The Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack, Volume 5

by David H. Keller

  Through it all there was something that Dr. Overfield could not understand. When he said good night to the white-haired man, he told him as much.

  “I do not understand it either,” commented Peterson, “but perhaps, before I die, I shall understand. I cannot help feeling that there is something in heredity, but I cannot prove it.”

  Dr. Overfield locked the door of his bedroom, and retired at once. He was sleepy, and, at the same time, nervous. He thought that a long night’s rest would help. But he did not sleep long. A pounding on the door brought him to consciousness.

  “Who is there?” he asked.

  “It’s me, Yorry. Open the door!”

  “What is the trouble?”

  “It is the boy, Alexander. He has slipped away from me again, and I cannot find him.”

  “Perhaps he has gone to the woods?”

  “No. All the outside doors are locked. He must be in the house.”

  “Have you hunted?”

  “Everywhere. The butler is safe in his room. I have been all over the house except in the Master’s room.”

  “Why not go there? Wait till I get some clothes on. Just a minute. He keeps the doors locked, doesn’t he? He told me to keep my door locked. You are sure he has his door locked?”

  “It was locked earlier in the evening. I tested it. I do that every night with all the bedrooms.”

  “Anyone with duplicate keys?”

  “No one except Mrs. Peterson. I think she must have a set; but she sleeps in her room, and her door was locked. At least it was, earlier in the evening.”

  “I think we ought to go to their rooms. The boy has to be somewhere. Perhaps he is with one of his parents.”

  “If he is with his mother, it is all right. They understand each other. She can do anything with him.”

  They rushed upstairs. The door to Mrs. Peterson’s room was open, the room empty, and the bed untouched. That was something not to be expected. The door to the next room, Peterson’s room, was closed—but not locked. Opening it, Yorry turned on the electric lights.

  Before he did so, from the dark room came an odd, low, snarling, noise. Then the lights were on, and there was the Peterson family on the floor. Peterson was in the middle. He had his shirt torn off, and he was very quiet. On the right side, tearing at the muscles of the arm, was Alexander, his face and hands smeared with blood. On the other side, at the neck, the Peterson woman was fastened, drinking blood from the jugular vein. Her face and dress were stained with blood, and as she looked up, her face was that of an irritated, but otherwise contented daemon. She seemed disturbed over the interruption, but too preoccupied to understand it. She kept on drinking, but the boy snarled his anger. Overfield pulled Yorry through the doorway, turned out the lights, and slammed the door in back of them.

  Then he dragged the dazed man down the steps to the first floor.

  “Where is the telephone?” he yelled.

  Yorry finally showed him. The Doctor jerked off the receiver.

  “Hullo! Hullo! Central. Give me the Coroner. No, I don’t know the number. Why should I know the number? Get him for me. Hullo! Is this the Coroner? Can you hear me? This is a doctor talking, Dr. Overfield. Come to Philip Peterson’s house at once. There has been a murder committed here. Yes. The man is dead. What killed him? Heredity. You can’t understand? Why should you? Now, listen to me. He had his throat cut, perhaps with a piece of broken glass, perhaps not. Can you understand that? Do you remember the little boy? Come up, and I will wait for you here.”

  The Doctor hung up the receiver. Yorry was looking at him.

  “The master was always worried about the boy,” Yorry said.

  “He can stop worrying now,” answered the Doctor.

  THE FACE IN THE MIRROR

  Originally published in Life Everlasting and Other Tales of Science, Fantasy and Horror (1947).

  James Fordyce was slowly, but surely, improving. For some weeks past, he had remained quiet, and his physician was encouraged over his condition. He even went so far as to report to the Fordyce family that, if the improvement continued, their son might be completely restored.

  He even wondered if, perhaps, he might not have been wrong in his original diagnosis, and that Fordyce was recovering from some toxic condition of short duration, instead of the serious mental disease that usually continued for life.

  Fordyce was, therefore, transferred to a sunny room in a front ward with a comfortable bed. There was also a rocking-chair and a bureau with a mirror on it. James Fordyce sat in the rocking-chair, and read daily papers. He seemed content with the quiet life of a separate room.

  The second week he was in this front ward room, he escaped. To him, it seemed a very easy thing to do. All the doors were unlocked. He dressed and walked down the halls leisurely, without rousing the sleeping night attendants and nurses.

  Once away from the building, in the quiet, forested surroundings, he increased his speed slightly; not from fear of being followed, but because he was eager to arrive at his destination. There was no doubt in his mind as to exactly where he wanted to go. And he was as certain why he wanted to go to this particular place, and who would be waiting there for him.

  Emerging from the evergreens surrounding the hospital, he came to the main highway. It was deserted that spring night, but Fordyce was not surprised at the absence of all traffic, even pedestrian. He saw no reason why he should not be absolutely alone. For an hour he walked in the brilliant moonlight. A solitary star gleamed near the full moon, and, as he walked, he told himself a little story about that star. In the telling, he realized that he had a story which, if given to the world, would be so new that all men would marvel at the originality of the creation.

