Nobody's Home by Tim Powers

Author:Tim Powers [Powers, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Tim Powers, Anubis Gates, time travel, ghost stories
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2014-12-02T21:00:00+00:00

Jacky and Harriet each crouched through one of the doors on either side of the narrow linen tent, and in the darkness beyond hers, Jacky felt her way for a couple of feet and soon touched the back bulkhead of what must have been a storage closet. Her boots had tangled in a length of cloth, and when she unsnagged it and felt it, she concluded that it was some sort of heavy woolen nightshirt. After a moment’s wary hesitation she decided that it would do, and that the possibility of her clothing being stolen here was remote, and so she tugged her wet clothes and boots off and pulled the woolen garment on over her head. She was unarmed, but the Nobody fellow didn’t seem strong, and if he tried anything she’d brain him with his clytemnestra or whatever the thing was called.

She pushed open the door and was startled again by the green radiance from the two lamps—lamps he’ll bide in, she thought, while the oil goes replenished—as the other door opened and Harriet came out on her hands and knees, blinking. Jacky saw that they were both now wearing white robes—her own a bit wet and grimy in spots from being stepped on. The deck was chilly under her bare feet.

“The pistol would be good to have,” spoke up Nobody, who had pulled a stool out from under the table and was now sitting down. His hands were open and palm-up in front of him.

“It’s, uh, soaked,” Jacky pointed out.

“Good to have,” repeated Nobody.

Jacky shrugged, stepped back into the storage locker and returned with her dripping flintlock; after glancing around the cabin, she laid it beside the clay jar on the table.

The man smiled, exposing two rows of little rounded teeth, and the boat shook as if it had run aground. White light flickered for a moment outside the portholes.

He took no visible notice of it. He opened a cabinet on the starboard bulkhead and fetched out an inkpot, a pen, and two sheets of paper, and he laid them on the table beside Jacky’s pistol.

“Dip the pen in the ink,” he said to Harriet, “and hold it and one of the papers.” When she had complied, he asked her, “Who is your ghost?”

She visibly took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “My husband, Moraji. He was from India. We were married almost three years ago, had two babies who died. He died a month ago, falling from a roof. Now that he’s dead he wants to burn me up.”

The man nodded, as if this was not uncommon. He turned again to the cabinet, and this time it was a pint bottle of gin and a bowl of chocolate squares that he set down on the table. For a grotesque moment Jacky thought he was offering them refreshments.

But, “Ghosts will come to candy and liquor,” he said, stepping away now toward the tent.

“Moraji didn’t like candy,” said Harriet unsteadily, “and he didn’t drink.”

“I said ghosts,” said Nobody.

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