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anguished, and had suffered an intense day of concern.
    "I hadn't intended to be away so long."
    She had made him breakfast. She sat opposite him at the table in the dining room, and leafed through
The Times
. "How could you get so dirty in so few hours?" she said, and he frowned as he forked slices of sausage into his mouth. Her words were confusing, but he himself was confused, now. He was oddly disorientated.
    When he went to his study he found that his desk drawer had been disturbed. Angry, he almost confronted Jennifer, but decided against it. The key to his private journal was lying on the desk top. And yet the last time he had written in the journal he had—he was sure—replaced the key carefully in its hidden position, pressed to the underside of the desk top.
    He wrote an official entry in his research journal, and then fetched the personal diary from its hiding place, entering an account of his encounter with Ash. His hand shook and he had to make many corrections to the text. When he had finished he blotted the ink dry, sat back, and turned back through the journal's pages.
    He read through what he had written shortly before the last trip with Wynne-Jones.
    And he suddenly realized that there were six additional lines to the text!
    Six lines that he had no recollection of writing at all.
    "Good God, who's been at my journal?"
    Again, he stopped himself going to Jennifer, or confronting the boys, but he was shocked, truly shocked. He bent over the pages, his hands shaking as he ran a finger word by word along the entry.
    It was in his own handwriting. There was no question of it. His own handwriting, or a brilliant forgery thereof.
    The entry was simple, and had about it that haste with which he was familiar, the scrawled notes that he managed when his encounters were intense, his life hectic, and his need to be in the wood more important than his need to keep a careful record of his discoveries.
She is not what she seems. Her name is Ash. Yes. You know that. It is a dark world for me. I will acknowledge terror. But there is
    I cannot be sure
    She is more dangerous, and she has done this. Edward is dead. No. Perhaps not. But it is a poss
    The time with the horses. I can't be sure. Something was watching
    "I didn't write this. Dear God. Am I going mad? I
didn't
write this. Did I?"
    Jennifer was reading and listening to the radio. He stood in the doorway, uncertain at first, his mind not clear. "Has anyone been to my desk?" he asked at length.
    Jennifer looked up. "Apart from you yourself, no. Why?"
    "Someone's tampered with my journal."
    "What do you mean 'tampered' with it?"
    "Written in it. Copying my own hand. Has anybody been here during my excursion?"
    "Nobody. And I don't allow the boys into the study when you're not here. Perhaps you were sleepwalking last night."
    Now her words began to fidget him. "How could I have done that? I didn't get home until dawn."
    "You came home at midnight," she said, a smile touching her pale features. She closed the book, keeping a finger at the page. "You went out again before dawn."
    "I didn't come back last night," Huxley whispered. "You must have been dreaming."
    She was silent for a long time, her breathing shallow. She looked at him solemnly. The smile had vanished, replaced by an expression of sadness and weariness. "I wasn't dreaming. I was glad of you. I was in bed, quite asleep, when you woke me. I was disappointed to find you gone in the morning. I suppose I should have expected it…"
    How long had he slept at the edge of the wood, before the woman and her dog had woken him? Had he indeed come home, unconscious, unaware, to spend an hour or two in bed, to write a confused and shattered message in his own journal, then to return to the woodland edge, to wait for dawn?
    Suddenly alarmed, he began to wonder what other magic Ash had worked on him.
    Where was Wynne-Jones? He had been gone over a week, now, and Huxley was increasingly disturbed, very concerned for his