Ghost Story (55 page)

"You ought to be in bed," Don said.

"Like the dickens I ought to be in bed! Can't you smell how
close
we're getting?"

"I can only smell eggs," Don said. "Peter, get some plates out of the cupboard."

"How many houses are there in the Hollow? Fifty? Sixty? No more than that. And she's
in
one of them."

"In there waiting for us," Don said, and Peter, putting plates on the Hawthorne's kitchen table, paused and set the final plate down more slowly. "And we must have had two feet of snow last night. It's still snowing. You wouldn't call it a blizzard anymore, but we could easily have another blizzard by this afternoon. There's a snow emergency over most of the state. Do you want to hike over to the Hollow and knock on fifty or sixty doors?"

"No, I want us to think," Ricky said, and carried the pan of eggs to the table and spooned a portion onto each plate. "Let's get some bread in the toaster."

When everything was ready, toast and orange juice and coffee, the three of them ate breakfast, following Ricky's lead. He seemed vibrant, sitting at the table in his blue dressing gown; almost elated. And he had obviously been thinking a great deal about the Hollow and Anna Mostyn.

"It's the one part of town we don't know well," Ricky said. "And that's why she's there. She doesn't want us to find her yet. Presumably she knows that her creatures are dead. For the moment, her plans have been delayed. She'll want reinforcements, either more like the Bates or more like herself. Stella got rid of the only other one around with a hatpin."

"How do you know he was the only other one?" Peter asked.

"Because I think we would have encountered any others, if they were here."

They ate in silence for a moment.

"So I think she's just holed up—in a vacant building, most likely—until more of them arrive. She won't be expecting us. She'll think we won't be able to move, in this snow."

"And she'll be vengeful," Don said.

"She might also be afraid."

Peter snapped his head up. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I helped kill her once before. And I'll tell you something else. If we don't find her soon, everything we have done will be wasted. Stella and the three of us bought time for the whole town, but as soon as outside traffic gets in ..." Ricky bit into a piece of toast. "Things will be even worse than before. She won't just be vengeful, she'll be rabid. Twice we've blocked her. So we'd better lay out everything we can come up with about the Hollow. And we'd better do it now."

"Wasn't it originally the place where the servants lived?" Peter asked. "Back when everybody had servants?"

"Yes," Ricky said, "but there has to be more. I'm thinking of what she said on Don's tape. 'In the places of your dreams.' We found one of those places, but I'm thinking that there must be another one, someplace where we could have been lured if we hadn't found Gregory and Fenny at the Rialto. But I just can't think..."

"Do you know anybody who lives there?" Don asked.

"Of course I do. I've lived here all my life. But I can't for the life of me see the connection ..."

"What did the Hollow used to be like?" Peter asked. "In the old days."

"In the old days? Back when I was a boy, you mean?

Oh, much different—much nicer. It was a lot cleaner than it is now. A bit raffish. We used to think of it as the Bohemian section of town. There was a painter who lived in Milburn then—did magazine covers. He lived there, and he had a splendid white beard and wore a cape—he looked just the way we thought painters should look. Oh, we used to spend a lot of time down there. Used to be a bar with a jazz band. Lewis liked to go there—had a little dancehall. Like Humphrey's place, but smaller and nicer."

"A band?" Peter asked, and Don too lifted his head.

"Oh, yes," Ricky said, not noticing their excitement. "Only a little six-eight piece band, pretty good for anything you'd hear out here in the sticks ..." He picked up the plates and took them to the sink; ran hot water over them. "Oh, Milburn was lovely in those days. We all used to walk for miles—down to the Hollow and back, hear some music, have a beer or two, take a hike out into the country ..." His arms deep in soapy water, Ricky abruptly ceased all movement. "Good Lord. I know. I know." Still holding a soapy plate, he turned toward them. "It was Edward. It was Edward, you see. We used to go down to see Edward in the Hollow. That was where he moved when he wanted his own apartment. I was in YPSL, my father hated that—" Ricky dropped the plate, and stepped unseeing over the shattered pieces—"and the owner was one of our first black clients. The building's still there! The town council condemned it last spring, and it's supposed to be demolished next year. We
got
Edward that apartment—Sears and I." He wiped his hands on his dressing gown. "That's it. I know that's it. Edward's apartment.
The place of your dreams."

"Because Edward's apartment ..." Don began, knowing that the old man was right.

"Was where Eva Galli died and our dreams began," Ricky said. "By God, we've got her."

"So you're sure you can find the place?" Peter asked.

"I'm reasonably sure," Ricky said. "Now, let's have a look at ourselves." They looked like three snowmen, padded out with so many layers of clothing. "Ah, hats. Well, I have a lot of hats." He fitted a high fur hat over Peter's head, put a red hunting cap that must have been half a century old on his own head, and told Don, "This one was always a little big on me." It was a soft green tweed, and it fitted Don perfectly. "Got it to go fishing with John Jaffrey. Wore it once. Hated fishing." He sneezed and wiped his nose with a peach tissue from his coat pocket. "In those days, I always preferred hunting."

But even before the weather changed, walking was difficult for them. Their feet began to feel the cold first, and their legs tired from the effort of wading through the deep snow. They soon gave up the luxury of speech —it took too much energy. Their breath condensed on the heavy wool scarves, and the moisture turned cold and froze. Don knew that the temperature was dropping faster than he'd ever seen it: the snow came down harder, his fingers tingled in the gloves, even his legs began to feel the cold.

And sometimes, when they turned a corner and looked down a street hidden by a long wide drift peaked up fifteen feet high, he thought the three of them resembled photographs of polar explorers—doomed driven men with blackened lips and frozen skin, small figures in a rippling white landscape.

