Ghost Story

his face was murder, nothing else. Just as I expected him to come forward and attack me, he stepped behind a tree.

I went forward very slowly. 'What do you want?' I called, simulating bravery. There was no answer. I went forward a bit more. Finally I got to the tree where I had seen him, and there wasn't a trace of him-he had just melted away.

I was still lost, and I still felt threatened. For that was the meaning of his appearance, I knew-it was a threat. I took a few steps off in a random direction, passed through another thick stand of trees, and stopped short. For a moment I was scared. Right before me, closer than that apparition had been, was a thin shabbily dressed girl with stringy blond hair: Constance Bate.

'Where's Fenny?' I asked.

She raised one bony arm and pointed off to the side. Then he too rose up like a-'like a snake from a basket,' I must admit, is the metaphor that comes to mind. On his face, when he stood up in the tall weeds, was that characteristic Fenny Bate expression of sullen guilt.

'I was looking for your home,' I said, and they both pointed at once in the same direction, again without speaking. Looking through a chink in the woods, I saw a tarpaper shack with one greasepaper window and a stingy little pipe of a chimney. You used to see a lot of tarpaper shacks here and there, though thank goodness they have disappeared now, but that one was the most sordid I ever did see. I know I have the reputation of being a conservative, but I've never equated virtue with money, nor poverty with vice, yet that mean stinking little shack- looking at it, you knew it stank-somehow for me appeared to breathe foulness. No, it was worse than that. It wasn't merely that the lives within would be brutalized by poverty, but that they would be twisted, malformed… my heart fell, I looked away and saw an emaciated black dog nosing at a dead cushion of feathers that must have been a chicken once. This surely, I thought, must be how Fenny got the reputation for being 'bad'-the prim folks of Four Forks had taken one look at his home and condemned him for life.

Yet I didn't want to go in there. I didn't believe in evil, but evil was what I felt.

I turned back to the children, who had the oddest frozen look in their eyes. 'I want to see you in school tomorrow,' I said.

Fenny shook his head.

'But I want to help you,' I said. I was on the verge of making a speech: what I wanted to say to him was that it was my plan to change his life, to rescue him, in a sense I suppose to make him human… that obstinate, frozen look on his mug stopped me. There was something else in it too, and I realized with a shock that something about Fenny was reminding me of my last glimpse of the mysterious Gregory. 'You must come back to school tomorrow,' I said.

Constance said, 'Gregory doesn't want us to. Gregory said we have to stay here.'

'Well, what I say is he comes, and you come too.'

'I'll ask Gregory.'

'Oh, to hell with Gregory,' I shouted, 'you'll come,' and walked away from the two of them. That queer sensation stayed with me until I found the road again -it was like walking away from damnation.

You can guess what the result was. They did not return. Things ticked on in their normal way for several days, Ethel Birdwood and some of the other girls giving me liquid glances whenever I called on them for an answer, me toiling over the next day's lessons in that frigid box of a room and rising extremely unlike Phoebus with the dawn to prepare the schoolhouse. Eventually Ethel began bringing me sandwiches for lunch, and soon my other admirers among the girls were bringing sandwiches too. I used to save one in my pocket to eat in my room after supper with the Mathers.

On Sundays I made the long hike to Footville for my required visit to the Lutheran church there. It was not as deadly as I had feared. The minister was an old German, Franz Gruber, who called himself Dr. Gruber. The doctorate was genuine-he was a much subtler man than his gross body or residence in Footville, New York, suggested. I thought his sermons were interesting, and I decided to speak to him.

When the Bate children finally appeared, they seemed worn and tired, like drinkers after a strenuous night this became a pattern. They'd miss two days, come in, miss three, come in for two: and each time I saw them, they looked worse. Fenny in particular seemed in decline. It was as though he were aging prematurely: he grew even thinner, his skin seemed to crease on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. And when I saw him, I could swear that he looked as though he were smirking at me-Fenny Bate smirking, though I would have sworn that he didn't possess the mental equipment for it. For him, it seemed corrupt-it frightened me.

Therefore, one Sunday after the service I spoke to Dr. Gruber at the church door. I waited to be last to shake his hand, and when everybody else had filed away down the road, I told him that I wanted his advice on a problem.

He must have thought that I was going to confess to an adultery, or some such. But he was very kind, and invited me into his home, across the street from the church.

Very graciously, he escorted me into his library. This was a large room, entirely book-lined-I hadn't seen a room like it since I'd left Harvard. It was obviously the room of a scholar: it was a room where a man comfortable with ideas worked with them. Most of the books were in German, but many were in Latin and Greek. He had the patristic writings in big soft leather folios, Bible commentaries, works of theology and the great aid to sermon- writers, a Bible concordance. On a shelf behind his desk I was surprised to see a little collection of Lully, Fludd, Bruno, what you could call the occult studies of the Renaissance. Also, even more surprisingly, a few antiquarian books about witchcraft and Satanism.

Dr. Gruber had been out of the room fetching beer, and when he came in he saw me looking at these books.

'What you see,' he said in his guttural accent 'is the reason you find me in Footville, Mr. James. I hope you will not think me a cracked old fool on the evidence of those books.' Without my prompting him, he told me the story, and it's as you'd expect-he'd been brilliant, approved of by his elders, he had written books himself, but when he had shown too much interest in what he called 'hermetic matters,' he was ordered to stop that line of study. He'd published one further paper, and been banished to the most out-of-the-way congregation the Lutheran establishment could find. 'Now,' he said, 'my cards are on the table, as my new countrymen say. I never speak of these hermetic matters in my sermons, but I continue my studies in them. You are free to go or to speak, as you please.' This sounded a little pompous to me, and I was a little taken aback, but I saw no reason not to continue.

I told him the whole story, not stinting on the detail. He listened with great attentiveness, and it was clear that he had heard of Gregory and the Bate children.

More than that, he seemed to be very excited by the story.

When I finished he said, 'And all of this happened just as you have explained?'

'Of course.'

'You have spoken of it to no one else?'

'No.'

'I am very happy you have come to me,' he said, and instead of saying anything further, pulled a gigantic pipe out of a desk drawer, filled it and began to smoke, all the while fixing me with his protuberant eyes. I began to feel uneasy, and half-regretted that I had taken his earlier comments so lightly. 'Your landlady never gave you any idea of why she thought Fenny Bate was 'badness itself'?'

I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the negative impression I'd just had of him. 'Do you know why she would?'

'It is a well-known story,' he answered. 'In these two little towns, actually it is quite a famous story.'

'Is Fenny bad?' I asked.

'He is not bad, but he is corrupt,' said Dr. Gruber. 'But from what you say-'

'It could be worse? I confess,' I said, 'it's entirely a mystery.'

'More so than you imagine,' he said calmly. 'If I try to explain it to you, you will be tempted, on the basis of what you know about me, to think me insane.' His eyes bulged even more.

'If Fenny is corrupt,' I asked, 'who corrupted him?'

'Oh, Gregory,' he replied. 'Gregory, without doubt Gregory is in back of it all.'

'But who is Gregory?' I had to ask.

'The man you saw. I'm positive of that. You have described him perfectly.' He held his pudgy fingers up