LYLE: Go on, please.
MRS. E: He said he felt . . . very close to his childhood while he was in there. He was ashen-faced . . . his hands were trembling.
LYLE: What did you do then?
MRS. E: We had the cab take us up 31st to the Isis Theatre. The movie house at 31st and Troost where Frank used to attend those Saturday horror shows they had for kids. Each week a new one . . . “Frankenstein” . . . “Dracula” . . . you know the kind I mean.
LYLE: I know.
MRS. E: It’s a porno place now . . . but Frank bought a ticket anyway . . . went inside alone. Said he wanted to go into the balcony, find his old seat . . . see if things had changed . . .
LYLE: And?
MRS. E: He came out looking very shaken . . . saying it had happened again.
LYLE: What had happened again?
MRS. E: The feeling about being close to his past . . . to his childhood . . . As if he could –
LYLE: Could what, Mrs. Evans?
MRS. E: . . . step over the line dividing past and present . . . step back into his childhood. That’s the feeling he said he had.
LYLE: Where did you go from the Isis?
MRS. E: Frank paid off the cab . . . said he wanted to walk to his old block . . . the one he grew up on . . . 33rd and Forest. So we walked down Troost to 33rd . . . past strip joints and hamburger stands . . . I was nervous . . . we didn’t . . . belong here . . . Anyway, we got to 33rd and walked down the hill from Troost to Forest . . . and on the way Frank told me how much he’d hated being small, being a child . . . that he could hardly wait to grow up . . . that to him childhood was a nightmare . . .
LYLE: Then why all the nostalgia?
MRS. E: It wasn’t that . . . it was . . . like an exorcism . . . Frank said he’d been haunted by his childhood all the years we’d lived in California . . . This was an attempt to get rid of it . . . by facing it . . . seeing that it was really gone . . . that it no longer had any reality . . .
LYLE: What happened on Forest?
MRS. E: We walked down the street to his old address . . . which was just past the middle of the block . . . 3337 it was . . . a small, sagging wooden house . . . in terrible condition . . . but then, all the houses were . . . their screens full of holes . . . windows broken, trash in the yards . . . Frank stood in front of his house staring at it for a long time . . . and then he began repeating something . . . over and over.
LYLE: And what was that?
MRS. E: He said it . . . like a litany . . . over and over . . . “I hate you! . . . I hate you!”
LYLE: You mean, he was saying that to you?
MRS. E: Oh, no. Not to me . . . I asked him what he meant . . . and . . . he said he hated the child he once was, the child who had lived in that house.
LYLE: I see. Go on, Mrs Evans.
MRS. E: Then he said he was going inside . . . that he had to go inside the house . . . but that he was afraid.
LYLE: Of what?
MRS. E: He didn’t say of what. He just told me to wait out there on the walk. Then he went up on to the small wooden porch . . . knocked on the door. No one answered. Then Frank tried the knob . . . The door was unlocked . . .
LYLE: House was deserted?
MRS. E: That’s right. I guess no one had lived there for a long while . . . All the windows were boarded up . . . and the driveway was filled with weeds . . . I started to move towards the porch, but Frank waved me back. Then he kicked the door all the way open with his foot, took a half-step inside, turned . . . and looked around at me . . . There was . . . a terrible fear in his eyes. I got a cold, chilled feeling all through my body – and I started towards him again . . . but he suddenly turned his back and went inside . . . the door closed.
LYLE: What then?
MRS. E: Then I waited. For fifteen . . . twenty minutes . . . a half hour . . . Frank didn’t come out. So I went up to the porch and opened the door . . . called to him . . .
LYLE: Any answer?
MRS. E: No. The house was like . . . a hollow cave . . . there were echoes . . . but no answer . . . I went inside . . . walked all through the place . . . into every room . . . but he wasn’t there . . . Frank was gone.
LYLE: Out the back, maybe.
MRS. E: No. The back door was nailed shut. Rusted. It hadn’t been opened for years.
LYLE: A window then.
