Ghost Story (46 page)

"So were Alma's rooms," Don said. He and Ricky could hear Sears's footsteps on the boards of the lower room. The sound brought a new awareness flooding across Ricky's features. "What is it?"

"Nothing."

"Tell me. Your whole face changed."

Ricky blushed. "This is the house we dream about. Our nightmares are set here. Bare boards, empty rooms —the sound of something moving around, like Sears just now, down below. That's how the nightmare begins. When we dream it, we're in a bedroom—up there." He pointed up the staircase. "On the top floor." He went up a few steps. "I have to go up there. I have to see the room. It might help to—to stop the nightmare."

"I'll go with you," Don said.

When they reached the landing, Ricky stopped short "Didn't Peter tell you this was where—?" He pointed to a dark smear down the side of the wall.

"Where Bate killed Jim Hardie." Don swallowed involuntarily. "Let's not stay here any longer than we have to."

"I don't mind splitting up," Ricky hastily said. "Why don't you take Eva's old bedroom and the rooms on the next landing, and I'll prowl around on the top floor? It'll go faster that way. If I find anything, I'll call for you. I want to get out of here too—I can't stand being here."

Don nodded, agreeing with him wholeheartedly. Ricky continued up the stairs, and Don climbed to a half-landing and swung open the door to Eva Galli's bedroom.

"Ricky?" he said, and knew that his voice was no louder than the whispers behind him. The dim light guttered; and from the moment he could no longer see the walls, Don felt that he was in a much larger room —the walls and ceiling had flown out, expanded, leaving him in a psychic space he did not know how to leave. A cold mouth pressed against his ear and said or thought the word "Welcome." He swung around to the source of the sound, thinking belatedly that the mouth, like the greeting, had been only a thought. His fist met air.

As if playfully to punish him, someone tripped him, and he landed painfully on hands and knees. A carpet met his hands. This gradually took on color—dark blue —and he realized that he could see again. Don lifted his head and saw a white-haired man in a blazer the color of the carpet and gray slacks above mirror-polished black loafers standing before him: the blazer covered a prosperous little paunch. The man smiled down in a rueful fashion and offered him a hand; behind him other men moved. Don knew immediately who he was.

"Have a little accident, Don?" he asked. "Here. Take my hand." He pulled him upright. "Glad you could make it. We were waiting for you."

"I know who you are," Don said. "Your name is Robert Mobley."

"Why, of course. And you read my memoir. Though I wish you could have been more complimentary about the writing. No matter, my boy, no matter. No apologies necessary."

Don was looking around the room, which had a long, slightly pitched floor ending at a small stage. There were no doors he could see, and the pale walls rose almost to cathedral height: way up, tiny lights flashed and winked. Under this false sky, fifty or sixty people milled about, as if at a party. At the top end of the room, where a small bar had been set up, Don saw Lewis Benedikt, wearing a khaki jacket and carrying a bottle of beer. He was talking to a gray-suited old man with sunken cheeks and bright, tragic eyes who must have been Dr. John Jaffrey.

"Your son must be here," Don guessed.

"Shelby? Indeed he is. That's Shelby over there." He nodded in the direction of a boy in his late teens, who smiled back at them. "We're all here for the entertainment which promises to be very exciting."

"And you were waiting for me."

"Well, Donald, without you none of this could have been arranged."

"I'm getting out of here."

"Leave? Why, my boy, you can't! You'll have to let the show roll on, I'm afraid—you've already noticed there are no doors here. And there's nothing to fear— nothing here can harm you. It's all entertainment, you see—mere shadows and pictures. Only that."

"Go to hell," Don said. "This is some kind of charade she set up."

"Amy Monckton, you mean? Why, she's only a child. You can't imagine—"

But Don was already walking away toward the side of the theater. "It's no good, dear boy," Mobley called after him. "You're going to have to stay with us until it's over." Don pressed his hands against the wall, aware that everybody in the room was looking at him. The wall was covered in a pale felt-like material, but beneath the fabric was something cold and hard as iron. He looked up to the winking dots of light. Then he pounded the wall with the flat of his hand—no depression, no hidden door, nothing but a flat sealed surface.

