The Year's Best Horror Stories 10

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  “So this Bill Thomson, ’e says to ’imself ’e’ll settle Joe ’awkins for good, all burned up with envy an’ anger, ’e were. Come the nex’ day, May day as was, all ready for the dancin’, there they all are for Southfield. Come up the time to kill the Winter, there’s Bill Thomson ups wi’ the sword, what everyone knowed was on’y made o’ wood, an’ lops off Joe ’awkins’ ’ead like a scythe cuttin’ corn. An’ when they looks for Bill Thomson, ’e’s nowhere to be found, not till they come to Joe ’awkins’ ’ouse and there’s Bill cowd as mutton with a pitchfork stuck in ’is chest nailin’ ’im to the floor, gouts o’ blood all over.” Simms gurgled into his pipe with relish. “Been dead an’ cowd since the night before, but ’e come back all right in ’is mask an’ all to kill the Winter in the Southfield. An’ that’s why they done away with it.”

  Driving back to my friend’s house, he broke a long silence to say to me, “Now you see why I lost interest in folk-dancing.”

  “Yes,” I said, “Good thing you made the connection, with May Day coming up.”

  “I nearly didn’t,” admitted my friend, “until my publisher sent me some copies of my last opus.”

  There was one stuck under the dashboard. I pulled it out: his name was given prominence on the cover, which was quite plain apart from the words, “History in Perspective. By C.H. Winter.”

  FIRSTBORN by David Campton

  “Firstborn” is a rare piece of fiction from David Campton, who is far better known as a playwright. A native of Leicester, Campton has written some seventy plays, in addition to numerous radio and television dramas. Born June 5, 1924, Campton served in the Royal Air Force during World War II and afterward performed on stage himself before giving up acting in 1963. Beginning with Going Home in 1950, Campton’s plays have ranged from romantic comedy (Roses Round the Door) to imaginative drama (The Life and Death of Almost Everybody) to science fiction satire such as Mutatis Mutandis, Then, Incident, Soldier from the Wars Returning, or Little Brother, Little Sister, a post-nuclear holocaust drama in which two children are raised in a bunker by the family cook. This spring the Haymarket Theater in Leicester produced Campton’s stage adaptation of Frankenstein.

  David Campton’s occasional forays into short fiction have mostly appeared in anthologies, notably those edited by Richard Davis and by David Sutton in England and by Stuart David Schiff in the United States. Robert Bloch has said that horror and humor are two sides of the same coin. In “Firstborn” Campton demonstrates this to perfection.

  There were questions to be answered.

  As the gale hurled more snow at the window of Harry’s cottage I asked myself what I was doing here. The pure malt I sipped was hardly the answer: the local product made a visit to this ice-raked wilderness bearable, but I wasn’t here for the whisky. To be honest, I had hoped that, since coming into his late uncle’s thousands, Harry might be good for another touch; otherwise, when he suggested the jaunt, I might not have so willingly traded civilisation for cold quarters in a converted barn. But what was a hot-house plant like Harry doing in the highest of the Highlands anyway?

  Moreover Harry’s elegant Elaine was here too in this croft north of Inverness. Why?—at this time of all times in a woman’s life. Surely persons of substance expect their firstborn to be delivered with all the advantages of modern obstetrics. Instead of which Elaine, who at a pinch could always make do with the best, was holding her breath in the whitewashed bedroom next to us, while the local midwife did whatever local midwives do. The atmosphere was charged with unvoiced questions.

  At a sharp cry from the next room Harry paused in midglass. The Scottish tones of the midwife’s response, half-chiding, half-reassuring, were muffled by the closed door. Harry opened his mouth, but only managed a creak from the back of his throat. The expectant father’s face shown in the light of the stoked-up fire. His eyes tried to focus on objects beyond the flicker of the leaping flames. He wanted to talk, and only needed enough Scotch in him to flush out the words. At last he plunged.

  “Trust you, Gerry,” he mumbled.

  “Hope so.” Detecting a certain lack of conviction in his tone, I hastened to reassure him. “After all, I owe so much to you.” The literal truth—all those IOUs.

