by Fritz Leiber
Not wishes, she realised with dreadful clarity, not wishes, but dreams. The solitary woman stood, too terrified to move, every limb trembled and she was without strength. She knew that this dream would have no waking end.
The sound was like that of a rifle shot as the ice began to crack.
THERE IS A REAPER…, by Charles V. De Vet
Originally pubished in Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy, August 1953.
The amber brown of the liquor disguised the poison it held, and I watched with a smile on my lips as he drank it. There was no pity in my heart for him. He was a jackal in the jungle of life, and I…I was one of the carnivores. It is the lot of the jackals of life to be devoured by the carnivore.
Suddenly the contented look on his face froze into a startled stillness. I knew he was feeling the first savage twinge of the agony that was to come. He turned his head and looked at me, and I saw suddenly that he knew what I had done.
“You murderer!” he cursed me, and then his body arched in the middle and his voice choked off deep in his throat.
For a short minute he sat, tense, his body stiffened by the agony that rode it—unable to move a muscle. I watched the torment in his eyes build up to a crescendo of pain, until the suffering became so great that it filmed his eyes, and I knew that, though he still stared directly at me, he no longer saw me.
Then, as suddenly as the spasm had come, the starch went out of his body and his back slid slowly down the chair edge. He landed heavily with his head resting limply against the seat of the chair. His right leg doubled up in a kind of jerk, before he was still.
I knew the time had come. “Where are you?” I asked.
This moment had cost me sixty thousand dollars.
Three weeks ago the best doctors in the state had given me a month to live. And with seven million dollars in the bank I couldn’t buy a minute more.
I accepted the doctors’ decision philosophically, like the gambler that I am. But I had a plan: One which necessity had never forced me to use until now. Several years before I had read an article about the medicine men of a certain tribe of aborigines living in the jungles at the source of the Amazon River. They had discovered a process in which the juice of a certain bush—known only to them—could be used to poison a man. Anyone subjected to this poison died, but for a few minutes after the life left his body the medicine men could still converse with him. The subject, though ostensibly and actually dead, answered the medicine men’s every question. This was their primitive, though reportedly effective method of catching glimpses of what lay in the world of death.
I had conceived my idea at the time I read the article, but I had never had the need to use it—until the doctors gave me a month to live. Then I spent my sixty thousand dollars, and three weeks later I held in my hands a small bottle of the witch doctors’ fluid.
The next step was to secure my victim—my collaborator, I preferred to call him.
The man I chose was a nobody. A homeless, friendless non-entity, picked up off the street. He had once been an educated man. But now he was only a bum, and when he died he’d never be missed. A perfect man for my experiment.
I’m a rich man because I have a system. The system is simple: I never make a move until I know exactly where that move will lead me. My field of operations is the stock market. I spend money unstintingly to secure the information I need before I take each step. I hire the best investigators, bribe employees and persons in position to give me the information I want, and only when I am as certain as humanly possible that I cannot be wrong do I move. And the system never fails. Seven million dollars in the bank is proof of that.
Now, knowing that I could not live, I intended to make the system work for me one last time before I died. I’m a firm believer in the adage that any situation can be whipped, given prior knowledge of its coming—and, of course, its attendant circumstances.
* * * *
For a moment he did not answer and I began to fear that my experiment had failed. “Where are you?” I repeated, louder and sharper this time.
The small muscles about his eyes puckered with an unnormal tension while the rest of his face held its death frost. Slowly, slowly, unnaturally—as though energized by some hyper-rational power—his lips and tongue moved. The words he spoke were clear. “I am in a…a…tunnel,” he said. “It is lighted, dimly, but there is nothing for me to see.” Blue veins showed through the flesh of his cheeks like watermarks on translucent paper.
He paused and I urged, “Go on.”
“I am alone,” he said. “The realities I knew no longer exist, and I am damp and cold. All about me is a sense of gloom and dejection. It is an apprehension—an emanation—so deep and real as to be almost a tangible thing. The walls to either side of me seem to be formed, not of substance, but rather of the soundless cries of melancholy of spirits I cannot see.
“I am waiting, waiting in the gloom for something which will come to me. That need to wait is an innate part of my being and I have no thought of questioning it.” His voice died again.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked.
“I do not know,” he said, his voice dreary with the despair of centuries of hopelessness. “I only know that I must wait—that compulsion is greater than my strength to combat.”
The tone of his voice changed slightly. “The tunnel about me is widening and now the walls have receded into invisibility. The tunnel has become a plain, but the plain is as desolate, as forlorn and dreary as was the tunnel, and still I stand and wait. How long must this go on?”
He fell silent again, and I was about to prompt him with another question—I could not afford to let the time run out in long silences—but abruptly the muscles about his eyes tightened and subtly a new aspect replaced their hopeless dejection. Now they expressed a black, bottomless terror. For a moment I marveled that so small a portion of a facial anatomy could express such horror.
