The Second Wish and Other Exhalations

by Brian Lumley

  “Get up,” she ordered. As he climbed to his feet she stared at the stump where his right arm should have been. “You can’t be a mutant — you’re too old for that.”

  He walked slowly, carefully up the defile, dusting him­self off as he went towards the girl who was outlined, now, against the evening greens and browns of the small valley behind her. She had a nice set-up here, and she was alone — otherwise she wouldn’t be toting that rifle herself. As he drew closer to her he saw the cave on the other side of the valley. Could hardly be more than a hundred yards across, that valley; more a saddle between the hills. Corn patch growing nicely … mutant strawberries … rabbits. She had real good legs …

  She saw where he was looking.

  “Hold it right there.” He came to a halt not ten feet away from her. “I asked you a question!” She swung the rifle to point it significantly at his middle.

  “Mutant? No, industrial accident, that’s all — long be­fore the war,” he answered. “But I’ve been given the mutant treatment ever since. So has every cripple! Been kicked out of every town I ever went near for almost four years. It’s no fun, lady — ’specially now they’re burnin’ mutants! Look, if you’ve any decency at all, you’ll give me just a bite of what you’ve got cooking over there, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  She thought about it, began to shake her head negatively, then changed her mind: “You’re … welcome — but I’ll warn you now, there’s three unmarked graves in the corners of this valley. You try anything … I’ll have no more cor­ners left.” She waved him past with the gun, taking a good look at him as he went. He was about thirty-five, forty per­haps. He’d probably put on age fast after the war. Feeling her eyes on his stump, he glanced back over his shoulder.

  “Armless, I be,” he said in wry humour, gratified to see her relax a little. Then: “How come you’re up here on your own? You’ve been here some years by the look of the place.”

  “I lived in the town on the coast back there, where the walls shine at night,” she gestured vaguely behind her. “That place at the foot of the hills, just a heap of rubble now, you must have come through it to get up here. I was only eighteen then … when the war came. One of the first bombs landed in the sea, threw radioactive water all over the town. When my baby was born he was — different. The radiation …” She faltered, lost for words. “… My husband died quickly. What few people lived through it wanted to have my baby put … they wanted to kill him. Said it would be better for him. Said it would be better for both of us. I ran off. I stole the rifle, shells, some seeds and one or two other odds and ends. Been here ever since. I get along fine…”

  “You still got the mu—?” He knew it was a mistake before the words were out. The air seemed to go hard.

  “Mister,” she poked the barrel of the gun viciously between his shoulder blades, “if you’re a mutant-hunter you’re as good as dead!” He staggered from the pressure of the rifle in his back, turning to face her, going suddenly white as he saw her finger tightening on the trigger.

  “No …! No, just curious. Christ, I’ve been hunted myself — and it’s obvious I couldn’t be a mutant! What, me? A mutant-hunter! Why? — some places there’s a bounty, sure — but out here in the middle of nowhere? I mean … do I look like a bounty hunter … ?” He was pathetic.

  She relaxed again. “My baby … he … he died! No more questions.” It was an order.

  They had crossed the valley and the sun was starting to sink behind the hills. He peered eagerly into the pot hanging over the fire. The cave was a dark blot behind the glowing embers, with a homemade candle flickering at its back.

  This was sure a good thing she’d got, he mused to himself, licking his lips.

  She motioned with the rifle, indicating he should help himself from the pot. He took up a battered tin plate and heaped it with the thick, bubbling stew before dropping the heavy iron spoon back into the pot. Juicy rabbit bones protruded from the meat in the mess of stew on his plate. Without another word he started eating. It was good.

  As he ate he looked the girl over. She had a good face to match her figure. He could hardly keep from staring at the way her shirt swelled outwards with the pressure of the firm breasts beneath it. And it was that above all else — the way her shirt strained from her body — which finally decided his course of action.

