Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (5 page)

 
          
No!
A bright jolt of fear galvanized her
to wakefulness; she couldn't sleep, not when she might find anything at all
here in the farmhouse when she awoke. The memory of the squirrel made her
shudder. If she slept again, who knew what she'd find in the morning?

 
          
Because
she was the one responsible. She had to find the strength to admit that now.
There was no one else to blame. No human agency could have followed her from
Manhattan
, to
Massachusetts
, to
Glastonbury
, killing animals and placing their ravaged
corpses outside her door. It was her. She was the one doing it.

 
          
A
wave of depression mixed with relief settled over her.
Accept the blame,
a cold inner voice whispered.
It's your fault, all your fault. Don't try
to find an explanation. Just accept the blame. . . .

 
          
Winter
drew a long, shuddering breath of grief. All right. She'd accept the
blame—that was supposed to be the first step on the road to recovery, wasn't
it? Mea fucking culpa? But if she was the cause, she could also make it stop.

 
          
Couldn't
she?

 
          
In
the search that had uncovered the brandy, Winter had also seen what she needed
now, and although she could not imagine the necessity that had stored 250 feet
of cotton clothesline in the farmhouse pantry, she blessed it now. With the
clothesline in one hand and the kitchen shears in the other, Winter retired to
her bedroom.

 
          
She'd
built a fire in the woodstove at the same time she'd built the fire in the
fireplace, and the room was pleasantly warm now. She took the time to change
her slept-in clothes for heavy flannel pajamas and turn back the patchwork
quilt and
Hudson Bay
blanket that covered the white iron
bedstead.

 
          
Then
she turned to the clothesline.

 
          
It's not me. It's
NOT. But it was, it
had to be—there was no one else here to blame. She cut a long hank of line, and
knotted one end around the bedpost, tying and retying knot over knot until there
was no way to undo it. She set the rest of the coil aside on the rocking chair
and slipped the shears carefully beneath the mattress. Then she climbed into
bed.

 
          
At least it won't happen tonight.

 
          
Winter
felt her cheeks go hot with embarrassment—although there was no one to see—as
she took the free end of clothesline and wrapped it around her wrist, knotting
and tying it until it was as secure as the other. She tugged at it, relieved at
its strength. There was no way she could break the rope, and no way to untie
it. In fact, she'd set herself up for a certain amount of strenuous gymnastics
in the morning, since in order to get out of bed she was going to have to get
the shears out from under the mattress and cut the clothesline one-handed,
something she knew she couldn't possibly manage to do in her sleep.

 
          
If
she
did
walk in her sleep—and she had
to believe that she did—she would not do it tonight. Satisfied, Winter turned
out the light and settled herself again for sleep.

A ROSE IN WINTER

It was the winter wild.
—JOHN MILTON

 
          
TAGHKANIC COLLEGE WAS FOUNDED IN 1714
IN THE colony of
New York
to provide education to the residents of what would later become
Amsterdam
County
. The college was first housed in a
building that had once been a cider mill, and the mill was still there on the
campus, though its classroom days were long past.
Taghkanic
College
survived into the twentieth century almost
unchanged from its Federalist heyday; the newest building on the campus was
the "new wing" of the Margaret Beresford
Bidney
Memorial Psychic Science Research Laboratory, and the "new wing" was
completed in 1941.

 
          
Margaret
Beresford
Bidney
graduated
Taghkanic
College
in the late 1860s, and upon her death, her
fortune went to fund what came to be known as the
Bidney
Institute. From the moment of the Institute's inception, the trustees of the
college were on the verge of claiming the entire
Bidney
Bequest on behalf of
Taghkanic
College
, when Professor Colin
MacLaren
accepted an appointment as director of the Institute.

           
Under his guidance, the moribund
Institute revived, taking the lead in the investigation both of psychic
phenomena and its wicked stepsister, occult phenomena. In the waning years of
the twentieth century,
Tagh-kanic
College, in association
with the
Bidney
Institute, stood as one of the few
schools to offer a doctoral program in parapsychology.

 
          
But
the Institute's primary function began as, and remained, research—into
parapsychology as well as "Science's dark twin," the occult sciences
that Professor
MacLaren
so firmly believed must be
studied alongside the psychic sciences in order to understand them fully.

 
          
On
this particular spring morning, researcher Truth
Jourdemayne
,
who had become expert in the
glamorless
field of
statistical parapsychology long before she realized her allegiance was to an
older stranger craft, was not thinking of science—
parapsychological
or occult—at all.

 
          
"An
entire summer in an Appalachian ghetto—you sure know how to spoil a girl,"
Truth teased. Her willing victim was Dr. Dylan Palmer, both a teacher at the
college and a researcher at the Institute.

 
          
Dylan
simply grinned, his mild blue eyes and shaggy blond hair giving him the
deceptively placid air of a penitent sheepdog.

 
          
"There
hasn't been an in-depth case study ever done on Morton's Fork— oh, Nicholas
Taverner
did a little something in the twenties, but he was
more of a folklorist, gathering material about English folk-survivals."

 
          
"When
what you want is ghosts," Truth said.

 
          
"Well,"
Dylan admitted, "you have to agree that the director of the Institute is
more likely to be interested in ghosts than folk songs—and from what I can
tell, Morton's Fork is the center of unexplained activity for a fifty-mile
radius. I've marked this survey map—"

 
          
Dylan
spread the map over the piles of paper that covered his desk. Truth bent over
it to see it more clearly, and Dylan tugged at her arm so she overbalanced and
fell into his lap.

 
          
There
was a time not so long before when Truth would have lashed out against a
gesture of this sort; fighting against it and the feelings it provoked. But
that time had passed, and an emerald-and-pearl ring glinted on the third finger
of her left hand in token of her emotional renewal.

