The Dark of Summer

ONE

Gwyn was not expecting anything unusual in that day's mail, and was certainly not expecting a letter that would change the course of her entire life…

She got up at eight o'clock, to the insistent shrill of her radio-alarm, went straightaway into the kitchenette where she tried to coax herself all the way awake with a cup of strong, black coffee. Sunlight streamed through the one large window over the sink and splashed on the tiny, round table where she sat. She squinted and hunched forward like a gypsy woman straining to cast a spell, her face puffy and lined with sleep. She had gone to bed rather late, for she'd stayed up studying for a Creative Drama exam; now, she was quite tired, bone tired. For a moment, as she closed her eyes against the warm fingers of the morning sun, she seriously considered re-setting her alarm to give herself another hour between the sheets, just sixty more minutes of lovely…

She snapped her head up as if she had been hit, and she forced herself to drink the rest of the bitter coffee. She dared not return to bed. For one thing, she'd miss the exam which she'd spent so much time preparing for. And for another, she knew how easily she could again slip into the sick, unnatural routine which had possessed her for six months after her parents died.

A temporary breakdown, Dr. Recard had said, an understandable psychological reaction to the tragedy. Yet, no matter how understandable it had been, she did not want to go through something like that again, for that had been the worst period of her life: it had been more horrible than the months after her sister's death when they'd both been twelve years old and inseparable, worse even than the morning the police had come around to tell her about her parents' accident. An understandable psychological reaction to tragedy… She had begun to sleep away the better part of each day. Anything but sleep became a chore, an unbearably arduous task. She began to get out of bed just before lunch, napping away part of the afternoon, retiring early after a meager supper, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. In sleep, there was no agony, no fear, no desperate loneliness. Her days passed in sleep, until it seemed as if she would never get out of bed, could not get out of bed except when she grew very hungry or thirsty. She had realized that something was terribly wrong with her, but she had not gone to a doctor for nearly six months. Then, when she had gone, it was only because she slept a whole day through without getting up for any meals at all and, the following morning, could not remember anything about the lost day. That terrified her. That sent her, thin and drawn and weeping, to see what Dr. Recard could do for her.

Now, for eight months, she had been able to resist the lure of lengthy sleep, and she felt she was gradually making solid contacts with life again, achieving, growing, putting her loss and her agony behind her. One moment of weakness, one extra nap when she really needed no nap, would send her spiraling back down into the bleak despair that had made her so cherish that unneeded sleep.

By nine o'clock, she'd showered, dressed and was on her way to the college campus which lay on a hill only six blocks from her efficiency apartment. The day was warm, bright, almost like a painting entitled “Spring,” with the cherry trees in blossom along Hudson Street, and birds darting like tiny kites between the eaves of the quaint old buildings which, though well-kept and attractive, had ceased to be single family homes and had been divided into student apartments much like her own. The walk, amidst all this bustling life and color, revived her spirits and made her forget about bed altogether.

The exam went well, and she knew that she had gotten a high grade, one that would insure the A for the course, which she had been working so hard to get. She stopped for a time in the student union building, but she did not remain long after she'd finished her Coke and sandwich. She had many acquaintances, but no real friends, for all her energies had been put toward re-making herself, rehabilitating herself. She had little or no time, these days, for friends. But that would change soon, when a week passed and there was no morning that she wanted to stay in bed unnecessarily long. Then she would know that she was better, was healthy again, and she would be able to open herself more fully to the world around her.

When she reached the apartment house at quarter past two o'clock, she stopped at the hall table to examine the stack of mail there, and she found only one thing addressed to her: a letter from her Uncle William, an impossible letter that, because it was the last thing in the world she was expecting, left her somewhat tense. She was frightened and shaking by the tune she had let herself into her three room apartment on the third floor of the old house.

She put the letter on the small kitchen table, went to change clothes, poured herself a tall glass of soda over two ice cubes, and sat down to read the daily paper which she'd picked up on campus.

She tried not to think about the letter.

That wasn't easy.

She finished the paper, folded it and stuffed it into the trashcan, rinsed out her glass and put that on the drainboard of the sink.

When she turned, the first thing that caught her eye was the white envelope lying in the center of the blue, formica tabletop. It was a beacon, a flare, and it simply would not be ignored.

Sighing, beginning to tremble a bit again, she sat down at the table, picked up the letter, ripped it open, extracted two sheets of fine vellum paper on which were neatly typewritten lines followed by her uncle's unfamiliar, bold signature. This was the first time in nearly fifteen years she had heard from him — encounters having anything to do with her mother's brother, William Barnaby, were exceedingly rare — and she did not know what to expect, though she expected the worst.

The letter said:

Gwyn looked up from the letter, stared out of the window at the incredibly blue spring sky, and she thought, somewhat bitterly, How simple and undramatic he makes it sound — how sterile in the recounting!

Though the biggest fight and the bitterest scenes between her Grandfather Barnaby and her parents had occurred before Gwyn was five years old, she still remembered those awful events as if they had transpired just last week. A few times, at her mother's insistence, Old Man Barnaby and William, who was eight years his sister's senior, would come to the Keller house for dinner; Louise, Gwyn's mother, was always certain that a good family get-together would help iron out their differences — especially with Gwyn and Ginny, the old man's only granddaughters, to lend an air of enchantment to the afternoon. But the old man never liked Richard Keller, looked upon him as an inferior, and always fomented a serious and roaring argument to end the visit. Gwyn remembered her mother's tears, and finally, the day the old man had left for good and notified them that they were forever cut out of his will.

The loss of the money did not upset her mother, though the loss of the old man's love most surely did. Still, she adapted to these new circumstances and devoted more time than ever to her own family, giving them all her love. In four years, she had gotten over her loss — and then her father had died. And her brother, William Barnaby, did not even notify her of the old man's passing until he had been buried for nearly a month. This delay, William insisted on the phone, was at his father's command, a clause in the old man's will. Her mother, aware that old man Barnaby could be extremely vindictive, even carrying a grudge to the grave, was still not satisfied with William's flimsy explanation. But she was more content, after this final insult, to let the estrangement between her and her brother continue — an arrangement that William was not only willing, but eager, to see perpetuated. He still professed a great dislike for Richard Keller and told his sister she would yet one day regret the marriage, despite her lovely twins.

The letter continued with this:

Sitting in her small kitchen, in the pleasant apartment which her trust fund allowances easily paid for, Gwyn smiled sadly at what, without realizing it, her Uncle William had just said. Money makes the man… Keller was worthless, an unpedigreed bum, an outcast compared to the so-daily conscious Barnaby family — until he'd started making big money. With a fortune, he was more acceptable. And, of course, he was easier to accept now that he was dead and gone…

She skipped over the remainder of that paragraph. She did not think Uncle William was so dense as to misunderstand her motives for not informing him, post haste, of his sister's death. Could he really have forgotten how badly he had hurt Louise when he withheld the news of old man Barnaby's death?

She turned to the second page of the letter:

Gwyn did not know at what point during the letter she had begun to cry, but now fat tears rolled down her cheeks like jewels of water, fell off the end of her chin, leaving a trace of saltiness at the corners of her mouth. She wiped at them with her hand, and she knew what her answer would be. She hadn't realized, until now, how much alone she was, how cut off from people, how without love and protection. She wanted a family, someone to turn to, someone to confide in, and she was more than willing to forgive old angers, old prejudices.

She got paper and pen from the desk in the living room and sat down to compose the reply.

She had no trouble with it. The words came as easily as if they were familiar lines of a favorite verse that she had memorized. In two weeks, when the semester ended, she would go to Calder, Massachusetts, to Barnaby Manor, to her Uncle William.

And life would start all over again.

She posted the letter that same afternoon and, in a better mood than any she had experienced since before her parents' death two long years ago, she treated herself to a movie that she'd been wanting to see for some time. And she went shopping for some new summer clothes — light dresses, swim-suits, shorts and airy blouses, sneakers — that might be suitable for the social life and the leisure time on the beach of the Massachusetts seacoast

That night, she had a nightmare which was old and familiar but which, for the first time did not terrify her. In the dream, she was standing alone on a barren plain with nothing but grotesque, stark rock formations twisting up on every side… The sky was flat gray and high, and she knew that no other living thing existed in all this world… She sat down on the sandy earth of the plain overwhelmed by the soul-deadening emptiness of the world, and she knew that the sky would soon lower (as it always did without fail), and that the rocks would close in (as they always did without fail), eventually crushing her to death while she screamed and screamed — knowing that there would be no answer to her calls for help. This time Uncle William appeared out of nowhere and reached for her smiling broadly. And this time she was not crushed and she was not alone.

In the morning, waking refreshed, she knew that now she was not without friends, without family or without hope. This one contact, yet so brief, with someone who might love her was enough to drive off the nightmare.

During the following two weeks, she did not have a single urge to sleep late or to take naps in the afternoon, and she knew that when her nightmare had gone away, her sickness had disappeared too.

She looked forward to the summer at Barnaby Manor with the enthusiasm of a small child preparing for Christmas morning. In her free time she did more shopping — not only for clothes for herself, but for gifts that she wanted to bring her aunt and uncle, small things given not so much because of their value but because they represented her own ardent desire to give in order to make their relationship a good and lasting one. These were gifts of care, gifts of sentiment, and she shopped especially carefully for each.

Finally on the first day of June, which was a Thursday, she packed her four large suitcases in her Opel coupe locked her apartment for the summer, paid her landlady three months' rent in advance and set out for the drive from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to the small town of Calder, Massachusetts where a bright, new future awaited her, a chance to re-establish contacts with people who wanted to love her in a world where, she had learned the hard way, love was at a premium.

TWO

When she first saw Barnaby Manor, still more than a quarter of a mile away at the top of the narrow and badly paved macadam driveway she stopped her car along the berm. She sat there, peering through the bright windshield against which the afternoon sun reflected, and she took time to carefully examine this place where she would spend the following three months and where, perhaps an old grudge would finally be laid to rest…

At first the house did not look particularly promising and seemed to threaten rather than to welcome. It was huge, with at least thirty rooms on three different levels, spotted with railed porches and balconies its slate roof precipitously steep and decorated with the blank eyes of attic windows which looked like nothing so much as observation posts in some fortress. The house was painted in those familiarly reversed colors that one sees along the New England seacoast: predominately royal blue, with a bright white trim rather than mostly white. This gave it a rich — and a decidedly sinister — look.

The driveway edged the cliff from the moment it turned off the public road half a mile behind her, and it fed directly into the loop before the mansion's large oaken doors. On the right as she faced the house the lawn sloped down and came to the cliff where it stopped without guard rails or wall. She could see from here that a set of steps had been carved into the cliff to give the people in the house easy access to the beach. To the left of the house, the Barnaby estate thickly forested, ran on out of sight.

