Ghost Story

Come down and play in the dark, Sears.

Sears took a step further down and saw his gigantic shadow advance along the concrete floor. Come on, Sears.

He did not hear the words spoken in his mind, he saw no images or pictures: but he had been commanded, and he followed his bloated shadow down onto the concrete floor.

Come and see the toys I left for you.

He reached the concrete floor and experienced a sick thrill of pleasure that was not his own.

Sears spun around, afraid that something was coming for him from under the wooden staircase. Light banded the concrete in stripes, streaming between the wood: nothing was there. He would have to leave the protection of the light and look into the corners of the cellar.

He moved forward, wishing wholeheartedly that he too had brought a knife, and his shadow melted away into dark. Then all doubt left him. 'Oh, my God,' he said.

John Jaffrey was stepping out into the shadowy light beside the furnace. 'Sears, old friend,' he said. His voice was toneless. 'Thank heavens you're here. They told me you would be, but I didn't know-I mean I-' He shook his head. 'It's all been so confused.'

'Stay away from me,' Sears said.

'I saw Milly,' John said. 'And do you know, Milly just won't let me in the house. But I warned her. I mean, I told her to warn you-and the others. About something. Can't remember now.' He lifted his sunken face and twisted his mouth into a ghastly smile. 'I went over. Isn't that what Fenny said to you? In your story? That's right. I went over, and now Milly won't-won't open-ah-' He raised his hand to his forehead. 'Oh, it's just awful, Sears. Can't you help me?'

Sears was backing away from him, unable to speak.

'Please. Funny. Here in this place again. They made me come here-wait for you. Please help me, Sears. Thank heavens you're here.'

Jaffrey lurched into the light, and Sears saw fine gray dust covering his face and outstretched hands, his bare feet. Jaffrey was moving in a painful, senile circle, his eyes too seemingly covered by a mixture of dust and drying tears-this spoke of more pain than his addled words and shuffling walk, and Sears, who remembered Peter Barnes's story about Lewis, at last felt more pity than fear.

'Yes, John,' he said, and Dr. Jaffrey, apparently unable to see in the light from the naked bulb, turned toward his voice.

Sears went forward to touch Dr. Jaffrey's extended hand. At the last minute he closed his eyes. A tingling sensation passed through his fingers and traveled halfway up his arm. When he opened his eyes, John was no longer there.

He stumbled into the staircase, painfully bumping his ribs. Toys. Sears began mechanically to rub his hand against his coat: would he have to find more creatures shambling and dazed like John?

But no, that was not what he would have to do. Sears soon discovered the reason for the plural noun. He walked out of the light toward the furnace and saw a heap of clothing dumped by the far wall. A pile of discarded boots and rags: it was eerily like the scrubby bodies of the sheep on Elmer Scales's farm. He wanted to turn away: all the truly bad things had begun back there, with him and Ricky freezing on a cold white hill. Sears saw a flaccid hand, a swirl of blond hair. Then he recognized one of the rags as Christina Barnes's coat; it lay flat, nearly empty, flung over a second flattened and emptied body, and it enveloped a gray deflated thing ending in blond hair which was Christina's body.

Instinctively, the shout escaping him, he called for the other two; then Sears forced control on himself and went to the bottom of the stairs and began methodically, loudly, shamelessly to repeat their names.

6

'So you three found them,' Hardesty said. 'You look pretty shook up, too.' Sears and Ricky were seated on a couch in John Jaffrey's house, Don in a chair immediately beside them. The sheriff, still wearing his coat and hat, was leaning against the mantel, trying to disguise the fact that he was very angry. The wet traces of his footprints on the carpet, a source of evident irritation to Milly Sheehan until Hardesty had sent her out of the room, showed a circling path of firm heelprints and squared-off toes.

'So do you,' Sears said.

'Yeah. Suppose I do. I never saw bodies like those two, exactly. Even Freddy Robinson wasn't that bad. You ever seen bodies like that, Sears James? Hey?'

Sears shook his head.

'No. You're damn right. Nobody ever did. And I'm gonna have to store 'em up in the jail until the meat wagon can get in here. And I'm the poor son of a bitch who has to take Mrs. Hardie and Mr. Barnes along to see those goddamned things to identify them. Unless you'd like to do that for me, Mr. James?'

'It's your job, Walt,' Sears said.

'Shit. My job, is it? My job is finding out who did what to those people-and you two old buzzards just sit there, don't you? You found 'em by accident I suppose. Just happened to break into that particular house, just happened to be taking a walk on a goddamned day like this, I suppose, and just thought you'd try a little housebreaking-Jesus, I oughta lock all three of you in the same cell with them. Along with torn-up Lewis Benedikt and that nigger de Souza and the Griffen boy who froze to death because his hippy mommy and daddy were too cheap to put a heater in his room. God damn. That's what I ought to do, all right.' Hardesty, now entirely unable to hide his anger, spat into the fireplace and kicked at the fender. 'Jesus, I live in that fucking jail, I really oughta haul you three assholes along and see how you like it.'

'Walt,' Sears said. 'Cool down.'

'Sure. By God, if you two weren't nothin' but a couple of hundred-year-old lawyers with teeth in the palms of your hands, I'd do it.'

'I mean, Walt,' Sears calmly said, 'if you will stop insulting us for a moment, that we'll tell you who killed Jim Hardie and Mrs. Barnes. And Lewis.'

'You will. Hot damn. Guess I don't have to get out the rubber hoses after all.'

Silence for a moment: then Hardesty said, 'Well? I'm still here.'

'It was the woman who calls herself Anna Mostyn.'

'Swell. Just dandy. Okay. Anna Mostyn. Okay. It was her house, so she's the one. Good work. Now. What did she do, suck 'em dry, like a hound'll do to an egg? And who held 'em down, because I know no woman could have taken that crazy Hardie kid by herself. Huh?'

'She did have help,' Sears said. 'It was a man who calls himself Gregory Bate or Benton. Now hold on to yourself, Walt, because here comes the difficult part. Bate has been dead for almost fifty years. And Anna Mostyn-'

He stopped. Hardesty had clamped both eyes shut.

Ricky took it up. 'Sheriff, in a way you were right about all this from the beginning. Remember when we looked at Elmer Scales's sheep? And you told us about other incidents, lots of them, that happened in the sixties?'

Hardesty's bloodshot eyes flew open.

'It's the same thing,' Ricky said. 'That is, we think it's probably the same thing. But here, they're out to kill people.'

'So what's this Anna Mostyn?' Hardesty asked, his body rigid. 'A ghost? A vampire?'

'Something like that,' Sears said. 'A shapeshifter, but those words will do.'

'Where is she now?'

'That's why we went to her house. To see if we could find anything.'

'And that's what you're gonna tell me. Nothing more.'

'There is no more,' Sears said.

'I wonder if anyone can lie like a hundred-year-old lawyer,' Hardesty said, and spat once more into the fire. 'Okay. Now let me tell you something. I'm going to put out a bulletin on this Anna Mostyn, and that's all she wrote. That's all I'm gonna do. You two old buzzards and this kid here can spend the rest of the winter ghost-hunting, for all I'm concerned. You're screwball-as far as I'm concerned, you're plumb outta your heads. And if I get some