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  “Still looking for somebody to help me find Jack Tryall,” Wilbert Fraser intoned. “Still looking for somebody to help me find Jack Tryall.”

  Suddenly, Jack thought he glimpsed a haze of blueish light, dancing around Wilbert Fraser’s forehead like a crown, and then dwindling and vanishing. He kept his eye closely on Wilbert Fraser now, watching for the slightest sign that it would happen again.

  “I can hear you,” said Wilbert Fraser. “I can hear you very faintly. You sound like you’re talking down the end of a cardboard tube.” The blueish light flickered again, so quickly and so faintly that Larry almost missed it. Now he was sure that Wilbert Fraser wasn’t talking to them any more, but somebody only he could see. There was a soft rustling sound somewhere behind Larry’s back—soft, soft rustling in the shadows in the very darkest corner of the room. Soft as silk, soft as breathing, as if somebody small were creeping on silk stockings, playing hide-and-go-seek. Larry wanted to turn around to see who it was, but his mother widened her eyes and gave him a quick, severe shake of her head.

  “I can hear you,” said Wilbert Fraser, “but not too distinctly, I’m afraid. You are a young one, yes? You are just a child. Maybe you should find us a grown-up to take us to Jack Tryall.”

  The rustling behind Larry’s back appeared to hesitate for a few moments. But then the blueish light around Wilbert Fraser’s forehead began to brighten and dance even more excitedly, so bright that it reflected blue diamond points in his eyes, and gave his face a blue-white pallor, as if he were as dead as the souls that he was summoning.

  “You’re going to have to speak louder, dearest,” Wilbert Fraser coaxed his spirit. “You’re going to have to show yourself.”

  It took all of Larry’s self-discipline not to turn around. Because behind him he could hear renewed whispering and rustling, and a singing magnetic coldness, as if somebody had opened a door to a refrigerated meat-store. He stared at his mother but his mother seemed quite calm, quite passive, and unafraid. Margot Tryall was standing in the center of their circle, her head thrown back, her eyes closed, her hands raised like all of the rest of them, but now her fists were tightly clenched. Dick Volare had his head bowed so that it was impossible for Larry to see his face, but he could tell by the creases on his cheeks that his teeth were gritted in a masklike grimace. Bembridge Caldwell’s eyes were closed, and he was whispering something to himself. He was standing closest to Wilbert Fraser, so his face too was suffused in deathly blue; as if he hadn’t looked sick enough already. Samantha Bacon was staring fixedly at Larry, her wide-apart eyes apparently unfocused. At least Larry thought that she was staring at him. She could have been staring over his shoulder, at what she could see behind him.

  “Come on, dearest, you’re going to have to show yourself,” Wilbert Fraser coaxed his little spirit. “You won’t be able to help us find the fellow we want unless you point out the way.”

  Larry heard more rustling. Then a sound like nothing he had ever heard in his life before. A sound like somebody breathing down the longest tunnel that he could imagine; somebody breathing closer and closer with every breath; yet still so very far away.

  It gave him a chill of infinite fear, and he knew that he was going to have to look around.

  But Wilbert Fraser hissed, “Larry! Whatever you do, don’t turn around!”

  “What?” asked Larry, bewildered.

  “Don’t turn around! You’ll upset the balance! You’ll see her soon enough—yes, and your father, too!”

  The breathing grew quicker. Quick, quick, quick. The rustling changed to a pattering, and the pattering grew faster and closer, too, like somebody running in ballet-slippers. “Faster, my dearest, faster!” Wilbert Fraser urged her. “We’re waiting for you here, in the real, real world! Faster, my little darling!”

  The blue light around his forehead grew brighter, illuminating his face in grotesque and shadowy relief, like a death-mask. The light was almost dazzling now, like the sun through a winter fog, and Larry would have shielded his eyes with his hand if he hadn’t been terrified of upsetting Wilbert Fraser’s precious “balance”.

  Without warning, the blue light suddenly branched out, flickering from one outstretched hand to the other, hesitating, then abruptly jumping, until all of their hands were joined together by a twitching, hazy rope of intense energy.

