“Luella she jest set and stared at me for all the world like a doll-baby that was so abused that it was comin’ to life.
“ ‘Yes,’ says I, ‘she’s killin’ herself. She’s goin’ to die just the way Erastus did, and Lily, and your Aunt Abby. You’re killin’ her jest as you did them. I don’t know what there is about you, but you seem to bring a curse,’ says I. ‘You kill everybody that is fool enough to care anythin’ about you and do for you.’
“She stared at me and she was pretty pale.
“ ‘And Maria ain’t the only one you’re goin’ to kill,’ says I. ‘You’re goin’ to kill Doctor Malcom before you’re done with him.’
“Then a red colour came flamin’ all over her face. ‘I ain’t goin’ to kill him, either,’ says she, and she begun to cry.
“ ‘Yes, you be!’ says I. Then I spoke as I had never spoke before. You see, I felt it on account of Erastus. I told her that she hadn’t any business to think of another man after she’d been married to one that had died for her: that she was a dreadful woman; and she was, that’s true enough, but sometimes I have wondered lately if she knew it—if she wa’n’t like a baby with scissors in its hand cuttin’ everybody without knowin’ what it was doin’.
“Luella she kept gettin’ paler and paler, and she never took her eyes off my face. There was somethin’ awful about the way she looked at me and never spoke one word. After awhile I quit talkin’ and I went home. I watched that night, but her lamp went out before nine o’clock, and when Doctor Malcom came drivin’ past and sort of slowed up he see there wa’n’t any light and he drove along. I saw her sort of shy out of meetin’ the next Sunday, too, so he shouldn’t go home with her, and I begun to think mebbe she did have some conscience after all. It was only a week after that that Maria Brown died—sort of sudden at the last, though everybody had seen it was comin’. Well, then there was a good deal of feelin’ and pretty dark whispers. Folks said the days of witchcraft had come again, and they were pretty shy of Luella. She acted sort of offish to the Doctor and he didn’t go there, and there wa’n’t anybody to do anythin’ for her. I don’t know how she did get along. I wouldn’t go in there and offer to help her—not because I was afraid of dyin’ like the rest, but I thought she was just as well able to do her own work as I was to do it for her, and I thought it was about time that she did it and stopped killin’ other folks. But it wa’n’t very long before folks began to say that Luella herself was goin’ into a decline jest the way her husband, and Lily, and Aunt Abby and the others had, and I saw myself that she looked pretty bad. I used to see her goin’ past from the store with a bundle as if she could hardly crawl, but I remembered how Erastus used to wait and ’tend when he couldn’t hardly put one foot before the other, and I didn’t go out to help her.
“But at last one afternoon I saw the Doctor come drivin’ up like mad with his medicine chest, and Mrs. Babbit came in after supper and said that Luella was real sick.
“ ‘I’d offer to go in and nurse her,’ says she, ‘but I’ve got my children to consider, and mebbe it ain’t true what they say, but it’s queer how many folks that have done for her have died.’
“I didn’t say anythin’, but I considered how she had been Erastus’s wife and how he had set his eyes by her, and I made up my mind to go in the next mornin’, unless she was better, and see what I could do; but the next mornin’ I see her at the window, and pretty soon she came steppin’ out as spry as you please, and a little while afterward Mrs. Babbit came in and told me that the Doctor had got a girl from out of town, a Sarah Jones, to come there, and she said she was pretty sure that the Doctor was goin’ to marry Luella.
“I saw him kiss her in the door that night myself, and I knew it was true. The woman came that afternoon, and the way she flew around was a caution. I don’t believe Luella had swept since Maria died. She swept and dusted, and washed and ironed; wet clothes and dusters and carpets were flyin’ over there all day, and every time Luella set her foot out when the Doctor wa’n’t there there was that Sarah Jones helpin’ of her up and down the steps, as if she hadn’t learned to walk.
“Well, everybody knew that Luella and the Doctor were goin’ to be married, but it wa’n’t long before they began to talk about his lookin’ so poorly, jest as they had about the others; and they talked about Sarah Jones, too.
