Ghost Story

house is empty.' Here in the back where no one could see them, both boys felt more comfortable.

The long back yard ended in a white hillock of snow which was a buried hedge; a plaster birdbath, the basin covered with snow like frosting on a cake, sat between them and the hedge. Even by moonlight this was a reassuringly commonplace object. You couldn't be frightened with a birdbath looking at you, Peter thought, and managed a smile.

'Don't you believe me?' Hardie challenged.

'It's not that' Both were speaking in their normal voices.

'Okay, you look in there first.'

'Okay.' Peter turned and stepped boldly in front of the small window. He saw a sink gleaming palely, a hardwood floor, a stove Mrs. Robinson must have left behind. A single water glass, left on the breakfast bar, caught an edge of moonlight. If the birdbath had looked homely, this looked forlorn-one glass gathering dust on the counter-and Peter at once began to agree with Jim that the house was empty. 'Nothing,' he said.

Hardie nodded beside him. Then he jumped up to the small concrete step before the back door. 'Man, if you hear anything, run like hell.' He pushed the bell.

The sound of the doorbell trilled through the house.

Both boys braced themselves; held their breath. But no steps came, no voices called.

'Hey?' Jim said, smiling seraphically at Peter. 'How about that?'

'We're doing this all wrong,' Peter said. 'What we ought to do is walk around in front and act like we just came. If anybody sees us, we'll just be two guys looking for her. If she doesn't answer the front doorbell, we'll do what people always do and look in the front windows. If someone sees us crawling around like we did before, they'll call the cops.'

'Not bad,' Jim said after a moment. 'Okay, we'll try it. But if nobody answers, I'm coming around back here and going in. That was the point, remember?'

Peter nodded; he remembered.

As if he too were relieved at having found a way to stop skulking, Jim walked freely and naturally to the front of the house. Peter coming more slowly behind him, Jim went across the lawn to the front door. 'Okay, sport,' he said.

Peter stood beside him and thought: I can't go in there. Empty, but filled with bare rooms and the atmosphere of whatever kind of person chose to live in them, the house seemed to be feigning stillness.

Jim rang the front bell. 'We're wasting time,' he said, and betrayed his own unease.

'Just wait. Just act normal.'

Jim stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket and fidgeted on the doorstep. 'Long enough?'

'A few more seconds.'

Jim exhaled a billowing cloud of steam. 'Okay. A few more seconds. One-two-three. Now what?'

'Ring it again. Just like you would if you thought she was at home.'

Jim stabbed the bell a second time: the trilling flared and died inside the house.

Peter looked up and down the block of houses across the street. No cars. No lights. The dim glow of a candle shone in a window four houses away, but no curious faces looked out at the two boys standing on the steps of the new neighbor's house. Old Dr. Jaffrey's house directly across the street looked mournful.

From nowhere at all, utterly inexplicably, distant music floated in the air. A buzzing trombone, an insinuating saxophone: jazz, played a long way off.

'Huh?' Jim Hardie lifted his head and turned from the door. 'Sounds like-what?'

Peter had an image of flatbed trucks, black musicians playing freely into the night. 'Sounds like a carnival.'

'Sure. We get a lot of those in Milburn. In November.'

'Must be a record.'

'Somebody's got his window open.'

'Has to be.'

And yet-as if the idea of carnival musicians suddenly appearing to play in Milburn was frightening- neither boy wanted to admit that these lilting sounds were too true to come from a record.

'Now we look in the window,' Jim said. 'Finally.'

He jumped off the steps and went to the large front window. Peter stayed on the porch, softly clapping his hands together, listening to the fading music: the flatbed was going into the center of town, toward the square, he thought. But what sense did that make? The sound died away.

'You'll never guess what I'm looking at,' Jim said.

Startled, Peter looked at his friend. Jim's face was determinedly bland. 'An empty room.'

'Not quite.'

He knew that Jim would not tell him: he would have to look for himself. Peter jumped off the step and walked up to the window.

At first he saw what he had expected: a bare room where the carpet had been taken up and invisible dust lay everywhere. On the other side, the black arch of a doorway; on his side, the reflection of his own face, looking out from the glass.

He felt for a second the terror of being trapped in there like his reflection, of being forced to go through that doorway, to walk the bare floorboards: the terror made no more sense than the band music, but like it, it was there.

Then he saw what Jim had meant. On one side, up against the baseboards, a brown suitcase lay on the floor.

'That's hers!' Jim said in his ear. 'You know what that means?'

'She still there. She's in there.'

'No. Whatever she wanted is still in there.'

Peter backed away from the window and looked at Jim's set, red face. 'That's enough screwing around,' Jim said. 'I'm going inside. You coming-Clarabelle?'

Peter could not answer; Jim simply stepped around him and set off around the side of the house.

Seconds later he heard the pop and tinkle of breaking glass. He groaned; turned around and saw his features reproduced in the window; they were pulled by fear and indecision.

Get out. No. You have to help him. Get out. No, you have to-

He went around the side of the house as quickly as he could without running.

Jim was up on the back steps, reaching in through the little pane of glass he had broken. In the dim light, bent over, he was the image of a burglar: Jim's words came back to him. So the worst has already happened, and you might as well relax and enjoy it.

'Oh, it's you,' Jim said. 'Thought you'd be home under the bed by now.'

'What happens if she comes home?'

'We run out the back, idiot. Two doors in this house, remember? Or don't you think you can run as fast as a woman?' His face stilled with concentration for a moment; then the lock clicked open. 'Coming?'

'Maybe. But I'm not going to steal anything. And you aren't either.'

Jim snorted derisively and went through the door.

Peter went up the steps and peered in. Hardie was moving across the kitchen floor, going deeper into the house, not bothering to look back.

Might as well relax and enjoy it. He stepped over the doorframe. Ahead of him, Hardie was thumping around in the hallway, opening doors and cabinets.

'Quiet,' Peter hissed.

'Quiet yourself,' Jim called back, but the noises immediately ceased, and Peter understood that whether or not he admitted it, Jim also was afraid.

'Where do you want to look?' Peter asked. 'What are we looking for, anyway?'

'How should I know? We'll know when we see it.'

'It's too dark in here to see anything. You could see better from the outside.'

Jim pulled his matches out of his jacket and lit one. 'How is that?' In truth, it was worse: where they previously had a dim vision of the entire hallway, now they could see only within a small circle of light.