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

by Fritz Leiber

  “‘I love life,’ he went on, ‘and I shall live beyond this perishing clay. Soon or late, a day will come when you will feel my living presence in the house, and it will be in that time that your son will ask of me. Then you will tell him all I have said, and also this:

  “‘That I promised to return—to watch over him—to guard him.

  “‘Name him for me, that I may have the power. There’s power in a name! And I am not as other men. Be very sure that—your son—Serapion—shall be—as happy—shall have all that I’ve had—of life. Believe—promise!’ And I promised.

  “The strangest look came into, his eyes. A look of…”—my mother’s voice sank to a hushed whisper—“I can only describe it as holy exultation! It was too vivid and triumphant to have been of this world. And he died in my arms—Clayton, why do you look at me like that? What is the matter, child?”

  “Nothing. You told the story so well that for a moment I seemed to—to see him—or something. Never mind me. Mother, haven’t you any picture of my uncle?”

  “Only one of him as he was in his latter years. I have kept it locked away, for fear it might be destroyed or injured. After Serapion was gone they had a fire at the photographer’s”—mother had risen and was searching in a bureau-drawer—“a fire—where is that key?—the fire spoiled all the old negatives, the man said—I had that key here—though the studio only partially burned, and I always suspected he simply didn’t take the trouble to hunt for the one of your uncle—here it is! In my glove box, of all places! I am so glad that you take this seriously, Clayton. You feel nearly as deeply about it as I, don’t you, dear?”

  “It’s nothing to joke over,” I said.

  “No; but your father might have influenced you—”

  “Let me unlock it!”

  She was struggling with a small drawer in the side of the high, old-fashioned, carved walnut escritoire which she kept in her bedroom now, because our one living-room was small and crowded.

  I made fussing over the refractory lock an excuse to hide my too-genuine emotion. I wished to see that picture. At the same time I dreaded unspeakably the moment when doubt might become certainty.

  “It’s open,” I said at last, and stepped back.

  My mother took out a flat package, wrapped in yellowed tissue-paper. She began to undo the silk cord tied around it. I turned my back suddenly. Then I felt something thrust into my hand. With all my will I forced myself to bring the thing around before my eyes.

  What face would stare back at me, eye to eye, amused, pleasant—

  The window-shades were still drawn, and the light dim. It was a moment before I realized that what I held was not a picture at all, but some kind of printed pamphlet “Raise the shade,” said my mother. “I wish you to read that. It is a little manorial of your uncle, written by one of his friends, a Mr. Hazlett. The words are so touching! Almost as beautiful as the thoughts Serapion himself often expressed.”

  “Would you mind”—I controlled my voice by an effort—“would you mind letting me see the picture first?”

  “Here it is.”

  This time she had handed me the unmistakable, polished, be-scrolled oblong of an old-fashioned photographer’s mounting.

  Defiance, last resource of the hard-pressed, drove me in two bold strides to the window, where I jerked the shade up, rattling on its roller.

  Daylight beat in. This was the middle of November and the light was gray, filtered through gray clouds. A few scattered particles of snow flickered past the window.

  In my fingers the polished face of a cardboard mount felt smooth, almost soft to the touch. I watched the snow.

  “Isn’t his face beautiful, dear?” demanded a voice at my shoulder.

  “I—I—yes, I’m afraid—of course, mother!”

  “But you are not looking at it!”

  “I did look,” I lied. “I—this has all been a little too much for me. Take it—put it away. No, I’ll read the memorial another time. Happy! Did he promise to—to come back and make me happy?”

  “Practically that. How like him you are, dear son! He was sensitive, too; and your eyes! You have the Barbour nose and forehead, but your eyes—”

  “Please, mother!”

  She let me go at last, and in the quiet of refuge behind the locked door of my bedroom, I, who after all had not dared to look upon the picture of Serapion, scrutinized thoroughly every feature of my own face in the mirror.

