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

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  Primitive it certainly was. A late middle-aged woman sat stiffly in a chair in an old-fashioned room. Her skirt was long and black, her shawl was white, and her face was stiff. Above her was something gray and ghastly that seemed to ooze from a panel in the wall. It looked like the bleached carapace of a long-dead spider, with bared teeth, and skeletal hands with clawing nails. Its expression was both fearful and malignant. Hobson’s Ghost.

  “Oh god, yes,” said Vlad in a sick, weak voice. “That’s it... a Boss in the Wall. Do you know any more about it?”

  “Well, there is an old story about a Henry and Hannah Hobson, who were settlers over in Blainesville. He was a widower, she a widow. He wanted to move west to live with his children. She wanted to move east to live with her children. Folks didn’t divorce or separate in those days, so they quarreled day and night. Then either he got sick and she let him die without calling a doctor, or she slowly poisoned his food. Anyway, his last words were that he’d never leave the house alive - and neither would she. And after he died, she never did leave. She packed more than once, but never left. Then old Hobson began to haunt her. One time or another, that wretched woman lived in every room of the house. No use. He’d find her, so in the end she hanged herself. There’s even an old song about it.” The museum lady began to sing in a wavering voice:

  “How the night winds howl, for death seems near to me.

  Beware, Mr Hobson, do not drink that tea!

  I fear my time is fleeting, and death comes in a rush.

  Beware, Mr Hobson, do not sup that mush!

  I fear my bad wife Hannah, and I fear my time has come.

  Beware, Mr Hobson, do not drink that rum!

  So stand back good Christian people, and do not heed her calls.

  For to haunt my bad wife Hannah, I slink slowly through the walls!

  * * * *

  Now Vlad and Jack were talking to Henry Wabershaw. “I’m named for my grandfather’s old Russian friend, Vladimir, for Smithville is full of Edgars, but how manyVlad Smiths are there?” said Vlad.

  If, inside of Wabershaw’s great fat man’s body there was a thin man screaming to get out, the screaming was inaudible to either Vlad or Jack. “You fellows from The Committee?” asked Wabershaw, in a small voice almost stifled by his immense flesh.

  “The committee?” asked Vlad. “That makes as much sense as ‘Larraby’s got one.’ “

  Perhaps Wabershaw understood the nuances of the remark and perhaps he did not. What he said was, “So you know about Larraby, hmm?” He nodded the small face set inside the very large one, and gave them an odd look. After a moment he sighed and said, “I’m sorry I can’t ask you boys to have a bite to eat, but there’s not a bite in the house.” He gazed at them as if he had given a sign and were waiting for a countersign

  Vlad and Jack had been warned that the way to Wabershaw’s heart and head was through his stomach, for he was surely eating himself to death. So they were prepared. Stewart now said, “As to that, Mr Wabershaw, as we hadn’t yet had our dinner, we took the liberty of bringing a little something along, and wondered if you’d have some with us.” He lifted the large paper sacks onto the table.

  “Why, fried chicken! I always say that fried chicken is the friend of man. And how I love potato salad! Three kinds of bread, real butter, French mustard, and look at these tempting cold cuts! Oh, I am very fond of raspberry soda. And what might be in this other bag? Chinese food! Is there anything nicer than Chinese food?” Then he peeped into a cardboard box and exclaimed with almost erotic glee, “What a lovely cake!” Pieces of fried chicken were already on the way to his turtle-like mouth when he paused and said, “You boys aren’t from The Committee. Catch any of them giving anything - they justtake! Bagnell, Calloway, Zimmerman, Elbaum, Branch, and the rest of that bunch. They want it all for themselves.”

  “Branch!” cried Vlad.

  By and by the galloping consumption of food slowed down to a mere nibbling. Wabershaw surveyed the wreckage on the table with elephantine calm and said, “Happiest day in my life.”

  “Which day was that?” asked Vlad.

  “When I first realized that the Boss in the Wall was real! Why? Because on that day I knew for sure that I was not going crazy.”

