The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  ‘Whereabouts was the baby born?’

  ‘Our place.’

  Yes, of course, it would be. No nice clean hygienic hospital for this one. Probably in the straw of a byre, among the chickens, if not the pigs.

  ‘And where is “our place”?’ asked Mrs Parsons, her voice turning to saccharine over steel.

  ‘Our house. Coveny Lane, Witchford.’

  Mrs Parsons looked up sharply. That sounded like a joke, a country joke against a townie. And indeed the woman had a slight irritating smile, hovering round her generous lips. But she said:

  ‘It was born there! That’s where us were all born!’

  But just to make sure, Mrs Parsons went across to consult the relevant ordnance survey map, one of several pinned on her walls. When you dealt with so many idiots, you had to make sure. But indeed, there in the distant Fenland village of Witchford was Coveny Lane. Only there were several small buildings marked in Coveny Lane . . .

  ‘What’s your house called?’

  ‘Just our house.’

  ‘What do other people call it?’

  Again the woman looked at Mrs Parsons, as if she thought Mrs Parsons slightly insane. ‘They do call it Smith’s place, I suppose.’

  Now Mrs Parsons felt better, as her Biro flew across the form. ‘Smith’s Place sounds quite historical,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Is it old?’

  ‘Old enough. The roof do leak. But we do call all the houses “Smith’s place” or “Jeffrey’s place” or “Policeman’s place”. ’Tain’t a proper name.’

  A wave of exasperation flowed through Mrs Parsons. ‘I don’t suppose it’s got a number,’ she asked. ‘To help the postman?’

  ‘Us don’t need no number. Postie do know where we do live. Us never gets no letters anyway, ’cept bills an’ us saves those to light the fire with.’

  So Smith’s Place it would have to be. Mrs Parsons just hoped that the General Register Office in London never found out, and sent her the printed reprimand the registrars termed a ‘yellow peril’.

  ‘Is the baby a girl or a boy?’

  The woman just smiled. The smile came from deep inside her like water slowly oozing up round your feet when you stand in a wet field. As if there was some huge joke that Mrs Parsons would never, never be told.

  ‘Oh, come, my good woman, you must know!’

  ‘Oh, he’m male all right. Just like his father afore him, and haven’t I got cause to know it! But cold as clay his father was, in the dark o’ night.’ Her slow smile invited questions now.

  Mrs Parsons said ‘Male’ briskly, and wrote it down. Then said, equally briskly, ‘In what name and surname is the baby to be brought up?’

  That was the official form of words, properly to be used. Mrs Parsons knew that some of the other, lesser registrars just said, ‘What are you going to call the baby?’ She sometimes felt tempted to use those words herself, when the atmosphere was cosy. But it was far from cosy now.

  ‘He’s a Smith,’ said the woman. ‘We’m all Smiths, allus were. Allus have been.’

  ‘And the Christian name?’ It just slipped out; Mrs Parsons could’ve kicked herself. Lots of people weren’t Christian these days; they might be atheists or humanists and might object. But she was so anxious to get this registration over . . . and the heat . . . and the smell.

  ‘No, us aren’t Christians,’ said the woman starkly. ‘Not Christians, not any of us, never.’

  But the awful thing was the child. The child suddenly raising its head from the mother’s black shoulder, and turning slowly and looking at the registrar. Black black eyes that were full of steady hate, a hate as cold and desolating as a fen-pool.

  Mrs Parsons’s mind fled into a flurry of panic, like a terrified hamster on its wheel. Dear God, babies can’t lift their heads at six weeks, nor focus their eyes. They can’t understand what you say and they can’t hate, I can’t bear it . . .

  After what seemed forever, the child turned away from her and clawed with one tiny green-tinted hand at the mother’s black-clad breast. The woman opened her dress with the utmost casualness. The breast was disturbing in its opulence, then it vanished behind the short black hair on the child’s head, and there was the ferocious sound of sucking. Mrs Parsons saw the mother wince.

  ‘I’m sorry . . . I’d rather you didn’t do that in here,’ said Mrs Parsons with much less than her normal certainty. ‘It’s . . . against regulations.’

