The Year's Best Horror Stories 13

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  Loveman wrote about Croydon to Crane in New York, but his reference was veiled, seemingly offhand. “You have heard about C, I take it. We are all aware. Always good to keep your guard up, old chum. Word to the wise meanwhile. I wonder, you wonder.”

  It was actually at this early juncture that it all began to come apart; though the pursuit among the seers and poets was leisurely by human measure, it was relentless.

  Lovecraft died in 1937, in painful loneliness. The official medical report listed the cause as intestinal cancer. Hart Crane’s more famous death had taken place five years earlier, the celebrated leap into the sea.

  The men had since met twice again, during the period of what Lovecraft had called his “New York exile.” He was a little shocked at the changes in Crane’s physical condition. “He looks more weather-beaten & drink-puffed than he did in the past,” Lovecraft wrote to his aunt, “tragically drink-riddled but now eminent.” He predicted that Crane would find it difficult to write another major work. After about three hours of acute & intelligent argument poor Crane left—to hunt up a new supply of whiskey & banish reality for the rest of the night!”

  Lovecraft records this encounter as taking place May 24, 1930. They were not alone and had no opportunity to talk privately, so that Crane would not have told the other what he had learned from Loveman of the circumstances of Croydon’s death. He could not apprise Lovecraft that he alone was inheritor to Croydon’s secret knowledge and that his identity must necessarily be known to that being, or series of beings, Dzhaimbu. He spoke of leaving New York and moving to Charleston, but Lovecraft did not pick up the hint, merely agreeing that such a move might be beneficial. Perhaps Crane’s gallantry prevented his placing the other in danger.

  Another interpretation is possible. We may guess that Crane did communicate some of his information to the horror story writer. It is just at this period that Lovecraft’s mythos began to take its more coherent and credible shape in such works as “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and “The Dreams in the Witch House.” Certainly both Lovecraft and Loveman remarked that Crane now lived in a state of haunted terror, wild and frightful, dependent upon alcohol to keep his fear manageable. Crane must have known that he was being pursued—the signs were unmistakable—and decided to face the terror on its own ground. For this reason he plotted to get the Guggenheim grant which would take him to Mexico.

  But it was too late, alcohol and drugs had disordered his nervous system, his strength was gone. On the voyage to Mexico he met the celebrated bacteriologist, Dr. Hans Zinsser, and concluded that he was an agent of Dzhaimbu sent to infect humanity by means of typhus-ridden rats. Zinsser’s motives in dumping infected rats into the harbor at Havana remain unknown, but it is hardly probable that Crane’s suspicions were correct.

  In Mexico the poet’s behavior was uncontrolled and incomprehensible, a series of shocking and violent incidents that landed him often in jail and caused his friends to distrust any sentence he uttered. His decision to meet the terror face to face was disastrous; he could not stand up under the strain. No man could. And his further decision—to keep his knowledge and theories secret so as not to endanger others—was a worse disaster.

  In the end, he fled, unable to face the prospect of coming close to the source of the horror. The voyage home began with dreams and visions so terrifying that he could not bear to close his eyes and stayed awake drinking continuously. Embarrassing episodes followed which he was numbly aware of but past caring about. On April 27, 1932, Hart Crane jumped from the railing of the Orizaba. The sea received him and the immense serpentine manifestation of Dzhaimbu, which had been following in the unseen depths of the water since the ship departed, devoured him.

  This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

  It is inevitable that we read these sad histories as we do, as a catalogue of missed opportunities and broken communications. A present generation righteously decries the errors of its forefathers. But it is unlikely that any human effort would have changed the course of events. There would still have come about the reawakening of Dzhaimbu and the other worse gods, under whose charnel dominion we now suffer and despair.

  The Wardrobe by Jovan Panich

  Jovan Panich was born January 24, 1960 in Birmingham, England, where he currently resides. Of himself, Panich writes: “My mother is English and my father Yugoslav, hence the strange name. I’ve always had a love of science fiction, fantasy and horror, and when I was young I’d hunt all the local magazine shops for Marvel comics, which were superior to anything being published in Britain. I then moved on to books without pictures and read every Moorcock book in print. Other authors followed, Howard, Lovecraft, Leiber, and Tolkien to name but a few.” His current favorites include Ramsey Campbell and Stephen King, whose works have influenced his own writing.

  Panich has been writing since he was about seven, but only in the last few years has he written anything with a serious intention to see it in print. “The Wardrobe” was originally submitted to Mary Danby for one of the Fontana Book of Horror Stories. Panich later sent it to Lari Davidson, editor of the Canadian magazine, Potboiler, who had Panich revise the story several times before accepting it. Panich has had two other stories published in Potboiler, and another, “Miala,” is set for a forthcoming issue of Undinal Songs.

  The car came to a halt beside the curb. The wipers juddered on the windscreen in shivering arcs, wiping away the last few drops of rain that still fell from a sky the color of iron.

  The doors swung open and a man, a woman, and two boys climbed out. They all were dressed in black and looked uncomfortable in the stiffly formal clothes. The youngest boy pulled at the collar of his shirt, trying to loosen its grip on his throat. He was guided gently towards the door of the house by his mother. She wore a small black velvet hat with a veil that could not hide her eyes. They were puffed and red with crying. She inserted a key into the lock and pushed open the door.

  “Go upstairs and get changed, Andrew. We’ll be in in a minute.” She spoke in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

  Andrew clambered up the stairs on all fours, glad to be allowed to change out of the uncomfortable clothes. He went into his room and sat on the bed, tugged off his tie and then fumbled with the top button of his shirt for a long time before he managed to undo it.

  Andrew sat looking out of the window at the sky still heavy with clouds. It had rained steadily during Granny’s funeral. It had been so strange and disorienting. All the flowers, bright and colorful, and the people so drab, black. There had been a man who had said some strange words that Andrew didn’t understand, in a slow, solemn voice, but was only pretending to be sad. And Andrew had looked around at all the people, his uncles and aunts and cousins. They all stood silent and unfamiliar, so that he was uncertain if they really were the people they were supposed to be.

  After the man had finished speaking, they had lowered the coffin into the hole in the ground. Andrew had watched fascinated as the coffin descended jerkily on the ropes, thumping lightly as it hit the wet earth at the bottom. He wondered what it must be like to be in the dark cold ground, trapped in a shiny wooden box. Why did Granny have to be put in the ground like that, with all the worms and beetles and slugs? What had she done wrong?

  He remembered Granny, a kindly old woman who sat in her chair by the fire and gave him sweets when he visited her. He could never remember her being bad, not even when he had broken the blue china teacup. Why, then, was Granny put into the coffin? He had asked his father when they left the graveside and were walking back to the car.

  “Because she’s dead, Andrew. Sleeping for a long time.”

  Andrew knew what being dead was like. It was like the cat he had seen near the rubbish heap, all stiff and covered in maggots, with blood and slimy stuff on its face and a smell that made him feel sick. Would Granny be like that when she woke up? He thought of himself being picked up and kissed by a mouth that was cold and soft and wet like squashed worms.

  He fel
t scared then and was glad that Granny was in her shiny box under the ground and a long way away. He hoped it would be a long, long time before she woke up, and perhaps she would have forgotten him by then.

  He finished taking off his best clothes, pulled on his jeans and the yellow t-shirt with a red racing car on it. Then he slipped his feet into a pair of sneakers that had once been white, and with a look of concentration on his face, slowly tied the laces.

  He heard the front door close and the rest of the family make their way into the lounge. Andrew picked up his suit and went over to the big wardrobe in the corner of his room, carefully hung the suit on its plastic hanger, and closed the door with a sharp click. He stepped back, looking at the wardrobe as if he were only now seeing it properly for the first time.

  The wardrobe dominated the small room. It was out of place. All the rest of the furniture was simple and modern, plain and unpretentious. But the wardrobe belonged to a time past, an Edwardian, or perhaps Victorian, setting, where all the colors were rich and dark, and the air heavy with the musty scent of long-dry lavender.

  It was made of oak, stained such a deep brown so as to be almost black. The twin doors had brass handles and were covered in fluting and carving that was cut deep into the wood, with fluid designs of entwined leaves and vines that seemed more like writhing serpents . . . or things found far beneath the ground.

  It stood in front of him, shiny and dark, like the coffin they had buried with Granny inside. But this coffin wasn’t under a layer of heavy soil pressed firmly in its place, it was here with him, in his room. What if there was something else inside, apart from his clothes? Something that had been asleep for a very long time . . . but was now waking up?

  Inside the wardrobe, Andrew’s jacket slid from the hanger and slithered down the inside of the door like the feeble movements of an old woman.

  Andrew turned and fled from the room, almost falling down the stairs in his haste to reach his parents. He flung himself into his mother’s arms as she sat on the sofa by the fire.

  He sobbed and gasped, unable to speak for a long time. At last the words came. “She’s not dead now. She’s woken up, but I shut the door. Mummy, I’m scared!”

  “Andrew! What are you talking about?” his father snapped. The funeral of his wife’s mother had already been enough of a strain without any more worries.

  “In the wardrobe! She’s in the wardrobe!” Andrew almost screamed.

  “Who’s in the wardrobe? The cat? Is it the cat stuck in the wardrobe?” Andrew’s father asked.

  “No! Granny! Or maybe somebody else, crawling in the bottom of the wardrobe. Maybe they were dead, but now they’ve woken up.”

  His own confusion calmed him, as he tried to express his thoughts with what words he knew.

  Andrew’s mother looked at him, and then put her head in her hands and began to cry softly.

  “They’re dead. Why do I have to be reminded?” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper.

  “Madeleine. Don’t cry, darling.” Andrew’s father said gently, then turning to his eldest son, said, “Stay with your mother, Gary. Andrew, let’s go upstairs.”

  He took firm hold of Andrew’s wrist and led him back to his bedroom. With a savage pull he opened the doors of the wardrobe and made Andrew look inside.

  “See? Nothing but your clothes, including your best jacket screwed up like a dish cloth.” He picked it up and replaced it on the hanger, doing up one of the buttons to hold it in place. “Now let’s go back downstairs, and not another word to your mother, she’s been through enough these past few days. You and Gary can go and play in the other room with your toys, quietly mind, no noisy games.”

