Gwyn did remember now, though she hadn't thought of Earl Teckert in a good many years.
“You do recall!” Ginny said.
“Yes.”
“We used to build sandcastles on the beach.”
“I remember.”
“Just the three of us,” Ginny said. “And we'd both be trying to get his attention. I think, perhaps, I had half as much of a crush on him as you did.”
Gwyn nodded, remembering the pleasant summer afternoons and the warm sand between her small fingers. She said, “I kissed him once, square on the mouth.” She laughed as the scene came back to her in full detail. “I startled him so badly, he was speechless when I let him go. And he refused to play with us again for nearly a week. Every time he saw us coming, he ran the other way.”
“That's him, sure enough!” Ginny said. She shook her head, her bright yellow hair a moonlit wreath that shimmered about her face, and she said, “He was terribly bashful.”
Gwyn began to reply — then stopped suddenly, fear flooding back into her like a wave of brackish water. If this ghost were the product of her own sick mind, an hallucination, a delusion, then how could it talk about things which she, herself, had forgotten? Shouldn't the apparition's conversation be strictly limited to those things which Gwyn could remember?
“Is something the matter, Gwyn?”
She licked her lips, swallowed hard. Her mouth was dry, and she felt as if she had a fever.
“Gwyn?”
It was possible, Gwyn supposed, that the hallucination, the ghost, could tap her subconscious mind for the old memories. Though she might have forgotten Earl Teckert, consciously, the old memories still lay in her subconscious mind, waiting to be re-discovered. The brain, after all, stored every experience; it never forgot anything. All one had to do was dig deep enough, find the right keys to the old doors, and even the most trivial experiences were to be found, far out of sight in the mind but not completely lost. Yes. That was it, must be it. The ghost, her alter-ego, the second half of her splitting personality, was able to tap her subconscious, to dredge up these bits and pieces of the past which she seemed, herself, to have forgotten.
“Gwyn?”
“What?”
“Something's the matter,” the ghost said.
She turned away from it.
“Gwyn?”
“It's nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“Really, I'm fine.”
“Gwyn, I am your sister. You used to share things with me; we used to have no secrets.".
Gwyn said nothing.
“I came from the other side, through all that long darkness, to be with you again. You mustn't reject me; you must share with me, accept me.”
Gwyn had begun to cry. The tears welled up in her eyes, hung in the corners until they became too heavy to stay there any longer, burst out through her tightly closed lashes and ran down her cheeks, warm and swift and salty, catching in the down-turned corners of her mouth, then trickling on down her chin. She wanted to stop crying, felt that it was desperately important for her to stop crying and get herself together again — but she simply could not. She saw now that dispelling the hallucination was going to be far more difficult, a far longer battle than she had at first anticipated. And perhaps she would never be able to get rid of the delusion, to cure herself, regain normality… When she ignored the specter, it still did not vanish as it should have; though it stopped speaking to her, it remained quite close at hand, hovering, waiting, listening, watching… And when she boldly confronted it, unafraid or trying to be unafraid, the thing also remained, undeterred, gaining control of the conversation. Indeed, when she confronted it, the specter proved itself much more substantial than she wanted to believe it was…
What would happen if she did not improve, if she couldn't be rid of these delusions?
Must she go to Dr. Recard again? And if that was necessary, would even he be able to help her over so serious an illness? Could anyone help her regain her sanity once she was freely talking to dead people, seeing ghosts, feeling their hands on her neck…?
She bit her lower lip and tried to tell herself that the situation, no matter how dangerous, was not as bleak as it seemed to be. She was going to pull through this, just as she had pulled through her previous trouble. Once, Dr. Recard had said that the only hopelessly ill mental patients were those who refused to admit there was anything wrong with them. He said that if you could recognize your sickness, knew you were in trouble, you would almost surely pull out of it. She had to believe that he was right. The future was not lost, nor was all hope abandoned. She'd fight through it. Over and over, she reassured herself, told herself she'd win out, but she only believed half of what she said.
In a few minutes, the tears stopped flowing, dried on her face, leaving a crinkled, sticky feeling after them. She wiped at her face with a corner of the sheet, but didn't feel particularly refreshed. She supposed she should go into the bathroom and wash her face — though she dreaded meeting the ghost again… Then, realizing that she was shrinking from her condition, that she was retreating from recognition of her illness, she pushed the covers up and got out of bed.
The room was empty.
She went to the hall door and looked out.
The ghost was nowhere in sight.
“Ginny?” she whispered.
She received no answer, except a slight, almost inaudible echo of her own word.
She closed the door, smiling. Perhaps she was already better. If she could admit the ghost was a delusion, how could the delusion persist?
She went and washed her face.
In bed again, bone weary from the day's strenuous sailing and from her contacts with the spirit, she soon fell asleep. Her sleep was troubled, filled with dark, stirring figures that she could not readily identify but which seemed to threaten her. She turned, murmuring, whimpering, scratching at the sheets until long past dawn.
NINE
The following morning, after breakfast in his room, as was his usual routine, Will Barnaby entertained a visitor in the library on the first floor, a somewhat portly gentleman with long sideburns, a mustache and thinning hair, all of which he kept in trim. The visitor, Edgar Aimes, was as well dressed as his host: an expensively tailored summer suit in a lightweight, coffee colored Italian knit fabric, black leather hand-tooled Italian shoes, a light brown shirt and a handwoven tie. But the similarity between Barnaby and Aimes did not end with their clothes. Aimes was as quick and as observant as his host, with dark eyes that seemed always watchful, in search of an advantage, an edge, something that might prove useful in bargaining. And when Aimes spoke, his voice was almost as self-possessed and authoritative as Barnaby's voice. Almost. Clearly, both men were accustomed to having money and to dealing for large stakes.
Barnaby took a chair behind his desk, leaned back, motioned Aimes to sit down in the easy chair by the bookcases.
“What's the word from Langley?” Barnaby asked, watching Aimes very closely, as if he distrusted him.
Aimes sat with a long sigh. He said, “Well, he's still asking too much for the property.”
“How much?”
“Forty-two thousand dollars.”
“That sounds—” Barnaby began.
“Unreasonable,” Aimes finished.
Barnaby tapped his fingers on the blotter of the desk. “You think that's too much?”
“I know it is.”
“What should he come down to?”
“For Jenkins' Niche?” Aimes asked, giving himself time to think, to figure. His own profit, as the real estate agent for Barnaby's growing property acquisitions, was dependent upon the purchase price. He didn't want to drive it so low that he hurt himself; yet, he didn't want Barnaby to pay an inordinately high price. After all, he wanted to remain as Barnaby's agent, a rather lucrative position, considering how fast Barnaby had been buying up seafront land.