The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume Two

by James D. Jenkins

  ‘It’s a sin not to work a man off on the first jerk,’ he cried.

  ‘You do it. What’s wrong?’ they answered.

  ‘It’s all wrong,’ shouted the hangman. ‘To begin with – the rope. Where did you get it? Out of the Ark?’

  ‘It’s his,’ they cried, pointing to the hanging Sexton. ‘Used it for lowering coffins.’

  ‘Well, it’s too thick for a neck like his. Get a bell-rope from the Tower. He keeps the key in his pocket.’ The Sexton was lowered. ‘Bind his hands behind him with his neckcloth, which you should have took off in the first place.’ The expert was obeyed.

  ‘Now two ringers up the Tower with me to choose a rope.’

  Going round and round up the turret steps to the belfry convinced Johnny Jolt how very drunk he was. He chose a rope by lantern light, and sent the ringers up the ladder to the bell-chamber to cut it down. It slipped through the ceiling hole, and lashed the hangman in his face as it fell, which put him in a rage.

  Out in the churchyard again the fresh noose was adjusted. They offered no prayer, but Churchwarden Quested pronounced a curse that was shuddering to hear. Young Piper held the corpse of his beloved high up in his arms. It looked as if he were being civil to the last and giving the dead girl every chance of seeing justice done for her. Nobody troubled about the after results. The whole village was in it. Johnny Jolt cared for nothing. He was drunk. Everything was ready. The nerve of the village was strung to breaking point when a great white horse came trotting across the churchyard, in and out of the tombstones, and right into the crowd, which scattered screaming, till someone shouted, ‘It’s only old Scraggybones, the churchyard horse. The only thing he cares about. String it up beside him.’

  Over the branch of a great elm, which stretched across the Bier-Walk, the Sexton’s discarded coffin rope was thrown, and before his eyes the Sexton’s whimpering pet was pulled up. The poor beast, like his master, managed to lay out more than one of the villagers as it was swung off its feet. ‘Courage, Scraggy­bones,’ cried the Sexton. ‘I shall be with you in a moment, and then we will ride the Bier-Walk together.’

  Johnny Jolt waited for the Sexton to see this piece of savagery completed, and then he made ready the knot, but his victim’s words sobered him. He did not like them.

  Mockingly asked if he had anything to say, the Sexton turned to Quested, and said, ‘It is November the Thirteenth. I shall not forget that date in the place where I am going. I shall ride the horse of Death, and trample you upon the Bier-Walk. Remember­.’ The hangman tightened the noose, and adjusted the knot to his final satisfaction. As he did so the Sexton spoke to him in a voice that sounded dead, ‘It would have been better for you, Mister Jolt, had you stayed within doors. It is an unlucky night for you to be abroad, and before the Calendar has run round many times, you will know that my last words were true. I shall be riding, and you will be thinking, “November the Thirteenth. The Thirteenth of November. I wish I had kept within doors.” ’ The body was jerked over. The Sexton was dead.

  When the Vicar returned with the rescue party the whole village was a-bed, but they found the Sexton beside his horse over the Bier-Walk. The whole village being implicated, nobody was punished, and all kept mum throughout the Inquiry, and after a half-hearted attempt on the part of the authorities to make someone speak, the matter was dropped.

  A few years went by. People died and people were born, and the dread night was effaced by more recent happenings. Young Piper never mentioned it, as he had married someone else, and did not care to mention Kitty Quested. And then one night Cephas Quested did not return home. It was in November, and there was snow upon the Bier-Walk. They found him there on the morning of the Fourteenth. He had been trampled by a horse, for the mark of a great shoe showed livid on his temple. Yes. He had been trampled to death on the Bier-Walk, which was significant. From that day Johnny Jolt became a wreck. He drank more heavily, and his eyes were haunted with a fear. He sought company, but there was none where he was welcome. He was always asking people what day of the week the Thirteenth of November fell on, and whenever that unlucky day came, he moved from his lonely cottage and bought board and lodging at the Chequers Inn for one night.

  The inn changed hands, and the new landlord did not approve of Johnny Jolt. He thought that the presence of a drunken hangman kept good custom away, and he did not intend to give the creature house-room upon the Thirteenth of November. The day came, and with it the hangman. He was drunk by noon, but had the sense to sit quiet and soak in the corner. It drew on towards midnight and the cronies left. The ex-hangman – for he had lost his job – steered himself to the bar.

