Out of Their Minds

by Clifford D. Simak

  The path forked and became two and there was another signpost, with two pointing arrows this time, one pointing to the castle, the other to the inn. But just a few yards down the path leading to the castle a massive iron gate barred any further progress, and stretching out on either side of it was a high fence of heavy steel mesh, with barbed wire on top of it. A gaily striped kiosk stood to one side of the gate and a man-at-arms leaned against it with a halberd held very sloppily. I walked up to the gate and had to kick it to attract his attention.

  “Ye be late,” he growled. “The gate is closed at sunset and the dragons are let loose. It would be worth your life to go a furlong down that road.”

  He came to the gate and peered closer at us.

  “You have a damsel with you. Is she in distress?”

  “Her ankle’s hurt,” I said. “She cannot walk.”

  He sniggered. “If such be the case,” he said, “it might be arranged to provide escort for the damsel.”

  “For both of us,” said Kathy, sharply.

  He wagged his head in mock sadness. “I stretch the point to let one past. I cannot stretch for both.”

  “Someday,” I said, “it will not be a point but your neck that will be stretched.”

  “Begone!” he shouted, angrily. “Begone and take your slut along. At the inn, the witch will mutter spells to mend the ankle.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Kathy, frightened.

  “My friend,” I said to the man-at-arms, “I shall make a point, when I am less encumbered, of coming back and raising lumps on you.”

  “Please,” said Kathy. “Please, let’s get out of here!”

  I turned around and left. Behind us, the man-at-arms roared threats and banged the gate bars with his halberd. I turned down the path that led to the inn and once out of sight of the castle gate stopped and let Kathy to the ground, crouching down beside her.

  She was crying, more with anger, it seemed to me, than with fear.

  “No one,” she said, “has ever called me a slut.”

  I did not point out to her that manners and language of that sort sometimes went with castles.

  She raised her arm and pulled my head down close beside her face. “If it hadn’t been for me,” she said, “you could have clobbered him.”

  “That was all talk,” I told her. “There was a gate between us and he had that fancy stabber.”

  “He said there was a witch down at the inn,” she said.

  I turned my head and kissed her gently on the cheek.

  “Are you trying to take my mind off witches?”

  “I thought it might help,” I said.

  “And there was that fence,” she said. “A wire fence. Who ever heard of a fence around a castle? Back in those days they hadn’t even invented wire.”

  “It’s getting dark,” I said. “We’d better head for the inn.”

  “But the witch!”

  I laughed, not that I really felt like laughing. “Mostly,” I told her, “witches are just old eccentric women no one understands.”

  “Maybe you are right,” she said.

  I lifted her and got on my feet.

  She held up her face and I kissed her upon the mouth. Her arms tightened about me and I held her body close, feeling the warmth and the sweetness of her. For a long moment there was nothing in the empty universe but the two of us and it was only slowly that I came back to a realization of the darkening woods and of the furtive stirrings in it.

  A short way down the path I saw a faint rectangle of light that I knew must be the inn.

  “We’re almost there,” I told her.

  “I won’t be any bother, Horton,” she promised. “I’ll not do any screaming. No matter what there is, I’ll never scream.”

  “I’m sure you won’t,” I said. “And we’ll get out of here. I don’t know exactly how, but somehow we’ll make it out of here, the two of us together.”

  Seen dimly in the deepening dark, the inn was an old ramshackle building, huddled beneath a grove of towering, twisted oaks. Smoke plumed from the chimney in the center of the roofline and the feeble window-light shone through diamond panes of glass. The inn yard was deserted and there seemed no one about. Which was just as well, I told myself.

  I’d almost gotten to the doorway when a bent, misshapen figure moved into it, a black, featureless body outlined by the dim light from inside.

  “Come on in, laddie,” shrilled the bent-over creature. “Don’t stand gawping there. There is naught to harm you. Nor milady, either.”

  “Milady has sprained her ankle,” I said. “We had hoped …”

  “Of course,” the creature cried. “You’ve come to the most likely place to have a job of healing. Old Meg will stir up a posset for it.”

  I could see her somewhat more clearly now and there could be no doubt that she was the witch of which the man-at-arms had told us. Her hair hung in wispy, ragged strands about her face and her nose was long and hooked, reaching for an upcurved chin and almost reaching it. She leaned heavily upon a wooden staff.

  She stepped back and I moved through the door. A fire that blazed smokily upon the hearth did little to relieve the darkness of the room. The smell of wood smoke mingled with and sharpened the other undefinable odors that lay like a fog upon the place.

  “Over there,” said Meg, the witch, pointing with her staff. “The chair over by the fire. It is of good construction, made of honest oak and shaped to fit the body, with a wood sack for a seat. Milady will be comfortable.”

  I carried Kathy over to the chair and lowered her into it.

  “All right?” I asked.

  She looked up at me and her eyes were shining softly in the firelight.

  “All right,” she said, and her words were happy.

  “We’re halfway home,” I told her.

  The witch went hobbling past us, thumping her staff upon the floor and muttering to herself. She crouched beside the fire and began stirring a pan of steaming liquid set upon the coals. The firelight, flaring up, showed the ugliness of her, the incredible nose and chin, the enormous wart upon one cheek, sprouting hairs that looked like spider legs.

