The Year's Best Horror Stories 11

A POSTHUMOUS BEQUEST by David Campton

Robert Bloch has commented that horror and humor are two sides of the same coin, and while this is true, it demands a certain elegance of wit and precise control of language to preserve a genuine mood of fear in the presence of underlying humor, however morbid. David Campton is one of the few writers today who is capable of accomplishing this. A native of Leicester, Campton is far better known as a playwright, having written some seventy plays, in addition to numerous radio and television dramas. Born June 5, 1924, Campton served in the Royal Air Force during World War II and afterward performed on stage himself before giving up acting in 1963. Beginning with Going Home in 1950, Campton’s plays have ranged from romantic comedy (Roses Round the Door) to imaginative drama (The Life and Death of Almost Everybody) to science fiction satire such as Mutatis Mutandis, Then, Incident, Soldier from the Wars Returning, or Little Brother, Little Sister, a post-nuclear holocaust drama in which two children are raised in a bunker by the family cook. The Haymarket Theatre in Leicester recently produced Campton’s stage adaptation of Frankenstein. This past year, however, has been very ordinary: “The highest point has been the launching of a new soap opera I am writing for local radio here in Leicester—about an Asian immigrant family. However they are all very normal, and there is nothing horrific about it at all (except perhaps in the very idea of writing soap opera).”

The message from Miss Coule turned up at the bottom of Hugo Pentrip’s morning mail. At first he refused to believe that it had really come from her, even though he recognized her distinctive handwriting: like sparrow tracks in the snow, as he had once described it. All the other letter’s had been considered and neatly stacked to await dictated replies. This sinister scrap alone lay in the middle of the polished expanse of the lawyer’s desk, disturbing and confusing. For Miss Coule had been buried almost a year earlier.

This in fact was the anniversary of the day when a home-help had found her, slumped over a window sill, breadcrumbs still in her hand, having breathed her last while feeding the robins. Recalling his client’s death perfectly well, Pentrip at first refused to believe his eyes—changing his spectacles then cleaning them. At last, though, he was left with no alternative but to read on.

“Pray do not allow me to take precedence over more important matters,” the note began. He could almost hear her voice, like a bird scratching dry leaves. “There is little urgency, as I have all the time in the world. I have been somewhat remiss in not communicating earlier; but I fail to mark the passing of time as I used to. I fear my birds wait in vain for their breakfast.” Until that point the lawyer had been prepared to believe the letter might have been delayed in the post for a year; but those words indicated not only that Miss Coule was dead, but that she was aware of the fact.

“I wish to pursue the matter of my will,” she went on. “I realize, of course, that extra detail must constitute a considerable chore, but I trust you to bear such additional work in mind when you submit your account.

“We have already agreed on the main bequests, have we not? My feathered friends must be provided for. The bulk of my estate is to be divided, therefore, among various ornithological charities—and how painstakingly you have researched those various headquarters and offices, thank you so much—with a little over for a local reminder of our mutual affection, to take the form of a bird sanctuary. But…” Pentrip could imagine Miss Coule holding up a forefinger which any bird might have mistaken for a twig. “But on reflection I have reached the conclusion that in my preoccupation with humbler creation, I have done less than justice to my nephew, Roger. I believe you yourself once brought up this very point, but at the time I failed to grasp the full import of your suggestion.”

“Please take note, then,” concluded Miss Coule, “that I now wish my nephew to enjoy my garden. I leave my nephew to the garden.”

“You mean leave the garden to your nephew,” mentally corrected the solicitor, then continued to repeat “garden to nephew” “nephew to garden” until his head swam and he paused to rub his eyes. But how does one reply to a communication not of this world? One doesn’t. Obviously the whole fabrication was an unfunny attempt at a practical joke, probably concocted by Roger Coule himself, who had always displayed an unreliable sense of humor. Pentrip picked up the offensive letter, and was about to tear it across before committing it to the waste-paper basket, when his hand froze. The document he held was a crisply typed acknowledgment of his of the third instant and promising a speedy consideration of the points detailed therein, and signed C. J. Williams of Mitchin, Mitchin and Barlow. Miss Coule’s straggling scribble had faded without a trace.

