Collected Fiction, page 161
HE looked relieved for a moment, but immediately his brows drew together. “Insanity is supposed to give you abnormal strength.”
“Perhaps. But I strongly doubt whether you could strangle a man thus. I was a general practitioner, not
a psychiatrist, but I know something about such matters. Besides, how could you go out and kill a soldier while you were dictating a cylinder full?”
“I thought of that,” Harmon said. “But I might have been dictating from memory.”
“Did you go out last night?”
“I don’t remember going out. I went to sleep about nine-thirty. Then suddenly I found myself at the dictaphone, in a sort of trance. When I’d finished talking, everything seemed to go black. I don’t know how much later, I woke up completely. I looked at my watch. It was a little after two. You were asleep, but I almost woke you—I needed to talk to someone.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t,” I said.
I went to the window once more, staring unseeingly at a gutted skyscraper across the deserted street, hearing the low drone of a plane high above.
“Can’t you figure out any sort of explanation?” Harmon asked.
“I don’t know. It isn’t in materia medica. It’s just an idea, a pretty fantastic one. If what you dictated was true—”
“Yes?”
“Then you read someone’s mind. Telepathy hasn’t been proved so far, though experiments have pointed rather conclusively to its possibility. The brain is a mysterious organ, Harmon. There’s little really known about it. The pineal gland, for example, is something of an enigma. And the nature of thought itself—well!”
I lit half a cigarette. “Matter and thought are vibration. Vibrations are wave-impulses and can be transmitted under favorable conditions. The conditions here are extraordinary. Mentally we’re all rather haywire. It’s in the air. Your mind isn’t normal, under this strain, and therefore it may be sensitive enough to get in telepathic rapport with some other mind.”
Harmon pondered. “But why don’t I have this rapport all the time, then? Why just for ten minutes or so last night?”
“The thoughts you got were conceived under tremendous emotional strain. If my theory is correct, this murderer is mad. Superficially he may not show it, I should be surprised if he did. Iron, rigid self-control denied him a more normal mental outlet. He forced himself to restrain the avalanche piling up in his brain. If he’d have got drunk, for example, he’d have been safe. But inhibitions prisoned him till the flood burst into a channel that would normally have been blocked up.
“I have seen murderers psychoanalyzed, Harmon. They didn’t want to kill, as a rule. But they were denied other sources of emotional release, or thought they were. Jack the Ripper was such a case. His fear complex led him to butcher women instead of—marrying, for example. If normal channels are blocked, the flood entered abnormal channels.”
Harmon held the wax cylinder in his hand. Suddenly he threw it down violently on the floor, where it cracked and shattered.
“You may be right enough,” he said, “but there’s still something wrong with my mind, eh?”
“I wouldn’t say wrong. Nothing that relief from strain can’t cure.”
“That’s easy to get,” Harmon said with heavy irony.
We were silent, listening to the low thunder of the great cannon at the front.
THE slow days passed wearily. Some left the city, but not many, for starvation waited in the ravaged countryside. In the metropolis one could hope to find food and water, by dint of diligent searching. We were trapped here, bound by invisible fetters. We were the damned. And Harmon suffered and grew haggard under the strain. His eyes were unnaturally bright, his cheeks red and feverish, his lips cracked. A week later there was a recurrence of his telepathic visitation.
I came in one night, bearing a meager supply of food, to find Harmon crouching above the dictaphone waiting for me. His whole gaunt body was trembling, and his face was a white, bearded mask.
“It’s happened again,” he said. “An hour ago.”
Silently I put down my booty and adjusted the earphones. Vague moonlight filtered through the cracked windows now grimy and dirt-smeared. Harmon was a vague shadow as he leaned against the wall, half-hidden amid the gloom.
Once more I heard the eerie voice:
“Walk, walk, walk. Faster. Expend the energy in my brain. But walk warily. Not in the moonlight. Not under the crushing sky, lest it fall. Hear the guns. Each sound adds a charge to the already overcharged currents in my brain. Killing the dog and the soldier wasn’t enough. The potential keeps building up again. I need another release. The shadows won’t protect me; they flee, slide away, shrink from me, leaving me exposed to the hammer of the sky. I must kill again.
