Ghouljaw and Other Stories

by Clint Smith

  (Despite her exotic beauty, unapologetic ambition, and attraction to ostentatious displays of success, she seemed satisfied with our placid town and with the meager income of a schoolteacher. She seemed satisfied with me.) I proposed three months after our first date.

  We played house for less than a year before getting married. And we took our honeymoon in the Caribbean.

  On our second night at the resort, Gretchen and I had wandered out onto our beachfront terrace. I held my new wife close as I surveyed the chalky shoreline and star-scattered sky. I peered out over the silver-rippled surface of the ocean. Far off were tiny green and red lights of some ship or barge moving slowly across the dark horizon. I inhaled the salty air and tightened my arms around Gretchen. I glanced down and saw her fondling her wedding ring.

  “I wish I could afford more,” I said, a confession I’d expressed before.

  She tilted her face and smirked. “It’s perfect, Paul.” She inched up on her toes and kissed me. “Besides,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder. “I can always upgrade for our anniversary.”

  We discussed Gretchen’s recent promotion; whether or not my students missed me at school; and when we should think about starting a family. Eventually we grew silent. I was content listening to the gentle cadence of the tide. Rearranging my embrace, I pulled my wife closer and caressed her arms. We told each other, I love you, before making our way back to the bed.

  I woke to the sound of Gretchen’s peaceful breathing—a rise and fall that mingled with the soft sussurance of the surf outside. We’d left the French doors open after coming back inside, the long delicate drapes drifted languidly. The room was still and washed with pale blue moonlight. As I made a drowsy movement to get up and close the doors I registered the figure standing on Gretchen’s side of the bed. In one jerky shift I rose up midway and went rigid.

  Recognition of a thing I’d forgotten for twenty years spilled into me: the high-cheekboned, cadaver-gray face, the jagged rows of broken-porcelain teeth glittering between a rictus and lecherous grin. Its moist, unblinking eyes were fixed on me. The long, pilgrim-style cloak hung loose over its shoulders.

  In a slick flash its gaze darted down to Gretchen. My stomach knotted and soured as it extended one of its purple-veined hands, fingering a few strands of hair from her forehead before making a single stroke across her clavicle.

  I twisted and lurched up, leaping over Gretchen and grabbing the thing by its collar, yanking him away from the bed. His smile widened as he clasped his hands over my upper arms. We tangled up in the middle of the room. Gritting my teeth, I swung my body around and shoved him toward the terrace, knocking over lamps and furniture. We burst through the doors and pitched over the rail, landing on the beach and kicking up sand as I tried to gain some control.

  And very quickly my bare feet sank into the soggy shoreline. With all the strength and leverage I could summon, I clawed into his cloak, shifted my weight, and tugged him down into the water, pressing a knee into his chest as a wave rushed over his face.

  “Goddamn it,” I grunted through my teeth. “My wife . . . fucking touched my wife.” I saw a burst of bubbles stream from his beaky nose, as if he’d laughed. I tilted forward, pressing harder, driving him down. Touched my wife.

  His arm, as if he’d not exerted an ounce of energy, shot up through the water, a slick hand latching over my throat; his slender, disproportionate fingers wriggled and worked and tightened. His arm began dragging me down.

  Flailing, I drove my fists against his face. Then, holding what little breath I had left, my face was submerged. Everything went black and silent. I opened my eyes and stopped struggling.

  In the underwater hum I heard, dimly at first, a distant echo. I heard the sonorous wail of a pipe organ, a single drawn-out note rising, sustaining, and fading. And as if that resonating note blended into a whisper, I heard, “Let go.” That whisper poured through my mind with the ease of a serene tide washing away impressions in the sand. The twitching fingers loosened around my neck as, once more, I heard the words. Let go. And I did.

  Hands grasped my shoulders and arms and my face broke the surface. There were frantic voices, a woman crying for help. I was being hauled onto the beach. I remember seeing wide-eyed people rushing from their beachfront rooms. Gretchen was there. Her face was tear-streaked and she held a hand over her mouth as someone settled me on my back. She knelt down next to me, pleading to know what had happened and why I had done this. Eventually her voice was drowned out as the sound of the ocean grew louder, and night rushed on, closing in around me.

