The Big Book of Ghost Stories

by Otto Penzler

  Ahead a tiny red pinpoint appeared at the side of the road, grew swiftly, then faded in the car’s glare to the bull’s-eye of a lantern, swinging in the gloved fist of a big man in a streaming rubber coat. Marvin automatically braked the car and rolled the right-hand window down a little way as he saw the big man come splashing toward him.

  “Bridge’s washed away,” the big man said. “Where you going, Mister?”

  “Felders, damn it!”

  “You’ll have to go around by Little Rock Falls. Take your left up that road. It’s a county road, but it’s passable. Take your right after you cross Little Rock Falls bridge. It’ll bring you into Felders.”

  Marvin swore. The trooper’s face, black behind the ribbons of water dripping from his hat, laughed.

  “It’s a bad night, Mister.”

  “Gosh, yes! Isn’t it!”

  Well, if he must detour, he must detour. What a night to crawl for miles along a rutty back road!

  Rutty was no word for it. Every few feet Marvin’s car plunged into water-filled holes, gouged out from beneath by the settling of the light roadbed. The sharp, cutting sound of loose stone against the tires was audible even above the hiss of the rain.

  Four miles, and Marvin’s motor began to sputter and cough. Another mile, and it surrendered entirely. The ignition was soaked; the car would not budge.

  Marvin peered through the moisture-streaked windows, and, vaguely, like blacker masses beyond the road, he sensed the presence of thickly clustered trees. The car had stopped in the middle of a little patch of woods. “Judas!” Marvin thought disgustedly. “What a swell place to get stalled!” He switched off the lights to save the battery.

  He saw the glimmer then, through the intervening trees, indistinct in the depths of rain.

  Where there was a light there was certainly a house, and perhaps a telephone. Marvin pulled his hat tightly down upon his head, clasped his coat collar up around his ears, got out of the car, pushed the small coupé over on the shoulder of the road, and ran for the light.

  The house stood perhaps twenty feet back from the road, and the light shone from a front-room window. As he plowed through the muddy yard—there was no sidewalk—Marvin noticed a second stalled car—a big sedan—standing black and deserted a little way down the road.

  The rain was beating him, soaking him to the skin; he pounded on the house door like an impatient sheriff. Almost instantly the door swung open, and Marvin saw a man and a woman standing just inside, in a little hallway that led directly into a well-lighted living-room.

  The hallway itself was quite dark. And the man and woman were standing close together, almost as though they might be endeavoring to hide something behind them. But Marvin, wholly preoccupied with his own plight, failed to observe how unusual it must be for these two rural people to be up and about, fully dressed, long after midnight.

  Partly shielded from the rain by the little overhang above the door, Marvin took off his dripping hat and urgently explained his plight.

  “My car. Won’t go. Wires wet, I guess. I wonder if you’d let me use your phone? I might be able to get somebody to come out from Little Rock Falls. I’m sorry that I had to——”

  “That’s all right,” the man said. “Come inside. When you knocked at the door you startled us. We—we really hadn’t—well, you know how it is, in the middle of the night and all. But come in.”

  “We’ll have to think this out differently, John,” the woman said suddenly.

  Think what out differently? thought Marvin absently.

  Marvin muttered something about you never can be too careful about strangers, what with so many hold-ups and all. And, oddly, he sensed that in the half darkness the man and woman smiled briefly at each other, as though they shared some secret that made any conception of physical danger to themselves quietly, mildly amusing.

  “We weren’t thinking of you in that way,” the man reassured Marvin. “Come into the living-room.”

  The living-room of that house was—just ordinary. Two over-stuffed chairs, a davenport, a bookcase. Nothing particularly modern about the room. Not elaborate, but adequate.

  In the brighter light Marvin looked at his hosts. The man was around forty years of age, the woman considerably younger, twenty-eight, or perhaps thirty. And there was something definitely attractive about them. It was not their appearance so much, for in appearance they were merely ordinary people; the woman was almost painfully plain. But they moved and talked with a curious singleness of purpose. They reminded Marvin of a pair of gray doves.

