American supernatural tales

by S. T. Joshi

  His shadow didn’t gesture. I just stood there, I watched and stared and tried to look away. His hands moved but the black outline stood poised and silent, hands dangling at the sides. And yet I saw the familiar shape of his head and nose; unmistakably his.

  “Say, Gulther,” I said. “Your shadow—there on the wall—”

  I slurred my words. My eyes were blurred.

  But I felt his attitude pierce my consciousness below the alcohol.

  Fritz Gulther rose to his feet and then shoved a dead white face against mine. He didn’t look at his shadow. He looked at me, through me, at some horror behind my face, my thoughts, my brain. He looked at me, and into some private hell of his own.

  “Shadow,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with my shadow. You’re mistaken. Remember that, you’re mistaken. And if you ever mention it again, I’ll bash your skull in.”

  Then Fritz Gulther got up and walked away. I watched him march across the room, moving swiftly but a little unsteadily. Behind him, moving very slowly and not a bit unsteadily, a tall black shadow followed him from the room.

  If you can build a better mousetrap than your neighbor, you’re liable to put your foot in it.

  That’s certainly what I had done with Gulther. Here I was ready to accept his offer of a good job as his secretary, and I had to go and pull a drunken boner!

  I was still cursing myself for a fool two days later. Shadows that don’t follow body movements, indeed! Who was that shadow I saw you with last night? That was no shadow, that was the Scotch I was drinking. Oh, fine!

  So I stood in the drugstore and sprinkled my sundaes with curses as well as chopped nuts.

  I nearly knocked the pecans off the counter that second night, when Fritz Gulther walked in again.

  He hurried up to the counter and flashed me a tired smile.

  “Got a minute to spare?”

  “Sure—wait till I serve these people in the booth.”

  I dumped the sundaes and raced back. Gulther perched himself on a stool and took off his hat. He was sweating profusely.

  “Say—I want to apologize for the way I blew my stack the other night.”

  “Why, that’s all right, Mr. Gulther.”

  “I got a little too excited, that’s all. Liquor and success went to my head. No hard feelings, I want you to understand that. It’s just that I was nervous. Your ribbing me about my shadow, that stuff sounded too much like the way I was always kidded for sticking to my studies in my room. Landlady used to accuse me of all sorts of things. Claimed I dissected her cat, that I was burning incense, messing the floor up with chalk. Some damn fool college punks downstairs began to yap around that I was some kind of nut dabbling in witchcraft.”

  I wasn’t asking for his autobiography, remember. All this sounded a little hysterical. But then, Gulther looked the part. His sweating, the way his mouth wobbled and twitched as he got this out.

  “But say, reason I stopped in was to see if you could fix me up a sedative. No, no bromo or aspirin. I’ve been taking plenty of that stuff ever since the other evening. My nerves are all shot. That job of mine down at Newsohm takes it all out of me.”

  “Wait a minute, I’ll get something.”

  I made for the back room. As I compounded I sneaked a look at Gulther through the slot.

  All right, I’ll be honest. It wasn’t Gulther I wanted to look at. It was his shadow.

  When a customer sits at the counter stools, the storelights hit him so that his shadow is just a little black pool beneath his feet.

  Gulther’s shadow was a complete silhouette of his body, in outline. A black, deep shadow.

  I blinked, but that didn’t help.

  Stranger still, the shadow seemed to be cast parallel with his body, instead of at an angle from it. It grew out from his chest instead of his legs. I don’t know refraction, the laws of light, all that technical stuff. All I know is that Fritz Gulther had a big black shadow sitting beside him on the floor, and that the sight of it sent cold shivers along my spine.

  I wasn’t drunk. Neither was he. Neither was the shadow. All three of us existed.

  Now Gulther was putting his hat back on.

  But not the shadow. It just sat there. Crouched.

  It was all wrong.

  The shadow was no denser at one spot than at another. It was evenly dark, and—I noted this particularly—the outlines did not blur or fade. They were solid.

