The Year's Best Horror Stories 11

I HAE DREAM’D A DREARY DREAM by John Alfred Taylor

One of the rewards as editor of a continuing anthology series is to watch the emergence of new talent. In reading each year’s crop of horror fiction, I find that my selections generally are stories either by established authors—more or less regular contributors to each year’s publications—or by newcomers and writers outside the field, whose presence in the horror genre is simply a guest appearance. Occasionally I come upon a new writer and sense that here is a name to watch. John Alfred Taylor is one such writer.

Taylor was born in Springfield, Missouri, on September 12, 1931 and grew up in one place or another across southern Missouri. He earned a B.A. from the University of Missouri and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, where he was in the Writer’s Workshop under Donald Justice and others. During his teaching career Taylor has lived in New Hampshire, Texas and New York, and he now teaches English at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania. Taylor has had some 300 poems published in various little magazines over the years, and recently he has had stories in Galaxy, Galileo, Twilight Zone Magazine, Space & Time, Eerie Country, and The Argonaut. His story “When the Cat’s Away” (Twilight Zone Magazine, September 1981) just got crowded out of The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X, and “I Hae Dream’d a Dreary Dream” in this year’s selection is one of four excellent (and quite dissimilar) stories from John Alfred Taylor in 1982. Remember his name.

Harold Percy took the rain as a matter of course. When he left the Black Bull that morning, Angus Donnan had warned of a possible storm, and he’d said he was prepared. Percy always tried to be.

Perhaps it was reaction against his inevitable nickname: he was not and never would be a “Hotspur.”

Under his mac he wore a fine wool shirt, his moleskin trousers had lasted him half a dozen vacations, inside his waterproof boots he wore two pair of socks, and in his rubberized duck musette bag were sandwiches, binoculars, notebook, clasp knife, a guidebook to the Isle of Skye, MacAlpine’s Gaelic Dictionary, and a small nickel-plated flask of what he supposed some of the natives still insisted on spelling uisgebeatha.

So when the mist turned to drizzle and the drizzle turned to rain, he buttoned his mac and pulled down the brim of his Irish tweed hat. He’d seen worse weather last year, following out Riastrick’s Green Tracks on the Pennines with Ordnance Survey maps.

At first the rain barely decreased visibility. It was supposed to be possible to see North Uist across the Minch on a clear day, but Percy wondered if the local definition of a clear day was synonymous with the Second Coming. Earlier the waves of the Minch had glittered, the mists and sun formed momentary castles from beams of gold and blocks of pearl, but now the rain had shut down. Only occasionally through its shifting could he see the leaden waves of the Minch below the western slope.

And then the real storm struck, a line squall roaring in like a black wall, and Percy had to clutch his hat before he lost it, while the wind came in from every side. It was blinding, paralyzing, like being thrown into a cold douche fully clothed in the dark, but he still retained enough sense of direction to find his way back to the outcropping he had just passed. Perhaps there was an overhang or some shelter from the wind.

He staggered grotesquely against the wind, one hand holding his hat on, blinking the water out of his eyes and blundering off the path into the heather, but finally he reached the outcropping. It was lower than he remembered and could give no shelter. Perhaps the side to the sea downhill? He leaned against the rock as he descended; it was steep, and the rain-wet stones were treacherous underfoot.

Below was another level of the outcropping, and between the two a cleft barely wide enough for a man. He lowered himself into it, his feet ankle-deep in the water rushing down it like a drain. It was too shallow to give him any shelter from the wind without stooping almost double, and he slipped and came down on hands and knees.

He could see further without the rain blowing in his eyes; the cleft deepened ahead, the sides almost leaning together like a roof. Once under that, he was out of the rain, back against one side, squatting with his feet in the sluice boiling down the floor, a solid sheet of rain a few inches from his face. Percy settled himself to wait out the fury of the squall; at this rate it couldn’t be long.

The cleft seemed to go farther down; he’d see as soon as the rain let up.

