Ghost Story

by Peter Straub

  “Come on.” Ricky put a hand on Sears’s elbow and steered him back to the couch. “Nobody’s going anywhere until we try the telephone. After that we can talk about what to do.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” Sears said, but sat down anyhow. He twisted his body to watch Ricky lift the phone off its stand and place it on the coffee table. “You know his number?”

  “Of course,” Ricky said, and dialed. Elmer Scales’s telephone rang; and rang again; and again. “I’ll give him more time,” Ricky said, and let it go for ten rings, then twelve. He heard it again: doom, doom, that frantic pulse.

  “It’s no good,” Sears said, “I’d better go. Probably won’t make it anyhow, on these roads.”

  “Sears, it’s still early morning,” Ricky said, putting down the phone. “Maybe nobody heard it ringing.”

  “At seven—” Sears looked at his watch. “At seven-ten on Christmas morning? In a house with five children? Does that sound likely to you? I know something is wrong out there, and if I can get there at all, I might be able to stop it from getting worse. I don’t intend to wait for you to get dressed.” Sears stood up and began putting on his coat.

  “At least call Hardesty and let him go out there instead. You know what I saw, back in that house.”

  “That is a feeble joke, Ricky. Hardesty? Don’t be foolish. Elmer won’t shoot at me. We both know that.”

  “I know he won’t,” Ricky said miserably. “But I’m worried, Sears. This is something Eva’s doing—like what she did to John. We should not let her split us up. If we go running in all directions she can get to us—destroy us. We ought to call Don and get him to come with us. Oh, I know something terrible is happening out there, I’m convinced of it, but you’ll court something even worse if you try to go there by yourself.”

  Sears looked down at pleading Ricky Hawthorne, and the impatience on his face melted. “Stella would never forgive me if I let you take that wretched cold outside again. And it would take Don half an hour or more to get there. You can’t make me wait, Ricky.”

  “I could never make you do anything you didn’t want to do.”

  “Correct,” Sears said, and buttoned his coat.

  “You’re not expendable, Sears.”

  “Who is? Can you name one person you think is expendable, Ricky? I’ve lost too much time already, so don’t make me hang around while you try to justify naming Hitler or Albert de Salvo or Richard Speck or—”

  “What in the world are you two talking about?” Stella was in the entrance of the living room, smoothing down her hair with the palms of her hands.

  “Nail your husband to the couch and pour hot whiskey into him until I get back,” Sears said.

  “Don’t let him go, Stella,” Ricky said. “He can’t go alone.”

  “Is it urgent?” she asked.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Sears muttered, and Ricky nodded.

  “Then he’d better go. I hope he can get the car started.”

  Sears moved toward the hallway, and Stella stepped aside to let him pass. But before he went into the hall, he turned back to look once more at Ricky and Stella. “I’ll be back. Don’t fret about me, Ricky.”

  “You realize it’s probably too late already.”

  “It’s probably been too late for fifty years,” Sears said. Then he turned and was gone.

  2

  Sears put on his hat and went outside into the coldest morning he could remember. His ears and the tip of his nose immediately began to sting; a moment later the unprotected part of his forehead was also blazing with cold. He moved carefully down the slippery walk, noticing that the previous night’s snow had been the lightest in three weeks—only five or six inches of fresh snow lay on the old, and that meant that he had a good chance of being able to take the big Lincoln out onto the highway.

  The key stuck halfway into the lock: cursing with impatience, Sears yanked it out and removed a glove to search his pockets for his cigar lighter. The cold bit and tore at his fingers, but the lighter snapped out its flame; Sears played it back and forth over the key, and just when his fingers felt as though they were about to drop off, slotted the key neatly into the lock. He opened the door and slid himself onto the leather seat.

  Then the interminable business of starting the engine: Sears ground his teeth and tried to get the engine to turn over by willing it. He saw Elmer Scales’s face as he had when coming awake, staring at him with dazed unfocused eyes and saying You gotta get out here, Mr. James, I don’t know what I been doin’, just get here for Chrissake . . . the engine gnashed and sputtered, then mercifully caught. Sears fluttered the gas pedal, making the engine roar and then rocked the car back and forth to roll it out of its depression and through the snow which had built up around it.

  After he got the car pointed out onto the street, Sears took the ice tool from the dashboard and pushed the powder off the windshield: the big harmless fluffs of snow swirled about him in a soundless dawn. He reversed the tool and used the bladed end to clear an eight-inch hole in the ice directly in front of the steering wheel. He’d let the heater do the rest.

  “Things you’re better off not knowing, Ricky,” he said to himself, thinking of the childish footprints he’d seen in the drifts outside his window three mornings running. The first morning he’d pulled his drapes shut in case Stella came into the guest room to clean; a day later he had realized that Stella had an extremely haphazard approach to housekeeping, and that not even bribery would induce her to enter the guest room—she was waiting until the cleaning woman would be able to come from the Hollow. For two mornings, those prints of bare feet dotted the snow which relentlessly climbed up to the window, even on Sears’s protected side of the house. This morning, after Elmer’s drugged face had pulled him unceremoniously from sleep, he had seen the prints on the windowsill. How long would it be before Fenny appeared inside the Hawthorne house, trotting gleefully up and down the stairs? One more night? If Sears could lead him away, perhaps he could win more time for Ricky and Stella.

  In the meantime he had to see to Elmer Scales and just get here for Chrissake.. . . . Ricky too had been tuned into whatever kind of signal that was, but fortunately Stella had appeared to keep him at home.

  The Lincoln rolled out onto the street and began bulling through the snow. There’s one comfort, Sears thought: at this time of the morning on Christmas day the only other person on the road will be Omar Norris.

  * * *

  Sears pushed Elmer Scales’s face and voice out of his consciousness and concentrated on driving. Omar had worked most of the night again, it seemed, because nearly all the streets in the center of Milburn were scraped down to the last four or five inches of hard-packed frozen snow. On these streets, the only danger was of skidding on the glassy cake beneath the wheels and going off into a spin to collide with a buried car . . . he thought of Fenny Bate on his windowsill, levering up the window, gliding into the house, snuffling for the scent of living things . . . but no, those windows had storms on them and he had made sure the inner windows were locked.

  Maybe he was doing the wrong thing; maybe he ought to turn around and go back to Ricky’s house.

  But he couldn’t do that, he realized. He swung the car through the red light at the top of the square and lifted his foot from the accelerator, letting the car coast into its own angle past the front of the hotel. He could not go back: Elmer’s voice seemed almost to get stronger, sounding deep tones of pain, of confusion (Jesus Sears, I can’t get my head around what’s happening out here). He twitched the wheel and straightened out the car: the only rough spot now would be the highway, those few miles of treacherous hills, cars stacked up in the ditches on both sides . . . he might be forced to walk.

  Jesus Sears I can’t figure out all this blood . . . seems like those trespassers got in finally and now I’m scared bad, Sears, scared real bad . . .

 
Sears nudged the accelerator down a fraction of an inch.

  3

  At the top of Underhill Road he paused: it was much worse than he expected. Through the snow and gloom of the morning he could see the red lights on Omar’s plow, pushing maddeningly slowly toward the highway. A nine-foot drift shaped like a surfer’s ideal wave curled over all the unplowed section of Underhill Road. If he tried to get around Omar’s plow, he’d bury the Lincoln in the drift.

  For a second he had a mad impulse to do just that, floor the accelerator and sail down the fifty yards to the bottom of the hill and then smash the Lincoln through the snow, crashing through it around Omar on his slow-motion throne and exploded out of the big drift onto the highway—it was as if Elmer were telling him to do it. Get that car moving, Mr. James, I need you bad—

  Sears blew his horn, mashing his hand down on the button, Omar turned around to gape at him: when he saw the Lincoln, he jabbed one finger in the air, and through the glass behind the cab Sears saw him weave on the seat, his face covered with a snow-crusted ski mask, and knew two things at once. Omar was drunk and half-dead with exhaustion; and he was yelling at him, telling him to turn around and not come down the hill. The Lincoln’s tires would never hold on the slope.

  Elmer’s dogged, wheedling voice had kept him from seeing it.

  The Lincoln, idling, rolled a few inches down the long hill. Omar switched off the plow and stood up half-out of the cab, supporting himself on one of the struts to the blade. He held a hand out palm-forward like a traffic cop. Sears stamped on his brake pedal, and the Lincoln shuddered on the slippery plowed surface. Omar was making circular motions with his free hand, telling him to turn around or back up.

