Weird Tales - Summer 1990

by Vol. 51 No. 4

  But I wasn't and I didn't. I took to my room and drowsed before a television with the sound turned off. As the colors danced in the dark, I submitted more and more to an anti-social sleepiness. Finally I instructed Rops, by way of the estate-wide intercom, to inform Aunt T. and company that I wasn't feeling very well, needed to rest. This, I fig­ured, would be in keeping with the fa­cade of a harmless valetudinarian, and a perfectly normal one at that. A night-sleeper. Very good, I could hear them saying to their souls. And then, I swear, I actually turned off the television and slept real sleep in real darkness.

  But things became less real at some point deep in the night. I must have left the intercom open, for I heard little metal voices emanating from that little metal square on my bedroom wall. In my state of quasi-somnolence it never occurred to me that I could simply get out of bed and make the voices go away by switching off that terrible box. And terrible it indeed seemed. The voices spoke a foreign language, but it wasn't French, as one might have suspected. Something more foreign than that. Per­haps a cross between a madman talking in his sleep and the sonar screech of a bat. The voices chittered and chattered with each other in my dreams when I finally fell completely asleep. And they ceased entirely long before I awoke, for the first time in my life, to the bright eyes of morning.

  The house was quiet. Even the serv­ants seemed to have duties that kept them soundless and invisible. I took advantage of my wakefulness at that early hour and prowled unnoticed about the floors of the house, figuring every­one else was still in bed after their long and somewhat noisy night. The four rooms Aunt T. had set aside for our guests all had their big panelled doors closed: a room for the mama and papa, two others close by for the kids, and a chilly chamber at the end of the hall for the maiden sister. I paused a moment outside each room and listened for the revealing songs of slumber, hoping to know my relations better by their snores and whistles and monosyllables grunted between breaths. But they made none of the usual racket. They hardly made any sounds at all, though they echoed one another in making a certain noise that seemed to issue from the same cavity. It was a kind of weird wheeze, an open mouth panting from the back of the throat, the hacking of a tubercular demon. Or a very faint grating sound, as if some heavy object were being dragged across bare wooden floors in a distant part of the house; a muted cacophony. Thus, I soon aban­doned my eavesdropping without re­gret.

  I spent the day in the library, whose high windows I noticed were designed to allow a maximum of natural reading light. However, I drew the drapes on them and kept to the shadows, finding morning sunshine not everything it was said to be. But it was difficult to get much reading done. Any moment I expected to hear foreign footsteps de­scending the double-winged staircase, crossing the black and white marble chessboard of the front hall, taking over the house. Nevertheless, despite my expectations, and to my increasing uneasiness, the family never appeared.

  Twilight came and still no mama and papa, no sleepy-eyed son or daughter, no demure sister remarking with as­tonishment at the inordinate length of her beauty sleep. And no Aunt T., either. They must've had quite a time the night before, I thought. But I didn't mind being alone with the twilight. I undraped the three west windows, each of them a canvas depicting the same scene in the sky. My private salon d'Automne.

  It was an unusual sunset. Having sat behind opaque drapery all day, I had not realized that a storm was pushing in and that much of the sky was the precise shade of old suits of armor one finds in museums. At the same time, patches of brilliance engaged in a ter­ritorial dispute with the oncoming onyx of the storm. Light and darkness min­gled in strange ways both above and below. Shadows and sunshine washed together, streaking the landscape in an unearthly study of glare and gloom. Bright clouds and black folded into each other in a no-man's land of the sky. The autumn trees turned in accordance with a strange season as their leaden-colored trunks and branches, along with their iron-red leaves, took on the appearance of sculptures formed in a dream, locked into an infinite and un­living moment, unnaturally timeless. The gray lake slowly tossed and tumbled in a deep sleep, nudging uncon­sciously against its breakwall of numb stone. A scene of contradiction and am­bivalence, a tragicomedic haze over all. A land of perfect twilight.

