A Touch of the Creature

by Charles Beaumont

  The traffic thinned and soon they were approaching the hills of Malibu.

  “Slow down,” Ann said. Then she pointed. “There.”

  “There?” Ryan’s mouth opened slightly.

  “That’s right.”

  He stopped the car and blinked. “The night,” he said, “is full of surprises. I must say that I didn’t expect your rendezvous to be a cheap motel on the beach!”

  Ann looked at him and shrugged. “We like it,” she said, and opened the door.

  Fighting desperately for control, Ryan followed his wife through the bamboo door into a stale, dimly-lit hallway, down the hallway to another door. It was labeled: “The Zebra Room.”

  As Ann removed a key and inserted it into the lock, he cleared his throat and said, “Hadn’t you better go in first and explain? I wouldn’t want him to have a heart attack.”

  “You’re right. Wait here and I’ll call when I’m ready.”

  The door opened and closed. Ryan stole a surreptitious glance back down the hall. There was something about the place, something— He thought of running outside and driving away, but that, of course, wouldn’t do. Not for a man in his position. No: he’d have to face the fellow (any moment now) and act the way the head of a publishing chain ought to act in such a situation. Cool, reserved, haughty, casual.

  “All right, Tim. You can come in.”

  Ryan’s heart flopped over painfully. His hand trembled as he reached for the knob.

  “Tim?”

  He pushed the door forward and walked into the room. It was in semi-darkness, lit only by a small lamp in the corner.

  “Where are you?” he muttered.

  “Here.”

  He turned his head. Ann was lying on an immense bed, next to the picture-window. The covers were pulled aside. She had on a short black nightgown, nothing more. The moon drenched her in soft light. Beyond, there was the sea.

  Ryan made an angry sound. He wheeled and snapped on the wall-switch and looked around the room. “Where is he?” he demanded.

  “Right here,” Ann said.

  “I don’t see him. What kind of a filthy joke—”

  “Tim, if you want to see him . . . turn around.”

  Ryan glared for a moment, trying to fathom the peculiar expression in his wife’s eyes; then, slowly, he turned.

  And faced a mirror.

  “Do you recognize him?”

  In a flash, Ryan remembered. He remembered the room, this room, where he and Ann had spent their wedding night; the drive they’d taken down Sunset, along the beach, so many years ago, on a night like this, cool and windy, with the moon shining and the ocean moving like a dark blanket—he remembered the old coat he’d worn then . . .

  “Do you know who your rival is now?” Ann asked, stepping into the reflection.

  “Yes.”

  “And—you won’t stand in our way?”

  “No, darling. I won’t stand in your way.”

  Ryan Publications, Inc., snapped off the light and held his wife close and kissed her. Then, together, they walked back toward the bed.

  The Junemoon Spoon

  I’d been trying to push a brand of corsets to the big department stores, and the luck I was having, you’d think women didn’t have stomachs anymore. When I pulled into town I’d made expenses and just about enough for a couple drinks at Frank and Eddie’s. So that’s where I went and that’s what I had.

  The usual bunch was there. Frank Wilmszyk was the only one who looked happy so I figured they’d all run up against the same thing. That’s the way it is, once in a while. Sometimes you make a big killing in one place, then you go somewheres else with the identical same merchandise and nobody’s interested. You can talk yourself hoarse and smile till you think your teeth are going to drop out, but there’s never anybody home. They’re always “Sorry, we’re quite busy now.” It’s the breaks. You expect them and so you figure them. But even though you’ve made a little ash to go on, you still don’t feel so wonderful when it happens. It’s like winning twenty hands of poker and then losing fifteen. I don’t know why, but you’re never happy about the twenty you won. Instead you cry about losing, even if you’re dough ahead. That’s life, if you know what I mean.

  So anyway, I sat down in a corner all prepared to spend a nice evening crying in my beer. Fred looked around and decided this owl-eyed bunch was not for him, so he left. All the others moaned around like me, not talking and staring off into space. Eddie went over to the juke and put on Hearts and Flowers, but nobody laughed this time.

