Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  There was an unexpected reaction, however. Doyle began to feel very sleepy. The lethargic drowsiness that was creeping over him could not be dispelled, although he let down the windshield to allow the cool night breeze to strike his face.

  Twice he just avoided going off the road. At last, realizing that he dared drive no further, he drew up off the shoulder of the highway, drew a rug over his legs and relaxed. When he awoke it would take only a few hours to reach home.

  He fumbled uneasily with the rug. The night had become very cold. Icy stars seemed to watch him intently from a sky ablaze with chill brilliance. Just as he went to sleep he imagined he heard someone laughing—

  Sleep that was haunted with strange, grotesque images—a feeling of dropping through giddy abysses—a horrible vertigo that passed and left him spent and helpless to the dreams that came—

  In his dream he was back in Benson’s house. The sable hangings still swathed the walls, the pentagram still glowed faintly on the floor, but the silver lamps were no longer alight. All around were darkness and silence, and a chill wind was blowing.

  With the odd inconsequence of dreams, Doyle realized without any particular feeling of surprise that the room was roofless. Cold stars blazed in a jet sky. Without warning an irregular patch of blackness sprang into existence overhead. Something, invisible save as a shapeless silhouette against the stars, was hovering over the roofless room.

  Looking down, Doyle saw Benson’s body lying where it had fallen. The glazed eyes seemed to shine with a shocking semblance of internal light. They were not looking at him; they were staring upward, and the light that was emanating from those ghastly hollows was actually beating back the darkness of the room.

  And now, Doyle saw that something like a thick, knotted rope was descending from above. It paused above the dead man’s face, coiling and wriggling with a slow, worm-like motion. Following the rope with his eyes, Doyle saw that it disappeared in the black patch of shadow far above, and he was oddly glad that his eyes could not pierce the gloom that shrouded the hovering thing.

  Very slowly the lids of Benson’s eyes began to close. There was no other movement in the still white face, save for the almost imperceptible shutting of the eyelids. At last they were completely closed. Doyle saw the black rope move, twisting and coiling restlessly across the room toward him, and slowly a dim radiance began to glow overhead. It waxed and grew until the stars were dim ghosts against its splendor, and then it began to drop silently through the air, slanting toward Doyle as it sank.

  Stark horror gripped the man. He tried to fling himself back and found that he could not move; some strange dream-paralysis held him rigid and helpless. And in the pale radiance above him he caught a glimpse of a vague, amorphous shape that swam slowly into view.

  The rope-like thing came on. Doyle made a sudden frightful effort to move, to break the invisible bonds that fettered him. And this time he was successful.

  The paralysis fled away; he whirled to escape and saw before him—emptiness. A gulf of blackness seemed to open abruptly at his feet, and he felt himself toppling forward. There was a jarring shock, a wrenching jolt that utterly confused all his faculties at once. For a second Doyle felt himself plummeting down into a gulf of utter abandon, and then gray light enveloped him. The roofless room was gone. Both Benson and the floating horror had vanished.

  He was in another world. Another dream-world!

  This weird feeling of unreality! Doyle stared about him, discovering that he was bathed in a gray, shadowless light that came from no visible source, while overhead the air thickened into a misty, opaque haze. Curious little crystal formations speckled the flat plain about him, a conglomeration of glinting, flashing light. Extraordinary balloon-like creatures, as large as his head, swung ceaselessly in the air all around him, drifting gently with the air currents. They were perfectly round, covered with flashing reptilian scales.

  One of them burst as he watched, and a cloud of tiny, glowing motes floated slowly down. When they touched the ground a strange crystalline growth began to form as the motes were metamorphosed into the little crystals that stretched into the hazy distance about him.

  Above the man a dim glow began to wax: a pale, lambent radiance that Doyle watched apprehensively for a few moments before realizing its significance. He recognized it finally as he began to make out vaguely disquieting formations in the brightness. And without warning a black coil dropped down purposefully—questing for him!

