Ghost Story

the car started to go down. When he came back up he said he had looked through the side window and…'

'And he didn't see anything on the back seat,' Sears told Don. 'He said.'

'The car went down and never came back up. It must be still down there, under thirty thousand tons of fill,' Ricky said.

'Did anything else happen?' Don asked. 'Please try to remember. It's important.'

'Two things did happen,' Ricky said. 'But I need another drink, after all that.' He poured some of the whiskey into his glass and drank before resuming. 'John Jaffrey saw a lynx on the other side of the pond. Then we all saw it. We jumped about a mile-it made us even guiltier, being seen. By even an animal. It switched its tail and disappeared back into the woods.'

'Fifty years ago, were lynxes common around here?'

'Not at all. Maybe farther north. Well, that was one. The other was that Eva's house burned, caught on fire. When we walked back to town we saw the neighbors all standing around, watching the volunteers try to put it out.'

'Did any of them see how it started?'

Sears shook his head, and Ricky continued the story. 'Apparently it just started by itself. Seeing it made us feel worse, as if we had caused that too.'

'One of the volunteers said something odd,' Sears remembered. 'All of us must have looked so haggard, standing around looking at the fire, and the firemen assumed we were worried about the other houses on the street. He said the other buildings were safe because the fire was getting smaller. He said from what he had seen, it looked like part of the house exploded inward- he couldn't explain it, but that's the way it looked to him. And the fire was only in that part of the house, up on the second floor. I saw what he was talking about. You could see some of the beams, and they were buckled in toward the fire.'

'And the windows!' Ricky said. 'The windows were broken, but there was no glass on the ground-they burst inward.'

'Imploded,' Don said.

Ricky nodded. 'Yes. I couldn't remember the word. I saw a light bulb do it once. Anyhow, the fire ruined the second floor, but the first floor wasn't touched by it. A year or two later a family bought the place and had it rebuilt. We were all back at work, and people had stopped wondering what had happened to Eva Galli.'

'Except for us,' Sears said. 'And we didn't talk about it. We had a few nasty moments when the developers started filling in that pond fifteen-twenty years ago, but they never found the car. They just buried it. And whatever was inside it.'

'Nothing was inside it,' Don said. 'Eva Galli is here now. She's back. For the second time.'

'Back?' Ricky said, jerking his head up.

'She is back as Anna Mostyn. And before, she came here as Ann-Veronica Moore. As Alma Mobley, she met me in California and killed my brother in Amsterdam.'

'Miss Mostyn?' Sears asked incredulously.

'Is that what killed Edward?' Ricky asked.

'I'm sure it is. He probably saw whatever Stringer saw-she let him see it.'

'I will not believe that Miss Mostyn has anything to do with Eva Galli, Edward or Stringer Dedham,' Sears said. 'The idea is ridiculous.'

'What is 'it'?' Ricky asked. 'What did she let him see?'

'Herself changing shape,' Don said. 'And I think she planned for him to see it, knowing it would literally scare him to death.' He looked at the two old men. 'Here's another. I think that in all probability she knows we are here tonight. Because we are unfinished business.'

Do You Know What It Means To Miss

New Orleans?

14

'Changing shape,' Ricky said.

'Changing shape indeed,' Sears said, less charitably. 'You're saying that Eva Galli and Edward's little actress and our secretary are all the same person?'

'Not a person. The same being. The lynx you saw on the other side of the pond was probably her too. Not a person at all, Sears. When you felt Eva Galli's hate that day she came to my uncle's apartment, I think you perceived the truest part of her. I think she came to provoke the five of you into some kind of destruction- to ruin your innocence. I think it backfired, and you injured her. At least that proves it can be done. Now she has come back to make you pay for it. Me, too. She took a detour from me to get my brother, but she knew that eventually I'd turn up here. And then she would be able to get us one by one.'

'Was this the idea you said you'd tell us about?' Ricky asked.

Don nodded.

'What in the world makes you imagine that it is anything but a particularly bad idea?' Sears asked.

'Peter Barnes, for one,' Don answered. 'I think this will convince you too, Sears. And if it fails, I'll read you something from a book that should work. But Peter first. He went to Lewis's house today, as I told you before.' He recounted everything that had happened to Peter Barnes-the trip to the abandoned station, the death of Freddy Robinson, the death of Jim Hardie in Anna Mostyn's house and the final, terrible events of the morning. 'So I think it's inescapable that Anna Mostyn is the 'benefactor' Gregory Bate mentioned. She animates Gregory and Fenny- Peter says he knew intuitively that Gregory was owned by something, that he was like a savage dog obeying an evil master. Together, they want to destroy the whole town. Just like Dr. Rabbitfoot in the novel I was planning.'

'They're trying to make that novel come true?' Ricky asked.

'I think so. They also called themselves nightwatchers. They're playful. Think of those initials. Anna Mostyn, Alma Mobley, Ann-Veronica Moore. That was playfulness-she wanted us to notice the similarity. I'm sure she sent Gregory and Fenny because Sears had seen them before. Or years ago, they appeared to him because she knew she'd be able to use them now. And it's no accident that when I saw Gregory in California, I thought of him being like a werewolf.'

'Why no accident, if that's what you're claiming he is?' Sears asked.

'I'm not claiming that. But creatures like Anna Mostyn or Eva Galli are behind every ghost story and supernatural tale ever written,' Don said. 'They are the originals of everything that frightens us in the supernatural. I think in stories we make them manageable. But the stories at least show that we can destroy them. Gregory Bate isn't a werewolf any more than Anna Mostyn is. He is what people have described as a werewolf. Or as a vampire. He feeds on living bodies. He sold himself to his benefactor for immortality.'

Don took up one of the books he had brought with him. 'This is a reference book, the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend. There's a long entry under 'Shapeshifting,' written by a professor named R. D. Jameson. Listen to this: 'Although no census of shapeshifters has been taken, the number of them found in all parts of the world is astronomical.' He says they appear in the folklore of all peoples. He goes on for three columns-it's one of the longest entries in the book. I'm afraid it isn't actually of much help to us, apart from showing that these beings have been talked about in folk history for thousands of years, because Jameson doesn't recount ways, if any, in which the legends say these creatures can be destroyed. But listen to the way he ends the entry: 'The studies made of shapeshifting foxes, otters, etc., are sound but miss the central problem of shapeshifting itself. Shapeshifting in folklore is clearly connected with hallucination in morbid psychology. Until the phenomena in both areas have been scrutinized with care, we are not able to go beyond the general observation that nothing is, in fact, what it seems to be.' '

'Amen,' said Ricky.

'Precisely. Nothing is what it seems to be. These beings can convince you that you are losing your mind. That's happened to each of us-we've seen and felt things we argued ourselves out of later. It can't be true, we tell ourselves; such things do not happen. But they do happen, and we did see them. You did see them. You did see Eva Galli sit up on the car seat, and you saw her appear as a lynx a moment later.'

'Just suppose,' Sears said, 'that one of us had a rifle along that day, and had shot the lynx. What would have happened?'

'I think you would have seen something extraordinary, but I can't imagine what it would have been. Maybe it would have died. Maybe it would have shifted to some preferred form-maybe, if it had been in great pain, it would