“I may have to teach you a few things, Gretel. After the doctor has been here—”
A harder trembling seized Gwen, and she folded her arms together to stop it.
“What will the doctor do to me?” she asked. She didn’t trust this doctor. Not a friend of Miss Haggety’s, who helped her dope the babies under three—
“Nothing, right now, I guess!” Miss Haggety said, thoughtfully. “You’re perfectly healthy, aren’t you? Well, I don’t know how long you’ll be with us, of course. I have to talk everything over with Dr. Mordred; he has an interest in my little establishment.
“You won’t even see him this evening, Gretel, He’s coming—partly—to give little Lily a blood transfusion. We take care of our babies—and, of course, he’s a good friend of mine too. Sometimes he takes me out for an evening—”
With an incredible simper she bobbed her ragged gray curls and was gone.
But Gwen did see Dr. Mordred that night, because she very carefully did what Miss Haggety had forbidden. Creeping softly and lightly, she slipped down the stairs till she could see the man who sat in the queer room of livid light and odd dimensions. She could see him, and very ugly she thought him, with his swarthy skin, cruel features like a bird of prey, and black hair growing up around two baldy peaks that shot up like a couple of horns.
He couldn’t be, of course, the devil, or a devil, Gwen knew that. But he looked like a man who would like to be one. Maybe there wasn’t a big difference?
Later, hiding under her covers, Gwen heard a far, faint wailing of a child in distress. And after that she heard the front door open, and Miss Haggety and her “friend” saying goodbye in the doorway, and she came out of her retreat and listened again.
The dark man was scolding Miss Haggety.
“You’re no better than one of the primitive anthropo—something,” he was saying crossly. (Anthro-po-pah-gee? What a word! Try to remember and find out, Gwen’s quick little mind said to her.) Other hard words followed:
“Your Hansel may be stupid, and his early shock certainly made him what the ‘sike’ boys call an introvert, but you’ve never tried to make anything of him but a small beast of burden. You might have had a chance to raise one of the little ones up and keep it and—develop it. Now for the first time in years, you have a really alert specimen. I let you have what you want, Hep Cat. But you’ve got to remember that first things are first. This is a First Thing. I want that little girl taken good care of. I want her taught. Step by step. You’ve—wine—enough to last you a week, and the next gathering is soon. You’ll have your handsome hours, and you have your big—treat—to look forward to.
“Poor Baby Lil—with all our care she won’t hold out much longer!”
Gwen crept back to her bed. But not to sleep. Dared she show Miss Haggety her hollow eyes tomorrow? Fear and loneliness kept dragging her eyelids up so she could stare into the darkness.
She cried, whimpering softly, for the baby who wouldn’t last long for all their care. Must be, they were good to the babies after all. Blood transfusions, that was the most you could do for anybody, so Dr. Mordred must be a real doctor and trying to help the dying baby. He had a regular doctor’s bag. He used some of the kind of words doctors used, and yet—somehow he didn’t talk like one at all.
The old, tired moon threw some late light in slantwise, and it shone on what appeared to be a framed hand-printed text, and Gwen crept out of bed again, curiously, to read the words.
It was some sort of religious text, all right, because the very first word was out of the Bible. It was “Amen.” But Gwen found the rest of it queer beyond belief. The words made no sense at all. After the “Amen—”
“Ever and Forever Glory The And Power The And Kingdom—”
Someone had printed the Lord’s Prayer—backward!
And—what an awful thing to do! And—what did it make Gwen think of? Something heard—or read—the Devil and witches and people like that, if they were people, they taught you to say it that way, and then you were one of them!
Gwen hurried back over the cold floor to the narrow white bed and sank on her knees beside it. And, frantically, she tried to say the prayer, to say it right, and, frantically, she found she couldn’t. Something in her was scared out of the words, as well as half out of her senses. There was the baby prayer, “Now I lay Me—”
She could say that, and she did, and the tears came and she crawled into bed trying to stifle her sobs, trying to keep herself from murmuring Mummie’s name, and she couldn’t stop herself. The baby prayer and Mummie’s name, they went together, they had stayed with her, and she couldn’t stop.
