by Cave, Hugh
"We'll be leaving tomorrow, all right," he muttered. "It won't be too soon, at that. I'll have to burn incense in here before the moving-men come."
He went into the living-room, then, and took the bottle he had left there on the smoke-stand. Quietly he turned out the light, and the hail light, too, and paced back to the bedroom. He opened the window six inches at the bottom, to let out that offensive odor. Then he went to bed.
He did not sleep. The room was too warm, and that unpleasant smell of pollution was too much in evidence. He lay with his thoughts, and they were morbid thoughts, parading rapidly across the bed. First marched the memories of that night not so long ago, when he had knelt on the floor of this very room, with a keen-edged kitchen-knife in one hand and a hack-saw. . . but it was better to forget those things. Then came the neighbors, finding him drunk, asking him questions, offering their sympathies. "Oh, but she'll come back, Mr. Kolitt! Women are strange creatures. They do strange things, but they are just women after all. She'll come back." And again: "Don't worry, old boy. She hasn't walked out on you for good. We all have our little family troubles. You and she—well, you've been going it pretty hot and heavy for quite a while. We've all known it. But she'll get over it."
And then Bellini. Damn Bellini!
Mr. Kolitt drained the contents of his bottle and leaned over to place the empty container on the floor. He lay back, enjoying the pleasant sensation of warmth that crept through him as the liquor found its way into his internals. Bellini was a superstitious young idiot, nothing else! His ideas were soap-bubbles filled with hot air. How could you bring something to life just by imagining it?
He turned suddenly on his side and peered at the bureau. The room was darker than usual, because the rain outside was a cold rain, and the combination of cold outside and warmth inside had fogged the window-pane. The huge bureau in the corner was a mastodonic shape of gloom, cloaked at one end in a winding-sheet of changing green light. It was neither hound nor horse tonight, Mr. Kolitt reflected. It was merely a swollen hulk with protruding eyes. What would Bellini say to that?
"Well, I won't look at the damned thing," he thought drunkenly. "I'll pack off to sleep and forget it."
But he looked, because the thing was fixed firmly in his mind, and his eyes refused to remain closed. Again and again he cursed himself for looking; but when he was not looking he was wondering what new shape the thing in the corner had assumed, and then his eyes opened again to find out.
This was foolish, too, because the thing had not changed shape since he had first peered at it. It was still a huge, bloated monstrosity with short, stumpy protuberances for legs, and a balloon-like excrescence for a head. "Like the thing in the movies tonight," he thought suddenly, and shuddered.
The thing in the movies had been a gigantic abhorrence supposedly called into being by obscene incantations. In the end, it had deliberately and awfully devoured its creator. Recalling those things, Mr. Kolitt gazed with renewed interest at the similar monster in his own room; then he shut his eyes and mumbled aloud:
"Ugh! I'll be giving myself D.T.s!"
For a while, this time, he succeeded in keeping his eyes closed, but he did not sleep. His thoughts were too vivid and his mind too alert to permit sleep. He wanted a drink, but was secretly glad that the bottle was empty. He had already drunk too much. The liquor was keeping him awake instead of making him drowsy. It was keeping alive the unpleasant parade of thoughts which persisted in marching through his mind. Especially was it keeping alive that annoying vision of Bellini, and the words that went with it.
Again Mr. Kolitt looked at the monster, and again shuddered violently.
"My God!" he muttered aloud. "I'd hate to bring you to life!"
The thought, expressed thus in blunt syllables, alarmed him infinitely more than when he had kept it to himself. He wanted all at once to recall it, lest the monster should take it seriously and heed the suggestion. He wanted, too, to get out of bed and turn on the light, thereby transforming the monster into its original form. But the light-switch was terrifyingly far away, and to reach it he would have to pass within a yard of the beast's bloated head. There were several other things he wanted to do, too. He wanted to shriek at the thing to stop glaring at him, and he wanted to go into the next room and look at the clock, to see how long it would be before daylight filtered through the green-glowing window. Fearfully he considered the wisdom of tiptoeing to the window and drawing the shade, to shut out that green glare; but if he did that, the room would be in total darkness, and the horror would still be there even though invisible.
