The Dark of Summer

EIGHT

At dinner that evening, in the smallest dining room, Gwyn had considerable difficulty keeping her mind on the conversation. Her thoughts kept drifting far afield, indeed, down strange avenues of inquiry as she gave serious consideration to ghosts, specters, the living dead, the occult in its countless facets… She thought, often, about the nature of madness, hallucination and even self-hypnosis… All of these were decidedly disturbing and unpleasant, though nonetheless pressing subjects; she could not bring herself to ignore them for very long, because she felt that they must all be faced as part of the solution to her condition. At times, however, she was caught wool-gathering. Having lost track of the table conversation, she would have to ask her aunt or her uncle to repeat a question.

“I'm sorry, Elaine,” she said, for the sixth time in less than an hour. “What did you say?”

Her aunt smiled at her indulgently and said, “I asked how you enjoyed your sailing today.”

“It was a lot of fun,” she said. And it really had been. But right now, the joy seemed to have paled; the only truly vivid memory she had of the day was her encounter with — the ghost.

“You didn't meet Jack Younger again, did you?” her uncle asked, his brows furrowed.

“No,” she said.

“Or any of the other fishermen?”

“No,” she said.

He blotted his lips on his napkin and said, “Gwyn, I don't want to pry at all…” He hesitated, then said, “But I do think that something's wrong here.”

“Wrong?” she asked. She tried to sound bewildered, and she smiled tentatively, though not genuinely. She reminded herself of her earlier decision. This was to be only her problem; only she could solve it.

“For one thing,” her Uncle Will said, “you're clearly preoccupied.”

She put down her fork and said, “I'm sorry. I know that I've been terribly rude, but—”

“Don't worry about that,” he said, waving his hand impatiently, as if to brush away her comment. “I'm not interested in the symptoms — just the source of the symptoms. What's the matter, Gwyn?”

“Really,” she said, “it's nothing.”

Elaine said, “Will, she's probably just tired out after all day on the water.”

“That's right,” Gwyn said, grasping at the offered straw, anxious to avoid any situation where she'd be forced to mention the ghost. “I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

“You're sure that's all it is?” he asked. His eyes seemed to bore right through her, to discover the convenient lie.

“Yes,” she said. “Don't worry about me, Uncle Will. I'm having a marvelous time, really. What could be bothering me?”

“Well,” he said reluctantly, “I guess there's nothing. But if something were upsetting you, Gwyn, you would let me know about it right away, wouldn't you?”

“Of course,” she lied.

“I want this to be a perfect summer for you,” he said.

“It will be.”

“Don't hesitate to come to me for anything.”

“I won't, Uncle Will.”

Elaine smiled and said, “He's got a bit of the mother hen in him, doesn't he, Gwyn?”

Gwyn smiled and said, “Just a bit.”

Will snorted, picked up his fork again. He said, “Mother hen, is it? Well, I suppose that's not so bad. I'm sure I've been called a lot of other things much worse.”

At two o'clock in the morning, unable to sleep, Gwyn heard the first soft, almost inaudible squeak of unoiled hinges as her bedroom door was opened. She sat up in bed in time to see the white-robed girl standing on the threshold.

“Hello, Gwyn.”

Gwyn lay back down without responding.

“Gwyn?”

“What do you want?”

“Is something the matter?” the ghost asked.

Gwyn lifted her head once again, for the voice had sounded much closer than before, too close for comfort. She saw that the dead girl had crossed half the open space toward her bed, a strangely lovely vision in the thin moonlight.

“Gwyn?”

“Yes, something is the matter,” Gwyn said.

“Tell me?”

“You,” Gwyn said.

“I don't understand.”

“Of course you do. You're not real; you don't exist, can't exist, except as a figment of my imagination. I'm not going to lie here and talk to you. I can snuff you out if I want; you're little more than a dream, a fancy daydream.”

“No, Gwyn. I do exist.”

Gwyn lay back and closed her eyes. “No.”

“Yes, Gwyn. Oh, yes.”

The voice was very close now.

Gwyn rolled over onto her stomach, reached out and hugged the feather pillow, trying to force herself to sleep. But that was, of course, quite useless.

She felt the bed sag: the dead girl must have sat down on the edge of it…

The dead girl said, “I told you, on the beach earlier, that I am not transparent, not made of smoke. When I chose to visit this realm of the living, I came cloaked in flesh. To the naked eye, I am as real as you are.”

Gwyn said nothing.

Suddenly, without warning, a soft, warm hand touched the back of Gwyn's neck, delicately, tenderly.

Gwyn leaped, rolled onto her back, terror-stricken, looked up at the dead girl. “You can't touch me! You aren't real, or substantial, not at all. You're a dream, a delusion, an hallucination, and you must be gone when I tell you to go.”

The dead girl smiled.

“Stop it!” Gwyn said.

“Stop what?”

“Stop being here!”

The dead girl reached out to touch Gwyn's cheek.

“No,” Gwyn said, desperately. She got out of bed on the far side, hurried into the bathroom and closed the door behind herself.

“Gwyn?” the dead girl called from beyond the door.

Gwyn looked at her face in the mirror. It was pale under the tan, and lined with fear and fatigue. Yet, it did not look like the face of a madwoman…

She splashed water in her face, took a long drink, then decided the best thing to do was to return to bed. Perhaps the night's fantasies were concluded.

In the main room, the dead girl stood by the window, her hands on the sill, leaning toward the night. She was looking intently out to sea, her back to Gwyn, apparently oblivious of the other girl's return. Ignoring this hallucination, trembling violently, Gwyn returned to the bed, got beneath the covers and pulled them up under her chin. She rolled onto her side, her back to the windows, and she tried not to think about the figure standing there in fluffy white lace…

“I don't want to upset you, Gwyn,” the dead girl said.

Gwyn lay still, waiting.

“I came back because I was lonely.”

Please let me sleep, Gwyn thought.

“I thought we'd get along well together. I thought you'd be glad to be with me again.”

Gwyn put her hands to her ears.

The voice filtered through her fingers: “I should have realized you'd need time to adjust to me. But you will adjust, Gwyn, and then we'll have fun — like we used to.”

Gwyn tried to recall if Dr. Recard had ever said anything about hallucinations. What was one to do in a situation like this? Just play along with the delusions until one had gone utterly mad?

The dead girl said, “I still remember the pain of drowning. It was like a warm, wet blanket I couldn't get out of…”

Gwyn shuddered. Unbidden, the memory of the small explosion, the swift fire, the craft sinking into the sea all came back to her as vividly as if the nightmare had transpired only yesterday.

“My chest ached so badly, Gwyn… as if a fire had been lighted inside of me, hot and sharp…” She paused, as if, even now, that agony welled up anew, as strong as it had originally been. “Oh, I managed to break the surface once or twice, but all I gasped down was seawater. I couldn't seem to get a breath of fresh air, no matter how hard I tried.”

“Please…” Gwyn said.

The ghost ignored her plea.

“I suppose I panicked. Yes, I know that I did. I was beating at the water, like a fool. Every flail of my arms drove me farther from the surface, but I was too scared to understand that. And I was screaming, too. Every time I screamed, I got more water in my lungs…”

“Stop it,” Gwyn said. But she spoke so softly into her pillow that the dead girl could not have heard her.

“Isn't it strange,” the dead girl said, “that all I had in my lungs was a bucketful of cool water— while it felt like a fire raging in there?”

Gwyn detected a change in the voice, more clarity; she thought the ghost must have turned from the window to speak directly at her. She did not turn over and look.

“You can't ever imagine how terrified I was, Gwyn. I knew I was going to die, and I knew there wasn't anything I could do about it. I could see the surface, because it was lighter than the water under me, but I just couldn't reach it. It was so cool looking, green and nice…”

Gwyn tried to get her mind off Ginny, off the past. She thought about Ben Groves, the Salt Joy, their afternoon together, in hopes that she could destroy this delusion, this ghost.

