The Universe of Horror Volume 1: The Soft Whisper of the Dead (Neccon Classic Horror)

by Charles L. Grant

  “Oh, damn it yourself,” he said, grinning. “You’ve just gotten too fat and too lazy.”

  Stockton sputtered and dropped into the chair. “You’re impossible.”

  “Look,” he said then, “there’s really not much I can do now about that … that animal unless you want me traipsing around out in the fields with everyone else in the village. And I’m sorry about Squires, but I did what I thought best there. You’ve probably already got Rick out anyway, so what’s left for me to do is, I suppose, talk to Adelle and take another look around the depot.”

  Stockton’s face softened immediately, and he sighed. “You think you know me pretty well, don’t you.”

  Ned shrugged.

  “Horace and I go back a long way, son.”

  “I know, Dad.”

  “Even if he is the crankiest man in the state.”

  The chief leaned forward then, suddenly and with a rage in his eyes his son had never seen. “You will find Horace, Ned, and you will find him soon, you understand me? I can handle Squires and his tantrums, but I can’t handle Adelle. You will not sleep until you do, you hear? Not a damned wink until that man is found!”

  Ned rose, though not as quickly as his father would have liked, took his coat and hat back down again and was about to leave when the older man spoke again.

  “And you’re wrong about Driscoll. He’s waiting out front for you. As a matter of fact, he’s kind of angry.”

  “So I’ll apologize, he’ll love it.”

  Stockton scowled. “Not about that. He claims someone came in and lifted some evidence of yours.”

  Ned blinked stupidly for a moment, then darted over to the desk and pulled out the drawer, grabbed the envelope and shook it over the blotter. Nothing fell out; the black fur was gone.

  “Damn!” He motioned his father away and dropped to his hands and knees, crawled into the desk well and searched the floor, then backed out. “Damn, I must have dropped it,” he muttered, though he clearly remembered putting it away.

  “Was it important?” Stockton asked, not sure if he should be amused or angry. And when Ned explained, he only shrugged. “Fur is fur is hair,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll need it to match with the beast when you find it. Now get out. Get to work.”

  Ned agreed reluctantly, had reached the threshold again when his father spoke his name.

  He turned.

  “Those people out there.”

  “I know, I saw them.”

  “They’re hearing things, Ned. They’re hearing wolves that haven’t been seen around here in a dog’s age. They’re seeing shadows and ghosts and god only knows what all else.” He paused, and looked down to his hands clasped loosely on the desk. “They know about Horace and all the rest. And they know things like this just don’t happen in the Station.” He looked up again. “It isn’t right, Ned. It’s bad, and it isn’t right. And before you talk to Adelle, drop in on John Webber. He sent me a note that I don’t really understand. Something about Marty, but the man never could write worth a damn.”

  Half an hour later, Ned and young Driscoll were in Doc Webber’s office on High Street, next to the livery. But it wasn’t until almost seven that the wizened old physician returned from delivering a child on the other side of the Village. By that time Ned had listened to the nurse-and-housekeeper complain a hundred times over about the recent weather being lousy, General Grant a miserable President, her chillblains aching, and her employer an old lecher.

  It was almost a relief when they went down to the morgue.

  In the basement was a large room sealed off from the rest of the house by a thick oak door banded in iron; in the center of the door was a narrow iron cross Webber had insisted Reverend Alden bless so the neighbors wouldn’t complain about the bodies lying there. It was cold, the stone walls laced with thin bands of ice, the stone floor uncovered, uneven, and mottled with dark-colored stains. There were several coarse wooden caskets piled in one comer, their lids ranged beside them, a shelf with surgical instruments and vials, and three wooden tables each draped with a white sheet.

  Only one of them was empty.

  Ned had been here several times before and had never gotten used to the not quite imagined stench of cold flesh waiting to rot. And he didn’t like the way his breath plumed as Webber pulled back the sheet from Marty Reston’s face.

  Driscoll went pale, but swallowed and didn’t tum.

  Ned breathed through his mouth.