Gwyn had lived in a mansion herself, when her parents were still alive and she was accustomed to money and what money could buy. However, even she was quite impressed with Barnaby Manor, impressed by its formidable dimensions and by the well-kept, ornately planted grounds around it. If the house were not so brooding, so foreboding —

But then she told herself, she was being foolish. A house was not a living and breathing entity. A house was merely a house. It could not have about it a mood, could project no aura, neither good nor bad. Rather, she was seeing in the house a projection of her own doubts and her own fears. Would her Uncle William be as pleasant in person as he had sounded in his letter? Would he really have forgotten all those years of enmity, and would he truly be sorry for the way he had treated his sister, Gwyn's mother? Because she had no concrete answers to any of these questions, she was seeing only danger in the lines of the perfectly harmless old house. It was she who was to blame, then, not the inanimate dwelling.

She put the car in gear, pulled onto the driveway, accelerated up along the cliffs edge toward the mansion. She stopped before the massive oaken doors and was surprised to see them open even before the sound of the car's engine had died away.

As she stepped out of the car she saw a thin wiry man walking toward her. He was sixty years old perhaps, with a leathery face that might have done well for the captain of an ancient sailing ship: all creases and lines, darkly tanned, grizzled. He was wearing a dark suit, blue shirt and dark tie and looked not unlike a funeral director.

“Miss Keller?” he asked rounding the front of her car, his gait swift but stiff-legged.

“Yes?”

“Fritz Helman,” he said, introducing himself with an incomplete bow in her direction. She thought that she detected the slightest trace of an accent in his precise voice, though he had obviously made English his native language decades ago. He said, “I'm the family's houseman. I serve as butler, official greeter, secretary to Mr. Barnaby — and in half a dozen other capacities. Welcome to the manor.”

He smiled at her warmly, though he seemed to be holding something back, keeping some other expression locked behind that smile. It was not quite that the smile was insincere, just that it did not completely show what he was feeling.

She said, 'Thank you, Mr. Helman.”

“Please call me Fritz.”

“Fritz, then. And you call me Gwyn.”

He nodded, still smiling, still withholding part of himself from her. “Your luggage?” he asked.

“Two suitcases in the trunk, and two on the back seat.”

“I'll have Ben get them shortly,” he said.

“Ben?”

“The handyman and chauffeur.” He took her arm in a very courtly manner and escorted her to the open doors, through them into a marble-floored entrance foyer where the walls were starkly white and hung with two flaring oil paintings by an artist she felt she should recognize but could not.

“Mr. and Mrs. Barnaby were hoping that you might arrive in time for lunch,” Fritz said. “They delayed as long as they reasonably could, and they've both only just finished.”

“I'm sorry if I held things up with—”

“Not at all,” he said quickly. “But would you like me to see about putting together a plate of leftovers for you?”

“I stopped for something on the way,” she said. “But thank you just the same, Fritz.”

She had taken two days for the drive, and she had enjoyed stopping at restaurants along the way — even those that had a decidedly plastic atmosphere and served food that she found barely passable and not always digestible. No matter what the quality of the meal, she was at least out among other people once more, away from the familiar academic background which had been the only place she had been able to function for quite some time. Now, free from school for a few months, no longer bothered by a need for excessive sleep, with some excitement for the summer ahead, she felt as if she were a jigsaw puzzle that had finally been put together. All of the missing pieces were in place, and she was again a complete woman.

While her thoughts were wandering, Fritz had led her down a darkly paneled corridor laid with a deep wine-colored carpet. Other original oil paintings hung on both sides. He stopped before a heavy, handcarved door decorated with wooden fruit and leaves, and told her: “Mr. and Mrs. Barnaby are in the library having a bit of brandy to help settle their lunch.”

He rapped once, shortly and sharply.

A man's voice, strong, even, and resonant, said, “Come in, please.”

Fritz opened the door and ushered Gwyn in before him.

He said, “Miss Keller has arrived, sir.” He sounded genuinely pleased to bring the news.

In the same instant he turned, rather abruptly, and left the room, closing the fruit bedecked door behind him and leaving her alone with the Barnabys.

The library was lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, and all of them were filled with hardbound volumes tooled in expensive leather or in good, sturdy cloth. A mammoth desk rested at one end of the room, and three large easy chairs at the other. In between was open carpet, a sort of no-man's land into which Fritz had led her and abandoned her. Though she had been feeling quite secure and competent moments earlier, she now felt full of doubts, uneasy, waiting for some indefinable disaster…

In two of the reading chairs, beneath the antique floor lamps, sat William and Elaine Barnaby. He was a large man, though lean, dressed in gray slacks, a burgundy blazer and a blue shirt with a dark blue ascot at his neck. His hair was gray and combed full at the sides in British fashion, and he had about him a look of near nobility. His face was somewhat soft, but not so little lined as to appear weak. His wife, Elaine, was younger than he, no more than forty, and quite beautiful in a cold, high-fashion way. She was dressed in a floor-length skirt and a ruffled blouse, holding a brandy snifter in her hand with the casual elegance that bespoke good breeding and the finest preparatory schools. She was brunette, with a dark complexion and huge, dark eyes that seemed to penetrate straight through Gwyn like twin knives.

No one spoke.

It was as if time had stopped flowing.

Gwyn felt awkward and clumsy as she compared herself to the older woman, though she knew she was neither of these things. Her bright blonde hair now seemed brassy and cheap next to Elaine's dark locks, and she felt that her pale complexion — from so many months as a recluse — made her look sickly and unattractive. She was certain that, if she took but a single step toward them, she would stumble and fall, making a complete fool of herself.

Putting his brandy snifter down on the table beside his chair, William Barnaby stood; he was well over six feet tall and even more impressive than he had been sitting down.

Gwyn waited.

She knew she should say something, but she could not. She was sure anything she could say would seem childish and frivolous.

He took a step toward her.

Behind him, Elaine stood too.

“Gwyn?”

Somehow, she managed to find her voice. “Hello, Uncle William.”

They were only half a dozen steps apart now, but neither of them moved to close the gap. The reunion was not going to be so easy as she had anticipated, for they both had too much past to reject to manage intimacy in the first few minutes.

“You look wonderful,” he said.

“Not really,” she said. “I've not been well lately. I need to get a little sun.”

It all sounded so inane and pointless, this small talk when they should have been making up for all those lost years. And yet… What else was there to do?

Elaine said, “How was your drive?” Her voice was cool, even, and touched by a faint British accent that amplified her sophistication. Her smile was absolutely dazzling.

“Very nice,” Gwyn said, her own voice stiff with expectancy. “I didn't mind it at all.”

Another moment of awkward silence passed.

Gwyn almost wished she had not come here. This reunion was going to take more out of her than she had to give.

Then, as if snapping out of a trance, her uncle said, “Gwyn, I'm truly sorry for what's happened.”

“It's all past,” she said.

“But that makes me no less sorry.”

“You mustn't worry about it,” she said.

“I can't help but worry,” he said. “I only wish that I had come to my senses years ago, before so much bad feeling had been generated — while Louise was still alive…”

Gwyn bit her lip.

Tears, unbidden, rose in her eyes.

She thought that she saw tears, also in William Barnaby's eyes, though she could not be certain.

Then, as the fat droplets brimmed up and trickled down her cheeks, the spell was broken altogether, and their uncontrollable emotions forced them to accept each other in a way that intellect alone could not have done. Elaine came swiftly forward, graceful and concerned, and she put an arm around the girl's shoulders, consoling her with few but well chosen words. When Gwyn had wiped the worst of the tears away and felt somewhat better, Elaine said, “Come and sit down. We've got so terribly much to talk about, the three of us.”

Elaine had been right: they couldn't get done talking. At times, all three of them would begin to speak at once, producing a senseless chatter that made them all break off in laughter. Then they would sip their brandy (a snifter had been wetted for Gwyn), take a moment to reorder their thoughts, and begin again. They talked about the past, about the present, about the summer ahead, and they gradually grew more accustomed to each other until, by late in the afternoon, Gwyn felt as if she had not been separated from them for years, but, rather, for a few short weeks.

She hoped they felt the same way about her, and she was fairly certain that they did, although she now and then sensed a caution, a cool reserve that was not unlike the same air she had noticed about the butler, Fritz Helman. She supposed that this was nothing intentional, but merely the way of those who have been very wealthy all their lives and have insulated themselves from the heat of the real world beyond their preserves.

Her Uncle William was not a man to indulge in self-pity or in self-recriminations. He was proud and a bit aloof. With others, outside of his circle of family and friends, he would be a bit snobbish, though not unlikable. Once he had convinced her of his sincere contrition for his past behavior — which he did at the outset when she first walked into the library — he never mentioned it again. Indeed, he spoke as if the separation between them had never existed at all, as if they were sitting down for a chat like a thousand others they had had. When he let his mind wander through the past and call forth amusing anecdotes, he laughed both at the stupidities perpetrated by himself and his father, and at the good times from his childhood, before the feuding had begun. He did not apologize repeatedly, and he did not whine over his mistakes; he was a man who was above that sort of behavior.

The conversation, therefore, was almost uniformly entertaining and contributed to a general lightening of Gwyn's spirits. The only time it grew depressing was when they wanted to know about her sickness.

“When you came in,” Elaine said, “you mentioned having been ill.”

“Yes.”

“Nothing too serious?”

“Nothing I could die from,” she said, laughing, trying to get them off the subject.

But they were both concerned for her. Her uncle said, “Our own doctor's quite good. I could make an appointment for you if—”

“That's not necessary,” Gwyn said.

“It's no trouble, and—”

“It wasn't exactly a physical illness,” she said, looking down at her hands which were folded around the thick stem of her brandy snifter and which were trembling noticably.

When she looked up, she caught the tail-end of a meaningful glance which the two older people had exchanged over this bit of news. For an instant, she almost thought that she had glimpsed an element of a smile in that glance… But that did not make sense. Mental illness was a misfortune; there was, surely, nothing about it that anyone could find humorous.

For a while, depressed by her own story, she had to tell them all that she had experienced because of the shock of her parents' death — the long naps, the longer nights in bed, and finally about her battle, with the help of a psychiatrist, to overcome her malaise. It was all very trying to recount, but she decided they had a right to hear about all of it. They were, she hoped, to be her only loved ones, and she did not want to have to keep secrets from them.

Much later, after the conversation had been channeled back to more pleasant subjects, Elaine stood abruptly, set down her glass and said, “Well, I think we've badgered Gwyn enough for now.” She turned to the girl and said, “You must be exhausted after your drive. I'll show you to your room, so you can rest and freshen up before supper.” She looked at her watch. “It's just six-thirty now. That gives you two hours before dinner.”

Gwyn's room on the second floor was huge and airy, furnished in genuine colonial antiques including a canopied bed. It had two large windows, both of which looked out on the lawn, the edge of the cliff, and the endless sea beyond. The sky was high and blue, marred only by a few scattered, dark clouds near the horizon — and the ocean threw back this blueness tenfold, like a painter's pot of color.

'It's a beautiful view,” Gwyn said.

The waves rolled toward the beach at the base of the cliff, which was not within view from this vantage point, tipped by brilliantly white foam that shimmered like a heat mirage.

“Do you really think so?” Elaine asked, standing next to her.

“Don't you?”