When the next few minutes had passed in silence, Gwyn thought perhaps she had succeeded, that the specter had at last been driven out. However, when she turned to look, she saw that the dead girl was standing by the side of the bed, looking down at her, a sad expression in those large, dark, unearthly eyes. “Don't you believe me, Gwyn?”

She shook her head: no.

“Why should I lie to you?”

Gwyn had no answer.

“I am your sister, Gwyn. Is there any way I can convince you, any way I can bring us together? I'm so lonely, Gwyn. Don't push me away like this. Don't block me out of your life after I've gone to so much trouble to come back to you.”

As she watched the specter, Gwyn wondered if she had been reacting to it in the wrong way. By pretending she didn't see it, by refusing to listen to it — wasn't she just running away from it? If the ghost were a manifestation of her own sick mind, an hallucination produced by her own subconscious, wouldn't it be best to face it, to shatter its illusion of reality? Surely, if it were a figment of her imagination, it would not withstand close scrutiny; to date, she had been running from it; if she confronted it squarely, shouldn't it erode like a formation of mist?

“Do you remember Earl Teckert?” the ghost asked. It had walked back to the window and was staring at the sea.

Gwyn swallowed hard. “Who?”

“Earl Teckert, from Miami.”

“I don't remember him.”

The specter still faced the window, her smooth complexion bathed in the milky radiance of the moon. She said, “You had a terrific crush on him, at one time.”

“On Earl Teckert?” Gwyn asked.

The ghost turned from the window, grinning, as if it sensed Gwyn's decision to confront it — and as if it knew that it would last through any such confrontation. “Yes,” it said. “You vowed that you would never give him up to another girl, no matter what.” She chuckled. “And you said you intended to marry him just as soon as possible — if not sooner. You were really strung out on him.”

Confused, Gwyn shook her head. “No, you're wrong. I don't know any Earl Teckert, and I—”

“You knew him when you were ten years old,” the specter said, still smiling.

“Ten?”

“Remember?”

“I don't think—”

“Earl was a whole year older than we were, a dark-haired little angel of a boy whose folks kept the summer house next door to ours, just outside of

Miami, This great romance of yours developed the year before my — boating accident. You fell in love in June, told me you'd marry him in July, and couldn't stand him by the end of August.”

Gwyn did remember now, though she hadn't thought of Earl Teckert in a good many years.

“You do recall!” Ginny said.

“Yes.”

“We used to build sandcastles on the beach.”

“I remember.”

“Just the three of us,” Ginny said. “And we'd both be trying to get his attention. I think, perhaps, I had half as much of a crush on him as you did.”

Gwyn nodded, remembering the pleasant summer afternoons and the warm sand between her small fingers. She said, “I kissed him once, square on the mouth.” She laughed as the scene came back to her in full detail. “I startled him so badly, he was speechless when I let him go. And he refused to play with us again for nearly a week. Every time he saw us coming, he ran the other way.”

“That's him, sure enough!” Ginny said. She shook her head, her bright yellow hair a moonlit wreath that shimmered about her face, and she said, “He was terribly bashful.”

Gwyn began to reply — then stopped suddenly, fear flooding back into her like a wave of brackish water. If this ghost were the product of her own sick mind, an hallucination, a delusion, then how could it talk about things which she, herself, had forgotten? Shouldn't the apparition's conversation be strictly limited to those things which Gwyn could remember?

“Is something the matter, Gwyn?”

She licked her lips, swallowed hard. Her mouth was dry, and she felt as if she had a fever.

“Gwyn?”

It was possible, Gwyn supposed, that the hallucination, the ghost, could tap her subconscious mind for the old memories. Though she might have forgotten Earl Teckert, consciously, the old memories still lay in her subconscious mind, waiting to be re-discovered. The brain, after all, stored every experience; it never forgot anything. All one had to do was dig deep enough, find the right keys to the old doors, and even the most trivial experiences were to be found, far out of sight in the mind but not completely lost. Yes. That was it, must be it. The ghost, her alter-ego, the second half of her splitting personality, was able to tap her subconscious, to dredge up these bits and pieces of the past which she seemed, herself, to have forgotten.

“Gwyn?”

“What?”

“Something's the matter,” the ghost said.

She turned away from it.

“Gwyn?”

“It's nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“Really, I'm fine.”

“Gwyn, I am your sister. You used to share things with me; we used to have no secrets.".

Gwyn said nothing.

“I came from the other side, through all that long darkness, to be with you again. You mustn't reject me; you must share with me, accept me.”

Gwyn had begun to cry. The tears welled up in her eyes, hung in the corners until they became too heavy to stay there any longer, burst out through her tightly closed lashes and ran down her cheeks, warm and swift and salty, catching in the down-turned corners of her mouth, then trickling on down her chin. She wanted to stop crying, felt that it was desperately important for her to stop crying and get herself together again — but she simply could not. She saw now that dispelling the hallucination was going to be far more difficult, a far longer battle than she had at first anticipated. And perhaps she would never be able to get rid of the delusion, to cure herself, regain normality… When she ignored the specter, it still did not vanish as it should have; though it stopped speaking to her, it remained quite close at hand, hovering, waiting, listening, watching… And when she boldly confronted it, unafraid or trying to be unafraid, the thing also remained, undeterred, gaining control of the conversation. Indeed, when she confronted it, the specter proved itself much more substantial than she wanted to believe it was…

What would happen if she did not improve, if she couldn't be rid of these delusions?

Must she go to Dr. Recard again? And if that was necessary, would even he be able to help her over so serious an illness? Could anyone help her regain her sanity once she was freely talking to dead people, seeing ghosts, feeling their hands on her neck…?

She bit her lower lip and tried to tell herself that the situation, no matter how dangerous, was not as bleak as it seemed to be. She was going to pull through this, just as she had pulled through her previous trouble. Once, Dr. Recard had said that the only hopelessly ill mental patients were those who refused to admit there was anything wrong with them. He said that if you could recognize your sickness, knew you were in trouble, you would almost surely pull out of it. She had to believe that he was right. The future was not lost, nor was all hope abandoned. She'd fight through it. Over and over, she reassured herself, told herself she'd win out, but she only believed half of what she said.

In a few minutes, the tears stopped flowing, dried on her face, leaving a crinkled, sticky feeling after them. She wiped at her face with a corner of the sheet, but didn't feel particularly refreshed. She supposed she should go into the bathroom and wash her face — though she dreaded meeting the ghost again… Then, realizing that she was shrinking from her condition, that she was retreating from recognition of her illness, she pushed the covers up and got out of bed.

The room was empty.

She went to the hall door and looked out.

The ghost was nowhere in sight.

“Ginny?” she whispered.

She received no answer, except a slight, almost inaudible echo of her own word.

She closed the door, smiling. Perhaps she was already better. If she could admit the ghost was a delusion, how could the delusion persist?

She went and washed her face.

In bed again, bone weary from the day's strenuous sailing and from her contacts with the spirit, she soon fell asleep. Her sleep was troubled, filled with dark, stirring figures that she could not readily identify but which seemed to threaten her. She turned, murmuring, whimpering, scratching at the sheets until long past dawn.

NINE

The following morning, after breakfast in his room, as was his usual routine, Will Barnaby entertained a visitor in the library on the first floor, a somewhat portly gentleman with long sideburns, a mustache and thinning hair, all of which he kept in trim. The visitor, Edgar Aimes, was as well dressed as his host: an expensively tailored summer suit in a lightweight, coffee colored Italian knit fabric, black leather hand-tooled Italian shoes, a light brown shirt and a handwoven tie. But the similarity between Barnaby and Aimes did not end with their clothes. Aimes was as quick and as observant as his host, with dark eyes that seemed always watchful, in search of an advantage, an edge, something that might prove useful in bargaining. And when Aimes spoke, his voice was almost as self-possessed and authoritative as Barnaby's voice. Almost. Clearly, both men were accustomed to having money and to dealing for large stakes.

