The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22

by Stephen Jones

  “I’m fine,” I assure her. “I was up a little too late last night, that’s all. A little too much to drink, most likely.”

  She nods, and I smile.

  “Well, then. I’ll see what we might have,” she says, and, cutting to the chase, it ends with a short article that appeared in the Newport Mercury early in November 1785, hardly more than two months after Abby Gladding’s death. It begins, “We hear a ftrange account from laft Thursday evening, the Night of the 3rd of November, of a body difinterred from its Grave and coffin. This most peculiar occurrence was undertaken at the beheft of the father of the deceafed young woman therein buried, a circumftance making the affair even ftranger ftill.” What follows is a description of a ritual which will be familiar to anyone who has read of the 1892 Mercy Brown case from Exeter, or the much earlier exhumation of Nancy Young (summer of 1827), or other purported New England “vampires”.

  In September, Abby Gladding’s body was discovered in Newport Harbour by a local fisherman, and it was determined that she had drowned. The body was in an advanced state of decay, leading me to wonder if the date of the headstone is meant to be the date the body was found, not the date of her death. There were persistent rumours that the daughter of Samuel Gladding, a local merchant, had taken her own life. She is said to have been a “child of singular and morbid temperament”, who had recently refused a marriage proposal by the eldest son of another Newport merchant, Ebenezer Burrill. There was also back-fence talk that Abby had practised witchcraft in the woods bordering the town, and that she would play her violin (a gift from her mother) to summon “voracious wolves and other such dæmons to do her bidding”.

  Very shortly after her death, her youngest sister, Susan, suddenly fell ill. This was in October, and the girl was dead before the end of the month. Her symptoms, like those of Mercy Brown’s stricken family members, can readily be identified as late-stage tuberculosis. What is peculiar here is that Abby doesn’t appear to have suffered any such wasting disease herself, and the speed with which Susan became ill and died is also atypical of consumption. Even as Susan fought for her life, Abby’s mother, Mary, fell ill, and it was in hope of saving his wife that Solomon Gladding agreed to the exhumation of his daughter’s body. The article in the Newport Mercury speculates that he’d learned of this ritual and folk remedy from a Jamaican slave woman.

  At sunrise, with the aid of several other men, some apparently family members, the grave was opened, and all present were horrified to see “the body fresh as the day it was configned to God”, her cheeks “flufhed with colour and lufterous”. The liver and heart were duly cut out, and both were discovered to contain clotted blood, which Solomon had been told would prove that Abby was rising from her grave each night to steal the blood of her mother and sister. The heart was burned in a fire kindled in the cemetery, the ashes mixed with water, and the mother drank the mixture. The body of Abby was turned facedown in her casket, and an iron stake was driven through her chest, to ensure that the restless spirit would be unable to find its way out of the grave. Nonetheless, according to parish records from Trinity Church, Mary Gladding died before Christmas. Abbey’s father fell ill a few months later, and died in August of 1786.

  And I find one more thing that I will put down here. Scribbled in sepia ink, in the left-hand margin of the newspaper page containing the account of the exhumation of Abby Gladding is the phrase Jé-rouge, or “red eyes”, which I’ve learned is a Haitian term denoting werewolfery and cannibalism. Below that word, in the same spidery hand, is written As white as snow, as red as red, as green as briers, as black as coal. There is no date or signature accompanying these notations.

  And now it is almost Friday night, and I sit alone on a wooden bench at Bowen’s Wharf, not too far from the kiosk advertising daily boat tours to view fat, doe-eyed seals sunning themselves on the rocky beaches ringing Narragansett Bay. I sit here and watch the sun going down, shivering because I left home this morning without my coat. I do not expect to see Abby Gladding, tonight or ever again. But I’ve come here, anyway, and I may come again tomorrow evening.

  I will not include the 1785 disinterment in my thesis, no matter how many feathers it might earn for my cap. I mean never to speak of it again. What I have written here, I suspect I’ll destroy it later on. It has only been written for me, and for me alone. If Abby was trying to speak through me, to find a larger audience, she’ll have to find another mouthpiece. I watch a lobster boat heading out for the night. I light a cigarette, and eye the herring gulls wheeling above the marina.