“Of course,” Elaine said. “But Will remembered about Ginny, about the accident… And he thought maybe you wouldn't like a view of the sea, that it would bring back unpleasant memories.”

“Of course it doesn't,” Gwyn said. But her voice was strained.

Ginny had died in a boating accident from which Gwyn had escaped with her life. Looking at the sea, Gwyn had not recalled the association — but now she could hardly avoid it. She remembered, with a sudden intensity that surprised her, the empty, hollow pain that had followed her sister's death when they were both twelve.

“Your life's been so full of death and pain,” Elaine said, touching her cheek. “But it's going to change now. You've only got good things coming to you.”

“I hope.”

“I know.”

Elaine showed her the private bathroom attached to her room, showed her where extra towels and linens were kept if she should need them. When the older woman left, her footsteps were like quickly fading whispers, testimony to her grace, and she closed the heavy door without making a sound.

Gwyn returned to the window, like an iron filing drawn to a magnet, and she watched the rhythmic pulsing of the great ocean which, in some small way, still harbored Ginny Keller… It held her atoms, sundered one from the other, which it had scattered to the four corners of the world, food for the fishes, no longer a person, no longer anything at all…

Dr. Recard had warned her that, when she found herself facing a particularly unpleasant chore or memory, that she should not turn from it, but should confront it, should become so familiar with it that it lost its frightfulness. Now, she confronted the ocean, the rolling waves, the low sky which was much like the sky beneath which Ginny had drowned so many years earlier…

Why had Elaine found it necessary to bring up the subject of Ginny Keller, when she knew that it could have only an adverse affect on Gwyn's mood? Why couldn't she have just let the subject lie undiscussed once she saw that Gwyn was not bothered by the ocean?

She was only concerned for me, Gwyn thought. She was only trying to be kind.

She hugged herself.

She was filled with a confusion of sadness and happiness, and she did not know for sure anymore whether or not this whole endeavor was a good idea. In the library, when they had talked of so many things, she was sure she had made the right decision by coming here; the summer would be full of joy. But now, she realized that the past could be forgiven — but that it could never be entirely forgotten.

As she stood watching the sea, her thoughts drifted, and in a while the face of Ginny Keller rose up before her, almost as if it were etched on the windowglass… It was a pale face, tongue lolling between purpled lips, eyes bulging obscenely, skin a vaguely bluish color, quite dead and quite hideous…

THREE

Gwyn was still standing before the window when the knock came at her door less than ten minutes later. She was watching both the sea and the vision of the long-dead girl, repelled and yet mesmerized by the superimposed spectacle provided by her own over-active imagination. The sound of knuckles meeting wood jerked her out of her unpleasant reverie, brought her back to the reality of Barnaby Manor.

She crossed the room and opened the door, expecting to see either Fritz Helman or her Uncle William. Instead, she was greeted by a tall, rather well-built young man no more than three or four years her senior, a handsome man with a thick growth of unruly brown hair and eyes as black as chips of polished coal. He was wearing casual slacks and a floppy collared blue shirt, and he carried two of her suitcases.

“I'm Ben Groves,” he said. “I didn't realize there were suitcases in the back seat of the car when I took the others out of the trunk. Fritz just told me. I hope I haven't inconvenienced you at all.”

“Of course not,” she said. “Bring them in.”

She stepped back from the door and ushered him in.

He placed the suitcases beside the other two, at the foot of the bed, and he said, “I could help you unpack, if you like.”

“That's okay,” she said. “I don't mind. If I don't do it all myself, I'll not know where everything's been put.”

He smiled. He had a perfect smile, all full of white, even teeth; his evident good humor was infectious. Gradually, Gwyn began to forget about the sea, about the boating accident, about Ginny…

He said, “I'm the handyman, as you probably know. If anything needs fixed — and something usually needs to be fixed in a place so old as Barnaby Manor: a dripping faucet, a sticking window, a loose stair tread — just leave word for me with Fritz or with Grace, his wife. I'll take care of it as soon as I know about it.”

She promised not to be shy about calling him.

“And I'm also the chauffeur,” he said. “The Barnabys own two cars — a rather ancient but excellently preserved Rolls Royce, and a brand new Thunderbird. I know you've got your own car, but if you should ever want to go into town, and you don't feel like driving yourself, you've just got to let me know.”

“I wouldn't want to interfere with your duties to Uncle Will,” she told him.

“He rarely needs a chauffeur. He manages the family estate from here, in the Manor, and he really doesn't go out very much. Except for his meetings with local real estate people, and even then the meetings are generally held here.” He looked around the huge room, nodding approval, and he said, “Do you like the place?”

“Very much,” she said. “There's more room than I'll need.”

“Not just your room,” he said. “Do you like the entire house?”

“I haven't seen much of it yet.”

“I'll give you a tour after supper,” he said.

“I'd appreciate it.”

He said, “Old houses fascinate me, and this one fascinates me more than most. It's nearly a century old, did you know?”

“I didn't.”

He nodded. “Houses were built so much better then than they are built today. The carpenters cared about what they did; they looked upon a house as their own private work of art, even if they were never to live in it. They added so many nice touches that contractors bypass for the sake of economy today.” He shook himself, as if he was beginning to forget where he was. “I can run on about Barnaby Manor,” he apologized. “But I'll save it all for the tour this evening.”

“I'll be looking forward to it,” she said.

He said, “Well, you're much different than I thought you'd be.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. For one thing, you're prettier.”

She blushed, wishing he hadn't said that — yet glad that he had. His candor was surprisingly refreshing, and her ego had needed boosting for a good, long while.

He said, “And you aren't at all stuck-up.”

“Why should I be?”

“You're a rich young woman,” he said.

“Are all rich young women stuck-up?”

“Most of them.”

She laughed. “Money isn't anything to get snobbish about.”

“You're an exception to the rule,” he said, smiling.

“I've never worked for a penny of my money,” she said. “Maybe that's why I can't be a snob about it.”

“No,” he said. “That's usually when people get snobbish, when it's inherited wealth. If they had to work for it, they'd always remember what it had once been like to be poor, and they'd not be able to take on a superior attitude.” His voice had grown much more serious, and the smile had slid away from his face. He turned from her, as if he didn't want her to see him in anything but the best of humor, and his gaze fell upon the window through which she had been watching the sea. He said, subdued for the first time, “I hope that hasn't bothered you.”

“What?” she asked.

“The view from that window.”

“No,” she said.

He turned and looked at her now, concerned. “This is the best of the guest rooms, the airiest. But if the view bothers you—”

“Please, believe me, I love the view,” she said, trying to smile and not managing it very well. Why did everyone have to bring up the view from the window? Why must she be repeatedly reminded of her dead sister, and by association, the deaths of her parents as well?

“Good,” he said. “But if you want to change rooms, just leave word with Fritz. Some of the other guest rooms face the woods on the other side of the house. Smaller than this, but nice anyway.”

“I'm fine,” she insisted.

She didn't feel fine at all.

“When you're finished with dinner,” he said, “don't forget to come and get me for a tour of the house. I'm most likely to be in the kitchen about that time.”

“I won't forget,” she promised.

When he was almost through the door, pulling it shut after him, she said, “Ben?”

He paused, looked back at her, smiling still, a lock of brown hair having fallen across one eye. “Yes?”

“Thank you.”

He grinned even more broadly and said, “There's nothing to thank me for. I'm more than happy to have an excuse to spend time in your company.” He closed the door softly behind him.

Gwyn went to her bed and stretched out beneath the blue canopy, abruptly quite weary. She realized that they were all concerned about her. They wanted her to have a good time here, and they did not want her to be bothered or upset by anything — including the view of the sea from her bedroom window. Their probing was only meant to ascertain if she were happy. Still, it rankled. The sea had never been an object of terror for her, even though Ginny had died in it, even though she had been lucky to escape its smothering mass alive. She had been to the beach and had been swimming in the ocean countless times since that long-ago tragedy. But if they didn't stop reminding her of Ginny, of the shattered boat so swiftly sinking, of the roiling water, of the screams… If they didn't stop reminding her, she was never going to be happy here at Barnaby Manor. There was such a thing as being overly protective; they were unconsciously destroying the good humor that they were so desperate to build in her. She resolved to make this plain to them if, at dinner or afterward, anything more was said about the view from her window.

But the dinner conversation never once touched upon the matter and was, in fact, quite lively and amusing. The food, prepared by Fritz's wife, Grace, was excellent though more typically American middle class than Gwyn would have thought: roast beef, baked potatoes, three vegetables in butter sauce, rolls, and a peach cobbler for dessert. They drank a fine rose wine with the meal, which seemed in contrast to the other fare, but which brought out a special taste in everything and added an edge of humor to the conversation that might otherwise have been lacking.

After dinner, because her uncle had still more business to attend to before he could call it a day, and because Elaine was tired and wished to go to bed early after an hour or so of reading, there was no objection to her going off with Ben Groves to examine the finer points of the house.

She found him sitting in the kitchen, reading the newspaper which her Uncle Will had finished with that morning and passed on. “Ah,” he said, standing, “I was afraid you wouldn't come.”

“I wouldn't miss it,” she said.

Fritz and his wife were in the kitchen, and Ben introduced Gwyn to the older woman.

“Pleased to meet you,” Grace said, offering Gwyn a chubby hand to shake. She was perhaps fifty years old, younger than her husband, though her hair was completely white. She was a robust woman, only slightly overweight, somewhat handsome, with few wrinkles in her face and all of these concentrated around the edges of her steady, blue eyes. She dressed and acted in a grandmotherly fashion, though Gwyn somehow felt that this image was an affected one, and that a wholly different Grace lay just below the surface, in the same way that Fritz's outward image did not seem to be the real one. Perhaps this harmless deception was what lifelong servants to the wealthy had to develop. They could never afford to tell their employers what they really thought. A workable facade kept their jobs and their sanities intact.

“It was a wonderful supper,” Gwyn said.

“Not fancy,” Grace said. “But good nourishment.”

“Exactly.”

“Mr. Barnaby had one of them fancy cooks for years, but he finally got rid of her. He says he's felt better ever since I took over the kitchen.”

The woman seemed proud of Mr. Barnaby's approval — and yet, hovering just behind everything that she said, was an elusive sarcasm.

Gwyn turned to Ben and said, “Well, can we start out now? I have to walk off some of that beef and potatoes.”

Grace laughed and returned to her work at a countertop, where she appeared to be filing receipes.

“This way,” Ben said, taking her out of the kitchen again.

For the next hour, he took her from one room to another — the library; Uncle Will's study; the large dining room where thirty guests could be easily accommodated at a huge table; the front drawing room; the sewing room; the music room where a huge piano stood on a pedestal, and where comfortable divans had been arranged for an audience that, Ben said, had not sat here since Old Man Barnaby's days; the pool in the basement, filled with bright blue water, heated, encircled by crimson and black tiles; the nooks and crannies which the builders had included everywhere, tiny rooms, hidden closets, niches in a main room where one could step back and be out of sight, alone with one's thoughts for a few minutes… He showed her how the carpenters had built the manor house without nails, using wooden pegs soaked in oil to insure a tight fit of all the joints. He explained that the visible joints, at door frames and window ledges, were all carved by hand, with sharp knives, rather than sawed, to give them a rustic look and a much better fit. When he was finally done, she was as in awe of the fine points of the house as he was.

