by Neil Gaiman
“Good afternoon,” said the man pleasantly as Blacker approached. “Remarkably fine weather, is it not?”
“I do hope I’m not trespassing.”
Studying the man, Blacker revised his first guess. This was no gamekeeper; there was distinction in every line of the thin sculptured face. What most attracted Blacker’s attention were the hands holding a small gilt coffee-cup; they were as white, frail, and attenuated as the pale roots of water plants.
“Not at all,” the man said cordially. “In fact you arrive at a most opportune moment; you are very welcome. I was just wishing for a little company. Delightful as I find this sylvan retreat, it becomes, all of a sudden, a little dull, a little banal. I do trust that you have time to sit down and share my after-lunch coffee and liqueur.”
As he spoke he reached behind him and brought out a second deck-chair from the cottage porch.
“Why, thank you; I should be delighted,” said Blacker, wondering if he had the strength of character to take out the ham sandwich and eat it in front of this patrician hermit.
Before he had made up his mind, the man had gone into the house and returned with another gilt cup full of black, fragrant coffee, hot as Tartarus, which he handed to Blacker. He carried also a tiny glass, and into this, from a blackcurrant-cordial bottle, he carefully poured a clear colourless liquid. Blacker sniffed his glassful with caution, mistrusting the bottle and its evidence of home-brewing, but the scent, aromatic and powerful, was similar to that of curaçao, and the liquid moved in its glass with an oily smoothness. It certainly was not cowslip wine.
“Well,” said his host, reseating himself and gesturing slightly with his glass, “how do you do?” He sipped delicately.
“Cheers,” said Blacker, and added, “my name’s Roger Blacker.” It sounded a little lame. The liqueur was not curaçao, but akin to it, and quite remarkably potent. Blacker, who was very hungry, felt the fumes rise up inside his head as if an orange tree had taken root there and was putting out leaves and golden glowing fruit.
“Sir Francis Deeking,” the other man said, and then Blacker understood why his hands had seemed so spectacular, so portentously out of the common.
“The surgeon? But surely you don’t live down here?”
Deeking waved a hand deprecatingly. “A week-end retreat. A hermitage, to which I can retire from the strain of my calling.”
“It certainly is very remote,” Blacker remarked. “It must be five miles from the nearest road.”
“Six. And you, my dear Mr. Blacker, what is your profession?” “Oh, a writer,” said Blacker modestly. The drink was having its usual effect on him; he managed to convey not that he was a journalist with literary yearnings, on a local daily, but that he was a philosopher and essayist of rare quality, a sort of second Montaigne. All the time he spoke, while drawn out most flatteringly by the questions of Sir Francis, he was recalling journalistic scraps of information about his host; the operation on the Indian Prince; the Cabinet Minister’s appendix; the amputation performed on that unfortunate ballerina who had both feet crushed in a railway accident; the major operation which had proved so miraculously successful on the American heiress…
“You must feel like a god,” he said suddenly, noticing with surprise that his glass was empty. Sir Francis waved the remark aside.
“We all have our godlike attributes,” he said, leaning forward. “Now you, Mr. Blacker, a writer, a creative artist—do you not know a power akin to godhead when you transfer your thought to paper?”
“Well, not exactly then,” said Blacker, feeling the liqueur moving inside his head in golden and russet-colored clouds. “Not so much then, but I do have one unusual power—a power not shared by many people—of foretelling the future. For instance, as I was coming through the wood, I knew this house would be here. I knew I should find you sitting in front of it. I can look at the list of runners in a race, and the name of the winner fairly leaps out at me from the page as if it was printed in golden ink. Forthcoming events—air disasters, train crashes, I always sense, in advance. I begin to have a terrible feeling of impending doom, as if my brain was a volcano just on the point of eruption.”
What was that other item of news about Sir Francis Deeking, he wondered, a recent report, a tiny paragraph hat had caught his eye in The Times? He could not recall it.
“Really?” Sir Francis was looking at him with the keenest interest; his eyes, hooded and fanatical under their heary lids, held brilliant points of light. “I have always longed to know somebody with such a power. It must be a terrifying responsibility.”
“Oh, it is,” Blacker said. He contrived to look bowed under the weight of supernatural cares; noticed that his glass was full again, and drained it. “Of course I don’t use the faculty for my own ends; something fundamental in me rises up to prevent that. It’s as basic, you know, as the instinct forbidding cannibalism or incest.”
“Quite, quite,” Sir Francis agreed. “But for another person you would be able to give warnings, advise profitable courses of action? My dear fellow, your glass is empty. Allow me.”
“This is marvelous stuff,” Blacker said hazily. “It’s like a wreath of orange blossom.” He gestured with his finger.
“I distill it myself; from marmalade. But do go on with what you were saying. Could you, for instance, tell me the winner of this afternoon’s Manchester Plate?”
“Bow Bells,” Blacker said unhesitatingly. It was the only name he could remember.
“You interest me enormously. And the result of today’s Aldwych by-election? Do you know that?”
