The 2014 Halloween Horrors Megapack

by Edith Wharton

  Staring from her window at the sky she saw the stars dimmed and milkily veiled by a night mist. The moon swung low, veiled also, bleary and old and tired. The dizzy horror was gone, but not far gone. Gwen’s too-old mind reminded her that she had known that the light of a star came from so far away that by the time it reached your eyes, that star might have burned to a great black cinder. Maybe Hep Cat had made her see things as they were right now, not all that long time ago. Maybe things were quaking toward their fall, toward an end of everything; grown folk talked gloomily about the earth’s destruction often enough—though not for children’s ears. They seemed to admit that they could do nothing but rush toward some awful doom as moths fly into the flame that burns them up.

  Moths into flame, stars into black, the earth into a chaos serious-minded people had built up for it, Gwen’s now older mind said to her, and the words, she thought, came across the night from Hep Cat, whose thoughts would never let her go.

  All into destruction, and only one thing left. The elder Half World, the world built of thought and dream-stuff by sorcerers and witches.

  To whose company Gwen had been admitted.

  She heard the frenetic music from the radio below rise higher and settle into a rhythm that made her muscles twitch as though she must dance to it. And, looking out across little field and somber wood, she saw the bare, dead branches of one tall tree catch this rhythm and toss themselves in a frenzy, as though that tree alone, among her leafy sisters, knew a mad wind that touched no other bough, no other leaf or twig.

  There, Gwen knew, she would find Hep Cat—if she dared follow her. The dead tree she had seen before; it was closed away from the opener wooded land by a thick thorny growth, much of which was as dead as the tall tree. Some day she would go there, Gwen thought dreamily; would go and see—

  She started as if from sleeping. The white bird had come, and was hurling itself at Arthur’s newly netted window. It cried plaintively, like a sad ghost. It tried again and again, and finally hurt itself somehow and fell to the ground.

  Gwen’s screen slid up and down, although not easily. She pushed it up now, and leaned out to look; and, doing so, heard Arthur’s voice—and somehow knew that he was sound asleep, had walked in his sleep to the window, and was talking in his sleep to the bird on the ground. The bird must have been in the habit of visiting the lonely boy at night, she thought. Perhaps he had not known it with his waking mind, While he slept it had come, and sleeping he had felt its presence.

  She heard the blond boy’s voice, and knew that, dreaming, he was murmuring to the white bird. The repeated syllables came clear:

  “Mama, Mama—” he was crying softly; and the white bird’s plaintive cry answered him.

  To the changed Gwen, he sounded incredibly babyish. And she felt so much older and wiser that it gave her courage to face the coming day.

  * * * *

  Hep Cat was old again, and showing strain and anger. Often she gave Gwen a deep look of understanding, but for a while there was no more talk between them.

  The dying baby was seen again for a few days. Hep Cat and Sal made strenuous efforts to build it up, and the doctor came and Gwen watched him give the languid child a transfusion. These things must have been done too late, for next day Gwen learned that the child had died in the night. It was taken away to be buried. Its mother did not come to the house. Perhaps she was too far away to come—or maybe the baby was a deserted waif, like Arthur.

  Gwen began a questioning of Arthur, asking him about things she had not quite liked, before, to mention.

  He could dimly remember his fair, young mother, whom he had lost, he thought, when he was three. Even he thought he knew that she had tried to leave with him; there had been an awful quarrel, and then his mother had been dead. Miss Haggety had told him that she had drowned herself in the old well in the woods. She had told him his mother was a coward, and was cursed, and had turned into a black bat. He didn’t believe it.

  He dreamed of her, dreams he couldn’t much remember. Only that she was very fair and lovely, and spoke to him—though he could never hear her words—in a soft, murmuring voice.

  The well she drowned in? Yes, it was a deep old well, an awful place. Hep Cat threw into it things she hated. Once, he thought, a dead baby had been thrown in there. And Gwen’s necklace was there, the one with the cross of bright purple stones on a gold heart. He had seen Gwen wearing it as she came up the walk. He had seen Hep Cat snatch it away. And he had sneaked off to the old well, wondering if he would see it shining up through the dark water.

