The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  “Sure. Let’s go, Nestor.” The dog came forward, gave Vlad a sociable sniff, waited until the front door was opened, and ambled off into the night. Vlad turned back, flashlight in hand, toward the water closet under the stairs.

  “Oh, by the way, Uncle Mose; that funny sound we heard that time, when we were listening at the wall? The rustling and, uh, clicking? I heard it again a few minutes ago, when I happened to have my ear against the floor.”

  “Look into it in the morning. On about your business now, your wife might be nervous alone upstairs. G’night.” The older man nodded, retreated into his chamber. Those two words were the last ones Vlad would ever hear him clearly say.

  The plumbing rushed and gurgled loudly. Vlad stood by to make sure the ancient equipment suffered no overflowing; then went to the front door. Nestor appeared at once. “Good boy.” Light still showed beneath the closed door of Mose’s room.

  Then the things began to happen.

  In what order did the things happen? Some things happened simultaneously, and there was no time to pause and think. The first thing was absolutely astonishing in itself. Nestor flung himself into the air, absolutely vertically; his feet even left the floor. Then he hurled himself, still upright, against the closed door with the crack of light beneath it. Before his immense body slammed against the door, Bella began to scream in a thin and terribly high tone which Vlad had never heard from her before. At once there was an answering scream from Elsa upstairs and, more or less at the same time, Nestor’s body slammed against the door. Uncle Mose roared and his feet ran, tramping, inside the room which had gone dark. Nestor howled and tried to break down the door. Vlad flung himself upon the door, and fell against Nestor instead. He tried to hold his light steady to see and grasp the doorknob.

  Still Nestor howled, still the old man stumbled inside the closed room, and still Bella screamed. - And the door opened and Vlad staggered into the room and tried desperately not to lose his balance. The noises Uncle Mose made were not roars any longer; Uncle Mose it was who staggered, lurched, fell upon his back and rolled to his side. Bella had stopped screaming, and was utterly silent. Nestor flung himself across the room and the house shook.

  Elsa came screaming in, and then she did absolutely the worst thing she could possibly have done - and somehow Vlad knew absolutely that she was going to do it. She seized the arm of the hand in which he held the flashlight, and she tugged down on it as she called her daughter’s name, and the flashlight swung wildly up and down until he managed to get it into the other hand.

  Nestor was throwing himself against the wall and clawing at the wall, howling and slathering, and something fell from his mouth. Vlad reeled as he tried to dislodge his wife and to focus the flashlight. Then Elsa let go of Vlad’s arm and ran to pick up her child, who was arching and thrashing and kicking and making sharp howling sounds. Elsa picked her up, but Bella’s arms and legs still moved and jerked convulsively.

  What else was in the room? Something else had been in the room. Someone else had been in the room. Something . . . someone filthy and frightful and foul had been in the room.

  There to one side was the Coleman lamp, and Vlad forced himself to calm his hands and to relight the lamp, and the room filled with hissing light. No one else and nothing else was in the room now.

  Still the huge dog flung himself against the wall. Then it stopped.

  Bella stopped her frightful convulsions. She hung limp in her mother’s arms, even when Elsa had fallen on her knees onto the sleeping bag, pressed her ear against the tiny chest, lifted her horrified face to him and nodded slightly.

  Nestor stepped delicately on huge feet to his master, nuzzled him and licked him, and began to utter a deep and moaning lament. Was the old man dead? Vlad slowly got down beside the body and said, “Uncle Mose? Nestor? Uncle Mose?” Slowly he placed his ear against the fallen man’s chest. There was no rustling sound he heard, no clicking. He heard no sound at all. Nestor sniffed again and began to howl.

  * * * *

  The long, slow, cold nightmare continued. Call the police, deputy sheriffs, sheriff’s deputies. The hospital: “Well, it’s shock, basically. Your little girl is of course the most affected, but your wife too is in shock. I’m afraid you aren’t in too good shape yourself.” - Take these . . . sign these . . . tell us again, Professor, exactly what happened: questions asked by the doctors and by the police.

