Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of
Author: Robert Bloch
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Short Stories; Fiction; Short Story Collection; Weird Fiction
Description: NIGHTMARES TURNED INSIDE OUT Contents: Introduction by Gahan Wilson The Tunnel of Love The Unspeakable Betrothal The Girl From Mars The Head Hunter The Weird Tailor Lucy Comes to Stay The Pin I Do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell Luck Is No Lady The Cure The Screaming People The Big Kick The Masterpiece Talent The Final Performance Life In Our Time Underground A Case Of The Stubborns The Head What You See Is What You Get Nina Author's Afterword
Publisher: Del Rey

NIGHTMARES
TURNED
INSIDE OUT

The Tunnel of Love

In the darkness of a romantic fun house, Marco had a rendezvous with a love who wanted more than kisses . . .

The Unspeakable Betrothal

A lot of things can happen at night, especially in dreams. But what happened to Avis Long was something you wouldn’t dare tell your best friend . . .

Final Performance

Jim Chatham wondered what a nice girl like Rosie was doing with an old has-been like Rudolph in a dump outside of Bakersfield. Unfortunately, he found out . . .

The Screaming People

The voice Steve heard in the darkness could have been only a bad dream. But it wasn’t. And he wasn’t the only one who’d heard it . . .

The Masterpiece

Every great artist has a secret—but for the old master who had created Girl with Flowers the secret was an insidious matter of life and death . . .

Life in Our Time

Harry’s time capsule meant nothing to his wife Jill, but then again neither did Harry—until time began running out . . .

Underground

It wasn’t easy to convince people that vampires really existed, but Count Barsack was an excellent actor. And an excellent spy. The trouble was, he began playing his role too well . . .

A Case of the Stubborns

When a crusty old man like Grandpa didn’t believe he was dead, it took more than medical science and a lot less than most people would think to convince him . . .

What You See Is What You Get

Charlie Randall got a real deal when he bought his instant picture camera—but once he started taking pictures, nobody else did . . .

AND MORE!

A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books

Copyright © 1979 by Robert Bloch

Introduction Copyright © 1979 by Gahan Wilson

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Ballantine Books of Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

ISBN 0-345-27996-4

Printed in Canada
First Edition: February 1979

Cover Art by Howard Koslow

This book is for

Johannes Gutenberg,
whose neat little
invention makes it
so much easier to
read

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“The Tunnel of Love,” copyright © 1948 by Fictioneers, Inc. (as “Hell Is My Legacy”), for New Detective Magazine, July 1948., Copyright renewed 1976 by Robert Bloch.

“The Unspeakable Betrothal,” copyright © 1949 by Avon Book Company for Avon Fantasy Reader #9. Copyright renewed 1977 by Robert Bloch.

“The Girl from Mars,” copyright © 1950 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. for Fantastic Adventures, March 1950. Copyright renewed 1978 by Robert Bloch.

“The Head Hunter,” copyright © 1950 by Popular Publications, Inc. (as “The Head Man”), for 15 Mystery Stories Magazine, June 1950. Copyright renewed 1978 by Robert Bloch.

“The Weird Tailor,” copyright © 1950 by Weird Tales for Weird Tales, July 1950. Copyright renewed 1978 by Robert Bloch.

“Lucy Comes to Stay,” copyright © 1952 by Weird Tales for Weird Tales, January 1952.

“The Pin,” copyright © 1953 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. for Amazing Stories, December 1953-January 1954.

“I Do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell,” copyright © 1955 by Fantasy House, Inc., for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1955.

“Luck Is No Lady,” copyright © 1957 by H.S.D. Publications for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, August 1957.

“The Cure,” copyright © 1957 by HMH Publishing Co. for Playboy, October 1957.

“The Screaming People,” copyright © 1959 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. for Fantastic, January 1959.

“The Big Kick,” copyright © 1959 by Greenleaf Publishing Co. for Rogue, July 1959.

“The Masterpiece,” copyright © 1960 by Greenleaf Publishing Co. for Rogue, January 1960.

“Talent,” copyright © 1960 by Digest Productions Corp. for IF, July 1960.

“The Final Performance,” copyright © 1960 by Winston Publications, Inc., for Shock, September 1960.

“Life in Our Time,” copyright © 1966 by Davis Publications, Inc., for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, October 1966.

“Underground,” copyright © 1967 by Davis Publications, Inc. (as “The Living Dead”), for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, April 1967.

“A Case of the Stubborns,” copyright © 1976 by Mercury Press for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1976.

“The Head,” copyright © 1976 by Terry Carr for The Ides of Tomorrow.

“What You See Is What You Get,” copyright © 1977 by Mercury Press for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1977.

“Nina,” copyright © 1977 by Mercury Press for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1977.

Introduction

This book is merely another indication that Robert Bloch will be with us for a long, long time. One way or another, in comic book adaptations, taped for 3D-TV, beamed on the interplanetary laser, Robert Bloch will persist.

He has become part of the popular psyche, has Robert Bloch. A dark part, to be sure, one often repressed, now and then skillfully sublimated, but a permanent one.

Psycho, of course, was the event which caused him to impinge on the majority’s consciousness. Up until the time Alfred Hitchcock adapted Bloch’s novel of a confused young man into the greatest roller coaster in horror movie history, the name Robert Bloch was comparatively unknown, but do note the “comparatively.” To a sizable band of warped connoisseurs, his name had already been firmly fixed in legend, and if the general public was not all that familiar with him, large numbers of that same general public had been shocked, horrified, or otherwise inconvenienced by one or another of his dainty little offerings.

Bloch started out, as did many authors drawn to the macabre, by selling to Weird Tales Magazine, a unique publication now long since in its grave despite brave efforts at resuscitation. Weird Tales gave shelter to such renowned owners of tripartite appellations as Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Robert Erwin Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith, and regularly provided a grateful nation the best all-round ghoulish read available on the newsstands.

Bloch’s stories in Weird Tales often differed from the others in that they possessed a kind of shocking friskiness and took an oddly jolly approach to the most godawful subjects. Chatting on about rotting vampires or slavering fiends did not seem to depress him in any way. Indeed, it often appeared that nothing cheered him up more than some new way to sever heads or inflict damage on innocent children, and any ghastly act of sadism which crossed his mind only set him to chortling, so long as he could make a pun on it.

I can offhand think of only one other author simultaneously given to sickening horror and drollery, and that would be Ambrose Bierce (who can forget—or forgive—his little chapter heading describing a hideously-mutilated corpse: “A Man Though Naked May Be in Rags”?); but Bierce was a bottomless cynic and unrelievedly bitter, whereas Bloch, though owning a really superb appreciation of the brutal ugliness and tacky dismalness which life can and does offer, is essentially an optimist, at least of sorts, and patiently cheerful.

His earlier work in Weird Tales was heavily influenced by Lovecraft, with whom he had a lengthy and affectionate correspondence. Their friendship also produced one of the brightest moments in the magazine’s history when it published a series of stories written by the two in which they killed one another off with appalling ingenuity.

As Bloch matured he moved out from under the direct Lovecraftian influence. His inclinations were much more worldly than H.P.L.’s, even when writing within the specific world-of-if which Lovecraft had created. Two stories in this collection, “The Unspeakable Betrothal” and “The Weird Tailor,” are good examples of Bloch using themes and elements Lovecraft never employed.

Also, though Bloch has toyed very effectively with the scholarly recluses and the academic environment with which Lovecraft was so comfortable, he tends to gravitate toward quite another sector of the population. He has, for example, a marvelous knack of conjuring up cheap grifters, sleazy wanderers whose heads are full of shoddy schemes for robbing their fellow humans of possessions or dignity, and who so fully and richly deserve the horrendous fates which Bloch lovingly prepares for them. There are a number of such rogues and their dire ends within. “Tunnel of Love” will do for a dandy example.

Another, and totally unLovecraftian, aspect of his work is his preoccupation with that branch of demonology presently recognized by science, namely the varying forms of psychosis with all their strange delights. Very often his stories in this area are not fantasy at all—and one rather wishes that they were. “Lucy Comes to Stay” is a good example of that ilk, and I must admit a strong personal affection for “Final Performance.”

The thing about Bloch’s stories is, literally, their knack of haunting the reader. They have a core happening which stays, rather like a fable or a story from the Brothers Grimm. I suspect this is what has made his stories so much in demand for adaptations. When you leave the theater after seeing a Blochian horror, it tags along behind and follows you on the empty sidewalks all the way home. When you turn off your television set, that Blochian climax continues to phosphoresce in your head. The crazy old lady in Psycho put a lot of small motels out of business because she wouldn’t leave the people who saw it, and I think you’ll encounter the same kind of lingering effect with at least one of the stories gathered here, depending on which one grabs your particular insecurity.

Maybe it’ll be the silver skeleton tinkling somewhere in the darkness on your bedroom floor, or could be it’ll be the horrible headsman lurking in your closet, or perhaps it’ll be the snaky lady prowling out there on the lawn or the fire escape. It’s hard to tell.

You’ll find out tonight.

Gahan Wilson
New York, New York
August, 1978

The Tunnel of Love

The entrance to the tunnel had been painted to resemble a woman’s mouth, with Cupid’s-bow lips bordering it in vivid red. Marco stared into the yawning darkness beyond. A woman’s mouth—how often had he dreamed of it, this past winter?

Now he stood before the entrance, stood before the mouth, waiting to be engulfed.

Marco was all alone in the amusement park; none of the other concessionaires had come to inspect their property and put it in working order for the new season. He was all alone, standing before the mouth; the scarlet mouth that beckoned him to come, be swallowed, be devoured.

It would be so easy to run away, clear out and never come back. Maybe when the summer season opened he could sell the concession. He’d tried all winter long, but there’d been no takers, even at a ridiculously low price. Yes, he could sell out and go away, far away. Away from the tunnel, away from the red mouth with its black throat gaping for some human morsels.

But that was nonsense, dream-stuff, nightmare. The Tunnel of Love was a good stand, a money-maker. A four-months’ take was enough to support him for an entire year. And he needed the money, needed it more than ever since he’d married Dolores.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have married her, in view of his troubles, but in a way that’s just why he had to marry her. He wanted something to cling to, something to shut out the fears that came to him at night. She loved him, and she would never suspect; there was no need for her to suspect if he kept his own head. Everything was going to be all right once the season started. Now all he needed to do was check up on his equipment.

The ticket booth was in good shape; he’d opened it and found no damage through leaking or frost. A good coat of paint would help, and he’d put a new stool inside for Dolores. She’d sell the tickets next season and cut down on his overhead. All he need bother about would be running the boats through; shoving them off and docking them for the benefit of the giggling couples who eagerly tasted the delights of the Tunnel of Love.

Marco had checked the six gondolas stored in the shed behind the boards fronting his concession. All were sound. The treadmill motor was oiled and ready. The water intake and outlet were unrusted. He had dragged one of the flat-bottomed gondolas out and it lay ready for launching once he flooded the channel and started the treadmill operation.

Now he hesitated before the tunnel entrance. This was it. He had to make up his mind, once and for all. Would he . . .

Turning his back deliberately on the jaws of the monster (he had to stop thinking like that, he had to!) Marco stepped over and opened the water. It ran down into the channel, a thin brown trickle, a muddy jet, a gushing frothy stream. The tunnel swallowed it. Now the treadmill was obscured; the water rushed into the tunnel full force. It rose as it flowed until the normal depth of three feet was attained. Marco watched it pour into the mouth. The mouth was thirsty. Thirsty for water, thirsty for . . .

Marco closed his eyes. If only he could get rid of that crazy notion about mouths! Funny thing, the exit of the tunnel didn’t bother him at all. The exit was just as big, just as black. The water would rush through the entrance, complete the circuit of the tunnel, and emerge on the other side from the exit. It would sweep over the dry treadmill, clean out the dirt and the debris, the accumulation of past months. It would sweep it out clean, bring everything from the tunnel, it was coming now, yes, he could hear it now; he wanted to run, he couldn’t look!

But Marco had to look. He had to know. He had to find out what floated on that bubbling, gurgling stream; had to see what bobbed and twisted in the torrent that emerged from the tunnel exit.

The water trickled, eddied, churned, swept out in a raging and majestic tide. Marco knelt in the gutter and stared down at the flow. It would be a hemorrhage, it would be blood, he knew that; but how could it be? Marco stared and saw that it wasn’t blood. Nothing emerged from the tunnel but dirty water—dirty water carrying caravels of leaves, a fleet of twigs, a flotilla of old gum-wrappers and cigarette butts. The surface of the water was rainbow-veined with oil and grease. It eddied and mingled once again with the steady flow from the faucets leading back into the tunnel. The level rose to the markings on the side of the treadle-pit.

So the tunnel was empty. Marco sighed gratefully. It had all been a nightmare; his fears were groundless. Now all he needed to do was launch the single gondola and go through the tunnel for an inspection of the lights on his exhibits.

Yes, all he had to do was sail into the waiting mouth, the hungry mouth, the grinning jaws of death—

Marco shrugged, shook his head. No use stalling, he had to go through with it. He’d turn the lights on; he could use the handswitches en route to stop the treadle if needs be. Then he could inspect the cut-off and see if everything was barricaded off. There was nothing to worry about, but he had to be quite sure.

He slid the heavy gondola off its truck and into the channel. Holding it with a boat-hook, he stooped again and switched on the motor. It chugged. The treadle groaned under the water, and he knew it was moving. The deep, flat-bottomed gondola rested on the moving treadle-struts. Marco let the boat-hook fall and stepped into the forward seat of the boat. It began to move forward, move towards the red lips, the black mouth. The entrance of the tunnel loomed.

Marco leaped from the boat with a spastic, convulsive tremor agitating his limbs. Frantically, he switched off the motor and halted the gondola at the lip of the tunnel. He stood there, all panting and perspiration, for a long moment.

Thank God, he’d thought of it in time! He’d almost gone into the tunnel without remembering to turn on the lights. That he could never do, he knew; the lights were necessary. How could he have forgotten? Why had he forgotten? Did the tunnel want him to forget? Did it want him to go into the blackness all alone, so that it could . . .

Marco shook his head. Such thoughts were childish. Quite deliberately, he walked into the ticket booth and plugged in the cord controlling the tunnel light circuit. He started the treadle going and jumped into the moving boat, barking his left shin. He was still rubbing the sore spot as the boat glided into darkness.

Quite suddenly Marco was in the tunnel, and he wasn’t afraid any more. There was nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all. The boat bumped along slowly, the water gurgled, the treadle groaned. Little blue lights cast a friendly glow at intervals of forty feet—little blue lights behind the glass walls of the small papier-mâché exhibit booths set in the tunnel sides. Here was Romeo and Juliet, here was Antony and Cleopatra, here was Napoleon and Josephine, here was the cutout . . .

Marco stopped the boat—halted the treadle, rather, by reaching out and pulling the handswitch set near the water’s edge in the left wall of the tunnel.

Here was the cutout . . .

Formerly the tunnel had contained an extra loop; a hundred and twenty feet more of winding channel through which boats had doubled back on an auxilliary treadle. Since November this channel had been cut out, boarded up, sealed up tightly and cemented at the cracks by Marco’s frantic fingers. He had worked until after midnight to do the job, but it was well done. Marco stared at the wall. It had held. Nothing leaked into the cutout, nothing leaked out of it. The air of the tunnel was fetid, but that was merely a natural musty odor soon to be dispelled—just as Marco’s fears were dispelled now by the sight of the smooth walled surface.

There was nothing to worry about, nothing at all. Marco started the treadle. The boat swept on. Now he could lean back in his double seat and actually enjoy the ride. The Tunnel of Love would operate again. The bobby-soxers and the college kids, the sailors and the hicks would have their romance, their smooching, their dime’s-worth of darkness. Yes, Marco would sell darkness for a dime. He lived on darkness. He and Dolores would be together; just like Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Marco and—but that was over.

Marco was actually grinning when the boat glided out into the light of day again.

Dolores saw the grin and thought it was meant for her. She waved from the side of the channel.

“Hello, darling!”

Marco gaped at the tall blonde in the flowered print dress. She waved at him, and as the boat drew up opposite the disembarking point she stooped, stopped the motor, and held out her arms to the man in the gondola. His grin disappeared as he rose.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just thought I’d surprise you. I guessed where you’d be going.” Her arms pressed his back.

“Oh.” He kissed her without giving or receiving any sensation.

“You aren’t mad, are you, darling? After all, I’m your wife—and I’m going to be working here with you, aren’t I? I mean, I’d like to see this old tunnel you’ve been so mysterious about.”

Lord, she was a stupid female! Maybe that’s why he loved her; because she was stupid, and uncalculating, and loyal. Because she wasn’t dark and intense and knowing and hysterical like . . .

“What on earth were you doing?” she asked.

The question threw him off balance. “Why, just going through the tunnel.”

“All alone?” Dolores giggled. “What’s the sense of taking a boat ride through the Tunnel of Love by yourself? Couldn’t you find some girl to keep you company?”

If you only knew, thought Marco, but he didn’t say it. He didn’t care. “Just inspecting the place,” he said. “Seems to be in good shape. Shall we go now?”

“Go?” Dolores pouted. “I want to see, too.”

“There’s nothing to see.”

“Come on, darling—take me through the tunnel, just once. After all, I won’t be getting a chance after the season opens.”

“But . . .”

She teased his hair with her fingers. “Look, I drove all the way down here just to see. What’re you acting so mysterious about? You hiding a body in the tunnel, or something?”

Good Lord, not that, Marco thought. He couldn’t allow her to become suspicious.

Not Dolores, of all people.

“You really want to go through?” he murmured. He knew she did, and he knew he had to take her, now. He had to show her that there was nothing to be afraid of, there was nothing in the tunnel at all.

And why couldn’t he do just that? There was nothing to fear, nothing at all. So—“Come along,” said Marco.

He helped her into the boat, holding the gondola steady in the swirling water as he started the treadle. Then he jumped into the seat beside her and cast off. The boat bumped against the sides of the channel and swayed as he sat down. She gasped.

“Be careful or we’ll tip!” she squealed.

“Not a chance. This outfit’s safe. Besides, the water’s only three feet deep at most. You can’t get hurt here.”

Oh, can’t you? Marco wiped his forehead and grimaced as the gondola edged towards the gulping black hole of the Tunnel of Love. He buried his face against her cheek and closed his eyes against the engulfing darkness.

“Gee, honey, isn’t it romantic?” Dolores whispered. “I bet you used to envy the fellows who took their girls through here, didn’t you? Or did you get girls and go through yourself?”

Marco wished she’d shut up. This kind of talk he didn’t like to hear.

“Did you ever take that girl you used to have in the ticket booth in here with you?” Dolores teased. “What was her name—Belle?”

“No,” said Marco.

“What did you say happened to her at the end of the season, darling?”

“She ran out on me.” Marco kept his head down, his eyes closed. They were in the tunnel now and he could smell the mustiness of it. It smelled like old perfume—stale, cheap perfume. He knew that smell. He pressed his face against Dolores’s cheek. She wore scent, but the other smell still came through.

“I never liked her,” Dolores was saying. “What kind of a girl was she, Marco? I mean, did you ever . . .”

“No—no!”

“Well, don’t snap at me like that! I’ve never seen you act like this before, Marco.”

“Marco.” The name echoed through the tunnel. It bounced off the ceiling, off the walls, off the cutout. It echoed and reechoed, and then it was taken up from far away in a different voice; a softer voice, gurgling through water. Marco, Marco, Marco, over and over again until he couldn’t stand it.

“Shut up!” yelled Marco.

“Why . . .”

“Not you, Dolores. Her.”

“Her? Are you nuts or something? There’s nobody but the two of us here in the dark, and . . .”

In the dark? How could that be? The lights were on, he’d left them on. What was she talking about?

Marco opened his eyes. They were in the dark. The lights were out. Perhaps a fuse had blown. Perhaps a short circuit.

There was no time to think of possibilities. All Marco knew was the certainty; they were gliding down the dark throat of the tunnel in the dark, nearing the center, nearing the cutout. And the echo, the damned drowned echo, whispered, “Marco.”

He had to shut it out, he had to talk over it, talk against it. And all at once he was talking, fast and shrill.

“She did it, Dolores, I know she did it. Belle. She’s here now, in the tunnel. All winter long I felt her, saw her, heard her in my dreams. Calling to me. Calling to me to come back. She said I’d never be rid of her, you’d never have me, nobody and nothing could take me away from her. And I was a fool—I came back, I let you come with me. Now we’re here and she’s here. Can’t you feel it?”

“Darling.” She clung to him in the dark. “You’re not well, are you? Because there’s nobody here. You understand that, don’t you? Belle ran away, remember, you told me yourself. She’s not here.”

“Oh yes she is!” Marco panted. “She’s here, she’s been here all along, ever since last season. She died in this tunnel.”

Dolores wasn’t clinging to him any more. She drew away. The boat rocked and bumped the channel sides. He couldn’t see anything in the perfumed blackness, and he had to get her arms around him again. So he talked faster.

“She died here. The night we took a ride together after I closed the concession. The night I told her I was going to marry you, that it was all over between her and me. She jumped out of the boat and tried to take me with her. I guess I fought her.

“Belle was hysterical, you must understand that. She kept saying it over and over again, that I couldn’t leave her, that she’d never give me up, never. I tried to pull her back into the boat and she choked me and then she—drowned.”

“You killed her!”

“I didn’t. It was an accident, suicide, really. I didn’t mean to hold her so tight but she was fighting me—it was just suicide. I knew it looked like murder, I knew what would happen if anyone found out. So I buried her, walled her up behind the cutout. And now she’s coming back, she won’t let me go, what shall I do, Dolores, what can I do?”

“You . . .”

Dolores screamed.

Marco tried to put his arms around her. She moved away, shrieking. The echo shattered the darkness. He lunged at her. The boat rocked and tipped. There was a splash.

“Come back, you fool!” Marco stood up, groping in darkness. Somewhere Dolores was wailing and gurgling. The gondola was empty now. The blackness was spinning round and round, sucking Marco down into it. He felt a bump, knew the boat had stopped. He jumped out into the water. The treadles were slippery with slime. Cold waves lapped about his waist. He tried to find Dolores in the darkness, in the water. No wailing now, no gurgles.

“Dolores!”

No answer. No sound at all. The bumping and the lapping ceased.

“Dolores!”

She hadn’t run away. There was nowhere to run to, and he would have heard the splashing. Then she was . . .

His hands found flesh. Wet flesh, floating flesh. She had fallen against the side of the boat, bumped her head. But only a few seconds had passed. Nobody drowns in a few seconds. She had passed out, poor kid.

He dragged her into the boat. Now it moved away, moved through the darkness as he propped her on the seat beside him and put his arm around the clammy, soggy wetness of her dress. Her head lolled on his shoulder as he chafed her wrists.

“There, now. It’s all right. Don’t you see, darling, it’s all right now? I’m not afraid any more. Belle isn’t here. There’s nothing to worry about. Everything will be all right.”

The more he said it, the more he knew it was true. What had he done, frightening the girl half to death? Marco cursed the slowness of the treadles as the boat bumped its way out of the tunnel. The mechanism wasn’t working properly. But there was no time to bother about that. He had to bring Dolores around.

He kissed her hair. He kissed her ear. She was still cold. “Come on, honey,” he whispered. “Brace up. This is the Tunnel of Love, remember?”

The boat bumped out into the daylight. Marco stared ahead. They were safe now. Safe from the tunnel, safe from Belle. He and Dolores . . .

Dolores.

Marco peered at the prow of the bumping gondola as it creaked over the treadles. He peered at the obstruction floating in its path; floating face upward in the water as if tied to the boat with a red string running from its gashed forehead.

Dolores!

She had fallen in the water when she jumped out of the gondola, fallen and struck her head the way Belle had struck her head. It was Dolores’s body that bumped against the front of the boat and retarded its progress. She was dead.

But if that was Dolores out there in the water, then what . . .

Marco turned his head, ever so slowly. For the first time he glanced down at the seat beside him, at what lay cradled in his arms.

For the first time Marco saw what he had been kissing . . .

. . . the boat glided back into the Tunnel of Love.

The Unspeakable Betrothal

Not far thence is the secret garden in which grow like strange flowers the kinds of sleep, so different one from the other . . . the sleep induced by datura, by the multiple extracts of ether, the sleep of belladonna, of opium, of valerian; flowers whose petals remain shut until the day when the predestined visitor shall come and, touching them, bid them open, and for long hours inhale the aroma of their peculiar dreams into a marveling and bewildered being.

Proust:
Remembrance of Things Past

Avis knew she wasn’t really as sick as Doctor Clegg had said. She was merely bored with living. The death impulse perhaps; then again, it might have been nothing more than her distaste for clever young men who persisted in addressing her as “O rara Avis.”

She felt better now, though. The fever had settled until it was no more than one of the white blankets which covered her—something she could toss aside with a gesture, if it weren’t so pleasant just to burrow into it, to snuggle deeply within its confining warmth.

Avis smiled as she realized the truth; monotony was the one thing that didn’t bore her. The sterility of excitement was the really jading routine, after all. This quiet, uneventful feeling of restfulness seemed rich and fertile by comparison. Rich and fertile—creative—womb.

The words linked. Back to the womb. Dark room, warm bed, lying doubled up in the restful, nourishing lethargy of fever . . .

It wasn’t the womb, exactly; she hadn’t gone back that far, she knew. But it did remind her of the days when she was a little girl. Just a little girl with big round eyes, mirroring the curiosity that lay behind them. Just a little girl, living all alone in a huge old house, like a fairy princess in an enchanted castle.

Of course her aunt and uncle had lived here too, and it wasn’t a really truly castle, and nobody else knew that she was a princess. Except Marvin Mason, that is.

Marvin had lived next door and sometimes he’d come over and play with her. They would come up to her room and look out of the high window—the little round window that bordered on the sky.

Marvin knew that she was a sure-enough princess, and he knew that her room was an ivory tower. The window was an enchanted window, and when they stood on a chair and peeked out they could see the world behind the sky.

Sometimes she wasn’t quite sure if Marvin Mason honest and truly saw the world beyond the window; maybe he just said he did because he was fond of her.

But he listened very quietly while she told him stories about that world. Sometimes she told him stories she had read in books, and other times she made them up out of her very own head. It was only later that the dreams came, and she told him those stories, too.

That is, she always started to, but somehow the words would go wrong. She didn’t always know the words for what she saw in those dreams. They were very special dreams; they came only on those nights when Aunt May left the window open, and there was no moon. She would lie in the bed, all curled up in a little ball, and wait for the wind to come through the high, round window. It came quietly, and she would feel it on her forehead and neck, like fingers stroking. Cool, soft fingers, stroking her face; soothing fingers that made her uncurl and stretch out so that the shadows could cover her body.

Even then she slept in the big bed, and the shadows would pour down from the window in a path. She wasn’t asleep when the shadows came, so she knew they were real. They came on the breeze, from the window, and covered her up. Maybe it was the shadows that were cool and not the wind; maybe the shadows stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

But she would sleep then, and the dreams always came. They followed the same path as the wind and the shadows; they poured down from the sky, through the window. There were voices she heard but could not understand; colors she saw but could not name; shapes she glimpsed but which never seemed to resemble any figures she found in picture books.

Sometimes the same voices and colors and shapes came again and again, until she learned to recognize them, in a way. There was the deep, buzzing voice that seemed to come from right inside her own head, although she knew it really issued from the black, shiny pyramid thing that had the arms with eyes in it. It didn’t look slimy or nasty, and there was nothing to be afraid of—Avis could never understand why Marvin Mason made her shut up when she started telling about those dreams.

But he was only a little boy, and he got scared and ran to his Mommy. Avis didn’t have any Mommy, only Aunt May; but she would never tell Aunt May such things. Besides, why should she? The dreams didn’t frighten her, and they were so very real and interesting. Sometimes, on grey, rainy days when there was nothing to do but play with dolls or cut out pictures to paste in her album, she wished that night would hurry up and come; then she could dream and make everything real again.

She got so she liked to stay in bed, and would pretend to have a cold so she didn’t have to go to school. Avis would look up at the window and wait for the dreams to come—but they never came in the daytime; only at night.

Often she wondered what it was like up there.

The dreams must come from the sky; she knew that. The voices and shapes lived way up, somewhere beyond the window. Aunt May said that dreams came from tummyaches, but she knew that wasn’t so.

Aunt May was always worried about tummyaches, and she scolded Avis for not going outside to play; she said she was getting pale and puny.

But Avis felt fine, and she had her secret to think of. Now she scarcely ever saw Marvin Mason any more, and she didn’t bother to read. It wasn’t much fun to pretend she was a princess, either. Because the dreams were ever so much more real, and she could talk to the voices and ask them to take her with them when they went away.

She got so she could almost understand what they were saying. The shiny thing that just hung through the window now—the one that looked like it had so much more to it she couldn’t see—it made music inside her head that she recognized. Not a real tune; more like words in a rhyme. In her dreams she asked it to take her away. She would crawl up on its back and let it fly with her up over the stars. That was funny, asking it to fly; but she knew that the part beyond the window had wings. Wings as big as the world.

She begged and pleaded, but the voices made her understand that they couldn’t take little girls back with them. That is, not entirely. Because it was too cold and too far, and something would change her.

She said she didn’t care how she changed; she wanted to go. She would let them do anything they wanted if only they would take her. It would be nice to be able to talk to them all the time and feel that cool softness; to dream forever.

One night they came to her and there were more things than she had ever seen before. They hung through the window and in the air all over the room—they were so funny, some of them; you could see through them and sometimes one was partly inside another. She knew she giggled in her sleep, but she couldn’t help it. Then she was quiet and listening to them.

They told her it was all right. They would carry her away. Only she mustn’t tell anyone and she mustn’t be frightened; they would come for her soon. They couldn’t take her as she was, and she must be willing to change.

Avis said yes, and they all hummed a sort of music together and went away.

The next morning Avis was really and truly sick and didn’t want to get up. She could hardly breathe, she was so warm—and when Aunt May brought in a tray she wouldn’t eat a bite.

That night she didn’t dream. Her head ached, and she tossed all night long. But there was a moon out, so the dreams couldn’t get through anyway. She knew they would come back when the moon was gone again, so she waited. Besides, she hurt so that she really didn’t care. She had to feel better before she was ready to go anywhere.

The next day Doctor Clegg came to see her. Doctor Clegg was a good friend of Aunt May’s and he was always visiting her because he was her guardian.

Doctor Clegg held her hand and asked her what seemed to be the matter with his young lady today.

Avis was too smart to say anything, and besides, there was a shiny thing in her mouth. Doctor Clegg took it out and looked at it and shook his head. After a while he went away and then Aunt May and Uncle Roscoe came in. They made her swallow some medicine that tasted just awful.

By that time it was getting dark and there was a storm coming outside. Avis wasn’t able to talk much, and when they shut the round window she couldn’t ask them to please leave it open tonight because there was no moon and they were coming for her.

But everything kept going round and round, and when Aunt May walked past the bed she seemed to flatten out like a shadow, or one of the things, only she made a loud noise which was really the thunder outside and now she was sleeping really and truly even though she heard the thunder but the thunder wasn’t real nothing was real except the things, that was it nothing was real any more but the things.

And they came through the window; it wasn’t closed after all because she opened it and she was crawling out high up there where she had never crawled before but it was easy without a body and soon she would have a new body they wanted the old one because they carried it but she didn’t care because she didn’t need it and now they would carry her ulnagr Yuggoth Farnomi ilyaa . . .

That was when Aunt May and Uncle Roscoe found her and pulled her down from the window. They said later she had screamed at the top of her voice, or else she would have gone over without anyone noticing.

After that Doctor Clegg took her away to the hospital where there were no high windows and they came in to see her all night long. The dreams stopped.

When at last she was well enough to go back home, she found that the window was gone, too.

Aunt May and Uncle Roscoe had boarded it up, because she was a somnambulist. She didn’t know what a somnambulist was, but guessed it had something to do with her being sick and the dreams not coming any more.

For the dreams stopped then. There was no way of making them come back, and she really didn’t want them any more. It was fun to play outside with Marvin Mason now, and she went back to school when the new semester began.

Now, without the window to look at, she just slept at night. Aunt May and Uncle Roscoe were glad, and Doctor Clegg said she was turning out to be a mighty fine little specimen.

Avis could remember it all now as though it were yesterday or today. Or tomorrow.

How she grew up. How Marvin Mason fell in love with her. How she went to college and they became engaged. How she felt the night Aunt May and Uncle Roscoe were killed in the crash at Leedsville. That was a bad time.

An even worse time was when Marvin had gone away. He was in service now, overseas. She had stayed on all alone in the house, for it was her house now.

Reba came in days to do the housework, and Doctor Clegg dropped around, even after she turned twenty-one and officially inherited her estate.

He didn’t seem to approve of her present mode of living. He asked her several times why she didn’t shut up the house and move into a small apartment downtown. He was concerned because she showed no desire to keep up the friendships she had made in college; Avis was curiously reminded of the solicitude he had exhibited during her childhood.

But Avis was no longer a child. She proved that by removing what had always seemed to her a symbol of adult domination; she had the high round window in her room unboarded once more.

It was a silly gesture. She knew it at the time, but somehow it held a curious significance for her. For one thing, it reestablished a linkage with her childhood, and more and more, childhood came to epitomize happiness for her.

With Marvin Mason gone, and Aunt May and Uncle Roscoe dead, there was little enough to fill the present. Avis would sit up in her bedroom and pore over the scrapbooks she had so assiduously pasted up as a girl. She had kept her dolls and the old fairy-tale books; she spent drowsy afternoons examining them.

It was almost possible to lose one’s time sense in such pastimes. Her surroundings were unchanged. Of course, Avis was larger now and the bed wasn’t quite as massive nor the window as high.

But both were there, waiting for the little girl that she became when, at nightfall, she curled up into a ball and snuggled under the sheets—snuggled and stared up at the high, round window that bordered the sky.

Avis wanted to dream again.

At first, she couldn’t.

After all, she was a grown woman, engaged to be married; she wasn’t a character out of Peter Ibbetson. And those dreams of her childhood had been silly.

But they were nice. Yes, even when she had been ill and nearly fallen out of the window that time, it had been pleasant to dream. Of course those voices and shapes were nothing but Freudian fantasies—everyone knew that.

Or did they?

Suppose it were all real? Suppose dreams are not just subconscious manifestations caused by indigestion and gas pressure?

What if dreams are really a product of electronic impulse—or planetary radiations—attuned to the wavelength of the sleeping mind? Thought is an electrical impulse. Life itself is an electrical impulse. Perhaps a dreamer is like a spiritualist medium; placed in a receptive state during sleep. Instead of ghosts, the creatures of another world or another dimension can come through, if the sleeper is granted the rare gift of acting as a filter. What if the dreams feed on the dreamer for substance, just as spirits attain ectoplasmic being by draining the medium of energy?

Avis thought and thought about it, and when she had evolved this theory, everything seemed to fit. Not that she would ever tell anyone about her attitude. Doctor Clegg would only laugh at her, or still worse, shake his head. Marvin Mason didn’t approve either. Nobody wanted her to dream. They still treated her like a little girl.

Very well, she would be a little girl; a little girl who could do as she pleased now. She would dream.

It was shortly after reaching this decision that the dreams began again; almost as though they had been waiting until she would fully accept them in terms of their own reality.

Yes, they came back, slowly, a bit at a time. Avis found that it helped to concentrate on the past during the day; to strive to remember her childhood. To this end she spent more and more time in her room, leaving Reba to tend to housework downstairs. As for fresh air, she always could look out of her window. It was high and small, but she would climb on a stool and gaze up at the sky through the round aperture; watching the clouds that veiled the blue beyond, and waiting for night to come.

Then she would sleep in the big bed and wait for the wind. The wind soothed and the darkness slithered, and soon she could hear the buzzing, blurring voices. At first only the voices came back, and they were faint and far away. Gradually, they increased in intensity and once more she was able to discriminate, to recognize individual intonations.

Timidly, hesitantly, the figures reemerged. Each night they grew stronger. Avis Long (little girl with big round eyes in big bed below round window) welcomed their presence.

She wasn’t alone any more. No need to see her friends, or talk to that silly old Doctor Clegg. No need to waste much time gossiping with Reba, or fussing over meals. No need to dress or venture out. There was the window by day and the dreams by night.

Then all at once she was curiously weak, and this illness came. But it was all false, somehow; this physical change.

Her mind was untouched. She knew that. No matter how often Doctor Clegg pursed his lips and hinted about calling in a “specialist,” she wasn’t afraid. Of course Avis knew he really wanted her to see a psychiatrist. The doddering fool was filled with glib patter about “retreat from reality” and “escape mechanisms.”

But he didn’t understand about the dreams. She wouldn’t tell him, either. He’d never know the richness, the fullness, the sense of completion that came from experiencing contact with other worlds.

Avis knew that now. The voices and shapes that came in the window were from other worlds. As a naive child she had invited them by her very unsophistication. Now, striving consciously to return to the childlike attitude, she again admitted them.

They were from other worlds; worlds of wonder and splendor. Now they could meet only on the plane of dreams, but someday, someday soon, she would bridge the gap.

They whispered about her body. Something about the trip, making the “change.” It couldn’t be explained in their words. But she trusted them, and after all, a physical change was of slight importance contrasted with the opportunity.

Soon she would be well again, strong again. Strong enough to say yes. And then they would come for her when the moon was right. Until then, she could strengthen the determination, and the dream.

Avis Long lay in the great bed and basked in the blackness; the blackness that poured palpably through the open window. The shapes filtered down, wriggling through the warps, feeding upon the night; growing, pulsing, encompassing all.

They reassured her about the body but she didn’t care and she told them she didn’t care because the body was unimportant and yes, she would gladly consider it an exchange if only she could go and she knew she belonged.

Not beyond the rim of the stars but between it and amongst substance dwells that which is blackness in blackness for Yuggoth is only a symbol, no that is wrong there are no symbols for all is reality and only perception is limited ch’yar ul’nyar shaggornyth . . .

It is hard for us to make you understand but I do understand you cannot fight it I will not fight it they will try to stop you nothing shall stop me for I belong yes you belong will it be soon yes it will be soon very soon yes very soon . . .

Marvin Mason was unprepared for this sort of reception. Of course, Avis hadn’t written, and she wasn’t at the station to meet him—but the possibility of her being seriously ill had never occurred to him.

He had come out to the house at once, and it was a shock when Doctor Clegg met him at the door.

The old man’s face was grim, and the tenor of his opening remarks still grimmer.

They faced each other in the library downstairs; Mason self-consciously diffident in khaki, the older man a bit too professionally brusque.

“Just what is it, Doctor?” Mason asked.

“I don’t know. Slight, recurrent fever. Listlessness. I’ve checked everything. No TB, no trace of low-grade infection. Her trouble isn’t—organic.”

“You mean something’s wrong with her mind?”

Doctor Clegg slumped into an armchair and lowered his head.

“Mason, I could say many things to you; about the psychosomatic theory of medicine, about the benefits of psychiatry, about—but never mind. It would be sheer hypocrisy.

“I’ve talked to Avis; rather, I’ve tried to talk to her. She won’t say much, but what she does say disturbs me. Her actions disturb me even more.

“You can guess what I’m driving at, I think, when I tell you that she is leading the life of an eight-year-old girl. The life she did lead at that age.”

Mason scowled. “Don’t tell me she sits in her room again and looks out of that window?”

Dr. Clegg nodded.

“But I thought it was boarded up long ago, because she’s a somnambulist and—”

“She had it unboarded, several months ago. And she is not, never was, a somnambulist.”

“What do you mean?”

“Avis Long never walked in her sleep. I remember the night she was found on that window’s edge; not ledge, for there is no ledge. She was perched on the edge of the open window, already halfway out; a little tyke hanging through a high window.

“But there was no chair beneath her, no ladder. No way for her to climb up. She was simply there.”

Dr. Clegg looked away before continuing.

“Don’t ask me what it means. I can’t explain, and I wouldn’t want to. I’d have to talk about the things she talks about—the dreams, and the presences that come to her; the presences that want her to go away.

“Mason, it’s up to you. I can’t honestly move to have her committed on the basis of material evidence. Confinement means nothing to them; you can’t build a wall to keep out dreams.

“But you can love her. You can save her. You can make her well, make her take an interest in reality. Oh, I know it sounds mawkish and stupid, just as the other sounds wild and fantastic.

“Yet, it’s true. It’s happening right now, to her. She’s asleep up in her room at this very moment. She’s hearing the voices—I know that much. Let her hear your voice.”

Mason walked out of the room and started up the stairs.

“But what do you mean, you can’t marry me?”

Mason stared at the huddled figure in the swirl of bedclothes. He tried to avoid the direct stare of Avis Long’s curiously childlike eyes; just as he avoided gazing up at the black, ominous aperture of the round window.

“I can’t, that’s all,” Avis answered. Even her voice seemed to hold a childlike quality. The high, piercing tones might well have emanated from the throat of a little girl; a tired little girl, half-asleep and a bit petulant about being abruptly awakened.

“But our plans—your letters—”

“I’m sorry, dear. I can’t talk about it. You know I haven’t been well. Doctor Clegg is downstairs, he must have told you.”

“But you’re getting better,” Mason pleaded. “You’ll be up and around again in a few days.”

Avis shook her head. A smile—the secret smile of a naughty child—clung to the corners of her mouth.

“You can’t understand, Marvin. You never could understand. That’s because you belong here.” A gesture indicated the room. “I belong somewhere else.” Her finger stabbed, unconsciously, towards the window.

Marvin looked at the window now. He couldn’t help it. The round black hole that led to nothingness. Or—something. The sky outside was dark, moonless. A cold wind curled about the bed.

“Let me close the window for you, dear,” he said, striving to keep his voice even and gentle.

“No.”

“But you’re ill—you’ll catch cold.”

“That isn’t why you want to close it.” Even in accusation, the voice was curiously piping. Avis sat bolt upright and confronted him.

“You’re jealous, Marvin. Jealous of me. Jealous of them. You would never let me dream. You would never let me go. And I want to go. They’re coming for me.

“I know why Doctor Clegg sent you up here. He wants you to persuade me to go away. He’d like to shut me up, just as he wants to shut the window. He wants to keep me here because he’s afraid. You’re all afraid of what lies—out there.

“Well, it’s no use. You can’t stop me. You can’t stop them!”

“Take it easy, darling—”

“Never mind. Do you think I care what they do to me, if only I can go? I’m not afraid. I know I can’t go as I am now. I know they must alter me.

“There are certain parts they want for reasons of their own. You’d be frightened if I told you. But I’m not afraid. You say I’m sick and insane, don’t deny it. Yet I’m healthy enough, sane enough to face them and their world. It’s you who are too morbid to endure it all.”

Avis Long was wailing now; a thin, high-pitched wail of a little girl in a tantrum.

“You and I are leaving this house tomorrow,” Mason said. “We’re going away. We’ll be married and live happily ever after—in good old storybook style. The trouble with you, young lady, is that you’ve never had to grow up. All this nonsense about goblins and other worlds—”

Avis screamed.

Mason ignored her.

“Right now I’m going to shut that window,” he declared.

Avis continued to scream. The shrill ululation echoed on a sustained note as Mason reached up and closed the round pane of glass over the black aperture. The wind resisted his efforts, but he shut the window and secured the latch.

Then her fingers were digging into his throat from the rear, and her scream was pouring down his ear.

“I’ll kill you!” she wailed. It was the wail of an enraged child.

But there was nothing of the child, or the invalid, in the strength behind her clawing fingers. He fought her off, panting.

Then, suddenly, Doctor Clegg was in the room. A hypodermic needle flashed and gleamed in an arc of plunging silver.

They carried her back to the bed, tucked her in. The blankets nestled about the weary face of a child in sleep.

The window was closed tightly now.

Everything was in order as the two men turned out the light and tiptoed from the room.

Neither of them said a word until they stood downstairs once again.

Facing the fireplace, Mason sighed.

“Somehow I’ll get her out of here tomorrow,” he promised. “Perhaps it was too abrupt—my coming back tonight and waking her. I wasn’t very tactful.

“But something about her; something about that room, frightened me.”

Doctor Clegg lit his pipe. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I couldn’t pretend to you that I completely understand. There’s more to it than mere hallucination.”

“I’m going to sit up here tonight,” Mason continued. “Just in case something might happen.”

“She’ll sleep,” Doctor Clegg assured him. “No need to worry.”

“I’ll feel better if I stay. I’m beginning to get a theory about all this talk—other worlds, and changes in her body before a trip. It ties in with the window, somehow. And it sounds like a fantasy on suicide.”

“The death impulse? Perhaps. I should have thought of that possibility. Dreams foreshadowing death—on second thought, Mason, I may stay with you. We can make ourselves comfortable here before the fire, I suppose.”

Silence settled.

It must have been well after midnight before either of them moved from their place before the fire.

Then a sharp splinter of sound crashed from above. Before the tinkling echo died away, both men were on their feet and moving towards the stairway.

There was no further noise from above, and neither of them exchanged a single word. Only the thud of their running footsteps on the stairs broke the silence. And as they paused outside Avis Long’s room, the silence seemed to deepen in intensity. It was a silence palpable, complete, accomplished.

Doctor Clegg’s hand darted to the doorknob, wrenched it ineffectually.

“Locked!” he muttered. “She must have gotten up and locked it.”

Mason scowled.

“The window—do you think she could have—?”

Doctor Clegg refused to meet his glance. Instead he turned and put his massive shoulder to the door panel. A bulge of muscle ridged his neck.

Then the panel splintered and gave way. Mason reached around and opened the door from inside.

They entered the darkened room, Dr. Clegg in the lead, fumbling for the light switch. The harsh, electric glare flooded the scene.

It was a tribute to the power of suggestion that both men glanced, not at the patient in the bed, but at the round window high up on the wall.

Cold night air streamed through a jagged aperture, where the glass had been shattered, as though by the blow of a gigantic fist.

Fragments of glass littered the floor beneath, but there was no trace of any missile. And obviously, the glass had been broken from the outer side of the pane.

“The wind,” Mason murmured weakly, but he could not look at Dr. Clegg as he spoke. For there was no wind, only the cold, soft breeze that billowed ever so gently from the nighted sky above. Only the cold, soft breeze, rustling the curtains and prompting a sarabande of shadows on the wall; shadows that danced in silence over the great bed in the corner.

The breeze and the silence and the shadows enveloped them as they stared now at the bed.

Avis Long’s head was turned towards them on the pillow. They could see her face quite plainly, and Doctor Clegg realized on the basis of experience what Mason knew instinctively—Avis Long’s eyes were closed in death.

But that is not what made Mason gasp and shudder—nor did the sight of death alone cause Doctor Clegg to scream aloud.

There was nothing whatsoever to frighten the beholder of the placid countenance turned towards them in death. They did not scream at the sight of Avis Long’s face.

Lying on the pillow of the huge bed, Avis Long’s face bore a look of perfect peace.

But Avis Long’s body was . . . gone.

The Girl from Mars

“The Wild Man from Borneo—he eats ’em alive—he eats ’em alive—”

Ace Clawson leaned against the side of the platform and listened to Lou, the spieler. Somebody had to listen to him, and there was no crowd in this lousy drizzle.

The rain was letting up now as it got dark, but the afternoon storm had made mudpies in the Midway. Ace stared up the deserted carny street as the lights came on over the soggy tents and the drooping banners of the world of wonder shows. He shivered. This was a stinking climate—no wonder these Georgia crackers got malaria.

Maybe it would stop raining soon. Maybe the marks would come down after supper. They’d better. Only two days left to play here and Ace wasn’t off the nut yet. Well, that’s the way some seasons went, just one bad break after another.

Ace scratched his chin. Better shave. Ah, phooey on that. And phooey for Lou, too—blatting his brains out for nothing up there. He looked at the gawky spieler on the platform and grinned. Punk kid, his first season out, and he needed practice. Ace cocked his head and called.

“Hey, Lou!”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up!”

Lou shut up and climbed down. He tossed his head and Ace ducked the spray of raindrops. “You damn fool, barking at nobody! Stuff it. Go inside and take the gang over to Sweeney for chow. We won’t see a sucker around here for an hour yet.”

“Sure, Ace.”

Lou went inside and rounded up the Strange People. They came out single file: Fat Phyllis waddling along with little Captain Atom, Hassan the Fire-eater puffing on one of his rancid shoe pegs, Joe the Alligator Boy wearing a raincoat, Eddie in his wild man outfit.

Ace stood behind the ticket stand. He didn’t feel like talking to them. Somebody was bound to make a crack about Mitzie and Rajah. Nuts to that noise!

He watched them plod through the red clay of the Midway, then squinted up at the banners behind the platform. All the Strange People squinted back with their painted eyes—Phyllis, Captain Atom, the World’s Smallest Man, the Mighty Hassan, the Alligator Boy, the Wild Man from Borneo, Rajah the Magician, and the Girl from Mars.

Rajah the Magician, dressed in evening clothes and wearing a turban on his head, was sawing a woman in half. The Girl from Mars spread her batwings over the sky. Ace scowled at them and cursed.

They had to take a powder on him, did they? Had to run out—and together! That’s what hurt. They ran off together. Rajah and Mitzie. It was probably her idea, the tramp. Just giving him the old double-X behind his back. Laughing at him. Bad weather, a poor take, and on top of it she had to run out on him, too!

Ace bit into his lower lip. That was all the supper he needed. That and a drink.

He sat down on the edge of the platform and pulled out his pint. Almost full. He pulled out the cork and threw it away. It wouldn’t be needed again for this bottle.

Tilting his head back, he swallowed. One swig for the rain. One swig for the lousy Georgia crackers. One swig for Rajah and Mitzie. Yes, and one swig for what he’d do to that broad if he ever caught up with her.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the rain had stopped. And then, he saw the girl.

She came wandering up the Midway, walking very slow. She was wearing some kind of gray playsuit, but he could tell it was a girl, all right, even from far away, because the lights showed off her blonde hair.

Blonde hell, she was platinum; as she got closer he saw the bush on her head was almost white. Her eyebrows, too. Like one of those—what did they call ’em?—albinos. Only her eyes weren’t pink. They were kind of platinum, too. Starey eyes. She gawked at everything as she went past the pitches.

Ace watched her coming; he had nothing else to do. Besides, she was worth watching. Even with that outfit on, he could see that she was really stacked. But built! Long legs, and plenty of meat on the torso. A disheroo.

He slicked back his hair. When she passed the tent he’d step and and walk over, sort of smiling. Then—

Ace hesitated. Because the girl wasn’t passing the tent. She came up to the end of the platform and stopped. She looked up and began to read the banners, moving her lips. She stood kind of funny, swaying a little as if she had a load. Maybe she did, at that. Anyhow, she rocked on her heels and stared up. She kept looking at one banner and mumbling to herself.

Ace turned his head. She was staring at the Girl from Mars. Yes, and that’s what she was mumbling out loud, too; he could hear it.

“The Girl from Mars,” she kept saying. She had a kind of a foreign accent. Blondie. Maybe a Swede or something.

“Something I can do for you?”

Ace swung over and came up behind her. She jumped about a foot.

“Teker—”

Swede, all right. But built. She didn’t wear any makeup. She didn’t need to. Ace smiled at her.

“I’m Ace Clawson. Own this show. What can I do for you, sister?”

She sized him up and then looked back at the banner.

“The Girl from Mars,” she said. “Is that truth?”

“Truth?”

“There is such a one? Inside there?”

“Uh—no. Not now. She scrammed.”

“Kep?” The girl swallowed quickly. “I mean—what do you say?”

“She ran away. What’s the matter, you don’t talk English so good, huh?”

“English? Oh. Speech. Yes, I talk it.” She spoke slowly, frowning. At least her eyebrows frowned, but her forehead didn’t wrinkle. Her skin was gray, like the playsuit. No buttons on the suit and she wasn’t carrying a purse. Foreigner.

“She did not po—possess wings?”

Ace grinned. “No. Fakeroo.” She was beginning her frown act again and he remembered she was probably drunk. “It was a gag, see? There is no Girl from Mars.”

“But I am from Rekk.”

“What?”

“I am from Re—from Mars.”

She was lushed to the gills. Ace stepped back. “Oh, yeah. Sure. You’re from Mars, huh?”

“I came today.”

“Well, well. Just like that, huh? Pleasure or business?”

“Kep?”

“Skip it. I mean, what’s on your mind? What can I do for you?”

“Hungry.”

Not only a lush, but a mooch, yet. But she was built. And when Ace put his hand on her shoulder, she didn’t move away. Her shoulder was warm. The heat just poured off her. Hot stuff. And she was hungry—

Ace glanced at the tent flap behind him. He was beginning to get an idea. It came to him when he put his hand on her shoulder. To hell with Mitzie. This was just what the doctor ordered. And the Midway was deserted. The gang wouldn’t be back from Sweeney’s for forty-five minutes yet.

“Hungry,” the girl repeated.

“Sure. We’ll get you something to eat. But let’s talk first. Come on inside.” Ace got another grip on her shoulder. Warm. Soft. Good stuff.

The lights inside were dim. Lou had switched them off when he left. The flaps were down over the platforms against the tent walls, as they were during the grind when only one freak performed at a time. Ace led her over to the Girl from Mars platform. There was a cot inside and he could lower the flap. Take it easy first though.

She walked on her heels until he held her still and pushed her down on the steps on the side of the platform. Touching her made him want to hurry it up, even though he knew he had to be careful. The heat came off her in waves, and he was warm from the whiskey.

“So you’re from Mars,” he said, huskily, bending over her but remembering to keep a grin on his face. “How did you get here?”

“Ertells. The—machine. With the others. Hydron, very swift. Until we land. Then this, we did not expect. In the atmosphere. Electric.”

“The storm? Lightning?”

She nodded, expressionless. “You understand. The kor—the machine split. Broken. All flerk. All but I. I fell. And then I did not know. Because I had no orders. Pre was ended. You understand?”

Ace nodded. She was hot. God, she was hot. And built. He stepped back, still nodding. Let her finish. Maybe she’d sober up a little.

“So I walked. Nothing. Nobody. Dark. Then I saw light. This place. And the words. And you. I read the words.”

“And here you are.” Humor them. You got to humor them, dames and drunks. “How come you read English, and talk?”

“Pre did it. Education. Because he—planned we must come. Much I cannot know. I will understand. Now hungry.”

There was no expression on her face. Lushes always twist their faces a lot. She didn’t stagger, just walked on her heels was all. And there was no liquor smell from her. So—she wasn’t drunk!

Ace stared.

He stared at the expressionless face, at the platinum hair and eyebrows. He stared at the sandals she wore, at the gray suit without any pockets, without any buttons. No buttons. That was it. She didn’t have all her buttons.

Yeah. Sure. She was a whack. She came here this afternoon, all right. Busted out of the county nuthouse in the storm. No wonder she didn’t carry a purse or anything. Just a lousy whack on the lam from the san.

Wouldn’t that have to be the kind of break he got? A screwball with an empty gut and an empty noggin. That’s all he needed. But she was built. And that’s all he needed—

Why not?

Ace figured fast. Half an hour, maybe. Long enough. He’d hustle her out of here right away. Nobody would know. It was a dirty trick, maybe. What the hell, he’d been getting the dirty end long enough himself; rain, no take, that damned Mitzie running out on him, no woman. He needed a change of luck. And besides, it wouldn’t hurt her, maybe do her good. Nobody would find out anything, and even if they did, she was a whack. Didn’t know what she was saying, even. Why not?

“Hungry.”

“Wait a minute, sister. I got a great idea. Come on back here for a second.”

He motioned her to her feet, led the way up the steps, and lifted the flap. It was dark on the platform behind the canvas curtain. He groped for the couch, found it.

“Sit down here.” He made his voice soft. She stood right next to him, not backing away, and when he pulled her down, pulled down all that heat and softness, she came without a sound.

He made himself wait, kept talking first.

“Yeah, I got a great idea. Why not? You’re from Mars, ain’tcha?”

“Yes. From Rekk.”

“Sure. And my Girl from Mars skipped. So the way I figure it, why don’t you come along with the show? You can have the same setup, sixty a week and chow, travel around and see the country. Nobody to tell you what to do or when to do it, see? Your own boss. Free. Get it—free?”

