Murgunstrumm and Others

by Cave, Hugh

I went upstairs and shut the door. To sleep? Ah, no. I lay on the bed, thinking of the promise I had made. Tonight . . . tonight!

  Night came so slowly! I watched the room grow dark. I lay there scheming. I thought my wife would never stop puttering around. Hungrily I listened to every sound she made downstairs, the soft tap-tap of her high heels as she went from room to room, the murmur of the portable radio on the fireplace mantel . . . and I cursed her for being so slow.

  When she entered the bedroom at last, I was in bed, pretending to be asleep. She set a lamp on the bureau and turned the wick low, so not to wake me. Obliquely I watched her undress.

  Pretty! Ah, so pretty! Such flawless legs. Such sweet, curving hips. So white and round and lovely her young breasts. So smooth and soft her shoulders! Did she know I was watching? Once, just once, she turned abruptly to look at me, and for a moment stood absolutely motionless, as though my furtive gaze had actually chilled her slim body. Then she put out the lamp and groped toward me in the dark . . .

  By the sound of her breathing I knew that her back was toward me, her face to the wall. I became aware of the warmth that emanated from her, of the subtle fragrance of her body. And I waited with devilish patience until I was certain she slept.

  Then I seized her.

  She screamed only once as my hands closed about her lovely throat. Her eyes opened and I saw the whites of them staring up at me in the dark. Her lips whispered my name as I tore the jacket of her pajamas open.

  I dragged her from the bed, gathered her in my arms and prowled to the door, leaving the torn remnants of her night-garb in a pitiful pile on the floor. If I kissed her mouth and crushed her against me in a wild, hungry embrace, it was not for love—for by that time I was laughing, and the low, bestial laughter that poured from my throat was like nothing human.

  My fingers bit deeply into the soft flesh of her limp body. My face was low over hers, my mouth drooling. "They want you!" I shrieked.

  Down the dark stairs I carried her to the lower hall, and now the old house was alive with whispers urging me on. Down the hall toward the cellar stairs I went. Then I heard voices. I heard heavy footsteps on the porch. I stopped, and a snarl curled my lips. Lowering my limp burden, I prowled stealthily through the sitting room to a window and crouched there, peering out.

  There were many of them and they carried every conceivable kind of weapon. Up from the village they had come, led by the mother of the girl I had locked in the cellar, and by Everett Digby, the doctor who knew more about this house than he had admitted.

  Even as I watched, Digby hammered the door with his fist and demanded admittance, while the others crowded closer, their faces grim and gaunt in the glow of flashlights and torches.

  "Open the door or we'll break it down!"

  I slunk from the window. For a moment I thought wildly of defiantly confronting them, but the beast in me was afraid. And yet, there might still be time to thwart them! If I could reach the cellar . . .

  Trembling and afraid, I crept into the hail. There lay my wife, mercifully unaware of my intentions, her sweet body a white, soft heap on the floor. And the whispers were thunder in my brain, lashing me, driving me on. I stooped to seize Anne's arms, to drag her. But it was too late.

  The door crashed inward, and I whirled in a crouch, snarling like a predatory beast driven from its prey. For one terrible moment I faced the mob, faced the awful accusation in the eyes of Everett Digby and the burning hatred in the stare of Mrs. Callister. Then a rifle cracked, a bullet splintered the ancient timbers of the cellar door behind me. I whirled and ran, leaving my wife there on the floor.

  With a beast's strength and cunning I sped through the kitchen, tore open the rear door and fled into the night. The darkness closed around me. At top speed I fled through the rank grass of the yard, to the vast black shelter of the woods, easily escaping the frenzied swing of their searchlights.

  There, exhausted, I lay snarling—and watched.

  That night will live long in the memory of those people. Half the men of the village were abroad, hunting me. Torches burned in the dark. Flashlights were glittering fireflies swarming in the night. Men's voices rose on the wind, and heavy feet tramped every path within a mile of the house.

  But they were hunting a beast too cunning for them.

