The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  She must have been too, he realised now. But he hadn’t to be bothered with her, when he was busy with his own thoughts and plans. He shook his head at her. ‘Got this all wrong.’ And he had to shout because the train might have been grinding its way through rocks, the noise it was making. ‘I don’t know you. And you don’t know me.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Or I did do, once,’ she went on steadily. ‘She thought the world of you, Ray. Her only son – so good-­looking, so clever!’

  He found a snarl coming out of him this time. ‘Do you mind! Just turn it up!’ And he looked away, to get rid of her. But when he turned his head again, she was still there, though not quite so close, having managed to back away from him a little. And now she seemed a lot older and was giving him a long sad look. He couldn’t return it – he suddenly felt he had nothing to return it with, not even a scowl – so he looked away again and was relieved to find the train was stopping at Camden Town. This time not many got in, but then not many got out, so he was still forced to stand, even though he’d a bit more space round him. And this suited him all right because if there was one thing he didn’t like it was being jammed among all these idiotic, bloody disgusting people, staring old cows, smelly bitches and stupid buggers of all ages and sizes. When he got to Brazil and the money was rolling in, as Karl swore it would, he’d work it so that there was no more of this horrible caper. The only people allowed near him would be the ones he could enjoy seeing, hearing, smelling and touching.

  As the train started rattling and banging off again, he started thinking again. Working out how he’d deal with Cherry and his mother, chatting them up about life on the Riviera, breakfasts on balconies, drinks to welcome the wonderful new life, laughs and hugs and kisses and all that female crap, he realised he’d overdone it, not for them but for himself. For what he’d gone and done, if only for a minute or two, was to go soft and feel a bit sorry for both of them, considering that he was about to skin them down to their last fifty quid each. No time for that tonight! He’d got to be as sensible and hard as he’d been when he worked out the plan. Serve ’em right for not having more sense! He’d to look after himself, so they could look after themselves – and women always managed somehow. And he began to remember and light up every grievance he’d ever had against the pair of ’em. He’d deal with them the way he’d planned, pretending to be as silly as they were, and when they laughed then he’d laugh too, even, just for a private giggle, bringing out and flourishing his wallet, which already had in it his Air France ticket to Rio.

  It was just past Chalk Farm when the man tapped him on the shoulder. He was a tall man, so tall he had to bend over Ray, and he had very sharp grey eyes and a long chin.

  ‘Better get out at Hampstead,’ the man said, almost in Ray’s ear.

  ‘Can’t do,’ Ray told him briskly. ‘Going as far as Hendon Central. Unless of course I have to change. Is that it ?’

  ‘You might say that’s it.’ A solemn reply.

  This sounded idiotic to Ray. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ This tall fellow didn’t look a chump, but then, like so many people now, he might be round the bend.

  Two women pushed past them, getting ready for Belsize Park. The man waited but then he tapped Ray on the shoulder again and bent closer to his ear. ‘Just a last word. Most people think this line’s at its deepest at Hampstead. What they don’t know – and I don’t suppose you do – is that there’s a second line, starting at Hampstead, that goes deeper still – on and on, deeper and deeper – ’

  ‘Oh – come off it!’ Ray was impatient now. This was obviously a crackpot.

  ‘I’m not on it.’ The man gave a short crackpot’s laugh. ‘But you may be if you don’t get out at Hampstead and then take a taxi or a bus – and go back.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Ray told him. ‘I’ll mind my own business and you mind yours.’

  ‘No, it’s not as simple as that,’ said the tall man quite mildly. ‘You’re part of my business now. That’s why I’m telling you – not asking you, telling you – to forget Hendon Central and get out at Hampstead—’

  Ray lost his temper. ‘And I’m telling you – not asking you – to piss off.’

