TERROR'S UNDISCOVERED LANDS

In the fourteen stories here we find our share of ghosts and werewolves and vampires, of monsters, of people trapped in (and out of) time and space—but these things don't always take the expected form. Our writers still explore lands that have not yet been settled . . . Our writers know that terra incognita still may lie across a sea or in some uncharted forest; but they also know that it can be as close as the other end of town; or in the same house or building where you now sit reading. It can be locked in your own mind, and with a rusty corroded lock just waiting for a little pressure to make it snap open.

Today's writers are more familiar than the writers of Poe's time with the ways of reaching terra incognita, and they are eager for your company . . .

Copyright ©, 1976 By DAW BOOKS, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Michael Whelan.

DEDICATION

For Jerry Burge and Bill Crawford,

partners in sorcery.

First Printing, November 1976

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

PRINTED IN U.S.A

Wickerman eBooks

INTRODUCTION

The early teller of horror stories, in common with the originators of less horrific fantasy and science-fiction, made sure his stories took place far enough from his audience that they could never challenge his claims. As travel became easier and more common, it was necessary to place those claims even farther out of reach. But eventually no part of this planet was really inaccessible and writers had to resort to placing their stories in other times: the future for science-fiction, the past for fantasy.

Even Edgar Allen Poe resorted to setting some of his most frightening stories in the past, yet it was Poe who recognized that it was never really necessary to go any farther away than the nearest human mind to find the elements of true horror. Among the mazes of human thought and the frustrations and uncertainties of our own personalities he found a greater source of fright than was provided by all the ghosts and phantoms that ever haunted Europe. Almost a century later H.P. Lovecraft realized that a man like himself—a man who did not believe at all in the supernatural—could find the themes for the sort of horror story he wanted to write in the stuff of science-fiction: time travel, aliens from other worlds and times, travels among alternate universes, the control of one mind by another . . . or by something altogether alien.

These were revolutionary discoveries in their own time, but today's writers take them for granted. In the fourteen stories here we find our share of ghosts and werewolves and vampires, of monsters, of people trapped in (and out of) time and space—but these things don't always take the expected form. Our writers still explore lands that have not yet been settled, but they no longer do so merely to prevent their readers from questioning their observations. They take the reader with them as they go and they let the reader see the landmarks and terrain for himself. Our writers know that terra incognita still may lie across a sea or in some uncharted forest; but they also know that it can be as close as the other end of town; or in the same house or building where you now sit reading. It can be locked in your own mind, and with a rusty corroded lock just waiting for a little pressure to make it snap open.

Terra incognita can be right here, separated from you only by the flimsiest web of time and space, or by your own uncertain perceptions, or by the perversity of luck. It is a web that can drop away at any time and there you stand: a stranger, unfamiliar with the natives or the customs of the natives and uncertain—but quite suspicious—of their eating habits. Today's writers are more familiar than the writers of Poe's time with the ways of reaching terra incognita, and they are eager for your company.

So Brian Lumley follows one of our modern superhighways to discover his secret places and comes up with a story which evokes the cold feeling that lies knotted and only partially hidden behind the frustration known by any driver trapped in the insanity of rush-hour traffic. Fritz Leiber takes us for an elevator ride in the most famous of the world's tall buildings, where we find a country with a much less likable monster than King Kong. David Drake returns from a war half the world away to find a more frightening battleground right here. Ramsey Campbell, on excursion in his native Liverpool, shows us a Christmas gift that does not express the joys of the season. On the top floor of a most unpicturesque building Avram Davidson shows us a bookstore with a very strange price list. And R.A. Lafferty takes us to a more affluent part of town where we learn an unpleasant secret that is all too safe.

But you must not imagine that horror is limited to urban settings. Joseph Payne Brennan finds something nasty in a small New England village, and Arthur Byron Cover tells of a home town summer vacation that was not quite as relaxing as might have been hoped. C.L. Grant uncovers a very haunting sort of terror on a farm in winter and Frank Belknap Long takes us to a cottage that's much too close to the sea.

The past is not completely ignored. Hal Clement finds scientific vampirism in Roman times and the alert reader might discover that in some ways the past is not too different from today. Joe Pumilia finds that the past and present aren't different at all and there's something horrible loose and roaming in time. However, G.N. Gabbard goes straight to the traditional with a story of something grim and grisly in the Black Forest. To bring us up to date there's a bonus, a short article by E. Hoffman Price about the controversy recently stirred up by the publication of L. Sprague de Camp's biography of H.P. Lovecraft.

If all this sounds like something your travel agent might have arranged, then so be it. But be warned as well. This agent has tried to arrange a tour that only covers those less than savory places that just might not be as out-of-the-way as you would like.

—Gerald W. Page

FOREVER STAND THE STONES by Joe Pumilia

Perhaps nothing symbolizes the mysterious past better than Stonehenge; not even the pyramids or those fascinating carvings on Easter Island. The following story, never before published in America, starts with Stonehenge and the rites the Druids practiced there, then quickly moves on to other times, other horrors—and other symbols of horror. But then, you do realize the connection between Stonehenge, Dracula, and Jack the Ripper . . . don't you?

"I don't care whether it makes any sense or not. Walter Deacon was there. You have to believe me. He went with us on the Stonehenge tour in 1883 and I saw him vanish. He stepped into a strange shadow between two big stones, and then he wasn't there. They keep telling me there's no such person as Walter Deacon, that there never was. But I know he doesn't exist only in my dreams. Sometimes when I'm walking through London I'll come on a place where Walter and I would visit, and the memory of him will come to me, and I just know that Walter was a real person, that he doesn't just exist in my mind. That's why I came to you after all these years. It's been preying on my mind. Did he exist or didn't he? Why do I remember him so clearly when no one else does? Please help me, Doctor. My husband says that if I call him Walter again he'll have me put away. You must help me find the truth or I shall go mad."

—From the lost notebooks of Sigmund Freud.

The Case of Gertrude Zimmermann.

In the time of the Roman invaders who came from the ends of the Earth to plant the eagle standard in Britain, a conclave was called in the sacred precincts of Salisbury, where the great stones stood, changeless, majestic, awesome, as they had stood, long Ages before the Celts had come.

The wind upon Salisbury was suddenly still, and rushing clouds of mist gathered like birds of prey in the morn-blood sky. They were gathered there, Mogh Kymroch the mighty warrior chief, his Arch Druid, Korich the Invoker, and a host of lesser priests, to consult the dark powers upon the dawn of the day of battle.

On this day the legions of Rome would find themselves pitted against fierce Celtic warriors, who battled naked, their only weapon—other than their iron ones—the knowledge that after death the soul joins a new body in Tir-na-nog, the afterworld.

"What will the omen be, Invoker?" asked Mogh anxiously.

"If the great Lord of the Portals comes to us," said the priest, "as he always comes when we invoke him upon this Appointed Day, then it will be a sign in our favor."

"But—what will he tell us?" the chieftain asked. "Has he instructions, or—?"

The Arch Druid raised a hand as gnarled as the root of the sacred oak.

"No, lord. He does not speak. It is enough that he shall appear to us. I shall read the omen in his eyes, and if we are permitted to glimpse the afterworld for but a brief moment, then his power is surely with us."

Wygiff, one of the younger priests, waited just outside the ring of stones, feeling the weight of the iron dagger in his hand.

When the time comes to slay the victim, he told himself, it will not be the girl I love, the girl I grew up with—it will not be Elwyn of the golden hair, no. Nor will I be Wygiff her lover—I will be the instrument of the gods, a priest of the Powers.

Wygiff had slain many victims, enemies mostly, upon the altar. A victim was slain at the time of sowing, and again at harvest, and at certain Appointed Days to propitiate the Powers. And now, before a great battle with the invaders, one of their fairest women would be sent into the afterlife to petition the gods.

Not a virgin—but the Arch Priest did not know that. Nor, Wygiff supposed, did it really matter, for as any fool could see, the ritual purity of the victim mattered nothing. The Lord of the Portals had often appeared on an Appointed Day with the sacrifice of a captive won in battle. Yet for this momentous occasion, Korich the Invoker had commanded that a virgin be slain—and has chosen Elwyn knowing full well that she was beloved of Wygiff, though how far that love had progressed he surely knew not.

Wygiff could not hate the old man overmuch, for he knew that Korich had long been preparing him to step into his office. If Wygiff performed his duties as ritual executioner without hesitation then the Arch Druid would know that his choice had been a good one.

Yet Wygiff knew that should Elwyn die as ordained, his life would be an empty one. How much better if he carried out his office for the glory of his people, then himself joined Elwyn in Tir-na-nog? He looked to the east where the sky was the color of near-molten iron. In moments the sun would rise. It was time.

The druid priests had gathered within the inner pentagram of towering sarsen stones, the five trilithons, five great stone doorways set within the outer colonnade with its continuous lintel. Doors without walls, the great trilithons upheld the weight of centuries of unrecorded time. All was silent, the silence of the moment before dawn when the insects had stopped whispering their ancient spells into the earth, and the birds had not yet begun their hymns to their father the sun.

Under the wrinkle-mounted eyes of the Invoker. Wygiff took his place at the altar. Through the entrance walkway, in the direction of the rising sun, Elwyn came, led by priests. She was not looking at Wygiff. Her eyes were closed, her breathing rapid. She was naked and white in the cold dawn, her body garlanded with mistletoe taken from the sacred oak. Wygiff desperately wanted to be transported beyond himself, as by the drink called vinum, which the Celts had captured from the Romans, and which was more potent than beer or mead.

The horrible pageant that was playing itself out before his eyes like a recurrent dream would not stop. The weight of the knife in his hand would not vanish. Elwyn would not look at him as she lay her naked body before him, not for love of him, but for love of her people and fear of her gods. She lay upon the crude stone altar, her four limbs and head forming a five-pointed figure corresponding to the five stone gateways.

His throat constricted as he tried to utter a comforting sound. He could not speak. Korich's nod was the signal to strike. Wygiff raised the knife, and his arm poised in the air. Mogh Kymroch looked on hopefully. What cared he that Wygiff's life would soon be a living hell of emptiness, as dreadful to contemplate as the dreary, foreboding afterworld in which the Romans believed? Mogh's responsibility lay with his warriors and the survival of the Celts in Britain, Wygiff's responsibility—

Again the Arch Druid nodded, stern and impatient. The next moment would reveal whether he had chosen an unworthy one for his successor.

Wygiff's sole thought was that his beloved should suffer no pain. Thus he struck deep, hard, and sure.

Strangely the victim uttered no cry, and in the eerie stillness that followed, the only sound was not of nature's uttering: the soft drip of blood from stone to earth, and the shadowy sound of blood trickling in rivulets along the ground.

The druids began to move in the shadows. Because it is horrible for men to slay a virgin and eat of her flesh, they were dressed in the skins of animals, and crouched as animals crouch. And in this moment before dawn, they were not men who waited among the great rough-hewn stones. They were foxes, stags, boars.

Bloody from their sacred task, the druids waited for the sun to rise from the underworld as it had done every day since time began. And as this day, the summer solstice, was one of the Appointed Days, the keepers of the stones had come, as their fathers had come before them, to mark the brief moment when the Lord of the Portals would come and give to his servants the brief glimpse of the afterlife that was the vindication of their lives and their beliefs.

Wygiff was now devoid of all feeling and emotion, and was possessed by a great emptiness into which madness began to creep, like a black thing from the dark marshes of forbidden thought. He crouched at the victim's head and his eyes gazed sightless on the first glowing arc of light that appeared upon the horizon.

Behind him something wondrous was happening. The others murmured and threw up their hands, and called to him to turn, to look. A zealous hand pushed him around, forced his ringing head to turn, and there he saw that which he knew he would see.

In the space between the uprights of the great stone doorway a light appeared. And atop the lintel stone a mist gathered, took shape, and became alive. Two burning orbs coalesced from the mist like stars being born in the center of creation, and swirls of phosphorescent mist became powerful arms.

It stretched out its great arms toward the sky in a gesture that might be joy or agony.

He had come. He had come again.

The watchers gazed raptly through the rough columns. The light there rivaled that of the sun, for sunlight it was. There at dawn on the still dark plain a ray of sunlight flowed between the columns from a point opposite the morning sun! The columns and lintel framed the vision of another world, a world whose sun was at midday.

Strange buildings and monuments came into view as the druids watched in awe. Should one of them have gone around to look through the doorway from the other side, he would see not his fellows kneeling with their backs to the sunrise, but another view of the city of the gods in the afterworld.

Strange, thought Wygiff, his head spinning, the memory of Elwyn deadened by a surfeit of overwhelming grief. Strange how each time we glimpse the afterlife it is different. No two times had it been the same. The men, the animals, the strange huts and temples—different each time.

Perhaps he then did what he did because of his grief, because he could not bear to live with the memory of Elwyn's death and his part in it. Because priests are men, and because thought and memory are immortal, undying things that tear at the weeping soul and give it no rest—because of this he stepped forth boldly, arms upraised. The others gasped at the blasphemy, but none dared rise to stay him.

"Oh, Master," said Wygiff in a voice tinged with madness, "I have served you for many cycles of the moon, and many dancings of the sun upon the marker stone. Surely the time approaches when I shall journey into the world beyond!"

The Lords of the Portals did not seem to notice. His flaming eyes saw all and nothing, and the moving of his polished limbs within their sheaths of vapor was terrible to behold.

"For generation upon generation we have served you," said Wygiff, a hint of fear in his voice. "Tell us, Master, what do you ask us? What may we give you?"

For the first time in the memory of those who served, the Lord of the Portals made answer:

I want nothing.

But the fire in Wygiff's eyes was still bright. "Then if your needs are not those of men," he said in a fanatical voice, "take this gift of my body—let me join my beloved Elwyn in the afterworld!"

His fellows gaped in astonishment as Wygiff rushed up to the trilithon and with an ecstatic cry leaped through, into the world beyond death. Cowering like the animals they pretended to be, the Celts watched awestruck as Wygiff cavorted upon the stone pavement of the city of the gods in the light of another sun. They watched him dance and run about, and they murmured ancient protections and performed ritual gestures against the unknown effects of this blasphemy, if such it was.

And at that moment the sun of the druids had come up over the world's edge and it sat upon the tip of the marker stone.

There was a strange unhuman wail of horror. It pricked their brains as a flint splinter pricked the flesh. The place of standing stones was suddenly cold, as though some dark sun had sucked away the warmth. The view between the columns was once more a view of the surrounding plain, and atop the lintel was only a tattered shred of mist that united with the air, and became invisible. The watchers crouched under animal pelts, as unmoving as the great sarsens, their mouths dry, their limbs clammy, their eyes as large and bright as summer moons.

O God help me please—I am Walter Deacon of London and this thing has got me, this thing in the stone! What do you want? I want to go home, to my wife Gertrude—let me go—

The voice says: I have given you the keys of past and present. I have made you immortal. From the place of Now, where past and future meet, you may range through time from the creation to the present, but not beyond into the future, except at the pace mortals travel it—day by day.

What are you? What do you want of me? Says the voice: I want nothing.

In the moonlight the stranger made his way through the stark autumn woods. Once he crossed the road that led to his castle atop a rugged hill overlooking the valley at Bran. The road was lined with tall poles, each bearing the body of a Turk. By chance he stopped for a wary breath beneath the pole bearing the skin-wrapped bones of the Pasha of Vidin, whose fine clothes were now wind-tattered rags.

The Pasha had been sent by the Sultan to depose him, but the puppet had learned to walk without strings.

The woods were not quiet. Night birds preyed and the wind howled in the trees like a thousand cats. The lights of a peasant's hovel were as inviting as the sheets of a king's bed. The stranger was cold and hungry and had not slept for many days. His fine clothes had been torn by thorns in the hidden ways of the deep wood.

A suspicious face peered at him from a half-open door.

"I flee the invader," said the stranger, and at this the door opened wide and a tough work-calloused hand grabbed his, and whisked him inside. The door slammed protectively behind him. Inside the house was a faint livestock smell, a smell that was quite inviting, even reassuring.

"Have you been long in flight?" asked the peasant, a proud but shabbily dressed man.

"Some days," answered the stranger. As he began to remove his tattered cloak, the man's daughter came and lifted it from his shoulders. The girl was young and pink-cheeked, and altogether quite a lovely thing to have been produced by the wizened old gnome. In her eye there was a sparkle like the sun shining through Venetian glass, and it did not escape the stranger's notice.

"You have not eaten," said the old man. He took his daughter aside and whispered in her ear.

"She will bring soup," he explained. He seated his visitor at the rough table and asked him, "Tell me, how near is the Turk?"

"I am not sure. They are searching the area around the castle of the Voivode. They suspect all of noble birth. I was forced to flee upon a moment's notice."

The peasant nodded knowingly. After the Pasha's defeat, the Turkish Sultan had invaded the country himself and deposed the Voivode, Vlad IV, much to the relief of Vlad's subjects, who knew him as Vlad the Devil. But it was not wise to mention such things to a nobleman, even though most were sympathetic to the lower classes.

"Ah, may God have mercy on our poor Voivode," said the peasant, crossing himself ostentatiously. "God protect him!" He did not mean it, of course.

Sasha returned with a bowl of thick soup. She was now wearing a large heirloom cross about her throat. The stranger slurped loudly, manners forgotten in the face of hunger. The peasant was pleased.

After the stranger had eaten, there was a fleeting moment when he seemed somehow unsure of himself. A disconcerted look crossed his scratched and stubbled face, a tortured look.

"Is something wrong?"

"I—I feel so strange. As though for a moment—for a moment I were someone else."

Seeing that the stranger was genuinely puzzled, and that it was no trick to deceive him, the peasant said warmly, "Please, your flight has exhausted you. Share our hospitality this cold night. You shall sleep in the bed of my poor dead wife. Come."

The old man reached to take the stranger's arm, but the visitor had now recovered from his strange lapse of memory, and the peasant was satisfied to lead him into the next room and provide him with heavy quilts that had belonged to the dead woman. From the darkness of the room, the stranger's eyes gleamed, and he murmured thanks.

The Voivode of Rumania, Vlad IV, formerly the puppet monarch of Mahomet, Sultan of Turkey, laid down but did not sleep. He was aware of the living things in the outer world, the wolves and the other prowling things, and the huge-winged owls that screeched in the night. His puzzling quirk of memory was forgotten.

He knew who he was.

He rose, his breath rapid. Moving ghostlike, he was poised and calm as he made his way through the darkened hut. He might have been walking through the ritual of a state dinner.

He stepped to the pallet of the peasant's daughter, and he brushed back the curtain as he would brush away a cobweb.

Vlad saw the dim light gleam on white eyes. Her chill-rouged lips smiled at him across the gulf of night, and her wind-licked cheeks formed inviting dimples. She bared her breast to him.

He bent over, his hands tasting her body. He nuzzled her throat softly. He bit into it. Her body jerked convulsively, and blood poured into the echo of her scream.

The old man came stumbling into the room, an ancient knife in his hand. His eyes were like shattered mirrors as he recognized the bloody-lipped specter in the ghostly light.

"Dracul!"

He turned in horror, slipping in the blood that yet Issued from the body's still pulsing jugular. He fell beneath Vlad's heel with a truncated plea. Vlad began to descend upon the old man like the plague of darkness, like a fog of hunting bats, like a dark sea of wolves. Suddenly he clutched his throat.

Choking, gasping in pain, he felt his body becoming a mist, becoming translucent, transparent, invisible. Before he vanished utterly, his true identity blazed forth, as a spark smothered under pine needles will emerge and consume them.

With a pang of anguish he realized who he was and what he had done.

No! Don't let me remember!

Dracul

Dracole

Dragulia

Dracula

DEACON!

I am Walter Deacon! Walter Deacon—stop—make the pain stop—I don't want to kill—what do you want of me?

The voice says: I have longed for death, but I cannot die. I have tasted death vicariously through the sufferings of those slain upon the altar, but there has been no chance of escape until now. I am imprisoned within the circle and pentagram of stones, but free to move in time. Now you shall do for me that which I cannot do for myself.

No no not again! What do you want of me—why must I kill, why must I bring pain?

The voice says: Fear is the greatest emotion. I do not feed upon emotion—I collect it. To invoke it most fully I utilize the supernatural manifestations most feared by men. Your consciousness of your own identity is always just below the surface, but you can only serve my purpose if you are ignorant of my plans. Therefore, you are no longer Walter Deacon.

No—no not again—please—I don't want to kill—just let me forget!

Says the voice: You are . . .

No no no I am—I am . . .

"I want you to kill my wife," said Catullus in a low and casual voice, as he scratched the loose flesh beneath his jowls.

"Why do you ask this of me?" said the witch.

"Would you like more wine, Mother?"

Looking across the table, Catullus saw not a fearsome skull-faced hag, but only a homely woman past middle age, dressed in a worn toga, sitting with him in the cool evening shade in the patio of his house.

He smiled and ordered a brown-skinned boy to bring more wine. The boy came, poured, and left. Catullus's glance lingered after him pruriently.

Returning his attention to his visitor, Catullus produced from the folds of his toga a leather bag. With a flourish he spilled its golden contents onto the table and leaned forward with a confidential air.

"How soon can it be done, Mother?"

Smiling grimly, the witch raked the gold into a pile and put it back into the bag. Opening her robe as though it were the gate of a treasure room, she nestled the purse against her wrinkled dugs.

"Tonight," she said.

Catullus sat up, smiling luxuriously, as though a great burden had been lifted from his tender shoulders.

"She will go with her attendants along the Street of Tombs, after she is satisfied that I am drunk and asleep."

With a sweeping movement, he brought the alabaster goblet to his mouth. The purple juice ran down the corners of his lips, down his jaw, and crept under the white of his toga, staining it.

"By Jupiter," he said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand, "when she is dead and dung underfoot, and eaten by dogs, then I can do as I please in my own house. I'll have a party and invite that poet—what was his name?—the one Claudius told me about. I shall have him compose me an ode. An ode to the garden where my wife meets her lovers. I will retire early tonight. I will in truth be drunk and asleep when she peers in to find me, as still as an Egyptian statue. Bold bitch! Hah, dead dog!"

He laughed, choked on purple juice, and vomited thinly on the ground beside the chair. He laughed again, reaching for the wine and spilled it. The witch took the bottle and held it to his lips.

He sucked greedily, his eyes rolling.

Later that evening, as the witch prepared her potion of transformation, a sudden sinking doubt came upon her, a doubt—at first—of the efficacy of her powers. Was she really a striga, a witch? Inexplicably the doubt deepened, encompassing not only her powers but her identity, her milieu, her very existence. Then as suddenly as the sensation had come over her, it passed. Ah! We poor strigas, she thought to herself. Impressions of the past and future hover about us like bats about a cave, and no doubt some shreds of memory from the mournful dead. We live between worlds—such is our lot. Thus she explained the strangeness to herself and made it less strange, and was no longer uneasy.

It was dusk on the Street of Tombs. The cypresses were slender obelisks against the blood-red, Tyran-hued purple sky. The massive flagstones of the street were like the scales of some monster fish lying dead in the earth. Along either side of the road rose the tombs, white marble masses of classical proportion. Sea birds flew to and fro, contributing their droppings to the offerings for the dead. The plume of Vesuvius was a witch's hair streaming on the wind. In the volcano's belly the dead cried and grated their tongues between their teeth.

A party consisting of a noble lady and two female attendants with torches walked quietly along, as if they were late mourners. In the distance, horses' hooves clicked on stone, and far away was the sound of a drunken revel, made near by the chill breeze.

The witch crouched in a colonnaded mausoleum, waiting.

Catullus dreamed purple lust-dreams on his couch and hummed obscenely in his sleep to the harp's tune.

The noble lady's servants leered knowingly at one another and flicked their eyes about saucily.

The monster glided out of the tomb's mossy recesses. She had the head and torso of a woman, but at her hips began the body of a great serpent. One servant died of terror on the spot. The other was rendered insane from that moment on. The noble lady's head was crushed between two powerful hands and she disappeared a bit at a time into the monster's fanged maw.

Dawn found the Street of Tombs scarlet with blood along a great distance. There was a dead woman lying on the flagstones without a mark on her. That night a hissing sound was heard and men with torches searched among the tombs. One of them found a naked woman creeping along the ground. Her eyes were glassy. She was hissing like a snake.

Please! Give me back my self! I want to be me again—I want to return to Gertrude, to London.

The voice says: You shall never return.

Is there no escape? For the love of God, tell me! Is there no escape?

The voice says: There is no return, but there is escape. You shall seek it once more—for me.

No, no wait—I—what do you want from me?

Come the answer from it: Nothing.

His mind screamed.

"Murder is a religious experience," said Shamshi.

The girl Humerelli answered, "That is a strange thing to say. Do you speak of the killing of the sheep and goats before the faces of the gods?"

"No, I do not speak of the deaths of animals," he said.

The ekimmu moved closer, smiling, his thick black beard like a bib upon his chest, his dark eyes like nighted caves. Humerelli glanced nervously to the north, along the great Procession Street flanked by the hanging gardens, to the enameled blue glory of the Ishtar Gate. The evening wind blew through the streets of Babylon. Hammurabi of the Golden Age was a thousand years in his grave.

"Do not be afraid, Humerelli," said the ekimmu softly. "Rejoice that you Eve now in the second golden age. After the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon will fall to the Persians, and then it will be Alexander's city, and then it will become dust."

"Shamshi! What are these strange things you say?" said the girl in shocked surprise.

The ekimmu took Humerelli's hand in his own humanlike hand. The girl's brown hand was damp and cold. He felt the flesh of her arm, delighting in the contrasting texture of the smooth flesh and its patina of fine sand grains. All was sand, the streets, the bricks of the city, the desert. Clay and sand.

"Worlds die," philosophized the demon wistfully. "They die, you know, like crushed clay tablets, and they fall and become one with the sand."

"Shamshi, who is this Alexander you speak of? Have we not conquered Ninevah and are we not now supreme in the fertile crescent?"

"Silly child. Do you really believe we are great because we have crushed forty-centuried Ninevah? Why, even young Rome in its short life will be greater than we."

"What is Rome?"

"I—I'm not sure," said the ekimmu. From somewhere the unfamiliar words came: Rome, Alexander—what are they? But then they ceased to be important. The demon laughed and kissed Humerelli impulsively.

The girl smiled. She decided there was nothing to fear in this stranger, though the things he said did not seem to make much sense. She threw her arms around him, thinking that his dark speculations masked only loneliness. They fell to the floor, laughing shamelessly, tussling among the silks and cushions like children.

The sun god descended upon crimson wings into the underworld. The girl and the demon made love on the garden balcony among the cool green of the plants and the humming of bees.

"It is to be like god," he said suddenly.

"What, my sweet?"

"To love and bring death. Thus I praise Tiamat, Mother of Chaos." He clutched her to him as they lay there beneath the winged genii of fertility painted upon the wall in earth-red, dull blue, and white. From corners of the balcony, sphinxes and griffins observed impassively.

"How many miles to Babylon?" he asked impulsively, a queer expression upon his face.

"What? Shamshi—never have I heard one speak as strangely as you."

From some unknown store of knowledge, the words came, a poem from a strange and unremembered childhood—a meaningless jumble of words that yet seemed to hold some secret dark and horrible. And the ekimmu, as surprised as Humerelli, quoted them:

How many miles to Babylon?

Threescore miles and ten.

Can I get there by candlelight?

Yes, and back again.

If your heels are nimble and light,

You may get there by candlelight.

Humerelli, vastly amused, began to laugh.

The ekimmu tore her apart. Limb from brown limb, he ripped the flesh from her bones. Some he devoured and some he cast like offal into the streets below. Then there came a shock that stunned his soul. He was surprised to find himself becoming less and less real. He struggled against it, to no avail. Finally he was utterly gone, as if he had never been there at all.

Outside the city's walls, the Euphrates flowed silently into the sea of time.

Letter to the London Times, September 1888:

"Could it be that the knife-wielding murderer that stalks our slums is in reality a member of some heathen sect that practices human sacrifice? That only a debased member of the human species could have committed these atrocities is obvious, but does not the geometric arrangement of wounds on the bodies of Tabram and Nicholls, and especially the pins and other objects laid around the last body in the form of a five-pointed star, suggest some form of witchcraft?"

On the rainy morning of 30th September, 1888. Constable Smith found the woman's body. Blood from her horrible wounds pooled darkly on the stones. The contents of her pockets—all of her worldly goods—were laid out in an arrangement of five around the body: a red cigarette case near her head, a tin box of tea and sugar near one outstretched hand, a clay pipe by the other. By one foot was a red mitten, by the other a ball of worsted. The body was spread-eagled as it were, in the five points of a star. She had been disemboweled with great skill. A kidney was missing.

By a quirk of fate, Constable Smith had arrived only seconds after the fiend had completed the mutilation. Smith chased the phantom murderer through Houndsditch, Middlesex Street, Goulston Street, and Dorset Street. There he lost the trail at a public basin, where bloodstained water still trickling down the drain showed that the killer had paused his flight to wash his hands.

All Dorset Street woke to the demon shriek of Constable Smith's police whistle. Soon they would know that the horror was upon them again.

With a secret satisfaction, Wygiff stepped up to a public post office in broad daylight, and there he mailed a cardboard box to Scotland Yard. Inside the box were a portion of a human kidney and a taunting note written in rude but passable English.

It had taken Wygiff a long time to learn the art of writing, which was unknown among the Celts at the time of his disappearance from their midst two thousand years ago. But the keepers of Broadmoor, an asylum for the criminally insane, had managed to teach him the rudiments of written communication, and had eventually released him as being more or less rehabilitated.

They did not really wish to keep in permanent confinement a feebleminded man whose only crime had been capering through London clad in a fox skin and waving a primitive dagger, apparently stolen from some collection of antiquities. As for the blood on the dagger—no one had been reported harmed, and therefore no complaint could be made against him on that ground.

And so, after three years of confinement, they had set him free, for by then he had learned to act reasonably like an Englishman. He did remain a bit of a puzzle, for no one had stepped forward to identify him, not even the mysterious Elwyn whom he asked for incessantly, and whom he continually expected to put in an appearance.

As for this new world he found himself in, Wygiff did not like it. It was definitely not the realm where the honored dead were made to walk about hand in hand with the gods. Wygiff felt out of place. He longed to return to his people. He realized that there was only one way to return: The sacrifice had to be performed.

If he had had the ability to make himself understood by the people on the street, he might have deduced that Stonehenge was not too distant from London. But passersby dismissed his ravings as those of a madman, and since none of them knew what "the holy place," or the "sacred stones" were, the sacrifice must perforce be performed in the city itself.

With one of the fine shining knives of this strange place, he took to the streets of the slums at night and killed the women he found walking there. It did not matter to him that the ritual did not take place within the sacred circle of standing stones, or that the drabs he slaughtered were not virgins. Although Wygiff had learned to act like an Englishman, he was and always would be a druid priest, and the mind of the druid which was the real Wygiff had not been able to stand the shock of not finding himself in the land beyond death where Elwyn awaited him. And perhaps after all it is neither the time nor the place nor the purity of the victim which is the necessary ingredient of the spell. Perhaps it is the belief of the practitioner that gives the magic its potency.

Yet after several attempts, none of the sacrifices had been successful. He was still in the strange place called London. So Wygiff decided to make one last desperate attempt at returning to his people before ending by suicide the growing unbearability of the contradictions that preyed upon his primitive mind.

He would get a woman alone in a room, and there he would have time to do it properly, with knife and fire and magic. The Lord of the Portals would surely take him back to his tribe then, if ever he would.

It was night. He threw a black cloak about his shoulders—no fox skins for an Englishman!—and took to the streets. His leather heels trod softly on the cobbles, and he moved as he did when as a boy he stalked the boar in the brush. Every instinct was submerged in the instinct of the hunter and the instinct of the priest. He was Wygiff, successor of Korich the Invoker! In him was the power to league himself with the dark forces that ruled the universe according to their own designs and fancies.

A woman lingered in the faded glow of a gas flare hanging on a sagging brick wall. He called to her from the shadow.

"Elwyn?"

She turned her head. "Oi, mister—lookin' for someone? Someone of the feminine sex?"

"Do you have a room?" asked Wygiff in his oddly accented English.

"Yeah, I'm kippin' in a room down the way. What's yer name, chum?"

"William."

The whore laughed. "Come along, Master William," she said in a jolly voice. She led him to the door of No. 13.

She waved to her roommate loitering nearby. The two drabs exchanged pleasantries, and then she went inside with Wygiff. The room was tiny, stuffy, and untidy. Wygiff noted that there was a fireplace.

The light of the fire on her pale, cold flesh made her a golden goddess. He plunged his knife into her body many times, before or after he had lain with her, he did not remember. All he knew was this: she was Elwyn.

And he slew her again, and again, and again.

Because he loved her.

So complete was the mutilation that it took skilled surgeons seven hours to piece the body together for identification. Parts of the dissected corpse were found lying around the room in "geometric patterns" (as the medical report said). The room was locked. The dead woman's roommate had been nearby all the while and had seen no one leave or enter by the room's one entrance.

Yet the murderer was not there.

Only seconds had elapsed for the stunned worshipers at Stonehenge. The view of the afterlife suddenly appeared once more between the columns of stone, but this time it was a scene of the interior of some hut or enclosure of strange aspect. The body of a ritual victim was clearly visible, and also a man in peculiar dress who held a bloody knife of unique design. Then the figure—was it a god?—stepped through the portals into the circle of standing stones. He raised high the weapon and cried exultantly, "Brothers! Wygiff returns!"

There was no doubt! Wygiff had returned from the afterlife! They ran to embrace him, and laughed and wept together, and he displayed his fine blade, fashioned by the gods from some shining stuff stronger than iron or stone. He accepted their awe and admiration gratefully, tears in his eyes. At last he was where he belonged. The years in the place called—absurdly—London—were only a fading dream, a vision. Yes! He had been in the afterworld and had spoken with the gods. And now he had returned to the world of living men as their spokesman.

Elwyn's body was a lump of flesh lying upon the altar before him, just as he had left it there years ago. It was a cold thing, dead, and no longer part of him, no longer alive even in his mind. In trying to summon her back to life, he had in that final orgy of horror killed her memory utterly and completely. His love of her, his memory of her, was as dead as the separated parts of the once-human being he had left lying in a strange room in a strange place called London.

There were other things to think about now, things pertaining to living men. The talk of battle was still in the air. Mogh Kymroch still awaited his omens, and Korich must read them. Even as the rejoicing began to subside and these weighty matters began to intrude upon their thoughts, the blazing orbs of the Portal Lord formed once more in the mist, and the Celts drew back before this unexpected apparition, and in it they saw something strange, something subtly different that could not be precisely defined.

The Lord of the Portals spoke: Where—am—I?

And again: I am—I am . . .

There was agony in the words. On the brink of articulation the voice broke into a strange cry, a wail of inhuman agony and loss. The sun at that moment rested lightly upon the marker stone and prepared to take flight into the morning sky. In that moment the Lord of the Portals vanished, leaving the uncompleted message hanging in the air to puzzle them even unto the generation of their sons' sons' sons. The druid priests did not hear the cry completed, yet those words echoed down time's corridor . . .

Down the vortex, falling, twisting, shrieking, the helpless raging scream of the falling man. Feet kick against nothing, arms flail against nothing. Vision blurs. But there are no feet, arms, eyes. In a white flash of pain he strikes bottom, collapsing into a thin film of being, a smear of consciousness, a stain of existence. And in that strange realm the cry becomes the cry of Walter Deacon who was, but who in the memory of man is no more.

Yet Walter Deacon knew he existed, knew that somehow he had been thrust into a place, thrusting out of the one who had occupied it before him. That personality seemed to linger nearby, just within the possibility of contact, yet still moving inexorably toward the pit of extinction.

The voice said: The farce is now over.

Louder! Your voice fades! How may I escape—you said you'd tell me.

The voice said: At summer solstice a man must step through the portal at the moment of sunrise. Because of the imbalance in space-time another man is taken from the era into which the portal has opened.

You captured me like that—made me take your place in the circle!

The voice said: Yes. You have superseded me as Lord of the Portal. Fear and pain are the sources of the energy that displaced me from my prison.

That's why you put me through those scenes of horror. Were they real, or only dreams?

The voice said: Before you could replace me here, it was necessary that you cease to exist as an object in space-time. Therefore I sent you back in time in the guise of demons to kill one of your ancestors. It took three tries before you succeeded.

The girl in Babylon! But all this suffering—you said you wanted nothing.

The voice said: And soon shall I have it. I shall cease to exist and my torment will be over. And yours will begin.

Your voice—it's much fainter now. Quickly, how long have you been trapped? How long before someone enters the portal at the right moment? And—who are you?

The voice said: I have been waiting for thirty-four hundred years, trapped by the forces I unknowingly released.

And again, it said: I am the architect of Stonehenge.

Can that which does not exist go insane? To that question no man living can make answer. But somewhere out of space and time there is one who knows, if he retains the ability of self-contemplation and all the horror that implies. And there is one thing he surely knows: that he can scream . . .

And scream

And scream

"The burial mound we excavated was right near Stonehenge. We had thought that some warrior chief of the primitive Britons was buried there. But the artifacts we found indicated that it was actually the grave of a high priest. This thing we found with the skeleton shocked me profoundly. There was no possibility of a hoax. Only my most trusted colleagues were allowed to see it. I finally disposed of the monstrous anomaly in a back room of the British Museum, where it shares a dusty shelf with a few other odds and ends that we turn up occasionally—things that, like it, shouldn't exist.

"It was a knife. A knife circa 1880, made in London, according to the stamp. It was quite rusty and corroded. It had been honed down to a sliver by some primitive whetstone. How the knife found its way into the hands of the skeleton—it's been preying on my mind, Doctor. I've been having these queer dreams about it. Maybe you can help me make some sense out of it. I hope to God you can."

—From the lost notebooks of Sigmund Freud.

The Case of Sir Henry Collier.

AND DON'T FORGET THE ONE RED ROSE by Avram Davidson

Avram Davidson: a name and, above all else, a M*I*N*D to C*0*N*J*U*R*E W*I*T*H—which he does, frequently. The conjuring is in excellent form in this story about Charley Barton and his employer, the somewhat less than admirable Matt Mungo, and that deliciously strange Bookstore owned by the Asiatic gentleman on the top floor. A gentleman who, in his own words, "have not twenty-seven times risked my life nor suffered pangs and pains innumerable, merely to sell for ordinary money these treasures." Oh no, of course not, never.

Charley Barton was the staff of an East New York establishment that supplied used gas stoves on a wholesale basis. He received deliveries at the back door, dollied them inside, took them apart, cleaned them (and cleaned them and cleaned them and cleaned them) till they sparkled as much as their generally run-down nature would allow, fitted on missing parts and set them up in front of the place, where they might be chaffered over by prospective buyers.

He never handled sales. These were taken care of by his employer, a thickset and neckless individual who was there only part of the time. When not fawning upon the proprietors of retail used-appliance stores, he was being brutal to Charley. This man's name was Matt Mungo, and he arrived in neat, middle-class clothes from what he referred to as his "other place," never further described to Charley, who did not venture to be curious.

Charley doubted, however, that Mungo did—indeed, he was certain that Mungo did not—display to employees and patrons of his other place the insulting manner and methods he used in the stove warehouse.

Besides calling Charley many offensive names in many offensive ways, Mungo had the habit of shoving him, poking him, and generally pushing him around. Did Charley, goaded beyond patience, pause or turn to complain, Mungo, pretending great surprise, would demand, "What? What?"—and, before Charley could formulate his protest, he would swiftly thrust stiff thick fingers into Charley's side or stomach and dart away to a distance, whence he would loudly and abusively call attention to work he desired done, and which Charley would certainly have done anyway in the natural course of things.

Charley lived on the second floor of an old and unpicturesque warehouse. On the first floor lived two old women who dressed in black, who had no English and went often to church. On the top floor lived an Asian man about whom Charley knew nothing. That is, he knew nothing until one evening when, returning from work and full of muscular aches and pains and resentments, he saw this man trying to fit a card into the frame of the name plate over the man's doorbell in the downstairs entrance. The frame was bent, the card resisted, Charley pulled out a rather long knife and jimmied the ancient and warped piece of metal, the card slipped in. And the Asian man said, "Thank you, so."

"Oh, that's all right," and Charley looked to see what the name might be. But the card said only BOOKSTORE. "Funny place for a store," Charley said. "But maybe you expect to do most of your business by mail, I guess."

"No, oh," the Asian man said. And, with a slight bow, a slight smile, and a slight gesture, he urged Charley to precede him up the stairs in the dark and smelly hall. About halfway up the first flight, the Asian man said, "I extend you to enjoy a cup of tea and a tobacco cigarette whilst in my so newly opened sales place."

"Why, sure," said Charley, instantly. "Why, thank you very much." Social invitations came seldom to him and, to tell the truth, he was rather ugly, slow, and stupid—facts that were often pointed out by Mungo. He now asked, "Are you Chinese or Japanese?"

"No," said his neighbor. And he said nothing else until they were on the top floor, when, after unlocking the door and slipping in his hand to flip on the light switch, he gestured to his downstairs co-resident to enter, with the word "Do."

It was certainly unlike any of the bookstores to which Charley was accustomed . . . in that he was accustomed to them at all. Instead of open shelves, there were cabinets against the walls, and there were a number of wooden chests as well. Mr. Bookstore did not blow upon embers to make the tea, he poured it, already sweetened, from a Thermos bottle into a plastic cup, and the cigarette was a regular American cigarette. When tea and tobacco had been consumed, he began to open the chests and the cabinets. First he took out a very, very tiny book in a very, very strange-looking language. "I never saw paper like that before," Charley said.

"It is factually palm leaf. A Buddhist litany. Soot is employed, instead of ink, in marking the text. Is it not precious?"

Charley nodded and politely asked, "How much does it cost?"

The bookman examined an odd-looking tag. "The price of it," he said, "is a bar of silver the weight of a newborn child." He removed it gently from Charley's hand, replaced it in the pigeonhole in the cabinet, closed the cabinet, lifted the carved lid of an aromatic chest, and took out something larger, much larger, and wrapped in cloth of tissue of gold. "Edition of great illustrated work on the breeding of elephants in captivity, on yellow paper smoored with alum in wavy pattern; most rare; agreed?"

For one thing, Charley hardly felt in a position to disagree and, for another, he was greatly surprised and titillated by the next illustration. "Hey, look at what that one is doing!" he exclaimed.

The bookman looked. A faint, indulgent smile creased his ivory face. "Droll," he commented. He moved to take it back.

"How much does this one cost?"

The dealer scrutinized the tag. "The price of this one," he said, "is set down as 'A pair of white parrots, an embroidered robe of purple, sixty-seven fine inlaid vessels of beaten gold, one hundred platters of silver filigree work, and ten catties of cardamoms.' " He removed the book, rewrapped it, and restored it to its place in the chest.

"Did you bring them all from your own country, then?"

"All," said the Asian man, nodding. "Treasures of my ancestors, broughten across the ice-fraught Himalayan passes upon the backs of yaks. Perilous journey." He gestured. "All which remains, tangibly, of ancient familial culture."

Charley made a sympathetic squint and said, "Say, that's too bad. Say! I remember now! In the newspapers! Tibetan refugees—you must of fled from the approaching Chinese Communists!"

The bookman shook his head. "Factually, not. Non-Tibetan. Flight was from approaching forces of rapacious Dhu thA Hmy'egh, wicked and dissident vassal of the king of Bhutan. As way to Bhutan proper was not available, escape was into India." He considered, withdrew another item from another chest.

"Well, you speak very good English."

"Instructed in tutorial fashion by late the Oliver Blunt-Piggot, disgarbed shaman of a Christian fane in Poona." He lifted the heavy board cover of a very heavy volume.

"When was this?"

"Ago." He set down the cover, slowly turned the huge, thick pages. "Perceive, barbarians in native costume, bringing tribute." Charley had definite ideas as to what was polite, expected. He might not be able to, could hardly expect to buy. But it was only decent to act as though he could. Only thus could he show interest. And so, again, ask he did.

Again, the bookman's pale slim fingers sought the tag. "Ah, mm. The price of this is one mummified simurgh enwrapped in six bolts of pale brocade, a hundred measures of finest musk in boxes of granulated goldwork, and a viper of Persia pickled in Venetian treacle." He replaced the pages, set back the cover, and set to rewrapping.

Charley, after some thought, asked if all the books had prices like that. "Akk, yes. All these books have such prices, which are the exceedingly carefully calculated evaluations established by my ancestors in the High Vale of Lhom-bhya—formerly the Crossroads of the World, before the earthquake buried most of the passes, thus diverting trade to Lhasa, Samarkand, and such places. So."

A question that had gradually been taking form in the shape of a wrinkle now found verbal expression. "But couldn't you just sell them for money?"

The bookman touched the tip of his nose with the tip of his middle finger. "For money? Let me have thought . . . Ah! Here is The Book of Macaws, Egrets, and Francolins, in the Five Colors, for only eighty-three gold mohurs from the mint of Baber Mogul and one silver dirhem of Aaron the Righteous . . . You call him Aaron the Righteous? Not. Pardon. Harun al-Rashid. A bargain."

