
Copyright ©, 1978, by DAW Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Michael Whelan.
To my grandfather,
William E. Grindle.
First Printing, July 1978
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
Wickerman eBooks
In 1957 Joseph Payne Brennan began a small magazine called Macabre, which ran short weird fiction and poetry. It differed from professional magazines in several respects, notably its small circulation, and the lack of newsstand distribution; but it was not quite a fan magazine in the sense of the science fiction fanzines, either, principally because it was trying to provide a serious outlet for horror writing that did not exist at that time in any professional magazine.
When this series of anthologies was launched a few years ago, there still was no regular professional magazine devoted to horror fiction. Today things are a little better. Magazines as diverse as Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mike Shayne Mystery, and Penthouse make it a point to carry good horror fiction with some frequency. Anthologists as astute as Kirby McCauley, Ramsey Campbell and Charles L. Grant are preparing books of original stories. Where, just a few short years ago the challenge of putting together a book such as this one lay in finding enough good stories to include, today there is the anguish of deciding what must be left out because there is only so much space available.
Brennan's Macabre is no longer published, but in a large part the current growth of the horror field owes much to Macabre and its successors. It is true, of course, that at the demise of Weird Tales magazine in 1954, the anchor of the field became August Derleth through the agency of his editing and publishing of the Arkham House line of books. But since Derleth's death in 1971 the small semi-professional magazine has played an increasingly important role in the field.
There are many such magazines today. Most of them are of negligible quality, or else geared to forms of fantasy other than horror (particularly to heroic adventure). Only a few of them can attract the sort of writing talent necessary to draw notice, and the majority are put together by people whose editorial abilities and taste are more hopeful than developed. But despite this, a surprising number of these magazines are good, and there are two of them---specializing in horror fiction---that stand out clearly as the field's current leaders: Whispers, edited by Stuart David Schiff, and Weirdbook, edited by W. Paul Ganley.
Whispers has clearly attracted the most favorable attention of any horror magazine, of any sort, since Weird Tales. In 1976 it carried a short story titled "Sticks," written by Karl Edward Wagner, that won the August Derleth Award as the year's best short fiction. Winning such an award in the science fiction and fantasy field is an unheard-of achievement for any story published in an amateur magazine. In 1977 the magazine itself won a World Fantasy Award. There has been an anthology of stories from Whispers (along with some new material by Whispers' regulars) published by Doubleday, and another is reported on the way. Schiff's taste in fiction is good and he's demonstrated the ability to attract regularly writers of the stature of Fritz Leiber, R. A. Lafferty and Manly Wade Wellman.
Weirdbook has been around a bit longer than Whispers; it recently published its tenth anniversary issue. Over the years it has relied heavily on newer writers, along with established names, and the result has been a certain unavoidable unevenness, although this has lessened in recent issues. But this has paid off for the magazine, too. There are three writers whose work to date has been largely confined to semi-and non-professional markets, but who have shown notable talent: Janet Fox, Charles Saunders and William Scott Home. All three have appeared in Weirdbook. Home, in fact, has been one of the magazine's major contributors. Ganley's championing of Home---a writer who is sometimes difficult, but who is usually vivid and often original---may well be his major contribution to the field. This is a fact that hasn't gone unnoticed among other writers, especially professionals, who are starting to contribute to Weirdbook in increasing numbers.
It isn't easy to predict the future for magazines like Whispers and Weirdbook. Certainly the immediate future looks good. Right now the state of the horror market is limited. It consists of magazines which specialize in other types of stories but allow in an occasional weird tale, a few hardback anthologies of new material, and the non-professional magazines. It's a strangely complementary mixture, too, with the diverse markets seeming to draw strength from one another.
But if a new professional horror magazine should manage to establish itself---by no means an assured task---it would be hard to say what the result would be on the existing markets. The irony might be that such a magazine would find itself with a real fight on its hands, trying to compete with the amateurs.
---Gerald W. Page
Atlanta, Ga.
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN by David Campton
What could be more appealing, more homey, than a garden---a British garden, at that, boasting an array of flowers and hedges and other such charming Old World items. Murder, for example. What would Dame Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers have done without those gardens which seemed always to hold---if not an interestingly slain corpse---at least an incriminating footprint among the roses. And didn't John Dickson Carr seem as fond of victims among daisies and in summer houses as he was of them in hermetically sealed rooms? And that's all well and good, but that's not the sort of thing, strictly, that belongs here, and we take some pride in the fact that we can offer you the following story which, while it takes place in a garden, ignores the grim specter of crime and provides us with, instead, a thing of no more menace than the play of children . . .
"Mummy, why has Ineed got furry teeth?"
Mrs. Williams ignored the question and tried to concentrate on the recipe in front of her. The breeze through the open kitchen door fluttered the page of the magazine propped up against the saucepan in which last night's milk had been boiled. Mrs. Williams had the uncomfortable feeling that the saucepan was going to be needed in a hurry. She ought to have more saucepans, but where could she put them? That was the trouble with this kitchen: there was not enough shelf space, and the equipment was always in the wrong place. She was not such a bad cook, or even as accident-prone as her husband suggested. The kitchen was just badly planned. The fish-slice had fallen behind the refrigerator, but how foolish to hang a fish-slice over a refrigerator: luckily it would not be needed until Friday.
"Please shut the door," she pleaded as a draught flicked the page over. She dabbed at the magazine with the wooden spoon, leaving a blob of something white and sticky in the middle of the recipe. She sighed, and fumbled in the sink for the dishcloth. Conviction was growing that this experiment was developing into a disaster.
These days she was finding the disposal of remains more difficult. When she was lucky some results could be garnished and served up as something else: certain sauces could be sliced, and occasional moulds might be poured. At worst, though, as when washing powder had unaccountably insinuated itself into a mixture and even the birds had refused the offering, it could lie for days on the lawn, advertising her incompetence; and after the occasion when a failure with rice had blocked the lavatory she had never dared to flush away a mistake. These days an inedible mess was destined for the dustbin, and she had to endure her husband's raised eyebrows if he caught a glimpse or whiff of it. After nine years Mr. Williams no longer complained about the cooking, but it seemed that he could not control his eyebrows.
Mrs. Williams wiped dough from the page, and peered at the small print through flour-fogged spectacles. It seemed to her that there was always something missing in the instructions.
The kitchen door banged.
"Add the dry ingredients."
"Mummy!"
Where was the ginger? She was sure she had taken the packet from the cupboard with the other things. Ah! No, that was dried sage. Why couldn't manufacturers label packets more clearly? Mrs. Williams jerked the cupboard open. A small jar fell out and smashed: well, it could be cleared up later. She grabbed at a cylindrical box; flipped the lid on to the floor; and shook a teaspoonful of curry powder among the other dry cake ingredients.
"Mummy, why has Ineed? . . ."
On the stove something boiled over.
Mrs. Williams sank into the kitchen chair, and ran a hand over her head. Bits of cake mix were left sticking in her hair.
"Why don't you listen to me, Mummy?"
Dimly, through a haze of conflicting thoughts, Mrs. Williams became aware of her daughter. She caught the tone of complaint in the child's voice.
"What were you saying, dear?"
"I knew you weren't listening to me."
"Mummy was listening, darling. Mummy can listen and get dinner ready at the same time." Now what could they have for dinner?
"I was telling you about Ineed."
"Enid, dear," corrected Mrs. Williams automatically. There was half a cold meat pie in the pantry, even though that would mean having cold pie for two days running. "Her name is Enid."
"She calls it Ineed."
"That is up to her. But the name is pronounced Enid." And they could have rice pudding afterwards. There was no shortage of rice pudding.
"But why has she?"
"Why has she what?" Or semolina, or tapioca, or sage. Nothing drastic could go wrong with a tinned milk pudding---apart from burning the saucepan.
"I told you, Mummy. Furry teeth. Why has Ineed got furry teeth?"
Why was it so difficult to concentrate? Why did recipes never turn out like their pictures? Why couldn't she talk to a child on a child's level?
"I'm sure Enid hasn't got furry teeth, darling," said Mrs. Williams. "She was just saying that."
"But she has, Mummy. She showed them to me."
"Did she, darling?" Or would a tin of fruit be better? Plums, perhaps. Was there enough milk left to make a custard?
"Yes. She took them out, and showed them to me. They were furry all over."
"Then she ought to see a dentist."
"You don't understand, Mummy. That's the way her teeth are. Fur all over them. She let me feel it before she put them back. It was quite soft---like a kitten's back."
Mrs. Williams felt a sudden ache at the back of her eyes. She could no longer ignore the brown mess sticking to the top of the cooker. With a bit of luck she might get most of the chaos cleaned up before Eric came home, and raised his eyebrows.
"That's very interesting, dear," she said. "Now run out and play again. If you're a good girl, we'll have plums and custard for dinner."
The child turned toward the kitchen door.
"You weren't listening," she accused her mother. "You never listen. You don't care about Ineed. You don't care about anything."
Then she was gone.
Mrs. Williams took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes, smudging flour on her eyelashes. She tried. Honestly she tried. If she didn't try, there would be fewer failures to throw away. If she didn't try, they could live on corned beef, and crisps, and baked beans. If she didn't try so hard there would be more time to spare for Geraldine. As events were turning out, was Geraldine doomed to being another of her mother's failures?
Geraldine wore thick-lensed spectacles, like her mother. Geraldine had her mother's flat features, unhealthy complexion, and dust-colored hair. Geraldine was prone to sickly headaches. Geraldine had uneven teeth. Like her mother, Geraldine was not very bright.
What had the girl been talking about? Another child with peculiar teeth? Fur? Imagination. Geraldine had shown so few signs of having any imagination that it was a pity not to have encouraged her now. But the cooker had to be cleaned.
Once, during the cleaning, Mrs. Williams paused. Who was Enid anyway? Then she kicked over a bucket of dirty water, and the thought was washed away.
Geraldine did not mention Ineed again for several weeks. Mrs. Williams was dimly aware that her daughter had a little friend. Once she saw them playing together by the hedge at the bottom of the garden. It was a thick hedge and had originally formed the boundary to the field on which this part of the housing estate had been built. With rare sensitivity, the builders had left it undisturbed. The two children were sitting together in the shadow of the hedge. The other child seemed smaller than Geraldine, dark-haired and very thin. At that distance Mrs. Williams could not quite make out what the children were doing. It seemed almost as though the dark one had unscrewed one of her hands and passed it to Geraldine for inspection. Although Mrs. Williams knew that her eyesight was at fault---she must have her eyes tested again when she could find the time---she felt vaguely uneasy, and rapped on the window. The children scurried out of sight, making Mrs. Williams feel guilty. She had blundered again. Geraldine did not make friends---she reflected her mother's insecurity when dealing with other people---at least her own mother need not frighten away the few friends she had. Mrs. Williams made a mental note to encourage Geraldine's new playmate. Perhaps the little girl could be invited to tea? Well, perhaps not to a meal; but invited to---something. However as the good intention grew vaguer, so did the impetus, and finally Mrs. Williams did nothing. As Geraldine did not mention her new friend, Ineed became a cloudy figure in the background of Mrs. Williams's ever-cluttered mind.
It was Mr. Williams who was responsible for bringing the matter up again while they were having dinner. It had been a successful meal: roast chicken (which Mrs. Williams had bought from the delicatessen) and salad. Mr. Williams had found only one caterpillar on his lettuce and had quietly pushed it to the side of his plate. They were all finishing their ice cream when her father noticed that Geraldine was no longer wearing the braces on her teeth.
He was not angry because he was never angry; however he pointed out that Geraldine had made a promise to take care of the braces until her teeth had been straightened. Geraldine smiled at him, showing all her teeth. It was a delightful smile that almost made one forget the thick spectacles, the lank hair, and the pasty complexion. Moreover, her teeth were perfect.
Mr. Williams put down his spoon and stared across the table.
"May I see them again?" he asked.
Geraldine grinned. Her teeth were even, white and sparkling. They even seemed to have lost their yellow tinge.
"Remarkable," said Mr. Williams. "Had you noticed, mother?"
Mrs. Williams hadn't noticed. She did, however, notice the implied rebuke in the question: he expected her not to have noticed the child's teeth.
"I'm sure I should have done so sooner or later," she murmured.
"Mummy wouldn't notice if I lost my head," muttered Geraldine.
"Now, now," rebuked her father; but he was too pleased to sound really severe. "I must say that dentist did a good job. He warned us that it might take over twelve months, but this has taken less than six weeks."
"Ineed did it," said Geraldine.
"I really ought to congratulate him," went on Mr. Williams.
"Ineed did it," repeated Geraldine.
"Ineed?"
"Geraldine has a little friend called Enid," explained Mrs. Williams. "Enid, dear. Do try to remember that. It's Enid. You must ask her round for tea, or a glass of lemonade, or something."
"She's shy," said Geraldine. "She isn't ordinary. So she only makes friends with people who aren't ordinary. Like me and Barry Mapel. Barry can't walk properly because he has twisted legs. Ineed has got holes where her ears should be, and her teeth are covered with fur."
"Really?" said Mr. Williams. "Of course one doesn't usually write to one's dentist, but I expect he'd like to know that we appreciate what he's done."
"Ineed took all my teeth out," said Geraldine. "It didn't hurt at all."
"I'm so glad," said Mrs. Williams, sniffing. Had she remembered to turn the light out under the milk for the coffee?
"Ineed said that she'd never seen teeth like mine before. They were so twisted. So she straightened them before she put them back. She rubbed them white, too."
"After all," said Mr. Williams, "a professional man must take a pride in his profession."
"I asked her if there was anything she could do about my headaches, but she said that she'd have to think about it."
"The laborer is worthy of his hire," quoted Mr. Williams with some satisfaction.
A hissing and spluttering came from the kitchen. With the speed and precision that long practice had tempered into second nature Mr. Williams strode into the kitchen, turning out the light under the milk with one hand, and reaching for the dishcloth with the other.
Mrs. Williams sat back with a sigh, and tried to pick up the threads of half-heard and dimly remembered conversations.
"This Enid. Doesn't she live near here?"
"Hereabouts."
"I suppose her family has just moved into the district."
"Oh, no. They've lived here a long time. As long as anyone can remember, Ineed says. Years and years."
"Longbarrow hasn't been built all that long, dear," mused Mrs. Williams. "The estate was quite new when your father and I bought this house. I remember having to wade through mud to inspect it. What is Enid's other name?"
"She hasn't got another name."
Mrs. Williams, listening to the sounds of the mopping-up operation in the kitchen, did not want to become involved in a childish argument, and did not press the question.
"You must ask her round some day. You know I like to see your friends." She thought she heard the rattle of coffee cups. "Play on the lawn or something."
"Ineed doesn't like people to look at her," mumbled Geraldine. "She thinks they laugh at her nose."
"I'm sure we're much too polite. I wonder if Daddy wants a hand with the coffee."
"I'm going to make her do something about my headaches," said Geraldine. "I'm going to make her promise."
"I expect you have some jolly games together."
"She says that the headaches happen right inside my head, but she doesn't know yet how to get inside. She's not sure how I'm put together. So I'm going to get the book. With pictures. Then she'll have to promise. She mended my teeth when they were twisted, didn't she?"
"I always liked that dentist," said Mrs. Williams. "So young and so enthusiastic."
"She says my eyes ought to get better at the same time. Then I shan't have to wear these glasses." She snatched them off, and squinted short-sightedly at her mother.
"Ah, coffee!" crowed Mrs. Williams.
With a sigh Geraldine replaced her glasses. Ineed was right. They didn't understand. They would never understand. No wonder Ineed wanted to avoid them. She and Ineed understood each other. Ineed was going to find a way to get inside her head. Geraldine knew where the book was kept---in the low bookcase that was never dusted. The book had pictures of people without clothes, without skin, and without flesh. That should show Ineed how people were put together. It even had a picture of the gray sponge called a brain. When Ineed saw that, she would be able to stop the headaches, and to make her see as well as anyone else. She only needed the book.
Mrs. Williams eventually found volume two of the encyclopedia open on the lawn. The pages were stained with grass cuttings, and the covers curled in the afternoon sun. Mrs. Williams had no idea how the volume came to be out there, but she was used to finding things where they ought not to be. So she returned to the house with the book. She did not associate Geraldine with its removal until she later found the child in a state of near hysteria.
Mrs. Williams heard the sound coming from her daughter's bedroom---half-screaming, half-sobbing. She found Geraldine lying face downward on the bed. For a while the child would not answer, no matter how gently questions were put; instead she drummed her feet, beat the pillow, and screamed.
Eventually Mrs. Williams was able to make out words. "She promised. She promised I should be next." The trouble with Geraldine was then correctly diagnosed as an attack of temper.
Mrs. Williams sat on the bed, and waited for the storm to subside, having learned from experience that this treatment was the most effective. At last the sobs died away, and the little girl looked up. She had hurled her spectacles into the corner of the room, and her eyes were inflamed, rubbed raw around the lids.
"Feeling better now, dear?" asked Mrs. Williams mildly.
"I hate her," said Geraldine.
"Tell Mummy all about it." She tried to put an arm around the child, but found the position too awkward to keep up. "Who did it, and what did they do?"
"She mended Barry's legs," sniffed Geraldine.
Mrs. Williams hunted for a handkerchief. "Go on, dear. Mummy's listening," she said, wondering where she could have tucked the spare one that she always kept handy for when she lost the first.
"She took them off and straightened them and then put them back again. Now he can walk as well as anyone."
"That's nice," murmured Mrs. Williams. "Just a minute, dear, while I fetch a piece of toilet paper. Then you can blow your nose."
"But I was supposed to be next," bellowed Geraldine as her mother pattered toward the bathroom. "She was going to look inside my head. That's why I took the book to her. Instead she used it to mend Barry's legs, and didn't do anything for me at all. She said she still wasn't sure because the inside of my head wasn't like the inside of her head, and my eyes weren't like her eyes. I know her eyes are different, but that doesn't mean she can't do anything about mine. Does it?"
"Of course not, dear," agreed Mrs. Williams absently, returning with a great loop of paper, and making a mental note to renew the toilet roll, knowing already that she would be the one to be caught. "Here you are. Wipe your eyes. And your nose."
"How can I make her do it?" whined Geraldine. "What can I do?"
"Let's put on our thinking caps, shall we?" said Mrs. Williams, trying to sound bright. "Now where did you throw your spectacles?"
Geraldine vaguely indicated the wall at which the glasses had been thrown in the first onslaught of her rage.
"She can do it. I know she can. I've seen her do things. She has very long fingers, and she can . . ."
"Oh, dear," murmured Mrs. Williams as she picked up the pieces. "Now I've trodden on them."
The spectacles had snapped in half. One lens was cracked, and Mrs. Williams's heel had pressed on the other, shattering it.
"You'll need a completely new pair," she went on. "And I really don't know what you'll do without them. You won't be able to watch TV or to read or anything. Right in the middle of the summer holidays, too. I don't know what you'll do with yourself."
To her irritation she realized that Geraldine was smiling. It was a slightly malicious, worldly-wise little smile: the sort of smile that no eight-year old has a right to be smiling.
"You're a very naughty girl, dropping your glasses where I---where anyone could step on them," she cried. "I ought to . . ." Her imagination gave out, and her voice with it; partly because she had no idea what she ought to do, and partly because the child's smile worried her. "I'll tell your father," she added weakly.
"Now Ineed will have to do something," said Geraldine calmly.
"Oh, damn Enid," snapped Mrs. Williams. "And as you're in your bedroom, you can stay here 'till teatime. Yes, you can stay here until your father comes home. Then we'll hear what he has to say about buying new glasses."
She left the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. On the landing she paused, wondering whether she ought to have locked the door, or whether she ought to go back and apologize; then at last deciding to leave everything to Eric. Her husband might have irritating eyebrows, but he always knew what to do in an emergency.
Mr. Williams decided that there had been faults on both sides. He thought that Mrs. Williams ought to make more of an effort to understand the child and to enter into the spirit of her fantasies. If Geraldine had an imaginary friend called Enid, who took off people's legs and straightened them, then Mrs. Williams ought to enter into the game. No wonder the child flew into a tantrum. On the other hand Geraldine must learn to control her feelings, especially when they resulted in expensive breakages; however, the child had been sufficiently punished and could now be allowed downstairs.
As Mrs. Williams retired to the kitchen feeling vaguely hurt---but fortunately just in time to catch the steak before it was irrevocably burned---Mr. Williams called upstairs.
"It's all right, Geraldine. You can come down now."
There was no reply.
"Geraldine, this is Daddy. I want to talk to you about, er, about Enid."
There was still no reply. Either the child was asleep or she was being obstinate. Mr. Williams went upstairs and found the bedroom empty. Of course that was typical: to send Geraldine to her room, and then not to be sure that she stayed there. Mr. Williams quickly smothered the spark of rising indignation because he prided himself upon being a reasonable man. Anyway the girl couldn't be far away. He looked out of the bedroom window.
There were two tiny figures by the hedge at the bottom of the garden. The height and distance made them look almost like dolls. One figure was bent over the other. By her dress she must have been a little girl, though she was incredibly thin, and her hair seemed to shine dark green in the late afternoon sun. Then she straightened up, and Mr. Williams could see the other figure more clearly.
"My God!" he shouted.
He charged from the bedroom and almost tumbled headlong in his rush down the stairs. He crashed through the kitchen and into the garden, screaming as he ran. "My God! My God! My God! My God!"
Mrs. Williams dropped a bowl of mashed potatoes and hurried after him.
The little girl with the leaf-colored hair, intent on the task before her, did not turn as Geraldine's father and mother raced the length of the lawn. The frantic parents were spurred by the sight of what lay on the grass under the hedge. Geraldine's headless body was spread-eagled on the grass. Her head lay some distance away, face upward. There was a hole where one eye should have been, and even as they ran toward the children, they saw the dark-haired girl pluck out the other eye.
Mr. Williams seized the child's shoulder, and at last she looked around. He glimpsed something deformed that the mind at once rejected, and would later refuse to recall except in nightmares; pale, phosphorescent, wrinkled skin of something that had lived for many, many years in the dark; bulging eyes giving a sickening hint that they might be extendable; gill-like slits for ears, and a drooping snout of a nose.
Mr. Williams swore, tightened his grip, but the creature twisted in his grasp. It reached up, its finger-like tentacles curling round under his arm. Immediately a pain tore through his muscles as though they were being removed with a white-hot scalpel. His arm flopped useless to his side.
There was a rustle in the hedge, and the thing was gone. Mrs. Williams was on her hands and knees by the remains of the child. She made vague fluttering motions with her hands. It was the same gesture that her husband had seen her make many times before, kneeling by a piece of broken china, and waiting for someone to fetch a dustpan. Except that this time she was giving voice to little high-pitched moans.
With his good arm Mr. Williams patted her shoulder. He told her to stay there and touch nothing until the police arrived. Then he went to the telephone. He knew the correct procedure for occasions such as this.
The eyes lay staring where the creature had dropped them. Mrs. Williams vaguely hoped that someone would be able to put them back. She noticed that Geraldine's mouth was moving, but guessed that this was only a muscular spasm, just as a chicken is reputed to run around after its head has been cut off. She did not recognize that the lips were forming words.
"Ineed!" the head wanted to cry out. "Let Ineed put me together again. Didn't you ever listen to what I told you about Ineed? I shall be better after she has put me together again. Where is Ineed? Ineed! Ineed!"
But divorced from lungs and larynx, no sound came from the mouth, and Ineed would take care never to be seen in Longbarrow again. Without Ineed, the head and body had to remain apart.
They were buried like that.
SCREAMING TO GET OUT by Janet Fox
If you have ever wondered what editors talk about when they get together, one answer is that they discuss writers. A few months ago, Grant Carrington (former associate editor with Amazing and Fantastic) and your obedient servant were conversing, and whose name should crop up, but that of Janet Fox. Her handful of stories had left an impression on both men and the question was---why weren't more of them appearing? Well, this past year more did appear, including this small gem about a man who bit off more than he could chew, and a woman who couldn't.
The city shone with a gauzy sleazy phosphorescence as things do in the later stages of decay. He could move through it, unthinking, unfeeling, in perfect safety, and though a lot had happened to make him what he was, at this moment he might as well have existed forever in this state, a suspension between blind exaltation and despair. But it must not be imagined that he knew this about himself any more than a rat is aware of its own prowess in the gritty levels just above bare survival. If it paused to consider, it would no longer be a rat.
He cruised in the dark, anonymous car until he felt the hunger come on him. That last one had been good. He remembered her face, ugly even before the tears streaked it and made her eyes red and swollen and her expression, that of an animal suffering and not knowing the reason why.
"You're like the Kleenex I blow my nose into," he had said.
She had pulled a sheet over her nakedness. Her body was ugly, too, bony and underdeveloped. He always chose the ugly ones. They seemed his legitimate prey in a world that worshipped physical beauty. She had started crying then in a satisfying way, the half-repressed, agonized sound of an adult's crying. Her inner self was as unattractive as the rest of her; no resources there, though she had probably been told at some point in her life that plain girls had "character." He had called her a couple of appropriate names and left, whistling down the street past the crumbling facades of the buildings, the castoffs of a technological society, the skeleton of a ruined bike, rusty blades of an electric fan, beer cans, and got into the car as one shoulders into a comfortable garment. The torn and sagging seat accommodated itself to his weight and the motor coughed into tenuous life.
He had read about her later in the paper. How she had closed all the windows and doors and turned on the gas. That was icing on the cake to him. The landlady (nosy old bag) had smelled the gas and had gone upstairs just in time to save her. That was even better, he thought. Let her live, that was the ticket. A suicide that failed was even better than one that succeeded. He had felt sated for days after that one, and was almost chary of trying again because the next one might not measure up.
Even though with each encounter it seemed he carried something away, it must not be thought that he did what he did with any malice. That it was something he could do and so did was all the explanation there was.
He drove up to a drive-in restaurant and watched the car hops go in and out with clockwork precision, parading their majorette legs in white short-shorts. They were safe from him and showed little interest in waiting on him, choosing instead the cars that spilled over with wise-cracking, rude-talking boys. He left the car and went inside and sat at a table where he ordered a coffee and drank it in measured sips. No one noticed him particularly because he wore that best of all disguises in the city, a face like everyone else's. Only the expressions moving quickly across his face at times insinuated a deformity of the spirit.
He looked around the room. Even though the place had a surface semblance of shining newness, a careful eye could see everywhere the signs of decay and ultimate fall. Corrosion had begun to eat in a circular pattern at the metal feet of the shining pseudo-marble tiles. There were bum scars where someone's cigarette had melted the gleaming black plastic tabletop. But he really didn't see these things as individual phenomena, because he himself was a part of the larger phenomenon which was slowly eating the city and all the people, its component parts.
She was behind the counter so that only half her bulk was visible, stomach rising to meet the pendulous breasts straining the white fabric of her uniform, chins, stacked one upon the other, sloping downward like tallow melting, features a distorted blur of protruding cheeks, doughy white skin, tiny wise eyes like something peering out, a prisoner beneath the weight of all that gross flesh. What was it they always said about a thin person screaming to get out? He ran his tongue rapidly across his lips. She moved serenely like some huge sea beast, and she had deft, seemingly boneless white hands that worked swiftly, almost with a life of their own.
Like him, she too was able to be what she was without thinking about it. As she worked, her white hands lifted toward her face French fries dripping with oil, sandwiches oozing mayonnaise, candy bars richly coated with chocolate, hiding in their centers crunchy, oily nuts. Although she did not bother to wonder why she was allowed to eat up this much of the profits, the manager was able to figure up how much he made on a worker who was never sick, never late, never complained and who worked untiringly at substandard wages. She did not wonder about it because she did not realize she was eating all these things. She lived almost every waking minute with a hunger that was a dull ache inside her and seemed to have nothing whatever to do with the rich foods her hands were continually putting into her mouth. Sometimes she tried to think about herself, who she was, but she could only feel herself as a mouth, empty and salivating for something, she didn't know what.
He studied her heavy body as she moved back and forth behind the counter. What must she look like naked: an outré buddha, shaped by dirty hands from a wad of dough, then allowed to rise . . . and rise. He smiled at the thought, and she orbited toward him, greasy patches shining on forehead and cheeks.
"D'you want it warmed up?"
"What?"
"Your coffee."
"Oh. Yeah. Business slow tonight?"
And she started, all the way through the layers of fat, as though she wasn't used to having anyone notice that she was human, let alone address a remark to her, let alone a man!
"Yeah, yeah, it is," she said in a small, strangely unresonant voice. They looked at each other, each seeming to awaken from a sleep. There was a meeting here, as of two large though dormant powers, testing strength, then each subsided and for the moment slept again.
He toyed with the coffee cup, playing at self-consciousness. "What time do you get off work? I suppose it's late."
"About twelve."
"Is it . . . all right if I pick you up? It's just that I . . . get lonely sometimes. You know how it is." And he knew that she did know.
"Okay."
He put a quarter on the table and left hastily, not sure that he would be back. He sensed a strength in her where there should be nothing but weakness. Well, he didn't have to come back, not if he didn't want to.
She allowed her hands to attend unerringly to her tasks, unaware of everything except the hunger that now seemed to intensify. She never understood it, and tried to appease it by eating, but it rarely went away.
Rain began to tap insistent fingernails against the plate glass. The car hops squealed and ran for cover, and since it was getting late, the manager let them go home. They laughed and chattered among themselves, then scattered into the wet night. To her they were alien creatures. She could not imagine their lives, and she couldn't remember ever having been as young as they were. She didn't try very hard to recall. There was a dim memory of a damp, dark, closed-in space. She stopped trying to remember and thought instead of the nice young man. Her mind spiraled out into the rainy night as though willing him to come back.
The windshield wipers worked violently against the torrent of wind-driven rain. Not even rain could cleanse the city; the stuff in the air polluted the rain, giving it a chemical smell; the water in the gutters was brown, yearning toward sewers that underlay the city in myriad dark channels. He eased the car into one of the parking stalls before the deserted drive-in. The place looked haunted with its girls departed, its neons blinked out. He thought for a moment that she hadn't waited, then he saw the bulk of her outlined in the dim glow from a street lamp.
The rain didn't matter to her; she walked toward him placidly as if she didn't feel it. Her ponderous form was grotesque, draped in a wrinkled tan raincoat and her sparse hair hung around her face in limp strands. Then she was inside the car. He felt the seat go down the extremity of its springs. She brought with her the smell of wet hair, wet clothing and some other scent, not really unpleasant, not perfume. He was suddenly comfortable in her presence, as though her size was something to lean against.
"A good thing I came back for you. You'd get soaked walking home. You need someone to take care of you." That line always appealed to them. "What's your address?"
"415 Fenwick."
"That's quite a ways. Do you walk every night after dark?"
"Yeah."
"I'd think you'd be afraid."
"I'm not." A statement of fact.
The car was one of the few on the rainblack street. Water was dashed across the windshield and hissed under the tires. She didn't speak further but sat, imposing and imperturbable. It should have made him nervous, but somehow it didn't. For all her weight she didn't seem quite real. It was as though he might look away for a moment and look back to find her gone.
He entered her street. The buildings sagged subtly one against the other, their facades crumbling off in layers. Gaping stars in windowpanes attested to emptiness. "Have you lived in this neighborhood long?"
She stopped and tried to think. "I've lived here . . . all my life, she said, surprised to realize that it was true. White bodies writhing and the beginning of the hunger.
"The city's funny," he said. "You think of it as civilized, and maybe some parts of it are nice and safe, but there are back alleys, deserted buildings, cellars, perfect hiding places for---" He stopped himself, his imagination straining but not quite able to conclude something that had been clear at the beginning. He slipped his arm around her, hoping to offer reassurance, but she only looked at him in an odd way, so he removed his arm, and was glad of it. The wet raincoat had a clinging, yeasty quality. Perhaps she was one of the ugly ones who had come to terms with herself as she was. These were not vulnerable to him, but (his hunger prompted him) this one did not really have that feel.
He pulled the car into a parking space beside many other empty spaces before a building as anonymous as others along this street. The rain washed in rhythmic waves across the roof. He got out and went around to open her door. She would not run and he did not have the strength to compel her. The rain pelted them as they walked from the car to the door of her building.
A flight of stairs carpeted with a threadbare, colorless runner, squeaked, he supposed, familiarly under her weight. The staircase and hallway was dimly lit by flyspecked light fixtures of antique design. The walls displayed their many coats of paint in peeling layers, green, cream, blue, green again. Someone had scrawled obscenities in a childish hand. The hallway was littered, broken toys, bits of mold-colored organic matter.
Someone who was not what he was would have felt pity to see the squalor in which she lived, but he was pleased. That would make it easier for him.
She opened the door. The apartment seemed only a continuation of the corridor. Mildew had added subliminal designs to the cheap flower-printed wallpaper. The furniture was that predictable collection of odds and ends that inevitably ends up in a furnished room. There were no pictures, pillows, rugs or books to show that someone had even attempted to make a home here. He was discomfited. That was wrong; they all had the nesting instinct; he depended upon it. Sometimes he promised marriage first and saw the ghosts of suburban ranch houses and magazine-ad children flicker in their eyes.
"I'll put on some dry clothes. I'll bring you a blanket. No, don't turn on the lights. At work my eyes get kind of tired."
He imagined her night after night groping about the darkness like some huge blind grub in its burrow. Why wasn't she being giggly and coy about the changing of clothes? She tossed in a blanket and he undressed and wrapped himself in it.
She came in carrying two jelly glasses with wine in them, her massiveness enhanced by a shapeless bright pink house coat with ruffles at neck and sleeves. It was old how he was surprised by her bulk each time he saw her. She sat down on the couch, causing him to slide down the slippery cushion until he was pressed against her in the hollow formed by broken springs. Her bloated face swam before him, the image in a bad dream, indistinct in the dimness. There was only the insistence of the rain against the windows. He took her hand or did she take his, and her skin was moist, faintly adhesive. She squirmed out of the robe, her body immense and white, the flesh bulging and folding upon itself. As she put her arms around him, he had the dream-like sensation of warm water lapping gently against his body. At first her largeness was comforting, a great warm wall of flesh, then he felt himself falling . . . into? it? Her body became liquescent and began to engulf him. Darkness surrounded him and when he attempted to scream, his mouth was filled and he gagged. He struggled as the corrosive acids in her body began to digest the outer layers of his skin. As she lolled back she remembered briefly the dark underground place where she had, as one pale larva among dozens, burst from the egg and how she had grown to resemble, through protective mimicry, the occupants of these structures.
By morning her body would eject those indigestible parts, the teeth, the hardest parts of the largest bones, and she would carry them down into the burrow and place them beside the several dozen eggs that she had deposited there. She lay, sated, on the sofa, what looked like a huge woman in a dainty pink house coat. She had assuaged the hunger this way before but she didn't know how many times. It was hard for her to remember. In the morning she might even wonder what had happened to the kind young man who had driven her home.
UNDERTOW by Karl Edward Wagner
Karl Edward Wagner's Kane, the anti-hero of heroic fantasy, is known to thousands of readers who have discovered him in such novels as Darkness Weaves, Bloodstone, and Death Angel's Shadow. Kane is a mysterious figure, powerful sorcerer, capable swordsman, shrewd soldier, and often a villain who might prove a match for Conan (a fact you might keep in mind in reading this story). Wagner has said something to the effect that Kane is drawn from the Biblical story of Cain, if only in inspiration. The story that follows is a horror story in the tradition of those marvelously flavorsome tales which Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard used to produce for Weird Tales in its hallowed heyday. It concerns Kane at his most villainously grim and demonstrates why he has become so popular, and shows also that Wagner is a writer about as skilled as anyone now writing this sort of thing.
"She was brought in not long past dark," wheezed the custodian, scuttling crab-like along the rows of silent, shrouded slabs. "The city guard found her, carried her in. Sounds like the one you're asking about."
He paused beside one of the waist-high stone tables, lifted its filthy sheet. A girl's contorted face turned sightlessly upward---painted and rouged, a ghastly strumpet's mask against the pallor of her skin. Clots of congealed blood hung like a necklace of dark rubies along the gash across her throat.
The cloaked man shook his head curtly within the shadow of his hood, and the moonfaced custodian let the sheet drop back.
"Not the one I was thinking of," he murmured apologetically. "It gets confusing sometimes, you know, what with so many, and them coming and going all the while." Sniffling in the cool air, he pushed his rotund bulk between the narrow aisles, careful to avoid the stained and filthy shrouds. Looming over his guide, the cloaked figure followed in silence.
Low flamed lamps cast dismal light across the necrotorium of Carsultyal. Smouldering braziers spewed fitful, heavy fumed clouds of clinging incense that merged with the darkness and the stones and the decay---its cloying sweetness more nauseous than the stench of death it embraced. Through the thick gloom echoed the monotonous drip-drip-drip of melting ice, at times chorused suggestively by some heavier splash. The municipal morgue was crowded tonight---as always. Only a few of its hundred or more slate beds stood dark and bare; the others all displayed anonymous shapes bulging beneath blotched sheets---some protruding at curious angles, as if these restless dead struggled to burst free of the coarse folds. Night now hung over Carsultyal, but within this windowless subterranean chamber it was always night. In shadow pierced only by the sickly flame of funereal lamps, the nameless dead of Carsultyal lay unmourned---waited the required interval of time for someone to claim them, else to be carted off to some unmarked communal grave beyond the city walls.
"Here, I believe," announced the custodian. "Yes. I'll just get a lamp."
"Show me," demanded a voice from within the hood.
The portly official glanced at the other uneasily. There was no aura of power, of blighted majesty about the cloaked figure that boded ill in arrogant Carsultyal, whose clustered, star-reaching towers were whispered to be overawed by cellars whose depths plunged farther still. "Light's poor back here," he protested, drawing back the tattered shroud.
The visitor cursed low in his throat---an inhuman sound touched less by grief than feral rage.
The face that stared at them with too wide eyes had been beautiful in life; in death it was purpled, bloated, contorted in pain. Dark blood stained the tip of her protruding tongue, and her neck seemed bent at an unnatural angle. A gown of light-colored silk was stained and disordered. She lay supine, hands clenched into tight fists at her side.
"The city guard found her?" repeated the visitor in a harsh voice.
"Yes, just after nightfall. In the park overlooking the harbor. She was hanging from a branch---there in the grove with all the white flowers every spring. Must have just happened---said her body was warm as life, though there's a chill to the sea breeze tonight. Looks like she done it herself---climbed out on the branch, tied the noose, and jumped off. Wonder why they do it---her as pretty a young thing as I've ever seen brought in, and took well care of, too."
The stranger stood in rigid silence, staring at the strangled girl.
"Will you come back in the morning to claim her, or do you want to wait upstairs?" suggested the custodian.
"I'll take her now."
The plump attendant fingered the gold coin his visitor had tossed him a short time before. His lips tightened in calculation. Often there appeared at the necrotorium those who wished to remove bodies clandestinely for strange and secret reasons---a circumstance which made lucrative this disagreeable office. "Can't allow that," he argued. "There's laws and forms---you shouldn't even be here at this hour. They'll be wanting their questions answered. And there's fees . . ."
With a snarl of inexpressible fury, the stranger turned on him. The sudden movement flung back his hood.
The caretaker for the first time saw his visitor's eyes. He had breath for a short bleat of terror, before the dirk he did not see smashed through his heart.
Workers the next day, puzzling over the custodian's disappearance, were shocked to discover, on examining the night's new tenants for the necrotorium, that he had not disappeared after all.
I. Seekers in the Night
There---he heard the sound again.
Mavrsal left off his disgruntled contemplation of the near empty wine bottle, and stealthily came to his feet. The captain of the Tuab was alone in his cabin, and the hour was late. For hours the only sounds close at hand had been the slap of waves on the barnacled hull, the creek of cordage, and the dull thud of the caravel's aged timbers against the quay. Then had come a soft footfall, a muffled fumbling among the deck gear outside his half-open door. Too loud for rats---a thief then?
Grimly Mavrsal unsheathed his heavy cutlass and caught up a lantern. He catfooted onto the deck, reflecting bitterly over his worthless crew. From cook to first mate, they had deserted his ship a few days before, angered over wages months unpaid. An unseasonable squall had forced them to jettison most of their cargo of copper ingots, and the Tuab had limped into the harbor of Carsultyal with shredded sails, a cracked mainmast, a dozen new leaks from wrenched timbers, and the rest of her worn fittings in no better shape. Instead of the expected wealth, the decimated cargo had brought in barely enough capital to cover the expense of refitting. Mavrsal argued that until refitted the Tuab was unseaworthy, and that once repairs were complete, another cargo could be found (somehow), and then wages long in arrears could be paid---with a bonus for patient loyalty. The crew cared neither for his logic nor his promises, and defected amidst stormy threats.
Had one of them returned to carry out . . .? Mavrsal hunched his thick shoulders truculently and hefted the cutlass. The master of the Tuab had never run from a brawl, much less a sneak-thief or slinking assassin.
Night skies of autumn were bright over Carsultyal, making the lantern almost unneeded. Mavrsal surveyed the soft shadows of the caravel's deck, his brown eyes narrowed and alert beneath shaggy brows. But he heard the low sobbing almost at once, so there was no need to prowl about the deck.
He strode quickly to the mound of torn sail and rigging at the far rail. "All right, come out of that!" he rumbled, beckoning with the tip of his blade to the half-seen figure crouched against the rail. The sobbing choked into silence. Mavrsal prodded the canvas with an impatient boot. "Out of there, damn it!" he repeated.
The canvas gave a wriggle and a pair of sandled feet backed out, followed by bare legs and rounded hips that strained against the bunched fabric of her gown. Mavrsal pursed his lips thoughtfully as the girl emerged and stood before him. There were no tears in the eyes that met his gaze. The aristocratic face was defiant, although the flared nostrils and tightly pressed lips hinted that her defiance was a mask. Nervous fingers smoothed the silken gown, adjusted her cloak of dark-brown wool.
"Inside." Mavrsal gestured with his cutlass to the lighted cabin.
"I wasn't doing anything," she protested.
"Looking for something to steal."
"I'm not a thief."
"We'll talk inside." He nudged her forward, and sullenly she complied.
Following her through the door, Mavrsal locked it behind him and replaced the lantern. Returning the cutlass to its scabbard, he dropped back into his chair and contemplated his discovery.
"I'm no thief," she repeated, fidgeting with the fastenings of her cloak.
No, he decided, she probably wasn't---not that there was much aboard a decrepit caravel like the Tuab to attract a thief. But why had she crept aboard? She was a harlot, he assumed---what other business drew a girl of her beauty alone into the night of Carsultyal's waterfront? And she was beautiful, he noted with growing surprise. A tangle Of loosely bound red hair fell over her shoulders, framed a face whose paleskinned classic beauty was enhanced rather than flawed by a dust of freckles across her thin bridged nose. Eyes of startling green gazed at him with a defiance that seemed somehow haunted. She was tall, willowy. Before she settled the dark cloak about her shoulders, he had noted the high, conical breasts and softly rounded figure beneath the clinging gown of green silk. An emerald of good quality graced her hand, and about her neck she wore a wide collar of dark leather and red silk, from which glinted a larger emerald.
No, thought Mavrsal---again revising his judgment---she was too lovely, her garments too costly, for the quality of street tart who plied these waters. His bewilderment deepened. "Why were you on board then?" he demanded in a manner less abrupt.
Her eyes darted about the cabin. "I don't know," she returned.
Mavrsal grunted in vexation. "Were you trying to stow away?"
She responded with a small shrug. "I suppose so."
The sea captain gave a snort and drew his stocky frame erect. "Then you're a damn fool---or must think I'm one! Stow away on a battered old warrior like the Tuab, when there's plainly no cargo to put to sea, and any eye can see the damn ship's being refitted! Why, that ring you're wearing would book passage to any port you'd care to see, and on a first-class vessel! And to wander these streets at this hour! Well, maybe that's your business, and maybe you aren't careful of your trade---but there's scum along these waterfront dives that would slit a wench's throat as soon as pay her! Vaul! I've been in port three days and four nights, and already I've heard talk of enough depraved murders of pretty girls like you to . . ."
"Will you stop it!" she hissed in a tight voice. Slumping into the cabin's one other chair, she propped her elbows onto the rough table and jammed her fists against her forehead. Russet tresses tumbled over her face like a veil, so that Mavrsal could not read the emotions etched there. In the hollow of the cloak's parted folds, her breasts trembled with the quick pounding of her heart.
Sighing, he drained the last of the wine into his mug and pushed the pewter vessel toward the girl. There was another bottle in his cupboard; rising, he drew it out along with another cup. She was carefully sipping from the proffered mug when he resumed his place.
"Look, what's your name?" he asked her.
She paused so tensely before replying: "Dessylyn."
The name meant nothing to Mavrsal, although as the tension waxed and receded from her bearing, he understood that she had been concerned her name would bring recognition.
Mavrsal smoothed his close-trimmed brown beard. There was a rough-and-ready toughness about his face that belied the fact he had not quite reached thirty years, and women liked to tell him his rugged features were handsome. His left ear---badly scarred in a tavern brawl---gave him some concern, but it lay hidden beneath the unruly mass of his hair. "Well, Dessylyn." He grinned. "My name's Mavrsal, and this is my ship. Aid if you're worried about finding a place, you can spend the night here."
There was dread in her face. "I can't."
Mavrsal frowned, thinking he had been snubbed, and started to make an angry retort.
"I dare not . . . stay here too long," Dessylyn interposed, fear glowing in her eyes.
Mavrsal made an exasperated grimace. "Girl, you sneaked aboard my ship like a thief, but I'm inclined to forget your trespassing. Now, my cabin's cozy, girls tell me I'm a pleasant companion, and I'm generous with my coin. So why wander off into the night, where in the first filthy alley some pox-ridden drunk is going to take for free what I'm willing to pay for!"
"You don't understand!"
"Very plainly I don't." He watched her fidget with the pewter mug for a moment, then added pointedly: "Besides, you can hide here."
"By the gods! I wish I could!" she cried out. "If only I could hide from him!"
Brows knit in puzzlement, Mavrsal listened to the strangled sobs that rose muffled through the tossled auburn mane. He had not expected so unsettling a response to his probe. Thinking that every effort to penetrate the mystery surrounding Dessylyn only left him further in the dark, he measured out another portion of wine---and wondered if he should apologize for something.
"I suppose that's why I did it," she was mumbling. "I was able to slip away for a short while. So I walked along the shore, and I saw all the ships poised for flight along the harbor, and I thought how wonderful to be free like that! To step on board some strange ship, and to sail into the night to some unknown land---where he could never find me! To be free! Oh, I knew I could never escape him like that, but still when I walked by your ship, I wanted to try! I thought I could go through the motions---pretend I was escaping him!
"Only I know there's no escape from Kane!"
"Kane!" Mavrsal breathed a curse. Anger toward the girl's tormentor that had started to flare within him abruptly shuddered under the chill blast of fear.
Kane! Even to a stranger in Carsultyal, greatest city of mankind's dawn, that name evoked the specter of terror. A thousand tales were whispered of Kane; even in this city of sorcery, where the lost knowledge of prehuman Earth had been recovered to forge man's stolen civilization, Kane was a figure of awe and mystery. Despite uncounted tales of strange and disturbing nature, almost nothing was known for certain of the man---save that for generations his tower had brooded over Carsultyal. There he followed the secret paths along which his dark genius led him, and the hand of Kane was rarely seen (though it was often felt) in the affairs of Carsultyal. Brother sorcerers and masters of powers temporal alike spoke his name with dread, and those who dared to make him an enemy seldom were given long to repent their audacity.
"Are you Kane's woman?" he blurted out.
Her voice was bitter. "So Kane would have it. His mistress. His possession. Once though I was my own woman---before I was fool enough to let Kane draw me into his web!"
"Can't you leave him---leave this city?"
"You don't know the power Kane commands! Who would risk his anger to help me!"
Mavrsal squared his shoulders. "I owe no allegiance to Kane---nor to his minions in Carsultyal. This ship may be weathered and leaky, but she's mine, and I sail her where I please. If you're set on . . ."
Fear twisted her face. "Don't!" she gasped. "Don't even hint this to me! You can't realize what power Kane . . .
"What was that!"
Mavrsal tensed. From the night sounded the soft buffeting of great leathery wings. Claws scraped against the timbers of the deck outside. Suddenly the lantern flames seemed to shrink and waver; shadow fell deep within the cabin.
"He's missed me!" Dessylyn moaned. "He's sent it to bring me back!"
His belly cold, Mavrsal drew his cutlass and turned stiffly toward the door. The lamp flames were no more than a dying blue gleam. Beyond the door a shuffling weight caused a loosened plank to groan dully.
"No! Please!" she cried in desperation. "There's nothing you can do! Stay back from the door!"
Mavrsal snarled, his face reflecting the rage and terror that gripped him. Dessylyn pulled at his arm to draw him back.
He had locked the cabin door; a heavy iron bolt secured the stout timbers. Now an unseen hand was drawing the bolt aside. Silently, slowly, the iron bar turned, crept back along its mounting brackets. The lock snapped open. With nightmarish suddenness, the door swung wide.
Darkness hung in the passageway. Burning eyes regarded them. Advanced.
Dessylyn screamed hopelessly. Numb with terror, Mavrsal clumsily swung his blade toward the glowing eyes. Blackness reached out, hurled him with irresistible strength across the cabin. Pain burst across his consciousness, and then was only the darkness.
II. "Never, Dessylyn"
She shuddered and drew the fur cloak tighter about her thin shoulders. Would there ever again be a time when she wouldn't feel this remorseless cold?
Kane, his cruel face haggard in the glow of the brazier, stood hunched over the crimson alembic. How red the coals made his hair and beard; how sinister was the blue flame of his eyes . . . He craned intently forward to trap the last few drops of the phosphorescent elixir in a chalice of ruby crystal.
He had labored sleepless hours over the glowing liquid, she knew. Hours precious to her because these were hours of freedom---a time when she might escape his loathed attention. Her lips pressed a tight, bloodless line. The abominable formulae from which he prepared the elixir! Dessylyn thought again of the mutilated corpse of the young girl Kane had directed his servant to carry off. Again a spasm slid across her lithe form.
"Why won't you let me go!" she heard herself ask dully for the . . . how many times had she asked that?
"I'll not let you go, Dessylyn," Kane replied in a tired voice. "You know that."
"Someday I'll leave you."
"No, Dessylyn. You'll never leave me."
"Someday."
"Never, Dessylyn."
"Why, Kane?"
With painful care, he allowed a few drops of an amber liqueur to fall into the glowing chalice. Blue flame hovered over its surface.
"Why?"
"Because I love you, Dessylyn."
A bitter sob, parody of laughter, shook her throat. "You love me." She enclosed a hopeless scream in those slow, grinding syllables.
"Kane, can I ever make you understand how utterly I loathe you!"
"Perhaps. But I love you, Dessylyn."
The sobbing laugh returned.
Glancing at her in concern, Kane carefully extended the chalice toward her. "Drink this. Quickly---before the nimbus dies."
She looked at him through eyes dark with horror. "Another bitter draught of some foul drug to bind me to you?"
"Whatever you wish to call it."
"I won't drink it."
