Murgunstrumm and Others

by Cave, Hugh

  Jum Peters licked his mouth. He tried to follow the focus of the policeman's eyes. The policeman wasn't staring into Jum Peters' face, but at something under Jum Peters' face. Jum Peters' head lowered itself spontaneously. His eyes dilated to their extreme magnitude. His body became all at once hard and inflexible. He knew that the policeman was intently contemplating the coruscant belt buckle which glittered on the outside of his coat.

  "Where'd you get all this stuff?" the policeman said. "Out of the dump?"

  "Y-yes, suh. Out'n de dum'."

  The policeman glanced queerly into Jum Peters' face. Then he resumed his inspection. He walked along the tin wall, dangling his nightstick from its leather strap. He stood over the crooked body of Washington Jeffers. He studied it dispassionately. He turned again and stared at Jum Peters.

  Jum Peters knew what he was staring at. He was staring at the belt buckle again. He was noticing the difference in the length of the belt. Four holes difference, and the policeman was aware of it. On Mulvahey's middle, the end of the strap had lipped down like a dog's tail with four punctures. On Jum Peters' it barely extended enough to go around.

  Jum Peters tried frantically to hide it with his hands. He leaned forward in his chair and sat like a man petrified. His eyes twitched and contracted with quick spasmodic jerks. His black face turned purple and became the color of the ashes in Mulvahey's grave.

  "How often did this old guy come to visit you?" the policeman said.

  Jum Peters did not reply. The policeman was deceiving him, playing with him the way the carrion dogs played with the dump rats when they caught them. Jum Peters knew. The policeman knew. Jum Peters knew the policeman knew. The policeman was only waiting . . . and waiting . . . and if that wasn't true, why was he standing in the doorway to block the opening and cut off the only way of escape!

  "Well," the policeman shrugged, "I'll be goin' along. I guess there ain't nothin' here."

  And he went out, leaving Jum Peters sitting there.

  A long time later, Jum Peters shifted his position and looked down at the leather belt and laughed in a cracked voice. He laughed a long time. He stared at Cerema and laughed again.

  "Am' I de bigges' fool?" he said loudly. "Am' I, huh? All 'count'n a no-coun' ledder bel'! Huh!"

  He stood up, swaggering, and closed the door and secured the latch and lit the electric light with shaky fingers. And then, in the triumphant solitude of the shanty, he stretched himself full length on the bed and stared up at the roof. Fear went out of him. He told himself there was nothing to be afraid of. Probably the policeman had come here of his own accord, on the mere chance of finding something significant to work with. Probably he wouldn't come again. No one would come at all again, ever. There would be only Cerema and himself, together, and that was what he wanted.

  He looked at Cerema and she was staring at him. Her eyes were as big as empty bowls and very white. They were motionless. Everything about her was motionless, as if the full understanding of what had happened and what would happen had begun to flow into her with cosmic viscosity.

  "Wha' you lookin' at?" Jum Peters demanded. "Huh? C'm heuh tuh me." Cerema stepped backward, not forward, and stepped backward again, still staring.

  "C'm heuh!" Jum Peters rasped.

  "Lawd Gawd, no!"

  Jum Peters looked at her and laughed. He stretched himself with the satisfied sleekness of a contented cat; he grunted animal grunts of anticipation. Presently he would get up off the bed and go to her, and pick her up in his arms and carry her back to the bed. But there was no hurry. It was good to be and think, and know that he was quite safe and every single thing here belonged to him. The electric light was winking at him happily, and the candle had burned itself to a sputtering stump. Everything was peaceful and quiet. It was pleasant, too, to look at Cerema and watch the terror in her face, and know that she was staring back at him because she couldn't help it. It made him feel powerful and omnipotent and almighty.

  He grinned when Cerema dropped trembling to her knees in the middle of the floor. He grinned again when she flung her face toward the ceiling and raised her arms despairingly and shouted luridly in a shrill voice:

  "Lawd Gawd! Lawd Gawd, sen' Mulvahey back tuh me! Sen' Mulvahey back tuh tek care er me!"

  "Am' no Lawd Gawd gwine sen' back Mulvahey," Jum Peters growled, "nor neither no one else. You'm crazy."

  But Cerema heard nothing but her own cry as she knelt there with closed eyes and twitching hands uplifted.

