Jack Stewart ran his own fingers through his molasses-colored curly hair, murmured about a shower, looked up and asked, “Why?”
“Why? Because I saw a specter haunting an old house, and it killed my uncle and sent my little girl into convulsions and my wife into a deep depression and, my god, it was awful! Why was it there? What was it, what is it? Nobody believes that I really saw it. Hardly anybody in academe even knows the legend, let alone believes it. Allbright does. We’re going to see Allbright. I’ve got to find out more about the legend, more about what I saw. I’ve got to find something that will help my wife and my daughter, help us put our lives back together. Bagnell knows about the legend. We’re going to see Bagnell. And . . . after that, well, we’ll see. See?”
Stewart, in turn, liked Vlad’s mind and sense of humor. But now he saw a man slumped in unhappiness, confusion, pain. There was much that he wanted to know about what happened. Much he dared not ask, which he knew would be revealed later. So he merely said, “I see.”
Vlad kicked off his shoes, rapidly undressed, said he was too tired for a shower. “Have one in the morning. Too tired even to put on the jammies. Maybe I’ll put them on in the morning, too. Going to stay up reading? Try the Gideon Bible, Job xv, 28, as a starting text. Leave the light on in the bathroom, if you like. Night.”
Jack turned on his reading light. Gideon Bible? Well, there weren’t many things you could do in a motel room. Job, huh, xv . . . 26, 27, ah . . . His finger traced its way to the verse.
28. And he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth . . .
Jack Stewart decided to leave the light on in the bathroom.
* * * *
Robert E.L. Allbright lived amidst the dense green kudzu vines, way away from anywhere, and very far away from the highways. The hand he held out was large and reddened and splotched ... a description of his face, as well. His eyes were red-rimmed and he blinked a lot. “I hope, Professor, that you may have had my letter?” asked Vlad Smith politely. Blink. Blink. “In which I said that I’d like to talk with you about the possible origins of the legends of the Paper-Man, or the Boss in the Wall?” Blink. Blink.
It was not clear if Allbright had led them into his office or his dining room. At one end of a table strewn with books and papers, a late teenaged boy was sitting beside a sort of barricade erected out of old law-books, eating breakfast cereal and milk. “My grandson, Albert S.J. Allbright. In theory he is reading law with me. When he is finished he will be a foremost authority on the foreclosure of mules.” His voice had fallen into the flattening tones of the increasingly deaf.
The boy slightly turned his head and raised his hand to it, as though to wipe away Rice Crispies and, looking straight at Stewart said, low-voiced, “You got a joint?”
Stewart opened his mouth to reply, looked at his elders and turned his own head slightly.
The boy got up and shuffled dishes. “Go git you some coffee,” he said.
“Give you a hand,” said Stewart.
“Well,” said Allbright, “I got your letter, where did I put that shoe box?” He rummaged among the many shoe boxes and other things on the table. “Put it - Florsheim Shoes - here.” He took up the shoe box, turned it over. A sheaf of typescript settled down on the table. Inasmuch as the width of the average shoe box is somewhat less than that of the average sheet of typing paper, someone had neatly trimmed the papers. The idea had something of the simplicity of genius.
“Here ‘tis,” Allbright said, “Here ‘tis. A True Account Prepared From The Original Testimony, of the Capture and Death of a Paper-Man on the Lands and Domains of Jim Oglethorpre Allbright, Esquire, as edited by his Grandson, Professor Robert E.L. Allbright. With Notes and Commentaries. - Sorry I don’t have a clear copy to give you. Like to look at it?”
“Well,” said Vlad, slightly bowled over. “I’d like to . . . yes . . . I’d like to talk with you about it. I’d like you to tell me about it, if you don’t mind.”
