The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories

by Stephen Jones

  V

  I HAD BOUGHT another round of drinks, and the first infusion of late night theatre-goers and those coming out of cinemas had enlivened the terrace tables around us, before Jordan went on with the next part of his story. Though the chattering and the laughter from the nearer tables at first put him off his stride, I myself was glad to have this lively background to the somberness of the main tapestry, and while he said nothing, I felt Grisson was of the same mind.

  The next incident was very simple and very terrible, and it must have come with an appalling effect on Jordan, being in possession of all the facts as he was. He was awakened the following morning by the relentless tones of his telephone bell, to find Sir Portman on the line. Had he seen the morning paper? Something unfortunate had happened at the Steinway Hall the previous evening. Jordan said he would come round to see Sir Portman at nine o’clock and rang off.

  He hadn’t asked his caller what the matter was, but it must be pretty serious to warrant such an early call. It was curious, too, that Sir Portman had not volunteered any information but had merely asked him to look at the paper. If Jordan expected sensational headlines on the front page, he was mistaken. He went for his Daily Post on the hall mat in trepidation, but it took him almost ten minutes to find the item.

  It was a small piece on page three, under a single column heading which said: Gallery Attendant Dies in Fall. The text ran:

  Albert Hoskins, 54, gallery attendant at the Steinway Hall, S.W., was found dead on the floor by a colleague early this morning, just a few hours before London’s biggest-ever 17th century exhibition was due to begin. Mr. Hoskins, who had been employed by the Hall authorities for about seven years, had apparently slipped from an unfenced balcony containing the group of Sicilian statuary, “The Gossips.” The accident had happened at about 12:30 a.m., a doctor’s report established, and Mr. Hoskins had fallen head-first nearly twenty feet on to a newly-laid rocky area, representing a cliff face.

  There was a bit more, but Jordan was too sick to read it. Hoskins had died—he hardly dared say to himself, had been killed—only about twenty minutes after his conversation with Jordan. He must have been on his way back through the gallery, after letting the latter out.

  It was a trembling Jordan who downed a large whiskey—at breakfast of all times—and faced Sir Portman and the Exhibition Committee an hour or two later. They had braced themselves, in view of opening day, and though the accident was unfortunate, they had to repress any morbid thoughts when the first members of the public would be coming in through the turnstiles at 11:00 a.m.

  Eventually, Jordan saw that it would be of little use to tell them of his talk with the gallery attendant. He did stress the desirability, though, of fencing the ledge on which the group rested, to prevent any repetition of the accident. The Committee saw his point, but were of the opinion that it would greatly reduce the effectiveness of the set-piece and place it on a level with something out of a public park. And in any case, no members of the public would be allowed on the ledge.

  Jordan could not but agree with them, and went to his office to prepare for the opening, fervently praying that nothing further would happen to mar the long-awaited triumph. It was at this point that Grisson again entered the story. He had known Arthur Jordan for some years, and had followed the occasional newspaper stories of the exhibition with interest. It was when he learned that “The Gossips” were to be exhibited that he contacted Jordan, and the two men pooled their knowledge. Grisson did not at first reveal all that he knew, particularly of the unfortunate visit he and I had paid to the palazzo some years before, but he had said enough to make Jordan realize that here he had an expert and initiated ally.

  So it was naturally to Grisson that he again turned in his current predicament. Fortunately, his colleague was in London for the express purpose of attending the exhibition, though he had been unable to be present at the preview the previous evening. He hadn’t seen the newspaper item when Jordan phoned his hotel, but agreed to come round to the Steinway Hall at once.

  He found Jordan in a very ragged state of nerves, which was hardly surprising. The two men spoke for an hour, and after a very full and frank comparison of notes, while realizing the strange and unnatural nature of “The Gossips,” neither of them felt justified in interfering with the course of the exhibition.

  Hoskins’s death could have been an accident, and who would have believed such a story? Certainly not the Exhibition Committee, or any other person in his right mind. With their special knowledge, and particularly Arthur Jordan’s agonizing responsibility as the person who had secured the statues for London and as a principal organizer of the exhibition, the two men could only agree to act together and keep a keen supervisory eye on things.

  In the event, it was agreed that whenever possible, one or other of the two men would be on duty in the gallery. At the first sign of any out-of-the-way manifestations, that part of the gallery would be closed. As a double precaution, Sir Portman was persuaded to have the immediate area at the foot of the simulated cliff roped off, to prevent any spectators from crowding underneath during the performances. With this much achieved, the two men felt they had done all that was humanly possible to prevent any further tragedy.

  As if to reinforce this view, the exhibition was a tremendous success—certainly, beyond anything that the organizers could have suspected. People in the thousands flocked to the five halls every day, and for every one who had heard of the death of the gallery attendant, there were at least five hundred who hadn’t. Even Jordan’s wan face relaxed, and Sir Portman’s features expanded like a sunrise in the blaze of publicity which surrounded such an unusual exhibition.

  As was to be expected, “The Gossips” tableau was the biggest single “draw” at the Steinway Hall and extra performances had to be laid on every day, so many people wanted to see the dawn and sunset effects. Press and radio were no less enthusiastic, and the first week saw both record crowds and record profits for the various antiquarian funds to which the exhibition was devoted.

