Ghost Story

sometimes sort of-you know-'

'Shit, I don't care if he did it or not. Hey, she's moving. He was silent; Peter was startled a moment later to have the telescope thrust into his hands. 'Take a look. Fast.'

Peter lifted the telescope, searched for the window, scanned past the top of the A in the hotel's sign. Back to the A; then straight up. He involuntarily moved several inches back on the sill. The woman stood at the window, smiling, holding a cigarette, looking right into his eyes. He thought he might have to vomit again. 'She's looking at us!'

'Get serious. We're way across the square. It's dark out. But you see what I mean.'

Peter gave the telescope back to Jim, who resumed looking at the woman's window. 'See what you mean about what?'

'Well, she's weird. Two o'clock, and she's in her room in the dark with all her clothes on, smoking?'

'So what?'

'Look, I lived in that hotel all my life, right? So I know how people act in hotels. Even the old farts who stay with us. They watch television, they want room service, they leave their clothes all over the room, you get bottles on cabinets and rings on the tables, they have little parties in their rooms and you have to scrub the carpet afterward. At night you can hear them talking to themselves, snoring, spitting-well, you can hear everything they do. You can hear them pissing in the sink. The walls are thick but the doors aren't, see? If you're out in the hall you can practically hear them brush their teeth.'

'So what?' Peter asked again.

'So she doesn't do any of that. She never makes any noise at all. She doesn't watch TV. Her room hardly ever needs to be cleaned. Even the bed is always made up. Strange, huh? So what does she do, sleep on top of the covers? Stay up all night?'

'Is she still there?'

'Yeah.'

'Let me see.' Peter took the telescope. The woman was still standing at her window, smiling faintly as if she knew they were talking about her. Peter shivered. He gave back the telescope.

'I'll tell you some more. I carried her suitcase up when she checked in. Now I've toted about a million suitcases, believe me, and that one was empty. She might have had a few newspapers in it, nothing more. Once when she was at work I looked in her closets- nothing. No clothes. But she didn't always wear the same thing, man. So what the hell did she do, wear them in layers? Two days later I checked again, and this time the closet was full of clothes-just like she knew someone came in to look. That was the night she asked me to take her to Humphrey's, and I figured she was going to chew me out. But no, she hardly talked to me at all. About the only thing she said was, 'I want you to introduce me to that man.' 'Lewis Benedikt?' I said, and she nodded, like she already knew his name. I took her up to him, and he ran away like a rabbit.'

'Benedikt did? What for?'

'I thought he was afraid of her.' Jim put the telescope down and lit another cigarette, looking at Peter all the time. 'And you know something? I was too.

There's just something in the way she looks at you sometimes.'

'Like if she thinks you were poking around in her room.'

'Maybe. But it's a heavy look, man. It really gets you. There's one other thing too. If you walk along the halls at night, you can tell if people have their lights on, right? The light comes through the bottom of the door. Well, she never has her lights on. Never. But one night -well, this is crazy.'

'Tell me.'

'One night I saw some flickering underneath her door. Flickering light-like radium or something, you know? A kind of greenish light. Cold light. It wasn't a fire or anything, and it wasn't from our lamps.'

'That's stupid.'

'I saw it.'

'But it doesn't mean anything. Green light.'

'Not just green-sort of glowing. Sort of silvery. Anyhow, that's why I wanted us to take a look at her.'

'Well, you did, so let's go home. My father'll be angry if I'm late!'

'Hold on.' He looked through the telescope again. 'I think something's happening. She's not at the window any more. Holy shit.' He lowered the telescope. 'She opened the door and went out. I saw her go into the hall.'

'She's coming over here!' Peter scuttled off the sill and moved down the gallery toward the stairs.

'Don't wet your pants, Priscilla. She isn't coming here. She couldn't see us, remember? But if she's going somewhere, I want to see where. You coming or not?' He was already gathering up his cigarettes, the bottle, his bundle of keys. 'Come on. We gotta hurry. She'll be out of the door in two minutes.'

'I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying!'

They pounded along the gallery and down the stairs. Hardie ran through the side aisles of the cathedral and pushed the door open, which gave stumbling Peter enough light to avoid the pillars and the edges of the pews. Out in the night, Jim clipped the padlock back on the door and ran to the car. Peter's heart beat rapidly, in part from relief at being out of the church. Yet he was still tense. He pictured the woman he had seen in the window coming across the snowy square toward them, the wicked queen from Snow White, a woman who never turned on a light or slept in a bed and who could see him on a black night through a church window.

He realized that his head was clear. As he got into the car beside Jim, he said, 'Fear sobers you up.'

'She wasn't coming here, idiot,' Hardie said, but pulled away from the side of the cathedral out to the south side of the square so rapidly that his tires squealed. Peter looked anxiously into the long expanse of the square- white ground broken by bare trees and the dim statue-but saw no evil queen drifting toward them. The picture had been so clear in his mind that, disbelieving, he continued to scan the town square after Jim had turned into Wheat Row.

'She's on the steps,' Jim whispered when they were nearly to the corner. Looking toward the hotel through the bare trees, Peter saw the woman calmly descending to the sidewalk. She wore the long coat, a fluttering scarf, a hat. She looked so absurdly normal in this clothing, turning out into the deserted street past two in the morning, that Peter laughed and shuddered at once.

Jim switched off the headlights and rolled quietly up to the stoplight. Off to their left and across the street, the woman moved quickly into darkness.

'Hey, let's just go home,' Peter said.

'Screw that. I want to see where she's going.'

'What if she sees us?'

'She won't.' He turned left and went slowly down the top of the square past the hotel, his lights still off. Though the lights in the square were not on, the street lamps would remain lighted until dawn, and both boys saw her entering a pool of light at the end of the first block across Main Street. Jim drove slowly across, and then waited until she had walked another block before going further.

'She's just taking a walk.' Peter said. 'She has insomnia, and she takes walks at night.'

'Like hell.'

'I don't like doing this.'

'Okay. Okay. Get out of the car and walk home,' Jim whispered fiercely at him. He reached across Peter and opened the passenger door. 'Get out and run home.'

Peter sat in the blast of cold from the door, almost ready to get out. 'You should too.'

'Jesus. God damn you! Get out or close the door,' Jim hissed. 'Hey! Wait a second!' Both boys watched as another car swung onto the street ahead of them and paused under a street lamp two blocks ahead. The woman went unconcernedly up to the car, the door swung open, and she got in.

'I know that car,' Peter said. 'I've seen it around.'

'Of course you have, you dodo. Seventy-five blue Camaro-it belongs to that turkey, Freddy Robinson.' He picked up speed as Robinson's car drove away.

'Well, now you know where she goes at nights.'

'Maybe.'

'Maybe? What else? Robinson's married. In fact, my mother heard from Mrs. Venuti that his wife wants to divorce him.'