The Year's Best Horror Stories 13

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  Hagen fixed his partner with a searching look. His fear was infecting Sanchez now. “Did they look, you know . . . regular to you?”

  “I don’t know, man. I don’t know what you mean. I told you I barely saw them at all. You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yeah, forget it. Let’s go.”

  They opened the doors against the wind.

  Their heartbeats and the sound of their boots on the crushed stone of the mesa filled the night.

  At the edge of the canyon they both played their beams into the maw of darkness. As if on cue, the wind rose again out of the abyss, tossing dust and branches, bowing the manzanita first one way, then another, as if frenziedly kowtowing to some rising monarch of the underworld. Their lights created wild, protean shadows.

  Sanchez saw them first, again. “Over here, Hagen!” He swung his beam to the right, where sounds of sudden movement had drawn his eyes. Several figures had been lying on the brush, just near the top of the canyon. Now they rose and broke for the mesa, running past the two men.

  Sanchez gave chase to the one closest to him: a boy in white sneakers.

  As he ran he heard Hagen’s voice in the distance. “I’ll turn on the floodlights on the truck and call in. There’s too many.”

  Sanchez turned his head as he ran; he could just make out, against the stars, dozens of figures to either side of him racing north in eerie silence. He thought he saw the same Indian woman he had chased earlier, but in the darkness it was impossible to be sure.

  He lunged at the boy he was chasing, reaching out his hand toward his jacket collar. He flew several feet and hit the ground, his fingers closing on air.

  When Sanchez looked up he saw a figure towering over him; a Mexican wearing a straw ranchero’s hat and rags, on his face an impossibly wide grin. The man raised what looked like some kind of pale garden tool over his head. He whispered at Sanchez in hoarse Spanish, “The mesa is a lonely place to die, eh, La Migra?”

  As the figure brought his arm down, Sanchez drew his gun. He fired upward point-blank at the man’s chest area. In the brief flash from the muzzle, Sanchez could see that his assailant had no weapon. The white, clawlike tool was his hand and there was no flesh on it.

  The image lingered on his retinas, echoing in his mind like the report from the magnum, repeating and decaying through the canyons.

  Suddenly, the mesa was bathed with light as Hagen threw on the headlights and floodlamps mounted above the Ram Charger. Over the loud hailer, he called, “Alto, por favor! La Migra! There is nowhere for you to go. The sector ahead of you is . . .” He stopped. His words echoed, carried on the wind, and died.

  Hagen, like Sanchez, was looking out at the harshly illuminated landscape that should have been covered with running men, women, and children. There was nothing but tumbleweeds, more of them than either of them had ever seen, being carried northward on the wind in oddly graceful leaps, without a sound.

  When Sanchez joined Hagen back at the truck, the radio was clamoring for their attention. Hagen ignored it, transfixed by the spectacle of the migrating tumbleweed.

  “Come in, 1028. I can see you guys. What’s goin’ on? What are you shootin’ at? Something wrong with your radio?”

  Sanchez picked up the call. “Nine-oh-one, this is 1028. You scoping us?”

  “Yeah. What are you doing? I just watched you run about fifty yards, jump in the air, land on your face, and fire a round at a ball of dead weeds.”

  Sanchez and Hagen looked at each other in silence. Finally Hagen shook his head from side to side. Sanchez nodded in agreement and pressed the button on the side of the mike. “We got . . . uh, a bad visibility situation here. The dust and the wind. We just, uh . . . thought we detected, uh, activity. All’s quiet, though. Over.”

  “Well, you might as well come on in and get coffee. You’re not going to get anything now, not down there. We’re pickin’ ’em up everywhere tonight but Dead Man’s. Since midnight it’s been Dia de Muertos and there’s no coyote going to bring anyone through there for twenty-four hours. You know how they are. Over.”

  “Yeah. Over and out.”

  “Dia de Muertos,” Sanchez repeated. He lit a cigarette with shaking hands. “November second.”

  “Yeah.” Hagen kept his hands on the steering wheel to steady them. “All Souls’ Day.”