 
          
"But
maybe you're right," Dylan said wistfully as Truth put her arms around
him. "It won't be much of a holiday, and I did promise. ..."

 
          
"I
think it will be the perfect vacation," Truth said, snuggling into a more
comfortable position. "Just you, and me, a hundred thousand dollars' worth
of temperamental recording equipment, three grad students, and some
ghosts."
Or whatever
genius loci
infest the place,
she finished, with
a pang of premonition.

 
          
"Sounds
crowded," Dylan murmured. "But, as none of them are here right now
..."

 
          
There
was a knock at the door.

 
          
Dylan
swore, and tipped Truth to her feet an instant before the door opened. Meg
Winslow, the Institute's secretary, looked in.

 
          
"Sorry
to bother you, Dylan, but—oh, Truth, I didn't see you there. Boy, am I glad to
see both of you—we've got a real live one this time."

 
          
As
a public focus for society's interest—and sometimes obsession— with the occult
and paranormal and allied New Age pursuits, the
Bidney
Institute had become accustomed to attracting a certain amount of public
inquiries, by phone, by letter, and sometimes in person. They ranged from pleas
for help from those genuinely troubled by psychic phenomena, to attempts by
con men and charlatans to bilk the Institute of its endowment through one
fraud or another, to outcries—no less sincere and desperate for all of
that—from individuals whose problems lay entirely within the scope of their
confused minds and troubled emotions.

 
          
"What's
his problem?" Truth asked, getting to her feet.

 
          
"Her,"
Meg corrected. "I tried to get rid of her, but she just keeps saying she
needs to talk to one of the researchers. She's really out there, Truth; I put
her in the Interview Lab—she was scaring the students."

 
          
"As
if anything could," Truth muttered.

 
          
"Did
she tell you what the problem was?" Dylan asked.

 
          
Meg
shrugged. "All she'd tell
me
was
that she was being haunted— she's got
that
right, if you ask me."

 
          
Winter
Musgrave rocked restlessly back and forth, too keyed up even to pace. She wrung
her hands, as if some private devil were clasped between them, until she
noticed what she was doing and stopped—only to start again as soon as her
attention wandered. Her jaws ached with the tension of gritted teeth, but she
nearly didn't dare open her mouth for fear that the sounds that issued from it
would be the keening of a madwoman.

 
          
I'm not crazy. I know I'm not. What happened
—/
could
NOT
have done that. No matter what.

 
          
She
clung to that thought, even though she could not understand how it could be
true. Perhaps it wasn't. Maybe she
was
crazy.
That would be better. Because if she wasn't crazy, she didn't need a shrink.

 
          
She
needed an exorcist.

 
          
Winter
hadn't meant to come here at all, but when she'd called Sullivan's Taxi she
hadn't been thinking clearly, and when the driver had come, he'd misunderstood
her frantic demand to be taken "to the Institute" and brought her
here. She hadn't really been thinking of going back to
Fall River
when she gave him the order; only of
getting away from the house that had now twice betrayed her.

 
          
But
the driver had brought her here instead—to the
Bidney
Institute.

 
          
He'd
had to tell her where she was three times before she'd get out— by then, hazy
memories of the local college's pet
ghostbreakers
had
begun to surface and Winter realized that her destination was sanctuary of a
sort. She didn't remember where she'd heard about the
Bidney
Institute—it wasn't the sort of laboratory that was traded on Wall Street,
after all— but once she'd arrived she knew it was her last hope. Her only hope.

 
          
Winter
stared around the room she'd been told to wait in without really seeing it.
The long window at the far end looked out over the old cider mill, with the
river behind it like a bright foil ribbon. On the oak table in front of her
were various things to fiddle with—blocks, a silver tuning fork, a deck of
cards, and a brown paper bag, looking out of place among the executive
time-wasters that Winter recognized from happier days. The back wall was lined
with books and cased runs of magazines.

 
          
I
am
not crazy.
Winter clenched her hands tighter. On the table the tuning fork
began, ever so faintly, to hum.

 
          
Oh, please, I want to be crazy.

 
          
She'd
been waiting for over ten minutes, and was beginning to be afraid that the
receptionist—who had so clearly wished she'd go away and stop being a
problem!—had simply shut Winter in here to get rid of her. She couldn't let
them do that. They had to see her, had to, had to, had to—

 
          
Because I am not mad. I'm not.

 
          
When
the door opened Winter had her back to it. She was so keyed up that the slight
sound of its opening made her jerk and yelp. She tripped backward into the
table; the deck of cards spilled onto the floor and one of the Rubik's Cubes
clattered after it. Winter stared wild-eyed at the figure in the doorway,
heart pounding.

           
She
looks as if she's going to have a seizure any minute,
was Truth
Jourdemayne's
first thought, and the second was that the
petite chestnut-haired woman ought to be in bed—maybe even a hospital bed. Her
gauntness had the emaciation of hysteria rather than fashion, and even while
staring at Truth and Dylan as though they were fresh out of her nightmares, she
could not keep her hands still.

 
          
Another crazy,
Truth thought resignedly,
though some instinct kept her from being satisfied with the facile judgment.

 
          
"Hello,"
she said in calm encouraging tones, "my name is Truth
Jourdemayne
.
And you are . . . ?"

 
          
"Winter."
The woman's voice was a husky croak. "Winter Musgrave." She stared
over Truth's shoulder at Dylan, amber eyes wide.

 
          
"I'm
Dylan Palmer," Dylan said, coming into the room. Truth walked over to the
table, and Dylan closed the door again, shutting out the noise of the people
going back and forth in the hall outside.

 
          
"Won't
you sit down, Ms. Musgrave, and tell us what we can do for you?" Truth
said.

 
          
Winter
Musgrave laughed; the sound came out almost as a wail.