The Universe of Horror Volume 3: The Long Night of the Grave (Neccon Classic Horror) Read online

  The Long Night of the Grave

  By

  Charles L. Grant

  Necon Classic Horror #22

  Cover by Jill Bauman

  A digital edition published by

  Necon E-Books at Smashwords

  This Edition Copyright 2012 Kathryn Ptacek

  Cover Copyright 2012 Jill Bauman

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For Don Grant, the godfather of this trilogy; With great affection, with great respect, with the only way I know to rightfully thank him; and wishing I could claim him a blood relation as well.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 1

  Spring, the dying season; when the comfort of the day’s warmth is sapped by blind stars, and the blind deadgrey moon sets a chill in the air that makes bootheels sound brittle and voices sound thin, that kills new blossoms with a wind’s winter razor and new growth marks time until its

  browning in autumn; when sleep after midnight fills with unsettled dreams because the season is unsettled and unsettles the minds of those who know that the year always returns to the color of the dead.

  Spring, the dying season; when a thick rolling mist rises from the creek circling the base of Pointer Hill, and drifts from the wetlands on the north side of the valley, seeping from the rotting wood at the bottom of deadfalls, the nightside of boulders, moving without a breeze to caress greying bark, to cover scattered gnawed bones, to ride toward the moon and fall back again, twisting into a striped and shifting cloud that too often resembles smoke from the ashes of a damp fire.

  Spring, whose afternoons are the time for walking, dusk the time for heading home.

  And night the time for listening for someone moving behind you.

  Silently.

  Slowly.

  With the stealth of a formless shadow.

  But Thorny knew it was only the twinges of his weary legs and the stir of his imagination. There was no one on the road with him, and there hadn’t been since midafternoon when a tinker rolled by on a cart so loaded with junk, the passing sounded like an army using tin sticks for swords. He wasn’t surprised. From what his colleagues over to Harley had told him around the fire burning low beside the railroad tracks, there wasn’t much traffic between the rest of Connecticut and the village he sought. Which made it just fine as far as he was concerned. No one to see him, therefore no one to place him.

  He smiled, spat, wiped his salt-and-pepper beard with a grimy sleeve, and sniffed.

  A loud sigh for company.

  A roll of his shoulders to ease the weight of his bedroll.

  A kick of his leg sideways to ease the stiffness in the thigh, and a slow and deep breath to take in the air newly touched with young leaves.

  A great night for walking — the moon big as God’s eye, enough of a breeze to keep the goddamn bugs from his ears, and the temperature just cool enough to keep the sweat from gathering under his coarse shirt.

  And that, he promised himself, would be the first thing he’d take care of once he’d taken care of the first house. A new shirt from the finest shop, one of them silk things with the pleats and ruffles down the front made just for him, and maybe one of them vicuna morning suit things with the long cutaway jackets, the fancy waistcoats with shiny pearl buttons, and grey striped trousers with creases so sharp he could cut a throat just by kicking.

  He’d seen hundreds of them clothes, maybe even thousands of them, out in Chicago at the Columbian Exposition. Everybody wearing them like everybody was rich. The electric lights. The hoochy-cooch dancers. Jesus God, it had been like falling into heaven with both eyes open. Of course he hadn’t been able to stay long, what with the blues spotting him right away and chasing him halfway to creation and back again before he hopped the train; but that didn’t matter. Soon as he got them clothes, he was going back, and he was going to parade in front of them snot-nosed cops and dare them to do something about it.

  His stride lengthened.

  A tune whistled in the moonlight.

  And then he came to the top of the curving rise and looked down the long road.

  There were soft lights, warm lights off near the horizon, beyond the hill that rose blackly on his left. On his right there was nothing but trees, and shadows shifting, and nightbirds cawing at him softly, as if telling him it was all right, come in, we won’t hurt you.

  “Thorny, take it easy,” he warned himself then. His imagination working, that’s all, nothing more. He wasn’t used to moving in the dark like this: he did most of his traveling in daylight, or on trains where the dark didn’t matter because it moved too swiftly past him.

  He wasn’t used to the ground fog that glowed pale under the moon, slipping out of the woods and down off the hill, crossing the road in billowing patches that hid his feet from him and coated his shins with thin ice.

  That rose, when the breeze quickened, into a silent white-backed beast hovering on the verge, waiting for him with the nightbirds.

  He wasn’t used to the quiet that whispered his name.

  “Jesus, Thorny,” he said, and gave himself a vigorous shudder that put the ground fog in its place and sent the shadows back under the branches and the leaves.

  Think of the lights. Those lights, over there. They meant fine houses and fine people. Warm stables for sleep and a drinking hole where he’d learn where all the money was. Only a few minutes away, and only a few hours away from loading the empty spaces of his bedroll with all the gold he could carry. That’s what his friends told him: a village like this had all the gold he could carry.

