Or, weren't these things hallucinations at all?
Was this a real ghost?
Impossible.
She could not permit herself to think along such lines, for she knew that surrender to madness lay that way. After all, she was no stranger to mental collapse… Anything was possible, she knew, any manner of relapse. This time, apparently, her deep, emotional disturbance had manifested itself in a different way: in ghosts instead of beckoning sleep, in agitated hallucinations instead of in lethargy…
She shuddered.
She opened her eyes, fearfully, but saw only the sea, no ghost of any description.
Birds swooped low over the waves.
If the problem were entirely psychological, then, and in no way mystical, if these ghostly visions were merely products of her own badly disturbed mind and not manifestations of the supernatural, she should seek professional help as soon as possible. She could telephone Dr. Recard the first thing tomorrow morning, when he would be in his office. She should tell him what had been happening to her, set up an appointment, and go to see him. That would mean packing and driving home again, leaving Barnaby Manor and the wonderful summer she had expected to have. It would mean postponing the development of the new relationship between her and Uncle Will…
And, in the final analysis, it was just this which kept her from proceeding as she should have. Now, more than anything else, her newfound family life was what counted. If she lost that, allowed it to be tainted by this new sickness, she knew that she would never have the spirit to fully recover her senses. If she left Barnaby Manor now, she would be leaving, also, all hope for a brighter future.
She would stay. She could fight this out on her own ground, and she could win. She knew she could. Hadn't Dr. Recard told her that, more important than anything else, even more important than what he could do for her as a professional psychiatrist, was what she tried to do for herself?
She would stay.
She would not mention the ghost to anyone — not to Uncle Will, or to Elaine and certainly not to Ben Groves — for she did not want them to pity her; all that she wanted was to be loved and respected; pity was the death of love, the instrument that killed respect. They mustn't know how unstable she was, how frayed were her nerves. Dr. Recard had told her that one should never be ashamed of having suffered through a mental illness and should never hesitate to seek help out of some misplaced embarrassment. She knew he'd spoken the truth. Yet… Yet, she could not help but be ashamed of her lack of control, her need for medical help. Her aunt and uncle knew about her previous sickness, but she loathed to tell them about this much more frightening siege she was now experiencing.
She stood up, as if she carried a leaden weight across her shoulders, and she dusted off the seat of her shorts.
It seemed to Gwyn that this was a watershed period of her life, a decisive turning point after which she would never be the same again. Here, she must take a stand, and she was gambling her whole future on the outcome of this confrontation with herself. There was not to be any area for compromise, no dealing, nothing but a win or lose solution. She would either prove capable of exorcising these demons that had recently come to haunt her, or she would slip all the way into madness.
She was more frightened than she had ever been in her entire life, and she also felt more lonely than ever before.
The terns cried above. They, too, sounded forlorn and despairing.
She turned and started up the steps in the cliff.
Twice, she grew dizzy and had to lean against the stone wall on her right, catching her breath and her balance.
Often, she looked behind, expecting to see the white-robed girl close on her heels. But the steps were always empty.
BOOK TWO
EIGHT
At dinner that evening, in the smallest dining room, Gwyn had considerable difficulty keeping her mind on the conversation. Her thoughts kept drifting far afield, indeed, down strange avenues of inquiry as she gave serious consideration to ghosts, specters, the living dead, the occult in its countless facets… She thought, often, about the nature of madness, hallucination and even self-hypnosis… All of these were decidedly disturbing and unpleasant, though nonetheless pressing subjects; she could not bring herself to ignore them for very long, because she felt that they must all be faced as part of the solution to her condition. At times, however, she was caught wool-gathering. Having lost track of the table conversation, she would have to ask her aunt or her uncle to repeat a question.
“I'm sorry, Elaine,” she said, for the sixth time in less than an hour. “What did you say?”
Her aunt smiled at her indulgently and said, “I asked how you enjoyed your sailing today.”
“It was a lot of fun,” she said. And it really had been. But right now, the joy seemed to have paled; the only truly vivid memory she had of the day was her encounter with — the ghost.
“You didn't meet Jack Younger again, did you?” her uncle asked, his brows furrowed.
“No,” she said.
“Or any of the other fishermen?”
“No,” she said.
He blotted his lips on his napkin and said, “Gwyn, I don't want to pry at all…” He hesitated, then said, “But I do think that something's wrong here.”
“Wrong?” she asked. She tried to sound bewildered, and she smiled tentatively, though not genuinely. She reminded herself of her earlier decision. This was to be only her problem; only she could solve it.
“For one thing,” her Uncle Will said, “you're clearly preoccupied.”
She put down her fork and said, “I'm sorry. I know that I've been terribly rude, but—”
“Don't worry about that,” he said, waving his hand impatiently, as if to brush away her comment. “I'm not interested in the symptoms — just the source of the symptoms. What's the matter, Gwyn?”
“Really,” she said, “it's nothing.”
Elaine said, “Will, she's probably just tired out after all day on the water.”
“That's right,” Gwyn said, grasping at the offered straw, anxious to avoid any situation where she'd be forced to mention the ghost. “I can hardly keep my eyes open.”
“You're sure that's all it is?” he asked. His eyes seemed to bore right through her, to discover the convenient lie.
“Yes,” she said. “Don't worry about me, Uncle Will. I'm having a marvelous time, really. What could be bothering me?”
“Well,” he said reluctantly, “I guess there's nothing. But if something were upsetting you, Gwyn, you would let me know about it right away, wouldn't you?”
“Of course,” she lied.
“I want this to be a perfect summer for you,” he said.
“It will be.”
“Don't hesitate to come to me for anything.”
“I won't, Uncle Will.”
Elaine smiled and said, “He's got a bit of the mother hen in him, doesn't he, Gwyn?”
Gwyn smiled and said, “Just a bit.”
Will snorted, picked up his fork again. He said, “Mother hen, is it? Well, I suppose that's not so bad. I'm sure I've been called a lot of other things much worse.”
At two o'clock in the morning, unable to sleep, Gwyn heard the first soft, almost inaudible squeak of unoiled hinges as her bedroom door was opened. She sat up in bed in time to see the white-robed girl standing on the threshold.
“Hello, Gwyn.”
Gwyn lay back down without responding.
“Gwyn?”
“What do you want?”
“Is something the matter?” the ghost asked.
Gwyn lifted her head once again, for the voice had sounded much closer than before, too close for comfort. She saw that the dead girl had crossed half the open space toward her bed, a strangely lovely vision in the thin moonlight.