At the door to her room, he said, “I hope I didn't bore you too much, Gwyn.”

“Not at all.”

“I get carried away about the place.”

“It's easy to see why,” she said.

“Tomorrow — might I show you the grounds around the house?”

“I'd like that,” she said. “Shall we say ten o'clock?”

“I'll be waiting by the front door,” he said. “Goodnight, Gwyn.”

“Goodnight.”

In her room, she watched the sea from her window, watched the moonlight dapple the moving waters, and she was once again perfectly sure that she had made the right decision in coming to Barnaby Manor for the summer. This evening, with Will and Elaine, and later with Ben Groves, had been one of the most enjoyable she'd spent in months.

She prepared for bed, got beneath the covers, snuggled down and turned out the bedside lamp. In the darkness, her mind spinning wearily around and around, she found that she had no trouble falling into a deep, sound sleep…

“Gwyn?”

She turned over in her sleep.

“Gwyn?”

She buried her head beneath the pillow, trying to block out the voice, grumbling to herself at this unwanted intrusion.

“Gwyn…”

The voice was soft, feminine, as hollow as an echo, as fragile as blown glass, repeating her name over and over again.

“Gwyn…”

She rolled onto her back, trying to shake off the dream, still not awake, flailing slightly at the covers around her.

“I'm here, Gwyn…”

She was awake now.

She pulled her arms out from beneath the lightweight covers and let the cool air-conditioning blow across them.

“Gwyn…”

Yawning, she tried to shake off the lingering dream. It had been a strange one: no visual images, nothing but that haunting voice which called out to her over and over again.

“Gwyn…”

Suddenly, realizing that the voice was not a part of any dream, but was real, she opened her eyes. The room was no longer completely dark, but flickeringly illuminated by a candle. She sat straight up in bed, confused but not yet frightened.

“Hello, Gwyn…”

Incredibly, impossibly, she looked to the open doorway of her room and saw herself standing there. It was as if she were looking into a mirror — except that this was no mirror image. Her double, in the door frame, was standing, while she was sitting. And while she wore a dark blue nightgown, the figure in the door was dressed in a gauzy white gown that looked as if it were made of hundreds and hundreds of layers of spider webs, all rustling and yet soft.

“Don't you know me?” the double asked.

“No.”

The double smiled.

She said, “How's the view from your window?”

Gwyn felt a chill that did not come from the air conditioner, a chill that welled up from deep inside of her.

“You've decided properly.”

“Decided what?”

“To love.”

Her double stepped back from the open door and turned away, walking quickly out of sight to Gwyn's left, down the second floor corridor.

“Wait!” Gwyn cried.

She pushed back the covers, got out of bed and ran to the door.

The hallway was dark, except for the moonlight that filtered in through the windows at either end. There was no candle. And by the pale, unearthly luminescence, Gwyn could see that the length of the corridor was utterly deserted.

Numbed by what she'd seen, she knew she must be asleep. There was no other logical explanation for it: she must be dreaming. She bunched some of her right arm in the fingers of her left hand and pinched herself hard, almost cried out with the pain. That was not the reaction one might have in a dream, surely. She was awake…

She stepped back into her room and closed the door. She went into the attached bath, washed her face in cold water and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her face looked drawn, her eyes wary.

“You need a suntan,” she told herself.

Her reflection obediently mimicked the movement of her lips. It did not start to make movements by itself, as she had almost expected that it might.

“You were merely dreaming,” she told her reflection, watching it closely. “Just dreaming.”

It simultaneously told her the same thing, moving its lips without making a sound.

She leaned away from the mirror and said, “Is it possible to have a dream last on, after you've wakened?”

Her reflection didn't know, or, if it knew, wasn't saying.

She sighed, turned out the bathroom lights, and went back to bed. She supposed that her aunt, and Ben Groves, so solicitous of her with their reminders of Ginny's death, had primed her for such a delusion as she'd just had.

The clock read 4:10 in the morning, still four hours before she would have to get up for breakfast. However, she slept very little the remainder of the night, dozing on and off, waking again and again to listen for the sound of a whispery voice calling her name…

FOUR

Half done with their tour of the grounds — which turned out to be far larger and more elaborately landscaped than Gwyn had at first thought — she and Ben Groves stopped at a white stone bench near the perimeter of the dense woodlands, within sight of a birdbath where two robins played. They sat and, taking a break from the nearly non-stop conversation they had thus far indulged in, watched the birds frolicking.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Gwyn asked him, without preliminaries, turning away from the robins.

They had talked about so many things during the last hour, jumping from one subject to another, sounding each other out on various topics, trying to get to know each other better, that it was unlikely he would find her abruptness strange.

“How do you mean?” he asked.

“Ghosts,” she said. “You know, old friends to haunt you, old enemies here to take revenge.”

He thought a moment, then said, smiling, “I believe in them.”

“You really do?”

“Yes.”

She was surprised. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“No,” she said, “I'm serious. Why do you believe in ghosts?”

“I believe in ghosts,” he said, “because I believe in anything that's fun.” He grinned at her.

“Ghosts are fun?” she asked.

He leaned back against the stone bench, folding his hands behind his head and crossing his ankles out in front of him. “Oh, most assuredly! Ghosts are an enormous lot of fun.”

“How?”

“Everyone enjoys a good fight.”

“I don't.”

“Sure you do,” he said.

“Nope.” She was adamant about it.

He turned sideways, his hands still behind his head, and he said, “Didn't you enjoy Halloween when you were a kid?”

“Yes, but—”

“Didn't the idea of frightening other people — and of being frightened yourself — appeal to you?”

“That's different,” she said.

He smiled. “Okay, then.” He seemed to pause for thought, then said, “Have you ever gone to see a horror movie — you know, one with vampires or werewolves — or even ghosts?”

“Sure. But what's that got to do with—”

He interrupted her by holding up a hand for silence. He said, “Just bear with me. Now, did you go to see any more of this sort of movie, after you saw the first?”

“Several,” she said.

“Why did you go?”

“What do you mean?”

He said, “Why did you keep going back to this sort of movie?”

“To be entertained. What else are movies for?”

“Exactly,” he said. He seemed pleased with himself. “And since the whole point of a horror movie is to frighten the audience, you must have enjoyed being frightened.”

She was about to disagree, when she saw that he was right, and that there was no point on which she could prove him wrong. She laughed. “I never looked at it like that before.”

“So,” he said, “I believe in ghosts because they're fun.”

They watched the robins a while longer. In time she said, “But aren't there — evil ghosts?”

“Probably most of them.”

“What if one of these has in mind to do more to you than frighten you? What if it intends you harm?”

“Then I stop believing in ghosts,” he said.

She laughed and slapped his shoulder playfully. “It's no use trying to be serious with you.”

He sat up straight and cut back the power of his smile. “I can be as serious as anyone else.”

“Sure you can.”

He said, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“No,” she said.

“You should always keep an open mind,” he said.

She threw a particularly sharp look in his direction, as if she thought she might catch him in some private and revealing expression not meant for her eyes, and thereby know what he was thinking. She said, “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

He was clearly surprised by her tone of voice, and he said, “Mean? Why, nothing particular… I was just trying to say that there are more things in heaven and earth than any one person, no matter how bright, can ever hope to comprehend.”

“I guess that's true,” Gwyn said, somewhat nonplussed. She smoothed down her blue denim skirt and said, “I'll be sure to do as you say; I'll keep an open mind about ghosts.”

“They're fun,” he said.

“So I've heard.”

She should not have snapped at him as she had, she realized, for he could have no way of knowing about her dream from the previous night. But that dream — the dead girl, the flickering candle, the whispered words echoing in darkness — had left her slightly on edge, expecting to encounter another spectral vision of her dead sister at any moment, in the most unlikely places. The first had seemed so real, not like a dream at all, though a dream it had surely been…

“Come along,” he said, standing and offering her his hand.

She took it and rose to her feet. His hand was large, warm and dry, a strong hand.

“We've got a lot more to see before lunch,” he said, leading her away from the robins.

She saw Elaine and Will, for the first time that day, at lunch in the small dining room near the kitchen, since they had taken breakfast in their room upstairs, as was their daily custom. Uncle Will was dressed in a dark gray suit, a dark blue shirt and a white tie, not conservative but not flamboyant, terribly distinguished. He had a meeting in Calder, with some real estate developers later that afternoon, and he would make a very good impression. Elaine, who intended to accompany him so that she might do some shopping, was wearing a short white skirt and a bright yellow blouse, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail that made her look almost like a girl in her twenties.

“How'd you sleep last night?” Will asked.

“Fine,” Gwyn said.

“That bed hasn't been used in a while,” Will said. “If it's lumpy or anything—”

“It's perfect,” Gwyn said. She had the feeling that they were still unsure about the room they had given her, and that they were giving her a graceful excuse for changing.

“We'll be gone until nearly dinnertime,” Elaine informed her. “Would you like to come into town with us?”

“I'll stick around here,” Gwyn said.

“Use the pool or the library, whatever you want,” Elaine said. “This is your house, now, as much as it is ours.”

But after they had gone, she knew exactly what she should do if she wanted to avoid any more dreams of ghosts that called her name in the middle of the night. Dr. Recard had repeatedly advised her never to run away from the problem, because running from the problem was also running from the source and the only possible cure. She must always seek out the source of her anxiety, always confront it head-on and thereby defeat it. So when Elaine and Will were gone, along with Ben Groves in the old Rolls Royce, she went upstairs and changed out of her clothes into a swimsuit. She rolled a towel around a bottle of suntan lotion, slipped on a pair of dark glasses, and went down to the beach for a swim and a nice, long session under the early summer sun.

Ben had shown her the steps carved into the cliff, though he had not taken her down to the beach. Now, as she followed the rough-hewn staircase, she realized how easily one might lose balance and topple forward, four hundred feet to the soft sand below, battered by the steps and by the half-wall of rock that framed them… She was exceedingly careful and, dizzy from watching her feet the whole way down, came out onto the beach five minutes later, safe and sound.

The sand was yellow-white and clean, except for a few clumps of freshly tossed up seaweed near the water's edge. She chose a likely spot, opened her large towel and spread it on the sand, sat down on it and gave herself a generous lathering with sun-tan lotion. As pale as she was, she might quickly burn, though she remembered that, as a school girl, she had always tanned quickly.

Oiled, she stood up and kicked off her sandals, scrunched her bare toes deep into the warm sand, letting the brisk sea wind sluice over her, cool and refreshing. And she watched the sea… It moved in toward her, as if it were alive and watchful, surging murderously forth like a many-humped beast, dissipating itself in the last fifty yards, then crashing to the beach and splashing up, foaming over, sliding inexorably away again only to surge forward once more. It put on a good act of ferocity, but she knew that it was more gentle than it appeared to be. It could not frighten her. It reflected the afternoon sunlight, all green and clear and clean, stretching on out and out as far as she could see. It was immense and so beautiful that she could never fear it, no matter whose life it might have claimed years ago, no matter how close it might have come to claiming her own life as well.