  Marvin looked around the room until he saw the telephone in a corner, and he noticed with some surprise that it was one of the old-style, coffee-grinder affairs. The man was watching him with peculiar intentness.

  “We haven’t tried to use the telephone tonight,” he told Marvin abruptly, “but I’m afraid it won’t work.”

  “I don’t see how it can work,” the woman added.

  Marvin took the receiver off the hook and rotated the little crank. No answer from Central. He tried again, several times, but the line remained dead.

  The man nodded his head slowly. “I didn’t think it would work,” he said, then.

  “Wires down or something, I suppose,” Marvin hazarded. “Funny thing, I haven’t seen one of those old-style phones in years. Didn’t think they used ’em any more.”

  “You’re out in the sticks now,” the man laughed. He glanced from the window at the almost opaque sheets of rain falling outside.

  “You might as well stay here a little while. While you’re with us you’ll have the illusion, at least, that you’re in a comfortable house.”

  What on earth is he talking about? Marvin asked himself. Is he just a little bit off, maybe? That last sounded like nonsense.

  Suddenly the woman spoke.

  “He’d better go, John. He can’t stay here too long, you know. It would be horrible if someone took his license number and people—jumped to conclusions afterward. No one should know that he stopped here.”

  The man looked thoughtfully at Marvin.

  “Yes, dear, you’re right. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I’m afraid, sir, that you’ll have to leave,” he told Marvin. “Something extremely strange——”

  Marvin bristled angrily, and buttoned his coat with an air of affronted dignity.

  “I’ll go,” he said shortly. “I realize perfectly that I’m an intruder. You should not have let me in. After you let me in I began to expect ordinary human courtesy from you. I was mistaken. Good night.”

  The man stopped him. He seemed very much distressed.

  “Just a moment. Don’t go until we explain. We have never been considered discourteous before. But tonight—tonight …

  “I must introduce myself. I am John Reed, and this is my wife, Grace.”

  He paused significantly, as though that explained everything, but Marvin merely shook his head. “My name’s Marvin Phelps, but that’s nothing to you. All this talk seems pretty needless.”

  The man coughed nervously. “Please understand. We’re only asking you to go for your own good.”

  “Oh, sure,” Marvin said. “Sure. I understand perfectly. Good night.”

  The man hesitated. “You see,” he said slowly, “things aren’t as they seem. We’re really ghosts.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “My husband is quite right,” the woman said loyally. “We’ve been dead twenty-one years.”

  “Twenty-two years next October,” the man added, after a moment’s calculation. “It’s a long time.”

  “Well, I never heard such hooey!” Marvin babbled. “Kindly step away from that door, Mister, and let me out of here before I swing from the heels.”

  “I know it sounds odd,” the man admitted, without moving, “and I hope that you will realize that it’s from no choosing of mine that I have to explain. Nevertheless, I was electrocuted, twenty-one years ago, for the murder of the Chairman of the School Board, over in Little Roc
k Falls. Notice how my head is shaved, and my split trouser-leg? The fact is, that whenever we materialize we have to appear exactly as we were in our last moment of life. It’s a restriction on us.”

  Screwy, certainly screwy. And yet Marvin hazily remembered that School Board affair. Yes, the murderer had been a fellow named Reed. The wife had committed suicide a few days after burial of her husband’s body.

  It was such an odd insanity. Why, they both believed it. They even dressed the part. That odd dress the woman was wearing. Way out of date. And the man’s slit trouser-leg. The screwy cluck had even shaved a little patch on his head, too, and his shirt was open at the throat.

  They didn’t look dangerous, but you never can tell. Better humor them, and get out of here as quick as I can.

  Marvin cleared his throat.

  “If I were you—why, say, I’d have lots of fun materializing. I’d be at it every night. Build up a reputation for myself.”

  The man looked disgusted. “I should kick you out of doors,” he remarked bitterly. “I’m trying to give you a decent explanation, and you keep making fun of me.”

