The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  The scream sank, became a gurgle, then a hiss – then ceased. A few more bones fell, another hunk of plaster, but at last there was peace – an absence of sound before the murmur of frightened voices came up from the room below. Lionel looked upwards and crooned with joy. The Ghoul’s head was hanging down through the jagged hole in the ceiling. The green face was no longer luminous; just nasty, crawling slightly, and seemed in imminent danger of parting company from whatever was left of its main body.

  ‘Got yer,’ said Lionel.

  The family crowded into the room; they looked upwards, they looked down, then they looked at Lionel. Mother put the communal thought into words.

  ‘How did you do it, Son?’

  Lionel was brief; action, after all, spoke louder than words.

  ‘Crooked cross,’ he said.

  ‘Little monster,’ said one aunt.

  ‘A horned toad,’ agreed Uncle Arthur.

  ‘What,’ enquired Mother, ‘will he be when he grows up?’

  Silently Lionel pointed to the head dangling from the ceiling.

  Forrest Reid

  COURAGE

  Forrest Reid (1875-1947) is still regarded by most critics as the finest writer ever to emerge from the North of Ireland. Though popular success eluded him during his lifetime (and after), his novels were almost universally praised by contemporary critics, and Young Tom (1944), perhaps his greatest achievement, was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for best novel of the year, the equivalent of today’s Booker Prize. Though Reid is widely recognized as a great writer, he is not often discussed as a practitioner of supernatural fiction, an odd omission, given that the supernatural runs through almost all his work, from The Spring Song (1916), in which a ghostly tune seems to be luring a boy to the world of the dead, to Uncle Stephen (1931), in which a young lad has a spectral playmate, to Denis Bracknel (1947), the story of an unworldly boy who practices strange occult rituals by moonlight. Late in his life, Reid set out to rewrite much of his early fiction, including ‘Courage’, a story that originally appeared in 1918; the version reprinted in this collection is the seldom-seen revised text of 1941. Many of Reid’s novels are available from Valancourt, and a previously unpublished horror story, ‘Furnished Apartments’, appeared in The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume One.

  When the children came to stay with their grandfather, Michael, walking with the others from the station to the rectory, noticed the high stone wall that lined one side of the long country lane, and wondered what lay beyond it. Over the top of the wall trees stretched green arms that beckoned to him, and threw black shadows on the white dusty road. His brothers and sisters, stepping demurely beside a tall aunt, left him, as usual, lagging behind, and when a white bird fluttered out for a moment into the sunlight they did not even see it. Michael called to them, and four pairs of eyes turned straightway to the trees but were too late. ‘A pigeon,’ Michael said to nobody, and trotted on to take his place among the rest.

  ‘Does anybody live there?’ he asked, but the aunt shook her head: the house, of whose chimneys he presently caught a glimpse between the trees, had been empty for years; there was not even a caretaker in the lodge.

  Michael, a rather persistent little boy, learned more than this, however, from Rebecca, the rectory cook, who told him that the house was empty because it was haunted. Big boys at the right time of the year would climb the wall and strip the apple-trees, but they took care to do so in broad daylight. The ghost had been seen of course – that was a silly question – how else could people have known about it? It was the ghost of a lady who had lived there once and been very wicked; and probably unhappy too, since she couldn’t rest in her grave. Then Rebecca added, more prophetically than explicitly (though Michael understood her perfectly), that there were boards up, with ‘Trespassers will be Prosecuted’ on them, and that his grandfather would be very angry. . . .

  It was on an afternoon, when a game of croquet was becoming increasingly acrimonious, that Michael slipped away unnoticed, and set out to explore the stream running past the foot of the rectory garden. He would follow it, he planned, wherever it led him; follow it just as his father, far away in wild places, had followed mighty rivers into the heart of unexplored forests. His father was a traveller, and had written a book, with lots of photographs in it. Michael had never been able to finish the book, or for that matter even the first chapter of it, but he had looked at the pictures, and now, by an easy process of imagination, he was a traveller too.

  The long, sweet grass brushed against his legs, and a white cow, with a rejected buttercup hanging from the corner of her mouth, gazed at him in mild curiosity as he passed. He kept to the meadow side, and on the opposite bank the leaning trees formed little magic caves tapestried with green. Black flies darted restlessly about, and every now and again he heard splashes – the splash of a water-hen, of a rat, of what might have been a fish, though this was unlikely – and then, behind him, the heavy, floundering splash of the cow herself, plunging into the stream up to her knees. He watched her plough laboriously through the sword-shaped leaves of a bed of irises on the farther side, while the rich black mud oozed up between patches of bright green weed. A score of birds made a quaint chorus of trills and peeps, chuckles and whistlings; a wren, like a small winged mouse, flitted about the ivy-covered bole of a hollow tree. But a few yards further on he came disappointingly to the end of his journey, for a rusty iron gate was swung here right across the stream, and on either side of it, as far as he could see, stretched a high grey stone wall.

  He paused. The gate was padlocked, and its spiked bars were set so closely together that it would not be easy to climb. While he gazed, a white bird rose out of the burning green and gold of the trees, and for a moment in the sunlight was the whitest thing in the world. Then the bird flew back again into the mysterious shadow, and Michael stood breathless.

