“Not yet. We’ll tape it now, air it later. With your permission. “
The man nodded gruffly. “ ’S’okay.”
“Gimme a sound check.”
“What’s your name, sir?” the reporter asked.
“Uh … Fred Hibbs.”
“And do you live here in Merridale?”
The man nodded.
“All right, Mr. Hibbs, you can look at the camera if you like, or at me if that’s more comfortable. Ready, Kevin? Okay.” The reporter’s casual air dropped away and his face grew stern and tight as the red eye of the camera winked on.
“I’m talking with Mr. Fred Hibbs, a Merridale resident, just one of thousands who have been stunned by the overnight phenomenon that’s taken place in this quiet Pennsylvania town. Mr. Hibbs, as we can see, the town square is just packed with people. Could you tell me why you’re here right now?”
Hibbs licked his lips almost guiltily, glancing up and down at the camera. “Don’t wanta be alone is all.”
“You live alone, sir?”
“Yeah. Got me a little house by myself.”
“What was your first reaction to this phenomenon, Mr. Hibbs?”
Hibbs’s head wagged and a crooked smile split his features. “I … uh … I was pretty scared. I mean, I, uh … I seen my momma and daddy.” His voice bubbled, cracked a bit. “Just went into the kitchen, and I seen ’em sitting there at the table plain as day, lookin’ just like they did the day they died. Only they’s naked.” Hibbs bit his lip. “I never seen ’em naked.”
“And what did you do then?”
“I got out. I … I just ran out of the house. And I seen more of ’em outside. But then Chris Spickler come by in his pickup and seen me and told me to hop in, and I did real quick and we come up here to the square.”
“When was this?”
“ ’Bout ten or so.”
“I understand the … occurrences took place much earlier.”
“Guess so. I’m a pretty sound sleeper.”
“Have you considered leaving Merridale?”
Hibbs shrugged. “I got no place to go.”
“But would you like to?”
“Yeah. Yes, sir, I would.”
“Do you have any thoughts as to what these things might be?”
“You betcha I do.” He paused, gathering strength. “Ghosts. That’s what they are. It’s that simple.”
The reporter nodded sagely. “Do you have any thoughts as to the motive behind their appearance?” Hibbs looked puzzled. “The reason they’re here,” the reporter clarified.
“ ’Cause we fucked up!”
It wasn’t Fred Hibbs that answered. When the reporter turned, he saw an elderly man with a crisply lined face. Hibbs, who had jumped at the words, now frowned, his face turning red with anger and embarrassment. The reporter slashed a finger across his throat, the camera’s red light winked out, and Eddie Karl laughed in a high-pitched cackle.
“Goddammit, Eddie,” Hibbs said through gritted teeth. “We’re on TV here!”
“Whoop-de-shit.” Eddie Karl turned to the reporter. “What are you talkin’ to Loafer for? He don’t know nothin’.”
“You mean Mr. Hibbs?” the reporter inquired with a sickly smile.
“Mr. Hibbs, hell. Loafer’s the name. ’Swhat everybody else calls him, right, Loafer?”
“You old—”
“Now, you want to know what this is all about, you just ask me.”
“You know?” the reporter asked.
“Damn right. They just don’t like what the hell’s goin’ on here. They think we’re fulla shit, and this is their way of tellin’ us.”
“Full of shit,” the reporter repeated.
“You heard it here first, buddy.”
The reporter ignored Eddie Karl, thanked Fred Hibbs, and moved away, closer to the tight group of men in the center of the square that seemed to form the command core. He stopped and listened to his colleague, who was still interviewing the mayor. “So you really have no idea of the cause?” The reporter was in her late twenties, tall, slim, attractive, her tailored wool suit in cosmopolitan counterpoint to Mayor Markley’s somewhat garish double-knit blazer and wide polyester tie.
“Well, no. No. It could be due to any number of things, and I’m certain there’s some logical explanation. Certainly no need to panic or leave town.”
