The Dark of Summer

by Dean R. Koontz

  Even half a dozen steps away from them, one could barely see the tops of these caves. Here, the beach was hove up like the back of an angry cat and was, for the most of its width, higher than the entrances to the caves, providing a natural blind. Within two yards of the cliff wall, however, the beach sloped drastically, giving way to the subterranean chambers at the bottom of a seven- or eight-foot incline.

  Gwyn stood at the top of this slope, looking down, not sure if she should risk a moment of optimism or not. Previously, in scouring the beach, she had seen no footprints besides her own; two days of wind and shifting tides had wiped the open sand clean of any trace of the dead girl's ghostly passage. At the bottom of this slope, on the other hand, in the dimly lighted entrance to one of the caves, other footprints marked the sand where the wind and the waves could not get in to erase them.

  Careful not to lose her balance and fall, Gwyn went down the steep hill, and braced herself against the cliff wall at the bottom. She crabbed sideways until she reached the cave in question.

  Her heart was thudding, more from excitement than exertion, but this was the only sign that she felt close to some strange truth…

  In the deeper, looser sand of the slope, the other set of prints was little more than a staggered series of formless depressions, not at all sufficiently well defined for identification. But at the bottom, in the cave entrance where the sand was level and not so deep or dry as on the slope, the prints had taken well and remained clear: slender and feminine, the tracks of a woman in her bare feet — as the ghost had been…

  Gwyn would not permit herself the elation that bubbled within her, because she realized that the footprints might have been made by anyone, a curious explorer from somewhere farther south along the beachfront, and not by a ghost. Moving cautiously, so as not to disturb the tell-tale tracks, she slipped to the mouth of the cave and then inside, walking only so far as she could see, though the subterranean system seemed rather large and complex. She saw, when she turned to face out toward the daylight, that the bare-footed woman who had been here before her had not gone deep into the cave either, but had stood just inside the entrance, looking out. Though this seemed to prove the woman had been waiting there, looking up the slope, expecting to see someone at the top, it was not proof of a ghost — or of a hoaxer.

  Gwyn stood there, near where the woman had stood, trying to see what value this discovery had.

  None.

  Even if she showed Uncle Will these tracks, what would they prove? That someone had been in the cave before her? So what?

  She looked down at the footprints again, shivered.

  Wasn't it possible that — yes, even likely that — if she did go to fetch her Uncle Will for him to take a look at the footprints, that they would be gone when the two of them returned from the manor house, that where prints were now, only clean sand would be then? Or perhaps, if she still saw the prints — might he be unable to see them, just as he had been unable to see the broom marks on the sand, yesterday? That would be conclusive proof that she was not the victim of a hoax, but was indeed losing her mind.

  And that would be intolerable, that abrupt closing off of all alternatives. Instead of confirming the slim possibility of a hoax — for whatever reasons — it would amount to nothing more than another carefully positioned brick in the rapidly growing edifice of her madness.

  For a moment, she considered going deeper into the cave to see if it might lead anywhere in particular, but she finally decided against any further explorations. Clearly, the barefoot woman had not gone any farther than this; therefore, nothing beyond this point could interest Gwyn or help her solve the overall puzzle of the ghost. Besides, she had no flashlight and no way of marking her route so that she could retrace her steps in the event that she became lost in the twisting corridors of stone.

  Dejected, she started out of the cave and almost overlooked the flash of white near the cavern mouth. Catching sight of it out of the corner of her eye, she turned and, her breath held at the back of her throat, recognized a scrap of flimsy, white cloth. It was the same fluffy fabric from which the dead girl's gown had been made. This scrap had caught on the jagged edge of a rock and been torn loose, apparently without the dead girl being aware of it. The breeze caught it and stirred it like a tuft of white hair on an old man's head.

  Gwyn touched it, reverently, as if it were a sacred relic, pried it free of the jagged stone and held it in the palm of her hand.