  I was in exaltation: finally the twi­light had come down to earth, and to me. I had to go out into this rare at­mosphere, I had no choice. I left the house and walked to the lake and stood on the slope of stiff grass which led down to it. I gazed up through the trees at the opposing tones of the sky. I kept my hands in my pockets and touched nothing, except with my eyes.

  Not until an hour or more had elapsed did I think of returning home. It was dark by then, though I don't recall the passing of the twilight into evening, for twilight has no edges. There were no stars anywhere, the storm clouds hav­ing moved in and wrapped up the sky. They began sending out tentative drops of rain. Thunder mumbled above and I was forced back to the house, cheated once again by the night. But I'll always remember savoring that particular twi­light, unaware that there would be no others after it.

  In the front hall of the house I called out names in the form of questions. "Aunt T.? Rops? Gerald? M. Duval? Madame?" Everything was silence. Where was everyone, I wondered. They couldn't still be asleep. I passed from room to room and found no signs of oc­cupation. A day of dust was upon all surfaces. Where were the domestics? At last I opened the double doors to the dining room. Was I late for the supper Aunt T. had planned to honor our vis­iting family?

  It appeared so. But if Aunt T. some­times had me consume the forbidden fruit of flesh and blood, it was never directly from the branches, never the sap taken warm from the tree of life itself. But here in fact were spread the remains of such a feast. It was the rav­aged body of Aunt T. herself, though they'd barely left enough on her bones for identification. The thick white linen was clotted like an unwrapped band­age. "Rops!" I shouted. "Gerald, some­body!" But I knew the servants were no longer in the house, that I was alone.

  Not quite alone, of course. This soon became apparent to my twilight brain as it dipped its way into total darkness. I was in the company of five black shapes which stuck to the walls and soon began flowing along their surface. One of them detached itself and moved toward me, a weightless mass which felt icy when I tried to sweep it away and put my hand right through the thing. Another followed, unhinging it­self from a doorway where it hung down. A third left a blanched scar upon the wallpaper where it clung like a slug, pushing itself off to join the at­tack. Then came the others descending from the ceiling, dropping onto me as I stumbled in circles and flailed my arms. I ran from the room but the things had me closely surrounded. They guided my flight, heading me down hallways and up staircases. Finally they cornered me in a small room, a dusty little place I had not been in for years. Colored animals frolicked upon the walls, blue bears and yellow rab­bits. Miniature furniture was draped with graying sheets. I hid beneath a tiny, elevated crib with ivory bars. But they found me and closed in.

  They were not driven by hunger, for they had already feasted. They were not frenzied with a murderer's bloodlust, for they were cautious and methodical. This was simply a family reunion, a sentimental gathering. Now I under­stood how the Duvals could afford to be sans prejuges. They were worse than I, who was only a half-breed, hybrid, a mere mulatto of the soul: neither a blood-warm human nor a blood-draw­ing devil. But they — who came from an Aix on the map — were the pure-breds of the family.

  And they drained my body dry.

  When I regained awareness once more, it was still dark and there was a great deal of dust in my throat. Not actually dust, of course, but a strange dryness I had never before experienced. And there was another new experience: hunger. I felt as if there were a chasm of infinite depth within me, a great abyss which needed to be filled — flooded with oceans of blood. I was one of them now, reborn into a hungry death. Everything I had shunned in my impossible, blasphemous ambition to avoid living and dying,
I had now be­come. A sallow, ravenous thing. A beast with a hundred stirring hungers. Andre of the graveyards.

  The five of them had each drunk from my body by way of five separate foun­tains. But the wounds had nearly sealed by the time I awoke in the blackness, owing to the miraculous healing capa­bilities of the dead. The upper floors were all in shadow now, and I made my way toward the light coming from downstairs. An impressionistic glow il­luminating the wooden banister at the top of the stairway, where I emerged from the darkness of the second floor, inspired in me a terrible ache of emo­tion I'd never known before. A feeling of loss, though of nothing I could spe­cifically name, as if somehow the dep­rivation lay in my future.

  As I descended the stairs I saw that they were already waiting to meet me, standing silently upon the black and white squares of the front hall. Papa the king, mama the queen, the boy a knight, the girl a dark little pawn, and a bitchy maiden bishop standing be­hind. And now they had my house, my castle, to complete the pieces on their side. On mine there was nothing.

