The Macabre Reader

by Donald A. Wollheim

  “Doctor Kurt,” she began abruptly, “do you think that Hans is crazy?”

  “Why do you ask?” I returned. Talking with her was different from talking with Hans. She was a beautiful young woman, tall, long-waisted, slender-limbed, with fair blue eyes and yellow hair and a gloriously clear skin. There was something imperiously demanding about her that disturbed me.

  She looked at me. Then she made a curious, impatient gesture. “Oh, don’t pretend. You know that Hans came to you yesterday with a story. He has told me the same things that he told you. Doctor Kurt—you know about—all this. Do you think he is crazy?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t worry on that account, Hilda. Hans is not crazy. He may be fooled, he may even be fooling himself; but he is sane.”

  Hilda sighed in relief. “Thank God for that. I was worried.” Then, as a sudden, new thought struck her, she leaned forward tensely. “But if he is sane his story is truel”

  She paused. I said nothing.

  “I’m going to marry him,” she said abruptly. “He’s been afraid of this thing long enough. If there’s nothing to it, it shouldn’t keep us apart. And if he’s in danger, two people in that lonely house are better than one.”

  I waited a long time, while the room hung silent, before I replied. “You believe in this danger, then?” I asked.

  “Yes, I believe in it. As I believe in Hans, I believe in it.”

  And, in a little while, she went away… .

  For the rest of the week I went about my usual routine. Hans, of course, did not come back. But I learned that he suddenly married Hilda, and that they were living at the Brubaker farm. A day or two later I drove out to see them.

  Hans was working about the back of the house as I drove into the yard. He straightened slowly, put down the tools from his hands, and walked over to the car. He looked tired, as though he had not been sleeping well.

  Shutting off the motor, I climbed from the car. Then, while I was close to him, Hans whispered hoarsely, “There is danger here, Doctor Kurt—I can feel it. I watch every night, Doctor. I have seen things that I haven’t told her about. I can’t tell her. I want to sell the place and go away, where it’s safe. But Hilda laughs—she hasn’t seen the things I’ve seen.”

  “Just what have you seen?” I asked.

  He looked at me eagerly. “Come to the house, tonight, after Hilda has gone to bed,” he whispered.

  I nodded. Then we were at the kitchen door and there was Hilda, smiling, beautiful in her tall, strong fairness, welcoming me to her home… .

  That night, at eleven o’clock, I returned down the rutted road that led to the Brubaker farm. It was abysmally dark, but it was not cold. I remember thinking that it might snow before morning. Long before I reached the Brubakers’ I could see two tiny yellow lights at the back of the house, the kitchen and the back bedroom. I drove past the house a hundred yards, parked the car alongside the road, and returned to the house on foot.

  I did not look at my watch; so I do not know how long I stood outside in the driveway. Waiting like that seems interminable, I know. And, obviously, I could not come in until Hilda was asleep.

  At last both lights were put out, almost simultaneously, and in a few minutes, as I had expected, the light in the kitchen flared up again. I walked softly to the rear door and knocked.

  Hans let me in immediately. I stepped into the kitchen, my eyes slightly dazzled by the brilliance within, and it was not until I had been comfortably seated beside the table that I noticed, with a start, what Hans was doing.

  He was sealing the bedroom door off from the kitchen with wax, making the passageway between the two rooms hermetically tight! He worked with the rapidity of one who does a task he has performed before. Presently he had sealed the doorway in its entirety. Then he put the remaining mass of wax in a piece of brown paper and carefully hid it way behind the woodbox in the comer. He came across the room and sat down close beside me. We talked in whispers.

  “I’m learning, all the time, what the thing can do,” he told me. “It came back three days ago. But I’m tired, tired to death. I haven’t slept.”

  I looked at him, at the reddish, bloodshot color of his eyes, at his sunken cheeks.

  “Why don’t you sleep now?” I suggested. “I’ll watch.”

  He looked at me eagerly. “You’re safe. It can’t come in unless you’re asleep, or unless you invite it in. I’ve learned that. But if anything happens, wake me!”

