Nightmare Alley

by William Lindsay Gresham

  He heard Grindle whisper, “Beauty—Beauty, come here!”

  Stan raised his head, moaning a little, and from under one eyelid saw that the cat had wriggled from Grindle’s lap and now stood gazing into the balance case.

  A gasp ran around the waiting circle. The light had snapped on, burning clear and ruby-red, a tiny bulb, Christmas-tree size, in an upright socket in one corner.

  Stan moaned again, his hands closing into fists. The light went out; his fists relaxed.

  Grindle cut short the buzzing whispers by a snap of his fingers.

  Another wait. Stan’s breath came heavier. He felt the saliva in his mouth thickening; his tongue was dry, the saliva like cotton; he forced it out over his lower lip. This was one time when he didn’t have to fake the foam.

  The light flared again and the medium’s breathing became a whistling, agonizing battle.

  Off again. Stan let out a sigh.

  Silence. Time ticking by on someone’s wrist watch. At the foot of the table the Persian looked back, frowning, at Grindle, saying in cat talk, “Let me get into that glass box.”

  The light again. This time it stayed on. Anderson slid from his seat while Stan’s heart pounded but Grindle motioned him back and he compromised by standing in his place. From under folded arms Stan could see Anderson’s lean hand, the nails softly polished, braced against the mahogany as he bent forward. The light went out.

  This time the medium trembled and threw himself back in his chair, his head lolling. Thickly he said, “Open the case. Let the air into it! Take the cover off and examine the apparatus. Hurry!”

  Anderson was already there. The Rev. Carlisle crumpled down in his chair, eyes closed, the foam thick on his lower lip and chin.

  Through slit lids he could see Anderson and the psychologist taking the balance from its box. Beauty had stood close by and now was tapping with her paw at the metal contacts on the floor of the case. Grindle picked her up, squirming, and shut her up in the apartment.

  Then Stan felt something touch his lips; he let his eyelids flick open. The doctor was standing over him, holding a bit of sterile gauze which he dropped into a flat glass culture dish, putting it back in his pocket. Go ahead, you goddamned wisenheimer townie, analyze it for soap! I could give you a good specimen right in the eye.

  Now Grindle had Stan by the arm and was leading him toward the apartment. Over his shoulder he said, “Good evening, gentlemen. You may go.”

  With Grindle alone Stan began to recover. The industrialist offered him brandy and he drank it slowly. Beauty stared at him from hot, yellow eyes.

  “I’ll have the car take you back to New York, Mr. Carlisle, as soon as you feel up to traveling.”

  “Oh, thank you so much. I—I feel a little shaky. Did any phenomena occur?”

  “The light in the cabinet went on three times.” Behind the rimless glasses Grindle’s gray, small eyes almost flashed. “That’s proof enough for me, Mr. Carlisle. I shan’t drag you all the way out here again. I told you I’m a hard-headed man. I needed proof. Well—” His voice broke with a tiny shading of emotion which habitual restraint could not hide. “I’ve seen something tonight that cannot possibly be explained by fraud or trickery. The conditions were absolutely air-tight. Some force inside the case depressed the pans of that balance and if anybody ever talks to me about magnets I’ll laugh right in his face. The instrument is made of brass. This plant is miles from city vibrations—it’s rooted in concrete. There were no threads. You never came near the thing; never touched it….”

  Grindle was pacing the carpet, smoking furiously, his face flushed.

  The Rev. Carlisle finished his brandy and stretched out an affectionate hand to the Persian cat. Safe! This was the money-bags mountain and he stood, not on the top of it, but in sight of the top. He rose at last, rubbing his eyes wearily. The great man had been talking.

  “… ten thousand dollars. I told you I’d do it and I mean what I say. The check will reach you.”

  “Please, Mr. Grindle, let’s not talk about money. If I have given you proof—”

  “Well, you have. You have, man! Let me—”

  “The church can always use donations, Mr. Grindle. You can take care of that through Mrs. Prescott. I know she will be pleased. A fine, devoted woman. But for me it is enough to know that some little corner of the glorious truth has been revealed.”

