The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories

by Michael McDowell

  A welcome prospect, so why didn’t he grasp it? He had rung the bell and his summons had been obeyed. Aunty Green was expecting him and she had led the way to the kitchen. A small, weak old woman with scar tissue still visible on her brow and cheeks while she halted beside a replica of the oil stove that had maimed her. A pathetic, defenceless little woman, who smiled pleasantly at him, but the woman he hated; the witch he had come to kill.

  So why couldn’t he kill her? Why had his hands become para­lysed? He might be ill, but disease hadn’t affected his muscles yet and his fingers were on a door-­knob. Why wasn’t he strong enough to release a jammed door and throw Aunty into the cupboard?

  Was she too small, too weak and defenceless perhaps? Too old and pathetic? Was it possible that she was innocent and had never harmed him? Did he suffer from a persecution complex; paranoia?

  Difficult problems, but soon solved. The woman crossed over to him, the years slipped away and she was no longer old or path­etic. She was a fiend whose eyes could penetrate his skull and brain and read the thoughts behind them. She had known his intentions from the moment the lawyer called on her. She knew that there was no floor over the well shaft. She knew he was a child again.

  ‘Open the door and go into the cupboard, Jimmy,’ said Mrs Green, and Sir James Crampton obeyed.

  Though he didn’t go alone. Strength returned as he stepped to meet the things at the bottom of the well. Wicked Jimmy clutched Aunty’s arm and dragged her down with him.

  MISS MACK by Michael McDowell

  Of the many authors rediscovered by Valancourt, none has proven more popular with readers than Michael McDowell (1950-1999). McDowell’s writing career was relatively short – his first novel, The Amulet, appeared in 1979, and his last in 1987 – but quite prolific: under his own name and various pseudonyms he published some thirty volumes of fiction during this span before turning his hand to Hollywood screenwriting (Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas). His Southern Gothic novels Cold Moon over Babylon (1980), The Elementals (1981) and Blackwater (1983) are among the finest horror novels of their era and are now rightly considered classics of the genre. ‘Miss Mack’, McDowell’s first published short story and one of only a handful that he wrote, first appeared in Alan Ryan’s anthology Halloween Horrors (1986) and is reprinted here for the first time. Those already familiar with McDowell’s work will notice the story shares settings in common with The Amulet and Cold Moon over Babylon; on the other hand, those unfamiliar with McDowell’s work won’t remain so for long, we think, after they read this delightfully creepy tale. Eight of McDowell’s novels are available from Valancourt.

  When Miss Mack showed up in Babylon in the late summer of 1957, nobody knew what to think of her. She had come from a little town called Pine Cone, and had a brother back there who did ladies’ hair in his kitchen. Miss Mack was a huge woman with a pig’s face, and short crinkly black hair that always looked greasy. Her vast shapeless dresses of tiny-patterned fabric seemed always to have been left too long in the sun. She always wore tennis shoes, even to church, because, as she candidly admitted, any other sort broke apart under her weight.

  She wasn’t old by any means, but a woman of such size and such an aspect wasn’t regarded in the usual light, and nobody in Babylon gave any thought to Miss Mack’s age. For seven years she had traveled all over Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, doing advance and setup work for the photographer who came in and took pictures of the grammar school children. She had been to Babylon before, on this very errand, and the teachers at the grammar school remembered her. Now the photographer was dead, and Miss Mack returned to Babylon. She showed the principal of the grammar school her college diploma and her teacher’s certificate from Auburn University, and said, ‘Mr Hill, I want you to give me a job.’

  Mr Hill did it, not because he was intimidated, but because he had a vacancy, and because he knew a good teacher when he saw one.

  Everybody liked Miss Mack. Miss Mack’s children in the third grade adored her. Having inherited the itinerant photographer’s camera, Miss Mack took pictures of every child in her class and pinned them to the bulletin board with their names beneath. Miss Mack’s strong point was fractions, and she drilled her children relentlessly. Her weak point was Alabama history, so she taught them the state song, and let it go at that. On the playground, Miss Mack played with the boys. Infielders cowered and outfielders pressed themselves right up against the back fence when Miss Mack came to bat. At dodgeball, Miss Mack rolled the ball up inside her arm so tightly and so deep that it seemed buried in the flesh there. She unwound the ball so quickly and flung it so hard that the manliest boys in the center of the ring squealed and ducked. Miss Mack’s dodgeball could put you flat out on the ground.

