Ghost Story

by Peter Straub

They frightened themselves each time they met, but they continued to meet because not to meet would have been more frightening yet.

Having survived the crises of youth and the middle years, they thought they had wisdom enough to meet the coming crises of age; having seen wars, adulteries, compromise and change, they thought they had seen most everything they would see—they’d make no larger claim. Yet there were things they had not seen, and which they would see in time.

And if the explanation seemed lunatic, perhaps it was—perhaps it was even wrong; but Peter’s story and the copy of The Watchtower proved that they had long since lurched into a time when madness offered a truer picture of events than sanity.

Hardesty went to the sink in his office, rinsed out his mouth, and bent down to look into the mirror. There was Rip van Shitstorm indeed, the famous hat-sucker, a sight which gave him no pleasure, and he was about to turn away when he finally recorded that behind him and to his left, just visible over his shoulder, the door to the utility cells was open wide. And that was impossible.