In Darkness

A Dark Shadows 1970/1840 Fanfiction

Author's Note: Early on in the run of Dark Shadows, when Windcliff Sanitarium and its leading doctor Julia Hoffman become part of the series' plotlines, the mention is made of Windcliff being about 100 miles away from Collinsport. As the series progressed, many distances between different landmarks seem to have become compressed, the distance between Windcliff and Collinsport/Collinwood among them. In the show, when Tad and Carrie run away from Windcliff, it seems only to be a few miles away from Collinwood. However, I am somewhat of a purist in my admiration for those early days of the show, and so I chose to ignore the later shrinking-of-distances, and to go with the original "about 100 miles from Collinsport" version.

Chapter Seven

For the second time in two nights, Gerard Stiles fled on foot down the hill from the great house of Collinwood.

This time he was not running. His progress was little more than a dogged trudge. He seemed driven by instinct, like a wounded animal with no thought but to escape from whatever caused its pain.

His visit to the dolls' house, and to the two unhappy spirits trapped inside it, had been mercifully brief. For the last few moments of that visit he had seemed to exist in two separate realities. He saw the parlor of the dolls' house around him, and he also saw the narrow little servants' staircase.

He no longer heard Daphne's voice invoking the light of the candles and the stars. The thought came to him that somehow the spell had gone wrong, or perhaps it had been interrupted before it was complete.

The dolls' house, and the two pleading children, faded from his sight. He still heard the children's cries for a few instants longer. Then those, too, were gone. Gerard was himself again, back in possession of his own body, sitting dazedly in a servants' staircase at Collinwood.

He lurched to his feet and started down the stairs.

This time he made no attempts at concealment. He didn't know if anyone saw him leave the house, and he did not care. He blundered out the front door and left it standing open behind him.

He later supposed that probably he had been crying, through all that long journey down the hill. However long he might have been crying, he didn't notice it until he was back in his room at the Collinsport Inn. Staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, he saw that his face was wet.

He had heard some man's voice call out to him in worried question as he'd headed up the stairs to his room, but he neither noticed nor cared if it had been Joe Haskell or Sam Evans calling after him, or someone else entirely. Once in his room with the door locked behind him, he went straight to the bathroom, propelled by the desperate need to wash himself clean from what had been done to him this night.

He was afraid to look at his face in the mirror. He forced himself to do it, and he felt some relief at the sight. His face was haggard and damp with tears, but it was his own face. It was not the green-glowing evil mask that it had become in his vision—his vision in which he had seen the warlock smiling at him with his stolen face.

Gerard stripped out of Roger Collins' clothes, got into the shower and turned up its water to as high a temperature as it would reach. He wished that the almost-scalding water could somehow cleanse him inside as well as out.

He felt filthy. He felt foul. This possession might only have lasted a minute or two, but he could not cleanse his mind from the knowledge that for those minutes the warlock had been inside his body. His body had not been his own.

Nausea surged in him. He staggered almost blindly over the edge of the bathtub, the shower's water still pouring down, and he threw himself at the room's modern, mechanized version of a chamber pot. Retching desperately, while a pool of shower-water spread about him on the floor, he vomited up whatever remnants his stomach had still been working on from his recent meals.

He did remember to turn off the shower then, and he threw a towel on the floor to soak up the water before he turned to face the sink. He brushed his teeth furiously with this era's caustic-tasting toothpaste. This time he was glad of its insanely strong taste. He wished that he could brush away certain memories as easily as he could excise the taste of vomit from his mouth. Then he climbed back into the bathtub, turned on the shower full force, and stood beneath its blast until the water began to run cold.

When he finally ceased his attempts at cleansing, he did not make use of Leticia's—or Carolyn's—hair-drying device. He was not certain he wanted anything to do with these electrically-powered contraptions which seemed just as likely to kill him as to accomplish the tasks for which they were designed. Anyhow, the abysmal roaring of the thing would likely not be welcomed in the middle of the night by any neighbors he might have at the inn. He dried himself with the towel which was not soaking up water on the bathroom floor, and he reluctantly dressed again in Uncle Roger's clothes. He wished he had something else to wear, beside his own clothing in which he had come back to life, and this outfit of Roger Collins which he had been wearing when the warlock took his body.

I have to get out of this town, Gerard told himself. I can't stay here. I can't just stay here waiting to be possessed.

He knew he ought to try and get some sleep, so he would be in something like decent condition tomorrow when he made his escape. But he hated the thought of lying down. He couldn't rid himself of the dread that if he were to lie down to sleep, he would dream of the warlock stealing his body yet again.

He compromised by settling into the armchair with his feet propped up on the edge of the bed. He had drifted into some manner of sleep before he was startled out of it again by a knocking on his door.

This time, he thought, if it is Charles Dawson or any other of the warlock's followers, I am going to kick the bastard down the stairs.

Or he would take even more direct action. Launching himself out of the armchair, he went to where he had discarded his boots. He picked up his left boot and confirmed that his stiletto was indeed there, snugly tucked into its purpose-built scabbard inside the boot. Gerard thought, Wasn't it considerate of the warlock to bring me back to life with my own clothes and with all of the effects I habitually wore about my person?

"Who's there?" he called, caressing his dagger's hilt as he pulled it half out from its scabbard.

A woman's voice called back quietly, "Julia Hoffman."

He shoved the stiletto back to its home and put down the boot.

The lady doctor had a look of relief on her face when Gerard opened the door and ushered her into his room. At least, she looked relieved at first, before her expression slid into one of suspicion and fear. She had greeted him first with a murmured, "Thank God, you're safe." Then the fear and suspicion found half-coherent voice in, "That is, if you're … if you're really …"

"Yes," Gerard said flatly. "I am really me. I'm not the warlock. Though, of course, it is useless for me to say that. If he had succeeded in possessing my body, he would also claim that he was me."

The doctoress stated, "Then you know he made an attempt tonight."

"Yes. I know. I heard Daphne's voice reciting the words of the spell. I think I heard Tad's voice, also. For a brief time, it seemed as though the spell had succeeded. But something must have happened to disrupt its power before it was complete."

"Yes," Julia Hoffman said, with an oddly bitter-sounding note to her voice. "I happened to disrupt it."

Gerard raised his eyebrows at her in question.

"Daphne was at Windcliff. I forced my way into Tad's room and found her with him, in the midst of the ceremony. They were standing inside a pentagram chalked on the floor, holding lit candles. I interrupted them; that must have caused the spell to fail."

Frowning, Gerard asked, "How did Daphne make her way to Windcliff? Didn't you tell me it's a significant distance away?"

With an angry sigh, Dr. Hoffman said, "She was there because Quentin brought her there."

Surprised at first, he repeated, "Quentin?" Then he gave his own angry sigh. "I should have realized. I knew this Quentin of yours was not to be trusted."

It was Julia Hoffman's turn to frown. "Why would you say that?"

"He was too ill-at-ease when all of you were here today. He behaved like a man whose conscience is troubling him. And the way he kept mentioning Daphne … He must be under her influence. That's probably why he volunteered to search for her, so he could ensure that Devlin didn't succeed in finding her."