  Because all teachers in the grammar school were called by their students ‘Miss,’ it was a matter of some speculation among her pupils whether or not she was married. When one little girl brought back the interesting report that Miss Mack lived alone in one of the four apartments next to the library, the children were all nearly overwhelmed with the sense of having delved deep into the mystery that was Miss Mack’s private life.

  Miss Mack’s private life was also a matter of speculation among her fellow teachers at the grammar school. The first thing that was noticed was that, in Mr Hill’s words, she ‘kept the Coke machine hot,’ dropping in a nickel at every break, and guzzling down a Coca-Cola every chance she got. It appeared that Miss Mack couldn’t walk down the hall past the teachers’ lounge without sidling in with a nickel – she kept a supply in the faded pocket of her faded dress – and swilling down a bottle at a rate that could win prizes at a county fair. Miss Mack’s apartment was not only next to the library, it was next to the Coca-Cola bottling plant as well. Wholesale, Miss Mack bought a case a day, summer and winter, and declared that, in point of fact, she preferred her Cokes warm rather than chilled.

  Every weekend Miss Mack disappeared from Babylon. It was universally assumed that she drove her purple Pontiac up to Pine Cone to visit her brother, and maybe sit with him in the kitchen, swilling Coca-Cola while he fixed ladies’ heads. But Miss Mack once surprised them all when she said that most weekends she went fishing. She drove all the way over to DeFuniak Springs because DeFuniak Springs had the best trout fishing in the world. She had a little trailer – the itinerant photographer’s van with all the equipment jettisoned – parked on the side of some water there, and every weekend Miss Mack and three cases of Coca-Cola visited it.

  Despite her alarming and formidable aspect Miss Mack quickly made friends in Babylon, and the friend she made earliest was the other third-grade teacher, Janice Faulk. Janice wasn’t but twenty-two, just out of college, short and cute and always smiling. It was thought that Janice had a whole bureauful of white blouses with little puffed sleeves, because she was never seen in anything else. She wore little sweaters and jackets loosely over her shoulders, held in place by a golden chain attached to the lapels. Janice had loved every minute of her two years of teaching. Her children loved her in return, but tended to take advantage of her, because Miss Faulk could be wheedled into just about anything at all.

  Mr Hill, the principal, was even thinking of wheedling Janice into marriage. He had taken her down to Milton for pizza a couple of times, and they had gone to the movies in Pensa­cola, and he had asked her advice on buying a birthday present for his mother. Mr Hill, a thin man with a broad smile, didn’t think it necessary to say anything more just yet. When the time came he didn’t doubt his ability to persuade Janice up to the altar. After all, he had hired her, hadn’t he? And he had always made sure she got to teach the smartest and best-behaved kids, right? Janice was just the sort of impressionable young woman to imagine that such favors ought to be returned, with considerable interest. Mr Hill had even told his mother of his intention of marrying Janice Faulk, and Mrs Hill, a widow living in an old house in Sweet Gum Head, had heartily approved. Mrs Hill in fact told her son he ought to propose to Janice without delay
. Mr Hill saw no need for haste, but a little later he was sorry not to have taken his mother’s advice.

  The next time Mrs Hill spoke to her son on the subject of Janice Faulk – the following Halloween – Mr Hill listened carefully. And he did exactly what his mother told him to do.

  For what Mr Hill hadn’t counted on in his sanguine projection of easy courtship and easy marriage was the friendship of Janice and Miss Mack.

