The 14th Pan Book of Horror Stories

Herbert van Thai has compiled a number of anthologies which include some of the writings of James Agate, Ernest Newman and Hilaire Belloc as well as a volume on Victorian Travellers. He has also resuscitated the works of many neglected Victorian writers. In 1971 his autobiography, The Tops of the Mulberry Trees, was published, as well as The Music Lovers’ Companion (with Gervase Hughes). He has also edited Thomas Adolphus Trollope’s autobiography and a two-volume work on Britain’s Prime Ministers.

VORTEX OF HORROR Gaylord Sabatini

I found him at last, seated at the far end of the heated plant house, a small man with white hair and bloodless features.

‘Mr Bloom?’ I said. He had been so engrossed in watering an exquisite-looking cactus that he was unaware of my entry, and started up violently at the sound of my voice, spilling some of the liquid over his shoes.

‘I . . . I . . .’ he gasped. His watery eyes were dilated as they flashed from side to side in extreme agitation. He made a quick lunge and grasped a wicked-looking machete, the type used in South America to hack a path through impenetrable jungle.

He stood there facing me, brandishing the weapon above his head, with the look on his face of a man who knew he was facing insuperable odds but was going to die fighting. I involuntarily retreated a few paces, being taken by surprise at the sudden ferocity of this crazy old scarecrow of a man.

‘Stand back!’ he called. His voice was high-pitched and strident with an edge of panic. ‘Stay back! You’ll not take it from me!’

I realized at that moment that it was the large cactus that he was trying to protect, taking me for a thief.

‘Mr Bloom,’ I said, ‘please calm yourself. I haven’t come to steal your plant. I am a reporter from Gardening Pride. I’ve come to interview you.’ He hesitated for a moment, then let the machete drop to the floor with a clatter. He sank down on to his knees by the beautiful plant and I saw with surprise that he was crying.

I came forward and laid my hand on his shoulder.

‘Mr Bloom,’ I said softly, ‘it often helps to tell someone of your troubles.’ I stood there, feeling rather embarrassed to witness a grown man’s collapse into a state of tears. My eyes could not help gravitating towards that succulent. Never in all my years in horticulture had I seen one of such breathtaking beauty. It was about five feet tall, with a main trunk and two branches coming out from its sides like arms, while the brilliant colours in the blooms presented a profusion of exotic splendour that defied all description. Its fantastic kaleidoscope of colour was superb; out of this world, almost. I got the feeling that this plant was unique, but that there was also something not quite right about it.

‘I must tell someone or go mad,’ he said in a small, broken voice. He turned his head and looked up at me. ‘How old do you think I am?’ I was quite startled at the question, which did not seem to bear any relevance to our conversation. He looked about seventy to me, but he had obviously been very ill, so he might have been only sixty-five. I did not see the point of the question, but decided to humour him. I said he looked about sixty.

‘Sixty?’ he sobbed, a look of torn anguish in his eyes. ‘Sixty? Do I look sixty? Do you know I am only thirty-five years old?’ A chilled feeling came over me.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I stammered. ‘I had no intention . . .’ He smiled for the first time through his tears and some of the years fell away.

‘Oh, I know I look old,’ he said, ‘but I have had a lot of worry.’ He looked at me again and I did not know whether to smile and acknowledge the joke or not.

He got up off his knees and turned towards the cactus again, laying a loving hand upon one of its fleshy limbs. He seemed to be trying to decide something of great importance to him. I saw his lips moving and heard a low mumble of sound, but could not catch any words. At last he turned round and looked at me.

‘We’ve decided to tell you a story Mr . . .’

‘Curtis,’ I volunteered. ‘James Curtis.’

‘Well, Mr Curtis, I hope you are an intelligent man, because I have a story that you must tell the world. A true story, but one so incredible that you will have great difficulty in making the sceptics believe.’ He looked again, at the cactus, then turned back to me and said in a cold, flat voice, ‘Sit down, Mr Curtis, and I will tell you a true tale of unparalleled horror.’

