Complete Short Fiction, page 12
“Yes,” it snapped from its human mouth. “I hear!”
With a single lunge, it was on its feet. All in one incredibly swift movement, it reached across the table, caught Progue’s shirt where it bulged open at his great neck—and jerked!
The Dutchman bellowed his fury, as that steel strength tore him clear off the floor, smashed His body across the table, and flung him in a single, sweeping motion headfirst out of the door.
Half a dozen dishes clattered to the cement floor, but they were made of tough clay and none broke.
A man said in an awed voice: “He may be weak-minded, but now I can understand how he could swim maybe miles.”
Amid dead silence, then, the creature sat down, and began to eat again.
Its brain was swirling with the murderous desire to leap after the stunned man and tear him to bits. With a horrible effort, it controlled that wild and flaming lust. It recognized that it had made a good impression on these hard men.
TO CORLISS, the silence was a weighted thing. The yellow-orange light that flooded from the lamps which hung down, from the ceiling did queer, ghastly things to the strained faces around the rough table. It was only with half his mind, that he noticed the light of dawn was trickling through the window at his left, spilling in a dingy pool on the floor.
From outside came the scraping, sound of. Progue furiously picking himself off the packed dirt. It was an angry noise, fraught with a sense of violence, the rage of a violent, unruly nature frenzied by humiliation. And yet, Corliss knew, the big Dutchman was unpredictable. Anything could happen.
Briefly, Corliss held his breath, as Progue’s scowling face peered in at the door. Then the man came in, his whole great body towering there. Corliss said sharply, his voice deep with, command:
“Progue, don’t start anything if you want to keep, my respect.”
The Dutchman flashed a terrible look at him, his face dark and glowering: “I’m starting nothing. Had that coming to me. But I still don’t like his eyes. That’s all.”
He went around the table; and it was odd, Corliss thought, that in spite of the ease with which the stranger had handled him, the big man had lost none of the respect of the others. There was no feeling that Progue had backed down from fear, for it was only too obvious that fear was not in him.
He grunted into his chair and began to shovel food into his mouth at a mad pace. Corliss echoed the sigh that went up from the men—an audible noise like a faint hiss. He had had visions of a cook shack smashed to a shambles:
One of the men—the swarthy Frenchman, Perratin—said hastily, and the very haste suggested that he was as much anxious to ease the tense atmosphere as to say what he had to say:
“Boss, I think a couple of us ought to go see if that monster we saw yesterday has come to the surface yet. I’ll absolutely swear, and le bon Dieu be my witness, that I got him right between the eyes.”
“Monster!” a tall, thin-faced, thinbodied man exclaimed from the end of the table. “What’s all this?”
“Seen from boat number two!” Corliss explained succinctly. “Perratin was telling me about it last night, but I was rather sleepy. Something about a big creature with flippers like a devilfish.”
“Sacre du Nom!” cried Perratin.
“The devilfish is a harmless baby compared to this fellow. He was all gray-blue, hard to see, I mean, and had a shark’s head and tail, both long and vicious—” He broke off abruptly. “What’s the matter with you, Brains? The way your eyes are goggling means you’ve seen one of these before.”
“Not seen, but heard of!” the tall, thin-bodied Englishman said slowly.
There was something so queer in the way he spoke that Corliss looked at him sharply. He had a deep respect for Brains Stapley. The man was reputed to be a university graduate; his past was a mystery, but that was nothing unusual; everyone in the room had a past of some kind.
Stapley went on: “You may not realize it, Perratin, but what you’re describing is the natural form of the mythical shark god. I never thought to hear of such a thing actually existing—”
“For Heaven’s sake,” somebody cut in, “are we gonna listen to a bunch of native superstitions? Go on, Perratin.”
Perratin looked at the thinbodied Stapley with the quiet respect that he and some of the others had for the man; then, as Stapley was silent, apparently lost in thought, he said:
“It was Denton who saw him first. You tell ’em, Denton.”