He wanted it to sound good. Sort of subtle, about being free. Even if she was a whack, she had enough sense to bust out and probably knew she’d have to keep moving. Not that he’d let her tie up with the show, that was all con, but he wanted her to go for the deal. Then he could start.

“But that is not what you speak. Hungry—”

Ah, to hell with it! You don’t waste your breath on a screwball. And here in the dark she wasn’t a screwball. She was a disheroo, a tall blonde, hot, better than Mitzie, damn Mitzie anyhow, she was here and he could feel her, feel the warmth just busting out of her—

Ace put his hands on her shoulders.

“Hungry, huh? Well, don’t you worry about that, sister. I’ll take care of you. All you gotta do is cooperate.”

Damn it! He heard the mumbling now, the gang was coming back, filing into the tent, climbing up on platforms and scraping chairs. He wouldn’t have time.

But what the hell, he was behind the curtain, it was dark, he’d keep quiet and make her keep quiet and they could sneak out later. Besides, his hands were on her shoulders. Ace felt her lean against him, felt those curves, solid. Instead of drawing back, she kept coming in. She wasn’t whacky, she knew what she was doing, this was all right.

Somebody in the outer tent flicked up the lights, and a thin glow filtered through the canvas curtain. He grinned at her upturned face. Her eyes were wide, shining. He ran his hands down her back. She was strong, eager.

“Don’t you worry about being hungry, baby,” he whispered. “I’ll take care of you.”

The heat poured out of her as she pressed his shoulders. He bent his head to kiss her. She opened her mouth, wide, and in the dim light he saw her teeth. They were platinum-colored, too.

Then he wanted to draw back, but something about the heat pouring off her made him feel dizzy. Besides, she held on to him so tight, and she kept whispering “hungry” over and over again, and now she was drawing him down on the cot and he saw the teeth coming at him. They were long and pointed. He couldn’t move, she held him, the heat came out of her eyes to blind him, and the long, sharp teeth were coming closer and closer—

Ace hardly felt any pain. Everything turned to heat and whirled away. Somewhere in the distance a voice began to chant. It was Lou, standing outside, standing under the Girl from Mars banner and beginning his chant. That was the last thing Ace heard or knew. The chant, the spiel.

“The Wild Man from Borneo—he eats ’em alive—he eats ’em alive—”

The Head Hunter

1

His name was Otto Krantz, and he was the greatest actor in Berlin. And was not Berlin the capital of the entire reasonable world?

He appeared before the public every day in the same drama, in the same role. Now, in 1937, it appeared as though the show might run forever, but no one seemed bored by his performance. And Otto Krantz did his best to keep it this way. He was never satisfied, but continued to rehearse and seek improvements in his part.

Take the matter of costume, for example. Krantz always appeared in evening clothes, but of a very simple cut. This sober garb was a surprising contrast, for many of the minor players wore gaudy uniforms or sought attention by wearing outlandish rags. But Krantz, after much study, realized his modest attire brought him more popular approval than the extravagant outfits of the others.

Again, the other actors were given to impassioned gestures as gaudy as their clothing. They shouted at the audience, they ranted, raved, wept, scowled, went into hysterics.

The spectators were never impressed. They much preferred the businesslike approach of Otto Krantz, who said little but acted with the finesse of a master. He never played to the gallery. While on stage, he went through the “business” as if the audience didn’t exist. For this reason, Krantz remained the most popular actor in Berlin, playing over and over again the selfsame role in the selfsame Comedy.

The Comedy was entitled The Third Reich.

The stage was the platform of the public executioner.

Otto Krantz filled the role of Official Headsman.

Each performance boasted a new supporting cast and a growing audience to cheer the Comedy on.

It was always the same. Every morning Krantz made his grand entrance in the bleak courtyard, instructed the new players in a stage-whisper, and graciously conducted them to the center of the platform. With becoming modesty, the great actor allowed each a moment alone in the spotlight in which to receive the tribute of the spectators.

After this, the show proceeded swiftly. Capable assistants did the placing and the binding—but it was Otto Krantz who tested the straps, bowed politely to the military escort, and then raised the bright, shining blade of the Headsman’s axe from its place in a block of ice.

Then came the glorious moment of climax; the moment that never failed to move both the minor players and the crowd. And when it was over, Otto Krantz lifted the head from the basket and held it up to his applauding audience with an honest smile of workmanlike pride.

This happened not once, but as often as ten or a dozen times in a single morning. Yet Krantz never faltered, never grew tired, never missed a line or a cue.

A sneering Prussian of the old school, the sniveling young son of a lower-class family, a withered hausfrau or a rosy-cheeked beauty—all received the same efficient courtesy at the hands of the executioner; hands that grew stained and red with the drops that fell as each head was lifted from the basket.

At the end of the performance, Otto Krantz bowed, retired, and washed his hands like a common laborer. Democratic, was the Official Headsman.

Outside of his public appearances, Krantz led a quiet life. A glass of schnapps when work was through, perhaps a little beer to wash down dinner at some humble bierstube; a stroll through the street to hear the news, and then home to the big upstairs room near SS District Headquarters. In the evening there might be a Party meeting to attend, or a summons notifying him of tomorrow’s labors.

It was a simple existence, for Otto Krantz did not share the hysteria of the times. He served the Reich with no thought of personal pleasure or profit. Let others raise the rabble and bluster in public meetings. In his time, Krantz had cut short a good many of these speakers—cut them short by a neck. These days might bring honors to a wiser head—but many wiser heads fell into his basket.

Krantz was content. A year ago he had been a humble butcher. Since leaving the slaughterhouse for a public post, he had seen enough of the world and its ways, and had met many people. Officially, in the past year, he had met several thousand. Each acquaintance was of painfully short duration, but it was enough.

He had gazed into the faces of the best families of Germany. He had held those faces in his hands—those proud, proud faces that would never smile again. And he knew that the blue-bloods stained his axe with gore as red as that of the lowest thief.

So Krantz was content. Until, gradually, the faces came too fast. It was impossible to ignore them any longer. He felt himself becoming interested in them because they passed in such an endless variety before his eyes. For each face masked a secret, each skull held a story. Young, old, pure, debauched, innocent, guilty, foolish, wise, shamed, defiant, cringing, bold—ten a day, twenty a day, they mounted the platform and bent their necks to the yoke of Death.

Who were these people he conducted into eternity? He, a simple butcher, was shaping the destiny of Germany. Shaping it with the axe.

What was the nature of that Destiny?

These faces knew.

Krantz tried to find out. He began to peer more closely at each prisoner in turn. Without realizing it, he gazed deeper into dead eyes, felt the shapes of skulls, traced the texture of hair and skin.

One day after work he entered a bookstall and bought texts on phrenology and physiography. That had been two months ago, and now he had gone further in his speculations.

Now, when work was through, he went home quickly and threw himself down on the bed. With eyes closed he waited for the faces of the day to pass in review.

They came—pallid, noble faces molded in sadness or rage; three thousand death-masks, and the end not yet! And with them came a message.

“You, Otto Krantz, are our Master! You are the most powerful man in the Reich. Not Hitler, not Goebbels, not Himmler or the others. You, Otto Krantz, hold the real power of life and death!”

At first, Krantz was afraid of such thoughts. But every day came a dozen new reminders, a dozen new faces to review in darkness, to remember, to relish.

To relish? But of course, it was a pleasure now. To be quiet. To dress in black. To wear a mask. To hide the secret thoughts and then come home to revel alone with three thousand memories!

For weeks now his memories had seemed to center around one particular moment—the moment when he held up the head and gazed into the face. Lately he had been forced to hold himself sternly in check as he did so, lest he betray his excitement. This was the supreme thrill, to hold the heads. If there was only some way to recapture that thrill, that sensation of power, at will! If only he could—

Steal the heads.

No. That was madness. If he were discovered, he would die. And for what? The foolish face of a gaping old wastrel?

Not that. Not a gray old head with a cruel, stupid face. It was not worth the risk. But there were other heads—strange heads of debauchees, golden heads of beautiful ladies that hung before him in dreams. These were worth possessing, worth the risk. To sit in his room and behold forever such symbols of his secret glory—there was a dream!

He must find a way, Krantz decided. It would be necessary to visit the condemned cells nightly, when the lists of execution were given out. Then he could inspect the crop and make his choices. He might make an arrangement with old Fritz, the scavenger who did the burials of all the unclaimed bodies. For a few marks Fritz would do anything. Then Otto Krantz could go home with a burlap bag slung over his shoulder. Nobody would be the wiser.

Krantz thought it all out carefully. He had to be careful, make sure no one suspected, for if they knew they would not understand. They might think he was crazy and shut him away. Then he wouldn’t have his axe any more. He wouldn’t be able to polish the heavy, gleaming blade every morning before work started. And he couldn’t see the heads every day. That must not be permitted to happen.

So he was very careful the next few times he went to work. Nobody who noticed the tall, broad-shouldered man with the close-cropped mustache and bald head would suspect that behind his stern, impassive countenance there lurked a dream.

Even his victims didn’t realize it when he stared at their faces each morning. Perhaps the black mask he wore helped to disguise the hideous intensity of his searching stare. It also concealed his disappointment.

For none of these traitors had the face that would satisfy him. None seemed to hold the symbol of power he desired. There was nothing but a succession of commonplace countenances. Krantz was disappointed, but he didn’t give up.

He went to Gestapo headquarters one evening late in the week. He passed up the broad stairs and received the salute of the sentinel Troopers with the dignity befitting an official of the Reich. He had no trouble in the outer offices.

The man at the desk chuckled when he heard Krantz make his request.

“You want to see the list for tomorrow? Here, it’s ready. Only seven of the swine, for high treason. You can probably do the job with one hand.”

Otto Krantz didn’t laugh. He spoke again, smoothly. “If you please, I should like to see the prisoners.”

“See them?”

“Yes.”

The man at the desk shrugged. “That is very irregular. I’m afraid you’d have to ask Inspector Grunert for permission.”

“But can’t you—?”

“One must obey orders, you know. Let me announce you.” The desk official buzzed the intercom, spoke briefly, and then raised his head. “You may go right in,” he said, nodding towards the door behind him.

Krantz forced a rigid smile. He had to go through with this, carry it off. If only he could get permission, it would be easy to make further plans.

As he entered Inspector Grunert’s office, the rigid smile became suffused with incredulous delight. For there, sitting on the bench before the Inspector’s desk, were the two prisoners he wanted—the answers to his prayers, his dreams.

Otto Krantz stared at them closely, noting with growing pleasure each detail of their faces.

The man was old, for only the old have long white hair. The man was young, for only the young have smooth, delicately pointed features unwrinkled by the years. The man was ageless, for only the ageless have great green glowing eyes that burn upwards from unthinkable recesses of the brain behind.

Then he looked at the other prisoner, the woman.

The woman was a wanton, for only wantons have wildly burnished locks that flow like flame above their brows. The woman was a saint, for only a saint has the white, ecstatic purity of a face transfigured by suffering. The woman was a child, for only a child has eyes that beam in beauty.

“She is the woman I want,” droned the voice within Otto Krantz.

He couldn’t tear his eyes from them. The long white hair, the long red hair. The slim necks. The greenish glow of their eyes. Father and daughter? Father and daughter of Mystery. Creatures of another world, a world of dreams.

And tomorrow they would become his dreams. His to possess. Symbols of his power, the power of the Headsman’s axe. These were the two he wanted . . .

“Ah, Krantz, here you are.” Smiling, Grunert rose and extended a fleshy palm. “Just in time to meet two future clients.” The fat Inspector bowed sardonically in the direction of the prisoners. “Allow me to present Joachim Fulger and his daughter, Eva.”

They did not stir. Neither man nor girl looked at Otto Krantz. Their eyes rejected the presence of the Headsman, the Inspector, and the room itself.

Grunert chuckled. “Cool heads, eh?”

“Wonderful heads,” purred the voice inside Otto Krantz, but his lips remained closed.

“Yes,” continued the Inspector. “One runs across all types in line of duty. Queer fish. Take these two specimens, for example.”

“I’m going to,” whispered the inner voice. Grunert could not hear it as he went on. “What do you suppose these two have been doing?” he inquired. “You’ll never guess, so I’ll tell you. They just signed the confession, in case you don’t believe me.”

“What?” asked Otto Krantz, knowing it was expected of him.

“Practicing sorcery against the Reich—can you imagine such a thing in this day and age? Sticking pins in images of our Führer!”

Grunert scowled reflectively. “Their block leader got wind of it last month. Sounded fantastic, but he checked them just as a matter of routine. Everyone in the neighborhood seemed to know they were queer ones—selling love philtres, telling fortunes, and all that.

“But when the block leader dropped in to pay them a visit—all very pleasant, not in an official capacity or anything—this swine of a magician and his unnatural offspring put an ice-pick into his throat!”

The two prisoners did not stir. Inspector Grunert nodded at Krantz and tapped his head significantly. “You see how it is.” He shrugged. “They could get the camp or a firing squad. But I decided the sorcery charge was the one to press. Make it high treason, I said. Herr Goebbels is always looking for a story—and here is a good example to set before those who work secretly against the Führer.”

He rose and confronted the silent, unblinking pair. “Cool as cucumbers, aren’t they? But they cursed enough when we had them brought in, I can tell you! A few days here and they signed the confessions without a murmur.

“Crazy fanatics! Trying to kill men by sticking pins in photographs and dolls. Why, it’s barbaric!”

A laugh crawled up out of Joachim Fulger’s white throat. The voice that followed it was curiously disturbing.

“Do you hear, Eva, my child? We are barbaric, says this barbarian in his murderer’s uniform! He sits here in his torture-chamber and explains our barbarism to the brutal savage whose axe will shear our heads from our necks tomorrow morning.”

Again, the laughter.

Otto Krantz watched it well out of the white throat. The axe would bite there—so—

The girl’s voice came now. “We are sorcerers, too, by his standards. But our magic is cleaner than the spells of these madmen with their chanting slogans, their howling worship of ancient gods. Our crime is that we have fought evil with evil, and apparently we have lost.

“But the day will come. Those who take the sword must perish by the sword; those that take whips shall die beneath them, and those who wield the axe will lie beneath it.”

The words moved Krantz until he remembered she was possessed; a witch, a lunatic. But she was beautiful. That long white throat—he’d strike it there—

“Let them rave.” Grunert chuckled. “But you wanted to see me about something, Krantz?”

“It does not matter. Some other time,” muttered the Headsman.

“Very well.” Grunert faced the prisoners. “You will meet Krantz again tomorrow morning. Perhaps then he can match your sharp tongues with something sharper. Eh, Otto?”

“Yes,” Krantz whispered. He couldn’t tear his eyes from them. The long white hair, the long red hair. The slim necks. The greenish glow of their eyes. Creatures from another world, a world of dreams. And tomorrow they would become his dreams. His to possess. Symbols of the power of the axe. These were the heads he wanted . . .

Abruptly, Otto Krantz turned and stumbled out of the room. He had remembered a duty to perform. A most important duty. He had to get back to his room and begin.

It wasn’t until he busied himself at the vital task that Krantz permitted himself to feel the thrill of anticipation again. But then it could no longer be held back, and Otto Krantz grinned in glee as he sat in the darkness of his room and delicately sharpened the Headsman’s axe.

2

“You want I should let you have the heads from those two bodies and bury the corpses secretly? Nein!”

Fritz the scavenger shook his head in bewildered but emphatic denial.

“But nobody has registered to claim the bodies. No one will know if you quicklime them with the heads or not,” Krantz wheedled.

“I cannot do this thing,” Fritz grumbled.

Otto Krantz smiled.

“Fifty marks in it for you,” he whispered.

Fritz blinked. But still he shook his head.

“I can get you extra butter rations,” Krantz murmured. “I will talk to the District Leader tomorrow.”

Fritz sighed. “I would do it for you without pay,” he said. “But I cannot. You see, the Fulgers are not going to be beheaded after all.”

“What?” Krantz reacted with a shocked grimace. “But the Inspector himself told me—”

Fritz shrugged. “I have just come from Headquarters. It was decided to drop the sorcery charge as foolish. The murder charge was upheld. They will die early in the morning, before a firing squad. Shot, not beheaded.”

Then and only then did Otto Krantz realize how much the possession of those two heads meant to him.

He had come away from his room in the middle of the night, carrying his axe in its velvet case. He had scurried through the streets, his official evening dress gaining him free passage from any SS Troopers encountered on the way. He had hurried here to the little room beneath the cell blocks where Fritz the scavenger dwelt. And all the while he had been hugging the thought of what was to come, gloating over the attainment of his goal.

Now the opportunity had slipped away.

With it, something slipped in Otto Krantz’s brain. He could feel it, the usurpation of his consciousness by that single pulsing urge. He couldn’t define the sensation. He knew only one thing—he must get those heads.

They hung before him in midair, those mocking twin faces. One with long white curls, one with red. They were laughing at his confusion, his dismay, his defeat.

His defeat? Never.

Krantz thought fast, spoke rapidly.

“It is still true that no one has claimed the bodies?”

“Yes, that is so.”

“Then after the Fulgers are shot, you will still take them to the lime vats?”

“I suppose.”

“Who has signed the papers for execution?”

“No one, of course. You remember. Inspector Grunert always does that when he arrives, first thing in the morning.”

Krantz rubbed his hands. “So no orders have actually been issued yet. No firing squad is appointed, no time has been set?”

“That is true.”

“Very well, then. Fritz, I offer a hundred marks to you for the heads.”

“But there will be no heads, I tell you—they’ll be shot.”

Krantz smiled. “No, they won’t! I’m taking the Fulgers out to the yard right now. I’ll get the job over with before the official ceremony begins at dawn.”

“But the orders—”

“Who will know? I’ll tell Grunert I picked up the order along with the rest at his office and took the liberty of assigning a squad to do the job, just to save him the trouble. He’ll sign the order afterwards and forget about it. He’ll never bother to ask who did the shooting, and since the bodies are unclaimed, you can cart them away.”

“The risk, they’ll see you do it—”

“No one will see. I shall bring them here myself.”

“Here, to my room?”

“I’ll tidy it up again for you, my fastidious friend.”

“No. I won’t permit it. We’ll be caught!”

“Fritz.”

Krantz’s voice was very soft when he uttered the name. But his face was hard. His hands, his butcher’s hands, were harder as they closed about the throat of the old scavenger.

Fritz fell back, choking. “Yes—yes—but hurry. It’s nearly dawn now.”

Krantz hurried.

He picked up the necessary papers in the Inspector’s office. He raced down the silent, night-lighted halls to the cell blocks, located a blinking guard, and bawled orders to the surprised fellow in convincing tones.

“Where’s the escort?” the guard protested.

“Upstairs, waiting,” snapped Krantz.

“You’re going to take them up alone?”

“You saw the orders. Get the Fulgers for me. At once, dummkopf!”

Befuddled, the guard led him to the cell.

“Raus!”

The Fulgers were waiting. Yes, they were waiting, and their green eyes gleamed in the murky dawn.

There was no trouble. They proceeded Krantz up the stairs without a word. The Headsman followed, slamming the outer door in the guard’s face.

“This way,” said Otto Krantz. He indicated a door.

Fulger and his daughter obeyed. The outer halls were deserted and Krantz, with a pounding heart, knew that they would reach Fritz’s quarters without being seen.

They did.

Fritz had everything in readiness. He’d hauled out an extra block of ice, and the axe was imbedded deeply therein, to keep the edge sharp. He had set up the official block as well. The basket and sawdust were waiting. It was all done in the proper regulation manner, just as it would be outside. He handed Otto Krantz the Headsman’s mask.

Krantz donned it.

Joachim and Eva Fulger stood against the wall of the little room under the cell blocks and stared. The old man turned to Krantz.

“But the court decreed that we be shot,” he murmured.

“Why the axe? And why here, inside? Where are the guards, where are the officials—”

The bony fingers of Otto Krantz raked across his mouth.

“Silence!”

Eva’s expression did not change. She merely opened her mouth a trifle and screamed.

Krantz stopped that. Her curls helped. Twisted expertly about her throat, they muffled further outcry.

Fritz had the old man kneeling now. He kicked the block into place.

Krantz drew the axe from the ice.

There was a deathly silence in the little room.

A deathly silence . . .

“I warn you,” murmured Joachim Fulger. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

Krantz had a sharp retort for that.

The axe—

3

The nightmare was over. Cleaning the room, hiding the bodies until they were ready for the lime, getting the burlap sack—Fritz tended to all that.

Otto Krantz appeared in the courtyard promptly at dawn, ready for his official duties. Grunert was there, and some others. The seven victims were led out. Krantz labored.

It was all a red blur. He plodded through his task mechanically now, as he had in the slaughterhouse long ago. The significance was gone from the moment. Sheep bleated, sheep died.

He could hardly wait to get home . . .

Grunert casually inquired about the Fulgers, after the executions were over. Krantz mentioned taking the liberty of arranging for the firing squad on his own authority, then quite indifferently presented the order for signing. Grunert shrugged, signed without reading, and sent it along with the rest for the official files.

It was over then.

Fritz had his hundred marks in a wallet.

And Otto Krantz—he had his sack. He hugged it to his breast as he sped through the streets towards home. No need to stop for food or drink today. There was a substitute for food and drink in the sack—for here were dreams come true.

Krantz ran the last few blocks, his feet moving in rhythm with his pulsing heart.

When he locked himself in the room, he was almost afraid to look, for a moment.

Suppose they had changed?

But they had not changed.

White-haired Joachim and auburn-tressed Eva stared up at him with glowing green eyes. Their faces were set in grimaces of undying hate.

And Krantz stared, stared as Perseus stared into the countenance of Medusa.

He gazed at their Gorgonic grinning and laughed aloud. Someone seeing him right now might think him mad, he reflected. But he was not mad. Not he, Otto Krantz, Official Headsman of the Third Reich. No madman could have been as clever, as cunning, as crafty as he.

These two had been mad. Mad, with their babbling of sorcery and witchcraft. They had not even had the sense to be afraid of death. They had mocked him, ridiculed him, called him a crude barbarian.

Well, perhaps he was a barbarian. A head hunter, maybe. Like those Indians in South America—Jivaros, weren’t they? That’s what he was, a head hunter!

Krantz laughed.

They had mocked him, so now he mocked them. He talked to the heads for a long time. He flung their words in their teeth. “Those that live by the axe shall perish beneath it,” they had said. And, “as ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

Krantz told them what he thought of that. He told them a great deal. After a while he no longer realized that he was talking to the dead. The heads seemed to nod and shake in answer to his words. The grins expanded sardonically.

They were laughing at him again!

Krantz grew angry. He shouted at the heads. He shouted so loudly that at first he didn’t hear the knocking on his door.

Then, when it rose to thunderous crescendo, he turned.

With a start, he realized it was already dusk. Where had the day gone to?

The knocking persisted.

Krantz got out the burlap bag, filled it, and shoved it under his bed. Then he answered the door, straightening his collar and striving to control the trembling of his lips.

“Lieber Gott, let me in!”

It was Fritz the scavenger. He stood quivering in the doorway until Otto Krantz dragged him across the threshold by the scruff of the neck.

“What is it?”

“The Fulgers—their bodies have been claimed by a relative. A cousin, I think. He comes tonight to take them for burial.”

“No, he can’t do that!”

“But he is, he has received permission. And we shall be found out, and it will mean the axe for us.”

Krantz managed to control his voice. He thought fast, frantically. Desperation blossomed into inspiration.

“Where are the bodies now?” he whispered.

“I have them out at the lime pits, behind the walls—near the old quarry.”

“And this cousin of the Fulgers will not come for them until late tonight?”

“That is right. He has received permission to bring a hearse and two coffins.”

Otto Krantz smiled. “Good. We shall be all right, then. This cousin of the Fulgers will not examine the bodies too closely, I think. He will not even bother to search for bullet wounds.”

“But they are headless—”

“Exactly.” A smile crept over Krantz’s face. Even in the twilight Fritz could see that smile, and he shuddered.

“What is it you will do?”

“Do you remember the last words of Joachim Fulger?” Krantz whispered.

“Yes. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. That’s from the Bible, isn’t it?”

“Exactly.” Krantz grinned. “The old fool meant it as a warning. Instead, it will be our salvation.”

“But I don’t see—”

“Never mind. Go at once to the shop down the street. Purchase five yards of strong catgut and a surgical needle. I will meet you at the lime pits tonight at eight. I’ll bring the sack with me. Now do you understand?”

Fritz understood. He was still shuddering as Krantz pushed him out into the hall towards the stairs.

4

It was a grisly ordeal. They worked in darkness, lest a light betray their presence to SS Troopers on guard in the pits beyond.

They crouched in the little shed in utter blackness and groped their way about the business in silence. Fortunately, there was no trouble in locating the bodies. Fritz had carefully set them aside for immediate interment.

The rest was up to Krantz. He was no surgeon, but his fingers held a skill born of utter desperation. If he bungled the task, his life was forfeit, and he knew it. He strung the catgut and sewed.

The needle rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell in darkness as Otto Krantz pursued his fanciwork.

And then it was done—done amidst the shuddering whimpers that rose from Fritz’s frantic throat.

But Krantz held his nerve to the last. It was he who added the final touch—binding the high collars about the two white throats and carefully patting the prison shirts into place beneath. His sense of touch served him well in this last gesture of precaution. At last he sighed, signifying that the task was complete.

Fritz wanted to bolt for it then. Krantz whispered that he must wait, must hide by the wall across the way from the shed, until they saw the cousin actually come and take the bodies away. Then and only then would he be certain of their safety.

So they waited, waited until midnight in the darkness. What phantasms it held for Fritz, Otto Krantz could not say. But as he stared into the night he saw the grinning faces of Joachim and Eva Fulger hanging bodiless in midair, their eyes alive with undying mockery.

Krantz pressed his eyelids together, but the faces remained, their leering mouths twisted as though in an effort to speak from beyond the barrier of death.

What were they trying to tell him?

Krantz didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. The hands which had wielded the surgical needle so expertly now hung limply at his sides as he waited.

Then the hearse came. The cousin, escorted by a guard, went into the little shed. Two mortician’s assistants brought the coffins. Krantz held his breath as they disappeared inside the shed.

They were not inside long. Soon they reappeared, carrying the closed coffins. They did not speak, there was no sign of agitation. The coffins were placed inside the hearse and the car drove away.

It was then that Krantz broke and ran, sobbing, from the scene.

He was safe. Everything was over, and he was safe. The heads were back on their bodies.

He got to his room somehow. Perhaps he might snatch a few hours of sleep before dawn. Then he must get up and return to duty as though nothing had happened. But now, to sleep—

But Otto Krantz did not sleep.

The heads were back on their bodies, yet they would not go away. They were waiting for Krantz in his room. He saw them hanging in the shadows, even when he turned on the lights.

They hung there—the head of the old man with the long white hair, and the head of the girl with her flaming curls—and they laughed at Krantz. They laughed at him.

Krantz bared his teeth.

Let them laugh! He was Otto Krantz, Headsman of the Reich. Krantz, the executioner, whom all men feared.

He had outsmarted them after all. Now they would be buried away in a grave and no one would ever know that Krantz had murdered them.

Krantz told them this in whispers, and they nodded to each other, sharing secrets. But Krantz did not mind. He was no longer afraid.

He almost welcomed the coming of dawn in this changed mood. He donned his immaculate evening dress carefully. He brushed his stiff collar into place before the bureau. The heads laughed at him over his shoulder in the mirror, but he didn’t care about that now.

He swaggered through the street on his way to Headquarters, cradling the axe in its case against his brawny chest. A passing guard drew stiffly to attention as Krantz marched by.

Krantz laughed. There—wasn’t that proof of his importance, his cleverness? Let the heads understand that he was a man of position, of power.

Otto Krantz knew he had nothing to fear. He would go about his duties today without question. He squared his shoulders and marched up the steps, into the outer office. He wasn’t worried. He knew no one else could see the heads but himself.

He smiled at the man behind the desk. That was the way—brazen it out!

“I’d like to see Inspector Grunert, please. About today’s orders. Is he here yet?”

“The Inspector left word for you to go right in.”

There. The Inspector was waiting for him! That’s the kind of a man Otto Krantz was. Inspectors waited for his arrival.

He smiled derisively at the heads.

Then he strutted into Inspector Grunert’s office.

The Inspector was waiting.

Krantz realized that just as soon as the two Gestapo men stepped from behind the door and pinned his arms close to his sides. They took the axe, they held him tightly, he could not struggle, he could only gape, he could only pant, he could only listen to what Grunert was saying.

“Otto Krantz, I arrest you in the name of the Third Reich, for the murder of Joachim and Eva Fulger.”

But what was he talking about? The Fulgers were in their graves by now, buried.

No—they weren’t.

The Inspector was pulling the sheet from the table over in the corner.

And Otto Krantz stared. He saw the heads again, and this time everyone could see them. They were grinning up at him now from over the tops of the sheets.

Somehow he dragged his captors forward with him. He bent over the bodies. He wanted to know how, know why they had been discovered.

They looked all right. The heads had been sewed on tightly. Perfectly. The high collars were still in place. Nothing was wrong with his work, nothing looked suspicious. Why, the collars hadn’t even been pulled back to disclose any of the sewing!

Then what was wrong?

Krantz gazed at the still bodies, trying to read the secret. He didn’t hear any of Inspector Grunert’s mumblings about madmen, about murder. He was trying to remember what had happened.

“As ye sow,” the old man had warned. “As ye sow—”

Then Otto Krantz’s gaze traveled up again to the heads of the dead wizard and his daughter. He screamed, once.

“Too bad you didn’t have any light to work with in that shed,” Inspector Grunert purred.

Otto Krantz didn’t hear him.

He was staring madly at the grinning heads of the old man and the girl—the heads he had sewed back on in the darkness and inadvertently switched.

The Weird Tailor

1

Only a connoisseur of horrors would have appreciated Erik Conrad’s window dummy.

It had been a cheap model to begin with—and the passage of twenty years had not improved its crudely molded features, its awkward stance, or the general air of clumsiness inherent in face and form. There was something grotesque about the dummy, as if it had been created by the alien art of another world; as though a life-form from Outside had deliberately set about to model a “man” from a poor woodcut in an ancient book.

The brash smile, the jaunty little mustache, and the open candor of the staring blue eyes had all suffered the gnawings of Time, so that now the figure was minus an upper lip, the left corner of the mustache, and the entire right eye. A crack extended from the empty eye-socket up to the crown of the head and split the marceled hair directly along the intended part. A chipped finger and a nick in the left wrist contributed to the gruesome aura of decay.

Certainly the suit Erik Conrad had draped over the dummy was just the garment which would be selected for the cheap client of a cheap mortician. It was eminently appropriate to the corpselike pallor of the window dummy, but the effect of the ensemble was well calculated to disturb the eye of the sensitive observer.

Fortunately, Erik Conrad was not overly imaginative. He didn’t mind the sight of the leering dummy slumped in the shadows at one corner of his dingy little tailoring establishment. He was not affected by the spectacle of its hideously progressive decay, any more than he was affected by his own.

For the years had not dealt kindly with Erik Conrad, merchant tailor. He had suffered a disintegration comparable to that of the dummy since setting up a shop of his own on this side street. His blue eyes were faded from endless peering, his fingers twisted and calloused from stitching, his shoulders bent from stooping over the pressing table. The sparse brown hairs plastered against his sloping skull were slowly turning gray, and hence were almost invisible against the gray pallor of his skin.

Erik Conrad was not conscious of these changes. He noted and bewailed only the steady decline of his business. Conrad’s window dummy slumped a trifle with the years, and Conrad himself stooped more than a bit—but the business itself tottered on its last legs. Time had dealt most harshly with little independent merchant tailors. The popularity of the ready-made suit, the competition of stylish downtown tailoring establishments, the inroads made by modern cleaning and dyeing concerns—all had contributed to his loss of revenue.

Conrad saw it happen, and he found no solution. His only relief lay in cursing and grumbling as he went about his steadily decreasing daily tasks.

Then, a year ago, he had married.

Anna was a refugee; a young woman of great physical attraction and shy personal charm. A stranger in a new world, she readily consented to marriage, even though Erik Conrad was middle-aged and none too successful. She was grateful enough to stand in the steam-filled back room and assist in the pressing which now formed the bulk of Conrad’s existing business.

Conrad, for his part, gave up cursing and grumbling after his marriage to Anna. Now, when he was discouraged or out of sorts, he merely smiled and shrugged, took his wife by the throat, and throttled her. Not too hard, of course, for she had her work to do. Anna did not complain too greatly, nor did she give way to tears. It is difficult to either scold or cry when one’s throat has been thoroughly choked by gnarled and twisted fingers.

At first she had longed for a child to keep her company, but after coming to know her husband better, she was glad that there was no little one to suffer Conrad’s mistreatment. Sometimes, when the tailor was out delivering pressed garments, she grew lonely in the deserted shop, and it was then she talked to herself, in German. Sometimes, when she became self-conscious or apprehensive about this habit, she pretended that the window dummy was a person, and talked to it.

She even invented a name for it—“Otto,” after her cousin, the one who had been killed in the air raid over Dresden, so many years ago. Otto had worn a mustache, too, and they would have been married. But a bomb had fallen from the sky, and when they found Otto in the ruins his head had been cracked like the dummy’s—so—and on his face was the little wooden smile, beneath the waxen pallor.

Anna told Otto all about it, and Otto listened, looking at her through the steam-clouds with his one good eye. Anna knew there was harm in this pretending, but she needed something.

And so life went on, its currents diverted from the tiny side street where the little tailoring shop stood. The window dummy crouched corpselike in the corner, Conrad choked his helpless, hopeless wife, and Anna’s beauty faded and disappeared in wisps of hot steam. A fine cloud of gray dust descended to settle over bolts of cloth, racks of unclaimed garments, corners of the floor where no feet trod. The dust settled on the shoulders of the window dummy, sifted through Conrad’s hair.

No connoisseur of horrors came to stare at the dummy or examine the sadistic secrets lurking behind the dingy exterior of the shop. Things might have gone on that way for years longer—the dummy could have continued to deteriorate, Conrad’s fingers might have eventually left a permanent indentation in Anna’s throat, and Anna would gradually have become a whining, half-mad harridan. The cloud of dust might have grown to an inch-deep layer upon the floor. The process could have continued indefinitely—but it didn’t.

Mr. Smith saw to that.

Mr. Smith stepped into the tailoring shop one bright and sunny afternoon. Anna happened to be behind the counter in the outer room, and when she saw the stranger, one of her hands stole instinctively behind her head to tuck in the straggling hairs on her neck.

For Mr. Smith inspired that sort of self-consciousness.

Mr. Smith looked prosperous. His sleek, smooth, well-shaven features wore a smile of benevolent affluence. His manicured nails and carefully clipped little gray Van Dyke beard hinted of riches, and his heavy tweed suit fairly shouted wealth to the beholder. The heavy, confident tread of his custom-made shoes was somehow transformed into the merry tinkle of jangling gold-pieces.

He placed one plump hand carefully on the dusty counter, so that the errant sunbeams played over the massive diamond ring upon his third finger, and drummed authoritatively.

“Is the proprietor in?” he asked.

Anna smiled. She looked at his face, looked at the ring, then looked at his face once more.

“I’ll call him, sir.”

Her step was strangely buoyant as she walked into the steam-filled back room. Conrad was dozing in a chair.

“Erik, there is a customer outside.”

He blinked and grunted in annoyance.

“Quickly. He is a very distinguished gentleman, I think.”

“Bill collector!” snarled Conrad. But he rose, brushed lint from his shabby coat, and shuffled out.

When he saw the stranger, he straightened up. He tried to look dapper and alert.

“Yes? What can I do for you, Mr.—?”

“Smith. Mr. Smith,” said the man in tweeds. “Do I understand correctly when I assume that you are prepared to custom-tailor a garment from material of my own selection?”

It took Erik Conrad several seconds to comprehend that this distinguished elderly gentleman was asking him if he could make a suit.

Then he understood, and immediately his mind conjured up visions of fabulous profits—ten dollars here, fifteen there, another twenty overall on the basis of the fine fancy words this stranger had used.

“That is right, sir. You would like me to make you a suit? I imagine you’d want something special—”

“Correct. I want something very special.”

Mr. Smith smiled with his eyes as well as his mouth when he answered the last question.

“Very well. If you’d give me an idea of what you have in mind, I could show you some very fine material. I’ve got a wonderful stock of woolens here.”

Conrad gabbled on, wondering to himself how he could possibly dare to show any of his shabby bolts to such a rich and elegant customer. He tried to remember fragments of sales-talk long since fallen into disuse; he stalled for time, he perspired, he grew red and impassioned.

Mr. Smith interrupted with an airy wave of the hand. The diamond sparkled as it flashed through the air, and Conrad’s faded eyes followed it thirstily, as if seeking to draw fresh fire from its ageless brilliance.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Mr. Smith. “I have the material already selected. Here, in my bag. Would you care to examine it?”

“Of course,” said Conrad. He was relieved and disappointed at the same time; relieved at being spared the ordeal of displaying his meager stock, but disappointed because he could not profit on the sale of material.

Still, he could make enough on tailoring the garment itself. This was a piece of luck. He eagerly awaited an inspection as Mr. Smith opened the bag and spread a bolt of cloth on the counter. Conrad switched an overhead light into position.

“Take a look,” said Mr. Smith. “There’s enough here for a suit, I believe.”

The cloth was gray. No, it couldn’t be gray, because it had little flecks that reflected the light. It was gold. But gold does not shimmer in rainbow hues. It was a peculiar off-shade of tan. But tan is not green, and there was green in this cloth, also some red and blue. No, it was gray. It had to be gray.

Conrad stared at it, stared at the iridescent surface. Mr. Smith seemed to notice nothing unusual, so Conrad forced himself to remain silent—but he had never looked upon this material before, in all his years of tailoring.

He spread the bolt out and fingered the material. It tingled to the touch, sliding through his hands with an electric crackling. It was not wool, or flannel, or cotton. The more Conrad saw of it, the less sure he became of what he saw. He could not discern a definite weave or texture. Neither eye nor finger could isolate a single thread for examination. Staring at it, Conrad began to experience a peculiar sensation—a tightness in his head.

But it was cloth, and Conrad was a tailor. He could make a suit from it, for this distinguished customer.

The distinguished customer eyed him closely as he examined the garment, and Conrad strove to remain impassive. “It will be difficult to work with so unusual a fabric,” he commented. “Still, I can promise you a suit. Now, if you’ll slip off your coat, sir, I will take the measurements—”

Mr. Smith held up his hand. The diamond’s dazzling reflection gleamed from the single eye of the window dummy in the corner.

“The suit is not for me,” he told Conrad.

“No? Then what is it that you wish?”

“The suit is for my son,” the elderly man told him.

“Will he come in for a fitting, then?”

“No. It’s to be a surprise. You see. I have all of his measurements written down here. Quite exact, they are. I shall require a most unusual fit for this garment.”

“And the style?”

“That, too, is noted.” Mr. Smith pulled out a sheaf of papers, covered with fine, crabbed script. “You understand all this must be done in strictest confidence, and exactly as I have indicated. I require a special suit. Of course, if you cannot handle it—”

Again the diamond described its glittering arc.

“I’m sure I can,” said Conrad, hastily. “Anything you want, I’ll give you.”

“Money is no object.” Mr. Smith smiled confidentially. “I expect you to bill me for your trouble. But these instructions, while they may seem peculiar to you, must be followed to the letter.”

Conrad nodded, and the two men bent over the sheaf of papers. Mr. Smith read aloud, slowly, emphasizing certain matters and enlarging upon other details. The measurements must be thus and so. The cut must conform in this wise to the diagram. There must be no lining—none whatsoever—the technical problem involved here would have to be solved by Conrad’s own ingenuity. Yes, and another thing; no vest would be required. Of course it might look a bit odd, but again Conrad must strive to turn out a suit of superficially conventional appearance and at the same time work within these limitations. Oh, and here was material for the buttons. Bone, to be turned and bored by hand.

Bye the bye, that was another very important stipulation. All work on this suit must be done by hand; no machine shortcuts were permissible. Of course Mr. Smith realized what this entailed, and he expected to pay for the extra attention.

Conrad listened, comprehended finally the physical rudiments of what he must do, if not the reasons inherent in the instructions. But then, understanding was not required of him—merely strict obedience.

“And here are the dates,” Mr. Smith concluded. “The times during which you can work. As you see they are most carefully worked out; the hours and even the minutes calculated to a nicety. I beg of you to keep faith with me and sew on this suit only as directed. That is most important.”

Here Conrad could not withhold his curiosity. “I can work only at these times?” he asked. “But why?”

Mr. Smith started to frown, then bit his lip until it curled back in a smile. “It is natural that you should ask, I know. All I can tell you is that I happen to be a believer in astrology. As such, I am sure you will humor me in these requests. Set your own price for the service.”

Conrad shrugged. So be it. Perhaps this Mr. Smith was mad. But no, with his fine clothes and big diamond—he was only eccentric. The rich are often so.

“Please, not a word to anyone,” the customer said as he turned away from the counter. “Take a month, six weeks, but conform to my schedule and keep silent. I am reposing my trust in you.”

“It shall be as you wish.” Conrad bent his head in the immemorial obeisance of servant to master, of artisan to aristocrat, of craftsman to burgher, of artist to patron.

So master-aristocrat-burgher-patron Mr. Smith went away from the little shop and Conrad carefully wrapped and put away the strange bolt of cloth.

“Conrad, what is all this?” asked Anna, timidly, slipping into the shop from the pressing room at the rear. “Who was that man?”

“Never mind, woman, it doesn’t concern you,” he told her.

“But I listened—heard him talking to you about sewing at funny hours—”

“Be silent! It is nothing to you.”

“Conrad, I’m afraid. There is something not right in all this, something that will make trouble.”

“Trouble!” Conrad went over to her and gripped her thin shoulders. “It is you who make trouble for me, you little fool!”

He beat her, then, until she whimpered and broke away to huddle in the corner of the shop. Conrad went out and sought the tavern where for a long time he sat mumbling to himself over his beer. In the beer foam he saw the sparkling of diamonds.

Anna whispered to herself in the darkness, then whispered to Otto the dummy. In Otto’s eye she saw not diamonds but the cold, empty glitter of glass.

2

The spider began to spin.

Squatting in the gloom, the web was woven with crabbed cunning, with squinting skill. Silently and ceaselessly the weaving went, the pattern emerged from fashioning fingers. Days, hours, minutes threaded past on single strands.

There were interruptions and distractions, of course. Conrad did not proceed with his work without making a futile effort to analyze the nature of the peculiar fabric. He placed it under a strong light, even used a pocket magnifying glass in order to observe the threads—but all he could concede was that this was some cloth foreign to his knowledge. He tried wetting the material and found that moisture left no stain. There was no real reason for his inquiry, of course; but Conrad was curious and the mystery surrounding the making of the suit disturbed him.

He was more violently disturbed, during these weeks, by the sudden appearance of collection agents and small creditors, including the tavern-keeper down the street. He fobbed them off with promises or curses as suited their temperaments, and told himself that he must hasten and complete the garment. Often as he sewed he amused himself by idle computation. Should he charge two hundred dollars for the suit? Or three hundred? Why not—five hundred?

Once or twice he tried to hasten his task by working on the suit at times unspecified by Mr. Smith’s schedule. Strangely enough, he could not sew—not literally, but his stitches went awry, the cloth slipped through his fingers with that peculiar crackling feel of static electricity, and there were other mishaps. Insensitive as he was, Conrad felt a touch of fear as he considered the nature of the unusual garment he was fashioning. The hints about astrology were a clue, but Conrad guessed at other things. This was a most peculiar job, and a most peculiar suit. It began to take shape under his fingers, and as it did so, fears took shape in Conrad’s mind.

Whatever Mr. Smith intended, whatever his plans for the suit, Conrad meant to be out of the deal. All he wanted was to finish it and collect his—yes—five hundred dollars.

There were only two possible answers; either he was working for a crazy man or for a practitioner of Black Magic. Conrad relished neither speculation, and after long hours of toiling and brooding, it was small wonder that at times he lost his temper and raised his hand against Anna.

His wife received another, more thorough beating when at last the suit was completed. It hung from the hook, a strange, shimmering garment with high collar, unusual peaked lapels, a curious button arrangement, and no pockets whatsoever—sleeves of practically simian length, and curiously cuffless trousers. But it was the cloth more than the cut which contributed the strangeness. In bolt form that fabric had disturbed Conrad’s eyes. Now, in the shape of a suit, there was something quite odd and yet impelling to the eye. Conrad found himself glancing again and again at the new suit, trying to visualize it as it might appear when actually worn.

“Looks funny,” Anna commented.

“Of course,” Conrad nodded. “That’s because it isn’t pressed. So get busy, woman.”

It was after this, when Anna returned and told him the suit just “wouldn’t take a press,” that Conrad gave his wife a severe beating. When he took the garment and attempted, in vain, to do the job himself, he was tempted to strike Anna again.

Instead, he reminded himself that it would be wise to deliver the suit and collect his payment as soon as possible.

Placing the peculiar coat and trousers in a box, Conrad set out for the address Mr. Smith had entrusted to him. It was in an unfamiliar section of the city, and he decided it would be best to go by taxi.

Jolting through the streets in the cab, Conrad conjured up a vision of the mansion in which Mr. Smith must live. He would open a wrought-iron gate, go up a long, tree-bordered walk to the big front door, grasp the bronze knocker and summon a butler. The butler would ask him to wait in the hall, then return to usher him into the big drawing room. And there was Mr. Smith—so—seated before the huge open fireplace. Ah, it was a wonderful house, that one!

The cab jerked to a halt and Conrad was jarred out of his musings. He started as he peered out at the doorway of the ramshackle tenement dwelling huddled between two warehouses on the mean street. For a moment he considered cursing the cab driver, then hastily checked the address. No mistake, this was his destination.

Conrad paid the driver and darted through the entrance, lugging the garment box under his arm. At the tenant register in the hall he pressed the buzzer for 4A. He paused, buzzed again, waited. Sighing, he prepared to trudge up the stairs.

It was not a pleasant ascent; leg muscles protested, hands clung to rickety railings, nose inhaled the stairwell reek of a dozen compounded unpleasantnesses. Conrad cursed the eccentricity of his customer. Why should a wealthy man choose to affect such poverty? Unless, of course, he was hiding out here.

There was some mystery connected with this whole affair, and it might very well be that Mr. Smith had his reasons for choosing this squalid lodging.

Was that the answer?

Conrad considered the possibilities as he knocked on the door of 4A. He might be getting mixed up in some dirty business. Then again—

“Come in,” said Mr. Smith. “I’ve been expecting you.” The bright smile glittered, the diamond glittered, and Conrad’s forebodings dissipated in the dazzle.

But there was nothing bright about the room. Toiling up the stairs, Conrad had wondered if perhaps his client might be concealing a luxurious hideaway beneath a grimy exterior. But this room was as filthy as the tenement in which it rotted.

Conrad noted a wooden table, a cot, a few chairs and a battered second-hand trunk in the corner beneath the single window overlooking the courtyard. A tattered curtain concealed a shallow alcove niche on the far side of the room. There was absolutely no sign of a fireplace, a butler, or any other figment of his daydreams.

Mr. Smith, however, seemed real enough; and his eagerness at the sight of the box under Conrad’s arm was quite genuine.

“You have brought it?” he boomed. “Splendid! I can hardly believe that you managed, with all the difficult stipulations I found it necessary to impose.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Conrad replied. “Mighty strange, that material. And you wouldn’t believe the trouble I had—”

“On the contrary, I would readily believe every word.” Mr. Smith smiled and rubbed his hands, while the diamond zigzagged through the gloom. “I hadn’t really dared to hope for success, and yet you say the suit is complete?”

“Just like you ordered.”

“Fine. You have no idea how I’ve waited, what this means to me. And to my son.”

“Your son—where is he?” Conrad inquired.

“That does not matter, does it?”

“But don’t you want a fitting, to make sure everything’s all right?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Mr. Smith. “If you followed instructions, the fit will be perfect. As a matter of fact, if you hadn’t done exactly what I directed, you wouldn’t have been able to complete the garment. So I know it’s right.”

“Thanks.” Conrad bowed his head in acknowledgment. “I did my best to turn out a good job.”

“I know you did, and it is I who should be thanking you.” Mr. Smith also bobbed his head, at the same time extending both hands. “Now, if you’ll be good enough to leave the suit with me—”

The diamond came close to the box, but Conrad drew back. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What about money?”

“Ah, yes, the fee. How much did you say it was?”

Erik Conrad took a deep breath of musty air. “Five hundred dollars,” he murmured.

“Very reasonable,” commented his customer. “Send the bill along and I’ll take care of it.”

“But—”

“Yes?”

“I have the bill made out, right here.” Conrad fumbled in his pocket. “And if you don’t mind, I need the money badly, and I was hoping that maybe today—”

Mr. Smith shook his head, slowly but emphatically. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question. After all, it’s not customary for one to pay tradesmen on delivery, is it? Why not mail your bill in the usual fashion—you’ll get your money, never fear.”

Again he sought to take the package from Conrad, but the tailor retreated to the curtained alcove. “I must have my money first,” he persisted. “Look, if this was a regular job I wouldn’t mind, but I’ve spent all these weeks working. And I have bills to pay. You wouldn’t understand, because you’re rich, but it’s different with me. I got to eat.”

“My dear fellow.” Mr. Smith advanced, cordially confidential. “On the contrary, I can understand your situation only too well. For it so happens that at the moment, I am in the same fix.”

“You?”

“Precisely.” Mr. Smith grinned as if he had just told the biggest joke in the world. “Oh, don’t misunderstand. In a very short while I should be in funds again. As soon as my son and I are reunited, in fact. But until then, I’m far from rich. In fact, I have no money, no money at all. So you’ll have to wait—”

“But how can you say that?” Conrad wailed. “A man like you, wearing a big diamond?”

Mr. Smith drew the ring from his finger and tossed it on the table. It glinted its way over the wood, then rolled to the floor. Mr. Smith did not bother to pick it up. “A fake,” he said. “A cheap, synthetic fake. Oh, at one time I had another, and the stone was real enough. But I was forced to place it in pawn, along with almost everything I possessed, in order to continue my studies. I have spent every penny on my son. Now, please, be reasonable and give me that suit.”

Again he reached for the package and again Conrad retreated—this time backing through the curtain veiling the alcove until his progress was halted by a waist-high obstruction.

Conrad turned and found himself confronting a gleaming refrigerator—a big one, and obviously brand-new.

“What’s this?” the tailor accused. “If you’re so hard up for money, why do you need a big new refrigerator?”

“It’s not for me,” Mr. Smith placated, hastily. “I had to buy it for my son. Like the suit. Now if you’ll come over here and show me—” and he attempted to grasp Conrad by the arm and draw him away.

But Conrad shrugged him off, still staring at the expensive refrigerator with a look of mingled puzzlement and disdain.

“Poor!” he muttered. “Why, I’ll bet it’s full of fancy food and—”

Impulsively, the little tailor yanked at the handle. The door opened and he stared inside. An icy blast fanned his face.

There were no shelves in the refrigerator. The six-foot high interior consisted of bare walls framing a single object. The object was the rigid, frozen body of a man.

The corpse stood upright, a blue and naked horror with a youthful face congealed into the age-old grimace of death.

“Close that door!” screamed Mr. Smith.

Conrad released the handle and jumped away. He pressed his back against the wall and bared his teeth. “Murderer!” he gasped. “So that’s it!”

“No, you don’t understand. I’m no murderer. He died a natural death. Can’t you see? He is my son. He is the one I was working for, planning for. That’s why I had you make the suit. It’s for him. You can’t stop me now, no one can stop me.”

Mr. Smith advanced. His hands worked at his sides, then rose. “Give me the suit,” he said. “Give it to me.”

Conrad tried to move away, but Mr. Smith blocked his path. “Give it to me,” he repeated. And his hands moved out.

It had grown dark in the murky little room. Erik Conrad saw a diamond eye wink up through the shadows on the floor. It was watching him—watching him as he stood there with a dead man behind him and a madman before him. The dead man had grimaced, and now the madman was grimacing, too. Grimacing, and reaching for Erik Conrad in the dark, as the diamond eye stared.

There was nothing else. There was no five hundred dollars. There was no butler. There was no justice or mercy or hope. Only this maniac trapping him in the blackness and now he was hitting him across the side of the face, and from far away a panting voice said over and over again, “Give it to me you fool give it to me you fool give it to me you fool—”

Until Erik Conrad struck back. The pudgy madman tried to choke him, tried to kick him, tried to squeeze him, and there was nothing else to do but strike back. Conrad said, “Let me go,” but Mr. Smith didn’t even hear him because he began to scream and claw at Conrad’s eyes. There was nothing else to do but strike back and it was only natural that Conrad pick up the wooden chair and swing it. He felt it land on Mr. Smith’s head and Mr. Smith’s scream died to a moan. Conrad raised the chair again and brought it down. Mr. Smith’s moan died to a gurgle. Conrad struck again, and again, and again, feeling the chair splinter and come apart in his hands. Mr. Smith’s gurgle died.

And so did Mr. Smith.

Erik Conrad didn’t know that until afterwards, of course. Not until he shook off his hysteria and turned on the light and bent down, panting, to examine Mr. Smith’s crushed and battered features as he lay sprawled on the grimy floor. Then the tailor understood.

He was a murderer.

The diamond eye had seen it all. The diamond eye knew it was a mistake, an accident. The diamond eye knew that Mr. Smith was a madman who preserved his son’s body in a refrigerator and had ordered a suit made up out of his own insane impulses. The diamond eye understood what had happened.

But the diamond eye was a fake. And the murder was real. Soon the police would come—

Erik Conrad rose, grabbed at the suit package, and headed for the door. He had to get out of here. Everything was ruined now, everything was spoiled, there was no money, and he had risked his life forever in coming here. It was—

At the door, Conrad halted. He noted once again the presence of the battered trunk in the corner. A wild hope rose, and Conrad knelt.

The trunk was unlocked and opened easily. Conrad threw back the lid. This was the treasure-chest, the secret hiding-place, the source of riches; it had to be, it was only logical and right and just. Eagerly he surveyed the contents of the old trunk.

“Books!” Conrad groaned. “Nothing but books!”

Nothing but books, and second-hand books at that—books with sprung spines, books with mildewed pages, books with torn bindings, books in foreign languages, books that appeared to be written by hand instead of printed. Junk. Rubbish. Good-for-nothing nonsense.

But wait—some of them were quite old. Some of them had iron hasps and locks. Some of them had worn vellum inserts. Didn’t people collect old books? Conrad seemed to remember reading about auctions and sales at one time—there were people who foolishly paid a lot of money for things like that.

He stacked an armful hastily and stood up. After all, it wasn’t really stealing. Mr. Smith owed him five hundred dollars which he would never collect. Surely Conrad was entitled to a few wormy old books. These volumes were no longer of any use to Mr. Smith. Dead men read no tales.

Conrad stepped into the hall, carrying the suit box and the books. The hall was dark and still as he tiptoed downstairs. No one had seen him come in, no one saw him leave. The taxi-driver wouldn’t remember, would never connect Conrad with the killing in the ordinary course of events.

The ordinary course of events—

In that phrase Conrad recognized the key to salvation. He must only remember to behave naturally as if nothing had happened, to return to the shop and go about his business in the normal way, and there would be no trouble at all.

Conrad walked down the street, a little tailor carrying his bundles. He paused at corners, jostled and was jostled in return, obeyed traffic signals like the good citizen he was, and eventually arrived at his shop. Strangely enough, he was trembling.

The place was dark and nobody saw him enter. Nobody except Otto, the window dummy. And Otto’s eye, like Mr. Smith’s diamond, was glass.

Conrad smiled as he shuffled down the hall into the bedroom. Glass, it was all glass, everything was a fake. And if everything was a fake, then nothing had happened. He hadn’t killed anyone.

“It’s a fake, just a fake,” Conrad murmured to himself as he fell face downward on the bed. “Nothing to worry about—it was all a fake!” Then he began to cry.

