The Link (31 page)

Dr. Keighley gapes at him. Through clenched teeth, he demands to know who the man is.

The man stands motionless, glaring at him.

“Who are you, I said!” cries the doctor.

The man turns away and disappears. Dr. Keighley stands frozen for a few moments, then runs to the corridor and looks.

There is no sign of the man.

The expression on Dr. Keighley’s face leaves little doubt that, despite his willful personality, he realizes that the small, ugly man was not real.

As they go upstairs, Peter asks Teddie to please control his tongue, they are guests at Harrowgate. Teddie apologizes (in his own fashion) but adds that there is something about Keighley that makes “the hackles rise.”

As Teddie retires, Robert, Cathy and Peter go into Keighley’s room (he has moved to his wife’s room, his wife and Eunice to another wing) where they will spend the night; two extra beds have been installed and they will take turns keeping watch.

“Well, I wonder what we’ll see, if anything,” says Peter with anticipation.

Robert, looking toward a paneled wall, “sees” a section of it sliding open rapidly and a crazed Mrs. Rochester-like lady in tattered grey come rushing across the room at him, brandishing a bloody dagger.

He represses a smile. It has been another of his mini-fantasies.

They discuss the haunting. (The “so-called” haunting, Cathy says). It possesses what is known as “vividity” in that distinctly percussive noises have been heard in the attic and on the door of this room. Moreover, the effects could not be simply designated as hallucinatory since all three members of the family heard them simultaneously.

“But only Dr. Keighley saw the man,” says Robert.

“There’s the interesting part,” says Cathy. “A man who claims there’s nothing going on here is personal witness to most of it.”

“We mustn’t forget the others felt the cold and heard the noises,” Peter says. “We can’t assume that the case can be reduced to a psychoanalytical exploration of the doctor’s mind.”

“What I find odd,” Robert thinks aloud, “is that a ghost apparently from the Middle Ages never shows itself until now.”

“Again, Dr. Keighley,” Cathy says. “We mustn’t forget that he’s experienced the bulk of the phenomena.”

Hours later; Peter and Cathy lying on their beds, asleep. Robert, nodding in a chair, jerks up his head as the sound of loud footsteps is heard in the corridor.

“Well, either that’s a member of the family or a new phenomenon,” he says.

He has barely completed the sentence when the bolted door flies open, (the bolt unbroken) crashing against the wall, making Robert recoil in his chair and Peter and Cathy jolt awake.

Suddenly, the room is flooded with an icy coldness which makes them shiver convulsively.

As, across the floor, audible to each of them, footsteps thump.

They stare at the path where it seems as though an invisible man is walking.

Incredibly, the footsteps now move upward toward the ceiling as though the unseen phantom is ascending a staircase.

The footsteps fade above them, cease.

“Well,” says Peter, smiling faintly.

They all twitch, gasping, as a man comes rushing into the room.

It is Teddie. “I heard the footsteps,” he says. “You saw him?”

No, they say, telling him what happened. As they do, Dr. Keighley enters. He, too, has heard the footsteps. Yes, they are a new phenomenon. He looks a little pale, acts not as harshly as he did at supper.

“Was there ever a staircase in here?” Peter asks him.

Not that he knows of, Keighley says. Is there any way of getting to the attic without breaking through a ceiling? Peter asks. I don’t believe so, says the doctor.

Peter nods. He smiles at Robert and Cathy. “So,” he says. “The game’s afoot.”

In the morning, Peter interviews the three members of the Keighley family in order to begin preparing a psycho-profile on the case. Robert and Cathy hear Dr. Keighley telling Peter, in no uncertain terms, that his physical and mental health are fine and that he has never, in his life, suffered from hallucinations.

Robert and Cathy take a walk. She says that she’s convinced that the phenomena have been caused, in some way, by Dr. Keighley.

“A prime example of telekinesis?” Robert asks drily.

“More or less.” She doesn’t smile.

“Cathy, do you always make up your mind first?” he asks. “Don’t you ever just wait and see?”

She’s waited for and seen enough things, she replies, to feel qualified to make up her mind about certain points.

Robert shrugs and lets it go. He doesn’t want to argue with her.

They discuss Teddie’s behavior and Cathy says she hopes he doesn’t behave like that in Russia. That could be catastrophic.

“He’s strange, all right,” Robert agrees. “But this thing with Keighley is something else, I think.”

“What do you mean?”

He says he doesn’t know; it’s just a feeling.

They are walking through a lovely wooded glade when they get caught in a chilling downpour and have to take cover in a small gazebo overlooking a pond. They sit on a bench inside and, when Cathy shivers, Robert, after hesitating, puts an arm around her.

Finally, both arms.

It is not too long before, gazing at each other, their lips meet, then hold, their embrace tightening.

“Oh, God, not again,” she laments.

“You want me to apologize?” he asks, his tone close to anger.

“No.” She clings to him. “No, I’m the one to apologize. I’m the one who’s making all the trouble.”

“Cathy,
I want to marry you,”
he says. “You have to make up your mind. Do you love me or not?”