  Beauty, lolling in the most comfortable chair in the room, suddenly started up and began to scratch her chin with her hind foot. Stan eased Grindle away toward the door. As it closed behind them he saw Beauty biting industriously at the fur over her ribs.

  On the steps of the plant its owner paused. From his pocket he took out two envelopes, held them to the light and handed one to Stan. “Here—might as well give you this now, Carlisle. I was going to send it to Mrs. Prescott as you suggested, but you can save me the trouble. This other we won’t need.” He tore the envelope and its contents to bits.

  “I don’t understand, Mr. Grindle.”

  The smile broke out again with a glitter of white teeth. “It was a warrant for your arrest—in case you tried any fraudulent methods of producing phenomena. It wasn’t my idea, Mr. Carlisle. I have to take advice once in a while, you know, from some of the boys who look after my interests.”

  Stan was erect and the blue eyes were hard. “That warrant was signed by a judge?”

  “I presume so.”

  “And on what grounds was I supposed to be arrested—if you or one of your employees thought he detected trickery?”

  “Why, with conspiracy with intent to defraud.”

  “And how would I have defrauded you, Mr. Grindle? Out of taxi fare from New York?”

  The big man frowned. “You understand, I had nothing to do with it. Mr. Anderson—”

  “You may tell Mr. Anderson,” said the Rev. Carlisle tautly, “that I would be quite capable of suing for false arrest. I have never taken a penny for exercising gifts of mediumship. I never shall. Good night, sir.”

  He got into the waiting car and said coldly to the driver, “Just to the railroad station—don’t drive me all the way in to New York.”

  Grindle stood gaping after him, then turned and went back to the plant.

  Anderson was a good lad, devoted, devoted. Couldn’t ask for more loyalty. But God damn it, he didn’t understand. He just didn’t understand the deeper, the spiritual things of life. Well, from now on Andy would be told to keep his nose out of psychic research.

  The others had left the directors’ room but Anderson was still there. He was attacking the end of the conference table with mighty heaves, trying to make the light flash.

  “Give it up, Andy,” the Chief said acidly. “On home. Go on.”

  “I’ll find out how he did it! He did something.”

  “Andy, you can’t find it in your soul anywhere to admit that it might have been an odylic force that you can’t see or feel or measure?”

  “Nuts, Chief. I know a hustler when I see one.”

  “I said go home, Andy.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  As he was leaving Grindle called to him: “And fire the woman you had taking care of Beauty’s coat. It’s a disgrace—she’s been neglected.”

  Anderson’s voice was smoldering but weary. “What is it now, Chief?”

  “It’s disgusting—Beauty’s coat is swarming with fleas.”

  “Okay, Chief. She gets the gate tomorrow.” He walked quickly from the plant, found his car in the parking lot and rammed in the ignition key irritably. That goddamned phoney reverend. He would be just the one to weasel inside the Chief. And the Chief would protect him. But how in the jumping blue blazes of merry hell did he ever turn that light on and off inside the case? Odylic force, balls!

  “Is that your odylic force, Reverend?”

  “Yeah. That’s it, babe. Like it?”

  She chuckled, warm and enfolding, beneath him in the dark of the bedroom.

  “Wait, lover. Let’
s rest.”

  They rested. Stan said, “He’s going overboard, all right. He’s not so tough—just another chump.”

  “Go easy with him, Stan.”

  “I’m easy. Every test a little stronger until he’s fattened up for the full-form stuff. There’s only one thing—”

  “Molly?”

  “Yeah, Molly. That dame’s going to give us a lot of trouble.”

  “She can be handled.”

  “Yeah. But it wears you out, handling. Lilith, I’m sick of the dame. She’s like a rock around my neck.”

  “Patience, darling. There’s no one else.”

  They lay silent for a time, seeing each other with their finger tips and with their mouths.

  “Lilith—”

  “What, lover?”

