The Dark of Summer

by Dean R. Koontz

  SIXTEEN

  Forty-five minutes later, in the kitchen downstairs, while Gwyn remained sound asleep in her room, the other six members of the manor household sat around the big table drinking freshly brewed coffee and eating pastries which Grace had baked earlier in the day. No one felt much like eating a full, cooked meal; there were too many building tensions in the air, and there was too much immediately at stake to permit proper digestion.

  However, the four different kinds of pastries were all crisp and delicious.

  “Maybe you really should have been a cook, Grace,” Ben Groves said, grinning at the gray-haired woman over a half-eaten apple tart. “I mean, you do have a flair for it.”

  “I was a cook once,” she said. “Long hours, lots of work, and only mediocre pay — unless you've style to handle the so-called gourmet dishes. Which I don't.” She took a bite of her own pastry and said, “I prefer life with Fritz, here. It's infinitely more exciting than spending your days in a hot kitchen.”

  “With Fritz,” Ben said, “you're lucky you haven't been spending your time in a hot jail.”

  “I resent that,” Fritz said. “I've worked the con games in half the countries of Europe, and I've not been caught once.”

  This sort of light banter continued for another several minutes, though neither Elaine nor William Barnaby joined into it. They drank their coffee and ate their pastries like two strangers at a table of close friends, though the illusion of rejection was not the fault of the other four. Fritz, Grace, Ben, and Penny had learned, very early in this strange association with the Barnabys, man and wife, that their wealthy patrons were not inclined to camaraderie.

  At last, when he was finished eating and had wiped his hands on a linen napkin heretofore folded on his lap, Will Barnaby interrupted their chatter and directed a distinctly admonitory remark to Penny Groves. “You were pretty damned foolish upstairs, just a while ago,” he said. “And I mean by your own account of it.”

  The girl looked up, finished chewing a mouthful of blueberry muffin and said, with surprise, “I was?”

  “You did say that you attempted to force her to take another sleeping tablet, didn't you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn't that strike you as foolish?”

  She said, “I didn't mean her to have it. I was only trying to scare her, and I succeeded.”

  “Suppose she had taken it?” Barnaby asked.

  “She wouldn't have.”

  “But suppose that she'd opened her mouth. Would you have given it to her then?” His face was tied up in an ugly, dark knot.

  The blonde thought about it for a moment, then said, “Well, I would have had to, wouldn't I? I mean, if she'd opened her mouth for it, and if I'd taken it away after all of the spooky act I'd put on, she'd have been sure to smell a rat.”

  “Then,” Barnaby said, “you were inexcusably foolish.”

  “Look here,” Ben Groves argued, “those pills aren't all that powerful. Two of them wouldn't have killed her, by any means.”

  Barnaby suddenly slammed a large fist down onto the table, rattling all the dishes and startling his associates. Elaine was not startled at all, for she knew him too well not to anticipate his outbursts. He said, “Gwyn must not be physically harmed. We mustn't take the slightest chance of killing her. It's not a matter of mercy, or anything like that, God knows; but if she dies, her estate might never come my way.”

  “It would be sure to,” Fritz said, dusting powdered sugar from his hands. “You are her last living relative.”

  “It would take years,” Barnaby said. “And the state would be right in there, shouting about a lack of last wills and testaments; the state would want it all and would get a huge chunk of it, no matter what a court finally decided.” He was red-faced just thinking about that delay.

  To head off another explosion on her husband's part, for the sake of group unity, Elaine said, in a more reasonable tone, “You see, the girl's got a history of mental instability. It shouldn't be difficult to convince a court that she's gone past the edge — especially if she goes on about ghosts or even hoaxes of ghosts. If she can be certified incompetent to control her own affairs, Will is sure to be given management of her estate, without any of the fortune being lost to inheritance taxes.”

  “And with that,” Barnaby added, “I can develop these properties I've been purchasing over the last ten years.”

