by Otto Penzler
“Quiet,” one of them, a tall fellow with hair as red as Malcolm’s was black, and a face mottled with more freckles than the moon has craters, hissed. And yes, I know it’s bad writing to use anything other than “said”—but you weren’t there. Trust me; there was less humanity in that one word as spoken by him than there was in a snake’s sibilance.
We marched on in silence. And I started to wonder just how they’d managed to catch us so thoroughly off-guard. We’d been standing on the crest of a small hill; if they’d come along the road from either direction we’d have seen them, and there was no way they could’ve climbed up the side, through the dry creosote, without making enough noise to wake the dead.
… to wake the dead … There are certain phrases that we use a thousand times without thinking, until one day you realize just how hideously appropriate they are.
We went around a bluff’s shoulder, down a steep trail, and found ourselves in a highwalled ravine; almost a box canyon. A quarter of the way up the rear wall, at the top of a pile of talus, was what had once been the mouth of Arrowhead Cave. It was little more than a lacuna now, the dynamite having closed it off seventeen years ago. Two of our four captors urged us up the ten-foot slope.
“Hey, guys?” The nasal quality of Malcolm’s voice was rising, a sure barometer of anxiety. “It’s gettin’ dark—my dad’ll hide me if I miss dinner—”
“Zip it,” one of them—short and rotund, with wire-rim specs—said. I got a good look at the clothes he was wearing as I passed him—knee pants and suspenders, a sweater and a flat, button-down cap. There was definitely something anachronistic about the apparel, but what really caught my eye was the toy gun he was brandishing. It was unlike any kids’ gun I’d ever seen, and after looking at it for a minute, I realized why. I didn’t have the words to describe it at the time, but looking back on it, I realize it was made of stamped metal. It was black, with a red barrel, and on the butt was a stylized sketch of the Lone Ranger. A legend ran in curved script along the bottom of the image; I can’t recall the exact phrase, but it was something about listening to Brace Beemer as the Lone Ranger, every Friday.
Why “listen”? Why not “watch”? And who was Brace Beemer? Everyone knew the Lone Ranger was played by Clayton Moore.
As big of a puzzle as that gun represented, however, the one held by the third boy was even more so. It, too, was made out of some material which I didn’t immediately recognize. When I did realize what it was, it was enough to make me stop and stare, open-mouthed.
His gun was made of cardboard.
There was a slogan inscribed on the side of it, as well—I couldn’t read all of it, because his hand partly obscured it. The part I could read proclaimed Geyser Flour to be “America’s top self-rising flour!”
The boy saw me staring at his paper gun. “Shut yer bazoo, yegg,” he instructed me, raising the toy as he did so.
And a strange feeling possessed me; I suppose it made sense in light of later developments, but at the time it was as inexplicable as it was overwhelming. I was, abruptly and totally, terrified of that ridiculous cardboard gun. So terrified that I felt in danger of soiling my corduroys.
He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder, pushing me up the slope, and his hand was cold. I could feel it through the fabric of my T-shirt.
As we climbed the steep slope, I watched both of my comrades, and knew they’d come to the same conclusion I had about our captors. Tom’s face was set in the utter blankness of denial, his gaze as uncomprehending as that of an abused animal. Malcolm’s was a hundred and eighty degrees opposite, full of growing realization and horror.
By the time the three of us had clambered up into the shallow remnant of the cave’s former entrance, Malcolm had lost it. He was sobbing, babbling incoherently, snot drooling from his nose. I wasn’t doing much better myself, but I at least managed to keep a somewhat braver face on. Tom seemed outwardly calm also, but his face was the same sallow hue as that of his prosthetic’s plastic skin.
We sat on the sandstone lip that hung above the declivity for what seemed like hours, but was in reality scarcely more than forty-five minutes; just long enough for the sun to disappear behind the western slope of the ravine. I watched our captors. I was only seven, and so I had no idea that all of them were dressed in Depression-era, poor white trash clothes, or that their toy weapons were relics of those same long-gone days. I only knew that there was something profoundly wrong about every aspect of them—even the way they moved, and sat, and talked amongst themselves.