He no longer thought about Bellini, or about the other thing which lay in the bureau's lower drawers. He thought only of himself, and of his increasing terror. It was foolish terror, he knew. It was the result of going to the wrong kind of a movie, and listening to a mystery play on the radio, and reading a weird detective story, and guzzling too much liquor. But those things were done now, and could not be amended. And the monster was here, threatening him.
"But it's only wood," he mumbled. "It's not real."
If he got up and walked toward it, and touched it, his fear would be gone and he would be laughing at himself for being a drunken fool. That would be the end of that, and he could turn on the light and go to sleep in security. But if the thing were real—if it were not made of wood—and he walked toward it—
Another thought came then, and caused him to cringe back into the wall. She had sent it. She had created it, just as the man in the movies had created his monster. The thing hated him for what he had done to her. It meant to kill him.
He lay rigid, staring at it. Yes, it was moving, and it was moving of its own accord—not because of the mist on the window-pane. Its hideous head was swaying from side to side, not much, but enough to be noticeable. Its small eyes were glaring maliciously. It was getting ready to attack him.
The blood ebbed from Mr. Kolitt's face. Slowly, with caution born of the fear which ate voraciously into him, he drew aside, inch by inch, the bed-clothes which covered him. Fearfully he worked his legs toward the edge of the bed, and lowered them until his bare feet touched the floor. Not once did his wide eyes blink or his fixed gaze leave the greenish shape in the corner. If he could reach the threshold and slam the door shut behind him, there might be a possibility of escape. The hall door was but a few strides distant, and once in the hall he could run with all his might, shouting for help.
Warily he rose to a sitting position and put his hands behind him, pushing himself up. An eternity passed while his trembling body straightened and stood erect. Then he hesitated again, stifling the groan that welled to his lips.
The thing was eyeing him malevolently. It was not a creature of his imagination. It was real; he knew it was real. Its horrible head had stopped swaying; its bloated, swollen body was slowly expanding and contracting. It was waiting—waiting for him to make the first move. If he attempted to escape, if he took a single forward step, it would fall upon him.
Frantically he wrenched his gaze away from it and glanced toward the doorway. The door was open. His only chance lay in that direction. If he waited any longer—
He hurled himself forward. Three steps he took, and on the fourth he stood rigid, paralyzed by the sucking, scraping sound which rose behind him. He turned, terrified, and the thing seized him as he recoiled from it. The impact flung him to the floor. For a single horrific instant he stared up into the loathsome, undulating countenance above him. A scream jangled from his throat. Then his eyes and nose and mouth were smothered under an emanation of putrescent vileness, and that cavernous maw engulfed him.
Eight hours later the janitor discovered him there. The janitor, a red-faced, large-stomached Swede of more than middle age, shuffled past Mr. Kolitt's door with a garbage pail in his one hand and a mound of newspapers in his other. He had reached the mid-point in his daily round of collections. He wondered why Mr. Kolitt had failed to put out a waste-basket. Then he became aware of a most unpleasant
and nauseating odor which filled the corridor. And, because the stench seemed to emanate from Mr. Kolitt's apartment, he knocked on Mr. Kolitt's door.
A moment later he let himself in with his own key.
He found Mr. Kolitt in the bedroom, midway between bed and doorway. Mr. Kolitt was dead. His legs and torso lay in a pool of dark red blood, and the entire upper portion of his plump body had been devoured. Those parts of him which remained were shapeless and unrecognizable beneath a pail of viscous green slime; and this foul excrescence, whose unbearable stench had first attracted the janitor's attention, extended from Mr. Kolitt's mutilated body to the bedroom window, where the sill was likewise coated with it.
These things the janitor saw and at first failed to assimilate. Unable to comprehend such horror, he merely stood staring. Then, believing his eyes at last, he shouted incoherent words in a guttural voice and leaned back against the wall, retching.
