The Haunts & Horrors Megapack: 31 Modern & Classic Stories

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  I bent to help him, then, despite myself, drew back. Clothed in outing flannel pajamas, drenched with blood that spurted from at least ten wounds, and obviously dead, Felicia Watrous lay, a huddled, mangled, bullet-riddled corpse, before us on the rain-diluted snow.

  * * * *

  The liquor that the pharmacist broke out at Weinberg’s order was far from palatable, but it was “Whiskey, U.S.P.,” which meant it was one hundred proof—fifty percent grain alcohol—and that was what we needed right then.

  “I was afraid of this,” he told me as he gulped a second potion down. “She’d been delirous all day, and I asked that they have a nurse with her every minute. I s’pose the girl had left to get her tray, or something, though, and that was when it happened. The moment she was free from surveillance, she went for the window—”

  “What in heaven’s name are you driving at, Al?” I broke in. “What’s Felicia’s being in delirium got to do with—”

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “I hadn’t told you what it was I suspected.

  “Remember the other night at your quarters I told you I thought medical opinion and theories were due for overhauling?

  “Yes, but—”

  “Never mind the buts, old man. Ever since we found that Jerry secret agent throttled in our railway coach, I’d puzzled over his bruises. The evidence all pointed to a great ape having throttled him, but that was palpably absurd. I’d found Felicia’s puttee and shoe unfastened, but that could have had have no bearing on the case—I thought. Then the other night you told me what Ten Eyck had said before he died—Felicia’s mother had been frightened into madness by a gorilla just before she had her baby; Felicia never showed her feet to anyone; seemed sensitive about them; you saw her almost faint when young Ten joked about her ability to feed herself with her feet remember?

  “Yes, of course; but—”

  “Hold hard, feller; let me finish. Nearly everybody’s heard—and most laymen believe stories—of pre-natal influence; if a mother’s frightened by an an animal, her baby’s likely to be marked with some characteristic of the beast. A mother terrified by a vicious dog, for instance, may give birth to a dog-faced child; or one who’s been chased by a bull may bear a child with vestiges of horn upon its head—”

  “What are you building up to?” I demanded. “Those old wives’ tales of prenatal influence have been discredited a century and more. Davenport in his Heredity in Relation to Eugenics states clearly that—”

  “Sure,” he broke in sarcastically, “and you can find plenty o’ people who believe that Bacon wrote Shakespeare, and just as many others who’ll tell you that Bacon laid an egg, but let me tell you something, Pat Carmichael: Felicia Watrous killed that German spy and saved us all from asphyxiation. She must have wakened when he got his gas-kit out and saw that he was up to—remember you told me how her eyes seemed to glow in the dark? She was probably better able to see in dim lights than we are, just as animals can. So she whipped her shoe and puttee off and killed him with a single grasp of her foot, but the gas got her before she’d quite finished redressing, so—”

  “Al, you’re drunk or crazy; maybe both!” I interrupted. “How in blazes could she have throttled him with her foot? I suppose you’ll tell me next she killed that crazy miner and saved those nurses—”

  “Of course she did,” he broke in almost savagely. “Come here—”

  Seizing me by the cuff he led me up the stairs and down the almost lightless corridor to the room where they had laid her.

  She was so peaceful, so lovely, lying in her white cot with the blankets drawn up cozily about her throat, that though I’d seen her die, I had to look a second time to make sure that I did not see the flutter of her bosom underneath the coverlet. The rain had stopped some time before, and now an early-morning beam of sunshine slanted through the window. But for Felicia, as for the boy who’d loved her since their childhood, the night had come.

  “Look here, Pat,” commanded Weinberg, “look and tell me if those ‘old wives’ tales’ have been completely discredited.”

  He drew the covers almost reverently from the foot of the cot.

  Her lovely legs were shaped as graciously as any ever sculptured by the master-craftsmen of old Greece, her ankles were as sharply turned and clean-cut as a thoroughbred race horse’s, but her feet—

  “Good heavens!” I cried as I looked.

