The Shadow People

by Margaret St. Clair

  "Mr. Hood will be back in a few minutes," she said in a flat, low voice. "Won't you sit down?"

  Was it Carol? I was still unsure. She was wearing blue, a color Carol had never liked. Then she smiled at me, a hesitant, doubtful, rather mechanical smile, and I was abruptly convinced.

  "Carol!" I said.

  She turned white, so white I was afraid she was going to faint. She pushed the glasses up on her forehead and peered blindly at me. I saw that the pupils of her brown eyes were so dilated that her eyes looked black, and the whites were suffused with blood.

  She groped with her hands before her face, as if she were pushing cobwebs away. "It isn't—it isn't really Dick, is it?" she asked. "You said Elkins, over the phone."

  "Yes, it's Dick. I've come back."

  She gave a tiny, doubtful whimper. It cut me to the heart. The next moment I was holding her in my arms.

  She was thin to touch, even thinner than she looked, and her mouth, when I kissed her, was thin too. She didn't respond to my kiss, and her eyes, so dilated and discolored, bothered me.

  "I can hardly see you," she said in her flat voice, as if she picked up my thoughts. "He anoints my eyes. He wants me to be able to see elves."

  "Hood?"

  "Yes. How can it be really Dick? This is even harder to believe than when you came for me in the darkness, when they were going to eat me. I can't really be sure." She touched my face timidly with her fingers. "Anyhow, it isn't Hood."

  "What are you doing with him?" I asked. "Are you really his secretary?"

  "I guess so. I mean, I type letters for him sometimes."

  "But—do you like him?" It stuck in my craw that Carol was apparently staying willingly with the man who had betrayed me to live and die in Underearth.

  "Of course not," she answered with more animation than she had yet shown. She was no longer quite so death white. "I hate him. Oh, he hasn't been too unkind to me, actually. He always makes me eat enough, and once, when I had an infected finger, he took me to a doctor. But I hate him so! I hate him from the bottom of my heart."

  "But you stay with him."

  "Yes." She sat down on the bed. "After—I left you down there, I never thought I'd see him again. I'd been gone longer than I thought, about four months. My landlady had put my things in storage.

  "I got a job as a part-time, typist. I tried to forget you, though I dreamed about you a lot. But I wasn't feeling well. I had cramps in my legs a lot, and night after night I'd wake up soaking wet with sweat.

  "I went to see a doctor. He told me I must have been taking some drug. He didn't believe me when I told him no.

  "He gave me some sleeping tablets. He told me I'd have to get over the addiction by myself. When I took the tablets, I'd try all night long to wake up. And I had cramps all over my body then.

  "I didn't know what to do. The people I used to know couldn't help me; the big drug crackdowns had begun. Then Hood came. He'd brought a bottle of that meal, the bitter red stuff; with him.

  "When I saw it, I knew it was what I wanted. He told me I could have it, have all the atter-corn I wanted, if I'd stay with him.

  "I felt so bad, Dick. I hated him, but staying with him really didn't seem to matter. I never thought I'd see you again. So I took the corn."

  "You've been with him ever since?" I asked. I had sat down beside her on the bed, with my arm around her waist. There was an angry ache in my chest.

  "Yes. We've been so many places—England, Iceland, Baja California, Kansas—I don't remember half of them. We move about constantly. We go in a hurry, without any warning, and we leave in a hurry, too. We left Helsinki half an hour after we got there.

  "Hood has strange visitors. He talks to people in dark alleys, and men knock on the door in the middle of the night. One of his callers was a sort of Negro, but I never saw a Negro so black. I don't think he was a Negro. He seemed to be made out of the color black. He and Hood didn't say anything to each other at all. They only looked at each other. Then the black man went away. He frightened me.

  "Ordinary people call, too, the kind of people whose faces one can't remember. Sometimes they give Hood money, and sometimes he has money for them. He has plenty of money, though he never seems to work at anything."

  "What do you think he's trying to do?" I asked. I had been dimly aware of Hood before as the shadowy, malign cause of much that had happened to Carol and me; now I began to wonder whether he might not be the hidden machinator of much more.