Halfway to the Hollow, Don was sure that the temperature had reached several degrees below zero. His scarf had become a stiff mask over his face, varnished by his breath. Cold bit at his hands and feet. He and Peter and Ricky were just straggling past the square; lifting their feet out of deep snow and leaning forward to get distance on the next step. The tree the mayor and the deputies had set up in the square was visible only as scattered green branches protruding through a mountain of white. Clearing Main Street and Wheat Row, Omar Norris had buried it.

By the time they reached the traffic lights, the brightness had left the air and the piled snow no longer sparkled: it seemed as gray as the air. Don looked up and saw thousands of flakes swirling between dense clouds. They were alone. Down Main Street, the tops of a few cars sat like inverted saucers on the drifts. All the buildings were closed. New snow spun around them: the air was darkening to black.

"Ricky?" he asked. He tasted frozen wool: his cheekbones, open to the air, burned.

"Not far," Ricky gasped. "Keep on going. I'll make it."

"How are you doing, Peter?"

The boy peered out at Don from under the snow-crusted fur cap. "You heard the boss. Keep on going."

Ricky fell down backward, and sat up chest high in the snow like a doll. Peter bent down to offer him an arm. Don turned around to see if he could help, and felt the snowladen wind pound against his back. He called, "Ricky?"

"Just have to. Sit. For a little."

He breathed deeply, and Don knew how the cold would be scraping against his throat, how it would chill his lungs.

"No more than two-three blocks," Ricky said. "God my
feet."

"I just had a hell of a thought. What if she's not there?"

"She's there," Ricky said, and took Peter's hand and pulled himself up.
"It's
there. Few more blocks."

When Don turned back into the storm he could not see for a moment; then he saw thousands of fast-moving particles of white veering toward him, so close together they were like lines of force. Vast semitransparent sheets cut him off from Ricky and Peter. Only partially visible beside him, Ricky motioned him on.

Don was never sure when they crossed into the Hollow: in the storm, it was no different from the rest of Milburn. Perhaps the buildings seemed marginally shabbier: perhaps fewer lights shone dimly in the depths of rooms, seeming thousands of feet away. Once he had written in his journal that the area had a "sepia '30's prettiness": that seemed unutterably remote now. All was dark gray dirty brick and taped windows. But for the few dim lights flickering behind curtains, it seemed ominous and deserted. Don remembered other facile words he had written in his journal:
if trouble ever comes to Milburn, it won't start in the Hollow.
Trouble had come to Milburn, and here in the Hollow, on a sunny day in mid-October fifty years before, it had started.

The three of them stood in the weak light of a street lamp, Ricky Hawthorne tottering, squinting across the street at three identical high brick buildings. Even in the noises of the storm Don could hear him breathing. "Over there," Ricky said harshly.

"Which one?"

"Can't tell," Ricky said, and shook his head, causing a shower of snow to whirl off the red hunting cap. "Just can't." He peered up into the storm: pointed his face like a dog. The building on the right. Then back to the building in the middle. He raised the hand which held his knife and used it to point at the windows on the third floor. They were curtainless, and one was half-open. "There. Edward's apartment. Just there."

The street lamp over them died, and light faded all about them.

Don stared at the windows high up on the desolate building, half expecting to see a face appear there, beckoning toward them; fear worse than the storm froze him.

"Finally happened," Ricky said. "Storm blew down the power lines. You afraid of the dark?"

The three of them floundered across the drifted street.

"Coats," Don whispered, thinking that the sodden garments would slow them down; he lay the axe down in the dark, unbuttoned his coat and dropped it on the floor. Then the scarf, stinking of wet wool; his chest and arms were still constricted by the tight sweaters, but at least the heaviest weight no longer pulled at his shoulders. Peter too removed his coat, and helped Ricky with his.

Don saw their white faces hovering before him, and wondered if this was the last act—they had the weapons which had destroyed the Bate brothers, but the three of them were limp as rags. Ricky Hawthorne's eyes were closed: thrown back, its muscles lax, his face was a death mask.

"Ricky?" Don whispered.

"A minute." Ricky's hand trembled as he raised it to blow on his fingers. He inhaled, held the air for a long moment, exhaled. "Okay. You'd better go first. I'll bring up the rear."

Don bent down and picked up the axe. Behind him Peter wiped the blade of the Bowie knife against his sleeve. Don found the bottom step with his numb toe and climbed onto it. He glanced back. Ricky stood behind Peter, propping himself against the staircase wall. His eyes were closed again.

"Mr. Hawthorne, do you want to stay down here?" Peter whispered.

"Not on your life."

With the other two following him, Don crept up the first flight of steps. Once, three well-off young men just beginning their practices in law and medicine and a preacher's son of seventeen had gone up and down these stairs: each of them close to twenty in the century's twenties. And up these stairs had come the woman with whom they were infatuated, as he had been infatuated with Alma Mobley. He reached the second landing, and peeked around the corner to the top of the last flight of stairs. With part of his mind, he wished to see an open door, an empty room, snow blowing unnoticed into an empty apartment ...

What he saw instead made him pull back. Peter looked over his shoulder and nodded; and finally Ricky appeared on the landing to look up at the door at the top of the stairs.

A phosphorescent light spilled out from beneath the door, illuminating the landing and the walls a soft green.

Silently, they came up the final set of stairs into the phosphorescent light.

"On three," Don whispered, and cradled his axe just below the head. Peter and Ricky nodded.

"One. Two." Don gripped the top of the banister with his free hand.
"Three."

They hit the door together, and it broke open under their weight.

Each of them heard a single distinct word; but the voice delivering it was different for each of them. The word was
Hello.