Part 2

Toffee came down promptly and heavily, her sudden weight rocking Marc back on his heels. For a moment it was touch and go between the staggering man and the forces of gravity. But Marc finally won out and righted himself. Then, looking down, he discovered, to his horror, that Toffee had landed face-down in his arms. Obviously, certain adjustments needed to be made immediately. With a timid hand, Marc tried to do what he could about them.

"Stop pawing me, you wrinkled adolescent!" Toffee yelled. "Put me down!"

And with that, she sank two talon-like fingernails into the flesh of Marc's thigh. Marc's trousers might just as well have been made of tissue for all the protection they afforded him against the cutting nails.

* * * * *

With a piercing scream of agony, he promptly gave Toffee over to the ground, where she landed with a resounding thump. "You little beast!" he cried, clutching his leg. "Of all the ingratitude!"

Toffee looked up owlishly from over her shoulder. "I told you to put me down," she said vindictively. "Surely, you didn't expect me to just hang there while you made finger prints all over my--"

"I was only trying to set you right," Marc cut in quickly.

"Hah!" Toffee jumped lightly to her feet. "From now on," she said, placing a slender hand on a sculptured hip, "I'll take care of my own setting, and don't you ever forget it."

"Do what you like with your precious setting," Marc put in, his irritation mounting. "See if I care. You can hurl the fool thing out the window for all of me."

"I wouldn't even tilt it over the sill for the best part of you," Toffee sneered. "Not after the torture you've been putting me through lately."

"I torture _you_!" Marc laughed bitterly. "That's good, that is!"

"Then what do you call it?" Toffee made a quick gesture that encompassed the whole of the valley. "How would _you_ like to be locked up in this place months on end? The valley of your mind! Hah! The sump hole would be more like it. You haven't had an original thought in the last six months."

"You're so depraved," Marc said, rising to his own defense, "you wouldn't know an original thought if you saw one. And if you think I'm going to dedicate my days to the contemplation of smut, just for your sweet sake, you're mistaken. Just because you're nasty minded, doesn't mean the rest of us are."

"Why you hypocritical old heller!" Toffee flared. "Some of the thoughts you've had were enough to singe the hair right off a censor's head. It makes me fairly blush sometimes, just being in the same mind with them."

"I've a fine picture of that!" Marc snorted. "You haven't got a modest blush left to your name."

Toffee shrugged her shoulders. "Anyway," she said, "you might at least have dreamed me up in time for the excitement this morning. The one morning in your dull life when something happens, and you keep me chained up in your subconscious!"

Marc's features suddenly fell into lines of deep meditation. The morning and its frantic adventures had gone completely out of his memory until now. Toffee's remark had stirred vague remembrances. All of it was slowly coming back.

Toffee started toward him with sudden concern. "What's wrong, Marc?" she asked softly. "Is it anything I can help with? Even if you are a low viper, I still love you, you know. I guess I just can't help it."

Marc shook his head. "I don't quite know what's wrong myself," he said slowly. "That is, I know what's happened, but I don't know why."

"You sound a little mixed up."

"I am. All mixed up."

Then they both swung quickly around as an odd lap-lapping sounded softly behind them. At the foot of the mound, the black tide was already rising swiftly toward them, each successive surge blotting out more and more of the little valley. For a moment, they just stood looking at it, too surprised to move.

"Here we go again," Toffee said happily, turning to Marc.

Her voice seemed to wake him from a sort of trance. "Go again?" he asked. "We?" A frightened look came into his eyes. "No! No, you don't. Things will be bad enough without you!"

"Oh, don't be silly," Toffee giggled. Then seeing that the speeding tide was already near their feet, she suddenly turned to Marc and swung her arms around his neck. "You need me."

"Let go!" Marc yelled. He ducked, tried to break her grasp, but it was no use. Then it was too late. All at once, the tide caught them up and hurled them toward the sky. And just as it seemed they were going to touch the clouds, there was a horrible sucking sound and they were drawn down into the inner current of the flowing blackness.