Denton was a smallish man with lively black eyes and a quick, jerky voice. He took up the refrain in his choppy way:
“Like Perratin said, Corliss, we were sittin’ there in the boat, the big chunk of meat bait dangling well into the water. We had to take the dark meat yesterday, you know, and you know how scary sharks act with the dark stuff. Well, that’s the way it was. They just cruised around, almost mad with the smell of the meat, but scared because it was dark. I guess there were fifteen of ’em when I saw the flash in the water—and this creature came up.
“He wasn’t alone, either. Had a bunch of hammerheads with him—biggest, most dangerous-looking sharks I’ve ever laid eyes on. Great, big, long fellows, with those wicked heads, you know, and torpedo bodies—we shot a couple of ’em, so you saw ’em, too. Anyway, this big flipper fellow was swimming in the center of ’em like a king.
“Well, there was nothing really surprising about that. We’ve seen swordfish cruising around with sharks, and all kinds of sharks hanging around together, just as if they knew they was related; though, come to think of it, I’ve never seen a devilfish with sharks; and the devilfish belongs to the shark family.
“Anyway, there he was, big as life. He stopped and looked at that bait we had in the water; and then, just as if to say, ‘What are you fellows scared of?’ he just dived right at it, and that was that. The whole pack made a beeline for the meat and. starts chawing away like merry hell—just what we’d been waitin’ for.”
Corliss noticed that the stranger was staring at Denton with an intent, fascinated stare. For the briefest moment, he understood Progue’s repelled feeling at the man’s eyes. He fought the emotion down and said:
“Denton means that we’ve found, once sharks attack, they lose all fear, no matter how many of their fellows are killed thereafter. Our whole industry here—we want their amazingly tough hides—is built on that fact.”
The stranger looked; at him, as if to indicate that he understood.
Denton went on: “Well, that’s what happened. As soon as the water stopped boiling from their movements, we started picking them off with—”
Perratin broke in eagerly: “It was then I noticed the big fellow had moved off to one side and was just watching us—that’s the way it looked to me, anyway. I tell you he just lay there, his eyes cold and hard and calm—and he watched what we were doing; so I let him have it right between the eyes. He jumped like a mule that’s been stung, and then dropped into the depths like a lead weight.
“I tell you I got him, boss, and he’ll be floating on the surface by now; a couple of us ought to go out and tow him in.”
“Hm-m-m!” frowned Corliss, his strong, tanned face dark with thought. “We can’t really spare more than one man! You’d have to take the small boat.”
The creature was quivering, a deep, internal throb of unutterable ferocity, as it stared at Perratin. This was the man who had fired the weapon that had struck it such a staggering blow. Its every nerve shrank in brief, horrible memory of the stunning pain of that one smash in the head. Its mind soared with the awful, hunger of rage to leap at the man. Only by sheer physical effort did it fight down that ravening eagerness, and it said in a thin voice:
“I’ll be only too glad to go along and help him. I might as well be earning, what I eat here. I can help in any of the physical work.”
“Why, thanks!” said Corliss, and he hoped that Progue felt properly ashamed of his suspicions of the stranger, after such a good-will offer. “And, incidentally, seeing as we can’t find out your real name, we’ll call you Jones. Now, let’s get going. Hard day ahead!”
AS THE THING followed the men into the muggy gloom of early dawn, it thought rapaciously: “It’s easier than I expected!” And it retched a little from the flaming fever of its desire. Its steel muscles vibrated tautly with hellish glee at the very idea of what was going to happen to the man when the two of them were alone in the small boat.
Shaking with the pure, unadulterated passion of its blood hunger, it followed the men—followed them over the spongy grass, through a dim shadowland toward where a projection of land jutted out into the gray waters of the lagoon. A building loomed there, a long, low bulk that dissolved itself presently into one-story wooden structure with a platform running out into the water.
From this, building, there came a stench. As the first wave of that incredible, piercing smell, struck the thing, it stopped short. Dead shark! The tart odor of decaying fish. The thing started dizzily forward again.
Its brain was whirling with a mad surge of flaming thoughts, and as that stink grew stronger and stronger, that unwholesome stream of thoughts grew wilder and more violent with each passing moment.
It stared at the men’s backs with hot, glittering eyes, fighting the devil impulse to leap at the nearest man and sink razor-sharp teeth into his soft neck, and then slash at the next man with a ferocious, murder strength, tearing him to bits before the others could even realize what was going on.
