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 strange 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 unusual 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 meself. I killed you. The moment it was done I could a-cut me 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—do you think it would put you back to rest if 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 shuddered. Then he saw the alternative—the breakdown of his life—a ruined business, poverty, the poorhouse, a daughter robbed of her health and perhaps dying, and always the curse of the dead-living man, who might follow him to the poorhouse. 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 further 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, had to 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 wrong since he’s been here.”
There was a general air of dustiness about the place. The tablecloths 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 corner by the door leading to the kitchen, unseen by her, lay a dusty macintosh 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—grayish-white dust.
“Reely, this place gets more and more slapdash. Why can’t you attend to business? You didn’t use to be like this. No wonder it’s gone down, letting the place get into this state. Why don’t you pull yourself together. Just look at that dust by the door. Looks as though somebody’s been spilling ashes all over the place.”
Nameless looked at it, and his hands shook a little. But he answered, more firmly than before,“Yes, I know. I’ll have a proper clean-up tomorrow. I’ll put it all to rights tomorrow. I been getting a bit slack.”
For the first time in ten weeks he smiled at them; a thin, haggard smile, but a smile.
WAKE NOT THE DEAD
John H. Knox
Although John H. Knox was a prolific pulp fiction writer, little is known of him other than he lived in Abilene, Texas, and was the son of a preacher. Still, he is one of the most popular pulp writers.
The service was proceeding smoothly, reverently, quietly. Our small and decorous Gothic chapel was dimly beautiful. The light filtering through the rose window beyond the chancel threw a warm glow over the high altar, over the minister intoning the stately service, and over the gray stone catafalque with its banked flowers beneath which lay Porter Bruton in his coffin.
Personally, I liked this solemn warmth of rite and ritual. As half-owner of the Sun Hill Crematorium, I was proud of the skill with which we helped to veil the raw harshness of death. But today, curiously, it did not seem enough. As I watched the pallid faces of that congregation of college students, teachers, and commonplace suburbanites, I was beginning to sense something of what my partner, Tom Carlin, had meant when he had said, “Watch them, Willis. With things as they are in Oakvale now, you can’t trust people around funerals any more.”
It had sounded absurd, far-fetched. For Oakvale had been an ordinary enough college suburb when the need for a serious operation had taken me away three months ago. Of course, I knew that during my absence the community had been somewhat upset by the suicide of Professor Grenfel, which followed the man’s mad attempt to snatch at the dark secrets of life and death.
It was rather weird that only yesterday, on the very day of my return, Grenfel’s young successor to the chair of biochemistry had followed his former chief in self-inflicted death. But was that enough to account for Tom’s ominous hysterical and rather cryptic warning?
Bits of jumbled talk he had let fall came back to me now. Hints at body-snatching and some weird mania smoldering among the undergraduates at Oakvale. Dark references to Major Dennis Macklin and the two natives he had brought back with him from Africa. And this had
seemed to connect in some way with a change that had come over Faustine Grenfel, the dead professor’s daughter, who had been openly in love with the young assistant who now lay there under the banked flowers.
I looked at Faustine Grenfel now. She had always been eccentric, something of a poser, I thought. But she did possess an eerie and rather disturbing sort of beauty, a supple fluidity of slender limbs and serpentine white arms which, enhanced by her pallid and over-rouged face under the tight-clustered gold curls, gave her an unearthly, even a death-like air.
What shocked and repelled me now was the fact that instead of the black she should have worn on this occasion she was dressed in a scarlet gown of daring cut—as if she had come, not to a funeral, but to a rendezvous! Moreover, the avid fixity with which she regarded the coffin, leaning forward with delicate nostrils dilated and scarlet lips moving faintly as if in some unholy communion with the corpse of the man on whom she had lavished an unwelcome love, had rather more than a little of the horrible enveloping it.
For it was known that Porter Bruton had spurned her, had loved, hopelessly in his turn, Lilly Langburn, the daughter of the president of Oakvale College—the girl who had promised to become my wife.
