American supernatural tales

by S. T. Joshi

  The thought came to me that here was a dynamo of life, the nearest approach to immortality that is possible for the destructible human body, the materialization of a cosmic secret more wonderful than the fabulous fountain sought for by Ponce de Leon. My soul was drawn into that unterrestrial gleam, and I suddenly wished passionately that it hammered and thundered in my own bosom in place of my paltry heart of tissue and muscle.

  Doc Blaine ejaculated incoherently. I wheeled.

  The noise of his coming had been no greater than the whispering of a night wind through the corn. There in the doorway he stood, tall, dark, inscrutable—an Indian warrior, in the paint, war bonnet, breech-clout and moccasins of an elder age. His dark eyes burned like fires gleaming deep under fathomless black lakes. Silently he extended his hand, and I dropped Jim Garfield’s heart into it. Then without a word he turned and stalked into the night. But when Doc Blaine and I rushed out into the yard an instant later, there was no sign of any human being. He had vanished like a phantom of the night, and only something that looked like an owl was flying, dwindling from sight, into the rising moon.

  ROBERT BLOCH

  Robert Albert Bloch was born in Chicago in 1917. An early love of pulp fiction led him to write to H. P. Lovecraft in 1933, and for the next four years, until Lovecraft’s death, Bloch engaged in a virtual tutelage in the art of writing. By 1935 Bloch had begun appearing in Weird Tales with somewhat flamboyant tales of supernatural horror; but in a few years he began exercising more restraint, developing the tight-lipped, hard-boiled manner representative of his later work. His first short story collection, The Opener of the Way, appeared in 1945 from Arkham House; two years later, The Scarf, a chilling novel fusing psychological and supernatural horror, was published. Bloch subsequently alternated between such works of suspense as the novels Psycho (1959), The Dead Beat (1960), and Night-World (1972) and supernatural tales such as the classic “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (Weird Tales, July 1943) and “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade” (Weird Tales, September 1945; filmed as The Skull, 1965). Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation of Psycho (1960) brought Bloch great celebrity but also a certain pressure to duplicate its success, and his two sequels (Psycho II, 1982; Psycho House, 1990) do not represent him to best advantage. Late in life he wrote a charming autobiography, Once Around the Bloch (1993). Robert Bloch died in Beverly Hills, California, in 1994.

  Bloch’s most representative work in supernatural horror is found in his bountiful array of short stories, collected in such volumes as Pleasant Dreams—Nightmares (1958), Tales in a Jugular Vein (1965), Chamber of Horrors (1966), Such Stuff as Jugular Vein (1965), Chamber of Horrors (1966), Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of (1979), and many others. The best of them are found in the three-volume Selected Stories (1988).

  “Black Bargain” (Weird Tales, May 1942; collected in Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunacies, 1998) is representative of Bloch’s work in its air of mundane realism, which allows the subtle incursion of the supernatural to enter in a spectacular denouement. It makes use of a fictitious volume, De Vermis Mysteriis (The Mysteries of the Worm), devised in Bloch’s early Lovecraftian tales.

  BLACK BARGAIN

  It was getting late when I switched off the neon and got busy behind the fountain with my silver polish. The fruit syrup came off easily, but the chocolate stuck and the hot fudge was greasy. I wish to God they wouldn’t order hot fudge.

  I began to get irritated as I scrubbed away. Five hours on my feet, every night, and what did I have to show for it? Varicose veins. Varicose veins, and the memory of a thousand foolish faces. The veins were easier to bear than the memories. They were so depressing, those customers of mine. I knew them all by heart.

  In early evening all I got was “cokes.” I could spot the “cokes” a mile away. Giggling high-school girls, with long shocks of uncombed brown hair, with their shapeless tan fingertip coats and the repulsively thick legs bulging over boots. They were all “cokes.” For forty-five minutes they’d monopolize a booth, messing up the tile table top with cigarette ashes, crushed napkins daubed in lipstick and little puddles of spilled water. Whenever a high-school girl came in, I automatically reached for the cola pump.

