The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories

by Michael McDowell

  ‘I’m only telling you what they said.’

  ‘Such a needler. The King of Needling. The Needlemeister. What an education, watching him work. A thing of beauty, your father. He had the softest touch.’ He fell silent, and I could see him remembering. The years seemed to melt away. A smile lit his old, craggy face.

  ‘We did pretty well for ourselves, didn’t we, Mickey? Considering what we had to work with. Where we came from. What we had to do. Pretty damned well.’

  Mickey was my father’s nickname, from the old days. Only a handful of people used it. Evidently, Adolph was talking to him.

  ‘We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. You a high school dropout. Me a college bum.’

  ‘Adolph?’

  He glanced at me.

  ‘Mickey’s not here.’

  He looked lost, but only for a moment. ‘Why would he be? But you. Listen. Be proud of your father. He was a good man. A wonderful person. You know how we met? The story. You know the story?’

  Some of it I did, but only bits and pieces, mostly from my mom. Dad didn’t talk much about the past.

  ‘I came over when I was just a kid. Your father was a year or two older and already here. My family took a room in a house in the neighborhood. Five of us in a single room. I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t know my way from a hole in the ground. Scared? You bet I was scared. Excited too. Scared and excited at the same time. Everything was so different, so strange and unusual, and one day I walked out the door, and there was your father. He was sitting on a fire hydrant, playing with a piece of string. He smiled when he saw me. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.’

  ‘He spoke your language? He spoke German?’

  ‘Your father? German? Never. Not a word.’

  ‘So how’d you understand him?’

  ‘How do you think I understood him? He made himself understood. He took me under his wing. Became a big brother to me. That’s how they worked it. The buddy system. Everything in pairs.’

  ‘Who worked it?’

  ‘The ones who sent us. The program. For me, mandatory. Your dad, if I’m not mistaken, was a volunteer.’

  ‘For what? A volunteer for what?’

  He thought for a moment, and a smile spread across his face. ‘The rest of his life. And then some. That’s for what. Don’t ask me how long, because I can’t tell you. As you see, I’m still here.’

  Apparently, he found this amusing. To me it was annoyingly obtuse.

  ‘You said you were sent. By whom?’

  ‘The senders.’

  ‘Who are the senders?’

  ‘I was five. What does a kid know when he’s five?’ He gave me a look. ‘Your father never talked to you about this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Then I assume he didn’t want you to know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Some do, some don’t. Tell people. It’s an individual decision. It’s not up to me to decide otherwise. Out of respect for your father, may he rest in peace. Out of respect for your mother. And for you.’

  This wasn’t good enough, not by a long shot. I asked him again what it was I didn’t know, but he refused to say another word. I wasn’t about to get down on my knees. Not literally. I did, however, let a certain plaintive, importuning tone enter my voice. But he wouldn’t budge.

  So I tried a different tactic. ‘The men who visited me. Are they part of this thing? Do they know?’

  He didn’t recognize either of their names, but my description of Michaels seemed to ring a bell.

  ‘They came to pay their respects?’

  ‘They wanted a look at him. At his bones. Who are they, Adolph?’

  ‘I’d imagine another unit. Another pair. Did you let them see?’

  ‘No. I didn’t trust them.’

  ‘They were secretive?’

  ‘Extremely.’

  ‘And you found that annoying. Distasteful. Unpleasant.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded, then fell silent. Nearly a minute passed before he spoke. ‘I understand. I do. But imagine for a moment if they weren’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Imagine if they were completely open and honest. Imagine if everyone was. Now take that one step further and imagine if everyone shared everything. If there were no secrets, no hidden thoughts, no privacy. If everyone knew everything about everybody. No separation between people. No boundaries. No mystery. Imagine a world like that. Every channel open all the time. Everything revealed. How does that sound to you?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘We’ve tried it. It fried our little brains. Almost fried our future too. Better a little privacy. A little ignorance. Trust me, it’s no crime to know a little less.’

  Then I’m in good shape, I thought. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘Why won’t his bones burn, Adolph?’

  ‘Ah, yes. That question. Do you have them?’

  As a matter of fact, I did. ‘They’re in the car.’

  He nodded, as if he’d expected no less. ‘The answer to your question is I don’t know why. I only know what you know, that they won’t.’

  He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He did resemble my father, and the look he gave me – ­ searching and warm – ­ resembled him too.

  ‘Have you thought of burying him?’ he asked.

  ‘My mother won’t allow it.’

  ‘It’s a common custom, you know.’

  ‘I do know. But it’s not up to me.’

  ‘Throughout the world. Among a great many groups, as different and diverse as they can be. To hazard a guess, I’d say the custom is quite universal. And I use that term in the broadest possible way.’

  He replaced his glasses and leveled his eyes at me. ‘Did it ever occur to you that the men were there for that?’

  ‘What? To bury my father?’

  ‘Yes. To bury him. Simply that.’

  ‘They didn’t mention it. And it didn’t occur to me. Not once.’

  ‘A failure of communication perhaps. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Your mother won’t permit it.’

  ‘She has that right.’

  ‘Certainly she does. The right of the survivor. We should do our best to honor her wishes. Perhaps it’s time you brought him in.’

