Dominion

TWENTY

Simon was aware of himself riding down in the elevator, of the elevator doors opening, returning him to the great hall. After that, he began to lose track of his physical location. Vivian’s electric touch was on him steadily. He could hear the murmur of her voice, he saw her eyes. And then he could see nothing but her eyes.

Vivian had not changed from when she was fifteen, he could see that now. She was still fifteen, or rather she was ageless. Nor would she ever change. She would never be any different from what she was. And Simon knew that to have her would be to possess the world.

Under Vivian’s careful guidance his body walked, going he knew not where. And, also guided by Vivian, his mind drifted, entering a secret, pleasant, mysterious place. In that place there was nothing to see but Vivian’s eyes, nothing to think about but what Vivian might want.

Your powers are real, Simon. That was Vivian’s voice, the only voice that could reach him now. They always have been real. You shouldn’t be afraid of that.

Yes, all right, they are real. I won’t be afraid, if you tell me not to be afraid.

I do tell you so. Now. Do you remember the day when you were tested? I want you to remember that day.

Tested?

The day, said Vivian, when I let you lie with me. Did you see the Sword on that day, Simon? I think you may have seen it.

He wanted to keep silent, but it was hopeless, his thoughts burst out. Oh, damn you, damn you, Vivian. All I’ve ever been able to remember is how you let me fumble at your body. All I’ve ever really wanted since then is to have you again. To have what you wouldn’t give me even then.

But what he wanted did not interest Vivian. I’m going to send you back to that day, Simon. I’m going to send you wherever I must, to find the Sword. We must discover where it is now.

Simon didn’t ask what Sword. He had seen it in one vision already.

You are going to walk what you call the secret passage. With my help it can take you to many places, many times. If we must, we will follow the Sword forward through the centuries from the day when it was forged. But first we’ll try that day just fifteen years ago. You can do it, for me. We must find where the Sword is now.

I’ll try, Vivian. Vivian.

You must do more than try. When you have found the Sword, Simon, then I will tell you my true name. And then I will give you the secret thing that you have always wanted. The secret thing, most precious and intense, that lies behind the door of sex.

Oh, I want you, Vivian. For a moment Simon saw only the vision that was always with him, that one day had been reality, Vivian as a young girl naked, inviting him, beckoning him on. He tried to reach for her.

Not yet, dear Simon. I want so much to love you, but not yet. First you must find the Sword. Magic that you must penetrate conceals it. No one, not even I, not even Falerin, can find things, see things, as well as you can. In that magic you have the potential to be supreme.

In a momentary flash of clear physical vision, Simon knew that he was standing again in the blasted doorway that led to the once-secret passage. His attempt at a performance had been used by Vivian to key the forces that had torn it open to the mundane world. And now Vivian was about to send him into it.

Find the Sword for me, Simon. Here begins your search, in your own past.

And he was drifting on the Sauk in the old rowboat, the almost paintless hulk that in all the childhood summers he could remember had been tied up at the old willow stump at Frenchman’s Bend. The boat wandered with the motion of an almost lifeless current between two jungled islands. Simon was alone, lying on his back in the bottom of the old boat, with a little sunwarmed leakage water flowing and ebbing gently around him. He was wearing the old remembered green swimming trunks and nothing else. His feet were up on the middle seat, and a clear warm summer sky was over him. Insects droned from the island shores, and there was an almost fleshy smell of mud.

When he was back in the city between vacations, going through the dull routine of school, Simon’s memories of Frenchman’s Bend drew in color and interest. But the glamour applied by his restless imagination tended to disappear quickly when he returned to the real place. The river had shrunken, every time he saw it again, turned muddier and dirtier than the Sauk he thought that he remembered. And most of the people appeared somehow shrunken too, even if months of growth had actually made the young ones physically larger. When reality seemed inadequate Simon’s imagination tended to come back into play.

He was letting it take over now, as he lay on his back in the heat of the sun with his eyes half closed. He was thinking, as he so often did, about Vivian. He was concentrating, as he usually did when he thought of her, on that day last summer when Simon and her little brother Saul had tried to talk her, dare her, into going into the river naked while they watched.

The effort had been a tantalizing near-success. Vivian had waded in in her bikini—watching her play around in that was maddening enough, for Simon at fourteen—and then, once up to her shoulders in the opaque brown water, she’d slipped quickly out of the suit, holding up the two pieces of it for them to see, and laughing that she’d won the bet. Simon had rowed his boat toward her, but before he could get very close the suit was somehow on again.

The whole business, of course, had really been Vivian’s idea from the start. No one ever talked or teased or bet her into doing anything but what she wanted to.

Simon sunning in the bottom of the boat at age fifteen couldn’t let this memory dwell on that scene for more than about two seconds without a physical reaction starting. That was okay. Pretty soon he’d pull down his trunks and do something about it. But there was no rush.

