Roger’s sole comment was: “You shouldn’t have come so far, Mum. It’s the hell of a walk.” His after-thought, “I wish I’d got a bike,” set Mrs. Amery to her familiar occupation of counting pennies.
She dreaded the night. Suppose, she thought (just as she had, earlier, supposed an argument in the opposite direction), suppose that she had not imagined that moment in the little sitting-room; if such a thing could happen in the clear light of late afternoon, what might not the night bring? She longed, with a longing as keen as that of a thirsty man for water, to suggest to Roger that the door between their bedrooms should stand open. But she dared not do it. She was certain by this time that she was a sick woman, the victim of an inflamed imagination, and she was really terrified lest some germ of her malaise might infect the child. She was always – had been for three long years – morbidly conscious that a boy without a father suffers a severe disadvantage, she shrank from the thought that she might try to make Roger take his father’s place in her life, and at the same time she shrank from pampering him unduly, or making him precocious, or timid. So she allowed him to chatter his way into his own room and shut the door, and decorations have been awarded for less courage than went into her last “good night”.
She lay down, with every nerve tense, and, keeping her light burning, read, with vagrant attention, her book, until from sheer exhaustion she fell asleep and woke to find Roger by her bedside. In one hand he carried a cup of scalding tea and in the other two very full-blown roses. The expression on his face was very queer; half shamed, and yet reminiscent of himself at four years old before self-consciousness dawned. He thrust the cup into her hand and laid the flowers on the bed-cover. “Thought it’d save you getting them yourself,” he muttered, with a smile which redeemed the sentence from gruffness. Her heart melted in a wave of adoration and understanding. Of course, he was shy. All nice boys were; they dreaded committing themselves; had a horror of being thought “soft”. Sniffing her roses, sipping her tea, remembering, self-derisively, her overnight fears, Mrs. Amery was happy again.
Yet when, at half past five, the truck roared away, leaving a vacuum of silence behind it, Mrs. Amery, although by this time self-convinced that her fears of yesterday were groundless, avoided the little sitting-room and stayed in the kitchen. After she had prepared the supper she sat down on a chair by the window and began to darn one of Roger’s socks. Deliberately she held her thoughts in rein, pondering the differences in the ways boys had of wearing out their hose, some at the toe, others at the heel, others again at the ball of the foot. Yet it was with less surprise than with a sense of foredooming that she became aware after a few moments of the onset of fear. The silence of the house, the expanse of its emptiness, the mere fact of her own physical isolation, began to bear in upon her like enemies.
She fought the pressure, darning madly, counting the thrusts of her needle until a voice in her mind said, clearly and accusingly, “You’re counting because you’re afraid, you’re afraid, you’re afraid.” And at that Mrs. Amery halted her needle and sat quite still, bringing everything that was in her, sense, reason, self-scorn and courage, to the business of meeting and withstanding her fear. She was still trying to mock herself into sanity when the half-finished sock was lifted gently from her hand and laid in her lap. And as she stared at the moving sock with incredulous, terror-filled eyes, she became conscious of a scent which, later on, she identified as that of hair-oil.
Her stumbling, staggering exit was a repetition of that of the day before; but, being already in the kitchen, she was nearer the blessed sanctuary of the open air. Yet today she was more deeply frightened and took longer to recover herself. She felt an urgent need for human company, and stood for a while looking up and down the village street, wishing that there were some house where her sudden arrival would be welcome and unquestioned. But there was none, for she had made no friends.
Then suddenly she remembered a name and an address which she had glanced at, unthinking and unnoticing, which had somehow become photographed on her mind. It was the name and address of a woman whom Mrs. Stanhope had selected as a possible scrubber. It was a legitimate errand, and, controlling herself with an effort, Mrs. Amery went in search of the woman. She was an old woman, with gnarled hands and stooping shoulders. But within their network of wrinkles her eyes were lively and intelligent. She would be glad, she said, to do any amount of scrubbing, and having said that, she embarked, almost as though she detected in Mrs. Amery a willing listener, upon a tangled maze of reminiscences, her own life-story, her memories of Mrs. Stanhope and the work she had done for her at various times, and, most potent memory of all, Mr. Edward.
