American supernatural tales

by S. T. Joshi

  “I said you might meet the great-aunt,” said Paul, as though in answer; Margaret followed his glance, and saw the old lady of the tower. She was dressed in yellow satin, and looked very regal and proud as she moved through the crowd of dancers, drawing her skirt aside if any of them came too close to her. She was coming toward Margaret and Paul where they sat on small chairs against the wall, and when she came close enough she smiled, looking at Paul, and said to him, holding out her hands, “I am very glad to see you, my dear.”

  Then she smiled at Margaret and Margaret smiled back, thankful that the old lady held out no hands to her.

  “Margaret told me you were here,” the old lady said to Paul, “and I came down to see you once more.”

  “I’m happy that you did,” Paul said. “I wanted to see you so much that I almost came to the tower.”

  They both laughed and Margaret, looking from one to the other of them, wondered at the strong resemblance between them. Margaret sat very straight and stiff on her narrow chair, with her blue lace skirt falling charmingly around her and her hands folded neatly in her lap, and listened to their talk. Paul had found the old lady a chair and they sat with their heads near together, looking at one another as they talked, and smiling.

  “You look very fit,” the old lady said. “Very fit indeed.” She sighed.

  “You look wonderfully well,” Paul said.

  “Oh, well,” said the old lady. “I’ve aged. I’ve aged, I know it.”

  “So have I,” said Paul.

  “Not noticeably,” said the old lady, shaking her head and regarding him soberly for a minute. “You never will, I suppose.”

  At that moment the captain came up and bowed in front of Margaret, and Margaret, hoping that Paul might notice, got up to dance with him.

  “I saw you sitting there alone,” said the captain, “and I seized the precise opportunity I have been awaiting all evening.”

  “Excellent military tactics,” said Margaret, wondering if these remarks had not been made a thousand times before, at a thousand different balls.

  “I could be a splendid tactician,” said the captain gallantly, as though carrying on his share of the echoing conversation, the words spoken under so many glittering chandeliers, “if my objective were always so agreeable to me.”

  “I saw you dancing with Carla,” said Margaret.

  “Carla,” he said, and made a small gesture that somehow showed Carla as infinitely less than Margaret. Margaret knew that she had seen him make the same gesture to Carla, probably with reference to Margaret. She laughed.

  “I forget what I’m supposed to say now,” she told him.

  “You’re supposed to say,” he told her seriously, “‘And do you really leave us so soon?’”

  “And do you really leave us so soon?” said Margaret obediently.

  “The sooner to return,” he said, and tightened his arm around her waist. Margaret said, it being her turn, “We shall miss you very much.”

  “I shall miss you,” he said, with a manly air of resignation.

  They danced two waltzes, after which the captain escorted her handsomely back to the chair from which he had taken her, next to which Paul and the old lady continued in conversation, laughing and gesturing. The captain bowed to Margaret deeply, clicking his heels.

  “May I leave you alone for a minute or so?” he asked. “I believe Carla is looking for me.”

  “I’m perfectly all right here,” Margaret said. As the captain hurried away she turned to hear what Paul and the old lady were saying.

  “I remember, I remember,” said the old lady laughing, and she tapped Paul on the wrist with her fan. “I never imagined there would be a time when I should find it funny.”

  “But it was funny,” said Paul.

  “We were so young,” the old lady said. “I can hardly remember.”

  She stood up abruptly, bowed to Margaret, and started back across the room among the dancers. Paul followed her as far as the doorway and then left her to come back to Margaret. When he sat down next to her he said, “So you met the old lady?”

  “I went to the tower,” Margaret said.

  “She told me,” he said absently, looking down at his gloves. “Well,” he said finally, looking up with an air of cheerfulness. “Are they never going to play a waltz?”