MRS. E: They were all boarded over. With thick dust on the sills.
LYLE: Did you check the basement?
MRS. E: Yes, I checked the basement door leading down. It was locked, and the dust hadn’t been disturbed around it.
LYLE: Then . . . just where the hell did he go?
MRS. E: I don’t know, Lieutenant! . . . That’s why I called you . . . why I came here . . . You’ve got to find Frank!
note: Lt. Lyle did not find Franklin Evans. The case was turned over to Missing Persons – and, a week later, Mrs. Evans returned to her home in California. The first night back she had a dream, a nightmare. It disturbed her severely. She could not eat, could not sleep properly; her nerves were shattered. Mrs. Evans then sought psychiatric help. What follows is an excerpt from a taped session with Dr. Lawrence Redding, a licensed psychiatrist with offices in Beverly Hills, California.
Transcript is dated 3 August 1984. Beverly Hills.
REDDING: And where were you . . .? In the dream, I mean.
MRS. E: My bedroom. In bed, at home. It was as if I’d just been awakened . . . I looked around me – and everything was normal . . . the room exactly as it always is . . . Except for him . . . the boy standing next to me.
REDDING: Did you recognize this boy?
MRS. E: No.
REDDING: Describe him to me.
MRS. E: He was . . . nine or ten . . . a horrible child . . . with a cold hate in his face, in his eyes . . . He had on a black sweater with holes in each elbow. And knickers . . . the kind that boys used to wear . . . and he had on black tennis shoes . . .
REDDING: Did he speak to you?
MRS. E: Not at first. He just . . . smiled at me . . . and that smile was so . . . so evil! . . . And then he said . . . that he wanted me to know he’d won at last . . .
REDDING: Won what?
MRS. E: That’s what I asked him . . . calmly, in the dream . . . I asked him what he’d won. And he said . . . oh, My God . . . he said . . .
REDDING: Go on, Mrs. Evans.
MRS. E: . . . that he’d won Frank! . . . that my husband would never be coming back . . . that he, the boy, had him now . . . forever! . . . I screamed – and woke up. And, instantly, I remembered something.
REDDING: What did you remember?
MRS. E: Before she died . . . Frank’s mother . . . sent us an album she’d saved . . . of his childhood . . . photos . . . old report cards . . . He never wanted to look at it, stuck the album away in a closet . . . After the dream, I got it out, looked through it until I found . . .
REDDING: Yes . . .?
MRS. E: A photo I’d remembered. Of Frank . . . at the age of ten . . . standing in the front yard on Forest . . . He was smiling . . . that same, awful smile . . . and . . . he wore a dark sweater with holes in each elbow . . . knickers . . . and black tennis shoes. It was . . . the same boy exactly – the younger self Frank had always hated . . . I know what happened in that house now.
REDDING: Then tell me.
MRS. E: The boy was . . . waiting there . . . inside that awful, rotting dead house . . . waiting for Frank to come back . . . all those years . . . waiting there to claim him – because . . . he hated the man that Frank had become as much as Frank hated the child he’d once been . . . and the boy was right.
REDDING: Right about what, Mrs. Evans?
MRS. E: About winning . . . He took all those years, but . . . He won . . . and . . . Frank lost.
2
AVENGING SPIRITS
Tales of Dangerous Elementals
The Old House in Vauxhall Walk
Charlotte Riddell
Prospectus<
br />
Address:
Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth, London, England.
Property:
Large Victorian residence, formerly the property of a wealthy London businessman and his family, now let as single-floor tenements. The building is in need of some renovation.
Viewing Date:
December, 1882.
Agent:
Charlotte Riddell (1832–1906) was born in Antrim, Ireland and has been described as the foremost female Victorian writer of supernatural fiction. She became a writer out of necessity when first her father, and then her husband, went bankrupt. Haunted houses were a popular theme in Riddell’s work: three novels explore the theme, The Haunted House at Latchford (1873), The Uninhabited House (1875) and The Haunted River (1877) and there are several in the collection, Weird Stories (1884), including this story of the ghost of a miserly old woman who haunts a run-down tenement. The writer’s own hard life gives an added poignancy to the events it describes . . .
