Ghost Story

by Peter Straub

  Don turned from the window and said to Peter Barnes, “Want some coffee?”

  “I’m fine,” the boy said. “Do you see them coming?”

  “Not yet. They’ll be here.”

  “It’s a terrible night. The worst yet.”

  “Well, I’m sure they’ll be here soon,” Don said. “Your father didn’t mind your leaving the house on Christmas Eve?”

  “No,” Peter said, and looked truly unhappy for the first time that night. “He’s—I guess he’s mourning. He didn’t even ask me where I was going.” Peter kept his intelligent face steady, not permitting his grief to demonstrate itself in the tears Don knew were close.

  Don went back to the window and leaned forward, pressing his hands on the cold glass. “I see someone coming.”

  Peter stood up behind him.

  “Yes. They’re stopping. It’s them.”

  “Mr. James is staying with Mr. Hawthorne now?”

  “It was their idea. We all felt safer that way.” He watched Sears and Ricky leave the car and begin to fight their way up the walk.

  “I want to tell you something,” Peter said behind him, and Don turned to look at the tall boy. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

  “Peter,” Don said, “if we get these things before they get us, it’ll be mostly because of you.”

  “We will,” Peter said quietly, and as Don went to the door he knew that he and the boy were equally grateful for each other’s company.

  * * *

  “Come in,” he said to the two older men. “Peter is already here. How’s your cold, Ricky?”

  Ricky Hawthorne shook his head. “Stable. You have something you want us to listen to?”

  “On my uncle’s tapes. Let me help you with your coats.”

  A minute later he was leading them down the hall. “I had quite a struggle to find the right tapes,” he said. “My uncle never marked the boxes he kept them in.” He opened the door to the office. “That’s why the place looks like this.” Empty white boxes and spools of tape covered the floor. Other white boxes littered the desk.

  Sears knocked a spool of tape off a chair and lowered himself into it; Ricky and Peter sat on camp chairs against a book-lined wall.

  Don went behind the desk. “I guess Uncle Edward had some sort of filing system, but I never found out what it was. I had to go through everything before finding the Moore tapes.” He sat down behind the desk. “If I were another kind of novelist, I’d never have to dream up a plot again. My uncle was told more dirt off the record than Woodward and Bernstein.”

  “At any rate,” Sears said, extending his legs deliberately to push over a stack of white boxes, “you found them. And you want us to listen to something. Let’s get to it.”

  “Drinks are on the table,” Don said. “You’ll need it. Help yourselves.” While Ricky and Sears poured whiskey for themselves and Peter took a Coke, Don described his uncle’s taping technique.

  “He’d just let the recorder run—he wanted to get everything the subject said. During the formal taping sessions, of course, but also during meals, having drinks, watching television—to catch anything the subject came up with. So from time to time, the subject would be left alone in a room with a tape recorder running. We’ re going to listen to a couple of moments when that happened.”

  Don swiveled his chair around and pushed the “on” button of the recorder on the shelf behind him. “This is set just about on the right spot. I won’t have to tell you what to listen for.” He pushed the “play” button, and Edward Wanderley’s voice filled the room, floating down from the big speakers perched up behind the desk.

  “So he beat you because of the money you spent on acting lessons?”

  A girlish voice answered. “No. He beat me because I existed.”

  “How do you feel about it now?”

  Silence for a time: then the other voice said, “Could you get me a drink, please? It’s difficult for me to talk about this.”

  “Sure, of course, I understand. Campari soda?”

  “You remembered. Lovely.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Noises of the desk chair squeaking, footsteps; the door closed.

  In the few seconds of quiet which followed, Don kept his eyes on Sears and Ricky. They watched the spools of tape hissing through the heads.

  “Are my old friends listening to me now?” It was another voice: older, brisker, drier. “I want to say hello to all of you.”

  “It’s Eva,” Sears said. “That’s Eva Galli’s voice.” Instead of fear, his face showed anger. Ricky Hawthorne looked as if his cold had just grown much worse.

  “We parted, the last time we all met, so ignominiously, that I wanted all of you to know that I remember you very well. You, dear Ricky; and you, Sears—what a dignified man you became! And you, handsome Lewis. How lucky you are to be listening today! Haven’t you ever wondered what would have happened if you had gone into the girl’s room instead of letting your wife answer her call? And poor ugly John—let me thank you in advance for having such a wonderful party. I am going to enjoy myself enormously at your party, John, and I am going to leave a present behind—a token of future presents to all of you.”

  Don took the reel off the recorder, said, “Don’t say anything now. Listen to the next one first.” He put on a second reel and advanced it to a number he had written on a pad. Then he pushed the “play” button again.

  Edward Wanderley: “Do you want to take a break for a little while? I could make us some lunch.”

  “Please. Don’t worry about me. I’ll just stay here and look at your books until everything’s ready.”

  After Edward left the room, Eva Galli’s voice came again through the speakers.

  “Hello, my old friends. And are you joined by a young friend?”

  “Not you, Peter,” Don said. “Me.”