He’d closed his eyes now fully against the sun, and was letting his imagination work on the remembered image of Vivian laughing at him, shoulder-deep in water. It was coming clearer and clearer. She held up her suit, panties in one hand, bra in the other. Her smile in the image was becoming inviting, beckoning, not the taunting expression it had been in reality. And now she was starting to wade towards him.

Simon sometimes felt a little frightened at the things his imagination could do for him. He’d never, for example, seen a real live girl completely unclothed. But when in a hundred hot deliberate dreams since last summer he’d brought Vivian out of the water naked, every detail of uncharted anatomy was as clear as something from a motion picture frame. And Simon couldn’t resist doing it that way, usually, seeing more and more detail, even if it did tend to get a little scary.

Now he brought the image of Vivian wading into water only knee-deep, smiling at him, displaying herself. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his trunks, and then immediately worried that maybe he ought to row over to an island first, get among bushes where he could be absolutely sure of a few minutes’ privacy. Not that anyone was likely to see him where he was now, but—

A high-pitched voice shattered his daydream, calling from some distance away. “Yeeoh, Simon!”

Vivian vanished, reality returned with a rush. In confusion Simon sat up in the boat, tugging his trunks as straight as he could. A craft he recognized as Gregory’s white canoe was sixty yards or so downstream, being paddled up toward him by one person. In a moment Simon recognized Saul Littlewood.

She’s here, was Simon’s first thought. If Vivian’s little brother is here in Frenchman’s Bend today, then so is she.

Saul was waving a greeting. Simon waved back, then took up one of his oars. Using it like a paddle, he made slow headway to meet the canoe’s advance.

“Yo,” Simon called back, when the canoe with the younger boy in it was closer. “I didn’t know you guys were here.”

Now Saul with a delicate touch of paddle brought canoe sideways against boat; and Simon with his stronger hands gripped both gunwales, holding the two craft clamped together.

Saul was wearing cutoff jeans, and a new, expensive-looking T-shirt with an elaborate pattern. He was dark-haired, of average size and chunky build. As was to be expected for a twelve-year-old, he’d grown considerably in the nine months or so since Simon had seen him last.

“We ain’t gonna be here long,” Saul said now. “We’re driving home again tomorrow morning.”

“Oh.” Then I’ve got to see her today, before she leaves. Vivian and Saul lived most of the year with their parents in one of the far northern suburbs of Chicago, closer to Simon’s home in the city than either place was to Frenchman’s Bend. Yet Simon had never seen them anywhere but here. In fact he had never met them, had known only vaguely of their existence, until just last summer.

Saul, watching Simon closely, said: “So why don’t you come up to the castle now? Vivian’s there. She was saying to me she wished you were around.”

“Yeah?” Simon swallowed. “Okay, I will. Who else is there?”

“Our parents were, but they had to go back into Blackhawk. Some kind of a meeting or something. They won’t be back till after dark.”

“Is Gregory there?” Simon knew that the dignified-looking man intermittently lived in the castle, as part of his caretaker duties. For various reasons he didn’t like Gregory, and thought that Gregory felt the same way about him.

Saul shook his head. “Vivian’s up there all by herself right now. She’s out by the grotto, you know? She’s painting a picture of one of those statues. She was telling me she thought it looked like you.”

“Me? Jeez. Which statue?”

Saul looked for a moment as if he thought that a dumb question, but he answered without comment. “The big naked guy standing there holding the stone and the slingshot. Well, he ain’t quite naked, he’s got a figleaf on.”

“Jeez. I haven’t got muscles like that.”

“You got a lot more muscles than you did last summer. Vivian was saying she bet you had.”

“Jeez.” Simon couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He hoped that if he was blushing it didn’t show through his tan. And the uncomfortable bulge in the front of his trunks had eased abruptly when Saul startled him, but now it suddenly gave signs of coming back.

If Saul had noticed either of these reactions he was being diplomatically silent about it. The joined boats had drifted out from between islands, and now it was possible to see the relatively distant shore on both sides. Saul was gazing toward the shabby house where Simon stayed during vacations. “Your uncle’s car’s not there,” he observed.

“My aunt and uncle had to go into Blackhawk. Just like your folks. Said they prob’ly won’t be back till late.”

“Your grandma go with ‘em?”

“Yeah.”

Saul was silent, with the air of one who has just made some kind of subtle point. The hot, humid air seemed to be somehow supporting the suggestion that somewhere in Blackhawk, population about one hundred thousand, there was a gathering today of the adults of the clan, and that gathering might have a secret importance.

It might be true, thought Simon, and so what, and anyway Vivian was throbbing in his blood.

He said: “Look, how about it we both go over there in the canoe? It’ll be faster. I’ll tie up the rowboat first.” He released his grip, letting the two craft separate.

“Okay.” Saul wielded his paddle again. Rowing and paddling, they worked their respective vessels toward the landing at Frenchman’s Bend.

