The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

Hans swore he hadn’t done it, hadn’t seen Mary Lou for weeks. There were people who testified in his behalf said he couldn’t have done it for one thing he didn’t have his brother’s car any longer and he’d been working all that time. Working hard out in the fields – couldn’t have slipped away long enough to do what police were saying he’d done. And Hans said over and over he was innocent. Sure he was innocent. Son of a bitch ought to be hanged my father said, everybody knew Hans was the one unless it was a derelict or a fisherman – fishermen often drove out to Elk Creek to fish for black bass, built fires on the creek bank and left messes behind – sometimes prowled around the Minton house too looking for things to steal. The police had records of automobile license plates belonging to some of these men, they questioned them but nothing came of it. Then there was that crazy man, that old hermit living in a tar-paper shanty near the Shaheen dump that everybody’d said ought to have been committed to the state hospital years ago. But everybody knew really it was Hans and Hans got out as quick as he could, just disappeared and not even his family knew where unless they were lying which probably they were though they claimed not.

Mother rocked me in her arms crying, the two of us crying, she told me that Mary Lou was happy now, Mary Lou was in Heaven now, Jesus Christ had taken her to live with Him and I knew that didn’t I? I wanted to laugh but I didn’t laugh. Mary Lou shouldn’t have gone with boys, not a nasty boy like Hans, Mother said, she shouldn’t have been sneaking around the way she did – I knew that didn’t I? Mother’s words filled my head flooding my head so there was no danger of laughing.

Jesus loves you too you know that don’t you Melissa? Mother asked hugging me. I told her yes. I didn’t laugh because I was crying.

They wouldn’t let me go to the funeral, said it would scare me too much. Even though the casket was closed.

It’s said that when you’re older you remember things that happened a long time ago better than you remember things that have just happened and I have found that to be so.

For instance I can’t remember when I bought this notebook at Woolworth’s whether it was last week or last month or just a few days ago. I can’t remember why I started writing in it, what purpose I told myself. But I remember Mary Lou stooping to say those words in my ear and I remember when Mary Lou’s mother came over to ask us at suppertime a few days later if I had seen Mary Lou that day – I remember the very food on my plate, the mashed potatoes in a dry little mound. I remember hearing Mary Lou call my name standing out in the driveway cupping her hands to her mouth the way Mother hated her to do, it was white trash behavior.

“’Lissa!” Mary Lou would call, and I’d call back, “Okay, I’m coming!” Once upon a time.

Video Nasty

Philip Pullman

Location:  Oxford, England.

Time:  November, 1994.

Eyewitness Description:  “David looked at the strange boy. His eyes were wide and fixed intently on the screen, and bis lips were moving unconsciously with the words. David felt queer. He knew now very strongly that he didn’t want to watch the film at all . . .”

Author:  Philip Pullman (1946–) is the author of His Dark Materials (1995–2000), the biggest-selling and most controversial trilogy of modern times in which he has challenged Christian faith and attacked the constraints of dogmatism. Born in Norwich, but educated at Harlech and Exeter College, Oxford, Pullman says that he started telling stories as soon as he knew what they were and formed a lifelong fascination with the supernatural. He recalled recently, “I used to enjoy frightening myself and my friends with the tales I read and I liked making up stories about the tree in the woods we used to call the Hanging Tree. My friends and I would creep past it in the dark and shiver as we looked at the bare, sinister outline against the sky. I still enjoy ghost stories, even though I don’t think I believe in ghosts any more.” Pullman began writing while he was working as a teacher, but the popularity of his children’s titles such as Count Karlstein (1982), Frankenstein (1990) and the Sally Lockhart series of modern “penny dreadfuls”, followed by the phenomenal acclaim for his trilogy, has enabled him to devote himself entirely to the art of storytelling. “Video Nasty” is one of his few short stories, contemporary, unsettling and, as the title indicates, dealing with something very unpleasant.