'The gods,' he said — 'the gods who piled stones upon stones are dead, and harm not us who pass the place of their dwelling.'
I knew what that was meant to be. It was an incantation, a ritual; to protect us from the spirits that lurked among the ruins — the ruins, I believe, of a city built by our own ancestors thousands of generations before.
As we passed the wall I looked back at a flicker of movement, and saw something hideously like a black rubber doormat flop itself around angle of the wall. I drew closer to the woman beside me and we crept on down to the sea for water — yes, water, for with the cessation of the planet's rotation rainfall had vanished also and all life huddled near the edge of the undying sea and learned to drink its bitter brine. I didn't glance again at the hill which had been Termopolis, the City of the End; but I knew that some chance-born fragment of Jack Anders had been — or will be; what difference, if time is a circle — witness of an age close to the day of humanity's doom.
It was early in December that I had the first memory of something that might have been suggestive of success. It was a simple and very sweet memory, just Yvonne and I in a garden that I knew was the inner grounds on one of the New Orleans' old homes — one of those built, in the Continental fashion, about a court.
We sat on a stone bench beneath the oleanders, and I slipped my arm very tenderly about her and murmured, 'Are you happy, Yvonne?'
She looked at me with those tragic eyes of hers and smiled, and then answered, 'As happy as I have ever been.'
And I kissed her.
That was all, but it was important. It was vastly important, because it was definitely not a memory out of my own personal past. You see, I had never sat beside Yvonne in a garden sweet with oleanders in the Old Town of New Orleans, and I had never kissed her until we met again in New York.
Aurore de Neant was elated when I described this vision.
'You see!' he gloated. 'There is evidence. You have remembered the future! Not your own future, of course, but that of another ghostly Jack Anders, who died trillions and quadrillions of years ago.'
'But it doesn't help us, does it?' I asked.
'Oh, it will come now! You wait. The thing we want will come.'
And it did, within a week. This memory was curiously bright and clear, and familiar in every detail. I remember the day. It was — the eighth of December, 1929, and I had wandered aimlessly about in search of business during the morning. In the grip of that fascination I mentioned I drifted to de Neant's apartment after lunch. Yvonne left us to ourselves, as was her custom, and we began.
This was, as I said, a sharply outlined memory — or dream. I was leaning over my desk in the company's office, that too-seldom-visited office. One of the other salesmen — Summers was his name — was leaning over my shoulder, and we were engaged in the quite customary pastime of scanning the final market reports in the evening 'paper.' The print stood out clear as reality itself; I glanced without surprise at the date-line. It was Thursday, April 27th, 1930 — almost five months in the future!
Not that I realized that during the 'vision,' of course, the day was merely the present to me; I was simply looking over the list of the day's trading. Figures — familiar names. Tele-Phone, 210 3/8; U. S. Steel, 161; Paramount, 68 1/2.
I jabbed a finger at Steel. 'I bought that at 72,' I said over my shoulder to Summers. 'I sold out everything today. Every stock I own. I'm getting out before there's a secondary crack.'
'Lucky stiff!' he murmured. 'Buy at the December lows and sell out now! Wish I'd had money to do it.' He paused. 'What you gonna do? Stay with the company?'
'No. I've enough to live on. I'm going to stick it in Governments and paid-up insurance annuities, and live on the income. I've had enough of gambling'
'You lucky stiff!' he said again. 'I'm sick of the Street too. Staying in New York?'
'For a while. Just till I get my stuff invested properly. Yvonne and I are going to New Orleans for the winter.' I paused. 'She's had a tough time of it. I'm glad we're where we are.'
'Who wouldn't be?' asked Summers, and then again, 'You lucky stiff.'
De Neant was frantically excited when I described this to him. 'That's it!' he screamed. 'We buy! We buy tomorrow! We sell on the twenty-seventh of May, and then — New Orleans!'
Of course I was nearly equally enthusiastic. 'By heaven!' I said. 'It's worth the risk! We'll do it!' And then a sudden hopeless thought. 'Do it? Do it with what? I have less than a hundred dollars to my name. And you–'
The old man groaned. 'I have nothing,' he said in abrupt gloom. 'Only the annuity we live on. One can't borrow on that.' Again a gleam of hope. 'The banks. We'll borrow from them!'
