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

Here Vlad’s blood ran cold as he continued reading.

“Mr Anderson drove the child to the West County Medical Center, and it wasn’t until much later that he was able to check the upstairs trap. It had been sprung, and inside the trap was a badly crushed, but easily identifiable human foot that seemed to be in a mummified condition. There was no sign of blood, and there was an immensely strong and fetid odor. I asked Mr Anderson if the force of the trap being sprung could have severed the foot from the ankle. He answered, and remember that he has long been a trapper; he said that the foot had been gnawed off.”

Attached to the pages was an envelope, and inside the envelope was a horrible close-up photograph. Of the foot. Vlad let the pages flutter away. He tried to swallow, but found that he could not. After a while he got up and went for a glass of water.

“You all right, Vlad?” asked Jack from the adjoining room.

“No, I am not.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“No, I don’t.” Vlad gave him the papers. Jack read them and looked up with an expression part-puzzled, part-unhappy. Vlad handed him the envelope. Jack looked at the photograph, then looked at Vlad with horrified eyes. “Jesus,” he said.

Vlad said, “What the hell? Is this a loop? Am I a prisoner in a Moebius strip, or is it all a bad dream?”

Jack Stewart said, “No, it’s not a bad dream. I’m sorry, I wish it were. I still don’t know what it means, but it’s not what we thought it meant — what we were told it meant. We’re in another country from now on. A country with strange inhabitants and unknown boundaries.”

Bagnell was walking, on his way to see Larraby again.

Who first developed the notion of The Phenomenon of the One-Legged Man in the Blue Baseball Cap? Bagnell did not know, but he knew the phenomenon well enough. You never saw such a person in your life, the story went, and the first day you see him, you see two more. Not merely two, mind you, but two more. Walking past the row of old stores which had, almost too late, been saved from destruction by a committee of concerned citizens — concerned, and prosperous — called Rowan Row, simply because it was on Rowan Street; walking along on the other side of the street, Bagnell looked up. He looked up with a jerk of his head; he had not intended to stop, for he had walked slowly past the old buildings earlier, had looked in the shop windows, seen nothing he wanted to examine closely; he looked up now with a jerk of his head. Had he seen, could he have seen a sign reading Paper-Man ? He had not. Not quite.

The shop buildings were all of brick and one story high, and dated from the 1830s. Some attempt had been made to preserve or restore the period flavor: where the tobacco store had been was a tobacco store now, and outside it was a wooden Indian. Apothecary’s had a row of very attractive apothecary’s jars on display, plus antique equipment in a glass case, and as for the rest, offered exactly what was sold in any other drugstore.

PasTime Paper Antiques, the sign read; which Bagnell had seen out of the corner of his ever-ready-to-deceive-you eyes. It had not caught his attention at first because it was, actually, above eye-level on its own side of the street. He stared a moment. He crossed the street. In the window were such things as well-weathered marriage documents illuminated in color in the Pennsylvania Dutch fraktur style, with flowering trees never seen even in botanical gardens, on the boughs of which were distelfinks, birds unknown to ornithology. There were a pair of US Navy certificates identifying Chauncey Casey as Caulker and Clarence Casey as Sailmaker, dated in the 1890s. There were a few posters in extravagant tints, and a small sedate notice, more inside. Bagnell noticed a selection of lacy valentines.

Bagnell noticed the Paper-Man in the very front part of the window.

An old-fashioned bell bobbed and dipped and rang as Bagnell swung the door widely open. An informally-neatly-dressed gentleman in perhaps his early forties appeared from behind an oriental screen. “If there were a time-travel machine,” the man said, quizzing his eyebrows, “I’d go back and murder whoever it was who cut something out of this copy of Godey’s Ladies’ Book, October 1842. Just imagine. Does this interest you? Yours for a dollar.” He thrust it forward, but Bagnell did not thrust a dollar at him.

“I’d like to see one of the daguerreotypes in the window,” Bagnell said. He realized that he was speaking very fast. He realized that he was breathing very fast. “The second one from the right.”

“Certainly. - Please help yourself,” the man gestured to two bowls on a little table, and went forward to the window. With great control, Bagnell did not go with him, did not even turn to watch him. He examined the bowls. One contained small candies; the other was full of business cards reading:

PasTime Paper Antiques

Number 7, Rowan Row

Mr Sydney, Proprietor

Mr Sydney, Proprietor, returned. He held in his hand what looked like a tiny book, and handed it to Bagnell, who at once unclasped the tiny hook and reopened it: it was the right one. It was the likeness of a young man in uniform, in no way remarkable, one might see him or his mates today drinking canned beer and watching television anywhere in town. Anywhere in the United States. “That is real leather and real brass, the casing, I mean, hardly to be found anymore anywhere; and the same goes for the satin facing the picture.”

Bagnell asked the price, and Mr Sydney slipped behind the screen and returned with a loose-leaf notebook which he now consulted. “Ah, yes. The collection of six daguerreotypes, I must tell you that they are actually ambrotypes, a slightly later process, but I follow your own usage which is my own as well; the collection of six daguerreotypes are for sale at $1,000, plus, alas, State sales tax of 3.7 percent. Sell only the single one? Oh I am afraid not. They are after all a collection, and I couldn’t sell just one. Not for less than $200, that is. And no, we don’t take credit cards or out-of-state checks. Sorry. These are after all collectors’ items, and a very good investment.” He proceeded to tell Bagnell about one such which had appreciated even as it sat in the window; adding, “Though if these are still here when the weather gets hotter, of course I will bring them inside because I am afraid of them fading.”

Curator Luke Larraby gave a grunt of surprise at seeing Bagnell again so soon, but he was not uncivil, and listened to him without interruption. He said, “Calm down, we’re not used to excitement here, in fact haven’t had any since the Yankee army passed through town, thank the Lord they didn’t even stop to burn it. Excitement, yes. I don’t feel I can discount the possibility that you are still in a state of excitement — even shock. It is a shocking sight, that photograph of mine — and those things I showed you. So. Oh of course I’ll go stroll by and take a look at the one you say is in. where? Rowan Row. Oh.” He looked at the card Bagnell gave him. “It would be one of the most remarkable coincidences if, actually, they were — Ho. Mr Sydney, yes. Know him. Done business with him, business, you get the point? Sydney is not running a junkyard. Now settle down. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Quit that fidgeting.”

Bagnell extended his stay at his motel, drove slowly back to the old Carolina Coast Museum, went up the blue slate steps, scooped and hollowed by the passing feet of a century. Larraby was there, and beckoned him in from inside his private office. “Aw right. Saw — it. What? Course it’s the same face! Outrageous coincidence! Against all known laws of probability. However. We must have a copy of Sydney’s ambro and work from there. No other choice. And it’s up to you to get him to let you make that copy. They’re not photographic negatives, you know that, of course. We’ll have to photograph it and produce our own negative. Enlarge it. Well — enlarge them both. Go over them with magnifying lens and fine-tooth comb. Have you got $200 cash on you, by the way? Ha. Thought not.”