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The October Country: Oct. 25th: “The Boar Hunt” by Jose Vasconcelos

In celebration of the month of October, I’ll be sharing 31 of my favorite spooky, eerie and creepy stories, one per day. The stories will range over an array of genres: horror, suspense, science fiction, mysteries and dark fantasy.

The October Country

…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…

— Ray Bradbury

October 25:

The Boar Hunt by Jose Vasconcelos

Found In:

The Realm of Fiction: 61 Stories (edited by James Hall)

Opening Line:

“We were four companions, and we went by the names of our respective nationalities: the Colombian, the Peruvian, the Mexican; the fourth, a native of Ecuador, was called Quito for short.”

Few readers, at least in America, are likely to have heard of Jose Vasconcelos today, which is a pity. He was a fine writer, as The Boar Hunt shows. It is possible he is better remembered in his home country Mexico, where he was also a professor and statesman (he even ran for president in 1929).

The Boar Hunt is the very first piece of fiction I read in high school. It is, I think, notable that it left such an impression that I never forgot it, though I barely remember any of the other short stories I read at the time. All the more remarkable, given that the story is a mere five pages.

I recall distinctly closing my English textbook at the end of the story and thinking: holy shit, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore. There are few stories as effective at drawing the line between the kid-lit you read in middle school and the adult-lit you’re going to read in high school and beyond.

The Boar Hunt begins with a trip. Four friends venturing through the Andean wilds in search of good game to shoot.

“We came to be tireless wanderers and excellent marksmen. Whenever we climbed a hill and gazed at the imposing range of mountains in the interior, its attractiveness stirred us and we wanted to climb it. What attracted us more was the trans-Andean region: fertile plateaus extending on the other side of the range in the direction of the Atlantic toward the immense land of Brazil.”

Their journey takes them up the Maranon River, where they are told they will find immense herds of wild boar: easy killing as long as the herds are scattered and grazing. The four companions make landfall upriver and venture into the interior, where they make camp as night falls. They hang their hammocks high in the trees, so as not to sleep on the ground.

In the morning, before they embark again, they hear a sound crashing through the jungle. Waiting in their hammocks, the four companions watch as a herd of wild boar stream through the trees.

“Black, agile boars quickly appeared from all directions. We welcomed them with shouts of joy and well-aimed shots. Some fell immediately, giving comical snorts, but many more came out of the jungle. We shot again, spending all the cartridges in the magazine. Then we stopped to reload. Finding ourselves safe in the height of our hammocks, we continued after a pause.”

Easy pickings. For hours the hunters shoot at will, delighted with the simplicity of the killing, as well the apparently unending flow of game.

But the day wears on, and a realization slowly grows in their minds:

“At 4:00 PM we noticed an alarming shortage of our ammunition. We had been well supplied and had shot at will. Though the slaughter was gratifying, the boars must have numbered, as we had been informed previously, several thousands, because their hordes didn’t diminish. On the contrary, they gathered directly beneath our hammocks in increasing groups. They slashed furiously at the trunk of the tree which held the four points of the hammocks.”

Bad news, boys and girls. The four companions determine to hold their ammunition and wait out the herd. Surely it must pass. Day dies out into night, and the hunters fall into uneasy sleep. In the morning, they are certain the boar will have moved on.

But dawn breaks…and the herd remains.

In fact, the boars have been busy in the dark.

“The boars were painstakingly continuing the work which they had engaged in throughout the entire night. Guided by some extraordinary instinct, with their tusks they were digging out the ground underneath the tree from which our hammocks hung; they gnawed the roots and continued to undermine them like large, industrious rats.”

Our narrator is able to make a leap from his own hammock to a nearby tree branch, and from one tree to another after that. But his companions are not so lucky. The boars bring down the tree, and they collapse from their hammocks into the herd.

Our narrator waits far away at the banks of the river, and returns when the herd has moved on, hoping that one of his friends somehow survived. But of course, they did not. All three were eaten by the boars.

Not exactly a pleasant ending. Vasconcelos weaves a tight, terrifying story not all that dissimilar in theme from a tale reviewed earlier this month: Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game. Here, however, the danger is nature itself, which Vasconcelos is particularly good at describing and turning from an innocent backdrop into a vicious foe.

Just the right kind of story for a fourteen-year-old.

The October Country: Oct. 24th: “When the Clock Strikes” by Tanith Lee

In celebration of the month of October, I’ll be sharing 31 of my favorite spooky, eerie and creepy stories, one per day. The stories will range over an array of genres: horror, suspense, science fiction, mysteries and dark fantasy.

