I had started staying under the lilac bush and listening to Mrs. Life on purpose. Teachers in school were always telling kids to think for themselves, but this was the first time that a schoolteacher had ever really taught me to do it. I was starting to see evil when I looked in her face, and I was starting to hate her. But I wasn't used to going against adults or thinking that I knew better than them. I wasn't used to having my own ideas about things. It was a strange feeling, and I spent a lot of time under my bush sort of wrestling with it.
I heard Mrs. Life say, "I don't like to speak ill of anyone, but just the same, if I was a parent I wouldn't want my child to have him as a schoolteacher."
I heard her say, "Would you want to use the same restroom or water fountain as him?"
I heard her say, "Even putting aside all the rest of it, suppose he should cut himself and his blood got on some poor little girl?" I knew what I ought to do, but I just couldn't. I wasn't old enough or big enough or strong enough to speak out against her. I had plenty of anger, but I couldn't find any courage.
Mr. Quickel killed himself the day after his wife went to Arizona to stay with her mother for a while. He did it by cutting his wrists, and he stayed in the bathroom so there wouldn't be too much mess. He left a private note for his wife and kids and a public one for the rest of us. All it said was, "I never hurt anyone."
My dad is a Volunteer Fireman and answered the call when the school board's private detective found him that evening. Dad came home looking pretty grim and told the rest of us what had happened, and Mom said to him, "It's partly your fault."
"What was I supposed to do?"
"He came to you for help and you turned your back. How do you think that made him feel?"
He yelled, "What is it with you and Nick Quickel, anyway?"
She yelled back, "What's that supposed to mean?"
I left them fighting and walked into our front room and looked across at Mrs. Life's porch. She was out there, all right.
And one of the other firemen was leaning on her railing. I guessed I knew what they were talking about.
Then he left and she got up off her wicker rocker and went inside.
I must have been about half crazy. The whole thing made me so sad and mad and sick I could have puked. I walked out of my house and straight across to hers and barged right in her front door without even thinking. I still don't know what I meant to say to her.
And there she was at her dining room table with her old tortoise-shell fountain pen, writing in one of those little notebooks of hers that she kept track of everything in. She finished writing and closed it, and I saw it was just like all the rest, spiral-bound, with lined paper, except that it had a black cover. "So I'm short-minded, am I?" she said to it. "Short-minded, indeed."
Then she looked up and saw me there. But her face didn't change. It was still the same as ever.
"Witch," I said to her. I wanted to scream it, but it came out a whisper. "You dirty witch."
In a very quiet, very cold voice she told me, "Veronica Hoffman, you watch your mouth."
I was so nuts I didn't stop. "How many people you got in there?" I squeaked at her. "Go ahead, tell me. How many suicides have you done?"
"Nineteen so far," she said.
"Wonderful. One more and you'll be up to twenty."
"That's right." She stood up, and suddenly I was very scared. "Get out of my house."
I ran like a rabbit, and if there was a way I could have kept running clear out of this town I would have done it. But there's nothing I can do. Mom and Dad are quarreling. There's nobody I can talk to, nobody who can help me. And already Mrs. Simmermeyer is starting to talk about how little Veronica Hoffman spends so much time at the cathouse, what can a girl her age want at that place?
I know who number twenty in Mrs. Life's little black book is going to be.
V
AULD LENG SIGNS
Young Akeley, final scion of his line,
Brought back from Arkham shards of Lengish glass:
Pale clouded souvenirs without design
Through which (if one stared long) strange shadows passed.
No knowledge had he of the Hyades,
Celaeno, Yith, or Yuggoth on the Rim;
Yet trial & error showed him all of these,
Until his ignorance caught up with him.
Toward midnight at the closing of the year, His worried friends broke down his study door. They found glass fragments splintered on the floor, A severed tentacle, one reddish smear,
& knew (as they ran shrieking from the spot)
That auld acquaintance might best be forgot.