“A rare one for the ladies was Mr. Edward; right down to the time he died. Making love to his nurse, they say he was when the last seizure come on him. Holding her hand, he was.” The bright old eyes sparkled with the suggestion that, in their time, they too had had their share of Mr. Edward’s attention. There flashed through Mrs. Amery’s facile imagination a vision of a neat, black-eyed, smiling, bestreamered maid-servant lingering in the passage or on the stairs of the house from which she herself had just fled. Had that touch . . . ah, but it would have been warm and human then! . . . fallen upon that shoulder, now so bowed, rested on that hand, now so gnarled?
With mechanical politeness and the smile which was almost automatic, Mrs. Amery took leave of the crone and walked away between the bright borders of the cottage garden. She felt a little dizzy, so rapidly was her mind working. One small nodule of incredulous common sense was trying to reject the fantastic conclusions which nervous dread, romanticism and remembered experience were forcing upon her. After all, misers haunted the sites of their buried hoards, murderers walked by the scenes of their crimes; why should not an inveterate philanderer be earthbound too? Earthbound! Terrible word. Terrible in its implications, terrible even in itself if repeated.
She walked rapidly, trying to outstrip her fear; but Roger met her before she was half way to the Fentons’; he too was hurrying, sweating slightly.
“Thought I’d start early and save you a bit of a walk,” he explained.
“What made you think I’d come?” She was pleased to hear her voice so light and normal.
“Just guessed,” he said. He linked his arm with hers, as he did sometimes when they were alone, and chattered on, describing his day’s exploits. She walked alongside him, wishing with all her heart that they were going to the station, going to take a room in the village, going anywhere rather than back into that haunted house. The idea of retreating without putting up a further struggle hung tantalizingly in her mind; but she had the twenty pounds to earn; and over her there hung not only the idea of the money, and of Mrs. Stanhope’s wrath, but behind that, Mrs. Bigmore. If she should let down Mrs. Bigmore’s favourite friend, bring one of that masterful woman’s plans to ridicule . . . why finish the thought? It was an unthinkable hypothesis.
But on that night she cajoled Roger into making the final round of doors and windows with her; and then, almost sick with self-contempt, and trying desperately to keep the note of pleading out of her voice, arranged for the communicating doors between their rooms to stay open, giving the heat as an excuse. Nothing untoward happened; but once, as she lay miserably watchful and wakeful, the child called, “Whassa matter, Mum?” in a voice thick with sleep. She called back, “Nothing. Why?” He muttered indistinguishably and in the morning denied any memory of the moment.
For two days and nights she managed, by little ruses and craftinesses, to avoid being in the house alone for a moment. But they were two days of misery. She was conscious now, in a way which was new, of being watched, reproachfully and with an increasing malevolence. It was as though some actual suitor, finding himself constantly rebuffed, were feeling love turn to hatred. And at the same time she knew that there were human eyes watching her too. Those big blue eyes of Roger’s, capable of such frankness and at the same time of such secretiveness, were beginning to dwell upon her with a kin
d of furtive interest. He was not blind, she felt, to her loss of interest in food, or to the ravages which broken sleep can inflict upon a face no longer young. Once he asked if her head ached. And on each afternoon, just before the truck drove away, he had arrived home, breathless and hot, giving some excuse for his early arrival and yet, it seemed, rather out of temper.
Then, suddenly, he began to ask questions. Were they to spend the whole holiday here? Well, she countered, until the work was finished, at least. And how long would that be? Couldn’t the chaps hurry a bit? She fenced with other questions. Wasn’t he happy here? Was he tired of the Fentons? She added, unwisely: “You needn’t spend so long here, you know. I can always come and meet you.”
