Ghost Story

by Peter Straub

  He rounded the corner. His father’s tact lay between him and whatever mysterious thing had happened out there two nights ago. In some way, his father was a protection against it; the terrible things would not happen; he was protected even by his immaturity. If he did not do anything bad, the terrors wouldn’t get him.

  By the time he reached the top of the square, the fear had almost entirely vanished. His normal route to school would have taken him past the hotel, but he did not want to take the slightest chance of seeing that woman again, and he turned off into Wheat Row. The cool air clipped against his face; sparrows thronged and cheeped across the snowy square, moving in quick zigs and zags. A long black Buick passed him, and he looked in the windows to see the two older lawyers, his father’s friends, in the car’s front seat. They both looked gray and tired. He waved, and Ricky Hawthorne lifted a hand in a returned greeting.

  He was nearly at the bottom of Wheat Row and walking past the parked Buick when a commotion in the square took his attention. A muscular man in sunglasses, a stranger, wandered over the snow. He wore a pea jacket and a knit watch cap, but Peter saw from the white skin around his ears that his head was shaven. The stranger was clapping his hands together, making the sparrows scatter like spray from a shotgun: he looked irrational as a beast. Nobody else, neither the businessmen going up the pretty eighteenth-century steps of Wheat Row nor the secretaries following in short coats and long legs, saw him. The man clapped his hands again, and Peter realized that the man was looking directly at him. He was grinning like a hungry leopard. He started to lope toward Peter: Peter, frozen, sensed that the man was moving more rapidly than his steps could explain. He turned to run and saw, seated on one of the tilting tombstones before St. Michael’s, a little boy with ragged hair and a slack grinning face. The boy, less fierce, was of the same substance as the man. He too was staring at Peter, who remembered what Jim Hardie had seen at the abandoned station. The stupid face twisted into a giggle. Peter nearly dropped his books, ran, kept running without looking back.

  Our Miss Dedham Will Now Say a Few Words

  5

  The three men sat in the corridor on the third floor of University Hospital, Binghamton. None of them liked being there: Hardesty because he suspected he looked like a fool in the larger city, where no one immediately knew of his authority, and suspected also that he was on a useless mission; Ned Rowles because he disliked being away from The Urbanite’s offices at most times of the day, and especially disliked leaving layout entirely to the staff; and Don Wanderley because he had been out of the East too long to drive instinctively well on icy roads. Yet he thought that seeing the old woman whose sister had died so bizarrely might help the Chowder Society.

  The suggestion had been Ricky Hawthorne’s. “I haven’t seen her in an age, and I understand she had a stroke some time back, but we might learn something from her. If you’re willing to make the journey on a day like this.” It was a day when noon was as dark as evening; storms hung over the town, waiting to happen.

  “You think there might be some connection between her sister’s death and your own problem?”

  “There might be,” Ricky admitted. “I don’t really think so, of course, but it wouldn’t do to overlook even these peripheral things. Trust me that there is some relevance, anyhow. We’ll have it all out later. Now that you’re here, we shouldn’t keep you in the dark about anything. Sears might not agree with me, but Lewis probably would.” Then Ricky had added wryly, “Besides, it might do you good to get out of Milburn, however briefly.”

  And that had been true at first. Binghamton, four or five times the size of Milburn, even on a dark, lowering day was another, brighter world: full of traffic, new buildings, young people, the sound of urban life, it was of its decade; it pushed little Milburn back into some novelettish period of Gothic romance. The larger city had made him recognize how enclosed Milburn was, how much an appropriate field for speculation like the Chowder Society’s—it was the aspect of the town which had initially reminded him of Dr. Rabbitfoot. It seemed he had become accustomed to this. In Binghamton there was no drone of the macabre, no lurking abnormality to be sniffed out in stories over whiskey and in nightmares by old men.