“Unwin, the Liberal, will get in by a majority of two hundred and eighty-two. He won’t take his seat, though. He’ll be killed at seven this evening in a lift accident at his hotel.” Blacker was well away by now.
“Will he, indeed!” Sir Francis appeared delightful. “A pestilent fellow. I have sat on several boards with him. Do continue.”
Blacker required little encouragement. He told the story of the financier whom he had warned in time of the oil company crash; the dream about the famous violinist which had resulted in the man’s canceling his passage on the ill-fated Orion; and the tragic tale of the bullfighter who had ignored his warning.
“But I am talking too much about myself,” he said at length, partly because he noticed an ominous clogging of his tongue, a refusal of his thoughts to marshal themselves. He cast about for an impersonal topic, something simple.
“The pheasants,” he said. “What’s happened to the pheasants? Cut down in their prime. It—it’s terrible. I found four in the wood up there, four or five.”
“Really?” Sir Francis seemed callously uninterested in the fate of pheasants. “It’s the chemical sprays they use on the crops, I understand. Bound to upset the ecology; they never work out the probable results beforehand. Now if you were in charge, my dear Mr. Blacker—But forgive me, it is a hot afternoon and you must be tired and footsore if you have walked from Witherstow this morning—let me suggest that you have a short sleep…”
His voice seemed to come from farther and farther away; a network of suncoloured leaves laced themselves in front of Blacker’s eyes. Gratefully he leaned back and stretched out his aching feet.
Some time after this Blacker roused a little—or was it only a dream—to see Sir Francis standing by him, rubbing his hands with a face of jubilation.
“My dear fellow, my dear Mr. Blacker, what a lusus naturae you are. I can never be sufficiently grateful that you came my way. Bow Bells walked home—positively ambled. I have been listening to the commentary. What a misfortune that I had no time to place money on the horse—but never mind, never mind, that can be remedied another time. It is unkind of me to disturb your well-earned rest, though; drink this last thimbleful, and finish your nap while the sun is on the wood.”
As Blacker’s head sank back against the deck-chair again, Sir Francis leaned forward and gently took the glass from his hand.
“Sweet river of dreams,�
�� thought Blacker, “fancy the horse actually winning. I wish I’d had a fiver on it myself; I could do with a new pair of shoes. I should have undone these before I dozed off, they’re too tight or something. I must wake up soon, ought to be on my way in half an hour or so…”
When Blacker finally woke, he found that he was lying on a narrow bed indoors, covered with a couple of blankets. His head ached and throbbed with a shattering intensity, and it took a few minutes for his vision to clear; then he saw that he was in a small white cell-like room which contained nothing but the bed he was on and a chair. It was very nearly dark.
He tried to struggle up, but a strange numbness and heaviness had invaded the lower part of his body; and after hoisting himself on to his elbow he felt so sick that he abandoned the effort and lay down again.
“That stuff must have the effect of a knockout drop,” he thought ruefully; “what a fool I was to drink it. I’ll have to apologise to Sir Francis. What time can it be?”
“Ah, my dear Blacker, I see you have come round. Allow me to offer you a drink.”
He raised Blacker skillfully, and gave him a drink of water from a cup with a rim and a spout.
“Now, let me settle you down again. Excellent. We shall soon have you—well, not on your feet, but sitting up and taking nourishment.” He laughed a little. “You can have some beef tea presently.”
“I am so sorry,” Blacker said. “I really need not trespass on your hospitality any longer. I shall be quite all right in a minute.”
“No trespass, my dear friend. You are not at all in the way. I hope that you will be here for a long and pleasant stay. These surroundings, so restful, so conducive to a writer’s inspiration—what could be more suitable for you? You need not think that I shall disturb you. I am in London all the week but shall keep you company at week-ends—pray, pray, don’t think that you will be a nuisance or de trop. On the contrary, I am hoping that you can do me the kindness of giving me the Stock Exchange prices in advance, which will amply compensate for any small trouble I have taken. No, no, you must feel quite at home—please consider, indeed, that this is your home.”
Stock Exchange prices? It took Blacker a moment to remember, then he thought, “Oh lord, my tongue has played me false as usual.” He tried to recall what stupidities he had been guilty of.
“Those stories,” he said lamely, “they were all a bit exaggerated, you know. About my foretelling the future…I can’t really. That horse’s winning was a pure coincidence, I’m afraid.”
“Modesty, modesty.” Sir Francis was smiling, but he had gone rather pale and Blacker noticed a beading of sweat along his cheekbones. “I am sure you will be invaluable. Since my retirement I find it absolutely necessary to augment my income by judicious investment.”
All of a sudden Blacker remembered the gist of that small paragraph in The Times. Nervous breakdown. Complete rest…
“I—I really must go now,” he said uneasily, trying to push himself upright. “I meant to be back by seven.”
“Oh, but Mr. Blacker, that is quite out of the question. Indeed, so as to preclude any such action, I have amputated your feet. But you need not worry; I know you will be very happy here. And I feel certain that you are wrong to doubt your own powers. Let us listen to the ten o’clock news in order to be quite satisfied that the detestable Unwin did fall down the hotel lift shaft.”
