The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  Of the three houses occupied by her, one was now a private hotel, one empty and for sale and the third in the possession of some very old friends. They asked me to visit them on my way back from a journey in the north. I was especially pleased to go; I wanted to see with my own eyes the houses of which I had heard so much, and besides this, our friends were in the middle of a very interesting experience. They had newly acquired a cook-housekeeper, a Mrs Garnish, who, it turned out, was a medium and received messages in automatic writing every night. Mrs Garnish went to bed with a pencil and sheets of paper beside her, and in the morning the latter were covered with regular handwriting, a little different from her own. The lines were even but they sometimes went at an angle across the paper and sometimes were written right off it so that the end of a line would be lost. Nonetheless a great body of communication was received, and it was of absorbing interest to our friends, for the greater part of it appeared to come from their own relations who were dead, and some from friends and connections whom they themselves could barely remember except by name. There was no doubting the good faith of the medium, and whatever might be the explanation of it, they were witnessing a very singular phenomenon. On a few occasions when clairvoyants had read cards for me they had asked me whether I were mediumistic, and when told no, they had said I should develop the faculty later. As they had never read my future with any marked success, and as the development they foretold had showed no signs of taking place, I had almost forgotten it. I remembered it again as I came down from Yorkshire into Derbyshire and leaning in a corner of the railway carriage, gazing at the wonderful landscape as we wound among dales and streams, I felt a stir of excitement, wondering if any messages would come for me during the night that I was under what had once been my great-grandmother’s roof.

  The crescent no longer stood out against the hills, for buildings had encroached around and far above it, and at close quarters the façade was seen to be cracked and darkened and patched with boards announcing hotels and offices. Inside however was all the space and gracefulness of its period. I walked in through a vestibule with inner doors whose panels of milky glass were scattered with clear glass stars and edged with strips of glass in ruby, amber, emerald, sapphire and violet. There were gothic-pointed windows on each side of the front door and embrasures for statues or plants. I was so much moved by all this that I barely noticed Mrs Garnish as she let me in and yet I knew it was she: short and square with a face of glistening pallor, pince-nez, a quiet smile and the most respectable clothes, ending in stockings of clerical-­grey and black strapped shoes.

  Our friends with sympathetic kindness had got the key of the empty house from the house agent, for they thought I should be able to imagine the original scene more clearly from empty rooms than from their own, filled with modern comforts. After lunch therefore on a bright afternoon in April, I let myself into the middle of the three houses, the one that had been my great-grandmother’s home. The functional nature of the premises and her restricted income by all accounts saved her from the over-furnishing and over-­ornamentation of the late Victorian era. Her rooms had been almost as elegantly bare as if she had furnished them in the previous century. The only rich objects in view had been the lofty gilt pier glasses already over the chimney-pieces when she had taken the house. Two of these were still there on the first floor; one was enclosed and separated into three by gilt Ionic columns, the other reared a gilt trophy of musical instruments, from which fringed gold scarves drooped in festoons on each side of the glass. The mirrors themselves were filled with watery gleams and shadows, for they were opposite the great sash windows through whose panes the girls had looked at the roofs of the town below or up at the great marbled expanse of the northern sky. I walked slowly across dusty boards, everything I had ever heard about the rooms coming back to me; I wondered in which of the three drawing-rooms it was that my mother had played with dolls on the yellow rug, where the round table had stood that was covered with a magenta velvet cloth, on which of the chimney-­pieces there had been the famous pair of emerald glass baskets. These objects had remained in many minds with a brilliance accentuated by the extent of drab serge and plain drugget around them. I climbed the front staircase till the stairs grew almost as narrow and steep as those of a church tower and found myself in a row of small bedrooms whose sash windows, filled with a pale blaze of sky, were so immediately in front of one on opening the door, one felt about to fall through them. So high up, a strong breeze was rattling the frames. I looked about the empty walls and wondered if this room or one like it had been the scene of my great-aunt’s brain fever, but for once the memory did not appal me; it now took on the proportion of a part in a much larger whole. After a long while I let myself out of the house and returned to the next door one through a pair of glass doors identical with those through which I had just emerged. Indoors I saw that it had become dusk, and an electric light was burning in the hall outside the drawing-room door. On a space of wall just beside it, was an enlarged photograph in an oval frame of Mrs Standish taken in advanced years. I had seen similar ones but never one that showed the face so well. The hair drooped smoothly under lace, the features in their symmetry and their sharpness were what I had often seen, but the eyes were sunken and tired; the hands rested on her lap palms upward, the back of one curved in the palm of the other. There was no suggestion of a posed portrait; this was a moment’s pause in the day of a busy woman, who had sat still for a minute that someone might take her photograph. As I stood looking at it I felt growing in me, unexpected and unsought, a feeling of sympathy, of admiration, of affection even for my great-grandmother. I saw, for the first time objectively, what a creature of spirit and style she had been, of what buoyancy of intellect. I imagined her obiter dicta, so many of which had come down to us, uttered in that voice I knew so well but louder, more resonant, with a twang like that of a harpsichord. Looking at the photograph with its saffron and mulberry gloss, I pored over the expression, calm and positive and a little fatigued, and I remembered all the good things said about her which I had so perversely disregarded: how splendidly capable she was with a child in the throes of croup, how unfailingly she remembered birthdays and would think of special treats for anyone who had been left out, how she had said that to be one of a family was a blessing, and that brothers and sisters must endure anything rather than quarrel. As I stood in the quiet hall, noises in different parts of the house came to my ears, a waft of radio music from behind the drawing-room door, and a sound of saucepans from the regions at the back. I thought with a rising excitement of Mrs Garnish. The idea of being able to get into touch with my great-grandmother gave me a thrill of interest keener than any book or picture had ever evoked in me. I felt sure that some contact was possible, was waiting for me, and as I went into the lighted drawing-room I was so rapt with the thought, I could barely see what was in front of me.

