Dark Forces

by McCauley, Kirby

  “You really don’t.”

  “No way. Because listen, when the man jerked out his head and said that, and the woman said don’t ask her to do that, then the perfessor guy tried to fight Grimme. You see what I’m saying? If Grimme breaks him up and stomps on the pieces, then you could maybe understand him beggin’ the woman to quit and give in. The way Grimme told it right here standing where you are, the man said it when Grimme hadn’t done nothing yet but hold his neck. That’s the part Grimme told over and over, laughin’. ‘Give it to him,’ the man kept telling her. And Grimme never even hit him yet. ’Course when the little man tried to fight him Grimme just laughed and clobbered him once side of the neck, laid him out cold. That was when the woman turned into a wildcat, to hear them tell it. It was all David could do to hold her, let alone mess around. Grimme left him to it and went around back to see what they got in their car. Mind you, I don’t know if he really done all this; I’m just telling you what he said. I heard it three, four times just that first week.

  “So he opened up the back and there was a stack of pictures, you know, painting like on canvas. He hauled ’em all out and put ’em all down flat on the ground and walked up and back looking at them. He says ‘David, you like these?’ and David he said ‘Hell no’ and Grimme walked the whole line, one big boot in the middle of each and every picture. And he says at the first step that woman screamed like it was her face he was stepping on and she hollered ‘Don’t, don’t, they mean everything in the world to him!’ she meant the perfessor, but Grimme went ahead anyway. And then she just quit, she said go ahead, and Dave tooken her into the van and Grimme sat on the perfessor till he was done, then Grimme went in and got his while Dave sat on the man, and after that they got in their van and come here to get drunk and tell about it. And if you really want to know why I don’t believe any of it, those people never tried to call the law.” And the barman gave a vehement nod and drank deep.

  “So what happened to them?”

  ‘Who—the city people? I told you—I don’t even believe there was any.”

  “Grimme.”

  “Oh. Them.” The barman gave a strange chuckle and said with sudden piety, “The Lord has strange ways of fighting evil.”

  The customer waited. The barman drew him another beer and poured a jigger for himself.

  “Next time I see Grimme it’s a week, ten days after. It’s like tonight, nobody here. He comes in for a fifth of sourmash. He’s walking funny, kind of bowlegged. I thought at first trying to clown, he’d do that. But every step he kind of grunted, like you would if I stuck a knife in you, but every step. And the look on his face I never saw the like before. I tell you, it scared me. I went for the whiskey and outside there was screaming.”

  As he talked his gaze went to the far wall and somehow through it, his eyes very round and bulging. “I said ‘What in God’s name is that?’ and Grimme said, ‘It’s David, he’s out in the van, he’s hurting.’ And I said, ‘Better get him to the doctor,’ and he said they just came from there, full of painkiller but it wasn’t enough, and he tooken his whiskey and left, walking that way and grunting every step, and drove off. Last time I saw him.”

  His eyes withdrew from elsewhere, back into the room, and became more normal. “He never paid for the whiskey. I don’t think he meant to stiff me, the one thing he never did. He just didn’t think of it at the time. Couldn’t,” he added.

  “What was wrong with him?”

  “I don’t know. The doc didn’t know.”

  “That would be Dr. McCabe?”

  “McCabe? I don’t know any Dr. McCabe around here. It was Dr. Thetford over the Allersville Corners.”

  “Ah. And how are they now, Grimme and David?”

  “Dead is how they are.”

  “Dead?… You didn’t say that.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “Not until now.” The customer got off his stool and put money on the bar and picked up his car keys. He said, his voice quite as gentle as it had been all along, “The man wasn’t yellow and he wasn’t kinky. It was something far worse.” Not caring at all what this might mean to the bartender, he walked out and got into his car.

  He drove until he found a telephone booth—the vanishing kind with a door that would shut. First he called Information and got a number; then he dialed it.

