The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (14 page)

LYLE
: A window then.

MRS. E
: They were all boarded over. With thick dust on the sills.

LYLE
: Did you check the basement?

MRS. E
: Yes, I checked the basement door leading down. It was locked, and the dust hadn’t been disturbed around it.

LYLE
: Then . . . just where the hell did he
go
?

MRS. E
: I don’t know, Lieutenant! . . . That’s why I called you . . . why I came here . . . You’ve got to find Frank!

REDDING
: And where were you . . .? In the dream, I mean.

MRS. E
: My bedroom. In bed, at home. It was as if I’d just been awakened . . . I looked around me – and everything was normal . . . the room exactly as it always is . . . Except for
him
. . . the boy standing next to me.

REDDING
: Did you recognize this boy?

MRS. E
: No.

REDDING
: Describe him to me.

MRS. E
: He was . . . nine or ten . . . a
horrible
child . . . with a cold hate in his face, in his eyes . . . He had on a black sweater with holes in each elbow. And knickers . . . the kind that boys used to wear . . . and he had on black tennis shoes . . .

REDDING
: Did he speak to you?

MRS. E
: Not at first. He just . . . smiled at me . . . and that smile was so . . . so
evil
! . . . And then he said . . . that he wanted me to know he’d won at last . . .

REDDING
: Won what?

MRS. E
: That’s what I asked him . . . calmly, in the dream . . . I asked him what he’d won. And he said . . . oh, My God . . . he said . . .

REDDING
: Go on, Mrs. Evans.

MRS. E
: . . . that he’d won Frank! . . . that my husband would
never
be coming back . . . that he, the boy, had him now . . . forever! . . . I screamed – and woke up. And, instantly, I remembered something.

REDDING
: What did you remember?

MRS. E
: Before she died . . . Frank’s mother . . . sent us an album she’d saved . . . of his childhood . . . photos . . . old report cards . . . He never wanted to look at it, stuck the album away in a closet . . . After the dream, I got it out, looked through it until I found . . .

REDDING
: Yes . . .?

MRS. E
: A photo I’d remembered. Of Frank . . . at the age of ten . . . standing in the front yard on Forest . . . He was smiling . . . that same, awful smile . . . and . . . he wore a dark sweater with holes in each elbow . . . knickers . . . and black tennis shoes. It was . . . the
same
boy exactly – the younger self Frank had always hated . . . I
know
what happened in that house now.

REDDING
: Then tell me.

MRS. E
: The boy was . . . waiting there . . . inside that awful, rotting dead house . . . waiting for Frank to come back . . . all those years . . . waiting there to claim him – because . . .
he
hated the man that Frank had become as much as Frank hated the child he’d once been . . . and the boy was
right
.

REDDING
: Right about what, Mrs. Evans?

MRS. E
: About winning . . . He took all those years, but . . . He won . . . and . . . Frank lost.

2

AVENGING SPIRITS

Tales of Dangerous Elementals

The Old House in Vauxhall Walk

Charlotte Riddell

“Houseless – homeless – hopeless!”

Many a one who had before him trodden that same street must have uttered the same words – the weary, the desolate, the hungry, the forsaken, the waifs and strays of struggling humanity that are always coming and going, cold, starving and miserable, over the pavements of Lambeth Parish; but it is open to question whether they were ever previously spoken with a more thorough conviction of their truth, or with a feeling of keener self-pity, than by the young man who hurried along Vauxhall Walk one rainy winter’s night, with no overcoat on his shoulders and no hat on his head.

A strange sentence for one-and-twenty to give expression to – and it was stranger still to come from the lips of a person who looked like and who was a gentleman. He did not appear either to have sunk very far down in the good graces of Fortune. There was no sign or token which would have induced a passer-by to imagine he had been worsted after a long fight with calamity. His boots were not worn down at the heels or broken at the toes, as many, many boots were which dragged and shuffled and scraped along the pavement. His clothes were good and fashionably cut, and innocent of the rents and patches and tatters that slunk wretchedly by, crouched in doorways, and held out a hand mutely appealing for charity. His face was not pinched with famine or lined with wicked wrinkles, or brutalised by drink and debauchery, and yet he said and thought he was hopeless, and almost in his young despair spoke the words aloud.

It was a bad night to be about with such a feeling in one’s heart. The rain was cold, pitiless and increasing. A damp, keen wind blew down the cross streets leading from the river. The fumes of the gas works seemed to fall with the rain. The roadway was muddy; the pavement greasy; the lamps burned dimly; and that dreary district of London looked its very gloomiest and worst.

Certainly not an evening to be abroad without a home to go to, or a sixpence in one’s pocket, yet this was the position of the young gentleman who, without a hat, strode along Vauxhall Walk, the rain beating on his unprotected head.

Upon the houses, so large and good – once inhabited by well-to-do citizens, now let out for the most part in floors to weekly tenants – he looked enviously. He would have given much to have had a room, or even part of one. He had been walking for a long time, ever since dark in fact, and dark falls soon in December. He was tired and cold and hungry, and he saw no prospect save of pacing the streets all night.

As he passed one of the lamps, the light falling on his face revealed handsome young features, a mobile, sensitive mouth, and that particular formation of the eyebrows – not a frown exactly, but a certain draw of the brows – often considered to bespeak genius, but which more surely accompanies an impulsive organisation easily pleased, easily depressed, capable of suffering very keenly or of enjoying fully. In his short life he had not enjoyed much, and he had suffered a good deal. That night when he walked bareheaded through the rain, affairs had come to a crisis. So far as he in his despair felt able to see or reason, the best thing he could do was to die. The world did not want him; he would be better out of it.

The door of one of the houses stood open, and he could see in the dimly lighted hall some few articles of furniture waiting to be removed. A van stood beside the curb, and two men were lifting a table into it as he, for a second, paused.

“Ah,” he thought, “even those poor people have some place to go to, some shelter provided, while I have not a roof to cover my head, or a shilling to get a night’s lodging.” And he went on fast, as if memory were spurring him, so fast that a man running after had some trouble to overtake him.

“Master Graham! Master Graham!” this man exclaimed, breathlessly; and, thus addressed, the young fellow stopped as if he had been shot.

“Who are you that know me?” he asked, facing round.

“I’m William; don’t you remember William, Master Graham? And, Lord’s sake, sir, what are you doing out a night like this without your hat?”

“I forgot it,” was the answer, “and I did not care to go back and fetch it.”

“Then why don’t you buy another, sir? You’ll catch your death of cold; and besides, you’ll excuse me, sir, but it does look odd.”

“I know that,” said Master Graham grimly, “but I haven’t a halfpenny in the world.”

“Have you and the Master, then –” began the man, but there he hesitated and stopped.

“Had a quarrel? Yes, and one that will last us our lives,” finished the other, with a bitter laugh.

“And where are you going now?”

“Going! Nowhere, except to seek out the softest paving stone, or the shelter of an arch.”

“You are joking, sir.”

“I don’t feel much in a mood for jesting either.”

“Will you come back with me, Master Graham? We are just at the last of our moving, but there is a spark of fire still in the grate, and it would be better talking out of this rain. Will you come, sir?”

“Come! Of course I will come,” said the young fellow, and, turning, they retraced their steps to the house he had looked into as he passed along.

An old, old house, with long, wide hall, stairs low, easy of ascent, with deep cornices to the ceilings, and oak floorings, and mahogany doors, which still spoke mutely of the wealth and stability of the original owner, who lived before the Tradescants and Ashmoles were thought of, and had been sleeping for longer than they, in St. Mary’s churchyard, hard by the archbishop’s palace.