Meadows of Forever (a Breckinridge Book)

By J. Reyome

December 2000

Book One: "James Help Kate"

It was the same dream. "Now, and forever," she sighed as she molded herself to him. "Now, and forever."

He couldn't see her, not clearly at least, but he couldn't see anything very clearly. It was as if things weren't quite solid, like he was watching some kind of a phantasmal double of himself doing things he certainly didn't think he was capable of doing.

His doppelganger's hands went to her shoulders, slipping her filmy gown off and down. Her own hands were likewise busy, tugging his shirt free from his slacks and down past shoulders which were shockingly bony. He goggled at the sight. It was his face, but the body...

The incongruity didn't seem to bother the participants, who were too busy with their mutual seduction to care...moving slowly, wonderfully slowly, enjoying every moment. The looks on their faces made it plain that this was obviously something both of them fervently wanted, had wanted for a long time, a total willingness to surrender to each other.

Beautiful, he thought enviously, staring on in wonder as the two stepped from their discarded clothing, holding each other, still kissing, and then...

...he blinked. This was something different. His perspective had changed. Now he was staring the woman right in the face, no longer an interested observer, now one of the participants.

She smiled at him, shyly but with obvious lust in her eyes.

Was this a dream? If it was, he fully expected to wake up soon, and rather sticky...

...or had it somehow become real?

Apparently he was at least cognizant. He knew what was going on around him and he was certainly capable of rational thought. As such, he quickly came to a conclusion: If it's a dream, then I can do what I want without fear of ridicule. And if it isn't...well, she looks eager enough.

Indeed. Her eyes opened and stared into his. There was almost a pleading, a desperation there.

For once in his life, Jeb Stuart abandoned emotional caution and waded in. He guided her onto the bed. She gave no hint of resistance. They sank down into the soft mattress, the softest he'd ever felt, molding itself to their bodies. And now he thought of nothing but her exploring her to the fullest extent possible, teasing and probing, stroking and caressing, not rushing anything. Somehow he knew there was plenty of time.

Then she was pulling him atop her, and he entered her, gently, gently. Perhaps too much so; she bit into his shoulder, blood trickling down his chest as her legs wrapped around him pulling him still closer, urging him on.

They rolled back and forth across the great bed, his blood smearing her body and mingling with her own, blood from within her, and now there was only joy, a purity of joy he'd thought unobtainable on earth. He kissed her, smiled, and gasped for air as a shout fought its way into his consciousness, a voice that didn't belong saying things that were inappropriate, to say the least.

"Jeb!" the voice shouted with greater urgency. "Goddamn it Jeb, you dumbfuck, wake up!"

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, then reopened them. And immediately regretted having done so. The ethereal scene had been replaced with the unpleasant reality of the red face of Dave Waanders hurling invectives.

So it was a dream. Again. He sighed heavily.

"Jeb!" Waanders shouted insistently. "Talk to me!"

"Oh Dave, can't you just let me be?" Jeb sighed.

"No! Look ahead of you."

Jeb did. He didn't see the pavement he expected. He was on gravel now, which a few yards onward transitioned to grass. Not more than another few steps onward the ground abruptly receded into a deep, rock-laced drainage ditch. Had he fallen in there, he wouldn't have just picked himself up and walked away.

"You didn't touch me, did you Dave?" Jeb asked, swatting himself on the back of the neck with the heel of his hand like a karate chop, trying desperately to bring himself back to his senses. "I am still in the race, right?"

"I didn't touch you, you're still in the race," Waanders sighed, plainly relieved. "What happen, you zone or something?"

"Or something. I'm okay now. Really." He whacked himself a few more times just to make sure.

"You sure? You look pretty awful."

"And you look better, I suppose."

Waanders grinned. "Yeah, you're obviously okay. All right then. But listen, if you leave the blacktop again, you're out. Friend or no friend. Understand?"

"Yeah, yeah." Jeb tottered just a bit, then regained his balance, took a deep breath and muttered a word of thanks, then he staggered wearily back onto the vast asphalt parking lot of Louisville Motor Speedway to rejoin the madness known as the Helloween 12 Hour Run. To the amazement of the sparse group of bemused onlookers, he began to run in a more or less straight line again, more or less on the traffic cone-marked course. This after eleven hours and six minutes--and sixty miles--of running.

At the northern edge of the tarmac, Stephanie Harmon sighed and sat back down in the lawn chair she'd placed under a forlorn pine tree for what little shade it would afford. It was hot, a state record for the third week in October, and she knew it was exponentially hotter where Jeb was right now. She'd "crewed" for him in ultramarathons before, but never in such conditions.

He looked bad. But then most people would after covering nearly a hundred kilometers, and besides, there was under an hour to go. He'd covered the last couple of hours on instinct and guts alone and with the number of racers that had dropped out due to the extreme conditions, he would likely finish in the top five.

She was terribly worried, but she was also unbelievably proud of him.

She checked her watch, set to countdown the time. 57 minutes. She cheered as he limped past again, silently wondering, ow long would it be before he can walk straight this time? He looked like a walking corpse now, with his eyes sunk deep into his skull and a thin veneer of salt crystallized on his skin making it appear ghoulishly pale. He glistened in the sun, but it wasn't from sweat. He'd stopped sweating hours ago.

Heart in throat, she walked out to meet him as he approached again. "How are you?" she asked for perhaps the sixtieth time

"Food," he gasped, "and water."

She brought a banana and a candy bar and a bottle of diluted sports drink; he ate and drank as best he could, which wasn't very well. He gagged a bit and spit up some of the candy bar, but managed to keep the banana down. It was better for him anyway.

"Gwen's coming," she told him. "She wanted to watch you finish."

"That' s nice."

"Anything I can do?"

"Got any amphetamines?"

"Umm, no. How 'bout I pour what's left of the ice water on you?"

He nodded painfully. "Hit me with it."

The suggestion had been meant as a joke, but he was serious, so she dumped what was left in the cooler over him. Considering the heat of the day and his present condition it was probably a risk, but, she thought, he knows best.

She could almost feel his heart stop, then start. For one scary instant he looked like he was ready to collapse and just that quickly he stumbled off to complete another couple of miles in the remaining time, most of it walked. But that didn't matter. Walked or ran, the distance counted and mounted, all that really mattered at the end of an ultra.

Then it was over, race director Waanders holding up a red flag borrowed from the Speedway indicating that all scoring for the runners should stop. Stevie and Gwen Chaney ran over and assisted Jeb as he limped across the lot to their "base camp".

"Thanks for coming," he muttered to Gwen with a wan smile.

"What, and miss seeing Mr. Tough Guy at his most vulnerable? I wouldn't miss it for the world." That said, she smiled. "I don't know how you do it, Jeb. Amazing."

"How is not the question," Stevie said worriedly. "Why is better."

Gwen nodded. "The answer to 'what is the meaning of life?' would probably be easier. Not to mention making more sense."

Jeb took the kidding as good naturedly as someone suffering from exhaustion and sever dehydration possibly could. A bit later he proudly if wearily collected a medal for his fourth place finish as the few who were left at the facility cheered. And after a massage, some IV fluids, and some medical tests for the University, the three of them left for his customary postrace pizza. A few hours later he was mercifully eased into his apartment and laid across his bed.

"Thanks," he sighed. "Sorry for the scare, Stevie. I don't know why I bonked."

"It happens," said Gwen. "Fifty nine miles, Jeb. That's fucking amazing."

"Are you going to be okay?" Stevie asked him worriedly.

He didn't answer. He couldn't. He'd fallen asleep.

"Sensational," Jeb replied, "considering."

"Considering what? That you ran nearly sixty miles two days ago?," Gwen called from just behind him.

"It just amazes me," Stevie said to him, "that you can ride a bike so well when you can hardly walk."

"Who says he rides well?" Gwen snorted. "Look at him. He's been on his granny gear for the last mile, just like always."

"We don't all have bionic legs, dyke-on-a-bike," Jeb said "And I call it economy of effort. Why use a taller gear when I don't have to? Besides, the spinning is good for me."

"Economy of effort my ass. Look at you! If your knees were sticking out any farther you'd catch so much air you could sail up this hill."

"Ease up, lover," Stevie said. "I didn't see you running out at the Speedway last Saturday."

"Speaking of which, I can still outrun you too," Gwen challenged Jeb as the three of them crested Five Mile Hill and aimed for a wayside about a half mile distant, none of them looking particularly winded.

"Speed-wise, I would not argue," Jeb conceded. "But call me when you want to talk distance."

"Seriously, you do feel up to this, don't you?" Stevie asked Jeb, her big-tubed Cannondale tracking a smooth course exactly parallel to his Paramount and perpendicular to Gwen's own similar mount. The three were never separated by more than a few feet, so great was their ever unspoken trust in each other's riding ability.

"I'm fine," Jeb affirmed. "Pretty tired and a bit stiff."

"Better or worse than usual?"

"Worse. Much worse. But maybe it's old age. I'll be fine." He dropped his hands from the brake hoods to the levers and slowed gently, the others instinctively miming him and pulling to a stop at the overlook at the top of the hill.

Stevie stared at him, trying to gauge his honesty.

He caught the look. "Really," he pleaded.

"Did you actually take the time to get laid or something last night?" Gwen asked him merrily.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, if I recall correctly, the last time we stopped up here was the day after you scored with that girl from the Baptist Seminary. God, were you wasted."

"Oh, Gwenny," Stevie sighed. "How could he, after..."

"We did it two hours after I finished the Old Style Marathon a year ago," Gwen reminded her. "And I ran fast." A grin at Jeb reminded him she was just kidding.

"I just wanted to enjoy the view," Jeb claimed. "I don't get up here so often anymore. I don't seem to have the time."

"The energy, you mean," Gwen quipped.

"That too."

"Maybe you should see a doctor," Stevie suggested.

"The 'D' word!" Gwen whistled.

"Some B12, maybe?" said Stevie, smiling at Jeb, but her concern was genuine. "Really Jebby, you have been looking kind of puny lately. People at work are beginning to notice."

"Just so long as Eric doesn't." Eric Wallace was Jeb and Stephanie's employer at Ohio Valley Furniture Works.

"Him too."

"Well."

"Yak, yak, yak," said Gwen. "I thought you stopped for the view." She swept her arm across the broad, clear horizon spreading beneath them, overlooking a series of low hills which eventually yielded to the Ohio River valley. "Yonder lies the view. Are you enjoying it?"

"I would enjoy it more without the abusive dialogue," he replied, perhaps a bit testily, dismounting and walking his bike unsteadily to the stone wall that bordered the overlook.

Gwen and Stevie stole a glance at each other. Jeb really didn't look good, riding prowess aside, and the gingerly manner in which he sat himself down on the wall only made things look worse. More, he wasn't one to speak coldly, especially to his two dearest friends.

Gwen frowned. Stevie put a finger to her lips and nodded in Jeb's direction, then clicked out of her pedals and went to join him. Gwen stayed with her bike, checking it out for the long, winding descent to come.

Stevie sat at Jeb's side, placing her left hand fondly on his right, resting on his knee.

"I think maybe I will see a doctor," he said softly. "I don't want to louse up my cave trip next weekend by getting sick."

"It's probably not a bad idea," she said, relieved. She'd been ready to argue with him regarding the apparent sorry state of his health, and his equally apparent lack of concern for the same. She was happy she wouldn't have to. He'd always been a bit too casual in that respect for her liking. "Evert Hole again?" she asked.

"Evert Hole again. Some days I'm sorry I ever dug that thing open. The trips all seem to blend into one big, long, dull, slimy nightmare anymore."

"If you hadn't have, someone else would've. Better that you get the credit, I say."

He smiled at her. "Do you know, some days I could actually love you.”

"But you do love me," she said. "Madly."

"And then, some days I could blissfully rip your throat out."

"See? You do love me."

"Come on," Gwen called impatiently. "It'll be dark soon, and I want a beer before I go home."

"You'll have to beat me for it," Jeb replied, climbing from his perch and walking back to his bike.

"I thought you'd never say that," Gwen laughed, clicking her shoes back onto the pedals and setting off down the hill in an all out sprint.

"Hey, no fair!" Stevie shouted.

"We'll catch her," said Jeb. "Draft me." He remounted as quickly as he could and gave chase, Stevie right behind. In no time he was in his tallest gear and hunkered down on the u-shaped clip on handlebar, tucked in as tight as possible for maximum speed on the descent.

This, like the ultra long distance running, was what Jeb lived for, more than Stevie or even Gwen. He revelled in expanding his limitations, finding just how far he could run, how fast he could ride, how many chances he could take and still survive an experience. He arced through the corners on the descent with no regard to oncoming traffic, which was light most days of the week and nearly nonexistent on Mondays anyway. Still, there was no telling, and that omnipresent recklessness only added to his heightened senses. The mounting fatigue, the none too soft pavement, the cars--they were the enemies. The goal was...well, a Nirvana of sorts, some indefinable moment in time where he would transcend mere humanity if only for briefly, almost death but not quite. He had been there before, the last time occurring only an instant before a passing car had clipped his left pedal and sent him to the shoulder of the road. As he'd laid on the hospital gurney an hour or so later having the gravel scrubbed from his right thigh and buttock he considered the cost and decided it was worthy, even cheap, though days later as the enormous abrasion continued to weep he wouldn't be nearly so certain.

Today, today...he nearly made it. Glancing down quickly at his computer, he found it reading 48 miles per hour. As with stock cars, two bikes running nose to tail will always run faster than one alone, and they was gaining quickly on Gwen. Soon Jeb would be "sucking" her rear wheel, then he would slingshot past her, for, "granny gears" notwithstanding his final gearing was several teeth taller than hers, and unlike her, he'd pedaled almost all the way down. He relaxed, totally at one with his bike And then...

...then he was there again, there with that wondrous creature he'd seen for the first time only the day before, with that faceless, nameless, ethereal being, wallowing in pleasure with her, pleasure without limit, pleasure without end. Lost in this alternate reality, he missed the normally glorious moment when he swept past Gwen, that instant when he could savor the look of disappointment mixed with amazement she usually rewarded him with. Nor did he see the only car he would have seen on the old Overlook road that day and how it had to take to the shoulder to avoid smashing him into an all too real oblivion.

"You," Gwen told him once they were stopped again at the bottom, "are a psycho."

"That has been remarked," he noted, looking around him, still a bit dazed.

"Oh, I suppose you don't remember what just happened!”

Stevie had dropped behind as soon as Jeb had made his lunatic move on Gwen. "Jebby, what on earth were you thinking? You were nearly killed up there!"

Jeb's jaw dropped in amazement.

"You are not going to try and tell me you don't remember," Gwen stated angrily.

"No," he admitted, wide-eyed, "I don't remember."

And once Gwen finished swearing--and promising that she would never, ever ride with Jeb again--they headed home.

Jeb Stuart awoke the next morning surprised, puzzled, and just a little concerned.

He fully expected to be stiff and sore, of course. One simply doesn't recover overnight from a weekend such as he'd had. But such weekends were old hat to him, and that's what things like Ibuprofen were for anyway. So why did he feel so bad? A dose of headache powder on top of the four IBs didn't help, gentle stretching had no effect, even his usual stand by itself cup of coffee did nothing to ease the pain he felt. More concerning though was the fatigue, a bone deep weariness like he'd never known.

Calling off work was a foregone conclusion, but even reaching for the phone was painful. He decided to wait for Stevie, who lived just a door away and who eventually would be over to pick him up. They'd traded keys a long time ago, and that was fortunate, because hard as he tried, he found himself quite unable to even rise from the bed. He presented a sorry sight when she finally arrived.

"You won't be going to work today," she chirped. "I can see it in your eyes.”

"Good for you," he groaned. "I can feel it in my legs. And arms. And back. And..."

"I'll tell Eric. And I'll set you up an appointment with Doctor Webster, whether you like it or not. And you'd better go."

"I'll go, I'll go."

"Good. Then go back to sleep. I'll give you a call around noon and see how you are. Do you need anything?"

"A glass of juice and a couple more IBs would be wonderful. Juice is in the fridge. There's breakfast in there for you, if you want to make it.”

"How many have you already taken?"

"Just two," he lied.

"All right then."

She helped him, helped herself, and left him to his dreams.

Vivid dreams. Strange dreams. Dreams of a cave.

Now, Jeb Stuart was a caver and had been one long before he'd become interested in running or bicycling. And that was a caver, he was careful to point out, not a spelunker. "Cavers rescue spelunkers," he would say. Caving was surely a singular preoccupation, one he'd learned about when he was very young and had taken to almost immediately, and from the beginning it was an all-consuming thing. But he'd never dreamed of caving before, not like his nervous thrashes the night before a long bike ride or an ultra. To him caving was nothing more than a naturally occurring segment of his life, no big deal. And even were he to dream of being underground, he would never have imagined it would be something the likes of which he was experiencing.

Evert Hole Cave (or Evert Hole, or Evert, or "that stinking hole in the ground", as it was variously referred to) was Jeb's biggest discovery, and it was quickly gathering a reputation as the longest and toughest cave in Kentucky outside of Mammoth. It was a gruesome series of dank, brown-black waterways connected by low, muddy crawlways and climbs up sheer walls and over loose rock. It was not the stuff of dreams, though some of his acquaintances claimed to have seen it in their worst nightmares.

The cave he dreamed of...

...but was it a dream? Was he really lying in his apartment in south Louisville, or was he really somewhere else, in some cave he'd never seen, walking dry-shod on a pleasant, sandy floor, admiring beautiful stone draperies hanging from the ceiling and walls? It certainly seemed real, real enough that he could feel the sand crunching beneath his feet, smell the wonderfully clean, slightly damp air, and feel the gentle breeze caressing his face, beckoning him onward.

Where was he? It was a big cave, that much he could tell by instinct alone. Surely something this big had to be well known, at least if it was located in the area of Kentucky he was familiar with, ground that had been gone over by countless cavers searching for new prospects.

And was he alone?

He shouted a hello, his voice echoing grandly in the vast corridor. There was no answer he could hear, but his senses were as acute as they ever were underground, and he felt a presence near him, very close, if not right beside him. And he was not frightened, the presence being more comforting than threatening.

Somehow, again, perhaps instinctively, he knew who it was.

"Talk to me," he whispered. "Talk to me. Please."

Then, abruptly, a foreign sound. A bird? Here, underground? Not unheard of, but not very likely either. And such an odd sounding bird at that. Why, it sounded just like his...

...telephone. And he was dragged back to reality once again.

He sighed in disappointment. Lost it again, he thought.

There was still the phone to attend to. It took eight rings from his moment of waking for him to pick it up, and another half minute or so before he was able to maneuver it to his ear. He was quite surprised to find the party was still waiting.

"Hello?" he murmured wearily.

"Mr. Stuart?" a lovely feminine voice asked.

"More or less," he replied.

"I'm Jennifer Gilles from University Medical Associates. Would you hold for Dr. Singh, please?"

"Sure." He lay back to wait, and was almost put back to sleep by the dull music that replaced the woman's voice.

She returned a moment later. He didn't mind. "Mr. Stuart?"

"Mmm hmm?"

"Sorry for the wait. Dr. Singh will be right with you."

"That's nice. Did you know your voice could melt iron?"

"Excuse me?"

"Never mind. Just have Dr. Singy hurry. I'm tired."

"Singh," she corrected, pronouncing it like singe. "And he'll be right along."

Her voice disappeared again, and again it was replaced by the elevator music. And once again he nearly fell asleep, roused by a voice calling his name.

"Mr. Stuart?" Not a woman this time. Distinctly foreign, and familiar.

"That's me," Jeb replied.

"This is the same James Edward Bryan Stuart who competed in the 'Helloween' Ultramarathon last weekend?"

"Yes, yes. Don't tell me, I'm supposed to hold on for Dr. Singh."

"But Mr. Stuart, I am Dr. Singh. Dr. Harrison Singh of the Sports Medicine Clinic at the University. I coordinated the physiological tests that were done at the race. Do you remember me?"

"Vaguely," Jeb admitted. "What can I do for you?"

"I tried to contact you at your listed place of employment and they told me you had stayed home sick. I am not surprised to learn this."

"And why is that? Besides the fact that I ran a hundred k Saturday and biked another fifty the next day, that is."

There was a pregnant pause. "Perhaps you should come in here and we shall talk."

"Dr. Singh, I had trouble picking up the phone just now. I can't imagine what it would be like to try and pick myself out of bed."

"Nevertheless, I urge you to come. It is extremely important that we talk face to face as soon as possible."

"It's that important?"

"If necessary, I shall arrange for a cab for you and pay for it myself. I do not suggest you drive."

"Well, you can arrange the cab, but I can afford to pay for it. I suppose if it's that all-fired urgent I can drag myself downstairs."

The latter process took awhile. The cab was waiting by the time he got to the front door. And the rest of his day went downhill from there.

He awoke the next morning feeling well enough to work, and answered Stevie's knock dressed and ready to go.

"You look awful," she observed brightly. "Why didn't you shave? You know how gross you look with a five o'clock shadow.”

"I've developed a fondness for hair," he replied in an odd voice. "Or at least an appreciation."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Never mind. Just drive."

So they went to work, she as secretary and he as an assistant foreman at Eric Wallace's Ohio Valley Furniture Works. Their jobs were rather boring and didn't pay enough, but they enjoyed the people they worked with and the living was adequate. More important perhaps, as bosses went, Eric Wallace was more pleasant than most, taking the time to ask Jeb how he felt and how his race had gone. Jeb replied better, and fine. And that was all, much to the surprise of both Wallace and Stevie.

"Is he all right?" Wallace asked Stevie after Jeb had left the office. "He normally bends everybody's ears the day after a race.”

"He went to the doctor," she replied, "or at least he said he did. Not Dr. Webster, some specialist who took care of him at the race."

Wallace shrugged. "Got to look after my interests. He is my best worker."

"Then you should pay him more. Me too, while you're at it."

Jeb seemed to go through the paces automatically all day. Virtually everyone in the plant noticed, but he didn't seem to care. Most everyone asked how he felt. He answered every question perfunctorily, only just stopping short of telling everyone to mind their own businesses and leave him alone. One needed no second sight to tell that something was very wrong.

Stevie tried to breach the subject on the way home. "Jebby, are you sure you feel okay?"

"I'm fine," he said, sounding irritated. "What is it about me today that has everyone so concerned about my health? Every other day I could drop dead on the floor and no one would notice."

"Because they'd think you were joking or something," she replied. "You just don't walk around like a marionette like you did today. It's not you."

He shrugged.

"So what's wrong?"

"Nothing I care to talk about.”

"But I care..."

"Please."

She left it.