  “But you've got a stake in this too, all of you,” Elaine reminded them. “Every risk you take is as much a danger to your own reward as it is to ours.”

  There was silence around the table for a while.

  Then Penny said, “I won't make a mistake like that again.”

  “Good,” Barnaby said.

  Fritz raised his coffee cup and said, “To fortune.”

  Three others joined in the unorthodox toast. The Barnabys, as usual, sat back and watched it all as if they were visitors at a zoo.

  SEVENTEEN

  The following morning, which was Wednesday morning, her Aunt Elaine was there when she woke, shortly past nine o'clock, and she was full of smiles and small jokes to cheer up the patient. The older woman helped her to the bath, where she left her on her own. (Brushing teeth and washing her face, combing the snarls from her long yellow hair, were almost more than Gwyn could manage; she didn't even attempt to shower, for she hadn't the energy or the will to stand up that much longer.) When she was back in bed, propped up on extra pillows, Elaine brought her a huge breakfast on a bed tray, helped her remove the lids from the hot dishes. Though Gwyn was sure that Grace's cooking was as good as usual, all of the food looked colorless and tasted stale, and she had no appetite at all for it, though she forced down more than half of everything. She recognized these often-suffered symptoms of chronic malaise; before, when she had been tempted to sleep her life away, food had been tasteless and without visual appeal. The world had gone by in a senseless blur as she curled tighter and tighter into her own mental cocoon…

  But, though she recognized what was happening to her, she no longer wanted to fight it. She had been having such pleasant dreams…

  In her dreams, her parents lived. There had been no accident, no deaths, and they were together again. Likewise, in the dreams, Ginny had never perished at sea. They were all so happy in their dream life, having so much fun…

  Indeed, the dreams seemed more real than the waking world, very sharply detailed and filled with emotions. They were preferable to the drab surroundings she discovered upon waking, and she longed, now, to get back to them.

  “Do you feel more rested?” Elaine asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  But she was still quite tired.

  “You'd like to sleep more, wouldn't you, dear?”

  “Yes, Elaine.”

  “I'll get you a tablet.”

  “Thank you.”

  The sound of running water.

  The rattle of the cap being removed from the medicine bottle, the hollow sound of it being put down on the nightstand again.

  A hand lifting her head.

  “Here you are, dear.”

  She opened her mouth.

  Elaine popped the pill inside.

  Gwyn reached, helping the older woman tilt the waterglass, took a long swallow of water, washing down the tablet. Then, pleased to know that the dreams would soon be returning, she lay back and waited for sleep to overtake her.

  At 12:45 that same afternoon, while Gwyn slept upstairs, Sheriff Louis Plunkett sat down in an easy chair in William Barnaby's study, holding his large black hat in both hands, like a superstitious man religiously fingering a talisman. He had hoped to meet Barnaby at the front door and conclude this business without having to come inside. However, Fritz had answered the door and escorted him to the study, giving him no choice but to almost literally beard the lion in his own den.

  Plunkett got up, paced around the bookshelves, looked at the two watercolors in ornate frames, checked the view from the window, went back to his cha
ir, looked at his watch, found that he'd only passed three minutes with all of that.

  He was nervous, partly because this was one of those cases he despised being involved with, and partly because he'd thus far had nothing at all for lunch. A man his size, as active as he was, had to keep his regular meal schedule, or he got nervous. So he was nervous.

  At last, Barnaby entered the study and closed the door behind, all smiles. He was still pleased with the efficient, no-nonsense way that Plunkett had posted the eviction notices yesterday and delivered all the right papers to all the right fishermen with nary a hitch. He offered his hand, shook Plunkett's, then went straight to his chair, sat down and picked up his letter opener, which he usually toyed with when entertaining a visitor in this room.

  “What's the problem?” he asked Plunkett, though he was not really expecting a problem.

