And yet, terrified as she was, her thoughts insisted on returning to the details of that room, and to her blind search for she knew not what. She felt too shaken to go to school; she would tell Aunt Bett she was sick. It must be early, the alarm hadn’t gone—then she realized it was Saturday. She would be late for work. She almost didn’t care, she almost got back into bed. But that would be worse. She made herself dress, then went into the kitchen to heat some rolls and make cocoa. She felt weak all at once, famished, as if every ounce of strength had been drained from her. When she saw Colin peering from his bed, she took her breakfast in, reluctantly, to share with him. She would rather have stayed to herself.
“It was real,” Colin said, and she thought he meant her dream, and the red bedroom, and she stared at him, incredulous. Then she realized he had meant the seance, and the terror of the black image washed over her again on top of the other. “I told you the Zagdesha was real,” he said smugly. “Now do you believe me?” She looked at him helplessly, but he went on, not seeing how she felt. “I wanted to come after you but—why did you run off? Tell me how it made you feel.” Then, when she did not answer, he really looked at her at last, and his eyes widened. “It scared you,” he said accusingly.
“Yes, it scared me!” She was furious at him. “But then,” she lied, not wanting to share her fears with Colin, “I realized it wasn’t anything, just some kind of mass hypnotism. A book I read once explained it,” she said coolly. “There’ve been lots of experiments.”
“It wasn’t hypnotism!” He jerked away, upsetting his cocoa, and she was glad she had shaken him like that. But she wanted to be away from his prying. She pushed their napkins hurriedly into the brown pool of cocoa, almost spilling her own cup, finished her breakfast quickly, burning her mouth, then snatched up her coat and left.
Outdoors, she turned up her collar and lifted her face to the bright cold air. Think of horses, she thought. Think of nothing but horses. Think of Danny. Think of hay and pitchforks and riding on the sand—nothing else is real, only this morning is real. She made herself see Danny’s dark eyes watching her, his teeth ready to bite.
A gray sedan pulled to the curb beside her, and Aunt Selma put out her gloved hand. “Won’t you get in for a minute, Bethany? I’d like to talk to you. Have you had your breakfast?”
“I’ve eaten,” Bethany said shortly, studying her aunt with displeasure, then turned and walked on.
Selma drove beside her. “Won’t you sit in the car for a minute? I can’t hurt you, you know.”
“What do you want?” Bethany stood stolidly on the sidewalk. It was still so early that the birds’ first morning calls were loud and eager all around them.
Selma smiled. “You showed a fascinating talent yesterday, Bethany. Dr. Claybelle and the Blakey’s were very impressed. I had no idea—” She let her words drift, as if in great admiration. “It’s—it was remarkable. I can’t imagine what you’d be able to do with some practice. Something spoiled it, though. Can you tell me what made you run away?”
“My own good sense,” Bethany said rudely.
Selma occupied herself lighting a cigarette, dark lashes fringing her smooth pale cheeks. Her hair was coiled around a pink scarf, and she was wearing a pink sweater. Bethany tried to get some thought from her but she could not, and when Selma looked up again her green eyes were innocent and warm. “Bethany, I —it means so much to me. It’s— There’s something there, something real and wonderful. I want so much to know. Won’t you come back? Won’t you come again and bring the Zagdesha for us? You’ve proven that it’s real; Mrs. Blakey was convinced it was her Zagdesha that began to form there. Could you tell? Could you see its face?” Her voice was so eager. “Will you come back and help us?”
“Aunt Bett won’t let me,” Bethany said, grateful, now, for Aunt Bett’s anger.
“Bett wouldn’t need to know, not if there’s no audience. Bett doesn’t need to know anything. We could do it privately, could see what you are really capable of.”
“No!” Bethany hissed. “No I won’t! I don’t want anything to do with it.” She flung away, furious, and turned into a vacant lot where Selma could not drive. She heard the car go off at last, gunning harshly.
She walked fast through the village, kicking at the sand. The streets were silent, no one about yet, and the sand lay deep in the gutters and up against the doors where it had blown during the night. When the village began to stir, the shopkeepers would all come out to sweep the sand. Why did Selma have to be so insistent? She was used to getting her own way. Then she thought suddenly: if it was a trick yesterday, a trick Selma played, then she wouldn’t need me, it could be anyone. She stopped dead still, staring at nothing. What if it wasn’t a trick? What if it was something in her doing it? Or Selma and her together, and Selma knew it? At last she went on, feeling very uncertain. A gull rose up screaming. Maybe Aunt Bett was right, she thought distractedly, maybe she should be terrified for her immortal soul.
Aunt Bett had shown real fear, and a deep concern for Bethany. “Something much stronger than you was at work, child. You have no idea what it is capable of, and you must not tempt it again.” Maybe she was right; that was what it had felt like, some terrible power that no one would want to get involved with. And yet underneath that, something else, something she could not define had touched her for a moment, something gentler—or at least she thought it had been gentle, a quick flash gone almost at once.
Aunt Bett had been curiously unemotional about the whole thing. She must have been very upset to hold herself so tightly; as if, if she really let go, she might do irreparable damage to Bethany on the shaky ground where she stood. This alone made Bethany know the gravity with which she viewed yesterday’s incident.
“When you were small,” Aunt Bett had said at last, “do you remember that you came to me once with something Jack had done?”
Bethany had blanched and nodded.
“How did you know that, Bethany? I never wanted to ask. I simply pretended to myself it had not happened. How did you know?”
“Sometimes—sometimes I just know, Aunt Bett. I don’t know how.”
“Do you do this often?”
Bethany had lied without compunction. “No, Aunt Bett,” she said quietly, “Not any more.” and she had felt Aunt Bett’s relief clearly. Then for a moment she had had a flashing sense of something more from Aunt Bett, something—but it was gone too suddenly, she could make nothing of it.
She was late to the stables, uncommunicative and preoccupied. She got to work at once, almost frantically, trying to drive out her thoughts. Neither Reid nor Mr. Grady said much, and Bethany wondered if Mr. Grady knew about yesterday. If he did, he would have considered it not his business to mention it, though he would have disapproved heartily, Bethany felt sure. Late in the morning, as she was raking the alleyway, Reid took the rake gently from her. “Do you know that’s the second time you’ve raked it? Do the tack, will you?”
She tried to pull herself together and pay attention to what she was about, but the rhythm of rubbing soap into the leather, like the rhythm of raking, only increased her preoccupation. Her thoughts kept returning to Selma’s insistent voice, and to the dark figure forming there before her—then to the ruins, and the bedroom where she had awakened—puzzling at it all, trying to find some clue that would help her unravel the mystery. When Reid put a horse in the alleyway and began to clean its feet, she was glad for his company. But she couldn’t bring herself to say anything; she knew if she started to talk she would tell him about the dream, and she didn’t want to. He too was silent for so long that her thoughts turned again to the red room, moving about in it, trying to make sense of why it seemed familiar; then she thought of Selma’s terrible gall this morning, and her anger rose again unbidden.