"Joke?" he repeated, in Enic's deep Voice, and chuckled again. "I don't joke with you, Katharine."
His left hand only remained on the controls. His right elbow hooked over the back of his seat, and its hand came into view—a slender, delicate hand, a hand I knew, and upon its back, shining in the dimness like touchwood, a jagged Z-scar.
All these details wavered before my eyes, like a very old motion picture, but I could not deny that they were definite. The pilot had changed, had melted and run into a travesty of Enic. Reason tried to hold command, frantically and inadequately, like a leader against whom tried old troops had rebelled.
Something dawned in my head, a saving thought: ectoplasm . . . what was it? I had heard of ectoplasm, had read of it in Swithin's books, had laughed over a comedy film about it. The name of the film was Topper—but that was hardly important now. Ectoplasm, the spirit-commanded aura that could flow forth, become solid and take shape, to form upon a living body the strange semblance of a dead person—this must be the answer.
"Who are you?" I asked, knowing all the time who it was, and Enic chuckled yet again, with almost honest mirth.
"Why do you ask, Katharine?" he mocked me, in that soft deep voice that I could hear above the roar of the motor. "There's no reason to ask."
"What do you want?" I cried, and marveled at the hysterical ring of my voice in my own ears.
"You," he answered. "You, of course." Dead hand lifted to dead face, long fingers tapped line-bracketed cheek. "Did you think you would ever be quit of me? I died up here, Katharine. And I waited. You came up, and we're together again."
I shrank back, as though he had moved to seize me. "But you're dead," I protested wildly. "And I'm—I'm alive!"
"Yes," he nodded, as one who concedes an unimportant item of a discussion. "Anyway, you aren't bringing Swithin into this." His lips widened in a tigerish grin. "You don't love him as much as you think."
"Enic," I said, and paused to govern my voice. I must keep steady, in word and in heart and in mind. "Enic, you're wrong. I love Swithin."
"And you don't love me?" His voice was suddenly plaintive, offering the note that had so often melted my resolve in the past.
"I can't love you, Enic. Not now. You're dead," I cried at him again. "The dead can't love"
"Can't they, though?" His left hand crawled over his controls, doing something I did not recognize. "I'm dead, but I love you. I'll have you, Katharine. You'll see."
The ship bucked and leaped around us. Suddenly I slid forward in my seat, almost fell out of it but for the safety belt.
"What's happening?" I screamed.
The motor's roar rose high, cracked, and became a terrifying whine.
"We're falling," said Enic, and still his voice could dominate the din. "I'm letting us crash, Katharine."
"No! No!" I begged.
"You'll never feel it," he told me, as though to comfort me. "We're going faster, Katharine—faster—you'll lose your wits, go to sleep—to sleep—and when you awaken"
That whining wail was the air that tore at the struts, I knew. It was quieter now, or my ears were growing numb.
