by Otto Penzler
“Would you get the key? For the handcuffs? It’s in his pants pocket.”
The girl didn’t seem to hear. She stopped at the puddle of vomit and lowered her face into it. Jean heard lapping sounds, and gagged. The girl raised her head, stared up at Jean, licked her dripping lips, then crawled forward.
“No. Get back.”
Opened her mouth wide.
Christ!
Jean smashed her knee up into the girl’s forehead. The head snapped back. The girl tumbled away.
A chill spread through Jean. Her skin prickled with goosebumps. Her heart began to slam.
It won’t stop with him.
I’m next!
The scalped girl, whose torso was an empty husk, rolled over and started to push herself up.
Jean leaped.
She caught the tree limb with both hands, kicked toward the trunk but couldn’t come close to reaching it. Her body swept down and backward. As she started forward again, she pumped her legs high.
She swung.
She kicked and swung, making herself a pendulum that strained higher with each sweep.
Her legs hooked over the barkless, dead limb.
She drew herself up against its underside and hugged it.
Twisting her head sideways, she saw the scalped girl crawling toward her again.
Jean had never seen her stand.
If she can’t stand up, I’m okay.
But the others could stand.
They were still busy with the Reaper. Digging into him. Biting. Ripping off flesh with their teeth. He choked around the pliers and made high squeaky noises. As Jean watched, the charred girl crouched over the fire and put both hands into the flames. When she straightened up, she had a blazing stick trapped between the fingerless flaps of her hands. She lumbered back to the group, crouched, and set the Reaper’s pants on fire.
The pants, pulled down until they were stopped by his boot tops, wrapped him just below the knees.
In seconds they were ablaze.
The Reaper started screaming again. He squirmed and kicked. Jean was surprised he had that much life left in him.
The key, she thought.
I’ll have to go through the ashes.
If I live that long.
Jean began to shinny out along the limb. It scraped her thighs and arms, but she kept moving, kept inching her way along. The limb sagged slightly. It groaned. She scooted farther, farther.
Heard a faint crackling sound.
Then was stopped by a bone white branch that blocked her left arm.
“No!” she gasped.
She thrust herself forward and rammed her arm against the branch. The impact shook it just a bit. A few twigs near the far end of it clattered and fell.
The branch looked three inches thick where it joined the main limb. A little higher up, it seemed thin enough for her to break easily—but she couldn’t reach that far, not with her wrists joined by the short chain of the handcuffs. The branch barred her way like the arm and hand of a skeleton pleased to keep her treed until its companions finished with the Reaper and came for her.
She clamped it between her teeth, bit down hard on the dry wood, gnashed on it. Her teeth barely seemed to dent it.
She lowered her head. Spat dirt and grit from her mouth. Turned her head.
The Reaper was no longer moving or making any sounds. Pale smoke drifted up from the black area where his pants had been burning. The charred girl who had set them ablaze now held his severed arm over the campfire. The slimy, breastless girl was pulling a boot onto one of her feet. The skinned girl, kneeling by the Reaper’s head, had removed the pliers from his mouth. At first Jean thought she was pinching herself with them. That wasn’t it, though. One at a time, she was squashing the maggots that squirmed on her belly. The rock thrower’s head was buried in the Reaper’s open torso. She reared up, coils of intestine drooping from her mouth. The rotted and armless girl lay flat between the black remains of the Reaper’s legs, tearing at the cavity where his genitals used to be.
Though he was apparently dead, his victims all still seemed contented.
For now.
Straining to look down past her shoulder, Jean saw the scalped girl directly below. On her knees. Reaching up, pawing the air with the remains of her hands.
She can’t get me, Jean told herself.
But the others.
Once they’re done with the Reaper, they’ll see that bitch down there and then they’ll see me.
If she’d just go away!
GET OUT OF HERE!
Jean wanted to shout it, didn’t dare. Could just see the others turning their heads toward the sound of her voice.