We were seated on iron chairs facing each other and a table stood between us supporting our drinks of iced coconut milk. I felt quite dwarfed and insignificant, surrounded as I was by the huge tropical plants and shrubs, their large fleshy green leaves and fibrous lineas dripping with moisture from the humid atmosphere. But in spite of the heat I felt myself already, unaccountably, begin to shiver.

‘Do you believe in parallel worlds, Mr Curtis?’ He carried on before I could answer. ‘Just think of all the times in the past that we have reached a crucial point in history. A fork in the road, if you like. Which way to go? Left or right? The fate of the world could be entirely changed at that point.

‘If the Germans had won the war, what then? If Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo? If Columbus had not discovered America? If there had been no gold for the Conquistadores? If Atlantis had not sunk beneath the waves when she did? If the giant reptiles had not all died out in the Cretaceous Period a hundred million years ago, but had lived on up to the present day? If you had not come to see me today?’ He paused to give some weight to the meaning, but I felt I had not quite grasped the point. ‘I believe all these things did happen in parallel worlds to our own and are continuing even now. Like the spirit world, it is all around us, but on a different plane, and every now and then there is a breakthrough. Doors to the parallel worlds are opened for no apparent reason and beings from each side can cross the vortex. What then, Mr Curtis?’ He looked at me, and for the first time I noticed that his eyes were green.

I loosened my tie and ran my finger quickly round my collar, but said nothing. I could feel droplets of perspiration running down between my shoulder blades. He continued,

‘And what if we go right back, Mr Curtis, to the dawn of the world? The Pre-Cambrian Period it is called, when all life, animal and vegetable was only one-celled and started on an even footing. The Amoeba, the one-celled animal, still exists today as it did millions of years ago. A protozoa still stalking its prey of microbes and engulfing them, flowing round and devouring by absorption. And what of Clamidomonas, the swimming plant? It hunts down and devours its prey even today, as it has done through the aeons of time. Of course, it’s only microscopic, but does that make it any the less formidable to creatures of similar size?

‘You as a horticulturist are quite familiar with Dionaea or, as it is more commonly known, the Venus Fly Trap. A carnivorous plant that catches and devours flies and insects in its jawlike petals.

‘Under the sea we have animals that look and act like plants, and plants that to all outward observation one would think were animals.’ He stopped and brushed his hand to one side as a gesture of dismissal. ‘But these things are only interesting to horticulturists such as you and me, Mr Curtis. The world is not concerned with them for, as they so rightly say, they are either microscopic or they are very low in the family tree of life as we know it on this planet.’

He leaned across to me, placing his hands flat on the table between us. ‘Suppose there was a parallel world where, instead of animals, the plants had leaped forward in evolutionary supremacy? Suppose the animals, and I include man also, had been superseded in the intellectual race for superiority? Can you imagine a world like that, Mr Curtis?’

The foliage seemed to be all around me, its heavy fronds malignant; listening to his words; waiting for my answer.

‘Impossible, surely Mr Bloom,’ I whispered, taking out my handkerchief and mopping my brow. He leaned back and laughed mirthlessly and I heard a soft rustling all around me, as if the tangled dripping undergrowth had taken up the laughter.

‘Impossible, you say, but I see in your eyes that already you are half convinced, and I have not yet told you my story!’ He paused and became deadly serious again, and a bleak, haunted expression clouded his drawn features. ‘Believe me when I say that it is true, so hellishly true. I know it because I have not only seen it, I have actually been there!’ He told me his story.

Two years ago I was a carefree bachelor of thirty-three. My mother had died at my birth and my father had passed away twenty years later. He had been a moderately wealthy man and his entire fortune had been left to me. No strings, just use it as I wanted. Well, I chose to let it feed and clothe me while I spent all my energies in study. I loved study for its own sake. I wanted to cram my brain with all the facts about every plant in the world. I loved plants. In fact I have always been more happy in the company of flora than of man. But I digress.

Two years ago I was driving my Land-Rover across the Kalahari Desert. I was all alone in tie acrid wilds in search of a very rare species of cactus that legend had it existed somewhere out there in those trackless wastes.