I had to laugh, though it was a bitter laugh. 'What bank would lend us money on a story like this? They wouldn't lend Rockefeller himself money to play this sick market, not without security. We're sunk, that's all.'
I looked at his pale, worried eyes. 'Sunk,' he echoed dully. Then again that wild gleam. 'Not sunk!' he yelled. 'How can we be? We did do it. You remembered our doing it! We must have found the way!'
I gazed, speechless. Suddenly a queer, mad thought flashed over me. This other Jack Anders, this ghost of quadrillions of centuries past — or future — he too must be watching, or had watched, or yet would watch, me — the Jack Anders of this cycle of eternity. He must be watching as anxiously as I to discover the means. Each of us watching the other; neither of us knowing the answer. The blind leading the blind! I laughed at the irony.
But old de Neant was not laughing. The strangest expression I have ever seen in a man's eyes was in his as he repeated very softly, 'We must have found the way, because it was done. At least you and Yvonne found the way.'
'Then all of us must,' I answered sourly.
'Yes. Oh, yes. Listen to me, lack. I am an old man, old Aurore de Neant. I am old Dawn of Nothingness, and my mind is cracking. Don't shake your head!' he snapped. 'I am not mad. I am simply misunderstood. None of you understand. Why, I have a theory that trees, grass, and people do not grow taller at all; they grow by pushing the earth away from them, which is why you keep hearing that the world is getting smaller every day. But you don't understand; Yvonne doesn't understand–'
The girl must have been listening. Without my seeing her, she had slipped into the room and put her arms gently about her father's shoulders, while she gazed across at me with anxious eyes.
CHAPTER IV
A Prophecy
THERE was one more vision, irrelevant in a way, yet vitally important in another way. It was the next evening, an early December snowfall was dropping its silent white beyond the windows, and the ill-heated apartment of the de Neants was draughty and chill. I saw Yvonne shiver as she greeted me, and again as she left the room, and I noticed that old de Neant followed her to the door with his thin arms about her, and that he returned with very worried eyes.
'She is New Orleans born,' he murmured. 'This dreadful arctic climate will destroy her. We must find a way at once.'
That vision was a somber one. I stood on a cold, wet, snowy ground; just myself and Yvonne and one who stood beside an open grave. Behind us stretched rows of crosses and white tombstones, but in our corner the place was ragged, untended, unconsecrated. The priest was saying, 'And these are things that only God understands.'
I slipped a comforting arm about Yvonne. She raised her dark, tragic eyes and whispered–' It was yesterday, Jack. Just yesterday that he said to me, 'Next winter you shall spend in New Orleans, Yvonne.' Just yesterday!'
I tried a wretched smile, but I could only stare mournfully at her forlorn face, watching a tear that rolled slowly down her right cheek, hung glistening there a moment, then was joined by another and splashed unregarded on the black bosom of her dress.
That was all, but how could I describe that vision to old de Neant? I tried to evade; he kept insisting
'There wasn't any hint of the way,' I told him. Useless; at last I had to tell anyway.
He was very
silent for a full minute. 'Jack,' he said finally, 'do you know when I said that to her about New Orleans? This morning when we watched the snow.'
I didn't know what to do. Suddenly this whole concept of remembering the future seemed mad, insane; in all my memories there had been not a single spark of real proof, not a single hint of prophecy. So I did nothing at all, but simply gazed silently as old Aurore de Neant walked out of the room. And when, two hours later, while Yvonne and I talked, he finished writing a certain letter and then shot himself through the heart — why, that proved nothing either.
So it was the following day that Yvonne and I, his only mourners, followed old Dawn of Nothingness to his suicide's grave. I stood beside her and tried as best I could to console her, and roused from a dark reverie to hear her words: 'Just yesterday that he said to me, 'Next winter you shall spend in New Orleans, Yvonne.' just Yesterday!'