Pentrip was roused by his secretary with his mid-morning coffee. Brenda with her blond curls, Delft-blue eyes and surplus twenty-eight pounds of puppy fat, at least belonged to this world. Pentrip passed off his slumped posture as a headache and demanded an aspirin. Brenda cast a curious glance over her shoulder as she left. Obviously she had reservations about the explanation, and Pentrip stifled an inclination to smack her fat bottom—not playfully as fantasy usually dictated, but viciously to pass on his own hurt.

Gulping his hot drink he tried to concentrate into logical order thoughts that timorously skittered in all directions. With all its guilty secrets a lawyer’s office was an obvious setting for a ghost. But what guilty secrets? Better not dwell on them in case more ghosts be raised. Nonsense! What would a ghost be doing here among the expensively leased furnishings? The place for a ghost would be one of the crazy garrets in the old quarter where crumbling attorney’s offices huddled together for fear of falling down. One might expect to encounter a specter among cobwebs and black tin boxes; but certainly not amid the glass and teak of a modem tower block. And could such a phenomenon as a nonexistent letter be counted ghostly—even when seeming to come from Miss Coule?

A mouthful of sticky syrup at the bottom of his cup reminded the solicitor that he had forgotten to stir his coffee. Brenda reappeared with a glass of water in one chubby hand, and an aspirin bottle in the other.

“Feeling poorly, Mr. Pentrip?” she asked brightly. “You do look ghastly.”

Her employer grunted and swallowed two pills.

“Get me Roger Coule on the phone,” he growled. “If his office says he’s in conference, try the golf club. This is urgent.”

As he waited for the call to come through, he doodled in the margin of the draft in front of him. He was hardly in the right frame of mind for working on a last will and testament. His scribbles developed into a flock of flying birds. Damn Miss Coule! Why had he ever agreed to draft her will? Anyway she had merely passed on before it could be properly signed and witnessed: unfortunate but not unusual. A complicated series of bequests takes time to arrange. Accuracy takes time; and Miss Coule had been ill when she first sought legal advice. Who was to blame if she died too soon? Hugo Pentrip had done nothing unlawful, nothing really unprofessional. Miss Coule’s estate had merely gone to her next of kin. Pentrip was convinced nephew Roger treated those feathered friends with the consideration his aunt would have wished for. Not perhaps so far as to establish a bird sanctuary, but that would have been unnecessarily ostentatious. Besides hadn’t the old lady herself now remembered Roger? No, she had not. The dead cannot remember anybody. Whoever heard of a posthumous bequest? The birds in the margin were no more than pencil marks, but they worried Hugo Pentrip. He buzzed his secretary. Where the devil was the call he had asked for?

Roger Coule had not been located. Messages had been left for him at the office, at the club, at his home. Pentrip waited for the reply. And waited. Roger Coule was not available at office, club or home that day. Or the next.

While he waited Pentrip worked on other wills. Probate formed the greater part of his professional routine. Other partners in the firm had their own specialties—conveyancing, company law, divorce—but Pentrip had just the right attitude for intimations of mortality. His workaday solemnity was tempered by his pink rotundity and a cultivated twinkle in the eye; just as his somber suiting was livened by an almost frivolous choice of shirt and tie. If witnessing a will reminded the testator of our universal destination, Pentrip was ready with a mild quip, folding up and filing away such funereal notions along with the legal documents. He was present, too, after the melancholy event, evenly weighing congratulations and condolences, and ready with advice on investments. Pentrip was an expert on glossing over grim realities; so after a few days Roger Coule’s non-availability became a matter for self-congratulation. How fortunate the man had not replied: what might have been conjectured about a solicitor whose imagination conjured up such figments as letters from deceased aunts? Too much indulgence in a different sort of spirit, eh? Pentrip thanked the circumstances that had kept Roger Coule out of touch.

Until the crossed line.

It is not an unknown experience to be cut off in the middle of a telephone call. It is not unusual for the ear to be filled instead with a jumble of clicks, crackles and garbled chatter. But it is unusual for a clear voice to emerge from the chaos and remark, “I am so glad the garden went to the right person. I believe Roger will be happy there. Don’t you, Mr. Pentrip? But I have just recalled…”

Pentrip slammed down the receiver. He sat rigid until the ice, which had so suddenly congealed around his heart, began to thaw and his protesting lungs reminded him to draw breath. Although the telephone rang persistently afterwards, he refused to touch the instrument. Was that why there had been no response from Roger Coule? Was he, too, afraid to hear the old lady’s chirping?

