Free The Best of Robert Bloch by Robert Bloch Page A

Saw her plain as day. What you cook up for us here, anyhow?"
    He began to stammer something, anything, to halt the flood of foolish babbling. She moved close to him,
    wanting to listen, wanting to believe, wanting to do anything but think of Gwen Hacker upstairs, all alone upstairs looking into a mirror and waiting to see—
    The screams came then. Not sobs, not laughter, but screams. He took the stairs two at a tune. Fat Mr. Hacker was right behind him, and the others straggled along, suddenly silent. There was the sound of feet clubbing the staircase, the sound of heavy breathing, and over everything the continuing high-pitched shriek of a woman confronted with terror too great to contain.
    It oozed out of Gwen Hacker's voice, oozed out of her body as she staggered and half-fell into her husband's arms in the hall. The light was streaming out of the bathroom, and it fell upon the mirror that was empty of all reflection, fell upon her face that was empty of all expression.
    They crowded around the Hackers—he and she were on either side and the others clustered in front—and they moved along the hall to her bedroom and helped Mr. Hacker ^stretch his wife out on the bed. She had passed out, somebody mumbled something about a doctor, and somebody else said no, never mind, she'll be all right in a minute, and somebody else said well, I think we'd better be getting along.
    For the first time everybody seemed to be aware of the old house and the darkness, and the way the floors creaked and the windows rattled and the shutters banged.
    Everyone was suddenly sober, solicitous, and extremely anxious to leave.
    Hacker bent over his wife, chafing her wrists, forcing her to swallow water, watching her whimper her way out of emptiness. The host and hostess silently procured hats and coats and listened to expressions of polite regret, hasty farewells, and poorly formulated pretenses of, "had a marvelous time, darling."
    Teters, Valliants, Talmadges were swallowed up in the night. He and she went back upstairs, back to the bedroom and the Hackers. It was too dark in the hall, and too light in the bedroom. But there they were, waiting. And they didn't wait long.
    Mrs. Hacker sat up suddenly and began to talk. To her husband, to them.
    "I saw her," she said. "Don't tell me I'm crazy, I saw her! Standing on tiptoe behind me, looking right into the mirror. With the same blue ribbon in her hair, the one she wore the day she—"
    "Please, dear," said Mr. Hacker.
    She didn't please. "But I saw her. Mary Lou! She made a face at me in the mirror, and she's dead, you know she's dead, she disappeared three years ago and they never did find the body—"
    "Mary Lou Dempster." Hacker was a fat man. He had two chins. Both of them wobbled.
    "She played around here, you know she did, and Wilma Dempster told her to stay away, she knew all about this house, but she wouldn't and now—oh, her face!"
    More sobs. Hacker patted her on the shoulder. He looked as though he could stand a little shoulder-patting himself. But nobody obliged. He stood there, she stood there, still waiting. Waiting for the rest.
    "Tell them," said Mrs. Hacker. "Tell them the truth."
    "All right, but I'd rather get you home."
    "I'll wait. I want you to tell them. You must, now."
    Hacker sat down heavily. His wife leaned against his shoulder. The two waited another moment. Then it came.
    "I don't know how to begin, how to explain," said fat Mr. Hacker. "It's probably my fault, of course, but I didn't know. All this foolishness about haunted houses—nobody believes that stuff anymore, and all it does is push property values down, so I didn't say anything. Can you blame me?"
    "I saw her face," whispered Mrs. Hacker.
    "I know. And I should have told you. About the house, I mean. Why it hasn't rented for twenty years. Old story in the neighborhood, and you'd have heard it sooner or later anyway, I guess."
    "Get on with it," said Mrs. Hacker. She was suddenly strong again and he, with his