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

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  A jacket was tossed over the plastic bag. The Heroes wandered away and eventually returned to their headquarters, a semi-occupied storeroom behind a small botanica, whose proprietor was an honorary Hero. There the reeking bag or bags were opened. Alas! No grass! Some of the Heroes uttered exclamations, not of enthusiasm.

  But the honorary member, with a look of the utmost gravity, had his own exclamation to utter, as he knelt and crossed himself, “Esta la cabeza de Santo Mumbo!”

  Something of Africa was after all recognized in the eclectic pantheon of the Christian Heroes. One by one, the others knelt down and followed his example.

  * * * *

  Sergeant Reilly said, “Urright, here’s anudda one, from one o’ dem buhyn-dout houses on Corona Street. Tullaphone call says dey, om, wuhyshippin da Devil’s head wit dead chickens, and alia dat blasphemy stuff.” He gave his own head an angry shake as though regretful that all of that blasphemy stuff had not constituted an indictable offense in New York State since 1797 (People v. Jemima Wilkerson); “So, om, Lopez? Levine? And take the visitin Royal Canadian witchuz and tull um t’muffle his hawss’s hoofs. Hoar, hoar!” Reilly went back to his coffee.

  “Worshipping the Devil’s Head!” exclaimed Corporal Clanranald. “Eh?”

  All the police repeated, “Eh?” in chorus, and laughed heartily.

  All had been very interested that a corporal from the RCMP would be with them a little while as part of a crash course in Urban Crime. All had been disappointed that the corporal had not worn his scarlet mountie coat, but his accent was meat for much merriment.

  Corporal Clanranald, of, originally, Trail, B.C., to whom Urban Crime had largely meant drunken peasoupers peeing in the streets and drunken Indians ineptly trying to take the tires off cars not theirs and mashing their fingers in the process, and drunken Manitoba-French Metis singing Voyageur songs under the street lamps at 2:00 a.m. - to Corporal Clanranald, New York City Urban Crime was Something Else. But even so, “worshiping the Devil’s head” was something else yet. The benign Sunday Schools of the United Church of Canada had not prepared him for metropolitan diabolism.

  The police car slowed down in that Borough where Thomas Wolfe had long ago heard the peaceful sound of a million Jews turning the pages of the Sunday Times. Times had changed. “Here we are, Corp, see? Some kid, I guess he was laying chicky, he just run in t’give the word . . .” Then, and only then, as the car was parked in front of a smoke-streaked apartment-building, whose doorless door-way was heaped with rubbish, did they briefly turn on the siren.

  Absolute shells, wreckages of other fires, or mere heaps of rubble, cellars of demolished houses, houses which had been burned repeatedly long after any insurance could possibly have been issued: this is what else they saw on Corona Street in that block.

  Visiting RCMP Corporal Clanranald, hissed and pointed, “Look, they’re running out the back and getting away!”

  “Fine, we don’t want ‘em,” said Lopez.

  “The Tombs is full enough as it is.” Levine said.

  The three men got out of the car and gingerly entered the building. Stale reek of smoke still clung to it. Doorways gaped. Now suddenly galvanized, Lopez and Levine loudly clumped their feet on the steps, called out, “Police!” A last clatter of their feet; then silence.

  On the second floor an entire wall had been knocked out, and in the large room which had resulted they found the evidence of the ceremony they had interrupted. On the walls were holy pictures of Mother Mary and the Caribbean Indian Saint, Maria Lionza, riding nude upon her horse; all affixed with thumb-tacks or scotch tape. On one wall hung a crucifix. In front of the crucifix was a table and in front of the table lay three headless black chickens and three headless white chickens. Their heads were on the table, so was smoldering incense, so were piles of wilting fruit and flowers, and little bowls piled with unknown substances, also cigars and candles red and yellow and blue and black. So was -

  Clanranald pointed. “My God! What is – that?”