  “Don’t bother with him, John,” the wife exclaimed. “It’s getting late.”

  “Mr. Phelps,” the self-styled ghost doggedly persisted, ignoring the woman’s interruption, “perhaps you noticed a car stalled on the side of the road as you came into our yard. Well, that car, Mr. Phelps, belongs to Lieutenant-Governor Lyons, of Felders, who prosecuted me for that murder and won a conviction, although he knew that I was innocent. Of course he wasn’t Lieutenant-Governor then; he was only County Prosecutor.…

  “That was a political murder, and Lyons knew it. But at that time he still had his way to make in the world—and circumstances pointed toward me. For example, the body of the slain man was found in the ditch just beyond my house. The body had been robbed. The murderer had thrown the victim’s pocket-book and watch under our front steps. Lyons said that I had hidden them there—though obviously I’d never have done a suicidal thing like that, had I really been the murderer. Lyons knew that, too—but he had to burn somebody.

  “What really convicted me was the fact that my contract to teach had not been renewed that spring. It gave Lyons a ready-made motive to pin on me.

  “So he framed me. They tried, sentenced, and electrocuted me, all very neatly and legally. Three days after I was buried, my wife committed suicide.”

  Though Marvin was a trifle afraid, he was nevertheless beginning to enjoy himself. Boy, what a story to tell the gang! If only they’d believe him!

  “I can’t understand,” he pointed out slyly, “how you can be so free with this house if, as you say, you’ve been dead twenty-one years or so. Don’t the present owners or occupants object? If I lived here I certainly wouldn’t turn the place over to a couple of ghosts—especially on a night like this!”

  The man answered readily, “I told you that things are not as they seem. This house has not been lived in since Grace died. It’s not a very modern house, anyway—and people have natural prejudices. At this very moment you are standing in an empty room. Those windows are broken. The wallpaper has peeled away, and half the plaster has fallen off the walls. There is really no light in the house. If things appeared to you as they really are you could not see your hand in front of your face.”

  Marvin felt in his pocket for his cigarettes. “Well,” he said, “you seem to know all the answers. Have a cigarette. Or don’t ghosts smoke?”

  The man extended his hand. “Thanks,” he replied. “This is an unexpected pleasure. You’ll notice that although there are ash-trays about the room there are no cigarettes or tobacco. Grace never smoked, and when they took me to jail she brought all my tobacco there to me. Of course, as I pointed out before, you see this room exactly as it was at the time she killed herself. She’s wearing the same dress, for example. There’s a certain form about these things, you know.”

  Marvin lit the cigarettes. “Well!” he exclaimed. “Brother, you certainly seem to think of everything! Though I can’t understand, even yet, why you want me to get out of here. I should think that after you’ve gone to all this trouble, arranging your effects and so on, you’d want somebody to haunt.”

  The woman laughed dryly.

  “Oh, you’re not the man we want to haunt, Mr. Phelps. You came along quite by accident; we hadn’t counted on you at all. No, Mr. Lyons is the man we’re interested in.”

  “He’s out in the hall now,” the man said suddenly. He jerked his head toward the door through which Marvin had come. And all at once all this didn’t seem half so funny to Marvin as it had seemed a moment before.

  “You see,” the woman went on quickly, “this house of ours is on a back road. Nobody ever travels this way. We’ve been trying for years to—to haunt Mr. Lyons, but we’ve had very little success. He lives in Felders, and we’re pitifully weak when we go to Felders. We’re strongest when we’re in this house, perhaps because we lived here so long.

  “But tonight, when the bridge went out, we knew that our opportunity had arrived. We knew that Mr. Lyons was not in Felders, and we knew that he would have to take this detour in order to get home.

  “We felt very strongly that Mr. Lyons would be unable to pass this house tonight.

  “It turned out as we had hoped. Mr. Lyons had trouble with his car, exactly as you did, and he came straight to this house to ask if he might use the telephone. Perhaps he had forgotten us, years ago—twenty-one years is a long time. Perhaps he was confused by the rain, and didn’t know exactly where he was.