Allbright said there was mighty little to tell. “He was located, as my diagram shows, my map here, he was found in one of the old tobacco barns we used to have. And it was set fire to, and he was seen as he ran off, and he was tracked down. My Great Grandmother was at hand, and she rallied the Negras, and they behaved very bravely, yes sir. My Grandfather was at war at the time, and his old mother guarded the fort, so to speak, and gave them courage. Because generally speaking they would have fled like deer from such an apparition; who could blame them?”
Who indeed, thought Vlad bleakly.
“As it was, they stoned him with stones until he died.”
“What?”
Old Allbright slowly nodded his massive, mottled head. “It is what happened, Professor Smith. To be sure.” He looked at Vlad directly. “There were skeptics, aren’t there always? Some of them said he was a Union prisoner, escaped from Andersonville Prison. Prisoncamp, we would call it nowadays. Some said that was why he was so gant. Well, no one denies that Andersonville was very bad. What comes of putting a Dutchman in charge of things. A Switzerdutchman. Starved his prisoners, the scoundrel. Went back to Switzerland during the war, went and returned by running the blockade. How much you want to bet he put a lot of money in one of those banks over there?”
Jack Stewart and the younger Allbright returned, carrying a tray with coffee and mugs, which they set on the table.
“As for the other skeptical account, why, some said that the creature killed was a Confederate deserter who had stripped off his uniform so as not to be identified, and had taken up some rags of old clothes from who knows where, maybe from a farmhouse in the middle of a battlefield. You know there was an old farmhouse right in the midst of the Battle of Bull Run, and an old lady died in that house during the battle, and who knows what went on in there. And as for the creature’s gant condition, maybe he hadn’t eaten well while he was hiding and skulking. He was discovered in the tobacco barn and tobacco is a filthy weed. I like it, but it’s notnourishing, which might explain his extreme thinness, and if hunger left him too weak to bathe in a creek, his extreme filthiness - if the explanations of the skeptics be true. I have offered this fully-documented account to no less than fourteen publications, and would you believe that ten of them decisively declined, and that four did not even reply?”
Jack said, rather abruptly, “If you tell it, sir, I would believe it. Otherwise I would not.”
Vlad also looked surprised. “I should think that such an account of the myth in action would be very acceptable, considering the historical period, and from someone of your stature in the field.”
“My stature in the field. Well, well.” Blink. Blink. His reddened face grew redder yet, but his voice remained flat. “If you had spent as much time in the Groves of Acadeemee as I have, it would perhaps surprise you less.” He poured coffee.
Later in the car Vlad said, “I don’t mind telling you that I was feeling just a bit spooked.”
The kudzu vines sped by, sped by. There seemed to be hardly anybody around, and the few people they saw didn’t seem to be doing anything. Surely they did not, could not, eat the damned stuff.
“Know what you mean,” Jack Stewart said. “What’d you think of that boy, buried alive out here, no wonder he couldn’t think of anything except grass.”
“Well, you can’t smoke kudzu.”
“He said a funny thing, we were sort of rapping about that and this. Well I did most of the talking about old Paper-Man, and he said, ‘You know Larraby’s got one locked up, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘No, who’s Larraby, and what’s he got?’ And then he took a loooong toke, and he said, ‘Well, if you don’t know who Larraby is, then I don’t know what he’s got.’ “
Vlad said, “We can ask Ed Bagnell at Sumner Public College.”
And then conversation faded away in the face of endless green tangles of kudzu . . . kudzu.
* * * *
Dr Edward Bagnell was on the telephone: “Dr Claire Zimmerman, please. Claire? Ed. D
o you have your little slate and pencil there? Okay, Listen. On whatsoever excuse, I want you to go to Rhode Island and see Dr Silas Abbott Selby of the Providence Plantations Museum; this refers to the Paper-Man Project. It’s of gross importance and intense confidence; you will go and question Selby about a rumor that he has a Paper-Man’s head. Don’t scream into the phone, for God’s sake. Heard it from Curator Luke Larraby of the Carolina Coast Museum, who has Selby in the sights of his Parrott guns - that’s confidential. I doubt if one visit will get you a peep, but be prepared to keep at it. It may require a slightly less severe costume and manner; that’s up to you. That’s all. Kiss, kiss.”
