Mrs. Rahlo's Closet and Other Mad Tales Read online

  “Mrs. Rahlo’s Closet” © 1988 by R. E. Klein. Originally published in Bringing Down the Moon.

  “The Tower in the Jungle” © 1988 by R. E. Klein. Originally published in Weirdbook.

  “The Apprenticeship of Alan Patch” © 1986 by R. E. Klein. Originally published in Space and Time.

  MRS. RAHLO’S CLOSET AND OTHER MAD TALES. Copyright © 2001 by R. E. Klein. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  For information address Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017.

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-2513-9

  First eBook Edition: July 2001

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  Contents

  Mrs. Rahlo’s Closet

  Scourge of Fire

  The Tower in the Jungle

  Edna

  The Apprenticeship of Alan Patch

  Harla

  Cowpants

  The Fish in Salmon Lake

  The Verms

  We Three and the Stars

  Ashes Fall on Timberlake

  To my parents, Harold and Rosalie Klein and to my Grandma Goldie

  Mrs. Rahlo’s Closet

  I was poor and about to begin graduate school in an unfamiliar city. Having completed four years of college in my hometown in the West, I won a fellowship to the Hartley Medical School in New England—enough for tuition and textbooks, with very little left over. I indulged in the luxury of plane fare across the continent; henceforth, to complete my medical studies, I would have to live as economically as possible.

  It was an early afternoon in late September when I arrived. I headed immediately for the college and over to the information center to ask about on-campus lodgings; nothing was available. Next I consulted a list of students seeking roommates. I called a few numbers, but the small amount I could afford for my monthly share of the rent was insufficient.

  Armed with the classified section of a local newspaper, I tried various neighborhoods and examined many lodgings, but I could afford none of them. I wasted half a day in pointless searching, till one of the landlords suggested I visit the older district. I would find cheap rooms there, he told me, though the renters didn’t advertise in the papers. So I took the streetcar and went to Old Town.

  Old Town may once have been a prosperous seaport, but now all was changed. As the streetcar turned eastward, I could glimpse the brown flats of a silted harbor, hideous in its desolation. The ships had long ago departed, the water turned to reeking mud; the stench assailed me even from a distance. Only the lonely, shrieking gulls inhabited the putrescent wastes.

  The streetcar took a sharp turn inland. The squalid shops and dismal warehouses of the commercial district gave way to rolling hills and broad, empty fields. Then we entered the residential section. I left the streetcar and walked many blocks.

  Here I found an abundance of richness and decay. Many of the houses I saw were mansions, multistoried structures elaborately gabled and cupolaed: opulent symbols of baroque fancy or neoclassical elegance once, but neglected now, cracked and stained by time. The colossal wooden piles looked empty and sepulchral, rotting in places, with broken windows; a few collapsed roofs completed the picture of abandonment. Enormous shade trees masked the houses, along with giant mounds of dusty, unpruned bushes.

  I walked down many narrow streets winding among a profusion of foliage. Deliverance Lane, Evangelical Way, Comber’s Alley. Queer names. Still, by streetcar I was only twenty minutes or so from campus, and judging from the appearance and age of these buildings, a room might just be affordable.

  Eventually I came to Grantham Path, a narrow, twisty street full of tottering old ruins whose paint might have begun peeling at the time of the witch trials. I stopped before a house half-hidden in foliage. Dry, cordlike vines twisted over all its walls and through the chinks in its rotten timbers. The September sun flashed red diamonds off the house’s latticed panes. It was now early evening.

  As a boy I often explored the stretches of shabby tenements in downtown Los Angeles. One late afternoon as I wandered down Temple Street, the setting sun at my back threw a great plate of light at the dingy buildings in front of me. Suddenly brilliant, the hovels glowed with glory, transfigured to palaces till the splendor grew too dazzling for the eyes. Then the sun sank, and the vision ended.

  Some such remembrance I had on Grantham Path in Old Town, some such correlation of disease and glory. I continued on, and saw the sign.