  This was real. She could touch it, feel it, run the flimsy stuff through her fingers. With this to show Uncle Will, she could get some help in discovering who was…

  Then again, how did she know that the scrap was real? Hadn't she felt the dead girl touch her, and hadn't she actually wrestled with the ghost? If she could hallucinate something as seemingly real as that, couldn't she hallucinate this piece of cloth?

  And even if it were genuine, what did it prove? That someone had been in this cave, had lost a piece of garment on a jagged rock? That didn't mean the “someone” was a ghost, a hoaxer pretending to be her dead sister. The cloth might have come to be here two days ago, or it might have hung on the rock for a week, a month. Indeed, it might have been here so long that the sun had bleached it white, though it had once been a different color. In short, it was proof of nothing.

  She looked around for something more, anything more, but she found only sand and stone — and possibly footprints.

  Sighing, she jammed the white scrap into the pocket of her shorts. The climb up the steep slope outside of the cave was exceedingly difficult and required every last bit of her strength, though she would normally have made it in a few seconds, with little effort. She kept falling to her knees and sliding back, the treacherous sand shifting like a liquid beneath her. In the end, she was forced to go up on her hands and knees, clawing frantically for each foot she gained. By the time she had reached the surface of the beach, she was gasping for breath, shaking like a storm-blown leaf, and coated with perspiration which dripped from her brow and streaked across her face.

  She toddled across the beach, to the water's edge, and sat there where she felt it would be cooler. Her head ached and seemed to spin around and around, as if it were coming loose. In a while, the sensation of movement ceased, though the headache remained.

  When she felt rested enough, she got up and started back toward Barnaby Manor, her rubbery legs twisting and bending but somehow managing to support her. Each step increased her weariness, brought a deep yearning for sleep more intense than that which she had suffered in her previous illness, so intense, in fact, that she could not understand it. She didn't know, of course, that she had been drugged heavily, twice, in the last twenty-four hours, and that a residue of those drugs still worked within her, like a quiet little fist.

  By the time she reached the bottom of the stone steps that lead up the cliffside to the Barnaby estate, Gwyn was drawing her breath in long, shuddering sobs, bone weary, fuzzy-eyed. She sat down, letting her head fall forward, her arms folded across her knees. She didn't see how she could manage to climb clear to the top.

  However, the sun was setting, bringing a shadowed twilight to the empty beach, and night would soon lay its black glove over everything. She didn't want to be down here when darkness fell, no matter whether her ghost was a real ghost, an hallucination or a hoaxer. When she had steadied her heartbeat and regained her breath, she got up and began the dangerous ascent.

  The first few steps weren't bad.

  The sixth seemed twice as high as it should be.

  The seventh was a major obstacle.

  After that, her strength fell away, and the steps rose before her like a series of mountains.

  Darkness was falling more rapidly than she'd anticipated — or she was taking an inordinately long time to make the climb — leaving pools of shadow on the steps, so that she sometimes misjudged where the edge of one of them lay. A chill draught moved down through the natural flue, bringing goose pimples to her flesh and giving her
the odd sensation that a giant lay above, breathing down on her.

  The twentieth step seemed to slip away from her, like the moving riser on an escalator; she lost her balance, felt herself tilting backward, a long hard fall behind her…

  Desperately, she flung herself forward, trying to regain her precarious but precious balance. She over-compensated for the backward tilt, and went painfully to her knees, clutching at the steps as if she thought they would shift out from under her.

  Darkness pressed in.

  The draught grew chillier.

  In a while, she started up again, staying on her knees this time, moving ahead as she had on that slope of sand by the caves. This, in the end, proved the wisest course, for she finally reached the lawn above without further injury and no more close calls.

  She lay on the grass, catching her breath, then got up and, crying slightly at her own weakness, walked toward the welcome lights of Barnaby Manor…

  “I told you a walk wasn't what you needed,” Elaine said, helping her into bed.