  I stared and stared. I saw a lot now I’d never noticed. The shadow wore no clothes. Of course! Why should it put on a hat? It was naked, that shadow. But it belonged to Gulther—it wore spectacles. It was his shadow, all right. Which suited me fine, because I didn’t want it.

  Now Gulther was looking down over his shoulder. He was looking at his shadow now. Even from a distance I fancied I saw new beads of sweat string a rosary of fear across his forehead.

  He knew, all right!

  I came out, finally.

  “Here it is,” I said. I kept my eyes from his face.

  “Good. Hope it works. Must get some sleep. And say—that job offer still goes. How about coming down tomorrow morning?”

  I nodded, forcing a smile.

  Gulther paid me, rose.

  “See you then.”

  “Certainly.” And why not? After all, what if you do work for a boss with an unnatural shadow? Most bosses have other faults, worse ones and more concrete. That shadow—whatever it was and whatever was wrong with it—wouldn’t bite me. Though Gulther acted as though it might bite him.

  As he turned away I looked at his departing back, and at the long, swooping black outline which followed it. The shadow rose and stalked after him. Stalked. Yes, it followed quite purposefully. To my now bewildered eyes it seemed larger than it had in the tavern. Larger, and a bolder black.

  Then the night swallowed Gulther and his nonexistent companion.

  I went back to the rear of the store and swallowed the other half of the sedative I’d made up for that purpose. After seeing that shadow, I needed it as much as he did.

  The girl in the ornate outer office smiled prettily. “Go right in,” she warbled. “He’s expecting you.”

  So it was true, then. Gulther was assistant research director, and I was to be his secretary.

  I floated in. In the morning sunshine I forgot all about shadows.

  The inner office was elaborately furnished—a huge place with elegant walnut paneling associated with business authority. There was a kidney desk set before closed venetian blinds, and a variety of comfortable leather armchairs. Fluorescent lighting gleamed pleasantly.

  But there was no Gulther. Probably on the other side of the little door at the back, talking to his Chief.

  I sat down, with the tight feeling of anticipation hugged somewhere within my stomach. I glanced around, taking in the room again. My gaze swept the glass-topped desk. It was bare. Except in the corner, were a small box of cigars rested.

  No, wait a minute. That wasn’t a cigar-box. It was metal. I’d seen it somewhere before.

  Of course! It was Gulther’s iron-bound book.

  “German inorganic chemistry.” Who was I to doubt his word? So naturally, I just had to sneak a look before he came in.

  I opened the yellowed pages.

  De Vermis Mysteriis.

  “Mysteries of the Worm.”

  This was no inorganic chemistry text. It was something entirely different. Something that told you how you could compound aconite and belladonna and draw circles of phosphorescent fire on the floor when the stars were right. Something that spoke of melting tallow candles and blending them with corpse-fat, whispered of the uses to which animal sacrifice might be put.

  It spoke of meetings that could be arranged with various parties most people don’t either care to meet or even believe in.

  The thick black letters crawled across the pages, and the detestable odor arising from the musty thing formed a background for the nastiness of the text. I won’t say whether or not I beli
eved what I was reading, but I will admit that there was an air, a suggestion about those cold, deliberate directions for traffic with alien evil, which made me shiver with repulsion. Such thoughts have no place in sanity, even as fantasy. And if this is what Gulther had done with the materials he’d bought himself for $5.39 . . .

  “Years of study,” eh? “Experiments.” What was Gulther trying to call up, what did he call up, and what bargain did he make?

  The man who could answer these questions sidled out from behind the door. Gone was the Fritz Gulther of the come-on-strong personality. It was my original moocher who creased his mouth at me in abject fear. He looked like a man—I had to say it—who was afraid of his own shadow.

  The shadow trailed him through the doorway. To my eyes it had grown overnight. Its arms were slightly raised, though Gulther had both hands pressed against his sides. I saw it cross the wall as he walked toward me—and it moved more swiftly than he did.

  Make no mistake. I saw the shadow. Since then I’ve talked to wise boys who assure me that under even fluorescence no shadow is cast. They’re wise boys all right, but I saw that shadow.