  “Is Don Wanderley with you? Don, I look forward to seeing you again too. For I will, you know. I will visit each of you and thank you in person for the treatment you gave me some time ago. I hope you are looking forward to the extraordinary things in store for you.” Then she paused, using the spacing of the sentences to form separate paragraphs.

  “I will take you places where you have never been.

  “And I will see the life run out of you.

  “And I will see you die like insects. Insects.”

  Don switched off the machine. “There’s one more tape I want to play, but you can see why I thought you ought to hear them.”

  Ricky still looked shaken. “She knew. She knew we were all going to sit here . . . and listen to her. To her threats.”

  “But she spoke to Lewis and John,” Sears said. “That’s rather leading.”

  “Exactly. You see what that means. She can’t predict things, she can just make good guesses. She thought one of you would go through these tapes shortly after my uncle’s death. And stew over them for a year, until she celebrated the anniversary of Edward’s death by killing John Jaffrey. Obviously she thought you would write to me, and that I would come out to take possession of the house. Of course putting my name on that tape meant that you would have to get in touch with me. It was always part of her plan that I come here.”

  Ricky said, “As it was we stewed pretty well on our own.”

  “I think she caused your nightmares. Anyhow, she wanted all of us here so that she could get us one by one. Now I want you to hear the last tape.” He removed the spent reel from the machine and took up the third reel beside him and placed it on the recorder.

  A lilting southern voice came through the big speakers.

  “Don. Didn’t we have a wonderful time together? Didn’t we love each other, Don? I hated leaving you—really, I was heartbroken when I left Berkeley. Do you remember the smell of burning leaves when you walked me home, and the dog barking str
eets away? It was all so lovely, Don. And look at what a wonderful thing you made of it! I was so proud of you. You thought and thought about me, and you came so close. I wanted you to see, I wanted you to see everything and have your mind open up to all the possibilities we represent—right through the stories about Tasker Martin and the X.X.X.—”

  He switched it off. “Alma Mobley,” he said. “I don’t think you have to hear the rest of it.”

  Peter Barnes stirred in his chair. “What’s she trying to do?”

  “To convince us of her omnipotence. To get us so scared that we’ll give up.” He leaned forward over the desk. “But these tapes prove that she’s not omnipotent. She makes mistakes. So her ghouls can make mistakes. They can be defeated.”

  “Well, you’re not Knute Rockne and this isn’t the big game,” Sears said. “I’m going home. To Ricky’s home, that is. Unless there are other ghosts you want us to hear.”

  Surprisingly, Peter answered him. “Mr. James, pardon me, but I think you’re wrong. This is the big game—it’s a stupid term and I know that’s why you used it, but getting rid of these horrible things is the most important thing we’ll ever do. And I’m glad we found out that they can make mistakes. I think it’s wrong to be sarcastic about it. You wouldn’t act like that if you ever saw them—if you ever saw them kill someone.”

  Don waited resignedly for Sears to crush the boy, but the lawyer merely drained his whiskey and leaned forward to speak quietly to Peter. “You forget. I have seen them. I knew Eva Galli, and I saw her sit up after she was dead. And I know the beast who killed your mother, and his pathetic little brother—the one who held you and made you watch—I knew him too. When he was merely a retarded schoolboy I tried to save him from Gregory, just as you must have tried to save your mother, and like you I failed. And like you I am morally offended to hear that creature’s voice, in any of her guises—I am morally outraged to hear that preening voice. It is unspeakable, that she taunts us in this way, after what she has done. I suppose I meant only that I would be more comfortable with some specific action.” He stood up. “I am an old man, and I am accustomed to expressing myself in whatever manner I please. Sometimes I fear I am rude.” Sears smiled at the boy. “That too might be morally offensive. But I hope that you live long enough to enjoy the pleasure of it.”

  If I ever need a lawyer, Don thought, you’re the one I want.

  It seemed to have worked for the boy as well. “I don’t know if I’d have your style,” Peter said, returning the old man’s smile.

  * * *

  And so, Don reflected after everyone had left, the voices on the tapes had failed: the tapes had drawn the four of them even closer together. Peter’s comment to Sears had been expressed in an adolescent fashion, but it had been a tribute all the same; and Sears had shown his enjoyment of it.

  Don went back to the tape recorder: Alma Mobley lay within it, trapped on a few spools of coated amber stuff.

  Frowning, he pushed the “play” button. Silky at first, sunny, her voice resumed.

  “—and Alan McKechnie and all the other stories I used to hide the truth from you. It’s true, I did want you to see: your intuition was better than anyone else’s. Even Florence de Peyser became curious about you. But what good would it have done? Like your ‘Rachel Varney,’ I have lived since the times when your continent was lighted only by small fires in the forest, since Americans dressed in hides and feathers, and even then our kinds have abhorred each other. Your kind is so bland and smug and confident on the surface: and so neurotic and fearful and campfire-hugging within. In truth, we abhor you because we find you boring. We could have poisoned your civilization ages ago, but voluntarily lived on its edges, causing eruptions and feuds and local panics. We chose to live in your dreams and imaginations because only there are you interesting.

  “Don, you make a grave mistake if you underestimate us. Could you defeat a cloud, a dream, a poem? You are at the mercy of your human imaginations, and when you look for us, you should always look in the places of your imagination. In the places of your dreams. But despite all this talk about imagination, we are implacably real, as real as bullets and knives—for aren’t they too tools of the imagination?—and if we want to frighten you it is to frighten you to death. For you are going to die, Donald. First your uncle, then the doctor, then Lewis. Then Sears, and after Sears, Ricky. And then you and whomever you have enlisted to help you. In fact, Donald, you are dead already. You are finished. And Milburn is finished with you.” Now the Louisiana accent had vanished; even femininity had gone from the voice. It was a voice with no human resonance at all. “I am going to shatter Milburn, Donald. My friends and I will tear the soul from this pathetic town and crush its bare bones between our teeth.”

  A hissing silence followed: Don yanked the tape from the machine and tossed it into a cardboard box. In twenty minutes he had all his uncle’s tapes in boxes. He carried the cartons into the living room and methodically fed all of the tapes into the wood fire, where they smoked and curled and stank and finally melted down to black bubbles on the burning logs. If Alma could see him, he knew, she’d be laughing.

  You’re dead already, Donald.

  “Like hell I am,” he said out loud. He remembered the haggard face of Eleanor Hardie, into which age had so suddenly burrowed; Alma had been laughing at him and the Chowder Society for decades, belittling their achievements and engineering their tragedies, hiding in the dark behind a false face, waiting for the moment to jump out and say boo.

  And Milburn is finished with you.

  “Not if we can get to you first,” he said into the fire. “Not if this time we shoot the lynx.”

  III

  The Last of the Chowder Society

  “Could you defeat a cloud, a dream, a poem?”

  —Alma Mobley

  * * *

  “And what is innocence?” Narcissus enquired of his friend.

  “It is to imagine that your life is a secret,” his friend replied. “Most particularly, to imagine it a secret between yourself and a mirror.”

  “I see,” Narcissus said. “It is the illness for which mirror-gazing is the cure.”

  1

  Near seven o’clock Ricky Hawthorne rolled over in bed and groaned. Feelings of panic, of emergency, filled him, making the darkness admonitory: he had to get out of bed, get moving, to avert some terrible tragedy. “Ricky?” Stella uttered beside him. “Fine, fine,” he answered, and sat up in bed. The window at the far end of the room showed dark gray shot through with lazily falling snow—flakes so big they looked like snowballs. Ricky’s heartbeat sounded: doom, doom. Someone was in terrible danger; in the instant before shooting into wakefulness, he’d seen an image and known—rendingly—who it was. Now all he knew was that it was impossible for him to stay in bed. He raised the covers and put one leg over the side.

  “Was it your nightmare again, baby?” Stella whispered hoarsely.

  “No. No, not that. I’ll be okay, Stella.” He patted her shoulder and left the bed. The urgency clung. Ricky slid his feet into his slippers, pulled a robe over his pajamas, and padded to the window.

  “Honey, you’re upset, come back to bed.”

  “I can’t.” He rubbed his face: still that wild feeling, trapped in his chest like a bird, that someone he knew was in mortal danger. Snow transformed Ricky’s back yard into a range of shifting and dimpled hills.

  It was the snow which reminded him: the snow blowing through a mirror in Eva Galli’s house, and a glimpse of Elmer Scales, his face distorted by an obligation to a commanding and cruel beauty, running raggedly through the drifts. Raising a shotgun: turning a small form into a spray of blood. Ricky’s stomach savagely bent in on itself, shooting pain down into his bowels. He pressed a hand into the soft flesh below his navel and groaned again. Elmer Scales’s farm. Where the last stage of the Chowder Society’s agony had begun.

 
“Ricky, what’s wrong?”

  “Something I saw in a mirror,” he said, straightening up now that the pain had dissolved, aware that his statement would be nonsense to Stella. “I mean, something about Elmer Scales. I have to get out to his farm.”

  “Ricky, it’s seven o’clock on Christmas morning.”

  “Makes no difference.”

  “You can’t. Call him up first.”

  “Yes,” he said, already on his way out of the bedroom, going past Stella’s white, startled face. “I’ll try that.”

  He was on the landing outside the bedroom, still with that wakening emergency sounding along his veins (doom, doom) and was torn for a second between rushing into the wardrobe closet and throwing on some clothes so he’d be ready to leave and running downstairs to the telephone.

  A noise from downstairs decided him. Ricky put his hand on the banister and descended.

  * * *

  Sears, fully dressed and with the fur-collared coat over his arm, was just coming out of the kitchen. The look of aggressive blandness which was Sears’s lifelong expression was gone: his old friend’s face was as taut as he knew his own to be.

  “You, too,” Sears said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I just woke up,” Ricky said. “I know what you’re feeling—I want to go with you.”

  “Don’t interfere,” Sears said. “All I’m going to do is get out there, have a look around and make sure everything’s all right. I feel like a cat on a griddle.”

  “Stella had a good idea. Let’s try to call him first. Then the two of us will go together.”

  Sears shook his head. “You’ll slow me down, Ricky. I’ll be safer alone.”