On his last return, Verne Telfair had run down to meet him at the landing, he said. The young man was hurt, bleeding. One arm was tom; his side was strangely wounded. His clothing was ripped, bloody. Henri had taken him aboard the skiff, put off in the haste he demanded.
Some hideous, unnamable horror, he insisted, had followed Verne down the trail. He would not try to describe it; he had not even seen it clearly.
The Cajun had wanted to take Verne out to Doctor Pichon. His strange wounds were alarming. But Verne insisted that they were not serious; he had remained upon the shanty-boat. He dressed his injuries, with Henri’s aid, and for several days he appeared to be recovering.
On the fifth morning Verne went into delirium, the Cajun said. Screaming. Fighting things that Henri could not see. Trying to throw himself off into the bayou. Henri had tied him to the bed.
His wounds appeared to have been poisoned. They swelled, grew purple. Henri muttered, signed the cross. He had prepared, he said, to carry Verne down to see Doctor Pichon. But on the following night he died. His whole body became purple, swelled unpleasantly.
The Cajun had not dared carry the body out of the swamp, for fear of the inevitable inquiry. He had buried it. He would show me the grave.
In the gloom of evening, Henri Dubois took me back through the brooding shadows of the swamp, to a sunken, weed-grown mound, beneath the gnarled, skeletal arms of a moss-bearded swamp oak. A rude cross, of two sticks nailed together, leaned askew at the head.
I stood watching the sinking grave for a long time, wondering if the hilarious, light-hearted Verne Telfair that I had known could indeed lie here in the dusky wilderness. It seemed incredible, blindly cruel.
Only when we had returned to the shanty-board did Henri Dubois think to tell me that Verne had been writing in a book during the days before his sudden relapse. Henri could not read, he did not know what the writing was. He had not dared show it to any one, for fear of questions whose answers men would not believe.
Impatiently I watched him fumbling among his disorderly possessions. He pawed over piles of traps, worm-eaten peltries, balls of string, patent-medicine bottles, fish-hooks, odd rifle and shotgun cartridges.
At last he handed me a dusty laboratory notebook, rolled into a compact cylinder and tied with string. On its pages was the narrative that follows, headed like a letter, under a date four years before, and addressed to me.
I read it, there in the Cajun’s malodorous dwelling. I suppose I was anticipating dark tragedy. But I was all unprepared for the lurid wings of dread that descended upon me as I turned the dusty pages, unarmed against the rending talons of terror that seized upon my soul as I neared the final act of the grim drama, the hideous and inevitable ending.
5. Wand of Creation
Dear Ed [it began]—If you hear nothing from me, following this, it will mean that I have not survived my injuries. I have dressed and disinfected them as well as facilities permit. I am almost free from pain, today, and have every hope of recovery. My wound, though, is unique; I don’t know what turn my condition will take next. I am penning this brief account of the affair for your eyes, in case—anyhow, I shall address it, and tell Henri Dubois to mail it.
Henri insists that I let him take me out to medical aid. But I have washed the wounds, sprinkled permanganate in them. I doubt that a doctor could do anything else—my trouble, of course, is quite beyond ordinary medical experience. And my appearance could only result in unwelcome publicity, and the necessity for explanations that I am unwilling to make. In no sense am I responsible for Paul’s death, but under the circumstances, the accusation might be made, and the story of it all is so bizarre that I should be helpless to provide it in a court of law.
You are, I think, the only human being likely to be much disturbed over the accident. I can’t fancy anyone else tearing his hair over it. For some time I have neglected our correspondence, for reasons that will become evident as you read. This will serve to explain our silence—and in case you hear nothing more, our disappearance. If I recover, as I have much hope of doing, I intend to join you immediately in South America, where I can add with my own lips any further details you may desire.
But preliminaries enough, except to hope that I can follow this letter very shortly, to renew old fellowship and forget what has happened here.
Paul must have been working for many years on his fatal discovery before I knew anything of it. You know how reticent he always was about any of his unproved theories.
I first learned of it one day, a few months ago, when I came home from a week’s shooting on Colonel Allen’s plantation—it was the first time I had been away from home so long, in ages. I found Paul sitting by a table covered with radio apparatus—tubes, condensers, transformers, variocouplers. There must have been two dozen tubes in the bank; I noticed they were of unusual pattern. A little motor-generator was humming in the comer. Paul wore a sort of headband, which held against his temples two little black disks; at first glimpse it appeared to be a set of ordinary phones.
“Going in for D X?” I asked him.
He took the apparatus from his head—I saw now that it was not a set of phones at all—and smiled up at me in a queer way.
“No, Verne, I’m not trying for distance,” he said, in his tantalizingly slow voice. “But how did you find the quail?”
I was just beginning to see that his equipment was not a radio set at all, but something far different—and, his manner told me, important.
“Then what is the little toy?” I demanded.
“Think you could stand a shock?” he asked, and picked up the little headpiece. “Meaning something rather startling.”
“I guess so.”
He paused, then laid the little instrument back on the table.
“Verne, I suppose you’ve heard about the Hindoo fakirs who plant a seed in the barren soil, wave their hands above it, and raise a tree before the eyes of their spectators. And perform similar impossible feats?”
