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Past nine. Dinner over. I continue to be frightened. And what of it? To exist in the limitless dark of this universe, bruised and unknowing whence we came and where we go, to take breath on this hurtling piece of rock in the void—these alone are a terror in themselves, are they not? Fear, if we correctly observe our situation, is our ordinary way, like feeding, like dying. And yet what I’m feeling now is quite totally different; it is a tenor of another kind. Not of ghosts. There is something else here that I am sensing, something chillingly alien and implacable; I fear it even more than the world. Case wants a séance tonight. It’s so perilous. God help me. I dread what might come through that door!

Chapter Nine

Freeboard was sitting on the edge of her bed and the edge of her mind when she heard the rapping. Pensive and frowning, deeply troubled, her elbows were propped atop her knees while she cupped her face between her hands. Facedown and open on the bed beside her was a copy of the book, The Denial of Death. She had been reading it for a time but then her eyes had begun to hurt.

Although not nearly as much as her head.

The knocking again. Two raps. Much louder.

Freeboard didn’t bother looking up.

“Knock it off, will ya, Terry? Cut it out!”

She heard her door opening and looked up at Dare.

“It’s me,” he said tensely.

“How would you know?”

Dare came over to the bed and sat beside her.

“Are you sitting on my glasses, Terry?”

“No. Joan, there’s something very creepy in our midst.”

“Please don’t start with me, Terry. I mean it.”

“My dear, I’m dead earnest,” said Dare. She heard a tremor in his voice and looked up. He was pale and his eyes were right and blinking. “I haven’t been as frightened since I dreamed I was a Zulu trapped in the locker room of Rudyard Kipling’s club.”

Freeboard searched his eyes and found genuine terror.

She frowned. “You seeing things, Terry?” she asked him.

“Joan, I swear to you, I haven’t dropped acid in years!”

He raised his right hand as if taking an oath.

Freeboard pondered.

“It’s got residual effects, remember? Remember the giant squids with the ray guns and the letter of reference from Cheech and Chong?”

Dare pushed up the sleeve of his shirt, disclosing a red and vivid welt running up from his inner wrist to his forearm. “Does this look as if I’m seeing things, Joanie? Take a look at this! Look at my arm!”

Freeboard stared mutely at the welt for a moment. She looked up at him quizzically and said, “How’d you do that?”

“I saw a group of people in the back of the house,” explained Dare. “Two of them were priests.”

“They were what?”

“I said priests!”

“Oh, for chrissakes, Terry!”

“I mean it! One of them threw something at me! This happened!” Freeboard reached out her hand as if about to touch the welt. Dare flinched. “No, don’t touch it!” he exclaimed.

“Looks like a burn,” she said quietly.

“It is!”

Freeboard looked up at him. She looked dubious.

“You weren’t ironing your scrapbook or anything, were you? I mean, where are these priests?”

“I don’t know,” answered Dare. “They disappeared.”

“They ran away?”

“They simply vanished.”

Freeboard turned and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, they vanished.”

Dare thrust out his arm and showed the welt. “This didn’t!”

She stared at it soberly. “It could have happened when Morna spilled the coffee on you, Terry.”

“Yes, but wouldn’t I have known that?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“I’ve tried to call the boatman to see about getting off the island, but—”

“You turdhead! What happened to ‘I am Doubt’?”

“It got mugged in the alley by ‘I am burned!’ Look, the boatman didn’t answer.” Dare’s manner was earnest and pressing, urgent. “No machine, no nothing,” he continued. “I tried to call a helicopter service. No answer. I tried to call Pierre about the dogs. No answer. The service doesn’t even pick up. You remember how you asked if today was a holiday?”

“Yeah. It’s like Manhattan got nuked or something.”

“And have you