Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror Stories and Radio Dramas
RANE RANDALL slouched in one of Limpy’s chairs completely engrossed with thought. He didn’t see the Air Cop eyeing him from the doorway; nor did he see Limpy nudge the barman and say: “They’re after him again. Take him a highball and ask if he knows Moses.” The barman looked at Randall, then at the …
Continue reading “THE BRAIN OF MANY BODIES CHAPTER I THE BODY STEALERS”
| A |
quoted Bob Sanderson, as we stood LAS, poor Yorick. I knew him well,”
with a group of fellow students gazing at the grinning ghastly thing of bones. It had arrived at the studio that morning and was already mounted in its corner terribly still, it stood, and with an air of serene dignity. But it might have shrieked through its clenched teeth, so compelling was its presence.
I sought the eyes desperately as a man does when he is shaken and needs assurance or understanding. Empty sockets! Unbelievable that inert cavities could hold such an expression of sardonic misery! I cringed before them. Eyes that were more hideous for not being there at all!
And there was that incongruous, eternal grin that seemed to say: “Look at me. Once I was like you, fellows. Once I could join in your merry banter and gossip o’ mornings. I, too, stood working before a clay figure, pressing, molding, making beauty with my hands. Poor mortal hands that found courage to fashion imperishable things, when they themselves must come to this decay. Andrews, my pal and confidant, why do you stare at them so? Why don’t you clasp them as you used to in your morning greeting?”
I stepped forward under the spell of an anguished memory to grasp those fearful, bony joints and recoiled, chilled with horror.
“But why?” The relentless grin seemed to say when I looked up again. “They used to warm your heart and set your day right.
Yours, too, will be like this, some day——”
Involuntarily, I looked at my own hands and shuddered.
“Andy!” A voice startled me, soft-spoken as
it had been, and I turned to Bob, who had called me. He, too, had stood staring a long moment, after quoting the Melancholy Dane, and as I looked into his darkened eyes under the familiar scowl, I knew he had meant no derision.
“Come away, old fellow,” he said. “This- this thing is getting us. Mustn’t be maudlin, but damned if I want any work and its consequent study of anatomy to make me as cold-blooded as some of the fellows here.
“Did you hear them jesting’ and making clever, derisive quips about life, inspired by that poor thing? Damn it, Andy, I knew that men of science, doctors, sculptors and the rest, get so familiar with our mortal machines that they have no illusions about the so-called souls that go with them. Atheists in their hearts, to the last man! It’s not for me to say whether that’s a blind spot from too much looking; but until they’re able to give me better proof of where consciousness goes when it leaves the body even temporarily, I’ll be
on the fence—with a periscope.”
| E |
VEN if I felt as sure as they do that this is all that’s left of poor Novello,” I rejoined, “wouldn’t that be all the more reason for respecting the one thing about him that does live—our memories ?”
“False courage, Andy,” Bob came back at me. “That remnant there is our common destiny, and since its irrevocable it isn’t pretty to think about. Bitterness, even clever bitterness, in the face of that, is only the frenzied bewilderment of half-cowards before an unconquerable foe. The desperate kitten spitting at a police dog. Courage? Of a kind, yes; but it only makes you laugh, doesn’t it? I’m not especially courageous, Andy, but I’m a stingy cuss, and I hate to give my reaper a laugh,” he ended.
Novello, a promising young Italian student had worked, chatted, laughed and smoked with us but a few months ago, and now this was all——
We had liked and admired him for his genial nature and his unmistakable talent, but mostly for his courage. Unlike the majority of us who had good homes and some means, Novello had had no close relatives, had lived alone and slaved doggedly at most anything between school hours to eke out a living and continue the work he loved. With half the chances for happiness, and twice the discouragements that we had, he had never been in an ugly mood. A thoroughly likeable fellow.
Pretty little Patricia Herron, youngest daughter of old Colonel Herron, the most popular girl in the class, had singled him out when she could have had any of us. But we had been glad anyhow; at least, Bob and I knew he was in love with her—in a hopeless sort of way.
He rarely came to any of our parties. He had to work and couldn’t afford to. So Pat usually came with Harlan Ware, who had pursued her clownishly in spite of her aloofness ever since she had entered the class.
However, on one occasion Novello had joined us late and unexpectedly, to find Pat draped in a velvet portiere and a silk lamp-shade set rakishly on her bobbed head, preparing with a couple of masculine confederates wearing impromptu whiskers and protruding with pillows, to burlesque a scene from a current revival of a popular operetta. He had seated himself at the piano without stopping to remove his coat and played from memory the opening and accompanying score. Then, when Pat was wrestling vocally with her bewhiskered abductors, he had surprised us all by picking up the cue of the banished lover and coming to her rescue with mock gallantry and a rich baritone voice. After much laughter and loud applause, the rest had amused themselves with other things, but Pat and Novello had gone back to the piano together. They sat, singing softly to themselves the strains of half forgotten melodies, until Harlan with ill-concealed bad humor came to claim Pat for a dance and then took her home.
During the following weeks, Pat and Novello lunched frequently together and Harlan consoled himself with mutterings about “Wops.”
Four months later, Novello had been taken seriously ill and had been told he required an immediate operation. Knowing of his perilous condition, and that he hadn’t the necessary funds, Bob and I had called a class meeting and collected among us more than a sufficient sum to carry him through.
When I went to the hospital to tell him this, he protested at first and then in his quiet way he grasped my hand, tears came to his eyes and he turned his face to the wall.