The October Country

…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…

— Ray Bradbury

October 24:

When the Clock Strikes by Tanith Lee

Found In:

Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural (edited by Marvin Kaye)

Opening Line:

“Yes, the great ballroom is filled only with dust now.”

There’s something about retellings of fairy tales. So many of us grew up on the Disney rendition only, and getting a different (especially a darker) view is a distinct pleasure. I think for man Americans, perhaps more than in other countries, the first introduction to the work of the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Anderson is a real eye-opener.

But this dark little gem is quite a few shades blacker than even those fabled collectors of unpleasant folk tales.

Lee begins with a description of a castle and a ballroom, some two hundred years after the decline of the great city in which they reside. This once-thriving city was, in years past, overseen by a grand Duke, who it was rumored had attained his power and wealth by stealthily murdering all who stood before him and the throne.

“He had accomplished the task slyly, hiring assassins talented with poisons and daggers. but rumor also declared that the Duke had not been sufficiently thorough. For though he had meant to rid himself of all that rival house, a single descendant remained, so obscure he had not traced her–for it was a woman.”

Unfortunately for the Duke, not just any woman. No, this gal was a Satan-worshiping witch. And a clever witch at that. She practiced her dark arts carefully, and she hid herself well, marrying a rather dimwitted but successful merchant. Together, they had a child, which the woman raised to follow in her footsteps.

For fourteen years, the merchant never suspects a thing. But, as was bound to happen sooner or later, one night he comes home and stumbled upon his wife and daughter spinning some spooky spells up in the high tower of the house. Like any decent husband, he immediately runs for the authorities and comes back with a torch-hoisting mob.

“Listen to me, my daughter,” she cried, “and listen carefully, for the minutes are short. If you do as I tell you, you can escape their wrath and only I need die. And if you live I am satisfied, for you can carry on my labor after me. My vengeance I shall leave you, and my witchcraft to exact it by.”

Which is more or less how it goes. The wife stabs herself in the heart, and the girl pretends to have been in a trance. She is readily believed, and ever afterward, she pretends to be in penance for her transgression (trance or not). She robes herself in rags and stumbles throughout the streets of town year after year like a beggar, wiping ash and grime all over herself to mask her beauty. And slowly, the city forgets about her.

The merchant remarries. Enter step-mother and step-sisters. Who, unlike the Disney version you remember so well, are kind and decent and try their damnedest to get their new step-sister to stop rolling around in the streets and put on some nice clothes.

Meanwhile, back at the castle, the Duke bites the dust. Not a natural death.

“Then, one night, the Duke screamed out in his bed. Servants came running with candles. The Duke moaned that a sword was transfixing his heart, an inch at a time. The prince hurried into the chamber, but in that instant the Duke spasmed horribly and died. No mark was on his body. There had never been a mark to show what ailed him.”

Two guesses, but you’ll only need one.

About that prince, though.

“The prince was nineteen, able, intelligent, and of noble bearing. He was of that rather swarthy type of looks one finds here in the north, but tall and slim and clear-eyed. There is an ancient square where you may see a statue of him, but much eroded by two centuries, and the elements. After the city was sacked, no care was lavished upon it.”

The prince mourns his fathers death, while the young witch who engineered the Duke’s death through Black Magic continues to plot her revenge. For she is not satisfied with only the death of the Duke.

The prince’s name day comes round, and he determines to hold a grand royal ball. All the fine ladies from the realm will be invited. I imagine you’ve heard this part of the story before, so you know how it goes.

All the ladies come. Including the young witch, who pretends to have no interest, but, after her step-sisters have left the house, conjures some black bibbity-bobbity-boo and makes herself up as the hottest chick in town. She attends the ball, and lo and behold, the prince is enamored with her and only her.

But as the clock strikes the final tones of the evening, she reveals her true self:

“At the eighth and the ninth strokes, the strength of the malediction seemed to curdle his blood. He shivered and his brain writhed. At the tenth stroke, he saw a change in the loveliness before him. She grew thinner, taller. At the eleventh stroke, he beheld a thing in a ragged black cowl and robe. It grinned at him. It was all grin below a triangle of sockets of nose and eyes. At the twelfth stroke, the prince saw Death and knew him.”

And then–poof–the young witch vanishes, leaving behind (you guessed it) a single glass slipper.

The prince, obsessed now in spite of his vision of death, roams the countryside forcing every woman in the land to try on the glass slipper. Of course, it fits no one. And in his obsession, he fails to properly manage his kingdom, which is always a poor choice. For his betrayers eventually catch up to him, setting a trap and murdering him on the road.

