American supernatural tales

by S. T. Joshi

  Then something occurred to him. It occurred to Mr. Minchell that he had not just suddenly vanished, like that, after all. No; he had been vanishing gradually for a long while. Every time he said good morning to that bastard Diemel he got a little harder to see. Every time he put on this horrible suit he faded. The process of disappearing was set into action every time he brought his pay check home and turned it over to Madge, every time he kissed her, or listened to her vicious unending complaints, or decided against buying that novel, or punched the adding machine he hated so, or . . .

  Certainly.

  He had vanished for Diemel and the others in the office years ago. And for strangers right afterwards. Now even Madge and Jimmy couldn’t see him. And he could barely see himself, even in a mirror.

  It made terrible sense to him. Why shouldn’t you disappear? Well, why, indeed? There wasn’t any very good reason, actually. None. And this, in a nightmarish sort of a way, made it as brutally logical as a perfect tape.

  Then he thought about going back to work tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. He’d have to, of course. He couldn’t let Madge and Jimmy starve; and, besides, what else would he do? It wasn’t as if anything important had changed. He’d go on punching the clock and saying good morning to people who didn’t see him, and he’d run the tapes and come home beat, nothing altered, and some day he’d die and that would be that.

  All at once he felt tired.

  He sat down on a cement step and sighed. Distantly he realized that he had come to the library. He sat there, watching the people, feeling the tiredness seep through him, thickly.

  Then he looked up.

  Above him, black and regal against the sky, stood the huge stone lion. Its mouth was open, and the great head was raised proudly.

  Mr. Minchell smiled. King Richard. Memories scattered in his mind: old King Richard, well, my God, here we are.

  He got to his feet. Fifty thousand times, at least, he had passed this spot, and every time he had experienced that instant of wild craving. Less so of late, but still, had it ever completely gone? He was amazed to find that now the childish desire was welling up again, stronger than ever before. Urgently.

  He rubbed his cheek and stood there for several minutes. It’s the most ridiculous thing in the world, he thought, and I must be going out of my mind, and that must explain everything. But, he inquired of himself, even so, why not?

  After all, I’m invisible. No one can see me. Of course, it didn’t have to be this way, not really. I don’t know, he went on, I mean, I believed that I was doing the right thing. Would it have been right to go back to the University and the hell with Madge? I couldn’t change that, could I? Could I have done anything about that, even if I’d known?

  He nodded sadly.

  All right, but don’t make it any worse. Don’t for God’s sake dwell on it!

  To his surprise, Mr. Minchell found that he was climbing up the concrete base of the statue. It ripped the breath from his lungs—and he saw that he could much more easily have gone up a few extra steps and simply stepped on—but there didn’t seem anything else to do but just this, what he was doing. Once upright, he passed his hand over the statue’s flank. The surface was incredibly sleek and cold, hard as a lion’s muscles ought to be, and tawny.

  He took a step backwards. Lord! Had there ever been such power? Such marvelous downright power and—majesty, as was here? From stone—no, indeed. It fooled a good many people, but it did not fool Mr. Minchell. He knew. This lion was no mere library decoration. It was an animal, of deadly cunning and fantastic strength and unbelievable ferocity. And it didn’t move for the simple reason that it did not care to move. It was waiting. Some day it would see what it was waiting for, its enemy, coming down the street. Then look out, people!

  He remembered the whole yarn now. Of everyone on Earth, only he, Henry Minchell knew the secret of the lion. And only he was allowed to sit astride this mighty back.

  He stepped onto the tail, experimentally. He hesitated, gulped, and swung forward, swiftly, on up to the curved rump.

  Trembling, he slid forward, until finally he was over the shoulders of the lion, just behind the raised head.

  His breath came very fast.

  He closed his eyes.

  It was not long before he was breathing regularly again. Only now it was the hot, fetid air of the jungle that went into his nostrils. He felt the great muscles ripple beneath him and he listened to the fast crackle of crushed foliage, and he whispered:

  “Easy, fellow.”

  The flying spears did not frighten him; he sat straight, smiling, with his fingers buried in the rich tawny mane of King Richard, while the wind tore at his hair . . .