Silas Selby had another view of the matter. He sipped Fundador, and looked at Claire over the rim of the glass. Her cropped dark hair framed her round face. They were in the W. Waldo Brown Room, endowed by the philanthropist of that name, some said in order to have a quiet place to drink brandy without his wife.
“Larraby has no training as a museum specialist whatsoever,” he said flatly. “He was an architect, and sort of a house doctor for old houses, patching them up, I mean. By and by he began to do work for the old museums down there in Carolina. Well, they were short all kinds of trained people, and he was a quick study, enthusiastic and willing to turn his hand to anything, willing to read up and become the local authority on anything; just the sort of man they needed when the curatorship fell vacant.” Selby sipped his brandy, gazed at Claire, and let his eyebrows rise and fall.
“Well, somehow or other Luke had acquired a local mummy. Ante-bellum, post-bellum, or just plain bellum. There are places throughout the world where the soil tends to preserve bodies laid to rest, and such bodies sometimes turned up down Luke’s way in places unexpected. I think they became sort of cult objects, who can say why? People went mum when one asked, and people looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes. Local name for them was ‘Paper-Men’ or ‘Paper Doll,’ because the local lovers of grue and ghoulishness had been in the habit of padding their wasted bodies with old newspapers under the clothes, which made them look less gant and skeletal, chests less fallen in, stomachs less shrunken and so on. The ancient Egyptians used small sacks of cedar sawdust for the same purpose, after all. It is reminiscent of old Jeremy Bentham, stuffed and mounted and in his best clothes, attending the annual meetings of the . . . whichever society. - Now perhaps I should not be telling you all this, Doctor Zimmerman, may I call you Claire? But I feel I can count upon your -?”
He peered at her again over his wine-glass. She assured him (again) that he might count on her.
“More brandy, Miss Zimmerman, or a biscuit? Very well, though I hate to be a solitary drinker.” Selby sipped his own. “I was visiting the provincial museums, and had to go about checking it ever so circumspectly. Couldn’t come right out and demand to see it. Well, Larraby kept that Paper Doll thing hidden in a Rinso box in a broom closet! It was in three pieces, in totally deplorable condition. A great troll of a janitor was lurking around. Details shall be spared you. ‘Luke, confound it, this should be kept in a moisture- and temperature-controlled, sealed case.’ “
“Couldn’t agree with you more,” said Larraby.
“Then why isn’t it?”
“Haven’t got one, is why. Besides, our fragrant friend might spook the city senseless.”
“ ‘And there should be a series of tests made, examinations, measurements, tissue samples. Let me give this some thought.’ To make the matter short, a complex plan was worked out. Some recently acquired shekel medallions would be sent to Larraby as sort of hostages, and the head of his precious mummy would be sent north to Rhode Island to be tested, teeth for example. Meanwhile I looked into getting a proper sealed case for it. But after a very short time, old Luke Larraby began demanding his, um, object back, and making ridiculous charges that the shekels weren’t authentic. Said the shekel medallions, of 18th century European manufacture, had been represented as actual 2nd century shekels of the last Jewish Commonwealth, which was certainly not stipulated in the agreement. Said his miserable mini-museum had now provided a more secure repository than the broom closet. Well, the tests take a long time, so Silas Abbott Selby stood firm.” The empty glass came down firmly on the table and his eyes firmly held Claire’s.
“And I am not likely to yield, my dear Miss, ah, my dear Doctor Zimmerman, for in strictest confidence, there is a great deal of mystery about this whole thing. The tests are inconclusive, but I can disclose that the tests show no traces of such chemical embalming agents as arsenic or formaldehyde or anything more modern. Though what they did disclose was both interesting and puzzling. Certain tissues are inconsistent with . . . the state of certain sinew fragments, soft tissue, brain matter and spinal matter, epidermal cells . . . but I have no wish to be prolix. Oh, the press would like nothing more, nothing better than to compare us, by ‘us’ I mean the Carolina Coast Museum and the General Museum of the Province of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, compare us to Burke and Hare. Ha ha.”