By the time the curtain of rain split into separate streams and trickles, his cramped position had become uncomfortable, and he rose with relief, careless of the drops still coming through the slot above. The cleft did go on, the sides nearly meeting more than once, and then he came to a bend. An interesting place, he never would have discovered it without the storm; he’d passed right by it a minute before.

The turn brought unexpected spaciousness; the cleft opened out, and he was standing on a ledge like a porch looking out at the sea and sky. The hidden way traversed the whole outcropping.

The rain had stopped, the sun was breaking through ragged clouds. Lunch time, Percy decided, and found a half-dry spot. Using his mac as a cushion, he sat with his legs dangling over and ate one of his sandwiches. Curious stone down there on the slope—then his practiced eye picked out an almost hidden line leading up toward his seat. That stone had been put there, perhaps as a marker, and that was a trail connecting with this cleft.

Suddenly excited, he stuffed the sandwich wrappings back into his bag, put on his mac again, and started to descend. The rocks below the ledge made a steep, narrow stair, just possibly by design. The way was overgrown, but Percy, who had cut his teeth on The Old Straight Track and followed out the tributaries of the Icknield Way and Berkshire Ridgeway, felt sure it was a trail. Close up, the stone gave proof; in spite of the lichen on its face he could pick out the “cup and ring” labyrinth laboriously pecked out before history began.

It was even steeper below the stone, and the trail switched back across the slope. Another fifty yards, and Percy had to stop where a slide had taken a nearly vertical bite. As far as he could go today. He’d have to bring a rope tomorrow.

In the bar at the back of the inn after dinner, Harold asked Angus Donnan about the place he’d found. Angus’s usually expressive eyes were still. “I really don’t know of any path like that, Mr. Percy.”

“Perhaps I haven’t described where I found it clearly—”

“Oh no sir. I recognize the place.”

Percy wondered if Angus knew more than he was telling, especially when Angus said something in Gaelic to the two islanders he was serving at the other end of the bar, and both glanced sidewise at Percy. One of them answered, repeating a phrase Angus had used. Percy repeated it to himself so as not to forget it while he finished his whisky. Bealach—that meant “pass” or “gap”—but the rest?

In his room Percy opened his MacAlpine. Even with his new-found understanding of the vagaries of Gaelic orthography, it took Percy ten minutes, and then he wasn’t sure. But that was what it sounded like. Sinister. Baelach a’ du Mairbh—Pass of the Dead.

Perhaps tomorrow Angus Donnan would be more forthcoming.

As he drifted toward sleep the words came into his mind unbidden:

But I hae dream’d a dreary dream

Beyond the isle o’ Skye,

I saw a dead man win a fight

And I thought that man was I.

It had been a Percy who gave Douglas his mortal wound at Otterburn, which made the old ballad special to him.

He burrowed deeper into his bed.

It was steep, but that wasn’t why he was afraid. He couldn’t stop, he would have to follow the path out to the end. He knew the waves were close; he could hear them even if he couldn’t see them. The sun was shining, why was it so dark? He had to stop. If he went on—

At the corner of his eyes he saw something moving, but when he turned that way it was gone. Then on the other side, something thin and beckoning, but looked at directly, it also vanished. It was so dark now the sun seemed a pale and diminished wafer, only a little brighter than the surrounding miasma.

And always his mind screamed to halt, but his feet kept finding their way down.

Percy woke to a bright morning, bright enough for him to shake off the mood of the dream with scarcely a thought. What could he expect, going to sleep with that stanza running through his head?

While he dressed he looked out the bedroom window. There were still mists here and there, but vanishing in the benign fury of the sun.

He breakfasted with gusto; by the time he finished his eggs and bacon and broiled tomatoes and scones the room was empty except for Angus Donnan sitting over at the table by the wall doing his accounts. Percy had been waiting for this moment.

Folding his napkin neatly, he rose from the table and walked over.

Angus looked up. “Yes, Mr. Percy?”

“I want to know about the Bealach a’ du Mairbh,” he said quietly.

Angus glanced about the room, then gestured to the other chair. Finally. “I’m glad you asked. I’ve been telling myself you deserved to know, but I didn’t know how to start.” He stared down at the table for a moment. “You wouldn’t say I was a superstitious man, would you?”