  Then, abruptly, he opened his eyes.

  The city stretched before him, and the people, and the lights. He tried quite hard not to cry, because he knew that forty-seven-year-old men never cried, not even when they had vanished, but he couldn’t help it. So he sat on the stone lion and lowered his head and cried.

  He didn’t hear the laughter at first.

  When he did hear it, he thought that he was dreaming. But it was true: somebody was laughing.

  He grasped one of the statue’s ears for balance and leaned forward. He blinked. Below, some fifteen feet, there were people. Young people. Some of them with books. They were looking up and smiling and laughing.

  Mr. Minchell wiped his eyes.

  A slight horror came over him, and fell away. He leaned farther out.

  One of the boys waved and shouted: “Ride him, Pop!”

  Mr. Minchell almost toppled. Then, without understanding, without even trying to understand—merely knowing—he grinned widely, showing his teeth, which were his own and very white.

  “You—see me?” he called.

  The young people roared.

  “You do!” Mr. Minchell’s face seemed to melt upwards. He let out a yell and gave King Richard’s shaggy stone mane an enormous hug.

  Below, other people stopped in their walking and a small crowd began to form. Dozens of eyes peered sharply, quizzically.

  A woman in gray furs giggled.

  A thin man in a blue suit grunted something about these damned exhibitionists.

  “You pipe down,” another man said. “Guy wants to ride the goddamn lion it’s his own business.”

  There were murmurings. The man who had said pipe down was small and he wore black-rimmed glasses. “I used to do it all the time.” He turned to Mr. Minchell and cried: “How is it?”

  Mr. Minchell grinned. Somehow, he realized, in some mysterious way, he had been given a second chance. And this time he knew what he would do with it. “Fine!” he shouted, and stood upon King Richard’s back and sent his derby spinning out over the heads of the people. “Come on up!”

  “Can’t do it,” the man said. “Got a date.” There was a look of profound admiration in his eyes as he strode off. Away from the crowd he stopped and cupped his hands and cried: “I’ll be seeing you!”

  “That’s right,” Mr. Minchell said, feeling the cold new wind on his face. “You’ll be seeing me.”

  Later, when he was good and ready, he got down off the lion.

  T. E. D. KLEIN

  Theodore Donald Klein (the E. in his name does not stand for anything) was born in 1947. Exhibiting an early interest in supernatural fiction, he attended Brown University and wrote an honors thesis (1969) on the influence of the Irish writer Lord Dunsany on H. P. Lovecraft. In the 1970s he produced several notable tales of supernatural horror, some published in small-press magazines and others appearing in anthologies; among them were “Petey” (1979), a story of monstrous horror in rural Connecticut; “Children of the Kingdom” (1980), a chilling tale of terrors on the underside of New York City; “Black Man with a Horn” (1980), a tale utilizing Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos; and “Nadelman’s God” (1985), a tale fusing cosmicism and psychological horror. These four tales were gathered in a landmark volume, Dark Gods (1985). A year prev
iously, Klein published The Ceremonies, an immense expansion of what remains his best-known tale, “The Events at Poroth Farm,” and drawing upon Klein’s sensitive reading of Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and other supernatural writers.

  Klein edited Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine from its inception in 1981 until 1986, making it the flagship publication in its field. He has since written relatively little: a second novel has been in gestation for two decades, while only a few short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies. Some of his later works include “Ladder” (1990), another tale of cosmic horror, and several supernatural stories for younger readers. Klein has also written engagingly about horror fiction in such works as Raising Goosebumps for Fun and Profit (1988). In spite of his small output, Klein remains a leading figure in the field and one of the masters of the modern horror tale.

  “The Events at Poroth Farm” (From Beyond the Dark Gateway, December 1972) is a dense, complex work of horror in rural New Jersey and well utilizes Klein’s exhaustive reading of previous horror literature. Klein has revised the tale on several occasions; the text used here derives from his latest revision, in a volume of his uncollected tales, Reassuring Tales (2007).

  THE EVENTS AT POROTH FARM

  As soon as the phone stops ringing, I’ll begin this affidavit. Lord, it’s hot in here. Perhaps I should open a window. . . .

