Murgunstrumm and Others

by Cave, Hugh

  I could get an answer to that last question, anyway, by asking her! I asked her. "Look," I said. "Did you just get home from work?"

  She nodded, smiling.

  "But surely you don't work in that dress!"

  "I came in quietly," she whispered, "and changed into this dress—just for you. Am I not beautiful in it, my beloved?"

  "But," I protested, "I didn't hear you come in. I—"

  She snuggled closer, took my arms, and wrapped them around her. What could I do? With the lamplight glowing so wonderfully on the pale satin of her shoulders and breasts, and her parted lips silently pleading to be kissed . . . hell,

  I thought, the questions could wait.

  Suddenly, from the adjoining room, I heard the voice of her father, urgently calling her name. "Roseen! Come here! Come quickly!" The girl squirmed from my embrace and sprang to her feet. Evidently her father's tone of voice was significant. She sped across the parlor and over the threshold, without even a glance atme.

  I stood up. The eerie silence of this old house was such that any sudden outcry bred tension. I felt tense, too. I cat-footed across to the doorway and looked into the next room. Roseen and Feicher Davis were standing together at a window that faced the road. They were peering out. They seemed afraid of something.

  I strode to a window in the parlor, and I looked out, too. It was dark as sin out there, and raining harder than ever. The road was invisible. I could hear trees tossing in the wind but couldn't see them. Then I saw a light.

  It appeared to be a flashlight, approaching through the stormy dark. Another one blinked on behind it, and a third. They came closer. I saw the shapes of men behind them. We were evidently about to entertain callers!

  Suddenly I was aware of a movement behind me. I swung around. Nothing was there; yet I had an uncanny feeling that something had rushed past with incredible speed. Yes, by God! A strand of spider-web in the doorway that led to the adjoining room was fluttering like a pennant in a gale!

  I strode to the doorway and saw, with amazement, that the adjoining room was now empty. Roseen and her father were gone! But in order to leave that room they must have passed within a yard of me, and I hadn't heard anything. I'd sensed a sudden swift movement, but

  Someone was thumping noisily on the front door. That was a sound I understood. Almost with relief, I strode to the door and opened it.

  They were men and there were five of them, grizzled, earthy-looking fellows from the village, as solid and real as the mountain country that had spawned them. They filed in, and the last one slammed the door shut to blot out the wind and the rain. They ringed me, looked me over. Their leader, a barrel-chested, black-bearded fellow as tall as I and a good fifty pounds heavier, came a step closer and said, "Who're you? What you doin' here?"

  I hadn't the slightest idea what they wanted, but it seemed a wise plan to humor them. "My name's Frank Blake," I said. "I'm an artist. Came here to paint pictures."

  They exchanged looks. Then the man at the rear, the one near the door, pushed forward and dumped something at my feet. I took a sudden backward step. The thing was a dog, and it was dead.

  "You know anythin' about this?" the fellow demanded, eyeing me.

  "What—do you mean?"

  "Dog's been kilt. Third one this week, mister. Not shot nor run over, but sucked. Look at it."

  Sucked. It was an ugly word, but descriptive. And accurate. I looked closer and shuddered. There was a small gash in the dog's throat; no other mark on its body, anywhere. Why did my hand go suddenly, involuntarily, to the mark on my own throat?

  "Dog was kilt near here," the fellow snarled. "Got yellow mud on his feet and under his belly. Only yellow mud in miles is right close to this place." He suddenly thrust his face close to mine. "What you doin' in this house, mister?"

  "I told you! Painting!"

  "Paintin' what?"

  "Now look here," I said, getting sore. "If you think I'm killing your dogs, you—"

  "No decent man would live in this house."

  "I tell you—"

  "Used to be mighty queer things go on around here when old man Davis and his daughter was livin'," the leader of the group said darkly. "More than dogs was kilt then. The year before they died—the worst year—babies took to dyin' all too frequent. No one's lived in this house since, mister. We think you better not stir the place up. You better git."

