Poe's Children: The New Horror: An Anthology

by Peter Straub

  The ghost doesn’t say anything. “Well,” Louise says. “You think about it. Let me know.” She closes the drawer.

  Anna is in her green bed. The green light is on. Louise and the baby-sitter sit in the living room while Louise and Anna talk. “When I was a dog,” Anna says, “I ate roses and raw meat and borscht. I wore silk dresses.”

  “When you were a dog,” Louise hears Louise say, “you had big silky ears and four big feet and a long silky tail and you wore a collar made out of silk and a silk dress with a hole cut in it for your tail.”

  “A green dress,” Anna says. “I could see in the dark.”

  “Good night, my green girl,” Louise says, “good night, good night.”

  Louise comes into the living room. “Doesn’t Louise look beautiful,” she says, leaning against Louise’s chair and looking in the mirror. “The two of us. Louise and Louise and Louise and Louise. All four of us.”

  “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” the babysitter says, “who is the fairest Louise of all?” Patrick the babysitter doesn’t let Louise pay him. He takes symphony tickets instead. He plays classical guitar and composes music himself. Louise and Louise would like to hear his compositions, but he’s too shy to play for them. He brings his guitar sometimes, to play for Anna. He’s teaching her the simple chords.

  “How is your ghost?” Louise says. “Louise has a ghost,” she tells Patrick.

  “Smaller,” Louise says. “Hairier.” Louise doesn’t really like Patrick. He’s in love with Louise for one thing. It embarrasses Louise, the hopeless way he looks at Louise. He probably writes love songs for her. He’s friendly with Anna. As if that will get him anywhere.

  “You tried garlic?” Louise says. “Spitting? Holy water? The library?”

  “Yes,” Louise says, lying.

  “How about country music?” Patrick says. “Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams?”

  “Country music?” Louise says. “Is that like holy water?”

  “I read something about it,” Patrick says. “In New Scientist, or Guitar magazine, or maybe it was Martha Stewart Living. It was something about the pitch, the frequencies. Yodeling is supposed to be effective. Makes sense when you think about it.”

  “I was thinking about summer camp,” Louise says to Louise. “Remember how the counselors used to tell us ghost stories?”

  “Yeah,” Louise says. “They did that thing with the flashlight. You made me go to the bathroom with you in the middle of the night. You were afraid to go by yourself.”

  “I wasn’t afraid,” Louise says. “You were afraid.”

  At the symphony, Louise watches the cellists and Louise watches Louise. The cellists watch the conductor and every now and then they look past him, over at Louise. Louise can feel them staring at Louise. Music goes everywhere, like light and, like light, music loves Louise. Louise doesn’t know how she knows this—she can just feel the music, wrapping itself around Louise, insinuating itself into her beautiful ears, between her lips, collecting in her hair and in the little scoop between her legs. And what good does it do Louise, Louise thinks? The cellists might as well be playing jackhammers and spoons.

  Well, maybe that isn’t entirely true. Louise may be tone deaf, but she’s explained to Louise that it doesn’t mean she doesn’t like music. She feels it in her bones and back behind her jaw. It scratches itches. It’s like a crossword puzzle. Louise is trying to figure it out, and right next to her, Louise is trying to figure out Louise.

  The music stops and starts and stops again. Louise and Louise clap at the intermission and then the lights come up and Louise says, “I’ve been thinking a lot. About something. I want another baby.”

  “What do you mean?” Louise says, stunned. “You mean like Anna?”

  “I don’t know,” Louise says. “Just another one. You should have a baby, too. We could go to Lamaze classes together. You could name yours Louise after me and I could name mine Louise after you. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

  “Anna would be jealous,” Louise says.

  “I think it would make me happy,” Louise says. “I was so happy when Anna was a baby. Everything just tasted good, even the air. I even liked being pregnant.”

  Louise says, “Aren’t you happy now?”

  Louise says, “Of course I’m happy. But don’t you know what I mean? Being happy like that?”

  “Kind of,” Louise says. “Like when we were kids. You mean like Girl Scout camp.”