As if returning to a dropped subject, Saul asked: “What do your aunt and uncle do in that shop all day?”

“Jeez, I dunno. Putter around. Sometimes they get a customer. Why?”

“I bet they don’t have too many customers.”

“I guess not.”

“But they make enough money to get along. Or they get money from somewhere else.”

“I guess so. Why?”

Saul paddled, looking straight ahead. “Does your grandma have a job?”

“Yeah, in an office down in the Loop. Some days she works at home. Why?”

Saul shrugged. “Just that some of our relatives have a lot of money, and some don’t.”

“Which ones have a lot?”

Saul just shrugged again.

They were nearing the shore. “I guess,” said Simon, “your folks are some who do.”

Watching Simon closely again, Saul said. “They’re my step-parents, actually.”

Simon nodded at this information, then did a double take. “Both of ‘em?”

“Yeah, both. The way they tell me it happened was that my real father died before I was born, and then my mother married again. Then she died, when I was still real young, and my stepdad got married. So I got a full replacement set.”

“You and Vivian both did, then.”

Saul never answered that straight out. The prow of the canoe grated gently at the shoreline, and he braced his paddle against the river bottom to hold the craft against the gentle current. He said: “Our whole family’s kinda crazy, you know? I mean the way it’s organized. There’s about a couple thousand people all related to each other. Like you and me. And the funny part of it is, almost nobody has any really close relatives. Except for husbands and wives.”

Simon grunted, rowing one last hard stroke, driving the old tub of a rowboat firmly into the shore. Then he shipped oars and hopped out into the muddy shallows, grabbing a length of chain to tie up the boat at its usual place, the ancient willow trunk. He said: “There’s not really a couple thousand.”

“All right. Maybe there’s really about a hundred people. Littlewoods and Collines and Picards and Wedderburns. Hell, old Gregory’s actually some kind of a cousin to both of us.” Carefully shifting his seat in the canoe, Saul made ready for Simon to get in. “You wanna do the paddling?”

“Sure.” Simon had learned to use a canoe the previous summer. He was in a hurry now to get across the river, and also eager to see how fast he could paddle, with another year’s growth of muscle to call upon. Jeez, Vivian was thinking about his big muscles. “I guess you’re right, about the family.” But he wasn’t really able to think about the family now. Not now, when Vivian wanted to see him. Maybe there would even be some way that Saul could be got rid of for a while…

Saul, relaxed now, sat in the bottom of the canoe, watching the water go by as Simon swung the craft downstream and headed it out from shore. “Yeah,” Saul said, “maybe my folks will be the ones who own the castle someday, and we’ll be rich.”

Simon paddled. To have something to talk about, to relieve his mind from Vivian, he asked: “So just who owns the castle now?” He felt sure it was someone in some branch of the family.

Saul sighed faintly, as if he didn’t much care about that point. “They say it’s all tied up in the courts and things. We can come and stay in it whenever we want. There’s a little furniture and stuff.” Pause. “That room still looks burned, and screwed up, you know, where old man Littlewood blew himself up. He was like our great uncle or something.”

“Yeah.” After using the old rowboat, the sleek canoe was a joy to handle. Simon drove the paddle fast and hard, angling between islands, taking advantage of quicker current wherever he could. Between strokes he asked: “Gregory don’t mind you using the canoe, huh?” He’d asked for its use himself and had been turned down; he knew his aunt and uncle went out of their way sometimes to do what Gregory wanted.

Saul shrugged again, as if what Gregory minded or didn’t mind was no concern of his. “He don’t use it much himself. Hey, Si?”

“What?”

“You ever see Gregory outdoors in the daytime?”

“In the daytime?” Simon repeated mechanically. He yearned to ask Saul what Vivian was wearing today. On a hot day like this, it wouldn’t be much, probably. “In the daytime? Hell, I dunno. I guess, sometimes. He usually comes around at night. Why?”

Again Saul’s shrug; it was a superior gesture, as if he had too many pressing things to think about and had already had to go on to think of something else. Saul and Vivian were basically among the castle-owners, not the dwellers in the huts below.

Simon said: “I dunno what part of the family I’m really in. The poor part, I guess.”

“I dunno either.” Saul meant about himself. He sounded suddenly worried about it.

Now Simon was past the islands, he could see the castle landing dead ahead. There were no boats at the tiny floating dock. There usually weren’t. “Hell,” said Simon. “Go start up your own family. That’s the way I feel about it.”

Saul’s expression seemed to say that it wasn’t that simple, but he didn’t want to argue about it, at least not right now.

Simon stepped out on the floating dock, after bringing the canoe neatly alongside. To his surprise, Saul only changed seats once more and reached for the paddle.

“I’m just gonna goof around in the canoe for a while, Si,” the younger boy said. “You go on up.”

