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Trawley gasped and put a hand to her cheek.

“And so that’s why you seemed so familiar to me.”

“Yes.”

Trawley sighed. “So it was not another lifetime.”

“No, Anna,” said Case.

“I’m crushed.”

Dare turned to Freeboard and spoke to her quietly. “Isn’t it hysterical? You couldn’t sell the house because you were haunting it.” Freeboard lowered her head into a hand. “Honest to God, if you weren’t dead already …” she murmured.

“Speaking of which,” spoke up Trawley. “We were eating and drinking and all that sort of thing. Have we got new bodies?”

“Heavens no,” replied Case. “It’s all an illusion, my dear, nothing more. You’ve all been creating your own reality. The island and the mansion are solid, they are here, but you’ve all reconstructed them to fit your delusion.”

“We’re not solid?” the psychic persisted.

“You are not.”

“Not even astral sort of somethings or other?”

“Give it up,” Dare advised her.

“Get a life,” added Freeboard in an undertone.

Dare turned to her and nodded approbation.

Case lifted his chin. “Now then, what have you decided?” he asked. “I must say, if nothing else, I do hope that if you cling to the earth you’ll at least have some pity on those poor, abused people who’ve been trying for so long to live peacefully at Elsewhere. You know; Paul Quandt and his family, poor darlings. You’ve given them a devil of a time. No pun intended.”

“What on earth do you mean?” asked Dare.

“You had them terrified out of their wits! You remember all that burning and flinging about and those nightmarish poundings that so frightened you all? Don’t you know what was causing all that?”

“I can hardly wait to hear,” Dare said dryly.

“The Quandts brought in
Jesuit priests to drive you out
!”

The author turned to Freeboard with a smirk of satisfaction.

“Did you hear that?”

“Oh, be quiet, Terry.”

“Priests!”

“Shut—
up
!”

They heard someone clear his throat. It was Case. “And so what’s it to be?” he asked. “A change of frequency? I certainly hope so. I must say, I’ve grown fond of you all. Very fond.”

Freeboard looked down and shook her head, uncertain.

“Boy, I really don’t know,” she said.

Case looked at her with fondness.

“I must say, I would miss you, Joan.”

She looked up in surprise and said, “Me?”

“There’d be no more loneliness there. No more tears.”

Freeboard’s eyes began to fill.

“That’s the deal?” she asked.

“That’s the deal.”

“This world was never meant to be a home to us, Joan,” said Case. “This world is a one-night stand.”

Abruptly Freeboard’s eyes lit up in surmise. “Hey, it’s you! You’re the angel in my dream! Gabriel! ‘The clams aren’t safe’; that meant the river!”

“Well, I know what
I’m
doing,” said Dare.

Freeboard turned to him and lifted an eyebrow. “You’re going?”

“Yes!” exclaimed Dare. “I’m off!” The author threw a kiss in the direction of the river. “
Adieu
, space-time!” he called out. “Be good!”

He was beginning to disappear.

“Hey, wait for me!” Freeboard shouted.

She, too, was beginning to vanish.

“
Adieu
, sucky speed-reading critics and reviewers!”

Dare was almost invisible.

“Hey, slow down a second, will you?” Freeboard nattered.

“Oh, well, of course, I’m at a
much
higher frequency, Joanie.”

The next moment they were gone. But a raucous cry of pique and frustration was heard, then a slap, and then the voice of Dare complaining: “No hitting in the afterlife, Joanie!”

Case and Trawley remained, and they looked at one another and smiled as they heard a dim yapping, as of two little dogs.

“Oh, my heart! Can it be?” came a waning cry from Dare.

And then Freeboard. “Can you puke in the afterlife?”

“Boys!”

Dare’s voice, intermingled with the dogs’ faint yapping, held a joy that he’d never felt or known.

In this life.

The sounds faded away.

“Well, Anna, and what about you?” Case asked her. “Are you coming? Bethie’s waiting, you know.”

Trawley frowned. “What’s become of Dr. Case?” she asked. “I mean, the real one. Did you off him or something?”

“No, Anna. Dr. Case is alive, poor soul. When he heard that you three had died, he simply left and went back to his teaching.”

“Oh.”

Case took a step toward her. “Now then, shall we go together?”

Trawley stuck her hand out in front of her, halting him.

“No, not yet,” she said. “First I want to know who you are.”

