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

“My stature in the field. Well, well.” Blink. Blink. His reddened face grew redder yet, but his voice remained flat. “If you had spent as much time in the Groves of Aca dee mee as I have, it would perhaps surprise you less.” He poured coffee.

Later in the car Vlad said, “I don’t mind telling you that I was feeling just a bit spooked.”

The kudzu vines sped by, sped by. There seemed to be hardly anybody around, and the few people they saw didn’t seem to be doing anything. Surely they did not, could not, eat the damned stuff.

“Know what you mean,” Jack Stewart said. “What’d you think of that boy, buried alive out here, no wonder he couldn’t think of anything except grass.”

“Well, you can’t smoke kudzu.”

“He said a funny thing, we were sort of rapping about that and this. Well I did most of the talking about old Paper-Man, and he said, ‘You know Larraby’s got one locked up, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘No, who’s Larraby, and what’s he got?’ And then he took a loooong toke, and he said, ‘Well, if you don’t know who Larraby is, then I don’t know what he’s got.’ “

Vlad said, “We can ask Ed Bagnell at Sumner Public College.”

And then conversation faded away in the face of endless green tangles of kudzu. kudzu.

Dr Edward Bagnell was on the telephone: “Dr Claire Zimmerman, please. Claire? Ed. Do you have your little slate and pencil there? Okay, Listen. On whatsoever excuse, I want you to go to Rhode Island and see Dr Silas Abbott Selby of the Providence Plantations Museum; this refers to the Paper-Man Project. It’s of gross importance and intense confidence; you will go and question Selby about a rumor that he has a Paper-Man’s head. Don’t scream into the phone, for God’s sake. Heard it from Curator Luke Larraby of the Carolina Coast Museum, who has Selby in the sights of his Parrott guns — that’s confidential. I doubt if one visit will get you a peep, but be prepared to keep at it. It may require a slightly less severe costume and manner; that’s up to you. That’s all. Kiss, kiss.”

Silas Selby had another view of the matter. He sipped Fundador, and looked at Claire over the rim of the glass. Her cropped dark hair framed her round face. They were in the W. Waldo Brown Room, endowed by the philanthropist of that name, some said in order to have a quiet place to drink brandy without his wife.

“Larraby has no training as a museum specialist whatsoever,” he said flatly. “He was an architect, and sort of a house doctor for old houses, patching them up, I mean. By and by he began to do work for the old museums down there in Carolina. Well, they were short all kinds of trained people, and he was a quick study, enthusiastic and willing to turn his hand to anything, willing to read up and become the local authority on anything; just the sort of man they needed when the curatorship fell vacant.” Selby sipped his brandy, gazed at Claire, and let his eyebrows rise and fall.

“Well, somehow or other Luke had acquired a local mummy. Ante-bellum, post-bellum, or just plain bellum. There are places throughout the world where the soil tends to preserve bodies laid to rest, and such bodies sometimes turned up down Luke’s way in places unexpected. I think they became sort of cult objects, who can say why? People went mum when one asked, and people looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes. Local name for them was ‘Paper-Men’ or ‘Paper Doll,’ because the local lovers of grue and ghoulishness had been in the habit of padding their wasted bodies with old newspapers under the clothes, which made them look less gant and skeletal, chests less fallen in, stomachs less shrunken and so on. The ancient Egyptians used small sacks of cedar sawdust for the same purpose, after all. It is reminiscent of old Jeremy Bentham, stuffed and mounted and in his best clothes, attending the annual meetings of the. whichever society. - Now perhaps I should not be telling you all this, Doctor Zimmerman, may I call you Claire? But I feel I can count upon your —?”

He peered at her again over his wine-glass. She assured him (again) that he might count on her.

“More brandy, Miss Zimmerman, or a biscuit? Very well, though I hate to be a solitary drinker.” Selby sipped his own. “I was visiting the provincial museums, and had to go about checking it ever so circumspectly. Couldn’t come right out and demand to see it. Well, Larraby kept that Paper Doll thing hidden in a Rinso box in a broom closet! It was in three pieces, in totally deplorable condition. A great troll of a janitor was lurking around. Details shall be spared you. ‘Luke, confound it, this should be kept in a moisture- and temperature-controlled, sealed case.’ “

“Couldn’t agree with you more,” said Larraby.

“Then why isn’t it?”

“Haven’t got one, is why. Besides, our fragrant friend might spook the city senseless.”

“ ‘And there should be a series of tests made, examinations, measurements, tissue samples. Let me give this some thought.’ To make the matter short, a complex plan was worked out. Some recently acquired shekel medallions would be sent to Larraby as sort of hostages, and the head of his precious mummy would be sent north to Rhode Island to be tested, teeth for example. Meanwhile I looked into getting a proper sealed case for it. But after a very short time, old Luke Larraby began demanding his, um, object back, and making ridiculous charges that the shekels weren’t authentic. Said the shekel medallions, of 18th century European manufacture, had been represented as actual 2nd century shekels of the last Jewish Commonwealth, which was certainly not stipulated in the agreement. Said his miserable mini-museum had now provided a more secure repository than the broom closet. Well, the tests take a long time, so Silas Abbott Selby stood firm.” The empty glass came down firmly on the table and his eyes firmly held Claire’s.

“And I am not likely to yield, my dear Miss, ah, my dear Doctor Zimmerman, for in strictest confidence, there is a great deal of mystery about this whole thing. The tests are inconclusive, but I can disclose that the tests show no traces of such chemical embalming agents as arsenic or formaldehyde or anything more modern. Though what they did disclose was both interesting and puzzling. Certain tissues are inconsistent with. the state of certain sinew fragments, soft tissue, brain matter and spinal matter, epidermal cells. but I have no wish to be prolix. Oh, the press would like nothing more, nothing better than to compare us, by ‘us’ I mean the Carolina Coast Museum and the General Museum of the Province of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, compare us to Burke and Hare. Ha ha.”

“Oh, surely you need not rush away now. A glass of Fundador? Do let me pour you, our Fundador is famous — well, I have very much enjoyed. And should you hear, should you just hear any of, ha ha ha, Curator Larraby’s, he has no degree in museum science, you know, of his complaints against this ancient and august institution, older than our Republic, well, ha ha, just consider the source. Allow me to help you with your wraps — well, Goodnight, Miss, Doctor Zimmerman. Claire.”

In a semi-senile tortoise shuffle came Dr H. Brown Roberts. “Who was that young woman, Selby? Surely you were not entertaining a personal female guest in these semi-Senatorial chambers, endowed by Uncle Waldo Brown, eh? Looked like a flapper to me. Eh?”

Framed in the arch of the ancient gallery, Dr Roberts wagged his snowy head. His white-thatched nostrils gleamed. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t signify. I’m only old Harry Roberts, and I don’t signify, though I am still on the Budget Committee. I guess I know a flapper when I see one, and I know a good bottle of Fundador when I see one, so pour me a glass, Silas Selby. Call me a Brandy Baptist if you like, what care I; I’m only old Harry Roberts and my years of labor don’t signify. Pour me two glasses of good Spanish brandy, or I’ll tell the Budget Committee about your stinking old head, and what will they say about that? — Ah. Hah ha. Mmmm. Tell you I know a flapper when I see one.”