The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (58 page)

W. C. opened a door down the hall and fumbled around inside. A moment later he reappeared carrying a candle and beckoned us to enter the room. Well, that was a little better. Showed some imagination, anyway. The candle was effective in the gathering darkness; it cast blotches of shadow over the walls and caused shapes to creep in the corners.

“Here we are,” he almost whispered.

And there we were.

Now I’m not psychic. I’m not even highly imaginative. When Orson Welles is yammering on the radio I’m down at the hamburger stand listening to the latest swing music. But when I entered that room I
knew
that it, at least, wasn’t a fake. The air reeked of murder. The shadows ruled over a domain of death. It was cold in here, cold as a charnel-house. And the candle-light fell on the great bed in the corner, then moved to the center of the room and covered a monstrous bulk. The murder block.

It was something like an altar, at that. There was a niche in the wall behind it, and I could almost imagine a statue being placed there. What kind of a statue? A black bat, inverted and crucified? Devil-worshippers used that, didn’t they? Or was it another and more horrible kind of idol? The police had destroyed it. But the block was still there, and in the candle-light I saw the stains. They trickled over the rough sides.

Daisy moved closer to me and I could feel her tremble.

Kluva’s chamber. A man with an axe, holding a terrified woman across the block; the strength of inspired madness in his eyes, and in his hands, an axe –

“It was here, on the night of January twelfth, nineteen twenty-four, that Ivan Kluva murdered his wife with—”

The fat man stood by the door, chanting out his listless refrain. But for some reason I listened to every word. Here in this room, those words were real. They weren’t scareheads on a sideshow banner; here in the darkness they had meaning. A man and his wife, and murder. Death is just a word you read in the newspaper. But some day it becomes real; dreadfully real. Something the worms whisper in your ears as they chew. Murder is a word, too. It is the power of death, and sometimes there are men who exercise that power, like gods. Men who kill are like gods. They take away life. There is something cosmically obscene about the thought. A shot fired in drunken frenzy, a blow struck in anger, a bayonet plunged in the madness of war, an accident, a car-crash – these things are part of life. But a man, any man, who lives with the thought of Death; who thinks and plans a deliberate, cold-blooded murder –

To sit there at the supper table, looking at his wife, and saying, “Twelve o’clock. You have five more hours to live, my dear. Five more hours. Nobody knows that. Your friends don’t know it. Even you don’t know it. No one knows – except myself. Myself, and Death, I am Death. Yes, I am Death to you. I shall numb your body and your brain, I shall be your lord and master. You were born, you have lived, only for this single supreme moment; that I shall command your fate. You exist only that I may kill you.”

Yes, it was obscene. And then, this block, and a hatchet.

“Come upstairs, dear.” And his thoughts, grinning behind the words. Up the dark stairs to the dark room, where the block and hatchet waited.

I wondered if he hated her. No, I suppose not. If the story was true, he had sacrificed her for a purpose. She was just the most handy, the most convenient person to sacrifice. He must have had blood like the water under the polar peaks.

It was the room that did it, not the story. I could feel him in the room, and I could feel
her
.

Yes, that was funny. Now I could feel
her
. Not as a being, not as a tangible presence, but as a force. A restless force. Something that stirred in back of me before I turned my head. Something hiding in the deeper shadows. Something in the blood-stained block. A chained spirit.

“Here I died. I ended here. One minute I was alive, unsuspecting. The next found me gripped by the ultimate horror of Death. The hatchet came down across my throat, so full of life, and sliced it out. Now I wait. I wait for others, for there is nothing left to me but revenge. I am not a person any longer, nor a spirit. I am merely a force – a force created as I felt my life slip away from my throat. For at that moment I knew but one feeling with my entire dying being; a feeling of utter, cosmic hatred. Hatred at the sudden injustice of what had happened to me. The force was born then when I died; it is all that is left of me. Hatred. Now I wait, and sometimes I have a chance to let the hatred escape. By killing another I can feel the hatred rise, wax, grow strong. Then for a brief moment I rise, wax, grow strong; feel real again, touch the hem of life’s robe, which once I wore. Only by surrendering to my dark hate can I survive in death. And so I lurk; lurk here in this room. Stay too long and I shall return. Then, in the darkness, I seek your throat and the blade bites and I taste again the ecstasy of reality.”

