“Oh dear, dear, dear.” The group round the piano broke up; Mr. Halsey crossed the room. “You heard a noise, you say? I do hope Elliot’s horse hasn’t broken out of the stables again.”
His easy tone, and the natural-sounding explanation, calmed the visitor. We have already noted that Paul Bernays did not possess a remarkably quick mind; it did not strike him as monstrously unlikely that a horse should break out of a warm stable in the middle of a winter’s night to go wandering abroad. He knew the animal in question; it did from time to time escape and had in the past been the subject of irritated complaint from other farmers. He was about to resume his seat, satisfied, when the priest took his arm.
“Shall we investigate, my dear boy? It might perhaps be prudent. I have no desire to see my fencing knocked down.”
Again the fatal grip of good manners! A young man of sense had only to protest that it grew late, the countryside lay in inky blackness, and the pursuit of somebody’s else’s horse under such circumstances were mere folly. He did indeed open his mouth to remark on the rain; yet under the steely impact of Alaric Halsey’s gaze, the smile that would not brook refusal, he heard himself answer:
“Yes, of course.” And then—clutching once more at straws—“Will you come with us, George?”
It should have presented no problem. Clearly (given the improbable surmise that a farm animal was running loose outside) the more people to catch it the better. So much should have been self-evident; yet somehow Paul found himself being drawn out into the hall, while behind him Uncle Nicholas cried: “You must stay with me, Mr. Markham! I—I—I feel sure the others can manage! I—I—I must ask you not to leave me alone . . .”
His voice rose to a plaintive yelp; and the door slammed shut. It must have been exasperated nerves which caused Paul to believe that, for a fraction before the door shut, Uncle Nicholas had looked to Alaric Halsey with frightened questioning eyes; and Alaric Halsey had almost imperceptibly nodded.
They passed through the dim hall and, pausing only to snatch up their raincoats, they hurried out of the main porch, into the rainswept night. It really was most horribly dark, an absolute blackness hung over the fields; a blackness so complete the eye could not determine the curve of the downs or see with any certainty where the horizon ended and the sky began. And the silence too held some quality positively unnatural: save for the drumming of rain on sodden grass there was no sound whatsoever.
“There’s nothing there!” cried Paul; and as the words left him he knew he lied. Oh, most certainly something was there: within that black void Something waited, holding its breath.
“Beyond the gate, I imagine.” His companion’s hand fell on his shoulder, urging him forward. Paul stumbled against the wet shrubbery, precipitating a shower of cold drops; if only it were possible to see! He fumbled in the pocket of his raincoat for matches; they were not there! They should have been there, for he smoked a pipe and was in the habit of carrying . . .
“Hurry! Hurry!” The Reverend Alaric’s voice, sharp with impatience, sounded behind him. “Come, come, you’re a young man, I’m relying on you, don’t loiter in the pathway! You’re not, I take it, afraid of the dark?”
“Of course not!” yelled Bernays; he leapt forward and caught his foot against a stone. “It’s just that—Confound it—which way are we supposed to be going?”
They were out of the garden by now. To the left lay a rising hill, to the right a flat stretch of meadow; this much he knew from memory—and memory was all he had to guide him; the land merged into an inky pool without form or definition. The rain appeared to be dropping in straight lines; the entire exercise seemed monstrously disagreeable and utterly pointless for there was no stray animal: no creature with a modicum of sense would be abroad in such abominable circumstances. Irritation began to replace alarm. What in the name of wonder were the two of them doing there? His dislike of Alaric Halsey hardened into a positive contempt. Blast the fellow, by what right did he drag a visitor from the house? He opened his mouth to protest, to voice his declared intention of returning indoors.
“Come,” said Alaric in his ear. “Follow.”
