behind his head, imitating my own gesture to Constance Bate. 'Perfectly, I assure you. Yet when you hear more, you will doubt my word.'
'For the sake of heaven, why?'
He shook his head, and I saw that his free hand was trembling. For a second I wondered if I really had stumbled into intimate conversation with a madman.
'Fenny's parents had three children,' he said, puffing out smoke. 'Gregory Bate was the first'
'He is their brother!' I exclaimed. 'One day I thought I saw a resemblance… yes, I see. But there's nothing unnatural in that.'
'That depends, I think, on what passed between them.'
I tried to take it in. 'You mean something unnatural passed between them.'
'And with the sister as well.'
A feeling of horror went through me. I could see that cold handsome face, and that hateful careless manner -Gregory's air of being free of all restraint. 'Between Gregory and the sister.'
'And, as I said, between Gregory and Fenny.'
'He corrupted both of them, then. Why isn't Constance as condemned by Four Forks as Fenny?'
'Remember, schoolteacher, that this is the hinterland. A touch of-unnaturalness-between brother and sister among those wretched families in shacks is perhaps not so unnatural after all.'
'But between brother and brother-' I might have been back at Harvard, discussing a savage tribe with a professor of anthropology.
'It is.'
'By God, it is!' I exclaimed, seeing that crafty, prematurely aged expression on Penny's face. 'And now he is trying to send me off-he sees me as an interference.'
'Apparently he does. I hope you see why.'
'Because I won't stand for it,' I said. 'He wants to get rid of me.'
'Ah,' he said. 'Gregory wants everything.'
'You mean he wants them forever.'
'Both of them forever-but from your story, perhaps Fenny most of all.'
'Can't their parents stop this?'
'The mother is dead. The father left when Gregory grew old enough to beat him.'
'They live alone in that appalling place?'
He nodded.
It was terrible: it meant the miasma, the sense of the place as somehow damned, came from the children themselves: from what happened between them and Gregory.
'Well,' I protested, 'can't the children themselves do something to protect themselves?'
'They did,' he said.
'But what?' I had prayer in mind, I suppose, since I was talking with a preacher, or boarding with another family-but as to that, my own experience had shown me how far charity went in Four Forks.
'You won't take my word for it,' he said, 'so I must show you.' He abruptly stood up, and gestured for me to stand as well. 'Outside,' he ordered. Beneath his excitement, he seemed very disturbed, and just for a moment I thought that he found me as unpleasant as I did him, with his showers of pipe tobacco and his bulging eyes.
I left the room and on the way out of the house, passed a room with a table set for one. I smelled a roast cooking, and an open bottle of beer sat on the table, so it could be that all he disliked was being kept from his lunch.
He slammed the door behind us and set off back toward the church. This was mystifying indeed. When he had crossed the road, he called to me without turning his head. 'You know that Gregory was the school handyman? That he used to do odd jobs around the school?'
'One of the girls said something about it,' I replied, watching him continue on around the side of the church. What next, I wondered, a trip into the fields? And what would I have to be shown before I would believe it?
A little graveyard lay behind the church, and I had time, following waddling Dr. Gruber, to idly look at the names on the massive nineteenth-century tombstones-Josiah Foote, Sarah Foote, all of that clan which had founded the village, and other names which meant nothing to me. Dr. Gruber was now standing, with a decided air of impatience, by a little gate at the back of the graveyard.
'Here,' he said.
Well, I thought, if you're too lazy to open it yourself, and bent down to lift the latch.
'Not that,' he said sharply. 'Look down. Look at the cross.'
I looked where he was pointing. It was a crude hand-painted wooden cross, standing where a tombstone would, at the head of a grave. Someone had lettered the name Gregory Bate on the horizontal piece of the cross. I looked back up at Dr. Gruber, and there was no doubt this time, he was looking at me with distaste.
'It can't be,' I said. 'It's preposterous. I saw him.'
'Believe me, schoolteacher, this is where your rival is buried,' he said, and not for a long time after did I notice his peculiar choice of words. 'The mortal portion of him, at any rate.'
I was numb; I repeated what I had said. 'It can't be.'
He ignored my remark. 'One night a year ago, Gregory Bate was doing some work in the schoolyard. While doing it, he looked up and noticed-I imagine this is what happened-that the rain gutter required some attention, and he went around to the back of the school and got the ladder and went up. Fenny and Constance saw their chance to escape his tyranny, and knocked the ladder out from under him. He fell, struck his head on the corner of the building, and died.'
'What were they doing there at night?'
He shrugged. 'He always took them with him. They had been sitting in the playground.'
'I don't believe that they killed him on purpose,' I said.
'Howard Hummell, the postmaster, saw them running off. It was he who found Gregory's body.'
'So nobody actually saw it happen.'
'Nobody had to actually see it, Mr. James. What happened was clear to all.'
'It's not clear to me,' I said, and he shrugged again. 'What did they do afterward?'
'They ran. It must have been obvious that they had succeeded. The back of his head was crushed. Fenny and his sister disappeared for three weeks-they hid out in the woods. By the time they realized they had nowhere to go and returned home, we had buried Gregory. Howard Hummell had told what he had seen, and people assumed what they assumed. Hence, you see, Fenny's 'badness.' '
'But now-' I said, looking down at the crudely lettered grave. The children must have made and lettered the cross, I realized, and suddenly that seemed the most gruesome detail of all.
'Oh yes, now. Now Gregory wants him back. From what you tell me, he
It chilled me. 'To take him.'
'To take him.'
'Can't I save him?' I said, almost pleading.
'I suspect at least no one else can,' he said, looking at me as from a great distance.
'Can't you help, for God's sake!'
'Not even for His. From what you say, it has gone too far. We do not believe in exorcisms, in my church.'
'You just believe-' I was furious and scornful.
'In evil, yes. We do believe in that.'
I turned away from him. He must have imagined that I was going to return and beg him for help, but when I kept on walking, he called out, 'Take care, schoolteacher.'
Walking home I was in a sort of daze-I could scarcely believe or accept what had seemed irrefutable while I talked with the preacher. Yet he had shown me the grave; and I had seen with my own eyes the transformation in Fenny-I had seen Gregory: it is not too much to say that I had felt him, the impression he made on me was that strong.
And then I stopped walking, about a mile from Four Forks, faced with proof that Gregory Bate knew exactly what I had discovered, and knew exactly what I had intended. One of the farmers' fields there formed a large wide
