The Macabre Reader

by Donald A. Wollheim

  “The Leopard Men.”

  “The what?”

  “The Leopard Men.” The watery voice said it as casually as if it were saying “the night watchman.”

  “The Leopard Men?” Nameless stared, and his fat face crinkled in an effort to take in the situation of a midnight visitation from a dead man, and the dead man talking nonsense. He felt his blood moving out of its course. He looked at his own hand to see if it was his own hand. He looked at the table to see if it was his table. The hand and the table were facts, and if the dead man was a fact—and he was —his story might be a fact. It seemed anyway as sensible as the dead man’s presence. He gave a heavy sigh from the stomach. “A-ah… . The Leopard Men… . Yes, I heard about them out there. Tales.”

  Gopak slowly wagged his head. “Not tales. They’re real. If they weren’t real—I wouldn’t be here. Would I?”

  Nameless had to admit this. He had heard many tales “out there” about the Leopard Men, and had dismissed them as jungle yams. But now, it seemed, jungle yams had become commonplace fact in a little London shop. The watery voice went on. “They do it. I saw them. I came back in the middle of a circle of them. They killed a native to put his life into me. They wanted a white man—for their farm. So they brought me back. You may not believe it. You wouldn’t want to believe it. You wouldn’t want to—see or know anything like them. And I wouldn’t want any man to. But it’s true. That’s how I’m here.”

  “But I left you absolutely dead. I made every test. It was three days before I buried you. And I buried you deep.”

  “I know. But that wouldn’t make any difference to them. It was a long time after when they came and brought me back. And I’m still dead, you know. It’s only my body they brought back.” The voice trailed into a thread. “And I’m so tired.”

  Sitting in his prosperous eating-house Nameless was in the presence of an achieved miracle, but the everyday, solid appointments of the eating-house wouldn’t let him fully comprehend it. Foolishly, as he realized when he had spoken, he asked Gopak to explain what had happened. Asked a man who couldn’t really be alive to explain how he came to be alive. It was like asking Nothing to explain Everything.

  Constantly, as he talked, he felt his grasp on his own mind slipping. The surprise of a sudden visitor at a late horn:; the shock of the arrival of a long-dead man; and the realization that this long-dead man was not a wraith, were too much for him.

  During the next half-hour he found himself talking to Gopak as to the Gopak he had known seventeen years ago when they were partners. Then he would be halted by the freezing knowledge that he was talking to a dead man, and that a dead man was faintly answering him. He felt that the thing couldn’t really have happened, but in tire interchange of talk he kept forgetting the improbable side of it, and accepting it. With each recollection of the truth, his mind would clear and settle in one thought—“I’ve got to get rid of him. How am I going to get rid of him?”

  “But how did you get here?”

  “I escaped.” The words came slowly and thinly, and out of the body rather than the mouth.

  “How?”’

  “I don’t—know. I don’t remember anything—except our quarrel. And being at rest.”

  “But why come all the way here? Why didn’t you stay on the coast?”

  “I don’t—know. But you’re the only man I know The only man I can remember.”

  “But how did you find me?”

  “I don’t know. But I had to—find you. You’re the only man—who can help me.”

  “But how can I help you?”

  The head turned weakly from side to side. “I don’t—know. But nobody else—can.”

  Nameless stared through the window, looking on to the lamplit street and seeing nothing of it. The everyday being which had been his half an hour ago had been annihilated; the everyday beliefs and disbeliefs shattered and mixed together. But some shred of his old sense and his old standards remained. He must handle this situation. “Well— what you want to do? What you going to do? I don’t see how I can help you. And you can’t stay here, obviously.” A demon of perversity sent a facetious notion into his head —introducing Gopak to his wife—“This is my dead friend.”

  But on his last spoken remark Gopak made the effort of raising his head and staring with the glazed eyes at Nameless “But I must stay here. There’s nowhere else I can stay I must stay here. That’s why I came. You got to help me.”

  “But you can’t stay here. I got no room. All occupied. Nowhere for you to sleep.”