Barnaby took a chair behind his desk, leaned back, motioned Aimes to sit down in the easy chair by the bookcases.

“What's the word from Langley?” Barnaby asked, watching Aimes very closely, as if he distrusted him.

Aimes sat with a long sigh. He said, “Well, he's still asking too much for the property.”

“How much?”

“Forty-two thousand dollars.”

“That sounds—” Barnaby began.

“Unreasonable,” Aimes finished.

Barnaby tapped his fingers on the blotter of the desk. “You think that's too much?”

“I know it is.”

“What should he come down to?”

“For Jenkins' Niche?” Aimes asked, giving himself time to think, to figure. His own profit, as the real estate agent for Barnaby's growing property acquisitions, was dependent upon the purchase price. He didn't want to drive it so low that he hurt himself; yet, he didn't want Barnaby to pay an inordinately high price. After all, he wanted to remain as Barnaby's agent, a rather lucrative position, considering how fast Barnaby had been buying up seafront land.

“For Jenkins' Niche, of course,” Barnaby said.

“Thirty-five thousand,” Aimes said.

“So he's asking seven too much.”

Aimes waited, not wanting to commit himself further.

“Is he adamant?”

Aimes said, “He pretends to be.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” There was a sharp edge in William Barnaby's voice that was not lost on the real estate agent.

“It means that he can't really intend to stick at that figure. He knows, as well as I do, what the Niche is worth. He's being stubborn, hoping we'll take it for, say thirty-seven or thirty-eight thousand. It's worth his time to hold out on us, for a couple of thousand extra.”

Barnaby was silent for a time, toying with a silver letter opener, using the sharp point of it to slice up the pressed paper blotter on his desk top. His face was absolutely expressionless, hard and stony — though the slight flush in his face gave evidence of the barely restrained fury which boiled just below the surface.

Aimes waited, cleaning his fingernails with the tiny point of a pocket knife, not watching Barnaby, apparently bored. After so many years in a hectic business, Aimes knew how to wait in silence when a situation called for patience.

“How long might Langley play around with us?” Barnaby asked at last, drawing Aimes' attention from his fingernails.

“It's difficult to say. He hasn't anything to lose by stringing us along. He knows how badly you want the Niche, to add it to your other land. He probably figures that you'll break down before he will.”

In a tight, hard voice, Barnaby said, “I didn't ask you for a longwinded reply. I asked for a figure, a date. How long will he play around with us?”

“Perhaps two or three more weeks,” Aimes said. “Another month.”

“That's too long.”

“In a month, I'll ram him down to thirty-five thousand. Isn't it worth the wait to save seven thousand dollars?”

“No.”

“You're telling me to take his price?”

“Yes,” Barnaby said.

“That's senseless.”

“I don't care.”

“Will, you're letting your emotions get in the way of good, sound business sense.”

Barnaby frowned. “That's your opinion.”

“No, that's the truth.”

“How so?”

“It's those fishermen, isn't it?” Aimes asked, no longer interested in his nails, watching Barnaby.

“I'll break them,” Barnaby said.

“Eventually,” Aimes admitted. “But why the rush?”

“I don't want to have to wait to break them,” Barnaby said. “I don't want to have to wait.” He had picked up his letter opener again, was slashing at the blotter once more.

Aimes said, “Will, I know that a lot of ugliness has passed between you and these men. I can understand that you want to — well, put them in their place. But—”

“Please, no lectures,” Barnaby said.

“I hate to see a man waste money.”

“It won't be wasted.”

“Revenge is worth seven thousand dollars?” Aimes asked, putting away his penknife.

“To me it is.”

Aimes sighed. To him, revenge wasn't worth anything. He said so.

Barnaby ignored him. He said, “How soon can the deal be concluded if we meet Langley's price?”

“It's against my better judgment to let you do this—”

“Forget that.”

“Okay, then,” Aimes said. “I've already run a title search on the land, and I've got all the other papers ready. At most, a couple of days and the Niche is yours.”

“Fine.”

Aimes started to get up.

“Wait, Edgar.”

He sat down, patient again.

Barnaby said, “These fishermen must have a lease with Langley, for the use of the Niche…”

“I've checked that.”

“And?”

“It's pretty one-sided. There's a dozen different clauses for the landlord's use, if he wants to break the lease.”

“And that contract is transferable with the land?”

“Of course.”

Barnaby smiled. “Then they'll be out on their ears in a week, maybe less.”

“There'll be more trouble,” Aimes warned.

“I don't care.”

“Well, I don't know about that,” Aimes said, fidgeting a bit in his chair, wiping at his thinning hair with the palm of a sun-browned hand. “Those fishermen are a rough bunch, Will. They can get nasty when they feel they have to.”

“Not to worry,” Barnaby said grimly, his lips tight, his whole face set in an attitude of commitment. “I can be nastier.”

Aimes was not satisfied. “Will, one of the worst things that you can do, that any businessman can do, is to let your emotions get the best of your reasoned judgment. I've seen men get obsessed with revenge before, and I've seen them be ruined by it. Without exception.”

“I'm not obsessed.”

“Perhaps not.”

“And I will win.”

“You may.”

“In any case, you're just the hired help, Edgar. None of this is really your concern.”

Aimes caught the warning in Barnaby's tone, and he was forced to agree. “Yes. You're absolutely right about that.”

Barnaby rose from his seat, dropped the letter opener again. He said, “I'll expect to hear from you as soon as Bob Langley accepts our offer.”

“You'll get a call,” Aimes said.

“Good luck, then.”

“When you're overpaying by seven thousand, and the seller knows it, you don't need any luck,” Aimes said. “It's already sewed up, right in your back pocket.”

“It had better be.”

“I'll be back to you on this sometime today.”

Alone, then, William Barnaby poured himself a small brandy in a large fishbowl snifter, and he sat down in the easy chair which Aimes had just vacated. He reached up and turned off the lamp” bedside the chair and, in the darkness that the heavy draperies preserved, the bittersweet brandy on his tongue, he thought about the inevitable triumph which was soon to fall into his hands…

A good businessman, he thought, had to be tough, the tougher the better. Though Edgar Aimes thought differently, Barnaby knew that it did not hurt a businessman to harbor a grudge. A grudge sharpened his senses, made him more alert, gave him a deeper motivation than mere profit. If there was a personal triumph attached to a particular business success, then a man worked all the harder to achieve his aim. Edgar was wrong, then, quite wrong. Perhaps that was why he'd not done more with his real estate agency than he had, why he wasn't the millionaire he should have been. Revenge was an excellent tool to spur one on toward the accomplishment of more mundane affairs.

He took another sip of brandy, put the big glass down on the table beside the chair.

And, he thought, hadn't the fishermen asked for this, every last bit of this? Of course they had! By trying to force International Seafood Products down the throats of everyone in Calder, they'd proved that they had no one's interests at heart but their own. When one proved, by his actions, that he had no care for his neighbors, he invited retribution.

He supposed that Edgar's warning about possible trouble from the fishermen was well meant, and valuable. After all, the fishermen were a rough tumble lot, and they might easily be capable of violence. He would have to be careful, and he would have to look out for his own. But in the end, he knew, everything would be resolved in his favor. He truly was, when all was said and done, tougher than any of them.

TEN

Unaware of her uncle's business conference with Edgar Aimes, Gwyn Keller sat in the small, informal dining room, alone, picking at a platter that Grace had piled high with buttermilk pancakes. The genuine blueberry syrup had begun to congeal around the edges of the cakes like purpling blood as she let the food grow cold. Her glass of orange juice had only been half drunk; the chips of ice in it were melted, and it was now too warm to drink.

Her fruit cup had hardly been touched, the frost on its sides having slid off into a slushy puddle at the base of the crystal pedestal, staining the white tablecloth. She had finished two cups of black coffee, though she had not really wanted even that much.

When Grace came to see if she wanted anything more, the older woman was surprised to find so much food untouched.