Looking troubled, Dr. Hoffman nodded. "He was under her influence when she was still a ghost. Barnabas and I learned about that a night or two ago. We thought he'd broken free of her when he admitted that to us, but she convinced him to take her to Windcliff tonight. The children had both developed high fevers for which there seemed to be no medical explanation. Daphne told Quentin she could make the children well if he took her to them."

"High fevers which the warlock caused, of course."

"Of course."

"Where is Daphne now?" Gerard asked.

"She's with Barnabas and Quentin at the Old House. They're trying to convince her to help us. I just stopped by here to make sure you're all right; now I'm going to go talk with Elliott Stokes. Hallie is his niece; if he talks with Daphne about her there's a chance he can awaken Daphne's sympathy. And he ought to be there to hear what Daphne can tell us, if we do prevail upon her to switch sides—"

"Stokes?" Only then did Gerard remember that he'd had no opportunity to deliver Stokes' note to the doctoress. "You can't go talk with him; he's on his way to Europe."

She gasped, "He's what?"

"I know; it sounds insane, doesn't it? But he assured me it's a swifter process now than it was in my day. He left a note for you—" Gerard broke off at that point, noticing her thoroughly horrified expression. "Why are you looking like that?"

"My God," Julia Hoffman whispered. "Oh, my God." Shakily, she sat down in the armchair. Gerard had seen no indication that women these days were in the habit of fainting, but he thought he wouldn't be surprised if Dr. Hoffman were to faint now.

She looked up at him, her eyes enormous with horror. She explained, "When Barnabas and I were in 1995, when we talked with Elliott there, he told us that when Collinwood was destroyed, he had been away in Europe. But then when we returned to this time, he told us he had no plans to travel to Europe for all the rest of this year. I can't believe he would go! He knows the significance of it; he knows it's another sign that the disaster is near!"

"Perhaps he didn't have a choice," Gerard speculated, feeling bleakly hopeless. "Perhaps the warlock influenced his decision." He continued to explain what had happened, "Stokes had found a book which spoke of the warlock, and he brought it to show to me, so I could confirm the warlock's name for him. When I had done so, he said he knew what he had to do. He said he had to go to Europe to find the one man alive who has a chance of defeating the warlock. I told him I felt he shouldn't go. He wouldn't listen to me. Perhaps the warlock wouldn't permit him to listen. He left a note for you—"

Gerard had turned toward the desk, to fetch the note and hand it to her. Then he stopped and stared.

"What is it?" Dr. Hoffman asked.

"The note. It's gone. It was right there on the desk." He hurried over and searched the top of the desk and the floor all around it. He checked under all the rest of the furniture and even in the drawers of the desk.

"God damn it," Gerard whispered finally. He repeated more loudly, "God damn it! Leticia. She must have taken it. She was here by the desk when she was using that blasted contraption to dry my hair—and she was out here alone all the time while I was in the shower. She had every opportunity to take it."

The lady doctor, he noticed, was eyeing him a bit oddly, perhaps scandalized by the notion of Leticia being here in his room while Gerard was showering. He didn't bother explaining the true circumstances to her, and frankly he didn't much care whether she was scandalized or not.

"I didn't even think about the clothes you're wearing, until now," Dr. Hoffman remarked, getting to her feet. "Did … Leticia bring those to you?"

"Yes. They belong to Roger Collins."

She nodded. "I thought they looked familiar." With a troubled frown, she continued, "Am I right in thinking the warlock caused Carolyn's possession by Leticia?"

"He did; Leticia admitted that to me herself. She said she had come here to me on her own; that he hadn't sent her. I don't think I believe that. But whether he sent her or not, she was serving him well when she stole that note from Professor Stokes."

"And you have no idea what Stokes may have written in it?"

"None. I only know he said he had to go to Europe to find the one man who could defeat the warlock."

"He didn't tell you anything more about that man?"

"Only that he couldn't be reached by telephone or telegraph. That doesn't seem to help us much."

"No. It doesn't." The lady doctor sighed. "I have to go tell Barnabas about all of this. You'll be here if we need you?"

"Yes," Gerard said, with an answering sigh. "I'll be here."

I'll be here tonight, his thoughts added, as Dr. Julia Hoffman departed. But I am not giving any guarantees on how much longer I will be here.

The armchair was a less-than-ideal sleeping location, but he managed to sleep in it, all the same. He left the lights on through the night, an action which he knew was absurdly like that of a child afraid of the dark. But he told himself he gave nothing resembling a damn if his actions were childish. After all that he had been through, he had every bloody right to leave the lights on if he so chose.

He had thought he was only resting his eyes, but he suddenly opened them to find broad daylight piercing through a gap between the curtains. He took out his watch from its new home in one of the pockets of Roger Collins' trousers—as with his stiletto, he felt an almost visceral sensation of reassurance in the fact that his own watch had made the journey into this new life with him. The watch told him it was slightly past 9 o'clock, a fact confirmed by the clock which sat on the bedside table beside that damnable telephone.

At least the telephone had not awakened him this morning. He told himself that was one slight blessing for which he ought to be grateful.

Brief contemplation led to his decision that he would confront the benighted "electric shaver" and force it to work for him. He could scarcely call Leticia to help him every time he needed a shave. And he had spent too much time already being bewildered by the technology of this era. He needed to take charge of himself and start behaving like someone who belonged here.

His first solo shaving session with the accursed device passed without mishap, though he resolved that if he lived long in this time, he would seek out more traditional methods of shaving. There must be some old-fashioned men in the world who preferred to shave with actual razors. Professor Stokes gave the impression that he might be among their ranks, but the professor had departed for Europe before Gerard had the idea of seeking his advice on such topics.

Damn it, Gerard thought, I should have asked Stokes to take me to Europe with him. That, at least, should be far enough away to put me beyond the warlock's clutches!

Downstairs opposite the inn's front desk, he was dismayed to find the door to the café closed, and to read the sign informing him that on Sundays it did not open until 11 o'clock. Sam Evans was seated at the desk with a newspaper open in front of him, puffing on his pipe. Evans remarked, "Gotta open a few hours later on Sunday so we can claim we're remembering the Sabbath Day and keeping it holy. Me, I haven't gone to church much since Maggie was a little girl. But Maggie and Joe started going to the Unitarians recently. No harm in it, I guess," he added with a shrug. "With all the spooky crap that goes on around here, I guess getting a weekly fix of godliness isn't a bad idea." Nodding toward the café's closed door, he offered, "I can let you in and make you some coffee. And you can have some stale doughnuts. You want anything fancier than that, you'll have to wait till eleven. And Maggie would say you shouldn't even risk my coffee. She says it's one of Collinsport's most frightening phenomena."

"I will risk it, thank you," Gerard answered. "However frightening it may be, I am certain I have survived worse."

Gerard spent almost that entire day in the Collinsport Inn's café. More than for the periodic meals and the omnipresent coffee, he relished those hours in the café for the sake of not being alone.

As he sat there, he was trying to make his plans.

His situation was still the same as it had been the night before last, when he first came back to life. He had to get out of Collinsport, and to do that, he needed money. And he saw only two options for swiftly acquiring said funds: to beg for them, or to steal them.

While drinking Sam Evans' coffee—which was nearly as strong as the coffee Gerard fondly recalled from his own time—he had asked Evans about transportation out of Collinsport. It transpired that something known as a "bus" ran between Collinsport and Bangor. Gerard guessed the term was probably derived from omnibuses such as those he had known in Paris and London. The bus schedule pamphlet which Evans gave him seemed to confirm his supposition. At its heading was a drawing of a vehicle which seemed relatively close kin to the omnibuses he remembered, with the obvious difference that the bus was not drawn by horses.