It was with relief that I turned toward Lilly now, rejoicing that her lovely face, with its large brown eyes and tender lips, though sad, was as radiantly serene as the flower whose name she bore. Thank God, nothing of this stupid hysteria had touched her, not even though Major Macklin was her father’s cousin, Faustine was her friend, and the dead man himself had been a suitor for her love. But then, nothing like that could touch Lilly!
Perhaps it was all exaggerated, anyhow. The service was nearly ended and nothing had happened yet. Even Faustine, sitting there with that awful look of expecting the dead man to rise at any moment, might manage to refrain from causing a scene.
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust—”
There, it was almost over. Tom Carlin was solemnly sprinkling the dust and ashes over the coffin. With a deep breath of relief, I pressed the button and watched the casket sink slowly below the floor to leave only the flowers visible. Then, while the audience slowly rose, I turned and hurried down into the receiving room.
My partner followed me. We found old Dr. Bruton, the dead young teacher’s father, waiting there with our superintendent, Sam Fleagle. Tom put a gentle hand on the old man’s shoulder.
“You still insist on—staying?” he asked.
The aged doctor lifted his stricken but tearless face.
“Certainly,” he said. “I watched him die, and I prepared his body for the last rites. I shall see him through to the last. It isn’t in the trappings of funerals that we show our love for our dead, but in the ministering of hands.”
It was a relief to see one Spartan at least in a crazed community. Tom sprang to help the old man as he raised his gaunt frame and moved toward the coffin from which Sam Fleagle was removing the lid. I turned to close the door, but stopped. Standing there, a scarlet apparition against the dimness, was Faustine Grenfel.
It was a tense instant. I could still hear feet moving upstairs and I dreaded the thought of the scene she might cause. For though her face was as immobile as a death mask, garish with paint, her greenish eyes glowed with a febrile threat that I could not misinterpret.
“Faustine,” I began soothingly, “you mustn’t—”
I broke off as she moved forward and I suddenly rushed her. But like a streaking flame she slithered past me and darted toward the coffin.
“Stop!” she shrilled. “You shall not burn him! You shall not destroy that splendid body!”
The others whirled and stood speechless as the girl flung herself upon the coffin, pressing her breast against it as she clawed and tugged to drag it to the floor.
“They shan’t burn you, Porter!” she sobbed madly.“I’ll tear the coffin apart! I’ll press my body to you, and life will come into you again!”
It was ghastly, revolting. In another instant she would have dragged coffin and corpse crashing to the floor, but Tom came to his senses and grabbed her. I sprang to his aid and we pulled her away by main force. We shoved her, fighting and screaming, toward the door.
People were crowding down the steps, but I yelled at them to go back. We began pushing her up the stairs, while she continued to scream.
“You want to burn him, Willis Payne! You want to burn him to keep him from getting Lilly. But the dead aren’t as dead as you think! He’ll come back—”
I flung a hand over her mouth and the next moment we had her in the chapel. Dr. Pelham, who had run to his car for a hypo, had jabbed the needle into her arm, and that part of the nightmare was over.
We went back down and found old Dr. Bruton on the verge of a collapse. This had been too much even for him, and when Tom offered to take him home, he consented weakly.
Left alone with Sam Fleagle, I locked the door and set about helping him get the coffin into the crematorium oven. Then I left him to seal the chamber and close the gilded doors, and went back and sat down to get my breath.
Thank God it was over now, anyhow! How could a girl allow her nerves to make such a fool of her, I asked myself. And then I gave a start. It was only the first whine of the motor, the preliminary roar of the flames in the bowels of the masonry, but it sent a queer tremor through me. What was wrong? Was I letting that mad girl’s words upset me?
The dead aren’t as dead as you think!
Rot! I sat up and stared at the furnace. A sudden booming had begun as the oil burner in the combustion chamber warmed up. It rose to a roar as the flames spurted into the oven to embrace the casket. Suppose Porter Bruton was not really dead? Suppose—
Damn it, was I getting morbid like the others? Angrily I got up, walked over and stood at the peephole at the back of the oven where Sam Fleagle was watching the color of the flames.