  I stared at him. "They—died?" I muttered. "Davis and his daughter died? What are you talking about? Who said they were dead?"

  "Been dead seven years, mister." He glanced at his companions. "They died hard, but they're dead."

  "You're crazy. Why, they were here in this room less than ten minutes ago!"

  They looked at me. Just looked. Not a word was uttered for fully a minute, and the moan of the wind, the sound of rain against the windows were strangely loud in that tense stillness. Suddenly I couldn't stand their stares any longer.

  "By God, I'll show you!" I shouted. "I've been painting the girl's picture. You wait here. I'll get it!"

  I barged upstairs to my bedroom and got the picture and took it down to them. I propped it on the divan. "There!" I said. "Is that Roseen Davis, or isn't it?"

  They stared at the picture. It was almost finished, that picture, and it was beautiful. It took your breath away. There she stood, white as an alabaster statue, every gorgeous, flowing line of her accented by the background of shadows against which she stood. Her lips curved in that inviting smile, her arrogant young breasts glowingly lovely, her hips and legs so smooth, so soft, so warmly alive that it made my blood pound just to look at her.

  But these men didn't see what I saw. The picture didn't warm their blood. They suddenly backed away from it and began muttering. They gave me quick, wide-eyed stares that said they were afraid of me, afraid of it.

  One of them croaked, "Let's get out of here, fellers!"

  They fled, and I was alone.

  "What the hell," I thought. "They're crazy!" I shut the door, picked up the

  painting. I carried the canvas upstairs, set it back on the easel and stood there admiring it.

  I'd been there about five minutes, I guess, when the door creaked behind me. I turned, startled—and there stood Roseen.

  "Is it that beautiful?" she whispered, smiling.

  I grinned at her. "It's beautiful, but not alive," I said. "I'll take the original." I put my hands on her white shoulders. "Where the devil did you get to? I had visitors."

  "Visitors?"

  "Some men from the village."

  "Oh," she said, nodding. "The queer ones, no doubt. You must not be afraid of them."

  "They told me—"

  But she wasn't having any more of my questions. Her arms went around my neck, warm and soft as kittens, and she put her mouth against mine to silence me. Her lips shaped themselves to my lips and clung fast for a moment, and her fiery body throbbed in my embrace. After that I didn't care what the villagers had told me. To hell with it.

  "You said," she whispered, "we would finish the picture tonight."

  I nodded. I moved the easel into position and stared at her while the Southern Belle gown rustled to the floor. She took her place in the shadows, and I went to work. As before, it was the hardest work I'd ever done. The nearness of her set my blood to boiling. Every trembling nerve in my body ached to be loving her, not painting her, and I grudged every moment I had to stand there smearing paint on the canvas. Yet I had to have that picture!

  There wasn't a sound in the old house as I worked. Not a murmur, except the wind and the rain. That helped; it enabled me to concentrate. By midnight I was finished.

  "Come and look at it," I said.

  She glided to my side, studied my work and voiced a little sigh of happiness. "It is so like me," she murmured, "I am almost jealous of it. Perhaps you will love it more than you love me."

  I laughed a little, and reached for her. She stepped back. Her white body was etched against the glow of the lamp for a moment;
then suddenly the room was in darkness. I waited, my heart pounding, my arms outstretched. In the dark her lips found mine and she slipped into my embrace.

  I don't remember much of what happened after that. I don't remember going to sleep. I don't know how much of what I dreamed was really a dream.

  Anyway, I was in that long tunnel again, only it was a bigger tunnel, a longer tunnel, and this time there was only one -cat. It was a white cat, a beautiful creature, the most beautiful cat I had ever seen. It walked along beside me, into the endless dark. It rubbed against my legs, looked up at me and purred. After a while it leaped gently to my shoulder and put its mouth against my throat.

