The Year's Best Horror Stories 4

by Gerald W. Page (Ed. )

  I marveled at the thing's growth—and marveled more at the occupant who willingly, I presumed, permitted his house to be swallowed up, as it were.

  As the summer wore on, Corvington became a bit edgy. I could see that something was beginning to bother him. I caught him frowning on occasion and I noticed that his chess game fell off considerably.

  Finally, one afternoon as we sipped our iced martinis on the screened porch, he brought up the matter.

  "Infernal nuisance, y'know," he began, "but I'm getting a little worried about Millward. Tradesmen haven't heard from him in weeks. Mail piled up." He turned toward me. "Have you walked down Stillcroft lately?"

  I was perfectly aware that he knew I had. "Every few days. The windows are completely covered with that climbing ivy and I haven't seen a sign of life." I set down my drink. "Of course nobody could see a sign of life. You could have a banquet or a ball in there with nobody the wiser. The windows are simply blanked out by that greedy growth."

  "Odd you'd use that word."

  "What word?" I asked.

  "Greedy."

  He was silent for some time. At length he reached over and refilled my glass. "I suppose," he said, "that I ought to do something."

  "I think so," I agreed. "I know the idea of—intrusion—is distasteful to you, but it would do no harm to look in on the old boy."

  He settled back with a sigh. "Well, tomorrow's time enough. We'll go down, and if there's no answer at the door, I'll use my key, much as I hate meddling."

  The next day, like most of its predecessors, was hot and sunny. After a light lunch, we started out for Millward Frander's house on Stillcroft Street.

  Overnight, it appeared to me, the shining, purple-green ivy leaves had grown larger and more luxurious. They were everywhere. They had climbed over the eaves and started across the roof. Their tiny claspers clung to the drains, the bricks themselves, the windowpanes. The house looked as if it had been draped in a thick cloak of shimmering ivy.

  Corvington rang the bell in vain. After a ten-minute wait, he sighed with resignation and took out his key. "Hate doing this, y'know."

  The door opened grudgingly. We saw then that the minute clasper-rootlets of the ivy had begun to pry into the almost invisible slit of space between the door and its frame.

  The entrance hall exuded a peculiar smell—a mixture of decay and growth, damp, sweet, and sickish.

  Corvington shouted up the stairs. "Millward!"

  He called again and we waited, but there was no reply.

  Closing the door behind us, he slipped the key into his pocket. "Might as well go up, I guess."

  As a trudged up the stairs behind him, I noticed that the unpleasant odor became more intense.

  In the upstairs hall, Corvington looked about in some confusion. "Been years since I was in here. Forgotten which was his favorite room."

  At length he settled on the last door to the right, toward the front of the house.

  He knocked and there was no reply. Finally he pounded on the door. "Millward! It's Corvington!" Silence.

  He tried the door and found it locked. "Hang it all! I don't have keys for all the rooms!"

  After a moment's hesitation, he shrugged and swung his big shoulder against the door. It crashed inward with a splintering rasp of broken wood and metal.

  We stepped into the semidarkened room—and stood stricken speechless.

  In the green, glimmering half-darkness, a thing which had once been human slumped in an arm chair a few feet from the front window. It was covered with a great fluttering, waving mass of the huge, five-lobed ivy leaves. Only its outline was visible. For a minute or so, as we remained rooted with horror, the shape itself stayed motionless. Then it moved. It lifted itself from the chair and a thin, half-stifled scream came out of its mouth.

  The purplish, fleshy-looking ivy leaves immediately veered in our direction, as if we had been some kind of magnet.

  The thing fell back in the chair but the inhuman, high-pitched scream of protest and agony went on and on.

  The ivy leaves waved frantically. Possibly it was my imagination, but I had the distinct impression that their claspers had descended to the floor in front of the chair and were starting across toward us.

  At last Corvington recovered himself. He shoved me toward the door. "Get out at once! Out of the house!"

  As I hurried down the stairs, he was right behind me. Even under the circumstances, I felt that this—well, it wasn't like the Corvington I knew, or thought I knew.

  Once outside, I turned to him. "My God, Corvington, what are you going to do?"

