The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  “I got interested when I read an unpublished paper on it, and remembered I’d long ago met a possible informant, and hadn’t realized it. One day when I was a kid, I was walking in a strange part of town and I came to an old house, abandoned and all overgrown. I thought I’d go in and look around, when a creepy old man hobbled from out of nowhere, with torn old clothes, and just a few teeth grinding in stubbly jaws, and he smelled very funny. Later an old lumberjack said to me, as if reading my mind, ‘Don’t go in that old house, boy, a Boss in the Wall lives there. They’re crazy people who think they’re dead, and they wrap themselves in paper, and they rattle like snakes and bite like snakes, so don’t go in there, boy.’ “

  Stewart paid the ultimate compliment. He sat straight up and said, “No shit?”

  “But I decided that poor old man was just a bum or tramp, who staked out a place for himself and didn’t want me inside. Years later I read the unpublished item, and all the elements fit, so naturally I became interested. I wrote a paper on the subject, and mine remains unpublished too. So there you are, gentlemen.”

  “What conclusions did you come to, for example, about the origins of the legend?” asked Vlad.

  Bagnell shrugged. “It’s like trying to trace down the origins of a fog. The fog exists and you can see it, but it always seems to begin somewhere else. Compare it to other American legends, that is, you can trace groundhog stories to badger stories, but then you trace them right back to groundhogs. Sometimes we folklorists take every possibility into consideration except the human longing for a good yarn, which sometimes means a good scary yarn.” A twig snapped in the fireplace and Bagnell said, “If fireplaces were concealed inside walls, they might be calledsnappers. All the legends are attached to old houses, and old houses often creak. They attract drifters and outcasts of broken minds and unclean habits, who remind us of childhood terror-tales of ghosts and skeletons and god knows what. And so a legend evolves.”

  Vlad asked if Bagnell had anything new to show him. Bagnell suggested he might call Dave Branch, but Vlad remainded him that it was Branch who had sent him to Bagnell.

  “Well,” Bagnell said, “I don’t know what to tell you, Vlad, I just don’t know what to tell you.”

  Vlad did not move for a while, then he let himself sink back in the chair. Behind him hung a beautiful photograph, an enlargement in sepia of a group of Ainu at a long-ago American world’s fair. They gazed through the camera as from some lost continent, too dignified to show their infinite bewilderment and their, vast sense of doom.

  After Vlad and Jack departed, Bagnell picked up the phone: “Dr Bagnell returning Dr Branch’s call. Hello, Dave? Yes, I know you hadn’t called; that’s just a ploy, never fails - sly. Listen, one Vladimir Smith Ph.D.. He’s tracking the Paper-Man legend. I just have one question: you didn’t mention the Committee to him, did you? No, good, that’s fine. Back to your learned discourses. Bye.”

  * * * *

  “Rawheaded Bloody Bones” may be an undifferentiated spook, but it is certainly vividly different from the rather enigmatic “The Boss in the Wall” which, to some informants, suggests an image of the human mind trapped inside the skull, and which has been reported from Mobile, Alabama to Jacksonville, Florida, and on up the Atlantic Coast for a few states more. “Rawheaded Bloody Bones” would not remind you right away of the “Greasy-Man” of Corpus Christi, Brownsville and Porta Isabella (all Texas). In all these places, however, “Greasy-Man” is also known as “String-Fellow” or “The String-Fellow.” It’s been conjectured that the latter name may come from the jerky, puppet-like walk attributed to the phenomenon. In New Orleans, of course, where every superstition flourishes, most of these names may be found, plus, as might be expected, the zomby-zumbi-jumbie-duppy group of names (see Limekiller): with the important difference that no “Paper-Man” etc. has ever been alleged “held to service or labor.” In other words, Zomby may have been at one time a slave, but Paper-Man was not.

  - Bagnell’s Notes

  Bagnell had arranged for Vlad and Jack to stay in a college guesthouse where Bagnell, himself, had recently stayed while his house was being painted. In the drawer of a nightstand Vlad found a sheaf of forgotten papers, labeled Duplicate of Dr Bagnell’s Committee Report. Vlad felt a twinge of scruple. Should he read it? But what has been duplicated can hardly be personal. So . . .