  In the course of the evening I told our friends what my hopes were. They were sympathetic but non-committal. Then we dropped this matter and spent an evening full of news and reminiscence. My bedroom was one of the lofty ones, but curtained, carpeted, warmed, with books, bedside lamp and a large soft eiderdown. I gave one glance through the panes before getting to bed. The sky was quite black and the harsh lights from the streets and the noise of traffic and nocturnal shouting deprived the scene of any visual depth or any charm. I suffered a reaction from my previous mood: I felt that everything I cared about was lost and went to my comfortable bed in a prosaic frame of mind.

  Next day I was to leave by a train shortly after twelve, and in the course of the morning when we had the breakfast-­room to ourselves, my hostess handed me a sheet of paper, saying something on it might refer to me. I left the room with it in my hand but my eagerness would not let me mount the stairs with it and I carried it into the glassed-in vestibule to examine it by one of the gothic windows. It was a sheet from an exercise book, blue-lined. The pencilled writing did not keep to the lines but it was regular and firm and
had been crossed, almost at right-angles, by more writing, which made the whole thing difficult to read. The writing parallel with the lines seemed to be about a Colonel Mortimer-­Fisher who had had three sons but all were with him now. They were working for those left behind, and sent messages of a hopeful and joyous nature to various groups of initials. My heart sank as I made all this out: I suddenly remembered all I had ever heard of the trite, depressing clichés of spirit communication; here was an example. I felt that even those who had known Colonel Mortimer-Fisher and his sons and held them dear could hardly be stirred by this. In a moment of disappointment and self-contempt I turned the paper round to bring the diagonally written lines straight. Their writing though less black was a good deal larger.

  Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth, I read, and the repetition of my name made my heart stop beating. No dangerous for you very dangerous very very dangerous on no account my love.

  I stood quite still, I have no idea for how long. Then I crossed the vestibule and the hall, both of them sunny and empty, and made my way, hesitating, to the semi-basement kitchen to say a word and a goodbye to Mrs Garnish. The door stood open and a large clock ticked on the narrow shelf high above what had once been a range, its cavern now occupied by a gas cooker. The light came over a stone wall and slanted through the top row of panes in a broad, clear shaft. A row of green plants stood under it on the deep sill. At the scrubbed white table Mrs Garnish was sitting in a mid-day pause. A bright blue canister was before her, a small brown teapot and a large white cup and saucer. She sat motionless with her eyes closed but her head, instead of being sunk forward as another person’s would have been, was upright, even raised a little. Her greenish-pale face glistened. Nothing moved but the jerking hands of the clock.

  It came over me that I had no business there, that I had already been told as much. I came upstairs again to objects that looked like cardboard, to mechanical words and automatic actions.

  I came back unable to say much to anyone about my visit. Hero, whom I met a couple of days afterwards, was struck by my unusual silence. When she had satisfied herself that I was not sickening for anything, she looked at me anxiously but without saying more. She is now turning over in her mind whether I had better go abroad for a little.

  J. B. Priestley

  UNDERGROUND

  J. B. Priestley (1894-1984) was a defining British cultural figure of the twentieth century, from his wartime BBC broadcasts to his best-selling and award-winning fiction to his extremely popular plays, required reading even today in British schools and still frequently performed and adapted for TV and film. Priestley did not write widely in the genres of horror or weird fiction, but his novel Benighted (1927), basis for the James Whale film The Old Dark House (1932), and his collection of strange stories The Other Place (1953) (both available from Valancourt) will appeal to fans of the genre. ‘Underground’, first published in the Christmas number of The Illustrated London News in 1974, is the story of a not-very-nice-guy whose journey in the London Underground becomes quite literally a hellish experience. Eight of Priestley’s books spanning a variety of genres, from adventure to science fiction to fantasy, are available from Valancourt, and his finest novel, Bright Day (1944), is forthcoming.

