The Dark of Summer

THIRTEEN

Louis Plunkett, the county sheriff, was a huge man, three inches past six feet tall, weighing two hundred twenty-five pounds, all of it muscle; his friends called him “Tiny.” An ex-marine in his mid-thirties, he kept himself in tip-top shape and was more than just a little bit impressive. When he served a summons or a warrant or made an arrest, he was seldom resisted by those to whom he was bringing the force of modern law; and those who were foolish enough to argue with him and make his duty a difficult one, always wished, later, that they had been less caustic and less belligerent.

Yet, despite his size, Louis Plunkett's face gave evidence of a gentle soul lying close beneath all that hard-packed muscle. His hair had receded back from his forehead, giving him a high-domed, extremely vulnerable look that accentuated his soft, brown eyes that were far too large for his face. His nose was small, almost pug, his mouth not hard but soft and sensitive. His face was splashed with freckles, giving him the look of a young farmboy; indeed, almost all that he required to complete that image was a pair of bib overalls and a length of dry straw dangling from the corner of his mouth.

To a stranger, he might look too big, too clumsy, and somewhat unsophisticated. If the stranger with such an opinion of Plunkett were a law violator and acted on that judgment, he would be sorry indeed, for Plunkett was exceptionally intelligent, in his own way.

Louis Plunkett's personality was as at odds with itself as was his formidable appearance, containing opposites that somehow worked in perfect harmony: inside, as well as out, he was half man and half boy, half the weary cynic and half the gay innocent, the pessimist and the optimist rolled into one, choosing to love but often hating as well. He did not like to see violence, and he went out of his way to avoid causing it. He disliked having to use his fists on a man — or his gun — and he preferred even to avoid verbal force when persuading a lawbreaker to see the light. He always tried to reason with an opponent or a potential opponent, using his deep calm voice as a tool to settle other people's bubbling anger. Yet, when the occasion demanded, he could easily hold his own in any fight, against anyone, even against two or three adversaries — as he had proven twice during his career as a law enforcement officer. He held back none of his great strength when he had to fight, and he was brutal to the end of it — after which he had to take a couple of Alka-seltzer tablets in order to settle his stomach, which had been turned by the sight of blood.

Plunkett was also scrupulously honest and fair-minded. Yet he knew that a man in his position had to provide special favors to certain influential citizens — or find himself out on his ear come election time. He did not have to permit the wealthy and the well-known to break the law, though he did have to let them stretch it a bit, now and then. And, on occasion, he was expected to assist them in a matter he would have preferred to be left out of.

It was just such a matter that had brought him to the manor house at William Barnaby's request, the morning after Gwyn's near-breakdown on the beach. He arrived in the county sheriff's car, with the gleaming gold-colored shield on the door, exactly at 8:00, prompt as always. Five minutes later, he had been ushered into William Barnaby's study and seated in the visitors' easy chair.

“How are you this morning, Sheriff?” Barnaby asked.

Casual friends of Louis Plunkett's called him Lou, while close friends called him Tiny. William Barnaby, however, to both their satisfaction, merely called him Sheriff.

“I'm fine,” Plunkett said, his voice soft and without edge.

“You've had breakfast, I trust?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I could have Grace whip up a batch of hotcakes or something,” Barnaby told him.

Plunkett sensed that the invitation was not genuine, only what the other man thought was expected of him. But he had eaten, so the answer was easy to make. “Really, sir, I've been well fed by the wife.”

Barnaby sighed, almost as if he were relieved the formalities were over with, and he handed the sheriff a set of papers which was the only thing on the top of his desk.

The big man looked through them, nodded.

“Do you foresee any trouble?” he asked.

“When I post them?” the sheriff asked.

“Yes.”

“Not then,” Plunkett said.

“But later?”

“Yes, there'll be trouble later.”

“I'll expect your support.”

Plunkett frowned at the papers in his large hands, and he said, “I had heard you were trying to buy the Niche, but I didn't know that the deal had already gone through.”

“Just yesterday,” Barnaby said. “You've seen the deed transfer; it's all perfectly up-and-up.”

Plunkett considered this for a moment and said, “According to law, don't tenants have as much as thirty days to vacate the premises when a new landlord takes over and wants them out?”

“Various laws define this as a proper courtesy period,” Barnaby said. “However, I'm not feeling especially courteous toward these fishermen, Sheriff.”

Plunkett was clearly not satisfied with that answer.

Barnaby said, “In a case like this, Sheriff, the landlord is in the driver's seat, always has been and always will be, as long as the concept of private property exists. You see, if I evict them now, returning a proper portion of whatever rent they've paid, they'll need a full week to get a restraining order from a judge — if they can get one at all. By the time the order is enforced and they're back in the Niche, most of the courtesy period will be up anyway. Besides, the whole procedure will require legal help, and that will cost them more money than the court order would be worth.”

“I see.” Plunkett was not happy. Laws were not necessarily being broken — but they were most surely being stretched to the limit.

“Well,” Barnaby said, in a sprightly tone of voice, dusting his long hands together, “shall we be on our way, then?”

Plunkett looked surprised and sat up straighter in his chair. He said, “You're not coming with me, are you?”

“Of course.”

“That's not necessary, Mr. Barnaby.”

“I'll enjoy it.”

“But perhaps it's also unwise.”

“Why?”

“There might be trouble, sir.”

Barnaby frowned and said, “You told me, only a few moments ago, that there wouldn't be trouble. Now, what could have happened in the last minute or two to change your mind?”

Plunkett shifted uneasily in his chair, rolled the papers up in one huge hand. “Well, sir, in all truth, I didn't expect trouble if I went alone. But with you there… You know how much some of those fishermen hate — how much they dislike you, sir.”

“I know.”

“Well, then—”

“But I don't suspect they'll cause trouble with you along,” Barnaby said. “And I want them to know I'm dead serious about this. I want them cleared out of Jenkins' Niche within thirty-six hours.”

Plunkett got to his feet, realizing that it was useless to argue with a man like William Barnaby. Still, in one last hope of averting the coming trouble, he said, “Can't you at least give them a week, sir?”

“Impossible,” Barnaby said.

“But thirty-six hours is so little time to—”

“I will not tolerate these dirty, uneducated, mannerless little men being on my land any more than thirty-six hours!” Barnaby had slowly raised his voice until he was nearly screaming; his face was flushed, his hands fisted at his sides as if he were holding his anger tightly between his fingers. “I will not be associated with the likes of them, not for a single minute longer than necessary, not even as their landlord, Sheriff. And that is my last word!”

Plunkett nodded sadly.

“Shall we go?”

“About that time,” Plunkett agreed.

By 8:30 that morning, they were on their way to Jenkins' Niche with the official eviction notices…

Gwyn had dozens of dreams that night, all of them bad, a few of them nightmares:

— She was running along a dark, narrow, low-ceilinged corridor, pursued by a faceless woman in white robes; the woman cried out to her, trying to get her to turn around and run in the other direction; but she knew that behind her, the corridor opened into the void; however, before long, she found that it opened onto the void at both ends…

— She was being chased by a formless creature through dark woods, and she could not escape those trees except by moving out onto a featureless plain which encircled them; the plain, she felt, was more terrifying, in its perfectly level scope, than were the shadowed trees where her stalker waited and watched…

— She was climbing a slope whose summit was obscured by deep shadows, trying to escape from a transparent woman with blood-red eyes who was climbing the same slope behind her; she scrabbled at the rocks, tearing away her fingernails, skinning her hands, falling to her knees repeatedly — only to rise up again and plunge on; the transparent woman wanted to carry her down to the bottom of the hill and throw her into the still black lake down there, an event that must not transpire, no matter what the cost of preventing it; at the top of the slope, Gwyn knew, she would find hope and a future; instead, as she crossed the brink, she discovered that the hill was capped by another black lake, just as evil as the stagnant brew below; then, the transparent woman caught up with her and, squealing in a voice filled with echoes, shoved her forward, off the stone rim and down toward the black water…

Gwyn woke from this last nightmare with a scream caught in the back of her throat, and she sat straight up in bed, flailing at the covers with both arms.

“Gwyn?”

Gasping, she looked toward the voice, saw Elaine and, blinking, realized the slope and the black lake and the transparent woman had all been parts of a dream.