  Its mouth was warm and moist, and the sound of its purring grew louder. I began to feel drowsy. I stumbled. There was a strange weakness in me, a lassitude that blurred my vision and made it hard for me to walk. I leaned against the wall of the tunnel, to rest, and became aware of an odor, a familiar odor, that reminded me of a cellar somewhere.

  The weakness grew overwhelming, and I lost consciousness.

  When I awoke, I was in bed, alone, and the room was murky. "Must be almost morning," I thought. My watch read six-thirty. I felt weak, almost too weak to move. There was a queer burning sensation in my neck.

  I lay there trying to recall what had happened after I finished the painting, but it wouldn't come back; it was all a deep, vast blur in which nothing would take shape. I seemed to remember warm lips against mine, and a soft, sweet body in my arms . . . whispers in the dark, and a pleasant purring sound of contentment, and a hot mouth touching my throat . . . but it was all a pattern of shadows, half forgotten already. And I was too weak now to bring it back.

  The room grew darker. I didn't understand that. I looked at my watch again, and struggled out of bed and dragged myself to the window. The moon was up! In God's name what had I done?.—slept through a whole night and day, and into the beginning of another night? There could be no other explanation!

  Suddenly, from the deeper darkness of the woods at the edge of the swampy yard, a shape emerged. A flashlight winked, went out again. The shape prowled forward, followed by others. I remembered the villagers who had come last night to question me. I sensed trouble.

  The prowlers separated as they approached the house. For a while I tried to follow them with my eyes, but it was like striving to follow dim ghosts through a dream. I reached for my clothes. That frightening weakness took me again, and it took every last ounce of my strength to get me dressed. I opened the door and went along the hall to the stairs.

  I smelled smoke. I heard a voice outside yelling triumphantly, "There, by God, there! That will do it!" I heard a noise like paper rattling, only it wasn't paper; it was the old, dry timbers of the house being consumed by flames! A cloud of strangling smoke poured up the narrow stair-well.

  "They've set fire to the house!" I muttered. And I hated them. God, how I hated them! This house had become a part of me, or I of it. It meant hours of supreme bliss with a beautiful girl. It meant strange journeys through that long, dark tunnel, into a land of dreams. And they'd set a torch to it! Damn them! Damn their rotten souls to hell!

  I raged along the hall, cursing the smoke, the flames that leaped up. The flames beat me back to the door of my room and I knew suddenly that I'd be trapped if I didn't get out of there. This house was old. It would go up like old paper. I snatched my painting and went stumbling through the smoke to the stairs.

  As 1 groped down them, a sound poured up from below, knifing through the noise of the fire. A shrill, keening sound, a scream like that of a wounded animal. The kind of scream you hear at night, sometimes, in a zoo or a circus—where the big cats are. It shrilled around me as I stumbled across the parlor to the front door.

  I got the door open and fell across the porch, picked myself up and crawled to the steps, crawled down them and across the yard. Behind me the house was a blazing inferno, hurling out heat. When I was out of reach of the heat I turned, looked back. I turned just in time to see a white blur, a lean white shape that looked like a giant cat, leap out through a cellar window.

  For an instant the shape seemed to hang suspended in air, so tremendous was its leap. Then it flashed along the ground and vanished into the woods. I don't remember anything else. I passed out.

  When I came to, there was no house. It was daylight, and raining, and the cellar of the old place was just a grim hole in the earth, filled with black, smouldering debris. I walked around it. After a while I jumped over to my car, to see if it was damaged. The paint was blistered and the tires looked queer, full of lumps, but it would run. I got into it—with my picture of Roseen—and drove away. I drove all day and half the night, and got home at four a.m.

  The doc can't figure me out. "The weakness," he says, "is due to loss of blood. You've lost an awful lot of blood somehow, yet I can't find a break in the skin anywhere. Can you explain it?"

  Sure I can, but not to him. Not to anyone. No one's going to call me crazy and send me up for a mental examination. I'll get over the weakness, the doc says. It will take time, and rest, but I'll be all right after a while. "Provided," he says, "the cause of your condition is not repeated."