  “Dr. Thetford? Hello… I want to ease your mind about something. You recently had two fatalities, brothers… No, I will not tell you my name. Bear with me, please. You attended these two and you probably performed the autopsies, right? Good. I hoped you had. And you couldn’t diagnose, correct? You probably certified peritonitis, with good reason… No, I will not tell you my name! And I am not calling to question your competence. Far from it. My purpose is only to ease your mind, which presupposes that you are good at your job and you really care about a medical anomaly. Do we understand each other? Not yet? Then hear me out… Good.”

  Rather less urgently, he went on: “An analogy is a disease called granuloma inguinale, which, I don’t have to tell you, can destroy the whole sexual apparatus with ulcerations and necrosis, and penetrate the body to and all through the peritoneum… Yes, I know you considered that and I know you rejected it, and I know why… Right. Just too damn fast. I’m sure you looked for characteristic bacterial and viral evidence as well, and didn’t find any.

  “...Yes, of course, Doctor—you’re right and I’m sorry, going on about all the things it isn’t without saying what it is.

  “Actually, it’s a hormone poison, resulting from a biochemical mutation in—in the carrier. It’s synergistic, wildly accelerating—as you saw. One effect is something you couldn’t possibly know—it affects the tactile neurones in such a way that morphine and its derivatives have an inverted effect—in much the same way that amphetamines have a calmative effect on children. In other words, the morphine aggravated and intensified their pain… I know, I know; I’m sorry. I made a real effort to get to you and tell you this in time to spare them some of that agony, but—as you say, it’s just too damn fast.

  “…Vectors? Ah. That’s something you do not have to worry about. I mean it, Doctor—it is totally unlikely that you will ever see another case.

  “…Where did it come from? I can tell you that. The two brothers assaulted and raped a woman—very probably the only woman on earth to have this mutated hormone poison… Yes, I can be sure. I have spent most of the last six years in researching this thing. There have been only two other cases of it—yes, just as fast, just as lethal. Both occurred before she was aware of it. She—she is a woman of great sensitivity and a profound sense of responsibility. One was a man she cared very little about, hardly knew. The other was someone she cared very much indeed about. The cost to her when she discovered what had happened was—well, you can imagine.

  “She is a gentle and compassionate person with a profound sense of ethical responsibility. Please believe me when I tell you that at the time of the assault she would have done anything in her power to protect those—those men from the effects of that… contact. When her husband—yes, she has a husband, I’ll come to that—when he became infuriated at the indignities they were putting on her, and begged her to give in and let them get what they deserved, she was horrified—actually hated him for a while for having given in to such a murderous suggestion. It was only when they vandalized some things that were especially precious to her husband—priceless—that she too experienced the same deadly fury and let them go ahead. The reaction has been terrible for her—first to see her husband seeking vengeance, when she was convinced he could rise above that—and in a moment find that she herself could be swept away by the same thing… But I’m sorry, Dr. Thetford—I’ve come far afield from medical concerns. I meant only to reassure you that you are not looking at some mysterious new plague. You can be sure that every possible precaution is being taken against its recurrence… I admit that total precautions against the likes of those two may not be possible, but there’s little chance
of its happening again. And that, sir, is all I am going to say, so good—

  “What? Unfair?… I suppose you’re right at that—to tell you so much and so little all at once. And I do owe it to you to explain what my concern is in all this. Please—give me a moment to get my thoughts together.

  “…Very well. I was commissioned by that lady to make some discreet inquiries about what happened to those two, and if possible to get to their doctor in time to inform him—you—about the inverted effect of morphine. There would be no way to save their lives, but they might have been spared the agony. Further, she found that not knowing for sure if they were indeed victims was unbearable. This news is going to be hard for her to take, but she will survive it somehow; she’s done it before. Hardest of all for her—and her husband—will be to come to terms with the fact that, under pressure, they both found themselves capable of murderous vengefulness. She has always believed, and by her example he came to believe, that vengeance is unthinkable. And he failed her. And she failed herself.” Without a trace of humor, he laughed. “‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ I can’t interpret that, Doctor, or vouch for it. All I can derive from this—episode—is that vengeance is. And that’s all I intend to say to you—what?

