The Second Haunts & Horrors MEGAPACK®: 20 Tales by Modern and Classic Authors

by Fritz Leiber

  The worst thing of all was an increasing sense that the Thing that watched was somehow getting closer. The net of evil seemed to be gathering round him; and it was only a question of time how soon it would enfold him. And then what would happen?

  When he went out to bathe before breakfast, he had a narrow escape. He was about to descend the cliff as before with the aid of the rope when he noticed just in time that this had been partly untied, so that when he put his weight on it the knot would run through and he would be sent whirling down to break his bones on the rocks far below. It was with a grim face that Cyril retied the knot before climbing down. But he looked still more grim a moment later, when a mass of rock that had been nicely poised on a ledge fell and missed him by a few inches.

  This time he took care not to go out of his depth; and he kept clear of the overhanging cliffs. But again he thought he caught sight of something peering over a rock at him, which vanished when he looked that way.

  Several times during the day he was haunted by this threatening danger: and the Thing that was biding its time was evidently gathering strength. He had an idea that the final attack was not very far off now. In fact he made up his mind to leave the place next day. But it was waiting for the next day that was to cost him his life.

  The last thing that his notes record seems to have happened during the afternoon of this day. He was sitting in a deck chair, reading a book, when he saw out of the corner of his eye something like a great wing rise above a rock on the left at a little distance. It seemed to stretch itself and then sink down, as if the bird were resting behind the rock. It had just the appearance of a raven’s wing: but no bird of such size was ever seen by human eye. Cyril did not see it quite clearly. He was looking at his book without paying any great attention to it; and he saw the wing indirectly and as it were slightly out of focus. When he looked directly at the rock, there was nothing unusual to be seen.

  He got up and went to the place. No trace of anything like a bird was to be seen; but behind the rock was a cave which opened on a rock platform facing the sea. He remembered having heard that human remains had been found there, and that the cave was supposed to have been a rock shelter in prehistoric days. Then he noticed that in one place the earth seemed to have been disturbed very recently—apparently only a few days before. There was a strong musky smell about the place—quite unlike anything that he had ever smelt before—and again came that strange sense of something that was watching and waiting its chance. The gloom of the cave seemed to be something not merely unnatural but even immoral.

  That is all that we shall ever know of the horror through which Cyril was doomed to pass. He evidently scribbled his note about the cave on his return—and the rest is silence.

  Late in the afternoon of the next day a fisherman passing in his boat noticed something unusual on the rocks below the cliff, and put in to see what it was. There he found all that was left of poor Cyril, horribly mangled and broken. There was not a whole bone in his body; and the mangling could not be accounted for by a fall from the cliff. His clothes were torn into ribbons; and on his chest and back were fearful rents that appeared to have been made by the claws of a gigantic bird of prey. But what bird has feet eight inches across?—and only feet of those dimensions could have made such wounds.

  When they came to examine the house, they found evidence of a mighty struggle. Most of the furniture was overturned, and some of it was smashed to splinters. A bag of flour had been thrown down and burst open; and thus several footprints were recorded. Those of Cyril were easily recognised, for he was wearing boots of peculiar shape: and the other footprints were those of a bird! And the bird’s footprints were eight inches across.

  A LITTLE LIGHT READING, by Robert Reginald

  Originally published in The San Bernardino County Sun, October 31, 1985.

  Jack Colwin picked up the phone. “University Library,” he said, stifling a yawn.

  It’d been a slow Sunday evening on the reference desk, and he was looking forward to nine o’clock.

  “My daughter never came home,” came the tinny voice. “She’s got a cubicle on the fourth floor near the psych books. Can you check it for me?”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” said Jack. “We don’t have a paging system, and haven’t got the staff to search the library. If this is an emergency, please call the campus police.” Gad, he could recite the mantra in his sleep—probably did on occasion.

  “Please, she should have been home over an hour ago. Last night she told me someone’d been snooping around her cubicle, and I’m worried. She’s twenty, with dark hair, red top, and a short red skirt.”

