Read Online Who Is Frances Rain? by Margaret Buffie - Free Book Online

feel it pushing against the backs of my eyes.
    Shaking my head to relieve the pain, I saw something out of the corner of my eye — something that flitted around the dim light at the edge of the building. My heart beat in thick, sickening throbs. Someone was there. I listened and looked, my head crushed with pain. Again, I saw the flicker of movement, but now it seemed to be drifting behind me, out of my line of sight. The horrible thing was, I couldn’t turn to see if it was coming closer. It was as if I was being held in a vise.
    I tried to tear the glasses from my face but ­couldn’t move my arms. The awful silence I had felt the day before once again hung around me, as if someone had dropped a deadening headset over my ears. Suddenly, I felt a terrible weight fall against my shoulders, a weight so strong my knees started to buckle under it. I fought to stay on my feet.
    A whistling sound, like a giant’s breath, rushed in and out through my head. My hand moved from my side, as if someone had taken control of it, and it hung in the air ready to take hold of the door handle. I watched in horror as its long paleness dissolved to a filmy mist, and in its place, a larger hand, brown and sinewy, reached towards the handle. A flat gold signet ring glinted in a far-off light.
    I didn’t wear a ring ... I didn’t wear ... slowly, slowly, the pressure pushed me towards the door. The hand with the ring took hold of the handle and pushed the door open. Yet it was the other pale spirit hand — my own hand — that drew away. The muscles in my arm, driven by my terror, lifted it towards my face.
    With every ounce of willpower left, I forced my eyes shut. It took all my concentration, for other eyes were also looking at the door, wanting to get inside the cabin. I knew I’d be pulled in, too.
    When the scene before me was finally blacked out, it was easier to move my arm. I fumbled with numbed fingers for the glasses, and somehow managed to hook my thumb under the wire arm, yanking them up and off in one hard pull.
    The glasses and I hit the ground at the same time. I lay for a long time with my back deep in the damp thick moss, waiting for the tall pines above me to stop turning, waiting for the dizziness and nausea to leave. I felt as if I’d been on the biggest ride in the fairground. Only it hadn’t been any joy ride.
    The top of my hand felt as if someone had hit it with a hammer. Carefully I touched it. No bump. Just a tender spot. I winced and dropped my hand. It felt like a dead weight.
    I’m not sure how long I lay there, gulping and gasping like a jackfish out of water, but when I did manage to stagger to my feet — probably looking like a drunk orangutan — I knew I had to get off the island. Archaeology wasn’t any fun anymore.
    Not daring to look behind me, I stumbled towards the safety of the Beetle, stopping only long enough to pick up Gran’s tape measure, the trowel and the shovel.
    After I’d paddled away from the landing rock, I made myself look back at the island. The sun had that deep yellow glow of northern afternoon and its heat was lying heavy and thick over the water. The pines stood silent and still, keeping their secrets to themselves.
    The smooth wooden paddle gripped tightly in my hands and all the familiar sights around me — the flashes of light off the waves, the rich green of Gran’s distant shore, and a sharp-winged tern riding high in the shimmering heat — they all seemed to only heighten the feeling that maybe I wasn’t really here anymore, that somehow I’d become part of someone else’s dream.
    I shook my head. No. I had to be real. I’d read somewhere that if you pinched yourself hard and it hurt, then you weren’t dreaming.
    â€œOuch!” I cried.
    I was real all right. “So, if that’s true, and if I’m real,” I snuffled to myself, as I paddled hard for home, “then