The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

She was no age I could guess. Older than my mother but not old-seeming. She wore men’s clothes and she was tall as any man, with wide shoulders, and long legs, and big sagging breasts like cows’ udders loose inside her shirt not harnessed in a brassiere like other women’s. Her thick wiry gray hair was cut short as a man’s and stuck up in tufts that looked greasy. Her eyes were small, and black, and set back deep in their sockets; the flesh around them looked bruised. I had never seen anyone like her before – her thighs were enormous, big as my body. There was a ring of loose soft flesh at the waistband of her trousers but she wasn’t fat.

“I asked you a question, miss. Why are you here?”

I was so frightened I could feel my bladder contract. I stared at her, cowering by the mattress, and couldn’t speak.

It seemed to please her that I was so frightened. She approached me, stooping a little to get through the doorway. She said, in a mock-kindly voice, “You’ve come to visit with me – is that it?”

“No,” I said.

“No!” she said, laughing. “Why, of course you have.”

“No. I don’t know you.”

She leaned over me, touched my forehead with her fingers. I shut my eyes waiting to be hurt but her touch was cool. She brushed my hair off my forehead where it was sticky with sweat. “I’ve seen you here before, you and that other one,” she said. “What is her name? The blond one. The two of you, trespassing.”

I couldn’t move, my legs were paralyzed. Quick and darting and buzzing my thoughts bounded in every which direction but didn’t take hold. “Melissa is your name, isn’t it,” the woman said. “And what is your sister’s name?”

“She isn’t my sister,” I whispered.

“What is her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know!”

“ – don’t know,” I said, cowering.

The woman drew back half sighing half grunting. She looked at me pityingly. “You’ll have to be punished, then.”

I could smell ashes about her, something cold. I started to whimper started to say I hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t hurt anything in the house, I had only been exploring – I wouldn’t come back again . . .

She was smiling at me, uncovering her teeth. She could read my thoughts before I could think them.

The skin of her face was in layers like an onion, like she’d been sunburnt, or had a skin disease. There were patches that had begun to peel. Her look was wet and gloating. Don’t hurt me, I wanted to say. Please don’t hurt me.

I’d begun to cry. My nose was running like a baby’s. I thought I would crawl past the woman I would get to my feet and run past her and escape but the woman stood in my way blocking my way leaning over me breathing damp and warm her breath like a cow’s breath in my face. Don’t hurt me, I said, and she said, “You know you have to be punished – you and your pretty blond sister.”

“She isn’t my sister,” I said.

“And what is her name?”

The woman was bending over me, quivering with laughter.

“Speak up, miss. What is it?”

“I don’t know—” I started to say. But my voice said, “Mary Lou.”

The woman’s big breasts spilled down into her belly, I could feel her shaking with laughter. But she spoke sternly saying that Mary Lou and I had been very bad girls and we knew it her house was forbidden territory and we knew it hadn’t we known all along that others had come to grief beneath its roof?

“No,” I started to say. But my voice said, “Yes.”

The woman laughed, crouching above me. “Now, miss, ‘Melissa’ as they call you – your parents don’t know where you are at this very moment, do they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do they?”

“No.”

“They don’t know anything about you, do they? – what you do, and what you think? You and ‘Mary Lou.’”

“No.”

She regarded me for a long moment, smiling. Her smile was wide and friendly.

“You’re a spunky little girl, aren’t you, with a mind of your own, aren’t you, you and your pretty little sister. I bet your bottoms have been warmed many a time,” the woman said, showing her big tobacco-stained teeth in a grin, “. . . your tender little asses.”

I began to giggle. My bladder tightened.

“Hand that here, miss,” the woman said. She took the willow switch from my fingers – I had forgotten I was holding it. “I will now administer punishment: take down your jeans. Take down your panties. Lie down on that mattress. Hurry.” She spoke briskly now, she was all business. “Hurry, Melissa! And your panties! Or do you want me to pull them down for you?”

She was slapping the switch impatiently against the palm of her left hand, making a wet scolding noise with her lips. Scolding and teasing. Her skin shone in patches, stretched tight over the big hard bones of her face. Her eyes were small, crinkling smaller, black and damp. She was so big she had to position herself carefully over me to give herself proper balance and leverage so that she wouldn’t fall. I could hear her hoarse eager breathing as it came to me from all sides like the wind.