  I waited. They will give up soon, I thought. Then I can go back! But in that I was mistaken. For as the first dull gray of dawn appeared, a crimson glow sprang up to rival it. Flames rose to the sky, devouring the ancient timbers of my honeymoon house. Huge clouds of smoke billowed up from the inferno.

  I crept as close as I dared, and from the fringe of the woods I cursed the flames and the grim-faced men who stood by, watching the house burn. I cursed the truck that came when the blackened foundations had cooled. I cursed the men who sweated there in the dawn, mixing concrete with which to fill the cistern in the cellar!

  When it was finished, I crept into the woods again, bitterly cursing my fate. For this I knew: In the cellar of our honeymoon house had existed a means of ingress to another existence. I was sure—and I still am sure!—that there are worlds, or shadow-worlds, closer to this life of ours than men dare to admit, and there are connecting passageways through which the nameless denizens of those other worlds may reach. Their taint was on me.

  Their taint had touched Jim Callister, too. How clearly I understood these things now! Callister had tracked the whispers to their source. Slowly, hideously, he had fallen prey to the whisperers. That his wife poisoned him I am certain, as I am equally certain that Dr. Digby knows of her guilt and is shielding her. There was no other way to protect herself and her child, no other way to save Jim Callister from a fate more hideous than death!

  And so, this letter, this manuscript, this confession or whatever you may choose to call it. I have written it, laboriously, upon scraps of paper picked up along the roads where at night I prowl in search of food. I shall find a way to mail it, and then I shall vanish. Where? God alone knows. The world of the whisperers is forever closed to me, and in the world of men I do not belong.

  Day by day the lines of my face change, my lips recede over teeth that are slowly protruding, my eyes grow smaller, my growing head shrinks into the bulge of my shoulders. Day by day the cold white skin of my twisted body grows more hairy.

  What next?

  Horror in Wax

  The smile of Mario Cellanti was a mockery. Aloud he said: "I shall be delighted, my friend, to spend the evening with one who has so charming a wife. It will be a very great honor indeed!"

  Behind the innocent stare of his dark eyes, he thought silently: "The big-bellied fool! If he knew his charming wife as well as I do, he would quickly stop pawing her!"

  Yes, some men were ignorant fools, knowing nothing of women—not even of the women they married. Luigi DiMucci was the biggest fool of all. Luigi was but a large-bodied middling-old idiot who believed that because a woman married him and because he was a good husband to her, nothing could come between them.

  For such ignorance there could be no excuse. Luigi was an Italian, was he not? Therefore he should know at least a small something about a woman's heart. He should know, surely, that no creature as young and lovely as Angelina could ever be content to love an old man with a fat belly. Money was not everything.

  This Luigi had money, but what else? Romance? Glamour? Not one small bit of either! To him, such essentials were foolishness, unbecoming an educated Italian who had made his way in the world, acquired a lovely wife, and settled into a life of leisure.

  Ah, but Angelina was lovely! Mario Cellanti gazed at her across the table and caught the smile on her carmine lips, and sighed. The smile said so plainly: "When this fat husband of mine leaves us alone, I shall be in your arms, my Mario, where I belong!"

  And her big-bellied idiot of a husband? He was saying in his sublime innocence: "Well, Cellanti, how about it?"

  He did not mean the woman, of course. He meant the wine which glowed dark amber in the g
lasses on the table—the large mahogany table in the magnificent dining-room of Luigi DiMucci's luxurious home, where days ago, Mario Cellanti had come at the woman's red-lipped invitation, to begin the pleasure of transferring her dark-skinned loveliness to a life-sized canvas which would grace the room's paneled wall. That canvas, now, was near to completion.

  "It is easily seen," Mario murmured, sipping his wine, "how the great Luigi has become so wealthy and can afford so beautiful a wife. When a man creates such a wine as this—"

  "He must also learn to be a business man," Luigi smiled. "The wine was created by Luigi DiMucci, the Sicilian. It is sold to these Americans by Luigi DiMucci, the American. Is that not so, Angelina?"

  "And who is it," the woman asked, reaching a slender arm about his neck, "that I married, Luigi?"

  "Can citizenship-papers change a man's heart-blood?"

