Horrible Imaginings

by Fritz Leiber

  Behind her, footsteps competed with the pounding rain.

  As she heard Cassius ask, “Where’s Tommy? In Wolf’s bedroom, Terri? Did the thunder scare him?” she stooped and switched off the offending globe with a vicious jab.

  Then, as she hurried past the whitely tousle-headed old man mummy-wrapped in a faded long brown bathrobe, she snarled at him, “Your poisonous night light gave Tommy a terrible nightmare!” and rushed downstairs without listening to his stumbling responses.

  In the dark living room the portrait of Helen Hostelford Kruger by Esteban Bernadorre was softly spotlighted by the pearly bulb just below its frame. As Terri advanced toward it, moving more slowly and deliberately now, breathing her full-blown anger, its witch face seemed to mock her. She noticed a subtlety that she’d previously missed: the narrowed eyes were very darkly limned, so that they sometimes seemed to be there but sometimes not, as though the portrait itself might be that of a taper-chinned witch mask greenish flesh-pink and waiting for eyes to fill it—and maybe teeth.

  After glaring at it for a half dozen pounding heartbeats while thunder crackled in the middle distance, her fists clenching and unclenching, she contented herself with switching off its milky light—poison milk!—with a just audible “Flakesma!” like a curse and hurrying back upstairs.

  In the hall there she passed Cassius coming out of “Wolfs bedroom,” as he’d called it. She spared him a glare, but he, agitated looking and seemingly intent on wherever he was heading, hardly appeared to notice.

  Wolf had Tommy tucked into the middle of their bed and was sitting close beside him. ‘Tom’s going to spend the rest of the night with us,” he told her. “Big family reunion and all.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” she said, forcing a smile and bidding anger depart, at least from her features and tumultuous bosom.

  “I’ve already invited him and he’s accepted,” Wolf went on, “so I guess you haven’t any say in the matter.”

  “But we really want you, Ma,” Tommy assured her anxiously, sitting up a little.

  She plopped down on the other side, saying, “And I’m delighted to accept,” as she hugged and kissed him.

  Straightening up, she informed Wolf, “I turned that light off,” and Tommy’s face changed a little, and Wolf said lightly, “You mean that ghost light in Tom’s room? A good idea. He and I have been talking about that a bit, and about ghosts and visions of all sorts, and thunderstorms, and flying cabbages and specter kings, and why if the sea were boiling hot we’d have fish stew.”

  “And wings for pigs,” Tommy added with a pallid flicker of enthusiasm. “Space Pigs.”

  “Incidentally,” Wolf remarked, “we discovered how the ghost light came to be on. No witchcraft at all. Cassius told us. It seems he was passing Tom’s room on his way to bed and saw it was out, and not knowing that Tom had given up sleeping with a night light—”

  “I might have known your father’d be the one!” Terri interjected venomously, yet midway through that statement recalled the command she’d given her anger, and managed to mute it somewhat.

  “—and thinking to do a good turn he quietly stole in, so as not to wake Tom, and switched it on,” Wolf finished, widening his eyes a little at Terri, warningly. “See? No mystery at all.”

  Then Wolf got up, saying, “Look, you guys, I want to check on what that storm’s up to. I’ve been telling Tom how rare such storms are out here, and usually feeble when they do come. While I’m gone, Terri, why don’t you tell Tom about the real humdingers they have in the Midwest that make even this one seem pretty tame? I’ll be back soon.”

  Passing Tom’s room he smelled fresh cigarette smoke.

  Cassius was kneeling by the night light with his back to the door. He shoved something into his pocket and stood up. He looked haggard and distraught. He started to make an explanation to Wolf, but the latter with a warning nod toward the room where Terri and Tommy were, and not trusting himself to talk, motioned his father in the opposite direction downstairs, and followed him.

  The interval gave the old man time to compose his thoughts as well as his features. When they faced each other in the living room, Cassius began, “I was replacing the night light that frightened Tommy with the white one from under Helen’s picture.” He gestured toward where the mask painting hung, now without its own special illumination. “Didn’t want to leave the slightest opportunity for that nightmare, or whatever, to recur.