  Now that my eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness, I began to make out some of the details of the room. Three rough plank tables stood along the front wall and unlighted candles, set in candlesticks upon the tables, leaned askew like pale and drunken ghosts. A large hutch cabinet at one end of the room held mugs and bottles that glinted faintly in the stuttering firelight flickering in the room.

  “Now,” said the witch, “just a bit of powdered toad and a pinch of graveyard dust and the posset will be finished. And once we fix the damsel’s ankle, then there will be food. Aye, yes, there will be food.”

  She cackled shrilly at a joke I could only guess at—something about the food, perhaps.

  From some distance off came the sound of voices. Other travelers, I wondered, heading for the inn? A company of them, perhaps.

  The voices grew louder and I stepped to the door to look in the direction from which they came. Coming up the track, climbing the hill, were a number of people and some of them were carrying flaring torches.

  Behind the crowd came two men riding horses, but as I watched the procession, I saw after a little time that the one who rode behind the other rode a donkey, not a horse, with his feet almost dragging on the ground. But it was the man who rode in front who attracted my attention and very well he might. He loomed tall and gaunt and was dressed in armor, with a shield upon one arm and a long lance carried on one shoulder. The horse was as gaunt as he was and it walked with a stumbling gait and with its head held low. As the procession approached closer I saw, in the light cast by the torches, that the horse was little better than a bag of bones.

  The procession halted and the people parted as the horse carrying the tall scarecrow in armor stumbled through the crowd and to the front. Having walked clear of the crowd, it halted and stood with hanging head and I would not have been
surprised if, at any moment, it had fallen in a heap.

  Man and horse held motionless and the crowd as well and watching them warily, I wondered rather vaguely what might happen next. In a place like this, I knew, it could be anything. The whole thing was ridiculous, of course—but that was no consolation, for it was a judgment based on the manners and the mores of the human twentieth century and it was not valid here.

  The horse slowly raised his head. The crowd shuffled expectantly, with the torches bobbing. And the knight, with what seemed a conscious effort, straightened and stiffened himself in the saddle and brought down the lance. I stood there, in the innyard, an interested spectator and just a bit befuddled as to what it might be all about.

  Suddenly the knight was shouting and, although his voice rang out loud and clear in the silence of the night, it took an instant for me to sort out what he said. The lance, braced against his thigh had leveled, and the horse had launched itself into a gallop before I realized the intent of his words.

  “Catiff,” he had shouted, “wretch, dirty infidel, make ready to defend thyself!”

  And it must have been me he meant, I gathered, because the horse was thundering toward me and the lance was pointed at me and, God knows, I had no time at all to prepare for my defense.

  If there had been time, I’d have taken to my heels, for I knew I was outclassed. But I didn’t have the time to do anything at all and I was, in fact, half frozen by the craziness of it and in the few intervening seconds that somehow seemed like hours I stood and watched in fascination as the glittering lance point came bearing down upon me. The horse was no great shakes, but he was good for a sudden burst of speed and he was thundering along like an asthmatic locomotive.

  The lance point was only a few feet away and about to spit me when I came alive enough to move. I jumped backward. The point went past me, but as it did the knight seemed to lose control of it, or the horse might have shied or stumbled—I don’t know which it was—but, in any case, the lance swung sharply toward me and, reaching out my hands, I batted at it blindly to shove it away from me.

  I hit it and deflected it downward and the point plunged into the ground. Suddenly the lance, its point plunged into the ground. Suddenly the lance, its point deeply buried, became a catapult so that its butt, catching in the armpit of the knight, hoisted him off the saddle and high into the air. The horse dug in its feet and skidded to a halt, with the stirrups swinging wildly, while the bowed lance straightened and hurled the hapless knight like a rock fired from a slingshot. He arched through the air and landed, face downward and spread-eagled, at the far end of the yard and when he hit the ground there was a clangor such as one might make if he hit an empty steel drum a resounding lick with a heavy hammer.

  Up the road the people who had formed the procession for the knight were convulsed with glee. Some of them were doubled over, laughing, with their arms wrapped about their middles, while others of them were rolling on the ground, helpless with their guffaws.

  Shambling down the road came the lop-eared little donkey, still carrying the tattered man whose feet almost dragged upon the ground—poor, patient Sancho Panza coming once again to the relief of his master, Don Quixote de la Mancha.

  And those others rolling in the road, I knew, had merely come along for the fun of it, willingly bearing torches to light the way for this scarecrow knight, knowing very well that one of his never-ending misadventures would sometime in the not-too-distant future provide amusement for them.

  I turned away, back toward the inn—and there wasn’t any inn.

  “Kathy!” I shouted. “Kathy!”

  There was no answer. Up the road the amusement-seeking company still was howling out its laughter. At the far end of what had been the inn yard Sancho had dismounted from the donkey and was trying manfully, but with small success, to roll Don Quixote over on his back. But the inn was gone and there was no sign of either Kathy or the witch.

