"An eternity," she said. "In the . . . the outside world it's different. There I can sit in front of the canvas for as long as I like. Because I know that in an hour, a day, even a week, I'll be able to begin. But here I don't know how long I've thought about it. It's like a plant," she tried to explain. "It needs time to grow. How can anything grow without time?" Her voice was pleading, desperate.

"There's still time," McNeely said. "We're just not as aware of it. The stars are always there, even when the sun's s.h.i.+ning."

"I never realized before how much I always depended on time," she went on, ignoring his remark. "Even though I've never been a slave of the clock-never had to be-I just always counted on day following night following day again. I could tell the time I needed to by the way shadows lengthened through the windows. And now ..." She gestured about her. "Everything's in shadow. And they never shorten, never lengthen. Everything's always the same."

Her shoulders slumped. "Please, forgive me. I think I'm very drunk."

McNeely indicated a small pile of drawing paper. "Are these your sketches?" She nodded dully. "May I?" Receiving no response, he picked them up and carefully thumbed through them. "These are good," he said. "Excellent. Why've you put off oils?"

"Nothing comes. I did all the sketches a short time after we arrived here. They came easily enough. But now . . ." She shrugged. "It's like something's holding me back."

"Nothing's holding you back but you," said McNeely. "And often that's enough." He looked around the room, hoping to find a topic of interest that would change the subject. He found it in what he took to be a Maxfield Parrish print hanging in one of the darker corners. "Now, there," he said, lightening his tone, "is a Parrish I've never seen before. G.o.d, I love his work, especially the thirties landscapes. Do you like him?"

She looked up, her eyes slightly glazed. "Yes, I do. The earlier work."

McNeely walked into the far corner to see the picture more closely. As he examined it, he frowned. "Have you looked at this?" he said. "Really looked at it?"

"Just from a few feet," she answered. "Why?"

He reached out, gingerly took it from the wall, and carried it over to her. "At first I thought it was a print," he said, "because it was gla.s.sed. But look. It's an original oil."

He was delighted at her response. It was the most animated she'd been for a long time. "My G.o.d, you're right-look at it, it is!"

"They probably had it behind gla.s.s because it was up here. Prey to bouncing b.a.l.l.s and sticky fingers and all, McNeely conjectured.

"All these years," said Gabrielle, "stored away where no one can see it."

Together they gazed at it for a long time. It depicted a young boy by the mouth of a cave, from which came thin tendrils of fog shaped like wizened hands. The boy's face bore a look of expectation mixed with fear, as if he had known that the fog would be there, but was uncertain of how to deal with it.

"What is it from?" Gabrielle finally asked.

"I'm not sure. The boy's dressed like an Arab, so it could be Ali Baba, but I don't recall those ghostly hands in the cave."

"It's like Pandora's Box," she said dreamily, "as if he's opened the door and let out all the evils into the world."

"If that's the case, he doesn't look too upset about it."

"And the colors . . . aren't the colors beautiful. . . ."

Chapter Seven.

Seth c.u.mmings laughed. It was a deep laugh that started low in his gut and bubbled up out of him, filling the small gym with its jubilance. He'd been there for hours-he was sure it had been that long-and now, after exercising all that time with no pauses for rest, he lay on the weight bench with only a light patina of sweat coating his frame.

Every plate in the gym was on the bar, five hundred pounds of iron. And Seth c.u.mmings could still laugh as he pressed it at arm's length, holding it over his chest as easily as if it were empty.

Instead of putting it in the rest, he sat up, muscles still tensed, and brought it down to clean position. Then he set it on the floor and touched the muscles of his arms and chest. They felt like steel. There was no give at all when he pressed them. His skin seemed like no more than a thick coat of paint on a tank.

The Master was giving him his strength.

Gabrielle Neville was almost sober. She sat at the kitchen table sipping scalding coffee, breathing heavily, watching George McNeely watching her.

"I never drink that much," she said apologetically.