  Soon, surprisingly soon, he came to a road leading off the highway at right angles. It was a narrow, dirt road, with tall fir trees on either side, as it climbed straight up a fairly steep mountain. This road was not a thoroughfare, for, after a long space, he rounded the first turn in the moonlight-speckled way, and approached a high stone wall which came to the roadside and was joined together by a heavy, wooden gate with the sign:

  PRIVATE ROAD—No Admission

  painted on it. The words were painted large, and were clearly legible in the moonlight.

  Fordyce laughed.

  “Since I own the land and built the road and wall, framed the gate and painted the sign, it certainly cannot apply to me,” he whispered to himself. Opening the gate, he passed through, then turned, closed and locked it behind him.

  “For,” he said, “since I am now on my own land, I would have no one come after me, not even him.”

  The moonlight made the road a streak of dull silver, as it wound up the mountain between the dense forest of tall fir trees. Somehow, the grade did not seem steep to the man, as he climbed steadily upward, and he rejoiced in the solitude. He wanted to be alone, certain that, only in complete isolation from the world, could he attain to the desired perfection of life. He eagerly looked forward to long years, wherein he might complete the development of his individuality.

  At last, he came to the top of the mountain. It must have been a very high mountain, because the moon was so near the earth that he could almost touch it; and the star, he knew, actually rested on the dome-like roof of the little circular building which occupied the exact center of a clearing from which the mountain sides dropped sharply. This building with the dome-shaped roof looked like an observatory, and the brilliant star rested exactly on the center of the roof, like a lode star, directing him to his place of emancipation.

  “That star has many peculiar features,” Fordyce remarked to himself. “It is a monstrous star and yet it does not crush the building. It shines, therefore it must have heat, but it does not burn the roof; and since it does not roll off, it must have adhesive qualities in its five sharp points. But I am not concerned especially with the star nor with the moon, which seems so near and cold and portentous in its steely gleaming.

  “There is something
of vast importance waiting to be done in the house. The door will be open; I will go in and do it. No one has lived here since I left so many years ago. I built the gate and painted the sign, so I know no one would dare enter against my prohibitions.

  “The house must need minor alterations. Everything must be made spotlessly clean, cobwebs removed, and any dead fly taken out and properly buried. Pictures must be dusted and straightened if they hang askew. Books must be rearranged in proper order, and some will have to be burned, for I will have nothing in the house that is not clean. All the house must be renovated for my homecoming. Thus, after months of life alone in a quiet, clean, house, I will gain the peace that is so necessary for the salvation of my soul.”

  He walked through the unlocked door into a room so large that, in the dim light, it seemed to be the only room in the house; but he knew that dark corridors ran from it into still darker rooms.

  “And of those rooms,” he said, “I can only dream; for though I built them, I have never revisited them since. Neither do I wish to enter them, for the things I have seen there, when sleeping, are not pleasant things; and it is the better for me to live in this one large room, where I can find peace and understanding.”

  A small table with straight-backed chairs on either side occupied the center of this large, but sparsely furnished, room. On the table was a small standing mirror, and on either side of this mirror was a burning candle. Fordyce, suddenly realizing that he was tired, sat down on one of the chairs, closed his eyes, and rested his head on arms folded in front of the mirror.

  Perhaps he slept, but of this he neither knew nor cared. There was no one to disturb him, but he knew he must open his eyes. Startled, he sat upright, staring straight before him.

  A man sat in the chair across the table, and Fordyce could see him very clearly through the mirror. In fact, he could only see him when looking through the mirror, for when he looked above the glass or on the sides or under it, no part of the man was visible. It seemed as if the man was simply a picture in an old fashioned frame instead of an actual, living man with a face that could be seen only through a looking-glass.

  Fordyce knew him well. From the very first second that he saw him, James Fordyce recognized him. And he also knew why he was there, what he would say, and the way it would all end. Fordyce frowned. This was not at all the way he had planned it. But the man on the other side of the glass laughed, leering. As Fordyce saw him laughing, he realized that he was the cause of the other’s merriment.

  The man taunted:

  “I have been waiting a long time for you. Were you afraid to come? There was no reason for fear; we have so much in common. I am like you, as though we were identical twins. If we could but fuse our souls, then how happy both of us would be. But whenever I make a suggestion of any kind, you meet it with positive refusal. Even when I suggest that you do the things I know you want to do, you refuse merely because I suggested them to you. That is so foolish! You deny yourself—and me—so much pleasure.”

  “You misconstrue everything,” replied Fordyce angrily. “You have been a curse rather than a blessing to me. I could have accomplished much, become really great, had it not been for you. There was a poem I wanted to write, and every time I scratched a sentence, you suggested that it was not worded properly; and I had to cross it out and start all over again. And I’ve never written more than these first lines:

  “Too late the roses are falling, Over you and me…

  “I do not want you here,” Fordyce continued. “I never wanted you, and I do not need you. Besides, this house is only large enough for one man. I built it, and I own it, so I command you to leave at once! Do you understand? Leave at once! Give me the privacy I seek. I have many great things to do. The most important one is the understanding of my soul, and I can attain my objectives only when by myself.”

