Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

When I came downstairs to recharge my iced-tea glass late Wednesday morning, Brenda Meserve had erected the laundry whirligig on the back stoop and was hanging out my clothes. This she did as her mother had no doubt taught her, with pants and shirts on the outside and undies on the inside, where any passing nosyparkers couldn’t see what you chose to wear closest to your skin. “You can take these in around four o’clock,” Mrs. M. said as she prepared to leave. She looked at me with the bright and cynical eye of a woman who has been “doing for” well-off men her entire life. “Don’t you forget and leave em out all night—dewy clothes don’t ever feel fresh until they’re warshed again.” I told her most humbly that I would remember to take in my clothes. I then asked her—feeling like a spy working an embassy party for infor-mation-if the house felt all right to her. “L&ll right how?” she asked, cocking one wild eyebrow at me. “Well, I’ve heard funny noises a couple of times. In the night.” She sniffed. “It’s a log house, ennit? Built in relays, so to speak. It setties, one wing against t’other. That’s what you hear, most likely.”

“No ghosts, huh?” I said, as if disappointed. “Not that I’ve ever seen,” she said, matter-of-fact as an accountant, “but my ma said there’s plenty down here. She said this whole lake is haunted. By the Micmacs that lived here until they was driven out by General Wing, by all the men who went away to the Civil War and died there—over six hundred went from this part of the world, Mr. Noonan, and less than a hundred and fifty came back… at least in their bodies. Ma said this side of Dark Score’s also haunted by the ghost of that Negro boy who died here, poor tyke. He belonged to one of the Red-Tops, you know.”

“No—I know about Sara and the Red-Tops, but not this.” I paused. “Did he drown?”

“Nawp, caught in an animal trap. Struggled there for most of a whole day, screaming for help. Finally they found him. They saved the foot, but they shouldn’t have. Blood-poisoning set in, and the boy died.

Summer of ought-one, that was. It’s why they left, I guess—it was too sad to stay. But my ma used to claim the little fella, he stayed. She used to say that he’s still on the TR.”

I wondered what Mrs. M. would say if I told her that the little fella had very likely been here to greet me when I arrived from Derry, and had been back on several occasions since.

“Then there was Kenny Auster’s father, Normal,” she said. “You know that story, don’t you? Oh, that’s a terrible story.” She looked rather pleased—either at knowing such a terrible story or at having the chance to tell it.

“No,” I said. “I know Kenny, though.