McNeely smiled, pouring himself another cup. "In that case, your tolerance is doubly remarkable. Half the bottle would have put most longsh.o.r.emen flat on their backs."

"I behaved like an a.s.s."

"Some good came out of it. We found a hidden Parrish, eh?"

She nodded, smiling. "It's been hiding too long. I think we'll donate it to the Brandywine Museum." Her face grew solemn as she added, "If David agrees." She looked up at McNeely suddenly. "George," she said, if I wanted out of here-or wanted to get David out before he ... before something terrible happens, what would you do?"

McNeely took a slow sip of coffee. "Do you mean would I put my key in the lock?" he asked, his hand going involuntarily to his throat, where the cool metal hung.

"Yes. And lose the money." There was life in her eyes again. The dulling liquor had almost vanished.

"I don't know. If I was convinced there was a good reason to, I suppose I would."

"And lose the money?" she repeated insistently.

"I didn't come here for the money," McNeely said calmly. "It would be nice, but I don't need it."

"Why did you come?"

He laughed self-disparagingly. "I suppose the same reason your husband did. Curiosity at first, then to see if there was really anything here. If there was-" He stopped.

"If there was what?"

He'd been about to say, "If there was a battle to fight," but he realized how absurd, how little-boy-looking-for-fun it would seem to Gabrielle Neville. So instead, he said, "If there were really ghosts."

"Would you like there to be?"

He thought for a moment before answering. "I think so. I think we'd all like to believe there's something after death. Thomas Hardy said he'd give ten years of his life to see an actual ghost. It would be a small price to pay for a guarantee of immortality." He shook his head and a strange look came into his eyes. "But then sometimes I think that this life should be enough."

"You said before," said Gabrielle, "that you haven't seen anything here so far. But what do you believe?"

McNeely stared into his coffee cup as into a black pool, waiting to see what rose from its depths. "I think ... I do believe that something's here. I wouldn't have stayed otherwise. I don't pretend to know what it is. It may be only random energy of some sort, but I believe there is something. "

Gabrielle noticed how far away his eyes seemed.

"It's like when I was alone in the jungle," he went on. "Even on the days when the wind is still, when the birds are all hushed or dead or sleeping, there's still the feeling that something is there, and you turn to see what that movement was in the corner of your eye, and there's nothing. But you know that if you'd been just a little faster, just whipped your head around a flash sooner, you'd have seen what was near you." He paused. "It's like that here, only it's not in the corners of your eyes you sense it, but in the corners of your mind.

"And you think. And you concentrate. But whatever it was that stole into your thoughts is gone, and it's just the shadow you remember, and you're not even sure if you remember that."

He sighed sadly. It was such an empty, despairing sound that she wanted to hold him. "I know what you mean," she said. "I felt like that when I talked so horribly to David. There was something else in my mind beside me. Maybe the thoughts were mine, the ones that we all store deep down away, the thoughts that we couldn't conceive of having if we heard them aloud. But I know it wasn't me that turned them into words. It couldn't have been. There was something else inside me." Her mouth twisted with disgust. "It was like being violated-worse than rape. But I don't know what it was. I don't have the haziest idea. Like you said, just a shadow. And I can't even remember its shape." She looked at McNeely, and he could see the strident lines of near panic marring her features. "What can you do? How can you fight something you can't see or hear?"

How, McNeely? If this were a battle, how? "You make it show itself. You make it speak."

"How?"

How, McNeely? How? "Wait it out. It can only go so far. Just wait it out."

The door boomed open and Gabrielle Neville screamed.

In the hallway a hulking figure loomed on the border of the light. George McNeely tensed and rose halfway out of his seat, his arms coming up to a defensive position. Then the thing came through the doorway into the light, and McNeely could see that it was Seth c.u.mmings.