  But on the third floor of the hospital, Milburn held sway. Milburn was in Walt Hardesty’s suspicion and nervousness, his rude “What the hell are you doing here? You’re from town. I’ve seen you around—I saw you in Humphrey’s.” Milburn was even in Ned Rowles’s lank hair and rumpled suit: at home, Rowles looked conventional and even well dressed; outside, he looked almost rubelike. You noticed that his jacket was too short, his trousers webbed with wrinkles. And Rowles’s manner, in Milburn low-key and friendly, here seemed tinged with shyness.

  “Just struck me as funny, old Rea going so soon after that Freddy Robinson being found dead. He was out at their place, you know, not more than a week before Rea died.”

  “How did she die?” Don asked. “And when can we see her sister? Aren’t there evening visiting hours?”

  “Waiting for a doctor to come out,” Rowles said. “As to how she died, I decided not to put that in the paper. You don’t need sensationalism to sell papers. But I thought anyone might have heard, around town.”

  “I’ve been working most of the time,” Don said.

  “Ah, a new book. Splendid.”

  “Is that what this guy is?” Hardesty asked. “That’s just what we need, a writer. Sweet jumping Jesus. Great. I’m gonna be talking to a witness in front of the fearless editor and some writer. And this old dame, how the hell is she going to know who I am, anyhow? How is she gonna know I’m sheriff?”

  That’s what is worrying him, Don thought: he looks like Wyatt Earp because he’s so insecure that he wants everybody to know that he wears a badge and carries a gun.

  Some of this must have shown on his face, because Hardesty became more aggressive. “Okay, let’s have your story. Who sent you here? Why are you in town?”

  “He’s Edward Wanderley’s nephew,” Rowles said in a tired voice. “He’s doing some work for Sears James and Ricky Hawthorne.”

  “Jesus, those two,” Hardesty moaned. “Did they ask you to come here to see the old lady?”

  “Mr. Hawthorne did,” Don answered.

  “Well, I suppose I ought to fall down and pretend I’m a red carpet.” Hardesty lit a cigarette, ignoring the no smoking sign at the end of the corridor. “Those two old birds have something up their sleeves. Up their sleeves. Hah! That’s rich.”

  Rowles looked away, obviously embarrassed; Don glanced at him for an explanation.

  “Go on, tell him, Fearless. He asked you how she died.”

  “It’s not very appetizing.” Rowles, wincing, caught Don’s eye.

  “He’s a big boy. He’s built like a running back, ain’t he?”

  That was another thing about the sheriff: he would always be measuring the size of another man against his own.

  “Go on. It’s not a goddamned state secret.”

  “Well.” Rowles leaned wearily back against the wall. “She bled to death. Her arms were severed.”

  “My God,” Don said, sickened and sorry that he had come. “Who would . . .”

  “You got me, you know?” Hardesty said. “Maybe your rich friends could give us a hint. But tell me this—who would go around doing operations on livestock, like happened out at Miss Dedham’s? And before that, at Norbert Clyde’s. And before that, at Elmer Scales’s?”

  “You think there’s one explanation for all of that?” This was, he assumed, what his uncle’s friends had asked him to discover.

  A nurse went by and scowled at Hardesty, who was shamed into stamping out his cigarette.

  “You can go in now,” the doctor said, leaving the room.

  * * *

  Don’s first shocked thought, seeing the old woman, was she’s dead too: but he noticed her bright panicked eye, whic
h was darting from one of them to another. Then he saw her mouth working and knew that Nettie Dedham was beyond communication.

  Hardesty, thrusting forward, was bustlingly untroubled by the patient’s gaping mouth and signs of agitation. “I’m the sheriff, Miss Dedham,” he said, “Walt Hardesty, the sheriff from over in Milburn?”

  Don looked into the flat panic in Nettie Dedham’s eye and wished him luck. He turned to the editor.

  “I knew she had a stroke,” the editor said, “but I didn’t know she was as bad as this.”

  “We didn’t meet the other day,” Hardesty was saying, “but I talked to your sister. Do you remember? When the horse was killed?”

