Ghost Story (48 page)

Hardesty went to the sink in his office, rinsed out his mouth, and bent down to look into the mirror. There was Rip van Shitstorm indeed, the famous hat-sucker, a sight which gave him no pleasure, and he was about to turn away when he finally recorded that behind him and to his left, just visible over his shoulder, the door to the utility cells was open wide.

And that was impossible. He unlocked that door only when Leon Churchill or some other deputy brought in another body waiting to be shipped up to the county morgue—the last time it had been Penny Draeger, her long silky black hair fouled and matted with dirt and snow. Hardesty had lost track of time since the discovery of Jim Hardie's and Mrs. Barnes's bodies and the beginning of the heavy snow, but he thought that Penny Draeger must have come in at least two days ago—that door had stayed locked ever since. But now it was open—open to its fullest extent—as if one of the bodies back there had strolled out, seen him sleeping with his head on his cheek, and turned around to go back to its cell and its sheet.

He walked past the file cabinets and his battered desk to the door, swung it back and forth reflectively for a moment, and then went through to the corridor which led to the cells. Here stood a tall metal door which he had not touched since leaving the Draeger girl's body; and it too was unlocked.

"Jesus H.
Christ,"
Hardesty said, for while the deputies had keys to the first door, only he had the key to this, and he had not even looked at the metal door for two days. He took the big key from the ring which hung beside his holster, fit it into the slot, and heard the mechanism clicking shut, driving the bolt. He looked at the key for a second, as if trying to see if it would open the door by itself, and then experimented by unlocking it: difficult as ever, the key taking a lot of pressure before it would move. He began to pull the door open, almost afraid to look behind it to the cells.

He remembered the screwball story Sears James and Ricky Hawthorne had tried to tell him: something out of Clark Mulligan's horror movies. A smokescreen for whatever they really knew, a thing you'd have to be crazy to believe. If they had been younger, he would have swung on both of them. They were ridiculing him, hiding something. If they weren't lawyers ...

He heard a noise from the cells.

Hardesty yanked at the door and stepped through onto the narrow concrete walkway between the utility cells. Even in the darkness, the air seemed full of some dirty pink light, hazy and very faint. The bodies lay beneath their sheets, mummies in a museum. He could not have heard a noise, not possibly; unless he had heard the jail itself creaking.

He realized that he was frightened, and detested himself for it. He couldn't even tell who most of them were any more, there were so many of them, so many sheet-covered bodies ... but the corpses in the first cell on his right, he knew, were Jim Hardie and Mrs. Barnes, and those two were never going to make any more noise again ever.

He looked into their cell through the bars. Their bodies were on the hard floor beneath the cot against the far wall, two still white forms. Nothing wrong there.
Wait a second,
he thought, trying to remember the day he had put them in the cell. Didn't he put Mrs. Barnes on top of the bunk? He was almost certain ... he peered in at them.
Now wait, now just hold it up a minute here,
he thought, and even in the cold of the unheated cells, began to sweat. A white-covered little parcel that could only be the Griffen baby—frozen to death in his own bed—lay on the cot. "Now just wait a goddamned second," he said, "that can't be." He'd put the Griffen baby with de Souza, in a cell on the other side of the corridor.

What he wanted to do was lock the doors behind him again and open a fresh bottle—
get out of this place right away
—but he pushed open the cell door and stepped in. There had to be some explanation: one of the deputies had come back here and rearranged the bodies, made a little more room ... but that too couldn't be, they never came back here without him ... he saw Christina Barnes's blond hair leaking out from beneath the edge of her sheet. Just a second before the sheet had been tucked securely around her head.

He backed away toward the cell door, now absolutely unable to stand so near the body of Christina Barnes, and when he had reached the threshold of the cell looked wildly around at the other bodies. They all seemed subtly different, as if they'd moved an inch or so, rolled over and crossed their legs while his back had been turned. He stood in the entrance to the cell, now unpleasantly conscious that his back was turned to all those other bodies, but unable to stop looking at Christina Barnes. He thought that even more of her hair was frothing out from beneath the sheet.

When he glanced at the little form on the cot, Hardesty's stomach slammed up into his throat. As if the dead child had wriggled forward in its sheet, the top of its bald round head protruded through an opening in the sheet—a grotesque parody of birth.

Hardesty jumped backward out of the cell into the dark corridor. Though he could not see them moving, he had a wild, panicky sense that all of the bodies in the cells were in motion—that if he stayed back here in the dark a second longer, they would point toward him like the needles of a dozen magnets.