“Was something wrong with the pancakes?” she asked, rubbing her soft hands together.

“Oh, no,” Gwyn said.

“You won't hurt my feelings if you tell me the truth,” Grace said, looking anxiously at the cold griddlecakes.

“Really, they were fine,” Gwyn said.

“I could whip up another batch, if you—”

“Don't worry, Grace,” Gwyn said. “The trouble's with me, not with your cooking.”

“Would you prefer eggs? I can fix you something else.”

“I'm not really hungry,” Gwyn said.

The older woman studied her carefully for a moment, then said, “You aren't looking too well this morning, dear. Your eyes are all puffy, and you look pale under that tan.” She stepped closer and laid a palm against Gwyn's forehead, searching for a fever.

“I'm not sick at all,” Gwyn said.

“We could have the doctor here in half an hour.”

Gwyn smiled and shook her head, cutting the other woman off. She said, “I was so exhausted from yesterday's sailing, that I couldn't really sleep well, if that makes sense. And after tossing and turning all night, I've pretty much ruined my appetite. I feel gritty and altogether unpleasant, but I haven't any virus.”

“Just the same,” Grace said, “you take a couple of aspirins and lie down a while. It never hurts to take aspirins, if you might be catching a bug of some sort.”

“I'll do that,” Gwyn assured her. “Maybe later today. Right now, I feel like I want to be up and around.”

“You're sure about breakfast?” Grace asked.

“Positive.”

“You take care.”

“I will.”

“You start to feel ill, you tell someone right away.”

“I promise, Grace.”

When the cook had gone away, taking the platter of uneaten pancakes with her, leaving Gwyn alone with the other odds and ends of the meal and with the curiously depressing sunlight which spilled through the window opposite her, she felt as if the exchange between them had been absolutely false — not only on her part, but on Grace's part as well. Gwyn had concealed the real reason for her own loss of appetite — the “ghost,” her fear of total mental collapse and eventual institutionalization — while Grace had hidden something equally important. What…? Gwyn felt that there was something distinctly false about the older woman's professed, motherly concern for Gwyn, though she could not exactly put her finger on it. Grace's entire role as a cook, elderly housekeeper, was quite phoney, one hundred percent pretended. Gwyn was sure of that. It was almost as if Grace were being paid to act the part of a cook in some grandiose real-life play, with the Manor as a complex stage. This was the same tint of unreality, of unexposed illusion, which she had also seen about Fritz, when she had first come here — a maddeningly unspecifiable falsity…

Or was this suspicion only another facet of her own severe mental instability? Was she beginning to see strange conspiracies all around her, hidden faces behind incredibly real masks, plotters lurking in every dark doorway? In short, was she growing paranoid, in addition to all of her other problems?

If so, she was finished.

Abruptly, she stood up, letting her napkin fall to the floor, not noticing it, and she left the house for a stroll around the grounds.

The day was still and warm, the sky high and almost cloudless, incredibly blue and dotted with swiftly darting specks that were birds.

The lawn around Barnaby Manor was so cool, neat and green that Gwyn was persuaded to take off her tennis shoes so that she could feel the slightly dewy grass between her bare toes. She walked, unthinkingly, along the same trail she had first covered with Ben Groves, examining the white statuary, the geometrically arranged flowers, the carefully sculptured shrubbery, her eyes soothed by the complimentary lines that flowed from one object to another.

By the woods, where she sat on the white stone bench, the purple shadows of the forest soothed her, cool and soft, cutting the glare of the morning sun, sheltering and safe.

Yet, in time, she realized that she had not come outside to see or enjoy any of these things — not the lawn, the shrubs, the statuary, the flowers, not the white bench or the shadows of the trees. Instead, she had come out with only one intention, unconscious at first but now quite evident: she wanted to go down to the beach…

The beach and the sea seemed to be the focus for everything that was happening to her. Ginny had died at sea, in the boating accident that had almost claimed Gwyn's life, as well. Now, at this house by the sea, the ghost had appeared to her… And it had made its most bold approach on the beach, by the surge of the waves. Somehow, Gwyn felt, if she were to find an answer to her sickness, she would find it in or by the sea.

She went down the stone steps to the beach, being careful not to trip and fall, running one hand lightly along the rugged wall.

Still carrying her shoes, her feet sliding pleasantly through the warm, dry sand, she started southward, unintentionally moving toward the curve in the beach where, only the day before — running northward with her close behind — the ghost had disappeared. Occasionally, she looked out to sea, not really seeing anything but the color of the roiling water, and sometimes she looked up at the terns which were busy already. Most of the time, however, she kept her eyes on her feet, on the shifting sand which made way for her, letting the lift and fall of her own feet hypnotize her.

She had never felt so tired in her life, so sleepy, as if she had been awake for days…

She had lied to Grace about not having slept the night before. She had slept, though she'd awakened from countless nightmares, each worse than the one before it, all of which centered around a chase in which she was pursued by a faceless thing … The size, shape, texture, and substance of the pursuer always changed, from nightmare to nightmare, though one thing remained constant: its hands. Always, in the dreams, long-fingered, black hands, with nails as sharp as razors, reached out for her, rattling at the back of her neck…

All that considered, she had still slept — so why was she so terribly sleepy now?

The sound of the boat engine came to her over the rhythmic crash of the waves, though she did not identify it until it was nearly to shore. Then, looking up, surprised, she saw Jack Younger beach his fishing launch not a dozen steps in front of her.

For the briefest of moments, when she recognized his sun-whitened hair and his lean, brown good looks, she smiled and waved at him, almost called out his name. Then, suddenly, she recalled what he had said about her Uncle Will, the accusations he had made two days ago, and her smile gave way to a grim, tight-lipped frown as she realized that, now, she would have to confront him with his pack of lies. The very last thing she would have thought she needed, this of all days, was an argument with Jack Younger (the younger). However, strangely enough, the prospect of it lightened her spirit considerably, put a much healthier glow on her cheeks, and jerked her out of the creeping malaise that had possessed her ever since she'd gotten out of bed a few disproportionately long hours ago. At least, in the heat of the argument, she ought to be able to put aside all thoughts of the ghost, momentarily forget her worries about her own mental condition. And that was, of course, to be desired.

He approached her, apparently unable to see that she was going to give him a piece of mind, grinning, his teeth bright, his freckles like the specks on a brown hen's egg. Affecting a mask of mock admonishment, he said, “You shouldn't be here, on the beach, you know.”

“Shouldn't I?” she asked, in a perfectly neutral tone of voice, deciding to make him initiate whatever verbal battle there was to be. She was quite sure that there would be one.

“Yes,” he said, smiling again, pushing his white hair back from his forehead. “You shouldn't be here on the beach. As I understand it, mermaids are supposed to keep in the water.”

Ordinarily, his compliment would have pleased her, though she would not have let on that it did. Now, however, it only served to give her anger a sharper edge, for she interpreted it as nothing more than a smooth line to soften her up, a false compliment to keep her from asking him why he'd told her a lot of awful lies about William Barnaby. She felt as if he were attempting to use her, mold her reactions, and she did not like that.

“You aren't smiling,” he observed.

“Should I be?”

“Yes.”

“Oh? Why?”

“For one thing,” he said, “I'm the funniest man in the entire fishing fleet.”

“And for another?”

“Mermaids should avoid getting frown lines.”

She still did not smile.

“Headache?” he asked.

“No.”

“A bad breakfast?”

She said nothing, but watched him.

“Have I done something?” he asked. And then, as if remembering, just then, he said, “Are you angry about what I said, day before yesterday?”

“Of course, I am,” she said.

“I didn't mean to make you angry with me,

Gwyn,” he said. “I was only telling you the truth as I -

She interrupted him with a forced laugh, trying to sound as if she were mocking him. She was pleased to see him wince at the harsh sound of her voice.

“Now the roles are reversed,” he said, no longer smiling. “You see something funny, and I do not.”

