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

The effect was galvanic. The curator was on his feet. “I require another name, and then we’ll see how sure you are that I know.”

Bagnell said, “ The Boss in the Wall.” Larraby was out the door before Bagnell was finished, but he was waiting in the hall.

“I was, as I said, sure that was what you wanted, young man. Pardon me, Professor. But I figured you’d go about it slyly.” The older man put his arm through Bagnell’s, and the gesture at once dissipated all mistrust. “I’m taking you to the top of the tower, it’s up these stairs, and I may lean on you quite a bit: no elevator. Slowly. Good.”

The stairs were swept clean and smelled of old wood and polish, but as they went up higher a strong odor of disinfectant became predominant. “- And if you had, why, I’d have hustled you right out of here. And here’s the key, Dr Bagnell. The first key.”

Inside the tower was a locked room which required a second key, and inside this was a modern steel cabinet with two keyholes; alongside it stood an open jug of creosol. “Tower door locked behind us? Make sure. Lock this one and swing the night-bolt too. Now, got a strong stomach?”

Bagnell said that he had helped to find and bury hurricane and flood victims. He now noticed another odor in the rather small room, a strong one, entirely different from the tarry reek of the disinfectant.

“Had such experience? Well, useful. Don’t say it’s better, don’t say it’s worse; different. Clean different.” He was gently inserting a key. “But not clean. God, no.” He looked up, withdrew the key. “Oh, forgot. Got a handkerchief? Put some of that bay rum on it; you may feel that you want it in a hurry.” On a small table in the corner was, of all things, a bottle of that once-widely-used gentlemen’s lotion and hair-tonic. Bagnell had thought it had gone out with newsreels. Was that the source of the other odor? God, no! Bagnell obediently scattered some spicy bay rum on his handkerchief. Larraby had the second key in and out.

Inside were two perfectly ordinary large cardboard cartons with laundry soap logos on them. “ Two ? I thought there was one.”

“Think twice. There is.” And so there was.

It was in two pieces.

The trousers and jacket were antique, and dull with dirt and some sort of grease; the words corpse fat came swift into Bagnell’s mind. On one bony foot, and it was as though the skin had been scraped thin before being replaced over the bones — and the skin was filthy beyond anything he had ever seen before, was a part of something doubtless once a shoe The jacket was torn; it was worn-torn and it was ripped-torn, and beneath it was part of a shirt. And the shirt-part was worst of all, for it must have once been white. No other color could ever have become so ghastly grey, and here and there were stains of other colors, though none was bright.

“Breathe through your handkerchief, and don’t get too close as you lean over it.”

Bagnell obeyed. Though not before an accidental breath gave him knowledge of the actual smell. A breath was enough. It was not what he had imagined it might be. The smell was organic, he was sure of that, but it was nothing like any organic — or for that matter inorganic — odor he had ever been exposed to before. It was worse than mere decay or decomposition, worse than any disease, worse — He had covered his nose but he could, even despite the scented distillation of the bay and the thick rank creosol, taste it; he covered his mouth as well.

Pieces of shredding yellowed-filthied paper poked out here and there: from under the ragged ankle-edge of the trouser cuff. From out of the gap where the fly had been, the tattered paper protruded like a codpiece. Worn and stained paper formed a sort of ghastly lace jabot high in front. And all of it that he could see showed awful and ugly stains, and even some of the stains had stains.

Larraby took up an exceedingly long pair of rather odd tongs and turned the upper torso half-over; it must have been very light for him to do it with one hand. “Look there.” There was an immense hole beneath the left shoulder-blade. And it had been stuffed, there was no other word for it, stuffed with paper.

Larraby said, through his own handkerchief mask, “Of course we never attempted to examine all the paper, but I can inform you that it seems to consist mostly of the special election supplement of the New York Herald of November whatever-it-was, 1864, which proves nothing; old Greeley shipped his weekly edition all over the country.”

Bagnell’s eyes were darting here and there, noting the claw-like hand encrusted with far more than a century’s (perhaps) filth, noticing the rubbed-out part of the sleeve from which protruded a something grimy and grim which was likely an elbow. Noticing . not noticing -

“The head’s not there.”

“Oh.” Bagnell’s eyes were again darting.

“The head’s not here, is what I mean. Don’t bother looking for it. Seen enough?”

Bagnell thought he’d probably seen enough.

“But I’ve got a photograph of it downstairs.” And Larraby went to locking up the cabinet. Then Bagnell let them out. Then Larraby locked up behind them.

“A photograph of —?”

“- Of the head. Want to know what the fellow said? Fellow who brought the body to us? Do, eh? A ‘right! — Steady; going down is not so easy for me as some might think. - Said he saw it, that thing upstairs, saw it lying on the floor of… a certain old building. Said he saw a rat scuttle over and start to gnaw at one of its feet. Said — you ready for this? A ‘right, said he saw the thing catch the rat with its foot — the thing’s foot. Said he saw it jerk the rat up and heard the rat squeal. Ever hear a rat give a death-squeal when some gant old tiger-she-cat with a dirty kitten catched hold of it? And he said that thing, old Boss-Devil, began to eat the rat. That dried-up old horror, supposedly dead a hundred years, with flesh as sere as a mummy’s, began to eat the rat. Could it happen? God, no! Did it happen? God, yes!”

As for the head; it was a good photo.

The mouth was still mostly full of teeth, visible beneath the writhed-up lip, and seemed to Bagnell very capable of clicking and clattering — and perhaps — of killing a rat… a very large rat, too. The nose was sunken but was by no means gone. Something had happened to one ear — how many times might it have offered itself as bait for rats, if rats were what it wanted; lying on rotting floors in rotting buildings by moonlight or in moondark, in forgotten tumuli behind now-vanished pest-houses? — Something had happened to one ear and one eye was closed — but one eye wasn’t. It was likely no more than a trick of the light, but the eye seemed to be looking watchfully out of one squinted corner. The eye seemed to have a very definite expression and seemed (as such things often will) to be looking directly at Bagnell, who did not in any way like the look. It was not what Bagnell would think of as fearful. The look was. what?

Sly.

He shuddered. Curator Larraby, once again just another on-the-way-to-being-old-man said, somewhat smugly, “Ah. Now it catches up with you. Here. Something I keep on hand, case of snakebite. Have one with you.” After the first sip, the second sigh, the curator said, “Save you the trouble of asking. No, you may not have a copy. Want a photograph of the head, direct you to Dr. Selby Abott Silas, scholar, rogue and thief, and most unworthy damned Yankee rat and rascal, holder of the magniloquent title of Principal Steward of the General Museum of the Province of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Details on request. Some other time. Further questions? Brief ones. ”