Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural

by Marvin Kaye (ed. )

  When she was gone he did cry, because she thought she meant something to him and she did not.

  Why am I crying? he asked himself. Why should I care? It’s not my fault she let me get a handle on her. . . .

  Sitting on the dresser in a curiously adult posture was the child, carelessly playing with itself as it watched Howard intently. “No,” Howard said, pulling himself up to the head of the bed. “You don’t exist,” he said. “No one’s ever seen you but me.” The child gave no sign of understanding. It just rolled over and began to slither down the front of the dresser.

  Howard reached for his clothes, took them out of the bedroom. He put them on in the living room as he watched the door. Sure enough, the child crept along the carpet to the living room; but Howard was dressed by then, and he left.

  He walked the streets for three hours. He was coldly rational at first. Logical. The creature does not exist. There is no reason to believe in it.

  But bit by bit his rationality was worn away by constant flickers of the creature at the edges of his vision. On a bench, peering over the back at him; in a shop window; staring from the cab of a milk truck. Howard walked faster and faster, not caring where he went, trying to keep some intelligent process going on in his mind, and failing utterly as he saw the child, saw it clearly, dangling from a traffic signal.

  What made it even worse was that occasionally a passerby, violating the unwritten law that New Yorkers are forbidden to look at each other, would gaze at him, shudder, and look away. A short European-looking woman crossed herself. A group of teenagers looking for trouble weren’t looking for him—they grew silent, let him pass in silence, and in silence watched him out of sight.

  They may not be able to see the child, Howard realized, but they see something.

  And as he grew less and less coherent in the ramblings of his mind, memories began flashing on and off, his life passing before his eyes like a drowning man is supposed to see, only, he realized, if a drowning man saw this he would gulp at the water, breathe it deeply just to end the visions. They were memories he had been unable to find for years; memories he would never have wanted to find.

  His poor, confused mother, who was so eager to be a good parent that she read everything, tried everything. Her precocious son Howard read it, too, and understood it better. Nothing she tried ever worked. And he accused her several times of being too demanding, of not demanding enough; of not giving him enough love, of drowning him in phony affection; of trying to take over with his friends, of not liking his friends enough. Until he had badgered and tortured the woman until she was timid every time she spoke to him, careful and longwinded and she phrased everything in such a way that it wouldn’t offend, and while now and then he made her feel wonderful by giving her a hug and saying, “Have I got a wonderful Mom,” there were far more times when he put a patient look on his face and said, “That again, Mom? I thought we went over that years ago.” A failure as a parent, that’s what you are, he reminded her again and again, though not in so many words, and she nodded and believed and died inside with every contact they had. He got everything he wanted from her.

  And Vaughn Robles, who was just a little bit smarter than Howard and Howard wanted, very badly to be valedictorian and so Vaughn and Howard became best friends and Vaughn would do anything for Howard and whenever Vaughn got a better grade than Howard he could not help but notice that Howard was hurt, that Howard wondered if he was really worth anything at all. “Am I really worth anything at all, Vaughn? No matter how well I do, there’s always someone ahead of me, and I guess it’s just that before my father died he told me and told me, Howie, be better than your Dad. Be the top. And I promised him I’d be the top but hell, Vaughn, I’m just not cut out for it—” and once he even cried. Vaughn was proud of himself as he sat there and listened to Howard give the valedictory address at high school graduation. What were a few grades, compared to a true friendship? Howard got a scholarship and went away to college and he and Vaughn almost never saw each other again.

  And the teacher he provoked into hitting him and losing his job; and the football player who snubbed him and Howard quietly spread the rumor that the fellow was gay and he was ostracized from the team and finally quit; and the beautiful girls he stole from their boyfriends just to prove that he could do it and the friendships he destroyed just because he didn’t like being excluded and the marriages he wrecked and the co-workers he undercut and he walked along the street with tears streaming down his face, wondering where all these memories had come from and why, after such a long time in hiding, they had come out now. Yet he knew the answer. The answer was slipping behind doorways, climbing lightpoles as he passed, waving obscene flippers at him from the sidewalk almost under his feet.

  And slowly, inexorably, the memories wound their way from the distant past through a hundred tawdry exploitations because he could find people’s weak spots without even trying until finally memory came to the one place where he knew it could not, could not ever go.

  He remembered Rhiannon.

  Born fourteen years ago. Smiled early, walked early, almost never cried. A loving child from the start, and therefore easy prey for Howard. Oh, Alice was a bitch in her own right—Howard wasn’t the only bad parent in the family. But it was Howard who manipulated Rhiannon most. “Daddy’s feelings are hurt, Sweetheart,” and Rhiannon’s eyes would grow wide, and she’d be sorry, and whatever Daddy wanted, Rhiannon would do. But this was normal, this was part of the pattern, this would have fit easily into all his life before, except for last month.