"Yes, Dessylyn, you will drink it."
His killer's eyes held her with bonds of eternal ice. Mechanically she accepted the crimson chalice, let its phosphorescent liqueur pass between her lips, seep down her throat.
Kane sighed and took the empty goblet from her listless grip. His massive frame seemed to shudder from fatigue, and he passed a broad hand across his eyes. Blood rimmed their dark hollows.
"I'll leave you, Kane."
The sea wind gusted through the tower window, swirled the long red hair about his haunted face.
"Never, Dessylyn."
III. At the Inn of the Blue Window
He called himself Dragar . . .
Had the girl not walked past him seconds before, he probably would not have interfered when he heard her scream. Or perhaps he would have. A stranger to Carsultyal, nonetheless the barbarian youth had passed time enough in mankind's lesser cities to be wary of cries for help in the night---and to think twice before plunging into dark alleys to join in an unseen struggle. But there was a certain pride in the chivalric ideals of his heritage---along with a confidence in the hard muscle of his swordarm, and in the strange blade he carried.
Thinking of the lithe, white limbs he had glimpsed---the patrician beauty of the face that coolly returned his curious stare as she came toward him---Dragar unsheathed the heavy blade at his hip and dashed back along the street he had just entered.
There was moonlight enough to see, although the alley was well removed from the nearest flaring street lamp. Cloak torn away, her gown ripped from her shoulders, the girl writhed in the grasp of two thugs. A third tough, warned by the rush of the barbarian's boots, angrily spun to face him---sword streaking for the youth's belly.
Dragar laughed and flung the lighter blade aside with a powerful blow of his sword. Scarcely seeming to pause in his attack, he gashed his assailant's arm with a upward swing, and as the other's blade faltered, he split the thug's skull. One of the two who held the girl lunged forward, but Dragar sidestepped his rush, and with a sudden thrust sent his sword ripping into the man's chest. The remaining assailant shoved the girl against the barbarian's legs, whirled and fled down the alley.
Ignoring the fugitive, Dragar helped the stunned girl to her feet. Terror yet twisted her face, as she distractedly arranged the torn bodice of her silken gown. Livid scratches streaked the pale skin of her breasts, and a bruise was swelling out her lip. Dragar caught up her fallen cloak and draped it over her shoulders.
"Thank you," she breathed in a shaky whisper, speaking at last.
"My pleasure," he rumbled. "Killing rats is good exercise. Are you all right, though?"
She nodded, then clutched his arm for support.
"The hell you are! There's a tavern close by, girl. Come---I've silver enough for a brandy to put the fire back in your heart."
She looked as if she might refuse---were her knees steadier. In a daze, the girl let him half carry her into the Inn of the Blue Window. There he led her to an unoccupied booth and called for brandy.
"What's your name?" he asked, after she had tasted the heady liqueur.
"Dessylyn."
He framed her name with silent lips to feel its sound. "I'm called Dragar," he told her. "My home lies among the mountains far south of here, though it's been a few years since last I hunted with my clansmen. Wanderlust drew me away, and since then I've followed this banner or another's---sometimes just the shadow of my own flapping cloak. Then after hearing tales enough to dull my ears, I decided to see for myself if Carsultyal is the wonder men boast her to be. You a stranger here as well?"
She shook her head. When the color returned to her cheeks, her face seemed less aloof.
"Thought you might be. Else you'd know better than to wander the streets of Carsultyal after nightfall. Must be something important for you to take the risk."
The lift of her shoulders was casual, though her face remained guarded. "No errand . . . but it was important to me."
Dragar's look was questioning.
"I wanted to . . . oh, just to be alone, to get away for a while. Lose myself maybe---I don't know. I didn't think anyone would dare touch me if they knew who I was."
"Your fame must be held somewhat less in awe among these gutter rats than you imagined," offered Dragar wryly.
"All men fear the name of Kane!" Dessylyn shot back bitterly.
"Kane!" The name exploded from his lips in amazement. What had this girl to do . . .? But Dragar looked again at her sophisticated beauty, her luxurious attire, and understanding dawned. Angrily he became aware that the tavern uproar had become subdued on the echo of his outburst. Several faces had turned to him, their expressions uneasy, calculating.
The barbarian clapped a hand to his swordhilt. "Here's a man who doesn't fear a name!" he announced. "I've heard something of Carsultyal's most dreaded sorcerer, but his name means less than a fart to me! There's steel in this sword that can slice through the best your world famed mastersmiths can forge, and it thrives on the gore of magicians. I call the blade Wizard's Bane, and there are souls in Hell who will swear that its naming is no boast!"
Dessylyn stared at him in sudden fascination.
And what came after, Dessylyn?
I . . . I'm not sure . . . My mind---I was in a state of shock, I suppose. I remember holding his head for what seemed like forever. And then I remember sponging off the blood with water from the wooden lavabo, and the water was so cold and so red, so red. I must have put on my clothes . . . Yes, and I remember the city and walking and all those faces . . . All those faces . . . they stared at me, some of them. Stared and looked away, stared and looked compassionate, stared and looked curious, stared and made awful suggestions . . . And some just ignored me, didn't see me at all. I can't think which faces were the must cruel . . . I walked, walked so long . . . I remember the pain . . . I remember my tears, and the pain when there were no more tears . . . I remember . . . My mind was dazed . . . My memory . . .
I can't remember . . .
IV. A Ship Will Sail . . .
He looked up from his work and saw her standing there on the quay---watching him, her face a strange play of intensity and indecision. Mavrsal grunted in surprise and straightened from his carpentry. She might have been a phantom, so silently had she crept upon him.
"I had to see if . . . if you were all right," Dessylyn told him with an uncertain smile.
"I am---aside from a crack on my skull," Mavrsal answered, eyeing her dubiously.
By the dawn light he had crawled from beneath the overturned furnishings of his cabin. Blood matted his thick hair at the back of his skull, and his head throbbed with a deafening ache---so that he had sat dumbly for a long while, trying to recollect the events of the night. Something had come through the door, had hurled him aside like a spumed doll. And the girl had vanished---carried off by the demon? Her warning had been for him; for herself she evidenced not fear, only resigned despair.
Or had some of his men returned to carry out their threats? Had too much wine, the blow on his head . . .? But no, Mavrsal knew better. His assailants would have robbed him, made certain of his death---had any human agency attacked him. She had called herself a sorcerer's mistress, and it had been sorcery that spread its black wings over his caravel. Now the girl had returned, and Mavrsal's greeting was tempered by his awareness of the danger which shadowed her presence.
Dessylyn must have known his thoughts. She backed away, as if to turn and go.
"Wait!" he called suddenly.
"I don't want to endanger you any further."
Mavrsal's quick temper responded. "Danger! Kane can bugger with his demons in Hell, for all I care! My skull was too thick for his creature to split, and if he wants to try his hand in person, I'm here to offer him the chance!"
There was gladness in her wide eyes, as Dessylyn stepped toward him. "His necromancies have exhausted him," she assured the other. "Kane will sleep for hours yet."
Mavrsal handed her over the rail with rough gallantry. "Then perhaps you'll join me in my cabin. It's grown too dark for carpentry and I'd like to talk with you. After last night, I think I deserve to have some questions answered anyway."
He struck fire to a lamp and turned to find her balanced at the edge of a chair, watching him nervously. "What sort of questions?" she asked in an uneasy tone.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
Mavrsal made a vague gesture. "Why everything. Why did you get involved with this sorcerer? Why does he hold to you, if you hate him so? Why can't you leave him?"
She gave him a sad smile that left him feeling naive. "Kane is . . . a fascinating man; there is a certain magnetism about him. And I won't deny the attraction his tremendous power and wealth held for me. Does it matter? It's enough to say that there was a time when we met, and I fell under Kane's spell. It may be that I loved him once---but I've since hated too long and too deeply to remember.
"But Kane continues to love me in his way. Love! His is the love of a miser for his hoard; the love of a connoisseur for some exquisitely wrought carving; the love a spider feels for its imprisoned prey! I'm his treasure, his possession---and what concern are the feelings of a lifeless object to its owner! Would the curious circumstance that his prized statue might hate him lessen the pleasure its owner derives from its possession?
"And leave him?" Her voice broke. "By the gods, don't you think I've tried!"
His thoughts in a turmoil, Mavrsal studied the girl's haunted face. "But why accept defeat? Past failure doesn't mean you can't try again. If you're free to roam the streets of Carsultyal at night, your feet can take you farther still. I see no chain clamped to that collar you wear."
"Not all chains are visible."
"So I've heard, though I've never believed it. A weak will can imagine its own fetters."
"Kane won't let me leave him."
"Kane's power doesn't reach a tenth so far as he believes."
"There are men who would dispute that, if the dead cared to share the wisdom that came to them too late."
Challenge glinted in the girl's green eyes as they held his. Mavrsal felt the spell of her beauty, and his manhood answered. "A ship sails where its master wills it---may the winds and the tides and perils of the sea be damned!"
Her face craned closer. Tendrils of her auburn hair touched his arm. "There is courage in your words. But you know little of Kane's power."
He laughed recklessly. "Let's say I'm not cowed by his name."
From the belt of her gown, Dessylyn unfastened a small scrip. She tossed the leather pouch toward him.
Catching it, Mavrsal untied the braided thong and dumped its contents onto his palm. His hand shook. Gleaming gem-stones tumbled a tiny rainbow, clattered onto the cabin table. In his hand lay a fortune in rough-cut diamonds, emeralds, other precious stones.
Through their multihued reflections his face framed a question.
"I think there is enough to repair your ship, to pay her crew . . ." She paused; brighter flamed the challenge in her eyes. "Perhaps to buy my passage to a distant port---if you dare!"
The captain of the Tuab swore. "I meant what I said, girl! Give me another few days to refit her, and I'll sail you to lands where no man has ever heard the name of Kane!"
"Later you may change your mind," Dessylyn warned.
She rose from her chair. Mavrsal thought she meant to leave, but then he saw that her fingers had loosened other fastenings at her belt. His breath caught as the silken gown began to slip from her shoulders.
"I won't change my mind," he promised, understanding why Kane might go to any extreme to keep Dessylyn with him.
V. Wizard's Bane
"Your skin is like the purest honey," proclaimed Dragar ardently. "By the gods, I swear you even taste like honey!"
Dessylyn squirmed in pleasure and hugged the barbarian's shaggy blond head to her breasts. After a moment she sighed and languorously pulled from his embrace. Sitting up, she brushed her slim fingers through the tousled auburn wave that cascaded over her bare shoulders and back, clung in damp curls to her flushed skin.
Dragar's calloused hand imprisoned her slender wrist as she sought to rise from the rumpled bed. "Don't prance away like a contrite virgin, girl. Your rider has dismounted but for a moment's rest---then he's ready to gallop through the palace gates another time or more, before the sun drops beneath the sea."
"Pretty---but I have to go," she protested. "Kane may grow suspicious . . ."
"Bugger Kane!" cursed Dragar, pulling the girl back against him. His thick arms locked about her, and their lips crushed savagely. Cupped over a small breast, his hand felt the pounding of her heart, and the youth laughed and tilted back her feverish face. "Now tell me you prefer Kane's effete pawings to a man's embrace!"
A frown drifted like a sudden thunderhead. "You underestimate Kane. He's no soft fleshed weakling."
The youth snarled in jealousy. "A foul sorcerer who's skulked in his tower no one knows how long! He'll have dust for blood, and dry rot in his bones! But go to him if you prefer his toothless kisses and withered loins!"
"No, dearest! Yours are the arms I love to lie within!" Dessylyn cried, entwining herself about him and soothing his anger with kisses. "It's just that I'm frightened for you. Kane isn't a withered graybeard. Except for the madness in his eyes, you would think Kane a hardened warrior in his prime. And you've more than his sorcery to fear. I've seen Kane kill with his sword---he's a deadly fighter!"
Dragar snorted and stretched his brawny frame. "No warrior hides behind a magician's robes. He's but a name---an ogre's name to frighten children into obedience. Well, I don't fear his name, nor do I fear his magic---and my blade has drunk the blood of better swordsmen than your black hearted tyrant ever was!"
"By the gods!" whispered Dessylyn, burrowing against his thick shoulder. "Why did fate throw me into Kane's web instead of into your arms!"
"Fate is what man wills it. If you wish it, you are my woman now."
"But Kane . . .!"
The barbarian leapt to his feet and glowered down at her. "Enough sniveling about Kane, girl! Do you love me or not!"
"Dragar, beloved---you know I love you! Haven't these past days . . ."
"These past days have been filled with woeful whimperings about Kane---and my belly grows sick from hearing it! Forget Kane! I'm taking you from him, Dessylyn! For all her glorious legend and over-mighty towers, Carsultyal is a stinking pest-hole like every other city I've known. Well, I'll waste no more days here.
"I'll ride from Carsultyal tomorrow, or take passage on a ship perhaps. Go to some less stagnant land, where a bold man and a strong blade can win wealth and adventure! You're going with me."
"Can you mean it, Dragar!"
"If you think I lie, then stay behind."
"Kane will follow."
"Then he'll lose his life along with his love!" sneered Dragar.
With confident hands, he slid from its scabbard his great sword of silver-blue metal. "See this blade," he hissed, flourishing its massive length easily. "I call it Wizard's Bane, and there's reason to the name. Look at the blade. It's steel, but not steel such as your secretive smiths forge in their dragon-breath furnaces. See the symbols carved into the forte. This blade has power! It was forged long ago by a mastersmith who used the glowing heart of a fallen star for his ore, who set runes of protection into the finished sword. Who wields Wizard's Bane need not fear magic, for sorcery can have no power over him. My sword can cleave through the hellish flesh of demons; it can ward off a sorcerer's enchantments and skewer his evil heart!
"Let Kane send his demons to find us! My blade will shield us from his spells, and I'll send his minions howling in fear back to his dread tower! Let him creep from his lair if he dares! I'll feed him bits of his liver and laugh in his face while he dies!"
Dessylyn's eyes brimmed with adoration. "You can do it, Dragar! You're strong enough to take me from Kane! No man has your courage, beloved!"
The youth laughed and twisted her hair. "No man? What do you know of men? Did you think these spineless city-bred fops, who tremble at the shadow of a senile cuckold, were men? Think no more of slinking back to Kane's tower before your keeper misses you. Tonight, girl, I'm going to show you how a man loves his woman!"
But why will you insist it's impossible to leave Kane?
I know.
How can you know? You're too fearful of him to try.
I know.
But how can you say that?
Because I know.
Perhaps this bondage is only in your mind, Dessylyn.
But I know Kane won't let me leave him.
So certain---is it because you've tried to escape him?
Have you tried, Dessylyn?
Tried with another's help---and failed, Dessylyn?
Can't you be honest with me, Dessylyn?
And now you'll turn away from me in fear!
Then there was another man?
It's impossible to escape him---and now you'll abandon me!
Tell me, Dessylyn. How can I trust you if you won't trust me?
On your word then. There was another man . . .
VI. Night and Fog
Night returned to Carsultyal, spread its misty cloak over narrow alleys and brooding towers alike. The voice of the street broke from its strident daylight cacophony to a muted rumble of night. As the stars grew brighter through the sea mists, the streets grew silent---except for fitful snorts and growls, like a hound uneasy in his sleep. Then the lights that glimmered through the shadow began to slip away, so stealthily that their departure went unnoticed. One only knew that the darkness, the fog, the silence now ruled the city unchallenged. And night, closer here than elsewhere in the cities of mankind, had returned to Carsultyal.
They lay close in each other's arms---sated, but too restless for sleep. Few were their words, so that they listened to the beating of their hearts, pressed so close together as to make one sound. Fog thrust tendrils through chinks in the bolted shutters, brought with it the chill breath of the sea, lost cries of ships anchored in the night.
Then Dessylyn hissed like a cat and dug her nails so deep into Dragar's arm that rivulets of crimson made an armlet about the corded muscle. Straining his senses against the night, the barbarian dropped his hand to the hilt of the unsheathed sword that lay beside their bed. The blade glinted blue---more so than the wan lamplight would seem to reflect.
From the night outside . . . Was it a sudden wind that rattled the window shutters, buffeted the streamers of fog into swirling eddies? A sound . . . Was that the flap of vast leathery wings?
Fear hung like a clinging web over the inn, and the silence about them was so desolate that theirs might have been the last two hearts to beat in all of haunted Carsultyal.
From the roof . . . suddenly there came a slithering metallic scrape upon the slate tiles.
Wizard's Bane pulsed with a corposant of blue witch-fire. Shadows stark and unreal cringed away from the lambent blade.
Against the thick shutters sounded a creaking groan of hideous pressure. Oaken planks sagged inward. Holding fast, the iron bolts trembled, abruptly smouldered into sullen rubious heat. Mist poured past the buckling timbers, bearing with it a smell not of any sea known to man.
Brighter pulsed the scintillant glare of the sword. A nimbus of blue flame rippled out from the blade, encircling the crouching youth and his terrified companion. Rippling blue radiance spread across the room---struck the groaning shutters.
A burst of incandescence spat from the glowing iron bolts. Through the night beyond tore a silent snarl---an unearthly shriek felt rather than heard---a spitting bestial cry of pain and baffled rage.
The shutters sprang back with a grunting sigh as the pressure against them suddenly relented. Again the night shuddered with the buffet of tremendous wings. The ghost of sound dwindled. The black tide of fear ebbed, shrank back from the inn.
Dragar laughed and brandished his sword. Eyes still dazzled, Dessylyn stared in fascination at the blade, now suffused with a sheen no more preternatural than any finely burnished steel. It might all have been a frightened dream, she thought, knowing well that it had not been.
"It looks like your keeper's sorcery is something less than all powerful!" scoffed the barbarian. "Now Kane will know that his spells and coward's tricks are powerless against Wizard's Bane. No doubt your ancient spellcaster is cowering under his cold bed---scared spitless that these gutless city folk will someday find courage enough to call his bluff! And against that, he's probably safe."
"You don't know Kane," moaned Dessylyn.
With gentle roughness, Dragar cuffed the grim-faced girl. "Still frightened by a legend? And after you've seen his magic defeated by the star-blade! You've lived within the shadow of this decadent city too long, girl. In a few hours we'll have light, and then I'll take you out into the real world---where men haven't sold their souls to the ghosts of elder races!"
But her fears did not dissolve under the barbarian's warm confidence. For a timeless period of darkness Dessylyn clung to him, her heart restlessly drumming, shuddering at each fragment of sound that pierced the night and fog.
And through the darkened streets echoed the clop-clop of hooves.
Far away, their sound so faint it might have been imagined. Closer now, the fog muffled fall of iron-shod hooves on paving bricks. Drawing ever closer, a hollow, rhythmic knell that grew dealing in the absolute stillness. Clop-Clop Clop-Clop Clop-Clop CLOP-CLOP CLOP CLOP. Approaching the inn unhurriedly. Inexorably approaching the mist shrouded inn.
"What is it?" he asked her, as she started upright in terror.
"I know that sound. It's a black, black stallion, with eyes that burn like living coals, and hooves that ring like iron!"
Dragar snorted.
"Ah! And I know his rider!"
CLOP-CLOP CLOP-CLOP. Hoofbeats rolled and gobbled across the courtyard of the Inn of the Blue Window. Echoes rattled against the shutters . . . Could no one else hear their chill thunder!
CLOP-CLOP CLOP. The unseen horse stamped and halted outside the inn's door. Harness jingled. Why were there no voices!
From deep within the chambers below echoed the dull chink of bolt and bars falling away, clattering to the floor. A harsh creak as the outer door swung open. Where was the innkeeper!
Footfalls sounded on the stairs---the soft scuff of boot leather on worn planks. Someone entered the hallway beyond their door; strode confidently toward their room.
Dessylyn's face was a stark mask of terror. Knuckles jammed against her teeth to dam a rising scream were stained red with drawn blood. Dread haunted eyes were fixed upon the door opposite.
Slipping into a fighting crouch, Dragar spared a glance for the bared blade in his taut grasp. No nimbus of flame hovered about the sword, only the deadly gleam of honed steel, reflected in the unnaturally subdued lamplight.
Footsteps halted in front of their door. It seemed he could hear the sound of breathing from beyond the threshold.
A heavy fist smote the door. Once. A single summons. A single challenge.
With an urgent gesture, Dessylyn signed Dragar to remain silent.
"Who dares . . .!" he growled in a ragged voice.
A powerful blow exploded against the stout timber. Latch and bolt erupted from their setting in a shower of splinters and wrenched metal. All but torn from its hinges, the door was hurled open, slammed resoundingly against the wall.
"Kane!" screamed Dessylyn.
The massive figure strode through the doorway, feral grace in the movements of his powerful, square torsoed frame. A heavy sword was balanced with seeming negligence in his left hand, but there was no uncertainty in the lethal fury that blazed in his eyes.
"Good evening," sneered Kane through a mirthless smile.
Startled despite Dessylyn's warning, Dragar's practiced eye swiftly sized up his opponent. So the sorcerer's magic had preserved the prime of his years after all . . . At about six feet Kane stood several inches shorter than the towering barbarian, but the enormous bands of muscle that surged beneath leather vest and trousers made his weight somewhat greater. Long arms and the powerful roll of his shoulders signaled a swordsman of considerable reach and strength, although the youth doubted if Kane could match his speed. A slim leather band set with a black opal tied back his shoulder-length red hair, and the face beneath the close-trimmed beard was brutal---a savagery that made his demeanor less lordly than arrogant. And his blue eyes burned with the brand of killer.
"Come looking for your woman, sorcerer?" grated Dragar, watching the other's blade. "We thought you'd stay hidden in your tower, after I frightened off your slinking servants!"
Kane's eyes narrowed. "So that's . . . Wizard's Bane, I believe you call it. I see the legends didn't lie when they spoke of the blade's protective powers. I shouldn't have spoken of it to Dessylyn, I suppose, when I learned that an enchanted sword had been brought into Carsultyal. But then, it's possession will compensate in some part for the difficulties you've caused me."
"Kill him, Dragar, my love! Don't listen to his lies!" Dessylyn cried.
"What do you mean?" rumbled the youth, who had missed Kane's implication.
The warrior wizard chuckled dryly. "Can't you guess, you romantic oaf? Don't you understand that a clever woman has used you? Of course not---the chivalrous barbarian thought he was defending a helpless girl. Pity I let Laroc die after persuading him to tell me of her game. He might have told you how innocent his mistress . . ."
"Dragar! Kill him! He only means to take you off guard!"
"To be sure! Kill me, Dragar---if you can! That was her plan, you know. Through my . . . sources . . . I learned of this formidable blade you carry---made mention of it to Dessylyn. But Dessylyn, it seems, has grown bored with my caresses. She paid a servant, the unlamented Laroc, to stage an apparent rape---trusting that a certain lout would rush in to save her. Well plotted, don't you think? Now poor Dessylyn has a bold defender whose magic blade can protect her against Kane's evil spells. I wonder, Dessylyn---did you only mean to go away with this thick-headed dolt, or did you plan to goad me into this personal combat, hoping I'd be slain and the wealth of my tower would be yours?"
"Dragar! He's lying to you!" moaned the girl despairingly.
"Because if it was the latter, then I'm afraid your plotting wasn't as intelligent as you believed," concluded Kane mockingly.
"Dragar!" came the tortured choke.
The barbarian, emotions a fiery chaos, risked an agonized glance at her contorted face.
Kane lunged.
Off guard, Dragar's lightning recovery deflected Kane's blade at the last possible instant, so that he took a shallow gash across his side instead of the steel through his ribs. "Damn you!" he cursed.
"But I am!" laughed Kane, parrying the youth's flashing counterattack with ease. His speed was uncanny, and the awesome power of his thick shoulders drove his blade with deadly force.
Lightning seemed to flash with the ringing thunder of their blades. Rune stamped star-metal hammered against the finest steel of Carsultyal's far-famed forges, and their clangor seemed the cries of two warring demons---harsh, strident with pain and rage.
Sweat shone on Dragar's naked body, and his breath spat foam through his clenched teeth. A few times only had he crossed blades with an opponent his equal in strength, and then the youth's superior speed had carried the victory. Now, as in some impossible nightmare, he faced a skilled and cunning swordsman whose speed was at least his equal---and whose strength seemed somewhat greater. After his initial attack had been deftly turned away, Dragar's swordplay became less reckless . . . less confident. Grimly he set about wearing down his opponent's endurance, reasoning that the sorcerer's physical conditioning could not equal that of a hardened mercenary.
In all the world there was no sound but their ringing blades, the desperate rush of their bodies, the hoarse gusts of their breath. Everywhere time stood frozen, save for the deadly fury of their duel, as they leapt and lunged about the bare timbered room.
Dragar caught a thin slash across his left arm---from a blow he did not remember deflecting. Kane's left-handed attack was dangerously unfamiliar to him, and only his desperate parries had saved him from worse. Uneasily he realized that Kane's swordarm did not falter as the minutes dragged past---and that more and more he was being confined to the defensive. Wizard's Bane grew ragged with notches from the Carsultyal blade, and its hilt was slippery with sweat. Kane's heavier sword was similarly scarred from their relentless slash, parry, thrust.
Then as Kane deflected Dragar's powerful stroke, the youth made a quick thrust with the turning blade---enough so that its tip gashed diagonally across Kane's brow, severing his headband. A shallow cut, but blood flowed freely, matted the flinging strands of his unbound hair. Kane gave back, flung the blood and loose hair from his eyes.
And Dragar lunged. Too quick for Kane to parry fully, his blade gored a furrow the length of the sorcerer's left forearm. Kane's long sword faltered. Instantly the barbarian hammered at his guard.
The sword left Kane's grip, as it clumsily threw back the star-blade. for a fraction of a second it turned free in midair. Dragar exulted that he had at last torn the blade from Kane's grasp---as he raised his arm for a killing stroke.
But Kane's right hand caught up the spinning blade with practiced surety. Wielding the sword with skill scarcely inferior to his natural swordarm, Kane parried Dragar's flashing blow. Then, before the startled barbarian could recover, Kane's sword smashed through Dragar's ribs.
The force of the blow hurled the stricken youth back against the bed. Wizard's Bane dropped from nerveless fingers and skidded across the wide oaken planks.
From Dessylyn's throat came a cry of inexpressible pain. She rushed to him, cradled Dragar's head against her lap. Desperately she pressed ineffectual fingers against the pulsing wound in his chest. "Please Kane!" she sobbed. "Spare him!"
Kane glanced through burning eyes at the youth's ruined chest and laughed. "I give him to you, Dessylyn," he told her insolently. "And I'll await you in my tower---unless, of course, you young lovers still plan on running off together."
Blood trailing from his arm---and darker blood from his sword---he stalked from the room and into the night mists.
"Dragar! Dragar!" Dessylyn moaned, kissing his haggard face and blood foamed lips. "Please don't die, beloved! Onthe, don't let him die!"
Tears fell from her eyes to his, as she pressed her face against his pallid visage. "You didn't believe him, did you, Dragar! What if I did engineer our meeting, dearest! Still I love you! It's true that I love you! I'll always love you, Dragar!"
He looked at her through glazing eyes.
"Bitch!" he spat, and died.
How many times, Dessylyn?
How many times will you play this game?
(But this was the first!)
The first? Are you sure, Dessylyn?
(I swear it! . . . How can I be sure?)
And how many after? How many circles, Dessylyn?
(Circles? Why this darkness in my mind?)
How many times, Dessylyn, have you played at Lorelei?
How many are those who have known your summoning eye?
How many are those who have heard your siren cry, Dessylyn?
How many souls have swum out to you, Dessylyn?
And perished by the shadows that hide below,
And are drawn down to Hell by the undertow?
How many times, Dessylyn?
(I can't remember . . .)
VII. "He'll Have to Die . . ."
"You know he'll have to die."
Dessylyn shook her head. "It's too dangerous."
"Clearly it's far more dangerous to let him live," Mavrsal pointed out grimly. "From what you've told me, Kane will never permit you to leave him---and this isn't like trying to get away from some jealous lord. A sorcerer's tentacles reach farther than those of the fabled Oraycha. What good is it to escape Carsultyal, only to have Kane's magic strike at us later? Even on the high sea his shadow can follow us."
"But we might escape him," murmured Dessylyn. "The oceans are limitless, and the waves carry no trail."
"A wizard of Kane's power will have ways to follow us."
"It's still too dangerous. I'm not even sure Kane can be killed!" Dessylyn's fingers toyed anxiously with the emerald at her throat; her lips were tightly pressed.
Angrily Mavrsal watched her fingers twist the wide silk and leather collar. Fine ladies might consider the fashion stylish here in Carsultyal, but it annoyed him that she wore the ornament even in bed. "You'll never be free of Kane's slave collar," he growled, voicing his thought, "until that devil is dead."
"I know," breathed the girl softly, more than fear shining in her green eyes.
"Yours is the hand that can kill him," he continued.
Her lips moved, but no sound issued.
Soft harbor sounds whispered through the night, as the Tuab gently rocked with the waves. Against the quay, her timbers creaked and groaned, thudded against the buffers of waste hemp cordage. Distantly, her watch paced the deck; low conversation, dimly heard, marked the presence of other crewmen---not yet in their hammocks, despite a hard day's work. In the captain's cabin a lamp swung slowly with the vessel's roll, playing soft shadows back and forth against the objects within. Snug and sheltered from the sea mists, the atmosphere was almost cozy---could the cabin only have been secure against a darker phantom that haunted the night.
"Kane claims to love you," Mavrsal persisted shrewdly. "He won't accept your hatred of him. In other words, he'll unconsciously lower his guard with you. He'd let you stand at his back, and never suspect that your hand might drive a dagger through his ribs."
"It's true," she acknowledged in a strange voice.
Mavrsal held her shoulders and turned her face to his. "I can't see why you haven't tried this before. Was it fear?"
"Yes---I'm terrified of Kane."
"Or was it something else? Do you still feel some secret love for him, Dessylyn?"
She did not reply immediately. "I don't know."
He swore and took her chin in his hand. The collar, with its symbol of Kane's mastery, enraged him---so that he roughly tore it from her throat. Her fingers flew to the bared flesh.
Again he cursed. "Did Kane do that to you!"
She nodded, her eyes wide with intense emotion.
"He treats you as a slave, and you haven't the spirit to rebel---or even to hate him for what he does to you!"
"That's not true! I hate Kane!"
"Then show some courage! What can the devil do to you that's any worse than your present lot!"
"I just don't want you to die, too!"
The captain laughed grimly. "If you'd remain his slave to spare my life, then you're worth dying for! But the only death will be Kane's---if we lay our plans well. Will you try, Dessylyn? Will you rebel against this tyrant---win freedom for yourself, and love for us both?"
"I'll try, Mavrsal," she promised, unable to avoid his eyes. "But I can't do it alone."
"Nor would any man ask you to. Can I get into Kane's tower?"
"An army couldn't assail that tower if Kane wished to defend it."
"So I've heard. But can I get inside? Kane must have a secret entrance to his lair."
She bit her fist. "I know of one. Perhaps you could enter without his knowing it."
"I can if you can warn me of any hidden guardians or pitfalls," he told her with more confidence than he felt. "And I'll want to try this when he won't be as vigilant as normal. Since there seem to be regular periods when you can slip away from the tower, I see no reason why I can't steal inside under the same circumstances."
Dessylyn nodded, her face showing less fear now. "When he's deep into his necromancies, Kane is oblivious to all else. He's begun again with some of his black spells---He'll be so occupied until tomorrow night, when he'll force me to partake of his dark ritual."
Mavrsal flushed with outrage. "Then that will be his last journey into the demonlands---until we send him down to Hell forever! Repairs are all but complete. If I push the men and rush reprovisioning, the Tuab can sail with the tide of another dawn. Tomorrow night it will be then, Dessylyn. While Kane is exhausted and preoccupied with his black sorcery, I'll slip into his tower.
"Be with him then. If he sees me before I can strike, wait until he turns to meet my attacks---then strike with this!" And he drew a slender dirk from a sheath fixed beneath the head of his bunk.
As if hypnotized by his words, by the shining sliver of steel, Dessylyn turned the dagger about in her hands---again and again, staring at the flash of light on its keen edge. "I'll try. By Onthe, I'll try to do as you say!"
"He'll have to die," Mavrsal assured her. "You know he'll have to die."
VIII. Drink a Final Cup . . .
Spread out far below lay Carsultyal, fog swirling through her wide brick streets and crooked filthy alleys, hovering over squalid tenements and palatial manors---although her arrogant towers pierced its veil, reared toward the stars in lordly grandeur. Born of two elements, air and water, the mist swirled and drifted---sought to strangle a third element, fire, but could do no more than dim with tears its thousand glowing eyes. Patches of murky yellow in the roiling fog, the lights of Carsultyal gained the illusion of movement---so that one might be uncertain at any one moment whether he gazed down into the mist-hung city or upward toward the cloud-buried stars.
"Your mood is strange tonight, Dessylyn," Kane observed, meticulously adjusting the fire beneath the tertiary alembic.
She moved away from the tower window. "Is it strange to you, Kane? I marvel that you notice. I've told you countless times that this necromancy disgusts me, but always before have my sentiments meant nothing to you."
"Your sentiments mean a great deal to me, Dessylyn. But as for demanding your attendance here, I only do what I must."
"Like that!" she hissed in loathing, and pointed to a young girl's mutilated corpse.
Wearily Kane followed her gesture. Pain etching his brow, he made a sign and barked a stream of harsh syllables. A shadow crossed the open window, fell over the vivisected corpse. When it withdrew, the tortured form had vanished, and a muffled slap of wings faded into the darkness.
"Why do you think to hide your depraved crimes from my sight, Kane? Do you think I'll forget? Do you think I don't know the evil that goes into compounding this diabolical drug you force me to drink!"
Kane frowned and stared into the haze of phosphorescent vapor which swirled within the cucurbit. "Are you carrying iron, Dessylyn? There's asymmetry to the nimbus. I've told you not to bring iron within the influence of this generation."
The dagger was an unearthly chill against the flesh of her thigh. "Your mind is going, Kane. I wear only these rings."
He ignored her to lift the cap and hurriedly pour in a measure of dark, semi-congealed fluid. The alembic hissed and shivered, seemed to burst with light within its crimson crystal walls. A drop of phosphorescence took substance near the receiver. Kane quickly shifted the chalice to catch the droplet as it plunged.
"Why do you force me to drink this, Kane! Aren't these chains of fear that hold me to you bondage enough!"
His uncanny stare fixed her, and while it might have been the alchemical flames that made it seem so, she was astonished to see the fatigue, the pain that lined his face. It was as if the untold centuries whose touch Kane had eluded had at last stolen upon him. His hair billowed wildly, his face was shadowed and sunken, and his skin seemed imparted with the sick hue of the phosphorescent vapors.
"Why must you play this game, Dessylyn? Does it please you to see to what limits I go to hold you to me?"
"All that would please me, Kane, is to be free of you."
"You loved me once. You will love me again."
"Because you command it? You're a fool if you believe so. I hate you, Kane. I'll hate you for the rest of my life. Kill me now, or keep me here till I'm ancient and withered. I'll still die hating you."
He sighed and turned from her. His words were breathed into the flame. "You'll stay with me because I love you, and your beauty will not fade, Dessylyn. In time you may understand. Did you ever wonder at the loneliness of immortality. Have you ever wondered what must be the thoughts of a man cursed to wander through the centuries? A man doomed to a desolate, unending existence---feared and hated wherever men speak his name. A man who can never know peace, whose shadow leaves ruin wherever he passes. A man who learned that every triumph is fleeting, that every joy is transient. All that he seeks to possess is stolen away from him by the years. His empires will fall, his songs will be forgotten, his loves will turn to dust. Only the emptiness of eternity will remain with him, a laughing skeleton cloaked in memories to haunt his days and nights.
"For such a man as this, for such a curse as this---is it so terrible that he dares to use his dark wisdom to hold something which he loves? If a hundred bright flowers must wither and die in his hand, is it evil that he hopes to keep one, just one, blossom for longer than the brief instant that Time had intended! Even if the flower hated being torn from the soil, would it make him wish to preserve its beauty any less?"
But Dessylyn was not listening to Kane. The billow of a tapestry, where no wind had blown, caught her vision. Could Kane hear the almost silent rasp of hidden hinges? No, he was lost in one of his maddened fits of brooding.
She tried to force her pounding heart to pulse less thunderously, her quick breath to cease its frantic rush. She could see where Mavrsal stood, frozen in the shadow of the tapestry. It seemed impossible that he might creep closer without Kane's unnatural keenness sensing his presence. The hidden dirk burned her thigh as if it were sheathed in her flesh. Carefully she edged around to Kane's side, thinking to expose his back to Mavrsal.
"But I see the elixir is ready," announced Kane, breaking out of his mood. Administering a few amber drops to the fluid, he carefully lifted the chalice of glowing liqueur.
"Here, drink this quickly," he ordered, extending the vessel.
"I won't drink your poisoned drugs again."
"Drink it, Dessylyn." His eyes held hers.
As in a recurrent nightmare---and there were other nightmares---Dessylyn accepted the goblet. She raised it to her lips, felt the bitter liqueur touch her tongue.
A knife whirled across the chamber. Struck from her languid fingers, the crystal goblet smashed into a thousand glowing shards against the stones.
"No!" shouted Kane in a demonic tone. "No! No!" He stared at the pool of dying phosphorescence in stunned horror.
Leaping from concealment, Mavrsal flung himself toward Kane---hoping to bury his cutlass in his enemy's heart, before the sorcerer recovered. He had not reckoned on Kane's uncanny reflexes.
The anguished despair Kane displayed burst into inhuman rage at the instant he spun to meet his hidden assailant. Weaponless, he lunged for the sea captain. Mavrsal swung his blade in a natural downward slash---abandoning finesse in the face of an unarmed opponent.
With blurring speed, Kane stepped under the blow and caught the other's descending wrist with his left hand. Mavrsal heard a scream escape his lips, as his arm was jammed to a halt in mid swing---as Kane's powerful left hand closed about his wrist and shattered the bones beneath the crushed flesh. The cutlass sailed unheeded across the stones.
His face twisted in bestial fury, Kane grappled with the sea captain. Mavrsal, an experienced fighter at rough and tumble, found himself tossed about like a frail child. Kane's other hand circled its long fingers about his throat, choking off his breath. Desperately he sought to break Kane's hold, beat at him with his mangled wrist---as Kane with savage laughter carried him back against the wall, holding him by his neck like a broken puppet.
Red fog wavered in his vision---pain was roaring in his ears . . . Kane was slowly strangling him---killing him deliberately, taunting him for his helplessness.
Then he was falling.
Kane gasped and arched his back inward, as Dessylyn drove her dagger into his shoulder. Blood splashed her sweat-slippery fist. As Kane twisted away from her blow, the thin blade lodged in the scapula and snapped at the hilt.
Dessylyn screamed as his backhand blow hurled her to the stones. Frantically she scrambled to Mavrsal's side, where he lay sprawled on the floor---stunned, but still conscious.
Kane cursed and fell back against his work table, overturning an alembic that burst like a rotted gourd. "Dessylyn!" he groaned in disbelief. Blood welled from his shoulder, spread across his slumped figure. His left shoulder was crippled, but his deadliness was that of a wounded tiger. "Dessylyn!"
"What did you expect!" she snarled, trying to pull Mavrsal to his feet.
A heavy flapping sound flung foggy gusts through the window. Kane cried out something in an inhuman tongue.
"If you kill Mavrsal, better kill me this time as well!" cried Dessylyn, clinging to the sea captain as he dazedly rose to his knees.
He cast a calculating eye toward the fallen sword. Too far.
"Leave her alone, sorcerer!" rasped Mavrsal. "She's guilty of no crime but that of hating you and loving me! Kill me now and be done, but you'll never change her spirit!"
"And I suppose you love her, too," said Kane in a tortured voice. "You fool. Do you know how many others I've killed---other fools who thought they could save Dessylyn from the sorcerer's evil embrace? It's a game she often plays. Ever since the first fool . . . only a game. It amuses her to taunt me with her infidelities, with her schemes to leave with another man. Since it amuses her, I indulge her. But she doesn't love you."
"Then why did she bury my steel in your back!" Despair made Mavrsal reckless. "She hates you, sorcerer---and she loves me! Keep your lies to console you in your madness! Your sorcery can't alter Dessylyn's feelings toward you---nor can it alter the truth you're forced to see! So kill me and be damned---you can't escape the reality of your pitiful clutching for something you'll never hold!"
Kane's voice was strange, and his face was a mirror of tormented despair. "Get out of my sight!" he rasped. "Get out of here, both of you!
"Dessylyn, I give you your freedom. Mavrsal, I give you Dessylyn's love. Take your bounty, and go from Carsultyal! I trust you'll have little cause to thank me!"
As they stumbled for the secret door, Mavrsal ripped the emerald-set collar from Dessylyn's neck and flung it at Kane's slumping figure. "Keep your slave collar!" he growled. "It's enough that you leave her with your scars about her throat!"
"You fool," said Kane in a low voice.
"How far are we from Carsultyal," whispered Dessylyn.
"Several leagues---we've barely gotten underway," Mavrsal told the shivering girl beside him.
"I'm frightened."
"Hush. You're done with Kane and all his sorcery. Soon it will be dawn, and soon we'll be far beyond Carsultyal and all the evil you've known there."
"Hold me tighter than, my love. I feel so cold."
"The sea wind is cold, but it's clean," he told her. "It's carrying us together to a new life."
"I'm frightened."
"Hold me tighter then, my love. I feel so cold."
"I seem to remember now . . ."
But the exhausted sea captain had fallen asleep. A deep sleep---the last unblighted slumber he would ever know.
For at dawn he awoke in the embrace of a corpse---the mouldering corpse of a long dead girl, who had hanged herself in despair over the death of her barbarian lover.
I CAN HEAR THE DARK by Dennis Etchison
Dennis Etchison's stories of contemporary horror have won him favorable comparison with writers like Richard Matheson. But when you read one of his stories, don't be surprised if the comparison melts away. Etchison writes stories so psychologically vivid, so compelling, that when you read one you find yourself left with an understanding of why this young California writer is repeatedly singled out by a growing coterie of critics and knowledgeable readers as a modem master who must be allowed to set his own ground rules---as he does here, beautifully. "I Can Hear the Dark" has never appeared before in print.
There was a blackness and a struggling somewhere in the house; William could feel it. The others were busy again trying to be something they weren't, and he tried not to listen, but sometimes he couldn't help it. He had this feeling you begin to get when something is wrong but you don't quite know it yet. Still, wherever it was, he knew that he ought to find it, whether he was supposed to or not.
"How do you feel?" said the actress.
"Mother," he said slowly, "where do we go when we die?"
"Why don't you just let him outside so he can play with himself or something?" said the tall actor from the living room. "You know, you're going to turn him into a goddam vegetable, Leona, keeping him under wraps like this all the time."
"Into an agent," said one of the other actors, laughing.
"Don't be absurd," she answered, too softly for it to carry, tipping her head down close to the boy's eyes. "Willum's doing just fine today." She smoothed the hair from his eyes, and a tender, practiced pout appeared in a line below her mouth. "Aren't you, my baby?"
He nodded uncertainly.
"So. Why don't you run down the week for me?" said another actor, the one with his hair over his collar. "I guess I've lost track, since that Dr. Whosit character put Ian into the hospital. You know." Fingers snapping. "The one they brought out from New York."
"Crispin, I think he was called," said the tall actor.
"Listen, there's some fresh fruit in the dining room," said the actress in her throaty voice, the one she used when she talked on the telephone at night, when the tall actor or Daddy, whichever one it was, was asleep. "And some of those good croissants, and your orange marmalade." She studied Willum absently. "I could ask Monica to make up another omelet with cream cheese. Would that please you, darling?"
"Leona, for God's sake," said the tall actor.
"All right!" She pretended to spit the words, making her eyelids flutter the way they did on The Late Show. "My G-o-d." She rose, still stooped, and kissed him dryly on his lips. "Take care, baby," she said. "Mother's just going to be a while longer. You can play downstairs, if you like, or---"
"Well," said the tall actor, "let's see. They finally got me divorced Friday. Just a minute. Leona!"
". . . So the way it went was this," said the third actor matter-of-factly. "Mm, what-was-her-name?"
"Jan."
"Right. Jan miscarried right after the rape. For a while it looked like they'd have her go back East to stay with her mother. But someone decided they should send this Crispin out from New York. And then it worked out that Jordan met up with his old flame again and filed for the divorce. Naturally. These things never make sense. You're right, she used to be married to his brother-in-law, but you know how those things go. Sometimes it takes years. What do you expect? Just like a soap opera, right?"
"What I don't understand," said the younger actress, "is that part about the drug dealer, what did they call him?"
"Shorty something. Bernstein, I think."
"How was she supposed to carry on during all that, with this Bernstein trying to involve her in the trial, not to mention the custody fight. It was all so unbelievable . . ."
". . . Of course you could handle it," the actor with hair over his collar was saying on the other side of the room. "Self-assurance is something a person is born with---and you certainly have it, Leona. How many pictures was it you made over there?"
"Twenty-two," supplied the tall actor, before she could answer.
"You see?"
"But," she said, "I always had a role to hide behind, don't you see? Every word---"
"We have scripts, too," said the tall actor. "Don't we, Kurt?" He had to laugh. "Such as they are."
"There," she said. "That's just it. You've told me yourself that you hardly have time for anything more than the most rudimentary blocking and run-through." Her chair creaked, straining. "So you must fall back on what you are. Don't you see? In other words, you're not provided with an adequate mask." Pause. "I'd be petrified if I had to work your soap. How do you do it?"
"With your self-assur---"
"Of course, self-assurance, my God! But what about confidence? That's something one must learn. And I've never had to do that kind of acting before. Why, over there---"
"Then you simply play the surface," said the other actor, as though explaining to a child. "The line."
"Don't you think I know about playing the line?" she said. "My God, how do you think I survived all those shitty films?"
"A lot of actors play the line."
"What do you think episodic television is all about?" said the tall actor.
"I know," said the actress. "You could even say that Larry Olivier falls back on pure technique when he's not given enough to work with. But when one is concerned about playing the meaning---"
"Sure. The spine. Zohra, for example, plays the meaning. Did you catch her on that Kojak rerun the other night? But when her material is thin, that's all she plays, the meaning. At the expense of the line."
"But," said the actress, "what if one strives to play the meaning and the line simultaneously? My God. Do you know that I worked on one with Corman years ago that he shot in four days? Some funny little man was busy in the trailer typing out the next scene directly on stencils!"
". . . I suppose that was why she had to do it," continued the third actor, across the room. "Morton wouldn't accept the separation. And then when he broke in---"
"I watched the whole thing," said the younger actress. "It was unreal. Like they had some third-rate writer."
"Then you know. That was all she wrote . . .
I can hear the dark, thought Willum, on the floor in the hall.
If I listen hard . . .
"I tell you, I've never felt that way before," said the taller actor, walking in from the patio.
"Oh, you were just high on shock," said the other actor, following. "You know. Hey listen, though, I'm glad we can talk---that's why I came by."
"If I could only relax, if it would just let up. Some time to myself. You have no idea. The schedule---"
"So why don't we just kick back now, while everybody's outside? And you can tell me all about real life."
The tall actor measured another Scotch. "The daily routine? What makes you think it's worth the telling?"
"Might do you good."
"You could run it down as well as I could, you know. All right, all right, what do you want me to say? First, breakfast. Then an argument. Then somebody or other comes over for a visit Or we go over there. Then work. And the crazy, irrational phone calls. Is someone up there writing this tripe, do you think? And the meetings. And the drinking. And the dinners, always at Tallboy's or the, whadayou call it? the Copper Kettle. Hey, Kurt, can you tell me why? Can you tell me how everything got to be so God damned repetitious? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday . . . Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night wondering how I ever got caught in this stupid imitation of a life."
"Come on, man."
"That's all it seems to me anymore. Just like we're all trapped in some broken, cheesy videotape loop." He added abruptly, "Sometimes I think I could walk. You know? No matter what's about to come down."
The other actor said ironically, "Do you have a contract?"
"Yeah, you old son of a bitch," answered the tall actor mildly. "And you know as well as I do that there are some things we don't exactly sign a contract for. They're the things that are the most binding."
Hiding in the garden . . .
Willum padded to the end of the hall. He gazed around him in the half-light. Doors. To the bedroom, to the kitchen, to the bathroom, to the dining room. The stairway. To his room, where the tutor met with him five afternoons a week. The tutor would keep coming, his mother said, until he got better and could start school, even though he felt well enough to start right now. He had always felt better. And he knew Daddy would understand, and help him to start. Soon. Daddy always helped, when he was here.
He noticed the telephone. Maybe it would tell him something. It had helped his mother lots of times. He touched his face to the cool, black receiver. If it didn't talk back to him with words he couldn't understand, the way it had when he tried before. And if it didn't make him cry, the way it made her cry sometimes.
From the living room came the voice of his mother, magnified by the walls of the corridor.
"I just wish Willum could be free of all this, oh, free to wander naked through the gardens of the universe!"
If wishes were camels, he thought, eyes would have needles . . .
"Precisely," said the younger actress. "You have a career, and now you must use that to provide access---"
"An access," said the actress, "is not an avenue."
"But it is a living, isn't it, Leona?"
"What you get is a living," said the actress. "If you're lucky. What you give is a life."
The tall actor sat her on the couch and tried to speak so that no one else would hear, though the others were waiting outside on the patio.
"It's going to be all right," he told her.
In the hall, Willum began trying doors. He was sure that someone had taken from him something irreplaceably valuable; but he couldn't remember who had done it, or even what it was. And no one would admit it.
"But they all know!" said the actress.
"That's right, and they're our friends---your friends, honey. They'll stand with you. We all will. You know that."
The doors were either locked or did not lead to anything that didn't show. He could see that. The empty kitchen. The sweet-smelling bedroom with mirrors, her bedroom. The dining room, with the big table legs. And the stairway to his own room. (He knew where each of his toys was hidden, even if she did not.) He looked around again. There were the pictures of her lining the hallway, scary old posters showing the way she was on The Late Show or Chiller:
TERROR FILLS THE NIGHT AS SHE STALKS HER PREY!
"I had to do it," she said. "What else could I do? He was going to take Willum away, in defiance of the court order. And do God knows what to me, if I got in his way."
"Self-defense," the tall actor said. "If you were going to be indicted and tried for it, which you aren't. Look, Morton broke in, trying to find him. The others were just arriving for dinner. Monica was out with the boy, of course---that part is true. You attempted to stop him. When he got to Willum's room he grabbed you, pushed you down. I came to your rescue, you ran for the gun, he took it from you, struggled with me, it went off. There. They'll all say they saw that, even the ones who didn't see anything---they'll claim they were already here, right? They stayed and talked to you, tried to calm you. You took a sedative. I called the police. Do you want to go over it again?"
"But why didn't we call a doctor? They'll think---"
"Kurt is a doctor, will you remember that? He'd practically finished his internship when he got his first part."
She sighed and made a small, strangled weeping in her throat. There was the sound of her pill box snapping open.
"Do you suppose he still loves me?"
Willum hesitated at the foot of the stairs, staring up into the blackness.
