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

by Fritz Leiber

  “I am Jason Gibbs,” it asserted. “Mr. Moore, will you kindly ask your friends to step back a little? We will do what we can for you, but my fellow spirits are a trifle shy of strangers.”

  Moore motioned us back. At the same time he shook his head smilingly.

  “That’s not Jason,” be murmured. “A very good imitation, but an imitation, nonetheless. We shan’t get much tonight.”

  “And in that,” retorted the tenor, “you are exactly mistaken! You will get much. In fact you are likely to get more than one of you ever bargained for. You say I’m not Jason Gibbs? Seeing is believing, isn’t it? Shall I show myself?”

  Moore acquiesced smoothly. “Do so, by all means.”

  “I’ll attend to that in a little while. I can read your mind all right, Jimmy Moore! You think I’m Horace talking high. Well, Horace is a very good fellow, and fond of his joke, but I’m Jason Gibbs tonight—and all the time, of course! Like to see something pretty?”

  “Anything at all, Hor—Pardon me—Jason!”

  “Then watch the cabinet.”

  We did. For a minute or two nothing happened.

  Then Roberta cried out: “It’s on fire!”

  “No,” said Moore. “Watch!”

  A strange, tiny flame was running along the edge of the black curtains where they touched the floor.

  When I say “running along,” I do not mean that in the usual sense as applied to fire. It was a tiny, individual flame, violet in color, about an inch and a half high, and as it moved it twirled and spun on its own base in the oddest manner. Reaching the center, where the curtains joined, it floated slowly upward, still twirling, left the cabinet and presently disappeared, apparently through the ceiling. Another flame and another followed it.

  I assured myself that we were watching a very clever and unusual exhibition of fireworks. But I didn’t believe that. I didn’t know exactly what I believed, but I did know that those twirling, violet flames were the first really strange thing I had ever seen in my life. When seven of them had appeared and vanished, Moore spoke—

  “Isn’t that enough—er—Jason? Can’t you do better than that for us?”

  There was silence, while the eighth and last flame twirled upward and vanished. Then that great, rough laugh burst startlingly from Alicia’s lips.

  “Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha! Oh, Jimmy Moore, I should say I can do better! I should say so!”

  And with that the curtains parted suddenly and—it is hard to tell, but it was harder to stand the shock of it—a huge, misshapen, grayish-black hand darted out from between them.

  Behind it, I caught a glimpse of wrist—I couldn’t see any arm. It just leaped out and into existence, as one might say, and to my unspeakable horror laid its gross, gnarled fingers fairly across Roberta Whitingfield’s month and chin.

  I believed it had seized her throat. Half mad with shock, I sprang at the hand, gripping it in both of mine. I felt a kind of cold roughness in my grasp—a rough solidity that melted to nothing even as I touched it. My hands were empty. I caught Roberta, as she swayed backward, whiter than Alicia herself.

  And Moore was reproving—something, in the most everyday manner.

  “Really, Horace, that wasn’t a nice joke at all!” he criticized.

  Easing Roberta into a chair, I sprang savagely at the curtains and swept them aside. Behind there was only the table and what we had seen on it. I had a fleeting impression that the lump of putty was different—that, where it had been a formless lump, it appeared now as if it had been squeezed between giant fingers. Then Moore was pulling me back.

  “Don’t do that, Barbour. We shan’t get anything more, if you interfere like that.”

  “Devil!” it was all I could think of to call him, and it seemed inadequate enough. “You—devil! To play a trick like that on an unsuspecting girl! Bert, darling, come, I’ll take you home; then I’ll come back and settle with these people!”

  “Barbour, I give you my word of honor that I had nothing to do with what just occurred. You brought Miss Whitingfield here of your own volition, and—pardon me—against my wishes. But she assured me she was not of the nervous type—”

  “Nervous!” I repeated, scornfully. “A really nervous woman would have died when that black paw flew out at her!”

  “I’m not hurt, Clayton,” intervened Roberta. “Don’t quarrel with him—please!”