  I nodded. “I’ll be all right. Don’t worry.”

  Exhausted, he lay back and closed his eyes. He fell asleep almost at once.

  Outside it had begun to snow, and the soft, heavy flakes made a steady rustling against the window. I looked out curiously; I noticed that the window had been nailed shut and the crevices stuffed with putty and painted over. I went outside impulsively and looked at the bedroom windows. They too were nailed and puttied tight, and I saw that the whole back end of the house had been freshly painted.

  “He’s got those two rooms airtight and watertight, all right,” I thought.

  Back in the kitchen again, I remembered, uneasily, that I was supposed to be on watch. But nothing had happened. Hans still slept, the fire still burned softly, the snow drifted and fell away from the black window-pane.

  And then, abruptly as a flash of lightning striking into the room, the whole calmness with which I had surrounded myself, my whole sense of security, vanished as though it had never been. Not that there was any physical happening. There was nothing, in that sense. But there was a sudden, sweeping realization that some mighty, malignant force had turned its whole attention upon the house… .

  I sat up sharply and walked to the door, where I stood listening. There was no sound from outside, and the snow, I could see out of the corner of my eye as I half glanced at the window, was still falling steadily. I waited, perhaps five minutes. And still that terrible awareness of some horrible force overhanging, impending, persisted. Then I threw the door wide, and stepped out upon the back porch. But nothing was there.

  I turned back into the kitchen. And then I saw, fleetingly, something move at the kitchen window.

  The window was beyond the table, beyond the light, beyond Hans’ sleeping figure. It was grayish with the constant touching of fingers of snow. And it seemed to me that, for a second, I saw something slipping down the window-pane, something that clung to the pane like a colorless jelly, almost live a wave of watery foam, almost like a nothingness that moved heavily down the window-pane and disappeared below the sill.

  The glimpse, or vision, whatever it was, was fragmentary. I remember that I thought, even as I crossed the floor toward the window to look out, that it might well be illusion. But when I reached the window I paused stock-still, pondering.

  The snow had been wiped cleanly from the sill, better than it could have been done with a broom. And I realized that here at last was evidence, physical evidence, that something had been pressed down upon the sill, a few moments ago, for I could yet count the flakes as they fell thickly upon the still bare wood.

  My lips moving unconsciously while I uttered soundless words, I stood there, watching the snow fall rustling upon the sill until the wood was again unbrokenly sheathed with white. Something had swept that snow away!”

  I went outdoors again, and stood again outside the window in the snow. I looked down, and at my feet the snow had been packed down. And, leading away from the house for a short distance, I saw a sharply marked track, like the trail that might be made by rolling a large ball. And beyond the rectangle of light that the window loosed into the snow-ridden gloom, that track became a trail of human footprints!

  Then my courage deserted me. Only one thought remained in my mind, to get back into that house as fast as I could. I got back into the kitchen at once.

  Hans was awake. The cold air from the open door had roused him. He looked at me, at first uncomprehendingly, then alertly, and I saw that he knew, pretty well, what had happened. He sat up, stretch
ing muscles stiff from sleeping half erect in a chair.”

  “Did someone come to the door?” he asked.

  I shook my head, pointing to the window. “There was a sort of gray fog against the window. It lasted only a moment. I went outside. There are tracks in the snow.”

  Hans looked at me queerly. “Tracks like nothing on earth, or human tracks?”

  My voice was harsh and high-pitched as I answered, “Tracks like—both!”

  As the day slowly lightened, Hans stripped the molding of wax from the bedroom door, shaped it between his hands, and affixed it to the lump behind the woodbox. I left the house before Hilda awoke, and returned to the village.

  At twilight I drove my car again into the Brubaker yard, and walked to the house, grayish, apprehensive-seeming in the falling darkness. Entering the house I realized at once that Hans had told Hilda everything. Stamped on the faces and engraved in the speech of both man and wife was a determination to fight the thing that threatened their home.

  Hilda—brave girl!—brought out a pinochle deck. But before we could sit down to play there came an interruption.