  Then he heard the noise, and he knew this time it was real. The distant rattling thunder of a carriage on the move. Behind and below him, lumbering up the hill.

  He sniffed again and yanked on the stiff brim of his cloth cap. Stretched his neck, his lips, blinked his eyes and moved over to the verge.

  Walking. Always walking. It’s what he did best, having done it all the way to the Mississippi and back more times than he could count, dropping in on towns like this, dropping out a few nights later on the wheels of a train.

  The thunder grew, the rattling separating into the creaks of springs and the snap of traces and the roll of high wheels over the hard ground.

  He frowned.

  More than one, he decided after listening a moment. Odd, but nothing to worry about. Just keep walking, keep out of sight, and if they spot you, those so-called friends in Harley were going to pay, and pay dear.

  He shifted the bedroll from right shoulder to left and moved closer to the trees when the first carriage came out of the turn, its corner lamps glaring, horses snorting.

  He moved into the shadows and watched it pass, a great black brougham wit
h baggage tied atop and behind, its curtains drawn, driver hunched over the reins. Moving steadily but not at a gallop, because, he realized, it probably didn’t want to outpace the wagon coming along behind.

  Nothing special there either, except it was carrying only a single crate so long and large its end hung over the back and it had to be tied to the vehicle with a webbing of thick rope.

  Interesting, he thought; someone new moving in.

  And he had just stepped back onto the road when the wagon’s rear right wheel rolled over a huge rock, slid off, and the bed began to slew to the right. The driver wisely aimed the horses in the same direction so that the forward motion would keep the wagon from tipping.

  But it didn’t prevent the crate from sliding out from beneath its restraints and crashing to the ground, shattering a cloud of mist and sending the nightbirds flying.

  Thorny didn’t hesitate. This was a chance to do a good deed and meet a possible benefactor, and such chances were too few and far between not to explore.

  He ran toward the crate, shouting as he did to warn the driver he’d lost his cargo.

  The brougham slowed, finally stopped, the wagon pulling up alongside it.

  Thorny reached the crate first and dropped the bedroll at his feet. Shaking his head. Tsking. Scrubbing his hands as though nervous about the operation before him. The crate had split open, several planks from its long side pulled from their nails and lying on the road.

  “Not to worry, sir,” he said with his best smile when he saw the driver heading toward him. “You’re in luck, and that’s the truth. Thornton Narbuck at your service, the best damned carpenter in the whole damned state. Give me a good flat rock and a few minutes, and I’ll have your baggage back together good as new.”

  He spit on his hands to prove his good intentions and squinted at the ground, kicking at the mist until he found what he wanted. He reached down for the rock, and felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “No need,” he said cheerfully. “I can manage, sir, thank you.”

  The grip tightened, and straightened him, and before he could react his back was bent the other way and something cold, smooth, and sharp was drawn across his wattled throat.

  Salt in his mouth and dampness flooding over his chest, and when he felt his knees weaken, the hand released him, and he fell.

  Feeling nothing when he landed on his face and no one to catch him.

  Seeing nothing but the moonlight, and the mist crawling toward him.

  Hearing nothing but his own gagging, and the frantic pounding of his heart.

  Watching the moonlight fade, watching the crate being dragged away, and seeing through the ragged gap what had to be a coffin. A huge coffin of a type he had never seen in his life.

  And a face on the side, large blue eyes, large red mouth, silver and gold all around, all the gold he could carry if he could only move his hands, if only he could stop screaming and no one now to hear him.

  Spring: the dying season; and the carriage moved on slowly, the wagon moving on behind it, past the hill on the left and the deserted farmland on the right, until it came to a road the ground fog left alone and the moonlight paved with silver. And when it turned the lamps went out, the wheels rolled softly, and for a moment spring was winter in the village of Oxrun Station.

  Chapter 2

  The new police station on Chancellor Avenue was less than three years old, but already those who worked there spoke of it as if it had been there forever. They complained of the cold in winter, the heat in summer, the feeling that every time they approached its Roman temple façade they ought to throw on togas and crash through the high double doors demanding the heads of Christians.

  John Vicar knew how they felt. It looked stupid. It didn’t belong. But the architect had been brother to a village council’s leader, and stupid or not, the marble and the pillars were to some awfully impressive. Thank god, he thought as he approached the wooden railing at the back of the waiting room, that Lucas Stockton hadn’t lived to see it. He would have resigned as Chief on the spot and moved to the highest mountain in Maine.

  The sergeant on duty was behind a long wood desk set on a platform half a foot above the floor. When he saw John at the railing gate he put down a pen and eyed him warily, and John grinned his most innocent.

  “You know,” a laughing Ned Stockton had told him once, “one of these days you’re going to learn to control that mind of yours, and when you do, all those wonderful ideas are going to vanish.”