The old drizzle-puss was elaborating his story, but I couldn’t hear him for my thoughts. Then all at once he flashed something out across my line of vision; something that was like a stark shadow against the candle-light.

It was a hatchet.

I felt, rather than heard, when Daisy went “Ooooh!” beside me. Looking down I stared into two blue mirrors of terror that were her eyes. I had thought plenty, and what her imaginings had been I could guess. The old bird was stolid enough, but he brandished that hatchet, that hatchet with the rusty blade, and it got so I couldn’t look at anything else but the jagged edge of the hatchet. I couldn’t hear or see or think anything; there was that hatchet, the symbol of Death. There was the real crux of the story; not in the man or the woman, but in that tiny razor-edge line. That razor-edge was really Death. That razor-edge spelled doom to all living things. Nothing in the world was greater than that razor-edge. No brain, no power, no love, no hate could withstand it.

And it swooped out in the man’s hands and I tore my eyes away and looked at Daisy, at anything, just to keep the black thought down. And I saw Daisy, her face that of a tortured Medusa.

Then she slumped.

I caught her. Bugle-beak looked up with genuine surprise.

“My wife’s fainted,” I said.

He just blinked. Didn’t know what the score was, at first. And a minute later I could swear he was just a little bit pleased. He thought his story had done it, I suppose.

Well, this changed all plans. No Valos, no drive before supper.

“Any place around here where she can lie down?” I asked. “No, not in this room.”

“My wife’s bedroom is down the hall,” said Bugle-beak.

His wife’s bedroom, eh? But no one stayed here after dark, he had said – the damned old fake!

This was no time for quibbling. I carried Daisy into the room down the hall, chafed her wrists.

“Shall I send my wife up to take care of her?” asked the now solicitous showman.

“No, don’t bother. Let me handle her; she gets these thing every so often – hysteria, you know. But she’ll have to rest a while.”

He shuffled down the hall, and I sat there cursing. Damn the woman, it was just like her! But too late to alter circumstances now. I decided to let her sleep it off.

I went downstairs in the darkness, groping my way. And I was only halfway down when I heard a familiar pattering strike the roof. Sure enough – a typical West Coast heavy dew was falling. Fine thing, too; dark as pitch outside.

Well, there was the set-up. Splendid melodrama background. I’d been dragged to movies for years and it was always the same as this.

The young couple caught in a haunted house by a thunderstorm. The mysterious evil caretaker. (Well, maybe he wasn’t, but he’d have to do until a better one came along.) The haunted room. The fainting girl, asleep and helpless in the bedroom. Enter Boris Karloff dressed in three pounds of nose-putty. “Grrrrrr!” says Boris. “Eeeeeeeeh!” says the girl. “What’s that?” shouts Inspector Toozefuddy from downstairs. And then a mad chase. “Bang! Bang!” And Boris Karloff falls down into an open manhole. Girl gets frightened. Boy gets girl. Formula.

I thought I was pretty clever when I turned on the burlesque thought pattern, but when I got down to the foot of the stairs I knew that I was playing hide-and-go-seek with my thoughts. Something dark and cold was creeping around in my brain, and I was trying hard to avoid it. Something to do with Ivan Kluva and his wife and the haunted room and the hatchet. Suppose there was a ghost and Daisy was lying up there alone and –

“Ham and eggs?”

“What the—” I turned around. There was Bugle-beak at the foot of the stairs.

“I said, would you care for some ham and eggs? Looks pretty bad outside and so long as the Missus is resting I thought maybe you’d like to join the wife and me in a little supper.”

I could have kissed him, nose and all.