I say they talked, but, even though I could clearly see them address each other; could even, until the light faded too much, see their lips moving, I heard nothing. It was deathly quiet in the ravine—even Malcolm’s crying had, for a time, subsided—and I knew that sound rose with great clarity in still air. But it was like watching TV with the sound off.
“Gh-ghosts,” Malcolm blubbered. “Th-they’re ghosts. They were kuh-killed in the cave—”
“Bullshit,” Tom muttered.
“—twenty years ago—”
“Stop it.” Tom’s voice was level and icy, but it was thin ice, covering black depths of hysteria. He stood and faced Malcolm.
Malcolm stood as well. “You know it’s true! You nuh-know it’s—”
“Shut up.”
“Shouldn’t’ve let ’em get us, should’ve run, now they’re gonna—”
Tom hit him.
It was a short, hard jab, brought up from his waist into the pit of Malcolm’s stomach, and it let the air out of him like a nail in a tire. He stared at Tom in utter shock, mouth gaping, making vaguely piscine sounds.
Then he turned, staggered toward the edge of the rocky shelf, and before either of us could try to stop him, he fell.
He rolled down the declivity a few feet before he managed to stop himself. Then he looked up, and Tom and I both heard his moan of terror when he saw the four boys—or whatever they were—surrounding him. His face had been scratched during his fall, and a red streak of blood stood out vividly against his chalk-white skin.
“Please,” I heard him say. “Please—I’m late for dinner—”
And they laughed.
I guess it was laughter, though it was the most mirthless, soulless sound I’ve ever heard. It was the sort of laughter something dead for a long time, long enough to completely forget any connection it had had with life, would make, if it were to somehow be amused.
They laughed, and they moved closer to him. Malcolm made a high, keening noise, a sound of utter despair.
Tom shouted, “You bastards! Leave him alone!” And he jumped off the ledge.
I don’t know what he thought he could possibly do. I doubt he thought about it at all. He just went to Malcolm’s rescue—or tried to. He might have been successful, somehow, if he’d had two good legs. I don’t know if he forgot that one was artificial, or if he just didn’t care.
It was a magnificent jump; it carried him to within five feet of them. He plowed into the loose stone and gravel, and his right leg buckled beneath him; he lost his balance and fell.
He struggled to stand, but before he could, the one with the cardboard gun looked up at him. He was grinning, and it might have just been a trick of the fading light, but for one awful instant it looked like the grin of a naked skull. He raised the gun and pointed it at Tom’s chest.
And, softly, but somehow very clearly, I heard him say, “Bang.”
That was all; just “Bang,” in a quiet voice. There was no puff of smoke, no recoil from the paper muzzle.
But Tom’s back erupted in a spray of blood.
He fell backward.
I screamed.
All four heads swiveled up toward me. Their eyes were like spiders’ eyes: black and gleaming.
I knew that following Tom and Malcolm would only get me killed—or worse. There was only one other direction that I could go—back into the cave.
I’d seen before-and-after photos of Arrowhead Cave. The City Fathe
rs had ordered it sealed off, and sealed off it had been, with a vengeance. What had been a dark, mysterious opening into the underworld had been reduced to a pile of rubble, leaving an overhang barely a yard deep.
But there was no place else to hide. I pressed against the unyielding stone, feeling a distant wetness as my bladder let go. I could hear them scrabbling up the slope after me. I turned frantically from side to side, seeking an impossible escape—
And saw, six inches above my head, a lateral crack in the rock.
It was barely wider than my body, and beyond it was unrelieved blackness, yet to me it looked like the gates of Heaven. I jumped, grabbed the flat sandstone lip, pulled myself up and into it, kicking and squirming. There was barely enough room for me to wriggle between the two slabs of rock; I had to breathe shallowly to do so. But I kept crawling.