  A little later in the evening I got the “gimmie two packs” crowd. Sports shirts hanging limply over hairy arms meant the filtertips. Blue work shirts with rolled sleeves disclosing tattooing meant the unfiltered cigarettes.

  Once in awhile I got a fat boy. He was always a “cigar.” If he wore glasses he was a two-for-thirty-fiver. If not, I merely had to indicate the box on the counter. Ten cents straight, Mild Havana—all long filler.

  Oh, it was monotonous. The “notions” family, who invariably departed with aspirin, Ex-Lax, candy bars, and a pint of ice cream. The “public library” crowd—tall, skinny youths bending the pages of magazines on the rack and never buying. The “soda waters” with their trousers wrinkled by the sofa of a one room apartment, the “curlers,” always looking furtively toward the baby buggy outside. And around ten, the “pineapple sundaes”—fat women Bingo players. Followed by the “chocolate sodas” when the show let out. More booth parties, giggling girls and red-necked young men in sloppy mod outfits.

  In and out, all day long. The rushing “telephones,” the doddering old “five-cent stamps,” the bachelor “toothpastes” and “razor blades.”

  I could spot them all at a glance. Night after night they dragged up to the counter. I don’t know why they even bothered to tell me what they wanted. One look was all I needed to anticipate their slightest wishes. I could have given them what they needed without their asking.

  Or, rather, I suppose I couldn’t. Because what most of them really needed was a good long drink of arsenic as far as I was concerned.

  Arsenic! Good Lord, how long had it been since I’d been called upon to fill out a prescription! None of these stupid idiots wanted drugs from a drugstore. Why had I bothered to study pharmacy? All I really needed was a two week course in pouring chocolate syrup over melting ice cream, and a month’s study of how to set up cardboard figures in the window so as to emphasize their enormous busts.

  Well—

  He came in then. I heard the slow footsteps without bothering to look up. For amusement I tried to guess before I glanced. A “gimme two packs?” A “toothpaste?” Well the hell with him. I was closing up.

  The male footsteps had shuffled up to the counter before I raised my head. They halted, timidly. I still refused to give any recognition of his presence. Then came a hesitant cough. That did it.

  I found myself staring at a middle-aged, thin little fellow with sandy hair and rimless glasses perched on a snub nose. The crease of his froggish mouth underlined the despair of his face.

  He wore a frayed $36.50 suit, a wrinkled white shirt, and a string tie—but humility was his real garment. It covered him completely, that aura of hopeless resignation.

  “I beg your pardon, please, but have you any tincture of aconite?”

  Well, miracles do happen. I was going to get a chance to sell drugs after all. Or was I? When despair walks in and asks for aconite, it means suicide.

  I shrugged. “Aconite?” I echoed. “I don’t know.”

  He smiled, a little. Or rather, that crease wrinkled back in a poor imitation of amusement. But on his face a smile had no more mirth in it than the grin you see on a skull.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he mumbled. “But you’re wrong. I’m—I’m a chemist. I’m doing some experiments, and I must have four ounces of aconite at once. And some belladonna. Yes, and—wait a minute.”

  Then he dragged the book out of his pocket.

  I craned my neck, and it was worth it.

  The book had rusty metals covers, and was obviously very old. When the thick yellow pages fluttered open under his trembling thumb I saw flecks of dust rise from the binding. The heavy black-lettered type was German, but I couldn’t read anything at that distance.

  “Let me see now,” he murmured. “Ac
onite—belladonna—yes, and I have this—the cat, of course—nightshade—um hum—oh, yes, I’ll need some phosphorus of course—have you any blue chalk?—Good—and I guess that’s all.”

  I was beginning to catch on. But what the devil did it matter to me? A weirdo more or less was nothing new in my life. All I wanted to do was get out of here and soak my feet.

  I went back and got the stuff for him, quickly. I peered through the slot above the prescription counter, but he wasn’t doing anything—just paging through that black, iron-bound book and moving his lips.

  Wrapping the parcel, I came out. “Anything else, sir?”

  “Oh—yes. Could I have about a dozen candles? The large size?”

