Haunts Read online

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  haunts

  Reliquaries of the Dead

  Ed by Stephen Jones

  No copyright 2012 by MadMaxAU eBooks

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  Contents

  Introduction: The Restless Dead

  The Revenant

  Richard L. Tierney

  A Warning to the Curious

  M. R. James

  The Door

  R. Chetwynd-Hayes

  Hand to Mouth

  Reggie Oliver

  Two O’Clock Session

  Richard Matheson

  Inheritance

  Paul McAuley

  Grandmother’s Slippers

  Sarah Pinborough

  The Mystery

  Peter Atkins

  Poison Pen

  Christopher Fowler

  Return Journey

  Ramsey Campbell

  Grandfather’s Teeth

  Lisa Tuttle

  Ill Met by Daylight

  Basil Copper

  The Place

  John Gordon

  The Bridegroom

  R. B. Russell

  Is There Anybody There?

  Kim Newman

  Wait

  Conrad Williams

  City of Dreams

  Richard Christian Matheson

  A House on Fire

  Tanith Lee

  Party Talk

  John Gaskin

  The Hurting Words

  Simon Kurt Unsworth

  The Church at Monte Saturno

  Robert Silverberg

  The Hidden Chamber

  Neil Gaiman

  Good Grief

  Robert Shearman

  Blue Lady, Come Back

  Karl Edward Wagner

  The Naughty Step

  Michael Marshall Smith

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  Introduction

  The Restless Dead

  SOMETIMES THE DEAD are restless. Sometimes they come back.

  Ghosts, phantoms, revenants, lost souls—call them what you will—but sometimes the dead are anchored to our world by something that will not let their essence pass over until their needs have been fulfilled.

  Sometimes, when life is gone, and before the spirit moves across to whatever lies beyond, something lingers on…

  —in a person…

  —in a specific location or structure…

  -—in a piece of clothing…

  —maybe in an item as small or insignificant as a pen…

  —perhaps even a human heart…

  —or even a sliver of bone.

  The twenty-five ghostly contributions to this anthology range from the classic “A Warning to the Curious” by M. R. James—who practically invented the “cursed reliquary” story—through some of my favorite supernatural stories about haunted people and places from the past four decades, to ten original tales about the restless dead that were especially written for this book by some of the most talented authors working in the genre today.

  Sometimes the dead want answers, or have unfinished business this side of the veil. Their spirits cannot rest until they have accomplished what they failed to achieve while they were still alive.

  Sometimes these needs are motivated by love … or loss … or even guilt. And sometimes they are driven by much stronger emotions. Sometimes they simply want revenge.

  Sometimes the dead come back, and perhaps they are attracted to something as simple as a book…

  Maybe even the very volume that you are holding in your hands right now.

  And that is when you really need to ne afraid…

  —Stephen Jones

  London, England

  June 2011

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  The Revenant

  RICHARD L. TIERNEY

  RICHARD L. TIERNEY lives in his house, “The Hermitage,” in Mason City, Iowa. He has a degree in entomology from Iowa State University and worked with the U.S. Forestry Service for many years. An editor, poet, and critic, his seminal essay, “The Derleth Mythos,” is considered a cornerstone of modern Lovecraftian criticism.

  A great admirer of the writings of Robert E. Howard, Tierney edited Tigers of the Sea and Hawks of Outremer for publisher Donald M. Grant, completing a few unfinished tales in the process.

  His novels include The Winds of Zar, the Bran Mak Morn pastiche For the Witch of the Mists (with David C. Smith), The House of the Toad, The Scroll of Thoth: Simon Magus and the Great Old Ones, The Cardens of Lucullus (with Glenn Rahman), The Drums of Chaos, and six Red Sonja books (1981 -83), also in collaboration with Smith.

  Tierney’s influences include Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Donald Wandrei, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long. His poetry has been collected in Dreams and Damnations, The Doom Prophet and One Other, the Arkham House volume of Collected Poems: Nightmares and Visions, The Blob That Cobbled Abdul and Other Poems and Songs, and Savage Menace and Other Poems of Horror.

  S. T. Joshi has described Tierney as “one of the leading weird poets of his generation.”

  (From the French of Charles Baudelaire)

  LIKE A DARK ANGEL, feral-eyed,

  I will return and softly glide

  Into the silence of your room,

  Wrapped in the shadows of night’s gloom.

  And you I’ll give, my sweet delight,

  Kisses cold as the moon’s cold light

  And chill caresses like the crawl

  Of snakes around a pit’s dank wall.

  You’ll find, when comes the livid dawn,

  The vacant place I’ve lain upon

  Where a strange cold shall bide till night.

  Though some by love and tenderness

  Would rule your youth and zestfulness,

  Me, I would seize your soul by fright.

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  A Warning to the Curious

  M. R. JAMES

  MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES (1862-1936) was Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and Eton. Most of his ghost stories were occasional pieces, written for friends or college magazines, and were collected in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911), A Thin Ghost and Others (1919), and A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories (1925).

