Ghost Story

Don tells the story of Alma Mobley. He explains that Dr. Rabbitfoot is just Alma “in blackface” (233), with horns and a soundtrack of jazz music. Rachel Varney, the female antagonist of his last novel, was also Alma in fancy dress.

Don met Alma while he was guest teaching at Berkeley. He taught creative writing and occasionally guest lectured for other faculty members. Don initially began a relationship with one of the other graduate students but broke it off for Alma, who seemed to glow with Southern beauty. Don took her to a fancy restaurant and he learned that she studied in Chicago. He felt irrelevant to her, as if she was just passing time with him. Don learned that she had a connection to the occult society of Northern California, the X. X. X. Alma was well-read and well-travelled, self-contained, and self-confident. Their affair consumed his time, causing him to neglect his position at Berkeley. Alma confided that she was almost completely detached from popular culture. Don describes her as sexually awakened and rich.

The two carried on their affair, though Don started to see Alma in glimpses as separate from the usual. She seemed timeless and androgynous, almost not quite human. Alma told Don he had been approved of, though she does not say by whom or what. Don shook off the annoying mystery and tried to focus on his work. Alma then asked if he would like to get married.

One day, after Alma told Don she was going to San Francisco, Don saw Alma outside a rough bar talking to a vulpine man. He is overcome with jealousy and fear for her safety and called her to ask who she was meeting. She explains that she came back from San Francisco because she was bored and didn’t tell him so he could work. She says the man she was meeting was an old neighbor named Greg Benton, so he tried to let it go. She invited him over, Don writes that two strange things happened that night: He felt a shock of revulsion at her touch and had a nightmare that left him with a deep sense of anxiety.

After that night, the couple continued to discuss the future. Don brought up the approval that, it turns out, was given from Alma’s dead fiancé . Alma confessed to still communicating with the man she almost married, named Tasker Martin. Tasker approved of Don, but Tasker deeply disturbed Don. Alma told Don that the three of them would have a beautiful marriage. Don explains the oddness as “she suggested a world in which advisory ghosts and men who were disguised wolves could exist […] I do not mean that she made me believe in the paraphernalia of the supernatural; but that she suggested that such things might be fluttering invisibly about us” (267). Alma introduced Don to a world with a thin membrane between reality and ghosts. He felt as if this was all a game to her, while he felt it was a fantasy. He was further pulled from his work, and his next guest lecture was a disaster.

After Don told David about Alma, they traveled to David’s place in Still Valley. Don describes David’s “cottage” as an expensive toy. Alma said the house looked like New Orleans, where she lived for a time. The cottage was filled with all the modern conveniences. Don, instead of feeling relaxed, felt trapped the three nights they spent there. He began to shudder at the idea of a future with her. Don felt nothing but dread when she spoke of their future together. Don woke in the middle of the night to see Alma staring out the window and she told him that she is a ghost. She did not respond as Don told her to come back to bed.

Don and Alma returned to Berkeley, where Don’s boss informed him that he would not be asked to stay on after his disastrous lecture. Alma stood him up for a lunch date, Don writes, then she disappeared entirely. He sunk into a depression after finding her apartment bare. Don’s boss called him in to ask him why he was not showing up for work. Don told him about his sickness and asked about the professor in Chicago with whom Alma had an affair. Don learned that the man left his wife and children and then killed himself because of a girl. Don then tried to contact Alma’s aunt, Mrs. de Peyser, only to reach a woman who said she had no niece.

In April, David called to tell Don that he was engaged—to Alma Mobley. Don could barely contain his shock and dismay. David assured Don that their relationship was solid and that he loved Alma. Don cut off contact for a month or so, then David called to tell him that he an Alma were going to Amsterdam. Don told him to be careful. Four days later, Don received news of David’s suicide. When Don asks about Alma, no one in David’s office knew about her. Don flew to get his brother’s ashes and returned to Berkeley. He turned the events into his novel, The Nightwatcher. He suffered from hallucinations of his brother and found a biography of the painter Alma claimed was her father, who had no daughters.

Don closes the section by writing that he is no longer sure his novel and the stories are not connected to the strange happenings in Milburn. He resolves to find out what caused his brother’s death.

Chapter 3 begins with an epigraph of Narcissus gazing in a pool, crying over his lost innocence. The narrative opens with Don’s note about three dead dairy cows, killed the same way as the sheep. Mr. Clyde, the dairy farmer, reports seeing “something which scared him so badly that he felt as though the wind were knocked out of him” (291). Some of the townsfolk blame aliens, though the County Farm Agent blames a wolf. Elmer Scales, the sheep farmer, begins sleeping with a shotgun in his barn. Sherriff Hardesty hunkers down in the spare room behind his office with a bottle of whiskey beside his cot, full of suspicion about the Chowder Society.

While Don writes his story about Alma, the narrative catches up to what the residents of Milburn have been doing. Milly sees John standing in her yard when she goes to put up the storm windows. He tells her to warn the others to leave and that the other side is awful, and she faints. She comes to and blames her imagination on Sears’s ghost stories. Snow continues to fall heavily, and Jim Hardie and Peter Barnes drink together while Jim brags about sleeping with Anna Mostyn. Stella contemplates breaking off her current affair with Milly’s nephew, Harold Sims. When Harold begins rambling about the Manitou, Stella asks what a Manitou is, but doesn’t pay attention to his answer. Ricky sees a man kicking a barefoot boy in the town square, and is startled when they look at him strangely when he attempts to intervene. Anna Mostyn smokes in the dark looking out her hotel window. Two more cows and a horse are slaughtered.