  They were like hands; like powerfully-sinewed hands with scarcely any palms, but with fingers of abnormal length and thickness. The thumbs—or great toes—were mere vestigial stumps, and over all was thick, lead-colored hide, coarse and tough and callous as the skin that covers a gorilla’s foot.

  THE MONKEY’S PAW, by W.W. Jacobs

  I.

  Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about the game involving radical changes, putting his king into such sharp and unnecessary perils that it even provoked comment from the white-haired old lady knitting placidly by the fire.

  “Hark at the wind,” said Mr. White, who, having seen a fatal mistake after it was too late, was amiably desirous of preventing his son from seeing it.

  “I’m listening,” said the latter, grimly surveying the board as he stretched out his hand. “Check.”

  “I should hardly think that he’d come tonight,” said his father, with his hand poised over the board.

  “Mate,” replied the son.

  “That’s the worst of living so far out,” bawled Mr. White, with sudden and unlooked-for violence; “of all the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live in, this is the worst. Pathway’s a bog, and the road’s a torrent. I don’t know what people are thinking about. I suppose because only two houses in the road are let, they think it doesn’t matter.”

  “Never mind, dear,” said his wife, soothingly; “perhaps you’ll win the next one.”

  Mr. White looked up sharply, just in time to intercept a knowing glance between mother and son. The words died away on his lips, and he hid a guilty grin in his thin grey beard.

  “There he is,” said Herbert White, as the gate banged to loudly and heavy footsteps came toward the door.

  The old man rose with hospitable haste, and opening the door, was heard condoling with the new arrival. The new arrival also condoled with himself, so that Mrs. White said, “Tut, tut!” and coughed gently as her husband entered the room, followed by a tall, burly man, beady of eye and rubicund of visage.

  “Sergeant-Major Morris,” he said, introducing him.

  The sergeant-major shook hands, and taking the proffered seat by the fire, watched contentedly while his host got out whiskey and tumblers and stood a small copper kettle on the fire.

  At the third glass his eyes got brighter, and he began to talk, the little family circle regarding with eager interest this visitor from distant parts, as he squared his broad shoulders in the chair and spoke of wild scenes and doughty deeds; of wars and plagues and strange peoples.

  “Twenty-one years of it,” said Mr. White, nodding at his wife and son. “When he went away he was a slip of a youth in the warehouse. Now look at him.”

  “He don’t look to have taken much harm,” said Mrs. White, politely.

  “I’d like to go to India myself,” said the old man, “just to look round a bit, you know.”

  “Better where you are,” said the sergeant-major, shaking his head. He put down the empty glass, and sighing softly, shook it again.

  “I should like to see those old temples and fakirs and jugglers,” said the old man. “What was that you started telling me the other day about a monkey’s paw or something, Morris?”

  “Nothing,” said the soldier, hastily. “Leastways nothing worth hearing.”

  “Monkey’s paw?” said Mrs. White, curiously.

  “Well, it’s just a bit of what you might call magic, perhaps,” said the sergeant-major, offhandedly.
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  His three listeners leaned forward eagerly. The visitor absent-mindedly put his empty glass to his lips and then set it down again. His host filled it for him.

  “To look at,” said the sergeant-major, fumbling in his pocket, “it’s just an ordinary little paw, dried to a mummy.”

  He took something out of his pocket and proffered it. Mrs. White drew back with a grimace, but her son, taking it, examined it curiously.

  “And what is there special about it?” inquired Mr. White as he took it from his son, and having examined it, placed it upon the table.

  “It had a spell put on it by an old fakir,” said the sergeant-major, “a very holy man. He wanted to show that fate ruled people’s lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow. He put a spell on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it.”

  His manner was so impressive that his hearers were conscious that their light laughter jarred somewhat.