  A car turned into the driveway, pulled up beside the house and a farmer came in, a man named Brandt, who lived near by. He shook his head when Hans asked him to sit down.

  “My Bertha!” he stammered eagerly; “have you seen anything of her?”

  I felt a tingle of fear.

  “My Bertha!” he stammered

  “She’s gone! She’s run away—she’s been going around too much with that Irish Catholic, Fagan. I put my foot down. ‘I’ll run away, papa!’ she told me. And now she’s done it. She’s gone. Did she walk to town? Two miles?”

  “It’s a bad night out,” Hilda said doubtfully.

  “I think that if you inquire at the houses along the road you’ll probably find her,” I said.

  Presently the man went out. “Do you think it was—that?” Hans asked, when he had gone.

  I shook my head. It was perfectly plain what had happened.

  We began to play pinochle. And nothing out of the ordinary occurred. The malignant influence seemed to have departed the vicinity, the house seemed more than usually cozy and peaceful, and from time to time I caught myself wondering if, after all, I might not be acting like a fool.

  III

  The next night, also, nothing happened. Hans, with his firsthand knowledge of the thing, suggested that it had “fed” elsewhere, and that there would be a quiescent period. And, feeling that I was neglecting my practice, I stayed away from the farm for a few days. But, late Saturday afternoon,

  1 found a note from Hans.

  “It has come back,” he had written.

  After supper I took my car and drove out to the Brubaker Farm. There had been a heavy thaw which had held on for several days; the roads were mere ribbons of mud and dirty ice.

  Both husband and wife looked inhumanly tired. I noticed that Hans had not shaved for two or three days.

  “We didn’t want to trouble you,” he told me. “We’ve slept a little, in the daytime, taking turns. But even in the day we can feel the thing near the house. And we’re deathly tired.”

  “Sit quietly and don’t speak,” Hilda said softly, “and you will feel it.”

  I sat as she had asked, and, striking inward at me, I could sense the same crawling horror that I had known before. I looked at the others.

  “Yes, I can feel it. But Hans—Hilda—you’re utterly exhausted. Lie down now and rest. I’ll watch.”

  Hans nodded eagerly toward Hilda.

  “Lie down and try to sleep, darling. Doctor Kurt will sit up with me. It will be safe.”

  Hilda stood up uncertainly and went into the bedroom. I poured out half a tumblerful of brandy, diluted it with water, and made Hans drain the glass. The liquor seemed to strengthen him, and I talked.

  “We can beat this thing in two ways, Hans. We know that it is a mass of dead-alive cells controlled by a deathless malign entity. The Slavic peoples had the right idea when they, as they thought, trapped vampires in their coffins, drove stakes through their hearts, and sealed the coffins. What they did not truly realize was the nature of the being they combated. Because the thing is half physical it has, to an extent, physical limitations. It must sleep. And what, in effect, those old-timers did was to catch their vampire asleep and seal it in a box which, fortunately, happened to be strong enough to resist its physical strength. The stake through the heart meant nothing. It was the airtight, solid coffin that did the business, restrained the thing until, as its physical substance slowly died, so was its spirit rendered homeless.

  “Now we know that this entity is strongly attracted to this particular vicinity. In the course of time it will find a permanent place where it can sleep, a barrel, perhaps, or a cistern, or an old trunk, or even a casket, if there’s such a thing available. And, if we can find that hiding-place and, while the thing is within, seal its receptacle hermetically tight, we will have beaten it.

  “There is yet another way to beat the thing, Hans. That -way is for someone to invite it to absorb him, if it can. The entity will try, Hans, for it knows nothing of fear. Then, if the man’s will is greater, the man will win. Otherwise the thing will absorb him, continue to grow, and he will cease to exist.”

  Hans’ eyes were closed. But when I stopped speaking he roused himself enough to mutter, “I’m—falling—asleep.” Then his head drooped forward heavily.

  Leisurely, I opened a book, and began to read. A night of wakefulness lay ahead.

  The hours slipped slowly by. I could hear Hilda, through the half-opened bedroom door, breathing slowly and deeply. Hans, beside me, snored irregularly.