* * * * *

The light of day returned to Marc slowly and without welcome. Partly opening one eye, he wished he hadn't, for his head instantly began pulsing like a heavily burdened steam engine pulling out of a mountain way-station. Somewhere there was a faint, intermittent hissing sound, which Marc expected was probably caused by gases shooting rhythmically from his ears. He opened the other eye and tried to clear his head by concentration. But the hissing continued. He lay back and turned his attention to the restful blankness of the ceiling. When Toffee's pert, puckish face swam into view just above his own, he was only mildly surprised. After everything else, it seemed only to be expected.

"It's so lovely to be materialized again," she sighed happily. "I feel all alive and wonderful. I even begin to like you a little." Unmoved by these glad tidings, Marc nodded absently and closed his eyes again. "You look simply awful," she added.

"You wouldn't win any titles, yourself," Marc mumbled, "if you'd been kicked, pummeled and bashed all over town like I have."

"What happened. Who kicked you?"

Sitting up and holding his head in his hands, Marc tried to give her a brief and coherent summary of his havoc-ridden journey to the office. Also, he included the depressing welcome afforded him by the staff upon arrival.

"Very strange," Toffee mused, moving thoughtfully around the disordered room. "Something has obviously gone amiss."

"Amiss!" Marc groaned. "Something's gone completely berserk." Suddenly he stopped speaking, looked up, and inclined his head in a listening attitude. "Do you hear something?" he asked.

"That hissing sound?" Toffee said. "Gets on your nerves, doesn't it?"

"Thank heaven," Marc sighed. "I thought maybe it was in my head. What do you think it is?"

"Sounds like someone sleeping, breathing heavily," Toffee said. Then her roving eye lit on the half-filled bottle at the other end of the room, and she moved swiftly toward it. She started to reach down for it, then suddenly stopped, tilting her head to one side. "That noise is louder over here." She straightened and pointed to the chair beside the bottle. "It seems to be coming from that."

"Don't be silly," Marc said shortly. "Why would a chair hiss?"

Leaning down again, Toffee extended a slender finger, and jabbed quickly at the cushion of the chair. Instantly, a horrible grunting sound echoed through the room, and she jumped back, her eyes wide with surprise.

"Good grief," a voice said thickly. "Haven't you any sense of decency at all? Keep your prodding fingers to yourself. Go exercise your low instincts somewhere else."

Toffee swung quickly around to face Marc. "This," she said sternly, "is no time to be sitting around throwing your voice. If you must give vaudeville entertainments, go to a cheap theatre where your vulgar talents will be appreciated."

Marc's face twisted with wonder. "I didn't throw anything," he said innocently. "Least of all my voice. But I heard it, and it was awful."

"It was your voice," Toffee insisted. "I'd know that rasp anywhere. And if you try it just once more, I'll...." Suddenly her voice froze into silence as she saw Marc's expression swiftly change to one of undiluted horror. Slowly, she turned and followed his gaze to the garrulous chair, and promptly started back with a hysterical sob.

"Holy gee!" she breathed. "If that isn't the most hair-raising sight ever!"

* * * * *

From the chair an apparently disembodied hand swung downward and grasped the bottle on the floor. Then, even as they watched it, it raised the bottle rakishly over the center of the chair and poured a portion of its contents into ... into nothing! This done, the hand and bottle moved downward again, and a resounding burp rumbled messily through the room.

"Holy gee!" Toffee repeated breathlessly.

"What ... what's...." The words died in Marc's throat.

The floating hand, now at rest on the arm of the chair, had suddenly been matched by another on the opposite arm. Marc and Toffee, struck dumb by this spectacle, remained rigid, staring with wide-eyed amazement. And as they watched, two feet, as though to add balance to the already gruesome picture, slowly appeared on the floor in front of the chair. After that things seemed to really get under way, and it was only a matter of seconds until, a section at a time, a whole body had come into view, complete with everything ... except a head.

"Ulp!" The sound came from Marc.

"You said it," Toffee murmured. "I think I'm going to be hysterical." With a shudder she turned away and gazed intently out the window.

"You ... you see it too?" Marc asked wretchedly.

"I'm doing my level best not to," Toffee replied. "It's the most horrible thing I've ever set eyes on. It's positively haunting. I'd be just as pleased if you wouldn't remind me of it."

"What do you suppose it is?"

"I don't know," Toffee returned miserably. "And I don't care. I just want to forget all about it. Maybe if we simply ignore it, it will go away and leave us alone. Let's just look out the window and engage in casual conversation. Maybe it'll get the idea it's not wanted."

