The Dark of Summer

by Dean R. Koontz

  “I'd appreciate it.”

  He said, “Old houses fascinate me, and this one fascinates me more than most. It's nearly a century old, did you know?”

  “I didn't.”

  He nodded. “Houses were built so much better then than they are built today. The carpenters cared about what they did; they looked upon a house as their own private work of art, even if they were never to live in it. They added so many nice touches that contractors bypass for the sake of economy today.” He shook himself, as if he was beginning to forget where he was. “I can run on about Barnaby Manor,” he apologized. “But I'll save it all for the tour this evening.”

  “I'll be looking forward to it,” she said.

  He said, “Well, you're much different than I thought you'd be.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. For one thing, you're prettier.”

  She blushed, wishing he hadn't said that — yet glad that he had. His candor was surprisingly refreshing, and her ego had needed boosting for a good, long while.

  He said, “And you aren't at all stuck-up.”

  “Why should I be?”

  “You're a rich young woman,” he said.

  “Are all rich young women stuck-up?”

  “Most of them.”

  She laughed. “Money isn't anything to get snobbish about.”

  “You're an exception to the rule,” he said, smiling.

  “I've never worked for a penny of my money,” she said. “Maybe that's why I can't be a snob about it.”

  “No,” he said. “That's usually when people get snobbish, when it's inherited wealth. If they had to work for it, they'd always remember what it had once been like to be poor, and they'd not be able to take on a superior attitude.” His voice had grown much more serious, and the smile had slid away from his face. He turned from her, as if he didn't want her to see him in anything but the best of humor, and his gaze fell upon the window through which she had been watching the sea. He said, subdued for the first time, “I hope that hasn't bothered you.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “The view from that window.”

  “No,” she said.

  He turned and looked at her now, concerned. “This is the best of the guest rooms, the airiest. But if the view bothers you—”

  “Please, believe me, I love the view,” she said, trying to smile and not managing it very well. Why did everyone have to bring up the view from the window? Why must she be repeatedly reminded of her dead sister, and by association, the deaths of her parents as well?

  “Good,” he said. “But if you want to change rooms, just leave word with Fritz. Some of the other guest rooms face the woods on the other side of the house. Smaller than this, but nice anyway.”

  “I'm fine,” she insisted.

  She didn't feel fine at all.

  “When you're finished with dinner,” he said, “don't forget to come and get me for a tour of the house. I'm most likely to be in the kitchen about that time.”

  “I won't forget,” she promised.

  When he was almost through the door, pulling it shut after him, she said, “Ben?”

  He paused, looked back at her, smiling still, a lock of brown hair having fallen across one eye. “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  He grinned even more broadly and said, “There's nothing to thank me for. I'm more than happy to have an excuse to spend time in your company.” He closed the door softly behind him.

  Gwyn went to her bed and stretched out beneath the blue canopy, abruptly quite weary. She realized that they were all concerned about her. They wanted her to have a good time here, and they did not want her to be bothered or upset by anything — including the view of the sea from her bedroom window. Their probing was only meant to ascertain if she were happy. Still, it rankled. The sea had never been an object of terror for her, even though Ginny had died in it, even though she had been lucky to escape its smothering mass alive. She had been to the beach and had been swimming in the ocean countless times since that long-ago tragedy. But if they didn't stop reminding her of Ginny, of the shattered boat so swiftly sinking, of the roiling water, of the screams… If they didn't stop reminding her, she was never going to be happy here at Barnaby Manor. There was such a thing as being overly protective; they were unconsciously destroying the good humor that they were so desperate to build in her. She resolved to make this plain to them if, at dinner or afterward, anything more was said about the view from her window.

  But the dinner conversation never once touched upon the matter and was, in fact, quite lively and amusing. The food, prepared by Fritz's wife, Grace, was excellent though more typically American middle class than Gwyn would have thought: roast beef, baked potatoes, three vegetables in butter sauce, rolls, and a peach cobbler for dessert. They drank a fine rose wine with the meal, which seemed in contrast to the other fare, but which brought out a special taste in everything and added an edge of humor to the conversation that might otherwise have been lacking.

  After dinner, because her uncle had still more business to attend to before he could call it a day, and because Elaine was tired and wished to go to bed early after an hour or so of reading, there was no objection to her going off with Ben Groves to examine the finer points of the house.

  She found him sitting in the kitchen, reading the newspaper which her Uncle Will had finished with that morning and passed on. “Ah,” he said, standing, “I was afraid you wouldn't come.”

  “I wouldn't miss it,” she said.

  Fritz and his wife were in the kitchen, and Ben introduced Gwyn to the older woman.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Grace said, offering Gwyn a chubby hand to shake. She was perhaps fifty years old, younger than her husband, though her hair was completely white. She was a robust woman, only slightly overweight, somewhat handsome, with few wrinkles in her face and all of these concentrated around the edges of her steady, blue eyes. She dressed and acted in a grandmotherly fashion, though Gwyn somehow felt that this image was an affected one, and that a wholly different Grace lay just below the surface, in the same way that Fritz's outward image did not seem to be the real one. Perhaps this harmless deception was what lifelong servants to the wealthy had to develop. They could never afford to tell their employers what they really thought. A workable facade kept their jobs and their sanities intact.