  In the center of the table it sat. Its mouth was smeared with fresh blood, and it seemed to leer at them out of the side of its single open eye. Slyly.

  “Oh, that’s horrible! What is it?”

  “Werentcha fetening? That’s the Devil’s head. It looks like it, too,” said Levine. “Gevalt, whadid they do, somebody rob a grave? Stay here, Royal, will ya? We gotta look around and radio da phatagraphers. Be right back . . .”

  Malcolm Clanranald would easily have preferred to do other things than stay there, but he stayed as ordered, as he told himself, he would have done in the frozen northern Yukon. It was then, under the unremittent gaze of the horrid head on the . . . table . . . altar?... he bethought himself of his own small personal camera; and took it from his pocket, and snapped a few photographs to show the folks in B.C. before Lopez and Levine returned, eventually followed by the official police photographers.

  What became of the head after its removal to the New York Police Lab, he never learned. For soon the course in Urban Crime was completed, and Clanranald was back in Canada. There he developed the photographs himself, and there one of the folks in BC had connections with a sensationalist newspaper. The corporal was not an especially talented photographer and most of the shots were ho-hum. But one single one was clear enough and ghastly enough to be picked up by a press syndicate.

  So for the first time, in newspapers throughout North America, appeared the likeness of a Paper-Man’s head. Though none of the caption-writers called it by that name.

  * * * *

  Genevieve Silas, Selby’s widowed sister-in-law and housekeeper, had made fish cakes and baked beans for breakfast again - often had he told her that he detested them at all times, and especially for breakfast: uselessly. So he was not in the best mood when the phone rang. “Silas here.”

  “Yeah, well this is Riordon here. What the hell have you been doing with the head I examined? What’s it doing in New York?”

  It took a few seconds for Silas to isolate this Riordon from the vast number of tribesmen of that name. “Doing with it, my dear Doctor Riordon; the object is in a locked cabinet in a locked room, and has certainly not been in New York City.”

  The dental surgeon’s voice cut in on his polite protest. “Worshipping the Devil’s Head, the papers say.”

  “Well, they do sometimes turn up as cult objects, yes, but I never heard of one in New York!”

  Riordon did not believe him, and Riordon did not believe that he had seen no such picture in the newspaper. Riordon said the New York City police had somehow had the teeth examined by someone who knew something. And this someone said that the teeth of this evidently ancient head had been not only recently drilled, but drilled by the new experimental Davenport drill, “and you know how many of them there are. Damned few. If this gets traced to me, well, God won’t help you.” With these cryptic words, Edward L. Riordon, doctor of dental medicine, hung up.

  Silas was in every way amazed. His stomach ached and rumbled as he consulted the pile of unread newspapers on the reading desk. There it was: MYSTERY GROWS AROUND “DEVIL’S HEAD”. Silas hardly remembered running down the hall, but he remembered some one running down the hall, and fumbling with the key in the lock of the outer door. One good look showed him the cabinet whose lock had been jimmied open, and the tiny note saying APRIL FOOL. Was there anything he could do which would be of the least help and comfort to him? Selby Silas knew well that there was nothing he could do.

  As for the Mustee, Larraby grilled him until he was scorched on both sides. He told Larraby that he could handle the Red men and he could handle the Black men and Paper-Men, but he could not handle the New York Police men. This was perhaps the truth, though certainly not the whole truth; but then the Mustee wasn’t under oath.

  “You owe me a head,” said Larraby.

  What else could he have said?

  Edward Bagnell unfolded his morning paper, and was jolted fully awake. There was the Paper-Man’s head . . . the Devil�
��s head . . . Ephraim Mackilwhit’s head gazing at him slyly. Bagnell realized that the dreadful secret, so long concealed, had begun to escape from its dreadfully long concealment.

  * * * *

  Professor Vlad Smith was not reading the newspapers.

  Jack Stewart had said that they were close to his home, and he wanted to spend a few days with his family, who hadn’t seen him since winter vacation. So Vlad dropped him off and continued alone.