“Would you believe that I’m a being of light?”

“Try again.”

“Now
I’m
crushed,” Case replied. “What’s the difference
who
I am?”

“A very large one. Knowing where you came from might give me some clue as to where you might take me, if you get my drift. In this circumstance, I’d have to say that character matters.”

“There isn’t any smoke or mirrors, Anna. You can trust me.”

“It’s the smoke part that worries me,” she said.

“You’re not serious, Anna. Oh, come, now!”

“Well, you’re certainly not an angel, now, are you? You deceived us. You pretended to be Gabriel Case.”

“But of course. It’s as you said, Anna—’Dead people lie.’”

He smiled that brilliant archangel smile.

Trawley’s laugh was full and rich, free of burden, overflowing.

Case started forward, his arms held out to her.

“And now shall we go elsewhere, my lovely?”

She jabbed a fist high into the air and cried,
“Yes!”

Then rushed forward to meet him with open arms.

Epilogue: 1997

T
he waking sun strewed shuttered gold upon the blue-gray waters of the silent river and the island air was filled with peace. Inside, in the echoing mansion Great Room, laughing young children were chasing one another while their parents, Paul and Christine Quandt, were in the library wrapping up some interesting business with a pair of tired Jesuit priests. One of them—husky, very young, inscrutable—stood with his hands in the pockets of his coat as he watched an older, taller priest tuck a book of prayers bound in bright red leather into a briefcase, snap it shut, and then scratch his nose with a freckled finger. “There, that’s that,” he sighed. “We’re done.”

He reached up and ran a hand through his thinning red hair.

Christine Quandt glanced into the Great Room.

“Oh, well, the kids are feeling good about the place,” she noted.

The old priest followed her gaze. “Bless their hearts.”

He picked up the briefcase.

A somber Paul Quandt was seated at the bar in a short-sleeved blue denim shirt and jeans. He shook his head. “I can’t believe all this business started up again, Father.”

“You moved back in when?” the priest asked him.

“May second. We’d been living in Europe. We’d taken the house off the market after that poor woman died, that Realtor. My God, what a shock to come back to all this!”

He took a sip from a large white mug of coffee.

The red-haired Jesuit glanced to his companion, who’d continued to silently watch and wait. The young priest somberly and knowingly nodded and then fixed an unreadable gaze on Paul Quandt.

“Oh, well, yes, I can imagine,” said the redheaded priest.

He moved toward the bar.

“Well, all right. And now let’s hope that’s the end of it,” he offered.

“Really,” Mrs. Quandt said dryly, nodding.

“I’ll be waiting outside,” the younger priest told the other with a move of his head. “I need a smoke.”

“All right, Regis. Be right with you,” the older man answered.

The young priest started away.

Paul Quandt called out to him.

“Thanks for everything, Father!”

“Me too!” his wife added.

The priest raised his hand in acknowledgment.

He kept walking and didn’t look back.

“Good fellow,” said the older priest, looking after him.

“So young,” murmured Christine Quandt. She watched the young priest go out the door. “Looks barely twenty.”

“Yes, I know,” said the older man. “My assistant took suddenly ill; they found Regis at the very last minute for me.”

“Oh, you just met at the house?”

“Yes, that’s right.” Something occurred to him. “Wasn’t that the name of the boy who died? Your cousin? Edward Quandt’s son?”

“Yes, it was,” confirmed the wife.

“Lovely name.”

The priest held out his hand.

“You won’t stay for some brunch?” she asked.

“Thank you, no. I’ve got a mass at eleven. In the meantime, God bless,” he said. “You’re nice people.” The priest took her hand. “Oh, would you please call the boatman?” he asked in an afterthought.

Paul Quandt got off the stool and shook his head.

“Already done it. Thanks again for the exorcism, Father.”

“Well, let’s hope that it gives you some peace.”

Quandt nodded. “Amen.”

“That’s
my
line,” said the priest.

The Quandts smiled. Then they noticed that the Jesuit was staring at something, a large oil painting above the fireplace of a man and a younger woman.

“Are these your famous aunt and uncle?”

Quandt said, “Yes.”

The priest nodded, then said softly, “I know their story.”

He slowly walked over to the painting, staring up.

“Tragic history: a murder and a suicide,” he grieved.

“No,” said Quandt quietly behind him.