  “…One more question?… Ah—the husband. Yes, you have the right to ask that. I’ll say it this way: there was a wedding seven years ago. It was three years before there was a marriage, you follow? Three years of the most intensive research and the most meticulous experimentation. And you can accept as fact that she is the only woman in the world who can cause this affliction—and he is the only man who is immune.

  “Doctor Thetford: good night.”

  He hung up and stood for a long while with his forehead against the cool glass of the booth. At length he shuddered, pulled himself together, went out and drove away in his little hatchback.

  The Brood

  Ramsey Campbell

  He’d had an almost unbearable day. As he walked home his self-control still oppressed him, like rusty armour. Climbing the stairs, he tore open his mail: a glossy pamphlet from a binoculars firm, a humbler folder from the Wildlife Preservation Society. Irritably he threw them on the bed and sat by the window, to relax.

  It was autumn. Night had begun to cramp the days. Beneath golden trees, a procession of cars advanced along Princes Avenue, as though to a funeral; crowds hurried home. The incessant anonymous parade, dwarfed by three stories, depressed him. Faces like these vague twilit miniatures—selfishly ingrown, convinced that nothing was their fault—brought their pets to his office.

  But where were all the local characters? He enjoyed watching them, they fascinated him. Where was the man who ran about the avenue, chasing butterflies of litter and stuffing them into his satchel? Or the man who strode violently, head down in no gale, shouting at the air? Or the Rainbow Man, who appeared on the hottest days obese with sweaters, each of a different garish colour? Blackband hadn’t seen any of these people for weeks.

  The crowds thinned; cars straggled. Groups of streetlamps lit, tinting leaves sodium, unnaturally gold. Often that lighting had meant—Why, there she was, emerging from the side street almost on cue: the Lady of the Lamp.

  Her gait was elderly. Her face was withered as an old blanched apple; the rest of her head was wrapped in a tattered grey scarf. Her voluminous ankle-length coat, patched with remnants of colour, swayed as she walked. She reached the central reservation of the avenue, and stood beneath a lamp.

  Though there was a pedestrian crossing beside her, people deliberately crossed elsewhere. They would, Blackband thought sourly: just as they ignored the packs of stray dogs that were always someone else’s responsibility—ignored them, or hoped someone would put them to sleep. Perhaps they felt the human strays should be put to sleep, perhaps that was where the Rainbow Man and the rest had gone!

  The woman was pacing restlessly. She circled the lamp, as though the blurred disc of light at its foot were a stage. Her shadow resembled the elaborate hand of a clock.

  Surely she was too old to be a prostitute. Might she have been one, who was now compelled to enact her memories? His binoculars drew her face closer: intent as a sleepwalker’s, introverted as a foetus. Her head bobbed against gravel, foreshortened by the false perspective of the lenses. She moved offscreen.

  Three months ago, when he’d moved to this flat, there had been two old women. One night he had seen them, circling adjacent lamps. The other woman had been slower, more sleepy. At last the Lady of the Lamp had led her home; they’d moved slowly as exhausted sleepers. For days he’d thought of the two women in their long faded coats, trudging around the lamps in the deserted avenue, as though afraid to go home in the growing dark.

  The sight of the lone woman still unnerved him, a little. Darkness was crowding his flat. He drew the curtains, which the lamps stained orange. Watching had relaxed him somewhat. Time to make a salad.

  The kitchen overlooked the old women’s house. See The World from the Attics of Princes Avenue. All Human Life is Here. Backyards penned in rubble and crumbling toilet sheds; on the far side of the back street, houses were lidless boxes of smoke. The house directly beneath his window was dark, as always. How could the two women—if both were still alive—survive in there? But at least they could look after themselves, or call for aid; they were human, after all. It was their pets that bothered him.

  He had never seen the torpid woman again. Since she had vanished, her companion had begun to take animals home; he’d seen her coaxing them toward the house. No doubt they were company for her friend; but what life could animals enjoy in the lightless, probably condemnable house? And why so many? Did they escape to their homes, or stray again? He shook his head: the women’s loneliness was no excuse. They cared as little for their pets as did those owners who came, whining like their dogs, to his office.

  Perhaps the woman was waiting beneath the lamps for cats to drop from the trees, like fruit. He meant the thought as a joke. But when he’d finished preparing dinner, the idea troubled him sufficiently that he switched off the light in the main room and peered through the curtains.

  The bright gravel was bare. Parting the curtains, he saw the woman hurrying unsteadily toward her street. She was carrying a kitten: her head bowed over the fur cradled in her arms; her whole body seemed to enfold it. As he emerged from the kitchen again, carrying plates, he heard her door creak open and shut. Another one, he thought uneasily.

  By the end of the week she’d taken in a stray dog, and Blackband was wondering what should be done.

  The women would have to move eventually. The houses adjoining theirs were empty, the windows shattered targets. But how could they take their menagerie with them? They’d set them loose to roam or, weeping, take them to be put to sleep.

  Something ought to be done, but not by him. He came home to rest. He was used to removing chicken bones from throats; it was suffering the excuses that exhausted him—Fido always had his bit of chicken, it had never happened before, they couldn’t understand. He would nod curtly, with a slight pained smile. “Oh yes?” he would repeat tonelessly. “Oh yes?”

  Not that that would work with the Lady of the Lamp. But then, he didn’t intend to confront her: what on earth could he have said? That he’d take all the animals off her hands? Hardly. Besides, the thought of confronting her made him uncomfortable.

  She was growing more eccentric. Each day she appeared a little earlier. Often she would move away into the dark, then hurry back into the flat bright pool. It was as though light were her drug.

  People stared at her, and fled. They disliked her because she was odd. All she had to do to please them, Blackband thought, was be normal: overfeed her pets until their stomachs scraped the ground, lock them in cars to suffocate in the heat, leave them alone in the house all day then beat them for chewing. Compared to most of the owners he met, she was Saint Francis.

  He watched television. Insects were courting and mating. Their ritual dances engrossed and
moved him: the play of colours, the elaborate racial patterns of the life-force which they instinctively decoded and enacted. Microphotography presented them to him. If only people were as beautiful and fascinating!

  Even his fascination with the Lady of the Lamp was no longer unalloyed; he resented that. Was she falling ill? She walked painfully slowly, stooped over, and looked shrunken. Nevertheless, each night she kept her vigil, wandering sluggishly in the pools of light like a sleepwalker.

  How could she cope with her animals now? How might she be treating them? Surely there were social workers in some of the cars nosing home, someone must notice how much she needed help. Once he made for the door to the stairs, but already his throat was parched of words. The thought of speaking to her wound him tight inside. It wasn’t his job, he had enough to confront. The spring in his guts coiled tighter, until he moved away from the door.

  One night an early policeman appeared. Usually the police emerged near midnight, disarming people of knives and broken glass, forcing them into the vans. Blackband watched eagerly. Surely the man must escort her home, see what the house hid. Blackband glanced back to the splash of light beneath the lamp. It was deserted.

  How could she have moved so fast? He stared, baffled. A dim shape lurked at the corner of his eyes. Glancing nervously, he saw the woman standing on a bright disc several lamps away, considerably farther from the policeman than he’d thought. Why should he have been so mistaken?

  Before he could ponder, a sound distracted him: a loud fluttering, as though a bird were trapped and frantic in the kitchen. But the room was empty. Any bird must have escaped through the open window. Was that a flicker of movement below, in the dark house? Perhaps the bird had flown in there.