  “Yeah,” Louise says. “Like that. You would have to get rid of your ghost first. I don’t think ghosts are very hygienic. I could introduce you to a very nice man. A cellist. Maybe not the highest sperm count, but very nice.”

  “Which number is he?” Louise says.

  “I don’t want to prejudice you,” Louise says. “You haven’t met him. I’m not sure you should think of him as a number. I’ll point him out. Oh, and number eight, too. You have to meet my beautiful boy, number eight. We have to go out to lunch so I can tell you about him. He’s smitten. I’ve smited him.”

  Louise goes to the bathroom and Louise stays in her seat. She thinks of her ghost. Why can’t she have a ghost and a baby? Why is she always supposed to give up something? Why can’t other people share?

  Why does Louise want to have another baby anyway? What if this new baby hates Louise as much as Anna does? What if it used to be a dog? What if her own baby hates Louise?

  When the musicians are back on stage, Louise leans over and whispers to Louise, “There he is. The one with big hands, over on the right.”

  It isn’t clear to Louise which cellist Louise means. They all have big hands. And which cellist is she supposed to be looking for? The nice cellist she shouldn’t be thinking of as a number? Number eight? She takes a closer look. All of the cellists are handsome from where Louise is sitting. How fragile they look, she thinks, in their serious black clothes, letting the music run down their strings like that and pour through their open fingers. It’s careless of them. You have to hold on to things.

  There are six cellists on stage. Perhaps Louise has slept with all of them. Louise thinks, If I went to bed with them, with any of them, I would recognize the way they tasted, the things they liked, and the ways they liked them. I would know which number they were. But they wouldn’t know me.

  The ghost is bigger again. He’s prickly all over. He bristles with hair. The hair is reddish brown and sharp looking. Louise doesn’t think it would be a good idea to touch the ghost now. All night he moves back and forth in front of her bed, sliding on his belly like a snake. His fingers dig into the floorboards, and he pushes himself forward with his toes. His mouth stays open as if he’s eating air.

  Louise goes to the kitchen. She opens a can of beans, a can of pears, hearts of palm. She puts the different things on a plate and places the plate in front of the ghost. He moves around it. Maybe he’s like Anna—picky. Louise doesn’t know what he wants. Louise refuses to sleep in the living room again. It’s her bedroom after all. She lies awake and listens to the ghost press himself against her clean floor, moving backward and forward before the foot of the bed all night long.

  In the morning the ghost is in the closet, upside down against the wall. Enough, she thinks, and she goes to the mall and buys a stack of CDs. Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Lyle Lovett. She asks the clerk if he can recommend anything with yodeling on it, but he’s young and not very helpful.

  “Never mind,” she says. “I’ll just take these.”

  While he’s running her credit card, she says, “Wait. Have you ever seen a ghost?”

  “None of your business, lady,” he says. “But if I had, I’d make it show me where it buried its treasure. And then I’d dig up the treasure and I’d be rich and then I wouldn’t be selling you this stupid country shit. Unless the treasure had a curse on it.”

  “What if there wasn’t any treasure?” Louise says.

  “Then I’d stick the ghost in a bottle and sell it to a museum,” th
e kid says. “A real live ghost. That’s got to be worth something. I’d buy a hog and ride it to California. I’d go make my own music, and there wouldn’t be any fucking yodeling.”

  The ghost seems to like Patsy Cline. It isn’t that he says anything. But he doesn’t disappear. He comes out of the closet. He lies on the floor so that Louise has to walk around him. He’s thicker now, more solid. Maybe he was a Patsy Cline fan when he was alive. The hair stands up all over his body, and it moves gently, as if a breeze is blowing through it.

  They both like Johnny Cash. Louise is pleased—they have something in common now.

  “I’m onto Jackson,” Louise sings. “You big talken man.”

  The phone rings in the middle of the night. Louise sits straight up in bed. “What?” she says. “Did you say something?” Is she in a hotel room? She orients herself quickly. The ghost is under the bed again, one hand sticking out as if flagging down a bedroom taxi. Louise picks up the phone.

