by S. T. Joshi
Three nights ago little Bobby Jeffers was killed in the lonesome place. He was all mauled and torn and partly crushed, as if something big had fallen on him. Johnny, who was on the Village Board, went to look at the place, and after he had been there, he telephoned me to go, too, before other people walked there.
I went down and saw the marks, too. It was just as the coroner said, only not an “animal of some kind,” as he put it. Something with a dragging tail, with scales, with great clawed feet—and I knew it had no face.
I knew, too, that Johnny and I were guilty. We had murdered Bobby Jeffers because the thing that killed him was the thing Johnny and I had created out of our childhood fears and left in that lonesome place to wait for some scared little boy at some minute in some hour during some dark night, a little boy who, like fat Bobby Jeffers, couldn’t run as fast as Johnny and I could run.
And the worst is not that there is nothing to do, but that the lonesome place is being changed. The village is cutting down some of the trees now, removing the sheds, and putting up a streetlight in the middle of that place; it will not be dark and lonesome any longer, and the Thing that lives there will have to go somewhere else, where people are unsuspecting, to some other lonesome place in some other small town or city or countryside, where it will wait as it did here, for some frightened little boy or girl to come along, waiting in the dark and the lonesomeness . . .
FRITZ LEIBER
Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr., was born in Chicago in 1910. He was the son of a noted actor, Fritz Leiber, Sr., and he himself appeared sporadically in plays and films. Shortly after his marriage in 1936 to Jonquil Stephens, Leiber came in touch with H. P. Lovecraft, with whom he had a brief but influential correspondence. Leiber began publishing tales of fantasy, science fiction, and horror in the late 1930s. Many of them focus around a pair of characters named Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, loosely based upon himself and his friend Harry O. Fischer; these jaunty, self-deprecating tales established the subgenre of sword-and-sorcery as a viable literary form. Leiber’s first book, the short story collection Night’s Black Agents (1947), was the first in a long succession of publications that would establish Leiber as one of the premier authors of science fiction and fantasy since Lovecraft. Among his achievements are the novel Conjure Wife (1943), a deft updating of the witchcraft legend; The Sinful Ones (1953), a novel of existential terror; and the futuristic novel The Big Time (1958). Leiber definitively modernized the supernatural tale by setting it in the present-day amid the common landmarks of urban civilization, as in such tales as “The Automatic Pistol” (1940) and “Smoke Ghost” (1941); this tendency reached its pinnacle in the late novel Our Lady of Darkness (1977), set in the San Francisco that was Leiber’s home for decades prior to his death in 1992. Leiber was the recipient of every major award in the fields of fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
“The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” (first published in The Girl with the Hungry Eyes, edited by Donald A. Wollheim, 1949) is representative of Leiber’s updating of supernatural tropes: in this account of a woman who exercises a fatal sexual lure upon men by the ubiquitous presence of her image on billboards and other advertising, Leiber has transformed the traditional vampire of legend into a kind of “psychic vampirism” that does not require the sucking of blood to engender its effects. Written in a clipped, Hemingwayesque prose, the story is a masterful exposition of the temptations of the “eternal feminine.”
THE GIRL WITH THE HUNGRY EYES
All right, I’ll tell you why the Girl gives me the creeps. Why I can’t stand to go downtown and see the mob slavering up at her on the tower, with that pop bottle or pack of cigarettes or whatever it is beside her. Why I hate to look at magazines any more because I know she’ll turn up somewhere in a brassiere or a bubble bath. Why I don’t like to think of millions of Americans drinking in that poisonous half smile. It’s quite a story—more story than you’re expecting.
No, I haven’t suddenly developed any long-haired indignation at the evils of advertising and the national glamour-girl complex. That’d be a laugh for a man in my racket, wouldn’t it?
Though I think you’ll agree there’s something a little perverted about trying to capitalize on sex that way. But it’s okay with me. And I know we’ve had the Face and the Body and the Look and what not else, so why shouldn’t someone come along who sums it all up so completely, that we have to call her the Girl and blazon her on all the billboards from Times Square to Telegraph Hill?