The scorching sun beat down mercilessly upon my head as I sweated at the controls of the Land-Rover that growled and bucked over the uneven, parched terrain. The thermometer was reading 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and everything was on the move in a shimmering, white haze.

I had just reached a smooth patch of ground and was able to get up a little more speed when, suddenly, there was a crack like thunder. The whole world seemed to shift, click out of focus and slam back into reverse. I stood on my brakes and gaped around me.

Everything was different. Colours seemed to have changed to those at the opposite end of the spectrum. The yellow sand was now blue. The blue sky was now a brilliant yellow. My own skin was a greenish colour. The temperature had now dropped back to seventy degrees Fahrenheit and my eyes focused with horror upon a sun which was a brilliant emerald green.

I left the Land-Rover and staggered up the slope to some purple rocks at the brow of the blue sand-dunes. I was dreadfully afraid, and even more terrified of what I was going to see. For a long time I did not dare to look over the top: it was like one of those terrible dreams you get when your muscles won’t respond. Biting my lip, I at last plucked up courage.

Keeping my head low, I peeped over the edge of the hill and gasped at the nightmarish scene that met my gaze. There was a large blue field below me with stakes set out in neat, regular rows at six-foot intervals. Tied to each stake was a completely naked human being! I rammed my fist into my dribbling mouth to stop myself from screaming.

They were standing quite still and did not seem to be in any pain. My attention was attracted to a movement further down the line. At first I could not quite make out what I was seeing, and then realization hit me like a hot blast of air. My mind seemed to twist as if it were a sponge being wrung out. I looked down at the row of staked-out humans and my eyes blurred, refusing to register what I was seeing. I clamped my eyelids shut, the horror of it clawing at my brain. Then I looked again.

There it was. A huge, shambling thing about twelve feet high. Thick in the trunk, about seven feet across at the base and tapering slightly towards the top, with dozens of long tentacle-like arms coming from all round its upper part. It reminded me vaguely of some giant tropical sea anemone. Each tentacle ended in a flattened, leaf-like appendage that appeared to be able to work like a hand. The thing was a dull red in colour, mottled with round black warts all over it, and as clearly as if someone had told me, I knew that this hideous apparition was a plant!

At first I could not quite make out what was happening, but I think now that it was my brain that was refusing to let me comprehend the horror of it. I looked again, and I knew what the thing was doing—and my mind shrieked in terror. My brain seemed to be trying to tear itself out of my skull to get away from the dreadful sight.

As this hell-plant moved along the rows I watched it untie a man, hold him up, and with quick strokes from one of its razor-sharp leaves, sever this wretched fellows’ legs, arms and head, as if it were topping rhubarb. The body was then held up high. The entire top of the plant then opened, up into a huge, black, cavernous mouth as it started to drink the blood that spouted out of the dismembered body. As the blood poured into its terrible maw, I saw it tremble all over in sheer delight at the feast. When the body was drained of blood it was thrown to one side on to a heap of rotting corpses and the thing moved on to the next person. Again I watched in cold dread a repetition of the same awful happening.

It was not until I raised my head that I realized that the entire area was covered with staked-out people, both men and women, and moving amongst them were more than a score of these terrible creatures. There must have been more than a thousand people down in that valley of death, but I did not see one of them struggling with his bonds or even showing any sign of emotion at what was happening to his fellows. In fact, they all seemed to be completely indifferent to their fate.

For several nerve-breaking hours I waited, witnessing the endless grisly ritual. Their appetites seemed to be insatiable. My mind had become bemused and I looked down at the scene dunking that no more horror could affect me, but as I watched these gruesome plants shuffling slowly along the lines, slaughtering and eating, I suddenly became aware of a commotion going on behind a small hillock.

Some more of these devil plants seemed to be fighting each other. Suddenly they broke away and about ten of them made a dash for all the decapitated heads. There seemed to be a race as to which of them could collect the most. Then they sped quite swiftly around, throwing them up into the air and catching them again in one of their many tentacles. They were like children playing with a ball in this insane world. Their means of locomotion was not very clear; they just seemed to flow over the ground.