  The wan voice said- “That doesn’t matter I don’t sleep.”

  “Eh?”

  “I don’t sleep. I haven’t slept since they brought me back. I can sit here—till you can think of some way of helping me.”

  “But how can I?” He again forgot the background of the situation, and began to get angry at the vision of a dead man sitting about the place waiting for him to think of something. “How can I if you don’t tell me how?”

  “I don’t—know. But you got to. You killed me. And I was dead—and comfortable. As it all came from you—killing me you’re responsible for me being—like this. So you got to—help me. That’s why I—came to you.”

  “But what do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t—know. I can’t—think. But nobody but you can help me. I had to come to you. Something brought me— straight to you. That means that you’re the one—that can help me. Now I’m with you, something will—happen to help me. I feel it will. In time you’ll—think of something.”

  Nameless found his legs suddenly weak. He sat down and stared with a sick scowl at the hideous and the incomprehensible. Here was a dead man in his house—a man he had murdered in a moment of black temper—and he knew in his heart that he couldn’t turn the man out. For one thing, he would have been afraid to touch him; he couldn’t see himself touching him. For another, faced with the miracle of the presence of a fifteen-years-dead man, he doubted whether physical force or any material agency would be effectual in moving the man

  His soul shivered, as all men’s souls shiver at the demonstration of forces outside their mental or spiritual horizon. He had murdered this man, and often, in fifteen years, he had repented the act. If the man’s appalling story were true, then he had some sort of right to turn to Nameless. Nameless recognized that, and knew that whatever happened he couldn’t turn him out. His hot-tempered sin had literally come home to him.

  The wan voice broke into his nightmare. “You go to rest, Nameless. I’ll sit here. You go to rest.” He put his face down to his hands and uttered a little moan. “Oh, why can’t I rest?”

  * * * *

  Nameless came down early next morning with a halfhope that Gopak would not be there. But he was there, seated where Nameless had left him last night. Nameless made some tea, and showed him where he might wash. He washed listlessly, and crawled back to his seat, and listlessly drank the tea which Nameless brought to him.

  To his wife and the kitchen helpers Nameless mentioned him as an old friend who had had a bit of a shock. “Shipwrecked and knocked on the head. But quite harmless, and he won’t be staying long. He’s waiting for admission to a home. A good pal to me in the past, and it’s the least I can do to let him stay here a few days. Suffers from sleeplessness and prefers to sit up at night. Quite harmless.”

  But Gopak stayed more than a few days. He out-stayed everybody. Even when the customers had gone Gopak was still there.

  On the first morning of his visit when the regular customers came in at mid-day, they looked at the odd, white figure sitting vacantly in the first pew, then stared, then moved away. All avoided the pew in which he sat. Nameless explained him to them, but his explanation did not seem to relieve the slight tension which settled on the diningroom. The atmosphere was not so brisk and chatty as usual. Even those who had their backs to the stranger seemed to be affected by his presence.

  At the end of the first day Nameless, noticing this, told him tha
t he had arranged a nice comer of the front-room upstairs, where he could sit by the window, and took his arm to take him upstairs. But Gopak feebly shook the hand away, and sat where he was. “No. I don’t want to go. I’ll stay here. I’ll stay here. I don’t want to move.”

  And he wouldn’t move. After a few more pleadings Nameless realized with dismay that his refusal was definite; that it would be futile to press him or force him; that he was going to sit in that dining-room for ever. He was as weak as a child and as firm as a rock. He continued to sit in that first pew, and the customers continued to avoid it, and to give queer glances at it. It seemed that they half-recognized that he was something more than a fellow who had had a shock.

  During the second week of his stay three of the regular customers were missing, and more than one of those that remained made acidly facetious suggestions to Nameless that he park his lively friend somewhere else. He made things too exciting for them; all that whoopee took them off their work, and interfered with digestion. Nameless told them he would be staying only a day or so longer, but they found that this was untrue, and at the end of the second week eight of the regulars had found another place.