  The man behind the mirror continued to smile, mockingly.

  “You say the house is too small for two men to live in? Don’t you know there are other rooms besides this one, rooms at the end of those dark corridors? I spend much of my time there.”

  “I know about those rooms,” cried Fordyce, consternation in his voice, his face white and sweating with fear and rage. “I know those rooms, and I also know you lived in one of them, and from that place you came to me in my dreams. For years you have come to me; and the creatures in the dreams you manufactured in your dank, slimy cell of a room must have been created by monsters of a bygone age and fed on the broth of Hell.

  “I could stand life so long as you came to me only in my dreams for there was always the awakening and the cold, revitalizing freshness of morning; but lately you have visited me in the daytime. It is true I never saw you, but I heard your voice from inside the walls of the room, from behind the door; and one day you entered my brain and talked to me from there. And I will not have that.

  “There must be an end to this persecution! You must go out of my life—out of my house, and especially must you go out of my soul; for in all these I have room for but one man. I will not share my soul with anyone, especially a man who has so foul a mind as you. Are you going freely or must I force you?”

  The man behind the mirror became serious.

  “I am not going willingly and you cannot force me. I am too vital a part of you to even think of leaving you. Perhaps that soul you talk of so glibly is not really your soul, but mine. Perhaps it is our joint possession? And if I have anything to do with it, I want it to be a clean, decent soul. Constantly you soil it with your adventurings in Borneo or Gobi. Perhaps you do not think I know about them? I was with you all the time and kept whispering to you that it would be best for you to behave more decorously.”

  “That is not true,” Fordyce shrieked, his face convulsed with anger. “Alone I am pure, clean, a fine man. But you always come to me with your tempting dreams, made in that horrid place where you live; and those dreams seem so real, that were it not for my powerful resistance, I would perhaps live the dream-life in the sunlight of the daytime.

  “Leave me alone! When I start doing something, cease your repeated urgings that I not do it! How can I ever do the things that have to be done if you are constantly blocking me? How can I ever finish the poem?”

  “The poem is finished,” laughed the mirror-man. “That is all there ever was to that poem; and when there is no more to a poem, it is finished. Likewise, your isolation is finished because, from now on, I am remaining very close to you. In fact, I am going to live in this room with you, and you are going to do the things I want you to do. Day after day, you will sit here with me, playing with the dreams I bring you and laughing when you hear the different voices in which I speak to you.

  “If you cease struggling, there will be no more trouble for James Fordyce because his soul will be the soul of me and my soul will be that of James Fordyce, and you will never worry any more.”

  “I have considered yielding to you,” whispered Fordyce. “For many reasons, such a life would be attractive. Some of the men in the house I left tonight have submitted to your allure, and in their sleep they are always smiling, no doubt because of their dreams; but in the daytime they sit in a corner, on the floor, and wish neither to eat or keep clean; no, nor even to breathe because they are so happy talking to you, and men like you.

  “I have thought of ending life that way, no more struggles, no more conflicts, no more splitting of the personality; just a pleasant life of wandering with the Hell-men, and sharing with them the abominable pleasures they have devised in their houses by the Lake of Fire.”

  Fordyce sat musing, his face drawn with the inner struggle. He roused himself and continued:

  “Yes, I have thought of it, but tonight I finally renounced such a life, and once I arrive at a decision, that decision cannot be changed. That is why I came here; to escape from you and your domination.”

  “But there is no escape from me. I am a part of you! I showed you that by talking to you from your brain. How can you escape from me when
I am with you always, even unto the end of the world?”

  “That is true. But you speak of the end of the world. What comes next? I suppose you know. You always know more than I do. You always say I am wrong and you are right, when I know that it is not so. But we were talking about your leaving this house and never returning. Again I ask: Will you go willingly, or must I make you?”

  The mirror-man shook his head, in negation.

  “I am never going, and you cannot make me, for I am you and you are me. How can I leave this house unless you go with me? This is a very comfortable room, and I enjoy your society, so here I will remain, talking to you; and if there is argument, that is your own fault, for I never argue—just talk.”

  Fordyce licked his parched lips with a dry tongue. He had arrived at a decision, and knew that he must move quickly, before that other man could block his movements. Leaping from his chair, he plunged head first through the mirror, grappled with the mirror-man, and, with a piece of the broken glass, he made certain that the other man would talk no more.

  He smiled as he did this; the victory was his. There would be no more arguments; no more thwarting of desires. Now he could live quietly, alone in his house; and do the many important things he had to do—such as the better understanding of his soul.

  First he must finish the poem. He was sleepy, but he could still clearly remember the beginning: Too late the roses are falling, Over you and me… It seemed an excellent beginning for a poem, and he was sure he could complete it in the morning. He would also write that story of the star on the domed roof of the house, but now he was too tired.