"Okay," said Chris Hobbs, "we'll call the meeting to order, such as it is." He rapped his makeshift gavel, and the monthly meeting of the Ohio Valley Speleological Survey was underway. It was not particularly well attended, only about a dozen regular members and a handful of curious newcomers dotting the library meeting room.

"First order of business is the weekend trip to Evert Hole," Hobbs began, "which, for the first time in recorded history, will not be led by the esteemed Mr. Stuart, who I assume will be off doing more important things this weekend, as he's informed us he will be unavailable."

There were catcalls from around the room, the loudest coming from a short, slender and rather squirrelly looking dark haired man sitting in the back row. "Finally lost it, did you, Stu?" he called up to Jeb, who sat next to Gwen, across the room and apart from the rest of the group.

"Well, at least he had it once," Gwen remarked dryly.

In a more crowded room it wouldn't have been audible, but with the day's sparse crowd one could just make out George English's muttered response, "Fucking dyke."

Gwen was on her feet in an instant. Jeb reached a long arm up and put a restraining hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off and sat back down, glaring across the room at a startled George English.

Jeb stood and looked over at him. "My reasons for not wanting to go to Evert this time are my own, but they boil down to this: I'm sick of that damned cave. It seems I'm spending every free weekend I have there, soaking up the water and slime, and it's not doing my health any good. Or my attitude, in case you haven't noticed yet."

"But we were counting on you," Hobbs said. "No one knows the cave near as well as you do."

"Including you, shitheels," Gwen snapped, glaring at English.

"And George, I'd expect you'd be kinder to Gwen," Jeb added, "seeing as she could kick your skinny little ass into the next area code without really trying." Gwen grinned at him and sat once again. Then he continued. "I want to do something different this weekend, something easy for a change. Maybe that's what I'd like to do from now on, see a different cave or two every weekend, rather than spend all my time in one project cave."

"Well," Hobbs said thoughtfully, "I did have one other trip in mind for this weekend, if anybody was interested..."

The looks from those in the room, especially the newcomers, urged him to continue. Less than a dozen people had ever been in Evert Hole, after all, and only about half of those had returned for a second trip. Its reputation certainly preceded it. "Anything but Evert," one voice groaned.

"I've thought about it," continued Hobbs, "and seeing as it is Halloween weekend, I figured it might be appropriate to visit Wilder Witch Cave."

The reaction was instantaneous, if not entirely affirmative. "Now that's more like it," Jeb said approvingly.

"You have got to be kidding," Gwen snorted derisively.

"For the first time since I've known you I actually agree with you, Chaney," said George English. "What's to see in Wilder Witch? The cave is only about five hundred feet long, and not particularly interesting at that.”

"So you've seen it," Hobbs said. "I haven't been there in a while, and I'm sure there's a few people here who've never been there at all."

"Like me," said Jeb. "Count me in."

"You mean to tell me you'd rather go to Wilder Witch than to Evert?" English said to him in amazement.

"I do. But George, if you're so gung-ho, you're more than welcome to take my place as leader. Just mind that you leave us a coming-out time so we know when to send in a body recovery team when you kill your party."

"More likely they kill him," some wag chuckled.

"So that's settled," Hobbs said, sounding relieved. "I'll leave two sign up sheets up here, one for Wilder, one for Evert. Sign the one you want to take, whichever or none. But don't think that by going to Wilder you won't have any excitement. I hear the witch is pretty active again.”

"There really is a witch?" Jeb asked. "I always thought it was just some kind of myth."

"You ever heard the legend?" Gwen asked him.

He shrugged. "Bits and pieces. It's an interesting story."

"I'm not much for ghost stories," Gwen sighed. "But you're going. It's against my better judgement, but I reckon I'll go along too."

"Figures," English snorted. "So who's going with me to Evert?"

There were no volunteers.

The week ended unremarkably for Jeb. Work had been mercifully slow, and he had opted out of the Evert trip the next morning, so he didn't bother setting his alarm clock before laying down. He felt awful and it only became worse with each passing day. The pain, the growing fatigue...he'd been cautioned to expect it, but that didn't make it any easier to accept, especially when it affected his life so dramatically.

It was funny, in a way. Knowing was everything, apparently. Prior to learning of his incipient leukemia, he'd attributed his various maladies to advancing age. Thirty wasn't all that old in years, to be sure, but as Jeb was so fond of saying, it wasn't the years, it was the mileage that made the man. And aches and pains were just a part of everyday life. So he'd thought.

He'd had to adapt. His normal frenetic pace was replaced by a more sedate mode, one that couldn't help but raise the eyebrows of those closest to him. But he told no one why. He'd made that decision simply to avoid the inevitable outpouring of sympathy and offers of help. It just wasn't his way to accept such things. Offering them was okay, but to accept...that would be unthinkable. He was independent, after all.

He'd had to be. Life had never come easy for Jeb Stuart. His father died in a fiery car wreck when Jeb was only twelve, and he'd never been close to his mother. So much for family. He'd left home the day after his graduation, seventeen years old, and on an impulse he was to regret later, he joined the Marine Corps. When that little nightmare ended, he began to crisscross the country in gypsy fashion, getting work where he could and staying long enough to make friends but not take root. He'd been a convenience store clerk, had run a video store, inspected laminated tables, worked in a print shop, walked a post as a security guard, been a busboy, a telemarketer, and had even once been a candidate for an FAA job as an air traffic controller. Somehow nothing quite panned out, not until he'd lighted in Louisville, Kentucky while running an errand in the city for a longtime caving acquaintance. He'd immediately fallen in love with the area and took a job in a motorcycle dealership, working the parts counter. There he met a mechanic who turned him onto the position with Ohio Valley Furniture Works, where Eric Wallace saw his vast range of experiences as an asset rather than a liability and had hired on him on the spot, first as the operator of a band saw cutting foam seat cushions, and later as an assistant foreman.

Jeb liked his job. True, it was hardly what he'd expected he would be doing as a career, but then one never knew, did they? For his part, Jeb knew that tomorrow he might well be in another state should the spirit unexpectedly move him. His only concession to Wallace was that he give his boss twenty four hours warning. But he liked his co-workers; they all did their jobs with little or no supervision, and Jeb was usually free to walk about the plant, serving more as a morale booster than a taskmaster.

Then there was Stevie. Stephanie Therese Harmon, one of the most staggeringly beautiful women he'd ever met. Classic auburn hair, enormous eyes, high cheekbones framing a constant smile flitting about the generous lips. She resembled a somewhat plumper, more appealing Stephanie Powers. She was Eric Wallace's secretary. Seemingly always battling a weight problem, she'd first approached Jeb for suggestions of low impact exercise and low fat diets. Jeb knew of none; he'd always been more fond of more strenuous activities, not to mention Papa John's pizza and Sterling beer. But once the first contact was made, the two had found themselves drawn inexorably toward each other. Not as lovers, though the attraction was surely there and was mutual. They instead became close friends, and when the apartment next to hers became available, Stevie insisted Jeb take it. "It beats squatting," she'd told him. He protested that he was hardly squatting, that he was actually paying rent on the front room of a decrepit New Albany home, but she countered with, "Homeless people in New York have classier living arrangements." And when he discovered the enormous rat that had chosen to crawl into his gas oven to die, Jeb decided that maybe the rat had the right idea. Either that, or Stevie did.

So he became Stevie Harmon's next door neighbor. There he met Gwendolyn Chaney, and learned first to never, ever refer to her as such. Gwen it was. Gwen of the mannish haircut and deceptively evil stare. Her eyes were the giveaway to Jeb; gray-green and showing limitless intelligence. She'd seen him wearing a Petzl Equipment t-shirt, and knowing the company well--Gwen was an accomplished rock climber--she'd engaged him in a conversation. Then she'd learned of his interests in caving and running, and the rest was history. She had been the one who'd suggested bicycling as an excellent form of low impact exercise for Stevie, and a fine bit of cross training for Jeb.

Yes, he did raise an eyebrow--privately--when the relationship between her and Stevie became apparent. He'd had Gwen pegged correctly as a lesbian, just by her dress and mannerisms, long before she'd made it crystal clear to him on their second meeting. "I'm queer," she stated defiantly. "Get used to it and if you can't, piss off." He'd gotten used to it quickly enough, but he'd never expected Stevie might be persuaded to follow the same path. Still, he could hardly fault either of them: Stevie's physical attributes were more than obvious; and Gwen's, while of a different nature, were equally powerful. And he couldn't deny the obvious love the two shared. It went well beyond physical attraction. If such things were ever made legal in Kentucky he could easily see the two of them getting married. For now, the three were as close as any family any had ever had.

And then there was Kevin. Stevie's son from her failed marriage to a University of Louisville pre-law student, Kevin Harmon was a bright, inquisitive eight year old who shared his mother's thick auburn hair and pleasant disposition, and his father's intelligence and--unfortunately--his temper and lack of patience. He spent every other weekend at Stevie's apartment, and as a result had early on adopted Jeb as something of a surrogate father. He looked up to Jeb with something akin to awe, an open admiration that made Jeb uncomfortable more often than not--who am I to inspire this? he wondered. But it was neat at the same time, and as Jeb had long since resigned himself to the fact that he would be the last of his particular line, he was more than happy to give freely of himself to the youngster while the opportunity presented itself.

Caving opened up other doors. It had been why he'd come to Louisville in the first place, after all, a load of caving rope he'd delivered to a Louisville specialty sporting goods store. A few questions here and there and he made contact with Chris Hobbs, chair of the OVSS. Hobbs had invited him on a cave trip and things had spiralled onward. As a pair the two had mapped more than twenty miles of cave passage, most of which had been virgin (unentered, in the typically overt sexual lingo of the caver) before their headlamps first pierced the gloom. So now Jeb had friends, family, and the closest thing he'd ever had to a home. More, he had stability, and--though it pained him to admit it--roots.

Seven years had passed thus. Every so often Jeb would ask himself the one word question: today? He'd asked that question a lot in the last seven years, the longest time he'd ever spent in one place, ever. Even so, despite the ties, he'd always believed that some day he'd feel the call to move on again.

But oh, not this way.

Not telling anyone was the hardest part. But how was he to tell his best--only--friends what he'd been told just four days previous? Best, he thought now as he had then, not to tell them at all, to let them learn on their own as the time became appropriate. Now was definitely not appropriate.

So life went on as it usually did in his home, post work. He picked up a book and then set it down after a moment, too tired to read. He closed his eyes and fell asleep, the reading lamp still lit, the book resting on his chest rising and falling with his breathing.

The dream came quickly this time. And he stayed longer, saw more, touched and actually felt more, experienced everything as if it were real. To him, it was, more real than life. It was a dream he never wanted to end, and he let that be known.

And he was heard.

It was in his mind more than in his ears that he caught the reply, soft and low, in a voice that was female, and yet, oddly, male at the same time. And again, it wasn't quite either. Still, it was there, and it was reassuring: "It can be so," it said, "if you are strong enough."

He hung his head and stared at the sandy floor of the cave.

"Strength comes from within," the voice said. "Don't be afraid. Lay down and rest, lay down and sleep, sleep here with me. It will do you well."

The sand was soft when he lay on it, and surprisingly warm. He felt wrapped in that warmth, as if held in gentle, soft arms, and he did sleep well, deep and long.

The day dawned bright and clear, but Jeb Stuart wasn't awake to see the dawn as he might've been any other Saturday morning. It was eleven before he finally awoke, feeling more rested and refreshed than he had in weeks. Even his tortured joints felt better, and he couldn't help but smile as he enjoyed the warmth that streamed across him, sunbeams toasting him gently as they entered through drapes he'd forgotten to close the night before.

It was warm outside too, and he hoped as he climbed onto his Yamaha that Gwen had packed a lunch as she'd promised to. It was a perfect day for a picnic. The fresh air would surely do him well.

Do him well. He smiled as he remembered the almost arcane words from the dream. He remembered well too, more so than before, perhaps because he'd seen the dream through to its apparent end. He was eager enough to see it continue, but he wondered just where it might take him. Perhaps he would locate the cave? Meet the owner of the disembodied voice? Or maybe he really had seen it through and it was over. He hoped not, but even if it was, it had seen him through a bad time.

Gwen saw the change in him when he arrived at her house, even through the full faced helmet he wore. "Well," she remarked, "you certainly look better. Your eyes look brighter."

"Hop on and I'll show you just how good I feel."

"No Eddie Lawson impersonations, please. Just get us to the cave alive."

The motorcycle was one of the few things of any value Jeb Stuart owned, and it was his sole mode of transportation. It was a Yamaha Maxim that was fighting a losing battle with rust and Jeb's less than attentive routine maintenance. But it got him about well enough, at least until heavy rains hit or winter arrived, during which times. Stevie would usually insist on carrying him to work. Like most of his life, the machine was a compromise: the best thing he could afford on his limited budget and still keep a roof over his head. It wasn't a particularly good-looking bike, but it served his purposes, and besides, he loved ridding. There was something about straddling the smoothly purring steel and rubber machine that spoke to him, some indefinable joy in finding a winding country road and arcing the bike through the turns that refreshed his spirit. Better still, he was never fond of being confined in any way, and with a motorcycle, he was out in the open. That had its disadvantages, of course, but he never complained.

He'd always enjoyed sharing his love of the road, and while he'd never managed to convince Stevie to join him on a ride, Gwen had accompanied him quite a few times. That was as close as he'd ever come to her, to understanding what she was all about, and, he suspected, vice versa. She always had a ruddy glow about her after a ride--something sexual? he wondered--and she always seemed to be in a good mood.

Today was no different. It was a long ride but an interesting one, along winding, scenic country roads, deep into rural Kentucky, over an hour from home. Hobbs' directions were explicit enough, and they had no trouble finding the old Wilder property, but they took their time, enjoying the fall colors and each others' company. And when they finally arrived, both seemed to regret having to stop.

"We need to do this more often," she said.

"You ought to buy a bike," he said. "As much as you like riding as a passenger, you'd probably get a kick out of taking the throttle for yourself."

"And kill myself to boot," she laughed. "I wouldn't give you the pleasure. It's bad enough that I have to put my arms around you to ride two up. You really aren't my type."

"Yeah. I'm a guy. So talk Stevie into buying one."

"Don't think I haven't tried. So where's Hobbs? Where's the cave?"

They looked around. Apart from a weathered, bleached white house sitting at the base of a low ridge, there was little to be seen. Even the house looked deserted. As usual thinking in parallel, they walked up the narrow path to the house. "Just to check," said she. "And I hope there's nobody home."

"Why?"

"Well, it'll sound stupid."

"So? People are always saying that about you."

She whacked him firmly on the meat of his bicep. "Maybe. But this place is already giving me the screamin' meemies and I haven't even seen the cave yet."

Jeb had to laugh. "Sorry," he said, "but that is kinda silly."

"Really now?" an unfamiliar voice drawled from behind him.

Jeb and Gwen both jumped, eliciting a chuckle from the old man who had, totally unnoticed, walked up to join them from an adjoining tobacco field. "Jumpy, eh?" he laughed. "Wait till Kate gets hold of you. Then you'll be doin' some serious jumpin'."

"You must be Mr. Phillips," Jeb said. "I'm Jeb Stuart."

"Jeb Stuart? Like the General?"

"Like the General. My father was a dyed in the wool, bury-me-in-my-grays southerner."

"Well, anybody who's named after the ol' Swamp Fox can't be all bad." He held out his hand. "I'm Wesley Phillips, Pip to them who know me, and I reckon that's you too. You the cave people?"

Jeb took his hand. It was weathered and dry, but strong. "We're two of them," he said. "I'm expecting at least one more."

"Thought so," said Pip. "You don't sound at all like the fella I talked to on the phone."

"That'd be Chris Hobbs," Jeb said, and he introduced Gwen. "This is my wife, Gwen."

Her face reddened, but she smiled gracefully. "Nice to meet you, Pip.”

"A pretty one," Pip said, nudging Jeb playfully. "Sturdy too. Reminds me of my own Eliza. Keeps the house up and still finds time to help me out in the fields. Amazing woman. Glad she found me. Mebbe some time I'll tell y'all about how it happened. Makes a great story. Anyway, I reckon you're itchin to get to the cave, so I'll take you to it. When your partner gets here you ought to have seen the most of it, and you can do the guidin'. Sound fair?"

Jeb nodded. "Great. We appreciate the hospitality."

"No bother. Wanted to get some coffee anyway. Eliza will have some ready in the house for you when you get out. Doc says I shouldn't drink it, but what the hell."

"Is the cave that cold?" Gwen asked.

"Naw. The coffee's to steady your nerves. Kate's been mighty noisy lately and she's liable to do just about anythin'. Don't be surprised by anythin' you see or hear, that's for sure."

"Tell us about her," Jeb asked. "I've never heard the whole story."

"Well, don't reckon I will right now. Got me some work to do, and besides, you ain't ready to listen just yet. I will give you a clue though, somethin' the people from the University told me. Go in with an open mind. She likes that. What she likes the least are people who go in not believin' nothin'. Those are the ones she really lays into."

"Has she ever...I mean, has anyone ever been hurt in the cave?" Gwen asked.

"You mean, has she ever hurt anybody," Pip corrected. "Yep, she sure has. There's a passel of loose rocks in that cave, and after 150 years I reckon she knows 'em all by their first names. A couple of boys have gone home hurt after she got started throwin' 'em. Oh, and while I'm at it, I oughta warn you not to be pickin' any rocks up and takin' 'em out with you. Seems she doesn't like that either."

Jeb smiled. Gwen looked positively ill.

"Well, we're not in the habit of collecting rocks from caves anyway," Jeb said, "so if Kate doesn't want us to do it here, why, we can certainly go along with that."

"Fair enough." He walked away, headed for an obvious hollow Jeb had already pegged as containing the entrance of the cave. Jeb started to follow him, then was pulled short by a consternated Gwen.

"Do you really want to do this?" she asked him.

"Sure!" he exclaimed. "Hey, c'mon! It's Halloween. Let's have some fun."

"Fun?" She shook her head. "Locking horns with some 150 year old witch is not my idea of fun, Jeb."

"Hey, this was your idea, Gwen."

"Yeah, but that was before. Now I'm not so sure. There's something..." She paused for a moment and gave a perceptible shudder. "There's something awfully creepy about this place. And I know all of the stories too.”

"I know. But it's only a legend, right?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. But it's a damned scary one. Look around. I defy you to tell me that there isn't something...well, wrong, with this place."

He did a quick scan of the area. Oddly, he felt that there was in fact something strange about the scene, not so much in appearance as in a gut feeling, like being just slightly off balance and perhaps just a touch nauseous, altogether unpleasant but not overwhelmingly so.

"I'm not sure what to say," Jeb said. "You know me...show it to me and I'll believe in it. Still..."

"I know." She seemed to shudder.

"Want to try to talk me out of it?"

"Maybe."

"I do appreciate you looking after my well being like that. Now, shall we see for ourselves?"

She looked him straight in the eye. "Your wife, eh?"

He shrugged."You know how country people are. Best to not have them think we're just boyfriend-girlfriend."

"We're not even that. Besides, no rings."

"So we're poor. Look what we rode in on."

"Sturdy, am I?"

"At least." He set off in pursuit of the now distant Pip, Gwen reluctantly in tow. They caught up just as he reached the entrance.

"Good," the old man said. "Was afraid I'd lost you for awhile. Havin' second thoughts?"

"No way," Gwen lied. "We don't scare easy."

"Nobody does. Good thing." He unlocked the stout iron gate that protected the opening. "Had to put this up last year. Got so every time I'd come in here somebody was prowlin' around, lookin' for Kate. You'd think the legends would keep 'em away, but young folks just don't set no stock in nothin these days." He handed the lock to Jeb. "I would be obliged if you'd lock it up once you get in. I just don't like leavin' it open anymore."

"What about Chris?" Gwen asked.

Pip swatted his head. "Shoot, I forgot about the boy. Reckon you'd better give that key back then. I'll just have him lock it up after he gets in. Mind you, I don't think you'll be in too long, there's just not that much to see. But you might want to stay awhile." He took the lock back from Jeb. "Especially you, Jeb Stuart." And with that cryptic remark uttered he walked away.

"Now why do you suppose he said that?" Jeb mused when the old man was safely out of earshot.

"Maybe he thinks Kate will try and seduce you or something," Gwen gibed. "Husband or no husband, I intend to see we both get out of here at the first sign of a witch, because I won't leave without you, and I sure as shit won't be coming back in. Understand?"

He bowed. "Then you lead in. I'll lead out."

"Thanks." And not without some hesitation, she walked in.

The reviews had been accurate, if not complimentary. As caves went, it wasn't much to speak of. Except for a few poorly formed flowstone draperies and an even fewer number of stalactites, the small passage was relatively undistinguished in comparison to other caves either one of them had visited in the area. But at least the passage was big enough to walk in for the most part, and the small stream that flowed through the cave was only a few inches deep.

About 150 feet in--just out of sight of the glimmer of the entrance--an opening above indicated the presence of an upper level. As leader, Gwen would ordinarily check it out, but instead, she left it to Jeb. "It's on the map," she said. "Doesn't go anywhere."

"I want to check it anyway," Jeb said, already halfway into it. "Then I can say I've seen everything there is to see."

"Good. Then we don't have to come back."

His laughter echoed from above her. "This place really does have you spooked, doesn't it?"

"Jeb, I've never really been scared in a cave before, even in Evert. But this place..."

His face appeared in the opening, smiling but understanding. "It kinda gives me the heebies too," he admitted. "But just a little. Now Evert, that gives me the creeps. You were right, it doesn't go anywhere."

"Good. Can we go now?"

He pointed downstream. "More cave. Go on now, don't make it so we really do have to come back."

She sighed and led on.

The rest of the cave was a pleasant surprise. True, it was no Lecheguilla, but it wasn't all that bad either. The flowstones were much more intricate and colorful, and there were even a smattering of pure white "soda straw" stalactites in the last large room, which was a comfortable thirty feet in diameter and over fifteen feet high. The stream issued from beneath one large stone curtain which seemed to block further progress. There might be enough room to get under the formation into passages beyond, but that would involve getting totally wet, something which neither of them were prepared to do.

"Can you get over it?" Gwen asked, sounding hopeful he couldn't.

Jeb tried, climbing the left wall adjacent to the formation.

"Careful," she admonished needlessly.

His headlamp piercing the gloom, he peered over the top of the curtain. "Looks like it pinches," he said. "Can't be sure. Anyway, I can't see any way to get over this thing without having to climb on it, and I don't want to do that. My feet are muddy, and I'd stain the formation."

"And my feet are cold," she said. "C'mon, let's get out of here."