The bus ran from Collinsport to Bangor twice on Sundays: at 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. The one-way fare, Gerard learned, was $2.25. At the bottom of the pamphlet someone had written by hand the fares to selected other destinations. Nine dollars and fifty cents would get him to Boston, and he could reach New York City for $21.00.

The amounts didn't sound too horrifying to him, but the melancholy fact remained that he had no money at all.

Sitting in the Collinsport Inn Café as Sunday morning ambled into afternoon, Gerard observed the restaurant's operations and analyzed his options for acquiring money.

The sums received from the café's customers went into a tall and elaborate mechanized strong-box. Opening the drawer to this strong-box seemed to be possible only through performance of an intricate routine that involved pressing numerous buttons all in the proper order. Gerard felt certain he had no chance of teaching himself that routine unless he stood at Maggie Haskell's side memorizing her actions—and thus making it painfully obvious that he planned on committing robbery.

At the inn's front desk was another, nearly identical strong-box. He might, he thought, have a slightly better chance of learning the thing's operation if he spent a goodly amount of time engaged in allegedly casual conversation with Sam Evans or whomever else might staff the desk at other times of day. At least he might look less suspicious there than if he took up position at a spot from which he could watch every transaction performed in the café. But as far as he could tell, there weren't enough transactions at the inn's front desk during the day for any such effort to be worth his time.

There was no chance he'd succeed in carrying either strong-box away with him, he was certain; not for more than a few feet. It was doubtless part of these things' design, that they were heavy enough to forestall the risk of any walk-by theft. He also doubted there was ever a time when the inn was empty enough that someone could walk off with a strong-box unnoticed; at least not any time apart from the middle of the night.

And he could not afford to wait until the middle of the night.

When the night falls again, Gerard wondered, will the warlock try again to take me? Is that when I will next hear Daphne's voice?

He had until 5:30, when the bus departed for Bangor. By that time, he had to have at least $2.25, so that he could be on that bus.

And do you really think going to Bangor will help you? His thoughts voiced the unpleasant question. Do you believe the city of Bangor has magical properties to protect you?

Why should he believe that going a mere 50 miles away would save him?

The impression he had from talking with Dr. Hoffman was that this Windcliff sanitarium was more than 50 miles from Collinsport. Yet Daphne and Tad, at Windcliff, had performed the ceremony which nearly completed Gerard's re-possession, when he was on his fool's errand in one of Collinwood's attics.

I still have to try, he told himself, before his panic could surge up and choke him. There's a chance that getting out of town may help. And it's better than doing nothing.

There was another possibility he hadn't yet considered: waiting until some moment when no other customer was in the café, and then straightforwardly holding Maggie Haskell at dagger's point and demanding she give him the money in the strong-box.

Of course, he would first have to go up to his room to take off his left boot and retrieve his stiletto from out of it. That was one decided disadvantage to the modern practice of wearing tight-legged trousers over boots; it made any weapons one might have hidden in one's boots entirely inaccessible. If he spent any length of time in this era, he would need to select some other methods for carrying concealed weaponry.

Gerard did not spend much time considering that option. Bare-faced daylight robbery was not the style of crime he favored, if he had any choice at all open to him. When he committed crimes, he far preferred they be crimes of ambiguous nature which could not be easily pinned on him. If he couldn't cast reasonable doubt on the question of his guilt and argue his way out of it, then it was not the crime for him.

Gerard felt certain that blatantly robbing the Collinsport Inn Café was only too likely to get him arrested—although he did take some slight satisfaction in the thought that if he were to be arrested for the robbery, and the warlock were then to possess him, he could make the warlock suffer the consequences for a crime Gerard had committed.

Why am I even thinking of this foolery? He asked himself. I am not going to present my dagger and tell the lovely Mrs. Haskell "Your money or your life." I am not going to do it for a multitude of very valid reasons. And not the least of those reasons is that I would hate to see the look of disdain on Maggie Haskell's face when I turn out to be a common thief.

A common thief, his thoughts added, and also a very stupid one.

He had reached the conclusion that he was not going to waste any more time imagining himself committing daylight robbery at the inn's café when Sam Evans stuck his head through the door from the lobby.

"Hey, Mr. Miller," the hotel's proprietor hailed him. "Julia Hoffman's on the phone for you."

Feeling bemused, Gerard walked into the lobby. The hand-held portion of the front desk's telephone was off its cradle and lying upon the desk, waiting for him. Trying not to look as though he believed that he was picking up a possibly poisonous snake, Gerard took it up and spoke into it a cautious, "Yes?"

"Mr. Miller," the doctoress' urgent voice came to him through the device, "is Quentin Collins there with you?"

"Quentin Collins?" he repeated blankly. "No."

"Have you seen him or heard from him at all since yesterday?"

"No, I have not. Why would I?"

Over the telephone connection, he heard Dr. Hoffman sigh. "When I got back to the Old House last night, Quentin was gone. Apparently he'd seen someone outside who seemed to be watching them, through the parlor window. He went out to look for whoever it was, and he hasn't come back."

Gerard harbored no fondness for the current Quentin Collins, but he supposed if it came down to a direct choice, he preferred the modern Quentin over his ancient nemesis the warlock. He told Julia Hoffman, "You have every reason to be concerned. His disappearance could be the warlock's doing. We know he wants to destroy everyone by the name of Collins."

"Yes," was her bitter-sounding reply. "I know. If you see Quentin or hear from him, please phone me at Collinwood at once."

"I will," he said, although the prospect of actually initiating a telephone call was more than a little daunting to him. He thought, Or I will simply make Quentin phone you, since he presumably knows how to conduct a telephone call without making an utter ass of himself.

An idea occurred to him. "There is something you can do," he told her. "Try to find Leticia and see if she will help you to locate Quentin. When I knew her, she had significant clairvoyant powers. I know of more than one incident in which she succeeded in locating missing persons. I don't know whether she has brought those powers with her into this possession, but it's worth a try."

"Yes," Julia Hoffman answered. "Yes, it is. Thank you." She brought the call to a close, after reiterating that he should call her if he heard or saw anything of Quentin.

Gerard walked back into the café, feeling close to hopeless.

We are running out of time, he thought. Professor Stokes has left for Europe, which the doctoress says is a sign that the destruction is near. And if the warlock has made his move against Quentin Collins, perhaps that means he is working himself up to complete his conquest.

And in the face of this threat, all I can think to do is to purchase a bus ticket?

It seemed pathetic and ridiculous. But he still preferred to try a pathetic and ridiculous option, rather than trying nothing at all.

Ruling out robbery of either of the inn's strong-boxes, there remained another, far easier potential source of funds: the tips that customers sometimes left as a token of thanks for Maggie's assistance. A glass which resembled an over-sized brandy snifter sat on the counter beside the café's strong-box as a receptacle for such tokens. Gerard had witnessed several people this day dropping a coin or two into the glass, and a number of coins had been in there already.