  Gwyn slid down under the sheets and lay back against the pillows, thankful for the smell of clean linen and the enveloping softness. “I see, now, you were right,” Gwyn said.

  “Dr. Cotter said you should rest.”

  “I'm awfully tired.”

  “What would you like for supper?” Elaine asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You've got to eat.”

  “I'm not hungry, Aunt Elaine.”

  The older woman made a face and said, “But you've hardly had anything to eat all day!”

  “Breakfast.”

  “One meal isn't—”

  Gwyn said, “But it was an enormous breakfast; it filled me up; I've not been hungry since, really.” She wanted to stretch, but didn't have the strength to lift her arms. She yawned instead and said, “All I want to do is sleep, get my strength back.”

  “If you're sure you're not hungry.”

  “I'm sure.”

  Elaine picked up a bottle of tablets by the side of the bed and emptied one out into the palm of her hand. “I'll get you a glass of water to take this with.”

  “Take what?”

  “A sleeping pill.”

  “I don't want a sleeping pill,” Gwyn said.

  “Dr. Cotter prescribed them.”

  “I don't need one,” Gwyn said, adamantly. “I feel like I've been kicked around by a herd of horses. I'll sleep without help.”

  “Dear—”

  “I won't take one.”

  Elaine sighed and put the tablet back into the bottle, capped the bottle and put it on the night-stand again. “If you won't, you won't.” She turned off all the lights except the reading lamp by her chair, sat down and picked up her book.

  “What are you doing?” Gwyn asked. She raised her head from her pillows and looked at the older woman.

  “Reading, dear,” Elaine said.

  “You're not going to sit up with me, are you?” Gwyn asked. She felt almost like a helpless little girl, a child so afraid of the dark that she needed a chaperone to help her get to sleep.

  “Of course I am,” Elaine said. She was dressed in a brown stretch sweater, brown bellbottoms and stylish boots. She did not look at all like the sort of woman who would insist on mothering anyone, yet here she was, insisting just the same. “If you won't take a sleeping tablet, as Dr. Cotter said you should, then I ought to be here to watch out for you, in case you need or want something.”

  “I don't want to be such a burden on you,” Gwyn said.

  “This isn't a burden. I've been wanting to read this novel for several months.”

  “You'll be more comfortable in the library,” Gwyn said. “I insist you don't ruin your evening worrying about me.” When she saw that Elaine was not affected by any of this, she said, “Besides, the light bothers me; it keeps me awake.”

  Elaine closed her book on a flap of the dust jacket, to mark her place, rose to her feet. “Promise you will sleep?”

  “I'm in no shape to do anything else,” she said.

  And she wasn't.

  Elaine bent and kissed her forehead, pulled the sheets closer around her, picked up the book, turned out the reading light, and left the room.

  The darkness was heavy but not oppressive, a welcome preliminary to sleep.

  Gwyn thought, briefly, how fortunate she was to have both Elaine and Uncle Will to look after her, especially at a time like this when everything seemed to be falling apart for her. Without them, she would have been so terribly alone, so much more vulnerable to this sickness, so helpless. But with them, she felt, she had a good chance of recovery, a better chance than she would have had if she'd no one to turn to…

  Sleep reached up.

  It was not threatening, but gentle.

  She let it touch her and pull her down.

  “Gwyn?”

  She opened her eyes and found that she had rolled onto her stomach in her sleep. She was peering out through a cocoon of sheets at a fragment of the wall behind the bed, and she could see that the reading light — which was dimmer than any other light in the room — had been turned on again. She hoped Aunt Elaine had not returned to keep a vigil.

  “Gwyn?”

  She froze.

  A small hand touched her shoulder, shook her gently, then more and more insistently.

  “Gwyn?”

  She rolled over, pushed the sheets away from her and looked up into the pale face of the dead girl, Ginny, her long-gone sister.

  “How are you feeling, Gwyn?”