Well—poor Novello never came through. Four of us fellows had spent the whole morning at the hospital. After the news came, we trudged slowly back to school without saying a word. He had been a real friend, and we felt his loss keenly.
The next day we learned that when Novello had known he was dying despite all that had been done for him, he had requested through his physician that his skeleton be given to the studio he had attended. He explained that he had once heard Professor Kalin say he desired the class to have one.
Whether he did this as a last act of gratitude, or whether he couldn’t bear to leave the place he had loved, and felt that in this way he could be with us still, I don’t know.
But—there it was. God, I was glad Pat wasn’t present! She had been grieved, stunned by his death and had gone to Europe with her mother shortly afterwards. I decided to inform her of the strange bequest as soon as she returned, for I wanted to spare her coming back to the studio without knowing what would greet her there. It would be hard enough for her without such a shock.
| B |
UT it is strange how intimacies and friendships are forgotten like dreams when they are no longer part of us. After a few months, the studio seemed quite the same, and most of the boys with the exception of Bob and myself could come into the room without a quick look to that corner and its ever-present reminder.
Pat stayed in Europe longer than we had expected, and it was almost a year after Novello’s death that I heard from her at home. She phoned that she was driving in from Long Island where she lived, and would drop by school for me at luncheon time if I wanted her to. Of course, I would be delighted to see her, and then I remembered too, the thing I must tell her.
I was waiting for Pat at the door when she drove up. We lunched at a little tea room around the corner and Pat had six escorts instead of one. For the rest of the students coming out at lunch time had recognized her car and insisted on joining us. Pat seemed quite her merry self again. I wondered how I would warn her about the thing in the studio for I feared she might return there with us and get a bad shock.
On the way back, I insisted upon walking alone with Pat. Sympathetically as I had hoped to put it, I fear I was very blunt. Her eyes filled with tears, but she pressed my hand and said: “Thanks, Andy, a lot, I understand.” As the rest of the group came up, she raised her head, smiled quickly and I don’t think they could have noticed any difference in her manner. She chatted gaily at the door, but refused to come up to the studio, pleading that she had other engagements and must hurry away.
WAS putting her in the roadster when Harlan
Ware, who had just heard of Pat’s return, came down. He rushed over to take her hands. At that moment, I felt sorry for him, for I knew he had missed Pat terribly. He pleaded to join her for a little spin, that they might talk, and they drove away together.
We saw Pat quite a lot during the next few weeks at luncheons and parties. But she never came back to the studio, although Harlan tried to persuade her several times, saying her refusal was “blamed nonsense.”
It was the second week in June, and the class was already in a flutter of anticipation about the annual class banquet set for the last Thursday of the month. This event always caused considerable excitement among us, for it was held in the studio and only for class members. There was something about coming back to a familiar scene of toil in holiday attire and bent only on pleasure that lent an atmosphere to the evening.
Two days before the party, Harlan Ware announced that Pat had consented to attend with him. We were surprised at her final decision but we were enthusiastic about it, for we had missed her and we remembered what a big part she had been of the two previous annuals.
Well, the evening had finally arrived, after a lackadaisical day at school, during which little work had been done while we gathered in groups and chattered about the possibilities of the evening.
Most of the gang had come early and in high spirits. “Chubby” Collins had started off the evening with his three impersonations, rendered to shouts of laughter although the crowd had seen them many times. Pretty Maybelle Fenton was ensconced becomingly in the window seat, strumming a uke, while four of the boys hovered over her, harmonizing extravagantly on moonlight melodies. There was little Sally Folsom, a la John Held, Jr., perched atop the piano, with a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other. Clever little girl, Sally, but you had to watch her drinks.
Someone had suggested dancing, and after a few turns I had gone downstairs with a couple of the boys for a smoke. When I came back, I saw Bob making the rounds as though looking for someone, and I went over to join him.
“Haven’t seen Pat and Harlan, have you?” he asked. I looked at my watch and was surprised to find it was almost eleven o’clock. And no sign of Harlan and Pat! We made inquiries from some of the rest, but no one had seen Harlan since school hours when he had promised to be there early and “with a pink ribbon in his hair.” He had confided to a few of the boys that he meant to ask Pat a very important question that night and had gone home in a high mood.
| T |
HE dancing and hilarity had lulled for a while and capable Betty Lindsey was busying herself with seating arrangements at the table when Harlan walked in alone.
Two of the girls ran up, to ask excitedly what he had done with his charge. He replied shortly: “Pat had a headache. Didn’t feel she should come.” His voice was calm, but his face was flushed and I knew he was furiously angry at what he called Pat’s “blamed nonsense.” Angry and jealous—of a memory!
“Chubby” mixed him a drink, then commandeering Les Corbin for a steed, he rode up in state to deliver it. Harlan laughed at this and seemed to be regaining his composure, but he became sullen again at the table. I sat opposite him and noticed that he was punishing the wine steadily. He had already had enough to make him drop the mask of amused interest he had worn earlier at supper, and he no longer laughed at the clever things little Sally Folsom on his left cooed in his ear. He was scowling fiercely in the direction of the corner. I realized this with a shock. I don’t think anyone else had noticed it, for there was much gaiety and laughter about the table.
Then suddenly he rose, strode over to the corner, took the poor thing of bones down, carried it back and say it in a chair at the head of the table. It was all done so quickly that some of the crowd had not seen it until it was seated there. Three of the girls shrieked and ran from the table. It did look grotesque—this grinning, ghastly thing at the head of a banquet table, with a bony hand at either side of its plate.
