Finally it was gone; Molly settled to a steady walk, and the sky was dark once more, dark and comforting now, with the familiar dunes around her. She patted the mare’s sweating neck. “Angry!” she told the mare suddenly, so Molly swiveled her ears around to listen. “Something—someone was angry! Angry because I fought back!”
When she told Justin later, she felt almost excited. “I’m beginning to think—to see—I don’t know exactly, but it’s as if it’s someone, Justin. Not a spirit, really not a spirit! Someone—someone as—”
“As willful as you are,” Justin finished for her, smiling.
“And as stubborn, maybe,” Bethany said. “Am I really stubborn, Justin, like Aunt Bett says sometimes?”
“It’s not a bad quality, you know.” Justin grinned. “Yes, stubborn. You keep digging for answers with a fine tenacity, I’d say. There’s nothing wrong with that, there’s nothing wrong with staying at something until you’ve defeated it.”
“If I can—” she said hesitantly. She wished she knew what it was she had to defeat.
It was while she was helping Justin unpack Zebulon’s books that she caught the strange, rich sense from Justin’s thoughts again, this time so strongly that it made her start. They had been arranging the books according to subject in the order in which Justin had packed them, books on history and geology and mythology, on the occult, nearly every facet of man’s life, and suddenly Bethany had such an overwhelming sense of people, centuries and centuries of people going back in time to a beginning so remote—and moving forward past her in time like hundreds of transparent pictures one over the other, people reaching and building, not just the physical things, she thought, but something of the mind, too, linking ideas together. The concept held a message that Bethany could almost, but not quite, fathom.
They transfered Justin’s research from boxes to metal files in her room; and in between readying the house for Zebulon, Justin was embarked on errands of her own. She spent hours writing letters and making phone calls.
Then one afternoon Justin came to Bethany tense with excitement and made her relate every detail she could remember about the other house and the city. How many stories was the house? What kind of furniture? What did the rest of the city look like? Describe the people on the streets. And when Bethany thought about it, it seemed to her that most of the people had dark hair and that many were black, especially around the market. “The house is three stories,” she knew that clearly. “And the kitchen is old-fashioned, like kitchens might have been fifty years ago. But there are new things too, new furniture, and there are cars on the streets. And on the third floor there are bedrooms that are closed off, maids used to live there, and once bats got loose in one, from the attic. Corrinne stays at the house only part of the time, then she goes home to the little room off the alley and—” Justin was regarding her with the oddest expression.
“What’s the matter?” Bethany asked.
“You’re talking about it as if—as if you live there,” Justin said softly.
And once, when Bethany awoke in the red bedroom and heard parakeets squawking like squeaky hinges outside her window, she said afterward to Justin, “I got out of bed and opened the glass doors and watched them until they flew away, then I went back to bed,” which brought a snort of laughter from Justin.
“You’re getting very blase, going back to bed.”
“What else is there to do, though? I mean, I’m either there or I’m here—but whatever I do I don’t seem able to control it, so I might as well be in bed as anyplace.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“Ever tried what?”
“Controlling it. Getting back. Have you ever tried to make yourself come back?”
Bethany stared at her. There was that once, on Molly. But most of the time she just let it come and go as it chose.
“I feel— I don’t like this happening to you, Bethany. The more it happens—I don’t know, it’s as if—” Justin paused, studying her. “I want you to be able to get back.”
“As if I’m losing myself.” Bethany breathed slowly. She hadn’t wanted to face that idea, but once expressed, fear took her suddenly.
But could she come back if she willed it, when she willed it? And before she knew it, her thoughts had turned themselves around, and she was thinking, Could I go when I want to? Could I make myself be there? And the excitement of that, and the terror of it, fought themselves in her so she turned away sick with alarm, and not wanting Justin to see.
But Justin did see that something was wrong; she had guessed, and was staring at Bethany and frowning. “No! You can’t do that, Bethany. I won’t allow it! You don’t know how dangerous it would be, you don’t know what it is—” She stopped, steadying herself. “You want to get away from it, not let it run you! If you went to it, whatever it is, the power would have you stronger.”
Bethany’s thoughts were leaping and would not be stilled even for Justin. She had been passive until now, letting the power move her as it wished. Except for the last seances, of course; and the time on Molly. But if she could do it, would it be a dark power that would help her? She shuddered. Or would it be something else entirely, something as impersonal as a kind of electrical impulse, something that could touch the dark powers—or the forces of light—but was not a part of them? The thought excited her. And if she could find out more about what this was— She turned away from Justin. “No, I won’t do that,” she lied. “I would be afraid to.” And the shame she felt, at lying to Justin, was awful.
Chapter 9
The sand pulled at her feet as she ran. The afternoon light was strange and raw, with clouds piled high along the horizons. She stood for a moment watching the grass tower shining golden in the pulsing light. Why had she come here to do it? It could happen anywhere; she had fallen into that other world in a dozen different places. But she felt safer here, felt somehow protected on the grass tower, and surer of herself.
It was as she parted the grass at her familiar place of ascending, where the tall blades were worn back to make a narrow corridor, that she looked down at her feet and saw the placard lying askew across the path. There was a spider web across it so the sign might have lain there for several days. The crayon printing was large and childlike: SATAN WORSHIP DAMNS THE SOUL. REBUKE THE PLEASURES OF EVIL AND DARKNESS. EXPOSE THEM AND YOU CAN BE SAVED.
The chill of it, the vileness of it, sickened her. She turned, half-expecting Mr. Krupp to be standing behind her; then she snatched up the sign, ripped it off the stick, and tore it furiously into pieces. She felt utterly betrayed by what one human being would do to another.