As I lay there, something made my hackles rise as I sensed imminent danger. I swung over, bunching my legs under me, and sprang to my feet, just in time to dodge a hacking blow that had been meant for the back of my head.

I was prepared somehow for the blow, but not for what I saw. It was a man. A brutish, naked man with long hair and pointed teeth stood facing me. In his hand he held a tube, and he kept trying to indicate that he wanted to stick it into me so that he could drink my blood. He kept coming forward, making little squeaking noises and thrusting that damned tube at me. His countenance had a look of perplexity upon it. He could not understand why I would not let him drink my blood. He was not angry, just mystified. He kept coming at me with futile little lunges, and I could not make him stop. At last I picked up a rock and hurled it at him. He did not make any attempt to dodge—that was the awful part of it. He just stood there and let the rock hit him full in the face with a sickening thud, and went down as if he had been pole-axed.

As I stood there, feeling sickened, another man and a woman appeared, each with a tube. I stood ready to do battle, but they made no attempt to attack me. Going straight over to the body of their former comrade, they each plunged a tube into his side and, sitting down, began to suck. I stood there reeling, feeling that at any moment my legs were going to give way under me. I wanted to run away and vomit, but I just stood there staring.

The woman stopped sucking at the tube for a moment and looked up at me through blank lifeless eyes. Then she picked up the tube that the first man had been trying to thrust into me and held it up, signing for me to join them.

As she did so, she had raised her arm and turned her head away from her companion. Before I could utter a sound of warning, he had pulled his tube out of the dead body and had thrust it deep into her side, just under the right breast.

She dropped the tube and gave a dull cough. Turning her head, she watched him lower his vile mouth to the end of the tube, in which the blood was already beginning to flow. The most horrifying thing was the expression on her face: it was devoid of all emotion.

I screamed out loud and, picking up a rock, I was on the point of bringing it down upon this monster’s head, when I heard a strange whistling. I turned to find myself surrounded by a dozen or more of those nightmarish plants. I hurled my stone into their midst, a futile gesture. They came forward with their tentacles flailing and all the time emitting that same whistling sound. They encircled the man and woman, picking them up as if they were rag dolls, then dozens of fibrous lineas clamped round me and I was held with my arms pinned to my side.

I watched with horror as one of the plants picked the man up by his long hair and, with quick stabbing movements, thrust one of its sharp leaves into the side of his neck and right down deep into his body. The man just hung there quite still while this evil vegetable, in a series of thrusting movements, sawed all round his neck.

I saw one of the other tentacles wrap itself round his feet and pull, and I watched the head come away still attached to, and pulling with it, the gullet, lungs, heart and liver, in one bloody mass. It was at this point that I fainted.

I awoke to find myself stripped naked and tied to a stake. I looked around me and cried out in panic. A girl tied to a stake three feet away from me turned and looked in my direction. She smiled across and said, ‘It’s nice here isn’t it?’ I had noticed that this field was much smaller, there being only about thirty people in it, but at that moment my attention was riveted upon the girl. She had spoken, and I had understood!

‘You can speak?’ I blurted.

‘Of course,’ she smiled. ‘I like you; I am so glad they have decided to cross us.’

‘Cross us?’

‘Yes, cross us, mate us. You must have a very high intellect to come to this field. This is the best.’ She looked around her. ‘We thirty have been crossed and re-crossed to get the best strain. Don’t you think we are beautiful to look at?’ She looked at me proudly. ‘We are not like the raggle taggle in the big fields or the Wild Ones running free in the Waste Lands.’ She sighed and leaned back against her post. ‘Oh, I love it here,’ she smiled. ‘We are all so beautiful.’

For a moment I allowed my eyes to rest upon her face and body. She was indeed the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Her long billowing hair was blue-black, and cascaded down to her waist. Her face was a delicate oval and her two almond-shaped eyes were green. I could hardly tear my eyes away from her exquisite body and I knew as I looked up again into her face that I was in love with her. I leaned back against my stake and gazed and gazed at her, feasting my eyes again and again on her heavenly beauty.