  I opened a drawer and scrabbled for them under the dust.

  “I’ll have to melt them down and reblend them with the fat,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I was just figuring.”

  Sure. That’s the kind of figuring you do best when you’re counting the pads in your cell. But it wasn’t my business, was it?

  So I handed over the package, like a fool.

  “Thank you. You’ve been very kind. I must ask you to be kinder—to charge this.”

  Oh, great!

  “You see, I’m temporarily out of funds. But I can assure you, in a very short time, in fact within three days, I shall pay you in full. Yes.”

  A very convincing plea. I wouldn’t give him a cup of coffee on it—and that’s what moochers usually ask for, instead of aconite and candles. But if his words didn’t move me, his eyes did. They were so lonely behind his spectacles, so pitifully alone, those two little puddles of hope in the desert of despair that was his face.

  All right. Let him have his dreams. Let him take his old iron-bound dream book home with him and make like crazy. Let him light his tapers and draw his phosphorescent circle and recite his spells or whatever the hell he wanted to do.

  No, I wouldn’t give him coffee, but I’d give him a dream.

  “That’s okay, buddy,” I said. “We’re all down on our luck some time, I guess.”

  That was wrong. I shouldn’t have patronized. He stiffened at once and his mouth curled into a sneer—of superiority, if you please!

  “I’m not asking charity,” he said. “You’ll get paid, never fear, my good man. In three days, mark my words. Now good evening. I have work to do.”

  Out he marched, leaving “my good man” with his mouth open. Eventually I closed my mouth, but I couldn’t clamp a lid on my curiosity.

  That night, walking home, I looked down the dark street with new interest. The black houses bulked like a barrier behind which lurked fantastic mysteries. Row upon row, not houses any more, but dark dungeons of dreams. In what house did my stranger hide? In what room was he intoning to what strange gods?

  Once again I sensed the presence of wonder in the world of lurking strangeness behind the scenes of drugstore and high-rise civilization. Black books still were read, and wild-eyed strangers walked and muttered, candles burned into the night, and a missing alley cat might mean a chosen sacrifice.

  But my feet hurt, so I went home.

  Same old malted milks, cherry cokes, Vaseline, Listerine, hairnets, bathing caps, cigarettes, and what have you?

  Me, I had a headache. It was four days later, almost the same time of night, when I found myself scrubbing off the soda-taps again.

  Sure enough, he walked in.

  I kept telling myself all evening that I didn’t expect him—but I did expect him, really. I had that crawling feeling when the door clicked. I waited for the shuffle of the Tom McCann shoes.

  Instead there was a brisk tapping of Oxfords. English Oxfords. The $40 kind.

  I looked up in a hurry this time.

  It was my stranger.

  At least he was there, someplace beneath the flashy blue weave of his suit, the immaculate shirt and foulard tie. He had had a shave, a haircut, a manicure, and evidently a winning ticket in the Irish Sweepstakes.

  “Hello there.” Nothing wrong with that voice—I’ve heard it in the big hotel lobbies for years, brimming over with pep and confidence and authority.

  “Well, well, well,” was all I could say.

  He chuckled. His mouth wasn’t a crease any more. It was a trumpet of command. Out of that mouth could come orders, and directions. This wasn’t a mouth shaped for hesitant excuses any longer. It was a mouth for requesting expensive dinners, choice vintage wines, heavy cigars; a mouth that barked at taxi drivers and doormen.

  “Surprised to see me, eh? Well, I told you it would take three days. Want to pay you your money, thank you for your kindness.”

  That was nice. Not the thanks, the money. I like money. The thought of getting some I didn’t expect made me genial.

  “So your prayers were answered, eh?” I said.

  He frowned.

  “Prayers—what prayers?”

  “Why I thought that—”

  “I don’t understand,” he snapped, understanding perfectly well. “Did you perhaps harbor some misapprehension concerning my purchases of the other evening? A few necessary chemicals, that’s all—to complete the experiment I spoke of. And the candles, I must confess were to light my room. They shut off my electricity the day before.”

  Well, it could be.

  “Might as well tell you the experiment was a howling success. Yes, sir. Went right down to Newsohm with the results and they put me on as assistant research director. Quite a break.”

  Newsohm was the biggest chemical supply house in our section of the country. And he went right down in his rags and was “put on” as assistant research director. Well, live and learn.

  “So here’s the money. $5.39, wasn’t it? Can you change a fifty?”

  I couldn’t.

  “That’s all right, keep it.”

  I refused, I don’t know why. Made me feel crawling again, somehow.

  “Well, then, tell you what let’s do. You are closing up, aren’t you? Why not step down the street to the tavern for a little drink? I’ll get change there. Come on, I feel like celebrating.”

  So it was that five minutes later I walked down the street with Mr. Fritz Gulther.

  We took a table in the tavern and ordered quietly. Neither he nor I was at ease. Somehow there was an unspoken secret between us. It seemed almost as though I harbored criminal knowledge against him—I, of all men, alone knowing that behind this immaculately clad figure of success, there lurked a shabby spectre just three days in the past. A spectre that owed me $5.39.

  We drank quickly, both of us. The spectre got a little fainter. We had another. I insisted on paying for the third round.

  “It’s a celebration,” I argued.

  He laughed. “Certainly is. And let me tell you, this is only the beginning! From now on I’m going to climb so fast it’ll make your head swim. I’ll be running that place within six months. Going to get a lot of new orders in from the government, and expand.”

  “Wait a minute,” I cautioned, reserve gone. “You’re way ahead of yourself. If I were in your shoes I’d still be flipping with what happened to me in the past three days.”

  Fritz Gulther smiled. “Oh, that? I expected that. Didn’t I tell you so in the store? I’ve been working for over a year and I knew just what to expect. It was no surprise, I assure you. I had it all planned. I was willing to starve to carry out my necessary studies, and I did starve. Might as well admit it.”

  “Sure.” I was on my third drink now, over the barriers. “When you came into the store I said to myself, ‘Here’s a guy who’s been through hell!’”

  “Truer words were never spoken,” said Gulther. “I’ve been through hell all right, quite literally. But it’s all over now, and I didn’t get burned.”

  “Say, confidentially—what kind of magic did you use?”

  “Magic? Magic? I don’t know anything about magic.”

  “Oh, yes you do, Gulther,” I said. “What about that little black bo
ok with the iron covers you were mumbling around with in the store?”

  “German inorganic chemistry text,” he snapped. “Pretty old. Here, drink up and have another.”

  I had another. Gulther began to babble, a bit. About his new clothes and his new apartment and the new car he was going to buy next week. About how he was going to have everything he wanted now, by God, he’d show the fools that laughed at him all these years, he’d pay back the nagging landladies and the cursing grocers, and the sneering rats who told him he was soft in the head for studying the way he did.

  Then he got into the kindly stage.

  “How’d you like a job at Newsohm?” he asked me. “You’re a good pharmacist. You know your chemistry. You’re a nice enough fellow, too—but you’ve got a terrible imagination. How about it? Be my secretary. Sure, that’s it. Be my secretary. I’ll put you on tomorrow.”

  “I’ll drink on that,” I declared. The prospect intoxicated me. The thought of escape from the damned store, escape from the “coke”-faces, the “ciggies”-voices, very definitely intoxicated me. So did the next drink.

  I began to see something.

  We were sitting against the wall and the tavern lights were low. Couples around us were babbling in monotone that was akin to silence. We sat in shadow against the wall. Now I looked at my shadow—an ungainly, flickering caricature of myself, hunched over the table. What a contrast it presented before his suddenly erect bulk!

  His shadow, now—

  His shadow, now—

  I saw it. He was sitting up straight across the table from me. But his shadow on the wall was standing!

  “No more Scotch for me,” I said, as the waiter came up.

  But I continued to stare at his shadow. He was sitting and the shadow was standing. It was a larger shadow than mine, and a blacker shadow. For fun I moved my hands up and down, making heads and faces in silhouette. He wasn’t watching me, he was gesturing to the waiter.