Ghost Story

by Peter Straub

  Peter sat down and pretended to watch the television. From time to time he heard the grinding of the snowplow, gradually working past their house and then continuing on in the direction of the square.

  13

  By the next day both atmospheres—internal and external—had changed. His mother was in neither of her moods, but moved happily through the house, vacuuming and dusting, talking on the telephone, listening to the radio. Peter, up in his room, listened to music interspersed with snow reports. The roads were so bad that school had been called off. His father had walked to the bank: from his bedroom window, Peter had seen his father setting off in hat, topcoat and rubber boots, looking small and Russian. Several other Russians, their neighbors, had joined him by the time he reached the end of the block. The snow reports repeated a monotonous theme: break out the snowmobiles, kids, eight inches last night and more predicted for the weekend, accident on Route 17 has stalled traffic between Damascus and Windsor . . . accident on Route 79 has stopped traffic between Oughuoga and Center Village . . . overturned camper van on Route 11 four miles north of Castle Creek . . . Omar Norris came by on the snowplow just before noon, burying two cars under an immense drift. After lunch his mother made him beat egg whites to a stiff froth. The day was a long bolt of gray cloth; endless.

  Alone again in his room he looked up Robinson, F, in the directory and dialed the number, his heart trying to bump the roof of his mouth. After two rings, someone picked up the receiver and immediately replaced it.

  The radio brought disasters. A fifty-two-year-old man in Lester died of a heart attack while shoveling out his driveway; two children were killed when their mother’s car struck a bridge abutment near Hillcrest. An old man in Stamford died of hypothermia—no money for the heating.

  At six the snowplow again rattled past the house. By then Peter was in the television room, waiting for the news. His mother looked in, a blond head in a swirl of cooking orders: “Remember to change for dinner, Pete. Why don’t you go all out and wear a tie?”

  “Is anybody coming in this weather?” He pointed to the screen—a blur of falling snow, blocked traffic. Men with a stretcher carried the body of the hypothermia victim, seventy-six-year-old Elmore Vesey, out of a rotting snowbound shack.

  “Sure. They don’t live far away.” Inexplicably happy, she sailed off.

  His father came home gray-faced half an hour later, looked in and said, “Hiya, Pete. Okay?” and went upstairs to roll into a hot tub.

  At seven his father joined him in the television room, martini in hand, cashews in the bowl. “Your mother says she’d like to see you in a tie. Since she’s in a good mood, why not oblige her this once?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Still no word from Jim Hardie?”

  “No.”

  “Eleanor must be losing her mind with worry.”

  “I guess.”

  He went back up to his room and lay on his bed. Being in attendance at a party, answering all the familiar questions (“Looking forward to Cornell?”), walking around with a tray and pitchers of drinks, were what he felt least in the world like doing. He felt most like curling up in a blanket and staying in bed for as long as they’d let him. Then nothing could happen to him. The snow would build up around the house, the thermostats would click on and off, he would fall into great arcs of sleep . . .

  At seven-thirty the bell rang, and he got up from bed. He heard his father opening the door, voices, drinks being offered: the arrivals were the Hawthornes and another man whose voice he did not recognize. Peter slid his shirt up over his head and replaced it with a clean one. Then he pulled a tie under the collar, knotted it, combed his hair with his fingers and left the bedroom.

  When he reached the landing and was able to see the door, his father was hanging up coats in the guest closet. The stranger was a tall man in his thirties—thick blond hair, squarish friendly face, tweed jacket and blue shirt without a tie. No lawyer, Peter thought.

  “A writer,” his mother said at that instant, her voice way up out of its normal register. “How interesting,” and Peter winced.

  “Here’s our boy Pete,” his father said, and all three guests looked up at him, the Hawthornes with smiles, the stranger merely with an appraising glance of interest. He shook their hands and wondered, taking Stella Hawthorne’s hand, as he always did seeing her, how a woman that old managed to be as good-looking as anyone you saw in the movies. “Nice to see you, Peter,” Ricky Hawthorne said, and gave him a brisk dry handshake. “You look a little beat.”