"Who?"
"Oh, Jordan, have I done such a terrible thing to my boy? Have I?"
The tall actor opened another bottle. "Jesus. You know something? I hate that damned show, but---"
"Then let's leave. Everything. Now. I'll get Willum and---"
"---But right now I wish to God life could be as simple as that stupid serial. A nine-to-fiver, with breakfasts, arguments, phone calls, dinners, hassles, but little hassles, ones I could handle with my eyes closed. You know, God help me, I can't help thinking you'd be better off if you'd never come back from Rome with Morton, if we hadn't started up again, maybe if Jan---if we'd just---"
She made another, more desperate sound.
"I don't know why I said that. I didn't mean it. Forgive me, Leona. Shh, now. Shh."
Willum put his fingers on the railing and started up.
He had felt it in the house, something missing, something gone away forever and never coming back, ever since he had come back from the park with Monica. And now he felt it inside himself. He paused at the first landing, peering back at the dimly lighted hall and the last of the posters below.
THE HIGH PRIESTESS OF EVIL
He shivered and, for reasons he could not yet understand, a shudder passed along his spine. He thought: a possum just ran over my grave. That was what Daddy always said. But this time he would be brave.
He tried humming to himself under his breath, closing his eyes tight as he climbed the rest of the way.
"Where's Willum?" said the tall actor suddenly.
"He-he's fine. He's playing. He likes to play by himself. He's such a good, good little boy. Isn't he? Don't you think he is?"
"But where---?"
"Don't worry," said the actress. "He can't go upstairs alone. He's afraid of the dark. He always has been. I used to be, too, when I was his age."
"I'd better call the police now," said the tall actor.
"Yes," said the actress.
"And I'll tell Jack to be ready. In case we need a lawyer. You haven't touched the body since, have you? He's still up there, where he fell?"
She began to cry.
Willum came to the top. Soon he would be safe in his own room. Eyes still squeezed tight, he thought of the things he must do. He would go through his toys one by one, to be sure they were there. Then he would open the closet and feel around inside. And the bed, he would have to look under the bed. And maybe he would find it. And then. Everything. Would be. All right.
He went on singing his little song. Now he put the words to it again, or he heard them in his mind, he didn't know which:
I can hear the dark
If I listen hard
Hiding in the garden
Climbing up the stairs . . .
He got ready. He would open his eyes. Soon.
Then, with a curious, almost expectant smile on his lips, he reached out and felt the cold doorknob. And made it turn in his hand, turn and begin to open.
EVER THE FAITH ENDURES by Manly Wade Wellman
Manly Wade Wellman has written just about everything and been appreciated for it, too: he's been nominated for a Pulitzer for one of his historicals, won first prize in the first Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine short story contest (nudging out William Faulkner in the process), has a Mystery Writers of America Award for his fact-crime book Dead and Gone, and received the 1975 World Fantasy Award for his collection Worse Things Waiting. He's been steadily writing creepy stories, too, since the 1930s---fine, flavorsome ones, too---despite the fact he could obviously be writing with success in almost any field. In fact, if anyone today deserves the title Dean of Fantasy Writers, it has to be Wellman, and this story (which has never been published before now) clearly reveals why. And after the story, we'll be back with some short remarks Wellman made recently.
He'd somehow expected it to be like this. What else had he come looking for?
Though he'd never been here, had only wanted to be here. Had saved money for this journey overseas, then had puzzled and striven over railway timetables and guidebooks to get here. Here to the home his ancestors had left to go to America.
The place was swaddled in trees, there a couple of miles from the village where he'd left the train that noon, all among a landscape of tawny hills and softly grassed valleys, gatherings of sheep grazed here and there in the open, under the serene authority of black and white dogs. And no trees out there, only here, heavily marshaled beyond the quickset hedge with its June blossoms. There were yews, rowans, Scotch firs, two or three enormous oaks, with shrubs matted here and there underneath. It was like a solid chunk of forest taken from somewhere else and set here among the meadows and slopes and distant heights.
Wofford Belson stood opposite a driveway gap in the hedge. He was fifty-five, big but not soft, wearing the tweed suit he had bought in London. Gray stitched his heavy black hair. His face was square-jawed, vigorously seamed. He reminded himself that Belsons had been American for three hundred years. Before that, British for how many thousands?
Movement among the trees, and a woman stepped into view. She was tall, slim, in dark blue slacks and a white blouse and a gray jacket. Her hair was a fine toss of syrupy brown. She wore broad spectacles. In one long hand she held a trowel. She came toward him.
"Yes?" she said.
Belson wished he had a hat to take off.
"I wondered---" he began, stopped, and started again. "Does this house happen to be called Belstone?"
"Yes," she said again, clipping the syllables. "It happens to be called Belstone."
"Let me explain." He wondered if he could. "My name's Wofford Belson, but it used to be Belstone." Once more he stopped.
"Used to be?" she prompted. Behind the spectacles her watchful eyes were as blue as deep, clean water, and as calm. She was, he thought, perhaps forty-two or forty-three. And quite pretty.
"I'm American," he said unnecessarily. "The name got changed over there. Back in 1643, in Virginia." He smiled, white-toothed. "That's long ago in America, if it's not long ago here."
"And I daresay you're curious about your British origins, Mr. Belson," she said gently. "I am Anne Belstone, and we must be cousins, at a number of removes." She smiled, ever so slightly, and she had a dimple. "Forgive me if I seemed careful. I live here alone, you know, and I don't get many callers." Her blue eyes appraised him. "But come into the yard if you like."
"Thank you, ma'am," he said. "I ought to say, I'm from North Carolina, a town called Chapel Hill. That's where the State university is."
"You are of the university?" she asked as he walked into the driveway and toward her. "You teach?"
"No, ma'am, but I graduated from there, and I have a book store in town. Now that I'm alone in the world---divorced, my children grown up---I wanted to come here. I always wanted to. Hoped to make it during the war, but they sent me to the Pacific theater." He felt that he was jabbering nervously, and wondered why. "I do know something, not much, about my family before the name got changed."
"Do you know why the name is Belstone?" she asked. "Do come and sit on the porch, I was going to have tea there. Would you care for a cup?"
"I thank you, ma'am, that's right good of you."
"Not at all."
They walked along the pebbled driveway. Overhead, the trees crossed stirring green branches. The driveway curved in around a gaunt, jagged rock, mottled gray in color and almost as tall as Belson. He thought that Anne Belstone drew away from it as she walked, and would have looked at it closely, but there was the house.
He stopped in his tracks to look. It was what he had wanted, without knowing it.
The house was squarely and massively built, with lean windows in its two stories and dormers in the high slate roof. The stone of the walls was gray with a hint of rose. Up the two gable sides sprouted wide chimneys of the same rose-gray stone, built into the walls themselves and each crowned with a row of hatlike pots. Across the front sprawled a paved porch with sturdy posts of cut stones in dark mortar. Inside the windows behind the porch clung tawny curtains. Along the porch's edge stood flower pots with tufts of bloom.
"Is something wrong?" asked Ann Belstone at his shoulder.
"I was admiring the house."
"I suppose it's different from houses in the states."
"The chimneys," he tried to explain his feelings. "They're part of the house, of the walls. Not put on after the house was built, not tacked on as an afterthought."
She chuckled. It was a musical chuckle.
"Well, sir, generations of your forebears lived here. This house, or most of it, goes back to Elizabethan times. I think of it as utilitarian, old-fashioned. You make me wonder if it isn't more than that. But come up and sit on the porch."
They mounted the blocky steps. "Here," she said, and laid a hand on the back of a chair of weathered, solid wood. "Sit here and I'll fetch us out a tray."
Then she was gone. Belson sat in the chair. Next to it was a blocky table. He looked out into the trees of the yard.
Someone stood beside the driveway. No, it was the jagged rock. It was like an ill-proportioned human figure in the shadows. It seemed to have sloping shoulders and a knobby head. Eyes? But they were only scraps of shadow. The mouth-like crack was just a crack. Belson told himself that. For a moment he almost got out of the chair to step from the porch and walk down to examine the rough pillar. Then he lectured himself to wait and ask Anne Belstone about it first.
Behind him he fancied he heard a rustle. He turned in his chair, expecting to see his hostess. There was only a window behind him, and a stir in the stealthy curtains.
Then she came through the door, bringing a broad tray set with heaped dishes. He rose, took the tray from her and set it on the table.
"I hope you don't mind tea," she said, sitting in another chair. "I believe that most Americans prefer coffee."
"Tea suits me fine, ma'am," he said. "Don't fret about Americans not appreciating it. Some of them dumped a whole shipload of it into Boston harbor one time."
She laughed her musical laugh and poured him a cup. He declined cream and sugar and thanked her when she put a roll and a pat of butter on a plate for him. They ate and drank.
"That's a right interesting chunk of rock in your yard," he felt it was time to remark. "For a moment, sitting here, I thought it looked like somebody coming in."
She set down her cup, her eyes moody behind the spectacles. "I'd better tell you about that. That stone is named Belstone, too."
"It is?" he said, smiling, for he had begun to like her company. "Who named it that?"
"Nobody knows. It's been here, probably, since prehistoric times. And the name means a god. Baal."
She sipped tea. Belson gazed at the stone, disliking the fancy that it gazed back at him.
"Baal," he repeated. "That's out of the Bible."
"Out of many places," said Anne Belstone. "Baal was worshipped by Old Testament people, by European pagans, worshipped here in the British Isles. His name's on the land. Balquiddir and Balgonie in Scotland, Baltimore in Ireland---they hark back to Baal, worshipped by the Celts before the Romans."
"And we have the name too, Cousin Anne."
She smiled again when he called her that. "Yes, let's be cousinly. I'll call you cousin---Wofford, you said?"
"That's my mother's family name. I've lots of Wofford kinfolk."
"Kinfolk," she said after him. "Not me. I was an only child, so was my father, and his father before him. Any cousins I have are almost as distant as you, Cousin Wofford. I don't keep in touch with them, and I have no friends you could call friends, not here. People don't come here."
"Not the milkman, the postman?"
"I get milk and letters and supplies yonder in the village. I've a little car out behind, to do my errands. I don't even try to keep up this house, so forgive me for not taking you inside. I live in just a bedroom and a kitchen."
He had a sense of movement at the window, but did not look. "We were talking about the name Belstone," he reminded her.
"And I said the stone was always there where you see it. The Romans invaded and wanted to take it away, but some sort of disaster happened to anyone who tried, so they left it. When Saxon missionaries came along, they learned to let it alone, too."
"Was it that bad?" asked Belson, gazing at the rock.
"Bad enough that someone was told off, about a thousand years ago, to live here and guard it; and he took the name Belstone on account of his job."
"Baal's stone," said Belson, buttering a bit of roll. "Why Baal's stone? Was it an altar?"
Ann Belstone's shoulders drew up, in not quite a shudder. "You can say that. The old pagans had human sacrifices---that's why the Romans were so bitter about them. And where sacrifice has been, a spirit stays. It can't be exorcised."
"The missionaries tried, I reckon."
'Yes, and they failed. This must sound silly to you."
"It sounds fascinating, Cousin Anne."
She dimpled at the name. "Well, the stone's stayed where you see it, all those centuries. And the Belstones have lived here beside it, and sometimes got into trouble and then got out."
"One got to America," said Belson. "My ancestor Thomas."
"What do you know of him?"
"Almighty little," admitted Belson. "His name's in a book about persons of quality coming to America. He arrived at Jamestown in 1643, aboard a ship named Bristol Venture, and there's a note saying he had to take a special oath of allegiance to Charles the First. I've wondered about that."
"I can tell you," said Anne Belstone. "He was a younger son---the older son, Alan, was my ancestor. The records say that Thomas Belstone claimed magical powers. One day Matthew Hopkins arrived in this area. Do you know who he was?"
"A witch-hunter, wasn't he?"
"England's Witch-finder General. Thomas Belstone was one of twenty-three accused witches here, and the only one not hanged. He seems to have had money and friends to help him get more or less exiled instead."
"I'm glad he got to America," said Belson, smiling into her spectacled eyes. "He married a girl with Indian blood, and I'm glad for that, too. A drop of the Indian---that's really American."
She pondered that for a moment. Then:
"My ancestor Alan joined Cromwell---the winning side." Her soft voice had music in it. "He profited by that and he enlarged this house. We've lived here ever since, and I hope this much family history will content you, because I don't know much more."
"It's pleasant on this porch." He changed the subject.
"Sometimes, when I sit out here at night, I hear a nightingale sing in the trees."
"Nightingale," he said after her. "We don't have those in America. I've often wondered how they sounded."
But she did not invite him to stay and find out. He set down his teacup.
"You said you won't show me the house, but I'd like to walk out and look at that rock I'm named for."
"Well . . . That was no permission, but no refusal, either.
He rose and walked into the yard. The graveled way was bordered with shaggy moss, in which grew tiny red toadstools. He reached the rock. It stood as tall as himself. It was like the outline of a human shape, but if it had been hewn like that, the marks of hewing had long weathered away. Belstone studied the shadowed dints that looked like eyes, the crack that ran across like a mouth. That crack seemed to twist wryly.
"You're not pretty," he addressed it. "No wonder the old Romans wanted to put you away. What if I just shoved you over?"
He lifted a hand, but he did not touch the rock. At that moment, it seemed to blur, as in a mist. He had a sensation of cold. And he heard the murmur of a voice.
That made him jump backward and turn around.
Anne Belstone had come silently out with him. Her hands clasped themselves in front of her. She whispered something. A prayer? But he did not know the words:
"Sobrosto, ekkshilhai---pion fhanfhantishm---"
She sidled away.
"What did you say?" he asked her.
"Old words I was taught when I was a girl."
"Some kind of spell?"
She did not answer that. "Come," she said, and turned to lead him back to the porch. He sat down and lifted his teacup, and silently cursed his hand for trembling.
"You had your wish, saw it at close quarters," she said. "Why did you make fun of it?"
He looked out at the silent rock. "You said, human sacrifices."
"Only in those days before the Romans. Later on, blood sacrifices of animals." Her smooth cheek looked tense. "When a god's overthrown, it becomes a devil."
"And a devil must be bought off," he tried to fall in with her unhappy humor.
"Yes, he must be bought off."
"Let's talk about something else, Cousin Anne. Thanks, I'd like more tea."
She asked about his children. He talked proudly of his lawyer son who had two sons himself, and of his daughter who was finishing her studies for a doctorate in psychology. He told about his book store and how happily he kept it. He said he approved of old shoes and the novels of P. G. Wodehouse, and of vacations in the mountains and at the seaside.
She talked more briefly about herself. She had always lived at Belstone, except when she had gone to school as a girl. When her parents died, she had stayed there, quietly alone.
"Haven't men come visiting?" he teased her, smiling. "I'd think that any man who was a man would want to."
"I know very few men."
"You ought to come and visit in North Carolina."
"You make it sound perfect there," she said.
"Nothing's perfect, but most time things are good. Beautiful spring and summer and fall, and mild winters. And I have friends, some of them professors, scholars. You'd like them." He looked at her earnestly. "They'd like you, too."
At last her own smile came back. "Why do you think that?"
"They'd have to, because I like you so much myself."
"I wish I could come." She sounded as if she meant it. She rose and began to gather up the tea things.
"I hate to bring this to an end, Cousin Wofford."
"Why bring it to an end?" he protested.
Her eyes were blue, blue, behind the spectacles. "You have quite a walk to the village. You'll want to be there by sundown."
"It won't he sundown for quite a while. Look, come with me. We can have dinner at the inn."
She stacked dishes on the tray. "I mustn't, really. But it's been good having you here. You're---well, so healthy, so cheerful."
"You don't look unhealthy, and you could be cheerful if you half tried," he said. "I want to help you to try."
"I might be cheerful if---"
She left it unfinished. He studied the sweet curve of her cheek as she bent over the tray.
"Look here, why didn't you ever marry?" He demanded suddenly, strong in the sense it was none of his business. "You ought to have a family, children."
"No," she said gently, "not for me. If you'll excuse me, I'll take these back to the kitchen."
She carried the tray to the door and turned the knob with her free hand. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. He heard the click of the catch. Had she locked it from inside? Why?
Rising, he walked to the door and turned the big brass knob. It wasn't locked. He pushed it inward and stepped into the house.
Dim in there, a sort of sandy-brown light That was from the curtains at the window. He took half a dozen steps along a hall and looked through an open arch into a broad, dim room.
It was walled with darkly aged wooden panels and set with upright timbers, like the ribs of a ship's hold. Furniture stood here and there, draped with dusty sheets. At the far end, a fireplace, and, though it was warm June outside, a nest of coals burned redly on the hearth. Belson felt its heat.
On the hob of the fireplace was built up a little cube of stones. Upon it, as upon an altar, lay what looked like shreds of raw meat.
Belson gazed at the hearth, wondering. Something moved on the far side of the room, beside a draped chair, something black and bulky. Belson turned his gaze upon it.
Only a particularly deep shadow, shifting perhaps in the light of the coals. Or a robe or coat of heavy dark fur, thrown there. Or---
But it stirred again. It rose slowly erect, like a black bear, gross and shaggy. But not a bear either, not with that broad flat face, those glowing pale eyes. Where the nose should be was a damp blob, like soggy brown leather, with staring nostrils. The mouth was a broad cleft. Upper and lower teeth jutted, like splinters of china.
Frozen, unbelieving, Belson looked. The glowing eyes looked back at him. Long, knobby arms lifted, spreading hands like hairy rakes. Talons glinted, as sharp and pale as the teeth. The mouth gaped, made a crooning snarl. It stepped toward him, on long flippers of feet.
"No, you don't!" Belson found his voice. "Stay away from me!"
He turned to run, and bumped into Anne Belstone. She pushed him into the hall. She raised her arms high.
"Athe, pemeath." She was saying more strange words. "Somiatoai, haliha."
It stood fast, its eyes flashed pale.
"Ah jathos noio sattis," Belson heard her chant. "Ishoroh."
He ran into the hall, leaving her alone there. He scrabbled the door open and was out on the porch, gasping for breath.
"Selu, samhaiah," said her voice in the house behind him. "Trinu, iamensaha."
He clung dizzily to the back of a chair. His knees wavered. Something made a noise behind him and he looked back in terror. Anne Belstone was on the porch, closing the door. She walked toward him. Her sweet face was as pale as a pan of fresh milk.
"Now," she said gently. "Now you know why I didn't want to invite you into the house."
"That in there," he mouthed. "A man or an animal or what?"
"Not man or animal." She was precise, informative. "I told you that the Belstones were ordered to look after him."
"A god, is that thing a god?"
"He used to be. Now he's what he is. Always hungry."
Belson gestured. "You said words to drive him back."
"I told you, my parents made me learn them." She shrugged. "I keep him here, so that he won't plague others---plague the world."
Something scraped inside the heavy door. She turned that way. "Heriel aias stoch nahas," she pronounced. The scraping ceased.
"He's not wholly satisfied with pieces of butcher's meat or just rabbits or chickens," she said wearily. "Maybe he thought you were the sort of sacrifice he used to expect."
He blinked at her. "You worship him," he half accused.
"Yes," she agreed. "Yes, I do. That way, I can keep him here. And now, you must go."
"Go?" He looked out at the jagged stone pillar.
"Probably he knows you're of the Belstone blood. That makes it bad for you, very bad. You must never come near this house again."
The drapes stirred at a window.
"How can you possibly live here?" cried Belson, wondering at how steady her stance was, her voice was. "How can you?"
"Because I've always lived here," she replied. "I was brought up to live here, stay here, see that he stays here, too. It's what I'm on earth for."
"No!" he fairly shouted into her calm, pale face. He seized both her slim hands in his big ones. "Come with me."
"Come with you?" she said after him and stared.
"Come home to America with me, Anne. Don't even step back inside there for anything. We'll buy you clothes, whatever you need, in London. We'll go back together, back home. It'll be your home, too." He pressed her hands. "Come with me," he begged. "Please!"
"I can't. If you'll only stop to think, you'll know why I can't. It's for me to live here at Belstone and keep him here, too. Keep him here away from everyone else."
"But when you don't live to keep him any more?" he prodded at her. "When you die at last?"
"Who knows what will happen then?" Her voice rose, her hands gripped his. "Who can know that? I'll be dead, I'll be past knowing. But until I'm dead, I'll stay and keep him here."
Strongly she dragged her hands free of his grip.
"Now, this is my house," she said, "though just now it may not seem quite like that to you. This is my house, and I must tell you to leave."
"I won't leave," he tried to argue.
"Go this instant," she commanded. "If you don't, I'll open the door and let him out here."
Again, a stir at the drapes of the window.
"And you know that I mean what I say," she told him. "Go on, go away, and don't ever come back."
She pushed him toward the steps, with a power he had not expected in her slim body. He blundered down them to the gravel below.
"Go away!" she cried at him once more.
He walked along the driveway. As he came opposite the rock he heard a sound from it, like a sigh of wind. Its eye-patches shone suddenly, as bits of ice shine. The crack of a mouth seemed to twitch.
He quickened his steps. Out on the road, he turned toward the village. He dared not look back. He could not have seen her, anyway. Upon him rushed a grinding sense of loss, of defeat.
His breath shook in his throat. He felt a trickle of wet on his cheeks. He was in tears, for the first time since he had been a little, little boy.
AFTERWORD
"This story is in some degree a love letter to England, where I've been happy on a number of visits. I think the stuff about Celtic pagan beliefs is authentic. One person who read it questioned Matthew Hopkins' witch-finding in 1643, saying he's not on record until 1645; but since 1645 was the year he found his most witches, I figure he was at the job before that. I like 1643, since that was the year my own first Wellman ancestor came to Jamestown in Virginia---and he had to take a special oath of allegiance, too, and I've always wondered why.
"Not that I'm Wofford Belson in this story. As to Anne Belstone, she may resemble a personable Englishwoman I know, who is very much up on folk things there."
Manly Wade Wellman
THE HORSE LORD by Lisa Tuttle
Ah, you know that name. Lisa Tuttle. Didn't she collaborate with the phenomenal George R. R. Martin on "The Storms of Windhaven?" And didn't she---let's see, that was back in 1974---share a John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with Spider Robinson? How could you not be impressed with someone who has been associated with two such notable young writers? As a matter of fact, unless you follow the magazines and anthologies reasonably closely, that just might be your primary knowledge of Lisa Tuttle. Poor you! Read this story, now. Read it and discover what those more widely read in the field than you have delighted in knowing ever since her stories first began to appear. As a matter of fact, once you've read "The Horse Lord," chances are good that you'll find yourself thinking of George R. R. Martin as the man who collaborated on a story with Lisa Tuttle, and Spider Martin as the fellow who once shared an award with her.
The double barn doors were secured by a length of stout, rust-encrusted chain, fastened with an old padlock.
Marilyn hefted the lock with one hand and tugged at the chain, which did not give. She looked up at the splintering gray wood of the doors and wondered how the children had gotten in.
Dusting red powder from her hands, Marilyn strolled around the side of the old barn. Dead leaves and dying grasses crunched beneath her sneakered feet, and she hunched her shoulders against the chill in the wind.
"There's plenty of room for horses," Kelly had said the night before at dinner. "There's a perfect barn. You can't say it would be impractical to keep a horse here." Kelly was Derek's daughter, eleven years old and mad for horses.
This barn had been used as a stable, Marilyn thought, and could be again. Why not get Kelly a horse? And why not one for herself as well? As a girl, Marilyn had ridden in Central Park. She stared down the length of the barn: for some reason, the door to each stall had been tightly boarded shut.
Marilyn realized she was shivering, then, and she finished her circuit of the barn at a trot and jogged all the way back to the house.
The house was large and solid, built of gray stone 170 years before. It seemed a mistake, a misplaced object in this cold, empty land. Who would choose to settle here, who would try to eke out a living from the ungiving, stony soil?
The old house and the eerily empty countryside formed a setting very much like one Marilyn, who wrote suspense novels, had once created for a story. She liked the reality much less than her heroine had liked the fiction.
The big kitchen was warm and felt comforting after the outside air. Marilyn leaned against the sink to catch her breath and let herself relax. But she felt tense. The house seemed unnaturally quiet with all the children away at school. Marilyn smiled wryly at herself. A week before, the children had been driving her crazy with their constant noise and demands, and now that they were safely away at school for six hours every day she felt uncomfortable.
From one extreme to the other, thought Marilyn. The story of my life.
Only a year ago she and Derek, still newly married, were making comfortable plans to have a child---perhaps two---"someday."
Then Joan---Derek's ex-wife---had decided she'd had her fill of mothering, and almost before Marilyn had time to think about it, she'd found herself with a half-grown daughter.
And following quickly on that event---while Marilyn and Kelly were still wary of each other---Derek's widowed sister had died, leaving her four children in Derek's care.
Five children! Perhaps they wouldn't have seemed like such a herd if they had come in typical fashion, one at a time with a proper interval between.
It was the children, too, who had made living in New York City seem impossible. This house had been in Derek's family since it was built, but no one had lived in it for years. It had been used from time to time as a vacation home, but the land had nothing to recommend it to vacationers: no lakes or mountains, and the weather was unusually unpleasant. It was inhospitable country, a neglected corner of New York state.
It should have been a perfect place for writing---their friends all said so. An old house, walls soaked in history, set in a brooding, rocky landscape, beneath an unlittered sky, far from the distractions and noise of the city. But Derek could write anywhere---he carried his own atmosphere with him, a part of his ingrained discipline---and Marilyn needed the bars, restaurants, museums, shops and libraries of a large city to fill in the hours when words could not be commanded.
The silence was suddenly too much to bear. Derek wasn't typing---he might be wanting conversation. Marilyn walked down the long dark hallway---thinking to herself that this house needed more light fixtures, as well as pictures on the walls and rugs on the cold wooden floors.
Derek was sitting behind the big parson's table that was his desk, cleaning one of his sixty-seven pipes. The worn but richly patterned rug on the floor, the glow of lamplight and the books which lined the walls made this room, the library and Derek's office, seem warmer and more comfortable than the rest of the house.
"Talk?" said Marilyn, standing with her hand on the doorknob.
"Sure, come on in. I was just stuck on how to get the chief slave into bed with the mistress of the plantation without making her yet another clichéd nymphomaniac."
"Have him comfort her in time of need," Marilyn said. She closed the door on the dark hallway. "He just happens to be on hand when she gets a letter informing her of her dear brother's death. In grief, and as an affirmation of life, she and the slave tumble into bed together."
"Pretty good," Derek said. "You got a problem I can help you with?"
"Not a literary one," she said, crossing the room to his side. Derek put an arm around her. "I was just wondering if we couldn't get a horse for Kelly. I was out to look at the barn. It's all boarded and locked up, but I'm sure we could get in and fix it up. And I don't think it could cost that much to keep a horse or two."
"Or two," he echoed. He cocked his head and gave her a sly look. "You sure you want to start using a barn with a rather grim history?"
"What do you mean?"
"Didn't I ever tell you the story of how my, hmmm, great-uncle, I guess he must have been---my great-uncle Martin, how he died?"
Marilyn shook her head, her expression suspicious.
"It's a pretty gruesome story."
"Derek . . ."
"It's true, I promise you. Well . . . remember my first slave novel?"
"How could I forget? It paid for our honeymoon."
"Remember the part where the evil boss-man who tortures his slaves and horses alike is finally killed by a crazed stallion?"
Marilyn grimaced. "Yeah. A bit much, I thought. Horses aren't carnivorous."
"I got the idea from that scene from my great-uncle Martin's death. His horses---and he kept a whole stable---went crazy, apparently. I don't know if they actually ate him, but be was pretty chewed up when someone found his body." Derek shifted in his chair. "Martin wasn't known to be a cruel man. He didn't abuse his horses; he loved them. He didn't love Indians, though, and the story was that the stables were built on ground sacred to the Indians, who put a curse on Martin or his horses in retaliation."
Marilyn shook her head. "Some story. When did all this happen?"
"Around 1880."
"And the barn has been boarded up ever since?"
"I guess so. I remember the few times Anna and I came out here as kids we could never find a way to get inside. We made up stories about the ghosts of the mad horses still being inside the barn. But because they were ghosts, they couldn't be held by normal walls, and roamed around at night. I can remember nights when we'd huddle together, certain we heard their ghosts neighing . . ." His eyes looked faraway. Remembering how much he had loved his sister, Marilyn felt guilty about her reluctance to take in Anna's children. After all, they were all Derek had left of his sister.
"So this place is haunted," she said, trying to joke. Her voice came out uneasy, however.
"Not the house," said Derek quickly. "Old Uncle Martin died in the barn."
"What about your ancestors who lived here before that? Didn't the Indian curse touch them?"
"Well . . ."
"Derek," she said warningly.
"OK. Straight dope. The first family, the first bunch of Hoskins who settled here were done in by Indians. The parents and the two bond-servants were slaughtered, and the children were stolen. The house was burned to the ground. That wasn't this house, obviously."
"But it stands on the same ground."
"Not exactly. That house stood on the other side of the barn---though I doubt the present barn stood then---Anna and I used to play around the foundations. I found a knife there once, and she found a little tin box which held ashes and a pewter ring."
"But you never found any ghosts."
Derek looked up at her. "Do ghosts hang around once their house is burned?"
"Maybe."
"No, we never did. Those Hoskins were too far back in time to bother with, maybe. We never saw any Indian ghosts, either."
"Did you ever see the ghost horses?"
"See them?" He looked thoughtful. "I don't remember. We might have. Funny what you can forget about childhood. No matter how important it seems to you as a child . . ."
"We become different people when we grow up," Marilyn said.
Derek gazed into space a moment, then roused himself to gesture at the wall of books behind him. "If you're interested in the family history, that little set in dark green leather was written by one of my uncles and published by a vanity press. He traces the Hoskinses back to Shakespeare's time, if I recall. The longest I ever spent out here until now was one rainy summer when I was about twelve . . . it seemed like forever . . . and I read most of the books in the house, including those."
"I'd like to read them."
"Go ahead." He watched her cross the room and wheel the library ladder into position. "Why, are you thinking of writing a novel about my family?"
"No. I'm just curious to discover what perversity made your ancestor decide to build a house here, of all godforsaken places on the continent."
Marilyn thought of Jane Eyre as she settled into the window seat, the heavy green curtains falling back into place to shield her from the room. She glanced out at the chilly gray land and picked up the first volume.
James Hoskins won a parcel of land in upstate New York in a card game. Marilyn imagined his disappointment when he set eyes on his prize, but he was a stubborn man and frequently unlucky at cards. This land might not be much, but it was his own. He brought his family and household goods to a roughly built wooden house. A more permanent house, larger and built of native rock, would be built in time.
But James Hoskins would never see it built. In a letter to relatives in Philadelphia, Hoskins related:
"The land I have won is of great value, at least to a poor, wandering remnant of Indians. Two braves came to the house yesterday, and my dear wife was nearly in tears at their tales of powerful magic and vengeful spirits inhabiting this land.
"Go, they said, for this is a great spirit, as old as the rocks, and your God cannot protect you. This land is not good for people of any race. A spirit (whose name may not be pronounced) set his mark upon this land when the earth was still new. This land is cursed---and more of the same, on and on until I lost patience with them and told them to be off before I made powerful magic with my old Betsy.
"Tho' my wife trembled, my little daughter proved fiercer than her Ma, swearing she would chop up that pagan spirit and have it for her supper---which made me roar with laughter, and the Indians to shake their heads as they hurried away."
Marilyn wondered what had happened to that fierce little girl. Had the Indians stolen her, admiring her spirit?
She read on about the deaths of the unbelieving Hoskinses. Not only had the Indians set fire to the hasty wooden house; they had first butchered the inhabitants.
"They were disemboweled and torn apart, ripped by knives in the most hungry, savage, inhuman manner, and all for the sin of living on land sacred to a nameless spirit."
Marilyn thought of the knife Derek had said he'd found as a child.
Something slapped the window. Marilyn's head jerked up, and she stared out the window. It had begun to rain, and a rising wind slung small fists of rain at the glass.
She stared out at the landscape, shrouded now by the driving rain, and wondered why this desolate rocky land should be thought of as sacred. Her mind moved vaguely to thought of books on anthropology which might help, perhaps works on Indians of the region which might tell her more. The library in Janeville wouldn't have much---she had been there, and it wasn't much more than a small room full of historical novels and geology texts---but the librarian might be able to get books from other libraries around the state, perhaps one of the university libraries . . .
She glanced at her watch, realizing that school had let out long before; the children might be waiting at the bus stop now, in this terrible weather. She pushed aside the heavy green curtains.
"Derek---"
But the room was empty. He had already gone for the children, she thought with relief. He certainly did better at this job of being a parent than she did.
Of course, Kelly was his child; he'd had years to adjust to fatherhood. She wondered if he would buy a horse for Kelly and hoped that he wouldn't.
Perhaps it was silly to be worried about ancient Indian curses and to fear that a long-ago event would be repeated, but Marilyn didn't want horses in a barn where horses had once gone mad. There were no Indians here now, and no horses. Perhaps they would be safe.
Marilyn glanced down at the books still piled beside her, thinking of looking up the section about the horses. But she recoiled uneasily from the thought. Derek had already told her the story; she could check the facts later, when she was not alone in the house.
She got up. She would go and busy herself in the kitchen, and have hot chocolate and cinnamon toast waiting for the children.
The scream still rang in her ears and vibrated through her body. Marilyn lay still, breathing shallowly, and stared at the ceiling. What had she been dreaming?
It came again, muffled by distance, but as chilling as a blade of ice. It wasn't a dream; someone, not so very far away, was screaming.
Marilyn visualized the house on a map, trying to tell herself it had been nothing, the cry of some bird. No one could be out there, miles from everything, screaming; it didn't make sense. And Derek was still sleeping, undisturbed. She thought about waking him, then repressed the thought as unworthy and sat up. She'd better check on the children, just in case it was one of them crying out of a nightmare. She did not go to the window; there would be nothing to see, she told herself.
Marilyn found Kelly out of bed, her arms wrapped around herself as she stared out the window.
"What's the matter?"
Kelly didn't shift her gaze. "I heard a horse," she said softly. "I heard it neighing. It woke me up."
"A horse?"
"It must be wild. If I can catch it and tame it, can I keep it?" Now she looked around, her eyes bright in the moonlight.
"I don't think . . ."
"Please?"
"Kelly, you were probably just dreaming."
"I heard it. It woke me up. I heard it again. I'm not imagining things," she said tightly.
"Then it was probably a horse belonging to one of the farmers around here."
"I don't think it belongs to anyone."
Marilyn was suddenly aware of how tired she was. Her body ached. She didn't want to argue with Kelly. Perhaps there had been a horse---a neigh could sound like a scream, she thought.
"Go back to bed, Kelly. You have to go to school in the morning. You can't do anything about the horse now."
"I'm going to look for it, though," Kelly said, getting back into bed. "I'm going to find it."
"Later."
As long as she was up, Marilyn thought as she stepped out into the hall, she would check on the other children, to be sure they were all sleeping.
To her surprise, they were all awake. They turned sleepy, bewildered eyes on her when she came in and murmured broken fragments of their dreams as she kissed them each in turn.
Derek woke as she climbed in beside him. "Where were you?" he asked. He twitched. "Christ, your feet are like ice!"
"Kelly was awake. She thought she heard a horse neighing."
"I told you," Derek said with sleepy smugness. "That's our ghost horse, back again."
The sky was heavy with the threat of snow; the day was cold and too still. Marilyn stood up from her typewriter in disgust and went downstairs. The house was silent except for the distant chatter of Derek's typewriter.
"Where are the kids?" she asked from the doorway.
Derek gave her a distracted look, his hands still poised over the keys. "I think they all went out to clean up the barn."
"But the barn is closed---it's locked."
"Mmmm."
Marilyn sighed and left him. She felt weighted by the chores of supervision. If only the children could go to school every day, where they would be safe and out of her jurisdiction. She thought of how easily they could be hurt or die, their small bodies broken. So many dangers, she thought, getting her coral-colored coat out of the front closet. How did people cope with the tremendous responsibility of other lives under their protection? It was an impossible task.
The children had mobilized into a small but diligent army, marching in and out of the barn with their arms full of hay, boards or tools. Marilyn looked for Kelly, who was standing just inside the big double doors and directing operations.
"The doors were chained shut," she said, confused. "How did you---"
"I cut it apart," Kelly said. "There was a hacksaw in the toolroom." She gave Marilyn a sidelong glance. "Daddy said we could take any tools from there that we needed."
Marilyn looked at her with uneasy respect, then glanced away to where the other children were working grimly with hands and hammers at the boards nailed across all the stall doors. The darkness of the barn was relieved by a storm lantern hanging from a hook.
"Somebody really locked this place up good," Kelly said. "Do you know why?"
Marilyn hesitated, then decided. "I suppose it was boarded up so tightly because of the way one of your early relatives died here."
Kelly's face tensed with interest. "Died? How? Was he murdered?"
"Not exactly. His horses killed him. They . . . turned on him one night, nobody ever knew why."
Kelly's eyes were knowing. "He must have been an awful man, then. Terribly cruel. Because horses will put up with almost anything. He must have done something so---"
"No. He wasn't supposed to have been a cruel man."
"Maybe not to people."
"Some people thought his death was due to an Indian curse. The land here was supposed to be sacred; they thought this was the spirit's way of taking revenge."
Kelly laughed. "That's some excuse. Look, I got to get to work, OK?"
Marilyn dreamed she went out one night to saddle a horse. The barn was filled with them, all her horses, her pride and delight. She reached up to bridle one, a sorrel gelding, and suddenly felt---with disbelief that staved off the pain---powerful teeth bite down on her arm. She heard the bone crunch, saw the flesh tear, and then the blood . . .
She looked up in horror, into eyes which were reddened and strange.
A sudden blow threw her forward, and she landed facedown in dust and straw. She could not breathe. Another horse, her gentle black mare, had kicked her in the back. She felt a wrenching, tearing pain in her leg: when finally she could move she turned her head and saw the great yellow teeth, stained with her blood, of both her horses as they fed upon her. And the other horses, all around her, were kicking at their stalls. The wood splintered and gave, and they all came to join in the feast.
The children came clattering in at lunchtime, tracking snow and mud across the redbrick floor. It had been snowing since morning, but the children were oblivious to it. They did not, as Marilyn had expected, rush out shrieking to play in the snow but went instead to the barn, as they did every weekend now. It was almost ready, they said.
Kelly slipped into her chair and powdered her soup with salt. "Wait till you see what we found," she said breathlessly.
"Animal, vegetable or mineral?" Derek asked.
"Animal AND mineral."
"Where did you find it?" Marilyn asked.
The smallest child spilled soup in her lap and howled. When Marilyn got back to the table, everyone was talking about the discovery in the barn: Derek curious, the children mysterious.
"But what is it?" Marilyn asked.
"It's better to see it. Come with us after we eat."
The children had worked hard. The shrouded winter light spilled into the empty space of the barn through all the open half-doors of the stalls. The rotting straw and grain was all gone, and the dirt floor had been raked and swept clear of more than an inch of fine dust. The large design stood out clearly, white and clean against the hard earth.
It was not a horse. After examining it more closely, Marilyn wondered how she could have thought it was the depiction of a wild, rearing stallion. Horses have hooves, not three-pronged talons, and they don't have such a feline snake of a tail. The proportions of the body were wrong, too, once she looked more carefully.
Derek crouched and ran his fingers along the outline of the beast. It had been done in chalk, but it was much more than just a drawing. Lines must have been deeply scored in the earth, and the narrow trough then filled with some pounded white dust.
"Chalk, I think," Derek said. "I wonder how deep it goes?" He began scratching with a forefinger at the side of the thick white line.
Kelly bent and caught his arm. "Don't ruin it."
"I'm not, honey." He looked up at Marilyn, who was still standing apart, staring at the drawing.
"It must be the Indian curse," she said. She tried to smile, but she felt an unease which she knew could build into an open dread.
"Do you suppose this is what the spirit who haunts this land is supposed to look like?" Derek asked.
"What else?"
"Odd that it should be a horse, then, instead of some animal indigenous to the area. The legend must have arisen after the white man---"
"But it's not a horse," Marilyn said. "Look at it."
"It's not a horse exactly, no," he agreed, standing and dusting his hands. "But it's more a horse than it is anything else."
"It's so fierce," Marilyn murmured. She looked away, into Kelly's eager face. "Well, now that you've cleaned up the barn, what are you going to do?"
"Now we're going to catch the horse."
"What horse?"
"The wild one, the one we hear at night."
"Oh . . . that. Well, it must be miles away by now. Someone else must have caught it."
Kelly shook her head. "I heard it last night. It was practically outside my window, but when I looked it was gone. I could see its hoofprints in the snow."
"You're not going out again?"
The children turned blank eyes on her, ready to become hostile, or tearful, if she were going to be difficult.
"I mean," Marilyn said apologetically, "you've been out all morning, running around. And it's still snowing. Why don't you just let your food digest for a while---get out your coloring books, or a game or something, and play in here where it's warm."
"We can't stop now," Kelly said. "We might catch the horse this afternoon."
"And if you don't, do you intend to go out every day until you do?"
"Of course," Kelly said. The other children nodded.
Marilyn's shoulders slumped as she gave in. "Well, wrap up. And don't go too far from the house in case it starts snowing harder. And don't stay out too long, or you'll get frostbite." The children were already moving away from her as she spoke. They live in another world, Marilyn thought, despairing.
She wondered how long this would go on. The barn project had held within it a definite end, but Marilyn could not believe the children would ever catch the horse they sought. She was not even certain there was a horse out in that snow to be caught, even though she had been awakened more than once by the shrill, distant screaming that might have been a horse neighing.
Marilyn went to Derek's office and climbed again into the hidden window seat. The heavy curtains muffled the steady beat of Derek's typewriter, and the falling snow muffled the country beyond the window. She picked up another of the small green volumes and began to read.
"Within a month of his arrival, Martin Hoskins was known in Janeville for two things. One: He intended to bring industry, wealth and population to upstate New York, and to swell the tiny hamlet into a city. Second: A man without wife or children, Hoskins' pride, passion and delight was in his six beautiful horses.
"Martin had heard the legend that his land was cursed, but, as he wrote to a young woman in New York City, 'The Indians were driven out of these parts long ago, and their curses with them, I'll wager. For what is an Indian curse without an Indian knife or arrow to back it?'
"It was true that the great Indian tribes had been dispersed or destroyed, but a few indians remained: tattered and homeless in the White Man's world. Martin Hoskins met one such young brave on the road to Janeville one morning.
" 'I must warn you, sir,' said the ragged but proud young savage. 'The land upon which you dwell is inhabited by a powerful spirit.'
" 'I've heard that tale before,' responded Hoskins, shortly but not unkindly. 'And I don't believe in your heathen gods; I'm not afraid of 'em.'
" 'This spirit is no god of ours, either. But my people have known of it, and respected it, for as many years as we have lived on this land. Think of this spirit not as a god, but as a force . . . something powerful in nature which cannot be reasoned with or fought---something like a storm.'
" 'And what do you propose I do?' asked Hoskins.
" 'Leave that place. Do not try to live there. The spirit cannot follow you if you leave, but it cannot be driven out, either. The spirit belongs to the land as much as the land belongs to it.'
"Martin Hoskins laughed harshly. 'You ask me to run from something I do not believe in! Well, I tell you this: I believe in storms, but I do not run from them. I'm strong; what can that spirit do to me?'
"The Indian shook his head sorrowfully. 'I cannot say what it may do. I only know that you will offend it by dwelling where it dwells, and the more you offend it, the more certainly will it destroy you. Do not try to farm there, nor keep animals. That land knows only one master and will not take to another. There is only one law, and one master on that land. You must serve it, or leave.'
" 'I serve no master but myself---and my God,' Martin said."
Marilyn closed the book, not wanting to read of Martin's inevitable, and terrible, end. He kept animals, she thought idly. What if he had been a farmer? How would the spirit of the land have destroyed him then?
She looked out the window and saw with relief that the children were playing. They've finally given up their hunt, she thought, and wondered what they were playing now. Were they playing follow-the-leader? Dancing like Indians? Or horses, she thought, suddenly, watching their prancing feet and tossing heads. They were playing horses.
Marilyn woke suddenly, listening. Her body strained forward, her heart pounding too loudly, her mouth dry. She heard it again: the wild, mad cry of a horse. She had heard it before in the night, but never so close, and never so human-sounding.
Marilyn got out of bed, shivering violently as her feet touched the cold, bare floor and the chilly air raised bumps on her naked arms. She went to the window, drew aside the curtains, and looked out.
The night was still and as clear as an engraving. The moon lacked only a sliver more for fullness and shone out of a cloudless, star-filled sky. A group of small figures danced upon the snowy ground, jerking and prancing and kicking up a spray of snow. Now and again one of them would let out a shrill cry: half a horse's neigh, half a human wail. Marilyn felt her hairs rise as she recognized the puppetlike dancers below: the children.
She was tempted to let the curtains fall back and return to bed---to say nothing, to do nothing, to act as if nothing unusual had happened. But these were her children now, and she wasn't allowed that sort of irresponsibility.
The window groaned as she forced it open, and at the faint sound the children stopped their dance. As one, they turned and looked up at Marilyn.
The breath stopped in her throat as she stared down at their upturned faces. Everything was very still, as if that moment had been frozen within a block of ice. Marilyn could not speak; she could not think of what to say.
She withdrew back into the room, letting the curtains fall back before the open window, and she ran to the bed.
"Derek," she said, catching hold of him. "Derek, wake up." She could not stop her trembling.
His eyes moved behind their lids.
"Derek," she said urgently.
Now they opened and, fogged with sleep, looked at her.
"What is it, love?" He must have seen the fear in her face, for he pushed himself up on his elbows. "Did you have a bad dream?"
"Not a dream, no. Derek, your Uncle Martin---he could have lived here if he hadn't been a master himself. If he hadn't kept horses. The horses turned on him because they had found another master."
"What are you talking about?"
"The spirit that lives in this land," she said. She was not trembling, now. Perspiration beaded her forehead. "It uses the . . . the servants, or whatever you want to call them . . . it can't abide anyone else ruling here. If we . . ."
"You've been dreaming, sweetheart." He tried to pull her down beside him, but she shook him off. She could hear them on the stairs.
"Is our door locked?" she suddenly demanded.
"Yes, I think so." Derek frowned. "Did you hear something? I thought . . ."
"Children are a bit like animals, don't you think? At least, people treat them as if they were---adults, I mean. I suppose children must . . ."
"I do hear something. I'd better go---"
"Derek---No---"
The doorknob rattled, and there was a great pounding at the door.
"Who is that?" Derek said loudly.
"The children," Marilyn whispered.
The door splintered and gave way before Derek reached it, and the children burst through. There were so many of them, Marilyn thought, as she waited on the bed. And all she could seem to see was their strong, square teeth.
WINTER WHITE by Tanith Lee
"It's a rare writer who inspires editors to almost total confidence. But Tanith Lee, with the trilogy that includes The Birthgrave, Vazkor, Son of Vazkor and Quest for the White Witch, her novels of Four BEE, the epic adventure The Storm Lord, and her witchcraft novel, Volkhavaar, has earned just that sort of faith. Editors expect her to be able to do just about anything. And she does. This story, which appears here for the first time, was originally intended for an anthology of heroic fantasy which DAW plans to publish next year. But so emotionally intense, so strong, is this story of sorcerous revenge, that it was felt it would fit this book; and so powerful and haunting is it, that it somehow seems wrong not to rush it into print. Because a writer like Tanith Lee is sure to deliver another equally good, in time to appear in the forthcoming book . . .
Crovak the warrior came home in the snow with eighty men, and with one other, so they say. This is how it was:
There had been a war, near summer's end, in the High Country. Ten of the clans were in it, and Crovak had gone from his hold with the rest, to fight and kill and take spoil, man's work for which he was well fitted, being very much a man. Over six feet in height he was, broad in the shoulder, and as strong as he needed to be with strength to spare. His hair and his eyes were brown, but his beard was black and the hair on his body black, and he could get up a black temper, too, when he had a mind to it. But his teeth were white as salt and he got his name from them, Crovak White-Tooth, though later he had other names. He was vain of his teeth, and vain all through if truth be told, not of his looks but of his battle skills, his chiefdom, vain of his manhood and of the fact he was a man. Being a man had been lucky for him. It was his boast that none could out-fight him, out-drink him or out-ride him in the horizontal art. He had sired only sons. "A man makes men," he would say. He had lost two wives that way, getting sons out of them. But the third wife, she was healthy, a red-haired vixen.
After the war was done, Crovak and his eighty warriors were going homeward with their spoil, but halfway to Drom-Crovak the winter woke early. Snow began to come down, and night closed in, and the warriors lost their road. They were in a wild unfamiliar place, on rocky hills with a pelt of thin forest, land where the wolf-folk live more often than men.
They cursed the snow, the warriors, but the snow paid no heed. Then, riding blind down through the tree-line in the storm, they came on a narrow valley, and in the valley was an old Drom hall. Not one of them knew the spot, neither of the hall, which plainly was long empty, though curiously not derelict. Still, they took it for shelter and fortune, and they rode their red horses straight in at the gate and through the doors into the house.
A great house it was, too, or had been. The pointed roof went up a good forty feet or more, and the cross beams, jet black with ancient smokes, were intricately carved in a fashion not instantly recognizable. The central hearth was years cold, yet by the hearth lay a huge bundle of wood, as if in readiness for them. One or two of the warriors discussed this uneasily, but Crovak gave them the edge of his anger and they shut their mouths. Certainly, when the Wood was lit on the hearth and the sparking reek going up, they were glad enough of it. Outside, the snow went on falling and piled against the doors and the ledges of the windows, but the lire burned within, and the men ate the dry meat they had saved over and drank their beer. They made a racket, eating, drinking, crowing over victories in the war, over loot, over women, and over each other's women in Drom-Crovak and how glad the women would be to have their men back after so many nights alone. Only they kept quiet on the matter of Crovak's wife, for none but he might make a story of her, how hot she was and how willing. But Crovak was not apparently in the mood for talking of women, and soon he got up, dipped a brand from the hearth, went about the Drom, through the hall, and at length up the inner stairway to the one big upper room which was the Chiefs place, or would have been if any chief had remained. Everyone knew what was in Crovak's mind then, he was on the lookout for fresh spoil, as if he scented it here as a hound scents his home hearth. None followed, for Crovak had summoned none to follow him. Whatever he found he would most probably keep, it was his by chiefs right, and if he was greedy nobody cared to cross him.
Crovak was indeed very restless. He liked to be up and doing, warring or hunting; if at rest, then with a girl or getting drunk, and they had no girls, and not enough beer with them to get drunk on. So he paced about, peering into the shadows of the Drom. He hardly expected to come on any riches left behind, and when he discovered the tall black chests standing in the upper room, he put his foot through their doors without much hope of reward, and truly there was none, for they were bare. The frame of an enormous antique bed stood against the far wall, and here spiders had got to work as they had in the corners of the room below. Crovak, what with the shadows and the webs of these spinner-people, nearly missed what rested on the sinister post of the bed. But just as he was going out with an oath, the brand he held caught a red glint in the dark, and Crovak returned to see.
