Festival of Fear

by Graham Masterton

  I smiled at her, and nodded. ‘I was thinking about Christmas, that’s all. I think it might have come early this year.’

  During November the grass in our yard continued to grow thick and lush, and I had to cut it with a sickle every weekend. I took two weeks off work, and I sat down with my accountant George Nevis and mapped out a business plan, although I didn’t tell George exactly what my product was. ‘Just take a look out of the window, George. It’s the middle of winter, in St Paul, and I can make the grass grow. This is my very first test, but I believe I can do the same thing for every cash crop in the world.’

  George blinked at me through his thick-lensed eyeglasses. ‘Jack, you’re talking very serious profit here. But not just profit. This has huge political implications, too. Like, huge. Even the President can’t make the grass grow in the middle of winter.’

  I patted him on the back. ‘It’s a new era, George, and it belongs to me.’

  Two days before Christmas, Jenny came into my study and said, ‘There’s somebody to see you. He wouldn’t give his name.’

  I was having a headache working out a franchise scheme for Miracle Crop Services. Obviously it was going to be impossible for me to visit every potential customer in person, so I would have to employ people to tour the country and perform the ritual for me. The principal problem was that – once I had told them how it was done, and given them the wherewithal to do it – they could go out and do it on their own and tell me to stick my franchise where you don’t need Ray-Bans.

  ‘Sorry – whoever it is, tell him I’m busy.’

  But Jenny came back a few moments later and said, ‘He says he really has to see you. It’s about the grass.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ I left my desk and went to the front door. A tall, thin man was standing in the porch, one side of his face illuminated scarlet by the sunshine that came through the stained-glass window, the other side yellow. He wore a black wide-brimmed hat and a long black coat and his hair was almost shoulder length, dry and gray. He had a large nose, but otherwise his face was strangely unmemorable, as if he had moved his head while his photograph was being taken.

  ‘Hallo, Jack,’ he said, but he didn’t extend his hand.

  ‘Yes? I’m very busy, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, I’ve come to relieve you of all of that.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I believe that you have something that belongs to me. In fact, I only had to look over into your back yard to know that you have something that belongs to me.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you’d better get off my property before I call the cops.’

  ‘My box, Jack. My trusty old box, with all of my powders and my bones and my –’ and here he held up his finger and thumb and made a little shaking gesture – ‘jingle, jingle, sleigh bells.’

  ‘I don’t have anything that belongs to you. I don’t even know who the hell you are.’

  The man gave the faintest of smiles. ‘I think you know exactly who I am, Jack. I’m the kind of man who can wait a very long time to get what he wants. I’m the kind of man who follows you right to the ends of the earth. You have my trusty old box, Jack. I went back for it and it wasn’t there and it sure took some sniffing around to find out what had happened to it.’

  ‘It was abandoned. It was lying in the dirt. Who’s to say it’s yours?’

  ‘It’s mine because it’s mine, Jack, and I want it back.’

  ‘Well, forget it. OK? You understand English? That box is mine now and you don’t have any way of proving different.’

  ‘So what are you going to do with it, Jack? Apart from making your back yard look like Kentucky?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you what I’m going to do with it.’

  The man smiled even more widely, his eyes glittering in his red-and-yellow harlequin face. ‘I know. You think you’re going to make your fortune, don’t you? You think you’re going to be rich beyond the dreams of men. But it doesn’t work that way, Jack. Never has. The ritual works once and only once. It gives you a helping hand when you’re lower than low and you don’t know what else to do. And it always carries its price, and one way or another, you have to pay that price, in full.’

  ‘OK, you’ve had your say. Now I’m calling the cops.’

  ‘You still don’t get it, do you? The ritual isn’t an act of kindness. I’m not in the charity business, Jack, never have been. The ritual is temptation. The ritual is what you turn to when the Lord thy God appears to have abandoned you. Why do you think I come at Christmas-time? Is there anything more satisfying than having somebody deny their faith on the very eve of the Virgin Birth?’