Later, a sober-faced Frenchwoman, who was a modiste, sat in Mr. Kolitt's living-room and said to the policemen who were questioning her:
"I have told you all I know. There I was, sitting in my apartment across the court from this one, and I heard a man screaming. I put down my needle and thread and hurried to the window, and I saw the thing coming out of this man's window. I do not know what it was. There was rain falling, and I saw only what the green light from the advertising sign showed me. It was large and it was greenish; that is all I am sure of. So large was it that it seemed to fold together as it flowed over his window-sill, and then stretched itself out like a big fat slug when it crawled over the edge of the roof up above. That is all I know."
"But what in thunder was it?" one of the policemen demanded irritably.
Mr. Bellini, the ascetic-faced young man from downstairs, said quietly: "If you will come again into the bedroom, gentlemen, I will show you what it was." And when they had followed him there, he pointed unemotionally to the huge bureau in the corner, and said: "It was a monster he made out of this. It destroyed him because he learned somehow to fear it, and fearing it, he willed it to do what it did."
"Huh?" mumbled one policeman. "Feared it? Why?"
"That I do not know."
"Well, we'll damned soon find out," the policeman snapped. "Give me a hand here, Jenkins."
Beginning with the top drawer, the two policemen removed the bureau's contents. They did so carefully, inspecting each item before dropping it to the floor. In the third drawer from the bottom they found, wedged far back and buried beneath heavy articles of wearing-apparel, a woman's arm, wrapped in an oblong of torn sheeting which was caked with congealed blood.
In the next drawer they found four more blood-caked packages, which they unwrapped with increasing horror. In the last drawer of all they found a single large bundle which contained a woman's head.
Mr. Bellini, standing as near them as they would permit, gazed calmly into the woman's rigid features and said without emotion:
"It is his wife."
The Prophecy
Consider for a moment the five persons who are in Peter's apartment tonight. They are, in substance, any five persons in any apartment.
Swede Corler, whose large body extends from one end of the sofa to the other, with his head in Emma's lap, is an electrician of sorts. His face is an even-sided geometric figure full of stubborn practicality. He drives and repairs his own three-year-old sedan; he reads the morning paper at noon over a metal lunch-box; his fingernails are crescents of sullen black because he considers it a waste of time to clean them after each day's labor. His ideas are the spawn of a matter-of-fact existence, and he is imposing enough in appearance to enforce them.
Emma Morrisey, who supports Swede's heavy head in her lavender skirt, is twenty-two years old, three years younger than he. She is engaged to marry him. Her cheeks are too much rouged in the center; she is short of stature and inclined to obesity; she is a school-teacher in the primary grades.
Godfrey Langdon, who stands gawkily in the doorway with both arms encircling the portieres behind him, is a junior at the State College. He is tall to absurdity, underweight and smooth of face. He says little; he has a religious mother at home who, he feels, would not approve of the conversational trends now in evidence. He considers himself here to look out for his sister.
His sister, Meg Langdon, sits grotesquely in the single stuffed chair behind the sofa. She is tall, but not, like her brother, ridiculously so. She has a straight, clear, good-looking face and a body which is beautiful to the hips and overlarge from the hips down. She is in love with Peter, but too obsessed with her own importance to admit it. She will uphold Peter's arguments against the others, unconsciously echoing Peter's own voice and believing herself to be strikingly original. Alone with Peter, she will deny his slightest statement blindly and bitterly.
Peter Hughes, the fifth member of the group, leans against the phonograph and is sorting records from the cabinet below. He is slightly shorter than Meg, but exceedingly thin in face and frame. He is dark and wears square-topped glasses which emphasize his over-long features. He smokes continually. Peter writes stories—not good stories—and sells enough of them to pay the rent a month or three months after it is due.
Now listen to their conversation. Swede, who speaks in a heavy, not-to-be-denied monotone, without lifting his head from Emma's lap, is saying:
"You write so much fiction, Peter, you're beginning to believe anything is the truth. Don't be a sucker for it."