  "No, Luigi!" And she looked across the table at Mario, shutting her eyes and opening them again in mock pain, as if to say: "Listen to him, Mario! `Can citizenship-papers change a man's heart-blood?' It is time he knew that the creeping years have changed the size of his waistline and put unsightly rings around his eyes, and made him lazy as a fat pig! The fool is so sure of me, Mario! I should almost like to tell him to his face what happened yesterday and the day before and the day before that, when he left you and me alone here!"

  Luigi said, placing his emptied glass on the table: "You are a lover of good wine, Mario?"

  "Always," Mario murmured, placing a hand to his heart.

  "Then it shall be my pleasure to share the best with you. What we are tasting is nothing; it is commercial; it is for pigs of Americans who would not appreciate the blood of saints. Come with me."

  Mario looked at the woman and saw her smiling, as if to say: "Go with him, my beloved. He has taken a fancy to you. Humor him, and when you have made a close friend of him our love-making will be that much easier!"

  Mario smiled, too, and went with his host. And while the woman stood alone, smiling, Luigi linked an arm with his guest and the two men proceeded through room after room.

  Luigi said: "Many persons have admired the beauty of my home, Mario, but few know the pleasant secrets of my wine-cellar, or even that such a cellar exists."

  "I am honored," Mario murmured.

  "Not at all. It is my honor to be privileged to reveal my secrets to so eminent an artist, and so handsome a one!"

  Mario thought: "His wife has found me handsome, too. He would think twice before showing me his secrets if he knew that I have already, for myself, discovered the secrets of his wife's heart."

  But he went with Luigi down a dim flight of stairs and through a game-room in the cellar, and then into a labyrinth of uncarpeted passageways where stone walls leaned toward him and pale lights burned in shoulder-high niches, stirring the shadows.

  Far into the maze Luigi showed the way, until Mario came to realize that they were pacing beneath a remote portion of the house where even Angelina had never led him. Cold and damp it was here, and the sound of boot-soles scraping on the stone floor was a sound of rats gnawing, or of millipedes scurrying through darkness.

  So, arriving at last before a padlocked door of iron, Luigi produced keys and said gently: "Here in this vault lie wines which have been dust-covered and untapped since before our grandfathers were born, my friend." And Mario, pacing over the threshold, stared about him with widening eyes and saw that this was true.

  Moreover, the vault was large and Luigi's treasures were in no stingy quantity. Thinking in terms of dollars, Mario regarded his host with new respect, even lowered his voice to a whisper of new reverence as he declared: "Amazing! Glorious!"

  "This is nothing," Luigi shrugged.

  "Nothing, you say!"

  "I have created a wine-room even greater—for my wife. You shall see it. But first—" Luigi leaned forward from his plump waist to slide one of the many bottles from a shelf facing him— "first we must drink to your art, and to our friendship."

  The wine was red and good, and sent a glow through Mario. Staring over the rim of his glass, he murmured in liquid tones: "We should drink, my friend, to the loveliness of your wife!"

  "She is lovely, Mario?"

  "Never has there been one so lovely!"

  "So I have always known. She is like rare wine, Mario. Sometimes I have looked at her and thought: 'Like rare wine she will one day run from the glass and be no longer mine'."

  "No woman so lovely could be ever unfaithful, my friend."

  "You comfort me."

  "One who possesses such a gem should need no comforting."

  At this, Luigi smiled proudly and refilled his companion's glass.

  "Come," he said. "Let me show you the wine-room I have built in her honor. Even she has not yet seen it, but I would have your opinion of it. You are an artist, Mario."

  Luigi took his friend's arm, leading him into the deep end of the vault where an iron door of narrow dimensions broke the stone wall and gave ingress to a chamber beyond.

  Here no lights burned. But Luigi struck a match, holding the flame to twin candles on the right of the door. Then, standing aside, he watched with unblinking eyes as Mario stepped past him to examine the room's contents.

  Four steps Mario took and stood motionless, frowning with bewilderment. Turning slowly in his tracks, he said: "But this room is merely a bare vault, Luigi. It is a cell. It contains only shadows and darkness and—"

  The words stuck in his throat and died there, but he opened his eyes very wide to stare at the small black pistol which lay in Luigi's unmoving hand.

