A Touch of the Creature

by Charles Beaumont

  As Beaumont’s stories had been providing him with a steady income, he moved his family to another part of Los Angeles, where he had purchased a home. During a chaotic time of expensive renovations throughout early 1960, Charles noted he was pleased to see the release of his third short fiction collection. Although he had once again urged Bantam to name his book A Touch of the Creature, the publishing house instead chose the title Night Ride and Other Journeys. “One reason for our decision to go ahead with another paperback original had to do with The Intruder selling to Putnam’s,” Saul David recalled. “Another reason was the name recognition Chuck was starting to get from Playboy and Twilight Zone.”

  Throughout 1961, Beaumont was at the height of his literary powers, selling to most of the top markets in magazine and television. By now, film offers were also flooding in. At times he juggled as many as ten projects simultaneously.

  The following year, however, it seemed as though Beaumont’s heavy workload was beginning to take its toll on him. “From the late Fifties into the early Sixties, Chuck was aging at a rate that was extremely rapid,” Matheson said. “He was never healthy to begin with; he’d had spinal meningitis as a youth. And for years he suffered from terrible migraine headaches. Really awful ones. He lived on Bromo Seltzer. He’d buy these huge electric-purple bottles of Bromo and consume them in no time. He was always very, very thin. Almost gaunt. Though he was above six feet in height, he only weighed around one hundred and forty pounds—and that was when he was healthy.”

  The spring of 1963 found Beaumont working on several film, television, fiction and nonfiction projects, while submitting his fourth collection of short fiction to Bantam. The book’s lineup of stories included “Time and Again”, which concerns parallel deaths in ancient Egypt and modern times, “Lachrymosa”, the touching story of a widow and widower meeting in a cemetery; and “Adam’s Off Ox”, a charming backwoods deal-with-the-devil fantasy that is written in an overtly bucolic style. Once again, Beaumont considered titling his collection A Touch of the Creature. Despite lengthy negotiations with Bantam, however, the volume never materialized.

  Meanwhile, Beaumont continued his prolific output of stories­. Yet for the first time in his career as a professional writer, he found himself struggling with his manuscripts, which saw continuous rewrites, as he was increasingly frustrated with the thoughts and words he was putting to paper. To worsen matters­, family and close friends noted that he seemed to be losing the ability to concentrate, the cause of which they attributed to exhaustion from stress and overwork.

  In an effort to maintain his status as a writer who was at the peak of his reputation and career, Beaumont continued to struggle through his assignments until he could find time for rest and, hopefully, recovery. Yet, as his concentration worsened, Helen desperately tried to understand and treat his symptoms.

  In the summer of 1964, after a battery of tests at UCLA, Charles Beaumont was diagnosed as having either Alzheimer’s disease or Pick’s disease, both of which are degenerative disorders of the brain and are recognized by doctors only through an autopsy. As each disease is largely untreatable and totally incurable, Beaumont faced premature senility, aging, and an early death.

  The following year, Beaumont was taken to the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.

  He died there on February 21, 1967 at the age of thirty-eight, his full potential never realized.

  * * *

  Charles Beaumont’s favored title was finally realized in 2000 when A Touch of the Creature was published in two hardcover formats: a numbered edition that featured fourteen previously unpublished stories, and a lettered edition that included three additional previously unpublished tales (“The Philosophy of Murder”, “The End Product,” and “The Blind Lady”). Now, with the release of Valancourt Books’ paperback edition of A Touch of the Creature, all seventeen stories are collected in this volume.

  Like the best of Beaumont’s work, the tales within bridge the gap between pre-World War II and modern styles of story­telling. However, the innovations he and his colleagues brought to fantasy and horror are the foundations of those genres’ current popularity. As such, every writer, artist, or filmmaker who has followed Beaumont into that night country he knew so well owes him an enormous debt.

  Upon reading these stories for the first time—decades after Beaumont’s passing—Richard Matheson noted that the tales in this collection had been a revelation to him: “All these years … I was under the impression that I had a clear picture of Chuck. I thought I had read all his work. I thought I had an accurate fix on his plotting, stylistic and character delineating skills. And certainly his persona.