  "Devils," I screamed, leaning hard on the staircase rail. "Devils," I repeated, but they still appeared horribly undis-tressed, perhaps uncomprehending of my outburst. "Diables," I reiterated in their own loathsome tongue.

  But neither was French their true language, as I found out when they be­gan speaking among themselves. I cov­ered my ears, trying to smother their voices. They had a language all their own, a style of speech well-suited to dead vocal organs. The words were breathless, shapeless rattlings in the backs of their throats, parched scrap­ings at the mausoleum portal. Arid gasps and dry gurgles were their dia­lects. These crackling noises were es­pecially disturbing as they emanated from the mouths of things that had at least the form of human beings. But worst of all was my realization that I understood perfectly well what they were saying.

  The boy stepped forward, pointing at me while looking back and speaking to his father. It was the opinion of this wine-eyed and rose-lipped youth that I should have suffered the same end as Aunt T. With an authoritative impa­tience the father told the boy that I was to serve as a sort of tour guide through this strange new land, a native who could keep them out of such difficulties as foreign visitors sometimes get into. Besides, he grotesquely concluded, I was one of the family. The boy was in­censed and coughed out an incredibly foul characterization of his father. The things he said could only have been con­veyed by that queer hacking patois, which suggested feelings and relation­ships of a nature incomprehensible out­side of that particular world it mirrors with disgusting perfection. It is the dis­course of Hell on the subject of sin.

  An argument ensued, the father's composure turning to an infernal rage and finally subduing the son with bi­zarre threats that have no counterparts in the language of ordinary malevol­ence. Monstrous possibilities were implied.

  Finally the boy was silenced and turned to his aunt, seemingly for com­fort. This woman of chalky cheeks and sunken eyes touched the boy's shoulder and easily drew him toward her with a single finger, guiding his body as if it were a balloon, weightless and toy­like. They spoke in sullen whispers, using a personal form of address that hinted at a long-standing and unthink­able allegiance between them.

  Apparently encouraged by this scene, the daughter now stepped forward and used this same mode of address to get my attention. Her mother abruptly gagged out a single syllable at her. What she called her daughter might possibly be imagined, but only with ref­erence to the lowliest sectors of the hu­man world. Their own words, their choking rasps, carried all the dissonant overtones of a demonic orchestra in bad tune. Each perverse utterance was a rioting opera of evil, a choir shrieking pious psalms of intricate blasphemy and devout songs of enigmatic lust.

  "I will not become one of you," I thought I screamed at them. But the sound of my voice was already so much like theirs that the words had exactly the opposite meaning I intended. The family suddenly ceased bickering among themselves. My outburst had consoli­dated them. Each mouth, cluttered with uneven teeth like a village cemetery overcrowded with battered grave­stones, opened and smiled. The expres­sion on their faces told me of something in my own. They could see my growing hunger, see deep down into the dusty catacomb of my throat which cried out to be anointed with bloody nourish­ment. They knew my weakness.

  Yes, they could stay in my house. (Famished.)

  Yes, I could make arrangements to cover up the disappearance of the serv­ants, for I am a wealthy man and know what money can buy. (Please, my family, I'm famished.)

  Yes, their safety could be insured and their permanent asylum perfectly fea­sible. (Please, I'm famishing to dust.)

  Yes, yes, yes. I agreed to everything; everything would be taken care of. (To dust!)

  But first I begged them, for heaven's sake, to let me go out into the night.

  Night, night, night, night. Night, night, night.

