The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  But nobody in town ever seemed pleased to learn that they still lived. There was no kind thought for them, certainly no compassion for these old folks. They were apart, repelled, unfriended, and unchurched.

  But what was really so odd about them, besides their keeping to themselves? Well, for one thing, for three things, there were the three graves, three rocked pits anyhow that were believed to be graves. It was said also that there were three gravestones at the heads of the empty pits, and that these stones were carved with the names of the three Berrymans, and with the dates of their deaths given. By one account, these dates were impossibly far in the future. But, by another story, the dates were coming up very soon, in this very year.

  Harvey Hinkle had himself read these inscriptions (or he said that he had), and he told about them. But Harvey was dead now. Matthew Moon had likewise seen them, according to his son; Matthew likewise was dead. There was nobody now living who had ever gone near enough to read the stones, or even to know if there were such stones and pits.

  The other oddity of the Berrymans was their manner of survival. No supplies of any kind had gone into that place for many years, perhaps not forever.

  They had, it is true, a pumpkin patch. They had what may have been a vegetable garden behind its high screen of weeds. They had, in season, a few straggling rows of corn, crazy and uneven; boys who had stolen some of it said that the ears were mottled and the kernels purple like squaw corn. And the Berrymans kept goats; spooky, unhappy goats, unrelated to the lively town goats.

  But nobody really believed that it was on such paltry stuff that they lived. There must be a better, and if not a better then a more interesting, explanation.

  Indeed the Berrymans dined but once a year. This was the most persistent and flavorsome of all the stories about them. And when they dined, they dined on stranger. Those who had disappeared over the years were numerous. There were the tinker who always came yearly, and now he came no more. There had been Ragged Dan the old tramp. He used to come to town every spring, but when was the last time he had been seen? There was the wandering darky who had been seen going to town by two different farmers; going on the high road to town. But he was not seen in town; he was never seen again at all. There were the three Gypsies who had wagoned off the road north of town not three hundred yards from Berryhill. And the next day there were only two of the Gypsies. Where was their brother? the townspeople asked the Gypsies. They did not know; somehow he had become lost; they did not know where he went, they said. But the townspeople knew.

  And if there had been these well-authenticated disappearances, how many more must have remained unknown? There was Sheila Cotter, said to have run away with a cattle-buyer. How would she have run away? What cattle-buyer? If the truth were only known, that she had been eaten by the Berrymans. It is no wonder that the townspeople had no love for them.

  2.

  It was a Friday evening and the Lost Creek Bobcats had held one of their irregular meetings. The Bobcats formed one of the most secret clubs in the world, having only two members: Jimmy Ware and Paul Potter, one nine years old, one nine and a half. It was an oath-bound society, unknown to the world; yet it had caused a wave of destruction in its ten day existence. It was the Bobcats who had hamstrung that sheep belonging to the Millers. It was they who had thrown offal down Tomkin's well, fouling the water. It was they who had broken the great branch of Johnson's apple tree with the blossoms still on it. They had released the pigeons from Hickman's cote; they had broken the dam in Merton's meadow; they had partly burned one of Conner's straw-stacks. It didn't burn well; it was too damp.

  Now, however, the club was split down the middle and dissolved in black anger.

  “I won't go with you, Jimmy,” Paul Potter said. “I'll find a way to stop you. And if you do go, I'll tell on you. You're crazy to even talk about doing it.”

  “You're afraid, Paul. You're a black-bellied coward.”

  “I ate the toadstool you said was poison. I was the one caught the barn-owl with my bare hands.”

  “You're afraid. You're a red-gizzarded, slobbering, wet-your-pants coward.”

  “I may be a coward but I won't go with you to do it. They'll kill you if they catch you.”

  “Besides, you don't know what I'm going to do.”

  “I know exactly what you're going to do. You've talked about it enough.”

  “Yes, I guess you do.”

  “I'll go tell your mother.”

  “It'll be too late to stop me. Nothing can stop me, and I have Pete in my pocket and Mike in my belt.”

  “It's the devil in you wants you to go in there. They'll kill you when they catch you.”

  “Maybe they won't catch me at all. It's getting dark, little boy. You'd better go on home. Run all the way. It gets dark real fast.”

  So Paul Potter ran home crying, but he knew he would not be in time to get help. And Jimmy Ware waited only a little while, till night came down like a curtain.

  Then he walked to Berryhill.

  A spooky house is spooky even to a stubborn boy. And in one respect Berryhill always gave an outlandish impression: it seemed to be growing out of the ground. A cottonwood post set in a fence row will sometimes take root and leaf out again; a hackberry will do the same. But here it seemed as though the wood of the house itself had never stopped growing. It was just that it was crawled all over with vines, and chinked up with old moss; but, coming on it at night, it was like a great hollow tree bole, uprooted, overturned, and then overgrown. It had the smell of slugs and lizards and of swamp weeds in the spring night.

  Well, such things never really harmed. Yet it was rough going even to approach the old house. It seemed to be surrounded by its own special darkness, miasmal, heavier than the night itself. And, in fact, the house was surrounded by much more rank vegetation than the adjacent region. Moreover, the approaches were uneven, ill-drained, sour, and somewhat dangerous.