  The last person in the world I wanted to see was Harry Jackson­. So, naturally, that’s who walked in. Not that Harry doesn’t have personality—but that he’s got too much. A salesman with too much personality is like a preacher with a megaphone. You get the donations all right, but you don’t make many friends.

  Well, you picture a guy who could talk Jane Russell into buying a barrel of bust developer and who once sold a carton of Bibles to Joe Dominic’s gang and you’ve got Harry Jackson right to a T. You’d be impressed, if you know what I mean, but you wouldn’t like him. You’d get the feeling he’s trying to sell you something the minute he shakes your hand. And you’d be right.

  But I’ve got to say, Harry could have fooled me this time, if I didn’t look close.

  It wasn’t the same fellow I’d known for seven years. No war-whoop, no calls to set everybody up. He just walked in, quiet-like, and ordered a drink. It could have been Cardinal Spellman.

  I was too miserable to try and duck. I looked into my drink, making like I didn’t notice anybody, but of course Harry spotted me. He sat down at the table slow and tired.

  He took a big gulp of whatever he was drinking and said, “Hiya, Bernie.”

  I said hiya back and that seemed like the end of the conver­sation.

  Harry sat for a while, doodling his fingers in his glass, and then he let out a sigh that made everybody look up. And more sighs and more doodling. It made me nervous and I wasn’t feeling so good anyway.

  And besides, this didn’t make sense. Harry had been gone quite a while and whenever that happened, you could lay money that he’d come back with a yard-wide smirk and a pocket full of the old redeemer. Instead, he looked like Joe Louis right after that fight with Charles. He ordered two more of what he had, and then started to balance match sticks on the sides of the glass. By this time I was getting a headache.

  I said to him, “What’s the matter, Hot-Shot—you only make two grand this trip?”

  He looked very sad.

  “Cut it out, Bernie.”

  And so we just sat there. This was new, all right. But I was still too interested in my own hard luck to pry into anybody else’s. Couple hours and ten beers later most of the others had cleared out, but Harry didn’t look like he was going anywheres. A guy who’d won the sweepstakes and lost his ticket couldn’t look sadder than Harry looked. Black and dismal, like a fish.

  Finally, he lifted up his head. The careful, slow way he did it, I could tell he had a pip on already.

  “Bernie,” he said to me, “what kind of justice is there in this crummy world?”

  Coming from a guy like Harry, this was not the type of question you’d answer in a hurry.

  “All kinds,” I said. “Depends on how you look at it.”

  Noncommittal, if you know what I mean.

  He shook his head and then grabbed hold of it.

  “No, there isn’t. There isn’t any. Not a lousy bit of it. None.”

  “What are you talking about, chum? Don’t tell me Harry Jackson hasn’t made a killing!”

  He looked over his shoulder to be sure the place wasn’t jammed. Then he ordered a few more from Eddie—a couple for me and a couple for himself—and settled back. I saw what was coming as I started to leave. But he pulled me back down.

  “Bernie, I’ll tell you about it. I wouldn’t tell anybody but you, because you’re my pal. None of these other crummy bums—just you.”

  I saw it
wasn’t any use. Always the same. The story how he dumped a carload of stuff none of the rest of the world would look at, off on the biggest store in the state. Not the kind of thing you want to listen to right after you miss the boat on something that’s ducksoup to push like corsets.

  But what can you do?

  “Right after I got rid of that load of pimple removers,” Harry began, “I decided it would be nice to travel. So I asked myself, where haven’t you been? The South. I hadn’t ever been south of Chicago. So what does Harry Jackson do?”—that’s the way he talks, like Harry Jackson was somebody else—“He gets himself a travel folder and starts to get ready. Monaghan, over at the warehouse, was having trouble with those stinkin’ vitamin pills and skin jellies, so he asks me to take them over for him, at one-third our cost. Pretty good? What do I do? I get them and ease him down to one-fourth our price.”

  I knew what he was talking about. Izzie Monaghan had gotten himself stuck with a ’house full of surplus “health” stuff that wouldn’t go at all, even in a market crying for the junk. Those pills, I personally knew, would eat the stomach out of a crowbar. And the skin jellies would finish the job.

