Ghost Story

S
~
:
Peter Straub
Copyright #Peter Straub 1979
All rights reserved
The right of Peter Straub to be identied as the
author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 1979
by Jonathan Cape
This edition published in Great Britain in 2008 by
Gollancz
An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martins Lane, London
WC2H 9EA
An Hachette Livre UK Company
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 575 08464 3
Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd,
Lymington, Hants
Printed and bound at CPI Mackays,
Chatham ME5 8TD
The Orion Publishing Groups policy is to use papers
that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and
made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging
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the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
www.orionbooks.co.uk

Prologue
Driving South
S
~
:
1
What was the worst thing youve ever done?
I wont tell you that, but Ill tell you the worst thing that ever
happened to me . . . the most dreadful thing. . .
2
Because he thought that he would have problems taking the
child over the border into Canada, he drove south, skirting the
cities whenever they came and taking the anonymous freeways
which were like a separate country, as travel was itself like a
separate country. The sameness both comforted and stimulated
him, so that on the rst day he was able to drive for twenty
hours straight through. They ate at McDonalds and at root-beer
stands: when he was hungry, he left the freeway and took a state
highway parallel to it, knowing that a drive-in was never more
than ten or twenty miles away. Then he woke up the child and
they both gnawed at their hamburgers or chili dogs, the child
never speaking more than to tell him what she wanted. Most of
the time she slept. That rst night, the man remembered the
light bulbs illuminating his license plates, and though this would
later prove to be unnecessary swung off the freeway onto a dark
country road long enough to unscrew the light bulbs and toss
them into a eld. Then he took handfuls of mud from beside the
road and smeared them over the plates. Wiping his hands on his
trousers, he went back around to the drivers side and opened
3
the door. The child was sleeping with her back straight against
the seat, her mouth closed. She appeared to be perfectly com-
posed. He still did not know what he was going to have to do to
her.
In West Virginia, he came awake with a jerk and realized that
for some seconds he had been driving in his sleep. Were going to
pull up and take a nap. He left the freeway outside of Clarksburg
and drove on a state road until he saw against the sky a red
revolving sign with the words PIONEERVILLAGE on it in white.
He was keeping his eyes open only by will power. His mind did
not feel right: it seemed that tears were hanging just behind his
eyes and that very soon he would involuntarily begin to weep.
Once in the parking lot of the shopping center, he drove to the
row farthest from the entrance and backed the car up against a
wire fence. Behind him was a square brick factory which manu-
factured plastic animal replicas for display for Golden Chicken
trucks. The factorys asphalt yard was half-lled with giant plastic
chickens and cows. In their midst stood a giant blue ox. The
chickens were unnished, larger than the cows and dully white.
Before him lay this nearly empty section of the lot, then
a thick cluster of cars in rows, and then the series of low
sandstone-colored buildings which was the shopping center.
Can we look at the big chickens? the girl asked.
He shook his head. Were not getting out of the car, were
just going to sleep. He locked the doors and rolled up the
windows. Under the childs steady unexpectant gaze he bent
over, felt under the seat and drew out a length of rope. Hold
your hands out, he said.
Almost smiling, she held out her small hands, balled into sts.
He pulled them together and wound the rope twice about her
wrists, knotted it, and then tied her ankles together. When he
saw how much rope was left, he held out the surplus with one
arm and roughly pulled the child to him with the other. Then
he wound the rope about them both, looping them together,
and made the nal knot after he had stretched out across the
front seat.
She was lying on top of him, her hands bunched in the middle
of his stomach and her head on his chest. She breathed easily
4
and regularly, as if she had expected no more than what he had
done. The clock on the dashboard said that it was ve-thirty,
and the air was just beginning to turn cooler. He hitched his legs
forward and leaned his head back against the headrest. To the
noises of trafc, he fell asleep.
And awakened it seemed immediately, his face lmed with
sweat, the faintly acrid, greasy odor of the childs hair in his
nostrils. It was dark now; he must actually have slept for hours.
They had gone undiscovered imagine being found in a shop-
ping center parking lot in Clarksburg, West Virginia, with a little
girl tied to your sleeping body! He groaned, shifted himself to
one side and woke the girl. Like him, she came immediately
into wakefulness. She bent back her head and regarded him.
There was no fear, only intensity in her gaze. He hurriedly
untied the knots, dragged the rope from around them; his neck
complained when he sat upright. You want to go to the bath-
room? he asked.
She nodded. Where?
Beside the car.
Right here? In the parking lot?
You heard me.
He thought again that she nearly smiled. He looked at the
girls intense small face, framed in black hair. Youll let me?
