R. Lafferty - The 7th Ghost Story Megapack

The policeman raised his gaze and looked at the television set over the bar. He stopped thinking about the long stairway, the broken heel, Murgy, and various possibilities. His mind snapped to what he was seeing on the TV set.

A local newscaster with doleful face was talking about her, her death. He was only a two dimensional image and she could sense nothing about him from this point. He was taking considerable time, and she could only guess that he was talking about her background, her family. There were some old newspaper pictures, one taken when she’d been helping raise money for the crippled children’s hospital. She hadn’t wanted any publicity for that, and she wished the newscast were less thorough.

There was a sudden disturbance down the bar. A fat man with a bald head and drink-flushed face was giving the TV set the Bronx cheer.

Janet felt quick displeasure. Really, I was never the rich, degenerated hussy you’re making me out, mister.

The force of the mental explosion back down the bar caused Janet to rise to the ceiling. She saw that the fat man’s exhibition had also disturbed her young policeman. He slammed out of the bar. And he was so mad he started across the street without looking.

Janet became a silent scream.

He looked up just in time to see the taxi hurtle around the corner. He tried to get out of the way. He’d had a drink too many.

Instantaneously, he became an empty shell of flesh and blood, shortly destined to become dust, lying broken in the middle of the street. A terrified but innocent cabbie was emerging from his taxi, and a small crowd was pouring out of the bar to join him.

This was defeat, Janet knew. Never had a defeat of the flesh been so agonizing. The stars could have been hers. Now the stars would have to wait, for a long, long time. For as long as Murgy lived. It wasn’t the waiting that would be so hard. It was this entrapment in incompleteness, this torture, this unspeakable pain of being inescapably enmeshed in cosmic injustice.

She took her misery to the darkest shadow she could find and lurked there awhile, until the scene in the street had run its course, from arrival to departure of the police.

A bitter thought wave her propulsion, she returned to the estate. She filtered through the roof and hovered in the foyer.

While there had been hope, the foyer’s full capacity for torture had not reached her. Now she felt it.

“Hello, Beautiful.”

Where had the thought come from? She swirled like a miniature nebula.

“Take it easy I’m right here.”

He swirled beside her. Her policeman .

“You!”

“Sure. I was so amazed at where I found myself I didn’t get to you while you were hiding near the accident. You know, you feel even more beautiful than you looked.”

“Why, thanks for the compliment. And your own homeliness, fellow, was all of the flesh. But don’t you concern yourself with me.”

“Why not?”

“I’m stuck here. You didn’t catch Murgy.”

“I had a hunch about that guy…”

“Hunch? Hah! It was me trying to get the guilt of the old boy across to you.”

“Really? Well, I was going to keep an eye on him.”

“I was after you to do that, too. See, I caught him stealing my jewels.”

“I had to go and ruin everything!”

“But you didn’t mean to barge in front of that cab.”

“Just the same, I’ll spend eternity being sorry. Sure you can’t come with me?”

“Nope. Just go quickly.”

He was gone. She felt his unwilling departure. It was the final straw of torture.

“Look, honey, my name’s Joe.”

He was back.

“I got this idea. It’s worth a try at least.”

It was so good having him back.

“My superior officer, Lieutenant Hal Dineen. He’s the sharpest, most tenacious cop ever to carry a badge. That report of mine, to start with, is going to raise a question in his mind. The same facts you were trying to get over to me are there for him to find. I just bounced over to headquarters and back. Just a look told me my fray with that taxi has knocked his mental guards to smithereens. He was at his desk, reading that last report of mine. If you alone could do what you did, consider what the two of us trying real hard can do if we hit Dineen, in his present state, with full thought force.”

Janet bounced to the rooftop. Joe was beside her.

“Janet, Dineen is razor sharp at playing hunches. He believes in them. All set to hit him with the grandfather of all hunches, the results of which he’ll talk about for a lifetime?”

“Let’s.” Let’s, darling .

Lieutenant Hal Dineen was talking to a fellow officer, “I dunno. Just one of those things. Comes from being a cop, I guess, from having the old subconscious recognize and classify information the eyes, ears, and hands miss. Just a hunch I had about this old family retainer. We all get em—these hunches. Me, especially, I’m a great one for em. And this one I couldn’t shake and so I figured…”

I am not an imaginative man, and no one who knows me can say that I have ever indulged in sentimental ideas upon any subject. I am rather predisposed, in fact, to look at everything from a purely practical standpoint, and this quality has been further developed in me by the fact that for twenty years I have been an active member of the detective police force at Westford, a large town in one of our most important manufacturing districts. A policeman, as most people will readily believe, has to deal with so much practical life that he has small opportunity for developing other than practical qualities, and he is more apt to believe in tangible things than in ideas of a somewhat superstitious nature. However, I was once under the firm conviction that I had been largely helped up the ladder of life by the ghost of a once well-known burglar. I have told the story to many, and have heard it commented upon in various fashions. Whether the comments were satirical or practical, it made no difference to me; I had a firm faith at that time in the truth of my tale.

Eighteen years ago I was a plain clothes officer at Westford. I was then twenty-three years of age, and very anxious about two matters. First and foremost I desired promotion; second, I wished to be married. Of course I was more eager about the second than the first, because my sweetheart, Alice Moore, was one of the prettiest and cleverest girls in the town; but I put promotion first for the simple reason that with me promotion must come before marriage. Knowing this, I was always on the lookout for a chance of distinguishing myself, and I paid such attention to my duties that my superiors began to notice me, and foretold a successful career for me in the future.

One evening in the last week of September, 1873, I was sitting in my lodgings wondering what I could do to earn the promotion which I so earnestly wished for. Things were quiet just then in Westford, and I am afraid I half wished that something dreadful might occur if I only could have a share in it. I was pursuing this train of thought when I suddenly heard a voice say, “Good evening, officer.”

I turned sharply around. It was almost dusk and my lamp was not lighted. For all that, I could see clearly enough a man who was sitting by a chest of drawers that stood between the door and the window. His chair stood between the drawers and the door, and I concluded that he had quietly entered my room and seated himself before addressing me.

“Good evening!” I replied. “I didn’t hear you come in.”