Are there $2.25 worth of coins in there? That was what he didn't know. Without $2.25, he still couldn't buy a ticket to Bangor—never mind that he also didn't know whether getting to Bangor would do him any good or not. Attempting to make off with the café's tips was less risky than any attempt he might make on its strong-box, but it was not without risk. And that risk would be worthless if he were to purloin those coins only to learn that they were not enough to get him to Bangor.

Gerard migrated to take a seat on one of the tall stools at the counter, ostensibly to facilitate his chatting with Maggie Haskell, but in reality so he could eye the tips-glass and endeavor to determine whether it held $2.25. He did not contribute much to the conversation that followed, but fortunately there seemed very little need for him to do so. Mrs. Haskell had made some observation about Victoria Winters and her two suitors. On learning that Mr. Miller knew nothing of their story, she launched into an exceedingly lengthy and complicated tale which explained how Miss Winters had ended up engaged to both of them. All that was required for Gerard to maintain his role in the conversation was to look interested and frequently surprised, to smile at Maggie Haskell on a frequent basis, and to occasionally interject some comment such as "Good heavens!" or "You don't say?"

At one point Gerard thought, Miss Winters has been far more fortunate than she might have been. At least when Burke Devlin was supposedly dead in the jungle, he was only her fiancé, not her husband. She could have been in the situation of being presumably widowed, marrying again a few months later, and then seeing her allegedly dead first husband stroll cheerfully through the drawing room door at the precise moment when she was on her way upstairs to bed with her second husband whom she had wed that very day.

He was reaching the conclusion that the contents of the tips-glass might very well be sufficient to pay for his bus ticket to Bangor. If the coins did not add up to at least $2.25, they assuredly must be close to that. If he was only a small amount short, surely some kindly fellow passenger would give him the nickel or dime or whatever might be wanting to make up the difference.

He could certainly manouever Mrs. Haskell into going into the café's kitchen for some reason. With her out of the room, he could empty the tips-glass with ease, since the café had no other customers at present. The problem with that was, of course, that the absence of any other customers made him the exceedingly obvious culprit.

Damn you, Gerard! he thought furiously. Are you going out of your way to find excuses for doing nothing?

Do you want to be still sitting here the next time Daphne Harridge starts chanting about the lights of the candles and the stars?

All right, then. If you don't want to rob Maggie Haskell, then how about asking her for the money?

He could tell her he needed to go to Bangor and ask to borrow the money for the ticket—with no intention, of course, of ever returning to Collinsport to pay that money back. But she was liable to find it odd, he supposed, that he would ask her for those funds, instead of asking his patroness Dr. Hoffman.

He could pour out the truth before her, or some portion of the truth. He could reveal to her that a 300-year-old warlock sought to possess his body and that he needed to get out of town to prevent it. From the sound of things, she had experienced enough odd happenings herself, around Collinsport, that she should not find his tale all that unbelievable.

But she would probably ask him, again, why he didn't ask Julia Hoffman to help him escape. And if she learned that the doctoress wanted him to remain in town in order to fight the warlock, Maggie was very unlikely to assist him. She seemed on good terms with Dr. Hoffman, and she had known the woman for years, against the two days she had now been aware of Ivan Miller's existence. There seemed little likelihood that Maggie would aid him if she thought that by so doing she might harm her actual friends up at Collinwood.

Damn, damn, damn, he thought. You pathetic, pusillanimous fool! Have you entirely lost the ability to take action? Are you simply going to argue yourself out of doing anything until you are re-possessed?

On his first night alive again, he'd assumed that he could gain money by picking pockets, if need be. He remembered thinking that pocket-picking was the sort of skill one never lost. Now, he was not so certain of that—although his new doubts might just be part-and-parcel with his apparent disinclination to do anything useful to his cause at all. He hesitated to put the question to practical test, considering the probable repercussions of attempting to pick someone's pocket and being caught. He had not tried his hand at pickpocketry on a regular basis since he was ten years old. And the changes which more than a century had wrought on the cut of people's clothing—and on the locations and construction of their pockets—combined to tell him this was not the time to attempt re-honing his skill.

Well, all right, then, God damn it! If you're not going to rob the strong-box, make off with the café's tips, beg Maggie Haskell for help or try picking someone's pocket, you have only one option left. You need to walk outside and start begging passers-by for the money to get you to Bangor.

Ordinary citizens of Collinsport shouldn't know him from Adam, and thus they would have no reason to think it odd that he was begging money from them instead of requesting for it from Dr. Julia Hoffman. Such persons seemed liable to accept whatever fable he might concoct for them about lost or stolen money. He thought, The ticket doesn't cost all that much. It shouldn't take me too long to find enough kindly passers-by for their gifts to add up to two dollars and twenty-five cents!

And it was a good thing that it shouldn't take long, because he had very little time left. A check of his watch showed him, to his dismay, that it was already 4:43.

Forty-five minutes, he thought. I have forty-five minutes to put together $2.25 and get the hell onto that bus.

He was about to tell Maggie Haskell that he was going out for a walk when Bill Malloy came striding in from the inn's lobby.

"Hi, Mr. Malloy," Maggie greeted him. "You don't look like you've dropped by for a cup of coffee."

"You got it in one, Maggie," agreed the old fisherman. "Mr. Miller, you available to drive out to Windcliff with me?"

"I am available," Gerard said in surprise, getting down from the stool. "Why should we go to Windcliff?"

"Julia just got a call from them. The kids have gone missing. It looks like they've probably run away."

Maggie Haskell remarked, "What, again? Does every patient in that place run away from it?"

Malloy gave the rueful answer, "Glad to see enough time's gone by that you can joke about it, Maggie. Though I guess it's one of those 'If you don't laugh, you're gonna cry' situations."

She chuckled quietly. "And plenty of times I end up doing both."

"Where is Windcliff?" Gerard asked. He did his best to sound casual about the question, despite the twinge of hope that had suddenly shot into him.

"Down near Machias," Malloy answered.

Gerard tried to recall his past knowledge of Maine's coastal geography. "And Machias is … about 100 miles from here?" Now his hope was not just a twinge; it had grown into a surge.

"Around that. It'll be dark by the time we get there. Of course," he added, with another humorous grimace at Maggie. "Wouldn't be the whole searching-for-missing-persons-in-the-woods experience if it wasn't dark into the bargain."

"Well, you boys be careful out there," Mrs. Haskell said, sounding mostly serious about it. "Though I guess it's probably far enough from Collinsport that there shouldn't be as many scary things in the forest."

"Shouldn't be," said Malloy, "but you never know. Machias probably has its own ghosties and ghoulies. I'm bringing walkie-talkies, so Mr. Miller and I can call each other for help if either of us gets jumped by Bigfoot, the Wendigo, or a passel of little green men from a flying saucer."

Maggie Haskell gave an exaggerated shudder. "Ugh. Don't even say it. Around here, that kind of joke just isn't funny anymore."

To Gerard's unhappiness, Bill Malloy's automobile was not one of the open-topped variety. But Gerard told himself he had no cause for complaint; the bus probably wouldn't have been open-topped, either. And the trip to Windcliff did not require him to literally beg, borrow or steal $2.25—and it would take him 100 miles from Collinsport.

Of course there was still the troubling fact that Daphne and Tad had conducted the most recent spell from Windcliff, the precise spot where Gerard and Malloy were now heading. The hundred miles separating Windcliff and Collinwood had not seemed to reduce the spell's efficacy. All the same, Gerard told himself it was still worthwhile trying—and hoping.

