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

“Do? Well the first thing to do is take Doctor Branch’s prescription of a big drink of whatever booze you have on hand, and then you are going to lie down and pretend to sleep. I will put on some sleepy-type music and. ah, I’d like to look through your files. I promise not to read any love notes or old paternity warrants; I want to look for learned matter. Folkloric shop stuff, okay?”

Pretending to sleep was, as expected, succeeded by genuine slumber. Then by awakening and finding Branch reading by lamplight. “What’s that you’re reading, Branch?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” He tilted up an old red folder mended with tape. “Look familiar?”

Vlad felt that it did look familiar, that he knew what was in it, and somehow he did not like what was in it. He recalled a small voice saying, “Is this our new house? I don’t like it.” He leaned his head on his hand and choked back tears.

Branch shoved the folder over to Vlad, who slowly opened and leafed through it. What was this on yellowed paper, laboriously typed in old-fashioned typescript? Transcript of Alleged Rare Pamphlet Allegedly Entitled “The Treatise on the House Devil.” And this: a sheaf of sundry papers, typed and penned and machine copied on various sorts of copy-machines, attached by a large rusting paper clip, and labeled Bagnell’s Notes. An item caught his eye; Preliminary Survey of the Folklore of Two Ohio River Tributaries: “I had the usual difficulties: first you must find your source. Then you must make him talk. Then you must make him stop talking. Or her. In fact it was from a her that I learned a folk remedy for pubic lice which is too gross for learned journals. Also I heard the following account which might interest you: Near a place called Wide Waters, where two large boats could pass each other, was a tower. It was originally as tall as a three-story building, but then kind of crumbled. Some say it was used as a shot-tower or a lighthouse. Others say it was built by a wicked Frenchman to remind himself of France. He was cruel to his slaves and nearly starved them to death. Well, as soon as Lincoln freed the slaves, they mixed up a big batch of cement and carried over a big pile of stones, and walled their evil old master — their Boss — inside the tower. Then all the former slaves ran off. There were no windows in the tower, just little slits. And before anybody came around and found him, long after he must have died, they say he got so thin he was able to poke his hands through the slits and wave them around. And they say you can still sometimes see the skeletal hands of the cruel ‘Boss in the Wall’ waving through the slits on stormy nights.

“You can recognize elements of countless Old World legends of cruel leaders walled in towers, such as the Sultan of Baghdad and the Mouse Tower on the Rhine. Though the skeletal hands waving through the slits may be strictly a local touch.”

“Okay, Branch, okay. I got it now; I remember,” Vlad wept. “Why didn’t I remember it before?”

Branch had poured moderate drinks for both of them from a bottle, sipped his own and gestured to his old friend to do the same. “Here’s a possible explanation. Why did you originally forget it? Because you forgot , that’s why. Who the hell remembers everything? Every wife in the world feels compelled to shove some of her husband’s old crap out of sight, and you had other things to do, so you forgot. Then you went to the old house, and just the sight of the place, or some little sound or smell started to bring back memories. But you didn’t want the memories. You and your wife and uncle wanted the old house, and the memories weren’t very nice. So your mind suppressed them. Until that moment. Let’s say that your uncle had some kind of stroke, or fit of convulsions. He couldn’t breathe, so he clawed and tore at his own throat. Suppose your daughter woke up and saw him, and she started to scream and scream.” Branch took another sip and continued, “Suppose that what you saw was so terrible, your mind couldn’t admit that you saw it. You had to be seeing something else. Your mind, so to speak, slipped down, down into the sub-basement. And down there in the mud and jumble, your mind found something. It found those old tales that old Pappa John had babbled about, and it substituted those old terror-tales for the terrible thing you were really seeing. All of this in an instant, of course, but the memory lingers on. Maybe your little girl’s defense was to retreat into convulsions and unconsciousness.”

Vlad groped for words. He felt as if he were on the edges of a deep, dark wood. “Is that what you really think happened? That my buried memories of all those damned old legends made me think I saw. ”

From outside the dark woods came a deep sigh. “That’s certainly one explanation, and I advise you to consider it,” said Branch, tossing down the rest of the whiskey.

Later, much later Vlad’s breath came softly and regularly from the couch. Branch slipped silently out of the room, took up the telephone, and walked as far into the kitchen as its long cord would allow. He turned on the light and a water tap, then dialed a number. Waited.

“Doctor Edward Bagnell, please. Hello, Ed? This is Branch. Yes, I know what time it is. Have a pen and paper? Okay, listen carefully. The House-Devil, Paper-Man, Boss in the Wall; well, I want to report another sighting.”

How sweetly the small old town smelled in the early summer rains. It seemed to smell of cedar and citronella and water and mint.

Annie Jenkins, Dean Jorgenson’s housekeeper said, “Was it one of those tramps, one of those awful ones? The Lord knows where they come from or why — luckily not often — oh they don’t do anything violent, not lately, they don’t even steal, the ones I’m thinking of. We used to call them Paper Men when I was a girl, because they put newspapers under their old clothes to keep warm in winter, though why in summer? — Don’t even steal, which is very odd if you think of it, they being so poor they can’t even afford soap or second-hand clothes. Oh those filthy rags. Just the sight of them, oh and the awful smell of them. I asked my husband what causes them, every so often you know. Harry said it was ‘slum clearance’. Harry says some awful old abandoned building is torn down somewhere, and then those dreadful derelicts have no place to hide, and so they just wander off, they shamble around, and sometimes they turn up here. Thank the Lord they don’t seem to stay. I have no idea where they go, but they don’t stay here. Was it one of those —? And to think of the sheriff accusing that sweet big dog. Why, when you gave him a shirt his old master had worn, Nestor took it to his bed in the barn, laid the shirt on the straw, and rested his head on it all that day.”

Dean Jorgenson said, tapping his huge hairy fingers on his desktop, “Well, good, Stewart. I told Vlad he could take the summer off if he took someone with him. I’m glad it’s you. He likes you; says you have a good mind and a good sense of humor. Fortunately this is still a private college and I can finagle you some graduate credits, and something out of the special funds without having to justify it to six state legislative committees. Consider that done. And you, in turn, won’t let him get morbid and obsessive about. ” He searched for a word, gazed at Jack Stewart with troubled eyes and concluded, “… it.”

Vlad looked as if he was fairly well recovered from a bad drunk, but Jack knew that if you looked it, you weren’t recovered at all. It wasn’t until they were bedding down for the first night, in a worn-down motel, that Vlad began to loosen up and talk.