The 38th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK

by Chester S. Geier

  In the darkness, Burrick moved his bony shoulders in a shrug. He decided he could do without the radio if he had to. Slyly, he wondered if he could wheedle out of Tom in the morning the admission price to a movie. All Tom had from his pay was what Alma allowed him, but occasionally he managed to slip Burrick a few pieces of change.

  Burrick felt a surge of self-pity. Fine life for an old man! Nobody to talk to, can’t listen to the radio, no money for shows. He wished he were young again. Then he could work and do what he wanted.

  Abruptly, he thought of Ten Eyck’s crystal. Now there was something! Better than the radio, better than the movies. Better, even, than having someone to talk to. Almost as good, in fact, as being young again. He clutched at the thought of the crystal eagerly.

  In the afternoon of the next day, Burrick hurried to the park. But it was not until almost evening that Ten Eyck appeared at the statue in the plaza.

  They talked for a time. Ten Eyck admitted having had no success as yet in finding Wilhelm. Burrick cunningly led the conversation around to the crystal.

  “I sure would like to see it again,” he told Ten Eyck. “There’s a lot in my younger days that I’d like to go over.”

  “You are sure you feel well?” Ten Eyck asked. “So soon after last night might not be good.”

  “I feel fine,” Burrick insisted. “Never felt better, in fact.”

  Ten Eyck nodded reluctantly. “All right, then, I shall show the crystal to you once more.”

  “Tonight?” Burrick said. “I have to go home to supper now, but I’ll sneak out afterwards.”

  “Tonight,” Ten Eyck said. “I shall be at my hotel, waiting.”

  * * * *

  That evening, Burrick sat again at the writing table in Ten Eyck’s room, gazing raptly into the blazing depths of the crystal. This time he went back to the days when he courted Marta, who subsequently became his wife. He’d had a good job, then, sporty clothes, and a horse and buggy that was the envy of his friend. Of all Burrick’s memories, those of this period of his youth were the best. Good old days, lost along the road of years, but reborn under the crystal’s spell. Once more, with Marta, he went for long rides under the summer moon, and attended the many well-remembered dances, picnics, and parties. It was all so real that when consciousness finally returned, Burrick felt more than ever that it was like falling into a bad dream than actually awakening.

  Though exhausted by his sojourn under the spell, one thought was prominent in Burrick’s mind—he had to see the crystal again. Within him the desire was as overpowering as an addict’s hunger for drugs.

  “I’ve got to see the crystal again,” he told Ten Eyck. “Can I come back tomorrow?”

  “But the danger!” Ten Eyck objected. “I have told you that looking at the crystal drains the strength. The body, fortunately, a sixth sense has, like an alarm clock, which breaks the spell when the drain too great becomes. But with too much of the crystal, this warning sense dulls, and one into a spell falls from which he never awakens.”

  “I’ve just got to see the crystal again!” Burrick insisted. “I’ll feel all right by tomorrow.”

  Ten Eyck looked doubtful. “It is a risk. But if you are willing—” Abruptly he shrugged. “Tomorrow—so be it.”

  Exhausted but triumphant, Burrick returned home. It was late, and Alma reminded him of that fact scathingly. But now with something eagerly to look forward to, Burrick scarcely felt the acid of her rebukes. He mumbled a vague excuse and went up to his cot in the attic, where he fell into a heavy slumber.

  Under the spell of the crystal, the next day, Burrick lived over incidents from his life as a boy. Once more he took forbidden swims in the abandoned stone quarry outside of town, went on weekend camping trips in the hills, and stole apples from the trees on Sim Crockett’s farm. Like everything else he had experienced while under the spell, all was very vivid and real. He could actually taste the apples, feel the water against his skin, smell the burning pine branches, pungent on the crisp air of evening.

  When he regained consciousness—feeling more fatigued this time than before—Burrick was now so strongly gripped by the fascinations of the crystal that he pleaded again with Ten Eyck to be allowed to return the next day. But Ten Eyck proved adamant. It was only after almost tearful urgings that Burrick managed to win Ten Eyck’s consent to return the day after the next.