One half of Pentrip feebly protested. What had he done to deserve such persecution? His other half briskly reminded him. A procession of episodes flashed before his mind’s eye like a drowning man’s reputed recall.

He remembered Miss Coule’s first appearance in his office—arriving solidly through the open door after making an orthodox appointment. He remembered her perching on the edge of the chair facing him. He could almost see her now with wispy gray hair escaping in sprays from underneath her period-piece of a hat (wobbling insecurely with her continuous nodding); her parchment skin crumpling into a hundred wrinkles as she smiled her painted smile; her long brown fingers, wasted with illness, laced together in an attitude of patience. She had cajoled her doctor into admitting that she had at most a few months to live: but she was thankful for breathing space in which to tidy her affairs. A will was an urgent necessity.

Pentrip, after noting her wishes with regard to various charities, had tactfully brought up the question of next of kin—a suggestion treated with scant consideration by Miss Coule. Her nephew was capable of looking after himself: her birds were not. Pentrip had diplomatically stifled his contrary opinion that, with bankruptcy impending, Roger was patiently incapable of looking after himself, whereas every sparrow mastered the art on leaving its nest.

Later, Pentrip appraised Roger Coule that his expectations were about to fade like a mirage. Touched by his friend’s distress, Pentrip had paid for the next round of drinks. Moreover, drawing Young Coule’s ear closer to his lips, he had breathed a message of hope. Ambiguously worded to the effect that there were more ways of killing a chicken than by wringing its neck, he had intimated that—without promising, you understand—all was not lost. In his turn Roger had intimated that Pentrip might count on a tangible expression of gratitude.

Pentrip recalled how, thereafter, he had demonstrated every aspect of the law’s delay: appointments had proved difficult to make but easy to break; clauses had been queried; precedents and authorities had proved elusive—we don’t want anything to go wrong afterwards, do we? A contested will is such an embarrassment to the firm that drew it up. In the end Pentrip’s stamina had proved stronger than Miss Coule’s—after all his life-span had not been limited to a few weeks.

Strangely, considering there had been no contract, Roger Coule had proved to be grateful. Generous even. He had been well able to afford it, of course, Miss Coule having died better off than anyone had suspected; but gratitude and generosity are not encountered so often these days. Roger Coule’s token of esteem had been managed very discreetly, giving Pentrip every reason to be satisfied with his Fabian tactics.

Until now.

Brenda clattered into the office, investigating the lack of response to her ringing. Had the telephone gone wrong again? More sympathetically, after a glance at her employer: was Mr. Pentrip feeling poorly again? There must be a bug going about.

Hugo Pentrip abruptly left the office, ordering Brenda to clear up the mess of cancelled engagements. He had only a hazy idea of what he was to do next, but a conference with Roger Coule had priority.

Pentrip made for Coule’s home. Roger and his wife had moved into his aunt’s vast Victorian villa after completely redecorating the place. Inga Coule fancied herself as a designer. An article with before-and-after photographs had even been incorporated into the new decor: the rest had gone to the salesroom, where they had considerably increased the size of Miss Coule’s estate. Having swept through the house from cellar to attic (the former becoming games-room-with-bar and the latter Inga’s studio), Roger’s wife was now well advanced in her campaign to tame the garden.

Pentrip half expected to glimpse her flourishing secateurs as he crunched over the drive’s clean gravel. Instead a curtain twitched as he approached the front door. This was the only acknowledgement of his presence. No one answered his ringing or even, after an impatient five minutes, his more determined knocking. At last he was reduced to shouting through the letter box.

“It’s all right,” he called, somewhat irritably. “It’s only me.”

There was no reply: only the click of a door somewhere inside, and the twitching of a different curtain.

Pentrip reapplied himself to the letter box, stressing that his errand was of the utmost urgency and that he refused to go away until he had been granted an interview. Even this declaration was greeted with silence. Having made it, though, he felt he could not ignominiously withdraw. If he was not to be admitted through the front door, he would lower his social status and apply to the Tradesman’s Entrance.