  “Come on, sugar, come on, my little sugar!” Wilbert Fraser urged her, although his voice wasn’t much more than a harsh whispering slur.

  Larry listened intently. He couldn’t hear anything now, although he could still the coldness, he could still feel the draft touching his back. Then, in a rush of ice-cold air and taffeta, a small girl of about eleven brushed past Larry’s elbow, actually nudging him, her taffeta actually scratching the back of his hand. She frightened him so much that he blurted out “Ah!” and took an involuntary step back.

  Unless she had been hiding in the curtains, or had climbed through the window, there was no way that she have crept into the room while Larry was standing in the circle, and pushed past him without him knowing that she was coming. Larry had a sixth sense about people coming up behind him. He could feel their aura. He could feel the molecules of air that surged ahead of them as they approached. But this little child had come close enough to stick him in the ribs with a 90-cent kitchen knife, and he hadn’t even felt a whisper.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Wilbert Fraser warned him. “Everything’s fine. This little girl is going to do her best to guide us to Jack Tryall. Remember, it’s not easy. It’s not easy for you and it’s not easy for her. Believe me, there isn’t any pain worse than the pain of being dead, and separated from the people you love, and knowing you’re dead.”

  Larry stared wide-eyed at the little girl’s back. She had entered the circle and was standing facing Margot Tryall. Margot still had her head thrown back and her eyes closed and her fists tightly clenched; and it looked almost as if the little girl were willing her to open her eyes and take notice of her.

  Larry couldn’t yet see the little girl’s face, but her dark wavy hair was twisted into braids, and she wore a bow on each side, over her ears. She wore a white taffeta party-frock, and white ankle-socks, and shiny white silk slippers.

  Although there was no wind in the room, no draft, her hair waved and her party-frock ruffled, and Larry was conscious of a soft echoing screaming sound; the kind of sound you hear in subway tunnels, distorted, breathy, weird; a sound that could be distant voices or distant trains, or simply the wind blowing from one underground chamber to another.

  “Hallo, sweetness,” said Wilbert Fraser, apparently unafraid. “What’s your name, hunh? Are you going to help us to find this lady’s father?”

  The little girl said something indistinct. Wilbert Fraser leaned forward, his hands still raised, and repeated, “Are you going to help us find this lady’s father? Jack Tryall, that’s his name. Are you going to show us where he is?”

  “Dead,” said the girl, in an odd hollow voice that gave Larry that neck-prickling feeling again. It sounded like someone speaking with their mouth pressed against an empty mug.

  “Well, sure, sweetness, we know he’s passed over, that’s why we want to talk to him. We want to comfort him, see, let him know that he’s not forgotten.”

  “He’s dead,” the girl repeated.

  Wilbert Fraser stood up straight again, and looked at the little girl with an expression that was decidedly testy.

  Larry was beginning to wonder if this spirit-manifestation were a clever hoax. Maybe this girl was Wilbert Fraser’s niece, or a pupil from one of San Francisco’s dozens of acting schools. Maybe the chill that he could feel behind him was nothing more supernatural than air-conditioning, turned right down. He couldn’t explain the blueish light that still flickered from one outspread hand to the other; but maybe there was a simple scientific explanation for that, too. Maybe it was static electricity, created by some kind of Van der Graaf generator.

  At this moment, the little
girl turned around and stared at him, straight at him. In spite of everything, he shivered. She was probably a hoax, probably a child actress. But supposing she wasn’t? Supposing she were really dead, and this was her spirit?

  She had a plain, spoiled face with piggy little brown eyes and freckles, and a small mouth, small as a stab-wound in a week-dead belly. She sure didn’t look like a spirit. She looked like any one of dozens of brats who sit sulking at theatrical auditions while their mothers endlessly fuss and braid their hair and carp about the opposition.

  For a moment, Larry thought that the little girl was going to say something, but then she turned her back again. As she did so, Margot Tryall opened her eyes at last and looked at her.

  “Are you my spirit guide?” asked Margot, in an awed whisper.

  The girl nodded.

  “Sweetness, you must show this lady where her father is,” Wilbert Fraser insisted. “Do you understand that? You don’t have to speak. All you have to do is nod once for yes and twice for no.”