  The sheriff had one for him, anyway. Plunkett frowned, his large face creased with two lines from the sides of his nose to the perimeters of his square chin; he stopped twisting his hat in his hands and placed it on the arm of his chair. He said, in a businesslike voice in which there was no longer a reluctance to skirt the issue at hand. “Well, I went out there late this morning, to see how they were getting along, to find out if there were any hitches in the moving.”

  “Out to Jenkins' Niche?” Barnaby clarified.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They have — what? Twelve hours?”

  “Somewhat less than that, now.”

  Barnaby smiled and nodded happily. He said, “That was very efficient of you, Sheriff, to make the follow-up call.”

  “You don't seem to understand me, Mr. Barnaby. I came here to you because we seem to have a problem,” Plunkett said. He ignored the other man's compliment, perhaps more because of a deep-seated dislike for William Barnaby than because of any great modesty.

  “Problem?”

  “They won't leave.”

  “The fishermen?”

  “Yes, sir, of course.”

  Barnaby froze, the tip of the silver letter opener pressed against the ball of his thumb. He said, “Won't leave?”

  “That's what they say.”

  “They told this to you, directly to your face?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They must be joking!”

  “They seem serious, Mr. Barnaby.”

  “They have to leave.”

  Plunkett said, unable to disguise his uneasiness at being involved in an event of this sort, dots of sweat on his forehead, “I told them that, Mr. Barnaby.”

  “They've been evicted, dammit!” But Barnaby was talking more to himself, now, than to Plunkett.

  The sheriff nodded.

  Barnaby put down his letter opener.

  Plunkett noticed a tiny dot of blood on the other man's thumb, where the point of the silver tool had broken the skin.

  Barnaby seemed unaware of his wound.

  “So we've a problem,” Plunkett repeated.

  Barnaby said, “What are you going to do about it?”

  Plunkett picked up his hat from the arm of the chair and began to play with it again, twirling it around and around in his calloused hands. He said, “I warned them that they were breaking the law, and I explained the consequences of trespassing after the delivery of an eviction notice. But, in point of fact, there's really nothing that I can do to them — besides yell my head off.”

  Barnaby was clearly appalled at this admission. He said, “You can evict them by force if they aren't out of the Niche by tonight!”

  “No, sir, I can't.”

  A dangerous look entered Barnaby's eyes, like an influx of muddy water into a clear stream, polluting his gaze. “Are you saying that you won't do your job on this?”

  “That's not what I'm saying at all,” Plunkett protested. “But I simply can't do a forced eviction. They intend to keep men in the Niche twenty-four hours a day, on shifts. That means there'll always be at least twenty of them waiting for me at any one time. Even if they only intend a nonviolent resistance, locking arms and that sort of thing, I can't deal with that big a group myself. I'd need at least ten good men with me, and you know I don't have them. I've got two deputy sheriffs, that's all.”

  Barnaby was temporarily satisfied with that answer, though he was not happy. He thought a moment and said, “Couldn't you arrest a couple of them, just the ringleaders? If the top few men — Younger and his cronies — were thrown in the tank, the rest would fall apart.”

  “I doubt that, sir,” Plunkett said. “It seemed to me that they were all equally determined about this. I believe, if we tried jailing any of the top men, the rest would only be more resolved than ever.”

  After a short silence, Barnaby said, “Is this a token resistance or a real battle? Do they intend to overstay by only a day or two—”

  “They're not leaving until their legal thirty days are up,” the sheriff said, finding it difficult not to smile.

  “That's intolerable.”

  “But that's the situation, sir.”

  “And your hands are tied?”

  “Quite effectively, Mr. Barnaby.”

  “Then I have to wait them out — or get my own court order that would permit the state police to step into the picture.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well,” Barnaby said, leaning back in his chair as if the decision had been made, the problem solved, and he could now relax. “Thank you for coming to me about this, Sheriff. Can you find your own way out?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Barnaby. Good day.”

  “Same to you, Sheriff.”

