“Tommy!” Virginia crowed, holding to the edge of the float with one hand and waving frantically at the small, furtive figure in the reeds. “Tommy—c’m on! look—I can swim a little on my back! Tommy—look!”
Like some small, cautious animal, the child very slowly left the reedy shallows where he was crouching and clambered up onto the bank. He shuffled across the bare strip of ground behind the float and stood there, to all appearances bashfully hesitant, grinning and squirming his bare toes in the dry earth.
There seemed nothing malevolent or remarkable about him now. He was small, Julia saw—indeed scarcely bigger than Gin herself. He seemed a bit thin or “spindling”—or else his faded, patched overalls and quaintly cut shirt were a little too big for him. This time, he carried his big straw hat, and she could see his face quite plainly—a grinning, engaging, freckled face surmounted by an unruly mop of red hair worn longish in the style of another time.
“Won’t—won’t you come near us?” Julia repeated her invitation a little faintly.
“No, ma’am,” she heard the boy distinctly say—still grinning, eyes lowered as though in shy embarrassment, bare toes wriggling a pattern in the dry dust.
Suddenly Julia stood up. As though in pleading, she stretched out her hand—took three quick steps across the bobbing float toward the small, smiling child on the bank. He looked up, then—and the hatred in the blue eyes leaped out at her, stabbing.
“Child, why do you hate me? I wouldn’t harm you—don’t you know that? I only want to know—the truth. Why you are this way, and what I can do to help you be at peace—”
He was gone. Quite simply, he turned his back, stepped toward the reeds and melted into their midst—disappeared. The float rocked as Gin, dripping and clumsy, heaved herself out of the water.
“Why, he’s gone!” Gin said reproachfuly. “Oh, Mother—you drove him away again!”
It was hot—there was such a dazzle on the water. The sky was a tight, lacquered bowl. Everything was too still, too close, too bright. Julia clutched despairingly at Gin’s small, dripping figure.
“What’s the matter, Mommy?” The childish voice, full of puzzled concern, made Julia break into uncontrollable weeping. “Do you feel awful bad?”
“Bad,” Julia sobbed, clutching Gin the harder. “Awfully bad! My poor little girl! Don’t leave me, ever? You’ll promise—stay close beside me?”
“’Course I’m right here, Mommy,” Gin replied with childish dignity. “I’m sorry you hurt. Shall I dip some water out of the pond and put it on your head?”
“The pond—no! Let’s go back and don’t ever go near it again! Keep away from it—you hear? It’s—it’s cursed!”
The time had come, Julia felt, when she could no longer continue the unequal struggle. For now, with every passing hour, she was losing—Gin was slowly, but surely, slipping away from her. Only one alternative remained—to go away. And now she was forced to tell Cliff the truth.
“I been thinking about telling you for two days,” Cliff unexpectedly informed her. “I know all about it. I’ve been inquiring around, ever since that afternoon when I—saw the kid.” He looked at Julia bleakly. “Yeah—I really knew, then, something was wrong. It’s the pond. Kid name of Tom Beaufield drowned there. Nine years old, he was—and that was seventy years ago.”
“Seventy years.” Julia repeated with dry lips. “Yes, I saw how it must have been—the old-fashioned haircut, the quaint shirt he wore.”
“They never found him,” Cliff went on. “The family moved away. Then a childless couple had the place—never noticed anything wrong. Then the old bachelor coot we bought the place from. It’s my fault—I should have sent you and Gin away before. But now this clinches it. Start packing tomorrow.”
“No—I won’t even pack at least, nothing but a small suitcase. We won’t let Gin know until the last minute. Even then, maybe, we’d better pretend we’re just going for the day. After we’ve gone you can board up the windows, see that our things get moved—”
Julia clapped her hand over her mouth, suppressing a scream.
“He was there!” she cried frantically, pointing to the wide-open window. “He heard us—every word!”
Cliff swore savagely. He leaped to the door and flung it wide open to the night. Across the lawn trotted a small shape, indistinctly seen by the light of a gibbous moon: a small lad in overalls who turned his head once, looking back, as if in derision. The instant Cliff stepped outside the door, he had vanished.
“Tomorrow!” Julia choked. “Tomorrow—if it isn’t too late!”
They didn’t leave because during the night Virginia complained of a burning in her throat. By morning she was running a high temperature and babbled deliriously. Alarmed, Julia had sent for a physician. But the man, a local practitioner, advised against moving the child until the fever died down.
“He’s won, again!” Julia thought frantically. He doesn’t want her to go away!”
But if Gin had to remain, confined, in that hateful house, she could still watch over her. Never would that hated other get near the child again. Already she had lost too much to him: Gin’s sanity, and perhaps her life itself. That sinister, malignant child of the pond would never dare set foot over the threshold of the house so long as she, Julia, remained on guard—alert and vigilant to the shadowy enemy.
He came in the early afternoon. Quite simply, she knew that he was there, outside—and sure enough, when she went to the door, there stood the little overalled lad, straw hat set askew on his head, face up-tilted to the windows—Gin’s window.
Julia walked out on the porch and, slowly, he lowered his head, staring full at her with bright blue eyes. He let her get within eight feet of him, then turned and walked away.
“Wait!” Julia cried sternly. “Stand where you are!”
He looked back over one shoulder. Under the shadow of the wide-brimmed hat she could see his eyes—sly, taunting. She could see the wide, mocking grin. It seemed to her that she had never known anything more malevolent, more horrifying than that child’s face—thin, freckled and full of an unchildish wisdom, a knowledge of something beyond her, a power she was utterly unable to cope with.
“Stop!” she sobbed. “Please! Let me speak—just once?”
The other stopped. Julia considered flinging herself at him, but before she could move the lad solemnly raised his hand and beckoned to her. Then, looking back and again beckoning, he led her deliberately across the field and down the hillside toward the orchard.
“Why,” cried Julia breathlessly when at last he permitted her to overtake him—“why are you doing this? What do you want?”
The lad lowered his eyes.
“I ain’t a-gonna be alone,” he muttered. “Not no more!” He looked up, and again she felt the stab of those blue, child’s eyes. “You—you want to take her away, but she ain’t a-goin’! She’ll be like me—and she’ll stay here forever!”
“You want her to be dead!” Julia screamed.
“She is dead,” the lad answered. “Now, already. Go see.”
The house was empty. Gin, in her feverish delirium, must have left while the other lured Julia away. Distraught, weeping, she ran from room to room—mocked everywhere by the ringing echoes of her own voice.
The pond—was that what he had meant? Julia ran, stumbling down the rough trail swamped out through the patch of woods. She found Gin’s two small shoes set side by side on the edge of the pond.
In response to her hysterical telephone call Cliff came home. Others, too, came to console her or join in the search. Close-mouthed men—strangers—tramped over the fields. The woods were combed. At night, as the search spread to the surrounding hills, there was the mournful baying of hounds.
“Get some sleep!” Cliff begged. “Maybe—there’s still a chance—”
“They’ll drag tomorrow,” Cliff whispered haggardly. “We’ll see.”
Sometime in the night it began raining. Julia slept but sleep was more terrible than waking reality. She plunged awake out of choking nightmare, to the drab grayness of earliest morning, and the sound of rain in the eaves gutters.
Downstairs Cliff slept huddled in a chair. He had not even taken off his shoes. The telephone had remained mute throughout the night. Julia tiptoed past him, down the hall and out the door.
It had rained heavily. A chill light glistened on every leaf and blade. Julia raised her face to the cold drops, feeling them soothe the terrible throb in her head, the ache in her eyes. She shut her eyes and walked blindly, feeling she could never get enough of the cold, pelting rain.
“Mommy!”