  “Mr Ernest Anderson is a trapper in a nearby state. He and his family moved into a structure known locally as ‘the Old Linsey Mill.’ The exterior is brick, but the inside is built of more eclectic materials. The main mill building has been closed for years, and the family lives in part of it. From the start of their residence there, it seems there were odd noises and odd smells, and one of the children claimed to have seen something. Mr Anderson, being a trapper, set a number of traps. On the night of the given date, a loud noise was heard from the second floor, described as the rattling and thrashing of a creature caught in a trap. Mr Anderson and other male relatives left the living quarters to rush upstairs, but then they heard loud screams and ran back to the living quarters, because one of the children was having some sort of fit.”

  Here Vlad’s blood ran cold as he continued reading . . .

  “Mr Anderson drove the child to the West County Medical Center, and it wasn’t until much later that he was able to check the upstairs trap. It had been sprung, and inside the trap was a badly crushed, but easily identifiable human foot that seemed to be in a mummified condition. There was no sign of blood, and there was an immensely strong and fetid odor. I asked Mr Anderson if the force of the trap being sprung could have severed the foot from the ankle. He answered, and remember that he has long been a trapper; he said that the foot had been gnawed off.”

  Attached to the pages was an envelope, and inside the envelope was a horrible close-up photograph. Of the foot. Vlad let the pages flutter away. He tried to swallow, but found that he could not. After a while he got up and went for a glass of water.

  “You all right, Vlad?” asked Jack from the adjoining room.

  “No, I am not.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  “No, I don’t.” Vlad gave him the papers. Jack read them and looked up with an expression part-puzzled, part-unhappy. Vlad handed him the envelope. Jack looked at the photograph, then looked at Vlad with horrified eyes. “Jesus,” he said.

  Vlad said, “What the hell? Is this a loop? Am I a prisoner in a Moebius strip, or is it all a bad dream?”

  Jack Stewart said, “No, it’s not a bad dream. I’m sorry, I wish it were. I still don’t know what it means, but it’s not what we thought it meant - what we were told it meant. We’re in another country from now on. A country with strange inhabitants and unknown boundaries.”

  * * * *

  IV. Bagnell’s Quest

  Bagnell was walking, on his way to see Larraby again.

  Who first developed the notion of The Phenomenon of the One-Legged Man in the Blue Baseball Cap? Bagnell did not know, but he knew the phenomenon well enough. You never saw such a person in your life, the story went, and the first day you see him, you see two more. Not merely two, mind you, but two more. Walking past the row of old stores which had, almost too late, been saved from destruction by a committee of concerned citizens - concerned, and prosperous - called Rowan Row, simply because it was on Rowan Street; walking along on the other side of the street, Bagnell looked up. He looked up with a jerk of his head; he had not intended to stop, for he had walked slowly past the old buildings earlier, had looked in the shop windows, seen nothing he wanted to examine closely; he looked up now with a jerk of his head. Had he seen, could he have seen a sign readingPaper-Man? He had not. Not quite.

  The shop buildings were all of brick and one story high, and dated from the 1830s. Some attempt had been made to preserve or restore the period flavor: where the tobacco store had been was a tobacco store now, and outside it was a wooden Indian. Apothecary’s had a row of very attractive apothecary’s jars on display, plus
antique equipment in a glass case, and as for the rest, offered exactly what was sold in any other drugstore.

  PasTime Paper Antiques, the sign read; which Bagnell had seen out of the corner of his ever-ready-to-deceive-you eyes. It had not caught his attention at first because it was, actually, above eye-level on its own side of the street. He stared a moment. He crossed the street. In the window were such things as well-weathered marriage documents illuminated in color in the Pennsylvania Dutch fraktur style, with flowering trees never seen even in botanical gardens, on the boughs of which were distelfinks, birds unknown to ornithology. There were a pair of US Navy certificates identifying Chauncey Casey as Caulker and Clarence Casey asSailmaker, dated in the 1890s. There were a few posters in extravagant tints, and a small sedate notice, more inside. Bagnell noticed a selection of lacy valentines.