  ‘Would ’ee ruther ’ee looked at ’ee then?’ asked the woman. ‘’Tis the only thing that will pacify him, once he’s angered.’

  The two women stared at each other a long silent time. Duty told Mrs Parsons there were things that should be reported here; the child must be much older than the regulation six weeks’ time limit for reporting a birth. Much too big and strong for six weeks, she could see that now. There should be an investigation; the woman had uttered a perjury . . .

  But where was the evidence? The child had been born in some hovel, doubtless without benefit of doctor or midwife; born with the help of some wretched old crone who would only back up the mother’s lies, like the Fen people always did. The police would be helpless; townie police in the Fen country.

  That was what she told herself. But the truth was that she couldn’t hold the woman’s gaze, so full of untold knowledge. So she dropped her eyes to her form again.

  ‘And the other name? The forename?’

  ‘Beelzebub,’ said the woman.

  ‘My dear woman!’ Mrs Parsons knew she shouldn’t be protesting. Parents had the right to call their children anything they liked. Much worse even than Sugar Ray and Frankie Bruno. Glasnost Graham had threatened before now, and Perestroika Peters been narrowly averted. She had in her desk an official list of approved names, which showed the approved spellings. But that could only be offered as a guide when requested. It could never be used as a weapon, a coercion. But ‘Beelzebub’! The name of a devil out of the Bible . . . the woman must have got into a muddle. If she wanted a biblical name, there were lots of nice ones like ‘Benjamin’ or ‘Nathaniel’ or even good old Victorian ones like ‘Ebenezer’ or ‘Hezekiah’.

  ‘You can’t burden a child with “Beelzebub”!’ said Mrs Parsons, her sense of duty overwhelmed by her feelings.

  And then, to her horror, as in a dream, she saw the child’s head lift and begin to turn towards her again. She could not look away. Again the eyes pierced her very soul with their awful black hate.

  ‘Write!’ said the child, in a dreadful, old man’s voice.

  To support her reeling mind, she leaned forward and clutched the edges of her desk hard. And felt a tiny tickle slide across the skin of her chest. And knew it must be the little silver cross she wore night and day, under her clothes usually. It had slipped from her blouse and was dangling free. Some stray beam of sunlight must have caught the cross, for she saw a flicker of light touch the child’s face.

  The child flinched, as if burnt, and buried its head in the refuge of its mother’s breast again.

  Mrs Parsons’s mind wriggled vigorously back into reality, as her body wriggled into its foundation garment every morning. Oh, this was all nonsense! Warm afternoon nonsense! She was passing through that awkward time of life; she must go to the doctor and get something! The child must merely have burped and it had sounded like the word ‘write’. And its greenness was just the greenness of the light and its size and strength merely . . .

  Anyway, her own legal duty was clear. She must write on the form what the mother had told her, and that was the end of it. Her responsibility ended there. So bitterly she wrote the name ‘Beelzebub’.

  And yet something inside told her she should not have written it. It was another crack in the precious wall of civilisation that held back chaos. There had been so many cracks recently. So many young people not bothering to get married and living in sin . . . a quarter of all the nation’s children being born out of wedlock. Those horrible men being tolerated for days on the roofs of prisons, waving their
arms and looking like devils from the Pit. Those who should have been on guard were sleeping at their posts, and one day there would be a terrible price to pay . . .

  It made her voice a little sharp, a little shrill, as she asked the next statutory question.

  ‘What is the father’s full name?’

  The woman giggled, a dreadful sound. ‘We do just call him “Old Luke”.’

  ‘I can’t just put down “Old Luke”.’ It was almost a squeak of outrage. ‘The people at General Register Office would never stand for that.’

  She glared at the woman, who glared back.

  ‘His full name do be Lucifer. But we do just call him “Old Luke”. We don’t never see him, you know. Just – he sometimes comes to us, after the dancing, in the dark of night. ’Tis like a dream . . . only you do know he’s been, in the morning, you do know that all right! I couldn’t sit down for days after . . . and you do know it’s he, because he do be as cold as clay.’

