Where the Summer Ends - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,103
a sweeping bow. “Let us pay honor to our bewitching mistress whose feast we celebrate tonight! I give you the lamia who haunted Adam’s dreams—Lilith!”
The maids smoothly swept the cloak from their mistress’ shoulders. From the multitude at her feet came an audible intake of breath. Beth Garrington was attired in a strapless corselette of gleaming black leather, laced tightly about her waist. The rest of her costume consisted only of knee-length, stiletto-heeled tight boots, above-the-elbow gloves, and a spiked collar around her throat—all of black leather that contrasted starkly against her white skin and blonde hair. At first Lisette thought she wore a bull-whip coiled about her body as well, but then the coils moved, and she realized that it was an enormous black snake.
“Lilith!” came the shout, chanted in a tone of awe. “Lilith!”
Acknowledging their worship with a sinuous gesture, Beth Garrington descended the staircase. The serpent coiled from gloved arm to gloved arm, entwining her cinched waist; its eyes considered the revellers imperturbably. Champagne glasses lifted in a toast to Lilith, and the chattering voice of the party once more began to fill the house.
Tregannet touched Beth’s elbow as she greeted her guests at the foot of the stairway. He whispered into her ear, and she smiled graciously and moved away with him.
Lisette clung to the staircase newel, watching them approach. Her head was spinning, and she desperately needed to lie down in some fresh air, but she couldn’t trust her legs to carry her outside. She stared into the eyes of the serpent, hypnotized by its flickering tongue.
The room seemed to surge in and out of focus. The masks of the guests seemed to leer and gloat with the awareness of some secret jest; the dancers in their fantastic costumes became a grotesque horde of satyrs and wanton demons, writhing about the ballroom in some witches’ sabbat of obscene mass copulation. As in a nightmare, Lisette willed her legs to turn and run, realized that her body was no longer obedient to her will.
“Beth, here’s someone you’ve been dying to meet,” Lisette heard Tregannet say. “Beth Garrington, allow me to present Lisette Seyrig.”
The lips beneath the black mask curved in a pleasurable smile. Lisette gazed into the eyes behind the mask, and discovered that she could no longer feel her body. She thought she heard Danielle cry out her name.
The eyes remained in her vision long after she slid down the newel and collapsed upon the floor.
•IX•
The Catherine Wheel was a pub on Kensington Church Street. They served good pub lunches there, and Lisette liked to stop in before walking down Holland Street for her sessions with Dr Magnus. Since today was her final such session, it seemed appropriate that they should end the evening here.
“While I dislike repeating myself,” Dr Magnus spoke earnestly. “I really do think we should continue.”
Lisette drew on a cigarette and shook her head decisively. “No way, Dr Magnus. My nerves are shot to hell. I mean, look—when I freak out at a costume party and have to be carted home to bed by my roommate! It was like when I was a kid and got hold of some bad acid: the whole world was some bizarre and sinister freak show for weeks. Once I got my head back on, I said: No more acid.”
“That was rather a notorious circle you were travelling in. Further, you were, if I understand you correctly, overindulging a bit that evening.”
“A few glasses of champagne and a little toot never did anything before but make me a bit giggly and talkative.” Lisette sipped her half of lager; she’d never developed a taste for English bitter, and at least the lager was chilled. They sat across from each other at a table the size of a hubcap; she in the corner of a padded bench against the wall, he at a chair set out into the room, pressed in by a wall of standing bodies. A foot away from her on the padded bench, three young men huddled about a similar table, talking animatedly. For all that, she and Dr Magnus might have been all alone in the room. Lisette wondered if the psychologist who had coined the faddish concept of “space” had been inspired in a crowded English pub.
“It isn’t just that I fainted at the party. It isn’t just the nightmares.” She paused to find words. “It’s just that everything somehow seems to be drifting out of focus, out of control. It’s... well, it’s