“If one of us passes the test, that one inherits all the land, the house, barns, livestock, everything?” Mallory asked Bill Strohm nodded and started to speak, but Mallory was not done yet “What’s to prevent that one from selling and splitting everything with the others?”

  “Nothing,” Bill Strohm said bitterly. “That’s why this is absolute rot. As soon as one of you is named the beneficiary, the game ends. What you do with it after that is up to you.”

  “And what if none of us passes? What happens to the land then?”

  Bill Strohm’s mouth tightened into a grim line before he answered. “The land will go to Oregon State University, to be used as an experimental farm.”

  I gasped before I could stop myself. No one moved or said anything until Conrad began to laugh. Janet glared at him.

  “Don’t you see?” Conrad said softly. “It’s always been us against him. And now he’s going to make it us against us. What he never could do in life, he’s going to try to do after death.”

  “It won’t work,” Mallory said, looking at the others one by one. “I say right now that if I’m the one, I’ll sell it just as fast as I can find a buyer. It will be split four ways. I swear it.”

  “Me too,” Lucas said quickly.

  Janet nodded, moistened her lips, then murmured. “And I”

  “It’s easy enough to say it now, but what will the winner say later?” Conrad asked thoughtfully. “I’ll go along, of course. God knows I wouldn’t want the farm.”

  “I’m off,” Bill Strohm said, putting down his coffee cup. •*Hell of an evening. Hell of a way to go.”

  He was really angry, I realized. He had been put in a humiliating position and it infuriated him. If there had been a way to forestall this, he would have found it if only to avoid both the scene he had just played out in the old man’s room and the coming scenes that he obviously dreaded.

  “Now you,” Mallory said, turning to Professor Hugh Froelich. “What’s your part in this?”

  Sizemore had been leaning against the doorframe; he pulled away from it and said hurriedly, “I’ll leave too. Greta will call me if there’s any change. Good night, good night”

  Hugh Froelich watched him and Strohm leave before he answered Mallory. “He has a lot of power,” he said, indicating the back of the house. “He gets what he wants, obviously always has. A few years ago I wrote a paper that he read and became interested in. I was summoned to meet him. I was curious, and I came to dinner. He pumped me about my paper, and demanded a reading list, reference books, articles. And he called my department head to make sure I carried out his orders. I sent the stuff, and eventually it was returned and I put it all out of mind. Last spring he sent for me again.”

  He finished his drink, poured himself another. Lucas was watching Froelich the way a dog watches a snake, waiting for the instant when it is safe to grab it by the neck. I moved closer to Lucas, wishing he would become aware of me, wishing he would come back from wherever it was he had gone.

  “This time,” Froelich said, “he was different. He was sick, for one thing. It was soon after his heart attack and he looked like a dying man. But his mind was as lucid as ever, I guess. He was giving orders like a man who expects to be obeyed. He told me what I was to do, give you all the EEGs now and again a week after his death. He gave me a copy of one that he had had made some years ago. It was his scheme from the start,*’ he said, glancing at Lucas.

  “I bet!** Lucas muttered.

  “You’re willing to go along with his madness for a price, I take it,” Mallory said.

  “The university administration knows they stand in line to inherit about twenty million dollars’ worth of property,” Froelich said. “How much choice do you think I have? If I don’t do it, someone else will, and it is my baby, after all.”

  “What was in that paper?” Conrad asked then.

  “I proposed a method to disprove once and for all that spirit possession can take place. It was at the height of that craze a few years ago. The electroencephalograph records brain activities, the various waves, as you know. Each tracing is unique, just like fingerprints, or the retinas of the eyes. And the waves change. Learning, for example, has a physiological effect on the brain; there are actual changes that can be demonstrated. Learning, growing, experiences,’ everything you do and think and study, everything that happens to you throughout your life is recorded in the brain. In my paper I suggested that if possession actually took place, the brain must be altered, must become like the brain of the possessor, or the behavior of the possessed wouldn’t change.” He stopped, then took a deep drink. “But you don’t want a lecture tonight. My paper’s in his library, along with quite a complete collection of works on possession. I’ll go over it with any of you tomorrow if you like.”

