Gwyn frantically grabbed those ghostly wrists.
They felt solid.
She tried to push them away, to break the specter's hold on her throat, but she could not manage that.
“It'll only hurt for a minute,” the dead girl promised her, smiling sweetly down in her face.
Gwyn reared up.
The ghost held her tight.
The pale hands increased the pressure on her throat, like the two halves of a soft but capable vise.
Gwyn gagged, tried to draw breath, found it difficult and almost impossible to do even that small thing.
Terror, then, returned tenfold.
She let go of the wrist and struck out for the dead girl's face, dragged nails along the pale face and brought one thin line of bright blood to the surface.
The ghost cried out and let her go.
Gwyn heaved up again, with all of her might, holding back nothing, her system flooded with adrenalin, and she shoved the specter out of the way. She leaped out of bed, stumbled on a trailing end of the sheet and fell to the floor.
The specter grabbed the back of her pajamas.
“Ben!” she cried.
The word came out in a croak.
Gwyn squealed, rolled forward, freeing herself., scrambled to her feet. Even a couple of minutes ago, she would not have thought she had so much energy left, but now her strength seemed boundless, her endurance without limits.
“You can't run,” the specter said.
She started for the door.
It stepped in front of her.
“You can't run anywhere that I won't follow you, Gwyn.”
The dead girl started forward, holding her hands out, just far enough apart to allow Gwyn's neck to fit between the wriggling fingers…
“Ben!”
The name was louder this time, but would probably still not carry all the way downstairs.
The ghost was much too close.
Gwyn put her head down and ran forward, toward the door, struck the dead girl a glancing blow and dashed into the upstairs corridor. She was disoriented for a moment, not having expected to escape, but located the stairs in short order and ran for them.
“Gwyn, come back to me!”
At the head of the steps, she collided with Ben Groves, who was on his way up, and nearly succeeded in knocking them both down the whole long flight in what would surely have been a deadly fall.
TWENTY-ONE
“Gwyn, what on earth's the matter with you? You were screaming so loudly I could hear you downstairs.”
He held her by her shoulders, tenderly and yet firmly, and he shook her until she stopped sobbing and was able to speak coherently again. She held onto his arms, glad to have him here, feeling protected by him as she had felt on the Salt Joy and on their walk around the grounds. She said, “I'm not losing my mind, Ben.”
He looked perplexed, then smiled tentatively. He said, “Well, of course you're not.”
“But I thought that I was.”
“You've lost me.”
She said, “It was the sickness, that you didn't understand… I was seeing ghosts, my dead sister, hallucinations—” It sounded foolish, like the babblings of a madwoman, as if she had already gone over the edge. She went on, nonetheless: “Now I know I wasn't having hallucinations at all, because she just tried to kill me, to strangle me.”
“She?”
“The — ghost. The woman pretending to be a ghost. I can still feel where her hands were on my throat.”
“You mean there's someone else in this house?” he asked.
“She was just in my room.”
“Let's go have a look,” he said.
“No.”
“Why not? Gwyn, if there's someone in the manor who doesn't belong here, we've got to see who she is.”
“I'm scared, Ben.”
He slid his arms around her, all the way, and gave her a quick, reassuring hug. He said, “There's no need to be scared, Gwyn. I'm here, and I'll take care of you.”
“Don't let her touch me.”
“I won't, Gwyn.”
“She must be a crazy woman.”
“Let's go see what this is all about.”
She turned around to go back with him, and she screamed, bringing her hands up to her face as if she could block out the reality by blocking out the vision itself. The dead girl, impossibly, stood not more than six feet away from them, smiling.
Ben said, “Gwyn? What is it?”
“There she is!”
He looked where Gwyn pointed, pursed his mouth, looked down at the girl at his side. He said. “There isn't anyone here but you and me.”
“There is!”
He gave her a searching look and said, “No one at all, Gwyn. The hallway's empty.”
“You don't see her?”
“There's no one to see, Gwyn.”
The dead girl grinned, wickedly now, and said, in a voice as thin as rice paper, “I told you, before, Gwyn, that we have a few tricks that come in handy.”
“She just spoke,” Gwyn said.
His grip on her tightened, but he said nothing.
“For God's sake, she just talked to me, Ben! You mean to tell me you didn't hear a word of it?”
But she knew that he hadn't.
He said, “No one spoke.”
“She did. Yes, she did.”
“No one but you and I.”
She remembered what Dr. Recard had said— that you could not be going mad if you thought that you were, that the truly mad person was absolutely sure of his sanity. Therefore, if Dr. Recard were to be believed, she must not be insane now, could be nowhere near insane; yet she remained uncheered by this reasoning.
The dead girl stepped toward her.
. “Stay back,” she said.
“I need you,” the specter said.
“Don't touch me!”
Ben said, “Gwyn, there isn't anyone here!”
The dead girl grinned, almost on top of her now, and she said, “A fall down these steps would do it, Gwyn. He'd think you fell, and then you'd be with me forever.”
Her head swam. In the back of her mind, leering, she saw the head of Death, where it always lay at the edge of her memory, waiting to claim her just as it had claimed so many who were dear to her in years past. “No!” she said.