  He had realized where he was, and that this wall must be a continuation of the wall in the lane. The stooping trees leaned down as if to catch him in their arms. He looked more closely at the padlock, and saw that the spring was half eaten away by rust. He took off his shoes and stockings. Stringing them round his neck, he waded through the water, and with a stone struck the padlock once, twice – twice only – for at the second blow the lock dropped into the stream. Michael tugged at the rusty bolt and in a minute or two the gate was open. Passing through, he clambered up the bank on the other side, and it was while he was pulling on his stockings and his shoes that he saw the gate swing slowly back into its old position.

  That was all, yet it slightly startled him, gave him an uneasy feeling that his movements had been watched and that he had been shut in deliberately. Of course the gate must have moved of its own weight, he told himself; nevertheless he had abruptly ceased to be an explorer in remote, untrodden forests, and Rebecca’s­­­­ quite different kind of story had taken the uppermost place in his mind.

  Before him was a dark moss-grown path, roofed by trees, whose overarching branches shut out any gleam of sunlight. The path seemed to lead on and on through a listening, watching stillness, and Michael hovered at the entrance to it, doubtful, gazing into its equivocal shadow, not very eager to proceed further.

  A nice explorer he would make! His lips pouted and he frowned. Then he made up his mind, and though still frowning, walked on determinedly, while the noise of the stream died away behind him, like a last warning murmur from the friendly world outside.

  Quite unexpectedly, for the path turned at an abrupt angle, he came upon the house. It lay beyond what must once have been a lawn, but now the unmown grass, coarse and matted, grew right up to the doorsteps. And to Michael the house itself had a daunting, forbidding look. Lines of dark moss and lichen had crept over the red bricks: the shutters looked as if they had been closed never to be opened again; yet next moment his heart gave a violent jump, for one of them, with a loud and most dismal rattle, flapped back from a window on the ground floor.

  He
stood motionless while he might have counted fifty. He was on the verge of flight, but fought down the impulse, and there was no further alarm. Moreover, even from his present distance he could see that the window was broken and most of the glass missing – the work, no doubt, of the apple-raiders. A puff of wind had blown back the shutter, that was all. In the reassuring sunlight the spirit of adventure revived and he advanced to make a closer inspection. With his hands on the low window-sill, he peered into a large room. Next, kneeling on the sill, he unlatched the window and pushed it up. The other boys had not dared to enter, he thought, for if they had he was sure they would not have troubled to re-latch the window. Then he clambered across the sill.

  Instantly, and most cheeringly, all sense of fear vanished. He could feel that the house was empty, that not even the ghost of a ghost lingered here. And with this certainty everything dropped comfortably, if half disappointingly, back into the commonplace. He opened the shutters, letting the rich afternoon light pour in. Though the house had been empty for so long, it still smelt sweet and fresh, and not a speck of dust was visible anywhere. This was surprising, but though Michael drew an experimental finger over the top of one of the little tables, his finger remained clean; the table might have been polished that morning. He also touched the faded upholsteries and curtains, and sniffed at the dried rose-leaves in a china jar. Above the wide chimney-piece hung a picture – the portrait of a lady, still quite young. She was seated in a chair, and beside her, with one hand resting on the back of the chair, stood a boy of about Michael’s own age. It was easy to see that they were mother and son, and Michael’s thoughts immediately turned to his mother, and they were rather strange thoughts, and rather sad, so that presently he wished he had not looked at the picture at all. He drew from his pocket a letter he had received that morning. She was better, she said, and would soon be quite well again. Yesterday she had gone out for a drive, but today she felt a little tired, which was why her letter must be so short. But he was to enjoy himself, and be a good boy, and give her love to the others . . .

  He went out into the hall and unbarred and flung wide the front door before ascending to the upper storeys. There he found a lot of interesting things, and in one room discovered a whole store of toys – soldiers, picture-books, a bow and arrows, a model yacht, and a musical box with a small silver key lying beside it. He wound up the box, and a simple melody tinkled out, faint and fragile, losing itself in the empty silence of the house, like the light of a taper in a cave.

  He opened the door of another room, a bedroom, and sitting down near the window, began to turn the pages of an old illuminated volume he found there, full of pictures of saints and martyrs, all glowing in gold and bright colours, yet somehow vaguely disquieting. It was with a start that, on glancing up from his book, he noticed how dark it had grown. The pattern had faded out of the chintz bed-curtains and he could no longer see clearly into the further corners of the room. It was from these corners that the darkness seemed to be stealing out, like a thin smoke, spreading slowly over everything. Surely he had not fallen asleep! yet he did not see how else the time could have passed so quickly without his noticing it. It was so dark now that the bed-­curtains were like pale drooping wings, and outside, over the trees, the moon was growing brighter. He must go home at once . . .