The invisible lights dimmed, as did the imitation stars. Two men took him, one holding an arm, the other a shoulder. They forcibly turned him to face the stage, on which a single spotlight shone. In the middle of the spot stood a placard board. The first placard read:

It was a high-angled shot of Montgomery Street, taken from over the roof of Anna Mostyn's house. Immediately after he recognized the setting, the characters appeared. He, Sears James and Ricky Hawthorne struggled up the middle of Montgomery Street: he and Ricky looking at the house for as long as they were in frame, Sears looking down as if consciously to give contrast to the shot. There was no sound, and Don could not remember what they had said to each other before marching toward the house. Three faces in fast-cut closeups: their eyebrows crusted with white, they looked like soldiers conducting a mopping-up operation in some Arctic war. Ricky's tired face was obviously that of a man with a bad cold. He was suffering: it was much clearer to Don now than it had been outside the house.

Then a shot of his reaching in through the broken window. An exterior camera followed the three men into the house, tracking them through the kitchen and into the dark hallway. More unheard conversation; a third camera picked up Don and Ricky climbing the stairs, Ricky pointing to the bloodstain. On Ricky's civilized face was the expression of pain he had seen. They parted, and the camera left Don just as he pushed at the door to Anna Mostyn's bedroom.

Don uneasily watched the camera following Ricky up the stairs. A jump-cut to the end of an empty corridor: Ricky seen in silhouette pausing on a landing, then going up to the top floor. Another jump cut: Ricky entering the top floor, trying the first door and entering a room.

Inside the room now: Ricky came through the door with the camera watching him like a hidden assailant. Ricky breathing heavily, looking at the room with open mouth and widening eyes—the room of the nightmare, then, as he had guessed. The camera began to creep toward him. Then it, or the creature it represented, sprang.

Two hands gripped Ricky's neck, choking him. Ricky fought, pushing at his murderer's wrists, but was too weak to break his grip. The hands tightened, and Ricky began to die: not cleanly, as on the television programs this "commercial" imitated, but messily, with streaming eyes and bleeding tongue. His back arched helplessly, fluids streamed from his eyes and nose, his face began to turn black.

Peter Barnes said they can make you see things,
Don thought,
that's all they're doing now ...

Ricky Hawthorne died in front of him, in color on a twenty-six inch screen.

Maybe this is where it ends, he thought, and went through into the bedroom.

And forced himself to stand still: even the breath in his body wanted to flee. It was the room of the dream, and every atom of it seemed pervaded with the Chowder Society's misery. Here they had each sweated and gone cold with fear; on this bed—now with a single gray blanket thrown over the bare mattress—each had struggled helplessly to move. In the prison of that wretched bed they had waited for life to end. The room stood only for death: it was an emblem of death, and its bare cold bleakness was its image.

He remembered that Sears was, or soon would be, in the cellar. But there was no cellar-beast: just as there was no sweating Ricky Hawthorne pinned to the bed. He turned around slowly, taking in all of the room.

On a side wall hung the only anomaly, a small mirror.

(
Mirror, mirror on the wall
... who's the scaredest of them all?)

(
Not I,
said the little red hen.)

Ricky went around the bed to approach the mirror. Set opposite the window, it reflected a white section of sky. Tiny flakes of snow drifted across its surface and disappeared at the bottom of the frame.

When Ricky got closer to the mirror a whisper of breeze slid against his face. He bent forward and a sparse handful of snowflakes spun out to touch his cheek.

He made the mistake of looking directly into what he now confusedly thought must be a small window open directly to the weather.

A face appeared before him, a face he knew, wild and lost; then he glimpsed Elmer Scales moving clumsily through the snow; carrying a shotgun. Like the first apparition, the farmer was splashed with blood; the jug-eared face had starved down to skin-covered bone, but in Scales's fierce gauntness was something which forced Ricky to think
he saw something beautiful— Elmer always wanted to look at something beautiful:
this bubbled to the surface of Ricky's mind and broke. Elmer was screaming into the blaring storm, lifting his gun and shooting at a small form, flipping it over in a spray of blood ...

Then Elmer and his target blew away and he was looking at Lewis's back. A naked woman stood in front of Lewis, soundlessly mouthing words.
Scripture,
he read, then
see Scripture in the pond, Lewis?
The woman was not living, nor was she beautiful, but Ricky saw the lineaments of returned desire in the dead face and knew he was looking at Lewis's wife. He tried to back away and escape the vision, but found he could not move.

Just when the woman closed on Lewis, both she and he melting into unrecognizable forms, Ricky saw Peter Barnes crouching in a corner of the storm. No—in a building, some building he knew but could not recognize. Some long-familiar corner, a worn carpet, a curved tan wall with a dim light in a sconce ... a man like a wolf was bending over terrified Peter Barnes, grinning at him with white prominent teeth. This time there was no melting, merciful snowfall to hide the dreadful thing from Ricky Hawthorne: the creature leaned over cowering Peter Barnes, picked him up and like a lion killing a gazelle, broke his back. Lionlike, it bit into the boy's skin and began to eat.

