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

Still Nestor howled, still the old man stumbled inside the closed room, and still Bella screamed. - And the door opened and Vlad staggered into the room and tried desperately not to lose his balance. The noises Uncle Mose made were not roars any longer; Uncle Mose it was who staggered, lurched, fell upon his back and rolled to his side. Bella had stopped screaming, and was utterly silent. Nestor flung himself across the room and the house shook.

Elsa came screaming in, and then she did absolutely the worst thing she could possibly have done — and somehow Vlad knew absolutely that she was going to do it. She seized the arm of the hand in which he held the flashlight, and she tugged down on it as she called her daughter’s name, and the flashlight swung wildly up and down until he managed to get it into the other hand.

Nestor was throwing himself against the wall and clawing at the wall, howling and slathering, and something fell from his mouth. Vlad reeled as he tried to dislodge his wife and to focus the flashlight. Then Elsa let go of Vlad’s arm and ran to pick up her child, who was arching and thrashing and kicking and making sharp howling sounds. Elsa picked her up, but Bella’s arms and legs still moved and jerked convulsively.

What else was in the room ? Something else had been in the room. Someone else had been in the room. Something. someone filthy and frightful and foul had been in the room.

There to one side was the Coleman lamp, and Vlad forced himself to calm his hands and to relight the lamp, and the room filled with hissing light. No one else and nothing else was in the room now.

Still the huge dog flung himself against the wall. Then it stopped.

Bella stopped her frightful convulsions. She hung limp in her mother’s arms, even when Elsa had fallen on her knees onto the sleeping bag, pressed her ear against the tiny chest, lifted her horrified face to him and nodded slightly.

Nestor stepped delicately on huge feet to his master, nuzzled him and licked him, and began to utter a deep and moaning lament. Was the old man dead? Vlad slowly got down beside the body and said, “Uncle Mose? Nestor? Uncle Mose?” Slowly he placed his ear against the fallen man’s chest. There was no rustling sound he heard, no clicking. He heard no sound at all. Nestor sniffed again and began to howl.

The long, slow, cold nightmare continued. Call the police, deputy sheriffs, sheriff’s deputies. The hospital: “Well, it’s shock, basically. Your little girl is of course the most affected, but your wife too is in shock. I’m afraid you aren’t in too good shape yourself.” — Take these. sign these. tell us again, Professor, exactly what happened: questions asked by the doctors and by the police.

Shock , Professor. Your only child has ceased to be a little girl who stood in a doorway and turned your heart with a single look. She became a wind-up doll which screamed and thrashed, except when the doll wound down and looked dully out of unfocused eyes. Shock, to use simple language, short-circuits the nervous system.

“What did she see that caused this shock? What sort of creature, sir? It is difficult for us to believe, you see, because your wife doesn’t report anything like that. Don’t be offended, sir, but you too have suffered a severe shock of some sort. ”

“What the hell, Branch, what the hell?”

Vlad’s old friend, and fellow Professor of Folklore David Branch looked at him and said, “Nobody knows what the hell, Vlad. We have to take this one step at a time.”

“Why was Uncle Mose’s funeral and cremation over so quickly. why was his collar so high?” Then another thought sprang into Vlad’s mind. “Where’s Nestor?”

“He’s at Dean Jorgenson’s farm; it’s in the next county, so the sheriff can’t get him to shoot.”

“What? Why would they shoot Nestor?”

“Well, mainly because they were afraid of him. This great brute was leaping around, terribly upset, and next thing a deputy got the idea that, well, maybe Nestor had killed the old man — Impossible? Why, impossible?”

“I told them the dog wasn’t in the room. when it began to happen.”

“Well, they didn’t know that and, um, I heard that Mose had some sort of marks on his throat that might have killed him so — Anyway, Nestor ran off and Dean Jorg heard about it, and called the trembling beast into his van and drove him across the county line, so Nestor’s all okay. What next?”

“I want to go back to that dammed old house. and I need some plastic bags.”

At the supermarket, leaning on the back of a superannuated cart containing aluminum cans, empty bottles, and odds and ends of light junk was someone whom Vlad recalled meeting. Remembrance was mutual. Stopping his wagon, the old black man said, “I sorry, sir, about you daddy.” Why bother with a correction? Vlad nodded, sighed. “Must be you daddy fo’get, done git between it and the wall. fine ol’ gentleman.”

Vlad stared. Remnants of thought came whirling by, as if caught in a gale. “What do you mean, Pappa John? Get between what and the wall. what wall?”

The age-glazed eyes in the furrowed face looked at him. “Them bad things as we finds sometimes in old houses. Them Rustlers or Clickers. them Paper Men. The Boss, sir, the Boss in the Wall. How the lady and the lee girl? The Boss done stole the lee girl’s soul and you gots get it back.”

He pushed off, leaving Professor Branch looking after him, leaving Vlad with his mouth twitching. “Did you understand what old John meant, Branch?”

“I believe I do, which is not to say that I believe it as facts.”

“I should tear that damned house apart. find evidence.”

They drove beyond the small town and along the country road. The old house looked far different in late afternoon sunshine than it had at night. In the room where Uncle Mose and Bella had cheerfully agreed to spend the night lay a well-worn red rubber toy.

Vlad pointed out to Branch a portion of the wall deeply and recently scored by talons. “Those are Nestor’s claws, I guess.” He put his ear against the wall; heard nothing. “It’s hollow,” he said.

“It would be. Proves nothing by itself.”

Vlad abruptly said, “Ah, that’s what I came for.” He pointed to something in the corner. “It was in her hand, and she dropped it when I picked her up.” He took the plastic bags out of his pocket.

Branch knelt and looked, then he sniffed. This time it was his face that writhed. “Paper. It looks like old newspaper. well, this is an old house. What a godawful stench. You say it was in your wife’s hand?”

“No, it wasn’t my wife,” said Vlad, as he carefully used one plastic bag to scoop the object into another. “It was my daughter who had it clutched in her hand. It was Bella.”

No further search could legally be made of the house, and no walls would be torn apart. According to the sheriff’s department, the deceased died from a stroke or a heart attack, possibly following an attack by a dog or some other animal. Case closed.

At the hospital, Elsa woke up and took a light supper, then she slept again. Bella’s condition was unchanged. Elsa’s aunt, Uncle Mose’s sister, invited them to stay at her big house in the country after they were released. Elsa softly told Vlad that she thought the change would do her and Bella good. Vlad reluctantly agreed.

“Jesus, Branch, what should I do?” said Vlad when they returned to College Housing. “It is my belief that Uncle Mose died of a severe bite in the throat by some sort of degenerate or derelict creature, for lack of better words, and that’s what terrified my wife and daughter, and messed up our lives. That’s what I told the doctors and the sheriffs, and nobody believed me. No autopsy was done before his body was cremated, and. ”