The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 2: The Orchard (Necon Classic Horror) Read online

  The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume 2: The Orchard

  By Charles L. Grant

  Necon Classic Horror #22

  Cover by Matt Bechtel

  A Digital Edition Published by Necon E-Books

  This Edition © 2012 The Estate of Charles L. Grant

  Cover © 2012 Matt Bechtel

  Introduction © 2012 Kealan Patrick Burke

  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 purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Introduction

  There's no better time to write this introduction than today, October 24th, because this is Charlie's season. As I sit here pecking away at the laptop, the light is an eerie shade of tarnished gold through a persistent rain. A blizzard of dead leaves scratch across the porch like dirty paper airplanes thrown by sullen children. The wind is not quite howling, but it's considering it, as it whips through the woods around my house. The branches are gnarled and bare, casting long thin shadows that look like rotten ropes intended to pull in the encroaching dark. The earth is sodden, the air smells like smoke. The river is thick and full and muddy as it rushes under the small wooden bridge that leads away from here.

  This is Charlie's season.

  And this is what I said to my fiancé a few days ago as we bundled up and took a stroll along the lane that meanders through these woods. "I love fall," I told her. "The quality of the light, the taste of the air…it's Charlie Grant's season." She did not need to ask who I meant, as she has heard me go on (and on, and on, God bless her patience) at length about my favorite writer. I have read passages to her from his books; she has seen the towering stack of yellowed paperbacks bearing his name that materializes beside the bed at this same time every year. She knows I edited a book called Quietly Now, which was a celebration of the man and his work. And she has heard me speak of him as a writer whose style I emulate over all others. There are any number of reasons why this is the case, most of which I've covered in the various essays and tributes I've written since Charlie passed away, so I won't rehash them here. Besides, if you're reading this book now, then chances are you already know them.

  Of everything Charlie wrote, my favorite books of his are those that combine quartets of stories linked by a central motif and packaged as novels, books like Nightmare Seasons, The Black Carousel, Dialing the Wind, and this one you're reading now. It has long been argued that, for horror writers particularly, the novella is the ideal length for a story. It allows character development and plenty of darkness, while negating the need for rambling or filler. For the reader it's just long enough to be worth the investment, but not so long it seems daunting. Charlie seemed most at home with novellas, and indeed they represented him at the height of his power, and nowhere is that more evident than here, in The Orchard.

  Here, our connective tissue is the titular venue, an old orchard on the outskirts of town that has somehow managed to be forgotten by most of the people in Oxrun Station. And perhaps it wants to be forgotten. There was a fire there, you see, and although apples still grow on the trees that escaped the flames, it is inadvisable to eat them. Doing so changes things, changes you, and unleashes an insidious evil, whether within or without.

  But people will always find places not meant to be found, and amid the shifting mists and half-glimpsed shadows, the orchard spreads its tendrils into the minds of the weak, exploiting the unrequited love of poor, overweight Herb Alstar in "My Mary's Asleep", and the loneliness and paternal insecurities of policeman Brett, in the ironically titled, "I See Her Sweet and Fair".

  I read this book in my late teens, about seven years after it was released, and though I didn't revisit it until Captain of the Good Ship Necon, Bob Booth, approached me to write this introduction, the one story that had never left me was "The Last and Dreadful Hour", which I recalled with almost perfect clarity. It's a terrifying piece, a veritable chiaroscuro of horror, and my favorite kind of story—one that traps people together in a single setting and pits them against some type of invasive, unknowable evil. After I first read this, visits to my dilapidated local movie theater were never quite the same, and as I sat in the gloom, usually alone, waiting for the movie to start, I would always find myself squinting into the shadows beneath the stained screen, wondering if there was something hiding there. It's a testament to Charlie's power that he can write something so moody, so dark and dirty, that it sticks in the mind years after you've read it. And that's one of the reasons I love his work so much. It is less a reading experience than an immersion into a meticulously crafted and lyrical carnival of shadows.

  Similarly, the closing segment of The Orchard, "Screaming, In the Dark" documents a man trapped (this time by injury and not supernatural means) in a hospital bed as odd things begin to occur in the hallways and rooms around him. What I like most about this one is how Charlie subverts the use of darkness and somehow manages to make dazzling bursts of white light even more threatening.

  The Orchard is bookended by the story of Abe Stockton, the current chief of police, who is not long for this world, and the man he brings to the orchard to educate about the ways of the place. To assist him, he has brought along some files, and it is those that make up the stories in the book. This introduction and epilogue could be considered incidental, but they're anything but. In addition to making the book read more cohesively than most novels, they're also just as skin-crawlingly unsettling as the stories themselves.

  If you're reading these stories for the first time, I envy you. And I can't help wondering what Charlie would have made of seeing his work presented in digital form. Some authors still rail against the new medium, and I completely understand why. Like them, I too have a deep attachment to physical books. To me, it's as much a part of the reading experience as the stories themselves, and it's still how I prefer to read, if possible. The argument could, and has, been made that digital reading is too cold and impersonal, but to be fair, I think this misses the point. The medium is irrelevant, merely the means by which the stories are brought to you. Deliver them via papyrus scrolls, cave paintings, pulp, movies, audio, digital screen, retinal scan, or brain implant (for who knows what comes next!), it is the stories, and only the stories that matter. I don't think Charlie would have cared how you read his work, only that you enjoyed it. And it is my hope that having his work available digitally exposes it to a new and expanded audience. It is nothing less than he deserved.

