The Most Frightening Story Ever Told

by Philip Kerr

  “He’s learned the hard way not to use too much lighter fluid. Gary used to have a full head of hair. Now he tends to keep it short. For obvious reasons.”

  Billy walked around the subterranean library, full of admiration for the effort Mr. Rapscallion had made to create his rather special bookshop.

  “This is a wonderful place,” he said. “Wonderful. I think it must be the best bookshop in all the world.”

  “Well, thank you, Billy. But like I said before, don’t tell me, tell your friends.”

  “I don’t really have any friends,” said Billy. “There’s you, of course. Would you mind it if I thought of you as my friend?”

  “Next question,” said Mr. Rapscallion.

  “How did you get started?” Billy asked him. “What gave you the idea?”

  “You really want to hear about that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well then, you’d better come over to the fireplace and sit yourself down.”

  Beside the fire they drew up two chairs as big as wooden thrones and sat down.

  “Are you sitting comfortably?” Mr. Rapscallion asked Billy.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Then I’ll begin.”

  “This is a story that requires a pipe,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “Perhaps two pipes.” From the pocket of his coat he took out a strangely curving white pipe made of English clay and lit it with a taper from the fire.

  “Years ago, when I was younger,” he said, “I had a mind—well, half a mind, anyway—to see something of the world. The mountains. The seas. The jungles. And the deserts. I traveled far and wide in search of, what exactly? I don’t know for sure. Perhaps an answer to the question of what I was going to do with my young life. You’ll ask yourself a question like that one day. Anyway, when you’re young you always make the mistake of believing that you have to go somewhere else to find yourself, when the plain and boring fact of the matter is that you need only stay at home and just take a look inside your own head.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Billy.

  “One day you will,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “Anyway, one of these travels in search of how I was going to live my life took me to a great, high, northern wilderness of endless, endless forest, high mountains and deep, deep snow. Somewhere along the way, I forget how exactly, I took up with three companions. They were all experienced, hairy woodsmen who knew how to survive in that desolate place. How to build a fire. How to put up a tent. How to fish and hunt. How to stay alive. How to avoid losing your mind in that empty wilderness. Which is easily done, let me tell you.

  “I can still remember their names. These men were not made for towns or cities. Even their names had a strange touch of the wilderness about them. There was Jim Screech. Tom Lurker. And Bill Tremor. But of the three, Old Screech was the one who truly belonged to the forest. He didn’t wash very much and was a terrifying sort of character, just to look at. Old Screech had never even slept in a bed. Always slept under the stars. Truly the wilderness was in his blood.

  “For several days we walked north into the big forest, fishing in the river and hunting small game. We saw no other men. There were no other men. Not for hundreds of miles. All you could hear was the sound of the river, the occasional bird and the cold wind in the trees. And not just any wind. This was a wind that played tricks on a man’s mind. A wind that sometimes, you fancied, could do more than just moan and groan. It seemed like a wind that might even speak to you. Whisper your fortune. Call your name. Tell you a story. Well, one night it did just that. Almost, anyway.

  “We’d had a good day’s fishing and were sitting around the blazing campfire, much as you and I are now. Smoking pipes. Exchanging stories. Ghost stories. I always loved a ghost story. We each agreed to tell a story. And having done so, we’d all vote on who’d told the scariest one, and the winner would be excused from any camp duties the next day. I went first. Then Tom Lurker. Then Bill Tremor.

  “Well, Bill Tremor told us a story that left us frozen with fear. Two of us, at least. And it’s odd, but to this day I can’t remember anything about it. Not one thing. And yet I agreed with Lurker that it was quite simply the most unnerving story we’d ever heard. Maybe it was what happened afterward that drove it from our minds. I don’t think it had scared Screech very much. Because even while we were complimenting Tremor on scaring us half to death, Old Screech was gazing up at the stars like a timber wolf and shaking his head slowly. Then he stood up and raised one of his hairy ears into the air and seemed to be listening to something.

  “ ‘Listen,’ said Screech. ‘Do you hear that?’