  RAMSEY CAMPBELL

  With the Angels

  RAMSEY CAMPBELL WAS BORN in Liverpool, where he still lives with his wife Jenny. His first book, a collection of stories entitled The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, was published by August Derleth’s legendary Arkham House imprint in 1964, since when his novels have included The Doll Who Ate His Mother, The Face That Must Die, The Nameless, Incarnate, The Hungry Moon, Ancient Images, The Count of Eleven, The Long Lost, Pact of the Fathers, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Grin of the Dark, Thieving Fear, Creatures of the Pool, The Seven Days of Cain and the movie tie-in Solomon Kane.

  His short fiction has been collected in such volumes as Demons by Daylight, The Height of the Scream, Dark Companions, Scared Stiff, Waking Nightmares, Cold Print, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead, and Just Behind You. He has also edited a number of anthologies, including New Terrors, New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Fine Frights: Stories That Scared Me, Uncanny Banquet, Meddling with Ghosts, and Gathering the Bones: Original Stories from the World’s Masters of Horror (with Dennis Etchison and Jack Dann).

  PS Publishing recently issued the novel Ghosts Know, and the definitive edition of Inhabitant of the Lake, which included all the first drafts of the stories. Forthcoming is another novel, The Black Pilgrimage.

  Ramsey Campbell has won multiple World Fantasy Awards, British Fantasy Awards and Bram Stoker Awards, and is a recipient of the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the Howie Award of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival for Lifetime Achievement, and the International Horror Guild’s Living Legend Award. A film reviewer for BBC Radio Merseyside since 1969, he is also President of both the British Fantasy Society and the Society of Fantastic Films.

  “My fellow clansman Paul Campbell will remember the birth of this tale,” he reveals. “At the Dead Dog party after the 2010 World Horror Convention in Brighton, someone was throwing a delighted toddler into the air. I was ambushed by an idea and had to apologise to Paul for rushing away to my room to scribble notes. The result is here.”

  AS CYNTHIA DROVE BETWEEN the massive mossy posts where the gates used to be, Karen said “Were you little when you lived here, Auntie Jackie?”

  “Not as little as I was,” Cynthia said.

  “That’s right,” Jacqueline said while the poplars alongside the high walls darkened the car, “I’m even older than your grandmother.”

  Karen and Valerie giggled and then looked for other amusement. “What’s this house called, Brian?” Valerie enquired.

  “The Populars,” the four-year-old declared and set about punching his sisters almost before they began to laugh.

  “Now, you three,” Cynthia intervened. “You said you’d show Jackie how good you can be.”

  No doubt she meant her sister to feel more included. “Can’t we play?” said Brian as if Jacqueline were a disapproving bystander.

  “I expect you may,” Jacqueline said, having glanced at Cynthia. “Just don’t get yourselves dirty or do any damage or go anywhere you shouldn’t or that’s dangerous.”

  Brian and the eight-year-old twins barely waited for Cynthia to haul two-handed at the brake before they piled out of the Volvo and chased across the forecourt into the weedy garden. “Do try and let them be children,” Cynthia murmured.

  “I wasn’t aware I could change them.” Jacqueline managed not to
groan while she unbent her stiff limbs and clambered out of the car. “I shouldn’t think they would take much notice of me,” she said, supporting herself on the hot roof as she turned to the house.

  Despite the August sunlight, it seemed darker than its neighbours, not just because of the shadows of the trees, which still put her in mind of a graveyard. More than a century’s worth of winds across the moors outside the Yorkshire town had plastered the large house with grime. The windows on the topmost floor were half the size of those on the other two storeys, one reason why she’d striven in her childhood not to think they resembled the eyes of a spider, any more than the porch between the downstairs rooms looked like a voracious vertical mouth. She was far from a child now, and she strode or at any rate limped to the porch, only to have to wait for her sister to bring the keys. As Cynthia thrust one into the first rusty lock the twins scampered over, pursued by their brother. “Throw me up again,” he cried.

