"The Fourth Call” by Ramsey Campbell. The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror: Evil Lives on in the Land! Edited by Stephen Jones (Skyhorse, 2021)

Never visit Leanbridge

I normally have a to-be-read list, though it's more often ignored than observed. My readerly "imp of the perverse" usually laughs and shrugs at such lists.

Example: two days into reading The Caller of the Black by Brian Lumley, I get distracted by Horror Delve blogger Matt Cowan's statement concerning balloting for best 2021 short story at the Boiled Bones Facebook group:

I sent mine in a few days back but just read a 2021 story yesterday that I like even more. It's "The Fourth Call" by Ramsey Campbell from The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror....

When Matt praises a story, my procedure is to pull off to the shoulder and read it immediately. 

"The Fourth Call" is a story about a modest family (one of several) terrorized hilariously by a bizarre and dangerous family, the Bundles.

Protagonist Mike is trapped over Christmas by bad weather in the village of Leanbridge. He has been packing-up the house of his Uncle Bill and Aunt Denise, where he and his parents used to spend the holiday:

....Christmases in Leanbridge—his father and Uncle Bill taking him for walks while Aunt Denise and his mother filled the house with aromas of Christmas dinner, the toys he would never unwrap until he'd tried to guess what they were, the board games everyone would play past his usual bedtime. Soon he took his reminiscences up to bed.

     He might have fallen asleep with them if he hadn't looked out of the window. The pale fields glimmered beneath the smouldering glow of the clouds, against which he was just able to glimpse the pallid hulk on the horizon. Now he remembered it was the Bundles' house. He'd often heard Mrs Bundle screeching at her husband and her sons, a sound that had grated in his ears even though it was shrivelled by distance. Unable to make out any words, he might almost have mistaken it for the furious cry of a bird.

Imitating bird calls was just the tip of the Bundle family's malevolent mummery. The more Michael asks about it while sharing a meal with the Darlingtons, old family friends, the more the alarming memories emerge.

     That Christmas was the first he and his parents had spent in Leanbridge—after that, each couple had played host in alternate years until he reached his teens—and he'd been six years old. After dinner he'd helped to wash up all the plates and cutlery, and was about to propose a Ludo tournament on the table they'd cleared when Aunt Denise replenished it with a solitary mince pie on a plate. "Who's that for?" Mike was eager to learn.

     "Our first visitor."

      "I don't think we know about that, do we?" Mike's father said.

     "You must know your twelve days of Christmas," Uncle Bill told his brother, who began to respond just as bluffly until they all heard a chirping outside the house.

     It must have been crossing the bridge. It sounded stridently determined and only intermittently melodious. As it approached it grew louder than Mike imagined any bird could sing. "Here he comes," Uncle Bill enthused, and his wife smiled so hard that it narrowed her eyes. The chirping resounded along the hall, and the caller rapped on the front door. "You let Bobby in, Michael," his aunt urged.

     As Mike opened the front door he was hoping to see not just a partridge or somebody dressed as one but a pear tree as well, and at first he was merely confused. Silhouetted against the streetlamp outside the gate was a rotund man who had gone to some trouble to render himself rounder. Padding thrust a crimson waistcoat forward from his jacket, which was as black as his capacious trousers. His hands were clasped behind his back, and his head was lowered, giving Mike the grotesque notion that the man had used some part of it to knock on the door. The visitor raised his head to reveal an unexpectedly thin sharp face, which he contorted to force the scrawny lips upwards until the pointed nose looked yet more beak-like. The lips parted a fraction, and the mimicry of birdsong shrilled between them. "Have you told him to come in, Michael?" Uncle Bill called.

     Mike did his best not to be daunted by the visitor, having deduced that the trills were made by a kind of device he'd seen street vendors demonstrating. "My uncle says come in," he said and backed along the hall.

     The padded man bobbed after him, chirping as he came, and slammed the front door with a backwards kick. Uncle Bill and Aunt Denise were beyond the table, which they indicated with outstretched hands and identical welcoming smiles. They began to laugh and applaud as their visitor hopped ponderously about the room, chirping with such force that it left all tunefulness behind. When he ducked to the table and picked up the mince pie with his teeth before throwing his head back to bolt down his prize, they clapped harder than ever, glancing at Mike's parents to make them join in. The man stuck out a fat tongue to capture crumbs around his mouth, and then he hopped so weightily into the hall that Mike felt the floorboards quiver. "Let him out, Michael," his aunt said.

     

The next night:

     They'd cleared the dining-table, and Mike was hoping this had made way for a board game until his aunt brought in a mince pie on a plate. "Expecting another visitor, are we?" his father said.