  “It was a wonderful supper,” Gwyn said.

  “Not fancy,” Grace said. “But good nourishment.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Mr. Barnaby had one of them fancy cooks for years, but he finally got rid of her. He says he's felt better ever since I took over the kitchen.”

  The woman seemed proud of Mr. Barnaby's approval — and yet, hovering just behind everything that she said, was an elusive sarcasm.

  Gwyn turned to Ben and said, “Well, can we start out now? I have to walk off some of that beef and potatoes.”

  Grace laughed and returned to her work at a countertop, where she appeared to be filing receipes.

  “This way,” Ben said, taking her out of the kitchen again.

  For the next hour, he took her from one room to another — the library; Uncle Will's study; the large dining room where thirty guests could be easily accommodated at a huge table; the front drawing room; the sewing room; the music room where a huge piano stood on a pedestal, and where comfortable divans had been arranged for an audience that, Ben said, had not sat here since Old Man Barnaby's days; the pool in the basement, filled with bright blue water, heated, encircled by crimson and black tiles; the nooks and crannies which the builders had included everywhere, tiny rooms, hidden closets, niches in a main room where one could step back and be out of sight, alone with one's thoughts for a few minutes… He showed her how the carpenters had built the manor house without nails, using wooden pegs soaked in oil to insure a tight fit of all the joints. He explained that the visible joints, at door frames and window ledges, were all carved by hand, with sharp knives, rather than sawed, to give th
em a rustic look and a much better fit. When he was finally done, she was as in awe of the fine points of the house as he was.

  At the door to her room, he said, “I hope I didn't bore you too much, Gwyn.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I get carried away about the place.”

  “It's easy to see why,” she said.

  “Tomorrow — might I show you the grounds around the house?”

  “I'd like that,” she said. “Shall we say ten o'clock?”

  “I'll be waiting by the front door,” he said. “Goodnight, Gwyn.”

  “Goodnight.”

  In her room, she watched the sea from her window, watched the moonlight dapple the moving waters, and she was once again perfectly sure that she had made the right decision in coming to Barnaby Manor for the summer. This evening, with Will and Elaine, and later with Ben Groves, had been one of the most enjoyable she'd spent in months.

  She prepared for bed, got beneath the covers, snuggled down and turned out the bedside lamp. In the darkness, her mind spinning wearily around and around, she found that she had no trouble falling into a deep, sound sleep…

  “Gwyn?”

  She turned over in her sleep.

  “Gwyn?”

  She buried her head beneath the pillow, trying to block out the voice, grumbling to herself at this unwanted intrusion.

  “Gwyn…”

  The voice was soft, feminine, as hollow as an echo, as fragile as blown glass, repeating her name over and over again.

  “Gwyn…”

  She rolled onto her back, trying to shake off the dream, still not awake, flailing slightly at the covers around her.

  “I'm here, Gwyn…”

  She was awake now.

  She pulled her arms out from beneath the lightweight covers and let the cool air-conditioning blow across them.

  “Gwyn…”

  Yawning, she tried to shake off the lingering dream. It had been a strange one: no visual images, nothing but that haunting voice which called out to her over and over again.

  “Gwyn…”

  Suddenly, realizing that the voice was not a part of any dream, but was real, she opened her eyes. The room was no longer completely dark, but flickeringly illuminated by a candle. She sat straight up in bed, confused but not yet frightened.

  “Hello, Gwyn…”

  Incredibly, impossibly, she looked to the open doorway of her room and saw herself standing there. It was as if she were looking into a mirror — except that this was no mirror image. Her double, in the door frame, was standing, while she was sitting. And while she wore a dark blue nightgown, the figure in the door was dressed in a gauzy white gown that looked as if it were made of hundreds and hundreds of layers of spider webs, all rustling and yet soft.

  “Don't you know me?” the double asked.

  “No.”

  The double smiled.

  She said, “How's the view from your window?”

  Gwyn felt a chill that did not come from the air conditioner, a chill that welled up from deep inside of her.

  “You've decided properly.”

  “Decided what?”

  “To love.”

  Her double stepped back from the open door and turned away, walking quickly out of sight to Gwyn's left, down the second floor corridor.

  “Wait!” Gwyn cried.

  She pushed back the covers, got out of bed and ran to the door.

  The hallway was dark, except for the moonlight that filtered in through the windows at either end. There was no candle. And by the pale, unearthly luminescence, Gwyn could see that the length of the corridor was utterly deserted.