  Doyle felt a cold shock of dreadful fear. Would this dream never end? The strange paralysis held him again. He tried to cry out, but no sound came from his stiff lips; and just before the worm-like tip of the tentacle touched him, he remembered his former escape and made a frantic effort to break his intangible bonds. And again the black abyss widened at his feet; again came the wrenching jar as he plummeted down—and again the dark veil was withdrawn to disclose a fantastic, alien scene.

  All about him was a tangled forest of luxuriant vegetation. The bark of the trees, as well as the leaves, the thick masses of vines, even the grass underfoot was an angry brilliant crimson. Nor was that the worst. The things were alive!

  The vines writhed and swung on the trees, and the trees themselves swayed restlessly, their branches twisting in the hot, stagnant air. Even the long, fleshy grass at Doyle’s feet made nauseating little worm motions.

  There was no sun—merely an empty blue sky, incongruously peaceful above the writhing horrors. Doyle saw a crimson, snakelike vine as thick as his arm dart out toward him, and he made again that desperate effort to move. At the same moment he saw the nucleus of a familiar glow pulsing through the air above him. Then the blackness overwhelmed him briefly, and it passed to reveal still another world.

  He was in a vast, towering amphitheater, vaguely reminiscent of the Coliseum, but far larger. Tiers of seats rose into the distance, and filling the rows was a surging multitude. There was a square of space separating him from the first row of seats, and on this space four creatures stood facing him.

  They were monsters, inhuman and terrible. Set atop fat, puffy, dark-skinned bags were shapeless globes, dead black, save for peculiar whitish markings which followed no particular pattern. From a gaping hole in each globe dangled a string of pale, ribbonlike appendages, and just above this orifice was a pale, glossy disk, with an intensely black center.

  The bodies, Doyle saw, were clothed in some black substance, so that only their general anthropoid contour was revealed. He caught a glimpse of unfamiliar appendages protruding through the clothing, but their various purposes were obscure.

  One long proboscis resembled the miniature trunk of an elephant, and it hung from where the navel should have been. Another short, dangling flap had an ovoid swelling on it. The worst revelation of all, however, occurred when one of the things lifted up an arm, and from the gaping cavity that was revealed a pinkish tongue lolled forth lazily.

  About Doyle a murmuring grew and swelled into a roar. The throngs in the distant seats were cavorting, dancing. The four nearby were waving their repulsive appendages and coming closer.

  Above Doyle a spot of light appeared, grew larger. As he watched it began to glow with that strange bright flame he had come to dread. The four nearby scurried ignominiously to a safe distance. But this time Doyle was ready. His flesh crawling at the sight of the horror materializing within the light, he tensed—it was not such an effort this time, somehow—and again he was plummeting into blackness.

  From the colorless void he emerged into the glaring blaze of a vast field of frozen white, with not an object visible in its limitless expanse, and a black, starless sky overhead. Abysmal cold seared Doyle to the bone, the utter chill of airless space. He did not wait for the coming of the pursuer to make the effort of his will that sent him into yet another world.

  Then he was standing on a black, gelatinous substance that heaved restlessly underfoot, as though it were the hide of some cyclopean monster. The ebony, heaving skin seemed to stretch f
or miles around. Presently the warning light was fused in the air above Doyle. Shuddering, he fled through the shielding darkness.

  Next was a field of hard, frozen brown earth, with a phenomenally beautiful night sky overhead, studded with unfamiliar constellations, with a great comet blazing in its white glory among the stars. And from that world Doyle fled to a strange place where he stood on a surface of ice or glass. Looking down he could see, far below, vague and indistinct figures that were apparently frozen or buried there, colossal shapes that seemed entirely inhuman, as far as he could make out through the cloudy crystalline substance.

  The next vision was by far the worst. From the swift plunge into blackness Doyle emerged to find about him a great city, towering upward to a black sky in which blazed two angry scarlet moons, whose flight he could almost follow with his eyes. It was a colossal and shocking city of scalene black towers and fortresses which seemed to follow some abnormal and anomalous system of geometry. It was in its entirety an indescribable conglomeration of stone horrors, and its architectural insanity sent sharp pains darting through Doyle’s eyes as he tried to follow the impossible planes and angles.