3

Conrad wasn’t conscious of the exact moment of transition from tears to terror. Sometime he must have roused himself and switched on the bedroom light. Somehow he must have begun to paw idly through the stack of battered books. Somewhere he must have noticed the volume printed in heavy black-letter German, and he had begun to read the text.

It was then that he remembered his early speculations concerning Mr. Smith; the possibilities of the mysterious stranger’s interest in Black Magic. Mr. Smith had proven himself a madman, to be sure, but still, these volumes were books on sorcery. The treatise Conrad was reading dealt with spells and charms, with formulae and incantations designed to raise up demons. Erik Conrad found himself stumbling over the pronunciation of strange names—Azaziel, Samael, Yaddith. There was nothing particularly disconcerting about the way in which the book was written; everything was set down in a straightforward, matter-of-fact style. Only the subject-matter itself was grotesque and irrational.

Perhaps it was this very circumstance which caused Conrad’s hands to tremble as he held the tome. This treatise on the summoning of evil entities was written in the style of a cookbook, filled with recipes. Take the maiden’s blood, take the heart torn from the infant’s breast, take the eyes of the hanged man—mix and stir in the cauldron, add the corpse-fat, and evoke your fiend. Simple. Easy. Anyone can do it.

It was absurd, it was insane, it was—convincing. Men had written this book, men had read this book, men had used this book for centuries. Men like Mr. Smith, whatever his real name might be. They had used this book to produce—what?

It was then that Erik Conrad began to tremble. And it was then that Anna returned from her evening shopping; returned quietly and tiptoed into the room so as not to disturb Conrad as he read.

“Erik,” she murmured.

The tailor’s face contorted with startled fear. He rose from the bed with a gasp which, as he faced and recognized the intruder, became transformed into a snarl of rage.

“What do you mean by sneaking in like that?” he choked. “You stupid fool!”

“But what is wrong? I only wanted to ask about the suit. You sold it, eh?”

Conrad indicated the box on the bed. “Does this look like I sold it?” he demanded.

“Was something wrong, then?”

“No, nothing was wrong. Don’t bother me, woman!”

“But the money—I thought—”

“Be quiet!” Conrad glowered at her, but Anna persisted.

“After you left,” she continued, “I told Mister Schwenk the butcher—he came after the money for the meat, you know—that he should come back tomorrow because you were getting paid by a customer. So—”

“You told him!” The tailor gripped Anna by the shoulder. “But I warned you to say nothing to anyone. Nobody should know about the suit, understand? Do not mention it to a soul, do not mention it to me again, ever. And get it out of my sight, quick.”

Anna sank, gasping with incomprehension, in this torrent of violence. But Conrad’s clawlike fingers bore her up. “Not a word!” he screamed. “Now take the suit and burn it, woman! Burn it in the furnace. And never speak of it again. Forget everything. Forget that I made it, forget Mr. Smith, forget that I went out today!”

He raised the box from the bed and thrust it into Anna’s arms. Then he slapped her across the face once, twice, three times. The third time he brought his hand away wet with tears. A fourth blow would bring blood, and for a moment he was tempted to deliver it.

Then suddenly all purpose left him. “Get out!” he screamed. “Get out and leave me alone.”

Anna stumbled out and closed the door. Conrad slumped to the bed once more and returned to his reading. He read for a long time. There were many subjects of outré interest.

Evocations—the runes of pestilence—the resurrection of vanished youth—the cloak of invisibility—the raising of the dead—the preservation of corpses and the use of mantic arts in restoring a semblance of life—the weaving of the cloth of Fate—

Conrad read the last sections again. It was all explained in prosaic detail. The bargain with the Powers. The sacrifice. The granting of the boon, the woven strands of Immortality with which to cloak the preserved corpse. The finished garment to impart life to any wearer bearing human guise. Conrad read it, and Mr. Smith had read it, too. He had read it and acted on it.

Now at last, Erik Conrad knew the secret of the suit, the secret of the frozen corpse, the secret of the weaving and the shaping. Mr. Smith had hoped to bring life back to his son.

Of course the old man had been mad, just as the author of this book had been mad. Best now to burn the book, and the other volumes, in case there should ever be any tracing, any questions.

Conrad loaded his arms with the ancient tomes and plodded down the dark hall to the basement stairs. He descended, knelt before the furnace, opened the door, recoiled momentarily before the blast of heat; then tossed the books into the fire.

There was no trace, no single shred of the strange suit. Apparently there had been no burning cloth odor, either. Anna had done her job well.

Anna—where was Anna? Conrad climbed the stairs, peered into the kitchen. Deserted. And the hall was dark. Was she out in the shop? She must be, but why?

Quietly, Erik Conrad walked down the hall. Yes, she was in the shop, he could hear her whispering. Talking to herself. He could distinguish words, phrases.

“. . . hates me, Otto. You’re the . . . friend I’ve got . . . going crazy . . . you had lived. Wish . . . could talk . . . tonight . . . hit me. Sometimes . . . dead.”

She was in there, talking to that window dummy again! Was the whole world going mad? Conrad pressed his hands against his skull. The temples were tight, bursting with rage.

He moved quickly into the shop, switching on the light. Anna turned. She was huddled in a heap at the feet of the wax dummy. Conrad stared at her, then at the mannikin. There was something strange about it, something different. It took a moment for him to comprehend and then he realized that Anna had put the crazy suit on the dummy.

“What are you doing?” Conrad was surprised when his voice came out so quietly. “Didn’t I tell you to burn the suit?” Why, he was talking calmly, sensibly.

“I was going to. I didn’t mean any harm. I just wanted to look at it again—you acted so funny about it all that I wondered if there was a secret.”

Conrad nodded, still very quietly. He even helped Anna to her feet as she continued.

“So I thought I could see it better if I put it on Otto—I mean, on the dummy here. Did you notice it in the dark, Erik? It looks queer—so glowing—”

Conrad was gentle with her, quite gentle. “Anna,” he said. “This is not wise of you. To disobey my orders. To pry into things that do not concern you. To talk to clothing dummies. Are you sure you feel all right, Anna?”

She hid her face. “I know,” she sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m out of my mind. But you are cruel, Erik. You beat me, and—”

“I will not beat you now,” said Conrad. “If you will burn the suit at once. I only hit you because I was afraid. Perhaps if I tell you, you can understand.” It was odd how calm he felt, how quietly he could talk like this to her now.

“You see, the suit must be burned. And no one must ever hear about it, or about Mr. Smith. Because this afternoon we quarreled, and I killed him.”

“You killed—?”

“An accident. Yes, an accident. He tried to take the suit away, it was self-defense, Anna. Mr. Smith was crazy. He had his son’s body in a refrigerator and he thought the suit would bring the boy back to life. You can’t reason with such a man, Anna. And when he comes at you, you must strike back.”

Anna stared into his eyes. Conrad nodded gravely. “So you see, it just happened that way. But the police wouldn’t believe me if they knew. That’s why I wanted the suit burned. That’s why I wanted you to forget. Now. Do you understand me, woman?”

“Yes.” Anna came close. “And I’m sorry, I didn’t know what was upsetting you, Erik. Only—”

“Only?”

“Only I think you should tell the police. Tell them the truth, tell them everything. I’ll make them believe you. Please, Erik! You cannot carry such a sin on your soul forever. For my sake, Erik, tell them what happened, that it was self-defense. I—I couldn’t bear to go on living with a murderer.”

As she spoke, Conrad stared over her shoulder at the clothing dummy. It slumped ridiculously in the corner, its cracked waxen features stolid, its glass eye gleaming. The impossible suit hung in ill-fitting folds across its shoulders, giving an apelike aspect to the arms. All this Erik saw, and at the same time he was conscious of listening to Anna.

And when he heard what Anna was saying, he suddenly realized why he was so calm. It was necessary to be calm, necessary to move quietly so as not to frighten her. She had been talking to the window dummy, she had tried the suit on it, and now she wanted him to confess to the police. Obviously she was losing her sanity. Obviously she would never cease to urge him to confess and might even end up by going to the police herself with the story.

So, obviously he must remain calm. Remain calm now as he moved back to the wall and switched off the light. There. Now the shop was pitch dark. No one could see in from the street. No one could see as he did the obvious thing—take Anna by the throat and squeeze, so, and squeeze and squeeze—

“Help!” The gasp came out, and he had to squeeze harder, not so calmly. “Erik—stop—oh—save me—Otto—save me!”

Crazy, to call on the dummy for help. Erik squeezed until she sagged and he could stare over her shoulders, stare into the pitch dark, which wasn’t really pitch dark at all because something was glowing over there in the corner. Something with arms and legs. It was the suit, of course, Anna had said the suit glowed in the dark, and it did. Like phosphorus, like silver, like gold, glowing brighter and brighter, and every time Erik squeezed the glow increased.

It was only the crazy suit, the crazy suit ordered by the crazy man for a crazy purpose; there was nothing to fear. Erik Conrad could bring death to Anna, but the suit could not bring life. It couldn’t!

But Conrad wasn’t calm any more. Not when he saw the silver arms stretch, saw the silver legs race forward, saw the leering eye of glass gleaming and flashing with a light that pierced brain and being.

He let Anna go, and turned to flee. Something caught him in the dark, then. There was nothing left to do but scream, and he tried that, but too late. There was a gleaming and a pressure and a spangle of silver fire that burst into final blackness.

Then there was nothing. . . .

Only a connoisseur of horrors would have appreciated Erik Conrad’s window dummy as it loomed over him, clad in the silver suit of enchanted Life—with its waxen fingers clamped in a grip of death about Erik Conrad’s throat.

Lucy Comes to Stay

“You can’t go on this way.”

Lucy kept her voice down low, because she knew the nurse had her room just down the hall from mine, and I wasn’t supposed to see any visitors.

“But George is doing everything he can—poor dear, I hate to think of what all those doctors and specialists are costing him, and the sanatarium bill, too. And now that nurse, that Miss Higgins, staying here every day.”

“It won’t do any good. You know it won’t.” Lucy didn’t sound like she was arguing with me. She knew. That’s because Lucy is smarter than I am. Lucy wouldn’t have started the drinking and gotten into such a mess in the first place. So it was about time I listened to what she said.

“Look, Vi,” she murmured. “I hate to tell you this. You aren’t well, you know. But you’re going to find out one of these days anyway, and you might as well hear it from me.”

“What is it, Lucy?”

“About George, and the doctors. They don’t think you’re going to get well.” She paused. “They don’t want you to.”

“Oh, Lucy!”

“Listen to me, you little fool. Why do you suppose they sent you to that sanatorium in the first place? They said it was to take the cure. So you took it. All right, you’re cured, then. But you’ll notice that you still have the doctor coming every day, and George makes you stay here in your room, and that Miss Higgins who’s supposed to be a special nurse—you know what she is, don’t you? She’s a guard.”

I couldn’t say anything. I just sat there and blinked. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t, because deep down inside I knew that Lucy was right.

“Just try to get out of here,” Lucy said. “You’ll see how fast she locks the door on you. All that talk about special diets and rest doesn’t fool me. Look at yourself—you’re as well as I am. You ought to be getting out. seeing people, visiting your friends.”

“But I have no friends,” I reminded her. “Not after that party, not after what I did—”

“That’s a lie.” Lucy nodded. “That’s what George wants you to think. Why, you have hundreds of friends, Vi. They still love you. They tried to see you at the hospital and George wouldn’t let them in. They sent flowers to the sanatorium and George told the nurses to burn them.”

“He did? He told the nurses to burn the flowers?”

“Of course. Look, Vi, it’s about time you faced the truth. George wants them to think you’re sick. George wants you to think you’re sick. Why? Because then he can put you away for good. Not in a private sanatorium, but in the—”

“No!” I began to shake. I couldn’t stop shaking. It was ghastly. But it proved something. They told me at the sanatorium, the doctors told me, that if I took the cure I wouldn’t get the shakes any more. Or the dreams, or any of the other things. Yet here it was—I was shaking again.

“Shall I tell you some more?” Lucy whispered. “Shall I tell you what they’re putting in your food? Shall I tell you about George and Miss Higgins?”

“But she’s older than he is, and besides he’d never—”

Lucy laughed.

“Stop it!” I yelled.

“All right. But don’t yell, you little fool. Do you want Miss Higgins to come in?”

“She thinks I’m taking a nap. She gave me a sedative.”

“Lucky I dumped it out.” Lucy frowned. “Vi, I’ve got to get you away from here. And there isn’t much time.”

She was right. There wasn’t much time. Seconds, hours, days, weeks—how long had it been since I’d had a drink?

“We’ll sneak off,” Lucy said. “We could take a room together where they wouldn’t find us. I’ll nurse you until you’re well.”

“But rooms cost money.”

“You have that fifty dollars George gave you for a party dress.”

“Why, Lucy,” I said. “How did you know that?”

“You told me ages ago, dear. Poor thing, you don’t remember things very well, do you? All the more reason for trusting me.”

I nodded. I could trust Lucy. Even though she was responsible, in a way, for me starting to drink. She just had thought it would cheer me up when George brought all his high-class friends to the house and we went out to impress his clients. Lucy had tried to help. I could trust her. I must trust her—

“We can leave as soon as Miss Higgins goes tonight,” Lucy was saying. “We’ll wait until George is asleep, eh? Why not get dressed now, and I’ll come back for you.”

I got dressed. It isn’t easy to dress when you have the shakes, but I did it. I even put on some makeup and trimmed my hair a little with the big scissors. Then I looked at myself in the mirror and said out loud, “Why, you can’t tell, can you?”

“Of course not,” said Lucy. “You look radiant. Positively radiant.”

I stood there smiling, and the sun was going down, just shining through the window on the scissors in a way that hurt my eyes, and all at once I was so sleepy.

“George will be here soon, and Miss Higgins will leave,” Lucy said. “I’d better go now. Why don’t you rest until I come for you?”

“Yes,” I said. “You’ll be very careful, won’t you?”

“Very careful,” Lucy whispered as she tiptoed out quietly.

I lay down on the bed and then I was sleeping, really sleeping for the first time in weeks, sleeping so the scissors wouldn’t hurt my eyes, the way George hurt me inside when he wanted to shut me up in the asylum so he and Miss Higgins could make love on my bed and laugh at me the way they all laughed except Lucy and she would take care of me she knew what to do now I could trust her when George came and I must sleep and sleep and nobody can blame you for what you think in your sleep or do in your sleep . . .

It was all right until I had the dreams, and even then I didn’t really worry about them because a dream is only a dream, and when I was drunk I had a lot of dreams.

When I woke up I had the shakes again, but it was Lucy shaking me, standing there in the dark shaking me, I looked around and saw that the door to my room was open, but Lucy didn’t bother to whisper.

She stood there with the scissors in her hand and called to me.

“Come on, let’s hurry.”

“What are you doing with the scissors?” I asked.

“Cutting the telephone wires, silly! I got into the kitchen after Miss Higgins left and dumped some of that sedative into George’s coffee. Remember, I told you the plan.”

I couldn’t remember now, but I knew it was all right. Lucy and I went out through the hall, past George’s room, and he never stirred. Then we went downstairs and out the front door and the streetlights hurt my eyes. Lucy made me hurry right along, though.

We took a bus around the corner. This was the difficult part, getting away. Once we were out of the neighborhood there’d be no worry. The wires were cut.

The lady at the rooming house on the South Side didn’t know about the wires being cut. She didn’t know about me, either, because Lucy got the room.

Lucy marched in bold as brass and laid my fifty dollars down on the desk. The rent was $12.50 a week in advance, and Lucy didn’t even ask to see the room. I guess that’s why the landlady wasn’t worried about baggage.

We got upstairs and locked the door, and then I had the shakes again.

Lucy said, “Vi—cut it out?”

“But I can’t help it. What’ll I do now, Lucy? Oh, what’ll I do? Why did I ever—”

“Shut up!” Lucy opened my purse and pulled something out. I had been wondering why my purse felt so heavy, but I never dreamed about the secret.

She held the secret up. It glittered under the light, like the scissors, only this was a nice glittering. A golden glittering.

“A whole pint!” I gasped. “Where did you get it?”

“From the cupboard downstairs, naturally. You knew George still keeps the stuff around. I slipped it into your purse, just in case.”

I had the shakes, but I got that bottle open in ten seconds. One of my fingernails broke, and then the stuff was burning and warming and softening—

“Pig!” said Lucy.

“You know I had to have it,” I whispered. “That’s why you brought it.”

“I don’t like to see you drink,” Lucy answered. “I never drink and I don’t like to see you hang one on, either.”

“Please, Lucy. Just this once.”

“Why can’t you take a shot and then leave it alone? That’s all I ask.”

“Just this once, Lucy, I have to.”

“I won’t sit here and watch you make a spectacle of yourself. You know what always happens—another mess.”

I took another gulp. The bottle was half-empty.

“I did all I could for you, Vi. But if you don’t stop now, I’m going.”

That made me pause. “You couldn’t do that to me. I need you, Lucy. Until I’m straightened out, anyway.”

Lucy laughed, the way I didn’t like. “Straightened out! That’s a hot one! Talking about straightening out with a bottle in your hand. It’s no use, Vi. Here I do everything I can for you, stop at nothing to get you away, and you’re off on another.”

“Please. You know I can’t help it.”

“Oh, yes, you can help it, Vi. But you don’t want to. You’ve always had to make a choice, you know. George or the bottle. Me or the bottle. And the bottle always wins. I think deep down inside you hate George. You hate me.”

“You’re my best friend.”

“Nuts!” Lucy talked vulgar sometimes, when she got really mad. And she was mad now. It made me so nervous I had another drink.

“Oh, I’m good enough for you when you’re in trouble, or have nobody else around to talk to. I’m good enough to lie for you, pull you out of your messes. But I’ve never been good enough for your friends, for George. And I can’t even win over a bottle of rotgut whiskey. It’s no use, Vi. What I’ve done for you today you’ll never know. And it isn’t enough. Keep your lousy whiskey. I’m going.”

I know I started to cry. I tried to get up, but the room was turning round and round. Then Lucy was walking out the door and I dropped the bottle and the light kept shining the way it did on the scissors and I closed my eyes and dropped after the bottle to the floor . . .

When I woke up they were all pestering me, the landlady and the doctor and Miss Higgins and the man who said he was a policeman.

I wondered if Lucy had gone to them and betrayed me, but when I asked the doctor said no, they just discovered me through a routine checkup on hotels and rooming houses after they found George’s body in his bed with my scissors in his throat.

All at once I knew what Lucy had done, and why she ran out on me that way. She knew they’d find me and call it murder.

So I told them about her and how it must have happened. I even figured out how Lucy managed to get my fingerprints on the scissors.

But Miss Higgins said she’d never seen Lucy in my house, and the landlady told a lie and said I had registered for the room alone, and the man from the police just laughed when I kept begging him to find Lucy and make her tell the truth.

Only the doctor seemed to understand, and when we were alone together in the little room he asked me all about her and what she looked like, and I told him.

Then he brought over the mirror and held it up and asked me if I could see her. And sure enough—

She was standing right behind me, laughing. I could see her in the mirror and I told the doctor so, and he said yes, he thought he understood now.

So it was all right after all. Even when I got the shakes just then and dropped the mirror, so that the little jagged pieces hurt my eyes to look at, it was all right.

Lucy was back with me now, and she wouldn’t ever go away any more. She’d stay with me forever. I knew that. I knew it, because even though the light hurt my eyes, Lucy began to laugh.

After a minute, I began to laugh, too. And then the two of us were laughing together, we couldn’t stop even when the doctor went away. We just stood there against the bars, Lucy and I, laughing like crazy.

The Pin

Somehow, somewhere, someone would find out.

It was inevitable.

In this case the someone was named Barton Stone. The somewhere was an old loft over a condemned office building on Bleecker Street.

And the somehow . . .

Barton Stone came there early one Monday morning as the sun shone yellow and cold over the huddled rooftops. He noted the mass of the surrounding buildings, rearranged them into a more pleasing series of linear units, gauged his perspective, evaluated the tones and shadings of sunlight and shadow with his artist’s eye. There was a picture here, he told himself, if only he could find it.

Unfortunately he wasn’t looking for a picture. He had plenty of subjects in mind. Right now he was looking for a place in which to paint. He wanted a studio, wanted it quickly. And it must be cheap. Running water and north light were luxuries beyond his present consideration. As for other aesthetic elements, such as cleanliness—Stone shrugged as he mounted the stairs, his long fingers trailing dust from the rickety railing.

There was dust everywhere, for this was the domain of dust, of darkness and desertion. He stumbled upward into the silence.

The first two floors of the building were entirely empty, just as Freed had told him. And the stairs to the loft were at the end of the hall on the second floor.

“You’ll have it all to yourself,” the rental agent had promised. “But remember to stay in the loft. Nobody’d ever bother looking up there. Damned inspectors come around—they keep telling us to raze the building. But the floor’s safe enough. All you got to do is keep out of sight—why, you could hide out there for years without being caught. It’s no palace, but take a look and see what you think. For twenty bucks a month you can’t go wrong.”

Stone nodded now as he walked down the debris-littered hall toward the loft stairs. He couldn’t go wrong. He sensed, suddenly and with utter certainty, that this was the place he’d been searching for during all of these frustratingly futile weeks. He moved up the stairs with inevitable—

Then he heard the sound.

Call it a thud; call it a thump; call it a muffled crash. The important thing was that it sounded from above, from the deserted loft.

Stone paused on the second step from the top. There was someone in the loft. For twenty bucks a month you can’t go wrong—but you could hide out there for years without being caught.

Barton Stone was not a brave man. He was only a poor artist, looking for a cheap loft or attic to use as a studio. But his need was great, great enough to impel him upward, carry him to the top of the loft stairs and down the short corridor leading to the entry.

He moved quietly now, although there was thunder in his chest. He tiptoed delicately toward the final door, noted the overhead transom, noted, too, the small crate in the corner against the wall.

There was silence beyond the door and silence in the hall now as he carefully lifted the crate and placed it so that he could mount the flat top and peer over the open transom.

No sense being melodramatic, he told himself. On the other hand, there was no sense rushing in—Barton Stone was not a fool and he didn’t want to become an angel.

He looked over the transom.

The loft was huge. A dusty skylight dominated the ceiling, and enough fight filtered through to bathe the room in sickly luminance. Stone could see everything, everything.

He saw the books, stacked man-high, row after row of thick books. He saw the sheaves bulked between the books, pile after pile of sheaves. He saw the papers rising in solid walls from the floor. He saw the table in the center of the loft—the table, bulwarked on three sides by books and sheaves and papers all tossed together in toppling towers.

And he saw the man.

The man sat behind the table, back to the wall, surrounded on three sides by the incredible array of printed matter. He sat there, head down, and peered at the pages of an opened book. He never looked up, never made a sound, just sat there and stared.

Stone stared back. He understood the source of the noise now; one of the books had fallen from its stack. But nothing else made sense to him. His eyes sought clues; his mind sought meaning.

The man was short, fat, middle-aged. His hair was graying into white, his face lining into wrinkles. He wore a dirty khaki shirt and trousers and he might have been an ex-GI, a tramp, a fugitive from justice, an indigent bookdealer, an eccentric millionaire.

Stone moved from the realm of might-have-been to a consideration of what he actually saw. The little fat man was riffling through the pages of a fat, paper-bound book which could easily be mistaken for a telephone directory. He turned the pages, apparently at random, with his left hand. Very well, then; he was left-handed.

Or was he? His right hand moved across the table, raised and poised so that the sunlight glittered in a thin fine of silver against the object he held.

It was a pin, a long, silver pin. Stone stared at it. The man was staring at it too. Stone’s gaze held curiosity. The little fat man’s gaze held utter loathing and, more than that, a sort of horrified fascination.

Another sound broke the stillness. The little man sighed. It was a deep sigh that became, with abrupt and hideous clarity, a groan.

Eyes still intent on the pin, the little man brought it down suddenly upon the opened pages of his book. He stabbed at random, driving the point home. Then he hurled the book to the floor, sat back, buried his face in his hands, and his shoulders shook with a silent sobbing.

A second sped. Stone blinked. And beyond the door, in the loft, the little man straightened up, reached for a long sheet of paper that might have been a polling list, and scanned its surface. The pin poised itself over the center of the sheet. Again the sigh, the stab, the sob.

Now the little man rose, and for a frantic moment Stone wondered if he’d been detected. But no, the pin wielder merely wandered down the row of books and pulled out another thick volume. He carried it back to the table and sat down, picking up the pin with his right hand as his left turned page after page. He scanned, scrutinized, then sighed, stabbed, sobbed.

Barton Stone descended from the top of the crate, replaced it carefully in the corner, and tiptoed down the stairs. He moved carefully and silently, and it was an effort to do so, because he wanted all the while to run.

His feeling was irrational, and he knew it, but he could not control himself. He had always experienced that sudden surge of fear in the presence of the demented. When he saw a drunk in a bar, he was afraid—because you never know what a drunk will do next, what will enter his mind and how he will act. He shied away from arguments, because of what happens to a man’s reaction pattern when he sees red. He avoided the mumblers, the people who talk to themselves or to the empty air as they shuffle down the street.

Right now he was afraid of a little fat man, a little fat man with a long, sharp, silver needle. The needle was crooked at one end, Stone remembered—and he could see that needle sinking into his own throat, right up to the crooked angle. The fat man was crazy and Stone wanted no part of him. He’d go back to the rental agency, see Mr. Freed, tell him. Freed could evict him, get him out of there in a hurry. That would be the sensible way.

Before he knew it, Stone was back in his own walk-up flat, resting on the bed and staring at the wall. Although it wasn’t the wall he was seeing. He was seeing the little fat man and studying him as he sat at his big table. He was seeing the books and the sheaves and the long rolls and scrolls of paper.

He could group them in the background, so. Just sketch them in lightly, in order to place the figure. The khaki shirt hung thusly—and the open collar draped in this fashion. Now the outlines of the head and shoulders; be sure to catch the intent intensity, the concentrated concentration of the pose.

Stone had his sketch pad out now, and his hands moved furiously. The sunlight would serve as a high light over the shoulder. It would strike the silver pin and the reflection would fleck the features of the face.

The features—the face—most important. He began to rough it in. If he could only capture the instant before the sob, if he could only fathom the secret of the eyes as the pin stabbed down, he’d have a painting.

What was that look? Stone had unconsciously catalogued and categorized the features. The proportions of nose to forehead, ears to head, chin to jaw; the relationship of brow and cheekbone to the eyes—he knew them and reproduced them. But the expression itself—particularly that look around the eyes—that was the key to it all.

And he couldn’t get it down. He drew, erased, drew again. He made a marginal sketch and rubbed it out. The charcoal smeared his palm.

No, it was wrong, all wrong. He’d have to see him again. He was afraid to go, but he wanted that painting. He wanted to do it; he had to do it. There was a mystery here, and if he could only pin it down on canvas he’d be satisfied.

Pin it down. The pin was what frightened him, he knew it now. It wasn’t the man so much. Granted, he was probably insane—without the pin he’d be harmless, deprived of weapons.

Stone stood up. He went out, down the stairs, walked. He should have gone to the rental agency first, he told himself, but the other need was greater. He wanted to see his subject once more. He wanted to stare into the face of the little fat man and read the secret behind the planes and angles.

And he did. He climbed the stairs silently, mounted the crate quietly, directed his soundless gaze over the transom.

The fat man was still at work. New books, new papers bulked high on the big table. But the left hand turned the pages, the right hand poised the pin. And the endless, enigmatic pantomime played on. Sigh, stab, sob. Stop and shudder, shuffle through fresh pages, scan and scrutinize again, and then—sigh, stab, sob.

The silver pin glared and glistened. It glowed and glittered and grew. Barton Stone tried to study the face of the fat man, tried to impress the image of his eyes.

Instead he saw the pin. The pin and only the pin. The pin that poised, the pin that pointed, the pin that pricked the page.

He forced himself to concentrate on the little man’s face, forced himself to focus on form and features. He saw sorrow, read resignation, recognized revulsion, found fear there. But there was neither sorrow nor resignation, revulsion nor fear in the hand that drove the pin down again and again. There was only a mechanical gesture, without pattern or meaning that Barton Stone could decipher. It was the action of a lunatic, the antic gesture of aberration.

Stone stepped down from the crate, replaced it in the corner, then paused before the loft door. For a moment he hesitated. It would be so simple merely to walk into the loft, confront the little man, ask him his business. The little man would look up, and Stone could stare into his eyes, single out and scrutinize the secrets there.

But the little man had his pin, and Stone was afraid. He was afraid of the pin that didn’t sob or sigh but merely stabbed down. And made its point.

The point—what was it?

Well, there was another way of finding out, the sensible way. Stone sidled softly down the stairs, padded purposefully up the street.

Here it was, Acme Rentals. But the door was locked. Barton Stone glanced at his watch. Only four o’clock. Funny he’d be gone so early, unless he’d left with a client to show some property or office space.

Stone sighed. Tomorrow, then. Time enough. He turned and strode back down the street. He intended to go to his flat and rest before supper, but as he rounded the corner he saw something that stopped him in his tracks.

It was only a brownish blur, moving very fast. His eye caught a glimpse of khaki, a suggestion of a bowed back, a white-thatched head disappearing into the doorway of a local restaurant. That was enough; he was sure now. His little fat man had taken time out to eat.

And that meant . . .

Stone ran the remaining blocks, clattered up the rickety stairs. He burst into the loft, raced over to the table. Then, and then only, he stopped. What was he doing here? What did he hope to find out? What was he looking for?

That was it. He was looking for something. Some clue, some intimation of the little fat man’s perverted purpose.

The books and papers billowed balefully all about him. There were at least half a hundred presently on the table. Stone picked up the first one. It was a telephone directory, current edition, for Bangor, Maine. Beneath it was another—Yuma, Arizona. And below that, in a gaudy cover, the city directory of Montevideo. At one side a long list of names, sheet after sheet of them, in French. The town roll of Dijon. And over at one side the electoral rolls of Manila, P.I. Another city directory—Stone guessed it must be in Russian. And here was the phone book from Leeds, and the census sheets from Calgary, and a little photostat of the unofficial census of Mombasa.

Stone paged through them, then directed his attention to another stack on the right-hand side of the table. Here were opened books aplenty, piled one upon the other in a baffling miscellany. Stone glanced at the bottom of the collection. Another phone book, from Seattle. City directory of Belfast. Voting list from Bloomington, Illinois. Precinct polling list, Melbourne, Australia. Page after page of Chinese ideographs. Military personnel, USAF, Tokyo base. A book in Swedish or Norwegian—Stone wasn’t sure which, but he recognized that it contained nothing but names; and like all the others it was recent or currently published and in use.

And here, right on top, was a Manhattan directory. It was open, like the others, and apparently the choice of page had been made on random impulse. Barton Stone glanced at the heading: FRE. Was there a phi mark? He stared, found it.

Freed, George A. And the address.

Wait a minute! Wasn’t that his rental-agency man? Something began to form and fashion, and then Stone pushed the book away and ran out of the room and down the stairs, and he rounded the corner and found the newsstand and bought his paper and clawed it open to the the death notices, and then he read the name again.

Freed, George A. And the address. And on another page—Stone’s hands were trembling, and it took him a while to find it—was the story. It had happened this morning. Accident. Hit by a truck crossing the street. Survived by blah, blah, blah.

Yes, blah, blah, blah, and this morning (perhaps while Stone had been watching him the first time) the pin had pointed and stabbed and a name in the directory was marked for destruction. For death.

For Death!

Nobody’d ever bother looking up there. You could hide out there for years without being caught. Yes, you could gather together all the lists, all the sources, all the names in the world and put them into that deserted loft. You could sit there, day after day and night after night, and stick pins into them the way the legends said witches stuck pins into effigies of their victims. You’d sit there and choose book after book at random, and the pin would point. And wherever it struck somebody died. You could do that, and you would do that. If you were the little fat man. The little fat man whose name was Death.

Stone almost laughed, although the sound didn’t come out that way. He’d wondered why he couldn’t get the little man’s eyes right, wondered why he couldn’t search out their secret. Now he knew. He’d encountered the final mystery—that of Death itself. Death himself.

And where was Death now? Sitting in a cheap restaurant, a local hash house, taking a breather. Death was dining out. Simple enough, wasn’t it? All Stone need do now was find a policeman and take him into the joint.

“See that little fat guy over there, Officer? I want you to arrest him for murder. He’s Death, you know. And I can prove it. I’ll show you the pin point.”

Simple. Insanely simple.

Maybe he was wrong. He had to be wrong. Stone riffled back to the death notices again. Kooley, Leventhaler, Mautz. He had to make sure.

Kooley, Leventhaler, Mautz.

Question: How long does it take for Death to dine?

Question: Does Death care to linger over a second cup of coffee?

Question: Does one dare go back and search that directory to find the pin points opposite the names of Kooley, Leventhaler, and Mautz?

The first two questions couldn’t be answered. They constituted a calculated risk. The third question could be solved only by action.

Barton Stone acted. His legs didn’t want to move; his feet rebelled every step of the way, and his hands shook as he climbed the stairs once more.

Stone almost fell as he peered over the transom. The loft was still empty. And it was shrouded now in twilight. The dusk filtering through the skylight provided just enough illumination for him to read the directory. To find the names of Kooley, Leventhaler, and Mautz. And the pin points penetrating each, puncturing the o, the v, the u. Puncturing their names, puncturing their lives, providing punctuation. The final punctuation—period.

How many others had died today, in how many cities, towns, hamlets, crossroads, culverts, prisons, hospitals, huts, kraals, trenches, tents, igloos? How many times had the silver pin descended, forced by fatal fancy?

Yes, and how many times would it descend tonight? And tomorrow, and the next day, and forever and ever, time without end, amen?

They always pictured Death wielding a scythe, didn’t they? And to think that it was really just a pin—a pin with a curve or a hook in it. A long, sharp, silver pin, like that one there.

The last rays of the dying sunset found it, set its length ablaze in a rainbow glow. Stone gasped sharply. It was here, right here on the table, where the little fat man had left it when he went out to eat—the silver pin!

Stone eyed the sparkling instrument, noted the hooked end, and gasped again. It was a scythe after all! A little miniature scythe of silver. The weapon of Death which cut down all mankind. Cut down mankind without rhyme or reason, stabbed senselessly to deprive men forever of sensation. Stone could picture it moving in frantic rhythm over the names of military personnel, pick, pick, picking away at lives; point, point, pointing at people; stick, stick, sticking into human hearts. The fatal instrument, the lethal weapon, smaller than any sword and bigger than any bomb.

It was here, on the table.

He had only to reach out and take it . . .

For a moment the sun stood still and his heart stopped beating and there was nothing but silence in the whole wide world.

Stone picked up the pin.

He put it in his shirt pocket and stumbled out of the room, stumbled through darkness and tumbled down the flights of the night.

Then he was out on the street again and safe. He was safe, and the pin was safe in his pocket, and the world was safe forever.

Or was it? He couldn’t be sure.

He couldn’t be sure, and he wouldn’t be sure, and he sat there in his room all night long, wondering if he’d gone completely mad.

For the pin was only a pin. True, it was shaped like a miniature scythe. True, it was cold and did not warm to the touch, and its point was sharper than any tool could ever grind.

But he couldn’t be sure. Even the next morning there was nothing to show. He wondered if Death read the papers. He couldn’t read all the papers. He couldn’t attend all the funerals. He was too busy. Or, rather, he had been too busy. Now he could only wait, as Stone was waiting.

The afternoon editions would begin to provide proof. The home editions. Stone waited, because he couldn’t be sure. And then he went down to the corner and bought four papers and he knew.

There were death notices still; of course there would be. Death notices from yesterday. Only from yesterday.

And the front pages carried further confirmation. The subject matter of the stories was serious enough, but the treament was still humorous, quizzical, or, at best, speculative and aloof. Lots of smart boys on the wire services and the city desks; too hard-boiled to be taken in or commit themselves until they were certain. So there was no editorial comment yet, just story after story, each with its own “slant.”

The prisoner up at Sing Sing who went to the chair last night—and was still alive. They’d given him plenty of juice, and the power worked all right. The man had fried in the hot seat. Fried, literally, but lived. Authorities were investigating . . .

Freak accident up in Buffalo—cables snapped and a two-ton safe landed squarely on the head and shoulders of Frank Nelson, forty-two. Broken back, neck, arms, legs, pelvis, skull completely crushed. But in Emergency Hospital, Frank Nelson was still breathing and doctors could not account for . . .

Plane crash in Chile. Eighteen passengers, all severely injured and many badly burned when engines caught fire, but no fatalities were reported and further reports . . .

City hospitals could not explain the sudden cessation of deaths throughout Greater New York and environs . . .

Gas-main explosions, automobile accidents, fires and natural disasters; each item isolated and treated as a freak, a separate phenomenon.

That’s the way it would be until perhaps tomorrow, when the hard-boiled editors and the hard-headed medical men and the hard-shelled Baptists and the hard-nosed military leaders and the hard-pressed scientists all woke up, pooled their information, and realized that Death had died.

Meanwhile, the torn and the twisted, the burned and the maimed, the tortured and the broken ones writhed in their beds—but breathed and lived, in a fashion.

Stone breathed and lived in a fashion too. He was beginning to see the seared body of the convict, the mangled torso of the mover, the agonized forms that prayed for the mercy of oblivion all over the world.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all and no man is an island. But on the other hand, Stone breathed and lived after a fashion. And as long as he had the pin, he’d breathe and live forever. Forever!

So would they all. And more would be born, and the earth would teem with their multitude—what then? Very well, let the editors and the doctors and the preachers and the soldiers and the scientists figure out solutions. Stone had done his part. He’d destroyed Death. Or at the least, disarmed him.

Barton Stone wondered what Death was doing right now. Death, in the afternoon. Was he sitting in the loft, pondering over his piles of useless papers, lingering over his lethal ledgers? Or was he out, looking for another job? Couldn’t very well expect to get unemployment compensation, and he had no social security.

That was his problem. Stone didn’t care. He had other worries.

The tingling, for example. It had started late that morning, around noon. At first Stone ascribed it to the fact that he hadn’t eaten or slept for over twenty-four hours. It was fatigue. But fatigue gnaws. Fatigue does not bite. It doesn’t sink its sharp little tooth into your chest.

Sharp. Chest. Stone reached up, grabbed the silver pin from his pocket. The little scythe was cold. Its sharp, icy point had cut through his shirt, pricked against his heart.

Stone laid the pin down very carefully on the table, and he even turned the point away from himself. Then he sat back and sighed as the pain went away.

But it came back again, stronger. And Stone looked down and saw that the pin pointed at him again. He hadn’t moved it. He hadn’t touched it. He hadn’t even looked at it. But it swung around like the needle of a compass. And he was its magnetic pole. He was due north. North, cold and icy like the pains that shot through his chest.

Death’s weapon had power—the power to stab him, stab his chest and heart. It couldn’t kill him, for there was no longer any dying in the world. It would just stab him now, forever and ever, night and day for all eternity. He was a magnet, attracting pain. Unendurable, endless pain.

The realization transfixed him, just as the point of the pin itself transfixed him.

Had his own hand reached out and picked up the pin, driven it into his chest? Or had the pin itself risen from the table and sought its magnetic target? Did the pin have its own powers?

Yes. That was the answer, and he knew it now. Knew that the little fat man was just a man and nothing more. A poor devil who had to go out and eat. who slept and dozed as best he could while he still stabbed ceaselessly away. He was only a tool. The pin itself was Death.

Had the little man once looked over a transom or peered through a window in New York or Baghdad or Durban or Rangoon? Had he stolen the silver pin from yet another poor devil and then been driven by it, driven out into the street by the pin that pricked and pricked at his heart? Had he returned to the place where all the names in the world awaited their final sentencing?

Barton Stone didn’t know. All he knew was that the pin was colder than arctic ice and hotter than volcanic fire and it was tearing at his chest. Every time he tore it free the point inexorably returned and his hand descended with it, forcing the pin into his chest. Sigh, stab, sob—the power of Death was in the pin.

And the power of Death animated Barton Stone as he ran through the nighted streets, panted up the midnight stairs, staggered into the loft.

A dim light burned over the table, casting its glow over the waiting shadows. The little fat man sat there, surrounded by his books, and when he saw Barton Stone he looked up and nodded.

His stare was impersonal and blank. Stone’s stare was agonized and intent. There was something Stone had to find out, once and for all, a question which must be answered. He recognized its nature and the need, sought and found his solution in the little fat man’s face.

The little fat man was a man and nothing more. He was merely the instrument, and the pin held all the power. That was enough for Barton Stone to know. It was all he could know, for the rest was only endless pain. He had to be relieved of the pain, had to be released from it, just as the poor devils all over the world had to be relieved and released. It was logic, cold logic, cold as the pin, cold as Death.

Stone gasped, and the little fat man stood up and moved around from behind the table.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “I knew you’d come back.”

Stone forced the words out. “I stole the pin,” he panted. “I’ve come to give it back.”

The little fat man looked at him, and for the first time Stone could read his eyes. In them he saw infinite compassion, limitless understanding, and an endless relief.

“What is taken cannot be returned,” murmured the little man. “I think you know that. When you took the pin you took it forever. Or until—”

The little man shrugged and indicated the seat behind the table.

Silently Stone sat down. The books bulked before him: the books, the directories, the papers and scrolls and lists that contained all the names in the world.

“The most urgent are on top,” whispered the little man. “I sorted them while I waited.”

“Then you knew I’d be back?”

The little fat man nodded. “I came back once too. And I found—as you will find—that the pain goes away. You can remove the pin now and get to work. There’s so much work to do.”

He was right. There was no longer any stabbing sensation in Stone’s chest. The little scythe-shaped pin came away quite easily and balanced in Stone’s right hand. His left hand reached for the topmost book. A small piece of paper, bearing a single scribbled name, rested on the opened volume.

“If you don’t mind,” breathed the little fat man, “this name first, please.”

Stone looked at the little fat man. He didn’t look down at the scribbled name—he didn’t have to, for he knew. And his right hand stabbed down, and the little man sighed and then he fell over and there was only a wisp of dust.

Old dust, gossamer-light dust, soon blows away. And there was no time to look at the dancing, dissipating motes. For Barton Stone was sighing, stabbing, shuddering, sobbing.

And the pin pointed and pricked. Pricked the convict up in Sing Sing and Frank Nelson in Buffalo Emergency and the crash victims in Chile. Pricked Chundra Lal of Bombay, Ramona Neilson of Minneapolis, Barney Yates in Glasgow, Igor Vorpetchzki in Minsk, Mrs. Minnie Haines and Dr. Fisher and Urbonga and Li Chan and a man named John Smith in Upper Sandusky.

It was day and it was night and it was summer and it was autumn and it was winter and it was spring and it was summer again, but you could hide out there for years without being caught.

All you did was keep shuffling the books, picking at random. That was the best you could do, the only fair way. Sometimes you got mad and took a lot from one place; sometimes you just kept going, plodding along and leaving it up to the pin.

You sighed, you stabbed, you shuddered, and you sobbed. But you never stopped. Because the pin never stopped; the scythe was always swinging.

Thus it was, and thus it would be forever. Until the day came, inevitably, when somehow, somewhere, someone would find out . . .

I Do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell

Bromely couldn’t remember who had recommended Dr. Fell. The name had popped into his mind (funny, something like that popping into his mind at a time when so many things seemed to be popping out of it!) and he must have made an appointment.

At any rate, the receptionist seemed to know him, and her “Good morning, Mr. Bromely” had a warm, pleasant sound. The door of the inner office, closing behind him, had a harsh, grating sound. Both seemed oddly familiar.

Bromely sensed the same misplaced familiarity as he gazed around the inner office. The bookshelves and filing cases to the left of the window, the desk to the right, the couch in the corner almost duplicated the arrangement in his own office. This was a good omen, he felt. He’d be at home here. At home. But, you can’t go home again. Home is where the heart is. You have stolen my heart, now don’t go ’way. As we sang love’s old sweet song on . . .

It took a tremendous, conscious effort to pull out of that one, but Bromely did it. He wanted to make a good impression on the doctor.

Dr. Fell rose to greet him from his chair behind the desk. He was a tall, thin man of about Bromely’s age and build, and Bromely received a vague impression that his features were not dissimilar. The subdued lighting did not lend itself to a closer scrutiny of the psychiatrist’s countenance, but Bromely was aware of a look of purpose and intensity quite foreign to his own face.

The same purpose and intensity drove Dr. Fell around the desk, communicated in his hearty handclasp.

“You’re prompt, Mr. Bromely,” said Dr. Fell. His voice was deep and low. Deep and Low. Low and Behold. Behold, Bedad and Begob. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Inc.

How he got out of that one Bromely never knew. He was somewhat surprised to find himself on the couch. Apparently he’d been talking to Dr. Fell for quite some time—and quite rationally too. Yes, he remembered now. He’d been answering all the routine questions.

Dr. Fell knew that he was Clyde Bromely, age thirty-two, public-relations counsel. Born in Erie, Pennsylvania. Parents dead. Business, lousy. No business. No business like show business, there’s no business I know . . .

Had he said that? Apparently not, because Dr. Fell’s rich, deep, comforting voice moved right along, asking the questions and extracting the answers. And it was quite all right to talk to Dr. Fell, tell him all he knew. Fell was a good psychiatrist.

Bromely knew a little something about psychiatry himself. Oh, not the technical terms, of course, but more than a smattering of technique. This was a routine orientation, preliminary to probing. And Bromely cooperated.

When Dr. Fell began to ask questions about his health and his general background, Bromely took a sheaf of papers from his inside coat pocket and handed them over.

“Here it is, Doc,” he said. “Complete report on the physical. Had it taken last week.” He indicated a second folded sheaf. “And here’s the autobiography. All the names you’ll need—friends, relatives, teachers, employers, the works. Everything I could remember. Which isn’t much right now.”

Dr. Fell smiled in the shadows. “Excellent,” he said. “You seem to understand the necessity of cooperation.” He put the papers on the desk. “I’ll check over this later,” he told Bromely. “Although I imagine I’m already familiar with most of the contents.”

Bromely got that panicky feeling again. Whoever had recommended Dr. Fell to him must also have talked to Dr. Fell about his case. Now, who would that be? He hesitated to ask—not that he felt ashamed, but it would be an admission that he was pretty far gone if he couldn’t even recall how he’d come here. Well, it didn’t matter. He was grateful to be here, and that was the important thing. He needed Dr. Fell.

“You’ve got to help me, Dr. Fell,” he was saying. “You’re my last hope. That’s why I’ve come to you. You must understand that, because it’s the crux of the whole matter. I would never have come to you unless you were my last hope. I’m at the end of my rope. When you come to the end of your rope, you swing. I’m swinging now. I’m swinging down the lane. Down Memory Lane. I wanted to be a songwriter once. But my lyrics sounded as if they were stolen. That’s my problem. Association. I’ve got too much association. Everything I do or say sounds like it’s stolen from somebody else. Imitation. Mimicry. Until there’s nothing original, nothing basic beneath to which I can cling. I’m losing myself. There’s no real me left.”

Bromely went on like this for about an hour. He said everything that came into his mind. The associative clichés poured out and with them the desperate plea for help.

Dr. Fell scribbled in his notebook and said nothing. At the end of the session he tapped Bromely on the shoulder.

“That’ll be enough for today,” he said. “Tomorrow, same time? Let’s plan on an hour a day, five days a week.”

“Then you think you can help me?”

Dr. Fell nodded. “Let’s say that I think you can help yourself. Five days a week, from now on.”

Bromely rose from the couch. Dr. Fell’s face wavered and blurred before him. He was very tired, very confused, but oddly relieved despite the physical strain that affected his vision. There was just one thing bothering him—and suddenly he remembered it.

“But, Doc, I just happened to think. You know, I’m not doing too well with the business these days and, I mean, five days a week—”

The hand gripped his shoulder. “I quite understand. But let’s put it this way. Your case—your problem, that is—interests me personally. And even a psychiatrist has been known to extend his services on occasion without fee.”

Bromely couldn’t believe his ears at first. “You mean—it won’t cost me anything?” His expression of gratitude was genuine. “Doc, you’re a real friend. A friend in need. A friend in deed. Indeed.”

Dr. Fell chuckled. “Believe me, Mr. Bromely, I am your friend. You’ll find that out for yourself in time, I trust.”

As Clyde Bromely went out the door he felt the phrases flooding through his brain. In God we trust, all others pay cash. My best and only friend. A man’s best friend is his mother.

The receptionist said something to him as he left, but Bromely was too preoccupied to catch her words. He was engrossed in thought, he was deep in contemplation, Deep in the Heart of Texas. Death and Texas. Nothing’s sure but.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Almost before he realized it, tomorrow had come and he had come and here he was back on the couch.

Dr. Fell listened as he told him about his father and mother and about the peculiar feeling he now had—the feeling that Dr. Fell reminded him of his father and mother. Brother and sister I have none, but I am my father’s only son. Who am I?

“Who are you?” Dr. Fell asked the question softly. “That’s really what’s bothering you, isn’t it? Who are you? You can answer that question if you want to, you know. So try. Try. Who are you?”

It was the wrong question. Bromely felt it, and he froze. Somewhere, deep inside, words formed an answer. But he couldn’t find the words. He couldn’t find that spot, inside him, where the words came from.

For the rest of the hour he just lay there on the couch.

Dr. Fell said nothing. When the time was up he tapped Bromely on the shoulder, muttered, “Tomorrow, then,” and turned away.

Bromely got out of the office. The receptionist stared at him oddly, half opened her mouth to say something, and didn’t. Bromely shrugged. Somehow he managed to find his way back to his own office.

He walked in and asked his girl for messages. Apparently whatever was wrong with him showed in his appearance, because she did that half-open mouth trick too. Then she managed to control herself and tell him that CAA had called just a few minutes ago and wanted to see him. There was a chance to handle Torchy Harrigan.

That was the news he’d been waiting for. Bromely snapped out of it fast. Torchy Harrigan—just signed for a new network video show—two pictures coming up with MGM—big deal with CAA, Consolidated Artists of America—personal representative—press releases to all dailies—

“Call them back and tell them I’m on my way over,” he said. “Bromely rides again!”

Bromely was riding again. He was riding the couch in Dr. Fell’s office. He was riding for a fall, riding hell-for-leather . . .

And all the while he was talking it out, gasping and sobbing and wheezing and choking it out.

“I can’t explain it, Doc. I just can’t figure it out! Here I had this deal sewed up with Harrigan, just the kind of setup I’ve been looking for. Two bills a week and all expenses, a chance to go out to the Coast with him, the works. Even turned out that his business manager is Hal Edwards—good friend of mine, known him for years. He gave Harrigan the pitch on me, built me up.

“So I walked in on Edwards and we talked it over, and then we went up to Harrigan’s suite at the Plaza to talk it over. And Harrigan gave me the big hello, listened to Hal Edwards pitch for me—greatest flack in the business, all that kind of thing.

“You get the picture, Doc? The whole deal was in the bag. Harrigan was just waiting for me to give him the word on my plan for a publicity campaign. Edwards flashed me the cue and I opened my mouth.

“But nothing came out. You understand me? But nothing! I couldn’t think of anything to say. Oh, there were words and phrases whirling around in my head, only they didn’t add up. I couldn’t think like a press agent any more.”

All the while he talked Bromely had been watching Dr. Fell’s face. At first it seemed far away, but now it was coming closer and closer, getting bigger and bigger until it blotted out everything.

And Dr. Fell’s voice was like distant thunder, then thunder near at hand, thunder overhead.

Vision and hearing played their tricks, but Bromely clung to Dr. Fell, clung to words that fell from Dr. Fell for he’s a jolly good fellow which nobody can deny.

Dr. Fell had been taking notes in shorthand. He glanced at them now as he spoke. In a moment Bromely realized he was merely reading off a string of quotes from Bromely’s previous conversation. The phrases droned on, louder and louder.

“Can’t figure it out . . . sewed up . . . setup . . . two bills a week . . . the works . . . gave Harrigan the pitch on me, built me up . . . big hello . . . greatest flack in the buisness . . . get the picture . . . in the bag . . . give him the word . . . flashed me the cue . . . but nothing . . . didn’t add up.”

Dr. Fell leaned forward. “What do those phrases mean to you, Bromely? What do they really add up to in your mind?”

Bromely tried to think about it. He tried hard. But all he could come out with was, “I don’t know. They’re all slang expressions I used to use in public relations a few years ago. Come to think of it, they’re a little dated now, aren’t they?”

Dr. Fell smiled. “Exactly. And doesn’t that tie in with your final statement, that you couldn’t think like a press agent any more? Isn’t that part of your problem, Mr. Bromely—that you aren’t a press agent any more, really? That you’re losing your identity, losing your orientation? Let me ask you once again now—who are you?”

Bromely froze up. He couldn’t answer because he couldn’t think of the answer. He lay there on the couch, and Dr. Fell waited. Nothing happened.

Nothing seemed to happen for a long, long time. How Bromely got through the next two days he couldn’t remember. All he recalled were the hours on the couch—and it seemed to him that he shuttled back and forth between his office and Dr. Fell’s more than once a day.

It was hard to check, of course, because he didn’t talk to anyone. He lived alone in a one-room walk-up apartment and he ate at one-arm counter joints. He wasn’t talking to his office girl, Thelma, any more either. There was nothing to talk about—no calls since the unfortunate Harrigan affair—and he owed her for three weeks’ back salary. Besides, she almost seemed afraid of him when he appeared in the office. Come to think of it (and it was so hard to come to think of it, or anything else, so very hard), even Dr. Fell’s little receptionist looked frightened when he walked in, without a word.

Without a word. That was his problem. He had no words any longer. It was as though his final effort, talking to Harrigan and Hal Edwards, had drained him dry of the ability to communicate. All the clichés had flowed out of him, leaving—nothing. Absolutely nothing.

He realized it now, lying on the couch in Dr. Fell’s office. Once more Dr. Fell had asked the single question, the only question he ever asked, “Who are you?”

And he couldn’t answer. There was nothing. He was nobody. For years now he’d been in the process of becoming nobody. It was the only explanation that fit. But he couldn’t seem to explain.

With a start he realized that it wasn’t necessary. Dr. Fell was sitting close to Bromely now, breaking the long silence, whispering confidentially in his ear.

“All right,” he was murmuring. “Let’s try a different approach, shall we? Maybe I can help answer the question for you. Maybe I can tell you who you are.”

Bromely nodded gratefully, but somewhere deep within him fear was rising.

“I’ve studied your case,” said Dr. Fell. “It’s quite remarkable, in a way, but only because it’s one of the first. I don’t believe it will be the last. Within several years, unless I miss my guess, there’ll be thousands of men like you. The schizoids and the paranoids will have to move over and make room for a new category.

“Call them neoids. The name doesn’t matter. It’s the condition that counts. You know anything about disease germs, bacteria?”

Bromley nodded.

“You’re aware then that these organisms undergo swift mutations and have been during the past few years? Men invent the sulfa drugs—they develop a tolerance for sulfa. Men come out with the antibiotics—penicillin, streptomycin, a dozen others. And the bugs adapt. What’s the result today? We have new bugs.”

He thinks I’m bugs, Bromely told himself, but he listened. Fell went on, his voice rising slightly.

“Bugs change, but they still spawn on men. And aberration—insanity, as they used to call it—changes with the times, too—but still it spawns on men. Five hundred years ago the commonest form of insanity was a belief in demoniac possession. Three hundred years ago men had delusions of witchcraft and sorcery. A man who couldn’t integrate his personality created a new one—he became a wizard. Because the wizard was the symbol of power, the supreme authority who knew the secrets of life and death. The disintegrating personality seeks reaffirmation in authority. Does that make sense to you?”

Bromely nodded, but he didn’t mean it. Nothing made sense to him any more. And the fear was rising within him as Dr. Fell’s voice rose without.

“Yes, three hundred years ago thousands upon thousands of men and women went to the stake firmly convinced that they were actually witches and wizards. Poor, deluded fools who had broken under the tensions of daily life and sought a fresh personality that symbolized strength to them.