There was a hissing sound from behind me. I tensed myself, slewing my head round at the same time. Coming up the row was one of those terrible plants which were now becoming quite familiar to me. At first I could not make out what the sound was, until I smelled a beautiful, intoxicating perfume which came drifting to my nostrils. The plant was spraying us with some exquisite scent. I could not make out if it was artificial or if it came naturally from the plant’s body, but as the latter moved along the rows it kept puffing itself out and then collapsing in again, and each time it did this, the exotic aroma wafted around us.

It was gorgeous! I looked across at the girl—my girl—and laughed! She smiled back languorously at me, moving her sensuous body up and down the post and flaring her nostrils to take in as much perfume as she could. I watched her breasts rise and fall with her heavy breathing. I leaned across to the extent of my bonds, lusting for her.

As I did so, something brushed against my face. I turned my head and looked full into the brutish face of the man who had been with the girl up in the Waste Lands.

I pulled away, but he nodded and smiled at me as he went by. I gazed after him in revulsion. One of the plants was carrying him—at least, what was left of him. All I could see of him was his grisly head sticking out of a soggy, dripping bag containing his gullet, heart, lungs and liver. This was supported by a sort of shoulder strap going round the plant. He continued to nod and smile at me as he went by and my stomach churned over, for I saw that somehow he was still alive!

As this plant monster went down the row I noticed a similar soggy bag on its other side containing the woman’s head. She seemed to recognize me and rolled her eyes round and round. I realized that the plant was carrying these two ghoulish heads for no other reason than personal adornment!

I screwed my eyes up tightly and slammed my head again and again against the post, trying to erase the terrible sight from my mind.

‘Ooh!’ I heard the girl sigh. ‘Ooh, that was glorious. That was the best yet.’ I opened my eyes and looked across at her. She was leaning heavily against her post and smiled at me through half-closed lashes. Her breathing was becoming more regular now. Little miniature beads of perspiration had dotted her brow like morning dew. ‘Ooh,’ she gasped again, ‘that was the best yet. It must have been because of you.’ She smiled warmly at me, ‘Did you feel it?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘I felt it,’ not really knowing what she meant.

‘It won’t be long now before we are crossed,’ she said. ‘I’m going to like that.’

‘How long do we have to stand like this?’ I asked. She seemed at first not to hear me. She had closed her eyes; the expression on her face and the sensuous movement of her body made it obvious what she was thinking. I knew that I was in love with her and wanted to save her if I could. I asked again; ‘How long do we have to stay here like this?’ She opened her eyes.

‘How long? What do you mean?’

‘Well, how long? How long is how long? When do they come and untie us?’

‘Untie us? They never untie us! Don’t say such horrid things or I won’t like you. I could not live without my post! I am not a Wild One!’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I did not know.’

‘You’re strange,’ she said, looking at me. ‘Different, somehow.’ She gazed steadily at me. ‘They will come and untie you from your post quite soon,’ she said at last.

‘They will? Why?’ I asked.

‘So that they can tie you to mine, of course,’ she smiled.

‘Oh!’ I exclaimed, feeling the blush rising up my neck.

Some time passed, and then I thought I would try a new approach.

‘Would you like me to be tied to your post all the time?’ I asked.

‘Oh that’s not possible,’ she answered. ‘But I would love it.’ I had no more time to follow up this tack.

‘Food!’ called someone along the line. ‘Food is coming!’ I turned my head to the sound of the voice. All thirty of us looked in the same direction. Two of the plants were coming along the rows holding a large bag with a tube coming from it. The tube was placed into the excited mouth of each person in turn, who would suck frantically at it for a short while before it was moved along to the next one.

I realized that I was famished, and found myself straining on my bonds like the others, waiting for my turn. As the plants came closer I suddenly cringed back with revulsion. What I had thought was a bag was in fact a human body bound tightly into a ball. They had been drinking his blood!

I fought and twisted my head from side to side, screaming at them to get the hell away from me, but they were too strong and rammed the tube down my throat. I drank the blood flowing from the tube, drank and drank. Then they took it away, and I fought against my bonds to try and get it back again. But by that time my girl was drinking at the end of the tube.

