J. B. Stamper - Midnight Hour 01, page 1
Tales For The Midnight Hour
J. B. Stamper
A full moon is in the sky,
The clock strikes twelve...
These are tales for the midnight hour!
THE FURRY COLLAR
Susan was my best friend. But I try never to think about her. It’s only on certain nights, when I’m all alone in my room, that I remember…
It was during Christmas vacation last year when Susan asked me to stay at her house overnight. She lived in a big, gloomy house set way back from the road. And she didn’t want to be alone there at night. Her parents had gone to visit some friends and wouldn’t be back until the next afternoon. Susan said we could have a really good time without her parents around.
And we did. At about 12:00 we decided to get dressed for bed. Susan had gotten this velvet night-robe for Christmas that had a thick furry collar. It was blood red velvet and she looked like someone from a Dracula movie in it. We had been watching television in the living room, but then we turned it off. We hadn’t noticed it before, but now the downstairs seemed too big, and almost sinister.
We started to go upstairs. Then, all of a sudden, we both ran up the steps to Susan’s room as if something was coming up from behind us. After we closed the door, we laughed at ourselves. But neither one of us wanted to leave the room again. We sat down and started to talk. That’s when we first heard the noise. It sounded like somebody sharpening a knife on an old emery stone.
We stopped talking and looked at each other, feeling really scared inside. There was just a thick silence in the room. Suddenly, Susan started to laugh. She said she had heard a sound like that in the house before. She said it was probably the shutters or something. That made me feel better and we started to talk again. Then we heard it again! SCRRITCH. SCRRITCH. The sound made my teeth vibrate as if somebody’s fingernails were scratching on a chalkboard. But this sound was much worse. It shrieked up from the dark, lonely rooms below us. SCRRITCH.
Susan got a wild look in her eyes, as though something horrible had come into her head. Before I could catch her, she ran out of the room, slamming the door shut and flicking off the light switch. I heard her footsteps as she ran down the first flight of stairs, and then stop.
I sat in the dark, sick with fright. I called out Susan’s name; but my voice was answered by hushed silence. I didn’t want to stay in the dark room alone, but even more I didn’t want to go out into that other darkness. SCRRITCH. I heard it again, that disgusting sound. Then I heard Susan’s footsteps, moving down the next and final flight of stairs. She went more slowly, as if she really didn’t want to. I heard her reach the bottom. I waited in the room, wondering what Susan was doing. I told myself she must be all right. You see, the noise had stopped right after I heard her reach the bottom of the stairs. It didn’t come after that. Susan had probably just fixed the shutter. Maybe she had known for sure about that all the time. She had just acted strangely to scare me. Maybe she was sitting on the steps now, laughing at me.
I got up and started toward the door to turn the light on. But a feeling of fear swept over me that held me back like a hand against my throat. I decided I would wait where I was for Susan to return. I would wait there until her parents returned, if necessary. Nothing could make me leave my darkness for that darker unknown outside the room.
Tune passed. My ears strained for a sound and my nerves tingled at imagined shadows. Then I heard a slow, shuffling noise on the bottom step. Was it Susan? It had to be. Yet the footsteps seemed too heavy, too deliberate. My heart began to pound and for a moment I lost control of my mind. It flew to the most horrible corners of my imagination and I shook with terror.
Then, suddenly, I knew what I would do. Susan’s new night-robe with the furry collar! I would wait for the door to open and then I would reach out and touch the person’s neck. If I felt the furry collar, I would know it was Susan — and I would get her back for scaring me like this. If I didn’t feel the furry collar… well, then there was nothing I could do.
The shuffling footsteps had reached the second flight of stairs. I forced my own feet to take the steps to get near the door of the room. I felt the skin crawl on my back as the footsteps reached the top step and moved down the hallway. I braced myself. The door creaked slightly as it swung open. I reached my arms out and hoped.
My fingers closed around the thick fur of Susan’s collar. My body drained with relief. I moved my hands up to touch Susan’s face. I was so happy; I no longer wanted to scare her. But as my fingers moved up from the furry collar, there was nothing.
Only the bloody stump where Susan’s head had been.
THE BLACK VELVET RIBBON
There was one room in the house that the old man always kept locked. Things had not changed in that room for years. A soft layer of dust had settled on the furniture and on the thing that lay on the floor, beside the bed….
The old man had been a bachelor most of his life. When he was 40 years old, he had met her — the girl with the black velvet ribbon. She was beautiful in a strange, mysterious way. Her hair and her deep, bottomless eyes were as black as the velvet ribbon around her neck. He planned to marry her before the next full moon rose in the autumn sky.
On their wedding day, he watched her walk toward him up the long aisle. She was dressed in a white gown, a white veil, and carried a bouquet of white flowers. Even her face was ivory white. But below it, around the ivory neck, was the black velvet ribbon. He remembered staring at that ribbon as the strains of the wedding march brought his bride nearer to him. He remembered the curious and shocked looks on the faces of the wedding guests. But then his eyes met hers, and he was drowning in their bottomless darkness.
He didn’t think of the velvet ribbon during the rest of his wedding day. It was a joyous time, and if people thought his wife a bit strange, they kept it to themselves. That night, when they were alone, he saw that the ribbon was still there, still circling her lovely neck.
