Ghost Story

She remembered.

Stella dropped her hands, pulled at her lapel with her right hand, found the pearl base of the hatpin. She used all the strength in her right arm to drive the long pin into his temple.

The meek eyes bulged and the monotonous word repeating in her mind became a babble of astonished voices. What what (she) no this (sword) woman what- the man's hands went limp on her throat, and he dropped onto her like a boulder.

Then she was able to scream.

Stella scrambled to open the door and fell backward out of the car. For a moment after she rolled over she lay panting on the ground, tasting the blood in her mouth mix with dirty snow and rock salt. She pushed herself up, saw his balding head lolling off the edge of the seat, whimpered and got to her feet.

Stella turned away from the car and ran down School Road toward Leon Churchill, who was now standing by the side of the plow, gazing at something dark he had evidently uncovered. She shouted his first name, slowed to a walk, and the deputy swiveled to watch her come toward him.

Leon glanced back at the dark thing in the snow and then trotted toward her: Stella was too distraught to see that the deputy was nearly as shocked as herself. When he caught her, he spun her halfway around and said, 'Uh now Mrs. Hawthorne you don't want to look at that what's the matter anyhow you had an accident Mrs. Hawthorne?'

'I just killed a man,' she said. 'I hitchhiked in his car. He tried to hurt me. I stuck a hatpin in his head. I killed him.'

'He tried to hurt you?' Leon asked. 'Uh-' He glanced back at his plow, and then looked again at Stella Hawthorne's face. 'Come on, let's have a look. It happened up there?' He pointed to the blue car. 'You had an accident.'

As he marched her along toward the car, she tried to explain. 'I had an accident in my car, he stopped to give me a ride and then he tried to hurt me. He did hurt me. And I had a long hatpin…'

'Well, you didn't kill him, anyhow,' Leon said, and looked at her almost indulgently.

'Don't patronize me.'

'He ain't in the car,' Leon said. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face the open door, the empty front seat.

Stella nearly fainted.

Leon held her up and tried to explain. 'See, what probably happened is you got shook up after the accident, this guy who gave you a lift went away to get help, and you maybe even passed out a little bit. You banged yourself up when the car went off the road. Why don't I take you home on the plow, Mrs. Hawthorne?'

'He's not there,' Stella said.

A large white dog jumped on top of the snowbank from the front yard of one of the neighboring houses, walked along the top and jumped down to the road in a shower of snow.

'Yes, please take me home, Leon,' Stella said.

Leon looked anxiously toward the school. 'Yeah, I gotta get to the office anyhow. You stay right here and I'll come back with the plow in five seconds.'

'Fine.'

'Not much of a chariot,' Leon said, and smiled at her.

14

'Now, Mr. Wanderley,' Bate said, 'back to the topic we were discussing.' He began to move across the aisle toward Don.

Screams, moans, the sound of rushing wind filled the theater.

-live forever

-live forever

Don stretched out his legs, dazedly looking at the pile of bodies lying beneath the risers to the stage. The old man's white face twisted toward him, lying across the body of a barefoot child. Peter Barnes was at the bottom of the heap, feebly moving his hands.

'We should have concluded matters two years ago,' Bate purred. 'So much trouble would have been saved if we had. You remember two years back, don't you?'

Don heard Alma Mobley saying His name is Greg. We knew each other in New Orleans, and remembered a moment so vividly that it was as if he were there again: he standing on a corner in Berkeley and looking in shock at a woman in the shadows beside a bar named The Last Reef. A leaden sense of betrayal made it impossible to move.

'So much trouble,' Bate repeated. 'But it makes this moment all the sweeter, don't you think?'

Peter Barnes, bleeding from a cheek, pushed himself halfway out of the tangle.

'Alma,' Don managed to say.

Bate's ivory face flickered. 'Yes. Your Alma. And your brother's Alma. Mustn't forget David. Not nearly as entertaining as you.'

'Entertaining.'

'Oh, yes. We enjoy entertainment. Only proper, since we have provided so much of it. Now look at me again, Donald.' He reached down to pull Don up from the floor, smiling coldly.

Peter groaned: pulled himself clear. Don looked confusedly across at him and saw that Fenny also was moving, rolling over, his smudgy face a soundless screaming grimace.

'They hurt Fenny,' Don said, blinking, and saw Bate's hand slowly reaching toward him. He shot his legs out and squirmed away from Bate, moving faster than he ever had in his life. Don rolled to his feet, halfway between Gregory and Peter, who was-

-live forever-

blinking at the squirming, grimacing form of Fenny Bate. 'They hurt Fenny,' Don said, the meaning of Fenny's agony going through him like an electric current. The giant sounds of the film opened up again in his ears.

'You don't,' he said to Bate, and looked under the seats. His axe lay out of reach.

'Don't?'

'You don't live forever.'

'We live much longer than you,' Bate said, and the civilized veneer of his voice cracked open to reveal the violence beneath it. Don backed toward Peter, looking not at Bate's eyes but at his mouth.

'You won't live another minute,' Bate said, and took a step forward.

'Peter-' Don said, and looked over his shoulder at the boy.

Peter was holding the Bowie knife above Fenny's writhing body.

'Do it,' Don shouted, and Peter brought the knife down into Fenny's chest. Something white and foul exploded upward, a reeking geyser, from Fenny's ribcage.

Gregory Bate launched himself toward Peter, howling, and knocked Don savagely over the first row of seats.

Ricky Hawthorne at first thought he was dead, the pain in his back was so bad that he thought only death or dying could account for it, and then he saw the worn carpet under his face, the loops of thread seeming inches high and heard Don shouting: so he was alive. He moved his head: the last thing he could remember was cutting open the back of Fenny Bate's neck. Then a locomotive had run into him.

Something beside him moved. When he lifted his head to see what it was, Fenny's bare streaming chest leaped-seeming six feet long-a yard into the air. Small white worms swam across the white skin. Ricky recoiled, and though his back felt as though it were broken, forced himself to sit up.

To his side, Gregory Bate was lifting Peter Barnes off the floor, howling as if his chest were a cave of winds. A section of the beam from the projector caught Gregory's arms and Peter's body, and swarming blotches of black and white moved over them for a second. Still howling, Bate threw Peter into the screen.

Ricky could not see his knife, and went on his knees to scrabble for it. His fingers closed around a bone handle, and a long blade reflected a line of gray light. Fenny thrashed beside him, rolling over onto his hand, and uttered a thin eee, dead air rushing out. Ricky snatched the knife from under Fenny's back, feeling his hand come away wet, and made himself stand.