The Dark of Summer

Gwyn frowned. “I didn't look for them.”

“Think about it. Can you recall her prints in the sand? When you rounded the curve in the beach and found she'd disappeared, didn't you think to try following her prints?”

Uneasily, Gwyn said, “No. I didn't.”

He nodded. Sadly, he said, “Gwyn, I don't like to suggest this, but, could you have imagined seeing the footprints, as you've imagined seeing the ghost itself?”

That notion had not occurred to her. Now it did, and it rested on her mind like a dark, cold worm. Summoning up her last dregs of self-confidence, she said, “I'm sure the prints were real.”

“There's one way to find out,” he said.

She stood up. “We'll go look.”

They stood on the beach, looking down at the white sand, the sea wind ruffling their hair. They were both silent, each waiting for the other to say something, each aware that the silence could not last forever, each dreading the beginning of the conversation.

At last, Gwyn looked up at him, afraid, embarrassed, but determined to go on. She wiped at her eyes and said, “I didn't imagine them. I'm sure I saw them.”

Only one set of footprints led from the stone steps to the edge of the water, and only one set of footprints came back: both made by the same person, both made by a girl wearing a pair of tennis shoes, both sets made by herself.

“I saw them,” she said, again, more quietly this time, as if she had ceased to try to convince him and was only trying, now, to make herself believe it.

“I'm sure you did,” he said.

“I mean really saw them,” she insisted.

“Gwyn, you should come back to the house and rest.”

“I'm not crazy.”

“I didn't say you were.”

Desperate, striking out at him because she could not see anyone or anything else to strike out at, she said, “You implied it!”

“I didn't mean to imply it,” he said.

He was walking slowly toward her.

She didn't move away.

She looked at the sand.

It was still marked only by her prints.

He said, “I've told you, I don't think your problem is anything so severe as a complete mental breakdown. Emotional instability, yes. You've been through so very much, so many deaths, Gwyn. You need a lot of rest, a lot of relaxation. You have to get your mind off the past and learn to look forward to the future.”

“I saw those prints.”

He said, “I feel responsible for this, in a small way. I shouldn't have given you the room with a sea view. I shouldn't have reminded you, that way, of your sister.”

Only half-listening to him as he drew nearer, she bent and looked more closely at the sand. “Look here,” she said.

“Gwyn, let's go back to the house. I'll call the doctor, and he can give you something to—”

She repeated: “Look here, Uncle Will.”

He bent down, playing along with her. “What is it?”

“Someone's taken a broom over the sand here,” she said. “You can see the bristle marks.”

He looked and said, “Where? I don't see any.”

She pointed. “Right there.” She looked toward the steps and said, “They swept out the 'ghost's' footprints.”

Sadly, and as if the words were the most difficult that he had ever been called upon to say, he told her: “Gwyn, lovely Gwyn, you are imagining things.”

“Damn you, I see those broom marks!” She enunciated the last five words with exaggerated care, as if she were talking to an idiot and wanted him to be sure to understand.

He touched her shoulder with one large, dry hand, as if he would quell the terror building in her.

She drew back.

“I see them!” she hissed.

Quietly, but with force that penetrated to her, he said, “Yes. But I don't see them, Gwyn.”

Their eyes locked for a long moment; then she dropped her gaze, a tremor rising from her stomach and spreading throughout the upper half of her body, an intense chill she could not throw off. She still saw the broom marks before her where some phantom had erased the tracks made by another phantom. She blinked, willing them to disappear, but could not shut them out.

He said, “There was no ghost. You never saw one, and you never spoke to one. And there were no footprints made by the ghost, either. It is all an illusion, Gwyn, a bad dream.”

She looked up, feeling small and alone, worse than she had felt since she got her uncle's letter back at school. She said, “You really can't see them, can you?”

“They aren't there,” he said.

“You're sure?”

“Yes.”

She looked down.

She still saw them: broom marks.

She shuddered and hugged herself with both arms, still possessed by that chill, the doubt setting in, confidence shaken loose by the tremors that passed through her.

“You should come back to the manor with me now, Gwyn,” her Uncle Will said. His voice was deep, masculine, reliable. He was offering her shelter from the world — and from herself.

A tern swept by above them. It called out in a high, funereal wail, disappeared into the side of the cliff, just as Gwyn's own happiness had disappeared without warning.

She said, “I think I'm very sick, Uncle Will.”

“It's not that bad.”

“No, it's very bad,” she said.

Another tern squealed, attacked the cliff, popped out of sight. Her happiness was already gone; what did this symbol represent, then — if not her sanity?

He said, “Come back up to the house with me, Gwyn.”

“Will you help me?”

“I'll call the doctor.”

“I may need more than that,” she said.

She felt like a lost child.

“You'll have whatever you need,” he said.

She nodded; she believed him. But she didn't think anything would help her now.

“Gwyn?”

She looked at him again.

He said, “You're my entire family — you and Elaine. I haven't any children of my own, as you know. You're the closest — you're the last— relative I have in the world. I've lost others, in the past, because of my own thick-headedness, but I won't lose you.”

She stood up as he did, but she continued to look down at the sand, where the broom marks lay at her feet. She kicked at them, blotting them out, though that didn't do much good. They marked the sand other places as well, every place the imaginary dead girl had walked.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He put his arm around her and turned her back toward the steps, gentle, with strength enough for both of