“Oh,” said Simon, not knowing what else he ought to say. He was going to be alone with Vivian. A pulse inside his head began to tap, lightly and quickly. Inside his trunks he could feel himself shriveling up completely, as if with fear.

When Saul had paddled out ten yards or so from the dock, he turned the canoe and let it drift. Now he regarded Simon with a look in which he let some wicked amusement show. “Hope you’re ready,” he called back. “She had a kind of funny look today. Like maybe her pants were a little hot or something.” And he continued watching Simon carefully for some reaction. Watchful, that was the word for Saul Littlewood at twelve.

Simon was past caring about, or even knowing, what reactions he might display. He turned dazedly and started along the lightly worn path that wound upward from the shoreline, into the trees that covered the face of the bluff. Mosquitoes greeted him as he entered the shade. Even nearly naked as he was, he hardly noticed them.

The pulse in his head tapped on. Halfway up the switchbacked path, he scraped a toe raw, stumbling on one of the carved stone steps, and barely felt it.

Saul had said that she was at the grotto, and when Simon came to the branching path he turned that way. His breathing was shallow and quick, and sweat trickled under his armpits newly grown with adolescent hair. He was distracted from other difficulties by something in the way that Saul had delivered that last remark. It had begun to raise a horrible suspicion in Simon’s mind: suppose Saul was screwing his own sister, or wanted to? Looking back on certain things that had been said and done last summer hinted at confirmation of the grotesque thought. Ugh. Of course he, Simon, was some kind of a cousin to her too. But that wasn’t like a brother and sister. God.

On silent feet Simon rounded the last shoulder of limestone rock before the grotto, and there he stopped. The thought came, almost calmly, that imagination had taken over completely, that his mind had at last given up reality. Vivian was sitting totally naked on the edge of the stone table at the center of the little paved court before the grotto. Her back was turned to Simon, and, as Saul had said, she was working on a painting. One slim, tanned arm was extended, holding a small brush to an easel set up just beside the table. Beyond the easel was the tall, pale stone statue serving her as model. There was a set of paints beside Vivian on the stone table, as well as two parts of a discarded green bikini and a crumpled red garment that might be a beach jacket. She was sitting sideways on the edge of stone, right foot on the lower paving, left leg raised and bent on the tabletop. In the faint breeze, leaf-shadows slid over her bare back.

This was not imagination. Suddenly the pulse in Simon’s head was pounding hard. His heart and lungs were laboring as if he’d run up the whole hill. His hands and his knees were trembling violently.

Saul had known she was sunbathing, he’d set this up. Or else Saul hadn’t known. It didn’t matter. Simon turned for an instant to look at the ascending trail behind him. He couldn’t see Saul on it, and Saul couldn’t have sneaked up through woods and underbrush without Simon’s hearing him before now.

Simon stared at Vivian again. She was real, not imaginary. He had to try to see her from the front, see everything. In a trembling frenzy he tiptoed off the trail, then went down into a crawling crouch, heedless of occasional sharp twigs. If he could move behind bushes and the low wall to the other side of the court, then look up over the wall carefully, he’d be able to see Vivian from in front. Heart in mouth, Simon made a scrambling, desperate progress. He was as silent as he could be, but still things crunched and snapped faintly under his hand, his knee, his foot. She had to hear the noise he was making, oh God, she had to be alarmed. But when at last, with enforced slowness, he raised his head beside a tree to look, Vivian was still calmly painting, she gave no sign of having heard a thing.

He had a perfect view of two small breasts, their tan softer than that of the surrounding skin, imaging a bikini top. The nipples were richly brown, exactly as his imagination had formed them for him a hundred times. He saw her spread thighs, the left knee raised and sharply bent. The foot was placed on the table exactly where it prevented his observing the central mystery. But he could see that that enigma was surrounded, just as his solitary dreams had shown him, by dark curls like those on Vivian’s head. Oh God oh God. And she was still intent on painting.

He couldn’t approach her while she was naked, he couldn’t let her know he was here watching. He couldn’t turn and leave. One thing he could do, would do, must do now. In desperate haste he stripped down his trunks, letting them fall around his ankles, then pulling one foot free of them to keep his awkward balance on the slope. Now he would go to it hard and quick. But he had no more than touched himself when Vivian suddenly stood up. Simon crouched, agonizing in fear of discovery, bending his body in a contortion to seek all the concealment possible. The world would end if she should see him now, the way he was. But she had turned away. Stones had printed faint red marks on her rump. Ignoring her discarded swimsuit, she reached for the red robe or jacket. She’d seen him after all, and was about to go tell everyone. No, that was unthinkable. And turned out to be a false alarm. It was still her painting that absorbed her attention. She frowned at it unhappily as she tied the cloth belt of her jacket, covering herself loosely from neck to mid-thigh. Then a moment later she turned and strode impatiently away, heading for the single path where Simon had come up a few moments ago.