But the Girl isn’t like any of the others. She’s unnatural. She’s morbid. She’s unholy.
Oh it’s 1948, is it, and the sort of thing I’m hinting at went out with witchcraft? But you see I’m not altogether sure myself what I’m hinting at, beyond a certain point. There are vampires and vampires, and not all of them suck blood.
And there were the murders, if they were murders.
Besides, let me ask you this. Why, when America is obsessed with the Girl, don’t we find out more about her? Why doesn’t she rate a Time cover with a droll biography inside? Why hasn’t there been a feature in Life or the Post? A Profile in the New Yorker? Why hasn’t Charm or Mademoiselle done her career saga? Not ready for it? Nuts!
Why haven’t the movies snapped her up? Why hasn’t she been on Information, Please? Why don’t we see her kissing candidates at political rallies? Why isn’t she chosen queen of some sort of junk or other at a convention?
Why don’t we read about her tastes and hobbies, her views of the Russian situation? Why haven’t the columnists interviewed her in a kimono on the top floor of the tallest hotel in Manhattan and told us who her boy-friends are?
Finally—and this is the real killer—why hasn’t she ever been drawn or painted?
Oh, no she hasn’t. If you knew anything about commercial art you’d know that. Every blessed one of those pictures was worked up from a photograph. Expertly? Of course. They’ve got the top artists on it. But that’s how it’s done.
And now I’ll tell you the why of all that. It’s because from the top to the bottom of the whole world of advertising, news, and business, there isn’t a solitary soul who knows where the Girl came from, where she lives, what she does, who she is, even what her name is.
You heard me. What’s more, not a single solitary soul ever sees her—except one poor damned photographer, who’s making more money off her than he ever hoped to in his life and who’s scared and miserable as hell every minute of the day.
No, I haven’t the faintest idea who he is or where he has his studio. But I know there has to be such a man and I’m morally certain he feels just like I said.
Yes, I might be able to find her, if I tried. I’m not sure though—by now she probably has other safeguards. Besides, I don’t want to.
Oh, I’m off my rocker, am I? That sort of thing can’t happen in this Year of our Atom 1948? People can’t keep out of sight that way, not even Garbo?
Well I happen to know they can, because last year I was that poor damned photographer I was telling you about. Yes, last year, in 1947, when the Girl made her first poisonous splash right here in this big little city of ours.
Yes, I knew you weren’t here last year and you don’t know about it. Even the Girl had to start small. But if you hunted through the files of the local newspapers, you’d find some ads, and I might be able to locate you some of the old displays—I think Lovelybelt is still using one of them. I used to have a mountain of photos myself, until I burned them.
Yes, I made my cut off her. Nothing like what that other photographer must be making, but enough so it still bought this whisky. She was funny about money. I’ll tell you about that.
But first picture me in 1947. I had a fourth floor studio in that rathole the Hauser Building, catty-corner from Ardleigh Park.
I’d been working at the Marsh-Mason studios until I’d gotten my bellyful of it and decided to start in for myself. The Hauser Building was crummy—I’ll never forget how the stairs creaked—but it was cheap and there w
as a skylight.
Business was lousy. I kept making the rounds of all the advertisers and agencies, and some of them didn’t object to me too much personally, but my stuff never clicked. I was pretty near broke. I was behind on my rent. Hell, I didn’t even have enough money to have a girl.
It was one of those dark grey afternoons. The building was awfully quiet—even with the shortage they can’t half rent the Hauser. I’d just finished developing some pix I was doing on speculation for Lovelybelt Girdles and Buford’s Pool and Playground—the last a faked-up beach scene. My model had left. A Miss Leon. She was a civics teacher at one of the high schools and modelled for me on the side, just lately on speculation too. After one look at the prints, I decided that Miss Leon probably wasn’t just what Lovelybelt was looking for—or my photography either. I was about to call it a day.