  “Possession,” Janet whispered. “He thinks he can possess one of us? Is that what he intends to try?”

  “He is crazy!” Mallory said, almost jubilantly. “No court would allow this nonsense to determine the outcome of a multimillion-dollar legacy!”

  Hugh Froelich shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “He’s doing this as a humanitarian gesture, knowing he’s dying. He’s participating in an experiment to prove that possession is impossible. The tracings will prove it No change will show up in the EEGs.”

  I felt numb. I couldn’t follow the reasoning, or understand the fury that crossed Conrad’s face, or comprehend the tautness of Lucas beside me on the couch.

  “Professor,” Conrad said coolly, “you and I both know this is a crock of shit.”

  “Why?” Janet asked. “What does that mean?”

  “You can’t prove a theory with negative evidence,” Hugh Froelich said. “I told him that. It’s worthless data, if any data comes from it. He understands that exactly.”

  No one spoke for a long time, until Mallory broke the silence. His voice was thick, almost blurred, as if all at once the liquor had taken effect “For a week we sit here and watch each other for a sign, for a change, for anything to indicate that he’s taking over, or trying to. We feel his presence worming in and out, relive every goddam nightmare. And then the test that no one will be able to pass. And finally the will, hearing it officially announced that this property is being donated to the university. Pretty, isn’t it? An old man’s last little joke on his kids. Laughing all the way to hell. Well, fuck him! I’m going home in the morning.’*

  It broke up with that. Lucas dug his fingers into my arm so hard I cried out, and instantly regretted it. I thought he was going to weep, and I realized how extraordinarily tired we both were. It was midnight, but we were on East Coast time and had been up for almost twenty hours.

  In our room Lucas paced, then sat on the side of the bed and held his head in both hands and finally said he had to walk.

  Now I should write my own interpretations of this insane day, but my mind is too blank. I wish Lucas would come back and hold me until we both can fall asleep. I want to tell him how much I love him and how sorry I am. How very sorry I am for all this. I wish we had pushed the beds together before he went out

  October 15

  I woke up first this morning. Although I tried to go back to sleep, it was impossible; finally I got up and dressed without waking Lucas. He was sleeping like a child, face in his pillow, the way he must have slept when he lived here. He looked young enough to be that schoolboy.

  It was only seven, ten by my East Coast body rhythm; I expected no one else to be stirring yet and was surprised to find Mallory already having coffee when I went to the kitchen.

  “I smelled the coffee,’* I said lamely.

  “And good morning to you, too,” he said. “Luke still sacked out?” He got a second mug from a cabinet and poured coffee for me. “Cream and sugar in the breakfast room. You want anything else yet?”

  “No thanks. He’s sound asleep.”

  “Yeah. He was pretty tired when he finally left me last night”

  We went into the adjoining room where sunlight fired scarlet geraniums. This was the brightest room I had seen yet in this house, blue and yellow wallpaper, yellow furniture, white woodwork. “I’ve never seen so many plants in one house before.”

  “He likes them.” Mallory sat down with his back to the windows. There were no curtains; there was a picture-post-card mountain scene instead. Apparently every window overlooked a breathtaking vista. “What do you do?” Mallory asked.

  “I’m an editorial assistant. I read manuscripts and report 25 on them, write routine letters, things like that. You have a ranch in Oregon?”

  “Eastern Oregon, high prairie country, not like this valley. Thousand acres of wheat, thousand of grazing land. Bone-dry most of the time, rocky all the time, bitter cold in the winter and hot as hell in the summer. Not like the valley.”