“Times change, Bromely. Look at what happened to you. Your personality disintegrated, didn’t it? You began to lose touch with reality. You were no longer completely oriented.

“Because you lived alone, because you had no close personal ties, there was no one to cling to. No one to reaffirm your reality. And your work was phoney too. The epitome of phoniness—manufacturing lies to create artificial personalities for others. That’s press agentry, isn’t it? You lived in an unreal world, dealt exclusively in unreal words and phrases. The stock slang of the day—the kind of thing that passes, in your circles, as a conversational substitute for real thought. You stole ideas, stole ‘gags’ and ‘stunts.’ You stole the current catch phrases. Before you knew it nothing you did was quite real to you any more. And you got panicked, because you felt your sense of identity slipping away. True?”

Bromely felt the fear very close now, because Dr. Fell was closer. He nodded, hoping the fear would go away. But he wanted Dr. Fell to stay, wanted him to solve this problem for him.

“You’re not a fool, Clyde.” Dr. Fell used his first name for the first time, and it underlined the intimacy of his words. “You sensed that something was wrong, that something was happening. And so you did what others are beginning to do. You did that which will create, in years to come, a new kind of mania. That’s why your case is important, Clyde. You’re the first of the new maniacs!”

Fear was here. Fear was the counterpoint to Fell now. It accented every word he spoke. Bromely felt the fear and listened to the words.

“Some start by seeking the ‘self-help’ books, just as those who wanted to become sorcerers used to study the old grimoires. Some go further and experiment in all the odd bypaths of parapsychology—ESP, telepathic communication, occultism, so-called. And some go all the way. They cannot conjure up the devil but they can commune with Freud, with Adler, with Jung and Moll and Stekel and Reik and the other archfiends. They don’t chant spells any more, but they learn the new Cabala, the new language of mystery. Schizophrenia, echolalia, involutional melancholia—the words come trippingly from the tongue, do they not?

“You should know, Clyde. Didn’t you visit the library on those long, dull days when business was bad and read endlessly in psychiatry? Didn’t you bury yourself these past several months in a completely new world of delusion and hallucination and obsession, of neurosis and psychosis? In other words, when you felt you were going crazy—just as in the past men felt they were becoming possessed of the devil—didn’t you seek to fight it by studying psychiatry as the ancients studied witchcraft and the black arts?”

Bromely tried to sit up. Dr. Fell’s face loomed closer, swung away, loomed closer again.

“You know what happened to those men, Clyde. They became, in their own minds, wizards. And you know now—surely you must have guessed—what has happened to you. During the past week you couldn’t be a press agent any more. You couldn’t be a rational human being any more. In an effort to project, to invest in a new identity, you became a psychiatrist. And you invented me!

“You’ve told yourself that this office is something like your own office, my receptionist resembles your girl, I resemble you. Don’t you understand? This is your office. That is your girl. You’ve been coming in daily and lying down here on your own couch. No wonder she’s frightened, hearing you talk to yourself. Now do you know who you are?”

Was it Dr. Fell or the fear screaming in his ears?

“This is your last chance, Clyde. You’ve got to decide once and for all. You can be yourself again, completely, if you have faith in your own identity. If not, you’re the first of the new maniacs. Let me ask you once again, once and for all—who are you?”

Clyde Bromely lay there on the couch while the room whirled and swirled. He saw pictures, endless pictures—a faded snapshot of a little Clyde, clinging to Mama’s skirt—Bromely, Lt. j.g., U.S.N., in uniform—Speed Bromely, public relations, shaking hands with a top comic at a benefit show—Bromely sitting in the public library, seeking the answer in the ologies and the isms—Bromely lying on the couch, clawing at nothing.

Bromely saw the pictures, shuffled them, sorted, them, and made his choice. He answered Dr. Fell’s question, but only to himself.

Then the fear fell away, and Bromely slept. He slept there on the couch for a long, long time. When he woke up it was dark and he was alone in the room. Somebody was rapping on the door.

It was his girl. He knew that now. He was in his own office, and his own girl came in, timidly and hesitantly, as he rose with a smile of renewed confidence and switched on the lamp.

“I was worried,” she said. “You being in here so long and no sound—”

He laughed and laughed again inside as he realized that the sound but dimly conveyed the new security he felt within himself. He’d fought the good fight and won, at last.

“I was sleeping,” he told her. “There’s nothing to worry about, my dear. From now on we’re going places. I’ve been in a pretty bad slump for the past month or so—someday I’ll tell you all about it—but I’m all right now. Let’s go out for dinner and we’ll make plans.”

The girl smiled. She could sense the change too. Dark as the room was, it seemed to fill with sudden sunlight.

“All right,” she said. “All right, Mr. Bromely.”

He stiffened. “Bromely? That patient? Don’t you know me, my dear?”

Luck Is No Lady

Frankie hung onto the bar with both hands. If he let go, he might fall down. He didn’t want to pass out, because this old Professor guy was talking to him. If he listened, maybe the old guy would keep on buying the drinks.

“Luck,” said the old Professor guy. “That’s what makes all the difference in the world. Five years ago I was a respected member of the faculty here at the university. Today, owing to the vicissitudes of fortune—”

He paused and sighed. Frankie sighed, too. “I know what you mean,” Frankie said. “I ain’t used to being on the bum myself.” Which was a lie, because Frankie had always been a bum. But he wanted to stay friendly; he wanted another drink. And sure enough, the old guy was signaling the bartender. He pulled out a half dollar and held it up in the air.

“Heads or tails,” the Professor said. “Who can tell which it will be when I drop this coin on the bar? I can’t. You can’t. And neither can the bartender. A mathematician will say the chances are even, either way. Professor Rhine will tell you the odds can be modified. But no one knows. And there you have the Mystery of the Universe. None of us can foresee what luck will bring. Behold!”

Frankie had his eyes in focus now and he watched the coin drop. It hit the bar, bounced, then stood still—balanced on edge.

“Luck!” chuckled the old Professor guy. “Sheer luck, operating all around us, governing every move of our lives. If Lincoln had stooped to tie his shoelace at the moment Booth fired his shot—if the bird had not appeared when Columbus faced the mutineers—if! But we’re all victims of Tyche.”

“Tight,” Frankie said. “I know I’m tight.”

“You misunderstand. I was speaking of Tyche. Fortuna, the Romans called her. One of the Fates, a sister of the Parcae.”

“Never met the dame.”

“I can well imagine that.” The old Professor guy smiled at Frankie over his glass. “But the ancients realized her importance. They held an annual festival in her honor. June twenty-fourth, I believe, was the date. I’ve seen her represented with a cornucopia in her hands, standing on a ball—”

“Let’s have a ball,” Frankie muttered. “One more drink and I’m gonna be all set for a ball.”

“You shouldn’t drink so much,” the old guy told him.

Frankie shrugged. “Why not? What else is there to do? I ain’t never had the breaks, not once. Look at me—a lousy, washed-up wino. I shake like an old man, and I’m only thirty-three. If I just got a decent chance—”

The Professor guy was nodding. “I know,” he said. “I could tell you a similar story. And so could every man. One man takes his last hundred dollars and buys a shack on the beach—six months later they find him there, dead of starvation. Another does the same thing—six months later they strike oil on the shore, and he sells his property for a million plus royalties. One man walks down the street and finds a fat wallet in the gutter. Another walks down the same street a moment later, just in time to be hit by a falling cornerstone. Fortune is a fickle goddess, my friend. But who knows? Being fickle, she may reverse her attitude and visit you with wealth and happiness.”

“Nuts!” said Frankie.

“There speaks the scientific mind,” said the old Professor guy. “But I’m not so sure. If I could only learn the secret of what attracts Fortune, I’d ask for nothing else. Perhaps it’s just a matter of real belief, or of worship. Fortune is a goddess and goddesses demand adoration. Being female, she requires constancy. Could it be that the so-called fortunate ones are merely those who have learned this secret and swear fealty to Fortune in return for her favors?”

“I dunno,” Frankie mumbled. “Me, I’d go all-out for any dame who’d change my luck.”

He picked up his glass, swallowed, then turned. But the old Professor guy had stumbled out. The bartender came up, shaking his head. “Funny how it hits them all of a sudden,” he said.

“Yeah,” Frankie answered. “But what gets me is why a guy like him hangs around this joint.”

“I dunno about that,” the bartender said. “We get some pretty classy trade, on account of the game in back.”

Then Frankie remembered. Sure, there was a back room here. Roulette, dice, the works. He’d never been back there because he never had a stake. But come to think of it, people had been crowding through all evening, passing behind him. Like the bald-headed jerk walking by now, and the college boy with the glasses, and the dame in red.

The dame in red—there was a real item!

Frankie hadn’t paid any attention to dames for a couple of months now. When you’re really on the juice, you get so dames don’t interest you. But this one did.

She wore this red sort of evening dress, and her skin was white as marble, and her hair was jet-black. Like her eyes. She looked at Frankie when she passed, and she smiled.

She smiled at him. The way he looked mustn’t have bothered her.

Frankie was high, or he’d never have done it. But he was high, so he floated after her. Floated to the door of the back room and stood behind her while the eye looked her over and gave the nod. And Frankie went right through to the back with her—the eye didn’t try to stop him. In fact, Frankie had an idea the eye was looking at him more than at her.

The room in back was bigger than he’d thought, and they had quite a layout. That crummy bar up front was only a blind. This was the McCoy—three big tables for roulette and four pool tables in the corners, for dice. And there must have been fifty people at least.

It was smoky back there, but not noisy. Even the dice-players were quiet, and when the wheel was spinning at a table you could notice the sound of the ball clicking. Frankie followed the dame in red over to one of the roulette tables. Lots of fat faces here, well-dressed citizens with plenty of moola. Big piles of chips in front of some. Little piles in front of others. And the wheel in the middle turning, the wheel with the thirty-six numbers and the 0 and the double-0, the wheel with the red and the black. Every time it turned, some of the piles would get smaller and other ones would get bigger.

Why?

Here it was, the thing the old Professor had been blabbing about. Fortune. Luck.

Some of the guys must have had a G or more in chips in front of them, and they kept on winning. Some of the others kept on losing and buying more: a dollar for whites, ten for reds, twenty for blues.

But win or lose, everybody was excited. Frankie could feel it coming off them in waves, the excitement around the table. Everybody watched every spin, every play. He watched, too, and felt the pressure. If he only had a stake now!

He looked over at the dame in red. She wasn’t playing either, just standing and looking, same as him. Not quite the same, because she wasn’t excited. Frankie could tell from the way she stood there, like a statue, sort of. Nobody else paid any attention to her, even though she was the hottest-looking dish in the joint. You’d think they didn’t even know she was there, the way they ignored her and kept their eyes on the table, on the little silver ball bouncing around on the rim of the wheel.

And she watched, but her eyes never changed. She didn’t clench her fists or breathe hard or even look interested, really. It was almost as if she knew who was going to win and who was going to lose.

Frankie stared at her, stared hard. All at once she turned her head and looked at him again. Those eyes were like a couple of black stones. He wanted to look away, but she looked away first. Her eyes glanced down at the floor.

Frankie bent over to see what she was looking at. And then he noticed it.

There was a chip lying there, right at his feet. It must have fallen off somebody’s stack. Frankie bent over and picked it up, held it in his hand. A blue chip—twenty bucks. He could cash it in right now. There was some luck for you!

He started to look around for one of the cashiers who went through the crowd with their little boxes strapped on, but he couldn’t spot one. And the stick was going into his act. “Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen—”

Why not? Twenty bucks found, that was luck. And maybe luck would hold. Twenty could get you forty. But which should he play, the red or the black?

Frankie looked over at the dame again. She had a red dress, that was a hunch. But her hair was black and her eyes were black. The black eyes were staring at him now—

Sure, he’d play the black. Frankie started to put his chip down, but his hand wasn’t steady and the chip got away from him. It rolled and landed smack on number 33.

He made a move to reach out, but the stick said, “The bank is closed,” and the wheel was spinning, and all he could do was stand there and watch. Twenty bucks tossed away like nothing, a rotten piece of luck. The wheel went round and round, the ball went round and round, the room went round and round.

The ball stopped. The wheel stopped. And the room stopped, too, so Frankie could hear the stick saying, “Thirty-three, black.”

His number!

Then it started. The stick pushed this big stack of chips his way. And the dame in red smiled, so he put half the chips back on red. Red came up. He left the stack there and red came up again. Three straight wins in a row and he couldn’t lose.

But the dame in red shook her head and edged away from the table, so he scooped all his chips together and gave them to the cashier. The cashier paid him off in twenties and fifties and hundreds. Three thousand and twenty bucks, cash!

Frankie stuffed it in his pockets, hurrying through the crowd because he wanted to see the dame again, thank her, maybe even give her a split.

The eye held the door open for him and the dame walked out ahead, and he called, “Hey, wait a minute!” and the eye looked at him.

“What’s that, buddy?”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Frankie said. “I was talking to the dame.”

“What dame?” asked the eye.

Frankie didn’t answer, because he could see her going out the front door of the tavern. He caught up with her on the corner. The fresh air hit him, made him feel slightly sick, but he floated over to her and said, “Thanks. You brought me luck.”

She just smiled, and in the dim light her eyes were darker than ever.

“Here.” He scooped out a handful of bills. “I figure you got this coming.”

She didn’t take the money.

“I mean it,” Frankie said. “Go ahead.” Then he stopped. “What’s the matter, you deaf or something?”

No answer. That was it, all right. Imagine a classy dame like that, deaf. But couldn’t they read your lips?

“Where you headed for?” Frankie asked her. Still no answer.

Maybe the dame was a dummy, too. No wonder she didn’t have any boy friend.

“Wanna come with me?” Frankie asked. It didn’t make sense that she would—a dame like her being picked up by a crummy bum. But nothing made sense any more; besides, he was too tired for sense. All he knew was that he had to get some rest and sober up. If she wanted to come with him, let her. Nobody’d say anything at the fleabag where he stayed. But he had to sleep now, had to.

He began to walk and sure enough, she followed him. Not a sound out of her, not even the clicking of high heels, because she was wearing sandals. No rings, no jewelry to clank. A beautiful dish, but like a statue.

And she stood like a statue in the middle of his dirty room.

Was she waiting for him to make a pass at her? All he knew was that he was tired, terribly tired. He dragged himself across the room, plopped down on the bed. He knew he couldn’t stop himself from falling . . .

He must have slept that way all night, with his head in her lap. And she must have just sat there, not sleeping. Because it was morning now and she was looking down at him and smiling.

She smiled while he washed and shaved and changed into his other shirt. He tried to talk to her again, but she didn’t answer. Just smiled and waited, waited until he put on his coat and picked up his hat.

“Come on,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

They went downstairs and out onto the street. Frankie was going into the Ace Lunch until he remembered he had three grand in his pocket. Why not eat in one of those nice big restaurants over on Main? But he couldn’t go to a place like that, looking the way he did.

“Wait a minute,” he told her. “I got shopping to do first.”

She waited, smiled and waited, while he went into the Hub and bought himself an outfit. Everything from shoes up to a twenty-dollar hat. The ready-made fit perfectly and he looked like a million bucks for only a hundred and thirty.

The clerk was plenty polite, but he ignored the dame. Frankie didn’t notice this so much, but afterwards in the restaurant the waitress acted the same way—brought him a glass of water and a menu, but nothing for her.

But it turned out she wouldn’t eat anything, anyhow. He pointed at the menu and she just shook her head.

So he ended up eating alone. Then he sat back and tried to figure things out. Here he was with almost three grand still in his pocket. But he had her, too. Miss Can’t-hear, Miss Can’t-talk, Miss Won’t-sleep, Miss Won’t-eat. How about that, now?

She smiled at him and Frankie smiled back, but he was beginning to wonder. Sure, she brought him luck, but there was something screwy about her—something awful screwy. He’d have to find a way to shake her before he got in some kind of trouble.

He walked out of the restaurant and she tagged along. Usually he headed for a park-bench in the morning, but now as he got ready to cross the street he stopped. The dame was holding his arm and looking up at a sign, ACME-METAL PRODUCTS COMPANY. So what?

There was another sign in the front window of the building. She was staring at it. MEN WANTED.

He tried to take another step, but she held him. And now she was pointing. Frankie blinked. Was that what she meant? Did she figure on him going in there and asking for a job?

He could, of course. That’d been his line years ago. Still had his social security card, and he could probably get back in the union somehow, even in spite of the bum rap on him. But how could she know that? And what made her think he’d go back to being a working stiff, now that he had all that dough in his kick?

So Frankie shook his head. But she kept right on smiling and her arm kept right on tugging at his sleeve.

All at once he got an idea. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it. But you wait here.” He pointed to the doorway, and sure enough, she walked over and stood there. He brushed past her to go inside and she gave him a big smile.

Once he got inside, Frankie started to smile, too. He knew what to do now. This joint must have a back entrance. He’d just slip out the other way. Simple.

Only this guy was standing in the hall, and he spotted Frankie and said, “You a machinist ’r a metalworker?”

“Coremaker,” Frankie said. It slipped out natural, before he could stop it. “But I’m not union—”

“Neither is this plant, buddy. Come on in, fill out an application. Got a rush order, the boss’s crying for help, and this town’s murder when it comes to getting experienced—”

Before he knew it, the guy had him in the office and a fat character named Chesley was handing him a form.

Frankie was getting ready to tell him off when the door opened behind him.

They came in fast, two of them, walking like a couple of wound-up toys. Both of them had bandanas over their mouths. They must have put them on outside in the hall, before they’d pulled their rods.

Their rods were out now, and pointing. And one of them said, from under his bandana, “Stick ’em up and don’t move.”

There was Frankie and this Chesley and an old bookkeeper guy and the man who’d brought him into the office. They all got their hands up in a hurry.

“Over against the wall,” said the first bandana-mouth. “Make it snappy.” He walked over to the big wall-safe and waited.

They started moving. The old bookkeeper guy looked like he was ready to pass out. In fact, all at once, he did pass out.

“Catch him!” Chesley yelled. “He’s got a bad heart!”

Both of the bandana-mouths turned and watched him fall. Frankie was watching, too. He didn’t notice the big wastebasket in front of him until he walked right into it.

The basket went over with a clatter and rolled. It hit one of the gunsels in the shins. Frankie stumbled because of his tangling with the basket and fell forward. He grabbed for something to hang onto. And that turned out to be the nearest gunman’s neck. All at once this fellow and Frankie were down on the floor in a heap and Frankie saw the gun in front of him. He reached for it because he was so scared he couldn’t think to do something sensible like not grabbing the gun.

The other crook saw him grab for it and he jerked away from the safe. Just then the rolling wastebasket hit him in the shins. This startled him and he gave out a yell and turned. But now his back was to Chesley, and Chesley jumped him. Frankie got this crook’s gun away from him, with a hard crack on the wrist, and covered both of the men while Chesley turned on the burglar-alarm.

There was plenty of excitement for the next half hour. When the cops got through talking to Frankie, there were reporters. When the reporters got through, there was Chesley again, and Frankie never did have to fill out that form.

Chesley was delighted that Frankie would be working for him, starting tomorrow.

Frankie was so confused he ended up walking out the front door. By the time he realized what he was doing it was too late to turn around. And there she was. She had been waiting for him all this time, and now she spotted him.

Like the old Professor guy said, everything was luck. The roulette wheel, and stumbling over the wastebasket, and now this job and a new, decent life ahead of him. Blind luck.

He stared at her. Now what? She was always around when things happened.

Frankie asked her to come to him with a jerk of his head, and she smiled. They walked down the street together and he bought some luggage and then he went into the Ardmoor and took a furnished suite, just like that. Two hundred clams a month, but no questions asked. The clerk didn’t even look at her, and the bellboy took them up without a word, or even a know-it-all grin.

He flipped the kid a half dollar and then sat down on the bed. She stood in the center of the room and smiled.

“This is it, huh, kid? Well, make yourself at home.”

He tried to light a cigarette, but it got on his nerves to see her just sitting there, smiling like a statue carved out of stone. Maybe the dame was feeble-minded . . .

What he needed was a drink. A nice little drink before dinner. There was a cocktail lounge right downstairs in the Ardmoor, one of those high-class places, all dim and quiet. Peaceful as a church. A place where you could relax and drink.

Frankie stood up. “Wait here a minute,” he said. “I’m gonna go down to the lobby and buy a paper.”

She didn’t try to stop him—just smiled.

He walked downstairs and into the lounge. The bartender asked him what’ll it be and Frankie almost said, “Glass of musky,” before he remembered he didn’t have to drink rotgut muscatel wine any more.

“Rye on the rocks,” he said.

It tasted good.

“Do it again,” Frankie told the guy.

The guy did it. And this one tasted good, too. Everything was good here. The nice, soft darkness and the nice, soft music in the background. A guy could relax.

“The same,” Frankie said to the bartender.

He was feeling better and better. Why not? With his luck, nothing could go wrong. Not even with the dame.

Or because of the dame.

It hit him on the third drink. It had been in the back of his mind all along, and with the third drink it didn’t seem so crazy. The dame in red was Lady Luck.

“Hit ’er again!” Frankie said to the bartender.

What had the old Professor guy said? Maybe if you believed in her enough, she’d come to you. And he’d sort of had that feeling last night. It was screwy, but then luck is always screwy. Like the Professor said, some guys get all the breaks and others always wind up with the wrong end of the stick.

Sense or not, it had happened to him. He had Lady Luck right where he wanted her, on his side.

“One more,” Frankie said.

It was the strangest, greatest feeling in the world, just sitting there and knowing that luck was with him now, smiling on him. Blind luck, dumb luck, but always smiling. Ready to give him everything and anything he wanted.

Frankie began to think about all the things he’d wanted during all the years he’d been wanting. One of those snazzy English cars. A place up in the woods maybe, with a private lake for fishing. And when he’d been in stir, he’d wanted a blonde more than he’d wanted anything else. Like that one sitting over there at the end of the bar.

She was a tall dame with bare legs. She had one of those fancy cigarette-holders and there was class written all over her. Kind of a doll Frankie’d never even had the nerve to look at twice.

But now, why not? Things were different now. He had luck with him. If he wanted something he could have it. Maybe she sent the blonde on purpose, knowing how he felt.

That was it. All he had to do was lean over and say, “How about a drink, baby?” Or maybe, “Would you care for a drink?” That would sound better, classier.

Sure it sounded classier, and it worked, too. She was moving over. Frankie stood up, feeling a little dizzy, and helped her onto the stool. Then he sat down again and had another and he felt fine, just fine.

He kept feeling better and better. Easy to talk, now. Her name was Margot. Not Margaret, but Margot. Only you said it “Margo.” The “t” was silent. Silent like the dame in red, waiting upstairs. Maybe he ought to get back to her. But what for? She didn’t eat; you don’t have to feed Luck. Luck was free, everything was free and easy now.

It was easy to talk to Margot, too. Easy to tell her how lucky he was. How everything he touched turned to gold, like this King Midas or whatever the guy’s name was they named that flour after.

So Frankie told her, and they drank, and he said how he’d just moved in, and how he’d foiled the robbery today and how he’d won all that dough last night. Only this was just the beginning, wait and see.

She said she’d like that—waiting and seeing. She called him “Frankie-boy,” and said she was afraid she was getting just a wee bit drunkie.

Then the bar started filling up. And Frankie said how’s for getting a bottle and taking it up to his room and drinking in peace?

And she said oh she didn’t know about a thing like that, but he could see she was only stalling, and sure enough she finally said yes.

So the bartender wrapped a bottle and she carried it because it was hard for him to walk. And they went up the stairs and he leaned on her and he could feel how warm her skin was under her sleeve and he knew this was it, this was what he wanted more than anything.

But in the hall he remembered and told her to wait right where she was for a minute. He went around a corner and down a corridor until he came to his door.

Frankie unlocked it. She was still sitting there, smiling at him—hadn’t moved a muscle since he left.

He stumbled over to her and he said, “Thanks. Thanks a million. But you gotta get out now or she’ll see you. We wanna be alone, understand?”

She just sat there, not hearing. So he yelled it at her. And then he pulled her up and pushed her over to the door. It was like lugging a statue, but he made it. And he headed her down the hall past the blonde in the corridor, hoping she wouldn’t see the blonde.

Only she must have, because she looked at him and stopped smiling. She stood there and her black eyes got that stony stare in them as she looked right through him.

He tried to grin and gave her a little push. “Go on,” he said. “Come back tomorrow. Tha’sa good girl.”

Then she was walking away and Frankie was walking away, back around the corridor to pick up the blonde and steer her into his room.

“Who were you talking to?” Margot asked. “Yourself?”

“Never mind,” said Frankie.

She didn’t mind and they had a drink together. And just to show her he wasn’t handing out a line, he showed her his roll.

After that things were even better between him and the blonde. She said she liked him much, much more than a lot. But he was so loaded and so sleepy, he had a hard time keeping his eyes open.

Funny thing, just about then Frankie thought he heard somebody knocking on the door. He figured maybe it was the dame in red. But before he could even try to find out, he passed out.

When Frankie woke up, it was morning, full bright daylight. The blonde was gone. So was the dough; so was his new luggage, even. He found a dollar and thirty-five cents change in the back of his suit. And that was it, brother, you’ve had it.

He’d had it, all right. Because before he could pull himself together, the house manager was on the phone complaining, telling him he was to vacate the premises at once on account of disturbing the neighbors during the night.

Frankie tried to say something about a refund then, remembering that a buck thirty-five was all that he had left, but the house manager said one more word and he’d call the cops. Besides, he didn’t want an ex-con for a tenant.

Frankie’s head was splitting; he couldn’t figure out how the guy knew about that.

Not until he got downstairs and bought a paper and saw the story about the robbery could he figure it. EX-CONVICT FOILS HOLDUP was the headline, and he read the story under it that was all about himself. All about himself, because some smart-aleck reporter must have checked the news files to see what he could find out about Frankie and ran across his name in an old story written at the time he got sent up.

So there was no sense going around to see Chesley for his job now. And the dough was gone, all on account of that dizzy, double-crossing blonde—

So it was gone. So what? That was just the breaks of the game. He could get more, with his luck.

With his luck.

But she was gone, too! And she was luck!

They must have thought Frankie was insane when he ran back to the Ardmoor and yelled to the manager about a dame in red. The manager hadn’t seen her, of course. Nobody had seen her. Nobody but Frankie.

He went back to the restaurant and to the old flop, went everywhere he’d been. Nobody talked.

What had the old Professor guy called her? Fortuna, the fickle goddess. Fickle. Only he’d been the one who was fickle. He’d ditched her for a blonde, thrown her out for a double-crossing thieving blonde.

Frankie went up and down the streets all day, looking for the dame in red. But he never saw her. His feet got tired and his head hurt and he kept talking to himself.

Finally, he decided to try the tavern. That’s where he’d met her in the first place. She might be hanging around in the back room, where the Wheel of Fortune turned.

It was getting dark and Frankie was a wreck. What with his hangover, and all that walking, and the funny feeling inside of him—not knowing what was real any more—he could hardly see.

He was just about a block away from the joint, when he blinked and straightened up. Somebody was coming out of the front door and it looked like the dame in red.

Frankie started to run. The dame was walking away, fast, and this time he could hear the hard click of high heels. Now that he was closer, he could tell it wasn’t the dame in red.

Then he saw who it was. It was the blonde—Margot! She’d been in there, playing the wheel on his dough!

She was walking away fast in the other direction and wasn’t yet aware of him sprinting towards her. He caught up with her just alongside an alley, and that was good, too.

Now Frankie knew that even though he hadn’t seen the dame in red that morning, she was still with him. Because she’d arranged for him to find Margot again. So luck was still in there pitching for him.

So he knew just what to do.

He reached out and grabbed the blonde by her pony tail and yanked her into the alley, fast. She turned around and saw him, her mouth dropping open and her eyes getting as big as they could get.

“Where’s the dough!” Frankie shouted, yanking her head back and forth. “Where’s my dough!”

The blonde couldn’t answer, because she was shaking so. But her bag fell out of her hand and landed on the bricks. It opened and a lot of lipstick and such spilled out of it. She pointed in the direction of the bag, gasping.

Frankie gave her one last angry shove. Then he got down on his knees and rummaged through the things that had fallen from her bag. He came up with a dollar or two in small change.

“You lost it!” Frankie yelled. “You lost it all! Talk about tough luck—”

Then he looked at her.

She was sitting on the alley pavement where she’d landed, sitting there with her back up against the wall. When Frankie had given her that shove, she’d banged her head, banged it hard, too, because there was blood running down the side of her face.

Frankie bent over and started to feel her forehead. But her head fell forward at his touch and Frankie could see right away that she was dead.

Frankie got out of the alley, fast. He wanted to run, but there was no place to go. When they found the blonde, he knew that they’d trace her back to the hotel, identify her, and tie him in, sooner or later. And with the tough luck he was suddenly having, it might as well be sooner.

In Frankie’s hand was the mound of loose change. Just enough to buy a couple of drinks, maybe. So he walked down the block, went into the tavern, and slid onto his regular stool.

The old Professor guy was there, and Frankie wanted to tell him the story. He wanted to tell him because maybe the Professor could settle something for him that was very important. Had there really been a dame in red, or had Frankie imagined the whole deal?

So Frankie started talking to the Professor real fast, spilling it all out. The Professor was pretty loaded, just like Frankie had been the night before, but he seemed to get the drift.

“Hallucination,” he said. “It’s all in your mind. Reality in such cases becomes purely subjective. But is there an objective world? That, my harried friend, is the question.”

And then he set his glass down on the bar and stared at the door to the back room.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Who’s she beckoning to?”

“I don’t see anybody,” Frankie told him.

“Then she must be looking for me,” the Professor said. He climbed down off the stool and staggered his way to the door. In a minute Frankie saw him standing there, moving his lips and gesturing, as if he were talking to someone. Then he nodded his head and held the door open for someone to go ahead of him into the back room and to its games of chance.

Frankie still couldn’t see anyone, but then he remembered what the Professor had said about Fortune being a fickle goddess and all that. So maybe she had a new friend now, who maybe would treat her better. On the other hand, the Professor could have caught this hallucination business from him like you catch measles or a cold in the chest. But maybe they were both crazy. Maybe the whole thing was just in their imaginations.

Maybe he’d even imagined murdering the blonde. By this time, Frankie didn’t know just what to believe. Until all at once he could hear the sirens outside, and he knew that at least a part of it hadn’t been his imagination.

The sirens got louder, and Frankie picked up his glass.

“Here’s luck,” said Frankie.

And then the cops walked in.

The Cure

It must have been after midnight when Jeff awoke.

The hut was dark, but moonlight streamed through the doorway. As Jeff rolled over, he could see Marie standing beside his hammock.

She was stark naked.

The long golden flame of her hair shone against the whiteness of her breasts, and there were little flecks of light dancing in her eyes.

Jeff held out his arms and she moved forward, smiling.

Then the knife came down.

Jeff caught the reflection of the moonlight on the steel, caught it just in time to twist his body to one side. There was a harsh, ripping sound as the blade of the machete slashed through the coarse canvas of the hammock.

He grappled with her, his hands sliding across the warm weight of her body, slippery with sweat. Marie made sounds deep within her throat and slashed at him again. The machete bit into Jeff’s ankle, and he screamed.

Then a dark form blotted out the moonlight from the doorway, hurtled forward, and pinned Marie from behind.

“Señor, you are all right?”

“I guess so.” Jeff clambered out of the hammock, gasping at the sudden surge of pain in his ankle as he found the lamp and lit it.

Luiz was standing behind the naked girl, pinning her arms to the wall. He stood quite calmly—a little man with a brown face and long black bangs who could have passed for a wooden Indian. A wooden Indian with a machete of his own in his hand, pressed against Marie’s naked throat.

“Yes, señor?”

“No!” Jeff muttered. “Don’t!”

Luiz shrugged and let the machete fall but did not release the girl. There was no expression in his muddy brown eyes.

Marie began to whimper.

“I’ll kill you, Jeff, I swear it! You thought I didn’t know, but I do. The money came, didn’t it? You and Mike have the money. You’re going to run away and leave me here to die. But I won’t let you. I’ll kill you first, I’ll kill you—”

“Hey, what goes on here?”

Mike came into the hut, wheezing from his climb up the ladder. He stared at them.

Jeff shrugged. The words came hard, but they came. “It’s Marie,” he said. “She flipped her wig.”

“Came at you with a machete, huh?”

“That’s right. She thinks we got the dough and we’re planning to pull a sneak.”

“Maybe it’s fever.”

“Look at her,” Jeff said.

Mike looked at Marie. Her eyes were rolling and saliva dribbled out of the corner of her mouth.

“Guess you’re right.” Mike sighed. “It isn’t fever. So now what do we do?”

“I don’t know. She’ll have to be watched.” Jeff turned to Luiz. “Lucky you came along,” he told the Indian.

Luiz nodded. “I see her come out of hut with machete, so I walk behind. She look bad. Is a sickness in the head, no?”

“Yeah. A sickness in the head. We’ll have to take her back to the hut and tie her down on her cot.”

“Let us do it,” Mike suggested. “You’d better look after that ankle of yours. It’s bleeding bad. If there was only a doctor around—”

Jeff granted. “She needs a doctor worse than I do,” he said. “I’ve seen this coming on for weeks. This is no place for a dame. No wonder she flipped. If that dough doesn’t get here soon, we’ll all flip.”

Mike and Luiz got Marie out of the hut, carrying her down the ladder. Jeff limped over to the bureau and looked for some brandy. He wanted to sterilize the wound. In this jungle damp even a scratch could be dangerous. He found the bottle and was all set to pour some on when Luiz came back. He had something in his hand. The stained rag looked like some kind of poultice.

“I fix,” he said. “Muy bueno.”

“What is it, one of your native messes?”

A hint of reproach shone in the muddy eyes. “I am not native, señor. I am the Spanish, no?”

“All right, you’re Spanish.” Jeff lay back in the hammock as Luiz bound his ankle. The poultice burned.

“Marie all right?” he asked.

“Señor Mike, he ties her tight,” Luiz answered. Then he paused. “Why you not let me kill her? She try to kill you.”

“Because she didn’t know what she was doing. She’s out of her head.”

“But she hurt you. I do not let anyone hurt the señor. He is my jefe.”

“That’s all right, Luiz. You’re a good boy.” Jeff sighed. “Now go away and let me rest.”

The Indian slipped away, and Jeff fell into a troubled sleep. It must have been midafternoon when Mike climbed the ladder to his hut again and Jeff awoke to find him standing there.

“How is she?” he asked.

Mike grunted. “Listen,” he said. “You oughtta be able to hear her screaming from here.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Plenty bad. Hollering about the dough at the top of her lungs. If these Indians understood English, we’d be in real trouble. We’ve got to get her to a doctor quick.”

Jeff sat up, slapping at a mosquito. “I can’t travel with this leg,” he said. “Besides, we have to wait here for the dough. Then we can go down to the coast, take a freighter to Belém. It’s a big city—they’ve got psychiatrists there.”

“You mean Marie needs a head shrinker?”

“That’s right.” Jeff sighed.

Mike looked at him. “I wonder how long it’ll take before your foot heals,” he said. “Maybe the smart thing to do is take her now. For all we know, the dough won’t arrive for another month. We can’t keep her tied up all the time, can we?”

“But I told you, I can’t travel now.”

“You don’t have to,” Mike answered. “Luiz and I could take her to Belém.”

“And leave me here all alone?”

“Somebody’d have to stay anyway, to get the dough when it comes.”

Jeff blinked at his partner. “You’d trust me?”

“Sure, why not?” Mike smiled. “We’re buddies, aren’t we? We pulled the job off together, didn’t we? Of course I trust you with the dough—ain’t you always trusted me with Marie?” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “So let’s do it this way. Luiz and I will take Marie down to Santarém in the piragua. From there we can catch some tramp steamer into Belém. We still got a grand or so stashed away, and that ought to be enough. I’ll slip a few bucks to the skipper and nobody’ll pay any attention to Marie no matter what she’s yelling about. In Belém I’ll hunt up a good head shrinker, get her fixed up. One of those private hospital deals, I figure. By the time you get the money she’ll be okay again. That’s the way you want it, isn’t it, Jeff?”

“Yeah.” Jeff sighed. “That’s the way I want it.”

And that’s the way it was. They left the following morning, Mike, Marie, and Luiz. Luiz didn’t quite know what it was all about, but he listened to Jeff’s instructions very carefully and promised to come back and report as soon as he could.

“You rest,” he told Jeff gravely. “I tell women to look after you, fix foot. No worry ’bout anything, eh?”

Jeff nodded, and after they departed he drowsed.

He nodded and drowsed, drowsed and nodded, and the days slipped by. The women in the village came with his food. They cleaned his hut and they fanned him with leaves during the heat of the day, and they changed the poultices on his ankle.

But something must have been wrong with the wound, because the fever came back. Jeff lay in his hammock, listening to the rain, and tried to pretend that none of this was real. And yet it was real; it had to be real.

You spend a year planning the armored-truck job, you and Mike together, and you know it’ll work. You figure all the angles, and you know you can get away with the dough—but then what?

If you’re smart, you can pull a big job and not get caught; it’s afterward that the trouble starts, when you try to get rid of the loot. They trace the bills and catch up with you.

Finally you work a deal. You make contact with a man named Gonzales in Cuba. He’ll dump the bills in exchange for pesos, in exchange for a third of the split. Meanwhile you have to hide out. Not in Cuba, because something might go wrong, and not in any city. So you think it over and decide to hole up somewhere out of the way—somewhere nobody goes if they have any dough or any sense. The godforsaken backwaters of Brazil, the jungle. You’ll wait there until Gonzales sends the dough.

So you pull the job, and it goes off okay, even if you have to plug a guard on the truck. You got your fake passports. You grab a freighter. You land in Pôrto de Moz.

Then you get lucky. You run into a wooden Indian named Luiz on the beach, and he takes a shine to you, wants to be your servant because you buy him the first pair of shoes he ever owned in his life. You treat him like a Spaniard, not like an Indian, and this makes him your slave for life. He tells you he’ll take you upriver, to his village. He brings you in his piragua, real proud to return home with three Norteamericanos. He’s a big shot now. He gets you installed in huts, and all you got to do is wait for the runner with the mail to bring you your dough.

That part makes sense.

But why did you bring Marie?

Because she wanted to come, and because you wanted her. That’s why you pulled the job in the first place—for Marie. You wanted her, and you had to have her because she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Not one of those cheap pushovers, but a big-time TV singer, real class. She didn’t soil her hands with punks; it took real dough to get her to roll over and play tricks.

You told her about the job and promised her everything she ever wanted—down in South America she could live like a queen on the loot. And you took her along because you were scared to wait and send for her later. You brought her here.

Here, where it rained all the time and the mosquitoes were murder. Here, where the huts were set on stilts, planted in filled oil drums to keep the ants away. But the ants came anyway, and they bit. And the fish in the river bit, too, so you couldn’t even bathe. And at night the Indians pounded on drums and played flutes. You sweated in the heat and shivered with fever and ate goat meat and drank brandy, and you waited. Luiz tried to be a good servant, but he was just a wooden Indian, even if he did speak English. He ran off to the jungle like the rest of them, and maybe he drank blood and used poison darts.

But that was crazy.

It was all crazy, and no wonder Marie flipped. Waiting for the runner with the dough, week after week. And the rain dripping on the roof, dripping on your skull, hour after hour, day after day, night after night.

Where was the damned runner? Where was Luiz? Where was Marie?

The fever broke at last, and then Jeff remembered where Marie was. She was in Belém, with Mike and Luiz. He hoped they’d found a good skull doctor for her so she’d be all right. Once she got out of here, got away from the jungle, she’d snap back. It was just that the jungle was no place for a woman. Funny, he wasn’t sore because she’d taken a cut at him with the machete. A person can’t help it when they flip.

But Jeff knew that if he didn’t get that dough soon he’d flip himself. Now that his ankle was all right again he spent all his time sitting in the doorway of the hut, staring out at the river. The waiting was awful. There was nothing to do, nobody to talk to, and he had only one bottle of brandy left.

Finally came the evening when he knew he was cracking up. He decided to tackle the brandy. He hadn’t been able to sleep decently for a week, and maybe the brandy would help. If it didn’t, tomorrow he’d set out for the coast alone. He couldn’t stand this any longer.

The brandy was like fire, like the moonlight. It was like the drums pounding out there in the clearing. Jeff was very drunk, so drunk that he forgot once again that Marie and Mike and Luiz were gone. He couldn’t find his shoes, and he began to crawl around the floor of the hut looking for them. Luiz must have put them away. “Luiz!” he shouted. “Luiz!”

And then, all at once, Luiz was there.

Luiz was there, and everything was all right. Jeff stood up, reeling, and stared at the little brown man with the muddy eyes. Good old Luiz, the perfect servant! He’d take care of everything now, he was back . . .

He was back.

Jeff sobered, remembering.

“What happened?” he murmured.

Luiz shrugged.

“A bad thing, señor.”

“Marie, did something happen to Marie?” Jeff gripped the edge of the table.

“She is all right,” Luiz said.

Jeff relaxed. “Okay, then. I can take anything else, I guess. What happened—did Gonzales double-cross us about the money?”

“No, the money came, señor.”

“You have it?”

“No. Señor Mike, he had it in the piragua. They think I am asleep, but I see him counting it when we go down the river. He tells your woman the runner brings it before they leave here. Now he will run away with her, after he kills me.”

“Why, the dirty, stinking rat—”

“Please, señor, do not alarm yourself. This Señor Mike then creeps toward me with his knife, to kill. But I am awake and waiting for him with my own machete. We fight. The money falls in the river—it is a sad thing, no? But your honor is saved, for I kill the Señor Mike very dead.”

Jeff began to sweat. “I see. The dough’s gone, my double-crossing partner is gone, and Marie—”

“She is all right. I do just what you say.”

“Took her to Belém alone?”

Luiz shrugged. “Please, señor. I am simple man. I have not the education to go alone to Belém. But I tie up your woman and take her back up the river, to my friends. I find the head shrinker there.”

“In the jungle? But—”

“Look.” Luiz unwrapped the bundle from his waist, and something rolled forward onto the table. “Better than you get in Belém. Is a good job, no?”

Jeff stared at the object on the table. It was a good job, all right. Marie’s head was no bigger than an orange.

The Screaming People

1

It begins in darkness.

They call it sleep, but it’s only darkness. I lie there curled in the womb-posture and the darkness is all around me. When sleep comes, I merely draw some of that darkness inside me; the warm, rich, all-encompassing darkness, the darkness that is the nourishing blood of the night.

Womb-posture. A fetus lacks awareness, but I know that I’m asleep. I like to sleep.

“Take it easy. Rest, relax. Get plenty of sleep.” That’s what the doctors told me. And I’m willing to follow orders.

Roxie tells me I’m lazy, but I don’t care; not if she lets me sleep. Not if she lets me go into the darkness, where I can be alone.

I’m alone now. I don’t even have to think about the necessity of sleep any more. I’m safe. No one can get to me, not even myself. Not even myself. That’s very important, somehow. I’m really alone, the way I want to be.

Better than that, I can burrow so deeply down into the darkness that I lose myself completely. There is no me, there’s nothing but night.

Night—and the Voice.

I have to call it that, although it really isn’t a Voice—I don’t hear it, merely sense its presence. It exists, suddenly, somewhere in the darkness around me.

It emerges as a buzzing which I cannot locate in time or space. Does it impinge upon me from far away or is it whispering beside my ear?

“It doesn’t matter.”

The Voice tells me that. And I realize this is true. It doesn’t matter where the Voice comes from. It’s a part of the darkness. I need the darkness around me, so I must accept the Voice.

Then it grows.

Maybe the Voice feeds on darkness too, because it expands immediately until everything else is blotted out. Even the darkness is engulfed by the Voice. The Voice, speaking to me, telling me what I must do if I want to go back into the dark.

“Get up. Get dressed. Go to Hexler’s.”

I’m asleep. I don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t want to go anywhere. And I’ve never heard of Hexler’s.

But the Voice realizes all that. It understands. And it tells me I have to go.

“Get up. Get dressed. Go to Hexler’s.” Over and over again. I try to escape from it, into the darkness, but the darkness is gone now. There’s only the voice, telling me what I must do. In order to retreat into the safety of the dark again, I have to obey. There’s no question of refusal. If I refuse, I’ll stay here forever, listening to the Voice, and I don’t want to do that.

So it’s easier to do as I’m told. The Voice will direct me. All I need do is listen and accept, and the Voice will lead me back into the darkness. The Voice knows the way.

Everything is so simple. I’m not conscious of awakening but I know—a part of me knows—that I’ve left the bed. No need for lights; I can find my clothing in the dark, without even opening my eyes. I can dress in the dark, quickly and quietly. The Voice anticipates everything.

But where’s the door? If I could only open my eyes—

“Very well. Open your eyes.”

That’s better. I can go now. But where?

“Hexler’s. Hexler’s house.”

So it’s a house.

“James P. Hexler. 100 North Azure Drive.”

The Voice will guide me, the Voice will never fail, because it knows. I can trust it, I must trust it. There’s something familiar about the Voice. “His Master’s Voice.” Funny, that should come into my head. Records. I’m in the transcription game myself.

Mustn’t think about that, though. Must concentrate on what the Voice is telling me. I’m getting instructions now.

“Walk quietly.”

I open the door, tiptoe into the hall, close the door behind me. The Voice anticipates every movement.

And then I’m out on the street, alone in the night. Alone, yet not alone. Because the Voice is with me.

“Turn west.”

The wind angers the grass. I gaze up at the ancient, evil world of the moon. It radiates an orange aura of corruption.

“North, into the canyon.”

On steeply sloping hills, the trees bow and beckon before me. Huddled behind them, strange houses squat, blinded by night.

“Enter the fifth driveway.”

The hill is high, the path uncertain.

“Climb.”

Why couldn’t I have come around the front, where the walk leads to a gate?

“Climb!”

I climb the hill, and then the wall is before me; the high stone wall ringing the hilltop. I pause, uncertain.

“Climb!”

My fingers claw, my knees lock, my back arches. But somehow there is no pain. The Voice protects and directs. My forehead is wet and an engine throbs in my chest. But I’m straddling the top of the wall, gazing down through the trees at the dark house on the hilltop.

“Jump!”

I float on the wind. The falling dream. My ankles are wrapped in cotton batting as I land. No, that’s illusion. I must remember to be careful of illusions. I must remember that the Voice alone is real. There is nothing but the Voice and the will to obey it.

Now I must walk towards the house, approaching it from the rear. I must stay within the shadows of the trees, where the moon’s rays are barred by branches.

The house of stone is huge; a mansion, built in the days when men thought of such edifices as mansions. The myriad heads of its cupolas are gray, silvered by the touch of time and moonlight. Myriad heads and one body—a hydra-house.

Why do I think of that? I don’t think in such terms. But the Voice does. The Voice is thinking for me. The night holds no secrets for the Voice. All I need do is listen and obey.

“Look for the open window.”

Yes, look for the open window. Look for the silver lining. Look for the bluebird. That’s my voice now, my thought. Or am I just remembering something that was already told to me, a long time ago?

A long time ago I was in bed, asleep. Maybe I’m still asleep. Maybe I’m just dreaming.

“The open window—”

The Voice doesn’t want me to wonder about such things. The Voice is telling me that somewhere along this side of the house there is a window, open and waiting.

Yes. I can see it. The sill is low. I can reach it, climb over it. That’s what I’m supposed to do. And I must be quiet, exceedingly quiet. Yes, I hear, I know.

But it’s dark. If I had my lighter—

“No light.”

Of course. No light. I can stand here until my eyes grow accustomed to the dimness. Carrots for night vision. Night vision—a vision born of the night. Stand in the strange house now and try to see.

There’s a musty odor in this room, a museum smell. I stand quietly, breathe softly, because no one must know I’m here.

I am a stranger and afraid, in a house I never made.

I blink at the sudden light. Is there somebody outside? No, it’s only the moon shining through the trees as it rises. I can see now.

The long room is like a museum hall, lined with cases. I start down it.

The Voice guides me. Watch out for creaking floorboards. Don’t bump against the glass. Breathe slowly, quietly.

Behind the glass I see figurines, pottery, vases, horses. Chinese art—Ming, Sung, Han, Tang. I don’t know my dynasties. Big Kwan Yin. Foo dogs. A Ho-Ti in the milky perfection of jade. That’s valuable, the jade. Tao—

“Go to the stairs.”

The staircase is around the corner, in the outer hallway. There are other rooms opening off the hall, containing more glass cases. A fortune in the stuff. Hexler must be filthy rich.

“Move slowly.”

I must climb the stairs. They creak, so easy does it. One step at a time. And now where?

“The third door on the left.”

It’s darker here in the upper hall, because all the doors are closed. One, two, three. Here.

Now, open the door. Open it just a trifle, as the Voice directs. There’s moonlight streaming through the window and I can see.

I’m standing in a bedroom, a vast bedroom. The high, canopied bed in the corner is a million miles away. Its curtains waver slowly in the breeze from the open window, billowing back and forth like batwings flapping in the dark. The bed is a huge beast, crouching over its prey—

I walk silently, threading a path through the tables lining the long room. There are bell-jars on the tables, with more jade beneath them. Jade and ebony and ivory. There’s a jackal-headed figure beneath one jar. That would be Anubis, the Opener of the Way. Who opened the way for me?

And what’s that sound . . . ?

I hear a tinkling. A tinkling in the moonlight, a faint clicking and clattering. Something is stirring in the breeze; the same breeze that ripples the short hairs rising along the nape of my neck.

Now I see it, on the table, next to the bed. There’s a little silver skeleton, mounted on a pedestal.

I stare at it, but there’s no mistake. It’s a perfectly fashioned miniature skeleton, completely articulated; a silver skeleton with ruby eyes, hinged and jointed and hung from a hook rising out of the pedestal’s base.

No wonder it clicks and clatters. For the tiny figure is weaving with the wind, bobbing and grimacing in a dance of death.

Death.

I must get out of here. What am I doing? This is all wrong, I must—

“The window-seat. Open the window-seat.”

The Voice commands, but I can’t obey. I have to get away from this place.

“The window-seat. Just open it and take the box. Then you can go.”

Yes. I could do that. I could do that, very quickly. Nobody will see me. Those little red eyes are only rubies. I can take it, fast, and then I can run.

The seat swings up. Funny, there was a lock here, I can see that, but it’s broken now. I lift the seat. And here’s the box. A black velvet box, long and shallow. I can hold it. I can hold it as I run down the hall—

“Go to the bed.”

I don’t want to go to the bed. I want to run. I’m going to run. Except that I can’t move. All at once I’m back there in the desert, pinned underneath the car, and my arms and legs are paralyzed and I’m trying to get away from the pain in my head, trying to sink down into the darkness. That’s why I need the darkness, still need it now; to get away from the memory, and the pain.

And the only way to find the darkness again is to let the Voice guide me. I must follow the Voice. That’s the only way.

“Go to the bed.”

I put the black case down on the table and walk over to the bed. It won’t hurt to look. Even if the batwings flap, even if the tiny skeleton moves in its danse macabre, I can look. I can gaze through the parted curtains.

The room is a museum and I am staring down at a mummy. Gaunt, stiffened limbs, wrapped in the folds of the bedding. A bald, shriveled skull. A face that is old and wrinkled and brown and dry. No bitumen seals the lips, so it cannot be a mummy; it must be a man. A very old man, sleeping in a canopy bed, sleeping the sleep of the aged, which is like death. His chest neither rises nor falls. His tongue is limp in his open mouth. I can hear nothing but the faint clattering of the little silver skeleton.

There are deep pools of shadow covering the old man’s eyes. I bend forward, peering into them. Surely there will be a ripple; the stone of my gaze must inevitably plumb those depths.

No ripple. No movement.

“Now.”

The Voice is not speaking to me. It is talking to my hands.

They know what to do.

It’s so simple, and there’s nothing to fear. Besides, the Voice will leave me if I obey. Then I can run away, then I can sleep, then I can go back into the darkness where there is neither Voice, nor dreams, nor memory of pain.

I have to sleep. It’s the only sure way. The only sure way to banish silver skeletons and yawning corridors and mummies grinning up into endless darkness—

“Now.”

Besides, I won’t be doing it. Only my hands. My restless, moving hands.

“Find a pillow.”

There is a pillow under the old man’s head. There was a pillow.

Now it is above his head, over his face. My hands hold it there, until the eyes and the open mouth are blotted out. My hands press a whiteness into the darkness.

No sound. No movement. My hands press and press and my wrists ache, but the Voice wants to be sure, very sure.

A century later, I turn away and pick up the black case from the table. The moonlight is dimming and the darkness increases.

All at once the Voice is gone. There is only that insane jangling, that damnable clicking from the obscene little grotesque on the table.

My hands put a stop to the mummy-vision. I can end this torment, too.

I grasp the silver figure and hurl it to the floor. Let my feet put a stop to the skeleton-spectre. It’s good to feel it crunch and splinter beneath my heel. See, I can dance too, now!

There, it’s done. And I’m alone in the dark, at last. I must grope my way out of the room, ever so slowly. I must creep down the stairs, out of the house, back through the strangeness of the silent streets. But the Voice is gone and I shall sleep once more.

I turn at the doorway for a last look. Blur of moonlight, swirl of shadows. And in the center of the room, the broken, jumbled heap of tiny silver bones . . .

2

Somebody was poking me in the ribs. I opened my eyes.

Then I knew it was all right because I was in bed, in my own apartment, with the sunlight streaming through the blinds. I was back in the world of morning, and bacon-and-eggs, and Roxie.

Roxie was doing the poking, of course. Her slim arm extended from beneath the covers of the twin bed next to mine, as she jabbed the pointed, painted nail of her index finger against my pajamas.

I was wearing pajamas! How could that be? Had I undressed again and—?

A quick glance to my right showed my clothing hung neatly over the back the way Roxie always hung it for me. My jacket wasn’t there. It would be in the closet. Roxie put it on a hanger before we went to bed.

Yes. Of course. It had to be that way.

“Wake up. What’s the matter?”

Husky voice. I could remember the way she used it when she sang. No control, but the fire came through.

“What’s wrong with you, Steve? Another nightmare?”

“Nightmare?”

“You’ve been tossing and turning and groaning like a—I don’t know what.” She laughed. “I had an awful time waking you up. She must have been pretty.”

“That was no lady, that was something I ate.” I sat up and grinned. It wasn’t hard to do.

Roxie was something to grin at—something to whistle at, too. I never could understand what she saw in me, but there was no doubt about what I saw in her.

She was a beautiful redhead. Repeat, beautiful. Because there are plenty of redheads per se (or per henna, for that matter) but very few worthy of that much-abused adjective. Generally speaking, every girl with orange hair or caramel-colored hair is, by courtesy, a redhead. But Roxie’s hair, in ordinary light, was really red. And there was no accompanying dermatological disorder; no hint of freckles or blotches in the smooth skin.

I reached over and took her in my arms. Not a bad deal. But she kept one eye on the clock. Thirty-six seconds later she said, “Steve—time to get up. You’ll be late.”

I made a face at the clock, but I got up.

“Want me to fix breakfast, honey?” she called as I started shaving.

“No, don’t bother. I’ll catch something downtown.” I stared at my countenance in the mirror. There were sagging pouches under my eyes. And no wonder. That dream last night had been the worst. Worse than the reality of the night on the desert, the night I was pinned under the car; worse than the weeks that followed.

I really ought to tell Roxie about the dream, but not now. This evening, perhaps, when I came home; then we could talk.

Right now the thing to do was to get down to the office. I had a job to hold, peddling one-minute commercials, twenty-second transcriptions, thirty-second recordings for station breaks in a world of hard-sell which had nothing to do with last night’s fantasy of dancing death. So it was time to face today’s reality. Out, damned spot announcement.

I adjusted my tie, picked up my coat, slung it over my arm, kissed Roxie goodbye at the door, and made my exit.

It wasn’t until I was halfway down the stairs that I put my coat on, and I was actually striding through the foyer of the apartment lobby before I became conscious of the unaccustomed bulk inside the jacket.

That’s when I pulled out the long, shallow, black velvet box. It was utterly empty, but utterly real.

And that, of course, is when the nightmare began again. Not in darkness, this time, but in broad daylight—the harsh, acrid, smog-obscured daylight of what, in Los Angeles, passes for reality.

So I didn’t go to the office after all. I phoned them from a public cubicle at the corner, and then I boarded a Sunset bus. That’s right, a bus; everybody drives in L.A., but I’m the lone exception—have been, ever since that night out on the desert when the car rolled over.

Right now the car was rolling over again, and the little silver skeleton was jangling, and I wanted to run home to Roxie and bury myself in her arms. But you can’t go home again, and you can’t tell the woman you love that everything is a nightmare and she is only a part of it. You can’t seek reality through a mother-substitute.

Dr. Wagram had made that perfectly clear. And that’s why I had to go to him now.

I took the 91 bus not far from Angel’s Flight and rode past the new County buildings on Hill. All the while I kept a tight grip on that damned black velvet box, because it was a part of reality now. I had to keep my grip on reality until I reached Dr. Wagram. He could explain things to me; there must be an explanation, and I wasn’t going to start screaming right here in a public bus.

And I forced myself to stare out at Los Angeles, though that didn’t reassure me very much. For fantasy is reality out here. I gaped at a cordon of men who groped with canes against the searing sunlight as I passed the Braille Institute of America. I blinked while the weird figure in the Space Patrol helmet whizzed past on his police motorcycle. After the bus turned onto Sunset I noted the headquarters of the National Judo Association—and tried to picture what went on inside, with little success. No more than I obtained as I attempted to visualize how the TV dreams were being made in the studios at Sunset and Cahuenga.

If anything, that bus ride was a continuation of flight and fugue. Why, I wondered, had they bothered to build a Disneyland out here, when every streetcorner offered its own vista of escape? I turned my head to the left and saw Schwab’s Pharmacy; turned it to the right and saw a Chinese pagoda towering high on the hillside; stared straight ahead at the palms of the Garden of Allah. And here was a midget roaring by, all alone in the enclosed immensity of an outsize Imperial. Following him came Irish McCalla—Sheena of the Jungle, one of the tallest women in show business—crouched over the wheel of her tiny copper-colored Volkswagen.

And now I climbed to the west, along the gaudy improbabilities of restaurant row—that Japanese place, and Ciro’s, and the Mocambo and Scandia—all utterly unreal here in the sunlight because they were asleep, their painted faces and neon eyes closed against the glare of the day. Like vampires, they come alive only after dark, and maybe that’s the secret; maybe these Strip restaurants are vampires. Or run for the benefit of vampires who venture forth only at night and who know the password and enter to drink blood from the crimson concealment of crystal goblets. And that would lend a certain sinister significance to the name of the street itself—Sunset Boulevard. Could there be any more appropriate designation for a thoroughfare peopled by the Undead?

I thought of some of the waxy, pallid faces I’d glimpsed in the night along this route; thought of the feral, feverish eyes, the too-bright, too-crimson lips pulled back from the white and gleaming teeth; thought of this army awaiting sunset on Sunset; awaiting it in crypts concealed beneath the big houses up there in the canyons. They were waiting now, waiting for the sun to fade before they awoke to walk and drink their fill in a world of mist and moonlight and silver skeletons—

And then I was back in my nightmare again and I thought of the big house on the hillside, and the other big house I was searching for now.

I left the bus just in time and started running up the slope of the hill to my left, and it was a nightmare, it was just the way it had been in my dream, only this time no Voice prompted me. I knew where I was going, and why, and I didn’t stop until I rounded the turn on the private entryway and came to the stone arch on which was imbedded the neat little bronze plaque reading Carl Wagram.

I was sweating and panting, but I didn’t slow down.

I started to run along the drive, towards the big doorway, and it was like running through water, or something thicker. What is thicker than water?

Blood.

Yes, I was running through blood, because everything was turning red.

My heart was pounding so loudly I could hear it even through the black velvet of the box inside my jacket. And now it seemed as though I could hear other sounds, too. There was the tinkling of tiny silver bones, and a harsh grating noise which seemed to come from far beneath the surface of the earth. It’s hollow and empty down there in the crypts, and even the echoes are monstrously magnified when the coffin-lids are opened from within and they come crawling out. They had heard my heart and that’s why they were coming to get me, because they knew it was pumping blood and I was running through blood and they thirsted. Blood is redder than Roxie’s hair, and if you’re blind and groping through the redness with a cane you can’t escape; even judo won’t save you when they wrap their cold arms around you and drag you down into the darkness. I could hear them coming closer and closer, and there was only one way to shut out the sound.

I screamed.

I screamed as I stumbled up the steps, screamed as I beat upon the door, screamed as I fell into Dr. Wagram’s waiting arms.

I was still screaming when he put me back in the womb . . .

3

It was very pleasant in the womb.

I lay there for a long time, coiled up fetally (fatally?—no, there was nothing to be afraid of here) and stark naked. Naked as a newborn babe, naked as an unborn babe with only a gossamer covering of lanugo to protect it. But there was no need for protection because this was the womb. It was dark and it was red, and the walls were soft and moist and rubbery and there was a faint and far-off murmuring which soothed and sated me.

I wasn’t afraid to think now, wasn’t afraid to remember. Although I didn’t have too much to recall. Here I was, back in the womb, yet my actual memories didn’t extend back past my thirtieth birthday.

My thirtieth birthday—that was the night I’d rolled the car over.

That was the night I’d been driving to Vegas; at least they surmised it had been my destination, for why else would I be racing across the desert in an open convertible with four thousand dollars in cash in the glove compartment?

That’s the amount they found when they found me—or, rather, when he found me. For it was Dr. Carl Wagram who, en route from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, pulled his car over to the side of the road and discovered me lying there in the ditch with half the convertible crushing my body. I’d suffered compound fractures of both arms and both legs, my skull had been smashed, and yet I was still able to scream. I must have been screaming for half an hour before he came along.

Even now—even here in the womb, where nothing could harm me—I still didn’t care to dwell on what happened. Actually, it all came to me via second-hand report, because when Wagram came I slipped down into the merciful oblivion of concussion-induced coma. And there I stayed for the next ten days, while Wagram accompanied me to the nearest town, supervised the work of the doctor who put the casts on me, represented me in the police investigation which followed, and finally—after two surgeons flew out from L.A., examined my head injuries, and pronounced my condition hopeless and my brain-damage so extensive as to render the case inoperable—chartered a private plane and flew me back to his own clinic here. Then he operated; Dr. Carl Wagram, who learned his neurosurgery in war-torn Munich. He put the plates into my skull and my head healed and he grafted the skin and hair grew and there was even a touch of cosmetological miracle involved. By the time my casts were off, my physical recovery was assured.

This left me with but one problem.

Amnesia.

Complete and total amnesia.

Oh, I could comprehend consciousness, and I could even speak after a fashion. But I was unable to remember a single solitary moment of my life before that crash. Existence, for me, began with a scream of pain out there on the desert.

My name?

Stephen Edmundson, according to the driver’s license and the registration of the crumpled car.

My address?

A motel, just north of Venice, in the Santa Monica area, which I’d occupied for just three weeks. And it was during those three weeks that I’d obtained both my license and the automobile. I’d paid cash for the latter, and the dealer at the used car lot had a sketchy record and a vague recollection of my coming in and making the transaction. But that was all.

The motel proprietor knew nothing about me except that I’d showed up one afternoon, wearing a nondescript outfit and carrying a single piece of luggage. I had paid him in cash, too, and we had no further dealings except for my weekly settlement of the rent. Apparently I’d gone out, applied for a driver’s license, took my tests—that was on record, too—and bought the secondhand convertible. Meanwhile I’d lived quietly, unobtrusively, made no contacts and no friends.

Dr. Wagram investigated, of course, and so did the police. They didn’t have much to go on. When I drove out of the motel I’d acquired new luggage and a complete new wardrobe, down to socks and handkerchiefs and underwear. They were able to find out where I’d bought some of it, but never learned what happened to my old clothing. Obviously, I’d discarded the lot.

So they checked the military authorities, but there was no record of any Stephen Edmundson in service.

And they checked with the FBI and they put out the usual bulletins and inquiries and tried to match fingerprints—without results.

No family claimed me, no friends stepped forward, no wife or children rushed to identify me. Nor was there any clue as to what I’d been doing holing up in a Venice motel with about seven thousand dollars in cash—or what I’d intended to do with the four thousand I had left when I took off in the general direction of Las Vegas.

I couldn’t remember.

My mind couldn’t remember and my body couldn’t remember. Thirty years had been wiped out.

At first there was even the painful and embarrassing matter of relearning the simple physiological habit-patterns governing ingestion and elimination. And, after the casts were removed, the business of learning to walk again. I was like a child; more accurately, like a newborn infant.

And that, I suppose, is why Dr. Wagram put me in the womb.

I knew where Wagram picked up his neuropsychiatric techniques, but never did discover where he’d acquired his theories. And even after I’d regained a certain measure of comprehension, a certain vocabulary which extended my frame of reference, I was unable to obtain satisfaction in the matter.

“There’s no point in explaining,” Wagram told me. The short, plump, balding little man regarded me with enigmatic eyes. “Poor Reich tried to explain about the orgone, and they laughed at him. Moreno’s psychodrama techniques haven’t won general acceptance. Even Jung has had trouble with his theories about the use of the mandala. The innovator, the unorthodox practitioner, had best be silent and let his work speak for itself, in terms of results.

“I will say only this. Out of trauma comes fugue, out of fugue comes the retreat to the womb. Many psychotherapists attempt to block this retreat. As the record attests, few succeed. So I have chosen another course. The analysand seeks the safety and comfort of the womb? Very well, I will give it to him. I have built a womb, where he is safe and secure, where he can find rest and reassurance. When the time comes that life stirs anew within him, when he desires to be born again, he and I together will weave an umbilical cord of words—a cord of dependency which will be snapped only when the moment of psychic rebirth arrives.

“The orthodox analyst becomes a father-image. I extend that; I become the mother-image as well. And the womb serves. It has served others amongst my patients; it will serve you.”

And it did.

Since that time I’ve heard it argued, by reputable psychotherapists, that the gaudy little room which Dr. Wagram set up as an artificial womb is a ridiculous concept, a charlatan conceit.

But it worked, for me.

It saved my life. It gave me a life, in place of the one I’d lost when memory melted away there in the desert.

There came a time when I could talk again, when I could reason again. And when I could feel emotion.

I never did manage to recover a knowledge of what had gone before. The past was not recaptured and I learned to accept Thomas Wolfe’s bitter dictum—you can’t go home again. But there were clues.

Wagram may have been an unorthodox practitioner, but he didn’t scorn the use of orthodox methodology when the situation indicated its employment. I took batteries of the usual tests, and Wagram probed with depth techniques, free association and all the rest. There were clues in my reactions—indications of learned responses.

Somewhere in my past I’d acquired the equivalent of a college education, plus a variety of motor and manual skills which reflected practical experience. Perhaps I’d been in the Merchant Marine for a while (though again a search of the records gave no confirmation). I’d lived in a colder climate for a time; I was familiar with the operation of a typewriter; I’d enjoyed sports. But all these things were haphazard inferences at best, and they afforded little reassurance.

I couldn’t stay in the womb forever. And I couldn’t stay at Wagram’s clinic forever. The time was coming when I must go back into the world—a world I never knew, and that didn’t know me.

I had no family, no friends, no ties of any sort. And I had no money, either. The cash had gone; mainly to the doctors and the officials, and only a surprisingly small sum to Wagram, who refused to even entertain the notion of future indebtedness. In fact, he insisted that I take six hundred dollars with me when I left his place.

“The data afforded me in connection with your case is invaluable,” he told me. “I consider the time and effort spent on you to be a sound investment which will bring me ample returns in the future.”

Wagram was wonderful. It was he who found me a place to live, pulled strings to get me my first sales job. From that, after a few months of orientation—during which I kept coming back to him for reassurance whenever necessary—I finally stepped into my present position with the transcription agency. And that’s where I’d met Roxie.

She’d come in, one day, with an agent, a Ben Clermer. He was one of those hearty, gregarious boys, a tactile tactician—continually patting you on the back, holding your arm while he talked to you. He pawed every woman he met. It was a compulsion, really. He couldn’t help putting his hands on you, digging you in the ribs, going through all the motions employed by a successful pickpocket.

But I don’t like pickpockets, and I didn’t much care for Ben Clermer; particularly when I saw him pawing Roxie.

That’s when I knew I was falling in love with her—when I began to resent his familiarity.

They came in several times; Roxie was hoping to get a job belting out singing commercials. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the voice for it. Those husky, untrained tones just didn’t lend themselves to cooing over the delights of a liquid detergent. And she lacked the disciplined projection necessary for a career as a straight singer. Roxie had, I learned, knocked around the fringes of show biz for a number of years; she’d been a nitery chorine in her teens, done bits in straw-hat stock, even had a season as assistant to a carny magician. She’d started out at fifteen as a beautiful redhead, and she ended up, at twenty-three, as a beautiful redhead.

Somewhere along the line there had been a brief, unsuccessful marriage and any number of brief, unsuccessful liaisons. I never asked her about the past—I’d learned to be pretty sensitive myself about this. But I did, eventually, broach the matter of her future.

“I don’t know what Clermer has told you,” I said. “But I can imagine. He keeps giving you the buildup, doesn’t he? Well, in a way, I don’t blame him. You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.”

“That’s a left-handed compliment if I ever heard one,” Roxie answered.

“I’m a left-handed guy. And right now I’m not interested in feeding you compliments. I want to give you a taste of the truth.”

“Which is—?”

“You can’t sing. You dance well enough for the second line, but in another couple of years you’ll be too old for chorus work. Your speaking voice is fair, but you’d need a lot of training if you ever hoped to make it in radio or TV as an actress. It would take time and money, and let’s face it—you haven’t too much of either.”

“What are you suggesting, then?” she asked me. “Could be you’re out shilling for some business college?”

“That’s a possibility,” I said. “But frankly, it hadn’t occurred to me. I was going to give you a bit of more obvious advice. The same advice you get from your mirror every morning.”

“Which is?”

“Get married.”

She made a face. “Clermer’s already married.”

“He’s not the only man in the world.”

“I know. But a girl has to wait until she’s asked.”

“Consider yourself asked, then.”

“Steve—”

“I make a hundred and a quarter a week here, average. Sometimes up to a hundred and fifty, if the commissions go good and the residuals pay off. I don’t have anything much put aside in the bank, but I’ve no obligations either. No family, no other responsibilities. We could find an apartment. You wouldn’t have to just sit around all day, you know—suppose you did want to take a little coaching, learn a bit about acting? There’d be the time and the money for that. And when you’re set, I could see about making some contacts for you. I may not be an agent, but I’ve got a few connections in the field. How does that sound to you?”

“Pretty good, as far as it goes. But there’s one little part you left out. Something about love and—”

“Roxie!” I said that part then, with my arms around her; said it and meant it and felt it. And I hadn’t stopped saying it and meaning it and feeling it during the past year we’d been together.

Of course I’d asked Dr. Wagram first. We had a long talk about marriage and its risks—particularly as they might apply to someone in my rather unusual position and circumstances. He hadn’t been too encouraging.

But I didn’t need encouragement at the time. I needed Roxie. And for a while she took the place of any continuing therapy. It wasn’t for many months that I went back to Dr. Wagram’s clinic.

When I went, Roxie wasn’t involved. In fact, she didn’t even know. She had met Wagram, of course, once or twice during the early months of our marriage. I’d told her a bit about my past—or lack of one, rather—and of what Wagram had done for me. She hadn’t pried or probed, merely accepted my story as she accepted me. And as I accepted her. For my own part, I never spoke to her of her earlier years. Even though she could remember them, I sensed that there was much unhappiness in that area, and I avoided it; just as I avoided my own earliest memories of lying under that car and screaming my mind away into the echoing night.

The trouble was, I couldn’t avoid such recurrent recall completely, not even in Roxie’s arms. And so the time came when I went back to Wagram—and even to the womb.

I did a little reading about amnesia, and what I learned bothered me. “There must be something I’m afraid to face, something pretty awful,” I told him. “Surely by this time I should have a gradual return of memory. Partial recollection ought to be triggered in, at least. Couldn’t you try some more word-association techniques? What about hypnoanalysis, narcohypnosis, or—”

Wagram waved my suggestions aside. He was never a violent man, always a quiet one, but his mere casualness carried weight.

“I’ve not found it necessary to discuss my other work here at the clinic, Steve,” he told me. “The work which supports all of my research, all of my independent investigations, my staff. You met Dr. Bittner, of course, and Dr. Corelli. But did you know that I have four more internists on the payroll, and three full-time nurses? Do you realize that at no time are there less than a dozen patients here, plus the analysands I see regularly by appointment?

“Well, it’s true. This is a big house, Steve. Big, and soundproofed. You’ve never been on the soundproofed side, have you? And I’ve no intention of taking you there now. You wouldn’t want to meet the screaming people.”

“Screaming people?”

Wagram shrugged. “Not a very flattering description, but a most accurate one. You see, that is the chief source of my livelihood here—the screaming people. The so-called incurables, the hopelessly psychotic. I’ve specialized in their care since I came here to the Coast after the war. I’ve deliberately taken on the cases which were given up as hopeless; the men and women whose only remaining alternatives are confinement in a public or a private institution for life. To be utterly blunt, they are given a choice including a private institution like this only if they or their families have a great deal of money. I need a great deal of money in order to advance my own therapeutic techniques, and I’ve had no compunctions about obtaining it from them. Because, in return, I’ve been able to stop the screaming.”

“You’ve cured the incurables?”

Dr. Wagram shrugged again. “Remember what the doctors decided in your case? You were to die. But neurosurgery—”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Neurosurgery. You saved me. But with physical techniques, here in your own operating-room. What can you do for the psychotics?”

“I can do what all the others do,” Wagram answered. “I can give them what you’re asking me to give you now. Free association, depth-analysis, narcohypnotic sessions. But these people are beyond the scope of such treatment. Their only hope lies in drastic therapy—new techniques. I have evolved many. The womb, here, is one. Another is my sadomasochistic ampitheatre, where acts of violent aggression can be carried out upon the persons of lifelike, even partially animated mannikins. Sexual repressions can be similarly discharged—but I’ve no intention of giving a lecture.

“It is enough for me to say that in most instances, something even more extreme is required.

“Here, let me put it this way. I will simplify, even oversimplify. The source of aberration lies in the past. The past lies in the memory-banks. Eliminate the memory-banks and you eliminate the source of aberration. There is no trauma, no guilt, no compulsion, when you remove the past; when you excise it surgically, completely.

“The brain has often been compared to a sponge, and so it is. Squeeze this gray sponge, squeeze it dry of all unpleasant memories of the past, and it can be filled again.

“I’ve learned how to drain the memories, using my own surgical techniques—call it a combination of lobotomy, topectomy and advanced shock-therapy, exercised with sufficient skill to avoid permanent damage to the tissue. There will be papers published some day, when my findings are sufficiently comprehensive, and I assure you that your own case will be much more than a mere footnote. Meanwhile, the work goes on.”

I remember my reaction to Wagram’s words. “So that’s it,” I said. “You actually induce amnesia, deliberately and artificially erase all memory-patterns.”

“Not in your case,” he told me. “It wasn’t necessary, any more than it was necessary during the war when I first began to study and specialize in mnemonic disorders. But I have learned how to duplicate general as well as retrograde amnesia without risk of amentia or physical lesion. And that’s what I’ve done for my screaming people.

“In effect, I reduce them to the prenatal stage, and put them back in the womb. Then, very slowly, with the help of the staff working under my direction and with my prescribed techniques—I allow them to be born again. To become infants, little children; to learn once more how to walk, and feed themselves, and control bodily functions. I teach them to talk, to think, guide them through childhood and adolescence to full maturity. All this, of course, with a careful avoidance of traumatic incident; and naturally, in a comparatively short time. The autonomous nervous system responds quickly, relearning and readapting previous patterns of behavior. In some cases a year or two is necessary for complete reeducation; in others, I’ve seen miracles accomplished in eight or ten months.”

“But don’t you get zombies, robots?”

“Not when the process is accompanied by selective memory-restoration. When these people are ready for it, I begin the process of reorientation; that is to say, I feed them data based on their actual past life. With the help of family and friends I can quickly and effectively recreate the sense of continuity based on a factual awareness of previous existence. But without the stress and tensions dramatized by Freud in his concept of Id and Ego and Super-Ego. I give them back their past without fear and guilt, without the screams.”

“You couldn’t give me back mine.”

“No, for I didn’t induce the condition, merely corrected the concussion. But it doesn’t matter, really, does it? Not as long as you’re satisfied with the present.”

I agreed with him then, and let the matter drop. And whenever I had problems—daily tension, nightly dreams—I went back to Wagram and talked it out. When Roxie started taking lessons and private coaching, when she began getting a few walk-on or one-line bits in TV shows, when I started branching out at the transcription agency, I kept Wagram informed. Somehow our relationship was never on a social plane, but Wagram remained an important part of my existence. He was, in a way, my only link with the mysterious past; and I suppose I kept going there, from time to time, with the hope that sooner or later he could guide me back and help me to fully establish my identity. Always, of course, when I brought the matter up directly, he repeated his dictum. “The past doesn’t matter as long as you’re satisfied with the present.”

And always I’d been able to reconcile myself to this statement. Always, until now.

Until now, when I was writhing and screaming in the womb, remembering last night. After a time I was able to talk rationally about it and he made me go over it again and again and asked many pertinent questions.

“It’s beginning to sound a bit like last week’s episode,” he told me, when at last I emerged from the red chamber and donned my clothes once again. “Remember, you came to me with the story of your dream? Something about firing a rifle on a target-range covered with snow? I told you then what must be happening. Your buried memories, the suppressed content, attempt to break through to the conscious level in symbolic form. All that is necessary is to realize this. Of course, if one likes, one can examine these symbols and arrive at an interpretation. For example, in this dream of yours last night, there’s the skeleton, the smothering attempt, the—”

“But last night was different!” I exclaimed. “It wasn’t a dream! Look, here’s the black velvet case, it was in my jacket pocket this morning.”

“Couldn’t it have been there last night as well?” Dr. Wagram leaned back in his chair and stared at me across the desk. “Are you sure it isn’t your wife’s property?”

“I don’t recall seeing her with such a case,” I told him. “Besides, you’re forgetting the most important thing. That Voice.”

“I haven’t forgotten, but at the moment this doesn’t concern me. What concerns me is what you have forgotten. Frankly, Steve, there must be another explanation as to how you came into possession of this object. There’s something you don’t want to remember. A limited retrograde amnesic condition has been established; a purposeful occlusion that—”

“Please, don’t fob me off with labels. I’ve got to find out what this is all about. Can’t you see it’s driving me crazy?”

“I don’t like that word, Steve.”

“I don’t like it, either. I don’t like to go to bed and hear strange commands, and have nightmares that seem real. A little more of this and I’ll end up like your screaming people.”

Wagram leaned forward, pursing his lips. “Steve, I’ll be frank. You may not be too far wrong. I still feel I did an efficient job on you, surgically, but now I’m not so sure I did what was necessary psychically. Perhaps that’s the next step. Maybe I ought to erase the past entirely—erase the dreams, erase the tension, give you a whole fresh start.”

“You mean, to operate again? The way you do on these rich psychos of yours?”

“An operation, as you call it, would be unnecessary. I have certain shock-therapy techniques that would work quickly and easily.”

“To make me forget all this?” I stood up. “But then I’d forget Roxie—”

“You could learn again. The others do.”

“No.”

“I’m not asking for a decision now. Don’t try to make one. Think about it. Discuss it with your wife. Come to think of it, there’s no reason why she should be excluded; this is as much her problem now as it is yours. Perhaps you ought to have confided in her fully before—I might have been mistaken in urging you to keep the whole truth from her. Why don’t we arrange to get together, the three of us, some day next week, and go over the entire matter? I won’t try to deceive you, Steve; this dream of yours disturbs me because of its latent symbolic content.”

“It disturbs me because I still don’t think it was a dream.”

I stood up, brushing past his desk. My arm swung out, dislodging the folded copy of the afternoon newspaper. I stooped, picked it up. My eyes scanned the headlines, halted at a routine little paragraph at the bottom of the front page.

“What are you reading?” Wagram asked.

“Here,” I said, extending the paper and moving towards the door. “You read it. Maybe you’ll find it interesting.”

He took the paper from my hand, but I didn’t wait. I walked out of there, then started to run. Somehow I couldn’t face what would happen when he read what I had just read—the little paragraph about the death, last night, of James P. Hexler, retired industrialist and art-collector, who had been robbed of a fortune in uncut emeralds and smothered with a pillow in his own bed at 100 Azure Drive . . .

4

Police. I had to go to the police.

I knew that, but this isn’t what made me run all the way down to Sunset Strip.

Sooner or later I’d go to them or they’d come to me. Right now, I must see Roxie first. I must see her and tell her what had happened. Roxie would know how to help.

Suddenly I realized the truth. Roxie was more important to me than Dr. Wagram. He had failed me just now; he hadn’t been able to comprehend the facts and so he hadn’t been able to help. Roxie had never been given a chance to help. I owed her that. And I owed myself that, too.

Because I couldn’t conceive of how or why I’d kill a perfect stranger. And I had to know, before the police stepped in.

So I hailed a cab in front of the Bank of America and gave him the apartment address. And I sat forward on the edge of the seat as we hit the freeway, hit the afternoon tangle of traffic, veered off to the south, skidded down into the smog once more. That damned black velvet box was still in my jacket—the empty box. Where were the emeralds? Yes, and where was the Voice? For that matter, where was 100 Azure Drive? Surely nowhere near my apartment; but I had walked there last night. Walked there and stolen and killed.

I had no answers. Wagram had no answers. Maybe Roxie had some answers. Roxie could save me—

We pulled up before the apartment and I was out of the cab before it ground to a stop, pushing a bill into the driver’s hand and brushing aside the change. Then I was running up the stairs, fumbling in my pocket for the key.

The key—where was it? I searched in my trousers, my jacket. Had I forgotten to take my key this morning? Well, no matter now. If Roxie was home, she’d let me in.

Roxie was home. The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open, then halted, just in time to avoid stumbling over her overnight bag. It rested right in the doorway. And next to it, on the floor, was her purse.

“Roxie!” I murmured.

There was a faint sound from the bedroom beyond. I crossed the room in three strides.

She was on the bed and he was bending over her, his hands coiled in her long red hair. He had wound her hair about her throat and now he was pulling the ends tight, strangling her in a scarlet noose. Her face was mottled and purple.

His face I couldn’t see, didn’t wait to see. I jumped him from behind, and pulled him off. And then I tore the heavy bed-lamp from its socket and I smashed his skull, smashed and battered at the top of his head until he slumped to the floor and I could stare down into his unconscious face.

At first I didn’t recognize it—hadn’t expected to recognize it, of course. And then, beneath the pallor of that contorted countenance a familiar expression emerged. The man had aged, his hair was graying, there was no pan-makeup on the face. But I could still identify it.

“Bucky Dugan,” I murmured.

Bucky Dugan. Yes, I remembered him now. He used to be on the network, M.C. of one of those quiz shows, until the scandals broke last year. Then he’d disappeared.

Things began to click into place now. Click-click-click, a tinkling sound, like the rattle of little silver bones jangling in the night-wind.

I stooped and searched his pockets, knowing what I’d find. My key, of course. And the rough objects the size of robins’ eggs. They were grimy and encrusted, but as I turned them the light caught a hint of green flame.

Roxie lay back on the bed, breathing stertorously. But she still breathed and that was all I needed to know. I could call the police, now. They’d send an ambulance over, take care of her.

I made the call hastily, and hung up when they asked my name.

It would have been fine if I could have stayed with her until they arrived, but there wasn’t time. And it wasn’t safe; not with the unconscious man on the floor and that other man—the dead man—discovered out there in the big house on Azure Drive.

So I left, hastily, running down the street until I found another cab. Then I made the driver wait while I located my address-book and found the name I sought.

I gave him a number out on the Strip. Funny that I should be retracing my route again. But then it was all very funny, all very coincidental—until one stopped to think, stopped to realize that there was no coincidence involved at all.

This time we drove back through dusk, and the lights began to blaze up—the enchanted lights of an enchanted city. The wonderful lights of a world of magic, blazing forth from all of those wonderful, magic clip-joints and gay bars and mortuaries which make up the romantic spectacle of Hollywood by night. The vampires would be abroad now. The bloodsuckers. And there was one bloodsucker in particular whom I was seeking.

We came to the building; one of those two-storey layouts divided up into small cubicles where little men spend their days barking into their telephones, where the air is filled with stale cigar-smoke and the endless babble of darling, sweetheart, lover-boy, let’s get together for lunch, let’s make a deal, let’s sign quick before they change their minds.

I didn’t know if I’d find him there this late, or if I’d have to seek him out at the Vine Street Derby, or Barney’s Beanery, or even Tail o’ the Cock. But I was past caring. If I had to track him all over town I’d catch up with him eventually. And when I did, I knew what I was going to do.

As it turned out, he was in his office, and alone. So I merely had to walk in, close the door behind me, march over to the desk, reach down, and grab him by the throat. I squeezed hard, but not too hard. That was the only difficult part, really—remembering that I mustn’t kill him. Not yet, anyway. And then I stared down into his crumpled face and said, “All right, Clermer, let’s have the straight story. Who paid you to bring Roxie to me in the first place? Who paid you, and how much?”

He talked, then.

It was all bluff and bluster at first, and I had to slap him around a bit before he realized that I meant business. Once he made a break for his desk drawer, but he never got his hand on the gun. In a way that was all to the good, because I took the gun myself. And after that, everything was much easier.

Only it wasn’t easy to hear what he had to tell me. It wasn’t easy to hear the truth, even though I expected and anticipated most of what he had to say.

Nothing was easy until I came to leave. Until I marched out of there and started walking north, into the canyon, with the gun cocked and ready in my pocket.

Nothing was easy until I came to Wagram’s place.

5

The night was deeper here in the canyon. The private driveway held a private darkness, and there were no lights in the big house beyond.

The screaming people were asleep, and I had no desire to wake them. Let them slumber in their wombs, their tombs, their dooms. Let them rest, let them rot in the lair of the womb-faker, the tomb-breaker, the doom-maker. Dr. Carl Wagram. I read his name etched in bronze. I saw his name, etched in blood, emblazoned on a bleeding brain.

The door was locked. I didn’t care. I knew other ways of entry. Case-entry. Window-entry. Breaking and entering.

There was no Voice to guide me here, but I didn’t need one now. I knew how to walk in the dark, how to stalk in the dark, how to simulate the silence of a shadow flitting down the long hall on the soundproofed side of the building.

The soundproofed side—that’s where the screaming people were. I could detect the dim light issuing from beneath the door on my left.

I wasn’t afraid. I had Clermer’s gun. I edged up to the door, turned the knob slowly. The door opened.

The wide room was bathed in twilight from recessed, indirect fixtures set in the walls. And it was lined with low cribs that looked like beds, yet bore a mocking resemblance to still another place of slumber. Eternal slumber. As I gazed down into the cold countenances of the occupants, the resemblance heightened.

These were not beds. They were coffins. And they contained corpses.

There were no screaming people here; the mouths were closed in thin-lipped lines, the faces were slack, the eyes glazed. I saw a dozen coffinlike cubicles; ten were occupied. I glanced at the faces through a tangle of apparatus overhead; then recognized the mundane instruments and installations used in ordinary intravenous feeding.

They weren’t really dead, but merely sleeping. Or in a coma, rather—for my presence did not awaken them. I gazed into their frozen features, then froze myself. Two faces I recognized, two I knew. “Bittner!” I murmured. “Corelli!”

Yes, Dr. Bittner. And Dr. Corelli. Wagram’s own assistants. He’d said they helped him with the screaming people, and yet they were lying here with the others. And the others did not scream.

I was the one who wanted to scream, but I held the gun and I held my purpose and I held my course. I moved towards the door at the far side of the room. Wagram’s private quarters must be beyond.

Yes, there was light flooding forth from under this door, too. I approached the panel slowly, cautiously. Gently, I eased the door ajar.

Now I could see into the room ahead. Wagram’s private study, as I’d suspected. And I could see the back of his head over the top of the big armchair, see the front of his head as he swiveled and turned, see the look in his eyes as he recognized me, see the slackness of his mouth as he goggled at the gun in my hand.

“That’s right,” I said, softly. “Don’t try to get up. In fact, I wouldn’t advise you to attempt to move at all.”

“Steve—”

“I know it’s a surprise. You were expecting Bucky Dugan, weren’t you?”

“I—”

“Let me do the talking. There are a few things I’d like to get straight before I call the police.” He started to say something, but I waved him into silence. The gun was much better than a magic wand; I could perform some really amazing transformations with that gun. And he knew it, because he slumped back in his chair and listened.

“I’ve never cared for the usual denouement,” I said, softly. “You know the bit—where the murderer holds a gun on the detective and blurts out a complete explanation of his crimes, just before the cops break in and rescue his intended victims. Fortunately, the situation is reversed now. So let me tell it my way. All I want from you is confirmation or correction.”

“Steve, you’re not well, you need help—”

“I’ve had your kind of help,” I told him. “All I ever want of it. And at the time, I was grateful. Grateful that you came along, opportunely, to rescue me and save my life. Now I wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off if I’d died out there on the desert. At least I wouldn’t have served as your guinea pig.

“Because that’s what I was, wasn’t I? You experimented on me, using my genuine amnesia as a base on which to superimpose an artificial personality-pattern. I was the first, wasn’t I?”

I waited, waving the gun, until he nodded reluctantly.

“That’s what I thought. Once you saw how easily it was possible to control an amnesic, you applied similar techniques with your so-called screaming people. The hopeless cases, whom only wealth saved from permanent public institutionalization; people whose families wanted to avoid publicity and who were willing to consent to anything which might seemingly restore the sanity of their loved ones.

“You had sent me back into the world, and you were able to send them back, when and if you so desired. My memory was lost in the accident; their memories you erased with shock-treatments. Is that the story?”

“Yes.” Wagram sighed the word.

I raised the gun. “That’s the story,” I said, “but not the truth. I’m no neurologist, but I do know that the actual source of memory-patterns has never been definitely located in the human brain. You can’t deliberately ‘erase’ memory, as you claim, without irreparable damage to actual cellular tissue and structure. Many external physical agents can bring about temporary amnesia, partial or complete—but unless there’s widespread permanent deterioration, memory returns. You can’t do what you claim to have done, physiologically. So your erasure must have been accomplished psychologically, instead. In my case, and in the case of all the poor victims of your ‘advanced’ therapy, you seized upon a temporary lapse in orientation and recall and made it permanent. And there’s just one way in which you or anyone else could do this—through suggestion, through hypnosis. You installed those permanent memory-blocks yourself; did so deliberately.”

“All right,” Wagram said. “I’ll admit that. But there was a reason, I’ve already explained it to you. By suppressing the memories, I could suppress the sources of psychosis and prevent any recurrence of aberration. That was the theory, the basis of my techniques—”

“Perhaps it was, originally. But then you found that your hypnotherapy, administered to stunned and literally infantile personalities, gave you complete and utter control over your patients. You could actually order their present and future existences as you willed. And the temptation was too great, wasn’t it? You began to think about ways of using that power. Of what it would be like to send supposedly cured patients back into the world who were actually under your eternal command. You could install a series of hypnotic controls, insure just the reactions you desired. Oh, it wasn’t quite that simple, I realize that; it wasn’t just a matter of sitting at some sort of psychic switchboard and pressing buttons at will, or being able to hold all the tangled strings and making the puppets dance. You needed other help, and you got it.”

“Clermer told you this?” Wagram murmured.

“He told me enough so that I can guess the rest. I know about last night, for example. You were planning to take a big step forward, weren’t you? If I’d succeeded as you intended, then you’d set up other similar tasks for the rest of your screaming people. You thought you’d found a way of committing the so-called perfect crime.

“Somehow you learned of Hexler’s emeralds. Perhaps through some relative who might have been a patient of yours. You made it your business to gain access to his home, to ‘case the joint’ and familiarize yourself with the physical layout and with his personal habits. Then you sent me there, to kill him and to steal the stones. But something went wrong.

“It took you a while to figure out what had happened. Today, when I showed up here at noon, you realized what must have occurred. So while you kept me occupied and we talked, you got the key to my apartment. While I was in that womb of yours, you gave the key to Bucky Dugan. He was one of your patients, one of your screaming people—had been, ever since he cracked up after the quiz-show mess. You went into that charming little morgue of yours, where you keep your wonderful cures in hynotic trance, and you fed Bucky Dugan full of subliminal suggestion, then sent him out to kill. And again, something went wrong, because I showed up in time to forestall him. She isn’t dead, Wagram.”

He stood up then. His eyes never left the muzzle of the gun, but he stood up anyway. “The police—she’ll talk—”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to talk, too.”

Wagram shook his head.

“No. You’re wrong. You won’t talk.” He took a step forward. “You won’t talk, and you won’t shoot me, either. Because you can’t, you know.”

My finger tightened on the trigger. “I wouldn’t risk it if I were you,” I muttered.

“There’s no risk involved.” He was just a grotesque, bald-headed little fat man and there was nothing imposing, nothing menacing, about his appearance.

But all at once I wasn’t seeing him any more. I was hearing him. I was listening to his voice, as it changed—as it became the Voice.

“Yes. You were right, Steve. I do use hypnotic controls. I have used them to suppress your latent memories. I have used them to install commands. And you obeyed. Remember last night, Steve? You obeyed me then. Just as you obey me now. Because you must obey. You know that, don’t you? You must always obey. Unless you listen to me, you’ll go back. Back to the pain, forever. Do you understand? Back to the pain, forever. I can do that, you know. I can send you there forever—send you to the time when you were crushed under the car, screaming your life away. You don’t want to scream again, do you, Steve? You don’t want to scream always and always, the way you feel like screaming now . . . it’s more than anyone can bear, isn’t it, the agony inside your skull . . . you’re lying under the car, you can’t move, you can’t possibly move or get away from the pain . . . it’s crushing you, Steve, you’ve got to make it stop . . .”

And it was crushing me, and I couldn’t see Wagram any more. I couldn’t see the room, because it was dark here on the desert and I was trapped, trapped under two tons of steel, and the pain was all around me and I wanted to scream, had to scream.

“Don’t,” said the Voice. “There’s another way. The only way. Just hold out your hand. There, hold it out. Give me the gun, Steve. You don’t need the gun, do you? That’s right . . . just give me the gun. It’s the gun that is hurting you. Once you get rid of it you won’t feel the pain. There will be no more pain. Just darkness . . . darkness and peace. You will rest then. Rest and forget. Forget that any of this ever happened. It was just a bad dream. A bad dream. Give me the gun—”

And I was out there in the darkness on the desert, but a million miles away was the end of my hand, and I was holding it out to him and he was taking the gun and I could feel the pain flowing down my arm (how slowly the pain flows when it has a million miles to go) and into the gun that he was taking and in a moment I would be free and the pain would be gone and the Voice would be gone and there would be nothing but the rapture of release.

The Voice told me that, I believed the Voice, I obeyed the Voice, and then—the Voice stopped.

The Voice stopped, and I opened my eyes.

I was back in Wagram’s study and I was staring at him and wondering what had happened to the Voice.

Wagram stood there, the gun dangling between his fingers. He let it fall and raised his hand to his throat, fumbling at the shiny object which quivered there in the space between his wide collar and his pudgy chin.

The light glittered on the length of the vibrating knife-blade. It glittered on the redness which gathered and gushed forth from the spot where the tip had penetrated his veined neck.

He took a half-step forward and opened his mouth, but no voice came forth—only a thin trickle of pinkish foam. He stared at the blade of the scalpel lodged in his throat, then fell and lay silent. Silent and forever still.

I turned. Roxie stood in the doorway.

“Just in time,” she whispered. “I must have come to right after you left. I knew you’d head straight for here, so I followed, before the police arrived. I found the scalpel out there, in the other room, where those creatures are sleeping. And I heard you and Wagram talking, heard what he told you there at the last. Oh, Steve, I’m so glad I got here before he—”

She started forward but I ignored her. I stooped and picked up the gun. “I’m not glad,” I said, softly. “I’m sorry. Very sorry. You should have kept running, Roxie. Even without the emeralds, you should have kept running while you had the chance.”

“Steve—”

“No, don’t come any closer.” I had the gun now, held it steadily. “You see, there’s just one thing wrong with your reasoning. I didn’t head straight for here after I left the apartment. I made a stop first, out on the Strip. I saw your friend Clermer.”

Drained white, the pallor of her face was indescribably lovely when framed by that long red hair.

“Or should I say Wagram’s friend Clermer?” I continued. “He must have been Wagram’s friend, first. Because it was Wagram who came to him, originally, and asked him to introduce you to me.”

“No, that’s not true! I don’t know what Clermer told you, but he lied!”

I shook my head. “I’m willing to believe him,” I answered. “Because it all fits.”

My voice softened. “I think I understand, Roxie. I can see how it was. You were just one of those good-looking women who never quite managed to make the grade. The breaks hadn’t come your way, and you were getting just a little panicky about the future. Maybe you’d have to choose between marrying some bartender or taking the B-girl route. Then Wagram came along with his proposition. Clermer was to introduce you to me, you’d make your play, we’d get married. That would give Wagram what he needed to continue his experiments—a go-between, a liaison agent, someone who could help him to keep control. In return, he’d cut you in on his future profits. Because he told you his plans, didn’t he, Roxie? He told you that he intended to use me as a sort of zombie, in robbery and murder. And you agreed.”

“But it didn’t work out that way,” Roxie murmured. “I loved you, Steve.”

“Yes. You loved me, and you loved living in a crummy little apartment and taking cheap bit parts when you could get them. But all the while you loved money more. And Wagram kept building me up, waiting for the right proposition to come along. When he planned this Hexler affair he thought he had it in the bag. Only that’s when you got smart.”

Roxie closed her eyes. “No, Steve, no. Clermer didn’t tell you this.”

“Of course he didn’t, not this part. I had to figure it out for myself. But it’s perfectly obvious, isn’t it? There were a couple of things even Wagram didn’t know about your past. That you worked a season or two with a carny, for example. Long enough to learn how to throw knives—as Wagram found out, just now. More important, my guess is that you probably got acquainted with some mentalist; well enough acquainted so that you understood the scope of Wagram’s plans for me and realized they might work.

“It was a simple enough idea. Wagram planted the entire pattern of post-hynotic suggestion with me when I visited him last week and arranged for you to give me a prearranged signal while I slept which would set the whole series of commands in motion as a sort of dream in which a Voice directed me.

“But even Wagram wasn’t fool enough to believe that a dazed somnambulist could get away with a detailed crime. You had to get there first, didn’t you? Last night, when you were sure I was asleep, you went to Hexler’s. That’s why the window was already open, that’s why the lock on the window-seat had already been forced, that’s why the emeralds were already stolen. And that’s why Hexler was already dead when I arrived. You strangled him with his pillow. I merely repeated the gesture with a corpse.”

“That’s insane—”

“But it just might have worked, mightn’t it? You came back, then gave the prearranged signal which activated Wagram’s pattern of suggestion over me. So that I’d retrace your footsteps, leave telltale fingerprints, retain a memory which would later convince me that I’d been guilty of the crime. The rest of it I can figure out, too. Wagram expected me to come running to him today with the story. And he’d be very sympathetic, but finally he’d agree to let me go to the police. That’s when you’d step in to testify about my inexplicable absence. Everything would come out then; everything except the present whereabouts of the emeralds—which you were already to have concealed, and turn over to Wagram once I was safely incarcerated and the heat was off. It was a doubly-perfect crime, wasn’t it, Roxie?

“Only you wanted to make it triply-perfect. By crossing up Wagram, taking the emeralds yourself, and making a run for it. Mexico, I suppose.

“But when I came to Wagram, something I said or did seemed to have aroused his suspicions. Maybe you were supposed to have phoned him, and didn’t. Anyway, he figured things out. And he stole my key, gave it to Dugan, sent Dugan to kill you. It was all right if I discovered your body—that would merely implicate me further, when Wagram informed the police he had Hexler’s killer. Maybe I was to be accused of your death, too. In any event, Wagram would get rid of me, of you, and of any suspicion of complicity.

“Except, of course, that I arrived before Dugan finished the job. And went to Clermer. And came here.” I shook my head. “Why didn’t you just keep on running, Roxie? Why did you come back?”

She stared into my eyes. “To save your life, Steve. Wagram had the gun. In another minute he’d have killed you.”

“I know.”

“Maybe it’s true, Steve, maybe everything you said is true. And maybe there were other things to come. What would you say if I told you that Carl Wagram confided in me? What if I told you that he was in love with me himself, that he offered me a full share in his future? If this experimental venture succeeded, he wasn’t going to stop there. He had plans for his patients, Steve, big plans. Don’t forget, some of them were wealthy and important, and all of them had influential connections. He could send them back to their homes, control them through his post-hyonotic suggestions and pseudomemories and plant observers at their sides, too. He’d recruit his own staff of nurses and attendants for the job.

“And it wasn’t murder and robbery he had in mind—there were bigger things. Some of these people of his had access to estates, trust-funds, controlling interests in banks, insurance companies. There’d be ways of making millions, in the end, without risk or bloodshed involved.

“I could have shared that, Steve. But instead, when I came here tonight and picked up that scalpel, I killed him. And saved you.”

“Because you knew it was too late then. If he killed me there’d be an investigation and both he and you would eventually be implicated. So you got rid of him instead, hoping that I’d take pity on you and let you save your own neck.”

“I—”

“Don’t lie to me, Roxie. Not now.”

She couldn’t meet my gaze any more. And the flush rose to cover the pallor.

“All right, Steve. It’s true. I thought maybe you’d let me go.”

I sighed and put the gun in my pocket.

“You’re a smart girl, Roxie.”

“Ohh—then you mean—?”

I turned away and faced the desk, staring down at the phone. “I’ll give you ten minutes. Just ten minutes. Then I’ll have to make the call.”

She didn’t say anything and I didn’t look at her, but I knew that she’d opened the door and backed out of the room, retracing her steps, running down between the coffinlike rows where the screaming people slept like vampires in their native earth.

And I stood there in the soundproofed silence of the room and my heart beat a requiem and the watch on my wrist brought me ten minutes closer to my own death.

Then I called the police.

It didn’t take them long to come—perhaps five minutes more, so that it was just fifteen minutes in all since Roxie had departed.

Only she hadn’t departed, and fifteen minutes was quite long enough.

I should have thought about that a little more.

I should have thought about what might have happened when Dr. Carl Wagram died; Dr. Carl Wagram, whose personal control over the psychotic psyches of his patients plunged them into trance, so that they slept in the room beyond. I should have wondered if, perhaps, that control might end when Wagram’s own life ended.

And I should have remembered that the rooms were completely and utterly soundproof . . .

But the police came, and they chose to arrive by the entrance on this side of the house, and by the time I told a portion of my story and opened the door through which Roxie had made her escape, it was too late.

I could only stare into the room beyond and listen to the screaming people—the screaming people who had awakened when Wagram died, awakened in all their ravening madness, and waited there when Roxie had retreated into their midst.

I could only stare at what was still in their midst, there on the floor—what had once been Roxie and was now only a torn and tattered mass over which the screaming people fought and clawed and bit and tore.

And the sound was deafening, so that the captain of detectives had to shout at me as I pushed him away and entered the room.

“Don’t, man!” he cried. “Where do you think you’re going? What’s the matter with you?”

There was only one answer left to me now, of course, and I gave it to him.

I opened my mouth.

And I began to scream—

The Big Kick

Some people total up their assets in a bankbook, but Judy always used a mirror.

Many men had told her she had a beautiful body, but she liked the mirror’s message better. The mirror could tell her the same thing without panting or pawing or slobbering.

The only trouble was, the mirror had no money. It would never give her a lot of nice clothes, a big car, a fancy apartment. At times Judy caught herself wondering if she really wanted these things, but, after all, what else is there in life?

Then she met Mitch and she found out.

Mitch had a bristling black crew cut, heavy eyebrows, and a tuft of beard on his jutting chin. He didn’t have money for clothes or cars or big apartments, but he didn’t make the usual sweating, wheezy advances, either. He merely took her, with casual brutality, and taught her about kicks.

Maybe it was the casual brutality that did it, but suddenly Judy found a reason for living. And she was living with him. Mitch, who wore a sloppy T-shirt and dirty slacks, whose car was a broken-down, ’51 Chevrolet, and whose apartment was a crummy rear-entrance walk-up he referred to as his “pad.”

It was there that Judy found her kicks.

Mitch taught her the whole beatnik bit, including the vocabulary. At first she thought it was rather silly—she couldn’t think of Mitch as a “real cool Daddy-o”—but gradually some of it began to make sense. Like the way Mitch whispered, at an intimately appropriate moment, “Baby, I dig you the most.”

Everything moved with Mitch. Pretty soon she was making the scene with all the gone cats and crazy studs he knew up at the university. They’d fall up to somebody’s pad; they’d blow some pot, and it was like wow, man.

Mitch and his crowd didn’t flip for jazz, but he’d come on strong with the bongos. “You don’t mess with the sound,” he told her. “It’s a drag, strictly nowhere. All you need to do is dig the beat. That’s everything—just beat. Now you take like Zen . . .”

But he’d lose her there; she couldn’t make the intellectual bit. It just didn’t swing. Balling for kicks was enough—why make a federal case out of it? And yet every once in a while Mitch and some of the other characters would get real spooky about meaning and significance and all that jazz.

One night he tried to explain. They were off in a corner at a real crazy bash, with everything rocking. “The most,” Mitch said. “I mean like, here we are holed up in a lousy pad, bunch of chicks and cats, and nobody has any bread, you know? But everything’s with it, everything swings.”

“But don’t you ever worry about the future?” Judy asked.

“This is the future, dig?” Mitch answered. “The whole thing’s a circle, with us in the middle having kicks. Now take like squares, what have they got? The study-and-work-hard pitch, the get-a-steady-job thing, real draggy. And then it’s marry-and-settle-down and buy-on-easy-terms and take-care-of-the-wife-and-kids. So you end up at fifty, doing the coronary bit.”

“Awright awready,” Judy said. “You aren’t going to marry me, and I’m not queer for that wife-and-mother scene myself. But a girl has to think about things, you know? And I don’t have any money, you don’t have a job—”

“So get with it.” Mitch shrugged. “You want some loot, find a live one.”

“You mean some fat old character with a wife and six kids? I should sneak in and out of motels with him for peanuts?” Judy was scornful. “Look, Pops, I don’t need it. I’ve been getting passes from such jerkies for years. All I’d catch is a bad dose of trouble.”

“Figures,” Mitch agreed. “But why sweat? You don’t even have to bother looking. Just relax and enjoy it. Let it come to you. Like Kenny here.”

He jabbed his thumb in the direction of a tall, thin man who stood leaning against the hall doorway, squinting at the smoky room through his horn rims.

“A real creepnik, that one,” Mitch said. “Used to be an assistant prof up at the U., but he doesn’t have to bust a truss making a living. He’s loaded. Phil tells me he popped for three jugs tonight, just to get in. Likes to make the scene, you know? And he’s got eyes for you.”

Judy stared at the man, then made a face. “Clammy,” she said.

“So, clammy. But you could promote. He’s what you call the society type. Lots of ’em sucking around, all wanting in. Swishes, eggheads, introverts, like. Too scared for fun and games but just dying to play. All you’d have to be is friendly. The teaser bit.”

Judy looked at Kenny again. He blinked shyly at her from across the room.

“Well, I don’t know.” she murmured.

“What’s to lose?” Mitch asked. “You’ve got it made. I mean, a beautiful chick like you.”

That did it, when he called her beautiful. Judy stood up and walked over to Kenny, proud as a queen.

Kenny treated her like a queen.

He was definitely a square, she decided, but kind of nice. He kept getting her drinks and lighting cigarettes and asking if she was comfortable and did she want anything to eat. And he didn’t try to touch her or suggest that the two of them sneak off together. He just talked.

“He’s going to call me tomorrow,” Judy told Mitch later, “for a date. You aren’t sore if I go out with him?”

“Look, we set it up this way, right? So live a little!” Mitch grinned. “You want the jealousy bit?” He pulled her down on the bed. “Not from me. This Kenny won’t even make a pass. He’s just sick.”

“He talked real intelligent—”

“Sick, sick, sick,” Mitch repeated. “Let me give you the word. Now you take squares, they’re sick but organized, like. All this jazz about jobs and families and voting the straight ticket—it’s a big habit and they’re hooked, see? But they love it.

“Creeping meatballs like Kenny are worse. They hate the habit but they can’t kick it. They’re the ones always talking it up about the Beat Generation, always making with the analyzing bit, always hanging around, but too chicken to get with the scene.”

He pulled her closer. “Go ahead and take him! Strictly no problem. Sure, he’s got the hots for you, but he’s too sick to make move one. Too sick for the big kicks. Like this. That’s all there is, baby. This. The big kick. The most.”

“Yes,” Judy echoed. “The most!”

So Judy went out with Kenny, to shows, to nice restaurants, to a concert. He never escorted her to anyone else’s parties, outside of the gang; he didn’t seem to have any friends of his own.

“He’s just lonely,” she told Mitch.

Mitch shrugged. “So he needs company, so let him start paying for it. Now here’s the pitch . . .”

He instructed her, and Judy obeyed.

She told Kenny the tale about getting some of her things out of hock so she could find a job. Kenny gave her the money.

She mentioned that Mitch’s heap had broken down and the garage insisted on payment before finishing the repairs. Kenny gave her the money for that also.

She came to Kenny with the sad story about the rent, and again he opened his wallet. But this time he opened his mouth too.

“Tell Mitch that’s all,” he said.

They had just ordered dinner at this real fancy joint, and Judy didn’t want to make a scene.

But the tall man didn’t seem to be angry; his dark eyes smiled at her from behind the heavy lenses of his glasses. “Really, now,” he was saying, “didn’t you think I knew Mitch set this all up? It was his idea in the first place, wasn’t it? Just as it’s Phil’s idea that I pay for the liquor whenever I’m permitted to attend a party and Jean’s idea to invite me to join their friends when they go out to eat because I always pick up the check.”

Judy sighed. “But if you know, why do you do such things?”

“Call it an admission fee. Maybe I enjoy watching the show.”

“Hey!” The idea hit her then. “You writing a book about us or something?”

Kenny chuckled and shook his head. “Why should I? There’s nothing worth writing about. It’s the same old story. Thirty years ago people like your friend Mitch called themselves the Lost Generation, and Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald were their prophets. Twenty years ago they pretended to be communists, ten years ago existentialists.

“But nothing really changes. Mitch and his kind will always rationalize. Their beat philosophy—what is it but an acrobat’s vocabulary of ‘jumps’ and ‘flips’ and ‘blows’ and ‘kicks’? An immature in-group’s set of catch phrases used to dramatize irresponsibility to others and to themselves.”

Judy shook her head. “They’re not bums! Mitch is a musician, Phil’s an artist, Jean writes poetry—”

“They always did,” Kenny told her. “In the Village, the Vieux Carré, the North End. But the real creative talents never stayed in these places very long. They got out. If they didn’t conform to social discipline, they developed self-discipline. Mitch’s kind never develop anything except self-pity. All this pretense about art is just an excuse to justify freeloading as a way of life.”

“At least they’re living,” Judy said. “They get their kicks. Not like some people who just sit around and talk because they’re too sick and too scared to take what they want.”

Kenny sighed. “Splashing blobs of paint on canvas and blowing an instrument off key doesn’t make anyone a rebel. And it doesn’t take a hero to get drunk on somebody else’s liquor and vomit on somebody else’s floor. Kicks! What does a child like Mitch know about the real potentialities of sensation?”

He put his hand on Judy’s wrist; his grip was surprisingly strong. “The difference between Mitch and me is that I know what I want and I’m mature enough to wait for it.”

Judy jerked her wrist away. “You’ll wait a long time,” she said. Then she rose. “I think I’d like to go now.”