  Well, (Harry went on) I throw the slop in the trailer and in a few days I’m breezing along toward points Soof. With the cash-money I picked up on the last job I could afford to take my time—you know, stop in for a mint julep and chew the lip with the peasants—but is that Harry Jackson? Business first, I always said. Business first. Save the palaver for when you got nothing left to push.

  Bessie conked out only once and in less than a week I was right in the heart of Alabama. And here, I said to myself, is where I really clean up! Talk about pickings—why nobody branched out in that direction is something I couldn’t understand. It would be like taking candy from a brat.

  First thing I did was find me a nice, respectable town. The big ones were okay, but that takes a little work. Big towns are pretty much all alike. So I drove through Montgomery, kind of looking her over, and stopped at a likely burg called Mobile.

  I’m telling you, Bernie, nothing could have been sweeter. The way those people shuffled around, like they didn’t care what happened, and the big open-arm pitch they heaved was enough to do the old Jackson heart plenty good. I got myself installed in a place called the Battle House—an old dump but strictly class—and unloaded most of the merchandise in the room. It was settle back and rake it in.

  They didn’t have many little vitamin shops, like in L.A., but the drugstores were all run by old women. Need I say more, need I say more? The business suit, the genteel line, the medical endorsements—one, two, three, and it was in the bag.

  Well, this lasted for a while, but pretty soon I run out of stores. And I was getting ready to shove when the hotel manager told me about a couple little towns nearby that made real nice visiting.

  Now Harry Jackson isn’t the type, so I don’t need to tell you, who likes to sit around in some two-bit burg. But, I don’t know, there was something that told me to stay put. I’d stocked nine-tenths of the drug stores with Philpott’s Miracle Vitamin and Dr. Wunder’s Skin Jelly, with a rake-in of almost a 0, and if there was a riding distance to some place where I could dump the rest, I didn’t figure on pulling out. I knew I couldn’t stay much longer, because people would start using that poison, but I figured a few days wouldn’t make much difference. So I paid for another week and got the directions to those little towns.

  The first one—believe it or not—was called Vinegar Bend. It wasn’t too big, but awful, awful nice. When I got through there, all I had left was a suitcase of the jellies. And by that time I was itching to get back to L.A., so I pushed Bessie out from the Battle House the next day for that second town. I was sure I could clean up.

  This other fleatrap was called Sneadville. Few drugstores, one or two theaters—you know. It was about a hundred miles from Mobile, so I decided to spend the night and start out fresh the next day. The hotels were all crummy, but I found one that was half-way decent. Not the Roosevelt, but it had clean sheets.

  It looked like a cinch. Just a lazy, happy little joint with just the right amount of loose money floating around. The people dressed like it was 1851 instead of 19 and they looked so dumb I was surprised that they could talk.

  Well, there I was, an honest salesman trying to drum up a little business with my merchandise, see, that’s all. Trying to make a living, like anybody else. And here’s what happens.

  I’m not sleepy and besides, it’s too early to go to bed, so I decide to walk around and take in a little of the local scenery. The hotel was big and stood out like a sore thumb, so I knew I wouldn’t get lost.

  So I walked around for a while, looking for a cocktail bar—and you’d think it was prohibition from how many I found. Closest thing to a saloon was a joint called “The Spa” and it was nothing more than a reconditioned hash-house. But, like I said, it was early and the old throat was parched, and I decided to give the dump a try.

  There weren’t many people in it. A corny song was going on the juke and a couple of old birds were lipping it over in a corner. Oh, they were friendly—don’t get me wrong. Just not my type, if you get me. I didn’t know anything about ham hocks and red-eyed peas, so I got a beer and ambled over to a table. About this time a grizzled old guy looks over, grins like a mule and heels it to my spot, carrying a chair with him.

  I wasn’t feeling unsociable or anything, but you know how it is, Bernie, when you kind of enjoy being by yourself. I made like I didn’t see him. The old guy doesn’t notice this and, wheezing like a boiler, he plumps himself down next to me. What do I do? I nod and smile.

  After all, he might own the biggest drugstore in town. And if you’re a salesman you’ve got to be pleasant to everybody, but everybody.