Im going to be holding onto your hand.
But you wont look? For the rst time, she showed concern.
He shook his head.
She moved her hand to the lock on her door, but he shook his
head again and took her wrist and held it tightly. Out on my
side, he said and pulled up his own lock and got out, still clutch-
ing the girls bony wrist. She began to edge sideways toward the
door, a girl of seven or eight with short black hair, wearing a
little dress of some thin pink material. On her otherwise bare
feet were faded blue canvas sneakers, fraying at the tops of the
heels. Childishly, she put one bare leg down rst and then wig-
gled around to swing the other out of the car.
He pulled her around to the factory fence. The girl bent her
head back and looked up. You promised. You wont watch.
I wont watch, he said.
5
And for a moment he did not watch, but let his head roll back
as she stooped, forcing him to lean sideways. His eyes drifted
over the grotesque plastic animals behind the fence. Then he
heard some fabric cotton moving over skin, and looked
down. Her left arm was extended so that she was as far from
him as she could get. The cheap pink dress was pulled up over
her waist. She too was looking at the plastic animals. When the
girl was nished, he took his eyes from her, knowing that she
would glance at him. She stood up and waited for him to tell her
what to do next. He pulled her back toward the car.
What do you do for a living? she asked.
He laughed out loud with surprise: this cocktail-party ques-
tion! Nothing.
Where are we going? Are you taking me someplace?
He opened the door and stood aside as she climbed back into
the car. Someplace, he said. Sure, Im taking you someplace.
He got in beside her, and she moved across the seat to the door.
Where?
Well see when we get there.
Again he drove all night, and again the girl slept most of the
time, coming awake to stare out the windshield (she always
slept sitting up, like a doll in her tennis shoes and pink dress) and
to ask him odd questions. Are you a policeman? she asked him
once, and then after seeing an exit sign, Whats Columbia?
Its a city.
Like New York?
Yes.
Like Clarksburg?
He nodded.
Are we always going to sleep in the car?
Not always.
Can I play the radio?
He said yes, and she leaned forward and twisted the knob.
The car was invaded by static, two or three voices speaking
at the same time. She punched another button and the same
crowded hiss erupted from the speaker. Twist the dial, he said.
Frowning, her face concentrated, she began slowly to turn the
6
selector. In a moment she had locked onto a clear signal, Dolly
Parton. I love this, she told him.
So for hours they drove south through the songs and rhythms
of country music, the stations weakening and changing, the disk
jockeys swapping names and accents, the sponsors succeeding
each other in a revolving list of insurance companies, tooth-
paste, soap, Dr Pepper and Pepsi-Cola, acne preparations, fu-
neral parlors, petroleum jelly, bargain wristwatches, aluminum
siding, dandruff shampoos: but the music remained the same, a
vast and self-conscious story, a sort of seamless repetitious epic
in which women married truckers and no-good gamblers but
stood by them until they got a divorce and the men sat in bars
plotting seductions and how to get back home, and they came
together hot as two-dollar pistols and parted in disgust and
worried about the babies. Sometimes the car wouldnt start,
sometimes the TV was busted; sometimes the bars closed down
and threw you out onto the street, your pockets turned inside
out. There was nothing that was not banal, there was no phrase
that was not a cliche, but the child sat there satised and passive,
dozing off to Willie Nelson and waking up to Loretta Lynn,
and the man just drove, distracted by this endless soap opera of
Americas bottom dogs.
Once he asked her, Have you ever heard of a man named
Edward Wanderley?
She did not reply but regarded him levelly.
Have you?
Whos he?
He was my uncle, he said, and the girl smiled at him.
How about a man named Sears James?
She shook her head, still smiling.
A man named Ricky Hawthorne?
Again she shook her head. There was no point in continuing.
He did not know why he had bothered to ask in the rst place. It
was even possible that she had never heard those names. Of
course she had never heard them.
Still in South Carolina, he thought that a highway patrolman
was following him: the police car was twenty yards behind,
7
keeping the same distance whatever the man did. He thought he
could see the state cop speaking into his radio; immediately he
cut his speed by ve miles an hour and changed lanes, but the
police car would not pass. He felt a deep trembling in his chest
and abdomen: he visualized the police car gaining on him,
turning on its siren, forcing him to the side of the road. Then
the questions would begin. It was about six in the afternoon,
and the freeway was crowded: he felt himself being drawn
helplessly along with the trafc, at the mercy of whoever was
in the police car helpless, trapped. He had to think. He was
simply being drawn on toward Charleston, pulled by the trafc
through miles of at scrubby country: suburbs were always
visible in the distance, miserable collections of little houses
with frame garages. He could not remember the number of the
freeway he was on. In the rear-view mirror, behind the long
row of cars, behind the police car, an old truck sent out a tall
column of black smoke through a chimneylike pipe beside the
engine. He feared the patrolman cruising up beside him and
shouting: Get over! And he could imagine the girl shouting,
her high tinny voice shouting, He made me come with him, he
ties me onto him when he sleeps! The southern sun seemed to
assault his face, to grind at his pores. The state patrolman swung
out into the next lane and began to draw up toward him.
