“I have a jar of formaldehyde,” Daniels muttered. His fingers fumbled nervously with the b.b. gun. “How do this thing work? I can’t seem to—”
Charles grabbed the gun from him. “I’ll kill it.” He squatted down, one eye to the sight, and gripped the trigger. The bug lashed and struggled. Its force-field hammered in his ears, but he hung onto the gun. His finger tightened. . .
“All right, Charles,” the father-thing said. Powerful fingers gripped him, a paralyzing pressure around his wrists. The gun fell to the ground as he struggled futilely. The father-thing shoved against Peretti. The boy leaped away and the bug, free of the rake, slithered triumphantly down its tunnel.
“You have a spanking coming, Charles,” the father-thing droned on. “What got into you? Your poor mother’s out of her mind with worry.”
It had been there, hiding in the shadows. Crouched in the darkness watching them. Its calm, emotionless voice, a dreadful parody of his father’s, rumbled close to his ear as it pulled him relentlessly toward the garage. Its cold breath blew in his face, an icy-sweet odor, like decaying soil. Its strength was immense; there was nothing he could do.
“Don’t fight me,” it said calmly. “Come along, into the garage. This is for your own good. I know best, Charles.”
“Did you find him?” his mother called anxiously, opening the back door.
“Yes, I found him.”
“What are you going to do?”
“A little spanking.” The father-thing pushed up the garage door. “In the garage.” In the half-light a faint smile, humorless and utterly without emotion, touched its lips. “You go back in the living room, June. I’ll take care of this. It’s more in my line. You never did like punishing him.”
The back door reluctantly closed. As the light cut off, Peretti bent down and groped for the b.b. gun. The father-thing instantly froze.
“Go on home, boys,” it rasped.
Peretti stood undecided, gripping the b.b. gun.
“Get going,” the father-thing repeated. “Put down that toy and get out of here.” It moved slowly toward Peretti, gripping Charles with one hand, reaching toward Peretti with the other. “No b.b. guns allowed in town, sonny. Your father know you have that? There’s a city ordinance. I think you better give me that before—”
Peretti shot it in the eye.
The father-thing grunted and pawed at its ruined eye. Abruptly it slashed out at Peretti. Peretti moved down the driveway, trying to cock the gun. The father-thing lunged. Its powerful fingers snatched the gun from Peretti’s hands. Silently, the father-thing mashed the gun against the wall of the house.
Charles broke away and ran numbly off. Where could he hide? It was between him and the house. Already, it was coming back toward him, a black shape creeping carefully, peering into the darkness, trying to make him out. Charles retreated. If there were only some place he could hide . . .
The bamboo.
He crept quickly into the bamboo. The stalks were huge and old. They closed after him with a faint rustle. The father-thing was fumbling in its pocket; it lit a match, then the whole pack flared up. “Charles,” it said. “I know you’re here, someplace. There’s no use hiding. You’re only making it more difficult.”
His heart hammering, Charles crouched among the bamboo. Here, debris and filth rotted. Weeds, garbage, papers, boxes, old clothing, boards, tin cans, bottles. Spiders and salamanders squirmed around him. The bamboo swayed with the night wind. Insects and filth.
And something else.
A shape, a silent, unmoving shape that grew up from the mound of filth like some nocturnal mushroom. A white column, a pulpy mass that glistened moistly in the moonlight. Webs covered it, a moldy cocoon. It had vague arms and legs. An indistinct half-shaped head. As yet, the features hadn’t formed. But he could tell what it was.
A mother-thing. Growing here in the filth and dampness, between the garage and the house. Behind the towering bamboo.
It was almost ready. Another few days and it would reach maturity. It was still a larva, white and soft and pulpy. But the sun would dry and warm it. Harden its shell. Turn it dark and strong. It would emerge from its cocoon, and one day when his mother came by the garage. . . Behind the mother-thing were other pulpy white larvae, recently laid by the bug. Small. Just coming into existence. He could see where the father-thing had broken off; the place where it had grown. It had matured here. And in the garage, his father had met it.