“Gwyn, are you feeling all right?” Elaine bent over her anxiously, her pretty brow furrowed with concern. She felt Gwyn's forehead for a fever, and finding none she gently pressed the girl back until her head touched the pillow once more.

“I'm okay,” Gwyn said, barely able to spit out the words. Her mouth was terribly dry and fuzzy, the corners of her lips cracked, her throat parched and sore. She managed to ask, in a voice all feathery and strange: “May I have a glass of water?”

“Of course,” Elaine said. “But you won't try to get up while I'm out of the room, will you?”

“No.”

Elaine disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later, Gwyn heard the delicious sound of running water in the sink. When the older woman returned with the water, she took it and greedily drank it down, almost without pause, as if she had just spent a week in the desert.

“Better?”

She relaxed. “Yes, thank you.”

Elaine returned the glass to the bathroom, came back and sat in the chair beside the bed, picking up a hardbound book which she had been reading to pass the tune.

“What happened?” Gwyn asked. She rubbed at her eyes, as if the gesture would clear her memory. Not only her mouth was fuzzy upon wakening, but her memory as well. She felt dizzy and weak and awfully sleepy — even though she'd just gotten up from a long sleep. She could not seem to put her thoughts in order.

“Do you remember anything about what happened last evening?” Elaine asked.

Gwyn thought, hard.

It was so long ago… yesterday…

She could not recall what had happened.

“You thought that you'd seen Ginny — your sister,” Elaine said. Obviously, from her expression and the tone of her voice, she was reluctant to talk about it, put the sickness into words.

“You came to Will with a story about footprints on the beach, or some such…”

“I remember now,” she said, quietly.

“You were in bad shape, so we called Dr. Cotter.”

“I don't remember that — oh, yes. A gray-haired little man…”

“He thought you needed as much rest as you could get,” Elaine said. “He gave you a sedative.”

“What time is it now?”

“You slept all night and most of the morning, as Dr. Cotter said you would,” Elaine explained. “It's now 11:30 in the morning.”

“You didn't sit up with me all night, did you?”

“There wasn't any need,” Elaine said, “since we knew you'd not come around until sometime this morning.”

“I'm being such a bother.”

“Not at all. That's what we're for. That's what a family is for, to help one another.”

“I'm so tired,” Gwyn complained.

“That's good, because you need to rest as much as you can.”

Gwyn said, “Even though I just woke up, I think I could go right back to sleep again.” She smacked her lips, wiped a hand across her mouth. “But I'm also famished.”

Elaine smiled. “That's one problem easily solved.” She got to her feet and said, “I'll go tell Grace that you're ready for your breakfast. Is there anything you want, especially?”

“Whatever she wants to fix,” Gwyn said. “Anything at all. I'll eat every last crumb of it, no matter what it is.”

Little more than an hour later, when Gwyn had devoured a stack of flapjacks in sweet apple syrup, two buttery pieces of toast, two eggs sunny-side up, a cup of coffee, juice, and a raisin-filled sweet roll, she felt bloated but content. She used the bath and returned to the bed, weak-kneed and woozy but able to manage on her own. Beneath the sheets again, she felt sleep stealing over her the moment her head touched the pillows; invisible hands tugged at her eyelids.

“You rest, now,” Elaine said.

“I'm not good company.”

“That doesn't matter.”

“But I can't stay awake. I feel so…”

“Sleep all you want.”

“I will. I'll sleep… I'm so tired; I've never been as tired as this before. I feel like I'm coming apart at the seams.”

“You've been through a lot, Gwyn.”

“Goodnight, Elaine.”

“Goodnight, dear.”

And she slept again…

She woke.

She was alone.

The house was still and quiet, like a living being that encompassed her and was now holding its breath.

From the angle at which the sunlight pierced the thin under-drapes that had been drawn across the two windows, she knew that it must be late in the afternoon. She had slept nearly a full day, except for the brief period of consciousness when she'd eaten her breakfast.

They had let her sleep through lunch, which was especially considerate of them…

Thirsty, she got up again. Her legs were as weak as before, her head as light. Even the dull glow of the sun that came through the partially curtained windows was too bright for her, and she squinted her eyes as she crossed the room. She got a drink of water in the darkened bathroom, returned to bed, drew up the sheets and closed her eyes once more.

Her arms felt leaden. Her entire body seemed to have grown heavy and inert, like a lump of earth.

It was extremely pleasant to be lying there in the large bed with absolutely nothing to do… without cares of any sort… and with no tedious studying to be done, no important exams to be preparing for, no reports or term papers or speeches to be written… free from all responsibilities and commitments… Her two pillows were incredibly soft, and the starched bedclothes were soft as well — and the limitless darkness that lay behind her eyes, the beckoning world of contented sleep, was infinitely softer than anything else…

Abruptly, Gwyn opened her eyes and pushed the sheets away as if they were sentient beings trying to smother her; she had been chilled to the core by the memory of how she had once slept away entire days rather than face up to the problem of everyday life. Her problems now were a hundred times more confusing and complex than those which had driven her into her first bout with mental illness; how much more desirable they made escape seem than it had ever seemed before. However, she knew that if she gave in, if she had a relapse of the other sickness on top of her present ills, she would be utterly lost, beyond Dr. Recard's patient care, beyond anyone's help.

She sat up, perspiring, pale and shaken.

She shouldn't have slept all night and morning, and she should never have taken a nap after lunch. What's more, Elaine should have realized how dangerous too much sleep could be for her, considering her past…

Yet, she was still sleepy.

She swung over the edge of the bed, looked down and saw that the floor appeared to be a hundred miles away, impossibly distant, quite out of reach. Her stomach churned at this confused perspective; she felt as if she were going to be physically ill. She fought down that urge, aware that her body was merely seeking another excuse for her to remain in bed. Putting her feet down on the thick carpet, she pushed against the mattress and stood up, swaying like a drunkard. She grasped the headboard of the bed to steady herself, regained her balance, let go and stood entirely on her own power, feeble as an old woman, but up and around nonetheless.

She decided she would shower, change into shorts and a blouse, then go for a walk, perhaps even down to the beach to take in the last of the day's best sunshine and the cool breezes which would be coming in across the choppy water. She should always, she reminded herself, return to the scene of any trouble, rather than flee from it; flight was escape, just as sleep was, and she couldn't afford to be cowardly.

Certainly, sleep was not the answer; and rest was the wrong solution: indeed, these were clearly only parts of the problem.

She went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, worked the twin faucets until the spray was just stingingly hot enough. She let the water stream over her, until she was beet red, then finished the ordeal with a bracing explosion of the cold water, a galvanizing experience which brought her more fully to her senses than she had been all day.

She dressed casually and went to the window where she could look out at the sea, as if challenging it and all the associations that it had lately come to have. A few minutes later, still weary but ready, she left her room and went downstairs.

FOURTEEN

William Barnaby responded to his wife's summons, followed her quickly down the long front hall and joined her by the largest of the front windows, half-hidden by thick draperies, where they had an unobstructed view of the lawn. Out there, Gwyn stood by a small fountain, intent upon the four marble cherubs that poured real water out of marble vases into a small but lovely reflecting pool.

“Christ!” Barnaby said, punching the palm of his left hand with his right fist. “She's supposed to be kept in bed.”

Elaine said, “I couldn't stop her.”

“Why couldn't you?”

“I caught her when she was here at the door, ready to go out, and she was adamant. She said the worst thing she could do was sleep away the rest of the day.”

“She's right — but that's wrong for us.” Without taking his eyes off his niece, he said, “Why weren't you upstairs in her room, watching over her?”

“I can't be there twenty-four hours a day,” Elaine said.

“But you're supposed to be there when she wakes up,” he said. “That's a chore you said you'd be able to handle the best.”

“Normally—”

“We can't afford excuses,” he said. “We have to be right in the first place.”

“I was not trying to shirk my responsibility; I did not intend to give you any excuses,” she said, a hint of anger tinting her voice. “All I meant to do was give you the facts of the situation.” When he did not respond to her, when his eyes did not drift away from Gwyn for a moment, Elaine went on: “The facts are that she was given a powdered sedative in her orange juice at breakfast, and should have slept nearly until supper-time. I'm sure she woke, on and off, but she shouldn't have had the desire or the energy to get out of bed.”

“But she did.”

“Obviously.”

“Are you certain she was given enough of the sedative?”

“Positive”

“Next time, increase the dosage.”

