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

He found not one.

That is, the current one contained not one. At the public library, in the reference room: “Out-of-date telephone directories? Nooo. We don’t keep them.”

“Oh. ” Sinking voice, sinking feeling.

“But I’ll tell you who does. Mr Rodeheaver does. I’ll write down the address for you.”

Homer would have felt at home in the old room where Mr Rodeheaver worked. Bagnell felt that if he had wanted the directory for Fusby-le-Mud, 1901, it would have been there. Mr Rodeheaver perhaps collected them, perhaps compiled mailing lists, or traced missing heirs. Bagnell didn’t care. Mr Rodeheaver was getting on in years and he listened patiently; then he asked, “What’s it worth to you?”

“Worth —?”

“Is it worth five dollars?”

Mr Rodeheaver began to pull down old phone books and pile them on his dusty desk; beckoned Bagnell to come look. Waited while he did. Ceasing three years before, but as far back from then, farther back than Bagnell cared to go, a Mrs Lambert Mackilwhit had lived at 269 Longfellow Avenue. Bagnell copied the address, handed the man a crumpled five-dollar bill.

“Well, there’s lunch,” said Mr Rodeheaver.

Did she still live there? Had she died three years ago? Had she just given up her phone, there being too few left alive to call her? Or, perhaps, there had been some difficulty about a bill, and she had let her listing lapse, and had a phone installed in the name of a neighbor, friend, or. well, probably not. But. Hurt to try? Might find a lead. Leads had been found, one after another.

Two-sixty-nine was in rather better shape than the other houses, which had all once been neat and bright. long ago. and Mrs Mackilwhit lived in a little room on the top floor, whither he was directed by a series of ageless women in cotton house-dresses, of whom each seemed to have three children and one in utero. But Mrs Mackilwhit was not ageless. Mrs. Mackilwhit was very aged indeed, and her skin hung in heavy flaps.

Did she know of an Ephraim Mackilwhit, who had served in the Civil War? A silence. The room smelled, rather, but of nothing worse than old people’s flesh and of cabbage, and perhaps it was only the neighbors’ cabbage. The room contained what was left of her life as it had drawn in upon itself, decade after decade; there was hardly room enough to move, although no doubt the woman who lived there had moved enough. She sat in her chair and she did not move now, and she stared at nothing which other people could see.

Silence. Then — “He disappeared,” she said at last. “Lambert’s, my husband’s aunts, used to speak of him. He was the black sheep of the family. He went away and he never came back. Yes. He disappeared.”

Bagnell had brought another picture along, of another group of soldiers, as a sort of control, and now he put both in her hands. “Might you recognize a family resemblance?”

She pushed one away after a glance, but the other one she looked at long and long. “A family resemblance. Yes. The one at the end. On the right. He has Lambert’s look. Yes. He has Lambert’s look.” And, very silently, her slow tears rained along the ruined landscape of her face.

A family resemblance. Is not Ephraim a beloved child ? And what had he come to? A thing in three boxes: shrivelled, withered, broken, and foul. But now at last, thank God forever dead.

Bagnell to Larraby: “ When was Ephraim Mackilwhit. that is, where was the Paper-Man found? Come clean.”

“Basement storeroom, in an old private girls’ school in Gainsboro, couple years ago. Mustee was picking up a little extra money there as a weekend relief watchman,” said Larraby.

Thither went Dr Claire Zimmerman, at Bagnell’s request, to interview the headmistress, Mrs. Sidwell:

“Yes, this is one of the oldest houses in town. It is well-preserved, and consequently required no major restorations. It has made an excellent private school building.” Mrs Sidwell stopped and thought. “Do I recall anything odd happening a couple of years ago? Well, there was a… I suppose the word I have to use is prank. It’s difficult to say when a prank gets out of hand and becomes. something more. Dr Rose Bennett asked me into her Advanced English class during a morning break. She said there was something on the blackboard she didn’t like. Of course I expected what we used to call a naughty word. Are there anymore naughty words? I haven’t quite grown used to hearing sweet girls talking like sailors. Well, no, it wasn’t a naughty word. The words Nothing but Death were written on the blackboard, and the writing was odd. somehow wrong. The next day the same words were written on a blackboard in room A-6, and the following morning, there it was again. Security and maintenance promised to keep a close watch on room A-6, and the next day the words Nothing but Death appeared in room C-12! When that happened, everybody began to get nervous. Well, we photographed the words, sponged all the blackboards, and read the riot act to security and maintenance, but still it appeared. Of course you’d like to see it. ” Mrs Sidwell rummaged in a drawer and handed an enlarged photograph to Claire, who studied it intently.

“Then Rose Bennett remembered that those were Jane Austen’s dying words. But the handwriting bore no resemblance to samples of Jane Austen’s, and we weren’t even teaching Jane Austen that year. So our school was being haunted by a spectre with a good knowledge of early 19th century English literature. But who?”

“Judging from the cramped and wavering writing, it must have been somebody very sick, or very tired,” said Claire.

“Oh my, I don’t like the sound of that, though you’re probably right. I must say, the whole thing gave me the creeps. Do you think somebody very old wrote it? The writing looks so weak and old fashioned. But why would an old person come creeping in like that? I asked Rose Bennett what the class had been discussing, the day before the words appeared. She remembered that she had asked them; ‘If you could be granted only one wish, what would you wish for?” The next morning, the words began to appear: Nothing but death. Then just as suddenly, it stopped.”

Claire examined the photograph closely. “What’s that down at the bottom of the blackboard? It looks like the letters ‘E.M.’ in the same writing.”

“Oh yes, sometimes that appeared too. But nobody knew what it meant,” said Mrs Sidwell. And then the bell rang and she had to go.

Vlad Smith and Jack Stewart were bedded down in an old-fashioned Tourist Guesthouse for the night. It was owned by Mrs Warrington, who looked like a gentlewoman in reduced circumstances. A bottle and glasses stood on the table next to a small pile of rather unprofessional-looking printed matter.

Jack tugged a comb through his tangled molasses curls and picked one up. “Nice old guy who gave us these,” he said. “Mr Pabrocky. All these years he’s been sending you these things and then all of a sudden you turn up on his doorstep. The News Bulletin of the Atlantic Folk Lore, two words and no hyphen, very dubious usage, Club,” he read. “Volume XV, number 11, to be precise. ‘WHO’S BOSS IN YOUR WALL?’ Cute, hey? There is a story told particularly in the south eastern and south central states of a spook or specter or bogle or hant who inhabitants houses and other older, usually, buildings. He is musty and gant and lives in the walls and floors and empty rooms and is seldom seen. The description is that he is skeletal but unlike other such myths he is depicted as wearing old clothes and is afraid of cats and fires. Perhaps because he is all dried up? It is quite a task to look this subject up in indexes and bibliographies, for one thing because it has so many names and for another so little seems to have been published. So we urge our members to make inquiries wherever they happen to be. Perhaps our little amateur News Bulletin may provide some information which the learned quarterlies have not. This folk tale figure is called ‘Paper-Man’ because he lives behind the wall paper which used to be on every wall but now no longer owing to the high cost and labor and also, we assume, because of a prejudice that ‘Bugs’ breed there. This creature issues a noise which is variously described as clicking or clattering or even rustling. Hence the various names of ‘Rustler’ or ‘Clicker’ as well as ‘the Boss in the Wall.’ Another name is ‘House Devil’ and Mary Mae Subchak reports she has heard it referred to as ‘the Devil in the Wall.’ “