  There is shock in total sudden contrast, coming on a wrong thing clear-cut and distinct. But there is a more creeping kind of shock in coming gradually upon an indistinct and formless monstrosity until one is nearly in the middle of it. A stark white ghost paralyzes with sudden fright. The indistinct gray specter takes over with a slower paralysis; yet it seizes no less completely. And it was just such a vague gray ghost that Jimmy slowly came onto now. He had thought at first that it was a bush, till he had passed into its half-yielding substance and felt the living hair on it in the dark.

  He twisted back then, with that clattering, devilish cry ringing in his head, and he thought that the gray devil had him. Even in hell there is no sound to compare with it; it is the mad night noise that lifts the hair right off the head and gives the shakes to Satan himself.

  Even after he realized what it was, Jimmy was unsettled. A goat, after all, is half devil, and these gaunt gray goats of the Berryhills were disquieting to come onto in the dark. Moreover, they had a high old smell on them as though they were graveyard creatures. A sudden goat-bleat in the dark has the final quality of the judgment horn.

  But for all that, Jimmy went boldly up on the porch of the old house and scouted over the rotten boards and the warped, uneven, weed-slimed surface. Had he been heavier, there were places where he would have broken through the porch entirely.

  Neither of the stagger-shuttered windows gave a view within at all, and there was no trace of light. But the door itself was neither locked nor latched. It gave to the push, but very heavily, as though it were seldom opened.

  Within, the old swamp smell was still stronger, and now there appeared just a memory of light. It was as if the house had swallowed a lantern, and it shone through the tissues of its monstrous belly.

  Jimmy explored deep into the dark house, and then he stood solid at a turning where there was enough light to make a clear way. The aura of the uncanny was heavy in the place, and Jimmy stood there dogged.

  The encounter was made. And then there was no withdrawing.

  It was a black-b
earded giant, tall as a straw-stack and thin as a pitchfork.

  “What is it? What's this?” Black-beard croaked. “Habacuc, come see! I believe it's a boy.”

  “How would there be a boy?” came the other voice out of a white beard floating by itself out of the darkness. “Likely it's a possum you've caught, they've been in the boards between the ceiling and the floor above. You can tell by the tail if it's a possum.”

  “It doesn't have a tail. I tell you it's a boy. Come with me to the light, boy. You'll be just in time for supper. It's been a long time since we had a boy here.”

  Jimmy Ware followed the black-bearded and the white-bearded old men down a dungeon-like stairs, to a lighted cellar room below.

  “Sophronia, look, we have a boy!” they called.

  “What? I don't know when we've last had a boy here. And just in time for supper too. My, it's been a long time since we've had a boy for supper!” said Sophronia.

  Nehemias the black-bearded hung a kerosene lantern on a rafter to light the table. It was a might rough splintered table, and Sophronia set it there with huge pot-metal plates; pewter they were. At each place she set a horn-handled knife and a roast-skewering fork. But there was no food on the table.

  “Boy,” said Habacuc the white-beard, “you have no idea how glad we are to have you here tonight. Yes, it's been a long time since we've had a boy for supper.”

  There is a trick that old kerosene lanterns have. There are places in a room that they will not light up at all, and there are corners where the darkness is all the deeper for the light being there. There were the three old folks and Jimmy in the cellar room; and evil stood like a servitor waiting to be released.

  “Boy,” said Nehemias, “I wonder if you'd lend a hand at this grindstone here. The carving knife need sharpening. Let us set to work with a will while Sophronia keeps the water at a boil.”

  Jimmy turned the grindstone; and Nehemias held the foot-long knife while sparks cascaded and the smell like burnt sulfur or brimstone was about the wheel.

  “Nehemias,” whined Habacuc in his fluted voice, “have you seen the bone-saw?”

  “On the peg right behind you. But I doubt if we'll need it much. I believe the joints will pop easily without it. It won't be a big carcass or heavily-boned. Boy, you may as well get ready. The knife is as sharp as it will ever be, and we will make a special occasion of this. Habacuc, it must be years since we've had a boy for supper. Right at a year since we've had anyone at all. Sophronia, how are you coming with it?”

  “Nearly ready to set it on. My this will be a good supper! And I'll have a blood-pudding to go with the flesh meat.”

  Then evil was no longer a servitor and would no more be controlled. It rose up, the master, and it worked its havoc in the room.

  Jimmy Ware disdained to use Pete, the snub-nosed pistol; perhaps it was not operable. He had never fired it. He carried it for effect. He took Mike, the razor-sharp hatchet, from his belt. The dim-eyed old folks had no idea of the danger they had been in. The two old men set to the board and bowed their heads in grace; and Jimmy struck, first Nehemias of the black beard, then Habacuc of the white.

  The old skulls broke like eggs to the blows of the strong boy. And as Sophronia tottered in with the boiled goat on a great trencher, he hacked her down also. Then every bond burst and the red evil was all through him like sulfur fire.

  “Paul said they'd kill me if they caught me. Let them kill me! Let them hang me! It was worth it. Paul was afraid to help me kill the old fossils. Now I have them all to myself. I get to kill all three. What do I care if they catch me afterwards?”