If I could just kill her!
Good luck on that one.
Gotta do something!
Jean clamped the limb hard with her hands. She gritted her teeth.
Don’t try it, she thought. You won’t even hurt her. You’ll be down where she can get at you.
But maybe a good kick in the head’ll discourage her.
Fat chance.
Jean released the limb with her legs. She felt a breeze wash over her sweaty skin as she dropped. She thrashed her feet like a drowning woman hoping to kick to the surface.
A heel of her shoe struck something. She hoped it was the bitch’s face.
Then she was swinging upward and saw her. Turning on her knees and reaching high, grinning.
Jean kicked hard as she swept down.
The toe of her shoe caught the bitch in the throat, lifted her off her knees and knocked her sprawling.
Got her!
Jean dangled by her hands, swaying slowly back and forth. She bucked and tried to fling her legs up to catch the limb. Missed. Lost her hold and cried out as the steel edges of the bracelets cut into her wrists. Her feet touched the ground.
The scalped girl rolled over and crawled toward her.
Jean leaped. She grabbed the limb. She pulled herself up to it and drove her knees high but not fast enough.
The girl’s arms wrapped her ankles, clutched them. She pulled at Jean, stretching her, dragging her down, reaching higher, climbing her. Jean twisted and squirmed but couldn’t shake the girl off. Her arms strained. Her grip on the limb started to slip. She squealed as teeth ripped into her thigh.
With a krrrack!, the limb burst apart midway between Jean and the trunk.
She dropped straight down.
Falling, she shoved the limb sideways. It hammered her shoulder as she landed, knees first, on the girl. The weight drove Jean forward, smashed her down. Though the girl no longer hugged her legs, she felt the head beneath her thigh shake from side to side. She writhed and bucked under the limb. The teeth kept their savage bite on her.
Then had their chunk of flesh and lost their grip.
Clutching the limb, Jean bore it down, her shoulder a fulcrum. She felt the wood rise off her back and rump. Its splintered end pressed into the ground four or five feet in front of her head. Bracing herself on the limb, she scurried forward, knees pounding at the girl beneath her. The girl growled. Hands gripped Jean’s calves. But not tightly. Not with the missing fingers. Teeth snapped at her, scraping the skin above her right knee. Jean jerked her leg back and shot it forward. The girl’s teeth crashed shut. Then Jean was off her, rising on the crutch of the broken limb.
She stood up straight, hugging the upright limb, lifting its broken end off the ground and staggering forward a few steps to get herself out of the girl’s reach.
And saw the others coming. All but the rotted skeletal girl who had no arms and still lay sprawled between the Reaper’s legs.
“No!” Jean shouted. “Leave me alone!”
They lurched toward her.
The charred one held the Reaper’s severed arm like a club. The breastless girl with runny skin wore both his boots. Her arms were raised, already reaching for Jean though she was still a few yards away. The rock thrower had found a rock. The skinned girl aswarm with maggots picked at herself wit
h the pliers as she shambled closer.
“NO!” Jean yelled again.
She ducked, grabbed the limb low, hugged it to her side and whirled as the branchy top of it swept down in front of her. It dropped from its height slashing sideways, its bony fingers of wood clattering and bursting into twigs as it crashed through the cadavers. Three of them were knocked off their feet. A fourth, the charred one, lurched backward to escape the blow, stepped into the Reaper’s torso, and stumbled. Jean didn’t see whether she went down, because the weight of the limb was hurling her around in a full circle. A branch struck the face of the scalped girl crawling toward her, popped, and flew off. Then the crawling girl was behind Jean again and the others were still down. All except the rock thrower. She’d been missed, first time around. Out of range. Now her arm was cocked back, ready to hurl a small block of stone.
Jean, spinning, released the limb.
Its barkless wood scraped her side and belly.
It flew from her like a mammoth, tined lance.
