Ghost Story

by Peter Straub

  “Because Edward’s apartment . . .” Don began, knowing that the old man was right.

  “Was where Eva Galli died and our dreams began,” Ricky said. “By God, we’ve got her.”

  16

  They dressed in all the warm clothing Ricky had, putting on several layers of underclothes and two shirts—Ricky’s shirts couldn’t be buttoned over the other two, but they meant two more layers of trapped air—and then sweaters. Two pairs of socks; even Don managed to slide his feet into an old pair of Ricky’s lace-up boots. For once, Ricky had a reason to be grateful for his attachment to his clothes. “We have to live long enough to get there,” he said, sorting through a box of old wool scarves. “We’ll wrap some of these around our faces. It must be about three-fourths of a mile from here to the Hollow. Good thing this is a small town. When we were all in our twenties, we used to walk from this part of town down to Edward’s apartment and back two or three times in one day.”

  “So you’re sure you can find the place?” Peter asked.

  “I’m reasonably sure,” Ricky said. “Now, let’s have a look at ourselves.” They looked like three snowmen, padded out with so many layers of clothing. “Ah, hats. Well, I have a lot of hats.” He fitted a high fur hat over Peter’s head, put a red hunting cap that must have been half a century old on his own head, and told Don, “This one was always a little big on me.” It was a soft green tweed, and it fitted Don perfectly. “Got it to go fishing with John Jaffrey. Wore it once. Hated fishing.” He sneezed and wiped his nose with a peach tissue from his coat pocket. “In those days, I always preferred hunting.”

  * * *

  At first Ricky’s clothing kept them warm, and as they went through lightly falling snow in a hard bright light, they walked past a few men attacking their driveways with shovels and snow blowers. Children in bright snowsuits played on the drifts, active blots of color in the dazzle of light from the snow. It was five degrees above zero, and the cold attacked the exposed sections of their faces, but they might have been three normal men out on a conventional errand—hunting strayed children or an open store.

  But even before the weather changed, walking was difficult for them. Their feet began to feel the cold first, and their legs tired from the effort of wading through the deep snow. They soon gave up the luxury of speech—it took too much energy. Their breath condensed on the heavy wool scarves, and the moisture turned cold and froze. Don knew that the temperature was dropping faster than he’d ever seen it: the snow came down harder, his fingers tingled in the gloves, even his legs began to feel the cold.

  And sometimes, when they turned a corner and looked down a street hidden by a long wide drift peaked up fifteen feet high, he thought the three of them resembled photographs of polar explorers—doomed driven men with blackened lips and frozen skin, small figures in a rippling white landscape.

  Halfway to the Hollow, Don was sure that the temperature had reached several degrees below zero. His scarf had become a stiff mask over his face, varnished by his breath. Cold bit at his hands and feet. He and Peter and Ricky were just straggling past the square; lifting their feet out of deep snow and leaning forward to get distance on the next step. The tree the mayor and the deputies had set up in the square was visible only as scattered green branches protruding through a mountain of white. Clearing Main Street and Wheat Row, Omar Norris had buried it.

  By the time they reached the traffic lights, the brightness had left the air and the piled snow no longer sparkled: it seemed as gray as the air. Don looked up and saw thousands of flakes swirling between dense clouds. They were alone. Down Main Street, the tops of a few cars sat like inverted saucers on the drifts. All the buildings were closed. New snow spun around them: the air was darkening to black.

  “Ricky?” he asked. He tasted frozen wool: his cheekbones, open to the air, burned.

  “Not far,” Ricky gasped. “Keep on going. I’ll make it.”

  “How are you doing, Peter?”

  The boy peered out at Don from under the snow-crusted fur cap. “You heard the boss. Keep on going.”

  * * *

  The new snow at first fell harmlessly, no more an obstacle than the candy-floss snowfall at the start of their trip; but by the time they had gone three blocks more in a building wind, Don’s feet now like two blocks of ice painfully welded to his ankles, the new snow was unequivocally a storm: not falling vertically or spinning prettily, but sleeting down diagonally, at intervals coming in waves like a surf. It stung where it hit. Whenever they reached the end of one of the high-curled drifts snow came straight at them, following the currents of the wind, blasting into their chests and faces.

  Ricky fell down backward, and sat up chest high in the snow like a doll. Peter bent down to offer him an arm. Don turned around to see if he could help, and felt the snow-laden wind pound against his back. He called, “Ricky?”

  “Just have to. Sit. For a little.”

  He breathed deeply, and Don know how the cold would be scraping against his throat, how it would chill his lungs.

  “No more than two-three blocks,” Ricky said. “God my feet.”

  “I just had a hell of a thought. What if she’s not there?”

  “She’s there,” Ricky said, and took Peter’s hand and pulled himself up. “It’s there. Few more blocks.”

  When Don turned back into the storm he could not see for a moment; then he saw thousands of fast-moving particles of white veering toward him, so close together they were like lines of force. Vast semitransparent sheets cut him off from Ricky and Peter. Only partially visible beside him, Ricky motioned him on.