  “What does that guy really want? I’ve beaten him over the head with ‘forgiveness’ but I get only half a response. He doesn’t gobble it. There’s something else. Okay. We bring back the dead dame. She tells him he’s forgiven and everything’s jake. But where do we go from there?”

  Dr. Lilith Ritter, at the moment in a very unethical but satisfying position in relation to one of her patients, laughed deep in her throat.

  “What does he want to do? With his first love? Don’t be so naïve, lover. He wants to do this … and this …”

  “But—no; that’s no good. Not with Molly. She’ll never—”

  “Oh, yes, she will.”

  “Lilith, I know that dame. She never stepped out of line once in all the years we been teamed up. I can’t sell her on jazzing the chump.”

  “Yes, you can, darling.”

  “Christ’s sake, how?”

  The warm mouth closed his and he forgot Molly and the con game which kept him in a torment of scheming. Through their pressed lips Lilith murmured, “I’ll tell you when the time comes.”

  The psychic lamp, provided by the Rev. Carlisle, shed no light except through a single dark-red disc in the center of its tin slide. The medium, dressed in a black silk robe, black silk pajamas and slippers, lay back in an armchair on one side of the billiard-room doorway. Grindle, in his shirtsleeves, sat opposite him, the lamp on a coffee table at his side. Dark curtains covered the door and a faint breeze tugged at them. Carlisle had raised one window in the inner room a few inches for ventilation. It was not open far enough for a man to stick his head through and it had been sealed. Grindle had pressed his signet ring into the hot wax. The other windows were sealed shut. There was a fifteen foot drop to the lawn outside, which sloped down to the river.

  Beyond the darkened billiard room the two men waited. The medium’s head was thrown back. His left wrist was fastened to Grindle’s right by a long strand of copper wire, and he had poured salt water on their wrists.

  The heel of the reverend’s slipper was pressed tight against the leg of his chair.

  Rap!

  It seemed to come from the table bearing the red lantern.

  Rap!

  “Is there one in spirit life speaking?” The medium’s words were a hoarse whisper.

  Rap! Rap! Rap!

  “We greet you. Are conditions favorable? May we turn up the lamp a little?”

  Three more raps answered him. Grindle leaned over and raised the lamp’s wick until a warning rap commanded him to stop. His big face was intent and ill at ease, but Stan detected no craft or outright skepticism. He was interested, moving in the right direction.

  They waited. More silence. Then from beyond the dark draperies of the doorway came another knock—a hollow, musical sound, as if something had struck the window. Grindle started from his chair but the warning, upraised hand of the spiritualist stopped him. Carlisle’s breathing came fast now, and heavy, and he seemed to lose consciousness.

  The “sitter” began to sweat. Did he imagine a tingling discharge of current at his wrist where the wire was bound?

  Another sound, a distinct click, from the billiard room. Then a whole chorus of clicks which he made out to be billiard balls, knocking against one another, sometimes in rhythm, as if they were dancing.

  Sweat began to roll from the industrialist’s forehead. It was a hot night, but not that hot. His shirt was sticking to his chest and his hands were dripping.

  The ghostly billiard game went on; then a white ivory ball rolled out from under the curtains and hit the table-leg between him and the medium.

  Carlisle stirred uneasily and a voice came from his stiff lips: “Hari Aum! Greetings, newcomer to the Life of Spiritual Truth. Greetings, our new chela. Believe not blindly. Believe the proof of the mind given you by the senses. They cannot give you the Truth but they point the Path. Trust my disciple, Stanton Carlisle. He is an instrument on which spiritual forces play as a lover plays his sitar beneath the window of his beloved. Greetings, Ezra. A friend has come to you from Spirit Life. Hari Aum!”

  The resonant, accented chanting broke off. Grindle snapped his attention from the lips of the medium to the curtains before the darkened room. The clicks of billiard balls now sounded closer, as if they were rolling and knocking on the floor just beyond the curtains. He stared, his lips drawn back from his dentures, his breath whistling. A white ball rolled slowly from under the curtains and stopped six inches inside the room where they sat. The red cue ball followed it. Click!