  ‘You’re crazy. Get out of here.’

  ‘I want my trusty old box, Jack, I’m warning you, and if I don’t get my trusty old box, you’re going to have to pay me recompense.’

  I slammed the door in his face. He waited outside for a while: I could see his face through the hammered-glass porthole. Then he turned and went away, closing the screen door very carefully so that it didn’t make a sound.

  Tracey and Mikey came scuttling down the stairs and Mikey said, ‘Daddy banged the door!’

  ‘The wind caught it,’ I told him, tousling his hair.

  Jenny came out of the kitchen looking worried. ‘Who was that man? What did he want?’

  ‘Nothing. Just a bum, looking for a handout.’

  ‘You were angry with him. I heard you.’

  ‘I told you, it’s nothing.’

  I tried to go back into my study but Jenny caught my arm. ‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there? Ever since you came home from Roseau, you’ve been acting so strange.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong. In fact everything’s one hundred and ninety percent right. This year we’re going to have a Christmas we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.’

  It snowed on Christmas Eve and carol singers came around from house to house, carrying lanterns. Tracey and Mikey knelt up on the window seat looking out at the street and their faces were lit up by the Christmas lights. Jenny squeezed my hand and said, ‘Mikey’s so excited I think he’s going to be sick.’

  We had supper together, and then the children put out Tracey’s Christmas cake and a glass of Canadian Club for Santa. The cake was lopsided but I assured Tracey that Santa wouldn’t mind, in fact Lopsided Cake was his favorite. I hugged them both before they went to bed and believe me there is no smell like the smell of your own children at Christmas. You don’t need spices or mulled wine.

  As we sat together that evening, Jenny said, ‘I wish you’d tell me what’s really going on.’

  ‘Nothing at all. I’m planning to go into crop management, that’s all. I’ve had enough years of experience, growing things.’

  ‘But that man. He wasn’t just a bum, was he? He said he wanted to talk to you about the grass.’

  ‘He was being nosey, that’s all.’

  She frowned at me. ‘It isn’t just a freak of nature, is it, that grass?’

  ‘What else could it be?’

  ‘You tell me. There’s some sort of connection, isn’t there, between the grass growing like that and you wanting to start up a new business? Why can’t you tell me what it is?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand it even if I told you. It’s too technical.’

  She suddenly sat up straight. ‘You used the things in that box, didn’t you, like that man in Roseau?’ God, women and their intuition. ‘You did the same ritual, and it worked.’

  ‘Jenny – don’t be ridiculous. You can’t make grass grow by burning fires and sprinkling powder on it.’

  ‘There were ashes on the snow, I saw them. You did it, didn’t you, and it worked?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘All right, yes. I did it and it worked. And if it works for the grass and it works for wheat it’s going to work for corn and broccoli and potatoes and rutabaga. God knows, it may even work for sheep and cows. That’s why this is going to be the best Christmas ever. This is the
Christmas when we start getting very, very rich.’

  ‘So what did that man want?’

  ‘I told you. He was sticking his nose in where it wasn’t wanted. He saw the grass and wondered how I’d managed to grow it.’

  ‘And you slammed the door on him?’

  ‘Jenny—’

  ‘Jack, I have a very bad feeling about this. I mean it. Using the things in that box – that’s like making a deal with the devil.’

  ‘It’s folk magic, that’s all. It’s perfectly harmless.’

  At that moment the phone rang. Jenny answered it but it was Jerry, wanting to talk to me.

  ‘Listen, Jack, I don’t want to spoil your Christmas Eve, but something’s happened.’

  ‘What is it? You sound terrible. Do you have a cold?’

  ‘I called Alma. You remember Alma from the North Star Bar?’

  ‘Of course I remember Alma. What about her?’

  ‘I called her. I was going to invite her down to St Paul for New Year’s.’

  ‘So? Is she coming?’

