The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  While the construction work followed its course, I ventured to visit our future residence alone one night. In fact, I was really seeking refuge there. Bakary and I had had a fight. One of those fights that are part of any couple’s life. You know, living with other people isn’t easy. Even with the one you love with all your heart, sometimes you need a little alone time, to just be one-­on-­one with yourself. At these moments, the other person’s presence can become irritating, unbearable, and then anything can give rise to a conflict . . . In short, I just needed a little air.

  I had rolled some joints carefully saved in my handbag, where there was also a packet of Camelia Sport (my favorite cigarettes), a bottle of whisky, and pepper spray in case any little thugs hassled me. It was, I think, two o’clock in the morning, maybe even three. It was my first time going to those premises at such a late hour. I had parked my car in front of the gate.

  Alone in the courtyard, leaning against a wall, my joint of Lopito in one hand, my Johnny Walker in the other, I thought about some things and about others. Simply put, I daydreamed. I was chilled out.

  At a given moment, something extraordinary took place. A wind of an unheard-­of force burst into the house. Everything started shaking, and me along with it. Although there was a full moon, the sky found a way of putting on its darkest cloak and the agitation of the earth started to compete with that of the sea. Everything moved around me, even the piece of cardboard on which I was sitting. The wind materialized and took on shapes and colors so marvelous that I was sorry I hadn’t brought my camera. I was surprised, astonished and fascinated, but I wasn’t scared. I was stoned, and I calmly attended the spectacle that was presented to me. The wind let out insane howls that covered the deafening groans of the kamikaze waves crashing against the rocks. It entered the building, making the doors and windows slam shut, then returned to whirl furiously in the courtyard. Finally it took on a distinct shape before my eyes: the silhouette of a horse. More than a silhouette, it was a very real horse, an all-­white horse whose shiny coat gleamed as brightly as its blood-­red eyes. It had only one leg beneath its torso and it moved with little hops. No question, it was Leuk Dawour Mbaye, just as the old people described him. My grandmother used to tell me that in her youth she would huddle up in bed at night, frozen with fear, for she heard the ‘Clop! Clop! Clop!’ of Leuk Dawour patrolling the streets.

  I was in the presence of the one and undeniable master of Dakar, he who, since time immemorial, had had a strangle­hold on the city. I was seized with fright, paralyzed. I didn’t dare to make any movement, not even to blink, despite all the dust there was in the courtyard. I sweated in my T-­shirt and torn jeans to the point where you’d have said I had taken a shower fully dressed. Cold sweat. I watched Leuk Dawour rise up towards the sky and loom over my head in an enormous and impressive firework display. Suddenly, I heard a whinnying quite near me that made me jump. I turned around. There was nothing but a wooden ladder placed against the cracking wall. It had seemed to me, however, that the whinny­ing came from that ladder. I didn’t have time to recover from my astonishment. I saw the ladder shake, as if under the influence of an electrical shock, and sink slowly into the earth, provoking horrible sounds like bones cracking. If I’d had the courage, I would have pinched myself to assure myself that I wasn’t dreaming. I saw the ladder descend until it was completely swallowed up by the earth. Leuk Dawour also disappeared. Then, nothing. It became calm once more, a calm disturbed intermittently by the sorrowful cries of the dying waves.

  ‘Bizarre! Bizarre!’ I said to myself. I stumbled out of the courtyard. I was sober enough for anything, except driving a car. I went to a main street to hail a taxi. And if Leuk Dawour had disguised himself as a cab driver? I had all the anxiety in the world, but I didn’t have a choice. Everything came out all right, fortunately. Nonetheless, I was sure that the rab of Dakar wasn’t going to let me go so easily. I felt his gaze at my back. He was following me . . .

  Bakary was sleeping. I undressed and lay down beside him. I had never squeezed him so tight in my arms as on that night. He had woken up several times to ask if I was all right. I responded, ‘Yes.’ I didn’t want to tell him . . . Anyway, he would have told me that I had hallucinated. For some time, he hadn’t stopped telling me I smoked too many joints and drank too much . . . Ah! I was ‘in a state’ (pregnant), as they say here. Two months pregnant.