  It was caught on a rock projection of the well shaft, just below the surface of the water.

  The two children became irritable, and for the first time quarreled often. Arthur’s mind had become active, or perhaps he had merely begun to let it be seen that he thought. He made Gwen pay for odd bits of information by telling him some of the things Hep Cat had talked to her about. Had she told her ugly fairy stories, as once she had Arthur—until he pretended he didn’t listen or understand, and so escaped being frightened more?

  So Gwen related the story of King Arthur, of whom Arthur had never heard, but they agreed that Hep Cat hated the name because of the ancient king. But Gwen made that king out to be such a stupid person that Arthur rebelled, and began to play that he was King Arthur himself.

  He got Gwen to draw him a picture of a sword. And then he made one out of wood, working on it painstakingly for days. It was a nice toy, but Hep Cat saw it and flew into one of her worst rages.

  She commanded the boy to take it to the old well and throw it in; and Gwen was sent along to see that he did it. Arthur wanted to hide his sword, which he fondly called “Excalibur,” but Gwen’s pleading and terror persuaded him.

  So in it went, both children leaning on the narrow coping to look down. No white hand or arm rose to receive it, but the waters, troubled, caught somehow a brighter light from the skyward world, and as they settled back Gwen saw quite clearly her prized lost necklace. The gold shone, and even a purple flash from the little cross inset on the heart-shaped locket.

  So it turned into an adventure, this casting away of the wooden sword.

  Gwen pleaded with Arthur as vehemently now to disobey Hep Cat as she had insisted that he obey her. A locket was a tiny thing. It could be hidden, as a wooden sword could not. It could be buried under a little mound of earth near the old well. Wouldn’t he, oh, wouldn’t he—please?

  She had realized that she had a certain power over the big boy. Yet she hardly believed it when he began to climb down as far as he could—planting his bare feet—he had thought to take off his shoes—in the chinks of the uneven stone of the circular shaft. But it was slippery, and looking down, she suddenly knew that if he went even a little lower he was bound to fall.

  She leaned over and reached a hand down; but something kept her lips closed, and open them she could not. Did she want to see him fall? Maybe—

  Then something like a white bolt of lightning shot past Gwen’s head and dived into the well. This might have been enough to make the boy fall, but he did not; perhaps because even as the thing darted down it uttered the soft, tender bird-cry he knew dreaming or waking.

  It was the white bird, and it plunged into the water like a great gull after a fish. It grazed the wall, somehow; the dive was too steep for its wings to balance it perhaps. But it achieved the upward flight, and Arthur began at once the safer climb to the stone coping.

  He sat there, and his eyes and Gwen’s were riveted on the white bird, which beat its wings frantically, poising only a few feet beyond hand reach of the boy and girl. The beating wings moved unevenly: one of them was hurt.

  “Things go in threes—” Gwen said. “That’s twice. She hurt herself badly when she fell from your window. She lay there a long time. I wonder what will happen to her next—”

  Then her sharp eyes caught a bright glint from the white feathered throat, and she cried excitedly:

  “The bird got it—my neckl
ace! Oh, somehow it slipped over her head. She’s wearing it—the crazy thing. As if she were a—a person.”

  Demandingly, as she had come to speak so often to Arthur, she began to order the bird, which still beat the air with uneven wings, which seemed to study her with bright, bright eyes. She called to it, she reached her hands. But it was no good. The bird circled, rising in the air. More smoothly now she leveled into a long, soaring arc which took her off behind the treetops.

  “Then why did she dive for it?” Gwen asked, through angry tears. “To think she had enough sense to do that! To dive into that narrow well, and to bring up—” She stopped herself, realizing what the bird had actually done. She had stopped Arthur’s dangerous climb. She had scooped up the necklace, tossed the chain over her neck and made off with it. Not giving Gwen, though, the thing she reached and begged for.

  A queer prescience came over the newly wise Gwen, a thought that would have made her feel awed and tender once, but now did not. She spoke coldly to Arthur.