To this day I’ve no idea how that providential escape route came to be there. Perhaps it had been overlooked after the blast; perhaps it had been deemed too small to worry about. Or perhaps that temblor we’d had a week earlier had had something to do with opening it. All I know is that, after a lifetime of frantic crawling, I saw light up ahead.
I redoubled my efforts, scooted forward—and felt a cold hand close around my ankle.
I didn’t have the breath to scream—it came out as a thin, mewling cry. Whichever one of those things had me began dragging me relentlessly back, down into the darkness. I felt my fingernails splinter on the rock. I kicked back frantically with my free leg, felt my shoe strike what had to be the head of the one that had grabbed me. I gritted my teeth, drew my leg up, and kicked backward with every bit of strength I had left.
His head splintered. I felt his skull cave in. But his grip did not slacken.
Sobbing obscenities, I swung my free leg against my other one, as hard as I could. Among the injuries that would be counted up later was a hairline fracture of my ankle—but at the time I felt nothing but a fierce joy when that cold grip loosened for a moment.
I lunged forward, panting, and came to the end of the passage, so abruptly that I tumbled out before I could stop myself. I caught a brief, dizzying glimpse of a hillside below me, scrub bushes barely illuminated by the crepuscular twilight—then I fell. Pain exploded in my head like a roman candle, and I must have passed out.
My last thought before I lost consciousness was: They’re still coming for me.
And now most of you are wondering a few different things, I imagine—such as, Why did he waste our time with this silliness? or, He’s got quite an imagination, or even, Where are the men with white coats and butterfly nets?
For those of you who wish to know the end of the story—I wish I could tell you. There was front-page material in the local paper the day after that day in 1955, documenting the discovery of Tom Harper’s body near Arrowhead Cave. No bullet or gun was ever found, but something very powerful had punched a hole clean through him.
They never found Malcolm.
Me they found at the bottom of the next ravine over from Arrowhead Cave. I had a concussion, and was in a coma for nearly two weeks. When I finally came out of it, I told everyone who asked—and many did, believe me—that I remembered nothing. Which was the truth. My recollection of the events of that long-ago day has come back to me piecemeal, during the course of many a long and sleepless night. I stopped seeing therapists after one diagnosed me with PTSD, and wondered why a writer with no military history was so afflicted.
I suppose it’s possible that I imagined the whole thing, in an attempt to supply a story that fit the necessary particulars. If it hadn’t been for the finding of Tom’s body, I would have no reason not to assume that wasn’t true. Which, of course, asks the question: What could possibly have happened that was so horrible that I might have made up such a story to normalize the reality?
In any event, I must admit lying to you at the start of my speech. I said I had always known that I wanted to be a writer. That’s not strictly true; until I was seven years old, I had no idea what I wanted to be. But after that night, there was no doubt in my mind.
It’s how I deal with it.
So, in conclusion, to those of you out there who know without question what you want to be when you grow up, I say congratulations—and be careful what you wish for.
PLAYMATES
A. M. Burrage
AS A MEMBER OF a family noted for writing juvenile fiction, A(lfred) M(cLelland) Burrage (1889–1956) followed in their footsteps, selling his first story to the prestigious children’s magazine, Chums, when he was only sixteen. Although he was prolific in this genre, producing numerous stories in the “Tufty” series under the pseudonym Frank Lelland, and, under his own name, selling stories to such magazines as Boys’ Friend Weekly, Boys Herald, and Comic Life, his father, Alfred Sherrington Burrage, and his uncle, Edwin Harcourt Burrage, were even more successful, the former credited with hundreds of stories for boys’ magazines and the latter with twenty-eight hardcover books.
However, it is for his ghost stories that A. M. Burrage is mainly remembered today, especially those collected in Some Ghost Stories (1927) and Someone in the Room (1931), written under the pseudonym Ex-Private X, under which name he also wrote a bitter war memoir, War Is War (1930). Burrage also wrote an occult novel of black magic, Seeker to the Dead (1942), based on the life and work of Aleister Crowley. Among his most famous stories are “The Green Scarf” (1927), “Between the Minute and the Hour” (1927), and “The Waxwork” (1931), which twice was filmed as an episode of a television series: on Lights Out in 1950 starring John Beal and on Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1959 starring Barry Nelson.