“It's quite funny,” Gwyn said, “to hear you talking about 'truth,' since you have so much trouble recognizing it yourself.”

“Oh?”

“Even now you're not being truthful,” she said.

“How so?”

“You're pretending you don't understand what I mean, while you understand perfectly well. You told me a long string of lies about my uncle, sent me off thinking I was staying with a genuine human monster. But you neglected to add a few details that would have painted a very different picture.”

“What details?”

“Oh, come on—”

He stepped closer, shaking his head. “No, really. I want to know what details you think I left out.”

She folded her arms across her chest, still holding her tennis shoes in one hand. “Okay. You asked for it.”

“I sure did. Tell me.”

For days now, it seemed as if the world were striking out at her, striking out blindly and malevolently, bringing her pain and worry. It was nice to strike back for once, even in this limited fashion. She said, “For one thing, you told me that Uncle Will, when he first bought the place, refused to rent the facilities at Lamplight Cove.”

“He did refuse!”

“Outright?”

“Yes,” Younger said.

“That's not the way I hear it.”

Younger said, “Barnaby wouldn't listen to reason, wouldn't give us a chance to—”

“Don't continue to lie to me, please,” she said, in an even voice. “I know that my uncle would have let you rent Lamplight Cove if you had been willing to meet certain conditions which were altogether reasonable.”

“Such as?”

“He asked you to stop polluting the waters of the cove; if you had agreed, you could have rented the buildings there. He asked you to cease dumping sludge oil from your boats into the cove waters, but you somehow couldn't agree about that. You repainted your boats there, and you let old paint, turpentine, solvents and other garbage run right out into the cove, where the fish and plant life were being killed.”

“This is all a lie.”

“You're quite bullheaded, aren't you?” Gwyn asked.

He said, “I assure you, Gwyn, that your uncle did not make any conditions. He merely bought the cove out from under us and told us' to get packing. He offered no reasons for the eviction, and he provided no alternatives of any sort.” He sighed, bent down and sifted sand between his fingers, looking up at her. “Besides, we positively were not polluting the water around Lamplight Cove — or anywhere else, for that matter. A responsible fisherman — and most all of them are responsible — would never dump sludge oil overboard, because he knows the sea is his livelihood, his entire means of support. Sludge oil is pumped into barrels and sold, periodically, to a reclaiming plant near Boston. And though we had a dry dock at Lamplight Cove, it was extremely well policed by everyone who used it; no contaminants could have gotten into the sea from there, not even by accident.”

“Are you saying Uncle Will lied to me?” she asked, looking down at him, fuming.

“He's been known to lie,” he said. “Look, why don't you let me take you to Lamplight Cove? You'd see how clean it is. By no stretch of the imagination could you say—”

“I'm sure it's clean, now,” she said. “After all, you people have been gone from there for a year.”

“It was clean before,” he insisted. “Your uncle lied to you.”

“I suppose he also lied about International Seafood Products?”

He fielded that one easily. “He probably did. What did he tell you about ISP?”

In brief, clipped sentences, no longer able to conceal the depth of her anger, Gwyn told him exactly what her Uncle Will said about the proposed seafood processing plant, how it would damage the ecology, foul the air, and ruin the land values all around Calder.

“Lies,” Younger said.

“What is true, then?”

He said, “Oh, there are seafood processing plants just like the one that he described for you, have no doubt. They're messy; they dump rotting fish into the sea just as he said they do; and the odor of decay clings like glue to the land for two or three miles in every direction.”

Confused, she said, “Well, I thought you said he was lying.”

“He is, Gwyn. I would be against the construction of a plant like that. After all, Calder is my home, the sea my livelihood and my love. But the ISP plant wouldn't be anything like that. It's a super-modern, one hundred percent mechanized place. They pack the flesh, but they don't then discard the scales, guts and bones, as many plants do. Much of that, along with the meat that can't be cut into filets, is pulverized to make a high-protein flour substitute. That's used in the making of other foods, and much of it's exported to poverty stricken countries overseas. What guts and bones can't be used for that are pulverized for fertilizer. The ISP plants don't throw out anything, and they produce no unfiltered wastes that are dumped into the sea. Furthermore, they've more than met all the federal government regulations on air emissions, and their new plants don't give off any odor at all. They have a plant like the one they want to build here up in Maine. I've seen it. It's clean as a church.”

She turned away from him. Trying to digest all that he had told her, she looked far out to sea, squinting against the fierce glare of sunlight that shimmered on the water.

For a time, they were both silent.

And still.

But, eventually, when he felt that he had given her sufficient time to think, he got impatiently to his feet, anxious to hear her reaction. He said, “Do you believe me, Gwyn?”

“No.”

Inwardly, however, she was not quite so certain what she should believe and what she shouldn't; circumstances were no longer clear cut, but shadowed and vague. She supposed there was at least a modicum of truth to what Younger had said about International Seafood Products, though she was sure that the plant could not be so clean as he said it was. After all, her Uncle Will had said that it would be filthy, and so far as she could see, he had no reason to make up elaborate lies for her. On the other hand, what reason did Younger have for lying to her?

He said, “Your uncle really is lying to you, Gwyn, as hard as that may be to accept. I can't say why he's lying, but he most certainly is. His behavior is usually difficult to fathom.”

Gwyn turned to face him again, her eyes so dazzled by the sunlight on the sea that he appeared cloaked in shadows and spots of moving light. She said, “I suppose you'll tell me that you never made threats against Uncle Will, either.”

“Me, personally?” he asked.

“Don't play word games with me,” she said, angrily.

“I'm not.”

“You know perfectly well what I mean,” she said. “Did the fishermen, in general, make threats against him?”

He said, “There's none of us who like your uncle, of course, but there's also none of us who would hurt him — or even threaten to hurt him. That isn't our way.” He paused, saw that she was still not prepared to believe him, and he said, “One thing I do understand about William Barnaby.”

She waited.

He said, “I understand his fanatical belief in classism, though it seems foolish to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“He's a very refined bigot,” Younger said.

“That's absurd!”

“Oh,” Younger said, “he's not an out-and-out racial bigot, because that's not fashionable any longer, not even in the least well educated social strata. I'm sure he wouldn't consciously discriminate against a black man or a Spanish-American merely because of race. In fact, he'd most likely go out of his way to show racial minorities special courtesy. No, your uncle's bigotry is based on far different standards, though it's nonetheless petty for that.”

“What other standards?”

“Social rank and position,” Younger said. “I suppose this kind of snobbish bigotry isn't uncommon in wealthy families with a long social history and genuine blue-blood ancestry. Yet, he seems like a fool for clinging to it. Gwyn, your uncle seems to hate all fishermen, automatically, without even knowing us, simply because we aren't of his own social level. He pushed us out of Lamplight Cove because he didn't want to have to associate with us, even in the role of our landlord. He was terrified that his hoity-toity society friends would think of him as a patron to the likes of us, as a renter of old docks and flensing sheds. And when we had the gall to stand up and argue with him, he hated us twice as much as before; in his mind, you see, we should always remain silent and assent to whatever he does to us, merely because we are — by his scale, and no other — his social inferiors, a pack of dirty laborers.”

“Uncle Will isn't like that,” she said.

“Then you don't know him at all.”

She said, “He used to be like that, I admit. But he's gotten over that, outgrown it. He's changed.”

“Has he, now?”

“Yes” she said. “And I'm proof that he has.”

Younger looked perplexed. He said, “You're proof? How?”

“That's a private, family story,” she said. She thought about her dead father and how mindlessly, unreasonably, the Barnaby family had hated him, how they had rejected him for being born into a family of less social stature than theirs. “But I can assure you that Uncle Will realized his own shortcoming along these lines, and that he's changed.”

“I doubt he has.”

“You're impossible,” she said.

“No more than you are,” he said.

She sat down on the sand and began to slip on her tennis shoes, fiddled with her laces, managed to string them tight and tie two neat bows even though her hands were shaking.