  “Well, why don’t you have three, sir?” said Herbert White, cleverly.

  The soldier regarded him in the way that middle age is wont to regard presumptuous youth. “I have,” he said, quietly, and his blotchy face whitened.

  “And did you really have the three wishes granted?” asked Mrs. White.

  “I did,” said the sergeant-major, and his glass tapped against his strong teeth.

  “And has anybody else wished?” persisted the old lady.

  “The first man had his three wishes. Yes,” was the reply; “I don’t know what the first two were, but the third was for death. That’s how I got the paw.”

  His tones were so grave that a hush fell upon the group.

  “If you’ve had your three wishes, it’s no good to you now, then, Morris,” said the old man at last. “What do you keep it for?”

  The soldier shook his head. “Fancy, I suppose,” he said, slowly. “I did have some idea of selling it, but I don’t think I will. It has caused enough mischief already. Besides, people won’t buy. They think it’s a fairy tale; some of them, and those who do think anything of it want to try it first and pay me afterward.”

  “If you could have another three wishes,” said the old man, eyeing him keenly, “would you have them?”

  “I don’t know,” said the other. “I don’t know.”

  He took the paw, and dangling it between his forefinger and thumb, suddenly threw it upon the fire. White, with a slight cry, stooped down and snatched it off.

  “Better let it burn,” said the soldier, solemnly.

  “If you don’t want it, Morris,” said the other, “give it to me.”

  “I won’t,” said his friend, doggedly. “I threw it on the fire. If you keep it, don’t blame me for what happens. Pitch it on the fire again like a sensible man.”

  The other shook his head and examined his new possession closely. “How do you do it?” he inquired.

  “Hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud,” said the sergeant-major, “but I warn you of the consequences.”

  “Sounds like the Arabian Nights,” said Mrs. White, as she rose and began to set the supper. “Don’t you think you might wish for four pairs of hands for me?”

  Her husband drew the talisman from pocket, and then all three burst into laughter as the sergeant-major, with a look of alarm on his face, caught him by the arm.

  “If you must wish,” he said, gruffly, “wish for something sensible.”

  Mr. White dropped it back in his pocket, and placing chairs, motioned his friend to the table. In the business of supper the talisman was partly forgotten, and afterward the three sat listening in an enthralled fashion to a second instalment of the soldier’s adventures in India.

  “If the tale about the monkey’s paw is not more truthful than those he has been telling us,” said Herbert, as the door closed behind their guest, just in time for him to catch the last train, “we sha’nt make much out of it.”

  “Did you give him anything for it, father?” inquired Mrs. White, regarding her husband closely.

  “A trifle,” said he, colouring slightly. “He didn’t want it, but I made him take it. And he pressed me again to throw it away.”

  “Likely,” said Herbert, with pretended horror. “Why, we’re going to be rich, and famous and happy. Wish to be an emperor, father, to begin with; then you can’t be henpecked.”

  He darted round the table, pursued by the maligned Mrs. White armed with an antimacassar.

  Mr. White took the paw from his pocket and eyed it dubiously. “I don’t know what to wish for, and that’s a fact,” he said, slowly. “It seems to me I’ve got all I want.”

  “If you only cleared the house, you’d be quite happy, wouldn’t you?” said Herbert, with his hand on his shoulder. “Well, wish for two hundred pounds, then; that’ll just do it.”

  His father, smiling shamefacedly at his own credulity, held up the talisman, as his son, with a solemn face, somewhat marred by a wink at his mother, sat down at the piano and struck a few impressive chords.

  “I wish for two hundred pounds,” said the old man distinctly.

  A fine crash from the piano greeted the words, interrupted by a shuddering cry from the old man. His wife and son ran toward him.

  “It moved,” he cried, with a glance of disgust at the object as it lay on the floor.

  “As I wished, it twisted in my hand like a snake.”

  “Well, I don’t see the money,” said his son as he picked it up and placed it on the table, “and I bet I never shall.”