And when they did realize—the monster’s lips parted in a silent snarl of inhuman hate. For a bare instant, it almost succumbed to the fury of its lust to kill; it throbbed in every nerve with horrible fascination at the thought of smashing in among the men and ripping the life from each weak body.
Surging memory stopped that insane impulse. Remembrance that its body, too, was human now, and correspondingly weak. An attack against these hard, experienced men would be pure suicide at this stage.
WITH a start, the thing saw that Perratin had fallen back level with it. He was saying: “You and me go this way, Jones. That’s a good name, Jones is. Covers up a lot—like Perratin! Anyway, you and me take this little boat here. We’ve got a hard row ahead of us. We’ll just cruise straight west. That’s the best way to get out, too. Some pretty dangerous rock splits the lagoon into several sections; we’ll have to edge along the shore for a ways to get by them, and then out through the break in the breakers that surround the island. Ha, that’s funny, isn’t it? Break in the breakers! Get it, Jones?”
Funny!—thought the thing. Funny! What was funny, and why?
It wondered if it was supposed to make some answer to what was obviously at least half a question. It grew tense with the thought that, if it did not answer, this man might become suspicious—just now when he was walking into a trap. Slowly, the creature relaxed, as the swarthy little man put the oars in the boat and cried:
“Get in! Get in!”
Out in the water, it was still dark, but the waves were turning a strangely beautiful blue shade, as the dawn crept forward toward sunrise, and the eastern sky grew brighter and brighter until the whole horizon was a dazzle of brilliance.
Abruptly, the first blaze of sun sparkled across the waters, and Perratin said:
“How about you takin’ the oars for a while? Two hours is a long row for one guy!”
As they crowded past each other in the narrow confines of the boat the thing thought with burning intensity: “Now!”
Then it paused. They were too close to the island. The island lay behind them on its bed of water, glistening like an emerald in a platinum setting, with the sun directly behind it. The whole world of ocean was a shining, gorgeous spectacle dominated by that ball of red fire resting its full circle now on the heaving horizon of water.
Perratin exclaimed: “Mon Dieu, but there are a lot of sharks around! I’ve seen two dozen in the last two minutes. The men should have come out this way again today.”
He fingered the long gun he held. “Maybe I ought to ping a few, and we could tow ’em in. I got plenty of rope.”
A surging shock stabbed through the monster, as it realized the man had a gun. Swift alarm burned along its alien nerves. The gun made a difference. A damnable difference! The thing was conscious of a brief wave of fury that it had so readily taken over the oars, leaving the man’s hands, free. Somehow, their present positions dimmed the certainty of the man being easy prey.
The sun was hours higher in the sky, the island a dark spot on that living waste of water, when Perratin said:
“Should be about here. Keep your eyes peeled, Jones. If those blasted sharks haven’t eaten it. Hey, you’re shaking the boat!”
His voice, shrill with anxiety, seemed to come from a great distance. And his body, too, seemed farther away, isolated there at the rear of the boat. Yet the thing could see everything with preternatural clearness.
The swarthy face of the little, thick-built man, cheeks grown strangely pale under their sunburn, eyes wide and wild. Arms and hands tensed, but still holding the gun.
“What the devil you trying to do? This place is alive with sharks. Sucre du Noon, say something, and quit staring with those horrible eyes.
He dropped the gun and grabbed wildly at the gunwale. With a snarl, the creature launched at him, and in one swift jerk of irresistible muscles threw him overboard. There was a boiling of movement, as long, dark bodies shaped like cigars darted up from the depths. Blood mingled with the blue waters, and the thing picked up the oars.
It was shaking in every nerve with horrible excitement, a burning sense of satisfaction. But now—there were explanations to think of. Cold with thoughtful speculation, it rowed toward where the island lay slumbering in the warm brilliance of the peaceful morning sun.
IT GOT BACK to the island too soon! The sun hung in midsky over a silent; deserted land. The cook was around somewhere, but no noises came from him. The boats of the men were beyond vision, beyond the blue watery horizon that quivered ever so gently against the background of blue haze of sky.
It was the waiting that was hard. The seconds and minutes of the eternity of the afternoon dragged their deadly course. The thing walked along the shore, tensely; it lay restlessly in the lush green grass under the cool of the palm trees, and in every moment of every hour its mind was fuming with a mad chaos of plans, of wild emotion tides, turgid with murder lust, and of a ceaseless, anxious mental reiteration of the explanation it had prepared.
Once, it heard a clatter of dishes from the cook’s shack. Its pulses leaped, and its first deadly desire was to rush over and destroy him. But cunning stopped that surging thrust of ferine eagerness. It would go over, instead, and try its story on him—but it dismissed that plan, too, as useless.
At last, the men came, their boats pulling long rows of dead sharks. The creature watched with glowing, remorseless eyes, its body so tortured by fury that for a crazy moment it wanted only to leap down on the boat and smash the men to death with battering blows.
And then Corliss was climbing out of the boat, and the thing heard itself saying something in a choked voice, and Corliss was exclaiming incredulously:
“Attacked you! The flipper thing attacked the boat and killed Perratin!”
Corliss was vaguely aware of the other men hurrying up from the boats muttering questions. The sun, low in the western sky, speared slanting, rays into his eyes; and he kept squinting them, as he stood there on the wooden, makeshift dock. Instinctively, his feet planted apart, as if he had to brace his body against a stunning blow. He stared at the lean, dark face of the stranger with its queer eyes, rugged line of powerful jaw and aquiline features; and a curious chill followed an abnormal path up his spinal column, lodging finally like a cake of ice in his brain.
It wasn’t the death. He had seen death before, horrible death, and heard of things that; had happened to men he knew; mind-shaking things. And always he had felt that some day the laws of chance would write an agonizing conclusion to his own life. More than once he had felt the thrill touch, when it seemed as if that some day had come.
No, it wasn’t the death. It was the sense of unreality, of stark disbelief, of slow, sick distrust of this—this Jones, that grew and grew until it was a dry ache within him. His voice, when he forced himself to speak again, sounded harsh and rasping to his own ears:
“Why didn’t Perratin shoot the damned beast? A couple of bullets could have—”
“He did shoot!” the creature said hurriedly, adjusting its mind to this new twist. It hadn’t thought again of the gun until this moment, but of Corliss wanted Perratin to have fired a gun, then he could have that, too. It went on swiftly: “But we didn’t have a chance. The monster just struck the boat so hard that Perratin was knocked out. I tried to pull him in, but I was far too late. The creature pulled Perratin under, and I was so scared that it might come at the boat again that I grabbed the oars and pulled for the island. The cook will tell you I arrived about noon.”
FROM behind Corliss, Progue uttered a jarring laugh, a deep, mirthless guffaw that split the late-afternoon air. He said:
“Of all the weak stories I’ve ever heard, the ones this guy pulls are lousiest. I tell you, Corliss, there’s something damn funny when, the first time this here stranger goes out with one of our men, there’s a murder. Yeah, I said murder!”
Corliss stared at the big Dutchman, and for a moment it seemed to him his own face must have looked very like Progue’s: dark and grim and suspicious. And then—it was odd how Progue, putting into words the very thoughts that were in his own mind, made him realize how mad and preposterous the very idea of such a thing was . . . Murder! Utterly ridiculous!
“Progue,” Corliss snapped, “you’ve got to learn to control your tongue! The thing is absolutely absurd.”
The thing looked at the Dutchman, its body stiff. Strangely, its only emotion was egotistical consciousness of its control of the situation; the feeling was so strong that, for the moment it was incapable even of anger. It said: “I don’t want to quarrel with you, and I realize it looks bad, what happened, but just remember we were going out after what Perratin himself described as a new and dangerous type of shark. And why should I want to murder a perfect stranger. I—” Its voice trailed off, for Progue had turned away and was staring down at the rowboat it and Perratin had used. The boat was moored to the end of the dock, and Progue just stood there, looking down at it. Suddenly, he jumped down into the boat, and the thing held its breath as the Dutchman stooped out of its sight beyond the edge of the dock. Its impulse was to run forward and see what the man was doing, but it didn’t dare.