  “Day of the Dead.”

  The tumbleweeds continued to dance in the headlights, occasionally throwing themselves against the truck to whisper with dry, brittle voices.

  The Scarecrow by Roger Johnson

  Roger Johnson’s first published story, “The Wall-Painting,” was reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII, and it attracted a great deal of favorable comment. Johnson was another of August Derleth’s discoveries, with three sonnets published in The Arkham Collector. Following Derleth’s death, Johnson disappeared from the horror genre for more than a decade, until Rosemary Pardoe coaxed him out of limbo. Born in 1947, Johnson has lived most of his life in Chelmsford, Essex—aside from five years at university and at library college (he took his degree, B.A. Honours in English, from London University), and six years living and working in Harlow New Town. Johnson is trying to devise some sort of ghost appropriate for a new town.

  “The Scarecrow” was entered some years back for the Times ghost story competition. It failed to place—a distinction shared with Ramsey Campbell’s “In the Bag” (which later won the British Fantasy Award for best short fiction) and my own “Sing a Last Song of Valdese” (which the previous editor, Gerald W. Page, selected for The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V). Says Johnson of this story: “The references to traditional folk song in ‘The Scarecrow’ reflect my long-time love of British folksong and dance. A fair amount of my spare time is spent at my local folksong clubs and in Morris dancing—not as healthy as jogging, perhaps, but a sight more fun.”

  “Going abroad, are you?” said old George, incuriously.

  “Not this year,” I replied. “Mike Williams and I are off to the Cotswolds next month, for a couple of weeks. I came here tonight to tell him that I’ve arranged for us to stay at a pub in a village near Banbury.”

  “Oh, yes. Nice little town, Banbury. I rather envy you. What’s the name of the village?”

  “Saxton Lovell.”

  “Good God!”

  It is never a good thing to surprise a man while he is drinking. Old George coughed and spluttered for a good half-minute. When he had regained his breath he said: “Then the pub must be—just a moment—the Belchamp Arms?” (He pronounced it “Beecham”.)

  “That’s right. Obviously you know it?”

  “Oh, yes,” said George, very deliberately. “I know it all right, though I’ve not been there for nearly fifty years. A little place, just off the road to Chipping Norton. Heh? And some three miles to the west is a hamlet called Normanton Lovell, which has one single and singular distinctive feature.”

  He paused, in that irritating way of his, and started filling his pipe.

  “You’re being cryptic,” I said severely. “You’ve roused my curiosity now, and I want to know why. Is there a story behind this?”

  The old man smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry, boy,” he said. “Yes, there’s a story, though I’ve not told it in a long time. Ah, well . . . I’ll tell it to you if you’ll be a good fellow and get me another pint. I think you’ll find it worthwhile.”

  I refilled both our glasses, and after we had taken a good long draught I lit a cigarette and settled back to listen.

  It happened while old George Cobbett was an undergraduate, reading Classics at Fisher College, Cambridge, and in those days, of course, he was by no means “old” George. His particular extra-curricular interest then was in the archaeology of ancient Britain, a theme which met with no approval at all from his tutor, and was therefore the more cherished. His particular friend at Cambridge was another Classics scholar, one Lionel Ager, who was privately devoted to the pursuit of English folklore. Alrea
dy, by the time he entered the University, he was a member of the Folklore Society, and among his correspondents, as he told George, were Alfred Williams and Frank Kidson, the great collectors of traditional song.

  George was in his second year at Fisher College when he learned of the stone circles at Normanton Lovell, in Oxfordshire. William Stukely seems not to have known of them, but in the college library’s copy of his Itinerarium Antiquum George found a handwritten marginal note referring to the Rollright Stones: “What of the Dancers of Normanton Lovell? More like Abury than this nearer neighbor.”

  The megalithic formations at Avebury (Stukely’s “Abury”) are unique, as George well knew, both in their design and in their overwhelming size. All the other stone circles that he knew of in Britain—always excepting the uniquely complex structure of Stonehenge—were, like the Rollright Stones, simple circles of free-standing megaliths, none of which could approach the size or complexity of Avebury.

  The riddle of the Dancers came again to his mind that evening, when his friend observed that the long vacation was only three weeks away, and that neither of them had yet made arrangements.

  “I know that your people are abroad, Cobbett, and my father’s gone to Carlsbad, so we’re our own masters at last. Now, I suggest that the two of us go off to Osfordshire for a few weeks.” (George was startled by the coincidence). “I gather it’s a rare place for folksongs, which will keep me occupied, and you should find enough of your precious Druid stones to amuse you.” Lionel Ager could never be convinced that the Druids were not responsible for Stonehenge and its fellows.

  George took the suggestion as a good omen, and immediately proposed that Normanton Lovell should serve as their base for the holiday. A perusal of the Ordnance Survey map of the area failed to prove the existence of the village, but to George’s delight the stone circles were clearly marked, and so was the nearby hamlet of Saxton Lovell, where the usual symbol indicated a public house. The decision was made that evening that the two of them would take rooms at the Belchamp Arms (that, they subsequently discovered, was the name of the inn) at Saxton Lovell for six weeks in June and July.

  Arriving at the Belchamp Arms, they discovered that there actually was a village of Normanton Lovell—if, that is, half a dozen houses constitute a village. George did not regret his choice of accommodation, however, for the Belchamp Arms was a fine example of the English country inn. The rooms were scrupulously clean, the service cheerful, the food good, and the beer excellent. The local farmers and laborers, too, appreciated the beer, for they thronged the bar of an evening, so the landlord said—an assertion which much pleased Lionel Ager.

  The young men spent their first afternoon walking around the pleasant little village, inspecting the romanesque church, and generally working up an appetite for what proved to be a very rewarding dinner. Afterwards they settled themselves in the lounge with a bottle of port, and Ager took the opportunity to ask their host whether there were any notable singers in the area.

  “I don’t know,” replied the landlord, doubtfully, “that we’ve anyone here that a scholar like yourself would care to hear. There’s Tommy Wells, now, who plays the organ—he can sing fine, but I reckon all he knows is hymns, and between ourselves that’s all right on Sundays, but I reckon a man needs a change during the week.”

  That, said Ager, was just what he meant. Did any of the farmworkers or such people come into the inn and sing?

  “Why, bless you, yes! If you don’t mind its not being polished like, just you come into the bar a little later on. Old Harry Arnold’ll be in about eight—he’s got a fine, strong voice—and then there’s Dennis Poacher and Percy Forrest and . . .”

  Laughing, the two friends assured him that it all sounded most satisfactory. The landlord, gratified, left them, and they fell to talking of those enigmatic stone circles that George planned to visit in the morning.

  As they entered the bar, the landlord informed them that old Harry had just arrived, and that was him sitting over there, the big, red-faced man, and yes, surely he’d be pleased to sing for the gentlemen. Introductions were made, and Harry Arnold indicated in the subtlest way possible that he couldn’t sing without something to wet his throat. That attended to, George sat back while his friend sat about drawing songs from the obligingly extrovert farmer. Soon Lionel Ager himself had been drawn into the singing, and he and Harry Arnold were swapping songs for all the world as if they were old friends. Even George was induced to join in the choruses, while the landlord grinned broadly behind his bar.

  “I remember very little about the songs that were sung that evening,” George told me, “though no doubt I’ve heard some of them many times since. The one that clings to my mind was a very intense, very powerful performance by Farmer Arnold of the ballad of John Barleycorn—the death and resurrection of the corn. He shut his eyes and threw his head back and sang as though every word and every note was forcing its way up from the very bones of him. He well deserved the pint of beer that the landlord gave him, and Ager’s almost tearful congratulations. It was a remarkable performance, really remarkable.”

  The next song, though, was something quite different. Harry Arnold took a deep draught from his mug and, mopping his forehead with a large spotted handkerchief, called to a stocky, weatherbeaten man who had been in the forefront of the choruses: “Dennis! Dennis Poacher! Give us ‘Rolling of the Stones,’ will you? It’s a long time since I heard that, boy, and I’d dearly like to hear it again.”

  “Now that,” thought George, “is a damned queer name for a song.” And his mind turned for an instant to the megalithic remains he had come to see.

  The stocky man began to sing in a clear and surprisingly gentle voice: “Will you go to the roiling of the stones, the tossing of the ball . . .?” A curiously enigmatic and charming fragment—surely a mere part of a longer song. George’s thought was interrupted by the sympathetic voice of Harry Arnold.

  “Does me good to hear it again, sir, that does. But there’s no denying it’s a strange sort of song. I can see you’re wondering at it, and so did I when I first heard it. My mother used to sing that to me when I was a little child, and I always used to wonder at that bit about ‘the rolling of the stones.’ Of course, that’s plain when you think about it—they mean fivestones—what my dad called knucklebones. But d’you know, the first stones that come to my mind over that was those great rings over Normanton way. Them, and that clump of ’em on our own farm—what we call Hell’s Gate.”

  George couldn’t help smiling. “Hell’s Gate!” There was a name to conjure with! He was a little surprised to realize that, after all, with half a bottle of port and more than a few pints of beer inside him he was really not quite sober. If he were, he would not be attaching any weight to the absurd name of a mere group of standing stones. He observed that on the far side of the farmer, Lionel Ager’s attention was confusedly divided between the singer (it was another singer now) and Harry Arnold. “Hell’s Gate?” George repeated, hesitantly.

  “That’s right,” said Harry. “Over in Nick’s Meadow, it is—though that’s never been a meadow ever to my knowing. Always been ploughed over, that has.” He looked around at the two young men, and his broad red face broke into a grin, showing strong teeth. “You want to hear the story? Well, why not? It’s quite a little ghost story, and it may interest you.”

  He drained his mug and set it down on the table. “It’s this way, you see—you know the name of this pub, the Belchamp Arms? Well, you won’t find any Belchamps around here now, but for many long years they was the lords of the manor. The head of the family was always called Squire Belchamp, and it had to be Yes, Squire, and touch your cap, or by God, he’d know why! Now, this man was the very last Squire Belchamp, and he used to go over to them stones at night—without a by-your-leave to the farmer, of course—and he’d do things there that, well, I reckon they gave the name of Hell’s Gate to the stones. O’ course, all this was something like a hundred years ago, now . . .”


  Sir Richard Belchamp, as Harry Arnold explained, was something more than the traditional wicked squire. Certainly he was an unbending autocrat, an acentric to the point of madness. Equally certainly he had a strong reputation as a whoremaster, and was rather less widely thought to be a necromancer. Legends of his diverse misdeeds were not uncommon in the neighborhood even now, particularly the tale that Harry Arnold told of the squire’s final sin, which led directly to his unmourned death. He had been caught in a rather horrid act, at those same stones, by the father of a young woman who was unwillingly involved. The father was a farmer—in fact, the owner of the land where the megaliths stood—and a man of few words and telling action. Being rightfully incensed, he took a staff and quite simply beat the squire to death.

  There must have been some juggling with the law, for at his trial the farmer received the surprisingly lenient sentence of five years’ hard labour. He accepted this fate with calm resignation, for he knew that justice had already been served; whatever the law might do now could not alter that fact. His sons were strong, and well able to care for the farm in his absence. The one thing that troubled him was very slight at first, but through the years in jail it grew, and it gnawed more and more at his mind. Sir Richard Belchamp had cursed his killer as he died, and the curse was an awful one; “Hell shall lie within your farm, and your filthy scarecrow shall be its gateman!”

  Yes, there was a scarecrow in Nick’s Meadow, a harmless thing, if old and ugly. Still, the farmer’s sons had taken it down when they heard of the squire’s words, and thrown it into a corner of the old barn, and there it had lain, untouched but much thought of, through five long years.

  The farmer was welcomed most heartily upon his release from jail. Food and drink were provided in quantity, and all ate and drank—some a little too freely, perhaps, for it seems that no one noticed just when, in the early hours of the morning, the farmer left the house. He did not return.