The Dark of Summer

by Dean R. Koontz

  Penny looked at the sea and hugged herself as it lapped across the beach like a series of huge tongues. She said, “Ben, you don't think that she's drowned herself?”

  “Highly unlikely,” he said.

  “She was very wrought up.”

  “It's still unlikely.”

  She said, “Barnaby will kill us if she did.”

  “Barnaby won't kill anyone,” he said.

  “But if he doesn't get his money, we're sure not going to get ours, and then all of this has been for nothing.”

  His voice got ugly, and he snapped, “I told you to shut up! We have not lost her, and she hasn't drowned.”

  They stood in silence for a moment, listening to the sea, to the wind, hoping to hear a girl crying…

  At last, he called out, “Gwyn!”

  They got no answer.

  “Gwyn!”

  Penny joined him: “Where are you, Gwyn?”

  Groves set off southward along the beach, examining the deepest shadows close in to the cliff.

  Back at the Kettle and Coach, the Barnaby-Aimes party had finished their dinner, finished dessert and the bottle of wine, and they had all returned to the cocktail lounge, which was as crowded and noisy as it had been earlier in the evening. Now, however, neither Will nor Elaine Barnaby enjoyed the hustle and bustle. It seemed to both of them that the second call they'd been expecting was long overdue.

  Will looked at his watch: 11:04. If the kid had held up this long, if the Groves hadn't been able to drive her over the brink in two or three hours, then the success of the entire plan might be up in the air.

  At quarter past eleven, Mrs. Aimes said, “It's so rowdy in here. Why don't we all go back to our place, for a nightcap?”

  Edgar Aimes looked at Barnaby inquiringly.

  “I don't know—” Will said. He looked at his watch again and said, “I'm expecting another call here, and I don't want to miss it. It's a rather important — business thing.”

  “At this hour?” Lydia asked.

  Elaine said, “Isn't it ridiculous, Lydia? But I'm sure you have the same problem with Edgar. When you manage to get a man like this to go out for an evening, he simply can't let go of the business reins and really relax.”

  Lydia sighed and nodded, slipping easily into the role of the proud but beleaguered wife, which Elaine had led her to. She said, “I know only too well what you mean.”

  Barnaby said, “Well, if you women wouldn't find so many ways to spend what we make, we'd not be turned into business zombies, and we'd be able to relax.”

  Lydia smiled at Elaine. “He has the same line that Edgar always uses. I just ignore it.”

  Elaine laughed and said, “I always try to have a comeback, but I think you're right. Let's ignore him.”

  Edgar Aimes, having picked up on the ample clues that the Barnabys had given him, and far more observant of such things than his wife, called the waiter and ordered another round of drink. He said, “Well, it may be rowdy, but I'm really enjoying myself tonight.”

  Lydia said, good-naturedly, “If I'd drunk all that you have, so far, I imagine I'd be feeling good too.”

  Aimes laughed and patted his wife's hand. “I promise you won't have to carry me home, dear.”

  “If I had to, I wouldn't.”

  Barnaby looked around the cocktail lounge and said, “You hardly ever see this place full of so much life.”

  “Full of noise, you mean,” Lydia Aimes said.

  Barnaby looked at his watch again: 11:24. What in the hell was keeping Groves' call from coming through?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The manor attic was extremely dusty, hung thick with cobwebs in all its corners, unused except for a circular area that had been swept clean around four, large steamer trunks. All of these black, oblong, metal boxes were large enough for Gwyn to curl up in, all were latched, though unlocked. She put her flashlight down on the seat of an easy chair that was not dusty and did not seem to belong up here, directing the beam on the trunks. Then she finished throwing open the latches, lifted the four lids, and began to go through the contents.

  She found the rest of Ben Groves' personal belongings, a lot of his clothes and a couple of cases of professional stage makeup. She found similar cases of makeup for the girl, a great deal of women's clothing, and nice costume jewelry. She also found four fat, well-maintained scrapbooks bound in leatherette and stuffed with clippings and she was instantly sure that these were the things that she had hoped to find, even though she had not been able to define their existence, beforehand.

  She went back to the easy chair, lifted the flashlight out of the way, and she sat down with the books.

  For a moment, she could not bring herself to open them, as if this last act would seal the theory of a hoax, as if she were not already sure and could turn back the clock. Then, with the help of the flashlight, she opened the scrapbook which bore the number One, and she began to read…

  They met back at the stone steps in the cliffside, after he had gone south along the beach and she had walked north, and neither of them was leading the girl.

  He said, “No luck?”

  “Obviously.”

  She sounded as weary as Gwyn Keller had been during these last two days, as if she too had been drugged.

  He said, “Did you walk in close to the cliff? The shadows there are so damned dense that she could easily hide in them — and there might even be caves to the north, just as there are to the south. She could have found a cave and crawled back into it, out of sight.”

  “I thought of that,” Penny said. She sat down on the stone steps, massaging her neck with both hands. “But there weren't any more caves — just shadows.”