“But in 1980,” the reporter reminded him, “a good many people left immediately after a minor incident at the Thorn Hill Nuclear Station, isn’t that correct?”
Markley grimaced. “Yes, that’s right. But there was no danger then, no danger at all. And there’s no danger now either.”
“Some people are already blaming the plant for the occurrence. Any comment on that?”
The mayor’s face soured again. “No, no, that remains to be proven. Of course, if it turns out to be true, we will certainly demand a reckoning.”
“As you did in 1980?”
“Well, that’s still tied up in litigation, but we expect …”
Kim Bailey hurled an armful of clothes into her suitcase, a frown wrinkling her pretty face. She thought of Dave again, picking up his picture and laying it carefully between two pairs of jeans, cushioning the glass. Damn. Where was he anyway? She’d tried to call his house as soon as her father had dropped the bombshell that they were leaving Merridale, but Dave had not answered. She knew he wasn’t at school—the whole district had been closed. But where then?
Just as she was sitting on her suitcase to force it shut, the phone rang, and she leaped up like some giant jack-in-the-box, her clothes spilling out over the handmade quilt. She jerked the phone from the receiver before the first ring had been completed and said hello breathlessly.
“Kim?”
“Dave, I tried to call, but you weren’t there.”
“My folks and I were in the square for a while. I’ve been trying to get you all morning, but the phones are all screwed up.”
“Listen,” Kim said, “we’re leaving.”
“Leaving? Leaving Merridale?”
“Daddy’s freaked out. Nobody knows what’s happening. We’re going to Lansford, Mike Davison, a guy Daddy knows. We’re staying at his place. They have two kids in college, so they’ve got the room.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Till somebody knows something or these things disappear. You seen them?”
“Yeah. My grandma lived with us when she died. I was just a kid. Mom didn’t want me to look, but I did. Just once though. I don’t want to again.”
“Kimmy!” her father called sharply from downstairs. “You ready?”
“I’ve gotta go, Dave.”
“When will I see you?”
“I’ll call you. Or call me. Mike Davison in Lansford. I love you.”
“I love you. It’ll be all right. Don’t be scared.”
“I won’t.”
Everyone was scared.
It was not the fear of the outward appearances of the dead returned so much as the fear of what had brought them back. It was the fear of the unseen rather than of those poor, shabby things, ethereal and real at once, that terrified.
Where did they come from?
Why are they here?
What do they mean?
They asked themselves the questions over and over, then talked of theories, possibilities. What if, suggested Hen Ebersole, the nuclear plant had put something into the air that made these things visible? What if they’d been there all the time, only invisible, and what if some nuclear dust settled on them so everyone could see them? Howard Flory held out for the ozone layer. The spray cans, he said, breaking down the ozone. You can’t see them when there’s ozone, but now all the ozone’s going away. Jerry Earhart held that they were ghosts, just ghosts pure and simple. As to why they showed up when they did, Jerry couldn’t say.
Pastor Robert Craven, moving from group to group in the square, calming, cheering, had his own explanation. “All we can know is,” he sa
id, “that the hand of God is behind it. We can’t see His purpose, but He’s allowed it to happen. All we can do is wait and try to do His will.”
“You think it’s a sign of the Revelation, Pastor?” asked Josie Betz. “The dead rising and all?”
“Only God knows that, Josie. And He’s told you as much as me.”
The pastor moved on to the next cluster. At most he was welcomed; at a few, only kindly tolerated. Craven was not the kind of minister who inspired faith. If his sermons and his manner had had the theatrical majesty of his physical appearance, there might have been those who would have followed him into hellfire. He was tall, cadaverous, prophetic-looking. Though only in his early fifties, his hair was nearly pure white, combed straight back without grease so that he always appeared to be striding directly into a gale.
