The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 19
The front door opened in confirmation of the speaker's prophecy. The girl struggled to raise her head, hope in her eyes.
"Prop her mouth open with something," articulated the voice under alien control. "We shall enter through the mouth." He paused, as heavy feet scuffled on the front door mat. "And call that fool in here. We shall use him also."
HIS VEINS bulging on his forehead, Dr. Blain called. "Tod! Come here!" He found a dental gag, toyed with its ratchet.
Excitement thrilled his nerves from head to feet. No gun could shoot two ways at once. If he could wangle the idiotic Mercer into the right position, and put him wise—If he could be on one side, and Tod on the other—
"Don't try it," advised the animated Clegg. "Don't even think it. If you do, we shall end up by having you both."
Tod Mercer lumbered into the room, his heavy soles thumping the rug. He was a big man, with thick shoulders jutting below a plump, moonlike face that sprouted two days' growth. He stopped when he saw the table and the girl. His great, wide, stupid eyes roamed from the girl to the doctor.
"Heck, Doc," he said, with an uneasy fidget, "I got me a puncture, and had to change tires on the road."
"Never mind about that," came a sardonic rumble right behind him. "You're in plenty of time."
Tod turned around sluggishly, twisting his boots as if each weighed a ton. He stared at the thing that had been Clegg, and said, "Beg pardon, Mister. I didn't know you was there."
His cowlike eyes wandered disinterestedly over the living corpse, over the pointing automatic, then slewed toward the anxious Blain. Tod opened his mouth to say something. He closed the mouth; a look of faint surprise came into his fat features; his eyes swiveled back and found the automatic again.
This time, the look didn't last one tenth of a second. His eyes realized what they saw. He swung a hamlike fist with astounding swiftness, slammed it into the erstwhile Clegg's awful features. The blow was dynamite, sheer dynamite. The cadaver went down with a crash that shook the room.
"Quick!" screamed Dr. Blain. "Get the gun." He vaulted the intervening table—girl and all—landed heavily, made a wild kick at the weapon still gripped in a flabby hand.
Tod Mercer stood abashed, his eyes turning this way and that. The automatic exploded thunderously; its slug nicked the tubular metal edge of the table, ricocheted with a noise like that of a buzz saw, and ripped a foot of plaster from the opposite wall.
Blain kicked frantically at a ghastly wrist, missed it when its owner jerked it aside. The gun boomed again. Glass tinkled in the farther cupboard. The girl on the table screamed shrilly.
The scream penetrated Mercer's thick skull, and brought action. Slamming down a great boot, he imprisoned a rubbery wrist beneath his heel, plucked the automatic from cold fingers. He hefted the weapon, pointed it.
"You can't kill it like that," shouted Blain. He jabbed Tod Mercer to emphasize his words. "Get the girl out of here. Jump to it, man, for Heaven's sake!"
Blain's urgency brooked no argument. Mercer handed over the automatic, moved to the table, ripped the straps from the weeping girl. His huge arms plucked her up, bore her from the room.
Down on the floor, the pilfered body writhed and struggled to get up. Its rotting eyes had disappeared. Their sockets were now filled with swirling pools of emerald luminosity. Its mouth gaped as it slowly regurgitated a bright green phosphorescence. The spawn of Glantok was leaving its host!
The body sat up with its back to the wall. Its limbs jerked and twitched in nightmarish postures. It was a fearful travesty of a human being. Green—bright and living green—crept sinuously from its eyes and mouth, formed twisting, swirling snakes and pools upon the floor.
Blain gained the door in one gigantic leap, snatching the ether bottle from the table as he passed. He stood in the doorway, trembling. Then he flung the bottle in the center of the seething green. He flicked his automatic lighter, tossed it after the bottle. The entire room boomed into a mighty blast of flame that immediately became a fiery hell.
THE GIRL clung tightly to Dr. Blain's arm while they stood by the roadside, and watched the house burn. She said, "I came to call you to my kid brother. We think he's got measles."
"I'll be along soon," Blain promised.
A sedan roared up the road, stopped near them with engine still racing. A policeman put his head out, and shouted, "What a blaze! We saw the glare a mile back along the road. We've called the fire department."