  One Friday morning recess, the bully of Janice’s class had fallen on the playground and split open his head on a rock. Janice had been about to run for Mr Hill, but Miss Mack was right there, kneeling on the sandy ground, lifting the boy’s head onto her lap, bandaging it as coolly as if she had been a trained nurse. Janice began to come to Miss Mack for other help and advice. Soon she was coming for the mere pleasure of Miss Mack’s company. Janice’s mother was dead, and her father worked five weeks out of six on an oil rig in Louisiana. She lived alone in a little clapboard house that was within sight of the grammar school. She visited Miss Mack in her apartment between the library and the bottling plant, and Miss Mack visited her in the lonely clapboard house. In Miss Mack’s purple Pontiac they went to the Starlite drive-in. If they saw horror movies, Miss Mack held Janice’s hand through the scary parts, and told Janice when it was all right to open her eyes. Miss Mack thought nothing of getting up from the supper table, and driving straight down to the Pensacola airport for the mere pleasure of watching the planes take off and land. On the four-lane late at night, Miss Mack came up right next to eighteen-wheel diesels, and made Janice roll down her window. Janice leaned her head cautiously out, and shouted up at the driver of the truck looking down, ‘You want to race Miss Mack?’

  Miss Mack, in short, knew how to show a girl a good time.

  By the summer after her first year of teaching, Miss Mack and Janice were inseparable friends, and an odd-looking pair they made. Miss Mack’s appearance was vast, dark, and foreboding, and people in the street tended to get out of her way. She gave somewhat the impression of a large piece of farm machinery that had forsaken both farmer and field. Janice Faulk was petite, retiring, faultlessly neat, like the doll of a rich little girl – very pretty and not often played with. Both women, in consideration of the extra money and the opportunity to spend nearly all their time together, took over the teaching of all the summer remedial classes in the grammar and junior high schools. As if five days a week, all day long, were time insufficient to indulge the happiness they felt in one another’s company, Miss Mack began taking Janice off to DeFuniak Springs every weekend.

  Gavin Pond, left to Miss Mack by the itinerant photographer, was no more than five acres in extent, surrounded on all sides by dense pine forest. One end of the pond was much shallower than the other, and here a large cypress grove extended a dozen yards or so out into the water. The little trailer, still bearing the name and the promises of the itinerant photographer, was set permanently in a small clearing on the western edge of the pond. Directly across was a little graveyard containing the photographer, his ancestors, and his kin by marriage. A dirt track – no more than two gravel-filled ruts really – had been etched through the forest all the way around the pond. At compass-­north it branched off toward the unpaved road, a couple of miles distant through the forest, that eventually led into the colored section of DeFuniak Springs. Altogether, Gavin Pond was as remote as remote could be.

  Miss Mack and Janice arrived at the pond every Friday evening, having stopped on the way only for a coffee can of worms and a rabbit cage of crickets. They unloaded the car, fixed supper, and played rummy until ten, when they went to sleep. Next morning they rose before dawn, ate breakfast, prepared a lunch, and went out in the little green boat that was tethered to one of the cypresses. All morning long they fished, and piled up trout and bream in the bottom of the boat. Janice thought this great fun, so long as Miss Mack baited her hook and later removed the gasping fish from it. The two women beneath their straw hats didn’t speak, and all that could be heard were the kingfishers in the cypress, and the cage of crickets sitting in the sun on the hood of the Pontiac. Miss Mack liked the sound, and said they chirped louder when they were hot.

  At noontime, Miss Mack rowed over to the little cemetery. There among the Gavin graves, the two women ate sandwiches and drank Coca-­Cola, though Janice, deliberately to antagonize her friend, sometimes insisted on Dr Pepper instead. Over this lapse of taste, Miss Mack and Janice passed the time in pleasant and practiced argument. In the heat of the afternoon, they returned to the trailer. While Janice napped, Miss Mack sat in the Pontiac – hot though the vinyl seats were – and listened to the baseball game over the radio. This weekly indulgence necessitated always carrying an extra battery in the trunk against the possibility of failure. In the late afternoon, they sat out in folding chairs by the pondside, talking, talking, talking and slapping at mosquitoes. Miss Mack had a large stick across her lap. Every time Janice screamed and pointed out a snake, Miss Mack leaped from her chair and killed the creature with a single blow. She lifted its mangled body on the stick and waved it before Janice’s face in retaliation for the Dr Pepper.

  Once Miss Mack killed a rattlesnake in the same manner, hesitating not a single moment in running up to the creature and cudgeling it as ferociously as she would have attacked the most harmless king snake. She sliced off its head and rattles, skinned it, cut out its single line of entrails, and then coiled it up in a buttered skillet and cooked it. She made Janice swallow two bites, and she ate almost all the rest herself.