“Yes, I love you, Rob. That never stopped. Please believe me. Whatever else I did was—cowardice or call it anything you want. But I never stopped loving you.”

He has to ask. “Are you sure you’re not just saying these things because we’re away from your family? Out of sight, out of influence?”

Her smile is sad. “You do know me, don’t you?” she says.

She promises that, this time, she will really tell Harry and her parents, really get divorced and marry Robert. “Really, Rob, I will. I swear. As soon as we get back from Russia.” She kisses him tenderly. “I love you so,” she whispers.

When the rain squall lets up and they return to the house, Peter is with Teddie, telling him about his interview with Mrs. Keighley.

“She’s seen the ghost to,” he says. “The night her husband saw it, he came to her room.”

We see the incident dramatized. Dr. Keighley, trying to maintain control, is, none-the-less, pale and shaken, barely able to speak as he tells his wife what happened. Mrs. Keighley decides he must have some brandy and leaves to run to the servant’s bedroom where the keys of the wine cellar are kept.

She is about to start up a few steps to a higher landing, her gaze down because the corridor is so dimly lit, when she sees, in front of her, a man’s legs garbed in coarse leggings. She jars to a halt.

Shaking uncontrollably, she raises her eyes to see the small, ugly man looking down at her.

He has on an old smock, Elizabethan leggings, boots covered with dried mud. There is a stained blue handkerchief around his neck. His face is red, his eyes malevolent.

Trying not to faint on the spot, Mrs. Keighley backs off slowly, whirls and runs back toward her bedroom.

When she glances back, the man is gone.

“Why didn’t she tell us?” Robert asks; we are back to the four.

“She said that, after her husband denied he’d seen anything—despite having told her that he had—she was afraid to tell him she’d seen the same thing. Afraid to mention it at the supper table as well.

“There’s something odd going on between them,” Peter says. “When we find out what it is—”

“Obviously, they have to be the cause of everything that’s going on,” Cathy says.

“Or the lure,” says Robert impulsively. They look at him and he makes a discarding gesture. “I don’t know why I said that,” he tells them.

“You may be on to something—” Peter breaks off as the sound of an approaching car is heard outside. He moves to the window. “Ah,” he says. “Perhaps we’ll get some answers now.”

Mrs. Warrenton has arrived.

BERTHA WARRENTON is 56, a tall, powerful looking woman with a dominating personality. As soon as she enters the house, she tells them they must have a sitting right away. She has to move on before dark to a nearby city for another “task.”

She holds forth as they start upstairs for Dr. Keighley’s room; the family does not choose to go with them. She tells them that it is her assumption that their presence at Harrowgate indicates a genuine phenomenon in the house.

“We must, of course,” she warns, “be ever vigilant against the possibility that we will be mis-led by old houses creaking, the chittering of birds in chimneys, the scampering of squirrels in attics.

“The babbling of nuts in manor houses,” Teddie mutters.

“Stop it, Teddie,” Cathy whispers.

Mrs. Warrenton seems to sniff the air as they reach the haunted wing. “Oh, yes, oh, yes,” she says.

She starts to talk about houses being “impregnated” with the actions, thoughts and emotions of former tenants. Cathy asks her if she means surviving energies or personalities. “Both,” says Mrs. Warrenton.

“I don’t believe in life after death,” Cathy tells her.

“Nor do I,” says Mrs. Warrenton. Cathy looks surprised until the medium adds, “There is no such thing as death. All is continuity.” She keeps looking around. “Of course,” she says distractedly, “we must not allow our fascination with the ‘other world’ to become a substitute for living in this world.”

“I always say that,” Teddie remarks.

“I may want you out of the room when we sit,” she responds casually. “I try not to waste my time with negative people.”

Peter laughs softly. “Touché?” he asks Teddie.

“Pigslop,” Teddie mutters.

They enter the room and Mrs. Warrenton paces it, the others watching. “Which way is north?” she asks.

They fumble, then establish it. Mrs. Warrenton requests they place her chair with its back to the north. “In this way I am polarized,” she says.

Robert shows interest in that. “What do you mean by polarized?” he asks.

“Let me describe it this way,” she tells him. “Sitting with my back to the north places my entire ‘antennae system’, as it were, in a position where I can more easily scan whatever information might be ‘riding’, shall we say, the earth’s magnetic lines of force.”

They all show some interest in her answer but especially Robert; he doesn’t know why.

The sitting begins, Mrs. Warrenton going into trance immediately, her head thrown back, her feet thrust out, eyes rolling back in their sockets. She has not demanded that Teddie leave but has warned him that he can ruin the sitting if he doesn’t cooperate.

It is an eerie scene, the room barely light because the afternoon is so overcast, the windows of the room so small. They watch quietly as the female medium starts breathing in short gasps, then, moments later, begins to utter low moans. Her eyes are closed but the lids flicker constantly. They watch her, waiting. It is just past four p.m. on March 1.

They react as she sits up straight in her chair, crosses her arms and begins to sway back and forth, her eyes still closed.