He climbed down. "I'd like to wait for Chris here."

"Here?" she said weakly.

"Why not? It's fairly dry, and pretty besides. And I want to take some pictures. You mind?"

"Well, actually..."

"Hey, a crawlway!" He walked quickly across the room and looked into a low passage that had caught his eye rather suddenly. He could swear it hadn't been there when he'd last scanned the wall, looking for openings, like he did in every cave. Later he would consider how it seemed to physically grab his attention, as if beckoning him to look into it. At this moment he merely thought it curious.

Gwen's reaction was similar. "That's not on the map," she said, equally puzzled.

"Well well." It didn't look like much, nor did it look very appealing, low and narrow and floored with gooey mud. But it did have a steady breeze issuing from its small opening--usually indicative of more cave beyond.

"You're not really going in there, are you?" Gwen asked.

"Why not? I have a second set of clothes in the tank bag of the bike."

"You're crazy. I didn't come here to play sow."

"Well, nobody's asking you to follow me." He got down on his hands and knees and crawled in.

"I'll cream you if you get stuck and I have to come in and get you," she called in after him.

"Creme me? Ooh. Promise?"

"I'm not kidding Jeb."

"So get Chris to rescue me. He might want to check this thing out anyway."

"Chances are he already has, Jeb. It's a waste of time."

"So what's time?" And he crawled on, considering those last three words. Time really did mean an awful lot to him now, but time spent doing something he loved, like caving, was not wasted. And when the crawl lowered, forcing him to his belly, he could have cheered. Sometimes, a good crawl, even in mud, could be a joy. The excitement, the lure of the unknown, and then there was the breeze. Surely this passage went somewhere. Maybe he couldn't get to the end, maybe it got too tight, maybe it went on for miles just like this, low and grungy. And then maybe a little digging would open it up. Maybe he wouldn't even have to dig. Maybe it opened up just around the next bend. Maybe...

He grinned and wiped a thin slurry of mud and sweat from his face. The trip hadn't been a waste of time. Hardly.

Fifteen minutes' hard labor saw him cover over 150 feet of truly awful crawlway. It was beginning to remind him of a similar passage in Evert Hole, one George English had aptly named "Misery", which had never yet been pushed to its end. Misery was particularly horrid in that every time it appeared to finally end in a silt plug or a mud bank, all that was required to pass the obstacle would be a little frenzied digging, which led to still more misery, ad infinitum. Jeb was at that moment digging at a comparable mudbank, beyond which he could hear the unmistakable siren song of water dripping into a pit.

It was hard work. There was little room to move, let alone enough space to pack the tailings of his work, and his only digging tool was the utility knife he carried everywhere McGyver style. Still, the opening grew steadily to the point where he could finally stick his head into the pit chamber beyond. He fervently hoped he wouldn't find himself more than a few feet from the floor--backing out would have been difficult at best--but fortunately he found himself at floor level. His shoulders quickly followed his head, then his chest, always the most difficult part, and then he was finally out and able to stand upright again.

He took stock of his surroundings. He had crawled, or rather, snaked, in through what had once been the drain of the pit above him. Now the water apparently found its way to the small creek outside the cave through a series of crevices beneath his feet, much too small to allow entry. The end?

Not quite. The water from above had to be coming from somewhere, either from the surface through joints in the bedrock, or possibly from an upper level passage. He checked his watch. Not even noon. "Plenty of time," he sighed contentedly, though he knew Gwen would not be happy with his extended absence. But he felt good now, better than he had all week, and for quite some time, to tell the truth...and the domepit was just too inviting to pass up. He set his back against one wall of the small room, lifted his right foot to the first available ledge, and began to "chimney" his way upward.

Gwen sat nervously outside, alternating her thoughts between concern for Jeb's prolonged absence, profound curses for the same reason, and wondering what might be keeping Chris Hobbs. She was alone, after all, and that did not please her.

Like most of her unfortunate ilk, Gwen Chaney was held up to ridicule (though quietly) for her sexual preferences. She was also usually thought of as coarse, often vulgar, and generally unpleasant to be around. She knew all of this and tended to use it as a shield of sorts, keeping away those people she knew would be offended by her and would in turn probably offend her equally. But she craved companionship nonetheless, and had just as many male friends as she did female, which admittedly weren't many. Still, most everyone who ever met her could not help but comment favorably on her levelheadedness, the pragmatic nature which enabled her to see through deception. In caving this became quite handy, as she was readily able to discern real danger in a given situation from something that looked worse than it really was. This asset, even when weighed against her shortcomings real and otherwise perceived, made her much sought after as a trip leader. Jeb had even followed her a few times into Evert, much as he knew about the cave.

She was calling on that ability right now. She was scared, and for once she wasn't totally certain whether the fear was over something real or merely imaginary.

Gwen was not a young woman well acquainted with fear, either. Though not quite the perfect stereotype of a tomboy--she had played with dolls as happily as any young girl--she had also taken on the neighborhood boys in every imaginable sport. Running led to tree climbing led to baseball led to basketball led to football. She was particularly adept at street hockey, as common in the streets of her native Chicago as stickball is in New York, and she never shied away from the vicious blows that were regularly dealt to her by the boys who were troubled by her presence on their "turf".

She became familiar with other "sports" as well. Her first ever boyfriend had taken her virginity at age 15, and tried to take her heart as well. She remained curiously unaffected throughout that episode, and several others that occurred as she passed through adolescence. Only when she left home for the University of Louisville did she begin to suspect her true sexual design, which was ultimately fulfilled when she met Stephanie Harmon. The two "clicked" almost immediately, and while Gwen knew Stevie still harbored a strong desire for the opposite sex, the two had weathered some mighty fierce storms together, and their love for one another was equally powerful. And, in Jeb's words, quite beautiful.

She smiled, thinking of him. She quite understood Stevie's affection for him, which surely bordered on adoration. If Gwen had ever had any competition for Stevie's attention, it was Jeb. And yet she trusted him completely, to the point where she had followed him into a place that just seemed...well, wrong.

Not bad, mind you. Wrong. And that confused her instincts as much as anything ever had. There was something unusual here, something beyond any run-of-the-mill ghost story. So while she might not have felt real fear, there was a distinct unease that filled her to the core. And that was more than bad enough for her.

"Jeb!" she called, her voice echoing wildly in the oblong room. She doubted very much if he'd heard her, or even if he would, no matter how loud or often she shouted. Still, it felt good. "Jeb! Come back!"

Jesus, she thought, I sound like a bad movie.

The climb up the pit was not difficult for the long-legged Jeb and the crawlway he found twenty feet above the drain passage was a pleasant surprise. Not only was it more than spacious enough for easy hands and knees crawling, it was also virtually dry. He decided that the pit had perhaps intersected this passage by accident, as "dome pits" are prone to do by the random nature of their vertical formation. The upper passage in which he now crawled probably only saw water during periods of heavy rainfall. The crawl he'd come into the pit from the main cave was probably wet from frequent rises in the creek that ran outside and backed up into the cave. Lighthearted, he crawled on, his only regret being that he'd left his knee pads at home. You won't need them, Chris had promised, one of the great old caving lies.

"Oh Chris," he sighed, "if only I knew this was virgin." What a coup that would be! To make such a lengthy discovery in a cave known so long would surely light a fire under certain individuals, not the least of which was George English, whose name was on the only map available of Wilder Witch Cave. Jeb had checked every foot of the passage and thus far he'd seen nothing that would suggest that anyone other than he had ever seen this place. But that was about to change.

Not surprisingly perhaps, it was the sensitive Gwen who detected something amiss, at first just a barely perceptible change in the cave's airflow. There had been a gentle breeze emanating from the unenterable passage beyond the flowstone curtain as long as she'd been there, and it had become irritating, in fact, chilling her to the point where she was more than ready to exit the cave without Jeb just to warm up. When it stopped, it stopped suddenly, and after an instant of relief, she muttered, "Wait a minute. Something is wrong here..."

Then her headlamp went out.

Then the wind returned from beyond the flowstone blockade, a gale now. And she felt...something.

And it was...was it really?...trying to touch her?

It was then, for the first time in as long as she could remember, that Gwen Chaney opened her pipes to their fullest extent and screamed.

Jeb felt the change in airflow too. It was hard for him not to, considering the confined space he was in, not to mention the fact that the air had completely changed direction, blowing at his back now instead of his face.

He pondered this for a moment. Airflow in caves regularly changed direction as the outside atmospheric pressure rose and fell. There was even a cave in Virginia, aptly named Breathing Cave, whose airflow changed in regular cycles of a few minutes at a time. He'd never seen a meaningful explanation of how a cave could do such a thing. It was mysterious all right, as was this sudden change. The skies were clear and blue when they'd gone under, not a cloud to be seen, and nary a front, cold, warm or stationary, anywhere in the vicinity according to Gary Rizzo's latest forecast.

He shrugged and crawled a few more yards. The cave was definitely opening up. Soon he might even be able to walk. He wiped the sweat from his brow again and continued.

Then he stopped. Was that an arrow on the wall? Pointing the way out?

It was, smoked by some wayward or adventurous explorer long ago. Disappointed as he was to find that the passage was not virgin, Jeb was still pleased to see this little bit of humanity so deep in such a forbidding place.

But there was more. Just a few feet further down the passage was an inscription, also smoked on the wall, which read:

1SGT M RIDGELY

101st AIRBORNE

FT CAMPBELL

KY

15 NOV 1947

But the verbally prolific Sgt. Ridgely hadn't been the first here either. Immediately adjacent to the Ridgely inscription was another, fainter and obviously older, but still readable:

G.E.G.

There was a faint date on that one too, 1894 as near as Jeb could decipher it. Under normal circumstances he might've been filled with wonder. Dates this old and so well preserved were pretty rare. But the circumstances were about to become anything but normal, and the wonder...well, it was overwhelming.

It had already long day for Chris Hobbs. First his alarm clock had failed to function, seemingly due to a mysteriously localized power failure that apparently had affected his dorm room only. Then his up-til-then dead reliable Hyundai Excel had turned simply dead. And to top it all off, his hurriedly eaten breakfast had decided to take leave of his body quite against his will, not twenty minutes out of Louisville. Worse still, the event had occurred on the one section of road between Louisville and Muldraugh that offered no convenient hiding places, let alone a men's room. He was sure at least one of the many sets of staring eyes had belonged to someone who knew him. Chris Hobbs was not a happy young man.

The thought crossed his mind at one point that it seemed something didn't want him to get to the cave on time. It was natural perhaps, considering the cave, and the nearness to Halloween, and he had just finished reading a book on the subject of Jung's "synchronicity". But he dismissed the thought, laughing. The rest of the journey was blessedly uneventful, up to and including checking in with Pip. "They're already in the cave," the old man told him. "Been in awhile too. Wonder what they found?"

"Or what found them," Chris laughed, and set off for the cave.

But as he caught sight of the open gate--Pip had forgotten to give him the lock--something struck him as odd, and he wondered whether what he'd said to Pip wasn't so much a joke as a legitimate question. The query gained a considerable measure of credibility when he heard a scream echo from within the cave. His pace, which had already been brisk, became a jog, then a dash, a dash so frantic that he almost brained himself in the entrance room before he even remembered to switch his headlamp on. Not that it did much good. It went out before he'd gotten halfway into the cave.

Another scream quavered from the passage before him. Good God, he thought..."Gwen? Are you all right?"

That bit of nonsense helped Gwen catch hold of her senses."Would I be screaming if I was?" she cried.

She's okay, Hobbs thought, but something's sure got her scared. "I can't get to you right now, my light's gone out. Will you be okay till I get a spare fired up?"

"Don't bother. I checked mine and none of them work. I bet yours don't either."

She was right. Neither of his emergency flashlights would function. Even his "last ditch" cigarette lighter failed to light. And now he was getting scared too.

"What the hell is this?" he called nervously. "What's happening?"

That helped Gwen too. "How the fuck am I supposed to know?" she shouted. "Hurry up and get in here! I think it went after Jeb!"

It? Hobbs thought.

The gentle breeze now at his back increased perceptibly. He turned to face it, and it picked up still more. Feels like, he thought, like...

...something's coming. Coming quickly too, if the wind was any indication.

For just an instant a wave of terror swept over him.

It was replaced by something that had become familiar to him just a few days' previous. Resignation, the same feeling he had been introduced to by Dr. Harrison Singh. And resignation was definitely not in his nature.

He tossed it aside. "Okay," he said, "come on, whatever you are. Come and get me."

Chris looked up from his useless lighter as a soft glow began to issue from the narrow passage ahead, the passage which led to the terminal room of the cave, where Gwen was trapped. Initially he felt relief: she's got her light going again. And then she began to scream again.

"So much for that," he muttered, and using the faint glimmer ahead as a guide, he worked his way back to her, warily edging into the room just as the eerie light--most certainly not that of a headlamp, flashlight, or lighter--disappeared into a low, barely noticeable crawl leading from the right wall.

"What was that?" he asked her as they were once again wrapped in total darkness.

"What do you mean, what was that?" Gwen shrieked. "It was the witch, that's what it was! And Jeb's in that crawl!"

Chris was thankful for the darkness. Considering her present state of mind, had Gwen seen him smile now she most likely would have killed him. "Well," he sighed, "then I expect ol' Jeb is in for a mighty big surprise."

Jeb's light went out as suddenly as Gwen and Chris' had. He was plunged into darkness, but not for long.

The light came quickly. It was bright, but not so intense that he couldn't stare directly at it. It moved to within a few feet of him, then it stopped.

It seemed to have no center, no source that he could identify. He already had a pretty good hold of its nature, unbelievable though it was. Now, as to its designs...

He beckoned. "Come on," he said, his voice surprising him in its apparent calmness. "Come and get me. I have nothing to lose."

And it did move closer, stopping mere inches from where he knelt. It was not a light at all; it had substance, and it seemed to be alive somehow.

"You wouldn't hurt me, would you?" he asked tentatively.

The words evoked a response. From within the glowing, diaphanous mass, a solid something began to coalesce, and extend toward him. At first he was unable to identify it, then he made out the unmistakable features of a face.

The hands came next, holding themselves out to him.

He held out his own hands, and felt those of the light take them. The grip was not solid; rather, it was more of a warm feeling that entered at his fingertips and ran up his arms. But to his mind it was much more tactile: the grip firm but gentle, the hands soft and warm.

He moved his hands to his face and held them there for a moment. The spectral hands followed, and when he took his own away, they remained, exploring his face like the fingers of a blind lover, taking in all of his features as physically as the glowing eyes were scrutinizing him visually.

Somehow he knew who it was. Faint and indistinct as they were the eyes gave her away. All the love, all the passion, the desire...they were all mirrored in those eyes, eyes that held his and would not let go.

Somehow he knew that he owed her the truth.

"I'm dying," he said simply.

She--it--closed in again, and this time it did not stop. It enveloped him, embracing him within its growing substance. It seemed to want to merge with him, to become part of him, and thus began the single worst moment of the young life of Jeb Stuart. For within the light there wasn't just one entity but several, and it was like seven or eight people trying to talk to him at once, something which had always made him uncomfortable, but this, this was unbearable...

In his entire existence Jeb Stuart could recall fainting only twice. The first time was while he was being examined as a child by a doctor for severe headaches. There was no spinning, no dizziness, just lights on, lights out. That was forgivable, perhaps. The second occurred when he was at a blood drive: he was walking away from the recliner from which he'd given his donation and the next thing he knew he was resting against a wall not far from where he'd fallen, having nearly split his head wide open.

This was not like either of those episodes. It was as if he were being overwhelmed by some ghastly sort of sensory overload, too much being forced upon him too soon by things too powerful for him to comprehend even if he were rational. He felt smothered, literally, and when the next breath didn't come he panicked, which accomplished nothing. He struggled only briefly before losing consciousness.

Five hundred feet is not a great distance, a little over a football field and a half by surface measurements. In Kentucky a cave five hundred feet long is nothing to shout about, especially when one considers that the largest cave in the state is well on its way to possessing five hundred miles of surveyed passages. But a five hundred foot trip through a cave in total darkness is something the average person will never experience. It wasn't something Gwen Chaney wanted to experience either, and by the time she and Chris made the entrance, she had made that quite clear to him.

"I can't believe you're just leaving him!" she wailed angrily. "Hell, I'd have waited in the dark!"

"Sure you would've," Chris said, trying not to laugh. "You would've come out eventually, probably on the run, and you probably would've fallen and busted your ass in the process."

Gwen Chaney was a pretty perceptive soul, and she heard the faint mirth in Hobbs' voice. As he led her out the entrance, she put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard. "Do I hear you saying," she said softly, "that this is some kind of stupid Halloween joke and Jeb's in on it?"

A chill went down Hobbs' spine, and the tendons in his shoulder crackled under the pressure of her grip. "Umm, Jeb didn't have anything to do with it," he stammered. "It's Marv Alexander and..."

"And you?"

"Well, yes."

"All I need to know." Gwen rarely showed much visible anger, and she never telegraphed her punches. She spun him straight into a raised knee, which fortunately caught him somewhat higher than she'd intended--Chris stood but five feet five inches tall. Still, it did drop him to the well packed dirt outside of the entrance with nothing but a grunt. Looking over him with no hint of anger on her face she said, "So how did you rig the light to go into that low crawl? Pretty clever." She laid a boot into his side, eliciting another groan.

"We didn't rig any light!" Hobbs grunted.

"Liar." She kicked him again.

"No, really!" he said quickly, trying to stave off another blow. "We didn't! Marv was gonna hide behind that curtain in that last room--there's a little space behind it you can't see unless you know where to look--and he was gonna play some screams and stuff off this tape he has! I'm not kidding Gwen, we've done this a dozen times before!"

"Funny boys. Remind me to kill Mr. Alexander the next time I see him." She hauled off for another kick.

"Wait! If it's not us..."

Her leg stopped in mid swing.

"Jeb's still in the cave, isn't he? We need to go get help! I'll fetch Pip if you'll stop kicking me long enough!"

"Fine. Now before I finish you off, tell me what good Pip will do."

"He might surprise you, Miss Gwen," Pip said sagely, ambling toward them along the path. "He might at that."

"Good timing," Gwen said. "Are you in on this too? Because if you are..."

"What?" he said. "What is it you aim to do to me that ain't already been done? I been around awhile, young lady, and I think by now I'm pretty familiar with all of Kate's tricks. And with how things feel around here when she's up to "em." He lit the lantern that he'd brought with him, and motioned for them to follow.

"Wait a minute," Gwen said. "Who's Kate?"

"Is she kiddin'?" Pip said to Hobbs.

"There's something awfully screwy going on here," Chris said.

"So? If that boy's in there alone, we'd better see to him."

"I don't believe a bit of this," Gwen spat, growing increasingly agitated. "You must be in on it. You have to be. And I thought you were so nice. Well believe me mister, as soon as you help us get my friend out of here we're leaving and coming back with the Sheriff."

Pip looked at her and frowned but calmly said, "Fair enough. Follow me." He led them back to the terminal room, and much to Gwen's surprise his light stayed on. Gwen looked at Chris, who shrugged.

"This is where you left him, I reckon?" Pip asked.

"Right there," Gwen replied, pointing into the low crawlway. "He went in there and didn't come back."

"Where the hell did that come from? Hobbs said in surprise.

"Been there as long as I can remember," Pip chuckled. "Thought y'all were supposed to check things like that. You tellin' me you didn't go in after him?"

"Not after it went in."

He sniffed disdainfully. "Some friend you are."

"Well then, you go!" Gwen spat.

"He's not my friend," Pip said angrily. "Looky here, you knew what you was gettin' into when you came here. Don't act so surprised, hear? Elsewise I'll leave the General to Kate, and I don't think he'll like that much."

"Will somebody fill me in on this?" Gwen said, regaining composure. "Just who is Kate? Is that the witch's name, or what?"

Pip looked at Hobbs. "Boy, you just made it certain nobody ever comes back to this cave on Halloween again."

"She's sorry," Chris said quickly. "So am I. She doesn't know anything, and I'm beginning to think I don't either. Isn't there anything you can do?"

Pip shrugged his old shoulders and sighed. "Let him go, Kate. He's not for you."

Gwen looked at Chris, then at Pip in disbelief. "Is that it? Just what the hell was that supposed to mean?"

"I think you know, Miss Gwen." He crouched before the crawl and shouted, "Come on, girl. Leave him be. You can do better."

It was some small satisfaction for Gwen to just catch a glimpse of Pip's startled face as his lantern suddenly went out from the sudden blast of wind that whistled out of the mouth of the crawlway. There was no sound, no apparition, nothing but a very surprised looking old man and then darkness.

"Shit, here we go again,'" Gwen said through gritted teeth.

"Just rest easy," Pip said, a noticeable tremor in his voice. "It never lasts long."

It didn't. Pip's lantern refired on its own accord the exact moment that both Chris and Gwen's headlamps winked on.

"Don't that beat all," Pip muttered. "That's a new one, Kate."

"Check your pack Gwen," Hobbs said. "I think your flashlights are both still on. Mine were." Hers were too.

From somewhere to their right they heard a scuffling sound, like rats in the walls...or a caver in a crawlway approaching. They looked at each other, then down at the crawlway opening, waiting.

His head appeared first, eyes on the floor, as if hardly daring to look up at reality again, and he almost ran into the far wall before he stopped crawling. He stayed down there on his hands and knees for a very long time before any of them moved, and when they did it was with deliberate slowness, each afraid to break too abruptly the spell that somehow had them all enchanted.

Gwen approached him first, gently laying a hand on his shoulder. "Jeb?" she asked tentatively.

"Yes?" he said in a voice that was barely a sigh.

"Are you all right?"

He looked up at her. "Am I?"

Pip moved to the opposite side. "Help me," he said to Gwen, and together they brought Jeb unsteadily to his feet. "General?" Pip said, staring into his eyes. "Are you with us again? Can you stand on your own?"

"Let me go," Jeb said softly. They did. He took a slow step forward, turned, and faced them. "I guess I can."

"Are you ready to go out now?" Chris asked him.

"Can I leave?"

None of the other three answered, it was so obvious that the question hadn't been directed at any of them.

"I guess I can," he repeated.

"Fine," Pip said. "That's fine. We'll all go back to the house and talk about all this. We'll have a cup of coffee and..."

"I want to go home now," Jeb said to Gwen. "Right now."

"That makes two of us," Gwen said.

"Come on," Chris said. "Let's get out of here while we still have light."

They left the cave.

