The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume Two

by James D. Jenkins

  1205/unk./mc 35/Spring

  Hill (Mobile) Alabama/

  $0/Broken glass

  Mr Rachman spent the rest of the night simply reading through his black loose-leaf notebook, not trying to remember what he could not easily bring to mind, but merely playing the part of the tireless investigator trying to discern a pattern. Mr Rachman did not think he was fooling himself when he decided that he could not.

  When the chambermaid came the next day, Mr Rachman sat on a chair with the telephone cradled between his ear and his shoulder, now and then saying, ‘Yes’ or ‘No, not at all’ or ‘Once more and let me check those numbers,’ as he made notations on a pad of paper headed up with a silhouette cartouche of palm trees.

  Mr Rachman checked out of the Oasis Hotel a few minutes after sundown, and smiled a polite smile when the young woman on the desk apologized for having to charge him for an extra day. The bill came to $131.70 and Mr Rachman paid in cash. As he watched the young woman on the desk tear up the credit card receipt, he remarked, ‘I don’t like to get near my limit,’ and the young woman on the desk replied, ‘I won’t even apply for one.’

  ‘But they sometimes come in handy, Marsha,’ said Mr Rachman, employing her name aloud as a reminder to note it later in his diary. Nametags were a great help to Mr Rachman in his travels, and he had been pleased to watch the rapid spread of their use. Before 1960 or thereabouts, hardly anyone had worn a nametag.

  Mr Rachman drove around downtown Mobile for an hour or so, just in case something turned up. Once, driving slowly down an alleyway that was scarcely wider than his car, a prostitute on yellow heels lurched at him out of a recessed doorway, plunging a painted hand through his rolled-down window. Mr Rachman said, ‘Wrong sex,’ and drove on.

  ‘Faggot!’ the prostitute called after him.

  Mr Rachman didn’t employ prostitutes except in emergencies, that is to say, when it was nearly dawn and he had not managed to make anyone’s acquaintance for the night. Then he resorted to prostitutes, but not otherwise. Too easy to make that sort of thing a habit.

  And habits were what Mr Rachman had to avoid.

  He drove to the airport, and took a ticket from a mechanized gate. He drove slowly around the parking lot, which was out of doors, and to one side of the airport buildings. He might have taken any of several spaces near the terminal, but Mr Rachman drove slowly about the farther lanes. He could not drive very long, for fear of drawing the attention of a guard.

  A blue Buick Skylark pulled into a space directly beneath a burning sodium lamp. Mr Rachman made a sudden decision. He parked his car six vehicles down, and quickly climbed out with his blue Samsonite suitcase. He strode towards the terminal with purpose, coming abreast of the blue Buick Skylark. A woman, about thirty-five years old, was pulling a dark leather bag out of the backseat of the car. Mr Rachman stopped suddenly, put down his case and patted the pockets of his trousers in alarm.

  ‘My keys . . .’ he said aloud.

  Then he checked the pockets of his suit jacket. He often used the forgotten keys ploy. It didn’t really constitute a habit, for it was an action that would never appear later as evidence.

  The woman with the suitcase came between her car and the recreational vehicle that was parked next to it. She had a handbag over her shoulder. Mr Rachman suddenly wanted very badly to make this one work for him. For one thing, this was a woman, and he hadn’t made the acquaintance of a female since he’d been in Mobile. That would disrupt the pattern a bit. She had a purse, which might contain money. He liked the shape and size of her luggage, too.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said politely, trying to squeeze by him.

  ‘I think I locked my keys in my car,’ said Mr Rachman, moving aside for her.

  She smiled a smile which suggested that she was sorry but that there was nothing she could do about it.

  She had taken a single step towards the terminal when Mr Rachman lifted his right leg and took a long stride forward. He caught the sole of his shoe against her right calf, and pushed her down to the pavement. The woman crashed to her knees on the pavement with such force that the bones of her knees shattered. She started to fall forward, but Mr Rachman spryly caught one arm around her waist and placed his other hand on the back of her head. In his clutching fingers, he could feel the scream building in her mouth. He swiftly turned her head and smashed her face into the high-beam headlight of the blue Buick Skylark. He jerked her head out again, and even before the broken glass had spilled down the front of her suit jacket, Mr Rachman plunged her head into the low-beam headlight. He jerked her head out, and awkwardly straddling her body, he pushed her between her Buick and the next car in the lane, a silver VW GTI. He pushed her head hard down against the pavement four times, though he was sure she was dead already. He let go her head, and peered at his fingers in the light of the sodium lamp. He smelled the splotches of blood on his third finger and his palm and his thumb. He tasted the blood, and then wiped it off on the back of the woman’s bare leg. Another car turned down the lane, and Mr Rachman threw himself onto the pavement, reaching for the woman’s suitcase before the automobile lights played over it. He pulled it into the darkness between the cars. The automobile drove past. Mr Rachman pulled the woman’s handbag off her shoulder, and then rolled her beneath her car. Fishing inside the purse for her car keys, he opened the driver’s door and unlocked the back door. He climbed into the car and pulled in her bag with him. He emptied its contents onto the floor, then crawled across the back seat and opened the opposite door. He retrieved his blue Samsonite suitcase from beneath the recreational vehicle where he’d kicked it as he struck up his acquaintance with the woman. The occupants of the car that had passed a few moments before walked in front of the Buick. Mr Rachman ducked behind the back seat for a moment till he could no longer hear the voices – a man and a woman. He opened his Samsonite case and repacked all his belongings into the woman’s black leather case. He reached into the woman’s bag and pulled out her wallet. He took her Alabama driver’s license and a Carte Blanche credit card that read A. B. Frost rather than Aileen Frost. He put the ticket in his pocket. Mr Rachman was mostly indifferent to the matter of fingerprints, but he had a superstition against carbon paper of any sort.

  Mr Rachman surreptitiously checked the terminal display and found that a plane was leaving for Birmingham, Alabama in twenty minutes. It would probably begin to board in five minutes. Mr Rachman rushed to the Delta ticket counter, and said breathlessly, ‘Am I too late to get on the plane to Birmingham? I haven’t bought my ticket yet.’

  Mark, the airline employee said, ‘You’re in plenty of time – the plane’s been delayed.’

  This was not pleasant news. Mr Rachman was anxious to leave Mobile. Aileen Frost was hidden beneath her car, it was true, and might not be found for a day or so – but there was always a chance that someone would find her quickly. Mr Rachman didn’t want to be around for any part of the investigation. Also, he couldn’t now say, ‘Well, I think I’ll go to Atlanta instead.’ That would draw dangerous attention to himself. Perhaps he should just return to Mr Maguire’s car and drive away. The evening was still early. He could find a house in the country, make the acquaintance of anyone who lived there, sit out quietly the daylight hours, and leave early the following evening.

  ‘How long a delay?’ Mr Rachman asked Mark.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ said Mark pleasantly, already making out the ticket. ‘What name?’

  Not Frost, of course. And Rachman was already several days old.

  ‘Como,’ he said, not knowing why.

  ‘Perry?’ asked Mark with a laugh.

  ‘Peter,’ said Mr Como.

  Mr Como sighed. He was already half enamoured of his alternative plan. But he couldn’t leave now. Mark might remember a man who had rushed in, then rushed out again because he couldn’t brook a fifteen-minute delay. The ticket from Mobile to Birmingham was $89, five dollars more than Mr Como had predicted in his mind. Putting his ticket into the inside
pocket of his jacket that did not contain Aileen Frost’s ticket to Wilmington, Mr Como went into the men’s room and locked himself into a stall. Under the noise of the flushing toilet, he quickly tore up Aileen Frost’s ticket, and stuffed the fragments into his jacket pocket. When he left the stall he washed his hands at the sink until the only other man in the rest room left. Then he wrapped the fragments in a paper towel and stuffed that deep into the waste paper basket. Aileen Frost’s license and credit card he slipped into a knitting bag of a woman waiting for a plane to Houston.