  “ ‘What is it?’ we asked Screech, looking around nervously. There was no moon. Beyond the flickering light of the fire there was only darkness and yet more darkness. ‘What can you hear? A bear, perhaps?’ (The bears in that part of the world are enormous. As big as a truck at the shoulder with teeth as long as a man’s foot and claws like razors.)

  “Screech kept listening for a moment, his dark, thin, weather-beaten face rigid with fear. Then he shook his head. ‘Don’t you fellows hear it?’ he said. ‘The wind. The wind is speaking to us. The wind was listening to your stories. But now the wind thinks it can do better. The wind wants to tell us a story, too.’

  “The rest of us listened carefully and then looked at each other, baffled. While we could hear the wind stirring the tops of the trees and see it fanning the flames of our campfire, it didn’t seem to us that the wind was saying anything quite so specific as that.

  “ ‘Oh, come on, Screech,’ said Tremor. ‘If you want to tell us a story, then just go ahead and do it. But don’t treat us like children. The wind wants to tell us a story. Really.’ And he laughed. ‘You must take us for the most absolute fools. It’s clear to me that this is just a stunt to help you win the bet.’

  “Screech kept on listening and then shook his head slowly, as if he’d just been told something important. ‘You ask me, it would be extremely rude of us to refuse an offer like that,’ he said gravely. ‘It’s not everyone the great north wind honors with a story. You wouldn’t want to offend the wind, would you?’

  “ ‘Stop fooling around, Screech,’ said Lurker. ‘Can’t you see we’re spooked enough as it is without you trying to spook us some more?’ He shivered and moved closer to the fire. ‘I for one have had enough creepy stories for tonight.’

  “Screech spat into the fire and looked at me. ‘How about you, Rapscallion?’ he asked me. ‘Two against the wind’s story, and two in favor. It’s your decision, sonny. The casting vote, so to speak. Only you’d better choose wisely.’

  “ ‘Wait a minute,’ said Bill Tremor. ‘Who are the two in favor? I only count four of us around this campfire.’

  “ ‘The wind is with us,’ said Screech. ‘Whether you like it or not.’

  “And strange to say, at that very moment the wind seemed to gust and blow some smoke from the fire into our faces, as if to confirm what Screech had said. Screech kept on looking at me. ‘Well? What do you say? Do we hear the wind’s story or not?’

  “ ‘This is ridiculous,’ insisted Tremor. ‘He’s just trying to frighten us. Can’t you see it? In a minute he’s going to laugh in your face that you were so easily fooled, sonny.’

  “Smiling, I nodded at Tremor. He just had to be right: Screech was playing a practical joke on the rest of us. ‘Come on, Screech,’ I said. ‘This is a hoax, right? The wind doesn’t tell stories around a campfire.’

  “ ‘Is that your final word?’ Screech’s voice sounded ominous and full of foreboding.

  “ ‘Yes,’ I said, and then bit my lip. It was just a feeling but almost immediately I regretted my decision.

  “Screech was silent for a moment and, shaking his head, sat down. He looked very sad. ‘The wind has spoken,’ he said. ‘The wind says we will have something more terrible than the story the wind was going to tell us. We will have the real thing.’

  “ ‘What do you mean?’ asked Lurker.
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  “ ‘Now we will have a visit from the spirit of the wilderness itself,’ said Screech.

  “He would say no more after this,” Mr. Rapscallion told Billy. “And with all our former humor gone, we soon retired to our tents. Lurker to share with Screech. And me to share with Tremor. Despite our stories, I slept heavily. But it was a strange, dream-filled sleep that did not leave me feeling refreshed, and sometime before dawn, I awoke with the strong sensation that something was not right. My heart was beating wildly, and although it was cold, I was covered with sweat. In the pitch dark I heard Tremor stir beside me and sit up in his sleeping bag. And, certain that I had missed something in my sleep that might have explained the strange feeling of foreboding I had, I put my hand out and caught Tremor’s hairy arm and asked him what it was that had disturbed him.

  “ ‘I heard someone calling my name,’ he said. ‘It was not Screech and it was not Lurker, I’m certain of it. The voice was not that of a man. And it wasn’t the voice of a woman. What’s more, it seemed to drift in here, as if from a very great distance. You’ll think me crazy, Rapscallion, but I’m certain it was the wind, speaking to me.’