  When I woke up the next day, Bakary wasn’t beside me. He had left word on the table to say that he was going to visit his family in Mbour and would probably return late that night. I had known about this trip for a long time. But what he really wanted to say in the message was in the final words: ‘Have a good day. A big hug from me. I love you.’

  I took the bus to see the ‘premises’ again. The workers hadn’t yet arrived. They didn’t have set hours. They began when they wanted, which is to say late. I made a tour of the house. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Everything was in order. Even the ladder was in its place. I saw my nearly empty bottle and my stubs stuck in the sand. I took my car and returned home, totally confused.

  I didn’t feel well. I was nauseous and had terrible stomach pains and discharges. My fetus wound up in the toilet. It was clearly a blow from Leuk Dawour. How was I going to tell Bakary? Oh what a day!

  I felt so bad that I had to disconnect my telephone and go to bed very early, after having chugged a bottle of whisky and lit several joints. I needed a pick-­me-­up.

  The terrifying image of the one-­legged horse haunted me. I was tormented by the rab of Dakar. Why had he left me alive? When was he going to show up again? To reassure myself, I had gotten into bed with a little pistol under my pillow. It was a Raven 25 semi-­automatic that my father, worried about my safety, had given me. I slept, my finger on the trigger. Let’s just say I dozed off . . .

  I couldn’t tell you what time it was. All I remember is that at a given moment I felt Leuk Dawour’s gaze upon me. He pushed his muzzle towards my face. Smoke came from his nostrils. But before he could touch me, I had fired. He collapsed at the foot of the bed, giving an inhuman cry. Blood flowed onto the floor as a cigarette burned my sheets. I had just eliminated the rab of Dakar . . .

  Since that night, I haven’t stopped repeating to the psychiatrist, every time I’m sitting across from him, looking him straight in the eyes: ‘Yes, I killed Leuk Dawour Mbaye, but it was in self defense.’

  Translated from the French by James D. Jenkins

  Frithjof Spalder

  The White Cormorant

  Unlike its Scandinavian neighbors Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and even to a small extent Iceland, Norway apparently has no contemporary horror scene to speak of, seemingly eschewing the supernatural in favor of crime novels by writers like Jo Nesbø and Karin Fossum. But excellent horror stories and supernatural tales do exist in Norwegian literature – if you’re willing to dig a little bit to find them. As discussed in the foreword, the Norwegian thriller writer André Bjerke (who dabbled a little in the supernatural himself, as in his novel De dødes tjern [The Lake of the Dead], which reads like a Norwegian episode of Scooby-­Doo) unearthed nearly two dozen rare Norwegian ghost and horror stories from the 19th and 20th centuries. In our opinion, the best of them was the following tale by Frithjof Spalder (b. 1933), originally published in 1971 in the collection Jernjomfruen [The Iron Maiden], named after the medieval torture device. Though Spalder’s tales were received with appreciation by connoisseurs of the genre, they seem not to have found a wide public, perhaps because they were so different from anything else being published in Norwegian literature at the time. ‘The White Cormorant’ is an elegant, perfectly constructed little tale that we’re delighted to present to a wider audience of readers.

  It was evening by the time I came out of the tavern and went down the dusty road that led to the harbor where our boats were. It was almost dark, and it had started to drizzle. I could smell the wet dust from the road filling
the air. I began to walk slowly downhill, a little tipsy from the beer I had drunk. Fortunately I had brought my jacket with me, and I put it on and turned the collar up to my ears. It was not particularly cold, but it is nice to walk with your collar like that, especially if it is a good collar, like this one, and if you have something to think about. And I had something to think about.

  Our village, Ballyheigue, is small and lies on the west coast of Ireland, nestled in a narrow bay. It consists of twelve or thirteen small cottages and a tavern, a road that goes inwards toward the countryside, and one that leads down to the harbor. There is nothing else. Almost all of us make our living from the sea.

  A couple miles further south lies the great cliff named Sybil Point. It is a high, steep cliff of weathered black granite that lies like a clenched fist out in the sea, connected to the mainland by a low, narrow ridge where some scraggly grass and windblown bushes grow, like a hairy wrist.

  Sybil Point.

