Free Haunted Legends by Ellen Datlow, Nick Mamatas Page A

veins and weeping, yellowed fluid. He tilts his head and there’s a rim of fire on his lips. When he speaks, his words are disjointed as if they fall into Ruth’s head from far away.
    “I’ll be taking you with me, Ruth,” he says. “See if I don’t.”
    Ruth falls forward from her chair. She’s unconscious before she hits the floor.
    •  •  •
    A twilight world, lost inside Ruth’s head. Shapes fade and loom; colours swirl. She’s in the park, but it’s hardly the same park she knows so intimately. The air smells of wood smoke, and gas lamps hiss and bathe the strolling gentry with a tallow glow. Between the lamps the stars burn fiercely in darker skies.
    Ruth reaches down and smoothes her petticoats. These are fine garments, silken to the touch. No one has pulled out and ejaculated on these skirts. No one has wiped piss and snot and God knows what on these gowns. She feels a hand grasp her wrist from behind, and she’s lifted with ease from the ground. Ruth leaps, instinctively in step with her bearer’s giant strides, until they’re like two ice dancers soaring gracefully as one. Below her, the lamps swirl and fall away. Ruth feels the night air cool and damp on her brow.
    “Is this what you want, Ruth?” says the Spring Heel.
    Ruth shivers. She stares down at Victorian Liverpool bustling far, far below her feet. With each bound, the Spring Heel takes her higher, farther away from the pimps and pushers, away from the users and abusers; away from the Ruth she once was and farther toward the narrow thoroughfares and simpler times.
    “Yes,” Ruth whispers. She grips the Spring Heel tighter. “It’s what I want.”
    Ruth turns her head. The Spring Heel’s breath is a fire on his lips, but for an instant he could be Basil, or Lass, or even The Runt.
    “You’d leave them all to be here?” says the Spring Heel.
    “I could bring them with me.”
    “You could if they’ll come.”
    •  •  •
    Ruth wakes, startled. The ward is hospital-warm, sickly stifling, and Ruth gasps for breath.
    “She’s awake,” says The Runt. “About fuckin’ time. I hate hospitals, me; hospitals are bad for the health.”
    Basil and Lass, entwined as ever, turn as one from the window.
    “You gave us quite a turn, old thing,” says Basil. “I thought we’d damned well lost you.”
    Lass smiles. “But not yet,” she says. “Not quite yet, eh?”
    The smell of the park lingers. Ruth still tastes the fiery breath of the Spring Heel on her lips. The white line of his grip fades around her wrist.
    “Where did he go?” says Ruth.
    “Who?” says The Runt.
    “The Spring Heel.”
    A nurse enters the room. The Runt’s ripe, and Basil swigs the last dreg of his brandy, and the nurse makes no attempt to disguise her contempt. She waves her arms. “Everyone, out, the girl needs rest.”
    Lass runs a hand over Ruth’s brow. She stares down into Ruth’s eyes. “I think he’ll come back for you later,” she says. “And when he does, then you should go fearlessly with him. It’s what we all do whenever the mood to go back takes us, and that’s more and more these days. There’s less and less here for us now.”
    Ruth smiles and nods. She thinks she understands. Everyone secretly yearns for simpler times.
    When the Spring Heel comes, he no longer looks the terrible demon to Ruth. Instead he’s a glowing light of salvation. He’s love, and Faith, and Hope, and all that Ruth needs. Together they stand paused at the opened hospital window. The evening is cool and the street below glistens with earlier rains.
    Ruth can see the headline now:
Spring Heel Jack Lures Woman to Death Fall.
    Even as they leap, Ruth blows a kiss across time and space to The Runt, to Basil, and most of all to Lass. Perhaps she’ll see them again one day, when they chance to journey back to better days. But for now Ruth strolls through the gas-lit park lanes with the gentry. She’s at home in simpler times, and here she knows enough