  4

  Things got worse after the honeymoon. The dream got worse. Our marriage lasted about as long as our courtship, less than a year.

  I’d always imagined myself being inconsolable—perhaps even physically violent—were I to be confronted with my wife’s infidelity in my marriage. But in Gretchen’s case, and considering the circumstances, I can’t blame her. Lately, I’ve learned to let go.

  I’d been sitting at the kitchen table one evening, staring at scratched-out words on a piece of paper, trying to scribble down an unsatisfying version of what you are now reading. I heard Gretchen’s car pull into the driveway. It was late.

  I can’t remember what I tried arguing with her about when she walked into the kitchen, but I stopped when I saw her. Her eyes were puffy. She simply dropped her keys on the table and sank down in a chair across from me. She’d been seeing someone for months, some finance manager from another bank.

  “Please, Paul,” she said, sobbing, reaching out for my hand. “It’s not your fault.” I did not believe that then, nor do I believe it now. Several days later I moved out. In November, I received divorce papers.

  Three weeks ago, the administration did my students, the school, and myself a favor when they fired me. My behavior had become too erratic and cruel to be considered acceptable conduct for an educator.

  Two nights ago I was standing in the shower, leaning against the ceramic-tiled wall with my eyes closed, dozing. The door didn’t open. It didn’t have to. I knew what was waiting for me on the other side of the vinyl—what had been waiting all along. I opened my eyes and hesitated before drawing the curtain aside.

  The black figure was slightly obscured by rolling clouds of steam. It was smiling, of course. Water streaming from the showerhead sputtered and changed color, turning black. Rivulets of inky liquid poured over me, branching down across my skin and collecting in a dark pool at my feet. The static hiss from the shower head grew louder. For the first time he spoke, and his voice was my voice: I was drowning in the ocean under a bone-toned moon.

  Dirt on Vicky

  Everybody loved Chick Lorimer in our town.

  Far off

  Everybody loved her.

  —Carl Sandburg, “Gone”

  Bill Hughes watched the children fall under the storyteller’s spell. The kids—Bill’s eight-year-old son Casey among them—were sitting on an enormous rug, wreathed around the feet of the old woman weaving tales from a wooden rocking chair at the back of the library. With Halloween days away, tonight was the final installment of New Bethel’s annual ghost story festival: The Witching Hour.

  In an exaggerated wail, the woman said, “Give me back my bones,” extending her arthritic fingers toward her devoted audience. Casey twisted around to look at his dad. Bill supplied a brief, reassuring smile before his son hooked his own fingers into tiny claws and mouthed: Give me back my bones. Bill nodded, silently indicating that Casey should return his attention to the storyteller.

  The combination of pausing at critical transitions, channeling eerie voices, and calling up the occasional witch’s cackle brought an unsettling authenticity when paired with her austere features. To Bill, it was as if one of Macbeth’s Weird Sisters had crawled off the page and slid into the creaking rocking chair. She was dressed in gray, a black shawl wrapped around her hunched back and knobby shoulders. Her wiry, iron-colored hair was spooled into an unraveling bun; the gh
ost of a smile played at the corners of her mouth as she peered at the rapt faces of her young listeners.

  Nestled near the center of the town’s prim bosom, the library had remained frighteningly unaltered since Bill Hughes had been a kid. Originally a courthouse, the building was a repository of custodial antiquity—marble floors reflecting the green gleam of reading lamps; massive, lacquered bookcases; the warm aroma of age-worn paper. Having lived here all his life, Bill was familiar with most of these stories. His own parents had brought him to these festivals when he was a kid, and he hoped Casey would find similar contentment with the provincial tales of ghost lights, phantom trains, banshee screams echoing under bridges.

