The Big Book of Ghost Stories

by Otto Penzler

  I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed:

  “This transcends everything! everything that ever did occur! Why you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing—you have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself—the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany! [A fact. The original was ingeniously and fraudulently duplicated and exhibited in New York as the “only genuine” Cardiff Giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real colossus) at the very same time that the real giant was drawing crowds at a museum in Albany.] Confound it, don’t you know your own remains?”

  I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation, overspread a countenance before.

  The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said:

  “Honestly, is that true?”

  “As true as I am sitting here.”

  He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping his chin on his breast); and finally said:

  “Well—I never felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own ghost! My son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor friendless phantom like me, don’t let this get out. Think how you would feel if you had made such an ass of yourself.”

  I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow—and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my bath-tub.

  IN AT THE DEATH

  Donald E. Westlake

  THERE CAN BE LITTLE dispute that the funniest mystery writer who ever lived was Donald Edwin Westlake (1933–2008). But he also wrote a very hard-boiled series about the tough professional thief Parker, using the pen name Richard Stark, and a poignant series featuring Mitch Tobin, under the pseudonym Tucker Coe. Born in Brooklyn, he lived in the New York City area most of his adult life and set the majority of his books and stories there. A prolific writer, especially early in his career when he wrote more than two dozen soft-core porn novels under various pseudonyms, short stories in the science fiction and mystery genres, and hard-boiled crime novels, the first being The Mercenaries (1960), he produced more than a hundred books. It is for his complex and hilarious caper novels, mainly about the unlucky criminal genius John Dortmunder, for whom every perfectly planned burglary goes woefully wrong, that Westlake has been most honored, notably by the Mystery Writers of America, which named him a Grand Master for lifetime achievement in 1993. He also won Edgars in three different categories (Best Novel for God Save the Mark, 1968; Best Short Story for “Too Many Crooks,” 1990; and Best Motion Picture for The Grifters, 1991). Numerous films have been made from his novels, most notably The Hot Rock (1970, filmed in 1972 with Robert Redford), The Hunter (1962, filmed as Point Blank in 1967 with Lee Marvin, and remade in 1999 as Payback with Mel Gibson), and Bank Shot (1972, filmed in 1974 with George C. Scott). His 1992 novel, Humans, is about an angel.

  “In at the Death” was originally published in The 13th Ghost Book, edited by James Hale (London, Barrie & Jenkins, 1977).

  In at the Death

  DONALD E. WESTLAKE

  IT’S HARD NOT TO believe in ghosts when you are one. I hanged myself in a fit of truculence—stronger than pique, but not so dignified as despair—and regretted it before the thing was well begun. The instant I kicked the chair away, I wanted it back, but gravity was turning my former wish to its present command; the chair would not right itself from where it lay on the floor, and my 193 pounds would not cease to urge downward from the rope thick around my neck.

  There was pain, of course, quite horrible pain centered in my throat, but the most astounding thing was the way my cheeks seemed to swell. I could barely see over their round red hills, my eyes staring in agony at the door, willing someone to come in and rescue me, though I knew there was no one in the house, and in any event the door was carefully locked. My kicking legs caused me to twist and turn, so that sometimes I faced the door and sometimes the window, and my shivering hands struggled with the rope so deep in my flesh I could barely find it and most certainly could not pull it loose.

  I was frantic and terrified, yet at the same time my brain possessed a cold corner of aloof observation. I seemed now to be everywhere in the room at once, within my writhing body but also without, seeing my frenzied spasms, the thick rope, the heavy beam, the mismatched pair of lit bedside lamps throwing my convulsive double shadow on the walls, the closed locked door, the white-curtained window with its shade drawn all the way down. This is death, I thought, and I no longer wanted it, now that the choice was gone forever.

  My name is—was—Edward Thornburn, and my dates are 1938–1977. I killed myself just a month before my fortieth birthday, though I don’t believe the well-known pangs of that milestone had much if anything to do with my action. I blame it all (as I blamed most of the errors and failures of my life) on my sterility. Had I been able to father children my marriage would have remained strong, Emily would not have been unfaithful to me, and I would not have taken my own life in a final fit of truculence.

  The setting was the guest room in our house in Barnstaple, Connecticut, and the time was just after seven p.m.; deep twilight, at this time of year. I had come home from the office—I was a realtor, a fairly lucrative occupation in Connecticut, though my income had been falling off recently—shortly before six, to find the note on the kitchen table: “Antiquing with Greg. Afraid you’ll have to make your own dinner. Sorry. Love, Emily.”

  Greg was the one; Emily’s lover. He owned an antique shop out on the main road toward New York, and Emily filled a part of her days as his ill-paid assistant. I knew what they did together in the back of the shop on those long midweek afternoons when there were no tourists, no antique collectors to disturb them. I knew, and I’d known for more than three years, but I had never decided how to deal with my knowledge. The fact was, I blamed myself, and therefore I had no way to behave if the ugly subject were ever to come into the open.