  ‘I always sleep here upon this night,’ he enunciated slowly. ‘I have done so for many years. It is the night when I cannot sleep in the cottage by myself. I daresay you know the reason.’

  ‘Ah yes, sir,’ answered mine host. ‘That is quite right. You honour the house every Thirteenth of November, I remember. Now please, sir, I wish to close the doors. Drink up, if you please.’

  ‘I will have one more before going to my room.’

  The landlord gave him another. ‘I will prepare your room for to-morrow, sir.’

  ‘No, for to-night,’ corrected the ex-hangman.

  ‘I thought it was for the thirteenth you ordered it.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It is the twelfth now, sir.’

  ‘No, the thirteenth.’

  Looking at a calendar the landlord shook his head. But the drunkard wanted to see for himself. The landlord brought the calendar and leant across the bar. ‘Here you are. November. That’s right. Here’s the Thirteenth. Tuesday as large as life. To-day’s Monday, and as you see the Twelfth.’

  ‘So it is,’ admitted the drunkard. ‘Even the Constable told me wrong.’

  ‘To-morrow then, sir?’ queried the landlord, putting away the calendar. ‘I’ll get the pot-boy to light a lantern for you and pilot you up the church steps. It’s your quickest way.’

  When they had gone, the landlord chuckled to his wife, ‘I’ll tell him to-morrow that we were looking at the calendar for next year. I got it to-day on purpose.’

  Johnny Jolt chuckled to the pot-boy as they climbed the steps. ‘Nearly let myself in for two nights at the inn. Couldn’t have run to that, with prices as they are now.’

  The pot-boy asked him why he wished to spend a night at the inn when his own cottage was so near.

  ‘For company, lad. Did you never hear the tale of the mad and murderous Sexton?’

  ‘Never, sir,’ lied the pot-boy, who wanted to hear it first-hand.

  ‘Then sit down here in the porch, and I’ll tell you while my legs get sober.’

  The pot-boy thought it stupid of Mister Jolt to drink any more brandy if he really wanted to get sober, but he kept his mouth shut while the ex-hangman talked and drank from the bottle in his hand.

  The story was finished about the same time as the brandy. Then Mister Jolt turned to the pot-boy and said, ‘Now you see why I spend the Thirteenth at the inn. If there are such things as ghosts that there Sexton will be one, and I ain’t taking chances with him. See?’

  ‘But you are. It’s the Thirteenth now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ screamed the hangman. ‘What’s to-night?’

  ‘Well, yesterday was Sunday, and we had Psalms for the Twelfth Evening. The Parson don’t make mistakes, I hope.’

  ‘If that’s true, I’ll break that landlord’s neck. But are you sure?’

  Before the pot-boy could answer, there came the sound of a galloping horse, and at the same time the church clock began to chime for midnight. Mister Jolt’s teeth chattered.

  ‘Listen. What’s that?’

  ‘A ’orse galloping,’ whimpered the pot-boy.

  ‘Coming close, ain’t it?’

  ‘Yus.’

  ‘Stopping, ain’t it?’

  ‘Yus.’

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  ‘Clock striking twelve.’

>   ‘No. The other noise.’

  ‘What? That sort of shuffling scuffle?’ snivelled the pot-boy.

  ‘Yes. It’s skeleton feet.’

  ‘No. It ain’t.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘I do. It’s the Sexton. The Sexton on his horse. He’s ridden up the Bier-Walk. He’s dismounting under the bracket. He’s come to take me. But I won’t be took. I won’t. I say I won’t.’ The hangman swung the lantern round his head, and raising the bottle with his other hand, pointed into the darkness screaming, ‘Look.’ The pot-boy sprang out of the porch, and the hangman brought the lantern down with a crash on to his head, and then came at him with the bottle. The boy had a dim recollection of thrusting his hand against the madman’s throat, and of gripping hard. Then the bottle came down, and he remembered no more.

  Half an hour later the landlord and two ostlers came from the Chequers to look for the pot-boy. He was lying insensible upon the pavement. They gave him brandy and brought him round, when he screamed out, ‘Mister Jolt. Where’s Mister Jolt?’ They found Mister Jolt on the Bier-Walk, beneath the lantern-bracket, his arms across his face and his legs crumpled under him.

  ‘He has fallen from the wall,’ said one of the ostlers. ‘Broke his legs, by the look of it.’

  ‘Drunk. It will give my house a bad name,’ muttered the landlord, as he uncovered the dead man’s face. When he saw it, he sprang to his feet. ‘Run for the doctor. I think he’s dead.’