  Thirteen rings. It has a sense of humor.

  I suppose that ought to be comforting.

  Somehow I’m not comforted. If it feels free to indulge in these teasing, tormenting little games, so much the worse for me.

  The summer is over now, but this room is like an oven. My shirt is already drenched, and this pen feels slippery in my hand. In a moment or two the little drop of sweat that’s collecting above my eyebrow is going to splash onto this page.

  Just the same, I’ll keep that window closed. Outside, through the dusty panes of glass, I can see a boy in red spectacles sauntering toward the courthouse steps. Perhaps there’s a telephone booth in back. . . .

  A sense of humor—that’s one quality I never noticed in it. I saw only a deadly seriousness and, of course, an intelligence that grew at terrifying speed, malevolent and inhuman. If it now feels itself safe enough to toy with me before doing whatever it intends to do, so much the worse for me. So much the worse, perhaps, for us all.

  I hope I’m wrong. Though my name is Jeremy, derived from Jeremiah, I’d hate to be a prophet in the wilderness. I’d much rather be a harmless crank.

  But I believe we’re in for trouble.

  I’m a long way from the wilderness now, of course. Though perhaps not far enough to save me. . . . I’m writing this affidavit in room 2-K of the Union Hotel, overlooking Main Street in Flemington, New Jersey, twenty miles south of Gilead. Directly across the street, hippies lounging on its steps, stands the county courthouse where Bruno Hauptmann was tried back in 1935. (Did they ever find the body of that child?) Hauptmann undoubtedly walked down those very steps, now lined with teenagers savoring their last week of summer vacation. Where that boy in the red spectacles sits sucking on his cigarette—did the killer once halt there, police and reporters around him, and contemplate his imminent execution?

  For several days now I have been afraid to leave this room.

  I have perhaps been staring too often at that ordinary-looking boy on the steps. He sits there every day. The red spectacles conceal his eyes; it’s impossible to tell where he’s looking.

  I know he’s looking at me.

  But it would be foolish of me to waste time worrying about executions when I have these notes to transcribe. It won’t take long, and then, perhaps, I’ll sneak outside to mail them—and leave New Jersey forever. I remain, despite all that’s happened, an optimist. What was it my namesake said? “Thou art my hope in the day of evil.”

  There is, surprisingly, some real wilderness left in New Jersey, assuming one wants to be a prophet. The hills to the west, spreading from the southern swamplands to the Delaware and beyond to Pennsylvania, provide shelter for deer, pheasant, even an occasional bear—and hide hamlets never visited by outsiders: pockets of ignorance, some of them, citadels of ancient superstition utterly cut off from news of New York and the rest of the state, religious communities where customs haven’t changed appreciably since the days of their settlement a century or more ago.

  It seems incredible that villages so isolated can exist today on the very doorstep of the world’s largest metropolis—villages with nothing to offer the outsider, and hence never visited, except by the occasional hunter who stumbles on them unwittingly. Yet as you speed down one of the state highways, consider how few of the cars slow down for the local roads. It is easy to pass the little towns without even a glance at the signs; and if there are no signs . . . ? And consider, too, how seldom the local traffic turns off onto the narrow roads that emerge without warning from the woods. And when those un-traveled side roads lead into others still deeper in wilderness; and when those in turn give way to dirt roads, deserted for weeks on end. . . . It is not hard to see how tiny rural communities can exist less than an hour from major cities, virtually unaware of one another’s existence.

  Television, of course, will link the two—unless, as is often the case, the elders of the community choose to see this distraction as the Devil’s tool and proscribe it. Telephones put these outcast settlements in touch with their neighbors—unless they choose to ignore their neighbors. And so in the course of years they are . . . forgotten.

  New Yorkers were amazed when in the winter of 1968 the Times “discovered” a religious community near New Providence that had existed in its present form since the late 1800s—less than forty miles from Times Square. Agricultural work was performed entirely by hand, women still wore long dresses with high collars, and town worship was held every evening.

  I, too, was amazed. I’d seldom traveled west of the Hudson and still thought of New Jersey as some dismal extension of the Newark slums, ruled by gangsters, foggy with swamp gases and industrial waste, a gray land that had surrendered to the city.