  He licked his lips and reached casually for the spoon again, crouching with the plate on his knees …

  In a second he had straightened and the hot stuff was on her neck. Before she even had time to yelp from the shock he had brought her a savage, whiplash, back-hand blow across the face with the swing of a powerfully muscled left arm. As she spun sideways he nimbly grabbed the falling rifle out of midair and turned it on her. She started to scramble to her feet, a red welt already blossoming on her face.

  “Stay put!” He held the rifle loosely in his hand, confi­dent finger on the trigger, daring her to make a false move. “I’ll shoot you in the legs,” he said, grinning wolfishly, “so’s not to spoil you completely. You wouldn’t want to be spoiled completely, now would you?”

  She cringed away from him on the ground. “You wouldn’t … you—”

  “Get up!” he snarled, the grin sliding from his face.

  As she made to get to her feet he tossed the rifle be­hind him and slammed another roundly swinging blow to her face. She lurched backwards, falling, and before she could recover he stepped over her, planting his feet firmly, tearing the shirt from her supple body. “Thing was ready to bust anyway …”

  He licked his lips again as she screamed and tried to cover herself. “Shirt sure didn’t tell no lie …”

  He grabbed her left wrist, twisting her arm up behind her back, forcing her to her feet.

  “Sweetheart, your feeding’s good — now let’s see what your loving’s like; the Good Lord knows you’ve waited a long time!”

  “Don’t… ! Don’t do it. I fed you, I …”

  “More fool you, sweetheart,” he rasped, cutting her off, “but you may’s well get used to me; I’m going to be here quite some time. You need a man about the place.”

  He pushed her into the cave, noting that the candle at the rear stood beside a heavy black blanket, stretched luxuriously in a hollow on the floor.

  The shadows moved in the dimness of the cave as he shoved her towards the sputtering candle. A few feet from the rear wall of rock she twisted under her own arm and pulled away from him. He laughed at the way her body moved as she tried to free herself. “No good get­ting all hot and bothered now, sweetheart — not with the bed all laid out for us …”

  “It’s not a bed!” she screamed, jerking her arm back in desperate resistance. The sweat of anticipation on his straining fingers let him down. Her hand suddenly slipped through his and he crashed backwards, off balance, onto the ‘bed.’

  There was instant, horrible movement beneath him.

  “No … !” the girl screamed. “No! That’s not stew, Baby, it’s a man!”

  But Baby, who had no ears, took no notice.

  The edges of the ‘bed’ rose up in thickly glistening, black doughy flaps — like an inky, folding pancake — and flopped purposefully over the struggling man upon it. Subtly altered digestive juices squirted into his face and muscular hardness gripped him. He gave a shriek — just one — as the living envelope around him started to squeeze.

  Hours later, when dawn was spreading like a pale stain over the horizon between the hills, the girl was still crying. Baby had taken a long time over his meal. He burped, ejecting the last bone and a few odd buttons. There wasn’t even a back she could pat him on.

  That day there was a new grave in the little valley in the hills. A very small one …

  What Dark God?

  If my memory serves me well, this next one was intended for August Derleth’s Arkham Collector, a sort of house journal in which he advertised forthcoming Arkham House books. But it was still unpublished when he died in 1971 and was event
ually used by editor and writer Jerry Page in a grab bag of a book called Nameless Places. What Dark God? was my twelfth short story in the first six months of my writing career. I used to write ’em fast in those days. Incidentally, the esoteric references and paraphernalia of Black Magic are all genuine. Only the timetables have been changed to protect British Rail!

  “… Summanus — whatever power he may be …”

  —Ovid’s Fasti

  The Tuscan Rituals? Now where had I heard of such a book or books before? Certainly very rare … Copy in the British Museum? Perhaps! Then what on earth were these fellows doing with a copy? And such a strange bunch of blokes at that.

  Only a few minutes earlier I had boarded the train at Bengham. It was quite crowded for a night train and the boozy, garrulous, and vociferous ‘Jock’ who had boarded it directly in front of me had been much upset by the fact that all the compartments seemed to be fully occupied.

  “Och, they bleddy British trains,” he had drunkenly grumbled, “either a’wiz emp’y or a’wiz fool. No orgynization whatsayever — ye no agree, ye sassenach?” He had elbowed me in the ribs as we swayed to­gether down the dim corridor.

  “Er, yes,” I had answered. “Quite so!”

  Neither of us carried cases and as we stumbled along, searching for vacant seats in the gloomy compartments, Jock suddenly stopped short.

  “Noo what in hell’s this — will ye look here? A com­partment wi’ the bleddy blinds doon. Prob’ly a young laddie an’ lassie in there wi’ six emp’y seats. Privacy be damned. Ah’m no standin’ oot here while there’s a seat in there …”

  The door had proved to be locked — on the inside — but that had not deterred the ‘bonnie Scot’ for a moment. He had banged insistently upon the wooden frame of the door until it was carefully, tentatively opened a few inches; then he had stuck his foot in the gap and put his shoulder to the frame, forcing the door fully open.

  “No, no …” The scrawny, pale, pin-stripe jacketed man who stood blocking the entrance protested. “You can’t come in — this compartment is reserved …”

  “Is that so, noo? Well, if ye’ll kindly show me the reserved notice,” Jock had paused to tap significantly upon the naked glass of the door with a belligerent fingernail, “Ah’ll bother ye no more — meanwhile, though, if ye’ll hold ye’re blether, Ah’d appreciate a bleddy seat…”

  “No, no …” the scrawny man had started to protest again, only to be quickly cut off by a terse command from behind him;

  “Let them in …”

  I shook my head and pinched my nose, blowing heavily and puffing out my cheeks to clear my ears. For the voice from within the dimly lit compartment had sounded hollow, unnatural. Possibly the train had started to pass through a tunnel, an occurrence which never fails to give me trouble with my ears. I glanced out of the exterior corridor window and saw immediately that I was wrong; far off on the dark horizon I could see the red glare of coke-oven fires. Anyway, whatever the effect had been which had given that voice its momentarily peculiar — resonance? — it had obviously passed, for Jock’s voice sounded perfectly normal as he said: “Noo tha’s better, excuse a body, will ye?” He shouldered the dubious looking man in the doorway to one side and slid clumsily into a seat alongside a second stranger. As I joined them in the compartment, sliding the door shut behind me, I saw that there were four strangers in all; six people including Jock and myself, we just made comfortable use of the eight seats which faced inwards in two sets of four.

  I have always been a comparatively shy person so it was only the vaguest of perfunctory glances, which I gave to each of the three new faces before I settled back and took out the pocket book I had picked up earlier in the day in London. Those merest of glances, however, were quite suf­ficient to put me off my book and to tell me that the three friends of the pin stripe jacketed man appeared the very strangest of travelling companions — especially the ex­tremely tall and thin member of the three, sitting stiffly in his seat beside Jock. The other two answered to ap­proximately the same description as Pin-Stripe — as I was beginning mentally to tag him — except that one of them wore a thin moustache; but that fourth one, the tall one, was something else again.

  Within the brief duration of the glance I had given him I had seen that, remarkable though the rest of his features were, his mouth appeared decidedly odd — almost as if it had been painted onto his face — the merest thin red line, without a trace of puckering or any other depression to show that there was a hole there at all. His ears were thick and blunt and his eyebrows were bushy over the most penetrating eyes it has ever been my unhappy lot to find staring at me. Possibly that was the reason I had glanced so quickly away; the fact that when I had looked at him I had found him staring at me — and his face had been totally devoid of any expression whatsoever. Fairies? The nasty thought had flashed through my mind unbidden; nonetheless, that would explain why the door had been locked.

  Suddenly Pin-Stripe — seated next to me and directly opposite Funny-Mouth — gave a start, and, as I glanced up from my book, I saw that the two of them were staring directly into each other’s eyes.

  “Tell them …” Funny-Mouth said, though I was sure his strange lips had not moved a fraction, and again his voice had seemed distorted, as though his words passed through weirdly angled corridors before reaching my ears.

  “It’s, er — almost midnight,” informed Pin-Stripe, grin­ning sickly first at Jock and then at me.

  “Aye,” said Jock sarcastically, “happens every nicht aboot this time … Ye’re very observant…”

  “Yes,” said Pin-Stripe, choosing to ignore the jibe, “as you say — but the point I wish to make is that we three, er, that is, we four,” he corrected himself, indicating his companions with a nod of his head, “are members of a little-known, er, religious sect. We have a ceremony to perform and would appreciate it if you two gentle­men would remain quiet during the proceedings …” I heard him out and nodded my head in understanding and agreement — I am a tolerant person — but Jock was of a different mind.

  “Sect?” he said sharply. “Ceremony?” He shook his head in disgust. “Well; Ah’m a member o’ the Church O’ Scotland and Ah’ll tell ye noo — Ah’ll hae no truck wi’ bleddy heathen ceremonies …”

  Funny-Mouth had been sitting ramrod straight, saying not a word, doing nothing, but now he turned to look at Jock, his eyes narrowing to mere slits; above them, his eyebrows meeting in a black frown of disapproval.

  “Er, perhaps it would be better,” said Pin-Stripe hastily, leaning across the narrow aisle towards Funny-Mouth as he noticed the change in that person’s attitude, “if they, er, went to sleep …?”

  This preposterous statement or question, which caused Jock to peer at its author in blank amazement and me to wonder what on earth he was babbling about, was directed at Funny-Mouth who, without taking his eyes off Jock’s outraged face, nodded in agreement.

  I do not know what happened then — it was as if I had been suddenly unplugged — I was asleep, yet not asleep — in a trance-like condition full of strange impressions and mind-pictures — abounding in unpleasant and realistic sensations, with dimly recollected snatches of previously absorbed information floating up to the surface of my conscious mind, correlating themselves with the strange people in the railway compartment with me …

  And in that dream-like state my brain was still very ac­tive; possibly fully active. All my senses were still working; I could hear the clatter of the wheels and smell the acrid tang of burnt tobacco from the compartment’s ashtrays. I saw Moustache produce a folding table from the rack above his head — saw him open it and set it up in the aisle, between Funny-Mouth and himself on their side and Pin-Stripe and his companion on my side — saw the designs upon it, designs suggestive of the more exotic work of Chandler Davies, and wondered at their purpose. My head must have fallen back, until it rested in the corner of the gently rocking compartment, for I saw all these things without having to move my
eyes; indeed, I doubt very much if I could have moved my eyes and do not remember making any attempt to do so.

  I saw that book — a queerly bound volume bearing its title, The Tuscan Rituals, in archaic, burnt-in lettering on its thick spine — produced by Pin-Stripe and opened rever­ently to lie on that ritualistic table, displayed so that all but Funny-Mouth, Jock, and I could make out its characters. But Funny-Mouth did not seem in the least bit interested in the proceedings. He gave me the impression that he had seen it all before, many times …

  Knowing I was dreaming — or was I? — I pondered that title, The Tuscan Rituals. Now where had I heard of such a book or books before? The feel of it echoed back into my subconscious, telling me I recognized that title — but in what connection?

  I could see Jock, too, on the fixed border of my sphere of vision, lying with his head lolling towards Funny-Mouth — in a trance similar to my own, I imagined — eyes staring at the drawn blinds on the compartment windows. I saw the lips of Pin-Stripe, out of the comer of my right eye, and those of Moustache, moving in almost perfect rhythm and imagined those of Other — as I had named the fourth who was completely out of my periphery of vision — doing the same, and heard the low and intricate liturgy which they were chanting in unison.

  Liturgy? Tuscan Rituals? Now what dark ‘God’ was this they worshipped? … And what had made that thought spring to my dreaming or hypnotized mind? And what was Moustache doing now?

  He had a bag and was taking things from it, laying them delicately on the ceremonial table. Three items in all; in one corner of the table, that nearest Funny-Mouth. Round cakes of wheat bread in the shape of wheels with ribbed spokes. Now who had written about offerings of round cakes of—?