A dozen furious knocks shook the door and made me understand that my husband would never accept such a solution. I had to find other arguments.
For hours it seemed, I talked to him about our boy, about me – his wife his family, his duty to us, and to the rest of humanity. He was evidently listening, but made no reply of any sort. At last I cried, ‘André . . . do you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ he knocked, very gently.
‘Well listen, then. I have another idea. You remember your first experiment with the ash-tray? Well, do you think that if you had put it through again a second time, it might possibly have come out with the letters turned back the right way?’
Before I had finished speaking, André was busily typing and a moment later I read his answer:
I HAVE ALREADY THOUGHT OF THAT. AND THAT WAS WHY I NEEDED THE FLY. IT MUST GO THROUGH WITH ME. THERE IS NO HOPE OTHERWISE.
‘Try all the same, André.’
I HAVE TRIED SEVEN TIMES ALREADY, was the typewritten reply.
‘André, try again, please!’
The answer this time gave me a flutter of hope.
I DEEPLY ADMIRE YOUR DELICIOUS FEMININE LOGIC. WE COULD GO ON DOING THIS EXPERIMENT UNTIL DOOMSDAY. HOWEVER, JUST TO GIVE YOU PLEASURE, PROBABLY THE VERY LAST I SHALL EVER BE ABLE TO GIVE YOU, I WILL TRY ONCE MORE. IF YOU CANNOT FIND THE DARK GLASSES, TURN YOUR BACK TO THE MACHINE AND PRESS YOUR HANDS OVER YOUR EYES. LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU ARE READY.
‘Ready, André!’ I shouted, without even looking for the glasses.
I heard him move around and then open and closed the door of his disintegrator. After what seemed a very long wait, but was probably not more than a minute or so, I heard a violent crackling noise and perceived a bright flash through my eyelids and fingers.
I turned round as the cabinet door opened.
His head and shoulders still covered with the brown velvet cloth, André was stepping carefully out of it.
‘How do you feel, André? Any difference?’ I asked touching his arm.
He tried to step away from me and caught his foot in one of the stools which I had not troubled to pick up. He made a violent effort to regain his balance, and the velvet cloth slowly slid off his shoulders and head as he fell heavily backwards.
The horror was too much for me.
Trying to stifle my screams I pushed both hands into my mouth. I screamed again and again until my fingers bled. I could not take my eyes off him, I could not even close them, and yet I knew that if I looked at the horror much longer, I would go on screaming for the rest of my life.
Slowly, the monster, the thing that had been my husband, covered its head, got up, and groped its way to the door. Though still screaming, I was able to close my eyes.
I who have ever been a true Catholic, who believe in God and another, better life hereafter, have today but one hope: that when I die, I really die, and that there may be no after-life for me, because, if there is, then I shall never forget! Day and night, awake or asleep, I see it.
Until I am totally extinct, nothing can, nothing will ever make me forget that dreadful white hairy head with its low flat skull and its two pointed ears. Pink and moist, the nose was also that of a huge cat. Where the eyes should have been were two brown bumps. Instead of a mouth, animal or human, was a long hairy vertical slit from which hung a black quivering trunk that widened at the end, trumpet-like, and from which saliva kept dripping.
I must have fainted, because I found myself flat on my stomach on the cold cement floor of the laboratory, staring at the closed door through which I could hear the noise of André’s typewriter.
Numb, numb and empty, I must have looked as people do immediately after a terrible accident, before they fully understand what has happened. I could only think of a man I had once seen on the platform of a railway station, quite conscious, and looking stupidly at his leg still on the line where the train had just passed.
The noise of the typewriter suddenly stopped and I felt I was going to scream again as something touched the door and a sheet ofpaper slid under it.
Shivering with fear and disgust, I crawled over to where I could read it without touching it:
MY POOR HELENE, NOW YOU UNDERSTAND. THAT LAST EXPERIMENT WAS A NEW DISASTER. WHEN I WENT INTO THE DISINTEGRATOR JUST NOW, MY HEAD WAS THAT OF A FLY. I NOW HAVE ITS EYES AND MOUTH LEFT. THE REST HAS BEEN REPLACED BY PARTS OF THE CAT’S HEAD. POOR DANDELO, WHOSE ATOMS HAD NEVER COME TOGETHER. YOU SEE NOW THAT THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION, DON’T YOU? I MUST DISAPPEAR. KNOCK ON THE DOOR WHEN YOU ARE READY AND I SHALL EXPLAIN WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO.