  And even now, after a day of grief at his own life, Howard could not face it. Could not but did. He unwillingly remembered walking by Rhiannon’s almost-closed door, seeing just a flash of cloth moving quickly. He opened the door on impulse, just on impulse, as Rhiannon took off her brassiere and looked at herself in the mirror. Howard had never thought of his daughter with desire, not until that moment, but once the desire formed Howard had no strategy, no pattern in his mind to stop him from trying to get what he wanted. He was uncomfortable, and so he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him and Rhiannon knew no way to say no to her father. When Alice opened the door Rhiannon was crying softly, and Alice looked and after a moment Alice screamed and screamed and Howard got up from the bed and tried to smooth it all over but Rhiannon was still crying and Alice was still screaming, kicking at his crotch, beating, him, raking at his face, spitting at him, telling him he was a monster, a monster, until at last he was able to flee the room and the house and, until now, the memory.

  He screamed now as he had not screamed then, and threw himself against a plate-glass window, weeping loudly as the blood gushed from a dozen glass cuts on his right arm, which had gone through the window. One large piece of glass stayed embedded in his forearm. He deliberately scraped his arm against the wall to drive the glass deeper. But the pain in his arm was no match for the pain in his mind, and he felt nothing.

  They rushed him to the hospital, thinking to save his life, but the doctor was surprised to discover that for all the blood there were only superficial wounds, not dangerous at all. “I don’t know why you didn’t reach a vein or an artery,” the doctor said. “I think the glass went everywhere it could possibly go without causing any important damage.”

  After the medical doctor, of course, there was the psychiatrist, but there were many suicidals at the hospital and Howard was not the dangerous kind. “I was insane for a moment, Doctor, that’s all. I don’t want to die, I didn’t want to die then, I’m all right now. You can send me home.” And the psychiatrist let him go home. They bandaged his arm. They did not know that his real relief was that nowhere in the hospital did he see the small, naked, child-shaped creature. He had purged himself. He was free.

  Howard was taken home in an ambulance, and they wheeled him into the house and lifted him from the stretcher to the bed. Through it all Alice hardly said a word except to direct them to the bedroom. Howard lay still on the bed as she sto
od over him, the two of them alone for the first time since he left the house a month ago.

  “It was kind of you,” Howard said softly, “to let me come back.”

  “They said there wasn’t room enough to keep you, but you needed to be watched and taken care of for a few weeks. So lucky me, I get to watch you.” Her voice was a low monotone, but the acid dripped from every word. It stung.

  “You were right, Alice,” Howard said.

  “Right about what? That marrying you was the worst mistake of my life? No, Howard. Meeting you was my worst mistake.”

  Howard began to cry. Real tears that welled up from places in him that had once been deep but that now rested painfully close to the surface. “I’ve been a monster, Alice. I haven’t had any control over myself. What I did to Rhiannon—Alice, I wanted to die, I wanted to die!”

  Alice’s face was twisted and bitter. “And I. wanted you to, Howard. I have never been so disappointed as when the doctor called and said you’d be all right. You’ll never be all right, Howard, you’ll always be—”

  “Let him be, Mother.”

  Rhiannon stood in the doorway.

  “Don’t come in, Rhiannon,” Alice said.

  Rhiannon came in. “Daddy, it’s all right.”

  “What she means,” Alice said, “is that we’ve checked her and she isn’t pregnant. No little monster is going to be born.”

  Rhiannon didn’t look at her mother, just gazed with wide eyes at her father. “You didn’t need to—hurt yourself, Daddy. I forgive you. People lose control sometimes. And it was as much my fault as yours, it really was, you don’t need to feel bad, Father.”

  It was too much for Howard. He cried out, shouted his confession, how he had manipulated her all his life, how he was an utterly selfish and rotten parent, and when it was over Rhiannon came to her father and laid her head on his chest and said, softly, “Father, it’s all right. We are who we are. We’ve done what we’ve done. But it’s all right now. I forgive you.” When Rhiannon left, Alice said, “You don’t deserve her.”

  I know.

  “I was going to sleep on the couch, but that would be stupid. Wouldn’t it, Howard?”

  I deserve to be left alone, like a leper.

  “You misunderstand, Howard. I need to stay here to make sure you don’t do anything else. To yourself or to anyone.”

  Yes. Yes, please. I can’t be trusted.

  “Don’t wallow in it, Howard. Don’t enjoy it. Don’t make yourself even more disgusting than you were before.”

  All right.

  They were drifting off to sleep when Alice said, “Oh, when the doctor called he wondered if I knew what had caused those sores all over your arms and chest.”

  But Howard was asleep, and didn’t hear her. Asleep with no dreams at all, the sleep of peace, the sleep of having been forgiven, of being clean. It hadn’t taken that much, after all. Now that it was over, it was easy. He felt as if a great weight had been taken from him.

  He felt as if something heavy was lying on his legs. He awoke, sweating even though the room was not hot. He heard breathing. And it was not Alice’s low-pitched, slow breath, it was quick and high and hard, as if the breather had been exerting himself.

  Itself.

  Themselves.

  One of them lay across his legs, the flippers plucking at the blanket. The other two lay on either side, their eyes wide and intent, creeping slowly toward where his face emerged from the sheets.

