The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology]
Page 35
“What happened to him?” Claire asks.
“After he made the hat, the Specialist came and took him away. I hid in the nursery chimney while it was looking for him, and it didn’t find me.”
“Weren’t you scared?”
There is a clattering, shivering clicking noise. Claire has found the baby-sitter’s bike and is dragging it towards them by the handlebars. The babysitter shrugs. “Rule number three,” she says.
Claire snatches the hat off the nail. “I’m the Specialist!” she says, putting the hat on her head. It falls over her eyes, the floppy shapeless brim sewn with little asymmetrical buttons that flash and catch at the moonlight like teeth. Samantha looks again, and sees that they are teeth. Without counting, she suddenly knows that there are exactly fifty-two teeth on the hat, and that they are the teeth of agoutis, of curassows, of white-lipped peccaries, and of the wife of Charles Cheatham Rash. The chimneys are moaning, and Claire’s voice booms hollowly beneath the hat. “Run away, or I’ll catch you and eat you!”
Samantha and the baby-sitter run away, laughing, as Claire mounts the rusty, noisy bicycle and pedals madly after them. She rings the bicycle bell as she rides, and the Specialist’s hat bobs up and down on her head. It spits like a cat. The bell is shrill and thin, and the bike wails and shrieks. It leans first towards the right and then to the left. Claire’s knobby knees stick out on either side like makeshift counterweights.
Claire weaves in and out between the chimneys, chasing Samantha and the baby-sitter. Samantha is slow, turning to look behind. As Claire approaches, she keeps one hand on the handlebars and stretches the other hand out towards Samantha. Just as she is about to grab Samantha, the baby-sitter turns back and plucks the hat off Claire’s head.
“Shit!” the baby-sitter says, and drops it. There is a drop of blood forming on the fleshy part of the baby-sitter’s hand, black in the moonlight, where the Specialist’s hat has bitten her.
Claire dismounts, giggling. Samantha watches as the Specialist’s hat rolls away. It gathers speed, veering across the attic floor, and disappears, thumping down the stairs. “Go get it,” Claire says. “You can be the Specialist this time.”
“No,” the baby-sitter says, sucking at her palm. “It’s time for bed.”
When they go down the stairs, there is no sign of the Specialist’s hat. They brush their teeth, climb into the ship-bed, and pull the covers up to their necks. The baby-sitter sits between their feet. “When you’re Dead,” Samantha says, “do you still get tired and have to go to sleep? Do you have dreams?”
“When you’re Dead,” the baby-sitter says, “everything’s a lot easier. You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to. You don’t have to have a name, you don’t have to remember. You don’t even have to breathe.”
She shows them exactly what she means.
* * * *
When she has time to think about it, (and now she has all the time in the world to think) Samantha realizes with a small pang that she is now stuck indefinitely between ten and eleven years old, stuck with Claire and the baby-sitter. She considers this. The number 10 is pleasing and round, like a beach ball, but all in all, it hasn’t been an easy year. She wonders what 11 would have been like. Sharper, like needles maybe. She has chosen to be Dead, instead. She hopes that she’s made the right decision. She wonders if her mother would have decided to be Dead, instead of dead, if she could have.
Last year, they were learning fractions in school when her mother died. Fractions remind Samantha of herds of wild horses, piebalds and pintos and palominos. There are so many of them, and they are, well, fractious and unruly. Just when you think you have one under control, it throws up its head and tosses you off. Claire’s favorite number is 4, which she says is a tall, skinny boy. Samantha doesn’t care for boys that much. She likes numbers. Take the number 8 for instance, which can be more than one thing at once. Looked at one way, 8 looks like a bent woman with curvy hair. But if you lay it down on its side, it looks like a snake curled with its tail in its mouth. This is sort of like the difference between being Dead, and being dead. Maybe when Samantha is tired of one, she will try the other.
On the lawn, under the oak trees, she hears someone calling her name. Samantha climbs out of bed and goes to the nursery window. She looks out through the wavy glass. It’s Mr Coeslak. “Samantha, Claire!” he calls up to her. “Are you all right? Is your father there?” Samantha can almost see the moonlight shining through him. “They’re always locking me in the tool room. Goddamn spooky things,” he says. “Are you there, Samantha? Claire? Girls?”
The baby-sitter comes and stands beside Samantha. The babysitter puts her finger to her lip. Claire’s eyes glitter at them from the dark bed. Samantha doesn’t say anything, but she waves at Mr Coeslak. The baby-sitter waves too. Maybe he can see them waving, because after a little while he stops shouting and goes away. “Be careful,” the baby-sitter says. “He’ll be coming soon. It will be coming soon.”
She takes Samantha’s hand, and leads her back to the bed, where Claire is waiting. They sit and wait. Time passes, but they don’t get tired, they don’t get any older.
* * * *
Who’s there?
Just air.
The front door opens on the first floor, and Samantha, Claire, and the baby-sitter can hear someone creeping, creeping up the stairs. “Be quiet,” the baby-sitter says. “It’s the Specialist.”
Samantha and Claire are quiet. The nursery is dark and the wind crackles like a fire in the fireplace.