She walked to the water's edge.

It slapped over her feet, cool.

She waded farther into it.

Seaweed scratched at her ankles, brushed her knees, frightening her for a moment, because she thought she had encountered some animal or other. She reached down, pulled a fistful of the stuff up and threw it into the air, laughing at her own fear.

When the waves were breaking above her waist and trying to shove her back toward the beach where they seemed to think she belonged, she turned with her back to the sea and as the water rose, fell back into it, swimming with a powerful, rhythmic backstroke that took her over the crests of the waves and farther out, despite the incoming tide.

At last, she raised her head and saw that the beach lay a good two hundred yards away — her towel swallowed up in all that glaring expanse of sand. It was time to stop and let the ocean carry her steadily back toward land. She ceased kicking, brought her hands in closer to her sides and fluttered them gently, the only movement that she required in the salt water to remain afloat.

Above, the sky was blue.

Below, the sea was blue.

She was like a fly trapped in amber. Caught between the two overwhelming forces, she felt at peace, and she did not think that she would have any more dreams about ghosts.

When she reached the shore again and waded out onto the beach, she fell forward onto her towel, turned her head to the side and let the sun beat harshly on her back. She was determined to be as dark and attractive as her aunt before much of the summer had gone by.

Yet, she soon grew restless and decided that she could get just as good a tan if she were up and moving about, perhaps a better one. She stepped into her sandals, caught the toe strap and wiggled it in place with her toes, then left her towel and lotion behind as she set off south along the dazzling beach.

The cliff remained on her right, towering and rugged, as formidable as castle ramparts, spotted here and there with scrubby vegetation that somehow managed to sustain its perilous existence on the verticle, unsoiled plunge of rock. The cliff also harbored a great many birds, mostly terns. These swept in from the sea, crying out high on the wind, as if they were about to dash themselves to death on the sheer stone face — then inexplicably disappeared without a trace at the last instant before disaster. If you stopped to seek an answer to this miracle, you would find a number of chinks and holes in the cliffside, ringed by dung and stuffed with straw, the homes of the sea's winged hangers-on.

As she walked, she noticed a long, motored launch, perhaps as long as sixteen feet, paralleling her course. It lay no more than a quarter of a mile out to sea and contained, so far as she could tell, only one man. It rose dramatically on the swell, dipped down and fell away, leaving a spray of foam behind, only to rise up again. In ten minutes, it had halved the distance to the shore and appeared to be angling in toward the beach a couple of hundred feet below her.

She stopped, watching it, holding one hand up to her eyes to ward off the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun.

Yes, the boat was beaching, just ahead. The man in it looked toward her just long enough to wave; then he cut back on the power, letting the tide and his own momentum carry him into the shallows. There, he shut the engine off altogether, pulled it in over the gunwale on its hinges, leaped into the water and wrestled with the heavy aluminum boat, lodging its prow into the sand so that the sea could not carry it away.

She realized, as he sat down on the beached boat, that he had come in to talk to her, and she began walking again.

“Hello,” he said when she was only twenty feet away.

“Hi.”

He was older than her, though most likely younger than Ben Groves, a blond whose hair had been bleached white by the sun. He was deeply tanned, wearing ragged jeans, dirty white sneakers without socks, and no shirt. He was lean, but his arms were corded with stringy muscle that gave evidence of a good deal of manual labor of some sort.

“My name's Jack Younger,” he said. “My father's name is also Jack Younger, though I wasn't saddled with a 'junior' on my name. Can you just hear how that would have sounded—'Jack Younger, Junior'?”

She laughed, liking him at once, His face was freckled, his nose pug, his ears a bit too large, and he had about him the look of one who enjoyed life immensely.

“On the other hand,” he said, “when I'm with my father and must introduce myself to strangers, I often have to say—'Hi. I'm Jack Younger, the younger.'”

“Can I just call you Jack?” Gwyn asked.

“I wish you would.”

“Good. My name's Gwyn Keller.”

“A lovely name,” he said.

“It's not uncommon,” she said. “But I spell it with a Y instead of an E, which gives me a little distinction.”

“Oh, you misunderstand,” he said, with mock surprise. Then, in an exaggerated tone, he said, “I didn't mean your first name — but your last.”

“Keller?”

“Ah,” he said, gripping his heart, “what a musical sound, how full of lilting melody.”

She laughed and sat down on the sand. “Tell me, Jack, did you come all the way into shore just to make jokes with me?”

“I must admit it's true,” he said.

“And were you following me, when you held your boat parallel to my path, back there?”

“Yes, that too.”

She smiled, enormously pleased, and she blushed a bit, though she hoped he wouldn't be able to see that. She had turned a slight reddish-brown from the sun, good camouflage for a blush. “What do you do that you can take time off to follow unsuspecting women?”

“You weren't unsuspecting,” he said. “You suspected me from the very start, as you've just said.” He gripped the edge of the aluminum boat and leaned back, swinging his feet off the sand.

“And you just avoided the question,” she said.

“I tend lobsters,” he said.

“Sure you do.”

“I really do. Or, rather, I tend the lobster traps. The lobsters themselves would be just as happy without my attention.”

“You're a fisherman.”

“As was my grandfather — and as is my father,” he said. He was clearly proud of his vocation, and yet he had the look and sound of someone educated to be much more than a tender of lobster traps.

“What would they think of you if they knew you were dallying around as you are now?” she asked, teasingly.

“They'd say I was a fine, red-blooded boy, an honor to the Younger family, and with a great deal of taste.”

She blushed again, but was sure her sunburn hid it. He had a talent for making her blush more so than anyone she'd ever met, including Ben Groves.

“Besides,” he said, “I've been setting traps all day, and I'd just finished when I saw you walking here. I've been up and about since five this morning, and if I haven't earned the right to dally a bit, then I guess I'm not strong enough for this lifestyle.”

“Do you catch much?” she asked.

“Tons!” he said. “Those lobsters virtually clamber over one another to get in the cages I send down for them. I do believe they battle, claw to claw, for the right to be caught by Jack Younger.”

“The younger.”

“Exactly.” This time, he laughed. When he was finished, he said, “'Have you just moved in somewhere here?”

“No,” she said. “Well, maybe, in a way. I'm staying the summer with my aunt and uncle.”

“Who are?”

“The Barnabys,” she said.

The change in Jack Younger's demeanor was sudden, complete and quite surprising. He had been all smiles a moment earlier, his blue eyes adance, full of nervous energy. Now, at the mention of the Barnabys, his eyes grew slitted and cautious. His smile metamorphosed quickly into a frown, almost into a scowl. His nervous energy, directed first at humor, seemed now to give birth to anger.

'Is something wrong?” she asked.

“I'm no friend of theirs,” he said.

“Whyever not?”

“I'm sure you know.”

“Don't be so sure, because I don't know.”

He got off the edge of the boat and stepped back into the frothy edge of the sea, his dampened trousers growing ever wetter, grabbing hold of the edge of the boat as if to pull it loose of the sand.

“You're not going are you?” she asked.

“I see no need to stay.”

“Because my uncle's Will Barnaby?”

He said nothing but looked at her with just a touch of disgust in his eyes.

“That's stupid,” she said.

“You wouldn't know.”

“You may not want to be friends with my uncle,” she said, “but why shouldn't you be friends with me? For heaven's sake, I'd never bring myself to touch a creepy old lobster — but I'm not about to shun you just because you make your living handling them!”

He laughed again, though not fully in good humor; half of that laugh was sour. He said, “Are you implying that your uncle is a creepy old lobster?”

She grinned, glad to have the joking back. “Not at all,” she said. “He may be a tiny bit of a cold fish, but basically I love him.”

His laughter had died away, and no smile came to his face now — though he did not frown, either.

“What have you against Uncle Will?” she asked, sitting on the sand again, tucking her legs under her in Indian fashion.

He hesitated, then let go of the boat and sat down on the edge of it once more. “He's just about ruined commercial fishing in this area,” he said. “He's just about finished us off.”

“How so?”

“You really don't know?” he asked, incredulous.

“No.” She shifted her legs, drew them in tighter, getting more comfortable, and she said, “I've only been here a day, and I haven't seen either Will or Elaine for years.”

He gave her one last searching look, then apparently decided that he would believe her. He said, “For years, your uncle's been buying up beachfront property and the beaches themselves. He must own the beaches from the manor to a point more than three miles south.”

“Is this a crime?”

“Not of itself,” he said. “But you see, all the lobster men, and many of the other fishermen, used to use Lamplight Cove for a base of operation. We had docks there, and we kept facilities to repair our traps. We also had a keeping tank to hold the catch — the better specimens, at least — until the expensive restaurants' buyers could get around to make their choices. You see, most lobsters are sold quickly, either to speculators in Calder or to scouts from the major seafood processing companies and chain restaurants, who keep a number of offices in the area. But private buyers, restauranteurs from Boston, travel the coast every week to make the following week's purchases. These are the specialty restaurants that usually boil the lobster alive — and they're able to pay quite well, considering that they charge their customers ten bucks and up for a lobster on the plate. Some lobster men prefer to hold their best catches out of the pack that goes to the seafood companies; they tag them, drop them into a community keeping tank, and hope that someone from one of those fancy Boston places will be especially taken with their beauties. Anyway, we kept a tank in Lamplight Cove, which held as many as four hundred prime lobsters. But we lost it, along with everything else we had there, when your uncle bought the bay property and sent us all packing like a bunch of grubby hoboes who'd settled down illegally.”

“Why did you sell to him?” she asked.

“We didn't. We rented the place — and it was our landlords who sold out from under us.”

“Well—” she began.

“Your uncle hasn't done a damn thing with the Cove in a year,” he said, extremely bitter and making no effort to conceal his feelings. “Yet he won't let us move back there. Instead, the docks and buildings we put to such good use are now standing idle. He'd rather collect nothing than get rent from us. He'd rather make our lot in life harder than to make a few dollars from a lease.”

“You've got nowhere else to go?” Gwyn asked.

“Oh, we've Jenkins' Niche, where we are now.”

“Then, what's the problem?”

He spat in the sea. “Jenkins' Niche is exactly what it's name implies, a cubbyhole in the coast, well enough protected from the sea in rough weather, but hardly large enough for sixteen separate fishing boats that have to use it. We squeeze in, but we're far from comfortable and farther still from being happy. We wanted to buy it, just the same, but the landlord won't sell. At most, he'll give a year-by-year lease, which he can break at any time. He's given his oh-so-generous permission for us to build temporary buildings there, but we don't know when he may ask us to leave. He's a friend of your uncle's. Now, you see, though we all live north of Calder, we must drive south, through town, down to Jenkins' Niche each morning. Then, once in the boats, we must come back north again, to where the lobster beds are. It means an extra half an hour or forty-five minutes in the car each day — plus again as much extra time in the boats. Perhaps that sounds like a trifling disadvantage, but if you add it to other inconveniences we now suffer — none of which we suffered when we had Lamplight Cove — you can see as how it puts us to the biting edge.”