The Jesuit turned around to him quizzically.

“No suicide,” said Quandt.

“No suicide?”

Quandt came over and stood beside him, the porcelain coffee mug still in his grip. “No. No suicide, Father. Two murders.”

“What?”

Quandt looked up at the man in the painting.

“Well, the truth of the matter, Father, is that Auntie apparently was cheating on Uncle and wanted him out of the way so badly that she put a deadly slow-acting poison in his drink. While he was dying, Uncle Edward found the vial that the poison had come in, and he sealed up Auntie alive in the crypt and then died himself right there on the spot.”

“By the crypt?”

“By the crypt.”

“How awful,” said the priest.

“Not quite
Romeo and Juliet
,” said Quandt.

His wife came up beside them. “Just misses.”

The old priest took a final look at the painting, and then turned away to leave. “Well, I’ll pray for them both.”

“Thanks, Father,” Paul Quandt told him. “I’d really like to imagine that they’re at peace.”

“Well, good-bye again.”

The priest gave a wave.

“Bye, Father.”

As the red-haired Jesuit left the room, a large collie dog came bounding up to him, and then followed him toward the door.

“Hello, boy,” the priest greeted him.

“Oh, now, leave the good Father alone,” Christine Quandt called out. “Come on, Tommy! Come on back here, you nutcase!”

The priest, still walking, looked over his shoulder. “No no no, I like dogs!” he called back. Then he turned and looked down at the collie. “Come on, Tommy! Good boy!”

The dog barked and leaped up at him playfully, following.

“Yes, I had a good doggie like you when I was little,” said the priest. “Oh, yes, Tommy. Good boy. Good boy.”

They had reached the entry hall. The priest opened the door and they went out. Paul Quandt put his arm around his wife’s waist and together they looked up at the painting again. Riga Quandt had rugged, imperfect features that nevertheless were intensely sensual and gave an impression of beauty. Her star-crossed husband, Edward Quandt, had dark good looks, a chiseled face, and a vivid scar that jagged like lightning from his cheekbone down to the base of his jaw.

They were the faces of Morna and of Gabriel Case.

*  *  *

The two priests and the dog were approaching the dock where the motor launch would soon pick them up. They could see it starting toward them from the opposite shore. The older priest picked up a stick and threw it. “Go, Tommy! Go!” he commanded. “Fetch!”

The dog took off with a bark and a bound.

The freckled old Jesuit glanced at the sky.

“Clearing up. Looks as if it’s going to be a nice day.”

They walked onto the dock and to its end, their steps thudding hollow on the dry old planks.

“I’m so glad you were able to fill in,” said the older priest. “You’re at Fordham, you said?”

“Yes, at Fordham.”

“You know Father Bermingham there?”

The stolid priest shook his head.

“The directions were good, by the way? You found the village and the dock with no trouble?”

“No trouble. The launch was there waiting for me.”

“Good. And so what do you think, young Regis? Tell me. Do you think we accomplished something? You believe the house is haunted?”

The other shook his head. “Beats me.”

The old priest stared at him. “You look so young.”

“I know.”

The old man stared down at the sparkling waters where some blueness of the sky was beginning to reflect. “What a terrifying mystery the world presents to us, Regis. We know so little of the way things really are; of what
we
are, finally.”

“True.”

“A neutrino has no mass nor electrical charge and can pass through the planet in the twinkling of an eye. It’s a ghost. And yet it’s real, we know it’s there, it exists. Ghosts are everywhere, I think; they’re right beside us … lost souls … the unquiet dead. You know I wonder if …”

Turning to the Jesuit beside him, he broke off and looked puzzled, then taken aback. He looked around and behind him, frowning in bewilderment. He said, “Regis?”

There was nobody there.

Acknowledgments

No book is an island, and this one, especially, owes its form and being to some very special people.

My thanks to:

David G. Hartwell, F. Paul Wilson, Dave Hinchberger, Rich Chizmar, and Matt Schwartz, for pointing me in fruitful directions;

Pete Schneider, who was there from the beginning;

Jennifer Brehl, who let me borrow her writers, and (even when the shovel was broken) dug for gold;

Ralph Vicinanza, who piloted the agent’s ship;

Tom Dupree, Avon editor supreme;

Marsha DeFilippo, Angel of Mercy;

And Stephen King—from one writer to another.