I pushed back my chair and stared at Harlan, wondering if he had suddenly gone mad, There was a diabolical expression of vengeance and jealousy in his bloodshot eyes and his mouth was twisted cruelly. He was pouring drinks for those nearest him, for himself, and for the thing of bones! With a gesture, he raised his glass to the stark jaws, and adding to the already incredibly gruesome scene, he began in a voice that seemed to choke and rattle deep down in his throat:
“Look at him, fellows! My lucky rival! Drink, drink to him, boys! He wins—with a heart turned to dust! Damn you, Novello! I tried to bring her here tonight—to show her how you’ve changed. You haven’t, to her—that’s the way with women—they shut their eyes to see! Damn your grinning pack of bones! Why don’t you laugh ? Laugh aloud ! You’ve beaten me, haven’t you ? You win! You win, damn you ! Here’s—here’s— to you !” He finished brokenly, as he picked up the wine he had poured for the thing and flung it through the grinning teeth. Then with one movement he gulped his own drink and fell back sobbing in his chair, his head in his arms on the table.
Then “Chubby” strolled back into the studio and slammed the door.
I got up to follow him, but Harlan stopped me at the door. “Stay with me, won’t you, Andrews?” He shuddered, He was sitting on the edge of the couch, digging his fingers through his hair. He did look done-up, poor devil.
“All right,” I replied. “Turn in. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
I stepped into the studio, but everybody had gone—even “Chubby,” with whom I had wanted to have a few words. How deserted the place looked! I certainly wasn’t going to linger long here. I lighted a cigarette and sat down at the far end of the room, with my back to the table for a few quick puffs.
When I had finished smoking-, I walked over to the wall switch near the door to turn out the lights. Might as well leave things as they were until morning, I thought. I’ll go to bed now.
I turned the switch, the lights went out and my heart almost stopped beating! Good God, what was that fluttering, reddish glow behind me, over my shoulder! I was paralyzed for the moment and afraid to turn around, for I remembered too well the thing sitting at the table. Suppose those tales one heard were true? Suppose poor Novello’s spirit——Well, I couldn’t stand here all night. Slowly, half leaning against the door, I turned to look. Boy, what a relief! With a sigh and a little chuckle, I relaxed against the door. A good laugh for the fellows tomorrow. What an old woman I was getting to be. Afraid of my own shadow— might as well be that way, as to be afraid of the glow of a few almost burned-out candles sputtering in a dark room. The candles on the table, of course. I’d forgotten all about them.
I opened my eyes and looked again. I stared—for I was fascinated by the gruesome beauty of that fantastic scene. The flicker of almost exhausted candles casting an eerie, wavering light on the deserted banquet table in the great dark studio—the only remaining guest, that thing of bones at the head of the table. That grinning, ghastly thing with its unearthly expression of misery and mockery. Little lights and shadows that chased themselves across the hideous face and almost made it seem animated—
Maybe I was going mad, standing here staring so long at that thing—I made an effort to pull myself together, walked quickly to the table, extinguished the candles and went in to rejoin
Harlan,
| W |
HEN I awakened the next morning, Harlan was already dressed and reclining in an easy chair. His eyes were closed wearily, as though he had not yet had enough sleep.
“Morning, Ware,” I called. “How’s the head?”
“Glad you’re awake, Andrews,” he replied. “I am bad company for myself this morning, On top of knowing that I made a damned ass of myself last night, I’ve had a most horrible nightmare that hangs on like a leech. Can’t seem to shake it off, even now when I’m wide awake. Serves me right, of course, after what I did last night. What do you suppose possessed me, Andy?
Can’t excuse myself on so few drinks. And that hellish dream! Got to tell it to you, Andrews, even though it’s silly as the deuce; then maybe I can forget it.”
He glanced up shamefacedly to see if I was listening as he continued: “The whole thing started out of a great glare of light that almost blinded me at first and which I realized afterwards was the headlights of a car. A speeding car, coming toward me, which for no reason filled me with great glee. Then I became conscious that it was Pat’s car, and there was Pat speeding toward me—toward all of us, as fast as she could. She was coming to the party, of course. As I ran down the long, dark road to meet her, waving my arms and shouting greetings, I saw something white in the seat beside her. Then, as the car drew nearer, it became—that thing in there!” He nodded toward the studio, as he covered his eyes.
“Then I could see Pat’s face, and it was no longer smiling as she grappled desperately with the thing that had its long, bony hands on the steering wheel and was turning it against Pat’s strength toward the steep, dark embankment at one side of the road. Terror-stricken, I tried to run to help her, but I couldn’t move an inch! You can’t imagine the horror that gripped me as I stood there in, the dark road, unable to move, while that thing battled with Pat over the wheel, swerving the speeding car dangerously from side to side of the road, getting nearer and nearer the embankment until, with a great crash of broken glass and a shriek from Pat, they plunged over into the darkness below. Then I woke up.
E had been so stunned by this horrible finale to our dinner that I don’t think anyone moved until Sally Folsom’s hysterical giggle broke the spell. There followed a few moments of excited discussion, mostly in monotones, while some of the boys admonished Harlan to “buck up,” while others winked and talked about “his having had too much.” The girls had gone for their wraps, since now it seemed impossible to resume frivolities.
