Jack had grown cynical by the time he went off to college. With each new woman he met, his first thought was which witch is this? Occasionally he might encounter the witch of hope or the witch of promises, but invariably he’d be left with the witch of nothing special.
Then came the day he met Marsha. She made no particular impression on him initially, which was unusual in itself. No handy labels presented themselves. She was a lawyer in a small firm downtown. They met at a party thrown by mutual friends. Apparently there’d been some match-making going on, but he hadn’t known this at the time. Marsha was small and quick, with piercing black eyes which flashed as she talked. “You’re full of it, Jack,” was perhaps the second or third thing she ever said to him.
Her insulting him that way was almost a relief. Marsha was surely the witch of attitude, and having made that determination he could at last feel comfortable with her. He knew what to expect from her.
But as he realized later, her comment wasn’t far off the mark. He’d been expounding, after too much drink, on his theory of witches. He’d felt secure that the people listening to him believed him to be merely fabricating a witty, extended conceit, with no idea that he really believed it. Marsha, however, saw through him almost immediately. “I know you can’t see it right now, but you’re full of it, Jack.”
“Full of it? Full of witches, you mean.”
Marsha sighed, turned away, then immediately turned back to him. “Will you come over for dinner tomorrow night?” And she smiled. A witch of surprises? But when he looked into her face at that moment he would swear she was the witch of eyes.
All the next day Jack was plagued by the witches of shyness, embarrassment, and nerves. Every time he looked in the mirror they were there, telling him how bad he looked, how unimpressive he was. The witch of uninterest fell asleep while enumerating his faults, melting into a silver pool when he turned the hair dryer on her. The witches of jibber, jabber, and yakkety-yak screamed when he slammed his bathroom door on their criticisms.
Jack kept going to the mirror to check himself, intent on making the best impression on her that evening. Unfortunately the witch of bad hair had flown through the window that afternoon: it looked as if he’d caught his head in a mixing bowl. To add to that, the witch of middle age was growing a crop of white hairs inside his ears, and the witch of septic tanks had performed unspeakable magic on his breath. “Bug off!” he shouted to the ceiling, and the witches of cobwebs, dust, and lost memory scattered to points unknown.
“Damn, I look terrible,” he said to the mirror, and the witch of gaunt reflection winked back. He shattered the glass with his fist, and bits of seven forgotten little witches tumbled to the tile floor, their eyes dull and inattentive.
The drive to Marsha’s apartment was short but nerve-racking. He missed the turnoff and ran over the witch of roadkill, drove around lost through a suburban tangle of ranch-style homes and the lairs of condominium witches for almost an hour. All the pedestrians he saw were women, or reasonable facsimiles, and all these women – he knew – were witches. So he refused to stop and ask any of them for directions. A few approached his car at an intersection – among them a witch of no visible means and a witch of immense proportions – but he stepped on the gas and rode away before they could grab the doorhandle.
In front of a church he counted four small witches-in-training in their school uniforms filing past with their leader staring menacingly at his car, daring him to run over just one. In fact, the idea would never have occurred to him: it was the small witches who filled him with the most painful mixture of pity and fear.
Marsha’s house was a split-level with a high hedge all around, no doubt to keep whatever particular rites she practiced a secret from male neighbors or arriving suitors.
“I’d pretty much decided you’d chickened out,” she said to him when she opened the door. “What’s the matter – the traffic witch cause you some trouble?”
He stepped back as if slapped. She knew of the witches! Of course, all the women knew – it was their birthright. But he had never had one admit this so readily before.
Marsha made him uneasy, and yet he was drawn to her irresistibly; she had become his witch of greatest appeal. Just as in the past he had fallen in love with no help for it for the witch of thighs and the witch of perfume, the witch of high breasts, and the witch of the perfect nose, or for Marsha’s previous, most threatening rival, the witch of sweet reassurances.
“You look like a man who’s been dating all the wrong women,” she said with a laugh and a wink. He couldn’t understand what she was talking about.