  "Lawd Gawd, sen' back Mulvahey! Lawd Gawd—"

  "Looka heuh," said Jum Peters irritably, swinging his long legs off the bed and standing very straight. "Wha' f oh you wan' dat insignificum Mulvahey back foh? Looka heuh 't me. Am' I better'n dat Mulvahey?"

  He stroked himself proudly, triumphantly. He was still wearing Mulvahey's clothes, and they were too small for him, so he looked even bigger in them than he was. His fingers caressed the leather belt which fitted him snugly. He looked down at it and grunted. Huh! No dog's tail hanging down on him. No flappy little tail with four puncture-holes in it. And that shiny buckle looked better on him than ever it had looked on Mulvahey.

  "Looka heuh," Jum Peters snarled impatiently. "Am' I wo'th lovin'? Am' I better'n dat sawed-off Mulvahey?"

  Cerema didn't look. She was rigid on the floor, on her knees, with her arms stiff as iron over her head; and she was saying over and over:

  "Lawd Gawd, sen' back Mulvahey . . . sen' back Mulvahey tuh me . . ."

  Jum Peters strode toward her to take her. Then he stopped and grinned, and reached up and switched off Mulvahey's light. The shanty was all at once black as a vault, and the only sound in it was the whimper of Cerema's breath and the murmur of Cerema's voice. Jum Peters stood quite still, but Cerema did not turn to see the hungry glare of his eyes or the twisting movements of his outstretched hands. Cerema was whimpering and moaning and praying . . . and the shanty was black with utter blackness.

  Jum Peters drew a deep breath and took a step forward, and a sound stopped him. The sound was the creak of the door as the door opened. The door opened very slowly, and Jum Peters stared at it. And then Jum Peters became as rigid as a thing made of ice-cold metal. In the whole of him only one thing moved; his eyes opened and opened and opened, until they were boundless and protruding and stark white.

  For a man stood in the doorway, and the man's face was graying black, and the man's clothing was wet and torn and loose-hanging and clotted with clinging lumps of slag. The man's arms hung lifeless at his sides; his decaying face moved not a muscle as he stared at Jum Peters with a boring penetrating gaze of awful portent. There was about him not one semblance of life or of motion; there was everything of death and decay and decomposition. And it was strange that Jum Peters could see him at all, for the darkness inside the shanty and outside the shanty was a winding-sheet of impregnable pitch. Yet the visitant was visible, and every separate detail of him was visible. And Jum Peters stared at him, and saw, and knew that he was a creature of the night, an earth-born, returned from the far-distant pits of gloom where everything is night.

  Straight into the room the man came, and slowly, and directly toward Jum Peters, leaving the door open behind him. His clotted shoes made no scrape on the linoleum floor. There was no sound of breathing from his lips, no rustle from his garments. There were only his eyes and his two hands, held before him on a level with his face, with all ten fingers spread apart and seeming to grow larger and larger as they came closer to Jum Peters' protruding eyes.

  Jum Peters stood like stone until all at once words bubbled from his lips. "M-mulvahey! Don' touch me! Don' touch yoh hands tuh me! Go back tuh yoh grave hole!"

  Then he turned and ran, and ran headlong into the bed, gibbering and shrieking and moaning. With both arms outstretched on the railing of the bed, and his body pressed against the iron bars of it, he faced about again.

  "Don't touch me!" he screamed.

  But the figure came on and on, closer and closer, and Ju
m Peters' shrill voice became a cracked sob of terror. And Jum Peters stumbled away again, and tripped, and fell screaming to the floor, and scrambled up again by gripping the legs of the broken table.

  "Lawd Gawd!" he shrilled, "don' come neuh me! Don' come no closer!"

  He fell backward, because there was no other way to run. His big body clattered into the tin wall and quivered the shanty all around and above him. Flattened there, he stared at the approaching figure, at the hollow face and sunken eyes and wide-spread fingers, at the clotted garments and earth-blackened boots. And he could see nothing else. He could see no detail of the shanty behind that oncoming figure of undead death. Cerema was nowhere; the door was nowhere; the devil dark outside had come inside, inside the room, close and horrible and vicious.

  "Go 'way, Mulvahey!" Jum Peters shouted. "Go back dar whar you come f'um!"