From an end cell, one he knew was empty, came a dry rasping voiceless sound. A chuckle. This empty sound of mirth unfolded in his mind, more a thought than a sound. Hardesty backed nervelessly down the corridor until he thumped into the edge of the metal door, then whirled around it and slammed it shut.

Don turned from the window and said to Peter Barnes, "Want some coffee?"

"I'm fine," the boy said. "Do you see them coming?"

"Not yet. They'll be here."

"It's a terrible night. The worst yet."

"Well, I'm sure they'll be here soon," Don said. "Your father didn't mind your leaving the house on Christmas Eve?"

"No," Peter said, and looked truly unhappy for the first time that night. "He's—I guess he's mourning. He didn't even ask me where I was going." Peter kept his intelligent face steady, not permitting his grief to demonstrate itself in the tears Don knew were close.

Don went back to the window and leaned forward, pressing his hands on the cold glass. "I see someone coming."

Peter stood up behind him.

"Yes. They're stopping. It's them."

"Mr. James is staying with Mr. Hawthorne now?"

"It was their idea. We all felt safer that way." He watched Sears and Ricky leave the car and begin to fight their way up the walk.

"I want to tell you something," Peter said behind him, and Don turned to look at the tall boy. "I'm really glad you're here."

"Peter," Don said, "if we get these things before they get us, it'll be mostly because of you."

"We will," Peter said quietly, and as Don went to the door he knew that he and the boy were equally grateful for each other's company.

"Come in," he said to the two older men. "Peter is already here. How's your cold, Ricky?"

Ricky Hawthorne shook his head. "Stable. You have something you want us to listen to?"

"On my uncle's tapes. Let me help you with your coats."

A minute later he was leading them down the hall. "I had quite a struggle to find the right tapes," he said. "My uncle never marked the boxes he kept them in." He opened the door to the office. "That's why the place looks like this." Empty white boxes and spools of tape covered the floor. Other white boxes littered the desk.

Sears knocked a spool of tape off a chair and lowered himself into it; Ricky and Peter sat on camp chairs against a book-lined wall.

Don went behind the desk. "I guess Uncle Edward had some sort of filing system, but I never found out what it was. I had to go through everything before finding the Moore tapes." He sat down behind the desk. "If I were another kind of novelist, I'd never have to dream up a plot again. My uncle was told more dirt off the record than Woodward and Bernstein."

"At any rate," Sears said, extending his legs deliberately to push over a stack of white boxes, "you found them. And you want us to listen to something. Let's get to it."

"Drinks are on the table," Don said. "You'll need it. Help yourselves." While Ricky and Sears poured whiskey for themselves and Peter took a Coke, Don described his uncle's taping technique.

"He'd just let the recorder run—he wanted to get everything the subject said. During the formal taping sessions, of course, but also during meals, having drinks, watching television—to catch anything the subject came up with. So from time to time, the subject would be left alone in a room with a tape recorder running. We're going to listen to a couple of moments when that happened."

Don swiveled his chair around and pushed the "on" button of the recorder on the shelf behind him. "This is set just about on the right spot. I won't have to tell you what to listen for." He pushed the "play" button, and Edward Wanderley's voice filled the room, floating down from the big speakers perched up behind the desk.

"So he beat you because of the money you spent on acting lessons?"

A girlish voice answered. "No. He beat me because I existed."

"How do you feel about it now?"

Silence for a time: then the other voice said, "Could you get me a drink, please? It's difficult for me to talk about this."

"Sure, of course, I understand. Campari soda?"

"You remembered. Lovely."

"I'll be right back."

Noises of the desk chair squeaking, footsteps; the door closed.

In the few seconds of quiet which followed, Don kept his eyes on Sears and Ricky. They watched the spools of tape hissing through the heads.

"Are my old friends listening to me now?" It was another voice: older, brisker, drier. "I want to say hello to all of you."

"It's Eva," Sears said. "That's Eva Galli's voice." Instead of fear, his face showed anger. Ricky Hawthorne looked as if his cold had just grown much worse.

"We parted, the last time we all met, so ignominiously, that I wanted all of you to know that I remember you very well. You, dear Ricky; and you, Sears—what a dignified man you became! And you, handsome Lewis. How lucky you are to be listening today! Haven't you ever wondered what would have happened if you had gone into the girl's room instead of letting your wife answer her call? And poor ugly John—let me thank you in advance for having such a wonderful party. I am going to enjoy myself enormously at your party, John, and I am going to leave a present behind—a token of future presents to all of you."