  It was a small placard placed in an upper window of the most dilapidated mansion I had seen so far—four stories of weathered boards and grimy windows buried in clusters of foliage. Unlike the surrounding houses, which fronted the sidewalk, this building stood in isolation behind a garden of dead weeds, guarded by a tottering fence of wood and wire. Beyond the fence a footpath ran to a veranda.

  The sign said ROOM FOR RENT. I opened the splintered gate and navigated the weedy path to the house.

  Stepping onto the veranda, I found it solid enough but empty: no worn wicker lounge chairs, no split-bottomed settees. Just dust and odor.

  Odor. Whiffs of it haunted the veranda. I knocked on the ornately carved door, waited a minute, and knocked again, harder. I fancied I heard sounds inside and knocked a third time. The door glided silently open.

  I was shocked at first by the person who appeared. She was a very tall, very massive, and ancient woman, her skin pale and wrinkled, her white hair wild and profuse. Most striking were the eyes: huge, black, protuberant, they seemed to burst from the surrounding pallor.

  “Hello,” I stammered. “I’m William Ashley, a student at Hartley. I saw your sign.” As I spoke, she seemed to awaken from a long dream.

  “My sign,” she said in a rasping voice. “You saw my sign. Come in.”

  She made way for me, and I stepped into musty darkness. There was that old-house smell, compounded of mold and mildew and rotting timber and improper ventilation, a kind of dry rot of the air.

  “I’m Mrs. Rahlo,” she began hoarsely. “The room is upstairs.”

  My first impression of repulsion was mitigated by her civility. I felt ashamed of my initial reaction to her.

  As my eyes grew used to the dark, I could see well enough to follow her up a broad, thinly carpeted stairway. We came to a landing.

  “It is the first door on the left,” she rasped. We entered.

  She opened the curtains and windows, admitting a flood of late-afternoon sunlight into two small adjoining rooms: one a sitting room, the other a bedroom. The sitting room contained an armchair, a table, and a desk; the bedroom, an iron bed, a chair, a chest of drawers, and a large antique clothespress. The windows faced the back of the house and looked out upon a seemingly limitless expanse of overgrown fields, beyond which were hills.

  “I’ll show you the bath.” Her voice had lost its harshness; she spoke softly and gently. “It is just down the hall.” This was, of course, a later addition of perhaps the last century, some spare room having been fitted up with bathroom fixtures. But the plumbing worked.

  “How much,” I asked, when we were back in the sitting room, “is the rent?”

  She considered a moment, then named a ridiculously low sum.

  “I’ll take it,” I said. “I can move in right away. I have a few suitcases waiting down at the college. I can pay you now.”

  She smiled. “Your rent includes meals.”

  I stammered a bit, wanting to be off and get my things before she changed her mind. Sh
e smiled again.

  “There is one thing,” she said, pointing to a door I hadn’t noticed. “That closet in your bedroom, you are not to use it; it is not part of your apartment. I use it to store things. It is locked. Please do not try to open it.”

  Assuring her I would do no such thing, I left to get my luggage.

  • • •

  It took her a long time to answer my knock, but she came eventually, opened the door, and presented me with my key. I started again at the wrinkled white face and bulging eyes—I couldn’t help myself—but she affected not to notice and even offered to help me carry my suitcases upstairs. Despite a repellent appearance, she seemed a pleasant old lady.

  She was a thoughtful hostess. When I entered my rooms to dispose of my luggage, I found by my bedside an antique bowl of dark crimson flowers.

  She gave me dinner, too, though I had to suppress a childish revulsion to her touching my food. We sat in a huge dining room, scantily furnished, meagerly lit by an unshaded bulb screwed into a makeshift fixture.

  A kind of fish comprised the major course, bland and unfamiliar to me, and we drank a sweet red wine. She was cordial, even friendly, but I did not like the way she smacked her gums and seemed to play with her food. The wine, too, she purled in her mouth, swishing it around, almost gargling.