  “Obviously, I was wrong.”

  Matheson was particularly struck by the intellectual and emotional impact of “The Pool”, a tale that concerns the frustrations of a young professional writer and family man. “Chuck was, literally, able to get inside himself, a feat only the best writers (or any superlative artist) can achieve,” Matheson wrote. “Nor, apparently, did he fear that inward probe and unflinching self-study which he was able to translate into words.

  “In this particular story, what more perfect evocation could be created for a writer wanting to yet unable to resist the largesse of writing scripts. A problem complicated by the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood. On a personal level, Chuck dealt with all of this.

  “This sorrow is familiar to me as it would be to any writer who yearns to write something truly important but lives in a state of constant frustration because he doesn’t.

  “With Chuck, there was further complication to this problem—a complication he was not aware of—his demise at the maddening age of 38.

  “Knowing all this, ‘The Pool’ is, to me in particular, a work of deep—and horrific—import.”

  Matheson also noted that he had been “thrown off-balance” by the other stories in this volume, all of which had been a “revelation” to him: “One which I did not expect. One which unsettled me. But one I am happy to have experienced. How often in life, after such a long period of years, is one struck by such a revelation?

  “Especially regarding an old friend and creative companion who, one discovers, was far different—and far larger—than one ever thought he was.”

  Roger Anker

  July 8, 2015

  Roger Anker is a Bram Stoker Award-winning editor, and he has also written for numerous magazines, including Twilight Zone, Starlog, Fangoria, Fantasy Review, Dark Discoveries, and Mystery Scene. He lives in Chicago, where he is currently writing Trapped in the Twilight Zone: The Life and Times of Charles Beaumont for Centipede Press.

  Adam’s Off Ox

  Hesh! The Good Lord in Judgment, get down there; you’ns must not crawl all over me like the scurvy. Swear, think after a body’s worked hard all day—let go a that brooch or I’ll whup you to within a ace of your life!—think a body could expect a little rightful rest. And you needn’t act smart nor cute neither, because it don’t fool me for one solitary minute: I have paid particular heed how that when they is beans to be popped and taters to peel you could ruin the muscles of your neck lookin for help, but once the work is all tended to—little old feisty crawly things, get down before you break both my legs! I’ll be witness, you’re all busier than a cow’s tail in fly time; and here it is long beyont reasonable bed-time.

  Now what ails you?

  Nosir. It is altogether too late to be startin in on a big old long drawn-out story.

  And I say it is, and we’ll hear no more of it.

  Besides, I have told you all the histories I could study up, and then some.

  Hesh!

  All right, all right. But listen to me: Do you’ns solemnly swear and give your oath that when I’m done you’ll march into bed and not another word out a you?

  Is that a solemn swear?

  Then stop dodaddlin around; quit your old fussin; and clear the phlegm out a your throats.

  And get down off m
e!

  Now then.

  Reckon I’ve already spelled out the story of my Great Uncle Billy Spiker and How He Met up with The Devil hisself in the Woods and like to Died at What Happent When He was Give that One Wish . . .

  No?

  Wellsir:

  My Great Uncle Billy Spiker was a caution. He growed up like any normal child, and was give all the advantages a mother’s lovin heart could provide, but his daddy was a heller and wanted Billy to enter the trappin business but Bill was a mind not to and that’s when he lit out. Aged fourteen at the time; and nobody heard hide nor tail of him agin.

  Entered a good many lines of business, Billy did, but he never could seem to stick at nothin—stay a while and the man he worked for, they’d hold him up like their own kin; then somebody would pass the corn liquor and Great Uncle would go off somewheres and stay three, four weeks. And that would be the end of that. He’d get jobs and lose em, get em and lose em, allers lookin for somethin, I guess, like—nobody ever could rightly understand, he was so peculiar.

