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

As Bagnell made a last and fruitless look towards the flat and locked steel box with the photo of the Paper-Man’s head, and made to go, one further question came to him.

Larraby made no objection to answering. The man who had brought in the thing upstairs, in two pieces plus the head, brought them in a gunny sack; the man was a well-known manslayer. “Had killed two Negroes, well, was tried for two. Half-black, half-Catawba Indian; a Mustee, we used to call them. And after he’d done a year or so in the penitentiary, where by the way he behaved himself, and I’m sure no one stole his cigarettes or tried to commit a crime against nature upon him, ho no! Well, while he was away there’d been some breakage here, theft and vandalism, so we pulled some strings, got Mustee a parole by offering him the job of second night-watchman; midnight to eight a.m.. He looks like Australopithecus maledictus, and you may be sure that no one comes around here now who’s got no lawful business. Mustee has no morals, no religion, feared of nothing, keeps his contracts. Gave him one hundred silver dollars for his find, and a big bottle of over-proof rum. - Hm, maybe I’ll give Mustee a ticket to Providence, Rhode Island. Hm, think about it.” Larraby thought about it as he reached for a lamp.

“Let me put some more lights on. Old newspapers, yes, indeed. Keep out the cold, they do. Wonder what you’ ll do, next time you hear a rustle in the dark. Your life has been changed forever. Well, nobody twisted your arm; you can always sell insurance. Mind your step on your way out.”

“How did Mustee kill those two, ah, Negroes?”

Larraby, winding a light scarf, looked at him eye to eye. “Broke their necks,” he said. “Quote me for one single word in print about this, I’ll ruin your career without compunction.”

And that was the first time Bagnell actually saw one.

So he informed his friend, Dr Claire Zimmerman, when he called her later that day. In the past that call would have been heralded by the almost-necromantic words: This is Long Distance Calling. But neither of them remembered that, and neither had seen a newsreel. The past was sending them different messages… far more distant and dangerous.

“How many appearance, or maybe we should say sightings, have been reported, would you say?” asked Branch.

“Don’t know,” said Bagnell.

“Define your terms,” said Claire Zimmerman. “How reported, to whom reported?”

“Well, it should be possible to find out. That would help combat it, wouldn’t you think?” asked Branch. “Do we even know, for instance, how many authenticated cases there are of one of them doing actual bodily harm to a human being?”

“How authenticated, by whom authenticated? Oh, there are accounts, sure. Bite wounds and scratches, mostly, and talk of festering and amputations,” said Bagnell. “We just don’t know. We think the Boss in the Wall is scaring us. Maybe he thinks we’re scaring him. How many of them are there? We don’t know. Do they know we’re on to them and that we’re after them? Can they communicate with each other? Do they? We don’t know. Are they suffering from some kind of unknown virus, and if so, is the disease still spreading? Has it infected and infested some of the filthy derelicts we see lying in the doorways of old buildings? Are the drifters sliding and sickening and deteriorating into Paper Men? We don’t know. What’s it all about — and what can we really do except burn down every old house in the country?”

The new house was very old, and Elsa Beth Smith and Professor Vlad Smith loved it at once.

Partly they had come to see it because of the cottage cheese fight of the people next door, and partly it was because of Uncle Mose, that fine old rogue.

College Residence Building Number Three had been, like all Bewdley College’s new Residence Buildings, military housing during the war. The War; World War Two. “A duplex!” was Elsa Beth’s first exclamation on entering her and Vlad’s new home — a brave cry which ignored the stained walls, leak-marked ceilings, pokey kitchen, and warping walls and doors and window-frames. The buildings had not been built to last. They were, in fact, not lasting, they were decaying fast, but people still lived in them all the same. And among the people were the people next door, Professors Albert and Anna Murray, husband and wife. The Murray marriage was not going too well, and a hearty sneeze penetrated the thin partition between the two families.

“Smell this,” — Anna Murray coming out on the porch.

“Throw it out,” — Albert Murray, nose in paper.

“Throw out a whole carton of cottage cheese?”

“Don’t throw it out then, dammit! ” Albert bellowed.

Inside their house, Vlad and Elsa Beth’s four-year-old daughter, Bella says softly, “Abbert and Amma are fighting again.” A slight and sallow child, resembling her father. Not precocious. She has her ways, what child has not? And the mere way she has of standing in a doorway with a wry, dry look on her small face makes her parents wonder how the doorway ever existed before Bella came to stand in it.

Her parents do not directly reply. They consider their options. “The rents in quaint old Bewdley City are out of sight,” sighs Elsa. She was once a strawberry blonde, but since Bella was in utero, Elsa’s hair has darkened to a light brown. Her face, with its slight suggestion of a double chin, looks very thoughtful. She is a talented painter and she is very nice.

Not long thereafter came Uncle Mose’s letter.

Uncle Mose wrote: “Moses Stuart Allenby is looking around for a sponge to throw in. I am tired of robbing widows and orphans, and I’m going to make you kids an offer. Elsie Bessey knows I’m quiet and clean in my habits. Mostly I sit in my room studying subversive publications like The Wall Street Journal, play a little jazz on my gramophone, take walks and watch birds. Want to relax at home, but must have a home, and have no desire to sleep on your sofa. So here’s the offer: All around small towns are perfectly suitable houses which never appear on any real estate lists because they are too old and unfashionable. Beware of Grecian pillars, cost another fifty thou and who needs them? Here are the magic words: A quick sale for $25,000 cash. Your local land agent will blench and swallow nervously. Then he will run around like a roach in rut season. You’ll be surprised how fast he comes up with something usually thought unsaleable. Old, old houses are solidly built or they wouldn’t have survived to be old, old. Uncle Mose was a farm boy, built and repaired many a barn and old house before leaving on the milk train to the city. Uncle Mose will leave lovebirds alone to bill and coo, and will often baby-sit little Bella, teach her to play poker and dance the hootchie-cootchie.”

“There’s the house, Professor, to the right,” said realtor Bob Barker with a toothy smile.

The words formed in Vlad’s mind: That house wasn’t even built in the 19th century. He saw a small replica of Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage, with squared wooden pillars, lacking even a lick of plaster, holding up the verandah’s second story. Not Grecian at all — just an old, old house that George Washington never slept in.

“Let’s go in, if you folks are ready,” Bob Barker said. They were ready. “Got to tell you honestly that this house is almost devoid of your modern conveniences. No electricity, no telephone, but no problem there, the lines run right past the place. It’s well-water, but the pump is inside the house. There is just merely one bathroom, and it empties into a ciss-pool. Watch out for the far end of the porch, got a rotten place there.” The key kept in a niche in the sill was modern. That was perhaps the only thing which was.