The Year's Best Horror Stories 11

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  The little train left the main line at Marsh Farm Junction and headed out across Wenlock Edge, that lovely country of Houseman’s verses. (I will refrain from comment on Mary Webb, that other Salopian writer of note—since I know her bilge is popular with Mr. Timothy!) The sun was behind Long Mynd and one could not have guessed from the wild beauty of the scene that a little farther along this rural railway lay Shropshire’s ‘black country’—the iron foundries of Coalbrookdale and Horsehay & Dawley (what a deceptively lovely name!), dating back to 1709 and the Dudley family; though I believe charcoal forges had heated iron in those hills since Tudor times.

  I was the only passenger to alight in the soft warm air at Longbury. The porter took my ticket, and replied to my compliment in the well-kept flower beds on the platform. “A welcome to you, Mr. Cummings,” he said, with a rather odd look at me, and signaled to a waiting car outside before marching off to the little cabin at the end of the platform to receive the tablet back from the engine driver. Clearly my coming was known in the village.

  As I stepped forward to meet my cousin I could hear the explosive staccato bark of the train pulling away from the station and off toward Much Wenlock.

  My cousin Sefton was a likeable enough chap, who was obviously intending me to stay at his farm. However in course of conversation on details of the morrow’s funeral, it transpired that my great aunt’s body was lying alone at her cottage. “Harry Jones, the Undertaker, wouldn’t take her to his parlor of course,” was the bald statement in Sefton’s Shropshire accents. When I asked the reason, and why “of course,” I was met with a shrug of the shoulders. In my stubborn way, I therefore determined to spend the night at the cottage, if only for the remembrance of her kiss, half-crown and annual pound! Seeing I meant what I said, Sefton made no argument—though he was clearly surprised—gave me the key and said there would doubtless be provisions in the larder. He gave me his telephone number “in case” (there were phones at the pub, village store and vicarage). As he dropped me with my suitcase at the gate to the cottage, I said brightly, “Well, if I’m lonely, I’ll drop into the pub.”

  “Mebbee you’d better not,” he said, with an odd look. “In any case, you won’t lack for company.” And with that he drove off.

  I walked up the well-remembered path through the tidy garden, full of the scent of thyme and other herbs, and with roses and honeysuckle over the porch and walls; opened the door and put on the light. Great Aunt Lucy was lying in her open coffin in the old parlor. Even the tang of medication could not mask the all-pervading smell of unlit fire. What memories that smell evoked! I looked at my aunt’s waxen features; she was smaller than I remembered and her face had got thinner and more lined. As I bent and kissed her cold forehead, I became conscious of a murmur of voices from beyond the chapel wall. There must be a ‘Convenanters’ meeting or something in progress—though six o’clock of an evening was an odd time to have it. I put my ear to the wall; the murmur resolved into the voices of a man and woman, but I could catch nothing of what they had said. I went outside to look at the chapel wing, but it was immediately obvious in the gloaming that there were no lights within; indeed, the door was locked. How peculiar! However, remembering my childhood tenor on the stairs, I just had to accept that this was a house of inexplicable sounds. This put me in mind of my other fright and I looked apprehensively toward the louring bulk of the Wash House, thought better of it and went back into the cottage. The muffled voices had, I thought, sunk to whispers, but might have ceased altogether. I gave it up and went into the scullery to forage.

  My accomplishments of yesteryear returned, and I soon had a fire going in the range and a kettle on the hob before the open enamel door. I managed very well with some eggs that proved to be quite fresh and some slices of cured ham. There was a big valve radio and I switched it on to have some noise about me: the place was deathly quiet, which I found uncanny—there were not even the usual mice or cockroaches of the country cottage. Maybe my aunt’s herbal knowledge had kept them at bay. Thinking of this, I returned to the front room where she lay, and looked into the curtained alcove. Her equipment was still there. I swung the pans of the scale idly and my eye caught a protruding knothole in the wall paneling. It came out easily into my hand leaving a small black hole. Selecting a dried grass stem from a small bundle on the table top, I poked it into the hole—it went through. So, the old lady had a peephole into the chapel from her seat at the table. I leaned forward to apply my eye to the hole, but of course all was dark within; though, I must say, I felt there was a cautious shifting movement beyond me in the murk. After all, it was now quite dark outside. However, in leaning forward I had put all my weight on the edge of the table, which must have loosed some spring or catch, for an unsuspected drawer appeared—stealthily as it were—without a sound from underneath. It gave me quite a start. The drawer was large and shallow, cleverly concealed to fit flush to the side of the table and remain undetected. In it were several books of the ledger type. Pushing the drawer back I took them to read beside the scullery range, for the room was becoming decidedly chilly. At any rate they might make better reading than Virtue’s Reward or Little Jeremy’s Prayers, offered by the bookcase.

