The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

Plugg’s ample stomach. With his other hand he took a firm grip of the magnate’s moustache and began to heave.

“When you sorta remember about the safe,” he said, “give three toots on your nose.”

Who would blame Mr Plugg? Gathering together his remaining breath, he let out a first toot which would have done honour to a Thames tug. He was filling up with air for a second one when suddenly the three gangsters sprang round as if stung. Painfully he turned his head, to see a strange figure standing by the bookshelves. (You’ve got it first guess. It was.)

Tristram hadn’t noticed the others. He was poring over a set of Spenser when Redgat slid back his trigger, and it was not until a heavy .45 bullet tore the book from his hand that he realized that something was happening. A stream of lead was hurtling through him and turning a priceless edition of Boccaccio to pulp, but he felt nothing. He was filled only with resentment at such ill-mannered interruption.

None of the gangsters had ever seen a man take fifty bullets in the chest and remain perpendicular. The sight unnerved them. Redgat continued to fire as accurately as before, but the other three stood irresolute.

Before Bolloni could dodge him Tristram had picked up what was left of The Faery Queen and brought it down with terrific force on his head, dropping him like a skittle. Boiling with rage, Tristram grabbed up The Anatomy of Melancholy and set about Toledo and the Bug. One of them discharged the shotgun full in his face, but not with any great hope – Gee! a ritzy guy in fancy-dress who only got fresher after a whole drum of slugs!

It was soon over. Redgat clung to his beloved machine-gun to the end, unable to believe that a second drum wouldn’t take effect. But he, too, went down to a thundering crack on the jaw from an illustrated Apocrypha . . .

Tristram began to feel very odd. For a moment he surveyed the scene, not quite comprehending what it all meant. Mrs Plugg had swooned, which merely caused the wastepaper-basket on her head to drop from the vertical to the horizontal. Her son was clearly about to be sick. Julius Plugg, himself supine but undaunted, was making wild signals with his famous eyebrows to be released.

Then, something in his nebulous inside going queerly click, Tristram realized what was happening. At last he had been a hero. At last he was free. The hail of bullets had smashed up not only Boccaccio but his father’s curse . . .

Debating, with the exquisite detachment of the poet, whether the Pluggs would be free before the gangsters recovered, he faded imperceptibly and left them to it.

Who or What Was It?

Kingsley Amis

Location:  Fareham, Hertfordshire.

Time:  August, 1971.

Eyewitness Description:  “I was very alarmed. Because the Green Man wasn’t only the name of the pub in my book; it was also the name of a frightening creature, a sort of solid ghost conjured up out of tree branches and leaves and so on . . .”

Author:  Sir Kingsley Amis (1922–95) was born in Norwood, South London and educated at Norbury College, whose only other famous pupil, he liked to say, was Derek Bentley, who was hung for the murder of a policeman. In 1954, Amis wrote Lucky Jim, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and has since proved to be one of the great comic creations of 20th century fiction. In subsequent works, he has proved to be a master of invective and comedy as well as revealing his interest in the supernatural in several short stories and the chilling novel, The Green Man (1969) described by The Times as “an accomplished ghost story in the M. R. James style, under appreciated when it first came out, but winning some belated admiration when it became a television serial in 1990.” A clubbable, generous-hearted, though often irascible man, Amis created a furore when he published this story in Playboy in 1972. It was written in its original form as a radio broadcast intended to make listeners believe it was a factual account. The whole idea backfired, however, when – like Machen before him – he found people, including close friends, believing it was true. Indeed, despite the fact he repeatedly stated it was “a lying narrative, fiction disguised as fact,” this misapprehension, like the theme of the story, haunted Amis for the rest of his life.

I want to tell you about a very odd experience I had a few months ago, not so as to entertain you, but because I think it raises some very basic questions about, you know, what life is all about and to what extent we run our own lives. Rather worrying questions. Anyway, what happened was this.

My wife and I had been staying the weekend with her uncle and aunt in Westmorland, near a place called Milnethorpe. Both of us, Jane and I that is, had things to do in London on the Monday morning, and it’s a long drive from up there down to Barnet, where we live, even though a good half of it is on the M6. So I said, Look, don’t let’s break our necks trying to get home in the light (this was in August), let’s take it easy and stop somewhere for dinner and reckon to get home about half-past ten or eleven. Jane said okay.

So we left Milnethorpe in the middle of the afternoon, took things fairly easily, and landed up about half-past seven or a quarter to eight at the . . . the place we’d picked out of one of the food guides before we started. I won’t tell you the name of the place, because the people who run it wouldn’t thank me if I did. Please don’t go looking for it. I’d advise you not to.

Anyway, we parked the car in the yard and went inside. It was a nice-looking sort of place, pretty old, built a good time ago I mean, done up in a sensible sort of way, no muzak and no bloody silly blacked-out lighting, but no olde-worlde nonsense either.

Well, I got us both a drink in the bar and went off to see about a table for dinner. I soon found the right chap, and he said, Fine, table for two in half an hour, certainly sir, are you in the bar, I’ll get someone to bring you the menu in a few minutes. Pleasant sort of chap, a bit young for the job.

I was just going off when a sort of paunchy business type came in and said something about, Mr Arlington not in tonight? and the young fellow said No sir, he’s taken the evening off. All right, never mind.

Well, I’ll tell you why in a minute, but I turned back to the young fellow, said Excuse me, but is your name Palmer? and he said Yes sir, and I said, Not David Palmer by any chance? and he said No sir, actually the name’s George. I said, or rather burbled, A friend of mine was telling me about this place, said he’d stayed here, liked it very much, mentioned you, anyway I got half the name right, and Mr Arlington is the proprietor, isn’t he? That’s correct, sir. See you later and all that.

I went straight back to the bar, went up to the barman and said, Fred? and he said Yes sir. I said, Fred Soames? and he said, Fred Browning, sir. I just said, Wrong Fred, not very polite, but it was all I could think of. I went over to where my wife was sitting and I’d hardly sat down before she asked, What’s the matter?

What was the matter calls for a bit of explanation. In 1969 I published a novel called The Green Man, which was not only the title of the book but also the name of a sort of classy pub, or inn, where most of the action took place, very much the kind of establishment we were in that evening.

Now the landlord of the Green Man was called Allington, and his deputy was called David Palmer, and the barman was called Fred Soames. Allington is a very uncommon name – I wanted that for reasons nothing to do with this story. The other two aren’t, but to have got Palmer and Fred right, so to speak, as well as Allington was a thumping great coincidence, staggering in fact. But I wasn’t just staggered, I was very alarmed. Because the Green Man wasn’t only the name of the pub in my book; it was also the name of a frightening creature, a sort of solid ghost conjured up out of tree-branches and leaves and so on that very nearly kills Allington and his young daughter. I didn’t want to find I was right about that, too.

Jane was very sensible, as always. She said stranger coincidences had happened and still been just coincidences, and mightn’t I have come across an innkeeper called Allington somewhere, half forgotten about it and brought it up out of my unconscious mind when I was looking for a name for an innkeeper to put in the book, and now the real Allington’s moved from wherever I’d seen him before to this place. And Palmer and Fred really are very common names. And I’d got the name of the pub wrong. I’m still not telling you what it’s called, but one of the