“But we don't want her totally unconscious,” Elaine said. “We want her to wake up, on and off, so she can realize what's happening to her — so she'll think the old sickness is coming back.”

“Sure, sure,” he said. “But we don't want her out of the house again. If she should stumble upon something—”

“Like what?”

He had no answer.

“We've planned this well,” she said. “Gwyn's not going to stumble across anything, because we've not left any loose ends lying around.”

“She's heading for the steps,” he said.

Elaine looked out in time to see Gwyn started down for the beach, soon out of sight.

Will turned away from the window, a scowl on his face that made him look ten years older than he was. He walked swiftly toward the front door and pulled it open.

“Wait!”

He looked back at her.

She said, “Where are you going?”

“To follow her.”

“Is that wise?”

“I want to know what she's up to,” he said.

“She's just going for a walk on the beach.”

“That's what she told you, but she may have been lying,” he said.

“Will, she doesn't suspect that we're involved in this, that it's all a put-up job. She thinks that she's losing her sanity. You've talked to her; you know. She hasn't any reason to be suspicious of us, of anyone in the manor.”

He hesitated.

She said, “Let her go. She'll be back soon enough, all worn out and even more of a candidate for the sleep treatment.”

“What if she meets that Younger kid again?” he asked.

“So what if she does?”

“I don't like her talking with him.”

“What could happen?”

“She might tell him about the ghost.”

“And he'd think she was crazy. That couldn't hurt our plans any.”

He wiped a hand across his face, as if sloughing off his weariness, and he said, “Just the same, there's a chance, no matter how slight, that Younger will believe her, or part of what she says. Or perhaps he'll be able to convince her of the truth about Lamplight Cove. And, remember, she doesn't know what's happened at Jenkins' Niche just this morning. Any fragment of the truth might shatter the whole illusion.”

“Will, she simply won't take the word of someone like Younger — not against your word. Can't you see how much it means to her to have a family life again? She will swallow whatever you tell her.”

He frowned and said, “I wouldn't trust to that. After all, she's Younger's type, not mine, with a gutter heritage not unlike his. She and I are from different worlds; she and Younger are brother and sister below the surface, products of the same kind of parents. No, we have got to keep her away from everyone else, make sure her only contact is with the people in this house — until we've got her in the state we want.”

“Suppose she sees you following her.”

“She won't.”

“But suppose she does. Won't that do more to shatter the illusion of the loving uncle than anything Younger might be able to persuade her of?”

He hesitated.

“If you want to know what she's doing down there,” Elaine said, “you can use the binoculars from the edge of the cliff. That's safer; you won't be seen.”

“I don't know…” But he had already begun to close the door.

“Come on, then,” she said.

He closed the front door and followed her along the corridor that led to the rear of the house and the kitchen. But halfway there, he had already decided that his wife was correct, that nothing was to be gained by watching Gwyn on the beach. Even if she met Younger, her confidence in him would be unswayed, no matter what the boy said. “Forget it, Elaine,” he told her, stopping her before she reached the kitchen door. “She's not going to find anything on the beach.”

“Of course she isn't.”

“This is still a minor crisis,” he said. “But I think it's one we can deal with well enough.”

“What have you in mind?”

“I want to talk to Ben and Penny.”

“About another little performance?” Elaine smiled and touched his arm with one hand.

“You don't think that would be overdoing it, do you?” he asked, taking her hand in his and holding it tightly.

“Penny's a great actress.”

“But we don't want the girl getting too familiar with the — ghost,” he said. “That would take a lot of fire out of the big finale — and we've put too much thought into the last act to ruin it now.”

“Penny can handle it,” Elaine assured him.

He thought a moment and said, “We ought to have something prepared for her as soon as she gets back, to wipe out any gains in self-confidence that she might have gotten from the walk.”

“We'd better see Penny right away,” Elaine said, leading the way back toward the main Starr-case, her flowing brown hair like a cape from a nun's bonnet. “Gwyn might come back at any moment.”

Together, they went upstairs. '

At Ben Groves' door, at the far end of the main corridor from Gwyn's room, Elaine knocked three times, rapidly, waited for an answer. When Groves didn't respond, she knocked again, more insistently this time.

He opened the door, looking worried, smiled when he saw them and sighed. “It's only you,” he said, stepping back out of the way. “I thought it might be the kid.”

“The kid is why we're here,” Will said. He followed Elaine into the room while Groves closed and locked the door behind them. He did not sit down, for his nerves were too keen to allow him relaxation. Instead, he paced to the windows and back again, rubbing his hands together as if they were covered with something sticky.

“What's wrong?” Groves asked.

“She's gone out for a walk,” Barnaby said.

“The kid?”

“That's right — and to the beach.”

“She's supposed to be knocked out,” Groves protested.

“Well, she isn't,” Elaine said, somewhat crossly.

“And we've got to schedule a new performance,” Barnaby added.

“See if you can contact the spirit world now,” Elaine told Groves.

“What?” he asked, bewildered.

“The ghost,” Elaine said. “See if you can scare us up the ghost.”

Groves grinned, now. “Oh. Yeah, just a minute.”

He went to the closet door, opened it, pushed some clothes out of the way and looked up a dark flight of attic steps. “Penny, we're having a conference. You want to come down?”

A moment later, he stepped back to allow a blue-eyed blonde into the room. At her appearance, both Elaine and Will smiled, reassured that their plan was foolproof. Penny was almost an exact double for Gwyn Keller, as much like Gwyn as Ginny had been, at least in appearance.

“I guess it's time for me to start earning my money again,” Penny said, sitting on the edge of Groves' bed.

“That's right,” Elaine said. “And you're worth every penny of it.” She smiled as she offered around a pack of cigarettes.

FIFTEEN

She stood halfway between the surf and the cliff, at the turning in the beach where the dead girl had disappeared two days ago, when Gwyn had been chasing her. This had not been her original destination — at least not consciously. When she'd first left the house, against Elaine's wishes, she'd started walking northward, along the unexplored arm of the beach, with the excuse that the scenery would thus be new and more enjoyable than a walk into familiar places. In fifteen minutes, however, she understood that she was only trying to avoid a confrontation with the landmarks of past terrors. She was running, again. Resolute, then, she had turned and started back to the south, passed the stone steps and went on for another half an hour until she came, at a leisurely pace, to the bend in the beach. She half expected that here she would find something important, something she had overlooked and which would settle this whole thing — though she had no idea what this might be…

The sun was low in the sky, though it continued to make the beach as hot as an oven. And she was weak, still, and tired. She would not, however, give up the last shred of her hope. For the most part, she was convinced the ghost had never existed, that she'd never seen anything more than an hallucination, that the footprints were illusions, as were the broom marks that had followed them. But a glimmer of doubt still existed, deep inside of her, a minim of hope that it would all prove to be something else quite different. This glimmer kept her here, searching the clean sand with an intent gaze.

She searched along the surf for some kind of indentation in the land which would be sufficiently deep to conceal a young woman who was approximately the size of the — the dead girl. She found nothing. Moving slowly in toward the cliff wall, each step rapidly becoming a major effort as her unusual weariness increased, she eventually discovered, to her own great surprise, the well-concealed series of small caves, all large enough to accommodate a man, which lay there…

Even half a dozen steps away from them, one could barely see the tops of these caves. Here, the beach was hove up like the back of an angry cat and was, for the most of its width, higher than the entrances to the caves, providing a natural blind. Within two yards of the cliff wall, however, the beach sloped drastically, giving way to the subterranean chambers at the bottom of a seven- or eight-foot incline.

Gwyn stood at the top of this slope, looking down, not sure if she should risk a moment of optimism or not. Previously, in scouring the beach, she had seen no footprints besides her own; two days of wind and shifting tides had wiped the open sand clean of any trace of the dead girl's ghostly passage. At the bottom of this slope, on the other hand, in the dimly lighted entrance to one of the caves, other footprints marked the sand where the wind and the waves could not get in to erase them.

Careful not to lose her balance and fall, Gwyn went down the steep hill, and braced herself against the cliff wall at the bottom. She crabbed sideways until she reached the cave in question.

