Christopher Fowler - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

Who’s there?

Just air.

The front door opens on the first floor, and Samantha, Claire, and the baby-sitter can hear someone creeping, creeping up the stairs. “Be quiet,” the baby-sitter says. “It’s the Specialist.”

Samantha and Claire are quiet. The nursery is dark and the wind crackles like a fire in the fireplace.

“Claire, Samantha, Samantha, Claire?” The Specialist’s voice is blurry and wet. It sounds like their father’s voice, but that’s because the hat can imitate any noise, any voice. “Are you still awake?”

“Quick,” the baby-sitter says. “It’s time to go up to the attic and hide.”

Claire and Samantha slip out from under the covers and dress quickly and silently. They follow her. Without speech, without breathing, she pulls them into the safety of the chimney. It is too dark to see, but they understand the baby-sitter perfectly when she mouths the word, Up. She goes first, so they can see where the fingerholds are, the bricks that jut out for their feet. Then Claire. Samantha watches her sister’s foot ascend like smoke, the shoelace still untied.

“Claire? Samantha? Goddammit, you’re scaring me. Where are you?” The Specialist is standing just outside the half-open door. “Samantha? I think I’ve been bitten by something. I think I’ve been bitten by a goddamn snake.” Samantha hesitates for only a second. Then she is climbing up, up, up the nursery chimney.

Avram Davidson (1923–1993) needs very little introduction. He was one of the great voices of imaginative fiction. The author of more than 200 short stories and many longer works, he won the Hugo, Ellery Queen, Edgar and World Fantasy awards, including the latter for Life Achievement. He was also nominated for the Nebula in every category.

Grania Davis was Avram Davidson’s former wife, life-long friend, and sometime collaborator. Her fantasy novels based on oriental legends include The Rainbow Annals, Moonbird and Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty (with Davidson), while her short fiction also reflects her travels abroard.

Although Avram Davidson’s work was largely out of print at the time of his death, Grania Davis has undertaken to get his fiction back into publication, helped by friends in the SF and fantasy community. With Robert Silverberg she co-edited the 1998 collection The Avram Davidson Treasury, which included thirty-eight stories, each introduced by a noted author, while The Investigations of Avram Davidson, co-edited with Richard A. Lupoff, is a recent collection of mystery stories.

“What a long, strange trip ‘The Boss in the Wall’ has been,” reveals Davis. “Avram had a weird dream in the early 1980s. I don’t remember exactly when. The dream became a rough, sprawling 600-plus page novel manuscript, about a strange creature in American folklore. When I first read it, it blew me away. After Avram’s health declined, I set to work to complete the novel, as I had already done with Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty (1988).

“(Aside: In classical music, ‘Completed By’ is a recognized byline. Different versions of Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ were posthumously Completed By different living composers. Perhaps we should consider this usage.)

“There was interest in the Boss novel, but editors changed positions, and somehow the book never got published. Avram began to work on a novella-length version of the story, but that also slipped through the cracks of the publishing process. After his death, I really wanted to see ‘Boss’ in print. I began the job of completing the novella, incorporating important segments from the novel, including material of my own. This version was supposed to be published in a fine magazine — which promptly ceased publication. Was ‘Boss’ jinxed, or what?

“Finally, Jacob Weisman, at Tachyon Publications in San Francisco, rose to the challenge. He published the completed novella, The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil, with thoughtful introductions by Peter S. Beagle and Michael Swanwick, and a truly creepy cover by Michael Dashow. ‘Boss’ was placed on the ballot by the Nebula Jury, which reaches out to smaller publishers like Tachyon. What a great surprise!

“ ‘The Boss in the Wall’ is a powerful, strange, funny tale. This was Avram’s last major work (along with Virgil III: The Scarlet Fig). ‘Boss’ has been well-received, as I always hoped it would be. To quote from the story: ‘. The dreadful secret, so long concealed, has begun to escape from its dreadfully long concealment.’ “

— And he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth -

— Job XV, 28

To say that the office looked dirty and shabby was to say that water looked liquid and wet. Newspapers, documents, magazines, clippings, files and folders lay stacked and slipped and scattered. Someone was thrusting his hand into a large manila envelope. Someone was turning the pages of an old illustrated publication. Someone was going through a scrapbook, moistening loose corners with a small glue-brush. On one webby wall was a sign: THE CONTRACT NEVER EXPIRES. None of the men was working hard or working fast, none of them seemed interested in what he was doing, and whatever they were all doing, they gave the impression of having been doing it for a long, long time.

The not-crisp card read:

Edward E. Bagnell

Professor of Ethnology

Sumner Public College

Curator Larraby of the Carolina Coast Museum looked up from the card. “Still sticking to ‘Ethnology,’ are they?” His tone was civil, even amiable, but there was a something in his eyes beyond the usual mere shrewdness.

“Yes sir, they are. Still sticking to ‘Public’, also.” Bagnell was sure there was something sticking to the Curator’s manner, inside the ruddy, well-worn face, lurking around the corners of the well-trimmed gray mustache and the picturesquely tufty silvery eyebrows. The Curator asked a few questions about Sumner Public College: Was Macrae getting on with his study of so-called “Moorish” mountain people? Was SPC having the usual small-college trouble with trustees who wanted more money spent on football than on music, say, or scholarship — real scholarship? Then there was a pause, and then the odd expression ceased to be odd at all, and was now plain to see.

Slyness.

And with that came the very slow, very quiet, “Well, what can I do for you, Professor Bagnell?”

Out with it.

“I understand that you have a Paper-Man here under lock and key, Curator Larraby.”

At once: “Yes I thought that was what you — don’t know how I knew, but I — what did you say?” The slyness was gone, it was quite gone. The ruddy face was now quite red, the slightly jowely mouth hung agape. “ What did you say?”

“A Paper-Man or Paper-Doll or Paper-Doll Man. A Hyett or Hetter or Header. A Greasy-Man or String-Fellow. A Rustler or Clicker or Clatterer. And/or other names. Though I assume. I’m sure you know.”

For a moment, silence. Then an audible swallow, a shake, as though the heavy, aging body had been set slightly askew and needed to be set right. A shudder, and then the slumped old man said, “This assumption cannot be allowed to get into the newspapers or the newsreels. This. ”

The newsreels! Bagnell had never seen a newsreel, anymore than he had ever seen a passenger pigeon or a Civil War veteran. “Oh God no! That’s the last thing we would want!”