  Then Doyle caught a flashing glimpse of the amorphous, nightmare inhabitants that teemed loathsomely in that gigantic city, and a dreadful horror racked him. He flung himself desperately into the black gulf that once more awaited him.

  He seemed to fall for endless eons through the limitless abyss. Then suddenly he found himself, gasping and sweating, in his roadster, while the shadowy darkness before the dawn made silhouettes of nearby trees.

  Trembling, Doyle groped for the dashboard compartment. His throat was dry, and he had a piercing headache. He needed a drink. His hand closed on the bottle. Then he paused.

  An inexplicable light was shining down on him!

  Doyle dropped back upon the cushions, his eyes dilated with unbelieving terror. And slowly, from empty air that pulsed with the straining of cosmic forces, a monstrous entity began to emerge. Gradually it swam into view from a blaze of blinding light, until Doyle saw hovering above him the star-spawn of an alien and forgotten dimension—Iod, the Hunter of Souls!

  It was not a homogeneous entity, this unholy specter, but it partook hideously of incongruous elements. Strange mineral and crystal formations sent their fierce glow through squamous, semitransparent flesh, and the whole was bathed in a viscid, crawling light that pulsed monstrously about the horror. A thin slime dripped from membranous flesh to the car’s hood; and as this slime floated down, hideous, plant-like appendages writhed blindly in the air, making hungry little sucking noises.

  It was a blazing, cosmic horror spawned by an outlaw universe, an abysmal, prehuman entity drawn out of fathomless antiquity by elder magic. A great faceted eye watched Doyle emotionlessly with the cold stare of the Midgard serpent, and the rope-like tentacle began to uncoil purposefully as the thing advanced.

  Doyle made a tremendous effort to break the invisible bonds that had again fettered him. He strained and struggled till his temples throbbed with agony, but nothing happened, save that from a puckered orifice on the rugose lower surface of the creature there issued a shrill, high-pitched whistling. Then the tentacle swung up and its tip darted out like a snake for Doyle’s face. He felt a frigid touch on his forehead, and the iron agony of fathomless cold bit into his brain.

  In an incandescent blaze of light the world flared up and was gone, and a ghastly suction began to drag inexorably at Doyle’s brain. The life was drained from him in one hideous tide of pain.

  Then the agony in his head lessened and was gone. There was a brief, shrill whistling that seemed to recede reluctantly as though into vast distances, and Doyle was left alone in the midst of a brooding, oppressive silence.

  Save for the motionless figure in the car, the road was empty.

  Alvin Doyle made a move to lift his arm, and found that he could not stir. With chill horror creeping over him he tried to shriek, to call for help, but no sound came from his frozen lips.

  Suddenly he thought of the words of Benson. “. . . Iod extracts the vital forces of being, leaving only—consciousness. The brain lives, but the body dies . . . life in death.”

  Doyle slipped into temporary oblivion. And when he awakened, he found the car surrounded by a dozen onlookers. A man in a khaki uniform was doing something with a mirror. In answer to a question Doyle had not heard, the man shook his head somberly.

  “No, he’s quite dead, all right. Look at that.” He exhibited the mirror. “See?”

  Doyle tried to shriek, to tell them that he lived. But his lips and tongue were paralyzed. He could make no sound. There was no sensation in his body; he was not conscious of its existence. Slowly the faces around him receded into white blurs, and the thunder of madness roared relentlessly in his ears.

  It was strangely rhythmic thunder. A series of jarring shocks— the hollow thud of clods falling on a coffin—the utter panic of an existence that was neither life nor death.

  THE CURSE OF THE CROCODILE

  The Man Who Violates the Banga Ju-Ju Returns to the Saurian Ooze from Whence He Sprang!

  BLASTED lot of black swine!” Koreing growled. “If I had my way I’d start the day by lambasting every native in the safari with a chicotte just to show him what to expect if he didn’t keep his end up.”

  “They might not like it,” Cummins remarked dryly, a quizzical expression on his lean, tanned face. “They might even mutiny.”