Once outside, it was more than clear that Jeb was in no condition to ride. Neither Chris or Gwen had ever driven a motorcycle before, so they were in a bit of a spot. "We'll have to leave it here," Gwen said to Pip. "At least till he's in some kind of condition to ride it back home." She nodded toward Jeb, who sat almost trancelike in the back seat of Hobbs' car.

Pip shrugged. "Makes no difference to me. I won't be responsible for it."

"Oh, don't worry about responsibility. You can sort that out with the cops."

"Listen missy," Pip said impatiently, "do you still think I had anything to do with this? Mebbe your friend here was trying to play some games with you, but believe me, I ain't. What does it get me but trouble? Eliza and I never wanted nothing more than to spend our lives here in peace, but there ain't no such thing here. You oughta know that by now. Try spending a night or two out here and you'd know. You'd know."

"Mister, I don't intend to ever set foot out here, myself," said Gwen. "I can bet Jeb won't either."

Pip had other ideas. "Oh, I don't believe that, not for a minute. He'll be back," he said. "you wait. He's seen her, he'll be back."

"Over my dead body," Gwen declared grimly.

"Miss Gwen," Pip said softly and just as seriously, "I do hope it don't come to that."

They didn't ask what he meant. They just got in the Hyundai and drove away as quickly as the little car would carry them.

They asked Jeb no questions on the way home, which was just as well, as he certainly had no answers for them. He consciously remembered almost none of what happened to him after he entered the crawl. He did recall seeing something unusual, but that was about as far as he could go. Everything else was just a big nothing, till he'd felt Gwen's hand on his shoulder.

Gwen and Stevie sat with him in his apartment the duration of the night. Hobbs left, pleading a Sunday morning appointment and pleased to have gotten away without further damage. Gwen debated calling the Breckinridge County Sheriff for a while, but in the end deciding it would do more harm than good, and besides, the longer she thought about it, the less she was certain that Pip had actually had anything to do with what had happened.

Whatever that was.

Now the two women sat on either side of Jeb on the sofa. Stevie, on his left, was (typically) fawning over him while Gwen, feeling very self conscious, held his right hand. At least I don't seem to be showing it as bad as he is, she thought. But she was frightened, to be sure.

Apart from her ever present inquiries about his condition, Stevie asked only one question of Jeb: was it the witch? He could only shrug in response.

"Do you know the legend?" Gwen asked her.

"Of course," Stevie replied. "I've known about it since I was a kid. I grew up in Irvington, remember. It's just that right now I'm not sure I want to tell it."

"I would like to hear it," Jeb said.

Gwen eyed him closely. "Well, maybe you can tell us something."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Stevie asked testily. "If he says he doesn't remember anything, Gwen, then he doesn't remember anything."

"I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just saying that there's things you don't remember here," she tapped the front of his head, "but you do remember here," patting the back.

Jeb smiled. "Sounds like you believe whatever it was might've had its way with me or something."

"You were gone an awful long time, Jeb," Gwen said softly. "Anything could've happened."

He nodded. "I guess that's what scares me the most."

"And that's why I don't think you should hear the witch story yet," said Stevie. "It's too soon."

"It's not all that bad," Gwen said. "It probably wouldn't hurt."

"Still," Stevie insisted, "it might not be a bad idea to wait a day or so."

"You can be such a baby sometimes," Gwen sighed.

"And you wouldn't want me any other way, so why complain?"

"I'll be all right," Jeb stated. "You can leave me alone safely. I'm not going to throw myself out the window or anything like that."

Their eyes turned to him, their gazes stony.

"That isn't even funny," Gwen said.

"All right," he admitted. "But I will be okay."

"Sure?" Stevie asked.

"Positive." They all stood and Jeb escorted them to the door. "Thanks," he said gratefully. "I really needed the company. You don't know how much."

"I think we do," said Stevie.

"No, you only think you do. But thanks anyway."

She headed next door. Gwen tried to follow; Jeb caught her and grabbed her arm before she could get out the door. "Can you drive me over to Wilder's tomorrow morning?" he whispered. "I want to pick up my bike."

She stared at him for a moment, gauging him. "Is that the only reason you want to go back?"

He stared right back, and knew it would be useless to lie. "No," he admitted, "but that can wait till we get there."

"It won't involve going into the cave, of course."

"Of course."

She thought about it, but only for a moment. "Eight o'clock. Be ready."

He took her face in his hands and kissed her. "Thanks, Gwenny."

"I hate when you do that," she complained...and then, impulsively, she kissed him back. "Sleep tight."

"I believe I will," he said as she walked next door to Stevie's apartment. He went straight to bed, and much to his surprise, he slept very tight indeed, untroubled by dreams of any kind.

He met her outside the next morning. They drove silently as far to Hardinsburg, where they stopped at Sweetie's, a favorite hangout among area cavers, for breakfast and exchanged their first words.

"You have something on your mind," she accused him gently over his second cup of coffee. The food was a bit slow in arriving.

"I'm hungry," he said softly, eyes on his coffee cup.

"Look, I may not be as affectionate as Stephanie, but I think I'm smarter. And a better listener. Besides, I already know what you're gonna do. You're gonna have Pip tell you the legend. Well, that's fine. I think it's a great idea, myself, though I bet my lover might disagree." She grinned. "Who am I kidding? She'd think it was a lousy idea, and she probably would've thrown me out last night if I would've told her what we were going to do this morning."

"So you didn't tell her?"

"I really don't have a death wish," she laughed. "No matter what people think of her and I, I'd hate to be the one to cross her. Sweet and gentle is just an act for her, believe me."

"I don't. But thanks for not telling anyway."

"So am I right?"

He nodded. "I have to hear it from him. If anybody's going to come close to the truth, he will. All anybody else--you included, I'm afraid--can give me is a warmed up version."

The waitress brought their food, omelets, cheese for her, cheese and tomato for him. They ate them quietly, only occasionally looking up at each other, as if to reassure themselves the other had not decided abruptly to run away. And when he was finished, to her unbridled surprise, he produced a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, lit one, and took a lusty drag.

"Since when do you smoke?" she gaped.

He grinned lamely. "I did a long time before I met you. Just decided the other day to start again."

"I presume you don't intend to do any more ultra running."

"Basically. But I know how you feel, so I won't try to smoke in your car."

"Damn right you won't!" she declared angrily. "Jeb, what's come over you? A week ago you were Mr. Healthy. And now..."

"...now I'm not," he said. "Gwen, I have to tell you something, a secret you can never, ever tell anyone. Especially Stevie."

"So don't tell me," she said firmly. "We have no secrets."

"Somebody has to know," he pleaded, "and you're...stronger than her. Please, Gwen. This is very important to me."

She sat silently for a moment, staring at him, a strange look on her pretty face. "God, Jeb, you're not trying to tell me you're dying, are you?"

Already he'd nearly smoked the Winston to its filter. He lit another off the end of the first and took another long pull, eyes closed, his features a miracle of serenity. He smiled at her, and she smiled back.

"Actually Gwen," he said softly, "I am."

Her smile evaporated. "You're not joking."

"Well, of course not." He nodded toward some still visible needle marks on his left arm. "You remember those tests they did on me at Helloween. For the University? Well, I got a phone call last week. Seems something funny turned up in my blood work, and they wanted a closer look. As you can see, they got it, and the tracks are only the start. I got put into this machine that reminded me of some thrill ride at the fair, only it wasn't so fun." He shuddered. "You know, I never would have thought a caver could be claustrophobic. Still, waiting for the news was worse. The worst experience I've ever been through. But I sort of had it figured. Guess it was the way I'd been feeling lately that tipped me off."

"Is it...?" Gwen's voice was very, very small.

He took her hand and nodded. She did not try to resist.

"Metastasized too, I'm afraid. Guess I was too darned careless--or afraid of doctors, take your pick--to notice it coming. So outside of radiation and chemo there's not a lot that can be done. I reckon it's spread past that point. I could die pretty quick, but then I could be hit by a TARC bus tomorrow too." He squeezed her hand fondly, and she surprised him by returning the grip."

"God," she said quietly.

Jeb shrugged and smiled. "Got to move on sometime, like the song says. It was hard the first couple of days, but I reckon I've gotten used to the idea. It's the treatment I'm not sure I can handle. It'll make me awfully sick, sicker than I've ever been."

"Not as sick as you could be," she said, gripping his hand tightly. "You have to do it, Jeb. I mean, it would just crush Stevie, and there's always a chance..."

"Exactly. And that's why she's not to be told. Can you go along with that?"

"Oh, absolutely!"

"And one other thing. I will be mightily pissed if you start worrying over me. I'll be fine, one way or another. I've come to accept this. Not like I had any choice, but there you go. But seeing as I trusted you enough to confide, I hope I can trust you to accept it too. In time, when it's right, I'll tell everybody who needs to know, and not before. But in the meantime, I'll probably need help from time to time, sorting out details, if you know what I mean."

She nodded. "I do. And you know how to get hold of me. Any time, Jeb, day or night."

"There you go," he sighed. "You're worrying already."

"That's right. But don't you worry, I won't go and make a public spectacle of either you or myself. But you'd better get this straight, pal: if you ever need me and don't call, you'd better not ever let me find out about it. Because I will be mightily pissed, if you know what I mean."

"I do," he said.

"Good. Let's get the hell out of here."

"You're not finished eating," he pointed out.

"I lost my appetite."

They were not surprised to find Pip waiting for them on the path leading up to his house. "Figured you'd be back," the old man chuckled. "Just didn't figure it'd be so soon. You ready to talk?"

Gwen and Jeb glanced at each other, then Gwen looked up at Pip and asked, "You know something, don't you? Something we don't?"

"Oh, I 'spect I know lots you don't, Miss Gwen. But that comes with the years, I reckon. If it's Kate you want to hear about, well, I can tell you plenty about her too, but maybe not what you want to know."

"Try me," Jeb suggested. "I might surprise you."

"Not you," Pip laughed. "No sir, I don't 'spect you'll be surprisin' me. Kate's already got you picked, she does. Your real name's James, right?"

Jeb blinked. "Umm...yes, it is. But nobody calls me that."

"Well, somebody does. If you don't know that yet, you will soon enough."

Gwen seemed to go weak in the knees, swaying a bit. Jeb steadied her and smiled. "We'll just have to see how things work, won't we Pip? I'm always open for new things, more now than ever, in fact."

With that, Pip laughed and swatted him on the back. "Y'know," he cackled, "I was wonderin' but I do believe Kate has made a right smart choice. Right smart indeed. C'mon, you two. Eliza's got a pot on; you can have what you didn't yesterday. And I needed the day off anyway. Old joints are gettin creaky." They went inside.

From outside the house looked rustic. From within it looked merely decrepit. The ceiling sagged in several places, and the walls hadn't seen paint in at least thirty years. The furnishings were ragtag, looking like they'd been salvaged from the Irvington landfill. But they were sturdy, and the house surely wouldn't collapse any time soon. Would it?

It was clean, that much Gwen would admit to herself, and with that she had to admire Eliza Phillips, who somehow kept the house up. Maybe literally, Gwen thought wonderingly. And the coffee, brewed in a tin pot which a collector would certainly consider an antique, was nothing short of heavenly.

"They can keep their 'lectric percolators," Eliza was saying. "Ain't no substitute for an old fashioned tin pot. So you're James, are you?"

The question again. Jeb looked startled. "Yes," he said, "but that's not what I call myself."

"I know," she said approvingly. "Jeb, like the General. Pip told me. But that's not what Kate calls you. James, that's what she calls you."

"Does Kate talk to you?" Gwen asked.

She laughed, a dry, rusty sound. "No, she's not in that habit. But she gets her word across all the same. See?"

She pointed across the room to a peeled white wall, at something neither Gwen nor Jeb had noticed. Words, apparently scratched into what was left of the paint. The letters were crudely drawn, but legible:

JAMES HELP KATE

Gwen stared at the message with eyes as big as silver dollars.

Pip cocked a thumb over his shoulder at the message. "That showed up a week ago yesterday. Kate 'd been pretty active round then so we wasn't surprised, we just kinda wondered who James was. Is that your name?"

"James Edward Bryan Stuart," Jeb declared, "and how anybody might've known it, I have no idea. I sure haven't made a habit of telling anyone."

"I've only ever known you as Jeb," Gwen said with genuine surprise.

"Guess she knowed you was comin'," said Eliza.

"You havin' dreams about her?" Pip asked.

"I don't know," Jeb said. "Maybe. Maybe it's her. I have been having some pretty strange dreams lately."

"It's her," Eliza said confidently.

"May be," said Pip. "If she's in your head, she probably knows everything about you."

"Who's saying she's in my head?" Jeb said. "Listen, I'm not hearing voices or anything. People might think I'm a little odd, but I'm certainly not schizo."

"Odd," Gwen snickered, "is not the word."

"Well, maybe you are and maybe you aren't, General," Pip declared, "but I'll tell you somethin' for certain: all this's happened before, but I'm gettin ahead of myself. You need to hear it all, from the beginnin'. So open your ears and heads, if you need to, and make yourselves comfortable, cause this is gonna take awhile."

So they sat and listened while he talked. The story was long, filled with anecdotes and the occasional resulting prompt from Eliza, but it was certainly intriguing, and it kept Jeb and Gwen silent and rapt throughout.

"My papa told me this story when I was, oh...this was back in 19 and 26, and I'm 79 now, so I reckon I was six. We lived here then; in fact we'd just moved in, as I recall. Picked up the place dirt cheap, and mind you, this was before the big crash really hit too. Reckon nobody wanted to live here. The house was new then, the fella who built it was gonna spend the rest of his life here. Had just gotten himself hitched, too. But Kate moved 'em out right quick. Reckon the wife was game enough, but he couldn't take it. Kate went through her whole trick list on 'em, or so I was told, things flyin' about, doors openin' and closin', that sort of thing. Anyway, we moved in, and my folks were just hard headed enough to stick around. Not that it made us kids very happy, but that's another story.

"Anyways, this is what he told me, just what I'm gonna tell you, and it checks out, all of it. If you want to go to the trouble that's fine, but I reckon most of the time I ever spent in a library was spent lookin' up things about Kate. And there's plenty too.

"As for how she got here or exactly who she was, nobody knows too awful much, just what she told people, which wasn't much either. All we really know is that one day she wasn't here, and the next day she was.

"Story really started back when John Wilder owned this place, back in 1847. It started small, whispers around the house, knockins, and that sort of thing. At first they thought his kids mighta been doin' it all, but then things happened when the kids weren't around too. Like once they said it sounded like somebody was tryin to knock a hole in the wall of the back bedroom, and the whole family was up here in the kitchen eatin'. So much for that. They even called in a preacher, who, the story says, actually talked to Kate by havin' her knock to answer questions. The preacher didn't come out and say it was a ghost, but then again he didn't say it wasn't a ghost either. Anyway, Kate sorted it out for everybody soon enough, when she started talkin'.

"And did she talk! She let everybody know what she meant to do from the get go: kill John Wilder. And let me tell you, she made his life pure hell pretty much from the minute she said that, too. Hardly let the poor man have a minute's rest, if you believe the stories, and there's plenty of 'em, too, everythin's in the books. You can look it up, if you like.

"She seemed pretty fond of Betsy. That was John Wilder's wife. Treated her right nice. Betsy was always a bit poorly, it seems, and Kate brought her gifts, food, pretty stones she said she'd found in the desert out west--reckon she wasn't tied to this place, she could move around as she pleased. Liked the kids too, and played with 'em a lot, them and their friends. Lots of stories about that too.

"Now, there was one child she had some kinda problem with, and that was Elsbeth, who was the oldest daughter. There was five kids, three boys and two girls. Little John was her favorite--seems Kate went out of her way to catch his favor, don't ask me why. But Elsbeth, she caught hell second only to John Wilder himself. Only after John--old Jack, Kate called him--only after he died did Kate kinda get civil to Elsbeth. By then it seemed she was gettin kinda weak anyway, and she up and left not long afterward. And here I go, gettin ahead of myself again.

"Anyways, not long after she showed up, she kinda told everybody who she was. Book says she said somethin' like, 'I am the Witch of Kate Bellamy, and I come to claim the soul of Jack Wilder,' but of course I can't say for sure. I reckon Kate would correct me if I was wrong.

"Now, Kate Bellamy was a girl John had been courtin' years before, a fetchin' thing too from what I read. If you ever see her, I'd like to know for sure, but when she shows herself here--and that ain't all that often--I only ever get quick looks, and all I can say for sure is that she has long, coal black hair. But then, I'm sure she could look like anythin' she cares to. Well, this Kate Bellamy just up and disappeared not long before John and Betsy were wed, so you kinda wonder just what happened, and so the stories say, lots of fingers got bent out of shape from pointin' at John Wilder, accusin' him of murderin' her. But as it happened, he died before anythin' could be done, and nobody ever found any proof he did kill her.

"Lord knows there's enough proof she killed him! He was throttled in his sleep, and must've known what was goin' on too. Stories say he had this godawful look on his face, just frozen there. And they couldn't get his eyes closed, either. He's buried just the other side of the ridge, in the old Wilder plot. Betsy and Elsbeth are there too, as are two of the other children. The others went away, one to Illinois, I think, and the other down in Tennessee. Met some of the Tennessee kin bout twenty, twenty five years back, and they said Kate comes back and visits sometimes, which makes sense, cause that was little John's family, and like I said, she always was fond of him.

"So that tells you about Kate. That's the story you'll find in the books, as near as I can tell it. But there's more, and it's the part you'll be needin' to hear. But it'll have to wait a minute," and with that, he excused himself to use the toilet.

Gwen and Jeb traded stunned looks.

"Nice girl you've got yourself mixed up with," she said.

"Not like it's my choice," Jeb muttered.

"There's obviously more to it than he knows. There has to be."

"You're right, you know," Eliza said to him. "Like, why kill old Jack anyway?"

"Revenge, maybe?" Gwen wondered.

"Means, motive, and opportunity," Jeb said. "Figure those out and you solve it, just like in any good mystery."

"But what did John Wilder do to her?" said Gwen. "Kill her? Dump her? Fool around on her? What?"

"A fair question, Miss Gwen," Pip said, walking back into the room, "and one which I hope to get an answer to someday." He turned to Jeb. "Maybe from you."

Jeb nodded. "Maybe. You said there was more."

"Oh yeah. There is, but Miss Gwen, I'm afraid you're gonna have to excuse us. This ain't for your ears."

"Say what?" Gwen said, obviously perturbed.

"It's the way Kate wants it, I think. I'm awful sorry. You can stay here, if you like, or wait in your car. General, you and me are gonna take a little walk. That okay?"

"Fine with me," Jeb replied.

"The hell you say!" Gwen snapped. "Anything you can say to him, you can say to me, Kate or no Kate!"

"Lookin' out for your man," said Pip approvingly. "Believe me Miss Gwen, I understand. But you have to understand this: I don't set the rules here. Eliza and me, we figured that out years ago. When Kate's around like she is now, you do your best to keep her happy, 'cause believe me, she can and will make your life miserable otherwise. And don't think just because you live in the city you'll be free of her. Let me tell you, that's just not so. If she wants to, she can go anywhere."

Gwen looked at Jeb, still angry. He shrugged helplessly.

"I promise you, it's all for the best. In the end, he'll be the one who decides what's what, not Kate. I know that for a fact."

"C'mon with me dear," Eliza said to Gwen. "I'll take you back to the old Wilder plot. You should see that anyway, I reckon."

"Go with her, Gwen," Jeb said. "Remember what I said about worrying. I'll be all right."

He dearly wanted to kiss her, the look on her face was so forlorn.

"You remember what I said," she told him.

"C'mon now," Pip said. "It ain't like you're goin away for good.", I think

Jeb and Pip walked slowly along the path that led to the cave. Pip remained silent till they arrived at the entrance, then he turned to Jeb and said, "Well, I reckon you'll be wantin' to go in. You can, if you like, but not yet."

"Actually, I had no intention of ever setting foot in your cave again," Jeb corrected.

"Not my cave. Never has been. Hell, I don't even own it, so far as I know. Wilder kin still hold the title on this land. I just look after it for 'em."

'"Whatever. I will never go in it again."

"Well, like I said, in the end that's up to you. She can't make you do anythin'."

"What exactly does she want me to do?"

Pip put a gnarled hand on his shoulder. "General, I think she wants you to save her."

The walk to the Wilder plot wasn't a long one. And Gwen had to admit to herself that it was a nice path, winding through the still pretty trees and past patches of wildflowers. "Bluebells," Eliza said. "They seems to bloom when they like around this place. Yonder's the cemetery," and they walked the hundred yards or so a low stone wall surrounding the plot.

It was small, but well tended, mowed and free of weeds. "I like to come up here," Eliza explained. "Everybody carries on so much about Kate, I only figure it's fair that somebody takes care of the Wilder end of things."

Gwen nodded. "Have you lived here all your life?"

"Most every day. I was born in Big Spring, just a ways away, and moved here when I married Pip. Now Pip, he's been around a bit. He was in the islands during the second World War. Got decorated too. For bravery, but then after being around Kate all his life I reckon it takes quite a bit to scare him!" She wrapped a thin arm around Gwen, cackled merrily for a minute, and guided her inside the wall.

"Now there's Betsy's stone," she said. "John Wilder's wife. And there's Elsbeth. Lived to a ripe old age, she did. I was born just a few years before she died, matter of fact. Kept her wits about her to the end too, so they say. And there's Charles, and Elaine. She died young, in birth, I think."

"Does Kate ever come out here?"

"Do cows give milk? Look at that stone there. That's where you'll usually find her. Won't give him rest, even in death."

Gwen knelt next to the new-looking stone, which read:

JOHN JAMES WILDER

Born June 12 1814

Died September 2 1882

May he rest in peace

Below this, in smaller letters, was the curious inscription:

Original marker disappeared 1951

This marker placed 9/2/53

"I was wondering," Gwen said softly, "why this stone looked so much newer. What happened? Did somebody steal the original headstone?"

Eliza nodded. "Now there's a story..."

"You're not the first fella she's called out to," Pip told Jeb. "God only knows how many there's been. But only three of you have ever gotten this far, so far as I know. One I've only heard stories of and can't say anythin' for sure about, but the other one...him I know about for a fact, cause I was here. Quite a stir back then about all that, too."

"I'm listening," said Jeb.

Pip smiled. "That does me good to hear. Makes me think you're learnin' somethin' and not just humorin' me."

"Believe me Pip, the last thing I'd do is try to humor you."

"Or tell me a fib? Like Miss Gwen bein' your wife? I figured that out pretty quick." He smiled. "Pity though. She is a pretty one, and she seems to care about you. Y'oughta grab her if you can."

"I can't," Jeb said, not trying to explain why. "She probably is my best friend, though. I trust her with my life."