Now Don was banging the walls upstairs—looking for a secret panel, Sears imagined, and shook his head. That all three of them were still alive and prowling through the house proved to Sears that Eva had moved on and left nothing behind.

He opened the door to the cellar. Wooden steps led down into complete blackness. Sears flicked the switch, and a bulb at the top of the steps went on. Its light revealed the steps and concrete floor at their bottom, but seemed to extend only seven or eight feet from the bottom of the steps. Apparently it was the only light; which meant, Sears realized, that the cellar was unused. The Robinsons had never turned the basement into a den or family room.

He went down a few steps and peered into the murk. What he could see looked like any Milburn cellar: extending under the whole of the house, about seven feet high, with walls of painted concrete block. The old furnace sat near the wall at the far end, casting a deep many-armed shadow which met and melted smoothly into the gloom; on one side stood the tall tubular cylinder for hot water and two disconnected iron sinks.

Sears heard a thump from upstairs, and his heart leaped: he was vastly more nervous than he wished to acknowledge. Tilting his head back toward the top of the stairs, he listened for further noises or sounds of distress, but heard none: probably no more than a slamming door.

Come down and play in the dark, Sears.

Sears took a step further down and saw his gigantic shadow advance along the concrete floor.
Come on, Sears.

He did not hear the words spoken in his mind, he saw no images or pictures: but he had been commanded, and he followed his bloated shadow down onto the concrete floor.

Come and see the toys I left for you.

He reached the concrete floor and experienced a sick thrill of pleasure that was not his own.

Sears spun around, afraid that something was coming for him from under the wooden staircase. Light banded the concrete in stripes, streaming between the wood: nothing was there. He would have to leave the protection of the light and look into the corners of the cellar.

He moved forward, wishing wholeheartedly that he too had brought a knife, and his shadow melted away into dark. Then all doubt left him. "Oh, my God," he said.

John Jaffrey was stepping out into the shadowy light beside the furnace. "Sears, old friend," he said. His voice was toneless. "Thank heavens you're here. They told me you would be, but I didn't know—I mean I—" He shook his head. "It's all been so
confused."

"Stay away from me," Sears said.

"I saw Milly," John said. "And do you know, Milly just won't let me in the house. But I warned her. I mean, I told her to warn you—and the others. About something. Can't remember now." He lifted his sunken face and twisted his mouth into a ghastly smile. "I went over. Isn't that what Fenny said to you? In your story? That's
right.
I went over, and now Milly won't—won't open—ah—" He raised his hand to his forehead. "Oh, it's just awful, Sears. Can't you help me?"

Sears was backing away from him, unable to speak.

"Please. Funny. Here in this place again. They made me come here—wait for you. Please help me, Sears. Thank heavens you're here."

Jaffrey lurched into the light, and Sears saw fine gray dust covering his face and outstretched hands, his bare feet. Jaffrey was moving in a painful, senile circle, his eyes too seemingly covered by a mixture of dust and drying tears—this spoke of more pain than his addled words and shuffling walk, and Sears, who remembered Peter Barnes's story about Lewis, at last felt more pity than fear.

"Yes, John," he said, and Dr. Jaffrey, apparently unable to see in the light from the naked bulb, turned toward his voice.

Sears went forward to touch Dr. Jaffrey's extended hand. At the last minute he closed his eyes. A tingling sensation passed through his fingers and traveled halfway up his arm. When he opened his eyes, John was no longer there.

He stumbled into the staircase, painfully bumping his ribs.
Toys.
Sears began mechanically to rub his hand against his coat: would he have to find more creatures shambling and dazed like John?

But no, that was not what he would have to do. Sears soon discovered the reason for the plural noun. He walked out of the light toward the furnace and saw a heap of clothing dumped by the far wall. A pile of discarded boots and rags: it was eerily like the scrubby bodies of the sheep on Elmer Scales's farm. He wanted to turn away: all the truly bad things had begun back there, with him and Ricky freezing on a cold white hill. Sears saw a flaccid hand, a swirl of blond hair. Then he recognized one of the rags as Christina Barnes's coat; it lay flat, nearly empty, flung over a second flattened and emptied body, and it enveloped a gray deflated thing ending in blond hair which was Christina's body.

Instinctively, the shout escaping him, he called for the other two; then Sears forced control on himself and went to the bottom of the stairs and began methodically, loudly, shamelessly to repeat their names.