“There is something coming toward me,” he said. “A—beast—of brutish foulness! Beast is too inadequate a term to describe it, but I know no words to tell its form. It is an intangible and evasive—thing—but very real. And it is coming closer! It has no organs of sight as I know them, but I feel that it can see me. Or rather that it is aware of me with a sense sharper than vision itself. It is very near now. Oh God, the malevolence, the hate—the potentiality of awful, fearsome destructiveness that is its very essence! And still I cannot move!”
The expression of terrified anticipation, centered in his eyes, lessened slightly, and was replaced, instantly, by its former deep, deep despair. “I am no longer afraid,” he said.
“Why?” I interjected. “Why?” I was impatient to learn all that I could before the end came.
“Because…” He paused. “Because it holds no threat for me. Somehow, someday, I understand—I know—that it too is seeking that for which I wait.”
“What is it doing now?” I asked.
“It has stopped beside me and we stand together, gazing across the stark, empty plain. Now a second awful entity, with the same leashed virulence about it, moves up and stands at my other side. We all three wait, myself with a dark fear of this dismal universe, my unnatural companions with patient, malicious menace.
“Bits of…” He faltered. “Of…I can name it only aura, go out from the beasts like an acid stream, and touch me, and the hate, and the venom chill my body like a wave of intense cold.
“Now there are others of the awful breed behind me. We stand, waiting, waiting for that which will come. What it is I do not know.”
I could see the pallor of death creeping steadily into the last corners of his lips, and I knew that the end was not far away. Suddenly a black frustration built up within me. “What are you waiting for?” I screamed, the tenseness, and the importance of this moment forcing me to lose the iron self-control
upon which I have always prided myself. I knew that the answer held the secret of what I must know. If I could learn that, my experiment would not be in vain, and I could make whatever preparations were necessary for my own death. I had to know that answer.
“Think! Think!” I pleaded. “What are you waiting for?”
“I do not know!” The dreary despair in his eyes, sightless as they met mine, chilled me with a coldness that I felt in the marrow of my being. “I do not know,” he repeated. “I… Yes, I do know!”
Abruptly the plasmatic film cleared from his eyes and I knew that for the first time, since the poison struck, he was seeing me, clearly. I sensed that this was the last moment before he left—for good. It had to be now!
“Tell me. I command you,” I cried. “What are you waiting for?”
His voice was quiet as he murmured, softly, implacably, before he was gone.
“We are waiting,” he said, “for you.”
THE NEW GODS OF THE LOST CHILDREN, by Jason Andrew
Originally published in Gods and Monsters, April 2006.
Elizabeth hid under the blanket in the shelter, trying not to draw attention to herself. The cot hurt her back, but if she moved, the children might notice and quit telling the stories.
“Tell us again about the Blue Lady, Ruthie,” the little girl named Lisa asked.
Elizabeth made a mental note to privately interview Ruthie in the morning. She was a gregarious and intelligent ten-year old mulatto girl who had come to serve as the children’s defacto shaman.
“She lives far away in the water, but she can hear her name, her secret name,” Ruthie said. “She can only help you if you call her. If you and your friends are on a corner on a street when a car comes shooting bullets, you can call her true name, and all the kids will be safe. Even if bullets are flying, the Blue Lady makes them fall on the ground. But if you call her without need, then Mr. Bang comes.”
Elizabeth was careful to log the gender and the race of each of the children. The stories seemed to come from a myriad of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. It was fascinating to attempt to trace the origins of the new mythology.
“I don’t believe you,” Laney, a seven-year-old African American girl from Chicago, retorted.
“I’ve seen her,” whispered Andy, a five-year-old Caucasian boy from Phoenix.
A chorus of voices murmured agreement. “The Blue Lady kept my mom from leaving the shelter. She cast out the demon in her and now she don’t smoke no crack,” Maria, a nine-year old Hispanic girl from an unknown location, revealed.
The children, Elizabeth knew, believed that demons inhabited people during times of stress and forced them commit unspeakable actions. It was an interesting form of cognitive dissonance that allowed children to hate the actions, but still love the adults in their lives. Elizabeth decided to put Maria on the short list for family interviews.
It was sometimes difficult for Elizabeth to match voices with faces, but she hoped that the new digital recorder would capture the moment with enough clarity that she could memorize them. She was suddenly very glad that Doctor Sloniker had insisted upon altering the waivers for the shelter, even if they had been less than honest with the parents about what they were studying.
The children’s barracks in the shelter always had an adult present to ward off sexual predators. Twice a month, Elizabeth slept overnight with the children as part of her work for her master’s degree. She had always been a light sleeper, even as a child in a house crammed with siblings. When their quite whispers first stirred her, Elizabeth listened to their stories while lying upon the uncomfortable cot convinced that it was a dream. It wasn’t until she turned over and the children rushed to their beds that Elizabeth realized she had managed to peek through a rare window into a secret life.
“What about Mr. Bang?” Laney asked.