  “He fainted, Mr. Phelps, the instant he recognized us. We have known for a long time that his heart is weak, and we had hoped that seeing us would frighten him to death, but he is still alive. Of course while he is unconscious we can do nothing more. Actually, we’re almost impalpable. If you weren’t so convinced that we are real you could pass your hand right through us.

  “We decided to wait until Mr. Lyons regained consciousness and then to frighten him again. We even discussed beating him to death with one of those non-existent chairs you think you see. You understand, his body would be unmarked; he would really die of terror. We were still discussing what to do when you came along.

  “We realized at once how embarrassing it might prove for you if Mr. Lyons’ body were found in this house tomorrow and the police learned that you were also in the house. That’s why we want you to go.”

  “Well,” Marvin said bluntly, “I don’t see how I can get my car away from here. It won’t run, and if I walk to Little Rock Falls and get somebody to come back here with me the damage’ll be done.”

  “Yes,” the man admitted thoughtfully. “It’s a problem.”

  For several minutes they stood like a tableau, without speaking. Marvin was uneasily wondering: Did these people really have old Lyons tied up in the hallway; were they really planning to murder the man? The big car standing out beside the road belonged to somebody.…

  Marvin coughed discreetly.

  “Well, it seems to me, my dear shades,” he said, “that unless you are perfectly willing to put me into what might turn out to be a very unpleasant position you’ll have to let your vengeance ride, for tonight, anyway.”

  “There’ll never be another opportunity like this,” the man pointed out. “That bridge won’t go again in ten lifetimes.”

  “We don’t want the young man to suffer though, John.”

  “It seems to me,” Marvin suggested, “as though this revenge idea of yours is overdone, anyway. Murdering Lyons won’t really do you any good, you know.”

  “It’s the customary thing when a wrong has been done,” the man protested.

  “Well, maybe,” Marvin argued, and all the time he was wondering whether he were really facing a madman who might be dangerous or whether he were at home dreaming in bed; “but I’m not so sure about that. Hauntings are pretty infrequent, you must admit. I’d say that shows that a lot of ghosts really don’t care much about the vengeance angle, despit
e all you say. I think that if you check on it carefully you’ll find that a great many ghosts realize that revenge isn’t so much. It’s really the thinking about revenge, and the planning it, that’s all the fun. Now, for the sake of argument, what good would it do you to put old Lyons away? Why, you’d hardly have any incentive to be ghosts any more. But if you let him go, why, say, any time you wanted to, you could start to scheme up a good scare for him, and begin to calculate how it would work, and time would fly like everything. And on top of all that, if anything happened to me on account of tonight, it would be just too bad for you. You’d be haunted, really. It’s a bad rule that doesn’t work two ways.”

  The woman looked at her husband. “He’s right, John,” she said tremulously. “We’d better let Lyons go.”

  The man nodded. He looked worried.

  He spoke very stiffly to Marvin. “I don’t agree entirely with all you’ve said,” he pointed out, “but I admit that in order to protect you we’ll have to let Lyons go. If you’ll give me a hand we’ll carry him out and put him in his car.”

  “Actually, I suppose, I’ll be doing all the work.”

  “Yes,” the man agreed, “you will.”

  They went into the little hall, and there, to Marvin’s complete astonishment, crumpled on the floor lay old Lyons. Marvin recognized him easily from the newspaper photographs he had seen.

  “Hard-looking duffer, isn’t he?” Marvin said, trying to stifle a tremor in his voice.

  The man nodded without speaking.

  Together, Marvin watching the man narrowly, they carried the lax body out through the rain and put it into the big sedan. When the job was done the man stood silently for a moment, looking up into the black invisible clouds.

  “It’s clearing,” he said matter-of-factly. “In an hour it’ll be over.”

  “My wife’ll kill me when I get home,” Marvin said.

  The man made a little clucking sound. “Maybe if you wiped your ignition now your car’d start. It’s had a chance to dry a little.”