  Gulther saw that book in my hands.

  “All right,” he said, simply. “You know. And maybe it’s just as well.”

  “Know?”

  “Yes. Know that I made a bargain with—someone. I thought I was being smart. He promised me success, and wealth, anything I wanted, on only one condition. Those damned conditions; you always read about them and you always forget, because they sound so foolish! He told me that I’d have only one rival, and that this rival would be a part of myself. It would grow with my success.”

  I sat mute. Gulther was wound up for a long time.

  “Silly, wasn’t it? Of course I accepted. And then I found out what my rival was—what it would be. This shadow of mine. It’s independent of me, you know that, and it keeps growing! Oh, not in size, but in depth, in intensity. It’s becoming—maybe I am crazy but you see it, too—more solid. Thicker. As though it had palpable substance.”

  Crease-mouth wobbled violently, but the words choked on.

  “The further I go the more it grows. Last night I took your sedative and it didn’t work. Didn’t work at all. I sat up in the darkness and watched my shadow.”

  “In darkness?”

  “Yes. It doesn’t need light. It really exists, now. Permanently. In the dark it’s just a blacker blur. But you can see it. It doesn’t sleep, or rest. It just waits.”

  “And you’re afraid of it? Why?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t threaten me, or make gestures, or even take any notice of me. Shadows taking notice—sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But you see it as I do. You can see it waiting. And that’s why I’m afraid. What’s it waiting for?”

  The shadow crept closer over his shoulder. Eavesdropping.

  “I don’t need you for a secretary. I need a nurse.”

  “What you need is a good rest.”

  “Rest? How can I rest? I just came out of Newsohm’s office. He doesn’t notice anything—yet. Too stupid, I suppose. The girls in the office look at me when I pass, and I wonder if they see something peculiar. But Newsohm doesn’t. He just made me head of research. Completely in charge.”

  “In five days? Marvelous!”

  “Isn’t it? Except for our bargain—whenever I succeed, my rival gains power with me. That will make the shadow stronger. How, I don’t know. I’m waiting. And I can’t find rest.”

  “I’ll find it for you. Just lie down and wait—I’ll be back.”

  I left him hastily—left him sitting at his desk, all alone. Not quite alone. The shadow was there, too.

  Before I went I had the funniest temptation. I wanted to run my hand along the wall, through that shadow. And yet I didn’t. It was too black, too solid. What if my hand should actually encounter something?

  So I just left.

  I was back in half an hour. I grabbed Gulther’s arm, bared it, plunged the needle home.

  “Morphine,” I whispered. “You’ll sleep now.”

  He did, resting on the leather sofa. I sat at his side, watching the shadow that didn’t sleep.

  It stood there towering above him unnaturally. I tried to ignore it, but it was a third party in the room. Once, when I turned my back, it moved. I began to pace up and down. I opened my mouth, trying to hold back a scream.

  The phone buzzed. I answered mechanically, my eyes never leaving the black outline on the wall that swayed over Gulther’s recumbent form.

  “Yes? No—he’s not in right now. This is Mr. Gulther’s secretary speaking. Your message? Yes, I’ll tell him. I certainly will. Thank you.”

  It had been a woman’s voice—a deep, rich voice. Her message was to tell Mr. Gulther she’d changed her mind. She’d be happy to meet him that evening at dinner.

  Another conquest for Fritz Gulther!

  Conquest—two conquests in a row. That meant conquests for the shadow, too. But how?

  I turned to the shadow on the wall, and got a shock. It was lighter! Grayer, thinner, wavering a little!

  What was wrong?

  I glanced down at Gulther’s sleeping face. Then I got another shock. Gulther’s face was dark. Not tanned, but dark. Blackish. Sooty. Shadowy.

  Then I did scream, a little.

  Gulther awoke.

  I just pointed to his face and indicated the wall mirror. He almost fainted. “It’s combining with me,” he whispered.

  His skin was slate-colored. I turned my back because I couldn’t look at him.

  “We must do something,” he mumbled. “Fast.”

  “Perhaps if you were to use—that book again, you could make another bargain.”

  It was a fantastic idea, but it popped out. I faced Gulther again and saw him smile.

  “That’s it! If you could get the materials now—you know what I need—go to the drugstore—but hurry up because—”

  I shook my head. Gulther was nebulous, shimmery. I saw him through a mist.

  Then I heard him yell.

  “You damned fool! Look at me. That’s my shadow you’re staring at!”

  I ran out of the room, and in less than ten minutes I was trying to fill a vial with belladonna with fingers that trembled like lumps of jelly.

  I must have looked like a fool, carrying that armful of packages through the outer office. Candles, chalk, phosphorus, aconite, belladonna, and—blame it on my hysteria—the dead body of an alleycat I decoyed behind the store.

  Certainly I felt like a fool when Fritz Gulther met me at the door of his sanctum.

  “Come on in,” he snapped.

  Yes, snapped.

  It took only a glance to convince me that Gulther had his cool again. Whatever the black change that frightened us so had been, he’d shook it off while I was gone.

  Once again the trumpet voice held authority. Once again the sneering smile replaced the apologetic crease in the mouth.

  Gulther’s skin was white, normal. His movements were brisk and no longer frightened. He didn’t need any wild spells—or had he ever, really?

  Suddenly I felt as though I’d been a victim of my own imagination. After all, men don’t make bargains with demons, they don’t change places with their shadows.

  The moment Gulther closed the door his words corroborated my mood.

  “Well, I’ve snapped out of it. Foolish nonsense, wasn’t it?” He smiled easily. “Guess we won’t need that junk after all. Right when you left I began to feel better. Here, sit down and take it easy.”

  I sat. Gulther rested on the desk nonchalantly swinging his legs.

  “All that nervousness, that strain, has disappeared. But before I forget it, I’d like to apologize for telling you that crazy story about sorcery and my obsession. Matter of fact, I’d feel better about the whole thing in the future if you just forgot all this ever happened.”

  I nodded.

  Gulther smiled again.

  “That’s right. Now we’re ready t
o get down to business. I tell you, it’s a real relief to realize the progress we’re going to make. I’m head research director already, and if I play my cards right I think I’ll be running this place in another three months. Some of the things Newsohm told me today tipped me off. So just play ball with me and we’ll go a long way. A long way. And I can promise you one thing—I’ll never have any of these crazy spells again.”

  There was nothing wrong with what Gulther said here. Nothing wrong with any of it. There was nothing wrong with the way Gulther lolled and smiled at me, either.

  Then why did I suddenly get that old crawling sensation along my spine?

  For a moment I couldn’t place it—and then I realized.

  Fritz Gulther sat on his desk, before the wall, but now he cast no shadow.

  Where had it gone?

  There was only one place for it to go. And if it had gone there, then—where was Fritz Gulther?

  He read it in my eyes.

  I read it in his swift gesture.

  Gulther’s hand dipped into his pocket and reemerged. As it rose, I rose, and sprang across the room.

  I gripped the revolver, pressed it back and away, and stared into his convulsed countenance, into his eyes. Behind the glasses, behind the human pupils, there was only a blackness. The cold, grinning blackness of a shadow.

  Then he snarled, arms clawing up as he tried to wrest the weapon free, aim it. His body was cold, curiously weightless, but filled with a slithering strength. I felt myself go limp under those icy, scrabbing talons, but as I gazed into those two dark pools of hate that were his eyes, fear and desperation lent me aid.

  A single gesture, and I turned the muzzle in. The gun exploded, and Gulther slumped to the floor.

  They crowded in then; they stood and stared down, too. We all stood and stared down at the body lying on the floor.

  Body? There was Fritz Gulther’s shoes, his shirt, his tie, his expensive blue suit. The toes of his shoes pointed up, the shirt and tie and suit were creased and filled out to support a body beneath.

  But there was no body on the floor. There was only a shadow—a deep, black shadow, encased in Fritz Gulther’s clothes.

  Nobody said a word for a long minute. Then one of the girls whispered, “Look—it’s just a shadow.”