  Now if you'll excuse me, I've prattled on long enough, and I am due another walk with my lovely bride-to-be. It is the perfect day for such things, just as it is the perfect day to reminisce about my favorite writer and mentor.

  Because now the light is fading and streetlights are coming on, making the shadows sprawl across the porch and toward the door. The wind has indeed risen to a howl, moaning once more about the things it seeks to change. The leaves are scratching at the door, tapping on the windows, asking to be let in, eager for me to come out. The river hurries on, and there's a chill in the air that foretells of the coming storm.

  It's Charlie Grant's season.

  And it always will be.

  — Kealan Patrick Burke

  Columbus, OH

  October 24th, 2011
<
br />   Prologue

  Old man Armstrong is dead, and no one since has claimed or worked the farm.

  And whatever they were like, the man and his family, is a mystery best left to children’s autumn dreams and the winter-long dreams of patient old men who he awake until dawn, thinking of the time they wouldn’t wake at all.

  If there had ever been a farmhouse, substantial or not, it is gone — roof, walls, and foundation. If there had ever been a barn, a shed, outbuildings of any kind, they are gone as well, battered into the rocky soil or turned to wind-chased ash in the aftermath of a fire. No fence No well. Not even a rutted road a wagon might have taken from the markets in the village. And the field that might once have been the site of high-growing corn, perhaps a green bed of alfalfa, perhaps lettuce rows or cabbage, is derelict now, and has been so for at least a century, If not more. Grasses whip-sharp and thin fill the furrows that are left, shrubs dream of being trees, and here and there for color an evergreen that has escaped being cut down for indoor use at Christmas. Dogs never run here, and cats seldom prowl, leaving the brown and green landscape to the insects and the crows

  To get there is easy; you cross Mainland Road, climb down and up a wide drainage ditch, then hunt for a decent gap in the wild thorn hedge that hides the land from the highway, and Oxrun Station beyond. Once through, and into the field. It remains a matter of not tripping over dead branches from trees you never saw. Of avoiding the burrows that look to snare your ankles, of dodging the occasional hornet and slapping at gnats when the sun is near to setting.

  Burrs cling to trousers. Twigs snap under heels, and winter-raised rocks look to rob you of your balance.

  Every so often, from somewhere just on the other side of my peripheral vision, I thought I saw a rabbit, stock-still, ears pricked, but turning showed me nothing but hillocks and tangled weeds. I even imagined a fox charging through the grass toward its den, pursued by a black hound-and that’s when I decided that old man Armstrong, whoever he was, was right in leaving this place. It didn’t hold dreams and it didn’t hold nightmares, but in spite of the noise of the traffic behind me and the growl of an airliner stalking the blue above, it created images behind my eyes that I didn’t want to see, didn’t want to explore.

  I shivered for no other reason than it felt right at the time, pushed my hands deep into the pockets of my worn denim jacket, and pushed on, using my knees to hack through those overgrown places I couldn’t go around, telling myself for slim comfort this was the way the pioneers had done it, this was how it was when the village was born.

  How nice for them, I thought glumly; no wonder they’re all dead.

  By the tune I had gone a hundred yards, I felt as If I had been lifting weights all my life without benefit of pause, and I was damning those pioneers for coming here at all.

  And what made it worse was the fact that Abe Stockton up there passed through it all as if he were a ghost.

  “C’mon, Abe, give me a break, huh?”

  He looked back and grinned at me, seeing my puffing, my not too silent groaning, and pointed to the line of woodland north and south of the field. Dark walls. Hickory, pine and oak. Birds sing there constantly that never sing here.

  Then he nodded to the west, lifted the collar of his tan sheepskin coat, and ducked quickly away from a sudden violent gust that lifted dust from the dry ground and shoved it in our faces. When the air calmed and he had blinked his eyes clear, he inhaled slow and deep, and let it out in one explosion. A hand with a handkerchief wiped the sweat from his face. A hand covered his eyes, his mouth, and clenched into a fist.

  I stopped feeling sorry for myself then and my less than perfect physical condition. At least I would be able to get out of bed tomorrow morning and go to work with the reasonable assumption that I’d do it all again the day after. And the day after that.

  Abe Stockton couldn’t.

  Abe Stockton was dying.

  “There,” he said, pointing an old man’s finger toward our destination. “Give It a couple of minutes more and you can rest, if you need it.”

  “Hell, I can walk all day If I have to,” I lied with a grin. “Didn’t I ever tell you about the time I managed eight thousand feet of Everest between breakfast and lunch?”

  He smiled, he didn’t laugh. I doubt anyone in the Station has ever heard him really laugh, or has seen much more than that brief pull of his lips that narrows his face, squints his dark eyes, deepens the creases that mark him true New England. He is an unabashed and unashamed stereotype, no question about it, and he has been Chief of Police here for almost thirty-five years.