  I could read nothing into his voice, or the words. I could not tell if he loved or hated the lush valley, if he loved or hated his ranch. We had flown over eastern Oregon and I had thought it a wasteland, nothing but desert I drank my coffee.

  “Sit still,” he said. “I’ll bring the pot back.” He left and a moment later brought in the coffeepot and refilled both cups. “What’s wrong with Luke?” he asked, looking at me intently.

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “He’s changed.”

  “He’s just getting over the flu. I guess he’s thinner than he was before he got sick.”

  “You kids eating enough?”

  My cheeks burned; I ducked my head and looked at the coffee mug. “We get by.”

  “Yeah. He told me he’s a set designer. Is he successful?”

  “He’s awfully good,” I said with a touch of sharpness.

  He did not press the issue, as if I had answered his question. I supposed I had and that made me angrier.

  “Why the inquisition?” I demanded. “He hasn’t asked you for money or anything. He’d rather die on the spot than ask you for money.”

  “Ginny, has Luke told you anything about me? How I’ve always felt about him?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay. Can you two get by without the money? If you knew there was no way on earth you could ever touch a cent of it, would it bother you?”

  “I didn’t even know there might be money,” I said, swallowing the first reply that formed. He wasn’t prying or picking on me. There was a crease between his eyes; he was leaning forward watching me, waiting. He was deeply worried. His concern was not for me; it was for Lucas. The warmth I had felt for him before flooded back in, driving out my anger. “We would get by exactly as we have in the past. We don’t have much money, as you seem to know already. Lucas doesn’t make much yet. He’s had three jobs in the past two years. He is very good, but it’s a rough business and it will take a long time for him to get established. I don’t make very much either. But it’s enough.” He began to tap his fingers and now he was looking past me, scowling. “There’s going to be ten, fifteen thousand for each of us outright Maybe twice that. Tell him to take it and run, Ginny. Can you persuade him to do that, do you think?”

  I stared at him. “Why? Why would it be so bad for all of you to live in this house for a week? It would take that long just to do an inventory, to make decisions about things, like that clock, for instance. What happens to something like the clock?”

  The clock I pointed to was a blue Delft antique on a wall where a dozen beautiful plates were mounted. “You’ll have to have appraisals on everything in the house. That clock must be worth hundreds of dollars.”

  “Everything stays, remember? Winner gets all.”

  “But you agreed that the winner is going to sell it all and divide the proceeds.”

  “There won’t be a winner,” he said tiredly, “except the university. Luke doesn’t believe that, and I guess Conrad and Janet agree with him, but there won’t be a winner. It’s a charade, a game. What’ll happen when Luke sweats out that damn week and dreams of all that money, and then finds out that there isn’t any winner? Can he take that?”

  I didn’t know. I thought of the various grandiose schemes Lucas had talked about from time to time: travel, a house in the country with an orchard and open fields, an apartment in the city…Neither of us had believed for a minute that it was a possibility or could ever become a possibility. One of us hadn’t believed, I thought suddenly. I had thought it nothing more than a game. I was not even good at playing such a game; my list of wants and wishes always stopped at a bigger apartment and more clothes and a savings account for emergencies. Would it be possible to persuade him to stop at fifty thousand even, when there were millions within reach? Maybe, I decided; if we were back home and he was working at a job that he was excited about, and if we had no pressing bills at the moment.

  I watched Mallory without trying to answer his question. He knew, probably better than I, if Lucas would be able to handle it if the prize was snatched away at the last minute. Too many ifs, I thought It was raining ifs.

  “Try, Ginny,” he said softly. “When he dies, don’t let Luke come back. Today we’re all going down to make that goddam EEG, and afterward you and Luke will take off. He promised not to stay any longer than that. When you get home, try to make him give up the idea of playing games with the old man. It’s a no-win game every time. Luke knows that, we all know it. Make him realize he knows it. I’m going to get my own lawyer to work, try to break that will, but Bill may be right in saying it’s foolproof.”

