Ghost Story

'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 streets 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.