  When the doctor came and looked at the distorted face, he said, ‘Yes, he is dead. A seizure. I warned him to keep off spirits.’

  ‘He had none to-night at the Chequers,’ said the landlord.

  ‘I daresay,’ nodded the doctor. ‘He carried it with him. See.’ He unclasped the dead man’s fingers, which were clutching the broken neck of a bottle. ‘Hallo. Finger-marks on his throat. How’s that?’

  The pot-boy looked at the doctor, and stammered, ‘It’s what he feared, sir. The Sexton’s ghost come for him. It’s the Thirteenth of November.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ snapped the doctor. ‘You must have seized him by the throat when he came at you.’

  ‘I was knocked senseless with his lantern,’ answered the pot-boy stubbornly.

  ‘Hallo. What’s this?’ The doctor had turned the dead man’s head, and they all saw the mark of a great hoof on his face.

  ‘I couldn’t have done that now, could I, sir? It’s the Sexton’s horse, like when Mister Quested was found here.’

  ‘More likely this, I think,’ answered the man of science, lifting a great carthorse-shoe from the gravel. ‘He was raving drunk, and he fell on this.’

  ‘Put it down, sir,’ whispered the landlord.

  ‘Horseshoes won’t harm us. They are lucky,’ said the doctor.

  ‘That’s been dropped by the Devil’s horse,’ shuddered an ostler.

  The landlord suddenly pulled the doctor’s hand from the corpse. ‘Look. That proves it,’ he cried, and pointed to the wall. From a crevice in the old stones there appeared a gigantic and glossy worm, which slithered and dropped upon the hangman’s neck, and slipped in under his shirt before the doctor could free his hand to take it.

  And so it became a ghost story. The Sexton’s horse had trampled him as it had Cephas Quested, and the Sexton’s bony fingers had finished by throttling. Then came the King Worm to claim him, and from that day not a soul who had been at the hanging would venture up the Bier-Walk upon November the Thirteenth.

  HALLEY’S PASSING by Michael McDowell

  Of the many authors rediscovered by Valancourt, none has proven more popular with readers than Michael McDowell (1950-1999). McDowell’s writing career was relatively short – his first novel, The Amulet, appeared in 1979, and his last in 1987 – but quite prolific: under his own name and various pseudonyms he published some thirty volumes of fiction during this span before turning his hand to Hollywood screenwriting (Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas). His Southern Gothic novels Cold Moon over Babylon (1980), The Elementals (1981) and Blackwater (1983) are among the finest horror novels of their era and are now rightly considered classics of the genre. ‘Halley’s Passing’, one of only a handful of short stories McDowell wrote, first appeared in the magazine Twilight Zone in 1987 and is reprinted here for the first time in almost thirty years. When she included it in her anthology The Year’s Best Fantasy (1988), editor Ellen Datlow noted that it was ‘unquestionably the most distressingly violent story’ in the volume, an observation that holds true for the present book as well. Nine of McDowell’s novels are available from Valancourt, and his short story ‘Miss Mack’ appeared in The Valan­court Book of Horror Stories, Volume One.

  ‘Would you like to keep that on your credit card?’ asked the woman on the desk. Her name was Donna and she was dressed like Snow White because it was Halloween­.

  ‘No,’ said Mr Farley, ‘I think I’ll pay cash.’ Mr Farley counted out twelve ten-dollar bills and laid them on the counter. Donna made sure there were twelve, then gave Mr Farley change of three dollars and twenty-six cents. He watched to make certain she tore up the charge slips he had filled out two days before. She ripped them into thirds. Original copy, Customer’s Receipt, Bank Copy, two intervening carbons – all bearing the impress of Mr Farley’s Visa card and his signature – they went into a trash basket that was invisible beneath the counter.

  ‘Good-bye,’ said Mr Farley. He took up his one small suitcase and walked out the front door of the hotel. His suitcase was light blue Samsonite with an X of tape underneath the handle to make it recognizable at an airport baggage claim.

  It was seven o’clock. Mr Farley took a taxi from the hotel to the airport. In the back of the taxi, he opened his case and took out a black loose-leaf notebook and wrote in it:

  103185 Double Tree Inn

  Dallas, Texas

  Checkout 1900/$116.74/

  Donna

  The taxi took Mr Farley to the airport and cost him $12.50 with a tip that was generous but not too generous.