  Shock, Professor. Your only child has ceased to be a little girl who stood in a doorway and turned your heart with a single look. She became a wind-up doll which screamed and thrashed, except when the doll wound down and looked dully out of unfocused eyes. Shock, to use simple language, short-circuits the nervous system.

  “What did she see that caused this shock? What sort of creature, sir? It is difficult for us to believe, you see, because your wife doesn’t report anything like that. Don’t be offended, sir, but you too have suffered a severe shock of some sort . . .”

  * * * *

  “What the hell, Branch, what the hell?”

  Vlad’s old friend, and fellow Professor of Folklore David Branch looked at him and said, “Nobody knows what the hell, Vlad. We have to take this one step at a time.”

  “Why was Uncle Mose’s funeral and cremation over so quickly . . . why was his collar so high?” Then another thought sprang into Vlad’s mind. “Where’s Nestor?”

  “He’s at Dean Jorgenson’s farm; it’s in the next county, so the sheriff can’t get him to shoot.”

  “What? Why would they shoot Nestor?”

  “Well, mainly because they were afraid of him. This great brute was leaping around, terribly upset, and next thing a deputy got the idea that, well, maybe Nestor had killed the old man -Impossible? Why, impossible?”

  “I told them the dog wasn’t in the room . . . when it began to happen.”

  “Well, they didn’t know that and, um, I heard that Mose had some sort of marks on his throat that might have killed him so -Anyway, Nestor ran off and Dean Jorg heard about it, and called the trembling beast into his van and drove him across the county line, so Nestor’s all okay. What next?”

  “I want to go back to that dammed old house . . . and I need some plastic bags.”

  At the supermarket, leaning on the back of a superannuated cart containing aluminum cans, empty bottles, and odds and ends of light junk was someone whom Vlad recalled meeting. Remembrance was mutual. Stopping his wagon, the old black man said, “I sorry, sir, about you daddy.” Why bother with a correction? Vlad nodded, sighed. “Must be you daddy fo’get, done git between it and the wall . . . fine ol’ gentleman.”

  Vlad stared. Remnants of thought came whirling by, as if caught in a gale. “What do you mean, Pappa John? Get between what and the wall . . . what wall?”

  The age-glazed eyes in the furrowed face looked at him. “Them bad things as we finds sometimes in old houses. Them Rustlers or Clickers . . . them Paper Men. The Boss, sir, the Boss in the Wall. How the lady and the lee girl? The Boss done stole the lee girl’s soul and you gots get it back.”

  He pushed off, leaving Professor Branch looking after him, leaving Vlad with his mouth twitching. “Did you understand what old John meant, Branch?”

  “I believe I do, which is not to say that I believe it as facts.”

  “I should tear that damned house apart. . . find evidence.”

  They drove beyond the small town and along the country road. The old house looked far different in late afternoon sunshine than it had at night. In the room where Uncle Mose and Bella had cheerfully agreed to spend the night lay a well-worn red rubber toy.

  Vlad pointed out to Branch a portion of the wall deeply and recently scored by talons. “Those are Nestor’s claws, I guess.” He put his ear against the wall; heard nothing. “It’s hollow,” he said.

  “It would be. Proves nothing by itself.”

  Vlad abruptly said, “Ah, that’s what I came for.” He pointed to something in the corner. “It was in her hand, and she dropped
it when I picked her up.” He took the plastic bags out of his pocket.

  Branch knelt and looked, then he sniffed. This time it was his face that writhed. “Paper. It looks like old newspaper . . . well, this is an old house. What a godawful stench. You say it was in your wife’s hand?”

  “No, it wasn’t my wife,” said Vlad, as he carefully used one plastic bag to scoop the object into another. “It was my daughter who had it clutched in her hand. It was Bella.”

  No further search could legally be made of the house, and no walls would be torn apart. According to the sheriff’s department, the deceased died from a stroke or a heart attack, possibly following an attack by a dog or some other animal. Case closed.