  He looked out to sea, wiped a hand across his brow to pull off a film of perspiration, and he got a hand slick with re-liquified chicken blood. He wiped that on his trousers and said, “I simply don't buy that other thing.”

  “Other thing?”

  “Suicide. I don't think she drowned herself, yet—”

  “Perhaps we drove her too far.”

  Without responding to her, he walked down to the water's edge, hunkered and dipped his hands in the frothy seawater that washed over his feet, scrubbing the blood from between his fingers. That had been a good trick: the fall down the steps, the blood. He had spent two years as a Hollywood stuntman at one time, and he knew how to make that sort of thing look realer than real. He had practiced the fall a hundred times before Gwyn had arrived at the manor house. The blood had been contained in a small, thin, plastic bag which he had taken out of his pocket when her back was turned, tucked into his cheek. During the fall, he had bitten the bag open and let the blood spill out, as if it were his own. Very real. Neat. The only problem was that, now, even when he'd splashed a lot of water in his face, he could taste the damn blood. He would have given anything, just then, for a glass of only slightly diluted mouthwash…

  Though he couldn't have that, he felt much better when his face was clean, and the cool water seemed to have cleared his mind as well. He thought again about the possibility that Gwyn was floating, dead, in this same sea, perhaps quite nearby, but he rejected it at once. And, simultaneously, he realized there was another possibility…

  He went back to Penny and said, “Let's go back to the house. She might have avoided us in the woods, somehow, and then gone back into the house when she saw us come down here.”

  “I don't think we're ever going to find her,” Penny said. “At least, not in time.”

  He pulled her to her feet and kissed her once, quickly. “Cheer up, love. We'll find the little bitch. And we'll win this yet.”

  The first scrapbook recounted — through dozens of newspaper clippings from their hometown newspapers, tiny snippets of gossip columns in which they had been mentioned, letters from fans, reviews of their work, souvenir casting lists of shows they'd been accepted for, ads for motion pictures in which they'd had bit parts, publicity type sheets, theater programs and hundreds of photograph
s of them with their actor friends — their individual careers before they had met each other. He had been Ben Groves, then as now, and she had been Penny Nashe, which she still was, at least in her career. He had started out as a stuntman in Hollywood — which explained how he could have made that spectacular fall down the stairs without really hurting himself — and she had been an understudy for a famous Broadway actress, in a hit musical. All of this memorabilia gave Gwyn a picture of two bright, stage-struck, at least minimally talented, eager and ambitious young people, who had the looks and the desire to make it big in show business. But there was nothing here that explained how these two were capable of driving a young girl mad, sheerly for profit.

  Oddly, in these pictures, Penny was not the exact double for Gwyn that she was now. In the past, there had been a terribly strong resemblance between them, of course, an uncanny likeness that anyone would have seen in a moment. They could have been taken for sisters — but never for identical twins. How had the likeness increased? How had Penny Nashe become her exact double?

  The second scrapbook opened with about fifty wedding pictures, all in color: Ben and Penny, both attractive and snappily dressed, the happy couple, standing before the altar, having rice thrown at them, being driven off in a limousine; later, the reception, feeding each other cake, dancing, laughing with guests, caught up in a whirlwind of love…

  Gwyn looked away from the scrapbook, wondering how such a pair, so much in love, could end up — just a few short years later — to be mixed up in a hateful thing like this hoax. But, she knew, there was nothing to be gained from such speculation, because they were mixed up in it, and facts were facts.

  Then, as she leafed through the rest of that book, and quickly through the next, she had some idea of what had driven them to this, to working for Will Barnaby. The tone of the scrapbook changed, from one that promised big success just around the corner, to a sad and sorry account of repeated failures: parts in shows that quickly folded on Broadway, smaller and smaller bit roles in films, and those in films that always seemed to lose money, a lot of benefit performances to stay in practice, then a round of the cheaper summer stock, another decension to work at various year-around New England barn theaters, the move to Britain, the failures there as well…

  She closed the books, not wanting to know any more of the details, and she returned them to the trunk. She closed the lid on that box and slid the latches in place, and began to paw through the final mound of stuff, though she thought she'd found enough.

  All the way up the long flight of stone steps, with a chill wind sweeping down over them, Penny Nashe-Groves tried to think of some way to convince Ben that it was time for them to get out, to call it quits and admit that this job with Barnaby had been just another failure. If they didn't leave now, tonight, she was sure that they were going to get caught in their own trap. Perhaps this was an irrational fear, but it was a very real one to her. She didn't think they were going to achieve what they'd been hired to do; they weren't going to be able to drive the kid crazy. Several times during the past few days, she had been surprised by Gwyn's ability to face up to sessions with the “ghost” and still hold onto her sanity. She had seemed tougher and more resistant to a breakdown than Barnaby had said she would be. There was a special strength in the girl, perhaps a strength that she didn't even know she had, which came from a long time of sorrow, a strength built upon disaster, a dogged determination not to be crushed altogether. It was the kind of strength neither she nor Ben had proved to have; when times had gotten rough for them, they had given in, taken the easy ways to money, doing things she no longer liked to think about — and finally agreeing to participate in this charade with Will Barnaby. Because they lacked this strength, while Gwyn had it, there was no way they could defeat her.