  “I can appreciate that,” said Vlad with heartfelt sincerity.

  “When you’ve been hearing things you can’t see, and seeing things you can’t believe, why, a fear builds up inside you and your life sort of slumps sideways into a different universe. I tried staying away from home, sleeping in the office and sleeping in hotels. I tried getting drunk and staying drunk, and I lost my good job as State Historian. I was hospitalized twice for nervous breakdowns, and in the hospital I began to put on flesh. Then one day I realized I was not crazy, so I came home. And I found a man with trained ferrets, and we sent those ferrets into the walls. Then we heard a terrible thrashing sound in the storeroom, and by the time we got there it was dead - but it had bit some of the ferrets to pieces. The man was pretty mad, and made me pay plenty for the loss of his critters. But I rejoiced, for just the sight and smell of that House-Devil proved I wasn’t crazy. I burned it in the fireplace, for it was very dry. And now I keep openings in the walls for my cats, who can git to any part of this house, and who serve to give warning if needed. You can feel safe here, professors. This house has been purged. This house is pure.”

  Vlad recalled Pappa John’s words to Uncle Mose. “Git you a cat.”

  Then Wabershaw placed his vasty paw over Vlad’s very ordinary hand, in a reassuring way that persuaded Vlad that once upon a time, before he became an eccentric though harmless monster, Henry Wabershaw must have been a very nice fellow. He said, “So now I stay home, for I no longer fear for my sanity. And I don’t drink any more - I just eat.”

  Vlad said, “You have come face to face with the same thing which persuaded us that this myth is no myth - namely, we have also seen the creatures. Now the question is how did they come to exist? For if we know what started them, maybe we’ll know how to stop them.”

  Wabershaw shifted his great weight in his reinforced chair, reached in a drawer and handed Vlad a manila envelope. “Seen anything like this?” he asked, as Vlad removed a sheaf of papers labeled First Draft of the Interim Committee Report.

  Vlad made a sound of surprise, for the papers were in the same format as those Bagnell had left behind in the nightstand of the Sumner College guesthouse. He began to read:

  “. . . They are commonly known as Rattlers or Rustlers but, in places as far apart as San Francisco and St. Louis, the favorite term is Clickers. In certain border states, the obscure Hyett is found, which may be related to Rawheaded Bloody Bones. In Biloxi, the favored terms are Boss-Devil, or Devil in the Wall. Dr Allan Lee Murrow, the great Southern folklorist says this may be an extension of the zomby legends, or that the zomby may have its origins here. Dr Robert Allbright notes the Yazoo Delta fable that Hyetts died of yellow fever or plague, and eat human flesh.

  “Hamling Calloway M.D. raises the question of whether there might be an unidentified retro-virus or microorganism, somehow associated with the great plagues (perhaps as a ‘fellow traveler’), which might in some way cause the phenomena that lie the bottom of these tales. Something which resembles life; some unrecognized viral wasting syndrome or plague which causes pseudo-life. And if so, is this plague still active - now?”

  Vlad let the papers drop on the still-littered table, sighed and rubbed his eyes. “What do you think?” he asked Wabershaw.

  “Professors, as near as I am confident, there is a disease, never diagnosed, which simulates death - and which then simulates life. And which still, from time to time, simulates it now. From the time when their normal body processes sink below a certain point, those old Paper-Men are neither alive as we know it, nor dead as we know it. They lie motionless behind countless walls, not crumbling to dust, until something disturbs them, and then they go clickin’ and clattering, and rustlin’ and rattling - until their clo
ck runs down again. Then they go back inside the walls until something winds them up again. I have often wondered how many of those poor old derelicts we see nodding and mumbling in doorways of old buildings, are in fact suffering from Paper-Man’s disease. They wrap themselves in rags and newspapers to stay warm, and crawl into a niche in some wall. They keep themselves ‘alive’ with an occasional rat, for rats are known to run along walls, and they sink into a hibernating state until something wakes them - then they attack. I knew all this before those fancy committee fellows did. I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen, they knew better. Well, hell with’m. Young Professor Stewart, there’s a gallon of sweet melk in the ice-box, if you’d be so kind to bring it out.”