  The train was slowing up. Belsize Park now. There were sufficient people getting out to push between Ray and the tall man, but then there was quite a gap between them now. Only a few got on, and Ray saw that he could have a seat at last if he wanted one. But somehow he didn’t. Perhaps he felt he might go soft again if he sat down. Better to keep on standing and be hard and tough. The tall man, easily seen, had moved down and was now near the far door, ready to get out at Hampstead, where the big daft sod thought everybody ought to get out. All these mental hospitals and yet a crackpot pest like this was allowed to wander around loose, making a bloody nuisance of himself! Anyhow, as soon as the train pulled up at Hampstead, out the chap went, followed by nearly everybody else. This left the carriage almost empty. Ray could have taken as many seats as he wanted now, but he didn’t make a move, not for the moment trusting himself to let go of the strap he was clinging to, for he had to admit that he felt a bit faint, probably because of all the clattering and swaying and what so many stinking people had done to the air had combined to make him feel faint.

  This was an unusually long wait. He closed his eyes, just for a few moments, and when he opened them again he was both surprised and alarmed to discover that he had the whole long carriage to himself. Nobody else at all in sight. Had they shouted, ‘Hampstead – all change!’ and he’d missed it? Even dim as he felt, he was about to make for the door when, with an unpleasant jerk, the train started again. Then two things, equally unpleasant, happened together. There were several loud bangs and the lights went out. Badly shaken, there in the dark with the train obviously gathering speed, he made up his mind he would get out at the next stop, which would be Golders Green, and find a taxi to take him up to Mum’s place. The lights came on again, and though they seemed bright enough at first, after the dark, he soon realized that in fact they were much lower than they’d been before. Ten to one some power-cut frigging nonsense!

  Then quite suddenly – and it came like a hammer-blow at the heart – he knew that this train was going nowhere near Golders Green. At the same time he felt that it wasn’t moving like all the others, which went more or less level or climbed a bit to rush out into the open air. No, it was going down and down. And what had that tall crackpot said? Something about a second line going deeper still – on and on, deeper and deeper—? He tried to forget this but he couldn’t, and he began to wish there was somebody else with him who could explain what was happening. The train went rattling on, faster now than the usual underground train. There was nothing to be seen of course, and with this poor lighting he could hardly catch a glimpse of his own reflection. He tried cursing and blinding, to stop himself feeling frightened; but it didn’t work.

  However, bringing a flood of relief, something happened he never remembered seeing before on an underground train. Some sort of conductor chap, wearing a dark uniform, had come through a door at the far end of the carriage and was now walking towards him – that is, if you could call this slow shuffle a walk. Enjoying his relief, Ray took a seat at last and began rehearsing the indignant questions he would ask. ‘Now look here,’ he called out, ‘what the hell’s the idea—?’ But there he stopped, terrified. He was staring at something out of a nightmare. The man hadn’t a face, just eyes like a couple of blackcurrants, and nothing else – no mouth, no nose, no ears. In his terror Ray huddled into his seat and shut his eyes tight, hoping feverishly that the lard-faced monster wouldn’t stop, even to put a finger on him, but would go shuffling past him. And this indeed he did, so that when Ray risked opening his eyes he was alone again. That was something, and what happened next was better still. At last the train was slowing down. There must be a station soon – certainly not Golders Green – but whatever the station was, however far it might be from Hendon Central, it was where he would get ou
t of this nightmare train.

  He caught glimpses of an enormous packed platform. As soon as the train stopped he reached the door, but even then it was too late. He was swept back by a solid mass of people, who pushed and shoved like maniacs and closed round him so that he couldn’t move and felt he could hardly breathe. And what people! All the faces he’d ever looked away from, disgust blotting out compassion, seemed to be here, and the train was already moving again. He felt he was hemmed in by ulcers, abscesses, half-blind eyes, rotting noses, gangrenous mouths and chins. And how far, how long? Even out of the depths of his nausea, he’d have to say something.

  He put his question to the face nearest to him, a twisted slobbery caricature of a face, but all he got in reply was a senseless gabble.

  ‘No use asking him,’ a voice said over his shoulder. ‘He’s forgotten how to talk. What you want to know?’ The voice belonged to a bull of a man with a face like a volcanic eruption.

  ‘Where – ’ and it was a shaky question, ‘where are we going?’

  ‘Where we going?’ the bull roared. ‘We’re not going anywhere, you silly sod.’ Now he roared louder still. ‘Time to push around, shove about, all you bastards!’

