I stood there for a full two minutes not even daring to think. Then I walked downtown toward Twentieth, and then uptown to Twenty-first. Then I did it again. No shop. I wound up without my question answered—what was I going to with this “talent”?
I was talking to Ginny one afternoon about this and that when a human leg, from the knee down, complete and puffy, drifted between us. I recoiled in horror, but Ginny pushed it gently with one hand. It bent under the touch, and started toward the window, which was open a little at the bottom. The leg floated toward the crack and was sucked through like a cloud of cigarette smoke, reforming again on the other side. It bumbled against the pane for a moment and then ballooned away.
“My gosh!” I breathed. “What was that?”
Ginny laughed. “Oh, just one of the Things that’s all ’e time flying around. Did it scare you? I used to be scared, but I saw so many of them that I don’t care any more, so’s they don’t light on me.”
“But what in the name of all that’s disgusting are they?”
“Parts.” Ginny was all childish savoir-faire.
“Parts of what?”
“People, silly. It’s some kind of game, I think. You see, if someone gets hurt and loses something—a finger or an ear or something, why, the ear—the inside part of it, I mean, like me being the inside of the ‘me’ they carried out of here—it goes back to where the person who owned it lived last. Then it goes back to the place before that, and so on. It doesn’t go very fast. Then when something happens to a whole person, the ‘inside’ part comes looking for the rest of itself. It picks up bit after bit—Look!” she put out a filmy forefinger and thumb and nipped a flake of gossamer out of the air.
I leaned over and looked closely; it was a small section of semitransparent human skin, ridged and whorled.
“Somebody must have cut his finger,” said Ginny matter-of-factly, “while he was living in this room. When something happens to um—you see! He’ll be back for it!”
“Good heavens!” I said. “Does this happen to everyone?”
“I dunno. Some people have to stay where they are—like me. But I guess if you haven’t done nothing to deserve bein’ kept in one place, you have to come all around pickin’ up what you lost.”
I’d thought of more pleasant things in my time.
For several days I’d noticed a gray ghost hovering up and down the block. He was always on the street, never inside. He whimpered constantly. He was—or had been—a little inoffensive man of the bowler hat and starched collar type. He paid no attention to me—none of them did, for I was apparently invisible to them. But I saw him so often that pretty soon I realized that I’d miss him if he went away. I decided I’d chat with him the next time I saw him.
I left the house one morning and stood around for a few minutes in front of the brownstone steps. Sure enough, pressing through the flotsam of my new, weird coexistent world, came the slim figure of the wraith I had noticed, his rabbit face screwed up, his eyes deep and sad, and his swallowtail coat and striped waistcoat immaculate. I stepped up behind him and said, “Hi!”
He started violently and would have run away, I’m sure, if he’d known where my voice was coming from.
“Take it easy, pal,” I said. “I won’t hurt you.”
“Who are you?”
“You wouldn’t know if I told you,” I said. “Now stop shivering and tell me about yourself.”
He mopped his ghostly face with a ghostly handkerchief, and then began fumbling nervously with a gold toothpick. “My word,” he said. “No one’s talked to me for years. I’m not quite myself, you see.”
“I see,” I said. “Well, take it easy. I just happen to’ve noticed you wandering around here lately. I got curious. You looking for somebody?”
“Oh, no,” he said. Now that he had a chance to talk about his troubles, he forgot to be afraid of this mysterious voice from nowhere that had accosted him. “I’m looking for my home.”
“Hm-m-m,” I said. “Been looking for a long time?”
“Oh, yes.” His nose twitched. “I left for work one morning a long time ago, and when I got off the ferry at Battery Place I stopped for a moment to watch the work on that new-fangled elevated railroad they were building down there. All of a sudden there was a loud noise—my goodness! It was terrible—and the next thing I knew I was standing back from the curb and looking at a man who looked just like me! A girder had fallen, and—my word!” He mopped his face again. “Since then I have been looking and looking. I can’t seem to find anyone who knows where I might have lived, and I don’t understand all the things I see floating around me, and I never thought I’d see the day when grass would grow on lower Broadway—oh, it’s terrible.” He began to cry.