  Numbed by what she'd seen, she knew she must be asleep. There was no other logical explanation for it: she must be dreaming. She bunched some of her right arm in the fingers of her left hand and pinched herself hard, almost cried out with the pain. That was not the reaction one might have in a dream, surely. She was awake…

  She stepped back into her room and closed the door. She went into the attached bath, washed her face in cold water and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her face looked drawn, her eyes wary.

  “You need a suntan,” she told herself.

  Her reflection obediently mimicked the movement of her lips. It did not start to make movements by itself, as she had almost expected that it might.

  “You were merely dreaming,” she told her reflection, watching it closely. “Just dreaming.”

  It simultaneously told her the same thing, moving its lips without making a sound.

  She leaned away from the mirror and said, “Is it possible to have a dream last on, after you've wakened?”

  Her reflection didn't know, or, if it knew, wasn't saying.

  She sighed, turned out the bathroom lights, and went back to bed. She supposed that her aunt, and Ben Groves, so solicitous of her with their reminders of Ginny's death, had primed her for such a delusion as she'd just had.

  The clock read 4:10 in the morning, still four hours before she would have to get up for breakfast. However, she slept very little the remainder of the night, dozing on and off, waking again and again to listen for the sound of a whispery voice calling her name…

  FOUR

  Half done with their tour of the grounds — which turned out to be far larger and more elaborately landscaped than Gwyn had at first thought — she and Ben Groves stopped at a white stone bench near the perimeter of the dense woodlands, within sight of a birdbath where two robins played. They sat and, taking a break from the nearly non-stop conversation they had thus far indulged in, watched the birds frolicking.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” Gwyn asked him, without preliminaries, turning away from the robins.

  They had talked about so many things during the last hour, jumping from one subject to another, sounding each other out on various topics, trying to get to know each other better, that it was unlikely he would find her abruptness strange.

  “How do you mean?” he asked.

  “Ghosts,” she said. “You know, old friends to haunt you, old enemies here to take revenge.”

  He thought a moment, then said, smiling, “I believe in them.”

  “You really do?”

  “Yes.”

  She was surprised. “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “No,” she said, “I'm serious. Why do you believe in ghosts?”

  “I believe in ghosts,” he said, “because I believe in anything that's fun.” He grinned at her.

  “Ghosts are fun?” she asked.

  He leaned back against the stone bench, folding his hands behind his head and crossing his ankles out in front of him. “Oh, most assuredly! Ghosts are an enormous lot of fun.”

  “How?”

  “Everyone enjoys a good fight.”

  “I don't.”

  “Sure you do,” he said.

  “Nope.” She was adamant about it.

  He turned sideways, his hands still behind his head, and he said, “Didn't you enjoy Halloween when you were a kid?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Didn't the idea of frightening other people — and of being frightened yourself — appeal to you?”

  “That's different,” she said.

  He smiled. “Okay, then.” He seemed to pause for thought, then said, “Have you ever gone to see a horror movie — you know, one with vampires or werewolves — or even ghosts?”

  “Sure. But what's that got to do with—”

  He interrupted her by holding up a hand for silence. He said, “Just bear with me. Now, did you go to see any more of this sort of movie, after you saw the first?”

  “Several,” she said.

  “Why did you go?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He said, “Why did you keep going back to this sort of movie?”

  “To be entertained. What else are movies for?”

  “Exactly,” he said. He seemed pleased with himself. “And since the whole point of a horror movie is to
frighten the audience, you must have enjoyed being frightened.”

  She was about to disagree, when she saw that he was right, and that there was no point on which she could prove him wrong. She laughed. “I never looked at it like that before.”

  “So,” he said, “I believe in ghosts because they're fun.”

  They watched the robins a while longer. In time she said, “But aren't there — evil ghosts?”

  “Probably most of them.”

  “What if one of these has in mind to do more to you than frighten you? What if it intends you harm?”

  “Then I stop believing in ghosts,” he said.

  She laughed and slapped his shoulder playfully. “It's no use trying to be serious with you.”

  He sat up straight and cut back the power of his smile. “I can be as serious as anyone else.”

  “Sure you can.”

  He said, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You should always keep an open mind,” he said.

  She threw a particularly sharp look in his direction, as if she thought she might catch him in some private and revealing expression not meant for her eyes, and thereby know what he was thinking. She said, “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

  He was clearly surprised by her tone of voice, and he said, “Mean? Why, nothing particular… I was just trying to say that there are more things in heaven and earth than any one person, no matter how bright, can ever hope to comprehend.”

  “I guess that's true,” Gwyn said, somewhat nonplussed. She smoothed down her blue denim skirt and said, “I'll be sure to do as you say; I'll keep an open mind about ghosts.”

  “They're fun,” he said.

  “So I've heard.”

  She should not have snapped at him as she had, she realized, for he could have no way of knowing about her dream from the previous night. But that dream — the dead girl, the flickering candle, the whispered words echoing in darkness — had left her slightly on edge, expecting to encounter another spectral vision of her dead sister at any moment, in the most unlikely places. The first had seemed so real, not like a dream at all, though a dream it had surely been…