Free of its pull, Jean twirled. The rock flicked her ear. She fell to her knees. Facing the crawler. Who scurried toward her moaning as if she already knew she had lost.
Driving both fists against the ground, Jean pushed herself up. She took two quick steps toward the crawler and kicked her in the face. Then she staggered backward. Whirled around.
The rock thrower was down, arms batting through the maze of dead branches above her.
The others were starting to get up.
Jean ran through them, cuffed hands high, twisting and dodging as they scurried for her, lurched at her, grabbed.
Then they were behind her. All but the Reaper and the armless thing sprawled between his legs, chewing on him. Gotta get the handcuff key, she thought.
Charging toward them, she realized the cuffs didn’t matter. They couldn’t stop her from driving. The car key was in the ignition.
She leaped the Reaper.
And staggered to a stop on the other side of his body.
Gasping, she bent over and lifted a rock from the ring around the fire. Though its heat scorched her hands, she raised it overhead. She turned around.
The corpses were coming, crawling and limping closer.
But they weren’t that close.
“HERE’S ONE FOR NUMBER EIGHT!” she shouted, and smashed the rock down onto the remains of the Reaper’s face. It struck with a wet, crunching sound. It didn’t roll off. It stayed on his face as if it had made a nest for itself.
Jean stomped on it once, pounding it in farther.
Then she swung around. She leaped the fire and dashed through the clearing toward the waiting car.
GENERALLY REGARDED AS the father of the modern horror and ghost story, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) was born in Dublin to a well-to-do Huguenot family. He received a law degree but never practiced, preferring a career in journalism. He joined the staff of the Dublin University Magazine, which published many of his early stories, and later was the full or partial owner of several newspapers. Although active politically, he did not permit contemporary affairs to enter his fictional works. Several of his novels were among the most popular of their time, including the mysteries Wylder’s Hand (1864) and Uncle Silas (1864), which was filmed as The Inheritance (1947), starring Jean Simmons and Derrick De Marney.
It is for his atmospheric horror stories, however, that he is most remembered today, especially “Green Tea,” in which a tiny monkey drives a minister to slash his own throat; “The Familiar,” in which lethal demons pursue their victims; and the classic vampire story “Carmilla,” which has been filmed numerous times, including as Vampyr (1932), Blood and Roses (1960), The Vampire Lovers (1970), Carmilla (1989), and Carmilla (1999).
“Schalken the Painter” is regarded as Le Fanu’s finest early story, and the first devoted to horror. It was originally published in the Dublin University Magazine in 1839; its first book publication was in the posthumous The Purcell Papers (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1880), under the title “Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter.”
BEING A SEVENTH EXTRACT FROM THE LEGACY OF THE LATE FRANCIS PURCELL, P. P. OF DRUMCOOLAGH.
YOU WILL NO doubt be surprised, my dear friend, at the subject of the following narrative. What had I to do with Schalken, or Schalken with me? He had returned to his native land, and was probably dead and buried, before I was born; I never visited Holland nor spoke with a native of that country. So much I believe you already know. I must, then, give you my authority, and state to you frankly the ground upon which rests the credibility of the strange story which I am, about to lay before you.
I was acquainted, in my early days, with a Captain Vandael, whose father had served King William in the Low Countries, and also in my own unhappy land during the Irish campaigns. I know not how it happened that I liked this man’s society, spite of his politics and religion: but so it was; and it was by means of the free intercourse to which our intimacy gave rise that I became possessed of the curious tale which you are about to hear.
I had often been struck, while visiting Vandael, by a remarkable picture, in which, though no connoisseur myself, I could not fail to discern some very strong peculiarities, particularly in the distribution of light and shade, as also a certain oddity in the design itself, which interested my curiosity. It represented the interior of what might be a chamber in some antique religious building—the foreground was occupied by a female figure, arrayed in a species of white robe, part of which is arranged so as to form a veil. The dress, however, is not strictly that of any religious order. In its hand the figure bears a lamp, by whose light alone the form and face are illuminated; the features are marked by an arch smile, such as pretty women wear when engaged in successfully practising some roguish trick; in the background, and, excepting where the dim red light of an expiring fire serves to define the form, totally in the shade, stands the figure of a man equipped in the old fashion, with doublet and so forth, in an attitude of alarm, his hand being placed upon the hilt of his sword, which he appears to be in the act of drawing.