Again he crouched low, limbs tangled in an aborted effort to get his trunks pulled up again. But Vivian never looked in his direction. When she reached the main path she walked up it briskly toward the castle. Simon could easily mark the passage of the red jacket behind screens of green growth. Then Vivian was gone.

Simon stood up, feeling more than half insane. He was dripping sweat all over, his nerves totally shot. What next? If she was clothed at all, he could approach her; he’d follow her up to the house, say he’d just come up from the landing. He got his trunks pulled up, his congested maleness, feeling like a dull toothache, more or less housed again. Through bushes whose little scrapes and pricks he now could feel, he worked his way out onto the sunwarmed stone pavement of the court. He stared at the table; that very stone, right there at the edge, had been pressed moments ago by Vivian’s warm ass. The easel and the paints were there, the small brush, tip wet, just where she’d thrown it down. Speaking of wet tips… he ached. And there were the two parts of her bikini. She’d worn them this hot day, and they would smell of her. He imagined himself raping her bikini now. But the possibility paled before one infinitely better if still discouragingly faint; he’d catch up with her, up at the castle.

Crossing the stone-paved court toward the path, Simon passed beside the abandoned easel. His eye was caught by the painting, and he paused momentarily in surprise. Even at the age of fifteen, even in his present state, he could see that the painting wasn’t very good. This was a surprise in itself, because Vivian always gave such an impression of overwhelming competence. But the main thing that stopped Simon was the painted face. Clumsily as it was done, he could see it wasn’t supposed to be the same face that the statue had. And for just a moment of wild conceit he thought that the face depicted might be modeled on his own; but no, that was supposed to be a short beard under the chin, not just a shadow.

The pathway brought him through the tall, thick hedge, into the half-tended back lawn of the castle. He stood beside the weed-grown tennis courts, with the great brownish stone face of the reconstructed keep rising broodingly before him. Afternoon shadows were lengthening. That didn’t matter. Saul had gone off somewhere with the canoe, probably. That didn’t matter a whole lot either, it would be easy enough for Simon to wade and swim his way back across the river, in the dark if he should stay on this shore that long. There was no rational reason for the sudden urge he felt to turn and hurry away.

He moved to stand beside the disused, empty swimming pool, looking up at the face of the keep shaded by tall trees and by its own west wing. Just ahead of him, at ground level, one of a pair of French doors stood slightly open. Otherwise the whole building appeared unoccupied, deserted.

Everything was silent, but he knew that she was in there, somewhere.

“Vivian!” It came out as a booming, grown-man’s shout.

Only silence answered it. And then a cicada in a tree somewhere, keening loudly, as if in a mocking pretense of amazement.

Simon went to the French doors and entered. It was dim inside the castle; at night it would be pitch black. He supposed Gregory must have electricity turned on in some of the rooms at least. He paced silently from one unfurnished ground floor room to another. They looked just as they had when Simon had seen them briefly in summers past, when he and his cousins had run through them in play, sometimes taunting, daring Gregory to chase them out. Which the caretaker had done, effectively enough, without seeming to try very hard. He had a way about him, that seemingly could turn on fear like an electric light in the cavernous dim rooms. The game did not last long, nor had it been frequently repeated.

“Viv?” He still said it loudly, but this time it was not a shout.

But this time his calling got response—of a kind. So faint that Simon wasn’t even really sure it was a physical voice, or of what it said. But he was sure that it came from Vivian. He was standing in the great hall when this answer came floating to him from upstairs.

On the stone stairs his bare feet whispered almost silently. Now his scraped toe had begun to hurt. Jeez, but he was a mess, Vivian wouldn’t want to come near him, no one would. In the interior coolness of the castle, sweat was drying clammily on his skin. He ran a hand through tangled, dirty hair, dislodging a small leaf. His mosquito bites had started itching, his frustrated balls [had] reached him with dull swollen pain…

At the first stair landing, he was distracted from this unhappy internal litany by… something. A nagging urge to turn aside here, explore a particular side hallway. The summons, whatever it was, was not from Vivian this time. But it was there.

At the end of a short hall he opened a thick wooden door, and was surprised to find that it gave onto a circular gallery that went at balcony level around a stone room at least thirty feet across. Enough daylight to show the general configuration of the chamber found its way in through small windows at a level a floor higher than the balcony. In the middle of the stone floor below was a low dais, much resembling the outdoor table near the grotto. This place reminded Simon of something else too, and in a moment he understood what—a medical operating theater, something he had never seen except in movies and television. A small central stage with not much audience space around it, what little there was provided safely out of the way of the performers.

But the most striking thing about this theatre was that the floor and the lower walls were blackened, scorched, in a pattern of streaked radii extending from the central table. The top of the dais itself was darkened too, solidly and in a different shade, as if exposed to repeated hard use and damage. It was quite clean now, as was the whole empty room, empty except for shadows.

