Ghost Story

by Peter Straub

  Ricky could not see his knife, and went on his knees to scrabble for it. His fingers closed around a bone handle, and a long blade reflected a line of gray light. Fenny thrashed beside him, rolling over onto his hand, and uttered a thin eee, dead air rushing out. Ricky snatched the knife from under Fenny’s back, feeling his hand come away wet, and made himself stand.

  Gregory Bate was just scrambling up onto the stage to leap through the rip in the screen after Peter, and Ricky threw out his free hand and grasped the thick collar of his pea jacket. Bate suddenly went rigid, his reflexes as good as a cat’s, and Ricky knew in terror that he would kill him, spinning around with pulverizing hands and slashing teeth, if he did not do the only possible thing.

  Before Bate could move, Ricky slammed the Bowie knife into his back.

  Now he could hear nothing, not the noises on the soundtrack, not the cry that must have come from Bate: he stood still gripping the bone handle, deafened by the enormity of what he had done. Bate fell back down and turned around and showed Ricky Hawthorne a face to carry with him all his life: eyes full of tearing wind and blizzard and a black mouth open as wide as a cavern.

  “Filth,” Ricky said, almost sobbing.

  Bate fell toward him.

  * * *

  Don climbed over the seats carrying the axe, in a desperate hurry to get to Bate before he could tear open Ricky’s throat; then he saw the muscular body slump and Ricky, gasping, pushing him off. Bate fell back into the front of the stage and went to his knees. Fluid dribbled from his mouth.

  “Get away, Ricky,” Don said, but the old lawyer was unable to move. Bate began to crawl toward him.

  He stepped beside Ricky and Bate tilted back his head and looked straight into his eyes.

  —live forever

  Don hurriedly raised the axe over his head and brought the sharpened blade down into Bate’s neck, cutting down deeply into the chest. With the next blow he severed the head.

  * * *

  Peter Barnes crawled back out through the screen, dazzled by pain and the beam from the projector. He made himself move across the few feet of bare wood to the edge of the stage, hearing a wild shrieking of voices, thinking that if he could get to the Bowie knife before Gregory Bate saw him, he might at least be able to save Don. Ricky had been killed by the first blow, he knew: he had seen its force. Then the beam of light slipped over his head and he saw what Don was doing. Gregory Bate, headless, squirmed under the blows of the axe; beside him Fenny rolled helplessly back and forth, covered in moving white pulp.

  “Let me,” he said, and both Ricky and Don stared up at him with white faces.

  When Peter was down on the floor of the theater beside them, he took the axe from Don and brought it weakly, glancingly down, his hysteria and loathing spoiling the blow; then he felt suddenly stronger, as strong as a logger, felt as if he were glowing, filled with light, and raised it effortlessly, all the pain leaving him, and brought the axe down again; and again; and again; and then moved to Fenny.

  When they were only shreds of skin and smashed bones a zero breeze lifted off their ruined bodies and swirled up into the beam from the projector, passing Peter with such force that it knocked him aside.

  Peter bent down into the mess and picked up the Bowie knife.

  “By God,” Ricky said, and tottered into one of the seats.

  When they left the theater, limping, their minds numb, they felt an impatient, hurrying wind even in the lobby—a wind that seemed to swirl through the empty space, rattling posters and the bag of potato chips on the candy counter, searching the way out—and when they broke open the doors, it streamed over them to join the worst blizzard of the season.

  15

  Don and Peter half carried Ricky Hawthorne home through the storm; and now there were two convalescents in the Hawthorne home. Peter explained it to his father like this: “I’m staying with Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne, dad—I’m stuck at their house. Don Wanderley and I had to practically bring Mr. Hawthorne home on a stretcher. He’s in bed and so is she, because she feels bad after a little accident in her car—”

  “There’ll be a lot of accidents on the roads this afternoon,” his father said.

  “And we finally got a doctor to come give her a sedative, and Mr. Hawthorne has a terrible cold the doctor said could turn into pneumonia if he doesn’t rest, so Don Wanderley and I are taking care of them both.”

  “Let me get this straight, Pete. You were with this Wanderley and Mr. Hawthorne?”

