Ghost Story

by Peter Straub

  After Dr. Jaffrey’s suicide, Freddy was desperate. The Chowder Society was disintegrating before he had even had a chance to prove his worthiness for it. On that night, he saw Lewis’s Morgan pull up to the doctor’s house, and ran out to comfort Lewis—to make his impression. But again it had not worked. He was too nervous, he had been fighting with his wife, and he had been unable to keep from mentioning insurance; he had lost Lewis again.

  * * *

  Therefore, knowing nothing of what Stringer Dedham may have tried to describe to his sisters as he lay bleeding to death into a blanket on his kitchen table, Freddy Robinson, whose children were already noisy strangers and whose wife wanted a divorce, had no idea of what lay before him when Rea Dedham called him one morning and said that he had to come out to the farm. But he thought that what he saw there, a bit of silk scarf fluttering on a wire fence, gave him a way into the gracious company of friends he needed.

  At first it seemed like another morning’s work—another tiresome claim to be settled. Rea Dedham made him wait ten minutes on her frozen porch. From time to time he heard a horse neighing in the stables. Finally she appeared, wrinkled and hunched in a plaid shawl over her dress, saying that she knew who did it, yessir, she knew, but she’d looked at her policy and it didn’t say anywhere that you didn’t get your money if you knew, did it? And would he like any coffee?

  “Yes, thank you,” Freddy said, and pulled some papers from his briefcase. “Now if we could get into some of these claim forms, the company can start processing them as soon as possible. I’ll have to look at the damage, of course, Miss Dedham. I guess you had some kind of accident?”

  “I told you,” she said. “I know who did it. It wasn’t any accident. Mr. Hardesty is coming out too, so you’ll just have to wait for him.”

  “So this is a case of criminal loss,” Freddy said, checking off a box on one of his papers. “Could you just tell me about it in your own words?”

  “They’re the only words I have, Mr. Robinson, but you’ll wait until Mr. Hardesty is here. I’m too old to say it all twice. And I’m not going out in that cold twice, not even for money. Brr!” She hugged herself with her bony arms and shivered theatrically. “Now you sit still and get some coffee into yourself.”

  Freddy, who had been awkwardly holding all his papers, his pen and his briefcase, looking around for a vacant chair. The Dedham girls’ kitchen was a dirty cave filled with junk. One chair supported a couple of table lamps, another a stack of Urbanites so old they were yellow. A tall mirror in an oak-leaf frame on one wall dully gave him back his reflection, a figure of bureaucratic incompetence engulfed by disorderly papers. He backed up to one dark wall, bent down and knocked a cardboard box off a chair with his bottom. It fell to the floor with a loud crash. The only sunlight in the room streamed over him. “Heavens,” Rea Dedham said, shrugging. “Noise!” Freddy cautiously extended his legs and arranged his papers on his lap. “Dead horse, is that it?”

  “That’s it. You people owe me some money—a lot of money, the way I see it.”

  Freddy heard something heavy rolling toward the kitchen through the house, and soundlessly groaned. “I’ll just get started on the preliminary details,” he said, and bent over so that he would not have to look at Nettie Dedham.

  “Nettie wants to say hello,” Rea said. So he had to look up anyhow.

  A moment later the door creaked inward, admitting a heap of blankets in a wheelchair. “Hello, Miss Dedham,” Freddy said, half-standing and clutching the briefcase with one hand, the papers with the other. He gave her a quick glance, then fled back into his papers.

  Nettie uttered a noise. Her head seemed to Freddy to be chiefly gaping mouth. Nettie was covered up to the chin in blankets, and her head was pulled back by some terrible constriction of the muscles so that her mouth was permanently open.

  “You remember nice Mr. Robinson,” Rea said to her sister, putting down cups of coffee on the table. Rea apparently ate all her meals standing up, for she made no move to sit now. “He’s going to get our money for poor dear Chocolate. He’s filling out the forms now, isn’t he? He’s filling out the forms.”

  “Ruar,” Nettie uttered, waggling her head as she spoke. “Glr ror.”

  “Get us our money, that’s right,” Rea said. “There’s nothing wrong with Nettie, Mr. Robinson.”