Fortunately, Bill Malloy was among those people aware of Mr. Miller's recent resurrection from ghostliness. Not being required to pretend that he knew his way around in 1970, Gerard felt no qualms about asking Malloy for confirmation that the crank-handle inside the car door was the item which operated the opening of the window.

Also fortunately, as far as Gerard was concerned, Malloy did not seem much inclined to conversation during the drive. For most of the time he concentrated on the road and presumably on his own thoughts. About an hour into the journey, however, he asked Gerard, "You knew Tad Collins and Carrie Stokes when all of you were alive?"

"I did," Gerard confirmed. "I knew both of them rather well, for a time; particularly Tad. He and I, and his father, spent several months of an ocean voyage in each other's company."

"Then from your knowledge of their characters, why would they run away from Windcliff? Assuming that's actually what's happened to them."

"Well," he answered slowly, "I suppose it is likely one of two possibilities. They may have gone because the warlock is summoning them. He may be calling them back to Collinwood to continue doing whatever his plans require of them. But if they have left of their own free wills …"

If they've left of their own wills, he thought, then they are probably trying to do exactly what I hope to do as soon as I can get out of Mr. Malloy's sight.

He continued, "If they've left by their choice, instead of the warlock's, then they are probably simply running away. In that case, they won't be going toward Collinwood; they are likely heading in the opposite direction. They'll have reached the conclusion that there is no life for them if they remain under the warlock's power; that sooner or later, he'll destroy them as he means to destroy all of the Collinses and their adherents. So Tad and Carrie may be running away with the hope of starting a new life in this new time."

Bill Malloy nodded. "Ay-yuh," he agreed. "That's what I think they might be doing. Doc Hoffman and I talked about it before I came to get you. She's heading out here to search, too, and she was going to try and get ahold of Burke and Sebastian Shaw, to get them to join the search. We agreed that she'd start searching the woods south and west from Windcliff, back toward Collinsport. I said I'd start searching northeast toward Machias."

"Yes," Gerard said. "If they are trying to escape, it makes sense that they would head there."

And that, he thought, is precisely where I am going to head, the very first moment I can arrange to become separated from you in the woods.

As Malloy had predicted, it had grown fully dark by the time he pulled his car to a halt in the driveway in front of Windcliff Sanitarium. The tall, towered building had clearly begun its existence as a sizeable house, although not nearly so gargantuan a one as the great house of Collinwood. Getting out of the car, Malloy told Gerard, "Why don't you wait out here; I'll go check in with them and see if there's been any news."

Watching Malloy stride toward the brightly-lit building's front door, Gerard briefly considered fleeing into the woods then and there. He decided against it, not wanting to arouse Malloy's suspicions too swiftly. Out in the dark woods, he should have better chances to make himself scarce without Malloy immediately realizing what he was up to.

The current prince consort of Collinwood was back outside again almost at once. "No sign of the kids yet," Malloy reported. "Only news is that Julia got here a few minutes ago and she's already out there searching." Opening one of the back doors of the car, he brought out some items that had been lying on the back seat. "Here," he said, handing Gerard an electric torch like the one to which Dr. Hoffman introduced him on the night when he had come back to life.

Malloy next held out another object toward Gerard, who managed to squeeze the torch into a back pocket of Roger Collins' trousers. "This thing's a walkie-talkie," Malloy told him. "It's like a … short-range wireless telephone, but they just connect with each other. To talk, you press that button and keep it held down while you're talking. See?" he said, demonstrating that action as he held the rectangular device in front of Gerard.

"Yes, I see," Gerard answered, endeavoring not to sound too wary about it.

"Let's try it out."

They did so, Gerard gingerly accepting the object from Malloy. He copied Malloy's actions when the fisherman extended a thin metal pole from one end of the second walkie-talkie. On Malloy holding down the relevant button and saying "Testing, testing," Gerard did indeed hear the man's voice rather scratchily emerging from the device in his hand. Dutifully, Gerard repeated the test, thinking of how odd it sounded to hear a version of his own voice say "Testing" from out of a small metal box a few feet away.

"Right," Malloy said briskly. "They've got a pretty short range, so if all you hear is static, you'll know we've gotten too far apart. I figure we should stay near the road; it makes sense that the kids would do that, too, so they have a chance of reaching Machias without getting lost. If they're thinking clearly enough to do something that makes sense. I'll take that side of the road," he continued, gesturing with his thumb toward the left, "you take this. Let's check in with each other every 15 minutes … you got a watch?"

"Yes," said Gerard. "I have one."

"Right. Good luck, then, Mr. Miller. Watch out for ghosties and ghoulies."

"Yes," Gerard said again, rather blankly. "Thank you. You as well."

Feeling more than slightly dazed, he retrieved the electric torch from his pocket and started into the woods on the right-hand side of the road.

He asked himself, Can it really be this easy?

Malloy could scarcely have made things any simpler for me if he had deliberately set out to help me escape!

All I have to do is keep near the road to Machias, not answer Malloy when he calls me on his blessed walkie-talkie—he thought that after the first fifteen-minute check he would discard the wretched thing in the woods—and give poor Mr. Malloy another missing person to worry about.

He strode through the trees and brush, feeling thankful for the technological wonder that was the electrical torch. Every now and then, for the benefit of Mr. Malloy, he called out something along the lines of, "Tad! Carrie! Are you out here?" Occasionally, he heard a distant, equivalent shout from Malloy's side of the road.

At what was presumably fifteen minutes into their walk through the woods, Mr. Malloy's voice crackled out from the walkie-talkie, "You there, Mr. Miller?" Somewhat to his own surprise, Gerard succeeded in answering. They confirmed that neither of them had seen hide nor hair of the two runaway children.

Right, Gerard thought, as soon as that brief consultation was ended. Now it's time for my miraculous escape.

He took minor but definite satisfaction from the rebellious act of chucking the walkie-talkie into a nearby clump of bushes. Then he began to run, maintaining as steady a lope as he could while detouring around the thicker sections of trees and underbrush.

He was making no effort at all to locate the two missing children. This demonstrated the fact that on occasion, one finds even though one does not seek.

He heard a burst of rustling noises in a stand of trees and brush off to his left, followed by a half-stifled "Oh!" as though someone had stumbled. He stopped and shone the light of the torch in that direction, and there, squinting against the sudden glare, stood the possessed children.

Gerard lowered the light to get it out of their eyes, and said with a sigh, "Carrie. Tad. All right, you might as well come out of there."

When they were not blinded by the torch, they swiftly recognized him. And, of course, they were immediately terrified.

"Gerard," Carrie began, as she threaded her way out of the underbrush and took a few steps toward him. "Gerard. We're sorry, we're so sorry; please don't hurt us, please—"

Her eyes suddenly widened as the torchlight showed her what he was wearing. For a moment Carrie was only puzzled, as she murmured, "Why are you dressed like that?"

Tad hastened out of the brush, to stand beside her and to cut off her words. "Hush up, Carrie, don't you see?" he said, as he clearly struggled to force a happy expression onto his face. "It means Gerard has come back to life, just like Daphne has."

A terror-stricken look washed over the girl's face before she managed to replace that expression with a patently false smile. That succession of looks spoke volumes on the subject of what these children had suffered from the man they'd believed to be Gerard.