As that was not open either, he rattled at doors round to the back of the house until he peered in at the French windows. To Hell with the Coules! He would show them. All may be locked and still, but he was convinced someone was about. He had said he would wait, so he would wait. While he waited he circumnavigated the garden. All was newly laid out and orderly except for a little wilderness at the far end; and an attack had been made recently even on that. Rough ground had been broken up behind unpruned bushes.

“I wish my nephew to enjoy my garden,” Miss Coule had said. Pentrip shuddered. Bright sunlight on the early bulbs was not enough to dispel that memory. Suddenly the solicitor wanted nothing more to do with gardens.

Then a bedroom window crashed open, and a woman was screaming at him. “Go away. Go away.” As he approached her, Pentrip was shocked by the change in Inga Coule’s appearance.

“Mrs. Coule?” he murmured. Even as he spoke he comprehended that the words might have been more carefully chosen. Who else but Mrs. Coule should be leaning from her own bedroom window? His inflexion had implied that he had failed to recognize the poised, chic, sophisticated blonde (as the article had described her) in this hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked, tousle-haired sloven waving wild arms at him from above. He hastened to put himself right. “Is your husband in?”

“No,” she cried, after a banshee screech. “Go away.”

“Mrs. Coule, this is critical,” he insisted. “It really is.” He was aware that he was treading on the thinnest of conversational ice. Was Inga Coule cognizant of the tacit arrangement between her husband and himself? Could she keep a secret? “If I can’t talk to Roger, perhaps I can talk to you. About his aunt.”

Her reply was a scream that sent starlings fluttering from the trees at the bottom of the garden. The window slammed shut. Behind it she could be seen gesticulating and, the solicitor could have sworn, gibbering.

This was as good an answer as any. Obviously Inga Coule knew something of Roger’s aunt, and the memory was not pleasant. The solicitor thoughtfully left. He had enough unpleasant memories of his own.

And they were probably responsible for his nightmares. He dreamed of that rough patch behind the shrubbery. The lumpy soil heaved and shuddered like bedclothes over an uneasy sleeper, while Miss Coule’s voice chattered on—“I leave my nephew to the garden.” Hugo Pentrip woke in a lather. Not only that night, but night after night as the dream recurred.

Brenda was concerned. With the unself-consciousness of the young, she wondered if Mr. Pentrip might not be working too hard. Why didn’t he relax occasionally? Pentrip smiled wanly at her concern; but at the same time recognized that, as an experienced seducer of secretaries, another triumph was within his grasp. How odd that he should need to thank Miss Coule for anything. He would play the strong man in need of ministering angel.

His erotic daydreams were rudely dispelled by reading an unexpected clause in an otherwise impeccably typed draft. “Believing that a woman should always be provided for, I bequeath to my nephew’s widow a permanent residence with constant attendance.”

Jeopardizing his romantic progress, he buzzed furiously for his secretary, and when she appeared, explosively demanded what the hell she thought she was doing. She indignantly defended her work, insisting that the words had been committed to paper exactly as Mr. Pentrip had dictated. To prove her point she produced the relevant tape, which had not been wiped. She was disconcerted when no trace of the intruding clause could be found. She was so sure that she had heard it. She even replayed it to check. Tearfully, she insisted that if she hadn’t heard it, how could she have known what to type? She would never have invented anything so absurd. If she’d been having a joke it would have been funnier than that.

Pentrip’s fury quickly subsided. Ashen-faced he merely requested that the document be retyped, and feebly asked Brenda’s pardon for his outburst. His haggard appearance so touched her that she not only forgive him, but would probably have given herself to him on the spot if he had only made the appropriate advances. However, sunk deep in macabre speculation, he failed to take advantage of either the situation or the girl.

Alone he somberly listed a sequence of events on his scratch pad:

1) Miss Coule had outlined the terms of her will

2) He had reached an accommodation with Roger Coule.

3) Miss Coule had died intestate and Roger had inherited.

4) Miss Coule had added to her will.

5) Roger had disappeared.

6) Miss Coule had added Roger’s wife to her will.

7) ??????

Pentrip preferred not to speculate on what “a permanent residence with constant attendance” might betoken, but guessed it to be less than agreeable to the legatee. Extending the steps he had numbered to 8) and even 9), the solicitor forecast that anyone else benefiting from Miss Coule’s misapplied estate might be due for a nasty shock. Roger and his wife had been the chief beneficiaries—but Hugo Pentrip himself had received a welcome moiety. He wished now to have nothing more to do with the money: if possible to return it.