“There are some pictures,” said I to my friend, “which impress one, I know not how, with a conviction that they represent not the mere ideal shapes and combinations which have floated through the imagination of the artist, but scenes, faces, and situations which have actually existed. When I look upon that picture, something assures me that I behold the representation of a reality.”
Vandael smiled, and, fixing his eyes upon the painting musingly, he said:
“Your fancy has not deceived you, my good friend, for that picture is the record, and I believe a faithful one, of a remarkable and mysterious occurrence. It was painted by Schalken, and contains, in the face of the female figure, which occupies the most prominent place in the design, an accurate portrait of Rose Velderkaust, the niece of Gerard Douw, the first and, I believe, the only love of Godfrey Schalken. My father knew the painter well, and from Schalken himself he learned the story of the mysterious drama, one scene of which the picture has embodied. This painting, which is accounted a fine specimen of Schalken’s style, was bequeathed to my father by the artist’s will, and, as you have observed, is a very striking and interesting production.”
I had only to request Vandael to tell the story of the painting in order to be gratified; and thus it is that I am enabled to submit to you a faithful recital of what I heard myself, leaving you to reject or to allow the evidence upon which the truth of the tradition depends, with this one assurance, that Schalken was an honest, blunt Dutchman, and, I believe, wholly incapable of committing a flight of imagination; and further, that Vandael, from whom I heard the story, appeared firmly convinced of its truth.
There are few forms upon which the mantle of mystery and romance could seem to hang more ungracefully than upon that of the uncouth and clownish Schalken—the Dutch boor—the rude and dogged, but most cunning worker in oils, whose pieces delight the initiated of the present day almost as much as his manners disgusted th
e refined of his own; and yet this man, so rude, so dogged, so slovenly, I had almost said so savage, in mien and manner, during his after successes, had been selected by the capricious goddess, in his early life, to figure as the hero of a romance by no means devoid of interest or of mystery.
Who can tell how meet he may have been in his young days to play the part of the lover or of the hero—who can say that in early life he had been the same harsh, unlicked, and rugged boor that, in his maturer age, he proved—or how far the neglected rudeness which afterwards marked his air, and garb, and manners, may not have been the growth of that reckless apathy not unfrequently produced by bitter misfortunes and disappointments in early life?
These questions can never now be answered.
We must content ourselves, then, with a plain statement of facts, or what have been received and transmitted as such, leaving matters of speculation to those who like them.
When Schalken studied under the immortal Gerard Douw, he was a young man; and in spite of the phlegmatic constitution and unexcitable manner which he shared, we believe, with his countrymen, he was not incapable of deep and vivid impressions, for it is an established fact that the young painter looked with considerable interest upon the beautiful niece of his wealthy master.
Rose Velderkaust was very young, having, at the period of which we speak, not yet attained her seventeenth year, and, if tradition speaks truth, possessed all the soft dimpling charms of the fair; light-haired Flemish maidens. Schalken had not studied long in the school of Gerard Douw, when he felt this interest deepening into something of a keener and intenser feeling than was quite consistent with the tranquillity of his honest Dutch heart; and at the same time he perceived, or thought he perceived, flattering symptoms of a reciprocity of liking, and this was quite sufficient to determine whatever indecision he might have heretofore experienced, and to lead him to devote exclusively to her every hope and feeling of his heart. In short, he was as much in love as a Dutchman could be. He was not long in making his passion known to the pretty maiden herself, and his declaration was followed by a corresponding confession upon her part.