Till that other door opened softly, and a tallish boy’s figure clad in pajamas of some washed out color that looked gray in the dim moonlight came softly over and touched her with surprising gentleness on her shaking shoulder.
“Hush!” said the boy called Hans. “She’ll leave you alone I think, if you don’t make her notice you. Mummie—that’s your word for Mama, isn’t it, Girl? I’m sorry to tell you, but you may as well forget her. If you stay alive, then she’ll have to be dead, you see. Or else, the other way around; if she stays alive, you must be dead. They can’t work things any other way—with big children, you see.”
Before dawn, and long after the boy had gone away to his own room, Gwen fell asleep. No matter what he had said, things still might be better than they seemed. Mummie always said that, when anything really bad happened. And—there was a person here who was a friend!
* * * *
Gwen thought now of Miss Haggety by the name she had heard the evil-looking doctor call her—“Hep-Cat.” The funniness of it tickled her fancy, and held the terror away. Did Hep-Cat like music? There was a radio and record playback in the parlor, but Gwen had not yet heard it used.
Hans continued to call Gwen merely “Girl.” But they made expeditions together, unchecked, into the wood that lay around two sides of the house and yard, and he soon talked almost as freely as Gwen. He barely remembered that once he had been Arthur, and long ago Hep-Cat (he accepted the name for their private use, thinking it funny when Gwen explained the slang of it) had made him answer to the name she gave him, and had told him the witch story of Hansel and Gretel. Since he daren’t say Gwen and wouldn’t say Gretel, Girl, he thought, was best. Hep-Cat would start in telling Gwen fairy stories one of these days, he said, but the stories would probably scare her. Could she read? He had not been taught. If she did, maybe she would have heard the stories anyway; even he had a vague, small child memory of having been told stories that were about the same things, yet weren’t the same at all. Hep-Cat changed stories, the way she did names.
It was Saturday night before Gwen saw any new face. The dark man wasn’t around much; he came in to talk to Sal, not really to help. Hep-Cat stayed in her room a good deal, her pets often with her. The wild black cat, whose name was actually “Grim,” would caterwaul at her door and she would let him slink in through a crack. A black bird flopped past the chink in the door once when Gwen was passing; and one evening something small hopped or flopped past the child’s feet as she went up to bed, something that must have gotten out of the room.
On Saturday after dinner Hep-Cat went to the kitchen and brought out a wine bottle filled with dark, red wine.
“The babies are already in bed, Sal,” she told the maid, incredibly winking one eye so that the wrinkles danced and ran together. “When he calls, we are going out!”
She stirred a few drops from a vinegar cruet which stood on the table into Gwen’s milk.
“Vitamins, dear Gretel.” she explained. “I forgot you when I put a few drops in Hansel’s soup. We must take care of our children!”
Grim slithered in as she went out, rubbing against her legs and almost tripping her. Hep-Cat’s good humor vanished, and she launched a kick at him which caught him in the ribs and sent him yowling to Gwen’s feet. He glared after his mistress with a look of malevolence. So mean, ugly things and people fell out
too! This pleased Gwen, and she set her milk on the floor for the black cat. It was the first overture of friendship she had tried since the first day, and she was delighted when he lapped it up.
Delighted, then surprised and shocked. Because he had hardly finished it when his head and tail went limp and he began to yawn, showing an enormous cavern of fang-lined red marked with dark brown. His over-bright eyes dimmed, and in a few more moments he lay at Gwen’s feet, limp and stupid.
Gwen’s mind, dulled at first by her surroundings, had cleared and quickened, hoped and thought and even tried to plan, from the moment when she knew the boy Arthur was her friend. Now it served her in good stead.
The kitchen swing-door was tight shut. Hep-Cat had reached her room and gone in. Arthur had slipped away early from the table, saying he was not hungry, and very tired.