     "The next three nights." Aunt Denise continued sounding apologetic but determined while she said "You'll let him in, won't you, Michael? He won't do you any harm."

     Mike felt as if he was being used as some form of defence. "Who's he going to be?" he said, trying to feel eager.

     "It's Burky Bundle, Michael."

     Mike began to giggle at the name until he saw his aunt and uncle didn't want him to laugh too much. He could have fancied they were nervous on his behalf if not their own. Once he fell silent he found he was listening, as he realised they were. He thought his mother was about to speak when they heard a gobbling noise outside the house. "That's him," Aunt Denise said, following her husband to the far side of the table, where Mike could have thought they were taking refuge. The shrill fragmented practically liquid cry grew louder, to be interrupted by a peremptory rapping at the front door. "Do your duty, Michael," Uncle Bill said.

     Mike hurried to be done with the task. When he pulled the door wide he was confronted by a figure as thin as last night's visitor had been rotund. The man wore a black overcoat and black trousers that clung to his skinny legs, and he'd tugged the reddish hair on the crown of his head up to form a crest. Apart from this and holding his arms behind his back, he seemed to have made no attempt to resemble a bird until he lifted his head, revealing the sharp Bundle face, and contorted his features more like a beak. His stringy throat worked, and the gobble shrilled out of his mouth. "You have to say come in, Michael," Uncle Bill called.

The Bundles seem to be enacting four of the twelve days of Christmas in their own strange fashion, which none of their neighbors dare ignore.

In the present day, Michael goes for a winter walk to the Bundles farm before another visit to the Darlingtons.

     "I want to hear what Michael has to say," Jac. [Darlington] said, groping for her hand. "What do you think you've seen, Michael?"

     "Just footprints over there. I wonder if any of the Bundles are back."

     "Don't say that," Beryl said low but fiercely.

     "We told you once, they're long gone and good riddance."

     "Is someone living in their house?" When the old man gave a negative grunt Mike said "Squatters, maybe?"

     "God help any that there are," Beryl said. "They'll not last long."

     Mike wasn't sure if she had opposition from the villagers in mind. He saw Jack's eyes tighten, and tried to improve the mood. "One thing I never knew," he said. "What were their real names?"

     Jack's eyes wavered open, though not much. "Whose?"

     "Bobby and Burky and the rest of them."

     "Those were their names." With a stare like a warning Jack said "That's how deep they got into what they did."

     "At least they managed to keep their farm going as well."

     "As long as they did till they didn't," Beryl said. "Now can we please talk about something else? It looks like you'll be going home tomorrow."

As Michael prepares for bed on his final night in the house:

     He was brushing his teeth when he thought he heard a sound harsher than the whir of the electric motor. He switched off the brush and held his breath—ceased to breathe, at any rate. In a moment he heard the noise again, a sharp caw outside the house. He might have succeeded in believing it was only a nightbird if it hadn't come so close to pronouncing a syllable. The frosted window of the bathroom showed him nothing.

     As he crossed his old bedroom, leaving the light off to help him see outside if not to avoid drawing attention to himself, he felt no less reluctant than he had when he'd been sent to open the front door of the house.

     Four shapes were hopping or darting or floundering about the field beyond the stream. Against the muffled phosphorescence of the snow their outlines remained indistinct, but Mike had the impression they were somehow frayed. The figure that was blundering haphazardly about appeared to be behaving in that fashion for lack of a head. Though Mike would have preferred not to distinguish any more details, he pressed his face against the chill window, and at once all the figures turned towards him.

     They sped in their various ways to the bank of the stream and lifted their heads to him. Even the decapitated shape did, or at least produced from its collar all that it had to show. The most bloated of the figures seemed to have lost some of its stuffing like a soft doll that had burst open, and Mike could see that its companions were disintegrating just as much. All their faces looked incomplete, not just because of the dimness, but he saw the glint of tiny shrunken eyes. They gave him a sense that the night had taken on a kind of life.

     Mike was inching back from the window—he was hoping desperately that if he moved slowly enough, the watchers mightn't notice—when the figure closest to the bridge gave another raucous caw and darted to the gap in the hedge alongside the road. As the others hopped or lurched after her, Mike found he couldn't move. The clumsiest of them had concealed its withered remnant of a head again, while its equally fleshless companion's head was lolling wildly on a splintered neck. Mike saw the four advance across the bridge, and then they were out of sight. He could still hear the word their leader was cawing. He was able to move again, but as he struggled to think where to hide he heard the visitors reach the house.

It's a typically breathless and compelling Campbell moment: menace seen at a distance but drawing closer to the horrified observer over open country at night.

Jay

1 January 2022

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The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror: Evil Lives on in the Land! Edited by Stephen Jones (Skyhorse, 2021)