  As I crossed to the door I got a severe shock and dropped the books. Aunt Lucy’s head had turned in the coffin and had tensed or contracted into a distinctly malevolent leer, as if she were sharing a secret—and that none too pleasant a one—with me. Startled, but reassuring myself from my ignorance, that such muscular contractions might be quite normal in corpses, I bent and put my ear to her chest (I must admit to a fear that her arms would rise from her sides and clasp me!) but there was no heartbeat of course. I took a small glass dish from the herb table and held its cold surface to her lips and nostrils, but there was no dimming at all: that was enough for me . . . I left the range fire to die out, put out the lights and radio, and scuttled off down the drive to the pub. I had fully intended to visit the Wash House with an electric torch to dispel my childish dread of its gloomy shadows, but now—admitting my unreasoning cowardice to myself—I no longer had any such notion.

  Clearly both publican and villagers knew who I was. They weren’t hostile—simply wary and offhand. There was no room to let it seemed. (I almost expected the landlord to add “Leastways not to you.”) A fine situation: either I could go back to the cottage, or phone Sefton and admit that I couldn’t stay with one dead old lady for whom I had previously and arrogantly asserted pity and dutiful affection. Clearly I should get nowhere asking any villager for a bed . . .

  So I went back to the cottage, poked and fuelled the fire back to life and put the radio on loud for company. Jeff and Luke, and the other “Riders of the Range,” investigating a ghost town in the West did not help my mood much, what with the creaking doors and mysterious footsteps: I found some music instead. Then I settled myself in the chimney corner, back to the two walls, to browse through the books. All were painstakingly compiled in longhand, making use of extensive but simple abbreviations. Although not copper-plate, the hand was bold and clear and the first tome proved to be the old girl’s Herbal; clearly a valuable compilation. (I subsequently presented it to the library at Kew.) Aunt Lucy had obviously been an amateur botanist of very practical bent: there were notes of where plants could be found in the locality, sketches of their anatomy and counsel on how to propagate them. There was an extensive cross-indexing of entries and a long list of ailments and cures, some of the latter distinctly odd. The second book was heavier and thicker, and had an alphabetical thumb-index. It was rather like a doctor’s case book, for under family names it contained details of treatments and transactions she had carried out. To my surprise and dismay however, on closer reading it also contained a great deal of intimate, scandalous and often sordid detail about persons in the parish. Clearly her view had been ‘knowledge is power’ and there could be no doubt she had shamelessly and callously exploited the confidence (willing or unwilling) of her ‘clients.’ Thus I could read of Mais
ie Bassett’s indiscretions, unwanted pregnancy and the conclusion of that little affair, and the subsequent use my Aunt had made of her knowledge; or—again—the ‘threats’ of local doctor and clergy—to whom one hapless victim had obviously confessed; and so on. I’m ashamed to say that the horrible fascination of the pathetic (and very human) errors catalogued in detail, kept me reading. By the time I’d read for several hours, I was feeling extremely tired. In a fit of disgust I threw the book on to the range fire and poked and stoked at it, until the ghastly catalog of human frailties was consumed.

  To be quite frank, I did not fancy going upstairs, and arranged chairs before the fire so that I could stretch out; made some more milkless tea and settled down with the final volume.

