The Best of Weird Tales 1923

by Marvin Kaye

  “August 5th. Tonight, the rat noises (I shall call them that for want of a more appropriate term) are very noticeable. I went to the length of unbolting my door and stepping into the hallway to listen. After a few minutes, I seemed to be aware of something large and grey watching me from the darkness at the end of the passage. This is a bizarre statement, of course, but it exactly describes my impression. I withdrew hastily into the study, and bolted the door.

  “Now that my nerves’ condition is so palpably affecting the optic nerve, I must not much longer delay seeing a specialist. But—how much shall I tell him?

  “August 8th. Several times tonight, while sitting here at my work, I have seemed to hear soft footsteps in the passage. ‘Nerves,’ again, of course, or else some new trick of the wind among the specimens on the walls.

  “August 9th. By my watch it is four o’clock in the morning. My mind is made up to record the experience I have passed through. Calmness may come that way.

  “Feeling rather fatigued last night, from the strain of a weary day of research, I retired early. My sleep was more refreshing than usual, as it is likely to be when one is genuinely tired. I awakened, however (it must have been about an hour ago), with a start of tremendous violence.

  “There was moonlight in the room. My nerves were on edge, but for a moment, I saw nothing unusual.

  Then, glancing toward the door, I perceived what appeared to be thin, white fingers thrust under it—

  exactly as if someone outside the door were trying to attract my attention in that manner. I rose and turned on the light, but the fingers were gone.

  “Needless to say, I did not open the door. I write the occurrence down, just as it took place, or as it seemed; but I cannot trust myself to comment upon it.

  “August 10th. Have fastened heavy rubber strips on the bottom of my bedroom door.

  “August 15th. All quiet, for several nights. I am hoping that the rubber strips, being something definite and tangible, have had a salutary effect upon my nerves. Perhaps I shall not need to see a doctor.

  “August 17th. Once more, I have been aroused from sleep. The interruptions seem to come always at the same hour—about three o’clock in the morning. I had been dreaming of the well in the cellar—the same dream, over and over—everything black except the slab, and a figure with bowed head and

  averted face seated there. Also, I had vague dreams about a dog. Can it be that my last words to her have impressed that on my mind? I must pull myself together. In particular, I must not, under any pressure, yield, and visit the cellar after nightfall.

  “August 18th. Am feeling much more hopeful. Mrs. Malkin remarked on it, while serving dinner. This improvement is due largely to a consultation I have had with Dr. Sartwell, the distinguished specialist in nervous diseases. I went into full details with him, excepting certain reservations. He scouted the idea that my experiences could be other than purely mental.

  “When he recommended a change of scene (which I had been expecting), I told him positively that it was out of the question. He said then that, with the aid of a tonic and an occasional sleeping draft, I am likely to progress well enough at home. This is distinctly encouraging. I erred in not going to him at the start. Without doubt, most, if not all, of my hallucinations could have been averted.

  “I have been suffering a needless penalty from my nerves for an action I took solely in the interests of science. I have no disposition to tolerate it further. From today, I shall report regularly to Dr. Sartwell.

  “August 19th. Used the sleeping draft last night, with gratifying results. The doctor says I must repeat the dose for several nights, until my nerves are well under control again.

  “August 21st. All well. It seems that I have found the way out—a very simple and prosaic way. I might have avoided much needless annoyance by seeking expert advice at the beginning. Before retiring last night, I unbolted my study door and took a turn up and down the passage. I felt no trepidation. The place was as it used to be, before these fancies assailed me. A visit to the cellar after nightfall will be the test for my complete recovery, but I am not quite ready for that. Patience!

  “August 22nd. I have just read yesterday’s entry, thinking to steady myself. It is cheerful—almost gay; and there are other entries like it in preceding pages. I am a mouse in the grip of a cat. Let me have freedom for ever so short a time, and I begin to rejoice at my escape. Then the paw descends again.