Charley shook his head. "No, I mean, just ordinary money."

The bookdealer bowed and shook his own head. "Neighboring sir," he said, "I have not twenty-seven times risked my life, nor suffered pangs and pains innumerable, merely to sell for ordinary money these treasures handed down from my progenitors, nor ignore their noble standards of value. Oh, nay." And he restored to its container The Book of Macaws, Egrets, and Francolins. In the Five Colors.

A certain stubbornness crept over Charley. "Well, then, what is the cheapest one you've got, then?" he demanded.

The scion of the High Vale of Lhom-bhya shrugged, fingered his lower lip, looked here and there, uttered a slight and soft exclamation, and took from the last cabinet in the far comer an immense scroll. It had rollers of chalcedony with ivory finials and a case of scented samal-wood lacquered in vermilion and picked with gold; its cord weights were of banded agate.

"This is a mere diversion for the idle moments of a prince. In abridged form, its title reads, Book of Precious Secrets on How to Make Silver and Gold from Dust, Dung, and Bran; Also How to Obtain the Affections; Plus One Hundred and Thirty-Eight Attitudes for Carnal Conjunction and Sixty Recipes for Substances Guaranteed to Maintain the Stance as Well as Tasting Good: by a Sage." He opened the scroll and slowly began to unwind it over the length of the table.

The pictures were of the most exquisitely detailed workmanship and brilliant of color on which crushed gold quartz had been sprinkled while the glorious pigments were as yet still wet. Charley's heart gave a great bound, then sank. "No, I said the cheapest one—"

His host stifled a very slight yawn. "This is the cheapest," he said, indifferent, almost. "What is cheaper than lust or of less value than alchemy or aphrodisiacs? The price . . . the price," he said examining the tag, which was of ebony inlaid with jasper. "The price is the crushed head of a sandal merchant of Babylon, with a red, red rose between his teeth: a trifle. The precise utility of that escapes me, but it is of no matter. My only task is to obtain the price as established—that and, of course, to act as your host until the stars turn pale."

Charley rose. "I guess I'll be going, anyway," he said. "I certainly want to thank you for showing me all this. Maybe I'll be back tomorrow for something, if they haven't all been sold by then." His heart knew what his heart desired, his head knew the impossibility of any of it, but his lips at least maintained a proper politeness even at the last.

He went down the stairs, his mind filled with odd thoughts, half enjoyable, half despairing. Heavy footsteps sounded coming up; who was it but Mungo. "I thought you said you lived on the second floor," he said. "No use lying to me; come on, dumbbell, I need you. Earn your goddamn money for a change. My funking car's got a flat; move it, I tell you, spit-head; when I say move it, you move it!" And he jabbed his thick, stiff fingers into Charley's kidneys and, ignoring his employee's cry of pain, half guided, half goaded him along the empty blocks to the empty block lined with closed warehouses where, indeed, an automobile stood, somewhat sagging to one side.

"Get the goddamn jack up; what're you dreaming about? Quit stumbling over your goddamn feet, or cry-sake; you think I got nothing better to do? You think I do nothing but sell greasy stoves to greaseballs? Move it, nipplehead! I want you to know that I also own the biggest goddamn shoe store in Babylon, Long Island. Pick up that tire iron!"

CHRISTMAS PRESENT by Ramsey Campbell

Probably no other writer has so thoroughly made the milieu of contemporary youth his stalking ground for horror as Ramsey Campbell; which may be one reason why he has produced some of the most powerful stories of fear in recent print. The lovely example that follows was broadcast on BBC radio on Christmas Eve in 1969 but did not see print until this past year. It reminds us of that now neglected tradition—the Christmas ghost story—but it can be enjoyed in any season.

(A slightly different version of this story was broadcast on BBC Radio Mersey-side on December 24, 1969; it was produced by Tony Wolfe, read by Gavin Richards, with a specially composed electronic score by Donald Henshilwood, and for these reasons the story is dedicated to them.)

You scarcely notice Christmas in Liverpool 8, except that there are more parties. On Christmas Eve I made my way early to the pub; as I hurried along Gambier Terrace I glanced up in search of party-goers, but most of the rooms of students and writers of ephemeral verse were unlit, blackly rattling in the wind which swept up from the river around the horned tower of the Anglican cathedral and across the sloughed graveyard, recently scraped clean of graves. Still, by ten o'clock in The Grapes, bottles of California Chablis were gathering on the tables; my table had collected three and a half of anonymous Riesling. Not that I knew all the people behind the names: only Bill and Les and Desmond and Jill, just back from London for Christmas, whose hand I was holding. I couldn't place the mute student on the other side of Jill; I'd caught his name and let it drift away among the stained glasses. He was one of those people you always seem to meet in the neurotics' ward of O'Connor's Tavern or arguing with the Marxists at the Phil, a face everyone knows and nobody can name, and I didn't know what to do with him.

We hadn't objected when he joined us, thrust smiling hopefully against our table by the deafening scarved crowd, a drooping streamer supporting his head like a red chinstrap—but he'd shown no inclination to provide a bottle. I couldn't bring myself to say "Look, there are enough of us already"; it was Christmas. Perhaps if we waited he naught go away. But at other tables groups were clutching bottles like truncheons and rising, and outside the first police cars were howling their way to Upper Parliament and Lime Streets. "We might as well go," I said and stood with Jill, followed by the others.

At last the student spoke. Jarred, I realized that I hadn't heard his voice, aggressive beneath the deprecating Southern whine. "I've got a present here for someone," he told his hands lurking under the table. "I wanted to be sure it'd be appreciated. Shall I give it to you, then?" he asked me.

"Do I take it you've been watching me to make sure?"

"It was a nice thought," Jill said, squeezing my hand and watching my face. "Wasn't it?"

I knew she needed to believe in the Christmas spirit. "Well, thank you very much," I told the student. "We're going back to my place for a party if you're free."

"Great," he said. His hands ventured forth and passed me a small box wrapped in black paper, tightly sealed and Sello-taped. "I'd like to be there when you open it," he said.

We forced our way through brimming tables and discussions of the art of cinema and emerged into Catherine Street. Fragmented by shadows of branches hard and sharp as black ice, we made our way through to Gambier Terrace, but Diane and Beatrice were out, for their cacti clawed at an unlit window. For a second I thought I heard the tin choirboys singing carols in the tree outside the Jacey Cinema, but as they faded, buffeted out of shape by the wind, I decided that they were trapped in a radio. Jill was peering through the hedge opposite the cathedral; beyond the Mersey glittered, and at Birkenhead the dinosaur skeletons of cranes had come down to the water to drink in darkness. My hand was frozen around the cardboard box. I hid Jill's in my pocket and we turned into Canning Street.

As we did so I heard the student say, "Look at the face on that cathedral."

We looked. An edge of the night-wind slipped into me as I took in the image; the tower's horns had pricked up triumphant and mocking, the long windows were eyes, drawn down and slitted into static evil. "I wish it had a mouth. Then at least we could guess its thoughts," I said.

"It looks as if it's shouldering its way up from the graveyards," Jill said, and then immediately: "Don't make me say things like that."

"Don't worry," I said. "There no longer is a graveyard."

"Thanks for trying," said Jill. "I've just been staring into that graveyard. If you hadn't pulled me away I might still be there. Why is it so crowded? And why in heaven's name do they have to light it up at night?"

"Come on, Jill, this is no party mood," I protested and hurried her back to the corner of Hope Street, the others curving back in formation and following us like a tail. "They've cleared the graveyard out completely. I'll show you."

"No, John, please don't!" Jill cried.

"Look, don't force her," the student intervened. "He's quite right, you know. No graveyard at all."

Jill steered us back toward my flat. I nodded thanks to the student. "What is your name, by the way?" I asked.

"I'll tell you later," he promised.

"When you've decided in our favor?"

"If you like."

"My God!" I shouted beerily, but Jill gripped my arm. "Look!" she said. "We're being followed."

"By what?"

"Darkness."

I persuaded myself to relax. Turning, I saw that the light at the end of Canning Street was unlit. Behind us our procession plodded; a dark figure, probably Bill, waved a bottle at me. Briefly I thought: Surely there were only eight more of us in the pub? How many are there now? But as they stepped one by one over the edge of light, I saw that there were no more than eight—certainly not the few dozen dark shapes that for a moment I thought I'd seen.

When the second light went out I said quickly to Jill, "Someone in the power station is stoned."

"Surely they can't turn off individual lamps," she whispered.

"Of course they can," I said, letting her cling to me as she strode on.

The third light vanished almost before we reached it, transformed into a dwindling image of brightness receded like hope. Behind us the others shouted comments. There wasn't a car to be seen in Canning Street except the shells at the curb, and there were two more lights ahead to be passed. Jill was almost running, snatching at the light before it was extinguished. I gripped my present and hurried with her. Beside her the student moved with us. His face suggested an expression which I couldn't read; as it seemed about to identify itself a fist of darkness clamped over his face. We were running. His face reappeared, expressionless, and we'd reached my flat. I glanced back; the others, however many there were, arrived panting. On the steps I hesitated, staring back along the fake Regency facades; surely some of the houses had been lit when we passed? But, an incoherent singing bus weaved past on Catherine Street, my key slipped into the lock, and we piled inside.

Jill and I plunged straight into the party, filling glasses where I'd placed them ready on the mantelpiece, sweeping up my abandoned afternoon's manuscript and burying it in the bedroom beneath coats, drawing back the curtains to attract those who might still be wandering with bottles, lighting the fire and throwing up the window. A record smacked the turntable and caught the needle. A bottle drained; conversations intertwined; laughter sprang up. Someone was dancing; a corner of my Beatles poster tore from the wall, but I'd meant to throw it out a month ago. Jill and I leaned against the chiming mantelpiece and sipped. Jill saw the student before I did, standing at the open window, staring down the lightless street toward the cathedral. As the next record hung alert for the needle, Jill cried: "Listen, everyone! John's had a present!"

"Well, open it," Bill called.

I took the sealed box from among the glasses on the mantelpiece, but the student turned. "No, not yet," he said. "Wait until midnight."

"Why midnight?" Bill demanded.

"Christmas Day."

"Well, that's right," Bill agreed. "That's tradition."

"Tradition," Jill hissed. I could feel her tensing.

"Come on, Jill, sit down, love," I said.

But Bill called: "What's wrong with tradition?"

"Oh, not tradition," Jill said from the couch. "Myths. How can we all stop for a couple of days and get stoned on the myth of human fellowship when people are being murdered in Vietnam?"

"Oh, come on," Bill said, offering a bottle. "Never mind that for now. It's Christmas."

"In Vietnam too?"

"You can't ignore myths," the student interrupted. "A war is a clash between a myth and its antithesis."

"Don't be pretentious," Jill said.

"All right, you stay on your debating-society level, but you wait. I'll show you that myths are dangerous."

Jill recoiled. The arrested dancers looked uneasy. "That's a hell of a generalization," I intervened. "How dangerous?"

"All belief needs is a mob to give it form," he said. "Listen, mate, there's nothing more frightening than people gathering round a belief. And I'll tell you why. Because if a belief exists it must have an opposite. That exists too but they try to ignore it. That's why people in a group are dangerous."

He'd given me a present but I couldn't resist saying, "In that case I'm surprised you came here."

"Ah, well," he said. "I'm safe now."

I think all this was above most of our heads. The second record had fallen unheard, but the touch of the needle on the third galvanized us all; we danced frenetically. Someone tried to draw the student into the dance, but he shook her off and returned to the window. As I whirled with Jill I saw him push the window up and climb onto the balcony, his hair springing up against the darkness. The record spun to a climax and lost the needle, and in the suspended silence we all heard the bell.

At least, we couldn't imagine what else it might be. "It's the cathedral. What's wrong?" Bill demanded. For the bell sounded drowned, its note boomed and then choked, muffled, swept away screaming and was engulfed. It dragged itself back, clanged unbearably loud and then dulled, thudded tonelessly in mud. We all stared at the student's intent back, but he never turned.

"It must be the electricity, like the lights," Bill said, and was about to go on when the voices began. "Carol singers!" he said happily.

Yes, we thought, carol singers, they can't be anything else. But there seemed to be so many coming up from the cathedral, an entire choir. I didn't recognize the tune, and I could tell that everyone was baffled, for the tune led toward recognition and then fled squealing and growling into impossible extremes, notes leaping like frogs and falling dead. The voices squirmed between the suffocated tones of the bell, voices thin and cold as the wind, thick and black as wet earth, and paced toward us up Canning Street.

"What are they singing?" Bill said desperately.

"Does it matter?" Jill muttered.

I pushed past the student and gripped the chill iron of the balcony. But Canning Street was an abyss of blackness, leading to the powerful horned form of the cathedral. I could see nothing, only hear their voices fling a contorted mass of sound toward the sky and into the earth, and wonder whether they were moving to the music. I could only imagine their faces turned up to me as they chanted and knocked at the door beneath my feet.

When I thrust my head back through the window it was too late. "I'll go and give them something," Bill said. "After all, it's Christmas," and he'd gone.

Nobody else moved. Perhaps they were right; perhaps Bill was right. The bell swung reverberating through the sky. I peered down through the mesh of the balcony. Before I could strain sight from the darkness, I heard the street door open. I listened for minutes, waiting to hear more than the clangor of the bell and the packed insistent voices. But there was nothing, except determined conversation in the room behind me, until Jill gripped my arm through the window and whispered urgently, "John, they're in the house. They're coming upstairs."

I dragged myself over the sill and fell into the room. I could hear the voices turn at the first landing, mount the stairs lethargically like a gigantic worm. "Where's Bill?" I demanded.

"I don't know."

"Quickly," I shouted. The voices were bursting forth at the top of the stairs. "Everyone. We'll take a collection. Give them money. Jill, you collect half."

But she was staring aghast out of the window. I whirled. On the balcony the student bent ecstatic against the gale of sound. Jill stood, a cry blocking her mouth; her face drained of color and wrinkled like an apple. The voices massed toward the door of the flat. "Don't offer them money," Jill choked. "Give them that present."

I lunged for the mantelpiece, thrusting bodies aside. Everyone seemed determined to ignore what was happening, to leave the decision to me; I waded through entangled conversations and clusters of faces like blank bubbles. I threw out my hand and caught up the cardboard box, and the student pinioned my arm. "Don't touch it, you fool!" he cried. "Not now!"

The voices were at the door, roaring a single note or a million, a sound which could never have emerged from threats but might have burst forth from a tunnel. I struggled with him. "One moment more," he pleaded. "Just to see."

And Jill shrieked and snatched the cardboard box from me and threw it into the fire.

For a moment the trembling flames were crushed, struggling, helpless. The bell crashed like tons of drowned iron; the voices squealed in triumph. Then the flames sprang up, swarmed up the corners of the box, and a minute later it puffed like rotten wood and collapsed into shapeless ash. The bell swung up into an aching silence; a draft muttered where the voices had been.

We waited until Bill knocked on the flat door. "Why on earth did I go downstairs?" he wondered.

"So much for your myths," Jill said to the student. "Damn you."

I controlled myself. "There's one thing I want to know," I said. "What did you put in that box?"

"Surely you can see that that doesn't matter," the student said. "Just something to give form to a belief, that's all. It was a sort of anti-Christmas present, actually. The antithesis of a Christmas present. An experiment, mate, you know. Or do you mean the actual contents of the box?"

"We don't need to know that," I told him. "In fact, I think Jill would rather not." I hit him only once, but he fell.

"Here, hang on," Bill protested. The others looked away. That I expected; but Jill clutched my shoulders and cried: "Bring him round! Bring him round, for God's sake! How do we know where he was before he met us? How do we know he didn't give someone else a present?"

And now we can't bring him round.

A QUESTION OF GUILT by Hal Clement

Several years ago Hal Clement was invited to write a vampire yarn for a proposed anthology. Unfortunately the anthology never materialized but Clement wrote the story. As might be guessed, it's unlike any vampire story you've ever read before and has no supernatural element whatsoever. Clement is best known as the hard-science science-fiction author of Mission of Gravity, Star Light, and others. He is so good at creating scientifically valid backgrounds and believable and interesting alien characters that it's often overlooked what a skilled and careful craftsman he is. But that care and skill and craft are abundantly evident in this story, which appears in print for the first time here.

Much of the pit's four-acre floor was in shadow, but reflection from the white limestone or the eastern walls kept it from being wholly dark. Its three occupants could easily have seen the watcher if they had chanced to look toward him. However, his silence and their own occupation combined to leave him unnoticed. He stood motionless in the tunnel mouth a few yards above the pit floor, and looked at them with an expression on his thin face which would have defied reading by the keenest beggar of Rome.

There was nothing remarkable about those he watched. Two were women: one a girl not yet twenty and the other ten or twelve years older. The third was a boy of five or six. They were playing some game which involved throwing two fist-sized sacks of sand or earth back and forth, apparently at random. The child's shouts of glee whenever one of his companions missed a catch echoed between the walls of the sink-hole. More decorous chuckles and an occasional cry of encouragement from the older woman reached the witness's ears at longer intervals.

The eyes in the lean, pale face seldom left the boy. Unlike the women, whose clothing somewhat hampered their activity, his thin body and thinner limbs were nearly bare. The short, kiltlike garment of brightly dyed wool which was his only covering left him free to leap and twist as the game demanded. It was these actions the watcher followed, marking each move of the pale-skinned body and nervous little hands, noting each bit of clumsiness that let a bag reach the ground, each leap and shriek of triumph as a double catch was made. The tiny fellow was holding his own—perhaps even winning—against his older adversaries, but no one could have been quite sure whether this was due to his own agility or their generosity. Perhaps the watcher was trying to learn as he stood in the shadow of the tunnel mouth.

The game went on, while shade covered more and more of the garden which made up the pit's floor. The players began to slow down, though the child's shouts were as loud as ever; if he was getting tired, he did not intend to admit it. It was the older woman who finally called a halt.

"Time to rest now, Kyros. The sun is going." She pointed toward the western lip of the pit.

"There's still plenty of light, and I'm not tired."

"Perhaps not, but you must be getting hungry. Unless Elitha and I stop playing, there will be no food cooked." The boy accepted the change of subject without actually surrendering.

"Can't I eat before cooking is done?" he asked. "There must be things to eat that don't have to be cooked." The older woman raised her eyebrows quizzically at the other.

"There may be something," was the answer to the unspoken question. "I will see. You could both stay in the light while it is with us, mistress." The girl turned toward the watcher, and saw him instantly.

Her gasp of surprise caught the attention of the other two, and they looked in the same direction. The boy, who had been about to fasten a light woolen cloak about his shoulders, dropped it with a yell of joy and dashed toward the tunnel mouth. The older woman shed the dignity which had marked her even during the game, and sprang after him with a cry.

"Kyros—wait!"

The girl echoed the words, but acted as well. She was closer than the boy to the tunnel, and as he rushed past her she reached out quickly and caught him up, swinging him around and almost smothering him for a moment in the folds of her garment. She held him while the other woman passed her, and the silent man came toward them down the slope of rubble which led from the tunnel to the pit's floor.

As the two met at its foot the girl let her captive go. He instantly resumed his dash toward the embracing couple; reaching them, he danced up and down and tugged at their clothing until an arm reached out and drew him into the close-locked group. Elitha stopped a few yards away and watched them, quietly smiling.

At length the older woman stepped back, still gazing at the newcomer. The latter now held the boy on his left arm, looking at him as he had for the many minutes of the game. It was his wife who spoke first.

"Four months. It has seemed like the year you thought it might be, my own." He nodded, still looking at the child.

"A hundred and thirty-one days. It was long for me, too. It is good to see that all is well here." She smiled.

"Well indeed. Open your mouth and show your father, Kyros." The boy's response might have been mere obedience, but looked more like a grin of triumph. The man started, and his grip on the small figure tightened momentarily as he saw the gap in the grin.

"A tooth—no, two of them! When?"

"Forty days ago," his wife said quietly.

"What trouble?"

"None. They loosened not long after you had gone. Elitha watched him carefully, and we were very particular about his food. He was very good most of the time, though I never knew him to be so fond of apples. But he kept his hands away from the loose teeth, and finally they just fell out—on the same day."

"And?"

"That was all. No trouble." Slowly the man put his son down, and for the first time a smile appeared on his face. Elitha spoke for the first time.

"You two will want to talk. I would like to hear what has happened on your journey, Master, but the meal must be prepared. Kyros and I will leave you and—"

"But I want to hear, too!" cried the child.

"I will not talk about my adventures until we have all eaten, Kyros, so you will miss nothing. Go along with Elitha, and be sure she makes food I like. Do you remember what that is?" The gap-toothed grin appeared once more.

"I remember. You'll see. Come on, Elitha!" He turned to dash up the slope, and the girl moved quickly to take his hand.

"All right," she said. "Stay with me so I don't fall; the stones are rough." The man and wife watched soberly as the other two disappeared into the tunnel; then the mother turned quickly to face her husband.

"Tell me quickly, my own. You said you might be gone a year. Did you come back now because you learned something, or—" She stopped, and tried to make her face inscrutable, but failed signally. The man put an arm about her shoulders.

"I did learn something, though not nearly what I hoped. I came back because I couldn't stay away—though I was almost afraid to come, too. if I had known of Kyros's teeth I might have been able to stay longer." The woman's face saddened slightly. "I might have, my Judith; I don't know that I would have."

"What did you learn? Have other healers spoken or written of this trouble? Have they learned how to cure it?"

"Some of them know if it. It is mentioned in writings, some of them many years old. One man I talked to had seen a person who had it."

"And cured him—or her?"

"No," the man said slowly. "It was a little boy, like ours. He died, as—" Both their heads turned slowly to the north side of the garden, where three small mounds were framed in carefully tended beds of flowers. The woman looked away again quickly.

"But not Kyros! There was no trouble when his teeth came out! It's not like that with him!" Her husband looked at her gravely.

"You think we have wasted effort, being so careful with him? You have forgotten the bruises, and the lameness he sometimes has? You would go back to live in Rome and let him play and fight with other children?"

"I wouldn't go back to Rome in any case, and I'd be afraid to have him play with other children or out of my sight," she admitted, "but why was there no trouble from the teeth? Or are teeth just different? None of the others"—she glanced toward the graves again—"lived long enough to lose teeth. Little Marc never grew any." She suddenly collapsed against him, sobbing. "Marc, dear Marc, why do you try? No man can fight the gods, or the demons, who have cursed us—who have cursed me. You'll only anger them further. You know it. You must know it. It was just not for us to have children. I bore you four sons, and three are gone, and Kyros will—"

"Will what?" There was sternness in the man's voice. "Kyros may die, as they did; no man can win all his battles, and some men lose them all. If he does, though, it will not be because I did not fight." His voice softened again. "My dearest, I don't know what I, or you, or we may have done to offend before I started to fight for the lives of my sons. You may be right in thinking that it is a punishment or a curse, but I cannot cringe before a man and don't like to before a god. Certainly if men had attacked and slain my sons, you would think little of me if I did not fight back. Even when the enemies are not men, and I cannot see them to fight them directly, I can hope to learn how they attack my children. Perhaps I can find a shield, even if there is no sword. A man must fight somehow or he isn't a man,"

The mother's sobs were quieter, though the tears still flowed.

"He might be a man, but he wouldn't be you," she admitted. "But if no healer in all the world has learned how to fight this thing, why do you think it can be fought? Men are not gods."

"Once there must have been a healer who first learned how to set broken bones, or cool fevers. How he must have learned is easy to guess—"

"The gods told him! There is no other way. Either you learn from another person or you learn from the gods."

"Then perhaps the gods will tell me what to do to keep Kyros alive."

"But surely they will not, if they have brought the sickness to punish us. Why should they tell you how to take it away again?"

"If they won't, then maybe the demons will. It's all the same to me; I will listen to anyone or anything able to help me save my son's life. Wouldn't you?"

Judith was silent. Defending her children was one thing, but defying the gods was quite another. A more thoughtful husband would not have pressed the question; a really tactful one would not have asked it in the first place. Seeing into the minds of other people, even those he loved best, was not a strong point with Marc of Bistrita.

"Wouldn't you?" he repeated. There was still no answer, and his wife turned away so that he could not see her face. For several seconds she just stood there; then she began to walk slowly toward the tunnel, stumbling a little as she reached the irregular heap of stones which formed the "stairway" to its mouth. The man watched for a moment in surprise; then he hastened after her to help. He did not repeat the question again; he was sometimes slow, but seldom really stupid.

No more words were exchanged as they made their way up to the opening and into the deepening darkness beyond. The tunnel was very crooked, and the last trace of daylight from the pit quickly vanished. The only illumination came from pottery oil lamps which were more useful in telling direction than in revealing what was actually underfoot.

Then the way opened into a cavern some forty feet across. It was well lighted, to eyes accustomed to the blackness of the tunnel; half a dozen lamps flickered around the walls. In a grotto at one side a small fire glowed. An earthenware pot was supported over it on a bronze trivet. Steam from the pot and smoke from the fire swirled together through a crack in the top of the grotto.

Elitha and the child were kneeling a yard or two from the blaze, working on something which could not easily be made out from across the cavern. As his parents came nearer, however, they saw that the child was cracking nuts with a bit of stone and carefully extracting the meats, which he placed in a clay bowl beside him. The girl was arranging other dishes for the meal, which seemed nearly ready. Except for the background, it was a typical family scene—the sort that Marc of Bistrita had known all too seldom in his forty-five years of life, and was to know very seldom in the future.

As he and his wife settled to the stone floor by the others, the boy grinned up at them; and it was the tiny distraction of their arrival which changed the atmosphere. The rock which he was using as a nutcracker landed heavily on his finger instead of the intended target. There was a startled cry, and a flood of tears which was stopped without too much trouble; but there was also a portion of skin scraped from the finger, and it was this which took most of the attention of Marc and his wife. The injured spot was oozing blood—not much by ordinary skinned-finger standards, but their standards were not ordinary.

The two women paled visibly, even in the poor light of the cavern. The man showed little facial change, but he acted. He drew a dagger from inside the cloak which still enveloped him and made a small cut in his own finger. The boy did not see this; his mother was still comforting him. Both women saw and understood, however, and both were visibly distracted during the meal which followed. Marc had seated himself so that his own cut was not visible to the boy, and had begun to tell the promised adventures; but the eyes of mother and maid flickered constantly from one injured finger to the other. Twice Elitha spilled food. Several times Judith was unable to answer questions asked by her son, or made random comments which quite failed to fit the situation. Kyros became quite indignant, at last.

"Mother! Aren't you listening to what Daddy says?" The shrill, shocked voice did catch her attention. "Didn't you hear what he told the soldier at—"

"I'm afraid I was thinking of something else, little one," she interrupted. "I'm sorry; I'll be good and listen more carefully. What would you have said to the soldier?" The question turned the youngster's thoughts back to his father's account, and saved her from having to explain what she could possibly be thinking about which was more interesting than adventures in the outside world. She tried to listen to Marc's words, but neither her eyes nor her thoughts could leave the two trifling injuries while the meal lasted, or for the hour or more afterward while Elitha cleared the dishes. She almost hated the man as his talk went on; she wanted to get the child to his bed so that the conversation could turn to the only point which meant a thing to her then. Marc, whatever his failings as a diplomat, could hardly have been entirely ignorant of this; but in spite of his wife's feelings he focused his entire attention on the boy. He kept the child enthralled with accounts of what had happened—or might have happened—on the six-week walk to Rome, and the stay there, and the return. The tales went on while the little fellow gradually ceased his excited responses and settled at Judith's side, with his eyes still fixed on his father's face. They went on while Elitha finished her work and seated herself at Kyros's other side. They went on until yawns too big to conceal began to appear on the small face; and then the stories ceased abruptly.

"Time you slept now, son," Marc said gently.

"No! You haven't said what happened after—"

"But you're sleepy. If I tell you now, you'll forget and I'll just have to tell you all over again next time."

"I'm not sleepy!"

"You are, Kyros. You're very sleepy. You've been yawning all through my story from Rome to Rimini. Elitha will take you to your room, and you will sleep. Perhaps tomorrow we can finish the story." For a long moment the eyes of the man and his son held each other in silence; then the youngster gave a shrug which he must have acquired from his father's mannerisms, took Elitha's proffered hand, and got to his feet. He tried to look reproachfully at Marc, but the gap-toothed grin broke through in spite of his efforts. He finally laughed, gave good-night hugs to his parents, and went off happily with the girl.

The mother waited until the two were presumably out of hearing along the passage, and then turned to her husband.

"I told you. He's going to be all right. The finger has stopped bleeding."

"True." The man's answer was slow, as though he were trying to find the happy medium between absolute truth and the woman's peace of mind. "It's stopped now. It took time, though. Mine had stopped while we were eating, but his was still flowing after we were finished—long after; Elitha had replenished the fire at least twice."

"It wasn't flowing very hard."

"It wasn't much of a cut. The one I gave myself was worse—I made sure of that. No, my dear, the curse is still there; maybe not as badly as with the others; maybe I won't have to fight as hard as I expected; but if we are to see Kyros grow to manhood I will have to fight."

"But how can such a thing be fought? You said it yourself—there is no enemy one can see. There is nothing you can do. It isn't like the broken bones you mentioned; a person could see what was sensible to do, in something like that."

"It is very much like a fever, though, in one way," her husband pointed out. "There is nothing one can see to fight, but we have learned about medicines which cool the body. I talked to one of Aurelius's army healers when I was in Rome, and he reminded me of that. I knew it, of course, but I had been feeling as discouraged as you, and he was trying to point out grounds for hope."

"But you can't just try one medicine after another on Kyros."

"Of course not. I want to save him, not poison him. I don't yet know the battle plan, my dearest, but I will fight as a general rather than a soldier who simply slashes at all in his path. I must think and work both; it will take time—probably a long time."

"And I cannot help you. That's the worst part; I can only watch the boy—"

"Which is the most important of the task." Judith ignored the interjection.

"—and will have no idea whether each new day's play may give him a hurt from which you are not yet armed to save him."

He laid a hand on her shoulder, and with the other turned her face toward him.

"You can help, dear heart, and you will. You are wiser than I in many ways—I learned that before we had known each other a week. We have talked and thought, studied and lived together for twelve years now; how could I doubt your ability to help? You would not have left Rome with me, and come to live in this wilderness, if you had not been so much like me as to value this sort of life more than all Rome could offer. You know why I loved you, and why I still love you."

She smiled briefly.

"I know; but even you need to talk with other people sometimes—not just for this, but years ago when you first left this place to visit Rome. We wouldn't have met, had you been completely satisfied with solitude."

"Well, it is good to talk to people who think of something besides boats, nets, and planting. I'm quite glad I went to the city; I'd have stayed there if you had insisted, even with its noise and smells. I still think the silence here is better, though, and I loved the garden up in the pit even before you came. I guess I'm just a hermit at heart."

"Not in all ways. Tell me tomorrow how you will fight, and I'll help. We should sleep now; you walked far today."

But Marc did not sleep for a long time. After his wife went, he stood for a long time staring into the fireplace, while the blaze sank to coals and the coals faded. He had not told all about his trip, nor all about his plans—Judith would not have been so emphatic about promising to help, even for Kyros, if he had.

Abruptly, he turned toward the passage leading to the sinkhole. Out in the starlight, he found the latter which Elitha used to go up to the plateau for fuel, and made his way up this to the broken surface of the Karst. It extended beyond eyeshot to his left as he faced south, dotted with sink-holes and weak spots in the water-rotted stone where a new hole might be an unwary traveler's grave. Few people went that way; there was little to attract them. The water vanished from the surface too quickly to do crops much good; the garden in his own sinkhole survived because of water brought by hand from an underground stream to supplement the rain accumulated in the clay catch-basins he had made long before.

To his right the plateau fell off toward the sea, some two miles away. He went in that direction, rapidly. Much had to be done before morning.

Judith was awakened by Kyros's voice echoing from the main cave. She rose, cast a fond glance at her soundly sleeping husband, took the lamp from its niche at the entrance of their sleeping cavern, and made her way two hundred yards down a steep passage to the underground stream. Washed and refreshed, she was back in a few minutes, finding the man still asleep. She finished dressing and went out to greet Kyros and Elitha.

"Where's Father?" cried the boy. "Breakfast is ready."

"He is still asleep. Remember, he has traveled a long, long way, and could not sleep as quietly or as safely among all those people outside as he can here. He is very tired. We will eat now, but save something for him."

"Then I suppose you have to carry water."

"Not today, son. There is enough in the basin from the last rain. We will take care of the garden, of course, but there will be time to play."

Marc slept until after Elitha and the child had finished eating and gone to the garden. Judith was cleaning the living cavern when he finally appeared. She stopped when she saw him, set out some fruit, and seated herself beside him while he ate. She was silent until he finished, but watched his face closely; and hard as it would have been for most people to read those features, she seemed to see something encouraging in his expression. When he finally stopped eating, she leaned forward and sought confirmation of the hope.

"You've thought of something, Marc. What can I do to help?"

"The hardest part may be in agreeing with me," he answered. "In a way, you thought of the same thing; but you didn't carry the thought to its end, and I'm sure you won't like it when I do."

"Explain, anyway."

"You said last night that anyone could see what was the sensible thing to do if a bone were broken. It seems to me that there is something equally sensible to do for someone whose bleeding won't stop."

"We tried. The gods know we tried. Sometimes we stopped it, but sooner or later, for each of them—"

"I know. I wasn't thinking of stopping the bleeding with bandages and cords and such things. That's all right on limbs, but it's harder on the body and nearly impossible inside the mouth. We don't know where the curse will strike Kyros."

"Not inside the mouth. Remember the teeth!"

"I remember. I wish I understood that; I keep thinking the gods must have made it happen to tell me something, but I can't think what it might be. Anyway, that wasn't what I started to say. If a water jug leaks, and you must keep the jug because you have no other, and you can't mend it, what is the only thing left?"

"You let it leak, and refill it whenever—oh, I see. But how can that be done? You or I or Elitha could give blood, but how could we get it into Kyros's body? Would it be enough for him to drink it?"

"I—don't—know. It has been tried, the Roman said, after battles; but the patients sometimes lived and sometimes died anyway, and he wasn't sure whether it did any good."

Judith grimaced. "I don't like the idea of drinking blood, or of making Kyros do it."

"One can do almost anything, if it is for life." The man frowned thoughtfully as he spoke. "In any case, something else would have to be done before such a test would mean anything."

"What do you mean?"

"There would have to be a person who was suffering from lack of blood, before we could tell whether more blood would help."

"I see. And if we wait until Kyros—no, Marc! I see what you mean, but you couldn't do such a thing. You could not do it on yourself, because of the danger; if you die, Kyros's last hope is gone. I would gladly let you take blood from me until I was sick from it, but I am sure I couldn't drink any for the test—not even for Kyros. The thought just—" Her face twisted again, and Marc nodded.

"Likely enough. And Elitha would be the same, no doubt, though we could ask. We would have to find someone who could be made—forced—to do it."

"But how—no, Marc! Not even for Kyros! I wouldn't let you do such a thing to anyone. You must not fight that way!"

"I was sure you would feel so. I do myself, a little. I have thought of one other thing, but there is a bad point about that, too."

"What is it?"

"I could go back to Rome. The healer I knew there would be more than willing to have me go with the emperor's army; he's supposed to himself, but doesn't seem very eager to leave the city. There would be plenty of chance to see and work on men who needed blood."

"But you'd be gone from here! What would we do if Kyros—"

"Precisely." He nodded agreement with her point. She looked at him, started to speak, bit her lower lip, got to her feet, and took two or three steps toward the garden passage. Then she turned to face him again.

"There must be some other way."

"I would like to believe it. The gods have not seen fit to show me one."

"If you killed other people in trying to find a cure for what Kyros has, we would deserve the curse."

"Would Kyros?" he countered. She was silent again for several minutes, pacing nervously back and forth the width of the cave. Then she turned suddenly and shifted the line of attack.

"What if just drinking blood is not enough? What else have you thought of to try? You once said that eating an enemy's heart to give courage, as some barbarians do, is superstition; why is it any more likely that drinking blood would restore blood?"

He smiled grimly. It was tempting to point out the glaring flaw in that argument, but seemed unwise.

"I have thought of other things; but all of them would have to be tried out before I could be sure they were good. All of them."

His point was clear. Judith said no more, and walked slowly out of the chamber toward the garden. Marc sat where he was for several more minutes. Then he, too, got to his feet and entered still another small cavern opening from the main one.

He had not been in this room since returning from his long journey, but took for granted that it would be ready for use—tools clean, writing materials at hand, lamps full. He had come to expect this over the years, and had very seldom been disappointed. Sometimes, but rarely, he was surprised; usually it was his own fault.

So it was this time. The lamp was full, the few tools ready, the workbench neat—everything which was Elitha's duty was properly taken care of. The charcoal bin, however, was nearly empty; and charcoal came from the village. It was Marc himself who made the trips there for meat, and oil, and other things the cavern and garden could not supply. Neither of the women ever went far from their home; Kyros had never even been up to the plateau. The cave was home—the finest of homes—to all of them.

Marc had known it longest. He had found it during his boyhood. Had he been born and raised in any of the nearby villages he would probably have stayed away from the dangerous caverns; but at the time he had not even spoken the local language well. He had been born in a Balkan village, spent much of his childhood in Galati as personal slave to a Roman official of literary inclination, and had survived the wreck of the ship carrying the Roman back to the city. He had come ashore near the village at the edge of the Karst, and by the time he was twenty years old was a well-established citizen of the place. His acquaintance with Roman civilization and literature had fired an imagination which might never otherwise have awakened. Exploring the caverns, which the villagers feared with ample reason, and construction of the garden in the sink-hole had been outlets for a mind which once awakened could not lie idle.

Twice during the years he had left the village, determined to live in the Rome he had learned about from his former master. Each time he had been back, disillusioned, within a year. The third time he had met Judith and stayed longer; when he finally returned to the village on the Adriatic, she and the child who had been her personal slave had come with him—and he had never again felt the urge to leave. With his caves, his garden, and his family he had been happy.

That was when he had had four sons.

He jerked his attention back from the thoughts which had softened his expression for a moment. He had meant to work, but charcoal was needed for what he had in mind. Should he go to the village for it today, or stay and think? Judith's words, though they had not come as a surprise, had left him much to think about.

He was spared the choice. Kyros came running in, wondering loudly what was keeping his father in the cave when it was so much better in the garden. That took care of the rest of the day, and the night took care of itself; Marc was not long past the prime of life, but he did need some sleep. It was not until the following morning that he resumed attack on the real problem.

"I need fuel for the forge," he announced after Kyros and Elitha had gone to the garden. "I'll start now, and should be back before evening. Will you come as far as the valley with me?"

She was surprised, but picked up one of the lamps in answer. An hour and a half later, after a walk through the dimly lit splendors of their "garden of stone," they reached the entrance Marc usually employed. It was barely noticeable from inside—a lost traveler could have been twenty yards from safety without knowing it. They had to work their way through a narrow space behind a wall of flowstone for perhaps ten yards before daylight was visible; a few more steps brought them, not entirely into the open, but to the bottom of a small gully whose walls could easily be climbed. Marc helped the woman to clamber out of this, and as her head rose above the bushes flanking the declivity she found herself able to see farther than she had wanted to for many years. She shrank back against her husband, but made no sound at first as she looked over the landscape.

The gully was at the edge of a broader valley, which lay between the cliff at their backs and a similar one a quarter of a mile away. To their left it narrowed rapidly; in the other direction it sloped gently downward and grew broader. Its floor was covered with heavy brush, punctuated by an occasional tree. The latter growths, far apart as they were, took on the aspect of a scrubby forest as the eye followed them down the slope. Above them in this direction the eye could just detect a blue-gray line which might have been the sea. Judith turned her eyes from it.

"It's ugly!" she exclaimed. "Dry, and brown, and not like the garden at all. Do you want me to go all the way to the village?"

He looked at her with some surprise.

"It's not that bad. The bushes aren't as green as the ones you take care of, but they're not really brown. The village is several thousand paces from here; I didn't want you to come with me, and maybe it would be better if you didn't. You can wait here; I'll be back in a few hours."

"But I don't want to wait out here; I don't like it. I'll go back inside."

"What's wrong with staying out in the light? You always want Kyros to do it."

"I don't like the idea. What would I do? I can't just sit and wait for you. I should be taking care of Kyros, and the garden—"

"Elitha is there. There's nothing to worry about."

"But I'm not happy about it."

"Don't you trust Elitha?"

"Yes, of course. I just don't—don't like being away, even now when you're home again. Will I be able to help you if I wait, or is it all right if I go back by myself?"

"Can you? Are you sure of the way?"

"Oh, yes. I watched, and you've marked it very well. I have a light, so there'll be one left for you."

He hesitated. "Do you realize—" He cut the question short, and thought for several more heartbeats. Then he changed his line of attack. "You really don't trust Elitha, do you?"

"I do. I trust her more than I trust myself, when it comes to taking care of Kyros. That's not it."

"What is the trouble, then? What's wrong with your waiting here? We didn't bring food, but there's water in the stream a few hundred paces down—"

"No! I couldn't go there! No, Marc, let me go back. I can find the way. I'll see you there tonight." She turned back toward the cave entrance, then faced him again with an expression which he had never seen before and which mystified him completely. Poor as he was at seeing into the minds of others, at least he knew this time that something strange was going on.

"I'd better go back with you," he said abruptly.

"No." She spoke barely above a whisper. "You need those things from the village. Even when I can't help, I mustn't hinder. Go on. I can find my way—but you must let me go." He stared at her in silence for fully another minute; then, slowly, he nodded his head. Her expression was replaced by a smile.

She started down the side of the gully; then she suddenly turned, climbed back to where he was standing, and kissed him. A moment later she had disappeared into the cave.

His own face took on the unreadable quality it had borne so often in recent months, as he looked silently at the spot where she had vanished. Then he blew out the lamp he was still holding, started to put it down, changed his mind, and with the pottery bowl still in his hand slipped into the entrance after his wife.

His sandals scuffed the rock; he stopped and removed them. Then, carefully, he looked from behind the flowstone barrier which veiled the inner end of the entryway.

Judith was fifty yards ahead, walking slowly. Her lamp was held in front of her and he could not see the flame, but its light outlined her figure even to eyes which had just come in from full sunlight. Silently he followed.

It was high noon when he reappeared at the cave mouth, blew out the lamp, set it on the ground at the entrance, and started rapidly toward the village. It was almost sunset when he got back to the spot laden with more than sixty pounds of material—a skin bottle of oil, a leaf-wrapped package of meat, a basket of charcoal, and other things. He had some trouble getting these through the narrow entrance—in fact, he had to carry the bulkier items through one by one. With these inside he returned to the tunnel mouth, lighted the lamp with flint and tinder, carried it into the darkness, resumed the load he had already borne for six miles, and started along the marked route to his home.

He had to rest several times along the way, and took it for granted that everyone would be asleep by the time he reached the living cavern. As he lowered his burden to the floor and straightened up, however, he saw the two women by the fireplace.

The fire itself was low, and even Marc's dark-adapted eyes could not make out their expressions; but the very fact that they were still up at this hour meant that something was out of order.

"What is it? Has something gone wrong?" he asked tensely.

Both women answered together, a startling action on Elitha's part.

"I told you! It's my fault—I told you I was cursed. As soon as I got back here!"

"The skin is broken only a little, and the bleeding has stopped. He is asleep now."

It took the man several seconds to disentangle their words.

"You're sure it has stopped, Elitha?"

"Yes, sir."

"How long did it take?"

"Perhaps half the afternoon—much like the last time."

"Did it hurt him much?"

"No. He gave it no thought after the first surprise and pain. He wanted to play again after we had comforted him."

"Good. You go back to his cave now, and sleep if you wish; there is no need to watch him." The girl obediently rose and departed, and Marc turned to his wife, who had been sobbing almost inaudibly during the exchange. He knelt beside her and gently turned her face toward his.

"It is no worse than last time; you heard Elitha, and you saw it all yourself. Has something else happened? There's still no reason to blame you rather than me."

"But there is!" Judith's words, emphatic as they were, were almost inaudible. "There's all the reason in the world. He fell this time just because of me. He had missed me, and was worried, and when he saw me he came running and tripped—"

"But it was I who made you come away," Marc pointed out.

"I know. I thought of that. If I were your slave instead of your wife that might mean something. I was uneasy about going, but not firm enough about refusing until it was too late. No, Marc, the fault is mine. The guilt is mine. The curse is mine."

"I'm not convinced. Every fault you claim for yourself could as easily be laid on me. In any case, it makes no difference; whether it be a curse on you, a curse on me, a curse on both of us, or simply another of the troubles given indifferently to the sons of men, the task and the fight are mine."

"No, you wouldn't be convinced. I know the sort of thing it takes to convince you. You are not sure whether the curse is on you or on me or on both of us because the children who have been touched are of both of us. I have thought of that, too. A child of Elitha's—" She let her voice trail off, watching him. He was several seconds catching her meaning; then he shook his head negatively.

