Ghost Story

he had a splendid white beard and wore a cape-he looked just the way we thought painters should look. Oh, we used to spend a lot of time down there. Used to be a bar with a jazz band. Lewis liked to go there-had a little dancehall. Like Humphrey's place, but smaller and nicer.'

'A band?' Peter asked, and Don too lifted his head.

'Oh, yes,' Ricky said, not noticing their excitement. 'Only a little six-eight piece band, pretty good for anything you'd hear out here in the sticks…' He picked up the plates and took them to the sink; ran hot water over them. 'Oh, Milburn was lovely in those days. We all used to walk for miles-down to the Hollow and back, hear some music, have a beer or two, take a hike out into the country…' His arms deep in soapy water, Ricky abruptly ceased all movement. 'Good Lord. I know. I know.' Still holding a soapy plate, he turned toward them. 'It was Edward. It was Edward, you see. We used to go down to see Edward in the Hollow. That was where he moved when he wanted his own apartment. I was in YPSL, my father hated that-' Ricky dropped the plate, and stepped unseeing over the shattered pieces-'and the owner was one of our first black clients. The building's still there! The town council condemned it last spring, and it's supposed to be demolished next year. We got Edward that apartment-Sears and I.' He wiped his hands on his dressing gown. 'That's it. I know that's it. Edward's apartment. The place of your dreams.'

'Because Edward's apartment…' Don began, knowing that the old man was right.

'Was where Eva Galli died and our dreams began,' Ricky said. 'By God, we've got her.'

16

They dressed in all the warm clothing Ricky had, putting on several layers of underclothes and two shirts- Ricky's shirts couldn't be buttoned over the other two, but they meant two more layers of trapped air-and then sweaters. Two pairs of socks; even Don managed to slide his feet into an old pair of Ricky's lace-up boots. For once, Ricky had a reason to be grateful for his attachment to his clothes. 'We have to live long enough to get there,' he said, sorting through a box of old wool scarves. 'We'll wrap some of these around our faces. It must be about three-fourths of a mile from here to the Hollow. Good thing this is a small town. When we were all in our twenties, we used to walk from this part of town down to Edward's apartment and back two or three times in one day.'

'So you're sure you can find the place?' Peter asked.

'I'm reasonably sure,' Ricky said. 'Now, let's have a look at ourselves.' They looked like three snowmen, padded out with so many layers of clothing. 'Ah, hats. Well, I have a lot of hats.' He fitted a high fur hat over Peter's head, put a red hunting cap that must have been half a century old on his own head, and told Don, 'This one was always a little big on me.' It was a soft green tweed, and it fitted Don perfectly. 'Got it to go fishing with John Jaffrey. Wore it once. Hated fishing.' He sneezed and wiped his nose with a peach tissue from his coat pocket. 'In those days, I always preferred hunting.'

At first Ricky's clothing kept them warm, and as they went through lightly falling snow in a hard bright light, they walked past a few men attacking their driveways with shovels and snow blowers. Children in bright snowsuits played on the drifts, active blots of color in the dazzle of light from the snow. It was five degrees above zero, and the cold attacked the exposed sections of their faces, but they might have been three normal men out on a conventional errand-hunting strayed children or an open store.

But even before the weather changed, walking was difficult for them. Their feet began to feel the cold first, and their legs tired from the effort of wading through the deep snow. They soon gave up the luxury of speech -it took too much energy. Their breath condensed on the heavy wool scarves, and the moisture turned cold and froze. Don knew that the temperature was dropping faster than he'd ever seen it: the snow came down harder, his fingers tingled in the gloves, even his legs began to feel the cold.

And sometimes, when they turned a corner and looked down a street hidden by a long wide drift peaked up fifteen feet high, he thought the three of them resembled photographs of polar explorers-doomed driven men with blackened lips and frozen skin, small figures in a rippling white landscape.

