Ghost Story

by Peter Straub

  “They’re trying to make that novel come true?” Ricky asked.

  “I think so. They also called themselves nightwatchers. They’re playful. Think of those initials. Anna Mostyn, Alma Mobley, Ann-Veronica Moore. That was playfulness—she wanted us to notice the similarity. I’m sure she sent Gregory and Fenny because Sears had seen them before. Or years ago, they appeared to him because she knew she’d be able to use them now. And it’s no accident that when I saw Gregory in California, I thought of him being like a werewolf.”

  “Why no accident, if that’s what you’re claiming he is?” Sears asked.

  “I’m not claiming that. But creatures like Anna Mostyn or Eva Galli are behind every ghost story and supernatural tale ever written,” Don said. “They are the originals of everything that frightens us in the supernatural. I think in stories we make them manageable. But the stories at least show that we can destroy them. Gregory Bate isn’t a werewolf any more than Anna Mostyn is. He is what people have described as a werewolf. Or as a vampire. He feeds on living bodies. He sold himself to his benefactor for immortality.”

  Don took up one of the books he had brought with him. “This is a reference book, the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend. There’s a long entry under ‘Shapeshifting,’ written by a professor named R. D. Jameson. Listen to this: ‘Although no census of shapeshifters has been taken, the number of them found in all parts of the world is astronomical.’ He says they appear in the folklore of all peoples. He goes on for three columns—it’s one of the longest entries in the book. I’m afraid it isn’t actually of much help to us, apart from showing that these beings have been talked about in folk history for thousands of years, because Jameson doesn’t recount ways, if any, in which the legends say these creatures can be destroyed. But listen to the way he ends the entry: ‘The studies made of shapeshifting foxes, otters, etc., are sound but miss the central problem of shapeshifting itself. Shapeshifting in folklore is clearly connected with hallucination in morbid psychology. Until the phenomena in both areas have been scrutinized with care, we are not able to go beyond the general observation that nothing is, in fact, what it seems to be.’”

  “Amen,” said Ricky.

  “Precisely. Nothing is what it seems to be. These beings can convince you that you are losing your mind. That’s happened to each of us—we’ve seen and felt things we argued ourselves out of later. It can’t be true, we tell ourselves; such things do not happen. But they do happen, and we did see them. You did see them. You did see Eva Galli sit up on the car seat, and you saw her appear as a lynx a moment later.”

  “Just suppose,” Sears said, “that one of us had a rifle along that day, and had shot the lynx. What would have happened?”

  “I think you would have seen something extraordinary, but I can’t imagine what it would have been. Maybe it would have died. Maybe it would have shifted to some preferred form—maybe, if it had been in great pain, it would have gone through a series of changes. And maybe it would have been helpless.”

  “A lot of maybes,” Ricky said.

  “That’s all we have.”

  “If we accept your theory.”

  “If you have a better one I’ll listen to it. But through Peter Barnes we know what happened to Freddy Robinson and Jim Hardie. Also, I checked with her agent and found out some things about Ann-Veronica Moore. She came literally from nowhere. There is no record at all of her in the town she said she was born in. Because there couldn’t be—there never was an Ann-Veronica Moore until the day she enrolled in acting class. She just arrived, plausible and well documented, at the door of a theater, knowing it was a way to get to Edward Wanderley.”

  “Then these—these things you think exist—are even more dangerous. They have wit,” Sears said.

  “Yes, they do have wit. They love jokes, and they make long-term plans, and like the Indians’ Manitou, they love to flaunt themselves. This second book gives a good example of that.” He picked it up and showed the spine to the two men. “I Came This Way, by Robert Mobley. He was the painter Alma claimed was her father. I made the mistake of never looking at his autobiography until today. Now I think that she wanted me to read it and discover that in calling herself Mobley she was making a pun on an earlier appearance. The fourth chapter is called ‘Dark Clouds’—it’s not a very well-written autobiography, but I want to read you a few paragraphs from that chapter.”

  Don opened the book to a marked page, and neither of the two old men stirred.