While she was thus engaged, Younger walked closer to the water's edge, turning his back on her, and began to scoop handfuls of sand up, balling the wet earth and throwing it out to sea. He worked fast, scooping and pitching, scooping and pitching, as if trying to drain himself of his anger. His broad back and brown muscular arms worked in a healthy, flowing rhythm that was not unpleasant to watch.

Shoes tied, Gwyn got to her feet, brushed sand from her clothes, and turned away from him, heading back toward Barnaby Manor.

“Gwyn?”

She turned.

He was facing her now, his hands hung at his sides and covered with wet sand, perspiration strung across his forehead in a band of transparent beads.

“Yes?”

He said, “I wanted to be friends.”

“So did I,” she said. “But you never gave it a chance.”

“It wasn't all me,” he said.

She did not reply.

He said, “Don't go yet.”

“I have to.”

“Let's talk a while longer.”

“We've nothing to talk about.”

“Why don't we get together tomorrow for—”

“That won't be possible.”

“But—”

“I've been told that I'd be wise to avoid you,” she said. “And now I see that was good advice.”

She started walking away again.

“Gwyn, wait!”

She continued walking.

“Who told you to stay away from me — that uncle of yours, that sweet and unprejudiced paragon of a man?” he shouted after her, his voice ringing from the cliffs, flat against the rolling sea.

She ignored him.

“I'm right about him, you know!” he shouted.

She did not respond, but walked a little faster. As the tone of his voice grew uglier, and as he put more volume to it, she grew more afraid that he would follow her.

He shouted something else.

With relief, she found that she had put so much distance between them that his words were indistinct.

Fifteen minutes later, moving through shimmering curtains of heat waves as the mid-day sun beat down mercilessly on the brilliant white sand, Gwyn reached the steps that wound up the cliffside toward Barnaby Manor like a stone snake. As she stepped to that cool, shadowed shaft of risers, she discovered that the dead girl — pale, quiet, soft and wraithlike, but nonetheless real — was waiting for her. The dead girl looked up, her blue eyes bright as gems, smiled gently, pushed a yellow, lock of hair out of her face with a long-fingered hand as white and as unearthly as anything Gwyn had ever seen.

“Hello, Gwyn,” the girl said.

The specter sat on the third step from the bottom, her bare feet on the first step, still dressed in a fresh, white gown of many layers. Her hands were again folded on her lap like trained animals returning to their proper place, and she looked as if she had been here a long time, keeping her eerie vigil.

Gwyn's mind had been fully occupied with the possible ramifications of her conversation with Jack Younger. Confused by everything that he had told her about the ISP plant and about her uncle, not wanting to believe him at all but nevertheless believing him at least a tiny bit, she had not had time to think of the ghost in more than an hour. Now, coming across the dead girl, her fears flushed back to her in a rush, like the crashing wall of water from a broken dam. Again, she felt a thousand years old, brittle and ready to crack apart.

“You don't look well,” the ghost said.

Gwyn said, “I'd like to use the stairs. Would you please move out of the way?”

Her voice came out shallow, nearly inaudible, and it betrayed the intense fear which she was trying desperately to control.

The specter didn't move.

Gwyn started forward, caught herself before it was too late, stopped. She realized that she was not now capable of touching the dead girl as she had before. She was not up to discovering, as she had discovered that other time, that the ghost would feel as solid as she felt, as real as any living person.

“Please,” she said.

“I want to talk to you.”

Gwyn waited.

The dead girl drew her feet up to the second step, propping her elbows on her knees and leaning forward so that her chin was cupped in the palms of her hands. She said, “I saw you talking with Jack Younger a while ago.”

“And?”

“Do you like him?”

Gwyn was unable to respond, her throat constricted, her tongue clinging to the roof of her mouth.

“He's quite handsome,” the dead girl said.

“Why don't you chase after him, then?” Gwyn asked.

The specter laughed. “I'm beyond that sort of thing now. I have only one love, the one that brought me back to this world of the living. I love you, Gwyn, my sister, no one else.”

Gwyn turned away from her.

“Don't go away,” the dead girl said, rising to her feet and reaching out toward Gwyn.

Sensing this approach without seeing it, Gwyn walked quickly across the beach, to the edge of the sea. Without removing her shoes, she let the cool water break across her feet, let it stir frothily around her slender ankles.

The specter appeared beside her.

The white dress swished back and forth in the sea breeze, while the golden hair streamed behind her like a lighted torch, just as Gwyn's own hair did.

“I love the sea,” the ghost said.

Gwyn nodded but said nothing, watched the incoming waves, hoping that their hypnotic flow would lift her up and away from all this, settle her down in some quiet place, alone.

“Even though it killed me, I love the sea,” the ghost said. “It has such power, such beautiful power.”

Far out, a luxury liner ran southward, full of holiday passengers intent on a four-week cruise to and through the Caribbean. Gwyn wished that she were with them, instead of here. And she wished, too, that Jack Younger would show up now. If he saw the dead girl too, then… But that was sheer nonsense, for the dead girl did not really exist.

“I don't think you're ever going to accept me,” the specter said, as if reading Gwyn's thoughts.

“That's right.”

“We could have so much fun together, if you would really listen to me, if you'd stop thinking that I'm nothing more than an illusion. But I suppose that, in the world of the living, a ghost is just much too much to be believed. When I was alive, I doubt I'd have believed in one. I've made a serious mistake coming back, and I see that now. I really do. I'm an anachronism. You think that you're seeing things, and that maybe you're even going crazy. I didn't mean to bring you unhappiness, Gwyn, just the opposite. I wanted so badly to be with you once more, to be close to you. Twins are always closer than regular brothers and sisters; it was easier for me to come back, because my ties were closer to you than most ties the dead have with the living… I wanted to see you again and share all the things we once shared, to have the fun together that we used to have when we were young…” As the dead girl spoke, incredibly, her voice cracked and grew small, as if she were on the verge of tears.

This startling evidence of feelings, of emotions in the specter, was more than Gwyn could stand, crazier and more frightening than almost anything else that the vision, the hallucination, had done to date. She began to cry herself, silently, big tears running down her cheeks. She wanted to turn and run, to scream for help, but she could not. Once, this fear had seemed to energize her, to give her the strength to flee. Now, all strength was gone, energy sapped, resources used up. She felt more weary, more sleepy than before, all soft and muscleless, limp and cold and nearly dead herself.

The specter said, “There's only one other solution, then, as far as I can see.” She seemed to have thoroughly recovered from her momentary lapse into that emotional and very unghostly self-pity. Her voice was strong again, unwavering.

Gwyn continued to watch the waves, did not look at her and did not ask what this solution might be. Whatever the specter said, it would not be good.

The dead girl said: “Instead of me crossing over to be with you, here in the world of the living, you could join me, in death… Yes… There, neither of us would be an outsider. We would both belong, and we would be happy together…”

Gwyn's heart was racing, her face flushed, her mouth as dry as the sand that lay behind her.

The dead girl went on, rapturously, “It would be so easy, Gwyn. You needn't suffer, not at all. It would be nearly painless, and then there would be all of eternity for us.”

Gwyn wanted to run.

She couldn't.

She was rooted there, weak and sick.

“Take my hand, Gwyn.”

She made no move to do as the ghost asked.

Seizing the initiative, the dead girl reached out and quickly took Gwyn's hand in her own, held it tight.

Gwyn did not have the energy or, indeed, the will to resist this unpleasant intimacy.

And why should she resist, after all, when absolutely none of it was happening, when the entire episode transpired only in her own mind, an utterly senseless fantasy, a mad illusion, a fragment of her mental illness…?

“We could just walk out there, into the sea, together. We'd let the warm water pull us out, caress us. We'd let it carry us away,” the dead girl said, her voice pleasantly melodic, convincing. She made death sound as desirable as fame or fortune, as sheltering and wonderful as love. “Come along with me, Gwyn, come be with me forever, forget all the worries you have over here…”

The dead girl's voice echoed from the hot air all around them, now tinny and strange, deep and shallow at the same time, melodic but flat, like a voice from some other dimension.

