Ghost Story

by Peter Straub

Lewis could smell the sheriff’s breath—half beer and half some terrible foulness, as if he’d been eating garbage.

“Oh, Harold, you are being insufferably banal,” she exploded. “Do you want to live in a trailer park? Eat tacoburgers?

I went to California, where they believed in mysticism. They didn’t drown witches, they gave them talk shows.”