And then the street door slammed four storeys down and there were steps on the stairs and she came in.
She was wearing a cheap, shiny black dress. Black pumps. No stockings. And except that she had a grey cloth coat over one of them, those skinny arms of hers were bare. Her arms are pretty skinny, you know, or can you see things like that any more?
And then the thin neck, the slightly gaunt, almost prim face, the tumbling mass of dark hair, and looking out from under it the hungriest eyes in the world.
That’s the real reason she’s plastered all over the country today, you know—those eyes. Nothing vulgar, but just the same they’re looking at you with a hunger that’s all sex and something more than sex. That’s what everybody’s been looking for since the Year One—something a little more than sex.
Well, boys, there I was, alone with the Girl, in an office that was getting shadowy, in a nearly empty building. A situation that a million male Americans have undoubtedly pictured to themselves with various lush details. How was I feeling? Scared.
I know sex can be frightening. That cold, heart-thumping when you’re alone with a girl and feel you’re going to touch her. But if it was sex this time, it was overlaid with something else.
At least I wasn’t thinking about sex.
I remember that I took a backward step and that my hand jerked so that the photos I was looking at sailed to the floor.
There was the faintest dizzy feeling like something was being drawn out of me. Just a little bit.
That was all. Then she opened her mouth and everything was back to normal for a while.
“I see you’re a photographer, mister,” she said. “Could you use a model?”
Her voice wasn’t very cultivated.
“I doubt it,” I told her, picking up the pix. You see, I wasn’t impressed. The commercial possibilities of her eyes had-n’t registered on me yet, by a long shot. “What have you done?”
Well she gave me a vague sort of story and I began to check her knowledge of model agencies and studios and rates and what not and pretty soon I said to her,
“Look here, you never modelled for a photographer in your life. You just walked in here cold.”
Well, she admitted that was more or less so.
All along through our talk I got the idea she was feeling her way, like someone in a strange place. Not that she was uncertain of herself, or of me, but just of the general situation.
“And you think anyone can model?” I asked her pityingly.
“Sure,” she said.
“Look,” I said, “a photographer can waste a dozen negatives trying to get one half-way human photo of an average woman. How many do you think he’d have to waste before he got a real catchy, glamorous pix of her?”
“I think I could do it,” she said.
Well, I should have kicked her out right then. Maybe I admired the cool way she stuck to her dumb little guns. Maybe I was touched by her underfed look. More likely I was feeling mean on account of the way my pix had been snubbed by everybody and I wanted to take it out on her by showing her up.
“Okay, I’m going to put you on the spot,” I told her. “I’m going to try a couple of shots of you. Understand, it’s strictly on spec. If somebody should ever want to use a photo of you, which is about one chance in two million, I’ll pay you regular rates for your time. Not otherwise.”
She gave me a smile. The first. “That’s swell by me,” she said.
Well, I took three or four shots, closeups of her face since I didn’t fancy her cheap dress, and at least she stood up to my sarcasm. Then I remembered I still had the Lovelybelt stuff and I guess the meanness was still working in me because I handed her a girdle and told her to go back of the screen and get into it and she did, without getting flustered as I’d expected, and since we’d gone that far I figured we might as well shoot the beach scene to round it out, and that was that.
All this time I wasn’t feeling anything particular in one way or the other except every once in a while I’d get one of those faint dizzy flashes and wonder if there was something wrong with my stomach or if I could have been a bit careless with my chemicals. Still, you know, I think the uneasiness was in me all the while.
I tossed her a card and pencil. “Write your name and address and phone,” I told her and made for the darkroom.
A little later she walked out. I didn’t call any good-byes. I was irked because she hadn’t fussed around or seemed anxious about her poses, or even thanked me, except for that one smile.
I finished developing the negatives, made some prints, glanced at them, decided they weren’t a great deal worse than Miss Leon. On an impulse I slipped them in with the pix I was going to take on the rounds next morning.