"I wonder if it _can_ go away?" Marc said. Shakily he rose from the lounge, and with one last tormented glance at the headless figure, moved rapidly to Toffee's side. "Suppose it ... it can't move ... any more?"

"It can move all right," Toffee said gloomily. "The way it was whipping that bottle around I wouldn't be surprised to see it get up and start doing an Irish jig, though the mere thought of it makes my flesh fairly scamper."

"That's right," Marc mused. "Whatever it is, it seems to be in splendid working order."

"Too damn splendid," Toffee agreed.

"Maybe we should assert ourselves," Marc suggested. "Maybe we could throw it out."

"I, personally," Toffee replied firmly, "would rather slash my wrists than lay a finger to the clammy thing."

"As I recall," a voice said hollowly from across the room, "you didn't mind in the least laying a finger to me a while ago. And a shockingly intimate finger it was too. In fact I was quite embarrassed by it. And if you two mental cases really want something to do, I suggest you open up that window and throw yourselves out into the street. Your feeble-minded gibbering is keeping me awake."

Marc and Toffee nearly collided as they swung about. Then, in perfect unison, they gasped. The figure, now graced with a head, was glaring at them evilly.

"Wha ... who?" Marc sputtered. Turning away, slightly, he passed a trembling hand over his eyes, then looked again. "OOooo!" He looked like a man who'd just received a ball bat across the stomach. The face into which he gazed was an exact duplicate of his own. It was like looking at his own reflection ... only there wasn't any mirror.

"You," the figure observed dryly, "sound like a bilious Indian. For that matter you may be one, for all I know. But, in any case, if you can't say anything intelligent, please go away. I'm very tired."

* * * * *

This seemed to jolt Marc out of his state of temporary paralysis. With the air of one who had had quite enough, he stepped forward and leveled a long finger at the figure in the chair. "Who ... who are _you_?" he asked.

"Why, I'm...." The figure turned and regarded Marc closely for the first time. A look of astonishment came into its face. "Who are _you_?" it countered suspiciously.

"I'm Marc Pillsworth," Marc returned impatiently. "This is my office. And whoever you are, and whatever kind of trick you think you're playing, I'll thank you to clear out before I call the police and have you dragged out ... er ... bodily." He cleared his throat uneasily. "A section at a time if need be."

Suddenly the figure was on its feet, staring at Marc in unmixed alarm.

"You're lying," it said. "You can't be Marc Pillsworth. I'm Marc Pillsworth ... at least, in a sense I am." It turned to Toffee. "He isn't Marc Pillsworth, is he?"

"I thought he was," Toffee replied confusedly. "Now I'm not so sure. Right now, I don't even know who I am. Maybe I'm Marc Pillsworth and you two are Toffee. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if it turned out that way."

"He can't be!" the figure insisted. "Marc Pillsworth was due to die at eight-thirty sharp this morning." Suddenly it turned to Marc. "You're dead!" it said firmly. "You'd better stop running around like this. It isn't right. I was ordered here to haunt this place, and how can I do it with you around? It ruins everything. I'm a self-respecting spectre and I won't have this sort of thing. I won't!"

"I'm not dead," Marc snapped peevishly. "And ... and...." Suddenly he stopped short and blinked. "You ... you're a ghost?"

"Naturally," the figure replied with solemn dignity. "Yours. What did you think? So you see, you simply can't be alive. It just isn't possible. These things just aren't handled that way."

Fearful uncertainty crept into Marc's eyes. "Well," he murmured, "I did have a lot of accidents this morning, and maybe I did.... I don't feel so good." Suddenly he shook his head. "No! This is insane. I'm just as alive as ever."

"Holy smoke!" the figure cried. "You mean you loused things up and didn't get killed? You're actually here, you and that naked lady?"

Toffee drew her brief tunic closer around her. "Ghost or no ghost," she said icily, "I'll not be referred to as that naked lady."

The ghost looked at her appraisingly. "You may not be any lady," he said, "but you are certainly naked."

"For heaven's sake!" Marc cried desperately. "This is no time to be going on about naked ladies."