  “And that the last time will be,” Ten Eyck said. “Convinced I am that Wilhelm is in this city no longer. But two days more will I try, and then to Pennsylvania I shall return.”

  Burrick went rigid with dismay. “You mean you’re taking the crystal with you—that I won’t be able to see it any more?”

  “But naturally,” Ten Eyck said.

  “You can’t—you mustn’t!” Burrick wailed, with an anguished feeling of loss. The crystal had come to mean everything to him—the companionship he didn’t have, the radio he couldn’t listen to, the movies he couldn’t afford. It was a key which unlocked the golden door of the past to give life new brightness and meaning. And now it was going to be taken away from him.

  Burrick did not realize that his emotions were based on psychological principles. The old live in the past. In the present there is only ill-health and loneliness, the gray drabness of existence without living. In the future there is only death. The past, with its glorious memories of youth, has enchantment and glamor.

  The crystal had provided Burrick with a means of recreating the past with all the vivid semblance of actuality. In a way, it had been like possessing the ability to go back and live one’s past life all over again. This had been one of Burrick’s fondest dreams—as it all too often is among the old. And once having been able very nearly to do so, Burrick quailed in horror at the mere thought of being forced to stop.

  Burrick grasped Ten Eyck’s arms imploringly. “Please, Mr. Ten Eyck, don’t go so soon. Stay a few days more. The crystal—I’ve got to see the crystal again.”

  Ten Eyck shook his head firmly. “To leave, my mind is made up. An inconvenience it would be to stay in the city longer.”

  “Then…then why not leave the crystal with me?” Burrick suggested in sudden cunning. “I could send it back to you later on.”

  Ten Eyck shook his head again, and with more vigor than before. “I am sorry, Mynheer Burrick, that I cannot do. The crystal in the family must stay. There are certain old stories—” Ten Eyck broke off with an abrupt gesture. A shadow crept into his blue eyes, and his ruddy features tightened. “What you ask is impossible. I must return home—and the crystal with me goes. The day after tomorrow, you shall see it the last time.”

  Gazing at the other’s set expression, Burrick knew that further pleading was useless. Filled with an empty coldness at the thought of having to resume his former cheerless existence, he left.

  As he weakly plodded home, Burrick revolted more and more at being deprived of the crystal. Within him a burning resentment arose that Ten Eyck should be so unsympathetic. And quite suddenly he found himself hating Ten Eyck with a bitter virulent hatred. Ten Eyck had money, freedom—everything. Why did he have to be so stingy where the crystal was concerned? Couldn’t he understand that it made up for all the things Burrick didn’t and could never hope to have?

  Burrick brooded constantly on the impending loss of the crystal, and by the following day his hatred of Ten Eyck coalesced into a plan for murder. By killing Ten Eyck, he would come into possession of the crystal. It would be his—his with which to delve into the golden past any time he wanted to. The unhappy tedium of the present would forever be broken.

  Burrick’s plan was quite simple. When he visited Ten Eyck again, he would wait until an opportunity presented itself and dispatch the other in some way which would not raise an alarm. Then he would take the crystal and leave. The desk clerk paid little or no attention to him, being familiar with seedy people, and at best could give the
police only a vague description. He was not known in that part of the city, and thus did not have to fear that some chance acquaintance would witness his departure from the hotel. This was just an affair between Ten Eyck and himself, and with Ten Eyck out of the way, he would have nothing to worry about.

  As to how the deed itself was going to be done, Burrick was already decided on that point. A gun would have made too much noise—even if he did have one. A knife, if he were to take one from home, would have been missed. He settled on a length of rusty lead pipe which he found in a trash-heaped corner of the basement at home. The pipe had an elbow joint on one end, and made an excellent hammer-like bludgeon.

  Burrick was quite determined. Yet when he presented himself for the last time at Ten Eyck’s shabby hotel room, his heart pounded suffocatingly and his stomach was a hard knot of tension. He thought that Ten Eyck must surely notice his nervous manner and be warned.

  But Ten Eyck did not notice. His mind was obviously taken up with the details of leaving. He nodded abstractedly at Burrick, gestured at the chair before the writing table, and turned to pull from under the bed the suitcase in which he kept the crystal.

