20

Speke could not take a single step, could only stay where he was, unable to make a sound.

Asquith stood beyond the window, and did not move, did not waver or flicker.

The flesh of the face was the color of the electric light that fell upon it, and the surface of the skin was blistered, broken, with the first eruptions of decay.

Or was it? The vision held itself back, at the very limit of the light. Shouldn’t a ghost seem, somehow, transparent? Speke forced himself to breathe, listening, watching, aching for an owl’s keenness, or a cat’s. This was a bad time to make a mistake. Listen, he commanded himself. What sort of being is that out there? Out there, in the dim light from the cottage.

Wasn’t adulthood a surprise, its contradictions, the lingering childishness of one’s own nature, the paradoxical nonsense of success? Why, then, shouldn’t a ghost baffle expectations, too?

“Asquith,” he whispered.

The silence was a response.

“What do you want?”

The figure was a stain in the air, a smudge on the otherwise perfect darkness. The apparition was almost like someone who wasn’t there at all.

But he was there, and more—there had been a sound, the breathy hush of grass depressed by a foot, the snap of a stem. Don’t lose control of yourself, Speke commanded his quaking arms and legs. Stay calm. Stare back.

It was certainly exactly like the living Asquith, a human presence barely illuminated by the light from the cottage. There was a chiaroscuro effect, a gilded line of head and shoulder, eyes glittering in shadows. The spectral figure stepped back, shifting away on its legs just like a living man. He was fading to black again.

And Asquith was gone.

“Come back,” Speke said in a low voice.

That made it worse. It was bad enough to have a hallucination. It was madness to actually talk to it, and he was not only speaking, he was shouting. “I can’t help what happened. I didn’t mean to kill you.”

Then he stopped himself. He was sweating, but the strangest feeling powered him forward.

He stumbled, flung himself to the windows and threw them open, but by the time he gazed at the patch of light they cast upon the earth, he saw only his own shadow and a few vague branches.

It was hopeless. The ground here was the same obdurate stone as always. He knelt, searching in the bad light, aware that any moment a dead hand could fall upon his shoulder. The hand would be cold, he knew. Perhaps even cold and wet.

This was the grave, its stones impossible to make out in the darkness, its presence a vague scatter of rock in the night. This was the light from the window. This—he put out his hand—was the jagged stone of the earth here, fragments that reminded him that earth was created by an explosion, a series of explosions, fire and storm.

But at least the stone was real. He was reassuring himself that the world was real, and that he was awake, but he was also realizing something else.

Asquith, he whispered. And he laughed.

Because it was funny—he had just been looking for footprints. He had just been imagining a hand, corporeal, with flesh and bones. This was because he did not believe that the apparition was a ghost.

He didn’t believe it. He never had believed it, he told himself. Not really.

He wasn’t a child any more. He still had nightmares from time to time. A waking, struggling corpse could disturb him, scare him, do everything but convince him. It wasn’t real. Everything was going to be just fine. He still had his native intelligence. He wasn’t going to let fear turn him into a cowering animal. He had pride. Don’t worry. Everything will be just terrific.

“I know you, Asquith!” he hissed.

No sound answered him. Of course not. What did he expect, an echo? A long-range conversation? I feel, he told himself, strangely lucid. Strangely peaceful. Perhaps a human being can only feel so much terror before something snaps. You are being watched. Act calm. He closed the windows, and turned off the light, telling himself to take his time. The dark alone won’t hurt you, he reassured himself, although he took a deep breath when the door was shut at last, and he could follow the trail up the hill.

It really wasn’t much of an act. He did feel calm. It was a peculiar, stunned sort of calm. But it allowed him to feel certain of one or two things. Hamilton Speke was not such a fool, after all. It was time for the truth.

Why was night so slow to fade? The stars were still vivid, the black perfect, except around the edge, where the east had gone gray. The gray of dirty dishwater, the gray of granite. How weak light is when it first dawns, he thought.

He would use his wits. He laughed, a rusty grunt like the sound of the garage door. The darkness held the stale, leftover heat of the previous day. He fumbled in the garage, groping for a light switch and finding cobwebs.

He grasped the familiar shaft, then turned and groped back into the dawn. The shovel was like an old friend. Good old spade, thought Speke fervently. My favorite weapon.

He understood why Beowulf’s men had names for their swords. It was only right: you could talk to the steel that would save your life. You could talk, as a driver might speak to a stalling automobile, willing life into iron.

We have work to do, he breathed.

It was still too dark. He wanted daylight. He wanted the shovel in his hands under the sun, and what he wanted more than anything was the truth. And he knew exactly how to get it.

He was going to dig up the grave and see what, if anything, lay under those stones.