Poe's children: the new horror : an anthology - By Peter Straub Page 0,89

will take the hint and hide out somewhere until everyone leaves.

The cellists arrive. Seven men and a woman. Louise doesn’t bother to remember their names. The woman is tall and thin. She has long arms and a long nose. She eats three plates of spaghetti. The cellists talk to each other. They don’t talk about the ghost. They talk about music. They complain about acoustics. They tell Louise that her spaghetti is delicious. Louise just smiles. She stares at the woman cellist, sees Louise watching her. Louise shrugs, nods. She holds up five fingers.

Louise and the cellists seem comfortable. They tease each other. They tell stories. Do they know? Do they talk about Louise? Do they brag? Compare notes? How could they know Louise better than Louise knows her? Suddenly Louise feels as if this isn’t her house after all. It belongs to Louise and the cellists. It’s their ghost, not hers. They live here. After dinner they’ll stay and she’ll leave.

Number five is the one who likes foreign films, Louise remembers. The one with the goldfish. Louise said number five had a great sense of humor.

Louise gets up and goes to the kitchen to get more wine, leaving Louise alone with the cellists. The one sitting next to Louise says, “You have the prettiest eyes. Have I seen you in the audience sometimes?”

“It’s possible,” Louise says.

“Louise talks about you all the time,” the cellist says. He’s young, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. Louise wonders if he’s the one with the big hands. He has pretty eyes, too. She tells him that.

“Louise doesn’t know everything about me,” she says, flirting.

Anna is hiding under the table. She growls and pretends to bite the cellists. The cellists know Anna. They’re used to her. They probably think she’s cute. They pass her bits of broccoli, lettuce.

The living room is full of cellos in black cases the cellists brought in, like sarcophaguses on little wheels. Sarcophabuses. Dead baby carriages. After dinner the cellists take their chairs into the living room. They take out their cellos and tune them. Anna insinuates herself between cellos, hanging on the backs of chairs. The house is full of sound.

Louise and Louise sit on chairs in the hall and look in. They can’t talk. It’s too loud. Louise reaches into her purse, pulls out a packet of earplugs. She gives two to Anna, two to Louise, keeps two for herself. Louise puts her earplugs in. Now the cellists sound as if they are underground, down in some underground lake, or in a cave. Louise fidgets.

The cellists play for almost an hour. When they take a break Louise feels tender, as if the cellists have been throwing things at her. Tiny lumps of sound. She almost expects to see bruises on her arms.

The cellists go outside to smoke cigarettes. Louise takes Louise aside. “You should tell me now if there isn’t a ghost,” she says. “I’ll tell them to go home. I promise I won’t be angry.”

“There is a ghost,” Louise says. “Really.” But she doesn’t try to sound too convincing. What she doesn’t tell Louise is that she’s stuck a Walkman in her closet. She’s got the Patsy Cline CD on repeat with the volume turned way down.

Louise says, “So he was talking to you during dinner. What do you think?”

“Who?” Louise says. “Him? He was pretty nice.”

Louise sighs. “Yeah. I think he’s pretty nice, too.”

The cellists come back inside. The young cellist with the glasses and the big hands looks over at both of them and smiles a big blissed smile. Maybe it wasn’t cigarettes that they were smoking.

Anna has fallen asleep inside a cello case, like a fat green pea in a coffin.

Louise tries to imagine the cellists without their clothes. She tries to picture them naked and fucking Louise. No, fucking Louise, fucking her instead. Which one is number four? The one with the beard? Number four, she remembers, likes Louise to sit on top and bounce up and down. She does all the work while he waves his hand. He conducts her. Louise thinks it’s funny.

Louise pictures all of the cellists, naked and in the same bed. She’s in the bed. The one with the beard first. Lie on your back, she tells him. Close your eyes. Don’t move. I’m in charge. I’m conducting this affair. The one with the skinny legs and the poochy stomach. The young one with curly black hair, bent over his cello as if he might fall in. Who was flirting