  Like him! She had often said so in the past, but the statement had failed to make any particular impression.

  Yes, she was right about the eyes. They were the same clear, light-blue as his—what? Never! Not as his. For all I knew by actual observation, Serapion’s eyes might have been sea-green or shell-pink. I had never seen him. Let me keep that fact firmly in mind.

  CHAPTER XI

  “VERSCHLINGENER DES LEBENS.”

  My face in the mirror bore a faint, sketchy resemblance to that of the unreal but none the less troublesome vision by which I was intermittently afflicted. The resemblance accounted for the vague familiarity that had enveloped it from the first.

  The face in the mirror, though, was much younger, and—resolve flared up in its eyes like a lighted fire.

  “You,” I addressed my reflection, “are not a sneak. You are not going to be made one. Tonight you will present yourself to Mr. James Barton Moore, and you will inform him that the little trick of hypnotism performed by his wife last August will either be reversed by her, or he himself will pay for it unpleasantly. I believe,” and my arm muscles flexed in bravado, “that Mr. Jimmy Moore will think twice before he refuses.”

  That was what I said. But in my heart I yearned suddenly to go and fling myself abject, at the feet of Alicia Moore, and entreat her to help me.

  It was a cold night, and the afternoon’s scattered flakes had increased to a heavy snow-fall. Alighting from the car—not mine, this time, but the transit company’s—I found the snow inches deep. I can still recall the feel of it blown against my face, like light, cold finger-touches.

  Plowing through it, I came again to the “dead-alive house.” That other visit had been in summer. The twin lawns, one green and close-cropped, the other high-grown with weeds, had stood out contrastingly then. There had been a line of sharp demarcation between Moore’s clean, freshly painted half of the house and the other half’s dirt-freckled wall.

  Now all that sharp difference was blurred and indistinct. The snow, blue-white in the swaying circles of light from a corner arc-lamp, had buried both the lawns. Joining the roofs in whiteness, drifting across the porches, swirling in the air, it obliterated all but a hint of difference between the living half and the dead.

  Though the windows of one part were dark as those of the other, a faint glow shone through the curtained glazing of Moore’s door.

  Now that I was here, I almost hoped that he and his wife were out. The accusation I must make was strange to absurdity. I braced myself, however, opened the gate, and as I did so a hand dropped on my shoulder from behind.

  A man had come upon me soundlessly through the snow. In my nerve-racked state, I whirled and struck at him.

  He caught my wrist. “Here! I’m no highwayman, Clay!”

  “Nils,” I laughed shakily, “you startled me.”

  Berquist stared, with a sudden close attention that I found myself shrinking away from. For weeks I had been keeping a secret at some cost. Though I had come here to reveal it, the habit of concealment was still on me.

  “Your nerves used to be better than that,” said Berquist shortly.

  “You calling on Moore?” I queried. “Thought there was some kind of vendetta between you. You wouldn’t come here with me, I remember.”

  “I’m glad you remember something,” he retorted gravely. “You have a very ni
ce, hospitable family, though. They took me in last night and fed me on the bare strength of my word that I’d been invited.”

  “I say, Nils, that’s too bad.”

  In my desperate search for Van the previous evening, I had clean forgotten my dinner invitation to Berquist. Reaching home near midnight, I had received a thoroughly sisterly call-down from Cathy, who had waited up to express her frank opinion of a brother who not only invited a friend to dinner without forewarning her, but neglected even to be present when the friend arrived.

  It seemed, too, that Roberta had dined there on Cathy’s own invitation, and the two girls had unitedly agreed that poor Nils was “queer” and not very desirable. He had committed the double offense of talking wild theories to dad, verbally ignoring the feminine element, and at the same time staring Bert out of countenance whenever her eyes were not actually on him.

  I had informed Cathy that Bert should feel highly honored, since Nils was generally too shy even to look at a girl, much less stare at her, and that as the family’s support I should certainly invite whom I pleased to dinner; as for Nils, I had regretted missing him, but knew he was too casual himself to hold the lapse against me.

