Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  I can see her out of every one of my windows!

  It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.

  I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.

  I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!

  I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once.

  And John is so queer now, that I don't want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I don't want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself.

  I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.

  But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time.

  And though I always see her, she MAY be able to creep faster than I can turn!

  I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.

  If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.

  I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much.

  There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don't like the look in his eyes.

  And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report to give.

  She said I slept a good deal in the daytime.

  John knows I don't sleep very well at night, for all I'm so quiet!

  He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind.

  As if I couldn't see through him!

  Still, I don't wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months.

  It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly affected by it.

  Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough. John is to stay in town over night, and won't be out until this evening.

  Jennie wanted to sleep with me—the sly thing! but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone.

  That was clever, for really I wasn't alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.

  I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.

  A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.

  And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish it to-day!

  We go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they were before.

  Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing.

  She laughed and said she wouldn't mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired.

  How she betrayed herself that time!

  But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me—not ALIVE!

  She tried to get me out of the room—it was too patent! But I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for dinner—I would call when I woke.

  So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it.

  We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the boat home to-morrow.

  I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.

  How those children did tear about here!

  This bedstead is fairly gnawed!

  But I must get to work.

  I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path.

  I don't want to go out, and I don't want to have anybody come in, till John comes.

  I want to astonish him.

  I've got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!

  But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!

  This bed will NOT move!

  I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner—but it hurt my teeth.

  Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!

  I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try.

  Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.

  I don't like to LOOK out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.

  I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?

  But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope—you don't get ME out in the road there!

  I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!

  It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!

  I don't want to go outside. I won't, even if Jennie asks me to.

  For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.

  But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.

  Why there's John at the door!

  It is no use, young man, you can't open it!

  How he does call and pound!

  Now he's crying for an axe.

  It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!

  "John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!"

  That silenced him for a few moments.

  Then he said—very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!"

  "I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!"

  And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door.

  "What is the matter?" he cried. "For God's sake, what are you doing!"

  I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder.

  "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"

  Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!

  H. G. WELLS

  1866 - 1946

  A founding father and presiding genius of English scientific romance, H.G. Wells had a significant influence on the development of American science fiction. The young Wells was deeply impressed by the teachings of T.H. Huxley (1825-1895), who was a vociferous proponent of Darwin's theory of evolution and an outspoken scientific humanist. Wells dabbled in related scientific journalism before beginning to sell articles and short stories regularly in 1893.

  "The Chronic Argonauts," a series of essays written for his amateur publication The Science Schools Journal in 1888, became the basis for Wells' first major work of fiction, The Time Machine: An Invention (1895), which maps the evolutionary future of life on Earth. In the novel the human species subdivides into the gentle Eloi and the bestial Morlocks; both ultimately become extinct, while life as we know it slowly decays as the Sun cools.

  The central themes of The Time Machine — the implications of Darwin's evolutionary theory and the desire to oppose and eradicate the injustices and hypocrisies of contemporary society — continued to run through Wells' future work. The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), for example, tells the story of a hubristic scientist populating a remote island wit
h beasts which have been surgically reshaped as men and whose veneer of civilization, exemplified by their chanted "laws," proves thin. The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance (1897) is a second classic study of scientific hubris brought to destruction.

  In The War of the Worlds (1898), Wells introduced aliens into a role which would soon become familiar: monstrous invaders of Earth, and competitors in a cosmic struggle for existence. When the Sleeper Wakes (1899) is a robust futuristic romance of socialist revolution, whose hero awakes from suspended animation to play a quasi-messianic role. In The First Men on the Moon (1901), Wells carried forward the great tradition of fantastic voyages and described the dystopian society of the Selenites on the Moon.

  The most interesting of Wells' later scientific romances are those that imagine future wars. In "The Land Ironclads" (1903) he anticipated the use of tanks, and in The War in the Air, and Particularly How Mr. Bert Smallways Fared While it Lasted (1908) he envisaged colossal destruction wrought by aerial bombing. In The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind (1914), similar destruction is wrought by atomic bombs whose "chain reactions" cause them to explode repeatedly, and the story embodies Wells' growing conviction that a new and better world could be built only once the existing social order had been torn down. When World War I began in actuality, Wells was initially enthusiastic — a point of view expressed in what remained for some time his most famous novel, Mr Britling Sees it Through (1916) — but events after 1918 failed to live up to his hopes.

  Wells possessed a prolific imagination which remained solidly based in biological and historical possibility, and his best works are generally regarded as exemplary of what science fiction should aspire to do and be.