He stared, and she stumbled on: “I mean, I don’t see much of you all day. I like to make our evenings seem long.”
A new worry came to prey upon her. Suppose Roger guessed that she was afraid of the house and susceptible to something uncanny about it; suppose he saw through her pathetic subterfuges to gain company; suppose he became frightened too. He was, after all, her child; he was very young, and already his life, she thought with self-reproach, was unnatural enough. He had a precocious knowledge of ways and means . . . and this ghastly holiday plan might result in some morbid complex which would remain with him for the rest of his childhood at the least. It was all her fault, too. Probably the whole thing was the fabric of an inflamed imagination.
Thinking like this through the long hours of daylight, she almost convinced herself, and just before dusk, instead of angling for Roger’s company on her evening round, she said – and the effort cost her dear – “I’ll just do the doors and windows before supper, dear. You go on reading.”
She sped round the house in a blind mad manner, as though the whole place was afire and she running to escape the flames. And nothing happened until she reached the drawing-room, which she had left till last because it was near the sitting-room, where Roger was reading. The tall wide windows were open to help the new paint to dry and to disperse the odour. She had a moment of her ever-ready self-reproach that she should be closing them so early. But as she rattled down the last window and stood on tiptoe to fasten the catch, she became aware, through all the smell of paint, of the fragrance of macassar oil, and in the same second, that cold clasp was all about her, holding her motionless, stopping her very blood. Her hands froze to the window-catch, her face froze in a grimace of terror, her heels stayed poised away from the floor and her involuntary cry of horror passed soundless through her stiff throat and ice-bound lips.
Roger’s heavy nailed shoes clinked on the stone floor of the hall and Roger’s voice, blessedly human, struck her frozen ears. “Shall I turn on the griller?”
The cold clasp melted; and as it did so Mrs. Amery heard the sigh again. It was no longer wistful. This time its frustration had a furious, exasperated note.
“You do look odd,” said Roger.
“I strained myself, I think, reaching to fasten the window.”
She was afraid to sleep. She lay with her mind going round in a circle, like a circus pony. She would not stay in the house another day; she would forfeit the twenty pounds and Mrs. Bigmore’s esteem and risk her job – for the headmistress’s displeasure would be far-reaching, she knew. And yet . . . and yet . . . it meant Roger’s schooling, and so much else – little things, down to the very football boots which she had promised him for next term. So, round and round, one decision after another, until the window grew grey with the blessed daylight, and courage came back and the twenty pounds regained its value and Mrs. Bigmore her importance; and for the hundredth time Mrs. Amery was sure that she was the victim of her own imagination, or still ill, or going mad like poor Great-aunt Vinny, and that therefore it was most important that she should try to make friends for Roger while she still could.
Half way through breakfast Roger, who had been uncommonly silent, said, rather crossly:
“I wish you’d speak if you must come into a chap’s room in the night.”
“I . . . I . . .” she said, setting down her cup with a jerk that spilled coffee into the saucer. “Oh . . . it was only that I turned cold myself and wondered whether you’d like your eiderdown pulled over.”
“I was all right till you came. But your hand was like ice and then I woke up and didn’t get warm again for ages. Why didn’t you pull it up when you were there?”
“You seemed warm enough.”
She was sick with a new fear. So now it was Roger who was threatened. And she could see the deadly, the truly awful, logic of that.
She thought: “Maybe I am mad . . . but he isn’t. And though I might be able to save him from my fear, I can’t save him from his own.”
She picked up the half-cup of coffee and drained it. Then she said, steadily, without emotion:
“Roger, would you like to go to Felixstowe after all, for the rest of the holiday?” There flashed into that inward eye which she would have been the last to call, with the poet, “the bliss of solitude”, the notices that spattered the shop windows, “Cook wanted”, “Waitresses required”. Surely there was something she could find.
The child’s brown face lightened and she realized suddenly that she had been missing that carefree look. But it dimmed again, and he said stubbornly:
“Not unless you come, too.”