Freddy Robinson, an insurance salesman, wrote a policy for the horse, so he and the sheriff went to view the body. The Dedham girls had run the horse farm since their brother, Stringer, died after his arms were shredded by a wheat thresher. The girls swear he saw something out by the thresher that caused him to walk out that night, something to do with his fiancée, Eva Galli. Freddy reflects on how he was led to sell the policy for the horse. Freddy, who had great admiration bordering on obsession for the Chowder Society and Lewis Benedikt in particular, imagines reaching out to the gentlemen and being welcomed into their inner circle. When Freddy arrives at the Dedhams’ home, the older sister wastes no time in blaming Jim Hardie for the horse’s death.

The narrative switches to Peter as he rides in Jim’s car over the back roads around Milburn. Jim admits that he never had sex with Anna Mostyn, and he tells Peter that he wants to look at her. He grabs a telescope from underneath his seat as he stops the truck outside of a church. Jim unlocks the church and they go up to the bell tower. From there, they spy on Anna, who is sitting in the darkness smoking. Jim says he knows there is something wrong with her. They watch as Anna makes her way out of the hotel.

The boys follow Anna as she meets with Freddy in an old railroad station. They watch from a distance, then begin to creep closer. The ground begins to shake beneath them, and the moment is broken as Jim lurches forward and Freddy screams. Jim tells Peter that a barefoot kid was sitting on top of the building watching him. He says that he thinks Freddy is dead, so they must be each other’s alibi.

Anna Mostyn asks Sears and Ricky to help her move into Freddy’s old home with the help of a savings account she has in San Francisco. The younger Dedham sister sees her older sister being followed by a figure as she does her chores. Unable to speak because of paralysis, she waits for her sister to return. Her sister never returns and Nettie thinks the man who followed her sister looked like her dead brother Stringer.

Peter discusses Jim with his father, who disapproves of his friend. His dad tells him of Rea Dedham’s murder. On his way to school, Peter sees a man in a peacoat and hat staring at him. He turns away to see a small child perched on a headstone watching him and Peter runs.

Don goes to the hospital to interview Nettie Dedham. Ricky thinks there might be a connection between Rea’s death and the Chowder Society’s drama. Don, pleased to get out of Milburn, goes to represent the Chowder Society. He finds Sheriff Hardesty at the hospital, who asks him why he’s there, along with Ned Rowles, the newspaper editor. The men chat, waiting for the doctor. Ned tells Don that Rea’s arms were severed, and she bled to death.

The story returns to Peter and Jim as Jim plans on breaking into Anna Mostyn’s new home. Jim says that there must be something hidden in the house that she killed Freddy to get. Jim plans to go and ring the bell. They notice that half the town does not have power and they assume the snow knocked the lines down.

The boys ring the bell and knock, but there is no answer. Jim seems certain the house stands empty and breaks the back window to enter. Peter follows Jim and they creep through the house using matches to light their way. The lights come on and they hear someone calling a hello to them. A man at the bottom of the house’s staircase removes his glasses to show uniform gold yellow eyes.

Don hears music as his phone rings. Sears hears his phone ring as soon as he chooses to ignore footsteps he thinks he hears in his house. Lewis hears his wife calling on the wind, her voice broken by the phone’s ring. Ricky called the men to come to his house. They sit in the living room discussing events and how they have come to a focus upon Don’s arrival. Lewis drinks whiskey as Don tells the Chowder Society his ghost story about Alma Mobley. Then men realize that they have each seen Gregory Bate. Lewis, drunk, laughs.

Back at Anna Mostyn’s house, Peter tries to get Jim to stop gaping at the man. When Peter makes eye contact with the man, he hears his voice in his head telling him to relax. Peter turns, leaving Jim, and runs, glancing back to see the man slam Jim’s head into the wall. Peter meets Freddy on his way to the door, but as he makes contact, Freddy dissipates. Peter runs all the way home.

In Ricky’s house, the men discuss their options. Don tells them what he thinks Nettie was trying to say: Stringer. Lewis, Sears, and Ricky look at each other. Don tells them that is there is another story, and that he wants to hear it at his uncle’s house. Ricky says it will be the final meeting of the Chowder Society.

Peter, meanwhile, makes it home safe. He tries to push Jim out of his mind and Peter’s dad thinks Jim has gone to New York, happy that he’s gone.

The Barnes’s dinner party is marred by continuing snow, causing immense drifts that require the plow to run constantly. Peter dresses in a tie and jacket and he helps his parents prepare for the party and greet guests. Peter spends the next hour hosting and helping his mom in the kitchen. He overhears his mom talking to Lewis on the phone and realizes the two are having an affair.

Upon his introduction to Don, Don realizes that Peter heard the jazz music as well. Peter freezes as his dad introduces him to Anna Mostyn.

Don continues his journal entry and speculates that Milburn is about to blow up. Don makes the connection between Anna Mostyn and Alma Mobley’s initials. Don resolves to burn his Dr. Rabbitfoot pages.