“He’s a tall black man with a long black coat and a hoodie. His eyes are pure white. They give him away to the rich people, so he wears dark sunglasses, even at night,” Ruthie explained. “He can kill anyone with just his long, bony finger. He shoots bullets. And right before he’s about to kill, you can see doves fly. Even Satan fears him. Especially now that he’s weak. That’s why he hates Seattle.”
“Why does he hate Seattle?” Andy asked.
“Satan was driving around the wharf looking for places to feed his demons when he saw a girl alone. He went after her, but she knew the Blue Lady’s true name,” said Ruthie. “The Blue Lady came and held up her hand and the water washed over Satan. When the water touched him, his horns appeared and the water turned to blood. He’s weak now and can’t hide. That’s why Mr. Bang runs things. He lives in the old ’fridgerators on the side of the road. Can’t escape him here or in Hell.”
There were two rows of old metal-framed bunk-beds in the center of the room surrounded by dozens of cheap plywood dressers colorfully decorated with happy cowboys and cheerful rodeo clowns. It was obvious to Elizabeth that the room had been designed by committee in an attempt to instill a sense of home and security to the children.
It was too sterile to work, Elizabeth decided. They lived in a chaotic world of change where little was certain. She reminded herself to include the unspoken backpack rule in her thesis. Each child had a backpack that contained his or her entire world. All clothing and toys had to fit into a single pack. Parents often pulled them from the shelter, seemingly at whim, and they never knew when they might return. If by chance one of them did receive something new, they had to get rid of something old. Like a tortoise, they carried their world on their back. The stories were something the children could take anywhere.
The gray walls of the kids’ room were covered with crude pictures sketched in donated crayons. Now that Elizabeth had heard the stories, she could see the Blue Lady protecting children and Mr. Bang killing the saints and the sinners. She found herself mentally writing the conclusion of her thesis: The imagination of these children conquered these gray walls.
“Mr. Bang killed my big brother,” Andy said suddenly. Elizabeth concentrated on the new story. Andy rarely spoke of his family. Elizabeth suspected it was not a happy story.
“What happened?” Lisa asked.
“Jeff was working at a gas station to pay rent,” Andy continued. “He wouldn’t sell beer to some kids so they beat him down. Possessed by demons. Mr. Bang came and pointed his finger right to his head.”
The children only spoke of Mr. Bang in reverent, hushed whispers, as though saying his very name might summon him. The next voice that spoke did not belong to a child. “She can hear you, children.”
Adults were not allowed in the child barracks at night. There were too many disturbed sexual predators running around on the streets. Elizabeth pulled back the blanket and flicked on her flashlight to scan the room. The children leapt to their beds and quickly pulled the covers over their faces and pretended to be sleeping. Elizabeth’s folding cot blocked the only entrance to the barracks, and the door to the bathroom was open.
Whatever had occurred, it was obvious that the children would not be telling any new stories that evening. She thought about the stories of these lost children as she drifted to sleep.
* * * *
“I think it’s brilliant. Absolutely brilliant,” Dr. Sloniker said. “If you continue along this course, your thesis will likely be published.”
The luxurious office was quite spacious and located on the corner of the building so the Professor had two large walls of glass overlooking the student quad. The remaining two walls were occupied by two giant, dusty wooden bookshelves that were overflowing with books. In the center of the office, adjacent to the door, stood a large antique wooden desk. Elizabeth sat opposite of her advisor. His reaction to her work had caught her off-guard.
“I just feel uncomfortable. It feels wrong, like I’m invading their pri
vacy.”
Dr. Sloniker was the tenured, assistant chair of the psychology department. His hair was long, gray, and tied back into a respectable ponytail. He wore thick-rimmed brown glasses and sported a goatee to try to seem relevant to his students. “But you’re going to be helping these poor kids. Helping others council them and address their fears. For example, this Mr. Bang character is obviously a modern reincarnation of Death. Note the hood references and the bony fingers. These stories are their way of dealing with death. These poor kids are building a whole mythology to explain an unexplainable world.”
Elizabeth nodded. “I just never imagined that such a place could exist. Not in America. I grew up on a farm in Idaho with five brothers and sisters. I knew things were hard for some, especially in this economy. But I never knew there could be such despair.”
Sloniker inclined his head. “Liz, I know life here in Seattle hasn’t been easy. But if I may, you wouldn’t have come here if you were looking for easy. You wanted to make a difference in the world. That was why I assigned you to that shelter.”
“I appreciate the extra attention you’ve given me, Dr. Sloniker.” Previously, her faculty advisor yawned his way through their student-teacher meetings and made vague recommendations. This was the first meeting to take longer than five minutes and Elizabeth was frankly concerned. “It just feels oddly intimate, like I’m spying on the only bright spot in their lives.”
“Liz, I can’t stress enough how important this work could become. Let’s take just one detail from the stories and examine it a bit. One of the stories mentioned Mr. Bang living in abandoned refrigerators. Doubtless the children have been warned numerous times not to play near abandoned refrigerators and certainly not to play inside them for fear of getting trapped. Obviously, the refrigerators represent a certain amount of fear, but what else could a refrigerator represent to a child?”