Her heart was thudding, more from excitement than exertion, but this was the only sign that she felt close to some strange truth…

In the deeper, looser sand of the slope, the other set of prints was little more than a staggered series of formless depressions, not at all sufficiently well defined for identification. But at the bottom, in the cave entrance where the sand was level and not so deep or dry as on the slope, the prints had taken well and remained clear: slender and feminine, the tracks of a woman in her bare feet — as the ghost had been…

Gwyn would not permit herself the elation that bubbled within her, because she realized that the footprints might have been made by anyone, a curious explorer from somewhere farther south along the beachfront, and not by a ghost. Moving cautiously, so as not to disturb the tell-tale tracks, she slipped to the mouth of the cave and then inside, walking only so far as she could see, though the subterranean system seemed rather large and complex. She saw, when she turned to face out toward the daylight, that the bare-footed woman who had been here before her had not gone deep into the cave either, but had stood just inside the entrance, looking out. Though this seemed to prove the woman had been waiting there, looking up the slope, expecting to see someone at the top, it was not proof of a ghost — or of a hoaxer.

Gwyn stood there, near where the woman had stood, trying to see what value this discovery had.

None.

Even if she showed Uncle Will these tracks, what would they prove? That someone had been in the cave before her? So what?

She looked down at the footprints again, shivered.

Wasn't it possible that — yes, even likely that — if she did go to fetch her Uncle Will for him to take a look at the footprints, that they would be gone when the two of them returned from the manor house, that where prints were now, only clean sand would be then? Or perhaps, if she still saw the prints — might he be unable to see them, just as he had been unable to see the broom marks on the sand, yesterday? That would be conclusive proof that she was not the victim of a hoax, but was indeed losing her mind.

And that would be intolerable, that abrupt closing off of all alternatives. Instead of confirming the slim possibility of a hoax — for whatever reasons — it would amount to nothing more than another carefully positioned brick in the rapidly growing edifice of her madness.

For a moment, she considered going deeper into the cave to see if it might lead anywhere in particular, but she finally decided against any further explorations. Clearly, the barefoot woman had not gone any farther than this; therefore, nothing beyond this point could interest Gwyn or help her solve the overall puzzle of the ghost. Besides, she had no flashlight and no way of marking her route so that she could retrace her steps in the event that she became lost in the twisting corridors of stone.

Dejected, she started out of the cave and almost overlooked the flash of white near the cavern mouth. Catching sight of it out of the corner of her eye, she turned and, her breath held at the back of her throat, recognized a scrap of flimsy, white cloth. It was the same fluffy fabric from which the dead girl's gown had been made. This scrap had caught on the jagged edge of a rock and been torn loose, apparently without the dead girl being aware of it. The breeze caught it and stirred it like a tuft of white hair on an old man's head.

Gwyn touched it, reverently, as if it were a sacred relic, pried it free of the jagged stone and held it in the palm of her hand.

This was real. She could touch it, feel it, run the flimsy stuff through her fingers. With this to show Uncle Will, she could get some help in discovering who was…

Then again, how did she know that the scrap was real? Hadn't she felt the dead girl touch her, and hadn't she actually wrestled with the ghost? If she could hallucinate something as seemingly real as that, couldn't she hallucinate this piece of cloth?

And even if it were genuine, what did it prove? That someone had been in this cave, had lost a piece of garment on a jagged rock? That didn't mean the “someone” was a ghost, a hoaxer pretending to be her dead sister. The cloth might have come to be here two days ago, or it might have hung on the rock for a week, a month. Indeed, it might have been here so long that the sun had bleached it white, though it had once been a different color. In short, it was proof of nothing.

She looked around for something more, anything more, but she found only sand and stone — and possibly footprints.

Sighing, she jammed the white scrap into the pocket of her shorts. The climb up the steep slope outside of the cave was exceedingly difficult and required every last bit of her strength, though she would normally have made it in a few seconds, with little effort. She kept falling to her knees and sliding back, the treacherous sand shifting like a liquid beneath her. In the end, she was forced to go up on her hands and knees, clawing frantically for each foot she gained. By the time she had reached the surface of the beach, she was gasping for breath, shaking like a storm-blown leaf, and coated with perspiration which dripped from her brow and streaked across her face.

She toddled across the beach, to the water's edge, and sat there where she felt it would be cooler. Her head ached and seemed to spin around and around, as if it were coming loose. In a while, the sensation of movement ceased, though the headache remained.

When she felt rested enough, she got up and started back toward Barnaby Manor, her rubbery legs twisting and bending but somehow managing to support her. Each step increased her weariness, brought a deep yearning for sleep more intense than that which she had suffered in her previous illness, so intense, in fact, that she could not understand it. She didn't know, of course, that she had been drugged heavily, twice, in the last twenty-four hours, and that a residue of those drugs still worked within her, like a quiet little fist.

By the time she reached the bottom of the stone steps that lead up the cliffside to the Barnaby estate, Gwyn was drawing her breath in long, shuddering sobs, bone weary, fuzzy-eyed. She sat down, letting her head fall forward, her arms folded across her knees. She didn't see how she could manage to climb clear to the top.

However, the sun was setting, bringing a shadowed twilight to the empty beach, and night would soon lay its black glove over everything. She didn't want to be down here when darkness fell, no matter whether her ghost was a real ghost, an hallucination or a hoaxer. When she had steadied her heartbeat and regained her breath, she got up and began the dangerous ascent.

The first few steps weren't bad.

The sixth seemed twice as high as it should be.

The seventh was a major obstacle.

After that, her strength fell away, and the steps rose before her like a series of mountains.

Darkness was falling more rapidly than she'd anticipated — or she was taking an inordinately long time to make the climb — leaving pools of shadow on the steps, so that she sometimes misjudged where the edge of one of them lay. A chill draught moved down through the natural flue, bringing goose pimples to her flesh and giving her the odd sensation that a giant lay above, breathing down on her.

The twentieth step seemed to slip away from her, like the moving riser on an escalator; she lost her balance, felt herself tilting backward, a long hard fall behind her…

Desperately, she flung herself forward, trying to regain her precarious but precious balance. She over-compensated for the backward tilt, and went painfully to her knees, clutching at the steps as if she thought they would shift out from under her.

Darkness pressed in.

The draught grew chillier.

In a while, she started up again, staying on her knees this time, moving ahead as she had on that slope of sand by the caves. This, in the end, proved the wisest course, for she finally reached the lawn above without further injury and no more close calls.

She lay on the grass, catching her breath, then got up and, crying slightly at her own weakness, walked toward the welcome lights of Barnaby Manor…

“I told you a walk wasn't what you needed,” Elaine said, helping her into bed.

Gwyn slid down under the sheets and lay back against the pillows, thankful for the smell of clean linen and the enveloping softness. “I see, now, you were right,” Gwyn said.

“Dr. Cotter said you should rest.”

“I'm awfully tired.”

“What would you like for supper?” Elaine asked.

“Nothing.”

“You've got to eat.”

“I'm not hungry, Aunt Elaine.”

The older woman made a face and said, “But you've hardly had anything to eat all day!”

“Breakfast.”

“One meal isn't—”

Gwyn said, “But it was an enormous breakfast; it filled me up; I've not been hungry since, really.” She wanted to stretch, but didn't have the strength to lift her arms. She yawned instead and said, “All I want to do is sleep, get my strength back.”

“If you're sure you're not hungry.”

“I'm sure.”

Elaine picked up a bottle of tablets by the side of the bed and emptied one out into the palm of her hand. “I'll get you a glass of water to take this with.”

“Take what?”

“A sleeping pill.”

“I don't want a sleeping pill,” Gwyn said.

“Dr. Cotter prescribed them.”

“I don't need one,” Gwyn said, adamantly. “I feel like I've been kicked around by a herd of horses. I'll sleep without help.”

“Dear—”

“I won't take one.”

Elaine sighed and put the tablet back into the bottle, capped the bottle and put it on the night-stand again. “If you won't, you won't.” She turned off all the lights except the reading lamp by her chair, sat down and picked up her book.

“What are you doing?” Gwyn asked. She raised her head from her pillows and looked at the older woman.

“Reading, dear,” Elaine said.

“You're not going to sit up with me, are you?” Gwyn asked. She felt almost like a helpless little girl, a child so afraid of the dark that she needed a chaperone to help her get to sleep.

“Of course I am,” Elaine said. She was dressed in a brown stretch sweater, brown bellbottoms and stylish boots. She did not look at all like the sort of woman who would insist on mothering anyone, yet here she was, insisting just the same. “If you won't take a sleeping tablet, as Dr. Cotter said you should, then I ought to be here to watch out for you, in case you need or want something.”