  “But, Wolf,” he immediately went on, his voice deepening, “what I really want to tell you is that I’ve been lying to you in more than one way while you’ve been here, at least lying in the sense of withholding information, though it didn’t seem important to start with and was done, at least in part, with good intentions. Or at least I could make myself believe that, until now.”

  Wolf nodded without comment, dark- and suspicious-visaged.

  “The littlest lie was that I haven’t been dreaming much lately except for that bitch of a one about Esteban. The truth is that for the past six months or so I’ve been having horrible dreams in which Helen comes back from the dead and hounds and torments me, and especially dreams—green dreams, I call ‘em—in which her face tonics off that picture and buzzes around me whispering and wailing like green-eyed skulls used to when I had nightmares as a boy, and threatening to strangle me—remember that!...

  “… for the most obvious reason for these dreams leads us straight hack to my larger lie—again, a lie by withholding information: that ever since Helen’s death I’ve had this half-memory, half-dread, that back in the horrible grey world of alcohol and blackout I contributed more actively to her death than just by not waking and getting her to the hospital in time to be pumped out.

  “Sometimes the memory-dread has almost faded away (almost, sometimes, as if it could vanish forever), sometimes it’s been real as a death-sentence—and especially since I’ve started this green-dreaming.” Underlying all that has been the unnerving suspicion or conviction that somewhere in my mind is the memory of what really happened if only I could find a way to get back to it, through past alcoholic mists and blackout, maybe by fasting and exhaustion and sheer deprivation, maybe by drinking my way to it again or taking some stronger drug, maybe by mind-regression or psychoanalysis or some other awareness-broadening pushed to an extreme, maybe even by giving my dreams and dreads to another, to see what he’d find in them— Wolf, it’s the sudden realization that I may have been trying (unknowingly!) to do that to Tommy—and to all of you, for that matter, but especially to Tommy—to use him as a sort of experimental subject, that shattered me tonight.”

  By this time Wolf also had had the opportunity to compose his thoughts and feelings somewhat, get over the worst of his anger at Tommy being terrorized, whether accidentally or half intentionally. Nor was he moved to sound off violently when Cassius, lighting another cigarette, had a coughing fit. But he’d also had time to make some decisions with which he knew Terri would concur.

  “Don’t worry any more about the night light,” he began. “Tommy’s sleeping with us. And tomorrow we’ll be taking off, whether the rain forces us to get out (and you too maybe!) or not. It’s been a good visit in a lot of ways, but I think we’ve pushed it too far, maybe all of us have done that. As for your dreams and guilts and worries, what can I say?” A wry note came into his voice for a moment, “After all, you’re the psychologist! I do know there was something damn funny, something strange, about the scare Tommy got tonight, but I don’t see where discussing it could get us anywhere, at least tonight.”

  Before Cassius could reply, the phone rang. It was Tilly for Cassius, and for Wolf too before she’d finished, to tell them that the TV said “the authorities” had begun to phone people in several areas including Goodland Valley to tell them to be ready to evacuate to safer places if the weather situation worsened and a second or general order came, and had they been phoned yet? Also to remind them that they were all, not just Cassius, invited down to her place, which was holding
out pretty well, although there was a leak in her kitchen and a seepage in her garage.

  When she finally got off the line, with messages to Terri and last admonitions to them all, Cassius tried to restart the conversation, but his mind had lost the edge it had had during his brief confession, if you could call it that, and he seemed inclined to ramble. Before he’d gotten anywhere much the phone rang again, this time with the official message Tilly had told them to expect, and there was that to respond to.

  That ended their attempts at any more talk. Wolf went upstairs, while Cassius allowed he probably needed some rest too.

  Outside the thunderstorm had moved into the far distance, but the rain was keeping up with a moderate pelting.

  Wolf found Tom and Terri in bed, her arm around him, and with their eyes closed. She opened hers and signed to Wolf not to talk, she’d just got the boy asleep.