  "You'll see," he replied grimly.

  I followed him around the side of the house, fighting through an almost impenetrable mass of vegetation. Swearing, he tore his way toward a sort of shed or garage which was situated in the rear of the house. The building bore such a weight of massed vines, limbs, and leaves, it appeared about to cave in.

  Somehow Corvington reached it, got one of the doors open, and groped inside. I waited, nearly suffocated in the dense tangle of growth, and presently he pushed his way out. I saw that he was carrying a heavy ax. The blade was rusty but the handle looked solid.

  As we struggled back toward the front of the house, I felt certain that the huge tangle had closed in behind us.

  As soon as we emerged near the entrance door, I understood Corvington's purpose. Pushing his way to the front of the house, he located the main root, or trunk, of the ivy.

  I know it may sound absurd, but the infernal thing seemed to sense his plan. The heavy ivy leaved fluttered against his face. I am positive I saw one or more of the claspers fasten on the shoulder of his jacket—but Corvington, once aroused, was formidable. He was not to be stopped.

  Swinging the ax in a wide arc, he buried the rusty blade in the knotty root.

  Gasping, he stepped back. I saw that he was staring at the half-severed root. Wiping the perspiration from my eyes, I looked more closely at it. A thin trickle of liquid was seeping out of the ivy trunk. It looked like blood.

  Corvington swung the ax again—and again.

  Things are handled quietly in Amley—if you know the right people. Corvington knew them.

  There was no publicity—aside from the stark announcement of Millward Frander's death "from circulatory problems associated with a failing heart."

  The funeral was private and the casket was closed.

  Corvington, who inherited his cousin's house, had all its surrounding vegetation chopped, cut and sheared away—down to the last blade of grass.

  One evening at the club, long afterward, he brought up the subject

  "Y'know," he said, "specimens of that monstrous ivy were sent to some of the best botanists in the country and they couldn't identify it! Millward must have rooted it out in some remote, unexplored jungle area. It resembles the common ivy—Hedera canariensis—which is native to North Africa and the Canary Islands—but there are horrible differences.

  "Rootlets of the damned thing had infiltrated a tiny fissure along the window frame where Millward usually sat.

  "We don't know the exact sequence of events. He may have suffered a stroke and been unable to move out of the chair. At any rate, once inside, the ivy headed right for him. Its claspers fastened on him while he was still alive and hairlike root filaments penetrated into his tissues. It must have been agony beyond our comprehension."

  Corvington refilled his glass. "Actually, however, it may not have lasted long. Even—what we saw—may have been deceptive. Millward may have been already dead when we entered."

  "But he tried to get out of that chair!" I objected.

  Corvington frowned. "Yes, I know. But . . . well . . . you see, it may have been a sort of—symbiosis. In other words, Millward may have been clinically dead when we saw him. The ivy root filaments may simply have acted on his nerve endings, galvanized them, so to speak. In other words, he was little more than a sort of zombie, physically animated by outside sources."

  I
shook my head. "Hard to believe. That scream . . ."

  Corvington nodded. "I know. But even that might be explained. The autopsy disclosed that the hideous thing had sent its hairlike rootlets right into his brain. The stimulation may have acted on his speech centers, even though he was medically dead."

  "And that red—fluid—in the root?"

  Corvington grimaced. "Thought you'd bring that up. We had it analyzed. It was—part of it, anyway—human blood."

  I had to let it go at that. Corvington, I observed, had closed the subject.

  Today, whenever I see a friend's house wearing ivy, I immediately urge him to get rid of the growth. I suppose I'm a bit too vehement about it.

  Some of my acquaintances have begun to consider me a trifle eccentric.

  THE RECRUDESCENCE OF GEOFFREY MARVELL by G. N. Gabbard

  Here's a story that takes place in the Black Forest, features a roguish vagabond as hero, a comely damsel as heroine, dastardly baron as villain—and a veritable parade of ghosts and revenants: in fact, so many familiar elements (no pun intended there) that one might question whether or not the story could have anything fresh to say or do. Well, one would be reckoning without the sly skills of G. N. Gabbard, who here adds his name to that small but gratifying list of writers capable of producing stories at once horrifying and funny.