Her eyes flew open. Then she cried out and ran, sobbing brokenly, toward the small figure standing uncertainly in the rain and the gray mist.
“Gin! I knew you’d come back! Oh I knew you wouldn’t leave me forever!”
“Don’t come any closer, mommy!” Gin said. “Please!”
‘Oh, Gin—let me hold you, just once!” Gin shook her head.
“You can’t, mommy. But I’ve got to go now. Tommy’s waiting.”
The child turned, and with elfin grace glided off into the rain. Julia ran—stumbling often as the wet grass tangled about her feet.
Gin ran too, fled barefooted, with the speed of the wind. In the eerie grayness she seemed part of the silver rain, part of the mist flowing along the tops of the wet grass. Her two short braids, drenched and dark, swung out behind her as she ran. In the milky opacity, another child, barefoot and overalled, raced to her side and joined hands with her.
“Children—wait! Please!” Julia shrieked.
She ran stumbling through the rain—and always the children, hands clasped, were just a little ahead. She lost them presently—and found, bewildered, that once again he had ventured down the trail to the edge of the pond.
She turned away from the loath sight of the water, gray and pelted with raindrops. Weeping, blinded, she stumbled against a solid body—a pair of arms encircled her.
“Good God, Julia!” Cliff said hoarsely. “What are you trying to do? Come on back—quick now!”
“Virginia,” Julia wept. “Earthbound. Unhallowed, for ever and ever.”
“I heard you scream,” said Cliff. “Saw you running across the field in the rain. I yelled and yelled, but you didn’t stop.”
Faintly and very far away, a dog began to bark. Julia twisted loose from Cliff’s embrace—pointed to the wet earth. Cliff stiffened, his face slowly whitening.
Two sets of tracks—the fresh prints of small, bare feet, led into the pond. Even as they looked, they were already beginning to fade under the pelting drops of the cold, heavy rain.
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS, by Jack London
A strange life has come to an end in the death of Mr. Sedley Crayden, of Crayden Hill.
Mild, harmless, he was the victim of a strange delusion that kept him pinned, night and day, in his chair for the last two years of his life. The mysterious death, or, rather, disappearance, of his elder brother, James Crayden, seems to have preyed upon his mind, for it was shortly after that event that his delusion began to manifest itself.
Mr. Crayden never vouchsafed any explanation of his strange conduct. There was nothing the matter with him physically; and, mentally, the alienists found him normal in every way save for his one remarkable idiosyncrasy. His remaining in his chair was purely voluntary, an act of his own will. And now he is dead, and the mystery remains unsolved.
—Extract from the Newton Courier-Times.
* * * *
Briefly, I was Mr. Sedley Crayden’s confidential servant and valet for the last eight months of his life. During that time he wrote a great deal in a manuscript that he kept always beside him, except when he drowsed or slept, at which times he invariably locked it in a desk drawer close to his hand.
I was curious to read what the old gentleman wrote, but he was too cautious and cunning. I never got a peep at the manuscript. If he were engaged upon it when I attended on him, he covered the top sheet with a large blotter. It was I who found him dead in his chair, and it was then that I took the liberty of abstracting the manuscript. I was very curious to read it, and I have no excuses to offer.
After retaining it in my secret possession for several years, and after ascertaining that Mr. Crayden left no surviving relatives, I have decided to make the nature of the manuscript known. It is very long, and I have omitted nearly all of it, giving only the more lucid fragments. It bears all the earmarks of a disordered mind, and various experiences are repeated over and over, while much is so vague and incoherent as to defy comprehension. Nevertheless, from reading it myself, I venture to predict that if an excavation is made in the main basement, somewhere in the vicinity of the foundation of the great chimney, a collection of bones will be found which should very closely resemble those which James Crayden once clothed in mortal flesh.
—Statement of Rudolph Heckler.