  While we ate, I had the opportunity to observe her more closely: the goggle eyes, the chalky skin, the frayed black dressing gown. Whenever our eyes met, I instinctively looked away.

  “Does anyone else live here?” I asked after dinner.

  “No one,” she said. She took my hand. “That is why I am so happy to have such a nice young man here.” I was surprised at her strength; her hand had caught mine unawares, and her grip hurt.

  We drank a great deal more of that red wine. I could not tell whether it had any effect on her, but I was beginning to feel disoriented. I remember she asked questions about my family and background. I tried to answer coherently. Eventually she surprised me by asking if I wouldn’t care to move into the parlor to watch television.

  The parlor was a vast, dark, dusty room immediately off the entrance hall. It was empty save for two straight-backed chairs flanking a squat wooden table supporting a black-metal device with an oval screen. This was a “homemade” television, she told me, built by a friend of hers who made them as a hobby. She gave me more wine and switched the machine on. The screen flashed to a white blur.

  The reception was poor, or else I had drunk so much that my senses were awry, as I could not easily distinguish picture or sound. But I could not leave off drinking. While in the throat the wine satisfied intensely; but immediately after, it left a thirst that burned for more.

  We watched some sort of program, I think; but I really could not be sure what it was. Only gradually did I become aware that my hostess was speaking, that she had been speaking for some time. “Will you take him?” she asked. “Will you take him?” She seemed to speak not to me but to the eerie phosphorescence of the screen.

  • • •

  I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. But I awoke in the night. Great whiffs of that dry-rot odor assailed my nostrils. Was it this that awakened me? No. It was the scraping sound at the foot of my bed. I sat up. Could it be a rat? Pressure on my feet. Something had jumped onto the bed. Kicking out, I grabbed for the bedside lamp and switched it on.

  Something red—the size of a cat—sprang with a flurry of legs to the floor.

  I leaped off the bed and whipped around to the foot. Nothing. But there was that scraping sound again, coming from under the bed. I crouched down to peer beneath the bed. Nothing there. Then I stood up. In the corner of the room, near the locked closet, a red oval shape nearly two feet wide was disappearing through the solid door.

  The whole thing was too uncanny. I started to throw on some clothes to leave the house—until I remembered the wine. I caught hold of myself and lay back down. Surely no rat, or anything else, could pass through a locked door. I laughed as I pulled up the covers.

  I had a poisonous nightmare, a revolting masque of frenzied men and desperate women hurling themselves into frantic debauchery. A child was in it, too, whimpering. Then something appalling happened which I could not remember. The dream ended in the cold luminous glow of the television in the parlor.

  • • •

  I awoke to sunshine streaming into my room. All the wine I’d drunk had left no aftermath. My head was clear as I surveyed the flowing fields outside my windows.

  It was Saturday, the end of summer; no school till a week from Monday. I had a week and over to settle in my new house. After I’d bathed and shaved, I went downstairs to find Mrs. Rahlo awaiting me with a plentiful, steaming breakfast.

  In the cheerful sunlight I laughed at the repulsion I had felt for her. Not only was Mrs. Rahlo not repellent, she seemed rather pleasant-looking.

  “Did you sleep well, dear?” she asked gently.

  “Well enough,” I said. I had all but forgotten the frightful dream I had had.

  “Sometimes it is difficult to sleep in an unfamiliar house.” She smiled and passed me my plate.

  The food—some kind of vegetable concoction—was abundant and hot, but, like the previous night’s meal, bland and tasteless.

  While I ate, she praised me for being such a well-mannered tenant.

  “Have you had many tenants?” I asked.

  “No, dear. The last was a middle-aged gentleman who came to study the old buildings. We were very happy until a telegram came and he had to go back to Boston. He left in such a hurry he didn’t have time to pack his things. He said he would send for them later. He never did.”