  This appeared to be an attempt at a narrative/journal based on her daily round, but the writing—which started out legible and clear—became much less so, showing clear signs of hasty setting down and lack of care, in contrast to the other books. It deteriorated so that letters were often unformed or words missed out—so fast, I judged, had the writer’s thoughts flowed ahead of the pen. With the heat from the range and the sighing of the fire within (the radio broadcasts having ceased), I drowsed over the lines of barbed-wire script, which blurred before my eyes as if water had poured across the page.

  I found myself rethinking some details of my visit of ten years earlier. I had slept in the little front room upstairs where the ceiling sloped down to a tiny window that overlooked the pathways and village lane. In my mind’s eye, I could see that fresh, whitewashed room with rush mats on the floor and rough but comfortable bedding scented with dried lavender heads. There was a biblical picture, “The Light of the World,” over the bed. I knew I had suddenly woken, for the harvest moon shone direct on my face through the open window. I heard a sound outside and climbed up, with some difficulty for my legs were short, into the tiny window recess up in the wall, to look out. The gardens and paths were bathed in ethereal brilliance and there was a slight ground mist. To my surprise, two figures were standing by the chapel, locked in each-other’s arms. A stealthy sound came from the house below me and someone—it could only be my aunt—came out of the front room and into the garden. She came from under the porch into my range of vision, down the chapel path to the herb garden, and toward the couple, making shooing gestures with her hands. They had turned to face her, the man’s arm protectingly round the woman; then I must have blinked or something, for all of an instant they were gone, and my aunt was pacing sedately back to the house. As luck would have it, she looked up and saw me leaning from the window, and that strange grimace I had seen earlier crossed her face. I shot back into bed, overturning the chair with a clatter, and lay quiet; frozen with fear between the sheets. I heard her come upstairs and pause on the landing outside my door, with creaking of floorboards. “Please don’t let her come in,” my child’s mind was praying. Came a further creaking of the boards and a low laugh . . . and I awoke, with that laugh still held in my ears, to find myself back in the present, a grown man, but upstairs in the dark, crouched on the small bed and clutching a handful of counterpane!

  As a grown man, I could stand on the chair (which I righted!) and look out of the window without getting on to the ledge. It was nearly morning; the moon had waned and there was nothing to be seen. It was, indeed, that ‘darkest hour.’ I pulled myself together, put on the landing light and went downstairs, nerving myself to enter the front room. There lay Aunt Lucy in her coffin, head returned to face the ceiling; the risus sardonicus, or whatever it might be, had gone and her features were composed.

  There was plenty of life in the range fire, and I drew it up to boil water for tea and to fry some eggs. I picked up the books where they had fallen to the floor and put them on the table. After eating I washed myself at the sink and went up the lane for a walk, to see the welcome dawn break over the hills and to enjoy the birds’ chorus.

  I was listening to the nine o’clock news on the radio when the undertaker’s men arrived to close the coffin. Not long after, Sefton and some others of the family arrived, and after introductions we preceded the pall bearers into the chapel, where the itinerant preacher was removing his bicycle clips. After a brief service and tribute to Aunt Lucy’s long years of caretaker duty, we marched ahead of the hearse up the village street to the new burial ground beyond the churchyard. Few if any of the villagers were about and none had attended the service; yet curtains twitched and a few heads were looking over the churchyard wall . . . no doubt wondering if their secrets had gone to the grave with her.

  As we walked away leaving her in the ground, a formally dressed young man touched my arm and introduced himself as my aunt’s lawyer. He gave me an ordinary manila envelope addressed in her writing. I undertook to contact him about the will in due course, and he got into his 14 hp Austin and drove off.

  I declined Sefton’s invitation and returned to the cottage as I wanted to catch the afternoon train back to Craven Arms and college, if possible. Outside the pub, the landlord was shiftily watering his potted geraniums in the window boxes. He turned reluctantly as I spoke: “I found some notes of my aunt’s concerning the business of folk in the village.” He swallowed hard and eyed my tie-knot. “You may like to tell them that I have burned the lot and that their privacy is respected.” He mumbled something, then—spontaneously—shook my hand and turned away as if in embarrassment. I guessed that at any rate, he and Maisie Bassett would sleep the easier now.