  Wellsir, he might have got liquored up, and maybe he wasn’t no count in a lot of respects, but he’s one man who never made a real enemy. Not a real one.

  This, you must understand, is all before he begun callin hisself Doctor Marvel-O.

  That came about in a peculiar way. My Great Uncle was remarked­ in a good many states for his way with the cards. Lot a folks recomembered how he used to swagger into some barroom or other and smile a smile that’d charm a coon right out of a tree, smile and set down and, be blamed, he’d make total paupers a half the men in that room before you could say scatwallix. Most other men would a got shot up sure as sin, but old Billy took their money ever time and left em laughin at their own cussed luck.

  Wellsir, it so happent one time, when the tide was turned around for a spell and he was nigh to bedrock, that he got involved in a game a poker. Things went along just fine and dandy and Billy was winnin away, when a certain gentleman owned up that he didn’t have any more money but he would bet all his other worldly possessions on that last hand, if my Great Uncle would do the same.

  Now Billy he couldn’t see but one thing to do. Says, “Hellfire yes!” and they drawed.

  And Billy won.

  And here is what he won: A big old creaky wagon, a thousand empty bottles, a horse a hundred years old or so named Queen Elizabeth III and a colored gentleman without no teeth and sad eyes named Ephriam-Ephriam X. And a banjo.

  Don’t you know Billy laughed fit to be tied when he seen his winnins. But he had a queer sort a wisdom and he made his decision right then and there.

  They was sign on the wagon read:

  DOCTOR MARVEL-O’S

  A Panacea for all Ailments

  A Youth Revivifier

  and!!

  Guaranteed to Increase Your Growth

  Only $1.00 a Bottle

  So then he bought a black suit with a white shirt and spectacles; and from the start he made an insistence that Ephriam-­Ephriam had to address him as Doctor.

  Hiked up and begun to travel then, once he’d mixed up a batch a medicine. You understand, of course, he did this all hisself: throwed water and all kinds of things, like sassafras root, clover weed and molasses, into a big tub a corn whisky and stirred her all up.

  Did I mention he was a borned talker? Hey-O; probably knew more about words than anybody else to begin with, so when he come to the first town in his yeller wagon, and after Ephriam-Ephriam got through strummin out melodies, it were no wonder he sold ever full bottle he had.

  And that is the way she went. From town to town, year in and year out, Doctor Marvel-O just went on mixin up his potions in the tub and lyin like a jackrabbit all the time to folks to get em to buy his Miracle Mix. Shoo-eee, how that man did frebaricade!

  But it never done nobody any real harm, exceptin them as imbibed too much and got the naushy due to the corn whisky taste. Didn’t do em any good, though, neither: not one last drap a good; and that’s what got ta jabbin Great Uncle Billy till he couldn’t sleep right of a night anymore.

  They was both out in this here part a the country—a long time fore even I was thought of—when Billy got to studyin things, and fell into a black old mood. The wagon was stuck in a mud puddle smack the middle of a forest, and for a long time they sat there, whilst it poured down rain outside, and finally Billy said: “Hit don’t seem right that a man should go on through life without doin a single solitary thing for nobody. Don’t seem right, no matter how you look at her.”

  He didn’t know how much his cussed smile had ever meant to more pretty janes than I got toes, or how many folks felt better just by listenin to him lie.

  Ephriam-Ephriam practically never talked, so he just listened. Nobody knows what he thought about it all.

  I say Great Uncle Billy set and studied, whilst it rained, then he started shakin his head like to come loose from his shoulder-blades. And then he weeped, for the first time in his whole adult life and it was a powerful thing to behold, as he thunk about all them years and how he’d be a parson or a doctor—a real doctor—if it was to do over agin.

  Wellsir, Ephriam-Ephriam took out his banjo and hummed a spiritual song. They’d have to wait for the rain to quit and things to dry anyway fore they could come unstuck, so Billy heshed his cryin and crawled inta the back a the wagon and begun to mix up another batch a mednis.

