The Big Book of Ghost Stories

by Otto Penzler

  Low as was the standard of morals in all classes of the University in the first half of the eighteenth century, the flagrant defiance of public decorum by the members of the Everlasting Society brought upon it the stern censure of the authorities, and after a few years it was practically dissolved and its members banished from the University. Charles Bellasis, for instance, was obliged to leave the college, and, though he retained his fellowship, he remained absent from it for nearly twenty years. But the minutes of the society reveal a more terrible reason for its virtual extinction.

  Between the years of 1738 and 1743 the minutes record many meetings of the Club, for it met on other occasions besides that of All Souls Day. Apart from a great deal of impious jocularity on the part of the writers, they are limited to the formal record of the attendance of the members, fines inflicted, and so forth. The meeting on November 2 in the latter year is the first about which there is any departure from the stereotyped forms. The supper was given in the house of the physician. One member, Henry Davenport, the former Fellow-Commoner of Trinity, was absent from the entertainment, as he was then serving in Germany, in the Dettingen campaign. The minutes contain an entry, “Mulctatus propter absentiam per Presidentem, Hen. Davenport.” An entry on the next page of the book runs, “Henry Davenport by a cannon-shot became an Incorporeal Member, November 3, 1743.”

  The minutes give in their handwriting, under date November 2, the names and addresses of the six other members. First in the list, in a large bold hand, is the autograph of “Alan Dermot, President, at the Court of His Royal Highness.” Now in October Dermot had certainly been in attendance on the Young Pretender at Paris, and doubtless the address which he gave was understood at the time by the other Everlastings to refer to the fact. But on October 28, five days before the meeting of the Club, he was killed, as I have already mentioned, in a duel. The news of his death cannot have reached Cambridge on November 2, for the Secretary’s record of it is placed below that of Davenport, and with the date of November 10: “this day was reported that the President was become an Incorporeal by the hands of a french chevalier.” And in a sudden ebullition, which is in glaring contrast with his previous profanities, he has dashed down, “The Good God shield us from ill.”

  The tidings of the President’s death scattered the Everlastings like a thunderbolt. They left Cambridge and buried themselves in widely parted regions. But the Club did not cease to exist. The Secretary was still bound to his hateful records; the five survivors did not dare to neglect their fatal obligations. Horror of the presence of the President made the November gathering once and for ever impossible: but the horror, too, forbade them to neglect the meeting in October of every year to put in writing their objection to the celebration. For five years five names are appended to that entry in the minutes, and that is all the business of the Club. Then another member died, who was not the Secretary.

  For eighteen more years four miserable men met once each year to deliver the same formal protest. During those years we gather from the signatures that Charles Bellasis returned to Cambridge, now, to appearance, chastened and decorous. He occupied the rooms which I have described on the staircase on the corner of the cloister.

  Then in 1766 comes a new handwriting and an altered minute: “Jan. 27, on this day Francis Witherington, Secretary, became an Incorporeal member. The same day this Book was delivered to me, James Harvey.” Harvey lived only a month, and a similar entry on March 7 states that the book has descended, with the same mysterious celerity, to William Catherton. Then, on May 18, Charles Bellasis writes that on that day, being the day of Catherton’s decease, the Minute Book has come to him as the last surviving Corporeal of the Club.

  As it is my purpose to record fact only I shall not attempt to describe the feelings of the unhappy Secretary when he penned that fatal record. When Witherington died it must have come home to the three survivors that after twenty-three years’ intermission the ghastly entertainment must be annually renewed, with the addition of fresh Incorporeal guests, or that they must undergo the pitiless censure of the President. I think it likely that the terror of the alternative, coupled with the mysterious delivery of the Minute Book, was answerable for the speedy decease of the first two successors to the Secretaryship. Now that the alternative was offered to Bellasis alone, he was firmly resolved to bear the consequences, whatever they might be, of an infringement of the Club rules.

  The graceless days of George II had passed away from the University. They were succeeded by times of outward respectability, when religion and morals were no longer publicly challenged. With Bellasis, too, the petulance of youth had passed: he was discreet, perhaps exemplary. The scandal of his early conduct was unknown to most of the new generation, condoned by the few survivors who had witnessed it.

  On the night of November 2, 1766, a terrible event revived in the older inhabitants of the College the memory of those evil days. From ten o’clock to midnight a hideous uproar went on in the chamber of Bellasis. Who were his companions none knew. Blasphemous outcries and ribald songs, such as had not been heard for twenty years past, aroused from sleep or study the occupants of the court; but among the voices was not that of Bellasis. At twelve a sudden silence fell upon the cloisters. But the Master lay awake all night, troubled at the relapse of a respected colleague and the horrible example of libertinism set to his pupils.

  In the morning all remained quiet about Bellasis’ chamber. When his door was opened, soon after daybreak, the early light creeping through the drawn curtains revealed a strange scene. About the table were drawn seven chairs, but some of them had been overthrown, and the furniture was in chaotic disorder, as after some wild orgy. In the chair at the foot of the table sat the lifeless figure of the Secretary, his head bent over his folded arms, as though he would shield his eyes from some horrible sight. Before him on the table lay pen, ink, and the red Minute Book. On the last inscribed page, under the date of November 2nd, were written, for the first time since 1742, the autographs of the seven members of the Everlasting Club, but without address. In the same strong hand in which the President’s name was written there was appended below the signatures the note “Mulctus per Presidentem propter neglectum obsonii, Car. Bellasis.”

  The Minute Book was secured by the Master of the College and I believe that he alone was acquainted with the nature of its contents. The scandal reflected on the College by the circumstances revealed in it caused him to keep the knowledge rigidly to himself. But some suspicion of the nature of the occurrences must have percolated to students and servants, for there was a long-abiding belief in the College that annually on the night of November 2 sounds of unholy revelry were heard to issue from the chamber of Charles Bellasis. I cannot learn that the occupants of the adjoining rooms have ever been disturbed by them. Indeed, it is plain from the minutes that owing to their improvident drafting no provision was made for the perpetuation of the All Souls entertainment after the last Everlasting ceased to Corporeal. Such superstitious belief must be treated with contemptuous incredulity. But whether for that cause or another the rooms were shut up, and have remained tenantless from that day to this.

  LEGAL RITES

  Isaac Asimov and

  James MacCreigh

  BORN ISAAK YUDOVICH OSIMOV in Petrograd, the young Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) grew up in Brooklyn and retained his New York accent for his entire life. A precocious genius, he began writing for pulp magazines at the age of nineteen, the same age at which he received his master’s degree from Columbia University. He had an academic career at Boston University as associate professor in the field of biochemistry, but his quick and profound success as an author of science fiction (he is regarded as one of the three greatest science fiction writers of the twentieth century, along with Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein) curtailed his teaching activities. Prolific in both fictional works and nonfiction, with more than three hundred books to his credit, he is remembered for such enduring, groundbreaking classics as I, Robot (1950)
, Foundation (1951), and the short story “Nightfall” (1941), selected by the Science Fiction Writers of America as the best science fiction story ever written.

  James MacCreigh is the pseudonym of Frederik (George) Pohl, Jr. (1919–), who, under his own name and at least a dozen pseudonyms, has written steadily and successfully for more than seventy years. He also has been an influential editor, holding that position at Super Science Stories and Astonishing Stories (1939–1943) and at Galaxy and if for more than a decade (1959–1969), winning three Nebula Awards for Best Editor. His writing has also earned him numerous Hugo and Nebula awards, including Grand Master. His 1980 novel, Jem, received the National Book Award.

  “Legal Rites” was originally published in the September 1950 issue of Weird Tales.

  Legal Rites

  ISAAC ASIMOV AND JAMES MACCREIGH

  I

  Already the stars were out, though the sun had just dipped under the horizon, and the sky of the west was a blood-stuck gold behind the Sierra Nevadas.

  “Hey!” squawked Russell Harley. “Come back!”

  But the one-lunged motor of the old Ford was making too much noise; the driver didn’t hear him. Harley cursed as he watched the old car careen along the sandy ruts on its half-flat tires. Its taillight was saying a red no to him. No, you can’t get away tonight; no, you’ll have to stay here and fight it out.

  Harley grunted and climbed back up the porch stairs of the old wooden house. It was well made, anyhow. The stairs, though half a century old, neither creaked beneath him nor showed cracks.

  Harley picked up the bags he’d dropped when he experienced his abrupt change of mind—fake leather and worn out, they were—and carted them into the house. He dumped them on a dust-jacketed sofa and looked around.

  It was stifling hot, and the smell of the desert outside had permeated the room. Harley sneezed.

  “Water,” he said out loud. “That’s what I need.”

  He’d prowled through every room on the ground floor before he stopped still and smote his head. Plumbing—naturally there’d be no plumbing in this hole eight miles out on the desert! A well was the best he could hope for—

  If that.

  It was getting dark. No electric lights either, of course. He blundered irritatedly through the dusky rooms to the back of the house. The screen door shrieked metallically as he opened it. A bucket hung by the door. He picked it up, tipped it, shook the loose sand out of it. He looked over the “back yard”—about thirty thousand visible acres of hilly sand, rock, and patches of sage and flame-tipped ocotillo.

  No well.

  The old fool got water from somewhere, he thought savagely. Obstinately he climbed down the back steps and wandered out into the desert. Overhead the stars were blinding, a million billion of them, but the sunset was over already and he could see only hazily. The silence was murderous. Only a faint whisper of breeze over the sand, and the slither of his shoes.

  He caught a glimmer of starlight from the nearest clump of sage and walked to it. There was a pool of water, caught in the angle of two enormous boulders. He stared at it doubtfully, then shrugged. It was water. It was better than nothing. He dipped the bucket in the little pool. Knowing nothing of the procedure, he filled it with a quart of loose sand as he scooped it along the bottom. When he lifted it, brimful, to his lips, staggering under the weight of it, he spat out the first mouthful and swore vividly.

  Then he used his head. He set the bucket down, waited a second for the sand grains to settle, cupped water in his hands, lifted it to his lips.…

  Pat. HISS. Pat. HISS. Pat. HISS—

  “What the hell!” Harley stood up, looked around in abrupt puzzlement. It sounded like water dripping from somewhere, onto a red-hot stove, flashing into sizzling steam. He saw nothing, only the sand and the sage and the pool of tepid, sickly water.

  Pat. HISS—

  Then he saw it, and his eyes bulged. Out of nowhere it was dripping, a drop a second, a sticky, dark drop that was thicker than water, that fell to the ground lazily, in slow defiance of gravity. And when it struck each drop sizzled and skittered about, and vanished. It was perhaps eight feet from him, just visible in the starlight.

  And then, “Get off my land!” said the voice from nowhere.

  Harley got. By the time he got to Rebel Butte three hours later, he was barely managing to walk, wishing desperately that he’d delayed long enough for one more good drink of water, despite all the fiends of hell. But he’d run the first three miles. He’d had plenty of encouragement. He remembered with a shudder how the clear desert air had taken milky shape around the incredible trickle of dampness and had advanced on him threateningly.

  And when he got to the first kerosene-lighted saloon of Rebel Butte, and staggered inside, the saloonkeeper’s fascinated stare at the front of his shoddy coat showed him strong evidence that he hadn’t been suddenly taken with insanity, or drunk on the unaccustomed sensation of fresh desert air. All down the front of him it was, and the harder he rubbed the harder it stayed, the stickier it got. Blood!

  “Whiskey!” he said in a strangled voice, tottering to the bar. He pulled a threadbare dollar bill from his pocket, flapped it onto the mahogany.

  The blackjack game at the back of the room had stopped. Harley was acutely conscious of the eyes of the players, the bartender, and the tall, lean man leaning on the bar. All were watching him.

  The bartender broke the spell. He reached for a bottle behind him without looking at it, placed it on the counter before Harley. He poured a glass of water from a jug, set it down with a shot glass beside the bottle.

  “I could of told you that would happen,” he said casually. “Only you wouldn’t of believed me. You had to meet Hank for yourself before you’d believe he was there.”