  “Number eight just told me the strangest thing,” Louise says. “Did you try the country music?”

  “Yes,” Louise says. “But it didn’t work. I think he liked it.”

  “That’s a relief,” Louise says. “What are you doing on Friday?”

  “Working,” Louise says. “And then I don’t know. I was going to rent a video or something. Want to come over and see the ghost?”

  “I’d like to bring over a few people,” Louise says. “After rehearsal. The cellists want to see the ghost, too. They want to play for it, actually. It’s kind of complicated. Maybe you could fix dinner. Spaghetti’s fine. Maybe some salad, some garlic bread. I’ll bring wine.”

  “How many cellists?” Louise says.

  “Eight,” Louise says. “And Patrick’s busy. I might have to bring Anna. It could be educational. Is the ghost still naked?”

  “Yes,” Louise says. “But it’s okay. He got furry. You can tell her he’s a dog. So what’s going to happen?”

  “That depends on the ghost,” Louise says. “If he likes the cellists, he might leave with one of them. You know, go into one of the cellos. Apparently it’s very good for the music. And it’s good for the ghost, too. Sort of like those little fish that live on the big fishes. Remoras. Number eight is explaining it to me. He said that haunted instruments aren’t just instruments. It’s like they have a soul. The musician doesn’t play the instrument anymore. He or she plays the ghost.”

  “I don’t know if he’d fit,” Louise says. “He’s largish. At least part of the time.”

  Louise says, “Apparently cellos are a lot bigger on the inside than they look on the outside. Besides, it’s not like you’re using him for anything.”

  “I guess not,” Louise says.

  “If word gets out, you’ll have musicians knocking on your door day and night, night and day,” Louise says. “Trying to steal him. Don’t tell anyone.”

  Gloria and Mary come to see Louise at work. They leave with a group in a week for Greece. They’re going to all the islands. They’ve been working with Louise to organize the hotels, the tours, the passports, and the buses. They’re fond of Louise. They tell her about their sons, show her pictures. They think she should get married and have a baby.

  Louise says, “Have either of you ever seen a ghost?”

  Gloria shakes her head. Mary says, “Oh honey, all the time when I was growing up. It runs in families sometimes, ghosts and stuff like that. Not as much now, of course. My eyesight isn’t so good now.”

  “What do you do with them?” Louise says.

  “Not much,” Mary says. “You can’t eat them and you can’t talk to most of them and they aren’t worth much.”

  “I played with a Ouija board once,” Gloria says. “With some other girls. We asked it who we would marry, and it told us some names. I forget. I don’t recall that it was accurate. Then we got scared. We asked it who we were talking to, and it spelled out Z-E-U-S. Then it was just a bunch of letters. Gibberish.”

  “What about music?” Louise says.

  “I like music,” Gloria says. “It makes me cry sometimes when I hear a pretty song. I saw Frank Sinatra sing once. He wasn’t so special.”

  “It will bother a ghost,” Mary says. “Some kinds of music will stir it up. Some kinds of music will lay a ghost. We used to catch ghosts in my brother’s fiddle. Like fishing, or catching fireflies in a jar. But my mother always said to leave them be.”

  “I have a ghost,” Louise confesses.

  “Would you ask it something?” Gloria says. “Ask it what it’s like being dead. I like to know about a place before I get there. I don’t mind going someplace new, but I like to know what it’s going to be like. I like to have some idea.”

  Louise asks the ghost, but he doesn’t say anything. Maybe he can’t remember what it was like to be alive. Maybe he’s forgotten the language. He just lies on the bedroom floor, flat on his back, legs open, looking up at her like she’s something special. Or maybe he’s thinking of England.

  Louise makes spaghetti. Louise is on the phone talking to caterers. “So you don’t think we have enough champagne,” she says. “I know it’s a gala, but I don’t want them falling over. Just happy. Happy signs checks. Falling over doesn’t do me any good. How much more do you think we need?”