— Ann K. Schwader
THE PRONOUNCED EFFECT
by John Brunner
Never in all her nineteen years had Lies Andrassy wished so devoutly her father could be with her. She had been tense and edgy throughout the 200-mile bus ride which had brought her here; now, in the huge hall of the hotel where banners welcomed the annual convention of the Linguistics Society, she was positively trembling. She had only seldom been among such a large group of people before — there must have been at least a thousand, milling around or waiting patiently in line — and the sheer pressure of their presence was upsetting.
Worst of all was the fact that she didn't know a single soul, and nobody knew her.
However, she was determined to put a bold face on it. She had checked into her room easily enough, and then come down to collect her conference documents. Tables had been set up with signs above them: PRE-REGIS-TERED A — K; PRE-REGISTERED L — Z; OFFICIALS AND PARTICIPANTS; NON-REGISTERED . . . She had duly joined the line at the first table, but it was moving dreadfully slowly, and she had far more time than she wanted to look about her and envy those who had friends to talk to.
One man in particular, of early middle age, with a big red beard and a booming laugh, was holding forth to half a dozen seeming admirers just far enough away for her not to catch what was being said, but everybody in the group was obviously vastly entertained by his witty conversation. Well, maybe
by the time the weekend was over she too might be chatting happily with new acquaintances. But Monday seemed like an awfully long way away from Friday, and in her heart of hearts she could not be optimistic. She was acutely aware how confident, how poised, most of the women were who strode briskly across the hallway, and how out of keeping her own "safe" tailored suit was compared with the up-to-the-minute styles most of them wore. People who wanted to be polite to her called her "cuddly," or at worst "plump," but in fact she was fat; and, worse yet, she had had to wear glasses since she was six. It looked, in short, as though nature had marked her out for the same kind of dull academic career her father had endured.
Not, of course, that he had ever admitted to finding it dull; indeed, he more often talked of it as though it were some kind of grand contest, in which there were skirmishes and duels and outright battles. But how on earth could anyone get excited about whether or not a certain word in a dead language was pronounced this way rather than that way?
On the bus she had read and re-read the paper of her father's which she was scheduled to present tomorrow in his place, until she had practically memorised it. She muttered a phrase from it which was supposed to be some kind of grand curse, calling up a veritable devil, as she went on staring at the man with the red beard.
"Oh, excuse me!" a light voice said at her side. "Did I bump into you?"
She returned to the here and now with a start, and realised that the line she was in had moved without her noticing, so there was now six feet between her and the person ahead. Hastily she closed the gap, at the same time glancing — glancing up — at the man who had addressed her. He was very tall and quite indecently handsome: a shock of fair hair, neatly brushed, incongruously dark eyes above well-modelled cheekbones, a light summer jacket, open shirt, silk choker . . .
He had been among the early arrivals; he already carried his file of conferen
ce documents, and pinned to his lapel was a badge identifying him as J.R. DeVILLE, Ph.D., MISKATONIC U.
Not a college Lies had ever heard of — but then, she hadn't heard of half the places represented this weekend. There would be almost two thousand teachers and students of linguistics and etymology assembled by tonight. And how bare her own name-badge would seem among all these doctors and professors, without a single qualification!
But that was irrelevant. What mattered was that he still thought her un-der-the-breath exclamation had been due to his bumping into her, and he had apologised needlessly. She summoned a smile.
"That's all right, Doctor! You didn't do anything."
"I'm glad," he said, and flashed sparkling white teeth as he made to turn away.
Before she could stop herself, she had caught his sleeve.
"Excuse me!" she heard herself saying. "But do you know who that man is over there, with the red beard?"
"Hmm?" Dr DeVille checked and looked around. "Oh, that's Professor Simon Tadcaster. One of the — ah — more conspicuous delegates, as you might say. ... Is something wrong?"
For on hearing the name Lies had turned pale and started to sway, furious because she could not control the impulse.
"I'm — I'm all right," she forced out.
"You don't look all right," he contradicted, taking her arm. "Let me help you to a chair."
