GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER 26_DEATH ON THE AIR LIKE THE SMELL OF ASHES

{"And death is on the air like the smell of ashes ...

Already the dark and endless ocean of the end,

Is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,

Already the flood is upon us."

- D. H. Lawrence 'The Ship of Death.'"

{Samuel Clemens, ghost, writing.

Toya, betrayer of Roland, has swaggered up to us.

The damned, literally, Door of Nasah towers over us, bound by no walls save the limits of comprehension.

The ghost of Lauren Bacall has been revealed as a disguised DayStar. Marlene Dietrich looks as if she'd kissed a corpse --

and the corpse liked it.

Bogey looks even worse. I tried to lighten the mood. But let the entry from Roland's journal take it from here.} :


I rubbed my face wearily, numbed by all I'd seen. Bogey looked terrible. Mark Twain with his sure wit and lousy timing drawled in a thick Missouri accent.

"Why this puts the phrase 'F___ me' in an entirely new light."

Bogey glared at him. "I'm in a lousy mood, and I have a loaded gun. A real bad combination for you to crack smart."

Toya spoke softly, Marlene's saber held right up against her throat, "Bogart, he is a buffoon but a good-hearted one."

Twain bristled, "Missy, this buffoon is about a second away from spanking you."

Toya smiled bitterly. "Sam already beat you to that."

Marlene husked, "You betrayed Roland to what you believed to be his death. Hembra, you deserve much worse than that."

Toya glared at me. "Worse? Worse than your boy friend?"

Toya's face screwed up in sheer hate. "You're worse than any bloody

Caesar,scribbler.

You write worlds, people into life. Then, you throw them into the meat

grinder to watch the blood fly."

"I had no idea I did that when I wrote," I said.

"Liar! You are DreamSinger, known throughout the Shadowlands."

Her eyes narrowed into slits so small I was surprised she could see through them.

"All that anguish. All that pain. All that death. And for what? You don't even have an agent, much less a publisher."

Her face became a mask of utter hate. "Do you get off on maiming those who can't fight back? Well, I fought back! And I'm proud of it. Do you hear me? Proud of it!"

Marlene spoke thickly. "Pitiful last words."

"No!," I nearly shouted. "In her eyes, she did what she felt to be right."

Toya rolled her suddenly wet eyes. "Right? Sam's about to die because of you. I'm not right. I'm damned!"

I frowned, growing cold at what I was afraid she was talking about. "W-What do you mean?"

"Don't give me that, scribbler! You know what's happening. It's the end of your damned unsold novel. Rind has been kidnapped. And Sam ... Sam ..."

I finished for her. " ... is going to Hell to rescue her."

Toya was right. I was a monster. All these people in Meilori's.

They existed because my pen, my Lakota blood had given them life. DayStar wasn't the Devil. I was. I was.

I felt my face become stone. "But he won't go alone."

Suddenly hollow-eyed, Marlene lowered her saber and turned to me. "No, Liebchen.

DayStar meant to tempt me, for me to hurt you, so ... so you would ..."

Toya glared at me and finished for her, "Go to Hell."
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GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER SEVENTEEN_ A WILD NIGHT

{“Dying is a wild night and a new road.”
- Emily Dickinson.

“Many are of the opinion that there is no difference between Man and the Jackass.

This, of course, wrongs the Jackass.”
- Mark Twain.}

{Ghostly Samuel Clemens here. Death has finally brought us upstairs to her second rendezvous with a soul.

She suddenly seemed burdened with her garments, so she had cast them from her, leaving me with mouth open and Marlene with eyes narrowed.

Roland looked as if he had been pole-axed. I leave the rest to him.} :

Death covered her essentials gracefully with her long, black wings, and her face became so icy it scared me.

She spoke, and the sounds of it were as if icicles had been given voice. Her eyes grew deep and full of rage.

"I have come to render the final payment due you for your lucrative property, Madame Levi."

Madame Levi was a tall, angular woman who looked like a female version of Scrooge. Her gray and white, no nonsense Victorian dress seemed so starched that I was surprised she could move in it.

But move she did. Backwards, with her shaking hand to her mouth.

"I - I run a perfectly legitimate --"

Death motioned slowly with a long forefinger, and the suddenly trembling woman was dragged against her will right up to us. "Y-You have no right --"

"Speak not to me of rights, daughter of Eve."

Death leaned forward and whispered in words of stone. "This night thy soul is required of thee."

Then, Death inhaled deeply. I jumped in fright and horror, for Death sucked in the body of Madame Levi as it was turned into smoky vapor.

The Landlord had just enough time to make a mewing whimper before she was totally inhaled by Death. She snorted in disgust.

Marlene looked paler than I had ever seen her. Even, Mark Twain for once had no words. I didn’t blame him.

"Her stench was worse than I expected," murmured Death.

"Maybe you should give up smoking,” Mark Twain muttered.

Now, dressed fully in the robes I had seen Bast wear, she looked down at me with eyes of steel. "Do you still think of me warmly, son of Man?"

I wet my lips. “I don’t cut pie wedges out of my friends. I accept them for who they are. All of them, not just part of them. You do what you have to do.

But I’ve seen you cry over it. That makes you special in my book.”

She breathed soft, snowflakes shimmering from her lips, and mussed my hair with fingers colder than the shivers down my spine.

"You still break my heart. Above you stands the Door of Nasah and the twilight of innocence, where deaths lurk like sleeping fears."

Mark Twain raised an eyebrow. “That’s fortune cookie for someone need us up there, right?”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she whispered one word. "Yes."

"T-Then, that's where I'm going," I said.

Her face became totally hidden by living shadows. "Your Night is falling. I am called elsewhere. And the last tangle of knots in your skein of days lies before you."

"Oh, is that all? For a second there, I thought I was in real trouble."

As she rose like a swam taking flight, I whispered, "Why could Madame Levi see us, and those other people couldn’t?"

"Because their Moment of Accounting, though close, has not yet come."

Her smile was as cold as my blood. "The cliche is wrong, Roland. You do see the bullet that claims you."

And with a start, I realized I was at the head of the last flight of steps without any memory of having climbed them. "What the?"

Death was back to wings and nothing else as she looked sternly down upon me.

"The most effective path to Hell is the gradual one, without signposts, without sudden turns."

She made a grand flourish with her right wing, as if tempting me to look at her naked body.

I reached out and squeezed Marlene’s hand. She squeezed back and smiled sadly.

"Behold, the Door of Nasah," murmured Death.

There in that fancy hallway of red carpet and lush amber wallpaper, covered with flying cupids, stood the Door of Nasah.

It was metal and seven feet tall if it was an inch. As I walked closer with Death studying me, I saw it was made of solid gold.

The thing had to be heavy. How did anybody open the damn thing?

The huge door, carved in the shape of a leering dragon's head, slowly swung open.

"Cue the spooky music," I whispered.

“If you would enter, you must do so now. And quickly!”

And so it was that I, sometimes called DreamSinger, walked through the Door of Nasah and into the final tangle of knots in my skein of days.
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