  “I should say not,” he said, and looked away again. His eye fell on a stuffed robin under a glass bell, surrounded by dark brown leaves. “Let’s get down to business, shall we? I gather the animal was named—”

  “Here’s Mr. Hardesty,” Rea said. Freddy could hear another car coming up the drive, and lay the pen across the papers in his lap. He glanced uneasily at Nettie who was working her mouth and staring dreamily at the mottled ceiling. Rea set down her cup and began to struggle toward the door. Lewis would open it for her, he thought, still clutching his awkward pile of papers.

  “Sit down, for heaven’s sake,” the old woman snapped.

  Hardesty’s boots crunched across the snow, mounted the porch. He had knocked twice before Rea got to the door.

  Freddy had seen Walt Hardesty in Humphrey’s place too often, sneaking into the back room at eight and lurching out at twelve, to think much of him as a sheriff. He looked like a bad-tempered failure, the sort of cop who’d enjoy using his gunbutt on someone’s head. When Rea got the door open, Hardesty stood on the porch with his hands in his pockets, his sunglasses like armor over his eyes, and made no move to come in. “‘Lo, Miss Dedham,” he said. “Well, where’s your problem?”

  Rea pulled the shawl more tightly around herself and went through the door. Freddy hesitated a moment and then realized that she was not coming back in; he dumped his papers on the chair and followed. Nettie waggled her head at him as he passed.

  “I know who did it,” he heard her saying to Hardesty as he went toward them. The old lady’s voice was high and indignant. “It was that Jim Hardie, that’s who.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Hardesty said. Freddy joined them, and the sheriff nodded at him over Rea’s head. “Didn’t take you long to get here, Mr. Robinson.”

  “Company paperwork,” Freddy mumbled. “Official paperwork.”

  “Guys like you always got papers up the old kazoo,” Hardesty said, and gave him a taut smile.

  “It was Jim Hardie for sure,” Rea insisted. “That boy’s crazy.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that,” Hardesty said. They were nearly at the stables. “You find the dead animal?”

  “We have a boy these days,” Rea said. “He comes out to feed and water and change the straw. He’s a nancy-boy,” she added, and Freddy jerked his head up in surprise. Now he could smell the stables. “He found Chocolate in his stall. That’s six hundred dollars’ worth of horsemeat, Mr. Robinson, no matter who did it.”

  “Uh, how did you reach that figure?” Freddy asked. Hardesty was opening the stable doors. One horse whinnied, another kicked at its stall door. All the horses, to Freddy’s untrained eye, looked dangerous. Their enormous lips and eyes flared at him.

  “Because his sire was General Hershey and his dam was Sweet Tooth and they were two fine horses, that’s because why. We could have sold General Hershey for stud anywhere—he looked just like Seabiscuit, Nettie used to say.”

  “Seabiscuit,” Hardesty said under his breath.

  “You’re too young to remember any of the good horses,” Rea said. “You write that down in your papers. Six hundred dollars.” She was leading them into the stables, and the horses in the stalls shied back or swung their heads, according to their nature.

  “These animals ain’t too damn clean,” Hardesty said. Freddy looked more closely and saw a huge patch of dried mud on the side of a gray.

  “Skittish,” Freddy said.

  “He says they’re skittish, the other one says they’re dirty. I’m too old, that’s the problem. Well, here’s poor
old Chocolate.” The statement was unnecessary; the two men were staring over the stall door at the body of a big reddish animal on the straw-littered floor. To Freddy it looked like the body of a huge rat.

  “Hell,” Hardesty said, and opened the stall door. He stepped over the stiff legs and began to straddle the neck. The horse in the next stall whinnied, and Hardesty nearly fell down. “Hell.” He steadied himself by propping an arm against the wooden side of the stall. “Hell, I can see it from here.” He reached down to the horse’s nose and tugged the entire head back toward him.

  Rea Dedham screamed.

  * * *

  The two men half-carried, half-lifted her out of the stables past two rows of terrified horses. “Settle down now, settle down,” Hardesty kept repeating, as if the old lady were herself a horse.