But a different Seth c.u.mmings. He was s.h.i.+rtless and the gym shorts he wore were just so much fabric stretched tautly over b.u.t.tocks and groin, shamelessly outlining his genitals against the light blue material. He stood well over six feet tall in his bare feet, but he looked larger because of his tremendous girth. His chest was huge, his arms ma.s.sive, each thigh as thick as the trunk of a healthy pine. Yet something was horribly wrong with the whole of c.u.mmings's body. It was as though a champion bodybuilder had been disa.s.sembled and rebuilt by a slightly mad committee.

The muscle groups on each side were in shockingly different proportions. The upper left arm was well muscled, but the forearm was so overly developed in contrast that it reminded McNeely of Popeye. The right pectorals were so large that they drooped pendulously, like a breast, the lesser developed deltoids unable to bear their weight, while the left chest and shoulder were formed perfectly. From mid-thigh down, thick boles of muscles protruded in uneven waves like rampant tumors. It was impossible to tell where the kneecaps were located, lost as they were among the lumps of fertile muscle.

The head was the worst. It was c.o.c.ked at a fantastic angle, pressing c.u.mmings's right ear against the slab of muscle that coated his shoulder. It was not the weight of the head that had toppled it over as much as the pressure of the left neck muscle, which protruded like the G.o.d of all goiters, forcing the head to the right so that the only slightly smaller right neck muscle was squashed and flattened like a fat pink slug.

But the face was smiling. It was almost lost in the ridges of thickened flesh that seemed stuck to the skin like modeling clay, but it was there, and McNeely s.h.i.+vered as the white teeth glittered deep within the cavernous mouth. They seemed to be all that was left of Seth c.u.mmings.

Then, though McNeely would not have believed it possible, the mouth twisted even more, and words came out. They were distorted and m.u.f.fled, as if c.u.mmings were buried deep inside that ma.s.s of flesh and muscle, but they were understandable.

"A little hungry," he said bubblingly. "A growing boy needs his food."

The incongruity of the cliche shocked McNeely into silence. He could only sit and stare uncomprehendingly as c.u.mmings shambled across the room to the refrigerator and pulled open the door with such force that the handle gouged a two-inch trench in the plaster of the wall it hit.

c.u.mmings croaked out a laugh as he examined the damage. "Getting stronger," he said. "Getting so I don't know my own strength, huh?" He looked at Gabrielle. "Huh, Mrs. Neville?" McNeely hadn't been able to take his eyes off c.u.mmings since he'd entered the kitchen, but now he looked at the woman across the table.

She was barely there. She had started in some way to slip into herself, to deny through unconsciousness the impossible creature that shared with her the quaint hominess of the kitchen. Her eyes were partially closed, and her mouth, to McNeely's astonishment, seemed to be almost smiling.

"I'm getting real strong," c.u.mmings said, his white marble eyes set on Gabrielle Neville, "and big. Bigger all over, Mrs. Neville. Maybe soon I'll show you just how big I'm getting. Think you'd like that?"

McNeely started to say c.u.mmings's name, but saliva made it only a wet click in his throat, and he cleared it violently. "c.u.mmings," he said successfully, "Seth. Are you ..." What do you say to a monster? What? "Do you feel . . . all right?"

c.u.mmings laughed again, still keeping his eyes on Gabrielle, as if he had nothing to fear from McNeely. "Feel all right? I feel perfect! I feel big and strong and filled with so much power that you can only begin to guess, Geo!" He looked at him then, and McNeely couldn't ever remember seeing such satanic joy in a human face. "I'd tell you more about it," c.u.mmings went on, "but I'm hungry." He turned back to the lost Gabrielle. "Hungry for food now. For other things later." He pulled a cooked five-pound beef roast from the refrigerator and slammed the door shut so that every dish and gla.s.s in the room clattered. Then he stalked across the kitchen and stepped into the hall, turning back to look at Gabrielle again.

"Other things later, Mrs. Neville," he gurgled. "Don't worry. I'll find you." And he was gone.

There would be no reason, McNeely thought dully, to shut the door, to try and secure it in any way. He had no doubt that c.u.mmings would simply batter it down. He started to think of what kind of weapon he could bring to bear against c.u.mmings, when he remembered Gabrielle Neville.