Tad's words went racing on, "We're so glad, Gerard, we've been trying as hard as we could to bring you back—"

With her sickly, fake-happy look, Carrie chimed in with her own, "Yes, Gerard, we're so glad!"

They were both of them terrible at lying. Gerard thought of how lucky both children were that he was not the man they thought he was.

Wearily he held up a hand to stop their protestations of gladness. Repeating Tad's initial phrase, he said, "Hush up, both of you. You don't need to do this."

That, at least, put an end to their terrified speech. They stared at him like a pair of bewildered owls. Tad finally whispered, "I don't understand. What do you want us to do?"

And here I go again, Gerard thought. How many times lately have I told this story?

This made only the fourth time, he supposed, after the versions he had recounted to Julia Hoffman, to her team of warlock-fighters, and to these two children's alter-egos who were trapped in the dolls' house.

He said, "I'm not the man you're afraid of. I'm not the one who's hurt you."

They still stared, and Gerard prayed for the eloquence to convince them of the truth.

There had been a time, long ago, when both of these children had trusted him; when they both had looked up to him, and thought of him as a friend. He hoped their memories of that time would prove strong enough to bridge the chasm of fear that the warlock had dug between them.

"Carrie," he said quietly, "do you remember … was there a time when you thought that I had changed? When, perhaps, I began behaving cruelly toward you, as I had never done before? Maybe when I began hurting you, and hurting others at Collinwood?"

As she gazed at him now she was clearly on the verge of tears. She answered in a tiny voice, "Yes, Gerard. There was a time like that. You know there was. Why are you asking me about it?"

He pressed on, "Did I seem so different that sometimes you almost thought I'd become a different person?"

"Yes," she whispered desperately, and now he did see tears escaping her eyes. "I don't understand why you're asking me this …"

"Carrie," was his eager reply. He stepped toward her and took one of her hands, and he held onto it as she tried to flinch away. "I'm asking you this because what you sensed then was true. I was a different person. The man you have been afraid of all these years wasn't me. I had been possessed."

The girl's huge blue eyes stared up at him in dawning wonder. She echoed, "Possessed …"

"Yes," he said, and now he was rushing through his words, trying to pile so many details onto his story that she could not help but believe him. "Do you remember, Carrie, there was an evening when you followed me out to the cliff at Widows' Hill. You told me you'd followed me because you thought I might be going there to meet a woman, and you were jealous. You saw me throw something off the cliff into the sea, and when I realized you'd seen me, I was frightened and angry. I made you promise not to tell anyone what you had seen. Then when you'd promised that, I remember you telling me I seemed like myself again, instead of the way I'd seemed when I was angry at you. I think I remember saying to you, 'I am my good old self again.' Do you remember?"

"Yes, Gerard," Carrie whispered, still gazing up at him. "Yes, Gerard, I do remember."

"Well," he said bitterly, "I wasn't my 'good old self again' for long. That was the night I was possessed. What you saw me throw off the cliff was … a magical object that held the power of a long-dead warlock. He was executed in Collinsport in the 17th century, and the judge who condemned him was a Collins. He vowed to come back to life to take revenge on the Collins family. That's what he did when he possessed me. He banished me from my own body and he began to live again in the body of Gerard Stiles."

"But," put in the nearly-forgotten Tad, from Carrie's side, "if you had thrown the object that held his power off the cliff—"

"It wasn't enough," Gerard answered. "I thought I had freed myself when I threw it over the cliff, but I hadn't. I wasn't strong enough to free myself from his clutches. Maybe you remember, Carrie: that night a visitor came to Rose Cottage. His name was Charles Dawson. You were the one who showed him upstairs to my chamber. Do you remember that?"

"I remember. Oh, Gerard," she breathed in horror, "was he a part of this? Did he do something to you?"

Gerard nodded. "He was a member of the warlock's coven. He brought back the … object I had thrown over the cliff. And that was when the warlock possessed me."

"Oh, Gerard!" she gasped again. "And I brought that man to you!"

He smiled at her and pressed her hand, feeling suddenly light-hearted at the thought that she was starting to believe him. He said to her, "I remember the dress you were wearing that night. It was a new dress, deep blue with a white lace collar. Flora bought it for you in Boston. You twirled around in it, showing it off for me, and you were wearing some ornament in your hair—cloth flowers; I think it was a sprig of lilacs made from silk. You told me about your trip to Boston, and about a play you and Flora had seen there. I think you told me about an actor in that play, whom you said had looked like me."

"Yes," Carrie breathed. Now she suddenly reached out and clasped his hand in both of hers. "It's true, I remember all of it. It's true!"

He grinned at her wryly and said, "I wish that you were wearing that dress now. It suited you better than … than what women are wearing these days." As he made that comment, he realized that as foolish as it was, he actually felt embarrassed at seeing the girl so scantily dressed. She had a coat on, which helped a bit. But even so, the striped dress she was wearing was so tiny, it scarcely looked large enough to be a shirt.

Carrie glanced down at her bare legs. Then she looked up, blushingly, to smile at him. "I know," she murmured, "it is rather awful, isn't it? Things aren't so difficult for you men; at least you aren't expected to go around half-dressed."

"Gerard," Tad said now, with the intense, husky voice of youth. "Do you have anything to say to me?"

Gerard looked over at the lad and met his earnest, challenging gaze.

"Yes," he said. "I have to say to you that I'm sorry. I'm sorry because I know the man who stole my body must have hurt you. I hate him for hurting you and I hate him for destroying our friendship. I hate knowing that you must have felt I'd betrayed you. I hate the fact that you must have believed, all these years, that our friendship was always a lie. It wasn't. It was never a lie. Your father was my best friend, Tad, and I was your friend. And I pray that someday you can accept my friendship again."

The boy studied his face. Tad's look of challenge changed slowly into one of belief.

"Gerard," Tad Collins whispered. "Gerard, is it really you?"

Whatever Gerard might have said at that point was forestalled by Carrie suddenly flinging herself at him. She threw her arms about his neck and buried her face against his chest. Her voice was muffled as she pressed against him, and also possibly muffled by the fact that she was crying. "Oh, Gerard," Carrie murmured. "Oh, Gerard, I missed you so!"

Gerard hugged the girl with his right arm, and with a questioning half-smile he held out his left arm to Tad. The boy hesitated a moment longer. Then his expression crumpled as though he, too, were about to cry. Crossing the distance between them in one step, Tad hugged Gerard. Gerard hugged him in return, a bit awkwardly due to the electric torch in his left hand.

In a fierce whisper, Tad forced out the words, "I hated thinking I was wrong about you. I hated believing you never really were my father's friend, or mine."

"I was," Gerard insisted with equal fierceness. "I was his friend, and yours."

With some further awkwardness the three of them stepped apart. Carrie hurriedly tried to brush the tears from her face, but she was smiling as she did so. For his part, Tad was still clearly working through all of this in his mind. Intently gazing at Gerard, he whispered, "It really wasn't you. It wasn't you who killed my father, and us."

"He killed you?" Gerard asked. "I didn't know. I'm sorry." At least, he didn't think that he had known. Those killings must have taken place near the end of the warlock's campaign, in 1841. By that point, the warlock had not been gloating to the man he'd imprisoned inside his severed head as frequently as he had done when he first commenced his new life in the body of Gerard Stiles.