“I don't want to be such a burden on you,” Gwyn said.

“This isn't a burden. I've been wanting to read this novel for several months.”

“You'll be more comfortable in the library,” Gwyn said. “I insist you don't ruin your evening worrying about me.” When she saw that Elaine was not affected by any of this, she said, “Besides, the light bothers me; it keeps me awake.”

Elaine closed her book on a flap of the dust jacket, to mark her place, rose to her feet. “Promise you will sleep?”

“I'm in no shape to do anything else,” she said.

And she wasn't.

Elaine bent and kissed her forehead, pulled the sheets closer around her, picked up the book, turned out the reading light, and left the room.

The darkness was heavy but not oppressive, a welcome preliminary to sleep.

Gwyn thought, briefly, how fortunate she was to have both Elaine and Uncle Will to look after her, especially at a time like this when everything seemed to be falling apart for her. Without them, she would have been so terribly alone, so much more vulnerable to this sickness, so helpless. But with them, she felt, she had a good chance of recovery, a better chance than she would have had if she'd no one to turn to…

Sleep reached up.

It was not threatening, but gentle.

She let it touch her and pull her down.

“Gwyn?”

She opened her eyes and found that she had rolled onto her stomach in her sleep. She was peering out through a cocoon of sheets at a fragment of the wall behind the bed, and she could see that the reading light — which was dimmer than any other light in the room — had been turned on again. She hoped Aunt Elaine had not returned to keep a vigil.

“Gwyn?”

She froze.

A small hand touched her shoulder, shook her gently, then more and more insistently.

“Gwyn?”

She rolled over, pushed the sheets away from her and looked up into the pale face of the dead girl, Ginny, her long-gone sister.

“How are you feeling, Gwyn?”

She was beyond screaming for help, beyond fighting with the ghost, far beyond any reaction at all — except a dull and unemotional acceptance of the impossible.

“You've been sleeping so much,” the dead girl said, “that I haven't had a chance to talk to you. I didn't want to wake you, because I knew how much you needed your sleep.”

Gwyn said nothing.

“You've been so overwrought, and it's mostly my fault.”

Gwyn closed her eyes.

She opened them again.

It didn't work: the ghost was still there.

“Are you listening to me, Gwyn?”

Against her will, she nodded.

“You looked so far away,” the apparition said. “I didn't even know if you could hear me.”

“I can hear you.”

The ghost sat down on the edge of the bed. She said, “Have you thought over what I talked about?”

Gwyn was actually unable to understand the specter's meaning; her mind was disjointed, scattered with the fragments of thought, smashed by her weariness and by her fear which, by now, was a common part of her.

“Will you come with me, to the other side? Will you die with me so we can be together again?”

Gwyn looked away from the dead girl, trying to block her out altogether, uselessly hoping that her eyes would light upon some distraction which — by completely dominating her attention — would force the apparition to disappear. After passing over a dozen objects and rejecting them, her gaze come to rest on the bottle of sleeping tablets which stood on her nightstand, almost within her reach.

“You'll like the other side, I promise you, Gwyn,” the specter said, leaning closer.

Its voice was like the sough of a night wind through the tilted stones of a deserted graveyard. It curdled Gwyn's blood and made her look all the more intently at the escape offered in the contents of that small medicine bottle.

“I could open your window,” the apparition said. “Straight down under it is a flagstone walk. If you jumped—”

Gwyn ignored the whispering voice and rose onto one elbow, leaned out and grasped the bottle of tablets. She took the cap off and shook out one pill. It was white, very shiny and hard; she supposed she could take it even without water. She put it in her mouth, after gathering saliva, and swallowed it.

“Sleeping pills?” the ghost asked.

Gwyn lay back.

The ghost took the bottle out of her hand. “Yes, dear, this would also be a good way to do it.” She took a second pill out and held it up to Gwyn's lips.

Gwyn kept her mouth pressed tightly shut, biting into her lower lip so hard that she thought she would soon draw blood if she weren't more careful.

“Dear Gwyn, it would be much less painful than jumping from the window or drowning in the sea. Just a long sleep leading into an even longer sleep…”

Though she knew that this was only an hallucination, had to be, Gwyn was not about to open her mouth and accept the tablet, even if it were imaginary.

“Say, a dozen of them,” the ghost said. “If you could manage to swallow only a dozen of them, that ought to do the trick.” She pushed the pill against Gwyn's lips.

Gwyn turned her head.

“Perhaps you'd like a glass of water to take it with,” the specter said, rising. She put the bottle and the tablet on the nightstand and went into the bathroom.

Please let me sleep, Gwyn begged. I can't stand it anymore… I just can't… I'll start to scream, and I won't be able to stop screaming again, ever.

But, as mentally and physically exhausted as she was, she did not sleep, but lay on the edge of it, ready to fall.

She heard water running in the bathroom.

Then it stopped, and the specter came back with a glass in her hand.

“Now,” the ghost said, “we'll get them down, won't we?”

Gwyn closed her eyes as tightly as she closed her mouth, bringing creases to her forehead and colorful streaks of light to the blackness behind her lids. She wished that she had the ability to close her ears, too, to seal out that cool, hypnotic whisper.

The pill touched her lips.

“It will be easy, Gwyn.”

She turned her head, felt the pill follow her, still jammed against her mouth.

“Gwyn?”

Panic began to rise in her as she felt a scream straining at the back of her throat. But then, mercifully, she also felt the pill she had taken beginning to work on her. Sleep came closer. She relaxed and gave herself over to it and was carried away into darkness, away from the ghost, away from everything.

SIXTEEN

Forty-five minutes later, in the kitchen downstairs, while Gwyn remained sound asleep in her room, the other six members of the manor household sat around the big table drinking freshly brewed coffee and eating pastries which Grace had baked earlier in the day. No one felt much like eating a full, cooked meal; there were too many building tensions in the air, and there was too much immediately at stake to permit proper digestion.

However, the four different kinds of pastries were all crisp and delicious.

“Maybe you really should have been a cook, Grace,” Ben Groves said, grinning at the gray-haired woman over a half-eaten apple tart. “I mean, you do have a flair for it.”

“I was a cook once,” she said. “Long hours, lots of work, and only mediocre pay — unless you've style to handle the so-called gourmet dishes. Which I don't.” She took a bite of her own pastry and said, “I prefer life with Fritz, here. It's infinitely more exciting than spending your days in a hot kitchen.”

“With Fritz,” Ben said, “you're lucky you haven't been spending your time in a hot jail.”

“I resent that,” Fritz said. “I've worked the con games in half the countries of Europe, and I've not been caught once.”

This sort of light banter continued for another several minutes, though neither Elaine nor William Barnaby joined into it. They drank their coffee and ate their pastries like two strangers at a table of close friends, though the illusion of rejection was not the fault of the other four. Fritz, Grace, Ben, and Penny had learned, very early in this strange association with the Barnabys, man and wife, that their wealthy patrons were not inclined to camaraderie.

At last, when he was finished eating and had wiped his hands on a linen napkin heretofore folded on his lap, Will Barnaby interrupted their chatter and directed a distinctly admonitory remark to Penny Groves. “You were pretty damned foolish upstairs, just a while ago,” he said. “And I mean by your own account of it.”

The girl looked up, finished chewing a mouthful of blueberry muffin and said, with surprise, “I was?”

“You did say that you attempted to force her to take another sleeping tablet, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“Didn't that strike you as foolish?”

She said, “I didn't mean her to have it. I was only trying to scare her, and I succeeded.”

“Suppose she had taken it?” Barnaby asked.

“She wouldn't have.”

“But suppose that she'd opened her mouth. Would you have given it to her then?” His face was tied up in an ugly, dark knot.

The blonde thought about it for a moment, then said, “Well, I would have had to, wouldn't I? I mean, if she'd opened her mouth for it, and if I'd taken it away after all of the spooky act I'd put on, she'd have been sure to smell a rat.”

“Then,” Barnaby said, “you were inexcusably foolish.”

“Look here,” Ben Groves argued, “those pills aren't all that powerful. Two of them wouldn't have killed her, by any means.”