Perhaps it was just that.

The specter said, “We could shed these bodies in the cleansing salt water, just as I once did by myself. We'd never need them again, for we'd be going where flesh is unheard of and not useful, where everyone is made of force, of energy, where we'd never need to be apart again, not for all of time…”

“That's— No. No, I—”

“Come, Gwyn.”

“Please, no, I…” But her voice was thin, and she could not say what she felt, could not express her terror.

The dead girl stepped farther out into the water, still holding Gwyn's hand. She kicked her feet in the water and grinned, as if to show how much fun it would be, like a game, a water sport: drowning. She held Gwyn's hand so tight, insistently, tugging at her, smiling enticingly, her blue eyes bright, almost fevered.

“No…”

“It won't hurt, Gwyn.”

“I don't want to die.”

“It will be nice.”

Gwyn still held back.

“It'll only be bad for an instant, when you panic,” the dead girl explained, patiently. “You'll feel like you're lying in a wet, warm blanket — and then that you're smothering in it. Before you know it, the panic will pass and the resignation set in, and then the joyful acceptance will come to you, and you'll embrace death.”

“I won't.”

“Yes. It's not at all as you've heard it is, not like anyone living has ever imagined it.”

Gwyn found that, involuntarily, she had taken a step into the water, so that it sloshed well above her ankles.

“Come along…”

“No!”

“Gwyn—”

Gwyn tried to turn and pull away.

She could not.

The specter held tight.

“Wait, Gwyn.”

“Let go of me!”

“Gwyn, you'll like it.”

“No!”

“We'll be together.”

Gwyn whimpered, struggling to escape the grasp of the pale, dead hand, telling herself repeatedly that none of this was actually happening, that she was caught up in a web of madness, of self-deception. Yet, she was unable to shrug off the deeper, more irrational fear that the ghost was genuine…

“Die with me, Gwyn..”

She slapped at the pale arm, twisted, pulled.

“Death is not so awful.”

Screeching like one of the terns, her teeth clenched tightly together, Gwyn gave one last, desperate, wrenching twist with her body and was suddenly, surprisingly free. She staggered backward, kicking up the water. She whirled, nearly fell, somehow regained her balance and ran for the flight of stone steps.

As she ran, she saw something in the sand which, in a single blazing instant, drove all thoughts of madness from her. She saw something there that proved the ghost was not a ghost and was not a figment of her imagination.

However, she did not stop, for what she saw terrified her almost as much as had the idea of insanity — and the possibility that the spirit was genuine. As frightened as ever, but for different reasons, she gained the steps in short order and, sobbing, ran up them without any regard for her safety, taking them two at a time. She had to find Uncle Will and tell him; she had to get help at once.

ELEVEN

William Barnaby watched Gwyn take several long swallows from the glass of cold water, then said, in a measured voice which was intended to soothe her, “Now, are you feeling any better?”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

“What on earth's happening?” he asked, smiling, sitting down on the edge of the desk.

Only minutes ago, she had raced up the stone steps, miraculously avoiding a fall, had crossed the wide, well-manicured lawn and entered the manor as if there were a pack of slavering devils close at her heels. She'd found him in the study, sitting behind his desk and working through an enormous sheaf of papers. She had been so incoherent — both because of fear and exhaustion — that she had been unable, at first, to tell him what was the matter. When he'd ascertained that she was not hurt, but only badly frightened, he made her sit in the easy chair where Edgar Aimes had sat earlier, then went to fetch her a glass of cold water from the kitchen. Now, she had drunk most of the water, and she felt that she'd gathered her wits about her enough to tell him what had happened. She said, “I have a strange story to tell, about ghosts, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't interrupt me.”

“Ghosts?” he asked.

“In a way.”

“Go on, then.”

She told him all of it, from the beginning. Once near the start, he shifted uneasily and interrupted her to say, very adamantly, that there just weren't such things as ghosts; she reminded him that he'd agreed to let her tell the whole story in her own way and at her own speed before making any comments about it. Then, she told him how the apparition had first appeared to her in her bedroom, how she'd thought that it must be only the remnant of a dream, went on through the subsequent visions, until she finished with a detailed explanation of what had transpired today on the beach, by the stone steps, and most importantly at the water's edge, only a short while ago.

He did not move from the edge of his desk during all of this, and he did not move even when she was finished, almost as if he thought that a change in this own position would somehow act as the catalyst to set off the explosion which he fancied he saw building inside of her. He looked at her strangely, warily, and he said, “I'm quite intrigued by this, Gwyn. But it's all so — well, baffling.” He was choosing his words carefully, keeping an un-felt smile on his face.

“Isn't it, though?” she asked.

“How do you explain it?” he asked. He was extremely cautious, not wanting to upset her. Clearly, he believed that she was more than slightly emotionally disturbed, and he felt that he must handle her with the proverbial kid gloves. She didn't mind his reaction in the least, his treating her as he might a mad person, for she had not expected him or anyone to swallow such a story without doubts.

Candidly, she said, “Well, at first, I thought that I was losing my mind. In fact, I was sure of it. I was convinced the ghost was an hallucination, until something I saw on the beach, a while ago, proved me wrong.”

He seemed to relax when he realized that she was willing to face such a drastic possibility as insanity, though he appeared not to have heard her mention the clue to the ghost's real nature, for he said, “You're going to be fine, Gwyn. If you can admit that you've got an emotional problem, then you're a long way toward—”

She interrupted him before he could say anything more. “I haven't any emotional problems,” she said. “At least, I haven't got any that are tied up with this ghost.”

“But you've just admitted—”

“The ghost is not a ghost,” she said. “It's someone masquerading as a ghost.”

He looked shocked, and then he became wary again. He said, “But who? And for what reason?”

She shrugged. “I don't really know. I haven't had time to think it out, but — mightn't it be the fishermen?”

“What would they have to gain, and why would they strike out at you instead of at me?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

“Besides,” he said, his voice gentle and comforting again, “what makes you think this ghost is 'real'?”

“Hallucinations don't leave footprints behind them,” she said, smiling up at him.

“I don't understand.”

She said, “When I pulled away from that woman, when she was trying to drag me into the water, I ran back toward the steps. On the way, I noticed two sets of footprints leading to the water's edge, mine and hers. If I'd imagined the whole thing, how could there be two sets of footprints?”

He got up, at last, paced to the bookshelves and then back again, stood near to her, looking down. He said, “You chased this — ghost perhaps half a mile along the beach the other day, before she — disappeared. Did you see footprints then?”

Gwyn frowned. “I didn't look for them.”

“Think about it. Can you recall her prints in the sand? When you rounded the curve in the beach and found she'd disappeared, didn't you think to try following her prints?”

Uneasily, Gwyn said, “No. I didn't.”

He nodded. Sadly, he said, “Gwyn, I don't like to suggest this, but, could you have imagined seeing the footprints, as you've imagined seeing the ghost itself?”

That notion had not occurred to her. Now it did, and it rested on her mind like a dark, cold worm. Summoning up her last dregs of self-confidence, she said, “I'm sure the prints were real.”

“There's one way to find out,” he said.

She stood up. “We'll go look.”

They stood on the beach, looking down at the white sand, the sea wind ruffling their hair. They were both silent, each waiting for the other to say something, each aware that the silence could not last forever, each dreading the beginning of the conversation.

At last, Gwyn looked up at him, afraid, embarrassed, but determined to go on. She wiped at her eyes and said, “I didn't imagine them. I'm sure I saw them.”

Only one set of footprints led from the stone steps to the edge of the water, and only one set of footprints came back: both made by the same person, both made by a girl wearing a pair of tennis shoes, both sets made by herself.

“I saw them,” she said, again, more quietly this time, as if she had ceased to try to convince him and was only trying, now, to make herself believe it.

“I'm sure you did,” he said.