  “It is four in the morning—the usual hour. I retired rather late last night, after administering the draft.

  Instead of the dreamless sleep, which heretofore has followed the use of the drug, the slumber into which I fell was punctuated by recurrent visions of the slab, with the bowed figure upon it. Also, I had one poignant dream in which the dog was involved.

  “At length, I awakened and reached mechanically for the light switch beside my bed. When my hand encountered nothing, I suddenly realized the truth. I was standing in my study, with my other hand upon the doorknob. It required only a moment, of course, to find the light and switch it on. I saw then that the bolt had been drawn back. The door was quite unlocked. My awakening must have interrupted me in the very act of opening it. I could hear something moving restlessly in the passage outside the door.

  “August 23rd. I must beware of sleeping at night. Without confiding the fact to Dr. Sartwell, I have begun to take the drug in the daytime. At first, Mrs. Malkin’s views were pronounced, but my

  explanation of ‘doctor’s orders’ has silenced her. I am awake for breakfast and supper, and sleep in the hours between. She is leaving me, each evening, a cold lunch to be eaten at midnight.

  “August 26th. Several times, I have caught myself nodding in my chair. The last time, I am sure that, on arousing, I perceived the rubber strip under the door bent inward, as if something were pushing it from the other side. I must not, under any circumstances, permit myself to fall asleep.

  “September 2nd. Mrs. Malkin is to be away, because of her sister’s illness. I cannot help dreading her absence. Though she is here only in the daytime, even that companionship is very welcome.“September 3rd. Let me put this into writing. The mere labor of composition has a soothing influence upon me.

  God knows, I need such an influence now, as never before!

  “In spite of all my watchfulness, I fell asleep tonight—across my bed. I must have been utterly exhausted. The dream I had was the one about the dog. I was patting the creature’s head, over and over.

  “I awoke, at last, to find myself in darkness, and in a standing position. There was a suggestion of chill and earthiness in the air. While I was drowsily trying to get my bearings, I became aware that

  something was muzzling my hand, as a dog might do.

  “Still saturated with my dream, I was not greatly astonished. I extended my hand to pat the dog’s head.

  That brought me to my senses. I was standing in the cellar.

  “THE THING BEFORE ME WAS NOT A DOG!

  “I cannot tell how I fled back up the cellar stairs. I know, however, that as I turned, the slab was visible, in spite of the darkness, with something sitting upon it. All the way up the stairs, hands snatched at my feet…”

  This entry seemed to finish this diary, for blank pages followed it; but I remembered the crumpled sheet, near the back of the book. It was partly torn out, as if a hand had clutched it, convulsively. The writing on it, too, was markedly in contrast to the precise, albeit nervous penmanship of even the last entry I had perused. I was forced to hold the scrawl up to the light to decipher it. This is what I read:

  “My hand keeps on writing, in spite of myself. What is this? I do not wish to write, but it compels me.

  Yes, yes, I will tell the truth, I will tell the truth.”

  A heavy blot followed, partly covering the writing. With difficulty, I made it out:

  “The guilt is mine—mine, only. I loved her too well, yet I was unwilling to marry, though she entreated me on her knees—though sh
e kissed my hand. I told her my scientific work came first. She did it, herself. I was not expecting that—I swear I was not expecting it. But I was afraid the authorities would misunderstand. So I took what seemed the best course. She had no friends here who would inquire.

  “It is waiting outside my door. I feel it. It compels me, through my thoughts. My hand keeps on writing.

  I must not fall asleep. I must think only of what I am writing. I must —”

  Then came the words I had seen when Mrs. Malkin had handed me the book. They were written very

  large. In places, the pen had dug through the paper. Though they were scrawled, I read them at a glance:

  “Not the slab in the cellar! Not that! Oh, my God, anything but that! Anything —”

  By what strange compulsion was the hand forced to write down what was in the brain; even to the ultimate thoughts; even to those final words?