  Nettie Dedham made a rattling sound.

  “Is that yes?”

  She repeated the sound.

  “Good. So you remember, and you know who I am.” He sat down and began speaking in a low voice.

  “I suppose Rea Dedham could understand her,” Rowles said. “Those two were supposed to be beauties, once. I remember my father talking about the Dedham girls. Sears and Ricky would remember.”

  “I guess they would.”

  “Now I want to ask you about your sister’s death,” Hardesty was saying. “It’s important that you tell me anything you saw. You say it, and I’ll try to understand it. Okay?”

  “Gl.”

  “Do you remember that day?”

  “Gl.”

  “This is impossible,” Don whispered to Rowles, who twitched his face and went around to the other side of the bed to look out of the window. The sky was black and neon purple.

  “Were you sitting in a position where you could see the stables where your sister’s body was found?”

  “Gl.”

  “That’s affirmative?”

  “Gl!”

  “Did you see anybody approach the barn or stables prior to your sister’s death?”

  “GL!”

  “Could you identify that person?” Hardesty was sitting forward at an exaggerated angle. “Say if we brought him here, could you make a noise to say he was the one?”

  The old woman made a sound Don eventually recognized as crying. He felt debased by his presence in the room.

  “Was that person a young man?”

  Another series of strangled noises. Hardesty’s excitement was turning into an iron impatience.

  “Let’s say it was a young man, then. Was it the Hardie boy?”

  “Rules of evidence,” Rowles muttered to the window.

  “Screw the rules of evidence. Was that who it was, Miss Dedham?”

  “Glooorgh,” moaned the old woman.

  “Shit. Do you mean to say no? It wasn’t?”

  “Glooorgh.”

  “Could you try to name the person you saw?”

  Nettie Dedham was trembling. “Glngr. Ginger.” She made an effort which Don could feel in his own muscles. “Glngr.”

  “Ah, let’s let that go for now. I got a couple more things.” He rotated his head to look angrily at Don, who thought he saw embarrassment too on the sheriff’s face. Hardesty turned back to the old woman and pitched his voice lower, but Don could still hear.

  “I don’t suppose you heard any funny noises? Or saw any funny lights or anything?”

  The old woman’s head wobbled; her eyes darted.

  “Any funny noises or lights, Miss Dedham?” Hardesty hated having to ask her this. Ned Rowles and Don shared a glance of puzzled interest.

  Hardesty wiped his forehead, giving up. “That’s it. It’s no good. She thinks she saw something, but who the hell can figure out what it was? I’m getting out of here. You stay or not, do what the hell you like.”

  Don followed the sheriff out of the room, and paused in the corridor as Hardesty spoke to a doctor. When Rowles emerged, his aging boy’s face was pensive and considering.

  Hardesty turned from the doctor and glanced at Rowles. “You make any sense out of that?”

  “No, Walt. No sense that makes sense.”

  “You?”

  “Nothing,” Don said.

  “Well, I’ll be damned if I’m not going to start believing in spacemen or vampires or something pretty soon myself,” Hardesty said, and went off down the corridor.

  Ned Rowles and Don Wanderley followed. When they reached the elevators, Hardesty was standing inside one, stabbing a button. Before Don could reach the elevator, the door had whooshed shut unimpeded by the sheriff, who obviously wanted to escape the other two.

  A moment later another elevator appeared, and the two men stepped inside it. “I’ve been thinking about what Nettie might have been trying to say,” Rowles told him. The doors closed and the elevator smoothly descended. “I promise you, this is crazy.”

  “I haven’t heard anything lately that isn’t.”

  “And you’re the man who wrote The Nightwatcher.”

  Here we go, Don thought.

  Don buttoned up his coat and followed Rowles outside into the parking lot. Though he wore only his suit, Rowles did not appear to notice the cold. “Here, get in my car for a second,” the editor said.