  Each day, when the dinner-hour came, Nameless tried to get him to take a little walk, but always he refused He would go out only at night, and then never more than two hundred yards from the shop. For the rest, he sat in his pew, sometimes dozing in the afternoon, at other times staring at the floor. He took his food abstractedly, and never knew whether he had had food or not. He spoke only when questioned, and the burden of his talk was “I’m so tired.”

  One thing only seemed to arouse any light of interest in him; one thing only drew his eyes from the floor. That was the seventeen-year-old daughter of his host, who was known as Bubbles, and who helped with the waiting. And Bubbles seemed to be the only member of the shop and its customers who did not shrink from him.

  She knew nothing of the truth about him, but she seemed to understand him, and the only response he ever gave to anything was to her childish sympathy She sat and chatted foolish chatter to him—“bringing him out of himself,” she called it—and sometimes he would be brought out to the extent of a watery smile. He came to recognize her step, and would look up before she entered the room. Once or twice in the evening, when the shop was empty, and Nameless was sitting miserably with him, he would ask, without lifting his eyes, “Where’s Bubbles?” and would be told that Bubbles had gone to the pictures or was out at a dance, and would relapse into deeper vacancy.

  Nameless didn’t like this. He was already visited by a curse which, in four weeks, had destroyed most of his business. Regular customers had dropped off two by two, and no new customers came to take their place. Strangers who dropped in once for a meal did not come again; they could not keep their eyes or their minds off the forbidding, white-faced figure sitting motionless in the first pew. At midday, when the place had been crowded and latecomers had to wait for a seat, it was now two-thirds empty; only a few of the most thick-skinned remained faithful.

  And on top of this there was the interest of the dead man in his daughter, an interest which seemed to be having an unpleasant effect. Nameless hadn’t noticed it, but his wife had. “Bubbles don’t seem as bright and lively as she was. You noticed it lately? She’s getting quiet—and a bit slack. Sits about a lot. Paler than she used to be.”

  “Her age, perhaps.”

  “No. She’s not one of these thin dark sort. No—it’s something else. Just the last week or two I’ve noticed it. Off her food. Sits about doing nothing. No interest. May be nothing —just out of sorts, perhaps… . How much longer’s that horrible friend of yours going to stay?”

  * * * *

  The horrible friend stayed some weeks longer—ten weeks in all—while Nameless watched his business drop to nothing and his daughter get pale and peevish He knew the cause of it. There was no home in all England like his: no home that had a dead man sitting in it for ten weeks. A dead man brought, after a long time, from the grave, to sit and disturb his customers and take the vitality from his daughter. He couldn’t tell this to anybody. Nobody would believe such nonsense. But he knew that he was entertaining a dead man, and, knowing that a long-dead man was walking the earth, he could believe in any result of that fact. He could believe almost anything that he would have derided ten weeks ago. His customers had abandoned his shop, not because of the presence of a silent, white-faced man, but because of the presence of a dead-living man. Their minds might not know it, but their blood knew it. And, as his business had been destroyed, so, he believed, would his daughter be destroyed. Her blood was not warning her; her blood told her only that this was a long-ago friend of her father’s, and she was drawn to him.

  It was at this point that Nameless, having no work to do, began to drink. And it was well that he did so. For out or the drink came an idea, and with that idea he freed himself from the curse upon him and his house.

  The shop now served scarcely half a dozen customers at mid-day. It had become ill-kempt and dusty, and the service and the food were bad. Nameless took no trouble to be civil to his few customers. Often, when he was notably under drink, he went to the trouble of being very rude to them. They talked about this. They talked about the decline of his business and the dustiness of the shop and the bad food. They talked about his drinking, and, of course, exaggerated it.

  And they talked about the queer fellow who sat there day after day and gave everybody the creeps. A few outsiders, hearing the gossip, came to the dining-rooms to see the queer fellow and the always-tight proprietor; but they did not come again, and there were not enough of the curious to keep the place busy. It went down until it served scarcely two customers a day. And Nameless went down with it into drink.

  Then, one evening, out of the drink he fished an inspiration.