  The grey light from outside, slanting down through two dull little windows, sank into the sodden hole near the inner wall. The coroner and I stood in the cellar, but not too near the hole.

  A small, demonstrative, dark man—the chief of detectives—stood a little apart from us, his eyes intent, his natural animation suppressed. We were watching the stooped shoulders of a police constable, who was angling in the well.

  “See anything, Walters?” inquired the detective, raspingly.

  The policeman shook his head.

  The little man turned his questioning to me.

  “You’re quite sure?” he demanded.

  “Ask the coroner. He saw the diary,” I told him.

  “I’m afraid there can be no doubt,” the coroner confirmed in his heavy, tired voice.

  He was an old man, with lackluster eyes. It had seemed best to me, on the whole, that he should read my uncle’s diary. His position entitled him to all the available facts. What we were seeking in the well might especially concern him.

  He looked at me opaquely now, while the policeman bent double again. Then he spoke—like one who reluctantly and at last does his duty. He nodded toward the slab of grey stone, which lay in the shadow to the left of the well.“It doesn’t seem very heavy, does it?” he suggested, in an undertone.

  I shook my head. “Still, it’s stone,” I demurred. “A man would have to be rather strong to lift it.”

  “To lift it—yes.” He glanced about the cellar. “Ah, I forgot,” he said, abruptly. “It is in my office, as part of the evidence.” He went on, half to himself: “A man—even though not very strong—could take a stick—for instance, the stick that is now in my office—and prop up the slab. If he wished to look into the well,” he whispered.

  The policeman interrupted, straightening again with a groan, and laying his electric torch beside the well. “It’s breaking my back,” he complained. “There’s dirt down there. It seems loose, but I can’t get through it. Somebody’ll have to go down.”

  The detective cut it: “I’m lighter than you, Walters.”

  “I’m not afraid, sir.”

  “I didn’t say you were,” the little man snapped. “There’s nothing down there, anyway—though we’ll have to prove that, I suppose.” He glanced truculently at me, but went on talking to the constable: “Rig the rope around me, and don’t bungle the knot. I’ve no intention of falling into the place.”

  “There is something there,” whispered the coroner, slowly, to me. His eyes left the little detective and the policeman, carefully tying and testing knots, and turned again to the square slab of stone.

  “Suppose—while a man was looking into that hole—with the stone propped up—he should accidentally knock the prop away?” He was still whispering.

  “A stone so light that he could prop it up wouldn’t be heavy enough to kill him,” I objected.

  “No.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Not to kill him—to paralyze him—if it struck the spine in a certain way. To render him helpless, but not unconscious. The post mortem would disclose that,

  through the bruises on the body.”

  The policeman and the detective had adjusted the knots to their satisfaction. They were bickering now as to the details of the descent.

  “Would that cause death?” I whispered.

  “You must remember that the housekeeper was absent for two days. In two days, even that pressure —”

  He stared at me hard, to make sure that I understood—“with the head down —”

  Again the policeman interrupted: “I’ll stand at the well, if you gentlemen will grab the rope behind me.

  It won’t be much of a pull. I’ll take the brunt of it.”

  We let the little man down, with the electric torch strapped to his waist, and some sort of implement—a trowel or a small spade—in his hand. It seemed a long time before his voice, curiously hollow, directed us to stop. The hole must have been deep. We braced ourselves. I was second, the coroner, last. The policeman relieved his strain somewhat by snagging the rope against the edge of the well.

  A noise like muffled scratching reached us from below. Occasionally, the rope shook and shifted slightly at the edge of the hole. At last, the detective’s hollow voice spoke.

  “What does he say?” the coroner demanded.

  The policeman turned his square, dogged face toward us.

  “I think he’s found something,” he explained.

  The rope jerked and shifted again. Some sort of struggle seemed to be going on below. The weight suddenly increased, and as suddenly lessened, as if something had been grasped, then had managed to elude the grasp and slip away. I could catch the detective’s rapid breathing now; also the sound of inarticulate speech in his hollow voice.