  More and more Cummins was becoming convinced that it had been a mistake for the superintendent at Akassi Mines to hire Koreing, sight unseen, on the strength of a few recommendations. But it was not easy to secure mining engineers who were willing to go into the deep bush to Akassi, and the super had obviously been pleased when he had ordered Cummins—the guide, hunter, and handyman at the mines—to bring Koreing back with him on his return from a few weeks’ vacation on the Coast. Now the stocky, craggy-faced engineer kicked viciously at a stone in the jungle trail.

  “Mutiny?” he grunted. “Not them. They might desert—some of ’em have already. But that’s why I’m letting you run things. I’ll never learn to kow-tow to a native.”

  “Don’t make the mistake of thinking the African will stand for too much,” Cummins retorted.

  “Yeah. I’ve heard all those yarns about putting ground glass in the bwana’s chop, and that sort of thing. But I’m not scared of any damn native.”

  “Well, we don’t want anything to happen on this trip,” Cummins snapped, exasperated by the other’s self-confidence. “We’re not making nearly such good time as I’d figured. You brought too many—luxuries with you, and we haven’t enough porters now.”

  “I’m a white man,” Koreing returned stiffly.

  The inference was obvious. Cummins flushed, remembering that the “luxuries” consisted mainly of whiskey, of which Koreing consumed the greater share.

  THERE is considerable truth in the statement if you have seen one mile of the African bush, you know what the rest of the continent looks like. The two hundred mile strip bordering the coast is monotonous past belief. Narrow trails wind through a dense forest which is as impenetrable as a brick wall in most places. Occasionally the traveler passes small clearings, generally the site of a village. And always, a short distance away, and in the densest part of the jungle, is the fetish house.

  This may be a pretentious building with some old man officiating as high priest, or just a tiny space cleared of brush with nothing to denote its sanctity but a few pathetic offerings—a bowl of cassava, a broken gin bottle, or a dead fowl.

  Fetishism is a subject about which practically nothing is known. The whole business of pagan practices, superstitions and secret religious rites is usually lumped together under the term ju-ju.

  “What the devil are the boys sidestepping that place for?” Koreing demanded as the safari passed a small hut before which squatted an old native. “Don’t tell me they’re scared of his nibs there!”

  Cummins me
rely nodded. He was tired; the hour was late, and he was in no mood for casual conversation. Ju-ju houses were common enough, and there was nothing to distinguish this one from a hundred others he had seen.

  That night they camped at the adjacent village, one which lay on the shore of a river, and after supper Koreing muttered something about strolling around to see if he could pick up any curios.

  “Might have a peek in that ju-ju hut. I’ve heard that’s where they keep their best stuff.”

  “You’d better keep out of there,” Cummins exclaimed in sudden alarm.

  “Why? Afraid these bushmen will start something?”

  “It isn’t them,” Cummins said, frowning. “It’s our own boys. You noticed how they looked when they filed by that hut—cowed, frightened. We don’t want any more of them vamoosing in the night.”

  “To hell with them! They won’t know, anyhow.” Koreing grinned at Cummins, helped himself liberally to a whiskey and sparkley, and after a time sauntered off.

  It was one of those dank, sultry nights common in Africa when a white man sleeps only in broken snatches. The noises in the bush after dark are continual and nerve-racking. Frogs croak from adjoining swamps, and the chorus of insects is unbelievable in its volume. Flying foxes squawk discordantly through the mango trees, and every living creature, silent during the day, seems to come to life determined to advertise its presence.

  Cummins awoke from a doze and saw by the luminous hands of his watch that it was nearly ten. Koreing’s cot on the opposite side of the tent was still empty. Didn’t the fool realize that it was absolutely necessary in that climate to make an early start? Didn’t he realize also that the natives in this region, peacable in all other respects, would not stand for any interference with their religious customs?

  AT THAT moment, Koreing staggered in the tent, threw a bundle on his cot, and lit the kerosene lamp. He poured himself half a tumblerful of whiskey. Cummins noticed his hands were shaking.