  She was beyond screaming for help, beyond fighting with the ghost, far beyond any reaction at all — except a dull and unemotional acceptance of the impossible.

  “You've been sleeping so much,” the dead girl said, “that I haven't had a chance to talk to you. I didn't want to wake you, because I knew how much you needed your sleep.”

  Gwyn said nothing.

  “You've been so overwrought, and it's mostly my fault.”

  Gwyn closed her eyes.

  She opened them again.

  It didn't work: the ghost was still there.

  “Are you listening to me, Gwyn?”

  Against her will, she nodded.

  “You looked so far away,” the apparition said. “I didn't even know if you could hear me.”

  “I can hear you.”

  The ghost sat down on the edge of the bed. She said, “Have you thought over what I talked about?”

  Gwyn was actually unable to understand the specter's meaning; her mind was disjointed, scattered with the fragments of thought, smashed by her weariness and by her fear which, by now, was a common part of her.

  “Will you come with me, to the other side? Will you die with me so we can be together again?”

  Gwyn looked away from the dead girl, trying to block her out altogether, uselessly hoping that her eyes would light upon some distraction which — by completely dominating her attention — would force the apparition to disappear. After passing over a dozen objects and rejecting them, her gaze come to rest on the bottle of sleeping tablets which stood on her nightstand, almost within her reach.

  “You'll like the other side, I promise you, Gwyn,” the specter said, leaning closer.

  Its voice was like the sough of a night wind through the tilted stones of a deserted graveyard. It curdled Gwyn's blood and made her look all the more intently at the escape offered in the contents of that small medicine bottle.

  “I could open your window,” the apparition said. “Straight down under it is a flagstone walk. If you jumped—”

  Gwyn ignored the whispering voice and rose onto one elbow, leaned out and grasped the bottle of tablets. She took the cap off and shook out one pill. It was white, very shiny and hard; she supposed she could take it even without water. She put it in her mouth, after gathering saliva, and swallowed it.

  “Sleeping pills?” the ghost asked.

  Gwyn lay back.

  The ghost took the bottle out of her hand. “Yes, de
ar, this would also be a good way to do it.” She took a second pill out and held it up to Gwyn's lips.

  Gwyn kept her mouth pressed tightly shut, biting into her lower lip so hard that she thought she would soon draw blood if she weren't more careful.

  “Dear Gwyn, it would be much less painful than jumping from the window or drowning in the sea. Just a long sleep leading into an even longer sleep…”

  Though she knew that this was only an hallucination, had to be, Gwyn was not about to open her mouth and accept the tablet, even if it were imaginary.

  “Say, a dozen of them,” the ghost said. “If you could manage to swallow only a dozen of them, that ought to do the trick.” She pushed the pill against Gwyn's lips.

  Gwyn turned her head.

  “Perhaps you'd like a glass of water to take it with,” the specter said, rising. She put the bottle and the tablet on the nightstand and went into the bathroom.

  Please let me sleep, Gwyn begged. I can't stand it anymore… I just can't… I'll start to scream, and I won't be able to stop screaming again, ever.

  But, as mentally and physically exhausted as she was, she did not sleep, but lay on the edge of it, ready to fall.

  She heard water running in the bathroom.

  Then it stopped, and the specter came back with a glass in her hand.

  “Now,” the ghost said, “we'll get them down, won't we?”

  Gwyn closed her eyes as tightly as she closed her mouth, bringing creases to her forehead and colorful streaks of light to the blackness behind her lids. She wished that she had the ability to close her ears, too, to seal out that cool, hypnotic whisper.

  The pill touched her lips.

  “It will be easy, Gwyn.”

  She turned her head, felt the pill follow her, still jammed against her mouth.

  “Gwyn?”

  Panic began to rise in her as she felt a scream straining at the back of her throat. But then, mercifully, she also felt the pill she had taken beginning to work on her. Sleep came closer. She relaxed and gave herself over to it and was carried away into darkness, away from the ghost, away from everything.