  * * * *

  V. The Committee

  Gertrude (Mrs Harry Brown) Roberts had finally, after years of trying everything in the pharmacopeia, found something which would put her to sleep and keep her to sleep. Ten minutes after she had taken it - an interval long enough to read her nightly number of lines from the Bible and to say her prayers (she now left the Catholics and Episcopalians for last, as she drifted into slumber) - her toothless mouth would open in her bony face and she would begin to snore. This, as it usually woke him up, was her old husband’s signal that he was once again a free man for the night.

  “So, Gertrude Sayer,” he hissed at the unresponsive body on the far side of the bed; “taking more than a thimbleful of brandy is wrong, is it? But doping your soul into subconsciousness with that chemical counterfeit of poppy and mandragore is all right, is it? Stuff! Poppycock! But just like a Sayer!”

  Old Harry Roberts got out of bed; the night air being just a bit chill, he put on his second-best frock coat (the one he saved for commencements and inaugurations, saving the very best one for Board meetings) over his nightshirt, and shuffled along the street in his carpet slippers. There were no passers-by and had there been, few would have given him a second glance and had any done so it would have been a glance of approval. New England still dearly cherished its eccentrics . . . had any identified him as one.

  H. Brown Roberts was soon at a certain side-door to the General Museum of the Province of Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations, of which he was still Librarian Emeritus and a member of the Budget Committee. He let himself in with his keys. A moment later he was once again deep into the immense annals of the Underground Railroad, on which he had long planned a series of books, and thus he stayed. From time to frequent time he muttered to himself about the Fugitive Slave Act and the Free Soil Whigs, and his great grandmother Brown and his great grandfather Roberts, both of whom were conductors on the Underground Railroad; when glancing up he observed one of the passengers.

  “Oh, my poor fellow!” H.B.R. exclaimed, rising to his feet. “Are you one of the stowaways aboard the cotton-boat from Charleston? Never do fear, we shall see you safe to Canada . . . but perhaps you are hungry, did they give you some hot victuals in the kitchen? What? Not? Well just you come with me.” The hallway seemed a trifle strange to him, as he padded along it, followed by the silent figure. Presently they entered another room, which he did not precisely recognize as either a part of the old Roberts or of the old Brown house . . . though to be sure, some of the furnishings ... It was not the kitchen, whatever it was, although . . . “Ha! There is the porcelain ginger-jar which Merchant Houqua of the Hong gave to Reuben Roberts. Hmm, I believe that in this cabinet one should find . . . Drat, it is locked! Pshaw! Have you, perchance with you, no, I suppose not, a lever with a thin end to it?”

  The dark and silent stowaway produced an enormous screwdriver, and had the cabinet opened in a second. Inside, however, was no bread, no cold meat or mutton soup, no hasty pudding. What there was in it were two bottles of brandy. Seizing first one and then the other, the liberated three-fifths of a person smote the bottom of each bottle a great blow with the flat of his great hand, neatly popped each cork; and handed one bottle to Dr H. Brown Roberts.

  “An excellent stratagem! Yes, yes. Hmm, no glasses, I suppose, in the cotton fields away.” He raised his bottle and sniffed. “An excellent Fundador. Ha hm. Here is to your good health, my man and my brother, and to your prosperity in Nova Scotia. Ah, ha, mmm.”

  The dark stranger was an excellent guest, that is, he neither interrupted nor made any comment himself. When his voice was heard for the first time, it was deep and rough: “I wants that head.”