Of course he was right, and it had been wrong and cruel of me to insist on a new experiment. And I knew that there was now no possible hope.
Getting up, dazed, I went to the door and tried to speak, but no sound came out of my throat, so I knocked once.
You can, of course, guess the rest. He explained his plan in short typewritten notes, and I agreed, I agreed to everything!
My head on fire, but shivering with cold, like an automaton I followed him into the silent factory. In my hand was a full page of explanations.
Without stopping or looking back, he pointed to the switchboard that controlled the steam-hammer as he passed it. I went no farther and watched him come to a halt before the terrible instrument.
He knelt down, carefully wrapped the cloth round his head, and then stretched out flat on the ground.
It was not difficult. I was not killing my husband. André, poor André, had gone long ago, years ago, it seemed. I was carrying out his last wish . . . and mine.
Without hesitating, my eyes on the long, still body, I firmly pushed the ‘stroke’ button right in. The great metallic mass seemed to drop slowly. It was not so much the resounding clang of the hammer that made me jump, as the sharp cracking which I distinctly heard at the same time. My hus – the thing’s body shook a second, and then lay still.
It was then I noticed that he had forgotten to put his right arm, his fly-leg, under the hammer. The police would never understand, but the scientists would, and they must not! That had been André’s last wish,
I had to do it, and quickly; the night-watchman must have heard the hammer and would be round at any moment. I pushed the other button and the hammer slowly rose. Seeing, but trying not to look, I ran up, leaned down, lifted, and moved forward the right arm which seemed terribly light. Back at the switchboard, again I pushed the red button, and down came the hammer a second time. Then I ran home.
You know the rest and can now do whatever you think right.
The following day I telephoned Commissaire Charas to invite him to dinner.
‘With pleasure, Monsieur Delambre. Allow me, however, to ask, is it the Commissaire you are inviting, or just Monsieur Charas?’
‘Have you any preference?’
‘No, not at the present moment.’
‘Well then, make it whichever you like. Will eight o’clock suit you?’
Although it was raining, the Commissaire arrived on foot. ‘Since you did not come tearing up to the door in your black police car, I take it you have opted for Monsieur Charas, off duty?’
‘I left the car up a side street,’ mumbled the Commissaire. ‘Merci,’ he said a minute later, as I handed him a glass of Pernod into which he tipped a few drops of water, watching it turn the golden amber liquid to pale blue milk.
‘You heard about my poor sister-in-law?’
‘Yes, shortly after you telephoned me this morning. I am sorry, but perhaps it was all for the best. Being already in charge of your brother’s case, the inquiry automatically comes to me.’
‘I suppose it was suicide.’
‘Without a doubt. Cyanide, the doctors say, quite rightly; I found a second tablet in the hem of her dress.’
‘I should like to show you a very curious document afterwards, Charas.’
‘Ah yes. I heard that Madame Delambre had been writing a lot, but we could find nothing beyond the short note informing us that she
was committing suicide.’
During our tête-à-tête dinner, we talked politics, books, and films, and the local football club of which the Commissaire was a keen supporter. After dinner, I took him up to my study where a bright fire was burning.
‘I would like you to read this, Charas; first, because it was partly intended for you and, secondly, because it will interest you. If you think that Commissaire Charas has no objection, I would like to burn it after that.’
Without a word, he took the wad of sheets Hélène had given me the day before and settled down to read them.
‘What do you think of it all?’ I asked some twenty minutes later as he carefully folded Hélène’s manuscript, slipped it into the brown envelope, and put it into the fire.
He watched the flames licking the envelope from which wisps of grey smoke were escaping. It was only when it burst into flame that he said, slowly raising his eyes to mine, ‘I think it proves very definitely that Madame Delambre was quite insane.’
