The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

here . . .

A dark, doll-like girl asked him for a light. He fumbled out some matches.

“Thanks,” she said, exhaling blue smoke into blue smoke. “Saw that worm guy talking to you. What a lousy bore he is! My ex-husband had a pet snake named. Baby and he fed it worms. That’s all they’re good for, unless you fish. Do you fish?”

“I’ve done some fishing up in Canada.”

“My ex-husband hated all sports. Except the indoor variety.” She giggled. “Did you hear the one about the indoor hen and the outdoor rooster?”

“Look, miss—”

“Talia. But you can call me Jenny. Get it?” She doubled over, laughing hysterically, then swayed, dropping her cigarette. “Ooops! I’m sick. I better go lie down. My turn-turn feels awful.”

She staggered from the party as Ashland crushed out her smoldering cigarette with the heel of his shoe. Stupid bitch!

A sharp handclap startled him. In the middle of the room, a tall man in a green satin dinner jacket was demanding his attention. He clapped again. “You,” he shouted to Ashland. “Come here.”

Ashland walked forward. The tall man asked him to remove his wristwatch. “I’ll read your past from it,” the man said. “I’m psychic. I’ll tell you about yourself.”

Reluctantly, Ashland removed his watch, handed it over. He didn’t find any of this amusing. The party was annoying him, irritating him.

“I thank you most kindly, sir!” said the tall man, with elaborate stage courtesy. He placed the gold watch against his forehead and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. The crowd noise did not slacken; no one seemed to be paying any attention to the psychic.

“Ah. Your name is David. David Ashland. You are successful, a man of big business . . . a producer . . . and a bachelor. You are twenty-eight . . . young for a successful producer. One has to be something of a bastard to climb that fast. What about that, Mr. Ashland, are you something of a bastard?”

Ashland flushed angrily.

“You like women,” continued the tall man. “A lot. And you like to drink. A lot. Your doctor told you—”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Ashland said tightly, reaching for his watch. The man in green satin handed it over, grinned amiably, and melted back into the shifting crowd.

I ought to get the hell out of here, Ashland told himself. Yet curiosity held him. When the host arrived, Ashland would piece this evening together; he’d know why he was here, at this particular party. He moved to a couch near the closed patio doors and sat down. He’d wait.

A soft-faced man sat down next to him. The man looked pained. “I shouldn’t smoke these,” he said, holding up a long cigar. “Do you smoke cigars?”

“No.”

“I’m a salesman. Dover Insurance. Like the White Cliffs of, ya know. I’ve studied the problems involved in smoking. Can’t quit, though. When I do, the nerves shrivel up, stomach goes sour. I worry a lot – but we all worry, don’t we? I mean, my mother used to worry about the earth slowing down. She read somewhere that between 1680 and 1690 the earth lost twenty-seven hundredths of a second. She said that meant something.”

Ashland sighed inwardly. What is it about cocktail parties that causes people you’ve never met to unleash their troubles?

“You meet a lotta fruitcakes in my dodge,” said the pained-looking insurance salesman. “I sold a policy once to a guy who lived in the woodwork. Had a ratty little walk-up in the Bronx with a foldaway bed. Kind you push into the wall. He’d stay there – I mean, inside the wall – most of the time. His roommate would invite some friends in and if they made too much noise the guy inside the wall would pop out with his Thompson. BAM! The bed would come down and there he was with a Thompson submachine gun aimed at everybody. Real fruitcake.”

“I knew a fellow who was twice that crazy.”

Ashland looked up into a long, cadaverous face. The nose had been broken and improperly reset; it canted noticeably to the left. He folded his long, sharp-boned frame onto the couch next to Ashland. “This fellow believed in falling grandmothers,” he declared. “Lived in upper Michigan. ‘Watch out for falling grandmothers,’ he used to warn me. ‘They come down pretty heavy in this area. Most of ’em carry umbrellas and big packages and they come flapping down out of the sky by the thousands!’ This Michigan fellow swore he saw one hit a postman. ‘An awful thing to watch,’ he told me. ‘Knocked the poor soul flat. Crushed his skull like an egg.’ I recall he shuddered just telling me about it.”

“Fruitcake,” said the salesman. “Like the guy I once knew who wrote on all his walls and ceilings. A creative writer, he called himself. Said he couldn’t write on paper, had to use a wall. Paper was too flimsy for him. He’d scrawl these long novels of his, a chapter in every room, with a big black crayon. Words all over the place. He’d fill up the house, then rent another one for his next book. I never read any of his houses, so I don’t know if he was any good.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Ashland. “I need a fresh drink.”

He hurriedly mixed another Scotch at the bar. Around him, the party rolled on inexorably, without any visible core. What time was it, anyway? His watch had stopped.

“Do you happen to know what time it is?” he asked a long-haired Oriental girl who was standing near the bar.

“I’ve no idea,” she said. “None at all.” The girl fixed him with her eyes. “I’ve been watching you, and you seem horribly alone. Aren’t you?”

“Aren’t I what?”

“Horribly alone?”

“I’m not with anyone, if that’s what you mean.”

The girl withdrew a jeweled holder from her bag and fitted a cigarette in place. Ashland lit it for her.

“I haven’t been really alone since I was in Milwaukee,” she told him. “I was about – God! – fifteen or something, and this creep wanted me to move in with him. My parents were both dead by then, so I was all alone.”

“What did you do?”

“Moved in with the creep. What else? I couldn’t make the being-alone scene. Later on, I killed him.”

“You what?”

“Cut his throat.” She smiled delicately. “In self-defense, of course. He got mean on the bottle one Friday night and tried to knife me. I had witnesses.”

Ashland took a long draw on his Scotch. A scowling fellow in shirt-sleeves grabbed the girl’s elbow and steered her roughly away.

“I used to know a girl who looked like that,” said a voice to Ashland’s right. The speaker was curly-haired, clean-featured, in his late thirties. “Greek belly dancer with a Jersey accent. Dark, like her, and kind of mysterious. She used to quote that line of Hemingway’s to Scott Fitzgerald – you know the one.”

“Afraid not.”

“One that goes, ‘We’re all bitched from the start.’ Bitter. A bitter line.”

He put out his hand. Ashland shook it.

“I’m Travers. I used to save America’s ass every week on CBS.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Terry Travers. The old Triple Trouble for Terry series on channel nine. Back in the late fifties. Had to step on a lotta toes to get that series.”

“I think I recall the show. It was—”

“Dung. That’s what it was. Cow dung. Horse dung. The worst. Terry Travers is not my real name, natch. Real one’s Abe Hockstatter. Can you imagine a guy named Abe Hockstatter saving America’s ass every week on CBS?”

“You’ve got me there.”

Hockstatter pulled a brown wallet from his coat, flipped it open. “There I am with one of my other rugs on,” he said, jabbing at a photo. “Been stone bald since high school. Baldies don’t make it in showbiz, so I have my rugs. Go ahead, tug at me.”