“Well, the Doctor did die, and he wanted to be married first, so as to leave what little he had to Luella, but he died before the minister could get there, and Sarah Jones died a week afterward.
“Well, that wound up everything for Luella Miller. Not another soul in the whole town would lift a finger for her. There got to be a sort of panic. Then she began to droop in good earnest. She used to have to go to the store herself, for Mrs. Babbit was afraid to let Tommy go for her, and I’ve seen her goin’ past and stoppin’ every two or three steps to rest. Well, I stood it as long as I could, but one day I see her comin’ with her arms full and stoppin’ to lean against the Babbit fence, and I run out and took her bundles and carried them to her house. Then I went home and never spoke one word to her though she called after me dreadful kind of pitiful. Well, that night I was taken sick with a chill, and I was sick as I wanted to be for two weeks. Mrs. Babbit had seen me run out to help Luella and she come in and told me I was goin’ to die on account of it. I didn’t know whether I was or not, but I considered I had done right by Erastus’s wife.
“That last two weeks Luella she had a dreadful hard time, I guess. She was pretty sick, and as near as I could make out nobody dared go near her. I don’t know as she was really needin’ anythin’ very much, for there was enough to eat in her house and it was warm weather, and she made out to cook a little flour gruel every day, I know, but I guess she had a hard time, she that had been so petted and done for all her life.
“When I got so I could go out, I went over there one morning. Mrs. Babbit had just come in to say she hadn’t seen any smoke and she didn’t know but it was somebody’s duty to go in, but she couldn’t help thinkin’ of her children, and I got right up, though I hadn’t been out of the house for two weeks, and I went in there, and Luella she was layin’ on the bed, and she was dyin’.
“She lasted all that day and into the night. But I sat there after the new doctor had gone away. Nobody else dared to go there. It was about midnight that I left her for a minute to run home and get some medicine I had been takin’, for I begun to feel rather bad.
“It was a full moon that night, and just as I started out of my door to cross the street back to Luella’s, I stopped short, for I saw something.”
Lydia Anderson at this juncture always said with a certain defiance that she did not expect to be believed, and then proceeded in a hushed voice:
“I saw what I saw, and I know I saw it, and I will swear on my death bed that I saw it. I saw Luella Miller and Erastus Miller, and Lily, and Aunt Abby, and Maria, and the Doctor, and Sarah, all goin’ out of her door, and all but Luella shone white in the moonlight, and they were all helpin’ her along till she seemed to fairly fly in the midst of them. Then it all disappeared. I stood a minute with my heart poundin’, then I went over there. I thought of goin’ for Mrs. Babbit, but I thought she’d be afraid. So I went alone, though I knew what had happened. Luella was layin’ real peaceful, dead on her bed.”
This was the story that the old woman, Lydia Anderson, told, but the sequel was told by the people who survived her, and this is the tale which has become folklore in the village.
Lydia Anderson died when she was eighty-seven. She had continued wonderfully hale and hearty for one of her years until about two weeks before her death.
One bright moonlight evening she was sitting beside a window in her parlour when she made a sudden exclamation, and was out of the house and across the street before the neighbour who was taking care of her could stop her. She followed as fast as possible and found Lydia Anderson stretched on the ground before the door of Luella Miller’s deserted house, and she was q
uite dead.
The next night there was a red gleam of fire athwart the moonlight and the old house of Luella Miller was burned to the ground. Nothing is now left of it except a few old cellar stones and a lilac bush, and in summer a helpless trail of morning glories among the weeds, which might be considered emblematic of Luella herself.
Gerald Durrell
The Entrance
Gerald Durrell is the brother of Lawrence Durrell, who exceeded his sibling’s literary success and reputation in the 1950s with The Alexandria Quartet. Yet Gerald, the world-famous naturalist, always made more money, principally on nonfiction. Gerald’s short fiction is not well known and “The Entrance” seems to spring from nowhere in the body of his work. It was a serious project for him, and he was reportedly pleased that Lawrence praised the piece that moved in a new direction, over which he had taken some time. One suspects that, like Fuentes’ “Aura,” the story was generated not by genre reading but by rich reading experiences and, perhaps, images of mirrors. The device of a tale told by a manuscript is common in horror, from Le Fanu and M. R. James through, for instance, Jean Ray’s “The Shadowy Street” (which makes an interesting comparison). Another literary antecedant might well be Oscar Wilde’s classic novella, “The Portrait of Dorian Grey.” Another, Through The Looking Glass. In any case, “The Entrance” is a polished and effective tale of horror that deserves wide recognition and repays careful reading. It is a monster story about the nature of identity.