And the witch’s vengeance is complete.

Cue Disney music. Curtain.

Finis.

The October Country: Oct. 23rd: “The Storm” by McKnight Malmar

In celebration of the month of October, I’ll be sharing 31 of my favorite spooky, eerie and creepy stories, one per day. The stories will range over an array of genres: horror, suspense, science fiction, mysteries and dark fantasy.

The October Country

…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…

— Ray Bradbury

October 23:

The Storm by McKnight Malmar

Found In:

Story and Sense (edited by Laurence Perrine)

Opening Line:

“She inserted her key in the lock and turned the knob.”

The Storm is a little known tale by a little known writer. Lord only knows where Mr. Perrine dug it up to include in his seminal Story and Sense, but good for him, because it’s a damn fine piece of work.

The story opens with a young woman arriving home before her husband. A storm rages outside their empty home. The wife has been visiting her sister and come home early. Her husband, Ben, is on his way from work, unaware that his wife left her sister’s early.

Not much of a setup, to be honest. This is a very simple story, at least on the surface. But what Malmar makes of this quiet, dark, empty house and the raging storm outside, where she takes this story and how she builds tension one paragraph at a time, is truly a wonder to behold.

“The wind hammered at the door and the windows, and the air was full of the sound of water, racing in the gutters, pouring from the leaders, thudding on the roof. Listening, she wished for Ben almost feverishly. She never had felt so alone.”

The wife’s unease builds when she catches a glimpse of something in the window.

“She froze there, not breathing, still half-bent toward the cold fireplace, her hand still extended. The glimmer of white at the window behind the sheeting blur of rain had been–she was sure of it–a human face. There had been eyes. She was certain there had been eyes staring at her.”

Half-frightened, half-certain that she is only imagining things, the wife attempts to call her husband, but the storm has knocked out the phone lines. She decides to make herself as comfortable as possible and wait out her fear. She’ll build a fire and wait for Ben. There was no face in the window. She is sure of it.

She heads to the cellar to get firewood. The outer door to the cellar has come unlatched and swung open in the storm, rain pelting inside.

“Yet the open door increased her panic. It seemed to argue the presence of something less impersonal than the gale. It took her a long minute to nerve herself to go down the steps and reach out into the darkness for the doorknob.”

The door bolted and shut, the wife begins to wonder just how the door came to be open in the first place. But she pushes out those dark thoughts and focuses on the firewood. As she is gathering wood, though, she spots something glimmering in the corner of her eye. The spark of light comes from an open trunk in the cellar.

A trunk she’s certain she’d closed tight.

She investigates the trunk. Flings it open wide. And sees what’s inside.

“For a long moment she stood looking down into the trunk, while each detail of its contents imprinted itself on her brain like an image on film. Each tiny detail was indelibly clear and never to be forgotten.”

Horrified, she runs back upstairs, locks the cellar door, and puts a chair under the handle. There was a dead woman’s body inside the trunk.

“She had not seen the face; the head had been tucked down into the hollow of the shoulder, and a shower of fair hair had fallen over it…One hand had rested near the edge of the trunk, and on its third finger there had been a man’s ring…”

Thoroughly terrified now, the wife waits in fear until Ben finally arrives home. He is soaked through the bone, and after changing clothes he comforts her and tells her he is certain she saw no such thing in the cellar. Why doesn’t she make some coffee, and he’ll check things out. He changes. She makes coffee.

By now, she’s feeling silly. Certain her imagination has simply run away from her, she knows Ben won’t find anything at all in the cellar.

Ben descends into the cellar. Pops open the trunk.

He said, “There’s nothing here but a couple of bundles. Come take a look.”

She comes down into the cellar, relief washing over her. She peers into the trunk. It’s empty aside from some packages she herself had placed there long before.

She is almost convinced, until at the last moment she notices the ring her husband is wearing: the same ring that was on the finger of the dead woman. At the story’s close, the wife flees the house and runs into the shelter of the storm.

There is a good deal of standard horror cliches woven throughout The Storm: the dark night, the storm itself, the face in the window, the dead phone line, the dead body. What Malmar pulls off so skillfully, though, is an intelligent, literary take on these same old standards, the way a talented young vocalist can breathe new life into a classic song.

Furthermore, she undermines the stock ending by leaving the reader wavering about the wife’s mental stability. Is everything the wife saw real? Or was she imagining it? Was there a body? Is Ben a murderer? Or is the wife crazy? Malmar presents the situation and characters is such a way that we are not really sure of anything.

This is a very carefully written story well worth reading and studying for its sharp execution and craft.