  “ ‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘You were dreaming, obviously. Not that I’m in the least bit surprised after that silly story Screech told us.’ I took hold of the man’s hand and squeezed it. ‘He’s got us well and truly spooked. I just had the most peculiar dream myself. I was convinced that someone or something had come into this tent with us. It was quite real. My heart is still beating wildly.’ I tried to laugh it off but my laughter had a very hollow tone, for there was no humor in it, only fear.

  “ ‘Perhaps it wasn’t a dream at all,’ said Tremor. ‘Perhaps it was real.’

  “And then we heard it. Quite distinctly. It was the sound of Tremor’s name carried floating on the wind from a great long distance away, exactly as my now-trembling friend had described. A high-pitched whine of a voice that was neither a man’s nor a woman’s. Indeed, Tremor’s own surname was the only thing human about it.

  “ ‘Trem-or,’ it said. ‘Trem-or.’

  “ ‘There,’ he said. ‘Do you hear it?’

  “ ‘Yes, I heard it.’

  “And in the dark his strong, hairy hand gripped mine more tightly, as if he was suddenly very afraid. He had a heck of a grip, it seemed to me, but then fear makes a man appear stronger than he is, sometimes.

  “ ‘Yes,’ I told him again. ‘I hear it. The voice seems to be coming from down by the river. Look here, it must be Screech, messing about. Trying to frighten us.’

  “ ‘You’re right,’ said Tremor. There was a note of anger in his voice. ‘Where’s the flashlight? I’m going out there to speak to him. And if I find it is him fooling about, then I’m going to punch him on the nose. It’s one thing to scare a man around the campfire. It’s quite another to scare him half out of his wits while he’s asleep. Now where did I leave the flashlight? Yes, it must be in my backpack. By the flap of the tent.’

  “In the dark I heard Tremor get out of his sleeping bag and crawl toward the tent flap and the backpack. I heard him fumbling crossly for the flashlight. And it was then that I realized, to my mounting horror, what seemed to me at once a thing impossible: that I was still holding Bill Tremor’s hairy hand in my own. And yet how could I be holding the hand of a man who even now was six or seven feet away, on the other side of the tent, fumbling inside his backpack? Whose bony, cold, half-human hand had I been holding for several minutes? Whose was the hairy hand that still held my own?

  “ ‘Don’t switch on that flashlight!’ I yelled. ‘Don’t for pity’s sake turn it on.’

  “ ‘What are you talking about?’ Tremor said angrily. ‘I’m certainly not going out there without a flashlight. It’s pitch-dark. There could be anything waiting for me in the forest. Some horrible creature. A monster of the night. A beast of the wilderness.’

  “It was then that I noticed the smell. Something strong and hardly human. The hand holding mine tightened so that I could feel the fingernails digging into my skin and flesh. Only these weren’t fingernails. These were claws, surely. And yet the hand, strong as it was, had fingers. Long, thin, bony fingers.

  “ ‘Whatever it is,’ I told Tremor, ‘it’s not out there. It’s in here. It’s in the tent and it has me by the hand. And if you switch on that flashlight, I know that I will see it and die of fright, do you hear?’ All the time I heard my voice rising. ‘Don’t do it, Tremor. Please.’

  “ ‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Tremor. He switched on the flashlight and pointed it my way and I turned to face the creature that was still sitting next to me and I heard myself…S-C-R-E-E-E-A-A-M-M!”

  Mr. Rapscallion let out a terrible, animal-like scream. And the surprise of this sudden and unexpected end to Mr. Rapscallion’s terrifying tale almost made Billy Shivers jump out of his skin. As it was, he jumped several feet out of the big wooden chair in front of the fire and landed on top of a tall pile of heavy leather books. At the very same instant he heard himself S-C-R-E-E-A-M! even more loudly than Mr. Rapscallion had done, although such a thing seemed hardly possible. And for several seconds afterward, the boy was the gibbering wreck Mr. Rapscallion had promised Billy he would become.

  Mr. Rapscallion laughed and laughed as, piecing together his shredded nerves, and now only muttering with fright instead of gibbering, Billy climbed down off the tall pile of books.

