“Would you mind going and getting it? Maybe a camera, too? Digital, I mean.” While Safie frowned, I added as casually as I could, “Simon, if you could give her a hand, that’d be great.”
Simon opened and closed his mouth, stuck in the classic Nice Guy’s dilemma of clearly realizing something was up, but being unable to call me on it without knowing what it was. I only nodded at Safie. After a moment she sighed, got to her feet, and went to the door, tapping Simon on the arm en route. “Come on.” He gave me one last tight-lipped look, and went with her. I waited until the door had closed completely then switched my attention back to Sidlo.
“You thought she shouldn’t have opened the door, right?” I said, my voice low. “The film you made—that that was Mrs. Whitcomb’s mistake, trying to go to Her?” He nodded, placidly. “Well—what if you made another copy, right here, right now, based on your memory of her memory? Could you do that? Am I right in thinking it’d be just as good as the last one you made, for Mrs. . . for Iris?”
There was a long pause before he answered; not quite surprise—it was as if he’d known all along what I had wanted to ask but hadn’t actually thought about the answer till now. He said at last, slowly, “I think so. Yes.”
“On Super 16, or silver nitrate?”
“Silver nitrate would be more appropriate.” He cocked his head at me again with that weird accuracy. “But what do you wish to accomplish, Ms. Cairns? Why would this time be different?”
“Because—” I caught my breath on a razor-edged gasp. “I want to make a door that goes the other way. One where, instead of me going to her, we make Lady Midday come to us.”
Sidlo stared into space, blinking slowly; said nothing for so long that I began to fear Safie and Simon would return before we could finish. But then, finally, he drew a quivering breath.
“You have . . . no idea,” he husked. “The repercussions . . .”
I kind of thought I did, but I wanted to hear it from him. “Then tell me.”
He shuddered. “Do you think She has ever really left me? I am under Her eye, even now; I live there.” He looked out the window, sunlight turning his skin and hair semi-transparent; weariness came off him so strong there was no room left for fear. “At midnight, I feel the noonday sun shine on me. I have slept only two or three hours a night for decades. Every sunrise is Her attention fixed upon me once more, a hand on my shoulder so hot and heavy I can barely rise, move, or breathe. Every day is the same, waiting helpless for a death She will not allow me—I am Tennyson’s Tithonus, suffering forever, aging without end. The woods decay, the woods decay and fall/The vapours weep their burthen to the ground/ . . . And after many a summer dies the swan—” He let out a long sigh. “Me only cruel immortality/Consumes,” he finished, a near-silent whisper.
Okay, then great, the most hateable part of me crowed inside. Even more perfect.
I swallowed, refusing to stop. “Then maybe this is the way to break that streak, get rid of what’s been haunting you all this time—this thing that isn’t even yours, somebody else’s ghost. And maybe . . . maybe this way, it can finally be finished. For Iris’s sake, and Hyatt’s. Their legacy.” The words tumbled out of me, not particularly planned. “Lady Midday wants worship, right? She doesn’t want to give, she wants to be given—that might’ve been Mrs. Whitcomb’s other mistake—that she demanded, instead of placating. Well, I’m fine with doing whatever it takes to keep Her away from my kid, and She can have whatever She wants, in exchange. I mean I’m not going to kill myself, or anything—even going by the mythology, there’s no earthly point to that. But if it turns out I have to spend the rest of my life making films about Her, or writing about Her, or telling people She bloody well exists in order to make her leave Clark alone—well then . . . that’s okay, from my end. Not like I have another job, anyways.”
(This is your job, Lois, Mom’s voice disagreed, inside my head. But as ever, I ignored it.)
Sidlo blinked. “You have no idea that’s what She wants,” he countered. “No idea if this will work.”
“Nope. But you know what else I don’t have? Any other options.” This time it was me who took his hand, gripped it hard, trying not to hurt him. “You saw how Hyatt vanishing destroyed Iris Whitcomb, and if I lost Clark—” The idea blindsided me, somewhat—an instant recipe for clogged sinuses and blurred eyes—but I choked my way through, nonetheless. “I’m not the world’s best mother, Mr. Sidlo. Clark drives me crazy a lot of the time, and I let it show. I let him . . . He’s mine, though. A piece of me—the best piece. I can’t let him go.”
A few moments passed, and I breathed in hard, letting the feeling ebb away. Then Sidlo moved his other hand across to cover mine. “My dear,” he said, his own voice raw, “if I have anything to say about it, you won’t.”
Fast fade, wipe, dissolve. Cut to—
Us in the van—Sidlo, Simon, Safie, and me; Sidlo’s wheelchair wedged into the back atop reefs of cable and equipment cases positioned to hold it still. And here is where, once again, a certain contextual ripple starts, filtering back from the inevitable point of contact between the “real world” and whatever lies sidelong, that hot silver reflection. A backwash, a storm forming, organizing itself around the seizure I can already assume is coming, once Lady Midday digs her fingers into my cortex yet again.
I think I remember being amazed my ploy had worked, at least thus fa
r. That anyone—Sidlo, let alone Simon—had believed me. Just let me get them home, I think I remember thinking. Let me put it all in place then see what happens. Let me try.
Because I know now, like I knew then: it was never about surrender, placation. It was about attack, entrapment. Stuffing the ghost—the god—back in her box, then setting the whole damn thing on fire.
(Opposites attract; lunar caustic, that term I didn’t even know yet. The moon tethering the sun. Industrial alchemy.)
Sidlo in the back, “watching” me from the corner of his filmy, flickering eyes. Safie driving, gaze on the road. Simon in the back, making sure Sidlo was okay. Me riding shotgun, a reel of precious, poisonous silver nitrate film in my lap, its case pressing cool against my legs—and my monkey-mind just racing, forwards and back at the same time, planning and scheming, unaware of its own impending danger. Always somewhere else.
(Come back, Lois, goddamnit, my father’s voice demanded, from the past. Don’t take yourself away. There’s more to life than dreaming, and it’s here, right here—)
I’m going to settle this, I thought, knowing on some level how stupid it sounded, even inside my head. Settle it, here and now. Or . . .
(What?)
Die trying, I suppose. Because that always seems so brave, when you’re not thinking clearly. When you haven’t even begun to consider what doing so—or, worse yet, failing to do so—might actually involve.
Let it work, let it work, I think I remember thinking. God, Lady Midday, whoever; just let this work, and I’ll never ask for anything again. And—
Looking back, amusingly enough, I don’t actually think I ever have.