  Don was never sure when they crossed into the Hollow: in the storm, it was no different from the rest of Milburn. Perhaps the buildings seemed marginally shabbier: perhaps fewer lights shone dimly in the depths of rooms, seeming thousands of feet away. Once he had written in his journal that the area had a “sepia ’30’s prettiness”: that seemed unutterably remote now. All was dark gray dirty brick and taped windows. But for the few dim lights flickering behind curtains, it seemed ominous and deserted. Don remembered other facile words he had written in his journal: if trouble ever comes to Milburn, it won’t start in the Hollow. Trouble had come to Milburn, and here in the Hollow, on a sunny day in mid-October fifty years before, it had started.

  The three of them stood in the weak light of a street lamp, Ricky Hawthorne tottering, squinting across the street at three identical high brick buildings. Even in the noises of the storm Don could hear him breathing. “Over there,” Ricky said harshly.

  “Which one?”

  “Can’t tell,” Ricky said, and shook his head, causing a shower of snow to whirl off the red hunting cap. “Just can’t.” He peered up into the storm: pointed his face like a dog. The building on the right. Then back to the building in the middle. He raised the hand which held his knife and used it to point at the windows on the third floor. They were curtainless, and one was half-open. “There. Edward’s apartment. Just there.”

  The street lamp over them died, and light faded all about them.

  Don stared at the windows high up on the desolate building, half expecting to see a face appear there, beckoning toward them; fear worse than the storm froze him.

  “Finally happened,” Ricky said. “Storm blew down the power lines. You afraid of the dark?”

  The three of them floundered across the drifted street.

  17

  Don pushed open the building’s front door, and the other two followed him into the vestibule. They pulled their scarves away from their faces, their breath steaming in the small cold space. Peter brushed snow from his fur hat and the front of his coat; none of them spoke. Ricky leaned against the wall, looking almost too weak to climb the stairs. A dead light bulb hung over their heads.

  “Coats,” Don whispered, thinking that the sodden garments would slow them down; he lay the axe down in the dark, unbut
toned his coat and dropped it on the floor. Then the scarf, stinking of wet wool; his chest and arms were still constricted by the tight sweaters, but at least the heaviest weight no longer pulled at his shoulders. Peter too removed his coat, and helped Ricky with his.

  Don saw their white faces hovering before him, and wondered if this was the last act—they had the weapons which had destroyed the Bate brothers, but the three of them were limp as rags. Ricky Hawthorne’s eyes were closed: thrown back, its muscles lax, his face was a death mask.

  “Ricky?” Don whispered.

  “A minute.” Ricky’s hand trembled as he raised it to blow on his fingers. He inhaled, held the air for a long moment, exhaled. “Okay. You’d better go first. I’ll bring up the rear.”

  Don bent down and picked up the axe. Behind him Peter wiped the blade of the Bowie knife against his sleeve. Don found the bottom step with his numb toe and climbed onto it. He glanced back. Ricky stood behind Peter, propping himself against the staircase wall. His eyes were closed again.

  “Mr. Hawthorne, do you want to stay down here?” Peter whispered.

  “Not on your life.”

  With the other two following him, Don crept up the first flight of steps. Once, three well-off young men just beginning their practices in law and medicine and a preacher’s son of seventeen had gone up and down these stairs: each of them close to twenty in the century’s twenties. And up these stairs had come the woman with whom they were infatuated, as he had been infatuated with Alma Mobley. He reached the second landing, and peeked around the corner to the top of the last flight of stairs. With part of his mind, he wished to see an open door, an empty room, snow blowing unnoticed into an empty apartment . . .

  What he saw instead made him pull back. Peter looked over his shoulder and nodded; and finally Ricky appeared on the landing to look up at the door at the top of the stairs.

  A phosphorescent light spilled out from beneath the door, illuminating the landing and the walls a soft green.

  Silently, they came up the final set of stairs into the phosphorescent light.

  “On three,” Don whispered, and cradled his axe just below the head. Peter and Ricky nodded.

  “One. Two.” Don gripped the top of the banister with his free hand. “Three.”

  They hit the door together, and it broke open under their weight.

  Each of them heard a single distinct word; but the voice delivering it was different for each of them. The word was Hello.

  18

  Don Wanderley, caught in a huge dislocation, spun around at the sound of his brother’s voice. Warm light fell around him, traffic noises attacked him. His hands and feet were so cold they might have been frostbitten, but it was summer. Summer: New York. He recognized the corner almost immediately.

  It was in the East Fifties, and it was so familiar to him because quite near—somewhere very near—was a cafe with outdoor tables where he had met David for lunch whenever he was in New York.

  This was not a hallucination—not a mere hallucination. He was in New York, and it was summer. Don felt a weight in his left hand, and looking down, saw that he was carrying an axe. An axe? Now what . . . ? He dropped the axe as if it had jumped in his hand. His brother called, “Don! Over here!”

  Yes, he had been carrying an axe . . . they had seen green light . . . he had been turning, moving fast . . .

  “Don!”