  Mrs Parsons shuddered, mainly with pity, but not entirely. The customs they still lived by, on the Fen! Who knew? They kept themselves to themselves. Even the police didn’t know, let alone the vicars who were supposed to care for their moral welfare. It was a disgrace, in this last decade of the twentieth century. This poor young ninny, voluptuous and not quite all there . . . a sitting target for any unscrupulous man after an orgy of drink . . . this pathetic story of Old Luke Lucifer . . . and now she would have the burden of the child, or expect the state to carry the burden of them both, more likely. And most likely it would grow up as much an idiot and a burden to itself as she was . . .

  Nevertheless, in accordance with her duties, Mrs Parsons wrote down the father’s name.

  Luke Lucifer.

  And again she knew she shouldn’t have done it. There was another crack in the dyke now. In the official records of the nation, in the archives of St Catherine’s House, there would be a black lie.

  Old Luke Lucifer.

  But she had to ask the next question.

  ‘Whereabouts was the father born?’

  The woman smiled; an incredulous smile, as at Mrs Parsons’s ignorance.

  ‘Why, in the Heavens, before he was cast down!’

  Mrs Parsons broke out in a sweat all over, from the small of her back to the palms of her hands. But she controlled herself. She must expect such sweats at her time of life; even if it was not simply caused by the increasing temperature of the room.

  But this was the thing she dreaded most. This appalling way even apparently quite sensible people had of leaping suddenly into the totally nonsensical. Even some vicars . . . there had been a visiting preacher two Sundays ago who had gone on and on about the Second Coming. Rubbish about the Blessed being placed on the right hand, and the Damned on the left, while at the same time the Blessed were being lifted up into the air . . . it had made her head whirl, like some spiritual Spaghetti Junction. She had spoken to the preacher quite severely afterwards, saying that in future she would tolerate only sermons about sensible subjects like Inner City Welfare Work, or the Ordination of Woman . . .

  ‘Place of father’s birth unknown,’ she said out loud, putting a vicious line through the space left for it on the draft form, so great was her exasperation.

  She heard the child mutter ominously at its mother’s breast, breaking the sound of sucking. But she swept straight on to the next question, even though she knew the answer would be gibberish. She must get this business over, and the awful woman out of her Register Office, back to the swamp of ignorance she’d emerged from. It would be like a Cleansing of the Temple.

  ‘What is the father’s occupation?’

  ‘He do go about the world, workin’ his Will.’

  ‘Commercial Traveller,’ wrote Mrs Parsons, with vicious spite.

  Again the child rumbled, horrible noises as from a nether pit. Could it sense what she was writing? Or did its nose just need wiping?

  She was nearly there now. Only a few more questions, and those were easier, more practical.

  ‘What is your full name?’

  ‘Joan Smith. Us do be all Smiths.’ The woman’s voice had gone tight; the child’s feeding sounded ferocious.

  ‘And what is your occupation?’

  ‘I do find things for people, when they’ve mislaid them. I do charm warts, and mix a cure for the Old Johnny. I can blast a man’s crops. I do a lot o’ they, afore the village shows . . .’

  ‘Herbal healer,’ cut in Mrs Parsons shortly. ‘And I think you said that you too were born in Coveny Lane, Witchford?’

  ‘That be right.’ The woman sounded not only in pain, but miffed at being rushed like this.

  Now for the crunch question. Though as the years passed, sadly it became less and less of a crunch. It was the test of whether the child was illegitimate . . . an ‘illy’ as they called it in the office.

  ‘What was your maiden name?’

  ‘I told ’ee. Smith I was, and Smith I am and Smith I shall be. Though I don’t be no maiden no more.’ That came out as a thick snigger.

  ‘So you have never married?’

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘Then I cannot enter the father’s name on the birth certificate. Not unless he comes to see me himself.’ At this point, Mrs Parsons looked up, putting on her most authoritative official face.

  But not for long.

  The child fed on. But a trickle of blood descended from the mother’s breast, staining deep dark brown into her open black dress.

  Mrs Parsons was not, at bottom, uncaring. Her cry of distress for the other woman was loud enough to bring her colleagues running. They gathered in a semi-circle, staring in horror and offering suggestions of cotton-wool and calamine lotion, Savlon and the office first-aid kit.