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “And this is Don Wanderley, he’s a writer, and he was the nephew of Mr. Wanderley,” his mother said. The writer’s handshake was firm and warm. “Oh, we must talk about your books. Peter, would you please go in the kitchen and get the ice ready?”

  “You look sort of like your uncle,” Peter said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Pete, the ice.”

  Stella Hawthorne said, “On a night like this I think I want my drinks steamed, like clams.”

  His mother cut off his laugh—“Pete, the ice, please”—and then turned to Stella Hawthorne with a fast nervous grin. “No, the streets seem all right for the moment,” he heard Ricky Hawthorne say to his father; he went down the hall into the kitchen and began cracking ice into a bowl. His mother’s voice, too loud, carried all the way.

  A moment later she was beside him, taking things from under the grill and peering into the oven. “Are the olives and rice crackers out?” He nodded. “Then get these on a tray and hand them around, please, Peter.” They were egg rolls and chicken livers wrapped in bacon. He burned his fingers transferring them to a tray, and his mother crept up behind him and kissed the nape of his neck. “Peter, you’re so sweet.” Without having had a drink, she acted drunk. “Now, what do we have to do? Are the martinis ready? Then when you come back with the tray, come back in for the pitcher and put it on another tray with the glasses, will you? Your father’ll help. Now. What do I have to do? Oh—mash up capers and anchovies to put in the pot. You look just lovely, Peter, I’m so glad you put on a tie.”

  The bell rang again: more familiar voices. Harlan Bautz, the dentist, and Lou Price, who looked like the villain of a gangster movie. Their wives, brassy and meek respectively.

  He was passing the first tray around when the Venutis arrived. Sonny Venuti popped an egg roll in her mouth, said “Warmth!” and kissed him on the cheek. She looked pop-eyed and haggard. Ed Venuti, his father’s partner, said, “Looking forward to Cornell, son?” and breathed gin in his face.

  “Yes, sir.”

  But he was not listening. “God bless the Martoonerville Trolley,” he said as his father put a filled glass in his hand.

  When he offered the tray to Harlan Bautz, the dentist slapped his back and said, “Bet you can’t wait to get to Cornell, hey, boy?”

  “Yes, sir.” He fled back into the kitchen.

  His mother was spooning a greenish mixture into a steaming casserole. “Who just came?”

  He told her.

  “Just finish adding this goop and then put it back in the oven,” she said, handing him the bowl. “I have to get out and say hello. Oh, I feel so festive tonight.”

  She left, and he was alone in the kitchen. He dropped the rest of the thick green substance into the casserole and twirled a spoon around in it. When he was putting it back into the oven, his father appeared and said, “Where’s the drinks tray? I shouldn’t have made so many martinis, we got a crowd of whiskey drinkers. Oh, I’ll just take out the pitcher and use the other glasses in the dining room. Hey, the joint’s jumping already, Pete. You ought to talk to that writer, he’s an interesting fella, guess he writes chillers—I remember Edward telling me something about it. Interesting, no? I knew you’d have a good time if you spent some time with our friends. You are, aren’t you?”

 
“What?” Peter closed the oven door.

  “Having a good time.”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Get out there and talk to people.” He shook his head as if in wonderment. “Boy. Your mother’s all wound up. She’s having a great time. Nice to see her like this again.”

  “Yes,” Peter said, and drifted out to the living room, carrying a tray of canapés his mother had left behind.

  There she was, “all wound up,” as his father had said: almost as if literally wound up, talking rapidly through a cloud of exhaled smoke, darting from Sonny Venuti to pick up a bowl of black olives and offer them to Harlan Bautz.