  Murder was there in his proper form, and Jimmy Ware was possessed completely. He hacked the life out of the old three, as he had planned for so long. Nehemias groaned in his dying sleep, and Habacuc whimpered like a crushed dog. Sophronia made little bird sounds as she died.

  Jimmy hacked as the blood welled with its sharp metallic smell, and it was on his hands with a slickness more like graphite than grease or liquid. The three harmless old relics lay still.

  And Jimmy Ware began to laugh and could not stop. He had done what he planned. Now he had everything he wanted.

  St. Poleander's Eve

  Lasciate ogni donna, voi ch'entrate!

  Leave every dame behind who enter here!

  — Cristofero Dante Benedetti

  Daisy Flavus had been working for Barnaby Sheen for a year or more; at least she had been on the payroll. He supposed, he said, that she had some duties down at his office or laboratory, but he wasn't sure. He didn't quite remember hiring her.

  Barnaby hadn't much control over the people who worked for him. He really shouldn't have been in business, except that now he was so wealthy from his ventures that he couldn't afford not to be in business. “And in this particular business,” he said (he had a seismograph company for the manufacture and use of instruments for the discovery or location of petroleum deposits), “I can wax wealthy without robbing widows and orphans.”

  “That blows half the fun of it,” Austro said.

  Now, however, Daisy had appointed herself to work in Barnaby's own house; aye, to work in the most mysterious room of that house, Barnaby's third-floor study-bar. This could mean trouble. There was, for one thing, the undisguised motto over the disguised doorway to that study: “Leave every dame behind who enter here.” The study was a male club room: it was not woman country.

  It's true that Loretta Sheen and Mary Mondo lived (if that was the word for them) in the study, but they were special instances — oh how they were special! It's true that three of the four men who knew everything, Doctor George Drakos, Cris Benedetti, and Harry O'Donovan, had wives, and that these wives had all been in the study. But they had been there only on brief guided tours. The study was off limits to women.

  “Get on downtown where you belong,” Barnaby had told Daisy the first time he caught her fluffing around in the study. “Your job is down there.” Daisy had yellow hair and yellow eyes, but she barely missed being grubby.

  “No, my job is here in this room now,” she said. “I am custodian of this room and all that pertains to it. I am now, by formal title, your artistic secretary.”

  “And just how did this come about?” Barnaby asked.

  “Oh, it's all quite regular, Mr. Sheen,” she said. “The director of job classification has reclassified me to work here as artistic secretary.”

  “I disremember. Who has been the director of job classification of my firm?”

  “I have,” Daisy Flavus told him. “I still am.”

  Now whatever was an artistic secretary, and what would Barnaby want with one? Who was arty around here anyhow? Oh, we all were, privately, personally, and in an amateurish way. Doctor George Drakos had fine surgeon's hands, but they were also artist's hands, etcher's hands, and sculptor's hands. Sometimes he did a little of this pleasure work in Barnaby's study. He sculpted there a bit; he painted there a bit. He was a colorful painter, and he used lots of yellow and orange and sienna and red, much more than nature uses. There was one shade of yellow that he could never quite get right. He would mix and he would moan. Then, in exasperation, he would call out “Austro!” and Austro would come: he'd take that color-mix out of the room, and in a short while he'd bring it back again, perfect now. Nobody knew what Austro added to make that color, but Drakos insisted that it was imperative to him to have that correct yellow. “That color is what art is all about,” George Drakos would say. “That color is art.”

  But why was it necessary to have an artistic secretary in the room for this?

  Cris Benedetti made verses. Mostly he made them in Italian (real verse must be in either Italian or Latin or Greek, he insisted), but sometimes he made them (limericks mostly) in English. Does this require an artistic secretary?

  Barnaby Sheen created absolutely implausible music on the Mustel celesta. The Mustel is not like other instruments, and Barnaby was not like other instrumentalists. His wasn't very good music, but it
was implausible. Did he need an artistic secretary for that?

  Harry O'Donovan wrote plays. He wrote the wonderful dramas and melodramas that were put on every Thursday night at the Rushlight Theatre, a non-profit enterprise. The Rushlight was a barnlike building; and the Rushlight Players were an amateur, though excellent, group. Harry also directed the plays, but naturally he didn't direct them in the study of Barnaby Sheen. Was an artistic secretary needed for any of this? Possibly for the correct transcription of Harry's ragged musical notations and scores, but Daisy couldn't read or write music.

  Austro, Barnaby's australopithecine houseboy, drew (or mostly rock-carved) that unpublished and unpublishable comic strip, Rocky McCrocky, in the study; and others helped him a little bit with the continuity. (Austro said that it was discontinuity that they contributed: since Austro had learned to talk he had been talking smart.) But an artistic secretary was not needed for the Rocky McCrocky strip. And what else was arty around here?

  The four men who knew everything played string quartets sometimes, Drakos on his ukulele, Benedetti on the banjo, O'Donovan on the mandolin, and Barnaby Sheen on the lute. They played about once a month and they played well. But how would an artistic secretary help them play better?