She had heard all he said, but found it a bit difficult to believe. “Has anyone approached my uncle to—”

“Your uncle,” he said, with grim laughter, “is unapproachable. “He answers none of our letters, and he takes none of our telephone calls. He refused, on three separate occasions, to even listen to a plea from our lawyer. And he has only replied with the worst sort of invective when he's encountered any of us in the streets of Calder.”

“That hardly sounds like Uncle Will.”

“That's him, all right,” Jack Younger said. He was no longer gripping the boat, but had his hands fisted on his thighs, as if he were looking for something to beat out his fury on. “We even tried to embarrass him through the local newspaper, but we found out it was owned by one of his friends. They wouldn't print our letters to the editor, or publish anything about our plight — and they wouldn't even accept a paid advertisement from us. Approach your uncle? It would be easier to approach the President of the United States in his White House bedroom, without the permission of his guards. Your uncle's as remote as the North Pole!”

“And there's no other cove or bay, besides these two, that's closer to your lobster beds?”

“None,” he said. “The coast here is rugged, but it's very short of well-sheltered backwaters where a thirty-five-foot fishing boat could weather a good blast in safety.”

“Perhaps if I talked to Uncle Will, he—”

“Would feed you some unlikely story that, because you love him, you'd believe.”

“Do I look stupid?” she asked, rather hotly, rising to her feet.

“No, but you look trusting — far, far too trusting.”

“I'll ask him, anyway,” Gwyn said.

He stood up too.

She sensed a new tension between them, an antagonism that she did not want, but which, right now, was unavoidable.

He said, “There are new rumors floating in Calder.”

“About my uncle?”

He nodded. “They say he is negotiating to buy up the land around Jenkins' Niche. If he purchases that and locks us out again, we'll have to go at least three miles farther south to find another base of operations. And that will be worse than Jenkins' Niche. To find a good place, we'll have to go five miles — which will put us intolerably far away from our beds. We can't keep the lobster catch out of the water for as long as it would take to transport them that far.”

“I'm sure Uncle Will won't be unreasonable,” she said.

“You're more optimistic than I am.”

“He must have had a reason, no matter how it looks to you, for closing down Lamplight Cove.”

He sighed. “If you ever do talk to him about this—”

“Not if, when,” she said.

“When you talk to him about this,” he said, “maybe you better tell him that the fishermen aren't going to put up with another move, not a move like this one would be.”

“Is that a threat?” she asked.

“Call it what you will.”

He splashed to the rear of the old boat. Without looking up at her again, he wrestled it free of the sand and guided it around in the swirling water. He pushed it out a few yards, hopped into it and started the engine. Putting only the tips of the blades into the shallow water, he moved cautiously toward deeper channels. When he dropped the engine down completely, he roared away in a wake of white water, soon out of sight.

FIVE

Gwyn waited until dinner was finished before she brought up the subject of the lobster fishermen. When the three of them had retired to the easy chairs in the library and had begun to mellow the effects of the dinner with tiny glasses of sweet banana liqueur, she said, “Well, I met Jack Younger this afternoon.”

Elaine sat up straight in her chair, her shoulders suddenly gone stiff, her face lined with concern and less young than it usually appeared. “Has that old scoundrel been hanging around here again?” she asked, quite evidently perturbed.

“He's been warned by the sheriff,” Will said, as stiff and ill-at-ease as his wife. “He's not to harass us any more, and he knows it. What did he want?”

“You misunderstand,” Gwyn said. “Not that Jack Younger.” She smiled to herself as she remembered the comic routine about his name which Jack had gone through when they met on the beach. To her aunt and uncle, she said, “That's his father. I met the — younger Younger.”

“Even so, he's no right coming around here,” Elaine said. She was more distressed than the situation seemed to warrant.

“Well, he wasn't around the mansion,” Gwyn explained. “I went for a swim, as I said — and then for a walk along the beach.” Modest, she decided to underplay the reason for their meeting. “We met — by accident, south of here about a mile.”

“And what did he have to say?” her Uncle Will asked. Although he had settled back into his easy chair and had crossed his legs once more, he appeared to be still ill-at-ease, strained like a rubber band. He ran one long-fingered hand through his silvered hair, over and over again, unconscious of this betrayal of his frayed nerves. But what did he have to be so awfully nervous about?

“He just wanted to chat,” Gwyn said. “He didn't know, at first, that I was your niece.”

“What'd he have to say when he found out that you were?” Elaine asked. She, too, had leaned back in her chair — and she, too, was strained almost to the breaking point.

“For one thing,” Gwyn said, “he talked a lot about a place called Lamplight Cove.”

Neither Will nor Elaine had anything to say about that. They seemed to be fighting an urge to glance at each other for reassurance.

Gwyn put her glass down on the stand beside her chair and turned to her uncle. “Is it really true, what he says?”

“What's he say?” Will asked.

“That you've been making life very hard for the lobster fishermen hereabouts. He says you bought Lamplight Cove out from under them, and even though you haven't done anything with it yourself, you refuse to let them rent their old facilities.”

“A rather nicely twisted version of the truth,” her uncle said. He seemed to have recovered all of his normal self-assurance.

“Is it? I suspected it might be, but he sounded so — honest.”

He put down his own liqueur and folded his hands together on his upraised knee. He said, “It's true enough that I've bought Lamplight Cove, and that I haven't done much of anything with the place — yet. The Cove is seven hundred yards across and contains more than a thousand yards of beach frontage property, which will develop nicely. I intend, in the near future, to establish generous, expensive homesites for discriminating people — just as I also intend to do with all the other land that I've bought up along this section of the coast during the past six or seven years. Eventually, this area will contain some of the most exclusive and lovely homes in all of America…” His voice lifted as he spoke of the project; clearly, he was sure of a large financial success.

“In the meantime,” Gwyn began.

He did not permit her to finish, but went on as if he had not even heard her speak. He said, “As soon as I acquired Lamplight Cove, I offered the fishermen the facilities there at the same rental they had always paid. Which, I might add, was precious little; the buildings were shoddy, the commercial value of them almost nil. But I did not throw them out — not as they now attempt to say I did. After all, I am a businessman, Gwyn, and I would not turn down any income so easy — no matter that it's small — as that which the dock rentals would have brought. However, included in my agreement to rent to them were several — ah, conditions.”

“Conditions?”

“They had spoiled the environment of Lamplight Cove and were well on the way toward recklessly destroying it altogether. They dumped their sludge oil from their boats right into the bay. They'd also established a complete dry dock, to paint and repair their boats, and they weren't at all concerned that so much of the poisonous products used in these repairs — scaled paint, new paint, turpentine, grease, oil, solvents — were let into the waters of the cove. You see, since they didn't live here, and since they didn't have to earn their living fishing in the cove, they didn't really much care what condition they left the place in. They didn't care whether or not they were killing off all of the underwater plant and animal life in the cove.”

“How terrible,” Gwyn said.

“But par, for most people,” he said.

She said, “Jack Younger never told me any of this.”

Elaine, in a tone of voice that made it perfectly clear she thought very little of any of the Youngers or their friends, said, “Well, my dear, I'd have been very must surprised if he had. These people show an amazing skill for twisting the truth.”

Her Uncle William said, “They've tried to make me out as a villain to everyone in the area. They've painted me as a vicious man, a money-grubbing, ruthless and pettily vindictive rich man discriminating against the poor, down-trodden laborers. You'd think I was an ogre if you heard only their side of things. But nothing's so simple as that.”

“I told him that he was wrong about you, Uncle Will,” Gwyn said.

He smiled. He took a sip of the banana liqueur, then put the glass down once again. “Thank you for your loyalty,” he said.

“It's nothing to do with loyalty,” Gwyn said. “It's just plain, common sense. You couldn't possibly be so mean and petty as he said you were. No one could be.”

“I'll wager that he didn't tell you anything about International Seafood Products, either.”

She looked perplexed.

“It's a huge concern that processes seafood and cans it. ISP has been trying to buy up seafront land and obtain government permissions to construct a fish processing factory only a mile from here. Do you realize what a plant like that would mean to this area?”

“More jobs?” Gwyn ventured.

He snorted.

“Actually, they'd employ very few people,” Elaine said. “The plant would be ninety percent automated.”

Her Uncle William leaned forward again, as if engaged in a vital argument about the affairs of the day — which, she soon saw, he was. “In point of fact,” he said, “such a processing factory would ruin Calder and the landside around it. Have you ever been anywhere near a seafood plant, a cannery?”

“No,” Gwyn admitted.

“The stench of dead and rotting fish — the guts, and other parts they can't use — carries for miles. The sea around the plant is used as a dumping grounds for organic and inorganic wastes, in huge quantities. You have an open sewer, within six months, and another dead section of the sea in a year.”

“And the lobster fishermen have been in favor of this cannery?” Gwyn asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Not just the lobster men, but all the captains. Because their own traditional grounds are so close, they'd be able to make a better profit on their catches. Add, of course, they'd have a steady market for just about everything they could bring in.”

Gwyn nodded. “I see.”

“Don't misunderstand,” Elaine said. “We're not against progress, and we're certainly not against capitalism. The seafood company should be allowed to build their plant somewhere. One of the offshore islands, north of here, would do nicely — someplace where there aren't people whose lives and property values would be lessened by such a godawful factory.”

“I'll admit,” her uncle said, “that one of my reasons for wanting to keep ISP out of Calder and the surrounding area is purely monetary. I've spent half a decade acquiring the land necessary to establish a fine seaside community of upper-class homes. I wouldn't want to see the value on all that land be cut by half because of the stench of rotting fish. But beyond this consideration, there's the other, of environmental protection. I don't want to live in a place where a good, deep breath makes me ill — or where the beaches are littered with decaying rejects from the cannery.”

“Neither would I,” Gwyn said.

“So,” Elaine said, “if you should see this Mr. Younger again, you'll be able to tell just how much of his line is pure hogwash.”

“Actually,” Will said, “I'd think it better if you don't see him again. If you notice him on the beach, avoid him. These people have made some threats — of violence, I'd feel safer if you avoided them.”

She promised that she would keep to herself, though she knew that she would take any opportunity to speak, just one more time, with Mr. Jack Younger (the younger). He had departed, this afternoon, with such a cold, abrupt attitude… He had made her feel guilty. Now, she would enjoy letting him know that she had found out exactly who the real villains were in this affair.

On the stairs, when she was on her way to her room, she met Ben Groves coming the opposite direction.

“It looks great,” he said.

Confused, she said, “What does?”

“Your tan!”

She looked at her bare arms and smiled. “I'd almost forgotten it. Yes, it's rather good, but just a start. I want to be as dark as everyone else around here, before the summer's over. At least, now, I don't look like a — ghost.”

After some additional smalltalk, he said, “How about going sailing with me tomorrow?”