“This building I am passing . . . people sleep here, refugees. And no doors are locked these days. The hall is very dark. In the corner . . . what is it? A black, shapeless bundle. Someone, wrapped in quilts, asleep. An old man. My eyes are accustoming themselves to the gloom. I seem to see very clearly. It’s the energy in my brain; light is energy, of course . . . the guns keep hammering. There’s a plane going past, I can hear it.
“And here are the shadows following me. They tell me to kill. They’ll protect me, guard me . . . the old man wheezes and groans in his sleep. His neck is withered and scrawny. Its texture is scaly with the wrinkles of age, a webwork of tiny wrinkles. I drop on one knee beside him. Silence, vague moonlight from the open door, and the rhythmic movement of breath stirring parchment-yellow skin. And now the energy drains from my brain, and the pounding grows less violent.
“The shadows lean above me, poised to leap. Softly, tenderly, my hands tighten about the old man’s throat. Storm of ecstasy! Of relief, flooding, bursting gates that crumble under the onslaught, leaving my brain cold and quite motionless . . . there is only the slight ache in my fingers, sunk in livid flesh. And it is over. He is dead. My brain is free, at peace. The sky is no longer terrifying. The noise of the guns no longer shakes the citadel of my mind. I am relaxed, utterly, joyously . . .
The record ended.
“I know what you’ll say,” Harmon said nervously. “Telepathy. But that doesn’t make it any more pleasant for me. There’s a mad killer somewhere in the city, and—and—God knows where it may end!”
“Harmon,” I said, “Why don’t you go into the country? Anywhere. It’s not important. A change of atmosphere is the thing.”
“Where can I go?” he asked. “We’re in hell here. We can’t get out of it. The whole land—the entire world, for that matter. . . .” Harmon was silent, brooding. “It’s the end. Man’s committing suicide. We can’t escape. All my relationships, all my ties with life, were cut during the first raid. There’s nothing left. I don’t know. . . .”
He dropped his head in his hands and massaged his temples. I stood wordlessly contemplating him.
“Why not smash the dictaphone?” I said finally.
Perhaps Harmon thought I intended irony.
“It’s easy for you to talk,” he snapped angrily. “You’re so damned cold-blooded you’ve got ice-water in your veins. You can’t understand how I feel . . .”
I grunted and turned away, conscious of a hot resentment toward Harmon. I, too, had suffered losses as bad as his own. How dared he assume that because I showed little emotion, I felt nothing underneath? There was a scene I hadn’t let myself recall—the ruins of my house, and the sight that told me I was wifeless and childless.
I forced my thoughts to safer ground. Some things are too horrible to remember.
A FORTNIGHT later I came home after midnight, empty-handed. In my stomach was a dull, insistent ache of hunger. The specter of starvation brooded over the city, taking the place of the planes that had vanished days before. We were alone in a world of the dead. Only the noise of the guns, intermittent now, yet somehow more frantically murderous than ever, told us that others besides our? selves were alive.
Before I entered the room where Harmon waited I heard his voice. Or, rather, the voice of the dictaphone. I walked in just as the record ended.
“Hello,” Harmon said dully. “It’s happened again. No murder this time, though. Listen.”
He got up and gave me the earphones. I started the record afresh.
It began abruptly:
“Kill, kill, before the energy tears my brain apart. Two weeks now without any release. Tonight I must find relief or die. Trying to fight down the murder impulse is useless and dangerous. Eventually it gets too strong for me. And tonight it’s strong, horribly so. It’s dark, very dark. No moon tonight. And there are no shadows. Just the empty sky pressing down. The guns don’t sound so often now, but when they do my expectant brain rocks under the impact. I must release this frightful energy within my head. But how, where? People live in this cottage, I think. But the door is locked. A window . . . it slides up easily enough. People don’t fear thieves nowadays. Let me light a match. An empty room, I hear the sound of soft breathing.”