"Well, I expect you not to trust her with this story, at least for now. Will you promise me that?"

It seemed a harmless enough promise. Still, Jeb couldn't help but harken to the promise he'd made Gwen swear to earlier. Sometimes the most insignificant promises turned out to be awfully vital. So he thought before answering, though the answer was the same.

"I promise," he said.

"Good." He pointed to a stump, out of the draft pouring from the cave entrance. "Sit there and I'll you the rest of the story."

"As I recall it," Eliza said, "a couple of boys from the city--one of the schools there--figured it would be a funny thing to do to come down here on Halloween and steal John Wilder's headstone. Not a nice thing to do, wouldn't you say?"

"A stupid college-type thing to do," Gwen agreed.

"Yep, they was college boys. Got caught in the act too. They didn't figure on Pip being up all night on Halloween, but he was, at least back then, every Halloween. And he found 'em just as they was loading the stone in their car. Got their license number and went down the road to call the Sheriff, because we didn't have a telephone back then.

"Well, they must've knowed he'd seen 'em, cause they got rid of the stone somewhere between here and the city. Never did find it, either. But the Sheriff was all ready to arrest 'em, at least for trespassing, but he never got the chance. They was both dead inside of three days."

Gwen shuddered. "I think I'd like to head back to the house now."

Eliza smiled kindly. "I understand, sweetheart. Sometimes this place gets to me too. And don't forget, I have to live here."

"How do you manage? I mean, I'd either be crazy or I'd definitely be moving out in under a week."

"Oh, it's not so bad. Kate can be a good friend to have around sometimes. See, I think folks have it in mind that she's all bad, just cause she happened to kill John Wilder. Myself, I happen to believe her reasons for doing what she did might've been good enough for the times, whatever they was. Now, what happened to the two boys, well, I ain't all that certain she was responsible for that. And I ain't certain either that she's responsible for ever'thin' that happens around here, either. Who's to say that John's ghost isn't here too? Or Betsy's? Or Elsbeth's?"

They walked out of the cemetery and back onto the path. "Have you ever tried talking to them?" Gwen asked. "I mean, just to make sure?"

"Nope. Not like I ain't been tempted, but the good book says not to truck with the dead, and puttin up with Kate--or whoever--is bad enough. It's just easier to lay it all at her feet, and I'm sure she don't mind. If she did, I'm sure she'd let us know right quick, don't you know it!" She laughed again, and this time Gwen joined her. They linked arms and walked back to the house, already fast friends.

"I don't remember his name," Pip said, "but I do remember he was an Army boy. Was you ever in the service?"

"I did a hitch in the Marines," Jeb replied. "Peacetime, though."

"Good boy. I was a jarhead myself. Was decorated by McArthur hisself, after Iwo Jima, but that's another story too, one I don't mind tellin' if you're ever in the mood. Anyway, this boy was a soldier, a hero-type too, as I recall. Didn't mind struttin' his stuff around, either. A real cock-o-the-walk type, if you know what I mean."

"I know the type," Jeb said, thinking of George English. "Go on."

"Well," Pip continued, "this soldier boy showed up here one day with a bunch of his friends. Don't remember exactly where they was from, but I don't think it was Fort Knox. Anyways, they was bent on seein' the cave, though it was pretty late at night. But they was wearin' their uniforms and all, and bein' as I'd got out not long before, I figured, what the hell, let 'em have a little fun. Didn't figure on it bein very excitin' to 'em, havin' been through the war and all, but it got pretty wild. Or so they told me.

"Their story was pretty much like Miss Gwen told me. The one boy--he was loaded with stripes, mind you, but he was still just a boy, we all was, I suppose--he went off into that little hole off to the side of that last room, just like you did. And supposedly Kate went roarin' into that hole after him, just like I imagine she did with you. Lots of them boys saw her too, got a pretty good look. Miss Gwen says she just saw a light, but these boys said they definitely saw a woman. Now I don't know, maybe they was drunk, or just seein' things. But that's what they said anyways.

"So they waited, just like with you. They was in there a long time, too. Was darn near to midnight when I finally figured I'd better go and fetch 'em. Met 'em halfway out the cave, and they was holdin' the one boy up, just like Chris and Miss Gwen was doin' with you.

"This much I remember real clear. Now, this boy didn't have much hair, of course, bein a soldier and all. But--and this ain't no lie, General--what he did have had gone pure white, clear through. Wonder how he explained it to the folks back on the post. Anyways, he didn't remember anythin', just like you yesterday. But just like you, he came back here, the very next day. Spent quite a bit of time in the cave too, and I was about ready to fetch him again when he came back, babblin' about how he was gonna save Kate and the others."

"Others?" Jeb asked.

Pip nodded. "Don't know exactly who he meant. I think maybe he might've meant one boy who'd tried to help her long before I was born, but as to who else he meant, I don't know. Anyways, he came back once more. Talked to me that day, too. Said, 'Pip, today's the day I'm gonna set Kate free.' I thought he was crazy. But I reckon he tried. Don't know exactly what he did or where he went either, 'cause he never came back. But that wasn't the end of it, 'cause for a couple of weeks after that, this place was just swarmin' with soldiers and police, all of 'em lookin' for this one boy. 'Bout turned the cave inside out, looked in every sinkhole between here and Garfield huntin' for him. But do you know, they never found nary a trace of him."

"Is that all you remember?"

"Well, no, not exactly. I did kinda leave somethin out, but I wanted to save it for last anyways. As I recall, this boy came back that second trip just a-ravin' about the big cave he found in there. Talked of things nobody's seen since, that's for sure, and that ain't for lack of lookin'. A group came up a few years ago and surveyed the place. Was all over the cave too, and didn't find nothin' like what he talked about. Checked that little hole you come out of too. They said it ended about thirty feet or so in where it was filled with mud they couldn't dig through. Don't suppose you'd remember anythin' about it?"

"No," Jeb admitted, "but I've seen a cave in my dreams. It's big, and very pretty. And she's there somewhere too."

"That's pretty much what that boy said. Mind you, that was after the second time he went in. Mebbe that's what he needed to remember everythin', to go in again. Not that I'm tellin' you to try it, of course."

Jeb nodded. "I understand. What I don't understand is why, if there really is more cave there, why it hasn't been found. You said it's been gone over pretty well. A fellow from the club I belong to led the survey, and he's a bastard, but he's also an awfully thorough surveyor. If there was more cave to survey, he would've found it."

"Mebbe so. But you're forgettin' Kate. Mebbe she can fix it so's nobody can get to the rest of it--her part, so to speak. Mebbe she saves that for the people she really wants to see it."

Jeb considered that for a moment. "It makes as much sense as any of this does," he concluded, "but why me? I'm no hero, that's for sure."

Pip put a hand on his shoulder. "General, different people got different notions on what a hero is. Mebbe you fit Kate's idea. Who knows? Mebbe you'd better go ask her." He handed Jeb a key to the cave gate. "That's my spare. You keep it as long as you like, come over as often as you want. All I ask is that you tell me the whole story when you're finished. I always s'pected there was more to it than anybody ever could know, and I'm as curious as anybody else as to what's truth and what's lies."

Jeb stared at the key. To accept it, it seemed, would be to accept the whole thing as real, and to commit himself to a path he still wasn't quite sure he wanted to travel. And Pip, obviously sensing this, closed Jeb's fingers around the key. "Take it," the old man insisted. "You might not want it now. You might not want to do want she wants. I sure ain't gonna think any less of you if you don't. But it's better you've got it. One way or another, you're gonna have to meet her and talk. And when you do, you'll need it. Just...be careful."

Jeb nodded. "Thanks," he said softly. "I just wish I knew what to do now."

Pip nodded toward the cave. "You could always ask her."

"I didn't bring a light."

"Yes you did." Pip turned and started to walk back up the path to the house.

"Wait a minute!" Jeb cried. "You can't just leave me alone!"

"But General," said Pip, "you're not alone." And he walked away.

Jeb stood and stared at the gate.

So what have I got to lose? he thought.

The key was like a sixteen ton weight in his hand.

Pip had taken good care of the lock. The key in slid easily; the well oiled tumblers clicked smoothly and the hasp came free. Jeb stood back, and the gate swung open on its own. "Come into my parlor," he muttered. "Okay, Kate. Here I come."

His steps were small and tentative, at first. But he found that the further he went into the cave, the more secure he felt. Even as the total darkness enveloped him he relaxed. Somehow he knew he wouldn't hit anything, that he'd go unfailingly in the right direction and would know when to duck for the low spots. Nothing in here will hurt me, he thought. I am welcome. I am wanted. I am...

...loved?

(Loved)

The thought wasn't his. He froze.

(You are loved. And in love there is never darkness)

"Hello?"

A light, pale but with an undeniable strength, appeared in the passage ahead.

"Hello?" he repeated, and took another hesitant step forward.

The light grew in intensity.

Another step, another corresponding growth in the brilliance.

"God help me," he whispered, now thoroughly terrified. And yet, still another step. The light was just ahead, through the last narrow canyon into the terminal room. Stepping into that room would be like stepping onto the sun, surely, it was just too much, like...like..

"Like last time," he said in awe. "I remember."

But this time it would be different. An open mind, Pip had said. Well, maybe that was what he needed. Not to fight the light, but to open himself to it.

He walked into the room, faced the light, closed his eyes, and welcomed it.

The light grew tenfold, then again. It exploded gently and took him with it, and he tumbled and spun, did a series of gainers Greg Louganis would have been proud of, and landed on his feet. Then the light fell in on itself, till it was just a tiny glow the size of a candle flame, just enough for him to see.

And now, there was another opening in the wall of the room, just to the right of the flowstone blocked tunnel. He couldn't remember having seen it the first time.

Of course not, he thought. I couldn't have seen it. It wasn't there last time.

The passage was narrow, but it was lofty. The light bobbed into the dark opening, and he followed it, walking sideways, trying to keep up as the light, seemingly anxious, picked up its pace. In the end he was moving so quickly he barely noted the moment when he broke out from the canyon into a broad, sand floored gallery, one he'd seen before.

In dreams.

He smiled. "I'm here," he said.

The light winked out. An unseen hand rested on his shoulder.

He drew in a breath, trying to contain his fear.

The hand pressed him down, gently but insistently.

And he understood.

"I wish there was a better way," he said softly, yawning from a sudden languor that had swept over him. "Maybe you can teach me how to listen." He curled up on the sand, closed his eyes, and waited for the dream to come.

He opened his eyes and sat up. The cave was brightly lit, by what he could only guess. There were no obvious flames.

He was comfortable, like he'd slept a full night. He stood and stretched, stifling a yawn. Then he began to walk, following his heightened instincts toward...what? He didn't care, either way. He knew whatever it was that had brought him here would be along presently. In the meantime, he could explore, and the cave beckoned.

It was everything his dreams had been, and more. He found himself longing for a camera, something to capture the beauty he was seeing on something other than the fragile threads of memory.

God, he thought, this is fantastic.

(But of course. Everyone wants their home to look nice)

Again, the thought had just popped into his head.

"Is this your home?" he asked aloud.

The reply came instantly: (Such as it is. Do you like it?)

He could have cried. "It's wonderful," he sighed. "Is that you?"

(It's me. Us)

There were two different voices. The single word sounded as if it had been uttered through a melange of throats, at least two of them male and an equal number female. The first phrase was strictly one female voice, and that voice was the one he addressed next.

"You are Kate Bellamy?"

(I am. You've talked to Pip then)

He nodded. "When do I get to meet you?"

(Soon)

"How soon?"

(Soon. You'll know when)

"What is it that makes you think I can help you?"

(You hear me. You speak to me. Soon you'll see me. When you do, you'll know as do I)

"Do you know what's happening to me? Inside of me?" There was no immediate reply. "I want to help you, really. But I...I don't know I'm exactly what you had in mind."

(You hear me. You speak to me. Soon you'll see me. Perhaps I'm not what you had in mind either)

He nodded. Then he decided to direct the questions to the business at hand.

"How many are trapped here?"

(Many)

"Both men and women?"

(Yes)

"One of you is Sergeant Ridgely. One...I don't know your name, but your initials are G.E.G. I presume Kate is one. Who are the rest?"

(That you must find out) There was an obvious change in the voice. Excitement, perhaps?

"How?"

(Soon. You will know soon)

"Okay. So what do I do now?"

(That you already know)

"What? Click my heels together? There's no place like home."

He sensed rather than heard the laughter, four clear, merry chuckles. Then the voice of Kate returned.

(You have nothing to fear here, James)

"Maybe. But I've been down here quite a while. Gwen is liable to be pretty upset."

(You have nothing to fear here, James. You have but to believe)

"It won't be easy," he said, "but I'll try."

The group voice spoke. (We know. Have faith) Then, Kate alone once again: (Believe)

He knew what to do. He lay back down.

The light faded away, and so did his consciousness. When he woke, he was still in the new cave. But the small light was back, and he followed it back into the canyon, where once again it began to expand.

"Oh boy," he muttered, "Here we go again."

More gymnastics. But the light remained kind to him, depositing him once again on his feet in the terminal room.

He looked around. On the wall over the flowstone blocked canyon was something else he hadn't noticed before: a smoked inscription, reading simply THE END.

"The end," he smiled as the last of the light faded. "Hardly," he said, "but that'll be our little secret for a while, okay?" He turned and walked slowly out of the blackness and back into the relative normality of daylight.

Gwen arrived at the entrance, breathless, just as he was clicking the lock back into place. "Thank God!" she gasped. "You didn't go in, did you? Pip said you might've."

He looked slowly up from the lock. "No," he said after a moment of contemplation. "Thought about it, but thought better than usual, I guess."

"Good," she sighed. "I was..."

"Worried?"

"Worried. Don't be mad."

He smiled. "Never that mad."

"Eliza invited us to stay over for lunch," she said.

"You on a first name basis with them now, are you?" he asked with a grin.

"And why not?"

"Lunch?" He looked at his watch. Noon. By his nearest guess, he'd been in the cave only five minutes. "Imagine that. I could eat, I suppose."

"Great. I'm starved." They joined hands--which surprised and delighted him--and walked back to the house.

After a fine lunch of chicken sandwiches, home fries and home made pickles, Jeb sat back and patted his tummy and sighed. "Best lunch I've ate in a long time," he admitted.

"That's because you don't eat lunch," Gwen chided him. "Miss Eliza, tell this man he's not helping himself doing without lunch."

"Most important meal of the day," Eliza allowed. "Can't work the best part of the day without a good lunch."

Pip had an errand to run, but invited Jeb and Gwen to stay and explore the area. "Poke around as long as you like," he said. "I won't be back till after dark, so just check in with Eliza when you're ready to go. Your sickle's back behind the shed. I threw a tarp over it so's the neighbor's kids couldn't see it. You know how kids are about such things."

"Jeb is nearly thirty and still is like a damn kid about his bike," Gwen observed, grinning. "He hated to leave it here."

"It's like part of the family," said Jeb. "Thanks for taking care of it."

"Ain't nothin' but a thang," Pip replied. "By the by, did you get things sorted out, General?" He winked at Jeb.

"I did. It was very...revealing."

"What?" asked Gwen.

"Glad to hear it. Let me know what happens."

"You bet. See you." They shook hands.

"And bye to you, Miss Gwen. Don't let your...husband stray too damn far. You may never get him back. Know what I mean?"

"Yeah. He's so dear to me." She squeezed his hand tightly enough to make him wince.

"Glad to hear that too. Nice to feel wanted, isn't, General?"

"It is that," he said, rubbing his sore hand.

"Tell Eliza I'll be back afore supper." They exchanged goodbyes and he left in a brand new Chevy pickup.

"That's his toy," Gwen laughed. "Eliza said he was like a kid in a candy store when he went to pick it up. And don't be surprised if your bike has a few extra miles on it."

"So where do you want to hike? We've got all day."

"Well, Eliza showed me the way to the old Wilder homestead up on the ridge. They don't own that land, they just tenant-farm it for the last of little John Wilder's kin. I'd like to go up there and take a quick look."

"Okay."

They followed the path to the cemetery, where they spent a few minutes, then past it and into the woods that covered the top of the ridge which contained the cave, following the rudest of paths. It took them almost a mile to the very edge of the ridge, where they found the ruins of the homestead, and more.

"Look at this," Jeb exclaimed. "I didn't realize we were this high up."

"That must be Sinking Creek," said Gwen, pointing to a silvery ribbon in the distance. "We're not that high above it, really. Maybe 75-100 feet tops. But the view is nice."

"This would be a great place to look for a domepit. They tend to form around the edges of ridges. And we're pretty close to the sandstone-limestone contact point."

Gwen nodded. "We should check for sinkholes while we're up here. But let's go look at the house first."

What was left of the Wilder homestead lay sprawling not far from the edge of the ridge. There wasn't much to see, just a tumble of rotted logs and some hint of the stone foundation still standing, but just the size of the mess gave a hint of how grand the house had once been.

"To think this was once somebody's home," Gwen murmured. "You'd think someone might've tried to restore it, especially seeing as there's still some family members alive."

"I think maybe the Wilder family would just as soon forget this place entirely," Jeb mused. "I mean, remember what happened here. It's not exactly the Biltmore."

"I suppose you're right." They walked around the ruins, stopping from time to time to examine an artifact more closely. The strangest things caught their eyes: a tattered bit of drapery still hanging on a remnant of a rod, the gnawed leg of a chair or maybe a table, an incredibly tarnished doorknob, barely recognizable, still fastened to the door it once opened. "They had some money, that's for sure," Gwen noted. "That's brass, I bet."

"Wonder if there's any pictures of what this place looked like. I'd sure like to see one."

"Me too. I bet it was wonderful. Or at least until..."

Jeb nodded. That "until" cast a pall over his imaginings. In all likelihood this house had been the site of at least one murder, that of John Wilder. The other? Perhaps that of Kate Bellamy, and Jeb meant to find that out for sure. And soon.

"Here. What's this?"

Jeb, lost in his thoughts, lost track of Gwen. She had wandered toward the woods, where she stood next to a smaller ruin. He joined her in wondering. "A privy, maybe?"

"With stairs?"

He looked closer. She was right; a set of steps were cut first into the earth, and then into rock.

"You know," she said, "this might be a little cave. There's an outcropping on the other side of this pile. Maybe they used this place as a root cellar. Or a storm shelter. I imagine this place got rocked during storms."

"Seems likely enough. Want to try and clear it out? Maybe we can get in."

She shook her head violently. "No way, pal. I'm not touching anything around here, and I'm sure as shit not setting foot in another cave within a mile of this place."

"Okay, okay," he laughed. "But I would like to look around a little. I still think we could find a significant pit up here. The main cave runs not far away from here."

She squinted at him. "Jeb, we're at least half a mile from the end of the cave."

He opened his mouth, then shut it with a click. "Oops."

"Wishful thinking, maybe?"

"Maybe. Let's scope the edge of the ridge. Maybe we'll get lucky."

They split up and looked for the better part of two hours, without luck. Then, just as he was ready to call it a day, she called for him, in a place where he'd felt no hope for success, close to the house.

"You find something?" he asked, walking up to her.

"Maybe." She pointed to a shallow depression. "It's not much, but it's the best I could do. At least it's got an opening."

Indeed it did, a narrow one, true, but it had potential.

"Gwen," he said, "I believe you just discovered yourself a cave."

"Good. Leave it to Kate, okay? We didn't bring any lights anyway."

"I've got a flashlight back in the saddlebag on my bike. C'mon, Gwenny, in half an hour we can have this thing dug open and know what's there."

"No," she said firmly. "And that means you too. It's going on four now, and both of us have to be at work early tomorrow morning. And besides, we agreed, no caving today. If you want to come back later, that's up to you, but for today, I mean to keep you to your word. I feel bad enough about lying to Stevie about where we were going in the first place."

He looked at her forlornly, but she had her jaw set, and he conceded defeat. "But you can bet I'll be back," he said to the hole.

"That's fine," said Gwen, sounding a little relieved.

"Now let's hit the road. Maybe I'll let you buy me supper."

"I bought breakfast," he protested lightly.

"I drove."

"Okay. But I get to pick the place."

"That's fair, as long as it's Chinese."

And after they'd said thank you and good bye to Eliza, they left, Jeb happily astride his Yamaha after what had been a most interesting day indeed. The night would prove to be equally intriguing.

He stared at the object he'd pulled from his pants pocket.

He'd been reaching for his apartment key, which he kept on a separate key ring from his bike keys, and in the opposite pocket--an idiosyncrasy that drove Gwen mad--when he found something that wasn't supposed to be there.

It was a rock. Nothing special, just a rather plain looking pebble one might find in a river bed, polished smooth by the water. He couldn't remember having picked it up, let alone putting it in his pocket to take home. Still, he knew one of his faults was a streak of absentmindedness, so he carried it into the apartment and laid it on his dresser, in case he remembered later just what he'd taken it for.

This was a better night than most. Even before he'd been known about the cancer, he'd spent more than a few sleepless nights due to painful joints. The chemotherapy he'd taken the last week must've helped at least somewhat, as he was able to stretch without agony, a real treat. A long, hot soak in the tub was another treat, and then bed. 6 AM was all too close, and he knew just how lackluster his work performance had been last week. Lord knows, he thought, I'm not so valuable to the company that they'd think twice about firing me if I just all but go to hell work-wise.

The sheets were a few weeks past clean, meaning to him that they were now well broken in. Any other night he might lay awake and read for an hour or so, enjoying the coolness of the night and the pleasant softness of the bedding. And it wasn't late. But tonight, just hitting the sheets seemed to be enough to relax him beyond mere comfort. The obvious thing to do would be to switch off the light, close his eyes, and go to sleep. Tonight though, he skipped step one and moved straight to two and three.

He woke five hours later to a strange sound. It sounded like a cat was scratching on his door. Now, there were no pets allowed in the building, but several tenants--himself and Stevie especially--had been known to shelter a few strays, at least for a while. He figured one of his past guests had simply decided that one in the morning was a perfectly respectable time to pay him a visit. He also figured he'd pass on the offer. He closed his eyes and tried to drop back off.

There it was again. This time it sounded like the feline had somehow gained entry and was sharpening its claws on his wall. He sat up and looked toward the source of the sound...and felt the blood rush from his head. He shook his head and blinked.

It was still there. A name, scratched on the wall:

KATE

"Landlady's gonna pitch a fit when she sees this," he whispered, on the verge of shock. And when the scratching sounds resumed in the living room, he began to shake violently. No Kate, he thought wildly, I left you in the cave. You cannot be here.