  Wolf brought his lips close to her cheek. “We’ll be leaving tomorrow,” he whispered. “Stay somewhere in San Francisco. Okay?”

  She nodded and smiled agreement and they softly kissed goodnight and he went around and carefully slid into bed on the other side of Tommy.

  That was the ticket, Wolf told himself. Leave tomorrow and let the storm decide how fast they moved, the storm and (he grinned to himself) “the authorities.” Right now the former seemed to be slackening and the latter to have signed off for the night. This lazy thought pleased him and suited his weariness. What had really happened the past few days, anyway? Why, he’d simply pushed his reconciliation with his father too far, involved himself too much in the old man’s ruined life-end, and as a result got Tommy and Terri (and Loni too!) entangled in the dismal wreckage of a marriage (and all its ghosts) which was all Cassius could ever be to anyone. And the solution to this was the same as it had been when Wolf was a youngster: get away from it! Yes, that was the ticket.

  His thoughts in the dark grew desultory, he dozed, and after a while slumbered.

  Morning revealed the storm still firmly in charge of things. No thunder-and-lightning histrionics, but its rain persistently pelted. TV and radio glumly reported a slowly worsening weather situation.

  The Martinezes called in early to say they wouldn’t be making it. They had storm troubles of their own down in the city.

  Wolf took that call. Overflowing ashtrays told him Cassius had been up most of the night and he let the old man sleep. He made breakfast for the rest of them and served it in the kitchen. Simpler that way, he told himself, and avoided confrontation of Tommy with a certain painting.

  Tilly called with updatings of last night’s news and admonitions. Terri took that call and she and the older woman spun it out.

  Packing occupied some more time. Wolf didn’t want to rush things, but it seemed a chore best gotten out of the way.

  He gave Terri the job of making them reservations at a San Francisco hotel or motel. She settled down with the phone and big directory.

  Taking a rain-armored Tommy with him, he went down to the garage and found, as he’d feared, that the gas tank was a little too near empty for comfort. They drove to the nearest gas station that was open (the first and second weren’t) and filled her up, made all other checks. Wolf noted that the big flashlight he kept in the glove compartment was dim and he bought new batteries for it.

  Driving back, he took more note of the rain damage: fallen branches, scatters of rock and gravel, small runs of water crosswise of the road. In the garage he reminded himself to check out Cassius’ Buick somehow before they left.

  Terri had managed to make them a reservation at a motel on Lombard after getting “No vacancies” from a half dozen other places.

  Cassius was up and on his best best behavior, though rather reserved (chastened? to borrow Tilly’s word) and not inclined to talk much except to grumble half comically that people as usual were making too much of the storm and its dangers, decry the TV and radio reports, and in general put on a crusty-old-man act. However, he seemed quite reconciled to Wolfs departure and the visit’s end, and also, despite his grumbles, to his own going down to Tilly’s to stay out the end of the storm.

  Wolf took advantage of this mood of acquiescence to get Cassius to go down to the garage with him and check out the Buick and its gas supply. Once there, and the Buick’s motor starting readily enough, Wolf badgered the old man into backing it out of the garage and then into it again, so the car’d be facing forward for easiest eventual departure. Cassius groused about “having to prove to my own son I can still drive,” but complied in the end, though in no more mood than before for any close conversation.

  Back once more in the house, there came at long last the expected phone call with the order, or rather advisement, that all dwellers in it get out of Goodland Valley. Wolf carried their bags and things down to the car, while Cassius, still grumbling a little, prepared an overnight bag and made a call to Tilly, telling her he would be arriving shortly.

  “But I’m not going to get out until you’re all on your way,” he gruffly warned his son’s family. “Enough’s enough. If I left at the same time you did, I’d lose completely the feeling—a very good one, let me assure you!—of having been your host in my own house for a most pleasant week.”

  Except for that show of warmth, Cassius continued his reserve in his good-bye, contenting himself with silently shaking hands first with Wolf, then Tommy, and giving each a curt nod of approval. Terri saw a tear in his eye and was touched, she felt a sudden swing in her feelings toward him, and impulsively threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. He started to wince away from her, then submitted with some grace and a murmured “M’dear. Thank you, Terri.”