  Now twilight is an alarm, a noxious tocsin which rouses me to an endless eve. There is a sound in my new lan­guage for that transitory time of day just before the dark hours. The sound clusters together curious shades of meaning and shadowy impressions, none of which belong to my former concep­tion of an abstract paradise: the true garden of unearthy delights. The new twilight is a violator, desecrator, steal­thy graverobber; death-bell, life-knell, curtain-riser; banshee, siren, howling she-wolf. And the old twilight is dead. I am even learning to despise it, just as I am learning to love my eternal life and eternal death. Nevertheless, I wish them well who would attempt to de­stroy my precarious immortality, for just as my rebirth has taught me the importance of beginnings, the idea of endings has also taken on a painfully tranquil significance. And I cannot deny those who would avenge all those exsanguinated souls of my past and fu­ture. Yes, past and future. Endings and beginnings. In brief, Time now exists, measured like a perpetual holiday con­sisting only of midnight revels. I once had an old family from an old world, and now I have new ones. A new life, a new world. And this world is no longer one where I can languidly gaze upon rosy sunsets, but another in which I must fiercely draw a full-bodied blood from the night.

  Night . . . after night . . . afternight. V

  THE LITTLE FINGER ON THE LEFT HAND

  by Ardath Mayhar

  It wasn't the pain. That was control­lable, even without the medication they insisted on shooting into me every time I opened my mouth. I mean, it isn't as though I'd been some sort of marsh-mallow. In the house wrecking busi­ness, you get your share of knocks and cuts, even when you're careful. No, it wasn't exactly the pain. Maybe part was the inactivity.

  For a man who has spent his entire life on his feet, when he wasn't actually asleep or making love, this lying flat on my back and staring at the antisep­tic white ceiling was making me crazy. For the first time in my life, I was grate­ful to my Dad for making me graduate from college. Bits and pieces came back to me . . . oddball scraps of literature, formulas, bits of history. It helped to make the time pass, though not much.

  Still, it wasn't just the boredom that was getting to me. It was that damned little finger on my left hand. The one that isn't there any more.

  With all the broken bones and con­tusions and whatnot that I got when that cut-stone wall fell on me, you'd think the loss of that finger wouldn't even be noticeable. I mean, it isn't as if you use the thing much. And right now I can't use anything, being strung up like a wounded mummy. But that was the bit that was missing from me when they dug me out, and that was the bit that was giving me Hell.

  Dr. Yoshida came in, the first day I was out from under sedation enough to tell him what was bothering me.

  "Your nerves are still there, in the stump, Mr. Carstairs," he said. "They send signals to the brain, even though they no longer lead to the finger. After such a trauma, they are sending scram­bled signals, I suspect. That is why you have that gnawing sensation and the sudden sharp pains.

  "After a time, they will heal at the severed ends, and the worst will be past. Though I must
admit that I have had patients who had terrible itches in missing limbs for years after losing them. However, right now you can call for sedation, when it gets too painful. You need that for rest, too, I am sure. By the time you are able to move about a bit, the worst will be over."

  It made some sense. I believed him. But I'm not one who likes to be doped up, no matter what. I just lay there and felt sharp teeth gnawing away at that finger until I was ready to scream. If it hadn't been for Lola, I'd have gone off my gourd.

  She comes in every day for as long as they'll let her stay. I keep reminding her that if she'd said yes when I asked her to marry me she might stay as long as she liked. She grins at that, because she didn't exactly say no. She said in four months, when she has her degree and time for a husband and a new job, both at once.

  Anyway, she kept looking at me, those first few days, as if she could sense what I was pretending not to feel.

  Finally she asked, right out, "Hamp, you're hurting, aren't you?"

  I had sworn never to lie to her. I meant it, too, so I nodded. "Some."

  "More than some. What is it? The back? The neck? You're so wrapped up I can't tell what's hurt the worst."

  I felt silly. I stared up at her, and she fixed me with those big brown eyes that demand the truth and nothing but the truth. "It's that little finger. The one that's gone. The thing's driving me wild . . . feels as if mice with saber-teeth are gnawing it to rags."

  "Ghost pains," she said, nodding. "They told me you'd have them, but I don't think they realize how bad it is for you. They're used to people having them in entire arms and legs. I think they don't expect a small bit like a fin­ger to give you so much trouble."

  That was probably true, but at least she knew and sympathized. That helped a little. When it got so that I was trying to turn off the TV with thought waves, she read to me or told me funny stories about her classmates and professors, or her boss and the techs in the lab where she worked. It helped.