Ghost Story

Peter took his hand off the door and stepped down into the brick court. He took several steps backward, looking up at the rear of the house. It was a fantasy anyhow: his mother's angry face had made it clear that she would not accept any fairytales about advice on fraternities.

He backed up further, the fortresslike back of Lewis's house seeming for a moment almost to lean over and follow him. A curtain twitched, and Peter was unable to move further. Someone was behind the curtain, someone not his mother. He could see only white fingers holding back the fabric. Peter wanted to run, but his legs would not move.

The figure with white hands was lowering its face to the glass and grinning down at him. It was Jim Hardie.

Inside the house, his mother screamed.

Peter's legs unlocked, and he ran across the court and through the back door.

He went rapidly through the kitchen and found himself in a dining room. Through a wide doorway he could see living-room furniture, light coming in through the front windows. 'Mom!' He ran into the living room. Two leather couches flanked a fireplace, antique weapons hung on one wall. 'Mom!'

Jim Hardie walked into the room, smiling. He showed the palms of his hands, demonstrating to Peter that his intentions were not violent. 'Hi,' he said, but the voice was not Jim's. It was not the voice of any human being.

'You're dead,' Peter said.

'It's funny about that,' the Hardie-thing replied. 'You don't really feel that way after it happens. You don't even feel pain, Pete. It feels almost good. No, it definitely feels pretty good. And of course there's nothing left to worry about. That's a big plus.'

'What did you do to my mother?'

'Oh, she's fine. He's upstairs with her now. You can't go up there. I'm supposed to talk to you. Hi!'

Peter looked wildly at the wall of spears and pikes, but it was too far away. 'You don't even exist,' he shouted, almost crying. 'They killed you.' He pulled a lamp from a table beside one of the couches.

'It's hard to say,' Jim said. 'You can't say I don't exist, because here I am. Did I say Hi yet? I'm supposed to say that. Let's-'

Peter threw the lamp at the Hardie-thing's chest as hard as he could.

It went on talking for the seconds the lamp was in the air.'-sit down and-'

The lamp exploded it into a shower of lights like sparks and crashed into the wall.

Peter ran down the length of the living room, almost sobbing with impatience. At the room's other end he passed through an arch, and his feet skidded on black and white tiles. To his right was the massive front door, to his left a carpeted staircase. Peter ran up the stairs.

When he reached the first landing he stopped, seeing that the staircase continued. Down at the other end of the gallerylike hall, he could see the foot of another staircase, which evidently led to another area of the house. 'Mom!'

Then he heard a whimpering noise, very near. He moved to Lewis's monkeywood door and opened it- his mother made another strangled whimpering noise. Peter ran into the room.

And stopped. The man from Anna Mostyn's house stood near a large bed that Peter knew must have been Lewis's. Striped pajamas hung from a chair. The man wore the dark glasses and knit cap. His hands were around Christina Barnes's neck. 'Master Barnes,' he said. 'How you young people get around. And how you poke your charming noses into other people's business. You'll be needing the ferule, I'm thinking.'

'Mom, they're not real,' he said. 'You can make them disappear.' His mother's eyes protruded and her body moved convulsively. 'You just can't listen to what they say, they get inside your head and make you hypnotized.'

'Oh, we had no need to do that,' the man said.

Peter moved to the broad shelf beneath the windows and picked up a vase of flowers.

'Boy,' the man said.

Peter cocked his arm. His mother's face was turning blue, and her tongue protruded. He made a frantic mewing sound in his throat and took aim at the man. Two cold small hands closed around his wrist. A wave of rotten air, the odor of an animal left dead for days in the sun, went over him.

'That's a good boy,' the man said.

Hatpin

5

Harold Sims got angrily into the car, forcing Stella to move sideways on the seat. 'What's the big idea? What the hell do you mean, acting like this?'

Stella took a pack of cigarettes from her bag, lit one and then silently offered the pack to Harold.

'I said, what's the big idea? I had to drive twenty-five miles to get here.' He pushed the cigarettes away.

'It was your idea to meet, I believe. At least that is what you said on the telephone.'

'I meant at your house, goddamnit. You knew that.'

'And then I specified here. You did not have to come.'

'But I wanted to see you!'

'Then what is the difference to you whether we meet here or in Milburn? You can say what you want to say here.'

Sims punched the dashboard. 'Damn you. I'm under stress. A great deal of stress. I don't need problems from you. What's the point of meeting out here on this godforsaken part of the highway?'

Stella looked around them, 'Oh, I think it's really a rather pretty spot. Don't you? It's quite a beautiful spot. But to answer your question, the point of course is that I did not want you to come to my house.'

He said, 'You don't want me to come to your house,' and for a moment looked so stupid that Stella knew she was an enigma to him. Men to whom you were an enigma were thoroughly useless.

'No,' she said gently. 'I did not.'

'Well, Jesus, we could have met in a bar somewhere, or in a restaurant, or you could have come to Binghamton-'

'I wanted to see you alone.'

'Okay, I give up.' And he lifted his hands as if literally giving something away. 'I suppose you're not even interested in what my problem is.'

'Harold,' she said, 'you've been telling me all about your problems for months now, and I have listened with every appearance of interest.'

Abruptly, he exhaled loudly, put a hand over hers and said, 'Will you leave with me? I want you to go away with me.'

'That's not possible.' She patted his hand, then lifted the hand off hers. 'Nothing like that is going to happen, Harold.'

'Come away with me next year. That gives us plenty of time to break the news to Ricky.' He squeezed her hand again.

'Besides being impertinent, you are being foolish. You are forty-six. I am sixty. And you have a job.' Stella felt almost as though she were speaking to one of her children. This time she very firmly removed his hand and placed it on the steering wheel.

'Oh hell,' he moaned. 'Oh hell. Oh goddam it. I only have a job until the end of the year. The department isn't recommending me for promotion, and that means I have to go. Holz broke the news to me today. He said he was sorry to do it, but that he was trying to move the department in a new direction, and I wasn't cooperating. Also, I haven't published enough. Well, I haven't published anything in two years, but that isn't my fault, you know I did three articles and every other anthropologist in the country got published-'

'I have heard all this before,' Stella interrupted. She stubbed out her cigarette.

'Yeah. But now it's really important. The new guys in the department have just aced me out. Leadbeater got a grant to live on an Indian reservation next term and a contract with Princeton University Press and Johnson's got a book coming out next fall… and I get the axe.'