  Wolf noted on her face a look of utter surprise and shock, but it was quickly replaced with a smile. It stuck in his mind, though he forgot to ask her about it, mostly because as they were pulling out of the garage, a highway patrol car stopped across the road and hailed them.

  “Are you leaving the Kruger residence?” one of the officers asked, consulting a list, and when Wolf affirmed that, continued with, “Anyone else up there?”

  “Yes, my father, the owner,” Wolf called back. “He’s leaving shortly, in another car.”

  They thanked him, but as he drove off, he saw them get out and start trudging up the hill.

  “I’m glad they’re doing that,” he told Terri. “Make sure Cassius is rooted out.”

  But the incident left a bad taste in his mouth, because it reminded him of what he’d heard about the two policemen calling there the morning after his mother died.

  At the first sizable intersection a roadblock was being set up to stop cars entering Goodland Valley. That didn’t hold them back, but the drive into San Francisco took half again as long as he’d anticipated, what with the rain and slow traffic and a mudslide blocking two lanes of the freeway near Waldo Tunnel just north of the bridge.

  Lombard Street, when they reached it just south of the bridge, reminded Wolf and Terri of western towns built along main highways in the days before freeways. Wide, but with stoplights every block and the sides garish with the neon of gas stations, chain restaurants, and motels. They located theirs and checked in with relief. Tommy had been starting to get cranky and the storm was making late afternoon seem like night.

  Only Terri didn’t seem to Wolf as relieved as she should be. Tommy was running a bath for himself and his boats. Wolf asked her, “Something bothering you, Hon?”

  She was scowling nervously at the floor. “No, I guess I’ve just got to tell you,” she decided reluctantly. “Wolf, when I kissed your father—”

  “I know!” he interjected. “I was going to ask you about it, if he’d goosed you, tried to cop some other sort of feel, or what? You looked so strange.”

  “Wolf,” she said tragically, “it was simply that his breath was reeking with alcohol. That was why he was making such a point of keeping a distance from us all day.”

  “Oh God,” he said despondently, closing his eyes and slumping.

  �
��Wolf,” she went on in a small voice after a moment, “I think we’ve got to call up Tilly to check if he ever got there.”

  “Of course,” he said, springing to the phone. “I guess we were going to do that in any case.”

  He got through to the Marin lady after some odd delays and found their worry realized: Cassius had not arrived. Wolf cut short Tilly’s counter-questions with “Look, Til, I’ll try to call him at the house, then get back to you right away.”

  This time the response was quicker. The number he was trying to reach was out of service due to storm damage.

  He tried to call Tilly back and this time, after still more delays, got the same response as when he’d tried to call his father.

  “All over Marin County the phones are going out,” he told Terri, trying to put a light face on bad news. “Well, Hon,” he went on, “I don’t think I’m left much choice. I’ve just got to go back up there.”

  “Oh no, Wolf,” she said apprehensively, “don’t you think you should try calling the police first, at least? Cassius may still be at the house, I suppose, but then again he may simply have driven off somewhere else, anywhere, maybe to some bar. How can you know?”

  He thought a bit, then said, ‘Tell you what, Hon. I’ll go down to the coffee shop and have a couple of cups and a Danish or something; meanwhile you try calling the police. You may be able to find out something, they seem to have pretty good organization on this storm thing.”

  When he got back some twenty minutes later, she was on the phone. “Shh, I think I’m finally getting something,” she told him. She listened concentratedly, nodded sharply twice, asked, “About the mudslides?” nodded at the answer she got to that, and finally said, “Yes, I’ve got that. Thank you very much, officer,” and put down the phone.

  “Nothing specifically on any Kruger,” she told Wolf, “but there arc still holdouts in Goodland Valley, houses that won’t vacate. And, at latest available report, there’s been no major earth movement there, though they’re expecting one at any time, it’s ‘a real and present danger.’ Wolf, I still don’t think you should go, just on the chance he’ll be there.”