“No,” said Harry.

“And neither are the rest of us. We think about Value Added Tax and the price of beef and mutton, not about seal-maidens or glaistigs or the Nuckelavee—you know about the Nuckelavee?”

Percy grinned. “Enough to know I don’t want to hear a description of it so soon after breakfast.”

Angus grinned fleetingly in return. “You know about the Nuckelavee. Anyway, we leave such things to the summer ladies from the mainland, with their tartans and their folklore societies. You’re interested in the old things too, but not the same way; you’re tactful, even though you’re a sasunnach. So I want you to know everyone takes the Pass of the Dead seriously.”

“What’s down there?”

“Nobody knows.”

“But how can that be?”

“Nobody goes down there, or rather the few who did never came back.”

“You’re joking!”

“I’m not, Harry Percy. It’s been called Bealach a’ du Mairbh as far back as there is memory. Two brothers—MacNeils they were—went down some years after Culloden and were never seen again. A young lad daft for gathering birds’ eggs thought he’d try early in Victoria’s reign. An incomer like yourself—a man named Johnson—went down right after the Hitler War, 1947. And after that there was the slide and no one has tried it since.”

“Aren’t there explanations, stories about the place?”

“To be sure, but moonshine, made-up stories. It’s a mystery.”

“Not even anything about why it’s named the Pass of the Dead?”

“Nothing. But I believe it’s well-named. It’s not a canny place, and you’d do well to avoid it.”

“Thank you for warning me,” Percy said.

“You’ll not be going down there?”

“I’ll consider what you’ve said.”

“Mr. Percy,” Angus Donnan said, “you know I’m a saving man, though not a grasping man, but I swear I wouldn’t start down that cleft for a thousand pounds. That’s how seriously I take it.”

“Then I have to take it seriously too.”

Harry was going to take it seriously. Though not the way Donnan meant. Obviously the Pass of the Dead was more dangerous to climbers than it looked, had been even before the slide.

Percy checked his equipment in his room and when he left the Black Bull, inside his jacket he had a 150-foot-coil of nylon rope slung over his shoulder, and his mac draped over one arm to hide his climbing pack.

To his right Ben Skraig brightened. By the time Percy reached the headland that concealed Bealach a’ du Mairbh, the quilting of purple-brown heather, pale green grass and dark green bracken was shining under a cloudless sky, and he had to recant his earlier doubts; on a day as clear as this North Uist was not only visible, but seemed nearer than it was, except for the dark blue miles of the Minch between. A perfect day for rock climbing.

Despite his eagerness, he took his time descending the cleft on the chance that he might see something he’d missed in the rain and dimness last time. And just before the cleft opened out, protected by the overhang, and even on such a bright day, half-hidden in the shadows, he found and sketched an incised spiral design. When he reached the stone at the bend of the trail below he stopped to sketch the “cup and ring” carving.

At the break in the trail he advanced cautiously, uncertain of the edge’s solidity. The descent didn’t look bad: no overhangs and the traverse back onto the trail at the bottom wouldn’t be far. About sixty feet down, but he measured it with the rope to be sure. It should be a smooth climb back; from here he could see at least one safe route.

There were no trees to anchor the rope, and the only rock was too sharp, so Percy drove three pitons into the rock and connected them with slings. Seat harness with brake-bar secured, belt, sling with carabiners and pitons, holstered hammer, pack, gloves. Enough equipment for an American, but then he was climbing alone. He left his mac folded beside the anchors, put the rope through the slings, snapped it into his brake bar and around his hand, and backed off the edge.

His last sight of his mac folded so small and lonely there gave Percy a wry twinge; if he never came up Angus Donnan would be telling solemnly how all they ever found of the sasunnach who went down Bealach a’ du Mairbh was his coat and the pitons.

The face was clean, with no loose rock or overhangs, but not too smooth; there should be no difficulty climbing back. Johnson or whatever his name had been might have been inexperienced. Though what about the three before the slide? But it was a steep trail.