  I remember well that one of the old, bearded chaps at the tavern, after having gotten good and drunk on the strong beer, had coughed and said anyone who sailed round the cliff must be either one hell of a sailor or else downright mad, and the others had nodded, mumbling. He had grabbed my scarf with large, clenched fists and pressed my face down to his own so that I could smell the beery stench from his sagging mouth and see how blurry his watery blue eyes were.

  ‘Listen here, my boy,’ he had said in a drunkard’s voice. ‘I’ll tell you something. There isn’t a single man here who manages to travel past Sybil Point unless he’s one hell of a sailor – or downright mad!’

  He looked at me for a long time after saying this, long enough for me to feel uncomfortable. The others remained quiet. He swayed before me and stared as though he expected a challenge on the spot. I kept completely silent and merely looked intently into his darkening eyes. Then he released his grip, which by the way was solid enough, and turned away with a contemptuous sound.

  It was that contemptuous sound I thought of as I walked, kicking at the stones on the way to the harbor. Well, all right. He had been drunk. What are a drunkard’s words? Lies or truth? Maybe the only truth. I stood on the wet planks of the pier and looked out over the forest of masts that tilted and pitched up and down before me in the weak swells. It had grown dark, mostly because of the woolly gray clouds that hung over the sea to the west and which now silently sent their fine drizzle down over the harbor. Out at the jetty where the lighthouse was, I could see a strip of lighter cloudcover. It was possible there would be fine weather tomorrow. And if it was fine weather . . .

  Why not?

  I was young and strong and full of daring. Why shouldn’t it go well for me? Who was to say that I wouldn’t manage it? Now I suddenly saw a challenge in it, that challenge I had hesitated to answer up at the tavern. This was the only proper course. A quiet, deliberate decision, taken alone, without provocation. Decisions made under pressure are almost always worthless.

  I went over to my own large sailboat where it was moored with the sail taken down and the gaff tied to the boom, as is the custom here. It was a spacious but slender sea boat, thirty-­two feet long, built for rough and stormy seas. I bent down and pulled a little at the mooring rope. Tightened it, felt the movement in the boat. It answered with some small gurgles from the bow where beneath the nailed boards the dark water lay.

  I stood on the wharf for a long time and stared out towards the shiny sea surface that lay there like molten lead, and the stars emerged one by one in the steel-­blue heavens.

  I was up very early the next morning to get the equipment ready for the trip. A sense of anticipation made my skin tingle as I got dressed. The sun was about to break through the foliage over the forest-­clad ridge behind the cottage. I went out on the steps, took a breath of the fresh morning air and saw the harbor far below like a big U, with boats lying along the protruding wharfs.

  It was completely silent.

  Down at the tavern and the cottages behind it, smoke had begun to emerge from the first chimneys. I took my watch from my pants pocket and flipped open the thin silver cover. Quarter to four. Soon the crews of the lobster boats would set out after their traps. I went in and made breakfast, packed some rations in my bag and pulled out what clothes I had for stormy weather.

  The grass was still wet and the air clear and pleasant to inhale after the previous day’s rain. I sang to myself as I walked rather quickly down the slope to the harbor, which the sun had now tinged with a reddish glow.

  I had almost reached the wharf, where the large granite rocks meet the planks, when I stopped. In the glistening wet grass to my left, halfway down in a ditch, sat a man. He sat so motionless that he almost blended in with the ground. It was the drunk from the night before at the tavern. He sat and looked straight ahead, didn’t move. He didn’t seem to have seen me. I walked away and stopped above and opposite him so that he could not avoid catching sight of me. He sat with his legs astride, his hands on the ground. I could see that he was as drunk as the night before, if not more so.

  ‘Hello!’ I called out. He sat totally motionless. I called again, a little louder, ‘Hello!’

  It was as if he shivered a little just then, his face tensed up, and he ran his tongue over his lips. Then he saw me.

