Perhaps the harrowing memories would fade eventually, and Yarkie return in heart as in fact to the lovely oasis it had been with its fresh woods and pristine beaches. But now, though safe with Peter Hubbard’s arm around her still-­bandaged body, Elizabeth Carr shivered. As she faintly made out the bowler shape, she saw not High Ridge and its stately homes and bright flowers; she saw the slimy dome in the abominable cockroach cave, the detestable “brain” whose “cerebral cells” in the form of the tiny insects Peter was bringing back—oh, safely packed!—to Harvard.

The biologists of the world would come to understand what had transpired. They would bestow Latin names and learned theories to relate the freak cockroach colony to known natural developments. But for her the Yarkie aggressors would remain a black mystery of the impossible.

Elizabeth turned her back on the island in a gesture of finality. Her life was elsewhere. Secretly, she doubted whether she and Peter would even return for the wedding. She would do almost anything to please her grandfather, but there would be too many ghosts in that hall—the lost children off the Tub, Craig Soaras, Wanda Lindstrom, the Cannons, the Tintons, the Laidlaws, the unknowns. No, she wanted to dance at her wedding without tripping over phantoms, dance with the man holding her tightly and safely now.

She lifted her face for his kiss of promise. He gave it with a man’s love as full as her own.

From the wheel beside Bonnie Taylor, Elias Johnson looked back at the two and wiped a moist eye with a rough wrist. “Keep her straight into the wind,” he admonished Bonnie. “You’re kicking up too much spray!”

The first faint sight of Chatham caught everyone’s attention. Boston and Cambridge—the world—were close and real again. Life would resume.

None of the people on board saw the small blot that skittered on the Jessica’s scrubbed deck for a split second before disappearing in a coil of Elias Johnson’s neatly arranged rope.

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gregory A. Douglas was the pseudonym of Eli Cantor (1913-2006). A man of many talents and interests, Cantor was a businessman, novelist, playwright, composer, artist and poet. He studied philosophy at New York University and earned a law degree from Harvard before getting his professional start in the legal department at CBS Television. While working there, he began to pursue a writing career, winning the O’Brien Short Story Award in 1940 and publishing his work in Esquire, Atlantic Monthly, the Saturday Review and other publications. His other novels include Enemy in the Mirror (1977) and Love Letters (1979). His lone horror novel, The Nest (1980), was the basis for a 1988 cult classic film.