“Claire, Samantha, Samantha, Claire?” The Specialist’s voice is blurry and wet. It sounds like their father’s voice, but that’s because the hat can imitate any noise, any voice. “Are you still awake?”
“Quick,” the baby-sitter says. “It’s time to go up to the attic and hide.”
Claire and Samantha slip out from under the covers and dress quickly and silently. They follow her. Without speech, without breathing, she pulls them into the safety of the chimney. It is too dark to see, but they understand the baby-sitter perfectly when she mouths the word, Up. She goes first, so they can see where the fingerholds are, the bricks that jut out for their feet. Then Claire. Samantha watches her sister’s foot ascend like smoke, the shoelace still untied.
“Claire? Samantha? Goddammit, you’re scaring me. Where are you?” The Specialist is standing just outside the half-open door. “Samantha? I think I’ve been bitten by something. I think I’ve been bitten by a goddamn snake.” Samantha hesitates for only a second. Then she is climbing up, up, up the nursery chimney.
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* * * *
AVRAM DAVIDSON
& GRANIA DAVIS
The Boss in the Wall:
A Treatise on the House Devil
Avram Davidson (1923-1993) needs very littleintroduction. He was one of the great voices of imaginative fiction. The author of more than 200 short stories and many longer works, he won the Hugo, Ellery Queen, Edgar and World Fantasy awards, including the latter for Life Achievement. He was also nominated for the Nebula in every category.
Grania Davis was Avram Davidson’s former wife, life-long friend, and sometime collaborator. Her fantasy novels based on oriental legends include The Rainbow Annals, Moonbird and Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty (with Davidson), while her short fiction also reflects her travels abroard.
Although Avram Davidson’s work was largely out of print at the time of his death, Grania Davis has undertaken to get his fiction back into publication, helped by friends in the SF and fantasy community. With Robert Silverberg she co-edited the 1998 collectionThe Avram Davidson Treasury, which included thirty-eight stories, each introduced by a noted author, while The Investigations of Avram Davidson, co-edited with Richard A. Lupoff, is a recent collection of mystery stories.
“What a long, strange trip ‘The Boss in the Wall’ has been,” reveals Davis. “Avram had a weird dream in the early 1980s. I don’t remember exactly when. The dream became a
rough, sprawling 600-plus page novel manuscript, about a strange creature in American folklore. When I first read it, it blew me away. After Avram’s health declined, I set to work to complete the novel, as I had already done with Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty (1988).
“(Aside: In classical music, ‘Completed By’ is a recognized byline. Different versions of Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ were posthumously Completed By different living composers. Perhaps we should consider this usage.)
“There was interest in theBoss novel, but editors changed positions, and somehow the book never got published. Avram began to work on a novella-length version of the story, but that also slipped through the cracks of the publishing process. After his death, I really wanted to see ‘Boss’ in print. I began the job of completing the novella, incorporating important segments from the novel, including material of my own. This version was supposed to be published in a fine magazine - which promptly ceased publication. Was ‘Boss’ jinxed, or what?
“Finally, Jacob Weisman, at Tachyon Publications in San Francisco, rose to the challenge. He published the completed novella, The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil, with thoughtful introductions by Peter S. Beagle and Michael Swanwick, and a truly creepy cover by Michael Dashow. ‘Boss’ was placed on the ballot by the Nebula Jury, which reaches out to smaller publishers like Tachyon. What a great surprise!
“ ‘The Boss in the Wall’ is a powerful, strange, funny tale. This was Avram’s last major work (along withVirgil III: The Scarlet Fig). ‘Boss’ has been well-received, as I always hoped it would be. To quote from the story: ‘. . . The dreadful secret, so long concealed, has begun to escape from its dreadfully long concealment.’ “
* * * *
- And he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth -
- Job XV, 28
To say that the office looked dirty and shabby was to say that water looked liquid and wet. Newspapers, documents, magazines, clippings, files and folders lay stacked and slipped and scattered. Someone was thrusting his hand into a large manila envelope. Someone was turning the pages of an old illustrated publication. Someone was going through a scrapbook, moistening loose corners with a small glue-brush. On one webby wall was a sign: THE CONTRACT NEVER EXPIRES. None of the men was working hard or working fast, none of them seemed interested in what he was doing, and whatever they were all doing, they gave the impression of having been doing it for a long, long time.
I. What Larraby’s Got
The not-crisp card read:
Edward E. Bagnell
Professor of Ethnology
Sumner Public College
Curator Larraby of the Carolina Coast Museum looked up from the card. “Still sticking to ‘Ethnology,’ are they?” His tone was civil, even amiable, but there was a something in his eyes beyond the usual mere shrewdness.
“Yes sir, they are. Still sticking to ‘Public’, also.” Bagnell was sure there was something sticking to the Curator’s manner, inside the ruddy, well-worn face, lurking around the corners of the well-trimmed gray mustache and the picturesquely tufty silvery eyebrows. The Curator asked a few questions about Sumner Public College: Was Macrae getting on with his study of so-called “Moorish” mountain people? Was SPC having the usual small-college trouble with trustees who wanted more money spent on football than on music, say, or scholarship - real scholarship? Then there was a pause, and then the odd expression ceased to be odd at all, and was now plain to see.