  He looked across the street and saw David, looking healthy and extremely prosperous, standing up at one of the outdoor tables, grinning at him and waving. David in a crisp lightweight blue suit, aviator glasses smoked over his eyes, their bows disappearing into David’s sun-blond hair. “Wake up!” his brother called over the traffic.

  Don rubbed his face with his freezing hands. It was important not to appear confused in front of David—David had asked him to lunch. David had something to tell him.

  New York?

  But yes, it was New York, and there was David, looking at him amusedly, happy to see him, full of something to say. Don looked down at the sidewalk. The axe was gone. He ran between the cars and embraced his brother and smelled cigars, good shampoo, Aramis cologne. He was here and David was alive.

  “How do you feel?” David asked.

  “I’m not here and you’re dead,” came out of his mouth.

  David looked embarrassed, then disguised it behind another smile. “You’d better sit down, little brother. You’re not supposed to be talking like that anymore.” David held his elbow and led him to a chair beneath one of the sun umbrellas. A martini on the rocks chilled a sweating glass.

  “I’m not supposed . . .” Don began. He sat heavily in the chair; Manhattan traffic went down the pleasant East Fifties street; on the other side, over the top of the traffic, he read the name of a French restaurant painted in gold on dark glass. Even his cold feet could tell that the pavement was hot.

  “You bet you’re not,” David said. “I ordered a steak for you, all right? I didn’t think you’d want anything too rich.” He looked sympathetically across the table at Don. The modish glasses hid his eyes, but David’s whole handsome face exuded warmth. “Is that suit okay, by the way? I found it in your closet. Now that you’re out of the hospital, you’ll have to shop for some new clothes. Use my account at Brooks, will you?” Don looked down at what he wore. A tan summer suit, a brown-and-green-striped tie, brown loafers. It all looked a little out of date and shabby beside David’s elegance.

  “Now look at me and tell me I’m dead,” David said.

  “You’re not dead.”

  David sighed happily. “Okay. Good. You had me worried there, pal. Now—do you remember anything about what happened?”

  “No. Hospital?”

  “You had about the worst breakdown anyone’s ever seen, brother. It was the next thing to a one-way ticket. Happened right after you finished that book.”

  “The Nightwatcher?”

  “What else? You just blanked out—and when you’d say anything, it was just crazy stuff about me being dead and Alma being something awful and mysterious. You were in outer space. If you don’t remember any of this, it’s because of the shock treatments. Now we have to get you settled again. I talked to Professor Lieberman, and he says he’ll give you another appointment in the fall—he really liked you, Don.”

  “Lieberman? No, he said I was . . .”

  “That was before he knew how sick you were. Anyhow, I got you out of Mexico and put you in a private hospital in Riverdale. Paid all the bills until you got straightened out. The steak’ll be here in a minute. Better get that martini down. The house red isn’t bad here.”

  Don obediently sipped at his drink: that familiar cold potent taste. “Why am I so cold?” he asked David. “I’m frozen.”

  “Aftereffect of the drug therapy.” David patted his hand. “They told me you’d feel like that for a day or two, cold, not too sure of yourself yet—it’ll go away. I promise you.”

  A waitress came with their food. Don let her take away his martini glass.

  “You had all these disturbed ideas,” his brother was saying. “Now that you’re well again, they’ll shock you. You thought my wife was some kind of monster who had killed me in Amsterdam—you were convinced of it. The doctor said you couldn’t face the fact that you’d lost her: that’s why you never came out here to talk about it. You wound up thinking that what you wrote in your novel was real. After you mailed the book off to your agent, you just sat in a hotel room, not eating, not washing—you didn’t even get up to shit. I had to go all the way down to Mexico City to bring you back.”

  “What was I doing an hour ago?” Don asked.

  “You were getting a sedative shot. Then they put you in a cab and sent you down here. I thought you’d like to see the place again. Something familiar.”

  “I’ve been in a hospital for a year?”

  “Near
ly two years. For the past few months, you’ve been making great progress.”

  “Why can’t I remember it?”

  “Simple. Because you don’t want to. As far as you’re concerned, you were born five minutes ago. But it’ll all come back slowly. You can recuperate in our place on the Island—lots of sun, sand, a few women. Like the sound of that?”

  Don blinked and looked around. His entire body felt unreasonably cold. A tall woman was just now coming down the block toward them, pulled along by an enormous sheepdog on a leash—the woman was slender and tanned, she wore sunglasses pushed up into her hair, and for a moment she was the emblem of what was real: the epitome of all not hallucinated or imagined, of sanity. She was no one important, she was a stranger, but if what David was telling him was the truth, she meant health.

  “You’ll see plenty of women,” David said, almost laughing. “Don’t burn out your eyes on the first one who crosses your path.”

  “You’re married to Alma now,” Don said.

  “Of course. She’s dying to see you. And you know,” David said, still smiling, holding a fork with a neatly speared section of meat, “she’s kind of flattered about that book of yours. She feels she contributed to literature! But I want to tell you something,” and David hitched his chair closer. “Think about the consequences of it, if what you said in that book was true. If creatures like that really existed—and you thought they did, you know.”