  “That’s right,” Peter said.

  “Well, I wish you’d thought of calling before this. I was worried half to death. You’re all I have, you know.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “Well, at least you’re with good people. Try to get home when you can, but don’t take any chances in the storm.”

  “Okay, Dad,” Peter said and hung up, grateful that his father had sounded sober, and even more grateful that he had asked no more questions.

  He and Don made soup for Ricky, and brought it up to the guest-room where the old man was resting while his wife slept undisturbed in their bedroom.

  “Don’t know what happened to me,” Ricky said. “I just couldn’t move another step. If I’d been alone, I would have frozen to death out there.”

  “If any of us had been alone,” Don said, and did not have to finish the sentence.

  “Or if there had been only two of us,” Peter said. “We’d be dead. He could have killed us easily.”

  “Yes, well he didn’t,” Ricky said briskly. “Don was right about them. And now two-thirds of what we have to do is accomplished.”

  “You mean we have to find her,” Peter said. “Do you think we can do it?”

  “We’ll do it,” Don said. “Stella might be able to tell us something. She might have learned something—heard something. I don’t think there’s any doubt that the man in the blue car was the same man who was after you. We should be able to talk to her tonight.”

  “Will it do any good?” Peter asked. “We’re snowed in again. We’ll never be able to drive anywhere, even if Mrs. Hawthorne does know something.”

  “Then we’ll walk,” Don said.

  “Yes,” Ricky said. “If that’s what it takes, we’ll walk.” And lay back against the pillows. “You know, we’re the Chowder Society now. The three of us. After Sears was found dead I thought—I said I was the only one left. I felt terribly bereft. Sears was my best friend; he was like my brother. And I’ll miss him as long as I live. But I know that when Gregory Bate cornered Sears, Sears put up a hell of a good scrap. He did his best to save Fenny once a long time ago, and I know he did his best against them when his time came. No, there’s no need to feel bad about Sears—he probably did better than any of us could have done alone.”

  Ricky put his empty soup bowl down on the bedside table. “But now there’s a new Chowder Society, and here we all are. And there’s no whiskey and no cigars, and we’re not dressed right—and good heavens, look at me! I’m not even wearing a bow tie.” He plucked at the open collar of his pajama shirt and smiled at them. “And I’ll tell you one other thing. No more awful stories and no nightmares either. Thank God.”

  “I’m not so sure about the nightmares,” Peter said.

  * * *

  After Peter Barnes went off to his own room to lie down for an hour, Ricky sat up in bed and looked candidly at Don Wanderley through his glasses. “Don, when you first came here you saw that I didn’t like you very much. I didn’t like you being here, and until I saw that you were like your uncle in certain ways, I didn’t much take to you personally. But I don’t have to tell you that’s all changed, do I? Good Lord, I’m chattering away like a magpie! What was in that shot the doctor gave me, anyhow?”

  “A huge dose of vitamins.”

  “Well, I feel much better. All revved up. I still have that terrific cold, of cou
rse, but I’ve had that so long that it feels like a friend. But listen here, Don. After what we’ve been through, I couldn’t feel closer to you. If Sears felt like my brother, you feel like my son. Closer than my son, in fact. My boy Robert can’t talk to me—I can’t talk to him. That’s been true since he was about fourteen. So I think I’m going to adopt you spiritually, if you don’t object.”

  “It makes me too proud of myself to object,” Don said, and took Ricky’s hand.

  “You sure there were just vitamins in that shot?”

  “Well.”

  “If this is how dope makes you feel, I can understand how John became an addict.” He lay back and closed his eyes. “When all this is over, assuming we’re still alive, let’s stay in touch. I’ll take Stella on a trip to Europe. I’ll send you a barrage of postcards.”

  “Of course,” Don said, and started to say something, but Ricky was already asleep.

  * * *

  Shortly after ten o’clock, Peter and Don, who had eaten downstairs, brought a grilled steak, a salad and a bottle of burgundy up to Ricky’s room. Another plate on the tray held a second steak for Stella. Don knocked on the door, heard Ricky say “Come in,” and entered, carrying the heavy tray.