  That had been said the evening he and Ned had sat in the Brass Ring on Steuben Avenue, drinking ale and pondering what had seemed to be an unsolvable murder. John had had a sudden notion, blurted it out, and two days later saw Ned and Tom Alden haul in the killer.

  Since that time he had taken unwilling part in a handful of puzzling cases that had been — accidentally, he was sure — solved through his efforts.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Vicar.”

  “And a good afternoon to you, Sgt. Alden.”

  “The chief’s away,” the burly man growled.

  “I know. Gallivanting blithely with wife and family across Europe while you’re forced to stay here and deal with dolts like me when you have more important things to do.”

  Alden’s perpetually flushed face didn’t alter its expression, and John sighed. Though the others on the force tolerated his dropping in now and then with at least a semblance of good humor, this one plain and simply didn’t like him. The feeling was mutual, but John wasn’t going to show it.

  “Actually,” he said, taking off his boater and holding it to his chest, “I was hoping to catch Cab in. Is he around?”

  “Out.”

  “Ah.”

  “Don’t know when he’ll be back.”

  “I see.”

  “Been gone since morning.”

  “Oh. Too bad. “

  Alden pointedly looked down at a stack of papers on his desk and picked up the pen, licked the nib and dipped it into an inkwell. Then he looked up without raising his head, the message clear enough.

  “Well, then, Sergeant,” John said with another smile, “I’ll be moving on then. Would you please tell Detective Planter I was asking for him?”

  No response but a stare, and he left before he decided to take off the man’s head. Stood on the top step and blindly watched the traffic on the broad sunlit avenue. He had been hoping to find out if Cab had learned anything about the body discovered by a farmer on Mainland Road the morning before. A slit throat and a bedroll with several gold coins hidden in its folds had ruled out, it seemed to him, an accident and highway thievery. But no one seemed to care much; the man was unknown and unknown he would probably remain.

  But John hated loose ends like he hated the silly costumes women wore these days when they played at playing lawn tennis in the park, dancing about and squealing so that the young men who watched them would grow warmer than the weather.

  Just the way he did himself, especially when the woman was Betty Jerrard, who never played at anything unless she played to win.

  Ah well, he thought with benign resignation as he placed the straw hat on his head and slapped at a lock of sandy hair that sprang out to blind one eye; even if Cab had learned something, the detective wouldn’t necessarily tell him. Planter was understandably protective of his own slow-growing reputation, and though he hadn’t been reluctant to ask John for advice in the past, he wasn’t nearly as quick as Ned to fill him in on a case, not until he was stumped.

  Besides, he reminded himself with a frown, there were more important things to worry about than what amounted to meddling in something not his affair. Tomorrow, if all went as he feared, he was probably going to incur the righteous wrath of one of his closest friends, and there was nothing he could do about it without ruining the man.

  Damn, he thought sadly, and turned up toward Centre Street, pausing briefly at the corner to watch an elegant carriage rumble past. A glimpse of a woman inside, and a man beside her. A glimpse, nothing more, of
features that on Westerners might seem rather coarse, but on them were perfect, exotic, and on the woman altogether lovely.

  When they were gone, he crossed over and hurried up to High Street, turned right and walked quickly past the abandoned Bartlett’s Livery, smiling fondly at the decrepit structure and envisioning it the way it should be, the way it would be before the summer was over.

  And the way he prayed it would be in years ahead, or what was left of his father’s money would vanish as if it were nothing but air.

  A horn blared at him, and he jumped backward, not realizing he had stepped off the curb until a polished black electric had nearly run him down. He tipped his hat at the woman driving and at the ladies upright and prim in the back seat, and watched them as they putted up to the Pike and vanished around the corner.

  His mood lightened.

  He laughed quickly and shook his head — his future, by god, had almost killed him, and if that wasn’t irony then he’d best head back to school.

  Another laugh for his dreaming, and he rushed across the street and into the park where he spent the rest of the afternoon watching the ladies play lawn tennis as he cursed their silly costumes, cursed the young men hanging around them and calling out encouragement at every fine play and at every mistake.

  Betty Jerrard wasn’t there.

  And by the time his stomach protested his lack of eating, the sun was already low, a chill in the air, the leaves whispering overhead as a north wind swept down out of the darkening sky. He rose with a groan, scolding himself for wasting time like that, for dozing, for daydreaming, and for thinking that Betty would somehow read his mind and flee her sister’s home just to join him.

  A dusting off of his trousers, and he left the park, walked up to the Pike, and turned right. Moving steadily, with long strides, habit long since telling him when to slow down, when to pick up his feet and get a move on. If all went well, he’d arrive home just in time for dinner and be spared Mrs. Karragan’s poor imitation of a mother hen; if all went well, the meal wouldn’t be burned, or boiled tasteless.