"No! You said it a moment ago—you are my wife. A curse on either of us, or a trouble for either of us, is a curse or a trouble for both. It is not that I don't know which of us it is; I do not care."

"But why should you grow old with no sons because the gods are angry with me? I still don't believe that anyone can fight the gods—you'll just make them angry with you, too, for trying. Forget that I gave you sons; we've been warned often enough. Kyros will join the others—you know it as well as I do. Take Elitha—"

"No!" Marc was even more emphatic than before. "I tell you it is not your fault. If gods or demons are punishing you, I blame them, not you, and will fight them—"

"Marc!" The woman's voice was shocked. "No! You can't."

"Yes! Many times yes! If it will make you feel better, I don't believe it is either gods or demons, or even a curse. I think I am just trying to learn something men should know; but if my sons have been killed by any living thing, that thing I will fight—man, devil, or anything else. I will not listen to any word of surrender, from you or anyone else."

"But if you yielded and stopped fighting, they might spare Kyros."

"What reason have I to expect that? They—if it is anyone—did not spare little Marc, or Balam, or Keth. They have done nothing to suggest that they would spare Kyros if I stopped fighting—you know that. I hadn't started fighting when Marc and Balam died. You can't suggest the smallest of reasons to believe what you just said; you just hope!"

"What else can I do?" Her voice was down to a whisper again.

"You can help. You said you would, in most things."

"I couldn't help you with something that would take another woman's children as mine have been taken. Why should I pass my pain over to her?"

"Because if I can learn to fight this sickness, the knowledge will ward that pain from all other mothers from now on. Can't you see that?"

"Of course I can see it. In that case, it would be right for you to test your ideas on Kyros. Would you do that?"

"No." The answer came without hesitation. "Kyros is my only remaining son. I have given my share."

"And learned nothing."

"I learned enough to let me talk about it sensibly with healers in Rome."

"And all they told you was that it couldn't be cured!"

"That no one knew how to cure it," he corrected. "I would not even have known that, if I had not seen—what we saw. Seeing that three times was more than my share, and far more than yours. We will see it again, perhaps; but if I have learned enough in time, we will see only part of it. Our boy will live."

"But promise me, Marc—tell me you won't try your ideas on other people. I know you don't believe there's any other way to learn, but promise me—not that way!"

"What other way is there?" he almost snarled. Then, in a gentler voice, "I can't promise, my own. I would do anything in the world for you—except what I think to be wrong. If the gods have any hand in this at all, it is not a curse but a warning—an order. Galen in Rome had never heard of more than one son of the same father who had suffered this way. I have lost three to this thing; one remains. That is either a warning, an order, or a challenge, if it was done deliberately. I heed the warning, I obey the order, I accept the challenge. I can do nothing else. I do promise not to try my ideas on people as long as I can see any other way; more than that I cannot promise, even for you." He got to his feet; after a moment she did the same, and stood facing him. Their shadows, magnified on the cavern wall by the steady flame of the single lamp, merged briefly and separated again.

"Sleep now, my own," he said softly. "I must think—I will think of all the other ways I can possibly learn what I must, before I use the one you don't want. You must sleep; I can't. My thoughts won't let me."

"Shouldn't I stay to help?"

"You can't help until I've thought of something for you to hear. Then you can tell me what's wrong with it. You can do that better if you've slept." She went.

For half an hour the man stood motionless where she had left him. Then he strode softly to the entrance of their sleeping cave and listened carefully for several more minutes. Then he took another lamp, lighted it from the one which was burning, and went toward the garden again.

He had not listened at the other sleeping cave.

Judith missed the chance to ask her husband about his plans the next morning. Her attention and his were otherwise taken up. Marc examined his son's knee as soon as the boy was awake, and found that Elitha had been right—the blood had clotted well enough. The knee was badly bruised, however, and Kyros admitted that it was hurting. For once, he walked to the living cave instead of bouncing to it.

The moment his mother discovered that he was less active than usual, she lost all thought for anything else. She kept anxious eyes on him while he ate, and went with him to the garden when he finished. Marc made no effort to follow, though he looked with concern after the pair. He went to his work cavern instead. The girl followed him to ask whether she should remain within call or go to the garden as usual with the others. He thought briefly, then smiled rather grimly and went to one of the bundles he had brought back the day before.

"Take one of the smallest pots, which we can do without for cooking or eating," he said as he opened the package. "Take the head off this, and boil it for the rest of the day. I want the skull complete, so handle it carefully. Once the pot is boiling do not touch it except to add more water if it seems to be going dry." He handed the corpse of a fair-sized snake to the girl. She shrank back for an instant, then got control of herself and accepted the repulsive object. Her voice trembled just a little as she asked, "Should I skin it first, Master?"

"No, don't bother. It will be much easier after the boiling, and I don't need the skin. That will be all; you may work in the garden with the others, as long as you don't let the pot boil dry. This thing was too hard to get for me to want it burned."

"Yes, sir." Elitha took the snake and left the workroom, showing rather less than her usual serenity. The man either didn't notice this or didn't care; he turned back to the forge.

He was not an experienced metal worker. He had sometimes seen goldsmiths at work when he was a child, and had deliberately watched them again during his recent trip; but seeing something done is not the same as doing it one's self. He could melt gold easily with his charcoal fire and a bellows he had devised, but casting or otherwise working it into a desired shape was another matter altogether. He lost himself in the problem.

Sometime about the middle of the morning Elitha reappeared. She stood silently by the entrance until he noticed her; just how long this was he was never sure. When he did see her, as he straightened up from another failure, he was rather startled.

"What do you want, girl?" The answer was hesitant, in contrast to Elitha's usual self-possession.

"I wondered whether your pot should be at the cooking fire when the lady and your son come to eat. The boy might not notice, but do you want the mistress to know about it—about the snake?"

"I don't see why not." Marc was honestly surprised.

"Do you think she'd like black magic? She is very fond of good, and might not like bad magic even for a good purpose."

The man's surprise and annoyance vanished, washed out on a wave of amusement. "This is not magic, black or white, Elitha." He laughed. "I'll show you what I need the skull for when it's ready. Bring the pot back here before the evening meal, though; it should have boiled enough by then."

"I don't want—I—very well, Master." The girl left hastily and Marc returned to his work and his frustration. The rest of the day was uninterrupted, uneventful, and unsuccessful for him.

It was worse for Judith. As long as her son was active and happy, she could usually persuade herself that the threat to his life was at least postponed; but today he was neither. His knee kept him from most of the games he enjoyed most, and made him crankier than usual about the necessary garden work. Judith tended to take each complaint, each bit of disobedience or stubbornness, each departure from what she considered his normal behavior, as evidence that the curse was about to reach a climax. Elitha, who was skillful at controlling the youngster tactfully on his bad days, was spending more time than usual inside the cave. Since Judith in her present mood was quite unable to be firm with the boy, it was a bad day for both. About the only successful order she issued was the standing interdict against climbing the ladder which Elitha used to go up to the plateau for firewood. Even this might have been disobeyed if Kyros had actually felt like climbing—though it is possible that the sight of her son climbing might have driven even Judith to something stern enough to be effective. No one will ever be sure.

The four ate the evening meal together as usual, though less happily than usual. Kyros was fretful, Judith silent, and Marc was becoming more and more worried—about his wife rather than his son. She had promised to help with his work. She was, he knew, perfectly able to do so in her normal state of mind, since she was a highly intelligent woman; but because of Kyros's condition she had been useless all day, and seemed likely to remain so. She asked not a word about the work, but watched the boy as she ate.

The youngster himself had a good appetite, whatever else might be wrong with him. He finished what was set before him, asked for more, and finished that. He rebelled at the suggestion that it was time for sleep, which seemed normal enough to Marc but bothered Judith. A compromise was finally effected in which Elitha was to go back to the garden with him and tell stories until the stars could be seen. Marc engineered this arrangement, partly to get Judith away from the boy for a while and partly so that he could talk to her himself. It almost failed; Judith wanted to go out with the others, but saw in time what her husband had in mind and managed to control herself. She remained silent until the two were out of earshot; then she burst forth:

"Marc! What can we do? You can see that it's coming—"

"No, I can't. Think, dearest, please! All that's really wrong with him is a bruised knee. The blood from the cut dried, just as the finger did the other day. Why do you worry so about a bruise? Boys have bruises more often than not; you know that." Marc was actually trying hard to retain control himself; he was carefully not telling his wife everything he had learned from Galen of Pergamum. "Please stop worrying about him, at least until something serious really happens, and help me so that we can be ready for it when it does."

"I'll try." Judith's voice gave her husband little ground for optimism. "What have you thought of? What can we do?"

"Nothing, without—well, you know."

"You have thought of nothing?"

"I have ideas, but I have no way of knowing whether they are good. How could I?"

"I should think that if an idea is good, anyone could tell that it is. What are the ideas?"

"One we mentioned before—replacing the blood which a person loses. We thought of having him drink it—"

"I remember. We didn't like the idea."

"It's not so much that we didn't like it, but I doubt very much that it would work. A person's stomach must turn the things he eats into the things his body needs, and maybe if you drink blood and your body needs blood it will go right through your stomach unchanged; but I'm not sure. After all, by that argument any food must turn into blood in your stomach, if that's what you need. When the other boys were dying we tried to get them to eat. When they could, it didn't do any special good, and toward the end they couldn't. Remember?"

Judith bit her lip. "I remember."

"So I thought it might be better to put new blood right into the veins, where we know it is needed."

"That seems perfectly all right. Why didn't we think of it sooner? We might have saved the other boys!"

"How would you go about it?"

"Why, just—" Judith stopped, her mind running over the various ways of getting a liquid from one container to another, and rejecting each in turn. "I don't see how, right away. Some sort of funnel, with a little pipe—but I don't see how—" Her voice trailed off.

"That's my general idea, too, and I think I see how; but I'm having trouble making it work."

"What are you doing?" Marc sighed inwardly with relief; he had apparently weaned her mind away from her son's condition for the moment.

"I'll show you; come up to the workshop," he said. She followed eagerly. "One part was quite easy," he went on as they reached the cavern. "There is a way made by the gods, if you want to look at it so, for putting something into a person's veins from outside. A viper can do it very easily, you know."

"Of course! I should have thought of that. You can make a sort of hollow needle, like a viper's tooth."

"Unfortunately I can't. I'm not that good a smith. What I thought of doing was using an actual viper's tooth, and fastening it somehow to a funnel; and I'm having trouble even with that."

"You have the tooth?"

"Yes. Here." He indicated the white skull on the bench. "The teeth are there. I haven't tried to get them out yet—perhaps your fingers would be better than mine. The real trouble has been to make a funnel which could be fitted to the tooth. I know that gold is one of the easy metals to melt, and I've been trying to make out of it a funnel and tube which could be fitted to such a small thing; but I've had no luck at all."

"Isn't lead easier to melt?"

"So I understand, but I don't have any. We do have some gold coin still."

"But what is your trouble?"

"I'll have to show you. I can melt the gold easily enough in a clay pot, and I can even make a sort of cup which could be used for the top part of a funnel; but I can't make a hollow tube. If I try to pour the gold into a narrow clay pipe, it just fills up to form a solid rod. If I put something down the middle of the pipe to keep the gold at the sides, I never can get it out afterward."

"Why not use clay for the tube you need, without bothering with gold?"

"Any clay tube I've made which was small enough cracked all to pieces when I tried to harden it in the fire. You can try that if you like while I melt up the gold again; you'll see."

It took several tries, and several hours, to convince Judith that practice could be more difficult than theory, and that ideas could be basically sound and still difficult to execute. When they finally stopped work for the night, Kyros and Elitha had long been asleep—at least, Judith's quick check of their cave produced no change in the breathing of either one.

The next day was somewhat better. The boy's bruise was less painful, and he showed something more like his normal activity. Judith was able to devote some thought to her husband's problem, while Marc himself alternately thought and tested out new variations on his amateur goldsmithing techniques. Elitha kept busy with her regular housekeeping and nursemaid duties. In spite of her reaction to the snake, she occasionally appeared in the work cave to make sure the lamps were full, though she came no closer to the working area than she could help. Marc suspected that she still considered him a black magician.

The night was similar to the preceding one; Judith joined her husband in the workshop for a time, and assisted in another failure or two. Marc saw that she was becoming discouraged. He couldn't blame her, but the fact discouraged him, and he decided to stop the forge work earlier than on the night before. He did not, however, go with her to sleep; there was thinking to be done, as he emphasized and as she was quite willing to admit. She left him alone at the workbench. His trip to the garden, and beyond, was quicker than before.

And so the days passed. Kyros's knee recovered. Then he scraped an elbow while running through the passage to the garden, and Judith relapsed into near-panic during the ten hours or so which the injury took to clot. Perhaps the experience was useful, though, for she produced a constructive idea a day or two later.

She had long since extracted the fangs from the snake skull, adding to Marc's problems by giving him a realistic idea of the size of the tube he was trying to match. He had managed by now to make finger-size pipes of gold, but this was a long way from what was needed—in fact, when he took his first good look at an extracted fang he suffered a spell of discouragement almost as bad as one of Judith's. He had recovered from this and resumed the struggle before Kyros suffered his elbow injury, but was making very little progress.

Then, with the boy back to normal, Judith appeared in the work cave bursting with an idea.

"Marc! I've been wondering. Why do we have to make a tube to connect the bowl part of the funnel to the snake's tooth? Why can't the tooth be right in the boom of the bowl?" The man straightened up from his furnace, and his eyes narrowed in thought.

"It might be all right," he said slowly. "It would be a bit hard to see whether the fang was going into a vein, but maybe that's not very important."

"I hadn't thought of that," she admitted, "but anyway, what I really wanted to know is, is there any real reason why the tube has to be gold?"

"Only that I can't think of anything else to use which I have here and can handle. The clay seems to be hopeless."

"You mean there isn't anything else you can make a tube out of. But what about tubes already made?"

"What sort? I can't think of any."

"When Elitha cleans a chicken, there is small tubing—veins, I suppose—"

"I don't like that idea too much. I'd have to tan it or something to keep it from rotting, and I don't know how. But wait a minute; how about a hollow reed?"

"All right, I should think, if you can find one small enough. I started thinking of chickens, though, and kept on that way; how about the quill of a feather?" Marc raised his eyebrows and was silent for a long moment; then, still without a word, he headed toward the garden. Judith, smiling, followed.

They never had more than four chickens—there was little for the birds to eat but the insect life in the sink-hole—but there was no difficulty in finding dropped feathers. A few of these were brought back to the cave. Marc tried to take the largest of them apart, using a tiny steel knife which was one of his dearest possessions. After he had ruined this one, Judith took over and quickly produced several tiny tubes, from perhaps half an inch to over two inches in length. All were satisfactorily hollow—at least, it was possible to suck water through any of them—and all seemed strong enough. One of the longer ones had just the right inner diameter to enclose on the snake fangs, to Marc's delight.

This emotion faded during the next hour as he tried to fasten the two together with rosin, and repeatedly blocked the tiny channel in the fang with the sticky material. After having to boil the intractable object three times to melt the adhesive out of it, he let the woman take over once more. He himself set about preparing the golden cup which would form the top of the apparatus. Even with his lack of manual skill, the task was not too hard. He formed a clay bowl about the size of his two cupped hands, dried it hurriedly over the charcoal, and began to pour small quantities of melted gold into it, rocking the vessel about so that the metal would harden in a thin coating over its inner surface. This was farm from professional technique, but it worked. With the metal hardened, he had no trouble breaking the clay away and punching a hole in the bottom of the resulting cup. A little careful reaming enlarged the perforation to the point where it would admit the upper end of the quill. A little more work with the rosin, which even Marc could manage this time, produced an apparently finished device.

Judith Was delighted. Her husband was more reserved in his enthusiasm, but did feel more encouraged when a quantity of water poured into the bowl began to drip slowly from the end of the bit of ivory.

"That's done it!" the woman exclaimed. "Don't you feel as though you'd started to live again, Marc? Come on—let's go out to the garden. I feel as though I hadn't seen Kyros for days—and now I can bear to look at him!" She turned toward the passage, and then turned back as her attention was caught by the expression on Marc's face—the old frown of uncertainty. "Marc—what's wrong?"

"Nothing for sure. Supposing that we do have a way of giving Kyros blood when he needs it; where does the blood come from?"

"Why, from you and me, of course. He has our blood now; what else would be right?" Marc did not have the knowledge to be able to pick holes in this argument. He had had something else in mind anyway, so he merely nodded and tried to put on an appropriate expression. He succeeded well enough for the lamplight, and Judith led the way into the garden without further question. Even Marc, despite the major doubt which he had managed to conceal from his wife, was able to join in the family amusements for the rest of the day.

Since it was not the night for the trip beyond the garden, he was able to enjoy himself for the next day as well. Judith seemed to have shed all her worries, and played with Kyros as she had with her firstborn in the days before the curse had ever shown itself. Her joy did much to make the man forget some of his own problems, but not all he could have wished. The thought of what he would have to do that night kept obtruding, even while he entertained Kyros with stories after the evening meal; and for once he was in no great hurry to get the youngster off to bed. Even Judith noticed this, but fortunately attributed it to a relief like her own, and asked no questions. In fact, and very luckily, she actually retired herself before the boy did.

What Elitha saw and thought was impossible to tell. She finally took the child to his rest, leaving the man alone by the fire. As usual, he stood thinking for a time, then checked to make sure Judith was asleep, went to the work cave briefly, took a lamp, and set out on his usual trip.

He was much later than usual getting back, and he went down to the underground stream and washed very carefully before going to sleep.

He slept late—deliberately. He needed to think, without having Judith see his face as he did so. What could he tell her? And how could he tell it? Could she stand any part of the knowledge, after what had happened in the last few days? But if she weren't told, what would happen if Kyros started to go the way of his brothers? For that matter, what would happen then even if she had been told? The questions raced endlessly around in his mind, with no answers to any of them.

The fight had to go on—Kyros was the only remaining child—Judith could never help now—the boy had lived longer than any of the others; maybe he would be spared—or maybe it would happen today—there must be something he could do—no, that was childish, unless the gods really had made the world for men instead of for themselves—what had gone wrong? What had he done wrong? What could he do—what else could he do?

No answer. He couldn't tell Judith—that was evasion, not an answer, but he couldn't. Maybe nothing would happen to Kyros, for a while anyway. That was an evasion too, but he could hope. In fact, as Judith had said not long before, what else could he do but hope?

At that thought he rolled from his pallet and stood up. He was a man. He could do more than hope; he could fight!

So he told himself.

At least, there need be no more night excursions—unless some new idea should come up. And even if hoping were not enough by itself, whatever hope could be summoned up would be useful. And Kyros had lived longer than his brothers. Maybe—

Marc went to wash again, and joined his family.

The hope lasted for nearly three weeks. Judith was happy most of the time. She was able to dismiss Kyros's occasional sore knee as an aftermath of the earlier fall. Even Marc, who remembered more objectively what had happened to the other boys, saw nothing menacing in it. When one sore knee became two, he was concerned, but could still see no connection with the curse. In fact he never did. What might have been an informative if harrowing year or more was cut short; Kyros fell again.

Perhaps it was the joint trouble. Perhaps, as Judith promptly decided, it was his mother's relaxation of care. Perhaps it would have happened anyway; the boy was becoming increasingly independent. None of the adults saw the accident.

Elitha was up on the surface gathering fuel, Marc was in his workroom; and although Judith was in the garden, her attention had wandered for a moment from the boy. Kyros himself was not doing anything particularly dangerous—or at least, what he was doing would not have been very dangerous for anyone else. He was backing away from the side of the sinkhole, looking up to see whether Elitha was near the head of the ladder, and tripped. The fall might have been harmless even for him, since he landed on the soft soil of the garden; but by sheer bad luck he fell at a place where he himself had set a sharpened stick in the ground for one of his games. It went through the fleshy part of his right arm, a few inches below the shoulder. His shriek was quite loud enough to get his mother's attention, and hers was audible both to Elitha and Marc.

Just how the stick was extracted from the arm was never well established. Judith may have pulled it out herself in the first moments of panic. Since it was firmly fixed in the ground, Kyros's own attempt to get up may have been responsible. However it happened, when Marc reached the scene there was work for him. He quickly tore a strip of cloth from his garment, thankful that the wound was no nearer the shoulder—half an inch higher a tourniquet would have been impossible to apply.

He should not have been thankful. His effort to tie the limb off above the injury was badly misjudged. The stick had not come anywhere near an artery, but had torn several veins; until Marc gave up on the tourniquet idea and jammed cloth directly into the wounds, blood continued to flow at a frightening rate. Marc didn't know why. Even with the cloth right over the wounds blood kept coming, though much more slowly.

Judith, in a state of shock, had stood back and done nothing while her husband worked. By the time he was done, Elitha had descended the ladder and was standing beside her; and as Marc gathered up his now unconscious son and carried him into the cave, the younger woman guided the almost equally pale mother in the same direction. There is no telling how long she would have stood staring at the soaked ground without that help. Even as she walked, she seemed neither to know nor to care where she was going; she looked at nothing—not even at the child in her husband's arms.

Inside, Marc laid the boy down near the fire and spoke to the women. "Get his bedding here." Elitha obeyed. Judith stood motionless, but gradually brought her eyes down to what lay before her. Very slowly she spoke.

"I said it was my curse. You wouldn't believe me. Now I've killed the last of my children."

"You haven't killed him." Marc's tone was harsh, but he didn't know how else to speak at the moment. "In the first place he is not dead, and in the second this was not your fault."

"Then whose was it? I was the only one there. It was my place to look after him. I failed to do it."

"There was nothing you could have done, unless you were to spend your whole life holding his hand—not even then; that would not have kept a stone from falling on him. No one—no one—can foresee everything."

"Except the gods. They foresee. They waited until only I was there. You would not believe. You believe now—you must! Who could help but see it?"

"I could help it. I don't believe. Judith, what has happened is not your fault, and what will happen will not be your fault—unless you do nothing." He stood up and moved aside as Elitha appeared with the rough blankets and gently began to arrange them. "There are things we can do, dearest; the bleeding is slow, now—little faster than it was on his last hurt. The things we have done before are still right; keep him warm, keep him quiet so that his blood does not flow so fast—it has worked before. It will work again. Time after time I have seen men—and women and children—recover from far worse hurts than this."

Judith shook her head negatively and firmly; but Marc took her shoulder and turned her to face him.

"It is not your fault," he repeated slowly and emphatically. "Not your fault, ever. You make mistakes, so do I—all people do; but what happened just now was not your mistake any more than it was mine or Elitha's or Kyros's own. It is not your fault!"

The headshaking continued for a few seconds after he began to talk, but gradually it decreased as he went on. The woman's eyes met those of her husband and stayed fixed on them as though she were trying to read his mind and learn what sincerity lay behind his words. Even more slowly the tense, frightened expression on her face relaxed; but then, quite abruptly, a new one took its place. She grasped his arm suddenly.

"That's right, Marc! There is something we can do! He's lost nearly all his blood, and what is left may go before he stops bleeding. He needs more. We can give it to him! Come—come quickly! Get your knife and the funnel—I can fight, too! I can give him my blood. Come on!"

This time it was the man's face which blanched, and his voice which fell almost to inaudibility.

"No," was all he said. Judith stood shocked.

"No? Why not? You made it—you saw it work—you know he needs my blood—"

"No. It works with water, but not with blood. I couldn't think how to tell you. The night after we made it I tried it out—I had to be sure." He bared his left arm and showed a scar inside the elbow. "I filled it with my own blood. A few drops went through the fang—and then stopped. Your blood and mine do harden, my dear. It hardened very quickly in the fang. I had no way even to clean it out; there was nothing small enough to push through that tiny channel." Judith's expression went dead again as he spoke, but she did not freeze into her earlier state of shock. She answered after only a short pause.

"Very well. We'll keep him warm, and quiet, and feed him if he awakens. But Marc, my own"—her hand reached out and gripped his arm, as firmly as any man's hand ever gripped it—"you must find a way. You believe it can be found. I am not so sure, so you must do it—you must—he is all we have—" She let go and knelt beside Kyros again. Marc nodded.

"I will. What I can do, I will." He thought briefly, and spoke to the girl, who had been listening intently. "Elitha, have food ready at all times. We ourselves must eat, however little we want to, and the boy will need it when he awakens." The girl silently set about obeying, though her eyes were as often on Kyros or Judith or Marc as on her work. Marc seated himself at a little distance from the others and thought. He never knew how many hours passed.

He was brought back to awareness by Elitha's voice.

"You must sleep, Mistress. I will watch."

"I can't leave him." Judith's voice was drowsy.

"You need not leave him. I have brought your bed here. I will watch while you sleep, and call you if there is need."

Marc expected an argument, but the mother silently went to the blankets her maid had spread. That was a relief. He had been afraid to leave before, unsure of what Judith might need; while she slept, he could work. He made his way to the cavern where his materials lay, sat down before the workbench with the funnel and tube in front of him, and resumed his thinking.

Elitha, as she well knew, had been right. Sleep is a necessity.

He awoke abruptly, aware of two things. The girl's voice was sounding in his ear and her hand pulled frantically at his shoulder; and the funnel was gone from the bench top.

"Master! My lord! Come—come quickly!" He snapped to his feet, took one look at Elitha's face, and preceded her to the main cave as fast as his still slightly numb muscles would carry him. He need not have hurried.

Kyros lay as he had. Judith was crouched beside him; she neither spoke nor moved as Marc approached. The funnel of gold lay beside the child's bare arm. The quill had been cut off at an angle, and its end was stained. A cut had been made inside the boy's elbow at the same point where Marc had withdrawn his own blood for the test which had failed. The fang was not in sight.

He picked up the cut. There was no blood in it, and no sign that there had been any. Blood would be of no use to Kyros now.

For long minutes Marc and Elitha stood silent as the older woman. She seemed unaware of them; but at last she spoke. She uttered only three words, and Marc had no answer.

"I did it."

Slowly she rose to her feet. Her husband tried to lay a hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off silently and disappeared into their sleeping cave.

And the next noon, when Marc came back from the fourth grave, she had disappeared from there as well.

The discovery cleared the numbness which had gripped him ever since seeing the body of his last child. He suddenly realized that there was still something to live for.

"Elitha!" His voice sounded faintly in the garden, but the girl heard it and came running. As he heard her footsteps in the tunnel, he called, "When did you last see her?"

"Not—not since she went to the sleeping room last night, sir," the girl answered breathlessly. "What has happened?"

"I don't know. She's not here."

"She is not in the garden, I am sure. I called her when you took the little one there, but there was no answer. I hoped she was asleep, and didn't call again or look. Have you tried the workshop? Or she might have gone to wash."

"Not yet. You look in the workshop; I'll go down to the river. Hurry!" He was back in minutes, to find Elitha waiting. The girl reported that there was no sign of Judith, but that one of the lamps was also gone.

"Then she must have gone into the gardens of stone," said Marc. "You wait here to help her if she comes back; I'll search the way to the entrance first. I'll be back in a few hours."

"But, sir—" Elitha started to speak, but paused.

"Yes?" he asked impatiently. The girl hesitated a moment longer, as though gathering her courage.

"I might have missed her if she went through the garden quietly. Maybe she went to—to the other place."

"What other place?"

"The one you used to visit late at night."

"How do you know about that?"

"I saw you, many times." Marc wanted to ask further, but managed to bring his mind back to the immediate problem. "Did you ever tell her?"

"No, sir."

"Then I don't see how she could be there—she couldn't know about it. I'll search there if nothing else works, but the entry way is more likely. Wait." He disappeared from the girl's view into the passage that led through the "gardens of stone."

He traversed it at reckless speed, more alert for a glimmer of light ahead than for any of the dangers of the way. Time and again only a combination of subconscious memory and luck saved him from a bad fall. There were places where the floor was wet; these he examined eagerly for footprints, but he had found no trace of his wife when he reached the entrance.

Here he sought carefully for the missing lamp, which would presumably have been left behind if Judith had gone outside, but there was no sign of it. He looked in and around the gully for footprints and other traces in the brush. He was not an experienced hunter or tracker—what little he knew was a relic of his early childhood—but when he had finished he was almost certain that Judith had not left the cave that way. When his mind was made up on this point, he instantly began to retrace his path to the living caves.

Elitha had food waiting when he got there; she offered it to him in silence and accepted it the same way, thinking furiously as he ate. Considering Judith's state of mind when last seen, there was an all too likely explanation for her disappearance; but Marc preferred to consider possibilities which offered not only hope but a line of action.

"I don't see how she could have known of the other place, or why she should have gone there," he said at length, "but I'll have to look there, too."

"I have already looked there, sir. She is not there," said Elitha quietly. Marc frowned.

"How did you know where it was?"

"I know most of the ground above, for a long way around the garden. The second night I saw you go, I followed—I will tell you why later. I saw you go to the other hole and climb down."

Angry as he was, Marc had control enough not to ask whether she had seen what he had done there; he kept to the problem of his wife's disappearance.

"Then she has simply gone out into the caves."

"I'm afraid so, sir. I should have watched her."

"Now you're sounding like Judith herself. If anyone should have watched her, it should have been me. It is not important to fix blame; what we must do is find her."

"And if she does not wish to be found?"

"She must be found anyway! Even if what happened to Kyros drove her to madness she must be found—she mourned each of the others, just as I did, but she recovered each time."

"But how will you find her? Even you do not know all these caves and passages. If she simply started walking with no plan, the gods alone know where she might be now. And if you did find her, how would you get her to come back if—"

"I have persuaded her before. She will come back when I find her. Wait here, and keep food ready; I will come back to rest—I don't say every day, because I won't know when the days are over, but when I have to." Elitha looked at him thoughtfully.

"But I should help, Master. She should be found quickly, since she is without food; two of us can search more places before it is too late." He pondered that point, and finally nodded.

"Very well. You search the caverns closest to here. Mark your way, and start back while there is still enough oil in your lamp—"

"I understand, Master. I will not lose myself."

But the search could not be continuous. Food and sleep were necessities; oil had to be replenished—sometimes from the distant village. Elitha did this errand once so that Marc could keep on looking, but she was not able to carry nearly as much as he; more time was lost than gained. Marc made the trip thereafter.

At the end of the first week, Marc was pointing out that there was water in the caves, so Judith could still be living. At the end of the second, his tune was, "At least she won't be moving around now. We're more likely to find her." Elitha made no reply to either theory, even when the third week had passed and no sane person could have expected to find the woman alive. Marc, at this point, was not sane. The girl knew it, and spoke and acted accordingly.

On the twenty-third day he came back from one of his searches to find her waiting. This was not too unusual, but the bowl of food she handed him did catch his attention.

"Why did you take time to cook?" he asked. "Have you stopped searching?"

"Yes, sir. Since yesterday. Finish your food and I will explain." Somehow she dominated him as he had dominated Judith in similar circumstances, and he emptied the bowl, never taking his eyes from her face. When he had finished and set the bowl down, she took up one of the lamps.

"Come, my lord." He followed dumbly. She led the way along the tunnel to the garden for a short distance, and then turned off into a narrow passage to the right. Marc could see that the route was marked with soot, as they wound their way into a region which even he scarcely knew, close as it was to the home cave. He commented after a few minutes.

"Did she leave this trail?"

"No, sir. I marked it during my search yesterday. I had not come this way before."

"Then you found her?"

"You will see. Follow." He obeyed, and for half an hour the pair made their way through the unnoticed beauties of the cavern.

At the length the way opened into a space some fifty feet across. The girl stopped at its center.

"Look," she said, pointing to the floor.

Marc saw a clay lamp at her feet. It was dry, and the wick had clearly been left to burn down as the oil disappeared. He looked down at it briefly, then turned to the girl.

"You found this here?"

"Yes. It had been left where you found it now."

"You mean she left it here when it went dry and just wandered off in the dark?"

"No. I think it was burning when it was put down. Look again, Master." She gestured toward the far side of the chamber, and led the way toward it.

A pit, a dozen feet long and half as wide, lay before them. Elitha walked around one end of it to the wall on the farther side, where a cluster of finger-thin stalactites grew. She broke one of these off, and tossed it into the hole.

There was silence for several heartbeats, then a clatter as it struck. This was repeated several times, and terminated in a sound which might have been a splash, though it was too faint for Marc to be certain.

Elitha pointed to another broken stalactite, a few inches from the one she had used.

"She could have used this to find whether—whether this was deep enough," she said gently. She regretted for a moment being on the far side of the hole, but reflected that Marc liked to be sure before he acted. She was right.

He stood looking down into the blackness for what seemed a long time, while the girl stayed where she was, almost without breathing. Then he turned and walked back to the place where the lamp had been set. Elitha took the opportunity to round the pit again, and followed him. She waited behind him while he stood looking at the empty lamp once more, wondering whether the heartbeats she could hear were her own or his. Then he turned and began to walk slowly but purposefully back toward the pit.

She was in front of him instantly, barring his way. He stopped, and a faint smile crossed his face.

"Don't fear. You can find your way back," he said softly.

"I know I can. That's not it, Master. You must come, too."

"Why? The only thing I had left in life is down there." He nodded toward the pit.

"No. There is something else."

He raised his eyebrows, Judith's suggestion of a few weeks before crossing his mind. He chose his words carefully.

"Can you say just what is left for me? My family is gone. My fight is lost."

"No!" she almost shouted. "You're wrong! Your fight isn't lost—it's scarcely begun! Can't you see? I can't read or write—I haven't her wisdom—but I can hear. I heard much of what you said to her, and I learned much from what I heard. I know what you are fighting, and I know that you have already learned more about that fight than any man alive. It is still your fight, even though your own children are lost.

"My lord, I am a woman. I may never have children of my own, but I can speak for those who have or will. I know what your fight has cost—I know what you had to do in that other pit, where you had the child you stole from the village. I know why you couldn't tell our lady what you had done or why it had failed, until the little one was hurt—"

"I couldn't even tell her then," Marc cut in. "What I told her was not true. I did get my blood into that child, and my blood killed him. How could I tell her that?"

Elitha's eyes opened wide. "You mean one person's blood kills another? That Kyros was killed by his own mother's blood?"

"No. He might have been—I can't tell. But he wasn't. I don't know whether his mother's blood would have helped or harmed him. He died before she had opened her own vein. She used the knife to go into his arm, then put the quill into the blood vessel she had opened; but she never put any of her own blood into the funnel. She must have seen he was gone before she could start. I don't know what killed him; he may have been about to go anyway, or perhaps putting the empty funnel into his vein harmed him in some way I can't imagine now. How can I learn the truth when so many things may be true? Maybe she was right—maybe the gods did curse us."

"Or her."

"No! No god that would curse a woman like Judith is worth a man's worship."

"But a demon which would do so is worthy to be fought."

"That may be." He pondered silently for a while. "But I don't see how I can carry on the fight. Judith is gone, but even without her to help plan or—or hinder testing, I can't work alone—I don't know—I can't think straight anymore—maybe she was right about not trying things on other people—"

"She was wrong," cut in Elitha. "She could not help feeling so, because she had children of her own. If I had children, I might be the same; but as it is, I can think of other women's children, both now and in years to come. I loved your wife. I was her slave all my life that I can remember. I loved her children, though they were not mine; and because I loved children not my own, I can think of still others. I am not as wise as she was—"

"I wonder," he muttered inaudibly.

"—but I am sure she was wrong and you were right about this. She could not think of your using other children, because she could think only of how she would feel if they were hers. You yourself could not use your own child. Now you would listen to her dead voice, and stop the struggle. Listen to mine, Master, and fight on—for the children and mothers of the years to come!"

"You tell me to do what I have done—steal and kill children?"

"I say what you once said to her. If you do not, this sickness will kill more."

"And you could bring yourself to help?"

"Gladly. I saw your four sons die. I would do anything to stop that curse."

"But I can't keep stealing children from this one village. Sooner or later our work would become known. Could you face what would happen then?"

"If necessary, I could. But you need not stay here. Go back to the mountains where you were born—there must be many places where you could live and work. If we are feared and hated, it will be worth it—though I think we can remain unknown if we move often enough.

"You know I am right, Master. Leave her to sleep alone here, and come back to the fight."

The man nodded slowly, and spoke even more slowly.

"Yes, you are right. And she was wrong. She thought the curse was her fault, and that Kyros's injury and death were her fault, and could not forget it. I feel that her death was my fault—I didn't tell her enough of the truth; but whether my fault or not, there is still the fight." He looked down at the girl suddenly. "I even feel guilty for letting you join the work"—her eyes fell, and a faint smile crossed her face—"but I accept the blame. Come."

He stared to pick up the empty lamp, but she forestalled him. She took it, strode to the pit, and tossed it in. Heartbeats later its crash came back to them. After a moment he nodded, took the burning lamp, and led the way from the cave. Elitha, following in his shadow, allowed a momentary expression of relief to cross her features as she wiped oil from her fingers.

THE HOUSE ON STILLCROFT STREET by Joseph Payne Brennan

Joseph Payne Brennan has been a too carefully guarded secret of horror-story connoisseurs for more than two decades, during which time he has published dozens of excellent stories and a handful of short-story collections without quite achieving the reputation his talent deserves. Perhaps this is because his skill is so natural you enjoy it without noticing. So we urge you to pay attention and remember his name; and you'll definitely want to remember it after reading the following story with its rather nasty little suggestion that while it may be all right to talk to plants, you should never take your eyes off them.

Amley is one of those out-of-the-way villages which the average traveler never hears about. Years ago a main road passed perilously close to it, but this route has since been superseded by a high-speed, four-lane parkway. The old route is often nearly deserted and almost nobody turns off at the tilted sign bearing the weathered letters, Amley.

I was introduced to Amley years ago by my friend Hugh Corvington, a wealthy member of my club who had stormed Wall Street successfully and retired early. Although I was a largely unrecognized writer who would have had difficulty in scraping up a penny for every hundred dollars possessed by Corvington, for some reason he like me and sought out my company.

Occasionally we had long leisurely dinners together; now and then we spent an evening over the chessboard and a bottle of good port.

One June, when I was fretting about where to go for a vacation, Corvington mentioned Amley.

He was casual, even diffident, about it. "Not much of a place. Dull, you know. And not right if you want travel. Only forty-odd miles from here, but quiet and peaceful. Pleasant place, really. No trouble getting lodgings. In fact, you could bunk in with me while you looked around. I've got a small house up there. A bit cramped, I'm afraid, but there's the usual guest room. We could manage while you poked about and made up your mind."

Two weeks later I drove up the old route, turned at the tilted sign reading Amley, and after a few miles found myself in a charming, somnolent New England village which had somehow escaped the annual invasion of the acquisitive "summer people."

Corvington's "cramped" small house turned out to be a compact Georgian gem, complete with Doric entrance columns.

Less than an hour later, after a shower and a change of clothes, I was sitting with my affable host on a screened rear porch which overlooked an English-type walled garden.

As I settled back in my chair and sipped my whiskey and soda, I lost all desire to travel, to seek out lodgings—and to carry through the writing chores which I had assigned myself.

Corvington seemed to sense my mood. "Thought occurs to me, y'know. If you can put up with this place, no real reason to muck about after rooms somewhere else. Stay here. I have a woman come in to fix breakfast and lunch. Dinner usually at the Black Lion Inn, Amley's only hostelry. Quite good, really."

I thanked him sincerely but insisted that I wouldn't dream of imposing on him to such an extent.

He would have none of it. "No imposition at all. Quite the opposite. You'd be doing me a favor. Now that I have nothing pressing me, I get bored on occasion. We might have some splendid games of chess without having to watch the clock!"

He refreshed my drink. "Of course you'd be free to write whenever you wanted to. No intrusions there. I respect your craft."

So it was settled. I understood that he would be offended if I even suggested remuneration of my accommodations. I decided that I would try to pay for most of our dinners at the Black Lion Inn and let it go at that.

The summer settled in smoothly. I usually wrote for a few hours in the morning and after lunch strolled around the village. Often I walked right through into the surrounding countryside. I would return in time for a shower, cocktails, and a relaxed chat before I walked with my host to the Black Lion Inn.

Not infrequently I spent most of the afternoon sauntering about Amley's leafy street. The peace and quiet of the place, the relatively unpolluted air, and the sense of stability surrounding the quaint old houses acted as a tonic and—I might as well admit it—a soporific.

My writing proceeded more or less on schedule; some color came back to my pale face and I beat Corvington at chess more often than formerly. Fortunately, he was a good loser. My improving gave acted as a challenge and I think we both played better than we ever had before. I can recall many long-drawn, remorseless battles.

One sun-drenched afternoon while I was strolling Amley's shaded walks, I noticed a sign reading: Stillcroft Street. The name intrigued me. Quite naturally I decided to turn at the sign. The street was little different from others in Amley: quiet old houses, gardens, immense trees—and scarcely a soul in sight. As I neared the end of it, I saw that it was a dead-end thoroughfare and that I would have to go back the way I had come.

Sauntering to the extreme far end, I crossed the road, intending to return on the other side. It was then that I first noticed the opposite house, the last one on the street. The house itself was ordinary enough—a two-story brick square with very few embellishments—but it was surrounded by a thick growth of exotic-looking trees, shrubs, and plants which appeared to have run wild over the premises. There was no evidence of any recent pruning, trimming, or shaping.

I was particularly struck by a glossy, luxurious growth of heavy climbing ivy which virtually covered the entire front of the house, including the windows. Only the door itself seemed to have escaped the clutch of this remarkable plant.

I supposed the ivy was the common climbing variety but I had never seen ivy leaves so large. Their rich deep green color, shining in bars of sunlight which slanted through the trees, appeared to possess a purplish sheen.

As I remained staring at the unusual growth, I caught a glimpse of a white-haired man's face peering out of one of the upper windows. The window itself was almost entirely screened by ivy leaves, and as I looked up, the face abruptly disappeared.

Turning away, I continued back up Stillcroft Street toward the center of Amley.

Over cocktails that afternoon I mentioned the house to Corvington.

He nodded. "That's Millward Frander's house. Noted botanist, y'know. Used to travel all over the world and bring back rare plants. Had a showplace garden. But he's been ill for some years. Recluse now. Scarcely anybody sees him. Stays shut in there and the garden's run riot. Too bad."

He sipped his martini and for some minutes was silent. Finally he added, as an afterthought of little importance, "Second cousin of mine, actually. I've a key to the house even. Never dream of using it, of course. I like privacy and I respect it."

"You're right," I agreed, "but don't you think he's got carried away a bit? The place is going to disappear in that jungle!"

Corvington shrugged. "I've a sort of philosophy. Every man has a right to his own kind of madness—providing, of course, it doesn't impinge on the rights of others. If Millward wants to live in a miniature jungle—well, so be it!"

I dropped the subject and did not bring it up again, but every day or two I found myself sauntering down Stillcroft Street. I presumed poor old Millward Frander was cursing me out as an infernal spy and busybody, but that strange ivy-shrouded house drew me like a magnet.

During the hot, brilliant summer the ivy seemed to grow almost visibly. Ivy, of course, is not a sun-lover, but the house itself was well-shaded by a row of huge old elms which grew along the front walk. The ivy received very little direct sunlight.

Almost as I watched, it seemed, the broad five-lobed leaves, glimmering purple-green, extended their domain. Only once or twice more after my first glimpse of that white-haired old man's face at the window, did I see it again. The ivy leaves sent their fluttering legions over the glass and the window just disappeared completely.

I marveled at the thing's growth—and marveled more at the occupant who willingly, I presumed, permitted his house to be swallowed up, as it were.

As the summer wore on, Corvington became a bit edgy. I could see that something was beginning to bother him. I caught him frowning on occasion and I noticed that his chess game fell off considerably.

Finally, one afternoon as we sipped our iced martinis on the screened porch, he brought up the matter.

"Infernal nuisance, y'know," he began, "but I'm getting a little worried about Millward. Tradesmen haven't heard from him in weeks. Mail piled up." He turned toward me. "Have you walked down Stillcroft lately?"

I was perfectly aware that he knew I had. "Every few days. The windows are completely covered with that climbing ivy and I haven't seen a sign of life." I set down my drink. "Of course nobody could see a sign of life. You could have a banquet or a ball in there with nobody the wiser. The windows are simply blanked out by that greedy growth."

"Odd you'd use that word."

"What word?" I asked.

"Greedy."

He was silent for some time. At length he reached over and refilled my glass. "I suppose," he said, "that I ought to do something."

"I think so," I agreed. "I know the idea of—intrusion—is distasteful to you, but it would do no harm to look in on the old boy."

He settled back with a sigh. "Well, tomorrow's time enough. We'll go down, and if there's no answer at the door, I'll use my key, much as I hate meddling."

The next day, like most of its predecessors, was hot and sunny. After a light lunch, we started out for Millward Frander's house on Stillcroft Street.

Overnight, it appeared to me, the shining, purple-green ivy leaves had grown larger and more luxurious. They were everywhere. They had climbed over the eaves and started across the roof. Their tiny claspers clung to the drains, the bricks themselves, the windowpanes. The house looked as if it had been draped in a thick cloak of shimmering ivy.