What he saw was a thing all bound over with gray spider flax, with its one red eye shining out at him. So he pulled the thing loose and picked off the webs, and presently he held a. slender small hollow pipe of ivory, with three black holes in it and a scarlet gem set where the fourth hole was not. Now Crovak was not a man given to superstition or to fancies of any kind, but it seemed to him, suddenly, that everything in the upper room had grown very still. Even the brand had stopped flickering in his grasp, even the spiders had paused upon their threads. But this was only for a moment. Crovak shook the pipe, and the flame on the brand jumped again, and the webs swayed and the shadows lurched. Then Crovak put his mouth to the pipe to blow the dust from it. The pipe made a sound when he did this, a thin high squeal, and for some reason the sound reminded Crovak instantly of the noise a woman might make when a man struck her, or raped her. This amused him, and he put the pipe to his lips a second time and blew it, but now no sound came out, and try as he would, no sound could he make to come from it. Still, for the ruby at its other end, it was not valueless.
Crovak left the room and swaggered down the stair. He toyed with the pipe, artfully not speaking, till the warriors asked where he had got it. He told them, and later he spoke of his wife and how she would run to him and hang on him when they got home. When the men slept, Crovak lay awake some while, considering that.
In the morning the snow was all down, but hard with frost, and a chill bright sun stood over it. They found their road again easily, Crovak and his eighty men, and by noon they were far from the old Drom where it lay empty and hearth-cold once more under the whiteness.
There were three more days of riding before they would reach Drom-Crovak.
All the first day, Crovak's horse acted oddly, swerving at nothing, trembling at nothing. Crovak cursed it, beat it and finally gifted it to another man and took that man's horse in exchange. After which Crovak's own horse became steady and the new horse under him began shying and stalling. That night they made their camp in the wretched open. Wolves howled on the hollow hills behind them, and the stars had a look of that same hungry howling, so swollen and brilliant they were in the sky. Yet the men had taken a deer and eaten fresh meat that night. Crovak slept under his cloak and dreamed he had his woman with him. A very real dream it was, yet she was not as she had been, her body stony in his grip. He woke in the dawn and took out the ivory pipe and set it grinning to his mouth, attempting to evoke that female squeal of pain or fear, but no sound came.
The second day, there was the same trouble with the horse. The warriors came into the lowlands and passed by the frozen river. Somewhere here, Crovak began to feel a certain strangeness at his back, as if something pressed against him, and not long after, the horse reared up and fell, throwing him. Then Crovak, in his fury, took a boulder and brained the horse as it struggled to rise.
The man whose horse it had been was angry. Altercation broke out, and Crovak struck him down with a blow that near broke his jaw. Crovak took back his own mount, and the horseless warrior must ride behind another. Crovak's horse shied at nothing, and trembled, but knew better than to throw him.
Just before the sun left the white plain, they passed a stretch of the river where the ice was broken and, glancing aside, Crovak saw his own reflection there astride the red horse, and something up behind him, riding pillion as the horseless warrior rode behind another.
Crovak drew rein, and turned about to see, and saw nothing, only the dying ruddy light, and his men at his back.
Some would dwell on an occurrence of this sort, but Crovak's mind was not constructed to dwell on shadows or on dreams. Yet, when they made their camp, he drew out the ivory pipe and offered it to one of the men.
"It has a pleasing note," said he, "but it is a stubborn object."
The man took the pipe and rolled it between his fingers.
"I never met such a thing before, Crovak lord," said he. "But I will not offer to sound it"
"Come, if I say sound it you shall," said Crovak.
"I say I will not, Crovak lord."
"What are you afraid of? Is it a woman's cringing heart you have? Perhaps I should wed you to one of my ten-year-old sons, and see if he can get you with child."
The other warriors joined his jeering. One said he would try the pipe, but when he was about to put it to his mouth he sneezed, and each time he raised the pipe he sneezed, a curious happening. And another man who snatched the pipe was taken with a fit of choking, while a third had the pipe at his lip, but the fire spat and a piece of flaming tinder flew up and lodged in his cloak, and he dropped the pipe to beat out the burning. Then Crovak retrieved the pipe with a snarl of laughter.
"The wench is wed to me," he said, and put the ivory away in his belt, and laughed again.
The next day's riding was hard, but they were getting near Drom-Crovak; the curve of the land, the trees, the tracks, all took on the look of home things, even beneath the snow. Here and there they passed by a small steading, the outlying holds of the Drom, which owed Crovak tithe. Generally when the Drom warriors went riding, the out-women kept from sight but a few miles from the Drom there was a girl child, not more than four or five, playing on the track. It was ill luck, and worse, unlawful among the clans, to kill a child, even a peasant's or a slave's brat The warriors reined aside, and then a dour skinny woman ran from the huddle of huts nearby to scoop the child up. Not looking at Crovak, she mumbled for his pardon and received instead a gob of his spit. As the men moved off, the girl child's voice rose thin and clear above the crunch of hoofs in the snow: "White woman! See."
Crovak heard, and something caught him in the cry, he could not have said what, but it inflamed his temper. He swung round and rode back.
"Speak, sow. What does your filthy bairn mean?"
"I do not know, Crovak lord."
"White woman," said the child again, "on big man's dog."
"What?" shouted Crovak.
"Pardon, Crovak lord. She thinks a horse a dog. She means on your horse, Crovak lord. But no one is there."
"White woman," said the child, the third time.
"Get from my sight!" Crovak shouted. He struck the woman a blow with his whip across her thighs, before she could run. But somehow she ran after the blow, hauling the child with her, silent, into the nearest hut.
Crovak was not frightened, did not think to be. But he was angry, with a mad unmotivated rage. He slashed his horse about the neck, and it plunged forward snorting. The warriors tore after. Yet, even riding so swift, Crovak felt a constriction at his chest and, glancing down, he saw an odd thing. Two white arms, white as the snow, were round his ribs and held him fast, and two white hands, their fingers knotted among his furs.
Then the anger, not the fear, overwhelmed Crovak, and with a bellow he strove to thrust and tear the fragile clinging white arms from him, and he must indeed have had his will, for they were suddenly gone. And when he looked before him again, and shook the freezing sweat from his scowling face, he perceived the track winding down between the shallow hills of the Low Country, leading to his Drom.
Crovak the warrior came home in the snow with his eighty men just at fall of night, and he saw the long stockade and the terraced earth mound behind with the Drom huts circling up on it, and the great hall at its summit. The torches were red on the stockade gates, between them, the men Crovak had left here, when he went to war, were patrolling with their spears, looking out for enemies. Above, other torches blazed from the cross-alleys between the dwellings, and brazen from the doors of the hall. It was a good thing to return and see, the Drom so sturdy, so safe and so fine with its lights, as if the night had no power over it.
Crovak had no sense of foreboding, or at least he would not have confessed one. But he said to his men: "Make camp here an hour, for I am going back alone. I would see how well my laws are kept when I am from the hearth."
The men laughed, and one dared to say that Crovak's wife would be weeping, with her loom set by and her face in the ashes. Crovak grinned and, leaving his horse, he stole down on his own hold like the thief.
He got over the stockade like a thief, too. No other but the master could have done it, for the watch-hounds knew his scent, and kept quiet when he bade them---one man who came to apprehend him, Crovak crowned with his fist. He was taking no chances. He stole up through the cross-alleys, muffled in his furs, and reached the hall door and went by it. Not only an inner but an outer stair led to the upper chamber, this outer stair infrequently used, but now Crovak used it. It was not yet the time for dinner, besides, the chief's wife did not sit in hall when he was absent, at least, not the wife of Crovak.
He knew she was in the chamber as soon as he reached the outer door, for he could scent her, the hot russet smell of her hair and the ripeness of her flesh. When he pushed open the door, he knew also why the perfume of her was so strong. She did not hear him enter, she was too preoccupied. Neither did the man hear.
They lay on Crovak's bed, intent on their journey.
Crovak, whose reaction to fury was usually one of clamor, made no noise at all as he crept about and took down from the wall one of his boar spears. He stood a moment, the spear resting in his hands, watching his wife and the man who rode her. Crovak did not feel surprise or hurt. But when he leaped forward and plunged the spear down through both their bodies, with his massive strength, through the two of them and through the bed itself into a crevice of the stone floor beneath, he felt a boiling spasm of pleasure at their deaths. He stood and watched them die. The eyes of his vixen wife pleaded with him; even dying, she pleaded dumbly for mercy, till the soul left her.
Crovak took out the ivory pipe. He looked at it with hatred and fondness.
"Cunning, you warn me," he said.
Then he went out to call his warriors in, and rouse the Drom to his arrival.
Of course, he did not mourn her. The man, Crovak gave to his kin to bury, that was their business. But she, his woman, Crovak had thrown a little distance outside the gates of the Drom, for beasts to feed on. The night meal was served late that night, but served it was, and Crovak sat down in his hall to it, sat in his carved chair, as if no untoward thing had happened. His rage was gone to a sort of grizzly playfulness. Not a man there but knew he must be wary for his skin's sake. Particularly that night, they only laughed when Crovak did, and when he said no word, no man spoke, and the quiet hung from the rafters with the smoke. And the warrior who had jested of Crovak's wife's weeping, he stayed away.
Finally Crovak called for his drinking cup, the cup which usually he kept for a feast. It was made from the skull of one of Crovak's enemies, slain in an earlier war, the eyes, the nostrils and the mouth closed with red gold, and the brink rimmed with gold. This goblet was filled for Crovak with beer, and he drank it to the last drop and banged his bone cup down on the board.
Just at that instant, there was another banging, much lighter---yet he heard it---on the doors of the hall. And, at the rapping, the doors opened.
Crovak sat staring, and his mouth set in its grin, showing his flawless and glistening teeth. Through the doors came neither warrior nor slave nor servant; not a traveler, not an itinerant musician with his harp on his back. No, none of these. Through the doors came a woman, and she was white as the winter snow.
Crovak recognized her at once. He shouted at her:
"So, you have come to claim payment for your warning, have you?"
It seemed she had. Up the silent hall, more silent than ever after Crovak's shout, she moved. She had no look of anything real, more like something painted or enameled than a living thing. Her gown was white, and not of the fashion of the time, and it left bare her shoulders, though she had been walking in the snow. Her gown was white, and as white as the gown was her flesh, as if there were no blood in it, and her flaxen hair was nearly as white. There was no color in her face, even her mouth was bloodless, but her brows were black and her eyes were black, and the nails of her hands were red as rubies, as if they, out of all her bloodlessness, had been dipped in blood. And indeed, her hands were so pale on the pale gown that it was hard to make them out, but for those nails like ten drops of blood splashed there.
"What will you have, woman?" Crovak roared. "Ask your price."
The woman kept walking toward him, but she did not speak. Alongside, the warriors glanced this way and that, at Crovak, then where he stared, at her. It seemed to the warriors that Crovak was afraid. Sweat stood on his forehead and in his black beard, though he grinned. But Crovak did not feel himself afraid. Not even when the woman reached him, and halted, facing him across the board. Her face was blank, and her mouth so pale he could not tell if it smiled or grimaced at him.
"Well, she-wolf," said Crovak, "I never believed in your like before, but here you are. Will you sit with me? You will be the first of your sex to sit at my table, but then you are fey, so perhaps you have earned it." Then he called for more beer to fill his skull-cup. The woman, however, did not sit, nor touch anything on the board. She only gazed at Crovak with her eyes as black as ravens. Crovak turned to his men. "What do you think of her?"
A man near to him, a fool, said haltingly: "Who are you seeing, Crovak lord? Is it your dead woman?"
Crovak gave a cry of rage, and turning about, struck the man sprawling.
"Who does not see her?" Crovak shouted.
The men looked at each other, the slaves huddled by the hearth and hid their eyes. It was borne in on Crovak that none but he could perceive the woman. At that, he laughed again.
"Only for me, are you?" He drank deep, and drank. "Only for me?"
When the fourth skull-full of beer was in his belly, he reached across the board and put his hand on her naked shoulder. She felt more real than she appeared, but her flesh was very smooth, as if there were not a pore in it, very smooth and cool. "Now, lass, shall you tell me what you want, or is it only to feast your glance on Crovak White-Tooth? Feast then."
Crovak called for more beer. He drank till the skin was empty, till he was drunken and the hall blurred and the sensations of his body blurred. Yet still he could see her very clearly, her with her black eyes. At length he rose, staggering and merry. He turned his back on her, and slurred over his shoulder at her: "Bid you good night, white sow," and he rolled through the silent hall and up the stair, through the hanging into the upper room where seven hours before he had ended his marriage to his redheaded wife. The blood had been cleaned away and the bedding changed, but the frame of the bed and the floor would always hold the mark of the spear's passage, which would be a grand thing to show the next wife he lay down here with.
Crovak stripped his boots and belt, went to the outer door and urinated out upon the stair. Turning back into the room, he beheld the white woman standing at the bed's foot.
Crovak shouted, wordlessly now. Just for one second, he went cold in his belly. Then he showed his teeth to her again and he said: "You would be wife to me, would you?" And he strode to her, rocking somewhat in his gait, and seized her in his two strong hands.
She made no resistance and no remonstrance as he half lifted her to the bed and slung her down there. He was ready for a woman, and pushed up her skirts. Even that part of her was pallid, but it did not deter him, nor the white points of her breasts which should have had some color in them, when he dragged down the neck of her bodice to see. He had her, but the drink made him slow. Slow enough he could notice how she watched him, kept on watching as he worked inside her. She did not catch her breath, she did not make a sound, and her eyes were wide. Her eyes bored into him, cold for his heat And when he shuddered and grunted and fell down upon her, even then her eyes were somehow watching him, observing his fit with a pitiless and detached interest
No sooner was the paroxysm over than a vile sickness took him, and lurching up and to the door, he vomited forth the beer.
She watched that too.
And when again he lay groaning on the bed, still she watched. And when he summoned his strength and struck her from the bed, next moment she was there again beside him, her face turned to him, unbruised, her eyes watching.
He grew faint or else he dozed. When he woke, darkness filled the Drom, and dimly through the outer door he scented the stench of his own sickness, and there she lay beside him yet.
"How now, bitch? Fey or not, you have outstayed my leave."
Rising then, he raised her, too, and she was light to carry. He went through the hanging to the inner stair, and he tossed her down it with no trouble. He saw her motionless at the stair's foot, against the dim glow of a single torch left burning in the hall.
Crovak chuckled. He feared her not at all.
He went to his bed and slept heavily. But when he roused in the hour before sunrise, she was beside him again, her eyes mere inches from his own, polished, frigid and terrible as the eyes of a serpent.
At that Crovak beat her. He gave her a beating no woman could take and live, and few men. She did not attempt to defend herself, neither did she cower away. She must be mute for she made no outcry even now, yet once he thought he glimpsed her tongue---pointed and pale---he thought he noted blood too, and when she tumbled on the ground, he applied his feet, kicking her in the shank and stomach. All this while he was bellowing like the bull, till his men came running up the stair and burst into the room, blear-eyed, with swords in their hands.
"What is amiss, Crovak lord?"
"Nothing!" he ranted, kicking at her, knowing they would not see, that she was his alone, snarling his hate while the sweat flew from his congested face. "Get to your kennels, and leave me to my own deeds."
Later, when they had gone, Crovak took the white woman down the outer stair and threw her over a horse, and calling two slaves from the straw where they slept, he sent them off with the horse in the chill gray dawn. "Ride him fast, and leave him when he is done."
The slaves' eyes were huge. Wolves came near the Drom in winter. Wolves would have the horse and possibly themselves also. But Crovak had gone mad, gone mad when he caught his wife at her game, gone mad even before, on the way home, some said . . . The slaves, not daring to disobey, raced the horse out of the stockade gate. Crovak watched them go with the horse and the white woman on its back. He grinned, but the cold day struck into his jaw and made it ache, though his jaw had never ached till then.
The warriors were muttering in the hold, but when Crovak came close, they were dumb.
Crovak carved for himself a piece of last night's roast, and turning about, with his knife in his grip, beheld the woman at his elbow.
Crovak screamed. He thrust the knife into her breast and snatched it out. She stood unharmed, unbloody, watching him. Crovak laughed. He laughed and crashed his fist upon the wall, laughed till the warriors slunk from his hall and the slaves hid themselves beneath the benches.
"Am I not to be rid of you? Be damned then, companion me!"
"How long have we to brook this?" the men asked each other. "Our lord by right, well, so he is. And if he was highhanded in the past, we bore with him, for he was a man, a warrior. We did well enough. But this winter---"
"He is mad this winter," others said. "Some new lord should master the Drom. Must we vow our swords to a madman?"
But still they feared Crovak too much to rebel openly against him. He had taught them that fear ten years, though now they had had a taste of his lunacy for two months. They had seen him strike out and mutter and shout at nothing, they had seen him sneer over his shoulder at nothing. They had seen him linger in the hall till sun-up and not go to his bed, as if he feared to go, nor did he ever take a woman. If any offered, he would knock them down. "I have a woman!"
The men did not see this: How Crovak, when exhaustedly he had sought his bed, would try to hold himself awake, knowing that as he slept two polished, greasy-shining black stones would stare at him. Nor did the men see how once or twice he had lain down on this woman of his, and how lusty Crovak could not take his pleasure with her, his fire put out by her cold water. Even her loins were cold, winter cold, and winter white as the rest of her. He gripped her feverishly and struggled to be a man with her, but she was stone and he was dead. And even the huzzies of the hall could not stir him, for he was aware that she would be by, watching, watching.
He grew morose. Always he spoke to her. He spoke because she did not and he must speak for both.
"What are you wanting? Tell me. You shall have it. Is it the pipe, the pipe with the ruby which called you? Eh? Will I give it you back? Here, take it." But her red-tipped hands stayed at her sides, blood drops on the white gown. He put the pipe under his heel, but it would not break. He tossed it away from him, but it reappeared in his belt, as always she reappeared at his side.
Certain of the warriors of Drom-Crovak began to steal out, generally by night, in bands of five or six, ten or fourteen. They went to seek other Droms, other lords. Some, whose kind were in Drom-Crovak, and whose roots ran deeper there, began small plots, but discarded them. Clan law was stringent, and they could not quite forget it. Nor the strength of Crovak's arm. Once in the dusk, as Crovak made water up against a wall, a man came by with a knife, but Crovak, with the white woman at his side watching even this, was aware of the man creeping near, and slew him. Truly, Crovak was swift and powerful.
But was he as powerful as he had been? At drink, and he was often drunken now, his hands shook. Sometimes he sat holding his jaw, for his teeth ached. In the second month, this trouble in his jaw became so bad his face was swollen, and he called the smith to pull out one of his front teeth. He howled with the pain, and started up as if he would kill the smith. No longer would they call Crovak "White-Tooth," with the black gap there. He lost another tooth later; it turned brown and cracked in his mouth. It was a strange thing, but it showed how his strength was leaving him.
The winter thickened on the Low Country. The snows descended, turning the black nights gray. The wolves showed themselves even at the gates of the. stockade, and the men of Drom-Crovak went hunting them, and as Crovak rode, he turned often to the air behind him and jeered and spat at this air: "Are you comfortable, sow? Is it good to ride with Crovak?" And when he cast his spears, they missed their aim.
Then came an evening when Crovak jumped up from the board and began to roar and rant without ceasing. It was the third month, and he brought more fear on his depleted hall than ever before. He was berserk and it seemed he would never be calm again. He over-set the benches in his raving. He picked up a slave boy and flung him the breadth of the room. They did not know what particular thing had caused this outburst, nor why he screamed at them his old boast: "A man makes men!"
But abruptly he blundered out into the torchlit darkness, and flung himself on a horse and plunged from the Drom, all the while yet screaming. And his noise died away on the night silence as a man's cry dies away down the length of a precipice from which he has fallen.
The woman shuddered with horror as she listened at the bolted door of the hut.
"Who is there?"
"I, bitch," the huge hoarse mad voice thundered. "Crovak. Now open, or I kick in the door."
The woman backed away, and the next moment the door was indeed broken in shivers, and Crovak strode in. The woman ascertained a great change in him, his ruined teeth, the gray in his black beard, the red veins in his eyes and his shaking demented body. This woman's man was dead, wolves had had him not a month ago. Now she was hard put to it to fend for herself. She stared at the Drom chieftain with miserable terror and no surprise, for who did not understand her life would be bitter and brief.
"Where is your bratling?" Crovak demanded.
Fresh horror---what would he do to her child?
"Come," he snapped, "your bairn is fey, is it not? It sees what others are blind to."
"It is sometimes thus with the very young, or the old ones, Crovak lord---they are nearer life's edge---"
"Get your piglet!" he screamed at her.
The woman turned and lifted the child up from the hearth. The din had not woken it, but now it woke, and looked at Crovak.
Crovak sighed. He glared dully at the woman.
"Tell me first, sow, if I am alone."
The woman nodded, holding tight to her infant.
"Now you," Crovak said to the child, "you tell me."
The child giggled. The woman, in alarm, coaxed it: "Tell the lord what you see. If any are with him."
"White woman," said the child.
"Where?" rasped Crovak, his eyes ablaze.
"By your left shoulder."
"Yes, you snake. My left shoulder. So. Now say how she is."
The child lowered its eyes and crooned, playing with the mother's hair. The mother became distrait, coaxing, coaxing: "Tell the lord, tell him---"
"All white," said the child, "but soot on her eyes and red on her fingers."
Crovak panted, showing his discolored teeth. He muttered, "And she is thicker at the waist than she was, plumper, is she not? Three months since I lay with her . . ."
The child's mother put her free hand to her mouth. The girl child simpered. It had suddenly a sly and canny look.
Crovak rode home, and he entered the gate and saw all about him the congealed glances of wary dislike, mistrust and underlying scorn. Crovak announced a feast in his hall. He ordered three cows slaughtered, five sheep, ten beer barrels broached, though there were fewer men now in Drom-Crovak than there had ever been. Fewer slaves, too, for many had fled. Even fewer women, for five of those Crovak had struck down in his fierce moods had died.
"This feast," Crovak told the Drom folk, spit running from his mouth, "is to celebrate the coming of another son to me. My demon wife is with child. Behold her belly---no, but you cannot. Little matter. She carries. She will give me a boy."
The feast was a grim and a weird one. Crovak went on drinking three nights and the days between. Sometimes he would go out and throw up what he had taken, then come back to eat and drink again. He dragged the women onto the board before him, and pawed them and straddled them, but he did not have them. "Note how faithful I am, my wife," he said.
Eventually Crovak crashed forward in a stupor, and when he recovered himself he found he lay on the floor of his hall, bound and helpless and his mouth stopped with a rag. And all about his warriors stood with their swords.
They had not killed him. As with the slaughter of a child, it was bad luck and unlawful to slay a sleeping man, let alone the chief. But they had spoken long, the warriors of Drom-Crovak. How their women were not safe, how the Drom was cursed, how priests were needed there, and the jurisdiction of the Clan elders. Even the legal sons of Crovak sanctioned what was to be done. No one but did not fear the bane which had fallen on their chieftain and hence upon his hold.
Sluggish and stupid, Crovak writhed in his bonds. The men informed him of what was to be done, informed him courteously. They could afford to be courteous, seeing they had the upper hand at last.
He was put over a horse and carried to a deserted steading about two miles from the Drom. Here was a hut made of stone and weatherproofed to some extent. In the floor was a stone post and a length of iron fetter attached to it---hostages taken in war had been brought to this place now and then, and kept for ransom. It served very well for mad Crovak. Though he was yet strong, they said, he could not rip his way free from iron chains.
Nor did he. Four months he rotted there.
Rotted there, and sat or lay on the straw mattress, or paced about on his short leash, like a restless dog. He had warmth, for his men left him pelts and furs to wrap himself in, bundles of wood to feed the fire, and every five days someone would come and leave more wood, and food, and drink besides, and while this one saw to that, three others would keep watch on Crovak. One other kept her watch, too.
They swore to him that when the snow broke, they would send word to the elders of the Clan and ask for the Council to be held, and there decide his fate.
But each time they visited him, Crovak was a fraction more sullen, or else louder; he lunged at them or he whimpered. It seemed he became madder and more mad. And he would frequently turn to his invisible demon and tell her things. If any warrior recalled the ivory pipe taken from the empty Drom that night the snow came, none spoke of it. For a superstitious folk, they had given small specific heed to Crovak's demon, and maybe they were wise.
She sat facing him, across his fire. She never ceased to fix her look on him. At night she lay by him, but he had no warmth from her. Her eyes never closed, she never blinked. Her belly swelled.
One night, in the fourth month, he woke and, in the dull shine of the fire's embers, he seized her throat and tried to throttle her, although he knew there was no use in it. He ground his decaying teeth and squeezed with all his might, and her black eyes went on staring into his, and the swollen belly pressed into his groin which had made it and now could make nothing.
"Will you kill me then?" he crowed at her. "Will you take my soul, too?"
When he let go her throat, there was no bruise on it. His arms ached like his teeth now, from straining to murder her.
As he lay there, whining softly at his pains, his mind ran back to the Drom where he had found the pipe. He thought of the wood on the floor laid ready, and the emptiness without dereliction, and he wondered if some other man had been enslaved there in the same way that he now was, enslaved there till he died. Crovak thought of the spiders scampering on their threads. He thought of the pipe, and how he had blown it and it had squealed like a woman in terror or hurt, and then he took the pipe out and rolled it in his fingers.
He had blown her into the world, if only he might blow her out, reverse the bane, be rid of her.
In a dreadful manner, he had almost grown accustomed to her stare, and turning from her, idly, he began to pick at the ruby that was set in where the fourth hole of the pipe was not. And then, growing weary of this, Crovak set the pipe to his lips and tapped it there.
It seemed to him, abruptly, that in her white face which watched him, there was the slightest and most subtle alteration. Crovak was undeniably insane by this season, but not with a blind insanity. Through the wreckage of his wits a strange idea came to him, and he slowly turned the pipe about in his hand, so its other end was to his mouth, and, holding it in this fashion, he blew it.
It made a sound. Not as at the previous hour, not a squeal of distress. This time, shrill and thin, it laughed.
The woman did two things, two things she had not done before. She opened her mouth very wide, and this was how he saw her teeth were gleaming and coal black as her eyes---which all at once she shut. Then she did a third new thing. She fell backward on the stone floor and she vanished.
Crovak could hardly credit what he beheld this plainly. He grunted, and he shuffled in his chains, and he waited, his tongue lolling, for her to reappear. And this she did not do.
When day came, still he looked for her, and still she was absent.
Four whole days he waited; four whole days she did not come back. The fourth night he poked out a hole between the stones of the floor and thrust the pipe down into it, and covered it, smiling. The fifth day, Crovak went on smiling to himself, hugging himself, rattling the chain. He built up the fire. When the warriors came to feed him, he spoke to them. He told them all was well, he had outwitted the demon, but he slavered as he spoke, and they paid no heed. Yet he had a strange cunning by then, and he stole a knife from one, and when the men were gone he hacked off his thumb, which made his hand slight enough to slip from the fetter.
He felt the agony only as a distant nudging, and packed snow on the wound, which numbed it. He followed the hoof-pocks in the whiteness the two miles back to Drom-Crovak. It was dusk and the torches burned on the gates. He came on a man there, patrolling the wall, and killed him with the knife and took his sword. After that, Crovak ran into his hold, and he laid about him with the stolen sword, and very many he butchered till he grew weary of the sport. He got a horse then, and rode away into the winter land, red with blood, and his mad eyes red, singing.
What else then do they say of Crovak? They say this:
He wandered the winter two months more. He lived like a beast, preying on the steadings thereabouts which once had paid him tithe. They had been in fear of him before, but now they had a better cause to fear him. Whole families he cut down, only for a loaf or a bit of meat. They say he drank men's blood. How he lived or where, is not certain, in some ruined hut perhaps. His madness kept him alive. Bands of men from the Drom rode out to catch and kill him, but they never found him out.
It had been a harsh unnatural winter, eager to arrive, reluctant to take its leave, but in the end the snow had gone, the ways were brown and muddy, the rivers running bright.
Crovak strode from the forest land which was putting on its green. His horse was dead by then, and he a fearsome sight, ragged, filthy, and his rotten teeth showing in that beard half gray and knotted with the debris of the woods.
He had forgotten much, and no longer did he reason in any form as a man does. Yet enough he remembered, and he took a perverse pleasure in his survival.
When he came to the field he did not quite recall it. The ground was raw with earth and rank grass, but a stand of trees was at its center, and nearby a group of huts, and beyond them a track. The track he knew, it led to the Drom, down over the curving shallow hills. A girl child was playing in the field. He recollected the child.
Crovak moved toward the child. He had no positive intention, but a kind of malicious crazy urge to startle it. But the grasses rustled, not merely at his passage, but as if a tiny beast were rummaging there, and the child looked up and saw Crovak.
The wild man snarled down at her, but the child exhibited no nervousness. In fact, confronting the child again, it was Crovak who felt a sudden ice in his belly. He made a guttural noise at the child, for speech did not come fluently anymore to him. After a try or two, he got his defiance out:
"What do you see? Is she there, eh? Is she? The white sow?"
The child shook its head.
"No."
Crovak grinned.
"No. No winter woman. I have sent her back. Clever Crovak, Crovak White-Tooth."
Just then the mother came from one of the huts and, catching sight of him, froze. This amused Crovak. He sucked his nine black nails. Behind him, in the rank grass, the creature rustled again, and the child gazed past Crovak, downward, and she giggled.
"What?" said Crovak. He laughed. "Tell me, what? A fox? I have eaten foxes in the wood."
"See," said the child.
By the huts, the woman held her hands to Crovak imploringly.
"Shall I eat you, then?" asked Crovak. "Like the fox."
"See," said the child a second time. She was watching something just at Crovak's back and somewhat to his left, in stature, a third of the distance up his calf.
"Will she play with me?" asked the child insistently.
Crovak did not turn.
"She is not there," he said, "the white woman."
"No," said the child.
Crovak would not turn. He would not think of the swollen belly which had pressed against him. He would not think of his boast of sons.
"She is small as me. She has no clothes," said the child, "but her fingers are red."
Crovak shrieked. He flung about and ran. Behind him, faintly, came the rustling of some tiny thing, which yet managed to keep pace with him. Which kept pace with him, and kept pace with him, and never slackened.
No more is known, or said, of Crovak.
A COBWEB OF PULSING VEINS by William Scott Home
Is there really a writer of horror fiction who today can be labeled most controversial?---Or even, in these liberated times, controversial at all? There is. His name is William Scott Home and most of his stories have appeared in the small-press markets, particularly the horror magazine Weirdbook, where it is likely that an issue reaches 3000 readers at the outside. But despite this, Home's stock has risen among the insiders of the field who recognize in his elaborately written, often complex, but incredibly varied stories, not only some of the most inventive writing around, but some of the most entertaining as well. This story, from Home's first short story collection, Hollow Faces, Merciless Moons, demonstrates his skill at devising highly original concepts and working them into unusual stories. And if, at the same time, this one evokes something of the shade of Poe himself, well then that only demonstrates something of the range of Home's writing talent.
1
Leaving the horses mulched in the Cimmerian shadow of a bloated yew, I eased pick and shovel out of the wagon and waded through the sodden yellow banks of weeds to a breach in the corpse kingdom's crumbling stone barricade. A quarter-moon smeared a feverish glow on the marble slabs and dappled the trodden weeds that beleaguered them with a pale dewy leprosy; only the massy shadows which clustered around the trunks of the ancient oaks and beeches escaped its infection, and I crept into them. But there, where the fallen leaves had not received a dayful of cold rain, cracklings like the meshing of brittle teeth followed my steps.
I paused and glanced around cautiously. I have many brothers I never care to meet: ours is a sacrosanct, but acroamatic, calling. The sodden quietness of this night might tempt them, but that expanded watchfulness which pulses beneath my temples convinced me I was alone. Sliding in between thickly interwoven branches of fir and ilex, I crouched between the adjoining walls of two ancient and weather-worn mausolea and lit a small candle to peer at the curious diagram I bore.
He who had given it had sketched it from memory for me, familiar with every molehill of this graveyard. Yet so exact were its proportions and juxtapositions that I was startled to be shown this familiar ground in his firm lines as though seen from a height. Despite the ease with which I could have obtained access to the tomb, he indicated he had specified a precise and peculiar path of entry, and on my obedience was his compensation staked. Thus---the more as the northeast corner, my goal, was the most unkempt and deserted sector of this cemetery, whose harvest, to winnowers of my mode, was scantiest, and as the landmarks he offered were for the most part known to me, however well, in strangely different verbal dress---I referred carefully once more to his precise distortion, as if dousing my heartbeat on the right side.
I moved on, rounding the sunken grave of William Mattix (every apprenticeship leaves its scars), the sepulchre become shrine of the poet, Joseph Ray, its bird-indexed statue angled against the heavy door. The complexity of that door's lock, the thickness of the walls, and the costly iron of the casket, had all been in vain, but his image was projected in there still by the worshipful eyes of fame's pale imbibers---surely a moral there for those who scorn us. Thorn bushes and dense new growths of weeds only slowed my passage through the little city of mausolea which housed the whole line of the Brilliots, but I was careful to tread directly upon that unmarked mound which had been concealed half a century before by the planting of great rose bushes, all of which had dwindled to sickly sticks.
Most of the alleys beyond that I had never trod before. An occasional flagstone gleamed through the turf, and many of the houses and vaults were covered, not by lichens, but by tufts of dangling grass and more. Once I was among them, they seemed so uniformly disguised in the thick parget of earth, I could not be sure which was which; I was at sea in an anonymity of dying pride, already absorbed in the earth's time-tolerant revision.
The door of one mausoleum was long broken, swung so far inward that it was pinioned by a gout of earth to the wall behind. Spiders alone maintained its interdiction. I stepped within to scan the diagram once more. The stagnant atmosphere which dropped on me as I entered was shocking; fear is a syllable of child's babble to those of us who cull our living from the dead, except when it faces us astride warm breath.
When my flaring candle began to zebra the stones, I looked first at the depth of the tomb, paper-blank as my fingers. It was huge: I had not noticed from outside because the further reaches were entirely buried, earth dribbling in between the joints of the stones. The hard shelves of marble near me at the door were empty, and those at the limits of the light disdained their granite seals, were in places filled with rock. Earth had filled the tomb everywhere, and fungi-mocking grass carpeted its floor.
Remembering suddenly that this was a particular of the edifice I sought, I glanced at the paper, and found myself confirmed. For some reason this brought a shock. I snuffed the candle automatically as if in fear of detection, chilled more than autumn night should chill me in any palace of frozen tears.
But imagination and resurrection cannot stand face to face. I hung my heavy coat across the gaping door, and having excised the feeble light of the living, lit the lantern, leaving it low.
The coffins at the rear of the tomb seemed to have reposed undisturbed, towering to the ribbed ceiling, for the fungi loam was crusted evenly over them. At the back was a wall of stone of waist height, beyond which was an equal quantity of loam. In the terminal wall of the mausoleum, closing down on its far side, the stonework ceased altogether, the dirt being contiguous with the outside. As for the embrasure of the consecrated walls, there was room for perhaps a dozen coffins, though there were no stones to mark any. But there I had to dig.
Bizarre shadows leapt from behind the crowded coffins and retreated before the swinging light. A perspiration too profuse to be that only of confined sepulchres swiveled across my hands and forehead. Yet to such labors I settled as a butcher to his block, or a miller to his wheel, with the fresh slough of dawn sweet on their cheeks.
I had been assured that there were only two coffins in this elevated parterre. The one I sought lay farthest from the outer half-wall, against the inner, and between five and seven feet from the right-hand wall. I had not laughed when he had given these figures, knowing that what he sought in such cramped confines could be no orb of bones but rather some bracketed chest, for in stately days such as those which had filled this chamber with their excreta, no dog, however beloved, shared its family's tomb.
I vaulted over the earth, forced to squat against the roof. With mingled feelings, I felt my feet sink ankle-deep into the moist humus, stopping only by virtue of their reaching the other coffin. Only a thin sheet of mud kept it within the rightful matrix of death.
According to his directions, I probed the soil beyond and heard the muffled clank of metal. The usual precautions being nugatory in so ancient and unvisited a tomb, I merely began shoveling the intervening soil at hazard and bared a small object in a few minutes' time. I realized then that I had not been adequately warned; for what I had uncovered was not a treasure box, but merely the upper (or lower) end of a coffin which stood erect in its grave. Nor was it of normal size, but only a little more than two feet square.
Here was added work. I decided finally that by opening up only one side I could haul it out laterally in little more time than it would take to section a normal grave. But as I exposed it level by level, strange aspects caught my eye and slowed my arms, and the same disquietude of my reception huddled closely at my back. The coffin was of iron and ornamented with small brass carvings of unusual intricacy; but chains of tarnished gold secured the lid to the base. Moving inadvertently between the lantern and the casket, I thought there was phosphorescence in the latter, and was able to make out the brazen decorations quite distinctly. It was only four feet in length, so I finished and pulled it forward in less time than I had set.
The weight was thunderous. Allowing for the cumbersome metals of its make, it yet overbalanced the death cradles of the obese. It was all I could do to gouge it across the spongy earth, baring the other coffin in the process. It was likewise of iron. As I lifted one end of the metal box over the edge of the retaining wall, I caught a hissing noise, or escaping air. But my full attention eliminated it. Something, still, seemed aprowl in the lifeless crypt, and with sudden strength I eased the ponderous object well up the passageway. As the lantern was continually being obscured in these operations, I believed there was a phosphorescence in many of the surrounding boxes; foolishly, I was disinclined to extinguish my lantern to ascertain whether its reflections might not be the source of the glow.
I had already realized I would never be able to get the box across the graveyard, and that it would be necessary to drive the horses around to the gravel walk which passed that side of the cemetery nearest the tomb---only fifty feet distant. Lest the long pause of the mares by the outer wall attract attention of the possible passerby, I would move the coffin to the wall first. Easier planned than executed. I was a long time forcing the iron cast even to the mouth of the tomb, where I extinguished my lantern and put on my coat, already crudely chilled. In the course of maneuvers, I made out with some surprise a small Byzantine cross above the door, half hidden by hanging weeds.
Then I remembered I had forgotten my tools. Leaving the box only a few feet from the door, I hurried back inside. Despite the depth and shadowing of the moon, every structure inside the sepulchre was clear and distinct to my eyes! I took neither pause nor caution in my outward flight, hauled the casket to the protection of some whispering vines shrouding a low-slung tomb some distance from the wall. Racing across the cemetery to my patient horses, I tossed shovel and pick into the wagon, unhitched and drove them from the safety of the shadows into the most open of the cemetery's buffering fields, liberally strewn with moonlight.
In a few minutes I was on the gravel road, by then calmed sufficiently to slow the pace of the two black mares, and seal ourselves to the ancient wall in silence. I had for a minute almost thought of abandoning the undertaking, but how with surprising speed, I heaved the iron box over the wall and lowered it into the wagon. I leapt back to the top of the wall for a quick look around. From the door of the tomb I had robbed poured a flood of pulsing blue light---a brighter and more intense glow than any will-o'-the-wisp or fungus fire could kindle. Dimly I could see details of the whole tomb bathed in its cold radiance; it pulsed and flickered faintly, but confined to the tomb, and I could see no source.
My withered tongue clove to the roof of my mouth; my scalp soaked in needles; my clothes were soaking. For a moment, I was viperstruck, but the horses, pawing restlessly, sensed something more than I, and feeling the reins slack, started off. They broke into a gallop as I narrowly leapt into the wagon, and I sprawled helplessly, careening against the fateful casket as they ran. Too palsied to recover, I rolled there impotent, as they raced the star winds, until at last instinct took them toward that pine-buttressed stable we occupied and bore me into its black and evil-smelling, and most welcome, depths.
2
The following day was gray and surly with the continuous drizzle of cold rains. Toward afternoon, a heavy fog shouldered them away, sticking to the sagging trees and blanketing the house. Waking at noon, I wandered through the rooms in a sort of panic becalmed. Cold reason was at work; I sought a thousand plausible explanations of the horror of the previous night. Unfortunately, I could not find one. He, on whose mission I had been, had promised to return late this afternoon, to claim that which I had obtained; and I was anxious for him to come and remove it. I stood at a small window steadily, peering into the seething mist.
A dark silhouette finally floated into view and turned toward the house, pausing. Without waiting, I seized a candle and ran into the stables, which were always dark. The mares stood silently, adrift in their own dreams. Pulling myself into the wagon and sweeping off the rags which concealed the box, I was struck again by a shivering and a sense of dread expectancy of which I had never thought myself capable. The drymouthed fears of ages had stared in my face, and I had never heeded them. I was garbed in a tattered, but once elegant, housecoat which had been rescued from the decay of the grave itself. On both hands, I wore gold rings which---as I am no artisan---were nothing more than the welded teeth of fools who thought to break the ancient platitude, their shapes still sharp and individual. Clothing, jewelry, and some favored artifacts, which otherwise would have melted to mist like the loves that cemented them, had been returned to utility and normal depreciation in my house without second thought.
In the dimness of the stable, though, the box perceptibly glowed, beyond the ability of my candle to wake response---as if filled with fire whose intensity penetrated its meteoric dermis. When I bent nearer to see whether the untouched brass carvings were not brighter than the rest, I was struck by a fetid odor entirely different from that of decay. I ran back to the window---the only one that penetrated the brown shreds of brambles that hem the house---and looked for the gaunt figure. He was not there. It had been someone else.
The rains began again. I paced back and forth nervously. Piddling flashes of lightning preceded unexpectedly intense borborygmi in the heavens. It added to my extremity, waking horrible visions; scanning the mist again for sight of the man in black, I hurried back to the stables. Since the coffin was uncovered, it was now clearly visible in the darkness, and the mares pawed and neighed in their stalls. For their own peace of mind (whatever its cost to my own), I decided to move that spiritual millstone into the passageway.
But the glow was uncanny, the tiny carvings almost mobile, when I tried to touch it. The increased frenzy in the stalls, however, goaded me, and I grasped its startling warmth and heaved it gratingly along the sideboard, once again enduring all the sensations of the night before. Tipping it over to the floor, I found the lid was loose, and the hyperweighted box fell from my hands and swung open as it struck, the lid restrained only by the golden chains from spilling its contents. Something horribly white was visible inside, and that noxious scent which was not putrefaction slaked the air. Badly as my fingers shook, I swore suddenly to withstand it no more; I had to know what I had brought out of that thaumaturgical earth at the behest of a stranger in black. I unloosed all of the chains but one, which carried more slack than the others, and cautiously lifted the heavy lid, with an unmuffled scream. I dropped it and hurried back to my rooms, leaning on the door with all my strength until I fell to the floor in nightmare reverie.
The thing---in my brief glimpse---was indeed no larger than a small child. But it was no child. The shape approximated that of an adult man, but the body was stretched out with arms over the head, so that the membraneous folds connecting arms and legs were clearly visible, all worm-white, except for purplish webs of blood lining the folded membranes. I had seen only a fraction of the face---if such it was---a gaping mouth whose cobra fangs indented the lower lip, tiny eyes with the slit pupil of the cat, and expression---if such it was---diabolical beyond metaphor.
And this thing---this thing I had dragged from a tomb untouched in over a century---was perfectly preserved, unflawed by a nibble of decay.
When I finally regained control of myself, the rains had ceased and darkness was already mopping up black rags of shadow. The grim clouds were heavy and sooty and I knew that no moon would watch that night. In the stable, I could hear the mares whinnying desperately. As light failed by seconds, the horror grew. I searched what little of the landscape remained for the predicted form, but only the wind came to meet my eyes.
"With nightfall," I mused, "his time is done." In heavy coat and muddy boots, I went down to the stable and heaved the load back into the wagon, shrouding it as before. Was there a nimbus of blue sparks, vaguer than an aurora, around the coffin? Did a pale umbilicus stretch toward the window? I resolved to keep them faint. After all their exertions, the mares only panted when I drew them out and hitched them up, but they pulled and shivered once the wagon moved.
As never before, I cursed myself for entering such a venture, cursed my greed, cursed my whole life of such desecrations for an ungodly, unblessed profession. I cursed my blasphemy in praising myself always as an unchristened animal and an instrument of the Creed's glorious promise. Tears of remorse were actually accompanying the sweatdrops on my cheeks when the doors flew wide and we tore out into the night, the horses caroming in the night-grimed fields as if all the fiends of hell were after them, instead of only one.
3
I took no thought to caution as we swept down on the cemetery. The swollen yews and saprophytic beeches threw up stygian ramparts to a sky scarcely lighter, and greeted me with the awful clenching of hollow fangs. Blackness blockaded heavens and forests, but the herbage gleamed wanly and I drove the mares into the midst of it, not caring who or what might see us, and hurried on to the gravel walk from which I would have to work.
It was only when I jerked them to a halt next to the ancient tombs that I heard other distant hoofbeats. I was shot through with the frost of dread, but not, this time, stricken. Hitching the team to a protruding branch, I exerted myself to thrust the coffin over the wall, and followed to find that, since I had forgotten to fasten the chains again, the coffin had come open, and one slim, white arm with its trailing drapery of skin dangled out of the mortuary confines.
I was already scoring a deep trench in the rank ground, hauling it on, when an enormous black mount galloped up, sending my own shrieking and pawing. The same gaunt figure I had awaited so impatiently all day was astride. But he had failed me, and, events transpiring as they had, I had no further concern with him. I had turned the box to an upright position, the lid clanging shut as the soft horror tumbled inside again. I went on dragging.
"Fool!" he snarled. "Fool! What do you think you are doing?"
The only perceptible feature of his face, which lay in the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat, was the glare of red eyes. In sudden recollection, I turned to look at the tomb, and saw it ablaze with the pulsing blue light of my nightmares. I stopped, helpless.
With horrible agility, the other man came over the wall. "Stop!" There was an accustomed command in his voice. "I hired you to rescue this from that tomb and rescued it will be. Here's the money---now surrender the booty!"
He offered a jingling sack. I only stared. I wondered why, in his rage, he did not seize the thing from me, or even threaten me. Red anger and black hatred swore in his violent eyes. But I only stared.
"Graveworm! Maggot! Corpserat! Have you become so enamored of the stink of buried flesh that you have come to despise it sweet? Is the trickling oil of rot tastier than blood? You who have blessed so many with the promised resurrection? You who have uprooted the better part of this selfsame cemetery for lust of the blush of gold, you hesitate now to liberate one more imprisoned innocent from the suffocating settle of mould---the power of deceptive decay?
"You deny your own dreams! You defy your own destiny! I am your kindred! I too am a resurrectionist. But I aim at resurrection beyond your fondest dreams! I am your king! I shall grind the key which opens that strange eon in which death may die! In which all maggots shall pine to extinction; all cemeteries shall become desert and desolate. The fears, powers and strengths wastefully secreted in sterile soil shall burst out like fresh shoots to a peacock-tailed spring!"
I had backed away---to the further side of fear---and croaked, "If you will have it, then take it."
But he stood back, straightening. "Carry it back outside the cemetery walls," swinging the leather sack gently.
I could not have touched it again for a moon of gold. Instantly the other, whose black coat was flapping around him, went into a transport of fury. He threw the sack to the ground and a dully gleaming torrent of coins spilled out. Over it he frothed, gnashed his teeth, snarled like a beast.
Then the distant drumming of hoofbeats came pattering on my ears again. Expecting to see infernal legions pour out of the darkness, their fire-breathing hounds trotting alongside, I looked to the west, wondering how long life can endure such alien trespasses; but only one lone rider appeared over the crest of the wall, slowing to a halt The man in black glanced at him only briefly and grated to me again:
"Move that coffin back outside the walls. Body-snatcher, you know this is consecrated ground!"
From the folds of his cloak he took a heavy brass amulet incised with tortured hieroglyphs and grisly symbols. It glowed in the darkness, and it was an unhealthy glow without illumination, like that of the coffin itself. Behind us the blue lambence, cold as Malebolge, waxed outward.
"What work of the devil goes on here?" suddenly rang out of the shadows; the newcomer was coming over the wall.
"Since when is his work yours, spawn of Ptahil?" the other snarled. "Toil by day if you must, and leave the night for its own!"
Minatory and determined he turned to me. "Do as I have instructed before the hideous fate which must be yours---" Suddenly both himself and the coffin were enveloped in a dark purple glow, or a purpurescence of blackness. Blots of glimmer seemed to pass from the amulet to the box and a mephitic amethystine mist began to well from it. I could see in the distinct fluorescence that the symbols of the amulet complimented those fixed to the coffin. With no further chance---I was beyond thought---I heard the first feeble scratchings against the lid---from within the coffin.
The newcomer had leapt into the cemetery and was stalking toward us, the pick from my wagon in his hand. The black intensity of the glow was strengthening and I felt the last of my integrity drain through my soles when he suddenly raised the pick before him, at the face of the moving creature.
"Demon," he shouted, "you dare to violate the ordinations of heaven? You dare to counter the judgment of God? Then make ready to join your black master!"
Beneath his faint tau, the swarming of blue beads slowed and dwindled; and when the desecrator turned toward it, an astonishing expression flitted across his misshapen features. I heard him gasp, "Consecrated ground!" and pushing the amulet back into his coat, he turned his body as if to dash for the wall, but seemed momentarily frozen. In that instant, the pick reversed and fell unerringly to the center of his skull. Its long handle projecting forward like a bascinet, he took several convulsive steps and collapsed asprawl.
From the moment he had hidden the amulet, the violet light around the coffin had vanished, and the scratching had ceased. With sudden glaring bursts, the blue flicker from the mausoleum began to fade. The other had already bent over the fallen body and withdrawn the amulet, which he carried quickly to the far corner of the walls, and buried with his hands. As it touched the earth, a small jet of blue light burst up, and then he covered it over.
"Now get this thing back into the fortress which binds it," he said harshly, returning and helping me---it was rather his strength which seemed enormous---to push and pull the weighty coffin back into the confines of its tomb and even back to its dirt receptacle, where we smoothed over the displaced dirt. As we had first entered the still blue-flickering tomb, I had seen that the locks of hair falling over my eyes, raven at sunset, were white as the moon. But once the hideous object was concealed, the glow departed wholly from the tomb and we were grasped with darkness. It was comforting and familiar.
As we groped our way out, the other upbraided me in a voice oddly hollow for one so deep, but not at all shaken. "This I hope will teach you the need for living by the laws of heaven. The lie in the garden assured the perpetual growth of such marble gardens as these for all the days of the earth, and that there may be justice among all created things, these seeds must be left to their proper harvesters. This time I will let you go, but if in the future, you forget to align your purposes with those of lawful beings, you will regret it. Come and look."
We felt our way outside and stopped by the fallen body. The clouds had thinned slightly and there was enough light to pick out revelatory points.
Only a shattered skull, pierced by the pick, emerged from clothes rotting and invested with mould. Clots and shreds of flesh and hair still clung to it, but they were verminous with decomposition. Bones similarly leeched protruded from the sleeves and trousers.
"This may not be the first, but will be the last time, that he has died," he said, and with one final abjuring look from fiercely yellow eyes, he fell and began gnawing the last scraps of flesh away from the bones.