  Carol pleated her lower lip thoughtfully. "I don't know, really," she said. "Once I asked him why we moved around so much, and he hit me and told me to shut up. But I've wondered whether he might not be a federal narcotics agent. That would account for his having money without working for it."

  "Is he pushing drugs, do you think?"

  "No-o-o, but he seems to have free access to drugs. I think he might be trying to use his contacts with—that place" (she meant Underearth) "for purposes of his own. He might be trying to shape the beings that live there into something solid, something he would control. Hood wants power. I haven't lived with him for three years without learning that."

  When she mentioned the years she had spent with Hood, my fists clenched involuntarily. I said, "Do you think he's succeeding in getting it?"

  She yawned. "Excuse me. I'm not sure. He's changed a lot lately. Ever since our second trip to Iceland, he's been frightened. He seems to think somebody is going to attack him. That's why he anointed my eyes—so I could see attackers before he could."

  "Can you see more than you used to?" I asked.

  She sighed. "I'm not sure. Sometimes things seem to get between me and the light.

  "It isn't only real attack, one from the outside, that he's frightened of. He talks to himself sometimes, you know, and says that he's carrying death around within himself. He twists around and claws at his back, over and over, as if something had been planted there."

  I couldn't make much sense of this. Carol yawned again. "But he's afraid his Otherworld visitors will attack him?" I asked.

  "Yes. Otherworld is big, Dick, bigger than any of us on the surface realize, and it has many entrances. It runs in a belt around and under our world. I've never really got away from it."

  Once more she yawned. "I'm sleepy," she said in apology. "I sleep most of the time. I was asleep when you called up from the lobby. I try not to sleep so much, but I can't help it. It gives me a cold feeling to be always asleep. But I don't have dreams, anyhow. I don't think I could stand it if I had dreams."

  "Are you sleepy because of the atter-corn, or is Hood giving you other drugs?"

  "I don't know. He—I—I don't know what goes on a lot of the time. I think he has intercourse with me sometimes, but I'm not sure."

  The anger in my chest had changed to a steady heat. I said abruptly, "Leave him."

  "Leave—?" she answered vaguely.

  "Yes, of course. You said you hated him. Don't be afraid. I'll take care of you. Leave Hood, and come with me."

  She twisted her fingers together nervously. "I can't."

  "Why not?"

  "How would I get the atter-corn?"

  I was still looking at her, my jaw dropped, when the door was thrown open and Hood burst in.

  He had aged, but I knew him instantly. I sprang to my feet, expecting trouble, but he paid absolutely no attention to me. I might have been invisible.

  "So, you little bitch," he said furiously to Carol, "You set them on my trail, did you? On corners and in alleys, behind walls and fences, wherever I go, and you put them there! Damn you, you pretty, sly little bitch!" His voice was high and quivering.

  Carol made no reply to this tirade. She sat quietly on the bed, her hands in her lap and her head drooping. She was plainly used to tongue lashings of this sort.

  I didn't feel as calm about it as she did. I was standing on Hood's left, and when he began to mouth more insults, I hit him as hard as I could on the side of his chin.

  His head snapped bac
k. He must have had a glass jaw, for he went over sideways and hit the floor with a considerable thud.

  I ran to the bathroom, and came back with two hand towels. I tied Hood's hands together behind his back, and tied his feet together, too. Then I caught him under the arms and pulled and tugged him into an armchair.

  His eyelids began to flutter. I slapped him lightly on the cheeks.

  "Oh," he said, opening his eyes, "Aldridge. Back from Underearth so soon?"

  "Never mind that," I said. "I want you to tell me how Carol can be cured of needing atter-corn."

  "Hah?" he said vacantly.

  I slapped him harder. "You heard what I said. I want to get Carol—Carol there, the girl you call a 'bitch'—over needing to eat the corn. How can it be done?" I was perfectly ready to torture him to find out.

  "You know how to cure her right now," he answered readily.

  "No, I don't. How can it be done?"

  "How did you get free of needing it yourself?" he answered.

  I thought of the way my intoxication had waned at the skull-shaped hill. "I cut my wrist," I said.