  Wider and wider Mario's eyes went, until they were white-rimmed and protruding from their sockets. His feet rooted themselves in the stone floor and his slender body swayed on stiff legs. Facing him, Luigi was smiling—if the sinister downward curve of his thin lips could be called a smile.

  "This was a wine-room, my friend." Luigi said softly, "One in which I kept my most precious vintages. But yesterday, in secret, I came here alone and stripped it bare of everything except the two candles you see burning there. I did that, my friend, while you and my wife were making love in her bedchamber upstairs."

  Slowly Luigi stepped backward to the threshold, reaching a hand to grasp the open door. The weapon in his leveled hand held Mario at bay.

  "Now, my friend, this chamber shall be yours. None but I shall know you are here. In solitude you shall be allowed to remember my wife's warm caresses and the soft words of affection which she murmured against your cheek. Because a man is old, my friend, and inclined to plumpness about the middle, is no proof that his powers of observation are dimmed—nor that he is a fool!"

  The door closed slowly, blotting out Luigi's smiling face. Like a man impaled, Mario stood staring at it, his slender body trembling, his dark eyes bulging in a face grey as the dripping wax of the twin candles niched in the wall before him. Not until the grating click of the heavy padlock reached his ears did he move. Then, he lunged forward with both arms outflung, hurled himself against the door, beat upon it with his fists.

  "No, no!" he screamed. "You are mistaken, Luigi! You are horribly mistaken! Your wife and I—"

  A sound of receding footsteps silenced him. And as the sound diminished in volume Mario wept and wailed against the iron barrier, shrieking admissions of his guilt and pleading for mercy. When at last he was silent, leaning limp against the door with salt tears staining his face and his hands afire from their futile pounding, no sound but the sob of his own hoarse breathing came to him.

  Slowly he retreated into the middle of the chamber and gazed about with blood-shot eyes—knowing that Luigi had carefully planned and executed his entire program of revenge.

  In truth, the man's cunning mind had conceived a vengeance complete in every detail. The room was a sunken vault possessing no windows, no means of ventilation. All too soon the damp air would grow foul with Mario's own exhalations, choking him, sapping the strength from his lean body. For light, there was nothing bu
t the flickering dimness of two candle-flames which, judging from the length of the half-burned stumps supporting them, would endure no longer than a few hours. After which he would be plunged in a darkness like death.

  No sound from his frenzied lips could reach far beyond these grim walls. Penetrating perhaps as far as the monstrous cellar beyond, any shriek from his throat would die at least there, amid mocking echoes, reaching no part of the house above.

  Death then, was the answer—slow, hideous death, with none even to watch the agony of it. Knowing this, Mario lowered his aching body to the cold floor, his back against a wall, and, staring at the two wavering candle-flames, sobbed until his throat refused to give out more than weak, stifling gasps.

  Slumped there, sagging, he wondered what hour it was—and knew that the time of day or night would never again be of importance to him. The candles burned lower, and he swayed erect, thinking to put one of them out, to save it. Then he thought: "I'll put both out, and if the hard floor will let me, I'll sleep a while. There is a way of escape. There must be. But I am too weary now, too terrified, to ponder over it."

  He searched the pockets of his clothing for matches. But that soon he was again terrified. He had but one match!

  Trembling, he placed that tiny sliver in the candle-niche where the dampness of the floor might not reach it, pinched the candle-flames between the thumb and forefinger, stretched his aching body on the stone floor, and slept.

  When he awoke, he used his last match to light one of the candles. For hours then he paced the floor of the vault, passing his hands over every inch of the walls, as high as his fingertips would reach. The door he gave even closer attention, thereby discovering, in the base of it, a thin crack outlining what seemed to be a small square door built into the barrier itself.

  But no amount of pushing or kicking served to jar the iron block loose from its parent-mass of metal. In the end, exhausted to the point of collapse, Mario sat again on the floor and stared with gaunt eyes into a leering face of Death.