My friends Paul and Marjorie Glenham are both failed artists or, perhaps, to put it more charitably, they are both unsuccessful. But they enjoy their failure more than most successful artists enjoy their success, and this is what makes them such good company and is one of the reasons why I always go and stay with them when I am in France. Their rambling farmhouse in Provence was always in a state of chaos, with sacks of potatoes, piles of dried herbs, plates of garlic and forests of dried maize jostling with piles of half-finished watercolors and oil paintings of the most hideous sort, perpetrated by Marjorie, and strange Neanderthal sculpture, which was Paul’s handiwork. Throughout this marketlike mess prowled cats of every shade and marking and a river of dogs, from an Irish wolfhound the size of a pony to an old English bulldog that made noises like Stevenson’s Rocket. Around the walls in ornate cages were housed Marjorie’s collection of roller canaries, who sang with undiminished vigor regardless of the hour, thus making speech difficult. It was a warm, friendly cacophonous atmosphere and I loved it.
When I arrived in the early evening I had had a long drive and was tired, a condition that Paul set about remedying with a hot brandy and lemon of Herculean proportions. I was glad to have got there, for during the last half hour a summer storm had moved ponderously over the landscape like a great black cloak, and thunder reverberated among the crags like a million rocks cascading down a wooden staircase. I had only just reached the safety of the warm, noisy kitchen, redolent with the mouth-watering smells of Marjorie’s cooking, when the rain started in torrents. The noise of it on the tile roof, combined with the massive thunder claps that made even the solid stone farmhouse shudder, aroused the competitive spirit in the canaries and they all burst into song simultaneously. It was the noisiest storm I had ever encountered.
“Another noggin, dear boy?” enquired Paul hopefully.
“No, no!” shouted Marjorie above the bubbling songs of the birds and the roar of the rain. “The food’s ready and it will spoil if you keep it waiting. Have some wine. Come and sit down, Gerry dear.”
“Wine, wine, that’s the thing. I’ve got something special for you, dear boy,” said Paul, and he went off into the cellar to reappear a moment later with his arms full of bottles, which he placed reverently on the table near me. “A special Gigondas I have discovered,” he said. “Brontosaurus blood, I do assure you my dear fellow, pure prehistoric monster juice. It will go well with the truffles and the guinea fowl Marjorie’s run up.”
He uncorked a bottle and splashed the deep red wine into a generously large goblet. He was right. The wine slid into your mouth like red velvet and then, when it reached the back of your tongue, it exploded like a fireworks display into your brain cells.
“Good, eh?” said Paul, watching my expression. “I found it in a small cave near Avignon. It was a blistering hot day and the cave was so nice and cool that I sat and drank two bottles of it before I realized what I was doing. It’s a seducing wine, alright. Of course, when I got out in the sun again the damn stuff hit me like a sledgehammer. Marjorie had to drive.”
“I was so ashamed,” said Marjorie, placing in front of me a black truffle the size of a peach, encased in a fragile, feather-light overcoat of crisp brown pastry. “He paid for the wine and then bowed to the Patron and fell flat on his face. The Patron and his sons had to lift him into the car. It was disgusting.”
“Nonsense,” said Paul. “The Patron was enchanted. It gave his wine the accolade it needed.”
“That’s what you think,” said Marjorie. “Now start, Gerry, before it gets cold.”
I cut into the globe of golden pastry in front of me and released the scent of the truffle, like the delicious aroma of a damp autumn wood, a million leafy, earthy smells rolled up into one. With the Gigondas as an accompaniment, this promised to be a meal for the Gods. We fell silent as we attacked our truffles and listened to the rain on the roof, the roar of thunder and the almost apoplectic singing of the canaries. The bulldog, who had for no apparent reason fallen suddenly and deeply in love with me, sat by my chair watching me fixedly with his protuberant brown eyes, panting gently and wheezing.