  "That's it. Her blood must be shed. But it's dangerous, very dangerous, because the elves—"

  He paused. His eyes opened so wide I saw the whites all round. He began to writhe in the armchair, straining and tugging to get his hands free.

  "What's the matter?" I asked.

  "Elf-shot!" he panted. "Elf-shot!" He whimpered and groaned for a moment, obviously in much pain. Then his body jerked forward violently, exactly as if he had been stabbed in the back.

  I felt over his back. The cloth of his green sport jacket was intact. I didn't understand what had happened to him.

  "Kill him," Carol said in a calm voice. She had risen from the bed. "You know how to help me now. There's no point in letting him live. He's always meant trouble for us."

  "I think he's dead already."

  "He may only have fainted. It's wiser to make sure."

  I thought it was excellent advice. I had no trouble in feeling ready to kill him. What Carol had suffered from him burned in my mind, and I had good reason to feel murderous toward him on my own account. I got my pocketknife out and opened it. It was not a very big knife, but I knew it could kill him if I kept trying. I longed for his blood.

  There was a rap at the door. A voice said, "Room service. I've brought up Mr. Hood's ginger ale."

  Carol and I exchanged glances. She swallowed. Then she said, "Mr. Hood doesn't want it now. He'll call room service for it later."

  "O.K.," said the voice.

  My mood of violence had ebbed. I closed the knife and put it back in my pocket. "Aren't you going to kill him?" Carol asked.

  I shook my head. "It's too dangerous. The hotel knows your name and Id disk number. If I kill Hood, there'll be a big mess. We may both have to face a murder charge. Besides, I think he's already dead."

  "Make sure," Carol said earnestly. "Hood is full of tricks."

  I untied his hands and feet and laid him back in the chair in a natural-looking position. I put my ear to his chest; I couldn't hear any heartbeat, but then, I wasn't a doctor.

  Carol was hovering over us uneasily. "Try with a mirror," she suggested.

  I got Carol's looking glass from the dresser and held it to Hood's lips. I held it there for three or four minutes, but not the faintest mist appeared on it.

  "We'll leave him in the chair," I said finally. "It may look as if he's had a heart attack. Maybe that's what he did have, actually."

  "Maybe," Carol agreed unemotionally.

  "Get your things packed, kid, and we'll go."

  "No." She shook her head. "I don't want to take anything with me he gave me. If I could, I'd leave this room naked. I'll go with you. But I don't want anything from him."

  It was a point of view I respected. After a little discussion, we went down in the elevator and walked through the lobby at an ordinary, unhurried pace.

  I helped Carol into the rented car. As I turned the ignition key, I wondered whether I had made a mistake. Perhaps I ought to have held a pillow over Hood's face for a while, to make sure. But I was certain his heart had ceased to beat.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I wanted to avoid the roadblock at Chowchilla. Carol was already beginning to show withdrawal symptoms, and I knew any peace officer would take her into custody as soon as he looked at her. So I drove directly east, by minor roads, until we reached 101 and headed north.

  We stopped at a little town, I think Paicines, for gas. The station was one of those one-pump deals in front of a general store. Carol was talking to herself, a muttering monotone whose burden was flight and pursuit. The attendant must have heard her; his eyes widened a little. But he filled the gas tank without comment.

  He began to wipe the windshield. I thought I recognized him. I said, "Say, are you Bill Hayes? Used to be with The Initial Chancre?"

  "Yeah. I played washboard. I'm trying to live it down, though. I'm studying the piano and playing Czerny etudes."

  "That's too bad," I answered. "You were great on the washboard. I was a great admirer of yours."

  Carol was fumbling with the catch of the car door. "Restroom," she said.

  "Around in back, ma'am, to the right," Bill Hayes said. "I'll turn the light on for you." He went to a switch.

  Carol stumbled off in the direction he indicated. Hayes finished cleaning the windshield, and opened up the hood to check the water and oil. I paid for the gas. Carol didn't come back. I felt a growing uneasiness.

