Page:Weird Tales Volume 2 Number 2 (1923-09).djvu/69

68 I met a young lady ghost. She was just a creation of pink and outline, without any real substance whatever. I had no idea that mere color and outline could be so appealing.

"A mere colored silhouette." I checked my beating heart. "Pooh, bah!" But I looked again, and there were two of them, and they were not pooh-bahs. They showed pink and faultlessly outlined beneath her pink outlined dress. Two faultless pink ankles, and for a moment I was sorry for Ben's ghost, for I was no longer Ben's ghost, but not for a moment was I sorry for the ghost of Bob Tuffley.

I introduced myself as Robert Jay Tuffley, which meant something, and she introduced herself as Genevieve Actum. I told her I didn't like her last name and offered to change it at the first flag station. It pained me very much to make this offer, for that blame blue ghostly hand of Ben's, still clinging to my hand like a rusty gopher trap, nearly squeezed my fingers off as I made the offer. It was as jealous as a clam that had lost its only pearl, and I had found that pearl.

"Believe me, little sport-ghost Genevieve," I said, saluting her chaste lips, "this is the ghostly life!"

"You have come at last!" she sighed. "Oh, I have waited, waited so long for you!"

"Where have you been waiting?" I asked, for being so young I could not tell her of much waiting on my part. As she smiled, I felt a manly crust come over my young ghost like that on the ghost of Julius Caesar himself.

"By the Nile," she replied. "The eternal Nile."

As she said this Ben's hand released mine and I looked and saw it was gone. Ben had funked at mention of the eternal Nile, and all that remained of him had sneaked off.

"If you were as old as Mary Ann, how old would Mary Ann be?" I asked

"Dear, bold, blunt boy," she smiled, "look not at a maiden through time, but look at time through a maiden, and time will be no more."

"You didn't happen to know of a skirt named Cleopatra on the Nile?" I inquired.

"I was her favorite manicurist," she replied. "Oh, history, history what were you without Egypt, and what were Egypt without Queen Cleopatra!"

"How did you get this far out of ancient history?" I asked.

"I am neither strayed nor lost," she said. "This is the ghostland of the ancients, and no ghost may leave here but by the consent of the seven sacred crocodiles of the Nile, who never consent."

Great Scott! here I was, a ghost just born, running after the girls of old Egypt, and I must get the consent of the seven sacred crocodiles of the Nile, who never consented, to get back into a ghostland even as recent as the times of Pocahontas. I certainly had backed up on time somewhere without noticing it. It must have been along that primrose path. Had I gone the full length of eternity and back again up to ancient history, as Ben's blame blue ghost, and not known it? I must have been stupid not to have noticed all eternity passing, but then, I recalled, I had been Ben's ghost, and that may have been the why of my wherefore.

"I'm going back," I told her. "I've a friend waiting back a ways and I'll send him along to talk it over with you. He knows ancient history like a personal diary."

"You can not go back," she smiled. "You must go on and on till you come to the ghostland of old King Chaos, and the time that was before time, and the maidens of that time."

"The girls of chaos!" I exclaimed. "They must be a little mixed in their dates and shapes."

"Dear, blunt boy," she smiled again, "their shapes are as the shapes of shapes before shapes. You will do well to linger with my shape, ancient as it is."

"Youth is the time to flit," I said. "I will flitter on and see these maidensof chaos. Little sport-ghost, farewell!"

"Dear boy ghost, farewell!" she wept. "Remember my shape when you behold the shapes of the maidens of chaos, whose shapes are as the shapes of shapes before shapes.”

I almost lingered at her shapely speech, and turned back more than once to admire her shapely outline, but whilst alive as a man I had ever been a horizon chaser, and the old passion of flesh was still strong on my young ghost, and so I hurried after the horizon and left behind me this sweet maidenly ghost of two thousand Egyptian summers.

Soon I left the horizon itself behind me and came to the ghostland of straight lines, where there was no horizon because there were no curves. This was the land of checkerboard maidens, square-mouthed and square-hipped, square-legged and square-eyed. I soon had the holy squares and my ghost suffered every torment of maladjustment to the ladies of the country and the blame square country itself. Everything in it was square, from Priscilla to possibility.

I kicked my young ghost through this land as fast as it could be squarely kicked, and after traveling for two square moons, came into the ghostland of the Smell-that-would-be-all. And it was all! I have met with several young and elderly smells in my time, as man and ghost, that were possessed of great ambition and marvelous genius in their line of endeavor, and extreme originality, and a promise only exceeded by their daring; but this Smell promised nothing, gave no hope for further achievement, held back nothing to spring later, for it was fulfillment itself.

There was nothing lacking, neither in body nor persistence, neither in achievement nor possibility. It was done, perfect, geometric, unquestionable, absolute! It arose with me, it lay down with me, it went before me and followed behind me. I lingered and it lingered with me, I hastened on and it had preceded me. I furnished but the nose and it did all the rest, willingly, freely, wholly. Nothing wearied it, nothing delayed it, nothing obscured it. It had length, breadth, thickness, and, like imagination, the mystic, mysterious fourth dimension was in it also.

"This is the third morning of the Great Smell!" I said on the third morning, for I kept the days by it, and that night was the third night of the Great Smell. Then the stars came out and shone above it and smelt to me as the Great Smell smelt, and the moon was drawn like a scimitar from the scabbard of night and hung in thrilling splendor above, and smelt as the Great Smell smelt. The next morning was the fourth morning of the Great Smell, and the following night the fourth night.

Once or twice I suspected that Ben's blue ghost was following me, then I concluded that I must be getting close on to chaos, and this was the smell of chaos itself. But one faith sustained my young ghost through this land of the Smell-that-would-be-all, and that was the faith that I was the smeller and not the smell.

On the sixth day I came out of the country of the Great Smell into a small country, which seemed to serve for no purpose but as a buffer to keep the smell back from the countries beyond. It must have been a very difficult job for this little country, requiring great talent, if not actual genius, by its anti-odor administration, but that administration did its work well and I was no longer accompanied by the Smell-that-was-all.

For a few days I rested in this buffer country, while my young ghost recovered sufficient strength, verve, and hope to