Ghost Story

'Wait until you hear what I have in mind,' Don said. 'You might not want to go through with it. And that would be okay, Peter. I'd understand.'

'I'm ready,' the boy repeated, and Don could feel him shivering. 'What are we going to do?'

'Go back into Anna Mostyn's house,' he answered. 'I'll explain it at Ricky's.'

Peter slowly exhaled. 'I'm still ready.'

8

'It was part of the message on the Alma Mobley tape,' Don said. Ricky Hawthorne was leaning forward on his couch, looking not at Don but at the box of Kleenex before him. Peter Barnes glanced at him momentarily, and then turned sideways again, resting his head against the back of the couch. Stella Hawthorne had disappeared upstairs, but not before giving Don a look of the clearest warning. 'It was a message for me, and I didn't want to subject anyone else to it,' he explained. 'Especially not you, Peter. You can both imagine the kind of thing it was.'

'Psychological warfare,' Ricky said.

'Yes. But I've been thinking about one thing she said. It… call it. It could explain where she is. I think she meant it as a clue, or a hint, or whatever you want to call it.'

'Go on,' said Ricky.

'She said that we-human beings-are at the mercy of our imaginations, and if we want to look for her, or for any of them, we should look in the places of our dreams. In the places of our imaginations.'

' 'In the places of our dreams,' ' Ricky repeated. 'I see. She means Montgomery Street. Well. I should have known we weren't through with that house.' Peter extended one arm along the top of the couch and rolled deeper into it: rejection. 'We deliberately didn't bring you the first time we went there,' Ricky said to the boy. 'Of course now you have even more reason for not wanting to go. How do you feel about it?'

'I have to go,' Peter said.

'It almost has to be what she means,' Ricky continued, still gently probing the boy with his eyes. 'Sears and Lewis and John and I all had dreams about that house. We dreamed about it almost every night for a year. And when Sears and Don and I went there, when we found your mother and Jim, she didn't attack us physically, but she attacked our imaginations. If it's any consolation, the thought of going back there scares the hell out of me too.'

Peter nodded. 'Sure it does.' Finally, as if another's admission of fear gave him courage, he leaned forward. 'What's in the package, Don?'

Don reached down and picked up the rolled blanket beside his chair. 'Just two things I found in the house. We might be able to use them.' He lay the bundle on the table and unrolled it. All three of them looked at the long- handled axe and the hunting knife which now lay uncovered on the blanket.

'I spent the morning sharpening and oiling them. The axe was rusty-Edward used it for his firewood. The knife was a gift from an actor-he used it in a film and gave it to my uncle when his book was published. It's a beautiful knife.'

Peter leaned over and picked up the knife. 'It's heavy.' He turned it over in his hands: an eight-inch blade with a cruel dip along the top end and a groove from tip to base, fitted with a hand-carved handle, the knife was obviously designed for one purpose only. It was a machine for killing. But no, Don remembered; that was how it looked; not what it was. It had been made to fit an actor's hand: to photograph well. But beside it the axe was brutal and graceless. 'Ricky has his own knife,' Don said. 'Peter, you can take the Bowie knife. I'll carry the axe.'

'Are we going there right away?'

'Is there any point in waiting?'

Ricky said, 'Hang on. I'll go upstairs and tell Stella that we're going out. I'll say that if we don't come back in an hour, she should call whoever is at the sheriff's office these days and have a car sent to the Robinson house.' He left them and began going up the staircase.

Peter reached forward and touched the knife. 'It won't take an hour,' he said.

9

'We'll go in the back again,' Don said to Ricky, bending forward to speak into his ear. They were just outside the house. Ricky nodded. 'We'll have to be as quiet as we can.'

'Don't worry about me,' said Ricky. He sounded older and weaker than Don had ever heard him. 'You know, I saw the movie that knife came from. Big scene-a long scene about it being forged. Man making it melted down a piece of asteroid or meteor he had- used it in the knife. Supposed to have-' Ricky stopped and breathed heavily for a moment, making sure that Peter Barnes was listening to him. 'Supposed to have special properties. Hardest substance anyone ever saw. Like magic. From space.' Ricky smiled. 'Typical movie foolishness. Looks like a dandy knife, though.'

Peter pulled it from the pocket of his duffel coat and for a second each of them-almost embarrassed to be caught in such childishness-looked at it again. 'Outer space worked wonders for Colonel Bowie,' Ricky said. 'In the movie.'

'Bowie-' Peter started to say, remembering something from a grade-school history class, and then clamped his mouth shut on the rest of the sentence. Bowie died at the Alamo. He swallowed, shook his head, and turned toward the Galli house. It was what he should have learned from Jim Hardie: good magic lay only in human effort, but bad magic could come from around any corner.

'Let's go,' Don said, and looked hard at Peter to make sure he knew enough to keep quiet.

Using their hands, they pushed snow away from the back door to open it; and then, moving quietly in single file, they entered. To Peter the house seemed nearly as dark as it had been on the night he and Jim Hardie had broken in. Until Don had led him through the kitchen, he had not been sure that he would be able to take the first step over the threshold. Even then, he feared for a moment that he would faint or scream-the gloom in the house whispered about him.

In the hallway, Don pointed to the cellar door. He and Ricky took their knives from their pockets, and Don pulled the door open. The writer led them soundlessly down the wooden steps to the basement.

Peter knew that this and the landing would be the worst places for him. He took a quick glance under the staircase and saw only a floating spider web. Then he and Don went slowly toward the octopus-armed furnace while Ricky Hawthorne moved down the other side of the basement. The big knife felt solid and good in his hands, and even when he knew that he would soon have to look at the place where Sears had found his mother and Jim Hardie, Peter also knew that he would not pass out or yell or do anything childish: the knife seemed to pass some of its competence into him.

They reached the deeply shadowed area beside the furnace. Don stepped behind the furnace with no hesitation, and Peter followed, gripping the handle of the knife. You have to slash up, he remembered from some old adventure story. If you bring the blade down its easier to take away from you. He saw Ricky coming around from the other side, already shrugging.

Don lowered the axe; both men looked beneath the workbench across the near wall. Peter shivered. That was where they had been. Of course nothing was there now: he knew by the way Don and Ricky straightened up that no Gregory Bate had jumped out, ready to begin talking… there wouldn't even be bloodstains. Peter sensed that the men were waiting for him to move, and he bent quickly and took a second's glance beneath the workbench. Only shadowed cement wall, a gray cement floor. He straightened up.

'Top floor now,' Don whispered, and Ricky nodded.

When they reached the brown stain on the landing Peter clutched the knife tightly and swallowed; looked quickly back over his shoulder to make sure Bate wasn't standing down there in a Harpo Marx wig and sunglasses, grinning up at them; and checked the next flight of stairs. Ricky Hawthorne turned to interrogate him with a kind look. He nodded-okay-and continued softly after the men.

Outside the first bedroom door at the top of the house Ricky paused and nodded. Peter hefted his knife: it might be the room the old men had dreamed about, whatever that meant, but it was also the room where he had met Freddy Robinson, the room where he might have died. Don stepped in front of Ricky and put his hand very firmly on the knob. Ricky glanced at him, set his mouth, nodded. Don turned the knob and pushed the door open. Peter saw an abrupt line of sweat run down the side of the writer's face, as sudden as a tapped spring, and everything in him went dry. Don moved rapidly through the door, bringing the axe up as he went. Peter's legs