  Later he phoned his own family and, to his pleasure and surprise, Elsa answered the phone. “Bella is a little better, thank God. She’s seeing a psychiatrist, who has her on a low dose of medication, but I wish she wasn’t so listless!” Elsa said.

  This last word, with its tone of emotion, however unhappy, gave Vlad hope that Elsa was starting to feel again - and that eventually her feelings might again include him.

  Vlad recalled that one of the names Wabershaw had mentioned as part of the secretive committee was Zimmerman, and he guessed that this was Claire Zimmerman, a woman he had often enjoyed meeting at folklore conferences. She lived nearby and perhaps she could help him. “Hello, Claire.”

  “Why . . . Vlad Smith!” A big hug.

  “Excuse the abrupt appearance at this hour. I tried three times to phone you, but the line . . .”

  “I just made fresh coffee, and have a slice of cake.” She handed him coffee and cake, and their hands brushed. Vlad had never before noticed how soft her hands were, or how her sleek dark hair framed her round and downy cheeks. Better to stop noticing. “I’m researching that old legend, the Paper-Man or Boss in the Wall . . .”

  “Oh, I suppose you saw the picture in the paper. Ghastly thing.” She handed him a folded newspaper, and this time he didn’t even notice that their hands brushed. Vlad stared with startled blue-gray eyes at the newspaper photo of the “Devil’s Head,” while Claire rattled on with just a slight nervous edge in her voice.

  “You had seen it, hadn’t you? I mean, I assumed that’s what you came to talk about, because of my research project with old news clippings and all. Well, that photo is startling, but nothing new, really, nothing new at all. Here, let me show you some examples.” She pulled a file of photocopies off a shelf. “Look at this one, from the New Orleans Daily Picayune, dated March 12, 1871. Right next to an ad for Ayer’s medicinal Sarsaparilla, and another ad for a hot spring cure for opium habits; the headline is ‘Kneeling Down to Idols.’ It says, ‘In a dark row of tenements on Dumaine Street, is a very old building with crumbling walls overgrown with wild creepers. Rain drops fall through the roof without restraint. A low, heavy doorway admits the visitor to a gloomy cell with a hard earthen floor. In one corner of the room is a bundle of rags, and on the wretched pallet reposes a half-naked Voudon doctor, beneath the idol of some heathenish divinity . . .’ It goes on like that for quite a while, but you see this sort of thing is not new, Vlad, not at all.”

  Vlad impulsively cupped her round and warm cheeks in his two long hands. “The legends aren’t new, Claire. What’s new is that the legends are real, and you know it and the committee knows it, and I need to know what’s going on!”

  Vlad told her all that had happened, and when he finished she sipped her coffee silently for a moment, then said in a soft voice, “I didn’t know Vlad, I’m so sorry this happened to your family, and to you, because I’ve always liked you. You’re great at puncturing stuffed shirts at conferences. Oh hell, take this memo. It has the date and location of the next committee meeting - and tell ‘em Claire sent you.”

  Vlad thanked her. Then he thanked her again. Then he said it was getting late and started towards the door. Then he turned and thanked her again, and took her hand. Then their lips brushed, and her open mouth was soft and warm.

  * * * *

  Later that night, Vlad read from the Interim Committee Report:

  “It is said that the Gullahs of the Georgia coast sometimes refer to them as Thunder People, because of the belief that they are seen more often during thunderstorms. Dr Allbright suggests that they may seize upon these deafening noises to cover their own well-known and well-feared sounds. Or perhaps the Boss in the Wall is discomfited by the falling of the barometer, and is impelled to move and to stir about.

  “In certain border states, the obscure term Hyett is found, which may be related to a little-known tale. There was a banker named Williams who had a wife named Dorcas and a daughter named Mary Martha. The family was prosperous, and Dorcas always liked to see a good plate of victuals on the table, and had a closet full of good black silk dresses. After Williams died of consumption, it was discovered that most of the bank’s assets had been invested in beautifully engraved, but worthless bonds. In all the excitement and tumult which followed, nobody gave much thought to the Widow Williams and her daughter.