  ‘She’s dead, Jack. They found her this morning. She and John Shooks, both. It seems like a guy came into the bar two nights ago asking about a tin box. He talked to Alma and he talked to John Shooks and it seems like they wouldn’t tell him nothing, and there was some kind of an argument.

  ‘It was Alma’s day off yesterday, but when she didn’t show up this morning the manager went to look for her. He broke into her room and there she was in bed with her head cut off. Tortured, too, all of her fingernails and toenails pulled out. The cops went round to John Shooks’ place and the same thing had happened to him. Jesus – they haven’t even found their heads yet.’

  I talked to Jerry a while longer, just to calm him down, but then I had to put the phone down, because I was starting to shake. That was how the man in the black hat had discovered where I lived. And if he could do that to Alma Lindenmuth and John Shooks just to find me, what was he going to do to me?

  ‘If I don’t get my trusty old box, you’re going to have to pay me recompense.’

  We went to bed late that night, well after midnight. All I told Jenny about Jerry was that two of his friends had been killed in an accident. I didn’t want her to start worrying, too. We tippy-toed into the children’s room and filled the pillowcases they had left out for Santa – a Bratz doll and a hairbrush set for Tracey and a collection of Harry Potter figures for Mikey, as well as candies and oranges and nuts.

  I left their doorway a couple of inches ajar and then I followed Jenny to the bedroom. ‘You’re so tense,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing, really.’

  ‘Jack – what I said about making a deal with the devil – I didn’t really mean it.’

  ‘Well, maybe it was a pretty stupid thing for me to do.’

  ‘If you think it’s really going to make us rich—’

  I took hold of her hands and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes you can stop and take a look at yourself and it hits you – my God, is this really me, behaving like this?’

  ‘You’re a good man, Jack.’

  ‘I used to think so. Now I’m not so sure.’

  We went to bed but this was another night when I couldn’t sleep. The hours ticked by and the clock in the hallway chimed each hour. At three o’clock, after the chimes had died away, I was sure that I could hear a faint jingling. Just an echo, probably. I had a brief fight with my pillow and tried to get comfortable, but the covers were all twisted and I didn’t want to pull them too hard in case I woke Jenny.

  As I settled down, I heard the jingling again. It was slightly louder this time, and closer. I lay in the darkness, waiting and listening. Then I heard a hollow knocking sound, right outside our bedroom window, as if something had struck the fascia boards around the guttering. I eased myself out of bed and looked outside.

  It was steadily snowing, and the street was glistening white. There, in our driveway, was a long black sleigh, with eight shaggy black dogs harnessed in it, panting patiently. The sleigh was empty, except for a heap of black sacks. I suddenly realized what the knocking sound had been – a long ladder, placed against the house.

  ‘Jenny!’ I shouted at her, shaking her shoulder. ‘Jenny, wake up! Call the police!

  She sat up and stared at me blurrily.

  ‘Call nine one one! Do it now!’

  But right above us, I heard footsteps crossing the roof, and then the creak of shingles being torn out. The children, for God’s sake. He was trying to get to the children.

  I hurtled along the landing to the children’s room, but as I reached the door it slammed shut, and I heard the key turn. I pummeled against the paneling with my fists, and I threw my shoulder against it, but it wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Tracey! Mikey! Wake up! Open the door! Open the door and get out of there, quick!’

  I heard more creaks as nails were dragged out of the roof. I hammered on the door again and shouted, ‘Tracey! Mikey! Wake up! You have to get out of there!’

  Now I heard Mikey crying, and Tracey calling, ‘What is it? What is it? The ceiling’s breaking!’

  ‘The door’s locked! Turn the key and get out of there, quick as you can!’

  Jenny came hurrying along the landing, her hair wild. ‘The police are coming right now. Five minutes, they said. What’s happening?’

  ‘Open the door Tracey goddamnit! Open the door!’

  ‘I can’t!’ wailed Tracey. ‘The key won’t turn!’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Jenny screamed at me. ‘What’s happening? Why can’t you open the door?’