  “You are sensible,” approved Moore. “There is no danger from such manifestations as that hand. Why, I have taken a peep into the cabinet when the power was, strong and seen half a dozen human limbs and parts of limbs lying about—fragmentary impulses, as one might say, of the mediumistic force—”

  But here, with marked decision, Roberta rose.

  “I think we will go home, Clay. I have just discovered that I am of the nervous, screaming sort! Mr. Moore, will you please say goodnight for us to Mrs. Moore when she—when she wakens?”

  He sighed disappointedly.

  “It’s too bad, really! If Jason Gibbs had actually been in control tonight there would have been nothing to shock you. Horace is nothing. Just a secondary, practical-joking phase of Alicia’s own personality.”

  “Come, Roberta.” We started toward the door.

  And then, without a warning flicker, the library lamp went out, leaving the room in impenetrable darkness.

  CHAPTER V

  THE FIFTH PRESENCE.

  The difference between light and the lack of it is the difference between freedom and captivity, and the real reason that we pity a blind man is because he is a prisoner. This is true under normal conditions. Add to darkness dread of the supernatural, and the inevitable sum is panic.

  Till that moment I doubt if Roberta or I had believed the black hand which touched her to be of other than natural origin. Ingrained thought-habit had accused Moore of trickery, even while it condemned the trick as unpleasant.

  That was while the light burned. One instant later we were trapped prisoners of the dark, and instincts centuries old flung off thought-habit like a tissue cloak.

  What had been a quiet, modern room became, in that instant, the devil-haunted jungle of forebears infinitely remote.

  And it didn’t help matters that just then “Horace” elected to be heard again. Alicia visible, Horace had seemed a vocal feat on her part. Alicia unseen, Horace became a discarnate fiend. That he was a fiend, vulgar and incongruous, only made his fiendishness more intolerable.

  “How’s this for a joke?” it inquired sardonically. “I never did like that lamp! Let’s give it away, Jimmy. Tell your young fool friend to take the lamp away with him.”

  Soundlessly, without warning, something hard and slightly warm touched my cheek. I struck out wildly. My fist crashed through glass, there was a great smash and clatter from the floor, and mingled it with shout upon shout of fairly maniacal mirth. Then Moore’s voice, cool but irritated:

  “You’ll have to stop these tricks, Horace. I’m ashamed of you! Breaking a valuable lamp like that. Our guests will believe you a common spirit of poltergeist!”

  “Moore, if you don’t throw on the lights, I’ll kill you for this!”

  My own voice shook with mingled rage and dread. Of course, it might be he who had brought the lamp and held it against my face, but the very senselessness of the trick made it terrible in a queer, unhuman way.

  “Stand still!” he commanded sharply. “Barbour, Miss Whitingfield, you are not children! Nothing will harm you, if you keep quiet. It was your own yielding to anger and fear that brought this crude force into play. Did it actually hit you with the lamp, Barbour?”

  “I hit the lamp, but—”

  “Exactly! Now keep quiet. Horace, may I turn on the lights?”

  “If you do, you’ll be sorry, Jimmy! Call me poltergeist or plain Dutch, the
re’s somebody worse than me here tonight.”

  “What do you mean, Horace?”

  “Oh, somebody that came in along with your scared young friends. He’s a joker, too, but I don’t like him. He wants to get through the gates altogether, and stay through. If he does, a lot of people will be sorry. You say I’m rough, but say, Jimmy, this fellow is worse than rough. He’s smooth! Get me? Too smooth. I’m keeping him back, and you know I’m stronger in the dark.”

  “Very well.” I heard Moore laugh amusedly. His quiet matter-of-courseness should have deleted all terror from the affair. He was carrying on a conversation with a rather silly, rather vulgar man, of whom he was not afraid, but whose vagaries he indulged for reasons of expediency. That was the sound of it.