Barnaby suddenly slammed a large fist down onto the table, rattling all the dishes and startling his associates. Elaine was not startled at all, for she knew him too well not to anticipate his outbursts. He said, “Gwyn must not be physically harmed. We mustn't take the slightest chance of killing her. It's not a matter of mercy, or anything like that, God knows; but if she dies, her estate might never come my way.”

“It would be sure to,” Fritz said, dusting powdered sugar from his hands. “You are her last living relative.”

“It would take years,” Barnaby said. “And the state would be right in there, shouting about a lack of last wills and testaments; the state would want it all and would get a huge chunk of it, no matter what a court finally decided.” He was red-faced just thinking about that delay.

To head off another explosion on her husband's part, for the sake of group unity, Elaine said, in a more reasonable tone, “You see, the girl's got a history of mental instability. It shouldn't be difficult to convince a court that she's gone past the edge — especially if she goes on about ghosts or even hoaxes of ghosts. If she can be certified incompetent to control her own affairs, Will is sure to be given management of her estate, without any of the fortune being lost to inheritance taxes.”

“And with that,” Barnaby added, “I can develop these properties I've been purchasing over the last ten years.”

“But you've got a stake in this too, all of you,” Elaine reminded them. “Every risk you take is as much a danger to your own reward as it is to ours.”

There was silence around the table for a while.

Then Penny said, “I won't make a mistake like that again.”

“Good,” Barnaby said.

Fritz raised his coffee cup and said, “To fortune.”

Three others joined in the unorthodox toast. The Barnabys, as usual, sat back and watched it all as if they were visitors at a zoo.

SEVENTEEN

The following morning, which was Wednesday morning, her Aunt Elaine was there when she woke, shortly past nine o'clock, and she was full of smiles and small jokes to cheer up the patient. The older woman helped her to the bath, where she left her on her own. (Brushing teeth and washing her face, combing the snarls from her long yellow hair, were almost more than Gwyn could manage; she didn't even attempt to shower, for she hadn't the energy or the will to stand up that much longer.) When she was back in bed, propped up on extra pillows, Elaine brought her a huge breakfast on a bed tray, helped her remove the lids from the hot dishes. Though Gwyn was sure that Grace's cooking was as good as usual, all of the food looked colorless and tasted stale, and she had no appetite at all for it, though she forced down more than half of everything. She recognized these often-suffered symptoms of chronic malaise; before, when she had been tempted to sleep her life away, food had been tasteless and without visual appeal. The world had gone by in a senseless blur as she curled tighter and tighter into her own mental cocoon…

But, though she recognized what was happening to her, she no longer wanted to fight it. She had been having such pleasant dreams…

In her dreams, her parents lived. There had been no accident, no deaths, and they were together again. Likewise, in the dreams, Ginny had never perished at sea. They were all so happy in their dream life, having so much fun…

Indeed, the dreams seemed more real than the waking world, very sharply detailed and filled with emotions. They were preferable to the drab surroundings she discovered upon waking, and she longed, now, to get back to them.

“Do you feel more rested?” Elaine asked.

“Yes,” she said.

But she was still quite tired.

“You'd like to sleep more, wouldn't you, dear?”

“Yes, Elaine.”

“I'll get you a tablet.”

“Thank you.”

The sound of running water.

The rattle of the cap being removed from the medicine bottle, the hollow sound of it being put down on the nightstand again.

A hand lifting her head.

“Here you are, dear.”

She opened her mouth.

Elaine popped the pill inside.

Gwyn reached, helping the older woman tilt the waterglass, took a long swallow of water, washing down the tablet. Then, pleased to know that the dreams would soon be returning, she lay back and waited for sleep to overtake her.

At 12:45 that same afternoon, while Gwyn slept upstairs, Sheriff Louis Plunkett sat down in an easy chair in William Barnaby's study, holding his large black hat in both hands, like a superstitious man religiously fingering a talisman. He had hoped to meet Barnaby at the front door and conclude this business without having to come inside. However, Fritz had answered the door and escorted him to the study, giving him no choice but to almost literally beard the lion in his own den.

Plunkett got up, paced around the bookshelves, looked at the two watercolors in ornate frames, checked the view from the window, went back to his chair, looked at his watch, found that he'd only passed three minutes with all of that.

He was nervous, partly because this was one of those cases he despised being involved with, and partly because he'd thus far had nothing at all for lunch. A man his size, as active as he was, had to keep his regular meal schedule, or he got nervous. So he was nervous.

At last, Barnaby entered the study and closed the door behind, all smiles. He was still pleased with the efficient, no-nonsense way that Plunkett had posted the eviction notices yesterday and delivered all the right papers to all the right fishermen with nary a hitch. He offered his hand, shook Plunkett's, then went straight to his chair, sat down and picked up his letter opener, which he usually toyed with when entertaining a visitor in this room.

“What's the problem?” he asked Plunkett, though he was not really expecting a problem.

The sheriff had one for him, anyway. Plunkett frowned, his large face creased with two lines from the sides of his nose to the perimeters of his square chin; he stopped twisting his hat in his hands and placed it on the arm of his chair. He said, in a businesslike voice in which there was no longer a reluctance to skirt the issue at hand. “Well, I went out there late this morning, to see how they were getting along, to find out if there were any hitches in the moving.”

“Out to Jenkins' Niche?” Barnaby clarified.

“Yes, sir.”

“They have — what? Twelve hours?”

“Somewhat less than that, now.”

Barnaby smiled and nodded happily. He said, “That was very efficient of you, Sheriff, to make the follow-up call.”

“You don't seem to understand me, Mr. Barnaby. I came here to you because we seem to have a problem,” Plunkett said. He ignored the other man's compliment, perhaps more because of a deep-seated dislike for William Barnaby than because of any great modesty.

“Problem?”

“They won't leave.”

“The fishermen?”

“Yes, sir, of course.”

Barnaby froze, the tip of the silver letter opener pressed against the ball of his thumb. He said, “Won't leave?”

“That's what they say.”

“They told this to you, directly to your face?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They must be joking!”

“They seem serious, Mr. Barnaby.”

“They have to leave.”

Plunkett said, unable to disguise his uneasiness at being involved in an event of this sort, dots of sweat on his forehead, “I told them that, Mr. Barnaby.”

“They've been evicted, dammit!” But Barnaby was talking more to himself, now, than to Plunkett.

The sheriff nodded.

Barnaby put down his letter opener.

Plunkett noticed a tiny dot of blood on the other man's thumb, where the point of the silver tool had broken the skin.

Barnaby seemed unaware of his wound.

“So we've a problem,” Plunkett repeated.

Barnaby said, “What are you going to do about it?”

Plunkett picked up his hat from the arm of the chair and began to play with it again, twirling it around and around in his calloused hands. He said, “I warned them that they were breaking the law, and I explained the consequences of trespassing after the delivery of an eviction notice. But, in point of fact, there's really nothing that I can do to them — besides yell my head off.”

Barnaby was clearly appalled at this admission. He said, “You can evict them by force if they aren't out of the Niche by tonight!”

“No, sir, I can't.”

A dangerous look entered Barnaby's eyes, like an influx of muddy water into a clear stream, polluting his gaze. “Are you saying that you won't do your job on this?”

“That's not what I'm saying at all,” Plunkett protested. “But I simply can't do a forced eviction. They intend to keep men in the Niche twenty-four hours a day, on shifts. That means there'll always be at least twenty of them waiting for me at any one time. Even if they only intend a nonviolent resistance, locking arms and that sort of thing, I can't deal with that big a group myself. I'd need at least ten good men with me, and you know I don't have them. I've got two deputy sheriffs, that's all.”

Barnaby was temporarily satisfied with that answer, though he was not happy. He thought a moment and said, “Couldn't you arrest a couple of them, just the ringleaders? If the top few men — Younger and his cronies — were thrown in the tank, the rest would fall apart.”

“I doubt that, sir,” Plunkett said. “It seemed to me that they were all equally determined about this. I believe, if we tried jailing any of the top men, the rest would only be more resolved than ever.”

After a short silence, Barnaby said, “Is this a token resistance or a real battle? Do they intend to overstay by only a day or two—”

“They're not leaving until their legal thirty days are up,” the sheriff said, finding it difficult not to smile.

“That's intolerable.”

“But that's the situation, sir.”

“And your hands are tied?”

“Quite effectively, Mr. Barnaby.”