  Don got into the passenger seat and looked over at Rowles, who was rubbing his forehead with one hand. The editor looked much older in the interior of the car: shadows poured into his wrinkles. “‘Glngr?’ Isn’t that what she said, that last time? You agree? It was a lot like that anyhow, wasn’t it? Now. I never knew him myself, but a long time ago the Dedham girls had a brother, and I guess they talked about him for quite a while after he died . . .”

  * * *

  Don drove back toward Milburn on the field-bordered highway under the lurid sky purpled with glowing strips. Back, back to Milburn, with part of the story of Stringer Dedham riding with him; back to Milburn, where people were beginning to close themselves up as the snows grew worse and the houses seemed to melt closer together; where his uncle had died and his uncle’s friends dreamed of horrors; away from the century and back to the confinement of Milburn, more and more like that of his own mind.

  Housebreaking, Part One

  6

  “My father says I’m not supposed to see you so much anymore.”

  “So what? Do you care? How old are you anyhow, five?”

  “Well, he’s worried about something. He doesn’t look very happy.”

  “He doesn’t look happy,” Jim mimicked. “He’s old. I mean, what is he, fifty-five? He’s got a boring job and an old car and he’s too fat and his favorite little boy is going to fly out of the nest in nine or ten months. Just take a look around this town, friend. How many folks do you see with big smiles on their wrinkly old faces? This town is loaded with miserable old suckers. Are you gonna let them run your life?” Jim leaned back on his barstool and smiled at Peter, clearly assuming that the old argument was still persuasive.

  Peter felt himself sinking back into uncertainty and ambiguity—these arguments were persuasive. His father’s worries were not his: and the issue had never been that he did not love his father, for he did, but merely whether he should always obey his father’s infrequent orders—or as Jim put it, “let him run your life.”

  For had he, after all, done anything truly bad with Jim? Because of Jim’s keys, they had not even broken into the church; then they had followed a woman. That was all. Freddy Robinson had died, and that was a shame even if they had not liked him, but nobody was saying that his death had not been natural; he’d had a heart attack, or had fallen down and hurt his head . . .

  And there had been no little boy on top of the station.

  And there had been no little boy sitting on the gravestone.

  “I suppose I should be grateful your old man let you come out tonight.”

  “No, it’s not that bad. He just thinks we ought to spend less time together, not that we shouldn’t spend any time at all together. I guess he doesn
’t like me sitting in places like this.”

  “This? What’s wrong with this?” Hardie gestured comically around at the seedy tavern. “Hey, you—Sunshine!” Jim shouted. “This is a hell of a great place, isn’t it?” The bartender looked back over his shoulder and grimaced stupidly. “Civilized as shit, Lady Jane. The Duke down there agrees with me. I know what your old man is afraid of. He doesn’t want you to get in with the wrong crowd. Well, I am the wrong crowd, that’s true. But if I am, then so are you. So the worst has already happened, and as long as you’re here, you might as well relax and enjoy it.”

  If you wrote down the things Hardie said and looked at them afterward, you’d find the errors, but just listening to him talk, you’d be convinced of anything.

  “See, what the old boys all think is craziness is just another way of stayin’ sane—you live in this town long enough you’re in danger of woodworm in the headboard, and you have to keep reminding yourself that the whole world isn’t just one big Milburn.” He looked over at Peter, sipped his beer and grinned, and Peter saw the fractured light in his eyes and knew, as he had all along, that underneath the “stayin’ sane” kind of craziness there was another, real craziness. “Now admit it, Pete.” He said, “Aren’t there times when you’d like to see the whole damn town go up in flames? The whole thing knocked down and plowed over? It’s a ghost town, man. The whole place is full of Rip Van Winkles, it’s just one Rip Van Winkle after another, a bunch of weird Rip Van Winkles with vacuums for brains, with a knothead drunk for a sheriff and crummy bars for a social life—”

  “What happened to Penny Draeger?” Peter interrupted. “You haven’t gone out with her for three weeks.”