  But how was she to get this across to Ben? She loved him, but she had to, admit that he was bullheaded. He'd set his mind on taking the money Barnaby had offered them, and he would die trying for it, if he must. Nothing she could say would change his mind. Therefore, since she could not leave him, they were both doomed.

  Her gloom must have been evident in the way she moved, for he put an arm around her slender shoulders when they reached the top of the steps, and he gave her a quick peck on the cheek. He said, “Chin up, love. This is our first big chance in a long time, and you know it. Our luck can't run bad forever, and this is where it changes. Believe me. This is where — this has to be where — it changes.”

  “I hope you're right.”

  “I am.”

  She knew, however, that he was wrong.

  Nothing had gone right for them in longer than she liked to think about. She realized now that their bad luck was the result, not of Fate, but of their own character weaknesses. Each of them, even before they had met, was over-reaching, trying for a stardom he didn't deserve. Together they had continued to over-reach, feeding each other's egos instead of helping each other get their feet back on the ground. Though they had wanted so much, they hadn't had the stamina, the will power, or the fanatical dedication to go after it and get it. And because they lacked that strength, they would fail here too.

  She was still thinking about this when, halfway across the lawn toward the manor house, she looked up and caught sight of something that made her grab Ben's arm.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I thought that I saw—”

  “Yes?”

  He was looking eagerly around the lawn, this way and that, certain that she had spotted the girl, unaware that the situation might be far more serious than that, unable to accept the fact that everything, as she had warned him that it might, had fallen through. This was their one big chance. Their luck was turning. He could only imagine that she'd seen the girl and that they could pick up where they'd left off.

  “Penny?” he repeated.

  She stood close to him, but she was still feeling terribly lonely. She watched the third floor of the house, but she did not want to say anything, for she could not be sure if she had seen what she thought she had. She didn't want him to think she was foolish. If they were to lose all else this night, at least they should keep their self-respect and their respect for each other.

  But then she saw it again, longer this time, and she cried out: “There it is again!” She pointed toward the attic window and said. “Up there, a moving light — maybe a flashlight. Do you see it, Ben?”

  “The attic!” he said, his spirits sinking in the instant, staring at the one small window which Gwyn had never noticed.

  “Oh, God!”

  He said, “If she's gotten to the trunks—”

  “She knows who we are,” Penny said, miserably, leaning into him for support. “She knows everything about us.”

  “Maybe not anything to do with the hoax.”

  “She must know,” Penny said. “If she was curious enough to go prowling around, then she must have had some idea even before she got to the attic.” She tried to hold him tight with one arm, and she said, “Ben, let's leave now. Let's not even go back in there to get our things.”

  “That's impossible,” he said.

  “No, it isn't. We could—”

  But he had broken free of her and was running toward the front door of the manor house. She could do nothing but follow him.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Gwyn found nothing more important in the last steamer trunk than the four scrapbooks, so she left the trunk's contents jumbled, closed the lid and slid the latches into place. It didn't much matter that she'd found nothing more, for she already had everything that she needed. She knew the nature of the mystery into which she'd fallen, knew the actors who had played in it, and she knew what she would have to do to extract herself from it, to ring down the final curtain.

  Her Uncle Will had not outgrown his childish prejudices, but had reinforced them, if anything. He still hated her father, and he still cursed her mother for the marriage she'd made. It followed, too, that he hated her, Gwyn, as much or more than anyone,
looked on her as a line of tainted blood in the Barnaby family. No wonder, then, that he could set up a plan to drive her mad, with little or no worry to his conscience.

  When Ben and Penny returned to the manor, she'd be waiting for them, and she would confront them with everything that she knew and suspected, see if they filled in the last couple of holes for her. Then, she would pack and put her things in the car. If Will and Elaine had gotten home by then, she'd give them a brief but pungent going-away speech to let them know what she thought of them. If they were still out, she would go away without so much as a goodbye.

  She supposed she could press charges against them, but she didn't want all the hassle that would involve. She had survived them. That was sufficient.

  She went carefully down the attic steps, out through the closet and into Ben Groves' room. There, she turned on all of the lights, as she intended to turn on others throughout the great house. So far as she could see, there was no good reason to maintain secrecy as to her whereabouts. The lights would draw Ben and his wife back to the manor much faster; and the sooner she had an opportunity to talk with them, to tell them what she knew, the better.

  She stepped into the hall, illuminated by the yellow wash of lamplight that spilled out of the room behind her, and she was brought up short as Ben shouted at her from no more than ten steps down the hall.

  “You! Stop!”

  She whirled and shone the flashlight into his face, momentarily blinding him.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You appear healthy for a dead man,” she said.

  He stopped, unable to find a response.

  She said, “I know all about you.”

  Behind Ben, Penny moaned softly.

  “The show's over,” Gwyn said.

  “You had no right to go snooping,” Ben said.

  She laughed at him and said, “Look who has suddenly turned into a moralist!”

  He took another step toward her, his expression more menacing than subdued.