BEST OF LUCK by David Drake
David Drake is assistant town attorney for Chapel Hill, N.C., has a B.A. in history and Latin, was a U.S. Army interrogator in Vietnam, and is well-known for both his science fiction and horror stories which he writes slowly but with consistency, for such markets as Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Superhorror, Whispers, and Year's Best Horror Stories---where he is now, happily, looked for regularly, and found, by our readers. This story, never before published, draws on his Vietnam experiences for its background, though we would hope that the story itself is imaginary.
A Russian-designed .51 caliber machine gun fires bullets the size of a woman's thumb. When a man catches a pair of those in his chest and throat the way Capt. Warden's radioman did, his luck has run out. A gout of blood sprayed back over Curtis, next man in the column. He glimpsed open air through the RTO's middle: the hole plowed through the flailing body would have held his fist.
But there was no time to worry about the dead, no time to do anything but dive out of the line of fire. Capt. Warden's feral leap had carried him in the opposite direction, out of Curtis's sight into the gloom of the rubber. Muzzle flashes flickered over the silver tree-trunks as the bunkered machine guns tore up Dog Company.
Curtis's lucky piece bit him through the shirt fabric as ha slammed into the smooth earth. The only cover in the ordered plantation came from the trees themselves, and their precise arrangement left three aisles open to any hiding place. The heavy guns ripped through the darkness in short bursts from several locations; there was no way to be safe, nor even to tell from where death would strike.
Curtis had jerked back the cocking piece of his M16, but he had no target. Blind firing would only call down the attention of the Communist gunners. He felt as naked as the lead in a Juarez floor show, terribly aware of what the big bullets would do if they hit him. He had picked up the lucky Maria Theresa dollar in Taiwan, half as a joke, half in unstated remembrance of men who had been saved when a coin or a Bible turned an enemy slug. But no coin was going to deflect a .51 cal from the straight line it would blast through him.
Red-orange light bloomed a hundred yards to Curtis's left as a gun opened up, stuttering a sheaf of lead through the trees. Curtis marked the spot. Stomach tight with fear, he swung his clumsy rifle toward the target and squeezed off a burst.
The return fire was instantaneous and from a gun to the right, unnoticed until that moment. The tree Curtis crouched beside exploded into splinters across the base, stunning impacts that the soldier felt rather than heard. He dug his fingers into the dirt, trying to drag himself still lower and screaming mentally at the pressure of the coin which kept him that much closer to the crashing bullets. The rubber tree was sagging, its twelve-inch bole sawn through by the fire, but nothing mattered to Curtis except the raving death a bullet's width above his head.
The firing stopped. Curtis clenched his fists, raised his head a fraction from the ground. A single, spiteful round banged from the first bunker. The bullet ticked the rim of Curtis's helmet, missing his flesh but snapping his head back with the force of a thrown anvil. He was out cold when the tree toppled slowly across his boots.
There were whispers in the darkness, but all he could see were blue and amber streaks on the inside of his mind. He tried to move, then gasped in agony as the pinioning mass shifted against his twisted ankles.
There were whispers in the darkness, and Curtis could guess what they were. Dog Company had pulled back. Now the VC were slipping through the trees, stripping the dead of their weapons and cutting the throats of the wounded. Wherever Curtis's rifle had been flung, it was beyond reach of his desperate fingers.
Something slurped richly near Curtis on his right. He turned his face toward the sound, but its origin lurked in the palpable blackness. There was a slushy, ripping noise from the same direction, settling immediately into a rhythmic gulping. Curtis squinted uselessly. The moon was full, but the clouds were as solid as steel curtains.
Two Vietnamese were approaching from his left side. The scuff of their tire-soled sandals paused momentarily in a liquid trill of speech, then resumed. A flashlight played over the ground, its narrow beam passing just short of Curtis's left hand. The gulping noise stopped.
"Ong vo?" whispered one of the VC, and the light flashed again. There was a snarl and a scream and the instant red burst of an AK-47 blazing like a flare. The radioman's body had been torn open. Gobbets of lung and entrails, dropped by the feasting thing, were scattered about the corpse. But Curtis's real terror was at what the muzzle flash caught in midleap---teeth glinting white against bloody crimson, the mask of a yellow-eyed beast more savage than a nightmare and utterly undeterred by the bullets punching across it. And the torso beneath the face was dressed in American jungle fatigues.
"Glad to have you back, Curtis," Capt. Warden said. "We're way understrength, and replacements haven't been coming in fast enough. Better get your gear together now, because at 1900 hours the company's heading out on a night patrol and I want every man along."
Curtis shifted uneasily, transfixed by the saffron sclera of the captain's eyes. The driver who had picked him up at the chopper pad had filled Curtis in on what had gone on during his eight weeks in the hospital. Seventeen men had died in the first ambush. The condition of the radioman's body was blamed on the VC, of course; but that itself had contributed to rotted morale, men screaming in their sleep or squirting nervous shots off into the shadows. A month later, Warden had led another sweep. The lithe, athletic captain should have been a popular officer for his obvious willingness to share the dangers of his command; but when his second major operation ended in another disaster of bunkers and spider holes, the only emotion Dog Company could find for him was hatred. Everybody knew this area of operations was thick with VC and that it was Dog Company's business to find them. But however successful the operations were from the division commander's standpoint---the follow-ups had netted tons of equipment and abandoned munitions---Warden's men knew that they had taken it on the chin twice in a row.
It hadn't helped that the body of Lt. Schaden, killed at the captain's side in the first exchange of fire, had been recovered the next day in eerily mutilated condition. It looked, the driver whispered, as though it had been gnawed on by something.
They moved out in the brief dusk, nervous squads shrunk to the size of fire teams under the poundings they had taken. The remainder of the battalion watched Dog's departure in murmuring cliques. Curtis knew they were making bets on how many of the patrol wouldn't walk back this time. Well, a lot of people in Dog itself were wondering the same.
The company squirmed away from the base, avoiding known trails. Capt. Warden had a destination, though; Curtis, again marching just behind the command group, could see the captain using a penlight to check compass and map at each of their frequent halts. The light was scarcely necessary. The mid-afternoon downpour had washed clean the sky for the full moon to blaze in. It made for easier movement through the tangles of trees and vines, but it would light up the GI's like ducks in a shooting gallery if they blundered into another VC bunker complex.
The trade dollar in Curtis's pocket flopped painfully against him. The bruise it had given him during the ambush still throbbed. It was starting to hurt more than his ankles did, but nothing would have convinced him to leave it in his locker now. He'd gotten back the last time, hadn't he? Despite the murderous crossfire, the tree, and the . . . other. Curtis gripped his sweaty M16 tighter. Maybe it hadn't been Maria Theresa's chop-scarred face that got him through, but he wasn't missing any bets.
Because every step he took into the jungle deepened his gut-wrenching certainty that Dog Company was about to catch it again.
The captain grunted a brief order into the phone flexed to his RTO. The jungle whispered "halt" from each of the platoon leaders. Warden's face was in a patch of moonlight. His left hand cradled the compass, but he paid it no attention. Instead his lean, dominant nose lifted and visibly snuffled the still air. With a nod and a secret smile that Curtis shivered to see, the captain spoke again Into the radio to move the company out.
Three minutes later, the first blast of shots raked through them.
The bullet hit the breech of Curtis's rifle instead of simply disemboweling him. The dented barrel cracked down across both of his thighs with sledge hammer force. His left thumb was dislocated, though his right hand, out of the path in which the .51 cal had snatched the rifle, only tingled. Curtis lay on his back amazed, listening to the thump-crack of gunfire and bullets passing overhead. He was not even screaming: the pain was yet to come.
An American machine gun ripped a long red streak to within inches of Curtis's head, no less potentially deadly for not being aimed at him. The wounded soldier fumbled open his breast pocket and clutched at the lucky piece. It was the only action to which he could force his punished body. The moon glared grimly down.
Something moved near Curtis. Capt. Warden, bare headed, was snaking across the jungle floor toward him. Warden grinned. His face slumped suddenly like lead in a mold, shaping itself into a ghastly new form that Curtis had seen once before. The Warden-thing's fangs shone as it poised, then leaped---straight into a stream of Communist fire.
A two-ounce bullet meat-axed through the thing's chest back to front, slapping it against a tree. Curtis giggled in relief before he realized that the creature was rising to its knees. Fluid shock had blasted a great crater in the flesh over its breastbone, and the lower half of its face was coated with blood gulped out of its own lungs. The eyes were bright yellow and horribly alive, and as Curtis stared in fascination, the gaping wound began to close. The thing took a step toward the helpless soldier, a triumphant grimace sweeping over its distorted features.
Without conscious direction, Curtis's thumb spun the silver dollar toward the advancing creature. The half-healed wound-lips in the thing's chest seemed to suck the coin in. The scream that followed was that of an animal spindled on white-hot wire, but it ended quickly in a gurgle as dissolution set in.
The stretcher team brought Curtis out in the morning. His right hand had been dipped into the pool of foulness soaking the ground near him, and the doctors could not unclench the fist from the object it was frozen on until after the morphine had taken hold.
CHILDREN OF THE CORN by Stephen King
Stephen King appeared a couple of times in the late '60s in Startling Mystery Stories, the companion to Magazine of Horror, edited by Robert A. W. Lowndes. It was a magazine that featured the early fiction of such as Ramsey Campbell, Eddy Bertin, Gerald Page and Richard Lupoff; but King soon appeared as a novelist with books like Carrie (which Brian da Palma turned into the best film of its kind since Psycho), Salem's Lot and The Shining, probably becoming the current best-selling writer of horror fiction in the world. "Children of the Corn" demonstrates why, too: he writes very strong horror stuff. Right now King is living in England, reportedly in a haunted house. His agent, Kirby McCauley, tells us that he's "particularly happy."
Burt turned the radio on too loud and didn't turn it down because they were on the verge of another argument, and he didn't want it to happen. He was desperate for it not to happen.
Vicky said something.
"What?" He shouted.
"Turn it down! Do you want to break my eardrums?"
He bit down hard on what might have come through his mouth and turned it down.
Vicky was fanning herself with her scarf even though the T-Bird was air-conditioned. "Where are we, anyway?"
"Nebraska."
She gave him a cold, neutral look. "Yes, Burt. I know we're in Nebraska, Burt. But where the hell are we?"
"You've got the road atlas. Look it up. Or can't you read?"
"Such wit. This is why we got off the turnpike. So we could look at three hundred miles of corn. And enjoy the wit and wisdom of Burt Robeson."
He was gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles were white. He decided he was holding it that tightly because if he loosened up, why, one of those hands might just fly off and hit the ex-prom queen beside him right in the chops. We're saving our marriage, he told himself. Yes. We're doing it the same way our GIs went about saving villages in the war.
"Vicky," he said carefully. "I have driven fifteen hundred miles on turnpikes since we left Boston. I did all that driving myself because you refused to drive. Then---"
"I did not refuse!" Vicky said hotly. "Just because I get migraines when I drive for a long time---"
"Then when I asked you if you'd navigate for me on some of the secondary roads, you said, 'Sure, Burt.' Those were your exact words. 'Sure, Burt.' Then---"
"Sometimes I wonder how I ever wound up married to you."
"By saying two little words. And I think you've been saying the opposite two ever since then."
She stared at him for a moment, white-lipped, and then picked up the road atlas. She turned the pages savagely.
It had been a mistake leaving the turnpike, Burt thought morosely. It was a shame, too, because up until then they had been doing pretty well, treating each other almost like human beings. It had sometimes seemed that this trip to the coast, ostensibly to see Vicky's brother and his wife but actually a last-ditch attempt to patch up their own marriage, was going to work.
But since they left the pike, it had been bad again. How bad? Well, terrible, actually.
"We left the turnpike at Hamburg, right?"
"Right."
"There's nothing more until Gatlin," she said. "Twenty miles. Wide place in the road. Do you suppose we could stop there and get something to eat? Or does your almighty schedule say we have to go until two o'clock like we did yesterday?"
He took his eyes off the road to look at her. "I've about had it, Vicky. As far as I'm concerned, we can turn around right here and go home and see that lawyer you wanted to talk to. Because this isn't working at---"
She had faced forward again, her expression stonily set. It suddenly turned to surprise and fear. "Burt, look out; you're going to---"
He turned his attention back to the road just in time to see something vanish under the T-Bird's bumper. A moment later, while he was only beginning to switch from gas to brake, he felt something thump sickeningly under the front and then the back wheels. They were thrown forward as the car braked along the center line, decelerating from fifty to zero along black skid marks.
"A dog," he said. "Tell me it was a dog, Vicky."
Her face was a pallid, cottage-cheese color. "A boy. A little boy. He just ran out of the corn and . . . congratulations, tiger."
She fumbled the car door open, leaned out, threw up.
Burt sat straight behind the T-Bird's wheel, hands still gripping it loosely. He was aware of nothing for a long time but the rich, dark smell of fertilizer.
Then he saw that Vicky was gone; and when he looked in the outside mirror, he saw her stumbling clumsily back toward a heaped bundle that looked like a pile of rags. She was ordinarily a graceful woman, but now her grace was gone, robbed.
It's manslaughter. That's what they call it. I took my eyes off the road.
He turned the ignition off and got out. The wind rustled softly through the growing man-high corn, making a weird sound like respiration. Vicky was standing over the bundle of rags now, and he could hear her sobbing.
He was halfway between the car and where she stood, and something caught his eye on the left, a gaudy splash of red amid all the green, as bright as barn paint.
He stopped, looking directly into the corn. He found himself thinking (anything to untrack from those rags that were not rags) that it must have been a fantastically good growing season for corn. It grew close together, almost ready to bear. You could plunge into those neat, shaded rows and spend a day trying to find your way out again. But the neatness was broken here. Several tall cornstalks had been broken and leaned askew. And what was that farther back in the shadows?
"Burt!" Vicky screamed. "Don't you want to come see? So you can tell all your poker buddies what you bagged in Nebraska? Don't you---" But the rest was lost in fresh sobs. Her shadow was puddled starkly around her feet. It was almost noon.
Shade closed over him as he entered the corn. The red barn paint was blood. There was a low, somnolent buzz as flies lit, tasted, and buzzed off again . . . maybe to tell others. There was more blood on the leaves farther in. Surely it couldn't have splattered this far? And then he was standing over the object he had seen from the road. He picked it up.
The neatness of the rows was disturbed here. Several stalks were canted drunkenly; two of them had been broken clean off. The earth had been gouged. There was blood. The corn rustled. With a little shiver, he walked back to the road.
Vicky was having hysterics, screaming unintelligible words at him, crying, laughing. Who would have thought it could end in such a melodramatic way? He looked at her and saw he wasn't having an identity crisis or a difficult life transition or any of those trendy things. He hated her. He gave her a hard slap across the face.
She stopped short and put a hand against the reddening impression of his fingers. "You'll go to jail, Burt," she said solemnly.
"I don't think so," he said and put at her feet the suitcase he had found in the corn.
"What---?"
"I don't know. I guess it belonged to him." He pointed to the sprawled, facedown body that lay in the road. No more than thirteen, from the look of him.
The suitcase was old. The brown leather was battered and scuffed. Two hanks of clothesline had been wrapped around it and tied in large, clownish grannies. Vicky bent to undo one of them, saw the blood greased into the knot, and withdrew.
Burt knelt and turned the body over gently.
"I don't want to look," Vicky said, staring down helplessly anyway. And when the staring, sightless face flopped up to regard them, she screamed again. The boy's face was dirty, his expression a grimace of terror. His throat had been cut.
Burt got up and put his arms around Vicky as she began to sway. "Don't faint," he said very quietly. "Do you hear me, Vicky? Don't faint."
He repeated it over and over, and at last she began to recover and held him tightly. They might have been dancing, there on the noon-struck road with the boy's corpse at their feet. Burt's stomach churned.
"Vicky?"
"What?" Muffled against his shirt.
"Go back to the car and put the keys in your pocket. Get the blanket out of the backseat and my rifle. Bring them here."
"The rifle?"
"Someone cut his throat. Maybe he's watching us."
Her head jerked up, and her wide eyes considered the corn. It marched away as far as the eye could see, undulating up and down small dips and rises of land.
"I imagine whoever did it is gone. But why take any chances? Go on. Do it."
She walked stiltedly back to the car, her shadow following, a dark mascot that stuck close at this hour of the day. When she leaned into the back seat, Burt squatted beside the boy. White male, no distinguishing marks. Run over, yes, but the T-Bird hadn't cut the kid's throat. It had been cut raggedly and inefficiently---no army sergeant had shown the killer the finer points of hand-to-hand assassination---but the final effect had been deadly. He had either run or been pushed through the last thirty feet of corn, dead or mortally wounded. And Burt Robeson had ran him down. If the boy had still been alive when the car hit him, his life had been cut short by thirty seconds at most.
Vicky tapped him on the shoulder, and he jumped.
She was standing with the brown army blanket over her left arm, the cased pump shotgun in her right hand, her face averted. He took the blanket and spread it on the road. He rolled the body onto it. Vicky uttered a desperate little moan.
"You okay?" He looked up at her. "Vicky?"
"Okay," she said in a strangled voice.
He flipped the sides of the blanket over the body and scooped it up, hating the thick, dead weight of it. It tried to make a U in his arms and slither through his grasp. He clutched it tighter, and they walked back to the T-Bird.
"Open the trunk," he grunted.
The trunk was full of travel stuff, suitcases, and souvenirs. Vicky shifted most of it into the back seat, and Burt slipped the body into the made space and slammed the trunk lid down. A sigh of relief escaped him.
Vicky was standing by the driver's side door, still holding the cased rifle.
"Just put it in the back and get in."
He looked at his watch and saw that only fifteen minutes had passed. It seemed like hours.
"What about the suitcase?" she asked.
He trotted back down the road to where it stood on the white line, like the focal point in an Impressionist painting. He picked it up by its tattered handle and paused for a moment He had a strong sensation of being watched. It was a feeling he had read about in books, mostly cheap fiction, and he had always doubted its reality. Now he didn't. It was as if there were people in the corn, maybe a lot of them, coldly estimating whether the woman could get the gun out of the case and use it before they could grab him, drag him into the shady rows, cut his throat---
Heart beating thickly, he ran back to the car, pulled the keys out of the trunk lock, and got in.
Vicky was crying again. Burt got them moving, and before a minute had passed, he could no longer pick out in the rearview mirror the spot where it had happened.
"What did you say the next town was?" he asked.
"Oh." She bent over the road atlas again. "Gatlin. We should be there in ten minutes."
"Does it look big enough to have a police station?"
"No. It's just a dot"
"Maybe there's a constable."
They drove in silence for a while. They passed a silo on the left. Nothing else but corn. Nothing passed them going the other way, not even a farm truck.
"Have we passed anything since we got off the turnpike, Vicky?"
She thought about it. "A car and a tractor. At that intersection."
"No, since we got on this road. Route 17."
"No. I don't think we have." Earlier this might have been the preface to some cutting remark. Now she only stared out of her half of the windshield at the unrolling road and the endless dotted line.
"Vicky? Could you open the suitcase?"
"Do you think it might matter?"
"Don't know. It might"
While she picked at the knots (her face was set in a peculiar way---expressionless but tight-mouthed---that Burt remembered his mother wearing when she pulled the innards out of the Sunday chicken), Burt turned on the radio again.
The pop station they had been listening to was almost obliterated in static, and Burt switched, running the red marker slowly down the dial. Farm reports. Buck Owens. Tammy Wynette. All distant, nearly distorted into babble. Then, near the end of the dial, one single word blared out of the speaker, so loud and clear that the, lips which uttered it might have been directly beneath the grill of the dashboard speaker.
"Atonement!" this voice bellowed.
Burt made a surprised, grunting sound. Vicky jumped.
"Only by the blood of the lamb are we saved!" The voice roared, and Burt hurriedly turned the station down. This station was close, all right. So close that . . . yes, there it was. Poking out of the corn at the horizon, a spidery red tripod against the blue. The radio tower.
"Atonement is the word, brothers 'n' sisters," the voice told them, dropping to a more conversational pitch. In the background, off-mike, voices murmured amen. "There's some that thinks it's okay to get out in the world, as if you could work and walk in the world without being smirched by the world. Now is that what the word of God teaches us?"
Off-mike but still loud: "No!"
"Holy Jesus!" The evangelist shouted, and now the words came in a powerful, pumping cadence, almost as compelling as a driving rock-and-roll beat: "When they gonna know that way is death? When they gonna know that the wages of the world are paid on the other side? Huh? Huh? The Lord has said there's many mansions in His house. But there's no room for the fornicator. No room for the coveter. No room for the defiler of the corn. No room for the hommasexshul. No room---"
Vicky snapped it off. "That drivel makes me sick."
"What did he say?" Burt asked her. "What did he say about corn?"
"I didn't hear it." She was picking at the second clothesline knot.
"He said something about corn. I know he did."
"I got it!" Vicky said, and the suitcase fell open in her lap. They were passing a sign that said: "GATLIN 5 MI. DRIVE CAREFULLY PROTECT OUR CHILDREN." The sign had been put up by the Elks. There were .22 bullet holes in it.
"Socks," Vicky said. "Two pairs of pants . . . a shirt . . . a belt . . . a string tie with a---" She held it up, showing him the peeling gilt neckclasp. "Who's that?"
Burt glanced at it. "Hopalong Cassidy, I think."
"Oh." She put it back. She was crying again.
After a moment Burt said: "Did anything strike you funny about that radio sermon?"
"No. I heard enough of that stuff as a kid to last me forever. I told you about it."
"Didn't you think he sounded kind of young? That preacher?"
She uttered a mirthless laugh. "A teenager, maybe---so what? That's what's so monstrous about that whole trip. They like to get hold of them when their minds are still rubber. They know how to put all the emotional checks and balances in. You should have been at some of the tent meetings my mother and father dragged me to . . . some of the ones I was 'saved' at.
"Let's see. There was Baby Hortense, The Singing Marvel. She was eight. She'd come on and sing 'Leaning on the Everlasting Arms' while her daddy passed the plate, telling everybody to 'dig deep, now; let's not let this little child of God down.' Then there was Norman Staunton. He used to preach hellfire and brimstone in this Little Lord Fauntleroy suit with short pants. He was only seven."
She nodded at his look of unbelief.
"They weren't the only two, either. There were plenty of them on the circuit. They were good draws." She spat the last word. "Ruby Stampnell. She was a ten-year-old faith healer. The Grace Sisters. They used to come out with little tinfoil halos over their heads and---oh!"
"What is it?" He jerked around to look at her and what she was holding in her hands. Vicky was staring at it raptly. Her slowly seining hands had snagged it on the bottom of the suitcase and had brought it up as she talked. Burt pulled over to take a better look. She gave it to him wordlessly.
It was a crucifix that had been made from twists of corn husk, once green, now dry. Attached to this by woven corn silk was a dwarf corncob. Most of the kernels had been carefully removed, probably dug out one at a time with a pocket knife. Those kernels remaining formed a crude cruciform figure in yellowish bas-relief. Corn-kernel eyes, each slit longways to suggest pupils. Outstretched kernel arms, the legs together, terminating in a rough indication of bare feet. Above, four letters also raised from the bone-white cob: I N R I.
"That's a fantastic piece of workmanship," he said.
"It's hideous," she said in a flat, strained voice. "Throw it out."
"Vicky, the police might want to see it."
"Why?"
"Well, I don't know why. Maybe---"
"Throw it out. Will you please do that for me? I don't want it in the car."
"I'll put it in back. And as soon as we see the cops, we'll get rid of it one way or the other. I promise. Okay?"
"Oh, do whatever you want with it!" She shouted at him. "You will anyway!"
Troubled, he threw the thing in back, where it landed on a pile of clothes. Its corn-kernel eyes stared raptly at the T-Bird's dome light He pulled out again, gravel splurting from beneath the tires.
"We'll give the body and everything that was in the suitcase to the cops," he promised. "Then we'll be shut of it."
Vicky didn't answer. She was looking at her hands.
A mile farther on, the endless cornfields drew away from the road, showing farmhouses and outbuildings. In one yard they saw dirty chickens pecking listlessly at the soil. There were faded cola and chewing-tobacco ads on the roofs of barns. They passed a tall billboard that said: "ONLY JESUS SAVES." They passed a cafe with a Conoco gas island, but Burt decided to go on into the center of town, if there was one. If not, they could come back to the cafe. It occurred to him only after they had passed it that the parking lot had been empty except for a dirty old pickup that looked as if it were sitting on two flat tires.
Vicky suddenly began to laugh---a high, giggling sound that struck Burt as being dangerously close to hysteria.
"What's so funny?"
"The signs," she said, gasping and hiccupping. "Haven't you been reading them? When they called this the Bible Belt, they sure weren't kidding. Oh Lordy, there's another bunch." Another burst of hysterical laughter escaped her, and she clapped both hands over her mouth.
Each of the signs had only one word. They were leaning on whitewashed sticks that seemed by their looks to have been implanted long ago in the sandy shoulder; the whitewash was flaked and faded. They were coming up at eighty-foot intervals, and Burt read:
A . . . CLOUD . . . BY . . . DAY . . . A . . . PILLAR . . . OF . . . FIRE . . . BY . . . NIGHT
"They only forgot one thing," Vicky said, still giggling helplessly.
"What?" Burt asked, frowning.
"Burma Shave." She held a knuckled fist against her open mouth to keep in the laughter, but her semihysterical giggles flowed around it like effervescent ginger-ale bubbles.
"Vicky, are you all right?"
"I will be. Just as soon as we're a thousand miles away from here, in sunny, sinful California with the Rockies between us and Nebraska."
Another group of signs came up, and they read them silently.
TAKE . . . THIS . . . AND . . . EAT . . . SAITH . . . THE . . . LORD . . . GOD
Now why, Burt thought, should I immediately associate that indefinite pronoun with corn? Isn't that what they say when they give you communion? It had been so long since he had been to church that he really couldn't remember. He wouldn't have been surprised if they used cornbread for holy wafer around these parts. He opened his mouth to tell Vicky and then thought better of it.
They breasted a gentle rise, and there was Gatlin below them, all three blocks of it, looking like a set from a movie about the depression.
"There'll be a constable," Burt said and wondered why the sight of that hick, one-timetable town dozing in the sun should have brought a lump of dread into his throat.
They passed a speed sign proclaiming that no more than thirty was now in order and another sign, rust-flecked, which said: "YOU ARE NOW ENTERING GATLIN, NICEST LITTLE TOWN IN NEBRASKA OR ANYWHERE ELSE! POP. 5431."
Dusty elms stood on both sides of the road, most of them diseased. They passed the Gatlin Lumber Yard and a 76 gas station, where the price signs swung slowly in a hot noon breeze---"REG. 35.9 HI TEST 38.9"---and another said, "HI TRUCKERS DIESEL FUEL AROUND BACK."
They crossed Elm Street, then Birch Street, and came up on the town square. The houses lining the streets were plain wood with screened porches. Angular and functional. The lawns were yellow and dispirited. Up ahead a mongrel dog walked slowly out into the middle of Maple Street, stood looking at them for a moment, then lay down in the road with its nose on its paws.
"Stop," Vicky said. "Stop right here."
Burt pulled obediently to the curb.
"Turn around. Let's take the body to Grand Island. That's not too far, is it? Let's do that."
"Vicky, what's wrong?"
"What do you mean, what's wrong?" she asked, her voice rising thinly. "This town is empty, Burt. There's nobody here but us. Can't you feel that?"
He had felt something and still felt it. But---
"It just seems that way," he said. "But it sure is a one-hydrant town. Probably all up in the square, having a bake sale or a bingo game."
"There's no one here." She said the words with a queer, strained emphasis. "Didn't you see that 76 station back there?"
"Sure, by the lumberyard, so what?" His mind was elsewhere, listening to the dull buzz of a cicada burrowing into one of the nearby elms. He could smell corn, dusty roses, and fertilizer---of course. For the first time they were off the turnpike and in a town. A town in a state he had never been in before (although he had flown over it from time to time in United Airlines 747's), and somehow it felt all wrong but all right. Somewhere up ahead there would be a drugstore with a soda fountain, a movie house named the Bijou, a school named after JFK.
"Burt, the prices said thirty-five-nine for regular and thirty-eight-nine for high octane. Now how long as it been since anyone in this country paid those prices?"
"At least four years," he admitted. "But Vicky---"
"We're right in town, Burt, and there's not a car! Not one car!"
"Grand Island is seventy miles away. It would look funny if we took him there."
"I don't care."
"Look, let's just drive up to the courthouse and---"
"No!"
There, damn it, there. Why our marriage is falling apart, in a nutshell. No I won't. No sir. And furthermore, I'll hold my breath till I turn blue if you don't let me have my way.
"Vicky," he said.
"I want to get out of here, Burt."
"Vicky, listen to me."
"Turn around. Let's go."
"Vicky, will you stop a minute?"
"I'll stop when we're driving the other way. Now let's go."
"We have a dead child in the trunk of our car!" He roared at her and took a distinct pleasure at the way she flinched, the way her face crumbled. In a slightly lower voice, he went on: "His throat was cut, and he was shoved out into the road, and I ran him over. Now I'm going to drive up to the courthouse or whatever they have here, and I'm going to report it. If you want to start walking back toward the pike, go to it. I'll pick you up. But don't you tell me to turn around and drive seventy miles to Grand Island like we had nothing in the trunk but a bag of garbage. He happens to be some mother's son, and I'm going to report it before whoever killed him gets over the hills and far away."
"You bastard," she said, crying. "What am I doing with you?"
"I don't know," he said. "I don't know anymore. But the situation can be remedied, Vicky."
He pulled away from the curb. The dog lifted its head at the brief squeal of the tires and then lowered it to its paws again.
They drove the remaining block to the square. At the corner of Main and Pleasant, Main Street split in two. There actually was a town square, a grassy park with a bandstand in the middle. On the other end, where Main Street became one again, there were two official-looking buildings. Burt could make out the lettering on one: "GATLIN MUNICIPAL CENTER."
"That's it," he said. Vicky said nothing.
Halfway up the square Burt pulled over again. They were beside a lunchroom, the Gatlin Bar and Grill.
"Where are you going?" Vicky asked with alarm as he opened his door.
"To find out where everyone is. Sign in the window there says, 'OPEN.' "
"You're not going to leave me here alone."
"So come. Who's stopping you?"
She unlocked her door and stepped out as he crossed in front of the car. He saw how pale her face was and felt an instant of pity. Hopeless pity.
"Do you hear it?" she asked as he joined her.
"Hear what?"
"The nothing. No cars. No people. No tractors. Nothing."
And then, from a block over, they heard the high and joyous laughter of children.
"I hear kids," he said. "Don't you?"
She looked at him, troubled.
He opened the lunchroom door and stepped into dry, antiseptic heat. The floor was dusty. The sheen on the chrome was dull. The wooden blades of the ceiling fans stood still. Empty tables. Empty counter stools. But the mirror behind the counter had been shattered, and there was something else . . . in a moment he had it. All the beer taps had been broken off. They lay along the counter like bizarre party favors.
Vicky's voice was gay and near to breaking. "Sure. Ask anybody. Pardon me, sir, but could you tell me---"
"Oh, shut up." But his voice was dull and without force. They were standing in a bar of dusty sunlight that fell through the lunchroom's big plate-glass window, and again he had that feeling of being watched, and he thought of the boy they had in their trunk and of the high laughter of children. A phrase came to him for no reason, a legal-sounding phrase, and it began to repeat mystically in his mind: Sight unseen. Sight unseen. Sight unseen.
His eyes traveled over the age-yellowed cards thumbtacked up behind the counter: "CHEESEBURG 35¢ WORLD'S BEST JOE 10¢ STRAWBERRY RHUBARB PIE 25¢ TODAY'S SPECIAL HAM & RED-EYE GRAVY W/MASHED POT 80¢"
How long since he had seen lunchroom prices like that?
Vicky had the answer. "Look at this," she said shrilly. She was pointing at the calendar on the wall. "They've been at that bean supper for twelve years, I guess." And she uttered a grinding laugh.
He walked over. The picture showed two boys swimming in a pond while a cute little dog carried off their clothes. Below the picture was the legend: "COMPLIMENTS OF GATLIN LUMBER & HARDWARE You Breakum, We Fixum." The month on view was August 1964.
"I don't understand," he faltered, "but I'm sure---"
"You're sure!" she cried hysterically. "Sure, you're sure! That's part of your trouble, Burt; you've spent your whole life being sure!"
He turned back to the door, and she came after him.
"Where are you going?"
"To the Municipal Center."
"Burt, why do you have to be so stubborn? You know something's wrong here. Can't you just admit it?"
"I'm not being stubborn. I just want to get shut of what's in that trunk."
They stepped out onto the sidewalk, and Burt was struck afresh with the town's silence and with the smell of fertilizer. Somehow you never thought of that smell when you buttered an ear and salted it and bit in. Compliments of sun, rain, all sorts of manmade phosphates and a good healthy dose of cow shit. But somehow this smell was different from the one he had grown up with in rural upstate New York. You could say whatever you wanted to about organic fertilizer, but there was something almost fragrant about it when the spreader was laying it down in the fields. Not one of your great perfumes. God no, but when the late-afternoon spring breeze would pick up and waft it over the freshly turned fields, it was a smell with good associations. It meant winter was over for good. It meant that school doors were going to bang closed in six weeks or so and spill everyone out into summer. It was a smell tied irrevocably in his mind with other aromas that were perfume: timothy grass, clover, fresh earth, hollyhocks, dogwood.
But they must do something different out here, he thought. The smell was close but not the same. There was a sickish-sweet undertone. Almost a death smell. As a medical orderly in Vietnam, he had become well versed in that smell.
Vicky was sitting quietly in the car, holding the corn crucifix in her lap and staring at it in a rapt Way Burt didn't like.
"Put that thing down," he said.
"No," she said without looking up. "You play your games and I'll play mine."
He put the car in gear and drove up to the corner. A dead stoplight hung overhead, swinging in a faint breeze. To the left was a neat, white church. The grass was cut. Neatly kept flowers grew alongside the flagged path up to the door. Burt pulled over.
"What are you doing!"
"I'm going to go in and take a look," Burt said. "It's the only place in town that looks as if there isn't ten years' dust on it. And look at the sermon board."
She looked. Neatly pegged white letters under glass read: "THE POWER AND GRACE OF HE WHO WALKS BEHIND THE ROWS." The date was July 24, 1976---the Sunday before.
"He Who Walks behind the Rows," Burt said, turning off the ignition. "One of the nine thousand names of God only used in Nebraska, I guess. Coming?"
She didn't smile. "I'm not going in with you."
"Fine. Whatever you want."
"I haven't been in a church since I left home, and I don't want to be in this church, and I don't want to be in this town, Burt, I'm scared out of my mind; can't we just go?"
"I'll only be a minute."
"I've got my keys, Burt. If you're not back in five minutes, I'll just drive away and leave you here."
"Now just wait a minute, lady."
"That's what I'm going to do. Unless you want to assault me like a common mugger and take my keys. I suppose you could do that."
"But you don't think I will."
"No."
Her purse was on the seat between them. He snatched it up. She screamed and grabbed for the shoulder strap. He pulled it out of her reach. Not bothering to dig, he simply turned the bag upside down and let everything fall out. Her key ring glittered amid tissues, cosmetics, change, old shopping lists. She lunged for it, but he beat her again and put the keys in his own pocket.
"You didn't have to do that," she said, crying. "Give them to me."
"No," he said and gave her a hard, meaningless grin. "No way."
"Please, Burt! I'm scared!" She held her hand out, pleading now.
"You'd wait two minutes and decide that was long enough."
"I wouldn't---"
"And then you'd drive off, laughing and saying to yourself, 'That'll teach Burt to cross me when I want something.' Hasn't that pretty much been your motto during our married life? That'll teach Burt to cross me?"
He got out of the car.
"Please, Burt?" She screamed, sliding across the seat. "Listen . . . I know . . . we'll drive out of town and call from a phone booth, okay? I've got all kinds of change. I just . . . we can . . . don't leave me alone, Burt; don't leave me out here alone!"
He slammed the door on her cry and then leaned against the side of the T-Bird for a moment, thumbs against his closed eyes. She was pounding on the driver's-side window and calling his name. She was going to make a wonderful impression when he finally found someone in authority to take charge of the kid's body. Oh yes.
He turned and walked up the flagstone path to the church doors. Two or three minutes, just a look around, and he would be back out. Probably the door wasn't even unlocked.
But it pushed in easily on silent, well-oiled hinges (reverently oiled, he thought, and that seemed funny for no really good reason), and he stepped into a vestibule so cool it was almost chilly. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness.
The first thing he noticed was a pile of wooden letters in the far corner, dusty and jumbled indifferently together. He went to them, curious. They looked as old and forgotten as the calendar in the bar and grill, unlike the rest of the vestibule, which was dust free and tidy. The letters were about two feet high, obviously part of a set. He spread them out on the carpet---there were eighteen of them---and shifted them around like anagrams. HURT BITE CRAG CHAP CS. Nope. CRAP TARGET CHIBS HUC. That wasn't much good either. Except for the CH in CHIBS. He quickly assembled the word CHURCH and was left looking at RAP TAGET CIBS. Foolish. He was squatting here, playing idiot games with a bunch of letters while Vicky was going nuts out in the car. He started to get up and then saw it. He formed BAPTIST, leaving RAG EC, and by changing two letters he had GRACE. GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH. The letters must have been out front. They had taken them down and had thrown them indifferently in the corner, and the church had been painted since then so that you couldn't even see where the letters had been.
Why?
It wasn't the Grace Baptist Church anymore; that was why. So what kind of church was it? For some reason that question caused a trickle of fear, and he stood up quickly, dusting his fingers. So they had taken down a bunch of letters; so what? Maybe they had changed the place into Flip Wilson's Church of What's Happening Now.
But what had happened then?
He shook it off impatiently and went through the inner doors. Now he was standing at the back of the church itself; and as he looked toward the nave, he felt fear close around his heart with its banana fingers squeezing tightly. His breath drew in, loud in the pregnant silence of this place.
The space behind the pulpit was dominated by a gigantic portrait of Christ, and Burt thought: if nothing else in this town gave Vicky the screaming mimis, this would.
The Christ was grinning, vulpine. His eyes were wide and staring, reminding Burt uneasily of Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera. In each of the wide, black pupils someone (a sinner, presumably) was drowning in a lake of fire. But the oddest thing was that this Christ had green hair . . . hair which on closer examination revealed itself to be a twining mass of early summer corn. The picture was crudely done but effective. It looked like a comic-strip mural done by a gifted child---an Old Testament Christ or a pagan Christ that might slaughter his sheep for sacrifice instead of leading them.
At the foot of the left-hand rank of pews was a pipe organ, and Burt could not at first tell what was wrong with it. He walked down the left-hand aisle and saw with slowly dawning horror that all the keys had been ripped up, the stops had been pulled out . . . and the pipes themselves filled with dry corn husks. Over the organ was a carefully lettered plaque which read: "MAKE NO MUSIC EXCEPT WITH HUMAN TONGUE SAITH THE LORD GOD."
Vicky was right. Something was terribly wrong here. He debated going back to Vicky without exploring any further, just getting into the car and leaving town as quickly as possible---never mind the Municipal Building. But it grated on him. Tell the truth, he thought. You want to give her Ban 5000 a workout before going back and admitting she was right to start with.
He would go back out in a minute or so.
He walked toward the pulpit, thinking: people must go through Gatlin all the time. There must be people in the neighboring towns who have friends and relatives here. The Nebraska SP must cruise through from time to time. And what about the power company? The stoplight had been dead. Surely they'd know if the power had been off for twelve long years. Conclusion: what seemed to have happened to Gatlin was impossible.
Still he had the creeps.
He climbed the four carpeted steps to the pulpit and looked out over the deserted pews, glimmering in the half shadows. He seemed to feel the weight of those eldritch and decidedly unchristian eyes boring into his back.
There was a large Bible on the lectern, opened to the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. Burt glanced down at it and read: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? . . . Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding." The Lord. He Who Walks Behind The Rows. Declare if thou hast understanding. And please pass the corn.
He fluttered the pages of the Bible, and they made a dry whispering sound in the quiet---the sound that ghosts might make if there really were such things. And in a place like this you could almost believe it. Sections of the Bible had been chopped out. Mostly from the New Testament, he saw. Someone had decided to take on the job of amending Good King James with a pair of scissors.
But the Old Testament was intact.
He was about to leave the pulpit when he saw another book on a lower shelf and took it out, thinking it might be a church record of weddings and confirmations and burials.
He grimaced at the words stamped on the cover, done inexpertly in gold leaf: "THUS LET THE INIQUITOUS BE CUT DOWN SO THAT THE GROUND MAY BE FERTILE AGAIN SAITH THE LORD GOD OF HOSTS."
There seemed to be only one train of thought around here, and Burt didn't care much for the track it seemed to ride on.
He opened the book to the first wide, lined sheet. A child had done the lettering, he saw immediately. In places an ink eraser had been carefully used, and while there were no misspellings, the letters were large and childishly made, drawn rather than written. The first column read:
Amos Deigan (Richard),
b. Sept. 4, 1945 Sept. 4, 1964
Isaac Renfrew (William),
b. Sept. 19, 1945 Sept. 19, 1964
Zepeniah Kirk (George),
b. Oct. 14, 1945 Oct. 14, 1964
Mary Wills (Roberta),
b. Nov. 12, 1945 Nov. 12, 1964
Yemen Hollis (Edward),
b. Jan. 5, 1946 Jan. 5, 1965
Frowning, Burt continued to turn through the pages. Three-quarters of the way through, the double columns ended abruptly.
Rachel Stigman (Donna),
b. June 21, 1957 June 21, 1976
Moses Richardson (Henry),
b. July 29, 1957
Malachai Boardman (Craig),
b. August 15, 1957
The last entry in the book was for Ruth Clawson (Sandra), b. April 30, 1961. Burt looked at the shelf where he had found this book and came up with two more. The first had the same "INIQUITOUS BE CUT DOWN" logo, and it continued the same record, the single column tracing birthdates and names. In early September of 1964 he found Job Gilman (Clayton), b. September 6, and the next entry was Eve Tobin, b. June 16, 1965. No second name in parentheses.
The third book was blank.
Standing behind the pulpit, Burt thought about it.
Something had happened in 1964. Something to do with religion and corn . . . and children.
Dear God, we beg thy blessing on the crop. For Jesus's sake, amen.
And the knife raised high to sacrifice the lamb---but had it been a lamb? Perhaps a religious mania had swept them. Alone, all alone, cut off from the outside world by hundreds of square miles of the rustling secret corn. Alone under seventy million acres of blue sky. Alone under the watchful eye of God, now a strange green God, a God of corn, grown old and strange and hungry. He Who Walks behind the Rows.
Burt felt a chill creep into his flesh.
Vicky, let me tell you a story. It's about Amos Deigan, who was born Richard Deigan on September 4, 1945. He took the name Amos in 1964, fine old Testament name, Amos, one of the minor prophets. Well, Vicky, what happened---don't laugh---is that Dick Deigan and his friends (Billy Renfrew, George Kirk, Roberta Wills, and Eddie Hollis, among others) they got religion, and they killed off their parents. All of them. Isn't that a scream? Shot them in their beds, knifed them in their bathtubs, poisoned their suppers, hung them or disemboweled them, for all I know.
Why? The corn. Maybe it was dying. Maybe they got the idea somehow that it was dying because there was too much sinning. Not enough sacrifice. They would have done it in the corn, in the rows.
And somehow, Vicky, I'm quite sure of this, somehow they decided that nineteen was as old as any of them could live. Richard "Amos" Deigan, the hero of our little story, had his nineteenth birthday on September 4, 1964---the date in the book. I think maybe they killed him. Sacrificed him in the corn. Isn't that a silly story?
But let's look at Rachael Stigman, who was Donna Stigman until 1964. She turned nineteen on June 21, just about a month ago. Moses Richardson was born on July 29; just three days from today he'll be nineteen. Any idea what's going to happen to ole Mose on the twenty-ninth?
I can guess.
Burt licked his lips, which felt dry.
One other thing, Vicky. Look at this. We have Job Gilman (Clayton) born on September 16, 1964. No other births until June 16, 1965. A gap of ten months. Know what I think? They killed all the parents, even the pregnant ones; that's what I think. And one of them got pregnant in October of 1964 and gave birth to Eve. Some sixteen-or seventeen-year-old girl. Eve. The first woman.
He thumbed back through the book feverishly and found the Eve Tobin entry. Below it: Adam Greenlaw, b. July 11, 1965.
They'd be just eleven now, he thought, and his flesh began to crawl. And maybe they're out there. Someplace.
But how could such a thing be kept secret? How could it go on?
How unless the God in question approved?
"Oh Jesus," Burt said into the silence, and that was when the T-Bird's horn began to blare into the afternoon, one long, continuous blast.
Burt jumped from the pulpit and ran down the center aisle. He threw open the outer vestibule door, letting in hot sunshine, dazzling. Vicky was bolt upright behind the steering wheel, both hands plastered on the horn ring, her head swiveling wildly. From all around, the children were coming. Some of them were laughing gaily. They held knives, hatchets, pipes, rocks, hammers. One girl, maybe eight, with beautiful long blonde hair, held a jack handle. Rural weapons. Not a gun among them. Burt felt a wild urge to scream out: Which of you is Adam and Eve? Who are the mothers? Who are the daughters? Fathers? Sons?
Declare, if thou hast understanding.
They came from the side streets, from the town green, through the gate in the chain-link fence around the school playground a block farther west. Some of them glanced indifferently at Burt, standing frozen on the church steps, and some nudged each other and pointed and smiled . . . the sweet smiles of children.
The girls were dressed in long, brown wool and faded sun-bonnets. The boys, like Quaker parsons, were all in black and wore round-crowned, flat-brimmed hats. They streamed across the town square toward the car, across lawns, a few coming across the front yard of what had been the Grace Baptist Church until 1964. One or two of them almost close enough to touch.
"The shotgun!" Burt yelled. "Vicky, get the shotgun!"
But she was frozen in her panic; he could see that from the closed windows.
They converged on the Thunderbird. The axes and hatchets and chunks of pipe began to rise and fall. My God, am I seeing this? he thought frozenly. An arrow of chrome fell off the side of the car. The hood ornament went flying. Knives scrawled spirals through the sidewalls of the tires, and the car settled. The horn blared on and on. The windshield and side windows went opaque and cracked under the onslaught . . . and then the safety glass sprayed inward, and he could see again. Vicky was crouched back, only one hand on the horn ring now, the other thrown up to protect her face. Eager young hands reached in, fumbling for the lock-unlock button. She beat them away wildly. The horn became intermittent and then stopped altogether.
The beaten and dented driver's-side door was hauled open. They were trying to drag her out, but her hands were wrapped around the steering wheel. Then one of them leaned in, knife in hand, and---
His paralysis broke, and he plunged down the steps, almost falling, and ran down the flagstone walk, toward them. One of them, a boy of about sixteen with long red hair spilling out from beneath his hat, turned toward him, almost casually, and something flicked through the air. Burt's left arm jerked backward, and for a moment he had the absurd thought that he had been punched at long distance. Then the pain came, so sharp and sudden that the world went gray.
He examined his arm with a stupid sort of wonder. A buck and a half Pensy jackknife was growing out of it like a strange tumor. The sleeve of his J.C. Penny sport shirt was turning red. He looked at it for what seemed like forever, trying to understand how he could have grown a jackknife . . . was it possible?
When he looked up, the boy with the red hair was almost on top of him. He was grinning, confident.
"Hey, you bastard," Burt said. His voice was creaking, shocked.
"Remand your soul to God, for you will stand before His throne momentarily," the boy with the red hair said and clawed for Burt's eyes.
Burt stepped back, pulled the Pensy out of his arm, and stuck it into the red-haired boy's throat. The gush of blood was immediate, gigantic. Burt was splashed with it. The red-haired boy began to gobble and walk in a large circle. He clawed at the knife, trying to pull it free, and was unable. Burt watched him, jaw hanging agape. None of this was happening. It was a dream. The red-haired boy gobbled and walked. Now his sound was the only one in the hot early afternoon. The others watched, stunned.
This part of it wasn't in the script, Burt thought numbly. Vicky and I, we were in the script. And the boy in the corn, who had been trying to run away. But not one of their own. He stared at them savagely, wanting to scream, "How do you like it?"
The red-haired boy gave one last weak gobble and sank to his knees. He stared up at Burt for a moment, and then his hands dropped away from the haft of the knife, and he fell forward.
A soft sighing sound from the children gathered around the Thunderbird. They stared at Burt. Burt stared back at them, fascinated . . . and that was when he noticed that Vicky was gone.
"Where is she?" he asked. "Where did you take her?"
One of the boys raised a blood-streaked hunting knife toward his throat and made a sawing motion there. He grinned.
From somewhere in back, an older boy's voice, soft: "Get him."
The boys began to walk toward him. Burt backed up. They began to walk faster. Burt backed up faster. The shotgun, the goddamned shotgun! Out of reach. The sun cut their shadows darkly on the green church lawn . . . and then he was on the sidewalk. He turned and ran.
"Kill him!" someone roared, and they came after him.
He ran, but not quite blindly. He skirted the Municipal Building---no help there, they would corner him like a rat--- and ran on up Main Street, which opened out and became the highway again two blocks farther up. He and Vicky would have been on that road now and away, if he had only listened.
His loafers slapped against the sidewalk. Ahead of him he could see a few more business buildings, including The Gatlin Ice Cream Shoppe and---sure enough---the Bijou Theater. The dust-clotted marquee letters read: "NOW HOWING L MITED EN AGEMEN ELI A TH TAYLOR CLEOPA RA." Beyond the next cross street was a gas station that marked the edge of town. And beyond that the corn, closing back into the sides of the road. A green tide of corn.
Burt ran. He was already out of breath, and the knife wound in his upper arm was beginning to hurt. And he was leaving a trail of blood. As he ran, he yanked his handkerchief from his back pocket and stuck it inside his shirt.
He ran. His loafers pounded the cracked cement of the sidewalk; his breath rasped in his throat with more and more heat. His arm began to throb in earnest. Some mordant part of his brain tried to ask if he thought he could run all the way to the next town, if he could run twenty miles of two-lane blacktop.
He ran. Behind him he could hear them, fifteen years younger and faster than he was, gaining. Their feet slapped on the pavement. They whooped and shouted back and forth to each other. They're having more fun than a five-alarm fire, Burt thought. They'll talk about it for years.
Burt ran.
He ran past the gas station marking the edge of town. His breath gasped and roared in his chest. The sidewalk ran out under his feet. And now there was only one thing to do, only one chance to beat them and escape with his life. The houses were gone; the town was gone. The corn had surged in a soft, green wave back to the edges of the road. The green, swordlike leaves rustled softly. It would be deep in there, deep and cool, shady in the rows of man-high corn.
He ran past a sign that said: "YOU ARE NOW LEAVING GATLIN, NICEST LITTLE TOWN IN NEBRASKA OR ANYWHERE ELSE! DROP IN ANY TIME!"