The sun was still bright on the rock; as he started the traverse to the trail he could see every pebble and boulder of the scree below.

When he arrived the rope was his first thought; he barely glanced down the continuation of the trail before he started pulling one end of the doubled rope, and coiling it as it dragged out. One thing at a time. The free end dropped past, and he finished coiling it and put it over his shoulder. No bad frays.

When he was done, he had a good look; the trail was narrow and tortuous, but that only made it interesting.

After the first steps he came to a stop. Nothing had changed; the sun still shone, the waves of the Minch were still rich blue, but Percy found himself trembling, half-paralyzed with terror. Once before, when exploring the earthworks of a causewayed camp, he had felt this same objectless dread, but nothing had happened. He went numbly on. He was palpable, as if the air had thickened till he had to force his way through—or was it as if he were being pulled in?

It was hard to think, the edges of things wavered before his eyes. That boulder that seemed to crouch, that bleached and twisted log? But how could there be driftwood so far above the surf?

Then the log straightened, began to stand up, the boulder uncrouched.

Instinctively Percy’s hand reached for the piton hammer at his side, and when he touched its head he saw them as they were. Gasping inarticulately, he jerked the hammer free and hefted it, backing away.

Not a log, but bleached bones and tendons, what had once been a man. And the croucher was clothed in sodden rags and still had a face, though shriveled back, exposing the long teeth in an eternal grin. And behind others were stirring, more than four.

In a spasm of repugnance, Percy swung at the first two as they closed on him. Though neither was touched, the hammer passed within inches of the bleached one, who shrunk back and emitted a moan of so desolate a timbre as to nearly rob Percy of volition.

He forced himself to move against that tide of despair, and fled. At the break he was too busy finding handholds and footholds to look back. What made it more terrible was the muteness of his pursuers; all he could hear were soft slitherings and the rattle of pebbles.

When he was several yards up he glanced back. His route had led him out onto the face, and the bleached one was crawling lizardlike up a parallel rib, while the others were scrabbling out below, the nearest peering up and grinning through tangled hair and beard, once red but now like dried seaweed.

Climb!

When he looked across again, the lean one was almost level with him, trying impotently to find a way to him around the smooth bulge of a spur.

And then Percy was stopped; no matter how he groped, he could find no handhold. But there was a crack. He unclipped a piton and pounded it desperately in while the scrabbling below came closer. The piton rang solid, and he pulled himself up, and then there was another foothold and another handhold.

They sounded near, too near to take time to see.

Then he heard the desolate moaning again and looked down. The bearded creature was just below the piton, its hand extended toward it. As Percy watched, the claw recoiled, the creature stopped and began to retreat, the others shifting below him.

When he looked down again they were coming again, but using routes bypassing the piton. On the right the tatter-bearded thing was ahead, further down on the left the one in dark rags led his own file of spidery horrors. At least the lizardlike one that had been climbing the parallel rib was stopped, baffled by an overhang.

Against all training Percy looked up. Only fifteen feet!

Less than his own length from the top he had no handhold, and had to drive in another piton. Between hammer blows he heard the scrabbling coming toward him on the right. This time the piton would not retard pursuit.

He dragged himself up, found another handhold, got his foot on the piton, up and up, and began to drag himself over the edge. His hips were over. Just ahead were the three pitons and the sling with which he had anchored his rapel.

He grasped the sling, pulled himself forward, found the head of a piton with his other hand.

At the same moment something closed tenaciously on his ankle and began to pull him back. Percy hung on for dear life. But the pull was inexorable, untiring. And he was tired. The piton dug into his palm—

The piton! They had avoided the one below. And then a line out of his boyhood reading flashed into his mind: “Cold Iron is master of them all,” and he let go with his right hand and groped back, while the grim pull stretched his other arm till the shoulder seemed half out of its socket. He slid his piton hammer out, and reached down toward his ankle with it, but stretched as he was between his left hand clenched on the sling and the pull on his ankle, he couldn’t quite reach; he could feel the hammerhead against his calf.