“I think so. What of it?”
“You don’t seem to take the matter very seriously. But plenty of credible travelers have reported such apparent miracles.”
“Just hypnosis, isn’t it?”
“That’s the commonly accepted explanation. It is certain that the fakirs accomplish their wonders through their powers of intense concentration, gained by long practice. But I have a new theory as to what their method really is. And I have devised this instrument to amplify the comparatively weak and uncertain mental emissions that I believe they use—”
“You mean to tell me you are going in for parlor magic?” I burst out. And I could hardly repress a laugh at the picture of my grave, sedate brother as a magician in a black top-hat.
“Hardly,” he said. “But I have stumbled on something rather big. The principle, I suspect, has been known in the East for centuries. But it was left for me to apply to it modem electronics. As far as that goes, I can already perform a few tricks that would be rather baffling, I think, to the unscientific magician.”
“Let’s see them?” I challenged.
The idea of my conservative brother engaged in any sensational research was rather startling. But I was unable to doubt his words; I knew that he was no practical joker.
“Name your trick,” he said, smiling.
“Well—” I hesitated. “Can you grow a tree out of the floor? That would be quite satisfactory.”
To my considerable surprise, he nodded calmly, and inquired, “What sort of tree?”
“An orange tree would do nicely,” I said, determined to keep even, if it were only a joke, after all. “Have it full of blooms and ripe oranges. You might add a few big red apples, for good measure.”
“Very well,” he said and reached for his head-piece again. But he paused, and looked back at me. “Perhaps I had better explain it a little, first. I don’t want to startle you too much.”
“You can’t get out, that way!” I said. “But then—if you think you can tell me h
ow to grow oranges out of the floor, go ahead.”
That seemed to touch him, slightly. He turned back to his table of apparatus, and adjusted the head-set so that its black disks were against his temples, which, I now noticed, were shaven. With a slow, confident, almost tantalizing smile, he looked up at me and said:
“Don’t forget you asked for it.”
He turned the dial of a rheostat on the table, and the long row of queer electron tubes lit dimly. Then he leaned back in his chair, with his eyes closed. I stood watching him, a little anxiously I admit, despite my skepticism.
For a few seconds his brow was furrowed with intense concentration. Then he looked up at me again, with that slow, quizzical smile on his thin face. Deliberately he slipped off the head-set, and laid it back on the table.
“I suppose I’m to laugh, now?” I inquired, a little acidly.
He replied, in his maddeningly slow voice, “Verne, you might look behind you.”
I spun around. And I suppose I cried out with amazement.
A small orange tree stood there, apparently rooted in the floor. Masses of white blossoms shone against the dark, rich green of its foliage. It was laden with bright, golden fruit. And on one branch was a cluster of red apples!
I stood gaping at it, fatuously.
“Would you care to gather some of the fruit?” the slow, amused voice of my brother penetrated my daze.
Weakly, wondering what trick he was playing upon my senses, I walked toward it. I half expected it to vanish before me, but it remained apparently substantial. I reached out a cautious hand, and touched one of the apples.
It felt firm, cool, slick-skinned, in all respects like a natural fruit. I pulled it. The stem snapped with an audible sound. The quivering bough rustled, and an orange fell to the floor with a soft thud.
“Step back, and I’ll turn off the power,” Paul said.
I moved hastily away from the amazing tree. A faint click came from Paul’s instruments. And the tree was suddenly gone. There was a flash of bluish light, a snapping crackle of electricity in the air. The apple had vanished from my hand, my arm jerked to a strong shock.
“Now,” my brother suggested, smiling at my amazement, “perhaps you will be more willing to listen to my explanation.”
I walked uncertainly to a chair, and sat down, incredulity struggling with the evidence my senses had received.
“You can see this table, can’t you?” he began.
“Why, yes.”
“And when you look away from it, you can still see an image of it, when I say table?”
“Of course, but what—”
“What is the difference between the table and your mental image of it?”
“The table is real, it is matter. And the image is—well, just an image. But I don’t see—”
Paul was smiling at me, fingering the black disks of his head-set.
“This difference is purely one of energy,” he said. “The image in your mind is a phenomenon of mental energy. And any student of physics could tell you that the table is composed merely of ‘arrested energy.’ Every atom in it is simply a set of balanced charges of positive and negative electricity. It isn’t really solid, as it looks; no matter is. It is merely a ‘space-lattice’ of vibrating energy. Relatively speaking, it is about as empty as cosmic space with a few stars and planets scattered through it. Any bit of what we call matter is merely a ‘frame’ composed of vibrating electrons. And the electrons, the vibrating charges of electricity, are so far apart that all those that make up the earth, packed close together, would form a sphere less than a mile in diameter.”
I stopped him. “What has all that to do with growing trees out of the floor?”
“These things you mistook for telephones,” he said, “are coils that pick up mental energy—though largely chemical, the activity of the brain gives rise to subtle electrical emanations. And the rest of the apparatus serves simply to amplify the picked-up energy a few billion times, and to project it, through the application of a new trick of wave-propagation I have come across, to become fixed in a space-frame of vibration that might be termed temporary matter. In other words, I can amplify my thoughts or mental images, until they are powerful enough to be fixated, for the time being, in what amounts to real matter.”