She was unmoving, and he thought for a second that she had stopped breathing. Her eyes were fully closed and her expression was blank.

"Gabrielle," he said, taking her hand. At the contact, her eyes leaped open and her nostrils flared with the sharp intake of breath. She twisted in her seat and drew away from him so that her chair rocked precariously before being stopped by the counter.

"I dreamed," she said, a thrill in her voice, "I must have fallen asleep and I dreamed that Seth c.u.mmings had"-she laughed shrilly-"had turned into a monster! Can you believe that? He looked ridiculous! Like . . ."

"I saw him too."

She looked at him as if he'd kicked the chair from under her.

"It was no dream. You really saw it, but you couldn't accept it. c.u.mmings has changed."

"Then what he said"-she sounded frightened, but strangely excited as well-"about coming back for me? That was real too?"

He nodded, wondering if she was playing a game or if she really thought she had dreamed it all. "All of it. You didn't dream. All of it was real."

"But how? What happened to him?"

"I don't know, but I do know we'd better find your husband and Kelly d.a.m.ned quick." He pulled the key out from under his s.h.i.+rt. "There'll never be a better time to use these than now."

"We're getting out?"

"There are four of us without c.u.mmings, and four is enough to open this place up. We'll get out, get help for c.u.mmings. But first we've got to find the others. You go . . ." He'd been about to tell her to search for her husband, but the thought of her running into c.u.mmings in the hall made him change his mind. "We'll stay together," he said. "Where do you think Neville might be?"

She shook her head. "Our suite perhaps. The study. I'm not sure."

"All right. Let's start with the study."

They stepped into the hall and went toward the west wing. As they moved into the open s.p.a.ce where they would be visible to a watcher in the Great Hall, McNeely took Gabrielle's hand and walked faster, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the heavy wooden doors that masked the locking unit, praying that they'd be able to activate it while c.u.mmings was holed up in some dark corner wolfing down his meat.

When they'd pa.s.sed into the west wing hall, McNeely spoke in a harsh whisper. "We'll try every room he might be in. Let me open the doors."

"What if-" She paused.

"What if we find c.u.mmings first? That's why I'm opening the doors and not you. I'd lock you in a safe if I could." And just for a moment McNeely pictured the steel doors of the fire chamber.

"What's wrong? What are you thinking?"

He shook the idea from his head like a terrier shaking off a rat. She'd be safer with him. "Nothing. Let's try the study."

They continued down the hall, McNeely suddenly aware of the nearly solid silence of the house. Their footsteps, even on the thick Oriental runner that stretched down the hall, made a dull padding that he felt could be heard everywhere. Then Gabrielle tensed, her fingers grasping his with a strength that surprised him. "What is it?" he whispered.

"Listen." Only her eyes moved, darting from floor to walls to ceiling as if she could see the source of her phantom noise dancing about like some housebound will-of-the-wisp.

"What did you hear?" McNeely asked.

"A shuffling." She answered slowly and carefully, as if fearing that her own words would drown out the stealthy approach of what she had heard.

"We've got to move," McNeely said. "We don't have forever."

But if we meet c.u.mmings, he thought, then we have forever. And ever and ever. McNeely had no doubt that c.u.mmings could destroy them if he chose. He had the strength and he had the madness. No man could have remained sane after such a change. He'd looked at McNeely and Gabrielle like a giant c.o.c.keyed cat eyeing two fat mice he was saving to play with, a cat that had had a bit too much catnip, a drunken cat.

Drunk with power.

McNeely couldn't guess what had happened to Seth c.u.mmings, except that the house was in some unimaginable way responsible. And there was no way, once the change had begun, that c.u.mmings would ever be what he'd been before. That tremendous muscle growth must even now be pulling c.u.mmings's bones and internal organs into an irreparable new alignment. No doubt about it, Seth c.u.mmings was a dead man.