  “They say if this keeps up Milburn could be cut off entirely,” Stella Hawthorne said, her voice lower and more listenable to than his mother’s and Mrs. Venuti’s. Perhaps for that reason, it stopped all conversation. “We only have that one snowplow, and the county’s plow will be kept busy on the highway.”

  Lou Price, on the couch beside Sonny Venuti, said, “And look who’s driving our plow. The council should never have let Omar Norris’s wife talk them into it. Most of the time Omar’s too boiled to see where he’s going.”

  “Now, oh, Lou, now, that’s the only work Omar Norris does all year round—and he came by here twice today!” His mother defended Omar Norris overbrightly: Peter saw her looking at the door, and knew that her febrile high spirits were caused by someone who had not arrived yet.

  “He must be sleeping out in the boxcars these days,” Lou Price said. “In boxcars or in his garage, if his wife lets him get that close. You want a guy like that running a two-ton snowplow past your car? He could run the damn thing on his breath.”

  The doorbell rang, and his mother nearly dropped her drink.

  “I’ll get it,” Peter said, and went to the door.

  It was Sears James. Beneath the wide brim of his hat, his face was worn and so white his cheeks looked almost blue. Then he said, “Hello, Peter,” and looked normal again, taking off his hat and apologizing for being late.

  For twenty minutes Peter took canapés around on trays, refilled drinks and evaded conversation. (Sonny Venuti, grabbing his cheek with two fingers: “I bet you can’t wait to get away from this awful town and start chasing college girls, right, Pete?”) Whenever he looked at his mother, she was in the middle of a sentence, her eyes darting to the front door. Lou Price was loudly explaining something about soybean futures to Harlan Bautz; Mrs. Bautz was boring Stella Hawthorne with advice about redecoration. (“I’d say, go rosewood.”) Ed Venuti, Ricky Hawthorne and his father were talking off in a corner about the disappearance of Jim Hardie. Peter returned to the sterile peacefulness of the kitchen, loosened his tie and cradled his head on a counter spattered with green. Five minutes later the telephone rang. “No, don’t bother, Walt, I’ll get it,” he heard his mother cry in the living room.

  The kitchen extension stopped ringing a few seconds later. She was on the phone in the television room. Peter looked at the white telephone on the kitchen wall. Maybe it was not what he thought; maybe it was Jim Hardie to say hey don’t worry, man, I’m in the Apple . . . he had to know. Even if it was what he thought. He picked up the receiver: he would listen only for a second.

  The voice was Lewis Benedikt’s, and his heart folded.

  “. . . can’t come, no, Christina,” Lewis was saying. “I just can’t. My drive is six feet deep in snow.”

  “Someone’s on the line,” his mother said.

  “Don’t be paranoid,” Lewis said. “Besides, Christina, it would be a waste of time for me to come out. You know.”

  “Pete? Is that you? Are you listening?”

  Peter held his breath; did not hang up.

  “Oh, Peter’s not listening. Why would he?”

  “Damn you, are you there?” His mother’s voice: sharp as the buzz of a hornet.

  “Christina, I’m sorry. We’re still friends. Go back to your party and have a great time.”

  “You can be such a shallow creep,” his mother said, and slammed down the phone. A second later, in shock, Peter also put down his receiver.

  He stood on wobbly legs, almost certain of the meaning of what he had overheard. He blindly turned to the kitchen window. Footsteps. The door behind him opened and closed. Behind his own blank reflection—as drained as when he had looked into an empty room on Montgomery Street—was his mother’s, her face an angry blur. “Did you get an earful, spy?” Then there was another reflection between them—it was like that for a moment, another pale blur sliding between his face and his mother’s. It shifted closer, and Peter was looking at a small face not in reflection, but directly outside the window: an imploring, twisted childish face. The boy was begging him to come out. “Tell me, you little spy,” his mother ordered.

  Peter screamed; and jammed his fist in his mouth to stop the noise. He closed his eyes.