He suspected he might never talk to Roger Coule again, but that made an interview with Inga Coule even more imperative.

He discovered her, spade in hand, at the bottom of the garden before she had time to take evasive action. She had just uncovered what was left of Roger Coule. “To make sure he was still there,” she explained simply afterwards.

Pentrip glanced into the disturbed grave and instantly regretted the impulse. Professional instincts asserting themselves, he hastily retired behind an unkempt laurel to avoid being sick in front of a client. The worms and Miss Coule’s nephew had evidently got on well together; though the advantage had gone to the worms.

Unsteadily Pentrip assisted Inga Coule into the house and poured out a large brandy for her—with an even larger one for himself. Stunned silence reigned until, two brandies later, Inga began to speak.

“I’m glad it’s over,” she said. “At least it’s off my mind. I suppose the police will have to be told now?”

Pentrip nodded. “How?” he whispered.

“With the spade,” said Inga.

Pentrip’s lips moved silently. “Why?” he mouthed.

Sunlight reflected from an expanse of mirror brilliantly lit—House and Garden decor. In spite of the brandy Inga Coule sat stiffly upright on the strikingly reupholstered Victorian chaise lounge. Pentrip faced her from a severe pine chair. He had automatically assumed the expression usually produced when noting testamentary dispositions. On this occasion it encouraged confession. Inga sighed, then words streamed from her.

“She began to follow me about,” she said. No need to inquire who. “Especially in the garden. Roger must have been aware too, because he became very jumpy. I didn’t mention her to him and he didn’t mention her to me. I don’t know whether he wanted to spare my feelings, or whether he knew that I knew so there was no point in talking.

“We had discussed the will in the early days, and how his aunt had never quite got around to signing it. I gathered as our solicitor you were in some way connected, but Roger never went into details. He could be very cagey at times. The old girl was dying anyway and we certainly did nothing to hasten her end—so why should she haunt us?

“Lately Roger had been on about putting a bird bath, or some such outrage in the middle of the lawn. I was completely against the idea—I’d as soon have had stone pixies. We even exchanged words. He seemed to have gone completely dotty about birds—stringing up coconuts, peanuts, lumps of suet… Every morning he sprinkled crumbs on the lawn. He even suggested bird houses round the fences, but I laughed at him.

“I think it was just after that argument when I began to sense her near. At first there were merely quick glimpses—behind the hedge, for instance, hiding among leaves. Then she became more sure of herself, lurking behind me while I worked in the garden. Even though I couldn’t see her I knew she was there: I could feel her peering over my shoulder. She began to talk: if you could call it talking. No words. She twittered like a sparrow or a starling. How can I be certain it wasn’t a sparrow or a starling chirping away? Some things one knows. Working in the garden I’d hear birds all day and take no notice—after all one expects to hear birds in the garden—but I didn’t need to be told when she was holding forth: the prickling at the back of my neck warned me. She wanted something. Twitter, twitter, twitter. Well, if it was a bird-bath in the middle of my newly-laid turf, she’d have to twitter on. No baths, no feeding tables, no tit-houses. There are limits.

“Wraith, spook, essence—call it what you like—reached the limit when it followed me into my garden house. Have you seen that rustic arbor where I store the tools? I was just putting away the fork and rake when the thing materialized in the doorway. Twitter, twitter, twitter. I turned round, facing up to her, and this time she didn’t even have the decency to fade. She stood there nodding and her outrageous old hat bobbing. Twitter, twitter. I asked what she wanted. Twitter, twitter, like a robin. I told her there was nothing here. She was dead, wasn’t she? Why didn’t she get back where she belonged? Twitter, twitter. You can’t hurt a ghost, can you? I had to show who owned the place now. I picked up the first thing handy and hit her with it. It was only a gesture. I knew I couldn’t hurt a ghost, but I hit her. With the spade. In the middle of that ridiculous hat.

“She still didn’t fade, though. She crumpled. Twittering all the way down. And where the edge of the spade had sliced into her head, blood was spurting. Can a ghost bleed? As she lay there, giving a last few feeble tweets, her face melted and changed. Gray hair into black. Parchment cheek into tanned skin with a little moustache. Her staring eyes into his staring eyes. Until it was Roger lying there—bloody and dead.”