  * * * *

  At the hospital, Elsa woke up and took a light supper, then she slept again. Bella’s condition was unchanged. Elsa’s aunt, Uncle Mose’s sister, invited them to stay at her big house in the country after they were released. Elsa softly told Vlad that she thought the change would do her and Bella good. Vlad reluctantly agreed.

  “Jesus, Branch, what should I do?” said Vlad when they returned to College Housing. “It is my belief that Uncle Mose died of a severe bite in the throat by some sort of degenerate or derelict creature, for lack of better words, and that’s what terrified my wife and daughter, and messed up our lives. That’s what I told the doctors and the sheriffs, and nobody believed me. No autopsy was done before his body was cremated, and . . .”

  “Do? Well the first thing to do is take Doctor Branch’s prescription of a big drink of whatever booze you have on hand, and then you are going to lie down and pretend to sleep. I will put on some sleepy-type music and . . . ah, I’d like to look through your files. I promise not to read any love notes or old paternity warrants; I want to look for learned matter. Folkloric shop stuff, okay?”

  Pretending to sleep was, as expected, succeeded by genuine slumber. Then by awakening and finding Branch reading by lamplight. “What’s that you’re reading, Branch?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” He tilted up an old red folder mended with tape. “Look familiar?”

  Vlad felt that it did look familiar, that he knew what was in it, and somehow he did not like what was in it. He recalled a small voice saying, “Is this our new house? I don’tlike it.” He leaned his head on his hand and choked back tears.

  Branch shoved the folder over to Vlad, who slowly opened and leafed through it. What was this on yellowed paper, laboriously typed in old-fashioned typescript? Transcript of Alleged Rare Pamphlet Allegedly Entitled “The Treatise on the House Devil.” And this: a sheaf of sundry papers, typed and penned and machine copied on various sorts of copy-machines, attached by a large rusting paper clip, and labeled Bagnell’s Notes. An item caught his eye; Preliminary Survey of the Folklore of Two Ohio River Tributaries: “I had the usual difficulties: first you must find your source. Then you must make him talk. Then you must make him stop talking. Or her. In fact it was from a her that I learned a folk remedy for pubic lice which is too gross for learned journals. Also I heard the following account which might interest you: Near a place called Wide Waters, where two large boats could pass each other, was a tower. It was originally as tall as a three-story building, but then kind of crumbled. Some say it was used as a shot-tower or a lighthouse. Others say it was built by a wicked Frenchman to remind himself of France. He was cruel to his slaves and nearly starved them to death. Well, as soon as Lincoln freed the slaves, they mixed up a big batch of cement and carried over a big pile of stones, and walled their evil old master -their Boss - inside the tower. Then all the former slaves ran off. There were no windows in the tower, just little slits. And before anybody came around and found him, long after he must have died, they say he got so thin he was able to poke his hands through the slits and wave them around. And they say you can still sometimes see the skeletal hands of the cruel ‘Boss in the Wall’ waving through the slits on stormy nights.

  “You can recognize elements of countless Old World legends of cruel leaders walled in towers, such as the Sultan of Baghdad and the Mouse Tower on the Rhine. Though the skeletal hands waving through the slits may be strictly a local touch.”

  “Okay, Branch, okay. I got it now; I remember,” Vlad wept. “Why didn’t I remember it before?”

  Branch had poured moderate drinks for both of them from a bottle, sipped his own and gestured to his old friend to do the same. “Here’s a possible explanation. Why did you originally forget it? Because you forgot, that’s why. Who the hell remembers everything? Every wife in the world feels compelled to shove some of her husband’s old crap out of sight, and you had other things to do, so you forgot. Then you went to the old house, and just the sight of the place, or some little sound or smell started to bring back memories. But you didn’t want the memories. You and your wife and uncle wanted the old house, and the memories weren’t very nice. So your mind suppressed them. Until that moment. Let’s say that your uncle had some kind of stroke, or fit of convulsions. He couldn’t breathe, so he clawed and tore at his own throat. Suppose your daughter woke up and saw him, and she started to scream and scream.” Branch took another sip and continued, “Suppose that what you saw was so terrible, your mind couldn’t admit that you saw it. You had to be seeing something else. Your mind, so to speak, slipped down, down into the sub-basement. And down there in the mud and jumble, your mind found something. It found those old tales that old Pappa John had babbled about, and it substituted those old terror-tales for the terrible thing you were really seeing. All of this in an instant, of course, but the memory lingers on. Maybe your little girl’s defense was to retreat into convulsions and unconsciousness.”