Asshole, thats not your girl, who is that girl?
Then they would put him in a cell and begin to beat him,
working on him methodically with nightsticks, turning his skin
purple . . .
But none of that happened.
3
Shortly after eight oclock he pulled over to the side of the road.
It was a narrow country road, loose red dirt piled on the
shoulders, as if it had been only recently dug out of the earth.
He was no longer sure of what state he was in, South Carolina or
Georgia: it was as though these states were uid, as if they and
all the rest of them could leak over into one another, pushing
8
forward like the highways. It all looked wrong. He was in the
wrong place: no one could live here, no one could think here, in
this brutal landscape. Unfamiliar vines, green and ropelike,
struggled up the low bank beside his car. The fuel gauge had
been on E for the past half hour. All of it was wrong, all of it. He
looked at the girl, this girl he had kidnapped. She was sleeping in
that doll-like way, her back straight against the seat and her feet
in the ripped sneakers dangling above the oor. She slept too
much. Suppose she was sick; suppose she was dying.
She woke as he was watching her. I have to go to the bath-
room again, she said.
Are you okay? Youre not sick, are you?
I have to go to the bathroom.
Okay, he grunted and moved to open his door.
Let me go by myself. I wont run away. I wont do anything.
I promise.
He looked at her serious face, her black eyes set in olive skin.
Where could I go, anyhow? I dont even know where I am.
I dont either.
So?
It had to happen sometime: he couldnt hold on to her at
every moment. You promise? he asked, knowing the question
was foolish.
She nodded. He said, All right.
And you promise you wont drive away?
Yes.
She opened the door and left the car. It was all he could do
not to watch her, but it was a test, not to watch her. A Test. He
wished overwhelmingly that he had her hand trapped in his st.
She could be scrambling up the bank, running off, scream-
ing . . . but no, she was not screaming. It often happened that
the terrible things he imagined, the worst things, did not occur;
the world gave a hitch and things went back to the way they
had always been. When the girl climbed back into the car he
was ooded with relief it had happened again, no black hole
had opened up for him.
He closed his eyes and saw an empty freeway, divided by
white lines, unreeling before him.
9
I have to nd a motel, he said.
She leaned back into the seat, waiting for him to do whatever
he wanted. The radio was turned low, and sounds from a
station in Augusta, Georgia a silky, lilting guitar drifted out.
For a moment, an image leaped to his mind the girl dead, her
tongue protruding, her eyes bulging. She gave him no resist-
ance! Then for a moment he was standing it was as if he were
standing on a street in New York, some street in the East
Fifties, one of those streets where well-dressed women walk
sheepdogs. Because there was one of those women, walking
along. Tall, wearing beautifully faded jeans and an expensive
shirt and a deep tan, walking along toward him with her sun-
glasses pushed to the top of her head. A huge sheepdog padded
beside her, wagging its rump. He was nearly close enough to see
the freckles exposed by the undone top buttons of the womans
shirt.
Ah.
But then he was right again, he heard the low guitar music,
and before he switched on the ignition he patted the top of the
girls head. Have to get us a motel, he said.
For an hour he just continued, protected by the cocoon of
numbness, by the mechanics of driving: he was almost alone on
the dark road.
Are you going to hurt me? the girl asked.
How should I know?
You wont, I think. Youre my friend.
Then it was not as if he were on the street in New York, he
was on that street, watching the woman with the dog and the
suntan come toward him. Again he saw the little random
scattering of freckles below her collarbone he knew how it
would taste if he put his tongue there. As often in New York, he
could not see the sun, but he could feel it a heavy, aggressive
sun. The woman was a stranger, unimportant . . . he was not
supposed to know her, she was just a type . . . a taxi went by,
he was aware of iron railings on his right side, the lettering on
the windows of a French restaurant on the other side of the
street. Through the soles of his boots, the pavement sent up
heat. Somewhere above, a man was shouting one word over
10
and over. He was there, he was: a portion of his emotion must
have shown in his face, for the woman with the dog looked at
him curiously and then hardened her face and moved to the
outer edge of the sidewalk.