  “Oh you do, do you? Do you? If you expect to trade it to the Bluenoses for rum, let me tell you that a quarter-quintal of codfish would be a likelier item.” Harry Roberts looked at his guest and had another tot from the brandy bottle, and why not? - he was already saved, wasn’t he? Yes he was. “Well, it doesn’t signify and I see no reason why you shouldn’t have it, for the acquisition was never authorized. Want that head? With taste and scent, no argument. Old Reuben Roberts brought one back from the Moluccas packed in cloves once. Well, the cloves were from the Moluccas.” They were walking down the hall by now. “Here we are; I have a key to the door, mm-hm, but my key no longer fits this lock, for Selby Silas, wretched fellow, had the lock changed, confound him, a Methodist!”

  A few wrenches with the huge screwdriver, and another cabinet was open. A hideous odor filled the room; there was the head, and the supposed follower of the Drinking Gourd gave a grunt of recognition. “Don’t touch it, my good fellow, they will scarcely let you on the cars if you reek of it, and certainly it would frighten the horses. Hmm. Ah! Scrape it off the shelf into these plastic bags and tie a knot. Drop them into this one. Tie another knot. And another. Ha, Selby Silas, his face will be a sight! Well, was it an authorized acquisition? No it wasnot! You are going now? Avoid Boston, the cotton-brokers are hand in glove with the - well, I needn’t tell you. Travel only at night, and take the back roads to Amherst. Rattle on the rear-windows of Moses Stuart, the house with the high stone fence.” The Librarian Emeritus affixed a small piece of paper (from the waste-basket, its back was unused) to the cabinet door with a very tiny piece of Scotch tape, wrote APRIL FOOL on it, and decided to go home.

  Harry Roberts, who rumor had it owned half the mortgages in Newport, hid the bottle behind great grand-uncle Erastus Everett’s second edition of Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, where Gertrude eventually found it, as she eventually found everything. She never said a word, but decided it was time to bake fruit-cake. The raisins were getting dry anyway, and, with the windfall of the Spanish brandy, the cake should be just about ready to eat by Christmas.

  * * * *

  The Mustee had not, as a matter of fact, planned on taking the horse-cars; or whatever remnants of the railroad which capital, management, labor, or government had left of the system. He made his way to a certain section of town, and there he walked slowly up and down the emptied streets, looking at license plates. The furthest southern origin he could find was New York, so, with a shrug, and a rather rapid use of the useful screwdriver, he let himself into the small truck’s cab, dropped his burden between his knees, and applied his lips to the brandy bottle. Then he simply settled into his seat. And waited. After a while someone else, humming a frolicsome air, also entered the truck-cab, though from the other side, and, catching sight of his passenger, attempted to tumble out backwards. A very long, very strong arm caught and drew him back in. “We goin sout,” said the Mustee.

  “Yessir, Big Blood,” the driver said. “We goin’ south. No doubt ‘bout that.”

  Crossing into New York City in the gritty light of dawn, the driver realized that although his passenger was either dead or dead drunk, the truck was not his own. He therefore parked the vehicle in front of its owner’s garage, gestured to the owner, and called, “You got it.” Then he left the truck, turned a corner, and ran like hell.

  The owner did not put down his coffee. He languidly eyed the truck, languidly kicked a tire, locked the garage, and ambled off to breakfast.

  The truck was already under the scrutiny of the pioneer squad of a social group, called many amusing names by tho
se who were not themselves members. Though not ... as a rule ... in the presence of the social group, all of whom hailed from a lovely tropical hamlet near Ponce. The group members called themselves The Christian Heroes. They cared little that the religious practices of their native hamlet were not up to the highest standards of Orthodoxy. And little cared their fathers and their mothers.

  The pioneer squad of the Heroes advanced, peered into the truck and its cab. Reported that the truck itself was empty, but that the cab contained a comatose Black man holding onto an empty brandy bottle and a plastic bag (the Taino and Arawack presence in their native island had been absorbed too long ago for them to recognize the Mustee as half-Indian); in fact the slack of the bag was wound tightly around his hand. The Christian Heroes held a brief council, then deployed their forces. “Andale! La bolsa! cried the smallest Hero, as he was hoisted into the open cab window, with a very sharp knife, and very deftly cut the plastic and snatched the bag away.