Ash Wednesday (20 page)

There was no sense of contact, but for a moment the top of the figure's head and part of his back were visible on the floor of the police car. They all jumped, and Rankin turned the wheel spasmodically, but kept the car on the road. "Steady, Bob, steady,"
Kaylor
said. Martin Sanders giggled.

Rankin pulled the car into one of the spaces in the town square. There were four or five cars parked nearby with their headlights on. While Rankin took Martin Sanders into the police station,
Kaylor
walked over to them. The cars of Tom Markley and Pastor Craven were parked side by side, so close they nearly touched. Markley's right-hand window and Craven's left were rolled down all the way, and
Kaylor
could hear them talking through the gap as he approached. He rapped lightly on the mayor's windshield and Markley jumped like a rabbit.

"Jesus!" he said in disgust when he saw
Kaylor's
face peering through the glass in the coming light of dawn. "You scared the life
outta
me, Frank." Then his eyes narrowed and he looked around suspiciously, as if something were creeping up on them. "You
wanta
come in here?"

"Why don't you come out here?"
Kaylor
answered. "You think it's safe?"

"You see them moving? Besides, I have a gun."

"Don't know what good
that'll
do," the mayor grumbled, but he slid back over to the driver's side and opened the door quietly, as though he didn't want to be heard. A haze of cigarette smoke followed him as he left the car and he lit another immediately. He fixed Frank
Kaylor
with a bulldog stare, although he had to look up to do it, and coughed as the smoke leaked out of him. Have a stroke in another year,
Kaylor
thought as he stared into the lumpy, florid face. Mayor Tom Markley smoked two packs a day and was only five pounds short of being fat. Not,
Kaylor
had decided, a good prognosis for longevity. "Well?" Markley said.

"Well what?"

"C'mon, Pastor," Markley called softly to Craven, who was just getting out through his passenger door, and turned back to
Kaylor
. "Well, what have you done about all this?"

"What's to do?" He shrugged. "
Staters
are on their way."

"
Staters
!" Markley barked. "We got a town full of spooks and people scared shitless about 'em—including me. And you tell me the
staters
are coming. Frank, there are people
leaving
town—actually packing up and
going
."

Kaylor
looked at Markley's eyes and read the near-panic in them. "You want me to calm folks down?" he asked.

"
Yes
. Damn right I do!"

Kaylor
walked back to the police car, opened the trunk, and took out a bullhorn. Flicking it on, he aimed it down South Market Street and spoke into it. "Attention. May I have your attention, please. This is Police Chief
Kaylor
speaking. There is nothing to fear from the"—he paused—"the things that we are all seeing on the streets and perhaps in your homes. They can't harm you. There's no need for panic or to leave town. The mayor and Pastor Craven are here with me now and we assure you that these creatures are harmless. We don't know as yet what they are, but an investigation is under way. Please remain calm and continue with what you would normally be doing."
Kaylor
switched off the bullhorn and looked at Markley. "Happy?"

"What did you tell them
that
for?"

"You wanted me to calm them down."

"
We
don't know these things are harmless!"

In answer
Kaylor
walked over to the figure of an old woman ten yards away and swung his arm through the space she occupied. "She's not hitting back," he said grimly, returning to Markley's side.

"I think Frank is right," said Pastor Craven in his deep baritone. "They seem too ethereal to do us any harm.”

“Well, what about this investigation then?" Markley went on.

"I'm investigating,"
Kaylor
replied, "right now."

Craven smiled. "Aren't we all?"

"What do
you
think, Pastor?"
Kaylor
asked. "This is more in your line than in mine."

"Tom and I have been discussing it, and from what I can make out, as crazy as it sounds, we've got a town full of ghosts here. I don't recognize them all, but I do a lot of them. And they're all dead. With some it looks like they're positioned right
where
they died—at the moment of death. With others it seems they show up where they lived, or where they spent much of their time."

"Jesus Christ," moaned Markley. "Excuse me, Pastor;" he added, "but I feel like I'm still sleeping, like this can't really be happening."

"It does feel like a dream," Craven agreed, "but I'm fairly certain
I'm
awake."

"What about hallucinations?"
Kaylor
suggested. "
Mass
hallucinations."

Craven pointed to a blue shape visible through the window of the Bar-Kay Dress Shop. "You see that woman?"
Kaylor
nodded. "Describe her to me."

Kaylor
did, noting the woman's bobbed, antiquated hairstyle, her thin lips, heavy frame, large pendulous breasts to which her stubby fingers were pressed.

"You've just described Grace Moyer," Craven said when
Kaylor
had finished. "She died of a heart attack when I was ten, years before you were born, Frank. My mother used to take me in her shop. So how could
you
hallucinate something that's in
my
memory?"

Kaylor
shook his head, thinking that it
did
seem like a dream, and feeling grateful for that. If he could just keep that idea in his mind until he could accept what had happened as reality, he thought he'd be all right.

"They're really here then," said Markley. "Holy shit . . .” He gave a half-laugh. "I wonder . . .”

"What?"
Kaylor
asked.

"I can't help but wonder if . . . if Eddie Karl's been telling the truth all along."