  But it was on the Saturday night that the incident occurred which provided the last shock for the harassed Jordan, caused a furore and agitated speculation in the press, and was finally responsible for the partial closure of the exhibition at Steinway Hall. No one could be blamed for what occurred, really. The last performance of the sky effects around the statuary was taking place at about 10:00 p.m., prior to the exhibition closing for the night.

  A large crowd gathered, had heard an exposition on their history from a distinguished professor, and Grisson, who was on duty, had taken the opportunity to slip out for a few minutes to the buffet for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. It was as the sunset effects were at their most splendid, that a rippled murmur made itself audible among the crowd, a murmur which rapidly changed to cries of horror. A middle-aged man was seen climbing over the rocky terrain around the base of the statues. He was reeling about as though drunk, and as the helpless crowd watched, horrified, he stepped forward and plunged from the edge of the platform upon the rocks beneath.

  Spectators rushed to his assistance and a doctor was soon on the scene, but the man had broken his neck and died a few minutes afterward. There was no rational explanation. He was a retired tailor, named Matthews, who lived at Streatham. Of impeccable antecedents and habits, he most certainly had not been drunk. No attendants had seen him approach any parts of the building closed to the general public, and the doors leading to the terrace on which the statues were situated were locked, as was the custom.

  This time the morning papers took a lot of notice, and after a hurried conference of his Committee the next day, Sir Portman and his colleagues decided to close down the gallery and make arrangements to ship back the statues to their place of origin. Although the Committee members were far from believing that the two deaths, coming so closely, were anything more than unconnected accidents, the information Grisson and Jordan were able to give them produced some raised eyebrows and blown cheeks in the c
ommittee room.

  The fact that an inquest would also have to be held tipped the scales. Reluctant as they were to lose such a fine asset as “The Gossips” for the exhibition, they simply could not afford any more adverse publicity. Jordan—and to a lesser extent, Grisson—was relieved at the Committee’s decision. The malevolent group was removed from the Steinway Hall, while that portion of the gallery remained closed for a couple of days.

  The statues were then crated to await transport to the docks, and a further cable was sent to the Duke. This, too, remained unanswered.

  Jordan remained silent for a moment, as he reached this point in his story. He fumbled in his wallet and eventually produced an envelope which contained some scraps of faded newspaper clippings. He selected one of these, and passed it over to me. It merely said that while the S.S. Janine was loading at London Docks, Albert Williams, docker, thirty-five, was crushed to death between a crate and the ship’s side. I looked up at Arthur Jordan.

  “This time the press hadn’t done all their homework,” he said. “The crate contained one of the statues, of course, but fortunately that didn’t get out. Again, no one could prove that it was anything other than an accident.”

  He had informed Sir Portman of the latest incident, as the exhibition went on from triumph to triumph, and the Chairman had remarked succinctly that the Sicilians were welcome to the statues. The next development was almost the most curious of all. Jordan had eventually received a letter from the Duke, apologizing for his absence from home during the arrival of the various cables.

  He went elaborately around the ground, and without actually admitting that the statues had been broken, he did go so far as to say that the estate workers had done their best to ensure that the statuary would be in condition for presentation at the exhibition. He expressed regret at the London incidents, and acknowledged receipt of the messages regarding the shipment.

  The letter covered a mere two pages of flowing handwriting, and left Jordan more puzzled and disgruntled than ever. He showed the documents to Sir Portman, who was equally mystified at the contents. But the matter didn’t seem worth following up and was gradually dropped.

  Three weeks later, Jordan happened to pick up a newspaper dated two or three days earlier, and his attention was arrested by a small paragraph on the front page. This he passed to me to read also.

  It was only about six lines and said that the Italian steamship Janine, of so many thousand tons, had foundered in a terrific storm in the Gulf of Lions, and had been lost with all cargo. There were no casualties among the crew, who had been landed at Marseilles by a Swedish freighter, which had picked them up.

  Even then, it was not quite the end of the story. Jordan smiled quizzically, as he looked back over his experiences with those cursed stones. The biggest surprise of all came at the end. Jordan was engaged in the clearing up of the exhibition, after its closure, when he received another telegram from the Duke. This merely acknowledged receipt of the crated statues at Palermo, in good order, and thanked him for his cooperation.

  This time Jordan showed the cable to no one except Grisson. The two met in an obscure London pub and thrashed the thing out between them. Wild horses would not have dragged either of them back to that haunted bluff in Sicily, if they had the time or the money, but they just had to know what had happened to those crates.

  Jordan went as far as to search the records at Lloyds. It was true that the Janine had foundered: all cargo had been lost and Lloyds made full settlement. It was not possible that four crates containing tons of stone could have been washed hundreds of miles farther south. After debating a while longer, Jordan cabled his agent in Palermo and asked him to inspect the site again. A fortnight later, he received a letter from the agent to say that the statues were once more in situ on the bluff in the Duke’s palazzo gardens. So far as the man could make out with field glasses, they appeared as they were before the accident.