  Him was not exactly how I thought of what I had, but I did agree that it was time, and I left the house and went to the car. By now it was late afternoon, and the sun through all the smoke and haze was a blurry ball of red. A woman pushing a stroller passed me on the sidewalk. She smiled, and I smiled back. A brief but warm and very human connection. But then I asked myself, what did her smile signify, what did it mean? And what did mine mean, and were our meanings the same? What did it mean to share something? To understand someone? To be inside another’s skin or their head? And then I thought, us. The word Adolph had used. They sent us. Who was us? And the senders, who were they?

  The box was in the trunk. I hadn’t opened it, and I didn’t intend to, but I had a feeling that Adolph did. I was willing to let him, as long as I didn’t have to watch. It was my dad after all, not some random bag of bones. And frankly, in my mind he was still living. Though not, I admit, living very well: the image I had of him was an elderly man who in his last days was not at all the man he was. That’s the trouble, if you can call it that, of someone living to a ripe old age: you tend to remember them as old. If they happened to be sick, especially if the sickness was prolonged, you remember them that way. I’m sure it gets better with time, easier, that is, to recall earlier days and younger selves, but at the moment what was freshest in my mind was dad in the hospital, restless and agitated, not recognizing me or my mother, awake but clearly somewhere, if not someone, else. The word ‘possession’ comes to mind, but it was more the absence of possession, as if something structured and maybe even made up, like a façade, were gone. Stripped away, to reveal a deep
er – ­ and frankly, deeply disturbing – ­ inner self. Had I seen this person before? The one with barely a thread of connection to the real world, the world, that is, that most of us lived in and knew? Maybe I had. Once when he got so mad while driving he had a near fatal accident. Once when he got so drunk he started singing in someone else’s voice. Another time, or several times, when he and my mother fought. Mostly he was not this way, and I loved him, but he did have a temper, which, when it came, made me think of him as monstrous: those bulging eyes, usually so mild, that strained and frightening voice, that blood red face.

  So yes, I do have memories. But pretty thin evidence for his being other than what he was. Because that’s what we’re talking about. The A word. No one’s using it . . . too scared, too diplomatic, too worried about what the family might say or do or think, too protective of us and our feelings. Whatever. But that’s what they mean.

  So maybe last night’s dream was a message. Maybe it was the voice of truth. Those weird, inhuman bodies. Those shifting, watery faces.

  Not that I believe in such things.

  Not that I necessarily don’t.

  It does raise some questions though. Like, where did you come from, Dad? How many of you are there? Any special powers? Weaknesses? Does Mom know?

  At a certain age – ­ I’m not sure what, but I think pre-­teen – ­ if you’d told me my dad was an alien, I’d have said cool. Go Dad. Part of it bravado, part of it pride, part a confirmation of how I was feeling anyway about him and the world. Face it, when you’re a kid, everything’s alien to some degree. But at an older age, like now, it’s different. I want to know what it means, and what it meant then, and why he didn’t tell me. I want to know who the hell I was living with, and listening to, and trying to impress. Who was I modeling myself after (and doing a pretty good job, judging by the result), and what does that make me?

  The fact is, my dad did have powers. He was good at business. He was super good at cards. He was super modest. When it came to sports, he was super slow.

  And vulnerabilities? His kryptonite? He didn’t always believe in himself. He had a weakness for food and drink. He got angry over and over at the same things. He was stubborn to a fault.

  The bones were a perfect example of his stubbornness: their resistance to being burned really shouldn’t have surprised me at all. When dad didn’t want to do something, he wouldn’t do it. The more you tried to get him to, the harder he’d dig in. If he does have a spirit, it’s a good bet that it resides in this: the hard-­headed, infuriating, refusal-­to-­budge persistence of his damn bones.

  They weren’t much heavier than the box they were packed in, but when I removed them from the trunk, I felt a weight much like what I felt when he and I would square off. The weight of expectation, but more than anything, the weight, the sheer mass, of that stubbornness of his, and not knowing how to respond to it: give in, and let him have his way? Be stubborn back and show my mettle? Should I open the box and force myself to look at him? Would that prove something? If he were watching, what would he think? If he were in my place, what would he do?

  Adolph was waiting when I returned. He’d cleared the table of the chess board, and I placed the box there. He looked at it for a long time before speaking.

  ‘You’ve not opened it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you want to.’

  I shook my head.

  He looked at me and at the same time laid his palm on the box, pressing it there as though to steady himself, or else to steady and maybe comfort who or what was inside. He didn’t reply, and at length I said, ‘I do and I don’t.’

  He nodded. ‘You have an urge.’

  ‘A small one.’

  ‘A sense of obligation.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Have you ever seen a man’s bones?’ he asked.

  ‘In books. And museums.’

  ‘Up close?’

  ‘Not so very close.’

  ‘Ever held a skull?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s an interesting business, skulls and bones. But not so interesting that a man should have to look at his own father. I advise against it. Unless you’re used to such things, the sight can be more than a little unsettling. There’s no reason to inflict it on yourself. It can leave an indelible scar.’

  I thanked him. I did feel an obligation, and his words helped relieve it.