  We could have done with a table, thought Larry. Knocking is a whole lot more decisive than nodding.

  The girl lifted one hand and pressed it flat against the palm of Margot’s hand. The room seemed to grow gloomier and colder, and the hazy blue light that connected the hands of everybody standing around begin to dim, and dance more epileptically, like a fluorescent tube about to flicker out.

  Larry had a feeling of closely compressed anxiety. He turned to Eleonora again, but again Eleonora shook her head. Don’t upset the balance, her expression told him. Wait until you’ve seen before you say you don’t believe.

  “We want you to take this lady to talk to her father,” Wilbert Fraser repeated. “Do you understand that, my little sweetheart? One nod will do it. Just give me one nod.”

  The little girl hesitated, then nodded. Wilbert Fraser beamed in relief. “They all agree to do it in the end,” he said, more to the little girl than to anybody else. “It’s just that some are a tad more awkward about it than others.”

  Margot whispered, “Little girl, little girl. What’s your name, little girl?”

  “Roberta Snow,” the girl replied.

  Margot smiled with benign delight at everybody in the room. “Roberta, what a pretty name! I had a cousin Roberta! Roberta Somerville! She died when she was about your age, too! Maybe you’ve met her!”

  “Come on, now, Margot, we may not have too much time,” Wilbert Fraser interrupted. “We have to find your father.”

  The little girl stood still and silent for a moment. Then she lisped, “He’s dead. Your father’s dead.”

  “I know he’s dead,” Margot nodded, sadly. “That’s why I want to talk to him. Can you find him for me?”

  It was then that the room grew darker still, and the air felt as if it were quivering like a freshly scraped violin-string. Larry could hardly make out anything in the darkness, except for the little girl’s wind-ruffled taffeta party-frock, and Margot Tryall’s pale face, and Wilbert Fraser’s diamond-glittering eyes.

  He had the most unearthly sensation that, instead of standing in Wilbert Fraser’s living-room, they were standing in a cathedral. He looked up, and he could see vaulted cathedral arches, and tall windows of blood-colored glass. He could hear the high-pitched singing of a choir, and the deep reverberation of a pipe-organ. He could feel the chill of the marble flooring; and all around him stone saints stood with eyes that were dead and hands that were frozen in gestures of love and compassion and holy censure.

  Yet he could still just as clearly see Wilbert Fraser’s living-room, and his mother, and Samantha Bacon, and Dick Volare, and Bembridge Caldwell. It was like standing in two places at the same time, one experience overlapping the other.

  Hologram, he thought. Just about the most technically flawless hologram that I’ve ever seen.

  He turned his head around to see if he could discover where the projector was hidden.

  At that instant, the little girl Roberta whipped her head around and glared at him with unmitigated ferocity. “You!” she hissed, in a voice as cold as a snake.

  “Larry!” Wilbert Fraser appealed. “Don’t turn around! Don’t upset the balance!”

  The blue light suddenly flared and crackled; and blue sparks showered down from everybody’s hands. Larry didn’t know whether he was standing in a cathedral or a living-room. The floor was covered with a crimson-patterned rug, but at the same it was marble. Their voices were muffled by curtains, and yet they seemed to echo, too. The assault on his senses was like the effects of an earth tremor—when you look for stability and reassurance in the very walls and floors that are swaying and betraying you.

  For one split-second he thought: You’re being tricked here, Larry. They’ve found a way to disorient you so wildly that you’ll believe anything and everything.

  He thought: Grab the little girl. This so-called “Roberta Snow”. Then everybody will see for sure that this is a hoax.

  “Come on, little girl, my dearest little one, we have to hurry,” Wilbert Fraser urged her. “We have other people to talk to tonight. Hurry.”

  “Just a minute, Mr. Fraser,” said Larry. His voice sounded as if he had a pillow pressed across his mouth—so blurred that he wondered if anybody else had heard it. He took a single step forward and held out his hand toward the little girl.

  The little girl turned her head and glared at him again. “Keep away!” she spat at him. He was about to snatch at her arm, but then something happened to her face, and he stopped in alarm.