  God save us from earnest mothers, thought Jack, and their equally flaky daughters. She’s probably up there studying the occult books in BF with her boyfriend. Be nice, Jack, be nice: maybe she’s pretty.

  “Tell ya what, ma’am,” he said. “The campus police’ll be here in a few minutes to help us close, and I’ll mention it to them. OK?”

  The lights were already being dimmed to warn patrons of closing time when Jack headed towards the Circulation Desk. Officer Barrin was just coming through the main entrance.

  “’Lo, Noel,” Jack said, and then mentioned the girl. Barrin promised to watch out for her, and headed up the elevator.

  The usual gaggle of bleary-eyed students straggled out in ones and twos, and at nine P.M. sharp the doors were locked and Jack sent the Circ staff home. Five minutes later he began to get restless. Ten minutes later he was worried. At fifteen after, when Barrin still hadn’t shown, he dialed 5-911.

  “Campus Police.”

  “Jack Colwin in the Library. Officer Barrin went upstairs half an hour ago to clear the floors, and hasn’t returned. Can you page him?”

  A pause. “Sorry, there’s no answer.” The dispatcher tried again. “That’s funny, his signal doesn’t even register. Maybe I’d better send Jameson over.”

  A few minutes later Werner Jameson came rushing in. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Barrin hasn’t come down, and he’s usually pretty prompt. Why don’t we search the floors together?” Jameson agreed.

  The third floor was empty of everything except books and trash, and the strange, mechanical breathing of the ventilators going whoosh, whoosh, whoosh over the stacks. They met at the elevators.

  “Not a sign of anyone,” Jameson said. “Let’s try Four.”

  The fourth floor was dark and quiet, the lights out, the air conditioners silent. Every fifteen feet the dim glow of an emergency bulb provided enough contrast to scatter heavy shadows randomly among the shelves.

  “Who’s playing games here?” asked Jameson. He pulled his revolver.

  Jack hesitated, and said: “Do you want me to turn the lights on again?”

  “No, stay here. You take the right side of the floor. I’ll take the left.”

  Jameson moved through the maze of literature stacks, taking the main aisle between “P” and “B,” while Colwin started through the art books, looking both ways down each cross aisle. Suddenly he saw Jameson pause.

  “What’s that?” the officer asked, as he pivoted, moving quickly towards the cubicles on the east side. Jack started to follow him.

  Jameson was just reaching down to pick a small object off the floor when Colwin—an aisle away—noticed something very odd. Spotlighted in the glow of an emergency light was a large leather volume with bright metal clasps; it was stuffed onto the top shelf of the occult section, just above the policeman, and rocking back and forth, as if unbalanced.

  Jack was about to say something when it suddenly sprang into the aisle, opened wide, and grabbed the officer by his head, tipping him over on his side. Then, ever so methodically, ever so precisely, with obvious pleasure and great relish, it calmly proceeded to eat Werner Jameson inch by glorious inch, crunching and crackling and crooning over the somew
hat pudgy, now prematurely retired cop, leaving only the leather shoes to stand side by side with the other two pair already lining the aisle.

  Jack watched these proceedings as a mouse watches a snake, bewitched, bewildered, and between. His terror gave way to flight, however, when the tome swiveled on its base, grew a pair of stilt eyes and a set of millipede legs, and headed down the aisle toward him. In a reflected flash of light he could read the title, The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, and suddenly realized that the book had grown perceptively larger. The lights came on, the whoosh-whoosh of the air conditioner began chugging in time to his panic-driven breath, as he ran down the seemingly endless aisles, and headed for the elevators, desperately jabbing his finger at the down button. The doors slid open, he fell against the back of the cage, then watched in horror as the gigantic volume ran lightly toward him. His vision was cut short by the doors shutting in front of him.

  Gad, he couldn’t help but think, as he pushed the first-floor button, what I wouldn’t give now for a little light reading!

