Running…?
A ghost did not run away.
A ghost merely vanished in the blink of an eye, as if it had never been in the first place. And even if this were not a ghost, but an hallucination, wouldn't it still simply dissolve before her eyes rather than take flight in such an unmagical manner?
Confused, but sensing something important in this detail, Gwyn started after the departing figure, stumbling in the loose sand, then running on the hard packed beach closer to the water. Exhausted already by the day's activities and by the one-sided sand battle she had just finished, she continued to lose ground. The specter ran faster, putting more and more beach between them.
“Wait!” she cried.
But the dead girl ran on.
“Wait for me!”
The specter slowed, looked back.
Gwyn waved. “Ginny, wait!”
The specter turned and ran again, faster than before.
She turned a corner of the beach and was out of sight.
When Gwyn turned the same thrusting corner of the cliff, she found that the dead girl, at last, had vanished. On her right was the rock wall, the sea on her left. Ahead lay three-quarters of a mile of featureless white beach until one came to the steps below Barnaby Manor. There was nowhere the dead girl could have hidden; she could not have run that three-quarters of a mile in the minute she was out of Gwyn's sight. Yet she was gone…
SEVEN
Somehow, Gwyn found the energy to run the rest of the way back to the stone steps in the cliff, tears of weariness burning in her eyes, her thoughts roiling confusedly over one another. Her legs ached with the exertion, from ankles to thighs, and they felt as if they would crumple up like accordion-folded paper. When she finally reached the steps, she found that she did not have the ability to climb them, and her mindless flight from her own fear came to a welcome and inevitable finish.
She sat on the lowermost step, her back to the cliff, looking out to sea for a moment, as if she might sight an answer to her problems afloat on the bright water. Of course, there were no solutions to be so easily discovered. She could not sit here and solve her problems, but must get up and go looking for answers.
She put her elbows on her knees and let her head fall forward into her hands as if she cupped cool water in her palms.
She closed her eyes and, for a short while, she did not think about the ghost, about the dead, about anything. She listened to her furiously pounding heartbeat and tried to slow it down to a more reasonable rate. When that had been accomplished, she listened to the wind, the sea, and the few birds that darted in the lowering sky.
What was happening?
Madness…?
Had she been lonely for so long that, at last, she was conjuring up nonexistent ghosts to keep her company? Was she slipping rapidly past the razor's edge of sanity, resurrecting the spirits of long-dead loved ones to help her stave off this terrible overwhelming feeling of isolation with which she had lived, now, for many months?
That seemed to be the only possible explanation… However, why should this sickness come now, when she was happier than she had been in months? She was no longer so isolated as she had once been, but was snugly in the bosom of the Bar-naby household. She was wanted, and she was loved — two things which should have helped her recover fully from that previous bout with mental illness, that awful urge to sleep and sleep and sleep… She had her Uncle Will, and she had Elaine — and perhaps she even had Ben Groves to comfort her as well. She no longer needed imaginary companions, spirits of the dead to talk with — so why, at this of all times, was she hallucinating them?
Or, weren't these things hallucinations at all?
Was this a real ghost?
Impossible.
She could not permit herself to think along such lines, for she knew that surrender to madness lay that way. After all, she was no stranger to mental collapse… Anything was possible, she knew, any manner of relapse. This time, apparently, her deep, emotional disturbance had manifested itself in a different way: in ghosts instead of beckoning sleep, in agitated hallucinations instead of in lethargy…
She shuddered.
She opened her eyes, fearfully, but saw only the sea, no ghost of any description.
Birds swooped low over the waves.
If the problem were entirely psychological, then, and in no way mystical, if these ghostly visions were merely products of her own badly disturbed mind and not manifestations of the supernatural, she should seek professional help as soon as possible. She could telephone Dr. Recard the first thing tomorrow morning, when he would be in his office. She should tell him what had been happening to her, set up an appointment, and go to see him. That would mean packing and driving home again, leaving Barnaby Manor and the wonderful summer she had expected to have. It would mean postponing the development of the new relationship between her and Uncle Will…
And, in the final analysis, it was just this which kept her from proceeding as she should have. Now, more than anything else, her newfound family life was what counted. If she lost that, allowed it to be tainted by this new sickness, she knew that she would never have the spirit to fully recover her senses. If she left Barnaby Manor now, she would be leaving, also, all hope for a brighter future.
She would stay. She could fight this out on her own ground, and she could win. She knew she could. Hadn't Dr. Recard told her that, more important than anything else, even more important than what he could do for her as a professional psychiatrist, was what she tried to do for herself?
She would stay.
She would not mention the ghost to anyone — not to Uncle Will, or to Elaine and certainly not to Ben Groves — for she did not want them to pity her; all that she wanted was to be loved and respected; pity was the death of love, the instrument that killed respect. They mustn't know how unstable she was, how frayed were her nerves. Dr. Recard had told her that one should never be ashamed of having suffered through a mental illness and should never hesitate to seek help out of some misplaced embarrassment. She knew he'd spoken the truth. Yet… Yet, she could not help but be ashamed of her lack of control, her need for medical help. Her aunt and uncle knew about her previous sickness, but she loathed to tell them about this much more frightening siege she was now experiencing.
She stood up, as if she carried a leaden weight across her shoulders, and she dusted off the seat of her shorts.
It seemed to Gwyn that this was a watershed period of her life, a decisive turning point after which she would never be the same again. Here, she must take a stand, and she was gambling her whole future on the outcome of this confrontation with herself. There was not to be any area for compromise, no dealing, nothing but a win or lose solution. She would either prove capable of exorcising these demons that had recently come to haunt her, or she would slip all the way into madness.
She was more frightened than she had ever been in her entire life, and she also felt more lonely than ever before.
The terns cried above. They, too, sounded forlorn and despairing.
She turned and started up the steps in the cliff.
Twice, she grew dizzy and had to lean against the stone wall on her right, catching her breath and her balance.
Often, she looked behind, expecting to see the white-robed girl close on her heels. But the steps were always empty.