  “Where did he get that from?”

  “From being a child, I should think,” Cynthia said. “Don’t you remember what it was like?”

  Jacqueline did, not least because of Brian’s demand. She found some breath as she watched the girls take their brother by the arms and swing him into the air. “Again,” he cried.

  “We’re tired now,” Karen told him. “We want to see in the house.”

  “Maybe grandma and auntie will give you a throw if you’re good,” Valerie said.

  “Not just now,” Jacqueline said at once.

  Cynthia raised her eyebrows high enough to turn her eyes blank as she twisted the second key. The door lumbered inwards a few inches and then baulked. She was trying to nudge the obstruction aside with the door when Brian made for the gap. “Don’t,” Jacqueline blurted, catching him by the shoulder.

  “Good heavens, Jackie, what’s the matter now?”

  “We don’t want the children in there until we know what state it’s in, do we?”

  “Just see if you can squeeze past and shift whatever’s there, Brian.”

  Jacqueline felt unworthy of consideration. She could only watch the boy wriggle around the edge of the door and vanish into the gloom. She heard fumbling and rustling, but of course this didn’t mean some desiccated presence was at large in the vestibule. Why didn’t Brian speak? She was about to prompt him until he called “It’s just some old letters and papers.”

  When he reappeared with several free newspapers that looked as dusty as their news, Cynthia eased the door past him. A handful of brown envelopes contained electricity bills that grew redder as they came up to date, which made Jacqueline wonder “Won’t the lights work?”

  “I expect so if we really need them.” Cynthia advanced into the wide hall beyond the vestibule and poked at the nearest switch. Grit ground inside the mechanism, but the bulbs in the hall chandelier stayed as dull as the mass of crystal teardrops. “Never mind,” Cynthia said, having tested every switch in the column on the wall without result. “As I say, we won’t need them.”

  The grimy skylight above the stairwell illuminated the hall enough to show that the dark wallpaper was even hairier than Jacqueline remembered. It had always made her think of the fur of a great spider, and now it was blotchy with damp. The children were already running up the left-hand staircase and across the first-floor landing, under which the chandelier dangled like a spider on a thread. “Don’t go out of sight,” Cynthia told them, “until we see what’s what.”

  “Chase me.” Brian ran down the other stairs, one of which rattled like a lid beneath the heavy carpet. “Chase,” he cried and dashed across the hall to race upstairs again.

  “Don’t keep running up and down unless you want to make me ill,” Jacqueline’s grandmother would have said. The incessant rumble of footsteps might have presaged a storm on the way to turning the hall even gloomier, so that Jacqueline strode as steadily as she could towards the nearest room. She had to pass one of the hall mirrors, which appeared to show a dark blotch hovering in wait for the children. The shapeless sagging darkness at the top of the grimy oval was a stain, and she needn’t have waited to see the children run downstairs out of its reach. “Do you want the mirror?” Cynthia said. “I expect it would clean up.”

  “I don’t know what I want from this house,” Jacqueline said.

  She mustn’t say she would prefer the children not to be in it. She couldn’t even suggest sending them outside in case the garden concealed dangers – broken glass, rusty metal, holes in the ground. The children were staying with Cynthia while her son and his partner holidayed in Morocco, but couldn’t she have chosen a better time to go through the house before it was put up for sale? She frowned at Cynttia and then followed her into the dining-room.

  Although the heavy curtains were tied back from the large windows, the room wasn’t much brighter than the hall. It was steeped in the shadows of the poplars, and the tall panes were spotted with earth. A spider’s nest of a chandelier loomed above the long table set for an elaborate dinner for six. That had been Cynthia’s idea when they’d moved their parents to the rest home; she’d meant to convince any thieves that the house was still occupied, but to Jacqueline it felt like preserving a past that she’d hoped to outgrow. She remembered being made to sit up stiffly at the table, to hold her utensils just so, to cover her lap nicely with her napkin, not to speak or to make the slightest noise with any of her food. Too much of this upbringing had lodged inside her, but was that why she felt uneasy with the children in the house? “Are you taking anything out of here?” Cynthia said.