I'll be sure to do that, Burt thought dimly.
He ran past the sign like a sprinter closing on the tape and then swerved left, crossing the road, and kicked his loafers away. Then he was in the corn, and it closed behind him and over him like the waves of a green sea, taking him in. Hiding him. He felt a sudden and wholly unexpected relief sweep him, and at the same moment he got his second wind. His lungs, which had been shallowing up, seemed to unlock and give him more breath.
He ran straight down the first row he had entered, head ducked, his broad shoulders swiping the leaves and making them tremble. Twenty yards in he turned right, parallel to the road again, and ran on, keeping low so they wouldn't see his dark head of hair bobbing amid the yellow corn tassels. He doubled back toward the road for a few moments, crossed more rows, and then put his back to the road and hopped randomly from row to row, always delving deeper and deeper into the corn.
At last he collapsed onto his knees and put his forehead against the ground. He could hear only his own taxed breathing, and the thought that played over and over in his mind was: thank God, I gave up smoking; thank God, I gave up smoking, thank God---
Then he could hear them, yelling back and forth to each other, in some cases bumping into each other ("hey, this is my row!"), and the sound heartened him. They were well away to his left, and they sounded very poorly organized.
He took his handkerchief out of his shirt, folded it, and stuck it back in after looking at the wound. The bleeding seemed to have stopped in spite of the workout he had given it.
He rested a moment longer and was suddenly aware that he felt good, physically better than he had in years . . . excepting the throb of his arm. He felt well-exercised, suddenly grappling with a clear-cut (no matter how insane) problem after two years of trying to cope with the incubus gremlins that were sucking his marriage dry.
It wasn't right that he should feel this way, he told himself. He was in deadly peril of his life, and his wife had been carried off. She might be dead now. He tried to summon up Vicky's face and dispel some of the odd good feeling by doing so, but her face wouldn't come. What came was the face of the red-haired boy with the knife in his throat.
He became aware of the corn fragrance in his nose now, all around him. The wind through the tops of the plants made a sound like voices. Soothing. Whatever had been done in the name of this corn, it was now his protector.
But they were getting closer.
Running hunched over, he hurried up the row he was in, crossed over, doubled back, and crossed over more rows. He tried to keep the voices always on his left, but as the afternoon progressed, that became harder and harder to do. The voices had grown faint, and often the rustling sound of the corn obscured them altogether. He would ran, listen, run again. The earth was hard packed, and his stockinged feet left little or no trace.
When he stopped much later, the sun was hanging over the fields to his right, red and inflamed; and when he looked at his watch, he saw that it was a quarter past seven. The sun had stained the corn tops a reddish gold, but here the shadows were dark and deep. He cocked his head, listening. With the coming of sunset the wind had died entirely, and the corn stood still, exhaling its aroma of growth into the warm air. If they were still in the corn, they were either far away or just hunkered down and listening. But Burt didn't think a bunch of kids, even crazy ones, could be quiet that long. He suspected they'd done the most kidlike thing, regardless of the consequences: they had given up and gone home.
He turned toward the setting sun, which had sunk between the raftered clouds on the horizon, and began to walk. If he cut on a diagonal through the rows, always keeping the setting sun ahead of him, he would be bound to strike Route 17 sooner or later.
The ache in his arm had settled into a dull throb that was nearly pleasant, and the good feeling was still with him. He decided that as long as he was there, he would let the good feeling exist in him without guilt. The guilt would return when he had to face the authorities and account for what had happened in Gatlin. But that could wait.
He pressed through the corn, thinking he had never felt so keenly aware. Fifteen minutes later the sun was only a hemisphere poking over the horizon, and he stopped again, his new awareness clicking into a pattern he didn't like. It was vaguely . . . well, vaguely frightening.
He cocked his head. The corn was rustling.
Burt had been aware of that for some time, but he had just put it together with something else. The wind was still. How could that be?
He looked around warily, half expecting to see the smiling boys in their Quaker coats creeping out of the corn, their knives clutched in their hands. Nothing of the sort. There was still that rustling noise. Off to the left.
He began to walk in that direction, not having to bull his way through the corn anymore. The row was taking him in the direction he wanted to go, naturally. The row emptied out into some sort of clearing. The rustling was there.
He stopped, suddenly afraid.
The scent of the corn was strong enough to be cloying. The rows held onto the sun's heat, and he became aware he was plastered with sweat and chaff and thin spider strands of corn silk. The bugs ought to be crawling all over him; they weren't.
He stood still, staring toward that place where the corn opened out onto what looked like a large circle of bare earth.
There were no minges or mosquitoes here, no black flies or chiggers---what he and Vicky had called "drive-in bugs" when they had been courting---he thought with sudden and unexpectedly sad nostalgia. And he hadn't seen a single crow. How was that for weird, a corn patch with no crows?
In the last of the daylight he swept his eyes closely over the row of corn to his left and saw that every leaf and stalk was perfect, which was just not possible. No yellow blight. No tattered leaves, no caterpillar eggs, no burrows, no---
His eyes widened.
My God, there aren't any weeds!
Not a single one. Every foot and a half the corn plants rose from the earth. There was no witchgrass, jimson, pikeweed, whore's hair, or polk salad. Nothing.
Burt stared up, eyes wide. The light in the West was fading. The raftered clouds had drawn back together. Below them the golden light had faded to pink and ocher. It would be dark soon enough.
It was time to go down to the clearing in the corn and see what was there; hadn't that been the plan all along? All the time he had thought he was cutting back to the highway, wasn't he being led to this place?
Dread in his belly, he went on down to the row and stood at the edge of the clearing. There was enough light left for him to see what was here. He couldn't scream. There didn't seem to be enough air in his lungs. He tottered on legs like slats of splintery wood. His eyes bulged from his face.
"Vicky," he whispered. "Oh, Vicky, my God---"
She had been mounted on a crossbar like a hideous trophy, her arms held at the wrists and her legs at the ankles by twists of common barbed wire, seventy cents a yard at any hardware store in Nebraska. Her eyes had been ripped out. The sockets were filled with the moon flax of corn silk. Her jaws were wrenched open in a silent scream, her mouth filled with corn husks.
On her left was a skeleton in a moldering surplice. The nude jawbone grinned. The eyesockets seemed to stare at Burt jocularly, as if the one-time minister of the Grace Baptist Church were saying: it's not so bad; being sacrificed by pagan devil-children in the corn is not so bad; having your eyes ripped out of your skull according to the Laws of Moses is not so bad---
To the left of the skeleton in the surplice was a second skeleton, this one dressed in a rotting, blue uniform. A hat hung over the skull, shading the eyes, and on the peak of the cap was a greenish-tinged badge reading: "POLICE CHIEF."
That was when Burt heard it coming: not the children but something much larger, moving through the corn toward the clearing. Not the children, no. The children wouldn't venture into the corn at night. This was the holy place, the place of He Who Walks behind the Rows.
Jerkily, Burt turned to flee. The row by which he had entered the clearing was gone. Closed up. It was coming closer now, and he could hear it, pulsing through the corn. He could hear it breathing. An ecstasy of superstitious terror seized him. It was coming. The corn on the far side of the clearing had suddenly darkened, as if a gigantic shadow had blotted it out
Coming.
He Who Walks behind the Rows.
It began to come into the clearing. Burt saw something huge, bulking up to the sky . . . something green with terrible red eyes the size of footballs.
Something that smelled like dried corn husks, years in some dark barn.
He began to scream. But he did not scream long.
Some time later a bloated, orange harvest moon came up.
The children of the corn stood in the clearing at midday, looking at the two crucified skeletons and the two bodies . . . the bodies were not skeletons yet, but they would be. In time. And here, in the heartland of Nebraska, in the corn, there was nothing but time.
"Behold, a dream came to me in the night, and the Lord did shew all this to me."
They all turned to look at Isaac with dread and wonder, even Malachai. Isaac was only nine, but he had been the seer since the corn had taken David a year ago. David had been nineteen and had walked into the corn on his birthday, as dusk had come drifting down the summer rows.
Now, small face grave under his round-crowned hat, Isaac continued:
"And in my dream the Lord was a shadow that walked behind the rows, and he spoke to me in the words he used to our older brothers years ago. He is much displeased with this sacrifice."
They made a sighing, sobbing noise and looked at the surrounding walls of green.
"And the Lord did say: 'Have I not given you a place of killing, that you might make sacrifice there? And have I not shewn you favor? But this man has made blasphemy within me, and I have completed this sacrifice myself. Like the Blue Man and the false minister who escaped many years ago.' "
"The Blue Man . . . the false minister," they whispered and looked at each other uneasily.
"So now is the Age of Favor lowered from nineteen plantings and harvestings to eighteen," Isaac went on relentlessly. "Yet be fruitful and multiply as the corn multiplies, that my favor may be shewn you, and be upon you."
Isaac ceased.
The eyes turned to Malachai and Joseph, the only two among this party who were eighteen. There were others back in town, perhaps twenty in all.
They waited to hear what Malachai would say, Malachai who had led the hunt for Japeth, who evermore would be known as Ahaz, cursed of God. Malachai had cut the throat of Ahaz and had thrown his body out of the corn so the foul body would not pollute it or blight it.
"I obey the word of God," he whispered.
The corn seemed to sigh its approval.
In the weeks to come, the girls would make many corncob crucifixes to ward off further evil.
And that night those above the Age of Favor walked silently into the corn and went to the clearing, to gain the continued favor of He Who Walks behind the Rows.
"Goodbye, Malachai," Ruth called. She waved disconsolately. Her belly was big with Malachai's child, and tears coursed silently down her cheeks. Malachai did not turn. The corn swallowed him.
Ruth turned away, still crying. She had conceived a secret hatred for the corn and sometimes dreamed of walking into it with a torch in each hand when dry September came and the stalks were dead and explosively combustible. But she also feared it. Out there, in the night, something walked, and it saw everything . . . even the secrets kept in human hearts.
Dusk deepened into night. Around Gatlin the corn rustled and whispered secretly. It was well pleased.
IF DAMON COMES by Charles L. Grant
Charles L. Grant appears to be able to write just about any sort of fiction, and to do it at a level of quality that can only amaze his colleagues. He is the author of a number of science fiction and fantasy novels (such as The Hour of the Oxrun Dead), editor of the horror anthology Shadows, and owns a Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America for his short story, "A Crowd of Shadows." He even writes such things as gothics and historical romances under pseudonyms. But Grant assures us that his first love is the horror story, and "If Damon Comes," which appears here for the first time, admirably demonstrates that love.
Fog, nightbreath of the river, luring without whispering in the thick crown of an elm, huddling without creaking around the base of a chimney; it drifted past porch lights, and in passing blurred them, dropped over the street lights, and in dropping grayed them. It crept in with midnight to stay until dawn, and there was no wind to bring the light out of hiding.
Frank shivered and drew his raincoat's collar closer around his neck, held it closed with one hand while the other wiped at the pricks of moisture that clung to his cheeks, his short dark hair. He whistled once, loudly, but in listening heard nothing, not even an echo. He stamped his feet against the November cold and moved to the nearest corner, squinted and saw nothing. He knew the cat was gone, had known it from the moment he had seen the saucer still brimming with milk on the back porch. Damon had been sitting beside it, hands folded, knees pressed tightly together, elbows tucked into his sides. He was cold, but refused to acknowledge it, and Frank had only tousled his son's softly brown hair, squeezed his shoulder once and went inside to say good-bye to his wife.
And now . . . now he walked, through the streets of Oxrun Station, looking for an animal he had seen only once---a half-breed Siamese with a milk-white face---whistling like a fool afraid of the dark, searching for the note that would bring the animal running.
And in walking, he was unpleasantly reminded of a night the year before, when he had had one drink too many at someone's party, made one amorous boast too many in someone's ear, and had ended up on a street corner with a woman he knew only vaguely. They had kissed once and long, and once broken, he had turned around to see Damon staring up at him. The boy had turned, had fled, and Frank had stayed away most of the night, not knowing what Susan had heard, fearing more what Damon had thought.
It had been worse than horrid facing the boy again, but Damon had acted as though nothing had happened; and the guilt passed as the months passed, and the wondering why his son had been out in the first place.
He whistled. Crouched and snapped his fingers at the dark of some shrubbery. Then he straightened and blew out a deeply held breath. There was no cat, there were no cars, and he finally gave in to his aching feet and sore back and headed for home. Quickly. Watching the fog tease the road before him, cut it sharply off behind.
It wasn't fair, he thought, his hands shoved in his pockets, his shoulders hunched as though expecting a blow. Damon, in his short eight years had lost two dogs already to speeders, a canary to some disease he couldn't even pronounce, and two brothers stillborn---it was getting to be a problem. He was getting to be a problem, fighting each day that he had to go to school, whining and weeping whenever vacations came around and trips were planned.
He'd asked Doc Simpson about it when Damon turned seven. Dependency, he was told; clinging to the only three things left in his life---his short, short life---that he still believed to be constant: his home, his mother . . . and Frank.
And Frank had kissed a woman on a corner and Damon had seen him.
Frank shuddered and shook his head quickly, remembering how the boy had come to the office at least once a day for the next three weeks, saying nothing, just standing on the sidewalk looking in through the window. Just for a moment. Long enough to be sure that his father was still there.
Once home, then, Frank shed his coat and hung it on the rack by the front door. A call, a muffled reply, and he took the stairs two at a time and trotted down the hall to Damon's room set over the kitchen.
"Sorry, old pal," he said with a shrug as he made himself a place on the edge of the mattress. "I guess he went home."
Damon, small beneath the flowered quilt, innocent from behind long curling lashes, shook his head sharply. "No," he said. "This is home. It is, Dad, it really is."
Frank scratched at the back of his neck. "Well, I guess he didn't think of it quite that way."
"Maybe he got lost, huh? It's awfully spooky out there. Maybe he's afraid to come out of where he's hiding."
"A cat's never---" He stopped as soon as he saw the expression on the boy's thin face. Then he nodded and broke out a rueful smile. "Well, maybe you're right, pal. Maybe the fog messed him up a little." Damon's hand crept into his, and he squeezed it while thinking that the boy was too thin by far; it made his head look ungainly. "In the morning," he promised. "In the morning. If he's not back by then, I'll take the day off and we'll hunt him together."
Damon nodded solemnly, withdrew the hand and pulled the quilt up to his chin. "When's Mom coming home?"
"In a while. It's Friday, you know. She's always late on Fridays. And Saturdays." And, he thought, Wednesdays and Thursdays, too.
Damon nodded again. And, as Frank reached the door and switched off the light: "Dad, does she sing pretty?"
"Like a bird, pal," he said, grinning. "Like a bird."
The voice was small in the dark: "I love you, Dad."
Frank swallowed hard, and nodded before he realized the boy couldn't see him. "Well, pal, it seems I love you, too. Now you'd better get some rest."
"I thought you were going to get lost in the fog."
Frank stopped the move to close the door. He'd better get some rest himself, he thought; that sounded like a threat.
"Not me," he finally said. "You'd always come for me, right?"
"Right, Dad."
Frank grinned, closed the door, and wandered through the small house for nearly half an hour before finding himself in the kitchen, his hands waving at his sides for something to do. Coffee. No. He'd already had too much of that today. But the walk had chilled him, made his bones seem brittle. Warm milk, maybe, and he opened the refrigerator, stared, then took out a container and poured half its contents into a pot. He stood by the stove, every few seconds stirring a finger through the milk to check its progress. Stupid cat, he thought; there ought to be a law against doing something like that to a small boy that never hurt anyone, never bad anyone to hurt.
He poured himself a glass, smiling when he didn't spill a drop, but he refused to turn around and look up at the clock; instead, he stared at the flames as he finished the second glass, wondering what it would be like to stick his finger into the fire. He read somewhere . . . he thought he'd read somewhere that the blue near the center was the hottest part and it wasn't so bad elsewhere. His hand wavered, but he changed his mind, not wanting to risk a burn on something he only thought he had read; besides, he decided as he headed into the living room, the way things were going these days, he probably had it backward.
He sat in an armchair flanking the television, took out a magazine from the rack at his side and had just found the table of contents when he heard a car door slam in the drive. He waited, looked up and smiled when the front door swung open and Susan rushed in. She blew him a distant kiss, mouthed I'll be back in a second, and ran up the stairs. She was much shorter than he, her hair waist-long black and left free to fan in the wind of her own making. She'd been taking vocal lessons for several years now, and when they'd moved to the Station when Damon was five, she had landed a job singing at the Chancellor Inn. Torch songs, love songs, slow songs, sinner songs; she was liked well enough to be asked to stay on after the first night, but she began so late that Damon had never heard her. And for the last six months, the two-nights-a-week became four, and Frank became adept at cooking supper.
When she returned, her makeup was gone and she was in a shimmering green robe. She flopped on the sofa opposite him and rubbed her knees, her thighs, her upper arms. "If that creep drummer tries to pinch me again, so help me I'll castrate him."
"That is hardly the way for a lady to talk," he said, smiling. "If you're not careful, I'll have to punish you. Whips at thirty paces."
In the old days---the very old days, he thought---she would have laughed and entered a game that would last for nearly an hour. Lately, however, and tonight, she only frowned at him as though she were dealing with a dense, unlettered child. He ignored it, and listened politely as she detailed her evening, the customers, the compliments, the raise she was looking for so she could buy her own car.
"You don't need a car," he said without thinking.
"But aren't you tired of walking home every night?"
He closed the magazine and dropped it on the floor. "Lawyers, my dear, are a sedentary breed. I could use the exercise."
"If you didn't work so late on those damned briefs," she said without looking at him, "and came to bed on time, I'd give you all the exercise you need."
He looked at his watch. It was going on two.
"The cat's gone."
"Oh no," she said. "No wonder you look so tired. You go out after him?"
He nodded, and she rolled herself suddenly into a sitting position. "Not with Damon."
"No. He was in bed when I came home."
She said nothing more, only examined her nails. He watched her closely, the play of her hair falling over her face, the squint that told him her contact lenses were still on her dresser. And he knew she meant: did you take Damon with you? She was asking if Damon had followed him. Like the night in the fog, with the woman; like the times at the office; like the dozens of other instances when the boy just happened to show up at the courthouse, in the park while Frank was eating lunch under a tree, at a nearby friend's house late one evening, claiming to have had a nightmare and the sitter wouldn't help him.
Like a shadow.
Like a conscience.
"Are you going to replace it?" He blinked. "The cat, stupid. Are you going to get him a new cat?"
He shook his head. "We've had too much bad luck with animals. I don't think he could take it again."
She swung herself off the sofa and stood in front of him, her hands on her hips, her lips taut, her eyes narrowed. "You don't care about him, do you?"
"What?"
"He follows you around like a goddamn pet because he's afraid of losing you, and you won't even buy him a lousy puppy or something. You're something else again, Frank, you really are. I work my tail trying to help---"
"My salary is plenty good enough," he said quickly.
"---this family and you're even trying to get me to stop that, too."
He shoved himself to his feet, his chest brushing against hers and forcing her back. "Listen," he said tightly. "I don't care if you sing your heart out a million times a week, lady, but when it starts to interfere with your duties here---"
"My duties?"
"---then yes, I'll do everything I can to make sure you stay home when you're supposed to."
"You're raising your voice. You'll wake Damon."
The argument was familiar, and old, and so was the rage he felt stiffening his muscles. But this time she wouldn't stop when she saw his anger. She kept on, and on, and he didn't even realize it when his hand lifted and struck her across the cheek. She stumbled back a step, whirled to run out of the room, and stopped.
Damon was standing at the foot of the stairs.
He was sucking his thumb.
He was staring at his father.
"Go to bed, son," Frank said quietly. "Everything's all right."
For the next week the tension in the house was proverbially knife-cutting thick. Damon stayed up as late as he could, sitting by his father as they watched television together or read from the boy's favorite books. Susan remained close, but not touching, humming to herself and playing with her son whenever he left---for the moment---his father's side; each time, however, her smile was more forced, her laughter more strained, and it was apparent to Frank that Damon was merely tolerating her, nothing more. That puzzled him. It was he who had struck her, not the other way around, and the boy's loyalty should have been thrown into his mother's camp. Yet it hadn't. And it was apparent that Susan was growing more resentful of the fact each day. Each hour. Each time Damon walked silently to Frank's side and slid his hand around the man's waist, or into his palm, or into his hip pocket.
He began showing up at the office again, until one afternoon when Susan skidded the car to a halt at the curb and ran out, grabbed the boy and practically threw him, arms and legs thrashing, into the front seat. Frank raced from his desk and out the front door, leaned over and rapped at the window until Susan lowered it.
"What the hell are you doing?" he whispered, with a glance to the boy.
"You hit me, or had you forgotten," she whispered back. "And there's my son's alienation of affection."
He almost straightened. "That's lawyer talk, Susan," he said.
"Not here," she answered. "Not in front of the boy."
He stepped back quickly as the car growled away from the curb, walked in a daze to his desk and sat there, chin in one palm, staring out the window as the afternoon darkened and a faint drizzle began to fall. His secretary muttered something about a court case the following morning, and Frank nodded until she stared at him, gathered her purse and raincoat and left hurriedly. He continued to nod, not knowing the movement, trying to understand what he had done, what both of them had done to bring themselves to this moment. Ambition, surely. A conflict of generations where women were homebodies and women had careers; where men tried to adjust when they couldn't have both. But he had tried, he told himself . . . or he thought he had, until the dishes began to pile up and the dust stayed on the furniture and Damon said does she sing pretty?
It's always the children who get hurt, he thought angrily.
Held that idea in early December when the separation papers had been prepared and he stood on the front porch watching his car, his wife, and his son drive away from Oxrun Station south toward the city. Damon's face was in the rear window, nose flat, palms flat, hair pressed down over his forehead. He waved, and Frank answered.
I love you, Dad.
Frank wiped a hand under his nose and went back inside, searched the house for some liquor and, in failing, went straight to bed where he watched the moonshadows make monsters of the curtains.
"Dad," the boy said, "do I have to go with Mommy?"
"I'm afraid so. The judge . . . well, he knows better, believe it or not, what's best right now. Don't worry, pal. I'll see you at Christmas. It won't be forever."
"I don't like it, Dad. I'll run away."
"No! You'll do what your mother tells you, you hear me? You behave yourself and go to school every day, and I'll . . . call you whenever I can."
"The city doesn't like me, Dad. I want to stay at the Station."
Frank said nothing.
"It's because of the lady, isn't it?"
He had stared, but Susan's back was turned, bent over a suitcase that would not close once it had sprung open again by the front door.
"What are you talking about?" he'd said harshly.
"I told," Damon said as though it were nothing. "You weren't supposed to do that."
When Susan straightened, her smile was grotesque.
And when they had driven away, Damon had said I love you, Dad.
Frank woke early, made himself breakfast and stood at the back door, looking out into the yard. There was a fog again, nothing unusual as the Connecticut weather fought to stabilize into winter. But as he sipped at his coffee, thinking how large the house had become, how large and how empty, he saw a movement beside the cherry tree in the middle of the yard. The fog swirled, but he was sure . . .
He yanked open the door and shouted: "Damon!"
The fog closed, and he shook his head. Easy, pal, he told himself; you're not cracking up yet.
Days.
Nights.
He called Susan regularly, twice a week at pre-appointed times. But as Christmas came and Christmas went, she became more terse, and his son more sullen.
"He's getting fine grades, Frank, I'm seeing to that."
"He sounds terrible."
"He's losing a little weight, that's all. Picks up colds easily. It takes a while, Frank, to get used to the city."
"He doesn't like the city."
"It's his home. He will."
In mid-January Susan did not answer the phone and finally, in desperation, he called the school, was told that Damon had been in the hospital for nearly a week. The nurse thought it was something like pneumonia.
When he arrived that night, the waiting room was crowded with drab bundles of scarves and overcoats, whispers and moans and a few muffled sobs. Susan was standing by the window, looking out at the lights far colder than stars. She didn't turn when she heard him, didn't answer when he demanded to know why she had not contacted him. He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around; her eyes were dull, her face pinched with red hints of cold.
"All right," she said. "All right, Frank, it's because I didn't want you to upset him."
"What in hell are you talking about?"
"He would have seen you and he would have wanted to go back to Oxrun." Her eyes narrowed. "This is his home, Frank! He's got to learn to live with it."
"I'll get a lawyer."
She smiled. "Do that. You do that, Frank."
He didn't have to. He saw Damon a few minutes later and could not stay more than a moment. The boy was in dim light and almost invisible, too thin to be real beneath the clear plastic tent and the tubes and the monitors . . . too frail, the doctor said in professional conciliation, too frail for too long, and Frank remembered the day on the porch with the saucer of milk when he had thought the same thing and had thought nothing of it.
He returned after the funeral, all anger gone. He had accused Susan of murder, knowing at the time how foolish it had been, but feeling better for it in his own absolution. He had apologized. Had been, for the moment, forgiven.
Had stepped off the train, had wept, had taken a deep breath and decided to live on.
Returned to the office the following day, piled folders onto his desk and hid behind them for most of the morning. He looked up only once, when his secretary tried to explain about a new client's interest, and saw around her waist the indistinct form of his son peering through the window.
"Damon," he muttered, brushed the woman to one side and ran out to the sidewalk. A fog encased the road whitely, but he could see nothing, not even a car, not even the blinking amber light at the nearest intersection.
Immediately after lunch he dialed Susan's number, stared at the receiver when there was no answer and returned it to the cradle. Wondering.
"You look pale," his secretary said softly. She pointed with a pencil at his desk. "You've already done a full day's work. Why don't you go home and lie down? I can lock up. I don't mind."
He smiled, turned as she held his coat for him, touched her cheek . . . and froze.
Damon was in the window.
No, he told himself . . . and Damon was gone.
He rested for two days, returned to work and lost himself in a battle over a will probated by a judge he thought nothing less than senile, to be charitable. He tried calling Susan again, and again received no answer.
And Damon would not leave him alone.
When there was fog, rain, clouds, wind . . . he would be there by the window, there by the cherry tree, there in the darkest corner of the porch.
He knew it was guilt, for not fighting hard enough to keep his son with him, thinking that if he had the boy might still be alive; seeing his face everywhere and the accusations that if the boy loved him, why wasn't he loved just as much in return?
By February's end he decided it was time to make a friendly call on a fellow professional, a doctor who shared the office building with him. It wasn't so much the faces that he saw---he had grown somewhat accustomed to them and assumed they would vanish in time---but that morning there had been snow on the ground; and in the snow by the cherry tree the footprints of a small boy. When he brought the doctor to the yard to show him, they were gone.
"You're quite right, Frank. You're feeling guilty. But not because of the boy in and of himself. The law and the leanings of most judges are quite clear---you couldn't be expected to keep him at his age. You're still worrying yourself about that woman you kissed and the fact that Damon saw you; and the fact that you think you could have saved his life somehow, even if the doctors couldn't; and lastly, the fact that you weren't able to give him things, like pets, like that cat. None of it is your fault, really. It's merely something unpleasant you'll have to face up to. Now."
Though he didn't feel all that much better, Frank appreciated the calm that swept over him when the talk was done and they had parted. He worked hard for the rest of the day, for the rest of the week, but he knew that it was not guilt and it was not his imagination and it was not anything the. doctor would be able to explain away when he opened his door on Saturday morning and found, lying carefully atop his newspaper, the white-face Siamese. Dead. Its neck broken.
He stumbled back over the threshold, whirled around and raced into the downstairs bathroom where he fell onto his knees beside the bowl and lost his breakfast. The tears were acid, the sobs like blows to his lungs and stomach, and by the time he had pulled himself together, he knew what was happening.
The doctor, the secretary, even his wife . . . they were all wrong.
There was no guilt.
There was only . . . Damon.
A little boy with large brown eyes who loved his father. Who loved his father so much that he would never leave him. Who loved his father so much that he was going to make sure, absolutely sure, that he would never be alone.
You've been a bad boy, Daddy.
Frank stumbled to his feet, into the kitchen, leaned against the back door. There was a figure by the cherry tree dark and formless; but he knew there was no use running outside. The figure would vanish.
You never did like that cat, Daddy. Or the dogs. Or Mommy.
The telephone rang. He took his time getting to it, stared at it dumbly for several moments before lifting the receiver. He could see straight down the hall and into the kitchen. He had not turned on the overhead light and, as a consequence, could see through the small panes of the back door to the yard beyond. The air outside was heavy with impending snow. Gray. Almost lifeless.
"Frank? Frank, it's Susan. Frank, I've been thinking . . . about you and me . . . and what happened."
He kept his eyes on the door. "It's done, Sue. Done."
"Frank, I don't know what happened. Honest to God, I was trying, really I was. He was getting the best grades in school, bad lots of friends . . . I even bought him a little dog, a poodle, two weeks before he . . . I don't know what happened, Frank! I woke up this morning and all of a sudden I was so damned alone. Frank, I'm frightened. Can . . . can I come home?"
The gray darkened. There was a shadow on the porch, much larger now than the shadow in the yard.
"No," he said.
"He thought about you all the damned time," she said, her voice rising into hysteria. "He tried to run away once, to get back to you."
The shadow filled the panes, the windows on either side, and suddenly there was static on the line and Susan's voice vanished. He dropped the receiver and turned around.
In the front.
Shadows.
He heard the furnace humming, but the house was growing cold.
The lamp in the living room flickered, died, shone brightly for a moment before the bulb shattered.
He was . . . wrong.
God, he was wrong!
Damon . . . Damon didn't love him.
Not since the night on the corner in the fog; not since the night he had not really tried to locate a cat with a milk-white face.
Damon knew.
And Damon didn't love him.
He dropped to his hands and knees and searched in the darkness for the receiver, found it and nearly threw it away when the bitterly cold plastic threatened to burn through his fingers.
"Susan!" he shouted. "Susan, damnit, can you hear me?"
A bad boy, Daddy.
There was static, but he thought he could hear her crying into the wind.
"Susan . . . Susan, this is crazy, I've no time to explain, but you've got to help me. You've got to do something for me."
Daddy.
"Susan, please . . . he'll be back, I know he will. Don't ask me how, but I know! Listen, you've got to do something for me. Susan, damnit, can you hear me?"
Daddy, I'm---
"For God's sake, Susan, if Damon comes, tell him I'm sorry!"
home.
DRAWING IN by Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell's first published story appeared in August Derleth's anthology, Dark Mind, Dark Heart in 1962---not bad for someone born in 1946. Two years later, Derleth's Arkham House: Publishers issued a collection of stories by Campbell, The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, which was heavily influenced by the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Now, after at least two more collections and a number of novels (including the notable The Doll Who Ate His Mother), to say nothing of an anthology of original horror stories Campbell edited under the title Superhorror, it can be said without any reservation that the fellow writes under the influence of nothing but his own talent (staggeringly vast) and imagination (inspiringly strange). "Drawing In," the illustration of that talent and imagination which appears below, has not been previously published.
No wonder the rent was so low. There were cracks everywhere; new ones had broken out during the night---one passed above the foot of his bed, through the elaborate molding, then trailed toward the parquet floor. Still, the house didn't matter; Thorpe hadn't come here for the house.
He parted the curtains. Act one, scene three. Mist lingered; the lake was overlapped by a ghost of itself. Growing sunlight renewed colors from the mist: the green fur of the hills, the green spikes of pines. All this was free. He'd little reason to complain.
As always when he emerged from his room, the height of the ceiling made him glance up. Above the stairs, another new crack had etched the plaster. Suppose the house fell on him while he was asleep? Hardly likely---the place looked far too solid.
He hesitated, staring at the ajar door. Should he give in to curiosity? It wasn't as simple as that: he'd come here to recuperate, he could scarcely do so if curiosity kept him awake. Last night he'd lain for hours wondering. Feeling rather like a small boy who'd crept into this deserted house for a dare, he pushed open the door.
The room was smaller than his, and darker---though perhaps all that was because of the cabinets, high as the ceiling and black as drowned timber, that occupied all the walls. The cabinets were padlocked shut, save one whose broken padlock dangled from the half-open door. Beyond the door was darkness, dimly crowded. Speculations on the nature of that crowding had troubled his sleep for three nights.
He ventured forward. Again, as the cabinet lowered over him, he felt like a small boy. Ignoring doubts, he tugged the door wide. The padlock fell, loud in the echoing room---and from high in the cabinet, dislodged objects toppled. Some opened as they fell, and their contents scuttled over him.
He sprang back. The containers rattled on the parquet. They resembled pillboxes, of transparent plastic. They were inscribed in a spidery handwriting, which seemed entirely appropriate, for each hand contained a spider. A couple of dark furry blotches clung with long legs to his sleeve. He picked them off, shuddering. He couldn't rid himself of an insidious suspicion that some of the creatures were not quite dead.
He peered reluctantly at them. Bright pinheads of eyes peered back, dead as metal; beside them, palpi bristled. The lifeless fur felt unpleasantly cold on his palm. Eventually he'd filled all the containers---God only knew how correctly. If he were an audience watching himself, this would be an enjoyable farce. As he replaced the boxes on the high shelf, he noticed a padlocked container, large as a hatbox, lurking at the back of the cabinet Let it stay there. He'd had enough surprises for one day.
Besides, he must report the cracks. Eventually the bus arrived, laden with climbers. Some of their rucksacks occupied almost as much space as they did. Camps smoked below the hills.
Outside the estate agent's office cows plodded to market. The agent listened to the tale of the cracks. "You surprise me. I'll look in tomorrow." His fingertips brushed his gray hair gently, abstractedly. He glanced up as Thorpe hesitated. "Something else?"
"The owner of the house---what line is he in?"
"Anarch---narach---" The agent shook his head irritably to clear it of the blockage. "An arachnologist," he pronounced at last.
"I thought it must be something of the kind. I looked in one of the cabinets---the one with the broken lock."
"Ah yes, his bloodsuckers. That's what he likes to call them. All these writers are eccentric in some way, I suppose. I should have asked you not to touch anything," he said reprovingly.
Thorpe had been glad to confess, but felt embarrassed now. "Well, perhaps no harm's done," the agent said. "He went to Eastern Europe six months ago, in search of some rarity---having fixed the amount of the rent."
Was that comment a kind of reproof? It sounded wistful. But the agent stood up smiling. "Anyway, you look better for the country," he said. "You've much more color now."
And indeed Thorpe felt better. He was at his ease in the narrow streets; he was able to make his way between cars without flinching---without feeling jagged metal bite into him, the windscreen shatter into his face. The scars of his stitched cheeks no longer plucked at him. He walked part of the way back to the house, until weakness overtook him.
He sat gazing into the lake. Fragmented reflections of pines wavered delicately. When mist began to descend the hills he headed back, in time to glimpse a group of hikers admiring the house. Pleased, he scanned it himself. Mist had settled on the chimney-stacks. The five squat horned blurs looked as though they were playing a secret game, trying to hide behind one another. One lacked horns---the odd man out.
After dinner he strolled through the house, sipping malt whisky. Rooms resounded around him. They sounded like an empty stage, and he was playing the owner of the house. He strode up the wide stairs, beneath the long straight crack, and halted outside the door next to his.
He wouldn't be able to sleep unless he looked. Besides, he had found the agent's disapproval faintly annoying. If Thorpe wasn't meant to look in the cabinets, why hadn't he been told? Why had one been left ajar?
He ventured in, among the crowd of dark high doors. This time, as he opened the cabinet he made sure the padlock didn't slip from its hold. He stooped into the dimness, to peer at the hatbox or whatever it was. Piled shelves loomed above him.
The large container wasn't locked. It had been, but its fastening was split; a broken padlock lay on top. On the lid, wisps of handwriting spelled Carps: Trans: C. D. The obscure inscription was dated three months before.
Thorpe frowned. Then, standing back, he poked gingerly at the lid with his foot. As he did so, he heard a shifting. It was the padlock, which slid loudly to thud on the bottom of the cabinet. Unburdened, the lid sprang up at once. Within was only a crack in the metal of the container. He closed the cabinet and then the room, wondering why the metal box appeared to have been forced open.
And why was the date on the lid so recent? Was the man so eccentric that he could make such a mistake? Thorpe lay pondering that and the inscription. Half dozing, he heard movement in one of the rooms: a bird trapped in a chimney, and scrabbling? It troubled him almost enough to make him search. But the whisky had crept up on him. He drifted with his thoughts.
How did the arachnologist bring his prizes home---in his pocket, or stowed away with the rest of the animals on the voyage? Thorpe stood on a dockside, awaiting a package which was being lowered on a rope. Or was it a rope? No, for as it swung close the package unclenched and grabbed him. As its jaws closed on his face he awoke gasping.
In the morning he searched the house, but the bird seemed to have managed to fly. The cracks had multiplied; there was at least one in every room, and two now above the stairs. The scattering of plaster on the staircase looked oddly like earth.
When he heard the agent's car he buttoned his jacket and gave his hair a rapid severe brushing. Damn it, the bird was still trapped; he heard it stir behind him, though there was no hint of it in the mirror. It must be in the chimney; it sounded far too large to be otherwise invisible.
The agent scrutinized the rooms. Was he looking only for cracks, or for evidence that Thorpe had been peeking? "This is most unexpected," he said as though Thorpe might be responsible. "I don't see how it can be subsidence. I'll have it looked at, though I don't think it's anything serious."
He was dawdling in Thorpe's room, perhaps to reassure himself that Thorpe had done it no injury. "Ah, here he is," he said without warning, and stooped to grope beneath the bed. Who had been sulking there while Thorpe was asleep? The owner of the house, it seemed---or at least a photograph of him, which the agent propped curtly on the bedside table, to supervise the room.
When the agent had left, Thorpe peered up the chimneys. Their furred throats looked empty, but were very dark. The flickering beam of the electric torch he'd found groped upward. A soft dark mass plummeted toward him. It missed him, and proved to be a fall of soot, but was discouraging enough. In any case, if the bird was still up there, it was silent now.
He confronted the photograph. So that was what an arachnologist looked like: a clump of hair, a glazed expression, an attempt at a beard---the man seemed hypnotized, but no doubt was preoccupied. Thorpe found his dusty presence disconcerting.
Why stand here challenging the photograph? He felt healthy enough to make a circuit of the lake. He strolled; the inverted landscape drifted with him. He could feel his strength returning, as though he were absorbing it from the hills. For the first time since the hospital, his hands looked enlivened by blood.
From the far end of the lake he admired the house. Its chimneys swayed, rooted deep in the water. Suddenly he frowned, and squinted. It must be an effect of the distance, that was all. He kept glancing at the house as he returned along the lakeside. Once he was past the lake he had no room for doubt. There were only four chimney stacks.
It must have been last night's mist which had produced the appearance of a fifth stack, lurking. Nevertheless it was odd. Doubts clung to his mind as he climbed the stairs---until his start jerked loose his thoughts: the glass of the photograph was cracked from top to bottom.
He refused to be blamed for that. The agent ought to have left it alone. He laid it carefully on its back on the bedside table. Its crack had made him obsessively aware of the others; some, he was sure, were new---including one in a downstairs window, a crack which, curiously, failed to pass right through the thickness of the pane. The staircase was sprinkled again; the scattering not only looked like, but seemed to smell like, earth. That night, as he lay in bed, he thought he heard dust whispering down from the cracks.
Though he ridiculed thoughts that the house was unsafe, he felt vulnerable. The shifting shadow of a branch looked like a new crack, digging into the wall. In turn, that made the entire room appear to shift. Whenever he woke from fitful dozing, he seemed to glimpse a stealthy movement of the substance of the room. It must be an optical effect---but it reminded him of the way a quivering of ornaments might betray the presence of an intruder.
Once, he awoke, shocked alert by an image of a tufted face that peered through the window upside-down. It infuriated him to have to sit up to make sure the window was blank; but its shutter of night was not reassuring. His subconscious must have borrowed the image of inversion from the lake, that was all. But the room seemed to be trembling, as he was.
Next day he waited impatiently for the surveyor, or whoever the agent was sending. He rapidly grew irritable. Though it could be nothing but a hangover from his insomnia, to stay in the house made him nervous. Whenever he glanced in a mirror, he felt he was being invisibly watched. The dark fireplaces looked ominous, proscenia awaiting a cue. At intervals he heard a pattering in other rooms: not of tiny feet, but of the fall of debris from new cracks.
Why on earth was he waiting? He hadn't felt so nervously aimless since the infancy of his career, when he'd loitered, clinging to a single line, in the wings of a provincial theatre. The agent should have given his man a key to let himself in---and if he hadn't, that was his problem. Thorpe strode over the slopes that surrounded the lake. He enjoyed the intricately true reflections in the still water, and felt a great deal healthier.
Had the man let himself in? Thorpe seemed to glimpse a face, groping into view at a twilit supper window. But the only sound in the house was a feeble scraping, which he was unable to locate. The face must have been a fragment of his dream, tangled in his lingering insomnia. His imagination, robbed of sleep, was everywhere now. As he climbed the stairs, he thought that a face was spying on him from a dark corner of the ceiling.
When he descended, fallen debris crunched underfoot. During his meal he drank a bottle of wine, as much for distraction as for pleasure. Afterward he surveyed the house. Yes, the cracks were more numerous; there was one in every surface now, except the floors. Had the older cracks deepened? Somehow he was most disturbed by the dust beneath the cracked windows. It looked not at all like pulverized glass; it resembled earth.
He wished he'd gone into the town to stay the night. It was too late now---indeed, the last bus had gone by the time he returned to the house. He was too tired to walk. He certainly couldn't sit outside all night; the mists were chill. It was absurd to think of any other course than going to bed, to try and sleep. But he drained the bottle of whisky before doing so.
He lay listening. Yes, the trapped bird was still there. It sounded even feebler now; it must be dying. If he searched for it he would lose his chance of sleep. Besides, he knew already that he couldn't locate it. Its sounds were so weak that they seemed to shift impossibly, to be fumbling within the fabric of the walls.
He was determined to keep his eyes closed, for the dim room appeared to be jerking. Perhaps this was a delayed effect of his accident. He let his mind drift out of the room, into memories: the wavering of trees and of their reflections, the comedy sketch of his encounter with the piled cabinet, Carps, Trans.
Darkness gathered like soot on his eyes. A dark mass sank toward him, or he was sinking into dark. He was underground. Around him, unlit corridors dripped sharply. The beam of his torch explored the figure that lay before him on dank stone. The figure was pale as a spider's cocoon. As the light fastened on it, it scuttled apart.
When he awoke, he was crying out not at the dream but at his stealthy realization. He had solved the inscription in his sleep, at least in part. Eastern Europe was the key. Carps meant Carpathians, Trans was Transylvania. But C. D.---no, what he was thinking was ridiculous, a bad joke. He refused to consider it seriously.
Nevertheless it had settled heavily on his mind. Good God, he'd once had to keep a straight face throughout a version of the play, squashed into a provincial stage: the walls of Castle Dracula had quaked whenever anyone opened the door, the rubber bat had plummeted into the stalls, C. D. could mean anything---anything except that. Wouldn't it be hilarious if that was what the bemused old spider-man had meant? But in the dark it seemed less than hilarious, for near him in the room, something was stirring.
He groped for the cord of the bedside lamp. At last he found it: it was long and furry, and seemed unexpectedly fat---but it was the cord, for its switch gave him light. Immediately he saw that the cracks were deeper; he had been hearing the fall of debris. Whether the walls had begun to jerk rhythmically, or that was a delayed symptom of his accident he had no time to judge. He must get out while he had the chance. He swung his feet to the floor, and knocked the photograph from the table.
Too bad, never mind, come on! But the shock of its fall nagged at him. He glanced at the photograph, which had fallen upside-down. The inverted tufted face stared up at him.
All right, it was the face he had dreamed in the window: why shouldn't it be? Just let him drag clothes over his pajamas---he'd spend the night outside if need be. Quickly, quickly---he thought he could hear the room twitching. The twitches reminded him not of the stirring of ornaments, but of something else---something of which he was terrified to think.
As he stamped his way into his trousers, refusing to think, he saw that now there were cracks in the floor. Perhaps worse, all the cracks in the room had joined together. He froze, appalled, and heard the scuttling.
What frightened him most was not how large it sounded, but the fact that it seemed not to be approaching over floors. Somehow he had the impression that it hardly inhabited the space of the house. Around him the cracks stood out from their surfaces; they looked too solid for cracks.
The room shook repetitively. The smell of earth was growing. He could hardly keep his balance in the unsteady room; the lines that weren't cracks were jerking him toward the door. If he could grab the bed, drag himself along it to the window---His mind was struggling to withdraw into itself, to deny what was happening. He was fighting not only to reach the window but to forget the image which had seized his mind: a spider perched at the center of its web, tugging in its prey.
WITHIN THE WALLS OF TYRE by Michael Bishop
Michael Bishop is the author of the science fiction novels Beneath the Shattered Moons (original title: And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees), A Little Knowledge, and Stolen Faces, and such well-received shorter works of sf as "Death and Designation Among the Asadi," the Urban Nucleus series, and "The House of Compassionate Sharers." But---and almost secretly---Bishop has been developing himself as a writer of horror stories (his novel Stolen Faces is a fine example, an efficiently grim sf horror masterpiece). The following story is not science fiction, however, though it is efficiently grim where it has need to be. It features an idea that might have teased the imagination of a John Collier at his peak, and a vivid portrayal of characters and setting which should fire the envy of any contemporary novel, and that compassionate humanism that has become the hallmark in Bishop's fiction.
As she eased her Nova into the lane permitting access to the perimeter highway, Marilyn Odau reflected that the hardest time of year for her was the Christmas season. From late November to well into January her nerves were invariably as taut as harp strings. The traffic on the expressway---lane jumping vans and pickups, sleek sports cars, tailgating semis, and all the blurred, indistinguishable others---was no help, either. Even though she could see her hands on the wheel, trembling inside beige, leather-tooled gloves, her Nova seemed hardly to be under her control; instead, it was a piece of machinery given all its impetus and direction by an invisible slot in the concrete beneath it. Her illusion of control was exactly that---an illusion.
Looking quickly over her left shoulder, Marilyn Odau had to laugh at herself as she yanked the automobile around a bearded young man on a motorcycle. If your car's in someone else's control, why is it so damn hard to steer?
Nerves; balky Yuletide nerves.
Marilyn Odau was fifty-five; she had lived in this city---her city---ever since leaving Greenville during the first days of World War II to begin her own life and to take a job clerking at Satterwhite's. Ten minutes ago, before reaching the perimeter highway, she had passed through the heart of the city and driven beneath the great, gray, cracking backside of Satterwhite's (which was now a temporary warehouse for an electronics firm located in a suburban industrial complex). Like the heart of the city itself, Satterwhite's was dead---its great silver escalators, its pneumatic message tubes, its elevator bell tones, and its perfume-scented mezzanines as surely things of the past as . . . well, as Tojo, Tarawa Atoll, and a young marine named Jordan Burk. That was why, particularly at this time of year, Marilyn never glanced at the old department store as she drove beneath it on her way to Summerstone.
For the past two years she had been the manager of the Creighton's Corner Boutique at Summerstone Mall, the largest self-contained shopping facility in the five-county metropolitan area. Business had been shifting steadily, for well over a decade, from downtown to suburban and even quasi-rural commercial centers. And when a position had opened up for her at the new tri-level mecca bewilderingly dubbed Summerstone, Marilyn had shifted, too, moving from Creighton's original franchise near Capital Square to a second-level shop in an acre-square monolith sixteen miles to the city's northwest---a building more like a starship hangar than a shopping center.
Soon, she supposed, she ought also to shift residences. There were townhouses closer to Summerstone, after all, with names just as ersatz-elegant as that of the Brookmist complex in which she now lived: Chateau Royale, Springhaven, Tivoli, Smoke Glade, Eden Manor, Sussex Wood . . . There, she told herself, glancing sidelong at the Matterhorn Heights complex nestled below the highway to her left, its cheesebox-and-cardboard-shingle chalets distorted by a teepee of glaring window panes on a glass truck cruising abreast of her.
Living at Matterhorn Heights would have put Marilyn fifteen minutes closer to her job, but it would have meant enduring a gaudier lapse of taste than she had opted for at Brookmist. There were degrees of artificiality, she knew, and each person found his own level . . . Above her, a green and white highway sign indicated the Willowglen and Summerstone exits. Surprised as always by its sudden appearance, she wrestled the Nova into an off-ramp lane and heard behind her the inevitable blaring of horns.
Pack it in, she told the driver on her bumper---an expression she had learned from Jane Sidney, one of her employees at the boutique. Pack it in, laddie.
Intent on the traffic light at the end of the off-ramp, conscious too of the wetness under the arms of her pantsuit jacket, Marilyn managed to giggle at the incongruous feel of these words. In her rearview mirror she could see the angry features of a modishly long-haired young man squinting at her over the hood of a Le Mans---and it was impossible to imagine herself confronting him, outside their automobiles, with the imperative "Pack it in, laddie!" Absolutely impossible. All she could do was giggle at the thought and jab nervously at her clutch and brake pedals. Morning traffic---Christmas traffic---was bearable only if you remembered that impatience was a self-punishing sin.
At 8:50 she reached Summerstone and found a parking place near a battery of army-green trash bins. A security guard was passing in mall employees through a second-tier entrance near Montgomery Ward's; and when Marilyn showed him her ID card, he said almost by way of ritual shibboleth, "Have a good day, Miss Odau." Then, with a host of people to whom she never spoke, she was on the enclosed promenade of machined wooden beams and open carpeted shops. As always, the hour could have been high noon or twelve midnight---there was no way to tell. The season was identifiable only because of the winter merchandise on display and the Christmas decorations suspended overhead or twining like tinfoil helixes through the central shaft of the mall. The smells of ammonia, confectionery goods, and perfumes commingled piquantly, even at this early hour, but Marilyn scarcely noticed.
Managing Creighton's Corner had become her life, the enterprise for which she lived; and because Summerstone contained Creighton's Corner, she went into it daily with less philosophical scrutiny than a coal miner gives his mine. Such speculation, Marilyn knew from thirty-five years on her own, was worse than useless---it imprisoned you in doubts and misapprehensions largely of your own devising. She was glad to be but a few short steps from Creighton's, glad to feel her funk disintegrating beneath the prospect of an efficient day at work . . .
"Good morning, Ms. Odau," Jane Sidney said as she entered Creighton's.
"Good morning. You look nice today."
The girl was wearing a green and gold jersey, a kind of gaucho skirt of imitation leather, and suede boots. Her hair was not much longer than a military cadet's. She always pronounced "Ms." as a muted buzz---either out of feminist conviction or, more likely, her fear that "Miss" would betray her more-than-middle-aged superior as unmarried . . . as if that were a shameful thing in one of Marilyn's generation. Only Cissy Campbell of the three girls who worked in the boutique could address her as "Miss Odau" without looking flustered. Or maybe Marilyn imagined this. She didn't try to plumb the personal feelings of her employees, and they in turn didn't try to cast her in the role of a mother confessor. They liked her well enough, though. Everyone got along.
"I'm working for Cissy until three, Ms. Odau. We've traded shifts. Is that all right?" Jane followed her toward her office.
"Of course it is. What about Terri?"
