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" 'And, Ora Lee insisted, Rebecca hadn't started out being mean to the children, or mean to anybody; it was what came as the result of her dissatisfaction over time. It was what came of Manfred's downright meanness.

" 'And as Ora Lee put it, in old age she was more able to understand Rebecca, and make no mistake, Quinn, Ora Lee thought Rebecca was murdered out there -- you can be sure of it -- but the point I was making was that in old age, Ora Lee was more forgiving of Rebecca and what she had done, though she couldn't forgive Rebecca's meanness to Camille.

" 'Even as Ora Lee told me these things, she begged me never to mention Rebecca's name to my father or to my Aunt Camille.

" ' "Your Aunt Camille was done in by those days," Ora Lee told me. "That poor child was always morbid, but she went deep into her shell and never came out anymore. "

" 'To return to the history of your illustrious ancestor,' Aunt Queen went on, 'I didn't need Ora Lee to tell me that he had kept bringing his Irish girls to the house and keeping them in the front bedroom upstairs for many a year. I was a girl of twenty or so when my mother told me all about it -- how just after my birth my father had begged the Old Man to please stop his bad behavior on account of his grandbaby coming into the world.

" 'The Old Man had cursed and fussed and slammed his fist down on the dining table so hard as to rattle the silver, but he agreed. For a daughter-in-law he hadn't bothered, but for a grandbaby, well, he would, and so he removed himself from the big upstairs best bedroom, in which you now reside, my blessed nephew, and he took this bedroom here on the back of the house. And even during my early years -- before I was too young to remember -- he slipped his women in by the back door.

" 'The changing of the room had a great significance for everyone. The priest of those days, Fr. Flarety, stopped calling on Manfred for his wicked ways, and by the time I was ten, by the time the Old Man gave me the cameos, he was pretty much just a pitiful slobbering old creature, raving at the empty air and trying to hail with his cane anyone who chanced to pass the door.

" 'My mother became the official lady of Blackwood Manor because Aunt Camille was a wounded being who could never take such a place.

" 'And as for the trunk, well, I suppose I forgot about it, and it just became one of many up there, full of uninteresting clothes. Oh, of course, I always meant to go and explore the attic, but thinking it a monumental chore to put a lot of chaos in order I never bothered, and neither has anyone else.

" 'And now, Quinn, you know more about what happened to Rebecca Stanford than anyone living, even me. Her ghost is a danger to you, Quinn, and to everyone around you. ¡¯

" 'Oh, but I don't know,' I answered. 'I found those chains out there, Aunt Queen. Rusted chains. But I don't really know what happened to her!¡¯

" 'Quinn, the important thing is you don't call up this ghost again!¡¯

" 'But I never really called her in the first place. ¡¯

" 'Yes, you did, Quinn. Not only did you find her things, you wanted to know her story. ¡¯

" 'Aunt Queen, if that's how I called her up, then why didn't she appear to you years ago when Ora Lee told you about her? Why didn't she appear to you when you were a little girl and Manfred gave you the cameos?¡¯

" 'I don't have your gift for seeing ghosts, Quinn,' she came back fast. 'I've never seen a ghost, and you've seen plenty of them. ¡¯

"I sensed a hesitancy in her, a sudden sharp introspection. And I thought I knew what it was.

" 'You've seen Goblin, haven't you, Aunt Queen?' I asked her.

"And as I said these words, Goblin came and crouched down at the arm of her chair and peered at her. He was extremely vivid and solid. I was shocked by his proximity to her, and I loathed it, but she was definitely looking at him.

" 'Back off, Goblin!' I said crossly, and he at once obeyed, very sad and nonplussed to have made me so short with him. He withdrew, throwing beseeching looks at me, and then he vanished.

" 'What did you just see?' Aunt Queen asked me.

" 'What I always see,' I responded. 'My double. He's wearing my jeans, just as neat and pressed, and he's wearing a polo shirt same as me and he looks exactly like me. ¡¯

"She sat back, drinking her champagne slowly.

" 'What did you see, Aunt Queen?' I threw the question back at her.

" 'I see something, Quinn, but it's not like what you see. I see an agitation in the air; it's like the movement or the turbulence that rises above a hot road in front of one's car in the middle of summer. I see that and sometimes there's a vague shape to it, a human shape, a shape of your size, always. The whole apparition is no more than, perhaps, a second. And what's left is a feeling that something is lingering, that something unseen is there. ¡¯

"For the first time in my life, I was angry with Aunt Queen. 'Why did you never tell me this!' I demanded. 'How could you go year in and year out and not tell me that you saw that much of Goblin, that you knew --. ' I was too out of sorts to go on.

" 'That's about the extent of what I see. ' She went on as though I weren't frothing at the mouth, 'and I don't, by any means, see it very often. Only now and then when your spirit wants me to see him, I suspect. ¡¯

"I was not only angry -- fit to be tied -- I was amazed. I had been in a constant state of amazement since Rebecca appeared to me, reeling from one revelation after another, and now this, to discover that all these years Aunt Queen had been seeing Goblin.

" 'Is there anything else?' I asked with a hint of sarcasm, 'that you can confide at this time?¡¯

" 'Quinn,' she said gravely, 'it's perhaps ridiculous of me to say that I've always done what I thought best for you. I've never denied the existence of Goblin. The path I chose was more careful and deliberate than that. It was not to ratify Goblin, not to reinforce him, one might say, because I've never known whether Goblin was a good creature or bad. But as we are laying it all out on the table, let me tell you that Big Ramona can see of Goblin about as much as I can -- a turbulence in the air. No more, no less. And Jasmine can see that much too. ¡¯