  “Who the hell would do a thing like that?” Freddy asked, still shocked by the sight of the long wound in the horse’s neck.

  “Norbert Clyde claims it’s Martians. Says he saw one. Didn’t you hear about that?”

  “I heard something,” Freddy admitted. “Are you going to check into where Jim Hardie was last night?”

  “Mister, I’d be a damn sight happier if people didn’t tell me how to do my job.” He bent over the old woman. “Miss Dedham, you settled down now? You like to sit?” She nodded, and Hardesty said to Freddy, “I’ll hold her up, you open the door of my car.”

  They propped her up on the car seat, her legs dangling out. “Poor Chocolate, poor Chocolate,” she moaned. “Horrible . . . poor Chocolate.”

  “All right, Miss Dedham. Now, I want to tell you something.” Hardesty leaned forward and propped a foot up on the car. “Jim Hardie didn’t do this, you hear me? Jim Hardie was out drinking beer with Pete Barnes last night. They drove up to a beer joint outside Glen Aubrey, and we got them checked in there till damn near two o’clock. I know about your little feud with Jim, so I asked around.”

  “He could have done it after two,” Freddy said.

  “He was playing cards with Peter Barnes in the Barnes’s basement until daylight. That’s what Pete says anyhow. Jim’s been spending a lot of time with Pete Barnes, but I don’t think the Barnes kid would do a thing like this or cover up for someone who did, do you?”

  Freddy shook his head.

  “And when Jim hasn’t been with the Barnes kid, he’s been with that new dame, you know who I mean. The good-looker—looks like a model.”

  “I know who you mean. That is, I’ve seen her.”

  “Yeah. So he didn’t kill this horse, and he didn’t kill Elmer Scales’s heifers either. The State Farm Agent says it was a dog turned killer. So if you see a big flying dog with teeth like razors, I guess you got it.” He looked at Freddy hard, and turned back to Rea Dedham. “You about ready to go inside now? Too cold out here for a old lady like you. I’ll get you inside, and go back and get someone to get rid of that horse for you.”

  Freddy stepped back, rebuffed by Hardesty. “You know it wasn’t a dog.”

  “Yep.”

  “So what do you think it was? What’s going on?” He looked around, knowing that he was missing something. Then he had it, and opened his mouth just as he saw a bright bit of cloth fluttering on the barbed-wire fence near the stables.

  “You want to say?”

  “There wasn’t any blood,” Freddy said, looking at the cloth.

  “Good for you. Farm Agent decided not to notice that. You gonna help me with this old lady?”

  “I dropped something back there,” Freddy told him, and walked back toward the stables. He heard Hardesty grunt, picking up Miss Dedham, and when he got to the stables, turned around to see him carrying her in the door. Freddy went over to the barbed wire and pulled the long bit of cloth from it—silk. It was torn from a scarf, and he knew where he had seen it.

  Freddy began—it was not the word he would have chosen—to scheme.

  Back home, after he had typed up his report and mailed it and the signed forms off to the head office, he dialed Lewis Benedikt’s telephone number. He did not really know what he would say to Lewis; but he thought he had the key he’d been looking for.

  “Hey, Lewis,” he said. “Hey, how are you? This is Freddy.”

  “Freddy?”

  “Freddy Robinson. You know.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Ah, are you busy right now? I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Go ahead,” Lewis said, not very promisingly.

  “Yeah. If I’m not taking up your time? . . . Okay. You know about those animals that were killed? Did you know there was another one? One of those old horses the Dedham sisters own, I wrote the policy on it, well I don’t think any Martian killed it. I mean, do you?” He paused, but Lewis said nothing. “I mean, that’s screwball. Uh, look, isn’t that woman who just moved into town, the one who sometimes hangs around with Jim Hardie, isn’t she working for Sears and Ricky?”

  “I’ve heard something to that effect.” Lewis said, and Freddy heard in his voice that he should have said Hawthorne, James instead of Sears and Ricky.

  “Do you know her at all?”

  “Not at all. Do you mind if I ask what the point is?”

  “Well, I think there’s more going on than Sheriff Hardesty knows about.”