  Only later did I learn of the rural New Jersey, and of towns whose solitary general stores double as post offices, with one or two gas pumps standing in front. And later still I learned of Baptistown and Quakertown, their old religions surviving unchanged, and of towns like Lebanon, Landsdown, and West Portal, close to Route 22 and civilization but heavy with secrets city folk never dreamed of: Mt. Airy, with its network of hidden caverns, and Mt. Olive, bordering the infamous Budd Lake; Middle Valley, sheltered by dark cliffs, subject of the recent archaeological debate chronicled in Natural History, where the wanderer may still find grotesque relics of pagan worship and, some say, may still hear the chants that echo from the cliffs on certain nights; and towns with names like Zion and Zaraphath and Gilead, forgotten communities of bearded men and black-robed women, walled hamlets too small or obscure for most maps of the state. This was the wilderness into which I traveled, weary of Manhattan’s interminable din; and it was outside Gilead where, until the tragedies, I chose to make my home for three months.

  Among the silliest of literary conventions is the “town that won’t talk”—the Bavarian village where peasants turn away from tourists’ queries about “the castle” and silently cross themselves, the New England harbor town where fishermen feign ignorance and cast “furtive glances” at the traveler. In actuality, I have found, country people love to talk to the stranger, provided he shows a sincere interest in their anecdotes. Storekeepers will interrupt their activity at the cash register to tell you their theories on a recent murder; farmers will readily spin tales of buried bones and of a haunted house down the road. Rural townspeople are not so reticent as the writers would have us believe.

  Gilead, isolated though it is behind its oak forests and ruined walls, is no exception. The inhabitants regard all outsiders with an initial suspicion, but let one demonstrate a respect for their traditional reserve and they will pro
ve friendly enough. They don’t favor modern fashions or flashy automobiles, but they can hardly be described as hostile, although that was my original impression.

  When asked about the terrible events at Poroth Farm, they will prove more than willing to talk. They will tell you of bad crops and polluted well water, of emotional depression leading to a fatal argument. In short, they will describe a conventional rural murder, and will even volunteer their opinions on the killer’s present whereabouts.

  But you will learn almost nothing from them—or almost nothing that is true. They don’t know what really happened. I do. I was there.

  I had come to spend the summer with Sarr Poroth and his wife. I needed a place where I could do a lot of reading without distraction, and Poroth’s farm, secluded as it was even from the village of Gilead six miles down the dirt road, appeared the perfect spot for my studies.

  I had seen the Poroths’ advertisement in the Hunterdon County Democrat on a trip west through Princeton last spring. They advertised for a summer or long-term tenant to live in one of the outbuildings behind the farmhouse. As I soon learned, the building was a long low cinderblock affair, unpleasantly suggestive of army barracks but clean, new, and cool in the sun; by the start of summer ivy sprouted from the walls and disguised the ugly gray brick. Originally intended to house chickens, it had in fact remained empty for several years until the farm’s original owner, a Mr. Baber, sold out last fall to the Poroths, who immediately saw that with the installation of dividing walls, linoleum floors, and other improvements the building might serve as a source of income. I was to be their first tenant.

  The Poroths, Sarr and Deborah, were in their early thirties, only slightly older than I, although anyone who met them might have believed the age difference to be greater; their relative solemnity and the drabness of their clothing added years to their appearance, and so did their hair styles: Deborah, though possessing a beautiful length of black hair, wound it all in a tight bun behind her neck, pulling the hair back from her face with a severity which looked almost painful, and Sarr maintained a thin fringe of black beard that circled from ears to chin in the manner of the Pennsylvania Dutch, who leave their hair shaggy but refuse to grow moustaches lest they resemble the military class they’ve traditionally despised. Both man and wife were hardworking, grave of expression, and pale despite the time spent laboring in the sun—a pallor accentuated by the inky blackness of their hair. I imagine this unhealthy aspect was due, in part, to the considerable amount of inbreeding that went on in the area, the Poroths themselves being, I believe, third cousins. On first meeting, one might have taken them for brother and sister, two gravely devout children aged in the wilderness.