  Mr Farley went to the PSA counter and picked up an airline schedule and put it into the pocket of his jacket. Then he went to the Eastern counter and picked up another schedule. In a bar called the Range Room he sat at a small round table. He ordered a vodka martini from a waitress named Alyce. When she had brought it to him, and he had paid her and she had gone away, he opened his suitcase, pulled out his black loose-leaf notebook and added the notations:

  Taxi $10.20 + 2.30/#1718

  Drink at Airport Bar

  $2.75 + .75/Alyce

  He leafed backwards through the notebook and discovered that he had flown PSA three times in the past two months. Therefore he looked into the Eastern Schedule first. He looked on page 23 first because $2.30 had been the amount of the tip to the taxi driver. On page 23 of the Eastern airline schedule were flights from Dallas to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Mobile, Alabama. All of the flights to Milwaukee changed in Cincinnati or St Louis. A direct flight to Mobile left at 9:10 p.m. arriving 10:50 p.m. Mr Farley returned the black loose-leaf notebook to his case and got up from the table, spilling his drink in the process.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said to Alyce, and left another dollar bill for her inconvenience.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Alyce.

  Mr Farley went to the Eastern ticket counter and bought a coach ticket to Mobile, Alabama. He asked for an aisle seat in the non-smoking section. He paid in cash and after taking out his black loose-leaf notebook, he checked his blue Samsonite bag. He went through security, momentarily surrendering a ringful of keys. The flight to Mobile departed Gate 15 but Mr Farley sat in the seats allotted to Gate 13, directly across the way. He read through a copy of USA Today and he gave a Snickers bar to a child in a pumpkin costume who trick-or-treated him. He smiled at the child, not because he liked costumes or Halloween or children, but because he was pleased with himself for having been foresightful enough to buy three Snickers bars just in case he ran i
nto trick-or-treating children on Halloween night. He opened his black loose-leaf notebook and amended the notation of his most recent bar tab:

  Drink at Airport Bar

  $2.75 + 1.7 5/Alyce

  The flight for Mobile began boarding at 8:55. As the announcement was made for the early accommodation of those with young children or other difficulties, Mr Farley went into the men’s room.

  A Latino man in his twenties with a blue shirt and a lock of hair dangling down his neck stood at a urinal, looking at the ceiling and softly farting. His urine splashed against the porcelain wall of the urinal. Mr Farley went past the urinals and stood in front of the two stalls and peered under them. He saw no legs or feet or shoes but he took the precaution of opening the doors. The stalls were empty, as he suspected, but Mr Farley did not like to leave such matters to chance. The Latino man, looking downwards, flushed the urinal, zipping his trousers and backing away at the same time. Mr Farley leaned down and took the Latino man by the waist. He swung the Latino man around so that he was facing the mirrors and the two sinks in the restroom and could see Mr Farley’s face.

  ‘Man – ’ protested the Latino man.

  Mr Farley rolled his left arm around the Latino man’s belt and put his right hand on the Latino man’s head. Mr Farley pushed forward very swiftly with his right hand. The Latino man’s head went straight down towards the sink in such a way that the cold-water faucet, shaped like a Maltese Cross, shattered the bone above the Latino man’s right eye. Mr Farley had gauged the strength of his attack so that the single blow served to press the Latino’s head all the way down to the porcelain. The chilled aluminum faucet was buried deeply in the Latino man’s brain. Mr Farley took the Latino man’s wallet from his back pocket, removed the cash and his Social Security card. He gently dropped the wallet into the sink beneath the Latino man’s head and turned on the hot water. Mr Farley peered into the sink, and saw blood, blackish and brackish swirling into the rusting drain. Retrieving his black looseleaf notebook from the edge of the left hand sink where he’d left it, Mr Farley walked out of the restroom. The Eastern flight to Mobile was boarding all seats and Mr Farley walked on directly behind a young woman with brown hair and a green scarf and directly in front of a young woman with slightly darker brown hair in a yellow sweater-dress. Mr Farley sat in Seat 4-C and next to him, in Seat 4-A, was a bearded man in a blue corduroy jacket who fell asleep before take-off. Mr Farley reached into his pocket and pulled out the bills he’d taken from the Latino man’s wallet. There were five five-dollar bills and nine one-dollar bills. Mr Farley pulled out his own wallet and interleaved the Latino man’s bills with his own, mixing them up. Mr Farley reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the Latino man’s Social Security card, cupping it from sight and slipping it into the Eastern Airlines In-Flight Magazine. He turned on the reading light and opened the magazine. The Social Security card read: