The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

At once the room was over 200 years younger. It was drenched in gilt, and candle-flames stood like flowers of golden diamond on their stems of wax, while the ceiling revealed dolphins and doves who escorted a goddess over a sea in a ship that was a shell. The windows were open to a revised night hung with diamante lamps, to a lagoon of black ink where bright boats were passing to the sound of mandolins. The salon purred and thrummed with voices. It was impossible to decipher a word, yet laughter broke through, and clear notes of the music. No one danced as yet. Perhaps they never would, for they were creatures from another world indeed, every one clad in gold and silver, ebony and glacial white, with jewels on them like water-drops tossed up by a wave. They had no faces. Their heads were those of plumed herons and horned deer, black velvet cats and lions of the sun and moon lynxes, angels, demons, mer-things from out of the lagoon, and scarabs from the hollows of time. They moved and promenaded, paused with teardrops of glass holding bloodlike wine, fluttered their fans of peacocks and palm leaves.

Jonquil stayed at the edge of the salon. She could have walked straight through them, through their holostetic actors' bodies and their prop garments of silk, steel and chrysoprase, but she preferred to stay in the doorway, drinking her own wine, adapting her little song to the tune of the mandolins.

After the astrologer had gone, others had come, and passed, in the house. The rich lady, and the prince, with their masks and balls, suppers and recitals.

The travel-cook chimed, and Jonquil switched off 200 elegantly acting persons, 1,000 faked gems and lights, and went to eat her steak.

She wrote with her free hand: Much too pretty. Tomorrow I must photograph the proper carvings . And said this over aloud.

Jonquil dreamed she was in the attic. There was a vague light, perhaps the moon coming in at cracks in the shutters, or the dying walls. Below, a noise went on, the holostetic masked ball which she had forgotten to switch off. Jonquil looked at the chest of black wood. She had realized she did not have to open it herself. Downstairs, in the salon, an ormolu clock struck midnight, the hour of unmasking. There was a little click. In the revealing darkness, the lid of the chest began to lift. Jonquil knew what it had reminded her of. A shadow sat upright in the coffin of the chest. It had a slender but indefinite form, and yet it turned its head and Jonquil saw the two eyes looking at her, only the eyeballs gleaming, in two crescents, in the dark.

The lid fell over with a crash.

Jonquil woke up sitting on her inflatable bed, with her hands at her throat, her eyes raised toward the ceiling.

"A dream," announced Jonquil.

She turned on her battery lamp, and the small room appeared. There was no sound in the house. Beyond the closed door the salon rested. "Silly," said Jonquil.

She lay and read a book having nothing to do with the Palace of the Planet, until she fell asleep with the light on.

The square was a terrifying ruin. Hidden by the frontage of the city, it was nearly inconceivable. Upper storeys had collapsed on to the paving, only the skeletons of architecture remained, with occasionally a statue, some of them shining green and vegetable (the dissolution of gold) piercing through. The paving was broken up, marked by the slough of birds. Here the booth arose, unable to decay.

"There's a chest in the attics. It won't open," Jonquil accused the receiver. "The manual lists it. It says, one sable-wood jester chest."

The reply came. "This is why you are unable to open it. A jester chest was just that, a deceiving or joke object, often solid. There is nothing inside."

"No," said Jonquil, "some jester chests do open. And this isn't solid."

"I am afraid you are wrong. The chest has been investigated, and contains nothing, neither is there any means to open it."

"An X-ray doesn't always show" began Jonquil. But the machine had disconnected. "I won't have this," said Jonquil.

Three birds blew over the square. Beneath in the sewers, the colony of voiceless rats, white as moonlight, ran noiselessly under her feet. But she would not shudder. Jonquil strutted back to the house through alleys of black rot where windows were suspended like lingering cards of ice. Smashed glass lay underfoot. The awful smell of the sea was in the alleys, for the sea came in and in. It had drowned the city in psychic reality, and already lay far over the heads of all the buildings, calm, oily and still, reflecting the sun and the stars.

Jonquil got into the house by the gate-door the manual had made accessible, crossing the garden where the blue fountain was a girl crowned with myrtle. Jonquil went straight up over the floors to the attic stair, and climbed that. The attic door was ajar, as she believed she had left it. "Here I am," said Jonquil. The morning light was much stronger in the attics and she did not need her torch. She found the chest and bent over it.