Yet, in spite of his prepossessing looks, his manner had far more in common with the Gentle Shepherd of the New Testament than the zealous warriors of the Old, whom he more closely resembled. His sermons were flat and unexciting, offending no one and captivating few. Still, he was liked by his congregation, who attended services out of habit and appreciation. If a church member found himself in the hospital, he also found Bob Craven at his side no later than the following morning. At funerals and viewings he would be there for just as long as the family wanted him, knowing unerringly what they wanted most to hear.
In spite of this there were those who felt Craven’s qualities were best summed up by his name, due to his refusal to lend that name to anything that could be interpreted as controversial. In 1980, when Tom Markley had asked him to sign a petition demanding the closing of Thorn Hill until a full safety investigation could be launched, Craven had declined, saying that he couldn’t use his position in the church to accomplish secular ends.
“Bob,” Markley had pressed, “as a private citizen do you believe in this?”
“Yes.”
“Well, why don’t you sign it as a private citizen?”
Craven had smiled. “Does that mean I can go out and get drunk as a private citizen?”
Markley had begun to argue that it was not the same thing, but he could see that in Robert Craven’s eyes it was, and he had given up, still liking Craven, but thinking less of him than he had.
The criticism had filtered back to Craven, and though it bothered him, he would not change. During his years of pastoral apprenticeship he had seen a long line of ministers who, by taking a stand on a controversial point, had pulled their churches apart. Take sides on any secular topic, he thought—abortion, welfare, the military, even sports in some communities—and you ran the risk of polarization. For there is always someone sitting out there in one of those pews who is ready to disagree, sometimes violently. And then it starts. The backbiting, the innuendos, the innocent acts made to look guilty. Craven would never forget the look on Pastor Albemarle’s face when his church’s lay council decided that it would be in the best interests of the church to find another head pastor.
It had been in 1952, and Craven, fresh out of seminary, had considered himself fortunate to have received the assistant pastorate, particularly at such a fine new church as St. Peter’s. The congregation was upwardly mobile, as befitted a west Philadelphia suburb in the fifties, and from St. Peter’s it was only an hour and half drive to his family in Merridale. But one fatal Sunday Dick Albemarle, a handsome, thirtyish bachelor, had spoken out from the pulpit against Joe McCarthy’s witch hunts, knowing full well that some powerful and influential members of the church were all for “Old Joe’s stickin’ it to the commies.” What had followed was disgusting: the discovery by the church caretaker of a half-empty jar of Vaseline beneath the couch of the pastor’s study, a brazenly stained pair of men’s briefs in the wastebasket, several homosexual magazines under the religious newspapers on the desk top. There were even some rubber sex aids found when the members of the church lay council, with Craven looking on, forced open the locked drawers of Albemarle’s desk. Though Craven did not definitely know that the items had been planted, he suspected so, and voiced those suspicions to a member of the council whom he felt was sympathetic toward Albemarle. “I wouldn’t bring that up,” the man had told him, not unkindly. “You’re married, and that helps, but you’ve got no kids yet. Don’t get tarred with the same brush, Bob. You’d never get it off.” Craven, young and scared, remained silent, not speaking as the council held their off-the-record meeting, confronting Albemarle with their evidence, doing it quietly so as to cause “no public scandal” and “wreck any future career you may have in the ministry.” Albemarle was so shocked, so white-faced, that Craven wondered if his suspicions were incorrect, if Albemarle were homosexual after all. He did not deny the charges, but only smiled grimly once his initial reaction had passed. He said merely, “I see I’m not wanted here. You’ll have my resignation tomorrow.” The council president replied with a gracious thank you, and stressed that what had happened in the meeting would always remain confidential.
And well it might, thought Craven. He had spoken to Albemarle fifteen years later at a church conference in Pittsburgh, where Albemarle now preached. He was married, with three children, and told Craven that the evidence had been planted. “They couldn’t have made it public,” Albemarle said. “They’d have been open to slander then.” When Craven apologized for not voicing his doubts, Albemarle shrugged it off. “They just would’ve got you too. No, it was the best thing. I learned my lesson. Politics and the pulpit don’t mix.”