  ‘It’s him,’ I told her. ‘It’s the man who came this afternoon. It’s Satan.’

  ‘What? What have you done? Get my children out of there! Get my children out of there!’

  I held on to the banister and kicked at the door with my bare feet, but it was too solid to budge. Inside, Tracey and Mikey were shrieking hysterically.

  ‘Daddy! Somebody’s coming through the ceiling! Daddy, open the door! It’s a man and he’s coming through the ceiling!’

  Oh shit, I thought. Oh shit oh shit. Jenny was totally panicking now and beating at the door so hard that she was breaking all her nails and spattering the paintwork with blood.

  God there was only one thing to do and I hoped it wasn’t too late. I ran along the landing and down the stairs, three at a time. Jenny called after me, ‘Where are you going? Jack! We have to open the door!’

  ‘Mommy! Mommy! I can see his legs! Open the door, mommy!’

  I careered through the kitchen and opened the door that led to the garage. I seized the metal box from my workbench and went running back upstairs with it.

  ‘What good will that do?’ Jenny screamed at me. ‘You could have brought your ax!’

  But I went up close to the door and shouted out, ‘Listen to me! I have it! Your box! If you let my children alone and open the door you can have it back right now!’

  I heard a crack-thump as the man broke through the last of the plaster and dropped down on to the floor. Tracey moaned and Mikey gave that little yelp that he always gives when he’s really, seriously scared.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ I asked him. ‘I have it right here in my hand. You can have it back, no questions asked, no charges brought, nothing. Just open the door and take the box and we’ll let you leave.’

  There was a long, long silence. I could still hear Mikey mewling so the man couldn’t have hurt them yet.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Those are our children.’

  Jenny stood close beside me, clenching and unclenching her bloodied fists. Then she suddenly screeched out, ‘Open the door you bastard! Open the door!’

  Another silence, and then the key was turned. The door swung open by itself.

  Tracey and Mikey were cowering down behind Mikey’s bed. The man was standing in the middle of their bedroom, his black clothes covered in plaster dust. He had torn a hole in the ceiling three feet across and snow wa
s whirling into the bedroom, and melting as it touched the carpet. He was holding a large curved sickle, with a black handle and an oily blade.

  I stepped forward, lifting the box in my left hand. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Everything’s in there, except for the powder I used on the grass.’

  He smiled at me, and hooked his sickle into his belt, and took the box in both hands.

  ‘I’m sorry I took it,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t realize that it was yours . . . that you were still alive after all those years.’

  Jenny skirted around behind me, took hold of Tracey and Mikey, and hurried them out of the bedroom. The man raised one eyebrow and said, ‘Beautiful children. You were wise.’

  ‘No . . . I was just what you said I was. Greedy. Wanting something for nothing. And I almost lost my family because of it.’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t be too hard on yourself, Jack. We all make mistakes.’

  His mistake was to put the box down on the floor and open it up, just to make sure that everything was there. He should have trusted me. While he was bent over it, I swung myself around like a baseball pitcher and lifted the sickle that I was holding in my right hand. He sensed my movement and began to raise his eyes but it was then that I hit him across the back of the neck and the sickle chopped right through his dry gray hair and right through his vertebrae and halfway through his throat. His head dropped forward on to his chest as if it were attached by a hinge, and blood jumped out of his neck and into the box. He looked at me – he actually looked at me, upside-down, from under his arm, and that look would give me nightmares for countless Christmases to come. Then he fell sideways on to the carpet.

  I didn’t want to do it, but somehow I knew that I had to. I turned him over and hacked at his neck twice more, until his head was completely severed. After that I didn’t have the strength to do anything else, but kneel beside him with gloves made of gradually-drying blood, while the snow fell on to my shoulders, and a police siren warbled closer and closer.

  It was Christmas Day, and Santa had been.

  Sarcophagus

  ‘Are you sure this is safe?’ asked Maureen. The evening sun had suddenly entered her dorm room, so she had to lift one podgy hand to shield her eyes.