The walls were mercury-colored mirrors; there were mirrors overhead. Racks of swirl-patterned jerseys, erotically tailored jumpsuits, and flamboyant scarves were reiterated around them like the refrain of a toothpaste or cola jingle. Macramé baskets with plastic flowers and exotic bath soaps hung from the ceiling. Black-light and op-art posters went in and out on the walls, even though they never moved---and looking up at one of them, Marilyn had a vision of Satterwhite's during the austere days of 1942-43, when the war had begun to put money in people's pockets for the first time since the twenties but it was unpatriotic to spend it. She remembered the Office of Price Administration and ration-stamp booklets. Because of leather shortages, you couldn't have more than two pairs of shoes a year . . .
Jane was looking at her fixedly.
"I'm sorry, Jane. I didn't hear you."
"I said Terri'll be here at twelve, but she wants to work all day tomorrow, too, if that's okay. There aren't any Tuesday classes at City College, and she wants to get in as many hours as she can before final exams come up." Terri was still relatively new to the boutique.
"Of course, that's fine. Won't you be here, too?"
"Yes, ma'am. In the afternoon."
"Okay, good . . . I've got some order forms to look over and a letter or two to write." She excused herself and went behind a tie-dyed curtain into an office as plain and practical as Creighton's decor was peacockish and orgiastic. She sat down to a small metal filing cabinet with an audible moan---a moan at odds with the satisfaction she felt in getting down to work. What was wrong with her? She knew, she knew, dear God wasn't she perfectly aware . . . Marilyn pulled her gloves off. As her fingers went to the onion-skin order forms and bills of lading in her files, she was surprised by the deep oxblood color of her nails. Why? She had worn this polish for a week, since well before Thanksgiving . . .
The answer of course was Maggie Hood. During the war Marilyn and Maggie had roomed together in a clapboard house not far from Satterwhite's, a house with two poplars in the small front yard but not a single blade of grass. Maggie had worked for the telephone company (an irony, since they had no phone in their house), and she always wore oxblood nail polish. Several months before the Axis surrender, Maggie married a 4-F telephone-company official and moved to Mobile. The little house on Greenbriar Street was torn down during the mid-fifties to make way for an office building. Maggie Hood and oxblood nail polish---
Recollections that skirted the heart of the matter, Marilyn knew. She shook them off and got down to business.
Tasteful rock was playing in the boutique, something from Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life---Jane had flipped the music on. Through it Marilyn could hear the morning herds passing along the concourses and interior bridges of Summerstone. Sometimes it seemed that half the population of the state was out there. Twice the previous Christmas season the structural vibrations had become so worrisome that security guards were ordered to keep new shoppers out until enough people had left to avert the danger of collapse. That was the rumor, anyway, and Marilyn almost believed it. Summerstone's several owners, on the other hand, claimed that the doors had been locked simply to minimize crowding. But how many times did sane business people turn away customers solely to "minimize crowding"?
Marilyn helped Jane wait on shoppers until noon. Then Terri Bready arrived, and she went back to her office. Instead of eating she checked outstanding accounts and sought to square away records. She kept her mind wholly occupied with the minutiae of running her business for its semi-retired owners, Charlie and Agnes Creighton. It didn't bother her at all that they were ten years younger than she, absentee landlords with a condominium apartment on the gulf coast. She did a good job for them, working evenings as well as lunch hours, and the Creightons were smart enough to realize her worth. They trusted her completely and paid her well.
At one o'clock Terri Bready stepped through Marilyn's curtain and made an apologetic noise in her throat.
"Hey, Terri. What is it?"
"There's a salesman out here who'd like to see you." Bending a business card between her thumb and forefinger, the girl gave an odd baritone chuckle. Tawny-haired and lean, she was a freshman drama major who made the most fashionable clothes look like off-the-racks from a Salvation Army outlet. But she was sweet---so sweet that Marilyn had been embarrassed to hear her discussing with Cissy Campbell the boy she was living with.
"Is he someone we regularly buy from, Terri?"
"I don't know. I don't know who we buy from."
"Is that his card?"
"Yeah, it is."
"Why don't you let me see it, then?"
"Oh. Okay. Sorry, Ms. Odau. Here." Trying to hand it over, the girl popped the card out of her fingers; it struck Marilyn's chest and fluttered into her lap. "Sorry again. Sheesh, I really am." Terri chuckled her baritone chuckle, and Marilyn, smiling briefly, retrieved the card.
It said: Nicholas Anson / Products Consultant / Sales Representative / Latter-day Novelties / Los Angeles, California. Also on the card were two telephone numbers and a zip code.
Terri Bready wet her lips with her tongue. "He's a hunk, Miss Odau, I'm not kidding you---he's as pretty as a naked Swede."
"Is that right? How old?"
"Oh, he's too old for me. He's got to be in his thirties at least."
"Decrepit dear."
"Oh, he's not decrepit, any. But I'm out of the market. You know."
"Off the auction block?"
"Yes, ma'am. Yeah."
"What's he selling? We don't often work through independent dealers---the Creightons don't, that is---and I've never heard of this firm."
"Jane says she thinks he's been hitting the stores up and down the mall for the last couple days. Don't know what he's pushing. He's got a samples case, though---and really the most incredible kiss-me eyes."
"If he's been here two days, I'm surprised he hasn't already sold those."
"Do you want me to send him back? He's too polite to burst in. He's been calling Jane and me Ms. Sidney and Ms. Bready, like that."
"Don't send him back yet." Marilyn had a premonition, almost a fear. "Let me take a look at him first."
Terri Bready barked a laugh and had to cover her mouth. "Hey, Ms. Odau, I wouldn't talk him up like Robert Redford and then send you a bald frog. I mean, why would I?"
"Go on, Terri. I'll talk to him in a couple of minutes."
"Yeah. Okay." The girl was quickly gone, and at the curtain's edge Marilyn looked out. Jane was waiting on a heavy-set woman in a fire-engine-red pantsuit, and just inside the boutique's open threshold the man named Nicholas Anson was watching the crowds and counter-crowds work through each other like grim armies.
Anson's hair was modishly long, and he reminded Marilyn a bit of the man who had grimaced at her on the off-ramp. Then, however, the sun had been ricocheting off windshields, grilles, and hood ornaments, and any real identification of the man in the Le Mans with this composed sales representative was impossible, if not downright pointless. A person in an automobile was not the same person you met on common ground . . . Now Terri was approaching this Anson fellow, and he was turning toward the girl.
Marilyn Odau felt her fingers tighten on the curtain. Already she had taken in the man's navy-blue leisure jacket and, beneath it, his silky shirt the color and pattern of a cumulus-filled sky. Already she had noted the length and the sun-flecked blondness of his hair, the etched-out quality of his profile . . . But when he turned, the only thing apparent to her was Anson's resemblance to a dead marine named Jordan Burk, even though he was older than Jordan had lived to be. Ten or twelve years older, at the very least. Jordan Burk had died at twenty-four taking an amphibious tractor ashore at Betio, a tiny island near Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Nicholas Anson, however, had crow's feet at the corners of his eyes and glints of silver in his sideburns. These things didn't matter much---the resemblance was still a heartbreaking one, and Marilyn found that she was staring at Anson like a star-struck teenager. She let the curtain fall.
This has happened before, she told herself. In a world of four billion people, over a period of thirty-five years, it isn't surprising that you should encounter two or more young men who look like each other. For God's sake, Odau, don't go to pieces over the sight of still another man who reminds you of Jordan---a stranger from Los Angeles who in just a couple of years is going to be old enough to be the father of your forever-twenty-four Jordan darling.
It's the season, Marilyn protested, answering her relentlessly rational self. It's especially cruel that this should happen now.
It happens all the time. You're just more susceptible at this time of year. Odau, you haven't outgrown what amounts to a basically childish syndrome, and it's beginning to look as if you never will.
Old enough in just a couple of years to be Jordan's father? He's old enough right now to be Jordan's and my child. Our child.
Marilyn could feel tears welling up from some ancient spring; susceptible, she had an unexpected mental glimpse of the upstairs bedroom in her Brookmist townhouse, the bedroom next to hers, the bedroom she had made a sort of shrine. In its corner, a white wicker bassinet . . .
That's enough, Odau!
"That's enough!" she said aloud, clenching a fist at her throat.
The curtain drew back, and she was again face to face with Terri Bready. "I'm sorry, Ms. Odau. You talkin' to me?"
"No, Terri. To myself."
"He's a neat fella, really. Says he played drums for a rock band in Haight-Ashbury once upon a time. Says he was one of the original hippies. He's been straight since Nixon resigned, he says---his faith was restored . . . Whyn't you talk to him, Ms. Odau? Even if you don't place an order with him, he's an interesting person to talk to. Really. He says he's heard good things about you from other managers on the mall. He thinks our place is just the sort of place to handle one of his products."
"I bet he does. You certainly got a lot out of him in the short time he's been here."
"Yeah. All my doing, too. I thought maybe, being from Los Angeles, he knew somebody in Hollywood. I sorta told him I was a drama major. You know . . . Let me send him back, okay?"
"All right. Send him back."
Marilyn sat down at her desk. Almost immediately Nicholas Anson came through the curtain with his samples case. They exchanged polite greetings, and she was struck again by his resemblance to Jordan. Seeing him at close range didn't dispel the illusion of an older Jordan Burk, but intensified it. This was the reverse of the way it usually happened, and when he put his case on her desk, she had to resist a real urge to reach out and touch his hand.
No wonder Terri had been snowed. Anson's presence was a mature and amiable one, faintly sexual in its undertones. Haight-Ashbury? No, that was wrong. Marilyn couldn't imagine this man among Jesus freaks and flower children, begging small change, the ankles of his grubby blue jeans frayed above a pair of falling-to-pieces sandals. Altogether wrong. Thank God, he had found his calling. He seemed born to move gracefully among boutiques and front-line department stores, making recommendations, giving of his smile. Was it possible that he had once turned his gaunt young face upward to the beacon of a strobe and howled his heart out to the rhythms of his own acid drumming? Probably. A great many things had changed since the sixties . . .
"You're quite far afield," Marilyn said, to be saying something. "I've never heard of Latter-Day Novelties."
"It's a consortium of independent business people and manufacturers," Anson responded. "We're trying to expand our markets, go nationwide. I'm not really used to acting as---what does it say on my card?---a sales representative. My first job---my real love---is being a products consultant. If your company is a novelties company, it has to have novelties, products that are new and appealing and unusual. Prior to coming East on this trip, my principal responsibility was making product suggestions. That seems to be my forte, and that's what I really like to do."
"Well, I think you'll be an able enough sales representative, too."
"Thank you, Miss Odau. Still, I always feel a little hesitation opening this case and going to bat for what it contains. There's an element of egotism in going out and pushing your own brainchildren on the world."
"There's an element of egotism in almost every human enterprise. I don't think you need to worry."
"I suppose not."
"Why don't you show me what you have?"
Nicholas Anson undid the catches on his case. "I've only brought you a single product. It was my judgment you wouldn't be interested in celebrity T-shirts, cartoon-character paperweights---products of that nature. Have I judged fairly, Miss Odau?"
"We've sold novelty T-shirts and jerseys, Mr. Anson, but the others sound like gift-shop gimcracks and we don't ordinarily stock that sort of thing. Clothing, cosmetics, toiletries, a few handicraft or decorator items if they correlate well with the Creightons' image of their franchise."
"Okay." Anson removed a glossy cardboard package from his case and handed it across the desk to Marilyn. The kit was blue and white, with two triangular windows in the cardboard. Elegant longhand lettering on the package spelled out the words Liquid Sheers. Through one of the triangular windows she could see a bottle of mahogany-colored liquid, a small foil tray, and a short-bristled brush with a grip on its back; through the other window was visible an array of colored pencils.
" 'Liquid Sheers'?"
"Yes, ma'am. The idea struck me only about a month ago, I drew up a marketing prospectus, and the Latter-Day consortium rushed the concept into production so quickly that the product's already selling quite well in a number of West Coast boutiques. Speed is one of the keynotes of our company's early success. By cutting down the elapsed time between concept visualization and actual manufacture of the product, we've been able to stay ahead of most of our California competitors . . . If you like Liquid Sheers, we have the means to keep you in a good supply."
Marilyn was reading the instructions on the kit. Her attention refused to stay fixed on the words and they kept slipping away from her. Anson's matter-of-fact monologue about his company's business practices didn't help her concentration. She gave up and set the package down.
"But what are? These Liquid Sheers?"
"They're a novel substitute---a decorator substitute---for pantyhose or nylons, Miss Odau. A woman mixes a small amount of the Liquid Sheer solution with water and rubs or paints it on her legs. The pencils can be used to draw on seams or color in some of the applicator designs we've included with the kit---butterflies, flowers, that sort of thing. Placement's up to the individual . . .We have kits for dark-as well as light-complexioned women, and the application process takes much less time than you might expect. It's fun, too, some of our products-testers have told us. Several boutiques have even reported increased sales of shorts, abbreviated skirts, and short culotte outfits once they began stocking Liquid Sheers. This, I ought to add, right here at the beginning of winter." Anson stopped, his spiel dutifully completed and his smile expectant.
"They're bottled stockings," Marilyn said.
"Yes, ma'am. I suppose you could phrase it that way."
"We sold something very like this at Satterwhite's during the war," Marilyn went on, careful not to look at Anson. "Without the design doodads and the different colored pencils, at any rate. Women painted on their stockings and set the seams with mascara pencils."
Anson laughed. "To tell you the truth, Miss Odau, that's where I got part of my original idea. I rummage old mail-order catalogues and the ads in old magazines. Of course, Liquid Sheers also derive a little from the body-painting fad of the sixties---but in our advertising we plan to lay heavy stress on their affinity to the World War II era."
"Why?"
"Nostalgia sells. Girls who don't know World War II from the Peloponnesian War---girls who've worn seamless stockings all their lives, if they've worn stockings at all---are painting on Liquid Sheers and setting grease-pencil seams because they've seen Lauren Bacall and Ann Sheridan in Bogart film revivals and it makes them feel vaguely heroic. It's amazing, Miss Odau. In the last few years we've had sales and entertainment booms featuring nostalgia for the twenties, the thirties, the fifties, and the sixties. The forties---if you except Bogart---have been pretty much bypassed, and Liquid Sheers purposely play to that era while recalling some of the art-deco creations of the Beatles period, too."
Marilyn met Anson's gaze and refused to fall back from it. "Maybe the forties have been 'pretty much bypassed' because it's hard to recall World War II with unfettered joy."
"I don't really buy that," Anson replied, earnest and undismayed. "The twenties gave us Harding and Coolidge, the thirties the Great Depression, the fifties the Cold War, and the sixties Vietnam. There's no accounting for what people are going to remember with fondness---but I can assure you that Liquid Sheers are doing well in California."
Marilyn pushed her chair back on its coasters and stood up. "I sold bottled stockings, Mr. Anson. I painted them on my legs. You couldn't pay me to use a product like that again---even with colored pencils and butterflies thrown in gratis."
Seemingly out of deference to her Anson also stood. "Oh, no, Miss Odau---I wouldn't expect you to. This is a product aimed at adolescent girls and post-adolescent young women. We fully realize it's a fad product. We expect booming sales for a year and then a rapid tapering off. But it won't matter---our overhead on Liquid Sheers is low and when sales have bottomed out we'll drop 'em and move on to something else. You understand the transience of items like this."
"Mr. Anson, do you know why bottled stockings existed at all during the Second World War?"
"Yes, ma'am. There was a nylon shortage."
"The nylon went into the war effort---parachutes, I don't know what else." She shook her head, trying to remember. "All I know is that you didn't see them as often as you'd been used to. They were an important commodity on the domestic black market, just like alcohol and gasoline and shoes."
Anson's smile was sympathetic, but he seemed to know he was defeated. "I guess you're not interested in Liquid Sheers?"
"I don't see how I could have them on my shelves, Mr. Anson."
He reached across her desk, picked up the kit he had given her, and dropped it in his samples case. When he snapped its lid down, the reports of the catches were like distant gunshots. "Maybe you'll let me try you with something else, another time."
"You don't have anything else with you?"
"To tell you the truth, I was so certain you'd like these I didn't bring another product along. I've placed Liquid Sheers with another boutique on the first level, though, and sold a few things to gift and novelty stores. Not a complete loss, this trip." He paused at the curtain. "Nice doing business with you, Miss Odau."
"I'll walk you to the front."
Together they strolled through an aisleway of clothes racks and toiletry shelves over a mulberry carpet. Jane and Terri were busy with customers . . . Why am I being so solicitous? Marilyn asked herself. Anson didn't look a bit broken by her refusal, and Liquid Sheers were definitely offensive to her---she wanted nothing to do with them. Still, any rejection was an intimation of failure, and Marilyn knew how this young man must feel. It was a shame her visitor would have to plunge himself back into the mail's motivelessly surging bodies on a note, however small, of defeat. He would be lost to her, borne to oblivion on the tide . . .
"I'm sorry, Jordan," she said. "Please do try us again with something else."
The man beside her flinched and cocked his head. "You called me Jordan, Miss Odau."
Marilyn covered the lower portion of her face with her hand. She spread her fingers and spoke through them. "Forgive me." She dropped her hand. "Actually, I'm surprised it didn't happen before now. You look very much like someone I once knew. The resemblance is uncanny."
"You did say Jordan, didn't you?"
"Yes, I guess I did---that was his name."
"Ah." Anson seemed on the verge of some further comment but all he came out with was, "Goodbye, Miss Odau. Hope you have a good Christmas season," after which he set himself adrift and disappeared in the crowd.
The tinfoil decorations in the mail's central shaft were like columns of a strange scarlet coral, and Marilyn studied them intently until Terri Bready spoke her name and returned her to the present. She didn't leave the boutique until ten that evening.
Tuesday, ten minutes before noon.
He wore the same navy-blue leisure jacket, with an open collar shirt of gentle beige and bold indigo. He carried no samples case, and speaking with Cissy Campbell and then Terri, he seemed from the vantage of Marilyn's office, her curtain partially drawn back, less certain of his ground. Marilyn knew a similar uncertainty---Anson's presence seemed ominous, a challenge. She put a hand to her hair, then rose and went through the shop to meet him.
"You didn't bring me something else to look at, did you?"
"No; no, I didn't." He revealed his empty hands. "I didn't come on business at all . . . unless . . ." He let his voice trail away. "You haven't changed your mind about Liquid Sheers, have you?"
This surprised her. Marilyn could hear the stiffness in her voice. "I'm afraid I haven't."
Anson waved a hand. "Please forget that. I shouldn't have brought it up---because I didn't come on business." He raised his palm, like a Boy Scout pledging his honor. "I was hoping you'd have lunch with me."
"Why?"
"Because you seem simpatico---that's the Spanish word for the quality you have. And it would be nice to sit down and talk with someone congenial about something other than Latter-Day Novelties. I've been on the road a week."
Out of the corner of her eye she could see Terri Bready straining to interpret her response to this proposal. Cissy Campbell, Marilyn's black clerk, had stopped racking a new supply of puff-sleeved blouses, and Marilyn had a glimpse of orange eyeliner and iridescent lipstick---the girl's face was that of an alert and self-confident panther.
"I don't usually eat lunch, Mr. Anson."
"Make an exception today. Not a word about business, I promise you."
"Go with him," Terri urged from the cash computer. "Cissy and I can take care of things here, Miss Odau." Then she chuckled.
"Excellent advice," Anson said. "If I were you, I'd take it."
"Okay," Marilyn agreed. "So long as we don't leave Summerstone and don't stay gone too long. Let me get my bag."
Inevitably, they ended up at the McDonald's downstairs---yellow and orange wall paneling, trash bins covered with wood-grained contact paper, rows of people six and seven deep at the shiny metal counters. Marilyn found a two-person table and eased herself into one of the attached, scoop-shaped plastic chairs. It took Anson almost fifteen minutes to return with two cheeseburgers and a couple of soft drinks, which he nearly spilled squeezing his way out of the crowd to their tiny table.
"Thank God for plastic tops. Is it always like this?"
"Worse at Christmas. Aren't there any McDonalds in Los Angeles?"
"Nothing but. But it's three whole weeks till Christmas. Have these people no piety?"
"None."
"It's the same in Los Angeles."
They ate. While they were eating, Anson asked that she use his first name and she in turn felt obligated to tell him hers. Now they were Marilyn and Nicholas, mother and son on an outing to McDonald's. Except that his attention to her wasn't filial---it was warm and direct, with a wooer's deliberately restrained urgency. His manner reminded her again of Jordan Burk, and at one point she realized that she had heard nothing at all he'd said for the last several minutes. Listen to this man, she cautioned herself. Come back to the Here and Now. After that, she managed better.
He told her that he'd been born in the East, raised single-handedly by his mother until her remarriage in the late forties, and, after his new family's removal to Encino, educated entirely on the West Coast. He told her of his abortive career as a rock drummer, his early resistance to the war in Southeast Asia, and his difficulties with the United States military.
"I had no direction at all until my thirty-second birthday, Marilyn. Then I discovered where my talent lay and I haven't looked back since. I tell you, if I had the sixties to do over again---well, I'd gladly do them. I'd finagle myself a place in an Army Reserve unit, be a weekend soldier, and get right down to products-consulting on a full-time basis. If I'd done that in '65, I'd probably be retired by now."
"You have plenty of time. You're still young."
"I've just turned thirty-six."
"You look less."
"But not much. Thanks anyway, though---it's nice to hear."
"Did you fight in Vietnam?" Marilyn asked on impulse.
"I went there in '68. I don't think you could say I fought. I was one of the oldest enlisted men in my unit, with a history of antiwar activity and draft-card burning. I'm going to tell you something, though---once I got home and turned myself around, I wept when Saigon fell. That's the truth---I wept. Saigon was some city, if you looked at it right."
Mentally counting back, Marilyn realized that Nicholas was the right age to be her and Jordan's child. Exactly. In early December, 1942, she and Jordan had made their last farewells in the little house on Greenbriar Street . . . She attached no shame to this memory, had no regrets about it. The shame had come twenty-six years later---the same year, strangely enough, that Nicholas Anson was reluctantly pulling a tour of duty in Vietnam. The white wicker bassinet in her upstairs shrine was a perpetual reminder of this shame, of her secret monstrousness, and yet she could not dispose of the evidence branding her a freak, if only to herself, for the simple reason that she loved it. She loved it because she had once loved Jordan Burk . . . Marilyn put her cheeseburger down. There was no way---no way at all---that she was going to be able to finish eating.
"Are you all right?"
"I need to get back to the boutique."
"Let me take you out to dinner this evening. You can hardly call this a relaxed and unhurried get-together. I'd like to take you somewhere nice. I'd like to buy you a snifter of brandy and a nice rare cut of prime rib."
"Why?"
"You use that word like a stiletto, Marilyn. Why not?"
"Because I don't go out. My work keeps me busy. And there's a discrepancy in our ages that embarrasses me. I don't know whether your motives are commercial, innocently social, or . . .Go ahead, then---laugh." She was wadding up the wrapper from her cheeseburger, squeezing the paper tighter and tighter, and she could tell that her face was crimsoning.
"I'm not laughing," Nicholas said. "I don't either---know what my motives are, I mean. Except that they're not blameworthy or unnatural."
"I'd better go." She eased herself out of the underslung plastic chair and draped her bag over her shoulder.
"When can I see you?" His eyes were full of remonstrance and appeal. "The company wants me here another week or so---problems with a delivery. I don't know anyone in this city. I'm living out of a suitcase. And I've never in my life been married, if that's worrying you."
"Maybe I should worry because you haven't."
Nicholas smiled at her, a self-effacing charmer's smile. "When?"
"Wednesdays and Sundays are the only nights I don't work. And tomorrow's Wednesday."
"What time?"
"I don't know," she said distractedly. "Call me. Or come by the boutique. Or don't. Whatever you want."
She stepped into the aisle beside their table and quickly worked her way through the crowd to the capsule-lift outside McDonald's. Her thoughts were jumbled, and she hoped feebly---willing the hope---that Nicholas Anson would simply disappear from her life.
The next morning, before any customers had been admitted to the mall, Marilyn Odau went down to Summerstone's first level and walked past the boutique whose owner had elected to sell Nicholas's Liquid Sheers. The kits were on display in two colorful pyramids just inside the shop's entrance.
That afternoon a leggy, dark-haired girl came into Creighton's Corner to browse, and when she let her fur-trimmed coat fall open Marilyn saw a small magenta rose above her right knee. The girl's winter tan had been rubbed or brushed on, and there were magenta seams going up the backs of her legs. Marilyn didn't like the effect, but she understood that others might not find it unattractive.
At six o'clock Nicholas Anson showed up in sports clothes and an expensive deerskin coat. Jane Sidney and Cissy Campbell left, and Marilyn had a mall attendant draw the shop's movable grating across its entrance. Despite the early Wednesday closing time, people were still milling about as shopkeepers transacted last-minute business or sought to shoo away their last heel-dragging customers. This was the last Wednesday evening before Christmas that Summerstone would be closed.
Marilyn began walking, and Nicholas fell in beside her like an assigned escort at a military ball. "Did you think I wasn't coming?"
"I didn't know. What now?"
"Dinner."
"I'd like to go home first. To freshen up."
"I'll drive you."
"I have a car."
"Lock it and let it sit. This place is about as well guarded as Fort Knox. I've rented a car from the service at the airport."
Marilyn didn't want to see Nicholas Anson's rental car. "Let yours sit. You can drive me home in mine." He started to protest. "It's either that or an early good-bye. I worry about my car."
So he drove her to Brookmist in her '68 Nova. The perimeter highway was yellow-gray under its ghostly lamps and the traffic was bewilderingly swift. Twilight had already edged over into evening---a drear winter evening. The Nova's gears rattled even when Nicholas wasn't touching the stick on the steering column.
"I'm surprised you don't have a newer car. Surely you can afford one."
"I could, I suppose, but I like this one. It's easy on gas, and during the oil embargo I felt quite smart . . . What's the matter with it?"
"Nothing. It's just that I'd imagined you in a bigger or a sportier one. I shouldn't have said anything." He banged his temple with the heel of his right hand. "I'm sorry, Marilyn."
"Don't apologize. Jane Sidney asked me the same thing one day . . . I told her that my parents were dirt-poor during the Depression and that as soon as I was able to sock any money away for them, that's what I did. It's a habit I haven't been able to break---even today, with my family dead and no real financial worries."
They rode in silence beneath the haloed lamps on the overpass and the looming gray shadow of Satterwhite's.
"A girl came into the boutique this afternoon wearing Liquid Sheers," Marilyn said. "It does seem your product's selling."
"Hooo," Nicholas replied, laughing mirthlessly. "Just remember that I didn't bring that up, okay?"
They left the expressway and drove down several elm-lined residential streets. The Brookmist complex of townhouses came into the Nova's headlights like a photographic image emerging from a wash of chemicals, everything gauzy and indistinct at first. Marilyn directed Nicholas to the community carport against a brick wall behind one of the row of houses, and he parked the car. They walked hunch-shouldered in the cold to a tall redwood fence enclosing a concrete patio not much bigger than a phone booth. Marilyn pushed the gate aside, let the latch fall behind them, and put her key into the lock on the kitchen door. Two or three flower pots with drooping, unrecognizable plants in them sat on a peeling windowsill beside the door.
"I suppose you think I could afford a nicer place to live, too."
"No, but you do give yourself a long drive to work."
"This place is paid for, Nicholas. It's mine."
She left him sitting under a table lamp with several old copies of McCall's and Cosmopolitan in front of him on her stonework coffee table and went upstairs to change clothes. She came back down wearing a long-sleeved black jumpsuit with a peach-colored sweater and a single polished-stone pendant at her throat. The heat had kicked on, and the downstairs was cozily warm.
Nicholas stood up. "You've set things up so that I'm going to have to drive your car and you're going to have to navigate. I hope you'll let me buy the gas."
"Why couldn't I drive you and just sit back and enjoy the ride?" Her voice was tight again, with uneasiness and mild disdain. For a products consultant Nicholas didn't seem quite as imaginative as he ought. Liquid Sheers were a rip-off of an idea born out of necessity during world War II, and the "novelties" he'd mentioned in his spiel on Monday were for the most part variations on the standard fare of gift shops and book stores. He wasn't even able to envision her doing the driving while he relaxed and played the role of a passenger. And he was the one who'd come to maturity during the sixties, that fabled decade of egalitarian upheaval and heightened social awareness . . .
"The real point, Marilyn, is that I wanted to do something for you. But you've taken the evening out of my hands."
All right, she could see that. She relented. "Nicholas, I'm not trying to stage-manage this---this date, if that's what it is. I was surprised that you came by the shop. I wasn't ready. And I'm not ready to go out this evening, either---I'm cold and I'm tired. I have a pair of steaks and a bottle of cold duck in the refrigerator, and enough fixings for a salad. Let me make dinner."
"A pair of steaks?"
"There's a grocery store off the perimeter highway that stays open night and day. I stopped there last night after work."
"But you didn't think I'd come by today?"
"No. Not really. And despite buying the steaks, I'm not sure I really wanted you to. I know that sounds backwards somehow, but it's the truth."
Nicholas ignored this. "But you'll have to cook. I wanted to spare you that. I wanted to do something for you."
"Spare me another trip down the highway in my car and the agony of waiting for service in one of this city's snooty night spots."
He gave in, and she felt kindlier toward him. They ate at the coffee table in the living room, sitting on the floor in their stocking feet and listening to an FM radio station. They talked cursorily about sports and politics and movies, which neither of them was particularly interested in anymore; and then, because they had both staked their lives to it, Marilyn lifted the taboo that Nicholas had promised to observe and they talked business. They didn't talk Liquid Sheers or profit margins or tax shelters, they talked about the involvement of their feelings with what they were doing and the sense of satisfaction that they derived from their work. That was common ground, and the evening passed---as Jane Sidney might have put it---"like sixty."
They were finishing the bottle of cold duck. Nicholas shifted positions, catching his knees with his right arm and rocking back a little.
"Marilyn?"
"Mmm?"
"You would never have let me drive you over here if I hadn't reminded you of this fellow you once knew, would you? This fellow named Jordan? Tell me the truth. No bet-hedging."
Her uneasiness returned. "I don't know."
"Yes, you do. Your answer won't hurt my feelings. I'd like to think that now that you know me a little better my resemblance to this person doesn't matter anymore---that you like me for myself." He waited.
"Okay, then. You're right."
"I'm right," he echoed her dubiously.
"I wouldn't have let you bring me home if you hadn't looked like Jordan. But now that I know you a little better it doesn't make any difference."
Not much, Marilyn told herself. At least I've stopped putting you in a marine uniform and trimming back the hair over your ears . . . She felt a quiet tenderness for both men, the dead Jordan and the boyish Nicholas Anson who in many ways seemed younger than Jordan ever had . . . That's because Jordan was almost three years older than you, Odau, and Nicholas is almost twenty years younger. Think a little.
The young man who resembled Jordan Burk drained his glass and hoisted himself nimbly off the floor.
"I'm staying at the Holiday Inn near the airport," he said. "Let me call a cab so you won't have to get out again."
"Cabs aren't very good about answering night calls anymore. The drivers are afraid to come."
"I hate for you to have to drive me, Marilyn." His look was expectant, and she hated to disappoint him.
"Why don't you just spend the night here?" she said.
They went upstairs together, and she was careful to close the door to the bedroom containing the wicker bassinet before following him into her own. They undressed in the greenish light sifting through her curtains from the arc lamp in the elm trees. Her heart raced. Then his body covered its beating, and afterwards she lay staring wide-eyed and bemused at her acoustic ceiling panels as he slept beside her with a hand on her hip. Then she fell asleep too, and woke when her sleeping mind noted that his hand was gone, and sat up to discover that Nicholas was no longer there. The wind in the leafless elms was making a noise like angry surf.
"Nick!" she called.
He didn't answer.
She swung her feet to the carpet, put on her gown, and found him standing in a pair of plaid boxer shorts beside the wicker bassinet. He had put on a desk lamp, and its glow made a pool of light that contained and illuminated everything in that corner of the room. There was no doubt that he had discovered the proof of her monstrousness there, even if he didn't know what it meant.
Instead of screaming or flying at him like a drunken doxy, she sank to the floor in the billow of her dressing gown, shamefully conscious of her restraint and too well satisfied by Nicholas's snooping to be shocked by it. If she hadn't wanted this to happen, she would never have let him come. Or she would have locked the door to her shrine. Or she would have murdered Nicholas in the numb sleep of his fulfillment. Any number of things. But this was what she had wanted.
Confession and surcease.
"I was looking for the bathroom," Nicholas said. "I didn't know where the upstairs bathroom was. But when I saw the baby bed . . . well, I didn't know why you'd have a baby bed and---" He broke off.
"Don't explain, Nicholas." She gave him an up-from-under look and wondered what her own appearance must suggest. Age, promiscuousness, dissolution? You grew old, that you couldn't stop. But the others . . . those were lies. She wanted confession and surcease, that was all, and he was too intent on the bassinet to escape giving them to her, to see how downright old she could look at two in the morning. Consumed by years. Consumed by that which life itself is nourished by. Just one of a world of consumer goods.
Nicholas lifted something from the bassinet. He held it in the palm of one hand. "What is this?" he asked. "Marilyn . . .?"
"Lithopedion," she said numbly. "The medical term is lithopedion. And lithopedion is the word I use when I want to put myself at a distance from it. With you here, that's what I think I want to do---put myself at a distance from it. I don't know. Do you understand?"
He stared at her blankly.
"It means stone child, Nicholas. I was delivered of it during the first week of December, 1968. A petrified fetus."
" 'Delivered of it'?"
"That's wrong. I don't know why I say that. It was removed surgically, cut from my abdominal cavity. Lithopedion." Finally she began to cry. "Bring him to me."
The unfamiliar man across from her didn't move. He held the stone child questioningly on his naked palm.
"Damn it, Nicholas, I asked you to bring him to me! He's mine! Bring him here!"
She put a fist to one of her eyes and drew it away to find black makeup on the back of her hand. Anson brought her the lithopedion, and she cradled it against the flimsy bodice of her dressing gown. A male child, calcified, with a tiny hand to the side of its face and its eyes forever shut; a fossil before it had ever really begun to live.
"This is Jordan's son," Marilyn told Anson, who was still standing over her. "Jordan's and mine."
"But how could that be? He died during the Pacific campaign."
Marilyn took no notice of either the disbelief in Anson's voice or his unaccountable knowledge of the circumstances of Jordan's death. "We had a honeymoon in the house on Greenbriar while Maggie was off for Christmas," she said, cradling her son. "Then Jordan had to return to his Division. In late March of '43 I collapsed while I was clerking at Satterwhite's. I was stricken with terrible cramps and I collapsed. Maggie drove me home to Greenville, and I was treated for intestinal flu. That was the diagnosis of a local doctor. I was in a coma for a while. I had to be forcibly fed. But after a while I got well again, and the manager of the notions department at Satterwhite's let me have my job back. I came back to the city."
"And twenty-five years later you had your baby?"
Even the nastiness that Anson imparted to this question failed to dismay her. "Yes. It was an ectopic pregnancy. The fetus grew not in my womb, you see, but in the right Fallopian tube---where there isn't much room for it to grow. I didn't know, I didn't suspect anything. There were no signs."
"Until you collapsed at Satterwhite's?"
"Dr. Rule says that was the fetus bursting the Fallopian tube and escaping into the abdominal cavity. I didn't know. I was twenty years old. It was diagnosed as the flu, and they put me in bed. I had a terrible time. I almost died. Later in the year, just before Thanksgiving, Jordan was killed at Tarawa, and I wished that I had died before him."
"He never lived to see his son," Anson said bitterly.
"No. I was frightened of doctors. I'm still frightened by them. But in 1965 I went to work for the Creightons at Capitol Square, and when I began having severe pains in my side a couple of years later, they made me go to Dr. Rule. They told me I'd have to give up my job if I didn't go." Marilyn brought a fold of her night gown around the calcified infant in her arms. "He discovered what was wrong. He delivered my baby. A lithopedion, he said . . . Do you know that there've been only a few hundred of them in all recorded history? That makes me a freak, all my love at the beck and call of a father and son who'll never be able to hear me." Marilyn's shoulders began to heave and her mouth fell slack to let the sounds of her grief work clear. "A freak," she repeated, sobbing.
"No more a freak than that thing's father."
She caught Anson's tone and turned her eyes up to see his face through a blur of tears.
"Its father was Jordan Burk," Anson told her. "My father was Jordan Burk. He even went so far as to marry my mother, Miss Odau. But when he discovered she was pregnant, he deserted her to enlist in a Division bound for combat. But he came here first and found another pretty piece to slip it to before he left. You."
"No," Marilyn said, her sobs suddenly stilled.
"Yes. My mother found Burk in this city and asked him to come back to her. He pleaded his overmastering love for another woman and refused. I was no enticement at all---I was an argument for remaining with you. Once during her futile visit here Burk took my mother into Satterwhite's by a side-street entrance and pointed you out to her from one of the mezzanines. The 'other woman' was prettier than she was, my mother said. She gave up and returned home. She permitted Burk to divorce her without alimony while he was in the Pacific. Don't ask me why. I don't know. Later my mother married a man named Samuel Anson and we moved with him to California . . . That thing in your arms, Miss Odau, is my half-brother."
It was impossible to cry now. Marilyn could hear her voice growing shrill and accusative. "That's why you asked me to lunch yesterday, isn't it? And why you asked me to dinner this evening. A chance for revenge. A chance to defile a memory you could have easily left untouched." She slapped Anson across the thigh, harmlessly. "I didn't know anything about your mother or you! I never suspected and I wasn't responsible! I'm not that kind of freak! Why have you set out to destroy both me and one of the few things in my life I've truly been able to cherish? I've just opened my soul to you---shown you my child and my shame! Why do you turn on me with a nasty 'truth' that doesn't have any significance for me and never can? What kind of vindictive jackal are you?"
Anson looked bewildered. He dropped onto his knees in front of her and tried to grip her shoulders. She shook his hands away.
"Marilyn, I'm sorry. I asked you to lunch because you called me Jordan, just like you let me drive you home because I resembled him."
" 'Marilyn'? What happened to 'Miss Odau'?"
"Never mind that." He tried to grip her shoulders again, and she shook him off. "Is my crime greater than yours? If I've spoiled your memory of the man who fathered me, it's because of the bitterness I've carried against him for as long as I can remember. My intention wasn't to hurt you. The 'other woman' that my mother always used to talk about, even after she married Anson, has always been an abstract to me. Revenge wasn't my motive. Curiosity, maybe. But not revenge. Please believe me."
"You have no imagination, Nicholas."
He looked at her searchingly. "What does that mean?"
"It means that if you'd only . . . Why should I explain this to you? I want you to get dressed and take my car and drive back to your motel. You can drop it off at Summerstone tomorrow when you come to get your rental car. Give the keys to one of the girls, I don't want to see you."
"Out into the cold, huh?"
"Please go, Nicholas. I might resort to screaming if you don't."
He rose, went into the other room, and a few minutes later descended the carpeted stairs without saying a word. Marilyn heard the flaring of her Nova's engine and a faint grinding of gears. After that, she heard nothing but the wind in the skeletal elm trees.
Without rising from the floor in her second upstairs bedroom, she sang a lullaby to the fossil child in her arms. "Dapples and grays," she crooned. "Pintos and bays, / All the pretty little horses . . ."
It was almost seven o'clock of the following evening before Anson returned her key case to Cissy Campbell at the cash computer up front. Marilyn didn't hear him or see him, and she was happy that she had been in her office when he at last came by. The episode was over. She hoped that she never saw Anson again, even if he was truly Jordan's son---and she believed that Anson understood her wishes.
Four hours later she pulled into the carport at Brookmist and crossed the parking lot to her small patio. The redwood gate was standing open. She pulled it shut behind her and set its latch. Then, inside, she felt briefly on the verge of swooning because there was an odor in the air like that of a man's cologne, a fragrance Anson had worn. For a moment she considered running back onto the patio and shouting for assistance. If Anson was upstairs waiting for her, she'd be a fool to go up there alone. She'd be a fool to go up there at all. Who could read the mind of an enigma like Anson?
He's not up there waiting for you, Marilyn told herself. He's been here and gone.
But why?
Your baby, Marilyn---see to your baby! Who knows what Anson might have done for spite? Who knows what sick destruction he might have---
"Oh, God!" Marilyn cried aloud. She ran up the stairs unmindful of the intensifying smell of cologne and threw the door to her second bedroom open. The wicker bassinet was not in its corner but in the very center of the room. She ran to it and clutched its side, very nearly tipping it over.
Unharmed, her and Jordan's tiny child lay on the satin bolster she had made for him.
Marilyn stood over the baby trying to catch her breath. Then she moved his bed back into the corner where it belonged. Not until the following morning was the smell of that musky cologne dissipated enough for her to forget that Anson---or someone---had been in her house. Because she had no evidence of theft, she rationalized that the odor had drifted into her apartment through the ventilation system from the townhouse next to hers.
The fact that the bassinet had been moved she conveniently put out of her mind.
Two weeks passed. Business at Creighton's Corner Boutique was brisk, and if Marilyn thought of Nicholas Anson at all, it was to console herself with the thought that by now he was back in Los Angeles. A continent away. But on the last weekend before Christmas, a Sunday, Jane Sidney told Marilyn that she thought she had seen Anson going through the center of one of Summerstone's largest department stores carrying his samples case. He looked tan and happy, Jane said.
"Good. But if he shows up here, I'm not in. If I'm waiting on a customer and he comes by, you or Terri will have to take over for me. Do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am."
But later that afternoon the telephone in her office rang, and when she answered it, the voice coming through the receiver was Anson's.
"Don't hang up, Miss Odau. I knew you wouldn't see me in person so I've been reduced to telephoning."
"What do you want?"
"Take a walk down the mall toward Davner's. Take a walk down the mall and meet me there."
"Why would I do that? I thought that's why you phoned."
Anson hung up.
You can wait forever then, she told him. The phone didn't ring again, and she busied herself with the onion-skin order forms and bills of lading. It was hard to pay attention to them, though.
At last she got up and told Jane she was going to stroll down the mall to stretch her legs. The crowd was shoulder to shoulder. She saw old people being pushed along in wheelchairs and, as if they were dogs or monkeys, small children in leather harnesses. There were girls whose legs had been painted with Liquid Sheers, and young men in Russian hats and low-heeled shoes who made no secret of their appreciation of these girls' legs. The benches lining the shaft at the center of the promenade were all occupied, and the people sitting on them looked fatigued and irritable.
A hundred or so yards ahead of her, in front of the jewelry store called Davner's, there was a Santa Claus and live reindeer.
She kept walking.
An odd display caught Marilyn's eye. She did a double-take and halted amid the traffic surging in both directions around her.
"Hey," a man said. He shoved past.
The shop window to her right was lined with eight or ten chalk-white effigies not much longer than her hand. They were eyeless. A small light played on them like the revolving blue strobe on a police vehicle. A sign in the window said Stone Children for Christmas, from Latter-Day Novelties. Marilyn put a hand to her mouth and made a gagging sound that no one else on the mall heeded. She spun around. It seemed that Summerstone itself was swaying under her. Across from the gift shop, on one of the display cases of the book store located there, were a dozen more of these minute statuettes. Tiny fingers, tiny feet, tiny eyeless faces. She looked down the collapsing mall and saw still another window displaying replicas of her and Jordan's baby. And in the windows where they weren't displayed, they were endlessly reflected.
Tiny fingers, tiny feet, tiny eyeless faces.
"Anson!" Marilyn shouted hoarsely, trying to find something to hang on to. "Anson, God damn you! God damn you!" She rushed on the gift-shop window and broke it with her fists. Then, not knowing what else to do, she withdrew her hands---with their worn oxblood nail polish---and held them bleeding above her head. A woman screamed, and the crowd fell back from her aghast.
In front of Davner's, only three or four stores away now, Nicholas Anson was stroking the head of a live reindeer. When he saw Marilyn, he gave her a friendly boyish smile.
THERE'S A LONG, LONG TRAIL A-WINDING by Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk's ghostly writings have included the novel Old House of Fear (1961), and the short story collection The Surly Sullen Bell (1962). He is a lecturer and writer on the topics of education and contemporary conservative thought, editor of the quarterly University Bookman, and writes the "From the Academy" column in National Review. He was lured back to fiction writing by the indefatigable Kirby McCauley, who used the following story to grace his anthology, Frights. And grace the book it did, walking away with a 1977 World Fantasy Award as Best Short Fiction. And no wonder . . .
Then he said unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offenses will come; but woe unto him, through whom they come!
It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.
---Luke xvii: 1, 2
Along the vast empty six-lane highway, the blizzard swept as if it meant to swallow all the sensual world. Frank Sarsfield, massive though he was, scudded like a heavy kite before that overwhelming wind. On his thick white hair the snow clotted and tried to form a cap; the big flakes so swirled round his Viking face that he scarcely could make out the barren country on either side of the road.
Somehow he must get indoors. Racing for sanctuary, the last automobile had swept unheeding past his thumb two hours ago, bound doubtless for the country town some twenty miles eastward. Westward, among the hills, the highway must be blocked by snowdrifts now. This was an unkind twelfth of January. "Blow, blow, thou Winter wind!" Twilight being almost upon him, soon he must find lodging or else freeze stiff by the roadside.
He had walked more than thirty miles that day. Having in his pocket the sum of twenty-nine dollars and thirty cents, he could have put up at either of the two motels he had passed, had they not been closed for the winter. Well, as always, he was decently dressed---a good wash-and-wear suit and a neat black overcoat. As always, he was shaven and clean and civil-spoken. Surely some farmer or villager would take him in, if he knocked with a ten-dollar bill in his fist. People sometimes mistook him for a stranded well-to-do motorist, and sometimes he took the trouble to undeceive them.
But where to apply? This was depopulated country, its forests gone to the sawmills long before, its mines worked out. The freeway ran through the abomination of desolation. He did not prefer to walk the freeways, but on such a day as this there were no cars on the lesser roads.
He had run away from a hardscrabble New Hampshire farm when he was fourteen, and ever since then, except for brief working intervals, he had been either on the roads or in the jails. Now his sixtieth birthday was imminent. There were few men bigger than Frank Sarsfield, and none more solitary. Where was a friendly house?
For a few moments the rage of the snow slackened; he stared about. Away to the left, almost a mile distant, he made out a grim high clump of buildings on rising ground, a wall enclosing them; the roof of the central building was gone. Sarsfield grinned, knowing what that complex must be: a derelict prison. He had lodged in prisons altogether too many nights.
His hand sheltering his eyes from the north wind, he looked to his left. Down in a snug valley, beside a narrow river and broad marshes, he could perceive a village or hamlet: a white church tower, three or four commercial buildings, some little houses, beyond them a park of bare maple trees. The old highway must have run through or near this forgotten place, but the new freeway had sealed it off. There was no sign of a freeway exit to the settlement; probably it could be reached by car only along some detouring country lane. In such a little decayed town there would be folk willing to accept him for the sake of his proffered ten dollars---or, better, simply for charity's sake and talk with an amusing stranger who could recite every kind of poetry.
He scrambled heavily down the embankment. At this point, praise be, no tremendous wire fence kept the haughty new highway inviolable. His powerful thighs took him through the swelling drifts, though his heart pounded as the storm burst upon him afresh.
The village was more distant than he had thought. He passed panting through old fields half grown up to poplar and birch. A little to the west he noticed what seemed to be old mine workings, with fragments of brick buildings. He clambered upon an old railroad bed, its rails and ties taken up; perhaps the new freeway had dealt the final blow to the rails. Here the going was somewhat easier.
Mingled with the wind's shriek, did he hear a church bell now? Could they be holding services at the village in this weather? Presently he came to a burnt-out little railway depot, on its platform signboard still the name "Anthonyville." Now he walked on a street of sorts, but no car tracks or footprints sullying the snow.
Anthonyville Free Methodist Church hulked before him. Indeed the bell was swinging, and now and again faintly ringing in the steeple; but it was the wind's mockery, a knell for the derelict town of Anthonyville. The church door was slamming in the high wind, flying open again, and slamming once more, like a perpetual-motion machine, the glass being gone from the church windows. Sarsfield trudged past the skeletal church.
The front of Emmons' General Store was boarded up, and so was the front of what may have been a drugstore. The village hall was a wreck. The school may have stood upon those scanty foundations which protruded from the snow. And from no chimney of the decrepit cottages and cabins along Main Street---the only street---did any smoke rise.
Sarsfield never had seen a deader village. In an upper window of what looked like a livery stable converted into a garage, a faded cardboard sign could be read:
REMEMBER YOUR FUTURE
BACK THE TOWNSEND PLAN
Was no one at all left here, not even some gaunt old couple managing on Social Security? He might force his way into one of the stores or cottages---though on principle and prudence he generally steered clear of possible charges of breaking and entering---but that would be cold comfort. In poor Anthonyville there must remain some living soul.
His mittened hands clutching his red ears, Sarsfield had plodded nearly to the end of Main Street. Anthonyville was Endsville, he saw now: river and swamp and new highway cut it off altogether from the rest of the frozen world, except for the drift-obliterated country road that twisted southward, Lord knew whither. He might count himself lucky to find a stove, left behind in some shack, that he could feed with boards ripped from walls.
Main Street ended at that grove or park of old maples. Just a sugarbush, like those he had tapped in his boyhood under his father's rough command? No: had the trees not been leafless, he might not have discerned the big stone house among the trees, the only substantial building remaining to Anthonyville. But see it he did for one moment, before the blizzard veiled it from him. There were stone gateposts, too, and a bronze tablet set into one of them. Sarsfield brushed the snowflakes from the inscription: "Tamarack House."
Stumbling along the maples toward this promise, he almost collided with a tall glacial boulder. A similar boulder rose a few feet to his right, the pair of them halfway between gateposts and house. There was a bronze tablet on this boulder, too, and he paused to read it:
Sacred to the memory of
JEROME ANTHONY
July 4, 1836---January 14, 1915
Brigadier-General in the Corps of Engineers,
Army of the Republic founder of this town
architect of Anthonyville State Prison
who died as he had lived, with honor
"And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the wall shall crumble in ruin,
And moulder in dust away."
There's an epitaph for a prison architect, Sarsfield thought. It was too bitter an evening for inspecting the other boulder, and he hurried toward the portico of Tamarack House. This was a very big house indeed, a bracketed house, built all of squared fieldstone with beautiful glints to the masonry. A cupola topped it.
Once, come out of the cold into a public library, Sarsfield had pored through a picture book about American architectural styles. There was a word for this sort of house. Was it "Italianate"? Yes, it rose in his memory---he took pride in no quality except his power of recollection. Yes, that was the word. Had he visited this house before? He could not account for a vague familiarity. Perhaps there had been a photograph of this particular house in that library book.
Every window was heavily shuttered, and no smoke rose from any of the several chimneys. Sarsfield went up the stone steps to confront the oaken front door.
It was a formidable door, but it seemed as if at some time it had been broken open, for long ago a square of oak with a different grain had been mortised into the area round lock and keyhole. There was a gigantic knocker with a strange face worked upon it. Sarsfield knocked repeatedly.
No one answered. Conceivably the storm might have made his pounding inaudible to any occupants, but who could spend the winter in a shuttered house without fires? Another bronze plaque was screwed to the door:
TAMARACK HOUSE
Property of the Anthony Family Trust
Guarded by Protective Service
Sarsfield doubted the veracity of the last line. He made his way round to the back. No one answered those back doors, either, and they, too, were locked.
But presently he found what he had hoped for: an oldfangled slanting cellar door, set into the foundations. It was not wise to enter without permission, but at least he might accomplish it without breaking. His fingers, though clumsy, were strong as the rest of him. After much trouble and with help from the Boy Scout knife that he carried, he pulled the pins out of the cellar door's three hinges and scrambled down into the darkness. With the passing of the years, he had become something of a jailhouse lawyer---though those young inmates bored him with their endless chatter about Miranda and Escobedo. And now he thought of the doctrine called "defense of necessity." If caught, he could say that self-preservation from freezing is the first necessity; besides, they might not take him for a bum.
Faint light down the cellar steps---he would replace the hinge-pins later---showed him an inner door at the foot. That door was hooked, though hooked only. With a sigh, Sarsfield put his shoulder to the door; the hook clattered to the stone floor inside; and he was master of all he surveyed.
In that black cellar he found no light switch. Though he never smoked, he carried matches for such emergencies. Having lit one, he discovered a providential kerosene lamp on a table, with enough kerosene still in it. Sarsfield went lamp-lit through the cellars and up more stone stairs into a pantry. "Anybody home?" he called. It was an eerie echo.
He would make sure before exploring, for he dreaded shotguns. How about a cheerful song? In that chill pantry, Sarsfield bellowed a tune formerly beloved at Rotary Clubs. Once, a waggish Rotarian, after half an hour's talk with the hobo extraordinary, had taken him to Rotary for lunch and commanded him to tell tales of the road and to sing the members a song. Frank Sarsfield's untutored voice was loud enough when he wanted it to be, and he sang the song he had sung to the Rotary:
"There's a long, long trail a-winding into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing and the white moon beams;
There's a long, long night of waiting until my dreams all come true,
Till the day when I'll be going down that long, long trail with you!"
No response: no cry, no footstep, not a rustle. Even in so big a house, they couldn't have failed to hear his song, sung in a voice fit to wake the dead. Father O'Malley had called Frank's voice "stentorian"---a good word, though he was not just sure what it meant. He liked that last tune, though he'd no one to walk to; he'd repeat it:
"Till the day when I'll be going down that long, long trail with you!"
It was all right. Sarsfield went into the dining room, where he found a splendid long walnut table, chairs with embroidered seats, a fine sideboard and china cabinet, and a high Venetian chandelier. The china was in that cabinet, and the silverware was in that sideboard. But in no room of Tamarack House was any living soul.
Sprawled in a big chair before the fireplace in the Sunday parlor, Sarsfield took the chill out of his bones. The woodshed, connected with the main house by a passage from the kitchen, was half-filled with logs---not first-rate fuel, true, for they had been stacked there three or four years ago, to judge by the fungi upon them, but burnable after he had collected old newspapers and chopped kindling. He had crisscrossed elm and birch to make a noble fire.
It was not very risky to let white wood-smoke eddy from the chimneys, for it would blend with the driving snow and the blast would dissipate it at once. Besides, Anthonyville's population was zero. From the cupola atop the house, in another lull of the blizzard, he had looked over the icy countryside and had seen no inhabited farmhouse up the forgotten dirt road---which, anyway, was hopelessly blocked by drifts today. There was no approach for vehicles from the freeway, while river and marsh protected the rear. He speculated that Tamarack House might be inhabited summers, though not in any very recent summer. The "Protective Service" probably consisted of a farmer who made a fortnightly inspection in fair weather.
It was good to hole up in a remote county where burglars seemed unknown as yet. Frank Sarsfield restricted his own depredations to church poor-boxes (Catholic, preferably, he being no Protestant), and then only under the defense of necessity, after a run of unsuccessful mendicancy. He feared and detested strong thieves, so numerous nowadays; to avoid them and worse than thieves he steered clear of the cities, roving to little places which still kept crime in the family, where it belonged.
He had dined, and then washed the dishes dutifully. The kitchen wood-range still functioned, and so did the hard-water and soft-water hand pumps in the scullery. As for food, there was enough to feed a good-sized prison: the shelves of the deep cellar cold-room threatened to collapse under the weight of glass jars full of jams, jellies, preserved peaches, apricots, applesauce, pickled trout, and many more good things, all redolent of his New England youth. Most of the jars had neat paper labels, all giving the year of canning, some the name of the canner; on the front shelves, the most recent date he had found was 1968, on a little pot of strawberry jam, and below it was the name "Allegra" in a feminine hand.
Everything in this house lay in apple-pie order---though Sarsfield wondered how long the plaster would keep from cracking, with Tamarack House unheated in winter. He felt positively virtuous for lighting fires, one here in the Sunday parlor, another in the little antique iron stove in the bedroom he had chosen for himself at the top of the house.
He had poked into every handsome room of Tamarack House, with the intense pleasure of a small boy who had found his way into an enchanted castle. Every room was satisfying, well furnished (he was warming by the fire two sheets from the linen closet, for his bed), and wondrously old fashioned. There was no electric light, no central heating, no bathroom; there was an indoor privy at the back of the woodshed, but no running water unless one counted the hand pumps. There was an oldfangled wall telephone: Frank tried, greatly daring, for the operator, but it was dead. He had found a crystal-set radio that didn't work. This was an old lady's house, surely, and the old lady hadn't visited it for some years, but perhaps her relatives kept it in order as a "holiday home" or in hope of selling it---at ruined Anthonyville, a forlorn hope. He had discovered two canisters of tea, a jar full of coffee beans, and ten gallons of kerosene. How thoughtful!
Perhaps the old lady was dead, buried under that other boulder among the maples in front of the house. Perhaps she had been the General's daughter---but no, not if the General had been born in 1836. Why those graves in the lawn? Sarsfield had heard of farm families near medical schools who, in the old days, had buried their dead by the house for fear of body snatchers; but that couldn't apply at Anthonyville. Well, there were family graveyards, but this must be one of the smallest.
The old General who built this house had died on January 14. Day after tomorrow, January 14 would come round again, and it would be Frank Sarsfield's sixtieth birthday. "I drink your health in water, General," Sarsfield said aloud, raising his cut-glass goblet taken from the china cabinet. There was no strong drink in the house, but that didn't distress Sarsfield, for he never touched it. His mother had warned him against it---and sure enough, the one time he had drunk a good deal of wine, when he was new to the road, he had got sick. "Thanks, General, for your hospitality."
Nobody responded to his toast.
His mother had been a saint, the neighbors had said, and his father a drunken devil. He had seen neither of them after he ran away. He had missed his mother's funeral because he hadn't known of her death until months after; he had missed his father's, long later, because he chose to miss it, though that omission cost him sleepless nights now. Sarsfield slept poorly at best. Almost always there were nightmares.
Yet perhaps he would sleep well enough tonight in that little garret room near the cupola. He had found that several of the bedrooms in Tamarack House had little metal plates over their doorways. There were "The General's Room" and "Father's Room" and "Mama's Room" and "Alice's Room" and "Allegra's Room" and "Edith's Room." By a happy coincidence, the little room at the top of the back stair, on the garret floor of the house, was labeled "Frank's Room." but he'd not chosen it for that only. At the top of the house, one was safer from the sheriffs or burglars. And through the skylight---there was only a frieze window---a man could get to the roof of the main block. From that roof one could descend to the woodshed roof by a fire escape of iron rungs fixed in the stone outer wall; and from the woodshed it was an easy drop to the ground. After that, the chief difficulty would be to run down Main Street and then get across the freeway without being detected, while people searched the house for you. Talk of Goldilocks and the Three Bears! Much experience had taught Sarsfield such forethought.
Had that other Frank, so commemorated over the bedroom door, been a son or a servant? Presumably a son---though Sarsfield had found no pictures of boys in the old velvet-covered album in the Sunday parlor, nor any of manservants. There were many pictures of the General, a little rooster-like man with a beard; and of Father, portly and pleasant-faced; and of Mama, elegant; and of three small girls who must be Alice and Allegra and Edith. He had liked especially the photographs of Allegra, since he had tasted her strawberry jam. All the girls were pretty, but Allegra---who must have been about seven in most of the pictures---was really charming, with long ringlets and kind eyes and a delicate mouth that curved upward at its corners.
Sarsfield adored little girls and distrusted big girls. His mother had cautioned him against bad women, so he had kept away from such. Because he liked peace, he had never married---not that he could have married anyway, because that would have tied him to one place, and he was too clumsy to earn money at practically anything except dishwashing for summer hotels. Not marrying had meant that he could have no little daughters like Allegra.
Sometimes he had puzzled the prison psychiatrists. In prison it was well to play stupid. He had refrained cunningly from reciting poetry to the psychiatrists. So after testing Sarsfield they wrote him down as "dull normal" and he was assigned to labor as a "gardener"---which meant going round the prison yards picking up trash by a stick with a nail in the end of it. That was easy work, and he detested hard work. Yet when there was truly heavy work to be done in prison, sometimes he would come forward to shovel tons of coal or carry hods of brick or lift big blocks into place. That, too, was his cunning: it impressed the other jailbirds with his enormous strength, so that the gangs left him alone.
"Yes, you're a loner, Frank Sarsfield," he said to himself aloud. He looked at himself in that splendid Sunday-parlor mirror, which stretched from floor to ceiling. He saw a man overweight but lean enough of face, standing six feet six, built like a bear, a strong nose, some teeth missing, a strong chin, and rather wild light blue eyes. He was an uncommon sort of bum. Deliberately he looked at his image out of the corners of his eyes, as was his way, because he was nonviolent, and eye contact might mean trouble.
"You look like a Viking, Frank," old Father O'Malley had told him once, "but you ought to have been a monk."
"Oh, Father," he had answered, "I'm too much of a fool for a monk."
"Well," said Father O'Malley, "you're no more fool than many a brother, and you're celibate and continent, I take it. Yet it's late for that now. Look out you don't turn berserker, Frank. Go to confession sometime, to a priest that doesn't know you, if you'll not go to me. If you'd confess, you'd not be haunted."
But he seldom went to mass, and never to confession. All those church boxes pilfered, his mother and father abandoned, his sister neglected, all the ghastly humbling of himself before policemen, all the horror and shame of the prisons! There could be no grace for him now. "There's a long, long trail a-winding into the land of my dreams . . ." What dreams! He had looked up "berserker" in Webster. But he wouldn't ever do that sort of thing. A man had to keep a control upon himself; besides, he was a coward, and he loved peace.
Nearly all the other prisoners had been brutes, guilty as sin, guilty as Miranda or Escobedo. Once, sentenced for rifling a church safe, he had been put into the same cell with a man who had murdered his wife by taking off her head. The head never had been found. Sarsfield had dreamed of that head in such short intervals of sleep as he had enjoyed while the wife-killer was his cellmate. Nearly all night, every night, he had lain awake surreptitiously watching the murderer in the opposite bunk and feeling his own neck now and again. He had been surprised and pleased when eventually the wife-killer had gone hysterical and obtained assignment to another cell. The murderer had told the guards that he just couldn't stand being watched all night by that terrible giant who never talked.
Only one of the prison psychiatrists had been pleasant or bright, and that had been the old doctor born in Vienna who went round from penitentiary to penitentiary checking on the psychiatric staffs. The old doctor had taken a liking to him, and had written a report to accompany Frank's petition for parole. Three months later, in a parole office, the parole officer had gone out hurriedly for a quarter of an hour, and Sarsfield had taken the chance to read his own file that the parole man had left in a folder on his desk.
"Francis Sarsfield has a memory that almost can be described as photographic"---so had run one line in the Vienna doctor's report. When he read that, Sarsfield had known that the doctor was a clever doctor. "He suffers chiefly from an arrest of emotional development, and may be regarded as a rather bright small boy in some respects. His three temporarily successful escapes from prison suggest that his intelligence has been much underrated. On at least one of those occasions he could have eluded the arresting officer had he been willing to resort to violence. Sarsfield repeatedly describes himself as nonviolent and has no record of aggression while confined, nor in connection with any of the offenses for which he was arrested. On the contrary, he seems timid and withdrawn, and might become a victim of assaults in prison, were it not for his size, strength, and power of voice."
Sarsfield had been pleased enough by that paragraph, but a little puzzled by what followed:
"In general, Sarsfield is one of those recidivists who ought not to be confined, were any alternative method now available for restraining them from petty offenses against property. Not only does he lack belligerence against men, but apparently he is quite clean of any record against women and children. It seems that he does not indulge in autoeroticism, either---perhaps because of strict instruction by his R. C. mother during his formative years.
"I add, however, that conceivably Sarsfield is not fundamentally so gentle as his record indicates. He can be energetic in self-defense when pushed to the wall. In his youth occasionally he was induced, for the promise of $5 or $10, to stand up as an amateur against some traveling professional boxer. He admits that he did not fight hard, and cried when he was badly beaten. Nevertheless, I am inclined to suspect a potentiality for violence, long repressed but not totally extinguished by years of 'humbling himself,' in his phrase. This possibility is not so certain as to warrant additional detention, even though three years of Sarsfield's sentence remain unexpired."
Yes, he had memorized nearly the whole of that old doctor's analysis, which had got his parole for him. There had been the concluding paragraphs:
"Francis Sarsfield is oppressed by a haunting sense of personal guilt. He is religious to the point of superstition, an R.C., and appears to believe himself damned. Although worldly-wise in a number of respects, he retains an almost unique innocence in others. His frequent humor and candor account for his success, much of the time, at begging. He has read much during his wanderings and terms of confinement. He has a strong taste for good poetry of the popular sort, and has accumulated a mass of miscellaneous information, much of it irrelevant to the life he leads.
"Although occasionally moody and even surly, most of the time he subjects himself to authority, and will work fairly well if closely supervised. He possesses no skills of any sort, unless some knack for woodchopping, acquired while he was enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps, can be considered a marketable skill. He appears to be incorrigibly footloose, and therefore confinement is more unpleasant to him than to most prisoners. It is truly remarkable that he continues to be rational enough, his isolation and heavy guilt-complex considered.
"Sometimes evasive when he does not desire to answer questions, nevertheless he rarely utters a direct lie. His personal modesty may be described as excessive. His habits of cleanliness are commendable, if perhaps of origins like Lady Macbeth's.
"Despite his strength, he is a diabetic and suffers from a heart murmur, sometimes painful.
"Only in circumstances so favorable as to be virtually unobtainable could Sarsfield succeed in abstaining from the behavior pattern that has led to his repeated prosecution and imprisonment. The excessive crowding of this penitentiary considered, however, I strongly recommend that he be released upon parole. Previous psychiatric reports concerning this inmate have been shallow and erroneous, I regret to note. Perhaps Sarsfield's chief psychological difficulty is that, from obscure causes, he lacks emotional communication with other adults, although able to maintain cordial and healthy relations with small children. He is very nearly a solipsist, which in large part may account for his inability to make firm decisions or pursue any regular occupation. In contradiction of previous analyses of Sarsfield, he should not be described as 'dull normal' intellectually. Francis Xavier Sarsfield distinctly is neither dull nor normal."
Sarsfield had looked up "solipsist," but hadn't found himself much the wiser. He didn't think himself the only existent thing---not most of the time, anyway. He wasn't sure that the old doctor had been real, but he knew that his mother had been real before she went straight to heaven. He knew that his nightmares probably weren't real; but sometimes, while awake, he could see things that other men couldn't. In a house like this he could glimpse little unaccountable movements out of the corners of his eyes, but it wouldn't do to worry about those. He was afraid of those things which other people couldn't see, yet not so frightened of them as most people were. Some of the other inmates had called him Crazy Frank, and it had been hard to keep down his temper. If you could perceive more existent things, though not flesh-and-blood things, than psychiatrists or convicts could---why, were you then a solipsist?
There was no point in puzzling over it. Dad had taken him out of school to work on the farm when he hadn't yet finished the fourth grade, so Words like "solipsist" didn't mean much to him. Poets' words, though, he mostly understood. He had picked up a rhyme that made children laugh when he told it to them:
"Though you don't know it,
You're a poet.
Your feet show it:
They're Longfellows"
That wasn't very good poetry, but Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a good poet. They must have loved Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in this house, and especially "The Children's Hour," because of those three little girls named Alice, Allegra, and Edith, and those lines on the General's boulder. Allegra: that's the prettiest of all names ever, and it means "merry," someone had told him.
He looked at the cheap wristwatch he had bought, besides the wash-and-wear suit, with his last dishwashing money from that Lake Superior summer hotel. Well, midnight! It's up the wooden hill for you, Frank Sarsfield, to your snug little room under the rafters. If anybody comes to Tamarack House tonight, it's out the skylight and through the snow for you, Frank, my boy---and no tiny reindeer. If you want to survive, in prison or out of it, you stick to your own business and let other folks stew in their own juice.
Before he closed his eyes, he would pray for mother's soul---not that she really needed it---and then say the little Scottish prayer he had found in a children's book:
"From ghoulies and ghosties, and long-leggitie beasties, and things that go bump in the night, good Lord deliver us!"
The next morning, the morning before his birthday, Frank Sarsfield went up the circular stair to the cupola, even before making his breakfast of pickled trout, peaches, and strong coffee. The wind had gone down and it was showing only lightly now, but the drifts were immense. Nobody would make his way to Anthonyville and Tamarack House this day; the snow plows would be busy elsewhere.
From this height he could see the freeway, and nothing seemed to be moving along it. The dead village lay to the north of him. To the east were river and swamp, the shores lined with those handsome tamaracks, the green gone out of them, which had given this house its name. Everything in sight belonged to Frank.
He had dreamed during the night, the wind howling and whining round the top of the house, and he had known he was dreaming, but it had been even stranger than usual, if less horrible.
In his dream, he had found himself in the dining room of Tamarack House. He had not been alone. The General and Father and Mama and the three little girls had been dining happily at the long table, and he had waited on them. In the kitchen an old woman who was the cook and a girl who cleaned had eaten by themselves. But when he had finished filling the family's plates, he had sat down at the end of the table, as if he had been expected to do that.
The family had talked among themselves and even to him as he ate, but somehow he had not been able to hear what they said to him. Suddenly, though, he had pricked up his ears, because Allegra had spoken to him.
"Frank," she had said, all mischief, "why do they call you Punkinhead?"
The old General had frowned at the head of the table, and Mama had said, "Allegra, don't speak that way to Frank!"
But he had grinned at Allegra, if a little hurt, and had told the girl, "Because some men think I've got a head like a jack-o'-lantern's and not even seeds inside it."
"Nonsense, Frank," Mama had put in, "you have a very handsome head."
"You've got a pretty head, Frank," the three little girls had told him then, almost in chorus, placatingly. Allegra had come round the table to make her peace. "There's going to be a big surprise for you tomorrow, Frank," she had whispered to him. And then she had kissed him on the cheek.
That had waked him. Most of the rest of that howling night he had lain awake trying to make sense of his dream, but he couldn't. The people in it had been more real than the people he met on the long, long trail.
Now he strolled through the house again, admiring everything. It was almost as if he had seen the furniture and the pictures and the carpets long, long ago. The house must be over a century old, and many of the good things in it must go back to the beginning. He would have two or three more days here until the roads were cleared. There were no newspapers to tell him about the great storm, of course, and no radio that worked; but that didn't matter.
He found a great big handsome Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in red morocco, and an illustrated copy of the Rubaiyat. He didn't need to read it, because he had memorized all the quatrains once. There was a black silk ribbon as marker between the pages, and he opened it there---at Quatrain 44, it turned out:
"Why, if the soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Were't not a Shame---were't not a Shame for him
In this clay carcass crippled to abide?"
That old Vienna doctor, Frank suspected, hadn't believed in immortal souls. Frank Sarsfield knew better. But also Frank suspected that his soul never would ride, naked or clothed, on the Air of Heaven. Souls! That put him in mind of his sister, a living soul that he had forsaken. He ought to write her a letter on this eve of his sixtieth birthday.
Frank traveled light, his luggage being mostly a safety razor, a hairbrush, and a comb; he washed his shirt and socks and underclothes every night, and often his wash-and-wear suit, too. But he did carry with him a few sheets of paper and a ball point pen. Sitting down at the library table---he had built a fire in the library stove also, there being no lack of logs---he began to write to Mary Sarsfield, alone in the rotting farmhouse in New Hampshire. His spelling wasn't good, he knew, but today he was careful at his birthday letter, using the big old dictionary with the General's bookplate in it.
To write that letter took most of the day. Two versions were discarded. At last Frank had done the best he could.
Dearest Mary my sister,
It's been nearly 9 years since I came to visit you and borrowed the $78 from you and went away again and never paid it back. I guess you dont want to see your brother Frank again after what I did that time and other times but the Ethiopian can not change his skin nor the leopard his spots and when some man like a Jehovahs Witness or that rancher with all the cash gives me quite a lot of money I mean to send you what I owe but the post office isnt handy at the time and so I spend it on presents for little kids I meet and buying new clothes and such so I never get around to sending you that $78 Mary. Right now I have $29 and more but the post office at this place is folded up and by the time I get to the next town the money will be mostly gone and so it goes. I guess probably you need the money and Im sorry Mary but maybe some day I will win in the lottery and then I'll give you all the thousands of dollars I win.
Well Mary its been 41 years and 183 days since Mother passed away and here I am 60 years old tomorrow and you getting on toward 56. I pray that your cough is better and that your son and my nephew Jack is doing better than he was in Tallahassee Florida. Some time Mary if you would write to me c/o Father Justin O'Malley in Albatross Michigan where he is pastor now I would stop by his rectory and get your letter and read it with joy. But I know Ive been a very bad brother and I dont blame you Mary if you never get around to writing your brother Frank.
Mary Ive been staying out of jails and working a little here and there along the road. Now Mary do you know what I hate most about those prisons? Why not being on the road you will say. No Mary the worst thing is the foul language the convicts use from morning till night. Taking the name of their Lord in vain is the least they do. There is a foul curse word in their every sentence. I wasnt brought up that way any more than you Mary and I will not revile woman or child. It is like being in H--- to hear it.
Im not in bad shape except the diabetes is no better but I take my pills for it when I can buy them and dont have to take needles for it and my heart hurts me dreadfully bad sometimes when I lift heavy things hours on end and sometimes it hurts me worse at night when Ive been just lying there thinking of the life Ive led and how I ought to pay you the $78 and pay back other folks that helped me too. I owe Father O'Malley $479.11 now altogether and I keep track of it in my head and when the lottery ticket wins he will not be forgot.
Some people have been quite good to me and I still can make them laugh and I recite to them and generally I start my reciting with what No Person of Quality wrote hundreds of years ago
Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.
They like that and also usually they like Thomas Grays Elegy in a Country Churchyard leaving the world to darkness and to me and I recite all of that and sometimes some of the Quatrains of Omar. At farms when they ask me I chop wood for these folk and I help with the dishes but I still break a good many as you learned Mary 9 years ago but I didnt mean to do it Mary because I am just clumsy in all ways. Oh yes I am good at reciting Frosts Stopping by Woods and his poem about the Hired Man. I have been reading the poetical works of Thomas Steams Eliot so I can recite his The Hollow Men or much of it and also his Book of Practical Cats which is comical when I come to college towns and some professor or his wife gives me a sandwich and maybe $2 and maybe a ride to the next town.
Where I am now Mary I ought to study the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier because theres been a real blizzard maybe the biggest in the state for many years and Im Snowbound. Years ago I tried to memorize all that poem but I got only part way for it is a whopper of a poem.
I dont hear much good Music Mary because of course at the motels there isnt any phonograph or tape recorder. Id like to hear some good string quartet or maybe old folk songs well sung for music hath charms to soothe the savage beast. Theres an old Edison at the house where Im staying now and what do you know they have a record of a song you and I used to sing together Theres a Long Long Trail A Winding. Its about the newest record in this house. Ill play it again soon thinking of you Mary my sister. O there is a long long night of waiting.
Mary right now Im at a big fine house where the people have gone away for awhile and I watch the house for them and keep some of the rooms warm. Let me assure you Mary I wont take anything from this good old house when I go. These are nice people I know and I just came in out of the storm and Im very fond of their 3 sweet little girls. I remember what you looked like when I ran away first and you looked like one of them called Alice. The one I like best though is Allegra because she makes mischief and laughs a lot but is innocent.
I came here just yesterday but it seems as if Id lived in this house before but of course I couldn't have and I feel at home here. Nothing in this house could scare me much. You might not like it Mary because of little noises and glimpses you get but its a lovely house and as you know I like old places that have been lived in lots.
By the way Mary once upon a time Father O'Malley told me that to the Lord all time is eternally present. I think this means everything that happens in the world in any day goes on all at once. So God sees what went on in this house long ago and whats going on in this house today all at the same time. Its just as well we dont see through Gods eyes because then wed know everything thats going to happen to us and because Im such a sinner I dont want to know. Father O'Malley says that God may forgive me everything and have something special in store for me but I dont think so because why should He?
And Father O'Malley says that maybe some people work out their Purgatory here on earth and I might be one of these. He says we are spirits in the prisonhouse of the body which is like we were serving Time in the world here below and maybe God forgave me long ago and Im just waiting my time and paying for what I did and it will be alright in the end. Or maybe Im being given some second chance to set things right but as Father O'Malley put it to do that Id have to fortify my Will and do some Signal Act of contrition. Father O'Malley even says I might not have to do the Act actually if only I just made up my mind to do it really and truly because what God counts is the intention. But I think people who are in Purgatory must know they are climbing up and have hope and Mary I think Im going down down down even though Ive stayed out of prisons some time now.
Father O'Malley tells me that for everybody the battle is won or lost already in God's sight and that though Satan thinks he has a good chance to conquer actually Satan has lost forever but doesnt know it. Mary I never did anybody any good but only harm to ones that loved me. If just once before I die I could do one Signal Act that was truly good then God might love me and let me have the Beatific Vision. Yet Mary I know Im weak of will and a coward and lazy and Ive missed my chance forever.
Well Mary my only sister Ive bored you long enough and I just wanted to say hello and tell you to be of good cheer. Im sorry I whined and complained like a little boy about my health because Im still strong and deserve all the pain I get. Mary if you can forgive your big brother who never grew up please pray for me sometime because nobody else does except possibly Father O'Malley when he isnt busy with other prayers. I pray for Mother every night and every other night for you and once a month for Dad. You were a good little girl and sweet. Now I will say good bye and ask your pardon for bothering you with my foolishness. Also Im sorry your friends found out I was just a hobo when I was with you 9 years ago and I dont blame you for being angry with me then for talking too much and I know I wasnt fit to lodge in your house. There arent many of us old real hobos left only beatniks and such that cant walk or chop wood and I guess that is just as well. It is a degrading life Mary but I cant stop walking down that long long trail not knowing where it ends.
Your Loving Brother
Francis (Frank)
P.S.: I dont wish to mislead so I will add Mary that the people who own this house didnt exactly ask me in but its alright because I wont do any harm here but a little good if I can. Good night again Mary.
Now he needed an envelope, but he had forgotten to take one from the last motel, where the Presbyterian minister had put him up. There must be some in Tamarack House, and one would not be missed, and that would not be very wrong because he would take nothing else. He found no envelopes in the drawer of the library table: so he went up the stairs and almost knocked at the closed door of Allegra's Room. Foolish! He opened the door gently.
He had admired Allegra's small rosewood desk. In its drawer was a leather letter-folder, the kind with a blotter, he found, and in the folder were several yellowed envelopes. Also lying face up in the folder was a letter of several small pages, in a woman's hand, a trifle shaky. He started to sit down to read Allegra's letter that never was sent to anybody, but it passed through his mind that his great body might break the delicate rosewood chair that belonged to Allegra, so he read the letter standing. It was dated January 14, 1969. On that birthday of his, he had been in Joliet prison.
How beautifully Allegra wrote!
Darling Celia,
This is a lonely day at Tamarack House, just fifty-four years after your greatgrandfather the General died, so I am writing to my grand-niece to tell you how much I hope you will be able to come up to Anthonyville and stay with me next summer---if I still am here. The doctor says that only God knows whether I will be. Your grandmother wants me to come down your way to stay with her for the rest of this winter, but I can't bear to leave Tamarack House at my age, for they might have to put me in a rest-home down there and then I wouldn't see this old house again.
I am all right, really, because kind Mr. Connor looks in every day, and Mrs. Williams comes every other day to clean. I am not sick, my little girl, but simply older than my years, and running down. When you come up next summer, God willing, I will make you that soft toast you like, and perhaps Mr. Connor will turn the crank for the ice-cream, and I may try to make some preserves with you to help me.
You weren't lonely, were you, when you stayed with me last summer for a whole month? Of course there are fewer than a hundred people left in Anthonyville now, and most of those are old. They say that there will be practically nobody living in the town a few years from now, when the new highway is completed and the old one is abandoned. There were more than two thousand people here in town and roundabout, a few years after the General built Tamarack House! But first the lumber industry gave out, and then the mines were exhausted, and the prison-break in 1915 scared many away forever. There are no passenger trains now, and they say the railway line will be pulled out altogether when the new freeway---they have just begun building it to the east---is ready for traffic. But we still have the maples and the tamaracks, and there are ever so many raccoons and opossums and squirrels for you to watch---and a lynx, I think, and an otter or two, and many deer.
Celia, last summer you asked me about the General's death and all the things that happened then, because you had heard something of them from your Grandmother Edith. But I didn't wish to frighten you, so I didn't tell you everything. You are older now, and you have a right to know, because when you grow up you will be one of the trustees of the Anthony Family Trust, and then this old house will be in your charge when I am gone. Tamarack House is not at all frightening, except a little in the morning on every January 14. I do hope that you and the other trustees will keep the house always, with the money that Father left to me---he was good at making money, even though the forests vanished and the mines failed, by his investments in Chicago---and which I am leaving to the Family Trust. I've kept the house just as it was, for the sake of the General's memory and because I love it that way.
You asked just what happened on January 14, 1915. There were seven people who slept in the house that month---not counting Cook and Cynthia (who was a kind of nannie to us girls and also cleaned), because they slept at their houses in the village. In the house, of course, was the General, my grandfather, your greatgrandfather, who was nearly eighty years old. Then there were Father and Mama, and the three of us little sisters, and dear Frank.
Alice and sometimes even that baby Edith used to tease me in those days by screaming, "Frank's Allegra's sweetheart! Frank's Allegra's sweetheart!" I used to chase them, but I suppose it was true: he liked me best. Of course he was about sixty years old, though not so old as I am now, and I was a little thing. He used to take me through the swamps and show me the muskrats' houses. The first time he took me on such a trip, Mama raised her eyebrows when he was out of the room, but the General said, "I'll warrant Frank: I have his papers."
Alice and Edith might just as well have shouted, "Frank's Allegra's slave!" He read to me---oh, Robert Louis Stevenson's poems and all sorts of books. I never had another sweetheart, partly because almost all the young men left Anthonyville as I grew up when there was no work for them here, and the ones that remained didn't please Mama.
We three sisters used to play Creepmouse with Frank, I remember well. We would be the Creepmice, and would sneak up and scare him when he wasn't watching, and he would pretend to be terrified. He made up a little song for us---or, rather, he put words to some tune he had borrowed:
"Down, down, down in Creepmouse Town
All the lamps are low,
And the little rodent feet
Softly come and go
"There's a rat in Creepmouse Town
And a bat or two:
Everything in Creepmouse Town
Would swiftly frighten you!"
Do you remember, Celia, that the General was State Supervisor of Prisons and Reformatories for time out of mind? He was a good architect, too, and designed Anthonyville State Prison, without taking any fee for himself, as a model prison. Some people in the capital said that he did it to give employment to his county, but really it was because the site was so isolated that it would be difficult for convicts to escape.
The General knew Frank's last name, but he never told the rest of us. Frank had been in Anthonyville State Prison at one time, and later in other prisons, and the General had taken him out of one of those other prisons on parole, having known Frank when he was locked up at Anthonyville. I never learned what Frank had done to be sentenced to prison, but he was gentle with me and everybody else, until that early morning of January 14.
The General was amused by Frank, and said that Frank would be better off with us than anywhere else. So Frank became our hired man, and chopped the firewood for us, and kept the fires going in the stoves and fireplaces, and sometimes served at dinner. In summer he was supposed to scythe the lawns, but of course summer didn't come. Frank arrived by train at Anthonyville Station in October, and we gave him the little room at the top of the house.
Well, on January 12 Father went off to Chicago on business. We still had the General. Every night he barred the shutters on the ground floor, going round to all the rooms by himself. Mama knew he did it because there was a rumor that some life convicts at the Prison "had it in" for the Supervisor of Prisons, although the General had retired five years earlier. Also they may have thought he kept a lot of money in the house---when actually, what with the timber gone and the mines going, in those times we were rather hard pressed and certainly kept our money in the bank at Duluth. But we girls didn't know why the General closed the shutters, except that it was one of the General's rituals. Besides, Anthonyville State Prison was supposed to be escape-proof. It was just that the General always took precautions, though ever so brave.
Just before dawn, Celia, on the cold morning of January 14, 1915, we all were waked by the siren of the Prison, and we all rushed downstairs in our nightclothes, and we could see that part of the Prison was afire. O, the sky was red! The General tried to telephone the Prison, but he couldn't get through, and later it turned out that the lines had been cut.
Next---it all happened so swiftly---we heard shouting somewhere down Main Street, and then guns went off. The General knew what that meant. He had got his trousers and his boots on, and now he struggled with his old military overcoat, and he took his old army revolver. "Lock the door behind me, girl," he told Mama. She cried and tried to pull him back inside, but he went down into the snow, nearly eighty though he was.
Only three or four minutes later, we heard the shots. The General had met the convicts at the gate. It was still dark, and the General had cataracts on his eyes. They say he fired first, and missed. Those bad men had broken into Mr. Emmons' store and taken guns and axes and whiskey. They shot the General---shot him again and again and again.
The next thing we knew, they were chopping at our front door with axes. Mama hugged us.
Celia dear, writing all this has made me so silly! I feel a little odd, so I must go lie down for an hour or two before telling you the rest. Celia, I do hope you will love this old house as much as I have. If I'm not here when you come up, remember that where I have gone I will know the General and Father and Mama and Alice and poor dear Frank, and will be ever so happy with them. Be a good little girl, my Celia.
The letter ended there, unsigned.
Frank clumped downstairs to the Sunday parlor. He was crying, for the first time since he had fought that professional heavyweight on October 19, 1943. Allegra's letter---if only she'd finished it! What had happened to those little girls, and Mama, and that other Frank? He thought of something from the Holy Bible: "It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones."
Already it was almost evening. He lit the wick in the cranberry-glass lamp that hung from the middle of the parlor ceiling, standing on a chair to reach it. Why not enjoy more light? On a whim, he arranged upon the round table four silver candlesticks that had rested above the fireplace. He needed three more, and those he fetched from the dining room. He lit every candle in the circle: one for the General, one for Father, one for Mama, one for Alice, one for Allegra, one for Edith---and one for Frank.
The dear names of those little girls! He might as well recite aloud, it being good practice for the approaching days on the long, long trail:
"I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet . . ."
Here he ceased. Had he heard something in the passage---or "descending the broad hall stair"? Because of the wind outside, he could not be certain. It cost him a gritting of his teeth to rise and open the parlor door. Of course no one could be seen in the hall or on the stair. "Crazy Frank," men called him at Joliet and other prisons: he had clenched his fists, but had kept a check upon himself. Didn't Saint Paul say that the violent take heaven by storm? Perhaps he had barked up the wrong tree; perhaps he would be spewed out of His mouth for being too peaceful.
Shutting the door, he went back to the fireside. Those lines of Longfellow had been no evocation. He put "The Long, Long Trail" on the old phonograph again, strolling about the room until the record ran out. There was an old print of a Great Lakes schooner on one wall that he liked. Beside it, he noticed, there seemed to be some pellets embedded in a closet doorjamb, but painted over, as if someone had fired a shotgun in the parlor in the old days. "The violent take it by storm . . ." He admired the grand piano; perhaps Allegra had learnt to play it. There were one or two big notches or gashes along one edge of the piano, varnished over, hard though that wood was. Then Frank sank into the big chair again and stared at the burning logs.
Just how long he had dozed, he did not know. He woke abruptly. Had he heard a whisper, the faintest whisper? He tensed to spring up. But before he could move, he saw reflections in the tall mirror.
Something had moved in the corner by the bookcase. No doubt about it: that small something had stirred again. Also something crept behind one of the satin sofas, and something else lurked near the piano. All these were at his back: he saw the reflections in the glass, as in a glass darkly, more alarming than physical forms. In this high shadowy room, the light of the kerosene lamp and of the seven candles did not suffice.
From near the bookcase, the first of them emerged into candlelight; then came the second, and the third. They were giggling, but he could not hear them---only see their faces, and those not clearly. He was unable to stir, and the gooseflesh prickled all over him, and his hair rose at the back of his big head.
They were three little girls, barefoot, in their long muslin nightgowns, ready for bed. One may have been as much as twelve years old, and the smallest was little more than a baby. The middle one was Allegra, tiny even for her tender years, and a little imp: he knew, he knew! They were playing Creepmouse.
The three of them stole forward, Allegra in the lead, her eyes alight. He could see them plain now, and the dread was ebbing out of him. He might have risen and turned to greet them across the great gulf of time, but any action---why, what might it do to these little ones? Frank sat frozen in his chair, looking at the nimble reflections in the mirror, and nearer they came, perfectly silent. Allegra vanished from the glass, which meant that she must be standing just behind him.
He must please them. Could he speak? He tried, and the lines came out hoarsely:
"Down, down, down in Creepmouse Town
All the lamps are low,
And the little rodent feet . . ."
He was not permitted to finish. Wow! There came a light tug at the curly white hair on the back of his head. O to talk with Allegra, the imp! Recklessly, he heaved his bulk out of the chair, and swung round---too late.
The parlor door was closing. But from the hall came another whisper, ever so faint, ever so unmistakable: "Good night, Frank!" There followed subdued giggles, scampering, and then the silence once more.
He strode to the parlor door. The hall was empty again, and the broad stair. Should he follow them up? No, all three would be abed now. Should he knock at Mama's Room, muttering, "Mrs. Anthony, are the children all right?" No, he hadn't the nerve for that, and it would be presumptuous. He had been given one moment of perception, and no more. Somehow he knew that they would not go so far as the garret floor. Ah, he needed fresh air! He snuffed out lamp and candles, except for one candlestick---Allegra's---that he took with him. Out into the hall he went. He unfastened the front door with that oaken patch about the middle of it and stepped upon the porch, leaving the burning candle just within the hall. The wind had risen again, bringing more snow. It was black as sin outside, and the temperature must be thirty below.
To him the wind bore one erratic peal of the desolate church bell of Anthonyville, and then another. How strong the blast must be through that belfry! Frank retreated inside from that unfathomable darkness and that sepulchral bell which seemed to toll for him. He locked the thick door behind him and screwed up his courage for the expedition to his room at the top of the old house.
But why shudder? He loved them now, Allegra most of all. Up the broad stairs to the second floor he went, hearing only his own clumsy footfalls, and past the clay-sealed doors of the General and Father and Mama and Alice and Allegra and Edith. No one whispered, no one scampered.
In Frank's Room, he rolled himself in his blankets and quilt (had Allegra helped stitch the patchwork?), and almost at once the consciousness went out of him, and he must have slept dreamless for the first night since he was a farm boy.
So profound had been his sleep, deep almost as death, that the siren may have been wailing for some minutes before at last it roused him. Frank knew that horrid sound. It had called for him thrice before, as he fled from prisons. Who wanted him now? He heaved his ponderous body out of the warm bed. The candle that he had brought up from the Sunday parlor and left burning all night was flickering in its socket, but by that flame he could see the hour on his watch: seven o'clock, too soon for dawn.
Through the narrow skylight, as he flung on his clothes, the sky glowed an unnatural red, though it was long before sunup. The prison siren ceased to wail, as if choked off. Frank lumbered to the little frieze window and saw to the north, perhaps two miles distant, a monstrous mass of flames shooting high into the air. The prison was afire.
Then came shots outside: first the bark of a heavy revolver, followed irregularly by blasts of shotguns or rifles. Frank was lacing his boots with a swiftness uncongenial to him. He got into his overcoat as there came a crashing and battering down below. That sound, too, he recognized, woodchopper that he had been: axes shattering the front door.
Amid this pandemonium, Frank was too bewildered to grasp altogether where he was or even how this catastrophe might be fitted into the pattern of time. All that mattered was flight; the scheme of his escape remained clear in his mind. Pull up the chair below the skylight, heave yourself out to the upper roof, descend those iron rungs to the woodshed roof, make for the other side of the highway, then---why, then you must trust to circumstance, Frank. It's that long, long trail a-winding for you.
Now he heard a woman screaming within the house, and slipped and fumbled in his alarm. He had got upon the chair, opened the skylight, and was trying to obtain a good grip on the icy outer edge of the skylight frame, when someone knocked and kicked at the door of Frank's room.
Yet those were puny knocks and kicks. He was about to heave himself upward when, in a relative quiet---the screaming had ceased for a moment---he heard a little shrill voice outside his door, urgently pleading: "Frank, Frank, let me in!"
He was arrested in flight as though great weights had been clamped to his ankles. That little voice he knew, as if it were part of him: Allegra's voice.
For a brief moment he still meant to scramble out the skylight. But the sweet little voice was begging. He stumbled off the chair, upset it, and was at the door in one stride.
"Is that you, Allegra?"
"Open it, Frank, please open it!"
He turned the key and pulled the bolt. On the threshold the little girl stood, indistinct by the dying candlelight, terribly pale, all tears, frantic.
Frank snatched her up. Ah, this was the dear real Allegra Anthony, all warm and soft and sobbing, flesh and blood! He kissed her cheek gently.
She clung to him in terror, and then squirmed loose, tugging at his heavy hand: "Oh, Frank, come on! Come downstairs! They're hurting Mama!"
"Who is, little girl?" He held her tiny hand, his body quivering with dread and indecision. "Who's down there, Allegra?"
"The bad men! Come on, Frank!" Braver than he, the little thing plunged back down the garret stair into the blackness below.
"Allegra! Come back here---come back now!" He bellowed it, but she was gone.
Up two flights of stairs, there poured to him a tumult of shrieks, curses, laughter, breaking noises. Several men were below, their speech slurred and raucous. He did not need Allegra to tell him what kind of men they were, for he heard prison slang and prison foulness, and he shook all over. There still was the skylight.
He would have turned back to that hole in the roof had not Allegra squealed in pain somewhere on the second floor. Dazed, trembling, unarmed, Frank went three steps down the garret staircase. "Allegra! Little girl! What is it, Allegra?"
Someone was charging up the stair toward him. It was a burly man in the prison uniform, a lighted lantern in one hand and a glittering axe in the other. Frank had no time to turn. The man screeched obscenely at him and swung the axe.
In those close quarters, wielded by a drunken man, it was a chancy weapon. The edge shattered the plaster wall; the flat of the blade thumped upon Frank's shoulder. Frank, lurching forward, took the man by the throat with a mighty grip. They all tumbled pell-mell down the steep stairs---the two men, the axe, the lantern.
Frank's ursine bulk landed atop the stranger's body, and Frank heard his adversary's bones crunch. The lantern had broken and gone out. The convict's head hung loose on his shoulders, Frank found as he groped for the axe. Then he trampled over the fallen man and flung himself along the corridor, gripping the axe helve. "Allegra! Allegra girl!"
From the head of the main stair, he could see that the lamps and candles were burning in the hall and in the rooms of the ground floor. All three children were down there, wailing, and above their noise rose Mama's shrieks again. A mob of men were stamping, breaking things, roaring with amusement and desire, shouting filth. A bottle shattered.
His heart pounding as if it would burst out of his chest Frank hurried rashly down the stair and went, all crimson with fury, into the Sunday parlor, the double-bitted axe swinging in his hand. They all were there: the little girls, Mama, and five wild men. "Stop that!" Frank roared with all the power of his lungs. "You let them go!"
Everyone in the parlor stood transfixed at that summons like the Last Trump. Allegra had been tugging pathetically at the leg of a dark man who gripped her mother's waist, and the other girls sputtered and sobbed, cornered, as a tall man poured a bottle of whisky over them. Mrs. Anthony's gown was ripped nearly its whole length, and a third man was bending her backward by her long hair, as if he would snap her spine. Near the hall door stood a man like a long lean rat, the Rat of Creepmouse Town, a shotgun on his arm, gape-jawed at Frank's intervention. Guns and axes lay scattered about the Turkey carpet. By the fireplace, a fifth man had been heating the poker in the flames.
For that tableau moment, they all stared astonished at the raving giant who had burst upon them; and the giant, puffing, stared back with his strange blue eyes. "O Frank!" Allegra sobbed: it was more command than entreaty---as if, Frank thought in a flash of insane mirth, he were like the boy in the fairy tale who could cry confidently "All heads off but mine!"
He knew what these men were, the rats and bats of Creepmouse Town: the worst men in any prison, lifers who had made their hell upon earth, killers all of them and worse than killers. The rotten damnation showed in all those flushed and drunken faces. Then the dark man let go of Mama and said in relief, with a coughing laugh, "Hell, it's only old Punkinhead Frank, clowning again! Have some fun for yourself, Frank boy!"
"Hey, Frank," Ratface asked, his shotgun crooked under his arm, "where'd the old man keep his money?"
Frank towered there perplexed, the berserker-lust draining out of him---almost bashful---and frightened worse than ever before in all his years on the trail. What should he shout now? What should he do? Who was he to resist such perfect evil? They were five to one, and those five were fiends from down under, and that one a coward. Long ago he had been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
Mama was the first to break the tableau. Her second captor had relaxed his clutch upon her hair; she prodded the little girls before her and leaped for the door.
The hair-puller was after her at once, but she bounded past Ratface's shotgun, which had wavered toward Frank, and Alice and Edith were ahead of her. Allegra, her eyes wide and desperate, tripped over the rungs of a broken chair. Everything happened in half a second. The hair-puller caught Allegra by her little ankle.
Then Frank bellowed again, loudest in all his life, and he swung his axe high above his head and downward, a skillful dreadful stroke, catching the hair-puller's arm just below the shoulder. At once the man began to scream and spout, while Allegra fled after her mother.
Falling, the hair-puller collided with Ratface, spoiling his aim, but one barrel of the shotgun fired, and Frank felt pain in his side. His bloody axe on high, he hulked between the five men and the door.
All the men's faces were glaring at Frank, incredulously, as if demanding how he dared stir against them. Three convicts were scrabbling tipsily for weapons on the floor. As Frank strode among them, he saw the expression on those faces change from gloating to desperation. Just as his second blow descended, there passed through his mind a kind of fleshy collage of death he had seen once at a farmyard gate: the corpses of five weasels nailed to a gatepost by the farmer, their frozen open jaws agape like damned souls in hell.
"All heads off but mine!" Frank heard himself braying. "All heads off but mine!" He hacked and hewed, his own screams of lunatic fury drowning their screams of terror.
For less than three minutes, shots, thuds, shrieks, crashes, terrible wailing. They could not get past him to the doorway.
"Come on!" Frank was raging as he stood in the middle of the parlor. "Come on, who's next? All heads off but mine! Who's next?"
There came no answer but a ghastly rattle from one of the five heaps that littered the carpet. Blood-soaked from hair to boots, the berserker towered alone, swaying where he stood.
His mind began to clear. He had been shot twice, Frank guessed, and the pain at his heart was frightful. Into his frantic consciousness burst all the glory of what he had done, and all the horror.
He became almost rational: he must count the dead. One upstairs, five here. One, two, three, four, five heaps. That was correct: all present and accounted for, Frank boy, Punkinhead Frank, Crazy Frank. All dead and accounted for. Had he thought that thought before? Had he taken that mock roll before? Had he wrought this slaughter twice over, twice in this same old room?
But where were Mama and the little girls? They mustn't see this blood-splashed inferno of a parlor. He was looking at himself in the tall mirror, and he saw a bear-man loathsome with his own blood and others' blood. He looked like the Wild Man of Borneo. In abhorrence he flung his axe aside. Behind him sprawled the reflections of the hacked dead.
Fighting down his heart pain, he reeled into the hall. "Little girls! Mrs. Anthony! Allegra, O Allegra!" His voice was less strong. "Where are you? It's safe now!"
They did not call back. He labored up the main stair, clutching his side. "Allegra, speak to your Frank!" They were in none of the bedrooms.
He went up the garret stair, whatever the agony, then beyond Frank's Room to the cupola stair, and ascended that slowly, gasping hard. They were not in the cupola. Might they have run out among the trees? In that cold dawn, he stared on every side; he thought his sight was beginning to fail.
He could see no one outside the house. The drifts still choked the street beyond the gateposts, and those two boulders protruded impassive from untrodden snow. Back down the flights of stairs he made his way, clutching at the rail, at the wall. Surely the little girls hadn't strayed into that parlor butcher shop? He bit his lip and peered into the Sunday parlor.
The bodies all were gone. The splashes and ropy strands of blood all were gone. Everything stood in perfect order, as if violence never had touched Tamarack House. The sun was rising, and sunlight filtered through the shutters. Within fifteen minutes the trophies of his savage victory had disappeared.
It was like the recurrent dream which had tormented Frank when he was little: he separated from Mother in the dark, wandering solitary in empty lanes, no soul alive in all the universe but little Frank. Yet those tremendous axe blows had severed living flesh and blood, and for one moment, there on the stairs, he had held in his arms a tiny quick Allegra: of that reality he did not doubt at all.
Wonder subduing pain, he staggered to the front door. It stood unshattered. He drew the bar and turned the key, and went down the stone steps into the snow. He was weak now, and did not know where he was going. Had he done a Signal Act? Might the Lord give him one parting glimpse of little Allegra, somewhere among these trees? He slipped in a drift, half rose, sank again, crawled. He found himself at the foot of one of those boulders---the farther one, the stone he had not inspected.
The snow had fallen away from the face of the bronze tablet. Clutching the boulder, Frank drew himself up. By bringing his eyes very close to the tablet, he could read the words, a dying man panting against deathless bronze:
In loving memory of
FRANK
a spirit in prison, made for eternity
who saved us and died for us
January 14, 1915
"Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Were't not a Shame---were't not a Shame for him
In this clay carcass crippled to abide?"
Table of Contents
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN by David Campton
SCREAMING TO GET OUT by Janet Fox
UNDERTOW by Karl Edward Wagner
I CAN HEAR THE DARK by Dennis Etchison
EVER THE FAITH ENDURES by Manly Wade Wellman
A COBWEB OF PULSING VEINS by William Scott Home
CHILDREN OF THE CORN by Stephen King
IF DAMON COMES by Charles L. Grant
WITHIN THE WALLS OF TYRE by Michael Bishop
THERE'S A LONG, LONG TRAIL A-WINDING by Russell Kirk