Craven learned the lesson too, and had been noncontroversial ever since. Quietly, safely, he had wended his way from church to church, watching the politically and socially aware lose their congregations and ultimately their positions, until finally he was back where he wanted to be. Back in Merridale. Back in the church of his parents and his grandparents, of Pastor Dunson, bald, moustached, overweight Pastor Dunson who’d said. “I see the calling in you, Bobby, I can see it.” Pastor Dunson, whose death brought Bobby Craven into the pulpit of Merridale United Methodist, from whence no sly plot or bridled congregation would ever remove him.
Chief Kaylor’s voice broke into his thoughts, startling him. “Dotty Sanders on the line, Pastor. She’d like to talk to you.”
“Oh, yes,” Craven said absentmindedly. “I’d wanted to visit her. Forgot in all the excitement.”
On the phone Dotty Sanders sounded upset and scared, as though she needed a living, calming presence. “I can’t get hold of my sister, Pastor. But I don’t want to go outside. I see them out there.”
“You relax, Dotty,” Craven said gently. “I’ll be right over.”
He drove apologetically through the crowd in the square, then through the streets, empty of all but the blue forms, which he avoided when he could, and closed his eyes and drove through when he couldn’t. He tried not to think about the phenomenon, tried to clear his mind of it enough to decide how he could best comfort Dotty Sanders.
When he arrived, she explained what had happened, opening the bedroom door and showing him the faint shade of Sheila Sommers. He was shocked by this new sight, the product of lust and rage. But he drew on his calm facade as easily as a surplice, and, in the warm hominess of the kitchen, across cups of coffee, he spoke to Dotty Sanders of the frailties of humanity, of how King David had been tempted, of how all save Jesus had fallen short of God’s trust and glory. “But love will win over all,” he told her. “The love of your friends, the love of your husband”—she winced—”because I have no doubt that Martin still does love you, in spite of what you may feel right now. And most of all God’s love, Dotty. “
“God’s love.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“If God loved me, how could He let this happen?”
“We can’t understand His ways, but we must believe that there is a purpose.”
“Purpose?” she snarled. “What purpose? What conceivable purpose could there be in Marty screwing that … that whore, and her getting her head smashed? You tell me that! Purpose!” s
he went on, flecks of spittle coating her lips. “What purpose that … that parents beat their babies, or … or plane wrecks kill a hundred people, good and bad? Why do people die of cancer? Like my mother? She was sixty, only sixty, and she suffered like she was in hell before she died. Why do killers walk free out of courtrooms? Why does the plant get to throw that shit into the air we breathe? Why do we take the chances? Why do we have a town—right now—full of dead people? Why don’t you tell me! Tell me something that makes sense to me, not to God. But please, please, don’t tell me there’s a reason that we’re all too stupid to see. Don’t insult my intelligence anymore.”
Her voice had slowly become less frenzied until now she sounded nearly in control, almost reasoned. It discomfited Craven. He had always been able to deal with emotion. But pure reason left him at a loss. His faith, that which he personally bore within him, would not let him spar with reason. “I’m sorry, Dotty. I don’t know what else to say. Only that I believe that what I say is true.”
She cried then, and apologized afterward. He left her house feeling like he had poured buckets of water into a barrel only to find there was a hole in the bottom. I believe it, I do, he thought violently, trying to avoid looking at the glowing figures that increased in number as he neared the town’s center. They seemed to mock him, as if saying, “Explain us. Why are we here, Pastor? Why have we come back?”
“I don’t know,” he said aloud. “But God does,” and he thought of the church, and turned in its direction. It was always there for him, that huge, somehow motherly building with its warm wood interior and bright stained-glass windows. When he felt troubled, worried, or simply tired, he would seek out the sanctuary and sit several pews from the front, waiting for his strength to return, listening for his faith.
There were not many ghosts near the church when he arrived. It was relatively new, built in the mid-fifties at what was then the edge of town. But now, several decades later, the town had moved outward, surrounding it with tract-home suburbs so that it rested amid young houses, young streets, young families.
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