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

“I understand Jorg’s going to do some creative bookkeeping, and get you some grad credits. Good. Officially we’re going on just another fun folklore ramble,” he ran his fingers over his tired face. “Good clean bright stuff; children’s jump-rope jingles, Paul Bunyan tales of the lower Appalachians, Old Darky stories about Mr Buz zard. But unofficially you are going to be my keeper, eh? We, that’s you, kid, are going to keep me, that’s me, kid, from getting into anything gamy or gritty. No folkloric spelunking. But no such luck, kid. God bless poor dear old Jorg, but I’m going after such little-known legends as the Clickers, the Rattlers, and I don’t mean snakes, I mean the Greasy Man, Paper-Man, the Boss in the Wall, see?”

Jack Stewart ran his own fingers through his molasses-colored curly hair, murmured about a shower, looked up and asked, “Why?”

“Why? Because I saw a specter haunting an old house, and it killed my uncle and sent my little girl into convulsions and my wife into a deep depression and, my god, it was awful! Why was it there? What was it, what is it? Nobody believes that I really saw it. Hardly anybody in academe even knows the legend, let alone believes it. Allbright does. We’re going to see Allbright. I’ve got to find out more about the legend, more about what I saw. I’ve got to find something that will help my wife and my daughter, help us put our lives back together. Bagnell knows about the legend. We’re going to see Bagnell. And. after that, well, we’ll see. See?”

Stewart, in turn, liked Vlad’s mind and sense of humor. But now he saw a man slumped in unhappiness, confusion, pain. There was much that he wanted to know about what happened. Much he dared not ask, which he knew would be revealed later. So he merely said, “I see.”

Vlad kicked off his shoes, rapidly undressed, said he was too tired for a shower. “Have one in the morning. Too tired even to put on the jammies. Maybe I’ll put them on in the morning, too. Going to stay up reading? Try the Gideon Bible, Job xv, 28, as a starting text. Leave the light on in the bathroom, if you like. Night.”

Jack turned on his reading light. Gideon Bible? Well, there weren’t many things you could do in a motel room. Job, huh, xv. 26, 27, ah. His finger traced its way to the verse.

28. And he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth.

Jack Stewart decided to leave the light on in the bathroom.

Robert E. L. Allbright lived amidst the dense green kudzu vines, way away from anywhere, and very far away from the highways. The hand he held out was large and reddened and splotched… a description of his face, as well. His eyes were red-rimmed and he blinked a lot. “I hope, Professor, that you may have had my letter?” asked Vlad Smith politely. Blink. Blink. “In which I said that I’d like to talk with you about the possible origins of the legends of the Paper-Man, or the Boss in the Wall?” Blink. Blink.

It was not clear if Allbright had led them into his office or his dining room. At one end of a table strewn with books and papers, a late teenaged boy was sitting beside a sort of barricade erected out of old law-books, eating breakfast cereal and milk. “My grandson, Albert S. J. Allbright. In theory he is reading law with me. When he is finished he will be a foremost authority on the foreclosure of mules.” His voice had fallen into the flattening tones of the increasingly deaf.

The boy slightly turned his head and raised his hand to it, as though to wipe away Rice Crispies and, looking straight at Stewart said, low-voiced, “You got a joint?”

Stewart opened his mouth to reply, looked at his elders and turned his own head slightly.

The boy got up and shuffled dishes. “Go git you some coffee,” he said.

“Give you a hand,” said Stewart.

“Well,” said Allbright, “I got your letter, where did I put that shoe box?” He rummaged among the many shoe boxes and other things on the table. “Put it — Florsheim Shoes — here.” He took up the shoe box, turned it over. A sheaf of typescript settled down on the table. Inasmuch as the width of the average shoe box is somewhat less than that of the average sheet of typing paper, someone had neatly trimmed the papers. The idea had something of the simplicity of genius.

“Here ‘tis,” Allbright said, “Here ‘tis. A True Account Prepared From The Original Testimony, of the Capture and Death of a Paper-Man on the Lands and Domains of Jim Oglethorpre Allbright, Esquire, as edited by his Grandson, Professor Robert E. L. Allbright. With Notes and Commentaries. — Sorry I don’t have a clear copy to give you. Like to look at it?”

“Well,” said Vlad, slightly bowled over. “I’d like to. yes. I’d like to talk with you about it. I’d like you to tell me about it, if you don’t mind.”

Allbright said there was mighty little to tell. “He was located, as my diagram shows, my map here, he was found in one of the old tobacco barns we used to have. And it was set fire to, and he was seen as he ran off, and he was tracked down. My Great Grandmother was at hand, and she rallied the Negras, and they behaved very bravely, yes sir. My Grandfather was at war at the time, and his old mother guarded the fort, so to speak, and gave them courage. Because generally speaking they would have fled like deer from such an apparition; who could blame them?”

Who indeed, thought Vlad bleakly.

“As it was, they stoned him with stones until he died.”

“What?”

Old Allbright slowly nodded his massive, mottled head. “It is what happened, Professor Smith. To be sure.” He looked at Vlad directly. “There were skeptics, aren’t there always? Some of them said he was a Union prisoner, escaped from Andersonville Prison. Prison camp, we would call it nowadays. Some said that was why he was so gant. Well, no one denies that Andersonville was very bad. What comes of putting a Dutchman in charge of things. A Switzerdutchman. Starved his prisoners, the scoundrel. Went back to Switzerland during the war, went and returned by running the blockade. How much you want to bet he put a lot of money in one of those banks over there?”

Jack Stewart and the younger Allbright returned, carrying a tray with coffee and mugs, which they set on the table.

“As for the other skeptical account, why, some said that the creature killed was a Confederate deserter who had stripped off his uniform so as not to be identified, and had taken up some rags of old clothes from who knows where, maybe from a farmhouse in the middle of a battlefield. You know there was an old farmhouse right in the midst of the Battle of Bull Run, and an old lady died in that house during the battle, and who knows what went on in there. And as for the creature’s gant condition, maybe he hadn’t eaten well while he was hiding and skulking. He was discovered in the tobacco barn and tobacco is a filthy weed. I like it, but it’s not nourishing, which might explain his extreme thinness, and if hunger left him too weak to bathe in a creek, his extreme filthiness — if the explanations of the skeptics be true. I have offered this fully-documented account to no less than fourteen publications, and would you believe that ten of them decisively declined, and that four did not even reply?”

Jack said, rather abruptly, “If you tell it, sir, I would believe it. Otherwise I would not.”

Vlad also looked surprised. “I should think that such an account of the myth in action would be very acceptable, considering the historical period, and from someone of your stature in the field.”