Win all or lose all, there was only one thing to do. Letting go with his left hand, he curled his body around, and struck at the thing on his ankle.

For an instant he thought he would be dragged over, and then the moan was cut off, and his ankle was free from the crushing force.

He lay panting on the shelf, weak with strain, until he had the courage to crawl to the edge and look down. The cliff sparkled in the sun, light laughed from the blue waves of the Minch, the trail below was empty of all threat.

He looked at his ankle; the cloth of his trouserleg was twisted and driven into his boot, and when he pulled it away, he saw why. Something fell out of the cloth as he pulled the cuff up, and after he examined the curve of indentations in the leather, the yellow tooth was merely objective confirmation of the horror. If it had been an inch above the boottop and broken the skin, Percy was sure no antitetanus, antivenom, or antibiotic would have saved him.

He put on his gloves before he picked it up, wrapped and knotted it in a handkerchief folded double, and began to limp up the Pass of the Dead.

At first all Angus Donnan said when Percy told him he’d had a fall was, “Must have been a bad one,” but when he invited Percy into the bar even though it was late afternoon, and sat him down for a glass of his best malt, his glance at the climbing gear was knowing. “Now that’s medicinal, Mr. Percy, and even if it’s between licensed hours, I consider you a benighted traveler. Precisely where did you fall?”

Percy took a fiery gulp, but his shudder came before the whisky hit his throat.

“Was it perhaps some place you shouldn’t have climbed, some place you were warned against?”

So Percy told him the gist of it, watching Donnan’s face for signs of disbelief. But the innkeeper listened solemnly, not saying a word till he was done, and when Percy put on his gloves and unwrapped the tooth, looked at it with dour interest. “Aye. You’re a lucky man indeed. Would you mind telling one other man of this?”

“Who?”

“He’s called Daft Rabbie,” then seeing the look on Percy’s face “but he’s no daft at all. I’m thinking you’d like to change your room—the room next to ours is empty, and I know the knowledge would be a great comfort when you’re going to sleep.”

Percy was ready to say he wasn’t a child, but thought again, and gratefully accepted.

When the pub opened again at five, Percy went down and stayed. He wanted company, and the regulars had accepted him. He ate his supper there, but drank sparingly, still shaken enough not to let down his guard. Near closing time a giant of an old man came in, long gray hair hanging from under his knitted cap, but when he took it off Percy saw he was bald. “I heard you were asking after me,” he said to Donnan.

“Aye,” said Donnan, and beckoned him closer so he could speak in a low voice. Then he led him over to Percy’s table. “This is Rabbie MacLeod, Daft Rabbie.”

Percy could see why Angus had insisted he was misnamed; MacLeod’s look was like a hawk’s, though without the ferocious fixity. “As soon as we’re closed I want you to tell Rabbie what happened.”

Daft Rabbie and Percy drank the whiskies Percy ordered, talking desultorily till Donnan gave the ten-minute warning. Even on such short acquaintance, Percy felt comfortable enough with MacLeod to share silence with him.

Afterwards, by the one light left on in the bar, Percy told the old man his story while Angus cleaned up quietly, so as not to miss a word. This time he went into more detail, and Rabbie now and again moved his head assentingly. “Aye, that’s what I saw,” he said at the end, “that’s what I saw myself forty years ago when I looked down Bealach a’ du Mairbh. Except for the one in rags—that would be the Johnson.”

When Percy brought down the handkerchief in his gloved hands and unknotted it, Angus came over, and the three of them stared down at the relic. “Memento mori,” whispered Rabbie, “as Parson’s so fond of saying.”

“Not with the help of this,” said Percy. “It’s a souvenir I can do without. But what to do with it?”

“I’ll fetch the paraffin,” said Angus.

So it ended with the three of them out on the hillside in the night. Percy soaked and resoaked the handkerchief and the bare rock around it, and then touched a match to it. As they watched the flames shifting in the wind, Angus said, “Let’s not talk of this.”

“Indeed not,” said MacLeod. “I know better now, and there’s no reason for you to be Daft Angus and you to be Daft Harry.”