Tad gave a wry little smile at that. "You don't need to apologize, Gerard. You didn't kill us." Then the boy frowned ponderingly and shook his head. He asked, "But what's happened to you now? How are you here, alive?"

"The two of you brought me back," Gerard answered. "The two of you and Daphne. You brought me to life with the spell you performed two nights ago."

"But then … the spell last night, the one Dr. Hoffman interrupted …"

"It was to enable the warlock to possess me again. That's why he needed me alive. I believe he must have lost the object through which channeled his powers before. He wants me alive so he can possess my body once more. Having succeeded in doing that once, it will be easier for him inhabit my body again."

Pain and remorse showed on the boy's face. "And I was helping him to do that!" Tad muttered angrily. "Gerard, I'm sorry, I didn't know."

Now Gerard said, in his turn, "You don't need to apologize." With a melancholy smile, he added, "I know there is no way to refuse him when he commands."

And here we stand, thought Gerard, chatting away as though there is not an all-powerful evil out there, seeking to possess or to destroy us. He asked, "Where are you going? Are you on your way to Machias?"

Tad took a moment to adjust to this sudden re-connection with reality. "Yes," he answered then. "There's no life for us at Collinwood. There won't be any life for us unless we can get away."

Gerard nodded and said, "That's the same conclusion I had reached, about myself." He looked from Tad to Carrie, and then back again to the boy. "Then if it is acceptable to both of you," he said quietly, "we can travel together."

Tad's eyes widened in what seemed fairly clearly to be gladdened surprise. He repeated incredulously, "Acceptable?"

Meanwhile Carrie asked in tones of wonder, "Would you do that, Gerard? Would you, truly?"

He was not entirely lying when he told her, "The journey will be a happier one in company. And speaking of the journey," he continued, "it's best that we set out again. There are other people out here in the woods searching for you. We can keep talking as we walk."

Set out again they did, but it was a while before any of them spoke. Tad was the first to speak again. He said, "It'll be good to have you with us. I'll be happier if I know I'm not Carrie's only protector. It seems … maybe it seems silly for me to have worried over what's ahead of us. This ought to be an easier journey than when Father and Mr. Simms and I crossed South America. But I did have Father and Mr. Simms. I had them to rely on. They did all the planning and made all the decisions. All I had to do was … do my best to stay strong, and keep walking." There seemed to be a smile in his voice as summed up his thoughts, "I'll be glad to have you with us."

"Yes," said Carrie, walking at Gerard's other side. "With you with us, perhaps this will seem like … an adventure. Instead of simply being frightening."

"I suspect," Gerard remarked, "that what the authors of adventures don't frequently tell their readers is that adventures are frightening. But, you are right," he went on, maneuvering his way around so he could say the sort of thing that Carrie probably wanted to hear, "it should not be so frightening if the three of us are together."

And now that I've told her something she wants to hear, he thought, let us turn the conversation to something I want to hear. He said to Tad, "I'm sure Mr. Simms must have been a practical adventurer. I will do my best to follow in his footsteps. One practical question which ought to be considered is: do either of you have any money?"

Before either child could answer, a whirring, rumbling noise approached from behind them, to their left.

"An automobile!" Gerard hissed, switching off the torch. "Get back into the trees."

As the three of them watched from the clump of brush they'd scrambled into, the car's engine noise grew nearer and its pale twin lights gleamed at them through the trees. Only when the lights were long past, and the engine's rumbling had long faded from their hearing, did Gerard whisper to the children, "All right. Let's get going again."

He hated to risk switching on the torch once more, but they didn't have much choice. Ahead of them the terrain grew rapidly more challenging. Up until now it had been fairly smooth going, the only real obstacles in their way coming in the form of the undergrowth and trees. But the territory they were walking into was marked by rock outcroppings and a series of gullies that crossed their path. Gerard thought bitterly that this stretch of forest might have been expressly designed with the purpose of slowing their progress. If they didn't use the torch, they were liable to break their necks.

As they were picking their way down into one gully and then up its other side, Tad said, "You asked about money. I've got all that I could find in David's room; a little over 47 dollars."

Gerard was holding Carrie's hand while he aided her in scrambling through the gully. She told him, "And I've got what Hallie had. It's fourteen dollars and four cents."

"That's good," Gerard said, thinking aloud. "It won't get the three of us to New York, but it should easily get us to Boston." He told the children, "There'll be an omnibus that runs between Machias and Boston. We'll have enough money left when we get there to take a room in a hotel or a lodging house, and I can find some sort of job to earn us what we'll need to travel on to New York. We can say that you're my brother and sister. That ought to work a great deal better than if the two of you were on your own; you being so young, it could raise people's suspicions."

Carrie squeezed his hand as they reached the more-or-less level ground. She said, "I'm so happy, Gerard. Oh, Tad, isn't it wonderful? Do you know, for the first time since we came back, I think that maybe things will be all right."

The three of them suddenly froze like startled deer. The light of another torch like the one Gerard was holding shone blindingly at them out of the forest ahead.

"Hello, kids," said a man's voice which Gerard knew he had heard before. "You're heading the wrong way."

Two can play at that game, thought Gerard, as he shone his torch at the face of the man—a man whom the light revealed to be the massive-chinned Burke Devlin.

"Howdy, Mr. Miller," Devlin greeted him, squinting against the light. "Any particular reason why you're leading these kids away from Windcliff?"

Absolutely no plausible-sounding lies presented themselves to his mind. All he could think to do was to look astonished and say, "Are you certain this is the wrong direction? That is embarrassing. I knew I wasn't much of a woodsman, but I didn't think I would make this poor a showing."

Devlin shrugged and said, "That's okay, we can't all be the Last of the Mohicans. My car's just over there, come on and I'll give all of you a ride."

Playing for time, Gerard answered, "That will be fine if you want to give the kids a ride back to Windcliff. I should go find Mr. Malloy and let him know that we've found them. He's over there across the road."

Burke Devlin was walking closer to them. Something about the way the man strode up to them disturbed Gerard, and he didn't think that was due to in the least to him having a guilty conscience over their attempted escape. Devlin's approach must be worrying to Tad and Carrie, as well, for the two of them drew close to him on either side, huddling nearer for protection.

"You don't need to find Malloy," Devlin said. "I already talked with Bill; I told him I'd drive you back to Collinwood."

"That doesn't make sense," argued Gerard. "Why would you do that?"

He should have expected Devlin's next action. He should have been moving to defend himself before the man even struck, or better yet, he should have struck first. But he did not.

He was caught humiliatingly off-guard when Devlin lunged at him. The larger man dropped his own torch for greater freedom of movement, and before Gerard could react, Burke Devlin had grabbed his left arm, pivoted him and pinioned his wrists together behind his back in the grip of hands which felt excruciatingly strong. A nasty flash of memory recalled to Gerard's mind the shockingly painful grasp of Gabriel Collins.

Burke Devlin said flatly, "I've got orders to take you to Collinwood."

Tad protested "What are you doing?" and Carrie pleaded, "Let him go!"

Gerard had been easy to catch, but it was not so simple for Devlin to keep hold of him. He twisted around with a violence that managed to tear his right arm free from Devlin's grasp. In the next instant he aimed a knee at the man. It connected, but not precisely in the spot where he had hoped it would. Devlin retaliated by forcing Gerard's left arm up and backward in a way that made his vision swim with anguish.

