Chapter 14 -- Ghost Story

October 1952

Lillian looked up from her book as Jesse's headlights swept along the wall. She glanced at her watch; it was after ten. A little late to be keeping Joey out, but tomorrow is Saturday. Davy Sterrit was with them.

         “Davy’s sleeping over,” Joey announced. “He has to borrow pajamas. He can use my toothbrush."

         "He can not! There's a new toothbrush in the bathroom. He can have that."

         Jesse told them to get upstairs and get ready for bed right away. Davy had stayed over here a number of times and he knew the drill in Jesse's house.

         "You don't mind having Davy here do you, Mom? He's afraid to go home."

         "Afraid? What's he done?"

         "Nothing, but the kids scared themselves. You know that game where the children sit in a circle and tell a ghost story and each one adds something? I couldn't believe all that was coming out of the minds of little children! If I had known where it was going I wouldn't of let them play that game."

         She asked, "What kind of stuff?"

         "Oh they had a ghost that choked people with its moldy hands, that kind of thing! I think they intended to scare the girls but they scared themselves too. I thought it was a good idea to bring Davy here. For one thing Joey’s less apt to come climbing in with me later on when he gets to thinking about ghosts."

         There was a sound of laughter and running overhead. "I better get that settled down before they have themselves too wound up to sleep if they aren't already." There was more noise upstairs and he headed up there to see what he could do about it.

         After prayers he told Joey, “All right get in and get over." Joey rolled toward the wall to make room for Davy. Jess told them, "And no horsing around okay? I have to get up early in the morning." He pulled up the covers and went to his room.

         Joey, of course, knew exactly how far he dared to push Jess. They could talk a while, and he would tell them to shut up and go to sleep several times before he was really ready to come in there and deal with it. Jesse's bark was way worse than his bite, but that still left room for a respectable bite.

         Davy said, "How did you like having the girls at the party?"

         "They brought the food."

         "You were talking to Minta June. Is she your girl friend?"

         Joey yanked the pillow out from under Davy's head and hit him with it. Davy appropriated Joey's pillow and returned the compliment and Jess appeared in the doorway. Pillows went back where they belonged and having admonished the boys Jess went back to his room.
         Davy said, "How could he hear pillows?"

         "He can hear feathers."

         Davy said "The girls were scared when we told the story."

         Joey wondered if that was so, since some of the more gruesome elements had come from the girls themselves. and from where he sat Davy had been scared too.

         Joey said, "You were scared."

         "No I wasn't but you were."

         "Was not! I don't believe in ghosts."

         Davy sat up. "There could be ghosts, Joe."

         “Could not!”

         “Yes, there could. Maybe if you don’t believe in them they might come around to prove it!”

         Joey didn't like sound of that but he still said, “Jess says there’s no such thing.”

         "When my grandmother was a girl, they lived in a house that had a ghost."

         Joey had never heard this subject discussed with any seriousness, but a grandmother is a reliable source. "How did they know there was a ghost?"

         "There used to be a crazy man who lived in the third floor ~ "

         "Why would they let a crazy man live in the third floor?"

         "Because he was my grandmother's uncle. And they promised his mother not to put him in the state hospital and anyway, after he died, they could still hear him walking around up there at night making the floor boards creak."

         "If a ghost doesn't weigh anything how can it creak the floorboards?"

         Davy had no answer for that. "There was another ghost my grandmother knew about, too, you couldn't see it but it rocked in a rocking chair. It would just start rocking, my grandmother saw it do it. My grandmother told lots of ghost stories, and they were all true!"

         Joey remembered that once, in a fit of pique, Jess had remarked that the whole Sterrit family was as batty as an old barn. He took it back immediately and apologized for saying it but Joey heard it and remembered it.

         He asked Davy, "Like what? Tell me one."

         "Well, she knew about this old lady that had a pearl necklace made out of real pearls worth a lot of money. So she wanted to be buried with it on."

         "Why would she want to be buried?"

         "Not right away, Stupid! Later, when she died. But the family thought it would be a waste to bury something that valuable, so they buried her in some cheap fake pearls and gave the real ones to her sister." Davy lowered his voice. "But whenever she wore the pearls they felt clammy -- "

         "Clammy? Wouldn't they feel oystery? I mean pearls come from oysters -- "

         "Come on, Joe. This is a true story so if you're just going to make jokes -- "

         Joey promised no more jokes.

         Davy continued, "So like I said, the pearls felt all cold and clammy, and when she wore them and she always felt like something was following her around. Then one night she woke up and there was something cold in the corner of her room."

         "What?" Joey asked in a very small voice, looking around at the corners of his own room.

         "Well she couldn't see anything but a kind of dark thing, and there was a voice saying 'give me my pearls.'" Davy said this last in a sepulchral whisper.