Well, the milk with the “vitamins” had been intended for Gwen, and if she had drunk it she would have gone as sound asleep as the black cat that lay like a dead thing. But a nine-year old child wouldn’t have keeled over as fast as that, because a nine-year old child is many times bigger than even a big black cat like Grim. If Gwen had drunk the milk she would have gotten very tired and sleepy as Arthur had, and she would have gone to her room and gotten herself to bed. And thought very little about it next morning!
So, better not let anyone notice the doped cat. Gwen gathered the lanky, coarse-haired brute into her arms with a shudder and skimmed up the stairs and into her own room. There she deposited Grim behind the one over stuffed chair over by the window.
After that, she opened the door that led to Arthur’s room. She had never done this before. In fact, neither of the children had opened the door since the night when Arthur came in to comfort her. Now she opened it halfway.
This room was barer and bleaker than her own, and had but one window. It was not screened; a grayed-out mosquito netting was tacked over the lower, open half, and even this was torn and hung loose at one corner. A rickety kitchen chair with the paint peeled off stood in one corner, and a ramshackle chest of drawers with a discolored, wavy framed mirror hanging above it took the place of a dressing table or bureau.
The bed had a torn sheet and a ragged cover, and on it lay the blond boy, fast asleep. Gwen could hear his breathing; it was heavy and slow. She didn’t dare to waken him; and besides, she suspected that it would be cruel to do so. Whatever he had been given would wear off eventually, she supposed, and it must hurt to be jounced out of a heavy sleep like that.
She retreated to her own room, closing the door softly behind her. Then she knew that this night she would not dare to go to bed. Better to stay awake, with the cat lying on the floor behind the chair, in case he came to as quickly as he had gone under, and made a fuss. Finding himself shut in, he might leap on her as she slept, and bite or claw her.
Too, there was the possibility of finding out a little more about old Hep-Cat’s doings. Was this the night of the big party Dr. Mordred had promised her?
She heard the doorbell ring, much later; and when hard, tapping heels—not a bit like the sound of old Miss Haggety’s footsteps—had run down the stairs, Gwen waited a little longer and then went out into the hall.
She knew a little more about the house, now. Sal slept in an attic room, to the rear. At the front on the second floor was one room which seemed not to be used by anybody. You could call it a guest room. And it would have windows overlooking the front yard.
So it was into this room that Gwen went, and from one of its windows that she peered, and sure enough there was the ugly doctor (now without his doctor’s case) waiting on the little front stoop. And, out of the door to meet him came—
Not Miss Haggety, or anyone like her!
Maybe this guestroom had an occupant after all? Or perhaps, old Hep-Cat had let this woman in during the afternoon, when Gwen had been in the nearby wooded lot, and her food had been smuggled up to her?
Here she was, though, going out for the evening all dressed to kill, and with Hep-Cat’s doctor “friend.” Hep-Cat must know, and how did she like it? And if she was still in her mysterious big bedroom Gwen might need luck as well as care to get back to her own.
Nevertheless, she watched the two going away with avid curiosity. The place had changed her already—a little. Peeking and prying weren’t things Gwen had ever done. Yet she was become the nasty prying sort of child Miss Haggety had warned her not to be. But in this place you had to try to find things out—
The young woman took Dr. Mordred’s arm, and they swung off down the street together. As she turned, Gwen got the best look of all. Why—she looked young enough to be old Hep-Cat’s daughter—or even too young for that!
The rays from the street lamp caught her squarely, showed up all her loveliness. Her beauty was more than beauty, it dazzled you. Her skin was incredibly white and gleaming, her lips were red as rubies—red as blood. Her hair was lustrous and coal-black, and she wore it shoulder length. She had on a slinky, shiny, close-fitting dress of a green as bright as her lips were red. She made the ugly doctor look like a moldy old crow.
They would be going to town, Gwen guessed. After they turned the corner she could hear a motor start and go and it was probably the doctor’s car. Why shouldn’t he park it out in front, then? Maybe he didn’t want people to know he called as often as he did, grown up people sometimes acted like that, she had noticed.