"No, no — really!" She straightened and released herself from his grip. "I don't want to lose my place in line, do I? And I really am all right, I promise. It's just . ."
She felt obliged to explain. "I simply didn't realise that was Professor Tad-caster. He's — he's my father's greatest enemy."
It sounded ridiculous, put like that. But what else could one call a person who set out systematically to mock and ridicule the life's work of a professional colleague?
Dr DeVille raised his eyebrows. "Really? Your father being —?"
"Well. . . Well, Professor Julius An-drassy. I don't suppose you ever heard of him."
"Heard of Andrassy?" DeVille countered with a trace of sarcasm. "Of course I have! He's giving a paper tomorrow on the way the pronunciation of Latin and Hebrew was affected by local dialects in Central Europe, and I certainly don't intend to miss it! It sounds fascinating!"
"Oh, you do know about him! I thought . . ." Lies licked her lips. "But he's not giving the paper. He's too ill to come, so I've got to do it instead, and I don't more than half-understand it.. . . And it's all that Professor Tadcaster's fault, I'm sure!"
"Well, I must admit," DeVille said after a slight hesitation, "he has been a bit scathing in the professional journals about your father's theories, and I suppose most of the people who turn up will be there in the hope of watching a grand set-to between them. . . . But never mind that for the moment. You said you're actually going to present the paper?"
"Yes, I promised I would."
"Then you're in the wrong line," DeVille said briskly, and taking her arm urged her over to the table for officials and participants, where there was for the moment no line at all; the girl on duty was leaning back in her chair and covering a yawn.
"But — !" Lies began.
He ignored her. "Do you have Professor Andrassy's documents there?" he was saying. "He can't come but Miss Andrassy here is his daughter and will be making the presentation in his place. You'd better let her have the professor's file, and make out a participant's badge for —ah . . . ?"
"Lies Andrassy, L-I-E-S."
The girl smiled and scribbled a note on a scrap of paper which she passed to a young man behind her seated at a large electric typewriter with an Orator all-capitals face. In a moment the badge, red-bordered to indicate her status as an official participant, was slipped into its transparent cover, and DeVille pinned it to the front of her jacket with quick, deft fingers.
"Thank you!" he said to the girl as she handed over the file of documents, and continued, taking Lies's arm, "I really am most interested to meet you! If you're not doing anything, come and have a drink."
"I — uh — I don't drink, I'm afraid," Lies said selfconsciously.
"Nonsense. My doctorate may not be in medicine, but I know enough to assure you that a glass of sweet wine would be medicinal to someone in your condition. This way!"
Such was his self-assurance, Lies felt herself helplessly swept along.
Moments later they were seated at a secluded table in a dimly-lit bar. With a snap of his fingers DeVille summoned a waiter and ordered sherry, one sweet, one very dry. Offering a cigar, which she refused — a little surprised that he should offer such a thing to a girl — and receiving her permission to light one for himself, he went on, "Now explain what you meant when you said your father's illness is due to Tadcas-ter!"
"It's true!" Under the table, Lies clenched her hands on the file of conference documents, into which she had slipped her copy of the paper she must deliver tomorrow. She was afraid to let it out of her sight, even in a locked hotel room. "He's being hounded! Absolutely hounded! And he hasn't done anything to deserve it. . . . Have you ever met my father, Dr DeVille?"
"No, I never had the privilege. And, by the way, nobody ever calls me Doctor except people I don't like. My name is Jacques."
"Are you — are you French?"
"Not by birth, if that's what you mean. Go on. You were telling me about your father."
"Well, he's a marvellous person, and lots of people think he's brilliant, including me, but he's — I don't know how to put it!"
"Unworldly?" Jacques suggested.
She seized on the word gratefully. "Yes, there's a lot of that in it, but something else, too. You might say single-minded. You might even say obsessive."
There: it was out. And to a perfect stranger. Something which before she had scarcely dared admit to herself.