By now I’d worked long enough so I was a bit fagged and nervous, but I didn’t dare waste enough money on liquor to help that. I wasn’t very hungry. I think I went to a cheap movie.
I didn’t think of the Girl at all, except maybe to wonder faintly why in my present womanless state I hadn’t made a pass at her. She had seemed to belong to a, well, distinctly more approachable social strata than Miss Leon. But then of course there were all sorts of arguable reasons for my not doing that.
Next morning I made the rounds. My first step was Munsch’s Brewery. They were looking for a “Munsch Girl.” Papa Munsch had a sort of affection for me, though he razzed my photography. He had a good natural judgement about that, too. Fifty years ago he might have been one of the shoestring boys who made Hollywood.
Right now he was out in the plant pursuing his favourite occupation. He put down the beaded can, smacked his lips, gabbled something technical to someone about hops, wiped his fat hands on the big apron he was wearing, and grabbed my thin stack of pix.
He was about half-way through, making noises with his tongue and teeth, when he came to her. I kicked myself for even having stuck her in.
“That’s her,” he said. “The photography’s not so hot, but that’s the girl.”
It was all decided. I wondered now why Papa Munsch sensed what the girl had right away, while I didn’t. I think it was because I saw her first in the flesh, if that’s the right word.
At the time I just felt faint.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“One of my new models,” I tried to make it casual.
“Bring her out tomorrow morning,” he told me. “And your stuff. We’ll photograph her here. I want to show you.”
“Here, don’t look so sick,” he added. “Have some beer.”
Well I went away telling myself it was just a fluke, so that she’d probably blow it tomorrow with her inexperience and so on.
Just the same, when I reverently laid my next stack of pix on Mr. Fitch, of Lovelybelt’s, rose-coloured blotter, I had hers on top.
Mr. Fitch went through the motions of being an art critic. He leaned over backward, squinted his eyes, waved his long fingers, and said, “Hmm. What do you think, Miss Willow? Here, in this light. Of course the photograph doesn’t show the bias cut. And perhaps we should use the Lovelybelt Imp instead of the Angel. Still, the girl . . . Come over here, Binns.” More finger-waving. “I want a
married man’s reaction.”
He couldn’t hide the fact that he was hooked.
Exactly the same thing happened at Buford’s Pool and Playground, except that Da Costa didn’t need a married man’s say-so.
“Hot stuff,” he said, sucking his lips. “Oh boy, you photographers!”
I hot-footed it back to the office and grabbed up the card I’d given her to put down her name and address.
It was blank.
I don’t mind telling you that the next five days were about the worst I ever went through, in an ordinary way. When next morning rolled around and I still hadn’t got hold of her, I had to start stalling.
“She’s sick,” I told Papa Munsch over the phone.
“She’s at a hospital?” he asked me.
“Nothing that serious,” I told him.
“Get her out here then. What’s a little headache?”
“Sorry, I can’t.”
Papa Munsch got suspicious. “You really got this girl?”
“Of course I have.”
“Well, I don’t know, I’d think it was some New York model, except I recognized your lousy photography.”
I laughed.
“Well look, you get her here tomorrow morning, you hear?”
“I’ll try.”
“Try nothing. You get her out here.”
He didn’t know half of what I tried. I went around to all the model and employment agencies. I did some slick detective work at the photographic and art studios. I used up some of my last dimes putting advertisements in all three papers. I looked at high school yearbooks and at employee photos in local house organs. I went to restaurants and drugstores, looking at waitresses, and to dime stores and department stores, looking at clerks. I watched the crowds coming out of movie theatres. I roamed the streets.
Evenings I spent quite a bit of time along Pick-up Row. Somehow that seemed the right place.
The fifth afternoon I knew I was licked. Papa Munsch’s deadline—he’d given me several, but this was it—was due to run out at six o’clock. Mr. Fitch had already cancelled.