“I just love these old-fashioned oval tables, don’t you, darling?” she chattered. “It doesn’t quite fit in but I couldn’t bear to part with it. Or these wonderful old dishes.”
Gordon looked at the table and at the dishes. A faint twinge made his shoulders quiver under the port dressing gown Esther had given him as a home-coming gift, along with the slippers. It was as if someone were pinching his spinal cord with a fine pair of tweezers.
“Yes, dear,” he said.
He looked at the dinner plate with the blue turkey design on it and burst with a sudden desire to retch. But he forced a tepid smile and wrenched his eyes away from the table and the plates. Everything was to be so perfect tonight. He told himself grimly that he would eat off one of those turkey plates if it killed him.
Just before she served the beef casserole Esther clapped her hands in feminine glee. “I’ve got something to show you, darling! The most wonderful thing I found!”
Gordon smiled indulgently as she ran out of the room. He was famished after his long bus ride, but he could wait. Esther got so excited about these little surprises. She was so sweetly feminine.
His smile died when Esther wheeled in the baby buggy, the oversize baby buggy.
“Of course I had to have it repainted, and a new cover put on,” she prattled proudly, “Isn’t it divine? It’s so well made. Don’t look so shocked, darling! I told you I want to have children, and I’ve always adored the idea of having twins. I just know that our first—”
“Take it away!”
“Why, darling! Don’t be so provincial!”
“Take it away!” Gordon strangled.
“All right. Oh, I know why you’re so touchy. You’re hungry, poor darling.” She wheeled the buggy out in the hall. “I’ll hurry, dear. Dinner’s coming right up. It’s something very special, just for you!”
Gordon took his place at the table and tried to act like a new, happy husband. That the buggy was out of his sight helped. But here he was sitting at the same oval table, with those same round turkey plates staring him in the face. As she served Esther chattered on about her fondness for old dishes and silver. She held up a fork with an ornate handle. One of its tines was bent. Gordon stared.
“Isn’t it lovely, darling?”
Gordon shivered. That bent tine. It was Cousin Aubrey’s fork. He remembered the day it happened. He watched Esther put it in her mouth and shuddered.
“You haven’t touched your dinner, darling!” Esther chided. “And I spent all afternoon cooking it, just for you.”
Gordon looked down. “What—”
“Beef casserole, dear.”
The plate of tender, spiced meat swam before his eyes. Under the drifting wisps of steam the pieces of beef seemed to dry and rot, like—
He shut his eyes and recited Dr. Folliger’s litany of exorcism. It wasn’t my fault. The wind blew the door shut. I only thought I did it because…
“Silly me!” Esther exclaimed. “No wonder you’re not eating. You never eat beef casserole without horse radish. You must have told me that a dozen times. I’ll run right down and get it. I won’t be a moment, darling.”
Deep in his ghost-laying litany, Gordon didn’t even hear her. His eyes were closed tightly, he muttered the words over and over. Then he opened his eyes. He looked across the table at Esther.
He screamed.
Esther heard, him scream and slammed the refrigerator door shut hastily. Horse radish bottle in hand, she ran up the cellar steps. The door was shut. She turned the handle but it wouldn’t open. It was snap-locked from the other side.
Nellie Fawcett knew all about the honeymooners, and she thought it prudent to wait a couple days before she brought over some of her nice home-made strawberry jam for their breakfast. She poked her head in the open kitchen window when no one answered her knock.
“Woo-woo!” she called.
A thudding sound from the hall was her answer. Nellie Fawcett frowned and cocked her head. It came again. It was like before, like somebody beating on the cellar door. Nellie Fawcett pursed her lips and hiked her bulk over the sill. She waddled down the hill. Funny. Funny how Cousin Aubrey’s buggy had rolled down the hall and pushed the cellar door shut. She shoved it aside and opened the cellar door. Esther Keel fell into her arms, screaming, “Gordon! Gordon!”
They went in the dining room to find him. Why hadn’t he answered? She had screamed and screamed. He must have heard her. Esther’s fingers were torn, and the clotted blood on them matched the red streaks in the cellar door.
Why hadn’t Gordon heard her, and let her out? Why?
He was sitting at the table. After two days, he was still sitting there.
“Gordon!” she cried.
He looked up at her with lackluster eyes, then he looked back down at the plate of beef casserole in front of him. Then he started to babble and drool hopefully. Gordon was hungry.
GRAND-DAME’S GHOST STORY,
by C.D.
I don’t know whether you ever tell your children ghost stories or not; some mothers don’t, but our mother, though of German descent, was strong-minded on the ghost subject, and early taught all of her children to be fearless mentally as well as physically, and, though dearly fond of hearing ghost stories, especially if they were real true ghosts, we were sadly skeptical as to their being anything of the kind that could harm. We were quite learned in ghostly lore, knew all about “doppelgangers,” “Will o’ the Wisp,” “blue lights,” etc., and we could not have a greater treat for good behavior than for our mother to draw on her store of supernatural tales for our entertainment. The story I am about to relate she told us one stormy night, when, gathered round her chair in her own cozy sanctum, before a cheerful fire, we ate nuts and apples, and listened while she recited “an o’er true tale,” told her by her grandmother, who herself witnessed the vision:
It was a fearful night, the wind sobbed and wailed round the house like lost spirits mourning their doom; the rain beat upon the casements, and the trees, writhing in the torture of the fierce blast, groaned and swayed until their tops almost swept the earth; bright flashes of lightning pierced even through the closed shutters and heavy curtains, and the thunder had a sullen, threatening roar that made your blood creep. It was a night to make one seek to shut out all sound, draw the curtains close, stir the fire and nestle deep in the arm-chair before it, with feet upon the fender, and have something cheerful to think or talk about. But I was all alone; none in the house with me but the servants, and the servants’ wing was detached from the main part of the building, for I do not care to have menials near me, and I had no loved ones near.
It was just such a night that Nancy Black died. “What a fearful night for the soul to leave its earthly home and go out into the vast, unknown future!” I spoke aloud, as, rousing from a train of thought, I drew my heavy mantle closer round me, wheeled my arm-chair nearer the fire, and cuddled down in it, burying my feet in the foot-cushion to warm them, for I felt strangely cold. I was in the library; it was my usual sitting-room, for I seldom used the parlors. What was the use? My books were my friends, and I loved best to be with them. My children dead, or married and away, the cold, grand parlors always seemed gloomy and sad; the ghosts of departed pleasures haunted them, and I cared not to enter them.
It was a long, wide room across the hall from the parlors, running the whole length of the house, and was lined with shelves from floor to ceiling. My husband’s father had been a bibliomaniac, and my husband had had a leaning that way also, and the shelves held many an old rare work that was worth its weight in gold. The fire, though burning brightly, did not illume one-half the room of which, sitting in the chimney corner, I commanded a full view, and had been looking at the shadows playing on the furniture and shelves, as the flame shot up, and after flickering a moment, would die out, leaving a gloom which would break away into fantastic shadows as the firelight would again shoot up.