  “Well, that’s more like it,” observed Mr. Rapscallion. “That sounds a lot better than ‘yikes,’ let me tell you.”

  He started to laugh some more. It has been mentioned that Mr. Rapscallion’s laugh was no ordinary laugh, and it was clear to Billy that Mr. Rapscallion liked to laugh, and laugh a lot. As usual his laughter arrived like a clap of thunder and then kept on going long after most other people would have stopped. At this point it became something almost mechanical, like something battery-operated or one of the spring-loaded “surprises” that were in every room of the Haunted House of Books. And still the laughter persisted, like an echo.

  Panting loudly, Billy Shivers sat down heavily on the stone floor and, pressing his hand against his chest, started to laugh himself. First he laughed with relief that the thing holding Mr. Rapscallion’s hand was now gone from his vivid imagination; and then he laughed as he realized that he had been had.

  “That was fantastic,” said Billy, shaking his head. “Fantastic. I haven’t had a fright like that, well, since the car accident.”

  “Good for you, Billy,” said Mr. Rapscallion.

  “But look,” said Billy, “you still haven’t answered my question: How did you start the Haunted House of Books?”

  “That’s really very, very simple,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “And not much of a story at all. Not like the story you just heard, anyway. You see, when I was a boy, not much older than you, I loved four things. I loved doing magic tricks, I loved practical jokes, I loved old horror movies and I loved reading. And I couldn’t make up my mind which of these four things I loved more, and to which of those four activities I wanted to devote my life when I was a grown-up. So I decided to do them all, and to combine professional magic and practical jokes with my enjoyment of books and horror movies. Hence this shop.”

  Mr. Rapscallion sighed and, for a moment, he continued to look happy.

  “The definition of true happiness, Billy,” he said, “is making your living from your hobby. It’s getting paid for what you would do for nothing. Try to remember that.”

  With Billy turning up at the Haunted House of Books every day, it wasn’t long before he started to recognize the regular customers. Some of these were friendlier than others. Some weren’t in the least bit friendly at all. But then, as Mr. Rapscallion had to remind Billy, it was a bookshop, and not a social club.

  There was Father Merrin, of course.

  And the lady with the black hair and the green leather coat who Billy now knew was called Miss Danvers. Weird.

  There was D
r. Saki. Quite friendly.

  There was Mr. Stoker. Friendly but a bit creepy.

  There was Mr. Quiller-Couch. Not friendly.

  There was Mr. Pu Sung Ling. Not friendly.

  There was Miss Maupassant. Not friendly. Weird, too.

  There was Mr. Montague James. Friendly. But weird.

  And there was Hugh Crane. Who was not at all friendly.

  Hugh Crane was a local lawyer and tycoon who wanted to buy the Haunted House of Books. Despite his interest in the shop, Crane was the only person who came in who wasn’t in the least bit interested in books. In fact, Crane hated books. He hated books because Crane knew that it’s easier to exploit and make money out of people who are ignorant. And of course no one who reads books—even books about ghosts and ghouls—can ever remain entirely ignorant.

  The only things Crane ever read were his bank statement, law reports and the price of stocks and shares in the newspaper he owned, The Hitchcock High Street Journal. He wanted to buy the bookshop so that he could knock it down and build a different kind of shop. A shop to sell very expensive shampoo. Billy thought it odd that Mr. Crane wanted to sell shampoo, because he was as bald as an ostrich egg.

  Once a week Mr. Crane would come into the shop with a large envelope full of cash and try to tempt Mr. Rapscallion into accepting his offer.

  Mr. Rapscallion had once borrowed some money from Hugh Crane, to keep the shop going, but now he was unable to repay the loan. Mr. Crane wasn’t pressing for the return of his money. Not yet. But it did mean that Mr. Rapscallion had to listen when, in order to get his greedy hands on the shop, Crane offered to wipe out the debt and give Mr. Rapscallion even more money.

  Usually Mr. Rapscallion knew when Crane was coming and went into one of the rooms in the shop on purpose so that the tycoon would have to look for him. He always left a note on the counter to say in which of the many rooms he could probably be found. That way Mr. Rapscallion could be sure that Crane would encounter at least one of the shop’s many surprises.