She waited a little before opening the door, to be sure the house was quiet. No sound in the hall, no sound from behind the door that shut in Miss Haggety and her pets. So she tiptoed back down the hall toward her own room—but as she passed that forbidden door, what Mummie used to call “one of her uncontrollable urges” took possession of her.
It made no kind of sense. Miss Haggety had gone upstairs to her room, and out of her room had come another person, a beautiful young woman. But Gwen didn’t know how this other woman had gotten into Miss Haggety’s room; or why she had kept hidden there. And there was, as she came opposite the door, the queerest feeling—just a sense—that actually Miss Haggety was not there at all. It was as though she could feel her absence, just as sometimes you can feel a person’s presence. (Was that sort of thing part of what Hep-Cat had called the Welsh second sight?—or did everyone feel when people were a place or not?)
If this other person could be spirited into Miss Haggety’s room and no one know, then so could Miss Haggety have been spirited out of it! What if—Gwen felt the hair roots on her head move with excitement—what if this evil-looking doctor and the beautiful young woman had conspired somehow to get rid of Miss Haggety? Then maybe the young woman would come back and Miss Haggety never would. Then, oh, then, perhaps a letter would be given Gwen that had come from Mum: “No letter. Miss Gretel, no, indeed! Your mother has other things to do, and mails are slow beside.” So beautiful a woman must be kind; anyway, far kinder than an old witch-like woman.
She couldn’t pass the door, no matter how hard she tried. She must know. So her hand went to the knob and turned it, ever so softly; and so her arm pushed back of her hand and slid the door open the same way—(Oh, if she is here, let her be asleep; or just not looking!)
And, gaining courage as nothing happened, in the end Gwen swung the door quite wide open and took a good look at the room.
It was dirty, dirty like a place that is intended to be so. The black bird roosted on a chair-back, fast asleep. On the floor two toads hopped gravely around each other—so it was one of them Gwen had nearly fallen over in the hall! And spider webs everywhere—never disturbed, never cleared away, and in them hanging fat, bloated spiders.
But one thing was certain. The room had no human occupant. Into it had gone Miss Haggety, out of it had come the young woman. (Certainly she had not come out of the guest room when she started down the stairs, because very clearly Gwen had heard the door of this room open and close, and the tapping heels going on from there.)
Through the night Gwen watched, sometimes dozing. Toward morning the black cat G
rim stretched himself and woke and went peremptorily to the door, and she let him out. And it was after that that someone entered the house and came up the stairs, someone who walked with strangely stumbling feet. This time Gwen was careful to creep swiftly into bed and pull the sheet over her, and just in time; for her door opened and shut, and the stumbling footsteps went away again. Went away, and off into Miss Haggety’s room.
And who had come into the house like that? The young woman, maybe having had too much of a big evening at some late night club or elsewhere? Miss Haggety, herself somehow the worse for wear?
Still Gwen dared not sleep. Hollow-eyed or not, she mustn’t sleep through breakfast, in case the drug she was supposed to have taken should not have lasted that long.
Everything was quiet in the dawn-light, except for some big bird that flopped against her window screens, gave a plaintive cry like a sea gull, and flew toward Arthur’s window and then was still. But at about the usual time for breakfast she heard Arthur moving around and dressing and she (still dressed from yesterday) went downstairs after he had gone down.
There in the dining room Miss Haggety sat waiting for the two children. Breakfast was always this threesome, the babies being given it upstairs. And Miss Haggety’s eyes were very red-rimmed, and her nose stood out and hooked down worse than ever with the tired wrinkles pointing away from it. She scanned the children closely and then leaned back, satisfied.
“Nothing but coffee, Sal!” she cackled. “Everything for the children. Must build them up, build them up in case—”
Before getting out of the house, Gwen ran upstairs to change. Passing the old woman’s room she saw a smallish black thing on the hall floor, and thought shrinkingly of the hop toads, but it was an evening slipper, black, with a very high, sharp French heel. Miss Haggety couldn’t wear such a thing. If she did she would stumble around—like the person coming in at almost dawn had stumbled.
The 2014 Halloween Horrors Megapack Page 14