* * * *
Here follows the excerpts from the manuscript, made and arranged by Rudolph Heckler:
I never killed my brother. Let this be my first word and my last. Why should I kill him? We lived together in unbroken harmony for twenty years. We were old men, and the fires and tempers of youth had long since burned out. We never disagreed even over the most trivial things. Never was there such amity as ours. We were scholars. We cared nothing for the outside world. Our companionship and our books were all-satisfying. Never were there such talks as we held. Many a night we have sat up till two and three in the morning, conversing, weighing opinions and judgments, referring to authorities—in short, we lived at high and friendly intellectual altitudes.
*
He disappeared. I suffered a great shock. Why should he have disappeared? Where could he have gone? It was very strange. I was stunned. They say I was very sick for weeks. It was brain fever. This was caused by his inexplicable disappearance. It was at the beginning of the experience I hope here to relate, that he disappeared.
How I have endeavoured to find him. I am not an excessively rich man, yet have I offered continually increasing rewards. I have advertised in all the papers, and sought the aid of all the detective bureaus. At the present moment, the rewards I have out aggregate over fifty thousand dollars.
*
They say he was murdered. They also say murder will out. Then I say, why does not his murder come out? Who did it? Where is he? Where is Jim? My Jim?
*
We were so happy together. He had a remarkable mind, a most remarkable mind, so firmly founded, so widely informed, so rigidly logical, that it was not at all strange that we agreed in all things. Dissension was unknown between us. Jim was the most truthful man I have ever met. In this, too, we were similar, as we were similar in our intellectual honesty. We never sacrificed truth to make a point. We had no points to make, we so thoroughly agreed. It is absurd to think that we could disagree on anything under the sun.
*
I wish he would come back. Why did he go? Who can ever explain it? I am lonely now, and depressed with grave forebodings—frightened by terrors that are of the mind and that put at naught all that my mind has ever conceived. Form is mutable. This is the last word of positive science. The dead do not come back. This is incontrovertible. The dead are dead, and that is the end of it, and of them. And yet I have had experiences here—here, in this very room, at this very desk, that—But wait. Let me put it down in black and white, in words simple and unmistakable. Let me ask some questions. Who mislays my pen? That is what I desire to know. Who uses up my ink so rapidly? Not I. And yet the in
k goes.
The answer to these questions would settle all the enigmas of the universe. I know the answer. I am not a fool. And some day, if I am plagued too desperately, I shall give the answer myself. I shall give the name of him who mislays my pen and uses up my ink. It is so silly to think that I could use such a quantity of ink. The servant lies. I know.
*
I have got me a fountain pen. I have always disliked the device, but my old stub had to go. I burned it in the fireplace. The ink I keep under lock and key. I shall see if I cannot put a stop to these lies that are being written about me. And I have other plans. It is not true that I have recanted. I still believe that I live in a mechanical universe. It has not been proved otherwise to me, for all that I have peered over his shoulder and read his malicious statement to the contrary. He gives me credit for no less than average stupidity. He thinks I think he is real. How silly. I know he is a brain-figment, nothing more.
There are such things as hallucinations. Even as I looked over his shoulder and read, I knew that this was such a thing. If I were only well it would be interesting. All my life I have wanted to experience such phenomena. And now it has come to me. I shall make the most of it. What is imagination? It can make something where there is nothing. How can anything be something where there is nothing? How can anything be something and nothing at the same time? I leave it for the metaphysicians to ponder. I know better. No scholastics for me. This is a real world, and everything in it is real. What is not real, is not. Therefore he is not. Yet he tries to fool me into believing that he is…when all the time I know he has no existence outside of my own brain cells.
*
I saw him today, seated at the desk, writing. It gave me quite a shock, because I had thought he was quite dispelled. Nevertheless, on looking steadily, I found that he was not there—the old familiar trick of the brain. I have dwelt too long on what has happened. I am becoming morbid, and my old indigestion is hinting and muttering. I shall take exercise. Each day I shall walk for two hours.
The Third Macabre Megapack: 25 Classic Tales of Horror Page 23