  Shortly before the sun came up over the river the next morning they sat at breakfast, Mr. and Mrs. Montague at the ends of the table, Carla and the captain, Margaret and Paul. The red roses in Carla’s hair had faded and been thrown away, as had Margaret’s yellow roses, but both Carla and Margaret still wore their ball gowns, which they had been wearing for so long that the soft richness of them seemed natural, as though they were to wear nothing else for an eternity in the house, and the gay confusion of helping one another dress, and admiring one another, and straightening the last folds to hang more gracefully, seemed all to have happened longer ago than memory, to be perhaps a dream that might never have happened at all, as perhaps the figures in the tapestries on the walls of the dining room might remember, secretly, an imagined process of dressing themselves and coming with laughter and light voices to sit on the lawn where they were woven. Margaret, looking at Carla, thought that she had never seen Carla so familiarly as in this soft white gown, with her hair dressed high on her head—had it really been curled and pinned that way? Or had it always, forever, been so?—and the fan in her hand—had she not always had that fan, held just so?—and when Carla turned her head slightly on her long neck she captured the air of one of the portraits in the long gallery. Paul and the captain were still somehow trim in their uniforms; they were leaving at sunrise.

  “Must you really leave this morning?” Margaret whispered to Paul.

  “You are all kind to stay up and say goodbye,” said the captain, and he leaned forward to look down the table at Margaret, as though it were particularly kind of her.

  “Every time my son leaves me,” said Mrs. Montague, “it is as though it were the first time.”

  Abruptly, the captain turned to Mrs. Montague and said, “I noticed this morning that there was a bare patch on the grass before the door. Can it be restored?”

  “I had not known,” Mrs. Montague said, and she looked nervously at Mr. Montague, who put his hand quietly on the table and said, “We hope to keep the house in good repair so long as we are able.”

  “But the broken statue by the lake?” said the captain. “And the tear in the tapestry behind your head?”

  “It is wrong of you to notice these things,” Mrs. Montague said, gently.

  “What can I do?” he said to her. “It is impossible not to notice these things. The fish are dying, for instance. There are no grapes in the arbor this year. The carpet is worn to thread near your embroidery frame,” he bowed to Mrs. Montague, “and in the house itself—” bowing to Mr. Montague, “—there is a noticeable crack over the window of the conservatory, a crack in the solid stone. Can you repair that?”

  Mr. Montague said weakly, “It is very wrong of you to notice these things. Have you neglected the sun, and the bright perfection of the drawing room? Have you been recently to the gallery of portraits? Have you walked on the green portions of the lawn, or only watched for the bare places?”

  “The drawing room is shabby,” said the captain softly. “The green brocade sofa is torn a little near the arm. The carpet has lost its luster. The gilt is chipped on four of the small chairs in the gold room, the silver paint scratched in the silver room. A tile is missing from the face of Margaret, who died for love, and in the great gallery the paint has faded slightly on the portrait of—” bowing to Mr. Montague, “—your great-great-great-grandfather, sir.”

  Mr. Montague and Mrs. Montague looked at one another, and then Mrs. Montague said, “Surely it is not necessary to reproach us for these things?”

  The captain reddened and shook his head.

  “My embroidery is very nearly finished,” Mrs. Montague said. “I have only to put
the figures into the foreground.”

  “I shall mend the brocade sofa,” said Carla.

  The captain glanced once around the table, and sighed. “I must pack,” he said. “We cannot delay our duties even though we have offended lovely women.” Mrs. Montague, turning coldly away from him, rose and left the table, with Carla and Margaret following.

  Margaret went quickly to the tile room, where the white face of Margaret who died for love stared eternally into the sky beyond the broad window. There was indeed a tile missing from the wide white cheek, and the broken spot looked like a tear, Margaret thought; she kneeled down and touched the tile face quickly to be sure that it was not a tear.

  Then she went slowly back through the lovely rooms, across the broad rose and white tiled hall, and into the drawing room, and stopped to close the tall doors behind her.

  “There really is a tile missing,” she said.

  Paul turned and frowned; he was standing alone in the drawing room, tall and bright in his uniform, ready to leave. “You are mistaken,” he said. “It is not possible that anything should be missing.”