  But the look on the Fen-woman’s face held them at bay; she crouched in her chair in the corner like a wild beast protecting her cub.

  ‘Let I be! Let I be! I be all right!’

  Mr Brooks looked in, looked harassed, and suggested that an ambulance be summoned. When the suggestion was rejected by all, he fled back to his own office, overwhelmed by such female mystery.

  And that led Mrs Parsons to say, ‘Leave it to me, ladies. I can handle it.’

  When they had all been got rid of, the woman deigned to snatch a large lump of cotton-wool soaked in calamine that Mrs Parsons offered her. She dabbed with it, inside her poor black dress. It seemed to renew some bridge between the pair of them. Mrs Parsons returned to her seat and took charge again.

  ‘Now you do understand? I cannot enter the father’s name on the birth certificate unless he comes and asks for it to be put on, himself?’

  ‘He do want his name on.’

  ‘I think you know him better than you make out.’ Mrs Parsons smiled a little, as the certainty of her own authority returned.

  ‘Oh, I do know him all right. And his ways.’

  Mrs Parsons smiled again, thinking of some great hulking Fen-man, coming cowed into this stronghold of stately authority, sober for once, maybe in his best suit, ill at ease off his own crude ground.

  The woman looked at her, almost with pity. ‘’Ee wouldn’t smile if ’ee saw him, missus. ’Ee’ve seen the son, at six week. Do ’ee really want to see the father?’

  And the child on her knee slowly turned its head again and stared at Mrs Parsons, with the pools of hate set in his pale green face. As if in response, the sun went in, outside the window, and the fetid smell grew stronger and more rancid in the over-warm room. Like the smell from the lair of some wild beast.

  Mrs Parsons found her own hand clutching the tiny silver cross round her neck.

  ‘Aye,’ said the woman. ‘That toy in yer hand will scare the young ’un. For a bit. But it won’t scare the old ’un, if he comes for yer.’

  ‘I have to do my duty,’ said Mrs Parsons, keeping the tremble out of her voice with difficulty.

  ‘’Ee won’t think of yer duty, if the old ’un comes for ’ee. ’Ee’ll do what he tells yer. Only it�
��ll be too late. For ’ee.’

  Mrs Parsons thought of the whole august system of the General Register Office, of the rule of law, of the phone by her elbow, and of the police.

  ‘None o’ that will help ’ee, if he comes,’ said the woman. ‘I told ’ee. He comes in the dark.’

  Mrs Parsons thought of the dark. Of getting out of the car in her own tree-lined drive, when her husband wasn’t home yet, and her house in darkness. She thought of the dimness of the multi-storey car park, when she had to be in town late in winter. She thought of lying awake in the small hours, when her husband was away on business. She suddenly realised that half the world, half of life, lay in the dark. She’d never realised it was so much, because she’d spent most of it going to the theatre or watching telly, or sleeping. The dark had seemed such a small part of her life . . . Now she realised how much it was there; out across the Fens; between the thin lines of streetlamps, thin as necklaces that might snap.

  She came to her crossroads, quite suddenly.

  You either belonged to the dark, or you belonged to the light. As you might belong to a hockey team in your youth, or the WI in middle age. The light wasn’t a free gift, it was a side you belonged to, an army in battle. As the Bible put it, there were the Children of Light, and the Deeds of Darkness.

  And the Deeds of Darkness would never gain an inch, not through her.

  She folded her hands together loosely on the desk, almost humbly, and said:

  ‘I’m afraid the father will have to come and see me.’

  ‘Don’t blame me. Don’t say I didn’t warn ’ee.’ The woman shot her a look almost of pity. Then walked out in her down-at-heel shoes, clacking off down the corridor, carrying her dreadful child away; into silence.

  Mrs Parsons sat on, utterly exhausted. There was no summons, from the receptionist’s buzzer, to fetch her to a new customer. Outside the window, the sky darkened and darkened. So close! Thunder must be threatening. The fetid smell the woman had left behind seemed to get worse, not better; but Mrs Parsons did not seem able to summon up the energy to cross the room for the air freshener she kept in the cupboard.