The waiter delivered their drinks; to cover her moment of alarm, she sipped the wine Jacques had chosen for her, and found it not only delicious, but warming. What a stroke of luck it had been to meet somebody like this, who simply by talking to her was bringing back a little of the confidence she had feigned to her father but never really felt.
"I think I see what you mean," Jacques was saying as he raised his own glass. "Cheers, by the way, and lots of luck tomorrow morning. . . . Yes, I've had something of that impression from the papers of his that I've read, especially the one on anomalous vowel-shifts among initiates of the alchemical tradition in Prague and Ratisbon."
Lies stared at him in genuine amazement. "You've read as much of my father's work as I have myself!" she exclaimed. "That was — oh — about the second paper he published after he learned English, wasn't it?"
"And very well he learned it, too. Amazingly well. Or do you help with the final text?"
She felt herself blushing. "Well, of course after Mother died someone had to ... So for the last five years, yes, it's been me."
"Congratulations on your editing job, then. But fill me in a little more on his background. I know he was born in Hungary, and left in 1956, and then he came to the States and found this post at Foulwater, a place which practically nobody wants to work at because of its name, only the trust under which the college was endowed prevents it being changed — isn't that right?"
"Yes," Lies confirmed. "Apparently our founder had a macabre sense of humour, which is why ninety per cent of the faculty are of foreign origin; the name doesn't bother them. The students, on the other hand . . . But we've always had enough, and sometimes after what they thought of as a bad start they've gone on to great things, because some of the teaching is superb. At least, so I've always understood."
"Your father has been happy at Foul-water?"
"Oh, yes! Most of the time. I mean he met and married Mother there, and except for a year or so after her death, he's always been content to carry on with his work. He's one of the old school of European scholars, basically; he loves learning in the abstract, and I suppose that's why people might call
him — as I said — obsessive." It was easier to utter the word the second time.
"And you think Tadcaster has been hounding him. How?"
"I don't think, I know!" Lies flared, and took another sip of her wine. "It's one thing to disagree with a colleague's argument, or reasoning. It's something else to mock his integrity, and — well — practically accuse him of forgery!"
"I take it," Jacques said thoughtfully, "you're referring to that unfortunate comment Tadcaster made during a discussion at last year's convention, when he said something to the effect that until he himself was able to subject the Foulwater texts to scientific analysis he would continue to doubt their authenticity?"
"He was much ruder than that, wasn't he?" Lies exclaimed. "When my father read the Proceedings, he was beside himself! He swore that even though he hates big gatherings like this he would attend this year's convention for the first time and show up Tadcaster for a scoundrel and a mountebank! But he's an ochlophobe, and the prospect of having actually to confront hundreds of people in a totally strange environment drove him into a decline. For months he's been shaking and trembling, and finally the stress brought on an ulcer, and right now he's in the hospital and hoping diet and tranquilizers will fix it without an operation. Which is why I'm here instead of him. Me, who don't really understand a fraction of what he wants to prove!"
"I see now why you got so upset in the lobby," Jacques said sympathetically. "And you have no real need to worry, you know. Many of the people who will attend the lecture tomorrow are definitely on your father's side, because Tadcaster is a man who makes enemies easily, and what's more he doesn't really have friends, only hangers-on and toadies. But of course his academic reputation is very high, and he works at one of the most famous universities in the world, and there was some substance in the charge he made that your father had never submitted the texts he's relying on to independent scrutiny."
"But he can't let them leave Foul-water!" Lies exclaimed heatedly. "The only thing he managed to bring with him when he left Hungary was this crate full of his prized collection of late-medieval and early-modern manuscripts and incunabula, and the only way he was able to secure a post at Foulwater before he spoke proper English was by donating them in perpetuity to the university library. That was more than a quarter of a century ago! Surely people who want to examine them for authenticity have had plenty of chances to go there and inspect them? Surely the people who inspected and valued them for insurance when he first arrived were satisfied about their genuineness?"
Weird Tales - Summer 1990 Page 8