I felt sorry for him. I could easily see what had happened. The shock was so great that even his ghost had amnesia! Poor little egg—until he was whole, he could find no rest. The thing interested me. Would a ghost react to the usual cures for amnesia? If so, then what would happen to him?
“You say you got off a ferryboat?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must have lived on the Island … Staten Island, over there across the bay!”
“You really think so?” He stared through me, puzzled and hopeful.
“Why sure! Say, how’d you like me to take you over there? Maybe we can find your house.”
“Oh, that would be splendid! But—oh, my, what will my wife say?”
I grinned. “She might want to know where you’ve been. Anyway, she’ll be glad to see you back, I imagine. Come on; let’s get going!”
I gave him a shove in the direction of the subways and strolled along behind him. Once in a while I got a stare from a passer-by for walking with one hand out in front of me and talking into thin air. It didn’t bother me very much. My companion, though, was very self-conscious about it, for the inhabitants of his world screeched and giggled when they saw him doing practically the same thing. Of all the humans, only I was invisible to them, and the little ghost in the bowler hat blushed from embarrassment until I thought he’d burst.
We hopped a subway—it was a new experience for him, I gathered—and went down to South Ferry. The subway system in New York is a very unpleasant place to one gifted as I was. Everything that enjoys lurking in the dark hangs out there, and there is quite a crop of dismembered human remains. After this day I took the bus.
We got a ferry without waiting. The little gray ghost got a real kick out of the trip. He asked me about the ships in the harbor and their flags, and marveled at the dearth of sailing vessels. He tsk, tsked at the Statue of Liberty; the last time he had seen it, he said, was while it still had its original brassy gold color, before it got its patina. By this I placed him in the late ’70s; he must have been looking for his home for over sixty years!
We landed at the Island, and from there I gave him his head. At the top of Fort Hill he suddenly said, “My name is John Quigg. I live at 45 Fourth Avenue!” I’ve never seen anyone quite so delighted as he was by the discovery. And from then on it was easy. He turned left again, straight down for two blocks and again right. I noticed—he didn’t—that the street was marked “Winter Avenue.” I remembered vaguely that the streets in this section had been numbered years ago.
He trotted briskly up the hill and then suddenly stopped and turned vaguely. “I say, are you still with me?”
“Still here,” I said.
“I’m all right now. I can’t tell you much how much I appreciate this. Is there anything I could do for you?”
I considered. “Hardly. We’re of different times, you know. Things change.”
He looked, a little pathetically, at the new apartment house on the corner and nodded. “I think I know what happened to me,” he said softly. “But I guess it’s all right.… I made a will, and the kids were grown.” He sighed. “But if it hadn’t been for you I’d still be wandering around Manhattan. Let’s see—ah; come with me!”
He suddenly br
oke into a run. I followed as quickly as I could. Almost at the top of the hill was a huge old shingled house, with a silly cupola and a complete lack of paint. It was dirty and it was tumble-down, and at the sight of it the little fellow’s face twisted sadly. He gulped and turned through a gap in the hedge and down beside the house. Casting about in the long grass, he spotted a boulder sunk deep into the turf.
“This is it,” he said. “Just you dig under that. There is no mention of it in my will, except a small fund to keep paying the box rent. Yes, a safety-deposit box, and the key and an authority are under that stone. I hid it”—he giggled—“from my wife one night, and never did get a chance to tell her. You can have whatever’s any good to you.” He turned to the house, squared his shoulders, and marched in the side door, which banged open for him in a convenient gust of wind. I listened for a moment and then smiled at the tirade that burst forth. Old Quigg was catching real hell from his wife, who’d sat waiting for over sixty years for him! It was a bitter stream of invective, but—well, she must have loved him. She couldn’t leave the place until she was complete, if Ginny’s theory was correct, and she wasn’t really complete until her husband came home! It tickled me. They’d be all right now!
