Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

“Yes. Professor Warren,” Mickelsson said. For some reason he added, perhaps with unconscious sadism, given Lawler’s timidity—or with that same evil luck that turns conversation repeatedly to noses in the presence of a man with a long nose—“It’s an odd coincidence. Professor Warren was investigating something involving this very house at the time he was murdered.”

If it was sadism, Mickelsson couldn’t have hoped for a better reaction. Lawler jumped a foot and, with the quick, cunning look of a rabbit, glanced left and right. “This house?” he exclaimed. “What was he looking into?”

“I’m not sure,” Mickelsson said, putting on an expression of unconcern. To heighten the effect of safe domesticity, he smiled fondly at the stray cat he had in fact not yet dared touch. “Some legend, I think.”

“Legend?” Lawler echoed. His eyebrows were raised as if permanently above his spectacle-rims.

“It’s said the house has ghosts,” Mickelsson said, and chuckled. “I suppose it was that that Professor Warren was looking into. I must say, I’ve thought of consulting a chemist myself, now and then. Sometimes the house gets a strange cooking smell.” He chuckled again.

Lawler’s mind was elsewhere, his hands busy laying out the white handkerchief like a napkin in his lap. “It can’t have been the ghosts he was interested in,” he said. “I talked with our student”—he glanced at the floor, then continued—“our late student Michael Nugent, about this Warren. The man was an atheist, or claimed to be.” The mention of Nugent made Mickelsson suddenly awkward; even so, he registered with distant amusement Lawler’s use of the word atheist as opposed to non-theist. The man was, of course, a medievalist.

Lawler was saying, “Warren would hardly be interested in ghosts for their own sake, and I doubt very much that he’d be interested in folklore either. That just doesn’t seem to fit.” He sank into thought, then raised his right hand, pointing upward. “Suppose, just for the sake of argument—” He was squinting now, compressing his lips. His pudgy hands smoothed the hankie in his lap. Mickelsson smiled, then puffed at his pipe and waited. “Suppose the legend was created as a cloak for something—to keep people away from the house. But what? That’s the question. What were people not to find out?”

“I don’t know,” Mickelsson said, keeping his tone deferential. “Who’d be kept away from a house by stories that it was haunted?”

“Perhaps not nowadays,” Lawler admitted, “though I’m told this is rather odd country, full of superstitions, even covens of—witches? At any rate, such a thing might once have worked—twenty years ago, say. Something must lie behind these ghost stories.”

“Maybe the house really is haunted,” Mickelsson suggested.

Lawler laughed, a sudden chortle that made his feet jump, and seemed not even to consider the possibility that the remark might be in earnest. He sat forward a little, so that the couch cushion sagged beneath him, ready to topple and drop him to the floor. For the first time he met Mickelsson’s eyes squarely. Lawler was excited, engaged, like a child playing cops and robbers. “What do you know about the house, Pete?”

Mickelsson shrugged, but thoughtfully. It struck him that, though probably nothing would come of it, it might be a good idea, in fact, to run through the whole thing with Lawler. Who knew? Perhaps the man’s famous intelligence might throw light on the whole strange business. “Not much,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I can.” He pulled at the pipe, considering where to start, then began, “I know the house was owned, before I bought it, by a woman doctor named Bauer, and I know that for years she had a feud of sorts with a man named Thomas Sprague. He was a relative of the Spragues who lived here before the doctor; in fact he claimed he was their heir. I think it’s the Spragues who lived here who are supposed to be the ghosts.” He glanced at Lawler. “The feud between the doctor and Thomas Sprague flared up in earnest when Sprague’s daughter died in an operation performed by Dr. Bauer—something about an anesthesia reaction. The feud went on—malpractice suit and so on—until Sprague himself died a little while ago … two weeks, maybe; I’vecompletely lost track.” He looked down, suddenly troubled about something, but he couldn’t identify it. He gave up the search and told Lawler about the fire and how Sprague had not been in it, how the walls had been torn up, according to Owen Thomas, and how Sprague had been found days later (or weeks?) in a snowbank, cuts all over his body, one of them the cause of death. Lawler listened with his eyes closed, his large, squat body tilted forward, motionless except for his breathing. “I also know,” Mickelsson said, “that there’s a legend—I don’t know if it’s true—that the house was once owned, long ago, by Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of Mormonism.”

Lawler’s eyes opened wide. “Interesting!” he said. “Warren was a Mormon apostate. I assume you knew that?”

“No,” Mickelsson said. His scalp prickled.

Lawler nodded, closing his eyes again. “Interesting. I don’t suppose … going over the house as you’ve done … you found anything?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I’m not sure myself, of course,” Lawler said. “But it might be a ‘lead,’ as they say. If there were something here that the Mormons would not want the world at large to be aware of—”

“I see what you mean.” Odd that he hadn’t thought of it himself. But of course he’d been thrown off by the fact that the ghosts were real—if they were, if they were not more tricks of a diseased mind. He backed off from the thought, then leaned forward, frowning hard, resting his elbows on his knees, and told Lawler of the night visitors, the people who’d torn his house apart, thrown out the cigarettes and liquor. “They could have been Mormons,” he said, “though on the other hand—”

Lawler sat tapping his fingertips together. “Suppose it was something like this,”