He walked over to the portable radio and switched it on.
The Most Dangerous Game
BY RICHARD CONNELL
Killing as sport. That’s what hunting’s all about once there’s already meat on the table. And when Richard Connell first published this piece in Collier’s magazine in 1924, it was one of those bull’s-eye moments when a story achieves quintessence and becomes a classic for all time.
Far from a one-hit wonder in his day (he also wrote the screen story for Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe), this remains the one for which Connell is justly remembered. Herein you’ll find an old-fashioned, exquisitely mannered psychosis: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as an elitist chamber piece, stripped of politics, with its imperialist pinky upraised.
It’s also bare-knuckled suspense at its classiest. And an inarguable inspiration for all the wannabe Hannibal Lecters to come. (The Zodiak Killer was also a fan.)
“Off there to the right—somewhere—is a large island,” said Whitney. “It’s rather a mystery—”
“What island is it?” Rainsford asked.
“The old charts call it ‘Ship-Trap Island’,” Whitney replied. “A suggestive name, isn’t it? Sailors have a curious dread of the place. I don’t know why. Some superstition—”
“Can’t see it,” remarked Rainsford, trying to peer through the dank tropical night that was palpable as it pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.
“You’ve good eyes,” said Whitney, with a laugh, “and I’ve seen you pick off a moose moving in the brown fall bush at four hundred yards, but even you can’t see four miles or so through a moonless Caribbean night.”
“Nor four yards,” admitted Rainsford. “Ugh! It’s like moist velvet.”
“It will be light enough in Rio,” promised Whitney. “We should make it in a few days. I hope the jaguar guns have come from Purdey’s. We should have some good hunting up the Amazon. Great sport, hunting.”
“The best sport in the world,” agreed Rainsford.
“For the hunter,” amended Whitney. “Not for the jaguar.”
“Don’t talk rot, Whitney,” said Rainsford. “You’re a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?”
“Perhaps the jaguar does,” observed Whitney.
“Bah! They’ve no understanding.”
“Even so, I rather think they understand one thing at least—fear. The fear of pain and the fear of death.”
“Nonsense,” laughed Rainsford. “This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The world is made up of two classes—the hunters and the hunted. Luckily, you and I are hunters. Do you think we’ve passed that island yet?”
“I can’t tell in the dark. I hope so.”
“Why?” asked Rainsford.
“The place has a reputation—a bad one.”
“Cannibals?” suggested Rainsford.
“Hardly. Even cannibals wouldn’t live in such a Godforsaken place. But it’s got into sailor lore, somehow. Didn’t you notice that the crew’s nerves seem a bit jumpy today?”
“They were a bit strange, now you mention it. Even Captain Nielson—”
“Yes, even that tough-minded old Swede, who’d go up to the devil himself and ask him for a light. Those fishy blue eyes held a look I never saw there before. All I could get out of him was, ‘This place has an evil name among seafaring men, sir.’ Then he said to me, very gravely, ‘Don’t you feel anything?’—as if the air about us was actually poisonous. Now, you mustn’t laugh when I tell you this—I did feel something like a sudden chill.
“There was no breeze. The sea was as flat as a plate-glass window. We were drawing near the island then. What I felt was a—a mental chill—a sort of sudden dread.”
“Pure imagination,” said Rainsford. “One superstitious sailor can taint the whole ship’s company with his fear.”
“Maybe. But sometimes I think sailors have an extra sense that tells them when they are in danger. Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing—with wave lengths, just as sound and light have. An evil place can, so to speak, broadcast vibrations of evil. Anyhow, I’m glad we’re getting out of this zone. Well, I think I’ll turn in now, Rainsford.”
“I’m not sleepy,” said Rainsford. “I’m going to smoke another pipe up on the after deck.”
“Goodnight then, Rainsford. See you at breakfast.”
“Right. Goodnight, Whitney.”
There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there, but the muffled throb of the engine that drove the yacht swiftly through the darkness, and the swish and ripple of the wash of the propeller.
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Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, indolently puffed on his favorite brier. The sensuous drowsiness of the night was on him. ‘It’s so dark,’ he thought, ‘that I could sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids—’
An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it, and his ears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. Again he heard the sound, and again. Somewhere, off in the blackness, someone had fired a gun three times.
Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail, mystified. He strained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, but it was like trying to see through a blanket. He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth. He lunged for it; a short, hoarse cry came from his lips as he realized he had reached too far and had lost his balance. The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea closed over his head.
He struggled up to the surface and tried to cry out, but the wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out with strong strokes after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. A certain cool-headedness had come to him; it was not the first time he had been in a tight place. There was a chance that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender, and grew more slender as the yacht raced on. He wrestled himself out of his clothes, and shouted with all his power. The lights of the yacht became faint and ever-vanishing fireflies; then they were blotted out entirely by the night.
Rainsford remembered the shots. They had come from the right, and doggedly he swam in that direction, swimming with slow, deliberate strokes, conserving his strength. For a seemingly endless time he fought the sea. He began to count his strokes desperately; he could do possibly a hundred more and then—