  This was the exact moment upon which Burrick had decided for going into action. From the right sleeve of his threadbare jacket where he had been hiding it, the elbow joint resting in his palm, Burrick shook the length of lead pipe. It looked like some barbarian’s grotesque war club as he gripped it tightly in his sweating hand. His breath came with difficulty, as though he breathed through many layers of cloth. Excitement made the blood roar in his ears.

  From the suitcase, Ten Eyck removed the familiar small wooden box. He started to straighten up. Behind him, Burrick crept up on unsteady legs, the length of lead pipe raised high. The utter horror of what he was going to do pulled Burrick forward as though in a trance. Wide and staring, his eyes were fixed on Ten Eyck’s head.

  As if having sensed Burrick behind him, Ten Eyck abruptly turned while still in the act of straightening up. His cherubic features twisted into a pale mask of terror as he saw the up-raised club.

  Burrick acted out of the sheer fright of having been discovered. The muscles in his arm contracted spasmodically, and the pipe swept down in a clumsy chopping stroke. Ten Eyck managed frantically to jerk aside at just the right moment, and the elbow joint merely grazed the side of his head.

  Pulled out of balance by the instinctive swing of his arm, Burrick collided with Ten Eyck’s kneeling form and fell over his shoulders onto the bed. Ten Eyck grasped Burrick’s legs in a terrified clutch and struggled to his to his feet. In panic, Burrick sought to kick free, but he succeeded only in pulling Ten Eyck back to his knees. Moaning with dread, Ten Eyck clung in desperation to Burrick’s legs.

  Twisting around on the bed, Burrick clawed himself into a sitting position. Once again, Ten Eyck was trying to rise. Suddenly mad with fear at the thought of failure, Burrick clubbed repeatedly at Ten Eyck’s head. It seemed unreal, fantastic, like something out of a horrible nightmare. The sobbing gibbering thing that clutched insensately at his legs…raising the pipe up, bringing it down, up and down, over and over, again and again…the breath jammed in his throat, the blood thundering and pounding in his ears.

  Burrick went almost crazy with despair. How much longer did he have to keep hitting. Wouldn’t Ten Eyck ever die?

  It was only after a long moment that he finally realized that the frenzied grip on his legs had loosened. Ten Eyck was dead.

  Burrick rose weakly. Noticing that his trousers were spotted with blood, he brushed them quickly with a corner of the disarranged bed blanket. Then, seizing the wooden box from where it had fallen on the worn rug, Burrick left the room.

  Apparently, the struggle had drawn no attention. The hotel was quiet. Moving slowly through a supreme effort of will, Burrick walked down the stairs and across the lobby. The desk clerk was reading a magazine. He did not raise his head as Burrick went out the door.

  * * * *

  No one was home when Burrick reached there. Alma and the children had gone to a movie. He went up to his cot in the attic and lay down. He felt almost sick with nervous exhaustion.

  After a while, Burrick quieted. The business was over with—and he had successfully got away with it. The crystal was now his. Triumphant elation surged through him at the thought. Strength and Purpose rushed back to him.

  Burrick turned on a light, and eagerly took the crystal from its box. It blazed gloriously in his hands. Pulling up a trunk that served him as a table, he placed the crystal upon it, then sat down on the bed. He stared into the depths of the crystal hungrily, anxious to escape in its spell the livid memory of what he had just done.

  The pulsing sea of rainbow color crept up around him. He sank gratefully into its warm embrace. The grayness came…dissolved. He was sitting on a lumpy bed in a shabby hotel room. A mewling thing had his legs in a desperate vise-like clutch, and he was clubbing at it, again and again, over and over, and it refused to die. Up and down with the pipe, up and down, over and over, and it sobbed and moaned, and wouldn’t die. His lungs bursting for breath, the blood shrieking and clanging in his head. Unutterable terror giving an insane strength to his flailing arm. Over and over, again and again. Wouldn’t it ever end? Wouldn’t the thing ever die?