“Then I have to wait them out — or get my own court order that would permit the state police to step into the picture.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well,” Barnaby said, leaning back in his chair as if the decision had been made, the problem solved, and he could now relax. “Thank you for coming to me about this, Sheriff. Can you find your own way out?”

“Certainly, Mr. Barnaby. Good day.”

“Same to you, Sheriff.”

Alone in the quiet study, then, Barnaby picked up his silver letter opener, raised it high overhead, and drove the point through the blotter and half an inch into the top of the desk. “Bastards!” he hissed.

They were all together again: mother, father, Ginny, Gwyn…

They were very happy.

In all her life, Gwyn had never been happier.

They played on the beach together, at the Miami summer house, went swimming together, joked and laughed, went to the movies together, read in the evenings, always together, a perfect life…

When she woke, at half-past two Wednesday afternoon, she tried to regain those dreams, to shove away the bedroom, the daylight, the real world, and sink back into the past.

“Are you awake?” Elaine asked.

Reluctantly, Gwyn opened her eyes and looked at the chair beside her bed, where the older woman sat with the book folded in her lap. “Yes,” she said, through a mouth that felt gummed with cobwebs.

“Feeling better?”

Actually, she was not feeling better at all, despite her rest. If anything, her body felt heavier, more bloated; her eyes were grainier, her mouth dry, her stomach a ball of knots that not even an escape artist could untie. But she didn't want to upset Elaine after all the older woman had done for her, and so she lied. She said, “Yes, I'm feeling much better, thank you.” And she tried a feeble smile which was only a partial success.

“You slept right through lunch,” Elaine said.

“I didn't miss it, really.”

“You should still eat. I've had Grace keep something warmed up for you. While you use the bath, I'll bring it.”

“Please,” Gwyn said, “I'd rather just sleep.”

“You can't take medicine without food in your stomach,” Elaine said. “Now, don't be headstrong.”

Elaine helped her to her feet. Her head was lighter, her legs more rubbery than before, but she managed the short walk to the bath and had the strength to refresh herself and return to bed by the time the woman had come back with the tray of food.

“Eat hearty, now.”

“It looks delicious,” Gwyn said.

In fact, it looked colorless and stale.

To please her aunt, she forced herself to eat: pot roast, browned potatoes, corn, a salad, rich chocolate pudding. Everything but the pudding was a chore to chew up and swallow, especially since the food was without taste or was nauseatingly flat; her reaction to each dish varied from bite to bite, so that she knew the shortcoming was in her own appreciation, not in the food itself. The spoon and the fork each weighed a couple of pounds and kept slipping from her fingers…

Though she could force herself to eat, she could not make herself hold up a viable conversation, and she did not even try. Her thoughts kept returning to the dreams, making her smile as she recalled a pleasant fragment of some unreal scene. The dreams were so wonderful, so filled with real happiness, because no one had died in them: death did not exist…

“I think I've had enough,” she said, after a few minutes, trying to push her tray off her lap.

Elaine examined the dishes, looked worried. She said, “You most certainly haven't had enough. One or two bites of everything. Let's see you clean up your plate.”

“Oh, Elaine—”

“No excuses.”

Though the fork and spoon were still as heavy as before, she ate faster. The sooner she was done, the sooner she could have another pill, could lie back and sleep and dream…

While Gwyn struggled with her lunch, William Barnaby sat in his study downstairs, holding the telephone receiver to his ear and listening to it ring again and again at the other end of the line. He hoped that Paul Morby was at home, and that the man could take on the job that he had for him. If Morby couldn't be gotten, Barnaby didn't know to whom he could turn for help. While he waited, he held the silver letter opener in his free hand and tapped the point rapidly against his blotter, not to any time he had in mind, but to the furious tempo of his anger.

The phone was picked up at the other end: “Hello.”

The gruff voice, deep-toned and uncompromising, was evocative of Morby's appearance: tall, heavy, a man made out of planks and wire and hard pressed steel, with hands twice as wide as any other man's hands and enough crudely shaped cles to attract all the girls on the beach.

“Barnaby here,” Will said.

“Yeah?”

“I have a job for you.”

“Can you hold on?” Morby asked. “I was coming in with the groceries when you rang. I want to pop a couple of things in the freezer.”

Barnaby preferred the kind of employee who'd let the frozen goods be ruined rather than make such a request, but he said it was all right, he'd hold the line. Men like Morby, with Morby's talents and his lack of scruples, were difficult to find.

He had used Morby twice before in the last two years, both times when a business deal was stymied by a man reluctant to sell his land. In one case, Morby delivered the adversary a rather thorough beating. In the second instance, Morby had burned the man's house to the ground, in such a clever fashion that no one had suspected arson. Not only had this made the potential seller more anxious to be rid of his property, but it made the purchase of the land cheaper for Barnaby, since the value of the house — now that there was no longer a house — could be subtracted from the package offer that Edgar Aimes had made.

Morby was good. He was dependable, and he could keep his mouth shut. If Sheriff Plunkett couldn't do anything about the squatters at the Niche, Morby could, with more speed and effectiveness.

“Okay, the ice cream's in the freezer,” Morby said, picking up the phone again. “What'd you want?”

“Remember the second job you did for me?”

Morby said, “The house?”

“That's it.”

“What about it?”

“Can you take on a similar contract?”

Morby thought, then said: “When?”

“Tonight.”

“Short notice.”

Barnaby said, “But I'll pay a good bonus if this goes right.”

“It always goes right when I do it,” Morby said. After another long silence, in which he considered his schedule, he said, “Is this another house — and if so, what size?”

“A boat,” Barnaby said.

Morby was surprised, but he recovered rather quickly. “You want me to do to a boat what I did to a house, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“How big is it?”

“A lobster boat, maybe thirty-six feet.”

“This boat — is it in the water, dry docked, in a showroom or what?”

“It's docked, on the water.”

“Boats are very hard to work on,” Morby said. “There are so few ways to get in and out of a boat, you see. It's easy to draw a big crowd, and that can mess up an otherwise easy contract.”

'There shouldn't be anyone on the boat,” Barnaby said.

“This around here?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose I could do it.”

“Will you be able to get your — supplies in time?”

Morby said, “I keep an emergency kit here, so I'm usually ready to go for something like this.”

“Fine,” Barnaby said. “Now, we should get together, at the usual place, to go over the details.”

“You can bring the pay then.”

“I will.”

“The bonus too.”

“The job's not finished yet.”

“It'll be done right.”

Barnaby hesitated only a second, then said, before Morby could tell him to forget it, “Okay, sure. The bonus too.”

“When?” Morby asked.

Barnaby looked at his gold coin watch and said, “It's two-thirty right now. I've some other things to attend to, so — why don't we say quarter past four.”

“I'll be there,” Morby said.

They both hung up without saying goodbye.

When she learned who was calling, Edgar Aimes' young secretary lost her cold and almost impolite tone and put Barnaby straight through to her boss without further delay.

“Hello, Will,” Aimes said. “What can I do for you?”

“I'd like to see you, Edgar. We've got some important business matters to discuss.”

“Has something come up?” Aimes asked.

“More than a little.”

Aimes thought a moment and said, “I have to come out your way in about an hour, to show a property along Seaview Drive. I could stop by at say four-thirty and—”

“That won't do,” Barnaby said. “Edgar, I think this is something we need time to discuss, perhaps over dinner.”

“Tonight, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“But Lydia and I were going to—”

“Cancel it.”

“Will, I—”

“I think a dinner discussion between us is far more important than whatever you were going to do tonight,” Barnaby said. His voice was firm and left no doubt that he expected full compliance with his request.

Aimes sighed. “What's the trouble, then?”

“I don't want to talk about it now, though I will say that it involves Mr. Morby, whom we've employed in the past, if you remember correctly.”

“You employed him,” Aimes said. “I have met him only once, and I wouldn't hire him.”

“Nevertheless, you see why I'd like to have dinner with a nice, reliable couple, like you and Lydia. In a public place, where we're sure to be seen — say between eight o'clock and one in the morning, somewhere that we can have drinks and make an evening of it.”

“I understand,” Aimes said.

“How about the Kettle and Coach?”

“That would be ideal. It's what we've done in the past, on nights when Mr. Morby was working.”

“Exactly,” Barnaby said. “Shall Elaine and I meet you there, then? Say at eight-thirty, in the cocktail lounge.”

“We'll be there,” Aimes said.

Again, both men rang off without saying goodbye.