  But the sense of it—there in the blackness—was such an indescribable horror to me as I cannot convey by words. There was more to this feeling than fear of Horace. I learned what nerves meant that night. If mine had all been on the outside of my skin, crawling, expectant of shock, I could have suffered no more keenly. Coward? Wait to judge that till you learn what the uncomprehended expectancy meant for me.

  “Very well,” laughed Moore. “But don’t break any more lamps, Horace—please! Have some consideration for my pocketbook.”

  “Money! We haven’t any pants-pockets my side of the line,” Horace chuckled. “If I’m to keep the smooth fellow back, you must let me use my strength. Let me have my fun, Jimmy! What’s a lamp or so between pals? And just to keep things interesting, suppose we bring out the big fellow in the closet?”

  I heard a thud from the direction of the cabinet, a low chuckle, and then a huge panting sound. It sounded like an enormous animal. We had a sense of something living and enormous that had suddenly come out of nothing into the room.

  “The hand!” screamed Roberta sharply. “It’s the black-hand thing!”

  I was hideously afraid that she was right. With her own clutching little hands on my arm, I sprang, dragging her with me. I didn’t spring for where I thought Moore was, nor for where I supposed the door might be. There were only two thoughts in my head. One of a monstrous and wholly imaginary black giant; the other, a passionate desire for light.

  By pure chance I brought up against the wall just beside a brass plate inset with two magical, blessed buttons. My fingers found them. Got the wrong button—the right one.

  Flash! And we were out of demon-land and in a commonplace room again.

  Not quite commonplace, though. True, no black, impossible giant inhabited it. The vast panting sound had passed, and though the lamp lay among the splinters of its wrecked shade and my hand was bleeding, a broken lamp and cut hand are possible incidentals of the ordinary.

  But that woman in the chair was not!

  Writhing, shrieking, foaming creatures like that have their place in a hospital—or a sick man’s delirium—but not rightfully in an evening’s entertainment for two unexpectant young people. Bert took one look and buried her face against my vest in an ecstasy of fear.

  Moore was beside his wife, swiftly unclasping the steel manacles that held her, but finding time for a glaring side-glance at me which expressed white-hot and concentrated rage.

  I didn’t understand. Alicia’s previous spasms or seizures, though less violent than this, had been bad enough. Why should Moore eye me like that, when if anyone had a right to be furious it was I?

  “The lights!” moaned Bert against my vest. “You turned on the lights, and it hurt her. I’ve read that somewhere—Oh, Clay, why don’t you do something to help her and make her stop that horrible screaming?”

  Moore heard and turned again, snarling. “You get out of here, Barbour! You’ve done harm enough!”

  “Shan’t I—shan’t we call a doctor?” I stammered.

  He didn’t answer. Released, Alicia had subsided limply, a black heap in the chair, face on knees. The gurgling shrieks had lowered to a series of long, agonizing moans. I thought she was dying, and in a confused way I felt that both Roberta and Moore blamed me.

  The moans, too, had ceased. Was she dead?

  Now Moore was trying to lift his wife out of the chair—and failing, for some reason. Instinctively I pushed Roberta aside and moved to help him.

  And then, at last, that happened for which all the rest had been a prelude—for which my whole life had been a prelude, as I was to learn one day. There came—how can I phrase it?

  It was not a darkness, for I saw. It was not a vacuum, for most certainly I—every one of us—continued to breathe. It was like—you know what happens sometimes in a thunderstorm? There is a hushed moment, when it is as if a mighty, invisible being had drawn in its breath—not breath of air, but of force. If you live in the suburbs and have alternating current, the lights go out—as if the current had been sucked back.

  Static has the upper hand of kinetic. A moment, and kinetic will rebel in a blinding, cradling river of fire from sky to earth. But till then, between earth and clouds there is a tension so terrific that it gives the awful sense of a void.

  That happened in the room where we stood, though the force involved was not the physical one of electricity. There was the hushed moment, the sense of awful tension—of void—of strength sucked back like the current—

  Without knowing how, I became aware that all the life in the room was suddenly, dreadfully centralizing around one of us. That one was Alicia.