“You've got a boat?”

“A fourteen-foot beauty,” he said, grinning. “I keep her moored in Calder. Tomorrow's my day off, so…”

“I'd love to,” she said.

“Be up and ready to go at nine,” he said.

“Aye, aye, Skipper.”

“But leave the corny sea talk behind,” he said.

“Right, Cap'n,” she said, with a mock salute.

“Gwyn?”

She sat straight up in bed.

Her hands were full of twisted sheets.

She was perspiring.

Tense, leaning forward as if she had just been hit in the stomach, she listened intently.

“Gwyn?”

She got up, without turning on any light, trying to be as silent as possible, moving like — like a ghost.

She stood in the center of the room, weakly illuminated by the remnants of the moon, and she looked around, trying to catch sight of any stranger, any shadow darker or lighter than the ones the furniture threw.

She saw nothing.

“Gwyn…”

This was no dream. Someone was most definitely calling out to her in a dry, whispery voice.

She walked cautiously to the door, reached for it, found that it was open.

She stepped into the corridor.

Tonight, as the moon waned, there was insufficient moonlight for her to tell whether or not the hallway was deserted. She might have been alone — or she might have been one of a half a dozen people standing there in the darkness.

Holding the door frame, one hand to her heart as if to still the rapid beating she listened.

She waited.

Time passed like syrup running sluggishly out of a narrow-mouthed bottle, drip by drip by drip…

The voice did not come again.

She willed it to return.

It did not.

In a whisper of her own, hoping she would not wake anyone else, Gwyn said, “What do you want?”

She received no reply.

“What do you want with me?”

Nothing.

“Ginny?”

Silence.

She walked the length of the corridor, first to the right of her room, and then to the left, moving on tiptoe, expecting to bump into someone — or something — at any moment. She encountered no one and nothing at all.

She stood in her doorway a while longer, listening, then went into her room again and closed the door.

With her back to the heavy door, both moist palms pressed flat against the cool, slick, varnished wood, she cleared her throat softly and, still whispering, she said, “Ginny, are you here?”

She felt like an utter fool, but when she received no answer, she repeated the question: “Ginny, are you here?”

Only silence…

And darkness.

Ben Groves, in that so-reasonable voice of his, had told her that everyone should keep an open mind on everything — even about ghosts and netherworld visitors. He had convinced her. But now, it seemed stupid for her to stand around in the dark, in her nightgown, talking to the air and waiting for a supernatural reply. She had never been one for astrology, for belief in anything beyond the human ken.

“It was a dream,” she said. “A repetitious dream.”

Then she remembered that the door had been standing wide open, and that she had most certainly closed it when she came to bed…

She tugged at it now, without twisting the knob, and she saw that the latch was slightly loose. Perhaps, because the door did lean slightly inward, it had slipped its latch during the night, all by itself, and had gradually drifted open. She'd had a dormitory room at college with a door that did that very same thing. In any event, it was easier to accept a mundane explanation like that than to put any credence in the existence of ghosts!

She got a drink of cold tapwater from the bathroom, let it soothe her parched throat, then returned to bed.

In a while, she slept again.

She did not dream.

Yet, in the morning, when she got up, she found that her door had drifted open again, during the night… She took this as proof that the latch needed to be replaced and the door set more evenly in its frame.

SIX

At four o'clock the following afternoon, having trimmed the bright white sails and — at the last possible minute — having dropped them altogether, Ben Groves brought his sailboat, Salt Joy, into its slot on the graded beach. This section of the shoreline had been especially built up, then sloped to provide an easy landing zone for the dozens of colorful sailboats that plied the waters around Calder. The flattish bottom of Salt Joy, unlike the curved bottoms of some of the other sailboats, slid up the incline with a wet, hissing noise and came finally to rest.

Ben leaped out seconds before she did, grabbed the front of the small craft and, staggering backwards, pulled it all the way out of the water. His arms bunched with muscle, and sweat stood on his brow.

“Are you sure I can't help with this?” she asked. She had turned even a more golden brown color, after nearly a whole day in the glare of the sun, in the reflecting bowl of the sea.

“We brought two cars so you wouldn't have to stay and help,” he said.

“Still—”

“Besides, I'm a perfectionist. I'm afraid you wouldn't fold or roll anything to my approval.”

“I could keep you company anyway,” she said.

“And have to listen to me cursing the canvas when it won't roll right?” he asked, mockingly incredulous. “I won't have you finding out how perfectly foul I can be.”

“You're sure?”

“Positive.”

They stood quite close. She felt as if, in the shadow that he threw, she would be always protected, watched over, safe. She had not had this strong a feeling of belonging even with her Uncle William.

“I want you to know,” she said, “That this was the most wonderful day I've had — since I can't remember when.”

“I hope that's true.”

“It is, Ben.”

“We'll do it again, soon. We haven't even begun to cover some of the better sailing areas to the south.”

“I'm already anticipating it,” she said.

Then, without warning, he bent toward her and, putting his arms around her, kissed her lightly on the lips.

His lips were somewhat salty, warm, firm and yet tender.

She kissed back, surprised at herself.

They parted, ending the kiss, though he still held her close. He said, “Was I too bold?”

“No,” she said. Her voice was small, quiet, defenseless.

“I had as good a time as you did, Gwyn,” he told her. “Actually, I think I had a better time.”

She looked up into his dark eyes, saw that they returned her gaze with a steady, unwavering affection.

She stood on tip-toe and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I better be going,” she said, “so you can get the boat packed up.”

“Be careful on the drive back,” Ben warned her.

“It's only a short way,” she said. “No more than fifteen minutes.”

“The greatest number of traffic accidents,” he admonished her in almost fatherly tones, “take place within a few miles of home.”

“I'll be careful,” she conceded.

But on the way back to Barnaby Manor, her mind was not on her driving at all. Instead, as the road rolled toward her, under her and away, she let her mind wander through scattered memories which she had stored up throughout the day…

She hadn't been lying to Ben when she told him that the day had been so terribly enjoyable. Not since before her parents had been taken from her had she been given so much fun in a single day: the bright and rolling water, the baking sun, the clouds… They had played the old game with the clouds, watching them for some image that resembled a face or an animal. They had talked, endlessly, about this and that and nearly everything — and they had grown, or so it seemed to Gwyn, quite close in the space of just a few short hours. He said that often happened on a sailboat — if two people were at least somewhat compatible to begin with. Two people found themselves drawn quickly together, as if to ward off the immensity of the endless sea… Afloat on the blue, blue ocean, one was made small, until one seemed of very little value, little worth… But with someone to share the experience with, the huge universe could be pushed back, your own importance expanded until the ego was recuperated…

Now, as she parked the Opel in the four-car garage attached to Barnaby Manor, she wondered exactly what else had transpired between her and Ben Groves. She felt, inexplicably, as if some new and special relationship had begun, now quite fragile, but perhaps soon to blossom and flower…

By quarter past five o'clock — with a good deal of time remaining until dinner — she had showered, dried her hair, inspected her tan in the mirror and dressed. Still full of energy, despite the work that had gone into the day's sailing and despite the energy the heat of the sun had taken out of her, she wasn't satisfied to read or to relax to music in her room.

Downstairs, Fritz and Grace were at work in the kitchen. Though both were polite, neither was a particularly fascinating conversationalist. Neither her aunt nor her uncle were about, and Ben Groves had not returned from Calder. The house lay heavy, cool and quiet, as if it were asleep and must not be awakened.

She went outside to the steps by the sea, and walked carefully downward to the beach, where everything was beautifully golden in the late afternoon sunlight.

Far out to sea, a tanker wallowed southward, noiseless at this distance, like some immense, ancient animal that should have been long extinct.

Watching the huge tanker, Gwyn was reminded of the way that Jack Younger had followed her in his fisherman's launch only the day before, and she knew that she had, without realizing it, come here to the beach in hopes of meeting him once more and getting a chance to give him a piece of her mind.

However, though the time seemed right, not a single fishing boat lay on the swell in either direction.

Gwyn took off her shoes — white canvas sneakers — and walked into the frothing edge of the surf. She wriggled her toes in the rapidly cooling water, stirred up milky clouds of fine sand, and kicked at stranded clumps of darkening seaweed.

When she had walked nearly a mile, no longer charged with so much undisciplined energy, she stopped at the water's edge and faced directly out to sea, watching the creamy clouds bend toward the liquid, cobalt horizon.

She had built up a tremendous appetite and was looking forward to one of Grace's hearty meals, then to a couple hours of reading in her room, and early to bed. She knew that, tonight, she would sleep like a rock, without any strange dreams. She bent down and put on her shoes, turned to go back to Barnaby Manor — and was rooted to the spot by what she saw behind her.

As if following in her footsteps, her double stood no more than a hundred feet away. She was wearing that many-layered white dress that billowed prettily in the sea breeze and gave her an ethereal look, as if she did not belong in this world. And perhaps she did not…

Gwyn took a step toward the pale apparition, then stopped suddenly, unable to find sufficient courage to continue.

The other Gwyn, the Gwyn in white, remained where she was — though her own stillness did not appear to be founded in fear.

Despite the steady susurration of the sea wind — which fluffed the stranger's golden mass of hair into an angelic nimbus all around her head — and despite the rhythmic sloshing sound of the waves breaking on the beach, the scene was maddeningly quiet. The air was leaden, the sky pressing down, each second an eternity. It was the sort of silence, filled with unknown fear, that one usually found only in remote graveyards or in funeral parlors where a corpse lay amid flowers.

To break this disquieting quiet, Gwyn cleared her throat — somewhat surprised at the noise she made, and in a voice cut through with a nervous tremor, she asked, “Who are you?”

The other Gwyn only smiled.

“Ginny?” Gwyn asked.

She hated to say that. But she could not help herself.

“Hello, Gwyn,” the apparition replied.

Gwyn shook her head, looked down at the sand, trying desperately to dispel the vision. But when she looked up again, she found, as she had expected she would, that Ginny remained exactly where she had been, in her white dress, yellow hair fluttering.

“I'm seeing things,” Gwyn said.

“No.”

“Hallucinations.”

“And are you hearing things too, Gwyn?” the double asked, smiling tolerantly.

“Yes.”

The apparition took several steps toward Gwyn, cutting the distance between them by a fourth. She smiled again and said, in a comforting voice, “Are you afraid, Gwyn?”

Gwyn said nothing.

“You haven't any reason to be afraid of me, Gwyn.”

“I'm not.”

“You are.”

Gwyn said, “Who are you?”

“I've told you.”

“I don't believe—”

“Have you a choice?”

“Yes,” Gwyn said. “I'll ignore you.”

“I won't let you do that.”

Gwyn looked out to sea, searching for some possibility of help. She would even have welcomed the sight of Jack Younger in his launch, his whitened hair, his deep tan… But there were still no boats nearby — only the tanker which steadily dwindled on its trip southward. Already, it was little more than a dot against the darkening sky.

“Gwyn?”

She looked back at the — specter.

“How can you deny me, Gwyn?”