He climbed unsteadily from bed and made his way into the living room, standing in the doorway. The sounds continued as he stood there, too shocked to switch on the light. Only when the scratching ceased did he dare to hit the switch, and when he did, he saw what she'd left him:

JAMES HELP KATE

The same message from Pip's kitchen, with one striking addition. Under the three words was another, in smaller, lower case letters:

plese

Misspelled, but the intent was clear. She had somehow managed to yet into his home, if for no other reason than to beg for his help.

It calmed him somewhat. It also touched him.

"I don't how you got here," he said quietly, with just a touch of shudder in his voice, wondering if she were even able to listen. "I don't really care either. I want to try to help you, I told you. Believe me. But listen, I can't have you scratching away at my walls every time you want to send me a message. If you're really here, you're welcome to stay if you like. It'd be nice to have company, even if I can't see it."

More sounds, this time knocks. On his front door. He ran to it and threw it open.

"God almighty!" Stevie gasped.

He sighed in relief. Part of him had actually been afraid of just what he'd find on the other side of the door. "Sorry," he said.

Her eyes were puffy. Clearly, she'd had a restless night. "I heard some funny noises, like rats in the walls, and I was scared. I...well, I wanted to know if you'd come over and sit with me for awhile."

"I don't think it was rats," he said.

"You were talking to somebody. Do you have a guest?"

Boy, he thought, if only you knew. "No," he said. "Just talking to myself. The curse of living alone, you know."

"Oh. So would you come over for a while? I don't like rats."

He was left without a clear excuse when the foreign noises resumed in his bedroom. Not scratching this time, more like things being moved on his dresser. "Okay," he sighed, "I'll be over in a minute. Just let me get a robe or something." He fervently hoped she wouldn't notice the new sounds.

She didn't seem to. "Thanks, Jebby," she said gratefully. "I'll leave the door open."

He walked back to the bedroom. "I sure hope you're not the jealous type, Kate," he whispered, ferreting in the closet for the robe he'd gotten as a Christmas present from a former girlfriend. He'd never worn a robe before, but this seemed like a good time to start. But before leaving, he checked the dresser to see what, if any, message might've been left.

Everything that had been sitting just so on top of the bureau had been shifted to the left side. And written in the two week's accumulation of dust were two words, widely separated, apparently to let him know that they weren't mean to be read as one sentence.

The first word was LOVE. He smiled. And the second word? A reply to his last remark, perhaps? NO, it read.

"Now that's a surprise. You love me, but you don't mind if I go off and spend the night with another woman. Where have you been all my life?"

Was that a giggle?

Impossible, he decided. He put on the robe and walked next door.

Stevie was sitting up in bed with a steaming cup of tea. "There's one for you on the nightstand," she said. "I know you like coffee, but I don't have instant, and I really needed something warm and soothing."

"Have you considered warm milk? It usually works for me."

"No milk," she said with a smile. "Since the last cat left, I've been trying to cut back on fat, and I just don't like lowfat milk."

"I can't stay long."

"Why not? We both have to be up at the same time, and I was supposed to cook breakfast this morning anyway."

"Well, it's not like I have far to go to my own bed, Steve."

She looked at him from beneath lowered brows. "I'm sorry I woke you."

"You didn't," he said with a smile. "I heard the noises too, but they didn't sound like rats to me." And there's another secret you'll be glad you don't know, he thought.

She patted the bed. "Come and sit with me. I won't bite, really."

He shook his head, if reluctantly. "I don't think that's a very good idea. Gwen would probably cut my nads off if she found out."

"Jebby, it's not like I'm asking you to have sex with me."

"But it might look that way. And I think too much of her to let that happen. You understand."

She nodded. "Then at least come and sit with me till I fall asleep."

"All right," he sighed. "I suppose you won't give me any peace unless I do." He sat beside her and only after some coaxing from her did he swing his feet onto the bed. She promptly snuggled up to him, and it felt disturbingly comfortable.

"Sorry," she said, not sounding very sorry at all. "It's just been so long since I've actually been in bed with a man, I wanted to remember what it was like."

"I know what you mean," he admitted, "but..."

"You mean you've been in bed with a man?"

He swatted her. "No, I mean it's been a long time since I've been in bed with a member of the opposite sex. So long I can hardly..."

She interrupted him with: "Jeb, do you think I'm pretty?"

"Well, of course I do."

"Really?"

"Certainly! You're gorgeous, in fact. Why?"

"I just want to know...if I offered myself to you--and I wasn't so connected to Gwen, would you take me?"

Connected. She made it sound so impersonal, as if she and Gwen were on the verge of a breakup.

"You would've woken me up to discuss this, rats or no rats, wouldn't you?"

She nodded. "It's not that I have any problems with Gwenny. I love her as much as always. It's just that, well, I'm not so committed to being gay as she is. I need a man every so often, and she knows that. And I want a child, Jeb."

"What about Kevin?" Young Mister Harmon would probably be thrilled him to know what was being said now.

"I only get to see Kevin every other weekend. I want a child here, with me. Gwen is open to the idea, but she wants to adapt, and I just can't see that being allowed in Kentucky. Besides, I want my own child. I want to go through the whole motherhood thing again. I can afford it now, and I'm mature enough to be able to handle it better."

She had been staring straight ahead at an M.C. Escher print he'd bought her for her birthday two years ago; now she turned to look at him, locking her eyes to his. "What I'm really asking for is a second chance. You don't get too many of those, and I want to do it right. And I want to start with somebody I love."

"Got anybody in mind?" he asked, a trifle nervously.

She didn't even blink. God, he thought, I wish she'd at least blink, if she doesn't bust out laughing.

"I'm not joking, if that's what you're thinking,'" she said softly, her lips perilously close to his ear. "And yes, I do have somebody in mind. You know I adore you, Jebby. Why, if it weren't for Gwen, you and I probably would have been married by now, don't you think?"

He had to admit that it was more than just a probability.

"And of course I know you think I'm pretty. You're polite as hell about it, but I catch you staring sometimes, especially when we bike and I'm in those spandex outfits. And you always blush! That kind of drives me nuts, it always has."

"I've caught you staring at me too," he pointed out, failing to mention that when he did catch her, rarely did she look away. And she never showed any signs of embarrassment.

And to his horror, he felt the blood rushing up his neck.

"Ooh, look at you!" she cooed. "Jebby, it's right. It has to be. Gwen would understand."

"Sure she would," he said, trying to shrug her off. "She'd say that, then she'd see to it I'd never reproduce again."

"She's not that way," she protested.

"Maybe not. But I love her, Stevie, and to do something like this behind her back is like betraying her friendship. I just won't do that." He beat his fists against his head in frustration. "God knows I would love to give you what you want--hell, what I want. But I can't. I feel guilty just being here with you like this."

She knew she was beaten, at least for tonight. "Listen, I'll work on her. If she says yes, would you...?"

"Only if she came to me and told me so."

"Good," she said with a satisfied smile. "I can live with that."

"It's settled then. I can go back to bed."

She held him gently. "I really wish you wouldn't. Rats do scare me something awful, mice too."

He gently untangled himself from her grasp and climbed from the bed. "If it makes you feel any better, I can tell you for a fact that what you heard was not a rat or a mouse or anything else that would hurt you. If I thought it was, believe me, I would stay. But since I know otherwise..."

"A good night kiss, at least?"

That was nonthreatening enough for him. He bent down and kissed her softly on the forehead. "Good night, Stevie. Sweet dreams."

"You can bet on that," she said as he left. Reluctantly.

It didn't take very long for her to fall asleep. As for Jeb, even turning off the lights and drawing the shade didn't help. A cold shower didn't help. Warm milk didn't help. He spent the rest of the sleepless morning reading and wondering about what he'd just passed up.

The next five weeks passed remarkably quickly. Even more remarkable for Jeb Stuart was the peace he was able to enjoy. Oh, there were the usual diversions, the weekly bike rides with Gwen and Stevie, a couple of typically grueling trips to Evert Hole, and Kevin's Pop Warner league football games. But work was quiet, and so was home, Kate apparently being content with leaving messages in the ever-present dust on his furniture, and once on the gas tank of his motorcycle. There were a few other minor manifestations, lights being turned on and off, doors opening and closing, and the occasional knock or two. It didn't take long for Jeb to become quite comfortable with the idea of having her around.

He talked to her too, a lot, as if she were really in the room with him. As far as he knew, she really was, and he treated the situation accordingly. Usually, when he asked her a question, she would somehow find a way to provide him with an answer.

It didn't seem incredible to him at all. After everything that had happened thus far, in fact, it seemed almost normal. He came home from work every day fully expecting a light to be on, and maybe the radio.

He kept all the radios in the house tuned to an all news station, but somewhere, sometime she apparently had developed a fondness for jazz, and inevitably he'd find the dial set to an FM jazz station. And that was fine with him too; he simply told her that he would appreciate it if she would confine her listening to the radio in the living room, and keep the volume down.

Did she travel with him? For a while he wondered, as she never seemed to manifest herself anywhere but the apartment and its environs. One night he was musing on this when something landed on the bed next to him. It was the rock he'd found in his pants pocket the night after the last trip to Wilder's, and it didn't take him long to make the connection. It had come from the cave; she'd put it in his pocket as a talisman of sorts. From then on he carried the rock with him everywhere, and sure enough, she began to make her presence felt at work, at Evert, and even at restaurants, where waitresses looked askance at him when he requested two place settings. But he found if he waited and watched patiently, one of "her" utensils would slowly rise from its place on the napkin and dart toward him playfully, till he smiled and nodded to acknowledge her presence. Only then would it return to its appointed spot.

His dreams of her were few, but they were growing in detail. Most common was one in which he found himself running with her, hand in hand, across a grassy meadow liberally peppered with wildflowers. Never did he get a clear picture of exactly what she looked like; it was more of an image of sorts that presented itself to him. All he could really be sure of was that she was tall, just a few inches shorter than his six foot two inch height, and her hair was long, straight, and black. Which, not coincidentally perhaps, was the exact description Pip had given him.

How much of it was real and how much was fantasy? He considered that too. He was not a loner by nature; he craved companionship. Might he be merely creating the psychic events himself? That sort of thing wasn't unheard of. Understandably, he'd done a lot of reading on the subject of ghosts and psychic abilities, and the conclusion he came to was, yes, it was possible he was at least in part responsible for some of the things that were happening. Mind power could be startling, and he knew this well enough, attributing the more exotic--and erotic--dreams to his own fevered subconscious, as well as some of the psychokinetic events. Yet in the end, he, like Pip and Eliza before him, simply chose to lay the credit for the greater part of the "visits" on Kate's shoulders. Not only was this convenient, but more than likely, he thought, it was true.

If only his body felt as whole as his mind did.

His body knew the truth, and it was making its point known to the mind gradually. The therapy was becoming less efficacious with every session it seemed, and he knew the only thing that would keep him alive was to increase the potency of the medicine and the amount of radiation he would have to absorb. And he wasn't so sure he wanted the inevitable side effects that would result. Were a few more months of life worth the agony he would have to endure?

Two separate events helped him decide.

It was a big day for Kevin Harmon, and it showed on his young face, which was a near double of his mother's: the same soft features, auburn hair and blue eyes, and even an identical spray of freckles over the bridge of his nose. All he lacked were the full lips--he had inherited his father's rather thin lips--but they hardly detracted from his appearance. He would be in later years much sought after by the young ladies. Today, he was grinning despite his mounting fatigue. He was riding his bicycle, a smaller version of his mother's, and he was taking his first ride up Five Mile Hill, along with his mother, Gwen, and most important to him, Jeb.

He looked up to the man on his left more than he did his own father. To him, Jeb was without fault, smart, fearless, and strong. And immortal. For though he was quite aware of the fact that people do die occasionally, he could not imagine being without Jeb. Couldn't Jeb run a hundred miles in a day? Cling to a thin nylon rope and descend without fear into bottomless pits? Ride his bicycle for hours at speeds faster than his friends' mopeds could travel? More, Jeb had crashed such a bicycle while fulfilling a dream of racing at the Major Taylor Velodrome up in Indianapolis. He went nearly head first into a wall only lightly padded with foam, and hadn't he gotten up in just a few seconds, laughing?

As his mother was inclined to say, Jeb could run farther, go faster, dive deeper and come up drier than anyone else she knew. Kevin believed Jeb could wrestle alligators if he wanted to. Nothing could hurt him. He was immortal, after all. And he was Kevin's best friend.

He looked tired today, though. Come to think of it, he had looked tired at the football game yesterday morning too. Maybe he wasn't getting enough sleep. He'd gotten thinner too-- Mom had said so earlier, just before they'd left the apartment. Jeb had joked that he was more aerodynamic that way, and he'd laughed. Mom and Gwen had laughed too, but Kevin noticed a funny look on Gwenny's face, like she thought something might be wrong. Still, it had disappeared quickly, and apart from sounding very winded, Jeb was riding well enough. And when they reached the top of the hill, his minor worries were lost in the view, and his pride in what was a major accomplishment.

Jeb gave it proper note. "Congratulations, Hammer!" he said breathlessly, swatting Kevin on the back. "You have just climbed the toughest hill in Jefferson County. I'm proud of you."

"You don't even look tired," said his Mother. "Great job, son."

Gwen smiled at him, high praise from her, then she pointed at Jeb and said, "You and me need to talk." She pointed to the lookout. "Over there, right now." Then, to his mother, "Alone." And the two of them rode over to the Overlook, while he and his mother waited, puzzled.

His ears were keen. From quite a ways away he heard her ask him, "Are you sure you're okay?" and his reply, "I'm fine." But now Kevin's earlier doubts had been revived. Something was wrong with Jeb. Maybe he was sick. It would explain a lot, that was for sure. But why would he keep it a secret?

Right now Jeb was shaking his head and looked angry. Something Gwen said had made him mad. "They're fighting," he said to his mother.

"So they are," she said. "Hey you two, act civilized. You're setting an awful example for Kevin."

"Is that his name?" Jeb said, pedaling back over to join them, a very upset looking Gwen in tow. "I thought his name was Lance. Lance Armstrong."

"Don't be silly," his mother laughed. "He's only ten."

"Lance was ten once too," Jeb said seriously. "Hammer, you keep climbing like you did today, and one day you might be in Le Tour de France with the man himself. Maybe even riding with him on the Postal Service team."

"Do you really think so?" Kevin asked. He was more than prepared to believe such a dream could come true.

"My Dad always said I'd be the first woman President," Gwen said.

"Could still happen," his mother said. "If Reagan and Bush accomplished anything, they proved conclusively that anyone really can grow up and be President."

"I would settle for a new set of lungs," Jeb said.

"It's the cigarettes," his mother scolded. "You ought to know better."

"Jeb smokes?" Kevin gasped.

"Just for a while," Jeb said, adding, "and I better not ever hear that you tried it. It's nasty, and you'll never get up Alpe de Huez with black lungs."

"Never," he promised.

"Good," said Jeb. "Now I think it's time for what we really came here for. You ready, Killer?"

He was. "No brakes." Just like Jeb.

"Oh no you don't," his mother warned. "Jeb, what have you been filling his head with? Kevin, I want you to keep your hands on the brake levers all the way down, understand?"

"She's right, Hammer," said Jeb. "Use 'em if you get scared, and don't feel sorry if you do. Your Mom and Auntie Gwen do all the time."

"Auntie Gwen wasn't born with an extra Y chromosome," said Gwen.

"What's a chromosome?" Kevin asked.

"Save genetics for High School," said his mother.

"What's genetics?"

"Never mind," she sighed. "Maybe Uncle Jeb will tell you all about them later."

"Providing he survives this run," Gwen snapped. "See, what Uncle Jeb doesn't want me to tell you..."

"NO!" Jeb shouted.

"...is that he's...not feeling very well today, and it's probably not a very good idea for him to go thundering down the hill like a maniac, like he usually does. But because he's not particularly bright, he's gonna go ahead and let us watch him smash himself into guava jelly."

"I thought you were looking a little pale," said his mother. "Jeb, are you sure you'll be okay?"

"I will be fine," Jeb insisted.

"I don't carry a spatula in my repair kit," Gwen persisted. "You think a tire tool will scrape enough of you off the road to load into the meat wagon?"

"Stop that," he said. "Right now. I mean it."

His jaw was set, and Kevin knew his mind was probably made up. But he put his opinion in anyway, saying, "We can come back another day, Jeb, when you're feeling better. I know I can get to the top now, and that's the hard part anyway."

"But going down is the fun part," Jeb said softly.

"So we can come back. I can wait."

Jeb's eyes closed and stayed that way for a long time.

"Please, Jeb," Gwen said. "You know I only want...

"...to help," said Jeb. "I know. I love you Gwen, and I mean that."

That's a funny thing to say, Kevin thought.

"What is going on here?" his mother asked, sounding worried. "'What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Gwen said. "Not a thing except for the fact that I haven't eaten yet today. Let's stop by Angilo's on the way home and chow on some pizza."

"Pizza!" Kevin cheered. "Yeah! Let's go!"

They all looked at Jeb. He smiled. "Yeah, I suppose I could go for a slice or two."

Gwen looked relieved. "Then let's go. Steve and I will lead."

So they left the overlook. To Kevin, it seemed that Gwen was keeping the pace awfully slow, barely over twenty on his speedometer. He was on the brakes an awful lot, that was for sure. He wondered how long it would be before he would be able to really thunder down the hill, like Jeb had talked about. And he wondered why Jeb, who usually looked so happy on his bike, now looked so sad.

Angilo's was a just a short ride from the bottom of the hill. They locked their bikes together, walked in and were seated, then Jeb excused himself to use the washroom. He really just wanted to comb his hair--like most of the Stuart males, he was possessed of a head of thick, light brown hair, and while he was hardly vain about it, he at least liked to keep it in control. Usually a hand run through it would do, but the helmet and the exertion of the hill climb had left it sweaty and matted, and he definitely wanted to run a comb through it before he ate.

He had not noticed the hairs that wafted from the helmet when he removed it. He could not miss the hair that choked the comb after only a single pass.

My God, he thought, my hair is falling out. It's happening.

He met Gwen on his way out of the washroom. She was on her way in. "Ye Gods," she gasped in mock horror. "I thought you were gonna comb your hair. You're an unholy mess, Jeb."

"I'm losing my hair," he said numbly.

She understood immediately. "A little, or a lot?"

The comb was still in his hand. He handed it to her. "I never noticed it before just now."

She looked at the comb, then back up at him. His eyes were filling with tears. She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the men's room door. "In here, quick," she said. "You can't let Kevin see you like this."

He followed and she locked the door. When he heard the latch go home, he leaned back against the wall and lost control.

She had never seen him cry before. Ever. It was not something she cared to watch, either.

"Jeb," she said, trying to sound consoling, "Jeb, it's all right. It's only hair. You knew it was gonna happen."

"It's not working," he said, his voice barely a wheeze.

She misunderstood. "You knew it, Jeb, don't fib. I'm not trying to pump you. It's just something you're gonna have to live with."

"That's not it, Gwenny," he whispered hoarsely. "The therapy isn't working."

Her blood turned to ice. "How do you know?"

"I can feel it. I just had a session a week ago and I can still feel it. It's eating me up inside. Doc warned me it might happen, as far along as I was it was impossible to tell if anything he could do would work. It was just a small chance, but it was a chance..."

And the tears began again.

How long, she wondered. How long has he been holding it all back? Well, he's accepted it now. Finally.

She wanted with all her heart to take him in her arms, to hold him and tell him things would be all right, that she would be there with him till the end, whenever it might come, to dry his eyes, that he was scaring her like he would surely scare Kevin and Stevie.

Stevie. That was the reason she didn't move. This was Stevie's place, not her's. And that made Gwen Chaney most angry indeed, despite her pain. "Tell her," she said. "You have to. I can't bear the weight alone any more than you can."

"I can't."

"Tell her or I will."

"No. I will not see her hurt."

Her face contorted with rage. "But it's okay to hurt me, right? No way, Jeb. I won't let you do that to me. You oughta know better."

"Not now," he pleaded. "Not around Kevin."

"He'll have to know too."

"Please."

She stared at him fiercely. He shrank from that gaze for the first time in her memory. And she felt pity, something foreign but at least familiar. "One week," she said. "And only because I love you like a brother." She rethought that. "Hell, I probably wouldn't do this for my brother. But I do love you, and you're right, now isn't the best time. And I understand, it'll take time for you to work up the courage. One week. Or I'll tell her, I swear it. And you know it'll hurt her worse if she hears it from me."

"I will," he said gratefully.

"Promise me."

"I promise."

"Good. Now clean yourself up. Can't let Steve and Kevin see you've been crying." She stormed purposefully from the washroom, startling a man who was waiting outside.

"Hey!" he said. "You were in the wrong rest room!"

"Well no shit," she replied, and when he looked ready to lash back, she added, "Something stuck in your craw, redneck?" And she fixed him with the stony gaze she was sure was frozen permanently on her pretty features.

The man shook his head rapidly after barely a second's thought.

"Good. Then tie a knot in it. The rest room is occupied, and it probably will be for quite a while." She was right, too. He wound up relieving himself behind the building.

So Jeb made his decision to discontinue the therapy.

Doctor Harrison Singh was not best pleased. "You realize of course that the disease will accelerate," he said, matter-of-factly. "Your only hope of survival is to continue the treatments, Mr. Stuart. I cannot be held responsible if you decline them."

"Who's going to hold you responsible?" Jeb asked. "Not me."

"It is tantamount to suicide. I will have to release you from my care."

Jeb shrugged. "That's okay. I won't be needing your services much longer anyway, right? How long do you figure? A month? Two?"

"It depends. It could be less. It certainly will not be more."

"Then that's it. I can't live like this anymore. The drugs and radiation aren't helping, and they're not letting me function like I'm accustomed to. So what's the point?"

Harrison Singh had seen many such cases since he'd emigrated from his native Pakistan. And despite his anger at seeing such a strong, vital young man give in as Jeb was, he understood. "It is not easy," he said. "I have been through this before, many times. Sometimes there are miracles, Mr. Stuart. Do you believe in God?"

"I believe in life. And death. And that there's something that comes after. What that is and who made it all, I have no idea."

"It is not too late to find out. In the meantime, I would like for you to at least remain under my observation. At your convenience, of course."

Jeb smiled wearily. "Thank you," he said. "You don't know how much that means to me." He held out his hand, and the little doctor shook it warmly.

"Ah, Mr. Stuart," he said, "I suspect I do."

The work week passed. And Jeb was still trying to figure out how to tell Stevie what she needed so desperately to know.