“Magnificent, Marjorie,” I said as the last fragment of pastry dissolved like a snowflake on my tongue. “I don’t know why you and Paul don’t set up a restaurant: with your cooking and Paul’s choice of wines you’d be one of the three-star Michelin jobs in next to no time.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Marjorie, sipping her wine, “but I prefer to cook for a small audience of gourmets rather than a large audience of gourmands.”
“She’s right; there’s no gainsaying it,” agreed Paul, splashing wine into our glasses with gay abandon.
A sudden prolonged roar of thunder directly overhead precluded speech for a long minute and was so fierce and sustained that even the canaries fell silent, intimidated by the sound. When it had finished, Marjorie waved her fork at her spouse.
“You mustn’t forget to give Gerry your thingummy,” she said.
“Thingummy?” asked Paul blankly. “What thingummy?”
“You know,” said Marjorie impatiently, “your thingummy . . . your manuscript . . . It’s just the right sort of night for him to read it.”
“Oh, the manuscript . . . yes,” said Paul enthusiastically. “The very night for him to read it.”
“I refuse,” I protested. “Your paintings and sculptures are bad enough. I’m damned if I’ll read your literary efforts as well.”
“Heathen,” said Marjorie good-naturedly. “Anyway, it’s not Paul’s, it’s someone else’s.”
“I don’t think he deserves to read it after those disparaging remarks about my art,” said Paul. “It’s too good for him.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a very curious manuscript I picked up,” Paul began when Marjorie interrupted.
“Don’t tell him about it; let him read it,” she said. “I might say it gave me nightmares.”
While Marjorie was serving helpings of guinea fowl wrapped in an almost tangible aroma of herbs and garlic, Paul went over to the corner of the kitchen, where a tottering mound of books, like some ruined castle, lay between two sacks of potatoes and a large barrel of wine. He rummaged around for a bit and then emerged triumphantly with a fat red notebook, very much the worse for wear, and came and put it on the table.
“There!” he said with satisfaction. “The moment I’d read it I thought of you. I got it among a load of books I bought from the library of old Doctor Lepitre, who used to be prison doctor
down in Marseilles. I don’t know whether it’s a hoax or what.”
I opened the book, and on the inside of the cover I found a bookplate in black, three Cyprus trees and a sundial under which was written, in Gothic script, Ex Libras Lepitre. I flipped over the pages and saw that the manuscript was in longhand, some of the most beautiful and elegant copperplate handwriting I had seen, the ink now faded to a rusty brown.
“I wish I had waited until daylight to read it,” said Marjorie with a shudder.
“What is it? A ghost story?” I asked curiously.
“No,” said Paul uncertainly, “at least, not exactly. Old Lepitre is dead, unfortunately, so I couldn’t find out about it. It’s a very curious story. But the moment I read it I thought of you, knowing your interest in the occult and things that go bump in the night. Read it and tell me what you think. You can have the manuscript if you want it. It might amuse you, anyway.”
“I would hardly call it amusing,” said Marjorie, “anything but amusing. I think it’s horrid.”
Some hours later, full of good food and wine, I took the giant golden oil lamp, carefully trimmed, and in its gentle daffodil-yellow light I made my way upstairs to the guest room and a feather bed the size of a barn door. The bulldog had followed me upstairs and had sat wheezing, watching me undress and climb into bed. He sat by the bed looking at me soulfully. The storm continued unabated, and the rumble of thunder was almost continuous while the dazzling flashes of lightning lit up the whole room at intervals. I adjusted the wick of the lamp, moved it closer to me, picked up the red notebook and settled myself back against the pillows to read. The manuscript began without preamble:
March 16th, 1901, Marseilles.
I have all night lying ahead of me, and as I know I cannot sleep—in spite of my resolve—I thought I would try and write down in detail the thing that has just happened to me. I am afraid that even setting it down like this will not make it any the more believable, but it will pass the time until dawn comes and with it my release.
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