  Bagnell noticed the Paper-Man in the very front part of the window.

  An old-fashioned bell bobbed and dipped and rang as Bagnell swung the door widely open. An informally-neatly-dressed gentleman in perhaps his early forties appeared from behind an oriental screen. “If there were a time-travel machine,” the man said, quizzing his eyebrows, “I’d go back and murder whoever it was who cut something out of this copy of Godey’s Ladies’ Book, October 1842. Just imagine. Does this interest you? Yours for a dollar.” He thrust it forward, but Bagnell did not thrust a dollar at him.

  “I’d like to see one of the daguerreotypes in the window,” Bagnell said. He realized that he was speaking very fast. He realized that he was breathing very fast. “The second one from the right.”

  “Certainly. - Please help yourself,” the man gestured to two bowls on a little table, and went forward to the window. With great control, Bagnell did not go with him, did not even turn to watch him. He examined the bowls. One contained small candies; the other was full of business cards reading:

  PasTime Paper Antiques

  Number 7, Rowan Row

  Mr Sydney, Proprietor

  Mr Sydney, Proprietor, returned. He held in his hand what looked like a tiny book, and handed it to Bagnell, who at once unclasped the tiny hook and reopened it: it was the right one. It was the likeness of a young man in uniform, in no way remarkable, one might see him or his mates today drinking canned beer and watching television anywhere in town. Anywhere in the United States. “That is real leather and real brass, the casing, I mean, hardly to be found anymore anywhere; and the same goes for the satin facing the picture.”

  Bagnell asked the price, and Mr Sydney slipped behind the screen and returned with a loose-leaf notebook which he now consulted. “Ah, yes. The collection of six daguerreotypes, I must tell you that they are actually ambrotypes, a slightly later process, but I follow your own usage which is my own as well; the collection of six daguerreotypes are for sale at $1,000, plus, alas, State sales tax of 3.7 percent. Sell only the single one? Oh I am afraid not. They are after all a collection, and I couldn’t sell just one. Not for less than $200, that is. And no, we don’t take credit cards or out-of-state checks. Sorry. These are after all collectors’ items, and a very good investment.” He proceeded to tell Bagnell about one such which had appreciated even as it sat in the window; adding, “Though if these are still here when the weather gets hotter, of course I will bring them inside because I am afraid of them fading.”

  * * * *

  Curator Luke Larraby gave a grunt of surprise at seeing Bagnell again so soon, but he was not uncivil, and listened to him without interruption. He said, “Calm down, we’re not used to excitement here, in fact haven’t had any since the Yankee army passed through town, thank the Lord they didn’t even stop to burn it. Excitement, yes. I don’t feel I can discount the possibility that you are still in a state of excitement - even shock. It is a shocking sight, that photograph of mine - and those things I showed you. So . . . Oh of course I’ll go stroll by and take a look at the one you say is in . . . where? Rowan Row. Oh.” He looked at the card Bagnell gave him. “It would be one of the most remarkable coincidences if, actually, they were - Ho. Mr Sydney, yes. Know him. Done business with him,business, you get the point? Sydney is not running a junkyard. Now settle down. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Quit that fidgeting.”

  Bagnell extended his stay at his motel, drove slowly back to the old Carolina Coast Museum, went up the blue slate steps, scooped and hollowed by the passing feet of a century. Larraby was there, and beckoned him in from inside his private office. “Aw right. Saw - it. What? Course it’s the same face! Outrageous coincidence! Against all known laws of probability. However. We must have a copy of Sydney’s ambro and work from there. No other choice. And it’s up to you to get him to let you make that copy. They’re not photographic negatives, you know that, of course. We’ll have to photograph it and produce our own negative. Enlarge it. Well - enlarge them both. Go over them with magnifying lens and fine-tooth comb. Haveyou got $200 cash on you, by the way? Ha. Thought not.”