Not that she hadn't already figured out that something was very, very wrong. She certainly wasn't blind, and the strained nature of the meal at Angilo's five days before hadn't passed by her unnoticed. He was thankful that at least she had kept her thoughts to herself. Lord knows, he thought, she certainly wasn't beyond causing a scene, even in front of Kevin.

And Kevin. There was Kevin to think about. How would he break the news to Kevin?

But there were other concerns. He dearly wanted to continue working, but that was becoming difficult. This morning he hadn't wanted to get out of bed at all. He managed, but another situation had come up at work--the company's group insurer had called Eric to inquire about Jeb's mounting medical bills and his work status. Eric told them he'd call back, and brought Jeb into the office to discuss the matter. It took some fast talking to get out of there, the situation being made all the more difficult by Stevie's presence in the next room, undoubtedly listening with much curiosity.

He lay in bed, feeling miserable. He was supposed to lead a trip into Evert in the morning, and he was, on top of everything else, being forced to evaluate his own fitness as a caver. Could he make it in and out without compromising the party?

He decided he could. It would be a matter of moving just quickly enough to keep warm in the wet, muddy cave, and just slowly enough to conserve energy for the return trip and the climb out of the 110 foot entrance drop. If he learned anything in ultra running, it was to be conservative with energy expenditure.

But it would be his last cave trip.

"I've done enough,"' he said aloud. "Fourteen miles of survey in three years is a good piece of work, wouldn't you say, Kate?"

She offered no reply.

"Besides," he added, "I'm tired of it all. Best to leave it to someone else. Maybe to Chris, if he could stand the vertical work. Or Marv Alexander. He seems to like the cave well enough, even if he lets White Castle farts constantly."

Kate indicated no preference.

"I'm boring you. I'm sorry. Guess I got used to you being so chatty lately. I reckon maybe you have to sleep too."

A knock on the headboard of the bed let him know that she was not only awake, but very close too. "God," he sighed, "I wish I could be with you right now, Kate. I need you."

(Then come to me)

He stiffened, but only partially out of shock. With all he'd experienced so far, this was still new--she had never spoken to him outside of a dream before. "How?" he asked.

(You know. Dream)

"I try and try and all I get is the same thing--the meadows. And you never talk to me there."

(Then don't try. And maybe you'll learn to listen)

So that's what he tried--not trying. He simply lay back, closed his eyes and relaxed, concentrating on her words: learn to listen. Learn to listen.

Learn to listen.

"It isn't easy," she said, "Is it?"

"Huh?" He opened his eyes with a start and found himself lying in the meadow, looking up at..."Kate?"

She smiled. "Part of what you see is me. Part isn't. I reckon I look prettier right now than I really am."

And she was very pretty indeed. She was as tall as he had originally envisioned, with a pale, angular face framed by long, flowing ebony tresses. Her eyes were a rather ordinary shade of brown, but they were large and wide, searching his own. And her smiling lips were large and inviting.

"Wow," he said.

"Do I look that good?" she asked, amused.

"Oh, you might say that. You might at that." He stood and faced her. "It's nice to meet a beautiful woman I don't have to look down two feet at."

"I was tall," she said reflectively. "That much I remember. But it was so long ago. And there's not a looking glass to be found here."

"You're beautiful. Can I..."

"Touch me? I should hope so."

He did, tentatively, with just the tips of his fingers.

She was warm. A good sign, he thought.

"I'm not dead," she chuckled, "at least not in the way you would consider it. I'm just...between here and there, as it were."

"Here meaning earth?"

"As you wish, if it makes things easier for you to understand."

"Uh huh. And there is...heaven?"

"As you wish," she laughed. "What do you want it to be?"

His fingers traced the path of her cheekbones. "Right here is just fine, so long as you're here too."

She closed her eyes and smiled wistfully. "Poor Stephanie. If only she knew what she's missing. And so close too. A mixed blessing. At least she won't be so upset when you leave."

"And when will that be?"

"Sooner than yesterday, and not as soon as tomorrow. Be patient."

He took his hands from her face. "There's a problem. I'm not sure just how many tomorrows I have."

She took his hands, kissed them, and placed them back on her face.

"You," she whispered, "have an eternity of tomorrows, here in these meadows of forever. With me. If you wish."

"You speak eloquently for an 1800s woman. But I like what you're saying."

Again the laughter, clear and wonderful. "I am no more an 1800s woman than you are a 1990s man. We are old souls, you and I. Only the bodies we occupy are young. You will learn as time goes by. Which here, is very, very slowly."

"I want to learn."

"You listen. You learn. Not a small part of it will be unpleasant, at least until you actually arrive here. Then..." She sighed. "But let's allow that to come as it will. You have much to face yet, and it will be difficult for you in your present condition."

She took his hands in hers again. "As you've guessed, there are three souls trapped here. I am not so much trapped as I am condemned to watch the trapped. And it is a fate you would not wish on your worst enemy, James."

"Why do you call me James?"

"It is your name, isn't it?"

"Well, yes."

"And James is the name of a saint. Jeb is the name of a rebel general, and I had no time for Confederates, myself. Such a brutal war, so much killing, over such pitiful reasons. I saw it all, you know. Come be with me and you can learn the history of the world from people who lived it."

"How will I know what to do?"

She smiled. "You will. Let this do for now: patience will save you, me, and three other helpless innocents. Patience. And I tell you, that is all the advice I can give you, for I'm bound to tell no more by forces beyond your earthly comprehension."

"God?"

"As you wish." And ever so slowly, she moved her face closer to his, till he could feel her breath, warm and sweet, caressing his face tenderly like an embrace. "Don't be sad for what you'll be leaving behind. In time we all come here; you'll see your friends and family again. Reconcile yourself to passing. You think of it as giving up; I tell you it is nothing of the sort. My only regret for you now is the bodily pain you have felt--and will feel--and that I could not have talked to you like this sooner. But patience, my love. It will serve you well, as it has me. And I will do all I can to ease your pain."

He felt transfixed by her. He had to struggle to get the word out: "How?"

"With that which is much spoken of but cannot be truly felt on earth."

He closed his eyes as her lips gently pressed against his.

"And I believe you know of it. And what you do not know, be sure I will teach you."

She kissed him again, firmer now, her tongue darting from between her lips, teasing his, exploring like her hands were, enjoying giving him the sensation as much as he was enjoying receiving it. And then her hands were on his shoulders, a touch he was familiar with, urging him down, down onto the long grass of the meadow, where they rolled, a tangled knot of superhuman on the edge of ecstacy.

But the fulfillment would have to wait. "It is not for now," she said simply.

"I was afraid of that," he sighed.

"Patience," she laughed. "The time will come, if you but believe. For now, lie with me and I will soothe your earthly pains. My ability is limited, but I have enough to share."

And she began to merge with him.

"Hey," he cried softly, "what..."

The sensation overwhelmed him. It was a feeling of unlimited strength and wisdom, not necessarily of her, but certainly within her. It was as if she contained a vast well, a hidden resource of power, and she was transferring some of it into his own depleted chambers.

And she was back in his mind. (I have shared this with you before. Remember?)

"Yes. What is it?"

(Simply energy. All things, living or otherwise, possess it to some degree. To you it will feel as strength, but beware: it's a deception. Your body will wear as it has, but your mind will not accept it. And it will not last indefinitely. You plan exertion in the morning. That should be fine, but mind that you maintain your thoughtful plan of caution. Do not listen to your body. You must control yourself. Remember this, because it's important: I can't do this for you everyday. You must use what I give you today wisely)

The infusive feeling ended as she detached herself from him. He smiled at her, a warm glow permeating his body. "It's wonderful," he sighed. "Like..."

She giggled, and kissed him. "It is, isn't it?"

"Better. It would mean depopulation if the human race were to find out about it."

"But James, people do it all the time. You exchange energy constantly with those you love, you just don't realize it. Someday perhaps one inspired person will document the process. I'm sure it's being researched even as we speak."

"Imagine the experiments."

"I wouldn't mind participating...so long as it was with you. Oh James, if only you could know what I have seen within you. Such wonders! Maybe you would understand the way I feel. Maybe you would understand yourself--love yourself--more than you ever have, or could. More than any human companion ever could. I pity you that way, but you'll know soon enough." She anticipated his next query and silenced it with a kiss. "Patience. Always patience. The wonders you'll see..."

He returned the favor, kissing her. "Enough!" he said. "I'll be patient."

"Good. Then lie with me. It will have to satisfy me till we finally are together." So they lay in the meadow, breathing the scents of the flowers and of each other, filling their senses for the difficult days to come. And when Jeb finally awoke, back in his own bed, he lay there for a long time, still enjoying the glow, still full of the joy and wonder of Kate.

"Okay," Jeb said, "on rope."

"Oy, do it, baby," said Marv Alexander as he always did at the start of a descent.

Jeb walked backward off the lip of the pit and hung free from his harness, enjoying the feeling of freedom for an extra instant or two before finally untying the rappel rack and beginning the long, slow drop.

The rope slid smoothly through the aluminum bars that rode on the U-shaped steel rack. The rack was in turn attached to his seat harness by a steel snaplink, a carabiner. He controlled the speed of the descent by lifting the trailing rope with his right hand. This action forced the bars of the rack to slide together, creating more friction that would slow or even stop him if he wished. To speed up he would lower the rope, or spread the bars with his left hand, which he usually rested lightly on the rack.

Evert Hole had once been a popular "yo-yo" pit for Louisville area pit plungers. It wasn't a particularly impressive drop as pits go, being rather narrow and undecorated. But it was the longest uninterrupted descent in the tri-county cave area by far, and the drop was free of the wall, as most rappellers preferred. It wasn't unusual to find at least four or five cavers at the pit every weekend.

Then came Jeb. As a diehard "vertical caver" it was natural that he made for Evert right away, and he spent many a weekend blissfully rappelling and climbing, rappelling and climbing, sometimes as many as seven or eight passes in a single day.

Like many others, he wondered if there might be more cave beneath the collapse at the bottom of the pit. Like a few others, he probed the pile. But his work was a bit more inspired than the rest, and after two years of persistent, patient searching he managed to worm his way into a low, wet crawlway that quickly branched into a series of interconnected tubes. The passages were rarely of any great size, but they were extensive, and before long he found himself unable to cope with the length of the rapidly expanding cavern. And thus began his long and sometimes aggravating association with the Ohio Valley Speleological Survey.

But the years had been productive and safe ones. Despite the cave's obvious penchant for flooding, only one team had ever been trapped for any length of time, and the rescue had been prompt and completely clandestine. And Jeb was satisfied with the work. The cave map had been his personal project and was a thing of beauty, with each level of the cave done in different colors of ink, and a vellum overlay showing the cave's relations to surface features. With this tool the survey team had located a likely spot to dig for a new entrance, which would open to exploration a new segment of passages which had before only been accessible by a ten hour, five mile one way trip. Evert Hole was on the verge of leaping into national significance.

But Jeb Stuart, who had started it all, would not be there when the breakthrough finally occurred. It was only appropriate, then, that his last trip would be the one on which a stake would be placed at the site where the entrance tunnel should intersect the cave.

He'd tossed that stake into his pack unceremoniously just prior to beginning his rappel. Not much of a monument to my caving career, he thought glumly, slowing his descent and touching down gently on top of the talus pile. He disconnected from the rope and clambered to the bottom of the pile, to his original dig site, where they'd recently put in a gate. It was a safeguard more than anything, to keep the curious clear of a cave they probably wouldn't be able to handle. He'd argued against it, saying the entrance crawl itself would deter more explorers than any gate, but here the gate lay. It's going to outlast me, he thought. And he smiled and unlocked it, pausing only to shout upward, "Off rope!" before wallowing into the watercourse.

He stopped in the first room, thirty feet in, to pull his knee pads from his pack and strap them on. He'd certainly gone through some knee pads in three years in Evert, five pairs, to his best recollection. They weren't supposed to wear so quickly, but then he did move faster than most cave crawlers might.

But not today.

He felt good. Great, in fact, ready to do anything, up to and probably including running an ultra. But he remembered. And in case he forgot, Kate's rock lay nestled deep within his pack, and he was sure she'd be more than ready to remind him in her own special way. He didn't want to find out what she might do either.

The next stop for him would be room two, another thousand feet in and the only room in this section of the cave large enough to hold four people at once. Usually they would enter the cave staggered a few minutes apart, so as not to be running into one another, waiting for the next person in the party in each room along the way. Today though, Jeb wanted the time alone to savor the cave's hidden delights. And well hidden they were too, mostly psychological; the lure of the unknown, the ever present threat of danger from floodwaters, and Jeb's own favorite: the pitting of mortals against immortal nature. A clichŽ? Perhaps. It was also true.

He reached Room Two in record time and pulled a cigarette from the pack he'd stashed in his helmet, the only place he'd found where they stayed relatively dry. He lit it, took a pull, and switched off his light.

"In love there is no darkness," he said. "Check this out, Kate."

But the darkness here was familiar, and he'd grown to love it. The sounds of water dripping from the ceiling and flowing along the floor, of the soft breeze blowing in the crawlway ahead, they were familiar, even friendly. He'd never really been scared in a cave until he'd gone to Wilder, and even that had passed. At times he felt he was more comfortable underground than above.

"Are there caves in heaven, Kate?" he wondered aloud. "I hope so. Can you imagine making love in a place like this?"

She couldn't, if her silence was any indication.

"Yeah, I reckon I'd prefer the meadow too. In the sunshine."

He'd recently sat down before his computer and calculated the total time he'd spent underground in the past ten years. It turned out that in over five hundred separate trips, he'd spent the equivalent of over six months underground. No wonder it all seemed so familiar.

This trip would take well over twenty hours in itself. He would have plenty of time to reminisce along the way, and the look of pain on his face when he drove the marker stake into the dry earth in the Target Room was very real. It felt as though he were pounding that stake into his own heart.

"Good lord, Stuart," said George English. "You hurt yourself or something?"

"Yeah George," said Jeb, "I did."

English was concerned for a moment. He didn't like Jeb, never had, but an injured caver so deep in Evert Hole would pose more than just a few problems.

Then he saw the drop rolling down his old nemesis' cheek. And he knew it wasn't sweat. Differences aside, Jeb recognized English as his heir apparent to the Evert Hole project, and as such he'd told him of his situation.

"Hard to give it up, isn't it?"

Jeb looked up at English. Their eyes met, and for just that moment, they understood each other.

"It's the hardest thing I've ever had to do," Jeb said softly.

Climbing out was agonizing. Jeb had purposely lagged behind, so as to be the last one out. Clicking the lock shut was bad enough, but he felt more empty with every foot of the ascent.

He stopped climbing for a moment and rested, trying to absorb as much of the sensation as he could. The memories would have to last a long, long time. When he came over the lip of the drop, he was crying again.

Marv Alexander gave him a hand up. "You okay, Jeb?" he asked. It had been a longer trip than had been expected, and the sun was rising on what would be a beautiful early winter Sunday morning. The glow of the sunrise made Jeb's tear streaked face glisten.

"Nope," Jeb said. "And I don't think I will be for awhile."

"Maybe this'll help," Marv said, handing him a cold beer.

"Can't hurt." He shrugged out of his harnesses, then stunned Alexander and three other members of the party by picking up the expensive, custom made harnesses, turning around, and tossing them into the depths of Evert Hole. He looked around at the startled faces, then at the one that didn't look surprised, that of George English, the only person in the club besides Gwen Jeb had told of his intention to quit.

Gwen hadn't wanted to take charge of the survey. English hadn't either, but there really wasn't anyone else, Jeb had explained, no one he really trusted would be able to do the work properly. So the torch had been passed, and Jeb's disposal of his climbing gear was his symbolic way of permanently separating himself from the project. So once again Jeb Stuart and George English locked eyes, and English nodded. Later, he would return to the pit and retrieve the gear, as Jeb had requested. It would be donated to the club. But it would never be used again.

"That's it," Jeb said simply, the tears drying already. "I'm finished."

"You're a nut, Jebbo," said Marv.

"But a content nut. C'mon. I'll let you buy me another beer."

They left the cave. He did not look back.

Book Two: "Trust, Gwen"

The old clock atop the former courthouse struck hour as Jeb removed his helmet. He looked up at the weathered dial and its roman numerals and smiled. Many was the time he'd come out of some Breckinridge County cave to hear the bell ringing, reminding him to check his watch, to reset it, because the courthouse clock was never, ever wrong. Or at least it hadn't been in his memory.

The new County Government Complex had given him some worries. He'd wondered if the County would really consider knocking the old courthouse down. In Hardinsburg the square was still prime real estate, what with the nearest shopping center of any great size being in Elizabethtown, nearly an hour away and still considered too remote for most of the locals. But the state had said no, the courthouse was old enough to be a landmark, and surprisingly, the county decided to relocate its tiny library into the building, and there was already a sign, freshly painted, pounded into the lawn along the walk up to the front door, proudly declaring this to be the new Breckinridge County Public Library. He strolled up that walk, already familiar with the place. It would be perfect, he thought. Maybe politicians could make a good decision every now and again.

He pulled on the huge oak door, and found it locked. It came as no great surprise--it was Sunday, after all, and the library wasn't officially open yet anyway. But he had made prior arrangement with the librarian, so he knocked loudly. It was only a moment before he heard the click of the lock, and the door opened to him. Holding it was a tall, heavy man with a young face, bright eyes, and grey hair, the latter obviously premature. "Can I help you?" the man asked politely.

"Well, yeah," Jeb said. "I'm Jeb Stuart. I called yesterday."

"Oh, right." The man checked his watch absently. "Yes, you were supposed to come by at one, I remember now. Sorry. I would've left the door open if I could've remembered, but I have so much work to do here I just get caught up in it, I'm afraid." He stepped aside and ushered Jeb in. "Do come in. Only goes to show, I was just getting ready to close the door on you." He held out his hand. "Charles Jeffers. Please don't call me Charlie. Everybody else does and I hate it. Sounds too provincial for a city boy."

"Just plain Jeb is fine with me." He shook Jeffers' hand. "Old Pip calls me General."

"Pip is a character, isn't he," Jeffers laughed. "But still very together for a man of his age. I should be so sane. Taking on something like this isn't what I had in mind when I took this job."

"I didn't think it would be so tough," said Jeb. "The old library never had many books."

"It didn't. But along with the grants for the building renovation came money for more, and everybody in the county donated at least four or five, it seemed. Heck, the cave stuff I snagged from the University will take up an entire shelf."

"You interested in caves?"

"Not a bit. But seeing as there's so many around here, I figured it would be right to have a cave collection too. It's the third largest collection we have right now, after the Wilder stuff, and of course the genealogical files. And along with all this I have a ton of new books to catalog, and only volunteer help three times a week. But I am making some progress."

Jeb looked around. The main floor--of four--was a mess.

"Oh, I know it doesn't look like much has been done. Most of the work I did at the start was the really old stuff, the stuff that couldn't wait. I had the county buy us some of the fancy vacuum files for the old material, like the stuff you'll be wanting to see. And when you see where I had to put them, you'll understand."

"Okay. So where do I have to go?"

Jeffers pointed down.

"Downstairs. Okay, I know the way. I had to pay a ticket or two here."

"Lower. In the basement."

"Basement? In the old jail?"

Jeffers grinned and nodded. "Lots of people round here still believe in old Kate. They didn't take too kindly to us having to spend so much money on preserving her history, either, but the Governor is a bit of a paranormal buff. They make me keep the stuff under lock and key. They agree it's valuable, they just don't agree to the point where they'll agree to let me keep it up here where it'll be drier. Make sense to you?"

"Not much about the whole Wilder story does. That's why I'm here."

"Do you believe in her?" Jeffers asked, eyeing him curiously.

"Do you?"

He shrugged. "Never saw her. Looked a couple of times."

"You're avoiding the question."

"So? I asked you first anyway. Do you believe in her?"

Jeb smiled. "I surely do."

Jeffers nodded and returned the smile. "Me too. Just because I couldn't see her doesn't mean she didn't let me know she was around." He paused, then added, "You ever see her?"

He risked the truth. "Many times."

"Then you have to fill out a form for me. It'll be part of the permanent collection."

"When my work's done, I promise you I'll write you a book."

"Great. Here's the keys; I'm sure you'll be able to guess which one opens the door."

Jeb did. It was a skeleton key, much larger than the rest of the keys on the ring, and very old. "Don't tell me you've got this stuff in a cell."

"Two cells. The key opens both doors. There's a desk and a reading lamp in one. I'll come down and get you when I'm ready to leave, which should be round about four."

"Okay. And thanks for the help." He turned and headed for the stairs, and walked down, down, and down into the past.

The jail was not hard to find. It was the only thing on the lowest level of the building, and seeing it, Jeb was not surprised to recall the proud boast of the county fathers that no one had ever escaped from their jail. How? You couldn't tunnel through solid bedrock, and there was but one door, the one he stood before, and it was more than just solid. It looked impenetrable. If the lock ever rusts shut, he thought, they'll have to blast this thing open.

A new sign hung on the door. It read, in old English style script, Wilder Collection. Authorized Persons Only. "Well," he murmured, "if I'm not authorized, I don't know who is." He unlocked the door, relieved to find the lock in good condition, then opened the door and looked in.

It didn't look like a particularly friendly place, especially with the lights off. He flipped the light switch on and things didn't get much better. The walls were gray. The paint was peeling, lending a surreal, not-quite-solid air to the scene. To enter the jail would be like walking into a haunted house, one populated by ghosts less friendly than Kate, the walls of which were foul with cobwebs and dust. God only knew what manner of horrors could be lurking in such a place.

To his surprise, he found himself frightened. An irrational fear perhaps, but all too real.

I really don't want to go in there, he thought.

He put his hand in his pocket; felt the comforting presence of Kate's stone. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he made a wish.

And then she was there. He felt her warm hand on his shoulder. It did not push him; the feeling was one of reassurance, of support. Do as you will, she seemed to be saying, I will be with you either way.

He took a deep breath, and a tentative step.

The hand, blessedly, remained.

On second thought the sensation was not unlike that he experienced on entering a cave. The same innate claustrophobic surge gripped him for a moment, the feeling of the walls closing in on him, then it was gone, washed away in a tide of adrenalin. He sniffed the air, dank and sweet like that of a cave, familiar and inviting. There was even a hint of a draft wafting through the corridor, completing the effect. He drew himself up straighter and walked on.

She seemed to sense he felt better. The hand withdrew.

"Thanks," he whispered.

The light hanging above did little to dispel the gloom, but he could see at least well enough to discern another sign, on a post in the center of the narrow hallway, reading: "Wilder Collection, Cells 7-8." He walked along till he reached Cell 7, and peered in.