For a long time we watched the fire eating up Hélène’s confession.
‘A strange thing happened this morning, Charas. I was visiting the cemetery where my brother is buried. It was quite empty and I was alone.’
‘Not quite, Monsieur Delambre. I was there, very close to you, but I did not want to intrude.’
‘Then you saw me. . .’
‘Yes. I saw you bury a matchbox.’
‘Do you know what was in it?’
‘A fly, I suppose.’
‘Yes. I had found it early this morning, caught in a spider’s web in the garden.’
‘Was it dead?’
‘No, not quite. I crushed it. . . between two stones. Its head was . . . white . . . all white.’
THE THING
by John W Campbell Jnr
If I was forced to name my favourite monster movie, it would probably have to be this final selection, The Thing. But then I would be faced with a further djfficulty in deciding whether I preferred the classic black-and-white RKO Radio version made in 1951 by the great Howard Hawks, or the brilliant, full-colour re-make produced thirty years later for Universal Pictures by perhaps the most talented of today’s horror film directors, John Carpenter. Both men, in fact, have remained strikingly faithful to the superb novella which inspired the story entitled “Who Goes There?”, written in 1938 by John W Campbell Jnr (1910–1971), the influential American science fiction writer and magazine editor. The story recounts with reveling effect how an Antarctic research station, locked in snow and ice, is menaced by a shape- changing alien of awesome power.
Although The Thing From Another World (to give it its full title), the first film version of Campbell’s story, was credited as being directed by Christian Nyby, an assistant of Howard Hawks, it is now generally acknowledged that the project was very much Hawk’s idea and that the style and quality of the movie bear all his hallmarks. The leading roles were played by Kenneth Tobey and Margaret Sheridan, with a hulking, 29-year-old bit player named James Arness as the alien. Nothing like it had been seen on the screen before and The Thing became one of the biggest succcesses of the day, hailed by one critic, Chris Steinb runner, as ‘a gripping classic in the cinema of terror, a starkly real set-piece of man’s struggle against the nonhuman, portrayed with mounting, knuckle-whitening suspense. ‘John Baxter went even further:
‘Not materially different from Frankenstein in plot or ambience, The Thing is the furthest beachhead ever established by Germanic horror on the body politic of American technology.’
Howard Hawks, on the other hand, said he hoped the picture would not be confused with the Frankenstein type of film, ‘an out-and-out horror thriller based on that which is impossible.’ He maintained that The Thing was based on ‘that which is unknown but is given credibility by the use of scientific facts which parallel that which the viewer is asked to believe.’ What he had undoubtedly achieved was a milestone in the history of the cinema of the fantastic: an intelligent, literate and realistic film which set standards for all future monster films.
It was perhaps these very standards which made other film-makers nervous about attempting a sequel, or even re-filming the original tale, as studio technology and special effects developed at an ever-increasing pace in the ensuing years. Not until 1981 did John Carpenter, who as a youngster had sat spellbound before the Howard Hawks’ original, decide to re-make the story. Like its predecessor, the new version of The Thing conjured up with bone-chilling effect the life of the American scientists gripped in the Antarctic cold; and once again,for much of the movie, the terrfjing alien presence was suggested by sounds off and sights just beyond the eye of the camera. Indeed, the special effects created by Albert Whitlock finely complemented Kurt Russell’s playing of the central character and the result was a second classic film from a classic story. It is with this that I satisfyingly close my selection of favourite films.
* * *
The place stank. A queer, mingled stench that only the ice- buried cabins of an Antarctic camp know, compounded of reeking human sweat, and the heavy, fish-oil stench of melted seal blubber. An overtone of liniment combatted the musty smell of sweat-and-snow-drenched furs. The acrid odour of burnt cooking fat, and the animal, not-unpleasant smell of dogs, diluted by time, hung in the air.
Lingering odours of machine oil contrasted sharply with the taint of harness dressing and leather. Yet, somehow, through all that reek of human beings and their associates – dogs, machines, and cooking – came another taint. It was a queer, neck-ruffling thing, a faintest suggestion of an odour alien among the smells of industry and life. And it was a life-smell. But it came from the thing that lay bound with cord and tarpaulin on the table, dripping slowly, methodically onto the heavy planks, dank and gaunt under the unshielded glare of the electric light.