  The Chronic Argonauts, by H. G. Wells

  Being the Account of Dr. Nebogipfel's Sojourn in Llyddwdd

  About half-a-mile outside the village of Llyddwdd by the road that goes up over the eastern flank of the mountain called Pen-y-pwll to Rwstog is a large farm-building known as the Manse. It derives this title from the fact that it was at one time the residence of the minister of the Calvinistic Methodists. It is a quaint, low, irregular erection, lying back some hundred yards from the railway, and now fast passing into a ruinous state.

  Since its construction in the latter half of the last century this house has undergone many changes of fortune, having been abandoned long since by the farmer of the surrounding acres for less pretentious and more commodious headquarters. Among others Miss Carnot, "the Gallic Sappho" at one time made it her home, and later on an old man named Williams became its occupier. The foul murder of this tenant by his two sons was the cause of its remaining for some considerable period uninhabited; with the inevitable consequence of its undergoing very extensive dilapidation.

  The house had got a bad name, and adolescent man and Nature combined to bring swift desolation upon it. The fear of the Williamses which kept the Llyddwdd lads from gratifying their propensity to invade its deserted interior, manifested itself in unusually destructive resentment against its external breakables. The missiles with which they at once confessed and defied their spiritual dread, left scarcely a splinter of glass, and only battered relics of the old-fashioned leaden frames, in its narrow windows, while numberless shattered tiles about the house, and four or five black apertures yawning behind the naked rafters in the roof, also witnessed vividly to the energy of their rejection. Rain and wind thus had free way to enter the empty rooms and work their will there, old Time aiding and abetting. Alternately soaked and desiccated, the planks of flooring and wainscot warped apart strangely, split here and there, and tore themselves away in paroxysms of rheumatic pain from the rust-devoured nails that had once held them firm. The plaster of walls and ceiling, growing green-black with a rain-fed crust of lowly life, parted slowly from the fermenting laths; and large fragments thereof falling down inexplicably in tranquil hours, with loud concussion and clatter, gave strength to the popular superstition that old Williams and his sons were fated to re-enact their fearful tragedy until the final judgment. White roses and daedal creepers, that Miss Carnot had first adorned the walls with, spread now luxuriantly over the lichen-filmed tiles of the roof, and in slender graceful sprays timidly invaded the ghostly cobweb-draped apartments. Fungi, sickly pale, began to displace and uplift the bricks in the cellar floor; while on the rotting wood everywhere they clustered, in all the glory of the purple and mottled crimson, yellow-brown and hepatite. Woodlice and ants, beetles and moths, winged and creeping things innumerable, found each day a more congenial home among the ruins; and after them in ever-increasing multitudes swarmed the blotchy toads. Swallows and martins built every year more thickly in the silent, airy, upper chambers. Bats and owls struggled for the crepuscular corners of the lower rooms. Thus, in the Spring of the year eighteen hundred and eighty-seven, was Nature taking over, gradually but certainly, the tenancy of the old Manse. "The house was falling into decay," as men who do not appreciate the application of human derelicts to other beings' use would say, "surely and swiftly." But it was destined nevertheless to shelter another human tenant before its final dissolution.

  There was no intelligence of the advent of a new inhabitant in quiet Llyddwdd. He came without a solitary premonition out of the vast unknown into the sphere of minute village observation and gossip. He fell into the Llyddwdd world, as it were, like a thunderbolt falling in the daytime. Suddenly, out of nothingness, he was. Rumour, indeed, vaguely averred that he was seen to arrive by a certain train from London, and to walk straight without hesitation to the old Manse, giving neither explanatory word nor sign to mortal as to his purpose there: but then the same fertile source of information also hinted that he was first beheld skimming down the slopes of steep Pen-y-pwll with exceeding swiftness, riding, as it appeared to the intelligent observer, upon an instrument not unlike a sieve and that he entered the house by the chimney. Of these conflicting reports, the former was the first to be generally circulated, but the latter, in view of the bizarre presence and eccentric ways of the newest inhabitant, obtained wider credence. By whatever means he arrived, there can be no doubt that he was in, and in possession of the Manse, on the first of May; because on the morning of that day he was inspected by Mrs. Morgan ap Lloyd Jones, and subsequently by the numerous persons her report brought up the mountain slope, engaged in the curious occupation of nailing sheet-tin across the void window sockets of his new domicile -- "blinding his house", as Mrs. Morgan ap Lloyd Jones not inaptly termed it.