He could just barely make out a desk resting against one graffiti covered wall of the cell. "Looks like a good place to start," he murmured, for self assurance if nothing else. He opened the cell door with the same skeleton key--appropriate, he thought. What am I looking for here, if not skeletons in the Wilder family closet?

A cord hung dimly in front of him. He pulled it, and the cell became brilliant with a welcome light, still not very bright, it occurred to him, but more than enough for him to see what he was doing. There was an old reading lamp on the desk; he turned it on. The desk was a relic as well, its varnish peeling virtually everywhere he looked, but it appeared sturdy enough. The accompanying chair matched the desk in age, but it looked comfortable. He tested it and found it supported him adequately. That fear assuaged, he turned his mind to the more important furnishing in the cell, the file cabinet.

It was big. Very big. How in God's name did they get this thing down here? he wondered. Must've taken every ounce of willpower Jeffers possessed just to con his volunteers to bring it down the stairs, let alone in here.

The cabinet possessed a large outer door, with a handle like that of the walk-in freezers at the grocery store he'd worked in so many years ago. There was no lock, Jeffers obviously deciding the jail locks and the eerieness of the setting were deterrent enough.

Jeb pulled up on the handle. There was a whoosh of air rushing into a vacuum, and a small cloud of dust billowed at his feet. A light came on inside the cabinet, revealing four large drawers. And there's another cabinet just like this one, he thought. This would not be a one day task, clearly. He pulled the top drawer out, then, working a lever on one of the rails, removed the drawer from the cabinet and set it on the desk, then sat down and began to carefully scan the files.

It was long work. The drawers had no labeling to indicate their contents, and the greater part of the top two drawers merely contained genealogical documents, mainly photocopies, mostly from Ireland and in Gaelic and English. It would have been fascinating to him had he not been searching for something completely different.

But what? he wondered. Just what is it I'm looking for?

The reply came from within: (You will know when you find it)

And when he finally saw something that caught his eye, he couldn't help but question the source of the contact, that bell that rang in his mind. From Kate? He didn't think so, or from any of the others. Perhaps it was that unnamed something Kate had spoken of, maybe an inner well of instinct he'd never known he possessed, let alone tapped.

He listened to that instinct. The file was labeled: "The Wilder Family of Breckinridge County, Kentucky." He pulled it out and spread its contents across the desk.

One document leaped to his attention almost immediately--a death certificate, of sorts. The script was old and difficult to read, but he had plenty of time to try and decipher it. He pulled the light closer to him and began to read:

"Affidavit on the death of John Jacob Wilder, of the township of Irvington, Kentucky, September 3, 1852, investigating physician Edgar B. Morgan, MD.

"I was summoned to the Wilder homestead by Breckinridge County Constable Willet Haskell on this day to examine the remains of Mr. Wilder, who apparently passed away on or about the evening of the 2nd. The deceased lay in his bed, untouched by any member of the family save his wife, who, in her words, 'only checked his pulse, to be sure.' He had been mysteriously afflicted for some time, by an ailment unknown to myself or any other physician I could consult. Whether or not this ailment contributed to the death I cannot determine at this time, nor do I believe I will ever be able to.

"Upon examination I found the decedent appearing rather undernourished. This apparently is due to his aforementioned ailment, which, according to Mrs. Wilder, allowed the deceased to take sustenance only occasionally. This undernourished condition did not have a bearing on the death of Mr. Wilder, however, the cause more than likely being asphyxiation.

"Constable Haskell pointed out certain marks on the throat of the deceased. These marks appear to be bruises, measuring approximately one and one half inch in length and half an inch wide uniformly, on either side of the deceased's tracheal protrusion. Similar marks on the back of the neck, which would indicate strangulation positively, were searched for but not found, perhaps due to the pooling of blood, or perhaps because they did not in fact exist.

"Both Constable Haskell and myself refused to speculate on the possibility of murder within the Wilder family itself, each members' character being beyond reproach. For her part, Mrs. Wilder said that she had been sitting up with her husband till she had to leave to use the commode, at or about 9 PM. When she returned, no more than five minutes later, she saw no evidence that anyone besides herself had been in the room. At that time she found her husband dead. The condition of the body on our viewing, she stated, was unchanged from the time she saw it.

"Undoubtedly the most striking feature of the body is the expression of the face, which is frozen into an expression of fear I have not experienced before, and one I might add I do not ever care to experience again. The eyes are wide open and have defied all efforts to close them thus far. I do not care to speculate on the nature of this particular phenomenon.

"The point has been raised, not by myself, that the death of Mr. Wilder may have been caused by the so-called 'Wilder Witch', of which much has been spoken and written. Certainly Mr. Wilder had no known mortal enemies to speak of, being a well respected and largely admired person, and this would tend to implicate the 'witch' if such a thing does in fact exist. I have seen no evidence of this 'witch', though many persons have witnessed the manifestations, including Constable Haskell and no less than our esteemed Governor. However, I remain reluctant to cast blame on something I cannot see. The cause of death might just as easily be strangulation due to Mr. Wilder's becoming caught up in his bedsheets. Mrs. Wilder, in her obvious state of shock, might well have rearranged the bed without remembering having done so.

"However, due to the circumstances as I viewed them, I cannot assign blame here to anything of my knowledge beyond asphyxiation. I will therefore recommend to Constable Haskell that the official cause of death should be listed as death by misadventure."

Jeb sat up, rubbed his eyes, and shook his head. Other than the signature of the doctor and that of the Constable as a witness, there was nothing else, or at least nothing that he hadn't already been told before by Pip, albeit in a less graphic nature. He scanned the paper closely, looking for some kind of clue as to why this paper was to be so important to him.

Much to his surprise, he found it. In tiny letters at the bottom of the page, a handwritten note read: "Page one of two." He sorted through the mess he'd scattered across the desk, looking for the elusive second page.

He didn't find it immediately. What he did find was more startling. It was a painting, small, perhaps ten inches wide and a foot or more high. The subject was an uncommonly beautiful girl, looking to be in her early teens. Her hair was a dark chestnut brown, framing a pale but nearly perfect face, with wide, almond shaped brown eyes, a delicately sculpted nose, and generous lips. He found himself falling in love with the girl, despite her youth, despite his obvious knowledge that the object of his emotion had no doubt been dead for many, many years.

But who was she? One of the Wilder children, no doubt, but which one? On a hunch he turned the portrait over, and found not only the identity of the girl, but also, stuck to the adhesive which held the identifying label in place, the missing second page of John Wilder's death certificate. He carefully removed it and set it aside, on top of the first, then read the label on the back of the portrait. "Elsbeth Prudence Wilder, at age 12-13. Portrait painted 1882, artist unknown." The latter was unimportant. The identity and the date struck home, and hard: Elsbeth Wilder, 1882. The same year as her father's untimely and mysterious demise. There had to be some significance to that.

Too, there was something else, something he'd already dwelled on for a moment. The painting was a good one, of almost photographic quality. Or perhaps beyond photographic, he thought. The artist had captured something with his brush, something equally vital perhaps, something the casual observer might not have noticed. It was just as likely that the artist himself hadn't been aware of what he was capturing.

Somehow Jeb was certain the representation was accurate. As he'd already decided, hers was as perfect a female face as he'd ever seen, on canvas or in the flesh. But she wasn't without flaw, at least not in this portrait. There was an odd quality to the set of her face, the cast of her eyes, and it troubled him. To him it looked like fear, or perhaps more likely rage, suppressed to the world but revealed to the artist, as she seemed to be focusing on something--or was it someone?--slightly above and to the right of her painter.

He closed his eyes and thought. If the painting really was significant, and he was certain it was, perhaps something might come to him.He sat that way for a long time, at least five minutes, sitting silently, eyes shut, body relaxed, waiting for anything, till finally he gave up, sighed, and opened his eyes...and received a shock of epic proportions.

He was no longer in the jail cell. Instead, he found himself sitting, in the same chair, in a broad, airy room he'd never seen before. Sunlight streamed in through open drapes on the large windows, which looked out onto a wide expanse of green pasture, pasture which looked vaguely familiar.

My God, he thought, awestruck. I'm there. I'm in the Wilder house.

Before him stood a tall, slender man in a black suit, his back to Jeb. He in turn stood behind rather a scruffy looking man, with shabby clothes and equally unkempt hair, who was intent on an easel before him, and on his subject, who sat bolt upright in a chair covered with some kind of black dropcloth. And that subject...

He stood and walked behind the tall man, peering over his shoulder, fearing to go any closer lest he destroy the image. It was Elsbeth in the chair, no doubt, and just as she appeared in the portrait.

The object of her hatred was the man he stood behind. To know that person's identity had to be vital. He started to walk, to move ahead, to get a look at the man's face--then he froze in his tracks.

She was looking at him.

Their eyes locked. And somehow he knew it was a warning, that he should not move, should not find out the identity of the man, not yet. He nodded, to acknowledge that he understood. And incredibly, she smiled.

In that instant, her beauty became complete.

He was held rapt. He felt a tear roll down his cheek, the first of many, he knew. He shut his eyes tightly to stem the tide, and when he reopened them, he found himself back in the cell, sitting at the desk, unable to stop crying till he heard the sound of footsteps approaching in the hall outside.

"Hello?" Jeffers called. "You all right in there?"

"Yeah," Jeb sniffed, hurriedly trying to wipe his face dry and succeeding only in smearing it terribly from the dust that collected on his face while he'd dreamed. When he looked up, he saw Jeffers smiling, and nodding in understanding.

"Found her picture, I see," he said. "Don't be ashamed. She affects everybody the same way, me included." He sighed and gazed wistfully down at the portrait Jeb still held in his hands. "A stunning young lady. Grew up to be a fine looking woman too, or so I understand. Wish she were still around."

"They sure don't make 'em like this anymore," Jeb said with a sigh, still staring at the portrait. "But then I'm sure that women feel something sim..." He abruptly sat up straight, his eyes wide. "What did you just say?" he said to Jeffers.

Jeffers looked puzzled. "Umm...that I wished she was still around?"

Jeb shook his head. It couldn't be that simple, he thought. Still, his instincts were reading him volumes. He suppressed them for the moment and brought his wits to bear on another subject. "I don't suppose," he began slowly, "that it's possible to check any of this stuff out."

"Oh no," Jeffers demurred, shaking his head. "No, no, no. It's far too valuable. We've got a Xerox machine upstairs if you want copies, but book or no book, I couldn't let the originals leave this building."

Somehow he knew this wouldn't do. I've got to have the originals, Jeb thought. In my posession.

He tried the only gambit he could think of. "I could make it worth your while."

"Historical documents are my life," Jeffers said stoically, looking more than just a little offended at the notion of a bribe. "This collection alone is worth more money than you or I will ever see in a lifetime, maybe two, and I spent too much time and effort putting them together to let them disappear. I don't even know you."

"You misunderstand," Jeb said quickly. "I'm not offering you money. You said upstairs that you've got some kind of a Breckinridge County Cave File in the works, right?"

"That's correct. Why?"

Jeb could see that the librarian's interest was piqued. He fed him the line gently. "Well, I'm a caver," he said. "Ever hear of Evert Hole?"

"Some. It's supposed to be one of the biggest caves in the county. I could use some scoop on it, I suppose," not adding but hinting vaguely, you'd have to do better.

"I might be of some assistance to you. I'm the Chief Surveyor in Evert. I also have the most complete listing of caves in this county available, guaranteed. Just ask any landowner around here. They'll probably remember Jeb Stuart. Most of them have my card."

A light went on in Jeffers' eyes. "Wait a minute," he said in a surprised voice. "Now I remember! I know all about you. You're the Mud Fox!"

The Mud Fox? Jeb wondered, grinning hugely. "Who calls me that?"

"The fellow I dealt with at the University. Compared you to the Confederate General Stuart. He was called the Swamp Fox, you know. This guy said you were the most thorough surveyor he'd ever seen and to get in touch with you for information on this county, particularly Evert Hole. Hell, if I'd realized this from the start you would've never gotten down here. I'd still have you upstairs, picking your brains."

The hook was set. "That won't be necessary. All my notes are on computer disks. I'd be happy to make you copies...providing we can come to an understanding here."

"Oh yes," Jeffers said excitedly. "I'm sure we can. What exactly do you want from me?"

Jeb's answer was complete and blunt. "Complete, unrestricted access to the Wilder files. During working hours, of course. These," he held up the portrait and the second page of the death certificate, "these will only be the first items I'll need. If you let me take them today, I'll bring the disks over later on in the week. This would be with one stipulation: that no locations to any caves are given out to anyone without permission of the OVSS."

Jeffers' excitement was somewhat tempered, but his reply was still the same. "I can live with that, so long as you'll give me an address and phone number to reach you at. Just in case."

"Done." Jeb took out his wallet and pulled out one of the business cards Gwen and Stevie'd had made for him as a birthday present last year. Beautifully done in script and in three colors of ink, they read:

OHIO VALLEY SPELEOLOGICAL SURVEY

EVERT HOLE PROJECT

J.E.B. Stuart

Chief Explorer and Surveyor

His email address and home and work phone numbers were also embossed on the card. "This oughta do you just fine. The address and phone numbers are current too; you can check if you like. Want another? I still have about 1500 left. I leave one or two with every landowner I contact. Some of them even call me back every time a new sinkhole opens on their property. It's quite a resource. We found the sink we're in process of digging a new entrance into Evert through that way."

"Okay," Jeffers said, his excitement again evident, taking the card. "You've got it. I'm here most of the time, but I'll leave special word with my volunteers just in case you need to be here when I'm not. You need anything else?"

Jeb smiled, feeling just a twinge of regret. The cave files had been his baby, his special project, and they'd taken over two years to compile. But they would do him precious little good now; he'd given up caving, and the Wilder files were much more crucial. He'd given George English copies of the disks anyway. That had been a far more difficult thing to do.

At the thought of English, Jeb asked, "No that would be it. But tell me, just who was it you dealt with at the University? I'd kinda like to know who tagged me with that nickname."

"Yeah," Jeffers said with a grin. "Neat, isn't it? To know that somebody thinks so much of you. Heck, you probably know him. Short, skinny guy with granny glasses and a whiny voice, but he knows caves, that's for sure. As near as I recall, his name was English. George English. Know him?"

Jeb nodded and smiled sadly. "I do." But, he added silently, not nearly as well as I wish I did.

After locking up and saying goodbye to Jeffers, Jeb headed for home as quickly as he dared, his precious cargo sealed in a protective plastic sleeve and tucked safely under his jacket. It was early yet, not even five, but he stopped only long enough to pick up a sandwich before roaring back to the apartment. He knew he had much to do, and for once, he knew pretty much exactly what it was.

He had to force himself to eat. A submarine sandwich was hardly the food he really needed. He knew he was getting awfully thin, and that was not a good sign. But he loved his subs and knew he'd eat it a lot more readily than he'd eat fruit or vegetables. He downed a couple of vitamins as well with a glass of milk. Whether they helped or not he couldn't tell, but Dr. Singh had recommended he take them, and they couldn't hurt in any case. That accomplished, in such a rapid pace that he was certain to have an upset stomach at the very least in a couple of hours, he took the plastic envelope into the bedroom, shut the door and pulled the drapes.

He pulled the stone out of his pocket and sat it down on the bureau. "Well Kate," he said softly, "I do believe I'm getting close. What do you think?"

Her reply surprised him. The stone lifted itself from the dresser top and hovered there, bobbing slightly.

"Should I have the stone near me when I try this?"

It moved closer, raising slightly till it was level with his chest--with my heart, he thought. "Okay," he said, "you know best." He changed into a loose fitting warmup suit, for comfort and warmth should he fall asleep atop the covers. He picked up the stone which had settled back onto the bureau, then lay down, placed the stone on his chest, and opened the envelope, taking out the second page of the John Wilder death certificate first. It was as difficult to read as the first page; he had to turn on his reading lamp to make it all out. The words were written in tiny letters, on both sides of the paper. And they were dawning words indeed.

"Addendum to the Affidavit On The Death Of John Jacob Wilder, September 4, 1852.

"I, Arnold Willet Haskell, Constable of Breckinridge County, Kentucky, was summoned to the homestead of the late John Jacob Wilder on this day at approximately 11 AM by messenger from the members of the family. I arrived at the Wilder home two hours later, to find Dr. Edgar Morgan already present, tending to young Elsbeth Wilder, who was gripped by some sort of fit. During this time she was tossing very violently on her bed, to the point where her wrists and ankles had to be secured by the doctor and I to the bedposts to prevent injury to her. In addition, she had been speaking in a voice that most definitely did not belong to her. I am very familiar with Miss Elsbeth, as is the Doctor, and we agreed that this girl could not possibly have been creating the voice that came from her mouth. Her family agreed as well.

Feeling that the situation could get no worse, I consulted with the Doctor and we agreed to ask Miss Elsbeth, or whatever was occupying her, to answer questions regarding this occurrence. To our surprise the voice replied quickly and firmly to our questions. Afterward, Dr. Morgan and myself sat to compile a record of everything we heard, and we agree that what follows is as near to complete as we can recall, viz:

"Doctor Morgan spoke first, asking the identity of the voice.

"'You know who I am,' the voice replied.

"'Are you what we call the Wilder Witch?' I asked.

"It replied quickly, 'I am the witch of Kate Bellamy'.

"We both noted at this time that the fits of Miss Elsbeth, to our relief, had ceased.

"'Why are you here now?' asked Dr. Morgan.

"'To claim the credit for the destruction of Old Jack. I am responsible.'

"I asked, 'Do you mean John Wilder?'

"'Yes,' the voice replied, 'and I fixed the old bastard but good this time.'

"'Why?' I asked. 'What did you have against him?'

"'Do you even remember me, Willet Haskell?' she asked, surprising me by calling me by my name. I did in fact recall a Kate Bellamy who once lived in the area, but I remembered I had neither seen her nor heard anything of her in quite some time. Then she added, 'Oh yes, I know of you. You are held in high regard for your work, but you'll accomplish nothing here. Justice has been done, for Old Jack was a murderer and a ravager and too painful a death was too good for him.'

"This revelation shocked the Doctor and myself, for we had known John Wilder as a good and kind man. 'Do you have proof of this?' I asked.

"'I need no proof, Constable,' she roared, Miss Elsbeth's body renewing its convulsions. 'Nor should you. I am all the proof you need.'

"'Are you finished then, with the Wilder family?' Doctor Morgan asked. 'With this girl? You have done what you set out to do. Leave her before you harm her as well.'

"We were both uncertain as to the witch's next words; the best we could recall was, 'She brought me here, though she may not be so aware. I will be with her, and with the family, until such time as I am satisfied.'

"'What will satisfy you?' the Doctor asked.

"'Not you,' she laughed, 'not anyone here.'

"'Look at Miss Elsbeth now,' Doctor Morgan implored. 'If you have a soul, look on her with pity. She could be gravely injured if you do not leave her be.'

"Miss Elsbeth's convulsions ceased again. They did not resume, nor did the witch speak again. She was since recovered, and I will allow the Doctor to finish with the particulars."

There was a space, then the document continued, in the same handwriting that was on the first page of the death certificate.

"Upon the conclusion of our interrogation of the 'witch', Miss Elsbeth quickly fell into a deep and blessedly natural sleep. I was present on her arousal, and found her to be alert but completely unaware of what had happened to her, and without even the slightest pain from her convulsions, which should have left her sore at the very least. I also noted that her wrists and ankles showed no sign of burns from the rope the Constable and I had used to secure them; a curious thing.

"Undoubtedly, I will be much questioned in the future as to the exact nature of the circumstances surrounding the death of John Wilder. As these records will surely not be kept confidential, I will say but this: my beliefs have changed considerably. Knowing as I do, however the stir this would create, I can but reaffirm my earlier conclusion: that the cause of death is by Misadventure."

"Some misadventure," Jeb muttered. "Sounds more like an execution to me, Doc."

Several items in the addendum cried out for his attention. The first was the mention that Kate had announced her deed through Elsbeth. Pip had told him that Kate had bragged of killing "Old Jack", but he hadn't said anything about that boast being relayed through Elsbeth. Why? Maybe he didn't know, Jeb thought. Maybe the family suppressed the information. It certainly seemed that the Doctor and the Constable had, or so Jeb inferred from the final paragraph of the document. Then there was the mention that the Constable had at least known of a Kate Bellamy, if he hadn't exactly known her personally. That appeared to confirm her identity, and lent considerable credence to the whole matter. That cheered Jeb to a degree, but Kate's accusation of John Wilder, calling him a murderer and a rapist, shocked Jeb as profoundly as it must've the investigators so many years ago. If John Wilder was in fact a murderer, whom did he kill? The obvious answer was Kate Bellamy, but how? And why? And whom had he raped?

The answer to that question was not so obvious, but Jeb had a suspicion, fueled by the chilling statement Kate had made: "she brought me here," she of course meaning Elsbeth.

In his research on the subject of ghosts and psychic phenomena, Jeb had found many of the more believable books had speculated on the ability of adolescents to produce rather startling psychic powers, powers that seemed to diminish as they passed puberty. Was it possible, perhaps, that Elsbeth, raped as a prepubescent girl, had retained the natural feelings of rage and fear and had brought them to bear on the restless spirit of Kate? Might Kate have thus been bound to Elsbeth, to commit the act they both most desperately wanted done?

Elsbeth Wilder had been dead for many years. So why was Kate still around? Was it possible that Elsbeth was another of the trapped entities, a punishment of sorts, perhaps?

He set the paper aside and took the portrait of Elsbeth from the packet. He stared at it thoughtfully for a long time, till he succumbed to a sudden rush of drowsiness, falling asleep with the portrait still gently clutched in his hand, Kate's stone resting on his chest, rhythmically rising and falling with his breathing.

When he opened his eyes, he was...there, again. The meadows themselves were unchanged, but another character had been added.

"Now you know," Kate said to him, smiling proudly. "Elsbeth, meet James."

Elsbeth Wilder curtsied politely to him, smiling as broadly as her former other.

"You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen," he said after a moment of shocked silence, the only words he could think of.

"I am humbled," said Elsbeth, bowing her head and blushing.

"It's a good thing I really am not a jealous woman, James," Kate laughed merrily. "You haven't said a word about how I look." And she did look different, somewhat thinner of face and with a different, more turned-up nose. But her complexion looked ruddier and more vital. While she was not the classic beauty Elsbeth was, Kate Bellamy as her own entity was a striking woman.

"This is you then," he said to her, a statement more than a question.

"It is me. The others are not bound directly."

"Will I need to research them?"

She shook her head. "You will know as much as you need to soon enough, before you need to know it, I should hope."

"There will be more dreams then."

"Expect them. But for now...Elsbeth dear, would you...?"