  We ravaged a thicket with our boots and slashing arms, and once on the other side, he shook his head wearily and mopped his brow again.

  “I ever tell you a Stockton was the first chief here, back a hundred years, maybe more? After the war, I think. Sonofabitch must have been ninety feet tall too, if you believe all the stories. I ever tell you about that?”

  He had. He has in fact, told me a lot of things over the two decades I’ve known him, much of which I’ve used in one form or another to chronicle the village’s time, none of which he’s told to anyone but me.

  Which was why, now, we were going to the orchard.

  “You gotta see it to believe it,” he said to me yesterday afternoon, between prolonged bouts of coughing that turned his pale face red and tore his lungs apart. “Nothing I say is gonna make sense until you see it for yourself.”

  “But 1 have,” 1 told him, thinking of the work I hadn’tdone and had to get back to soon before the creditors decided to set up camp on my lawn. “I’ve been there a couple of times, as a matter of fact.”

  “Not with me, you haven’t.” And that sealed it; I was going.

  A hundred yards later we were there, seated on a rock large enough to hold ten, dark enough to trap midnight and never give back the stars.

  The orchard must have been a wonderful place, back when tat was alive and no one stayed away — scores of twisted apple trees whose fruit scented the air each fall and turned the land red once the first frost had passed; the blossoms in spring must have looked like snow from a distance, an entire field of it daring the sun to melt it down; the sound of children picking their own for pies and preserves and butter and cake, must have brought Christmas early to this part of the world.

  It must have been great.

  It’s more than dismal now

  Most of the original trees are long gone, and of those that remain, only a handful have been untouched by an unexplained fire that raged here nearly ten years ago Trunks and branches are charred, the grass in most places has never returned; rain has pounded the ash Into a crust on the ground. If any fruit still matures on the plants that can still bear them, they probably drop unnoticed to the dead ground, and probably rot.

  “Ugly little place, isn’t it,” he said, taking the handkerchief out again to wipe his face and neck dry

  I nodded; but it isn’t, not really, though it is without question unpleasant — the images that had stalked me across the field darkened here and grew shadows, shifted contrary to the wind and played darkly around the boles, and I wished we could have stayed back at his house while he told me what he had to. At least there I would be out of the damp cold and in a comfortable chair, with a drink in my left hand and his old bloodhound snoring in volleys at my right; at least there I could turn a lamp on after sunset, listen to the radio, watch a little TV, read his newspaper while he fussed with dinner in the kitchen.

  At least there I wouldn’t have to see the shadows of the dead.

  A spasm of coughing and choking bent him over, and I could do nothing but pat his shoulder helplessly until it was done, angry that he was going to leave me at last, angry that I couldn’t do anything to make the leaving easy, angry that no doctor could tell him what the hell was wrong.

  “Yep,” he said, his breath back and his grin. “First chief in town was old Lucas. They had the police before, of course, but he was the first one dumb
enough to take the job.”

  “He wasn’t exactly dumb,” I said, shivering.

  “He did all right, from what you’ve told me.”

  “Did all right with what he had, I suppose.” He squinted at the light, shook out the handkerchief, and blew his nose. “His son became chief too, y’know. Ned, it was. They never called him anything else. Some say I tend to favor him more than my own father.” He wiped his mouth; his hand was trembling.

  “Abe. look,” I said, “why don’t we go back, okay? There’s — ”

  “I never planned on living this long, y’know,” he said, ignoring me as always and staring at the trees as if they were about to uproot themselves and come at him. “Never planned it, never wanted it, if you want to know the truth. I was gonna die peacefully at eighty in my bed, an ornery old coot who didn’t give a damn about much of anything but making his peace with the Lord.” He gripped his knees and lowered his head, but not his eyes. “But things just got gotta hand, son. I never had a say, and they just got outta hand.” He sniffed, and spat. “Too much to take care of, pups to train to be cops in the Station, city folks to watch out for in case they broke a leg crossing the street. Every goddamn time I took a vacation they put that idiot Windsor in, took me weeks to clean up after him. Shame he’s dead, I guess, but he was a Jackass.” His gaze lowered. to the ground. “It ain’t been easy, y’know. Jesus God, it ain’t been easy.”

  I didn’t have to answer; I knew what he meant.

  It wasn’t the small amount of crime we have here in Oxrun, or the people he had to teach, or the sicknesses he endured all alone in his home.

  It was the other things

  The far side of the shadow things that no one ever believes until they wake up past midnight, cold and unsettled, and see the landscape of the night-world that exists beyond the far boundaries of legend, beyond the frail cage of reason; the dark children of their childhoods who have gleefully persisted through education, through marriages, through living in the modern world, and wait under the stairs to laugh quietly and harsh; the shade of black seen only when eyes are open and dawn hasn’t arrived and a wind shakes the doorknob like the paw of a wolf learning to come in, the light that dances without fire and glows without a bulb and casts no shadow in the comer of the room where something small and large crouches behind the chair.