  He was a small-bodied, sallow faced little man, clad in a closefitting garment of some stiff, dark material, which Mr. Parry Davies the Llyddwdd shoemaker, opined was leather. His aquiline nose, thin lips, high cheek-ridges, and pointed chin, were all small and mutually well proportioned; but the bones and muscles of his face were rendered excessively prominent and distinct by his extreme leanness. The same cause contributed to the sunken appearance of the large eager-looking grey eyes, that gazed forth from under his phenomenally wide and high forehead. It was this latter feature that most powerfully attracted the attention of an observer. It seemed to be great beyond all preconceived ratio to the rest of his countenance. Dimensions, corrugations, wrinkles, venation, were alike abnormally exaggerated. Below it his eyes glowed like lights in some cave at a cliff's foot. It so over-powered and suppressed the rest of his face as to give an unhuman appearance almost, to what would otherwise have been an unquestionably handsome profile. The lank black hair that hung unkempt before his eyes served to increase rather than conceal this effect, by adding to unnatural altitude a suggestion of hydrocephalic projection and the idea of something ultra human was furthermore accentuated by the temporal arteries that pulsated visibly through his transparent yellow skin. No wonder, in view even of these things, that among the highly and over-poetical Cymric of Llyddwdd the sieve theory of arrival found considerable favour.

  It was his bearing and actions, however, much more than his personality, that won over believers to the warlock notion of matters. In almost every circums
tance of life the observant villagers soon found his ways were not only not their ways, but altogether inexplicable upon any theory of motives they could conceive. Thus, in a small matter at the beginning, when Arthur Price Williams, eminent and famous in every tavern in Caernarvonshire for his social gifts, endeavoured, in choicest Welsh and even choicer English, to inveigle the stranger into conversation over the sheet-tin performance, he failed utterly. Inquisitional supposition, straightforward enquiry, offer of assistance, suggestion of method, sarcasm, irony, abuse, and at last, gage of battle, though shouted with much effort from the road hedge, went unanswered and apparently unheard. Missile weapons, Arthur Price Williams found, were equally unavailing for the purpose of introduction, and the gathered crowd dispersed with unappeased curiosity and suspicion. Later in the day, the swarth apparition was seen striding down the mountain road towards the village, hatless, and with such swift width of step and set resolution of countenance, that Arthur Price Williams, beholding him from afar from the Pig and Whistle doorway was seized with dire consternation, and hid behind the Dutch oven in the kitchen till he was past. Wild panic also smote the school-house as the children were coming out, and drove them indoors like leaves before a gale. He was merely seeking the provision shop, however, and erupted thencefrom after a prolonged stay, loaded with a various armful of blue parcels, a loaf, herrings, pigs' trotters, salt pork, and a black battle, with which he returned in the same swift projectile gait to the Manse. His way of shopping was to name, and to name simply, without solitary other word of explanation, civility or request, the article he required.

  The shopkeeper's crude meteorological superstitions and inquisitive commonplaces, he seemed not to hear, and he might have been esteemed deaf if he had not evinced the promptest attention to the faintest relevant remark. Consequently it was speedily rumoured that he was determined to avoid all but the most necessary human intercourse. He lived altogether mysteriously, in the decaying manse, without mortal service or companionship, presumably sleeping on planks or litter, and either preparing his own food or eating it raw. This, coupled with the popular conception of the haunting patricides, did much to strengthen the popular supposition of some vast gulf between the newcomer and common humanity. The only thing that was inharmonious with this idea of severance from mankind was a constant flux of crates filled with grotesquely contorted glassware, cases of brazen and steel instruments, huge coils of wire, vast iron and fire-clay implements, of inconceivable purpose, jars and phials labelled in black and scarlet -- POISON, huge packages of books, and gargantuan rolls of cartridge paper, which set in towards his Llyddwdd quarters from the outer world. The apparently hieroglyphic inscriptions on these various consignments revealed at the profound scrutiny of Pugh Jones that the style and title of the new inhabitant was Dr. Moses Nebogipfel, Ph.D., F.R.S., N.W.R., PAID: at which discovery much edification was felt, especially among the purely Welsh-speaking community. Further than this, these arrivals, by their evident unfitness for any allowable mortal use, and inferential diabolicalness, filled the neighbourhood with a vague horror and lively curiosity, which were greatly augmented by the extraordinary phenomena, and still more extraordinary accounts thereof, that followed their reception in the Manse.