  Ray Aggarstone took the Northern Line from Leicester Square. It was some time since he had gone anywhere by Underground. Either he had used his car or had taken taxis for shorter journeys. But now that he was almost ready for what he liked to call, to himself but not to anybody else, the Big Getaway, he had sold his car for just over four hundred quid. Just showed you how useful it could be to chat somebody up, in this case that stupid sod who was always in the Saloon bar of the King’s Arms. While waiting on the crowded platform at Leicester Square, Ray told himself once again that he was careful as well as very clever. For instance, after that car deal and with a few drinks inside them, some fellows would have boasted about the Brazilian setup and the flight to Rio, but not Ray – not on your life! He had told this stupid sod exactly the same story he had told his mother and his wife, Cherry, now waiting for him somewhere near the end of this Northern Line. ‘Going to France, old man – Nice actually – where I’ve bought into a very promising property deal. Smart work, if I may say so.’

  But of course he hadn’t shown him the letters he’d concocted to show his Mum and Cherry, now ready to part with eight thousand between them, about all they had. They were both so excited about his plan for them to join him at Nice within the next two or three weeks, like a pair of idiotic kids, they left business entirely to him, Mum’s clever handsome son, Cherry’s dominating, fascinating if occasionally unfaithful husband. Serve them right when he vanished with the two cheques he was going to collect – the silly cows!

  No train yet but more people arriving on the platform. He changed his place, bumping and shoving a bit, if only to show these types what he thought about them. A run-down lot in a running-down country! He could never come back of course, not after those two women finally decided he’d robbed them blind, but he didn’t want to anyhow. He’d had it here all right – finish! He couldn’t blame Rita and Karl for sneering and jeering, even though now and again they got his goat, specially Karl. But that was early on, before they began to talk business.

  The train came along, already more than half full. And because he hadn’t stood near the platform edge, though he pushed and shoved as hard as anybody, perhaps a bit harder than most, of course he didn’t get a seat – not a hope! So there he was, standing and swaying, wedged in with a lot of fat arses, smelly underclothes and bad breath. Looking around, disgusted, he couldn’t imagine now what had made him come down here when he might have hired a car, travelled in comfort and also impressed Mum and Cherry. So, to stop cursing himself, he began thinking about Rita and Karl again. After all he’d be meeting them in Rio in two or three days, and he began to wonder how things would work over there. Every time Karl, who was her husband all right, had gone to Manchester or Leeds and had stayed the night, he’d had Rita, a hot brunette if there ever was one, who’d start moaning if a finger touched a tit. Did Karl know, just guess, not care – or what? Anyhow, what Karl, a real businessman in the German-Swedish style, did know was that his friend, smart Ray Aggarstone, would be shortly financing most of the deal they’d worked out. Moreover, there must be plenty of hot moaning brunettes in Brazil.

  Tottenham Court Road and people, dreary bloody people, pushing their way out and pushing their way in. And off again – sway, rattle, bang, bang, rattle, sway. A long thin woman, loaded with parcels, dug an elbow into his ribs, and he used his own elbow, with some force, to knock it away. She glared at him over her parcels, but all he did was to raise his eyebrows at her. After a moment or two she was able to move away a few inches. It was then that a curious thing happened. Through the gap she had left between them he saw for the first time a small figure sitting down. It had the face of an old-looking boy or a rather young-looking dwarf. He stared at this creature, who then met his stare with a widening of the eyes, odd eyes, yellowish. Next, the little oddity closed his eyes and moved his head slowly from side to side, almost as if he was giving a ‘No-no-no’ signal. As soon as the eyes opened again, Ray gave them a hard scowling look. But now there was no sign of recognition in them. It was just as if Ray was no longer there at all. The boy-or-dwarf might have been looking through him. A silly idea. Ray began to think how he would deal with Mum and Cherry.

  At Euston there was a lot more pushing out and shoving in, twerps on the move. The little monster had gone, and in his place was a fat suet-faced woman who stared angrily at anything or nothing, just to prove she had a right to a seat. Rattling and swaying on again, Ray told himself how he ought to deal with Mum and Cherry this time. Very different, he decided, from last time when he’d been all solemn, very much the business man, explaining again why Cherry had to stay with Mum, now that he’d got rid of their flat, and why he was staying in an hotel to be near the two Frenchmen who’d agreed to let him buy into the
big property development just outside Nice. This time, everything being settled now they were giving him their cheques, there’d be no point in going on with the solemn business thing. It would have to be all merry chit-chat about Nice and the Riviera, how they’d be joining him down there quite soon, how he’d be arranging their flights, booking a posh double-bedded room with bath for Cherry and him, with a good single nearby for Mum, and at least one balcony the three could use for breakfast – all that bullshit. Yes, there he’d be, egging them on, the stupid cows, maybe taking them out to a pub if Mum hadn’t got anything in to drink.

  Somebody touched his arm. This was deliberate. A woman was smiling at him. She was an oldish woman, white-haired but with a plump red-cheeked face and bright blue eyes; and he’d seen her before somewhere. ‘You’re Ray Aggarstone, aren’t you?’ she said, smiling away.

  It seemed as if he hadn’t time to think before he heard himself saying, ‘No, I’m not.’ He said it sharply too, as if really telling her to mind her own dam’ business.

  It wiped the smile off her face and narrowed and darkened her eyes, almost turning her into another person. ‘I think you are Ray Aggarstone, y’know,’ she said; and though the train was making a lot of noise, somehow she managed to say it quietly. ‘And you must remember me. I’m an old friend of your mother’s.’