  Even then Jordan did not quite give up. In the hope that there might be some more rational explanation, he again wrote to the Duke, asking him, as a matter of urgency, for the full details to which he felt entitled.

  In reply he did get a long letter this time, and after he had read it, he wished, for his own peace of mind, that the Duke hadn’t been quite so loquacious. Some of the information Grisson had already told me earlier in the evening, but much was for Jordan’s ear only, and he was asked to burn the letter after he had read it.

  Regarding the reappearance of “The Gossips,” the Duke had written, in what appeared to be a frantically scrawled hand, there is no explanation; think what you will, but do not ask for one. His text had then gone into Sicilian. This, Jordan had translated by a colleague at his museum.

  “It was something on the lines of the old English saw about the female of the species being more deadly,” he said to me, with an apologetic smile.

  The Duke did reveal that his own grandfather had been skeptical of the legend, and had actually started to have a smaller wall, which then existed to separate the statues from the house, taken down. No one knew exactly what happened, but he had such a bad fright one evening that the young man, as he then was, had the larger wall erected as I had seen it on the occasion of my memorable visit.

  Jordan stopped again, and played a little tune on the marble-topped table with the handle of his coffee spoon.

  “That wasn’t what frightened us in the garden,” he said, with a sort of slow defiance. “I’d been pretty steady-nerved until then.”

  “He’s saving the best till last, like all good storytellers,” said Grisson, in a vain attempt to lighten the atmosphere. The café lights were beginning to go out along the Arno, though a few lamps still reflected back its brilliant surface.

  “You see,” said Jordan with a deep sigh. “The explanation was in the nature of the statues. Caravallo’s masterpiece had been created from life.”

  From the shattered horror of the stonework in the garden, after the accident to the lift, had poured the raw materials on which he had based his devilish art—mingled with the brownish-red basaltic stone were the teeth, bones, and hair of three young girls.

  IN THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE WAR

  HARLAN ELLISON®

  Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) won the Hugo Award eight-and-a-half times, the Nebula Award four times, the Bram Stoker Award five times (including Lifetime Achievement in 1996), and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award twice.

  He was also the recipient of the Silver Pen for Journalism by International P.E.N., the World Fantasy Award, the Georges Méliès fantasy film award, an unprecedented four Writers Guild of America awards for Most Outstanding Teleplay, and the International Horror Guild’s Living Legend Award. In 2006, he was made a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

  Ellison moved to New York in his early twenties to pursue a writing career, and over the next two years he published more than one hundred stories and articles. Relocating to California in 1962, he began selling to Hollywood, coscripting the 1966 movie The Oscar and contributing two dozen scripts to such shows as Star Trek, The Outer Limits, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Cimarron Strip, Route 66, Burke’s Law, and The Flying Nun. His story “A Boy and His Dog” was filmed in 1975, starring Don Johnson, and he was a creative consultant on the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone TV series.

  His books include Rumble (aka Web of the City), Rockabilly (aka Spider Kiss), All the Lies That Are My Life, and Mefisto in Onyx, while some of his almost two thousand short stories have been collected in The Juvies (aka Children of the Street), Ellison Wonderland, Paingod and Other Delusions, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Love Ain’t Nothing But Sex Misspelled, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, Deathbird Stories, Strange Wine, Shatterday, Stalking the Nightmare, Angry Candy, Slippage, and The Essential Ellison: A 50-Year Retrospective edited by Terry Dowling.

  Ellison also edited the influential science fiction anthology Dangerous
Visions in 1967, and followed it with a sequel, Again Dangerous Visions, in 1972.

  More recently, he was the subject of Erik Nelson’s revelatory feature-length documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth (2008), chronicling the author’s life and work, which was made over a period of twenty-seven years.

  “When I was a very little boy in Painesville, Ohio, at age five” recalled Ellison, “a woman who lived up the street had my dog, Puddles, picked up by the dog-catcher and gassed while I was away at summer camp. I’ve never forgotten her. I think I hate her as much today, almost eighty years after the fact, as I did the day I came back from camp and my father took me in his arms and explained that Puddles was dead. That old woman is no doubt long gone, but hate lives on.

  “Each of us moves through life shadowed by childhood memories. We never forget. We are bent and shaped and changed by those ancient fears and hatreds. They are the mortal dreads that in a million small ways block us off or drive us toward our destiny.

  “Is it impossible to realize that those memories are merely the dead, ineffectual past; that they need not chain us?

  “A fine writer named Meyer Levin once wrote, ‘Three evils plague the writer’s world: suppression, plagiarism, and falsification.’

  “The first two are obvious. They are monstrous and must be fought at whatever cost, wherever they surface.

  “The last is more insidious. It makes writers lie in their work. Not because they want to, but because the truth is so terribly clouded by insubstantial wraiths, personal traumas, the detritus of adolescent impressions. Who amongst us can deny that within every adult is caged a frightened child?

  “This is a horror story. It speaks to the death of my father.

  “There are no ghosts or slimy monsters or antichrist omens. At least none that can physically reach out and muss the hair. The horrors are the ones we create for ourselves; and they are the ones we all share.