I watched the tear that rolled slowly down her right cheek, hung glistening there a moment, then was joined by another and splashed on the black bosom of her dress.
But it was later, during the evening that the most ironic revelation of all occurred, I was gloomily blaming myself for the weakness of indulging old de Neant in the mad experiment that had led, in a way, to his death. It was as if Yvonne read my thoughts, for she said suddenly, 'He was breaking, Jack. His mind was going. I heard all those strange things he kept murmuring to you.'
'What?'
'I listened, of course, behind the door there. I never left him alone. I heard him whisper the queerest things — faces in a red fog, words about a cold gray desert, the name Pyroniva, the word Termopolis. He leaned over you as you sat with closed eyes, and he whispered, whispered all the time.'
Irony of ironies! It was old de Neant's mad mind that had suggested the visions! He had described them to me as I sat in the sleep of lethargy! Later we found the letter he had written, and again I was deeply moved. The old man had carried a little insurance; just a week before he had borrowed on one of the policies to pay the premiums on it and the others. But the letter — well, he had made me beneficiary of half the amount! And the instructions were:
'You, Jack Anders, will take both your money and Yvonne's and carry out the plan as you know I wish.'
Aurore De Neant had found the way to provide the money, but I couldn't gamble Yvonne's last dollar on the scheme of a disordered mind.
'What will we do?' I asked her. 'Of course the money's all yours. I won't touch it.'
'Mine?' she echoed. 'Why, no. We'll do as he wished. Do you think I'd not respect his last request?'
Well, we did. I took those miserable few thousands and spread it around in that sick December market. You remember what happened, how during the spring the prices skyrocketed as if they were heading back toward 1929, when actually the depression was just gathering breath. I rode that market like a circus performer; I took profits and pyramided them back, and on April 27th, with our money multiplied fifty times, I sold out and watched the market slide back.
Coincidence? Very likely. After all, Aurore de Neant's mind was clear enough most of the time. Other economists predicted that spring rise; perhaps he foresaw it too. Perhaps he staged this whole affair just to trick us into the gamble, one which we'd never have dared otherwise. And then when he saw we were going to fail from lack of money, he took the only means he had of providing it.
Perhaps. That's the rational explanation, and yet — that vision of ruined Termopolis keeps haunting me. I see again the gray cold desert of the floating fungi. I wonder often about the immutable Laws of Chance, and about a ghostly Jack Anders somewhere beyond eternity.
For perhaps he does — did — will exist. Otherwise, how to explain that final vision? What of Yvonne's words beside her father's grave? Could he have foreseen those words and whispered them to me? Possibly. But what, then, of those two tears that hung glistening, merged, and dropped from her cheeks?
What of them?
Scanner’s Notes
THE DARK OTHER
Other Books by Stanley Weinbaum
DAWN OF FLAME
THE NEW ADAM
THE BLACK FLAME
A MARTIAN ODYSSEY
Copyright 1950 by Fantasy Publishing Co., Inc. Manufactured in U. S. A.
Contents
1. PURE HORROR
2. SCIENCE OF MIND
3. PSYCHIATRICS OF GENIUS
4. THE TRANSFIGURATION
5. A FANTASY OF FEAR
6. A QUESTION OF SCIENCE
7. THE RED EYES RETURN
8. GATEWAY TO EVIL
9. DESCENT INTO AVERNUS
10. RESCUE FROM ABADDON
11. WRECKAGE
12. LETTER FROM LUCIFER
13. INDECISION
14. TOO BIZARRE
15. A MODERN MR. HYDE
16. POSSESSED
17. WITCH - DOCTOR
18. VANISHED
19. MAN OR MONSTER?
20. THE ASSIGNATION
21. A QUESTION OF SYNAPSES
22. DOCTOR AND DEVIL
23. WEREWOLF
24. THE DARK OTHER
25. THE DEMON LOVER
26. THE DEPTHS
27. TWO IN HELL
28. LUNAR OMEN
29. SCOPOLAMINE FOR SATAN
30. THE DEMON FREE
31. "NOT HUMANLY POSSIBLE"
32. REVELATION
The Dark Other
1
Pure Horror
HAT ISN'T WHAT I MEAN, SAID NICHOLAS Devine, turning his eyes on his companion. "I mean pure horror in the sense of horror detached from experience, apart from reality, Not just a formless fear, which implies either fear of something that might happen, or fear of unknown dangers. Do you see what I mean?"