After he took her home and left her without a word she experienced misgivings.

“I goofed,” she told Mitch. “I blew the scene.”

Mitch shook his head. “Let him snap his cap. He’ll be back.”

“Think he’s just jealous?”

“Righterooney!” Mitch pulled up his sweatshirt and scratched. “This is a real sicknik. A masochist, like.”

Mitch had to explain to her about masochists.

Judy nodded. “I think maybe that’s it,” she agreed. “But, lover, where did you learn all this goop?”

“I dig psychology. And I dig Kenny. All this stuff he handed you about how simple I am, it doesn’t hang me. You peel the banana and what’s left? The same old jazz about morality, right and wrong, good and evil.” He put his arm around Judy’s waist. His hand moved. “Look. Is this right? Is this wrong?”

Judy shuddered. “I don’t know. I don’t care. It’s you and me.”

“Yeah. You and me. The real kick.” He released her. “But I’m not forgetting what we talked about. We need some loot. Like say, if we go out to the Coast next week—”

“The Coast?”

“Frisco. Bill Wallace, cat I know out in Richmond, he’ll line me up a job in a combo. We’ll really have a ball out there. All we do is get Kenny to pay the freight.”

“But I can’t go to him for money to—”

Mitch put his arm around her again. “You don’t go. He comes to you. Want to bet?” He grinned at her. “You don’t ask for dough either. You tell him the straight story, about you and me going away together.”

“He’ll get sore.”

“He’s a masochist, remember? I dig the type. The more you pour it on, the more he loves it. He’ll pop with a going-away present. Old sicknik Kenny.”

“Honey, it wouldn’t be right. I mean, if he’s really sick like you say, then to take him this way—”

Mitch put both arms around her. “Right, wrong, all that jazz, it’s nowhere. Like the man says, beyond good and evil. Nothing matters but this. The big kick.”

“The big kick!” Judy said. “Righterooney!”

And it was righterooney two days later when Kenny called, just as Mitch predicted. So that gave her the courage to do what he ordered and tell Kenny the story. Kenny reacted as if Mitch had written his lines for him—he was a real masochist and no mistake.

Of course Judy thought there might be some mistake when he said goodbye to her without mentioning a present, and when she saw Mitch she was worried.

“He didn’t pop,” she told him. “I said we were leaving tomorrow afternoon, and all he did was smile and wish me luck. He didn’t even kiss me . . .”

“Wait,” said Mitch. “Just wait!”

The next morning the package came in the mail. Judy was so excited that she let Mitch open it up. His hands were steady until he unwrapped the box and removed the cover. Then he started to shake.

“Christerooney!” he said. “Dig this!”

It was a diamond bracelet—and a big one.

“Mitch, look at it. It can’t be real—”

“It’s real, all right. See, the tag’s still on it. From Orfitt’s. They don’t sell phoney ice, not in that joint. Why, I’ll bet it’s worth five grand, maybe ten!”

Judy started to fasten the bracelet around her left wrist, but Mitch took it away from her. “What’s with you?” he asked. “We got no time. Enough of this love-making.”

“But—”

“Look, here’s the bit. I’ll fall right over to Orfitt’s. No, they won’t go for any jazz about returning it, but they’ll give out with what it cost. Then we head uptown and hock it. But I want some idea of what we can get, dig?”

“Oh, honey, it’s so lovely—”

Mitch grabbed her by the ponytail. “We can yak about it on the trip out. We leave for the Coast this afternoon, remember? And this pays our way.”

Judy didn’t say anything.

“Okay,” Mitch muttered. “So you keep the bracelet. And you fall up and see old Kenny, just like he figures you will, after I’m gone. Real cozy like, you and that sicknik and the ice, the togetherness bit. Me, I’m off to the Coast for kicks.”

Judy gripped his arm. “No, Mitch. I don’t want the bracelet. Take me with you. We’ll hock it, just like you say.”

So they went down to Orfitt’s in the heap. But first Mitch got into some decent threads—he had this one blue suit and he wore a white shirt and a tie too. “You don’t blow into an uptown layout like Orfitt’s looking beat,” he told her. “And another thing—I want you to stay outside, so the word never gets back to Kenny about you asking questions about the ice. Maybe he buys a lot of stuff in there. Let me handle the scene. I’ll make like a real square.”

They parked right in front, and Judy sat waiting while Mitch marched into the store. She could see him through the window, playing it cool when the clerk came up. She could see him talking to the clerk, pulling the bracelet out of his pocket. She watched the clerk examine it.

And then she saw the clerk signal the manager, and both of them jabbering at Mitch, and he was shaking his head and trying to shut them up. Then he slammed his fist down on the counter and started to walk away, but the manager grabbed him, and all of a sudden a third character in some kind of guard’s uniform came up and hung onto Mitch’s arm. The clerk was pressing a buzzer, some kind of alarm thing, and the other two held him tight, and then Judy could hear the sirens down the street.

So she started up the motor and cut out of there.

The car was all loaded for the trip, but she couldn’t leave town. She had no money, and besides, Mitch was in trouble. Judy drove back to his pad, and by the time she arrived she figured out what had happened.

It was getting dark already, but she had no difficulty in recognizing the tall man who leaned against the downstairs stoop in the shadows. And because she had the deal straight in her own mind now she didn’t make a scene. Instead, she just nodded at him when she got out of the car and allowed him to follow her up the stairs.

She stooped and unlocked the door, beckoned to him to enter.

“You don’t act very surprised to see me,” Kenny said.

Judy shrugged.

“Which means you’ve probably realized what happened,” he said. “In which case this won’t surprise you either.” He stepped over to the door and locked it. The key flashed in the gloom and disappeared into his pocket.

“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” Judy said. “Stealing that bracelet because you knew Mitch would go back to Orfitt’s and try to find out what it was worth and they’d recognize it.”

“Smart enough.” Kenny said. “At least Mitch fell for it. I imagine he’ll get at least two years in which to meditate on his stupidity. Or cupidity.” Kenny smiled shyly at her across the dim room. “Cupidity—under the circumstances, that’s very good!”

“I can go to the police. I can explain,” Judy said.

Kenny nodded. “Yes. But I doubt if they’ll believe you. After all, the car is full of your luggage. You were ready to leave. And you don’t have any friends here in town, not any real friends, who might serve as character witnesses. That’s the trouble with you beatniks, you know—you lack roots. You can drop out of sight overnight and nobody will ever know or care—”

“Skip the sermon,” Judy murmured. “You don’t have to give me a hard time. I know the bit now. If I’m nice to you you’ll get Mitch off the hook.” She began to fumble with the buttons of her blouse. “So I’m nice.”

Kenny walked over to her and put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t misunderstand,” he said gently. “I didn’t go to all the trouble of arranging this meeting just to force you to be nice, as you insist on calling it. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not interested in that sort of thing. Any more than I’m interested in the fate of a stupid animal like Mitch. Let him rot in jail—there’s nothing you can do now to get him out.”

“Animal?” Judy’s voice trembled. “Why, you lousy masochist!”

Kenny seemed puzzled. “What on earth do you mean, dear child?”

“You know what I mean. Mitch told me what you are. Like now, you won’t even touch me. This isn’t what you want, is it? This isn’t how you get your kicks—”

“But I am touching you!” Kenny caressed her shoulder softly with his left hand. “It’s true I don’t get my kicks this way, as Mitch would say. But he was wrong about my being a masochist. Actually, you know, I’m a sadist.”

Judy opened her mouth to ask what a sadist was, but Kenny put his hand over it. And then he bent her back over the sofa, bent her back in the darkness.

She couldn’t scream and she couldn’t move. He held her there, and Judy could only stare as he pulled out the knife and showed her the big kick.

The Masterpiece

You talk of masterpieces, messieurs.

Well, I, too, have created a masterpiece in my time. There is no need to laugh. I know what you are thinking—that it is the wine speaking. You fine gentlemen, you artists, thought to play a little joke. “Who is the old one, le pauvre, who comes nightly to this café to peddle shoelaces and paper flowers? Bid him join us, give him to drink until he grows tipsy, and we will have our sport with him.”

You see I comprehend, and I am not offended. I myself have done the same many times, when gathered with my friends at the sidewalk cafés of Paris. Here in Buenos Aires it is much like the Paris I remember, before the war. But I was young then, as you are now, and I, too, was an artist.

You are looking at me, and I perceive that you do not believe. That is because I am aged and a peddler of shoelaces, an exile in this Argentina of yours. But I was an artist, and if I spoke my name you would surely recognize it. You will find my signature on a painting that hangs in the Louvre.

So, you laugh again. But it is the truth—I have created a masterpiece!

The painting of which I speak? It was my last finished canvas, a life-sized portrait.

Ah, you raise your eyebrows at that! Representational painting is out of fashion? This I know. Nevertheless, “Girl with Flowers” hangs in the Louvre, and it is as fresh and true today as the moment I completed it. Vivienne said—

Vivienne? Vivienne Surlac, my friends. She was the model, a tall dark girl from Bordeaux. She was like the wine of that region—full-bodied, richly sweet, and, upon further acquaintance, treacherous.

I did not know this when I worked on the portrait, though in my ignorance I fancied I knew her well. One does not live with a woman for a year without learning certain secrets: the mole on the left thigh, the heart murmur from a childhood ailment, the unreasoning love of sweets and pastries, the unreasoning fear of insects, the favorite song—

Perhaps you find these matters boring, but I assure you I was not bored during our year together. For I was in love with Vivienne, and the portrait was painted out of love, and it was in my mind to make her an honorable proposal of marriage.

You see, I did not know about the treachery.

When my affairs called me away from Paris for a week I left with a light heart, and it was with a light heart that I returned. My studio was empty; she had gone. From the concierge I learned that she had not gone alone. A gentleman had come for her. Gentleman! Her description was vivid and left little doubt—and when I inquired of my friends I found my guess confirmed. She had gone with Dobrieux. Max Dobrieux, fat Max who couldn’t paint a mural suitable for the decoration of a pissoir; fat Max, who used to sit quietly in the studio, watching me at the easel—and watching Vivienne as she posed. Often he brought champagne, for fat Max was also rich Max.

And that, of course, was why she went with him. Because of his wealth, because of the handsome little villa in the new suburbs beyond Versailles.

Now that it was, in effect, a fait accompli, my friends saw no reason not to talk. It seems they had all known of the intrigue; everyone had known except me. Love is proverbially blind.

Justice is blind, too, and so is rage. When I returned to my studio my first impulse was to destroy the painting. Then reason prevailed. The painting was without fault. As I said, it was fresh and true. The corruption and the falseness were in the model. In the name of love, in the name of justice, I would destroy Vivienne.

But not blindly. I went about the affair with my eyes open.

There was the trip to the villa, made merely to spy from afar and to learn that she was indeed living there with Max. There was the matter of arranging the phone call which summoned Max back to Paris because of the sudden illness of a brother. There was the hiring of the flics who taught the fat one a lesson, gave him something to reflect on as he lay recuperating in the hospital.

And finally there was my own journey back to the villa, unobserved, that same night. The steel was in my pocket and the cardboard container was in my hand, and of what was in my heart I need not speak.

Entering the villa was no problem. Justice is blind, but it can see in the dark. I made my way down the tiny corridor, into the bedroom.

She lay naked upon the bed, in the pose of Goya’s “Maja,” and when I tiptoed in she called out, “Max, darling, I’ve been waiting.”

“You wait no longer,” I murmured. Perhaps she recognized my voice, but by this time it did not matter, because I stood beside her in the darkness. My left hand swiftly pinned her wrists together behind her head and my right hand scooped the steel from my pocket. The handcuffs clicked as I fastened them, and she was helpless, chained to the headboard of the bed.

Then I switched on the lamp and she could see me. More important, I could see her—and for a moment I hesitated. Even her fear was beautiful to behold, because it was true, and one does not easily destroy reality.

But my love had been real, and she had destroyed it. And there, over the bed, was the painting—an ugly, grotesque daub, the sort of abstraction which wealthy idiots like Max buy because they are connoisseurs, because they despise representational artists who seek to show the truth. We are old-fashioned, so they mock our work and steal away that which we hold precious. Well, I would show them—Max and Vivienne both—that I, too, could deal in falsehood and treachery.

She read it in my eyes that she must die, for she began to whimper. No matter, for the villa was set well back from the road in a private park. She watched me as I opened the cardboard box. I held it up to the light, directly over her face.

I do not know what Vivienne expected. Perhaps she thought the box contained a gun, or a knife, or vitriol. Poor fool, she did not understand that a lover of beauty would not mar her body.

Slowly I tilted the box forward so that she could see its contents. Then she started to scream.

She screamed as she saw a score of black, wiggling figures, scuttling forth like tiny, furry monkey hands. She screamed as the box tipped and she saw the fatal symbols—the red hourglass markings on the bellies of the spiders.

“Black widows!”

These were the only words I could distinguish, because it was then that the screams rose—as the spiders fell. They descended upon the writhing whiteness of her body in a cloud of death; they crawled upon her and fastened themselves swiftly, surely.

I snapped off the light, and now there was only the darkness and the screaming. There was not long to wait before the screaming died.

And when I turned on the light once more, Vivienne was dead too.

I did what must be done, just as I’d planned. I unshackled her wrists, rearranged the coverlet, and gathered up the little wriggling horrors that marred her loveliness. Then I left as silently and secretly as I had come, left the villa and went directly to the airport. No one knew, and no one would ever know. And it does not matter now, because I am old—and because there is, of course, no extradition law here in the Argentine.

So, messieurs, the hour is late and I shall leave you. I trust I have not wearied you with all this talk of a forgotten masterpiece. But you, too, are painters; you understand the matter of an artist and his pride.

“Girl with Flowers”? Yes, that is the title of my painting, and I assure you it hangs in the Louvre today, just as I have said. If it were truly a masterpiece, in it you could see the Vivienne I knew—the dark girl with the mole, the bad heart, the absurd fear of insects. But of course it is merely a good representational portrait.

No, you heard me right. When I refer to my masterpiece, I speak of the last bit of painting I ever did—the painting of those oh-so-real and frightening red hourglasses on the bellies of the harmless little spiders . . .

Talent

It is perhaps a pity that nothing is known of Andrew Benson’s parents.

The same reasons which prompted them to leave him as a foundling on the steps of the St. Andrews Orphanage also caused them to maintain a discreet anonymity. The event occurred on the morning of March 3rd, 1943—the war era, as you probably recall—so in a way the child may be regarded as a wartime casualty. Similar occurrences were by no means rare during those days, even in Pasadena, where the Orphanage was located.

After the usual tentative and fruitless inquiries, the good Sisters took him in. It was there that he acquired his first name, from the patron and patronymic saint of the establishment. The “Benson” was added some years later, by the couple who eventually adopted him.

It is difficult, at this late date, to determine what sort of a child Andrew was; orphanage records are sketchy, at best, and Sister Rosemarie, who acted as supervisor of the boys’ dormitory, is long since dead. Sister Albertine, the primary grades teacher of the Orphanage School, is now—to put it as delicately as possible—in her senility, and her testimony is necessarily colored by knowledge of subsequent events.

That Andrew never learned to talk until he was nearly seven years old seems almost incredible; the forced gregarity and the conspicuous lack of individual attention characteristic of orphanage upbringing would make it appear as though the ability to speak is necessary for actual survival in such an environment from infancy onward. Scarcely more credible is Sister Albertine’s theory that Andrew knew how to talk but merely refused to do so until he was well into his seventh year.

For what it is worth, she now remembers him as an unusually precocious youngster, who appeared to possess an intelligence and understanding far beyond his years. Instead of employing speech, however, he relied on pantomime, an art at which he was so brilliantly adept (if Sister Albertine is to be believed) that his continuing silence seemed scarcely noticeable.

“He could imitate anybody,” she declares. “The other children, the Sisters, even the Mother Superior. Of course I had to punish him for that. But it was remarkable, the way he was able to pick up all the little mannerisms and facial expressions of another person, just at a glance. And that’s all it took for Andrew—just a mere glance.

“Visitors’ Day was Sunday. Naturally, Andrew never had any visitors, but he liked to hang around the corridor and watch them come in. And afterwards, in the dormitory at night, he’d put in a regular performance for the other boys. He could impersonate every single man, woman or child who’d come to the Orphanage that day—the way they walked, the way they moved, every action and gesture. Even though he never said a word, nobody made the mistake of thinking Andrew was mentally deficient. For a while, Dr. Clement had the idea he might be a mute.”

Dr. Roger Clement is one of the few persons who might be able to furnish more objective data concerning Andrew Benson’s early years. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1954; a victim of a fire which also destroyed his home and his office files.

It was Dr. Clement who attended Andrew on the night that he saw his first motion picture.

The date was 1949, some Saturday evening in the late fall of the year. The Orphanage received and showed one film a week, and only children of school age were permitted to attend. Andrew’s inability—or unwillingness—to speak had caused some difficulty when he entered primary gardes that September, and several months went by before he was allowed to join his classmates in the auditorium for the Saturday night screenings. But it is known that he eventually did so.

The picture was the last (and probably the least) of the Marx Brothers movies. Its title was Love Happy, and if it is remembered by the general public at all today, that is due to the fact that the film contained a brief walk-on appearance by a then-unknown blonde bit player named Marilyn Monroe.

But the Orphanage audience had other reasons for regarding it as memorable. Because Love Happy was the picture that sent Andrew Benson into his trance.

Long after the lights came up again in the auditorium the child sat there, immobile, his eyes staring glassily at the blank screen. When his companions noticed and sought to arouse him he did not respond; one of the Sisters (possibly Sister Rosemarie) shook him, and he promptly collapsed in a dead faint. Dr. Clement was summoned, and he administered to the patient. Andrew Benson did not recover consciousness until the following morning.

And it was then that he talked.

He talked immediately, he talked perfectly, he talked fluently—but not in the manner of a six-year-old child. The voice that issued from his lips was that of a middle-aged man. It was a nasal, rasping voice, and even without the accompanying grimaces and facial expressions it was instantaneously and unmistakably recognizable as the voice of Groucho Marx.

Andrew Benson mimicked Groucho in his Sam Grunion role to perfection, word for word. Then he “did” Chico Marx. After that he relapsed into silence again, mute phase. But it was an eloquent silence, and soon it became evident that he was imitating Harpo. In rapid succession, Andrew created recognizable vocal and visual portraits of Raymond Burr, Melville Cooper, Eric Blore and the other actors who played small roles in the picture. His impersonations seemed uncanny to his companions, and the Sisters were not unimpressed.

“Why, he even looked like Groucho,” Sister Albertine insists.

Ignoring the question of how a towheaded moppet of six can achieve a physical resemblance to Groucho Marx without benefit (or detriment) of make-up, it is nevertheless an established fact that Andrew Benson gained immediate celebrity as a mimic within the small confines of the Orphanage.

And from that moment on, he talked regularly, if not freely. That is to say, he replied to direct questions, he recited his lessons in the classroom, and responded with the outward forms of politeness required by Orphanage discipline. But he was never loquacious, or even communicative, in the ordinary sense. The only time he became spontaneously articulate was immediately following the showing of a weekly movie.

There was no recurrence of his initial seizure, but each Saturday night screening brought in its wake a complete dramatic recapitulation by the gifted youngster. During the fall of ’49 and the winter of ’50, Andrew Benson saw many movies. There was Sorrowful Jones, with Bob Hope; Tarzan’s Magic Fountain; The Fighting O’Flynn; The Life of Riley; Little Women, and a number of other films, current and older. Naturally, these pictures were subject to approval by the Sisters before being shown, and as a result movies depicting or emphasizing violence were not included. Still, several Westerns reached the Orphanage screen, and it is significant that Andrew Benson reacted in what was to become a characteristic fashion.

“Funny thing,” declares Albert Dominguez, who attended the Orphanage during the same period as Andrew Benson and is one of the few persons located who is willing to admit, let alone discuss the fact. “At first Andy imitated everybody—all the men, that is. He never imitated none of the women. But after he started to see Westerns, it got so he was choosey, like. He just imitated the villains. I don’t mean like when us guys was playing cowboys—you know, when one guy is the Sheriff and one is a gun-slinger. I mean he imitated villains all the time. He could talk like ’em, he could even look like ’em. We used to razz hell out of him, you know?”

It is probably as a result of the “razzing” that Andrew Benson, on the evening of May 17th, 1950, attempted to slit the throat of Frank Phillips with a table knife. Probably—although Albert Dominguez claims that the older boy offered no provocation, and that Andrew Benson was exactly duplicating the screen role of a western desperado in an old Charles Starrett movie.

The incident was hushed up, apparently, and no action taken; we have little information on Andrew Benson’s growth and development between the summer of 1950 and the autumn of 1955. Dominguez left the Orphanage, nobody else appears willing to testify, and Sister Albertine had retired to a rest-home. As a result, there is nothing available concerning what may well have been Andrew’s crucial, formative years. The meager records of his classwork seem satisfactory enough, and there is nothing to indicate that he was a disciplinary problem to his instructors. In June of 1955 he was photographed with the rest of his classmates upon the occasion of graduation from eighth grade. His face is a mere blur, an almost blank smudge in a sea of preadolescent countenances. What he actually looked like at that age is hard to tell.

The Bensons thought that he resembled their son, David.

Little David Benson had died of polio in 1953, and two years later his parents came to St. Andrews Orphanage seeking to adopt a boy. They had David’s picture with them, and they were frank to state that they sought a physical resemblance as a guide to making their choice.

Did Andrew Benson see that photograph? Did—as has been subsequently theorized by certain irresponsible alarmists—he see certain home movies which the Bensons had taken of their child?

We must confine ourselves to the known facts, which are, simply, that Mr. and Mrs. Louis Benson, of Pasadena, California, legally adopted Andrew Benson, aged 12, on December 9th, 1955.

And Andrew Benson went to live in their home, as their son. He entered the public high school. He became the owner of a bicycle. He received an allowance of one dollar a week. And he went to the movies.

Andrew Benson went to the movies, and there were no restrictions. No restrictions at all. For several months, that is. During this period he saw comedies, dramas, Westerns, musicals, melodramas. He must have seen melodramas. Was there a film, released early in 1956, in which an actor played the role of a gangster who pushed a victim out of a second-story window?

Knowing what we do today, we must suspect that there must have been. But at the time, when the actual incident occurred, Andrew Benson was virtually exonerated. He and the other boy had been “scuffling” in a classroom after school, and the boy had “accidentally fallen.” At least, this is the official version of the affair. The boy—now Pvt. Raymond Schuyler, USMC—maintains to this day that Benson deliberately tried to kill him.

“He was spooky, that kid,” Schuyler insists. “None of us ever really got close to him. It was like there was nothing to get close to, you know? I mean, he kept changing off so. From one day to the next you could never figure out what he was going to be like. Of course we all knew he imitated these movie actors—he was only a freshman but already he was a big shot in the dramatic club—but it was as though he imitated all the time. One minute he’d be real quiet, and the next, wham! You know that story, the one about Jekyll and Hyde? Well, that was Andrew Benson. Afternoon he grabbed me, we weren’t even talking to each other. He just came up to me at the window and I swear to God he changed right before my eyes. It was as if he all of a sudden got about a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier, and his face was real wild. He pushed me out the window, without one word. Of course I was scared spitless, and maybe I just thought he changed. I mean, nobody can actually do a thing like that, can they?”

This question, if it arose at all at the time, remained unanswered. We do know that Andrew Benson was brought to the attention of Dr. Max Fahringer, child psychiatrist and part-time guidance counselor at the school, and that his initial examination disclosed no apparent abnormalities of personality or behavior patterns. Dr. Fahringer did, however, have several long talks with the Bensons, and as a result Andrew was forbidden to attend motion pictures. The following year, Dr. Fahringer voluntarily offered to examine young Andrew—undoubtedly his interest had been aroused by the amazing dramatic abilities the boy was showing in his extracurricular activities at the school.

Only one such interview ever took place, and it is to be regretted that Dr. Fahringer neither committed his findings to paper nor communicated them to the Bensons before his sudden, shocking death at the hands of an unknown assailant. It is believed (or was believed by the police, at the time) that one of his former patients, committed to an institution as a psychotic, may have been guilty of the crime.

All that we know is that it occurred some short while following a local rerun of the film Man in the Attic, in which Jack Palance essayed the role of Jack the Ripper.

It is interesting, today, to examine some of the so-called “horror movies” of those years, including the reruns of earlier vehicles starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Peter Lorre and a number of other actors.

We cannot say with any certainty, of course, that Andrew Benson was violating the wishes of his foster-parents and secretly attending motion pictures. But if he did, it is quite likely that he would frequent the smaller neighborhood houses, many of which specialized in reruns. And we do know, from the remarks of fellow classmates during these high school years, that “Andy” was familiar—almost omnisciently so—with the mannerisms of these performers.

The evidence is oftentimes conflicting. Joan Charters, for example, is willing to “swear on a stack of Bibles” that Andrew Benson, at the age of 15, was “a dead ringer for Peter Lorre—the same bug eyes and everything.” Whereas Nick Dossinger, who attended classes with Benson a year later, insists that he “looked just like Boris Karloff.”

Granted that adolescence may bring about a considerable increase in height during the period of a year, it is nevertheless difficult to imagine how a “dead ringer for Peter Lorre” could metamorphize into an asthenic Karloff type.

A mass of testimony is available concerning Andrew Benson during those years, but almost all of it deals with his phenomenal histrionic talent and his startling skill at “ad lib” impersonations of motion picture actors. Apparently he had given up mimicking his associates and contemporaries almost entirely.

“He said he liked to do actors better, because they were bigger,” says Don Brady, who appeared with him in the senior play. “I asked him what he meant by ‘bigger’ and he said it was just that—actors were bigger on the screen, sometimes twenty feet tall. He said, ‘Why bother with little people when you can be big?’ Oh, he was a real offbeat character, that one.”

The phrases recur. “Oddball” and “screwball” and “real gone” are picturesque, but hardly enlightening. And there seems to be little recollection of Andrew Benson as a friend or classmate, in the ordinary role of adolescence. It’s the imitator who is remembered, with admiration and, frequently, with distaste bordering on actual apprehension.

“He was so good he scared you. But that’s when he was doing those impersonations, of course. The rest of the time, you scarcely knew he was around.”

“Classes? I guess he did all right. I didn’t notice him much.”

“Andrew was a fair student. He could recite when called upon, but he never volunteered. His marks were average. I got the impression he was rather withdrawn.”

“No, he never dated much. Come to think of it, I don’t think he went out with girls at all. I never paid much attention to him, except when he was on stage, of course.”

“I wasn’t really what you call close to Andy. I don’t know anybody who seemed to be friends with him. He was so quiet, outside of the dramatics. And when he got up there, it was like he was a different person—he was real great, you know? We all figured he’d end up at the Pasadena Playhouse.”

The reminiscences of his contemporaries are frequently apt to touch upon matters which did not directly involve Andrew Benson. The years 1956 and 1957 are still remembered, by high school students of the area in particular, as the years of the curfew. It was a voluntary curfew, of course, but it was nevertheless strictly observed by most of the female students during the period of the “werewolf murders”—that series of savage, still-unsolved crimes which terrorized the community for well over a year. Certain cannibalistic aspects of the slaying of the five young women led to the “werewolf” appellation on the part of the sensation-mongering press. The Wolf Man series made by Universal had been revived, and perhaps this had something to do with the association.

But to return to Andrew Benson; he grew up, went to school, and lived the normal life of a dutiful stepson. If his foster-parents were a bit strict, he made no complaints. If they punished him because they suspected he sometimes slipped out of his room at night, he made no complaint or denials. If they seemed apprehensive lest he be disobeying their set injunctions not to attend the movies, he offered no overt defiance.

The only known clash between Andrew Benson and his family came about as a result of their flat refusal to allow a television set in their home. Whether or not they were concerned about the possible encouragement of Andrew’s mimicry or whether they had merely developed an allergy to Lawrence Welk and his ilk is difficult to determine. Nevertheless, they balked at the acquisition of a TV set. Andrew begged and pleaded, pointed out that he “needed” television as an aid to a future dramatic career. His argument had some justification, for in his senior year, Andrew had indeed been “scouted” by the famous Pasadena Playhouse, and there was even some talk of a future professional career without the necessity of formal training.

But the Bensons were adamant on the television question; as far as we can determine, they remained adamant right up to the day of their death.

The unfortunate circumstances occurred at Balboa, where the Bensons owned a small cottage and maintained a little cabin-cruiser. The elder Bensons and Andrew were heading for Catalina Channel when the cruiser overturned in choppy waters. Andrew managed to cling to the craft until rescued, but his foster-parents were gone. It was a common enough accident; you’ve probably seen something just like it in the movies a dozen times.

Andrew, just turned eighteen, was left an orphan once more—but an orphan in full possession of a lovely home, and with the expectation of coming into a sizeable inheritance when he reached twenty-one. The Benson estate was administered by the family attorney, Justin L. Fowler, and he placed young Andrew on an allowance of forty dollars a week—an amount sufficient for a recent graduate of high school to survive on, but hardly enough to maintain him in luxury.

It is to be feared that violent scenes were precipitated between the young man and his attorney. There is no point in recapitulating them here, or in condemning Fowler for what may seem—on the surface of it—to be the development of a fixation.

But up until the night that he was struck down by a hit-and-run driver in the street before his house, Attorney Fowler seemed almost obsessed with the desire to prove that the Benson lad was legally incompetent, or worse. Indeed, it was his investigation which led to the uncovering of what few facts are presently available concerning the life of Andrew Benson.

Certain other hypotheses—one hesitates to dignify them with the term “conclusions”—he apparently extrapolated from these meager findings, or fabricated them out of thin air. Unless, of course, he did manage to discover details which he never actually disclosed. Without the support of such details there is no way of authenticating what seem to be a series of fantastic conjectures.

A random sampling, as remembered from various conversations Fowler had with the authorities, will suffice.

“I don’t think the kid is even human, for that matter. Just because he showed up on those Orphanage steps, you call him a foundling. Changeling might be a better word for it. Yes, I know they don’t believe in such things any more. And if you talk about life-forms from other planets, they laugh at you and tell you to join the Fortean Society. So happens. I’m a member.

“Changeling? It’s probably a more accurate term than the narrow meaning implies. I’m talking about the way he changes when he sees these movies. No, don’t take my word for it—ask anyone who’s ever seen him act. Better still, ask those who never saw him on a stage, but just watched him imitate movie performers in private. You’ll find out he did a lot more than just imitate. He becomes the actor. Yes, I mean he undergoes an actual physical transformation. Chameleon. Or some other form of life. Who can say?

“No, I don’t pretend to understand it. I know it’s not ‘scientific’ according to the way you define science. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. There are a lot of life-forms in the universe, and we can only guess at some of them. Why shouldn’t there be one that’s abnormally sensitive to mimicry?

“You know what effect the movies can have on so-called ‘normal’ human beings, under certain conditions. It’s a hypnotic state, this movie-viewing, and you can ask the psychologists for confirmation. Darkness, concentration, suggestion—all the elements are present. And there’s post-hypnotic suggestion, too. Again, psychiatrists will back me up on that. Most people tend to identify with various characters on the screen. That’s where our hero worship comes in, that’s why we have Western-movie fans, and detective fans, and all the rest. Supposedly ordinary people come out of the theater and fantasy themselves as the heroes and heroines they saw up there on the screen; imitate them, too.

“That’s what Andrew Benson did, of course. Only suppose he could carry it one step further? Suppose he was capable of being what he saw portrayed? And he chose to be the villains? I tell you, it’s time to investigate those killings of a few years back, all of them. Not just the murder of those girls, but the murder of the two doctors who examined Benson when he was a child, and the death of his foster-parents, too. I don’t think any of these things were accidents. I think some people got too close to the secret, and Benson put them out of the way.

“Why? How should I know why? Any more than I know what he’s looking for when he watches the movies. But he’s looking for something, I can guarantee that. Who knows what purpose such a life-form can have, or what he intends to do with his power? All I can do is warn you.”

It is easy to dismiss Attorney Fowler as a paranoid type, though perhaps unfair, in that we cannot evaluate the reasons for his outburst. That he knew (or believed he knew) something is self-evident. As a matter of fact, on the very evening of his death he was apparently about to put his findings on paper.

Deplorably, all that he ever set down was a preamble, in the form of a quotation from Eric Voegelin, concerning rigid pragmatic attitudes of “scientism,” so-called:

“(1) the assumption that the mathematized science of natural phenomena is a model science to which all other sciences ought to conform; (2) that all realms of being are accessible to the methods of the sciences of phenomena; and (3) that all reality which is not accessible to sciences of phenomena is either irrelevant or, in the more radical form of the dogma, illusionary.”

But Attorney Fowler is dead, and we deal with the living; with Max Schick, for example, the motion-picture and television agent who visited Andrew Benson at his home shortly after the death of the elder Bensons, and offered him an immediate contract.

“You’re a natural,” Schick declared. “Never mind with the Pasadena Playhouse bit. I can spot you right now, believe me! With what you got, we’ll back Brando right off the map! Of course, we gotta start small, but I know just the gimmick. Main thing is to establish you in a starring slot right away. None of this stock-contract jazz, get me? The studios aren’t handing ’em out any more in the first place, and even if you landed one, you’d end up on Cloud Nowhere. No, the deal is to get you a lead and billing right off the bat. And like I said, I got the angle.

“We go to a small independent producer, get it? Must be a dozen of ’em operating right now, and all of ’em making the same thing. Only one kind of picture that combines low budgets with big grosses and that’s a science fiction movie.

“Yeah, you heard me, a science fiction movie. Whaddya mean, you never saw one? Are you kidding? How about that? You mean you never saw any science fiction pictures at all?

“Oh, your folks, eh? Had to sneak out? And they only show that kind of stuff at the downtown houses?

“Well look, kid, it’s about time, that’s all I can say. It’s about time! Hey, just so’s you know what we’re talking about, you better get on the ball and take in one right away. Sure, I’m positive, there must be one playing a downtown first run now. Why don’t you go this afternoon? I got some work to finish up here at the office—run you down in my car and you can go on to the show, meet me back here when you get out.

“Sure, you can take the car after you drop me off. Be my guest.”

So Andrew Benson saw his first science fiction movie. He drove there and back in Max Schick’s car (coincidentally enough, it was the late afternoon of the day when Attorney Fowler became a hit-and-run victim) and Schick has good reason to remember Andrew Benson’s reappearance at his office just after dusk.

“He had a look on his face that was out of this world,” Schick says.

“ ‘How’d you like the picture?’ I ask him.

“ ‘It was wonderful,’ he tells me. ‘Just what I’ve been looking for all these years. And to think I didn’t know.’

“ ‘Didn’t know what?’ I ask. But he isn’t talking to me any more. You can see that. He’s talking to himself.

“ ‘I thought there must be something like that,’ he says. ‘Something better than Dracula, or Frankenstein’s Monster, or all the rest. Something bigger, more powerful. Something I could really be. And now I know. And now I’m going to.’ ”

Max Schick is unable to maintain coherency from this point on. But his direct account is not necessary. We are, unfortunately, all too well aware of what happened next.

Max Schick sat there in his chair and watched Andrew Benson change.

He watched him grow. He watched him put forth the eyes, the stalks, the writhing tentacles. He watched him twist and tower, filling the room and then overflowing until the flimsy stucco walls collapsed and there was nothing but the green, gigantic horror, the sixty-foot-high monstrosity that may have been born in a screenwriter’s brain or may have been spawned beyond the stars, but certainly existed and drew nourishment from realms far from a three-dimensional world or three-dimensional concepts of sanity.

Max Schick will never forget that night and neither, of course, will anybody else.

That was the night the monster destroyed Los Angeles . . .

The Final Performance

The neon intestines had been twisted to form the word Eat.

I squinted up at it, the sand stinging my eyes, and shifted my overnight bag to the left hand. As I opened the sagging screen door a trickle of perspiration ran down my arm.

Two flies accompanied me into the restaurant. One of them headed for a pile of crullers on the counter and the other alighted on the bald head of an elderly fat man who leaned behind it. The man looked up and the fly buzzed away.

“Evening,” he said. “What’ll it be?”

“Are you Rudolph?” I asked.

He nodded.

I slid onto a stool. “Fellow named Davis sent me.”

“From the garage?”

“That’s right—the place up the highway. My car conked out on me coming through the mountains. He had to phone Bakersfield for a new connecting rod. They’re bringing it out first thing tomorrow morning, and he figures he can get it installed before evening. But tonight I’m looking for a place to stay. He told me to try here—said you used to run a motel.”

“Not any more. Isn’t enough traffic along this route.”

“I noticed a couple of cabins out in back.”

“Closed up.” The fat man reached under the counter and came up with a half-empty bottle of beer. He took a long gulp; when he set the bottle down again it was empty. “Look, you could hitch a ride into Bakersfield and come back tomorrow.”

“I thought of that, but I hate to leave all my belongings. Everything I own is in that car—guess it broke down because it was overloaded. You see, I’m moving to Hollywood, and I packed all my books and—”

“Hollywood?” The fat man blinked. “You in show biz?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Television?”

“Short stories and books.”

He blinked again. “That’s better. TV is lousy. I can’t understand what they think they’re doing out there. Now you take a guy like that Ed Sullivan—” He broke off abruptly and stared at me. “Book writer, you say. Ever run into Arnie Pringle?”

“No. I can’t say that I have.”

“Before your time, I guess. Probably dead by now. He used to write my act.”

“You were in show business?”

“Are you kidding? Rudolph the Great. Twenty years top billing, Pantages, Albee, Keith-Orpheum time. Why, I’ve got three press books full of—”

I rose from the stool.

“Here, where you going?”

I shrugged. “Sorry, but if I’m hitching a ride into Bakersfield I’d better get out there on the highway before dark.”

“Never mind that. Guess we can fix up a cabin for you. Put some clean sheets on the bed.” He swayed along behind the counter, and it suddenly occurred to me that he was just a little bit drunk.

“Look, I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble,” I told him.

“No trouble. My pleasure.” He jerked his head toward the swinging door behind him. “Rosie!” he yelled.

Rosie came into the room.

She was a tall girl, blonde and amply proportioned, her hair done up in a ponytail. She wore a blue sleeveless smock and her legs were bare.

“Rosie, this is Mr.—”

“Chatham. Jim Chatham.” I nodded at her and she wrinkled up her nose at me. It took a moment before I realized she was smiling.

“Had a little trouble with his car,” Rudolph said. “Davis is fixing it up at the crossroads. He needs a place to stay overnight. You think you can find some clean bedclothes for Number One?”

She nodded at him, still looking at me.

“Better take him out with you. Let him have a look.”

“All right.” Her voice was soft, deeper than I’d expected.

“Keys in my desk, right-hand drawer.”

“I know. I’ll get them.”

She turned and left the room. Rudolph reached under the counter into the cooler and brought out another bottle of beer, a full one this time. “Care for a brew?” he asked.

“Later, perhaps. Let me get settled and then I’ll come back for dinner.”

“Suit yourself.” He bent to open the bottle, then raised it to his lips.

Rosie came back into the room; she carried a bundle of sheets wrapped around a pillow. “All set?” she asked.

I picked up my bag and followed her outside. The sun was setting and the desert wind was cool. Joshuas cast their shadows along the path leading to the cabins in the rear, striping the sand and the backs of her bare calves as she walked along before me.

“Here we are.” She halted and opened the door of the tiny cabin. The interior of the little shack was dark and stifling hot. She switched on the light. “It’ll cool off in a minute with the door open,” she said. “I’ll make up the bed for you.”

I put down the suitcase and slumped into the single chair next to the gray-filmed window. She went to work, bending over the bed. She had fine breasts. As she moved around to tuck in the sheet, her leg brushed mine.

All at once, for no reason at all, my mind was filled with corny dialogue. What’s a nice girl like you doing in such a godforsaken hole? Let me take you away from all this . . .

Suddenly I noticed she had stopped working. She stood there with the pillow in her arms, staring at me.

“I heard you talking to him,” she said. “About being a writer. What are you going to do out in Hollywood, work for the movies?”

“I doubt it. Probably just keep turning out stories the same as usual. But the climate’s better.”

“Yes, the climate.” She nodded and wrinkled her nose at me. “Take me with you.”

“What?”

“I said, take me with you.”

“But Mrs. Rudolph—”

“His first name is Rudolph. Bitzner.”

“Mrs. Bitzner, then—”

“I’m not Mrs. Bitzner either.”

“Oh, I just thought—”

“I know what you thought. Never mind that. Just take me with you. All I’d do is ride along. There wouldn’t be any trouble.” She let the pillow fall on the bed and moved closer. “I wouldn’t be any bother at all. I promise.”

I stood up, but I didn’t reach for her. I didn’t have to reach for her, because she came right into my arms, and she said, “Please, please, say you’ll take me. You’ve got to. You don’t know what it’s like all alone out here. You don’t know what he’s like. He’s crazy—”

She had this trick of talking without opening her mouth, keeping her lips puckered up, waiting to be kissed, and she wrinkled her nose and I could see the tiny freckles on the bridge, and her skin was marble-cool in all this heat. And it’s one thing to sit back and make sophisticated remarks about cheap waitresses named Rosie (Rosie, for God’s sake!) and another thing entirely to feel a waiting, willing woman stirring hard against you and whispering, “Please . . . promise me you will . . . I’ll do anything . . .”

So I opened my mouth to answer, then let it remain open in bewilderment as she stepped back quickly and picked up the pillow again. Then I heard him scuffling along the path and understood.

“Rosie!” he yelled. “You almost finished? Customers!”

“Be right in,” she called.

I stepped over to the doorway and waved at Rudolph.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Everything’s fine.”

“Come and eat, then. You can wash up inside.”

I glanced back at Rosie. She was bending over the bed and she didn’t look at me. But she whispered, “I’ll see you later. Wait for me.”

That’s what kept me going through the long evening.

I followed Rudolph, and I cleaned myself up a bit in the filthy washroom, and I shared a steak and french fries with the two flies and their cousins. The customers were in and out for the next couple of hours, and there was no chance to talk to Rudolph or even catch a glimpse of Rosie out in back. Then, finally, it was nine o’clock and the place was empty again. Rudolph yawned and walked over to the door, switching off the Eat sign.

“This concludes the evening’s performance,” he said. “Thanks for the use of the hall.” He went over to the swinging door. “You fixing yourself something?” he yelled.

“Yes, just a hamburger. How about you?” Rosie asked.

“Never mind. I’ll have myself another beer.” He looked at me. “You ready for one now?”

I shook my head and stood up. “No, thanks. It’s about time I turned in.”

“What’s your hurry? Stick around. We’ll go in back and chew the fat awhile. To hell with the beer—I’ve got some hard stuff there.”

“Well, I—”

“Come on. Got some things that might interest you. Man doesn’t get much chance to talk to anybody halfway intelligent around here.”

“All right.”

He ran his wrist across the gray stubble around his mouth.

“Tell you what, I’ll check the register first. You go right on back, through that door on the end. I’ll be along.”

So I went back, into the little room on the side of the restaurant which served as a parlor. I saw the overstuffed couch and the easy chair and the desk, the lamp, the TV set, but I didn’t do any more than glance at them.

Because I was staring at the walls—the walls of another world.

It was the world of the twenties and the early thirties, a world that belonged to the half-forgotten faces which peered out at me from a thousand photographs reaching from floor to ceiling. Some of the pictures had peeled and faded, just as my memories had peeled and faded in the long years since early childhood. But I could still remember the familiar countenances, and I had at least heard of most of the names scrawled in autograph fashion beneath the unfamiliar ones. I moved around the room, moved around the mementos of what had once been a world called vaudeville.

Here was a skinny, gangling kid called Milton Berle and a buxom young woman named Sophie Tucker. Here was a youthful Bert Wheeler holding an apple and a smiling Joe Cook holding an Indian club and explaining why he would not imitate the Four Hawaiians. There was an entire section of faces in burnt cork—Cantor, Jolson, Lou Holtz in the pre-Sam Lapidus days, Frank Tinney (way before my time), and one mournfully humorous countenance which needed no spurious blackface; the signature read, “To Rudolph from Bert Williams.”

And there were the teams and the acts—Moran and Mack, Gallagher and Shean, Cross and Dunn, Phil Baker and Ben Bernie, Smith and Dale (Dr. Kronkheit, I presume), and a surprisingly handsome young couple who signed themselves “George and Gracie.” And there was an incredible Jimmy Durante—with hair—and Clayton and Jackson.

“See? It’s like I told you, I knew ’em all.” Rudolph had come up behind me, carrying a bottle and glasses. “Here, let me fix you a snort and I’ll show you my press books.”

He made me a drink, but he didn’t get around to the press books. Instead he sprawled out on the sofa, uncorked the bottle again, and uncorked himself.

I don’t know how long he rambled on about the old days and the old ways; about the Six Brown Brothers and Herman Timberg and Walter C. Kelly and Chic Sale. At another time, under other circumstances, I might have hung on to his every word. But right now I was hanging on to other words—“I’ll see you later. Wait for me.”

So I really didn’t listen to him, to Rudolph the Great who used to do Orpheum Time until vaudeville died and then wandered out here into the desert to do a twenty-year layoff as Rudolph Bitzner. Twenty years—why, Rosie, couldn’t be much over twenty herself! And here was this fat old man wheezing away on the couch, drinking out of the bottle now and slobbering. He was getting ready to pass out. He had to pass out soon, he had to . . .

“Have ’nother drink?” He sat up, blinking at the bottle. “Oh, ’s empty, well whaddya know?”

“That’s all right,” I told him. “I’ve had enough.”

“Well, I haven’. Got more ’round here someplace. Rosie!” He yelled her name, then lowered his voice as he turned to me. “She’s out front. Told her to clean up the joint. Won’t come near me when I’m drinking, anyhow, you know?” He chuckled. “Don’t matter—I locked the door before I came back. Got the key ri’ here, so she can’t get away. Never get away, not from me.”

He swayed to his feet. “Know what you’re thinkin’—just an old lush, that’s all, just an old lush. But wait till I show you the press books. Then you’ll see who I was. Who I am.” He stumbled back against the sofa. “Rudolph the Great. Tha’s me. Keep in practice. Jus’ as good as I ever was. Better. Why, I could go on Sullivan’s show nex’ week . . .”

Then the color drained from his face and he fell back on the couch. I never did get to see those press books. By the time I put his feet up on the sofa he’d started to snore. I took the keys from his pocket and went back into the restaurant. She was waiting for me in the dark. And we went out through the dark to my cabin, and she clung to me in the dark, and that’s the one thing I want to remember, have to remember now.

Afterward she told me about herself. She’d been ten when she’d come to Rudolph—her parents stopped by on their way to Texas and dropped her off while they filled a fair date. They were a couple of ex-vaudevillans themselves: the Flying Keenos. They knew Rudolph from the old days and they accepted his suggestion to leave her in his care while they traveled on, because they were down on their luck.

“Only they never came back,” she said. “They never came back. And he tried to find them. He wrote to Billboard and everything, but they just disappeared. So I stayed on. Rudolph—he wasn’t so bad then, you know. I mean, he didn’t drink so much or anything. He sent me to school on the bus, bought me clothes and things. Treated me just like he was my father—until I was sixteen.”

She started to cry, very softly. “He isn’t even in love with me, not really. It’s because of living out here all alone in this crazy desert and knowing he’s getting old. Before it started he used to talk about making a comeback on TV. He said it was just like vaudeville, he’d always known there’d be a revival. Then, that summer when I was sixteen, he decided the time was right and he took me with him out to L.A. He went around and saw some agents, had a few auditions. I never did find out what really happened. But when we came back here in the fall he started to drink right away, and that’s when—”

That’s when she tried to sneak off, and he caught her, and he closed up the motel so she couldn’t see anyone or attempt to hitch a ride. He kept her inside the restaurant, didn’t even allow her to go up to the crossroads for supplies, wouldn’t let anyone come near her.

There were times when she thought of running away in the night, but something always stopped her. She realized she owed him something for all the years he’d taken care of her, and he needed her now. He was just an old man, not quite right in the head, and he seldom bothered her any more. Most nights he just drank and passed out. She’d resigned herself to putting up with it until this evening. Then, when she saw me—

“I know. You figured you could get a ride, and maybe I’d even take care of you out on the Coast for a week or so, long enough for you to find a job. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“No!” She dug her nails into my arms. “Maybe I did think something like that at first. But not now. Believe me, not now.”

I believed her. I believed her voice and I believed her body, even though it was incredible that I should be lying here in the desert night with this stranger whom I’d known forever.

“It’s all right,” I said. “We’ll go away. But I’d feel better if we told him. Maybe if I talked things over with him, explained, I could make him understand.”

“Oh no—you can’t do that! He’s crazy jealous. I didn’t want to tell you, but one time he caught this truck driver talking to me outside—just talking is all—and he took after him with that big butcher knife. He would have killed him if he caught him, I know he would! And he beat me up so that I couldn’t even get out of bed for three days. No, he mustn’t even suspect. Tomorrow afternoon, when the car is fixed . . .”

We made our simple plans. The restaurant was closed on Sundays, and it would be better if I didn’t attempt to take a meal there—just went straight to the garage and saw to it that Davis got the car fixed as soon as possible. Meanwhile Rosie would have her suitcase packed and ready. She’d encourage Rudolph to drink—not that he generally needed any encouragement from her. Maybe he’d even pass out. If not, she’d go so far as to cut the phone wire, if necessary; just so she could slip out to me with the assurance of getting a head start.

So we talked it all over, calmly and sensibly, and she slipped out of the cabin, and I lay there and tried to sleep. It was almost dawn when I closed my eyes, and the bats were out, flying against the gaudy desert sunrise.

I slept for a long time. When I left the cabin and cut across to the highway, it was almost two o’clock. I walked the mile to the crossroads garage and found Davis working with the car up on the rack. We talked for a while, but I didn’t listen to what he said, or to what I said either. From time to time somebody drove up for gas and Davis would have to stop and give them service. The car wasn’t ready until a little after five; it was already getting dark.

I paid him and drove off. The motor hummed smoothly, but I almost stripped gears as I shifted. I was nervous, that’s all, just nervous. I didn’t feel any guilt and I didn’t feel any fear. Certainly I didn’t feel any horror.

That came later.

That came when I parked in the deepening shadows on the side of the darkened restaurant and went up to the door. This was it. If something had gone wrong—

But nothing could go wrong. I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath, then rattled the doorknob. That was the signal; she’d be waiting to hear me.

Nothing happened. A few flies buzzed against the glass awaiting entry. I rattled the door again softly. It was locked.

Then the figure emerged from the back room.

I recognized Rudolph.

He moved briskly; there was no shuffle in his gait and no stagger either. His face was gray and puffy, but his red-rimmed eyes weren’t blinking. He stooped and unlocked the door, motioning for me to come inside.

“Good afternoon,” I said. There was nothing else I could say, not yet, not until I knew what had happened.

He nodded, moving behind me to lock the door again. I could hear the click of the key and I didn’t bother to look around.

That’s when the horror came.

Horror is something cold and sharp, biting against the back of your neck.

“Let’s go into the other room,” Rudolph said. “Rosie has something to say to you.”

“What have you done to her?”

“Nothing. She just wants to talk to you. You’ll see.”

We went down the aisle past the counter, the flies buzzing in our wake. Then we were in the back room and they were all waiting for me there—George and Gracie, Frank Tinney, Lou Holtz. They were all staring, as I stared, at the open torn heap. For a moment, in the dim light, I thought it was Rosie lying there.

But no, Rosie was sitting on the sofa and she was looking at the suitcase too. She didn’t say a word when I came in because there was nothing to say now.

I could feel Rudolph’s breath on my neck, right behind me. And I could feel the coldness, too, the sharpness, the horror. All at once it went away. I heard the knife clatter to the floor.

“You can thank her for that,” Rudolph murmured. “I could have killed you, you know. I wanted to kill you. But she talked me out of it. And now she has something to say to you. Go ahead, Rosie, tell him.”

He left me standing there in the doorway and walked over to where Rosie was sitting. He slid down on the sofa beside her and put his arm around her, smiling. Rosie looked up then, but she didn’t smile.

The shadows crept across the walls, across the faces of Williams and Bernie and Jolson, across his face and hers. But I wasn’t watching the shadows. I was listening to the girl.

“You see how it happened,” she murmured. “He walked in while I was packing. He found out.”

“All right,” I said. “So he found out. I wanted to tell him in the first place. And that he knows, he can let us go.”

I was already moving before I finished my last sentence, crossing the room in two strides and scooping up the big, broad-bladed butcher knife from the floor.

“Look,” I said. “I’ve got the knife now. He can’t hurt us and he’d better not try. We can walk out of here whenever we please.”

She sat there, turning her head to stare at the knife. And he stared, too, tightened his arm around her and stared and smiled while she said, “No. I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going with you.”

“But I don’t understand—”

“We talked it all over before you came. I can’t go. He needs me so. It’s right that I should stay. I belong with him. Can’t you see that?”

I shook my head. There was something wrong with her words, something wrong with the way she stared and he smiled. And all at once it came to me as I looked into his fat face off in the shadows. “Maybe I can see,” I said. “Rudolph the Great. You were a hypnotist, weren’t you? That’s the answer, isn’t it? You’ve hypnotized her, that’s what you’ve done—”

He started to laugh.

“You’re wrong, mister,” he said. “Tell him how wrong he is. darling.”

And then she was laughing, too, in a high, hysterical titter. But there was no laughter in her face, and her words, when they came, were soft and somber.

“He’s no hypnotist. I know what I’m doing, believe me. I’m telling you to get out. Just get out, do you hear me? Go away and don’t come back. I don’t want to go to the Coast with you. I don’t want you pawing me in some dirty cabin. I know what you are. You’re a—”

She began to curse me then; the filth and the foulness poured out of her mouth and she bobbed her head at me in rage, while he just sat there and smiled.

Finally she was finished. “All right,” he said. “Have you heard enough?”

“I’ve heard enough,” I said. “I’ll go.” And I dropped the knife again. It rolled across the floor, and a thin ray of light from the dying sunset streaked the dulled and darkened blade.

I turned to go, and neither of them rose. They just sat there, arms entwined, and stared at me. The shadows blotted out their faces, then pursued me all the way down the hall.

The car stood waiting for me in the twilight. I climbed in, switched on the ignition, pulled away. I must have gone two or three miles before I remembered to turn on my lights. I was in a daze. There was nothing but the shadows, the strange shadows. Shadows in the room, on their faces, on the dulled and darkened knife. The dulled and darkened knife . . .

Then it hit me, and I speeded up. I found a phone just ahead in a filling station outside Pono and put in my call.

The state troopers arrived in fifteen minutes, and I told my story as we roared back to the restaurant in their patrol car.

“He must have done something to her,” I said. “That knife blade was dark with dried blood.”

“We’ll see,” the sergeant told me.

But at first we didn’t see, because Rudolph must have heard us coming, and that’s when he used the knife on himself. We found it sticking out of his chest there on the floor in the back room, and he was quite dead.

Rosie still sat there on the sofa, staring at us. It was the sergeant who discovered she’d been strangled.

“Must have happened a couple of hours ago,” he told me. “The body’s getting stiff.”

“Strangled? A couple of hours? But I was just here. We were talking—”

“See for yourself.”

I walked over and touched her shoulder. She was stiff and cold and there were purple marks on her neck. Suddenly she toppled forward, and that’s when I saw how the knife had been used—saw the huge, foot-long gash extending from the back of her neck down across the shoulders. The wound was incredibly deep; I couldn’t understand why. Not even when the sergeant called my attention to the blood on Rudolph’s right hand.

It wasn’t until I saw the press books that I really knew. Yes, we found his press books, and I finally saw them there at the last, finally found out what must have happened in his dark room, in his dark mind, when he walked in and discovered her getting ready to leave.

That’s when he’d strangled her, of course, strangled her to death in a crazy rage. But he was sane enough to realize I’d be coming by to get her and that he’d have to find a way to get rid of me.

So he used the knife then and cut the hole, cut it wide and deep. Wide and deep enough so that she could bow and nod and turn her head when he had his hand behind her. Of course I’d heard her talking to me, but the press books explained all that.