Not being any kind of an honorable fighter, Gerard's next move was an attempt to gouge Devlin's eyes out. He probably inflicted some scratches on Devlin's face, but Devlin succeeded in seizing hold of Gerard's wrist again and dragging his hand away. Locked together, for a moment they staggered against each other in an utterly graceless dance.

The rough terrain was perhaps now helping Gerard, or at least it was as troublesome to Devlin as it was to him. Both of them slipped down into the gully out of which Gerard and the children had just climbed. That loosened Devlin's grip on Gerard's left wrist just enough for him to wrench his arm free. Gerard still had hold of his electric torch—which sent crazy shadows and shafts of light dancing all around the scene—and despite the screaming pain of his left arm he managed to wind up a blow and slam the metal torch against Devlin's head. With the impact, the torch's light went out.

A good, direct hit might have knocked the man out, or even killed him. In the chaos of stumbling down the slope, Gerard had not delivered a good, direct hit. He had, however, succeeded in stunning his opponent enough that Devlin's remaining hold on him weakened.

Gerard tore himself free and dropped the torch. Driven by habit and by his body's memories, he reached down to his left leg to draw the dagger from his boot. His hand only encountered the trouser leg. In a rush of despair, he remembered that he had no chance of reaching his dagger.

Instead, he started a scrambling uphill run. He yelled to the two children, "Run! There's only one of him; he can't catch all three of us!"

Sounding as untroubled as though he had not just been hit on the head with a torch, Burke Devlin called, "I wouldn't do that, kids. Someone back at Collinwood won't be pleased with you if you run."

With hindsight, Gerard later thought that he ought to have submitted to capture immediately and saved himself a good deal of pain and bother. He hadn't even made it out of the gully again when Burke Devlin caught up and slammed into him. His feet were knocked from under him and he found himself flat against the ground, face pressed into the dirt, with the very considerable weight of his opponent on top of him.

The exigencies of the situation led him to employ language which he would not normally utter in front of the children. "Tad, Carrie, God damn it!" he shouted, managing to raise his head enough so that he wasn't just spitting dirt. "Grab some rocks and knock this bastard out with them!"

"I wouldn't do that, either, kids," came Devlin's voice again, insultingly calm. "You don't want to make that someone at Collinwood angry at you." Again he forced Gerard's arms together behind his back.

"How can you be serving the warlock?" Gerard snarled at him. "He's going to kill all the Collinses and all of their friends, if he can—all of them, including the woman you love."

"You don't know anything about who I serve," was the reply. "And you don't know anything about the woman I love."

Gerard suddenly thought he understood—and he thought he knew why Burke Devlin and Quentin Collins had made no progress yesterday in locating Daphne Harridge. "Daphne," Gerard muttered. "You're under her control."

"Sorry, Mr. Miller," Burke Devlin answered. "You'll have to keep on guessing. I'm not the kind of man who'll kiss and tell."

Devlin's next move was to call out again to the watching children. "Hey, Tad, Carrie. My car's parked on a side road just ahead of you. Go to the car—you can use my flashlight; get the ropes from the passenger's seat and bring them to me." The children must have hesitated to obey him, because he uttered another of his disturbingly unemotional threats: "You'd better do it, kids. You know you don't want to make that person back at Collinwood mad."

While he waited for the children to return with the ropes and for Devlin to tie him up, a horrifyingly ironic thought occurred to Gerard.

I didn't need to throw away that accursed walkie-talkie, he thought. I might have kept it with me. If I had, I could have used it to call on Mr. Malloy for help.

Burke Devlin very clearly knew his way around ropes. When the two intimidated children brought the ropes to him, it took him barely any time at all to bind Gerard's wrists and ankles with a thoroughness which left Gerard in despair about the likelihood of his ever managing to free himself.

For good measure, Devlin shoved a handkerchief or something of the like into Gerard's mouth and tied it firmly behind his head, putting an end to Gerard's faint hope of being able to shout for help and summon Bill Malloy when they got nearer to the road.

With his captive securely bound, Devlin stood up, and from the sound of it, dusted himself off. "Thanks, kids," he said casually. "I appreciate the help." Then he heaved Gerard off the ground, slung him over his shoulder like a sack, and started climbing up the slope.

Gerard did not bother trying to resist, being quite certain that at this point, it was useless. Or, he did not try to resist until they reached the car.

By the light of the torch—or flashlight?—which Tad was carrying, Gerard could see something of what was going on. When Devlin let him slide down none-too-gently to the ground, he saw that he was lying beside one of the back wheels of the car. He also saw Devlin open a compartment at the back of the automobile, which looked as though it was probably used for carrying luggage. Devlin reached down, grabbed the shirt Gerard was wearing and hauled him up off the ground—and Gerard panicked.

He did not give a damn about the spectacle he was making of himself as he flailed about like a hooked fish and wildly struggled to force some words past the cloth shoved into his mouth. All he cared about was the terrifying knowledge that Devlin was going to dump him into that compartment at the back of his car—and that if he did so, Gerard would be dead by the time they reached Collinwood.

Burke Devlin held him upright, propped against the side of the car, and frowned at him in disgust.

"What the hell, Mr. Miller?" the man inquired. "You having some kind of a fit, or what?"

Carrie was suddenly there beside them, tugging desperately at Devlin's arm.

"Take the gag off him, please!" she begged. "Please! There's something he wants to say!"

Gerard gave a frantic nod.

Devlin scowled a while longer. Then finally he said, "Okay. I'll risk it. But if you shout for help, Mr. Miller, you're going to regret it." He yanked the gag out of Gerard's mouth. "Now," he demanded, "what the hell is wrong with you?"

Gasping for breath, Gerard made the humiliating admission, "I become ill in enclosed vehicles. If you drive this thing with me inside there, it's a hundred-to-one chance that I'm going to be sick. If that happens while you've got me gagged, I'll choke to death on my vomit. I don't think your master back at Collinwood wants that to happen."

Apparently Burke Devlin didn't think his master back at Collinwood wanted that to happen, either. After some moments' consideration, he decided, "Fine. You can ride without the gag. But if you do anything to make me sorry for this, I'll make you a helluva lot sorrier."

Without further ado, Devlin hoisted Gerard off his feet, dumped him into the compartment and slammed the lid down after him.

Lying in the stuffy darkness, Gerard remembered words he had spoken to Sam Evans only this morning—which already seemed an impossibly long time ago.

I am certain I have survived worse.

I have survived worse, he told himself. Being imprisoned in a coffin-sized compartment in an automobile is considerably preferable to disembodied existence inside a warlock's severed head.

That was what he thought until the car started up, and began jolting along a road which was in no way improved from the roads of Gerard's own time.

Not being able to see made the jolting feel worse to him than ever. Added to that, the fumes of whatever noxious substance these vehicles required for their functioning made him think that he just might be dead before they got back to Collinwood, even without a gag jammed into his mouth.

Good, Gerard thought spitefully. It'll serve that whoreson right, if I die before he manages to possess me.

Except that if that happens, he will simply make Daphne and the children bring me back to life again.

I am going to become so very tired of hearing about the star that guides the destiny of Gerard Stiles.