  Stella Hawthorne, her hair in a scarf, looked up at Don from beside her husband on the guest-room bed. “I woke up an hour or so ago,” she said, “and I got lonely, so I came down here to Ricky. Is that food? Oh, you’re lovely, both of you.” She smiled at Peter, who was standing shyly in the door.

  “While the two of you were eating us out of house and home I had a little talk with Stella,” Ricky said. He took the tray and put it on Stella’s lap, and then removed one of the plates. “What luxury this is! Stella, we should have had maids years ago.”

  “I think I mentioned that once,” Stella said. Though still obviously shaken and exhausted by shock, Stella had improved enormously during the evening; she did not look like a woman in her forties now, and perhaps she never would again, but her eyes were clear.

  Ricky poured wine for himself and Stella and cut off a piece of steak. “There’s no doubt that the man who picked up Stella was the same one who followed you, Peter. He even told Stella that he was a Jehovah’s Witness.”

  “But he was dead,” Stella said, and for a moment the shock swept wholly back into her face. She snatched at Ricky’s hand and held it. “He was.”

  “I know,” Ricky said, and turned to the other two again. “But after she came back with help, the body was gone.”

  “Will you please tell me what is going on?” Stella said, now almost in tears.

  “I will,” said Ricky, “but not now. We’re not finished yet. I’ll explain everything to you this summer. When we get out of Milburn.”

  “Out of Milburn?”

  “I’m going to take you to France. We’ll go to Antibes and St. Tropez and Arles and anywhere else that looks good. We’ll be a pair of funny-looking old tourists together. But first you have to help us. Is that all right with you?”

  Stella’s practicality saw her through. “It is if you’re really promising, and not just bribing me.”

  “Did you see anything else around the car when you came back with Leon Churchill?” Don asked.

  “No one else was there,” Stella replied, calmer again.

  “I don’t mean another person. Any animals?”

  “I don’t remember. I felt so—sort of unreal. No, nothing.”

  “You’re sure? Try to remember how it looked. The car, the open door, the snowbank you hit—”

  “Oh,” she said, and Ricky paused with the fork halfway to his mouth. “You’re right. I saw a dog. Why is that important? It jumped on top of the snowbank from someone’s yard, and then jumped down onto the street. I noticed it because it was so beautiful. White.”

  “That’s it,” Don said.

  Peter Barnes looked back and forth from Don to Ricky, his mouth open.

  “Wouldn’t you like some wine, Peter? And you, Don?” Ricky asked.

  Don shook his head, but Peter said, “Sure,” and Ricky passed him his glass.

  “Can you remember anything the man said?”

  “It was all so horrible . . . I thought he was crazy. And then I thought he knew me because he called me by name, and he said I shouldn’t go to Montgomery Street because you weren’t there anymore—where were you?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it over a Pernod. This spring.”

  “Anything else you remember?” Don asked. “Did he say where he was taking you?”

  “To a friend,” Stella said, and shuddered. “He said I’d see a mystery. And he talked about Lewis.”

  “Nothing more about where his friend was?”

  “No. Wait. No.” She looked down at her plate, and pushed the tray down toward the foot of the bed. “Poor Lewis. That’s enough questions. Please.”

  “You’d better leave us,” Ricky said.

  Peter and Don were at the door when Stella said,” I remember. He said he was taking me to the Hollow. I’m sure he said that.”

  “That’s enough for now,” Ricky said. “See you in the morning, gentlemen.”

  * * *

  And in the morning, Peter and Don were startled to find Ricky Hawthorne already in the kitchen when they came down. He was scrambling eggs, pausing now and then to blow his nose into Kleenex from a convenient box. “Good morning. Do you want to help me think about the Hollow?”

  “You ought to be in bed,” Don said.

  “Like the dickens I ought to be in bed! Can’t you smell how close we’re getting?”

  “I can only smell eggs,” Don said. “Peter, get some plates out of the cupboard.”

  “How many houses are there in the Hollow? Fifty? Sixty? No more than that. And she’s in one of them.”