  ‘I hear you,’ he said with a tongue that was thick and stiff. His eyes widened and then contracted. ‘I recognize you . . .’ He squinted up at me with dull eyes. ‘And now you’re going to sail to Sybil – to Sybil Point!’ His mouth drew into a twisted grin, his chest heaved as though he were going to vomit, but then I realized he was sitting there laughing, laughing with a hoarse, objectionable sound that quickly turned into a violent cough. My sack had suddenly become heavy to hold, and I let it fall onto the road with a thud. The old man’s breath came out in squeaks between coughs. Then he pointed a bony finger at me and called hoarsely – ‘You’re going to Sybil . . . to Sybil . . . she . . .’

  She?

  I took a step forward and bent down.

  ‘What’s that you say, old man? She who?’

  His voice grew weak from fatigue, and he tilted his head back as he looked at me and whispered:

  ‘Sybil . . .’

  ‘Who is Sybil?’ I said. ‘There’s no one by that name here. Sybil Point is a place.’

  He coughed and drew a creaking breath.

  ‘Beware . . . the cormorants . . .’

  His eyes closed again and his voice died away.

  I realized I had gotten worked up by what he had said. My blood pulsed faster, and I felt a strange shiver run down my back. I tried to shake him to wake him up. It was useless. He lay there reclining in the wet grass with his legs spread out to the side and his head leaning backward. It was impossible to get any more out of him.

  I got up and walked over to the boathouse, where I had hung the sail out to dry. It was rough and thick and I half dragged it with me over the wharf down to the boat. There I secured it. Afterwards I found an old sack in the boathouse, which I laid over the sleeping drunk in the ditch. Then I untied the mooring ropes, set the tiller in place, and rowed the heavy sailboat out of the mooring place and out of the harbor, past the jetty. There I raised the square gaff sail and remained adrift, waiting on the breeze that always comes from the west at that time of day.

  After a while it filled the gray-­white sail, and the sea began to wash along the bow.

  I sat good and deep down in the steering hatch and held the tiller with one hand. I had lashed the mainsail, for now a brisk side wind was blowing that made the craft keel, with the boom and the gaff hanging out over the gunwale. I had brought a bag of apples with my provisions and I picked one up and began to eat.

  I could not help thinking again about the old drunkard. It was the second time I had bumped into him, and both times he had talked about Sybil Point. Or rather – hadn’t he talked about a ‘her’? A woman? He had said
something else too:

  ‘Beware . . .’

  It goes without saying of course that his mind wasn’t altogether sound.

  It had gotten colder, and the fog had drifted in from the sea. I could hardly see land out there.

  The sun had traveled half its arc over the sky and hung like a yellow paper disk in the mist, when I noticed that the sail flapped weakly a couple of times and finally hung dead from the gaff. A whirlwind sketched a dark ripple over the sea. I noticed too that the swells had become bigger and stronger. I craned my neck and scouted ahead. Far up ahead, as at the oceanfront, I could see a dark clump formed against the colorless sky, like a knot on the horizon. That had to be it – the cliff.

  The sky above me had all at once gone gray and dark like an arched vault. The seagulls, which had followed in my wake since I set out, had disappeared. I looked back. The horizon could no longer be seen. The swells bobbed me up and down like a cork on the sea, and the water was dark and smooth like oil. The wind was totally dead here, and the sail hung heavy and quiet. But I was born and raised on the sea and I knew what that meant.

  I locked the rudder and climbed up to the mainsail. I had barely got the halyard lowered when it broke loose. The first gust almost sent me overboard, but I hooked myself securely in the stays as the wind ripped and tore at my clothes, and with rapid movements I made the ropes secure. Then the wind came howling over me.

  The little boat tossed wildly, quivering under the violent wind pressure and keeling until the gunwale was all the way down to the water’s surface. The sun had completely disappeared. Breaking waves heaved over the deck, and wind and sea and rain and salt spray were like a violent whirlwind around me. A mighty bolt of lightning ripped the sky into a network of blue fire, larger and more intense than I had ever seen before, and the thunder came almost simultaneously, a deafening bang like God’s own voice, and the whole time the whistling and howling of the wind, which sent the boat like a sliver of wood along the lashing sea. I sat stiff-­legged pressed up against the bulkhead and held onto the rudder with all my strength. I was soaking wet and almost breathless from the wind and breaking waves, and the oiled wood of the rudder was wet and slippery. My leg muscles trembled and my arms had begun to cramp.