  He was actually chuckling at his own witticism when the doors sprang wide, and the massive tome gaped open, revealing a wicked set of teeth lining each side of the hand-tooled binding, and a creamy gullet filled with myriad incantational scribblings.

  This is not one of those stories with a happy ending.

  SECOND NIGHT OUT, by Frank Belknap Long

  Also known as “The Black, Dead Thing”

  Originally published in Weird Tales, October 1933.

  It was past midnight when I left my stateroom. The upper promenade deck was entirely deserted and thin wisps of fog hovered about the deck chairs and curled and uncurled about the gleaming rails. There was no air stirring. The ship moved forward sluggishly through a quiet, fog-enshrouded sea.

  But I did not object to the fog. I leaned against the rail and inhaled the damp, murky air with a positive greediness. The almost unendurable nausea, the pervasive physical and mental misery had departed, leaving me serene and at peace. I was again capable of experiencing sensuous delight, and the aroma of the brine was not to be exchanged for pearls and rubies. I had paid in exorbitant coinage for what I was about to enjoy—for the five brief days of freedom and exploration in glamorous, sea-splendid Havana which I had been promised by an enterprising and, I hoped, reasonably honest tourist agent. I am in all respects the antithesis of a wealthy man, and I had drawn so heavily upon my bank balance to satisfy the greedy demands of The Loriland Tours, Inc., that I had been compelled to renounce such really indispensable amenities as after-dinner cigars and ocean-privileged sherry and chartreuse.

  But I was enormously content. I paced the deck and inhaled the moist, pungent air. For thirty hours I had been confined to my cabin with a sea illness more debilitating than bubonic plague or malignant sepsis, but having at length managed to squirm from beneath its iron heel I was free to enjoy my prospects. They were enviable and glorious. Five days in Cuba, with the privilege of driving up and down the sun-drenched Malecon in a flamboyantly upholstered limousine, and an opportunity to feast my discerning gaze on the pink walls of the Cabanas and the Columbus Cathedral and La Fuerza, the great storehouse of the Indies. Opportunity, also, to visit sunlit patios, and saunter by iron-barred rejas, and to sip refrescos by moonlight in open-air cafes, and to acquire, incidentally, a Spanish contempt for Big Business and the Strenuous Life.

  Then on to Haiti, dark and magical, and the Virgin Islands, and the quaint, incredible Old World harbor of Charlotte Amalie, with its chimneyless, red-roofed houses rising in tiers to the quiet stars; the natural Sargasso, the inevitable last port of call for rainbow fishes, diving boys and old ships with sun-bleached funnels and incurably drunken skippers. A flaming opal set in an amphitheater of malachite—its allure blazed forth through the gray fog and dispelled my northern spleen. I leaned against the rail and dreamed also of Martinique, which I would see in a few days. And then, suddenly, a dizziness came upon me. The ancient and terrible malady had returned to plague me.

  Seasickness, unlike all other major afflictions, is a disease of the individual. No two people are ever afflicted with precisely the same symptoms. The manifestations range from a slight malaise to a devastating impairment of all one’s faculties. I was afflicted with the gravest symptoms imaginable. Choking and gasping, I left the rail and sank helplessly down into one of the three remaining deck chairs.

  Why the steward had permitted the chairs to remain on deck was a mystery I couldn’t fathom. He had obviously shirked a duty, for passengers did not habitually visit the promenade deck in the small hours, and foggy weather plays havoc with the wicker-work of steamer chairs. But I was too grateful for the benefits which his negligence had conferred upon me to be excessively critical. I lay sprawled at full length, grimacing and gasping and trying fervently to assure myself that I wasn’t nearly as sick as I felt. And then, all at once, I became aware of an additional source of discomfiture.

  The chair exuded an unwholesome odor. It was unmistakable. As I turned about, as my cheek came to rest against the damp varnished wood, my nostrils were assailed by an acrid and alien odor of a vehement, cloying potency. It was at once stimulating and indescribably repellent. In a measure, it assuaged my physical unease, but it also filled me with the most overpowering revulsion, with a sudden, hysterical and almost frenzied distaste.