Hugo Pentrip made a feeble gesture. What use were words?

“I know I should have ’phoned the police,” she went on. “It was an accident. Anybody can have an accident. But when I tried to rehearse my story it became more and more confused. How could I explain why I hit anybody with a spade in the first place—whether I knew it was Roger or not? How could I have mistaken my husband for an old lady? Especially when I had been to her funeral. While I talked to myself I tied myself in knots, so I had no illusions about the chances I stood with the police. All this time a tiny voice at the back of my mind was telling me to bury him. So I did.

“I hung on for days, knowing what lay behind the laurel bushes. I daren’t see anyone or even answer the ’phone in case I should be asked where he was. I tried to tell myself the—misunderstanding—hadn’t really happened. Until I began to wonder whether it had really happened. That’s when I uncovered him again. How could I have made such a mistake? Roger never looked like his aunt.”

Pentrip made consoling noises. Inga Coule sat back at last and closed her dark-ringed eyes.

“I must have been mad,” she murmured. “But I don’t feel mad.”

Pentrip cleared his throat. “For the purpose of your defense, I would suggest that you remain a little mad. Diminished responsibility.”

Inga almost smiled. “I wasn’t responsible at all. She arranged everything, didn’t she? Even my digging him up again for you to see. Will you come with me to the police?”

Pentrip nodded solemnly, belying his mind’s frantic activity. What unsavory details might emerge during cross-examination? Might his own conduct be shown up in an unfortunate light?

“I suggest that you make a clean breast,” he advised. “Then plead guilty. At least you’ll be spared the strain of a wearing trial.”

“What will that mean to me?”

“It will mean…”

“A permanent residence with constant attendance,” cut in Inga. Or was that elderly voice Inga’s?

Subsequent events moved as smoothly as Pentrip could have wished. In next to no time Inga Coule was put safely away, out of reach of garden tools. Pentrip even assumed heroic stature in Brenda’s eyes. Had he not single-handedly subdued a dangerous criminal lunatic? He took full advantage of his improved status. One morning soon he intended to waken with Brenda’s chubby face on the pillow next to his.

When bedded he was grateful to discover that Brenda was virginal but enthusiastic. She went to sleep in his arms.

Such an awkward position is bound to affect anyone’s dreams, but the intrusion of old Miss Coule into his was unwarranted and inexcusable. Especially as Pentrip’s late client was wagging a twiglike finger at him.

“Ah, but I left nothing to you, Mr. Pentrip,” she insisted.

His sleeping self protested that he had merely done his best in a professional capacity and desired no higher reward.

“I want you to see things my way,” she decided firmly. “So I shall leave you my eyes.”

She faded rapidly as such dreams sometimes do. It was sufficiently vivid and nasty to wake Pentrip. The light of dawn filtered through his half-opened eyes. Brenda’s yielding body was still pressed against his. He turned his head to admire his lately conquered pink and white cherub.

But the face on the next pillow was even further gone in decay than Roger’s had been. Her cheekbone gleamed whitely through the rotten flesh. Eyesockets gaped dark and hollow. Was this how Miss Coule saw Brenda? But Miss Coule could not see anything. She was dead. Quite dead. Long since rotted away.

Pentrip jerked back in revulsion away from the horrid object near his face, his only consolation being that this was still part of the nightmare. He would wake up any moment now. His sudden movement disturbed Brenda. As she stretched and yawned, withered lips parted to reveal blackened gums. In the decomposing recesses of her mouth a pale shape wriggled suggestively. And it was not her tongue.

Brenda’s giggles eventually assured Pentrip that he was not still asleep. He had received Miss Coule’s final bequest: her eyes, long accustomed to the dark of the grave.

Could she do this? He remembered a letter that had been something quite different. Inga had taken her husband for an old woman. Now what should have been a fresh-faced girl…

“Kiss me, love,” gurgled Brenda, pulling him toward her.

As their lips met Pentrip began to squeal. He was still screaming when he was taken away. Two orderlies were necessary to restrain him.

Even now he lives a solitary life, with a peculiarly timid way of glancing at people and a tendency to scream if anyone approaches too near. He only eats under compulsion and then with his eyes shut. Psychiatrists have not yet agreed on the cause of his condition, but they keep him under observation. A peculiar case.