The dead girl reached for her, palms flattened, arms stiff. “Just a quick shove—”
Gwyn pulled away from Ben, who would clearly be no help for her, turned and grabbed the stair railing, started down toward the first floor as fast as she could go.
“Gwyn!” the ghost called after her.
And Ben, not hearing that other-worldly plea, cried, “Gwyn, what's gotten into you.”
She did not answer either of them, did not look back until, as she neared the bottom steps, she heard Ben scream behind her. She whirled in time to see him falling, head over heels, thumping rudely from step to step by the rail, clawing out for support — and then coming to a brutal and final stop. His head caught between two stairs railings, twisted and sheet-white, breaking his neck. His face was streaked with blood, his eyes bulging, more blood running from the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, God,” Gwyn said.
The ghost, smiling, stooped by the body. “He's dead,” she said. “Well, he'll be happier now.”
Madness?
Reality?
The dead girl stood again and started down the steps. “Well,” she said, “you've already reached the bottom, safely enough. We'll have to look for some other way for you to reach your end. But there are plenty, dear, so don't fret. And it'll be less painful than his end was, I assure you.”
Gwyn turned and ran along the hallway, deeper into the dark manor house, alone with the dead girl, so terrified now that she could not even cry, and could barely draw a breath. Madness…?
TWENTY-TWO
The Kettle and Coach, on the outskirts of Calder, was more crowded than usual, and considerably rowdier than the Barnabys liked it, th
ough neither was put out by the cloud of cigarette smoke that hung over the cocktail lounge, or by the roar of conversation that, by its very volume, almost ruled out conversation. They actually seemed to enjoy the close quarters, the hustle and the bustle, and they had a smile and a few words for almost everyone they saw. After all, the more contacts they made, the more sound their alibi for the evening.
From the cocktail lounge, they went into the dining room, where they ate a leisurely dinner, accompanied by a bottle of good wine and a lot of unimportant business talk between Will and Edgar Aimes. It was near the end of this dinner that waiter brought a message from the cocktail lounge.
“Mr. Barnaby?”
Will looked up, smiled. “Yes?”
“A phone call, sir. You can take it in the lounge.”
“Thank you.”
“Business?” Edgar Aimes asked.
“Our friend Mr. Morby, I should imagine.” He smiled at Mrs. Aimes, who had no idea who Mr. Morby was and never would. He said, “You will excuse me,” as if she were the only important person at the table.
His special attention took her mind off Morby. She flushed and said, “Of course, Will.”
He followed the waiter to the lounge and had the proper telephone pointed out to him, tipped the waiter a dollar, waved away the man's profuse thanks, and stepped into the glass booth, drawing the folding door tight shut behind him.
“Hello?”
“Morby here.”
“How are things?”
“The job is finished. I thought you'd like to know that it went well, as smoothly as it could have.”
Barnaby smiled. “I bet those tramps were screaming their heads off, eh?”
“I wouldn't know,” Morby said. “I don't stick around to see how a job affects anyone.”
“Well, I would have,” Barnaby said, chuckling.
“And you'd never last in a profession like this,” Morby said, without rancor, as a man might say the sun will rise in the morning.
“Perhaps you're right.”
“Of course I am,” Morby said. “And if you've any work for me in the future, don't hesitate to call.”
“I won't.”
Morby hung up.
By the time he got back to the dinner table, Barnaby was feeling like a million bucks, or better. And if the second half of tonight's plans were running to schedule, he'd actually be worth far more than a measly million, in just a few months time.
The young fisherman was not going to back down from his position, and the longer he held to it, the more he stirred up the men who were listening to him. His name was Tom Asher, and he swore that the Princess Lee had not been ripped open by an explosion in her fuel tanks nor by any gas fumes trapped in a lower hold. He said, “It was plastic explosives, as sure as I stand here. I was in Vietnam eighteen months, and I saw that kind of blow-up a hundred times. If it'd been a gasoline explosion, from the start, you'd have had a fireball, a big mushrooming effect. But this was compact and neat, ripping right through the top and right through the bottom of the boat. The fireball, what there was of it, came later, when the gas tanks went. You could see that, a second explosion a few seconds after the first. And from the smallness of the fireball, I'd say her fuel tanks were nearly empty. No, it wasn't an accident. It was a shaped charge, a planned blow-up.”
Jack Younger (the elder), was a squat, muscular man with a full gray beard and bushy sideburns, a chest like half a barrel and arms as thick as the limbs of large oak trees. He was the strongest of the fishermen, and he was the most reasonable as well. Right now, he felt as if he were the only thing holding back a second explosion that might be far more damaging than the first.
He said, “Tom, you can't seriously be saying that the Princess Lee was sabotaged?”
“I'm saying it,” the young fisherman told him.
“But who would do a thing of that sort?” Younger asked.
His son stood next to him, a pace or two behind.
He admired his father immensely, and he could usually expect him to win out in any contest of fists or wits. Tonight, however, it was evident to Younger (the younger) that Tom Asher was going to carry the largest part of the group with him.
“I've already named the culprit,” Asher said.