Charles began to move numbly away, past the rotting boards, the filth and debris, the pulpy mushroom larvae. Weakly, he reached out to take hold of the fence—and scrambled back.
Another one. Another larvae. He hadn’t seen this one, at first. It wasn’t white. It had already turned dark. The web, the pulpy softness, the moistness, were gone. It was ready. It stirred a little, moved its arm feebly.
The Charles-thing.
The bamboo separated, and the father-thing’s hand clamped firmly around the boy’s wrist. “You stay right here,” it said. “This is exactly the place for you. Don’t move.” With its other hand it tore at the remains of the cocoon binding the Charles-thing. “I’ll help it out—it’s still a little weak.”
The last shred of moist gray was stripped back, and the Charles-thing tottered out. It floundered uncertainly, as the father-thing cleared a path for it toward Charles.
“This way,” the father-thing grunted. “I’ll hold him for you. When you’ve fed you’ll be stronger.”
The Charles-thing’s mouth opened and closed. It reached greedily toward Charles. The boy struggled wildly, but the father-thing’s immense hand held him down.
“Stop that, young man,” the father-thing commanded. “It’ll be a lot easier for you if you—”
It screamed and convulsed. It let go of Charles and staggered back. Its body twitched violently. It crashed against the garage, limbs jerking. For a time it rolled and flopped in a dance of agony. It whimpered, moaned, tried to crawl away. Gradually it became quiet. The Charles-thing settled down in a silent heap. It lay stupidly among the bamboo and rotting debris, body slack, face empty and blank.
At last the father-thing ceased to stir. There was only the faint rustle of the bamboo in the night wind.
Charles got up awkwardly. He stepped down onto the cement driveway. Peretti and Daniels approached, wide-eyed and cautious. “Don’t go near it,” Daniels ordered sharply. “It ain’t dead yet. Takes a little while.”
“What did you do?” Charles muttered.
Daniels set down the drum of kerosene with a gasp of relief. “Found this in the garage. We Daniels always used kerosene on our mosquitoes, back in Virginia.”
“Daniels poured the kerosene down the bug’s tunnel,” Peretti explained, still awed. “It was his idea.”
Daniels kicked cautiously at the contorted body of the father-thing. “It’s dead, now. Died as soon as the bug died.”
“I guess the other’ll die, too,” Peretti said. He pushed aside the bamboo to examine the larvae growing here and there among the debris. The Charles-thing didn’t move at all, as Peretti jabbed the end of a stick into its chest. “This one’s dead.”
“We better make sure,” Daniels said grimly. He picked up the heavy drum of kerosene and lugged it to the edge of the bamboo. “It dropped some matches in the driveway. You get them, Peretti.”
They looked at each other.
“Sure,” Peretti said softly.
“We better turn on the hose,” Charles said. “To make sure it doesn’t spread.”
“Let’s get going,” Peretti said impatiently. He was already moving off. Charles quickly followed him and they began searching for the matches, in the moonlit darkness.
Copyright 1954 by Fantasy House, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents,
Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.
THE CHILDREN’S HOUR
by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore
HE SAT ON A BENCH in the little gr
ove in front of Administration, watching the clock over the provost marshal’s door jerk its long hand toward seven. Presently, when the hour struck, he would be going in that door, and up one flight of stairs, and down the corridor to the room where Lieutenant Dyke sat waiting, as he had waited so many evenings before.
Tonight might be the night that would end it. Lessing thought perhaps it would be. Something was stirring behind the intangible locks of his mind, and tonight that door might open which had resisted the skilled manipulations of hypnosis for so long. The door might swing wide tonight at last, and let the secret out which not even Lessing knew.
Lessing was a good hypnosis subject. Lieutenant Dyke had discovered that early in their class experiments in psychonamics—that astonishing means by which a soldier can learn to desensitize his own body and feel neither pain nor hunger, when pain or hunger would otherwise be intolerable. In the process of learning, dim and untrodden corridors of the mind are sometimes laid bare. But seldom in any mind was such a thing to be encountered as that block in Lessing’s.