Gwyn said nothing.

“I am your sister, after all.”

“No.”

A tern flew overhead, screeching, and disappeared into the ragged face of the cliff.

“Besides,” the other said, in a tone of mild reproof, “I've come such a long, long way to see you.”

“From where?”

“From the other side.”

Gwyn shook her head violently: No. No, no, no! She could not allow herself to go on like this. She could not stand here and listen to — and even converse with — a ghost. That was insanity. If she let this go on much longer, she would slip right past the edge, into madness. And once that had happened, not even Dr. Record could do anything to give her a normal life again. She would be, until the ends of her days, completely out of touch with all that was real…

“I've missed you,” the other said.

Gwyn bit her lips, felt pain, knew she was not dreaming, but wished ardently that she were.

“Talk to me, Gwyn.”

Gwyn said, “If you are who you profess to be — then, you should look like a twelve-year-old girl and not like a grown woman.”

“Because I died when I was twelve?”

“Yes.”

“I could have chosen to approach you, from the start, as a child, as the Ginny that you remember. However, I felt that you would be more likely to accept me if I came to you like this. You could see, then, that I was not just a hoaxer, but your twin.”

“If changing your form is so easy as you indicate,” Gwyn said, measuring each word carefully, trying to conceal the worst of her fear, “then become a child for me now, right here.”

The other shook her head woefully, smiled sadly and said, “You've got the wrong idea about the powers of a ghost. We aren't shape-changers of such ability as you think; we can't perform tricks like that quite so easily.”

“You're no ghost.”

“What am I, then?”

Indeed, what? Gwyn had no ready answer, but she said, “You're much too substantial to be a ghost.”

“Oh, I'm quite substantial,” the other agreed. “But ghosts always are. You think of them as being transparent, or at least translucent, made of smoke and such stuff; that's what your superstitions tell you to believe. In reality, when we step into the world of the living, we take on flesh as apparently real as yours — though it is not real and can be abandoned at will, without trace.”

Gwyn shivered uncontrollably.

This was insanity, no doubt, no hope to overcome it.

She said, “Why — if you're who you pretend to be — did you wait so long to come back?”

The other sighed and said, “Conditions on the other side wouldn't permit me to make the voyage until quite recently, no matter how much I had yearned for it.”

“Conditions?”

The other said, “Oh, it's a strange place on the other side, Gwyn. It is not remotely like any living person has ever imagined it… I get so incredibly lonely over there — so desperate for companionship. The other side is still, dark and as cold as a winter night, though there are no seasons; it is always cold, you see. I've wanted to escape it, to come here and see you, speak with you, watch you — but only a few days ago was the time right.”

“I want you to go away.”

“Why?”

“I just do.”

“You're being selfish, Gwyn.”

“I'm afraid,” she admitted.

“I told you not to be.”

“I still am.”

“But I won't harm you.”

“That's not what I fear.”

“What, then?” the other asked.

“I'm going mad.”

“You aren't. I exist.”

They stood in silence for a while.

“Come take my hand,” the apparition said.

“No.”

Overhead, another tern cried out, like a voice from beyond the veil of death, sharp and mournful.

“Take my hand and walk with me,” the specter insisted, holding out one slim, long-fingered, pale hand.

“No.”

“Gwyn, you must accept me sooner or later, for we need each other. I'm your twin, your only sister… Do you remember, years ago, before the accident, how very close we were?”

“I remember.”

“We can be that close again.”

“Never.”

“Take my hand.”

Gwyn said nothing.

She did not move.

But the specter stepped closer.

“Please, Gwyn.”

“Go away.”

“Sooner or later…” the specter said.

Gwyn wondered if she could dodge to the side and run past the dead girl, back toward the steps and the safety of Barnaby Manor. Thus far, the ghost — or the hallucination — had not appeared to her when she was with other people. If she could get back to the manor, then, and remain in company, she would be fine…

“Gwyn..”

The dead girl stepped closer.

“Don't touch me.”

“I'm your sister.”

“You aren't.”

“Take my hand—”

Squealing as the dead girl reached to touch her, Gwyn threw herself backward, fell upon the warm damp sand at the water's edge. She scrabbled about, searching frantically for some weapon, though she realized it would probably do her no good at all. If this were a ghost, it would not be hurt by stones or other weapons; and if it were an hallucination, the product of a mind perilously close to complete disintegration, it would likewise be impervious to force.

“Gwyn…”

She closed her hands on the damp sand, scooping up balls of it and, rising to her feet, threw them wildly, like a child in a snowball battle.

The sand broke into several smaller lumps, falling all around the specter, striking her white garment.

“Stop it, Gwyn!”

Gwyn bent, scooped up more sand, tossed it, bent again, formed two more balls of sand, threw them, sucking wildly for breath, sobbing, her heart thudding like a piston.

In a moment, weak, her stomach tied in knots, almost unable to get her breath, Gwyn saw that the specter was moving away, running back up the beach toward Barnaby Manor. The dead girl moved quite gracefully, each step etherally light and quick — as if she were not really running, but were gliding only a fraction of an inch above the sand. Her full, white dress flowed out behind her, flapped at her bare legs, and her hair was a golden banner in her wake.

Running…?

A ghost did not run away.

A ghost merely vanished in the blink of an eye, as if it had never been in the first place. And even if this were not a ghost, but an hallucination, wouldn't it still simply dissolve before her eyes rather than take flight in such an unmagical manner?

Confused, but sensing something important in this detail, Gwyn started after the departing figure, stumbling in the loose sand, then running on the hard packed beach closer to the water. Exhausted already by the day's activities and by the one-sided sand battle she had just finished, she continued to lose ground. The specter ran faster, putting more and more beach between them.

“Wait!” she cried.

But the dead girl ran on.

“Wait for me!”

The specter slowed, looked back.

Gwyn waved. “Ginny, wait!”

The specter turned and ran again, faster than before.

She turned a corner of the beach and was out of sight.

When Gwyn turned the same thrusting corner of the cliff, she found that the dead girl, at last, had vanished. On her right was the rock wall, the sea on her left. Ahead lay three-quarters of a mile of featureless white beach until one came to the steps below Barnaby Manor. There was nowhere the dead girl could have hidden; she could not have run that three-quarters of a mile in the minute she was out of Gwyn's sight. Yet she was gone…

SEVEN

Somehow, Gwyn found the energy to run the rest of the way back to the stone steps in the cliff, tears of weariness burning in her eyes, her thoughts roiling confusedly over one another. Her legs ached with the exertion, from ankles to thighs, and they felt as if they would crumple up like accordion-folded paper. When she finally reached the steps, she found that she did not have the ability to climb them, and her mindless flight from her own fear came to a welcome and inevitable finish.

She sat on the lowermost step, her back to the cliff, looking out to sea for a moment, as if she might sight an answer to her problems afloat on the bright water. Of course, there were no solutions to be so easily discovered. She could not sit here and solve her problems, but must get up and go looking for answers.

She put her elbows on her knees and let her head fall forward into her hands as if she cupped cool water in her palms.

She closed her eyes and, for a short while, she did not think about the ghost, about the dead, about anything. She listened to her furiously pounding heartbeat and tried to slow it down to a more reasonable rate. When that had been accomplished, she listened to the wind, the sea, and the few birds that darted in the lowering sky.

What was happening?

Madness…?

Had she been lonely for so long that, at last, she was conjuring up nonexistent ghosts to keep her company? Was she slipping rapidly past the razor's edge of sanity, resurrecting the spirits of long-dead loved ones to help her stave off this terrible overwhelming feeling of isolation with which she had lived, now, for many months?

That seemed to be the only possible explanation… However, why should this sickness come now, when she was happier than she had been in months? She was no longer so isolated as she had once been, but was snugly in the bosom of the Bar-naby household. She was wanted, and she was loved — two things which should have helped her recover fully from that previous bout with mental illness, that awful urge to sleep and sleep and sleep… She had her Uncle Will, and she had Elaine — and perhaps she even had Ben Groves to comfort her as well. She no longer needed imaginary companions, spirits of the dead to talk with — so why, at this of all times, was she hallucinating them?

Or, weren't these things hallucinations at all?

Was this a real ghost?

Impossible.

She could not permit herself to think along such lines, for she knew that surrender to madness lay that way. After all, she was no stranger to mental collapse… Anything was possible, she knew, any manner of relapse. This time, apparently, her deep, emotional disturbance had manifested itself in a different way: in ghosts instead of beckoning sleep, in agitated hallucinations instead of in lethargy…

She shuddered.

She opened her eyes, fearfully, but saw only the sea, no ghost of any description.

Birds swooped low over the waves.

If the problem were entirely psychological, then, and in no way mystical, if these ghostly visions were merely products of her own badly disturbed mind and not manifestations of the supernatural, she should seek professional help as soon as possible. She could telephone Dr. Recard the first thing tomorrow morning, when he would be in his office. She should tell him what had been happening to her, set up an appointment, and go to see him. That would mean packing and driving home again, leaving Barnaby Manor and the wonderful summer she had expected to have. It would mean postponing the development of the new relationship between her and Uncle Will…

And, in the final analysis, it was just this which kept her from proceeding as she should have. Now, more than anything else, her newfound family life was what counted. If she lost that, allowed it to be tainted by this new sickness, she knew that she would never have the spirit to fully recover her senses. If she left Barnaby Manor now, she would be leaving, also, all hope for a brighter future.

She would stay. She could fight this out on her own ground, and she could win. She knew she could. Hadn't Dr. Recard told her that, more important than anything else, even more important than what he could do for her as a professional psychiatrist, was what she tried to do for herself?

She would stay.

She would not mention the ghost to anyone — not to Uncle Will, or to Elaine and certainly not to Ben Groves — for she did not want them to pity her; all that she wanted was to be loved and respected; pity was the death of love, the instrument that killed respect. They mustn't know how unstable she was, how frayed were her nerves. Dr. Recard had told her that one should never be ashamed of having suffered through a mental illness and should never hesitate to seek help out of some misplaced embarrassment. She knew he'd spoken the truth. Yet… Yet, she could not help but be ashamed of her lack of control, her need for medical help. Her aunt and uncle knew about her previous sickness, but she loathed to tell them about this much more frightening siege she was now experiencing.

She stood up, as if she carried a leaden weight across her shoulders, and she dusted off the seat of her shorts.

It seemed to Gwyn that this was a watershed period of her life, a decisive turning point after which she would never be the same again. Here, she must take a stand, and she was gambling her whole future on the outcome of this confrontation with herself. There was not to be any area for compromise, no dealing, nothing but a win or lose solution. She would either prove capable of exorcising these demons that had recently come to haunt her, or she would slip all the way into madness.

She was more frightened than she had ever been in her entire life, and she also felt more lonely than ever before.

The terns cried above. They, too, sounded forlorn and despairing.

She turned and started up the steps in the cliff.

Twice, she grew dizzy and had to lean against the stone wall on her right, catching her breath and her balance.

Often, she looked behind, expecting to see the white-robed girl close on her heels. But the steps were always empty.