The other fishermen murmured agreement.
What was left of the Princess Lee had burned and sunk in the water of the Niche and had not set fire to any of the other ships, thanks to the quick reaction of all present. Now, the campfire had died down too, and they were all illuminated by an eerie red glow that left the tops of their faces swathed in darkness and turned their chins the color of blood.
“Barnaby?” The elder Younger asked.
“Yes. Who else?”
“But, Tom, use your sense. Why would he resort to some stunt like this, when we must be out of here in another month anyway?”
“That man's not sane,” someone behind Asher said.
“He's nuts,” Asher agreed. “You can't ever say what a nut is going to do — or why.”
“You don't become a millionaire if you're nuts,” Younger cautioned them, wagging a finger like their father.
“Now, Jack,” Asher said, “you know Barnaby was born a millionaire. He didn't have to earn it, not a penny. He's still nuts, I say.”
“But where's your proof?” Younger insisted.
“Aboard the sunken Princess Lee,” Asher said. “The state police will find fragments of the plastic explosives.”
“And will that lead back to Barnaby?”
“It may. That stuff's not easy to get.”
Younger sighed and shook his burly head. “Do you think that a creampuff like William Barnaby could sneak in here—”
“Come off it, Jack!” Asher said. “You know I'm not trying to sell the idea that Barnaby did it himself. He would have hired someone to do it. He did hire someone!”
“Again — proof?”
“I, for one, don't need proof,” Asher said. His features looked like the lines in a grotesque horror mask as the dying firelight washed up over him and bled away into the night.
“Great,” Younger said, “a lynching.”
“No one said anything about that,” Asher said. “We'll just go to the manor and confront him with it We'll make out — as if we saw the man that did it. How's he to know we're lying? If we play it right, we can get him running scared, and he may let something slip.”
“That happens in the movies, not in real life,” Younger said.
Someone said, “Have you forgotten, Jack, that Scott was aboard that boat when she went up, and that there's likely no piece of him left bigger than a quarter?”
They were all very silent.
“I haven't forgotten,” Younger said, sadly.
“Then what the devil are we waiting for?” Asher wanted to know, his face screwed up as if his impatience was a bolt which had tightened inside of his head. He had always been in favor of taking a harder line against Barnaby; now, with the death of Scott against the Princess Lee, he felt that his stand had been the right one all along.
Younger frowned and said, “Well, I see that you're set on it and there's no talking reason to you, no considering what alternatives we might have.”
The men muttered agreement.
“We'll take my ship, then,” Younger said. “But there will not be any violence when we get to the manor, no rock throwing, no window smashing or any contact with Barnaby beyond the verbal. I will not tolerate that, and I'd turn my best friend over to the coppers. Understood?”
“You're right,” Asher said, “We only want to confront that scum with what he's done.”
“And that'll come to naught,” Younger said.
“Maybe it will, Jack,” Tom Asher admitted, now that he had won the main battle and felt that he could afford to make a few small concessions for the sake of unity. “But really, Jack, what else can we do and still keep our self-respect?”
Younger had no answer to that.
They stamped ou
t the fire and drowned it with several buckets of seawater, then boarded the Wanda Lynne, the thirty-six-foot Younger ship.
When they were under way, Jack Younger drew his son close and, in a voice too low for anyone else to hear, said, “You stay by me the whole time, you hear?”
“Sure, Dad,” the boy said.
“If there's any trouble, no matter how harmless it seems at the start, you don't join in with it, but you run.”
Jack Younger, the younger, nodded agreement. As they set out of the Niche toward the open sea, he wondered what knowledge, if any, Gwyn had about this affair…
TWENTY-THREE
Fleeing from the bloody scene on the stairs, her thoughts in a turmoil, Gwyn reached the end of the long, main corridor and pushed open the swinging door, stepped into the dark kitchen, aware that the dead girl was not terribly far behind her. She crossed the kitchen to the outside door, put her hand on the knob before she realized what a fatal error she had made.
Once she left the manor house, she had to cross a long expanse of open lawn before she could reach either the sheltering woods or the steps down to the beach, and the specter was certain to see which way she was going, and give chase. Once her destination was known, she had no hope of hiding there.
On the other hand, if she remained in the house, she could creep from room to room, down the complex hallways, up and down the main and back stairs, like an animal avoiding a hunter, both of them in a confusing maze. The house was certainly huge enough for…
Still standing there, unable to make a decision, she realized how ludicrous her plans were. Since Ben had been unable to see the ghost, then it was either real, or a figment of her imagination, in which case there was no hiding from it.
Abruptly, she had a disconcerting thought: suppose it were imaginary; then who had pushed Ben down the stairs? The answer was chillingly clear: she had pushed him herself.
With the realization that she might be, on top of everything else, a psychopathic murderess, she put her face in her hands, as if her fingers could close out the world. She might have frozen there, in terror at what was happening around her and to her, might have finally broken down if she had been given another full minute or two of silence in which to contemplate her own sickness; however, the specter called out to her from the hallway beyond the kitchen door, jolting her with that by now well-known, ethereal voice. “Gwyn?”
The Dark of Summer Page 17