  “‘Even in a life so apparently fortunate as mine has been, dark and troubling periods have intruded and marked months and years with indelible grief. The year 1958 was one such; only by hurling myself with the utmost concentration into my work, I believe, did I maintain my sanity during that year. Knowing the sunny watercolors and rigid formal experimentation in oils which had been characteristic of my work during the five years previous, people have often questioned me about the stylistic transformation which led to my so-called Supernatural Period. I can say now only that my mind was very likely unbalanced, and the violent disorder of my emotions found expression in the work I forced myself to do.

  “‘The first painful event of the year was the death of my mother, Jessica Osgood Mobley, whose affection and wise advice had . . .’ I’ll skip a page or two here.” Don scanned the page, and turned it over. “Here we are. ‘The second, even more shattering loss was the death by his own hand in his eighteenth year of my elder son, Shelby. I shall mention here only the circumstances surrounding Shelby’s death which led directly to my work of the so-called Supernatural Period, for this book is chiefly an account of my life in painting: yet I must assert that my son’s was a gay, innocent and vibrant spirit, and I am certain that only a great moral shock, the apprehension of a hitherto unsuspected evil, could have led him to take his life.

  “‘Shortly after the death of my mother, a spacious house near our own was sold to an evidently prosperous, attractive woman in her mid-forties whose sole family consisted of a niece of fourteen who had become her ward after the death of the girl’s parents. Mrs. Florence de Peyser was friendly and reserved, a woman with charming manners who wintered in Europe as my own parents had: in fact she seemed altogether more representative of another age than our own, and for a time I speculated about doing her portrait in watercolor. She collected paintings, as I saw when invited to her house, and was even knowledgeable about my own work—though my abstractions of the period would have fitted oddly with her French Symbolists! But for all Mrs. de Peyser’s charm, the principle attraction of her household soon became her niece. Amy Monckton’s beauty was almost ethereal, and I believe that she was the most feminine being I have ever seen. Every action she undertook, be it merely entering a room or pouring a cup of tea, spoke a volume of quiet grace. The child was an enchantment, entirely self-possessed and modest—as delicate as (but perhaps more intelligent than) Pansy Osmond, for whose sake Henry James’s Isobel Archer sacrificed herself so willingly. Amy was a welcome guest in our home: both of my sons were drawn to her.’

  “And there she is,” Don said. “A fourteen-year-old Alma Mobley, under the guidance of Mrs. de Peyser. Poor Mobley didn’t know what he was letting into his house. He goes on: ‘Though Amy was the same age as Whitney, my younger son, it was Shelby—sensitive Shelby—who became closer to her. At the time, I thought it was proof of Shelby’s politesse, that he gave so much time to a girl four years younger than himself. And even when I picked up clear signs of affection (poor Shelby blushed when the girl’s name was mentioned), I could never have imagined that they indulged in any behavior of a morbid, degrading or precocious kind. In truth, it was one of the delights of my life to observe my tall, handsome son walking through our garden with the pretty child. And I was not surprised, though perhaps a bit amused, when Shelby confided to me that when she was eighteen and he twenty-two, he would marry Amy Monckton.

  “‘After several mo
nths I noticed that Shelby had become increasingly withdrawn. He was no longer interested in his friends, and in the last months of his life, he concentrated exclusively on the de Peyser household and Miss Monckton. They had lately been joined by a servant of sinister and Latin appearance named Gregorio. I distrusted Gregorio on sight, and attempted to warn Mrs. de Peyser about him, but was informed that she had known him and his family for many years, and that he was an excellent chauffeur. I felt I could say no more.

  “‘In this short account I can say only that my son became haggard in appearance and secretive in manner during the last two weeks of his life. I played the heavy parent for the first time in my life and forbade him to communicate with the de Peyser household. His attitude led me to believe that under Gregorio’s influence, he and the child were experimenting with drugs—perhaps also with illicit sensuality. That noxious and debasing weed, marijuana, was even then to be found in the lower sections of New Orleans. And I feared also that they experimented too with some gimcrack form of Creole mysticism. That sort of thing suits the drug milieu.