He wasn’t lying about his notices; they were raves.

And he wasn’t lying about hypnotism either. Rudolph the Great hadn’t been a hypnotist. He was just one of the best damned ventriloquists in the business.

Life in Our Time

When Harry’s time capsule arrived, Jill made him put it in the guest house.

All it was, it turned out, was a big long metal box with a cover that could be sealed tight and welded so that the air couldn’t get at what was inside. Jill was really quite disappointed with it.

But then she was quite disappointed with Harry, too. Professor Harrison Cramer, B.A., B.S., M.A., Ph.D. Half the alphabet was wasted on nothing. At those flaky faculty cocktail parties, people were always telling her, “It must be wonderful to be married to a brilliant man like your husband.” Brother, if they only knew!

It wasn’t just that Harry was fifteen years older than she was. After all, look at Rex Harrison and Richard Burton or even Larry Olivier for that matter. But Harry wasn’t the movie-star type. Not even the mad-scientist type, like Vinnie Price in those crazy high-camp pictures. He was nothing.

Of course Jill got the message long before she married him. But he did have the big house and all that loot he’d inherited from his mother. She figured on making a few changes, and she actually did manage to redo the house so that it looked halfway presentable, with the help of that fagilleh interior decorator. But she couldn’t redo Harry. Maybe he needed a fagilleh interior decorator to work on him, too; she certainly couldn’t change him. And outside of what she managed to squeeze out of him for the redecorating, Jill hadn’t been able to get her hands on any of the loot, either. Harry wasn’t interested in entertaining or going out or taking cruises, and whenever she mentioned sable jackets he mumbled something under his breath about “conspicuous consumption,” whatever that was. He didn’t like art or the theatre, he didn’t drink, he didn’t even watch TV. And he wore flannel pajamas in bed. All the time.

After a couple of months Jill was ready to climb the walls. Then she began thinking about Reno, and that’s where Rick came in. Rick was her attorney. At least, that’s the way it started out to be, but he had other ideas. Particularly for those long afternoons when Harry was lecturing at seminars or whatever he did over there at the University. Pretty soon Jill forgot about Reno; Rick was all for one of those quickie deals you get down in Mexico. He was sure he could make it stick and still see to it that she got her fifty-fifty share under the community property laws, without any waiting. It could all be done in twenty-four hours, no hassle; they’d take off together, just like eloping. Bang, you’re divorced, bang, you’re remarried, and then, bang, bang, bang—

So all Jill had to worry about was finding the right time. And even that was no problem, after Harry told her about the capsule.

“I’m to be in charge of the project,” he said. “Full authority to choose what will be representative of our culture. Quite a responsibility. But I welcome the challenge.”

“So what’s a time capsule?” Jill wanted to know.

Harry went into a long routine and she didn’t really listen, just enough to get the general idea. The thing was, Harry had to pick out all kinds of junk to be sealed up in this gizmo so that sometime—ten thousand years from now, maybe—somebody would come along and dig it up and open it and be able to tell what kind of a civilization we had. Big deal. But from the way Harry went on, you’d think he’d just won the Grand Prix or something.

“We’re going to put the capsule in the foundation of the new Humanities Building.” he told her.

“What are humanities?” Jill asked, but Harry just gave her one of those Christ-how-can-you-be-so-stupid? looks that always seemed to start their quarrels, and they would have had a fight then and there, too, only he added something about how the dedication ceremonies for the new building would take place on May 1st, and he’d have to hurry to get everything arranged for the big day. Including writing his dedicatory address.

May 1st was all Jill need to hear. That was on a Friday, and if Harry was going to be tied up making a speech at the dedication, it would be an A-OK time to make a little flight across the border. So she managed to call Rick and tell him and he said yeah, sure, perfect.

“It’s only ten days from now,” Jill reminded him. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

She didn’t know it, but it turned out she wasn’t kidding. She had more to do than she thought, because all at once Harry was interested in her. Really interested.

“You’ve got to help me,” he said that night at dinner. “I rely on your taste. Of course I’ve got some choices of my own in mind, but I want you to suggest items to go into the capsule.”

At first Jill thought he was putting her on, but he really meant it. “This project is going to be honest. The usual ploy is pure exhibitionism—samples of the ‘best’ of everything, plus descriptive data which is really just a pat on the back for the status quo. Well, I want to include material that’s self-explanatory, not self-congratulatory. Not art and facts—just artifacts.”

Harry lost her there, until he said, “Everything preserved will be a clue to our social attitudes. Not what we pretend to admire, but what the majority actually believes in and enjoys. And that’s where you come in, my dear. You’re the majority.”

Jill began to dig it, then. “You mean like TV and records?”

“Exactly. What’s that album you like so well? The one with the four hermaphrodites on the liner?”

“Who?”

“Excuse me—it’s purportedly a singing group, isn’t it?”

“Oh, you’re talking about the Poodles!” Jill went and got the album, which was called The Poodles Bark Again. The sound really turned her on, but she always thought Harry hated it. And now he was coming on smiles.

“Great,” he said. “This definitely goes in.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll buy you another.” He took the album and put it on his desk. “Now, you mentioned something about television. What’s your favorite program?”

When she saw he was really serious she began telling him about Anywhere, U.S.A. What it was, it was about life in a small town, just an ordinary suburblike, but the people were great. There was this one couple with the two kids, sort of an average family, you might say, only he was kind of playing around with a divorcée who ran a discothetique or whatever they call them, and she was getting the hots for a psychiatrist—he wasn’t really her psychiatrist, he was analyzing one of the kids, the one who had set fire to the high school gymnasium, not the girl—she was afraid she’d been caught because of that affair she was having with the vice-principal who was really a Commie agent only she didn’t know it yet and her real boyfriend, the one who had the brain operation, had a thing about his mother, so—

It got kind of complicated, but Harry kept asking her to tell him more and pretty soon he was nodding. “Wonderful—we’ll have to see if we can get kinescopes on a week’s episodes.”

“You mean you really want something like that?”

“Of course. Wouldn’t you say this show captured the lives of typical American citizens today?”

She had to agree that he was right. Also about some of the things he was going to put into the capsule to show the way people lived nowadays—like tranquilizers and pep pills and income tax forms and a map of the freeway-expressway-turnpike system. He had a lot of numbers, too, for Zip Code and digit-dialing, and Social Security, and the ones the computers punched out on insurance and charge-account and utility bills.

But what he really wanted was ideas for more stuff, and in the next couple of days he kept leaning on her. He got hold of her souvenir from Shady Lawn Cemetery—it was a plastic walnut that opened up, called “Shady Lawn in a Nutshell.” Inside were twelve little color prints showing all the tourist attractions of the place, and you could mail the whole thing to your friends back home. Harry put this in the time capsule, wrapping it up in something he told her was an actuarial table on the incidence of coronary occlusion among middle-aged, middle-class males. Like heart attacks, that is.

“What’s that you’re reading?” he asked. And the next thing you know, he had her copy of the latest Steve Slash paperback—the one where Steve is sent on this top-secret mission to keep peace in Port Said, and right after he kills these five guys with the portable flamethrower concealed in his judo belt, he’s getting ready to play beddy-bye with Yasmina, who’s really another secret agent with radioactive nipples—

And that’s as far as she’d got when he grabbed the book. It was getting so she couldn’t keep anything out of his hot little hands.

“What’s that you’re cooking?” he wanted to know. And there went the TV dinner—frozen crêpes suzettes and all. To say nothing of the Plain Jane Instant Borscht.

“Where’s the photo you had of your brother?” It was a real nothing picture of Stud, just him wearing that way-out beard of his and standing by his cycle on the day he passed his initiation into Hell’s Angels. But Harry put that in, too. Jill didn’t think it was very nice, seeing as how he clipped it to another photo of some guys taking the Ku Klux Klan oath.

But right now the main thing was to keep him happy. That’s what Rick said when she clued him in on what was going on.

“Cooperate, baby,” he told her. “It’s a real kinky kick, but it keeps him out of our hair. We got plans to make, tickets to buy, packing and like that there.”

The trouble was, Jill ran out of ideas. She explained this to Rick but he laughed.

“I’ll give you some,” he said. “And you can feed ’em to him. He’s a real s.a., that husband of yours—I know what he wants.”

The funny part of it was that Rick did know. He was really kind of a brain himself, but not in a kooky way like Harry. So she listened to what he suggested and told Harry when she got home.

“How about a sample of the Theatre of the Absurd?” she asked. Harry looked at her over the top of his glasses, and for a minute she thought she’d really thrown him, but then he grinned and got excited.

“Perfect!” he said. “Any suggestions?”

“Well, I was reading a review about this new play, Little Irma—it’s about this guy who thinks he’s having a baby so he goes to an abortionist, only really I guess the abortionist is supposed to be God or somebody, even if he is a black, and it all takes place in a pay toilet—”

“Delightful!” Harry was off and running. “I’ll pick up a copy. Anything else?”

Thank God Rick had clued her in. So she said what about a recording of one of these concerts where they used a “prepared” piano that makes noises like screeching brakes, or sometimes no sound at all. And he liked that. He also liked the idea about a sample of Pop Art—maybe a big blowup of a newspaper Piles—Don’t Be Cut ad.

The next day she laid it on him about a tape of a “Happening” which was the real thing, because it took place in some private sanatorium for disturbed patients, and he really got hung up on this idea.

And the next day he asked for a suggestion for a movie, so she remembered what Rick coached her on about 7¼, which was a way-out thing by some Yugoslavian director she never heard of, about a man making a movie about a man making a movie, only you never could be quite sure, in the movie, whether the scene was supposed to be a movie of a part of a movie or a movie of a part of what was really happening, if it happened.

He bought this. too.

“You’re wonderful,” he said. “Truthfully, I never expected this of you.”

Jill just gave him the big smile and went on her merry way. It wasn’t hard, because he had to go running around town trying to dig up tapes and films and recordings of all the stuff he had on his list. Which was just how Rick had said it would be, leaving everything clear for them to shop and set up their last-minute plans.

“I won’t get our tickets until the day before,” Rick told her. “We don’t want to tip anything. The way I figure it, Harry’ll be moving the capsule over to where they’re holding the ceremonies the next morning, so you’ll get a chance to pack while he’s out of the way.” Rick was really something else, the way he had it all lined out.

And that’s the way it worked. The day before the ceremony, Harry was busy out in the guest house all afternoon long, packing his goodies into the time capsule. Just like a dopey squirrel burying his nuts. Only even dopey squirrels don’t put stuff away for somebody to dig up ten thousand years from now.

Harry hadn’t even had time to look at her for the past two days, and this didn’t bother Jill any. Along about suppertime she went out to call him, but he said he wasn’t hungry and besides he had to run over and contact the trucking company to come and haul the capsule over to the foundation site. They’d dug a big hole there for tomorrow morning, and he was going to take the capsule to it and stand guard over it until it was time for the dedication routine.

That was even better news than Jill could hope for, so as soon as Harry left for the trucking company she phoned Rick and gave him the word. He said he’d be right over with the tickets.

So of course Jill had to get dressed. She put on her girdle and the bra with the built-in falsies and her high heels; then she went in the bathroom and used her depilatory and touched up her hair where the rinse was fading, and put on her eyelashes and brushed her teeth, including all the caps, and tried those new fingernails after she got her makeup on and the perfume. When she looked at the results in the mirror she was really proud; for the first time in months she felt like her real self again. And from now on it would always be this way, with Rick—no more pretending, nothing phony.

There was a good moment with Rick there in the bedroom after he came in, but of course Harry would drive up right then—she heard the car out front and broke the clinch just in time, telling Rick to sneak out around the back. Harry’d be busy with the truckers for a couple of minutes at least.

Jill forced herself to wait in the bedroom until she was sure the coast was clear. She kept looking out the window but it was too dark now to see anything. Since there wasn’t any noise she figured Harry must have taken the truckers back into the guest house.

And that’s where she finally went.

Only the truckers weren’t there. Just Harry.

“I told them to wait until first thing in the morning,” he said. “Changed my mind when I realized how damp it was—no sense spending the night shivering outside in the cold. Besides, I haven’t sealed the capsule yet—remembered a couple of things I wanted to add to the collection.”

He took a little bottle out of his pocket and carried it over to the open capsule. “This goes in too. Carefully labeled, of course, so they can analyze it.”

“The bottle’s empty,” Jill said.

Harry shook his head. “Not at all. It contains smog. That’s right—smog, from the freeway. I want posterity to know everything about us, right down to the poisonous atmosphere in which our culture breathed its last.”

He dropped the bottle into the capsule, then picked something else up from the table next to it. Jill noticed he had a soldering outfit there, ready to plug in when he sealed the lid, after he used a pump to suck the air out. He’d explained all this about the capsule being airtight, soundproof, duralumin-sheathed, but that didn’t interest her now. She kept looking at what he held in his hand.

It was one of those electric knife outfits, with the battery.

“Another artifact,” he said. “Another symbol of our decadence. An electric knife—just the thing for Mom when she carves the fast-frozen, precooked Thanksgiving turkey while she and Dad count all their shiny, synthetic, plastic blessings.” He waved the knife. “They’ll understand,” he told her. “Those people in the future will understand it all. They’ll know what life was like in our times—how we drained Walden Pond and refilled it again with blood, sweat and tears.”

Jill moved a little closer, staring at the knife. “The blade’s rusty,” she said.

Harry shook his head. “That’s not rust,” he said.

Jill kept her cool. She kept it right up until the moment she looked over the edge of the big, oblong box, looked down into the opening and saw Rick lying there. Rick was all sprawled out, and the red was oozing down over the books and records and pictures and tapes.

“I waited for him when he sneaked out of the house,” Harry said.

“Then you knew—all along—”

“For quite a while,” Harry said. “Long enough to figure things out and make my plans.”

“What plans?”

Harry just shrugged. And raised the knife.

A moment later the time capsule received the final specimen of life in the twentieth century.

Underground

All day long he rested, while the guns thundered in the village below. Then, in the slanting shadows of the late afternoon, the rumbling echoes faded into the distance and he knew it was over. The American advance had crossed the river. They were gone at last, and it was safe once more.

Above the village, in the crumbling ruins of the great chateau atop the wooded hillside, Count Barsac emerged from the crypt.

The Count was tall and thin—cadaverously thin, in a manner most hideously appropriate. His face and hands had a waxen pallor; his hair was dark, but not as dark as his eyes and the hollows beneath them. His cloak was black, and the sole touch of color about his person was the vivid redness of his lips when they curled in a smile.

He was smiling now, in the twilight, for it was time to play the game.

The name of the game was Death, and the Count had played it many times.

He had played it in Paris, on the stage of the grand Guignol; his name had been plain Eric Karon then, but still he’d won a certain renown for his interpretation of bizarre roles. Then the war had come, and with it, his opportunity.

Long before the Germans took Paris, he’d joined their Underground, working long and well. As an actor, he’d been invaluable.

And this, of course, was his ultimate reward. To play the supreme role—not on the stage, but in real life. To play without the artifice of spotlights, in true darkness; this was the actor’s dream come true. He had even helped to fashion the plot.

“Simplicity itself,” he told his superiors. “Chateau Barsac has been deserted since the Revolution. None of the peasants from the village dare to venture near it, even in daylight, because of the legend. It is said, you see, that the last Count Barsac was a vampire.”

And so it was arranged. The shortwave transmitter had been set up in the crypts beneath the chateau, with three skilled operators in attendance, working in shifts. And he, Count Barsac, in charge of the entire operation, as guardian angel. Or guardian demon.

“There is a graveyard on the hillside below,” he informed them. “A humble resting place for poor and ignorant people. It contains a single imposing crypt—the ancestral tomb of the Barsacs. We shall open that crypt, remove the remains of the last Count, and allow the villagers to discover that the coffin is empty. They will never venture near the spot or the chateau again, because this will prove that the legend is true—Count Barsac is a vampire, and walks once more.”

The question came then. “What if there are skeptics? What if someone does not believe?”

And he had his answer ready. “They will believe. For at night, I shall walk. I, Count Barsac.”

After they saw him in the makeup, wearing the cloak, there were no more questions. The role was his.

The role was his, and he’d played it well. The Count nodded to himself as he climbed the stairs and entered the roofless foyer of the chateau, where only a configuration of cobwebs veiled the radiance of the rising moon.

Now, of course, the curtain must come down. If the American advance had swept past the village below, it was time to take one’s bow and exit. And that too had been well arranged.

During the German withdrawal, another advantageous use had been made of the tomb in the graveyard. A cache of Air Marshall Goering’s art treasures now rested safely and undisturbed within the crypt. A lorry had been placed in the chateau. Even now, the three wireless operators would be playing new parts—driving the lorry down the hillside to the tomb, placing the artwork and artifacts in it. By the time he arrived there, everything would be packed. And they would don the stolen American Army uniforms, carry the forged identifications and permits, drive through the lines across the river and rejoin the German forces at a predesignated spot. Nothing had been left to chance. Someday, when he wrote his memoirs—

But there was no time to consider that now. The Count glanced up through the gaping aperture in the ruined roof. The moon was high. Time to leave.

In a way he hated to go. Where others saw only dust and cobwebs, he could see a stage—the setting of his finest performance. Playing a vampire’s role had not addicted him to the taste of blood—but as an actor, he enjoyed the taste of triumph. And he had triumphed here.

“Parting is such a sweet sorrow.” Shakespeare’s line. Shakespeare, who had written of ghosts and witches, of bloody apparitions. Because he knew that his audiences, the stupid masses, believed in such things. Just as they still believed, today. A great actor could always make them believe.

The Count moved into the shadowy darkness outside the chateau entrance. He started down the pathway toward the beckoning trees.

It was here, amidst those trees, that he had come upon Raymond, one evening weeks ago. Raymond had been his most appreciative audience; a stern, dignified, white-haired elderly man, mayor of the village of Barsac. But there’d been nothing dignified about the old fool when he’d caught sight of the Count looming up before him out of the night. He’d screamed like a woman and run.

Probably he’d been prowling around, intent on poaching; all that had been forgotten after his encounter in the woods. Raymond was the one to thank for spreading the rumors that the Count was again abroad. He and Clodez, the oafish miller, had then led an armed band to the graveyard and entered the Barsac tomb. What a fright they got when they discovered the Count’s coffin open and empty!

The coffin had contained only dust, and it was scattered to the winds now, but they could not know that. Nor could they know about what had happened to Suzanne.

The Count was passing the banks of the small stream now. Here, on another evening, he’d found the girl—Raymond’s daughter, as luck would have it—in an embrace with young Antoine LeFevre, her lover. Antoine’s shattered leg had invalided him out of the army, but he ran like a deer when he glimpsed the grinning Count. Suzanne had been left behind and that was unfortunate, because it was necessary to dispose of her. The body had been buried in the woods, beneath great stones, and there was no question of discovery; still, it was a regrettable incident.

In the end, however, everything was for the best. Because now silly superstitious Raymond was doubly convinced that the vampire walked. He had seen the creature himself, seen the empty tomb and the open coffin; his own daughter had disappeared. At his command, none dared venture near the graveyard, the woods, or the chateau beyond.

Poor Raymond! Now he was not even a mayor any more—his village had been destroyed in the bombardment. Just an ignorant, broken old man, mumbling his idiotic nonsense about the living dead.

The Count smiled and walked on, his cloak fluttering in the breeze, casting a batlike shadow on the pathway before him. He could see the graveyard now, the tilted tombstones rising from the earth like leprous fingers rotting in the moonlight. His smile faded; he did not like such thoughts. Perhaps the greatest tribute to his talent as an actor lay in his actual aversion to death, to darkness and what lurked in the night. He hated the sight of blood, realized that within himself was an almost claustrophobic dread of the confinement of the crypt.

Yes, it had been a great role, but he was thankful it was ending. It would be good to play the man once more, and cast off the creature he had created.

As he approached the crypt he saw the lorry waiting in the shadows. The entrance to the tomb was open, but no sounds issued from it. That meant his colleagues had completed their task of loading. They were ready to go. All that remained now was to change his clothing, remove the makeup, and depart.

The Count moved to the darkened lorry. And then—

Then they were upon him, and he felt the tines of the pitchfork bite into his back, and as the lantern-flash dazzled his eyes he heard the stern command. “Don’t move—”

He didn’t move. He could only stare as they surrounded him; Antoine, Clodez, Raymond and the others, a dozen peasants from the village. A dozen armed peasants, glaring at him in mingled rage and fear, holding him at bay.

But how could they dare—?

The American Corporal stepped forward. That was the answer, of course. The American Corporal and another man in uniform, armed with a sniper’s rifle. They were responsible. He didn’t even have to see the riddled corpses of his three assistants piled in the back of the lorry to understand what had happened. They’d stumbled on his men while they worked, shot them down, and summoned the villagers.

Now they were jabbering questions at him, in English, of course. He understood English, but he knew better than to reply. “Who are you? Were these men working under your orders? Where were you going with this truck—?”

The Count smiled and shook his head. After a while they stopped, as he knew they would.

The Corporal turned to his companion. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” The other man nodded and climbed into the cab of the lorry as the motor coughed into life. The Corporal moved to join him, then turned to Raymond.

“We’re taking this across the river,” he said. “Hang onto our friend, here—they’ll be sending a guard detail for him within an hour.”

Raymond nodded.

Then the lorry drove off into the darkness.

And it was dark now; the moon had vanished behind a cloud. The Count’s smile vanished, too, as he glanced around him at his captors. A dozen stupid clods, surly and ignorant. But armed. No chance of escaping. And they kept staring at him, and mumbling.

“Take him into the tomb.”

It was Raymond who said that, and they obeyed, probbing their captive forward with pitchforks. That was when the Count recognized the first faint ray of hope. For they prodded him most gingerly, no man venturing close, and when he glared at them their eyes dropped. They were putting him in the crypt because they were afraid of him. Now that the Americans were gone, they feared once more; feared his presence and his power. After all, in their eyes he was a vampire—he might turn into a bat and vanish entirely. So they wanted him in the tomb for safekeeping.

The Count shrugged, smiled his sinister smile, and bared his teeth. They shrank back as he entered the doorway. He turned, and on impulse, furled his cape. It was an instinctive final gesture, in keeping with his role—and it provoked the appropriate response. They moaned, and old Raymond crossed himself. It was better, in a way, than any applause.

In the darkness of the crypt, the Count permitted himself to relax a trifle. He was offstage now, and for the last time. A pity he’d not been able to make his exit the way he’d planned, but such were the fortunes of war. Now he’d be taken to the American headquarters and interrogated. Undoubtedly there would be some unpleasant moments, but the worst that could befall him was a few months in a prison camp. And even the Americans must bow to him in appreciation when they heard the story of his masterful deception.

It was dark in the crypt, and musty. The Count moved about restlessly. His knee grazed the edge of the empty coffin set on a trestle in the tomb. He shuddered involuntarily, loosening his cape at the throat. It would be good to remove it, good to be out of here, good to shed the role of vampire forever. He’d played it well, but now he was anxious to be gone.

There was a mumbling audible from without, mingled with another and less identifiable noise—a scraping sound. The Count moved to the closed door of the crypt, listening intently, but now there was only silence.

What were the fools doing out there? He wished the Americans would hurry back. It was too hot in here. And why the sudden silence?

Perhaps they’d gone.

Yes. That was it. The Americans had told them to wait and guard him, but they were afraid. They really believed he was a vampire, old Raymond had convinced them of that. So they’d run off. They’d run off, and he was free, he could escape now—

So the Count opened the door.

And he saw them then, saw them standing and waiting, old Raymond staring sternly for a moment before he moved forward. He was holding something in his hand, and the Count recognized it, remembering the scraping sound he’d heard.

It was a long wooden stake with a sharp point.

Then he opened his mouth to scream, telling them it was only a trick, he was no vampire, they were a pack of superstitious fools—

But all the while they bore him back into the crypt, lifting him up and thrusting him into the open coffin, holding him there as the grim-faced Raymond raised the pointed stake above his heart.

It was only when the stake came down that he realized there’s such a thing as playing a role too well . . .

A Case of the Stubborns

The morning after he died, Grandpa come downstairs for breakfast.

It kind of took us by surprise.

Ma looked at Pa, Pa looked at little sister Susie, and Susie looked at me. Then we all just set there looking at Grandpa.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Why you all staring at me like that?”

Nobody said, but I knowed the reason. Only been last night since all of us stood by his bedside when he was took by his attack and passed away right in front of our very eyes. But here he was, up and dressed and feisty as ever.

“What’s for breakfast?” he said.

Ma sort of gulped. “Don’t tell me you fixing to eat?”

“Course I am. I’m nigh starved.”

Ma looked at Pa, but he just rolled his eyes. Then she went and hefted the skillet from the stove and dumped some eggs on a plate.

“That’s more like it,” Grandpa told her. “But don’t I smell sausages?”

Ma got Grandpa some sausage. The way he dug into it, they sure was nothing wrong with his appetite.

After he started on seconds, Grandpa took heed of us staring at him again.

“How come nobody else is eating?” he asked.

“We ain’t hungry,” Pa said. And that was the gospel truth.

“Man’s got to eat to keep up his strenth,” Grandpa told him. “Which reminds me—ain’t you gonna be late at the mill?”

“Don’t figure on working today,” Pa said.

Grandpa squinted at him. “You all fancied up this morning. Shave and a shirt, just like Sunday. You expecting company?”

Ma was looking out the kitchen window, and she give Grandpa a nod. “Yes indeedy. Here he comes now.”

Sure enough, we could see ol’ Bixbee hotfooting up the walk.

Ma went through the parlor to the front door—meaning to head him off, I reckon—but he fooled her and came around the back way. Pa got to the kitchen door too late, on account of Bixbee already had it and his mouth open at the same time.

“Morning, Jethro,” he said, in that treacle-and-molasses voice of his. “And a sad grievous morning it is, too! I purely hate disturbing you so early on this sorrowful occasion, but it looks like today’s another scorcher.” He pulled out a tape-measure. “Best if I got the measurements so’s to get on with the arrangements. Heat like this, the sooner we get everything boxed and squared away the better, if you take my meaning—”

“Sorry,” said Pa, blocking the doorway so ol’ Bixbee couldn’t peek inside. “Needs be you come back later.”

“How much later?”

“Can’t say for sure. We ain’t rightly made up our minds as yet.”

“Well, don’t dilly-dally too long,” Bixbee said. “I’m liable to run short of ice.”

Then Pa shut the door on him and he took off. When Ma come back from the parlor. Pa made a sign for her to keep her gap shut, but of course that didn’t stop Grandpa.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“Purely a social call.”

“Since when?” Grandpa looked suspicious. “Ol’ Bixbee ain’t nobody’s friend—him with his high-toned airs! Calls hisself a Southern planter. Shucks, he ain’t nothing but an undertaker.”

“That’s right, Grandpa,” said sister Susie. “He come to fit you for your coffin.”

“Coffin?” Grandpa reared up in his seat like a hog caught in a bobwire fence. “What in bo-diddley blazes do I need with a coffin?”

“Because you’re dead.”

Just like that she come out with it. Ma and Pa was both ready to take after her but Grandpa laughed fit to bust.

“Holy hen-tracks, child—what on earth give you an idee like that?”

Pa moved in on Susie, taking off his belt, but Ma shook her head. Then she nodded to Grandpa.

“It’s true. You passed on last night. Don’t you recollect?”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with my memory,” Grandpa told her. “I had me one of my spells, is all.”

Ma fetched a sigh. “Wasn’t just no spell this time.”

“A fit, mebbe?”

“More’n that. You was took so bad, Pa had to drag Doc Snodgrass out of his office—busted up the game right in the middle of a three-dollar pot. Didn’t do no good, though. By the time he got here you was gone.”

“But I ain’t gone! I’m here.”

Pa spoke up. “Now don’t git up on your high horse, Grandpa. We all saw you. We’re witnesses.”

“Witnesses?” Grandpa hiked his galluses like he always did when he got riled. “What kind of talk is that? You aim to hold a jury-trial to decide if I’m alive or dead?”

“But Grandpa—”

“Save your sass, sonny.” Grandpa stood up. “Ain’t nobody got a right to put me six feet under ’thout my say-so.”

“Where you off to?” Ma asked.

“Where I go evvy morning,” Grandpa said. “Gonna set on the front porch and watch the sights.”

Durned if he didn’t do just that, leaving us behind in the kitchen.

“Wouldn’t that frost you?” Ma said. She crooked a finger at the stove. “Here I went and pulled up half the greens in the garden, just planning my spread for after the funeral. I already told folks we’d be serving possum-stew. What will the neighbors think?”

“Don’t you go fret now,” Pa said. “Mebbe he ain’t dead after all.”

Ma made a face. “We know different. He’s just being persnickety.” She nudged at Pa. “Only one thing to do. You go fetch Doc Snodgrass. Tell him he’d best sashay over here right quick and settle this matter once and for all.”

“Reckon so,” Pa said, and went out the back way. Ma looked at me and sister Susie.

“You kids go out on the porch and keep Grandpa company. See that he stays put ’til the Doc gets here.”

“Yessum,” said Susie, and we traipsed out of there.

Sure enough, Grandpa set in his rocker, big as life, squinting at cars over the road and watching the drivers cuss when they tried to steer around our hogs.

“Lookee here!” he said, pointing. “See that fat feller in the Hupmobile? He came barreling down the road like a bat outta hell—must of been doing thirty mile an hour. ’Fore he could stop, ol’ Bessie poked out of the weeds right in front of him and run that car clean into the ditch. I swear I never seen anything so comical in all my life!”

Susie shook her head. “But you ain’t alive, Grandpa.”

“Now don’t you start in on that again, hear!” Grandpa looked at her, disgusted, and Susie shut up.

Right then Doc Snodgrass come driving up front in his big Essex and parked alongside ol’ Bessie’s pork-butt. Doc and Pa got out and moseyed up to the porch. They was jawing away something fierce and I could see Doc shaking his head like he purely disbelieved what Pa was telling him.

Then Doc noticed Grandpa setting there, and he stopped cold in his tracks. His eyes bugged out.

“Jumping Jehosephat!” he said to Grandpa. “What you doing here?”

“What’s it look like?” Grandpa told him. “Can’t a man set on his own front porch and rockify in peace?”

“Rest in peace, that’s what you should be doing,” said Doc. “When I examined you last night you were deader’n a doornail!”

“And you were drunker’n a coot, I reckon,” Grandpa said.

Pa give Doc a nod. “What’d I tell you?”

Doc paid him no heed. He come up to Grandpa. “Mebbe I was a wee bit mistaken,” he said. “Mind if I examine you now?”

“Fire away.” Grandpa grinned. “I got all the time in the world.”

So Doc opened up his little black bag and set about his business. First off he plugged a stethyscope in his ears and tapped Grandpa’s chest. He listened, and then his hands begun to shake.

“I don’t hear nothing,” he said.

“What do you expect to hear—the Grand Ol’ Opry?”

“This here’s no time for funning,” Doc told him. “Suppose I tell you your heart’s stopped beating?”

“Suppose I tell you your stethyscope’s busted?”

Doc begun to break out in a sweat. He fetched out a mirror and held it up to Grandpa’s mouth. Then his hands got to shaking worse than ever.

“See this?” he said. “The mirror’s clear. Means you got no breath left in your body.”

Grandpa shook his head. “Try it on yourself. You got a breath on you would knock a mule over at twenty paces.”

“Mebbe this’ll change your tune.” Doc reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “See for yourself.”

“What is it?”

“Your death certificate.” Doc jabbed his finger down. “Just you read what it says on this line. ‘Cause of death—card-yak arrest.’ That’s medical for heart attack. And this here’s a legal paper. It’ll stand up in court.”

“So will I, if you want to drag the law into this,” Grandpa told him. “Be a pretty sight, too—you standing on one side with your damfool piece of paper and me standing on the other! Now, which do you think the judge is going to believe?”

Doc’s eyes bugged out again. He tried to stuff the paper into his pocket but his hands shook so bad he almost didn’t make it.

“What’s wrong with you?” Pa asked.

“I feel poorly,” Doc said. “Got to get back to my office and lie down for a spell.”

He picked up his bag and headed for his car, not looking back.

“Don’t lie down too long,” Grandpa called. “Somebody’s liable to write out a paper saying you died of a hangover.”

When lunchtime come around nobody was hungry. Nobody but Grandpa, that is.

He set down at the table and put away black-eyed peas, hominy grits, a double helping of chitlins, and two big slabs of rhubarb pie with gravy.

Ma was the kind who liked seeing folks enjoy her vittles, but she didn’t look kindly on Grandpa’s appetite. After he finished and went back on the porch she stacked the plates on the drainboard and told us kids to clean up. Then she went into the bedroom and come out with her shawl and pocketbook.

“What you all dressed up about?” Pa said.

“I’m going to church.”

“But this here’s only Thursday.”

“Can’t wait no longer,” Ma told him. “It’s been hot all forenoon and looking to get hotter. I seen you wrinkle up your nose whilst Grandpa was in here for lunch.”

Pa sort of shrugged. “Figgered the chitlins was mebbe a little bit spoiled, is all.”

“Weren’t nothing of the sort,” Ma said. “If you take my meaning.”

“What you fixing to do?”

“Only thing a body can do. I’m putting evvything in the hands of the Lord.”

And off she skedaddled, leaving sister Susie and me to scour the dishes whilst Pa went out back, looking powerful troubled. I spied him through the window, slopping the hogs, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

Susie and me, we went out to keep tabs on Grandpa.

Ma was right about the weather heating up. That porch was like a bake-oven in the devil’s own kitchen. Grandpa didn’t seem to pay it any heed, but I did. Couldn’t help but notice Grandpa was getting ripe.

“Look at them flies buzzing ’round him,” Susie said.

“Hush up, sister. Mind your manners.”

But sure enough, them old blueflies buzzed so loud we could hardly hear Grandpa speak. “Hi, young ’uns,” he said. “Come visit a spell.”

“Sun’s too hot for setting,” Susie told him.

“Not so’s I can notice.” He weren’t even working up a sweat.

“What about all them blueflies?”

“Don’t bother me none.” Big ol’ fly landed right on Grandpa’s nose and he didn’t even twitch.

Susie begun to look scared. “He’s dead for sure,” she said.

“Speak up, child,” Grandpa said. “Ain’t polite to go mumbling your elders.”

Just then he spotted Ma marching up the road. Hot as it was, she come along lickety-split, with the Reverend Peabody in tow. He was huffing and puffing, but she never slowed until they fetched up alongside the front porch.

“Howdy, Reverend,” Grandpa sung out.

Reverend Peabody blinked and opened his mouth, but no words come out.

“What’s the matter?” Grandpa said. “Cat got your tongue?”

The Reverend got a kind of sick grin on his face, like a skunk eating bumblebees.

“Reckon I know how you feel,” Grandpa told him. “Sun makes a feller’s throat parch up.” He looked at Ma. “Addie, whyn’t you go fetch the Reverend a little refreshment?”

Ma went in the house.

“Well now, Rev,” said Grandpa. “Rest your britches and be sociable.”

The Reverend swallowed hard. “This here’s not exactly a social call.”

“Then what you come dragging all the way over here for?”

The Reverend swallowed again. “After what Addie and Doc told me, I just had to see for myself.” He looked at the flies buzzing around Grandpa. “Now I wish I’d just took their word on it.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning a man in your condition’s got no right to be asking questions. When the good Lord calls, you’re supposed to answer.”

“I ain’t heard nobody calling,” Grandpa said. “Course my hearing’s not what it used to be.”

“So Doc says. That’s why you don’t notice your heart’s not beating.”

“Onny natural for it to slow down a piece. I’m pushing ninety.”

“Did you ever stop to think that ninety might be pushing back? You lived a mighty long stretch, Grandpa. Don’t you reckon mebbe it’s time to lie down and call it quits? Remember what the Good Book says—the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”

Grandpa got that feisty look on his face. “Well, he ain’t gonna taketh away me.”

Reverend Peabody dug into his jeans for a bandana and wiped his forehead. “You got no cause to fear. It’s a mighty rewarding experience. No more sorrow, no more care, all your burdens laid to rest. Not to mention getting out of this hot sun.”

“Can’t hardly feel it.” Grandpa touched his whiskers. “Can’t hardly feel anything.”

The Reverend give him a look. “Hands getting stiff?”

Grandpa nodded. “I’m stiff all over.”

“Just like I thought. You know what that means? Rigor mortis is setting in.”

“Ain’t never heard tell of anybody named Rigger Morris,” Grandpa said. “I got me a touch of the rheumatism, is all.”

The Reverend wiped his forehead again. “You sure want a heap of convincing,” he said. “Won’t take the word of a medical doctor, won’t take the word of the Lord. You’re the contrariest old coot I ever did see.”

“Reckon it’s my nature,” Grandpa told him. “But I ain’t unreasonable. All I’m asking for is proof. Like the feller says, I’m from Missouri. You got to show me.”

The Reverend tucked away his bandana. It was sopping wet anyhow, wouldn’t do him a lick of good. He heaved a big sigh and stared Grandpa right in the eye.

“Some things we just got to take on faith,” he said. “Like you setting here when by rights you should be six feet under the daisies. If I can believe that, why can’t you believe me? I’m telling you the mortal truth when I say you got no call to fuss. Mebbe the notion of lying in the grave don’t rightly hold much appeal for you. Well, I can go along with that. But one thing’s for sure. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust—that’s just a saying. You needn’t trouble yourself about spending eternity in the grave. Whilst your remains rest peaceful in the boneyard, your soul is on the wing. Flying straight up, yesiree, straight into the arms of the Lord! And what a great day it’s fixing to be—you free as a bird and scooting around with them heavenly hosts on high, singing the praises of the Almighty and twanging away like all git-out on your genuine eighteen carats solid golden harp—”

“I ain’t never been much for music,” Grandpa said. “And I get dizzy just standing on a ladder to shingle the privy.” He shook his head. “Tell you what—you think heaven is such a hellfired good proposition, why don’t you go there yourself?”

Just then Ma come back out. “We’re fresh out of lemonade,” she said. “All’s I could find was a jug. I know your feeling about such things, Reverend, but—”

“Praise the Lord!” The Reverend snatched the jug out of her hand, hefted it up, and took a mighty swallow.

“You’re a good woman,” he told Ma. “And I’m much beholden to you.” Then he started down the path for the road, moving fast.

“Here, now!” Ma called after him. “What you aim to do about Grandpa?”

“Have no fear,” the Reverend said. “We must put our trust now in the power of prayer.”

He disappeared down the road, stirring dust.

“Danged if he didn’t take the jug!” Grandpa mumbled. “You ask me, the onny power he trusts is in that corn-likker.”

Ma give him a look. Then she bust out crying and run into the house.

“Now, what got into her?” Grandpa said.

“Never you mind,” I told him. “Susie, you stay here and whisk those flies off Grandpa. I got things to attend to.”

And I did.

Even before I went inside I had my mind set. I couldn’t hold still to see Ma bawling that way. She was standing in the kitchen hanging on to Pa, saying, “What can we do? What can we do?”

Pa patted her shoulder. “There now, Addie, don’t you go carrying on. It can’t last forever.”

“Nor can we,” Ma said. “If Grandpa don’t come to his senses, one of these mornings we’ll go downstairs and serve up breakfast to a skeleton. And what do you think the neighbors will say when they see a bag of bones setting out there on my nice front porch? It’s plumb embarrassing, that’s what it is!”

“Never you mind, Ma,” I said. “I got an idea.”

Ma stopped crying. “What kind of idea?”

“I’m fixing to take me a hike over to Spooky Hollow.”

“Spooky Hollow?” Ma turned so pale you couldn’t even see her freckles. “Oh, no, boy—”

“Help is where you find it,” I said. “And I reckon we got no choice.”

Pa took a deep breath. “Ain’t you afeard?”

“Not in daylight,” I told him. “Now don’t you fret. I’ll be back afore dark.”

Then I scooted out the back door.

I went over the fence and hightailed it along the back forty to the crick, stopping just long enough to dig up my piggy-bank from where it was stashed in the weeds alongside the rocks. After that I waded across the water and headed for tall timber.

Once I got into the piney woods I slowed down a smidge to get my bearings. Weren’t no path to follow, because nobody never made one. Folks tended to stay clear of there, even in daytimes—it was just too dark and too lonesome. Never saw no small critters in the brush, and even the birds kep’ shut of this place.

But I knowed where to go. All’s I had to do was top the ridge, then move straight on down. Right smack at the bottom, in the deepest, darkest, lonesomest spot of all, was Spooky Hollow.

In Spooky Hollow was the cave.

And in the cave was the Conjure Lady.

Leastwise I reckoned she was there. But when I come tippy-toeing down to the big black hole in the rocks I didn’t see a mortal soul, just the shadows bunching up on me from all around.

It sure was spooky, and no mistake. I tried not to pay any heed to the way my feet was itching. They wanted to turn and run, but I wasn’t about to be put off.

After a bit I started to sing out. “Anybody home? You got company.”

“Who?”

“It’s me—Jody Tolliver.”

“Whoooo?”

I was wrong about the birds, because now when I looked up I could see the big screech-owl glaring at me from a branch over yonder near the cave.

And when I looked down again, there she was—the Conjure Lady, peeking out at me from the hole between the rocks.

It was the first time I ever laid eyes on her, but it couldn’t be no one else. She was a teensy rail-thin chickabiddy in a linsey-woolsey dress, and the face under her poke-bonnet was black as a lump of coal.

Shucks, I says to myself, there ain’t nothing to be afeard of—she’s just a little ol’ lady, is all.

Then she stared up at me and I saw her eyes. They was lots bigger than the screech-owl’s, and twice as glarey.

My feet begun to itch something fierce, but I stared back. “Howdy, Conjure Lady,” I said.

“Whoooo?” said the screech-owl.

“It’s young Tolliver,” the Conjure Lady told him. “What’s the matter, you got wax in your ears? Now go on about your business, you hear?”

The screech-owl give her a dirty look and took off. Then the Conjure Lady come out into the open.

“Pay no heed to Ambrose,” she said. “He ain’t rightly used to company. All’s he ever sees is me and the bats.”

“What bats?”

“The bats in the cave.” The Conjure Lady smoothed down her dress. “I beg pardon for not asking you in, but the place is purely a mess. Been meaning to tidy it up, but what with one thing and another—first that dadblamed World War and then this dadgummed Prohibition—I just ain’t got round to it yet.”

“Never you mind,” I said, polite-like. “I come on business.”

“Reckoned you did.”

“Brought you a pretty, too.” I give it to her.

“What is it?”

“My piggy-bank.”

“Thank you kindly,” said the Conjure Lady.

“Go ahead, bust it open,” I told her.

She whammed it down on a rock and the piggy-bank broke, spilling out money all over the place. She scrabbled it up right quick.

“Been putting aside my cash earnings for nigh onto two years now,” I said. “How much is they?”

“Eighty-seven cents, a Confederate two-bits piece, and this here button.” She kind of grinned. “Sure is a purty one, too! What’s it say on there?”

“Keep Cool With Coolidge.”

“Well, ain’t that a caution.” The Conjure Lady slid the money into her pocket and pinned the button atop her dress. “Now, son—purty is as purty does, like the saying goes. So what can I do for you?”

“It’s about my Grandpa,” I said. “Grandpa Titus Tolliver.”

“Titus Tolliver? Why, I reckon I know him! Use to run a still up in the toolies back of the crick. Fine figure of a man with a big black beard, he is.”

“Is turns to was,” I told her. “Now he’s all dried up with the rheumatiz. Can’t rightly see too good and can’t hear for sour apples.”

“Sure is a crying shame!” the Conjure Lady said. “But sooner or later we all get to feeling poorly. And when you gotta go, you gotta go.”

“That’s the hitch of it. He won’t go.”

“Meaning he’s bound-up?”

“Meaning he’s dead.”

The Conjure Lady give me a hard look. “Do tell,” she said.

So I told. Told her the whole kit and kaboodle, right from the git-go.

She heard me out, not saying a word. And when I finished up she just stared at me until I was fixing to jump out of my skin.

“I reckon you mightn’t believe me,” I said. “But it’s the gospel truth.”

The Conjure Lady shook her head. “I believe you, son. Like I say, I knowed your Grandpappy from the long-ago. He was plumb set in his ways then, and I take it he still is. Sounds to me like he’s got a bad case of the stubborns.”

“Could be,” I said. “But there’s nary a thing we can do about it, nor the Doc or the Reverend either.”

The Conjure Lady wrinkled up her nose. “What you ’spect from them two? They don’t know grit from granola.”

“Mebbe so. But that leaves us betwixt a rock and a hard place—’less you can help.”

“Let me think on it a piece.”

The Conjure Lady pulled a corncob out of her pocket and fired up. I don’t know what brand she smoked, but it smelled something fierce. I begun to get itchy again—not just in the feet but all over. The woods was darker now, and a kind of cold wind come wailing down between the trees, making the leaves whisper to themselves.

“Got to be some way,” I said. “A charm, mebbe, or a spell.”

She shook her head. “Them’s ol’-fashioned. Now this here’s one of them newfangled mental things, so we got to use newfangled idees. Your Grandpa don’t need hex nor hoodoo. Like he says, he’s from Missouri. He got to be showed, is all.”

“Showed what?”

The Conjure Lady let out a cackle. “I got it!” She give me a wink. “Sure ’nough, the very thing! Now just you hold your water—I won’t be a moment.” And she scooted back into the cave.

I stood there, feeling the wind whooshing down the back of my neck and listening to the leaves that was like voices whispering things I didn’t want to hear too good.

Then she come out again, holding something in her hand.

“Take this,” she said.

“What is it?”

She told me what it was, and then she told me what to do with it.

“You really reckon this’ll work?”

“It’s the onny chance.”

So I stuck it in my britches’ pocket and she give me a little poke. “Now sonny, you best hurry and git home afore supper.”

Nobody had to ask me twice—not with that chill wind moaning and groaning in the trees, and the dark creeping and crawling all around me.

I give her my much-obliged and lit out, leaving the Conjure Lady standing in front of the cave. Last I saw of her she was polishing her Coolidge button with a hunk of poison oak.

Then I was tearing through the woods, up the hill to the ridge and over. By the time I got to the clearing it was pitch-dark, and when I waded the crick I could see the moonlight wiggling on the water. Hawks on the hover went flippy-flapping over the back forty but I didn’t stop to heed. I made a beeline for the fence, up and over, then into the yard and through the back door.

Ma was standing at the stove holding a pot whilst Pa ladled up the soup. They looked downright pleasured to see me.

“Thank the Lord!” Ma said. “I was just fixing to send Pa after you.”

“I come quick as I could.”

“And none too soon,” Pa told me. “We like to go clean out’n our heads, what with the ruckus and all.”

“What kind of ruckus?”

“First off, Mis Francy. Folks in town told her about Grandpa passing on, so she done the neighborly thing—mixed up a mess of stew to ease our appeytite in time of sorrow. She come lollygagging up the walk, all rigged out in her Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, toting the bowl under her arm and looking like lard wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Along about then she caught sight of Grandpa setting there on the porch, kind of smiling at her through the flies.

“Well, up went the bowl and down come the whole shebang. Looked like it was raining stew-greens all over that fancy Sears and Roebuck dress. And then she turned and headed for kingdom come, letting out a whoop that’d peel the paint off a privy wall.”

“That’s sorrowful,” I said.

“Save your grieving for worse,” Pa told me. “Next thing you know, Bixbee showed up, honking his horn. Wouldn’t come nigh Grandpa, nosiree—I had to traipse clear down to where he set in the hearse.”

“What’d he want?”

“Said he’d come for the remains. And if we didn’t cough them up right fast, he was aiming to take a trip over to the county seat first thing tomorrow morning to get hisself a injection.”

“Injunction,” Ma said, looking like she was ready to bust out with the bawls again. “Said it was a scandal and a shame to let Grandpa set around like this. What with the sun and the flies and all, he was fixing to have the Board of Health put us under quar-and-tine.”

“What did Grandpa say?” I asked.

“Nary a peep. Ol’ Bixbee gunned his hearse out of here and Grandpa kep’ right on rocking with Susie. She come in ’bout half hour ago, when the sun went down—says he’s getting stiff as a board but won’t pay it no heed. Just keeps asking what’s to eat.”

“That’s good,” I said. “On account of I got the very thing. The Conjure Lady give it to me for his supper.”

“What is it—pizen?” Pa looked worried. “You know I’m a God-fearing man and I don’t hold with such doings. ’Sides, how you ’spect to pizen him if he’s already dead?”

“Ain’t nothing of the sort,” I said. “This here’s what she sent.”

And I pulled it out of my britches pocket and showed it to them.

“Now what in the name of kingdom come is that?” Ma asked.

I told her what it was, and what to do with it.

“Ain’t never heard tell of such foolishness in all my born days!” Ma told me.

Pa looked troubled in his mind. “I knowed I shouldn’t have let you go down to Spooky Hollow. Conjure Lady must be short of her marbles, putting you up to a thing like that.”

“Reckon she knows what she’s doing,” I said. “ ’Sides, I give all my savings for this here—eighty-seven cents, a Confederate quarter, and my Coolidge button.”

“Never you mind about no Coolidge button,” Pa said. “I swiped it off’n a Yankee, anyway—one of them revenooers.” He scratched his chin. “But hard money’s something else. Mebbe we best give this notion a try.”

“Now, Pa—” Ma said.

“You got any better plan?” Pa shook his head. “Way I see it, what with the Board of Health set to come a-snapping at our heels tomorrow, we got to take a chance.”

Ma fetched a sigh that come clean up from her shoes, or would of if she’d been wearing any.

“All right, Jody,” she told me. “You just put it out like the Conjure Lady said. Pa, you go fetch Susie and Grandpa. I’m about to dish up.”

“You sure this’ll do the trick?” Pa asked, looking at what I had in my hand.

“It better,” I said. “It’s all we got.”

So Pa went out and I headed for the table, to do what the Conjure Lady had in mind.

Then Pa come back with sister Susie.

“Where’s Grandpa?” Ma asked.

“Moving slow,” Susie said. “Must be that Rigger Morris.”

“No such thing.” Grandpa come through the doorway, walking like a cockroach on a hot griddle. “I’m just a wee mite stiff.”

“Stiff as a four-by-four board.” Pa told him. “Upstairs in bed, that’s where you ought to be, with a lily in your hand.”

“Now don’t start on that again,” Grandpa said. “I told you I ain’t dead so many times I’m blue in the face.”

“You sure are,” said sister Susie. “Ain’t never seen nobody look any bluer.”

And he was that—blue and bloated, kind of—but he paid it no heed. I recollected what Ma said about mebbe having to put up with a skeleton at mealtime, and I sure yearned for the Conjure Lady’s notion to work. It plumb had to, because Grandpa was getting deader by the minute.

But you wouldn’t think so when he caught sight of the vittles on the table. He just stirred his stumps right over to his chair and plunked down.

“Well, now,” Grandpa said. “You done yourself proud tonight, Addie. This here’s my favorite—collards and catfish heads!”

He was all set to take a swipe at the platter when he up and noticed what was setting next to his plate.

“Great day in the morning!” he hollered. “What in tarnation’s this?”

“Ain’t nothing but a napkin,” I said.

“But it’s black!” Grandpa blinked. “Who ever heard tell of a black napkin?”

Pa looked at Ma. “We figger this here’s kind of a special occasion,” he said. “If you take my meaning—”

Grandpa fetched a snort. “Consarn you and your meaning! A black napkin? Never you fear, I know what you’re hinting around at, but it ain’t a-gonna work—nosiree, bub!”

And he filled his plate and dug in.

The rest of us just set there staring, first at Grandpa, then at each other.

“What’d I tell you?” Pa said to me, disgusted-like.

I shook my head. “Wait a spell.”

“Better grab whilst you can git,” Grandpa said. “I aim to eat me up a storm.”

And he did. His arms was stiff and his fingers scarce had enough curl left to hold a fork and his jaw-muscles worked extra hard—but he went right on eating. And talking.

“Dead, am I? Ain’t never seen the day a body’d say a thing like that to me before, let alone kinfolk! Now could be I’m tolerable stubborn, but that don’t signify I’m mean. I ain’t about to make trouble for anyone, least of all my own flesh and blood. If I was truly dead and knowed it for a fact—why, I’d be the first one to go right upstairs to my room and lie down forever. But you got to show me proof ’fore I do. That’s the pure and simple of it—let me see some proof!”

“Grandpa,” I said.

“What’s the matter, sonny?”

“Begging your pardon, but you got collards dribbling all over your chin.”

Grandpa put down his fork. “So they is. I thank you kindly.”

And before he rightly knowed what he was doing, Grandpa wiped his mouth on the napkin.

When he finished he looked down at it. He looked once and he looked twice. Then he just set the napkin down gentle-like, stood up from the table, and headed straight for the stairs.

“Goodbye all,” he said.

We heard him go clumping up the steps and down the hall into his room and we heard the mattress sag when he laid down on his bed.

Then everything was quiet.

After a while Pa pushed his chair back and went upstairs. Nobody said a word until he come down again.

“Well?” Ma looked at him.

“Ain’t nothing more to worry about,” Pa said. “He’s laid down his burden at last. Gone to glory, amen.”

“Praise be!” Ma said. Then she looked at me and crooked a finger at the napkin. “Best get rid of that.”

I went round and picked it up. Sister Susie give me a funny look. “Ain’t nobody fixing to tell me what happened?” she asked.

I didn’t answer—just toted the napkin out and dropped it deep down in the crick. Weren’t no sense telling anybody the how of it, but the Conjure Lady had the right notion after all. She knowed Grandpa’d get his proof—just as soon as he wiped his mouth.

Ain’t nothing like a black napkin to show up a little ol’ white maggot.

The Head

One morning, when Jon was ten years old, it was raining too hard for him to go out and kill anybody.

He stood at the top of the cave looking out at the storm, telling himself rain was a goodie, man. But he felt kind of, you know, down.

So Jon stash the knife away under the belt of his jock and went back into the tunnels to find somebody he could do it to. Only he coulden catch any of the little kids because they run when they see him coming. And he know if he wassen careful some of the biggies would do it to him.

He diden turn on for that, not even when Grope did it, but at lease Grope kepp the others offen him. Grope was the biggest stud in the whole cave and he never let anyone do it to his old ladies or his kids excepp himself.

The hangup was, Grope had went away on a skull-hunt with the gang and Jon didden trust the others. Even though it was raining the women was out in the fields and the kids was running loose all through the cave with their knives and clubs, hassling. Moving along, Jon could hear the noises from out of the side tunnels—laughs and screams and moans.

So Jon kepp to the middle of the big cave where the cooking fires light up the way. Each gang had their own, with a creep watching to see it never went out. Creeps were like too old to hunt or work in the fields and they coulden do it any more, so most of them just got killed, but they was always a few leff to keep the fires.

The kids never went to the cooking fires alone. Jon remember one time he was little, Grope find a kid try to rip off food from a pot. Grope juss pick the kid up and smash her brains out on the side of a rock. So she end up in the cook-pot herself. All the other kids laugh, ha ha, but they diden forget. And after that they kepp away from the fires excep at feeding times.

Thass why it was safe to stay in the big cave now, but Jon was itchy, he wannet to do something. So he grab a torch and went down into Grope’s side tunnel very slow and careful in case someone hide there. But the tunnel was empty and he crepp down in the dark until he pass the sleeping-place and find the entrance hole to the burrows way farther on. There was lotsa burrows twisty all through the rock and Jon know his way good. Nobody else ever come this far.

They was rocks falled in the tunnels, too many for the biggies to climb over, but Jon start to crawl through when he was a little kid and he was the only one ever. Thass how come he find the secret place.

The secret place was far under. Jon went through falled rocks to where the walls was, you know, all smooth. Not rocks, the walls, but something else. Like his knife—hard and shiny. And then he went to where they was the buzz noise.

When he first went the buzz noise scare him, but he got use to it after while. It never hurt him, onny noise from somewhere behind the smooth walls. So now he kepp on to where he diden need a torch because they was light. The light come from somewhere behind like the buzz.

Nobody know about the buzz or the light and Jon never tole because that was part of the secret.