  Mr Como had been given a window seat near the front of the plane. The seat beside him was empty. After figuring his expenses for the day, Mr Como wrote in his black loose-leaf notebook:

  0745/Aileen Frost/fc

  35/Mobile Airport Parking

  Lot/$212/Car headlights

  Mr Como was angry with himself. Two airport killings within a week. That was laziness. Mr Como had fallen into the lazy, despicable habit of working as early in the evening as possible. This, even though Mr Como had never failed, not a single night, not even when only minutes had remained till dawn. But he tended to fret, and he didn’t rest easy till he had got the evening’s business out of the way. That was the problem of course. He had no other business. So if he worked early, he was left with a long stretch of hours till he could sleep with the dawn. If he put off till late, he only spent the long hours fretting, wondering if he’d be put to trouble. Trouble to Mr Como meant witnesses (whose acquaintance he had to make as well), or falling back on easy marks – prostitutes, nightwatchmen, hotel workers. Or, worst of all, pursuit and flight, and then some sudden, uncomfortable place to wait out the daylight hours.

  On every plane trip, Mr Como made promises to himself: he’d use even more ingenuity, he’d rely on his expertise and work at late hours as well as early hours, he’d try to develop other interests. Yet he was at the extremity of his ingenuity, late hours fretted him beyond any pleasure he took in making a new acquaintance, and he had long since lost his interest in any pleasure but that moment he saw the blood of each night’s new friend. And even that was only a febrile memory of what had once been a hot true necessity of desire.

  Before the plane landed, Mr Como invariably decided that he did too much thinking. For, finally, instinct had never failed him, though everything else – Mr Como, the world Mr Como inhabited, and Mr Como’s tastes – everything else changed.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said the captain’s voice, ‘we have a special treat for you tonight. If you’ll look out the left side of the plane, and up – towards the Pleiades – you’ll see Halley’s Comet. You’ll see it better from up here than from down below. And I’d advise you to look now, because it won’t be back in our lifetimes.’

  Mr Como looked out of the window. Most of the other passengers didn’t know which stars were the Pleiades, but Mr Como did. Halley’s Comet was a small blur to the right of the small constellation. Mr Como gladly gave his seat to a young couple who wanted to see the comet. Mr Como remembered the 1910 visitation quite clearly, and that time the comet had been spectacular. He’d been living in Canada, he thought, somewhere near Halifax. It was high in the sky then, brighter than Venus, with a real tail, and no one had to point it out to you. He tried to remember the time before – 1834, he determined with a calculation of his fingernail on the glossy cover of the Delta In-flight magazine. But 1834 was beyond his power of recollection. The Comet was surely even brighter then, but where had he been at that time? Before airports, and hotels, and credit cards, and the convenience of nametags. He’d lived in one place then for long periods of time, and hadn’t even kept proper records. There’d been a lust then, too, for the blood, and every night he’d done more than merely place an incrimsoned finger to his lips.

  But everything had changed, evolved slowly and immeasurably, and he was not what once he’d been. Mr Como knew he’d change again. The brightness of comets deteriorated with every pass. Perhaps on its next journey around the sun, Mr Como wouldn’t be able to see it at all.

  THE NICE BOYS by Isabel Colegate

  Isabel Colegate is the author of many acclaimed novels, including The Shooting Party (1980), a modern classic set in Edwardian England that won the W. H. Smith Literary Award and was adapted for an award-winning film. ‘The Nice Boys’, her sole contribution to the horror genre, is an atmospheric tale with a lingering sense of menace set in Venice. It was first published in a now-scarce volume simply entitled Horror Anthology (1965) – where it appeared alongside tales by Ray Bradbury, M. R. James, Robert Aickman and others – and it has never previously been reprinted. Colegate’s first novel, the darkly comical The Blackmailer (1958), recently cited in a BBC.com article as one of ‘ten lost books you should read right now’, is available from Valancourt.

  October 2

  Of course Venice is not the same. How could it be? Last year was the first time, and with Jacob.

  There were two nice boys on the train from Milan. I talked to them. I have been through bad periods before. I know how easy it is to become isolated if you are unhappy.

  I asked them for a light.

  The one in the corner brought out a box of matches, lit one, and held it out to me with a steady hand.