  This comfort induced a wry smile. “That’s why it has to be you. Here, I mean. In case ...” He tossed another log onto the fire. “First you ought to know about ... Not fair to face you with ... Of course, it might not after all—in which case there’s no harm ... But if it should be necessary ...” He kicked the log, sending a burst of sparks up the chimney.

  Had I betrayed signs of uneasiness? He patted my shoulder, and paced from wall to wall of the tiny room—four steps each way. “That’s why we’re out here in the wilds, of course. Nobody else to ... The midwife’s a risk, but money’s a great persuader, eh?”

  I nodded agreement over the rim of my glass.

  “How else did the old boy coax us down to Dorset?” he went on. “Money called. Elaine didn’t even query the social life in Dorset, which meant that even she understood the situation. The wolves were gathering—you’re familiar with the signs: bills in red with great threatening stamps all over them; ’phone dead; supplies cut off; friends suddenly out of town. At the clink of Uncle’s money bags we packed the little we had to pack and accepted what he offered without leaving a forwarding address for our creditors.

  “Uncle must have heard a whisper of our little local difficulties, but that didn’t explain this uncharacteristic generosity. True, I was his surviving nearest and dearest, but until then he’d hardly acknowledged my existence. I didn’t believe his guff about being lonely. He’d lived alone all his life and, being past the seventy mark, must have been used to his own company. For forty or more years he’d devoted himself to making money in the City with a ruthless singlemindedness that ruled out friends. He may have had an acquaintance or two at one time but almost certainly threw them to the sharks whenever profit was involved. Uncle loved Uncle and money, which didn’t leave much affection over for anyone else. Not even my beautiful Elaine. He asked specially for Elaine. Obviously in some way or another we were expected to sing for our suppers; but a straw looks like a life-boat to a drowning man. Dorset was the Promised Land.

  “Uncle had built the place there just over a year before. Between retirement and moving into this retreat he had lived abroad. He never mentioned those years to us: whatever we learned about them we gleaned from another source. The architect of the new building must have been utterly undistinguished, as not a single aspect of it was designed to catch the eye. The more remarkable features had been added to my uncle’s own specifications, and we were only to learn about them in due course. His home was distant enough from civilisation to satisfy a demanding recluse. The taxi fare from the station took away my breath and all but a jingle of small change.

  “I suppose it was typical of the very rich that Uncle never considered reimbursing our travelling expenses. So there we were on his doorstep like orphans at Barnardo’s, dependent on his charitable whims.

  “Oddly we felt neither downcast nor apprehensive. Sunshine helped—remember last May’s early heatwave? Although the house was nothing to write home about, the garden was a delight. Bees were busily doing whatever bees are supposed to do, and the flowers were encouraging them. Their scent would have been worth a fortune in a bottle. Elaine seemed to think so too: she paused half-way up the garden path, nose twitching and an expression of silly bliss on her face. That slight indulgence gave Uncle time to establish himself on the front porch with welcoming gestures.

  “He was an undersized monkey of a man whose grin stretched from ear to ear exposing an unconvincing set of teeth. His bright eyes twinkled like frost. Obviously we measured up to his expectations. Elaine particularly. He fondled her hand in both his shrivelled paws, and stood on tip-toe to kiss her cheek.

  “His enthusing over how much he was going to enjoy having us with him had a ring of the double entendre. As Elaine’s e
yes met mine over his wrinkled head she raised a questioning brow. I replied with a reassuring smile—whatever lecherous impulses my superannuated relative may have harboured, he was surely past exercising them.

  “After which we were introduced to the guest room, then given lunch. The appointments were new and luxurious. I suspected they had been ordered specially for us. The food was as good as deep-freeze and micro-wave could rise to. The wine was excellent. I had a feeling that Elaine was going to be happy for a while. Between meals she was able to stretch out, suitably anointed, on the green velvet lawn exposing herself to the sun; her gleaming skin tanning to the caramel that blended so well with her butterscotch hair. I caught Uncle licking his lips like a small boy at a sweet-shop window. Well, age can have few compensations, and who was I to intrude on his naughty fantasies? I had daydreams of my own.

  “I had plenty of time for them, too. The house, equipped with every modern labour saver, more or less ran itself while Uncle pottered among his plants. In spite of his initial pressing invitation the old boy paid far more attention to his seedlings than to his guests. He presided over meals and presumed that concluded his duties as host. His concentration on the paraphernalia of propagation almost amounted to mania. As an ancient is entitled to his eccentricities, I left him to them. By the third day, though, boredom had led me to the greenhouses.