  Alone in the quiet study, then, Barnaby picked up his silver letter opener, raised it high overhead, and drove the point through the blotter and half an inch into the top of the desk. “Bastards!” he hissed.

  They were all together again: mother, father, Ginny, Gwyn…

  They were very happy.

  In all her life, Gwyn had never been happier.

  They played on the beach together, at the Miami summer house, went swimming together, joked and laughed, went to the movies together, read in the evenings, always together, a perfect life…

  When she woke, at half-past two Wednesday afternoon, she tried to regain those dreams, to shove away the bedroom, the daylight, the real world, and sink back into the past.

  “Are you awake?” Elaine asked.

  Reluctantly, Gwyn opened her eyes and looked at the chair beside her bed, where the older woman sat with the book folded in her lap. “Yes,” she said, through a mouth that felt gummed with cobwebs.

  “Feeling better?”

  Actually, she was not feeling better at all, despite her rest. If anything, her body felt heavier, more bloated; her eyes were grainier, her mouth dry, her stomach a ball of knots that not even an escape artist could untie. But she didn't want to upset Elaine after all the older woman had done for her, and so she lied. She said, “Yes, I'm feeling much better, thank you.” And she tried a feeble smile which was only a partial success.

  “You slept right through lunch,” Elaine said.

  “I didn't miss it, really.”

  “You should still eat. I've had Grace keep something warmed up for you. While you use the bath, I'll bring it.”

  “Please,” Gwyn said, “I'd rather just sleep.”

  “You can't take medicine without food in your stomach,” Elaine said. “Now, don't be headstrong.”

  Elaine helped her to her feet. Her head was lighter, her legs more rubbery than before, but she managed the short walk to the bath and had the strength to refresh herself and return to bed by the time the woman had come back with the tray of food.

  “Eat hearty, now.”

  “It looks delicious,” Gwyn said.

  In fact, it looked colorless and stale.

  To please her aunt, she forced herself to eat: pot roast, browned potatoes, corn, a salad, rich chocolate pudding. Everything but the pudding was a chore to chew up and swallow, especially since the food was without taste or
was nauseatingly flat; her reaction to each dish varied from bite to bite, so that she knew the shortcoming was in her own appreciation, not in the food itself. The spoon and the fork each weighed a couple of pounds and kept slipping from her fingers…

  Though she could force herself to eat, she could not make herself hold up a viable conversation, and she did not even try. Her thoughts kept returning to the dreams, making her smile as she recalled a pleasant fragment of some unreal scene. The dreams were so wonderful, so filled with real happiness, because no one had died in them: death did not exist…

  “I think I've had enough,” she said, after a few minutes, trying to push her tray off her lap.

  Elaine examined the dishes, looked worried. She said, “You most certainly haven't had enough. One or two bites of everything. Let's see you clean up your plate.”

  “Oh, Elaine—”

  “No excuses.”

  Though the fork and spoon were still as heavy as before, she ate faster. The sooner she was done, the sooner she could have another pill, could lie back and sleep and dream…

  While Gwyn struggled with her lunch, William Barnaby sat in his study downstairs, holding the telephone receiver to his ear and listening to it ring again and again at the other end of the line. He hoped that Paul Morby was at home, and that the man could take on the job that he had for him. If Morby couldn't be gotten, Barnaby didn't know to whom he could turn for help. While he waited, he held the silver letter opener in his free hand and tapped the point rapidly against his blotter, not to any time he had in mind, but to the furious tempo of his anger.

  The phone was picked up at the other end: “Hello.”

  The gruff voice, deep-toned and uncompromising, was evocative of Morby's appearance: tall, heavy, a man made out of planks and wire and hard pressed steel, with hands twice as wide as any other man's hands and enough crudely shaped cles to attract all the girls on the beach.

  “Barnaby here,” Will said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I have a job for you.”

  “Can you hold on?” Morby asked. “I was coming in with the groceries when you rang. I want to pop a couple of things in the freezer.”