  My aunt’s letter was brief and to the point, enclosing a copy of her will. “You have my gift of sight,” she wrote. “Do what you will with it. Meantime you will find in my herb table” (here she gave directions for opening the drawer I had already discovered) “some books—use them as you see fit. If you should care to succeed me as a healer you will find that the villagers will support you because of the great knowledge in these books. My journal will explain that which mystified you as a child and I leave you to do what you think necessary.” In essence, the will itself left the cottage and effects to me if I chose to occupy them, or—if sold—to divide the proceeds between Sefton and myself.

  Clearly then, the ‘Journal’ that I had mistaken for an embryo novel, was the one I wanted; so I settled down to read it there and then. As I did so, my hair began to rise.

  By this account, my Uncle’s ministry had not been confined to the spiritual plane where the females of his congregation were concerned. Certainly the decisive involvement with that farm lass—a distant relative—had deteriorated from spiritual to physical in remarkably short time; and the undue amount of spiritual guidance given to her alone in the chapel would have aroused suspicion in far less astute a person than Aunt Lucy, who had clearly put her peephole to good use. Her writing grew less and less legible as she vengefully recorded some of their inane utterances and the more sacrilegious aspects of their behavior in the apparent security and privacy of the chapel. She bode her time and thus became aware of the girl’s pregnancy as soon as her husband. Rage almost obliterated her meaning when she wrote of their plans to run away together, and I had a hard time deciphering the scrawl.

  Once they had arranged a rendezvous at the chapel gate for a certain evening, she acted with speed and decision. Suffice it to say that along with an appetite for the females of his flock, my uncle liked ‘Welsh cakes,’ those unleavened sweet buns baked in the oven from flour and water. My aunt simply substituted flour made from the roots of Hawthorn (For obvious reasons this identity is incorrect. However, there are well-documented cases where multiple hawthorn scratches—hedging etc—have produced nausea and vertigo) which contain a virulent poison that baking would reduce in toxicity to a general paralytic agent.

  Inert as he was; paralyzed, but horribly conscious, she had dragged her offending spouse on a carpet out to the Wash House, humped him upright, then—with the aid of the laundry basket hook and line—upended him, head first, into the water butt. There she left him to drown, upside down, while she returned the carpet to the cott
age and swept it clean.

  I was so horrified at this ‘confession,’ that I could hardly continue reading.

  However, the agitated, eccentric handwriting continued relentlessly to relate how, later that night, the girl had arrived at the chapel gate to rendezvous with my uncle. Aunt Lucy had put a thick sack over her head and dragged her into the Wash House, where a hurricane lamp was lit. The first thing the terrified girl saw when the sack was removed was the flaccid body of her dead lover hanging upside down out of the big sink—his inverted face toward her, eyes staring blankly and hair dripping on to the floor. She had shrieked and fallen in a fit, which had made it easy for Auntie to hoist her similarly into the butt—head first again, to prevent any chance of her getting out even if she revived. Aunt then went off to make a cup of tea, gathering up the girl’s bag of belongings en route. An hour or so later she hoisted the sodden bundle of dead girl out with the basket hook and reunited the lovers in the sink. It seems incredible to me, but she left them there all next day, during which she instituted a search for her missing husband and played the worried wife. Simultaneously the police were looking for the missing girl, and they soon concluded—in the light of local opinion—that the two had run away together. A report of a couple seen boarding an early train to Hereford at Craven Arms seemed to confirm the theory. That night my aunt dug up a portion of her herb garden and buried them both, bags and all beneath the thyme. When the local policeman came with tidings of the ‘Craven Arms couple’ she was placidly hoeing the topsoil around the thyme plants—which (she said) were doing rather badly that year.

  (Mr. Cummings paused. We all sat in silence, surprised at the sudden blunt turn of his narrative. With a heavy sigh, he continued . . .)

  I sat down for a long time, thinking over this chronicle of events which—if true—would scandalize Wenlock for years. On the other hand, the protagonists were all dead, with no direct family links remaining; what possible benefit to anyone to stir up a mess of this nature, now? My prospect of catching the afternoon train vanished, for I needed a talk with Sefton: his common-sense would be a lifeline to my somewhat disordered wits.