Gwyn shivered uncontrollably.
This was insanity, no doubt, no hope to overcome it.
She said, “Why — if you're who you pretend to be — did you wait so long to come back?”
The other sighed and said, “Conditions on the other side wouldn't permit me to make the voyage until quite recently, no matter how much I had yearned for it.”
“Conditions?”
The other said, “Oh, it's a strange place on the other side, Gwyn. It is not remotely like any living person has ever imagined it… I get so incredibly lonely over there — so desperate for companionship. The other side is still, dark and as cold as a winter night, though there are no seasons; it is always cold, you see. I've wanted to escape it, to come here and see you, speak with you, watch you — but only a few days ago was the time right.”
“I want you to go away.”
“Why?”
“I just do.”
“You're being selfish, Gwyn.”
“I'm afraid,” she admitted.
“I told you not to be.”
“I still am.”
“But I won't harm you.”
“That's not what I fear.”
“What, then?” the other asked.
“I'm going mad.”
“You aren't. I exist.”
They stood in silence for a while.
“Come take my hand,” the apparition said.
“No.”
Overhead, another tern cried out, like a voice from beyond the veil of death, sharp and mournful.
“Take my hand and walk with me,” the specter insisted, holding out one slim, long-fingered, pale hand.
“No.”
“Gwyn, you must accept me sooner or later, for we need each other. I'm your twin, your only sister… Do you remember, years ago, before the accident, how very close we were?”
“I remember.”
“We can be that close again.”
“Never.”
“Take my hand.”
Gwyn said nothing.
She did not move.
But the specter stepped closer.
“Please, Gwyn.”
“Go away.”
“Sooner or later…” the specter said.
Gwyn wondered if she could dodge to the side and run past the dead girl, back toward the steps and the safety of Barnaby Manor. Thus far, the ghost — or the hallucination — had not appeared to her when she was with other people. If she could get back to the manor, then, and remain in company, she would be fine…
“Gwyn..”
The dead girl stepped closer.
“Don't touch me.”
“I'm your sister.”
“You aren't.”
“Take my hand—”
Squealing as the dead girl reached to touch her, Gwyn threw herself backward, fell upon the warm damp sand at the water's edge. She scrabbled about, searching frantically for some weapon, though she realized it would probably do her no good at all. If this were a ghost, it would not be hurt by stones or other weapons; and if it were an hallucination, the product of a mind perilously close to complete disintegration, it would likewise be impervious to force.
“Gwyn…”
She closed her hands on the damp sand, scooping up balls of it and, rising to her feet, threw them wildly, like a child in a snowball battle.
The sand broke into several smaller lumps, falling all around the specter, striking her white garment.
“Stop it, Gwyn!”
Gwyn bent, scooped up more sand, tossed it, bent again, formed two more balls of sand, threw them, sucking wildly for breath, sobbing, her heart thudding like a piston.
In a moment, weak, her stomach tied in knots, almost unable to get her breath, Gwyn saw that the specter was moving away, running back up the beach toward Barnaby Manor. The dead girl moved quite gracefully, each step etherally light and quick — as if she were not really running, but were gliding only a fraction of an inch above the sand. Her full, white dress flowed out behind her, flapped at her bare legs, and her hair was a golden banner in her wake.
Running…?
A ghost did not run away.
A ghost merely vanished in the blink of an eye, as if it had never been in the first place. And even if this were not a ghost, but an hallucination, wouldn't it still simply dissolve before her eyes rather than take flight in such an unmagical manner?
Confused, but sensing something important in this detail, Gwyn started after the departing figure, stumbling in the loose sand, then running on the hard packed beach closer to the water. Exhausted already by the day's activities and by the one-sided sand battle she had just finished, she continued to lose ground. The specter ran faster, putting more and more beach between them.
“Wait!” she cried.
But the dead girl ran on.
“Wait for me!”
The specter slowed, looked back.
Gwyn waved. “Ginny, wait!”
The specter turned and ran again, faster than before.
She turned a corner of the beach and was out of sight.
When Gwyn turned the same thrusting corner of the cliff, she found that the dead girl, at last, had vanished. On her right was the rock wall, the sea on her left. Ahead lay three-quarters of a mile of featureless white beach until one came to the steps below Barnaby Manor. There was nowhere the dead girl could have hidden; she could not have run that three-quarters of a mile in the minute she was out of Gwyn's sight. Yet she was gone…
SEVEN
Somehow, Gwyn found the energy to run the rest of the way back to the stone steps in the cliff, tears of weariness burning in her eyes, her thoughts roiling confusedly over one another. Her legs ached with the exertion, from ankles to thighs, and they felt as if they would crumple up like accordion-folded paper. When she finally reached the steps, she found that she did not have the ability to climb them, and her mindless flight from her own fear came to a welcome and inevitable finish.
She sat on the lowermost step, her back to the cliff, looking out to sea for a moment, as if she might sight an answer to her problems afloat on the bright water. Of course, there were no solutions to be so easily discovered. She could not sit here and solve her problems, but must get up and go looking for answers.
She put her elbows on her knees and let her head fall forward into her hands as if she cupped cool water in her palms.
She closed her eyes and, for a short while, she did not think about the ghost, about the dead, about anything. She listened to her furiously pounding heartbeat and tried to slow it down to a more reasonable rate. When that had been accomplished, she listened to the wind, the sea, and the few birds that darted in the lowering sky.
What was happening?
Madness…?
Had she been lonely for so long that, at last, she was conjuring up nonexistent ghosts to keep her company? Was she slipping rapidly past the razor's edge of sanity, resurrecting the spirits of long-dead loved ones to help her stave off this terrible overwhelming feeling of isolation with which she had lived, now, for many months?
That seemed to be the only possible explanation… However, why should this sickness come now, when she was happier than she had been in months? She was no longer so isolated as she had once been, but was snugly in the bosom of the Bar-naby household. She was wanted, and she was loved — two things which should have helped her recover fully from that previous bout with mental illness, that awful urge to sleep and sleep and sleep… She had her Uncle Will, and she had Elaine — and perhaps she even had Ben Groves to comfort her as well. She no longer needed imaginary companions, spirits of the dead to talk with — so why, at this of all times, was she hallucinating them?