With fingers fastened onto Paul’s wrist, he led the way across a grassy incline, moving forward with a very complete confidence as if perfectly aware of his destination. Walking became more hazardous; rough ground and darkness combined to make each step a risky business; the earth (rendered soft by the downpour) sucked at their shoes and left a coating of mud which smelt of farmyard refuse. Bernays glanced over his shoulder: he could see blurred patches of light behind them, the hazy outline of the rectory windows: as he watched, the lights went out. A curious effect. It must be an optical illusion, caused no doubt by some contour of the landscape. He turned to comment on it; thank goodness the Reverend Halsey had let go of his arm and moved a few paces on into the night.
“Did you notice that?” asked Paul; and then again, “I say, sir, did you notice that?”
Rain drummed steadily on the grass. He strained his eyes, for surely the man must be there; he had been there only a second before.
“Hullo!” He peered again—and yes, there he was, away on the left—No. That looked more like a tree; it was in fact a tree. Well, to the right, then, there had not been time for him to travel any great distance. “Mr. Halsey!”
He got no answer, and now concern swept over him: had his guide slipped and fallen, was he lying on the ground?
“Where are you, sir?”
The rain grew slower, spat, and stopped.
If there had been an accident he would have heard a cry, a shout for help. If his companion had gone on without him—unlikely in these difficult conditions—he should by now be aware of Paul’s absence.
“I’m here!” cried Paul. The call was swallowed up in the surrounding darkness. “I’m here, where are you . . .?”
No reply; and still blackness defeated his eyes and still he could not find a trace. He hurried forward, which was unwise and led to a stumbling fall; he spent several minutes in agitated search before deciding that he would have to return to the house and get help. It seemed that some calamity had overtaken the Reverend Alaric Halsey. He straightened; then realized that with the disappearance of the lights, he had lost his bearings; he did not know in which direction to walk—quite simply, he did not know where he was. Paul Bernays possessed slow reactions yet a fair degree of common sense; he pulled himself up and stood completely still. To advance blindly might easily lead to his wandering miles out into the open countryside; the best hope lay in waiting, in hoping that his eyes would finally grow accustomed to the gloom and enable him to identify a landmark.
As he stood there a noise caught his attention: close at hand, close behind him, the sound of heavy breathing. Now there is no good reason why this should have alarmed him so extravagantly; it could have been a farm animal, a stray dog, a badger, a fox . . .
He knew it to be none of these.
The noise grew louder, a kind of panting followed by a hiss. It took all Paul’s courage to remain where he stood, for an overwhelming presentiment of evil gripped him, a profound conviction that horror walked the night. Two things alone kept him in his place: the first, a very real fear that if he turned and ran he might all too easily lose his footing and crash to the ground; the second, a curious yet mounting impression that this invisible creature was not looking at him. He froze. Perhaps the darkness cloaked him? Yet surely an animal could smell; no animal would be hampered by . . . Something soft and faintly slimy bumped against his leg. Paul let out a yell; and still the Thing glided on, indifferent, and now the breathing grew fainter and now it stopped.
“Dear heaven!” muttered Bernays, and he wiped his face with a handkerchief. Luckily there was a handkerchief in the pocket of his raincoat, although he could not remember putting it there. Relief swept over him; whatever the threat, it had gone. The next moment the sky above him split into groups of leaden clouds and the merest fragment of a moon slid through.
“That’s bet
ter!”
The faint moonbeams did indeed throw some light across the country: the empty fields, the wide curve of the downs now came into view. Paul grimaced; he had been facing the wrong way; if he had continued he would have become most hopelessly lost. Thank goodness he had kept his head! He looked over toward the black outline of the rectory; and observed to his considerable annoyance a figure walking quite calmly up the path to the house. The Reverend Alaric.
“Confound the man!” Paul swore briefly. “Would he have left me, wandering about in the dark?” He ran forward, forming a protest in his mind; in pity’s name, this lacked both hospitality and common sense.
And then he saw it; some twenty yards behind Alaric Halsey.
He took it at first to be a small rain puddle, and his eyes might have ignored it altogether but for one thing. It moved. As he watched, it heaved, swelling a little, and slid across the ground—it could have been a shadow but there was nothing there to account for a shadow; nothing between the wet earth and the moon. Heaving, pulsating, it moved with ever-increasing speed along the ground. The Reverend Alaric came to the gate and passed through; behind him the object swelled, sucked itself up, wobbled briefly on the top bar and dropped over. For no particular reason Bernays associated its movement with that panting, hissing breath. It had lessened the gap, a bare ten yards lay between it and the priest; it not only gathered speed as it went, but also seemed to grow, pushing outward in wide soft bulges.
“Halsey!” cried Paul. “Halsey! Halsey!”
The man looked round. The moonlight struck full on him and an expression that might have been surprise or rage or both showed in his face. Before the emotion could be identified he saw the Thing behind him and screamed.
He broke into a run and Paul ran too, leaping across the fields, driven on by a rising panic, for distance could not dim the terror in Alaric Halsey’s voice. He fled around the corner of the rectory; the monstrous shadow gaining all the time. Paul had the advantage of youth; he cut round by the other side and caught up with him beyond the elm trees. The priest appeared to be in a state of advanced shock, his eyes stared blindly up and he shrieked:
“Deliver me! Deliver me! Deliver me from evil!”
Then he fell to the ground, senseless.
Bernays stooped over him. Fear still pulsed through the night. For the moment he had lost sight of that dark stain—it might be crouched slackly under the trees, it might have vanished altogether. He had abandoned all rational thought, all attempt to work out what in heaven’s name it could be; his immediate concern was to get Halsey to safety. They were some little distance from the house; the church stood altogether more near, and there were practical considerations too; the elder man was above average height and heavy. Paul placed his arm around the unconscious figure and, half-pulling half-lifting, contrived to drag him through the stone porch and into the little Norman church. As he did so he got once more that extraordinary sensation. The tiny chapel seemed to open out around him, to change into a vast cathedral thronged with people whispering, muttering, praying—and high above them all a sudden triumphant laugh. He blinked; between them and the altar stood a formless Thing of towering height, growing larger even as he looked.
Oh God, thought Paul confusedly. It lives here. And fainted.
He came to his senses in the brightly lit bedroom of West Farthing; he had been ill, they told him, for three weeks. Out of concern for his health, another week passed before the doctor thought it proper to tell him that Alaric Halsey had died, presumably of a heart attack. The doctor (being a rational country physician) had no intention of repeating local gossip; the whispered story that the body had marks on it for all the world as if it had been trampled to death by a huge crowd. The marks were there; but must surely have been caused by something else, for the entire population of West Farthing village numbered no more than twenty people. Country folk were notorious for their imaginings, and the story struck the good doctor as a palpable absurdity.
Christmas had come and gone while Paul lay in his bed; and it was not until the end of January that he nerved himself to revisit the rectory. It seemed deserted. No one answered his repeated knock; and of his Uncle Nicholas there was no sign whatsoever. He considered examining the chapel—but became conscious of a repugnance so extreme he abandoned the attempt. The Spring term beckoned, he had work to do, examinations to sit; Paul Bernays tidied his house and prepared to return to Cambridge. Sorting through various papers belonging to the estate he came across a bundle of ancient correspondence; letters apparently written by Nicholas Bernays to his father, the squire of West Farthing. The ink had faded and the words (which seemed to have been written by someone in a violent rage) proved uncommonly hard to decipher. Ill-formed characters sprawled across the page at an angle; at one point the nib of the pen had actually gone straight through the document.
“. . . he is my friend! My friend! I do not care if you disinherit me! I shall devote my life to him! You have been listening to vile slanders, the babble of the village idiots who have all run away. He is a great man! It is not true that he worships the . . .”
Here followed a word which might have been Devil; but Paul could not be certain—besides, he was pressed for time, and so he threw the letters away.