Don took the reel off the recorder, said, "Don't say anything now. Listen to the next one first." He put on a second reel and advanced it to a number he had written on a pad. Then he pushed the "play" button again.

Edward Wanderley: "Do you want to take a break for a little while? I could make us some lunch."

"Please. Don't worry about me. I'll just stay here and look at your books until everything's ready."

After Edward left the room, Eva Galli's voice came again through the speakers.

"Hello, my old friends. And are you joined by a young friend?"

"Not you, Peter," Don said. "Me."

"Is Don Wanderley with you? Don, I look forward to seeing you again too. For I will, you know. I will visit each of you and thank you in person for the treatment you gave me some time ago. I hope you are looking forward to the extraordinary things in store for you." Then she paused, using the spacing of the sentences to form separate paragraphs.

"I will take you places where you have never been.

"And I will see the life run out of you.

"And I will see you die like insects.
Insects."

Don switched off the machine. "There's one more tape I want to play, but you can see why I thought you ought to hear them."

Ricky still looked shaken. "She
knew.
She knew we were all going to sit here ... and listen to her. To her threats."

"But she spoke to Lewis and John," Sears said. "That's rather leading."

"Exactly. You see what that means. She can't predict things, she can just make good guesses. She thought one of you would go through these tapes shortly after my uncle's death. And stew over them for a year, until she celebrated the anniversary of Edward's death by killing John Jaffrey. Obviously she thought you would write to me, and that I would come out to take possession of the house. Of course putting my name on that tape meant that you would have to get in touch with me. It was always part of her plan that I come here."

Ricky said, "As it was we stewed pretty well on our own."

"I think she caused your nightmares. Anyhow, she wanted all of us here so that she could get us one by one. Now I want you to hear the last tape." He removed the spent reel from the machine and took up the third reel beside him and placed it on the recorder.

A lilting southern voice came through the big speakers.

"Don.
Didn't we have a wonderful time together? Didn't we love each other, Don? I hated leaving you— really, I was heartbroken when I left Berkeley. Do you remember the smell of burning leaves when you walked me home, and the dog barking streets away? It was all so lovely, Don. And look at what a wonderful thing you made of it! I was so proud of you. You thought and thought about me, and you came so close. I
wanted
you to see, I wanted you to see everything and have your mind open up to all the possibilities we represent —right through the stories about Tasker Martin and the X.X.X.—"

He switched it off. "Alma Mobley," he said. "I don't think you have to hear the rest of it."

Peter Barnes stirred in his chair. "What's she trying to do?"

"To convince us of her omnipotence. To get us so scared that we'll give up." He leaned forward over the desk. "But these tapes prove that she's not omnipotent. She makes mistakes. So her ghouls can make mistakes. They can be defeated."

"Well, you're not Knute Rockne and this isn't the big game," Sears said. "I'm going home. To Ricky's home, that is. Unless there are other ghosts you want us to hear."

Surprisingly, Peter answered him. "Mr. James, pardon me, but I think you're wrong. This is the big game—it's a stupid term and I know that's why you used it, but getting rid of these horrible
things
is the most important thing we'll ever do. And I'm glad we found out that they can make mistakes. I think it's wrong to be sarcastic about it. You wouldn't act like that if you ever saw them—if you ever saw them kill someone."

Don waited resignedly for Sears to crush the boy, but the lawyer merely drained his whiskey and leaned forward to speak quietly to Peter. "You forget I have seen them. I knew Eva Galli, and I saw her sit up after she was dead. And I know the beast who killed your mother, and his pathetic little brother—the one who held you and made you watch—I knew him too. When he was merely a retarded schoolboy I tried to save him from Gregory, just as you must have tried to save your mother, and like you I failed. And like you I am morally offended to hear that creature's voice, in any of her guises—I am morally outraged to hear that preening voice. It is unspeakable, that she taunts us in this way, after what she has done. I suppose I meant only that I would be more comfortable with some specific action." He stood up. "I am an old man, and I am accustomed to expressing myself in whatever manner I please. Sometimes I fear I am rude." Sears smiled at the boy. "That too might be morally offensive. But I hope that you live long enough to enjoy the pleasure of it."

If I ever need a lawyer, Don thought, you're the one I want.

It seemed to have worked for the boy as well. "I don't know if I'd have your style," Peter said, returning the old man's smile.