“Don’t you ever take that ribbon from around your neck?” he asked, hoping his question was a needless one.
“You’ll be sorry if I do,” his wife answered, “so I won’t.”
Her answer disturbed him, but he did not question her further. There was plenty of time for her to change her ways.
Their life together fell into a pleasant pattern. They were happy, as most newly married couples are. He found her to be a perfect wife… well, nearly perfect. Although she had a great number of dresses and wore a different one every day, she never changed the black velvet ribbon. This ribbon began to be the test of their marriage. When he looked at her, his eyes would inevitably fall to her neck. When he kissed her, he could feel the ribbon tightening around his own throat.
“Won’t you please take that ribbon from around your neck?” he asked her tune and time again.
“You’ll be sorry if I do, so I won’t.” This was always her answer. At first it teased him. Then it began to grate on his nerves. Now it was beginning to infuriate him.
“You’ll be sorry if I do.”
“You’ll be sorry if I do.”
One day he tried to pull the ribbon off after she had repeated her answer, like a mechanical doll. It wouldn’t come loose from her neck. He realized then, for the first time, that the ribbon had no beginning and no end. It circled her neck like a band of steel. He had drawn back from her in disgust that day. Things weren’t the same with them after that.
At the breakfast table, the black ribbon seemed to mock him as he drank his suddenly bitter coffee. In the afternoon, outside, the ribbon made a funeral out of the sunlight. But it was at night that the ribbon bothered him most. He knew he could live with it no longer.
“Either take that ribbon off, or I will,” he said on a night to his wife of only four weeks.
“You’ll be sorry if I do, so I won’t.” She smiled at him, and then fell off to sleep.
But he did not sleep. He lay there, staring at the hated ribbon. He had meant what he said. If she would not take off the ribbon, he would.
As she lay sleeping and unsuspecting, he crept out of bed and over to her sewing box. He had seen a small, sharp scissors she kept there. It was thin enough, he knew, to slip between the velvet ribbon and her soft neck. Gripping the scissors in his trembling hands, he walked softly back to the bed. He came up to where she lay and stood over her. Her head was thrown back on the pillow, and her throat with the black velvet ribbon around it rose ever so slightly with her breathing.
He bent down, and with one swift movement, he forced the thin blade of the scissors under the ribbon. Then, with a quick, triumphant snip, he severed the ribbon that had come between them.
The black velvet ribbon fell away from his wife’s neck… her head rolled off the bed and onto the floor…. She was muttering, “You’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry…”
THE BOARDER
The boy lay quietly in the dark. He was listening. Next door, the boarder was making the sounds of preparing for bed. The boy could hear him brush his teeth, gargle, and then splash water onto his face. The sounds made the boy grit his teeth. He hated the boarder.
The two of them shared the upstairs floor of the house. It was a small house in the poor area of town. The boy’s parents had taken the boarder in to add his rent to their meager income. Before, the boy had had the upstairs to himself. The extra bedroom had been his playroom. Now the boy was kept to his own small space.
&nb sp; In the next room, the boarder was getting his bed ready for the night. The boy heard him plump the pillows. Then he heard the creak of the old bedsprings as the boarder lay down. The boy wondered if the boarder knew how well he could be heard, how much the boy knew about every move he made. The sound of the light switch being flicked off came through the thin walls. Now, the boy knew, the boarder was lying in the dark, too. Listening for him.
It was a waiting game. The boy knew the boarder would be going out tonight. For the last month, he had known about the Friday-night journeys. This night, the boy planned to follow the boarder to wherever it was that he went.
The boy lay perfectly still in his bed. He had learned how to be very quiet. It bothered him to think that the boarder could hear him as he could hear the boarder. So he had begun to walk softly and creep slowly into bed and to do everything quietly — like a cat. The boarder didn’t know how much the boy could hear from his room.
But no sound came from the boarder’s room now, except the muffled sound of snoring. The boy hated that snoring, just as he hated everything about the boarder. He hated his snickering laugh and the way the boarder looked at his mother at the breakfast table. He despised his chores of shining the boarder’s shoes and going on errands for him. Most of all, he hated the boarder’s money, which his parents needed so much.
The money was the reason the boy lay awake in bed. No one knew how the boarder got his money… No one knew how he spent his days away from the house. No one asked questions because the rent money was always there, fully paid and in advance. The boy lay in the dark and struggled to keep his eyes open. Tonight he was going to follow the boarder and find out his secret.
The seconds of time ticked by in the boy’s mind as he lay waiting. He knew the boarder would pretend to sleep like this at first. But the time was drawing near now for him to make his move. The boy waited in silent darkness.
Then, from the next room, came the slow creaking of springs. The boy raised his head to hear better. The springs creaked again as the boarder’s weight crushed against them. Then, they were quiet. Now the boy knew that the boarder was preparing for his journey. He would be slipping into his clothes in the dark, pulling on his rubber-soled shoes.
The boy slipped out of bed and reached for his own clothes. He didn’t make a sound as he dressed himself and put on his sneakers. He tiptoed over to the window in his room and pressed himself against the wall. He was ready.