  “It must have been your fancy, father,” said his wife, regarding him anxiously.

  He shook his head. “Never mind, though; there’s no harm done, but it gave me a shock all the same.”

  They sat down by the fire again while the two men finished their pipes. Outside, the wind was higher than ever, and the old man started nervously at the sound of a door banging upstairs. A silence unusual and depressing settled upon all three, which lasted until the old couple rose to retire for the night.

  “I expect you’ll find the cash tied up in a big bag in the middle of your bed,” said Herbert, as he bade them good-night, “and something horrible squatting up on top of the wardrobe watching you as you pocket your ill-gotten gains.”

  He sat alone in the darkness, gazing at the dying fire, and seeing faces in it. The last face was so horrible and so simian that he gazed at it in amazement. It got so vivid that, with a little uneasy laugh, he felt on the table for a glass containing a little water to throw over it. His hand grasped the monkey’s paw, and with a little shiver he wiped his hand on his coat and went up to bed.

  II

  In the brightness of the wintry sun next morning as it streamed over the breakfast table he laughed at his fears. There was an air of prosaic wholesomeness about the room which it had lacked on the previous night, and the dirty, shrivelled little paw was pitched on the sideboard with a carelessness which betokened no great belief in its virtues.

  “I suppose all old soldiers are the same,” said Mrs. White. “The idea of our listening to such nonsense! How could wishes be granted in these days? And if they could, how could two hundred pounds hurt you, father?”

  “Might drop on his head from the sky,” said the frivolous Herbert.

  “Morris said the things happened so naturally,” said his father, “that you might if you so wished attribute it to coincidence.”

  “Well, don’t break into the money before I come back,” said Herbert as he rose from the table. “I’m afraid it’ll turn you into a mean, avaricious man, and we shall have to disown you.”

  His mother laughed, and following him to the door, watched him down the road; and returning to the breakfast table, was very happy at the expense of her husband’s credulity. All of which did not prevent her from scurrying to the door at the postman’s knock, nor prevent her from referring somewhat shortly to retired sergeant-majors of bibulous habits when she found that the post brought a tailor’s bill.

  “Herbert will h
ave some more of his funny remarks, I expect, when he comes home,” she said, as they sat at dinner.

  “I dare say,” said Mr. White, pouring himself out some beer; “but for all that, the thing moved in my hand; that I’ll swear to.”

  “You thought it did,” said the old lady soothingly.

  “I say it did,” replied the other. “There was no thought about it; I had just— What’s the matter?”

  His wife made no reply. She was watching the mysterious movements of a man outside, who, peering in an undecided fashion at the house, appeared to be trying to make up his mind to enter. In mental connection with the two hundred pounds, she noticed that the stranger was well dressed, and wore a silk hat of glossy newness. Three times he paused at the gate, and then walked on again. The fourth time he stood with his hand upon it, and then with sudden resolution flung it open and walked up the path. Mrs. White at the same moment placed her hands behind her, and hurriedly unfastening the strings of her apron, put that useful article of apparel beneath the cushion of her chair.

  She brought the stranger, who seemed ill at ease, into the room. He gazed at her furtively, and listened in a preoccupied fashion as the old lady apologized for the appearance of the room, and her husband’s coat, a garment which he usually reserved for the garden. She then waited as patiently as her sex would permit, for him to broach his business, but he was at first strangely silent.

  “I—was asked to call,” he said at last, and stooped and picked a piece of cotton from his trousers. “I come from ‘Maw and Meggins.’”

  The old lady started. “Is anything the matter?” she asked, breathlessly. “Has anything happened to Herbert? What is it? What is it?”

  Her husband interposed. “There, there, mother,” he said, hastily. “Sit down, and don’t jump to conclusions. You’ve not brought bad news, I’m sure, sir;” and he eyed the other wistfully.

  “I’m sorry—” began the visitor.