“That’s unreasonable,” I protested.
“Rather astonishing, I suppose,” he said. “But you have seen it done.”
“You mean that tree was real?”
“It was as real, while it lasted, as any matter. The fixation was only temporary. I haven’t power enough, here, to build up a permanent space-frame. But may I create something else for you?”
“Create!” The word struck me like a blow.
“Certainly. What else would you call it? Verne, this apparatus is a wand of creation!”
“You can—can create other things?” I stammered.
“Of course. Anything that I can imagine. I can materialize all my dreams into realities. I have only to form a clear mental image; the mental energy is picked up, amplified, fixated in the form of matter.
“There are just two limitations. Because I have so little power available, the space-frames are unstable, and collapse as soon as the power is shut off. And I haven’t yet been able to create anything really alive. The forms of animals are easy enough, but they are always motionless, lifeless.
“With greater power, I think, I can overcome both difficulties.”
“You want to create life?” Something in me was outraged.
“Naturally. I am going to follow the experiment to its logical end—try the full power of my wand of science.”
A surge of something akin to horror rose in me. I am not religious. As the son of a biologist, I came naturally to accept the theory of creative evolution. But it seemed to me, none the less, a sacrilege to tamper with the power of creation.
“Better leave the creation of life to Nature,” I said. “I’m afraid, Paul, you’re playing with fire.”
He laughed at me, amusedly, held out the odd head-set.
“Want to try it, Verne?”
I started back, instinctively. “I’ll have nothing to do with it!” I cried. “Paul, you are mad to aspire to creation! It’s not only dangerous, but somehow—well, wicked!”
He laughed again, tolerantly, and slipped the little black disks back over his temples.
“Forget your conventional prejudices, Verne. My wand of science is destined to make over the world!”
I was startled, horrified, by the insane daring of his plan. But he had spared me knowledge of the full extent of his fatal ambition. I did not know that he hoped not only to create life but to recreate the dead. That he hoped to resurrect the fair girl that death had taken from him. That he aspired to cheat the grave!
6. The Lonely Laboratory
In the course of a few days I became familiar with the wonders of my brother’s amazing invention, and the instinctive horror with which I had at first regarded its use was almost forgotten. I became able to watch the startling creations of his “wand of science” without much emotion, though I was still unable to bring myself to use the instrument.
He refused to yield to my arguments against the use of the agency for the creation of life. But I think my opinions were largely responsible for his decision to move his apparatus to some isolated spot, where he could try his experiments on a larger scale, in secrecy and without fear of interference.
We decided upon some spot in the wooded swamps along Chicot Bayou. There we could be completely secluded, yet not far from civilization. I had some knowledge of the country, from fishing and hunting trips, and we employed a Cajun, Henri Dubois, who had once been my guide, to help find a location where the ground was firm enough to support heavy apparatus, and which would be sufficiently accessible.
Much as I opposed Paul’s plan, it never occurred to me not to help carry it out. Despite his strange scientific enthusiasm, my brother was still the quiet, cultured gentleman for whom I
held such affection. As always, he remained dependent on me to care for his practical affairs. I could not desert him merely because of disagreement with his scientific aims.
Too, his long hours of labor over the details of his invention brought increasingly frequent recurrence of those hideous nightmares that always came upon him as a result of illness or fatigue. Almost nightly I had to wake him from a rigid paralysis of terror, in which he lay trembling, covered with sudden chill sweat, gasping for breath and making little strangled cries.
Sometimes he told me of his dreadful dreams. They were all of gigantic spiders. Sometimes huge black tarantulas appeared from nowhere, he said, in endless swarms, and pursued him relentlessly over dark, illimitable plains, until he was seized with the rigid paralysis, unable to escape them.
Or more often, he said, a harmless object, or even a familiar person, would change, by slow and hideous degrees, into a colossal spider, while he watched, frozen in stark and helpless fear.
These nightmares, of a type familiar enough to psychiatrists, were a natural result, of course, of that scar left upon his mind by his unfortunate childhood experience—but none the less torturing.
I could not leave him, of course, to endure such mental agony without the aid and comfort I could give.
In New Orleans we purchased equipment for assembling a far larger and more powerful installation than any with which he had experimented. Reaching the chosen site by water, we laid down a large concrete floor, and mounted upon it our large dynamo, with the powerful motor that was to drive it, and the other apparatus.
To my considerable surprise, Paul made no provision for a roof to shelter the equipment, nor for any lodgings for ourselves, though he had a supply of food left for us.
When the installation was at last completed, after several days of work, the Cajuns we had employed departed through the swamp, leaving the two of us alone with the apparatus.
The eeriness of it all almost overcame me, as I gazed from the edge of the newly-laid platform down the trail, where the backs of the laborers were vanishing in the tawny forest gloom. The hoarse and interminable croaking of frogs rose in the distance, sounding through the twisted, moss-tufted trees, weirdly ventriloquial, infinitely depressing.
The Wand of Doom Page 2