Ghost Story

was just impossible. Linda noticed that I wasn't feeling well, but Mrs. de Peyser pooh-poohed her. And of course I said I felt fine.

'We sat down to eat. I managed to get down a few bites, but I did feel very light-headed. Alice said nothing during the meal, but looked at me shyly from time to time, smiling as if I were an unusual treat. That was not how I felt. In fact, it may have been only alcohol on top of weariness. My senses were screwy-my fingers felt numb, and my jaw, and the colors in the room seemed paler than I knew they were-I couldn't taste the food at all.

'After dinner, her aunt sent Alice to bed. Rosita served cognac, which I didn't touch. I was able to talk, I know, and I may have seemed normal to anyone but Linda, but all I wanted to do was get to bed. The suite, large as it was, seemed to tighten down over me-over the three of us at the table. Mrs. de Peyser kept us there, talking. Rosita melted away.

'Then the child called me from her room. I could hear her voice saying 'Mr. Benedikt, Mr. Benedikt,' over and over again, very softly. Mrs. de Peyser said 'Would you mind? She likes you very much.' Sure, I said, I'd be happy to say good night to the girl, but Linda stood up before I could and said, 'Darling, you're too tired to move. Let me go.' 'No,' said Mrs. de Peyser. The child wants him.' But it was too late. Linda was already going toward the girl's bedroom.

'And then it was too late for everything. Linda went into the bedroom and a second later I knew something was horribly wrong. Because there wasn't any noise. I had heard the child half-whispering when she called to me, and I should have heard Linda speaking to her.

It was the loudest silence of my life. I was aware, fuzzy as I was, of Mrs. de Peyser staring at me. That silence ticked on. I stood up and began to go toward the bedroom.

'Linda began to shriek before I got halfway. They were terrible shrieks… so piercing…' Lewis shook his head. 'I banged open the door and burst in just as I heard the noise of breaking glass. Linda was frozen in the window, glass showering all over. Then she was gone. I was too shocked and terrified even to call out. For a second I couldn't move. I looked at the girl, Alice. She was standing on her bed with her back flattened against the wall. For a second-for less than a second-I thought she was smirking at me.

'I ran to the window. Alice started sobbing behind me. It was much too late to help Linda, of course. She was lying dead, way down on the patio. A little crowd of people who had come out of the dining room for the evening air stood around her body. Some of them looked up and saw me leaning out of the broken window. A woman from Yorkshire screamed when she saw me.'

'She thought you had pushed her,' Otto said.

'Yes. She made a lot of trouble for me with the police. I could have spent the rest of my life in a Spanish jail.'

'Lew-iss, couldn't this Mrs. de Peyser and the liddle girl explain what really happened?'

'They checked out. They were booked for another week, but while I was making statements to the police, they packed up and left.'

'But didn't the police try to find them?'

'I don't know. I never found them again. And I'll tell you a funny thing, Otto. The story has a joke ending. When she checked out, Mrs. de Peyser paid with an American Express card. She made a little speech to the desk clerk too-said she was sorry to go, that she wished she could do something to help me, but that it was impossible, after the shock she and Alice had had, for them to stay on. A month later we heard from American Express that the card was invalid. The real Mrs. de Peyser was dead, and the company could not honor any debts on her account.' Lewis actually laughed. One of the sticks in the fire tumbled down onto the coals, showering sparks out over the snow. 'She stiffed me,' he said, and laughed again. 'Well, what do you think of that story?'

'I think it is a very American sort of story,' Otto said, 'You must have asked the child what happened- at least what made her stand up on the bed.'

'Did I! I grabbed her and shook her. But she just cried. Then I carried her over to her aunt and got downstairs as fast as I could. I never had another chance to talk to her. Otto, why did you say it was an American sort of story?'

'Because, my good friend, everyone in your story is haunted. Even the credit card was haunted. Most of all the teller. And that, my friend, is echt Amerikanisch.'

'Well, I don't know,' said Lewis. 'Look, Otto, I sort of feel like going off by myself for a little while. I'll just wander around for a few minutes. Do you mind?'

'Are you going to take your fancy rifle?'

'No. I'm not going to kill anything.'

'Take poor Flossie along.'

'Fine. Come on, Flossie.'

The dog jumped up, all alertness again, and Lewis, who was now really unable to sit still or to pretend in any way that he was unaffected by the feelings which had sprung out at him from his memories, walked off into the woods.

Witness

7

Peter Barnes dropped the vase, half-nauseated by the foul smell which had swept over him. He heard a high-pitched giggling; his wrist was already cold where the unseen boy gripped him. Already knowing what he would see, he turned around to see it. The boy who had been sitting on the gravestone was holding onto his wrist with both hands, looking up at Peter's face with the same idiot mirth. His eyes were blank gold.

Peter chopped at him with his free hand, expecting that the scrawny reeking child would blow apart like the Jim Hardie-thing downstairs. Instead the boy ducked the blow and kicked at his ankles with a bony foot which hit him like a sledgehammer. The kick dumped Peter on the ground.

'Make him look, brat,' the man said.

The boy nipped behind Peter, clamped his head between two ice-hard hands and turned him around by force. The terrible foulness intensified. Peter realized that the boy's head was just behind his own and screamed 'Get away from me!' but the hands on his head increased their pressure. It felt as though the sides of his skull were being pushed together. 'Let me go!' he yelled, and this time he did fear that the boy would crush his skull.

His mother's eyes were closed. Her tongue stuck out further.

'You killed her,' he said.

'Oh, she is not dead yet,' the man said. 'She is merely unconscious. We need her to be alive, don't we, Fenny?'

Peter heard horrible squeals from behind him. 'You strangled her,' he said. The pressure of the boy's hands lessened to its original level: enough to hold him as if in a clamp.

'But not to death,' the man said, giving a mock-pedantic inflection to the words. 'I may have crushed her poor little windpipe a little, and the poor darling probably has a very sore throat. But she does have a pretty neck, doesn't she, Peter?'

He dropped one hand, and held Christina Barnes up with the other as if she weighed no more than a cat. The exposed portion of her neck wore large purple bruises.

'You hurt her,' Peter said.

'I am afraid that I did. I only wish that I could perform the same service to you. But our benefactor, the charming woman whose house you broke into with your friend, has decided that she wants you for herself. At the moment, she is occupied with more urgent business. But great treats are in store for you, Master Barnes, and for your older friends. By that time, neither you nor they will know up from down. You will not know if you're reaping or sowing, isn't that right, idiot brother?'

The boy gripped Peter's head painfully tightly and made a whinnying noise.

'What are you?' Peter said.

'I am you, Peter,' the man said. He was still holding his mother up with one hand. 'Isn't that a nice simple answer? Of course it is not the only answer. A man named Harold Sims who knows your older friends would undoubtedly say that I am a Manitou. Mr. Donald Wanderley has been told that my name is Gregory Benton, and that I am a resident of the city of New Orleans. Of course I once spent several entertaining months in New Orleans, but I can't be said to be from there. I was born with the name Gregory Bate, and that was how I was known until my death in the year 1929. Fortunately, I had entered into an agreement with a charming woman known as