Just as Gwyn was finished with her lunch and gave the tray to Elaine, a knock sounded on the closed bedroom door. A moment later, the door opened, and Will Barnaby looked in. “How are you today, Princess?” he asked Gwyn.

She smiled and said, “Better.”

He came over and sat on the edge of her bed, took one of her damp hands in his. “I told you it wasn't as serious as you thought it was. All you needed was rest, plenty of rest.”

“I guess you were right,” she said. But his presence brought back the memory of the ghost, the footprints on the beach, the broom marks, her whole illness. She said, “Have you called Dr. Recard, Uncle Will?”

He said, “I called him first thing yesterday morning, even before you'd gotten awake.”

“What'd he say?”

“That you were to rest, really rest. If you aren't feeling better in a week, then you're to go see him. I'll take you there.”

She relaxed. “He didn't think it was serious enough to — put me in a hospital somewhere?”

“No, no,” Will said. “Just get lots of rest.”

“I've been doing that.”

“Except for your walk on the beach yesterday,” he said.

“I'm sorry about that.”

“You should be,” he said. “You knew you weren't supposed to be up and around yet.”

“I didn't mean to upset anyone,” Gwyn said. She turned her head and looked at Elaine, who was smiling down at them, holding the bottle of sleeping tablets.

“Let's forget about yesterday,” her uncle said, patting her hand. “I'm sure you won't do anything like that again.”

“I won't, I promise.”

“Good,” he said, letting go of her hand. “Now, I'll talk to your aunt for a minute, if I may, and give you a chance to recover from that feast you just finished.”

He stood and took his wife's elbow, led her through the door, closed the door after them, and walked her several paces down the hall.

In a whisper, she said, “What's wrong?”

He told her, succinctly, about the squatters at Jenkins' Niche and about his phone calls to Morby and Aimes. “So,” he concluded, “since we have to be out in public tonight, for an alibi, I thought we might as well move up the schedule with Gwyn. We'll make tonight the final act with her.”

“But we agreed, originally, that she could use another day of sleep, to wear her down.”

“If we're out of the house tomorrow night, too,” Barnaby said, “it may look a little strange. We can't very well go out to dinner with Edgar twice in a row, to talk business.”

“I guess so.”

“Therefore,” he said, “you won't be giving her another sleeping pill today. She'll have to be wide awake for the festivities tonight.”

Elaine said, “If you'd been only five minutes later than you were, I would already have given her a tablet.” She clenched the medicine bottle tightly in her right hand. “But don't worry about a thing, darling. I'll take care of her from here on out — and I'll be damned glad to get this over with a day early.”

“You think she'll crack tonight?” he asked.

“With what Penny is going to do to her?” Elaine asked. “There just isn't any doubt, so far as I can see. She's on the verge of a complete breakdown already. She hasn't the will power to refuse a sleeping pill any more, and she seems even anxious to sleep. With tonight's little show, she's going to lose what control she has. By the end of the summer, you'll have been appointed to manage her trust.”

“I think so too,” he said. “Well, you get back to her, while I tell Groves what's going on.”

“Then you can be ready tonight?” Barnaby asked.

Penny Groves stubbed out her cigarette and said, “I'm ready right now, as far as that goes.”

“Nervous?”

Groves answered for her: “Penny and I are professionals; we're never nervous about a performance.”

“Good. Tonight, then.”

Elaine came back into the room and dropped the bottle of sleeping pills into the pocket of her bellbottom slacks, the top still screwed on tight. She fluffed Gwyn's two pillows, straightened the covers and said, “Now, you try to rest, dear.”

Gwyn looked at the bulge in Elaine's pocket made by the medicine bottle, looked at the empty nightstand and said, “But don't I get a sleeping pill to help me?”

She could feel the dreams receding, growing cold, streaking out of her reach…

“Dr. Cotter said that you're not to have too many of them,” Elaine said, making up a convenient lie.

“One more won't hurt.”

“Doctor knows best.”

“But I can't sleep without them.”

“Just rest, then, dear.”

“But—”

“Really, Gwyn, it'll be best to wait until tonight, at bedtime, before taking another. Now, if you close your eyes and don't worry yourself about the pills, I'm sure you'll doze off.”

Gwyn was not so certain about that. She was so exhausted that her weariness was no longer a contributing factor to her sleep, but an obstacle to it. Her eyes, though gritty and burning with fatigue, would not stay shut, but popped open like shutters if she hadn't the tablet to help them stay down.

“Oh, by the way,” Elaine said, “Will and I are supposed to go out this evening, for a dreadful little business dinner with associates. It's not going to be much fun, so if you—”

“Oh, no!” Gwyn said, rising up onto one elbow. “Don't stay at home because of me. You've done too much of that already. Besides, I'm feeling much better than I was.”

“You haven't been hallucinating again, have you?” Elaine asked, delicately. “No — ghosts?”

“None,” Gwyn said, forcing a smile. That wasn't too much of a lie, really. In two days, the only encounter she'd had with the ghost was the short visitation the night before, when it had attempted to get her to take an overdose of sleeping pills. Her visions were tapering off.

“I thought you hadn't,” Elaine said. “But I wanted to hear it from you before I decided whether we should leave the house tonight. Well, if you're sure you'll be okay, I'll tell Will not to cancel out on the dinner.”

“I'm fine,” Gwyn assured her, not feeling fine at all. However, now her ailments seemed physical more than mental, and she could cope with that— she thought.

“Also, if it's okay with you,” Elaine said, “I'll tell Grace to make you a supper that can be heated, then give her and Fritz the night off so they can take in a show they've been wanting to see.”

“I'll do fine on my own,” Gwyn said.

“Oh, I wouldn't leave you entirely alone,”

Elaine said. “Ben will be in the house. He'll look in on you from time to time, and he can give you your sleeping tablet around eleven.”

In the downstairs study, when he had finished talking with Penny and Ben, William Barnaby removed one of the watercolors from the wall, revealing a small safe, which he opened with a few deft twists of the combination dial. Inside the safe were a few important papers, most of which were only duplicates of others he kept in a safety deposit box downtown. There was also a savings account passbook and a neatly bound bundle of cash.

He took out the passbook first and looked at the bottom figure: $21,567. It was a pitiful amount, for it represented the last immediately available funds of what had once been a multi-million dollar fortune… So much money had gone down the drain in the last decade or so. Of course, he and Elaine enjoyed living high; but there had also been a few real estate deals that hadn't panned out like he'd thought they would. He had almost a million tied up in seafront property now, of course. But unless he was able to get the money to develop that land as he intended, he would lose considerably when he resold it.

Angry and nervous, he shoved the passbook into the safe again, took out the bundle of cash. It contained slightly more than seven thousand dollars in small bills. He peeled off two thousand dollars to pay Morby, thought a moment and then added another five hundred as a bonus. Morby might be expecting an extra thousand, but he wouldn't turn the job down if he got only half that much.

Barnaby returned the remainder of the cash to the safe, closed the small, round metal door, spun the dial, tugged on the chromium handle to be sure that it was locked, lifted the watercolor from the floor and hung it where it had been.

He went to the bar cabinet behind his desk, got out a bottle of Scotch whiskey and poured himself a double shot: neat, with no ice and no water. He drank it down fast, for he needed the boost it gave him. It was a busy afternoon — and it was going to be an even busier evening…

The rest of that day passed slowly for Gwyn. She dozed off and on, for ten or fifteen minutes at a stretch, waking each time with a start, not knowing what had frightened her, never fully recapturing her pleasant dreams of a life that never was and could never be. She tossed and murmured when she slept, skirting those desired dreams, coming even closer to horrid nightmares. When she was awake, her bones ached, and every joint felt arthritic. Her eyes were too tired to allow her to read; thus, the minutes ticked by in agonizing half-time.

She thought of asking for a pill again, but she knew that Elaine would say no. And she knew, too, that so much medicine, so much unnecessary sleep, was not good for her. Yet, she desired it…

Hour by hour, her nerves grew more frayed.

She began to think of Ginny again.

The ghost…

Her naps became fewer and farther between, only five minutes long now, and always turbulent. Each time that she woke from one of them, she remembered every detail of the mini-nightmare that plagued her. It was always the same one: she was by the sea, with the dead girl, being dragged into the crashing waters against her will, too weak to resist, too weak to cry out, most assuredly doomed…