  First, though, he tried out the corn liquor to see that it was of the usual high quality, no doubt. Tried her out agin, he did, and got to think about how dog miserable he was and all, and he kep on tryin out that whisky until they wasn’t a overgenerous amount left when he got through.

  But hit helped his mood out. Got to singin and whoopin and hollerin, like to out-shout that old storm hitself; and then, Great Uncle Billy Spiker started gatherin up things for his Miracle Mix.

  He threw in ever last thing he could lay his hands to. Lamp oil, kerosene, rusted nails, handkerchiefs, old love letters from women he liked at first didn’t later on when they begun to love him up too much, week-old socks—Billy just kep on tossin things inta that old tub. Soon it begun to bubble and bile and spit, but the more noise it made the louder Billy sung and it appeared­ as if he was goin to put old Ephriam-Ephriam X in too, ony he was too heavy.

  “Double double toil an trouble,” Billy shrieks out.

  O, twas weird. Queen Elizabeth III got worried and fretted feisty-like: come nigh rearin up.

  Then—well now, here is where the interestin part comes in.

  After that tub got ta jumpin with all the peculiar things Billy had throwed inside, Billy he took him a notion to go walkin.

  So he clumb out the wagon and like to lit on his head in the mud, he was so saturated, but he dint. Made her all right and laughed like a hyeeny, he did, at the pitisul sight of that yeller rig and the old hoss and Ephriam-Ephriam settin big and proud in the pourin down rain, spang in the midst of them Skagit woods.

  Begun to walk and seein as how they wasn’t no more spirits, he got to thinkin agin and there he was, thrice as miserable as a body can get.

  Fore long he was out of sight of the wagon and anything else human—just walkin in the rain, stumblin and fallen all over his­self like a man gone demented, tryin to study, don’t you understand what I’m sayin, tryin to kindy sort and figure and study it all out and see what the sum come to.

  Now, a course, they is every good chance that what took place then was a total dream all in my Great Uncle Billy’s head, which was whirlin and spinnin to Glory due to the corn whisky. But them as has lived out some years, they get to know the difference betwixt an between dreams and real-to-life occurrences. Leastways, I will tell it to go it come about as actual, and if you’ns choose to say Billy Spiker was just dead old drunk and not accountable, then you are as welcome as the air to do so.

  Well now, don’t you know it vexed Billy when, as he elected to sit down on a old log and listen to the rainy wind, there come big and loud a hee-haw and a hee-haw louder’n a m
ule’s bray!

  He jumped up and looked around for a good stick, and then he caught a glimmer of who it was was doin all that laughin and it struck God’s own fear into my Great Uncle’s heart.

  Now mind, he were no coward. Billy had fought him many’s the good old fight, includin Apache injuns and men twicet his size and geirth, and he was never knowed to be a shirker.

  But he took one look at who was laughin his fool head off, and he said: “Feet, let us go!” But those old feet, they was rooted to the ground and preliminated movement of any kind, shade or description. Billy begun to tremble like a aspirin.

  “It is certainly wet out,” says Billy, poochin out his chest.

  “Don’t take much sense to see that, now does it?” says the other, comin closer.

  “I was tryin,” says Billy, “to be sociable.”

  And upon that, this here old man—gettin closer all the time—he laid his head back and laughed and sniggered till you’d think he’d choke.

  He was a study, let me tell you all. A big man it was, standin there laughin at Billy Spiker—big and ornry lookin and by no stretch of the imagination just exactly right. For one thing, he didn’t have no hair on his whole body, and you could say this for a fact because the old vulgarian was naked as a jaybird, without even nothin to cover his modesty! Head slicker’n a bean and flatter on the top than two pancakes. Also, he was jetty black—just as black old black as the ace of spades. Not like Ephriam-­Ephriam X, I don’t mean, but—well, like a lump a hard coal: shiny and wet, as if he’d been scorched in the fire for a long time so’s it turned from red to black and the scars blistered all over. When he smiled, you could see his little sharp pointy teeth set in a row, and his bitty eyes, like a fish’s eyes, ony a deep bright bloody red.