  Ray found at his elbow an old creature whose nose and chin nearly met: she could have been a witch out of an ancient fairy tale. ‘I’ll tell you where you’re not going, young man,’ she said, cackling and spitting. ‘He-he-he! You’re not going to Rio in Brazil. Not now and not ever. He-he-he!’

  His heart turning into ice-water, he understood at last that he might never know anything again except this underground journey to nowhere, wedged beyond any chance of escape among these malicious jeering monstrosities . . .

  . . . ‘Full name’s Raymond Geoffrey Aggarstone, but liked to call himself just Ray,’ said the first man. ‘Got that? Okay. Now – effects. Silver cigarette case, inscribed Darling Ray from his loving Cherry . . . Posh lighter . . . Diary, gold pencil, three fivers and four pound notes in small notecase in one inside pocket . . .’

  ‘Not too fast,’ said the second man. ‘And what about trousers pockets – keys and change and all that?’

  ‘Come to them in a minute, chum,’ said the first man. ‘And if I’m going too fast, why ask for more? . . . Wallet in right inside pocket . . . Contains credit cards, two letters, and something from Air France—’

  ‘Hold it! Yes, sir?’ But this query was addressed to the new arrival. He was a tall man, with a long chin and sharp grey eyes, and he was obviously top brass authority, not the kind of bloke to be asked what he was doing there and where was his warrant card.

  ‘I’ll take the two letters,’ this tall man said pleasantly but with assured authority. ‘Not needed for the next of kin. I must look at that Air France booking too. Thank you!’ He examined it, took out a pen and made an alteration. ‘Yes, as I thought. There’s a mistake here. Should have been Nice not Rio. Here you are, ready for the next of kin, but I’ll keep the two letters, they’d only bewilder a couple of miserable women.’ He gave the two men a sombre look. ‘You know, this is a world where the guilty all too often go unpunished and the innocent are increasingly victimised, robbed, ruined, maimed or murdered.’

  ‘That’s true enough, sir,’ said the first man. ‘As I’ve said more than once to the wife and kids.’

  ‘Well, now and again,’ the tall man told him, ‘we have the chance to change that. Just now and again. By the way, what are the facts here?’

  ‘Found unconscious in the Northern Line train at Hampstead, sir. Major heart attack. Never recovered consciousness. In fact, died in the ambulance, sir. Finish!’

  ‘Thank you! Possibly finish – possibly not. We don’t know, do we? Goodnight!’ And he left them so quickly, he might almost have vanished, a trick some of these top blokes seem to have mastered.

  James Purdy

  MR EVENING

  James Purdy (1914-2009), like many Valancourt authors, achieved widespread critical acclaim and admiration from his fellow writers (he has counted Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and Jonathan Franzen among his many fans), but rarely received the wider popular attention his works deserved. His books, often both savagely funny and horrifyingly violent, as well as open and unapologetic in their treatment of gay themes, sometimes elicited controversy: major U. S. publishers refused to touch two of his early books, which had to be published abroad, and as recently as 1990 one of his books was suppressed by police in Germany. Purdy’s work often mixed high camp with Gothic grotesquerie, as in his novels In a Shallow Grave (1976) and Narrow Rooms (1978), both forthcoming from Valancourt, and his tale ‘Mr Evening’, first published in 1968, is no exception. Described by one critic as ‘a darkly whimsical exercise in bloodless gothic horror’, it’s a delectably insidious tale, the horror of which only becomes evident as it reaches its climax.

  ‘You were asking the other day, Pearl, what that very tall young Mr Evening – the one who goes past the house so often – does for a living, and I think I’ve found out for you,’ Mrs Owens addressed her younger sister from her chair loaded with hand-sewn cushions.

  Mrs Owens continued to gaze out the big front window, its heavy shutter pulled back now in daylight to allow her a full view of the street.

  She had paused long enough to allow Pearl’s curiosity to whet itself while her own attention strayed to the faces of passersby. Indeed Mrs Owens’s only two occupations now were correcting the endless inventory of her heirlooms and observing those who passed her window, protected from the street by massive wrought-iron bars.