  "Ach, Geister! Ritt' mich!"

  The cry for help came muffled through the fog, then came the patter of running steps, muffled but growing clearer. Marvell waited until the girl was almost upon him.

  "You took no stock in ghosts this noon, Luise. Now 'tis midnight, the tune runs otherwise?"

  She stopped, staring. He might have been a ghost himself, with his pale melancholy face framed in black hair that drooped lank to the shoulders, and his black surcoat, boots, and hat—froth of lace at wrists and throat, ghost-blood from a suicide's wounds. But she reached hesitant fingers to a sleeve and, reassured by the solid touch, grasped his arm with both hands.

  "I did see a ghost, yonder," she said.

  "Why, 'tis not for nothing they call this neck of the Black Forest Gespensterwald—Specter Wood; or so your father told me at the inn. You sang another song then." He glanced around. "Or is it a snare—that while I comfort you 'gainst the possibility of phantoms, some of your kin phantom-foot up out of this pestilent fog, rap the Englishman's empty head for him, and pick his not-far-from-empty purse?"

  "Oh, no!"

  Marvell twitched pale lips. "Your eyes spark with veracity. But they do say 'blue eyes are true eyes,' meaning that the best liar hath blue eyes that seem most true when most they lie. And, often enough, hair that shines like gold even at midnight in a misty wood."

  "And are you not afraid of ghosts?" she asked seriously, though a faint redness spread in her cheek.

  "Only the ghost of King Charles, that gnaws me here." He struck his heart melodramatically; he struck it again, and the rings on his fingers clinked against something. He put hand into coat and drew forth a flask. "And here I have what will lay the most importunate such ghost. Spirits for the spirit. Wine, though it be but poor sour German stuff, when well seasoned with kisses is a sovereign physic for all gripes of the heart."

  "Du albern!" She laughed. "Silly! Your king has been dead these four years and more now."

  "Aye. But if I cease to mourn him, what cause would I tell fair maidens why this face of mine droops so low, that they would take pity on me? Come, there's a spot of dry earth nearby—the single one in all this forest, I swear!"

  Only a few minutes later, Luise sat up abruptly. "There are ghosts here! Listen!"

  Marvell cursed all ghosts with ingenious Cavalier curses, sat up beside her, listened. "Only the wind," he said uncertainly.

  "It's not!" she hissed.

  "Well, we might follow yon path till it met another . . ."

  "It does, not far along. Will we be safe there?"

  "So goes the tale. I've heard in Scotland that ghosts do shun a crossroads; but your Teutonic specters, now . . ."

  The girl jumped lightly to the path and scampered off, holding the skirt of her coarse frock up out of the mire. Marvell followed at his leisure. Behind him, a faint blue glow showed far and faint through the thinning fog. "Foxfire," he said. When he looked back again, it was larger and had moved—it moved as he watched it "Corpse candle," he said. "Will-o'-the-wisp, that is," loosening his rapier. He looked to his pistols, but found the priming irredeemably damp. He walked faster.

  Behind him now he heard a dull keening that was not the wind. And a faint rattle of chains—But that came from in front of him!

  He stopped and peered ahead. Last wisps of mist wavered here and there, unpredictably blurring the view. Yes, there lay the crossroad in a small clearing. Head in arms, Luise crouched where the roads met, and beyond, across the clearing, loomed the dark skeletal bulk of a gibbet.

  When Marvell touched her, she jumped. She pointed to the gibbet, keeping her eyes turned away, and said shakily, "I'd not remembered this was here."

  Sniffing the air, he gazed up at the heavy oaken structure. A corpse dangled there, evidently quite fresh although birds had made off with the eyes and several other accessories. It swayed in the breeze, and the chains enwrapping it tinkled a dirge in minor fifths.

  "I'd liefer 'twere an Aeolian harp," said Marvell. "But under the circumstances—What's amiss?"