This had to be, Simon thought, the room in which Old Man Littlewood, whom Simon had never seen, had burned or blown himself to death five years ago, Simon had never been told just how. And now there were only shadows…

For just a moment Simon thought he saw a man, someone standing at the edge of the floor, against the lower wall on the side where the blurred daytime shadows presently were thickest.

But when he looked closely there was no one. Even when he closed his eyes, in an unconscious effort at the proper kind of concentration, his inner vision could detect no one.

It was a spooky place and he wanted to turn and leave. But there was some important reason, still undiscovered, why he should not do that just yet. Instead he started walking round the gallery, like a small child trailing the fingers of his left hand on the stone balustrade. When he got about halfway around, he could see what was directly under the part of the gallery where he had been standing when he first entered. A cot was there, in shadows but with enough indirect light on it for Simon to make out the recumbent figure of a man. The man lay partly on his back, partly on one side, with the pale outline of his face turned directly in Simon’s direction.

Gregory.

It was very difficult to distinguish any features forty feet away, in the dim light, but Simon was sure. Gregory’s eyes were open—how could he really be sure of that?—and they might even be following Simon as he walked.

Feeling a chill of fright and horror compounded, Simon walked on quickly, keeping his eyes on the man’s face as he moved. He told himself that Gregory had to be asleep, despite the impression of open eyes that tracked Simon as he walked. If he was awake he’d certainly sit up, say something, yell at Simon for intruding. Something about the way the man just lay there, as if he were watching Simon in his sleep, was horrible in the extreme. It brought to a focus all the strangenesses that Simon had seen or imagined about Gregory in the past. It forced Simon to begin to see him clearly.

When Simon had got far enough round the gallery’s circle for the man on the cot to pass from his field of vision, he broke into a soft-footed run.

Sweating again despite the coolness, he trotted quickly back out through the gallery’s single entrance, and closed the thick door behind him, as quickly as he could without making noise. And then even as he moved on he began to tell himself that the pale face and dark eyes following him must have been some kind of an illusion. Seeing something was one thing, and making sense out of what was seen was something else entirely. It wouldn’t make sense for Gregory to simply lie there and watch… as if he were in some kind of trance.

And Saul had said, hadn’t he, that Gregory had gone with the other adults to Blackhawk; of course for Saul to lie, or be mistaken, would be no big surprise, but… Simon yearned to leave the castle as quickly as he could, running, wading, swimming, to get back to the other side of the river. But it was a hopeless yearning, like that of a soldier who knows the war must be finished before he can go home. Vivian was here. He couldn’t leave while there was a chance of finding her.

Simon went back to the stairs, and up again to the next landing. Having got that far he paused, hearing somewhere—was it behind him?—a sound like the faint closing of a door. He listened but there was no other sound. To find Vivian, the direction to go was up and forward.

When he came to a landing that felt right, he paused again and softly called her name. Then he slowly made his way along a dim hallway lined with doors, listening for an audible response that never came. It never came, yet he had the feeling that it had come… Simon couldn’t really explain it, even to himself. But he did feel sure, very sure, that this was the way to take to find Vivian.

This was a part of the castle where Simon had never been before. He went down the hall looking into one bedroom after another, most of the rooms disused and unfurnished, with doors standing open. When he came to a closed door he tapped on it, not really trusting his sense that the room beyond it was unoccupied. He called Vivian’s name softly, and looked inside, and went on to the next room.

Simon held his breath when he came at last to a room whose closed door held the feeling of something different shut up behind it. When after tapping and calling he opened this door, he discovered furniture, including a made bed. But there was no one in the room.

He stepped in and looked around. To judge by the few items of clothing hanging in the closet, an adult couple was staying here, and logic said it must be Vivian’s and Saul’s parents. They hadn’t brought many things, so they weren’t staying long. So, if their important meeting was really in Blackhawk, why not a hotel there? It must have been important to them for some reason to establish a presence in the castle too.

Out in the hall again, Simon looked back toward the stair he had come up. He saw nothing, heard nothing, but there was… something… back there now, somewhere just out of sight in that direction. The shadows would be deepening on that stairway now, as the sun lowered outside. He’d take some other route when the time came to go back downstairs. He’d already looked for Vivian in that direction, and in that direction maybe Gregory…

Damn it, he wasn’t going to let himself be all that scared of Gregory. Sure, the man might yell at him angrily if he found Simon here. But he knew Simon and wasn’t going to shoot him for a burglar, so Simon wasn’t going to be scared… his hands were shaking slightly, and his knees. His mouth was dry, and he had to fight with himself to keep from running in the opposite direction from the stairs.

Come on, he told himself fiercely. This is ridiculous. He was fifteen, not the age to start having hysterics over nothing, over one little odd experience, like some little kid who’d just watched his first horror movie. And what had he actually seen? Not a ghost, not a skeleton. A man, lying on a cot. What was so bad about that?