He responded well to all the usual tests. Immobility and desensitization, the trick of warping the balance center, the familiar routine of posthypnotic commands, all these succeeded without a hitch, as they had succeeded with so many others. But in Lessing’s brain one barrier stood up immovable. Three months in his life were locked and sealed behind adamant walls—under hypnosis.
That was the strangest thing of all, for waking, he remembered those three months clearly. Under hypnosis—they did not exist. Under hypnosis he had no recollection that in June, July and August of two years ago he had been living a perfectly normal existence. He was in New York, a civilian then, working in an advertising office and living the patterned life that still existed for a time after December 7, 1941. Nothing had happened to make his hypnotized memory blank out with such stubborn vehemence when asked to remember.
And so began the long sessions of searching, probing, delicately manipulating Lessing’s mind as a complicated machine is readjusted, or as muscles wasted and atrophied are gently massaged back to life.
Up to now, the dam had resisted. Tonight—
The first stroke of seven vibrated upon the evening air.
Lessing got up slowly, conscious of an unaccustomed touch of panic in his mind. This was the night, he thought. There was a stirring deep down in the roots of his subconscious. He would know the truth tonight—he would look again upon the memory his mind had refused to retain—and he was illogically just a little afraid to face it. He had no idea why.
In the doorway he paused for a moment, looking back. Only the twilight was out there, gathering luminously over the camp, blurring the outlines of barracks, the bulk of the hospital distantly rising. Somewhere a train hooted toward New York an hour away. New York that held mysteriously the memory his mind rejected.
“Good evening, sergeant,” said Lieutenant Dyke, looking up from behind his desk.
Lessing looked at him a little uneasily. Dyke was a small, tight, blond man, sharp with nervous vigor, put together with taut wires. He had shown intense interest in the phenomenon of Lessing’s memory, and Lessing had felt a bewildered sort of gratitude until this moment. Now he was not sure.
“Evening, sir,” he said automatically.
“Sit down. Cigarette? Nervous, Lessing?”
“I don’t know.” He took the cigarette without knowing he had done it. This was the flood tide, he thought, and he had no mind for any other awareness than that. The dam was beginning to crumble, and behind it what flood waters, pent up in darkness, waited for release? There were almost inaudible little clicks in his mind as the bolts subconsciously, automatically clicked open. Conditioned reflex by now. His brain, responsive to Dyke’s hypnotic probing, was preparing itself.
A bare light swung above Dyke’s desk. His eyes turned to it, and everything else began to darken. This, too, was reflexive by now. Dyke, behind him, traced a finger back along his scalp. And Lessing went under very quickly. He heard Dyke’s voice, and that changed from a sound to a strong, even suction pulling somewhere in darkness. An indefinable force that drew, and guided as it drew. The dam began to go almost at once. The gates of memory quivered, and Lessing was afraid.
“Go back. Go back. Back to the summer of ‘41. Summer. You are in New York. When I count ten you will remember. One. Two—” At ten Dyke’s voice dropped.
Then again. And again. Until the long, difficult preparation for this moment proved itself, and James Lessing went back through time and.
And saw a face, white against the dark, blazing like a flame in the emptiness of the swift temporal current. Whose face? He did not know, but he knew there was a shadow behind it, darker than the blackness, shapeless and watchful.
The shadow grew, looming, leaning over him. A tinkling rhythm beat out. Words fitted themselves to it.
Between the dark and the daylight
When the night is beginning to lower
Comes a pause in the day’s occupation
That is known as the children’s hour—
It meant nothing. He groped through blindness, searching for reason.
And then it began to come back to him, the thing he had forgotten. A minor thing, something hardly worth remembering, surely. Something. . .no, someone—And not quite so minor, after all. Someone rather important. Someone he had met casually in a place he could not quite remember—a bar, or in the park, or at a party somewhere—very casually. Someone—yes, it had been in the park—but who? He could remember now a flickering of green around them, leaves twinkling in sunshine and grass underfoot. A fountain where they had stopped to drink. He could remember the water, clear and colorless, trickling musically away, but he could not quite remember who had. . .who it was—Everything else was coming clear except the person. Forgetfulness clung stubbornly around that figure at his side. That slender figure, smaller than himself—dark? Fair? No, dark.