The window in the boarder’s room slid open with a slight scratching noise of wood against wood. The boy stared sideways out his window. He watched as two legs quietly and carefully picked their way across the small balcony outside the window.
The legs disappeared. For a few seconds, the boy heard no sound. Then there was a dull thud on the ceiling above him. The boarder had gotten up onto the roof.
Moving quietly like the boarder, the boy slid open his window. He swung his body over the sill and onto the small balcony. He knew he was taking a chance of the boarder seeing him. But he knew if he waited too long, the boarder might be out of sight.
The boy climbed the drainage pipe up to the roof as the boarder had done before him. He slowly raised his eyes to the level of the roof. Standing twenty feet away and staring across the rooftops, was the boarder.
The boy could see the eager expression on his face. He could also see the shiny hook hanging from his belt and the coil of thick rope hung over his shoulder.
The boy lowered his head below the rooftop. Then he heard the boarder move across the roof. He peeked out again, over the roof. The boarder had jumped from their house to the next one. The roofs were only four feet apart because the houses were built so close together in this neighborhood. The boy saw the boarder walk across that roof and then jump to the next house.
It was a dark night. The moon was hidden by clouds. The boy hoisted himself onto the roof. He crept over to the chimney. Three houses away, he could see the boarder walking steadily east.
He knew he had to follow the boarder fast enough to keep up with him, but slowly enough not to be seen. The boy came to the space between his house and the next one. The cement walkway between the two houses stared up at him from forty feet below. He felt sick for a moment. Then he leapt across to the next roof.
As he landed, he saw the boarder turn around from three houses away. The boy flattened himself against the tar roof. He watched as the boarder paused, searching the darkness for the source of the sound he had heard. But the boarder couldn’t see the boy’s body pressed up against the roof. He went on, jumping to the next roof to the east.
The boy made his next jump more quietly. The boarder didn’t turn around. It became like a game of leapfrog between them. The boarder jumping; then the boy jumping, three houses behind him. The boy learned not to look down at the black, gaping spaces between the roofs. His face, too, took on an expression of eager excitement.
Ahead, the boy could see that they were coming to the end of the block of small houses. As the boarder came to the last house, he turned left and began to cross the roofs going north. The boy knew that these roofs were no longer set apart. They were the roofs of the stores on Main Street, which were built right beside one another.
The boy ran softly to a chimney and crouched behind it, resting. The boarder, too, had stopped. He seemed to be counting the roofs of the connected buildings with his outstretched hand. Then he moved on down the roofs, walking confidently now. The boy followed slowly, bent down low. The roofs were flatter here than they had been on the houses. He followed behind the line of chimneys that stretched out in a row across the roofs.
Suddenly, deliberately, the boarder stopped in front of one of the chimneys. The boy jerked his body to a halt and darted behind the closest chimney. When he peeked around it, he saw the boarder shrugging the heavy coil of rope off his shoulder. He picked up the end of the rope and began to wind the coil around the chimney. The boy watched as he worked to make a strong knot in the rope. Then the boarder picked up the rest of the coil of rope and dropped it down the chimney. After a few seconds, a dull thud came from inside the bricks.
The boy sat behind the chimney, watching intently. His mind was in a fever. Now he knew the boarder’s secret.
The metal hook from the boarder’s belt flashed in the dull moonlight. The boy watched the boarder fasten the hook onto the chimney ledge. Then, as the moon shone brightly from an opening in the cloudy sky, the boy could see the boarder slowly descending into the chimney. As the boarder’s head disappeared, the boy moved quickly across the roofs. He came up to the chimney tied round with the boarder’s rope. He sat down and listened.
The boarder’s grunts came up the chimney as he lowered himself down the rope. The boy knew what the boarder planned to do. He was looking for an old open fireplace. He could enter a store, rob it, and return up the chimney by rope. There would be no chance of a fire burning on such a hot summer’s night.
The boarder’s grunts disgusted the boy. Now that he knew the boarder’s secret, he hated him even more. He eyed the rope twisted around the chimney. The knot was directly in front of him.
The boy touched the knot. It wasn’t a very good one. He began to undo the loose end, thinking how stupid the boarder was. He began to pick at the knot more, thinking of how the boarder looked at his mother. He began to tug the loose end of the rope through the final tie, thinking of how the boarder’s room used to be his. The knot came undone and the rope started to slip around the chimney. Then, suddenly, it disappeared down through the top. Seconds later, the boy heard a startled cry come from the chimney, followed by a dull thud.
The boy sat crouched near the roof. He knew the boarder had fallen. It sounded as though he had landed on the sealed bottom of the chimney. The boy wondered if the boarder was dead.
But then he heard the boarder’s voice, grunting with effort. He listened to the voice for a long time as the boarder desperately tried to climb back up the chimney. He listened until the boarder’s voice took on the mad sound of panic.
Then he ran away. He ran across the store roofs, across the house roofs, jumping from one to another. He reached the roof of his own house and swung himself down the pipe onto the small balcony. Quietly, he slipped through the window and shut it. In the still darkness he dropped his clothes on the floor and stole into bed.