  And then he fought. He fought because he had to, and because he was afraid not to. His hands lashed about, seeking a weapon. They clutched at the belt around his middle. They scraped against the glistening belt-buckle. Frantically Jum Peters whipped the belt out of its loops and seized it in his fist and laid about him with it. Whip-like, it whistled and whined through the dark, slashing again and again at the oncoming face of the man who was already dead.

  And the man stopped. He stopped, and his lips curled into a smile of vague meaning as the stinging belt slapped against him. Again and again the leather lash cracked in violent contact with his sunken cheeks and never-blinking eyes. There was no sound, no faintest whisper except the whistle of the whip. There was nothing; nothing but Jum Peters' livid face and heaving chest, and the thin, vague smile on the whipped features of deathless rot.

  Then, once again, the dead man stepped forward, and his smile vanished. His hands lifted slowly, convulsively; his lifeless eyes glowed with a dull sheen of luminosity, closer and closer to Jum Peters' perspiring jowls.

  With a single great shriek Jum Peters turned and ran. He ran blindly. Headlong he stumbled into the upstuck legs of the broken table. He crashed to the floor, and his head thudded into the floor; and he lay there with a deep groan of semi-unconsciousness. And that was all.

  The dead man leaned over him, and Jum Peters knew that this was so. The dead man's eyes were looking into his face and studying him intently, as if debating quietly and methodically what punishment was most fit to be meted out. And Jum Peters cringed violently away from that face, and from those eyes, and from the spread fingers of those hovering hands, as he would have cringed from a figure of flame. Jum Peters groveled into the floor and clawed with frozen fingers at the slick linoleum, as if he would scratch an aperture in the very earth beneath him and so escape the horror that loomed above his twisted body.

  "Go-go 'way f'um me, Mulvahey!" Jum Peters sobbed. "Le' me be! Don' touch me! You'm daid!"

  The face of the dead man altered as Jum Peters gaped into it. It became calm and peaceful and full of satisfaction, and it was smiling in a way that was not a smile at all, but a silent expression of deep understanding. And the hands reached down with motionless quickness and took from Jum Peters the leather belt which Jum Peters clasped in stiff fingers.

  Jum Peters stared and saw then that the lash had made marks upon the dead man's features; for the marks were leering down at him in long, ugly, vicious white welts. But they were bloodless and no real marks at all; they were only scars without definite form, white and ghastly visible upon their mask of graying decay. And upon the man's head, under its mat of crawling clotted hair, gleamed another white incision, a wide and hideous gash where Jum Peters' iron bludgeon had long ago, ever and ever so long ago, struck and brought death.

  Jum Peters saw this, and the dead man's lips were parted, smiling, as those groping hands took hold of the leather belt and removed it from Jum Peters' fingers. Jum Peters stared and shuddered. For the man lifted the leather belt to his mouth and drew it very slowly and deliberately over his ashen lips, touching every inch of it in a strange caress. And he pressed the buckle of it also to his lips, as if he loved it with a strange affection. And then he leaned again and replaced the belt in Jum Peters' fingers; and he stood very straight, unsmiling and expressionless.

  Jum Peters peered into his face and trembled violently with the significance of it. The expressionless contour of the face lingered in Jum Peters' eyes long after the dead man had turned away and paced slowly across the floor. And there the man stopped quite still and extended his arms, and into his arms came another figure with upturned face and wide worshipping eyes and parted lips.

  The man's arms folded about this other figure and drew her into their embrace, and the lips of the dead man closed over the lips of Cerema; and Cerema and the dead man moved together to the door.

  Jum Peters watched them, and into Jum Peters' eyes came swift and sudden horror. For he saw that Cerema, too, as she clung to the man's clotted body, became visible in the dark even as he was. A strange light, which was no light at all but merely a glow of life-in-death, swept from his form into hers and emanated anew from her, enveloping her and making of her a macabre, unreal woman. She clung desperately to her lover, and his arm was tight about her waist; and together they passed over the threshold into the outer darkness.

  Jum Peters saw them, and crawled on hands and legs to the doorway, and lay there, watching. He saw them walk together across the dump and into the gloom of that vague, uninhabited terrain of devil dark which extended beyond. Side by side they walked; and they were the only visible moving things in a well of utter blackness; and they became smaller and smaller in the distance . . . and never once turned to look back . . . and so vanished, together, into the night.