Could she speak? Could someone in whatever sort of experi-
ence this was utter sentences, audible ordinary human sen-
tences? Could you talk to the people you met in hallucinations,
and would they answer back? He opened his mouth. I have to
to get out, he was going to say, but he was already back in the
stalled car. A soggy lump that had once been two potato chips
lay on his tongue.
What was the worst thing youve ever done?
The maps seemed to show that he was only a few miles from
Valdosta. He drove unthinkingly on, not daring to look at the
child and therefore not knowing if she were awake or sleeping,
but feeling her eyes on him nonetheless. Eventually he passed a
sign which informed him that he was ten miles from the
Friendliest City in the South.
It looked like any southern town: a little industry on the way
in, machine shops and die-stampers, surreal groups of corrug-
ated metal huts under arc lights, yards littered with cannibal-
ized trucks; further in, wooden houses in need of paint, groups
of black men standing on corners, their faces alike in the dark;
new roads went scarring through the land, then ended abruptly,
weeds already encroaching; in the town proper, the teenagers
patrolling endlessly, vacantly in their old cars.
He passed a low building, incongruously new, a sign of the
New South, with a sign reading PALMETTO MOTOR-IN; he
reversed down the street back to the building.
A girl with upswept lacquered hair and candy-pink lipstick
gave him a meaningless, dead smile and a room with twin beds
for myself and my daughter. In the register he wrote: Lamar
Burgess, 155 Ridge Road, Stonington, Conn. After he handed
her a nights payment in cash, she gave him a key.
Their cubicle contained two single beds, an iron-textured
brown carpet and lime-green walls, two pictures a kitten
tilting its head, an Indian looking into a leafy gorge from a
11
clifftop a television set, a door into a blue-tiled bathroom. He
sat on the toilet seat while the girl undressed and got into bed.
When he peeked out to check on her, she was lying beneath a
sheet with her face to the wall. Her clothes were scattered on
the oor, a nearly empty bag of potato chips lay beside her. He
ducked back into the bathroom, stripped and got into the
shower. Which blessed him. For a moment he felt almost as
though he were back in his old life, not Lamar Burgess but
Don Wanderley, one-time resident of Bolinas, California, and
author of two novels (one of which had made some money).
Lover for a time of Alma Mobley, brother to defunct David
Wanderley. And there it was. It was no good, he could not get
away from it. The mind was a trap it was a cage that slammed
down over you. However he had got to where he was, he was
there. Stuck there in the Palmetto Motor-In. He turned off the
shower, all traces of the blessing departed.
In the little room, only the weak light over his bed to illu-
minate those ghostly surroundings, he pulled on his jeans and
opened his suitcase. The hunting knife was wrapped in a shirt,
and he unrolled it so the knife fell out on the bed.
Carrying it by the chunky bone handle, he crossed to the
girls bed. She slept with her mouth open; perspiration gleamed
on her forehead.
For a long time he sat beside her, holding the knife in his right
hand, ready to use it.
But this night he could not. Giving up, giving in, he shook her
arm until her eyelids uttered.
Who are you? he asked.
I want to sleep.
Who are you?
Go away. Please.
Who are you? Im asking, who are you?
You know.
I know?
You know. I told you.
Whats your name?
Angie.
Angie what?
12
Angie Maule. I told you before.
He held the knife behind his back so that she could not see it.
I want to sleep, she said. You woke me up. She turned her
back to him again. Fascinated, he watched sleep settle over her:
her ngertips twitched, her eyelids contracted, her breathing
changed. It was as if, to exclude him, she had willed herself to
sleep. Angie Angela? Angela Maule. It did not sound like the
name she had given him when he had rst taken her into the
car. Minoso? Minnorsi? Some name like that, an Italian name
not Maule.
He held the knife in both hands, the black bone handle
jammed into his naked belly, his elbows out: all he had to do
was thrust it forward and jerk it up, using all his strength . . .
In the end, sometime around three in the morning, he
crossed over to his bed.
4
The next morning, before they checked out, she spoke to him
while he was looking at the maps. You shouldnt ask me those
questions.
What questions? He had been keeping his back turned, at
her request, as she got into the pink dress, and he suddenly had
the feeling that he had to turn around, right now, to see her. He
could see his knife in her hands (though it was back inside the
rolled-up shirt), could feel it just beginning to prick his skin.
Can I turn around now?
Yeah, sure.
Slowly, still feeling the knife, his uncles knife, beginning to
enter his skin, he turned sideways on the chair. The girl was
sitting on her unmade bed, watching him. Her intense unbeauti-
ful face.
What questions?
You know.
Tell me.
She shook her head and would not say any more.
Do you want to see where were going?
13
The girl came toward him, not slowly but measuredly, as if
not wishing to display suspicion. Here, he said, pointing to a
spot on the map. Panama City, in Florida.
Will we be able to see the water?
Maybe.
And we wont sleep in the car?
No.
Is it far away?
We can get there tonight. Well take this road this one see?
Uh huh. She was not interested: she hung a little to one side,
bored and wary.
She said: Do you think Im pretty?
Whats the worst thing that ever happened to you? That you took
off your clothes at night beside the bed of a nine-year-old girl? That
you were holding a knife? That the knife wanted to kill her?
No. Other things were worse.
Not far over the state line and not on the highway he had
shown Angie on the map but on a two-lane country road, they
drew up before a white board building. Buddys Supplies.
You want to come in with me, Angie?
She opened the door on her side and got out in that childish
way, as if she were climbing down a ladder; he held the screen
door open for her. A fat man in a white shirt sat like Humpty
Dumpty on a counter. You cheat on your income tax, he said.
And youre the rst customer of the day. You believe that?
Twelve-thirty and youre the rst guy through the door. No, he
said, bending forward and scrutinizing them. Hell no. You
dont cheat Uncle Sam, you do worse than that. Youre the guy
killed four-ve people up in Tallahassee the other day.
What? he said. I just came in here for some food my
daughter
Gotcha, the man said. I used to be a cop. Allentown,
Pennsylvania. Twenty years. Bought this place because the
man told me I could turn over a hundred dollars prot a week.
Theres a lot of crooks in this world. Anybody comes in, I can
14
tell what kind of crook they are. And now I got you straight.
Youre not a killer. Youre a kidnapper.
No, I he felt sweat pouring down his sides. My girl
You cant shit me. Twenty years a cop.
He began to look frantically around the store for the girl.
Finally he saw her staring gravely at a shelf stocked with jars of
peanut butter. Angie, he said. Angie come on
Aw, hold on, the fat man said. I was just tryin to get a rise
out of you. Dont ip out or nothin. You want some of that
peanut butter, little girl?
Angie looked at him and nodded.
Well, take one off the shelf and bring it up here. Anything
else, mister? Course if youre Bruno Hauptmann, Ill have to
bring you in. I still got my service revolver around somewhere.
Knock you at, Ill tell you that for free.
It was, he saw, all a weary mockery. Yet he could scarcely
conceal his trembling. Wasnt that something an ex-cop would
notice? He turned away toward the aisles and shelves.
Hey, listen to this, the man said to his back. If youre in that
much trouble, you can just get the hell out of here right now.
No, no, he said. I need some things
You dont look much like that girl.
Blindly, he began taking things off the shelves, anything. A jar of
pickles, a box of apple turnovers, a canned ham, two or three other
cans he didnt bother to look at. These he took to the counter.
The fat man, Buddy, was staring at him suspiciously. You
just shook me up a little bit, he said to him. I havent had much
sleep, Ive been driving for a couple of days . . . Invention
blessedly descended. I have to take my little girl to her grand-
mother, shes in Tampa Angie swiveled around, clutching
two jars of crunchy peanut butter, and gaped at him as he said
this uh, Tampa, on account of her mother and me split up
and I have to get a job, get things put together again, right,
Angie? The girls mouth hung open.
Your name Angie? the fat man asked her.
She nodded.
This man your daddy?
He thought he would fall down.
15
Now he is, she said.
The fat man laughed. Now he is! Just like a kid. Goddam.
You gure out the brain of a kid, you got to be some kind of
genius. All right, nervous, I guess Ill take your money. Still
sitting on the counter, he rang up the purchases by bending to
one side and punching the buttons of the register. You better
get some rest. You remind me of about a million guys I took
into my old station.
Outside, Wanderley said to her, Thanks for saying that.
Saying what?: pertly, self-assuredly. Then again, almost
mechanically, eerily, ticking her head from side to side: Saying
what? Saying what? Saying what?
5
In Panama City he pulled into the Gulf Glimpse Motor Lodge, a
series of shabby brick bungalows around a parking lot. The
managers lodge sat at the entrance, a separate square building
like the others, with the exception of a large pane of plate glass
behind which, in what must have been ovenlike heat, a stringy
old man with gold-rimmed glasses and a mesh T-shirt was vis-
ible. He looked like Adolf Eichmann. The severe inexible cast
of the mans face made Wanderley remember what the ex-
policeman had said about himself and the girl: he did not, with
his blond hair and fair skin, look anything like the girls father.
He pulled up before the managers lodge and left the car, his
palms sweaty.
But inside, when he said that he wanted a room for himself
and his daughter, the old man merely glanced incuriously at the
dark-haired child in the car, and said, Ten-fty a day. Sign the
register. You want food, try the Eat-Mor down the road apiece.
Theres no cooking in the bungalows. You planning on staying
more than one night, Mr He swung the register toward him.
Boswell?
Maybe as long as a week.
Then youll pay the rst two nights in advance.
He counted out twenty-one dollars, and the manager gave
16
him a key. Number eleven, lucky eleven. Across the parking
lot.
The room had whitewashed walls and smelled of lavatory
cleaner. He gave it a perfunctory look around: the same iron
carpet, two small beds with clean but worn sheets, a television
with a twelve-inch screen, two awful pictures of owers. The
room appeared to have more shadows in it than could be
accounted for. The girl was inspecting the bed against the side
wall. Whats Magic Fingers? I want to try it. Can I? Please?
It probably wont work.
Can I? I want to try it. Please?
All right. Lie down on it. I have to go out to do some things.
Dont leave until I come back. I have to put a quarter in this slot,
see? Like this? When I get back we can eat. The girl was lying
on the bed, nodding with impatience, looking not at him but at
the coin in his hand. Well eat when I get back. Ill try to get
you some new clothes, too. You cant wear the same things all
the time.
Put in the quarter!
He shrugged, pushed the quarter into the slot and im-
mediately heard a humming noise. The child settled down onto
the bed, her arms fully extended, her face tense. Oh. Its nice.
Ill be back pretty soon, he said, and went back out into the
harsh sunlight and for the rst time smelled water.
The Gulf was a long way off, but it was visible. On the other
side of the road he had taken into town the land abruptly fell off
into a wasteland of weeds and rubble at its bottom bisected by a
series of railroad tracks. After the tracks another disused weedy
patch of land ended at a second road which veered off toward a
group of warehouses and loading sheds. Beyond this second
road was the Gulf of Mexico gray lathery water.
He walked down the road in the direction of town.
On the edge of Panama City he went into a Treasure Island
discount store and bought jeans and two T-shirts for the girl,
fresh underwear, socks, two shirts, a pair of khaki trousers and
Hush Puppies for himself.
Carrying two large shopping bags, he emerged from Treasure
17
Island and turned in the direction that was downtown. Diesel
fumes drifted toward him, cars with Keep the Southland Great
bumper stickers rolled by. Men in short-sleeved shirts and short
gray crewcuts moved along the sidewalks. When he saw a
uniformed cop trying to eat an ice-cream cone while writing
out a parking ticket, he dodged between a pickup truck and a
Trailways van and crossed the street. A rivulet of sweat issued
from his left eyebrow and ran into his eye; he was calm. Once
again, disaster had not happened.
He discovered the bus station by accident. It took up half a
block, a vast new-looking building with black glass slits for
windows. He thought: Alma Mobley, her mark. Once through the
revolving door, he saw a few aimless people on benches in a large
empty space the people always seen in bus stations, a few
young-old men with lined faces and complex hairdos, some
children racketing around, a sleeping bum, three or four teenage
boys in cowboy boots and shoulder-length hair. Another cop was
leaning against the wall by the magazine counter. Looking for
him? Panic started in himagain, but the cop barely glanced at him.
He pretended to check the arrivals-and-departures board before
moving, with exaggerated carelessness, to the mens room.
He locked himself into a toilet and stripped. After dressing up
to the waist in the new clothes, he left the toilet and washed
at one of the sinks. So much grime came off that he washed
himself again, splashing water onto the oor and working the
green liquid soap deep into his armpits and around the back of
his neck. Then he dried himself on the roller and put on one of
the new short-sleeved shirts a light blue shirt with thin red
stripes. All of his old clothes went into the Treasure Island bag.
Outside, he noticed the odd grainy grayish blue of the sky. It
was the sort of sky he imagined as hanging forever over the keys
and swamps much further south in Florida, a sky that would
hold the heat, doubling and redoubling it, forcing the weeds and
plants into fantastic growth, making them send out grotesque
and swollen tendrils . . . the sort of sky and hot disk of sun
which should always, now that he thought of it, have hung over
Alma Mobley. He stuffed the bag of old clothes in a trash barrel
outside a gun shop.
18
In the new clothes his body felt young and capable, healthier
than it had all through that terrible winter. Wanderley moved
down the shabby southern street, a tall well-built man in his
thirties, no longer quite aware of what he was doing. He rubbed
his cheek and felt that blond mans feathery stubble he could
go two or three days without looking as though he needed a
shave. A pickup driven by a sailor, ve or six sailors in summer
whites standing up in the rear of the truck, drove past him, and
the sailors yelled something something cheerful and private
and derisory.