  Harley remembered his thirst and drained the glass of water, then poured himself a shot of the whiskey and swallowed it without waiting for the chaser to be refilled. The whiskey felt good going down, almost good enough to stop his internal shakes.

  “What are you talking about?” he said finally. He twisted his body and leaned forward across the bar to partly hide the stains on his coat. The saloonkeeper laughed.

  “Old Hank,” he said. “I knowed who you was right away even before Tom came back and told me where he’d took you. I knowed you was Zeb Harley’s no-good nephew, come to take Harley Hall an’ sell it before he was cold in his grave.”

  The blackjack players were still watching him, Russell Harley saw. Only the lean man farther along the bar seemed to have dismissed him. He was pouring himself another drink quite occupied with his task.

  Harley flushed. “Listen,” he said, “I didn’t come in here for advice. I wanted a drink. I’m paying for it. Keep your mouth out of this.”

  The saloonkeeper shrugged. He turned his back and walked away to the blackjack table. After a couple of seconds one of the players turned too, and threw a card down. The others followed suit.

  Harley was just getting set to swallow his pride and talk to the saloonkeeper again—he seemed to know something about what Harley’d been through, and might be helpful—when the lean man tapped his shoulder. Harley whirled and almost dropped his glass. Absorbed and jumpy, he hadn’t seen him come up.

  “Young man,” said the lean one, “my name’s Nicholls. Come along with me, sir, and we’ll talk this thing over. I think we may be of service to each other.”

  Even the twelve-cylinder car Nicholls drove jounced like a haywagon over the sandy ruts leading to the place old Zeb had—laughingly—named “Harley Hall.”

  Russell Harley twisted his neck and stared at the heap of paraphernalia in the open rumble seat. “I don’t like it,” he complained. “I never had anything to do with ghosts. How do I know this stuff’ll work?”

  Nicholls smiled. “You’ll have to take my word for it. I’ve had dealings with ghosts before. You could say that I might qualify as a ghost exterminator, if I chose.”

  Harley growled. “I still don’t
like it.”

  Nicholls turned a sharp look on him. “You like the prospect of owning Harley Hall, don’t you? And looking for all the money your late uncle is supposed to have hidden around somewhere?” Harley shrugged. “Certainly you do,” said Nicholls, returning his eyes to the road. “And with good reason. The local reports put the figure pretty high, young man.”

  “That’s where you come in, I guess,” Harley said sullenly. “I find the money—that I own anyhow—and give some of it to you. How much?”

  “We’ll discuss that later,” Nicholls said. He smiled absently as he looked ahead.

  “We’ll discuss it right now!”

  The smile faded from Nicholls’ face. “No,” he said. “We won’t. I’m doing you a favor, young Harley. Remember that. In return—you’ll do as I say, all the way!”

  Harley digested that carefully, and it was not a pleasant meal. He waited a couple of seconds before he changed the subject.

  “I was out here once when the old man was alive,” he said. “He didn’t say nothing about any ghost.”

  “Perhaps he felt you might think him—well, peculiar,” Nicholls said. “And perhaps you would have. When were you here?”

  “Oh, a long time ago,” Harley said evasively. “But I was here a whole day, and part of the night. The old man was crazy as a coot, but he didn’t keep any ghosts in the attic.”

  “This ghost was a friend of his,” Nicholls said. “The gentleman in charge of the bar told you that, surely. Your late uncle was something of a recluse. He lived in this house a dozen miles from nowhere, came into town hardly ever, wouldn’t let anyone get friendly with him. But he wasn’t exactly a hermit. He had Hank for company.”

  “Fine company.”

  Nicholls inclined his head seriously. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “From all accounts they got on well together. They played pinochle and chess—Hank’s supposed to have been a great pinochle player. He was killed that way, according to the local reports. Caught somebody dealing from the bottom and shot it out with him. He lost. A bullet pierced his throat and he died quite bloodily.” He turned the wheel, putting his weight into the effort, and succeeded in twisting the car out of the ruts of the “road,” sent it jouncing across unmarked sand to the old frame house to which they were going.