“No…”
“It won't hurt, Gwyn.”
“I don't want to die.”
“It will be nice.”
Gwyn still held back.
“It'll only be bad for an instant, when you panic,” the dead girl explained, patiently. “You'll feel like you're lying in a wet, warm blanket — and then that you're smothering in it. Before you know it, the panic will pass and the resignation set in, and then the joyful acceptance will come to you, and you'll embrace death.”
“I won't.”
“Yes. It's not at all as you've heard it is, not like anyone living has ever imagined it.”
Gwyn found that, involuntarily, she had taken a step into the water, so that it sloshed well above her ankles.
“Come along…”
“No!”
“Gwyn—”
Gwyn tried to turn and pull away.
She could not.
The specter held tight.
“Wait, Gwyn.”
“Let go of me!”
“Gwyn, you'll like it.”
“No!”
“We'll be together.”
Gwyn whimpered, struggling to escape the grasp of the pale, dead hand, telling herself repeatedly that none of this was actually happening, that she was caught up in a web of madness, of self-deception. Yet, she was unable to shrug off the deeper, more irrational fear that the ghost was genuine…
“Die with me, Gwyn..”
She slapped at the pale arm, twisted, pulled.
“Death is not so awful.”
Screeching like one of the terns, her teeth clenched tightly together, Gwyn gave one last, desperate, wrenching twist with her body and was suddenly, surprisingly free. She staggered backward, kicking up the water. She whirled, nearly fell, somehow regained her balance and ran for the flight of stone steps.
As she ran, she saw something in the sand which, in a single blazing instant, drove all thoughts of madness from her. She saw something there that proved the ghost was not a ghost and was not a figment of her imagination.
However, she did not stop, for what she saw terrified her almost as much as had the idea of insanity — and the possibility that the spirit was genuine. As frightened as ever, but for different reasons, she gained the steps in short order and, sobbing, ran up them without any regard for her safety, taking them two at a time. She had to find Uncle Will and tell him; she had to get help at once.
ELEVEN
William Barnaby watched Gwyn take several long swallows from the glass of cold water, then said, in a measured voice which was intended to soothe her, “Now, are you feeling any better?”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
“What on earth's happening?” he asked, smiling, sitting down on the edge of the desk.
Only minutes ago, she had raced up the stone steps, miraculously avoiding a fall, had crossed the wide, well-manicured lawn and entered the manor as if there were a pack of slavering devils close at her heels. She'd found him in the study, sitting behind his desk and working through an enormous sheaf of papers. She had been so incoherent — both because of fear and exhaustion — that she had been unable, at first, to tell him what was the matter. When he'd ascertained that she was not hurt, but only badly frightened, he made her sit in the easy chair where Edgar Aimes had sat earlier, then went to fetch her a glass of cold water from the kitchen. Now, she had drunk most of the water, and she felt that she'd gathered her wits about her enough to tell him what had happened. She said, “I have a strange story to tell, about ghosts, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't interrupt me.”
“Ghosts?” he asked.
“In a way.”
“Go on, then.”
She told him all of it, from the beginning. Once near the start, he shifted uneasily and interrupted her to say, very adamantly, that there just weren't such things as ghosts; she reminded him that he'd agreed to let her tell the whole story in her own way and at her own speed before making any comments about it. Then, she told him how the apparition had first appeared to her in her bedroom, how she'd thought that it must be only the remnant of a dream, went on through the subsequent visions, until she finished with a detailed explanation of what had transpired today on the beach, by the stone steps, and most importantly at the water's edge, only a short while ago.
He did not move from the edge of his desk during all of this, and he did not move even when she was finished, almost as if he thought that a change in this own position would somehow act as the catalyst to set off the explosion which he fancied he saw building inside of her. He looked at her strangely, warily, and he said, “I'm quite intrigued by this, Gwyn. But it's all so — well, baffling.” He was choosing his words carefully, keeping an un-felt smile on his face.
“Isn't it, though?” she asked.
“How do you explain it?” he asked. He was extremely cautious, not wanting to upset her. Clearly, he believed that she was more than slightly emotionally disturbed, and he felt that he must handle her with the proverbial kid gloves. She didn't mind his reaction in the least, his treating her as he might a mad person, for she had not expected him or anyone to swallow such a story without doubts.
Candidly, she said, “Well, at first, I thought that I was losing my mind. In fact, I was sure of it. I was convinced the ghost was an hallucination, until something I saw on the beach, a while ago, proved me wrong.”
He seemed to relax when he realized that she was willing to face such a drastic possibility as insanity, though he appeared not to have heard her mention the clue to the ghost's real nature, for he said, “You're going to be fine, Gwyn. If you can admit that you've got an emotional problem, then you're a long way toward—”
She interrupted him before he could say anything more. “I haven't any emotional problems,” she said. “At least, I haven't got any that are tied up with this ghost.”
“But you've just admitted—”
“The ghost is not a ghost,” she said. “It's someone masquerading as a ghost.”
He looked shocked, and then he became wary again. He said, “But who? And for what reason?”
She shrugged. “I don't really know. I haven't had time to think it out, but — mightn't it be the fishermen?”
“What would they have to gain, and why would they strike out at you instead of at me?” he asked.
“I don't know.”
“Besides,” he said, his voice gentle and comforting again, “what makes you think this ghost is 'real'?”
“Hallucinations don't leave footprints behind them,” she said, smiling up at him.
“I don't understand.”
She said, “When I pulled away from that woman, when she was trying to drag me into the water, I ran back toward the steps. On the way, I noticed two sets of footprints leading to the water's edge, mine and hers. If I'd imagined the whole thing, how could there be two sets of footprints?”
He got up, at last, paced to the bookshelves and then back again, stood near to her, looking down. He said, “You chased this — ghost perhaps half a mile along the beach the other day, before she — disappeared. Did you see footprints then?”