  From somewhere in the woods and down the slope came the shrill cackling of the witch. I waited and the cackle came again and this time I pinpointed the direction and went plunging gown the slope. I crossed the few feet of cleared space that had served as the inn yard and ran into the woods. Roots clutched at my toes, seeking to trip me up, and branches raked my face. But I kept on running, with my arms outstretched to protect me against running into a tree headfirst and beating out what little brains I had. Ahead of me the insane cackling still went on.

  If I could only catch her, I promised myself, I’d wring her scrawny neck until she took me to Kathy or told me where she was, and after that the temptation, I knew, would be great to continue with the wringing. But I knew even then, I think, how little chance I had of catching her. I. banged into a boulder and fell across it and felt my way around it and went on running down the slope, while ahead of me, leading me on, never any farther off, never any closer, the crazy laughter still went on. I ran into a tree, but my outstretched hands found it first and saved me from a cracked skull, although I thought for a moment that both the wrists were fractured. And, finally, one of the roots on the forest floor managed to trip me up and I went cartwheeling through the air, but I landed soft—in the edge of a woodland swamp. I landed on my back and my head went under and I sat up coughing and retching, for I had swallowed some of the foul swamp water.

  I sat there, without stirring, knowing I was licked. I could chase that cackle through the woods for a million years and not lay hands upon the witch. For this was a world, I knew, with which neither I, nor any other human, could cope. A human would be dealing with the fantasies he’d hatched and all his worlds of logic would not come up with any answers.

  I sat in the mud and water to my waist and above my head the cattails swayed and off to my left something—I suppose a frog—went jumping through the muck. Dimly I became aware of a light glowing faintly off to the right of me and I got up slowly. Mud fell off my trousers with little, sodden plops as it hit the water. But, even standing, I could not see the light well, for I sank close to my knees in muck and the cattail growth came up around my head.

  With some difficulty, I began to make my way toward the light. It was not easy going. The muck was deep and sticky and the cattails, mixed with water-loving bushes, helped to impede my progress. I plodded forward slowly, forcing my way through the heavy growth.

  The mud and water became shallower and the cattail growth began thinning out. I saw that the light was shining from a point somewhere above my head and I wondered where that light might be, but a moment later, when I came to a sloping bank, I knew the light was atop the bank. I started to climb the bank, but it was slippery. Partway up, I started skidding back and as I did, a great brawny hand came out of nowhere and I grabbed at it and felt the fingers of it close hard around my wrist.

  I looked up and saw the thing that the hand belonged to, leaning down from the bank, with his arm outstretched. The horns were there, set upon his forehead and his face was a heavy face, coarse in texture but with a foxy look despite the coarseness of the features. His white teeth flashed at me in a sudden grin and for the first time since it all had started, I think that I was scared.

  And that wasn’t all. There. perched upon the edge of the bank beside him, was a squatty thing with a pointed head and when it saw that I had seen it, it began hopping wrathfully.

  “No! No!” it screamed. “Not two! Just one! Quixote doesn’t count!”

  The Devil gave a jerk and hauled me up the bank in a single motion and set me on my feet.

  A lantern was set upon the ground and by its light I could see that the Devil was a chunky character, a bit shorter than I was, but built most powerfully and running to a lot of fat. He wore no clothes except a dirty loincloth tied about his middle and his overgrown paunch hung across it in a fold.

  The Referee kept on with his squeaky squawling. “It is not fair,” he shouted. “You know it is not fair. That Quixote is a fool. He never does things right. The beating of Dox Quixote is no facing of a danger and
…”

  The Devil turned and swung his foot, the cloven hoof flashing in the lantern light. The kick caught the Referee somewhere in his middle and hoisted him and sent him sailing out of sight. His squawling trailed off into a reedy sound and ended in a splash.

  “There now,” said the Devil, turning back to me, “that will give us a moment of honest peace and quiet, although he is a most persistent pest and will be crawling out to pester us again. It doesn’t seem to me,” he said, switching quickly to another subject, “that you appear too frightened.”

  “I’m petrified,” I said.

  “It is something of a problem,” the Devil complained, switching his barbed tail back and forth to show his puzzlement, “to know just how one should appear when he confronts a mortal. When you humans persist in portraying me in so many different guises, one can never know which of them is the most effective. As a matter of fact, I can assume any one of the many forms which are attributed to me if you have a preference. Although I must confess that the one in which you see me now is, by all odds, the most comfortable to carry.”

  “I have no preference,” I said. “Continue in your comfort.” I was getting back some courage, but I still was shaky. It’s not every day one converses with the Devil.

  “You mean, perhaps,” he said, “that you’ve not spent much thought on me.”

  “I guess that’s it,” I said.

  “That is what I thought,” he answered, dolefully. “That has been the story of my life in the last half-century or so. People almost never think of me and when they do they aren’t scared of me. Oh, a bit uncomfortable, perhaps, but not really scared. And that is hard to take. Once upon a time, not too long ago, the entire Christian world was plenty scared of me.”

  “There may be some who still are,” I told him, trying to comfort him. “In some of the backward countries, they must still be scared of you.” And as soon as I’d said it, I was sorry that I had, for I could see that it was no comfort to him, but only made him feel the worse.