GOAT
by David Campton
David Campton is an English playwright whose short fiction has proven immensely popular in Whispers. “Goat” is a lesson as to how a horror story should he written, and its appearance in our eighth issue marked the North American debut of both it and Mr. Campton.
Goat Kemp knew more than was good for anybody. There wasn’t a soul in the village, except Slow Harry, who didn’t feel unease lest the old devil should blurt out something better left unsaid. If I worried less than most, it was because I had less to hide—merely certain books outside a schoolmaster’s required reading. But Goat knew about them. He whispered a title to me one evening after I had disregarded his cigarette cadging: after which he loped away with a packet of twenty. I should have stood firm—after all what could Ashbee’s pornographic bibliography have meant to my neighbors? But my poise had been shaken. How could he have known? When not in my hands, the book is kept locked in a desk. Where I shivered, though, others quaked.
It was Goat Kemp who had Sam Fernie before the magistrates over a few brace of pheasants. Sam swore revenge, but he had been a fool not to share those birds with Goat: better part with one than lose them all.
It was Goat Kemp who drove little Miss Mellat to desperation. As she waited her turn in the village shop he bleated, “What about the child?” Later, on the church porch after the service, “Where is it buried?” Then across the listening street, “Is coltsfoot-rock poison?” How all those details might have added up we never learned because Miss Mellat took her secret into the river with her. All because she once remarked that Goat Kemp needed a bath.
Which was only true. His filth had medieval quality, peeling in tiny flakes. His nickname, though, came from more than his personal hygiene. His triangular face, trailing cobweb of a beard, and slanting, red-rimmed eyes all suggested a father of either sub- or super-human origin. The villagers accepted that Kemp had been either sired by a goat or by the Devil.
No one knew how he came by his uncanny knowledge, but we all knew how he used it. “Nice to see you, Goat,” we greeted him as he shuffled up to the bar. “What are you having, Goat?” Even if we paid for every glass, it amounted to a modest tribute. He never stayed long in The Ox—particularly if Slow Harry should be there.
“Turnip!” he would spit at Harry. “Great slobbering turnip.”
Nothing worried Harry. He was content, sitting in the inglenook of The Ox, grinning, nodding, and occasionally shouting a joyful, obscene, monosyllable at the climax of someone’s joke. He did not slobber much, and anyway wiped his chin from time to time on his sleeve. Goat hated him because he had no vices. With his big hands and big head he lacked opportunities for falling into temptation. Goat could not blackmail a man without fear and beyond reproach.
In a way our two oddities canceled each other out. Goat took: Harry gave. We liked Harry and feared Goat.
Then a new fear began to haunt the district. I believe Sam Fernie’s children started it, calling after Goat in the street. They only repeated expressions learned at their fathers knee, but Goat turned on them, his slant eyes glowing like coals.
“I saw what you did to Mrs. Bugle’s catmint,” he spat. “She thought it was the cats, but I know who.”
“Tell if you like,” retorted Young Sam. His behind had smarted from his father’s belt often enough; he knew the price and was resigned to paying. His sister, Kate, stuck out her tongue.
“Who tipped ink into the teacher’s desk?” hissed Goat.
“I did,” said Young Sam, protecting his sister while calculating that he might as well be strapped for two misdemeanors as one.
Two tongues stuck out at Goat. Two thumbs pressed against two snub noses.
“We’re not afraid,” defied Young Sam.
“You will be,” snarled Goat.
“He does frighten me,” whispered Kate.
“Don’t let him,” ordered Young Sam.
Anticipating Goat he confessed to the crimes, and was sent early to bed, where he lay face downward for comfort. No doubt Kate was thinking of Goat’s threat when she made her last call that night at the lavatory at the end of the garden.
Her cries brought Fernie and his wife running from the cottage. Young Sam watched from the bedroom window, and told me about it afterward. Kate leaned against the rough, wooden door, her face a white blob in the moonlight. She screamed and screamed, and could not be calmed.
“What had she seen?”
“Was it a rat?”
She pointed to something lying by the path. It was a crude doll, about the height of a nine-year-old girl. Its head was a mangold, and its limbs bundles of twigs.
“Is this all that scared you?” Fernie tried to laugh the terror away. “Just this old thing?”
“It walked behind me,” sobbed the girl. “It put out its arms and touched me.”
“Look. No arms. No legs. Nothing but dry sticks.”
“It touched me,” screamed Kate. “It touched me.”
They coaxed the child into the cottage, and when kitchen-cupboard remedies failed, sent for the doctor. After sedation Kate slept, but for years afterward needed a night light in her room.
Fernie accepted her story of the turnip head, but it stood to reason that a bundle of sticks could not move under its own accord. Someone had attacked his daughter; however when he searched the garden for signs of an intruder, he found nothing in the way of footprints or trampled plants. Oddly enough by next morning the mannikin, too, had disappeared.
Fernie was a sound man with a snare, and could produce a rabbit for the asking, but he always took time to add two and two together, and several days passed before he began to suspect Goat Kemp. The children talked about slanging Goat in the street; in Goat’s garden stood such a scarecrow; and in the bar of The Ox, Goat himself sneered at Kate’s nerves.
Suddenly Fernie was standing in front of Goat, and silence like a blanket had fallen.
“You know something.” Beer and the firelight reddened his face.
Goat bleated. The noise was meant for a laugh. We, like fools, instead of calling for another round, or starting a game of darts, we sat waiting for the next move, as though these were actors instead of men with blood to spill.
“If I believed you harmed my girl, I’d beat that smirk into the back of your neck,” said Fernie.
“Talk,” sneered Goat, and took another swig of bitter.
A flat-handed swipe knocked the glass from his hand, and smashed it against the far wall. Goat dabbed at the bruised corner of his mouth.
“That’ll cost you the price of another drink,” he said.
A gaping seam tore further as Fernie seized a handful of Goat’s coat. “What do you know?” he roared.
“She frightens easy, don’t she?” grinned Goat. “A scrap of kindling and an old root. As long as she meets nothing worse . . .”
After which he took Fernie’s fist full in his mouth, and hurtled across the room after his glass.
“Witch spawn,” thundered Fernie.
Blood trickled from the corner of Goat’s mouth, leaving a red streak on his dust-colored beard. We waited for the threats. Instead Goat’s crooked, yellow, animal teeth were bared in the caricature of a smile, which was worse.
“Any more questions?” he creaked.
“You did it,” shouted Fernie. “You scared my girl into screaming hysterics. You and that damned scarecrow.”
“You saw me, did you?” smiled Goat. “Or perhaps she saw me. Climbing over the wall, maybe. Hiding under a gooseberry bush. Next time . . .”
The old creature’s head banged against the paneling as Fernie hit him again.