"Of course," said Pat, letting her eyes wander over the black expanse of night-dark Lake Michigan. "Certainly I see what you mean but I don't quite understand how you'd do it. It sounds — well, difficult."
She gazed at his lean profile, clear-cut against the distant light. He had turned, staring thoughtfully over the lake, idly fingering the levers on the steering wheel before him. The girl wondered a little at her feeling of contentment; she, Patricia Lane, satisfied to spend an evening in nothing more exciting than conversation! And they must have parked here a full two hours now. There was something about Nick —she didn't understand exactly what; sensitivity, charm, personality. Those were meaningless cliches, handles to hold the unexplainable nuances of character.
"It is difficult," resumed Nick. "Baudelaire tried it, Poe tried it. And in painting, Hogarth, Goya, Dore. Poe came closest, I think; he caught the essence of horror in an occasional poem or story. Don't you think so?”
"I don't know," said Pat. "I've forgotten most of my Poe."
"Remember that story of his — 'The Black Cat'?"
"Dimly. The man murdered his wife."
"Yes. That isn't the part I mean. I mean the cat itself — the second cat. You know a cat, used rightly, can be a symbol of horror."
"Indeed yes!" The girl shuddered. "I don't like the treacherous beasts!"
"And this cat of Poe's," continued Nick, warming to his subject. "Just think of it — in the first place, it's black; element of horror. Then, it's gigantic, unnaturally, abnormally large. And then it's not all black — that would be inartistically perfect — but has a formless white mark on its breast, a mark that little by little assumes a fantastic form — do you remember what?"
"No."
"The form of a gallows!"
"Oh!" said the girl. "Ugh!"
"And then — climax of genius — the eyes! Blind in one eye, the other a baleful yellow orb! Do you feel it? A black cat, an enormous black cat marked with a gallows, and lacking one eye, to make the other even more terrible! Literary tricks, of course, but they work, and that's genius! Isn't it?"
"Genius! Yes, if you call it that. The perverse genius of the Devil!"
"That's what I want to write — what I will write some day." He watched the pla
y of lights on the restless surface of the waters "Pure horror, the epitome of the horrible. It could be written, but it hasn't been yet; not even by Poe."
"That little analysis of yours was bad enough, Nick! Why should you want to improve on his treatment of the theme?"
"Because I like to write, and because I'm interested in the horrible. Two good reasons."
"Two excuses, you mean. Of course, even if you'd succeed, you couldn't force anyone to read it."
"If I succeed, there'd be no need to force people. Success would mean that the thing would be great literature, and even today, in these times, there are still people to read that. And besides —" He paused.
"Besides what?"
"Everybody's interested in the horrible. Even you are, whether or not you deny it."
"I certainly do deny it!"
"But you are, Pat. It's natural to be."
"It isn't!"
"Then what is?"
"Interest in people, and life, and gay times, and pretty things, and — and one's self and one's own feelings. And the feelings of the people one loves."
"Yes. It comes to exactly the point I've been stressing. People are sordid, life is hopeless, gay times are stupid, beauty is sensual, one's own feelings are selfish. And love is carnal. That's the array of horrors that holds your interest!"
The girl laughed in exasperation. "Nick, you could out-argue your name-sake, the Devil himself! Do you really believe that indictment of the normal viewpoint?"
"I do — often!"
"Now?"
"Now," he said, turning his gaze on Pat, "I have no feeling of it at all. Now, right now, I don't believe it."
"Why not?" she queried, smiling ingenuously at him.
"You, obviously."
"Gracious! I had no idea my logic was as convincing as that."
"Your logic isn't. The rest of you is."
"That sounds like a compliment," observed Pat. "If it is," she continued in a bantering tone, "it's the only one I can recall obtaining from you."
The Lost Master - The Collected Works Page 61