The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 9 by Ellen Datlow

Author:Ellen Datlow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Best Horror of the Year
ISBN: ISBN
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2017-05-30T04:00:00+00:00

THE HOUSE OF WONDERS

C.E. WARD

An acrid waft of blue tobacco smoke woke me from an early evening doze in my comfortable chair in the garden. I started suddenly and sat up rather disorientated, glancing across at Stevenson who reclined in the wicker chair on the porch of the summerhouse, the local newspaper open untidily on his knees, having paused in his perusal to light his gnarled old briar. He returned my look with a smile, and puffed his pipe as though his life depended on it, overpowering the pleasant scents of the flowers with the pervasive fumes of his Navy flake.

“Did I wake you?” he asked facetiously. “I’ve just been looking through the obituaries, and I see that Jack Froston has died. Aged 67—no great age.”

“Wasn’t he a friend of yours? I had no idea that he’d been ill. It must have been quite sudden.”

Stevenson tamped the glowing ashes in his briar with a forefinger so apparently unfeeling I’d often suspected the stained brown digit was made of the same material as his pipe. “Well, the last time I saw him he wasn’t wonderful—which could hardly be expected after that odd business with his last book. He was a changed man after that. Lost a lot of weight and got quite apathetic and short tempered. None of the boundless enthusiasm he’d once had, and his writing suffered; no more books but just the odd piece for a magazine or journal. Obviously Janice’s death was a blow to him too, and it was after her funeral that Jack and I got talking over a few drinks at her wake. That was when he told me a few strange things about the last book he’d researched and written, and that he believed his problems had originated from there. Showmen of England, do you recall it?”

I sat up in my chair intrigued. “Yes, I have a copy of it on my shelves somewhere. Quite interesting and quirky if I recall correctly and full of obscure photographs as all his books were. It wasn’t quite his usual territory was it? Country houses, old customs and folklore were more in his line. His research was as thorough as always of course—I knew nothing about the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show appearing locally in the early 1900s until I read about it there. Every interesting travelling show, fair, place of amusement and exhibition from the 1830s to the early 1970s must have been included.”

“Not quite everything,” Stevenson replied in that low and mysterious tone I was used to between draws on his briar. “He told me that he’d omitted a full chapter of the manuscript which he’d intended his publisher to have. The odd thing I remember him saying about that was that he’d researched it too well. He was very drunk at the time and I didn’t take that much notice, and it’s sad to say he was very much on a downward slide with all his very heavy drinking and smoking. I only saw

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