  Then his mother’s arms were around him and her voice was going, muttering apologies, the tears now not latent but warm on his neck. He could hear, above the noise his mother was making, the voice of Sears James declaiming: “Yes, Don came here to take possession of his house, but also to help us out with a little problem—a research problem.” Then a muffled voice that might have been Sonny Venuti’s. Sears replied, “We want him to look into the background of that Moore girl, the actress who disappeared.” More muffled voices: mild surprise, mild doubt, mild curiosity. He took his fist out of his mouth.

  “It’s okay, mom,” he said.

  “Peter, I’m so sorry.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  “It’s not—Peter, it wasn’t what you think. You can’t let it upset you.”

  “I thought maybe it was Jim Hardie calling,” he said.

  The doorbell rang.

  She loosened her grip on his neck. “Poor darling, with a crummy runaway friend and a psycho mother like me.” She kissed the back of his head. “And I cried all over your clean shirt.”

  The bell rang again.

  “Oh, there’s one more,” Christina Barnes said. “Your father will make the drinks. Let’s get back to normal before we’re seen in public again, okay?”

  “It’s someone you invited?”

  “Why sure it is, Pete, who else could it be?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and looked at the window again. No one was there: only his mother’s averted face and his own, glowing like pale candles in the glass. “Nobody.”

  She straightened up and wiped her eyes. “I’ll get the food out of the oven. You better get in and say hello.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Some friend of Sears and Ricky’s.”

  He walked to the door and looked back, but she was already opening the oven door and reaching in, an ordinary woman getting the dinner ready for a party.

  I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t, he thought, and turning his back on her went out into the hall. The stranger, Mr. Wanderley’s nephew, was talking near the living-room arch. “Well, what I’m interested in now, to tell the truth, is the difference between invention and reality. For example, did you happen to hear music a few days ago? A band, playing outside somewhere in town?”

  “Why no,” breathed Sonny Venuti. “Did you?” Peter stopped dead just inside the arch and gaped at the writer.

  “Hey, Pete,” his father said. “I want you to meet your dinner partner.”

  “Oh, I wanted to sit next to this handsome young man,” Sonny Venuti crooned, smiling at him popeyed.

  “You’re stuck with me,” said Lou Price.

  “Come on over here, scout,” his father called.

  He pulled himself away from Don Wanderley, who was looking at him curiously, and turned to his father. His mouth dried. His father was standing with his arm around a tall woman with a lovely fox-sharp face.

  It was the face which had looked the wrong way through a tele
scope across a dark square and found him.

  “Anna, this is my son Pete. Pete, Miss Mostyn.”

  Her eyes licked at him. He was conscious for a moment of standing halfway between the woman and Don Wanderley, Sears James and Ricky Hawthorne looking on like spectators at a tennis match; but himself and the woman and Don Wanderley forming the points of a long narrow triangle like a burning-glass, and then her eyes moved over him again, and he was conscious only of the danger he was in.

  “Oh, I think Peter and I will have lots to talk about,” said Anna Mostyn.

  From the Journals of Don Wanderley

  14

  What was to have been my introduction to a wider Milburn community ended in a disastrous shambles.

  Peter Barnes, a tall black-haired boy who looks both capable and sensitive, was the dropped bomb. He seemed merely uncommunicative at first—understandable in a seventeen-year-old playing servant at his parents’ party. Flashes of warmth for the Hawthornes. He too responds to Stella. But underneath the distance was something else—something I gradually imagined was—panic? Despair? Apparently a friend of his disappeared under a cloud, and his parents evidently assumed that to be the cause of his moroseness. Yet it was more than that, and what I thought I saw in him was fear—the Chowder Society had either tuned me to this, or caused me mistakenly to project it. When I was making my pompous remarks to Sonny Venuti, Peter stopped in his tracks and stared at me; he really searched me with his eyes, and I had the idea that he wanted badly to talk to me—not about books. The startling thing was that I thought that he too had heard the Dr. Rabbitfoot music.

  And if that’s true—