Corvington rang the bell in vain. After a ten-minute wait, he sighed with resignation and took out his key. "Hate doing this, y'know."

The door opened grudgingly. We saw then that the minute clasper-rootlets of the ivy had begun to pry into the almost invisible slit of space between the door and its frame.

The entrance hall exuded a peculiar smell—a mixture of decay and growth, damp, sweet, and sickish.

Corvington shouted up the stairs. "Millward!"

He called again and we waited, but there was no reply.

Closing the door behind us, he slipped the key into his pocket. "Might as well go up, I guess."

As a trudged up the stairs behind him, I noticed that the unpleasant odor became more intense.

In the upstairs hall, Corvington looked about in some confusion. "Been years since I was in here. Forgotten which was his favorite room."

At length he settled on the last door to the right, toward the front of the house.

He knocked and there was no reply. Finally he pounded on the door. "Millward! It's Corvington!" Silence.

He tried the door and found it locked. "Hang it all! I don't have keys for all the rooms!"

After a moment's hesitation, he shrugged and swung his big shoulder against the door. It crashed inward with a splintering rasp of broken wood and metal.

We stepped into the semidarkened room—and stood stricken speechless.

In the green, glimmering half-darkness, a thing which had once been human slumped in an arm chair a few feet from the front window. It was covered with a great fluttering, waving mass of the huge, five-lobed ivy leaves. Only its outline was visible. For a minute or so, as we remained rooted with horror, the shape itself stayed motionless. Then it moved. It lifted itself from the chair and a thin, half-stifled scream came out of its mouth.

The purplish, fleshy-looking ivy leaves immediately veered in our direction, as if we had been some kind of magnet.

The thing fell back in the chair but the inhuman, high-pitched scream of protest and agony went on and on.

The ivy leaves waved frantically. Possibly it was my imagination, but I had the distinct impression that their claspers had descended to the floor in front of the chair and were starting across toward us.

At last Corvington recovered himself. He shoved me toward the door. "Get out at once! Out of the house!"

As I hurried down the stairs, he was right behind me. Even under the circumstances, I felt that this—well, it wasn't like the Corvington I knew, or thought I knew.

Once outside, I turned to him. "My God, Corvington, what are you going to do?"

"You'll see," he replied grimly.

I followed him around the side of the house, fighting through an almost impenetrable mass of vegetation. Swearing, he tore his way toward a sort of shed or garage which was situated in the rear of the house. The building bore such a weight of massed vines, limbs, and leaves, it appeared about to cave in.

Somehow Corvington reached it, got one of the doors open, and groped inside. I waited, nearly suffocated in the dense tangle of growth, and presently he pushed his way out. I saw that he was carrying a heavy ax. The blade was rusty but the handle looked solid.

As we struggled back toward the front of the house, I felt certain that the huge tangle had closed in behind us.

As soon as we emerged near the entrance door, I understood Corvington's purpose. Pushing his way to the front of the house, he located the main root, or trunk, of the ivy.

I know it may sound absurd, but the infernal thing seemed to sense his plan. The heavy ivy leaved fluttered against his face. I am positive I saw one or more of the claspers fasten on the shoulder of his jacket—but Corvington, once aroused, was formidable. He was not to be stopped.

Swinging the ax in a wide arc, he buried the rusty blade in the knotty root.

Gasping, he stepped back. I saw that he was staring at the half-severed root. Wiping the perspiration from my eyes, I looked more closely at it. A thin trickle of liquid was seeping out of the ivy trunk. It looked like blood.

Corvington swung the ax again—and again.

Things are handled quietly in Amley—if you know the right people. Corvington knew them.

There was no publicity—aside from the stark announcement of Millward Frander's death "from circulatory problems associated with a failing heart."

The funeral was private and the casket was closed.

Corvington, who inherited his cousin's house, had all its surrounding vegetation chopped, cut and sheared away—down to the last blade of grass.

One evening at the club, long afterward, he brought up the subject

"Y'know," he said, "specimens of that monstrous ivy were sent to some of the best botanists in the country and they couldn't identify it! Millward must have rooted it out in some remote, unexplored jungle area. It resembles the common ivy—Hedera canariensis—which is native to North Africa and the Canary Islands—but there are horrible differences.

"Rootlets of the damned thing had infiltrated a tiny fissure along the window frame where Millward usually sat.

"We don't know the exact sequence of events. He may have suffered a stroke and been unable to move out of the chair. At any rate, once inside, the ivy headed right for him. Its claspers fastened on him while he was still alive and hairlike root filaments penetrated into his tissues. It must have been agony beyond our comprehension."

Corvington refilled his glass. "Actually, however, it may not have lasted long. Even—what we saw—may have been deceptive. Millward may have been already dead when we entered."

"But he tried to get out of that chair!" I objected.

Corvington frowned. "Yes, I know. But . . . well . . . you see, it may have been a sort of—symbiosis. In other words, Millward may have been clinically dead when we saw him. The ivy root filaments may simply have acted on his nerve endings, galvanized them, so to speak. In other words, he was little more than a sort of zombie, physically animated by outside sources."

I shook my head. "Hard to believe. That scream . . ."

Corvington nodded. "I know. But even that might be explained. The autopsy disclosed that the hideous thing had sent its hairlike rootlets right into his brain. The stimulation may have acted on his speech centers, even though he was medically dead."

"And that red—fluid—in the root?"

Corvington grimaced. "Thought you'd bring that up. We had it analyzed. It was—part of it, anyway—human blood."

I had to let it go at that. Corvington, I observed, had closed the subject.

Today, whenever I see a friend's house wearing ivy, I immediately urge him to get rid of the growth. I suppose I'm a bit too vehement about it.

Some of my acquaintances have begun to consider me a trifle eccentric.

THE RECRUDESCENCE OF GEOFFREY MARVELL by G. N. Gabbard

Here's a story that takes place in the Black Forest, features a roguish vagabond as hero, a comely damsel as heroine, dastardly baron as villain—and a veritable parade of ghosts and revenants: in fact, so many familiar elements (no pun intended there) that one might question whether or not the story could have anything fresh to say or do. Well, one would be reckoning without the sly skills of G. N. Gabbard, who here adds his name to that small but gratifying list of writers capable of producing stories at once horrifying and funny.

"Ach, Geister! Ritt' mich!"

The cry for help came muffled through the fog, then came the patter of running steps, muffled but growing clearer. Marvell waited until the girl was almost upon him.

"You took no stock in ghosts this noon, Luise. Now 'tis midnight, the tune runs otherwise?"

She stopped, staring. He might have been a ghost himself, with his pale melancholy face framed in black hair that drooped lank to the shoulders, and his black surcoat, boots, and hat—froth of lace at wrists and throat, ghost-blood from a suicide's wounds. But she reached hesitant fingers to a sleeve and, reassured by the solid touch, grasped his arm with both hands.

"I did see a ghost, yonder," she said.

"Why, 'tis not for nothing they call this neck of the Black Forest Gespensterwald—Specter Wood; or so your father told me at the inn. You sang another song then." He glanced around. "Or is it a snare—that while I comfort you 'gainst the possibility of phantoms, some of your kin phantom-foot up out of this pestilent fog, rap the Englishman's empty head for him, and pick his not-far-from-empty purse?"

"Oh, no!"

Marvell twitched pale lips. "Your eyes spark with veracity. But they do say 'blue eyes are true eyes,' meaning that the best liar hath blue eyes that seem most true when most they lie. And, often enough, hair that shines like gold even at midnight in a misty wood."

"And are you not afraid of ghosts?" she asked seriously, though a faint redness spread in her cheek.

"Only the ghost of King Charles, that gnaws me here." He struck his heart melodramatically; he struck it again, and the rings on his fingers clinked against something. He put hand into coat and drew forth a flask. "And here I have what will lay the most importunate such ghost. Spirits for the spirit. Wine, though it be but poor sour German stuff, when well seasoned with kisses is a sovereign physic for all gripes of the heart."

"Du albern!" She laughed. "Silly! Your king has been dead these four years and more now."

"Aye. But if I cease to mourn him, what cause would I tell fair maidens why this face of mine droops so low, that they would take pity on me? Come, there's a spot of dry earth nearby—the single one in all this forest, I swear!"

Only a few minutes later, Luise sat up abruptly. "There are ghosts here! Listen!"

Marvell cursed all ghosts with ingenious Cavalier curses, sat up beside her, listened. "Only the wind," he said uncertainly.

"It's not!" she hissed.

"Well, we might follow yon path till it met another . . ."

"It does, not far along. Will we be safe there?"

"So goes the tale. I've heard in Scotland that ghosts do shun a crossroads; but your Teutonic specters, now . . ."

The girl jumped lightly to the path and scampered off, holding the skirt of her coarse frock up out of the mire. Marvell followed at his leisure. Behind him, a faint blue glow showed far and faint through the thinning fog. "Foxfire," he said. When he looked back again, it was larger and had moved—it moved as he watched it "Corpse candle," he said. "Will-o'-the-wisp, that is," loosening his rapier. He looked to his pistols, but found the priming irredeemably damp. He walked faster.

Behind him now he heard a dull keening that was not the wind. And a faint rattle of chains—But that came from in front of him!

He stopped and peered ahead. Last wisps of mist wavered here and there, unpredictably blurring the view. Yes, there lay the crossroad in a small clearing. Head in arms, Luise crouched where the roads met, and beyond, across the clearing, loomed the dark skeletal bulk of a gibbet.

When Marvell touched her, she jumped. She pointed to the gibbet, keeping her eyes turned away, and said shakily, "I'd not remembered this was here."

Sniffing the air, he gazed up at the heavy oaken structure. A corpse dangled there, evidently quite fresh although birds had made off with the eyes and several other accessories. It swayed in the breeze, and the chains enwrapping it tinkled a dirge in minor fifths.

"I'd liefer 'twere an Aeolian harp," said Marvell. "But under the circumstances—What's amiss?"

Luise had clapped hand to mouth and was shrieking quietly through it. Blue light, phosphorescent, putrescent, flowed into the clearing with the inevitability of neap tides. A skeleton emerged from the trees—a skeleton apparently assembled in some haste, for several ribs and minor bones were missing, and these it carried under one arm. It staggered forward, zigzagging like frozen lightning, with a low rattle as of chattering teeth in a shut mouth. It detoured around the crossroad. After it a dried stringy lich stalked along with the dignity of a Spanish grandee, grave-clothes bunched cloaklike on one arm. And behind it, a third . . .

Marvell found his voice. " 'What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?" he whispered. Luise, innocent of all English, stared at him dumbly, stared again at the ghosts.

An endless rout of them marched along—some in their habit as they lived, some marked by corruption, in charnel cerements, and some no more than indecently naked bone. Some were women, harridans and courtesans and young girls, and some dragged ghostly children with them and some dogs. A Moorish knight wafted past, turbaned and lightly mailed, stub of a broken lance in hand, followed by a troop of Negroes jingling slave-manacles. One specter held up its head lanternwise, with fingers tangled in long dark hair. Marvell, remembering his king, started; but the ghost's dress, smutched with blood and grime, was feminine. He saw other signs of the executioner's ax, and of the rope, the rack, and the lash. One youth whose forehead bore a thief-brand pulled himself along on stumps of legs. Another showed face and hands dissolved away by leprosy; but none of this company shied away from him. And over all hovered a sourceless, ceaseless moaning.

At length the last of the procession hove in sight: two sturdy peasants dripping gore from deep-trenched gashes. They and only they seemed impatient, and pressed forward on the heels of those before them as if to hurry the march.

Luise poked a shivering hand toward them. "Ernst and Georg," she whimpered. "Robbers waylaid them on the road day before yesterday."

"Friends of yours?" said Marvell. "Call them to us, then, and inquire the whence and whither of this caravan. Perhaps hell's had an earthquake and these are escaped."

Luise only burrowed into her crossed arms again. The late Georg and the late Ernst disappeared into the trees. The moaning receded, and the blue light—but not all of it.

Turning on his heel, Marvell saw the gibbeted corpse aglow. The light grew strong, detached itself, took on the form of a burly, well-dressed man with rope-burned neck and protuberant tongue. It leaped down from the platform and went bounding away after the others.

"Were you a familiar of this one too?" Marvell asked.

"Oh, some townsman the baron condemned of highway robbery, I hear." She looked cautiously. "Are they all gone?"

"All, and I with them. 'Tis said curiosity killed the cat, but I'm no feline; and I mean to find out whither these diverse haunters of the night are bent. Bide here. Belike 'twill be safe enough." Before she could protest, he trotted off down the path.

The fog had lifted, but clouds still hid the stars and moon. Under the trees' clotted foliage it was darker than ever. Soon Marvell saw a point of blue light ahead, and slowed his pace so as to remain barely in sight of it.

He lost the light in a marshy place which was not to be passed over lightly by one of mortal solidity and weight, then, hurrying to catch up, rushed unexpectedly out of the forest. He stepped back and looked through underbrush at the scene.

On a low hill squatted a castle, blacker against the surrounding blackness but for a small lighted window midmost of its bulk. The ghosts were shuffling forward through its main gate—lined up, Marvell thought, like a crowd at a playhouse waiting to give up their farthings for places in the pit. As they filtered in, the castle began to display other windows, blue. The light inside waxed as the crowd outside diminished, until finally the entire structure took fire with it and even the lighted window was tinged, yellow turned sickly green.

Marvell cocked an ear. The breeze blew to him noises of a hostile murmuring, howls, shouts, and imprecations uttered in hollow bodiless voices, clangor of chains, and gnashing of immaterial jaws. And above it all a booming laughter, too loud and massive to have issued from any but a living throat. He frowned in perplexity, and turned back up the path.

When he reached the crossword again, Luise was gone. He cursed her in one breath, saved the next for walking. She was not on the path as far as it stayed in the forest. Cursing again, he thrust his way into the undergrowth.

At last tired of the search, he dropped down by a mossy pool and meditated. "Was it the specters she fled from, or me? Hm." He leaned forward, to make out a dim reflection in the water. His moustache needed trimming, he observed. And the gray plume of his hat drooped, dank with dew.

"Well, we'll see what comes with the morning," he said, and went to sleep with his back against a tree.

The ghosts woke him with their moaning as they hastened back to wherever they had come from. Dawn found him banging at the flimsy wooden gate of the castle.

He who opened the gate was as large, dark, and ugly as the castle itself. With deliberate rudeness, Marvell said in English, "Oh, someone lives here, then!"

The porter replied in the same language, "If you thought not, why have you been knocking at the gate? Unecht' englischer Schwein!"

"I speak no Dutch," said Marvell blankly. "What place is this, if you please?"

"Kassburg. The castle of the Baron Kassier."

"Ah. Will you tell your master that Sir Geoffrey Marvell craves speech with him."

"Nein. The baron sleeps now. He sleeps the day through."

Marvell wrinkled his brow. "S'truth? Well, have you spied a maid wandering through the forest of late? Blue eyes, golden hair, et cetera."

"One such came knocking lately at the gate, even as you. Come and see." Marvell ambled through the wide-flung gate, followed the porter across an inner courtyard and into the castle's main hall.

It was a vast room, with walls and arched ceiling of unadorned raw stone, floor of rush-strewn oak plank. The only furniture consisted of a table and four chairs set before the great fireplace. In one of the chairs sat Luise, dwarfed, like a child's doll abandoned in an empty house.

"She waits," the porter said. "The baron will want to talk with her when he awakes."

"He has awaked," came a suety voice. Marvell swept off his hat as Baron Kassier closed the door behind him. The baron was less large and only less ugly than his porter, with fat where the other had sinew. He wore a dirty silk bedgown and a blond periwig which flowed down from his massive head to inundate his shoulders. " 'Kann nicht schlafen for this hubbub belowstairs. You are Sir Something Marvell? (My bedchamber lies near to the gate.) What do you wish?"

"He wants the girl," said the porter.

Kassier directed his piggish eyes at Luise. "So? You have judgment, Sir Whatever-it-is. And you roam about the forest succoring fair maidens? Very good. But from what, in this case? The girl (I recognize her) comes from Rastdorf, and therefore I am myself her feudal protector. And since, besides, I—or rather Johannes, in character of my deputy—rescued her first . . ."

"The matter of the maid can be set by for the nonce," said Marvell. "For in truth, Baron, I came here for another reason—that if I do not gratify my curiosity soon, I am like to burst with it. And my curiosity has but one question: to wit, that is't you do all night?"

The baron looked at Johannes. Johannes looked at the baron. The baron said, "Wie?"

Marvell smiled ingratiatingly. "You sleep all the day so that you may spend the night as host to the company of specters I spied entering this castle not six hours agone. I would know why. I tell you, sir, I have not seen such a mort of ghosts since last they gave Macbeth, before the playhouses were closed in England."

Kassier looked at him stolidly, then nodded. "Stimmt. Sit you down, then, while I tell. 'Hannes, etwas zum trinken. In Krueger!" The porter lumbered out. Marvell took a chair at one end of the table, pushing its back against the wall. Kassier sat opposite. Between them, Luise looked from one to the other anxiously. Marvell smiled at her; smiled, impartially, at the baron also.

"You ask what are the ghosts," rumbled the baron. "They are my trophies—I collect them. That is all and sum."

"How's this?" Marvell said, sitting up straight. "Collect ghosts! Why, how would a man pursue such a matter?"

" 'Tis simple."

Johannes brought beer in pewter tankards. He clanked the heavy containers down on the table, glaring at Marvell as he did so, then took the remaining chair. Marvell ignored him and looked with expectation at the baron.

Kassier drained his tankard at one gulp, wiped sleeve across lips, and continued, " 'Tis an unescapable rule of occult science that one which hath some great wrong done him, and most specially in manner of dying, must thereafter haunt the author of that wrong, in spirit, until the wrong be repaid. Versteh'?"

"Oh, aye. 'Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night.' "

"I talk of no stage-phantoms wrapped in muslin sheets, but of genuine spirits—trailing spirit blood and rotten grave-wrappings," Kassier gloated. "Some, see you, I betrayed into the hands of their enemies, or of robbers, of the state, of the Inquisition. Some I contrived the execution of, on forged evidence. Some I poisoned. But most—ah, scores of them! I created with my hands, breaking and crushing the fleshly tenement till the spirit broke free—oh, what a painful birthing that was!—the spirit tempered in fires of torment and bound forever to me by unbreakable threads of hatred. And like a master puppeteer I play with those very threads. For they come here each night—from Spain, from Sweden, France, Austria, even from Greece and Muscovy, dragged wailing from their rest by lust of revenge. Those I poisoned would poison me in return; those whose beheading I caused would wrench the head from my body; those I tortured would torture me. They come here. But . . . look!"

He thrust a hand down the table, and Marvell bent to look. On one finger gleamed a ring of gold, crudely fashioned, and set with a flat dull green stone whereon were incised two interlaced triangles.

" 'Tis one of the sigils of Solomon," rasped Kassier, "by which he commanded the spirits of the air. While I wear it, there is no ghost in hell or out of it can harm me, or any who sit in arm's reach of me. And so we sit here each night, 'Hannes and I—oh, he sits very close to me, 'Hannes does, and follows me where I walk, like a great hound. We sit in this hall and taunt the spirits which flock around, brandishing their weapons and reproaching us with their wounds and crying out for that they cannot lay hands upon us." He laughed the huge laugh Marvell had heard the night before, and clapped his hands around the empty tankard before him. "What think you of this, Sir—er—Knight?"

Marvell quoted, " 'As for myself, I walk abroad o' nights, And kill sick people groaning under walls: Sometimes I go about and poison wells . . .' "

Kassier blinked ponderously. "So? You deem me a monstrous sham, like Marlowe's Jew of Malta. Nay, rather than a character am I a dramatist, a carver of life into such shapes as please me with their spectacle. And now I have a mind to add your fair maiden to my happy family of dramatis personae." Luise, though not understanding his words, shrank back from the look he gave her. "For the process of—eh—spiritualization here, promises to yield as much pleasure as the later viewing of her, so to say, out of the flesh. Now quote me a line for that!"

Marvell coiled up his muscles. " '. . . Most foul, strange, and unnatural,' " he said. "But whether 'tis true what you tell me, or a prodigious lie, I think you'll not fright me away, nor have the maid for any kind of your pleasure."

Kassier's glance slid sideways. " 'Hannes, haben wir ein englischer Geist in unserer Truppe?"

"Nicht . . . jetzt!" Johannes surged to his feet, dirk in hand. But Marvell was before him, sword-point set to his throat.

"Luise, renn' hinweg!" he snapped. He caught a movement in the corner of his eye, whirled, but too late. A hurled tankard struck him full on the forehead, and Kassier laughed him down into blackness.

Jarred back to consciousness, Marvell found himself lying in pain, darkness, and a shallow pool of water. Above, a disk of light held Johannes's ugly face.

"You are not cunning," a gruff voice echoed down. "We saw, the baron and I, that you understood Deutsch, for you knew the girl, and she clearly spoke no English. No, not cunning, handsome one. But lucky, yes. The baron commanded you dead at once, but I let you stay alive as long as you can, down there. Learn cunning from the serpents, or dine on them. You get nothing else to eat from me. Maybe I come back in a while and tell you how far along we are with the pretty one." He laughed. "After that, I see you soon—with the other ghosts!" A trapdoor slammed into place.

In the darkness, Marvell crept out of fetid water and groped until his hand closed on a hanging chain, the remains of a set of fetters. He must be in one of the castle's old dungeon cells. With the chain's support he pulled himself almost to his knees. Then the wall fastening gave way, dropping him back to the floor, pelted with rotten stone. Splashes rose around him, and hisses. A cold wet coil slid over his wrist. He jumped up and leaned against the wall.

As his eyes adjusted to the faint light that filtered in from somewhere, he saw that his cell was ancient. The floor was crumbled away and the cavity filled with black water; even the stone of the walls had collapsed in places to a depth of a foot and more. His only companions in despair were a skeleton meekly rotting in the pool and a dozen miscellaneous water snakes.

Across from him a pile of rubble from the walls formed a shelf which appeared comparatively dry and comfortable. He waded over and occupied it, after dispossessing a number of outraged reptiles, using the chain as a flail. There he sat, and considered ids melancholy situation. He considered it for some hours.

He came to himself to discover that he had gone to sleep and slid to the floor, nose within an inch of the pool. He retook the shelf and began his thoughts again from the beginning.

Immured in a tomblike dungeon far beneath the castle's foundations, sans food and sans companionship save for that of the snakes—companionable beasts, for they kept trying to snuggle up to him. Not poisonous, but not pleasant pets either. Sans timepiece, sans weapon save for his dagger, which Johannes had missed. Surrounded by unwholesome damps; and to top it off, there was a draft. The humors of his body were like to become unbalanced. Asthma would supervene if starvation did not—

"Idiot!" he shouted, leaping to his feet amid hisses of disturbed snakes. A draft must come through an opening. And so, for that matter, must the light and the snakes. He put his nose into the draft and followed it. It led him into the pool and eventually to the pool's far side, to a low mouth hardly as big as a badger hole. Drawing his dagger, he knelt knee-deep in water and pried at the rotten stone. Snakes frolicked around his hands, tangling his fingers. He cursed their playfulness as the stone crumbled bit by bit and debris splashed down. When the hole was large enough, he crawled in and kept burrowing, digging, with his chin barely out of water.

After more hours, the dagger broke through a thin shell of stone. He followed it, and stood upright in a tunnel whose sides he could touch with outstretched hands. The floor inclined. He turned upward, but immediately came against an old cave-in. Downward, then. As he went on that way, water rose to his knees, to his waist. He shivered with the chill, and wondered if he had incontinently leaped from frying pan to fire. It was the most inappropriate metaphor possible.

Ghosts kept crowding into the great hall; ghost-light thickened until it was like fog and even the blaze in the fireplace seemed to burn blue. They stood all about the table where sat Kassier, Johannes, and Luise: stood silent but for their omnipresent humming moan, and stared at the baron out of empty sockets lit by sparks of witch-fire.

The baron caressed Luise's hand. "Look there, my dear. See you that pale lovely maiden with burned feet and ropes all around her? The daughter of an impoverished Castilian hidalgo, whom I denounced to the Inquisition for a witch. She had fed me a love-potion, I told them!" His laugh boomed out hollow through the stone vault. "Look, look closely. See, the merest kiss of the flame yet shows on her lips."

"I told them best tie her tight," Johannes grumbled. "But no! And near as soon as the fagots were litten, she leaned down and breathed the flame, and so died."

The baron smiled thickly. "But at the least, her beauty was thus preserved for our present delectation. 'Twould be sad were her face like that of yon Francois de l'Isle, which is as much as to say no face at all. Grilled alive by the Count of Flanders, at my behest." Luise buried her face in her hands and shuddered.

The rickety skeleton which always led the procession bounded forward into the space before the table and began to caper, like an animated print of the medieval danse macabre. It limped slightly, lacking in its ankle-assembly a few small bones which it tossed up and down in one hand. Suddenly it halted, leaning on the table, and flung the bones down like dice. It pointed a bony finger at them and leered in Kassier's face, a gamester taunting his opponent over the verdict of fortune.

"The old fellow is lively tonight," growled Johannes.

" 'Tis the first I ever slew," Kassier boasted. "My elder brother, who had the inheritance. But you'll meet him, and all of them, more intimately—in a week, or perhaps a month. And, talking of additions to our troupe—where, Johannes, is the new Englishman?"

Johannes shifted in his seat and opened his mouth as if to reply. Then Luise whimpered, staring beyond them, and the two men turned to follow her look.

Through the inner door glided Geoffrey Marvell, draped to the heels in white, his pale face dabbled with blood. He swayed in the wind and drifted forward, and the other ghosts made way for him with grave courtesy. Behind him a chain dragged, monotonously clanking.

"Ach, da! Sehr gut!" the baron cried, turning his chair to face the new arrival. "Your English friend, he makes a very fine ghost, does he not?"

"He looks so natural!" wailed Luise, and began to blubber.

"Trust a female to say the most foolish thing," muttered Kassier. Then, addressing in English the still-advancing apparition, "Come close, Englaender, so that we may review your fittings. 'Tis no original appearance you furnish forth—bedsheets and chains, Herrgott! But that is the influence, ohne Zweifel, of your sensational English drama."

Johannes burst out, "But him I put in the old oubliette! He cannot have starved already!"

"Only observe the blood, 'Hannes. Did you take from him his dagger? No? Clearly, then, he has cut his own throat in despair. A melancholic lot, these English, given to soliloquy and suicide."

All this while, Marvell steadily advanced. His gaze was fixed on the face of Kassier, with no least glance for Luise, who looked at him with tear-glazed eyes.

" 'Tis little enough, that blood," Johannes muttered, leaning forward to peer, and thus putting himself between Marvell and the baron.

"Er hat Wucht!" Johannes screeched suddenly. He hopped up, pawing at his knife-hilt "He has weight! See the way he moves, Baron, and listen—I hear his footsteps!"

Marvell swooped forward, bare feet slapping the floor. Before Johannes could draw blade, the chain whipped around his neck. Marvell's shoulders heaved. Johannes sprawled silently into the fire. Marvell slid down the table and seized the baron's hand, which had carried an uncorked vial halfway to his mouth.

The fire was out now, and in the gelid light Kassier's skin looked bloodless, his sag-fleshed face dead but for eyes glittering with fear. Marvell shattered the vial, and green liquid coiled sluggishly on the table. All around, ghosts bayed and thrust out fleshless hands.

Marvell showed his teeth. He said, "I leave you, sir, in the bosom of your family." He tore the seal-ring and a square inch of skin from its finger. The baron wailed like a dog and scurried under the table. Ghosts, now silent, closed in.

"Come!" Marvell grabbed Luise's hand and ran for the outer door, brushing away ghosts that clung like cold tenacious cobwebs. They were more material to the baron, as his howls testified.

Once under shelter of the trees, they slowed to a walk.

Luise gasped. "Do we have aught to fear, now, from the ghosts?"

"They're otherwise occupied for the nonce," Marvell said, listening to screams that faded with distance. "But 'twas a near thing, that. I found me in a burrow that went down, far down, before it turned upward again—"

She squeezed his arm as if to assure herself of its solidity. "Oh, I care not how you escaped, so long as you did."

"Well, it debouched at last near to the baron's own bedchamber. Which puts into my mind—" He stopped to divest himself of the sheets, made as if to toss them away.

"Stop!" She snatched them away and bundled them up in her arms. "Real linen, these are. They'll come in handy sometime."

Marvell's teeth flashed in the dimness. "Aye, perhaps sooner than you deem, if we cannot find out that single dry spot again. Come along—" Ceremoniously, he placed the ring of Solomon on her finger. "Whatever happens, there'll be no ghosts to interrupt, this time!"

SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE by David Drake

It takes a great deal of skill for a writer to cram a lot of plot into a short space. David Drake does it here in a mere twenty-five hundred words. The result is a strong, scary tale about a soldier back from Vietnam with a war story to tell that isn't quite like any other you've ever heard—and that isn't over yet, either.

"He was out in the hall just a minute ago, sir," the pinched-faced WAC said, looking up from her typewriter in irritation. "You can't mistake his face."

Captain Richmond shrugged and walked out of the busy office. Blinking in the dim marble were a dozen confused civilians, bussed in for their pre-induction physicals. No one else was in the hallway. The thick-waisted officer frowned, then thought to open the door of the men's room. "Sergeant Morzek?" he called.

Glass clinked within one of the closed stalls and deep voice with a catch in it grumbled, "Yeah, be right with you." Richmond thought he smelled gin.

"You the other ghoul?" the voice questioned as the stall swung open. Any retort Richmond might have made withered when his eyes took in the cadaverous figure in ill-tailored greens. Platoon sergeants's chevrons on the sleeves, and below them a longer row of services stripes than the captain remembered having seen before. God, this walking corpse might have served in World War II! Most of the ribbons ranked above the sergeant's breast pockets were unfamiliar, but Richmond caught the little V for valor winking in the center of a silver star. Even in these medal-happy days in Southeast Asia they didn't toss many of those around.

The sergeants cheeks were hollow, his fingers grotesquely thin where they rested on top of the door or clutched the handles of his zipped AWOL bag. Where no moles squatted, his skin was as white as a convict's; but the moles were almost everywhere, hands and face, dozens and scores of them, crowding together in welted obscenity.

The sergeant laughed starkly. "Pretty, aren't I? The docs tell me I got too much sun over there and it gave me runaway warts. Hell, four years is enough time for it to."

"Umm," Richmond grunted in embarrassment, edging back into the hall to have something to do. "Well, the car's in back . . . if you're ready, we can see the Lunkowskis."

"Yeah, Christ," the sergeant said, "that's what I came for, to see the Lunkowskis." He shifted his bag as he followed the captain and it clinked again. Always before, the other man on the notification team had been a stateside officer like Richmond himself. He had heard that a few low-casualty outfits made a habit of letting whoever knew the dead man best accompany the body home, but this was his first actual experience with the practice. He hoped it would be his last.

Threading the green Ford through the heavy traffic of the city center, Richmond said, "I take it Private Lunkowski was one of your men?"

"Yeah, Stevie-boy was in my platoon for about three weeks," Morzek agreed with a chuckle. "Lost six men in that time and he was the last. Six out of twenty-nine, not very damn good, was it?"

"You were under heavy attack?"

"Hell, no, mostly the dinks were letting us alone for a change. We were out in the middle of War Zone C, you know, most Christ-bitten stretch of country you ever saw. No dinks, no trees—they'd all been defoliated. Not a damn thing but dust and each other's company."

"Well, what did happen?" Richmond prompted impatiently. Traffic had thinned somewhat among the blocks of old buildings and he began to look for house numbers.

"Oh, mostly they just died." Morzek said. He yawned alcoholically. "Stevie, now, he got blown to hell by a grenade."

Richmond had learned when he was first assigned to notification duty not to dwell to the way his . . . missions had died. The possibilities varied from unpleasant to ghastly. He studiously avoided saying anything more to the sergeant beside him until he found the number he wanted. "One-sixteen. This must be the Lunkowskis'."

Morzek got put on the curb side, looking more skeletal than before in the dappled sunlight. He still held his AWOL bag.

"You can leave that in the car," Richmond suggested. "I'll look up."

"Naw, I'll take it in," the sergeant said as he waited for Richmond to walk around the car. "You know, this is every damn thing I brought from Nam? They didn't bother to open it at Travis, just asked me what I had in it. 'A quart of gin,' I told 'em, 'but I won't have it long,' and they waved me through to make my connections. One advantage to this kind of trip."

A bell chimed far within the house when Richmond pressed the button. It was cooler than he had expected on the pine-shaded porch. Miserable as these high, dark old houses were to heat, the design made a world of sense in the summer.

A light came on inside. The stained-glass window left of the door darkened and a latch snicked open. "Please to come in," invited a soft-voiced figure hidden by the dark oak panel. Morzek grinned inappropriately and led the way into the hall, brightly lighted by an electric chandelier.

"Mr. Lunkowski?" Richmond began to the wispy little man who had admitted them. "We are—"

"But yes, you are here to tell us when Stefan shall come back, are you not?" Lunkowski broke in. "Come into the sitting room, please Anna and my daughter Rose are there."

"Ah, Mr. Lunkowski," Richmond tried to explain as he followed, all too conscious of the sardonic grin on Morzek's face. "You have been informed by telegram that Private Lunkowski was—"

"Was killed, yes," said the younger of the two red-haired women as she got up from the sofa. "But his body will come back to us soon, will he not? The man on the telephone said . . ."

She was gorgeous, Richmond thought, cool and assured, half smiling as her hair cascaded over her left shoulder like a thick copper conduit. Disconcerted as he was by the whole situation, it was a moment before he realized that Sergeant Morzek was saying, "Oh, the coffin's probably at the airport now, but there's nothing in it but a hundred and fifty pounds of gravel. Did the telegram tell you what happened to Stevie?"

"Sergeant!" Richmond shouted. "You drunken—"

"Oh, calm down, Captain," Morzek interrupted bleakly. "The Lunkowskis, they understand. They want to hear the whole story, don't they?"

"Yes." There was a touch too much sibilance in the word as it crawled from the older woman, Stefan Lunkowski's mother. Her hair was too grizzled now to have more than a touch of red in it, enough to rust the tight ringlets clinging to her skull like a helmet of mail. Without quiet appreciating its importance, Richmond noticed that Mr. Lunkowski was standing in front of the room's only door.

With perfect nonchalance, Sergeant Morzek sat down on an overstuffed chair, laying his bag across his knees. "Well," he said, "there was quite a report on that one. We told them how Stevie was trying to boobytrap a white phosphorous grenade—fix it to go off as soon as some dink pulled the pin instead of four seconds later. And he goofed."

Mrs. Lunkowski's breath whistled out very softly. She said nothing. Morzek waited for further reaction before he smiled horribly and added. "He burned. A couple pounds of willie pete going blooie, well . . . it keeps burning all the way through you. Like I said, the coffin's full of gravel."

"My god, Morzek," the captain whispered. It was not the sergeant's savage grin that froze him but the icy-eyed silence of the three Lunkowskis.

"The grenade, that was real," Morzek concluded. "The rest of the report was a lie."

Rose Lunkowski reseated herself gracefully on a chair in front of the heavily draped windows. "Why don't you start at the beginning Sergeant?" she said with a thin smile that did not show her teeth. "There is much we would like to know before you are gone."

"Sure," Morzek agreed, tracing a mottled forefinger across the pigmented callosities on his face. "Not much to tell. The night after Stevie got assigned to my platoon, the dinks hit us. No big thing. Had one fellow dusted off with brass in his ankle from his machine gun blowing up, that was all. But a burst of AK fire knocked Stevie off his tank right at the start."

"What's all this about?" Richmond complained. "If he was killed by rifle fire, why say a grenade—"

"Silence!" The command crackled like heel plates on concrete.

Sergeant Morzek nodded. "Why, thank you, Mr. Lunkowski. You see, the captain there doesn't know the bullets didn't hurt Stevie. He told us his flak jacket had stopped them. It couldn't have and it didn't. I saw it that night, before he burned it—five holes to stick your fingers through, right over the breast pocket. But Stevie was fine, not a mark on him. Well, Christ, maybe he'd had a bandolier or ammo under the jacket. I had other things to think about."

Morzek paused to glance around his audience. "All this Well, Christ, maybe he'd had a bandolier of ammo under the Federal Building."

"You won't be long," the girl hissed in reply.

Morzek grinned. "They broke up the squadron, then," he rasped on, "gave each platoon a sector of War Zone C to cover to stir up the drinks. There's more life on the moon than there was on the stretch we patrolled. Third night out, one of the gunners died. They flew him back to Saigon for an autopsy but damned if I know what they found. Galloping malaria, we figured.

"Three nights later another guy died. Dawson on three-six . . . Christ, the names don't matter. Sometime after midnight his track commander woke up, heard him moaning. We got him back to Quan Loi to a hospital, but he never came out of it. The lieutenant thought he got wasp stung on the neck—here, you know?" Morzek touched two fingers to his jugular. "Like he was allergic. Well, it happens."

"But what about Stefan?" Mrs. Lunkowski asked. "The others do not matter."

"Yes, finish it quickly, Sergeant," the younger woman said, and this time Richmond did catch the flash of her teeth.

"We had a third death," Morzek said agreeably, stroking the zipper of his AWOL bag back and forth. "We were all jumpy by then. I doubled the guard, two men awake on every track. Three nights later and nobody in the platoon remembered anything from twenty-four hundred hours till Riggs's partner blinked at ten of one and found him dead.

"In the morning, one of the boys came to me. He'd seen Stevie slip over to Riggs, he said; but he was zonked out on grass and didn't think it really had happened until he woke up in the morning and saw Riggs under a poncho. By then, he was scared enough to tell the whole story. Well, we were all jumpy."

"You killed Stefan." It was not a question but a flat statement.

"Oh, hell, Lunkowski," Morzek said absently, "what does it matter who rolled the grenade into his bunk? The story got around and . . . something had to be done."

"Knowing what you know, you came here?" Mrs. Lunkowski murmured liquidly. "You must be mad."

"Naw, I'm not crazy, I'm just sick." The sergeant brushed his left hand over his forehead. "Malignant melanoma, the docs told me. Twenty-six years in the goddamn army and in another week or two I'd be warted to death.

"Captain," he added, turning his cancerous face toward Richmond, "you better leave through the window."

"Neither of you will leave!" snarled Rose Lunkowski as she stepped toward the men.

Morzek lifted a fat gray cylinder from his bag. "Know what this is, honey?" he asked conversationally.

Richmond screamed and leaped for the window. Rose ignored him, slashing her hand out for the phosphorous grenade. Drapery wrapping the captain's body shielded him from glass and splintered window frame as he pitched out into the yard.

He was still screaming there when the blast of white fire bulged the walls of the house.

COTTAGE TENANT by Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long draws the horror for "Cottage Tenant" from the depths of the supposedly placid sea; and the result is a menace H. P. Lovecraft himself might have been proud of. Not surprising perhaps, since Long was one of Lovecraft's closest friends. But the story is uninfluenced by any talent except Long's own, which isn't surprising either since Long is the author of over three hundred science-fiction and fantasy tales, including some of the finest modern supernatural horror stories. He's been too infrequently seen with macabre fiction in the past decade but we hope his two books last year (The Early Long and his non-fiction work Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside) and such stories as the following indicate that his interest is reviving.

"When we were children," Crewson said, trying hard to sound thoughtful and wise, "the Old English Nursery Rhymes and tales of Greek gods unaging seemed just the right kind of reading for eight-year-olds. No one would have dreamed of putting them on a restricted list. But I'm afraid that today—" He broke off abruptly to stare at Susan Jane, who was two years short of eight and at his son, Timothy, whose recent birthday had made him nine. They bore a remarkable family resemblance, and though his son was the best looking, Susan Jane could hardly have been thought of as "plain."

He avoided looking directly at his wife until Anne Crewson said: "That's nonsense and you know it. Complete, absolute, total nonsense. What would you have them read—sociological tracts?"

Instead of replying instantly, Crewson allowed his thoughts to stray. It seemed such a pity, in a way. No young married couple—he still refused to let ten years alter his perspective in that respect—could have achieved more harmony and fulfillment, if just one "fly in the ointment" could have been set aside. They had an attractive white cottage overlooking the sea, with flowering plants and bright shells in the sun parlor, and the wide half-acre of lawn that sloped down to the sea was a miracle of smooth emerald enchantment, with pathway of white gravel leading to the wharf and a small cabin cruiser riding it anchor close to the end of it.

They were both employed as well, Anne as second in command at a tourist-frequented village antique shop and himself as a junior-high-school principal. Buy somehow they could never seem to agree concerning what was best for the children.

It wouldn't have mattered much if Timothy didn't say things at times which alarmed him. He was doing that now, raising his eyes from the book he'd been reading in a sprawled-out position on the floor to comment on what his mother had just said.

"I don't believe any of these stories," he said. "The fall of Troy wasn't like it says here. No one saw what came out of the sea—just a stupid, big wooden horse. All right. There were soldiers inside the horse and they set fire to Troy and burned it down. But the Greeks couldn't have done that without help. They were told what to do every minute."

"Oh, sure," Crewson muttered sarcastically, his concern blotted out for an instant by irritation. "But how do you account for the fact that Vergil and the Greek dramatists didn't view it that way at all? Poets are supposed to be inspired, perceptive far beyond the average. How could they have written about the fall of Troy as they did if they had suspected there was something hidden and hideous about the sea where the Greek ships rode at anchor? This isn't the first time you've let yourself take that tale apart in a silly way—but the time has come to put a stop to it."

To his surprise, Crewson found himself quoting: " 'Troy has perished, that great city. Only the red flames now lives there.'

"That's poetry, Tim boy. Great poetry. And when I was your age those stories meant a lot to me. But kids today—well, that kind of reading seems to do more harm than good. Perhaps because life has become too complicated in too many different directions. I don't know. But if a more realistic kind of reading could be substituted I'm sure I wouldn't be so worried about you, and that means a lot to a father."

"Darling, just let him say what he pleases," Anne protested. "All children have strange ideas at times. They exaggerate just one aspect of experience out of all proportion. It's part of the growing-up process."

"It's nothing he could have experienced," Crewson retorted. "He. wasn't there."

"Neither was Vergil."

"What does that mean? What are you trying to tell me? That if a boy his age lets his imagination run riot he's doing something we should encourage—if only because it's harmless, and can be chalked up to the marvelous imagination of children? There was nothing childish about Vergil. You'd realize how ridiculous all this is if you'd put Timothy's meanderings into an adult frame of reference."

"You're better at that than I am," Anne said. "What frame do you have in mind?"

"One of simple plausibility. Timothy is sure that something monstrous and long-buried came up out of the sea and took possession of the Greek intelligence. Not one person in ten thousand, child or adult, would have hit on so freakish a conjecture. No—not one in a million. Its very freakishness makes it grotesque. And it disturbs me.

"Besides," Crewson added, "to have taken possession of the Greek intelligence in the Homeric Age would have required some doing even for a sea monster. Ulysses survived every encounter with monsters on land and sea, remember?"

It was a poor attempt at humor and Crewson knew it. But he was beginning to feel that if he didn't dismiss lightly what his wife had been saying he might end by taking one small part of it seriously. He had never come close to accepting Jung's theory of archetypal images, and only a Jungian would have been willing to concede that Timothy might have dredged something up out of his collective unconscious that was both deeply buried and unusual.

Solely to keep himself from dwelling on that Crewson set his lips in tight lines, swung about and crossed to the door of the sun parlor in three long strides.

"Where are you going Daddy?" Susan Jane asked.

"Just for a walk on the beach," Crewson said, opening the door with a wrench. It always seemed to stick on damp days, and there had been a gray overcast since morning. The fog that had drifted in from the sea had thinned a little, however, and there was a brightness where the sun was trying to break through. If the beach just stayed the way it was, he told himself, it would be just right for the kind of stroll he enjoyed most. The tang of the brine in his nostrils, a good visibility for two or three yards ahead, and enough scattered seashells underfoot to keep him occupied in a pleasantly active way. Not that he shared Timothy's interest in collecting shells of all shapes and sizes. But he did like to stop occasionally, pick one up and send it skimming out across the surf-line.

An unusual shell, or a stranded spider crab or jellyfish gave him a boyish kind of thrill, just why he could not have said. Certainly they were abundant enough on every stretch of New England coastline in the wake of a slight storm, and should have been familiar enough to a New Englander born and bred to stir no interest at all.

"Supper will be on the table in just twenty minutes," Anne said. "Why did you have to pick this time to go for a walk?"

"I always seem to pick the wrong time for just about everything," Crewson said. "I'm truly and honestly sorry, Anne."

"Oh, forget it," Anne said. "Perhaps I married you for that reason. I'm a strange woman in many ways. I guess you've discovered that by now."

Crewson shut the door very quietly behind him. He walked down the white gravel path to the wharf, and then struck eastward across the narrow stretch of beach which fringed his property for close to half a mile in both directions.

The fog had cleared surprisingly fast and he could see, not just two or three yards ahead, but as far as the bleak, ragged ledge of rock which ran out into the bay where Richard Forbes's sailboat was anchored. It was a trim, handsome craft, and had much in common with Forbes himself, who prided himself on his popularity with women. Crewson had often found himself wondering how much the attractive blonds and redheads—only rarely a brunette—Forbes took on brief excursions around the bay appreciated the absolute perfection of the boat's lines and the dent its cost had made in his playboy's income. Probably not excessively. Forbes had kept them too busy.

The sailboat was on Crewson's property, but the water was unusually deep on both sides of the rock projection and he had been only too happy to make Forbes a present of that mooring facility.

Halfway of the rock projection Crewson paused for an instant to stare down at an enormous horseshoe crab which the recent blow had cast up upon the beach in an upside-down position. It was wriggling its legs furiously in its efforts to right itself, and he was moved by pity to bend down, pick it up, and toss it far out beyond the small waves that were lapping at the sand a few feet from where he was standing.

A strange thought came into his mind—what Timothy had said about the Greek ships riding at anchor in an age remote from ours, but not in the least ancient to a horseshoe crab. For uncounted millions of years horseshoe crabs had survived unchanged, passed over by an evolutionary process that had brought about the rise and fall of the dinosaurs.

He had just started to walk on when he heard the screaming. Two voices seemed to be screaming in unison, one unmistakably that of a woman and the other even more unnerving, because it wasn't often that a man screamed in just as high-pitched accents of masculinity.

He had no doubt at all that the screams were coming from the anchored sailboat. The beach was unoccupied by human forms as far as the rock projection, and when screams drifted ashore across a short stretch of water they had to come either from someone thrashing about in the water, or from a boat. And there were no desperately struggling forms anywhere in the water.

Crewson had always believed that it was a mistake to break into a run, unless someone in need of help was in immediate, critical danger. A swift stride could lessen the danger of stumbling and when the distance was very short the loss of a few seconds was more than offset by a gain in purposeful assurance.

He moved swiftly enough, keeping parallel with the surf-line, but avoiding a too close approach to the narrow ribbon of sand which the waves had left wet and soggy.

He was soon within wading distance of the boat, with the rock ledge stretching out in front of him like the fanlike crest of some enormous lizard half buried in the sand.

The tide was receding, but that did not mean that he could reach the anchored craft solely by wading. But the distance he might have to cover by swimming would, he felt, be so short that untying his sneakers and kicking them off would needlessly delay him.

The screams had stopped, but before the water reached to his knees other sounds came to his ears—a creaking and a shuffling, followed by a groan that made him pause for an instant to stare at the boat's rail. He could see nothing and continued on until the water rose to his shoulders.

He was less than thirty feet from the boat when the depth of the water ruled out further walking. He surrendered to the buoyancy of the tide and swam toward the almost stationary craft with a breaststroke, feeling that an overhand crawl would have been an absurdity.

So short was the distance that he was at the rail, grasping it firmly and heaving himself across it, before the froglike movements of his legs had made more than a slight swirl in the water.

There were two people in the sailboat, both of whom he recognized.

Richard Forbes was dragging himself across the foredeck, one hand pressed to his side and the other grasping the loose end of a coil of rope that kept unraveling like a snake in his clasp. His features were distorted with what could have been either stark terror or dazed incomprehension. It was impossible for Crewson to tell. His jaw sagged and his eyes had a slightly filmy look.

Slumped on the deck a few feet from him was perhaps the most strikingly beautiful of the dozen or more women who had accompanied Forbes in a sailing cruise around the harbor and often further in coastal waters in the past year and a half.

Helen Tanner was thirty or thirty-two but she had the rosy-cheeked complexion of a girl of seventeen. Only now most of the rosiness had vanished and she looked haggard-eyed and drawn. Her pale blond hair, dampened by the fog, clung to her brow in such a way that, quite suddenly and appallingly, made Crewson think of Medusa's coils. She had seemed to be bearing up fairly well, but the instant Crewson looked directly at her, her expression changed and she screamed once shrilly, and then fell silent with a look that might well have turned Perseus to stone.

It was a terrible, fathomless look, as if she had gazed on something so monstrous that it had drained away all that was womanly in her.

But still, despite all that, she seemed to want desperately to tell him what had happened to bring her to such a pass. Her lips moved, twitching spasmodically, and she raised herself a little more and her hand went out toward him.

He moved toward her on his knees—getting to his feet had seemed less urgent than reaching her before she collapsed—and took firm hold of her hand.

"What is it?" he breathed. "What has happened here? Did—did Forbes try to attack you?"

She shook her head. "No, no—oh, God, no. He's badly hurt. Can't you see? It tore at his side . . . clawed him."

Forbes's voice came then, as if from a great distance, as if the air surrounding him had changed into a swirling vortex carrying him far away in space and time. There was a deadness in his voice, a hollowness. Yet it seemed laden with anguish as well.

"It was like a mist at first—a mist that crept in over the rail. I thought it was just the fog—coming back again, getting quickly denser, as fogs often do."

Crewson released his tight grip on Helen Tanner's hand, swung about and stood up, a little surprised by the steadiness in his legs. He was grateful for the slight swaying of the boat, for it enabled him to cross to Forbes's side in a somewhat lurching way. Otherwise he might have given Forbes the impression that he was sturdily in command of himself and he did not want to do that. A man or woman in great distress, in need of support, likes to think that he is not alone in experiencing inner torment. The comforter, Crewson knew, has to be a little shaken himself—if he is to provide a wholly sympathetic kind of support.

He took as firm a hold of Forbes's shoulder as he had of Helen Tanner's hand and cautioned: "Perhaps you'd better not try to talk. Suppose you just let me have a look at your side. The wound may not be as bad as you think."

Forbes made no attempt to rise. But he removed the hand that had been pressed to his side, exposing a dull, red stain that was triangular in shape. His sport shirt was badly ripped, with pinpoints of glistening redness on the torn cloth where it clung to the wound in frayed strips.

He shook his head when Crewson bent to examine more closely one of the lacerations, which seemed the opposite of a superficial scratch.

"No sense in looking at it," Forbes said, quickly replacing his hand. "I know how bad it is. Its talons were like little knives. If they had been longer—"

"Its talons?"

"I tried to tell you. Why did you stop me? It was like a mist at first, and then it changed. It changed into some kind of animal. It was jet-black and had four limbs and a head. The head kept getting larger and there were eyes in it, and I think it had a beak. But I can't be sure, because something happened to my mind. I could see nothing clearly after that."

"Did you try to defend yourself when it attacked you?" Crewson heard himself asking. "Did you struggle with it?"

Forbes let go of the rope he'd been gripping and pounded the deck with his fist, as if just remembering what had happened demanded some kind of emotional release.

"I couldn't move. I tried to back away from it, tried to get the rail behind me for support. But it rose up and flung itself at me while I was in a state of shock. There was a heaviness in my legs, and the deck looked warped, twisted up. It must have done something to my mind."

"It didn't attack Miss Tanner?"

"No, she tried to make it let go of me. She screamed and tugged at it. I don't know why it didn't turn on her. You can see what just the sight of it has done to her."

"It may have been the feel of it," Crewson said. "I didn't ask her."

"Please don't." Forbes said, staring across the deck to where Helen Tanner was still sitting motionless, her shoulders now a little hunched, and her fingers pressed to both sides of her brow. "She's been through enough."

The salt sea air which had always meant so much to Crewson seemed suddenly an unhealthy kind of air to breathe.

He found that he could not take seriously a great deal of what Forbes had said. But something could have come flopping up out of the sea and landed on deck—probably had. A seal perhaps. They were not unheard of in New England waters. Then some kind of wild hysteria could have gripped both Forbes and Helen Tanner, and—

But how explain the lacerations on Forbes's right side and his ripped shirt?

Could Helen Tanner have succumbed to so wild a fright that she had lost all contact with reality and lunged at him with a knife, mistaking him for whatever it was that had flopped over the rail to the deck? But if she had done that what had happened to the knife?

Crewson came to a quick, firm decision. He bent and took steadying hold of Forbes's shoulder for the second time.

"We've got to get you to a hospital," he said. "I'll go ashore and come right back, and drive you both to East Windham. Miss Tanner needs immediate medical attention. The worst wounds are not always physical."

"You can say that again," Forbes muttered, with a slight upward tilt to his lips that didn't quite result in a smile.

It was past midnight when Crewson returned to the cottage after a two-way, fifty-mile drive. He put the car back into the garage and walked wearily up the white gravel path to the door of the sun parlor, surprised by its lighted-up aspect.

The instant he passed through the door he was greeted by Timothy with an open book still in his hand.

"What happened, Dad?" he asked. "What did they say at the hospital. Were they surprised?"

"Naturally they were surprised," Crewson said. "A man with a bad wound in his side he can't readily explain away and a woman half out of her mind."

He looked steadily at his son for a moment, then demanded: "Why are you up so late? I hope you have an excuse that stands up. I'm sure it can't be because you were worried about me."

"I never worry about you, Dad," Timothy assured him. "You can take care of yourself."

"I often wonder about that," Crewson said. "Going for a walk when supper was practically on the table wasn't such a bright idea—in view of what happened on the beach."

"Do you believe Mr. Forbes's story?" Timothy asked.

"I'm sorry I even mentioned what happened when I came back to get the car," Crewson said. "Now look. Forget about that excuse. What I want you to do is go straight upstairs to bed. You've done enough reading for today."

"The Grecian ships—" Timothy began.

Crewson suddenly became as angry as he was capable of becoming in the presence of his son.

"You heard me. Straight upstairs to bed. I'm very serious, Timothy."

"All right. But I just wanted you to know that what happened to Mr. Forbes wasn't my fault. I couldn't have stopped it. If I hadn't been reading about the Fall of Troy—"

It confirmed everything that Crewson had feared. Stories of heroes and mythological monsters and ancient cities famous in song and legend might or might not be just the right kind of reading for children living under the shadow of The Bomb. But even if that could be debated pro and con it was the worst possible kind of reading for his son.

It was Timothy above every other child in the world that he had been seeking to safeguard in taking what his wife had considered a ridiculous stand.

Was it already too late? Had Timothy lost all contact with the world of sobriety and common sense? Childhood schizophrenia—

It was a horror he refused to dwell on. Not tonight, not after all he had endured. It had been even worse at the hospital, in a way, than when he'd heaved himself up over the rail of Forbes's boat, and looked into Helen Tanner's fathomless, terror-haunted eyes. At the hospital she had collapsed again and they had carried her, shrieking and raving, into the emergency ward. It had taken two strong interns to control her.

"Timothy," Crewson said.

"What is it, Dad?"

"Forgive me if I spoke a little harshly. Just go upstairs now and turn in. And try not to wake your mother. She may be needing all the sleep she can get."

"But don't you want to know why—"

"I don't want to hear anything more tonight," Crewson said, silencing his son with a look which would have been unwise for Timothy to ignore. "We'll talk about it tomorrow."

As soon as Timothy had vanished in the darkness at the top of the staircase Crewson took a slow turn up and down the sun parlor. It wasn't even a moon parlor now, since the night beyond its wide-paned windows was inky black, and the instant Timothy had ceased to make the stairs creak he had reached up, and pulled the chain on the hanging electric bulb which his son had left blazing.

He had no particular desire to join his family upstairs. Anne, he knew, would go right on sleeping and not miss him at all unless she happened to wake up, and if she did she would take for granted that he'd chosen to spend the rest of the night on his favorite couch.

Timothy would tell her that he'd returned safely, even if she didn't come downstairs to make sure. Probably she wouldn't, because he'd made a habit of sleeping on the couch several times a month, where the air was cooler on hot nights. It was something Anne did herself at times, creeping downstairs in the middle of the night and leaving him to slumber on in the heat in their upstairs bedroom.

The couch was quite long and spacious and since it was on the side of the sun parlor where a cool breeze from the sea blew in most strongly—if just one window remained raised—all Crewson had to do was stretch himself out at full length and relax,

It creaked a little as he eased himself down, making him decide to oil the springs in the morning. He sighed, turned on his side, and almost immediately fell asleep.

Just how deep it was he had no way of knowing. He knew only that he awoke once, aware of an unusually strong sea smell in the room, but was far too drugged with sleep to pay it. much attention. In a deep, half-conscious way he remained aware of it for perhaps a full minute, but so overwhelming was his drowsiness that when it became no stronger he made no effort to resist the tug of slumber.

When he opened his eyes again the sun parlor was no longer in total darkness. There was a faint glow in the eastern sky, and though the light which had crept in through the windows was too dim to enable him to see more than the shadowy outlines of the furniture—three chairs, a flower-stand, and a small, circular table—he could make out something huge and misshapen in a far corner that should not have been there at all.

It was too solid-looking to have been a shadow. And there was nothing in the sun parlor that could have cast one of that shape and size.

For a moment Crewson wasn't in the least frightened. There were so many ways of explaining something like that—a big chunk of bark from the dead oak on the lawn, ripped from the trunk and blown through the open window by a fierce gust of wind in the night, or something Timothy had lugged downstairs in the small hours, being too restless to sleep and wanting something to do. Or just possibly—but no, it was far too large to be a cat or a wood-chuck or a skunk.

The chill began when he realized that thinking it might be some animal that had climbed through the window while he slept might very well be the truth. It got worse when it began to move about, sending so great a coldness lancing up through him that his lips began to shake.

He sat up abruptly, as wide awake as he had ever been, jolted by an awareness of danger so acute that it drove every vestige of slumber from his brain. Only the dimness of the light prevented him from seeing it clearly, for his vision had ceased to be even slightly blurred.

There was something vaguely parrot-like about it. But its body did not seem in the least birdlike and it moved with a scraping sound, as if its feet were claw-tipped.

Crewson was shaking violently and uncontrollably now. He knew that he possessed as much courage as most men. But when a breath from the unknown blew cold upon anyone, man or woman, courage became a relative thing. It had always been that way, from the rude beginnings of human life on earth.

There was a breath—sea bottom-fetid, as if some decaying shellfish had been stirred into a vaporized broth and sprayed into every corner of the sun parlor. It was moving toward him more swiftly now, swaying as it advanced, and making a sound that he had never associated with an animal of land-dwelling habits. It was neither a growl nor a catlike whining, but a kind of blubbery smacking-together of what may or may not have been lips.

Suddenly it reared up and appeared to increase in bulk, and that abrupt change in its attitude seemed to do something to the light. There was a sudden brightness high up under the ceiling, bringing into view an enormous, shining beak and two eyes as large as dinner plates that were trained so fiercely upon Crewson that he could feel the heat of them searing his pupils and burning its way into his brain.

There was an abrupt, loud clattering on the stairs, followed by a thud. It brought about an instant dimming of the light again. The beak and the eyes hovered for the barest instant in the diminished glow and then whipped away out of sight. The high-rearing bulk of the monstrous shape began to dissolve as Crewson stared, growing more and more attenuated until nothing but a thin curtain of revolving mist lingered between the couch and the corner of the room from which it had emerged. And in another moment even the mist was gone.

Crewson's trembling had not stopped. But shaken as he was, he somehow managed to stand up and jerk at the chain of the hanging light bulb which he'd turned off long ago, in another age surely—some immeasurably remote period in time when his sanity had not yet deserted him in quite so total a way.

The instant the sun parlor became flooded with light he saw Timothy. He was lying at the foot of the stairs in a sprawled-out heap, with no trace of animation in his limbs or features. His eyes were tightly shut and he was pajama-clad, and there was a swelling, dark bruise on his forehead which was visible from where Crewson stood.

It was the bruise more than anything else which brought Crewson to his son's side with a concern so acute that he staggered and almost fell. He bent and gathered Timothy into his arms and started shaking him, not trusting himself to speak.

Timothy opened his eyes and stared up at him. "What happened, Dad? I was just starting to—Did I trip? Yeah, I must have taken a tumble. Everything went black."

"You had a very bad fall," Crewson heard himself muttering, his concern suddenly less acute. "Are you all right? Do you feel all right? Not dizzy or anything?"

"Maybe I'll feel dizzy if I stand up," Timothy said. "But I guess not. I feel pretty good."

"I'm glad of that, at least," Crewson said. "But I don't know why you should feel good, after giving me a scare like that. Why did you come downstairs at this hour? Tell me."

"I stayed up all night, Dad. I was reading in bed. Then I started worrying about what might happen if I kept thinking about what happened when the Greek ships—"

"Stop right there," Crewson ordered. "We're not going into that again. Not now—or ever again. Do you understand? I don't want to hear about it."

"All right, Dad. But that smell will keep coming back."

Crewson's heart skipped a beat. "What smell?" he demanded. "What are you talking about?"

Just the fact that he knew only too well what Timothy was talking about meant nothing, one way or the other. The last thing he wanted to do was let Timothy know that he knew.

"Susan smelled it too," Timothy said, defensively. "It woke her up. When Mom boils a lobster and when she steams clams Susan can't stand the smell. She stays out on the lawn until supper's ready. You never get cross with her."

"She's allergic to sea food," Crewson said. "I've told you that many times. But it's mostly shellfish. That's why we never let her eat shellfish."

It was an irrelevant remark. But Crewson felt it would encourage his son to talk more freely, and he no longer wanted him to stop.

"It came right up out of the sea again," Timothy said. "I can always tell. But when Susan smelled it I knew it was getting bad. It will be like that now even when it doesn't come back. Mom will smell it, too."

"Is that why you came rushing downstairs so fast—to find out if I smelled anything strange?"

Timothy shook his head. "I was scared you'd see it. That's worse than just smelling it. Mr. Forbes saw it, and was nearly killed."

Crewson had forgotten for a moment what Timothy had said about feeling dizzy if he tried to walk. But now all of his concern came back.

"Get up, son," he said. "Walk up and down a few times. We've got to make sure that bump on your head is nothing to worry about. Kids your age take so many tumbles you get in the habit of giving it little thought. But sometimes you don't worry enough."

Timothy got up and walked back and forth until his father told him to stop.

"Any dizziness?" Crewson asked.

"No, Dad. I feel fine."

"I'm glad. There's just one more thing I want you to do. Go upstairs and wake your mother up. Tell her I have to see her right away. And don't come back with her. Just go to your room and stay there. I've got to have a long serious talk with her."

If Timothy had the slightest inclination to disobey it was not apparent in his behavior. He turned slowly and went back up the stairs, dragging his feet a little as if in sullen protest against parental dominance.

Five minutes later Anne Crewson was sitting at her husband's side, listening to what he was saying without making any attempt to interrupt him. The creaking of the couch as she shifted her position almost continuously was more revealing of the way she felt than her expression, for she was a woman who could endure a great deal of inner torment with composed features.

Crewson carefully avoided so much as hinting at the torment that he had endured before his son's fall had made a horror beyond sane description waver and vanish. He started with Timothy's mishap, explaining that it was the crash that had awakened him. But he told her everything that their son had said and when he had finished he was almost sure, from the long silence which ensued, that her concern was now as great as his, and perhaps even surpassed it.

Her voice, when she spoke, was slightly tremulous. "We're very lucky, in a way, Ralph. Dr. Moorehouse is not only a kindly and understanding man. He doesn't really belong in a town as small as East Windham, even though they have a quite large general hospital. I don't need to tell you how famous he has become. There are few child psychologists—"

"He started as a Jungian analyst," Crewson said, before she could continue. "Most of his patients, in those days, were troubled adults. He's still a Jungian, I've been told, but yes—he's a good man. I've never had anything against Jung—or Freud, for that matter, except that I've never been a convert to any kind of analytical therapy."

"Most people are today," Anne said.

"No, I wouldn't say that exactly," Crewson said. "It's a big world and we make a mistake when we let ourselves forget it."

"You picked a strange time to interpose objections," Anne said. "Timothy is more than just troubled. There are few adults—"

"That's not what you said when Timothy was sprawled out on the floor reading about the fall of Troy for the fiftieth time. I told you then that it was the wrong book. A very bad book for Timothy—even if a case could be made out for letting that kind of reading fall into the hands of comparatively well-balanced children for a while longer."

"I've changed my mind, that's all," Anne said.

Crewson reached out and pressed his wife's hand. "I'm glad you have. I'll drive to East Windham and have a talk with Moorehouse just as soon as you can perk some strong coffee—make it three cups. Black, no cream."

"That's unusual for you," Anne said, trying very hard to smile. "You hate black coffee. Oh, hell—I'll boil you two eggs while I'm at it. It won't take more than ten minutes."

Under ordinary circumstances Crewson would have phoned Dr. Moorehouse to check on his availability before driving to East Windham at so early an hour. But he needed to get out into the open in a speeding car regardless of the hour; and no matter how soon he arrived in the town a period of waiting seemed inevitable, and he saw no reason for worrying about whether it would be long or comparatively short.

Possibly, he told himself, an appointment could be arranged as early as ten o'clock at Moorehouse's residence. And if it had to be later at the hospital, where the psychiatrist was a staff therapist, East Windham was a pleasant enough town to keep the dread which darkened his thoughts from becoming overwhelming for a few hours.

It turned out better than he had dared to hope and a phone call to Moorehouse's home on his arrival secured him an appointment at nine-thirty. The hour and a half of waiting which remained he spent roaming through the more ancient part of town, studying the old houses, some dating back to the sixteenth century, and talking for twenty minutes on the phone with Forbes, in his private room at the hospital.

The news he received was reassuring. Forbes's wound had been well attended to, and unless some complication developed, which seemed unlikely, he would be up and about again in a few days. And Miss Tanner was no longer under sedation.

He arrived at Moorehouse's home ten minutes ahead of time and was ushered into his quite large, tastefully furnished office facing the street by his wife, a quiet-spoken, attractive woman who was quick to explain that his regular office hours were eleven to one, and were followed by his duties at the hospital which sometimes kept him occupied all night.

"Sometimes he sees patients earlier," she told Crewson. "He's been terribly busy in recent weeks. Everything's so uncertain today that people are taking up more and more of his time. I worry about the schedule he's imposed on himself."

She nodded and shut the door, and Crewson found himself staring across the sunlit room at a slightly stout, gray-haired man with thoughtful brown eyes, and rather small features that were finely chiseled and verged on the handsome. There was nothing particularly distinguished about him, but there was something in his expression that inspired confidence at first glance.

He arose from behind his desk, gestured to a chair drawn up opposite the desk, and sat down again. He did not offer his hand in greeting, but his first words put Crewson completely at his ease.

"We have two mutual friends, it seems. But this is the first time I've had the great pleasure of meeting you in person. I understand you wish to talk to me about your son."

Crewson had debated with himself the wisdom of telling the composed, widely experienced man who now sat facing him everything that had happened since the previous afternoon, starting with Timothy's wild talk and the angry scene with his wife that had made him decide to go for a walk on the beach.

He abruptly decided that he would be defeating his own purpose in seeking the psychiatrist's help if he kept anything back, including the appalling spectacle which had confronted him when he'd heaved himself over the rail of Forbes's boat

Quite possibly Moorehouse had talked with Forbes at the hospital and already knew about that. The emergency had been an unusual one, and a staff psychiatrist could well have been summoned to provide some immediate help, particularly since Helen Tanner had undergone a dangerous kind of hysterical collapse.

It took Crewson close to half an hour to acquaint Moorehouse with a sequence of occurrences that went far beyond what the psychiatrist could have surmised from just talking with Forbes. And he was careful to stress that not only were they sanity-threatening, but seemed to bear some frightening relationship to Timothy's state of mind.

When he had finished, Moorehouse remained for a long moment staring at him with an inscrutable expression on his face. Then he arose quietly, walked to the window, and stared out, as if he needed an even longer moment to think over what he had been told.

When he returned to the desk and resumed his seat the inscrutable expression had vanished. It had been replaced by a look of restrained reassurance.

"Let me ask you something," he said. "Just what kind of a boy is your son? Oh, I know. You've described him, but not sufficiently. Is he ever in the least outgoing, despite his tendency to engage in daydreaming a great deal of the time?"

"He can be," Crewson said. "With other kids at times. And I guess you could say he is with me. He talks back, gets aggressive, and disobeys. But most of the time he's obedient enough."

"Children are always a little outgoing with their own parents," Moorehouse said. "I wasn't really thinking of that. Is he the kind of boy who had a lot of bottled-up emotions he'd like to display in an aggressive way, despite his introspective tendencies? But he doesn't, simply because daydreaming seems easier, and more emotionally satisfying to him except at rare intervals. But then, once in a while he lets go, really lets go. He blackens the eye of some kid he regards as a bully, and gives a damned good account of himself in other ways. Am I describing him accurately?"

"Very," Crewson said.

"Just how familiar are you with the Jungian hypothesis in general?" Moorehouse asked.

"Not too familiar," Crewson replied. "It covers so wide a territory. But I've dipped into Jung now and then.

"You refer to it as an hypothesis," he couldn't resist adding. "Are you implying you don't accept the whole of Jung?"

"Naturally I don't," Moorehouse said. "If I did that I'd be a bum psychiatrist from the word 'go.' No mathematical physicist in his right mind would, or could, accept the whole of Einstein. It's the last thing Einstein would have wanted anyone to do."

A very earnest, serious expression came into Moorehouse's eyes. "Only one aspect of the Jungian hypothesis in general concerns me now. I'll try to discuss it as briefly as I can. It's the very familiar one, the one that four people out of five—and that would take in the bartender at the cafe a block from here—would know what you were talking about if you mentioned it in casual conversation. I'm referring, of course, to man's collective unconscious, the repository of archetypal images which Jung was firmly convinced we all carry about with us in the depths of our minds."

He paused for a moment, and though Crewson had more than an inkling of what Moorehouse was about to say he waited patiently for him to go on.

Before doing so Moorehouse removed a cigarette from the package at his elbow, lit it, and took a few slow puffs.

"Those archetypal images," he resumed, "are often frightful—enormous snakes, and tribal effigies with chalk-white faces, and legendary kings with scepters of fire who practiced cruelty night and day. All that we know. But Jung even suggested—since there is no way of knowing how far the collective unconscious goes back in time—that images from a reptile-stage or fish-stage period of evolution may form a part of man's buried ancestral heritage. And that would explain the frequent appearance as archetypes of fanged and flying lizards or even more hideous monsters from the sea."

Moorehouse fell silent again, and Crewson found himself wondering, with some concern, if he had allowed the way he was staring at the psychiatrist to make him reluctant to say more.

Very quickly he ceased to stare, looking beyond Moorehouse to the glimmering patch of sunlight on the opposite wall.

"Just what are you trying to tell me?" he asked. "It would be very hard for me to believe—"

"Yes, I know," Moorehouse interposed. "It would be hard for me to believe it too. But Jung once allowed himself to speculate—wait, put it this way. What if a very imaginative child—or an adult, for that matter—with the bottled-up aggressive drives we've discussed—became abnormally stimulated in some way by something he had read? I mean—you see—"

"I'm afraid I don't see."

"I'm sure you do. It's always a mistake to conceal from ourselves what we would prefer not to believe."

"Aren't you doing that yourself, right now? You just said—"

"I said it would be very hard for me to believe and that's true. There's no dishonesty in that. But we do know that visual images—even when they are not archetypal—can seem more real to us if we link them to something we've read. A book of mythology for instance, or—if you were a child in the Victorian age—the darkly frightening, even cruel world of fantasy conjured up by the Brothers Grimm."

"Are you trying to make me believe that an archetypal image in Timothy's mind took on form and substance, and—"

Moorehouse raised a protesting hand. "I'm not asking you to believe anything. It's Timothy you're most concerned about and so am I. You came here to consult me for no other reason. We've got to help Timothy, because when a sensitive, imaginative child with many fine qualities is in trouble—well, there's no greater tragedy."

"For God's sake," Crewson heard himself saying. "What do you suggest? What would you have me do?"

"Just listen carefully. Has Timothy ever spent the summer in a boy's camp, in everyday, relaxed contact with other kids his age? Has he ever gone in for bird watching and paddled around in a canoe, and played tennis, and baseball, and engaged in a half dozen other sports? Very strenuous ones, guaranteed to make him feel so tired at night he'll just drop down exhausted and sleep like a log until he's caught up in another day of activity?"

"No, I'm afraid not," Crewson heard himself replying. "We never felt—it was partly his mother's fault. She couldn't bear the thought of not seeing him for six or eight weeks. And he never cared much for sports, aside from baseball."

"There's a camp right here in East Windham," Moorehouse said. "An excellent one, which I can personally recommend. I have a nephew Timothy's age, and he has spent three summers with the Wheltons. It's in the deep woods, by Sharon Lake—not twenty minutes' drive from the center of town."

"That means we could see him—"

Dr. Moorehouse shook his head. "No—I wouldn't advise that. If you love your son you'll make him understand that when once he's deposited in the camp he's staying there until fall. That will not prevent you from writing to him—as often as you wish."

Crewson got slowly to his feet and this time Moorehouse reached across the desk, and firmly clasped his hand. "When Timothy comes back," he said, "you may find that your worries are at an end."

There was a telephone handset on Moorehouse's desk and Crewson tapped it with his forefinger. "May I—call my wife on this phone? I'd like to get this settled as quickly as possible."

"By all means," Moorehouse said. "I was just about to suggest it."

A moment later Crewson was saying into the phone, "Anne, I want you to pack a few of Timothy's clothes—in that small, brown leather suitcase in the hall closet. Just an extra pair of trousers, sneakers, two or three flannel shirts—you know what you packed for him when he spent the weekend with your sister in Brookdale two summers ago. Everything he'll need for a few days away from home.

"What's that? No, darling, I can't go into it now, but he'll be going on a short visit. Yes, yes, I've talked with Dr. Moorehouse and I'm phoning from his home. It's something he felt was most urgent."

Anne's voice came so frantically over the line that he had to hold the receiver away from his ears for a moment. When the protests stopped he added: "Nothing to worry about, darling. Everything's fine. Timothy is going to be all right. I'll explain when I get back. I just want to be sure the suitcase is packed, and that Timothy will be ready to leave with me when I drive up in the car. Right away—that's most important."

He hung up before Anne could protest further.

"You handled that very well," Moorehouse said.

Driving home on a road that skirted the sea for a mile or so at frequent intervals Crewson kept turning over in his mind everything that Moorehouse had said to him. It was hard for him to believe any part of it, and he very much doubted if Moorehouse took more than a tenth of it seriously.

But in one-tenth of a far out surmise there might reside just enough truth to make its dismissal an act of folly. What did the Jungians advise when a problem of that nature presented itself?

Dismiss nothing as absolutely unbelievable. Watch every step you take, tread cautiously. There may well be some kind of tenuous connection between the logically untenable, and the mysterious nature of ultimate reality.

Perhaps nothing so gross as a visual image, archetypal or otherwise, could be thought of as capable of separating itself from the mind, at least in part, and acquiring destructive, physical attributes.

But terrifying occurrences had seemingly taken place which had come as no surprise to Timothy and his wild talk had clearly established some kind of relationship between his thoughts and the occurrences. Perhaps Moorehouse had been all wrong about the nature of those relationships. But just the fact that they appeared to exist made caution mandatory.

The shape that had towered above the couch with its eyes malignantly trained on him had dwindled and vanished a few seconds after Timothy had tripped on the stairs and struck his head in falling. It seemed unlikely that the sudden blotting out of Timothy's consciousness could have been totally unrelated to the shape's disappearance. Unanticipated coincidences were perhaps common enough under ordinary circumstances. But when something happened that was both terrifying and unusual how often did coincidence play a role as well? It was asking too much of the law of averages, was loading the dice in a totally unacceptable way.

Crewson tightened his hold on the wheel of the speeding car, wishing the sea would not come into view so often. The breeze whipped at his hair, setting it to swirling on his brow and occasionally half blinding him.

Suddenly the long ledge of rock where Forbes's boat was still bobbing about in the tide came into view and all of his apprehension vanished. It was close enough to the cottage now to bring the car flush with the garage, leap out, and cross the lawn in eight or ten long strides.

Twenty seconds later he was doing just that, the wind still whipping at his hair. He was almost at the door of the cottage when the wind brought so strong an odor of decaying shellfish to his nostrils that he came to an abrupt halt.

He started to turn, to see if the odor became stronger when he faced the wharf. But before he'd swung completely about he realized it could only be coming from the cottage. The tide was at its full, and there were no mud flats from which it could have been carried by the wind.

He remained for an instant motionless, facing the door without jerking it open, choosing to listen instead. The slightest sound from within the cottage—light, unhurried footsteps, Anne's voice or that of the children talking back and forth—would have dispelled the fear which had come upon him, and he desperately needed such reassurance. It was worth waiting for five, six, seven seconds. Waiting longer was unthinkable and when no sounds came to his ears he grasped the doorknob, gave it a violent wrench, and entered the cottage in a kind of stumbling rush.

He almost stumbled over Anne. She was lying slumped on the floor just inside the door, her face drained of all color. He was instantly on his knees at her side, slipping one arm under her shoulder and raising her to a sitting position. She moaned and stirred a little, but he had to shake her and plead with her to say something—anything—before her terrible limpness vanished and she leaned heavily against him, her voice coming in choking gasps.

"Ralph, it—it's horrible! Half fish, half hairy animal. I tried to—make it let go of Timothy—and it hurled me across the room. Everything went hazy for a minute. I thought—my back was broken. If you hadn't started shaking me—"

Her hand went out and fastened on his writs. "You've got to get to them. Timothy was screaming and Susan—"

"Both of the children!" Crewson couldn't seem to breathe. "Where are they? I don't see them!"

"It dragged Timothy upstairs. And Susan ran after them. I couldn't stop her."

"All right—careful now," Crewson cautioned. "Just lean back against the wall when I take my arm away. Don't twist about. And don't try to get up."

"I won't. But hurry, darling! It may not be too late—"

Crewson got swayingly to his feet, and in another moment was mounting the stairs, ascending to the floor above with a nightmarish feeling of unreality making it hard for him to believe it wasn't happening to someone else.

Sunlight was streaming in through the two small windows in the upper hallway but there was a swirling curtain of mist at the end of the hall which prevented him from seeing into Timothy's room. Since Timothy seldom closed the door on summer days Crewson didn't expect to find it shut. But the thought that it might be gave him little concern. He felt fully capable of battering it down, and he moved now with a steadiness of purpose which, for an instant, had almost deserted him on the stairs.

The odor of decaying shellfish became sickening as the mist swirled up about him, forcing him to cover his face with his hand. Then he was inside the room, staring up with his hand lowered, feeling a wetness start up on his forehead and turn into a cold trickling which ran down both cheeks to his throat.

Timothy was suspended between the floor and ceiling by long tendrils of mist that crisscrossed and held him enmeshed, as if he had stumbled by accident into a vast, glowing spider web and been elevated to its exact center by his own furious struggles to escape.

Lower down in the web Susan Jane was also enmeshed. But she had seemingly given up struggling and dangled as limply as a calico doll tossed carelessly across a bedpost for the night

Behind the bed a huge shape towered, beaked and taloned and faintly rimmed with sunlight from a window which its bulk had nine-tenths blocked out

When Timothy saw his father he stopped struggling so abruptly that his limbs seemed still in motion, for the web continued to tremble for a moment in the same violent way. Timothy could not have looked more frightened and despairing, and that seemed to be keeping him from surrendering to another kind of emotion.

It was only what he said that startled Crewson and made him stare unbelievingly.

"If you don't go it will kill you, Dad. I don't want you to die. Tell Mom good bye. I love her very much. You, too, Dad."

Timothy's voice seemed so startlingly calm and adult it was hard for Crewson to realize it was his own son speaking.

Crewson's throat had tightened up, and for an instant he could say nothing in reply. His mouth felt as dry as death, and that made speaking even more difficult. But he made a supreme effort, and when he heard himself saying, "No one in this house is going to die, Timothy," his voice seemed even calmer than Timothy's had been.

"I can't get free, Dad," Timothy said. "And Susan can't either. But if you go right back downstairs it may not kill you."

"Listen to me," Crewson pleaded. "Stop thinking. Can you do that? Try—make your mind a total blank. I'm not here, you're not here. You're in a different place and you've stopped thinking about anything. You're just waiting for something to happen. It's so wonderful, so certain to happen, you don't even have to give it a thought."

Crewson suddenly realized that he'd let himself forget that Timothy was only nine. Could a trancelike state, with all immediate awareness blotted out, be self-induced by a boy that young and bring about a change in his conscious thinking? If he failed to comprehend exactly what he was being urged to do—

Timothy seemed to understand, for his expression changed, and although he continues to look directly at his father an unmistakable look of remoteness began to creep into his eyes.

"You're far away, Timothy," Crewson murmured. "There's nothing to be afraid of, and you're being protected from all harm and you're not letting anything frighten you. You're thinking about nothing at all, because you know that thinking can make people unhappy for no reason at all."

It happened more quickly than Crewson had dared to hope. The beaked and darkly towering shape behind the web began to waver and dissolve. First the shining beak vanished and then the ghastly bulk of the creature dwindled and fell away, until nothing remained of it between the web and the window but a few floating filaments of mist that took just a little longer to disappear.

The web vanished then, in a sudden, almost blinding burst of light and both children tumbled to the floor.

If Timothy had been shaken up by the fall or was still a little under the sway of the trance that had brought a look of remoteness into his eyes, he displayed no evidence of it. He was almost instantly on his feet, helping his sister to rise.

As soon as both children were on their feet Crewson hurried them out of the room without saying a word, gripping Timothy by the wrist and encircling Susan Jane's waist almost fiercely with his free arm. His only thought was to keep Timothy from talking about any part of what had happened until they were downstairs and out of the house and—

Timothy began remembering before they were halfway down the stairs.

"Dad, for a minute I didn't know where I was. What happened—"

"You just now helped Susan to get up," Crewson told him. "You mean—you did that with your mind a blank?"

"I must have, Dad. How did we get away? It was going to kill me and Susan, and I told you—"

"Your mother may be badly hurt," Crewson said. "Think about that—nothing else."

They were at the bottom of the stairs now and Crewson saw with relief that Anne was coming toward them across the sun parlor. She was holding herself very straight and had the look of a fully recovered woman whose only emotion was one of overwhelming gratefulness.

She started to speak, but her voice broke and although Crewson knew how much time a family reunion could consume he released his tight grip on Timothy and Susan Jane, and let them run straight into Anne's outstretched arms.

He wasn't sure he had done a wise thing, and spoke almost harshly to make his wife realize that all rejoicing must be cut short.

"We're getting out of the house and into the car and driving to East Windham right now," he said. "Timothy won't be needing the suitcase I told you to pack. He'll be having the time of his life at a boy's camp—camping, hiking, swimming—well into October. We can buy him everything he'll need in East Windham tomorrow. We may even get there today before the stores close."

Anne looked at him out of eyes swimming with tears. "You got to them in time," she said. "Nothing else matters. I'll miss Timothy. You know that. But if a boys' summer camp is what you worked out for him with Dr. Moorehouse I won't say a word."

"He couldn't be any more tanned than he is now," Crewson said. "But otherwise you won't know him when he comes back in October. He'll have a real rough-and-tumble look."

He gripped his wife's hand and pressed his lips to her cheek.

"Come on," he said, leading the way to the door. "We haven't a moment to lose."

The children followed.

"Thank you, darling," Anne said, as they passed out into the clear, bright sunlight.

THE MAN WITH THE AURA by R. A. Lafferty

R. A. Lafferty knows more secrets of the universe than can be found in a room full of Rosicrucians, and he generously shares them with us at the rate of one (or sometimes even more) per story. The following Lafferty gem delves into politics and tells us why so many of us eagerly rush out and vote for Certain Candidates.

"Nor is that the worst of my troubles, James," said Thomas Castlereagh. "Not only has my conscience begun to gnaw me, but my doctor tells me that I will be dead within a month."

"Good God, Thomas! I thought you were in perfect health," his friend James Madigan cried out in real alarm.

"Not perfect, but, James, I'm of sound body for a man of my age."

"But your doctor said—"

"That he intends to kill me. I've given him reason."

That was the evening that Thomas Castlereagh told his full story to James Madigan. Halfheartedly he had tried to tell it several times before. He hadn't been believed. He had only gained the reputation of being a delightful man with a certain outré humor.

He wasn't. He had no humor at all.

But he had everything else: robust pink-faced health; gold-edged security and impregnable wealth; familial abundance in his later years as recompense for his earlier sorrows; and the glowing regard of every person in America.

Castlereagh served on many committees and national forums. His heading-up of any body guaranteed its integrity and success. No president felt properly inaugurated unless Castlereagh stood by his side. His was the most sought-after endorsement in the country. He was Respectability.

Any description of the man would be trite beside the man himself. His face had become the Face of America at its best.

Rumley had done him. Cassell had done him in the magnificent portrait now in the Great Portraits Room of the Tate Gallery. Arestino had done him. But the finest portraits could give no real indication of the man himself. Anyone in his presence was always pleasantly shaken by the experience. Words cannot give an account of it, though the Castlereagh voice and words were a large part of the effect

Castlereagh's three sons were respected and notable. Charles had much of the father's business ability and of his pervading charisma. John Thomas was a doctorate professor, and the author of an exciting text, Theoretical Extrapolated Mechanics. Robert Adrian was a gifted artist. All inherited in part from the father's amazing gifts, but all would stand in his shadow forever.

And Castlereagh's wife was Letitia, an international beauty known equally for her wit and sparkle and for her nearly too perfect beauty.

And the graciousness and grace of the man failed in nothing. He had brought a new dimension to goodness. He was perfected in fame and fortune; and perfection is not perfect if it ever fails in anything.

Castlereagh's visitor of this night was James Madigan, a Cabinet Member, Secretary of Crime Prevention. But Madigan was in a bleak mood, even in the golden presence of Castlereagh.

"Thomas, the country, the society, is in the worst shape ever," he deplored. "The very idea of honesty has become comical. We have been afraid to publish the revised crime index for the last six months; I doubt if we will ever publish it again; it's horrible. The very appearance of character has all but vanished from the human face. Perhaps that is why you yourself are so remarkable, Thomas."

"Coals of fire, James! But they don't burn me much. I'm well insulated."

"What, Thomas? I believe that I catch a glint of your fine humor there, and I certainly need it tonight. How the crimes do weigh on me!"

"Ah, the crimes!" said Castlereagh. "Murder and arson aren't important in themselves. The effect on a man becomes serious only when followed by a certain hardening. But a man who has done these things to the point of ennui and who has built upon them may eventually become a little coarse. I've seen it happen to others. Who can say that I am immune? Drink, James."

They were drinking brandy together. The words of Castlereagh seemed delightfully humorous. It was the puckish twist of the mouth, it was the laughing eyebrows, it was the dancing gray of the eyes, the complexity of the voice.

"I enjoy your piquant humor, Thomas," said Madigan as he savored and sipped the drink that had an aura beyond all others. "There is something beyond hilarity in the idea that you could ever be criminal, or coarse. But even your drollery can hardly distract me tonight. When I was younger I believed that there was nothing darker than a crime of sheer passion. Now I know that there is something much worse. Do you know what it is?"

"I know it as well as I know the face behind my face, James. But it is you who are in full eloquence. Go on."

"It is the crime without passion, Thomas, the crime almost without interest. The most vile things are done daily in the most offhand manner. It is a thing colder and more horrifying than sadism. If only I could discover the roots of it! If I could find one clear stripped-down example to study. Thomas, I might develop a specific against this venom."

"I can give you one, Madigan. I will give you a chance to study at close range a man who has had more opportunities for evil and has made more use for them than anyone in the world. Listen, and believe. It is important to me that someone finally believe.

"Madigan, I am about to tell you the story of my life. I realize that those are the most fearsome words that one man can ever say to another, but do not be alarmed; I have the virtue of brevity.

"I was named Tom Shanty, James, and not Thomas Castlereagh. I've come a ways from the shanty to the royal castle, which is the meaning of Castlereagh. The name, you see, James, is one element of the aura. I was a sickly boy and the most luckless ever; and perhaps the most dishonest. The police suspected me of every misdemeanor in our neighborhood, and they were right to suspect me. My appearance was against me. I was a fox-faced sneak."

"You, Thomas? Mr. Distinction himself? This is good. On with your tale."

"I was fox-smart and fox-mean. But a fox is hunted uncommonly, James, before he learns his trade. I was unsuccessful in all my jobs and all my thieveries, and was always poor. I worked for a dishonest photographic portraitist. We collected for these, but we did not deliver them. The samples I showed always made the sale. And this means experience was the beginning of my success. The touchups really were fabulous. My employer was a genius at this—when he chose to work at it. I myself am now a compendium of his best touchups. I learned what the face of respectability and distinction looked like.

"I worked for a dishonest electronics man. We did bad work for high prices on TV, VVV, and Replica sets. Being fox-smart I picked up technical knowledge. I learned what things may be translated into waves, including things not commonly thought to be translated.

"I worked for con men. I was bad at this, and my masters were good. I understood quickly why this was so. They had natural advantages for it, and I did not. I had decided to create these advantages for myself unnaturally. More brandy, James?"

"Thank you. It's a droll old brandy you serve, and a droller tale you serve up. Go on, Thomas."

"I spent time in the pokey. My face and my aspect were always against me. They drew the finger of suspicion correctly to me every time. Then I became that lowest life-form, an unsuccessful inventor.

"I married a quiet and rather short-witted girl who was quietly repelled by me. My luck worsened. There came the day when there was no prospect of any job, honest or dishonest; and there was nothing to eat in the house. Little Fox-face had come to the bottom of his burrow.

"But on that lowest day I had completed a crude model of my oddest invention. I named it the aura machine."

"An odd name, Thomas. And you sold the invention and began your rise?" Madigan asked.

"No, I didn't sell it. I never did sell it, for it's priceless. It's made me quite rich. I installed it and let it work for me."

"Just what did you do with your invention, Thomas?"

"Oh, when my device seemed to be working all right, I went out and forged five large checks in the crudest possible manner. That was the first test of my invention, and it stood up well."

"Thomas," smiled James Madigan, "I feel better already. There is something in your goblin humor that always sets me up."

"With the funds acquired from the forged checks I took out twenty thousand dollars' insurance on my wife," Castlereagh said. "I waited three days for the papers to clear. Then I killed her."

"You are the most amazing man, Castlereagh," Madigan said. "You are the cathartic I need. No man but you, even in the retrospect of forty years, could jest about such a matter without crudity. But coming from you, it is the all-saving humor."

"I have no humor, Madigan."

"I've studied that early case, Thomas. I'm as baffled by it as you are. There was no clue at all to the murder of your young wife, and no suspect. You and she were alone in the house, and nobody could have entered. It remains one of the classic puzzles to this day."

"It puzzled me a little too, James, until I looked in the mirror again. My device was working remarkably. My face no longer resembled that of a fox-faced sneak. It was my same face, and yet how different! My luck had changed, had been changed by a fairly simple device. The tide has been running for me ever since."

"But later, Thomas, you suffered great disasters that would have sank a lesser man."

"All the disasters suffered were tricks of my own, and all turned me a profit. With the funds from my wife's death I started a business. It was a crackpot business and it should have failed, for I was and am incompetent. But I had my new contrived luck that made competence unnecessary."

"Thomas, you pile drollery upon drollery. You're a bright patch in my life."

"My invention was working well for me. No, James, the business was in no way concerned with its manufacture of sale. By a series of clumsy frauds I prospered. It was a proud milestone in my life when I caused my first suicide, one of many I was to cause."

"Humor is the key, Thomas. Let our bleakest moods be bathed in its golden light and somehow we will find the strength to go on. The tale becomes richer and richer."

"Then I embarked on arson, that most hare-brained and easily detected of frauds, on a large scale. I acquired a block-long warehouse, an ancient shanty of a building, and filled it with old crates and trash. I insured it heavily. I had twenty drums of kerosene openly hauled in one night and strategically placed. And after dark I upturned them all, gave them a quarter of an hour to soak the timber, and walked out the front door. James, that was the crudest piece of arson ever pulled, and it was not even suspected. My invention was working fine for me now. I collected. I had made my first million dollars; and the story went out that I had suffered the loss of five times that amount."

"Castlereagh, you are better than this old brandy. You warm my cockles and give new life to my tired heart. Your 'invention' I know will be a wowser when you come to your punch line. No tongue but yours could twist out so delightful a rhapsody."

"It is my invention again that makes you find the story delightful. When I look at my reflection, James, I am even able to hoodwink myself. The man behind such a face as mine cannot be other than a great and respected man."

"Richer and richer," chuckled Madigan.

"I married again," said Castlereagh. "Hers was not really a great fortune, but it was a comfortable seven-figure accumulation. I saw it comfortably settled on myself. I gave her half a year, for she was a pleasurable creature. Then I killed her."

"Ah, you hide that old tragedy behind your mocking humor also, Thomas. I am familiar with the case. It was one of the most baffling—"

"Sure. No clue at all, and no suspect. I was alone in the house with her, and nobody could have entered. There were no fingerprints but mine to be found anywhere, even in the powder on her throat. She was throttled by persons unknown. Quite an impossible murder.

"Well, James, I stayed with proved methods, but always on an expanding scale. Who would suspect a man whose face mirrored the integrity of Lincoln, the clear fire of a young Jefferson, the humor of Lamb, the honest thoughtfulness of Browne, the scope of Plutarch, the urchin-humanness of Francis, the serenity-in-power of Octavius? My next arson concerned eighty acres of surplus government buildings acquired for a sour song and a sweet face. It took me thirteen days and three thousand drums of kerosene to set that one up properly. But I collected fifty million dollars worth of insurance on it. It was bruited about, however, that I had lost half a billion; and the nation almost went into mourning."

"I will remember my personal desolation at your great loss," said Madigan. "I doubt if any other man would have had the heart to surmount it, or the grace to joke about it later on."

"One more grand trick, and then I'd have all the money that mattered. I built me a nationwide all-embracing fraud. I cleaned thirty million investors, small, medium, and large on that one. Then, as an experiment, I let my mask slip a trifle, muted my peculiar device a little. A few of the fish saw behind it then. They even took me through a series of courts."

"I well remember those craven character assassins, Castlereagh," Madigan said, "No man but yourself would be able to find humor in it, even now."

"Oh, they had me cold at every turn, James. The transparency of my fraudulent machinations was breathtaking. But I turned my device on to the full. My invention, ah, luck, working again at full efficiency. And once more I had my wonderful face. It had gone so far that it had to go all the way, and of course I won. There were tears in the eyes of the Chief Justice when he embraced me after it was all over. I had tears in my own eyes, but I would not want to have the salt in them publicly analyzed."

"The entire nation wept in gratitude at your vindication; and now you are able to joke absurdly about it. Ah, deep humor and tears are very close together, are they not, Thomas?"

"Jerked by the same pair of strings, James. Then I put the cap on it. I set up the Castlereagh Fund for the Study of Bott's Disease."

"Kicked off by an anonymous contribution of thirty million dollars! Anonymous! But, of course, everyone knew that the contribution was yours."

"Sure, everyone knew it was mine, even if it wasn't. It was my own publicity that pointed the big finger at me. But it wasn't mine. The man who gave that thirty million was rather a shy fish about giving. He gave in the dark through me. By an irony, his name has come to be a byword for miserliness. By a double irony it was myself who hung that tag on him. But I treat that fund with respect; I only milk it for the earned interest every year. I call it my toothpick fund. If anything named Bott's disease really comes around, maybe I'll be able to run the trick through again."

"Thomas, what a fund of deep drollery you have! My fit of depression is all but gone. But seriously, Castlereagh, what is this business about Doctor Forester? He must be unbalanced. You mean he has actually threatened you?"

"Forester has done a little work in emanations himself. I went to him for a skin rash, and he discovered parts of my device embedded under my hid. He caught on pretty fast. He learned that my projected personality was an artificial one. He learned a few other things as soon as he started thinking. Now he says he's going to kill me. I've been fooling around with his wife pretty seriously, you know."

"You and Maisie? Oh, that is the joke of all jokes. For a moment I thought that you were serious."

"I am. Madigan, if a man says he will kill me, then that man is already dead. If I have any talent at all it is for anticipating an event. The murder of Doctor Forester is this present month will be a curious one, and it will reach to the level of your own office; but you will not be there for it. It will be a crude one. I always kill crudely. James, I talk and talk, but you have no ears for what I say."

"No ears for your humor, Castlereagh? I haven't enjoyed anything so much in months. I am rejuvenated and recharged. Thomas, come to the high point of it! What is your 'Wonderful Invention'?"

"Wait, James, I must make a phone call. And then I must mix for you a special brandy." And Thomas Castlereagh went to do so. He returned after a short interval. He gave Madigan the brandy.

"And what did you add to my brandy to make it special, Thomas?" Madigan asked.

"Oh, the oldest venom of all, conium maculatum. It goes well with all wines and brandies. Strikes direct to the heart. Taste it and thank me for it."

"I taste it. I thank you for it," said Madigan.

"Thank me that I have spared you the burned almond taste, at least. I hate such clichés in poisonings. Ah, the marvelous invention? It is simply the Aura Machine. I was fooling around with electronics which I luckily misunderstood. And I was studying bodily emanations and auras as the expression of personality. I stumbled on a way of modifying my own aura.

"I found that the aura, and its great effect upon the ambient, were really very simple things that might be simply reproduced. Those who speak of personal magnetism are correct. There is a strong magnetic element; also a strong element of the electrical corona effect; and there is another emanation that works on the sublimal sense of smell. Quite simply, I could make my own aura! I could make it to project any personality and appearance that I wished for myself . . . I made it to project the personality and appearance of Respectability, Distinction, and Utter Rectitude. I fabricated such an artificial personality for myself that nobody, under any conditions but the most fantastic, would ever be able to believe any evil of me.

"Could such a simple thing work, James? It could. A duck-call is a simple device, and a duck is a complex one. Yet a duck will be fooled by a duck-call sounded by a man. A duck will even come to the artificial call in preference to the real, if the artificial is made with sufficient care. I employed all the art I was capable of in making my own device; and mostly it has sufficed.

"It didn't take much: a subcutaneous device which I inserted myself; a selenium plate set into my head by a quack butcher; an apparatus embedded in my throat to give my voice what I wanted; a power pack; a harmonic booster. I tried it on my lowest day, as I have told you, and it worked. At first I was a little afraid of overdoing it. Then I discovered that there is no way of overdoing the respectability bit. People saw my face, not as it was, but as a respectable one. I became the man who could do no wrong. It was a grand trick, and I worked it down to the nub."

"Thomas, you slay me!"

"True. You finally understand. No, you do not. We both forget that I have no humor. Madigan, my device was so good that it could even fool an ordinary camera. However, I devised a camera with an astatic filter that cuts the emanating aura. It's good for a man to remember sometimes what he really looks like. I still have the face of a fox-faced sneak."

Madigan's chuckle had become like an earth-wave. "It's like something out of those odd little magazines with the surrealist covers, Thomas. Have you ensured that your—as—marvelous invention will not die with you?"

"Sure. I've willed the secret to a small group of cutthroats sometimes in my employ. Their looks are against them. They remind me of me. They need it. And when I am gone, they will carry on the evil work that is so close to my heart."

"What a wonderful man you are," said James Madigan. "From what deep well do you draw your flowing humor? Thomas, I feel giddy! I'm suddenly ill. Call my man for me. I'll not be able to get home alone."

"I did call your man, James, just before I poisoned you. I told him that you were dying. He'll be here shortly. I had to tell my story to someone, and I could not let that someone live if he believed it. And after all, who will suspect me of poisoning you, just because we were drinking together with no one else present when you were given the needled brandy? My thing will hold. It will be another of those most baffling crimes ever."

"Ah, your wonderful humor, Thomas! But I am quite sick."

"Dying, I tell you. Dammit, man, can't you get it through your head that you're dying before you die? I want you to believe me! It's less fun when you don't believe me. James, I kill you! Act like a man being killed!"

"You are such a wonderful man, Castlereagh. If I am somehow called away, and it seems that I am, I'll miss you woefully."

"Believe me that I kill you, Madigan! It's no fun if you don't believe."

But James Madigan died with a blissful smile, happy in the presence of his golden-hearted friend. It was enough in life to have known him.

"I had better take the other one tonight also, and have it done," Thomas told himself. The fox-face flickered there for a brief instant, as it sometimes did when he was alone. "And then I'll turn it up as far as it will go, and damn the headaches. This one will take everything I've got."

These were two of the most mysterious murders ever. The poisoning of Madigan was clearly murder; and the bloody bludgeoning of Doctor Forester could have been nothing else. And yet they seemed impossible of solution. There was no clue. No nothing.

The drink of Madigan had been poisoned, that of Castlereagh had not been. And yet they had been together for the long evening, and no one had intruded. And the affair of Doctor Forester was truly weird. Thomas Castlereagh, taken by a strong premonition, had gone to the home of his close friend the doctor and been admitted. Something happened then, a thing so shocking that Castlereagh does not retain the memory of it. From his attempt to intervene, apparently, he was covered with the doctor's death blood, and he held the death weapon in his own august hands. Whatever fell intruder did the thing remains a mystery.

These foul murders cry to Heaven for vengeance, but we of Earth are baffled when we try to answer that cry. All is riddle.

A certain commentator best encapsuled the feelings of all of us:

"The sympathy of the nation and the whole world goes out to Thomas Castlereagh. So great and good a man, and he has suffered such sorrows in the past! And now to be deprived of his two closest friends in a single right! The heart groans."

WHITE WOLF CALLING by C. L. Grant

There have been only a handful of C. L. Grant stories so far—though they are starting to come with welcome frequency—but the by-line has already become one to watch for. A Grant story is notable for good, likeable characters sympathetically portrayed; for well-delineated backgrounds; and for being so well told. The following story has a rural American setting and deals with a ghostly wolf that appears as a sign to those who are soon going to die. Sound familiar? Don't count on it. Not the way C. L. Grant tells a story.

Snow: suspended white water humping over hidden rocks, slashed by a slick black road that edged around the stumped mountains and swept deserted between a pair of low, peaked houses that served as unassuming sentinels at the mouth of the valley; drifting, not diving to sheathe needled green arms that bent and held in multiples of thousands, spotting indifferently the tarmac walk that tongued from the half-moon porch of the house on the right. A snowman with stunted arms and holes for eyes squatted awkwardly beside a solitary spruce, watching nothing and making uneasy the brown-bundled man who stood by the mailbox. He leaned heavily against a broad-mouthed shovel, staring at the home opposite, turning his red-capped head to look beyond it to the forest that wavered through the sailing crystals up the slope to blend before the summit into the gray-white air.

No wind. Breathing only as he listened to the sunset, strained to hear the summons of the wolf.

"Mars?"

The shovel skittered from his stiff hand, banged against the walk, and angered him with its rifle-volley clatter.

"You think you have the power to move that house with just your eyes?"

Turning, he bent to retrieve the shovel, waving his free hand to indicate he had heard and did not approve. Not so many decades before, he had begun calling his wife Venus because of her shortening of his own name to laughingly deify him; hers was Samantha, but his Venus she was. On the porch now, with crimson cheeks and her back reed-fragile, she folded her arms against the cold, waiting as he took a frustrated poke at the soiled snow the village plow had left to harass his cleaning. The mount was almost ice, and he glared at his gloves as if to blame them before hurrying to the house.

"Get inside, you dope, before you catch your death."

"I haven't seen the wolf, Venus. I'll probably live forever."

"Quit your smiling, Mars. That isn't funny at all. Get inside."

"You go on ahead. I'm almost done."

"I'm stubborn, Mars Tanner. I like to watch you killing yourself while that shiny new snowblower I gave you for Christmas lies rotting in the garage."

He pinched at her nose, tugged a lock of hair. "I may not be as young as I used to be, kid, but I can still handle anything that comes out of the sky."

She made a face and thumped him on the back as he went through the door, then rushed down the darkened hallway into the sweet-smelling kitchen before the warm stinging yanked at his parchment face and dried his lips.

"Tea?"

"No, thanks."

"Coffee?"

He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. "Every time you ask, and every time I have to tell you, dummy, that coffee gives me gas. When are the boys coming back?"

"If they're sober, they'll be back in time for supper, as always," she said, taking his cap and stiffly new coat to hang by the wood-fed stove. "Some boys. They're almost forty, you know."

"In age, maybe, but their heads are at least two dozen years behind."

Venus tugged at the strings of her apron, letting the blue and yellow cloth tighten around her waist before she wriggled to settle it into place. Her hair was bunned gray, narrowing her face, sharpening her nose to a pale robin's beak. Only her chin remained youthfully rounded, even when she was mad.

"I don't like the way you make fun of them, Mars. They've come to hard times, in case you've forgotten the accident. It wasn't easy for them, losing both their wives as suddenly as that." She stared at him standing by the refrigerator. "Two daughters-in-law, and no grandchildren. It hasn't been easy for me, either."

"Those so-called women, and I'm sorry to say it, thought the boys had money, Venus. They took one look at our property here, didn't think anything at all about how land is cheap in this part of the state, and they talked themselves into believing we were rich. And neither Carter or Jonathan did anything to discourage them. Those women were too young and too damned impatient, and neither of my sons had brains enough to handle them."

Suddenly annoyed with himself for speaking when he should have been thinking, Mars poked aside the curtains on the back door and glared at the first staggered row of pine at the end of the yard he had cleared himself during their first summer in the valley. Seeing nothing, more angry because he thought he might, he sat at the table and dry-washed his hands. Venus moved behind him, rested her cheek against his still-thick hair, and sighed just loud enough for him to hear. Knowing she would soon begin to caution him about little Tommy across the road, he shifted uneasily and cleared his throat.

"Into town today, I heard Pierson talking at the barbershop."

"It's about time you got a haircut," she said, sitting, one boned hand snaking unconsciously across her face in remembrance of a time when her hair was black and hung in gleaming ripples in front of one eye. "You're beginning to look like a sheep dog. Don't look like a very good one, though. Even without my glasses I can see it doesn't look like a very good one."

"That's because I didn't get one. I was to the hardware store looking up a new hammer when Pierson called me in for a chat. He says, and you know how Pierson is when he says anything, he told me fat McKenzie saw the wolf last week, just before his car smacked into the telephone pole."

"He was drinking. The newspaper said so. And that mechanic had done something to the steering. You think they had a trial for nothing?"

"McKenzie was scared. He told me."

"Of what, for heaven's sake? That mechanic? Mac owed that man a fortune for gambling, and practically everyone in town heard them fighting one time or another. My God, Mars, Mac outweighed him by a hundred pounds. If he was scared of anything, it was of having to pay the man and have nothing left for his wine. You know he always drank. I knew him for thirty-five years and can't remember the day he was last sober. Even on his wedding night when he married that Cranford woman."

Mars grinned. "You were there, I suppose?"

"Mars!"

"I wouldn't be surprised. You do get around, you know."

She feigned a roundhouse slap, he mimed a ducking wince, and they laughed, forgetting the moment what McKenzie had seen.

"I'm going to take Tommy out to the cabin tomorrow to help me with the wood."

Venus wiped at the smiling tears in her eyes and shook her head. "That boy's not good for you, Mars. He's not your son, you know, and I doubt that the Dovnys will approve of your trying to make him."

"Oh, for pete's sake, Venus, his father's never home, and his mother's flat on her back because of that skiing accident that busted her back. He happens to like my company, and I happen to like his. And with no one else his age around close to play with, we get along just fine."

"Well . . ."

"We can take care of ourselves, dear, don't worry. If I see the wolf, I'll spit in its eye."

Venus tried to smile, rose instead, and bustled meaninglessly at the stove where supper was already steaming in three huge black pots.

Neither of them admitted believing there was a snow wolf in the mountains, had never even heard of such a green-eyed creature until the Dovny's purchase of the land opposite them where they had constructed the house Mars hated because it spoiled his rocking-chair view. He had met the Slavic father only once, at a Board of Education luncheon two years before at the village school. The man's English had been formal, as if memorized from a grammar book, but he charmed and was charming, and Mars had become friends with the blond-banged son when he had straightened a runner on the little boy's sled. The boy was the one who had told him and the village about the white wolf.

"Oh, I get it," Mars had said as he pulled boy and sled up a slope behind the house. "You're talking about one of those werewolf things. I've seen them a lot on television, on those horror-show festivals."

The boy frowned bewilderment until Mars had explained, then shook his head and squinted to think harder. "No, the wolf only comes when someone is to die. It's not a person."

"Funny, but I never heard of that until you came around. How does it work? Is it kind of a family tradition? Maybe a Czech folk story, something like that?"

The boy had shrugged.

"Have a chocolate bar?"

The boy nodded and stuck it in his pocket.

Mars had completely forgotten that day until Samson O'Brien claimed he had shot at a wolf bigger than any he'd seen in his life. He was jeered when he failed to produce a pelt, or the tracks when he led a group of men to the site of the hunt. A week to the day later, his wife knifed him in the back when she learned he had been seeing the daughter of the mayor.

"Mars, are you trying to hypnotize yourself, or has my company gone stale after all these years?"

He blinked, tried a boyish grin before shaking his head. "Sorry," he said, leaning back in his chair. "I was thinking."

"Well, stop it. The boys are home. I heard them on the stairs."

"You want me to go up?"

"What for?"

He shrugged. "Talk to them. See what their plans are. God knows there isn't any paying work around here."

"We won't be around that long, Pop," and Mars grimaced when he turned so abruptly he twisted his side.

The sons were twins, dark-haired, taller than their parents and heavier about the chest and waist. Carter was the younger by three minutes, but his face was shadowed with lines and puffs; Jonathan was the same as he had been at thirty, except for the eyes that seemed perpetually half closed.

"I wasn't trying to ease you out," Mars said, almost pouting, while they noisily took their places at the table.

"I know, Pop," Carter said.

"Of course he knows," Jonathan said, not bothering to disguise a slighting sneer. "He knows everything, don't you, Carter boy? Even took Pop's advice and knew enough to put the girls on that goddamned, beat-up excuse for a train."

"That's enough!" Venus said, slapping plates down in front of them. "The past is past, and I won't have that kind of talk in my house. You two have got to get back on your feet again, and soon. Your father's too proud to admit it, and too good to say it, but we can't have you around here indefinitely. It's too much of a strain."

"I know," Carter said, rising to help ladle the soup. "Just need a little readjusting, that's all. Besides, my leave's up in a week and I'll have to be getting back to camp."

"My goodness," Jonathan said, "does even a captain have to run like a buck private? Something else I didn't know. When are you going to make major, by the way? Ever?"

"Go to hell," Carter said.

"Language, brother," Jonathan said, scooping chunks of butter onto steaming slices of homemade bread.

"That's enough from the both of you," Mars said. "Your mother's right, as always. My pension can't handle everything. We love you both, but soon you've got to make a move. I'm talking especially to you, Jon. Your brother at least has a check coming in."

"Pop," Carter said before his twin could snap again, "why don't you sell the house? Maybe move to one of those retirement places. I know you love it here and all, but for crying out loud, the physical upkeep alone is going to do you in one of these days."

"I'll buy the place," Jonathan said, suddenly solicitous.

"Neither of you will," Venus said, taking her seat. "We've been here since you were born, and I'm not about to leave it now. Say grace, Mars, before I lose my appetite."

And dinner passed into evening as the snow grayed, crusted, and was littered with snapping fallen branches weakened by ice. Fireplace flames shadowed the living room in spite of the lamps, and Mars stood at a window, listening to his shattered family playing cards, listening later, as he wandered the house looking for sleep, to whispers: the house itself, talking down to dawn through the mouth of the furnace, the pops of cooling wood in the fireplace, the creaks of boards searching for a comfortable place to shy away from the rising wind; the wind, riding the back of the snow, drifting powder over the road, pushing against thin glass, humming to itself in wires strung through the air, once to a crescendo covering hushed words; the words, snapping, biting, accusing, and prodding the weaknesses of the old man in vain attempts at deadly prophecy, husking laughter when one suggested the other do Mars the fatal blow.

Standing in the hallway, Mars shivered at the door of his sons' room, pleading for a prayer, sucking back the trembling that directed him to break down the barrier and cast them out.

He thought of Tommy, the surrogate sun, and cursed his lack of wisdom that had made him a failure.

In his own bed again, wondering, he listened to the wind, heard faintly the cry of the dead calling for death.

And in the morning, after he had seen the brothers off to the village to notch another day at the tavern bar, after picking up after himself in bedroom and bath, he stood in the back yard and waited as Tommy ran awkwardly through the snow to him, dragging a sled still shining with varnish. Mars smiled, adjusted the peaked cap that covered the long blond hair, pinched the rounded cheek with his glove, and led the boy into the woods, up the slope to a narrow plateau where freshly cut stumps pockmarked the ground.

A makeshift shed euphemistically called a cabin stood bleakly at the far end of the clearing. It was missing a front wall, served as a storage area for the logs Mars cut twice each winter. Tommy scrambled from stump to stump, climbing, daring Mars to spill him into the snow. The old man smiled, encouraged the boy to play on his. own while he pulled a tarpaulin from a handmade toboggan and began loading the split wood, strapping each layer from front to back, finished with the canvas strapped side to side.

It was noon, and he was sweating, gasping, but not yet ready to give in to the aching that stretched his muscles and pounded through his lungs. He pointed out to the boy the peak where three hunters had lain wounded when a local man had gone berserk one evening in the tavern, escaped from the sheriff, and had done some hunting of his own. They had endured the freezing night unprotected except for their clothes, only one surviving to testify at the trial, dying shortly after in the county hospital.

"They saw the wolf," Tommy said solemnly, and Mars laughed, cuffed him on the back of the head.

"You never did tell me how that works," he said, deliberately light.

Tommy rubbed a black mitten across his nose and sniffed. "I told you. The wolf comes when somebody's to die."

"But no one's been killed, much less even scratched, round here in a hundred years. By a wolf, that is."

Tommy looked up into the old man's face. "The wolf doesn't do it, silly. Father says the wolf . . . I don't know. It just comes. I don't know what it eats, but it causes, not does."

"You know, maybe I should get to know your father better," Mars said, taking hold of the unraveling gray rope that was tied to the ends of the sled's steering bar. He waved the boy on, and they moved up past the cabin. "I haven't seen him in nearly two years to talk to properly. I hope he doesn't think I'm unfriendly. I just never got around to it somehow."

"He works in the city," the boy said proudly. "He comes home on weekends and sleeps most of the time. He's very tired."

Mars nodded.

"Mommy's sick all the time."

"I know, son. I heard about it in the village."

"She can't sit up like us. Her back hurts all the time."

"I know, son."

Tommy jumped off the sled, and Mars sighed gratitude as they trudged in tandem toward the run they had made the week before.

"You know something, Mr. Tanner, I think my father's trying to scare me with the wolf story. He said it comes all the way from our home in . . . in . . ." He stumbled silently, mouthing the name and trying to give it voice. Mars has learned early not to help him. Czechoslovakia was the boy's private problem. One of these days, Mars thought, he'll pronounce it right and we'll have a damn big party.

The snow crackled beneath them as they turned around, hissed like scrapping glass when Mars lay on the sled, Tommy climbed onto his back, and they raced down to the clearing.

Grinning and shouting, Mars sideswiped a log and spilled them both into a wave of snow that seeped down their necks like traces of ice. Lying with his face up, Mars squinted at the impossibly bright clouds, widened his eyes as a shadow darkened them, and saw the laughing boy hugging his face.

"Mars, I think I need you."

"My God," Mars said and clasped the boy to him, closing his eyes to keep them from emptying, opening them to see the wolf.

It was white to its tail, with glittering beads of snow and ice clinging softly to its unmatted fur, swinging as it moved silently around the edge of the clearing. Breath in turbulent rivers of misted gray snorted from its nostrils while it turned around and faced them, its ears upright, its head slightly cocked. It stalked, slowly, and Mars rocked, still chuckling in his throat, keeping the boy's face pressed to his chest. The white wolf circled, and Mars twisted on his buttocks to keep the animal from getting behind him. Snow flecked from the sky, veiling but not hiding the green eyes that were deep close to black in the creature's magnificent head.

A ghost or a god? Mars thought as he pulled his legs from underneath him and struggled to stand without releasing Tommy.

"Hey," the boy said. "You're hurting me."

"Maybe," Mars whispered, "but you're tough. You can take it."

"Sure," Tommy said and squeezed harder, laughing.

The wolf backed away when Mars steadied himself, watched as man and boy sidled toward the toboggan. It bobbed its head once, whipped its tail, and trotted off without looking back.

Tommy began coughing.

"You got a cold?"

"Same one I had last week."

"Come on," Mars said, swallowing to keep his voice level, "I'll get some warm soup into your craw."

"What does that mean?"

"It's a foreign word, son. Foreign to you, that is."

"I know a lot of foreign words, too."

"Good. Maybe someday you can teach them to me."

"When, Mars?"

"I don't know. Someday. Soon, I guess."

With the runners freshly waxed and the slope working with him, Mars had little trouble hauling the load of lumber down to the house. Tommy pushed from behind, calling out every few feet to be sure Mars knew he was helping. And when they parted, Venus handing him a pot of stew to bring to his mother, Tommy waved, stepped into the road, and was nearly struck by the car that raced out of the village and into the driveway.

"Goddamn it, you idiot," Mars shouted at Carter. "Why the hell can't you watch where you're going?"

Carter heaved his bulk out of the car and stumbled past silently, muttering nothings and leaving a waft of mixed beer and liquor.

Mars grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him around. "Where's Jonathan?"

Carter shrugged, shook the hand off, and staggered into the house, brushing past Venus without taking off his coat.

Cursing, then, his own thoughtlessness, Mars spun around, but Tommy was already on the first step of his own porch. He turned and waved, and Mars wanted to call out. He lifted a hand instead and sagged into the kitchen. Despite Venus's proddings, he remained silent throughout the evening meal, wondering what would have happened if Tommy had seen the green-eyed specter. It was a miracle he hadn't, and Mars was moved once to laugh at his suspicions of the divine. That he was frightened he wouldn't admit, not even to himself.

Jonathan was returned by two of Mars's friends just before midnight, and the three of them carried the unconscious son into the bedroom, making little attempt to keep their voices low since Carter was already asleep and would not awaken until his stomach decided it was time to empty.

The fireplace, then, and the aroma of burning pine while Venus went to work on some knitting of hers: a scarf she had started the winter before but hadn't the patience to finish when its perfection eluded her clumsy fingers.

"What is it, Mars?"

He looked away from the fire.

Thinking: McKenzie.

"I saw the white wolf today."

"You didn't." She set the yarn at her side and leaned forward with her arms resting trembling on her thighs.

A bubble of sap boiled.

"Bigger than life and twice as heavy. Damndest thing I ever saw in my life."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"We didn't believe there was such a thing, remember?"

"You saw it," she said. "It must be so. You never did have much imagination, Mars."

Thinking: three men bleeding.

"I think I was trying to get the boy to look at it."

Venus hummed nervously, then left her armchair for the sofa and curled her legs beneath her as she rested against Mars's unmoving arm. "Now you are imagining."

"You just said I never did, but maybe you're right, I don't know. I was thinking, though, that this thing, whatever it is, was never around before the Dovny people came."

"You saying maybe they brought it with them? A pet of some kind?"

Mars didn't know. From the time he had returned to the house from the clearing, he had been seeing movement in the corners of his eyes that escaped when he turned his head, white movement speckled green.

"O'Brien," he said without realizing he had spoken aloud.

"Hush that talk," she said, gliding a hand against his mouth until he kissed it and carefully placed it between his own. "All those men were just bums, flops, failures, and I don't mourn their passing. And that wolf is just a wolf and had nothing to do with them."

Sleet began exploding like glass against the house.

"One of these days it'll move out to the city."

"Into the city?" She laughed, gasping, incredulous. "Come on, Mars Tanner, can you really see that beast walking the streets of a big town? With no one doing anything but staring or running scared? In a city, Mars?"

He thought: as he had left the clearing with Tommy, one backward glance had been sufficient to note that the snow where the wolf had been pacing was clean. There were no depressions to indicate an animal of that size had walked a warning.

"Mars, you're frightened, aren't you?"

He watched the sparks like fire-rain raise up into the chimney. "Venus," he said, "we've done bad by our children. One we drove into the army, the other we just drove. I don't think we ever really knew how to be parents."

"We did the best we could."

It was a tired argument, one that usually left them not speaking for hours.

"I should have cared more, I guess, been more ambitious, but the store was good enough for me."

"They went to school, Mars. They learned things."

"Yeah," he said, scratching his stubbled jaw, "and blamed me for not doing the same."

A commotion on the steps forestalled her answer, caused her to straighten as if her sons would have been affronted by their parents' intimacy.

They came down into the foyer carrying suitcases and already wearing their overcoats. As Mars strode angrily toward them, Carter lifted a hand. "Don't say it, Pop, but we have to go. It's no good here, and you were right yesterday."

"The dear captain's going to get me something at the PX," Jonathan said.

"But why now?"

"Listen, Pop, there's no sense in our making it any harder on any of us. Some folks got the touch to do things right, and some don't We don't"

"What's the matter with your eyes?"

"I been drinking a lot in case you hadn't noticed. Just let us go quietly, and maybe one of us will write when things get settled. When we get the time."

Venus remained on the sofa, tilting her cheek to her sons' kisses, brief and without even momentary affection. And they were out the door before Mars could think of an appropriate farewell to forty years.

"Samantha," he said, his back to the room, "don't ever let anyone tell you that I didn't love you."

Suddenly there were shouts, and Carter came running back inside.

"Your rifle, Pop, where is it? Never mind," and he snatched at the weapon cradled in the wall rack in the hall. Mars hurried to the door, but Carter brushed past him, answering with a wordless shout the urgings of his brother.

"God," he said, stopping long enough to pull a box of cartridges from a breakfront and stuff the magazine. "You should see that animal, Pop. Biggest damn thing in the world."

"Oh, my Christ!" Mars said and ran into the kitchen, grabbed his coat, and slapped on his hat. Venus he pushed back into a chair as she tried to follow, and with a muttered "Samantha" rushed outside, nearly colliding with his sons who were standing on the edge of the porch. Jonathan had the rifle to his shoulder, sighting, waiting until Mars saw the white wolf trot unconcernedly from behind the spruce in the center of the yard. His son fired; the bright star flared from the barrel, and a puff shattered from the snowman's head. The three men descended to the walk when it was obvious Jonathan had missed.

"Never could shoot worth a damn," Carter said, grabbing for the stock, being pushed roughly aside.

"That will make a hell of a coat," Jonathan said, stalking now as the wolf padded from the yard to the slippery road. Immediately, lights in the Dovny house blinked on sporadically until the grounds were lighted with squares of pale sun. The front door opened and Tommy stepped out

Mars watched the progress of the wolf, unable to speak, dizzy from the cold that lanced at his face in droplets of sleet Tommy called out, waving, and began to climb down from his porch. Jonathan swung the rifle and fired again.

"The boy!" Mars shouted. "Goddamn it, Jon, watch the boy!"

"Shut up, Pop," one of them said.

Tommy had reached the bottom of the steps, was angling across the front of the house when the wolf broke into a run toward the corner nearest him. Tommy sprinted after it, and Mars, unthinking, ran across the road toward him.

Someone shouted and the wolf halted, gray now beyond the light.

Tommy clapped his hands and shouted encouragement as Jonathan moved to the center of the road and took aim.

The wolf moved, placing the boy between it and the rifle.

Mars, arms spread and mouth open, flung himself into the air.

Jonathan fired.

And in the silence echoing from flake to flake as sleet turned to snow, Mars sprawled on the ground, twisting his head from side to side as if searching for a door into a room without pain. He gasped as Tommy roughly rolled him onto his back, heard the careless shriek of tires as a car skidded, straightened, and bulleted toward the village. They'll never make the turn at the railroad, he thought

Distantly, he heard Venus screaming.

Into the snow he opened his eyes and saw Tommy kneeling beside him.

"You never ate the chocolate I gave you," he said through the sparks that wouldn't leave him be. "Probably threw away the stew, too." He arched his back and gasped. "Don't suppose I could get a second chance, could I? I could do better."

Tommy shook his head. His left arm nestled in the ruff around the neck of a white wolf. His right hand stroked the head of another. He bent his face closer to peer into Mars's face, and Mars saw the glimmering green in his eyes, feeding on his failure before he died.

"Daddy's home," the boy said. "You said you wanted to meet him."

LIFEGUARD by Arthur Byron Cover

Summer between school years. A job lazing around the pool, soaking up a tan, nothing to worry about, nothing more serious to do than driving around and smoking grass and finding girls. Where could be the horror in that? Arthur Cover has said he enjoys writing horror fiction because it's the only chance he has to write social realism. Indeed, if you've read his wild and surrealistic comic novel Autumn Angels, "Lifeguard" might come as something of a surprise. But a pleasant—to say nothing of chilling—one, we think . . .

The summer following my third year in the state college wondering what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, I got a part-time job as a lifeguard so I would have more free time to spend smoking grass. There wasn't supposed to be any grass in Blackton, Virginia, according to an article the local newspaper had run on the opinions and witticisms of the town sheriff. "The kids here are good kids," the sheriff had said. "There hasn't been any hint of marijuana or that so-called hard stuff in Blackton." My friends and I had a good laugh over that one. Alcohol was out; the nineteen-seventies had finally arrived; and I was tired of the embarrassing scenes of my brother and I coming home drunk; i.e., like the time I had the dry heaves and, much to the chagrin of my mother, passed out while leaning over the commode. She pulled me out by the hair.

It started out to be a good summer; I was counting my blessings. Three days a week I, Bob Strawn, took it easy getting a suntan, and the other four days I slept, smoked, drove around, balled, played bridge and poker, and did all the other things the fine upstanding kids did. Sometimes I read books and thought deep thoughts about the social revolution of our times, but that was only a gesture; apathy was sinking in fast Other times I wondered if I should go on and get my masters or just bum around the country for a few years. No matter what, I didn't want to wind up like some of the kids I had graduated from high school with—staying in Blackton all their lives and basically just stagnating.

Not that the country was bad. During the summer the trees were thick with dark green leaves and the sun was bright and the air woke you up in the morning. I liked to walk in the mountains and kick the fragile, damp leaves which had fallen the autumn before and smoke grass, all by myself. I watched the white clouds roll their way across a sky that was as blue as anything I had ever seen. I was really living, Wordsworthian style, I told myself.

But the reverie would soon be over; I had one more year of school and there just wasn't that much to do in Blackton or in Blackton County. I didn't want to get married and sell used cars with my father. Somehow I had it figured that there were great things in my future, though I didn't know exactly what However, I didn't think about the future much.

The morning after the Fourth of July weekend, I was sweeping gravel from the concrete and picking up the trash around the pool when that friendly neighborhood pusher, Jack Walker, arrived and told me he was getting some great stuff in that night Of course I didn't believe him; Jack was a little guy with a crew-cut and a lot of zits and he was mostly mouth. That day he was wearing baggy blue shorts and a red shirt I couldn't look at without my sunglasses. He had scrawny little arms and scrawny little legs and a beer-gut which rivaled my father's. He tried to be friends with everyone; he tried very hard, which is why he never succeeded. As far as I knew, no one had ever bought any of that great acid he had been selling all through June. He bummed a cigarette from me, let the smoke linger in his mouth like he was really enjoying it, and sat down on the bench beside the wooden table people were supposed to eat at. He leaned back, spread his legs, and draped his arms over the table; he looked like a spider. "I tell you, Bob ol' boy, it's fantastic. I smoked a sample last night." He leaned forward, nodded, and assumed the manner of a fifty-year-old executive. "Look, I just know you'll want some."

Trying to be nice, I said, "I spent all my money last weekend. That party at the Lutz's, you know."

"I know. I was there."

"Oh. I had forgotten. Well, uh, if you know, then you know. I ain't got no jack, and I ain't gonna get none until I get my check next week. Talk to me about it then."

He flipped his cigarette outside the wire fence into the parking lot and watched me work for about five minutes. Then his face assumed that slimy smile which always brought out the best in his yellow teeth. "I tell you what," he said, "I'm supposed to get the stuff at Cook's Cabin; that's where I always make my heavy connections. I'll leave a few joints in there for you tonight, 'cause I'm going straight to Richlands to get me a piece of ass." He chuckled and did a poor imitation of Groucho.

"You?"

He didn't answer. "I'm going to have to get rid of this stuff fast because I think my parents are catching on. So pick them up, will you? If you vouch for it, then everybody else will know it's OK."

I wanted to ask Jack if he thought the police were watching him; I knew the sheriff couldn't be as dumb as we thought. But before I could do so, he slapped me on the shoulder and told me he had to be going. "You will get them, won't you?"

"Yeah, I guess," I said, not knowing whether I would or not.

He left, driving over the gravel road at forty m.p.h., raising dust everywhere. I thought bad thoughts about him, then promptly thought about other things.

Later on that day I sat at the bench in the same position Walker had; I was talking with Chip Anderson, a med student trainee at the Health Department, and with Ted Maxwell, the nicest redneck I ever met. Ted was a cadet at the state college, but I rarely saw him unless we were both in Blackton; he was lanky, with short black hair and an accent that made me sound as if I had come from the English stage. Chip had thick glasses and wiry brown hair covering his ears; he was twenty pounds overweight and still had complexion problems. After we had discussed various topics for a while, Chip started talking about alcohol again; he compared it to the feeling people were supposed to get from grass. "I can't get high off grass," he said for the hundredth time. "Maybe if I tried some really powerful stuff . . ."

Naturally that reminded me, and I related my conversation with Jack Walker.

"Why don't we go tonight?" asked Ted. "We got nothing else to do."

"Oh yeah, Ted?" asked Chip. "We gotta help my aunt move tonight."

Ted grimaced and said, "Well, I got another idea. Why doesn't Bob go and get the joints? If the stuff is good, we'll buy a few ounces and get Chip so stoned he won't be able to talk."

I said I would go.

At seven I borrowed the car and drove to Cook's Cabin; the radio was loud, but then the station played a song I hated, so I turned it off. The sun was sinking behind a mountain; a thin grayness was settling over the countryside, although the sky was as blue as ever. I paid no attention to my driving; I knew every curve by heart and my mind was blank. I felt as if I were trying to think some thought new to me, a thought alien to my experience. I wondered if Blackton County was a dim dream. I was wasted inside; maybe I had been playing too hard and needed some rest. My eyes lingered over fragments of scenery: a cow chewing his cud and sticking its head over a barbed-wire fence; a junked Chevy in someone's front yard; the brick home of a girl I knew only passingly but always wanted to catch sight of. And other things I guess; I forgot them as soon as my mind wandered to something else.

Cook's Cabin was on a hill next to the forest, twenty yards from the highway leading toward Richlands. I don't know if it had ever been renovated or not; a silver marker with black letters called it a historic landmark—built by the first settlers of Blackton County two hundred years ago. Across the highway were fields reputed to have been an Indian burial ground.

I made a left turn into the shoulder next to the cabin and got out of the car. I felt nervous, but I ascribed that to my keen sense of paranoia; I told myself again that the police were not that dumb. I looked around to see if anyone was there; sometimes people were. A green picnic table was close to the cabin, presumably as a tourist attraction. I walked toward the cabin, trying to make it seem as if I were just wandering around for the benefit of any unseen eyes.

When I got inside I grimaced; it sure was a mess. Dust and litter were stacked in the corners. I ran my fingers across a log and wiped them on my blue jeans. It was only a one-room cabin, and a genuine historic site at that; I wondered why the county didn't hire someone to sweep it up once or twice a year. There were no joints in the middle of the floor; I gave Jack credit for having some brains. My wasted feeling strengthened; I pretended it wasn't there by humming that song I hated. It didn't work, and I felt even more like I was part of a dream. The new thought inside me continued its attempts to take shape. I wondered why I felt someone was with me. I walked to the corner closet to the door; naturally Jack hadn't put the grass there. And just as naturally I found it in the fourth corner, underneath the biggest stack of litter in the cabin. Three joints. I told myself that it was lucky I had plenty of practice driving around stoned, but that thought didn't seem real either. Only the urge to light up and get spaced out was real. I chuckled at my keen sense of paranoia, coming and going at its own leisure. Outside the sky was darkening more quickly than usual; only a few cars were passing by. I sat down, thinking that my jeans had to be washed anyway, and lit up. It was good stuff; Jack had finally impressed me.

Suddenly everything changed. I wasn't stoned like I was supposed to be. My head didn't whirl; my eyelids didn't feel heavy; the whish of the passing cars didn't drag out at a louder volume. I was aware of the dampening air, the coming darkness, and the thought finally nearing its final shape. It did not occur to me to fight any of this. It was not like I was engaged in a battle for my sanity. It seemed natural. It was right that I should yield to the thought, that I should surrender to the forces molding me.

The cars whishing by were a quiet fragment of sound, holding no meaning for me. I doubted that when I left the cabin, I would see my car. My brother didn't exist; Chip and Ted didn't exist; my parents and our house didn't exist. Only Cook's Cabin was real. All else was a mist.

The thought formed, yet I could not think of words to describe it. I saw her.

She was a wisp of yellow smoke swirling in front of my eyes. A wisp with sex, emotion, and intellect. Now that the thought had formed and had changed me, she too could form. It seemed as if she had two arms reaching toward me, that she had pleading eyes, that she had waited for me and no others. I wanted to dismiss my impressions of her; she should have been only a fragment of my imagination, yet she was real. The longer she swirled, becoming more than a wisp, the heavier the thought felt in my brain, the emptier my stomach felt. Again, it did not occur to me to fight; she was a siren, and I belonged to her.

Without thinking I lit another joint. I held the smoke in my lungs as long as I could. The world, the tiny world swayed back and forth as she shaped. The darkness from outside covered me, but she was light

She formed.

She formed, she was real, she was a person; yet I could not touch her, I could not see her features, I could not smell her. I had only the thought to guide me, and the thought told me she was brightness and love, grayness and pain. The thought told me that she was beautiful, and I wondered if she had yellow or black hair, green or blue eyes, large or small breasts, long or short legs, dark or pale skin. She was one woman; she was all women. I was about to try to dismiss her presence as a mere vision, a juvenile impression somehow brought about by the grass, when I heard her speak in the voice that was both frightened and calm, impetuous and well-rehearsed.

She said simply, "Help me."

At that point she was in such complete control of me I felt as if my pride should have been damaged. But I was too busy being sorry for her. All of a sudden I knew I would help her no matter what the cost to myself.

"Please! You must help me."

I didn't know if I had really heard her voice or not, but that didn't matter to me. I spoke. Not aloud, but somewhere in my mind. I asked her many things, most of them obvious—who was she, where had she come from, and what was her danger. The thought told me not to be concerned with such trivialities. I realized that her voice also belonged to the thought; it had in it all colors, all fears, all feelings.

"You are the only person who can help. Don't you want to help? You must; you must help!"

I wanted the thought to give me a reply. There were no more sounds from the highway and I wanted to stand up to look and see if Blackton County was still there. The thought jerked my attention from my surroundings, but did not tell me what to say.

"You're the only one who can help. I know you are. I knew the others could not help, but I had to do something. I had to do something while I was waiting for you. You can help! Please help!"

But the thought would give me no course of action. I was its pawn, and it wanted me to do something. But it would not allow me to move from my position on the floor.

She stopped paying attention to me. I was afraid that she had given up and would go away forever. I sensed her looking out the window, staring at something frightening her. I wanted to look with her, but the thought would not let me move my head.

"Listen to those screams! They see those savages coming! The screams! The screams!"

The thought told me that there were indeed screams, but I could not hear them. I wanted to convince her that I was trying to hear, but I didn't know how.

"Daddy! Daddy!" Then she turned toward me. "How can you just sit there and watch them murder Daddy? You've already let them kill Mommy and my brothers! And we did nothing to them, nothing! How can you just sit there?"

The thought told me that she had broken contact with me; she would no longer speak to me. Neither would she let me go. I saw her form shrink; she was falling to her knees and burying her face in her hands. I wanted to touch her, but the thought told me that if I tried, she would disappear. I decided not to touch her because I wanted her to be with me.

When she raised her head, it was not to look at me. She was becoming a wisp again. I sensed her opening her mouth to scream, and I could imagine what her scream would be like. I tensed myself, hoping to shut it out of my mind, but the scream never came.

It was over fast; the yellow wisp was suddenly gone and I was alone in the blackness.

I don't know how long I sat there. My eyes were closed most of the time and I concentrated on my wasted feeling. The remaining joint had been crushed out in my fist, but I couldn't summon any sorrow for it. And the thought was still there. The thought, whatever it was supposed to represent after her going, would always be with me; that didn't make me feel any less lonely.

Finally I left Cook's Cabin and walked toward the car; my movements were made without desire because I didn't care if I ever got home or not. The sky was clear, the stars were sparkling, but in the distance a silver fog hung over the mountains. Glancing at the fields across the highway—those reputed to have been the Indian burial grounds—startled me for some reason. I realized that the fields were fertile, good for planting crops. Then I knew what she and her family had done to the Indians, why they had been slaughtered. I leaned on my car and smoked a cigarette, keeping my mind as blank as possible.

When I woke up (with a headache) the next morning I wanted to continue my life as before, as if it had all been a dream. I opened my eyes to see a yellow wisp in front of me. I waved my hand and it was gone. My vision was not over, I realized as I took a couple of aspirin in the bathroom; and on top of that, something important had been taken from me; something had been pushed out of my brain by the thought. I cursed out loud, just as my mother passed the bathroom. She glared at me and spoke my name in anger.

"Uh, sorry, Mom."

"Well? What's the matter?"

"Uh, nothing."

"Nothing," she said, tapping her foot. "Come and get your breakfast." She walked toward the kitchen.

I didn't eat much. I drank some orange juice and left for the pool a little early because my father tried to talk to me about what I was going to do when I got out of school. Despite the fact that I saw the yellow wisp while he spoke, I remained noncommittal, as usual.

And as usual, the morning sun was very bright. Sometimes it was hidden from me by the tree next to the highway, but not often enough to suit me. Once the sunlight changed into that yellow wisp and I almost wrecked the car; fortunately the police weren't anywhere around. After that I looked for my sunglasses beside me on the seat and couldn't find them; they were either at home or lost. Not looking forward to spending the whole day squinting my eyes, I stopped at a drugstore and bought a new pair with yellow-orange lenses. I hoped that Jack Walker wouldn't see me and ask where my money had come from.

Jack Walker; I had a few things to say to him.

Twenty minutes after I arrived at the pool, thick gray and white clouds rolled from the mountains in the west. They rolled until they covered the whole sky. I sat on the table with my feet on the bench and twirled my sunglasses. Every once in a while, when I wasn't seeing the yellow wisp and when the few people at the pool were out of hearing range, I said, "Come on out, you bastard. Come on out."

Chip and Ted arrived late that afternoon, earlier than usual because Chip had left the Health Department without permission.

"Well? Is it good?" asked Ted.

"Yeah, it's gotta be good because I don't want to spend good poker money on something that's not gonna get me high," said Chip.

"How was moving?" I asked, not really interested.

"It sucked," said Ted. "How's the dope?"

"Uh, it's good. We'll have to make sure Walker gives us some of the same shit, though." There wasn't much enthusiasm in my voice.

"Yeah," said Chip. "I wouldn't trust him with nothing."

"How good?" asked Ted.

"For Christ's sake, it's good!"

Ted smiled and lit my cigarette. "Well, you don't have to get bitchy about it. Peace, love, and all that shit."

"Yeah," I said. "Seen Walker today?"

"No," said Chip, "but I imagine that Scrooge will be here soon enough."

Walker was at the pool twenty minutes later, after I had to suffer through the yellow wisp twice more and Ted telling me about how Chip had dropped a table, stepped into a box of expensive china, and had been jilted by his ugly second cousin. When Walker saw us, he "trucked on up," looking like the silly animation I had seen once in an Italian movie about Sinbad. "Do you want some?" he asked. "Do you want some?"

"Must you wear that damn shirt?" I asked.

"We want some," said Ted.

"Yeah. How much?" said Chip.

Walker cited the going price for dope. Ted cursed and muttered something about inflation being everywhere these days.

"What's in it?" I asked. "Any angel dust?

"No. I wish there was," replied Walker, smiling.

"You sure?" I asked. "I mean, you better not be lying or nothing." I was sitting on my hands because I didn't want to use them. The thought was telling me that he was telling the truth, and I had given up fighting people because I didn't like their looks long ago.

"I'm sure. Nothing but good, fresh, healthy dope. Some of the best."

I didn't know how much Chip and Ted bought I didn't get any, myself.

The next day I didn't have to work, so I watched quiz shows, soap operas, and Mike Douglas. I also ate a lot of popcorn. I enjoyed watching TV because I was able to ignore to some extent the thought buzzing around in my head. The yellow wisp didn't bother me as much either; I didn't even adjust the color on the set when it came. Outside clouds still covered the sky; I looked once or twice. The temperature was lower than usual, and when chills ran up and down my body, I closed the windows. There was a lot of smoke in the living room after that.

At about four o'clock Bill Roberts called me. I had seen him only once or twice this summer, but I used to hang around with him when I was in high school and he was in college. He was a strange boy who grew up to be an even stranger young man. Long ago he wanted to be a writer, and I had to listen to him talk for hours about the big parties he would go to in New York, about how he would tell Norman Mailer what he really thought of him, and about how all his books would be on the best-seller lists. And he was smart; I couldn't believe it. Once I asked him an innocent question about who in the world Oliver Goldsmith was; he delivered a long lecture about him being an ugly poet. Bill also used to talk about how he was going to leave Blackton, just as soon as he graduated from college. He was going to go to New York, get a job somewhere, and write. For some reason it never happened; occasionally he had written a few things and sent them off, but they didn't sell. Then he just gave up. Threw his arms up in the air and said to heck with it. Went to work for the Health Department.

Anyway, he called to tell me that his folks had asked him to take some clothes and books to his sister in Richlands and he wanted to know if I would go along. Since Chip and Ted were smoking that dope and I didn't particularly want to, I said I would.

He picked me up at six. Bill was putting on a gut. With those Arrow shirts and clean blue jeans, and with that black hair dangling over the top of his ears, he looked like he was already married, and liking it, even though he wasn't supposed to marry Jenna Hughes for another six months. His face was puffy and round and he was clean-shaven. I liked him better when he was thin and dressed in rags like a true freak and three days' stubble was on his chin and his eyes looked like they were about to drill into something. During those days he looked like someone who just might become a great author. But there was nothing I could do about that. He was still a nice guy.

For a few minutes we didn't say much. The yellow wisp was in front of me and the thought was still buzzing around; what it was trying to say I didn't know, didn't care. Funny; I was beginning to feel like I was a comrade with Bill again, for the first time in years. He cursed some old woman who pulled out in front of him at an intersection and I forced a laugh. He turned on the radio, asked me to light a cigarette for him, and said, "Well, Bob ol' boy, what's you been doing with yourself?"

"Getting stoned. Lounging around. The usual." I was uncomfortable because we were going to pass Cook's Cabin soon, but I tried not to show it

"Yeah. Same here." He took the cigarette I was handing him.

"Been doing any writing?" I don't know why I asked that; I didn't know if that was the right thing to say or not. If it was wrong, he didn't show it. He said:

"No. I don't read much anymore either. I just get drunk with Jenna on weekends at her father's cabin in Thompson Valley."

"How come you don't write?" I used to enjoy pumping him because he had always been quick with the Christ-figure answers. Now I was acting toward him as I had several years ago, when we had been close, and the only reason I had for doing so was the notion that he might understand if he knew what I was going through. I still wanted to help the girl I had seen last night.

"Not much point to it." He sped up around a curve so his tires would squeal; they did and he chuckled, squinting his eyes in the setting sun, which had just come out of the clouds.

It was good to see sunlight, even if it was fogged by that yellow mist. The grass next to the highway flicked by me, and I watched it until we passed a hitchhiker with long hair; I flipped him the finger, just for the fun of it. Bill saw me do it and laughed. "Remember when we used to shoot moons?" he asked.

"I shot 'em. You always drove because you were so damn shy."

"Something like that." He repeated the words, as if saying them again somehow gave them more meaning. Maybe it did.

"How come you stayed here in Blackton? I always expected you to leave and you never did. How come?"

Bill didn't answer until we neared Cook's Cabin and the burial grounds. He took his foot off the gas and looked to his left, to the cabin on the hill. Twilight was coining, and the cabin seemed as if it were now a dream, and everything else (but the wisp and the thought) was real.

"I just wanted to stay," Bill said. "I figured that anything I could do away, I could do here. And Mom and Dad need me. Jenna needs me." He paused for a moment, waiting until we couldn't see Cook's Cabin for the curves, and said, "And maybe somebody else will need me. I couldn't leave knowing she might need me."

I let it hang there for a moment, but I couldn't let it hang for too long. I thought I knew whom he was talking about, and I had to be sure. After a moment I asked him who.

He flicked his cigarette out the window. "You know who as well as I do, Bob ol' boy. You're one of us now. I sensed it this morning."

I guessed my mouth dropped open. I wanted to say something else, but instead I slumped down in my seat and lit a cigarette for myself. I realized what had been taken away from me; the wasted feeling the thought carried with it would be with me for the rest of my life in Blackton County.

As we drove in silence toward Richlands, I allowed myself to think of the many things I had tried to ignore since the night before. I thought of the girl in the cabin, and I wondered how many more times she would try to find someone who could save her. I wondered how it felt to die again and again and again. And I wondered how many more people there were like Bill and me.

THE BLACK CAPTAIN by H. Warner Munn

Critics frequently seem to regard it as sufficient praise of a story to say that the horror takes place in daylight. H. Warner Munn gives us a story that takes place in the most blistering sort of daylight, and in doing so he probes a little more deeply than may first be apparent. For this sun-drenched gem is really about the night and the horrors that can lurk in darkness—waiting . . . waiting . . .

A hunting tarantula moved cautiously out of the spot of shade provided by the body of the man in the rocking chair. Exploring the heat-warped floor boards of the roofless porch for possible prey, it tiptoed on the points of its claws into the full blaze of the desert sun.

The man saw it coming—a shaggy, black blotch, progressing in little quick leaps, delicately tensing as it waited for any answering vibration that would indicate the presence of quarry which its nearsighted vision might not detect

He regarded it incuriously, neither with enmity or fear, although his bare foot was directly in its path. If he felt any emotion concerning the tarantula, it was not apparent.

So far as the eye could see, between the shack and the distant mountain rim quivering fantastically through the heat haze, no other life disturbed the barren, arid vista. Yet life was there, waiting for the comparative cool of night to go about its business in all its diverse ways.

This was not a new thought, being ever present in his mind. It recurred now, with the usual sense of dread. It was time to make his daily trip across that shelterless expanse after water.

The tarantula reached his foot. It tested the hot, calloused skin. A flake of scurf fell away. It pounced viciously, mumbling the juiceless trophy.

The man felt the roughness of savagely working mandibles, so close it was. Harsh fur crowded against his instep. He did not move. The haunting terror in his hollowed eyes was not for the deadly spider.

His gaze, diverted for an instant, returned to an evanescent cloud drifting toward the shack, detached from the edge of the far peaks. There was a spot of shadow beneath, shrinking as it came. He watched this, intently, estimating its speed, its direction, its rapid attenuation and probable time of arrival.

Now the tarantula had mounted the obstacle and was crossing his foot. He remained passive under the tickling scratch of taloned, wide scrabbling legs. He could sense its hunger. It was furious with disappointment. A tiny drop of venom from the rapidly palpitating jaws fell upon his skin. He felt the wetness through fine-drawn nerves. In his bloodstream, this would have brought immediate pain, fever, perhaps delirium and death.

As though this were a minor problem, he watched only the cloud. It was this approach which brought an increase in his heartbeat, as adrenalin pumped into his veins—and that alone.

The tarantula crossed the barrier without sinking its fangs. It hopped down upon the cracked, desiccated wood with an audible plop.

As though drawn by the sound, a tarantula-wasp dived down out of nowhere, sting extended, driving it deep into the spider's body at the precise spot to bring about immediate paralysis.

The tarantula shuddered, drew its legs tightly together in convulsion, and relaxed into a shapeless bundle. The wasp, heavily laden, went staggering away toward its burrow, skimming low to the ground through the breathless heat.

The man sighed, following its course almost as though he regretted the end of the incident. It appeared that he had deliberately courted the danger of the bite.

He looked for the cloud. It had completely evaporated. His face showed some relief. Temporarily, there was nothing to fear.

Subconsciously, he was aware that the small generator in the shed behind the shack was throbbing with its usual regularity. Gasoline and supplies would arrive tomorrow. There was no immediate problem to hinder the journey for water, yet he hesitated.

He glanced into the shack. Four one-hundred-watt bulbs, one to each corner of the small room, were blazing to compete with the midday sun which streamed in, unimpeded by curtains. A Coleman lantern hung ready in the center, its globe raised, ready for instant lighting. A kerosene lamp stood on a small table at the head of his cot, its glass chimney set beside it, and candles were laid close at hand, with loose matches in several places conveniently in reach—day and night—should the generators fail.

Skull-cracking rays drove upon the shack, but he did not enter its protection and comparative coolness. There were no shadows inside, but there was always the possibility under a roof.

The man cast a calculating eye toward the zenith. The flaming sky was an oven lid clamped firmly to the horizon rim. He wheeled slowly, encompassing the entire circumference of it. It seemed impossible that any breeze could force a way through such a joint to alleviate the oppressive heat.

Distantly, a black speck circled above the cinnabar red, wind-worn peaks of the baked Infiernillo Range. Little Hell, he mentally translated, and was not aware that he had repeated the words aloud until startled by his own creaking voice.

For a moment he toyed with the thought. If this was so—could the observant winged creature be searching for him? He shook away the fancy, as his eyesight, keened by anticipatory dread, resolved the moving dot into its truthful aspect.

Only a buzzard, tracking carrion, and waiting. If it was not yet existent, because of the lack of water, old age, and injury, the bird would eventually feed.

He searched the surface of the desert through slitted eyelids, almost closed against the glare which pounded against them. Nothing. His smile of satisfaction gashed his unkempt beard as, reassured, he took down the empty olla from its hook.

Circling the shed where the generator pulsated faithfully, out of old custom he carefully avoided entering its shadow. A path began here, smoothed by his long use. It led directly out into the wasteland, where even greasewood and creosote bush could find no subsistence.

He trod the path without hesitation. He could have done so with his eyes closed, had not such an action placed him in the lonely dark. Rather than permit such a contingency, the blink of his eyelids was ophidianly rapid. The intervals between were more than ordinarily long.

The man's vision covered a wide range. He constantly scanned the pebbled surface of the desolate terrain. Only furiously dancing ghosts spiraled upon it in frantic saraband, in this most deadly hour of the day—most brilliantly bathed with painful light, most frightfully scourged with whips of sunfire.

He came upon a dead skink. The tiny lizard, unable to reach the protecting shade of a rock a few feet from the path, had been struck down while racing for shelter. Already its cold blood was dried out by the greedy, parching air. It lay, vampire-stricken, shrunken like a twisted root.

The man felt that he was being watched. Well used to this sensation, he had long since acquired peripheral vision to a high degree. He halted, encompassing a full hundred and eighty degrees without turning his head. Perceiving nothing, he wheeled about, almost expecting to detect a swiftly nearing menace, yet knowing what his cringing soul abhorred, could not, by the very laws of its being, exist in such blistering brilliance.

He sneered, in self-contempt, and resumed his journey. Scorn hastened his steps. As he walked rapidly on, other tiny trails cut into the path. Delicate prints of kangaroo rats; the dragging fat width of furrow created by the tails of Gila monsters; the scrawl of a sidewinder. He knew them all as neighbors, needing water even as himself. He had no fear of any of them, nor they of him. They dwelt in amity and tolerance.

The man came, at last, after a long hour of such traveling, in sight of his destination. Here, almost invisible to anyone at desert level, a crack in the calcined soil, little more at its beginning than a scratch along the ground, widened to the width of his body and descended to become a long ramp.

He followed it down, into shade which would have been welcome to any other thirsty traveler. He ran, feeling himself in a veritable valley of the shadow, gasping with horror at the unavoidable necessity which drove him. It was not until he frantically burst into an open, enclosed space bathed in merciless sunlight, that he felt safe and flung himself down to rest

Long ago, some ancient people—the mysterious cliff dwellers?—the Hohokam?—he did not know who it could have been—had discovered their secret salvation in this deep dimple in the desert.

Here was water, held in a carved reservoir in the living rock below arid subsoil. Leading into it, grooves, long and slanting, led drops of night dew captured on the front of the stone above the little tank.

He lay with one burning cheek in soft, cool mud, gloating upon his private treasure until his heart quieted and breathing became easier. Now that the Apache were long gone from this pitiless country, only he and the little desert people knew of the hidden pool. He felt himself kin to them—even the scorpion that he saw not far away.

His euphoria, brought on by the successful conclusion to his trip, did not last long. The descent never failed to recall to his mind that other plunging below the level of upper earth, which had brought upon himself the dragging curse of inevitable doom under whose threat he labored.

Everything reminded him of that implacable foe. The ooze, which should have soothed him, for example. There had been cold slime on the floor of that gelid tunnel which he and his partner had discovered in the temple of Ah-Puch, deep within the crumbled ruin of jungle-shrouded Ixcopan.

This hidden retreat, sunbathed as it was—how similar in size to the deep crypt below! Even the ramp he had just followed down—downward, another ramp, deeper, darker, more ominous than this had led the two explorers where Ah-Puch, The Black Captain, awaited his worshippers.

Into his ruminative solitude, the irreverent intruders had burst, seeking treasure, only to discover a second ramp behind the altar—a tunnel, slanting deep beyond the illumination of any torch, and still in use. Tracks not to be considered footprints, lined the slime in this second tunnel where beings came up from unguessable depths to make obeisance to their god.

That such intrusion was resented was not long in doubt. At the first opening of those baleful eyes, the first stirring of broad, scaly wings, the first ululation from that massive throat—the two heard the slither of fast answering hulks in the profound gut into which they had peered.

They turned then, to flee. The man had known, instantly, that only one could escape—as soon as he saw the white, lurching shapes emerge and heard the wet slap of their lolloping bodies against the floor of the crypt.

The terror of his partner's eyes had not deterred the man from striking the Judas blow. It had not hindered him from the sudden backward thrust which hurled the staggering form of his friend to fall upon the altar, to lie there, stunned, until that which hungered, descended to rip and tear.

Now, thinking upon this—even in this safe, sun-drenched refuge, that lightless tunnel up which he had clawed his way to humid daylight, leaving the entrance wide open behind him—he relived the horror of the dark.

It had never left him. It never would. The mark of Ah-Puch was upon him. It would attract that which pursued, if so be it he permitted darkness to fall upon himself, even for an instant

While a man lives he must cling to life, be it however so burdensome. He picked up the olla, hesitated to enter the corridor—the shadows in it seemed denser now—then, cursing his timidity, he set his feet to the ramp.

When he emerged from the crack in the desert and came out upon its surface into the heat, it struck him like a blow. His head reeled, inured as he was to this harsh and hopeless life. Dazzled, he did not raise his eyes toward the malevolent sun.

The man, isolated from the world as he was, detached from the reality and the affairs of the world and the news of happenings within and without it ignorant of the announced eclipse which had fascinated astronomers and the general public, now found himself a prisoner of distance and of time.

It was hopeless to attempt to reach the shack, but he threw down the heavy olla of water and began to run.

He was still running, with far to go, when blackness overwhelmed the sun and racing shadow overtook him. He was running when night and noonday came upon him, alleviated only by the flick of Bailey's Beads which glittered along the ground and speedily passed him by.

He was running when that which had long awaited this moment swooped upon him as the tarantula-wasp had upon the spider—and took him away.

THE GLOVE by Fritz Leiber

Fritz Leiber's novel Conjure Wife is unquestionably the best known story from the pages of the legendary fantasy magazine Unknown. Leiber is well known for his science-fiction (he won another Nebula earlier this year, this time for his short story "Catch That Zeppelin!") and for his heroic fantasy stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. But it may well be that it is with the story of supernatural horror in a modern setting that Leiber really excels, and he has provided us with a number of small, chilling masterpieces such as "The Black Gondolier" and "Ms. Found in a Maelstrom." If you are unfamiliar with those stories, then do not hesitate to read the following one to find out what we mean. If you are familiar with them, then you need no urging.

My most literally tangible brush with the supernatural (something I can get incredibly infatuated with yet forever distrust profoundly, like a very beautiful and adroit call girl) occurred in connection with the rape by a masked intruder of the woman who lived in the next apartment to mine during my San Francisco years. I knew Evelyn Mayne only as a neighbor and I slept through the whole incident, including the arrival and departure of the police, though there came a point in the case when the police doubted both these assertions of mine.

The phrase "victim of rape" calls up certain stereotyped images: an attractive young woman going home alone late at night, enters a dark street, is grabbed . . . or, a beautiful young suburban matron, mother of three, wakes after midnight, feels a nameless dread, is grabbed . . . The truth is apt to be less romantic. Evelyn Mayne was sixty-five long divorced, neglected, and thoroughly detested by her two daughters-in-law and only to a lesser degree by their husbands, lived on various programs of old age, medical and psychiatric assistance, was scrawny, gloomy, alcoholic, waspish, believed life was futile, and either overdosed on sleeping pills or else lightly cut her wrists three or four times a year.

Her assailant at least was somewhat more glamorous, in a sick way. The rapist was dressed all in rather close-fitting gray, hands covered by gray gloves, face obscured by a long shock of straight silver hair falling over it. And in the left hand, at first, a long knife that gleamed silver in the dimness.

And she wasn't grabbed either, at first, but only commanded in a harsh whisper coming through the hair to lie quietly or be cut up.

When she was alone again at last, she silently waited something like the ten minutes she'd been warned to, thinking that at least she hadn't been cut up, or else (who knows?) wishing she had been. Then she went next door (in the opposite direction to mine) and roused Marcia Everly, who was a buyer for a department store and about half her age. After the victim had been given a drink, they called the police and Evelyn Mayne's psychiatrist and also her social worker, who knew her current doctor's number (which she didn't), but they couldn't get hold of either of the last two. Marcia suggested waking me and Evelyn Mayne countered by suggesting they wake Mr. Helpful, who has the next room beyond Marcia's down the hall. Mr. Helpful (otherwise nicknamed Baldy, I never remembered his real name) was someone I loathed because he was always prissily dancing around being neighborly and asking if there was something he could do—and because he was six foot four tall, while I am rather under average height

Marcia Everly is also very tall, at least for a woman, but as it happens I do not loathe her in the least. Quite the opposite in fact.

But Evelyn Mayne said I wasn't sympathetic, while Marcia (thank goodness!) loathed Mr. Helpful as much as I do—she thought him a weirdo, along with half the other tenants in the building.

So they compromised by waking neither of us, and until the police came Evelyn Mayne simply kept telling the story of her rape over and over, rather mechanically, while Marcia listened dutifully and occupied her mind as to which of our crazy fellow-tenants was the best suspect—granting it hadn't been done by an outsider, although that seemed likeliest. The three most colorful were the statuesque platinum-blond drag queen on the third floor, the long-haired old weirdo on six who wore a cape and was supposed to be into witchcraft, and the tall, silver-haired, Nazi-looking lesbian on seven (assuming she wore a dildo for the occasion as was nuttier than a five-dollar fruit cake).

Ours really is a weird building, you see, and not just because of its occupants, who sometimes seem as if they were all referred here by mental hospitals. No, it's eerie in its own right. You see, several decades ago it was a hotel with all the rich, warm inner life that once implied: bevies of maids, who actually used the linen closets (empty now) on each floor and the round snap-capped outlets in the baseboards for a vacuum system (that hadn't been operated for a generation) and the two dumbwaiters (their doors forever shut and painted over). In the old days there had been bellboys and an elevator operator and two night porters who'd carry up drinks and midnight snacks from a restaurant that never closed.

But they're gone now, every last one of them, leaving the halls empty-feeling and very gloomy, and the stairwell an echoing void, and the lobby funereal, so that the mostly solitary tenants of today are apt to seem like ghosts, especially when you meet one coming silently around a turn in the corridor where the ceiling lights burned out

Sometimes I think that, what with the smaller and smaller families and more and more people living alone, our whole modern world is getting like that.

The police finally arrived, two grave and solicitous young men making a good impression—especially a tall and stalwart (Marcia told me) Officer Hart. But when they first heard Evelyn Mayne's story, they were quite skeptical (Marcia could tell, or thought she could, she told me). But they searched Evelyn's room and poked around the fire escapes and listened to her story again, and then they radioed for a medical policewoman, who arrived with admirable speed and who decided after an examination that in all probability there'd been recent sex, which would be confirmed by analysis of some smears she'd taken from the victim and the sheets.

Officer Hart did two great things, Marcia said. He got hold of Evelyn Mayne's social worker and told him he'd better get on over quick. And he got from him the phone number of her son who lived in the city and called him up and threw a scare into his wife and him about how they were the nearest of kin, goddamn it, and had better start taking care of the abused and neglected lady.

Meanwhile the other cop had been listening to Evelyn Mayne, who was still telling it, and he asked her innocent questions, and had got her to admit that earlier that night she'd gone alone to a bar down the street (a rather rough place) and had one drink, or maybe three. Which made him wonder (Marcia said she could tell) whether Evelyn hadn't brought the whole thing on herself, maybe by inviting some man home with her, and then inventing the rape, at least in part, when things went wrong. (Though I couldn't see her inventing the silver hair.)

Anyhow the police got her statement and got it signed and then took off, even more solemnly sympathetic than when they'd arrived, Officer Hart in particular.

Of course, I didn't know anything about all this when I knocked on Marcia's door before going to work that morning, to confirm a tentative movie date we'd made for that evening. Though I was surprised when the door opened and Mr. Helpful came out looking down at me very thoughtfully, his bald head gleaming, and saying to Marcia in the voice adults use when children are listening, "I'll keep in touch with you about the matter. If there is anything I can do, don't hesitate . . ."

Marcia, looking at him very solemnly, nodded.

And then my feeling of discomfiture was completed when Evelyn Mayne, empty glass in hand and bathrobe clutched around her, edged past me as if I were contagious, giving me a peculiarly hostile look and calling back to Marcia over my head, "I'll come back, my dear, when I've repaired my appearance, so that people can't say you're entertaining bedraggled old hags."

I was relieved when Marcia gave me a grin as soon as the door was closed and said, "Actually she's gone to get herself another drink, after finishing off my supply. But really, Jeff, she has a reason to this morning—and for hating any man she runs into." And her face grew grave and troubled (and a little frightened too) as she quickly clued me in on the night's nasty events. Mr. Helpful, she explained, had dropped by to remind them about a tenants' meeting that evening and, when he got the grisly news, to go into a song and dance about how shocked he was and how guilty at having slept through it all, and what could he do?

Once she broke off to say, almost worriedly, "What I can't understand, Jeff, is why any man would want to rape someone like Evelyn."

I shrugged. "Kinky some way, I suppose. It does happen, you know. To old women, I mean. Maybe a mother thing."

"Maybe he hates women," she speculated. "Wants to punish them."

I nodded.

She had finished by the time Evelyn Mayne came back, very listless now, looking like a woebegone ghost, and dropped into a chair. She hadn't got dressed or even combed her hair. In one hand she had her glass, full and dark, and in the other a large, pale gray leather glove, which she carried oddly, dangling it by one finger.

Marcia started to ask her about it, but she just began to recite once more all that had happened to her that night, in an unemotional mechanical voice that sounded as if it would go on forever.

Look, I didn't like the woman—she was a particularly useless, venomous sort of nuisance (those wearisome suicide attempts!)—but that recital got to me. I found myself hating the person who would deliberately put someone into the state she was in. I realized, perhaps for the first time, just what a vicious and sick crime rape is and how cheap are all the easy jokes about it.

Eventually the glove came into the narrative naturally: ". . . and in order to do that he had to take off his glove. He was particularly excited just then, and it must have got shoved behind the couch and forgotten, where I found it just now."

Marcia pounced on the glove at once then, saying it was important evidence they must tell the police about. So she called them and after a bit she managed to get Officer Hart himself, and he told her to tell Evelyn Mayne to hold on to the glove and he'd send someone over for it eventually.

It was more than time for me to get on to work, but I stayed until she finished her call, because I wanted to remind her about our date that evening.

She begged off, saying she'd be too tired from the sleep she'd lost and anyway she'd decided to go to the tenants' meeting tonight. She told me, "This has made me realize that I've got to begin to take some responsibility for what happens around me. We may make fun of such people—the good neighbors—but they've got something solid about them."

I was pretty miffed at that, though I don't think I let it show. Oh, I didn't so much mind her turning me down—there were reasons enough—but she didn't have to make such a production of it and drag in "good neighbors." (Mr. Helpful, who else?) Besides, Evelyn Mayne came out of her sad apathy long enough to give me a big smile when Marcia said "No."

So I didn't go to the tenants' meeting that night, as I might otherwise have done. Instead I had dinner out and went to the movie—it was lousy—and then had a few drinks, so that it was late when I got back (no signs of life in the lobby or lift or corridor) and gratefully piled into bed.

I was dragged out of the depths of sleep—that first blissful plunge—by a persistent knocking. I shouted something angry but unintelligible and when there was no reply made myself get up, feeling furious.

It was Marcia. With a really remarkable effort I kept my mouth shut and even smoothed out whatever expression was contorting my face. The words one utters on being suddenly awakened, especially from that matchless first sleep that is never recaptured, can be as disastrous as speaking in drink. Our relationship had progressed to the critical stage and I sure didn't want to blow it, especially when treasures I'd hoped to win were spread out in front of my face, as it were, under a semitransparent nightgown and hastily thrown on negligee.

I looked up, a little, at her face. Her eyes were wide.

She said in a sort of frightened little-girl voice that didn't seem at all put on, "I'm awfully sorry to wake you up at three o'clock in the morning, Jeff, but would you keep this 'spooky' for me? I can't get to sleep with it in my room."

It is a testimony to the very high quality of Marcia's treasures that I didn't until then notice what she was carrying in front of her—in a fold of toilet paper: the pale gray leather glove Evelyn Mayne had found behind her couch.

"Huh?" I said, not at all brilliantly. "Didn't Officer Hart come back, or send someone over to pick it up?"

She shook her head. "Evelyn had it, of course, while I was at my job—her social worker did come over right after you left. But then at suppertime her son and daughter-in-law came (Officer Hart did scare them!) and bundled her off to the hospital, and she left the glove with me. I called the police, but Officer Hart was off duty and Officer Halstead, whom I talked to, told me they'd be over to pick it up early in the morning. Please take it, Jeff. Whenever I look at it, I think of that crazy sneaking around with the silver hair down his face and waving the knife. It keeps giving me the shivers."

I looked again at her "spooky" in its fold of tissue (so that she wouldn't have to touch it, what other reason?) and, you know, it began to give me the shivers. Just an old glove, but not it had an invisible gray aura radiating from it.

"OK," I said, closing my hand on it with an effort, and went on ungraciously, really without thinking, "Though I wondered you didn't ask Mr. Helpful first, what with all his offers and seeing him at the meeting."

"Well, I asked you," she said a little angrily. Then her features relaxed into a warm smile. "Thanks, Jeff."

Only then did it occur to me that here I was passing up in my sleep-soddenness what might be a priceless opportunity. Well, that could be corrected. But before I could invite her in, there came this sharp little cough, or clearing of the throat. We both turned and there was Mr. Helpful in front of his open door, dressed in pajamas and a belted maroon dressing gown. He came smiling and dancing toward us (he didn't really dance, but he gave that impression in spite of being six foot four) and saying, "Could I be of any assistance, Miss Everly? Did something alarm you? Is there . . . er . . .?" He hesitated, as if there might be something he should be embarrassed at.

Marcia shook her head curtly and said to me quite coolly, "No thank you, I needn't come in, Mr. Winters. That will be fine. Good night."

I realized Baldy had managed to embarrass her and that she was making it clear that we weren't parting after a rendezvous, or about to have one. (But to use my last name!)

As she passed him, she gave him a formal nod. He hurried back to his own door, a highlight dancing on the back of his head. (Marcia says he shaves it; I, that he doesn't have to.)

I waited until I heard her double-lock her door and slide the bolt across. Then I looked grimly at Baldy until he'd gone inside and closed his—I had that pleasure. Then I retired myself, tossed the glove down on some sheets of paper on the table in front of the open window, threw myself into bed, and switched out the light.

I fully expected to spend considerable time being furious at my hulking, mincing officious neighbor, and maybe at Marcia too, before I could get to sleep, but somehow my mind took off on a fantasy about the building around me as it might have been a half century ago. Ghostly bellboys sped silently with little notes inviting or accepting rendezvous. Ghostly waiters wheeled noiseless carts of silver-covered suppers for two. Pert, ghostly maids whirled ghostly sheets through the dark air as they made the bed, their smiles suggesting they might substitute for nonarriving sweethearts. The soft darkness whirlpooled. Somewhere was wind.

I woke with a start as if someone or something had touched me, and I sat up in bed. And then I realized that something was touching me high on my neck, just below my ear. Something long, like a finger laid flat or—oh God!—a centipede. I remembered how centipedes were supposed to cling with their scores of tiny feet—and this was clinging. As a child I'd been terrified by a tropical centipede that had come weaving out of a stalk of newbought bananas in the kitchen, and the memory still returned full force once in a great while. Now it galvanized me into whirling my hand behind my head and striking my neck a great brushing swipe, making my jaw and ear sting. I instantly turned on the light and rapidly looked all around me without seeing anything close to me that might have brushed off my neck. I thought I'd felt something with my hand when I'd done that, but I couldn't be sure.

And then I looked at the table by the window and saw that the glove was gone.

Almost at once I got the vision of it lifting up and floating through the air at me, fingers first, or else dropping off the table and inching across the floor and up the bed. I don't know which was worse. The thing on my neck had felt leathery.

My immediate impulse was to check if my door was still shut. I couldn't tell from where I sat. A very tall clothes cabinet abuts the door, shutting the view off from the head of the bed. So I pushed my way down the bed, putting my feet on the floor after looking down to make sure there was nothing in the immediate vicinity.

And then a sharp gust of wind came in the window and blew the last sheet of paper off the table and deposited it on the floor near the other sheets of paper and the glove and the tissue now disentangled from it.

I was so relieved I almost laughed. I went over and picked up the glove, feeling a certain revulsion, but only at the thought of who had worn it and what it had been involved in. I examined it closely, which I hadn't done earlier. It was rather thin gray kid, a fairly big glove and stretched still further as if a pretty big hand had worn it, but quite light enough to have blown off the table with the papers.

There were grimy streaks on it and a slightly stiff part where some fluid had dried and a faintly reddish streak that might have been lipstick. And it looked old—decades old.

I put it back on the table and set a heavy ashtray on top of it and got back in bed, feeling suddenly secure again.

It occurred to me how the empty finger of a gray leather glove is really very much like a centipede, some of the larger of which are the same size, flat and yellowish gray (though the one that had come out of the banana stalk had been bright red), but these thoughts were no longer frightening.

I looked a last time across the room at the glove, pinioned under the heavy ashtray, and I confidently turned off the light.

Sleep was longer in coming this time, however. I got my fantasy of hotel ghosts going again, but gloves kept coming into it. The lissome maids wore work ones as they rhythmically polished piles of ghostly silver. The bellboys' hands holding the ghostly notes were gloved in pale gray cotton. And there were opera gloves, almost armpit length, that looked like spectral white cobras, especially when they were drawn inside-out off the sinuous, snake-slender arms of wealthy guesting ladies. And other ghostly gloves, not all hotel ones, came floating and weaving into my fantasy: the black gloves of morticians, the white gloves of policemen, the bulky fur-lined ones of polar explorers, the trim dark gauntlets of chauffeurs, the gloves of hunters with separate stalls only for thumb and trigger finger, the mittens of ice-skaters and sleigh riders, old ladies' mitts without any fingers at all, the thin, translucent elastic gloves of surgeons, wielding flashing scalpels of silver-bright steel—a veritable whirlpool of gloves that finally led me down, down, down to darkness.

Once again I woke with a start, as if I'd been touched, and shot up. Once again I felt something about four inches long clinging high on my neck, only this time under the other ear. Once again I frantically slashed at my neck and jaw, stinging them painfully, only this time I struck upward and away. I thought I felt something go.

I got the light on an checked the door at once. It was securely shut. Then I looked at the table by the open window. The heavy ashtray still sat in the center of it, rock firm.

But the rapist's glove that had been under it was gone.

I must have stood there a couple of minutes, telling myself this could not be. Then I went over and lifted the ashtray and carefully inspected its underside, as if the glove had somehow managed to shrink and was clinging there.

And all the while I was having this vision of the glove painfully humping itself from under the ashtray and inching to the table's edge and dropping to the floor and then crawling off . . . almost anywhere.

Believe me, I searched my place then, especially the floor. I even opened the doors to the closet and the clothes cabinet, though they had been tightly shut, and searched the floor there. And of course I searched under and behind the bed. And more than once while I searched, I'd suddenly jerk around thinking I'd seen something gray approaching my shoulder from behind.

There wasn't a sign of the glove.

It was dawn by now—had been for some time. I made coffee and tried to think rationally about it.

It seemed to boil down to three explanations that weren't wildly farfetched.

First, that I'd gone out of my mind. Could be, I suppose. But from what I'd read and seen, most people who go crazy know damn well ahead of time that something frightening is happening to their minds, except maybe paranoiacs. Still, it remained a possibility.

Second, that someone with a duplicate or master key had quietly taken the glove away while I was asleep. The apartment manager and janitor had such keys. I'd briefly given my duplicate to various people. Why, once before she got down on me, I'd given it to Evelyn Mayne—matter of letting someone in while I was at work. I thought I'd got it back from her, though I remember once having a second duplicate made—I'd forgotten why. The main difficulty about this explanation was motive. Who'd want to get the glove?—except the rapist, maybe.

Third, of course, there was the supernatural. Gloves are ghostly to start with, envelopes for hands—and if there isn't a medieval superstition about wearing the flayed skin of another's hand to work magic, there ought to be. (Of course, there was the Hand of Glory, its fingers flaming like candles, guaranteed to make people sleep while being burgled, but there the skin is still on the dried chopped-off hand.) And there are tales of spectral hands a-plenty—pointing out buried treasure or hidden graves, or at guilty murderers, or carrying candles or daggers—so why not gloves? And could there be a kind of telekinesis in which a hand controls at a distance the movements and actions of a glove it has worn? Of course that would be psionics or whatnot, but to me the parapsychological is supernatural. (And in that case what had the glove been trying to do probing at my neck?—strangle me, I'd think.) And somewhere I'd read of an aristocratic Brazilian murderess of the last century who wore gloves woven of spider silk, and of a knight blinded at a crucial moment in a tourney by a lady's silken glove worn as a favor. Yes, they were eerie envelopes, I thought, gloves were, but I was just concerned with one of them, a vanishing glove.

I started with a jerk as there came a measured knock-knock. I opened the door and looked up at the poker faces of two young policemen. Over their shoulders Mr. Helpful was peering down eagerly at me, his lips rapidly quirking in little smiles with what I'd call questioning pouts in between. Back and a little to one side was Marcia, looking shocked and staring intently at me through the narrow space between the second policeman and the doorjamb.

"Jeff Winters," the first policeman said to me, as if it were a fact that he was putting into place. It occurred to me that young policemen look very blocky around their narrow hips with all that equipment they carry snugly nested and cased in black leather.

"Officer Hart—" Marcia began anxiously.

The second policeman's eyes flickered toward her, but just then the first policeman continued, "Your neighbor Miss Everly says she handed you a glove earlier this morning," and he stepped forward into the private space (I think it's sometimes called) around my body, and I automatically stepped back.

"We want it," he went on, continuing to step forward, and I back.

I hesitated. What was I to say? That the glove had started to spook me and then disappeared? Officer Hart followed the first policeman in. Mr. Helpful followed him in and stopped just inside my door, Marcia still beyond him and looking frantic. Officer Hart turned, as if about to tell Mr. Helpful to get out, but just then Officer Halstead (that was the other name Marcia had mentioned) said, "Well, you've still got it, haven't you? She gave it to you, didn't she?"

I shook and then nodded my head, which must have made me look rattled. He came closer still and said harshly and with a note of eagerness, "Well, where is it, then?"

I had to look up quite sharply at him to see his face. Beyond it, just to one side of it, diagonally upward across the room, was the top of the tall clothes cabinet, and on the edge of that there balanced that damned gray glove, flat fingers dripping over.

I froze. I could have sworn I'd glanced up there more than once when I was hunting the thing, and seen nothing. Yet there it was, as if it had flown up there or else been flicked there by me the second time I'd violently brushed something from my face.

Officer Halstead must have misread my look of terror, for he ducked his head forward toward mine and rasped. "Your neighbor Mr. Angus says that it's your glove, that he saw you wearing gray gloves night before last! What do you say?"

But I didn't say anything, for at that moment the glove slid off its precarious perch and dropped straight down and landed on Mr. Helpful's (Angus's) shoulder close to his neck, just like the hand of an arresting cop.

Now it may have been that in ducking his head to look at it, he trapped it between his chin and collarbone, or it may have been (as it looked to me) that the glove actively clung to his neck and shoulder, resisting all his frantic efforts to peel it off, while he reiterated, his voice mounting in screams, "It's not my glove!"

He took his hands away for a moment and the glove dropped to the floor.

He looked back and forth and saw the dawning expressions on the faces of the two policemen, and then with a sort of despairing sob he whipped a long knife from under his coat.

Considerably to my surprise I started toward him, but just then Officer Hart endeared himself to us all forever by wrapping his arms around Mr. Angus like a bear, one hand closing on the wrist of the hand holding the knife.

I veered past him (I vividly recall changing the length of one of my strides so as not to step on the glove) and reached Marcia just in time to steady her as, turned quite white, she swayed, her eyelids fluttering.

I heard the knife clatter to the floor. I turned, my arms around Marcia, and we both saw Mr. Angus seem to shrink and collapse in Officer Hart's ursine embrace, his face going gray as if he were an empty glove himself.

That was it. They found the other glove arid the long silver wig in a locked suitcase in his room. Marcia stayed frightened long enough, off and on, for us to become better acquainted and cement our friendship.

Officer (now Detective) Hart tells us that Mr. Angus is a model prisoner at the hospital for the criminally insane and has gone very religious, but never smiles. And he—Hart—now has the glove in a sort of Black Museum down at the station, where it has never again been seen to move under its own power. If it ever did.

One interesting thing. The gloves had belonged to Mr. Angus's father, now deceased, who had been a judge.

NO WAY HOME by Brian Lumley

Of all the accoutrements of modern civilization, none seem to dominate our lives so completely as our streets and highways. Be honest now: are you ever really confident that you've taken the correct off-ramp until you reach the place you're going? Brian Lumley suggests that the machinery for slipping between alternate worlds might well be laid out all around us, marked with familiar signs.

If you motor up the Ml past Lanchester from London and come off before Bankhead heading west across the country, within a very few miles you enter an area of gently rolling green hills, winding country roads and Olde Worlde villages with quaint wooden-beamed street-corner pubs and noonday cats atop leaning ivied walls. The roads there are narrow, climbing gently up and ribboning down the green hills, rolling between fields, meandering casually through woods and over brick and wooden-bridged streams; the whole background forms a pattern of peace and tranquility rarely disturbed over the centuries.

By night, though, the place takes on a different aspect. An almost miasmal aura of timelessness, of antiquity, hangs over the brooding woods and dark hamlets. The moon silvers winding hedgerows and ancient thatched roofs, and when the pubs close and the last lights blink out in farm and cottage windows, then it is as if Night had thrown her blackest cloak over the land, when even the most powerful headlight's beam penetrates the resultant darkness only with difficulty. Enough to allow you to drive, if you drive slowly and carefully.

Strangers motoring through this region—even in daylight hours—are known occasionally to lose their way, to drive the same labyrinthine lanes for hours on end in meaningless circles. The contours of the countryside often seem to defy even the most accurate sense of direction, and the roads and tracks never quite seem to tally with printed maps of the area. There are rumors almost as old as the area itself that persons have been known to pass into oblivion here—like gray smoke from cottage chimney stacks disappearing into air—never to come out again.

Not that George Benson was a stranger. True, he had not been home to England for many years—since running off as a youth, later to marry and settle in Germany—but as a boy he had known this place like the back of his hand and must have cycled for thousands of miles along dusty summer roads, lanes, and tracks, even bridle paths through the heart of this very region.

And that was why he was so perturbed now, not because of a pack of lies and fairy stories and old wives' tales heard as a boy, but because this was his home territory, where he'd been born and reared. Indeed, he felt more than perturbed, stupid almost. A fellow drives all the way north through Germany from Dortmund, catches the car ferry from Bremerhaven into Harwich, rolls on upcountry, having made the transition from right-to left-of-the-road driving with only a very small effort . . . and then hopelessly loses himself within only a fistful of miles from home!

Anger at his own supposed stupidity turned to bitter memories of his wife and then to an even greater anger. And a hurt . . .

It didn't hurt half so much now, though, not now it was all over. But the anger was still there. And the memories of the milk of marriage gone sour. Greta had just up and left home one day. George, employing the services of a detective agency, had traced his wife to Hamburg, where he'd found her in the bed of a nightclub crooner, an old boyfriend who finally had made it good.

"Damn all Krauts!" George cursed now as he checked the speed of his car to read out the legend on a village name board. His headlights picked the letters out starkly in the surrounding darkness. "Middle Hamborough?—Never bloody heard of it!" Again he cursed as, making a quick decision, he spun the steering wheel to turn his big car about on the narrow road. He would have to start backtracking, something he hated doing because it seemed so inefficient, so wasteful. "And blast and damn all Kraut cars!" he added as his front wheels bounced jarringly onto and back off the high stone roadside curb.

"Greta!" he quietly growled to himself as he drove back down the road away from the outskirts of Middle Hamborough. "What a bitch!" For of course she had blamed him for their troubles, saying that she couldn't stand his meanness. Him, George Benson, mean! She simply hadn't appreciated money. She'd thought that Deutsche marks grew on trees, that pfennigs gathered like dew on the grass in the night. George, on the other hand, had inherited much of the pecuniary instincts of his father, a Yorkshireman of the Old School—and of Scottish stock to boot—who really understood the value of "brass." His old man had used to say: "Thee tak care o' the pennies, Georgie, an' the pounds'll tak care o' theysels!"

George's already pinched face tightened skull-like as his thoughts again returned to Greta. She had wanted children. Children! Damned lucky thing he had known better than to accept that! For God's sake, who could afford children? Then she'd complained about the food—like she'd been complaining for years—said she was getting thin because the money he gave her was never enough. But George liked his women willowy and fragile; that way there was never much fight in them. Well, he'd certainly misjudged Greta, there had been plenty of fight left in her. And their very last fight had been about food, too. He had wanted her to buy food in bulk at the supermarkets for cheapness; in turn she'd demanded a deep freezer so that the food she bought wouldn't go bad; finally George had gone off the deep end when she told him how much the freezer she had in mind would cost!

She left him that same day; moreover, she ate the last of the wurstchen before she went! George grinned mirthlessly as he gripped the steering wheel tighter, wishing it were Greta's scrawny neck. By God! She'd be sorry when she was fat!

Still, George had had the last laugh. Their home had been paid for fifty-fifty, but it had been in George's name. He had sold it. Likewise the furniture and the few clothes she left behind. The car had been half hers, too—but again in George's name, for Greta couldn't drive. It was all his now, his money, his car, everything. As he'd done so often in the last twenty-four hours, he took one hand from the wheel to reassuringly pat the fat wallet where its outline bulged out the upper right front of his jacket.

It was the thought of money that sent George's mind casting back an hour or so to a chance encounter at Harvey's All-Night-Grill, just off the Ml. This drunk had been there—oh, a real joker and melancholy with it, too—but he had been sooo well-heeled! George remembered the man's queer offer: "Just show me the way home, that's all—and all I've got you can have!" And he had carried a bankbook showing a credit of over two thousand pounds . . .

That last was hearsay, though, passed on to George by Harvey himself, the stubble-jawed, greasy-aproned owner of the place. Now that earlier accidental meeting and conversation suddenly jumped up crystal clear in George's mind. It had started when George mentioned to Harvey that he was heading for Bellington; that was when the other fellow had started to take an interest in him and had made his weird offer about being shown the way home.

God damn! George sat bolt upright behind the steering wheel. Come to think of it, he had heard of Middle Hamborough before. Surely that was the name of the place the drunk had been looking for—for fifteen years!

George hadn't paid much attention to the man at the time, had barely listened to his gabbled, drunken pleading. He'd passed the man off quite simply as some nut who'd heard those fanciful old rumors about people getting lost in the surrounding countryside, a drunk who was making a big play of his own personal little fantasy. The fellow would be all right when he sobered up . . .

Now that George thought about it, though—well, why should anyone make up a story like that? And come to think of it, the man hadn't seemed all that drunk. More tired and, well, lost, really . . .

Just then, cresting a low hill, as his headlights flashed across the next shallow valley, George saw the house with the big garden and the long drive winding up to it. The place stood to the right of the road, atop the next hill, and the gravel drive rose up from an ornamental stone arch and iron gate at the roadside. Dipping down the road and climbing the low hill, George read the wrought-iron legend on the gate: High House. And now he remembered more of the—drunk's?—story.

The man had called himself Kent, and fifteen years ago, on his tenth wedding anniversary, he'd left home one morning to drive to London, there to make certain business arrangements with city-dwelling colleagues. He had taken a fairly large sum of money with him when he drove from High House, the home he himself had designed and built, which had worked out just as well for him. Turning right off the Middle Hamborough road through Meadington and onto the London road at Bankhead, Kent had driven to the city. And in London—

Kent was a partner in a building concern . . . or at least he had been. For in London he discovered that his firm had never existed, that his colleagues, Milton and Jones, while they themselves were real enough, swore they had never heard of him. "Milton, Jones & Kent" did not exist; the firm was known simply as "Milton & Jones." Not only did they not know him, they tried to have him jailed for attempted fraud!

That was only the start of it, for the real horror came when he tried to get back home—only to discover that there just wasn't any way home! George remembered now Kent's apparently drunken phrase: "A strange dislocation of space and time, a crossing of probability tracks, a passage between parallel dimensions—and a subsequent mapping-back of space-time elastic . . ." Only a drunk would say something like that A drunk or a nut.

Except Harvey had insisted that Kent was sober. He was just tired, Harvey said, confused, half mad trying to solve a fifteen-year-old problem that wasn't . . . There had never been a Middle Hamborough, Harvey insisted. The place wasn't shown on any map; you couldn't find it in the telephone directory; no trains, buses, or roads went there. Middle Hamborough wasn't!

But Middle Hamborough was, George had seen it, or—

Could it be that greasy old Harvey had somehow been fooling that clown all these years, milking his money drop by drop, cashing in on some mental block or other? Or had they both simply been pulling George's leg? If so, well, it certainly seemed a queer sort of joke . . .

George glanced at his watch. Just on 11:00 P.M.

Damn it he'd planned to be in Bellington by now, at home with the old folks, and he would have been if he'd come off the Ml at the right place. Of course, when he'd left England there had been no motorway as such, just another road stretching away north and south. That was where he'd gone wrong, obviously; he'd come off the Ml too soon. He should have gone on to the next exit. Well, all right, he'd kill two birds with one stone. He'd go back to Harvey's all-nighter, check out the weird one's story again, then see if he couldn't perhaps latch on to some of the joker's change to cover his time. Then he'd try to pick up a map of the area before heading home. He couldn't go wrong with a map, now could he?

Having decided his course, and considering the winding roads and pitch-darkness, George put his foot down and sped back to Harvey's place. Parking his car, he walked through the open door into the unhealthy atmosphere and lighting of the so-called cafeteria (where the lights were kept low, George suspected to make the young cockroaches on the walls less conspicuous). He went straight to the service counter and carefully rested his elbows upon it, avoiding the splashes of sticky coffee and spilled grease. Of the equally greasy proprietor he casually inquired regarding Mr. Kent's whereabouts.

"Eh? Kent? He'll be in his room. I let him lodge here, y'know. He doesn't like to be too far from this area . . ."

"You let him lodge here?" George asked, raising his eyebrows questioningly.

"Well, y'know, he pays a bit."

George nodded, silently repeating the other's words: Yeah, I'll bet he pays a bit!

"G'night there!" Harvey waved a stained dishcloth at a departing truck driver and his mate. "See y'next time." He turned back to George with a scowl. "Anyway, what's it to you, about Kent? After making y'self a quick quid or two?"

"How do you mean?" George returned, assuming a hurt look. "It's just that I think I might be able to help the poor bloke out, that's all."

"Oh?" Harvey looked suspicious. "How's that, ten?"

"Well, half an hour ago I was on the road to Middle Hamborough, and I passed a place set back off the road called High House. I just thought—"

" 'Ere," Harvey cut in, a surprisingly fast hand shooting out to catch George's jacket front and pull him close so that their faces almost met across the service counter. "You tryin' t' be clever, chief?"

"Well, I'll be—" George spluttered, genuinely astonished. "What the hell d'you think you're—"

" 'Cos if you are—you an' me'll fall out, we will!"

George carefully disengaged himself. "Well," he said, "I think that answers one of my questions, at least."

"Eh? What d'you mean?" Harvey asked, still looking surly. George backed off a step.

"Looks to me like you're as mad as him, attacking me like that. I mean, I might have expected you to laugh, seeing as how I fell for your funny little joke—but I'd hardly think that you'd get all physical."

"What the 'ell are you on about?" Harvey questioned, a very convincing frown creasing his forehead. "What joke?"

"Why, about Middle Hamborough, about it not being on any map and about no roads going there and Kent looking for the place for fifteen years. I'm on about a place that's not twenty minutes' fast drive from here, signposted clear as the City of London!"

Suddenly Harvey's unwashed features paled visibly. "You mean you've actually seen this place?" he whispered. "And you drove past . . . High House?"

"Damn right!" George answered abruptly, feeling as though things were all unreal, a very vivid but meaningless daydream.

Harvey lifted a flap in the counter and waddled through to George's side. He was a very big man, George suddenly noticed, and the color had come back to his face with a vengeance. There was a red, angry tinge in the man's sallow features now; moreover, the cafeteria was quite empty of other souls, all bar the two of them.

"Now look here—" George blurted, as Harvey began to maneuver him into a corner.

"I shouldn't 'ave mentioned 'is money, should I?" The fat man cut him off, his piggy eyes fastening upon those of his patently intended victim, making his question more a statement than a question proper.

"See," he continued, "I'd had a couple of pints earlier, or I wouldn't 'ave let it drop about 'is predicament. 'E's been right good to me, Mr. Kent 'as—'elped me set this place up proper, 'e did—and I don't cotton to the idea of some flyboy trying to—"

Again his arm shot out, and he grabbed Benson's throat this time, trapping him in the dim corner. "So you've been down the road to Middle Hamborough, 'ave you?—And you've seen High House, eh? Well, let me tell you, I've been looking for that place close on six years, me an' poor ol' Kent an' not so much as a peep!

"Now I knows 'e's a bit of a nut, but I like 'im and we gets on fine. 'E stays 'ere, cheap like, an' we do a bit of motorin' in 'is old car—lookin' for those places you say you've seen, y'know? But we never finds 'em, an' we never will, 'cos they're not there, see? Kent being a decent little gent I 'umors 'im and things is OK. But I'm no crook, if you see what I mean, though I'm not sure I can say the same for everybody!" He peered pointedly at George, releasing the pressure on his windpipe enough for him to croak:

"I tell you I have seen High House; or, at least, I saw a place of that name and answering that description I heard from Kent. And I have been on the road to—"

"What's that about High House?" The question was a hoarse, quavering whisper—hesitant, and yet filled with excited expectancy. Hearing that whisper, Harvey immediately released his grip on Benson's neck and turned to move over quickly to the thin, gray-haired, middle-aged man who had appeared out of a back room behind the service counter.

"Don't get yourself all upset, Mr. Kent," Harvey protested, holding up his hands solicitously. "It's just some bloke tryin' to pull a fast one—"

"But I heard him say—" Kent's eyes were wide, staring past the fat proprietor straight at Benson where he stood, still shaken, in the corner.

George found his voice again. "I said I'd seen High House, on the road to Middle Hamborough—and I did see it." He shook himself, straightening his tie and shrugging his disarranged jacket back into position. "But I didn't come back in here to get involved with a couple of nuts. And I don't think much of your joke."

George turned away and made for the door; then, remembering his previous trouble, he turned back to face Harvey. "Do you have a map of the area by any chance? I've been in Germany for some years and seem to be out of touch. I can't seem to find my way about anymore."

For a moment Kent continued to stare very hard at the speaker; then he half turned to Harvey. "He—he got lost! And he says he's seen High House . . .! I've got to believe him; I daren't miss the chance that—"

Almost sure by now that he was the victim of some cockeyed leg-pull (and yet still experiencing niggling little subconscious doubts), George Benson shrugged. "OK. No map," he grumbled. "Well, good night, boys. Maybe I'll drop in again sometime—like next visiting day!"

"No, wait!" the thin man cried. "Do you think that you can find . . . that you can find High House again?" His voice went back to a whisper on the last half dozen words.

"Sure, I can find it again," George told him, nodding his head. "But it's well out of my way."

"I'll make it worth your trouble," Kent quickly answered, his voice rising rapidly in what sounded to George like a bad case of barely suppressed hysteria. "I'll make it very worthwhile indeed!"

George was not the man to pass up a good thing. "My car's outside," he said. "Do you want to ride with me, or will you follow in your own car?"

"I'll ride with you. My hands are shaking so badly that I—"

"I'm coming with you," Harvey suddenly grunted, taking off his greasy apron.

"No, no, my friend," Kent turned to him. "If we don't find High House, I'll be back. Until then, and just in case we do find it, this is for all you've done." His hand was shaking badly as he took out a checkbook and quickly, nervously scribbled. He passed the check to Harvey, and George managed to get a good look at it. His eyes went wide when he saw the amount it was made out for. Five hundred pounds!

"Now look 'ere, Mr. Kent," Harvey blustered. "I don't like the looks of this bloke. I reckon—"

"I understand your concern," the older man told him, "but I'm sure Mr.—?" He turned to George.

"Er, Smith," George told him, unwilling to reveal his real name. This could still be some crazy joke, but if so, it would be on some bloke called "Smith," and not on George Benson!

"I'm sure that Mr. Smith is legitimate. And in any case I daren't miss the chance to get . . . to get back home." He was eager now to be on his way. "Are you ready, Mr. Smith?"

"Just as soon as you say," George told him. "The sooner the better."

They walked out into the night, to George's car, leaving fat greasy Harvey worriedly squeezing his hands in the doorway to his all-nighter. Suddenly the night air seemed inordinately cold, and as George opened the passenger door to let Kent get in, he shivered. He walked around the car, climbed into the driver's seat, and slammed the door.

As George started up the motor, Kent spoke up from where he crouched against the opposite door, a huddled shape in the dark interior of the car. "Are you sure that—that—"

"Look," George answered, the utter craziness of the whole business abruptly dawning on him, souring his voice, "if this is some sort of nutty joke . . ." He let the threat hang, then snapped, "Of course I can find it again. High House, you're talking about?"

"Yes, yes. High House. The home I built for the woman who lives there, waiting for me."

"For fifteen years?" George allowed himself to indulge in the other's fantasy.

"She would wait until time froze!" Kent leaned over to spit the words in George's ear. "And in any case, I have a theory."

Yeah! George thought to himself. Me, too! Out loud he said, "A theory?"

"Yes. I think—I hope—it's possible that time itself is frozen at the moment of the fracture. If I can get back, it may all be unchanged. I may even regain my lost years!"

"A parallel dimension, eh?" George said, feeling strangely nervous.

"Right." His passenger nodded emphatically. "That's the way I see it."

Humoring him, George asked, "What's it like, this other world of yours?"

"Why, it's just like this world—except that there's a village called Middle Hamborough, and a house on a hill, and a building firm called Milton, Jones & Kent. There are probably other differences, too, but I haven't found any yet to concern me. Do you know the theory of parallel worlds?"

"I've read some science-fiction," George guardedly answered. "Some of these other dimensions, or whatever they're supposed to be, are just like this world. Maybe a few odd differences, like you say. Others are different, completely different. Horrible and alien—stuff like that." He suddenly felt stupid. "That's what I've read, anyway. Load of rubbish!"

"Rubbish?" Kent grunted, stirring in his seat. "I wish it were. But, anyway, you've got the right idea. Why are you stopping?"

"See that sign?" George said, pointing through the windshield to where the headlights lit up a village name board. "Meadington, just a few miles down the road. We're through Meadington in about five minutes. Then we turn left where it's signposted Middle Hamborough. Another five minutes after that and we're at High House. You said it would be worth my while?"

Now comes the crunch, George told himself. This is where the idiot bursts out laughing—and that's when I brain him!

But Kent didn't laugh. Instead he got out his checkbook, and George switched on the interior light to watch him write a note for . . .

George's eyes bulged as he saw the numbers go down on the crisp paper. First a one, followed by three zeros! One thousand pounds! "This won't bounce?" he asked suspiciously, his hand trembling as he reached for the check.

"It won't bounce," said Kent, folding the note and tucking it into his pocket. "Fortunately, my money was good for this world, too. You get it when we get to High House."

"You have a deal," George told him, putting the car in gear. They drove through slumbering Meadington, its roofs and hedges silvered in a moonlight that shone through the promise of a mist. Leaving the village behind, the car sped along the country road, but after a few minutes George again pulled into the curb and stopped. His passenger had slumped down in his seat.

"Are you OK?" George asked.

"There's no turnoff," Kent sobbed. "We should have passed it before now. I've driven down this road a thousand, ten thousand times in the last fifteen years, and tonight it's just the same as it always is. There's no turnoff, no signpost to Middle Hamborough!"

"Yeah." George chewed his lip, unwilling to accept defeat so easily. "We must have missed it. It wasn't this far out of Meadington last time." He turned the big car about, driving onto the grass verge to do so, then headed back toward Meadington.

George was angry now and more than a little puzzled. He'd been watching for that signpost as keenly as his passenger. How the hell could they have missed it? No matter, this time he'd drive dead-slow. He knew the road was there, for he'd been down it and back once already tonight!

Sure enough, with the first of Meadingtons' roofs glimmering silver in the near-distance a dilapidated signpost suddenly showed up in the beam of the car's lights. It pointed across the tarmac to where the surface of a second road ribboned away into the milky moonlight, a sign whose legend, though grimy, was nevertheless amply legible: Middle Hamborough.

And quite as suddenly George Benson's passenger was sitting bolt upright in his seat, his whole body visibly trembling while his eyes stood out like organ stops, staring madly at the signpost. "Middle Hamborough!" he cried, his voice pitched so high it almost broke. And again: "Middle Hamborough, Middle Hamborough!"

"Sure," said George, an unnatural chill racing up his spine. "I told you I could find it!" And to himself he added, But I'm damned if I know how we missed it the first time!

He turned onto the new road, noticing the second signpost at his right as he did so. That was the one they'd missed. Perhaps it had been in the shadows; but in any case, what odds? They were on the right road now.

Kent's trembling had stopped, and his voice was quite steady when he said, "You really don't know how much I owe you, Mr. Smith. You shall have your check, of course, but if it were for a million pounds, it wouldn't really be enough." His face was dark in the car's interior, and his silhouette looked different somehow.

George said, "You realize that fat Harvey's been having you on all this time, don't you?" His voice became quite gentle as he added, "You know, you really ought to see someone about it, about all . . . this, I mean. People can take advantage of you. Harvey could have brought you here anytime he wanted."

Suddenly Kent laughed, a young laugh that had the merest trace of weary hysteria in it. "Oh, you don't know the half of it, do you, Mr. Smith? Can't you get it through your head that I'm not mad and no one is trying to make a fool of you? This is all real. My story is the truth. I was lost in an alien dimension, in your world, but now I'm finally back in my own. You may believe me, Mr. Smith, that you have earned your thousand pounds!"

George was almost convinced. Certainly Kent was sincere enough. "Well, OK—whatever you say. But I'll tell you something, Mr. Kent. If that check of yours bounces when I try to cash it tomorrow, I'll be back, and you better believe I'll find High House again!"

The silhouette turned in its seat in an attitude of concern. "Do me a favor, will you, Mr. Smith? If—just if, you understand—if you can't find the road back to Meadington, don't hesitate to—"

George cut him off with a short bark of a laugh. "You must be joking! I'll find it, all right." His voice went hard again. "And I'll find you, too, if—"

But he paused as, at the top of the next low hill, the headlights illuminated a house standing above the road at the end of a winding drive. George's passenger suddenly gripped his elbow in terrific excitement. "High House!" Kent cried, his voice wild and exultant. "High House! You've done it!"

George granted in answer, revving the car down into the valley and up the hill to pull it to a halt outside the wrought-iron gates. He reached across to catch hold of his passenger's coat as Kent tried to scramble from the car. "Kent!"

"Oh, yes, your check," said the young man, turning to smile at George in the yellow light from the little lamp on the gate . . .

George's jaw dropped. Oh, this was Kent, all right. Little doubt about that. Same features, same suit (though it hung a little baggily on him now), same trembling hand that reached into a pocket to bring out the folded check and place it in George's suddenly clammy hand. But it was a hand that trembled now in excitement and not frustrated but undying hope, and it was a Kent fifteen years younger.

One thousand pounds, and at last George knew that he had indeed earned it!

Kent turned and threw open the gates, racing up the drive like a wild man. In the house, lights were starting to go on. George fingered the check unbelievingly and ran his tongue over dry lips. His mind seemed to have frozen over, so that only one phrase kept repeating in his brain. It was something Kent had said: "If you can't find the road back to—"

He gunned the motor, spinning the car wildly around in a spray of gravel. Up on the hill at the top of the drive, Kent was vaulting the fence, and a figure in white was waiting in the garden for him, open arms held wide. George tore his eyes away from them and roared down the hill, as for the second time that night, he headed for the Meadington road.

The check lay on the empty passenger seat now where he'd dropped it, and money was quite the last thing in George's mind as he drove his car in an unreasoning panic, leaping the low hills like some demon hurdler as he tried to make it back to the main road before—before what? A hideous doubt was blossoming in his mind, growing like some evil genie from a bottle and taking on a horrible form. All those stories about queer dislocations of space and time—the signpost for Middle Hamborough that was, then wasn't, then was again—and, of course, Kent's story, and his . . . rejuvenation?

"I will be very glad," George told himself out loud, "when I reach that junction just outside of Meadington!" For one thing, he could have sworn that it wasn't this much of a drive. He should surely have been there by now. Ah, yes, this would be it coming up now, just around this slight bend . . .

No junction!

The road stretched straight on ahead, narrow and suddenly ominous in the sweeping beam of his lights. All right, so the junction was a little farther than he'd reckoned. George put his foot down even harder to send the big car racing along the narrow road. The miles flew by without a single signpost or junction, and a ground mist came in that forced George to slow down. He would have done so anyway, for now the road seemed to be exerting a strange pull on his car. The big motor felt as if it were slowing down! George's heart almost leaped into his mouth. There couldn't be anything wrong with the car, could there?

Braking to a halt and switching off the car's engine and lights, George climbed out of the driver's seat. He breathed the damp night air. On unpleasantly rubbery legs he walked around to the front of the car and lifted the hood. An inspection light came on and he cast a quick, practiced glance over the motor. No, he'd worked in a garage for many years and he knew a good motor when he saw one. Nothing wrong with the car, so—

As he straightened up, George felt an unaccustomed suction on his shoes and glanced down at the road. The surface was rubbery, formed of a sort of tough sponge. A worried frown crossed George's face as he bent to feel that peculiar surface. He'd never seen a road surfaced with stuff like that before!

It was as he straightened up again that he heard the tinkling, like the sound of tiny bells from somewhere off the road. Yes, there set back from the road, he could see a row of low squat houses, like great mushrooms partly obscured by the mist that swirled now in strange currents. The tinkling came from the houses.

The outskirts of a village? George wondered. Well, at least he'd be able to get directions. He stepped off the road onto turf and made for the houses, only slowing down when he saw how featureless and alike they all looked. The queer tinkling went on, sounding like the gentle noises the hangings on a Christmas tree make in a draft. Other than that there was only the billowing mist and the darkness.

Reaching the first house, stepping very slowly now, George came up close to the wall and stared at it. It was gray, featureless. All the houses looked alike. They were indeed like enormous mushrooms. No windows. Overhanging roofs. Flaps of sorts that could be doors, or there again—

The tinkling had stopped. Very carefully George reached out and touched the wall in front of him. It felt warm . . . and it crept beneath his fingers!

Deliberately and slowly George turned about and forced one foot out in front of the other. He fought the urge to look back over his shoulder until, halfway to the mist-wreathed car, he heard an odd plopping sound behind him. It was like the ploop you get throwing a handful of mud into a pond. He froze with his back still to the houses.

Quite suddenly he felt sure that his ears were enlarging, stretching back and up to form saucerlike receivers on top of his head. Everything he had went into those ears, and all of it was trying to tune in on what was going on behind him. He didn't turn, but simply stood still; and again there was only the utter silence, loud in his strangely sensitized ears. He forced his dead feet to take a few more paces forward—and sure enough the sound came again, repeating this time: ploop, ploop, ploop!

George slowly pivoted on his heel as muscles he never knew he had began to jump in his face. The noises, each ploop sounding closer than the last, stopped immediately. His legs felt like twin columns of jelly, but he somehow completed his turn. He stumbled spastically then, arms flailing to keep himself from falling. The nearest house, or cottage, or whatever, was right there behind him, within arm's reach!

Suddenly George's heart, which he was sure had stopped forever, became audible again inside him, banging away in his chest like a trip hammer. All in one movement he turned and bounded for the car, wondering why with each leap he should stay so long in the air, knowing that in fact his body was moving like greased lightning while his mind (in an even greater hurry, one his body couldn't even attempt to match) thought he was in reverse!

Not bothering, not daring to look back again, he almost wrenched the car door from its hinges as he threw himself into the driving seat. Then, in an instant that lasted several centuries, his hand was on the ignition key and the engine was roaring. As he spun the car about in a squeal of tortured tires and accelerated up the rubbery road, he looked in his rear-view mirror—and immediately wished he hadn't!

The "houses" were all plooping down the road after him—like great greedy frogs—and their "doors" were wide open!

George nearly went off the road then, wrenching at the wheel with clammy hands as he fought to control his careening car on the peculiar surface. A million monstrous thoughts raced through his head as he climbed up through the gears. For of course he knew now for certain that he was trapped in an alien dimension, that the space-time elastic had snapped back into place behind him, stranding him here. Wherever "here" was!

It was only several miles later that he thought to slow down, and only then after passing a junction on the right and a signpost saying: Middle Hamborough 5 1/2 Miles. His heart gave a wild leap as he skidded to a halt on a once-more perfectly normal tarmac road. Why, that sign meant that just half a mile up the road in front he'd find Meadington, and beyond Meadington . . . Bankhead and the Ml!

Except that Meadington wasn't there . . . Instead, the mist came up again and, worse, the road went rubbery. And no sign of Meadington. When he saw a row of mushroom "houses" standing back from the road, George did an immediate, violent about-turn, rocking the car dangerously on the rubber road. Trouble with this weird surface was that it gave too much damn traction.

Amazing that he could still think such mundane thoughts in a situation like this. And yet, through all this protracted nightmare, a ray of hope still shone. The road to Middle Hamborough!

Back there, down that road, there was a house on a hill and beyond that a real, if slightly different, world. A world where at least two of the inhabitants owed him a break. From what Kent had told him, it seemed to George that the other world wasn't much different from his own. He could make a go of things there. He gunned his motor back down the road and out of the mist, back onto a decent tarmac surface and into normally dark night, turning left at the leaning signpost onto the now familiar road to Middle Hamborough.

Or was it familiar?

The hedges bordering the road were different somehow, taller, hiding the fields beyond them from the car's probing headlights, and the road seemed narrower than George remembered it. But that must be his imagination acting up after the terrific shocks of the last ten minutes; it had to be, for this was the road to Middle Hamborough. Then, cresting the next hill, suddenly George felt that hellish drag of his tires, and his headlights began to do battle with a thickening, swirling mist. At the same time he saw the house atop the next hill, the house set back off the road at the head of a long winding drive. High House!

There were no lights on in the place now, but it was George's refuge nonetheless. Hadn't Kent told him to come back here if he couldn't find his way back to Meadington? George gave a whoop of relief as he swept down into the shallow valley and up the hill toward the wrought-iron roadside gates. They were still open, as Kent had left them; and as he slowed down fractionally, George swung the wheel to the left, turning his car in through the gates. They weren't quite open all the way, though, so that the front of the car slammed them back on their hinges.

Up the drive the front lights of the house instantly came on; two of them that glowed yellow as though shutters had been quickly opened—or lids lifted! George had no time to note anything else—except perhaps that the drive was very white, not the white of gravel but more of leprous flesh—for at that point the car simply stopped as if it had run head-on into a brick wall! George wasn't belted in. He rose up over the steering wheel and crashed through the windshield, automatically turning his shoulder to the glass.

He hit the drive in a shower of glass fragments, screaming and expecting the impact to hurt. It didn't, and then George knew why the car had stopped like that: the drive was as soft and sticky as hot toffee! And it wasn't a drive!

Behind George the wide fleshy ribbon tasted the car and, rising up, flicked it easily to one side. Then it tasted George. He had time to scream, barely, and time for one more quite mundane thought—that this wasn't where Kent lived—before that great white chameleon tongue slithered him up the hill to the house, whose entire front below the yellow windows opened up to receive him.

Shortly thereafter the lights went slowly out again, as if someone had lowered shutters, or as if lids had fallen . . .

THE LOVECRAFT CONTROVERSY—WHY? by E. Hoffmann Price

Several recent biographies have dealt with H. P. Lovecraft, that enigmatic figure many consider the leading writer of horror stories in this century. In particular, two of these biographies, one by that consummate scholar L. Sprague de Camp, and the other by Frank Belknap Long, who was one of Lovecraft's closest friends have attracted attention. A controversy sprang up over some of de Camp's statements. Many felt that de Camp did not like Lovecraft very much, while others have suggested that de Camp came from the wrong sort of background to understand a man of Lovecraft's complexity. In this sort of atmosphere, it was perhaps inevitable that when Long's more leisurely and personal reminiscences appeared, many of de Camp's critics would point to the Long book as more fair. In the following article, E. Hoffman Price comes to another conclusion.

Born in 1898, E. Hoffman Price sold to Weird Tales Magazine as early as 1924. He was a close friend of that magazine's legendary editor, Farnsworth Wright, and with many of its leading writers, including H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. In the 1930's he was one of the top fiction writers in America, selling to most of the leading magazines. Today he lives near San Francisco, where he wrote this article just before taking off alone on an automobile trip around the country to visit old friends and autograph copies of his recent book Far Lands Other Days (Carcosa).

That I have been asked to appraise Lovecraft: A Biography by L. Sprague de Camp (Doubleday), and Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Night Side by Frank Belknap Long, is an honor which I value. That I know and have a high regard for each author makes this task a pleasure rather than an awkwardness. There is, however, built into my attempt, one problem which derives from the Lovecraft worshipers whose fanaticism HPL's good friend, the late W. Paul Cook, discussed as long ago as 1945, in the fan magazine The Ghost. His apprehensions have proved all too well justified. If, instead of wrangling at conventions and assailing each other in fan-magazine columns, they could set aside juvenile emotionality and permit themselves enrichment from the differences between the two books in question, they would profit.

Long's work is valuable because, with one possible exception, he knew HPL as does no other person. L. Sprague de Camp's work is valuable because he did not, repeat not, know HPL. The two writings complement each other; each is essential to the other.

I spent a total of five days in HPL's company. We met in New Orleans, June 1932, and again in Providence, July Fourth weekend, 1933. This brief experience of the man's charm and presence, his kindness, his good fellowship, his unique personality, has lived with me throughout the forty-three years since our final meeting. My awareness of HPL's unusual qualities was broadened by letter exchanges until the month before his death.

Compared to Harry K. Brobst, who lived in Providence and was HPL's close friend and neighbor from 1932 until the end, and Frank Belknap Long who met HPL five hundred times in the course of about twenty years, my exposure to the man was trifling, yet it enables me to appreciate the difference between a writing about HPL by one who knew him and a biography by one who never met the man.

An HPL worshiper who was not even born until after the Old Master's death reproached me for not having condemned de Camp's book. He could scarcely believe me when I declared that I'd written well of it. Since he had long known me as one who has a deep regard for HPL, he found it inconceivable that I had not petitioned to have de Camp hanged by the toes and flogged to death, at least in effigy, until devotees could seize and settle the culprit.

Long's Dreamer on the Night Side is at once a delight and a sadness in its evocation of that Lovecraft who, after hospitality I described in a memoir which appeared in the book Something About Cats (Arkham House), rode with me in my car "Great Juggernaut" to guide me to the city limits of Providence. He would enjoy the walk back to 66 College Street, he told me: yet this was a courtesy which gave me additional minutes of his company. I like also to believe that he wished to prolong my time as his guest.

I do not recall our words of parting. There lives with me only the final sight of him standing by the roadside, arm raised—good-bye, blessing, and bon voyage.

Each page of Long's book evokes an image of HPL. Long has created for me an image far greater in breadth and depth than memory, yet his splendid amplification has not altered any details. There is at once more Lovecraft, but it is still the same Lovecraft. As I turn the pages, browsing, pausing to savor again this glimpse or that: sometimes HPL face-to-face, or else some long-ago letter-exchange comes to memory, written words which were always an extension of the man himself. Even one who is not a Lovecraft fan would do well indeed to relish that human and affectionate presentation. In writing Dreamer, Long set a new high for himself—though his recent autobiographical sketches for a collection of his stories (The Early Long, Doubleday) are little short of this peak.

Yes, I am indeed biased in Long's favor. Thanks to HPL's having suggested that I ask Long to guide me to Paterson, New Jersey, where I intended to visit a friend, I met that fabulous member of the "Kalem" tong. (And if you want an explanation of what the Kalem Klub was, then I've trapped you: you'll have to read about it in Dreamer on the Night Side.) I remember Long's parents most fondly, and recall their gracious welcome. That friendly hour made me feel as though I had found a new home. And all this was overshadowed by Lovecraft.

Now let's get at L. Sprague de Camp's book, copies of which, it is whispered, have been polluted in unnamable ways, and after obscene and eldritch ritual, burned in the public square by slavering juveniles of all ages.

I value this book because the author, never having been exposed to HPL's charm and mind and presence, has given an objective and thoroughly researched biography such as Long states from the very beginning in Dreamer on the Night Side that he had not intended to write. And I know how earnestly de Camp searched records. Beginning early in 1970 he wrote me many a letter asking for information or asking me to comment on statements gleaned from other sources. These included queries on Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, writers so closely associated with HPL that, though neither ever met him, an understanding of the two was essential to a biographer of de Camp's thorough and conscientious character.

During this exchange, de Camp sent me, with his compliments, his The Ancient Engineers, a valuable reference work I found useful in working up the background for a novel about Lilith. His novels The Arrows of Hercules and The Golden Wind impressed me by their careful and evident research. Although I abstain from mentioning names, all too many fantasy writers are phony as three-dollar bills when they venture into antiquity. Some can't even present the contemporary scene convincingly. De Camp, a full-dress professional writer, considers that his first obligation to readers is to know what he is talking about.

Accordingly, I value de Camp's Lovecraft: A Biography. Yes, it does contain errors. He states that in 1934 I returned to Providence. The only time I was ever in that city was 1933. He states that I was a cavalry officer in World War I. This is not correct: I was a trooper of the 15th Horse in the Philippines and France. Only after the war was I an officer, and in the Coast Artillery Corps.

Despite his earnest efforts, de Camp let other errors intrude. He quotes, in part, from a letter HPL wrote to August Derleth (page 305) in which it appears that HPL had been informed by one of the "circle" that Farnsworth Wright, the long-time editor of Weird Tales Magazine, had "drinking spells." HPL wrote: . . . I feel tempted to unearth a local bootlegger to send Brother Farnsworth a case of synthetic brilliance . . .

I had heard from one of the Lovecraft Circle that Wright was an alcoholic. To that fellow, one who, as far as I know, never knew or even claimed to have met Wright, I gave a detailed history of my association with Wright. At each of the many social events at Wright's home, my home, and at the home of Otis Adelbert Kline, Farnsworth Wright was conspicuously abstemious. At the "victory dinner" when our friend Robert Spencer Carr sold his first novel, Wright was the only sober guest. If for no other reason his health forbade more than an occasional glass. HPL unfortunately taking the word of an uninformed member of the "Circle," wrote to Derleth as he did. De Camp, rightly impressed by HPL's integrity, had not thought of checking with someone who knew Farnsworth Wright.

De Camp is condemned for harping on what he deems HPL's faults, weaknesses, and deficiencies. How much is excessive? From Plutarch on, biographers have "interpreted" their subjects.

In 1940, researching for a historical novel about General Charles George ("Chinese") Gordon and the fall of Khartoun, I gutted two university libraries and the California State Library. One writer of high repute stated that Gordon was "the noblest man since Jesus Christ." Another of equally high stature declared that Gordon was a fanatic, a drunkard, erratic as a soldier, insubordinate, and, except for undeniable talent for commanding "native" troops, a mediocre officer. These were the opinions of contemporaries. I find no such irreconcilable clash between the affectionate presentation by Long and the objective one by de Camp. The latter could scarcely have written other than he did: he went with recorded facts as he found them. His interpretation could be only his own—certainly not mine, nor Long's, nor that of a "Circle" member.

De Camp included almost the entirety of my friendly presentation of HPL. The publishers demanded extensive cutting, probably between a quarter and a third of the final draft. Only amateurs are permitted the luxury of going temperamental and refusing to delete a comma!

Uncompromisingly, I agree with de Camp in his views on HPL's notions on amateurism. I have never heard anyone assert that the amateur pianist, amateur violinist, amateur singer, amateur dancer, renders a performance superior to that of a professional. Wherefore, then, is the amateur writer any the less a bungler than are the other amateurs I've cited? No one denies HPL's right to his personal code, his personal acceptances—but nothing, I submit, would be sillier than to declare that HPL's views are a valid ideal for all writers.

De Camp's book baited me into reviewing HPL's writings: and this rereading was enlightening. My study extended to the letters which HPL had written to me, and to others. I began to appreciate the extent of the subjects which he and I had bypassed—matters which he had discussed at great length with many another friend. Ever considerate and gracious, he never addressed a word of racism to me—he knew that I had fraternized with Malays, Japanese, Chinese, and Syrians, as well as various non-Nordic French folks.

We ignored politics.

In one or two fine letters HPL outlined the essence of his view on fictioneering. He and I differed—but the difference was not worth debating. Neither had any urge to convert the other. It remained for one of the "Circle" many years later to parrot the Master and to assure me that one would do better by far to work in a filling station, than to make a living by writing. This pious devotee equated professionalism with "crass, mercenary hack." I said to that unrealistic oaf, "Sir, only a fool would twist a gas pump when he could earn three to five times as much by writing fiction! How is it that artistic integrity is the monopoly of those who can't make a living at writing?"

I've presented, in terms of my own experience, what I consider to be the essence of de Camp's analysis of HPL's own statements.

As an instance of the biographer's doing the best he could by his subject, de Camp quotes sufficiently from my memoir to establish the fact that HPL was devoid of the bigotry and abominable Puritanism imputed to him. On the other hand, de Camp's study of HPL's letters makes it clear that when an audience deferred to him, he was an all-out advocate of total abstinence from liquor and tobacco.

Only from the biography did I become aware of the extremes to which HPL went in his views on fictioneering. I cite page 405, wherein it is stated that HPL rather deplored the commercial success of certain authors, feeling that it would make cheap magazine hacks of them, as he thought it had of E. Hoffmann Price and C.L. Moore.

". . . And to think that they were once lit'ry guys . . ."

In this quip he poked his chin out a mile! I was, it seems, "a lit'ry guy" because of having sold some twenty grossly overwritten, adjective-riddled yarns, with stilted dialogue and wooden diction—all these to Weird Tales. These "lit'ry" things included a number of so-called orientales which moved an Armenian reader to write that I had an impossible mishmash of Persian, Arabic, Mongol, and Urdu phrases with a corresponding hash of "atmoshphere"—but no matter, since the readers were too ignorant to know the difference.

Once I succeeded in upgrading my work sufficiently to crash magazines which demanded better craftsmanship and higher order of authenticity, my work had become "hack." In applauding freshman composition, presumably because it was the work of an amateur who made his living working for Union carbide, and condemning fiction which was accepted by magazines much more exacting than Weird Tales (presumably because the stuff sold for sufficient rates to take the place of the salary I'd lost when I left the job), suggests that HPL was singularly devoid of objectivity—which is in effect what de Camp stated of the man.

De Camp is damned for making it clear that the Master could and did pontificate as readily out of error and ignorance as ever he did out of genuine erudition. He did both with equal sincerity!

Although HPL rightly damned mass mayhem and mechanized meat-cutting, he had nothing but good to say of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. He applauded Howard's African stuff which demonstrated, as nothing else could, how ignorant Howard was of Africa.

HPL never took himself as seriously as his worshipers take him. There was one who wrote declaring that L. Sprague de Camp was a debunker. In context, this was by no means applause. However, I replied, "Goddamn high time someone presents HPL and others as human beings, rather than as phony demigods."

In Frank Belknap Long's presentation, the living Lovecraft shines through. In L. Sprague de Camp's biography, there is an objectivity such that, for the first time, I am able to separate that living Lovecraft whose memory I cherish most affectionately, from Lovecraft the writer of diverse fantasies, of widely varying merit. Long and de Camp have given me, each in his own way, a more complete Lovecraft image. If these are to remain apart, then good; if for me they can merge into oneness, then better yet! In any event, I am grateful to my colleagues for their impressive productions.

A professional, i.e. not a cocktail-hour psychologist, said to me, "HPL was so complex, so paradoxical, that not even a competent psychologist who knew him well could hope to reduce the man to a logical formula, or to explain him—he was unique, and the remains inexplicable." So, instead of seeking to rationalize him, let us knock off this juvenile haggling and wrangling, and love HPL for the sake of his foibles and his blind spots, as well as for his merit and his impressive personality. Most of those who knew him are doing this. Newcomers could do as well, unless they prefer noisy ignorance to quiet appreciation.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

FOREVER STAND THE STONES by Joe Pumilia

AND DON'T FORGET THE ONE RED ROSE by Avram Davidson

CHRISTMAS PRESENT by Ramsey Campbell

A QUESTION OF GUILT by Hal Clement

THE HOUSE ON STILLCROFT STREET by Joseph Payne Brennan

THE RECRUDESCENCE OF GEOFFREY MARVELL by G. N. Gabbard

SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE by David Drake

COTTAGE TENANT by Frank Belknap Long

THE MAN WITH THE AURA by R. A. Lafferty

WHITE WOLF CALLING by C. L. Grant

LIFEGUARD by Arthur Byron Cover

THE BLACK CAPTAIN by H. Warner Munn

THE GLOVE by Fritz Leiber

NO WAY HOME by Brian Lumley

THE LOVECRAFT CONTROVERSY—WHY? by E. Hoffmann Price