  I tried to rise from the chair, but the strength was gone from my limbs. An intangible presence seemed to rest upon me and weigh me down. And then the bottom seemed to drop out of everything. I am not being facetious. Something of the sort actually occurred. The base of the sane, familiar world vanished, was swallowed up. I sank down. Limitless gulfs seemed open beneath me, and I was immersed, lost in a gray void. The ship, however, did not vanish. The ship, the deck, the chair continued to support me, and yet, despite the retention of these outward symbols of reality, I was afloat in an unfathomable void. I had the illusion of falling, of sinking helplessly down through an eternity of space. It was as though the chair which supported me had passed into another dimension without ceasing to leave the familiar world—as though it floated simultaneously both in our three-dimensional world and in another world of alien, unknown dimensions.

  I became aware of strange shapes and shadows all about me. I gazed through illimitable dark gulfs at continents and islands, lagoons, atolls, vast gray waterspouts. I sank down into the great deep. I was immersed in dark slime. The boundaries of sense were dissolved away, and the breath of an active corruption blew through me, gnawing at my vitals and filling me with extravagant torment. I was alone in the great deep. And the shapes that accompanied me in my utter abysmal isolation were shriveled and black and dead, and they cavorted deliriously with little monkey-heads with streaming, sea-drenched viscera and putrid, pupil-less eyes.

  And then, slowly, the unclean vision dissolved. I was back again in my chair and the fog was as dense as ever, and the ship moved forward steadily through the quiet sea. But the odor was still present—acrid, overpowering, revolting. I leapt from the chair, in profound alarm.… I experienced a sense of having emerged from the bowels of some stupendous and unearthly encroachment, of having in a single instant exhausted the resources of earth’s malignity, and drawn upon untapped and intolerable reserves.

  I got indoors somehow, into the warm and steamy interior of the upper saloon, and waited, gasping, for the deck steward to come to me. I had pressed a small button labeled “Deck Steward” in the wainscoting adjoining the central stairway, and I frantically hoped that he would arrive before it was too late, before the odor outside percolated into the vast, deserted saloon.

  The steward was a daytime official, and it was a cardinal crime to fetch him from his berth at one in the morning. But I had to have someone to talk to, and as the steward was responsible for the chairs I naturally thought of him as the logical target for my interrogations. He would know. He would be able to expl
ain. The odor would not be unfamiliar to him. He would be able to explain about the chairs…about the chairs…about the chairs… I was growing hysterical and confused.

  I wiped the perspiration from my forehead with the back of my hand, and waited with relief for the steward to approach. He had come suddenly into view above the top of the central stairway, and he seemed to advance toward me through a blue mist.

  He was extremely solicitous, extremely courteous. He bent above me and laid his hand concernedly upon my arm. “Yes, sir. What can I do for you, sir? A bit under the weather, perhaps. What can I do?”

  Do? Do? It was horribly confusing. I could only stammer: “The chairs, steward. On the deck. Three chairs. Why did you leave them there? Why didn’t you take them inside?”

  It wasn’t what I had intended asking him. I had intended questioning him about the odor. But the strain, the shock, had confused me. The first thought that came into my mind on seeing the steward standing above me, so solicitous and concerned, was that he was a hypocrite and a scoundrel. He pretended to be concerned about me and yet out of sheer perversity he had prepared the snare which had reduced me to a pitiful and helpless wreck. He had left the chairs on deck deliberately, with a cruel and crafty malice, knowing all the time, no doubt, that something would occupy them.

  But I wasn’t prepared for the almost instant change in the man’s demeanor. It was ghastly. Befuddled as I had become I could perceive at once that I had done him a grave, a terrible injustice. He hadn’t known. All the blood drained out of his cheeks and his mouth fell open. He stood immobile before me, completely inarticulate, and for an instant I thought he was about to collapse, to sink helplessly down upon the floor.

  “You saw—chairs?” he gasped at last.