The Tehama and others

by Bob Leman

  There remained in Watkins no capacity for protest or remonstrance; he obediently hurried through the once-familiar house to the basement and took up the shovel. He dug and probed and groped until his hand encountered the cross. He pulled it out and ascended the stairs and returned to the witch's den.

  She lay as she had fallen, a slack, loose heap. Watkins said, "Is she dead?"

  "Oh, no," said the ghost. "No. You ran be sure you will know it when she is dead. You have been a very long time getting that thing. Luckily you struck hard. Now drag her in. Good. Stretch her out on her back. Lay the crucifix on her."

  Watkins did so. The cat-creature was watching with interest.

  As the crucifix touched her, the witch's body gave a convulsive twitch, and then lay as motionless as before, but now with a cadaverous rigidity. There was an expectant silence in the room. And then there was a Presence.

  A glistening black wall, extending from floor to ceiling and from side wall to side wall, appeared at the end of the room. It shimmered with an indefinable internal movement. Whiteness appeared suddenly at the comers where it met the ceiling and floor, and the whiteness expanded rapidly until what had been the black wall could be seen as a swiftly contracting circle of blackness, with white all around it. Then the whiteness, too, was a circle, and at the top of the white circle a monstrous eyelid shrank into recognizability. The vast pitiless eye filled the entire end of the room, and then no longer filled it because it was shrinking with enormous speed and there were two eyes, and then a face that Watkins could never afterward remember, although neither was he ever able to forget the dread that he felt. There was a whole head in a moment, and a neck and shoulders, and as the figure shrank it flowed and altered, changing in shape and color, discarding indescribable appendages and acquiring scaly excretions that writhed and shifted and became a semblance of clothing, so that by the time it had shrunk to the size of a man, it looked like a man.

  A very ordinary man, at that, a grayish man in grayish clothing, who spoke in a grayish voice: "Now, what's the problem here?"

  The ghost said, "Your Excellency. I appeal to you. The witch is spoiled, as you can see. Take her, and release me."

  The gray man said, "Well, well. So it's you, Gnulcibber. You've let yourself in for a bit of trouble this time, haven't you? And who's this?"

  The cat-creature said, "Sir, it's a common mortal. An innocent bystander, as it were. Watkins. Could be of use to you."

  The gray man looked at Watkins. "Perhaps so," he said. "We'll see. First I'd better take care of Meg here. Wake up, Meg."

  The witch's eyes opened. There was instant comprehension in them. She said, "You, Watkins. Don't gloat yet. I'll be seeing you sooner than you think."

  "Now, now," the gray man said. "No recriminations. You've had as long as most, Meg, and the time has come to pay the piper. Come along, now."

  The witch's clothing was suddenly empty, although it retained her contours for a moment before collapsing. Out of it flashed a swift small black thing, no larger than a mosquito, that emitted a tiny, thin, high wail. The gray man's hand darted out, and his thumb and forefinger plucked the thing from the air and stowed it in what appeared to be a vest pocket. "So much for her," the gray man said. "Now you, Gnulcibber."

  "My punishment should not be too harsh, Excellency," the ghost said. "It is true that I was careless. But I was not the first that it has happened to, nor will I be the last. It is a hazard of the profession."

  A shaft of fire jetted from the gray man's hand, bathing the ghost in flames. It screamed.

  "Don't play the fool with me, Gnulcibber," the gray man said. "Your chief offense wasn't getting trapped, as you well know. It was ruining a good tool. Witches aren't easily come by these days. Do you think I don't know how you used the mortal there to destroy the witch? You'll have to pay for that. You'll pay very dearly. And at the same time, I think I can put you to some use." He turned to Watkins. Tell me, Mr. Watkins, what is it that you want in this world?"

  Watkins made several false starts before his voice responded. He said at last, "Are you—? Are you—?"

  "Oh, no," the gray man said. "Far from it. I am an assistant to an assistant of his, I suppose you would call it. Not without authority, however. Considerable authority, as a matter of fact. Enough to settle this matter without consulting elsewhere. I ask you again, Watkins: What is it that you want?"

  The voice was oily and soothing, and Watkins was sufficiently calmed by its emolliating softness to begin to think again, albeit in a somewhat fitful and disorganized way. "No deals," he said. "No deals with you. I've heard about — I know about—"

  "Oh, come now, Watkins," the gray man said. "I am not suggesting a contract. After what you have just witnessed, I am sure it would be quite useless to do that. No, what I propose is an uncomplicated short-term agreement. You do something for me, and I will do something for you, and that will be the end of it. Simple barter of services."

  "Well — what is it you want me to do?"

  "Nothing of much consequence, really, for you, although it will be of ponderable service to me, for which I propose to be more than generous in my return to you. Therefore, Watkins, you should carefully consider what your real heart's desire may be. What is it really that you want most? Permit your mind to wander freely. I assure you, I have considerable latitude in the favors I can grant."

  Watkins was making a valiant effort to think clearly, but with no marked success. "I don't — there's nothing I want, really. I'd just like not to worry, not to feel so scared all the time. I'd like things to be the way they used to be. There's nothing you could give me."

  "What is it that worries you, that frightens you, Watkins?"

  "That's none of your—" He remembered whom he was talking to. "The house," he said. "Somebody else in the house. Somebody finding — finding—"

  "There's nothing to worry about," the gray man said. "The house is yours. You can move right back in. Look here."

  He plucked something from the air and handed it to Watkins. "A deed to the house," he said, "all properly signed and notarized. A forgery, of course, but I promise you that under the circumstances no one will ever know. And something comes with it. She buried her hoard in the basement. There is no way I can give you access to her bank accounts and securities without arousing more interest than you would find comfortable, but there is gold and currency down there to the amount of, say, a million and a half. It will be adequate."

  Watkins had not really heard the last sentences; he was trying to grasp the first, to bring himself to believe that the long nightmare might be ending, that his life might go back again to what it had been before Meg Hathorne took his house. He did not allow his hopes to go beyond that. He said, "It's mine again? I can live here again? And watch out for it?"

  "Oh, yes indeed. You are quite welcome to go back to your hermit's life here, if that is what you want. It will in fact fit in very well with the service I propose to ask of you. You see, Watkins, what I need is someone to act as master to Gnulcibber here. I have just sentenced him to a few centuries as a ghost, to soften him up for the real punishment that will follow. And while just being a ghost is itself a wretched and painful existence, it can become truly awful if there's someone about to keep the ghost hopping, to keep him from ever taking his ease in the grave. So, Watkins, you will get your house back, but you will have to take the ghost with it. What do you say?"

  Take the ghost with it. Watkins looked at the wraith with revulsion. It seemed, as it stood before the gray man, to be as solid and substantial as Watkins himself, an erect body with no top to its head and its arms hanging limp at its sides. It was clad in a tom, muddy dress that hung askew on its body and hose that flopped loose about its ankles. One foot was shod, the other not. The shod foot twisted at an unnatural angle. When it was motionless, it was simply the simulacrum of a corpse, nothing more; a gruesome and disgusting sight, but bearable. But when it moved, when it spoke, then it was truly horrible: its muddy limbs e
rratic and stiff, like ineptly operated machinery; its voice an inhuman harsh croak; its jaw chomping mechanically, like a ventriloquist's dummy. And inside it, Watkins knew, was something immeasurably evil and malign, a thing coldly venomous and bloated with hate and beslimed with unspeakable filth. He said, "No. No. I can't do it. I couldn't — there's no way I could live with that thing in the house."

  "It is pretty nasty," the gray man said. "It's mostly a matter of appearance, though. Consider me. Now that you have somewhat recovered from your initial panic, do you find my presence disquieting?"

  Watkins discovered that he did not; or, at any rate, not to the point of panic. He said, "No, I guess not."

  "No. And yet, I assure you, Watkins, that what I really am is, in every single particular, so much worse than this poor clown of a ghost that there is hardly a basis for comparison. Beside me he is a cherub, a loveable puppy dog. I know that you have sensed in this Gnulcibber certain attitudes and capabilities that terrorize you, but you are able to sense them only because he cannot dissemble as well as I. As he terrorizes you, Watkins, so do I terrorize him. And yet you are — up to a point — comfortable with me. To you, I look and behave like an ordinary man; I converse with you reasonably, I emanate no reek of wickedness. And so shall it be with our friend, Gnulcibber. Watch."

  He waved his hand. "There, Watkins," he said. "Do you think you could live with that in the house?"

  Instead of Edna's disfigured corpse, a young woman was standing there, a ripe beauty of classical proportions and aphrodisiac skin tones, who wore nothing but a small smile of tender invitation. She extended her arms toward Watkins.

  He tried frantically to order his thoughts. "It — that thing is still Gnulcibber, whatever it looks like. I tell you, it scares me."

  "To be sure," the gray man said, "but that is easily taken care of. Watch and listen, Watkins." He spoke to the ghost: "This is your master, for as long as the present phase of your punishment lasts. Is that understood?"

  "Yes, Excellency," the ghost said. The voice was soft, pleasant, and seductive.

  The gray man continued: "His power over you is absolute. If you displease him in any way, he has only to say a word to punish you most horribly. You can do nothing to harm him, or even to cause him discomfort or inconvenience. You are incapable of plotting or trickery against him. You will keep your real self buried so deeply that no trace or sense of you will be evident to Watkins or any other mortal with whom you may come in contact. You will retain sufficient power to be of aid and assistance to Watkins, but no more power than that. You may not return to the body in the grave for rest and relief. You will travel as far from these premises as Watkins commands you, and you are forbidden to voice any complaint about the sufferings it will cause you. All these commands I lay upon you. Am I understood?"

  "Yes, Excellency," the soft voice said.

  "All right, Watkins," said the gray man, "let's see how you like your new servant. Go ahead. Touch her. That's real flesh, there, not ghost-stuff. What you've got here is real woman, except that there’s no soul inside. What's inside is Gnulcibber, but I promise you you'll forget about that in a week or two. Go ahead. Grab a handful."

  Watkins touched her, somewhat gingerly, on the upper arm: soft, firm female flesh. She smiled at him, meltingly. He stared at her for a moment, and then turned back to the gray man. "No," he said, "I don't think this is what I want. I guess what I really want is Edna back and the old life without any excitement. Could you — that is, could you—?"

  The gray man shook his head. "I'm afraid not. Edna is dead, Watkins, and there is nothing I can do about that.

  Edna has escaped us entirely. But if she is what you want, you can have a perfect substitute. Look!"

  And, instead of the houri, Edna was there: mousy, dowdy, and dear, her face wearing its accustomed apologetic half-smile.

  "Edna," Watkins said. "Oh, Edna."

  "Fred," she said. "Oh, it's good to be back."

  The gray man said, "Now, Watkins. Do we have a bargain?"

  The word "bargain" alerted Watkins, and alarmed him. "Bargain?" he said. "Tell me again. What will our bargain be?"

  "As I said, a simple exchange of services. I give you your house and this substitute Edna, and an absolute assurance that the secret in the basement will remain a secret for as long as that is your desire. In exchange you will keep the substitute Edna with you and about you busy at household and other tasks. I suggest that you travel, even go abroad. That will provide excellent — oh, excellent — punishment for Gnulcibber. I suppose you will not in the event do that; I realize that you are somewhat insane in matters relating to this house, and you will probably not be able to bring yourself to leave it for very long. But that will be all right. Simply being Edna for twenty-four hours a day will inflict most grievous punishment upon this oaf.”

  Watkins said, "But my — well, my soul. I won't bargain that. I'm not making a deal on that. That's final."

  "Oh, there's nothing like that involved," the gray man said. "The fact is, it requires a rather elaborate ceremony to effect that sort of contract. What we have here is just a temporary ad hoc matter. We can, of course, arrange an extension, if at some future date you conclude that the various benefits and pleasures you will enjoy under this arrangement should be continued beyond your normal span of years. At that time, if you reached such a conclusion, there must, of course, be a renegotiation, and quite obviously there will be weightier matters under consideration than we have bargained for today. At that time we can discuss the matter of your soul."

  "That time will never come," Watkins said.

  "Of course not," the gray man said.

  ***

  You have no doubt sometimes seen buttoned-up, sinister-looking houses on decaying small-town streets, and wondered who lived there, and what might go on behind the locked shutters. Most of these houses, as it happens, shelter nothing more than pitiable daft recluses; but one out of fifty or so is the lair of a witch. In Rumford's Mill, on Donley Street, there is such a house. It is difficult to say which of the classifications applies to its owner. Fred Watkins is certainly reclusive enough, and eccentric to a marked degree, and he is probably just what he seems to be, an odd old man who dislikes the society of people. His house has become truly ruinous, but he remains adamant in his refusal to undertake that slightest maintenance of it, despite the fact that he is, as everyone in town knows, very rich.

  He is also very old, although no one is sure just how old. His contemporaries are all dead now, and there are some unaccountable hiatuses in the vital statistics books in the courthouse. He is unusually well preserved for a man of his years, and this is sometimes commented upon by the few citizens who occasionally catch sight of him.

  His wife is seen even less often than he is, but she also is reported to carry her years well. A vague story is sometimes brought up when the Watkinses are discussed, something half-remembered from conversations of the parents of the parties to the discussion, about how Mrs. Watkins had been a wild one when she was young, and once ran off with a traveling salesman, but he abandoned her or something, and she came home to Watkins.

  They are, in any case, quiet, unobtrusive people, and important taxpayers (Watkins, over the years, bought up all the land within a half- mile of his house), and no one would dream of disturbing them, least of all the city fathers. They are peculiar old folks, but they live their peculiar lives very quietly, disturbing no one and making every effort to ensure that no one disturbs them. They are said to be very fond of their cat.

  The Pilgrimage of Clifford M.

  (The Magazine of Fantasy & S.F., May 1984)

  A number of colleagues have suggested that my paper, "The Case of Clifford M.," might well be of interest to the general public if it were recast in language less technical than that of the original. What follows is an attempt to accomplish such a revision. I have expanded the paper in one respect, by giving a brief summary of biological information that did not have to be set out
for the original audience, and pruned it in others, chiefly by omitting graphs and tables and conclusions that are of interest only to the specialist.

  For an understanding of the case of Clifford M., it is necessary, first of all, to be aware of the natural processes involved in the reproduction of these creatures. There is a widespread belief that vampires create others of their kind by forcing a human being to ingest vampire blood, thus ensuring that after the human has died of the vampire's leeching, he will rise again as a vampire. Such a belief is sheer superstition. Those who die of a vampire's depredations are permanently dead, and, in any case, vampires are mammals — of a sort — and they are born as other mammals are born. With, of course, certain differences.

  Vampires bring forth young at intervals of approximately two centuries, and the young are born in litters numbering from eight to twelve. The female has ten breasts, and if the litter numbers more than ten, those pups who lose in the struggle to obtain one of the dugs must perish. If you are at all acquainted with the canonical literature, you will recall that no one has ever seen an adult vampire without clothing. The reason is that since vampires customarily masquerade as human beings, the female vampire's extra breasts (as well as certain oddities of the male genitalia) must be kept hidden. In recent years there have appeared some popular apocrypha in which vampires disport sexually with human beings in a more or less normal manner. Such connections are of course quite impossible, and writings describing them are pure works of the imagination.

  The gestation period of the vampire has not been fixed with accuracy, but it is almost certainly a very long one — possibly as much as a decade. The young are very tiny at birth, weighing, as a rule, no more than half a pound, and they bear little resemblance to the adult creature. They resemble, as a matter of fact, tadpoles with rudimentary limbs, or perhaps fetuses. (There is a theory, with a certain amount of evidence to sustain it, that the remote ancestors of vampires were marsupials.) The most noticeable feature of these vampire pups is their teeth. They are born fully dentate, and at first glance a newborn pup appears to be all mouth. After they are born they wriggle to a teat and attach themselves to it by means of those extraordinary teeth, and there they remain for a period of two years or more, during which time the dam is nourished by human blood carried to her by one of the males, which may or may not be the sire of the litter. This nourishment is fed her by the same method that birds use to feed their young, a procedure that requires a strong stomach to contemplate. It is worth noting that through out the time she is suckling the young, the female feeds entirely on human blood, although under ordinary circumstances the vampire requires a human victim for only one feeding out of each dozen or so, and can utilize almost any warm-blooded creature for the remainder of its diet.