"They'll be too late, I'm afraid," said Blain.
"Insured?" asked the policeman sympathetically.
"Yes."
"Everybody out of the house?"
Blain nodded an affirmative, and the policeman said, "We happened to be out this way looking for an escaped nut." The sedan rolled forward.
"Hey!" Blain shouted. The sedan stopped again. "Was this madman's name James Winstanley Clegg?"
"Clegg?" came the driver's voice from the other side of the sedan. "Why, that's the fellow whose body walked out of the morgue when the attendant had his back turned for a minute. Funny thing, they found a dead mongrel in the morgue right by where the missing body ought to have been. The reporters are starting to call it a werewolf, but it's still a dog to me."
"Anyway, this fellow isn't Clegg." chimed in the first policeman. "He's Wilson. He's small, but nasty. This is what he looks like." He stretched an arm from the automobile, handed Blain a photograph. Blain studied the picture in the light of the rising flames. It bore not the slightest resemblance to his visitor of that evening.
"I'll remember that face," Dr. Blain commented, handing the photograph back.
"Know anything about this Clegg mystery?" inquired the driver.
"I know that he's dead," Blain answered truthfully.
Pensively, Dr. Blain watched flames leap skyward from his home. He turned to the gaping Mercer, and said, "What beats me is how you managed to hit that fellow without him anticipating your intention, and plugging you where you stood."
"I saw the gun, and I 'it 'im." Mercer spread apologetic hands. "I saw 'e'd got a gun, and I 'it 'im without thinking."
"Without thinking!" murmured Blain.
Dr. Blain chewed his bottom lip, stared at the mounting fire. Roof timbers caved in with a violent crash; a flood of sparks poured upward.
With his mind, but not his ears, he heard faint threnodies of an alien wail that became weaker and weaker, and, presently, died away.
The End
Sinister Barrier
Unknown – March 1939
(revised to Sinister Barrier 1948)
Author's Note:
IT WOULD be idle to pretend, and dishonest to suggest that "Sinister Barrier" is anything else than fiction. Some may regard it as fantasy, because it is placed in the future and depicts certain developments that have been predicted by those qualified to forecast the coming triumphs of science. But I regard it as a sort of fact-fiction solely because I do sincerely believe that if ever a story was based upon facts it is this one.
"Sinister Barrier" is as true a story as it is possible to concoct while presenting believe-it-or-not truths in the guise of entertainment. It derives its fantastic atmosphere only from the queerness, the eccentricity, the complete inexplicability of the established facts that gave it birth. These facts are myriad. I have them in the form of a thousand press clippings snatched from half a hundred newspapers in the Old World and the New. A thousand more were given me by adventurers, hardier than myself; people who have explored farther and more daringly into forbidden acres than I have done.
To these people I acknowledge my indebtedness. To the Fortean Society of America, and to Charles Fort, author of "The Book of the Damned", "New Lands", "Lot" and "Wild Talents". I have derived inspiration from J. W. N. Sullivan's "Limitations Of Science", and been greatly assisted by H. Gordon Garbedian's "Major Mysteries Of Science". Professor E. A. Milne's evolution of a post-Einsteinian cosmology has been of much help; while the symbiotic aspect of terrestrial life I conceived with the unwitting aid of my respected friend, W. Olaf Stapledon, author of "Last And First Men", "Star Maker", etc. Finally, I owe much to another and equally respected friend, Lieutenant Commander Rupert T. Gould, R. N., author of "Oddities", "Enigmas", etc.
But perhaps my greatest debt is to two friends, one of whom asked me, "Since everybody wants peace, why don't we get it?" while the other posed me this one, "If there are extra-terrestrial races further advanced than ourselves, why haven't they visited us already?" Charles Fort gave me what may well be the answer. He said, "I think we're property." And that is the plot of "Sinister Barrier".
I wrote the story—but it isn't mine. It is a posthumous collaboration. For Fort, with other imaginative and inquiring minds, such as Bierce, Weinbaum, Daniels, and Lovecraft, has been "removed" with expedition, and with subtle cunning.
Critics are entitled to say, "If you believe your plot has a factual, basis, you are running an awful risk of 'removal' by merely developing it." I run no risk. "Sinister Barrier" is not fiction offered as truth: it is offered only as fiction. Therefore, it will not be believed. The natural skepticism of my readers is my safeguard.
Eric F. Russell.
Clipping from a current daily:
________________________
TO BE READ IN A DIM
LIGHT, AT NIGHT
The late Charles Fort, who was a sort of Peter Pan of science and went about picking up whimsies of fact, mostly from the rubbish heaps of astronomy, would have been interested in an incident that occurred Sunday morning on Fifth Avenue between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth Streets.
Eight starlings in flight suddenly plummeted to the feet of Patrolman Anton Vodrazka, dead. There was no sign of a wound or any other indication of what caused their end. It was at first thought that they might have been poisoned, as were some pigeons at Verdi Square, Seventy-second Street and Broadway, recently.
S. P. C. A. agents said it was most unlikely that eight birds, even if they had been poisoned, would succumb at the same moment in mid-flight. Another report from the same neighborhood a few minutes later didn't help any. A starling, "excited and acting as if pursued by some invisible terror," had flown into a Childs Restaurant on Fifth Avenue, banged into the lights and fallen in the front window.
What killed the eight starlings? What frightened the ninth? Was there some Presence in the sky? ... We hasten to pass the idea on to the nearest writer of mystery-stories.
And here's the story:
Chapter One
"QUICK DEATH awaits the first cow that leads a revolt against milking," mused Professor Peder Bjornsen. He passed long, slender fingers through prematurely white hair. His eyes, strangely protruding, filled with uncanny light, stared out of his office window, which gaped on the third level above traffic swirling through Stockholm's busy Hötorget. He wasn't looking at the traffic.
"And there's a swat ready for the first bee that blats about pilfered honey," he added. Stockholm hummed and roared. The professor continued to stare in silent, fearful contemplation. Then he drew back from the window, slowly, reluctantly, moving as if forcing himself by sheer will power to retreat from a horror that enticed him toward it.
He raised his hands, pushed, pushed at thin air. His eyes, cold, hard but bright, followed with dreadful fascination an invisible point that crept from window to ceiling. He turned and ran, his eyes staring, his mouth open and expelling breath soundlessly.
Halfway to the door he emitted a brief gasp, stumbled, fell. Clutching the calendar from his desk, he dragged it down with him. Then he sobbed, hugged hands to his heart, and lay still. The calendar's top leaf fluttered in a cold breeze from nowhere. The date was May the seventeenth, 2015.
Bjornsen had been five hours dead when they found him. The medical examiner diagnosed heart disease. Police Lieutenant Backer found on the professor's desk a scratch pad bearing a message from the grave.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is humanly impossible to order my thoughts every minute of the day; to control my dreams every hour of the night. It is inevitable that sooner or later I shall be found dead, in which case you must—"
"Must what?" asked Baeker. There was no reply. The voice that could have answered was stilled forever. Baeker heard the medical officer's report, then burned the note. Heart disease it was, actually and officially.
ON MAY the thirtieth, Dr. Guthrie Sheridan walked with the deliberate, jerky step of an automaton along Charing Cross Road, London. His frozen-looking eyes were on the sky, while his feet found their own way. He had the vague appearance of a blind man treading a familiar route.
Jim Leacock saw him wending his mechanical way, and yelled, "Hey, Sherry!" He dashed up, boisterous as usual, all set to administer a hearty slap on the back. He stopped, appalled.
Turning upon him pale, strained features framing eyes that gleamed like icicles seen in twilight, Guthrie seized an arm, and said: "Jim! By heavens! I'm glad to see you." His breath came fast, his voice grew urgent. "Jim, I've got to talk to somebody or go crazy. I have discovered the most incredible fact in the history of mankind. It is almost beyond belief. Yet it explains a thousand things that we have merely guessed at, or completely ignored."
"What is it?" demanded Leacock, studying Sheridan's distorted face.
"Jim, let me tell you that man is not the master of his fate, nor the captain of his soul. The very beasts of the field—" He broke off, grabbed at his listener, and screamed: "I've thought it! I've thought it, I tell you!" His legs bent at the knees. "I'm done for!" He slumped to the sidewalk.
Hastily, Leacock stooped over the doctor, tore open his shirt, slid a hand down his chest. No beat was discernible. Sheridan was dead. Heart disease, apparently.
At exactly the same hour of the same day, Dr. Hans Luther did a very similar thing. He carried his deceptively plump body at top speed across his laboratory, raced down the stairs, along the hall. He fled with many frightened glances over one shoulder, and the glances came from eyes like polished agate.
Reaching the telephone in the hall, he dialed with shaking finger, got the Dortmund Zeitung, shouted for the editor. With his eyes still upon the stairs, while the telephone receiver trembled against his ear, he bawled into the mouthpiece: "Vogel, I have for you the most astonishing news since the dawn of time. Earth is belted with a warning streamer that says: KEEP OFF THE GRASS!"
"Ha-ha!" responded Vogel dutifully. His heavy face moved in the tiny vision screen above the telephone, and took on the patient expression of one who is accustomed to tolerate the eccentricities of scientists.
"Listen!" screamed Dr. Luther. "You know me. I do not joke. I tell you nothing which I cannot prove. So I tell you that now, and perhaps for thousands of years past, this world of ours ... a-ah! ... a-a-ah!"
The receiver swung at the end of its cord, and gave forth a reedy shout of: "Luther! Luther! What's happened?"
Dr. Hans Luther made no response. He sank to his knees, rolled his eyes upward, then fell on his side. His tongue licked his lips slowly, very slowly, once, twice.
Vogel's face bobbed in the vision screen. The dangling receiver made noises for ears that could no longer hear.
BILL GRAHAM knew nothing of these earlier tragedies, but he knew about Mayo. He was on the spot when it happened.
He was walking along West Fourteenth, New York, when for no particular reason he flung a casual glance up the sheer side of the Martin Building, and saw a human figure falling past the twelfth-floor.
Down came the body, twisting, whirling, spread-eagling. It smacked the sidewalk and bounced nine feet. The sound was halfway between a squelch and a crunch. The sidewalk looked as if it had been slapped with a giant crimson sponge.
Twenty yards ahead of Graham, a fat woman stopped in mid-step, lay carefully on the concrete, closed her eyes, and mumbled nonsense. A hundred pedestrians made themselves into a rapidly shrinking circle with the thing on the sidewalk as its center.
The dead had no face. Sodden clothes were surmounted only by a mask like scrambled berries and custard. Graham felt no qualms as he bent over the body. He had seen worse in war.
His strong, brown fingers plucked at the pocket of a sticky vest, drew out a messy pasteboard. He looked at the card, permitted himself a whistle of surprise.
"Professor Walter Mayo! Good heavens!"
Swallowing hard, he looked once more at the pathetic remnant sprawled at his feet, then forced his way through the swelling, heaving, muttering crowd. The revolving doors of the Martin Building whirled behind him as he sprinted for the pneumatic levitators.
Fumbling the card with unfeeling fingers, Graham strove to compose his jumbled thoughts while his one-man disk was wafted swiftly up its tube. Mayo, of all people, to pass out like that!
At the sixteenth floor the disk stopped with a rubbery bounce and a sigh of escaping air. Graham raced along the passage, reached Mayo's laboratory, found the door ajar.
There was nobody in the laboratory. Everything appeared peaceful, orderly, bearing no signs of recent disturbance.
A thirty-foot-long table carried a lengthy array of apparatus which Graham recognized as an assembly for destructive distillation. The apparatus was cold, lifeless, unused. Evidently the experiment had not commenced.
He counted the flasks, decided the setup was arranged to extract the sixteenth product of something which, when he opened the electric roaster, proved to be a quantity of dried leaves. They looked and smelled like some sort of herb.
Papers on an adjacent desk danced in the breeze from a widely opened window. Graham went to the window, looked out, down, saw the crowd surrounding four blue-coated figures and a crushed form. He frowned.
LEAVING the window open, he searched hastily through the papers littering the dead professor's desk. He could find nothing to satisfy his pointless curiosity. With one last keen glance around, he left the laboratory. His dropping disk carried him past two ascending policemen.
