by Fritz Leiber
With a whir and a clash the top of the box shot up on its hinges, there was a smoky puff and a stench that paled faces and set Miss Bricker gagging, then something small and intensely black and very fast dove out of the box and scuttled across the altar cloth and down a leg of the table and across the floor and under the tapestry and was gone.
Maury Gender had thrown himself out of its course, Miss Bricker had jerked her feet up under her, as if from a mouse, and so had Max Rath. But Vididy Sheer stood up straight and tall, no longer strengthless-seeming. There was icy sky in her blue eyes and a smile on her face—a smile of self-satisfaction that became tinged with scorn as she said, “You needn’t be frightened. We won’t see it again until after dark. Then—well, at least it will be interesting. Doubtless his hussars saw many interesting, things during the seven months my military ancestor lasted.”
“You mean you’ll be attacked by a black rat?” Max Rath faltered.
“It will grow,” said Dr. Rumanescue quietly.
Scanning the hillside again, Max Rath winced, as if it had occurred to him that one of the black flecks out there might now be it. He looked at his watch. “Eight hours to sunset,” he said dully. “We got to get through eight hours.”
Vividy laughed ripplingly. “We’ll all jet to New York,” she said with decision. “That way there’ll be three hours’ less agony for Max. Besides, I think Times Square would be a good spot for the first . . . appearance. Or maybe Radio City. Maury, call the airport! Bricker, pour me a brandy!”
Next day the New York tabloids carried half-column stories telling how the tempestuous film star Vividy Sheer had been attacked or at least menaced in front of the United Nations Building at 11:59 P.M. by a large black dog, whose teeth had bruised her without drawing blood, and which had disappeared, perhaps in company with a boy who had thrown a stink bomb, before the first police arrived. The Times and the Herald Tribune carried no stories whatever. The item got on Associated Press but was not used by many papers.
The day after that The News of the World and The London Daily Mirror reported on inside pages that the German-American film actress Vividy Sheer had been momentarily mauled in the lobby of Claridge’s Hotel by a black-cloaked and black-masked man who moved with a stoop and very quickly—as if, in fact, he were more interested in getting away fast than in doing any real damage to the Nordic beauty, who had made no appreciable effort to resist the attacker, whirring in his brief grip as if she were a weightless clay figure. The News of the World also reproduced in one-and-a-half columns a photograph of Vividy in a low-cut dress showing just below her neck an odd black clutch-mark left there by the attacker, or perhaps drawn beforehand in india ink, the caption suggested. In The London Times was a curt angry editorial crying shame at notoriety-mad actresses and conscienceless press agents who staged disgusting scenes in respectable places to win publicity for questionable firms—even to the point of setting off stench bombs—and suggesting that the best way for all papers to handle such nauseous hoaxes was to ignore them utterly—and cooperate enthusiastically but privately with the police and the deportation authorities.
On the third day, as a few eyewitnesses noted but were quite unwilling to testify (what Frenchman wants to be laughed at?), Vividy Sheer was snatched ofi the top of the Eiffel Tower by a great ghostly black paw, or by a sinuous whirlwind laden with coal dust and then deposited under the Arc de Triomphe—or she and her confederates somehow created the illusion that this enormity had occurred. But when the Sheer woman, along with four of her film cohorts, reported the event to the Sureté, the French police refused to do anything more than smile knowingly and shrug, though one inspector was privately puzzled by something about the Boche film-bitch’s movements—she seemed to be drawn along by her companions rather than walking on her own two feet. Perhaps drugs were involved, Inspector Gibaud decided—cocaine or mescalin. What an indecency though, that the woman should smear herself with shoeblacking to bolster her lewd fantasy!
Not one paper in the world would touch the story, not even one of the Paris dailies carried a humorous item about Le bête noir et énorme—some breeds of nonsense are unworthy even of humorous reporting. They are too silly (and perhaps in some silly way a shade too disturbing) for even silly-season items.
During the late afternoon of the fourth day, the air was very quiet in Rome—the quiet that betokens a coming storm—and Vividy insisted on taking a walk with Max Rath. She wore a coif and dress of white silk jersey, the only material her insubstantial body could tolerate. Panchromatic make-up covered her black splotches. She had recruited her strength by sniffing brandy—the only way in which her semi-porous flesh could now absorb the fierce liquid. Max was fretful, worried that a passerby would see through his companion, and he was continually maneuvering so that she would not be between them and the lowering sky. Vividy was tranquil, speculating without excitement about what the night might bring and whether a person who fades away dies doubly or not at all and what casket-demons do in the end to their victims and whether the Gods themselves depend for their existence on publicity.
As they were crossing a children’s park somewhere near the Piazza dell’ Esquilino, there was a breath of wind, Vividy moaned very quietly, her form grew faint, and she blew off Max’s arm and down the path, traveling a few inches above it, indistinct as a camera image projected on dust motes. Children cried out softly and pointed. An eddy caught her, whirled her up, then back toward Max a little, then she was gone.
Immediately afterward mothers and priests came running and seven children swore they had been granted a vision of the Holy Virgin, while, four children maintained they had seen the ghost or double of the film star Vividy Sheer. Certainly nothing material remained of the courageous East Prussian except a pair of lead slippers—size four-and-one-half—covered with white brocade.
Returning to the hotel suite and recounting his story, Max Rath was surprised to find that the news did not dispel his companions’ nervous depression.
Miss Bricker, after merely shrugging at Max’s story, was saying, “Maury, what do you suppose really happened to those eight hussars?” and Maury was replying, “I don’t want to imagine, only you got to remember that that time the casket-demon wasn’t balked of his victim.”
Max interrupted loudly, “Look, cut the morbidity. It’s too bad about Vividy, but what a break for Bride of God! Those kids’ stories are perfect publicity—and absolutely non-scandalous. Bride’ll gross forty million! Hey! Wake up! I know it’s been a rough time, but now it’s over.”
Maury Gender and Miss Bricker slowly shook their heads. Dr. Rumanescue motioned Max to approach the window. While he came on with slow steps, the astrologist said, “Unfortunately, there is still another pertinent couplet. Roughly: ‘If the demon be balked of a Von Sheer kill, On henchmen and vassals he’ll work his will!’ ” He glanced at his wrist. “It is three minutes to sunset.” He pointed out the window. “Do you see, coming up the Appian Way, that tall black cloud with blue lightning streaking through it?”
“You mean the cloud with a head like a wolf?” Max faltered.
“Precisely,” Dr. Rumanescue nodded. “Only, for us, it is not a cloud,” he added resignedly and returned to his book.