I found an old pinchbar in the drive and attacked the ground under the stone. It took quite a while and made my hands bleed, but after a while I pried the stone up and was able to scrabble around under it. Sure enough, there was an oiled silk pouch under there. I caught it up and carefully unwrapped the strings around it. Inside was a key and a letter addressed to a New York bank, designating only “Bearer” and authorizing the use of the key. I laughed aloud. Little old meek and mild John Quigg, I’d bet, had set aside some “mad money.” With a layout like that, a man could take a powder without leaving a single sign. The son-of-a-gun! I would never know just what it was he had up his sleeve, but I’ll bet there was a woman in the case. Even fixed up with his will! Ah, well—I should kick!
It didn’t take me long to get over to the bank. I had a little trouble getting into the vaults, because it took quite a while to look up the box in the old records. But I finally cleared the red tape, and found myself the proud possessor of just under eight thousand bucks in small bills—and not a yellowback among ’em!
Well, from then on I was pretty well set. What did I do? Well, first I bought clothes, and then, I started out to cut ice for myself. I clubbed around a bit and got to know a lot of people, and the more I knew the more I realized what a lot of superstitious dopes they were. I couldn’t blame anyone for skirting a ladder under which crouched a genuine basilisk, of course, but what the heck—not one in a thousand have beasts under them! Anyway, my question was answered. I dropped two grand on an elegant office with drapes and dim indirect lighting, and I got me a phone installed and a little quiet sign on the door—Psychic Consultant. And, boy, I did all right.
My customers were mostly upper crust, because I came high. It was generally no trouble to get contact with people’s dead relatives, which was usually what they wanted. Most ghosts are crazy to get in contact with this world anyway. That’s one of the reasons that almost anyone can become a medium of sorts if he tries hard enough; Lord knows that it doesn’t take much to contact the average ghost. Some, of course, were not available. If a man leads a pretty square life, and kicks off leaving no loose ends, he gets clear. I never did find out where these clear spirits went to. All I knew was that they weren’t to be contacted. But the vast majority of people have to go back and tie up those loose ends after they die—righting a little wrong here, helping someone they’ve hindered, cleaning up a bit of dirty work. That’s where luck itself comes from, I do believe. You don’t get something for nothing.
If you get a nice break, it’s been arranged that way by someone who did you dirt in the past, or someone who did wrong to your father or your grandfather or your great-uncle Julius. Everything evens up in the long run, and until it does, some poor damned soul is wandering around the earth trying to do something about it. Half of humanity is walking around crabbing about its tough breaks. If you and you and you only knew what dozens of powers were begging for the chance to help you if you’ll let them! And if you let them, you’ll help clear up the mess they’ve made of their lives here, and free them to go wherever it is they go when they’ve cleaned up. Next time you’re in a jam, go away somewhere by yourself and open your mind to these folks. They’ll cut in and guide you all right, if you can drop your smugness and mistaken confidence in your own judgment.
I had a couple of ghostly stooges to run errands for me. One of them, an ex-murderer by the name of One-Eye Rachuba, was the fastest spook I ever saw, when it came to locating a wanted ancestor; and then there was Professor Grafe, a frog-faced teacher of social science who’d embezzled from a charity fund and fallen into the Hudson trying to make a getaway. He could trace the most devious genealogies in mere seconds, deduce the most likely whereabouts of the ghost of a missing relative. The pair of them were all the office force I could use, and although every time they helped out one of my clients they came closer to freedom themselves, they were both so entangled with their own sloppy lives that I was sure of their services for years.
But do you think I’d be satisfied to stay where I was making money hand over fist without really working for it? Oh, no. Not me. No, I had to big-time. I had to brood over the events of the last few months, and I had to get dramatic about that screwball Audrey, who really wasn’t worth my trouble. It wasn’t enough that I’d proven Audrey wrong when she said I’d never amount to anything. And I wasn’t happy when I thought about the gang. I had to show them up.
I even remembered what the little man in the Shottle Bop had said to me about using my “talent” for bragging or for revenge. I figured I had the edge on everyone, everything. Cocky, I was. Why, I could send one of my ghostly stooges out any time and find out exactly what anyone had been doing three hours ago come Michaelmas. With the shade of the professor at my shoulder, I could backtrack on any far-fetched statement and give immediate and logical reasons for backtracking. No one had anything on me, and I could out-talk, out-maneuver, and out-smart anyone on earth. I was really quite a fellow. I began to think, “What’s the use of my doing as well as this when the gang on the West Side don’t know anything about it?” and “Man, would that half-wit Happy Sam burn up if he saw me drifting down Broadway in my new six-thousand-dollar roadster!” and “To think I used to waste my time and tears on a dope like Audrey!” In other words, I was tripping up on an inferiority complex. I acted like a veridam fool, which I was. I went over to the West Side.
It was a chilly, late winter night. I’d taken a lot of trouble to dress myself and my car so we’d be bright and shining and would knock some eyes out. Pity I couldn’t brighten my brains up a little.
I drove up in front of Casey’s pool room, being careful to do it too fast, and concentrating on shrieks from tires and a shuddering twenty-four-cylinder roar from the engine before I cut the switch. I didn’t hurry to get out of the car, either. Just leaned back and lit a fifty-cent cigar, and then tipped my hat over one ear and touched the horn button, causing it to play “Tuxedo Junction” for forty-eight seconds. Then I looked over toward the pool hall.
Well, for a minute I thought that I shouldn’t have come, if that was the effect my return to the fold was going to have. And from then on I forgot about everything except how to get out of there.
There were two figures slouched in the glowing doorway of the pool room. It was up a small side street, so short that the city had depended on the place, an old institution, to supply the street lighting. Looking carefully, I made out one of the silhouetted figures as Happy Sam, and the other was Fred Bellew. They just looked out at me; they didn’t move; they didn’t say anything; and when I said, “Hiya, small fry—remember me?” I noticed that along the darkened walls flanking the bright doorway were ranked the whole crowd of them—the whole gang. It was a shock; it was a little too casually perfect. I didn’t lik
e it.
“Hi,” said Fred quietly. I knew he wouldn’t like the big-timing. I didn’t expect any of them to like it, of course, but Fred’s dislike sprang from distaste, and the others from resentment, and for the first time I felt a little cheap. I climbed out over the door of the roadster and let them have a gander at my fine feathers.
Sam snorted and said, “Jelly bean!” very clearly. Someone else giggled, and from the darkness beside the building came a high-pitched “Woo-woo!”
I walked up to Sam and grinned at him. I didn’t feel like grinning. “I ain’t seen you in so long I almost forgot what a heel you were,” I said. “How you making?”
“I’m doing all right,” he said, and added offensively, “I’m still working for a living.”
The murmur that ran through the crowd told me that the really smart thing to do was to get back into that shiny new automobile and hoot along out of there. I stayed.
“Wise, huh?” I said weakly.
They’d been drinking, I realized—all of them. I was suddenly in a spot. Sam put his hands in his pockets and looked at me down his nose. He was the only short man that ever could do that to me. After a thick silence he said:
“Better get back to yer crystal balls, phony. We like guys that sweat. We even like guys that have rackets, if they run them because they’re smarter or tougher than the next one. But luck and gab ain’t enough. Scram.”
I looked around helplessly. I was getting what I’d begged for. What had I expected, anyway? Had I thought that these boys would crowd around and shake my hand off for acting this way?
They hardly moved, but they were all around me suddenly. If I couldn’t think of something quickly, I was going to be mobbed. And when those mugs started mobbing a man, they did it up just fine. I drew a deep breath.
“I’m not asking for anything from you, Sam. Nothing; that means advice; see?”
“You’re gettin’ it!” he flared. “You and your seeanses. We heard about you. Hanging up widow-women for fifty bucks a throw to talk to their ‘dear departed’! P-sykik investigator! What a line! Go on; beat it!”
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