  So I remained silent, but not content. I was discontent, unhappy, angry, resentful—truculent.

  I’d tried to kill myself before. At first with the car, by steering it into an oncoming truck (I swerved at the last second, amid howling horns) and by driving it off a cliff into the Connecticut River (I slammed on the brakes at the very brink, and sat covered in perspiration for half an hour before backing away), and finally by stopping athwart one of the few level crossings left in this neighborhood. But no train came for twenty minutes, and my truculence wore off, and I drove home.

  Later I tried to slit my wrists, but found it impossible to push sharp metal into my own skin. Impossible. The vision of my naked wrist and that shining steel so close together washed my truculence completely out of my mind. Until the next time.

  With the rope; and then I succeeded. Oh, totally, oh, fully I succeeded. My legs kicked at air, my fingernails clawed at my throat, my bulging eyes stared out over my swollen purple cheeks, my tongue thickened and grew bulbous in my mouth, my body jigged and jangled like a toy at the end of a string, and the pain was excruciating, horrible, not to be endured. I can’t endure it, I thought, it can’t be endured. Much worse than knife slashings was the knotted strangled pain in my throat, and my head ballooned with pain, pressure outward, my face turning black, my eyes no longer human, the pressure in my head building and building as though I would explode. Endless horrible pain, not to be endured, but going on and on.

  My legs kicked more feebly. My arms sagged, my hands dropped to my sides, my fingers twisted uselessly against my sopping trouser legs, my head hung at an angle from the rope, I turned more slowly in the air, like a broken wind chime on a breezeless day. The pains lessened, in my throat and head, but never entirely stopped.

  And now I saw that my distended eyes had become lusterless, gray. The m
oisture had dried on the eyeballs, they were as dead as stones. And yet I could see them, my own eyes, and when I widened my vision I could see my entire body, turning, hanging, no longer twitching, and with horror I realized I was dead.

  But present. Dead, but still present, with the scraping ache still in my throat and the bulging pressure still in my head. Present, but no longer in that used-up clay, that hanging meat; I was suffused through the room, like indirect lighting, everywhere present but without a source. What happens now? I wondered, dulled by fear and strangeness and the continuing pains, and I waited, like a hovering mist, for whatever would happen next.

  But nothing happened. I waited; the body became utterly still; the double shadow on the wall showed no vibration; the bedside lamps continued to burn; the door remained shut and the window shade drawn; and nothing happened.

  What now? I craved to scream the question aloud, but I could not. My throat ached, but I had no throat. My mouth burned, but I had no mouth. Every final strain and struggle of my body remained imprinted in my mind, but I had no body and no brain and no self, no substance. No power to speak, no power to move myself, no power to remove myself from this room and this suspended corpse. I could only wait here, and wonder, and go on waiting.

  There was a digital clock on the dresser opposite the bed, and when it first occurred to me to look at it the numbers were 7:21—perhaps twenty minutes after I’d kicked the chair away, perhaps fifteen minutes since I’d died. Shouldn’t something happen, shouldn’t some change take place?

  The clock read 9:11 when I heard Emily’s Volkswagen drive around to the back of the house. I had left no note, having nothing I wanted to say to anyone and in any event believing my own dead body would be eloquent enough, but I hadn’t thought I would be present when Emily found me. I was justified in my action, however much I now regretted having taken it, I was justified, I knew I was justified, but I didn’t want to see her face when she came through that door. She had wronged me, she was the cause of it, she would have to know that as well as I, but I didn’t want to see her face.

  The pains increased, in what had been my throat, in what had been my head. I heard the back door slam, far away downstairs, and I stirred like air currents in the room, but I didn’t leave, I couldn’t leave.

  “Ed? Ed? It’s me, hon!”

  I know it’s you. I must go away now, I can’t stay here, I must go away. Is there a God? Is this my soul, this hovering presence? Hell would be better than this, take me away to Hell or wherever I’m to go, don’t leave me here!

  She came up the stairs, calling again, walking past the closed guest room door. I heard her go into our bedroom, heard her call my name, heard the beginnings of apprehension in her voice. She went by again, out there in the hall, went downstairs, became quiet.

  What was she doing? Searching for a note perhaps, some message from me. Looking out the window, seeing again my Chevrolet, knowing I must be home. Moving through the rooms of this old house, the original structure a barn nearly two hundred years old, converted by some previous owner just after the Second World War, bought by me twelve years ago, furnished by Emily—and Greg—from their interminable, damnable, awful antiques. Shaker furniture, Colonial furniture, hooked rugs and quilts, the old yellow pine tables, the faint sense always of being in some slightly shabby minor museum, this house that I had bought but never loved. I’d bought it for Emily, I did everything for Emily, because I knew I could never do the one thing for Emily that mattered. I could never give her a child.

  She was good about it, of course. Emily is good, I never blamed her, never completely blamed her instead of myself. In the early days of our marriage she made a few wistful references, but I suppose she saw the effect they had on me, and for a long time she has said nothing. But I have known.

  The beam from which I had hanged myself was a part of the original building, a thick hand-hewed length of aged timber eleven inches square, chevroned with the marks of the hatchet that had shaped it. A strong beam, it would support my weight forever. It would support my weight until I was found and cut down. Until I was found.

  The clock read 9:23 and Emily had been in the house twelve minutes when she came upstairs again, her steps quick and light on the old wood, approaching, pausing, stopping. “Ed?”

  The doorknob turned.

  The door was locked, of course, with the key on the inside. She’d have to break it down, have to call someone else to break it down, perhaps she wouldn’t be the one to find me after all. Hope rose in me, and the pains receded.

  “Ed? Are you in there?” She knocked at the door, rattled the knob, called my name several times more, then abruptly turned and ran away downstairs again, and after a moment I heard her voice, murmuring and unclear. She had called someone, on the phone.

  Greg, I thought, and the throat-rasp filled me, and I wanted this to be the end. I wanted to be taken away, dead body and living soul, taken away. I wanted everything to be finished.

  She stayed downstairs, waiting for him, and I stayed upstairs, waiting for them both. Perhaps she already knew what she’d find up here, and that’s why she waited below.

  I didn’t mind about Greg, about being present when he came in. I didn’t mind about him. It was Emily I minded.

  The clock read 9:44 when I heard tires on the gravel at the side of the house. He entered, I heard them talking down there, the deeper male voice slow and reassuring, the lighter female voice quick and frightened, and then they came up together, neither speaking. The doorknob turned, jiggled, rattled, and Greg’s voice called, “Ed?”

  After a little silence Emily said, “He wouldn’t—He wouldn’t do anything, would he?”

  “Do anything?” Greg sounded almost annoyed at the question. “What do you mean, do anything?”

  “He’s been so depressed, he’s—Ed!” And forcibly the door was rattled, the door was shaken in its frame.

  “Emily, don’t. Take it easy.”

  “I shouldn’t have called you,” she said. “Ed, please!”

  “Why not? For heaven’s sake, Emily—”

  “Ed, please come out, don’t scare me like this!”

  “Why shouldn’t you call me, Emily?”

  “Ed isn’t stupid, Greg. He’s—”

  There was then a brief silence, pregnant with the hint of murmuring. They thought me still alive in here, they didn’t want me to hear Emily say, “He knows, Greg, he knows about us.”

  The murmurings sifted and shifted, and then Greg spoke loudly, “That’s ridiculous. Ed? Come out, Ed, let’s talk this over.” And the doorknob rattled and clattered, and he sounded annoyed when he said, “We must get in, that’s all. Is there another key?”

  “I think all the locks up here are the same. Just a minute.”

  They were. A simple skeleton key would open any interior door in the house. I waited, listening, knowing Emily had gone off to find another key, knowing they would soon come in together, and I felt such terror and revulsion for Emily’s entrance that I could feel myself shimmer in the room, like a reflection in a warped mirror. Oh, can I at least stop seeing? In life I had eyes, but also eyelids, I could shut out the intolerable, but now I was only a presence, a total presence, I could not stop my awareness.

  The rasp of key in lock was like rough metal edges in my throat; my memory of a throat. The pain flared in me, and through it I heard Emily asking what was wrong, and Greg answering. “The key’s in it, on the other side.”

  “Oh, dear God! Oh, Greg, what has he done?”

  “We’ll have to take the door off its hinges,” he told her. “Call Tony. Tell him to bring the toolbox.”

  “Can’t you push the key through?”

  Of course he could, but he said, quite determinedly, “Go on, Emily,” and I realized then he had no intention of taking the door down. He simply wanted her away when the door was first opened. Oh, very good, very good!

  “All right,” she said doubtfully, and I heard her go away to phone Tony. A beetle-brow
ed young man with great masses of black hair and olive complexion, Tony lived in Greg’s house and was a kind of handyman. He did work around the house and was also (according to Emily) very good at restoration of antique furniture; stripping paint, reassembling broken parts, that sort of thing.

  There was now a renewed scraping and rasping at the lock, as Greg struggled to get the door open before Emily’s return. I found myself feeling unexpected warmth and liking toward Greg. He wasn’t a bad person. Would he marry her now? They could live in this house, he’d had more to do with its furnishing than I. Or would this room hold too grim a memory, would Emily have to sell the house, live elsewhere? She might have to sell at a low price; as a realtor, I knew the difficulty in selling a house where a suicide has taken place. No matter how much they may joke about it, people are still afraid of the supernatural. Many of them would believe this room was haunted.

  It was then I finally realized the room was haunted. With me! I’m a ghost, I thought, thinking the word for the first time, in utter blank astonishment. I’m a ghost.