Stewart paid the ultimate compliment. He sat straight up and said, “No shit?”
“But I decided that poor old man was just a bum or tramp, who staked out a place for himself and didn’t want me inside. Years later I read the unpublished item, and all the elements fit, so naturally I became interested. I wrote a paper on the subject, and mine remains unpublished too. So there you are, gentlemen.”
“What conclusions did you come to, for example, about the origins of the legend?” asked Vlad.
Bagnell shrugged. “It’s like trying to trace down the origins of a fog. The fog exists and you can see it, but it always seems to begin somewhere else. Compare it to other American legends, that is, you can trace groundhog stories to badger stories, but then you trace them right back to groundhogs. Sometimes we folklorists take every possibility into consideration except the human longing for a good yarn, which sometimes means a good scary yarn.” A twig snapped in the fireplace and Bagnell said, “If fireplaces were concealed inside walls, they might be calledsnappers. All the legends are attached to old houses, and old houses often creak. They attract drifters and outcasts of broken minds and unclean habits, who remind us of childhood terror-tales of ghosts and skeletons and god knows what. And so a legend evolves.”
Vlad asked if Bagnell had anything new to show him. Bagnell suggested he might call Dave Branch, but Vlad remainded him that it was Branch who had sent him to Bagnell.
“Well,” Bagnell said, “I don’t know what to tell you, Vlad, I just don’t know what to tell you.”
Vlad did not move for a while, then he let himself sink back in the chair. Behind him hung a beautiful photograph, an enlargement in sepia of a group of Ainu at a long-ago American world’s fair. They gazed through the camera as from some lost continent, too dignified to show their infinite bewilderment and their, vast sense of doom.
After Vlad and Jack departed, Bagnell picked up the phone: “Dr Bagnell returning Dr Branch’s call. Hello, Dave? Yes, I know you hadn’t called; that’s just a ploy, never fails — sly. Listen, one Vladimir Smith Ph. D.. He’s tracking the Paper-Man legend. I just have one question: you didn’t mention the Committee to him, did you? No, good, that’s fine. Back to your learned discourses. Bye.”
“Rawheaded Bloody Bones” may be an undifferentiated spook, but it is certainly vividly different from the rather enigmatic “The Boss in the Wall” which, to some informants, suggests an image of the human mind trapped inside the skull, and which has been reported from Mobile, Alabama to Jacksonville, Florida, and on up the Atlantic Coast for a few states more. “Rawheaded Bloody Bones” would not remind you right away of the “Greasy-Man” of Corpus Christi, Brownsville and Porta Isabella (all Texas). In all these places, however, “Greasy-Man” is also known as “String-Fellow” or “The String-Fellow.” It’s been conjectured that the latter name may come from the jerky, puppet-like walk attributed to the phenomenon. In New Orleans, of course, where every superstition flourishes, most of these names may be found, plus, as might be expected, the zomby-zumbi-jumbie-duppy group of names (see Limekiller): with the important difference that no “Paper-Man” etc. has ever been alleged “held to service or labor.” In other words, Zomby may have been at one time a slave, but Paper-Man was not.
— Bagnell’s Notes
Bagnell had arranged for Vlad and Jack to stay in a college guesthouse where Bagnell, himself, had recently stayed while his house was being painted. In the drawer of a nightstand Vlad found a sheaf of forgotten papers, labeled Duplicate of Dr Bagnell’s Committee Report. Vlad felt a twinge of scruple. Should he read it? But what has been duplicated can hardly be personal. So.
“Mr Ernest Anderson is a trapper in a nearby state. He and his family moved into a structure known locally as ‘the Old Linsey Mill.’ The exterior is brick, but the inside is built of more eclectic materials. The main mill building has been closed for years, and the family lives in part of it. From the start of their residence there, it seems there were odd noises and odd smells, and one of the children claimed to have seen something. Mr Anderson, being a trapper, set a number of traps. On the night of the given date, a loud noise was heard from the second floor, described as the rattling and thrashing of a creature caught in a trap. Mr Anderson and other male relatives left the living quarters to rush upstairs, but then they heard loud screams and ran back to the living quarters, because one of the children was having some sort of fit.”
Here Vlad’s blood ran cold as he continued reading.
“Mr Anderson drove the child to the West County Medical Center, and it wasn’t until much later that he was able to check the upstairs trap. It had been sprung, and inside the trap was a badly crushed, but easily identifiable human foot that seemed to be in a mummified condition. There was no sign of blood, and there was an immensely strong and fetid odor. I asked Mr Anderson if the force of the trap being sprung could have severed the foot from the ankle. He answered, and remember that he has long been a trapper; he said that the foot had been gnawed off.”
Attached to the pages was an envelope, and inside the envelope was a horrible close-up photograph. Of the foot. Vlad let the pages flutter away. He tried to swallow, but found that he could not. After a while he got up and went for a glass of water.
“You all right, Vlad?” asked Jack from the adjoining room.
“No, I am not.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“No, I don’t.” Vlad gave him the papers. Jack read them and looked up with an expression part-puzzled, part-unhappy. Vlad handed him the envelope. Jack looked at the photograph, then looked at Vlad with horrified eyes. “Jesus,” he said.
Vlad said, “What the hell? Is this a loop? Am I a prisoner in a Moebius strip, or is it all a bad dream?”
Jack Stewart said, “No, it’s not a bad dream. I’m sorry, I wish it were. I still don’t know what it means, but it’s not what we thought it meant — what we were told it meant. We’re in another country from now on. A country with strange inhabitants and unknown boundaries.”
Bagnell was walking, on his way to see Larraby again.
Who first developed the notion of The Phenomenon of the One-Legged Man in the Blue Baseball Cap? Bagnell did not know, but he knew the phenomenon well enough. You never saw such a person in your life, the story went, and the first day you see him, you see two more. Not merely two, mind you, but two more. Walking past the row of old stores which had, almost too late, been saved from destruction by a committee of concerned citizens — concerned, and prosperous — called Rowan Row, simply because it was on Rowan Street; walking along on the other side of the street, Bagnell looked up. He looked up with a jerk of his head; he had not intended to stop, for he had walked slowly past the old buildings earlier, had looked in the shop windows, seen nothing he wanted to examine closely; he looked up now with a jerk of his head. Had he seen, could he have seen a sign readingPaper-Man? He had not. Not quite.
The shop buildings were all of brick and one story high, and dated from the 1830s. Some attempt had been made to preserve or restore the period flavor: where the tobacco store had been was a tobacco store now, and outside it was a wooden Indian. Apothecary’s had a row of very attractive apothecary’s jars on display, plus antique equipment in a glass case, and as for the rest, offered exactly what was sold in any other drugstore.