  Now I began an apology that was rather wandering, for my mind was otherwise concerned.

  I wished to tell him about the Fifth Presence. Before I entered Moore’s house, it would be very well that I should tell Nils of my errand. Why, in the name of all reason, was I possessed by this sense of shame that shut my lips whenever I tried to open them concerning the haunting face?

  Cutting the apologies short, Nils forgave me, explained that though out of sympathy with Moore’s work, he occasionally called to play chess with him, and then we were going up the snow-blanketed walk, side by side.

  “Even the chess sometimes ends in a row,” Nils added gloomily. “I wouldn’t play him at all, if he hadn’t beaten me so many times. Perhaps some day I’ll get the score even, and then I shan’t come here any more.”

  “Moore is—did he ever tell you that I kept my appointment with him?”

  “Which one?”

  The question leaped out cuttingly sharp.

  “The only one I ever made with him, of course. That day you introduced us in the restaurant.”

  “You haven’t been coming here since?”

  “No. Why should you think that?”

  We had checked again, halfway up the walk. As we stood Nils caught my shoulders and swung me around till the arc-lamp rays beat on my face. He scrutinized me from under frowning brows.

  “You’ve lost something!” he said bluntly. “I can’t tell exactly what. I don’t know what story your eyes hide; but they hide one. Clay, don’t think me an officious meddler, but you—you have your family dependent on you—and—oh, why do I beat about the bush? That girl you will marry some day; she’s rather wonderful. For her sake, if not your own, tell me the truth. Has Moore involved you in some of his cursed, dangerous experiments? Tell me! Is it that, or—” his voice softened “are you merely worn out with the common and comparatively safe kinds of trouble?”

  “I’ve had—trouble enough to worry any fellow.”

  “Yes, but is any part of it to be laid at this door?” He jerked his head toward Moore’s dimly radiant portal.

  “A face—a face—” Sheer panic choked the words in my throat. I had begun betraying the secret which every atom of my being demanded should be kept.

  “Yes; a face?”

  “A face—is not necessarily a chart of the owner’s doings,” I wrenched roughly from his grasp. “Since when have you set up as a critic in physiognomy, Nils?”

  “When one has a friend, one cares to look beneath the surface,” he said simply.

  “Well, don’t look with the air of hunting out a criminal, then. I have as good a right to call here as you, haven’t I? Moore sent me a letter asking me to drop around, so I—I thought I would. I’m tired, and need distraction. What’s the harm?”

  Without answering, he eyed me through a long moment; then turned quietly and went on up into the porch.

  Standing hesitant, I glanced upward, looking for a light in the windows above. Again I saw the slanting roofs, blended in snow. Months ago, in a momentary illusion of moonlight, I had seen them look just so. The thought brought me a tiny prick of apprehension. Not fear, but the startled uneasiness one might feel at coming to a place one has never visited, and knowing it for the place one has seen in a dream.

  Nevertheless, I followed Nils to the door.

  Another maid opened it than the one who had admitted Roberta and myself in August. She was a great, craggy, hard-faced old colored woman, whom Nils addressed familiarly as “Sabina,” and who made him rather glumly welcome in accents that betrayed her Southern origin. She assumed, I suppose, that Nils and I had come together, and my card did not precede me into Moore’s sanctum.

  The latter was in the library again. The shades and curtains were drawn tight, which accounted for the “not-at-home” look of the windows from outside. I learned later that he frequently denied himself to callers, even near-acquaintances, unless they came by appointment. His letter to me had been ignored too long to come under that heading. I wonder! Would he have refused to see me that night, given a choice?

  In my very first step across the library’s threshold, I realized that my battle was to be an even more difficult one than I had feared.

  Passing the doorway, I entered—physically and consciously entered—the same field of tension, to call it that, which had centralized about Alicia at the climax of my previous experience.