I
“Houseless – homeless – hopeless!”
Many a one who had before him trodden that same street must have uttered the same words – the weary, the desolate, the hungry, the forsaken, the waifs and strays of struggling humanity that are always coming and going, cold, starving and miserable, over the pavements of Lambeth Parish; but it is open to question whether they were ever previously spoken with a more thorough conviction of their truth, or with a feeling of keener self-pity, than by the young man who hurried along Vauxhall Walk one rainy winter’s night, with no overcoat on his shoulders and no hat on his head.
A strange sentence for one-and-twenty to give expression to – and it was stranger still to come from the lips of a person who looked like and who was a gentleman. He did not appear either to have sunk very far down in the good graces of Fortune. There was no sign or token which would have induced a passer-by to imagine he had been worsted after a long fight with calamity. His boots were not worn down at the heels or broken at the toes, as many, many boots were which dragged and shuffled and scraped along the pavement. His clothes were good and fashionably cut, and innocent of the rents and patches and tatters that slunk wretchedly by, crouched in doorways, and held out a hand mutely appealing for charity. His face was not pinched with famine or lined with wicked wrinkles, or brutalised by drink and debauchery, and yet he said and thought he was hopeless, and almost in his young despair spoke the words aloud.
It was a bad night to be about with such a feeling in one’s heart. The rain was cold, pitiless and increasing. A damp, keen wind blew down the cross streets leading from the river. The fumes of the gas works seemed to fall with the rain. The roadway was muddy; the pavement greasy; the lamps burned dimly; and that dreary district of London looked its very gloomiest and worst.
Certainly not an evening to be abroad without a home to go to, or a sixpence in one’s pocket, yet this was the position of the young gentleman who, without a hat, strode along Vauxhall Walk, the rain beating on his unprotected head.
Upon the houses, so large and good – once inhabited by well-to-do citizens, now let out for the most part in floors to weekly tenants – he looked enviously. He would have given much to have had a room, or even part of one. He had been walking for a long time, ever since dark in fact, and dark falls soon in December. He was tired and cold and hungry, and he saw no prospect save of pacing the streets all night.
As he passed one of the lamps, the light falling on his face revealed handsome young features, a mobile, sensitive mouth, and that particular formation of the eyebrows – not a frown exactly, but a certain draw of the brows – often considered to bespeak genius, but which more surely accompanies an impulsive organisation easily pleased, easily depressed, capable of suffering very keenly or of enjoying fully. In his short life he had not enjoyed much, and he had suffered a good deal. That night when he walked bareheaded through the rain, affairs had come to a crisis. So far as he in his despair felt able to see or reason, the best thing he could do was to die. The world did not want him; he would be better out of it.
The door of one of the houses stood open, and he could see in the dimly lighted hall some few articles of furniture waiting to be removed. A van stood beside the curb, and two men were lifting a table into it as he, for a second, paused.
“Ah,” he thought, “even those poor people have some place to go to, some shelter provided, while I have not a roof to cover my head, or a shilling to get a night’s lodging.” And he went on fast, as if memory were spurring him, so fast that a man running after had some trouble to overtake him.
“Master Graham! Master Graham!” this man exclaimed, breathlessly; and, thus addressed, the young fellow stopped as if he had been shot.
“Who are you that know me?” he asked, facing round.
“I’m William; don’t you remember William, Master Graham? And, Lord’s sake, sir, what are you doing out a night like this without your hat?”
“I forgot it,” was the answer, “and I did not care to go back and fetch it.”
“Then why don’t you buy another, sir? You’ll catch your death of cold; and besides, you’ll excuse me, sir, but it does look odd.”
“I know that,” said Master Graham grimly, “but I haven’t a halfpenny in the world.”
“Have you and the Master, then –” began the man, but there he hesitated and stopped.