He moved along the hall, walking normally, in the direction away from the stairs. The next room he came to also showed signs of habitation. Judging by the spare clothing visible, the occupant must be Saul.

The door of the next room after Saul’s was also shut. The pulse in Simon’s head came back as he called softly, and tapped on the door, then opened it and went in. Vivian wasn’t here, though the clothes indicated it was her room. She wasn’t in the bathroom either. She wasn’t even (and here Simon felt silly bending down to look) hiding mischievously under the bed.

What now? Having led him this far, his instinct seemed to have faltered. He could go out in the hall and search for her some more. He could wait in her room for her to come back. Neither of those courses felt right.

He’d left the door to the hall open. Out there it appeared to have got darker rather suddenly. Or had it really? Looking that way, Simon blinked. One thing for sure, he suddenly didn’t want to go out into that hall again. He didn’t want to because… there was a presence out there now.

Not Vivian. It could be Gregory, yeah, he thought it was Gregory, but… Gregory with something added, something taken away, something odd.

It was not that Simon, looking out from Vivian’s bedroom, could see or hear anything physical out in the hall. Even the greater darkness was perhaps not physical. But it was there. Whatever shadowy presence he’d awakened in the scorched circular room had followed him up the stairs, and was out there, in some form, now. If Simon were to stick his head out into the hall he might well see it with his eyes, and what he saw might well be more than he could bear, though he didn’t know just what his eyes would see.

Was it Gregory out there? Yes and no. Simon knew Gregory, to the limited extent he knew him at all, as a man, a human being, and this did not quite fit those categories. It felt like an it.

The it/Gregory out in the hall hadn’t followed Simon right into Vivian’s room. It wouldn’t, or it couldn’t. Simon thought he could see how, in some half-conscious way, it had thought that it had better not. But if Simon went out there now, he’d have to confront it directly and rather closely. It might be no more than twenty feet down the hallway, listening, trying to think, struggling against whatever power kept it from thinking clearly right now and acting forcefully…

Simon could, if he dared, if he hurried, rush right out into the hall this moment, without looking to his right, and then hurry along it to his left. If he hurried along, never looking back, then somewhere he’d find, he’d have to find, another way to get himself back downstairs. Although, as he thought about it, he got the distinct impression that in that direction there wasn’t a whole lot of hallway left.

Simon stepped forward, teetered on one foot for an almost paralyzed moment. Then with a sound like a sob he sprang for the door and slammed it shut. The moment of possible escape had passed, because he’d been too scared to seize it. There was a huge, old-fashioned bolt near eye level on the massive door, and Simon reached up and shot it home, then sagged in relief against the wall beside the door. The it/Gregory had moved forward suddenly. Simon was all right now, he was safe for the moment at least, but almost he had waited too long.

The presence he feared was now just outside the door. Simon could hear no sounds of breathing, he could hear nothing in fact, but he had not the least doubt that it was there. It moved, a little, and he sensed the movement by some means that was not hearing. It was waiting with great patience.

Was it waiting for him to come out?

The realization came to Simon that he was in a trap.

There ran through his mind, like the litany of some prayer memorized but never quite believed, all of the scientific, rational, logical opinions that he had managed to accumulate during his fifteen years of life. But to try to call on science and logic now was useless. Simon could no more open that hall door now than he could have leaped from the castle roof.

Maybe he could get out of the room through its window… but the window looked pretty small.

A quick check in the bathroom showed him that the window there was absurdly tiny, and filled with little stained glass panels. If he were a cat, maybe. Back to the one window in the bedroom.

Here, standing on a chair and pushing his upper body into the deep embrasure, he could manage to stick his head out easily enough. It was something of a surprise to see how full the daylight still was outside. Tall trees but not the horizon were covering the sun. Simon could have wriggled his body out through the window too, if there were anything at all nearby to offer a good grip, anyplace at all which he might reasonably hope to reach by climbing. Maybe, if he balanced on his toes on the sill here, then leaned far to the side, he might grasp that small ledge…

He could see, if he tried, that this wasn’t really the way out.

Standing on the floor inside the room again, the half-seen way to Vivian, to freedom, was as hard to pin down as ever. Once again Simon had the impression that it might be the window—but no. He could expect nothing but a fall to his death if he tried that.

If he couldn’t find any way to get out of this room, then he’d have to wait here. Sooner or later, Vivian would come back, or someone…

Unless it got dark first.

With the evil, infallible logic of nightmares Simon understood the worst in that one phrase. It was an axiom without support and needing none. When the sun had set, the room’s closed door would no longer hold.

Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus God. Some hand of human shape outside was trying the doorknob now. This was not only a feeling, Simon could actually see and hear it move. He stumbled away from the door and sank down on all fours on the thick bedside rug, stifling fear-whimpers in his throat. He could feel his bowels quivering, threatening to let go.

