Ghost Story

She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a platter holding a roast the size of a young pig. 'Cold roast beef all right for you? The carving things are in the drawer to your right. Start cutting.'

Only after Stella rather abruptly left the house for what she called an 'appointment'-after the strange scene in the kitchen, I had a passing notion of its character, and the momentary expression of utter misery which crossed Ricky Hawthorne's face confirmed it- did the three men open up to me. Bad choice of words: they did not 'open up' at all, at least not until much later, but after Stella Hawthorne had driven off, the three old men began to show me why they had asked me to come to Milburn.

It began like a job interview.

'Well, here you are at last, Mr. Wanderley,' said Sears James, pouring more cognac into his glass and removing a fat cigar case from the inside pocket of his jacket. 'Cigar? I can vouch for their merit.'

'No thanks,' I said. 'And please call me Don.'

'Very well. I have not welcomed you properly, Don, but I will do so now. We were all great friends of your uncle Edward's. I am, and I speak for my two friends as well, very grateful that you have come across the country to join us. We think that you can help us.'

'Does this have to do with my uncle's death?'

'In part. We want you to work for us.' Then he asked me if we could talk about The Nightwatcher.

'Of course.'

'It was a novel, therefore in large part an invention, but was this invention based on an actual case? We assume you did research for the book. But what we want to know is whether in the course of your research you discovered any corroborating evidence for the ideas in your book. Or perhaps your research was inspired by some inexplicable occurrence in your own life.'

I could almost feel their tension on my fingertips, and perhaps they could feel mine on theirs. They knew nothing about David's death, but they had asked me to expose the central mystery of both The Nightwatcher and my life.

'The invention, as you put it, was based on an actual case,' I said, and the tension broke.

'Could you describe that to us?'

'No,' I said. 'It's not clear enough to me. Also, it's too personal. I'm sorry, but I can't go into it.'

'We can respect that,' Sears James said. 'You seem nervous.'

'I am,' I admitted, and laughed.

'The situation in The Nightwatcher was based on a real situation that you knew about?' asked Ricky Hawthorne, as if he hadn't been paying attention, or could not believe what he had just heard.

'That's right.'

'And you know of other similar cases?'

'No.'

'But you do not reject the supernatural out of hand,' Sears said.

'I don't know if I do or not,' I said. 'Like most people.'

Lewis Benedikt sat up straight and stared at me. 'But you just said…'

'No, he didn't,' Ricky Hawthorne put in. 'He just said his book was based on a real event, not that it recounted the event exactly. Is that right, Don?'

'More or less.'

'But what about your research?' asked Lewis.

'I didn't actually do much,' I said.

Hawthorne sighed, glanced at Sears with what looked like irony: I told you so.

'I think you can help us anyway,' Sears said, as if he were contradicting a voiced opinion. 'Your skepticism will do us good.'

'Maybe,' Hawthorne muttered.

I was still feeling that they had blundered into my most private space. 'What does all this have to do with my uncle's heart attack?' I asked. There was a lot of self-defense in the question, but it was the right question to ask.

It all came out-James had decided to tell me everything.

'And we've been having unthinkable nights. I know that John did too. It is not exaggerating to say that we fear for our reason. Would either of you dispute that?'

Hawthorne and Lewis Benedikt looked as though they were remembering things they'd rather not, and shook their heads.

'So we want your expert help, and as much time as you can reasonably give us,' Sears concluded. 'John's apparent suicide has shaken us all very deeply. Even if he was a drug addict, which I dispute, I do not think he was a potential suicide.'

'What was he wearing?' I asked. It was just a stray thought.

'Wearing? I don't recall… Ricky, did you look at his clothing?'

Hawthorne nodded. 'I had to throw it out. It was the most astounding assortment of things-his evening jacket, a pajama shirt, the trousers to another suit. No socks.'

'That's what John put on when he got up the morning he died?' Lewis asked, astonished. 'Why didn't you tell us before?'

'At first I was shocked by it, and then I forgot. Too much was happening.'

'But he was usually such a fastidious man,' Lewis said. 'Damn it, if John jumbled his clothes up like that, his mind must have been jumbled too.'

'Precisely,' Sears said, and smiled at me. 'Don, that was a perceptive question. None of us thought of it.'

I could see him beginning to snatch up all the available rationalizations. 'It doesn't simplify things to point out that his mind was jumbled,' I pointed out. 'In the case I had in mind when I did my book, a man killed himself, and I'm damn sure his mind was shaken, but I never found out what really happened to him.'

'You're talking about your brother, aren't you?' asked Ricky Hawthorne cleverly. Naturally. So they all knew, after all; my uncle had told them about David. 'And that was the 'case' you alluded to?'

I nodded.

'Uh oh,' Lewis said.

I said, 'I just turned it into a ghost story. I don't know what really happened.'

For a moment all three of them looked embarrassed.

'Well,' Sears James said, 'even if you are not accustomed to doing research, I'm sure that you're capable of it.'

Ricky Hawthorne leaned back into his eccentric couch; his bow tie was still immaculate, but his nose was red and his eyes bleary. He looked small and lost, in the midst of his giant furniture. 'It will obviously make my two friends happier if you stay with us for a while, Mr. Wanderley.'

'Don.'

'Don, then. Since you seem prepared to do that, and since I am exhausted, I suggest we all say good night. You'll spend the night at Lewis's?'

Lewis Benedikt said, 'That's fine,' and stood up.

'I have one question,' I said. 'Are you asking me to think about the supernatural-or whatever you want to call it-because that absolves you from thinking about it?'

'Perceptive, but inaccurate,' Sears James said, looking at me with his rifle shot's blue eyes. 'We think about it all the time.'

'That reminds me,' Lewis said. 'Are you going to stop the Chowder Society meetings? Does anyone think we should?'

'No,' Ricky said with an odd defiance. 'For heaven's sake let's not. For our sakes, let's continue to meet Don will be included.'

So here I am. Each of the three men, my uncle's friends, seems admirable in his own way: but are they losing their minds? I can't even be sure they have told me everything. They are frightened, and two of them have died; and I wrote earlier in this journal that Milburn feels like the sort of town where Dr. Rabbitfoot would go to work. I can feel reality slithering away from me, if I start to imagine that