“Had a quarrel? Yes, and one that will last us our lives,” finished the other, with a bitter laugh.
“And where are you going now?”
“Going! Nowhere, except to seek out the softest paving stone, or the shelter of an arch.”
“You are joking, sir.”
“I don’t feel much in a mood for jesting either.”
“Will you come back with me, Master Graham? We are just at the last of our moving, but there is a spark of fire still in the grate, and it would be better talking out of this rain. Will you come, sir?”
“Come! Of course I will come,” said the young fellow, and, turning, they retraced their steps to the house he had looked into as he passed along.
An old, old house, with long, wide hall, stairs low, easy of ascent, with deep cornices to the ceilings, and oak floorings, and mahogany doors, which still spoke mutely of the wealth and stability of the original owner, who lived before the Tradescants and Ashmoles were thought of, and had been sleeping for longer than they, in St. Mary’s churchyard, hard by the archbishop’s palace.
“Step upstairs, sir,” entreated the departing tenant; “it’s cold down here, with the door standing wide.”
“Had you the whole house, then, William?” asked Graham Coulton, in some surprise.
“The whole of it, and right sorry I, for one, am to leave it; but nothing else would serve my wife. This room, sir,” and with a little conscious pride, William, doing the honours of his late residence, asked his guest into a spacious apartment occupying the full width of the house on the first floor.
Tired though he was, the young man could not repress an exclamation of astonishment.
“Why, we have nothing so large as this at home, William,” he said.
“It’s a fine house,” answered William, raking the embers together as he spoke and throwing some wood upon them; “but, like many a good family, it has come down in the world.”
There were four windows in the room, shuttered close; they had deep, low seats, suggestive of pleasant days gone by; when, well-curtained and well-cushioned, they formed snug retreats for the children, and sometimes for adults also; there was no furniture left, unless an oaken settle beside the hearth, and a large mirror let into the panelling at the opposite end of the apartment, with a black marble console table beneath it, could be so considered; but the very absence of chairs and tables enabled the magnificent proportions of the chamber to be seen to full advantage, and there was nothing to distract the attention from the ornamented ceiling, the panelled walls, the old-world chimney-piece so quaintly carved, and the fire-place lined with tiles, each one of whic
h contained a picture of some scriptural or allegorical subject.
“Had you been staying on here, William,” said Coulton, flinging himself wearily on the settee, “I’d have asked you to let me stop where I am for the night.”
“If you can make shift, sir, there is nothing as I am aware of to prevent you stopping,” answered the man, fanning the wood into a flame. “I shan’t take the key back to the landlord till to-morrow, and this would be better for you than the cold streets at any rate.”
“Do you really mean what you say?” asked the other eagerly. “I should be thankful to lie here; I feel dead beat.”
“Then stay, Master Graham, and welcome. I’ll fetch a basket of coals I was going to put in the van, and make up a good fire, so that you can warm yourself; then I must run round to the other house for a minute or two, but it’s not far, and I’ll be back as soon as ever I can.”
“Thank you, William; you were always good to me,” said the young man gratefully. “This is delightful,” and he stretched his numbed hands over the blazing wood, and looked round the room with a satisfied smile.
“I did not expect to get into such quarters,” he remarked, as his friend in need reappeared, carrying a half-bushel basket full of coals, with which he proceeded to make up a roaring fire. “I am sure the last thing I could have imagined was meeting with anyone I knew in Vauxhall Walk.”
“Where were you coming from, Master Graham?” asked William curiously.
“From old Melfield’s. I was at his school once, you know, and he has now retired, and is living upon the proceeds of years of robbery in Kennington Oval. I thought, perhaps he would lend me a pound, or offer me a night’s lodging, or even a glass of wine; but, oh dear, no. He took the moral tone, and observed he could have nothing to say to a son who defied his father’s authority. He gave me plenty of advice, but nothing else, and showed me out into the rain with a bland courtesy, for which I could have struck him.”
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) Page 10