R. Lafferty - The 7th Ghost Story Megapack

Welcome to The Seventh Ghost Story MEGAPACK ®! Once more we have a wide-ranging assortment of supernatural fiction, with setting across the world—Europe, the Americas, Asia—and across the centuries. You will note that we have a larger than normal number of “Anonymous” stories. No, the authors weren’t embarrassed by their contributions. Victorian-era literary magazines and newspapers often ran fiction without crediting the author, or with only vague names like “By a Lady,” the author’s initials, or humorous pseudonyms (as with the story by “Q.E.D.” in this volume). Authors later collected their stories in books, and that’s when readers discovered who had actually written what. If a story never got reprinted, its author remained a mystery. Modern scholars are still researching these anonymous stories, but many authors will never be properly identified.

Enjoy!

Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://wildsidepress.forumotion.com/ (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at wildsidepress@yahoo.com or use the message boards above.

Stephen Knight held favorable field position in the game of life. He was inordinately lucky, though he himself said (and with a straight face) that lucky was only another word for logical. Though spared the burden of excessive wealth with its entailments and baggage, yet he had a talent for money, both in the acquisition and spending of it. The world is full of otherwise sound men who lack this talent, and a well-balanced man like Stephen is rare.

He had a healthy digestion, an appetite of wide range, a tolerably clear conscience, and a measure of youth. His mind had a clarity and directness that was disconcerting to one who had fallen into the pattern. And he had an almost automatic gift for coming up with the right answer, in the manner of a cat always landing on its feet.

His life was full of brimming small passions for all the direct and sudden things in the world: the paintings of Tsinnahjinnie and Woody Crumbo (for the logic of the line of the American Indian artists never fails), the music of the Cimmaron Valley Boys and of Victor Herbert (if one possesses these two peaks, let the lesser folks own the dim valley between), Louisiana Rice-Ribby, Indian Barbecue, choc beer (Stephen did not have stomach trouble), jug-fishing (the only effective and therefore the only logical sort), the annual rattlesnake round-up at Okeene (for Stephen was fascinated by this most direct of all creatures with its logic of lightning), Bowling with the Black Knights (his own team), membership in the Engineer’s Club and the Neo-Thomists Society (the only two clubs in town where the philosopher’s key fits the locks), pidgeon flying (the poetry of the proficient), and affiliation with the Brain Busters, a small group of petroleum geologists with a penchant for startling theories. Stephen was interested, interesting, and happy.

And he had Vivian.

At any one time (by the nature of a monogamous world) it is possible for only one man to have the finest wife in the world. That man at that particular time was Stephen Knight. It had been planned: a clear thinking man will stake out the best part for himself and take thought to obtain it, and a logical man will see the logic of having the best wife possible.

There are tools unsuited to certain tasks, and words are inadequate tools to describe Vivian Knight. She made her presence and her comings felt. Other men, friends or strangers, would lift their heads like colts before she was even in sight. She was the heart of any group. When she was gone she left nothing at all tangible; but O the intangibles that surrounded that woman like an aura!

Actually, as Professor Schlauch had told Stephen, she was a rather stupid person with a high vitality, brimming friendliness, and a magnetism that should have flicked instruments on Mars. But Stephen, who analyzed her as he did all things, knew that she was not stupid, knew that intelligence (like icebergs and the mounting of diamonds) should be four-fifths below the surface. With Vivian her intelligence was entirely below the surface, deeply hidden and of subliminal force.

But on the surface she was a scatterbrain, a small intense cyclone with a curious calm at her center. Nobody who really understands such things could doubt that Stephen Knight had the finest wife in the world.

And she was coming now. Stephen could sense it from a distance as any man could sense it; but he could analyze the sensing of it, sorting out the complex of sounds that was her coming, dredging the subliminal up over the limen. He liked to break up sensations into their component parts.

On the two or three evenings a week when they were not together, he was sometimes in bed before she was. Now he was in bed, for in four more hours he must be up and off on a field trip. He was a petroleum geologist with a peculiar flair for seeing below surface indications, five thousand feet below surface indications. His talent for preliminary survey was unequaled; fine logic and sound information can reach very deep.

He was right, as always, as to her coming. Her small car turned in. He saw the sweep of the lights past his window, and heard the car crunch on the soft snow. Vivian, brimful and bubbling!

The bird downstairs broke into excited song; it always became excited when Vivian arrived. And just as her key was in the door its whistled song turned into ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ as she had taught it.

Vivian was in with a loud rustle, and her footsteps like music as she started up the stair (the tone of her footfall at a frequency of 265, just above middle C, compounded with a vagrant, two harmonics, and a mute). Few men could so analyze their wives’ footsteps. Everything about her was in tune, and she hummed the ‘Dreamer’ as she ascended.

A ringing knife cut across the rustle, a frequency of 313 wedded to a false harmonic 30 vibrations higher. The phone. The extension was on the stairs and she would be right at it. It rang again and the rustle had stopped. But she did not answer it.

“Catch it, Vivian,” he called. But she did not. It rang again and again and he rose grumbling to answer it.

“Knight here.”