  Over and over, again and again, up and down, and up and down…

  And then he was brushing at his trousers, forcing himself to walk slowly from the hotel. Climbing up to his cot in the attic, waiting for energy and calmness to return. Pulling up the trunk, looking into the crystal…

  Burrick awoke, weak, numbed with horror. He stared at the crystal as though it were the embodiment of every fear he had ever known. A great cold hand seemed to close around him. What had happened? Why did the crystal no longer bring to life the happy memories of his youth?

  Abruptly, Burrick recalled Ten Eyck’s insistence that the crystal had to stay in his family, and the fearful shadow which had crept into Ten Eyck’s face at his unfinished reference to “certain old stories“. Was it that ownership of the crystal by others than those of the Ten Eyck family resulted in a frightful perversion of its powers? From what Burrick had just experienced while under its spell, this seemed to be the answer.

  Burrick gazed at the crystal with sudden loathing. If he would undergo a repetition of his murder of Ten Eyck each time he looked at it, then it would have to be destroyed.

  And now. Before Alma and Tom came home.

  Careful not to look at it directly, Burrick picked up the crystal and hurried down to the basement. He placed it upon a wooden chopping block, then obtained a large heavy hammer from the tool chest. He pounded the crystal into powdery fragments. With a broom, he carefully swept the dust onto a shovel and dumped it in the ash barrel.

  Burrick sighed in relief. That was that. Nobody could ever connect him with Ten Eyck’s death now. He returned to the attic. As he sat down on the cot preparatory to removing his shoes, a brightness caught his eye. He sought for it puzzledly. He found it. His heart seemed to turn over inside him.

  On the trunk, pulsing, glowing with prismatic splendor, was the crystal!

  Burrick stared at it. Before he could resist, he was sinking into the throbbing rainbow sea. And then he was back in that shabby hotel room, sitting on the bed, while a mewling thing held his legs in a desperate vise-like clutch. He was clubbing at it, again and again, over and over, and it refused to die. Up and down with the pipe, up and down, over and over…

  Burrick opened his eyes. He was covered with perspiration. A tight band seemed to have closed over his chest, making it hard to breathe. His heart had a strange fluttery beat. The outlines of his attic room shimmered crazily.

  A deluge of sudden fright impelled him into motion. The crystal! He had to get rid of it. He reached for it, avoiding its treacherous splendor. He stood up, swayed, fell back on the cot. He was appalled to find how weak he had become. />
  He had to get rid of the crystal. The thought beat at him. But he was too weak to go back down to the basement. What could he do?

  Burrick glanced hopelessly around the room. His eyes settled upon the windows at the rear of the attic. That was it! The windows were open. He could hurl the crystal out into the night.

  Burrick forced himself to his feet. Tottering, staggering, as though drunk, he made his uncertain way over to the windows. Summoning his last dregs of strength, he threw the crystal outside. Then he crept back slowly and painfully to the cot.

  With weary listlessness, Burrick began to remove his jacket. Something bright caught his eye. He looked—and the world spun in chaos around him.

  On the trunk, pulsing, glowing with prismatic splendor, was the crystal!

  He fought its spell, fought it frantically—but he was too weak to resist. The throbbing rainbow sea claimed him. And then he was back in that shabby hotel room, sitting on the bed, while a mewling thing held his legs in a desperate vise-like clutch. And he was beating at it, again and again, over and over, and it refused to die. Up and down with the pipe, up and down, over and over…

  And this time, with his last reserves of life force drained from him, there was no awakening. There was just a great cold blackness that came and never went away.

  GETAWAY

  Originally published in Amazing Stories, October 1946.

  In the early afternoon the rain turned to a gray drizzle which filled the barn-like machine shop with a tired murmuring. Simmons opened the great sliding doors to let in air, and beyond the rain hung like a curtain of dirty cellophane.

  Simmons stood for a moment in the machine shop doorway, watching the rain with the look of sly scrutiny with which he looked at everything. He saw without seeming to see. His narrow bony face was turned toward the cottage some thirty yards away, but he watched the rain out of the corners of lidded eyes. His eyes were the color of greasy brown vest buttons, and held just about as much expression.