“Stabbed by a white wench’s black eyes.”
He caught his breath suddenly, in a violent physical wrench, as memory deluged back with appalling violence. Clarissa! How could he have forgotten? How could he? How could even amnesia have erased her? He sat stunned, the shining flood all but blinding him. And somewhere under that pouring brightness was grief—but he would not let that break the surface yet.
Clarissa. What words were there to get all that vivid color into speech? When the barrier went down, it collapsed with such a blast of sudden glory that . . . that—
They had walked in the park above the Hudson, blue water marbled with deeper blue and twinkling in the sun, sliding away below them. Clear water in the fountain, tinkling down over pebbles wet and brown in the dappled shadows beneath the trees. And everything as vivid at Creation’s first morning, because of Clarissa walking beside him under the shining leaves. Clarissa—and he had forgotten.
It was like looking back into a world a little brighter than human. Everything shone, everything glistened, every sound was sweeter and clearer; there was a sort of glory over all he saw and felt and heard. Childhood had been like that, when the newness of the world invested every commonplace with particular glamour. Glamour—yes, that was the word for Clarissa.
Not sveltness and slickness, but glamour, the old word for enchantment. When he was with her it had been like stepping back into childhood and seeing everything with an almost intolerable fresh clarity.
But as for Clarissa herself—who had she been? What had she looked like? And above all, how could he have forgotten?
He groped backward into the shapeless fog of the past. What phrase was it that had suddenly ripped the curtain? Shock had all but erased it from his mind. It was like a lightning-flash forking through the darkness and vanishing again. Darkness—blackness—black eyes—yes, that was it. “Stabbed by a white wench’s black eyes.” A quotation, of course, but from what? More groping. Shakespeare? Yes, “Romeo and Juliet.” Why, wasn’t that what—Mercutio?—had said to Romeo about Romeo’s first love? The gi
rl he loved before he met Juliet. The girl he forgot so completely—
Forgot!
Lessing sat back in his chair, letting everything else slide away for a moment in sheer amazement at the complexity of the subconscious. Something had wiped out all recollection of Clarissa from level below level of his memory, but far down in the dark, memory had clung on, disguised, distorted; hiding behind analogy and allegory, behind a phrase written by. a wandering playwright three hundred years before.
So it had been impossible, after all, to erase Clarissa entirely from his mind. She had struck so deep, she had glowed so vividly, that nothing at all could quite smudge her out. And yet only Lieutenant Dyke’s skill and the chance unburial of a phrase had resurrected the memory. (For one appalling moment he wondered with a shaken mind what other memories lay hidden and shivering behind other allegorical words and phrases and innocent pictures, deep in the submarine gulfs.)
So he had defeated them after all—the bodiless, voiceless people who had stood between them. The jealous god—the shadowy guardians—For a moment the glare of showering gold flashed in his mind’s eye blindingly. He was, in that one shutter-flash, aware of strangers in rich garments moving against confused and unfamiliar backgrounds. Then the door slammed in his face again and he sat there blinking.
Them? Defeated them? Who? He had no idea. Even in that one magical glimpse before memory blanked out again he thought he had not been sure who they were. That much, perhaps, had been a mystery never solved. But somewhere back in the darkness of his mind incredible things lay hidden. Gods and showering gold, and people in bright clothing that blew upon a wind not—surely not—of this earth—Bright, bright—brighten than normal eyes ever perceive the world. That was Clarissa and all that surrounded her. It had been a stronger glamour than the sheer enchantment of first love. He felt sure about that now. He who walked with Clarissa shared actual magic that shed a luster on all they passed. Lovely Clarissa, glorious world as clear—as clarissimaindeed—as a child’s new, shining world. But between himself and her, the shadowy people—Wait. Clarissa’s—aunt? Had there been an . . . an aunt?
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