Ghost Story

'You can go in now,' the doctor said, leaving the room.

Don's first shocked thought, seeing the old woman, was she's dead too: but he noticed her bright panicked eye, which was darting from one of them to another. Then he saw her mouth working and knew that Nettie Dedham was beyond communication.

Hardesty, thrusting forward, was bustlingly untroubled by the patient's gaping mouth and signs of agitation. 'I'm the sheriff, Miss Dedham,' he said, 'Walt Hardesty, the sheriff from over in Milburn?'

Don looked into the flat panic in Nettie Dedham's eye and wished him luck. He turned to the editor.

'I knew she had a stroke,' the editor said, 'but I didn't know she was as bad as this.'

'We didn't meet the other day,' Hardesty was saying, 'but I talked to your sister. Do you remember? When the horse was killed?'

Nettie Dedham made a rattling sound.

'Is that yes?'

She repeated the sound.

'Good. So you remember, and you know who I am.' He sat down and began speaking in a low voice.

'I suppose Rea Dedham could understand her,' Rowles said. 'Those two were supposed to be beauties, once. I remember my father talking about the Dedham girls. Sears and Ricky would remember.'

'I guess they would.'

'Now I want to ask you about your sister's death,' Hardesty was saying. 'It's important that you tell me anything you saw. You say it, and I'll try to understand it. Okay?'

'Gl.'

'Do you remember that day?'

'Gl.'

'This is impossible,' Don whispered to Rowles, who twitched his face and went around to the other side of the bed to look out of the window. The sky was black and neon purple.

'Were you sitting in a position where you could see the stables where your sister's body was found?'

'Gl.'

'That's affirmative?'

'Gl!'

'Did you see anybody approach the barn or stables prior to your sister's death?'

'GL!'

'Could you identify that person?' Hardesty was sitting forward at an exaggerated angle. 'Say if we brought him here, could you make a noise to say he was the one?'

The old woman made a sound Don eventually recognized as crying. He felt debased by his presence in the room.

'Was that person a young man?'

Another series of strangled noises. Hardesty's excitement was turning into an iron impatience.

'Let's say it was a young man, then. Was it the Hardie boy?'

'Rules of evidence,' Rowles muttered to the window.

'Screw the rules of evidence. Was that who it was, Miss Dedham?'

'Glooorgh,' moaned the old woman.

'Shit. Do you mean to say no? It wasn't?'

'Glooorgh.'

'Could you try to name the person you saw?'

Nettie Dedham was trembling. 'Glngr. Ginger.' She made an effort which Don could feel in his own muscles.

'Glngr.'

'Ah, let's let that go for now. I got a couple more things.' He rotated his head to look angrily at Don, who thought he saw embarrassment too on the sheriff's face. Hardesty turned back to the old woman and pitched his voice lower, but Don could still hear.

'I don't suppose you heard any funny noises? Or saw any funny lights or anything?'

The old woman's head wobbled; her eyes darted.

'Any funny noises or lights, Miss Dedham?' Hardesty hated having to ask her this. Ned Rowles and Don shared a glance of puzzled interest.

Hardesty wiped his forehead, giving up. 'That's it. It's no good. She thinks she saw something, but who the hell can figure out what it was? I'm getting out of here. You stay or not, do what the hell you like.'

Don followed the sheriff out of the room, and paused in the corridor as Hardesty spoke to a doctor. When Rowles emerged, his aging boy's face was pensive and considering.

Hardesty turned from the doctor and glanced at Rowles. 'You make any sense out of that?'

'No, Walt. No sense that makes sense.'

'You?'

''Nothing,' Don said.

'Well, I'll be damned if I'm not going to start believing in spacemen or vampires or something pretty soon myself,' Hardesty said, and went off down the corridor.

Ned Rowles and Don Wanderley followed. When they reached the elevators, Hardesty was standing inside one, stabbing a button. Before Don could reach the elevator, the door had whooshed shut unimpeded by the sheriff, who obviously wanted to escape the other two.

A moment later another elevator appeared, and the two men stepped inside it. 'I've been thinking about what Nettie might have been trying to say,' Rowles told him. The doors closed and the elevator smoothly descended. 'I promise you, this is crazy.'

'I haven't heard anything lately that isn't.'

'And you're the man who wrote The Nightwatcher.'

Here we go, Don thought.

Don buttoned up his coat and followed Rowles outside into the parking lot. Though he wore only his suit, Rowles did not appear to notice the cold. 'Here, get in my car for a second,' the editor said.

Don got into the passenger seat and looked over at Rowles, who was rubbing his forehead with one hand. The editor looked much older in the interior of the car: shadows poured into his wrinkles. ' 'Glngr?' Isn't that what she said, that last time? You agree? It was a lot like that anyhow, wasn't it? Now. I never knew him myself, but a long time ago the Dedham girls had a brother, and I guess they talked about him for quite a while after he died…'

Don drove back toward Milburn on the field-bordered highway under the lurid sky purpled with glowing strips. Back, back to Milburn, with part of the story of Stringer Dedham riding with him; back to Milburn, where people were beginning to close themselves up as the snows grew worse and the houses seemed to melt closer together; where his uncle had died and his uncle's friends dreamed of horrors; away from the century and back to the confinement of Milburn, more and more like that of his own mind.

Housebreaking, Part One

6

'My father says I'm not supposed to see you so much anymore.'

'So what? Do you care? How old are you anyhow, five?'

'Well, he's worried about something. He doesn't look very happy.'

'He doesn't look happy,' Jim mimicked. 'He's old. I mean, what is he, fifty-five? He's got a boring job and an old car and he's too fat and his favorite little boy is going to fly out of the nest in nine or ten months. Just take a look around this town, friend. How many folks do you see with big smiles on their wrinkly old faces? This town is loaded with miserable old suckers. Are you gonna let them run your life?' Jim leaned back on his barstool and smiled