  “I saw it.”

  “It is not true, you know,” he said. He was walking quickly up and down the room, slapping his gloves on his wrist, glancing nervously, now and then, at the door, at the tall windows opening out onto the marble stairway. “The house is the same as ever,” he said. “It does not change.”

  “But the worn carpet . . .” It was under his feet as he walked.

  “Nonsense,” he said violently. “Don’t you think I’d know my own house? I care for it constantly, even when they forget; without this house I could not exist; do you think it would begin to crack while I am here?”

  “How can you keep it from aging? Carpets will wear, you know, and unless they are replaced . . .”

  “Replaced?” He stared as though she had said something evil. “What could replace anything in this house?” He touched Mrs. Montague’s embroidery frame, softly. “All we can do is add to it.”

  There was a sound outside; it was the family coming down the great stairway to say goodbye. He turned quickly and listened, and it seemed to be the sound he had been expecting. “I will always remember you,” he said to Margaret, hastily, and turned again toward the tall windows. “Goodbye.”

  “It is so dark,” Margaret said, going beside him. “You will come back?”

  “I will come back,” he said sharply. “Goodbye.” He stepped across the sill of the window onto the marble stairway outside; he was black for a moment against the white marble, and Margaret stood still at the window watching him go down the steps and away through the gardens. “Lost, lost,” she heard faintly, and, from far away, “all is lost.”

  She turned back to the room, and, avoiding the worn spot in the carpet and moving widely around Mrs. Montague’s embroidery frame, she went to the great doors and opened them. Outside, in the hall with the rose and white tiled floor, Mr. and Mrs. Montague and Carla were standing with the captain.

  “Son,” Mrs. Montague was saying. “When will you be back?”

  “Don’t fuss at me,” the captain said. “I’ll be back when I can.”

  Carla stood silently, a little away. “Please be careful,” she said, and, “Here’s Margaret, come to say goodbye to you, brother.”

  “Don’t linger, m’boy,” said Mr. Montague. “Hard on the women.”

  “There are so many things Margaret and I planned for you while you were here,” Carla said to her brother. “The time has been so short.”

  Margaret, standing beside Mrs. Montague, turned to Carla’s brother (and Paul; who was Paul?) and said “Goodbye.” He bowed to her and moved to go to the door with his father.

  “It is hard to see him go,” Mrs. Montague said. “And we do not know when he will come back.” She put her hand gently on Margaret’s shoulder. “We must show you more of the house,” she said. “I saw you one day try the door of the ruined tower; have you seen the hall of flowers? Or the fountain room?”

  “When my brother comes again,” Carla said, “we shall have a musical evening, and perhaps he will take us boating on the river.”

  “And my visit?” asked Margaret smiling. “Surely there will be an end to my visit?”

  Mrs. Montague, with one last look at the door from which Mr. Montague and the captain had gone, dropped her hand from Margaret’s shoulder and said, “I must go to my embroidery. I have neglected it while my son was with us.”

  “You will not leave us before my brother comes again?” Carla asked Margaret.

  “I have only to put the figures into the foreground,” Mrs. Montague said, hesitating on her way to the drawing room. “I shall have you exactly if you sit on the lawn near the river.”

  “We shall be models of stillness,” said Carla, laughing. “Margaret, will you come and sit beside me on the lawn?”

  RICHARD MATHESON

  Richard Burton Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey, in 1926. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and subsequently gained a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He married Ruth Ann Woodson in 1952; one of their sons is the noted contemporary horror and science fiction writer Richard Christian Matheson. Matheson burst onto the horror scene in 1954 with two volumes, the novel I Am Legend and the story collection Born of Man and Woman. I Am Legend is one of the most inventive elaborations of the vampire myth since Bram Stoker’s Dracula, portraying a future society in which a virus has transformed every human being, with one exception, into a vampire; it was filmed as The Omega Man. Matheson subsequently wrote The Shrinking Man (1956), filmed the next year as The Incredible Shrinking Man with his screenplay. Matheson did much work in film and television, writing many scripts for Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and also for Thriller and other series. A Stir of Echoes (1958) is an effective novel about psychic powers.