  He recognized a few folks here and there, deftly sidestepping the opportunity for anyone to strike up a conversation. Bill’s threshold for tolerating these questions had grown narrow over the past three or four years. He didn’t need to rehash his humiliation every time some busybody got nosy. Of course, none of them cared about him or Casey; they just wanted more gossip, more small town dirt on Vicky.

  Bill’s wife had been killed when Casey was three years old, and everyone in town, Bill was certain, had their own perverse account of what had happened—the maliciously myopic, grown-up counterpart of the children’s story circle. While Casey wasn’t the only youngster in town living in a single-parent home, he was the only kid whose father was a widower. Only in the past few years had Casey started articulating those painfully inevitable questions: “How come kids at school have a mommy and a daddy?” On these occasions, Bill sloppily cobbled something together to mollify the boy. But Casey was getting smarter, his innocent inquiries becoming more acute.

  Throughout the evening, Bill abandoned being a member of the audience, opting to aimlessly pace the aisles in solitude. Lean and lanky, Bill had the aspect of a rangy farmhand. He’d played basketball seventeen years earlier in high school—the same school where he was now a science teacher—and had since strictly maintained the appearance (down to his high-and-tight haircut) of a soft-spoken ball player.

  Bill checked his watch and then gave a glance through one of the skinny windows. The orange-to-mauve tint of October twilight had nearly faded completely. Night’s lithe fingers had pulled darkness up to the town’s chin. Despite this being a Friday (and despite neither father nor son having to cope with school tomorrow), Bill still had the uneasy urge to head home.

  “All right, children,” said the old spinster, steepling her crooked fingers, “are you ready for a final twilight tale?” The kids collectively acknowledged that they were. From a wicker basket near her feet, the woman produced a saddle-stitched chapbook. “Well then . . . our last story is a local legend . . . the legend of the Aikman Farm.”

  Bill’s thin grin faded, his face slackened. Good God, he thought, do people still talk about that place? But why be surprised—the town had barely changed over the past three decades, why should its superstitions?

  He half listened to the latest permutated tale of the Aikman place. Experimentally, he tried to imagine what Casey was envisioning—a gray, windowless farm house on a hill, under a sky the color of dirty wool. Drifting through knee-high witch grass, his mental eye floated across the yard, toward the house, through a black, coffin-shaped threshold beneath the shadow-draped porch. Bypassing a parlor covered with shattered plaster, dead leaves, and debris, his imagination is dragged up a crooked flight of stairs, slows on the second floor, and stops at a door with a gleaming brass knob. The door yawns open, revealing a narrow corridor of scuffed, severely angled stairs leading up to the attic, up to a figure standing at the top, up to Vicky. He twists his mind away before she can do something obscene.

  The applause of children shook Bill from his self-induced trance.

  Parents were converging. Casey rose to his tiptoes and caught sight of Bill. Grinning, Casey jogged forward, chattering in eager tones. Bill gestured for his son to slow down and lower his voice. Casey obeyed.

  In a hush-rushed breath, Casey said, “Oh my gosh, Dad, it was so spooky.”

  “I’m happy to hear it. Did you thank the storyteller?”

  Zipping his windbreaker, Casey turned toward the still-seated woman. “Thank you,” he said, supplying a timid wave.

  The old woman remained in character—part crone, part bucolic prophet—raising several feeble fingers. “You offered some very fine questions about the fables, my boy. Perhaps there’s bit of a storyteller in you.” Casey’s face lit up. She flicked her rheumy gaze onto Bill. “You have a bright little light bulb on your hands, Mr. Hughes.”

  Bill was seized by a preposterous suspicion: that this was somehow the same woman who’d told stories at The Witching Hour when he was a kid. His left brain understood the impossibility of such a thing (that old fabler had been ancient thirty years ago). This idea was small, like a struck match momentarily flaring in a dark room, but it guttered with a dangerously playful possibility: that if Bill allowed his mind to get carried away, he could convince himself to believe it.

  He patted Casey’s shoulder. “Oh, yes. Too precocious for his own good.” Bill cleared his throat, uncomfortable with how alive her eyes were. “Well, good night.”