“Oh, I meant us both. Would you like to get your things together while I go and send some telegrams?”
In the train, the feeling which had begun to assail her in the post-office reached an agonizing pitch. Remorse and self-contempt attacked her until she felt physically ill. She had thrown away a job, risked another, lost twenty pounds which she needed and was about to spend money which she hadn’t yet earned . . . and for what? Why? She was ready to answer, “Because I imagine things.” She looked at her son, sitting opposite, lost to the world in some schoolboy paper or other and thought, Poor Roger; his father is dead and his mother is mad.
Roger folded the paper. He studied his mother carefully for some seconds and then asked:
“I say, will you ever go back to that place . . . Bidstone I mean?”
“No. I shan’t go back.”
“Then I’ll tell you something. I don’t know whether you spotted it or not . . . but, gosh, there was something very queer there.”
“Queer, darling? In what way?”
“Well . . .” he paused, choosing his words. “Did you notice that I always got back pretty early? Did you notice I always sort of stuck close in the evening? I was sort of scared you’d guess why. Well, gosh, Mum, that place was spooky. I don’t mean spies or smugglers pretending to be spooks. This was a real one. Honest, Mum. I saw it. I was afraid you might, too.”
“No,” said Mrs. Amery truthfully, “I never saw anything.”
“Gosh, I’m glad of that. Say, that was why I sort of kept on about getting away, you know. I saw the thing dozens of times.”
“It’s imagination,” said Mrs. Amery, more from habit than from intention.
“This wasn’t. I saw him as plain as I’m seeing you. Old, he was, in a plum-coloured velvet coat and sort of tight long trousers. And a lot of hair and whiskers. I tell you, Mum, I didn’t like it at all.”
“I think . . .” said Mrs. Amery, feeling sick and dizzy, “I think you’d better try to forget about it, darling.”
“Forget it!” he exclaimed, aghast at such misunderstanding. “Forget it! I should think not. Why, think what a tale it’ll be to tell the chaps after Lights Out. Gosh, I’ll make their flesh creep. A real live ghost, seen with my very own eyes. Gosh, if you hadn’t been there, Mum, I’d have found out what he was looking for, buried treasure or a lost will or something. He had a kind of . . . well . . . more of a hungry look.”
“Roger,” said Mrs. Amery, “you’re making my flesh creep. I believe you’re making up the whole thing on purpose.”
And then she began to wonder – as was her wont – whether she was handling this affair properly.
&
nbsp; House of the Hatchet
Robert Bloch
Prospectus
Address:
Kluva Mansion, Prentiss Road, Los Angeles, USA.
Property:
Nineteenth-century, two-storey tenement building. Restored as a tourist attraction named “The House of Terror”, it is billed as “A Genuine Authentic Haunted House”.
Viewing Date:
May, 1955.
Agent:
Robert Bloch (1917–1994) was born in Chicago and began his career in advertising, writing stories in his spare-time for the legendary pulp magazine, Weird Tales, until the success of his novel, Psycho (1959), filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, turned him into a household name. His fiendish imagination and gallows humour made Bloch’s stories unique in fantasy fiction, especially those using the Haunted House motif, such as “The Curse of the House”, “The Hungry House” and “House of the Hatchet”, reprinted here. In this, an old mansion where a notorious axe murderer killed his wife – now a tourist attraction – has the most appalling effect on one visitor . . .
Daisy and I were enjoying one of our usual quarrels. It started over the insurance policy this time, but after we threshed that out we went into the regular routine. Both of us had our cues down perfectly.
“Why don’t you go out and get a job like other men instead of sitting around the house pounding a typewriter all day?”
“You knew I was a writer when I married you. If you were so hot to hitch up with a professional man you ought to have married that broken-down intern you ran around with. You’d know where he was all day; out practising surgery by dissecting hamburgers in that chili parlor down the street.”
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) Page 40