  In spite of the success of such novels as Hell House (1971)—a takeoff of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House—and What Dreams May Come (1978), many critics believe that Matheson’s best work is in the short story, especially in the five-volume series, Shock! (1961), Shock II (1964), Shock III (1966), Shock Waves (1970), and Shock 4 (1980). Matheson, along with Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, and Charles Beaumont, is credited with bringing supernatural horror down to earth, eschewing the Gothic extravaganzas of Lovecraft for mundane, contemporary settings for greater immediacy of effect. The immense Collected Stories appeared in 1989.

  “Long Distance Call” (first published in Beyond Fantasy Fiction, November 1953, and reprinted in Shock!) is typical of Matheson’s work in utilizing a common utilitarian device—the telephone—to effect a novel treatment of the conventional supernatural theme of the reanimated dead.

  LONG DISTANCE CALL

  Just before the telephone rang, storm winds toppled the tree outside her window and jolted Miss Keene from dreaming sleep. She flung herself up with a gasp, her frail hands crumpling twists of sheet in either palm. Beneath her fleshless chest the heart jerked taut, the sluggish blood spurted. She sat in rigid muteness, her eyes staring at the night.

  In another second, the telephone rang.

  Who on earth? The question shaped unwittingly in her brain. Her thin hand faltered in the darkness, the fingers searching a moment and then Miss Elva Keene drew the cool receiver to her ear.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Outside a cannon of thunder shook the night, twitching Miss Keene’s crippled legs. I’ve missed the voice, she thought, the thunder has blotted out the voice.

  “Hello,” she said again.

  There was no sound. Miss Keene waited in expectant lethargy. Then she repeated. “Hel-lo,” in a cracking voice. Outside the thunder crashed again.

  Still no voice spoke, not even the sound of a phone being disconnected met her ears. Her wavering hand reached out and thumped down the receiver with an angry motion.

  “Inconsideration,” she muttered, thudding back on her pillow. Already her infirm back ached from t
he effort of sitting.

  She forced out a weary breath. Now she’d have to suffer through the whole tormenting process of going to sleep again—the composing of jaded muscles, the ignoring of abrasive pain in her legs, the endless, frustrating struggle to turn off the faucet in her brain and keep unwanted thoughts from dripping. Oh, well, it had to be done; Nurse Phillips insisted on proper rest. Elva Keene breathed slowly and deeply, drew the covers to her chin and labored hopefully for sleep.

  In vain.

  Her eyes opened and, turning her face to the window, she watched the storm move off on lightning legs. Why can’t I sleep, she fretted, why must I always lie here awake like this?

  She knew the answer without effort. When a life was dull, the smallest element added seemed unnaturally intriguing. And life for Miss Keene was the sorry pattern of lying flat or being propped on pillows, reading books which Nurse Phillips brought from the town library, getting nourishment, rest, medication, listening to her tiny radio—and waiting, waiting for something different to happen.

  Like the telephone call that wasn’t a call.

  There hadn’t even been the sound of a receiver replaced in its cradle. Miss Keene didn’t understand that. Why would anyone call her exchange and then listen silently while she said, “Hello,” over and over again? Had it actually been anyone calling?

  What she should have done, she realized then, was to keep listening until the other person tired of the joke and put down the receiver. What she should have done was to speak out forcefully about the inconsideration of a prankish call to a crippled maiden lady in the middle of a stormy night. Then, if there had been someone listening, whoever it was would have been properly chastened by her angry words and . . .

  “Well, of course.”

  She said it aloud in the darkness, punctuating the sentence with a cluck of somewhat relieved disgust. Of course, the telephone was out of order. Someone had tried to contact her, perhaps Nurse Phillips to see if she was all right. But the other end of the line had broken down in some way, allowing her phone to ring but no verbal communication to be made. Well, of course, that was the case.