  I wonder about that, especially at night. She didn't die in the fire. I saw her escape—I'm sure of it. And maybe she'll find me. Maybe I'll even go back there, so she can find me without too much trouble.

  Nights, I sit and stare at the picture; then I shut my eyes and see her standing there in the shadows, in the bedroom of that old house. White and warm and beautiful. . . with a smile of invitation and promise on her red lips, and her arms outstretched, and the lamplight caressing her shoulders, her exquisite breasts...

  I can hear her whispering, "Come with me, my beloved. Come with me. .

  Maybe I will. If I look at the picture long enough, maybe I will.

  Tomorrow Is Forever

  The details of his departure from the front were still annoyingly vague, but that he had entered a new and unfamiliar region was now certain, and the strangeness of his surroundings disturbed him. On what mission had he been sent here? Where were his comrades?

  He had walked at least a day and a night, yet there was no real day or night in this place by which to measure time. There was silence and a road—and there were dim shadow-shapes who plodded aimlessly on, like himself, to no apparent destination.

  Were there no towns, no villages, in this shrouded valley? Must he trudge forever through a changeless twilight, along a road that led to nowhere?

  He was tired and walked slowly. And hungry, too, though it was a kind of hunger, he sensed, that food and drink would not appease. "I would give the Iron Cross I won in Poland," he thought glumly, "to be back with Fedor and Karl and Fritz in the mud of the Caucasus. Is there no way out of this accursed place?"

  Presently, hearing footsteps, he paused again, and out of the twilight another of the plodding people came toward him. This time it was one of his own kind. His hope came alive, and with an arm upflung in greeting he strode forward. "Wait!" he shouted. "I wish to talk!"

  But the man was deaf and blind to him, and trudged past without recognition. The road was once more empty.

  Shaking with anger, he resumed his journey. It did not occur to him to be afraid—he was a soldier, sheathed in an armor of arrogance through which fear had not yet found an opening. But beneath his anger lay bewilderment and a nagging sense of aloneness. Panic beat its dark wings more insistently, now, against the wall of his calm. What was this valley in which he wandered?

  On he went, measuring time by his weariness and the sound of his boots, until at last, ahead, there were lights in the darkness.

  It was not a large place—not important—but about it was something old and familiar that puzzled him anew. The shape of its twisting streets tugged at his memory, and a voice within him whispered a warning.

  But here were people and houses, and the sound of voices bright against the night. He heard a child's laughter and the warm wonder of a wom
an singing.

  With a click of his heels and new stiffness in his shoulders, he confronted the first man who approached.

  "What is this place?"

  The man was old, with graying hair and a bent body. Beside him skipped a dark-haired child whose hand he clasped. They chatted gaily and laughed at some private joy they shared, and without a glance in his direction, went past.

  Embittered, he sullenly watched them. "Because I'm alone," he thought, "they choose to be insulting. Very well, I am alone. But not for always. The day has come in hundreds of other miserable villages such as this, and will come here." They would regret their insolence, these people. He would learn the name of the place and report it.

  But it was not easy to learn the name. Identifying signs had been removed, and though the pattern of its streets and the shape of its houses told him its nationality, he could not sort it from the scores of similar places he had seen. "They are all alike, these worthless towns," he reflected. "They were built to be destroyed."

  His scorn was a good thing. Strengthening his pride, it held in check the beating wings of panic as, one after another, the people he accosted ignored him.

  Were they imbeciles, these people? By the church he confronted a slender girl of twenty— "You! Fraulein! Tell me what place this is!"—and she turned instead, with her sweetest smile, to a young man who approached from the opposite direction.

  In the square he spoke to children dancing— "Stop it! An end to this nonsense! I have questions to ask!"—and they romped away without hearing.

  From street to street, his anger mounting, he sought information. None saw him. None heard. At last, his rage past holding, he rushed at a youth who would not listen, and swung his fist.

  Feeling nothing, the youth walked on.