There was a small but comfortable ante-room off the studio that Professor Kalin had allowed the boys to fit up for use during the winter months, and we had often taken turns at spending the night there when we wanted to work late or get an early morning start on some particularly interesting subject. It had been good-natured “Chubby” Collins’ for that weekend, but he took Harlan there and offered it to him in embarrassed sympathy;
“Go to bed, you sap, and get some shut-eye. That’s what you need. I gotta take Betty home.”
“Terrible, wasn’t it? Gave me such a nasty twist, I can’t get it out of my mind. Well, it’s only seven o’clock, Andy,” he concluded. “Shall we go out for a little cool morning air, before we have breakfast and brighten up the place?”
We were about ready to leave when Bob came in.
“How do you happen to be up so early ?” he asked. “Have you heard, too?”
“Heard what?” I asked quickly.
| A |
BOUT Pat,” he answered, and I saw
Harlan start and clench his teeth, “they found her at the bottom of that embankment near Merrick’s corner this morning in her wrecked car—dead ! Her mother called me about a half an hour before they found her. She asked if I knew where she had gone for the night. She said Pat had decided suddenly around eleven o’clock last night that she had behaved foolishly about refusing to go to the party and had climbed into her roadster, chuckling over the surprise she would give us when she walked in time for the banquet. Her mother seemed to have a premonition of what would happen for she said it had been drizzling when Pat left and she had cautioned her against driving too fast on the slippery road. I—I hadn’t the heart to tell her we hadn’t seen Pat. I was afraid, too, so I dressed and went out—but they had discovered her body. Poor little Pat,” he finished with a sigh.
Harlan had slumped into a chair and sat staring into space. I motioned Bob to follow me into the studio, and without a word we took the thing of bones and replaced it in its corner. As we turned away, I noticed a strand of hair caught in the bony fingers of the left hand!
“Probably Sally’s—last night,” Bob said, “She was nearest, wasn’t she?” I didn’t answer but I felt cold all over as I walked away.
I have never told anyone of the dream Harlan so vividly related to me that morning. I’d merely be thought an impressionable fool if I did, I guess.
To the rest of the world, Pat was just a member of the reckless younger generation, speeding in typical fashion on a slippery night road to join a party of waiting friends and ending disastrously at the bottom of a cliff. Too bad, but quite a natural denouement these days!
Call me superstitious if you will, but I can’t think of the affair without having grave doubts as to its natural conclusion.
If spirits do live on, in that vague place we call the Borderland, retaining their earthly personalities, then they must indeed retain their earthly emotions as well.
Novello had loved Pat. Can death change that? Since Pat continued to love his memory, was he not, as Harlan had said, still the lucky rival ?
But he was a rival unable to defend his mortal memory from the blasphemous and unsportsmanlike treatment to which it had been subjected! Suppose this fact had taunted him into contemplating an interrupted victory—into taking Pat across the misty frontier that had intercepted their love?
Who knows?
Uncanny Stories, April 1941
by Denis Plimmer
Author of “Men of the Solar Legion,” etc.
In midair the gigantic form seemed to stop!
| F |
OR immediate release!
The statement which follows concerns the entire world, and for that reason I, Paul Dicey of Irving Place, New York City, am sending copies of it to the world’s leading newspapers. What I have to say herein must be considered carefully by all who can read, for in it may lie their salvation and the salvation of billions of their descendants yet unborn!
For this is an account of the mysterious visitation of the stranger, Mok; of my meeting with Carlton Jervis, M.D., and of the enormous consequences thereof.
I shall begin with the night of the great storm in mid-September, 1941.
All that day heat hung sultry and ominous over Manhattan, and about ten that night the storm broke—a wild weird electrical fury striking vicious blue tongues of lightning through the black and swollen sky.
I slammed down my window as the driving rain broke against it in vicious inimical waves. Around the four walls of the old rooming-house on Irving Place the wind tore and rattled and clutched and scraped like a vast invisible giant with clawing importunate fingers. For the sake of coolness I had left my door open. Across the hallway was the only other room on the floor, a room at that time unoccupied.
I was studying for my Doctorate in applied psychology and so deep was I in my books that at first I didn’t hear footsteps mounting the crazy ancient staircase, so deep that I noticed nothing until a light glowed suddenly in the hall. Looking up, I saw Mrs. Rafferty, my old Irish landlady, emerge from the stairs. She was followed by a stranger. Unlocking the door of the vacant room, she switched on the light within and beckoned the stranger to follow her.
In view of subsequent events, I have always been piqued at the thought that the new lodger did not strike me more action ac hvac vividly at the moment. As it was, in the uncertain light of the hall lamp I perceived only a tall, stooping heavy-set man with an indefinable air of shagginess about him. His back was turned to me the entire time so I had no glimpse of his face. But I did see wide muscular shoulders, long swinging arms, stained and rainsoaked clothing, and twining hair darkly tangled which escaped beneath his hat to cover his thick neck.
| It was the first time the cop had cut down a man from another Time-track—it was the first time he’d sent that kind of a corpse to the morgue! |
I returned to my work with hardly a thought for the newcomer. Minutes passed. The door across the hall closed. A hand touched my shoulder.
“Mr. Dicey!”
It was my landlady who spoke so timidly and in such low tremulous tones.
“Can I talk to you?” she was pleading.
“Of course, Mrs. Rafferty.”
Furtively she locked the door. Her expression was a queer blend of fear and horror. She said:
“Did you see him?” “Whom?”
“The new roomer?”
I stared at her, puzzled. “Only from the back, Mrs. Rafferty.”
| H |
ER anxious eyes watched me.
“Then you didn’t see his face?” I shook my head.
Suddenly she collapsed into an armchair.
“I shouldn’t be tryin’ to run this place alone, I shouldn’t,” she moaned. “It’s not a woman’s task!” Fiercely she gripped my hand.
“He wouldn’t sign the register, Mr. Dicey! He wouldn’t hardly speak a word. His English is funny. I can’t think what country he’s from. I don’t know his name. Oh, Lord, I don’t know anything about him!”
“Then why did you let him in?” Mrs. Rafferty stared at the carpet.
“Because I was afraid,” she breathed.
“Of what?”
“His face.”
“What about it?”
Through Irving Place the wind screamed desolately. The rain washed over the screaming windowpanes.
“It’s the face of an animal!” I stared, saying, “What kind of an animal?” Mrs. Rafferty sucked in her breath.
“I don’t know, Mr. Dicey. Some kind that don’t know kindness nor gentleness, some kind that does things that make the quiet and secret, that does them at night!”
To my instant suggestion that she have a policeman evict this obviously undesirable tenant, the old lady demurred. After all, she might be mistaken in her judgment and Lord knew she wouldn’t turn a dog out into such a night as this . . .
“Did he pay you anything in advance?”
Mrs. Rafferty displayed a crushed five-dollar bill bunched up tightly in her palm.
“Well,” I persisted, not having much desire to share a lonely top-floor with so bizarre a creature, “how would it be, Mrs. Rafferty, if I went in and saw him? Maybe I could form an opinion of my own.”
“Oh, don’t, Mr. Dicey,” she begged. “Please, don’t! There’s something about him tonight that warns me to leave him alone! I said he had a face like an animal. Well, tonight the animal’s come far, he’s hungry and tired, his temper is short! Let him alone, Mr. Dicey, let him alone!”
But by this time my curiosity was afire. I had already started for the door when, distant and faint, a shrill stabbing scream soared from the rainy street.
“Eileen!” Mrs. Rafferty gasped. “That’s Eileen’s voice!”
I dashed to the window and threw it up, leaning far out into the stormy night. What I saw drove me back and, followed closely by Mrs. Rafferty, I dashed down the shaky staircase. When we arrived in the street less than a minute later, Eileen Rafferty and a little rain-coated knot of passers-by were bending over a stricken form.
Eileen was my landlady’s granddaughter.
“What is it, child?” cried the old lady.
The rain-drenched girl indicated the huddled figure on the pavement.
“It’s Delia,” she explained in a quivering tone of raw fright. “I think her throat’s cut!”
I bent closer to look. Delia was the colored maid of the house. From her sepia throat a dark river of blood still poured, gradually mingling with the dancing rain.
“She’d left the house through the cellar twenty minutes ago,” Eileen was narrating. “We’d given her an advance on her salary. I think she was going to buy some shoes. She must have been caught in the cellar entrance. Afterwards, she managed to stagger out this far.”
| M |
Eileen shook her head.
“All the doors and windows were shut, gran,” she replied. “The storm was raisin’ such a howl you couldn’t have heard an army passin’. Then the bell rang, remember, and you took the new fellow upstairs to show him the room.”
“Ah yes,” I said. “The new lodger. I’m going to talk to him. Eileen, get the police.”
And leaving the two women I hurried back up the stairs and knocked on the stranger’s door. I heard a grunt, pushed the door open, and entered the room.
The new lodger sat with his back to me. His shaggy head drooped in his hands. Carelessly in the center of the floor lay his damp coat and hat. In one corner, muddied shoes and socks made a grotesque heap.
“Pardon me,” I said.
For a moment the drooping figure remained still. Then—slowly—the head swung around. I choked back a cry of terror. The face was infinitely more horrible than Mrs. Rafferty had described it. Although basically feature for feature it was human, its expression of eyes and mouth was that of a wild, hungry man-driven ape, resting from pursuers in a cave under a desolate hill.
For a space we stared at each other stupidly. Several times the stranger opened his great maw of a mouth inarticulately. Finally:
“You want—something?”
The words were uttered with difficulty. The voice, as if unused to human speech, grated rustily.
“Yes,” I replied. “Mrs. Rafferty tells me that you failed to sign her register.”
Under their shadowy brows the harassed eyes roved about the room helplessly.
“Cannot—write,” the creature muttered finally.
“You haven’t been taught to write?”
“Nobody write. Forgot—long ago. Five hundreds of—years.”
“Your people haven’t been able to write for five-hundred years? Why?”
The monster stared at me. In its eyes a tiny red flame flickered, the same flame which glows in the eyes of a jungle beast goaded into a trap by its enemies.
“Only priests write,” he said finally. “Why others—learn?”
From what country did the creature come? He shook his head. And his name?
“Mok.”
“What’s your other name?”
The response to this was unexpected. With lightning speed Mok heaved his giant bulk from the chair. Hands swinging ape-fashion, eyes red with rage, he tottered towards me.
“Tired,” he bellowed, towering above my head. “Go! Sleep! Tired! Sleep! Sleep! See?”
Before this onslaught I fled to the hallway. The door slammed. A metallic fumbling within was accompanied by heavy breathing. The lock clicked. Something told me that locks were strange affairs to this outlandish animal.
“SLEEP!”
The word welled up within the room, spiraled through the house. Another grunt, and the bed groaned as that prodigious body fell upon it. Suddenly I realized that the thing called Mok had been unbelievably exhausted.
Downstairs the two women were pallid and trembling. Mrs. Rafferty, huddled in an armchair, was staring white-faced at Eileen. Delia had just been taken to the morgue. I told them of my experience.
| W |
HEN I had done, Mrs. Rafferty extended her hand. In it still lay the five-dollar bill.
“Look at it, Mr. Dicey!” Eileen whispered.
Wonderingly I unfolded the note, smoothing out the grimy creases. Of a sudden, nausea rose within me.
The bill’s upper left-hand corner was bloodsoaked.
For a while the room was heavy with silence. I said:
“Eileen, did you give Delia a five-dollar bill?” Eileen nodded dumbly.
“This five-dollar bill?”
“I don’t know. I—I can’t be sure.”
I turned to the door, saying, “I’m going to take this to the police.”
Instantly Mrs. Rafferty clutched my arm.
“You can’t, Mr. Dicey,” she begged. “I won’t let you!”
“But this is brutal murder. That thing upstairs may be a homicidal maniac. God knows he looks
it!”
Mrs. Rafferty sobbed.
“I don’t care. I’ve got the reputation of my house to keep. I can’t afford to involve one of my lodgers in a murder case. Not unless I’m sure he’s guilty. If the police are good for anything, they’ll get him some other way. This can’t be the only clue!”
Slowly I turned back. Although I hated the idea of sharing a lonely top-floor with a possible criminal, I appreciated Mrs. Rafferty’s viewpoint.
“All right,” I conceded. “We’ll say nothing— yet.”
So did I leave the two terrified women.
The next day I passed at the university. On my return that evening I found my landlady seated quietly in her basement parlor. What of the new lodger?
“I haven’t set eyes on him,” Mrs. Rafferty replied. “What sort of weird animal he is I don’t know, but he has no regular job, and he seems satisfied to sit in his room all day alone. He hasn’t even been out to eat. I’ve been watching for him, believe me!”
The main entrance to the old building lay just outside Mrs. Rafferty’s sub-sidewalk window. My eye wandered to it and when she finished speaking I put my finger to my lips. Just outside, the thing called Mok was slowly descending the steps. As we watched, he disappeared down the darkening street.
“That’s the first breath of air he’s had all day, so help me!” the old landlady whispered. We sat there in the gathering dusk for a quarter of an hour until Mok returned, shambling down the street and into the house. We heard him climbing the stairs.
I sat there a few moments longer. Then I went to my room.
The next three hours passed in study. I have fortunately taught myself concentration but, as the clock checked off the minutes, unbidden thoughts kept scattering through my brain. I thought of Delia lying on the gleaming pavement with her throat gaping redly, of Eileen’s tormented face, and of the grim lodger a few feet down the hall. And I fell to examining his strange remarks, to analyzing them, to attempting some sort of a coherent integration of them.
Apparently he was unfamiliar with America, had come a long distance, was poor and exhausted. The land he came from was priest-ridden and during the past five hundred years illiteracy had been the rule. The stranger was white. For a while I considered the strange rumors of vanished white races said to be hidden away in the hearts of Asia and Africa. Even these hardly seemed to fit the case. Besides, they smacked too much of travelers’ tales to elicit much belief from me. In the final analysis, his land of origin sounded much like Europe before the year One-thousand. But it certainly resembled no modern country that I had ever heard of.
Instinct suddenly made me look up. In my doorway was Mok!
| T |
HE sight of that huge bulk of bestial life sent a chill through my body. Striving to hide my terror, I said:
“What is it, Mok?”
Slowly he lifted his hand. From the hairy paw dangled an absurd piece of gaily-spotted material. A man’s bow-tie.
Mok gulped. His cruel face underwent an odd change which I interpreted as an apologetic grin.
He held the tie towards me.
“You fix—yes?”
For a moment I was speechless. Then it dawned upon me that he had in some way acquired a bowtie and would now like to wear it as he had seen others do.
Threading the garish thing through his collar, I tied it in a rakish butterfly knot. The effect was grotesque. The spectacle of that ugly simian face crowning the ridiculous little splash of colored cloth made me chuckle in spite of my fear. I held up a mirror before the monster. Wonderingly, he studied his reflection.
Then from out that muscled cavernous throat great laughter welled. With thick and clumsy fingers he touched the bow. Then turning to me he reached forth his hand. At first I started back. Then I stopped. The hand was affectionately stroking my hair.
Mok was pleased!
“Where you come from,” said I, “don’t they have bow-ties?”
He shook his head.
“What do you live in?” I pursued hopefully.
“Hut. Hut from—big—stones.”
“How long have you lived in these huts?”
Slowly through the tortuous labyrinth of Mok’s intelligence my words filtered.
“Always,” he answered finally. “Since big war.”
“What war?”
“War of giants—long ago!”
Again his fingers strayed to the tie beneath his chin. Again the happy smile crinkled his face. With a final pat on my head, he ambled back to his room.
For a while I pondered this new facet, a facet showing childlike vanity quite touching and distinctly appealing. It seemed hard to picture this great grinning thing slitting Delia’s ebony throat. I continued my speculations concerning the land of his birth. A land in which bow-ties were unknown, where many years ago there had been a war. Something in the way he mentioned this made me feel that it had occurred generations back, long before Mok or his father or his father’s father had been born. He referred to it much as moderns refer to the discovery of America, as an event of antiquity, almost a milestone of tradition.
I was just preparing for bed when Mrs. Rafferty knocked softly. I admitted her. As on the previous night, she locked the door.
“Mr. Dicey,” she whispered “I don’t feel right about letting you sleep up here so near to him.”
Remembering the incident of the tie, I smiled.
“He never killed Delia, Mrs. Rafferty. He’s too good-natured.”
She compressed her lips. Her eyes held mine.
“The body of an old man has been found behind a signboard in a vacant lot three blocks away. Mr.
Dicey, his neck was broke . . .” Suddenly I went cold.
“Who was he?”
Mrs. Rafferty shook her head.
“No one I ever saw. A nice-looking weak little old man. His poor thin neck was all twisted like a dead chicken’s. It was horrible! And the queer thing was”—she lowered her voice—“that he was fully dressed except for one thing. He had no tie!” She unlocked the door. “You’ve been warned, sir. Bolt yourself in tonight. I’m going to!”
Before I could speak, she was gone. I could hear her scurrying down the dark stairs.
| D |
IGGING my nails into the palms of my hands,
I fought to keep my head. The ghastly picture was bright in my brain of Mok trailing the little old man, getting him into a dark garbage-strewn lot, and wringing his neck—for a gay piece of cloth!
Suddenly I saw how in character the murder was. It had elements of the bizarre, the horrible, the grotesque. A useless senseless slaughter for a thing of adornment, but it was right. . . . It was what Mok would do!
I jumped to my feet. A sound had reached me— the sound of a nearby door slamming, of heavy feet descending the stairs. How long I stood there frozen I don’t know, but the blood surged in my veins at the sound of a low cry from the depths of the building, the cry of a woman in mortal terror. With a single leap I was through the door. As I descended the stairs, the low cry was repeated. My flying feet drowned it out. Panting, I reached Mrs. Rafferty’s door.
As I did so, it flew open with a deafening crash. With express-train speed a giant figure shot out, starting up the stairs in great animal-like hops. I ran into the room. Mrs. Rafferty, chalk-white and shaking, cowered in the. corner.
“I was eating a piece of bread,” she gasped. “He knocked me down and took it from me. He was hungry!”
A burly policeman attracted by the screams entered. Briefly I explained the situation. Together we started up the stairs. Halfway up the officer shouted to Mok to surrender. The answer was violent. A light chair spun down the stairwell, splintering and crashing. We dodged. The missile hurtled by harmlessly. Mingled with the stamping of feet, we heard Mok’s mumbled incoherencies. The bullet-like crack of a slammed door echoed.
A few more steps carried us to the top floor. Mok’s door faced us. Within the creature panted heavily.
“Mok,” I shouted, “come out!”
The only reply was a guttural monosyllable.
The policeman beat upon the thin panel of the door with his nightstick.
“Open up!”
Drawing his pistol, he sent two slugs tearing through the flimsy lock. A guttering howl of pain arose. The door fell open. Across the room Mok was clambering through the window. We rushed him but he was quick. Swinging out onto a fireladder, he mounted to the roof. Cursing, the patrolman followed, I at his heels. Striving not to look down at the distant street, I climbed the rusted rungs and swung myself over the lip of the roof. A gigantic moonlit form loped across its tarred surface, thrusting the sturdy patrolman aside as if he had been a child.
With a single clean leap Mok gained the high coping. Barely eight feet separated the top of Mrs. Rafferty’s house from the roof of a neighboring building. Tensing his iron muscles, Mok launched himself into dizzy space. A straight arrow of flame from the revolver’s mouth split the darkness. In midair the gigantic form seemed to stop, hanging for a breathless instant on the jet bosom of Night.
Then with a piteous animal-like cry, he fell sprawling and clutching through the empty air. The policeman and I leaned over the roof’s rim just as the body struck. It bounced on the hard sidewalk, lurched, and landed scarecrow-postured across the curb. Even as we watched, the dark shadows of the curious began to encircle the body like jackals about a slain tiger.
When we reached the street, a pale slender man was just rising from a scrutiny of the remains of Mok!
“My name is Jervis, officer,” he said quietly. “I’m a doctor. This—man—is dead.”
There was something strange in the hesitation before man. The doctor noted my look of inquiry and explained gravely:
“I say man for want of a more apt word.”
We stared at the body, then with a common accord leaned closer.
For something was happening to it!
| N |
EVER shall I be able adequately to describe what followed. As we watched a miracle took place. In swift metamorphoses the brutish face of the dead Mok was changing, growing younger. The beard lightened and disappeared, the heavy lines around the eyes melted, the rugged contours of the jaw softened. Before us was the face of youth. Simultaneously the huge body appeared slimmer, almost—adolescent . . .
Beneath our fascinated eyes the process continued inexorably. Young manhood yielded to boyishness, boyishness to childhood, with a corresponding change in the bulk beneath the clothes. With a lightning movement the doctor tore the already loose shirt aside, exposing the frail delicacy of a youngster’s body.
And still the alteration proceeded until in the cold light of the street lamp the corpse of a baby lay before us. Even that diminished. Teeth vanished, hair; muscular hands became pudgy and dimpled.
Tinier and tinier grew the corpse at our feet. Feverishly the doctor ripped clothing aside to watch this wonder. Suddenly the baby’s body curled, knees drawn up, hands folded inward, head contracted toward the breast. Before our eyes extremities lost shape; hands, feet, and head were engulfed in a vague roundness. Suddenly before us lay a tiny lump of indeterminate flesh, cushioned on the discarded clothing of the giant. The flesh dwindled to the size and shape of a large pearl. That was replaced by a glinting jewel of moisture which vanished before our awestruck gaze. Now nothing remained before us—nothing but the crumpled outline of garments which once had clothed the savage stranger.
We had seen the mystic process of birth— reversed!
“Where is he?” the dazed policeman muttered. Jervis looked up, smiling faintly.
“Somewhere in Time, officer,” was all he said.
The officer bent over. Gingerly he gathered up the heap of worn clothes.
“What are you going to do with those?” I asked.
He grinned sheepishly.
“Damned if I know,” he responded. “If I take ‘em to the morgue, they’ll say I’m crazy. If I take ‘em to headquarters, they’ll say I’m crazy. Any way you look at it, somebody’ll say I’m crazy!” He shook his head. “Maybe I am.”
“Here’s my card,” said Jervis. “If you need any help in your dilemma, just give me a ring.” He retrieved a small object from the pavement. “And here’s final evidence that you shot a man and not a ghost.”
His extended hand held a piece of metal.
“My bullet!” exclaimed the policeman.
“And,” Jervis concluded, “flattened on one side as all bullets are when they strike bone. Goodnight.”
Mumbling to himself, the patrolman wandered down the street, the heap of discarded clothes cradled in his brawny arms.
I was anxious to discuss the whole affair, so I invited Jervis up to my room. A few minutes later, seated in my armchair, he was intently listening to my narration.
When I was through, he wrinkled his brow.
“You say, Mr. Dicey,” he mused, “that Mok came from some land once ravaged by war in which for five-hundred years literacy had been a monopoly of the priesthood, in which the inhabitants lived in stone huts and were unfamiliar with bow-ties or locks, and whose basic impulses, unscreened by any civilized veneer, made them casual murderers?”
“And,” I reminded him, “a country of white men.”
He nodded.
“What conclusions do you draw?” he asked.
| I |
SAID, “Well, doctor, I know of no modern nation which would fit those specifications, do
you?”
He shook his head.
“I can only think of the Dark Ages,” I went on. “The British tribes for example lived in stone huts, they certainly wore no bow-ties, they were notoriously brutal in their attitude toward human life, they were ruled by a weird kind of priesthood, the Druids, they left few written remains, and they experienced wars of one kind or another almost incessantly. Of course I’d never say it in public, but could it be possible—philosophers say that all Time exists simultaneously—that somehow Mok was an ancient Briton who by design or accident strayed into the wrong time-track and found himself in the 20th century? Then when he died, his body, following a natural course, grew younger, became embryonic, resolved itself into the seed of life, and finally vanished back into its own period?” My words sounded crazy. Jervis bit his lip.
“Mr. Dicey, anything is possible, and certainly your hypothesis seems to fit the case. One detail alone rings false! The language spoken by the ancient Britons, the pre-Beowulf tongue, had little connection with modern English. I should think it unlikely that Mok, therefore, could have learned even as much comprehensible language as he did during his brief stay in our century.”
I asked the doctor for his own solution.
“I think,” he began, “that your time speculation was essentially right. Mok did lose himself on the wrong time-track. But he did not come from the past!”
I put the obvious question.
“Go over the facts again,” said Jervis. “A certain land, say America, is devastated by war. Civilization is destroyed. Those who survive must live like savages in caves or huts. Learning dies, culture dies, the spoken word almost atrophies. However, modern English in a crudely abbreviated form still remains the basis for such conversation as is needed. As always in a primitive society, a learned circle springs up, possibly a circle numbering the few scientists and scholars left alive, and in their hands learning, a precarious flame, is kept feebly alight. But these men are in the minority, and in order to preserve their safety they call themselves priests and pass their knowledge down from generation to generation. Five hundred years later bow-ties are forgotten and English has been reduced to a scattering of vital nouns and verbs. Sleep, tired, hungry, hot, cold, run, fight, die, and so on. Then perhaps one of the priesthood gets to work on the problem of Time. By a miracle he manages to crash through the veil separating age from age, and for the sake of experiment he sends Mok out and down the years as a courier. If all Time exists simultaneously on different levels, then
Caesar’s Rome and Charlemagne’s France,
Elizabeth’s England and Lincoln’s America are all still active, still going through their endless destined round of events like so many records on an automatic phonograph. And if the past coexists with the present, what follows?” “That the future does also?” Jervis nodded, saying:
“I believe that Mok was an emissary from the Future. Through him you and I are privileged to know what the Future may be like, a time of bestiality and savagery where throats are cut and learning hides behind the walls of the temple. And this is to be brought about by some vast and devastating war, a war destroying all decency and all faith in God or man. Mr. Dicey, we stand on the threshold of this disaster. Perhaps we have been chosen as prophets for our time. Perhaps we can revise the Future and save mankind from annihilation. But for us the fight will be bitter. Two against the forces of darkness abroad in the world today. Are we partners, Mr. Dicey?”
He had offered a lean nicotine-stained hand. I grasped it. For I had found a friend.
This brings my share in the world’s warning to a close. Humanity now has its chance. The choice lies fairly in our hands. Dr. Jervis and I have done our best. Gentlemen, the rest is up to you!
Signed Paul Dicey, A.B., A.M.
Signed Carlton Jervis, M.D. (Witness)
THE END