  “Could you explain yourself, Freddy?”

  “Not on the phone. Could we meet somewhere to talk about it? See, I found something out at the Dedham place, and I didn’t want to show it to Hardesty until I had talked with you and maybe with, ah, Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. James.”

  “Freddy, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, to tell you the truth I’m not so sure myself, but I wanted to get together with you, have a few beers maybe and bat a few ideas around. Sort of see what we can come up with on this.”

  “On what, for God’s sake?”

  “On a few ideas I have. I think all you guys are just terrific, you know, and I want you to know if there’s any kind of trouble coming your way . . .”

  “Freddy, I’ve got all the insurance I need,” Lewis said. “I’m not in the mood to go out. Sorry.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll see you in Humphrey’s Place anyhow? We could talk there.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Lewis said, and hung up.

  Freddy put his receiver down, satisfied that he had planted enough hooks in Lewis for now. Lewis was bound to call him back once he’d thought about everything Freddy had told him. Of course if everything he was thinking was true, then it was his duty to go to Hardesty, but there was plenty of time for that—he wanted to think out the implications before he spoke to Hardesty. He wanted to make sure that the Chowder Society was protected. His thoughts went more or less in this order: he had seen the scarf from which the piece had been torn around the neck of the girl Hardesty called “the new dame.” She had worn the scarf at Humphrey’s Place on a date with Jim Hardie. Rea Dedham suspected Jim Hardie of killing the horse; Hardesty had said something about a “feud” between the Hardie boy and the Dedham sisters. The scarf proved that the girl had been there, so why not Hardie too? And if these two had for whatever reason killed the horse, why not the other animals? Norbert Clyde had seen a big form, something peculiar about the eyes: it could have been Jim Hardie caught in a ray of moonlight. Freddy had read about modern witches, crazy women who organized men into covens. Maybe this new girl was one of them. Jim Hardie was fodder for any lunatic who came down the pike, even if his mother would never see it. But the reputation of the Chowder Society would be damaged if all this were true, and if it got out. Hardie could be shut up, but the girl would have to be paid off and forced to leave.

  He waited two days, anxiously waiting for Lewis to return his call.

  When Lewis did not, he decided that the time for aggression had come and once again dialed Lewis’s number.

/>   “It’s me again, Freddy Robinson.”

  “Oh, yes.” Lewis said, already distant.

  “I really think we ought to get together. Hey? Honestly, Lewis, I think we should. I’ve got your best interests at heart.” Then, searching for an unanswerable appeal, “What if the next body is human, Lewis? Think about that.”

  “Are you threatening me? What the hell are you saying?”

  “’Course not.” He was flattened. Lewis had taken it the wrong way. “Listen, how about tomorrow evening some time?”

  “I’m going coon hunting,” Lewis immediately said.

  “Gosh,” Freddy said, startled by this new facet of his idol. “I didn’t know you did that. You hunt raccoon? That’s really great, Lewis.”

  “It’s relaxing. I go out with an old boy who has a few dogs. We just go off and waste time in the woods. Great if you like that sort of thing.” Freddy heard the unhappiness in Lewis’s voice, and for a moment was too disturbed by it to reply. “Well, good-bye,” Lewis said, and hung up.

  Freddy stared at the phone, opened the drawer where he had put the section of scarf, looked at it. If Lewis could go hunting, so could he. Not really knowing why he felt it was necessary, he went to the door of his study and locked it. He searched his memory for the name of the old woman who worked as receptionist for the law firm: Florence Quast. Then he got her number from the book and mystified the old lady with a long story about a nonexistent policy. When she suggested that he call either Mr. James or Mr. Hawthorne, he said, “No, I don’t think I need bother either of them, I think that new girl of theirs could answer my questions. Could you give me her name? And just where is she staying again?”

  (Are you thinking, Freddy, that somehow she will be living in your house very soon? And is that why you locked the door of your study? Did you want to keep her out?)

  Hours later, he rubbed his forehead, buttoned his jacket, wiped his palms on his trousers and dialed the Archer Hotel.

  “Yes, I’d be happy to see you, Mr. Robinson,” the girl said, sounding very calm.