  Luise had clapped hand to mouth and was shrieking quietly through it. Blue light, phosphorescent, putrescent, flowed into the clearing with the inevitability of neap tides. A skeleton emerged from the trees—a skeleton apparently assembled in some haste, for several ribs and minor bones were missing, and these it carried under one arm. It staggered forward, zigzagging like frozen lightning, with a low rattle as of chattering teeth in a shut mouth. It detoured around the crossroad. After it a dried stringy lich stalked along with the dignity of a Spanish grandee, grave-clothes bunched cloaklike on one arm. And behind it, a third . . .

  Marvell found his voice. " 'What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?" he whispered. Luise, innocent of all English, stared at him dumbly, stared again at the ghosts.

  An endless rout of them marched along—some in their habit as they lived, some marked by corruption, in charnel cerements, and some no more than indecently naked bone. Some were women, harridans and courtesans and young girls, and some dragged ghostly children with them and some dogs. A Moorish knight wafted past, turbaned and lightly mailed, stub of a broken lance in hand, followed by a troop of Negroes jingling slave-manacles. One specter held up its head lanternwise, with fingers tangled in long dark hair. Marvell, remembering his king, started; but the ghost's dress, smutched with blood and grime, was feminine. He saw other signs of the executioner's ax, and of the rope, the rack, and the lash. One youth whose forehead bore a thief-brand pulled himself along on stumps of legs. Another showed face and hands dissolved away by leprosy; but none of this company shied away from him. And over all hovered a sourceless, ceaseless moaning.

  At length the last of the procession hove in sight: two sturdy peasants dripping gore from deep-trenched gashes. They and only they seemed impatient, and pressed forward on the heels of those before them as if to hurry the march.

  Luise poked a shivering hand toward them. "Ernst and Georg," she whimpered. "Robbers waylaid them on the road day before yesterday."

  "Friends of yours?" said Marvell. "Call them to us, then, and inquire the whence and whither of this caravan. Perhaps hell's had an earthquake and these are escaped."

  Luise only burrowed into her crossed arms again. The late Georg and the late Ernst disappeared into the trees. The moaning receded, and the blue light—but not all of it.

  Turning on his heel, Marvell saw the gibbeted corpse aglow. The light grew strong, detached itself, took on the form of a burly, well-dressed man with rope-burned neck and protuberant tongue. It leaped down from the platform and went bounding away after the others.

  "Were you a familiar of this one too?" Marv
ell asked.

  "Oh, some townsman the baron condemned of highway robbery, I hear." She looked cautiously. "Are they all gone?"

  "All, and I with them. 'Tis said curiosity killed the cat, but I'm no feline; and I mean to find out whither these diverse haunters of the night are bent. Bide here. Belike 'twill be safe enough." Before she could protest, he trotted off down the path.

  The fog had lifted, but clouds still hid the stars and moon. Under the trees' clotted foliage it was darker than ever. Soon Marvell saw a point of blue light ahead, and slowed his pace so as to remain barely in sight of it.

  He lost the light in a marshy place which was not to be passed over lightly by one of mortal solidity and weight, then, hurrying to catch up, rushed unexpectedly out of the forest. He stepped back and looked through underbrush at the scene.

  On a low hill squatted a castle, blacker against the surrounding blackness but for a small lighted window midmost of its bulk. The ghosts were shuffling forward through its main gate—lined up, Marvell thought, like a crowd at a playhouse waiting to give up their farthings for places in the pit. As they filtered in, the castle began to display other windows, blue. The light inside waxed as the crowd outside diminished, until finally the entire structure took fire with it and even the lighted window was tinged, yellow turned sickly green.

  Marvell cocked an ear. The breeze blew to him noises of a hostile murmuring, howls, shouts, and imprecations uttered in hollow bodiless voices, clangor of chains, and gnashing of immaterial jaws. And above it all a booming laughter, too loud and massive to have issued from any but a living throat. He frowned in perplexity, and turned back up the path.

  When he reached the crossword again, Luise was gone. He cursed her in one breath, saved the next for walking. She was not on the path as far as it stayed in the forest. Cursing again, he thrust his way into the undergrowth.

  At last tired of the search, he dropped down by a mossy pool and meditated. "Was it the specters she fled from, or me? Hm." He leaned forward, to make out a dim reflection in the water. His moustache needed trimming, he observed. And the gray plume of his hat drooped, dank with dew.