white gown of many layers. Her hands were again folded on her lap like trained animals returning to their proper place, and she looked as if she had been here a long time, keeping her eerie vigil.
Gwyn's mind had been fully occupied with the possible ramifications of her conversation with Jack Younger. Confused by everything that he had told her about the ISP plant and about her uncle, not wanting to believe him at all but nevertheless believing him at least a tiny bit, she had not had time to think of the ghost in more than an hour. Now, coming across the dead girl, her fears flushed back to her in a rush, like the crashing wall of water from a broken dam. Again, she felt a thousand years old, brittle and ready to crack apart.
“You don't look well,” the ghost said.
Gwyn said, “I'd like to use the stairs. Would you please move out of the way?”
Her voice came out shallow, nearly inaudible, and it betrayed the intense fear which she was trying desperately to control.
The specter didn't move.
Gwyn started forward, caught herself before it was too late, stopped. She realized that she was not now capable of touching the dead girl as she had before. She was not up to discovering, as she had discovered that other time, that the ghost would feel as solid as she felt, as real as any living person.
“Please,” she said.
“I want to talk to you.”
Gwyn waited.
The dead girl drew her feet up to the second step, propping her elbows on her knees and leaning forward so that her chin was cupped in the palms of her hands. She said, “I saw you talking with Jack Younger a while ago.”
“And?”
“Do you like him?”
Gwyn was unable to respond, her throat constricted, her tongue clinging to the roof of her mouth.
“He's quite handsome,” the dead girl said.
“Why don't you chase after him, then?” Gwyn asked.
The specter laughed. “I'm beyond that sort of thing now. I have only one love, the one that brought me back to this world of the living. I love you, Gwyn, my sister, no one else.”
Gwyn turned away from her.
“Don't go away,” the dead girl said, rising to her feet and reaching out toward Gwyn.
Sensing this approach without seeing it, Gwyn walked quickly across the beach, to the edge of the sea. Without removing her shoes, she let the cool water break across her feet, let it stir frothily around her slender ankles.
The specter appeared beside her.
The white dress swished back and forth in the sea breeze, while the golden hair streamed behind her like a lighted torch, just as Gwyn's own hair did.
“I love the sea,” the ghost said.
Gwyn nodded but said nothing, watched the incoming waves, hoping that their hypnotic flow would lift her up and away from all this, settle her down in some quiet place, alone.
“Even though it killed me, I love the sea,” the ghost said. “It has such power, such beautiful power.”
Far out, a luxury liner ran southward, full of holiday passengers intent on a four-week cruise to and through the Caribbean. Gwyn wished that she were with them, instead of here. And she wished, too, that Jack Younger would show up now. If he saw the dead girl too, then… But that was sheer nonsense, for the dead girl did not really exist.
“I don't think you're ever going to accept me,” the specter said, as if reading Gwyn's thoughts.
“That's right.”
“We could have so much fun together, if you would really listen to me, if you'd stop thinking that I'm nothing more than an illusion. But I suppose that, in the world of the living, a ghost is just much too much to be believed. When I was alive, I doubt I'd have believed in one. I've made a serious mistake coming back, and I see that now. I really do. I'm an anachronism. You think that you're seeing things, and that maybe you're even going crazy. I didn't mean to bring you unhappiness, Gwyn, just the opposite. I wanted so badly to be with you once more, to be close to you. Twins are always closer than regular brothers and sisters; it was easier for me to come back, because my ties were closer to you than most ties the dead have with the living… I wanted to see you again and share all the things we once shared, to have the fun together that we used to have when we were young…” As the dead girl spoke, incredibly, her voice cracked and grew small, as if she were on the verge of tears.
This startling evidence of feelings, of emotions in the specter, was more than Gwyn could stand, crazier and more frightening than almost anything else that the vision, the hallucination, had done to date. She began to cry herself, silently, big tears running down her cheeks. She wanted to turn and run, to scream for help, but she could not. Once, this fear had seemed to energize her, to give her the strength to flee. Now, all strength was gone, energy sapped, resources used up. She felt more weary, more sleepy than before, all soft and muscleless, limp and cold and nearly dead herself.
The specter said, “There's only one other solution, then, as far as I can see.” She seemed to have thoroughly recovered from her momentary lapse into that emotional and very unghostly self-pity. Her voice was strong again, unwavering.
Gwyn continued to watch the waves, did not look at her and did not ask what this solution might be. Whatever the specter said, it would not be good.
The dead girl said: “Instead of me crossing over to be with you, here in the world of the living, you could join me, in death… Yes… There, neither of us would be an outsider. We would both belong, and we would be happy together…”
Gwyn's heart was racing, her face flushed, her mouth as dry as the sand that lay behind her.
The dead girl went on, rapturously, “It would be so easy, Gwyn. You needn't suffer, not at all. It would be nearly painless, and then there would be all of eternity for us.”
Gwyn wanted to run.
She couldn't.
She was rooted there, weak and sick.
“Take my hand, Gwyn.”
She made no move to do as the ghost asked.
Seizing the initiative, the dead girl reached out and quickly took Gwyn's hand in her own, held it tight.
Gwyn did not have the energy or, indeed, the will to resist this unpleasant intimacy.
And why should she resist, after all, when absolutely none of it was happening, when the entire episode transpired only in her own mind, an utterly senseless fantasy, a mad illusion, a fragment of her mental illness…?
“We could just walk out there, into the sea, together. We'd let the warm water pull us out, caress us. We'd let it carry us away,” the dead girl said, her voice pleasantly melodic, convincing. She made death sound as desirable as fame or fortune, as sheltering and wonderful as love. “Come along with me, Gwyn, come be with me forever, forget all the worries you have over here…”
The dead girl's voice echoed from the hot air all around them, now tinny and strange, deep and shallow at the same time, melodic but flat, like a voice from some other dimension.
Perhaps it was just that.
The specter said, “We could shed these bodies in the cleansing salt water, just as I once did by myself. We'd never need them again, for we'd be going where flesh is unheard of and not useful, where everyone is made of force, of energy, where we'd never need to be apart again, not for all of time…”
“That's— No. No, I—”
“Come, Gwyn.”
“Please, no, I…” But her voice was thin, and she could not say what she felt, could not express her terror.
The dead girl stepped farther out into the water, still holding Gwyn's hand. She kicked her feet in the water and grinned, as if to show how much fun it would be, like a game, a water sport: drowning. She held Gwyn's hand so tight, insistently, tugging at her, smiling enticingly, her blue eyes bright, almost fevered.