They dont mean no harm, said a man who had appeared
beside Wanderley. His head, with an enormous hair-sprouting
wart dividing one eyebrow, came no higher than Wanderleys
breastbone. Theys all good boys.
He smiled and uttered a meaningless agreement and moved
away he could not go back to the motel, could not deal with
the girl; he felt as though he might faint. His feet seemed unreal
in the Hush Puppies too far down, too far from his eyes. He
found that he was walking rapidly down a descending street,
going toward an area of neon signs and movie theaters. In the
grainy sky the sun hung high and motionless. Shadows of
parking meters stood out, purely black, on the sidewalk: for a
moment he was certain there were more shadows than parking
meters. All the shadows hovering over the street were intensely
black. He passed the entrance to a hotel and was aware of a vast
brown empty space, a brown cool cave, beyond its glass doors.
Almost unwillingly, recognizing a dread familiar set of sensa-
tions, he went on in the terric heat: consciously he kept himself
from stepping over the shadows of the parking meters. Two
years before the world had gathered itself in this ominous way,
had been slick and full of intent after the episode of Alma
Mobley, after his brother had died. In some fashion, literally or
not, she had killed David Wanderley: he knew that he had been
lucky to escape whatever it was that took David through the
Amsterdam hotel window. Only writing had brought him back
up into the world; only writing about it, the horrid complicated
mess of himself and Alma and David, writing about it as a ghost
story, had released him from it. He had thought.
19
Panama City? Panama City, Florida? What was he doing
there? And with that strange passive girl he had taken with
him? Whom he had spirited down through the South?
He had always been the erratic one, the troubled one, the
foil to Davids strength, in the economy of family life his
poverty the foil to Davids success; his ambitions and pre-
tensions (You actually think you can support yourself as a
novelist? Even your uncle wasnt that dumb: his father) the
contrast to Davids hard-working good sense, to Davids steady
progress through law school and into a good law rm. And
when David had bumped into the daily stuff of his life, it had
killed him.
That was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
Until last winter: until Milburn.
The shabby street seemed to open like a grave. He felt as if
one more step toward the bottom of the hill and the sleazy
movie theaters would take him down, down, as if it would
never stop but turn into an endless falling. Something which had
not been there before appeared before him, and he squinted to
see it more clearly.
Breathlessly he turned around in the piercing sunlight. His
elbow caught someones chest, and he heard himself murmur-
ing sorry, sorry to an irritated woman in a white sunhat. He un-
consciously began to move quickly back up the street. Back
there, looking down to the intersection at the bottom of the hill,
he had momentarily seen his brothers tombstone: it had been
small, of purple marble, the words David Webster Wanderley,
19391975 carved into it, sitting in the middle of the intersection.
He ed.
Yes, he had seen Davids tombstone, but David had none. He
had been cremated in Holland, and his ashes own back to their
mother. Davids tombstone, yes, with Davids name, but what
sent him rushing back up the hill was the feeling that it was for
him. And that if he were to kneel in the middle of the inter-
section and dig up the cofn, within it he would nd his own
putrefying body.
He turned into the only cool, welcoming place he had seen,
the hotel lobby. He had to sit down, to calm himself; beneath
20
the disinterested regard of a desk clerk and a girl behind a mag-
azine counter, he sank down onto a sofa. His face was clammy.
The fabric of the sofas upholstery rubbed uncomfortably into
his back; he leaned forward, ran his ngers through his hair,
looked at his watch. He had to appear normal, as if he were just
waiting for someone; he had to stop trembling. Potted palm
trees had been placed here and there about the lobby. A fan
whirled overhead. A thin old man in a purple uniform stood by
an open elevator and stared at him: caught, he looked away.
When noises came to him he realized that since seeing the
tombstone in the middle of the intersection he had heard
nothing. His own pulse had drowned all other sound. Now the
efcient noises of hotel life oated in the humid air. A vacuum
cleaner hummed on an invisible staircase, telephones dimly
rang, the elevator doors closed with a soft whoosh. Around the
lobby, small groups of people sat in conversation. He began to
feel that he could face the street again.
6
Im hungry, she said.
I got you some new clothes.
I dont want new clothes, I want food.
He crossed the room to sit in the empty chair. I thought
youd get tired of wearing the same dress all the time.
I dont care what I wear.
Okay. He tossed the bag onto her bed. I just thought you
might like them.
She did not respond.
Ill feed you if you answer some questions.
