Gwyn gagged, tried to draw breath, found it difficult and almost impossible to do even that small thing.
Terror, then, returned tenfold.
She let go of the wrist and struck out for the dead girl's face, dragged nails along the pale face and brought one thin line of bright blood to the surface.
The ghost cried out and let her go.
Gwyn heaved up again, with all of her might, holding back nothing, her system flooded with adrenalin, and she shoved the specter out of the way. She leaped out of bed, stumbled on a trailing end of the sheet and fell to the floor.
The specter grabbed the back of her pajamas.
“Ben!” she cried.
The word came out in a croak.
Gwyn squealed, rolled forward, freeing herself., scrambled to her feet. Even a couple of minutes ago, she would not have thought she had so much energy left, but now her strength seemed boundless, her endurance without limits.
“You can't run,” the specter said.
She started for the door.
It stepped in front of her.
“You can't run anywhere that I won't follow you, Gwyn.”
The dead girl started forward, holding her hands out, just far enough apart to allow Gwyn's neck to fit between the wriggling fingers…
“Ben!”
The name was louder this time, but would probably still not carry all the way downstairs.
The ghost was much too close.
Gwyn put her head down and ran forward, toward the door, struck the dead girl a glancing blow and dashed into the upstairs corridor. She was disoriented for a moment, not having expected to escape, but located the stairs in short order and ran for them.
“Gwyn, come back to me!”
At the head of the steps, she collided with Ben Groves, who was on his way up, and nearly succeeded in knocking them both down the whole long flight in what would surely have been a deadly fall.
TWENTY-ONE
“Gwyn, what on earth's the matter with you? You were screaming so loudly I could hear you downstairs.”
He held her by her shoulders, tenderly and yet firmly, and he shook her until she stopped sobbing and was able to speak coherently again. She held onto his arms, glad to have him here, feeling protected by him as she had felt on the
He looked perplexed, then smiled tentatively. He said, “Well, of course you're not.”
“But I thought that I was.”
“You've lost me.”
She said, “It was the sickness, that you didn't understand… I was seeing ghosts, my dead sister, hallucinations—” It sounded foolish, like the babblings of a madwoman, as if she had already gone over the edge. She went on, nonetheless: “Now I know I wasn't having hallucinations at all, because she just tried to kill me, to strangle me.”
“She?”
“The — ghost. The woman pretending to be a ghost. I can still feel where her hands were on my throat.”
“You mean there's someone else in this house?” he asked.
“She was just in my room.”
“Let's go have a look,” he said.
“No.”
“Why not? Gwyn, if there's someone in the manor who doesn't belong here, we've got to see who she is.”
“I'm scared, Ben.”
He slid his arms around her, all the way, and gave her a quick, reassuring hug. He said, “There's no need to be scared, Gwyn. I'm here, and I'll take care of you.”
“Don't let her touch me.”
“I won't, Gwyn.”
“She must be a crazy woman.”
“Let's go see what this is all about.”
She turned around to go back with him, and she screamed, bringing her hands up to her face as if she could block out the reality by blocking out the vision itself. The dead girl, impossibly, stood not more than six feet away from them, smiling.
Ben said, “Gwyn? What is it?”
“There she is!”
He looked where Gwyn pointed, pursed his mouth, looked down at the girl at his side. He said. “There isn't anyone here but you and me.”
“There is!”
He gave her a searching look and said, “No one at all, Gwyn. The hallway's empty.”
“You don't see her?”
“There's no one to see, Gwyn.”
The dead girl grinned, wickedly now, and said, in a voice as thin as rice paper, “I told you, before, Gwyn, that we have a few tricks that come in handy.”
“She just spoke,” Gwyn said.
His grip on her tightened, but he said nothing.
“For God's sake, she just talked to me, Ben! You mean to tell me you didn't hear a word of it?”
But she knew that he hadn't.
He said, “No one spoke.”
“She did. Yes, she did.”
“No one but you and I.”
She remembered what Dr. Recard had said— that you could not be going mad if you thought that you were, that the truly mad person was absolutely sure of his sanity. Therefore, if Dr. Recard were to be believed, she must not be insane now, could be nowhere near insane; yet she remained uncheered by this reasoning.
The dead girl stepped toward her.
. “Stay back,” she said.
“I need you,” the specter said.
“Don't touch me!”
Ben said, “Gwyn, there isn't anyone here!”
The dead girl grinned, almost on top of her now, and she said, “A fall down these steps would do it, Gwyn. He'd think you fell, and then you'd be with me forever.”
Her head swam. In the back of her mind, leering, she saw the head of Death, where it always lay at the edge of her memory, waiting to claim her just as it had claimed so many who were dear to her in years past. “No!” she said.
The dead girl reached for her, palms flattened, arms stiff. “Just a quick shove—”
Gwyn pulled away from Ben, who would clearly be no help for her, turned and grabbed the stair railing, started down toward the first floor as fast as she could go.