  Anna sits on the kitchen floor and watches Louise cutting up tomatoes. “You’ll have to make me something green,” she says.

  “Why don’t you just eat your crayon,” Louise says. “Your mother isn’t going to have time to make you green food when she has another baby. You’ll have to eat plain food like everybody else, or else eat grass like cows do.”

  “I’ll make my own green food,” Anna says.

  “You’re going to have a little brother or a little sister,” Louise says. “You’ll have to behave. You’ll have to be responsible. You’ll have to share your room and your toys—not just the regular ones, the green ones, too.”

  “I’m not going to have a sister,” Anna says. “I’m going to have a dog.”

  “You know how it works, right?” Louise says, pushing the drippy tomatoes into the saucepan. “A man and a woman fall in love and they kiss and then the woman has a baby. First she gets fat and then she goes to the hospital. She comes home with a baby.”

  “You’re lying,” Anna says. “The man and the woman go to the pound. They pick out a dog. They bring the dog home and they feed it baby food. And then one day all the dog’s hair falls out and it’s pink. And it learns how to talk, and it has to wear clothes. And they give it a new name, not a dog name. They give it a baby name and it has to give the dog name back.”

  “Whatever,” Louise says. “I’m going to have a baby, too. And it will have the same name as your mother and the same name as me. Louise. Louise will be the name of your mother’s baby, too. The only person named Anna will be you.”

  “My dog name was Louise,” Anna says. “But you’re not allowed to call me that.”

  Louise comes in the kitchen. “So much for the caterers,” she says. “So where is it?”

  “Where’s what?” Louise says.

  “The you know what,” Louise says, “you know.”

  “I haven’t seen it today,” Louise says. “Maybe this won’t work. Maybe it would rather live here.” All day long she’s had the radio turned on, tuned to the country station. Maybe the ghost will take the hint and hide out somewhere until everyone leaves.

  The cellists arrive. Seven men and a woman. Louise doesn’t bother to remember their names. The woman is tall and thin. She has long arms and a long nose. She eats three plates of spaghetti. The cellists talk to each other. They don’t talk about the ghost. They talk about music. They complain about acoustics. They tell Louise that her spaghetti is delicious. Louise just smiles. She stares at the woman cellist, sees Louise watching her. Louise shrugs, nods. She holds up five fingers.

  Louise and the cellists seem comfortable. They tease each other. They tell stories. Do they know? Do they talk about Louise? Do the
y brag? Compare notes? How could they know Louise better than Louise knows her? Suddenly Louise feels as if this isn’t her house after all. It belongs to Louise and the cellists. It’s their ghost, not hers. They live here. After dinner they’ll stay and she’ll leave.

  Number five is the one who likes foreign films, Louise remembers. The one with the goldfish. Louise said number five had a great sense of humor.

  Louise gets up and goes to the kitchen to get more wine, leaving Louise alone with the cellists. The one sitting next to Louise says, “You have the prettiest eyes. Have I seen you in the audience sometimes?”

  “It’s possible,” Louise says.

  “Louise talks about you all the time,” the cellist says. He’s young, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. Louise wonders if he’s the one with the big hands. He has pretty eyes, too. She tells him that.

  “Louise doesn’t know everything about me,” she says, flirting.

  Anna is hiding under the table. She growls and pretends to bite the cellists. The cellists know Anna. They’re used to her. They probably think she’s cute. They pass her bits of broccoli, lettuce.

  The living room is full of cellos in black cases the cellists brought in, like sarcophaguses on little wheels. Sarcophabuses. Dead baby carriages. After dinner the cellists take their chairs into the living room. They take out their cellos and tune them. Anna insinuates herself between cellos, hanging on the backs of chairs. The house is full of sound.

  Louise and Louise sit on chairs in the hall and look in. They can’t talk. It’s too loud. Louise reaches into her purse, pulls out a packet of earplugs. She gives two to Anna, two to Louise, keeps two for herself. Louise puts her earplugs in. Now the cellists sound as if they are underground, down in some underground lake, or in a cave. Louise fidgets.