  Jum Peters stared and stared and stared. And presently a great horror welled into his soul, and he fell flat upon his face on the floor, with his hands clawing the threshold.

  And darkness came over him as he lay there.

  The darkness was gone when he awoke from it. Through the open door of the shanty streamed a shaft of burning yellow sunlight, making gold ingots of the upturned table and the stove and the metal posts of the bed. Jum Peters groped unsteadily to his feet and pushed one hand through his tangled hair, and rubbed his eyes. He peered all about him in mute bewilderment, and he said aloud:

  "I bin dreamin'. Am' nuttin' like dat evuh really happen!"

  But he saw something as he stared; and he strode quickly across the floor and stood over it. It was dead, and it was Cerema. And she lay on her back, with her face upturned to the roof and her hands flung out on the floor above her head, and her knees doubled beneath her, as if she had fallen backward from a kneeling position, and died that way.

  Jum Peters gaped down at her and reached down to touch her. He drew his hand away very quickly and stepped backward without taking his gaze from her face. He did not understand it, because Cerema's face was happy and smiling and full of God's glory, and yet Cerema was dead. And certainly Cerema had died from fright and fear.

  "Huh," Jum Peters grunted, and the grunt was a whisper. "Her allus wus queer. Her am' no ord'nary woman."

  But he knew he had been dreaming about the other thing, and he was not afraid anymore, because the shanty was not dark. He strode to the stove and looked into the aluminum pot which stood there. Then he set about making a fire, because he was hungry. He went in and out of the shanty many times, gathering wood and papers and breathing great gulps of sunlight; and presently he kicked something and looked down and grunted. Then he leaned over and picked up the leather belt that lay there on the threshold, and he looked at it, frowning.

  "I sho' 'nough must er been dreamin'!" he marveled. "Looks like I must er been runnin' roun' an' ravin'. Else how come dis bel' layin' heuh?"

  But he slipped the belt through the loops of his khaki trousers and buckled it, and shrugged his shoulders.

  "Ain' gwine worry 'bout'n dat," he said.

  He caressed the belt lovingly and examined it.

  "Am' no dog's tail hangin' down on me," he grinned. "Ain'
no tail wid fouh peep-holes in ut, danglin' down. I am' Mulvahey."

  He was satisfied then. He made a fire and ate the stew in the pot when it was hot, and then he glanced at Cerema and said, musingly:

  "Cain't leave dat heuh. Ain' no udder woman gwine lib heuh wid me while dat'm hangin' 'roun'."

  He lifted Cerema's body to his shoulders, and found the shovel, and carried Cerema out into the dump. While he picked his way carefully through the piles of refuse, with Cerema's legs clasped like clay sticks in his arm and Cerema's head and arms dangling down his back, he thought of something else and said aloud:

  "Huh. I'se gwine mek suah ob dat. Am' gwine hab no mo' dreams like dat 'un."

  He took Cerema to the place where he had buried Mulvahey's dead body, and he dug there with the shovel. He dug until the blade of the shovel struck something soft and spongy, and then he climbed down in the hole and clawed with his hands. And then he stared for a moment into the face of the corpse, which was Mulvahey's face; and he said aloud, with relief:

  "Huh. I knowed dat."

  He climbed out again and tossed Cerema's body in on top of the other one, and filled in the hole. Then, with the shovel over his shoulder, he stumbled back to the shanty and closed the door and lay on the bed.

  "Affer dis all ovuh fo' good," he told himself, "I'se gwine git me a woman foh nih lib heuh wid me. Didn' cayuh nuttin' foh dat Cerema nohow. I'se gwine git me someun better'n her."

  He stretched himself and thought about it, and grinned with thinking about it. He looked up at the ceiling and felt very strong and powerful.

  "I'se Gawd," he grinned. "Dat's who I is."

  And he looked at himself and thought so. He stretched himself and gazed proudly at the leather belt around his middle. He thought about the dog's tail with the four holes, and he sneered. There was no dog's tail on him! He polished the buckle with his sleeve, and caressed the leather, and lay back, thinking. He thought about Washington Jeffers and the policeman and Mulvahey and Cerema; and he said, lazily: