Elaine picked up a bottle of tablets by the side of the bed and emptied one out into the palm of her hand. “I'll get you a glass of water to take this with.”
“Take what?”
“A sleeping pill.”
“I don't want a sleeping pill,” Gwyn said.
“Dr. Cotter prescribed them.”
“I don't need one,” Gwyn said, adamantly. “I feel like I've been kicked around by a herd of horses. I'll sleep without help.”
“Dear—”
“I won't take one.”
Elaine sighed and put the tablet back into the bottle, capped the bottle and put it on the night-stand again. “If you won't, you won't.” She turned off all the lights except the reading lamp by her chair, sat down and picked up her book.
“What are you doing?” Gwyn asked. She raised her head from her pillows and looked at the older woman.
“Reading, dear,” Elaine said.
“You're not going to sit up with me, are you?” Gwyn asked. She felt almost like a helpless little girl, a child so afraid of the dark that she needed a chaperone to help her get to sleep.
“Of course I am,” Elaine said. She was dressed in a brown stretch sweater, brown bellbottoms and stylish boots. She did not look at all like the sort of woman who would insist on mothering anyone, yet here she was, insisting just the same. “If you won't take a sleeping tablet, as Dr. Cotter said you should, then I ought to be here to watch out for you, in case you need or want something.”
“I don't want to be such a burden on you,” Gwyn said.
“This isn't a burden. I've been wanting to read this novel for several months.”
“You'll be more comfortable in the library,” Gwyn said. “I insist you don't ruin your evening worrying about me.” When she saw that Elaine was not affected by any of this, she said, “Besides, the light bothers me; it keeps me awake.”
Elaine closed her book on a flap of the dust jacket, to mark her place, rose to her feet. “Promise you will sleep?”
“I'm in no shape to do anything else,” she said.
And she wasn't.
Elaine bent and kissed her forehead, pulled the sheets closer around her, picked up the book, turned out the reading light, and left the room.
The darkness was heavy but not oppressive, a welcome preliminary to sleep.
Gwyn thought, briefly, how fortunate she was to have both Elaine and Uncle Will to look after her, especially at a time like this when everything seemed to be falling apart for her. Without them, she would have been so terribly alone, so much more vulnerable to this sickness, so helpless. But with them, she felt, she had a good chance of recovery, a better chance than she would have had if she'd no one to turn to…
Sleep reached up.
It was not threatening, but gentle.
She let it touch her and pull her down.
“Gwyn?”
She opened her eyes and found that she had rolled onto her stomach in her sleep. She was peering out through a cocoon of sheets at a fragment of the wall behind the bed, and she could see that the reading light — which was dimmer than any other light in the room — had been turned on again. She hoped Aunt Elaine had not returned to keep a vigil.
“Gwyn?”
She froze.
A small hand touched her shoulder, shook her gently, then more and more insistently.
“Gwyn?”
She rolled over, pushed the sheets away from her and looked up into the pale face of the dead girl, Ginny, her long-gone sister.
“How are you feeling, Gwyn?”
She was beyond screaming for help, beyond fighting with the ghost, far beyond any reaction at all — except a dull and unemotional acceptance of the impossible.
“You've been sleeping so much,” the dead girl said, “that I haven't had a chance to talk to you. I didn't want to wake you, because I knew how much you needed your sleep.”
Gwyn said nothing.
“You've been so overwrought, and it's mostly my fault.”
Gwyn closed her eyes.
She opened them again.
It didn't work: the ghost was still there.
“Are you listening to me, Gwyn?”
Against her will, she nodded.
“You looked so far away,” the apparition said. “I didn't even know if you could hear me.”
“I can hear you.”
The ghost sat down on the edge of the bed. She said, “Have you thought over what I talked about?”
Gwyn was actually unable to understand the specter's meaning; her mind was disjointed, scattered with the fragments of thought, smashed by her weariness and by her fear which, by now, was a common part of her.
“Will you come with me, to the other side? Will you die with me so we can be together again?”
Gwyn looked away from the dead girl, trying to block her out altogether, uselessly hoping that her eyes would light upon some distraction which — by completely dominating her attention — would force the apparition to disappear. After passing over a dozen objects and rejecting them, her gaze come to rest on the bottle of sleeping tablets which stood on her nightstand, almost within her reach.
“You'll like the other side, I promise you, Gwyn,” the specter said, leaning closer.
Its voice was like the sough of a night wind through the tilted stones of a deserted graveyard. It curdled Gwyn's blood and made her look all the more intently at the escape offered in the contents of that small medicine bottle.
“I could open your window,” the apparition said. “Straight down under it is a flagstone walk. If you jumped —”
Gwyn ignored the whispering voice and rose onto one elbow, leaned out and grasped the bottle of tablets. She took the cap off and shook out one pill. It was white, very shiny and hard; she supposed she could take it even without water. She put it in her mouth, after gathering saliva, and swallowed it.
“Sleeping pills?” the ghost asked.
Gwyn lay back.
The ghost took the bottle out of her hand. “Yes, dear, this would also be a good way to do it.” She took a second pill out and held it up to Gwyn's lips.
Gwyn kept her mouth pressed tightly shut, biting into her lower lip so hard that she thought she would soon draw blood if she weren't more careful.
“Dear Gwyn, it would be much less painful than jumping from the window or drowning in the sea. Just a long sleep leading into an even longer sleep…”
Though she knew that this was only an hallucination, had to be, Gwyn was not about to open her mouth and accept the tablet, even if it were imaginary.
“Say, a dozen of them,” the ghost said. “If you could manage to swallow only a dozen of them, that ought to do the trick.” She pushed the pill against Gwyn's lips.
Gwyn turned her head.
“Perhaps you'd like a glass of water to take it with,” the specter said, rising. She put the bottle and the tablet on the nightstand and went into the bathroom.
