James Herbert - ‘48

Her hair was sensuous against my skin. ‘I saw them, Hoke,’ I heard her say. ‘There were so many.’

‘Who? Who did you see?’

She lifted her head to gaze up at me. ‘I saw their spirits. The people who died in this hotel – I saw their spirits wandering the hallways and corridors. I saw them on the stairways, lost souls, just drifting, with nowhere to go. It was so sad, Hoke, so pitiful – and so frightening.’

‘I told you all not to leave your rooms tonight.’ My anger was false, a diversion from what she was telling me, because I didn’t want to hear such things. Memories were enough to cope with.

‘I had to get out. I needed to see more of this place, perhaps only to revisit better days. Can’t you understand that?’

I shook my head. ‘It was a stupid thing to do.’

She wasn’t listening. ‘I went as far as the main stairway, the one by the lift. They were just shadows at first, a shifting in the dark, until they began to emerge, slowly at first, as if my own concentration was helping them take form. Then they were all around me, drifting, floating, and oblivious to each other. Even for those who were together, elegant women in long, flowing dresses on the arms of men in dinner jackets and winged collars, there appeared to be no contact between them. But the anguish in their eyes, the misery in their features…’ Her head rested against my chest once more. ‘Was it only my imagination, Hoke? Or were they real…?’

‘A dream, that’s all,’ I told her as I held her tight, my arms pressed against her back, the gun now awkward in my hand.

‘But I wasn’t sleeping,’ I heard her murmur.

‘Illusions, then. Don’t you get it? The shock of seeing all those corpses earlier today is still messing with your head. Believe me, I know about it, Muriel, I’ve been there myself. You, me, Cissie, old Albert Potter, and the German – we’re the only living, breathing things in this hotel.’

‘I didn’t say they were living -’

‘There are no ghosts.’ She jumped at the anger in my voice. ‘The dead are dead. Anything else is fantasy. You understand, Muriel, you understand?’

My free hand was gripping her upper arm and she flinched at its sudden pressure. She tried to pull away.

‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry,’ I soothed, annoyed at myself for letting her wild talk get to me. ‘Just relax now and try to put those thoughts out of your mind. They’ll fade away eventually, I promise you. They’ll fade away for good.’

Her body seemed to sag and she leaned back into me, her hands down by her sides, her weight against my chest. I let her weep, my hand stroking her hair, and soon I became aware of the hardened tips of her small breasts through the thin silky slip, nudging my skin, arousing feelings I’d long since subdued. I fought against it, against yearnings that had been denied for so many years, aware that it was wrong, the wrong time, the wrong circumstances. And afraid she would be repelled.

Her weeping had stopped and she suddenly became taut once more, as though aware of what was happening. But instead of pulling away, she relaxed into me and the contact between us took on a new intensity. The very air around us seemed charged, as though an electric storm was gathering inside that cluttered bedroom. Impossible, but it seemed so real, and I soon realized that energy was building inside our own bodies and not in the atmosphere outside them. For me it became a kind of agony, an ecstatic craving that battled against other emotions, feelings and memories that would not be cast aside, not just for this, not just for – the image appeared stark and horrifying in my mind, her body lying there on stone steps, her belly torn open…I tried to block the thought, but still the horror of it lingered.

‘Hoke?’

Now I was the one who trembled, the one who fought back tears and turned away.

Muriel held my arms and shook me gently. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she said.

‘It’s okay,’ I lied, suppressing the dread inside. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘For a moment I thought you’d seen the ghosts too.’

‘I told you, there are no ghosts.’

‘Then why were you afraid just now?’

‘It wasn’t fear.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘So why are you shivering?’

There was only one way to stop her questions. I kissed her. Hard. Angrily.

And she responded, pressing her lips just as hard against mine, as if there was a fury in her longings also, a fierce aching that had been there for a long time. We fought against each other in a battle that was for fulfilment, not conquest, each of us clinging so that flesh touched flesh and desire met with desire. It was a struggle that required an outcome and we both knew it.

She drew her head away and whispered something. I became still and looked at her questioningly.

‘I need more,’ she said, her voice barely audible over our gasps for breath. ‘I need to lie next to you.’

I hardly hesitated, because any resistance was gone, lost in those first few moments. After wiping away the rivulets of tears from her cheeks with the thumb of one hand I led her to the bed and lowered her onto the wrinkled sheet. She kept her arms around my neck as I left the gun on the bedside cabinet and I took in her scent, not the perfume she’d found in her suite, nor the soap she’d used on her hair, but the aroma of her womanhood, of her arousal. The sheet beneath us was an unblemished white in the moonlight and her skin was of that same whiteness; the slip she wore was a shade darker, its reflections soft and silvery. Only by closing my mind to the past could I release myself to the present, and the vision of Muriel lying there, her arms outstretched to receive me, her legs slightly parted, one knee raised, helped me banish that other time. We needed each other badly and any reservation was swiftly put aside.

I sank down onto her, taking most of my own weight on my elbow so that I could gaze into her moon-bleached face and into those eyes that sought more than just passion. There was an urgency there, but also – or so I told myself at the time – a need for some kind of security, maybe a commitment

My fingers, still trembling, slipped beneath the strap on her pale shoulder to ease it aside. Resting my hand there, curled around her shoulder, I lowered my face so that our lips brushed against each other. The touch was deliberately delicate, unlike the bruising kiss of moments before, and it excited us both; still we kept the encounter tentative, moistening each other’s mouths with tiny stabs of our tongues, resisting the impulse to crush, to give ourselves completely, the restraint soon becoming unbearable, the years of abstinence heightening the tension, increasing the pleasure.

It could only last a matter of seconds and when finally we pressed into each other, teeth clashing, our lips hurting, I felt a roaring inside my head, a rush of charges surging through each limb, each part of my body. My hand left her shoulder to find her small, firm breast, and my fingers tightened on its solid core. I heard her gasp at the sudden pain, but the sound became a moan, and this was of pleasure.

Her hands slid round my neck, kneading its flesh and the hard ridge of my spine, her fingertips retreating so that they could come between us to work themselves against my chest, digging into the muscles there, smoothing over the ridges. It was my turn to gasp when her fingers probed the bruising. She quickly took her hand away, afraid she’d hurt me too much, and I felt those fingers flatten against my stomach, causing the muscles there to shudder involuntarily.

Our kisses were equally wild, our breaths equally as desperate, and when her tongue entered my mouth and pressed against my own tongue, I became even more aroused. One of my hands tugged at the slip, pulling it down, away from her breasts, and I took time to drink them in with my eyes, because they were so naked, so bare, so sensual, like delicate spheres carved in marble; and then I drank them in with my mouth, taking each nipple in turn between my lips and drawing them in so that they stood wet and proud as Muriel squirmed beneath me. I heard the quiet rustle of the sheet as her legs parted and when I rose from her again, I saw that the smooth material of her slip had ruffled up over her thighs, leaving a deep, alluring shadow between them. It was another flawless sight, an image that set my mind reeling as all control, all reason, slipped away from me.