“Playmates” was first published in Some Ghost Stories (London, Cecil Palmer, 1927). It appeared as an episode of three half-hour television series: Gruen Guild Theatre (1952), The Schaefer Century Theatre (1952), and The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse (1954), starring Natalie Wood and Alan Napier.
Playmates
A. M. BURRAGE
I
Although everybody who knew Stephen Everton agreed that he was the last man under Heaven who ought to have been allowed to bring up a child, it was fortunate for Monica that she fell into his hands; else she had probably starved or drifted into some refuge for waifs and strays. True her father, Sebastian Threlfall the poet, had plenty of casual friends. Almost everybody knew him slightly, and right up to the time of his fatal attack of delirium tremens he contrived to look one of the most interesting of the regular frequenters of the Café Royal. But people are generally not hasty to bring up the children of casual acquaintances, particularly when such children may be suspected of having inherited more than a fair share of human weaknesses.
Of Monica’s mother literally nothing was known. Nobody seemed able to say if she were dead or alive. Probably she had long since deserted Threlfall for some consort able and willing to provide regular meals.
Everton knew Threlfall no better than a hundred others knew him, and was ignorant of his daughter’s existence until the father’s death was a new topic of conversation in literary and artistic circles. People vaguely wondered what would become of “the kid”; and while they were still wondering, Everton quietly took possession of her.
Who’s Who will tell you the year of Everton’s birth, the names of his Almae Matres (Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford), the titles of his books and of his predilections for skating and mountaineering; but it is necessary to know the man a little less superficially. He was then a year or two short of fifty and looked ten years older. He was a tall, lean man, with a delicate pink complexion, an oval head, a Roman nose, blue eyes which looked out mildly through strong glasses, and thin straight lips drawn tightly over slightly protruding teeth. His high forehead was bare, for he was bald to the base of his skull. What remained of his hair was a neutral tint between black and grey, and was kept closely cropped. He contrived to look at once prim and irascible, scholarly and acute; Sherlock Holmes, perhaps, with a touch of old-maidishness.
The world knew him for
a writer of books on historical crises. They were cumbersome books with cumbersome titles, written by a scholar for scholars. They brought him fame and not a little money. The money he could have afforded to be without, since he was modestly wealthy by inheritance. He was essentially a cold-blooded animal, a bachelor, a man of regular and temperate habits, fastidious, and fond of quietude and simple comforts.
Nobody is ever likely to know why Everton adopted the orphan daughter of a man whom he knew but slightly and neither liked nor respected. He was no lover of children, and his humours were sardonic rather than sentimental. I am only hazarding a guess when I suggest that, like so many childless men, he had theories of his own concerning the upbringing of children, which he wanted to see tested. Certain it is that Monica’s childhood, which had been extraordinary enough before, passed from the tragic to the grotesque.
Everton took Monica from the Bloomsbury “apartments” house, where the landlady, already nursing a bad debt, was wondering how to dispose of the child. Monica was then eight years old, and a woman of the world in her small way. She had lived with drink and poverty and squalor; had never played a game nor had a playmate; had seen nothing but the seamy side of life; and had learned skill in practising her father’s petty shifts and mean contrivances. She was grave and sullen and plain and pale, this child who had never known childhood. When she spoke, which was as seldom as possible, her voice was hard and gruff. She was, poor little thing, as unattractive as her life could have made her.
She went with Everton without question or demur. She would no more have questioned anybody’s ownership than if she had been an inanimate piece of luggage left in a cloak-room. She had belonged to her father. Now that he was gone to his own place she was the property of whomsoever chose to claim her. Everton took her with a cold kindness in which was neither love nor pity; in return she gave him neither love nor gratitude, but did as she was desired after the manner of a paid servant.