  The next words I caught more clearly. They were a command to pull him up. At the same moment, the weight on the rope grew heavier, and remained so.

  The policeman’s big shoulders began straining, rhythmically. “All together,” he directed. “Take it easy.

  Pull when I do.”

  Slowly, the rope passed through our hands. Then it tightened suddenly, and there was an ejaculation from below—just below. Still holding fast, the policeman contrived to stoop over and look. He

  translated the ejaculation for us. “Let down a little. He’s stuck with it against the side.” We slackened the rope, until the detective’s voice gave us the word again.

  The rhythmic tugging continued. Something dark appeared, quite abruptly, at the top of the hole. My nerves leapt inside of me, but it was merely the top of the detective’s head—his dark hair. Something white came next—his pale face, with starting eyes. Then his shoulders, bowed forward, the better to support what was in his arms. Then —

  I looked away; but as he laid his burden down at the side of the well, the detective whispered to us: “He had her covered up with dirt—covered up…”

  He began to laugh—a little, high cackle, like a child’s—until the coroner took him by the shoulders and deliberately shook him. Then the policeman led him out of the cellar.

  It was not then, but afterward, that I put my question to the coroner.

  “Tell me,” I demanded. “People pass there at all hours. Why didn’t my uncle call for help?”

  “I have thought of that,” he replied. “I believe he did call. I think, probably, he screamed. But his head was down, and he couldn’t raise it. His screams must have been swallowed up in the well.”

  “You are sure he didn’t murder her?” He had given me that assurance before, but I wished it again.

  “Almost sure,” he declared. “Though it was on his account, undoubtedly, that she killed herself. Few of us are punished as accurately for our sins as he was.”

  One should be thankful, even for crumbs of comfort. I am thankful.

  But there are times when my uncle’s face rises before me. After all, we were the same blood, our sympathies had much in common; under any given circumstances our thoughts and feelings must have been largely the same. I seem to see him in that final death march along the unlighted passa
geway—

  obeying an imperative summons—going on, step by step—down the stairway to the first floor, down the cellar stairs—at last, lifting the slab.

  I try not to think of the final expiation. Yet was it final? I wonder. Did the last Door of all, when it opened, find him willing to pass through? Or was something waiting beyond that Door?

  MAY 1923

  Two changes distinguish issue #3: interior illustrations, mostly by unnamed artists, were added and size was increased from 6” x 9” to what Weird Tales historian Bob Weinberg calls “large bedsheet size.”

  The percentage of good stories is slightly higher than the second issue. The first of Weird Tales‘s long series of reprinted stories appears, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s “The Haunters and the Haunted” (also known as “The House and the Brain”). The serials continue to be less than inspired, with the end of

  “The Whispering Thing” upstaged by the first half of “The Moon Terror,” a contrived bit of Asian-bashing “science-fiction” that racked up the highest sales till then for any issue. Encouraged by its popularity, the publishers rushed to publish “The Moon Terror” as a book, but reader enthusiasm did not last. Copies of it cluttered up the editorial offices well into the 1940s.

  Counting the serials and Bulwer-Lytton’s classic, Volume I, Number 3 consists of twenty-one stories, including a clever bit of whimsy by the novelist Vincent Starrett, best remembered today as a Chicago Tribune literary columnist and as the author of the indispensable Holmesian study, “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” (not to be confused with the Billy Wilder film of the same name).

  Another story in the third issue, M. L. Humphrey’s “The Floor Above,” was well-liked by H. P.

  Lovecraft, but I do not share his enthusiasm.

  I chose Herman Sisk’s offbeat haunted cabin tale, “The Purple Heart,” and Lyle Wilson Holden’s “The Devil Plant,” which, though a bit overwritten, is worth noting as a forerunner of “Audrey II” from

  “Little Shop of Horrors.” It is one of several “malevolent vegetable” stories to appear in the pages of