  It was close to three when I heard footsteps sloshing up the driveway, passing around behind the house, hesitating, slowly ascending the steps. Then a knock.

  Looking back now I think that, at that moment, I was horribly afraid, even though a revolver lay on the table and I certainly had no lurking fear- that the thing would walk up to the house like that.

  My body chilled with fear, I opened the door. And then I exclaimed with relief, for, outside on the porch, bedraggled with mud and slush, stood eighteen-year-old Bertha Brandt. She wore a shapeless, dirty, unpressed coat. When she saw me she shrank back away from the door.

  “Bertha, you poor kid! Come in, and dry out those wringing wet clothes and tell me what’s wrong.”

  I noticed that she looked curiously at Hans.

  “There’s been sickness,” I explained, hurriedly. “Nothing serious—Hans has been up two or three nights.” I looked at her squarely. “So you’re back!”

  She glanced at me timidly. “You know, then, that I ran away?”

  “Yes, I knew—but here, sit down by the fire. There, take off your coat.”

  Suddenly, for some unaccountable reason, I remembered why I was at Brubaker’s at three o’clock in the morning; I remembered all that Hans had told me about the strange white cat, about the dog that looked like Nan, about the boy who had wandered down the road. … I laughed, then, at the silliness of it.

  “This is Bertha, all right,” I told myself. “She’s the same girl she always was, right as rain, except that she’s a little tired.”

  And, almost aping my thought, Bertha said, “Could I lie down beside Hilda? I daren’t go home tonight … I daren’t!”

  I was pottering around the stove with my back turned toward the girl, trying to warm over some coffee. “Lie down beside Hilda?” I said absently. “In a minute … in a minute.”

  I went to the comer cupboard and found a cup and saucer. Then I poured out the coffee, doctored it plentifully with milk and sugar, and turned back to Bertha. She was not in the room.

  “Bertha?” I called softly.

  The crawling, cold sensation had begun again at the base of my spine. To my inexpressible relief her voice answered from the bedroom. “Here, Doctor Kurt. I’m so tired!”

  “Come and get your coffee. Then you can lie down and rest. Wh
at you need now is food.”

  “I know,” she answered slowly. “But I’m so tired. And you said that ‘in a minute’ I could he down with Hilda. It’s been a minute.”

  Just like a child! But I was impatient. “You mustn’t he on Hilda’s bed while you’re all dirty. You’ll have to wash first.”

  There was a little pause. Then the voice answered, still softly, “Hilda won’t mind. Hilda’s asleep. Hilda’s sound asleep.”

  I went to the doorway and stood there uncertainly, half in gloom, half in brightness. I could see the figures of the two women lying on the bed, close against each other—almost, my imagination told me, melting together.

  “Come, Bertha,” I said mildly. “You’re dirtying Hilda’s bed.”

  There was no answer. As my eyes became more accustomed to the dimness I could see that, there on the bed, there were no longer two women. The two bodies were pressing together like ghastly Siamese twins, dissolving together into one.

  My heart, in that instant, froze like a lump of ice. Somehow, my whole body trembling horribly, I leaped across the half-darkened room, knelt on the bed and dug frenzied fingers into the thing that had looked like Bertha and that was now eating the sleeping woman, dissolving her as might a powerful acid.

  My fingers, beneath the muddy, tattered garments, sank deep, not into the firm flesh of a living girl, but into a yielding mass of protoplasmic slime!

  Then I screamed. And, as I fought and tore at the flaccid, jelly-like mess I screamed again and again without pause, like a madman, without hearing my own voice, knowing only, from the tautness of my throat and the beating of my breath, that I shrieked.

  It was like trying to grasp something that would not be grasped. The stuff, beneath the garments, ran like water in a bag. And I saw that the thing was slowly giving up pretense of human shape. The face was changing—the hands and arms and the contours of the body were dissolving. And, in the last second before it melted into shapeless slime, from that vanishing mouth came Bertha Brandt’s voice, crying, “I didn’t do it, Doctor Kurt! I didn’t!”