  “During the next few months, six babies were reported missing from sharecroppers’ shacks in the vicinity. Perhaps the number was more, for the poor sometimes counted their blessings in the way of children, and concluded that they had been overblessed. The wordGypsies was mentioned, and many a mother threw up her hands in horror.

  “Constable Stebbins was sent to investigate, a rough but kindly man. It occurred to him that Mrs and Miss Williams had not been seen lately, and he went to inquire if they had been bothered by any frightening strangers. He went to the back of the house, and its neglected condition made him feel uneasy. But Miss Mary Williams assured him that she and her mother were quite all right, and that they had seen no suspicious characters or small children around. Her complexion was very pale, and there was a slight smile on her lips.

  “Then the Constable noted something red beneath the edge of a large towel in the kitchen, and he recalled that one of the missing children had been wearing a red dress. He lifted the towel - and found a basket full of babies’ clothes. Then Miss Mary Williams looked at him with her small little smile, and said, ‘Mother was very hungry.’

  “No such shocking event had ever occurred in the county, as the news that Mary Williams had drowned at least six small children, and carried them home in her shawl to be eaten. The people screamed for her blood. How much did old Mrs Williams know? All she said was, ‘Nobody cared about me and my baby.’ Mary Williams was sentenced to be hanged, and her mother was sent to a lunatic asylum for life. Miss Williams’ last words were, ‘Will they feed mother good there?’

  “Mrs Dorcas Williams was allowed to bring her best black silk dresses to the asylum, and they say that she sat in a certain chair in the ward, without speaking a word, for thirty-seven years. They say that she ate hearty, and never spotted her black silk dress.

  “Mrs Williams’ family name wasHyett, and any small child in the region will run screaming if one says: ‘Mother Hyett was very hungry.’ “

  * * * *

  Vlad picked up Jack from his family’s home, and said that they were off to a meeting of the mysterious committee.

  The man at the head of the table said that, like the interesting club in New York City whose only rule was that there were no rules, this committee had no name, no schedule of meetings -this was either its third, tenth, or twelfth session, depending on how you looked at it - and no formal chair. “And if anyone else would rather chair this, speak up, I’ll gracefully yield.” No one spoke up.

  Then the people around the table looked up to see two other people who hadn’t been present before. “What the hell,” said Bagnell. “You’re not supposed to be here, you know.”

  “I know,” said Vlad Smith. “Do you still doubt what I saw?”

  Said Bagnell, “I never doubted it.”

  “Why the secrecy, Branch, why?” asked Vlad.

  “I was trying to protect you,” said Dave Branch.

  “Like hell,” said Jack Stewart. “You were all trying to protect your frigging academic turf.”

  The men faced each other silently for a moment.

  “Who told you?” asked Bagnell.

  “I told them,” said Claire Zimmerman. “They are here
at my invitation, because they belong here. So let’s stop squabbling over which kids are allowed in the clubhouse, and get on with it.”

  Having no other choice, they got on with it.

  The man at the head of the table, whom Branch identified for Vlad and Jack as Augustus Elbaum, had a reddish grizzled beard. He sighed and said, “All right. On the principle that it doesn’t matter where you begin to measure the circumference of a circle, as usual we’ll begin anywhere. Notes and queries have been sent to me, and I’ve answered some and sent some around. We’ll go over a few of them anyway.” He paused and looked around the table, then continued.

  “The trouble is, you know, we are getting in over our depths. We began as a group of folklorists, most of us trained to classify and catalog: ‘Oh, this is obviously a version of Childe Ballad number such-and-such.’ Now we’ve got historians, criminologists, physicians - and we just keep getting in deeper and deeper. We may already be in over our heads. Seen the newspapers? Seen a certain picture of a certain head?”