“Oh, surely you need not rush away now. A glass of Fundador? Do let me pour you, our Fundador is famous - well, I have very much enjoyed. And should you hear, should you just hear any of, ha ha ha, Curator Larraby’s, he has no degree in museum science, you know, of his complaints against this ancient and august institution, older than our Republic, well, ha ha, just consider the source. Allow me to help you with your wraps - well, Goodnight, Miss, Doctor Zimmerman. Claire.”
In a semi-senile tortoise shuffle came Dr H. Brown Roberts. “Who was that young woman, Selby? Surely you were not entertaining a personal female guest in these semi-Senatorial chambers, endowed by Uncle Waldo Brown, eh? Looked like a flapper to me. Eh?”
Framed in the arch of the ancient gallery, Dr Roberts wagged his snowy head. His white-thatched nostrils gleamed. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t signify. I’m only old Harry Roberts, and I don’t signify, though I am still on the Budget Committee. I guess I know a flapper when I see one, and I know a good bottle of Fundador when I see one, so pour me a glass, Silas Selby. Call me a Brandy Baptist if you like, what care I; I’m only old Harry Roberts and my years of labor don’t signify. Pour metwo glasses of good Spanish brandy, or I’ll tell the Budget Committee about your stinking old head, and what will they say about that? - Ah. Hah ha. Mmmm. Tell you I know a flapper when I see one.”
* * * *
Edward Bagnell, Doctor of Philosophy, friend of Dave Branch, and holder of other distinctions greeted Vlad Smith and Jack Stewart in the Elephant Room of Sumner Public College’s Museum of Ethnology. The Elephant Room contained a rather large and awful oil painting of the progress of some Hindu maharaja, the gift of a long-ago benefactor. The painting’s cleaning was fiercely resisted on the grounds that it was best left obscured.
Bagnell waved them to a large leather sofa. “I daresay you’d like to know why it’s Sumner Public College? Every body wants to. I am able to dispel the mystery. The founding fathers and the one founding mother put the word in to show that the college was a serf to neither church nor state. As some still are. How do you like the Elephant Room? It looks like the antechamber of a rather seedy club, but here the Department of Ethnology holds out by being part anthropology, part folklore, and part whatever. We claim to have pioneered the inter-disciplinary study; haw. And here is where the ethnologists gather to drink embalming fluid, as wine is only allowed on campus for certain ceremonial occasions. How is Allbright doing?”
Stewart took the reply upon himself. “Old man gives the impression that he’s mostly letting the kudzu grow over him, but he isn’t really. And the boy makes cryptic statements such as ‘Larraby’s got one locked up.’ “ He repeated what he had told Vlad and concluded, “You have any idea what that means, Dr Bagnell?”
Ed Bagnell shrugged. “Probably that Larraby, whoever he may be, has a report on the legend, and is keeping it locked up until he’s ready to publish. Typical academic paranoia, eh Vlad?”
After answering no more than a grunt, V
lad slowly began to speak of his own and immediate problem. Of encountering by moonlight in the old uninhabited house, something so hideous, noisome, foul that he might have thought it was madness to think it was real. Only to find the sight so real as to drive his small daughter past terror and hysteria. “Do you understand why I’m trying to find out. . .” he waved his hands helplessly, “. . . what the damned thing was? That, that vanished in an instant? One minute it was there, another minute nothing was there, as though, just as though it had come out of the wall. The police say ‘Tramp’ - it was no tramp! The only thing it resembled was that old legend, and that’s why I’m here, Ed. In my file on the legend is a collection of items labeled Bagnell’s Notes. I won’t go so far as to say they are yellowed, but they are far from crisp. May I ask how you got interested in the legend of the Paper-Man, or whatever name you call it by?”
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology] Page 38