We went into the back. Mrs. was just what you’d expect; thin woman in her middle forties, wearing a patient look. The place was quite cosy, though; she had fixed up several rooms as living quarters. I began to have a little more respect for Bugle-beak. Poor showman though he was, he seemed to be making a living in a rather novel way. And his wife was an excellent cook.

The rain thundered down. Something about a little lighted room in the middle of a storm that makes you feel good inside. Confidential. Mrs. Keenan – Bugle-beak introduced himself as Homer Keenan – suggested that I might take a little brandy up to Daisy. I demurred, but Keenan perked up his ears – and nose – at the mention of brandy and suggested we have a little. The
little
proved to be a half-gallon jug of fair peach-brandy, and we filled our glasses. As the meal progressed we filled them again. And again. The liquor helped to chase that dark thought away, or almost away. But it still bothered me. And so I got Homer Keenan into talking. Better a boring conversation than a boring thought – boring little black beetle of thought, chewing away in your brain.

“So after the carny folded I got out from under. Put over a little deal in Tia and cleaned up but the Missus kind of wanted to settle down. Tent business in this country all shot to blazes anyway. Well, I knew this Feingerber from the old days, like I say – and he put me up to this house. Yeah, sure, that part is genuine enough. There was an Ivan Kluva and he did kill his wife here. Block and axe genuine too; I got a state permit to keep ’em. Museum, this is. But the ghost story, of course that’s just a fake. Gets them in, though. Some week-ends we play to capacity crowds ten hours a day. Makes a nice thing of it. We live here – say, let’s have another nip of this brandy, whaddy say? Come on, it won’t hurt you. Get it from a Mex down the road a ways.”

Fire. Fire in the blood. What did he mean the ghost story was fake? When I went into that room I smelled murder. I thought
his
thoughts. And then I had thought
hers.
Her hate was in that room; and if it wasn’t a ghost, what was it? Somehow it all tied in with that black thought I had buzzing in my head; that damned black thought all mixed up with the axe and hate, and poor Daisy lying up there helpless. Fire in my head. Brandy fire. But not enough. I could still think of Daisy, and all at once something blind gripped me and I was afraid and I trembled all over, and I couldn’t wait. Thinking of her like that, all alone in the storm, near the murder-room and the block and the hatchet – I knew I must go to her. I couldn’t stand the horrid suspicion.

I got up like a fool, mumbled something about looking after her, and ran up the black staircase. I was trembling, trembling, until I reached her bedside and saw how peacefully she lay there. Her sleep was quite untroubled. She was even smilling. She didn’t know. She wasn’t afraid of ghosts and hatchets. Looking at her I felt utterly ridiculous, but I did stare down at her for a long time until I regained control of myself once again . . . .

When I went downstairs the liquor had hit me and I felt drunk. The thought was gone from my brain now, and I was beginning to experience relief.

Keenan had refilled my glass for me, and when I gulped it down he followed suit and immediately poured again. This time we sat down to a real gab-fest.

I began to talk. I felt like an unwinding top. Everything began to spin out of my throat. I told about my life; my “career,” such as it was; my romance with Daisy, even. Just felt like it. The liquor.

Before you know it I was pulling a True Confession of my own, with all the trimmings. How things stood with Daisy and me. Our foolish quarrels. Her nagging. Her touchiness about things like our car, and the insurance, and Jeanne Corey. I was maudlin enough to be petty. I picked on her habits. Then I began to talk about this trip of ours, and my plans for a second honeymoon, and it was only instinct that shut me up before becoming actually disgusting.

Keenan adopted an older “man-of-the-world” attitude, but he finally broke down enough to mention a few of his wife’s salient deficiencies. What I told him about Daisy’s love for the horrors prompted him to tease his wife concerning her own timidity. It developed that while she knew the story was a fake, she still shied away from venturing upstairs after nightfall – just as though the ghost were real.

Mrs. Keenan bridled. She denied everything. Why she’d go upstairs any time at all. Any time at all.

“How about now? It’s almost midnight. Why not go up and take a cup of coffee to that poor sick woman?” Keenan sounded like somebody advising Little Red Riding-Hood to go see her grandmother.