  Vlad groped for words. He felt as if he were on the edges of a deep, dark wood. “Is that what you really think happened? That my buried memories of all those damned old legends made me think I saw . . .”

  From outside the dark woods came a deep sigh. “That’s certainly one explanation, and I advise you to consider it,” said Branch, tossing down the rest of the whiskey.

  * * * *

  Later, much later Vlad’s breath came softly and regularly from the couch. Branch slipped silently out of the room, took up the telephone, and walked as far into the kitchen as its long cord would allow. He turned on the light and a water tap, then dialed a number. Waited.

  “Doctor Edward Bagnell, please. Hello, Ed? This is Branch. Yes, I know what time it is. Have a pen and paper? Okay, listen carefully. The House-Devil, Paper-Man, Boss in the Wall; well, I want to report another sighting.”

  * * * *

  III. Vlad’s Quest

  How sweetly the small old town smelled in the early summer rains. It seemed to smell of cedar and citronella and water and mint.

  Annie Jenkins, Dean Jorgenson’s housekeeper said, “Was it one of those tramps, one of those awful ones? The Lord knows where they come from or why - luckily not often - oh they don’t do anything violent, not lately, they don’t even steal, the ones I’m thinking of. We used to call them Paper Men when I was a girl, because they put newspapers under their old clothes to keep warm in winter, though why in summer? - Don’t even steal, which is very odd if you think of it, they being so poor they can’t even afford soap or second-hand clothes. Oh those filthy rags. Just the sight of them, oh and the awful smell of them. I asked my husband what causes them, every so often you know. Harry said it was ‘slum clearance’. Harry says some awful old abandoned building is torn down somewhere, and then those dreadful derelicts have no place to hide, and so they just wander off, they shamble around, and sometimes they turn up here. Thank the Lord they don’t seem to stay. I have no idea where they go, but they don’t stay here. Was it one of those -? And to think of the sheriff accusing that sweet big dog. Why, when you gave him a shirt his old master had worn, Nestor took it to his bed in the barn, laid the shirt on the straw, and rested his head on it all that day.”

  * * * *

  Dean Jorgenson said, tapping his huge hairy fingers on his desktop, “
Well, good, Stewart. I told Vlad he could take the summer off if he took someone with him. I’m glad it’s you. He likes you; says you have a good mind and a good sense of humor. Fortunately this is still a private college and I can finagle you some graduate credits, and something out of the special funds without having to justify it to six state legislative committees. Consider that done. And you, in turn, won’t let him get morbid and obsessive about . . .” He searched for a word, gazed at Jack Stewart with troubled eyes and concluded, “... it.”

  Vlad looked as if he was fairly well recovered from a bad drunk, but Jack knew that if you looked it, you weren’t recovered at all. It wasn’t until they were bedding down for the first night, in a worn-down motel, that Vlad began to loosen up and talk.

  “I understand Jorg’s going to do some creative bookkeeping, and get you some grad credits. Good. Officially we’re going on just another fun folklore ramble,” he ran his fingers over his tired face. “Good clean bright stuff; children’s jump-rope jingles, Paul Bunyan tales of the lower Appalachians, Old Darky stories about Mr Buzzard. But unofficially you are going to be my keeper, eh? We, that’s you, kid, are going to keep me, that’s me, kid, from getting into anything gamy or gritty. No folkloric spelunking. But no such luck, kid. God bless poor dear old Jorg, but I’m going after such little-known legends as the Clickers, the Rattlers, and I don’t mean snakes, I mean the Greasy Man, Paper-Man, the Boss in the Wall, see?”