Neither the minister nor the police chief made any comment, but they wondered too.

The state troopers arrived with the sun twenty minutes later. As always, they seemed cool, withdrawn, dryly professional, at least at first. Once they learned exactly what they were dealing with, many of them seemed as jumpy as Tom Markley. The mere act of filling them in did wonders for
Kaylor
, and he felt almost in control once more.

People were starting to come out on the street at last, most in pairs, hurrying to the comforting-looking group of living men gathered in the square. Most people, however, stayed in their houses, closing the doors of rooms where the figures, glowing softer in the light of day, were stationed.

Some were not frightened, but were touched in other ways by the reappearance of those dear to them. Joe
Longsdorff
sat all morning on the couch next to the apparition of his wife, Judy, who had died very quickly of leukemia three years before. Though her face was expressionless, her eyes were open, and her naked body still looked firm, youthful, appealing. As Joe told her what had happened in the years she was gone, he gradually put an arm around the space she occupied, and ultimately piled up pillows that he rested his head upon, positioned so that his cheek seemed to be lying on her breast.

On Locust Street, Thorne and Evelyn Beech sat in their cold backyard under the willow tree, where the swing set had been thirty years before. "Can I get you anything?" Thorne said. "Coffee?"

"Coffee would be nice."

"You can't stay here forever, Evelyn," he said gently.

"She has," the woman replied, never taking her eyes off the little girl who lay arms akimbo, neck cocked at an angle several degrees past awkward.

Throughout the town grown men and women became children once more in the presence of their returned parents, and trembled at the impossibility of it all. They had gone to sleep alone and had awakened in the presence of their ancestors. Mothers saw sons returned from the battlefields, snatched from flaming accidents, just as they had been at the second when death had claimed them. Widows and widowers, most finally used to their lot, now found themselves married once again.

In nearly every house with a living occupant, both radio and television were turned on. However, KMRA,
Merridale's
local radio station, was the only media source that as of 8:00 A.M. had mentioned what had occurred in the town. The morning DJ, Hal Drake, was playing his usual "Mellow Morning Music," but between each record he cut the commercials and instead said what Chief
Kaylor
had requested: "Okay, this is Hal Drake for the Drake Wake on KMRA Merridale, and if you're a Merridale resident and a bit upset by what's happening in the town, Police Chief Frank
Kaylor
has asked me to say that we should all stay cool, and that whatever this phenomenon is, it seems to be completely harmless. We got state police in here now, and other government agencies have been contacted, so go easy on the panic button, all right? Stay in your houses if you like, or go to work, or if you're really bugged and want to leave town and visit the folks for a bit, hey, feel free. But drive carefully, okay? And remember, there's nothing to worry about." Drake hoped to hell there wasn't—he didn't like the way the station's former owner was staring at him from where he hovered, gauntly thin, three feet above the tile floor. "Now let's get back to some music—Mr. Vic
Damone
singing 'Come Back to Me.'”

Fifteen miles away the news manager for WLMA, Lansford's CBS affiliate, hooted in laughter and turned off the radio. " 'Come Back to Me!' Jesus H., what a choice."

WLMA's morning news anchor grinned and puffed on a cigarette that sprinkled ash over his blue uniform blazer. "We go with it or not?"

The news manager scratched his head. "It is so fucking wacky I can't believe it. But
something's
doing up there. You got the story?"

"Right here." The anchor held up a typed sheet.

"Okay, let's do this. Don't lead with it. Rhoda started up there twenty minutes ago and we ought to hear from her any second. We'll get the dope by the first commercial, guaranteed. Then we'll know."

Twelve minutes into the show, Rhoda, called and verified the story in a trembling voice. The manager gave the anchor the high sign, and WLMA became the first TV station to report on what would become known as the Ghost Town. Before the half hour was up, the news manager had sent a two-man camera crew to join Rhoda in Merridale, and also called the CBS regional office, who said they would send their own crew as soon as possible.

By noon, when the crew arrived, Merridale was in no mood to welcome them. The square was filled with people, and
Kaylor
had ordered detour signs put up directing traffic up Park, across Spruce, and down Lincoln to bypass it. The square had become the kraal of the town, the place of safety from which the natives would face the dangers of their particular jungle. Although it was a Friday, most of the husbands had remained home from work in order to be with their families, and now a good majority of those families occupied the several thousand square feet that were formed by the meeting of High and Market streets. At first glance it looked almost festive, as though a town fair or
Oktoberfest
were in progress. The sun was shining, and although the day had started off chilly, it had become quite warm for late October. People sat in clusters on lawn chairs, mothers and fathers with children on their laps. But there was no trace of festivity in the faces. They were solemn, concerned, filled with a dark fear. There had been over two dozen bodies visible in the square itself, but once people started gathering there early that morning, Henry Zeller and his son Buck set cardboard partitions around the grisly figures, concocting them from the refrigerator and washer/dryer boxes in the basement of their hardware and appliance store. There were still visible apparitions up and down the streets, but the square at least was secured as well as possible. Too, daylight weakened the effect of the things. The sun seemed friendly, and although it did not diminish the forms completely, it was enough for people to feel perplexity rather than sheer terror, as they had in the dark.