The secret was in a little smooth wall cave with more buzz noise and light blinks from under shelf with knobs in it. Jon remember how it scare him long time ago to see the big shiny bubble on the shelf, like he try to smash it with a rock but the rock just bounce off. Then he twist knobs and they diden come loose, but more light come from the shiny bubble so he could see what was inside.

That was the real secret, like floating inside the bubble with the long thin things sticking down out of the ears and neck.

A big head, all wrinkle and hairy. Eyes shut tight, mouth shut too. Dead.

Until Jon twist knobs like he done the first time. Now the sparks jump from long thin things.

The eyes open, look at him. The mouth open too.

And the head say, “Good morning, Jon.”

Good morning, Jon.

He could hear his voice say it, but maybe it wasn’t really morning: time had no meaning here. And it wasn’t really his voice—just the level, artificial output of the mechanism powered by the feeble electrical impulse of his tongue and laryngeal nerve; electronically amplified, as was his hearing.

What was the old phrase? Damned clever, these Chinese. Inappropriate, of course. The Chinese hadn’t perfected this variation of the crionics technique; in fact it had been arrived at just prior to the threatened thermonuclear holocaust. When East meets West—pow! They’d anticipated the results, and this was the solution. A chemical solution, in which the brain was preserved and electrically reactivated.

It was the only way they’d come up with. They couldn’t save the atmosphere, they couldn’t save the artifacts, they couldn’t save human life. But perhaps, under these conditions, they could save knowledge.

Recorded knowledge is perishable—books and tapes and microfilms are subject to disintegration. Or, even if preserved, to misinterpretation. Computers weren’t the answer; perpetual power couldn’t be generated or maintained on a sufficient scale for maintenance of large-scale units, and they’d be useless to anyone without sophisticated training.

The one sure source of wisdom was still the mind. So select the minds, select the precious few psychologically suitable to withstand such stress and preserve them. Place them in the strategically situated security bunkers far below the surface, hook them up to the self-maintained mechanisms of input and output. And sooner or later someone would find them. There would be survivors; eventually the atmosphere would shed itself of pollution. Then the remnants of the human race, ready for regeneration, would stumble across the secret storage-spots, the secret source of science and skill and scholarship that waited to rebuild a new world from the ruins.

That had been the plan, and this was its fruition. There were other minds buried away in various top-security subterranea; maybe they hadn’t been discovered yet, maybe they never would be discovered. But the law of averages, the law of accident, had led to this resurrection.

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. And a little child shall lead them. A child, prowling the caves and chancing upon this unit; fumbling with the unfamiliar gadgetry, reactivating his awareness.

He stared at the creature crouching before him. Blurry, indistinct, out of focus. Better correct that.

“Jon—can you hear me?”

The crouching figure nodded.

“Good. Now listen carefully. Remember what I told you the other times you came here—about the switches?”

The creature blinked. Something was puzzling him. Switch. He didn’t understand the word. What was the term he used?

“The knob, Jon. The knob on the left.”

The creature nodded again, reached forward.

“There. Push it up. Slow—not too far—just a little way. That’s better.”

Yes, he could see clearly now. But was it better? Was it really better to get a clear glimpse of this near-naked figure—this white ape? Not even white, actually, but a new ethnic admixture of Caucasian and Negroid, a product of generations of inbreeding here in the doomed darkness.

Their previous confrontations had produced little more than knowledge of Jon’s name; his people had no history, no consciousness of continuity. As far as Jon was aware, they had always lived in the caves, always scratched and scrabbled on the scarred surface just outside and above to find weeds for the cook-pots, always hunted other groups from other caves to supplement their daily diet with occasional meat. They had fire, shelter, crude weapons, a surviving semblance of the urban subculture based upon the concept of gangs and territories. This much he had learned through patient questioning, and perhaps there was no more. Savages.

He dismissed the thought; it wasn’t important. What mattered now was that this creature was all that remained of humanity. The hope of the future, the sole surviving hope.

It could speak. “Tell me something, man.”

Man. This was mankind, what was left of it. Shorn of heritage, stripped of civilization, its language reduced to an illiterate’s jargon of jive.

God, how could he educate this? How could he even communicate clearly? But he had to, he must, it was the only way.

“Like talk, man.”

So he talked.

Once again, just as he had so many times before, he told Jon the story. Told him of the old days, the days of innocence before the wars, when men walked proud and free over the face of the earth and built their shining cities with spires thrusting high into the heavens; built their shining hopes still higher, soaring to the stars.

That’s what it was to Jon—a story. He was listening, he always listened, but obviously he didn’t believe. Any more than man had believed in the Garden of Eden.

In a way, of course, this was the Garden of Eden he talked about—earth in the days before the Fall. And the growing dissent leading to the war; the racial, political, religious, ideological, sexist strife with its breakdown of communications on every level was like the Tower of Babel. Just as the final war itself was a Flood, wiping out the world. Its survivors didn’t land on a mountaintop; instead they were inside the mountain. The children of Noah, crouching in this cave.

He listened to himself—to the mechanical output of his thought—and recognized how much it all sounded like a fairy tale. That’s the way the biblical accounts had sounded to him in the old days. Fables, fantasies, folklore. If it had been difficult for him to conceive of the simplicity of the Garden of Eden, how much harder it must be for Jon to realize the reality of a complicated civilization?

And yet it was true. There had been a hope for heaven on earth, until mankind turned it into hell. For most, hell had been a shockingly swift and short nightmare of fear and pain, followed by merciful oblivion. But the true meaning of hell had been revealed only to a few, like himself. He knew what hell really was.

Hell was forever.

Hell was a darkness that never died, a nightmare that never ended. Hell was the fear and pain of being alive and aware in that darkness, utterly isolated, unable to see or hear or speak or even move. Hell was being alone with his thoughts forever; thoughts that never slept, thoughts that echoed eternally with a silent shrieking that shattered the skull.

That was his hell, before Jon turned him on. And that was his hell when Jon turned him off and left; left him alone in the dark.

So now it didn’t really matter if Jon believed him or not, just as long as he was willing to listen. Because if Jon was listening he wouldn’t turn him off.

Keep talking, keep him interested. Tell him about anything, everything. About radar, lasers, fission, fusion, super- and sub-sonics, microscosm, macrocosm, dactyls and pterodactyls, all the wonders and blunders of the world. “And then, Jon, we started to conquer space. We landed on the moon—”

“You tole that.” Jon scowled; he was bored. “Tell about big kills.”

Big kills. The war. He didn’t want to talk about the war; that was Privileged Information, Top Security, the sealed orders and the directive which sent him here to the Classified Area and Operation Survival. That’s what they’d labeled it—Operation Survival, the procedure which placed him under the knife at the very last moment when the earth shuddered and the mountaintop melted over his head. But he’d obeyed, they’d all obeyed; scientists and surgeons sweating as they wielded their scalpels under the sizzling, sputtering lights before the final darkness. But damn it, don’t you understand? It isn’t death—you’ll be alive! There’s bound to be someone who finds you sooner or later and when they do, when they turn on the power, you’ll be reborn. And so will the human race—reborn with the knowledge you retain.

That was the hope he had taken down with him into the darkness, the purpose that had sustained him in the hideous, endless emptiness.

But that’s not what Jon wanted to hear about. He was scowling again, scratching his armpit.

“More kill,” Jon said. “Boms. You know, man.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “And you don’t know, either. You’re not a man—you’re a child. That’s why you must listen to me, listen and learn. There’s more to life than killing and feeding and copulation. If you listen I can teach you.”

“Tell how you make bom.” Jon grinned. “Some day I kill Grope.”

“No, that’s not the way.”

Jon shook his head stubbornly. “Tell me!”

Tell him what? Where were the words, how could he reach him, teach him, save him from savagery, lead his people out of the wilderness?

And whose words would serve—those of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Lao-Tse, Plato, Spinoza, Confucius, Shakespeare? What prophets, priests, philosophers, savants or sages in the history of mankind could show him the solution?

He had to find those words now, for Jon’s sake, for his own sake, if only to keep from being turned off again, from being turned back into that ceaseless silence, that blind blackness. A brain, buried alive beneath a mountain.

Mountain. Wilderness. Hadn’t Moses led a nomad rabble into a wilderness, climbed a mountain? Suppose the biblical Babel and Flood were allegories. Suppose there had been thermonuclear destruction then—and the same solution? Scientists of a forgotten civilization had hit upon the secret of salvation, preserved a living intelligence against the day when some primitive survivor would encounter it, hidden away and waiting to bring the light of truth back into the world. Suppose Moses had gone into the mountain, found just such a cave, stumbled across just such a mechanism, turned it on, and heard the voice of God?

Steady, now. God wouldn’t dread the darkness the way he dreaded it, God wouldn’t feel the fear of being turned off. You’re not God, remember that.

But you can be God’s voice.

You can be God’s voice and Jon can be Moses. Speak to him in God’s words, so that he can lead his people to the Promised Land.

“Thou shalt not kill,” he said.

Jon frowned at him, shaking his head. “I kill Grope. You see.”

“No. Grope is your father. Honor thy father and thy mother—don’t you understand?”

Jon grimaced, his eyes restless, resentful. He wasn’t interested.

But there had to be a way. A way to save Jon and the others, a way to save himself. Because if he was turned off once again he knew he would truly go mad, finally and irrevocably mad and there would be no voice of God, only the writhing and wriggling and crazed clawing within his bursting brain alone in the darkness and foreverness. There would be darkness over the heavens and the earth and without his voice God would be dead.

Jon was reaching for the knob now. Reaching, bored and impatient.

He was powerless to prevent it. Only God had that power. Salvation. Salvation through prayer. Yes, that was the way.

He spoke then. Spoke the only words that would save the world, the words that never failed, the words of wisdom, the words of the ages, the words of God.

“The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul—”

Jon was listening now. Did he understand? Was there enough humanity left in this creature to comprehend the truth? The answer would decide his fate forever, Jon’s fate, the fate of the world, the fate of God.

Then Jon smiled and the answer came.

“That’s shit, man,” Jon said.

And turned him off.

What You See Is What You Get

Never mind about inflation. You can still buy yourself a million dollars’ worth of trouble for ten bucks.

That’s what Charlie Randall paid for the camera, and he thought he was getting a bargain.

It was one of those models with a self-developing photo pack already in place, but no exposures had been taken. The outfit retailed for something like forty bucks plus tax, so it looked like a good deal. There were even a couple of flashcubes in the box—the original owner had been all ready to take some pictures.

But dead men tell no tales, and they’re not so hot on photography either. So Randall picked up the camera for a ten-spot at a Saturday garage-sale conducted by the executor of the estate.

Randall didn’t know the executor; he just happened to be driving past the house when he saw the sign. He didn’t know the dead man, but from the looks of some of the stuff on display he must have been a real nostalgia freak. There were cartons and stacks of old books and magazines all over the place, but no good stuff, like stereo equipment or transistor radios or a portable color TV. And the furniture was old and beat-up, too. The only new item in the lot was the camera; picking it up cheap was a lucky break.

The first thing Charlie Randall did when he got home that afternoon was to take a picture of Butch.

Butch was a big German Shepherd that Randall kept on a long chain when he gave him the run of the yard. Even so, he got a lot of static from the neighbors; they couldn’t figure why Randall needed a dog that big and that mean. But then they couldn’t figure what line of work Randall was in, or what he had stashed away in the cellar. What you don’t know won’t hurt you, and having Butch around kept people from knowing. If they tried to find out, they’d get hurt soon enough, because Butch was a real guard dog.

Even Randall didn’t trust him too far, but he wanted to check out how the camera worked, and Butch was the handiest subject around. Matter of fact, he was the only one around. Randall lived alone and didn’t encourage visitors, not even on business; he liked to do his deals away from home.

Anyway, he read the instructions on the box the camera came in, got Butch to heel next to the kitchen door, attached one of the flashcube units, and took the shot.

Nothing to it, easiest thing in the world, and when he pulled the exposed film out the picture came into focus. A little blurry at first, but then it got clearer and sharper and the colors came out to make a perfect print.

Randall wanted to try another, but it was getting late and Saturday was always a big night for him. So he went down into the cellar and got his merchandise and took it out to the car by the back entrance to the garage. After that he shaved, dressed, fed Butch and locked him inside the house when he left.

Everything worked out for him that evening, and Randall was feeling pretty good when he drove in around two in the morning.

That is, until he opened the front door and Butch tried to kill him.

If he hadn’t heard the growling before the dog made a leap for his throat, it would have gotten him for sure. As it was, he jumped back just in time, slamming the door. He could hear Butch snarling inside, snarling and clawing away, and there was no percentage in trying to open that door again.

So Randall went around the back, tiptoeing through the yard and listening to make sure that Butch was still up front.

Easing the back door open very quietly, Randall let himself in. He switched on the kitchen light, and in just about two seconds flat the dog came charging through from the hallway. His eyes were red and ropy strands of saliva dripped from his fangs as he opened his jaws wide and hurtled across the room.

Randall stepped back quickly, across the threshold of the open doorway behind him. As the dog sprang, the door slammed shut just in time.

Standing outside, Randall stared at the door as it shuddered at the impact of Butch’s launching attack. There was a piercing howl—then a thud—then silence.

Randall stood waiting for the onslaught to resume but he heard nothing, not even the sound of panting. Moving around to the side of the house, he peered through the kitchen window.

Butch was lying on the floor near the door. One look was enough to establish his condition; the foam-flecked jaws were slack, the glaring eyes glazed, and the ribcage no longer rose and fell in the movements of breathing. The dog had flipped out and it was dead.

Randall had a hard time dragging the body into the garage but there was no other place to put it until Monday when he could call the Animal Shelter. Maybe he’d dispose of the body himself tomorrow.

Either way, this had loused up his evening, and when he got back to the house he poured himself a couple of stiff shots before he went to bed.

Even so, he had trouble falling asleep. Funny how things work out sometimes. One minute he’d been on top of the world and the next—if he hadn’t been quick—he’d have been dead. And now the dog was dead; all he had left was a picture.

That was funny, too—him taking the picture only a couple of hours before Butch jumped him. He wondered just what had happened; from the looks of things the dog must have freaked-out with rabies. Come to think of it, he hadn’t touched his food or his water. Randall heard something about dogs not drinking water when they got rabies. Oh well, you can’t win ’em all.

So on Sunday afternoon he made the long haul out to the quarry and dumped Butch’s body. After that he loosened up a little and by the time he got back to the house he felt okay again.

Until he saw the car.

It was a big Caddie with a big man sitting behind the wheel smoking a big cigar. Randall spotted it through the window right after he came in, watched it pull up to the curb and park. The big man was looking at a piece of paper like he was checking the address of the house, and then he got out of the car and started up the walk.

Randall didn’t waste any time. He had the cellar door locked before the front doorbell rang, and the gun was in his pocket when he walked back through the hall. There was a chain on the front door, but no sense taking chances.

The bell rang again.

He opened the door a smidge, just far enough to tighten the chain, and the big man smiled at him.

“Mr. Randall?” he said. “Mr. Charles Randall?”

“That’s right.”

“I’d like to talk to you. Mind if I come in?”

Randall was ready to ask him if he had a search warrant, but the man didn’t give him a chance. “My name is Frank Lumley,” he said. “I’m the executor of the estate.”

“What?”

“The Desmond estate. You were at the garage-sale yesterday, weren’t you?”

Randall stared at the big man, trying to see what was underneath his smile. “How come you know about that?”

“This check.” Lumley held it up. “Your name and address are on it. If you’ll just let me explain—”

It sounded legit, so Randall took the chain off the door and let him in. He led Lumley to the living room and sat down.

“Okay,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

“I understand you purchased a camera at the sale. Is that correct?”

“Right.”

“Well, I’m afraid there’s been a slight error. One of my secretaries copied the inventory of what was to be sold, along with another listing of items which were to be held back for the heirs. Somehow she made a mistake and put the camera on the wrong list. It’s not for sale.”

“I bought it,” Randall said.

“So you did. And for ten dollars.” Lumley held up the check, still smiling. “Now I’d like to buy it back. For twenty.”

“No way. That’s a brand-new camera; it’d run you at least forty at a store.”

“All right, I’ll give you forty.”

The big man said it so fast that Randall knew there had to be a catch to it.

“Not interested.” He shook his head.

“Fifty?”

“Forget it.”

The living room was comfortably cool, but Lumley was perspiring. “Now see here, Mr. Randall. I don’t like playing games—”

“Neither do I.” Randall was watching him sweat. “So stop with the hype and tell me what’s so special about that camera.”

“Nothing,” Lumley said. “But it’s one of the last things Desmond bought and the heirs would like to have it for sentimental reasons. I got a cablegram this morning from Buenos Aires—”

“Hold it.” Randall frowned. “Who’s Desmond?”

“Sorry about that.” Lumley nodded. “Desmond the Great. Big-time vaudeville magician—retired years ago. His two sons took over the act. They’re touring it in South America. Flew home for the funeral, then went back to finish up the engagement. But they looked over their father’s stuff and helped make out the inventory. He’d accumulated a lot of items as a hobby over the years and they don’t want to break up the collection.”

“Bull,” said Randall. “The camera’s something special, isn’t it? Something gimmicked for the magic act.”

“If that’s so I wasn’t informed.” Lumley took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Look, all I’m doing is following orders. You can buy an exact duplicate of that camera in any drug or department store and make yourself a profit to boot. I’ll give you a hundred dollars and that’s my final offer.”

“No way.” Randall stood up.

“But the Desmond brothers—”

“Tell them to get in touch with me when they come back.”

Lumley sighed. “All right. They should be winding up their tour in a few days. Promise me you won’t dispose of the camera until you hear from them.”

“Don’t worry.” Randall smiled. “I’ll take good care of it.”

And that was that. Or almost so.

Randall was standing at the front window watching Lumley walk out to his car when the impulse hit him. Maybe if he took a few more shots he’d figure out what the gimmick was.

He reached into the desk-drawer where the camera was stashed, pulled it out and focused on the big man as he slid behind the wheel, catching him in the viewfinder just before the car pulled away.

Then he yanked the tab and waited for the print to develop. Sure enough, there was Lumley in the Caddie, big as life.

Randall peered closely at the print, checking it for anything that looked unusual. All he saw was an ordinary photo.

But there had to be a gimmick, some reason why Lumley and the heirs wanted the camera. He’d have to take a few more shots soon, and if that still didn’t tell him, the next step would be to disassemble the camera itself.

Meanwhile he had work to do. He put the camera and print back in the drawer, then prepared to drive off on his nightly rounds.

Sunday night was always good for heavy dealing because a lot of Randall’s clients were fresh out and hurting after a weekend high. He laid a lot of lids at rock-joints around town, got rid of some smack, and everything went down without a hassle. But it took plenty of chasing, and by the time he got home again Randall was really wiped out.

He was still in the sack the next morning when Josie arrived for her weekly cleaning-session. Randall let her in and fixed himself some breakfast, then dressed and shaved. After that he went down to the cellar to check his inventory. He was low on grass, so he came back up and called Gonzales to meet him up on Mulholland at nine and make a buy.

It was after lunch when he went into the front room and found Josie blubbering as she vacuumed the rug.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s with you?”

She just shook her head and went on crying.

“Shut that damn thing off,” he told her. “Here, have some Kleenex.”

He waited while she blew her nose and the sniffling stopped. “Okay, that’s better. Now sit down and tell me what’s bugging you.”

Josie sat down beside the desk, shaking her head. “Ain’t nothing to concern you, Mr. Randall. Jes’ a personal thing, is all.”

Josie was a good old broad, a little short on smarts but a hard worker, and she’d been with him for years. Randall really didn’t like to see her uptight this way. “Come on,” he said. “Lay it on me.”

What Josie spilled was like some kind of soap-opera—one son up for grand theft, auto, another younger kid running with a gang, the dude she’d been shacking up with walking out last night after ripping off the money she’d been saving to pay for car repairs.

“Cool it,” Randall told her. “The kids are old enough to do their own thing—you can’t take the rap for them now. And this guy who split sounds like a real loser. Cheer up, there’s plenty more where he came from.”

Josie shook her head. “Ain’t no use trying to find me another man, not any more. Kids gone, money’s gone, sorrow here to stay. I about ready to wrap it all up.”

“You’ll get somebody, wait and see.”

“I jes’ a beat-up ol’ cleaning-lady. Nobody gonna want no part of me.” Josie looked as if she was ready to start bawling again.

That’s when he got the idea. He went over to the desk, took out the camera.

Josie stared at him. “What you got there?”

“Sit still. I want to take your picture.”

“Me—the way I look?”

“Right.” Randall nodded as he focused. “Pictures don’t lie. You’re a sharp-looking woman and I’m going to show you. Now hold still.” He pressed the button. “Got it.”

He pulled the print out and set it down on the desktop to develop. Gradually the picture came into view.

“Here, see for yourself.” He showed her the photo. “You got no problem, believe me.”

“Maybe so.” Josie looked doubtful, but at least she wasn’t crying any more.

Randall gave her a big grin. “Now stop goofing off and get with it.”

“Right on.”

She started vacuuming again and he went downstairs to figure up the week’s take.

By the time he finished and came up from the cellar it was getting dark and Josie had already left. Randall went to the front door to see if the paper had arrived.

He took it into the kitchen to read while he ate his supper. After fixing a salad and heating up some beans he carried his plate to the table and sat down; then he unfolded the paper to look at the front-page news. That’s when the crunch came.

ATTORNEY KILLED
IN CAR ACCIDENT

Frank M. Lumley, 47, prominent local attorney, suffered fatal injuries late Sunday afternoon when the automobile he was driving crashed head-on into an embankment at 4125 S. Cooleigh Drive. According to police reports a steering-wheel defect caused the car to go out of control and swerve into the concrete retaining wall. A coroner’s spokesman said death resulted from . . .

Randall didn’t read any more, nor did he eat.

He was still shaken when he drove off to keep his appointment with Gonzales. Somehow he got through the deal, but it was all a blur; his thoughts kept going back to his meeting the day before. Lumley must have been killed shortly after he left the house, because Cooleigh Drive was less than a mile away.

It was an accident, of course, just like the police said. Damned automatic-power assists are always conking out in an emergency. But something about the way it happened kept spooking Randall.

Not until he got back home did he come up with the answer. Two deaths in a row, that was the downer. First the dog, then Lumley.

But that was just coincidence. Nothing to tie them together—or was there?

Then he remembered the photos. He’d taken a picture of the dog and he’d taken a picture of the attorney. And today he’d taken a picture of Josie—

He was out of the car, into the house, and on his way to the front room when he heard the phone ring in the hall.

Even before he picked it up he had this sick feeling, almost as if he knew what the voice would say. The choked-up voice of Ira, Josie’s youngest boy.

“Momma’s dead. I come home tonight, she lying on the bathroom floor. Swallowed a whole bottleful of reds the doctor give her for sleeping—”

It went on and on, and Randall could hear his own voice saying all the right things, telling the kid she’d been okay when she left the house, and if there was anything he could do—

He knew what he had to do, of course. When the kid finally hung up, Randall ran into the front room, turned on the lamp, took Josie’s picture from the desk-top.

There she was, sitting in the chair alongside the desk, in full focus and natural color. And there, resting on the desk beside her, was something neither she nor he had noticed when they looked at the photo.

A little plastic bottle, filled with red pills.

Randall blinked and stared down at the desk-top. He didn’t see any pill-bottle now; there hadn’t been one when he took the shot.

But the bottle was in the picture.

He reached into the drawer, scrabbling around until he found the other photos he’d taken—the pictures of Lumley and the dog.

Could the pictures be warnings? Did they predict how death would come?

With Josie it was the pills. And suddenly he realized that the shot of Lumley showed him sitting in the car that killed him. But what about Butch? There was nothing in his photo except the dog.

Then he remembered that rabies was a disease, some kind of virus, and you couldn’t see the germs. They were invisible, but they were in the picture—in the dog, in its future. That camera had to be gimmicked, after all. But how?

He was just reaching for it when someone started knocking on the front door. Hastily he dropped the photos into the drawer and slammed it shut, then hurried into the hall.

Through the peephole he saw the stranger standing outside; some young dude in blue jeans. He had light brown hair, cut fairly short, and a small, sandy beard, and he looked harmless enough, but you never know.

Randall opened the door on its chain, just enough to get a better glimpse of his visitor, and the young dude squinted at him.

“Charles Randall?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Milton Desmond.”

Desmond—that was the magician’s name. This must be one of his sons.

“Please, Mr. Randall. I’ve got to see you—”

Randall took off the chain, opened the door. He led young Desmond into the front room and sat down behind the desk.

“You’re early,” he said. “I thought you weren’t coming back from South America until later this week.”

Desmond blinked. “Then you know?”

“Lumley told me.” Randall nodded, poker-faced. “Where’s your brother?”

“Mike stayed to wrap up the final performance. But when we didn’t hear from Lumley over the weekend he told me to hop a plane and find out what happened.”

“You know what happened if you read the papers.”

“Yes.” Desmond stared at him. “But how did it happen?”

Randall shrugged. “Accident. He was okay when he left here.”

“Then he did see you.”

“We talked.”

“What about?”

Randall shook his head. “Let’s cut the stalling,” he said. “He made a pitch and I turned him down. The camera’s right here in the drawer.”

“You haven’t taken any pictures yet, have you?”

Randall played it very straight. “What difference does it make?”

“None.” But Milt Desmond looked plenty worried. “The thing is, my brother and I want that camera and we’re prepared to pay for it.”

“How much?”

“Anything within reason. Five hundred dollars.”

Randall felt a little shiver of excitement tingle along his spine. He’d been right about his hunch. But when he spoke his voice faked surprise. “For a forty-dollar camera?” he said.

“I’m sure Mr. Lumley told you why we’re interested—the last purchase Dad made for his collection—it’s a matter of personal sentiment—”

“Don’t give me any scam,” Randall said. “There’s got to be something more for that kind of money.”

Desmond frowned. “All that Mike and I know is that my father was into magic.”

“Sure. Lumley told me he was a magician.”

“I’m not talking about stage illusions. His hobby was occult phenomena.”

“He believed that stuff?”

“Not at first. As a performer he exposed fake mediums and phoney mystics. But the more he investigated, the more he was convinced that some psychics had genuine powers. There was one man—I don’t even know his name—that Dad worked with closely. He claimed he could predict the future.”

“Fortune-telling?”

“More than that. He believed there are forces controlling our lives which science refuses to recognize. When palmists, astrologers, or clairvoyants make accurate predictions, it’s put down as guesswork, coincidence. But he felt that if such powers could be demonstrated by some kind of mechanical device it would be accepted as real proof. He was working on a method when he died of a heart attack, just weeks before Dad passed away. In his last letter to Mike and me, Dad said he had something important to show us when we got back.”

“The camera?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s all a hype, but Mike thinks—” Desmond broke off and took a deep breath. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars,” he said.

“For something that may turn out to be a fake?” Randall smiled.

“I’ll take that chance.” Desmond reached for his wallet but Randall shook his head.

“Let me think it over first.”

“But Mr. Randall—”

“You staying in your father’s place over on Clairmont? Okay, suppose I get in touch with you tonight.”

“Couldn’t you make it sooner?”

“Tonight.” Randall stood up and escorted his visitor to the front door, then watched him move down the walk and enter his car. Desmond smiled, but Randall stood waiting.

As Desmond started the engine and moved off, his smile vanished, his bearded face freezing into a grimace of anger and frustration.

Randall turned away. Good thing he’d waited—there was no mistaking that look. The dude was plenty shook up, probably blaming himself for spilling what he knew about the camera and wondering what Randall was going to do.

Well, that made two of them. Because he didn’t know what to do. A thousand bucks was a thousand bucks. But on the other hand, a camera that could predict how you’d die—

Such information could be valuable to the right parties. Old folks, rich people with cancer, heart conditions—they’d want to know. Suppose there was a doctor who could really call the shots for them, let them know if they’d recover from illness or pull through an operation without a hitch? Word about such an M.D. would get around fast, and it would be worth a hell of a lot more than a thousand dollars to have such power.

That’s how he figured, and the Desmond brothers must have come up with the same answer. No wonder they were so hot to get hold of the camera. The look on Milt Desmond’s face was a dead giveaway.

Dead giveaway.

Randall scowled as the idea hit him. Suppose he went to Desmond tonight and said the deal was off. Just how far would this dude go to get what he wanted?

There was one sure way of finding out.

Randall went over to the desk, took out the camera, carried it to the bedroom. He stood in front of the big mirror set in the bathroom door, focusing on his own image.

He hesitated, conscious of the sudden uneasiness surging and churning within him, and the hands holding the camera began to shake. Did he really want to know his own future?

But he had no choice. Randall steadied himself, then pressed the button. He pulled the tab, carried the exposed print over to the window. Standing in the sunlight he watched the outlines of the photograph emerge.

There he was, clearly established in front of the mirror, holding the camera.

For a moment he felt his panic subside—until he realized the picture was still developing. And now another image came into view behind him; the blurred image of a man in motion. Randall stared at the brown hair, the neatly trimmed sandy beard, and recognized Milt Desmond. Milt Desmond—with fury in his face and an upraised knife in his hand.

Pictures don’t lie, and what he’d suspected was true. Milt Desmond was going to kill him.

Unless, of course, he gave him the camera. Gave him something that could be worth how much—maybe a million?

“No way,” Randall muttered.

Then he thought of the way, and grinned.

That night he climbed into his car, drove over to the Desmond house on Clairmont, and knocked on the door. Milt Desmond let him in.

“You alone?” Randall asked.

“Of course.” Desmond’s face relaxed in relief as he noted the brown paper bag Randall held in his gloved hand.

“You brought the camera,” he said. “Let’s see it.”

Randall shook his head. “Let’s see the money first.”

Desmond smiled and reached for his wallet, and Randall pulled a revolver out of the brown paper bag to shoot him through the heart.

It was all very neat. At a three-foot range there was no chance of missing, and the silencer worked perfectly. The silence wasn’t even broken by a thud, because Randall caught the body before it hit the floor.

He lugged it out the back way to where his car was parked in the alley, trunk already unlocked. The neighboring houses were dark—Randall had checked them out before he came in—and in less than a minute the body was safely stowed away as the car moved off.

It had been a long trip to the quarry when he disposed of Butch, and this time it seemed even longer. But Randall had a chance to relax and case the scene carefully before he drove in to tumble Desmond’s corpse over the side. It was hard work climbing down the slope, and even harder work covering the body with those big hunks of loose shale, but it had to be neatly done.

When he finished he clambered to the top, backed his car out on the lonely side-road, then took a rake from where he’d stashed it on the rear seat. He carried it into the quarry and carefully smoothed loose dirt over tire-tracks and footprints. Neatness counts.

Neat work and neat thinking. That was the answer, and Randall began to unwind as he drove home. He took a shot of Scotch before he went to bed and slept like a baby.

It wasn’t surprising, because in a way he was a baby—he’d just been reborn. Picture or no picture, magic or no magic, he had nothing to fear now. Milt Desmond was snuffed and he was alive.

In the morning he made some calls, setting up buys for the customers he’d neglected last night. Then he stocked his merchandise under the car-mats and went to work.

Daytime dealing always involved extra precautions and took a lot more time. It was dark when Randall finished up and got back to the house. He’d put the whole affair out of his mind while he was gone, but now he was ready to figure the next move.

The first thing he did was check on the camera and prints. They lay undisturbed in the desk-drawer, and Randall carried them into the bedroom, spreading them out on the bed so that he could see the whole lot at the same time. It always helps when a salesman knows exactly what he’s selling, and this would be the biggest sales-pitch he’d ever planned.

If he could get together with the right doctor he could forget about dealing from now on—no more scuffling, no more risks, no more long hours and short money. He began to think about the M.D.s he knew, wondering which one to approach first and just how he’d make his pitch.

That’s where the pictures would come in—they were his samples, his proof. Gazing at them now he began to run through the routine.

First Butch, of course—then Lumley in his car—then Josie and the bottle of pills. Whichever doctor he contacted, he’d show the photos and let him check them out. He could only give his word about what happened to the dog, but the newspapers would back him up on Lumley and Josie.

Randall’s eyes went to the last photo and he frowned. This picture he wouldn’t show, because it could blow the whole deal. Milt Desmond hadn’t killed him—which meant the camera wasn’t always right. Matter of fact, he’d better not mention Desmond at all, or repeat that talk about magical powers.

And maybe that’s what it was, really—just talk. Dogs do get rabies, people die in car accidents or wipe themselves out with pills. Taking these pictures beforehand could still be coincidence. That’s what it had to be, because what the last one showed had never happened. It never could happen now unless Milt Desmond rose from the dead, climbed out of the quarry, and came after him with a knife.

Randall stared again at the last photo, seeing himself in front of the mirror with the camera in his hand while Milt Desmond loomed up behind him ready to strike.

The camera never lies. But it had lied about him.

Why?

He picked up the camera and carried it over to the light. Once again he debated about opening it up, taking it apart to see what was inside; there must be something he could find. But then he’d run the risk of damaging it or not being able to put the pieces back together again.

Still, he had to know. Magic or gimmick, there was a secret here, and he needed the answer. Maybe the first step before doing anything drastic was just to take another shot of himself and see how it compared with the other one. That might give him a clue. Randall moved up to the mirror, focusing on his reflection.

It was then that the bedroom door opened silently and the figure loomed up swiftly behind him—the figure of the brown-haired man with the neatly trimmed beard. There was fury in his face and an upraised knife in his hand.

Randall just had time to recognize Milt Desmond as the knife came down.

Nobody comes back from the dead.

That was Randall’s last thought before he died, and of course he was right.

But the camera doesn’t lie.

And Milt Desmond’s brother Mike was an identical twin.

Nina

After the lovemaking Nolan needed another drink.

He fumbled for the bottle beside the bed, gripping it with a sweaty hand. His entire body was wet and clammy and his fingers shook as they unscrewed the cap. For a moment Nolan wondered if he was coming down with another bout of fever. Then, as the harsh heat of the rum scalded his stomach, he realized the truth.

Nina had done this to him.

Nolan turned and glanced at the girl who lay beside him. She stared up through the shadows with slitted eyes unblinking above high cheekbones, her thin brown body relaxed and immobile. Hard to believe that only moments ago this same body had been a writhing, wriggling coil of insatiable appetite, gripping and enfolding him until he was drained and spent.

He held the bottle out to her. “Have a drink?”

She shook her head, eyes hooded and expressionless, and then Nolan remembered that she didn’t speak English. He raised the bottle and drank again, cursing himself for his mistake.

It had been a mistake, he realized that now, but Darlene would never understand. Sitting there safe and snug in the apartment in Trenton, she couldn’t begin to know what he’d gone through for her sake—hers and little Robbie’s. Robert Emmett Nolan II, nine weeks old now; his son, whom he’d never seen. That’s why he’d taken the job, signed on with the Company for a year. The money was good, enough to keep Darlene in comfort and tide them over after he got back. She couldn’t have come with him, not while she was carrying the kid, so he came alone, figuring no sweat.

No sweat. That was a laugh. All he’d done since he got here was sweat. Patrolling the plantation at sunup, loading cargo all day for the boats that went downriver, squinting over paperwork while night closed down on the bungalow to imprison him behind a wall of jungle darkness. And at night the noises came—the hum of insect hordes, the bellow of caimans, the snorting snuffle of peccary, the ceaseless chatter of monkeys intermingled with the screeching of a million mindless birds.

So he’d started to drink. First the good bourbon from the Company’s stock, then the halfway-decent trade gin, and now the cheap rum.

As Nolan set the empty bottle down he heard the noise he’d come to dread worst of all—the endless echo of drums from the huts huddled beside the riverbank below. Miserable wretches were at it again. No wonder he had to drive them daily to fulfill the Company’s quota. The wonder was that they did anything at all after spending every night wailing to those damned drums.

Of course it was Moises who did the actual driving; Nolan couldn’t even chew them out properly because they were too damned dumb to understand plain English.

Like Nina, here.

Again Nolan looked down at the girl who lay curled beside him on the bed, silent and sated. She wasn’t sweating; her skin was curiously cool to the touch, and in her eyes was a mystery.

It was the mystery that Nolan had sensed the first time he saw her staring at him across the village compound three days ago. At first he thought she was one of the Company people—somebody’s wife, daughter, sister. That afternoon, when he returned to the bungalow, he caught her staring at him again at the edge of the clearing. So he asked Moises who she was, and Moises didn’t know. Apparently she’d just arrived a day or two before, paddling a crude catamaran downriver from somewhere out of the denser jungle stretching a thousand miles beyond. She had no English, and according to Moises she didn’t speak Spanish or Portuguese either. Not that she’d made any attempts to communicate; she kept to herself, sleeping in the catamaran moored beside the bank across the river and not even venturing into the Company store by day to purchase food.

“Indio,” Moises said, pronouncing the word with all the contempt of one in whose veins ran a 10 percent admixture of the proud blood of the conquistadores. “Who are we to know the way of savages?” He shrugged.

Nolan had shrugged, too, and dismissed her from his mind. But that night as he lay on his bed, listening to the pounding of the drums, he thought of her again and felt a stirring in his loins.

She came to him then, almost as though the stirring had been a silent summons; came like a brown shadow gliding out of the night. Soundlessly she entered, and swiftly she shed her single garment as she moved across the room to stand staring down at him on the bed. Then, as she sank upon his nakedness and encircled his thighs, the stirring in his loins became a throbbing and the pounding in his head drowned out the drums.

In the morning she was gone, but on the following night she returned. It was then that he’d called her Nina—it wasn’t her name, but he felt a need to somehow identify this wide-mouthed, pink-tongued stranger who slaked herself upon him, slaked his own urgency again and again as her hissing breath rasped in his ears.

Once more she vanished while he slept, and he hadn’t seen her all day. But at times he’d been conscious of her secret stare, a coldness falling upon him like an unglimpsed shadow, and he’d known that tonight she’d come again.

Now, as the drums sounded in the distance, Nina slept. Unmindful of the din, heedless of his presence, her eyes hooded and she lay somnolent in animal repletion.

Nolan shuddered. That’s what she was; an animal. In repose, the lithe brown body was grotesquely elongated, the wide mouth accentuating the ugliness of her face. How could he have coupled with this creature? Nolan grimaced in self-disgust as he turned away.

Well, no matter—it was ended now, over once and for all. Today the message had arrived from Belém; Darlene and Robbie were on the ship, ready for the flight to Manaus. Tomorrow morning he’d start downriver to meet them, escort them here. He’d had his qualms about their coming; they’d have to face three months in this hellhole before the year was up, but Darlene had insisted.

And she was right. Nolan knew it now. At least they’d be together and that would help see him through. He wouldn’t need the bottle any more, and he wouldn’t need Nina.

Nolan lay back and waited for sleep to come, shutting out the sound of the drums, the sight of the shadowy shape beside him. Only a few hours until morning, he told himself. And in the morning, the nightmare would be over.

The trip to Manaus was an ordeal, but it ended in Darlene’s arms. She was blonder and more beautiful than he’d remembered, more loving and tender than he’d ever known her to be, and in the union that was their reunion Nolan found fulfillment. Of course there was none of the avid hunger of Nina’s coiling caresses, none of the mindless thrashing to final frenzy. But it didn’t matter; the two of them were together at last. The two of them, and Robbie.

Robbie was a revelation.

Nolan hadn’t anticipated the intensity of his own reaction. But now, after the long trip back in the wheezing launch, he stood beside the crib in the spare bedroom and gazed down at his son with an overwhelming surge of pride.

“Isn’t he adorable?” Darlene said. “He looks just like you.”

“You’re prejudiced.” Nolan grinned, but he was flattered. And when the tiny pink starshell of a hand reached forth to meet his fingers he tingled at the touch.

Then Darlene gasped.

Nolan glanced up quickly. “What’s the matter?” he said.

“Nothing.” Darlene was staring past him. “I thought I saw someone outside the window.”

Nolan followed her gaze. “No one out there.” He moved to the window, peered at the clearing beyond. “Not a soul.”

Darlene passed a hand before her eyes. “I guess I’m just overtired,” she said. “The long trip—”

Nolan put his arm around her. “Why don’t you go lie down for a while? Mama Dolores can look after Robbie.”

Darlene hesitated. “Are you sure she knows what to do?”

“Look who’s talking!” Nolan laughed. “They don’t call her Mama for nothing—she’s had ten kids of her own. She’s in the kitchen right now, fixing Robbie’s formula. I’ll go get her.”

So Darlene went down the hall to their bedroom for a siesta and Mama Dolores took over Robbie’s schedule while Nolan made his daily rounds in the fields.

The heat was stifling, worse than anything he could remember. Even Moises was gasping for air as he gunned the jeep over the rutted roadway, peering into the shimmering haze.

Nolan wiped his forehead. Maybe he’d been too hasty, bringing Darlene and the baby here. But a man was entitled to see his own son, and in a few months they’d be out of this miserable sweatbox forever. No sense getting uptight; everything was going to be all right.

But at dusk, when he returned to the bungalow, Mama Dolores greeted him at the door with a troubled face.

“What is it?” Nolan said. “Something wrong with Robbie?”

Mama shook her head. “He sleeps like a angel,” she murmured. “But the señora—”

In their room. Darlene lay shivering on the bed, eyes closed. Her head moved ceaselessly on the pillows even when Nolan pressed his palm against her brow.

“Fever.” Nolan gestured to Mama Dolores, and the old woman held Darlene still while he forced the thermometer between her lips.

The red column inched upwards. “One hundred and four.” Nolan straightened quickly. “Go fetch Moises. Tell him I want the launch ready, pronto. We’ll have to get her to the doctor at Manaus.”

Darlene’s eyes fluttered open; she’d heard.

“No, you can’t! The baby—”

“Do not trouble yourself. I will look after the little one.” Mama’s voice was soothing. “Now you must rest.”

“No, please—”

Darlene’s voice trailed off into an incoherent babbling and she sank back. Nolan kept his hand on her forehead; the heat was like an oven. “Now just relax, darling. It’s all right. I’m going with you.”

And he did.

If the first trip had been an ordeal, this one was an agony: a frantic thrust through the sultry night on the steaming river, Moises sweating over the throttle as Nolan held Darlene’s shuddering shoulders against the straw mattress in the stern of the vibrating launch. They made Manaus by dawn and roused Dr. Robales from slumber at his house near the plaza.

Then came the examination, the removal to the hospital, the tests and the verdict. A simple matter, Dr. Robales said, and no need for alarm. With proper treatment and rest she would recover. A week here in the hospital—

“A week?” Nolan’s voice rose. “I’ve got to get back for the loading. I can’t stay here that long!”

“There is no need for you to stay, señor. She shall have my personal attention, I assure you.”

It was small comfort, but Nolan had no choice. And he was too tired to protest, too tired to worry. Once aboard the launch and heading back, he stretched out on the straw mattress in a sleep that was like death itself.

Nolan awakened to the sound of drums. He jerked upright with a startled cry, then realized that night had come and they were once again at anchor beside the dock. Moises grinned at him in weary triumph.

“Almost we do not make it,” he said. “The motor is bad. No matter, it is good to be home again.”

Nolan nodded, flexing his cramped limbs. He stepped out onto the dock, then hurried up the path across the clearing. The darkness boomed.

Home? This corner of hell, where the drums dinned and the shadows leaped and capered before flickering fires?

All but one, that is. For as Nolan moved forward, another shadow glided out from the deeper darkness beside the bungalow.

It was Nina.

Nolan blinked as he recognized her standing there and staring up at him. There was no mistaking the look on her face or its urgency, but he had no time to waste in words. Brushing past her, he hastened to the doorway and she melted back into the night.

Mama Dolores was waiting for him inside, nodding her greeting.

“Robbie—is he all right?”

“Sí, señor. I take good care. Por favor, I sleep in his room.”

“Good.” Nolan turned and started for the hall, then hesitated as Mama Dolores frowned. “What is it?” he said.

The old woman hesitated. “You will not be offended if I speak?”

“Of course not.”

Mama’s voice sank to a murmur. “It concerns the one outside.”

“Nina?”

“That is not her name, but no matter.” Mama shook her head. “For two days she has waited there. I see you with her now when you return. And I see you with her before—”

“That’s none of your business!” Nolan reddened. “Besides, it’s all over now.”

“Does she believe that?” Mama’s gaze was grave. “You must tell her to go.”

“I’ve tried. But the girl comes from the mountains, she doesn’t speak English—”

“I know.” Mama nodded. “She is one of the snake-people.”

Nolan stared at her. “They worship snakes up there?”

“No, not worship.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“These people—they are snakes.”

Nolan scowled. “What is this?”

“The truth, señor. This one you call Nina—this girl—is not a girl. She is of the ancient race from the high peaks, where the great serpents dwell. Your workers here, even Moises, know only the jungle, but I come from the great valley beneath the mountains, and as a child I learned to fear those who lurk above. We do not go there, but sometimes the snake-people come to us. In the spring when they awaken, they shed their skins, and for a time they are fresh and clean before the scales grow again. It is then that they come, to mate with men.”

She went on like that, whispering about creatures half-serpent and half-human, with bodies cold to the touch, limbs that could writhe in boneless contortion to squeeze the breath from a man and crush him like the coils of a giant constrictor. She spoke of forked tongues, of voices hissing forth from mouths yawning incredibly wide on movable jawbones. And she might have gone on, but Nolan stopped her now; his head was throbbing with weariness.

“That’s enough,” he said. “I thank you for your concern.”

“But you do not believe me.”

“I didn’t say that.” Tired as he was, Nolan still remembered the basic rule—never contradict these people or make fun of their superstitions. And he couldn’t afford to alienate Mama now. “I shall take precautions,” he told her, gravely. “Right now I’ve got to rest. And I want to see Robbie.”

Mama Dolores put her hand to her mouth. “I forget—the little one, he is alone—”

She turned and padded hastily down the hallway, Nolan behind her. Together they entered the nursery.

“Ah!” Mama exhaled a sigh of relief. “The pobrecito sleeps.”

Robbie lay in his crib, a shaft of moonlight from the window bathing his tiny face and form. From his rosebud mouth issued a gentle snore.

Nolan smiled at the sound, then nodded at Mama. “I’m going to turn in now. You take good care of him.”

“I will not leave.” Mama settled herself in a rocker beside the crib. As Nolan turned to go she called after him softly. “Remember what I have told you, señor. If she comes again—”

Nolan moved down the hall to his bedroom at the far end. He hadn’t trusted himself to answer her. After all, she meant well; it was just that he was too damned tired to put up with any more nonsense from the old woman.

In his bedroom something rustled.

Nolan flinched, then halted as the shadow-shape glided forth from the darkened corner beside the open window.

Nina stood before him and she was stark naked. Stark naked, her arms opening in invitation.

He retreated a step. “No,” he said.

She came forward, smiling.

“Go away—get out of here.”

He gestured her back. Nina’s smile faded and she made a sound in her throat, a little gasp of entreaty. Her hands reached out—

“Damn it, leave me alone!”

Nolan struck her on the cheek. It wasn’t more than a slap, and she couldn’t have been hurt. But suddenly Nina’s face contorted as she launched herself at him, her fingers splayed and aiming at his eyes. This time he hit her hard—hard enough to send her reeling back.

“Out!” he said. He forced her to the open window, raising his hand threateningly as she spewed and spit her rage, then snatched up her discarded garment and clambered over the sill to drop into the darkness beyond.

Nolan stood by the window watching as Nina moved away across the clearing. For a moment she turned in a path of moonlight and looked back at him—only a moment, but long enough for Nolan to see the livid fury blazing in her eyes.

Then she was gone, gliding off into the night where the drums thudded in distant darkness.

She was gone, but the hate remained. Nolan felt its force as he stretched out upon the bed. Ought to undress, but he was too tired. The throbbing in his head was worse, pulsing to the beat of the drums. And the hate was in his head, too. God, that ugly face! Like the thing in mythology—what was it?—the Medusa. One look turned men to stone. Her locks of hair were live serpents.

But that was legend, like Mama Dolores’s stories about the snake-people. Strange—did every race have its belief in such creatures? Could there be some grotesque, distorted element of truth behind all these old wives’ tales?

He didn’t want to think about it now; he didn’t want to think of anything. Not Nina, not Darlene, not even Robbie. Darlene would be all right, Robbie was fine, and Nina was gone. That left him, alone here with the drums. Damned pounding. Had to stop, had to stop so he could sleep—

It was the silence that awakened him. He sat up with a start, realizing he must have slept for hours, because the shadows outside the window were dappled with the greyish pink of dawn.

Nolan rose, stretching, then stepped out into the hall. The shadows were darker here and everything was still.

He went down the hallway to the other bedroom. The door was ajar and he moved past it, calling softly. “Mama Dolores—”

Nolan’s tongue froze to the roof of his mouth. Time itself was frozen as he stared down at the crushed and pulpy thing sprawled shapelessly beside the rocker, its sightless eyes bulging from the swollen purple face.

No use calling her name again; she’d never hear it. And Robbie—

Nolan turned in the frozen silence, his eyes searching the shadows at the far side of the room.

The crib was empty.

Then he found his voice and cried out; cried out again as he saw the open window and the grey vacancy of the clearing beyond.

Suddenly he was at the window, climbing out and dropping to the matted sward below. He ran across the clearing, through the trees, and into the open space before the riverbank.

Moises was in the launch, working on the engine. He looked up as Nolan ran towards him, shouting.

“What are you doing here?”

“There is the problem of the motor. It requires attention. I come early, before the heat of the day—”

“Did you see her?”

“Who, señor?

“The girl—Nina—”

“Ah yes. The Indio.” Moises nodded. “She is gone, in her catamaran, up the river. Two, maybe three hours ago, just as I arrive.”

“Why didn’t you stop her?”

“For what reason?”

Nolan gestured quickly. “Get that engine started—we’re going after her.”

Moises frowned. “As I told you, there is the matter of the repairs. Perhaps this afternoon—”

“We’ll never catch her then!” Nolan gripped Moises’s shoulder. “Don’t you understand? She’s taken Robbie!”

“Calm yourself, señor. With my own eyes I saw her go to the boat and she was alone, I swear it. She does not have the little one.”

Nolan thought of the hatred in Nina’s eyes and he shuddered. “Then what did she do with him?”

Moises shook his head. “This I do not know. But I am sure she has no need of another infant.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I notice her condition when she walked to the boat.” Moises shrugged, but even before the words came, Nolan knew.

“Why do you look at me like that, señor? Is it not natural for a woman to bulge when she carries a baby in her belly?”

Author’s Afterword

I can’t tell you who first came up with the term “psychological suspense.” But I’m forever grateful to him.

Before that phrase was coined, people like myself were referred to—if at all—as “horror-story writers.” This designation made me shudder more than my readers. It evoked the vision of a wild-eyed weirdo whose entire wardrobe consisted of two garments—a long black cloak and a short white straitjacket.

But “psychological suspense writer” suggests a more respectable type; a keen-eyed scientific observer whose lucrative analysis of the human condition has enabled him to purchase a whole closetful of tailored clothing.

Actually I don’t fit into either category. My eyes are as dull as my conventional outlook and I don’t own a single straitjacket, let alone one with a Gucci label.

The real benefit from this change of image accrues to my stories. Over the years what was once dismissed as unworthy of consideration is now frequently given a second glance and a second chance. As a result some of the things I’ve tried to say have found a new audience. And while my primary purpose is entertainment, it’s gratifying to communicate on other levels as well.

To me, writing remains a form of communication. At one time a statement like this seemed self-evident. Now, however, we live in an age of obscurantism, where music and graphic art need lengthy interpretation and the written word must be explained by critics who tell the reader what the writer was “trying to say.”

I still believe a writer must do more than try—his job is to succeed in saying what he means. Obscurantism is for politicians.

In discussing my stories I strive for equal clarity. The material in this collection falls into two genres: supernatural fantasy and the conte cruel. But there’s a common element—horror, or psychological suspense, if you prefer the term. And that’s about all the explanation that seems necessary.

Chronologically the stories represent a sampling of my output over the past three decades. During that time there have been many changes in the world of reality—but the world of unreality, of imagination and aberration, remained constant.

Despite extensive and expensive investigation, the field of parapsychology has not been greatly illuminated. Dispute still wages and rages over the validity of supernatural manifestations, and we know not one whit more about death than we do about life.

Equally elaborate attention has been paid to the examination of criminal behavior and mental disorder, without resulting in any consensus of scientific opinion. The mind has not yielded up a tithe of its secrets.

And so—since we fear that which we do not know and cannot explain—my subject-matter remains pertinent, or impertinent.

Black magic was hardly a novelty when I wrote “The Weird Tailor”; as a matter of fact, a belief in the power of sorcery or witchcraft was considered quaint and old-fashioned. Since then there has been a spectacular revival, not just in interest but in actual practice. Whether the governing principles are supernatural or psychological remains in dispute, but black magic is very much alive today. I suspect it always will be.

And so will the belief in ancient myths and legends, or the more modern mythology created by recent writers. H. P. Lovecraft was a twentieth-century materialist, but his wholly imaginary Cthulhu Mythos is actually accepted as figurative if not literal truth by some readers. My story “The Unspeakable Betrothal” derives from his earlier tales. I decline to take responsibility for the title, which was tacked on by some editor without my prior knowledge and sounds like something dreamed up by the late Queen Victoria after a bad night, but the content still seems consistent. “The Head Hunter” was published in magazine form as “The Head Man,” again because some editor decided to improve on my own title; I’ve taken the liberty of changing it back.

“The Tunnel of Love” was a “lost” story for almost thirty years, and it too was first published under another title. Finally it was unearthed by Kirby McCauley for a collection. I include it here for old crime’s sake, as an early example of “psychological suspense.”

“Lucy Comes to Stay” is one of several stories that developed a concept culminating in my later novel, Psycho. It was the last of the sixty-nine stories I wrote for Weird Tales, and a far cry—or scream—from most of its predecessors.

Stories like “The Girl from Mars” and “The Pin” seemed to write themselves; all I had to do was type them out. I wish I knew where such ideas come from, because if I did I’d go back for more.

“I Do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell” is another stepping-stone in the stream of consciousness flowing toward Psycho. It is also the first of my efforts to be published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. And while I may not have loved Dr. Fell, I freely confess my enduring affection for the magazine’s editor at that time, Anthony Boucher. Tony was—and is—one of the truly great and multifaceted talents in the genre. Greatest of all was his talent for friendship, and I count myself fortunate for having known this remarkable man.

“The Cure” is typical of the material I wrote for the men’s magazines (in this case, Playboy) during this period. It was also the first of my stories to be adapted for television. “The Big Kick,” “The Masterpiece,” and “The Final Performance” were also products offered to readers of men’s magazines in their pre-porno period.

“The Screaming People,” “Life in Our Time,” and “Underground” (again a title change; it was labeled “The Living Dead” in its initial incarnation) are, I hope, self-explanatory tales. And “Talent” is another valentine offering from my lifelong love affair with fantasy films.

“A Case of the Stubborns” is comedy, right down to the bottom line. I wrote that line, and the first, more than twenty years before I was able to connect them to a story in-between.

“The Head” has a science-fiction setting, but like much of my output in that field, it’s really a horror story.

“What You See Is What You Get” is a recent variation on one of the oldest themes, and in “Nina” we come full circle to the traditional horror-tale with which I began.

Times change. Styles change. So do tastes and attitudes. The writer’s task is to mirror these changes—and though my particular mirror may be cracked and its images distorted, it still reflects a personal vision.

I am not a superstitious man, but to me that mirror is a magical one. Gazing into it, I may hopefully continue to find fresh glimpses of fantasy—and reality.

Robert Bloch

Table of Contents

- Backcover
- Titlepage
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- The Tunnel of Love
- The Unspeakable Betrothal
- The Girl from Mars
- The Head Hunter
- The Weird Tailor
- Lucy Comes to Stay
- The Pin
- I Do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell
- Luck Is No Lady
- The Cure
- The Screaming People
- The Big Kick
- The Masterpiece
- Talent
- The Final Performance
- Life in Our Time
- Underground
- A Case of the Stubborns
- The Head
- What You See Is What You Get
- Nina
- Author’s Afterword