Blair, the little bald-pated biologist of the expedition, twitched nervously at the wrappings, exposing clear, dark ice beneath and then pulled the tarpaulin back into place restlessly. His little birdlike motions of suppressed eagerness danced his shadow across the fringe of dingy grey underwear hanging from the low ceiling, the equatorial fringe of stiff, greying hair around his naked skull a comical halo about the shadow’s head.
Commander Garry brushed aside the lax legs of a suit of underwear, and stepped toward the table. Slowly his eyes traced around the rings of men sardined into the Administration Building. His tall, stiff body straightened finally, and he nodded. ‘Thirty-seven. All here.’ His voice was low, yet carried the clear authority of the commander by nature, as well as by title.
‘You know the outline of the story back of that find of the Secondary Pole Expedition. I have been conferring with Second-in-Command McReady, and Norris, as well as Blair and Dr Copper. There is a difference of opinion, and because it involves the entire group, it is only just that the entire Expedition personnel act on it.
‘I am going to ask McReady to give you the details of the story, because each of you has been too busy with his own work to follow closely the endeavours of the others. McReady?’
Moving from the smoke-blued background, McReady was a figure from some forgotten myth, a looming, bronze statue that held life, and walked. Six-feet-four-inches he stood as he halted beside the table, and with a characteristic glance upward to assure himself of room under the low ceiling beams, straightened. His rough, dashingly orange windproof jacket he still had on, yet on his huge frame it did not seem misplaced. Even here, four feet beneath the drift-wind that droned across the antarctic waste above the ceiling, the cold of the frozen continent leaked in, and gave meaning to the harshenss of the man. And he was bronze – his great red-bronze beard, the heavy hair that matched it. The gnarled, corded hands gripping, relaxing, gripping and relaxing on the table planks were bronze. Even the deep-sunken eyes beneath heavy brows were bronzed.
Age-resisting endurance of the metal spoke in the cragged heavy outlines of his face, and the mellow tones of the heavy voice. ‘Norris and Blair agree on one thing; that animal
we found was not . . . terrestrial in origin. Norris fears there may be danger in that; Blair says there is none.
‘But I’ll go back to how, and why we found it. From all that was known before we came here, it appeared that this point was exactly over the South Magnetic Pole of Earth. The compass does point straight down here, as you all know. The more delicate instruments of the physicists, instruments especially designed for this expedition and its study of the magnetic pole, detected a secondary effect, a secondary, less powerful magnetic influence about 80 miles south-west of here.
‘The Secondary Magnetic Expedition went out to investigate it. There is no need for details. We found it, but it was not the huge meteorite or magnetic mountain Norris had expected to find. Iron ore is magnetic, of course; iron more so – and certain special steels even more magnetic. From the surface indications, the secondary pole we found was small, so small that the magnetic effect it had was preposterous. No magnetic material conceivable could have that effect. Soundings through the ice indicated it was within one hundred feet of the glacier surface.
‘I think you should know the structure of the place. There is a broad plateau, a level sweep that runs more than 150 miles due south from the Secondary station, Van Wall says. He didn’t have time or fuel to fly farther, but it was running smoothly due south then. Right there, where that buried thing was, there is an ice-drowned mountain ridge, a granite wall of unshakable strength that has dammed back the ice creeping from the south.
‘And four hundred miles due south is the South Polar Plateau. You have asked me at various times why it gets warmer here when the wind rises, and most of you know. As a meteorologist I’d have staked my word that no wind could blow at –70 degrees; that no more than a 5-mile wind could blow at –50, without causing warming due to friction with ground, snow and ice and the air itself.
‘We camped there on the lip of that ice-drowned mountain range for twelve days. We dug our camp into the blue ice that formed the surface, and escaped most of it. But for twelve consecutive days the wind blew at 45 miles an hour. It went as high as 48, and fell to 41 at times. The temperature was –63 degrees. It rose to –60 and fell to –68. It was meteorologically impossible, and it went on uninterruptedly for twelve days and twelve nights.
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