Two events only remain to be told. On putting on his raincoat preparatory to leaving West Farthing, the young man discovered a pair of black leather gloves in the pocket; a curious circumstance as he did not possess any black leather gloves. Further consideration led him to the belief that he had in fact got the wrong raincoat—by some accident in the dim light of the rectory hall, he had picked up the Reverend Halsey’s coat, and that gentleman had picked up his. The two garments were not dissimilar. (In passing it might be well if the manufacturers were to make these items of clothing more distinctive, thus avoiding possibly—unfortunate—mistakes.)
At Cambridge Paul resumed his studies, happily showing no ill effects from his disastrous adventure. But his friends did remark that from that date he evinced a marked dislike for the popular student song, “Come Follow”; and—on being present at a concert when the Glee Club performed that piece—he asked them to be good enough to desist.
THE SMELL OF CHERRIES by Jeffrey Goddin
Since that always-popular question: “Where do you get your ideas?” has been asked of authors probably since the first caveman started scribbling on his walls, it’s always a relief when some author manages to produce a coherent answer. “The Smell of Cherries,” according to Jeffrey Goddin, “is blatantly autobiographical, if somewhat romanticized. It derives from a period some years ago when I had to do security work to make ends meet—but it was fun. To keep myself awake on eight- or twelve-hour all-night shifts I’d fantasize about just what manner of bizarre things could take place in such a setting. On some nights the phenomenal world kicked in a few ideas of its own.”
Jeffrey Goddin is a native Indianan, born in a small town there on July 7, 1950 and currently living in Bloomington. He describes himself as a “basically rural type, fond of rare books, botany, woods, rivers, target shooting and moths.” Goddin has had other stories in small press publications such as Space & Time, November, and Potboiler; he has written a biobibliographical study of Lafcadio Hearn and professes a fondness for Edwardian/Victorian writing. At present he has more short fiction and a couple of nature essays upcoming, and there are novels in progress.
Taylor had never been in the army. Too young for Korea, he’d pulled a high number during the Vietnamese shindig. But he liked guns, and he liked excitement of the low-key variety. This might explain why he still found security work mildly interesting, even though he’d almost had his car shot up on an industrial espionage job, and had had to wrestle a coked-out robber to the floor on a pawnshop beat.
The problem with Taylor was, he was a romantic, and more or less incapable of taking orders from anyone on an eight-hour basis. This was probably the reason that what he’d regarded as merely a stopgap job on the way to bett
er things was heading into its second year.
Now, near midnight, driving down a narrow river road on the Indianan side of the Ohio across from Louisville, he was humming softly to himself. He looked forward to a night of sipping spiced coffee and watching the perimeter of a small trucking company for intruders.
This was a holiday job. Happy Thanksgiving. He’d never done the Coleman trucking shift before. All he knew about Coleman was that they had trouble keeping guards on it. The guards got spooked, for some reason. This, too, made the shift mildly attractive.
The lights of Jeffersonville were fading in the distance. Night closed in around the inverted cones of his headlights. Skeletal November trees lined the road, with now and again a car parked by the roadside, interior lights on, kids smoking dope or drinking with the radio throbbing.
Nice, calm, dark road. But Taylor had a slight uneasiness this night, a new feeling, as if in some way he were going into battle. And a part of him liked the feeling.
He passed a stretch of river, distant lights, then the road ran back inland. Now on the left a series of large buildings came up, set well away from the road. A few, but only a few, of the buildings showed light.
Taylor remembered that Coleman’s lay along the edge of a large World War II military base, now mostly empty barracks space, a seldom-used proving ground with a skeleton administrative staff.
Almost there. He saw the red eyes of the reflectors marking the entrance to the wide staging lot, a dozen or so trailers ranged around the perimeter waiting for drivers. At the rear of the lot he recognized the El Camino of the day guard.
On a whim, he killed his lights. He accelerated a little, then let the car coast up beside the El Camino, which was facing to the rear.
It was one of those minor precognitions, like when he’d known that the next guy to walk into the pawnshop was the one he’d have to deal with. He’d also known in some strange fashion that the duty guard in the El Camino would be sleeping, and he was right.
The Year's Best Horror Stories 11 Page 9