  The frail woman remained rocking, staring, silent.

  Casey was recapping the evening as they stepped out of the library. It was full night now. A breeze had picked up, anemically urging clusters of brittle leaves to chatter along the sidewalk.

  “We better get home,” Bill said, and shifted his voice to a lightheartedly sinister tone, “before we drift into the witching hour.”

  Appearing momentarily startled, Casey looked up at his father; but he obviously read playfulness in his dad’s expression. “Yeah, right.” As they passed under the amber halos of streetlamps lining the sidewalk, Casey drew his fingers into little claws and gave a mournful, imitative moan. Now it was Casey’s turn: “Give me back my bones!”

  They were nearly clear of Main Street when Casey said, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Well,” Bill began, taking the same tone as when one of his students caught him off-guard. He glanced over at Casey, a sincere little frown between his large eyes. Sometimes he looked so much like Vicky. Panels of shadows passed over the boy’s face as they moved through sparse light. “I suppose I don’t.” In his periphery he saw Casey’s shoulders slump as he turned away. “But it’s all supposed to be for fun, right?” Casey mumbled something. Bill scratched his cheek. “I mean, what would Halloween be without ghosts?” This time there was no reply.

  Bill slowed at an intersection, idling under a red light for a few seconds before it clicked to green and he steered onto Northeastern Avenue. After several minutes without speaking, Bill said, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  Casey, hands folded neatly on his lap, peered out the passenger window. His small voice was resolute. “I think ghosts are real.”

  Bill gave an earnest nod. “And there’s nothing wrong with that, son. I believed in ghosts at your age.”

  Casey shifted a bit, glancing askance at his dad. “Really?” His tone was more eager than incredulous.

  “Sure,” Bill said, steering onto the road which led directly home. “You may not believe this, but when I was a kid—although quite a bit older than you—me and some of my friends used to ride our bikes out to the Aikman farm.”

  “Seriously?” Casey pressed forward against the taut seatbelt. “That lady wasn’t making that up? The Aikman place is real?” He was beaming, the energy of their special evening returning.

  “If I’m lying I’m dying,” Bill said, trying to sound at ease.

  “What was it like?”

  “The Aikman place?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Casey.

  “Well,” Bill took a deep breath and squinted as if straining to see through fog. He was back in front of his classroom, back in control. “It was a deserted farmhouse out on Haymaker Lane, mostly a place kids dared each other to explore—coaxing one another to run up and knock on the front door on
Halloween, that sort of thing. The house was”—he struggled for the right words—“exactly something you’d imagine a haunted house would look like: two stories with a few dormers around the top . . . a sagging porch around the bottom. I don’t think anyone really knew why it’d been abandoned.”

  He trailed off. Bill didn’t know if this was true or not. He’d always just accepted (and perpetuated) whatever legend or lie was circulating at the time: The Aikman woman murdered her husband and kids and buried them in the root cellar before hanging herself from the rafters out in the barn. . . . The Aikman’s eldest son came home from college during winter break and poisoned the entire family Christmas morning before dumping the bodies out in the limestone quarry out east. . . . The Aikman father smothered his wife and kids while they slept, placing their corpses in the cornfield shortly before tumbling them to pieces in the rusty pickers of his combine at harvest time. Grim as it may have been, Bill had always relished the autumn elements of the last legend, but was reticent to share any of these particular tales with his impressionable son.

  Yet beneath all this there was that persistent image—the impression he’d suppressed since long before the library—of Vicky at the top of the stairs, only now it had taken on the photographic effect of a negative—all the colors inverted . . . the whites to black and blacks to white: Vicky, her teeth now pearly black, her penetrating pupils had reversed to white marbles rimmed with black sclera, her once dark hair now shredded gray drapes. Bill stifled himself from murmuring, Not real.

  “Dad?”

  Bill shivered. “Hm?”

  “Why do you keep saying was?”

  Bill said, “How do you mean?”

  “Like”—Casey licked his lips—“you keep saying was and looked and used to be, and I want to know why everything is in the past.”