  “‘Whatever Shelby had been drawn into, its results were tragic. He disobeyed my orders and continued clandestinely to frequent the de Peyser house; and on the last day of August he returned home, took the service revolver I kept in a drawer in my bedroom, and shot himself. It was I, painting in my studio, who heard the shot and discovered his body.

  “‘What occurred next must have been the result of shock. I did not think to call the police or an ambulance: I wandered outside, imagining somehow that help would already have arrived. I found myself on the road outside our house. I was looking at Mrs. de Peyser’s residence. What I saw there nearly made me lose consciousness.

  “‘I imagined I saw the chauffeur Gregorio standing at an upper window, sneering down at me. Malevolence seemed to flow from him. He was exultant. I tried to scream and could not. I looked down and saw something worse. Amy Monckton stood by the side of the house, similarly staring at me, but with a calm, expressionless gaze and a grave face. Her feet were not touching the ground! Amy appeared to be floating nine or ten inches above the grass. Exposed to them, I felt an utter terror, and pressed my hands to my face. When I removed them and could see again, they were gone.

  “‘Mrs. de Peyser and Amy sent flowers to Shelby’s funeral, but by then had gone to California. Though I was and am now convinced that I had imagined my last sight of the child and the chauffeur, I burned the flowers rather than let them adorn Shelby’s coffin. The paintings of my so-called Supernatural Period, which I propose now to discuss, flowed from this experience.’”

  Don looked at the two old men. “I read that for the first time today. You see what I mean by flaunting themselves? They want their victims to know, or at least to suspect, what sort of things happened to them. Robert Mobley got a shock that nearly unhinged him, and he did the best paintings of his life; Alma wanted me to read about it and know that she had lived in New Orleans with Florence de Peyser under another name and killed a boy as surely as she killed my brother.”

  “Why hasn’t Anna Mostyn killed us already?” Sears asked. “She’s had every opportunity. I can’t even pretend not to be convinced by what you’ve told us, but why has she waited? Why aren’t the three of us as dead as the others?”

  Ricky cleared his throat. “Edward’s actress told Stella that I’d be a good enemy. I think what she was waiting for was the moment when we knew exactly what we were up against.”

  “You mean now,” Sears said.

  “Do you have a plan?” Ricky asked.

  “No, just a few ideas. I’m going to go back to the hotel and pick up my things and move back here. Maybe in the tapes she made with my uncle there’ll be some information we can use. And I want to break into Anna Mostyn’s home. I hope you will come with me. We might find something there.”

  “What you’ll find in there is a long walk on a short pier,” Sears said.

  “No, I don’t think they’ll be there anymore. The three of them will know that we’ll try the house first. They’ll have found somewhere else already.”

  Don looked at Sears and Ricky. “There is just one thing left to say. As Sears asked, what would have happened if you’d shot the lynx? That’s what we’ll have to find out. This time we’ll have to shoot the lynx, whatever that will mean.”

  He smiled at them. “It’s going to be a hell of a winter.”

  Sears James rumbled something affirmative. Ricky asked, “What do you suppose the odds are that we three and Peter Barnes will ever see the end of it?”

  “Rotten,” Sears answered. “But you’ve certainly done what we asked you here to do.”

  “Do we tell anybody?” Ricky asked. “Should we try to convince Hardesty?”

  “That’s absurd,” Sears snorted. “We’d end up in the booby hatch.”

  “Let them think they’re fighting Martians,” Don said. “Sears is right. But I’ll give you a much better bet than the one you gave me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I bet your perfect secretary won’t come to work tomorrow.”

  * * *

  When the old men left him in his uncle’s house, Don built up the fire and sat in Ricky’s warm place on the couch. While snow piled up on the roof and tried to wind its way around doors and window frames, he remembered a warm-chilly night, the smell of burning leaves, a sparrow lighting on a rail and a pale already loved face shining at him with luminous eyes from a doorway. And a naked girl looking out of a black window and pronouncing words he only now understood: “You are a ghost.” You Donald. You. It was the unhappy perception at the center of every ghost story.

  II

  The Town Besieged

  Narcissus, gazing at his image in the pool, wept.

  When his friend, passing by, enquired the reason,

  Narcissus replied, “I weep that I have lost my innocence.”

  His friend answered, “You would wiser weep that you ever had it.”

  1

  December in Milburn; Milburn moving toward Christmas. The town’s memory is long, and this month has always meant certain things, maple sugar candy and skating on the river and lights and trees in the stores and skiing on the hills just outside of town. In December, under several inches of snow, Milburn always took on a festive, almost magically pretty look. A tall tree always went up in the square, and Eleanor Hardie matched its lights by decorating the front of the Archer Hotel. Children lined up before Santa Claus in Young Brothers’ department store and put in their nonnegotiable demands for Christmas—only the older ones noticed that Santa looked and smelled a little bit like Omar Norris. (December always reconciled Omar not only with his wife, but also with himself—he cut his drinking in half, and talked to the few cronies he had about “moonlighting down at the store.”) As his father had done, Norbert Clyde always drove his old horse-drawn sleigh through town and gave the kids rides so they would know what real sleighbells sounded like—and would know the feeling of skimming along through pine-smelling air behind two good horses. And as his father had done, Elmer Scales pulled open a gate in one of his pasture fences and let the town people come out to sled down a hill at the edge of his property: you always saw half a dozen station wagons pulled up alongside the fence, and half a dozen young fathers pulling Flexible Flyers laden with excited children up Elmer’s hill. Some families pulled taffy in their kitchens; some families roasted chestnuts in their fireplaces. Humphrey Stalladge put up red and green lights over the bar, and started making Tom and Jerries. Milburn wives swapped recipes for Christmas cookies; the butchers took orders for twenty-pound turkeys and gave away recipes for turkey gravy. Eight-year-olds in the grade school cut out trees from colored paper and pasted them to classroom windows. High school kids concentrated more on hockey than English and history, and thought about the records they’d buy with the holiday checks from aunts and uncles. The Kiwanis and Rotary and the Kayc
ees held a huge party in the ballroom of the Archer Hotel, with three bartenders imported from Binghamton, and cleared several thousand dollars for the Golden Agers fund; from this evening, and from all the cocktail parties the younger, newer residents of Milburn held—the people who still did not look quite familiar to Sears and Ricky, though they might have lived in Milburn for years—people came to work with headaches and queasy stomachs.

  This year there still were a few cocktail parties and women still made Christmas cookies, but December in Milburn was different. People who met in Young Brother’s department store didn’t say “Isn’t it nice to have a white Christmas?” but “I hope this snow doesn’t keep up”; Omar Norris had to stay on the municipal snowplow all day long, and junior clerks said they’d get into his Santa suit only if someone fumigated it first; the mayor and Hardesty’s deputies set up an enormous tree, but Eleanor Hardie didn’t have the heart to decorate the front of the hotel—indeed she began to look so harried and lost that a tourist couple from New York City took one glance at her and decided on the spot to keep on going until they found a motel. And Norbert Clyde, the first time ever, didn’t take his sleigh out of his barn and grease up the runners: ever since seeing that “thing” on his land, he had gone into a funny decline. You could hear him at Humphrey’s or other bars on the outskirts of town, saying that the County Farm Agent didn’t know his ass from his elbow, and that if people had any sense they’d start paying a little more attention to Elmer Scales, who didn’t open up his gate to let the sledders onto his hill, but skipped dinners and scribbled crazy poetry and waited up nights with his loaded twelve-gauge over his knees. His tribe of children sledded on the hill by themselves, feeling ostracized. Snow fell all day, all night; the drifts at first covered fences, and then reached the eaves of the houses. In the second two weeks of December, the schools were closed for eight days: the high school’s heating system failed, and the board shut it down until mid-January, when a heating engineer from Binghamton was finally able to get into town. The grade school closed a few days later: the roads were treacherous, and after the school bus went into a ditch twice in one morning, the parents would have kept their kids home anyway. People of the age of Ricky and Sears—those who were the town’s memory—looked back to the winters of 1947 and 1926, when no traffic had come in or out of Milburn for weeks, and fuel had run out and old folks (who were no older than the present ages of Sears and Ricky) had, along with Viola Frederickson of the auburn hair and exotic face, frozen to death.