  Widely regarded as one of the finest authors of supernatural fiction in the English language, James is credited as the originator of the “antiquarian ghost story,” replacing the Gothic horrors of the previous century with more contemporary settings for his subtle hauntings.

  Many of his stories were originally written as Christmas entertainments and were read aloud by the author to selected gatherings of friends.

  “A Warning to the Curious” has twice been adapted for television-first in 1972 for a BBC dramatization starring Peter Vaughn and Clive Swift, and then again in 2000 for the same network’s Ghost Stories for Christmas, in which Christopher Lee portrayed the author. More recently, actor Alex Jennings read the story on BBC Radio 3 in June 2011.

  According to James, the ghost story should “put the reader into the position of saying to himself: ‘If I‘m not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!’Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo… Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage.

  “Another requisite, in my opinion, is that the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story.”

/>   The classic tale that follows could stand as the prototype for every “cursed object” story that has appeared since it was first published in The London Mercury in 1925…

  THE PLACE ON THE EAST COAST which the reader is asked to consider is Seaburgh. It is not very different now from what I remember it to have been when I was a child. Marshes intersected by dykes to the south, recalling the early chapters of Great Expectations; flat fields to the north, merging into heath; heath, fir woods, and, above all, gorse, inland. A long seafront and a street: behind that a spacious church of flint, with a broad, solid western tower and a peal of six bells. How well I remember their sound on a hot Sunday in August, as our party went slowly up the white, dusty slope of road towards them, for the church stands at the top of a short, steep incline. They rang with a flat clacking sort of sound on those hot days, but when the air was softer they were mellower too. The railway ran down to its little terminus farther along the same road. There was a gay white windmill just before you came to the station, and another down near the shingle at the south end the town, and yet others on higher ground to the north. There were cottages of bright red brick with slate roofs… but why do I encumber you with these commonplace details? The fact is that they come crowding to the point of the pencil when it begins to write of Seaburgh. I should like to be sure that I had allowed the right ones to get onto the paper. But I forgot. I have not quite done with the word-painting business yet.

  Walk away from the sea and the town, pass the station, and turn up the road on the right. It is a sandy road, parallel with the railway, and if you follow it, it climbs to somewhat higher ground. On your left (you are now going northward) is heath, on your right (the side towards the sea) is a belt of old firs, wind-beaten, thick at the top, with the slope that old seaside trees have; seen on the skyline from the train they would tell you in an instant, if you did not know it, that you were approaching a windy coast. Well, at the top of my little hill, a line of these firs strikes out and runs towards the sea, for there is a ridge that goes that way; and the ridge ends in a rather well defined mound commanding the level fields of rough grass, and a little knot of fir trees crowns it. And here you may sit on a hot spring day, very well content to look at blue sea, white windmills, red cottages, bright green grass, church tower, and distant martello tower on the south.

  As I have said, I began to know Seaburgh as a child; but a gap of a good many years separates my early knowledge from that which is more recent. Still it keeps its place in my affections, and any tales of it that I pick up have an interest for me. One such tale is this: it came to me in a place very remote from Seaburgh, and quite accidentally, from a man whom I had been able to oblige—enough in his opinion to justify his making me his confidant to this extent.

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  I know all that country more or less (he said). I used to go to Seaburgh pretty regularly for golf in the spring. I generally put up at The Bear, with a friend—Henry Long it was, you knew him perhaps—(“Slightly,” I said) and we used to take a sitting room and be very happy there. Since he died I haven’t cared to go there. And I don’t know that I should anyhow after the particular thing that happened on our last visit.

  It was in April 19—, we were there, and by some chance we were almost the only people in the hotel. So the ordinary public rooms were practically empty, and we were the more surprised when, after dinner, our sitting-room door opened, and a young man put his head in. We were aware of this young man. He was rather a rabbity anemic subject—light hair and light eyes—but not unpleasing. So when he said: “I beg your pardon, is this a private room?” we did not growl and say: “Yes, it is,” but Long said, or I did—no matter which: “Please come in.” “Oh, may I?” he said, and seemed relieved. Of course it was obvious that he wanted company; and as he was a reasonable kind of person—not the sort to bestow his whole family history on you—we urged him to make himself at home. “I dare say you find the other rooms rather bleak,” I said. Yes, he did: but it was really too good of us, and so on. That being got over, he made some pretence of reading a book. Long was playing Patience, I was writing. It became plain to me after a few minutes that this visitor of ours was in rather a state of fidgets or nerves, which communicated itself to me, and so I put away my writing and turned to engaging him in talk.

  After some remarks, which I forget, he became rather confidential. “You’ll think it very odd of me” (this was the sort of way he began), “but the fact is I’ve had something of a shock.” Well, I recommended a drink of some cheering kind, and we had it. The waiter coming in made an interruption (and I thought our young man seemed very jumpy when the door opened), but after a while he got back to his woes again. There was nobody he knew in the place, and he did happen to know who we both were (it turned out there was some common acquaintance in town), and really he did want a word of advice, if we didn’t mind. Of course, we both said: “By all means,” or “Not at all,” and Long put away his cards. And we settled down to hear what his difficulty was.