  “What she did was to save you—of course. That bird—loves you. So Hep Cat told you your mother had been turned into a black bat! Well, Hep Cat lied that time. She—somehow—is in that bird. Either she is the bird, or she knows how to get inside it, make it do things. I wonder if I’ll ever know exactly which, and how it works?”

  Nothing mattered to Gwen these days, except to slake the new curiosity that was in her. Hep Cat had made her ambitious. Whatever it was that gave control to some over others, Gwen wanted that. That was why she was a “disciple” of the Master Minds. She had shared a glass of red wine with the witch, and she had changed from that night. She was not at all the silly little girl she used to be.

  But when Arthur looked long and quietly at her without speaking, she knew—with something like fury—that he had his own wisdom. Maybe it had not occurred to him to think the white bird had anything, really, to do with his mother. But he had felt the love that came to him while he slept, and he had returned it, and it had kept him from becoming half as silly and dimwitted as Hep Cat seemed to believe his neglected childhood must have made him.

  The house became untenable, about that time, because of flies. Hep Cat loved them. Like the spiders, Gwen knew she must not lift a hand to swat one of the black, fat, buzzing monsters that crept in somehow and infested the place. Once, in fact, she brushed one away violently and Hep Cat was nearby and left the print of her hand in red on Gwen’s soft cheek. After that, there were no more mistakes.

  “Why—” she asked Arthur, “Why are they so thick around the place? More every day.”

  And Arthur’s clear blue eyes looked at her with an unbelievable quietness, as he answered. “Blood will draw flies—quicker than sugar. Once I fell and knocked myself out, and cut my knee—a great gash. When I woke, flies were all over it. This is because of what she calls the blood transfusions.”

  Gwen stared at him, shocked and angry. “Oh, that can’t be!” she cried. But the boy insisted.

  “She’s teaching you things I wouldn’t learn from her,” he said. “But I’ve been here too long not to know some things. Don’t you know why Baby Lily died? They tried to build her up finally—to go on using her. Just at the end, they’ll give blood to the babies. First, they take it from them. Hep Cat drinks it. It does things for her. Gives her something she needs. Some kind of power. And to look young again—for a while. I’ve seen her like that. That wine she drinks—”

  He stopped. Gwen knew that she was white—she could feel her own blood drain inward from her face and hands and arms and legs, could feel it make her heart heavy and her head light. Could feel it as though it were, sickeningly, in her own stomach. Could remember the odd, salty taste of the wine—

  And she could see in Arthur’s eyes that he understood her anguish.

  “It—isn’t straight blood, I think. Probably she puts it in wine. One drink or two couldn’t make you—like she is.” he said comfortingly. “If she’s given it to you—try not—again—”

  His voice stumbled into silence. But Gwen had rallied, the newer, harder Gwen.

  “You are a ridiculous, horrid, lying boy!” she flung at him, and ran then into the house.

  That evening she heard Dr. Mordred talking to Hep Cat in the lower hall; and slipped to the stairhead to listen. What she heard lured her farther down the shadowy stairwell.

  “Sal and her Mugro shall have their treat, and even you, Hep Cat.” he was saying. “You’ll not forget you must think of it as ritual rather than indulgence. But from what you tell me, the boy Hans—as you call him—has become changed. It will do no good to keep him here. We’ll have a farewell party for him—a gala event. And we can initiate your little Gretel at the same time.”

  “Is the girl ready for that—so soon?” Hep Cat asked, doubtingly. “On the way, yes. But I had not thought—”

  “She likes what all children like. A fine show, Hep Cat. She shall have it. What is the whole world but a magic lantern show? From the first days of illusion, the world of the dull and that of the quickened has lain side by side. For her, the big part in a Cinerama show. Two sciences, one imposed on the other like two photographs on the same plate. Beyond the lightning-struck tree where the branches sweep low, have your spiders build their webs. Frankly, the thought came to me when I saw their love for the place. They’re fat and busy there, and throw their gauze from twig to twig—nobody’s ever disturbed them. You need only work a little magic to make them weave us what we want; a screen as fine as mist, to hold images we can dispense with when the spell is fully cast.

