“Tear his head off!”
“Kick him!”
“Rip off an arm!”
“Pull out his eyes!”
“See how he works!”
The music boxes struck up martial airs: “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Dixie,” “Marching Through Georgia.”
“He’ll be sorry!” The soldier again. “It’s the only way. The only thing he understands is force. We’ll show him how it feels. We’ll make him suffer.”
Outside the wind laid a shroud of snow across the blackened earth. They listened to it wail and keen, alert as sentries as they waited in the dark. Waited on shelves in the attic at the top of the stairs.
“Soon, do you hear!”
Snow blowing hopelessly back and forth.
“Soon . . .”
And they waited, silent, motionless, more alive than they had ever been.
And below them the boy slept, and his dream rode a prancing cockhorse at the head of candy-bright armies crashing and clashing, guns and drums and blood black as licorice in the soldiering snow.
Accompanying this rewritten version, was the following letter:
Dear Stuart,
I am enclosing the revision of A WEATHER REPORT FROM THE TOP OF THE STAIRS that you asked for. I think that it does what you and Gahan felt the original version did not do: that it makes quite clear the fact that the toys are going to “get” the boy. However, Jim and I both feel that in doing so, the story has become much more one-dimensional and much less interesting, and simply a much worse story. We would like to persuade you to use the original version in the anthology % we hope that when you compare the two you will agree with us.
When we wrote the story, we were not simply trying to explain Gahan’s cartoon. Rather, we used it as a starting point for a story which included both Jim’s and my slightly different conceptions. Jim really felt that it was too late for the toys, they had only words left, they were a collection of shattered dreams. I wanted the story to say something about human nature and nurture in the area of violence. The boy’s violence is evident in what he has done to the toys % in the violence which has rubbed off on them and now causes them to desire revenge % in the fact that his gun is the toy which has lasted longer than any other. On page three, the parents, nostalgic, think to themselves “so much of the shaping done already.” That and the boy’s dream that ends the story are meant to suggest a wider context in which to apply the story’s idea. But we did not want the story to be heavily didactic; we wanted it to be slightly ambiguous at the end. It does not really matter whether the toys get their revenge or not, because that is not really the focus of the story. As I see it, the boy is evidence that people are inherently violent and that violence is encouraged by our upbringing, here by his loving parents, who really do love him but don’t know what they’re doing.
Please let me know what you think about the two versions. I hope you will agree that the first is better.
Well, dear reader, good luck with your decision.
THE SCALLION STONE
by Basil A. Smith
The late Canon B. A. Smith was the author of Dean Church (Oxford University Press); he was a very interesting clergyman, a collector of ghostly tales, and himself living for years in a rectory (Holy Trinity, Micklegate, York) where monks’ bones were forever poking up from the front lawn. (The janitor then burnt them.) Through the efforts of noted author Russell Kirk (The Conservative Mind), the horror stories this man had written for his own entertainment were retrieved from oblivion and shown to me. I found them an impressive grouping of tales in the M. R. James tradition, and Whispers Press will be publishing them all in a hardcover collection that will be illustrated by Steve Fabian. Meanwhile, whet your appetite with this haunting account of demons, saints, and the Scallion Stone . . .
“So you’re on your way to Northumberland and the Farne Islands, are you?” said Aitchison, and added with genial irony, “I suppose if it hadn’t been for my having Prideaux Selby’s catalogue, you’d never have broken your journey here at all!”
“Well, I did want to check up on one or two species,” laughed the ornithologist. “And I don’t dislike sleepy little Durham, you know. For a night’s lodging, within hearing of the cathedral chimes, I can even put up with a cantankerous old sinner like you!”
With such good-natured banter and amid the comfortable surroundings of Aitchison’s library, a stranger—had there been one there, hidden for some melodramatic reason, behind an armchair—would have had no difficulty in guessing that Drury was an old academic friend with a good claim to familiarity with his aged host.
“Ah!” reflected Aitchison a few minutes later as the pair of them, like good bachelors, sat watching the fire go out, “it’s a long time since I did more than peep at Holy Island. Let’s see; it’s fifty years since the St. Cuthbert centenary. I remember crossing to the Farne about then.”
“Is there much archaeological stuff there?” asked Drury. “Any Cuthbert relics still?”
“Fourteenth-century chapel and site of the old boy’s hermitage. But unless you’re keen there’s nothing very exciting,” said Aitchison.
“It’s the birds I’m after chiefly, of course,” said Drury, “but while I’m there I might as well kill two birds with one stone!”
“Talking of stones,” responded the antiquary quite seriously, “you really ought to see the Scallion Stone.”
“What’s that then?” asked the other. “Some ancient carved work?”
“No,” said Aitchison, “it’s more of a geological curio—in shape, something between an oblong block and a wedge—about five feet in length and nearly two in breadth at its widest, I should say—surface pretty smooth, with five elongated shapes like fossils standing out. The name comes from these, I suppose, for they look like spring onions, or scallions as they call them in these parts. The whole thing’s very curious.”
“And you say this is still to be seen on the island?” asked Drury.
“I should be surprised if anyone’s disturbed it,” rejoined Aitchison. “In fact I doubt whether many people know of its existence, and with the amount of seaweed there is, they are not likely to come across it by accident.”
Drury was quite intrigued, and very soon the two had forgotten their wine, while Aitchison was drawing sketches and setting down directions which would help his guest to locate the phenomenon which seemed so well worth searching for.
Drury enjoyed his expedition, and a few days later he was back in Durham loaded with notes and photos of his beloved seabirds. Aitchison had urged him to stay the night, and talk soon turned upon the Scallion Stone once more.
“Yes, I did manage to get at it after tearing up a load or two of Channeled Wrack,” said Drury. “In fact, I took a photo, too. I got a print out from it last night. You can have it if you like.”
Aitchison was most interested when Drury brought down the photo for him. He scrutinized it for a minute, then put it down with knitted brow.
“That’s strange,” he murmured, “it must have changed.”
“How do you mean?” asked Drury with some astonishment.
“Well,” said Aitchison reflectively, “your photo here shows five ‘scallions’ all pretty much the same. Actually, when I saw this stone, four were complete and the fifth was what I should call disfigured, almost as if wrenched and depleted at the end.”
“You re probably mistaken,” said Drury half-amused. “Anyway it seems a trivial point to keep in mind for all these years. Archaeology has made you mighty keen and observant, my boy.”