Peter shrugs indifferently. He has learned not to let himself be excited. "It isn't a case of believing or not believing. I simply say there are things we don't and can't understand, and I'm willing to be shown. I've an open mind."
"We really don't know whether there's any truth in it or not," Meg echoes importantly. "You've got to admit that, Swede. Take some of our most learned men. Take Clarence Darrow, for instance, and—well, Conan Doyle. Those men have brains, and they didn't arrive at their conclusions without plenty of deep study; and yet their conclusions are entirely different. Conan Doyle believed in life after death—"
"That's nothing but pure rot!" Godfrey Langdon scowls. "Cheap spiritualism, that's all it is. You know very well, Meg—"
"Godfrey's right," Swede declares caustically. "This spirit business is nothing more or less than exaggerated fortune-telling. What do they do? They get you in a room with a lot of other people, and douse the lights, and then some old hag tells you that your great-great-grandfather is here, wanting to talk to you. Hell, nobody but a grammar-school kid would fall for that kind of horse-play. Still, a man is entitled to his own opinions, and if Peter here wants to believe that the dead come back and deliver ghost-messages—"
"I'm not arguing," Peter shrugs. "I'm merely telling what I've seen and what I've heard. If you're so thick-skulled and practical that you won't believe anything you can't understand, then I can't help it. I say there are millions of things we don't comprehend, and death is one of them."
"Then you believe in spiritualism?"
"Well—"
"Do you or don't you?"
"I do."
"Rot!"
"If it's rot," Meg interrupts angrily, "perhaps you can explain this: Peter and I went to a negro place down on Raymond Street about a week ago. We were the first ones there, and while we were waiting for it to begin we exchanged rings, just for something to do. Then the others came in and the affair got under way, and at the very end of the evening a young colored woman got up and pointed to Peter and asked him if he had given me a ring recently, or if he was going to. She said she saw a ring around us."
"Why not?" Swede grins, his long legs over the edge of the sofa. "You're both young. She probably figured that any young couple who went to a place like that are either engaged or going to be. It's just the same as fortune-tellers. They're clever, but they don't actually do anything. They tell you a lot of generalities and you supply the details subconsciously; then you think they're revealing secrets for you."
"I don't think
so," Meg retorts stubbornly.
"You shouldn't go to those places anyhow!" This from Godfrey Langdon, who looks at his sister angrily. "You know very well that spiritualism in all its forms is wicked. It's sinful nonsense without a germ of truth in it! If mother knew—"
"Oh, mother knows all about it. Peter and I have been there a dozen times, and every time I tell mother about anything that happens she goes off on a wild discourse about the devil. She'll never understand the way Peter and I do. All her life she's lived between the covers of a Bible, and she never wants to learn anything else. She won't even read books; can you imagine that, Emma? Anyway, Peter and I go to listen to the singing. Don't we, Peter?"
Peter shrugs his shoulders. He feels that there is no use arguing, because the argument is getting nowhere. He knows what he himself believes, and has always believed in things that these others are too stubbornly practical and unimaginative to understand. He turns to the phonograph and puts on a noisy record. He likes loud music.
"Where is this place you go to?" Emma asks.
"Down in the negro section." This from Meg, who frowns at the music. "Shut the doors on that thing, Peter."
"You can't hear the music if you shut the doors," Peter grumbles. He is sore. "What do they do? Do they produce all that bunk about table-rapping and ghost voices?" Emma asks.
"That's just the trouble with you!" Peter says savagely. "You've never seen any of the real thing. You condemn it and you don't know anything about it. No, they don't rap on tables and make ghosts. It's a regular church service, after a fashion, and they sing and—"
"Peter loves to hear them sing. He joins right in with them as loud as he can," Meg volunteers.
"And I suppose you do, too!" Godfrey Langdon declares accusingly. "You'll get in trouble down there some night. It will serve you right. It's all stuff and nonsense, every single bit of it, and the devil rules it."