“A corpse is just so much matter,” I told myself steadily,“not a person at all.”
Inside there the fire roared like hell. I saw a dark line creep down the center of the flame-enshrouded casket. It widened. The casket split like an eggshell and black smoke blasted angrily against the peephole.
“Porter Bruton’s entity is not in there,” I said, “just the lifeless husk of him.”
Why were my palms so sweaty?
A tremor rumbled like an earthquake through the masonry and Fleagle snatched at the air valves to reduce the flame. Then soot on the peephole thinned and I saw the thing inside, melting as it were, in the white oxidation of the fire, shrinking, twisting. . . .
I started to turn away. It had never affected me like this before. But I seemed unable to withdraw my eyes from the shape that moved uneasily between the obscuring flashes of fire. It made me dizzy for an instant and it was then that I experienced the queer hallucination. For suddenly, rising above the flame’s roar, wild and windy and remote as an echo thrown up from the abyss, there came a shriek, “Lilly, Lilly, I’m not dead! They’re burning me alive! Save me, Lilly!”
Despite the great heat, a sheath of ice froze round my limbs, and as my brain spun like something whirled on the end of a string, it came again—a distillation of intolerable agony, black despair and immortal hate that would have chilled a devil’s blood, “God curse you, Willis Payne! I’ll come back!”
Then there was only the flames’ roar, and with limbs atremble I turned to Sam Fleagle who was just straightening up.
“Did you hear something, Sam?”
He grinned. “Hear? Sure. Them flames makes all sorts of noises. Sometimes they seem to scream, sometimes to laugh.”
“I guess so,” I managed. “Well, I think I’ll go now.”
I staggered up the steps, through the chapel and out into the late afternoon sunlight, my brain still in a daze. Over and over I told myself it was all imagination. But I knew better; I had heard! And he had called, not Faustine’s name, but Lilly’s!
Now I wasn’t quite a fool, even in my terror. I couldn’t believe th
at a voice from the blazing coffin had come through the thick masonry of the oven. But I did know that telepathy is a proven phenomenon, that in the intensity of death’s agony, the dying have been known to project not only thoughts, but actual apparitions that stand before the eyes of the living—and speak!
I got into the roadster, fumbled with the ignition key, finally got the engine started, and drove to the apartment which Tom Carlin and I called home. Tom was seated in the living room, morose and haggard, with a drink in his hand.
“Well, Willis,” he said, without looking up, “a little more of this and we’re finished. People won’t bring their dead out from the city to a place with the atmosphere of a chamber of horrors. And it’s my fault for dragging you into the business, too. I sometimes feel that I ought to offer to buy you out—”
He looked up, grinning wryly, and saw my face. “What’s wrong? You look like you’d seen—”
“A ghost?” I asked. I looked him straight in the eyes. “Tell me the truth, Tom, do you know that Porter Bruton was dead? Do you know that the poison he took actually killed him?”
“What do you mean?” he exclaimed. But something evasive in his face told me he knew well enough. “Of course he was dead. Dr. Bruton saw him die, signed the death certificate, dressed the body. You’re not suggesting that the old man could have connived at his own son’s murder?”
I poured myself a drink, sat down to gulp it, and then told Tom exactly what had happened. Once he tried to interrupt me with some weak protest about the state of my nerves, but I silenced him and went on.
“You’ve been holding back on me, Tom, probably because you think I’m still too sick to stand the shock. But you may as well open up. I want to know what in hell is wrong here in Oakvale,” I concluded.
He chewed that over a moment. Then:
“I wish I knew,” he said. “Some sort of weird traffic with the dead must be going on, for bodies have been stolen. As to who’s behind it, I have only a guess. I may be wrong. Let’s start at the first and see what you think.”
The Book of the Living Dead Page 23