  But most evenings they ate the fish they had caught that day, Miss Mack consuming far more than Janice. After supper they played more cards, or read each other riddles out of paperback books, or just talked, talked, talked.

  They drove back to Babylon on Sunday afternoon, arriving sometime after dark, tanned and weary, but already looking forward to the next weekend.

  Mr Hill knew of these trips, and Mr Hill didn’t like them one little bit. Through her friendship with Miss Mack, Janice had changed, and – so far as Mr Hill was concerned – not for the better. Janice no longer wanted to go to Milton for pizza, because Miss Mack didn’t like pizza and Janice had decided that she didn’t like it either. Janice no longer considered it a wonderful privilege to be asked to go to Pensacola to a movie, because it was so much more fun to go to the airport and watch the planes take off and land, and try to guess which relatives waiting in the coffee shop would go with which passengers coming through the gate. Mr Hill didn’t even get to see Janice in church on Sunday morning, and sit next to her, and hold her hymnbook, because on Sunday morning Janice was fishing out at Gavin Pond with Miss Mack, getting burned by the sun and eaten up by mosquitoes. Mr Hill, in short, was worried. He feared that, because of Miss Mack’s influence, Janice would refuse his offer of marriage. Mr Hill’s mother, to whom he confessed his anxiety, said, ‘Miss Mack will never let Janice go. You got to take back what’s rightfully yours. And if you cain’t think of anything, then you come on back to me, and I’ll tell you what to do.’ Quite beyond any consideration of his fondness for Janice Faulk, Mr Hill had no intention of allowing his comfortable plans to be thwarted by a fat woman with greasy black hair and a face like a pig’s.

  One day in August, right after a meeting of the teachers preparatory to the beginning of the academic year, Mr Hill said to Miss Mack, ‘You gone keep going out to your fishing pond after school starts, Miss Mack?’

  ‘I sure do hope so,’ replied Miss Mack. ‘Even though we probably cain’t get away until Saturday morning from now on.’

  Deftly ignoring Miss Mack’s we, Mr Hill went on, ‘Where is that place anyway?’

  ‘It’s about ten miles south of DeFuniak Springs.’

  ‘Hey you know what? My mama lives in Sweet Gum Head – you know where that is? I have to go through DeFuniak Springs to get there. One of these days when I go visit my mama, I’m gone stop by your place and pay you a visit.’

  ‘I wish you would, Mr Hill. We have got an ex
tra pole, and an extra folding chair. This weekend I’m gone put your name on ’em, and Janice and I will start waiting for you.’ Under normal circumstances Miss Mack’s hospitality would have been extended to Mr Hill’s mother, but in her travels through the Southern country­side, Miss Mack had heard stories about that old woman.

  Though Janice and Miss Mack returned to Gavin Pond every weekend in September and October, Mr Hill didn’t come to visit them there. Finally one day, toward the end of October, Janice said to Mr Hill, ‘Mr Hill, I thought you were gone go see your mama sometime and stop by and see Miss Mack and me out at the pond. I wish you had, ’cause now it’s starting to get cold, and it’s not as nice. We’re going out this Halloween weekend, but that’s gone have to be the last time until spring.’

  ‘Oh lord!’ cried Mr Hill, evidently in some perturbation. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Janice?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘You’re gone be needed here at the school for Halloween night.’

  ‘Saturday?’

  ‘That’s right. I was gone get Miz Flurnoy to do it, but her husband’s getting operated on in Pensacola on Friday, and she says she cain’t. Gallstones.’

  Janice was distraught, for she had intended to savor this last weekend at the pond. She came to Miss Mack with a downcast countenance, and told her friend the news.

  ‘Oh, that’s not so bad,’ said Miss Mack. ‘Tell you what, we just won’t go out at all until Sunday. We’ll make just the one day of it.’

  ‘No sir!’ cried Janice. ‘I don’t want you to miss your weekend on my account. You were going out there long before you knew me, and I certainly don’t want you to miss your final Saturday out there. Sunday’s never as good as Saturday out at the pond, Miss Mack – you know that! You go on, and I’ll drive out on Sunday morning. I’ll be there before you get up out of the bed!’