“I’ve never been too good with women,” Jack admitted, thinking back to the witch of broken dates and the witch of screaming tantrums. “I’ve never known quite what to say. I never know what they want.”
“I suspect it has more to do with what you want, Jack,” Marsha said, this witch of smiles.
She reached over and took him by the hand. She pulled him to the couch and with her higher power forced him to sit down. She stroked his hand and whispered reassurances. She told him, “Let go,” and “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” It was all too much. She was obviously some sort of witch of deception. He ran away – escaped – from her apartment and back to his own home. He ignored the witch of poverty panhandling in the street. He rudely brushed off the witch of opportunity who accosted him in the elevator.
“They don’t understand, not any of them,” he said to his empty four walls. And four witches of loneliness nodded. “I do my best, but I really don’t know how to please them.” Five witches of frustrated desire raked their claws across his clothes, exposing his cool flesh. “I’m so scared of them I don’t know what to do!” And three enormous witches of suicide began to open him with hammers and razors and knives.
“Open him! Open him! Open him!” they cried in unison, as his skin split and ribs parted. Then they reached inside him with their thin, wrinkled hands, to retrieve their sisters, the hundreds of witches who had always lived inside him, craving his attention.
MANLY WADE WELLMAN
The Finger of Halugra
TWENTY YEARS AGO, when I was just starting out in this field, I was lucky enough to be befriended by Manly Wade Wellman, his wife Frances, and their close friend Karl Edward Wagner.
Manly Wellman (1903–1986) was born in the village of Kamundongo in Portuguese West Africa. Following several childhood visits to London, he settled in the United States where he worked as a reporter before quitting his job in 1930 to write fiction full-time. He was one of the most prolific contributors to the pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, and his tales of horror, fantasy, science fiction, crime and adventure graced the pages of such legendary titles as Weird Tales, Strange Stories, Wonder Stories, Astounding Stories and Unknown, to name only a few. He wrote more than seventy-five books in all genres, and had over two hundred short stories and numerous comic books and articles to his credit. He twice won the World Fantasy Award, and some of his best stories are collected in Who Fears the Devil?, Worse Things Waiting, Lonely Vigils and The Valley So Low.
According to Frances Wellman and David A. Drake, Manly probably wrote “The Finger of Halugra” for Gerald W. Page’s magazine Witchcraft & Sorcery in 1971 or shortly thereafter. When that magazine ceased publication, the story was returned to the author and he forgot about it. After he began selling regularly again to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Whispers and Fantasy Tales the story was overlooked, and it was only shortly before his own premature death in 1994 that Karl Wagner discovered the manuscript and sent it to editor Mark Rainey for Deathrealm magazine.
In memory of an old friend and a fine writer, I am delighted to have this rare opportunity to present a “new” Manly Wade Wellman story to a wider readership through the pages of The Best New Horror . . .
IT HAD BEEN sweaty days of scrambling, nights of sleeping out in chill winds and nothing to eat fit for a dog, let alone a man. But here, looking across from the
lip of the cliff to the lean, jagged pinnacle, Sugg Harpole saw what the Greek had promised him good money for.
The Greek was Mahlon Tomlinson, not a Greek at all. He was called that because he read in Bulfinch and other mythology books and talked about classic deities and nature spirits. The Greek had flown to Rome once, just to toss three coins in a certain fountain. He wore a crux ansata, the Egyptian looped cross, around his neck; in his pockets he carried a carved seal from Syracuse and the hind foot of a rabbit trapped in a graveyard at midnight; all these things for luck, and the Greek had had lots of that. Had won on long shots at dog and horse races, had invested profitably in drug smuggling and gun running, had wound up owning dance places in Winston-Salem and Richmond and a golf course outside Pinehurst, and other things elsewhere not so much in the open. But had wanted more, the way most men wanted more, and had offered Sugg Harpole a thousand dollars to fetch him back the stone finger of Halugra.
“A thousand when you bring it to me, even before we find out if it works,” he’d smiled plumply. “Then we try it out, and if it does work you get another thousand. Ain’t that worth a week up on them mountain tops?”
Sugg had agreed, because he didn’t often have even part of a thousand dollars from running errands for the Greek. Though if he’d tried to say no, the Greek didn’t often take no for an answer.
What the Greek told about Halugra would have made Sugg laugh if it had been anybody but the Greek talking. The Indians had carved Halugra from stone, off up in the mountains, long before any white men came nosing around. Halugra was said to be an image, maybe of a god, maybe of something else, on a chimney-like height you had to jump to from the main mountain. Halugra’s finger stuck out and if somebody sick or puny touched that finger, the somebody got well. There’d been a piece in a folklore magazine about it, with reports of when the finger-touching had worked for Indians halfway to death’s door. So Sugg would take a hammer and chisel and fetch the finger back, with a thousand if the finger worked for real.
Sugg was thirty years old at the time, long and tall and more or less good looking, with waves of yellow hair and lots of white teeth in his grin. He’d thrown the discus and played basketball in high school, though he’d been bad to drink and the coaches had given him hell about that. He put camping gear in the back of a green pickup truck the Greek had sold off to him and stuck expense money in his jeans and had driven away into those Southern mountains to do what he’d been told.
But you couldn’t get all the way there in the pickup. He’d had to leave the highway and bump for hours on a dirt road that finally faded into ruts. There he paid ten dollars to leave the pickup behind a whiskery old man’s squared log cabin, and went on from there on foot because the Greek would want him to. Carried a pack and two rolled blankets and a canteen and some food, not tasty food. He got sick of canned beans and Vienna sausages and instant coffee the three days he tramped and climbed to where Halugra was.
Nor were the few people he saw helpful. They lived in shacks and worked corn and potato patches. A couple knew of Halugra but wouldn’t have gone there, not for money nor yet for government liquor. The Indians had put a curse on the white men up there when they cleared out, said such folks. Following sketchy directions, Sugg made it at last up a slope as steep as a giant barn roof. Again and again he had to get down on hands and knees to do it. At last he found Halugra.
If the slope had been as steep as a roof, the far side fell away as perpendicularly as a wall. He didn’t care to guess how far down the cliff went like that. Trees at the bottom looked like clumps of soft moss, with blue haze in them. It made him dizzy to look. But right across from him rose a gaunt splinter of rock, naked and rough, something that must have been split from the main cliff in the violent youth of these mountains. Up and up from below it soared, with its apex more or less level with the ridge on which he stood, and upon it squatted somebody and stared back at him.
But no, it wasn’t a living thing. It was a statue, chopped out of the brown rock of the pinnacle. It looked burly and grotesque, hunkered down to sit on its heels. One arm lay across its heavy chest. The other was raised, and a stubby forefinger pointed at Sugg as if in accusation.
“Halugra,” said Sugg out loud. “Damn if you ain’t as ugly as home-made sin.”
And Halugra was. The head was flat on top as a box. The face was carved wide and thick-lipped and scowling, with a beaked nose and brows like eaves to shadow where the eyes must be. Between those brows was driven an angry furrow. Sugg could see all that, because the pinnacle was close to the cliff, no more than seven or eight feet away at most. Not too big a jump if you forgot how sickeningly far the precipice plunged there between.
Sugg felt bushed with his tramping and climbing, and he had a cold from camping out. He dropped off his pack and rubbed his galled shoulders. From the pack he took the hammer and thrust it into his belt, and into a hip pocket slid the cold chisel. He walked along the brink of the chasm to a point directly opposite the pinnacle with its seated image. Somehow it looked like more of a jump there, but he put that out of his mind. He drew back a few steps, rocked on his toes, ran and leaped.
He hung, scissor-legged, above emptiness that seemed trying to suck him down. Then he struck hard and sprawled on his face, his heart hammering inside him. He had made it. He wiped his face with his sleeve and got up on his knees. He gulped air and blew his nose between his fingers.
One thing for sure, it might be tougher to jump back than it had been to jump here. The top of that pinnacle wasn’t much larger than a double bed. It would have to be a standing jump. But meanwhile, here Sugg was, and here Halugra was.
At close quarters, Halugra’s squatting blockiness rose almost to Sugg’s shoulder. Halugra’s short legs doubled awkwardly. The extended hand looked more like the forefoot of a lizard, clumsy and short-fingered. The face glowered at Sugg. Under those beetling brows, the deep-set eyes glinted bluely. Maybe they were bits of some other stone. Jewels? But Sugg did not feel like bending down to study them.
“You’ve got your hand out to me, Halugra,” Sugg said, wishing the Greek could hear him being so witty. “But all I want is just a chunk of it.”
He took out his chisel and drew the hammer from his belt. He studied that protruding finger. It was cleverly carved. You could see the joints. Even the nail looked natural. He touched it. And instantly, his head cleared. His cold was gone as if he’d never had it. His shoulders ached no more.
“By God, the thing works!” he cried out. “That means an extra thousand bucks.”
He set the chisel solidly against where the finger was joined to the fist. He rapped once, experimentally, then hit the chisel hard with the hammer. It rang, it would be a musical ring if it weren’t so jangly. Again he smote, again. The finger broke off, bounced on the rock. He stooped quickly to catch it before it rolled over the edge.
Sugg thrust it into his pocket and dropped hammer and chisel to the rock beside the feet of Halugra. “Have a good day,” he addressed the bitter face. “I hope I didn’t hurt you. But it’s not polite to point, anyway.”
He was a good talker, he congratulated himself as he faced around to make the return jump.
Behind him he thought he heard a grating noise. It helped him get into the air. Again that crash of legs above emptiness and he was safe on the cliff again, running a step or two to keep his balance.
He felt no more stuffiness in the nose, no weariness. He rejoiced in his sense of well-being. He picked up the pack. As he slung it, he glanced at the pinnacle he had just left.
The stone image seemed taller somehow, as though it had risen upon those stubby legs. Sugg grimaced at the thought as he headed down the slope up which he had come. It was steep, sometimes chancy, and he told himself to be damned careful. Two hours had passed before he came to the valley below and a trail that probably had been made by animals. Again he spared a look backward and upward.
Something jutted at the distant top of the slope, perhaps a chunk of rock
he had not noticed before. It was deep brown, like the pinnacle, like the substance of Halugra. He stared at it, but, reassuringly, it did not move. It couldn’t be anything alive, menacing. He trudged along the trail. At last he came among thickets of timber. Evening crept stealthily in, and it was hard to see his way. He decided to make another camp in the open.
He reached a sort of clearing, with a flow of water at its edge. There he picked up wood to build a fire and spread his blankets close to it. For supper he chose a can of macaroni and cheese, another of sardines. Dropping to one knee, he opened them.
And, on the far side of the fire, was the dark silhouette of a standing figure.
For a moment as long as eternity, Sugg knelt and looked. His fire was beginning to blaze up. Its light danced on a squat duskiness with a heavy, flat-topped head and scowling eyes that glinted blue. It stood silent as, well, as a statue.
Sugg whirled and darted away among the trees in the dusk. He cannoned hard against a trunk, bounced off it, kept his feet with an effort, and ran among more trees beyond. He thought he heard a crashing of brush behind him, but did not stop, did not look around even. He ran, bouncing off of trees again, tripping over roots but somehow not going down. He never knew how far he ran, but he had to slow down at last, wheezing for breath and lathered with sweat.
He had come to the edge of an open field. The sun had gone down, the moon was up, and the field looked frosty pale in soft shimmer. Some sort of crop grew on part of it. On the side showed two bright squares of yellow radiance. Lighted windows, Sugg decided at once, and he half-ran, half-staggered toward them.
It was another of those pole cabins, built low, with a shallow roof of home-split shingles. He made out that much in the moonlight. Now he looked back. Did something dark and splayed rise in the open there? He could not be sure, he dared not be sure. He reached the door and knocked. A dog challenged him querulously inside, and a deep voice bade it shut up. The door opened.
The Best New Horror 7 Page 26