  ‘Mr Evening is in and out of his rooming house frequently enough to be up to a good deal, if you ask me, Grace,’ Pearl finally broke through her sister’s silence.

  Coming out of her reverie, Mrs Owens smiled. ‘We’ve always known he was busy, of course.’ She took a piece of newsprint from her lap, and closed her eyes briefly in the descending rays of the January sun. ‘But now at last we know what he’s busy at.’ She waved the clipping gently.

  ‘Ah, don’t start so, child.’ Mrs Owens almost laughed. ‘Pray look at this, would you,’ and she handed the younger woman a somewhat lengthy ‘notice’ clipped neatly from the Wall Street Journal.

  While Pearl put on thick glasses to study the fine print, Mrs Owens went on as much for herself as her sister: ‘Mr Evening has always given me a special feeling.’ She touched her lavaliere. ‘He’s far too young to be as idle as he looks, and on the other hand, as you’ve pointed out, he’s clearly busier than those who make a profession of daily responsibility.’

  ‘It’s means, Grace,’ Pearl said, blinking over her reading, but making no comment on it, which was a kind of desperate plea, it turned out, for information concerning a certain scarce china cup, circa 1910. ‘He has means,’ Pearl repeated.

  ‘Means?’ Mrs Owens showed annoyance. ‘Well, I should hope he has, in his predicament.’ She hinted at even further knowledge concerning him, but with a note of displeasure creeping into her tone at Pearl’s somewhat offhand, bored manner.

  ‘I’ve telephoned him to appear, of course.’ Mrs Owens had decided against any further “preparation” for her sister, and threw the whole completed plan at her now in one fling. ‘On Thursday, naturally.’

  Putting down the ‘notice’ Pearl waited for Mrs Owens to make some elaboration on so unusual a decision, but no elaboration came.

  ‘But you’ve never sold anything, let alone shown to anybody!’ Pearl cried, after some moments of deeply troubled cogitation.

  ‘Who spoke of selling!’ Mrs Owens tightened an earring. ‘And as to showing, as you say, I haven’t thought that far . . . But don’t you see, poor darling’ – here Mrs Owens’s voice boomed in what was perhaps less self-defense than self-­explanation – ‘I’ve not met anybody in half a century who wants heirlooms so bad as he.’ She tapped the clipping. ‘He’s worded everything here with one thought only in mind – my seeing it.’

  Pearl withdrew into incomprehension.

  ‘Don’t you see this h
as to be the case!’ Here she touched the ‘notice’ with her fingers again. ‘Who else has the things he’s enumerated here? He’s obviously investigated what I have, and he could have inserted this in the want ads only in the hope it would catch my eye.’

  ‘But you’re certainly not going to invite someone to the house who merely wants what you have!’ Pearl found herself for the first time in her life not only going against her sister in opinion, but voicing something akin to disapproval.

  ‘Why, you yourself said only the other night that what we needed was company!’ Mrs Owens put these words adroitly now in her sister’s mouth, where they could never have been.

  ‘But Mr Evening!’ Pearl protested against his coming, ignoring or forgetting the fact she had been quoted as having said something she never in the first place had thought.

  ‘Don’t we need somebody to tell us about heirlooms! I mean our heirlooms, of course. Haven’t you said as much yourself time after time?’

  Mrs Owens was trying to get her sister to go along with her, to admit complicity, so to speak, in what she herself had brought about, and now she found that Pearl put her mind and temper against even consideration.

  ‘Someone told me only recently’ – Pearl now hinted at a side to her own life perhaps unknown to Mrs Owens – ‘that the young man you speak of, Mr Evening, can hardly carry on a conversation.’

  Mrs Owens paused. She had not been inactive in making her own investigations concerning their caller-to-be, and one of the things she had discovered, in addition to his being a Southerner, was that he did not or would not ‘talk’ very much.

  ‘We don’t need a conversationalist – at least not about them,’ Mrs Owens nearly snapped, by them meaning the heirlooms. ‘What we need is an appreciator, and the muter the better, say I.’