"It's as good a time as any," Toffee said pertly. "You stay out of this. It may develop into something interesting." Her hold on the tunic relaxed slightly. "Naked ladies don't grow on trees, you know."

"I don't care if they grow in ash cans!" Marc rasped, a little out of control. "I don't care about naked ladies at all!"

"You don't?" The ghost stared at Marc wonderingly.

"No, I don't! What I care about is this mess you've gotten me into. It's got to be straightened out!"

"Oh, that," the ghost said, suddenly unconcerned. "That's easy, now that I think about it. There was some sort of slip up this morning, but I'm sure it was all your own doing. Our office never makes mistakes. All you have to do now is just bump yourself off, and everything will be all right. Better late than never, I suppose."

"What!" The word shot from Marc's mouth like a handful of gravel. "You expect me to commit suicide just for the sake of your precious records! I never heard of anything so callous!"

"Oh, come now, old man," the spirit smiled blandly. "Let's not be sentimental about it. Why don't you just toddle down to the corner and slip quietly under a truck?" Suddenly he burped and his legs, in simultaneous accompaniment, disappeared up to the knees. For a moment he seemed to hover, half-legless, in mid-air. Looking down at this curious phenomenon, he smiled apologetically. "It's the liquor," he said. "Can't handle my ectoplasm worth a damn when I'm drinking." Closing his eyes, he seemed to concentrate a moment, and the legs reappeared in their entirety. He looked up, beaming proudly.

"Oh, good grief," Toffee moaned. "As long as I live I'll never see anything worse than that!"

"And now," the spirit began, turning to Marc, "as I was saying...."

"No!" Marc looked like an animal at bay.

* * * * *

Moving to the chair, the spirit sat down, crossed his legs and elegantly lifted the bottle from the floor. After a long swallow, he looked up and shook his head. "It's on the books that you're dead, and I've got my ectoplasm and a job to do. I don't care what you do, I'm going to stay and haunt this place." He crossed his arms defiantly over his chest.

Marc glanced up peevishly. "_Haunt_ this place?" he said sarcastically. "A wrecking crew could do the same thing, if that's what you call it."

"It's the new method," the spirit said languidly. "The old-fashioned moaning and chain rattling is out nowadays. The new haunting manual tells us just to use our own imagination and initiative. You know, make the thing more personal through self-expression." He leaned forward and looked at Marc more closely. "Say, you don't look so good." He held out the bottle. "You better have some of this."

Marc accepted the bottle with hesitation, regarded it suspiciously for a moment, then, with a shrug, took a long drink. After savoring the taste and the feel of the warm liquid, he thoughtfully took another ... and another.

"Let's not get greedy about this thing!" the spirit said with some show of alarm. "Let's not go overboard. That grog was hard come by. I had to hi-jack a delivery truck and nearly got a free ride to the next city."

"That would have been awful," Marc countered wryly. He returned the bottle and turned to Toffee. "You are naked," he mused. "Awful naked. And things are complicated enough without it. Why don't you trot off and put on some clothes?"

"And where do I get these clothes?"

Marc waved an expansive hand toward a door at the far end of the room. "I think the boys were doing some models in there yesterday. There are probably some clothes left over."

"Good night!" Toffee said, scandalized. "What were those boys doing to the poor things. What, with clothes left over, it must have been awful."

"They were photographing them for ads."

"Oh," Toffee said disappointedly, and pivoting, went to the door. Opening it, she paused a moment to look back. "This won't take long. Don't go away." She stepped into the dimness of the next room, and softly closed the door.

Marc directed his attention back to the spirit. "Now there must be some way out of this, Mr. ... uh...."

"Just call me George," the spirit said. "It's your second name, you know. You're already using the Marcus part of it yourself."

Marc nodded gravely. "Well, anyway, George, you must understand that this thing can't go any further." George yawned expansively, and Marc increased the volume of his voice. "You've simply got to go, George. I'm sure that...."

His voice trailed off into the distant reaches of the room and faded into nothing. George had suddenly disappeared, and a hollow snoring sound rattled ominously from the depths of the now empty-looking chair.

"In here, Miss McGuire?" The voice was Julie's and it came from just beyond the outer door.