She turned away from him and began picking at the sheets,
wrinkling them and smoothing them out.
Whats your name?
I told you. Angie.
Angie Maule?
No. Angie Mitchell.
21
He let it go. Why havent your parents sent the police out to
nd you? Why havent we been found yet?
I dont have any parents.
Everybody has parents.
Everybody except orphans.
Who takes cares of you?
You do.
Before me.
Shut up. Shut up. Her face became glossy and self-contained.
Are you really an orphan?
Shut up shut up shut up!
To stop her screaming he lifted the canned ham out of the
box of groceries. All right, he said. Ill get you some food.
Well have some of this.
Okay. It was as if she had never screamed. I want the
peanut butter too.
While he was slicing the ham she said, Do you have enough
money to take care of us?
She ate in her dedicated way: rst she bit off a mouthful of
ham, then dipped her ngers in the peanut butter and brought a
wad of it home and chewed the two together. Delicious, she
managed to utter around the food.
If I go to sleep, you wont leave, will you?
She shook her head. But I can take a walk, cant I?
I guess so.
He was drinking a can of beer from a six-pack he had picked
up at the little store on his way back; the beer and the food
together made him drowsy, and he knew that if he did not get
to bed, he would fall asleep in the chair.
She said, You dont have to tie me onto you. Ill come back.
You believe me, dont you?
He nodded.
Because where could I go? I dont have anywhere to go.
Okay! he said. Once again, he could not talk to her as he
wished: she was in control. You can go out, but dont be gone
too long. He was acting like a parent: he knew that she had put
him in this role. It was ludicrous.
He watched her go out of the mean little room. Later, rolling
22
over in bed, he dimly heard the door clicking shut and knew
that she had, after all, come back. So she was his.
And that night he lay on his bed, fully dressed, watching her
sleep. When his muscles began to ache from being held so long
in the same position, he shifted his body on the bed; in this way,
over a period of two hours, he went from lying on his side and
supporting his head on his hand to sitting up with his knees
raised and his hands crossed behind his head to leaning forward,
elbows on knees, and nally back to lying on his side, cocked up
on one elbow: as if all these postures were elements of a formal
round. His eyes scarcely ever left the girl. She lay absolutely still
sleep had taken her somewhere else and left only her body
behind. Simply lying there, both of them lying there, she had
escaped him.
He rose, went to his suitcase and took out the rolled-up shirt
and went back to stand beside his bed. He held the shirt by the
collar and let gravity carry the hunting knife to the bed, unroll-
ing the shirt as it fell. When it hit the bed it was too heavy to
bounce. Wanderley picked it up and hefted it.
Holding the knife once again behind his back, he shook the
girls shoulder. Her features seemed to blur before she turned
over and dug her face into the pillow. He grasped her shoulder
again and felt the long thin bone, the prominent wing jutting
out from her back. Go way, she muttered into the pillow.
No. Were going to talk.
Its too late.
He shook her, and when she did not respond, tried to roll her
over by force. Thin and small as she was, she was strong enough
to resist. He could not make her face him.
Then she turned over by herself, as if in contempt. Lack of
sleep showed in her face, but beneath the pufness she looked
adult.
Whats your name?
Angie. She smiled carelessly. Angie Maule.
Where do you come from?
You know.
He nodded.
23
What were your parents names?
I dont know.
Who took care of you before I picked you up?
It doesnt matter.
Why not?
They arent important. They were just people.
Was their name Maule?
Her smile became more insolent. Does it matter? You think
you know everything anyhow.
What do you mean, They were just people?
They were just people named Mitchell. Thats all.
And you changed your name yourself ?
So what?
I dont know. That was true.
So they looked at one another, he sitting on the edge of the
bed, holding the knife behind him and knowing that whatever
was going to happen, he would be unable to use it. He supposed
that David too had been unable to take life any life but his
own, if he had done that. The girl probably knew he was hold-
ing the knife, he thought, and simply dismissed it as a threat. It
was not a threat. He too was probably not a threat. She had
never been even apprehensive of him.
Okay, lets try again, he said. What are you?
For the rst time since he had taken her into the car, she
really smiled. It was a transformation, but not of a kind to make
him feel easier: she did not look any less adult. You know, she
said.
He insisted. What are you?
She smiled all through her amazing response. I am you.
No. I am me. You are you.
I am you.
What are you? It came out in despair, and it did not mean
what he had meant the rst time he asked it.
Then just for a second he was back on the street in New York,
and the person before him was not the stylish suntanned anon-
ymous woman, but his brother David, his face crumbled and his
body dressed in the torn and rotting clothing of the grave.
. . . the most dreadful thing . . .
24