  “It began,” he said, “more than a week ago, when I bicycled over to Froston, only about five or six miles, to see the church; I’m very much interested in architecture, and it’s got one of those pretty porches with niches and shields. I took a photograph of it, and then an old man who was tidying up in the churchyard came and asked if I’d care to look into the church. I said yes, and he produced a key and let me in. There wasn’t much inside, but I told him it was a nice little church, and he kept it very clean, ‘but,’ I said, ‘the porch is the best part of it.’ We were just outside the porch then, and he said, ‘Ah, yes, that is a nice porch; and do you know, sir, what’s the meanin’ of that coat of arms there?’

  “It was the one with the three crowns, and though I’m not much of a herald, I was able to say yes, I thought it was the old arms of the kingdom of East Anglia.

  ‘“That’s right, sir,’ he said, ‘and do you know the meanin’ of them three crowns that’s on it?’

  “I said I’d no doubt it was known, but I couldn’t recollect to have heard it myself.

  “‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘for all you’re a scholared, I can tell you something you don’t know. Them’s the three ‘oly crowns what was buried in the ground nearby the coast to keep the Germans from landing—ah, I can see you don’t believe that. But I tell you, if it hadn’t have been for one of them ‘oly crowns bein’ there still, them Germans would a landed here time and again, they would. Landed with their ships, and killed man, woman, and child in their beds. Now then, that’s the truth what I’m telling you, that is; and if you don’t believe me, you ast the rector. There he comes: you ast him, I says.’

  “I looked ‘round, and there was the rector, a nice-looking old man, coming up the path; and before I could begin assuring my old man, who was getting quite excited, that I didn’t disbelieve him, the rector struck in, and said: ‘What’s all this about, John? Good day to you, sir. Have you been looking at our little church?’

  “So then there was a little talk which allowed the old man to calm down, and then the rector asked him again what was the matter.

  “‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it warn’t nothink, only I was telling this gentleman he’d ought to ast you about them ‘oly crowns.’

  “‘Ah, yes, to be sure,’ said the rector, ‘that’s a very curious matter, isn’t it? But I don’t know whether the gentleman is interested in our old stories, eh?’

  “‘Oh, he’ll be interested fast enough,’ says the old man, ‘he’ll put his confidence in what you tells him, sir; why, you known William Ager yourself, father and son too.’

  “Then I put in a word to say how much I should like to hear all about it, and before many minutes I was walking up the village street with the rector, who had one or two words to say to parishioners, and then to the rectory, where he took me into his study. He had made out, on the way, that I really was capable of taking an intelligent interest in a piece of folklore, and not quite the ordinary tripper. So he was very willing to talk, a
nd it is rather surprising to me that the particular legend he told me has not made its way into print before. His account of it was this: ‘There has always been a belief in these parts in the three holy crowns. The old people say they were buried in different places near the coast to keep off the Danes or the French or the Germans. And they say that one of the three was dug up a long time ago, and another has disappeared by the encroaching of the sea, and one’s still left doing its work, keeping off invaders. Well, now, if you have read the ordinary guides and histories of this county, you will remember perhaps that in 1687 a crown, which was said to be the crown of Redwald, King of the East Angles, was dug up at Rendlesham, and alas! alas! melted down before it was even properly described or drawn. Well, Rendlesham isn’t on the coast, but it isn’t so very far inland, and it’s on a very important line of access. And I believe that is the crown which the people mean when they say that one has been dug up. Then on the south you don’t want me to tell you where there was a Saxon royal palace which is now under the sea, eh? Well, there was the second crown, I take it. And up beyond these two, they say, lies the third.’

  ‘“Do they say where it is?’ of course I asked.

  “He said, ‘Yes, indeed, they do, but they don’t tell,’ and his manner did not encourage me to put the obvious question. Instead of that I waited a moment, and said: ‘What did the old man mean when he said you knew William Ager, as if that had something to do with the crowns?’

  “‘To be sure,’ he said, ‘now that’s another curious story. These Agers—it’s a very old name in these parts, but I can’t find that they were ever people of quality or big owners—these Agers say, or said, that their branch of the family were the guardians of the last crown. A certain old Nathaniel Ager was the first one I knew—I was born and brought up quite near here—and he, I believe, camped out at the place during the whole of the war of 1870. William, his son, did the same, I know, during the South African War. And young William, his son, who has only died fairly recently, took lodgings at the cottage nearest the spot, and I’ve no doubt hastened his end, for he was a consumptive, by exposure and night watching. And he was the last of that branch. It was a dreadful grief to him to think that he was the last, but he could do nothing, the only relations at all near to him were in the colonies. I wrote letters for him to them imploring them to come over on business very important to the family, but there has been no answer. So the last of the holy crowns, if it’s there, has no guardian now.’