“The head’s not there.”
“Oh.” Bagnell’s eyes were again darting.
“The head’s not here, is what I mean. Don’t bother looking for it. Seen enough?”
Bagnell thought he’d probably seen enough.
“But I’ve got a photograph of it downstairs.” And Larraby went to locking up the cabinet. Then Bagnell let them out. Then Larraby locked up behind them.
“A photograph of —?”
“- Of the head. Want to know what the fellow said? Fellow who brought the body to us? Do, eh? A‘right! — Steady; going down is not so easy for me as some might think. - Said he sawit, that thing upstairs, saw it lying on the floor of… a certain old building. Said he saw a rat scuttle over and start to gnaw at one of its feet. Said — you ready for this? A ‘right, said he saw the thing catch the rat with its foot — the thing’s foot. Said he saw it jerk the rat up and heard the rat squeal. Ever hear a rat give a death-squeal when some gant old tiger-she-cat with a dirty kitten catched hold of it? And he said that thing, old Boss-Devil, began to eat the rat. That dried-up old horror, supposedly dead a hundred years, with flesh as sere as a mummy’s, began to eat the rat. Could it happen? God, no! Did it happen? God, yes!”
As for the head; it was a good photo.
The mouth was still mostly full of teeth, visible beneath the writhed-up lip, and seemed to Bagnell very capable of clicking and clattering — and perhaps — of killing a rat… a very large rat, too. The nose was sunken but was by no means gone. Something had happened to one ear — how many times might it have offered itself as bait for rats, if rats were what it wanted; lying on rotting floors in rotting buildings by moonlight or in moondark, in forgotten tumuli behind now-vanished pest-houses? — Something had happened to one ear and one eye was closed — but one eye wasn’t. It was likely no more than a trick of the light, but the eye seemed to be looking watchfully out of one squinted corner. The eye seemed to have a very definite expression and seemed (as such things often will) to be looking directly at Bagnell, who did not in any way like the look. It was not what Bagnell would think of as fearful. The look was. what?
Sly.
He shuddered. Curator Larraby, once again just another on-the-way-to-being-old-man said, somewhat smugly, “Ah. Now it catches up with you. Here. Something I keep on hand, case of snakebite. Have one with you.” After the first sip, the second sigh, the curator said, “Save you the trouble of asking. No, you may not have a copy. Want a photograph of the head, direct you to Dr. Selby Abott Silas, scholar, rogue and thief, and most unworthy damned Yankee rat and rascal, holder of the magniloquent title of Principal Steward of the General Museum of the Province of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Details on request. Some other time. Further questions? Brief ones. ”
As Bagnell made a last and fruitless look towards the flat and locked steel box with the photo of the Paper-Man’s head, and made to go, one further question came to him.
Larraby made no objection to answering. The man who had brought in the thing upstairs, in two pieces plus the head, brought them in a gunny sack; the man was a well-known manslayer. “Had killed two Negroes, well, was tried for two. Half-black, half-Catawba Indian; a Mustee, we used to call them. And after he’d done a year or so in the penitentiary, where by the way he behaved himself, and I’m sure no one stolehis cigarettes or tried to commit a crime against nature upon him, ho no! Well, while he was away there’d been some breakage here, theft and vandalism, so we pulled some strings, got Mustee a parole by offering him the job of second night-watchman; midnight to eight a.m.. He looks likeAustralopithecus maledictus, and you may be sure that no one comes around here now who’s got no lawful business. Mustee has no morals, no religion, feared of nothing, keeps his contracts. Gave him one hundred silver dollars for his find, and a big bottle of over-proof rum. - Hm, maybe I’ll give Mustee a ticket to Providence, Rhode Island. Hm, think about it.” Larraby thought about it as he reached for a lamp.
“Let me put some more lights on. Old newspapers, yes, indeed. Keep out the cold, they do. Wonder what you’ ll do, next time you hear a rustle in the dark. Your life has been changed forever. Well, nobody twisted your arm; you can always sell insurance. Mind your step on your way out.”
“How did Mustee kill those two, ah, Negroes?”
Larraby, winding a light scarf, looked at him eye to eye. “Broke their necks,” he said. “Quote me for one single word in print about this, I’ll ruin your career without compunction.”
And that was the first time Bagnell actually saw one.
So he informed his friend, Dr Claire Zimmerman, when he called her later that day. In the past that call would have been heralded by the almost-necromantic words: This is Long Distance Calling. But neither of them remembered that, and neither had seen a newsreel. The past was sending them different messages… far more distant and dangerous.
“How many appearance, or maybe we should say sightings, have been reported, would you say?” asked Branch.
“Don’t know,” said Bagnell.
“Define your terms,” said Claire Zimmerman. “How reported, to whom reported?”
“Well, it should be possible to find out. That would help combat it, wouldn’t you think?” asked Branch. “Do we even know, for instance, how many authenticated cases there are of one of them doing actual bodily harm to a human being?”
“How authenticated, by whom authenticated? Oh, there are accounts, sure. Bite wounds and scratches, mostly, and talk of festering and amputations,” said Bagnell. “We just don’t know. We think the Boss in the Wall is scaring us. Maybe he thinks we’re scaring him. How many of them are there? We don’t know. Do they know we’re on to them and that we’re after them? Can they communicate with each other? Do they? We don’t know. Are they suffering from some kind of unknown virus, and if so, is the disease still spreading? Has it infected and infested some of the filthy derelicts we see lying in the doorways of old buildings? Are the drifters sliding and sickening and deteriorating into Paper Men? We don’t know. What’s it all about — and what can we really do except burn down every old house in the country?”
The new house was very old, and Elsa Beth Smith and Professor Vlad Smith loved it at once.
Partly they had come to see it because of the cottage cheese fight of the people next door, and partly it was because of Uncle Mose, that fine old rogue.
College Residence Building Number Three had been, like all Bewdley College’s new Residence Buildings, military housing during the war. The War; World War Two. “A duplex!” was Elsa Beth’s first exclamation on entering her and Vlad’s new home — a brave cry which ignored the stained walls, leak-marked ceilings, pokey kitchen, and warping walls and doors and window-frames. The buildings had not been built to last. They were, in fact, not lasting, they were decaying fast, but people still lived in them all the same. And among the people were the people next door, Professors Albert and Anna Murray, husband and wife. The Murray marriage was not going too well, and a hearty sneeze penetrated the thin partition between the two families.