  So anyway, this gazabo sits down and pours half of my beer into his glass.

  “Well, young feller,” he says to me, “so you’re the salesman just got in town?”

  You don’t know these little Alabama towns, Bernie. They’re murder on knowing everything about what’s going on. How the old guy found out about me, I couldn’t say. Probably the hotel proprietor. Oh, they got ways, all right. Like for instance, he knew my name. It isn’t so unusual, because I’d given the hotel clerk my card, but even so it gives you a creepy feeling to hear people you don’t know calling you by your name.

  He talked with a mouthful of mush, all full of y’all’s and heah’s. You know, the Yassuh business. And I smiled and told him I liked Sneadville and might make it my home some day.

  Then, all of a sudden, he asks me, “What are ya sellin’, son?” And naturally, Harry Jackson doesn’t have to be hit over the head to see a good thing. The old boy was practically holding out his money.

  “Well, sir,” I said, “I take it that you are familiar with the famous Dr. Wunder?”

  When he nodded his head yes I knew this was it. Maybe Sam Ingall wasn’t so dumb when he tagged that phony monicker on his muck.

  “Dr. Wunder has developed a miraculous skin jelly, sir, which he does not wish to cheapen by vulgar advertising. He has therefore chosen to send out selected representatives to practically give the people his revolutionary discovery. It has been enjoying such a success that I’m afraid it will be six months before even the back orders can be filled.”

  The old guy’s eyes brighten and I see that another jerk that I didn’t notice before is listening to our conversation. A mean-looking, dark-haired number, but he looked interested as I talked in a louder voice.

  “You see, sir, Dr. Wunder’s Famous Skin Jelly has the power to transform your flesh to the bloom of youth. Goodbye wrinkles, goodbye unsightly eruptions! Although the price will be increased, due to difficulties in obtaining certain of the extracts, it has been selling for four dollars a large, eight ounce bottle.”

  The old bird asked to see a sample and, luckily, I had one with me. Always carry a sample, I used to say—even when you go to bed. He looked the junk over for a long time, sniffed arou
nd and finally asked the question.

  “Son, do you suppose I might get a bottle of this? It’d sure surprise the wife!”

  I hemmed and hawed about back orders for a while, then agreed to let him have the sample for five bucks. Which was still a buck over what I had been charging, and, believe me, I could have kicked myself when I thought that I could have been getting this much! He took the stuff, chuckled around a while, dabbed fingerfulls of it on his hands right then and there, and sat back like he expected something to happen. It was hard, Bernie, to keep from laughing in his face.

  Just as I was feeling good and getting ready to interview the hairy job who kept ankling around, the door opens and in steps a dame who—Bernie, trust my word—a babe who is stacked, but stacked, like nothing Harry Jackson had ever seen before. She looked like a cross between Daisy Mae and Hedy Lamarr, dressed in a ratty gunnysack affair that clung around those curves like it was wet.

  Bernie, you know me. Harry Jackson’s been around. I know a sharp piece of material and take it from me, this was first class merchandise. When she walked there wasn’t anything that didn’t jiggle a little bit on her, and that luscious blonde hair came practically down to her waist, clinging around. It was a sight for sore eyes, Bernie, and my eyes weren’t sore!

  The strange thing was that this dish was all alone. She walked in, looks nice at everybody in the place and orders a glass of milk from the barkeep.

  Old Hamfat next to me hollers, “Hello, Julie girl,” and the dish waves back, looking everywhere but at me. I naturally get more than interested.

  But when I start to get up and excuse myself, gristlebeard pulls me down. Then he points over at the dark-haired number as if that explained everything. I tried again but the same thing happened. Then the big, mean, ugly guy takes something out of his pocket (I noticed that it was wrapped in cotton) and ambles over to where Gorgeous is sitting. I bet I glared holes through old bird next to me. But he chuckles away like Boris Karloff, maneuvering his chair closer to mine. Then he bends down till his mouth is flapping over my ear, and whispers: “That’s Julie Patterson, old Colonel Patterson’s granddaughter. She’s a goner tonight.”