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Freeboard stared at Dare’s hands. They were resting on his thighs. “Why, Terry, your hands are shaking!” she marveled.

“All those tiny purple spots on her face and neck?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she has them. They’re known as petechiae. I researched that for Gilroy’s Confession.”

“And so?”

“They’re what you see when someone dies from suffocation.”

Freeboard stared.

“Oh, Mr. Dare? Miss Freeboard? Are you there?”

Case. He was calling up from the Great Room and his voice had a sinister lilting quality, as if it were coming from a fog-shrouded moor. Dare and Freeboard looked at one another in surmise.

Where had it come from, this fear? How had it jelled?

“Could I speak to you a moment?” Case called up to them again.

“He sounds just like Freddy Krueger,” whispered Dare.

“Oh, shut up!”

Dare got up, went out the door and stepped into the hallway. Leaning over the balustrade he looked down and saw Case standing next to a round game table where Anna Trawley already was seated. “Ah, there you are,” said Case. “And Miss Freeboard? Is she there?”

“Yeah, I hear you,” Freeboard called out from the room. “What’s up?” The next moment the Realtor appeared at the balustrade.

“What’s harpooning?” she asked without a smile.

“If you’ll both come down we can start the séance.”

Chapter Ten

“Would you sit here beside me, Mr. Dare?” Trawley asked.

“Why beside you? Do you feel I’m more in need of vibrations?”

“Oh, for shitssakes sit down!” Freeboard told him.

Trawley patted the seat to her left. “Right here.”

“Very well,” agreed Dare. He sat down.

“And you here on my right, Miss Freeboard,” Trawley told her. Freeboard nodded and quickly took her place. Case was already in the chair across from Trawley.

“Thank you,” said the psychic. “We can start.”

On top of the game table rested a Ouija board with an American-style planchette, a cream-colored, heart-shaped piece of plastic with a circular window set in its center. The room was in darkness except for the fireplace flames and the flickering light on the table from a group of thick candles arranged close by.

Trawley lifted an eyebrow at Dare. “No tape recorder?”

Dare shook his head. His manner brusque, he said, “No. No, I’ll remember. No need.” The author glanced up to the second-floor landing and a video camera put there by Case. It was aimed at the table. “And it’s going on film,” Dare noted further.

Trawley nodded. “Very well. Now then, you may have a few misconceptions that I think I should disabuse you of.”

Dare murmured, “Of which I should disabuse you” Distracted, he was staring at the planchette and was hardly aware that he had spoken. Trawley glanced in his direction “There will not be any floating tambourines, Mr. Dare. No ectoplasm. No ghostly apparitions. No voices. Nothing will possess me or attempt to speak through me. Yet if something is here, it will show us, it will make itself known. My pitiful"—she turned to look at Case—“gift,” she finished, “is somehow to focus its energies, that’s the best that we can expect. We don’t need to have the lights off, incidentally.”

“Oh, I know that,” said Case. “It’s just to put us in the mood.”

“Well, we’re in it,” snapped Dare.

Freeboard folded her arms and looked at Trawley.

“And so what’s supposed to happen?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said the psychic.

“You don’t know?”

“No. Perhaps nothing at all will occur.”

Trawley held out her hands to either side.

“Now all join hands, would you please?”

They followed her instruction.

“I need you to be quiet and perfectly still,” said Trawley. “Try to help me, please. Even if you think this is foolishness, try not to speak and keep your thoughts fixed on me.” She closed her eyes. “Think only of me and what I’m trying to do,” she said. “Now then, shut your eyes, please.”

They obliged, and as they did, a slow creaking sound was heard, as of a shutter or a door coming slightly ajar.

Dare’s eyes opened wide.

“Mr. Dare, are your eyes still open?” asked the psychic.

“How on earth did you know that, madam? Are you peeking?