  It was less masterful than then. There was not the same drain on my physical strength, nor the feeling of being en rapport with the movements of others. But the condition was none the less present; I knew it as surely and actually as one recognizes a marked change in atmospheric temperature or, to use a closer simile, as one feels entry into the radius of electrical force produced by a certain type of powerful generator.

  There is no simile which will exactly express what I mean. The consciousness involved is other than normal, and only a person who had been possessed by it could fully understand.

  On that first occasion, I had been sure that my impressions were shared by the others present. This time some minutes passed before I became convinced that Berquist and James Moore, at least, were insensitive to the condition.

  The library appeared as I had seen it first, save that the lamp broken then had been replaced by another, with a Japanese “art” shade made of painted silk. Near the large reading-table, with the lamp, a small stand had been drawn up and a chessboard laid upon it. In anticipation of Nils’s arrival, Moore had been arranging the pieces. They were red and white ivory men, finely carved. They and the Japanese lampshade made a glow of exotic color, in the shadow behind which sat—Alicia, a dim figure, pallid and immobile.

  By one of those surface thoughts that flash across moments of intensity, I noted that Moore was dressed in a gray suit, patterned with a faint, large check in lighter gray.

  Then he had recognized me, and the man’s pale eyebrows lifted.

  “You’ve brought Barbour?” he said to Nils.

  “No,” denied my friend. “Met him at the door. How do, Alicia?”

  He strode across the room to where Mrs. Moore sat in the shadow.

  Under other conditions I should have felt embarrassed. By Moore’s tone and Nils’s non-committal response, they had placed me as an intruder, received without even a gloss of welcome for courtesy’s sake.

  But to me it seemed only strange that they could speak at all in ordinary tones through this atmosphere of breathless tension. A voice here, I thought, should be either a shriek or a whisper.

  Then Alicia’s dry monotone:

  “You should have come alone, Nils. You have brought one with you who is v
ery evil. I know him. He is an eater of lives.”

  “Dear lady!” protested Nils, half jokingly. “Surely you don’t apply that cannibalistic description to my friend here? He might take it that way.”

  “How he takes it is nothing,” shrugged Alicia. “There is one too many in this room. There are four of us here, and there is also a fifth. And I think your friend is more aware of that than even I.”

  Moore’s previously unenthusiastic face lighted to quick eagerness. He pounced on Alicia’s original phrase like a cat jumping for a mouse.

  “An eater of life! Did you say this invisible Fifth Presence is an eater of life, Alicia?”

  “I did not,” she retorted precisely. “I said an eater of lives. Everyone does not know that—”

  “No, but wait, Alicia. This is really interesting.” He turned from her to us. “There’s a particularly horrid old German legend about such a being.” He informed us of it with the air of one imparting some delightful news. “Give me a German legend always for pure horror, but this excels the average. ‘Der verschlingener des Lebens’—‘The Devourer of Life!’—Very interesting. Now the question arises, did Alicia read that yarn sometime in the past, and is this the subliminal report of it coming out now, or—does she really sense an alien force which has entered the room in your company? What’s your impression, Barbour? Have you any? You’re psychic yourself—knew it the first time I saw you. Is anyone here but we four?”

  By a great effort, I forced my lips to answer:

  “I couldn’t say. This—I—”

  “Have a chair, Barbour, and take your time.” He was all sudden kindliness—the active sort, with a motive behind it, as I knew well enough now. To him I was not a guest but an experiment. “I haven’t a doubt,” he asserted cheerfully, “that you and Alicia sense a presence that entered with you and which such poor moles as Nils and myself are blind to. Now don’t deny it. Anyone possessing the psychic gift who denies or tries to smother it is not only unwise but selfish. Supremely selfish! And it’s a curious fact that one powerful psychic will often bring out the undeveloped potentialities of another. Alicia may have already done that for you. When you went here before—”