Halfway to the Hollow, Don was sure that the temperature had reached several degrees below zero. His scarf had become a stiff mask over his face, varnished by his breath. Cold bit at his hands and feet. He and Peter and Ricky were just straggling past the square; lifting their feet out of deep snow and leaning forward to get distance on the next step. The tree the mayor and the deputies had set up in the square was visible only as scattered green branches protruding through a mountain of white. Clearing Main Street and Wheat Row, Omar Norris had buried it.

By the time they reached the traffic lights, the brightness had left the air and the piled snow no longer sparkled: it seemed as gray as the air. Don looked up and saw thousands of flakes swirling between dense clouds. They were alone. Down Main Street, the tops of a few cars sat like inverted saucers on the drifts. All the buildings were closed. New snow spun around them: the air was darkening to black.

'Ricky?' he asked. He tasted frozen wool: his cheekbones, open to the air, burned.

'Not far,' Ricky gasped. 'Keep on going. I'll make it.'

'How are you doing, Peter?'

The boy peered out at Don from under the snow-crusted fur cap. 'You heard the boss. Keep on going.'

The new snow at first fell harmlessly, no more an obstacle than the candyfloss snowfall at the start of their trip; but by the time they had gone three blocks more in a building wind, Don's feet now like two blocks of ice painfully welded to his ankles, the new snow was unequivocally a storm: not falling vertically or spinning prettily, but sleeting down diagonally, at intervals coming in waves like a surf. It stung where it hit. Whenever they reached the end of one of the high-curled drifts snow came straight at them, following the currents of the wind, blasting into their chests and faces.

Ricky fell down backward, and sat up chest high in the snow like a doll. Peter bent down to offer him an arm. Don turned around to see if he could help, and felt the snowladen wind pound against his back. He called, 'Ricky?'

'Just have to. Sit. For a little.'

He breathed deeply, and Don knew how the cold would be scraping against his throat, how it would chill his lungs.

'No more than two-three blocks,' Ricky said. 'God my feet.'

'I just had a hell of a thought. What if she's not there?'

'She's there,' Ricky said, and took Peter's hand and pulled himself up. 'It's there. Few more blocks.'

When Don turned back into the storm he could not see for a moment; then he saw thousands of fast-moving particles of white veering toward him, so close together they were like lines of force. Vast semitransparent sheets cut him off from Ricky and Peter. Only partially visible beside him, Ricky motioned him on.

Don was never sure when they crossed into the Hollow: in the storm, it was no different from the rest of Milburn. Perhaps the buildings seemed marginally shabbier: perhaps fewer lights shone dimly in the depths of rooms, seeming thousands of feet away. Once he had written in his journal that the area had a 'sepia '30's prettiness': that seemed unutterably remote now. All was dark gray dirty brick and taped windows. But for the few dim lights flickering behind curtains, it seemed ominous and deserted. Don remembered other facile words he had written in his journal: if trouble ever comes to Milburn, it won't start in the Hollow. Trouble had come to Milburn, and here in the Hollow, on a sunny day in mid-October fifty years before, it had started.

The three of them stood in the weak light of a street lamp, Ricky Hawthorne tottering, squinting across the street at three identical high brick buildings. Even in the noises of the storm Don could hear him breathing. 'Over there,' Ricky said harshly.

'Which one?'

'Can't tell,' Ricky said, and shook his head, causing a shower of snow to whirl off the red hunting cap. 'Just can't.' He peered up into the storm: pointed his face like a dog. The building on the right. Then back to the building in the middle. He raised the hand which held his knife and used it to point at the windows on the third floor. They were curtainless, and one was half-open. 'There. Edward's apartment. Just there.'

The street lamp over them died, and light faded all about them.

Don stared at the windows high up on the desolate building, half expecting to see a face appear there, beckoning toward them; fear worse than the storm froze him.

'Finally happened,' Ricky said. 'Storm blew down the power lines. You afraid of the dark?'