  I saw Moore move back from her. He had gone ghastly pale, and he waved his hands queerly. The straining sense of void which was also centralization increased. A numbness crept over me.

  The invisible had drawn in its breath of pure force, and my life was undoubtedly a part of it.

  There came a stirring of the black heap in the chair. Inexplicably, I felt as well as saw it. As if, standing by the wall, I was also in the chair. Roberta shivered. She was out of my sight, standing slightly behind me, but I felt that, too. No two of us there were in physical contact, and yet some strange interfusion of consciousness was linking us more closely than the physical.

  Again Alicia stirred. She cried out inarticulately. The centralization was around her, but not by her will. I felt a surge of resentment that was not mine, but Alicia’s. Then I knew that there were more than four of us present in the room. A fifth was here—invisible, strong, unifying the strength of us all for its own purpose—for a leap across the intangible barriers and into the living world!—

  Numbness was on me, cold dread, and a sense of some danger peculiarly personal to myself.

  It was coming—now—now—

  With another cry, Alicia shot suddenly erect. Her arms went out in a wide sweep that seemed to be struggling in an attempt to push something from her.

  “Serapion!” she cried, and: “You! Back! Go back—go back—go back—Oh, you, Serapion!”

  When kinetic revolts against static, blinding fire results.

  The tension m that room let go as suddenly as the lightning stroke, though I was the only one to feel it fully.

  My body reeled against the wall. My spirit—I—the ego—reeled with it—beyond it—down—down—into darkness absolute—and into a nullity deeper than darkness’s self.

  CHAPTER VI

  THE POWER OF A NAME.

  Speed. In outer space there is room for it, and necessity. Between our sun and the nearest star where one may grow warm again there is space that a light ray needs centuries to cross.

  The cold is cruel, and a wind blows there more biting than the winds of earth. Little, cold stars rush by like far-separated lamps on a country road, and double meteors, twin blazing eyes, swing down through the long, black reaches. It is hard to avoid these, when they sweep so close, and one’s hands are numb on the steering-wheel.

  But one can’t slow for that—nor even for a frightened voice at one’s elbow, pleading, protesting,
begging for the slowness that will let the cold overtake and annihilate us.

  “The cold!” I shouted against the wind. “Cold!”

  “Well, if you’re cold,” wailed the harassed voice, “why don’t you slow down? Clay! Clayton Barbour! I’ll never ride again in a car with you, Clayton, if you don’t slow down!”

  Another pair of twin meteors rushed curving toward us. We avoided them, kept our course by the fraction of a safe margin, and as we did so the limitless vistas of interstellar space seemed to close in sharply and solidify.

  Infinite shrank to finite with the jolt of a collision—and it was almost a real one. I swung to the left and barely avoided the tail of a farmer’s wagon, ambling sedately along the road ahead of us. Then I not only slowed, but stopped, while the wagon creaked prosaically by. I sat at the wheel of a motor-car—my own car—and that was Roberta Whitingfield beside me.

  “Sixty miles an hour!” she was saying indignantly. “You haven’t touched the siren once, and you are sitting so that I can’t get at it. It’s very fortunate that mother didn’t come. She would never let me ride with you again!”

  I said nothing. Desperately I was trying to adjust the unadjustable.

  This road was real. The numbness and chill were passing, and the air of a summer night blew warm on my cheek. That wild rush of the spirit through space was already fading into place as a dream memory.

  But there had been some kind of an hiatus in realities. My last definite memory was of—Alicia Moore. Alicia—upright—rebellious—crying out a name.

  “Serapion!”

  “Clay!” A note of concern had replaced Roberta’s indignation. “Why do you sit there so still? Answer me! Are you ill? What is the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  That was a lie, of course, but instinctive as self-protection. I must get straight somehow, but I wouldn’t confide the need even to Roberta. In the most ordinary tone I apologized for my reckless driving and started the car again. We were on a familiar road, outside the city, but one that would take us by roundabout ways to our home in the suburbs.