  “And your Gretel’s hand shall take hold on a matter so big it can never let go!”

  Gwen might have had misgivings about Arthur’s being sent away; or about the treat in store in which she was to take part; or about the great spell that was to be cast. But such thoughts were promptly routed next morning by Hep Cat, whose child psychology was surely shrewder and more piercingly acute than any known to the ordinary world of parents, teachers or child psychiatrists.

  By whatever shuddering method, this guardian-jailor—who had already for so long been the one adult in the child’s shrunken world, the one to whom she must render obedience and some share of a child’s natural faith; who was also guide on a strange pathway that roused deep, old, nameless desires in the girl had made herself beautiful for Gwen. (How had she done it—how did she do it? Gwen had seen her drink no wine of late. Oh, it wasn’t that, it wasn’t that, and Arthur had lied—how would the dull boy know if what he said were true?)

  All grace and ivory skin and ebon hair and sparkling eyes, Hep Cat called Gwen to her, and for the first time led her into the crowding wood. (Would she take off her ugly dress and underthings—as on that night?) But she did not, and Gwen relaxed and walked easily beside her, hand in hand. And the tangle seemed to clear itself away before them, at the lightest touch.

  They turned aside from the way they went, though that was aside from any path. They came to a great circular clearing where grass had grown and had been burned to blackness and had not grown again; and over this place the lightning-stricken tree seemed to reign in a dismal grandeur.

  “But look beyond—” Hep Cat prompted. “You listened again last night, did you not? Child, I know your thoughts and everything you do. I am not angry, as once I would have been—because you are one of us, and you will be all mine and do the things I wish. And so I brought you here to see my weavers at work—they are weaving a tapestry for you, all for your entertainment—though good, patient Sal and Mugro shall have entertainment too!”

  Yes, Gwen had changed.

  She saw beyond the charred clearing the wide sweep of gray spider web, and the busy weaving of the fat spiders as they still widened it and thickened it. It seemed to her they did a dance on the filmy silver; the kind of dance she had wanted to do with her untrained child’s body and limbs the night Hep Cat ran naked into the wood, when the bare branches of the dead tree had swayed in a windless air.

  “I saw Cinerama—i
n New York, with Mother!” Gwen breathed, and for the moment was all little girl again. “You’re going to show one like it—and they are weaving the screen for it. And you can make them—Oh, Hep Cat!”

  Adoration was in her eyes. It would be hard to call back again this real love, just given! Let the beautiful young body change back into the old witch’s form if it must, and the lovely face to the wrinkled mask. Always, hereafter, Gwen told herself passionately, she would see the young loveliness that walked beside her now.

  “Well, see you’re not a sleepy girl tomorrow night,” laughed the young witch—for so Gwen thought of her now, no longer caring.

  “The night should be black. We’ll wait for the old moon to show her crescent. While the world sleeps, we’ll wake in the darkness. It will be—a revel, Girl. A revel. Not for a child’s eyes—but Age is newly grown in you.”

  It was true. Gwen felt strange, wild emotions surging in her next night while she waited. Once she signaled Arthur softly, but she did not bother to open the connecting door. She could feel the emptiness of his room. Already he had been sent away—or taken. She wondered idly to what place, but could not think of it for long. Her eyes were on that line of tree tops over which the old moon soon would swing. And when it rose there, she needed no further summons. Barefooted, she stole down the stair.

  The Doctor was down there with Hep Cat. She had felt their silent presence. They smiled at her, smiles that had in them something of triumph. They were proud of her, she thought. She had known to come, and when to come, and she was one of them tonight.

  Each took her by a hand, leading her toward the forest. And now she realized that they were strangely clad. The lovely young body of Hep Cat need not be bared tonight, so gracefully fell the black folds of the transparent robe through which it shimmered. The Doctor too was black-clad. The skirt of a great cape swept the grass and swished as he walked.