  ‘So what do we do? What’s the plan?’

  ‘You’re asking my advice?’

  ‘Yes. Please.’

  He folded his hands. ‘Very well. Leave the box with me.’

  ‘Leave it?’

  ‘Come back tomorrow and I’ll give you his ashes.’

  ‘How are you going to do that?’

  ‘Not by fire,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  He didn’t reply, and I recalled that he had been a chemist. Possibly he was going to use some chemical method. Possibly that method was illegal, and he didn’t want to implicate me.

  ‘I’d like you to trust me,’ he said.

  ‘I’d like to.’

  ‘Good.’ A moment passed. He gave a knowing smile. ‘The question is, will you?’

  ‘If you tell me how you’re going to do it.’

  ‘And if I can’t?’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  ‘Can’t,’ he said.

  ‘Then I’d want to know why.’

  The smile deepened. ‘Of course. And I’d say that why is unimportant. Or rather, secondary. Inessential at this time. Our job is to honor your father and take care of your mother. And of you. That’s the business at hand. We can continue our conversation later, though I’m not sure you’ll end up knowing more than you do now. The older you get, the more you learn to be satisfied with less. At any rate, now we should do what we have to.’

  ‘Who is he, Adolph?’

  ‘You know who he is.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Forgive me, but you do.’

  This was my father’s oldest friend. My mother trusted him, and I wanted to trust him, too. I longed to trust him. But I couldn’t, not in this.

  I thanked him for everything and left the house, the box in my arms. He watched from the doorway as I slid it in the trunk, doing nothing to interfere. I pulled away and drove a few blocks, then stopped and moved the box to the back seat. A few blocks later, and I moved it to the front.

  The sun had set, and the moon was low in the sky, shrouded gray. It looked like a hole through which all the smoke and soot might pour and disappear, leaving the world, my world, clean and whole again. In the distance along the edge of a hill was a smudge of red where another fire raged. My heart was heavy. I stopped the car.

  Adolph was right. I did know who he was. And that person wasn’t in the box, or behind some secret door, or in what people thought or hinted about him. Who he was was inside me. And knowing this was knowing a lot, and it made the decision of what to do next easy.

  The fires continued to ravage the state, until it seemed we had entered an era of flame. If you didn’t see one, then you saw smoke, and breathed it in and tasted it. But then one day, miraculously, the sun rose in a sky that was nearly blue. And the air was nearly fresh. And that was the day we scattered his ashes.

  Some, at mom’s insistence, we sprinkled on a pathetic little planting strip beside Oak Mall, which was all that remained of a park where she and dad had courted. The rest we scattered on a hilltop overlooking town. Adolph had sealed them in a heavy-­duty plastic bag, which he had thoughtfully placed in a stainless steel urn. My mother, who normally notices such things, made no comment, but to me the urn looked suspiciously like a large martini shaker.

  Were they my father’s remains? My mom certainly thought they were. And I was inclined to think so too. If they weren’t, they were doing what they had to. They were fulfilling their purpose.

  It’s a terrible thing to live in a constant state of doubt. It’s hard, sometimes excruciatingly hard, to always be u
nsure. Whoever my father was and wherever he came from, the earth had him now. But we had him before, and without question he had us.

  LET LOOSE by Mary Cholmondeley

  Mary Cholmondeley (1859-1925) (pronounced ‘Chumley’) was a popular novelist of the late Victorian period, best known as an author of ‘Sensation’ fiction, including Red Pottage (1899), a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. Another sensational tale, Diana Tempest (1893), was well received by critics and has been reprinted by Valancourt in a scholarly edition. ‘Let Loose’ first appeared in Temple Bar magazine in April 1890. Preceding Bram Stoker’s famous novel by seven years, Cholmondeley’s tale has been recognized by critics as an early vampire story of sorts.

  The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold

  Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still.

  Some years ago I took up architecture, and made a tour through Holland, studying the buildings of that interesting country.

  I was not then aware that it is not enough to take up art. Art must take you up, too. I never doubted but that my passing enthusiasm for her would be returned. When I discovered that she was a stern mistress, who did not imme­diately respond to my attentions, I naturally trans­ferred them to another shrine. There are other things in the world besides art. I am now a land­scape gardener.

  But at the time of which I write I was engaged in a violent flirtation with architecture. I had one companion on this expedition, who has since become one of the leading architects of the day. He was a thin, determined-­looking man with a screwed-­up face and heavy jaw, slow of speech, and absorbed in his work to a degree which I quickly found tiresome. He was possessed of a certain quiet power of overcoming obstacles which I have rarely seen equalled. He has since become my brother-­in-­law, so I ought to know; for my parents did not like him much and opposed the marriage, and my sister did not like him at all, and refused him over and over again; but, neverthe­less, he eventually married her.

  I have thought since that one of his reasons for choosing me as his travelling companion on this occasion was because he was getting up steam for what he subsequently termed ‘an alliance with my family,’ but the idea never entered my head at the time. A more careless man as to dress I have rarely met, and yet, in all the heat of July in Hol­land, I noticed that he never appeared without a high, starched collar, which had not even fashion to commend it at that time.