  “There’s nothing here for me, Cynthia. You have whatever you want and don’t worry about me.”

  Cynthia gazed at her as they headed for the breakfast room. The chandelier stirred as the children ran above it once again, but Jacqueline told herself that was nothing like her nightmares – at least, not very like. She was unnerved to hear Cynthia exclaim “There it is.”

  The breakfast room was borrowing light from the large back garden, but not much, since the overgrown expanse lay in the shadow of the house. The weighty table had spread its wings and was attended by six straight-backed ponderous chairs, but Cynthia was holding out her hands to the high chair in the darkest corner of the room. “Do you remember sitting in that?” she apparently hoped. “I think I do.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Jacqueline said.

  She hadn’t needed it to make her feel restricted at the table, where breakfast with her grandparents had been as formal as dinner. “Nothing here either,” she declared and limped into the hall.

  The mirror on the far side was discoloured too. She glimpsed the children’s blurred shapes streaming up into a pendulous darkness and heard the agitated jangle of the chandelier as she made for the lounge. The leather suite looked immovable with age, and only the television went some way towards bringing the room up to date, though the screen was as blank as an unin-scribed stone. She remembered having to sit silent for hours while her parents and grandparents listened to the radio for news about the war – her grandmother hadn’t liked children out of her sight in the house. The dresser was still full of china she’d been forbidden to venture near, which was grey with dust and the dimness. Cynthia had been allowed to crawl around the room – indulged for being younger or because their grandmother liked babies in the house. “I’ll leave you to it,” she said as Cynthia followed her in.

  She was hoping to find more light in the kitchen, but it didn’t show her much that she wanted to see. While the refrigerator was relatively modern, not to mention tall enough for somebody to stand in, it felt out of place. The black iron range still occupied most of one wall, and the old stained marble sink projected from another. Massive cabinets and heavy chests of drawers helped box in the hulking table scored by knives. It used to remind her of an operating table, even though she hadn’t thought she would grow up to be a nurse. She was distracted by the children as they ran into the kitchen. “Can we have a drink?” Karen said for all of them.

  “May we?
” Valerie amended.

  “Please.” Once she’d been echoed Jacqueline said “I’ll find you some glasses. Let the tap run.”

  When she opened a cupboard she thought for a moment that the stack of plates was covered by a greyish doily. Several objects as long as a baby’s fingers but thinner even than their bones flinched out of sight, and she saw the plates were draped with a mass of cobwebs. She slammed the door as Karen used both hands to twist the cold tap. It uttered a dry gurgle rather too reminiscent of sounds she used to hear while working in the geriatric ward, and she wondered if the supply had been turned off. Then a gout of dark liquid spattered the sink, and a gush of rusty water darkened the marble. As Karen struggled to shut it off Valerie enquired “Did you have to drink that, auntie?”

  “I had to put up with a lot you wouldn’t be expected to.”

  “We won’t, then. Aren’t there any other drinks?”

  “And things to eat,” Brian said at once.

  “I’m sure there’s nothing.” When the children gazed at her with various degrees of patience Jacqueline opened the refrigerator, trying not to think that the compartments could harbour bodies smaller than Brian’s. All she found were a bottle of mouldering milk and half a loaf as hard as a rusk. “I’m afraid you’ll have to do without,” she said.

  How often had her grandmother said that? Supposedly she’d been just as parsimonious before the war. Jacqueline didn’t want to sound like her, but when Brian took hold of the handle of a drawer that was level with his head she couldn’t help blurting “Stay away from there.”

  At least she didn’t add “We’ve lost enough children.” As the boy stepped back Cynthia hurried into the kitchen. “What are you doing now?”

  “We don’t want them playing with knives, do we?” Jacqueline said.

  “I know you’re too sensible, Brian.”

  Was that aimed just at him? As Cynthia opened the cupboards the children resumed chasing up the stairs. Presumably the creature Jacqueline had glimpsed was staying out of sight, and so were any more like it. When Cynthia made for the hall Jacqueline said “I’ll be up in a minute.”