THE record broke off, then resumed swiftly:
“A bedroom. Another match. Its light shows me a bed, two children asleep in it. Eight or ten years old, perhaps. Their throats are soft, white, waiting. I must kill swiftly. I cannot wait. In my head is a surging, thundering maelstrom. It pounds and shatters against the inside of my skull. No shadows to aid me. But the energy is flowing down into my arms. I must bend over the bed, over the child.
“Softly, tenderly, my hands tighten about his throat. . . . Shut up! Shut up! Damn you . . . the other boy is screaming, he’s scrambled out of bed, yelling at the top of his lungs. I hear men shouting. Hurrying footsteps. No time now, no time to kill the child. The window’s still open. Now I’m in the street. They’re following me, bellowing threats. One more minute and I’d have strangled the boy and released the energy. But there wasn’t time. Here’s an alley. It’s dark. And a side street. The pursuers’ voices are dying away. I’m losing them. . . . I’m safe now. Safe? God, my brain’s ready to explode!”
The record was finished.
I took off the earphones, and turned to face Harmon. In defiance of the air-danger, he had lit an electric lamp screening it with a handkerchief. He was sitting, now, before the dictating machine, rigid, ignoring me. I started to speak, and, suddenly, paused, watching him.
A TREMOR shook Harmon’s gaunt body. His eyes were dilated. Slowly, automatically, he lifted the speaking-tube of the dictaphone to his lips and pressed the operating button. The needle began to slide over the wax cylinder.
“I can’t stand it,” Harmon said, in a dead, expressionless voice. “I can’t keep the energy pressure under control any longer. My brain is throbbing, pounding, shaking in my skull. I escaped capture, but no risk is too great if it cools my brain. All the energy is back again inside my head. I must kill, swiftly, swiftly!”
There was an outburst of gunfire far away.
But Harmon did not hear it.
“The energy is moving,” he went on. “The tides lift it from my brain, down my arms, into the very tips of my fingers. There it waits, ready to leap forth and escape.”
Again the guns muttered ominously.
“Crouch, shadows, ready to spring! Leap to guard me! Guard me as I kill! Now—now—now!”
Suddenly Harmon gave a high-pitched, wordless shriek. The speaking-tube fell clattering from his lips. He swung around to face me, his eyes widely distended, his face yellow and glistening with sweat. A spasm of terror twisted his lips.
The guns roared.
The shadow fell on Harmon as I moved swiftly.
Softly, tenderly, my hands closed and tightened upon his throat. . . .
THE ROOM OF SOULS
Caught in the Satanic Net He Has Himself Woven, Forsythe Learns the Terrible Power of Evil Forces!
ELDON FORSYTHE drank Amontillado and looked at the New York skyline through his window. He was a tall, strongly built man who looked younger than his fifty years, with a thin, handsome face that showed remarkable self-control behind it.
“Satanism?” he repeated, his level gray eyes inscrutable. “In New York? Some ridiculous cult, Morley, I’m sure.”
Tom Morley shrugged and stuffed tobacco, heavy with perique, into his briar pipe.
“I don’t know. I ran across the chap by accident, and his place looks like a temple of devil-worship, all right. But you know more about that than I. You went to the Orient to study demonology, didn’t you?” Forsythe turned, the hint of a smile on his thin lips.
“Er—something of the sort. Primitive religions and anthropology. But as for Satanism, the Himalayas worship older gods than Lucifer. Nevertheless, this Shackleton fellow interests me. He hasn’t run afoul of the law, eh?”
Morley’s rugged, tanned face broadened into a grin.
“Oh, he hasn’t been sacrificing any children, if that’s what you mean. He’s no Gilles de Rais. But he puts on a good show, and he’s got a lot of adherents to his cult. Wealthy men, some of them—and that may be significant.”
“Blackmail?” Forsythe suggested.
“I doubt it. Shackleton strikes me as a pretty naive fellow. A bluffer, though he’s got some good tricks.”
“I think I’d like to meet him,” Forsythe said thoughtfully. “He sounds like a stage magician, but there may be something in it.”
“Good,” Morley said. “Tomorrow night? He’s putting on a show—a Black Mass, he says.”
“Tomorrow night,” Forsythe assented, and the conversation turned to lighter subjects. In a short while Morley left, and his host was alone.