  He sat motionless, trying to realize what had happened – and listening, listening – for it was as if the secret hidden heart of the house had begun very faintly to beat. Faintly at first, a mere stirring of the vacant atmosphere, but as the minutes passed it gathered strength, and with this consciousness of awakening life a fear came also. He listened in the darkness, and though he could hear nothing, he had a vivid sense that he was no longer alone. Whatever had dwelt here before had come back, as a beast returns to his lair, and was even now, perhaps, creeping up the stairs. A paralysing dread held him weak and inert – though only for a few seconds. It had not – whatever it was – come for him, he told himself. It could not know about him, and perhaps he could get downstairs without meeting it. He glided swiftly across the room and opened the door.

  Out on the landing, he had before him the great yawning well of the staircase, that was like a pit of blackness. His heart thumped as he stood against the wall. With shut eyes, lest he should see what he had no desire to see, he took two steps forward and gripped the banister. Then, with eyes still tightly shut, he ran quickly down, unconscious instinct guiding his feet in safety.

  At the turn of the stairs the open hall-door showed as a dim silver-grey square, and once he had reached this his panic left him. Fear remained, but it was no longer blind and senseless. He even halted on the threshold, and while he stood there a voice from far away seemed to reach him – yet not a voice, really, so much as a soundless message. He waited, and the message became clear. The way of escape lay there in front of him, but there was something he must do before he took it, and if he left this undone, then he would have failed.

  He looked up at the dark, dreadful staircase. Nothing had pursued him, and he knew now that nothing would. Whatever was there was not there with that purpose, and if he were to see it, to face it, he must go in search of it. And if he left it? Nothing would happen; he would be quite safe. Only he knew this, that he would be leaving something else as well, for the message most surely, though he did not know how nor why, had come from his mother. It was her spirit that was close to him at this moment, as if holding his hand, holding him there upon the step. But why? – why? She wanted him to stay, but she did not or could not tell him why. He was free; the choice was his. Yes; but if he were a coward she would know, he would have to tell her, he could not hide it from her. She would accept it, she would forgive him, but that would be wretched, he did not want her to have to forgive him. He steadied himself against the side of the porch. The cold moonlight washed through the hall, and died out in a faint greyness half-way up the first flight of stairs. With sobbing breath and wide eyes he retraced his steps, but at the foot of the stairs he stopped once more, dreading the impenetrable blackness of those awful upper storeys. He put his foot on the lowest stair, and slowly, step by step, he mounted, clutching the banisters. He did not pause on the first landing, but continued straight on into the darkness, which seemed to close about his slender figure like the gates of a monstrous tomb.

  Groping his way, he opened the door of the room with the toys. It was bathed in moonlight, and he prayed, ‘Let it come now,’ for he felt he could not bear the strain of waiting. But nothing came; the room was empty. And he knew, perhaps had known all along, that this was not the right room. Yes, he had known, and with the blood drumming in his ears he now made his final effort. He opened the other door, and was at first conscious only of a sudden, an immense relief, for this room, too, seemed blessedly empty. Then, close by the window, in the pallid twilight, he saw something. At first hardly more than a shadow, a thickening of the darkness, and then, drawing inward and gradually defining itself, a human form. It made no movement towards him, and so long as it remained thus, with head mercifully lowered, he felt that he could bear it. Yet the suspense tortured him, and a faint moan of anguish rose in his throat. With that, the grey marred face he dreaded to see was lifted. He tried to close his eyes, but could not. He felt an increasing weakness and clutched at the doorpost for support. But in the stillness, as he waited, the strange realization slowly came to him that it, too – this shadow – was afraid, and that what it feared was his fear. He saw in the dim, sad eyes the doubt and despair that could find no utterance, and as he did so another and more generous emotion began to stir within him. Why was she like this? – so different from the picture downstairs – and where was the boy who had stood so close to her, who had seemed so close to her? Michael made no effort to retreat though now she was approaching him – timidly, uncertainly. He looked at her steadily; he wasn’t going to run away. He was quite sure now, and was no longer afraid. She wanted him, so he came to meet her, and when she held out her arms he came nearer stil
l and held up his face to hers. But as her arms went round him it was as if he were wrapped in an icy mist, through which he had a last brief vision of a radiant happiness shining down on him – and then he was alone….

  Alone in a moonlit house that no longer held any terror for him. Alone, but with a strange glow of happiness that seemed not only within, but all around him. He must certainly go home, and yet now he felt loath to do so. Only, they would wonder what had happened to him, must have begun to wonder long ago; and he was very hungry. He pulled back the curtains as far as possible to let more moonlight in, and on the window-ledge a box of matches was revealed. This was lucky, for now he could light the two tall candles on the chimney-piece. And it was while he was doing so that he became more vividly aware of what he had felt subconsciously during the past few minutes. A subtle change had come about in the surrounding atmosphere, though in what it consisted he could not tell. It was as if the earlier stillness were no longer empty, had become, rather, a hush in the air, like that which accompanies the falling of snow. But how could there be snow in midsummer? – and, moreover, this was within the house, not outside. He lifted one of the candlesticks and saw that a delicate powder of dust had gathered upon it. He looked down at his own clothes – they, too, were covered with that same thin powder. Then he knew what was happening. The dust of years had begun to fall – silently, slowly, like a soft and continuous caress, laying everything in the house to sleep.