  Sears’s car lurched another six inches down the slope and he grabbed for the handbrake, no longer thinking of how to handle the car but just trying to stop it. He heard Elmer saying Sears—need—need—that dogged, high-pitched voice urging the car forward.

  And then saw Lewis Benedikt at the bottom of the hill running toward him, waving his arms to make him stop, a khaki jacket flapping out behind him, his hair blowing.

  —need—need—

  Sears released the handbrake and pushed his foot down on the accelerator. The Lincoln skidded forward, its rear tires whining, and plummeted down the long hill, fishtailing from side to side. Behind Lewis’s running figure, Sears saw a blurry Omar Norris standing stock-still on the snowplow.

  Traveling at seventy-five miles an hour, the Lincoln sliced through the figure of Lewis Benedikt; Sears opened his mouth and shouted, twisting the wheel savagely to the left. The Lincoln spun three fourths of the way around and jolted the snowplow with its right rear fender before plunging into the huge curling drift.

  His eyes closed, Sears heard the mushy, sickening thud of a heavy object striking the windshield: a moment later he felt the atmosphere about him become thicker: in the next endless second the car crumped to a stop as if he’d hit a wall.

  He opened his eyes and saw he was in darkness. Sears’s head stung where he had struck it in the crash. He put one hand to a temple and felt blood; with the other he switched on the interior lights. Omar Norris’s masked face, jammed against the windshield, peered with an empty eye in at the passenger seat. Five feet of snow held the car like cement.

  “Now, little brother,” said a deep voice from the back of the car.

  A small hand, earth embedded under its nails, reached forward to brush against Sears’s cheek.

  * * *

  The violence of his reaction took Sears by surprise: he rocketed sideways on the seat, getting his body out from under the wheel without planning or forethought, moved by a galvanic revulsion. His cheek felt scraped where the child touched it; and already, in the sealed-off car, he could smell their corruption. They sat forward in the back seat, glowing at him, their mouths open: he had startled them, too.

  Disgust for these obscene beings kindled up in him. He would not die passively at their hands. Sears threw himself forward and grunted, aiming the only punch he had thrown in sixty years: it caught Gregory Bate’s cheekbone and slid, tearing the flesh, into a damp, reeking softness. Glistening fluid slid over the torn cheek.

  “So you can be hurt,” Sears said. “By God, you can.”

  Snarling, they flew at him.

  Twelve Noon, Christmas Day

  4

  Ricky knew that Hardesty was drunk again the moment Walt had finished breathing two words into the telephone. By the time he had uttered as many sentences, he knew that Milburn was without a sheriff.

  “You know where you can put this job,” Hardesty said, and belched. “You can shove it. Hear me, Hawthorne?”

  “I hear you, Walt.” Ricky sat on the couch and glanced over at Stella, whose face was averted into her cupped hands. Mourning already, he thought, mourning because she let him go alone, because she sent him out of here without a blessing, without even thanks. Don Wanderley squatted on the floor beside Stella’s chair and put an arm over her shoulders.

  “Yeah, you hear me. Well, listen. I used to be a Marine, you know what, lawyer? Korea. Had three stripes, hear that?” A loud crash: Hardesty had fallen into a chair or knocked over a lamp. Ricky did not answer. “Three goddamned stripes. A leatherneck. You could call me a goddamned hero, I don’t mind. Well, I didn’t need you to tell me to go out to that farm. Neighbor went in there around eleven—found ’em all. Scales killed ’em all. Shot ’em. And afterward laid down under his goddamned tree and blew his head apart. State cops took all the bodies away in a helicopter. Now you tell me why he did it, lawyer. And you tell me how you knew something happened out there.”

  “Because I once borrowed his father’s car,” Ricky said. “I know it doesn’t make sense, Walt.”

  Don looked up at him from beside Stella, but she merely pushed her face deeper into her hands.

  “Doesn’t make—shit. Beautiful. Well, you can find a new sheriff for this town. I’m clearin’ out as soon as the county plows get in. I can go anywhere—record like mine. Anywhere? Not because of out there—not because of Scales’s little massacre. You and your rich-bitch friends been sittin’ on something all along—all along—and whatever it is does things—meaner’n a stirred-up hog. Right? It got into Scales’s place, didn’t it? Got into his head. Can go anywhere, can’t it? And who called all this down on us, hey Mr. Lawyer? You. Hey?”