  While he watched, the hairs on the back of the big man’s neck raised, the skin drew tight over his temples. For in the dim, ruby light a tiny hand felt its way out from under the curtains, groped delicately for the red ball, found it, and rolled it after the white one. Click! And the hand was gone.

  With an unconscious shout Grindle leaped up and threw himself after the vanishing hand, only to spin around and claw at the curtains of the doorway to keep himself from falling. For his right wrist was firmly secured by copper wire to the wrist of the medium who was now groaning and gasping, his eyes half open and rolled up, until the whites looked as stark as the eyes of a blind beggar.

  Then Grindle felt the room beyond them to be empty and still. He stood, fighting for breath, making no further attempt to enter.

  The medium drew a long breath and opened his eyes. “We can remove the wire now. Were there any phenomena of note?”

  Grindle nodded, still watching the doorway. “Get me out of this harness, Reverend! I want a look in there.”

  Stan helped unwind the wire and said, “One favor, Mr. Grindle —I wonder if you could get me a glass of brandy?”

  His host poured him one and knocked off two straight ones himself. “All set?”

  He drew the curtains and snapped the wall switch.

  A reassuring glow fell from the hanging lamp above the billiard table. Stan’s hand on his arm restrained him from entering.

  “Careful, Mr. Grindle. Remember our test precautions.”

  The floor had been thickly sprinkled with talcum powder. Now it bore traces, and as Grindle knelt to examine them he saw with a chill that they were the unmistakable bare footprints of a small child.

  He rose, wiping his face with a wad of handkerchief. The room had been the scene of grotesque activity. Cues had been taken from their racks and thrust into the open mouths of stuffed sailfish on the wall. The cue chalk had been thrown down and smashed. And everywhere were the tiny footprints.

  Carlisle stood in the doorway for a moment, then turned back and sank into his chair and covered his eyes with his hand as if he were very tired.

  At last the light in the billiard room snapped off and Grindle stood beside him, pale, breathing heavily. He poured himself another brandy and gave one to the medium.

  Ezra Grindle was shaken as no stock-market crash or sudden South American peace treaty could have shaken him. For with a crumb of cue chalk a message had been written on the green felt of the billiard table. It held the answer to a vast, secret, shameful ache inside him—a canker which had festered all these years. Not a soul in the world could know of its existence but himself—a name he had not spoken in thirty-five years. It held the key to an old wro
ng which he would willingly give a million hard-earned dollars to square with his conscience. A million? Every cent he owned!

  The message was in a characterless, copybook hand:

  Spunk darling,

  We tried to come to you but the force was not strong enough. Maybe next time. I so wanted you to see our boy.

  DORRIE

  He drew the doors together and locked them. He raised his hand for the bell rope, then dropped it, and poured himself another brandy.

  At his side stood the tall, silken figure in black, his face compassionate.

  “Let us pray together—not for them, Ezra, but for the living, that the scales may fall from their eyes.…”

  The train to New York was not due for half an hour and Mrs. Oakes, who had been visiting her daughter-in-law, had read the time table all wrong; now she would have to wait.

  On the station platform she walked up and down to relieve her impatience. Then, on a bench, she saw a little figure stretched out, its head pillowed on its arms. Her heart was touched. She shook him gently by the shoulder. “What’s the matter, little man? Are you lost? Were you supposed to meet mamma or papa here at the station?”

  The sleeper sat up with a snarl. He was the size of a child; but was dressed in a striped suit and a pink shirt with a miniature necktie. And under his button nose was a mustache!

  The mustachioed baby pulled a cigarette from his pocket and raked a kitchen match on the seat of his trousers. He lit the cigarette and was about to snap away the match when he grinned up at her from his evil, old baby face, thrust one hand into his coat and drew out a postcard, holding the match so she could see it.

  Mrs. Oakes thought she would have a stroke. She tried to run away, but she couldn’t. Then the train came and the horrible little creature swung aboard, winking at her.

  CARD XIV

  The Tower

  rises from earth to heaven but avenging lightning finds its walls.