The knob was still. Now there was a brushing sound, very faint, against the door. It reminded Simon of someone holding a corpse’s arm, manipulating it so that the dead fingers [touched] the wood with excruciating delicacy.

Minutes of daylight still remained, the barrier still held. Simon made it to the providential toilet, dropped his trunks and squatted there. He could void the sickness of fear to some extent, but not the fear itself. When at last he stood up and worked the handle that brought a prosaic rush of water through the pipes, terror wasn’t exorcised enough to let him once again approach the door to the hallway.

Fearfully he approached the barrier, sensing now emptiness beyond, a deserted hallway. This time he put his ear right to the thick wood of the door and listened.

He could detect no one, nothing, waiting for him in the hall outside.

Choking on peculiar sounds, Simon unbolted the door. He pulled it open, like one reaching for air after near-suffocation. He stepped out into the hall.

He/it/Gregory had tricked him, just round the corner it was coming back in an utterly silent rush from the direction of the stairs—

Simon screamed. He hurled himself back into the room and slammed the door and bolted it. Pride, logic, and science had been utterly routed from his mind. He threw himself toward a far corner of the room, floundering diagonally across Vivian’s wide bed that lay in his path. With his feet under him again, standing in the corner of the room, he sent his fingers groping behind knurls on the dim wall’s elaborate wood paneling. Small, hidden catches yielded to his fingers’ pressure. An almost door-sized section of paneling swung gently out into the room, just clearing a night table by the bed. Gasping, Simon stepped into the opening, down and into the passage hidden in the wall.

He could have run through the dark passage if it had been necessary. So clearly did his mind now see the way ahead of him despite the physical darkness. But he did not run, for his vision showed him with equal clarity that he was not being pursued, and was not going to be. Instead of running he paced steadily, discovering and ignoring the spyholes and the other secret doors. They did not lead to a way out for him today. The way out was still somewhere ahead. He discovered, and bypassed, the lower, branching passage. A few moments after that he was standing inside the grotto looking out with a certain amazement at the paved court. Its stones were in shade now though the sun was still not really down. On the central stone table Vivian, now wearing her bikini, was stretched out napping with the red jacket folded under her head for a pillow.

The door of iron grillwork was secured with a chain and padlock. But there was enough play in the chain so that Simon was able to open the door just enough to slide through. It cost him a painful moment, but he made it.

He walked over to stand beside Vivian, looking down at her.

He thought that he had made no noise at all approaching, but still she awoke. It was a graceful, not at all startled, stirring. “I see you found me,” Vivian said, smiling faintly. “You should be very glad.”

“Yeah,” said Simon. His throat wasn’t working too well. Sweats of lust, exhaustion, terror, had dried on him in layers, mixed with a little river mud, powdered with the dust of long-forgotten passageways. He knew that he must stink. But that was no longer relevant. Emotionally he was too mangled to worry about or plan for anything.

Vivian moved, stretched, got up. Her motions were luxurious, catlike. When she turned for a moment to again study the picture on the easel, her bikini bottom was pulled low in back, showing the top of the cleft between her buttocks. Simon stared at it, just stared, not aware of feeling anything. Whatever happened next would happen, that was all.

Meanwhile Vivian was considering her work with evident dissatisfaction. “Maybe I should give up. It’s hard to paint from a statue. I don’t suppose you’ve ever tried.”

“No.”

“And to do a face from memory. Never mind.” And Vivian undid her bra and pulled it off. “Someday you’ll do much greater things than paint.” The panties fell, and Vivian held out her arms. “Now. Don’t you want your reward for finding me?”

And yet she made him wait a moment while she arranged the red jacket into a pad on the stone table, to ease her back when Simon’s frantic weight descended on her. She held him tightly and competently, and if she was uncomfortable, as she seemed to be, she certainly didn’t have to hold him very long. As he grasped her, Simon became aware that Saul was watching them from behind some bushes. But even being watched could not distract him now. Frenzy dissolved in joyless spasms. What pumped from him into Vivian burned heavily, bringing a mental image of molten lead. The convulsions of his body went on and on, draining him completely. They emptied the last reservoir, then died away, mechanical as functions in a plumbing system.

Exhausted, void, he rolled free of Vivian’s body to lie stickily on stone. The stone was chill beneath its surface warmed by the day’s sun. Simon thought to look toward the bushes, but Saul wasn’t there any more. If he ever had been.

Simon had trouble thinking. Or feeling. He couldn’t find anything inside himself now but emptiness.

Vivian lay on her back almost primly, knees raised together, as if after all she might have enjoyed it, and her body was seeking to absorb what his had given. She raised an eyebrow at him now. “Simon?”

“What?”

“I thought I heard a car drive up. My folks will be here, and Gregory, and you look awfully guilty. Suspicious. I think you’d better be moving on.”