  “We hadn’t been warned that they were out of bounds. When I tried one of the doors, and it wouldn’t open, I assumed it was merely stuck. I was just heaving on the handle when Uncle bounded up, shrieking.

  “I didn’t exactly quail, because I’m not the quailing sort; but I must have looked somewhat blasted, because he suddenly cut his wrath short and apologised, giving me the monkey grin with nothing behind it but teeth. On my side I agreed that botanical experiments can be a sensitive area; and on his side he promised a guided tour of the potting sheds.

  “While I’m fond enough of fruit and flowers on the table, I’ve never been one for prying into their private lives. However, I had nothing better to do, and as our comfort depended on keeping Uncle sweet, I trailed behind, playing up an interest I didn’t exactly feel.

  “The first greenhouse was all orchids. Some were pretty; some were bizarre. Uncle explained he had started with orchids. While still in the full vigour of his late fifties, piling thousands upon thousands, his medico had advised him to take up a hobby—‘preparing for retirement,’ he called it. Orchids were one of the suggestions. The doctor should have known that my uncle was incapable of doing anything by halves. Orchids became a consuming passion. Retiring years before he was expected to (actually shaking the F. T. Share Index), the relative devoted himself to his new pursuit. He embraced orchidomania as fervently as a religion. New horizons opened up. He had hoped one day to cultivate ... Had I read Wells’s ‘Flowering of the Strange Orchid’? A pity that one had eluded him, because orchids now commanded less of his time. He reached beyond orchids ...

  “We left the orchid house. The orchid house was not locked. Making a detour through the kitchen, we picked up a basinful of mince, a slice or two of steak, and a couple of bones. There was a mortice lock on the door of the next hothouse.

  “Thin brown fingers clutching the key, my uncle swore me to secrecy. I made some feeble joke, but pandered to his whims. Even then, before opening the door, he delivered a mini-lecture on his current obsession—the thin line between plant and animal life. The man-eating vine was a commonplace of horror stories—well, there was an area where fantasy fiction merged with fantastic fact.

  “The plants nearest the door were almost commonplace—if giant fly-traps and sundews can be counted as commonplace. We fed these with pinches of mince. I was even allowed the treat of sprinkling meat onto waiting flowers. I admit I found their reaction grimly fascinating, with some blooms snapping shut on dinner, and others curling tendrils over their morsels of protein. Uncle enjoyed himself almost as much as the plants.

  “The larger specimens were more impressive. They were approached with a certain reverence. You have to accord respect to any vegetation that can make a meal of half a pound of steak. I wasn’t allowed to feed these. Nor did I wish to. I felt that, unless approached with care, one of them might snap off a finger as an hors d’oeuvre.

  “Something crawled towards my neck, and I put a cautious hand up to it. It was no more than a trickle of sweat. The temperature and humidity in the glasshouse were uncomfortably high. Uncle grinned as he noticed the gesture, but he didn’t comment. Instead he continued his exposition on South American discoveries, coupled with research into hybrids, grafting, cross-fertilisation, and so on, all mixed up with a poly-syllabic jargon that bemused me completely.

  “Although I couldn’t understand what he was talking about, I could see what he was doing. We ended by confronting an unhealthy-looking mass with blotched saucer-like leaves—or were they blooms? By this time most of the meat had been consumed, the other plants devoted to the process of digestion. Uncle had only bloody bones left in his tuck box. Were they for this mottled monster? Of course they were.

  “I believe the thing was quivering with expectation. It practically grabbed at the hunks of skin and bone, my uncle musing meanwhile on whether the thing was capable of consuming a man. Not whole, he concluded, answering his own queries. A man would have to be chopped up first, and that hardly counted. However, his researches were continuing. He had entered an area of delicate and fascinating speculation. Was the question now one of cultivation or of breeding? Was conception the dividing line between animal and vegetable? Could that line be crossed?

  “One of the saucers opened with a plop and a nauseating reek of gas. I’ll swear it burped. Uncle suggested that I had seen enough for one day. I agreed with him—my shirt was sticking to my back, and my soggy condition had nothing to do with either the temperature or the humidity.