  The dead man’s face was a sickly pale grey, his thick lips obscenely vivid, and his throat ripped open from below his left ear to the hollow.

  The doctor grunted and set his hands on his hips. The only light in the room came from an overhead lantern with a dented green base, its flame bright but sputtering. It reflected off the surgeon’s high forehead, was lost in the brown hair still thick and wavy. He grunted again and jabbed a nicotine-stained finger at the ragged edges of the flesh, pulling them aside to expose the muscles and flesh beneath. “See that, Neddie? Not expert, but clean enough, all things considered. Got to the jugular neat as a pin. Opened it just like getting at an orange. Not bad, not bad at all.” He sniffed and wiped his nose with the sleeve of his soiled smock. And sneezed. “Sorry, Neddie. Got home late last night, from the Squires affair out to the Manor.” He sneezed again. “Actually, I hate those damned things,” he muttered, still poking at the gap in Reston’s neck. “Pretty women, but the men all dress like dandies. Gregor Brastov, that Count fella, you’d think he was going to a wedding, for god’s sake. And Grandon?” His laugh was sharp and continuous until he saw the impatience in Ned’s eyes.

  “Doctor … ”

  “All right, all right. You never did have any patience, Neddie. You’re just like your father.” He blew a white breath and tapped Reston’s neck. “Now I saw where they found him, same as you.” He looked up, over the tops of his glasses. “You see any blood there?”

  “Nope.”

  “Neither did 1. Why? Because there wasn’t any. Why? Because it was gone before it hit the ground. Why? Beats the living hell outta me, son.”

  Ned blew on his hands.

  “Don’t suppose you want to see Jubal.”

  “I gather he’s the same.”

  “Damn straight. Bit more unpleasant, though. Like whatever did it was in a hurry.”

  Driscoll, when he spoke, sounded as if he were strangling. “Are you saying, Doc, that the dog drank all their blood or something?”

  Webber looked up, surprised. “Dog? Good Lord, boy, who said anything about a dog?”

  7

  The fog wasn’t constant. Here it was mist; there it was cloud. It shifted and glided, exposing and burying, giving movement to the trees, to the hedgerows, to the stalks of dead corn still standing in the fields. It slipped under doors and passed effortlessly through windows, and waited under the eaves for a wind to nudge it again. It billowed like smoke and lay in depressions like shrouds, and when it was passed through it grew fingers for grasping.

  Adelle Bartlett watched it dully from her living room’s only window, but she did not see it. All she saw was High Street, the coaches hurrying by, the high spears of the park’s iron fencing down to her right beyond the stable. There was a carriage at the curb in front of Doctor Webber’s, a small one barely large enough for two, and she watched that as well. When she’d first caught sight of it she had thought with a start it was the hackney and Horace was home.

  But it wasn’t. It wasn’t anything like it. There was no red piping on the roofline, and instead of a bay, there was a roan in the traces.

  She sighed and absently pushed at her thinning, nearly white hair, coaxing it back into the loose, netted bun hanging at her nape. Her apron was dirty, her dress wrinkled, her hands unable to stay in one place for very long. All day she’d been waiting for word from the police, and had even roused herself twice to walk down there to ask. But Chief Stockton had no news, and it was very little comfort that he was genuinely concerned.

  Sh
e turned away and shuffled toward the stairs. There was no sense trying to work now, no sense going to the dress forms and the cloth and the needles, the fine thread. No sense at all. She may pride herself on being the best seamstress in the village, but she couldn’t tat a shawl for a gnat the way her nerves made her fingers jump. Maybe a nap. If nothing else despite the hour a nap would help to pass the time, and when she awakened again the old fool will probably be standing on the doorstep, reeking of cheap gin and grinning like an idiot. There’d be a lot of yelling then, and recriminations, and she would ask him what the children would think if they could see him like this.

  And she sighed.

  The children. Now why weren’t they here when she needed them? Why did they insist on going off to the army, and to New York, and to some fool college school up in Massachusetts where, the eldest said, he’d learn more about business than he would working in the stable. They were ambitious, that’s for sure, and she was proud of them for it. But why weren’t they here when she needed them for comfort?