  Bagnell found himself breathing rapidly again. “Look here, Luke” - a silvery-tufted eyebrow shot up, but Larraby listened, - “this is absolutely the first time it’s been even possible to think of its being even possible to provide any element of prehistory of a Paper-Man, and you can’t let it go by and risk losing it forever.”

  Larraby, still calm in his naturally-cool old-fashioned office, with sepia-tinted framed photographs of his predecessors on its walls; Larraby, still calm, said it was Bagnell’s fault for showing enthusiasm. “However. I understand your emotion. Still, why he wants $200, $200 for a daguerreotype of a nobody, for that price you ought to get one of Lola Montez naked - and I have not got that $200 in my budget.”

  Bagnell gnawed his neat mustache. “Well, how much have you got that you can spend to borrow the picture, just borrow it and have it copied? I mean, you absorb the copying costs, and I’m sure I can manage a pro rata share of it - how much?”

  The old curator sighed and canted his head and looked at his wall calendar. “Oh . . . $50? Tops.”

  * * * *

  Mr Sydney was cautious. Mr Sydney smelled something. Bagnell offered to have it cleaned for him. “No charge.”

  “Cleaned? It’s as clean as a whistle! Look at it. Beautiful condition. What -”

  “Okay. I’ll come clean with you.”

  “Now we’re talking.”

  “The Carolina Coast Museum -”

  “The Carolina Coast Mu - Oh, Lord, they don’t have a button! Nothing doing. Oh, well, what’s your offer?”

  “An offer of $50 just to -”

  Mr Sydney’s shock was not assumed. “Fifty dollars! No no. Out of the -”

  “- just to borrow it for one week for purposes of comparison with another picture.”

  This was unexpected. Mr Sydney seemed genuinely uncertain. “And what do I do if someone comes in off the Row and asks, ‘where’s the old snapshot of the boy in uniform, used to be in between Baby Phoebe and Grampa Jukes?’ “

  “You say ‘It’s being cleaned. Would you like to put down a deposit? It will be cleaned for you. Free.’ “

  It was immediately clear that Mr Sydney liked this image. He nodded. His mouth moved, evidently silently repeating the words. “You have a suggestion there. Not bad. Very well. I feel able to do it for you and the museum, but for $75. Impossible for less: risk factor.”

  Slowly, Bagnell emptied his pockets. There was the fairly crisp $50. And, also, there was a limp $20, and two dim ones, and 50 cents. His sigh was quite immediate. So was Mr Sydney’s reaction. “Oh, very well, the Firm will settle for $70, and will cover State tax. The Firm is not hard-hearted. Keep the two-fifty for lunch. The Museum will probably offer you possum a la taxidermy. Oh, and I shall require you to show some ID and to sign a little piece of paper, and then shall I gift-wrap it for you? No? But remember now: Not more than one week.”

  * * * *

  “Company in the parlor,” Curator Larraby said, briskly.

  Bagnell blinked. “An odd phrase to come from a self-admitted church member.�
��

  Company, in the small lecture-room (doors locked), consisted of Hughes of the Southeastern Interstate Criminology Institute (commonly called the Crim Lab), and Dr Preston Budworth of every hospital in town. “My colleagues insist that the best specialty is dermatology. They say, ‘The patients never die and they never get cured; they just keep coming back.’ And I say, ‘True, but plastic surgeons make more. Oh boy, yes. Of course, we work hard for it, oh, it’s hell on the feet.’ “

  He said no more for the moment, the lights having then been turned off; then he said, “Jesus Christ!” - the slide of the Paper-Man’s head having briefly flashed on the screen. “Course, I’ve seen worse,” said Dr Budworth. “Oh, lots worse. But seen nothing the same. What in salvation is it?” The copy of the ambrotype next appeared. “Soldier boy, hey?” It remained a while, then the severed head, with its cold, sly sneer, came back to grimace at them. Dr Budworth cleared his throat and said, “Looks as though he’d been shot dead at Gettysburg and had his picture taken at Appomattox.”

  In a voice slow and heavy, Larraby said, “Perhaps you’re right.”