  Her face brightened. “I’ll bet his clothes would fit you. Why not try them on? They are just where he left them, in your room, in the big drawer at the bottom of the clothespress.” I had paid little attention to the clothespress; my meager clothing all fitted into the chest of drawers. I thanked her and promised to examine the clothes.

  Breakfast over, Mrs. Rahlo inquired how I should spend the day. I told her by exploring the neighborhood.

  “Oh dear,” she said with concern. “The streets around here are not—exciting, though there are some fine old trees.” Then she whispered, “I wouldn’t go close to any of the houses; many are empty and falling to pieces. You may injure yourself. Someone else might . . .” here she broke off. “You are my—tenant; I feel responsible for you, dear.”

  I promised to be careful.

  I threaded my way through the bright, crazy streets, past the drowsy houses, slumbering in morning sunlight. I met no one, though here and there I fancied I saw faded curtains move in upper-storied windows. Through the spaces between the crumbling houses I could see hills in the distance, one mound in particular. But every time I found a path I thought would lead me there, I was confronted by more tottering, ruinous houses, many of them with ROOM FOR RENT signs. Eventually I headed back.

  Mrs. Rahlo was gone but had left me a vast vegetarian lunch. I wondered what all those vegetables were. There was something like lettuce and something similar to squash. But the rest were pale leguminous things, totally new to me.

  After lunch I decided to explore the fields behind the house. Starting with the front yard, a series of mounds and craters covered by knee-high weeds, I gradually worked my way around to the side, skirting the line of tall, dead gladioli spiked along the narrow bed next to the house. Passing by a ventilation grate, I caught an updraft of the house odor.

  Suddenly I had the sensation of being watched. Were Mrs. Rahlo’s bulging eyes staring from some uncurtained window? The house smell seemed to pour out of the ventilation grate at my feet. Something scraped against the wire screen. I bent down and peered through the grate.

  Behind the rusty screen squatted something oval-shaped, with hinged appendages protruding from its body. I shouted, and it scurried off with a scraping sound into the black caverns beneath the ancient mansion.

  It was as weird as it was incon
gruous; though, after all, we weren’t far from the sea. Perhaps an inland channel flowed nearby. This is what I told myself as I stood sweating in the sunlight. For what I saw behind the ventilation screen was a monstrous crab.

  Old buildings are often infested with vermin, I assured myself as I continued alongside the house. Maybe the large crustacean helps to keep down rats and roaches. I had a mental picture of a crab devouring a roach and turned my thoughts to other matters.

  It was not until I walked the entire length of the house and entered the back grounds, that I realized the immense size of the building. The rear part had deteriorated much more than the front. Here and there great gaps rent the outer wall, and I peered into gutted, rubbish-filled rooms disfigured by cracked partitions and raw, splintered crossbeams. Glancing up, I could see that certain upper rooms had collapsed entirely—tons of rotted wood and shingle, supported by the lower, still-intact portions of the house.

  The back grounds stretched moundy and vast, mostly, I thought, like a succession of old empty lots running to weed. In places I could make out bits and byways of a onetime sanded path. But mostly there were white weeds, as tall or taller than I, great clusters of them. A huge, empty jungle lot, like the house and neighborhood, full of the mystery that breeds from sunlit squalor. I could find no trace of Mrs. Rahlo’s kitchen garden, if she had one.

  It was pleasant breaking my way through those weeds. At times I scaled some bare, hard-packed hummock that commanded a fair prospect. Other times I descended into tiny valleys from where I could no longer see the house. But the weeds in these places rustled, though there was no wind, and I thought of the monstrous crustacean beneath the house; perhaps others inhabited the weeds. I returned to the house, bathed, looked into a novel, and napped until dinnertime.

  For dinner we had more of the same vegetables I had for lunch. When I asked the names of these, Mrs. Rahlo smiled and shook her head, telling me she ate nothing but these vegetables, which she grew in a back garden, insisting that they were rare, choice, and exceedingly healthful. I nodded agreement; for, despite her sickly pallor, she did look remarkably healthy.