  A hand on the newel post, one foot on the first step, and there was a knock at the door. She spun around and moved as fast as her bulk would carry her back across the foyer. The door opened almost the moment her hand gripped the knob, and her smile faded to puzzlement when she saw the stranger on the porch.

  He was tall and slender, simply but elegantly dressed in a black suit and red velvet-lined cloak, the fog behind him lighted by the streetlamp and swirling away as if not daring to touch him. She couldn’t see his face, but when she looked down she saw the hands — pale and long-fingered, gripping the cloak’s edges to close at his waist.

  “Good evening,” he said, in almost a whisper. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Mrs. Bartlett?”

  She hesitated before nodding.

  His voice was deep, somber, like the tolling of bells from a long abandoned cathedral.

  “Mrs. Bartlett, I have word about your husband.” He stepped forward, into the light. His face was lean, his eyes black, his hair in a widow’s peak speckled with grey.

  She thought immediately of pictures of dukes and lords she’d seen in the magazines her husband found in the back of the coaches and on the benches of the depot. This man was like one of them, and she couldn’t help wondering what someone like that was doing at her house. But he said he knew something about Horace. She was sure he had said that. She was sure she’d heard those words through the fog that climbed slowly up and around him. Peculiar, it was; she knew she was tired, but she didn’t think it was this bad. Worrying about Horace, that’s what it was. And this man … this man with the voice and the eyes and … “Mrs. Bartlett, may I come in?”

  Pamela sat glumly in the library, an unopened book in her lap, a small glass of sherry on the table beside her chair. Twice she had determined to read through Sam Clemens’ latest farce, and twice the volume proved too heavy for her hands. When Timmons came in and asked if she’d like wine, she’d jumped at it too eagerly, and nearly shrank at his disapproval. But even that had lost its pleasure after only one sip.

  She looked up at the octagonal clock on the wall above the mantel. Nearly seven; and she sighed.

  Ten minutes later she tossed the book on the floor and pushed herself to her feet. She was wearing a simple dress of deep greens and golds, its narrow waist confining, its billowing folds husking in her wake. She paced — from the door to the fireplace, from the fireplace to the first high window. She pulled aside a velvet drape and stared out at the fog.

  Her face, normally cheerful even in repose, was thoughtful, almost solemn, and her green eyes were clouded with a worried half-squint.

  Something was wrong in the house, and she couldn’t give it a name. It was feeling more than fact, instinct more than reason.

  First, that morning, she had eaten alone. Granted, the party the evening before was a long one, a loud one, with more bottles from the wine cellar than she’d ever seen before; granted even people like Reverend Alden had left for home almost reeling. Nevertheless, there’d been plenty of other affairs like it, and her father had always been able to make it to breakfast.

  Not always in good spirits, but he’d always come down.

  Yet today he hadn’t appeared until almost midaftemoon; and when he did, his customary bluster was curiously missing. He refused a decent meal, picking only at leftovers, and told her he’d be spending the rest of the day napping, that maybe he was getting too old for this sort of thing.

  And the admonition to her and the staff that he be left absolutely alone was not only unnecessary, it was delivered in anger.

  Stranger still, Saundra hadn’t left her rooms once.

  And that more than anything pricked her like a thorn.

  It had been over three years since she’d last seen her friend, just before she’d embarked on her first Grand Tour. They had known each other since childhood, and Saundra was always the adventurous one, daring Pamela to this escapade and that and always, somehow, avoiding the blame. Those were marvelous times, exciting times, and she was looking forward to seeing them back in the Station.

  But the Saundra she’d greeted last night was different.

  She frowned and let the drapery fall, turned and walked slowly back to the center of the room.

  Initially, she’d blamed the journey and the weather and the fact that the poor woman looked so sickly and pale. But still, that was no excuse for lying. When she’d had the last dance with Jack Foxworth, and after the last guest had gone giggling into the late morning, she’d seen to it with Timmons that all the gaslight and candles had been turned down or snuffed out. Then she decided she needed fresh air. She went out onto the front porch, and saw in the drive a lone hackney in the shadows, off to one side. She didn’t need to get closer; she recognized it instantly from the red piping on the roof.

  But Saundra had said old Bartlett hadn’t fetched her.

  She went back to fetch Timmons, and search the kitchen for the old driver. And when she returned with the butler, the carriage was gone.

  Impossible, she had thought then; “Impossible,” she muttered now, and decided it was time Saundra gave her an explanation.

  She nodded once and left the room, climbed the stairs and knocked on the guest apartment door. There was no answer and when, after a decent moment’s wait, she opened the door and went in, Saundra wasn’t there.

  “Well, I’ll be … ”

  When she checked the bedroom, the coverlet hadn’t been disturbed — or Saundra had made the bed herself, without waiting for a maid.

  She hurried down to the kitchen and found Timmons fussing with Cook over a problem with dinner. The master, Cook insisted, hadn’t ordered any at all, and Timmons was telling her she had to be wrong. When they saw Pamela they quieted, waiting for an answer, but all she did was ask them if they had seen Miss Chambers.

  “She’s left, Miss,” Timmons said expressionlessly.

  Pamela’s eyes widened. “Left? On a night like this? Did she say where she was going?”

  “For a ride, Miss.”

  “A ride? good Lord, where?”

  “She didn’t say, Miss.”

  Pamela turned to leave, turned back and frowned. “Did you give her a carriage, Timmons?”

  The butler shook his head. “I didn’t have to, Miss. There was already one waiting.”

  “The one I saw last night?”

  He shrugged without moving, and only raised an eyebrow when she muttered a sharp oath and stormed into the hallway, strode to the front room to look for her father. He wasn’t there. Nor was he in his room, his study, or the library.

  She was alone then, and she didn’t like it.

  She stood in the hall and glanced up at the chandelier. It was dark now and would be until the next party they had. Dark, and cold crystal, and suddenly she wished that Ned were here to hold her.

  She needed him now.

  The house was too cold.

  A half hour later the house began to shrink. It was silly of her an
d she knew it. Nothing was changing, but every room she drifted into seemed much smaller than before. The walls were closer, the ceiling lower, and she couldn’t shake the chill that had her hugging herself as if she were outside, without cloak or gloves.

  And then she heard the thunder.

  At first she thought one of the staff was moving some furniture about, but when she heard it again, louder, rolling down the staircase, she hurried back to the hall and stared at the chandelier. It was swaying. Very slightly, but swaying nonetheless, the crystal teardrops tinkling softly to each other.

  It wasn’t all that uncommon, thunder in cold weather, thunder during or after a rather heavy snowfall. But it unnerved her, and she was halfway to the landing to hide in the library when she heard the fall of the brass knocker. Thunder again. Insistent.

  She paused, waiting for Timmons to respond to the summons.

  The chandelier swayed, the teardrops like dead chimes.

  She scowled and hurried down, hesitated at the door before opening it softly.

  “Good evening,” said the dark figure waiting on the porch. “May I come in?”

  8

  Ned angrily jammed his hands into his gloves, his hat onto his head, and climbed into the carriage so forcefully it rocked loudly on its springs, Driscoll joined him a few moments later, sitting gingerly on his left and holding the reins lightly in his hands. Directly ahead of them loomed the park fence, and the gap where in the spring a pair of gates were to be placed.

  Then the fog breathed, and the park was gone.

  “He thinks I’m a fool.” he muttered, folding his arms tightly across his chest. “And an idiot, besides.”

  Driscoll opened his mouth, shut it, and instead watched the roan shifting nervously, its hooves grating loudly on the slick cobblestones.

  Ned shook his head in disgust and weary anger. “For god’s sake, Rick, did you really believe all that mumbo-jumbo he was trying to hand us? My god, the man’s finally too old. He’s eighty if he’s a day, and he’s finally lost his reason.”