  “Why are you agreeing to the EEG?”

  “Because I told Luke I would if he would promise to get the hell out of here this evening.” He looked naked, helpless; it was clear that the love he felt for Lucas had not diminished over the years. He must have seen something of my understanding then, for he got up abruptly and left, saying he liked a walk before breakfast.

  They all went out before ten o’clock. Lucas and I haven’t had any time together since we got here. Even though I knew I was as restless and fretful as a child, I couldn’t help feeling resentful, excluded from an intimate circle where the initiates could speak in half sentences or single words, or even with significant looks, and be thoroughly understood by the others. I, the outsider, understood nothing.

  I explored the house, skirted the shelves of books on occultism in the library, ignored the hanging garden, and, of course, the back half of the house where he was dying.

  After I packed the few things we had unpacked, I sat looking at the sheep on the hills. My restlessness drove me out for a walk. The day was warm and the air dry, the sky cloudless. Not at all my idea of Oregon, I thought The gardens were as lovely as any I had ever seen. Everything was trimmed and neatly mulched with bark; the roses were in beds with bark paths winding in and out among them. I studied the rose beds: There was something…I realized how carefully the roses had been laid out, not only for size and variety, but for color. White, immaculate, pristine, gave way to ivory, and on into the yellows; pinks, so pale the tint looked illusory, blended into deeper pinks, reds, nearly black. Corals, oranges, a group that was almost mahogany. I looked back at the house; from there, from any distance at all, the colors would look like an impressionist painting. There were chrysanthemums and staked dahlias, some of the flowers as big as platters. I was too close to see the effect of the color arrangement. They were meant to be seen close up as individual blooms and from farther away as larger patterns of light and color. I scanned the house—up there, I thought, those windows. I didn’t know whose windows they were. His I suspected. I wandered along the walks until I came to a shadowy moist area where ferns grew as high as my head, and vines crawled up posts, clung to an overhead latticework of wood. Hanging baskets of fuchsias dominated here.

  Suddenly I felt it again, the same certainty that I had felt in the hanging garden. Someone was near, watching me. I stopped. Something was telling me to get out, get out, get out. I wanted to run, but I was too frightened to move. It vanished as quickly as it started, and a wave of nausea passed over me. I turned around and found myself looking at the sunroom, through the glass, where he was lying in bed, staring at me.

  “You’re dead,” I heard my own voice say. “You’re dead!”

  Greta ran across the room to his side. She felt his pulse, reached into the drawer of the table by the bed, withdrew a stethoscope and used it. I watched her close his eyes and pull the sheet over his face, watched her go to a chair by an end table, sit down, and dial the telephone.

  I didn’t know I had been moving until I realized I was on the lawn in the hot sunshine. I was shaking violently; nausea came over me in surges, each one stronger, until I retched and heaved convulsively, clinging to a tree trunk.

  Now I’m in our room, staring out the window again. The sheep are still there. Don’t they ever move? All I can think of is turning around to see him watching me. Seeing him dead, dying. Dead. We won’t leave now. I know it as surely as I know that the game has started and he has won the first round.

  When I could no longer stand our room, I went downstairs to the library to try to find something to read, but I kept looking at the books on possession, until finally I felt driven outside again. This time I headed for the red lava road that went toward the hills. I walked for an hour and when I came back I saw the station wagon in the drive.

  Hugh Froelich met me at the door. “We were worried about you,” he said. “You know?”

  I nodded. “Where’s Lucas?”

  “In the library with the others. Bill Strohm is with them. They’ve already taken the…Mr. Culbertson away to the funeral home.”

  We sat in the living room waiting for the others to finish their meeting. Neither of us talked. Hugh Froelich was still wound up tight, I thought If he was like this all the time, he would have a heart attack or a stroke. The house was very quiet, until someone opened the library door, and I could hear Mallory yelling. A moment later he appeared in the doorway, nodded to us, left again. His face was red, furious.