  As the two boys walked meekly past their father in the hall, Gary, who was eight, and as curious as a kitten, asked, “What did Mum mean when she said they were dead?”

  “Her mother and father of course.” He answered quietly, but he looked away even as he spoke and quickly stepped back into the lounge, shutting the door firmly.

  Peter could still picture that day, a bright morning in early August. He had decided to decorate the spare room in readiness for the baby Madeleine was carrying. A little brother or sister for Gary. He had been moving the wardrobe out on to the landing, a slow and difficult job because of the Wardrobe’s size and weight. Madeleine had come out of the bedroom, seen him struggling, and asked if she could help. He had laughed, and replied, “In your condition?” and patted the prominent lump. And then he had lifted the wardrobe up at one end, slid it along the carpet. Somehow he lost his balance, stumbled, and it had toppled forward, pinning Madeleine against the wall. She screamed, a cry that had made his heart freeze. When he pulled the wardrobe away he thought she was dead, there was so much blood. The child had been a little girl.

  Now the memory had been reawakened, and Peter wondered, deep down inside in a small and secret place, if there was perhaps something evil about the wardrobe.

  The months passed, and the incident of the wardrobe was all but forgotten by Andrew. He still felt nervous about being in the room alone sometimes, and he would then have to open the wardrobe doors and slide the clothes to one side. After he had carried out this inspection and decided that there was nothing hiding inside, he was quite happy to stay in the room. And after a time it became more like a ritual, akin to not stepping on the cracks between paving stones, devoid of any real meaning.

  One evening in late autumn, Andrew was playing in his room with his electric train set. It was almost dark inside the room, only a hint of the afternoon still lingered in the patch of sky outside the window, but Andrew hadn’t switched on the light because his new train had tiny headlights and illuminated carriages. In the gloom it looked almost like a real train as it hurtled round the track with its headlamps glinting on the rails.

  Something made him turn, some movement on the edge of his vision. He looked at the wardrobe. The doors were half open. In the space between the clothes and the bottom of the wardrobe he could see a head. The face was gray and crumpled with years and there were only black patches where the eyes and mouth should be. It leered at him.

  He began to scream, too frightened to run to the light switch. He kept on screaming, and the train went round and round the track relentlessly.

  His father ran in and switched on the light. “Andrew! What is it? Have you hurt yourself?”

  “In the wardrobe, daddy. A ghost! A ghost!” He pointed wildly at the wardrobe, at any moment expecting the thing to come shambling out.

  His father padded over to the wardrobe in his worn brown slippers and pulled the door open wider. Andrew was ready to scream again but he saw his dread apparition resolve into a gray shirt and the toecaps of a pair of shiny black shoes. They lay at the bottom of the wardrobe, so mundane and natural in the clear electric light. He felt foolish.

  His mother ran into the room. Her eyes were filled with concern. “What’s happened? Is he alright? Are you alright, Andrew?”

  She saw the open doors of the wardrobe. The concern vanished from her eyes and was replaced by fear. “It’s that thing again. That bloody wardrobe! I know it is! It’s . . .”

  Quickly Peter rushed to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “Andrew’s okay. He just got himself caught up with his train set. He got frightened, but I’ve seen to it. There’s nothing to get worked up about.”

  Madeleine nodded. “I’m sorry. I thought . . .”

  “Shush. Don’t worry. Now go downstairs and finish getting tea ready. We’re all starving.”

  He forced a smile, and slapped her playfully.

  As soon as she was gone the smile vanished. He gestured to Andrew to switch off the train. Slowly Andrew stood up and sat on the edge of the bed. His father sat down beside him.

  “Now listen to me, Andrew, because I’m only going to say this once, and then we’re not going to mention it ever again. Understand?”

  Andrew wet his lips with his tongue, and whispered, “Yes, dad.”

  “You saw
what happened to your mother when she thought something had frightened you. You could see how scared and worried she got. It made her cry and feel bad. I know you love her and don’t want her to be upset . . .”

  “It was the wardrobe, dad. It frightened me again. I thought there was something inside it . . . like last time.”

  “For God’s sake, Andrew! Don’t be stupid! It’s only a piece of furniture, like the table and chairs. You’re not frightened of those, are you?”

  Andrew lowered his eyes and said nothing.

  “Don’t you understand that you’re frightening your mother? The two of you are scaring one another to death, feeding on one another’s fears. It has got to stop. It will stop. Understand?”

  “Yes, Dad.” Andrew answered in a small voice.

  Peter, remembering that he was talking to his youngest son, who hadn’t yet reached his seventh birthday, sighed and tousled Andrew’s hair. “Okay, son. Let’s forget all about it and go and have something to eat.”

  Andrew did indeed try and forget all about the wardrobe, and for a few weeks all was well. December came, and with it a cold spell. A thick frost on the lawn crackled like newspaper when Andrew walked on it, and ice patterns covered the kitchen window when he got up for school. Christmas was fast approaching, bringing with it a fervent excitement. He hoped that he would get the radio-controlled sports car he had asked for. He would be the envy of all the other boys in his class.