Joey said, “Gosh!”

         Davy went on. "She threw the pearls into the corner and in the morning they were gone. But when they dug up the old lady the pearls were around her neck bones."

         Joey didn't ask for any more stories. He had a really creepy feeling that he didn't like at all. He started crawling across Davy's feet.

         "Where are you going?" Davy asked.

         "To the john," said Joey.

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

         The hallway was dark and Joey's flashlight made funny shadows he had never noticed before. Suddenly the big friendly house seemed strange and eerie. Joey had never had any fear of the dark, but tonight it seemed to him that there was something unnatural in every corner. He gripped Davy's wrist with a gelid hand. "Did you hear that?"

         "Y - yes, what was it?"

         Joey didn't know but there it was again, a sort of metallic sound. It was coming from downstairs.

         "Something's down there," whispered Davy.

         They heard it again, and this time they ran to Jess's room. Joey said "Wake up Jess! There’s a ghost downstairs!"

         Jess put up his hand to shade his eyes from Joey's flashlight. He said, "There is no ghost; go back to bed."

         Then it became clear to him even in his half-awake state, that in order to get any sleep at all he was going to have to sort this out. He sat up and put on the light. "All right tell me what makes you think there's a ghost downstairs?"

         "We heard it!" Joey told him.

         "It's dragging a chain," said Davy.

         "All right, I'll go see. Don't wake up your grandmother."

         "You aren't going down there are you?" Joey protested.

         Jess was putting on his slippers. "Don't be dumb, Joey."

         He went down the stairs and was back after a moment. He put something in Joey's hand. "There's your ghost." It was Lillian's tea ball, a little metal thing you filled with tea leaves and put in a pot of boiling water to make tea. Jess told them “It was on the floor and the cat was playing with it." They looked unconvinced so he took it from Joey and rolled it along the floor with a rattly metal sound. "That's what you heard, wasn't it?" They admitted it was but they still did not look like going back to bed.

         Now he knew the kids were really scared and his chances of a night's sleep were dwindling unless he could unscare them. So he said, "All right what is going on here?"

         Joey said “The ghost stories.”

         “You guys made that stuff up out of your own heads, that wasn’t true!”

         “Davy told me some things that are true.”

         “Like what?”

         So Joey told him about the ghost that creaked floorboards, and Jess said, "Every old house has its own noises. This one does, too."

         So they told him about the rocking chair, and Jess asked Davy if the house where his grandmother lived was near the tracks. (He knew it was.) "A train going by could vibrate the house and make the chair rock, couldn't it? All right next case."

         They told him about the pearls.

         "You know that's a story. If the woman had a guilty conscience about it, that would make her imagine things, wouldn't it?" He knew the boys could not have reached the age of nine without having had a guilty conscience at least once. So they conceded that much. "And as for digging up the dead, it's against the law, it can't be done, you have to get lawyers and court orders and warrants and I don't know what all, and you have to have a very good reason. So that's a story."

         Davy said, "Gramma wouldn't lie."

         "No but maybe somebody told it to her and she believed it. So, are you guys okay now? Go back to bed! I have the county agent coming in the morning. I need to get some sleep!"

         Davy had one more question. "Then where did the pearls go?"

         "Maybe she lost them and she didn't want to admit it so she made up a story."

         That was logical; they could live with that. They went back into Joey's room and let him tuck them in. "Don't make me come back in here tonight," he advised.

         He returned to his room kicked off his slippers and got back into bed. But now he discovered he couldn't sleep. There was a kind of disagreeable fascination about the pearl story, especially the part about the cold dark thing that talked. He would never admit it in a thousand years but now he was a little edgy. He knew that sometimes drinking hot milk would make you sleepy so he was ready to try anything. He didn't want to get the kids up again and he didn't want to wake Lillian. Going down the stairs in the dark was no problem. He got to the bottom and reached for the light switch. But there was already a hand on the switch. Jess let out a cry and jumped back. Something heavy and soft engulfed him.
         The light came on then and he saw Lillian, looking pale and shaken. He had jumped back against the coat rack and his own coat had fallen on him.

         "Jesse, what is wrong with you? Prowling around in the dark like that!" She went into the kitchen. "I heard the boys wake you up, and then I saw your light was still on so I thought I'd get you some hot milk. Now I think I need some, too."

         She opened the fridge and at that moment the boys came down the stairs. Joey stood blinking at the light. "What's going on?"

         "Nothing, we're just going to get a drink of milk."

         The boys came into the kitchen. "Can we have some?" Joey asked. "And cookies?"

         Jesse said something under his breath that sounded like "oh why not?" and Joey went to get the cookie canister.

         Sitting at the kitchen table with his mouth full of peanut butter cookies, Davy said "I like sleeping over here; you guys have fun at night!"