time, that's all, an older me. But the same place, more or less. The same river. We were back there,' he thumbed the air, indicated the path behind them, 'a few hundred yards downriver, sitting on the bank. It was summer and I was talking to my mother when you came by. Now it's ... oh, quite a few winters later. I'm a little closer to your own age now, so perhaps we'll be able to get along that much better.'
Closer to my own age? Jake thought. But you're a good deal firmer, too. That's a Ml of a strong grip you have on my arm, and how much stronger on my mind?But Harry the youth only shook his head in disappointment. 'Hiding your thoughts won't help. I'm in here, remember? Well, at present I am, anyway, while you accept me.''Jesus!' Jake gasped. 'It's like something out of A Christmas Carol! When I wake up, I won't believe it.''That's what I'm afraid of,' said Harry. 'Worse still, you may not even remember it. That's why we have to get things done while we can, and hope they get fixed in your mind.''Things?''Until you trust me,' the other answered, 'until you allow me a little permanency, we'll have to move in stops and starts. We'll get nowhere until I know the whole story, and I won't be able to help you until you believe.''Believe in a ghost?''But I'm not, not really. And Jake, you wouldn't - I mean you really wouldn't - believe how often I've been through this before! Oh, I've had trouble convincing others before you.'While Harry talked, Jake looked him over. It was the same 'boy' for sure, but he'd be nineteen or maybe twenty years old now. Wiry, he would weigh some nine and a half stone and stand seventy inches tall. His hair was an untidy sandy mop that reminded Jake of Glint Eastwood's in those old western movies of more than thirty years ago. But his face wasn't nearly so hard and his freckles were still there, lending him a naive and definitely misleading boyish innocence.More than any other feature, Harry Keogh's eyes were especially interesting. Looking at Jake, they seemed to see right through him (the sure sign of an esper, as Jake was now aware), as if he were the revenant, and not the reverse. But they were oh so blue, those eyes, that startling, colourless blue which always looks so unnatural, so that one thinks the owner has to be wearing lenses. More than that, there was something in them which said they'd seen a lot more than any twenty-year-old has any right seeing.But still Jake felt a little easier with all of this now. After all, it was only a dream. And since this ghost, or whatever it was, was conversational, why not talk to it? Or humour it, as the case might be.'So, if convincing people is as hard as you make out, why do you put yourself to the trouble?' he asked his strange companion.They had come to a halt before the gate in the garden wall of the central house. Lights in the downstairs room adjacent to the garden sent angular black shadows marching over the brittle shrubbery arid garden path ... the shadows of men, glimpsed only briefly before the patio doors were slammed and curtains jerked hurriedly across the wide windows.For a long moment Harry made no answer to Jake's question; he stood as if transfixed, looking in through the gate's horizontal bars. But the house was mainly dark, where mere chinks of light escaped at odd angles from the corners and joins of poorly-fitted curtains.Then the youth started, blinked his eyes in the pale moonlight, and breathlessly answered, 'Why do I keep putting myself out? That's easy, Jake. It's because I was the beginning, and I have to be the end ...' Then he gave another start, and said:'We can't stay here. That house there is where I was born. My stepfather has visitors - Boris Dragosani and Max Batu - and later, I'll be visiting him, too. Tonight is the night I killed him. But there are things you mustn't see, not yet.'
'You ... you killed him?' And now the cold that Jake felt wasn't entirely physical, if it ever had been.
'I will,' said the other. 'But I don't want to see it, and Idon't want you to see it. So now we have to go. Another place