  As last I went around to the right to look for her. It was quite dark now, but a light on the rear wall of the store lit up a romantically cluttered back yard. Wooden crates, paper cartons, a red shed with a sagging door, and signs reading "Ladies" and "Gents" fixed to opposite sides of the building, were merely conventional, but the willow tree, enormously green and bosky, was not, and neither was the pond under it, filmed with algae even more intensely, poisonously green than the leaves of the willow. I could see quite clearly, because of the hard light.

  Carol was standing beside the pond under the willow, stooping over and scooping up scum from the surface of the pond in her two hands. She raised it to her mouth and began to lap at it.

  "Don't do that!" I said sharply.

  She raised her head and looked at me. Her lips and chin were green with scum. "Why not?" she said. "Why not? It tastes like the corn. It could taste like the corn." She giggled stupidly.

  "Come on, get back in the car." I tried to take her arm.

  She pulled away from me. "No. No nonononono. Oh, I do feel so bad. I feel so bad."

  Our voices must have been loud. Bill Hayes came around the side of the store. "The man's here," he said in a quick whisper. "If he sees her like that, he'll hang a bust on her. He'll be around to go to the john as soon as he gets his Coke from the machine. We'd better hide her in the shed."

  Together we pushed and jockeyed Carol into the outbuilding. When the deputy, Coke bottle in hand, came around to the back, Hayes was asking me about the condition of the men's restroom, and I was replying that yes, it had been fine and sanitary.

  "Did you check the oil in my car?" I asked as the deputy went into the head, still holding his Coke bottle.

  "Yes, sir. You're down a quart," Hayes answered. He was plainly a man who was quick to dig.

  "You might as well fill it up."

  "O.K. We only have Western oil, though."

  We went around to the gas pump. Hayes fidgeted with my car; I hoped desperately that Carol would be quiet.

  The deputy came out from in back, paid for his gas, and drove off. It was plain he wasn't suspicious, or he would have hung around waiting for me to go.

  When I went back to the shed, Carol was sitting on the floor, her head drooping. "I think they know," she said.

  "Who knows what?" I asked. I set her on her feet, and steered her around to the car. Hayes helped me put her in.

  "The—elves," Carol answered. "They know they know they know.
They know." She gave a dreary giggle.

  "What's she been on?" our friend asked as I started the car.

  "Nothing you'd know about," I answered. "Thanks a lot for helping us."

  "That's O.K. I don't meet many people who remember my washboard days."

  We got to Berkeley about eleven. Carol was in a bad way, her leg muscles knotted in cramps and her body streaming sweat. She talked constantly of Otherworld pursuit; I didn't see how they could possibly have followed us from Fresno, but I found her talk unnerving. For all my sojourn under the skin of the world, I knew its denizens had capabilities I was ignorant of.

  I stopped the car near a lighted phone booth and looked in the directory for Dr. Fred Gruenwald. He had been the hip community's favorite physician. I hoped to get something from him that would keep Carol going until I could get her to a motel and try the bleeding operation on her.

  Gruenwald's name wasn't in the directory, and when I asked information about him, she said no such phone was listed.

  I went back to the car. Now that it was too late, I realized that I should have stopped at a motel with Carol as soon as we left Fresno, perhaps at Rolinda or Kerman. Her symptoms had been slight then, and it was improbable the Otherearth pursuers would have tracked her to a chance-chosen motel. I might have been able to release her from her addiction. But I didn't dare take her to a motel now; she was obviously in the throes of withdrawal from some drug, and the penalties for harboring drug users were severe. A motel proprietor would call the fuzz as soon as he looked at her.

  I thought of taking her to a non-hip physician; again, I didn't dare risk it. What a heavy liability my poor girl was! The curfew would come into effect in about half an hour. I'd have to get her in some safe place by then.

  I drove around for a while. Carol's constant moaning got on my nerves. We'd had extraordinary luck in avoiding the flics, but it couldn't keep up forever. What was I to do?

  My aimless cruising—was it so aimless?—finally took me past the building that held Fay's apartment. But, of course, I couldn't ask Fay for help. I drove around the block twice more. On the third pass, I slipped the car into a parking place. There were only a few minutes left.