“I mean really saw them,” she insisted.

“Gwyn, you should come back to the house and rest.”

“I'm not crazy.”

“I didn't say you were.”

Desperate, striking out at him because she could not see anyone or anything else to strike out at, she said, “You implied it!”

“I didn't mean to imply it,” he said.

He was walking slowly toward her.

She didn't move away.

She looked at the sand.

It was still marked only by her prints.

He said, “I've told you, I don't think your problem is anything so severe as a complete mental breakdown. Emotional instability, yes. You've been through so very much, so many deaths, Gwyn. You need a lot of rest, a lot of relaxation. You have to get your mind off the past and learn to look forward to the future.”

“I saw those prints.”

He said, “I feel responsible for this, in a small way. I shouldn't have given you the room with a sea view. I shouldn't have reminded you, that way, of your sister.”

Only half-listening to him as he drew nearer, she bent and looked more closely at the sand. “Look here,” she said.

“Gwyn, let's go back to the house. I'll call the doctor, and he can give you something to—”

She repeated: “Look here, Uncle Will.”

He bent down, playing along with her. “What is it?”

“Someone's taken a broom over the sand here,” she said. “You can see the bristle marks.”

He looked and said, “Where? I don't see any.”

She pointed. “Right there.” She looked toward the steps and said, “They swept out the 'ghost's' footprints.”

Sadly, and as if the words were the most difficult that he had ever been called upon to say, he told her: “Gwyn, lovely Gwyn, you are imagining things.”

“Damn you, I see those broom marks!” She enunciated the last five words with exaggerated care, as if she were talking to an idiot and wanted him to be sure to understand.

He touched her shoulder with one large, dry hand, as if he would quell the terror building in her.

She drew back.

“I see them!” she hissed.

Quietly, but with force that penetrated to her, he said, “Yes. But I don't see them, Gwyn.”

Their eyes locked for a long moment; then she dropped her gaze, a tremor rising from her stomach and spreading throughout the upper half of her body, an intense chill she could not throw off. She still saw the broom marks before her where some phantom had erased the tracks made by another phantom. She blinked, willing them to disappear, but could not shut them out.

He said, “There was no ghost. You never saw one, and you never spoke to one. And there were no footprints made by the ghost, either. It is all an illusion, Gwyn, a bad dream.”

She looked up, feeling small and alone, worse than she had felt since she got her uncle's letter back at school. She said, “You really can't see them, can you?”

“They aren't there,” he said.

“You're sure?”

“Yes.”

She looked down.

She still saw them: broom marks.

She shuddered and hugged herself with both arms, still possessed by that chill, the doubt setting in, confidence shaken loose by the tremors that passed through her.

“You should come back to the manor with me now, Gwyn,” her Uncle Will said. His voice was deep, masculine, reliable. He was offering her shelter from the world — and from herself.

A tern swept by above them. It called out in a high, funereal wail, disappeared into the side of the cliff, just as Gwyn's own happiness had disappeared without warning.

She said, “I think I'm very sick, Uncle Will.”

“It's not that bad.”

“No, it's very bad,” she said.

Another tern squealed, attacked the cliff, popped out of sight. Her happiness was already gone; what did this symbol represent, then — if not her sanity?

He said, “Come back up to the house with me, Gwyn.”

“Will you help me?”

“I'll call the doctor.”

“I may need more than that,” she said.

She felt like a lost child.

“You'll have whatever you need,” he said.

She nodded; she believed him. But she didn't think anything would help her now.

“Gwyn?”

She looked at him again.

He said, “You're my entire family — you and Elaine. I haven't any children of my own, as you know. You're the closest — you're the last— relative I have in the world. I've lost others, in the past, because of my own thick-headedness, but I won't lose you.”

She stood up as he did, but she continued to look down at the sand, where the broom marks lay at her feet. She kicked at them, blotting them out, though that didn't do much good. They marked the sand other places as well, every place the imaginary dead girl had walked.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He put his arm around her and turned her back toward the steps, gentle, with strength enough for both of them.

Halfway to the steps, she stopped and said, “This is worse than the last time.”

“You'll feel better when you've rested,” he assured her. “You're tired, and you aren't thinking straight.”

She said, “No, it really is worse than the last time. Will you call Dr. Recard and tell him what's happening to me?”

“I'll call him today,” he said.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

She let him lead her the rest of the way across the beach, up the steps to the top of the cliff, across the well tended lawn and into the big manor house where the ghost-hallucinations had begun and where, she ardently hoped, she'd get rid of them forever.

TWELVE

A man and a woman, both young, lying in the lush grass at the edge of the clifftop and sharing a pair of high-powered European binoculars, had watched the scene on the beach between William Barnaby and Gwyn, watched with particular fascination. The man, Ben Groves, Barnaby's chauffeur and handyman, was not as frivolously behaved as he took pains to be in Gwyn's company, but serious and intent on what developed below, as if his whole future might hinge on the outcome. The woman with him, no less concerned than he was, was a yellow-haired beauty in a many-layered white dress. Her eyes were incredibly blue, her complexion pale, her whole attitude one of unearthly fragility…

“Well?” she asked.

He waited, still watching, and did not reply.

“Ben? What's happening?”

He put the binoculars down and rubbed at his eyes, which felt furry after staring at that magnified, sun-brightened sand. He said, “Don't give yourself an ulcer, love. It looks as if it worked, all according to plan.”

She sighed, as if a great burden had been lifted from her slender shoulders. She said, “I just haven't been sure of myself during any of this. It's quite different than acting before a camera or on a stage.”

“You were superb today,” he said.

She flashed him a quick look of unfeigned surprise and said, “How would you know about that?”

“I watched you.”

“When I was trying to get her to drown herself?” the girl asked, astonished.

“That's right.”

“From where?”

“Right here.”

“With the binoculars?”

“Yeah.”

She giggled. “I didn't know I was going to have an audience. Why didn't you tell me you'd watch it?”

“I didn't want to cramp your style,” he said.

“Nonsense. I always play better with an audience. You know that, darling.” she reached out and touched him.

“Anyway,” he said, leaning to her and kissing her lips, “you were quite fine. You even scared me.”

“I scared her witless.”

For a few moments, then, they were silent, letting the cool breeze wash over them, enjoying the soft grass on which they lay.

“Light me a cigarette?” she asked.

He rolled onto his back, extracted a pack from his shirt pocket, lit one for her, passed it over.

When she'd taken a few drags, she said, “I still don't feel a hundred percent right about this.”

He snorted derisively and lighted a cigarette for himself, puffed out a long stream of white smoke. “With what we stand to make from this little charade, you don't have to feel a hundred percent right about it, love. You don't even have to feel a full ten percent right about it, as far as that goes. All that lovely cash money will do a lot to soothe the conscience.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“I know it will.”

“But, basically, she's such a sweet girl,” the blonde said. “And she's had it pretty rough to date, what with her sister and her parents dying—”

“For God's sake, enough!” he bellowed, flicking his cigarette over the edge of the cliff and rolling onto his side to face her and be closer to her. He was the strength that kept them going, he knew, and he had to raise her spirits now. “You can't afford to be empathetic, Penny.”

“I know.”

“It'll get us nowhere.”

She nodded.

“We've had a good stroke of luck, to fall into this deal, and we've got to be ruthless about exploiting it.”

She smiled. “I'll stay up tonight and practice being ruthless before my mirror.”

He hugged her and said, “That's more like it.”

“I just hope it doesn't have to go on much longer,” Penny said. “It's fraying my nerves.”

He said, “Just remember what it was like when you hadn't any money, when you had to — take to the streets. And remember how bad it's been for us to get going, to get any roles worth dirt. What we make here will give us a chance to set up our own productions and to hell with all the casting directors we've had to bow to.”

“I guess I can hold up,” she said, finishing her cigarette.

He said, “Besides, it won't be more than a day or two now. Gwyn's ready to go over the edge. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. But soon.”