Evening drew in quite quickly and it was not for some time that I realized my bonds were rather slack. I wriggled my hands. Yes, they were loose! Frantically I worked away at the knots. I understood then what must have happened. In my struggle not to be fed, one of the plant’s sharp leaves had sliced through some of my bonds.

‘Darling,’ I called across softly. ‘Darling, I am nearly free.’ She looked over to me and her eyes widened.

‘What are you doing? Oh you must not do that. I will tell, I will tell!’ She started to cry out, but by that time I was free. I sprang across to her and clamped my hand over her lovely mouth. She fought and wriggled, then I took my hand away and pressed my lips to hers. Oh, that kiss! In that one kiss we were pledged to each other! She did not resist me any further but allowed me to untie her, and we made our escape through the darkness.

Up and over the brow of the hill I carried her and there, in the blue moonlight, stood my Land-Rover! Holding on firmly to her I slithered and stumbled down the slope and into the vehicle. I could hear the whistling sounds all around me as I desperately tried to start the engine. There seemed to be hardly any life left in the battery. The whistling sounds were getting closer and closer!

At last the engine fired; I smashed it into gear, let out the clutch and we rocketed off to the sound of squealing tyres. Suddenly, there was a crack like thunder and everything seemed to shift out of focus, then slam back into reverse. We were through! We were safe!

‘Yes, Mr Curtis, I had gone through the Vortex of Horror to a parallel world and, what is more, I had got back again!’ I looked at the white-haired old man.

‘That is the most terrifying story I have ever heard, Mr Bloom,’ I said. ‘But there is one consolation in all this. What of your lovely bride?’

‘Ah, yes, a terrible experience it was indeed, Mr Curtis, for that is what made me as you see me today. But now you have my story, it could be worth a lot of money to you. What about payment?’

‘Payment, Mr Bloom?’

‘Yes, payment, Mr Curtis.’

‘Well, I’m sure my paper will handsomely reward you . . .’

‘No, not money, who needs money?’

‘Well, what?’ He got up off his chair and came towards me with a tube in his hand.

‘My girl needs feeding and there is not much blood left in this old body of mine, Mr Curtis.’ He offered the tube to me. ‘Just a little blood, Mr Curtis, for payment, just a little blood for my girl.’

‘No!’ I screamed, jumping up and striking him away. He was old and frail and he staggered back under the impact of my frantic blow.

He was obviously completely insane, this whole story a figment of his crazed mind. He must have become delirious out there in the tropical sun.

He got on to his hands and knees, this old, grey, dried-up stick of a man, and crawled sobbing towards that exquisite succulent with its profusion of exotic flowers.

‘He wouldn’t give me any, my darling, not even just a little drop. Surely the story of my ordeal was worth a little drop of blood?’ He crawled up to the plant, rested his head against it and closed his eyes.

To my horror the two arms of the plant moved and encircled him. Before I knew what I was doing I had cried out a warning and, picking up the machete from the floor, started to hack viciously at that gorgeous cactus.

There was a scream like that of a woman being mortally wounded. The old man was thrown aside and I watched with horrified fascination this strange plant writhing in its agony of death. Screams and sobs rent the air as I saw blood pouring from a dozen mortal wounds.

I seem to recall it all now like a crazy, blurred dream. The writhing, bleeding cactus; the gasping gurgle from the old man staggering around, clutching at his heart and fighting for breath. My recollection is hazy of what really happened next, as if I were viewing it all through a distorting lens, clouded by swirling mist. I recollect dropping the machete and backing away from the dead man lying on his back with one hand clamped across his heart and the other stretched out in a vain attempt to reach the dying plant. My head was reeling with a strange vertigo.

I remember rushing and stumbling from the house to my car, screaming all the time and driving like a maniac down the road. I recall hearing a crack like thunder and seeing the world shift out of focus and slam back again into reverse.

I am looking up at an emerald-green sun, and there is a strange whistling sound in my ears.