  ‘What’s that on your arm?’ he asked. ‘A bite?’

  I had taken off my coat, and the sleeves of my dress were short. There was a circular bruise on my forearm.

  I explained feebly that I had bitten myself in a temper. The travel agency had muddled all my arrangements just when I was fussing about my packing. ‘I know it sounds stupid,’ I said. ‘But it did calm me down as a matter of fact.’

  The boy who had lit my cigarette pushed back the sleeve of his jacket, undid the button of his beautifully white cuff, and showed me his wrist. One side of it was purple and swollen. It was a much more serious bruise than mine.

  ‘That was a bite,’ he said.

  I wondered what to say.

  The other boy said, ‘His kid sister did it,’ and they both laughed, excessively I thought, but I suppose they were remembering a funny incident.

  ‘She’s a terror,’ said the first boy.

  ‘How old is she?’ I asked. They told me she was eight and called Jean, and then a noisy Italian family moved into the carriage with a lot of luggage and our conversation came to an end for the time being.

  We exchanged another non-committal word or two on the journey, about the weather and this or that, and I was rather struck by them. It was not just that they were nice-looking and well-dressed, with good haircuts and Italian shoes, but that they had a certain air of confidence and reserve as if they already had some achievement to their credit. I don’t know what the achievement could be. They might have been pop singers; but there would have been fans, and a manager or something. Academic success? They might have been grammar school boys who had won scholarships somewhere; but no, they had more assurance than that. Anyway, whatever its origin, their air of authority was rather charming.

  Of course, all young people are confident these days. Confident, independent, and cool. He didn’t sink his teeth into his own flesh at three o’clock in the morning after hours of sobbing and screaming with jealous misery. I wish I had his self-control.

  October 5

  I am glad I came. Venice is wonderfully soothing, wonderfully sad.

  I remember my very first impression, which was one of gaiety; but that was misleading. I remember going down the Grand Canal in a launch – boats dashing about through the choppy water, the sun on buildings of pure fantasy – it was so active, startling, beautiful, such a glorious joke. I remember standing up and laughing, and Jacob watching me with surprise and pleasure. Later I discovered the Venice I loved best, the Venice of regret.

  We stayed for two nights at the Gritti Palace, but then it became obvious that my money was not going to last, and so we moved to this same seedy pensione where I am now, not far from the Accademia bridge. The pale German woman is still the proprietress. She does not
remember me, thank goodness. I was right to come. It is easy to be sad here, and when I am sad I am not enraged. Besides, Venice’s glory is all over too.

  I was rather nervous when I came in. I was afraid she would ask about Jacob. I could not decide whether to deny having been here before, or to say ‘He is busy,’ or to say ‘He has married someone younger, prettier, and richer than I am.’ I need not have bothered. She hardly looked at me; but when she saw my English passport she said, ‘I see you have more terrible murders in London.’ She was not interested in me, only in some idea she had about a gas-lit London where sadistic murderers pad through the fog about their dreadful business: some foreigners do have this picture of London in their minds. I asked her if she had ever been there and she said no. ‘It is terrible,’ she said. ‘These poor girls.’ Someone has evidently been chopping up prostitutes again. She seemed to have a morbid interest in the whole business.

  When we were here before the sun was shining. This time it is misty and damp. Appropriate, perhaps. Loneliness, damp, melancholy, the seediness of a place from which the glory has fled. I went to Torcello in the water-bus, simply to be on the lagoon again, and visit those dead islands, grass on stone, quiet water over fallen palaces; and felt a sort of happiness. How soon will all Venice slide into the sea?

  The boys from the train are staying in the pensione. They were signing themselves in when I came in this evening. I greeted them, and saw that they had written ‘N. Bray, S. Brook’. Seeing where I was looking the one who had been writing said with a smile, ‘He’s Sig. I’m Poney.’ Sig is slightly smaller and quieter, Poney darker, more handsome and less intense. They seem unlikely names.

  October 9

  The fog has come. Damp cold fog has flopped over Venice, making the whole place mysteriously different. The people seem to accept it with a certain gloomy relish. They say it is better than the floods they often have at this time of the year.