All Hallows' Eve Read Online Free

but there was no moonlight on the ground. The lights in the houses would come on and then go out. It was certainly growing darker. By her side the chattering went on; the crying became more full of despair. Lester dimly remembered that she would once have been as irritated by it as all but the truly compassionate always are by misery. Now she was not. She said nothing; she did nothing. She could not help being aware of Evelyn, and a slow recollection of her past with Evelyn forced itself on her mind. She knew she had never really liked Evelyn, but Evelyn had been a habit, almost a drug, with which she filled spare hours. Evelyn usually did what Lester wanted. She would talk gossip which Lester did not quite like to talk, but did rather like to hear talked, because she could then listen to it while despising it. She kept Lester up to date in all her less decent curiosities. She came because she was invited and stayed because she was needed. They went out together because it suited them; they had been going out that afternoon because it suited them; and now they were dead and sitting in the Park because it had suited someone or something else—someone who had let a weakness into the plane or had not been able to manage the plane, or perhaps this City of façades which in a mere magnetic emptiness had drawn them to be there, just there.
    Still motionlessly gazing across the darkening Park, Lester thought again of Richard. If Richard had been in distress by her side—not, of course, crying and chattering, more likely dumb and rigid—would she have done anything? She thought probably not. But she might, she certainly might, have cried to him. She would have expected him to help her. But she could not think of it; the pang took her quickly; he was not there and could not be. Well … the pang continued, but she was growing used to it. She knew she would have to get used to it.
    The voice by her side spoke again. It said, through its sobs, the sobs catching and interrupting it, “Lester! Lester, I’m so frightened.” And then again, “Lester, why won’t you let me talk?”
    Lester began, “Why——” and had to pause, for in the shadow her voice was dreadful to her. It did not sound like a voice; only like an echo. In the apparent daylight, it had not been so bad, but in this twilight it seemed only like something that, if it was happening at all, was happening elsewhere. It could not hold any meaning, for all meaning had been left behind; in her flat perhaps which she would never occupy again; or perhaps with the other dead in the tunnels of the Tube; or perhaps farther away yet, with whatever it was that had drawn them there and would draw them farther; this was only a little way—Oh what else remained to know?
    She paused, but she would not be defeated. She forced herself to speak; she could and would dare that at least. She said, “Why … Why do you want to talk now ?”
    The other voice said, “I can’t help it. It’s getting so dark. Let’s go on talking. We can’t do anything else.”
    Lester felt again the small weak hand on her arm and now she had time to feel it; nothing else intervened. She hated the contact. Evelyn’s hand might have been the hand of some pleading lover whose touch made her flesh creep. She had, once or twice in her proud life, been caught like that; once in a taxi—the present touch brought sharply back that other clasp, in this very Park on a summer evening. She had only just not snapped into irritation and resentment then; but in some ways she had liked the unfortunate man and they had been dining pleasantly enough. She had remained kind; she had endured the fingers feeling up her wrist, her whole body loathing them, until she could with sufficient decency disengage herself. It was her first conscious recollection of an incident in her past—that act of pure courtesy, though she did not then