  Ricky said nothing.

  “You can call it Anna Mostyn, but that’s just sheer plain lawyer’s crap. Goddamn it, I always thought you were an asshole, Hawthorne. But I’m tellin’ you now, anything shows up around here with ideas about moving me around, I’m gonna blow it in half. You and your buddies got all the fancy ideas, if you got any buddies left, you can take care of things around here. I’m stayin’ in here until the roads get clear, sent the deputies home, anybody comes around here I shoot first. Questions later. Then I get out.”

  “What about Sears?” Ricky asked, knowing that Hardesty would not tell him until he asked. “Has anyone seen Sears?”

  “Oh, Sears James. Yeah. Funny about that. State cops found him too. Saw his car half-buried in a drift, bottom of Underhill Road, snowplow all fucked over . . . you can bury him whenever the hell you want, little buddy. If everybody in this goddamned freakshow town doesn’t end up cut to pieces or sucked out dry or blown in half. Ooof.” Another belch. “I’m pig-drunk, lawyer. Gonna stay that way. Then I cut outa here. To hell with you and everything about you.” He hung up.

  Ricky said, “Hardesty’s lost his mind and Sears is dead.” Stella began to weep; soon he and she and Don were in a circle, arms around each other for that primitive consolation. “I’m the only one left,” Ricky said into his wife’s shoulder. “My God, Stella. I’m the only one left.”

  * * *

  Late that night each of them—Ricky and Stella in their bedroom, Don in the guestroom—heard the music playing through the town, exclamato
ry trumpets and breathy saxophones, the arcadian music of the soul’s night, the liquid music of America’s underside, and they heard in it an extra strain of release and abandonment. Dr. Rabbitfoot’s band was celebrating.

  5

  After Christmas even neighbors stopped seeing each other, and the few optimists who still had plans for New Year’s Eve quietly forgot them. All the public buildings stayed closed, Young Brothers and the library, the drugstores and the churches and the offices: on Wheat Row the drifts lapped up against the façades all the way to the rain gutters. Even the bars stayed closed, and fat Humphrey Stalladge stayed in his frame house out behind the tavern listening to the wind and playing pinochle with his wife, thinking that when the county plows got in he’d start making more money than the mint—nothing brought people into bars like bad times. His wife said, “Don’t talk like a gravedigger,” and that killed the conversation and the pinochle too for a while: everybody knew about Sears James and Omar Norris and, the worst of all, about what Elmer Scales had done. It seemed that if you listened to that snow hissing long enough, you wouldn’t just hear it telling you that it was waiting for you, you’d hear some terrible secret—a secret to turn your life black. Some Milburn people snapped awake in the dog-hours of morning, three o’clock, four o’clock, and thought they saw one of those poor Scales kids standing at the foot of the bed, grinning at them: couldn’t place which of the boys it was, but it had to be Davey or Butch or Mitchell. And took a pill to get back to sleep and forget the way little Davey or Butch or whoever-it-was looked, with his ribs shining underneath his skin and his skinny face shining too.

  Eventually the town heard about Sheriff Hardesty: how he was holed up in his office with all those bodies waiting in the utility cells. Two of the Pegram boys had snowmobiles, and they coasted up the door of the sheriff’s office to check him out—see if he was as nutty as the rumor said. A whiskery face jammed itself up against the window as they climbed off the snowmobiles: Hardesty lifted his pistol so the boys could see it and shouted through the glass that if they didn’t pull off those damn ski masks and show their faces they wouldn’t have any faces left. Most people knew someone who had a friend who’d had to go past the sheriff’s office and swore that he heard Hardesty shouting in there, yelling at nothing or at himself—or at whatever it was that could move freely around Milburn in this weather, sliding in and out of their dreams, exulting in shadows whenever they’d just turned their heads: whatever it was that could account for that music some of them had heard around midnight on Christmas night—inexplicable music that should have sounded joyful but was instead wound full of the darkest emotions they knew. They pushed their heads into their pillows and told themselves it was a radio or a trick of the wind—they’d tell themselves anything rather than believe that something was out there that could make a noise so fearsome.