Marc leaped to his feet in alarm, started frantically toward the chair, the door to the photographer's room, then, hopelessly, he whirled about, threw himself down on the lounge and closed his eyes tight. Maybe if Julie thought he was sleeping, she would leave. There was the sound of a hand on the door knob.

The door whined open, and muted footsteps sounded on the carpet. From the sound of it, there seemed to be several people, among them a man. Marc wondered desperately who it was, but kept his eyes determinedly shut.

"There he is," came the sound of Memphis' voice, "just as I left him."

"Is that good, doctor?" This time it was Julie's voice, anxious and fearful.

"I really couldn't say, Mrs. Pillsworth. Maybe. Maybe not."

The doctor's voice was a solemn one with sonorous, church-like overtones.

"Well, I'll leave you two with him," Memphis said. "I hope everything will be all right."

"Thanks so much for calling me," Julie returned.

As the door closed with a snap, Marc struggled valiantly against a driving impulse to open his eyes ... one of them at least ... just a little.

"Smell the liquor, doctor?" Julie was saying. "This sort of thing has never happened before. I just don't understand it. If what Miss McGuire tells me is true, he's been behaving like a regular hoodlum."

"Sometimes," the doctor replied, "they just snap all of a sudden. There's no telling what sets them off at all. It might be anything."

The footsteps came closer and Marc felt a hand on his shoulder. It shook him gently. "Wake up, dear," Julie's voice cooed. "It's Julie."

* * * * *

Marc opened his eyes and looked up guiltily. Julie's anxious face was just above his own, smiling a tragic little smile. And just beyond her shoulder there was also the face of a man, studious and intelligent in a musty, smug sort of way. Marc disliked it on sight.

"Do you feel very awful?" Julie asked.

Marc nodded. "Yes, dear," he murmured wanly. "Terrible."

Her hand patted his shoulder reassuringly. "Well, everything's going to be all right," she said. "I've brought Dr. Polk to see you. He wants to talk to you."

Marc's thoughts raced wildly as he boosted himself into a sitting position.

He glanced nervously at the chair across the room and the door behind which Toffee was dressing. The situation, he felt, was almost too atomic to be endured. It might explode at any minute if he didn't get Julie and the doctor out of there. He regarded the doctor with mistrust.

"I don't want to talk to him," he said peevishly. "I won't."

Undismayed, the doctor calmly sat down on the edge of the lounge. "You mustn't feel that way, Mr. Pillsworth," he said soothingly. "We're going to be great friends, you and I."

"Want to bet?" Marc scowled. He turned to Julie. "What kind of quack is this guy, anyway?"

"Dr. Polk is a ... a...."

"I'm a psychiatrist," the doctor broke in. "You're suffering from a nervous disorder, Mr. Pillsworth, and I'm here to help you."

Marc's eyes widened with astonishment. They thought he was nuts! What was he...! His mind leaped to other things as the hissing noise from George's chair suddenly increased in volume. They were bound to notice it in a moment.

"I'm all right, doctor," Marc said, his voice unnaturally loud. "I'm perfectly okay. So you see, I really don't need you! It was just a little joke. Hah, hah!" His laugh was false and a little hysterical. "So you can run along back to your nuts ... ah ... patients." He glanced nervously at the door to the photographer's room. Everything was ominously quiet. The hissing from George's chair had stopped.

The doctor cleared his throat, glanced significantly at Julie. "Well, yes," he said, edging closer to Marc. "I'll run along. But I want you to answer a few simple questions for me first. Is that all right?"

"Sure! Sure," Marc said feverishly. "I'll answer your questions. Only make it fast, doctor. I'm a busy man, you know."

"All right," the doctor said, taking a pencil from his pocket and carefully spreading a notebook over one knee. "I'm going to give you a list of words and I want you to give me the first response that comes into your mind. Understand?"

"Sure, doctor," Marc replied. "You say a word and I come back at you with the first thing it reminds me of. Only hurry, will you?"

"Fine." The doctor poised the pencil over the notebook. "Now this is the first word. Black."

"Future," Marc answered absently, gazing fearfully at George's chair.

"Hot," the doctor continued.

"Seat," Marc replied, still absorbed in the chair.

"Cut."

"Throat."

"Door."

Marc glanced frightenedly at the door to the photographer's room. "Closed!" he yelled, taking advantage of the situation. "Keep the door closed!"