Read Online Ghosts and Other Lovers by Lisa Tuttle - Free Book Online Page A

thrown herself at the child. But she had not.
    Instead, against all reason, Alida had flung herself at the man in black, had thrown herself into his waiting, outstretched arms, and taken the embrace that was meant for the child.
    The next thing she knew was pain. A blinding agony that lanced all through her, stretched her joints out of socket and broke every bone, took even her scream and shattered it inside her agonized eardrums. She was ripped apart and thrown back together into a shuddering, wracked heap that knew not even its own name.
    "Are you all right, love?"
    Opening her eyes was like ripping skin off a barely healed wound; her throat was too raw for a moan. Alida realized that she was alive. She was standing on Newington Church Street, her back against a wall, and before her was a little white-haired lady -- hair-net protecting her fresh perm, blue dress buttoned up to the neck, handbag square and glossy as the Queen's -- gazing at her with concern.
    Alida looked down at herself and saw that she was whole, with no signs of blood or bruising, even her clothes -- flowered print skirt and sleeveless pullover -- undisturbed.
    "What happened?" she asked, and clenched her teeth and rocked against the wall as an aftershock of pain ripped through her.
    "I don't know my love, I'm sure. I happened to notice you, and you were backing up to the wall as if you couldn't stand properly on your own, and you had a look on your face  . . . it was the look that worried me. . . ."
    "Not . . . a car didn't hit me?" Alida looked out at the road, past the woman's emphatic negative, to where the multi-colored traffic glittered in the sun and surged ceaselessly past.
    She saw the yellow dog panting in the sunlight, still blocking the door to the tobacconist's shop, although the two young men and the woman with the pushchair had moved on out of sight. She forced herself away from the wall, far enough to look around the bend, and was rewarded by the sight of Gavin's red curls. The little boy's hand was firmly in his mother's grip as they walked away.
    As for the man in black --
    The pain that was her memory of him was so sudden and sharp that she bit her tongue, finding the taste of blood a relief.
    "I'll be all right," she said to the woman who was still worrying about her. "It's over now."
    "Maybe it was the heat," said the old woman. "I'd see a doctor, though, just to make sure. It might be your heart, and you can't be too careful."
    But Alida knew it wasn't the heat, and it wasn't her heart. It was death, and she had survived it.
    She walked on, moving slowly, for the intensity of the experience had left her feeling almost boneless. As she came to the old churchyard she went in and sank onto a low stone bench to rest. She couldn't face her friends just yet: they would know by looking at her that something had happened, and she didn't know how she could explain it to them. She wasn't sure she wanted to tell anyone, for she expected disbelief, and she did not want to be made to doubt her own experience.
    She had seen Death. She had felt it, gone through, and survived.
    Despite the warmth of the day, Alida shivered. The agony was still there, on the edge of her consciousness, dangerous even to think about. And yet -- she had come through. Death, like pain, was comprehensible; it had a place in the world like that other mystery, sex. And, like sex, it was both simpler and more momentous than she had imagined in her innocence.
    She felt almost pleased with herself, with her new maturity. After a few more moments of reflection she was able to stand up, smooth down her skirt, and go to see her friends as if she was the same person they had always known.
    She thought that was the end of it. She had satisfied her curiosity and cured her obsession; she had come to terms with her own mortality and that of others and need no longer dream of death.
    But Death had not finished with her. On the bus that evening, going home, she saw the man in