Slyness.
And with that came the very slow, very quiet, “Well, what can I do for you, Professor Bagnell?”
Out with it.
“I understand that you have a Paper-Man here under lock and key, Curator Larraby.”
At once: “Yes I thought that was what you - don’t know how I knew, but I - what did you say?” The slyness was gone, it was quite gone. The ruddy face was now quite red, the slightly jowely mouth hung agape. “What did you say?”
“A Paper-Man or Paper-Doll or Paper-Doll Man. A Hyett or Hetter or Header. A Greasy-Man or String-Fellow. A Rustler or Clicker or Clatterer. And/or other names. Though I assume . . . I’m sure you know.”
For a moment, silence. Then an audible swallow, a shake, as though the heavy, aging body had been set slightly askew and needed to be set right. A shudder, and then the slumped old man said, “This assumption cannot be allowed to get into the newspapers or the newsreels. This . . .”
The newsreels! Bagnell had never seen a newsreel, anymore than he had ever seen a passenger pigeon or a Civil War veteran. “Oh God no! That’s the last thing we would want!”
The effect was galvanic. The curator was on his feet. “I require another name, and then we’ll see how sure you are that I know.”
Bagnell said, “The Boss in the Wall.” Larraby was out the door before Bagnell was finished, but he was waiting in the hall.
“I was, as I said, sure that was what you wanted, young man. Pardon me, Professor. But I figured you’d go about it slyly.” The older man put his arm through Bagnell’s, and the gesture at once dissipated all mistrust. “I’m taking you to the top of the tower, it’s up these stairs, and I may lean on you quite a bit: no elevator. Slowly. Good.”
The stairs were swept clean and smelled of old wood and polish, but as they went up higher a strong odor of disinfectant became predominant. “- And if you had, why, I’d have hustled you right out of here. And here’s the key, Dr Bagnell. The first key.”
Inside the tower was a locked room which required a second key, and inside this was a modern steel cabinet with two keyholes; alongside it stood an open jug of creosol. “Tower door locked behind us? Make sure. Lock this one and swing the night-bolt too. Now, got a strong stomach?”
Bagnell said that he had helped to find and bury hurricane and flood victims. He now noticed another odor in the rather small room, a strong one, entirely different from the tarry reek of the disinfectant.
“Had such experience? Well, useful. Don’t say it’s better, don’t say it’s worse; different. Clean different.” He was gently inserting a key. “But not clean. God, no.” He looked up, withdrew the key. “Oh, forgot. Got a handkerchief? Put some of that bay rum on it; you may feel that you want it in a hurry.” On a small table in the corner was, of all things, a bottle of that once-widely-used gentlemen’s lotion and hair-tonic. Bagnell had thought it had gone out with newsreels. Was that the source of the other odor? God, no! Bagnell obediently scattered some spicy bay rum on his handkerchief. Larraby had the second key in and out.
Inside were two perfectly ordinary large cardboard cartons with laundry soap logos on them. “Two? I thought there was one.”
“Think twice. There is.” And so there was.
It was in two pieces.
The trousers and jacket were antique, and dull with dirt and some sort of grease; the words corpse fat came swift into Bagnell’s mind. On one bony foot, and it was as though the skin had been scraped thin before being replaced over the bones - and the skin was filthy beyond anything he had ever seen before, was a part of something doubtless once a shoe The jacket was torn; it was worn-torn and it was ripped-torn, and beneath it was part of a shirt. And the shirt-part was worst of all, for it must have once been white. No other color could ever have become so ghastly grey, and here and there were stains of other colors, though none was bright.
“Breathe through your handkerchief, and don’t get too close as you lean over it.”
Bagnell obeyed. Though not before an accidental breath gave him knowledge of the actual smell. A breath was enough. It was not what he had imagined it might be. The smell was organic, he was sure of that, but it was nothing like any organic - or for that matter inorganic - odor he had ever been exposed to before. It was worse than mere decay or decomposition, worse than any disease, worse - He had covered his nose but he could, even despite the scented distillation of the bay and the thick rank creosol, taste it; he covered his mouth as well.
Pieces of shredding yellowed-filthi
ed paper poked out here and there: from under the ragged ankle-edge of the trouser cuff. From out of the gap where the fly had been, the tattered paper protruded like a codpiece. Worn and stained paper formed a sort of ghastly lace jabot high in front. And all of it that he could see showed awful and ugly stains, and even some of the stains had stains.
Larraby took up an exceedingly long pair of rather odd tongs and turned the upper torso half-over; it must have been very light for him to do it with one hand. “Look there.” There was an immense hole beneath the left shoulder-blade. And it had been stuffed, there was no other word for it, stuffed with paper.
Larraby said, through his own handkerchief mask, “Of course we never attempted to examine all the paper, but I can inform you that it seems to consist mostly of the special election supplement of the New York Herald of November whatever-it-was, 1864, which proves nothing; old Greeley shipped his weekly edition all over the country.”