  He took it downstairs to Gopak, who was sitting in his usual seat, hands hanging, eyes on the floor. “Gopak—listen. You came here because I was the only man who could help you in your trouble. You listening?”

  A faint “Yes” was his answer.

  “Well, now. You told me I’d got to think of something. I’ve thought of something… . Listen. You say I’m responsible for your condition and got to get you out of it, because I killed you. I did. We had a row. You made me wild. You dared me. And what with that sun and the jungle and the insects, I wasn’t myself. I killed you. The moment it was done I could ’a cut me right hand off. Because you and me were pals. I could ’a cut me right hand off.”

  “I know. I felt that directly it was over. I knew you were suffering.”

  “Ah! . . I have suffered. And I’m suffering now. Well, this is what I’ve thought. All your present trouble comes from me killing you in that jungle and burying you. An idea came to me. Do you think it would help you—I—if I—if I— killed you again?”

  For some seconds Gopak continued to stare at the floor. Then his shoulders moved. Then, while Nameless watched every little response to his idea, the watery voice began. “Yes. Yes. That’s it. That’s what I was waiting for. That’s why I came here. I can see now. That’s why I had to get here. Nobody else could kill me Only you. I’ve got to be killed again. Yes, I see. But nobody else—would be able—to kill me. Only the man who first killed me… . Yes, you’ve found—what we’re both—waiting for. Anybody else could shoot me—stab me—hang me—but they couldn’t kill me. Only you. That’s why I managed to get here and find you.” The watery voice rose to a thin strength. “That’s it. And you must do it. Do it now. You don’t want to, I know. But you must. You must.”

  His head drooped and he stared at the floor. Nameless, too, stared at the floor. He was seeing things. He had murdered a man and had escaped all punishment save that of his own mind, which had been terrible enough. But now he was going to murder him again—not in a jungle but in a city; and he saw the slow points of the result.

  He saw the arrest. He saw the first hearing. He saw the trial. He saw the cell. He saw the rope. He shudd
ered.

  Then he saw the alternative—the breakdown of his life —a ruined business, poverty, the poor-house, a daughter robbed of her health and perhaps dying, and always the curse of the dead-living man, who might follow him to the poor-house. Better to end it all, he thought. Rid himself of the curse which Gopak had brought upon him and his family, and then rid his family of himself with a revolver. Better to follow up his idea

  He got stiffly to his feet. The hour was late evening—-half-past ten—and the streets were quiet He had pulled down the shop-blinds and locked the door The room was lit by one light at the farther end He moved about uncertainly and looked at Gopak “Er—how would you—how shall I—”

  Gopak said, “You did it with a knife Just under the heart. You must do it that way again ”

  Nameless stood and looked at him for some seconds. Then, with an air of resolve, he shook himself He walked quickly to the kitchen.

  Three minutes later his wife and daughter heard a crash, as though a table had been overturned. They called but got no answer. When they came down they found him sitting in one of the pews, wiping sweat from his forehead. He was white and shaking, and appeared to be recovering from a faint.

  “Whatever’s the matter? You all right?”

  He waved them away. “Yes, I’m all right. Touch of giddiness. Smoking too much, I think.”

  “Mmmm. Or drinking… . Where’s your friend? Out for a walk?”

  “No. He’s gone off. Said he wouldn’t impose any longer, and ’d go and find an infirmary.” He spoke weakly and found trouble in picking words. “Didn’t you hear that bang —when he shut the door?”

  “I thought that was you fell down.”

  “No. It was him when he went. I couldn’t stop him.” “Mmmm .Just as well, I think.” She looked about her. “Things seem to ’a gone all wrong since he’s been here.” There was a general air of dustiness about the place. The table-cloths were dirty, not from use but from disuse. The windows were dim. A long knife, very dusty, was lying on the table under the window. In a comer by the door leading to the kitchen, unseen by her, lay a dusty mackintosh and dungarees, which appeared to have been tossed there. But it was over by the main door, near the first pew, that the dust was thickest—a long trail of it—greyish-white dust.