Eldon Forsythe smiled. He shook a few drops of bitters into a glass, filled it with dry sherry, and relaxed in a chair, slowly sipping the wine. It had been pleasant to see Morley again, the first familiar face he had seen in three years. Almost, for a second, those years of mystery and strangeness and wonder were briefly forgotten, and Forsythe was again the avid, wide-eyed student of the occult who had left New York to acquire knowledge.
WELL, he had captured that knowledge. And, as yet, the price was not too heavy. Never wealthy, he was now beggared, but hidden in his brain were keys that would unlock treasure houses.
Purposely he had told Morley little of his experiences. He had not mentioned the old Arab in Baghdad who had, for a large sum, given him the name of a Damascene named Said al Zarif. And he had not spoken of the dark cult in Damascus, or of the quest that had taken him from the marge to the inner mysteries of the dark lore.
Yes, that trip had been well worthwhile. But even now Forsythe shuddered slightly as he recalled his initiation, and the Blood Seal that had been marked indelibly upon his breast.
Before Forsythe had crossed the Atlantic, he had known little indeed of demonology. Now he knew it too well. Before his eyes floated visions of an exotic paradise, thronged with sloeeyed houris and great afrits, drug-begotten phantasms he had seen in Eastern lands. And he remembered other things. . . .
However, it was necessary to be practical now. Money was required. Forsythe’s bank balance was dangerously low, and his investments had been neglected for three years. This “devil-worshiper,” Shackleton, sounded promising, and Forsythe smiled again as he sipped his favorite wine.
Tomorrow night he would know. Time passed, slowly enough, but eventually the hour came. Morley called, and the two taxied down to an apartment house overlooking Central Park. Morley was gleeful.
“Think you can show him up?” he asked. “The chap has an entire penthouse. Fixed it up like a surrealist’s nightmare. You’ll see.”
“I expect so,” Forsythe said enigmatically. His gray eyes were lidded as the elevator slid noiselessly up.
A Negro servant met them. “You are expected?” He glanced at the small card Morley produced. “Yes, sair. And this other gentleman?”
“He’s all right. I’ll vouch for him.”
“Yes, sair. This way.”
They were ushered into a large room, and Forsythe could not help grinning. Black velvet drapes hid the walls. A dim red light came from swinging censers, while braziers on metal tripods sent up musky coils of incense. The carpet, into which cabalistic designs had been woven, was of flaming crimson. The mystic pentagram formed the center. At one end of the room was an organ. At the other was a featureless black altar.
A dozen men were seated here and there, looking rather uncomfortable.
Most of them were in formal evening attire. All wore domino masks.
“You are looking through a mirror, sair,” the Negro explained. “At least it is a mirror on the other side. The gentlemen cannot see you. Here are your masks.”
Forsythe and Morley donned them. The panel was slid aside, and they crossed the threshold. The other men looked up, and then averted their gaze.
“Let’s sit here,” Morley suggested. “The show ought to start soon.”
THERE was a queer, half-furtive anticipation in his manner. Forsythe glanced at him sharply.
The lights in the room darkened. A low, sonorous tone sounded. Abruptly the organ began to play. Its keys were depressed, though no one sat on the bench. Invisible hands seemed to launch into the opening chords of Halvorsen’s eery March of the Bojaren. Music as mad as Grieg’s, Forsythe thought, but the sheer unearthliness of Cristobal Colon would have been more effective.
The piece ended thunderously. Suddenly there was a black-clad figure standing before the altar. A greenish glow illuminated his pudgy face. “Shackleton,” Morley whispered. Forsythe looked at the man with interest. Shackleton was quite short, almost fat, and his round moon face looked singularly devoid of diabolism. He had cultivated a mustache and goatee, but only in his jet, unwinking eyes was there any hint of—alienage.
Then he spoke, and Forsythe acknowledged that the voice was impressive. Deep, yet strangely soothing, it seemed to fill the room.
“You are here to get your hearts’ desire. Only by the powers of the Prince of Air and Darkness can man attain happiness. Open your minds to him. Empty them of scoffing thoughts. Concentrate on the ultimate darkness.”