  Her hair unbraided itself and rose slowly into the air, waving as if she were lying back in a pool. Her face grew pale, with a faint greenish tinge, and her cheeks and her eyes puffed up. Still she continued to stare at him with hostility and resentment, although the pupils of her eyes milked over, like a boiled fish lying on a plate.

  Wilbert Fraser said, “Larry! Please, back off! You don’t know what damage you can do!”

  Larry didn’t know what to say; didn’t know what to do. But from the swollen transformation of the girl’s face, and the way in which her hair was slowly waving in the air, he was convinced now that he wasn’t looking at a hologram. He was convinced now that what he was experiencing was real—even if it wasn’t exactly what Wilbert Fraser was claiming it to be.

  “Come on, sweetness,” Wilbert Fraser murmured to the little girl. “Everything’s fine; everything’s dandy. Nobody’s going to touch you. Nobody’s going to hurt you. We’re all your friends.”

  There was a moment of excruciating tension. Looking across at his mother, Larry saw that her eyes were wide with fear, and that her neck was tautened into sinews. Margot Tryall was quivering, breathing in shallow gasps. Bembridge Caldwell was grayer than ever, and sweating.

  “Come on, sweetness,” said Wilbert Fraser.

  The little girl screamed. A high gargling scream that could have shattered glass. As she did so, thick green water gushed out of her nose and mouth, gallons of it, and splashed on to the rug. She stood gagging, choking, with tendrils of slimy weed hanging out of her nostrils.

  Wilbert Fraser said, “Come on, sweetheart,” and reached out his hand. But the little girl twisted away and pushed her way out of the circle. Larry turned to see which way she would go, but she ran directly toward the main window.

  “For Christ’s sake, stop her!” he shouted. “She’s going to ju—”

  He stopped; stunned. The little girl ran toward the window, her own reflection rushing toward her in the night-darkened glass. She took one slippered step on the brown sofa in front of the window, and threw herself into the window, her arms spread wide, her head thrown back. And vanished.

  There was a long silence, punctuated only by the steady dripping of water. Larry was the first to walk toward the window and touch it with his hand. Cold, unbroken glass. Outside, nothing but the fog, and the night, and a drop so far to Wilbert Fraser’s front yard that nobody, not even an acrobat, could have survived it without breaking a leg.

  Larr
y turned back and stared at Wilbert Fraser and the rest of the guests.

  “She disappeared,” he said. “Did you see that? She jumped into the window and she disappeared.”

  Wilbert Fraser dryly rubbed his hands together. “Larry… I told you before we started that we were going to be dealing with the full undiluted energy of the world beyond.”

  On a sudden thought, Larry went back to the window, and tried to open it. Maybe Wilbert Fraser had worked out a way of opening and closing it so fast that you wouldn’t realize what had happened. But it was a heavy Victorian sash window, and its frame had been distorted by years of earth-slips and settling, and what was more, it was stuck with cream-colored paint. He heaved at its two brass handles, but he couldn’t budge it.

  “Larry, darling,” Eleonora pleaded. Her face was white. “I know that it’s hard to accept the spirits, the first time you see them.”

  Larry returned to the circle. He pointed to the water on the floor. “How did you do that?” he asked Wilbert Fraser, bluntly.

  Wilbert Fraser said, “The little girl was drowned. When you challenged her reality, she had no choice but to show you that she was truly dead. You must remember that the spirits are very traumatized by what has happened to them. They are mostly very vulnerable. Especially the children.”

  Margot Tryall had tears in her eyes. “I could have seen my father, Larry,” she told him. “Roberta could have taken me to see my father.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I spoiled things,” said Larry. “Sorry for being so skeptical, you know. I’m embarrassed. It just looked to me like hocus-pocus.”

  “Do you want to make a search for hidden projectors and microphones and dry-ice machines?” asked Wilbert Fraser, sharply. “I really don’t mind if you do.”

  “It’s all right, forget it, I’m sorry,” Larry told him. He was still hyperventilating from the experience of seeing the young girl. “I guess I suffer from Detective’s Disease. I can’t take anything on face value, even when it’s right in front of my nose.”

  “Well, you’re not the only one,” Wilbert Fraser replied, a little more charitably this time. “I just hope I’ve managed to convince you that the other side is a reality.”