  Howard was puzzled. “I thought you’d be gone,” he said to the children. “You’re supposed to be gone now.”

  Alice stirred at the sound of his voice, mumbled in her sleep.

  He saw more of them stirring in the gloomy corners of the room, another writhing slowly along the top of the dresser, another inching up the wall toward the ceiling.

  “I don’t need you anymore,” he said, his voice oddly high-pitched.

  Alice started breathing irregularly, mumbling, “What? What?”

  And Howard said nothing more, just lay there in the sheets, watching the creatures carefully but not daring to make a sound for fear Alice would wake up. He was terribly afraid she would wake up and not see the creatures, which would prove, once and for all, that he had lost his mind.

  He was even more afraid, however, that when she awoke she would see them. That was the one unbearable thought, yet he thought it continuously as they relentlessly approached with nothing at all in their eyes, not even hate, not even anger, not even contempt. We are with you, they seemed to be saying, we will be with you from now on. We will be with you, Howard, forever.

  And Alice rolled over and opened her eyes.

  At the beginning of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Jonathan Harker awaits an ominous carriage from Castle Dracula When it arrives, one of Harker’s terrified fellow travelers murmurs “Denn die Todten reiten schnell,” which Stoker translates “For the dead travel fast.” It is a paraphrase of the recurring refrain of the famous German supernatural ballad, “Lenore,” by GOTTFRIED AUGUST BURGER (1747—1794). Several English renderings of “Lenore” have been attempted, including a disappointing one by Sir Walter Scott. The best, yet most obscure version is by the British poet DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-1882). According to the poet’s brother, Rossetti completed it in June 1844 at age sixteen, but it was never published in Rossetti’s lifetime, nor did it appear amongst his posthumous papers. The manuscript turned up at an auction in 1899. It is reproduced below in hopes that it will attain the recognition it deserves.

  Lenore

  By Gottfried August Bürger

  English adaptation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Up rose Lenore as the red morn wore,

  From weary visions starting;

  “Art faithless, William, or, William, art dead?

  ’Tis long since thy departing.”

  For he, with Frederick’s men of might,

  In fair Prague waged the uncertain fight;

  Nor once had he writ in the hurry of war,

  And sad was the true heart that sickened afar.

  The Empress and the King,

  With ceaseless quarrel tired,

  At length relaxed the stubborn hate

  Which rivalry inspired:

  And the martial throng, with laugh and song,

  Spoke of their homes as they rode along,

  And clank, clank, clank! came every rank,

  With the trumpet-sound that rose and sank.

  And here and there and everywhere,

  Along the swarming ways,

  Went old man and boy, with the music of joy,

  On the gallant bands to gaze;

  And the young child shouted to spy the vaward,

  And trembling and blushing the bride pressed forward:

  But ah! for the sweet lips of Lenore

  The kiss and the greeting are vanished and o’er.

  From man to man all wildly she ran

  With a swift and searching eye;

  But she felt alone in the mighty mass,

  As it crushed and crowded by:

  On hurried the troop,—a gladsome group,—

  And proudly the tall plumes wave and droop:

  She tore her hair and she turned her round,

  And madly she dashed her against the ground.

  Her mother clasped her tenderly

  With soothing words and mild:

  “My child, may God look down on thee,—

  God comfort thee, my child.”

  “Oh! mother, mother! gone is gone!

  I reck no more how the world runs on:

  What pity to me does God impart?

  Woe, woe, woe! for my heavy heart!”

  “Help, Heaven, help and favour her!

  Child, utter an Ave Marie!

  Wise and great are the doings of God;

  He loves and pities thee.”

  “Out, mother, out, on the empty lie!

  Doth he heed my despair,—doth he list to my cry?

  What boots it now to ho
pe or to pray?

  The night is come,—there is no more day.”

  “Help, Heaven, help! who knows the Father

  Knows surely that he loves his child:

  The bread and the wine from the hand divine

  Shall make thy tempered grief less wild.”

  “Oh! mother, dear mother! the wine and the bread

  Will not soften the anguish that bows down my head;

  For bread and for wine it will yet be as late

  That his cold corpse creeps from the grim grave’s gate.”

  “What if the traitor’s false faith failed,

  By sweet temptation tried,—

  What if in distant Hungary

  He clasp another bride?—

  Despise the fickle fool, my girl,

  Who hath ta’en the pebble and spurned the pearl:

  While soul and body shall hold together

  In his perjured heart shall be stormy weather.”

  “Oh! mother, mother! gone is gone,

  And lost will still be lost!

  Death, death is the goal of my weary soul,

  Crushed and broken and crost.

  Spark of my life! down, down to the tomb:

  Die away in the night, die away in the gloom!

  What pity to me does God impart?

  Woe, woe, woe! for my heavy heart!”

  “Help, Heaven, help, and heed her not,

  For her sorrows are strong within;

  She knows not the words that her tongue repeats,—

  Oh! count them not for sin!

  Cease, cease, my child, thy wretchedness,

  And think on the promised happiness;

  So shall thy mind’s calm ecstasy

  Be a hope and a home and a bridegroom to thee.”