  “Outside in the sunshine Elaine was tanning prettily. She purred contentedly as I rubbed oil between her shoulder blades. But Uncle’s references to breeding had touched me on a sore spot. The fact is—Elaine and I had experienced some difficulty in that department. It seemed that I couldn’t and she didn’t want to. At least, not often. I don’t know whether I couldn’t because she didn’t want to, or whether she didn’t want to because I couldn’t. As a sex-symbol, Elaine was all symbol and no sex. None of which had escaped Uncle’s beady eye.

  “In fact at meal times—the only occasions on which the three of us seemed to come together—he would slip into the conversation occasional innuendos or half-jokes, meant to be funny because accompanied by a wrinkled grimace, but which I considered in rather poor taste. Naturally I didn’t wince as I felt inclined, because a poor relation learns to laugh at the right time. Well, I suppose the old devil eventually did us a good turn.

  “After a particularly good dinner—I can’t recall what we ate, but the claret was remarkable—Uncle had been holding forth on his monomania. As a dutiful nephew I displayed some interest, and Elaine bestowed the occasional slow, sweet smile. Elaine has never been a great wit—being too involved with her private thoughts to follow much conversation—but her smile has warmed the cockles of many a monologuist’s heart. She and I toyed relaxedly with our brandy snifters, content to let Uncle sparkle like the soda-water in his glass.

  “On this occasion the bubbles must have gone to his head, because he prattled of his great experiment. At first I took this to mean the bone-crunching monster locked up in the hot-house but gradually came to realise that he was referring to some holy of holies. Apparently under the house lay unsuspected cellars, and he was offering to show us all. Elaine and I floated after him on an alcoholic cloud of euphoria.

  “The cellar door was a cunningly devised panel in the kitchen. At the bottom of the stairs were doors to right and left. Behind the right-hand door lay the wine racks in an electronically controlled atmosphere at exactly the right temperature and humidity to keep their precious contents in condition.

  “The same principle ap
plied to the room behind the left-hand door, except that here conditions were equatorial. Within minutes of the door being shut behind us, our pores had opened like faucets, sweat running into our eyes. Even with vision somewhat blurred, though, we could not miss the vine that half-filled the cellar. The plant was supported by a frame of hausers, to which it clung with rope-like tendrils.

  “As Uncle lectured on instinctive reactions in plants he held out a finger, and a green thread obligingly curled around it. A pretty demonstration. While we were admiring this performance I leaned unsteadily against the frame, whereupon something gripped me around the waist in a wrestler’s hold, jerking me off my feet and among the dripping leaves.

  “Uncle gently unwound the slippery bonds, ducking words like ‘naughty, naughty’; though I could not be sure whether they applied to me, or to the vine.

  “Cautiously standing back, we were invited to admire the buds that festooned the branches—green fingers varying in size, with the largest a handspan in length and over an inch in diameter. Streaks of red showed through a tracery of cracks near the top of one bud that was ready to open.

  “Subdued excitement gripped Uncle. He knew what to expect. He stared at the bud, biting his lip and breathing heavily. On cue, while we watched, the bud burst open. Later I wondered if the fact that we were there may have had something to do with this prompt exhibition. After all the movement of the tendrils had shown that the plant reacted to our presence. Even if we had been obliged to wait, though, we would have been rewarded by the display. The flower was remarkable.

  “A bright, shining red, it parodied my inefficient reproductive equipment—the main difference being its rampant vigour compared with my habitual ineptitude. No wonder it had been kept behind locked doors: its appearance in a shop window might have exposed a florist to prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act.

  “Elaine has a delicate mind. Easily offended by schoolboy smut, she switches off completely at an off-colour remark. I glanced sideways, expecting blushes at one of Nature’s jokes. In that heat a blush was difficult to detect, but her eyes had opened very wide and her mouth hung open. For the space of a few heartbeats nothing existed in her world but that flower. She looked so peculiarly vulnerable that something stirred deep inside me—a chemical reaction with pity and jealousy fizzing together. I wanted to take her in my arms and console her for what she had been missing—at the same time realising, almost with fury, that in her present mood she would be easy game for anyone offering as much.