  “In there waiting for us,” Don said, and Peter, putting plates on the Hawthorne’s kitchen table, paused and set the final plate down more slowly. “And we must have had two feet of snow last night. It’s still snowing. You wouldn’t call it a blizzard anymore, but we could easily have another blizzard by this afternoon. There’s a snow emergency over most of the state. Do you want to hike over to the Hollow and knock on fifty or sixty doors?”

  “No, I want us to think,” Ricky said, and carried the pan of eggs to the table and spooned a portion onto each plate. “Let’s get some bread in the toaster.”

  When everything was ready, toast and orange juice and coffee, the three of them ate breakfast, following Ricky’s lead. He seemed vibrant, sitting at the table in his blue dressing gown; almost elated. And he had obviously been thinking a great deal about the Hollow and Anna Mostyn.

  “It’s the one part of town we don’t know well,” Ricky said. “And that’s why she’s there. She doesn’t want us to find her yet. Presumably she knows that her creatures are dead. For the moment, her plans have been delayed. She’ll want reinforcements, either more like the Bates or more like herself. Stella got rid of the only other one around with a hatpin.”

  “How do you know he was the only other one?” Peter asked.

  “Because I think we would have encountered any others, if they were here.”

  They ate in silence for a moment.

  “So I think she’s just holed up—in a vacant building, most likely—until more of them arrive. She won’t be expecting us. She’ll think we won’t be able to move, in this snow.”

  “And she’ll be vengeful,” Don said.

  “She might also be afraid.”

  Peter snapped his head up. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I helped kill her once before. And I’ll tell you something else. If we don’t find her soon, everything we have done will be wasted. Stella and the three of us bought time for the whole town, but as soon as outside traffic gets in . . .” Ricky bit into a piece of toast. “Things will be even worse t
han before. She won’t just be vengeful, she’ll be rabid. Twice we’ve blocked her. So we’d better lay out everything we can come up with about the Hollow. And we’d better do it now.”

  “Wasn’t it originally the place where the servants lived?” Peter asked. “Back when everybody had servants?”

  “Yes,” Ricky said, “but there has to be more. I’m thinking of what she said on Don’s tape. ‘In the places of your dreams.’ We found one of those places, but I’m thinking that there must be another one, someplace where we could have been lured if we hadn’t found Gregory and Fenny at the Rialto. But I just can’t think . . .”

  “Do you know anybody who lives there?” Don asked.

  “Of course I do. I’ve lived here all my life. But I can’t for the life of me see the connection . . .”

  “What did the Hollow used to be like?” Peter asked. “In the old days.”

  “In the old days? Back when I was a boy, you mean? Oh, much different—much nicer. It was a lot cleaner than it is now. A bit raffish. We used to think of it as the Bohemian section of town. There was a painter who lived in Milburn then—did magazine covers. He lived there, and he had a splendid white beard and wore a cape—he looked just the way we thought painters should look. Oh, we used to spend a lot of time down there. Used to be a bar with a jazz band. Lewis liked to go there—had a little dancehall. Like Humphrey’s place, but smaller and nicer.”

  “A band?” Peter asked, and Don too lifted his head.

  “Oh, yes,” Ricky said, not noticing their excitement. “Only a little six-eight piece band, pretty good for anything you’d hear out here in the sticks . . .” He picked up the plates and took them to the sink; ran hot water over them. “Oh, Milburn was lovely in those days. We all used to walk for miles—down to the Hollow and back, hear some music, have a beer or two, take a hike out into the country . . .” His arms deep in soapy water, Ricky abruptly ceased all movement. “Good Lord. I know. I know.” Still holding a soapy plate, he turned toward them. “It was Edward. It was Edward, you see. We used to go down to see Edward in the Hollow. That was where he moved when he wanted his own apartment. I was in YPSL, my father hated that—” Ricky dropped the plate, and stepped unseeing over the shattered pieces—“and the owner was one of our first black clients. The building’s still there! The town council condemned it last spring, and it’s supposed to be demolished next year. We got Edward that apartment—Sears and I.” He wiped his hands on his dressing gown. “That’s it. I know that’s it. Edward’s apartment. The place of your dreams.”