The First Orbit Book of Horror Stories

EDITED BY RICHARD DAVIS

THE FIRST ORBIT BOOK OF HORROR STORIES

A FEAST OF HORROR Not for the timid… not for those who live alone… but if your stomach is strong and your nerves sound here is an absolute orgy of modern horror, culled by a master of the field from the world's best recent offerings, plus a few spine-tinglers specially written for this collection.

Table of Contents 1: Harlan Ellison - The Whimper Of Whipped Dogs 2: J. Ramsey Campbell - The Man In The Underpass 3: T. E. D. Klein - S. F. 4: Clive Sinclair - Uncle Vlad 5: Brian M. Stableford - Judas Story 6: Brian Lumley - The House Of Cthulhu 7: Allan Weiss - Satanesque 8: Steve Chapman - Burger Creature 9: Tim Stout - Wake Up Dead 10: Bernard Taylor - Forget-me-not 11: Gregory Fitz Gerald - Halloween Story 12: Charles E. Fritch - Big, Wide, Wonderful World 13: Eddy C. Bertin - The Taste Of Your Love

1: Harlan Ellison - The Whimper Of Whipped Dogs On the night after the day she had stained the louvered window shutters of her new apartment on East 52nd Street, Beth saw a woman slowly and hideously knifed to death in the courtyard of her building. She was one of twenty-six witnesses to the ghoulish scene and, like them, she did nothing to stop it. She saw it all, every moment of it, without break and with no impediment to her view. Quite madly, the thought crossed her mind as she watched in horrified fascination, that she had the sort of marvelous line of observation Napoleon had sought when he caused to have constructed at the Cornedie-Frangaise theaters, a curtained box at the rear, so he could watch the audience as well as the stage. The night was clear, the moon was full, she had just turned off the 11:30 movie on channel 2 after the second commercial break, realizing she had already seen Robert Taylor in Westward the Women, and had disliked it the first time; and the apartment was quite dark. She went to the window, to raise it six inches for the night's sleep, and she saw the woman stumble into the courtyard. She was sliding along the wall, clutching her left arm with her right hand. Con Ed had installed mercury vapor lamps on the poles; there had been sixteen assaults in seven months; the courtyard was illuminated with a chill purple glow that made the blood streaming down the woman's left arm look black and shiny. Beth saw every detail with utter clarity, as though magnified a thousand power under a microscope, solarized as if it had been a television commercial. The woman threw back her head, as if she were trying to scream, but there was no sound. Only the traffic on First Avenue, late cabs foraging for singles paired for the night at Maxwell's Plum and Friday's and Adam's Apple. But that was over there, beyond. Where she was, down there seven floors below, in the courtyard, everything seemed silently suspended in an invisible force-field. Beth stood in the darkness of her apartment, and realized she had raised the window completely. A tiny balcony lay just over the low sill; now not even glass separated her from the sight; just the wrought iron balcony railing and seven floors to the courtyard below. The woman staggered away from the wall, her head still thrown back, and Beth could see she was in her mid-thirties, with dark hair cut in a shag; it was impossible to tell if she was

pretty: terror had contorted her features and her mouth was a twisted black slash, opened but emitting no sound. Cords stood out in her neck. She had lost one shoe, and her steps were uneven, threatening to dump her to the pavement. The man came around the corner of the building, into the courtyard. The knife he held was enormous-or perhaps it only seemed so: Beth remembered a bone-handled fish knife her father had used one summer at the lake in Maine: it folded back on itself and locked, revealing eight inches of serrated blade. The knife in the hand of the dark man in the courtyard seemed to be similar. The woman saw him and tried to run, but he leaped across the distance between them and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back as though he would slash her throat in the next reaper-motion. Then the woman screamed. The sound skirled up into the courtyard like bats trapped in an echo chamber, unable to find a way out, driven mad. It went on and on… The man struggled with her and she drove her elbows into his sides and he tried to protect himself, spinning her around by her hair, the terrible scream going up and up and never stopping. She came loose and he was left with a fistful of hair torn out by the roots. As she spun out, he slashed straight across and opened her up just below the breasts. Blood sprayed through her clothing and the man was soaked; it seemed to drive him even more berserk. He went at her again, as she tried to hold herself together, the blood pouring down over her arms. She tried to run, teetered against the wall, slid sidewise, and the man struck the brick surface. She was away, stumbling over a flower bed, falling, getting to her knees as he threw himself on her again. The knife came up in a flashing arc that illuminated the blade strangely with purple light. And still she screamed. Lights came on in dozens of apartments and people appeared at windows. He drove the knife to the hilt into her back, high on the right shoulder. He used both hands. Beth caught it all in jagged flashes-the man, the woman, the knife, the blood, the expressions on the faces of those watching from the windows. Then lights clicked off in the windows, but they still stood there, watching. She wanted to yell, to scream, "What are you doing to that woman?" But her throat was frozen, two iron hands that had been immersed in dry ice for ten thousand years clamped around her neck. She could feel the blade sliding into her own body. Somehow-it seemed impossible but there it was down there, happening somehow-the woman struggled erect and pulled herself off the knife. Three steps, she took three steps and fell into the flower bed again. The man was howling now, like a great beast, the sounds inarticulate, bubbling up from his stomach. He fell on her and the knife went up and came down, then again, and again, and finally it was all a blur of motion, and her scream of lunatic bats went on till it faded off and was gone. Beth stood in the darkness, trembling and crying, the sight filling her eyes with horror. And when she could no longer bear to look at what he was doing down there to the un-moving piece of meat over which he worked, she looked up and around at the windows of darkness where the others still stood-even as she stood-and somehow she could see their faces, bruised purple with the dim light from the mercury lamps, and there was a universal sameness to their expressions. The women stood with their nails biting into the upper arms of their men, their tongues edging from the corners of their mouths; the men were wild-eyed and smiling. They all looked as though they were at cock fights. Breathing deeply. Drawing some sustenance from the grisly scene below. An exhalation of sound, deep, deep, as though from caverns beneath the earth. Flesh pale and moist. And it was then that she realized the courtyard had grown foggy, as though mist off the East River had rolled up 52nd Street in a veil that would obscure the details of what the knife

and the man were still doing… endlessly doing it… long after there was any joy in it… still doing it… again and again… But the fog was unnatural, thick and gray and filled with tiny scintillas of light. She stared at it, rising up in the empty space of the courtyard. Bach in the cathedral, Stardust in a vacuum chamber. Beth saw eyes. There, up there, at the ninth floor and higher, two great eyes, as surely as night and the moon, there were eyes. And- a face? Was that a face, could she be sure, was she imagining it… a face? In the rolling vapors of chill fog something lived, something brooding and patient and utterly malevolent had been summoned up to witness what was happening down there in the flower bed. Beth tried to look away, but could not. The eyes, those primal burning eyes, filled with an abysmal antiquity yet frighteningly bright and anxious like the eyes of a child; eyes filled with tomb depths, ancient and new, chasm-filled, burning, gigantic and deep as an abyss, holding her, compelling her. The shadow play was being staged not only for the tenants in their windows, watching and drinking in the scene, but for some other. Not on frigid tundra or waste moors, not in subterranean caverns or on some faraway world circling a dying sun, but here, in the city, here the eyes of that other watched. Shaking with the effort, Beth wrenched her eyes from those burning depths up there beyond the ninth floor, only to see again the horror that had brought that other. And she was struck for the first time by the awfulness of what she was witnessing, she was released from the immobility that had held her like a coelacanth in shale, she was filled with the blood thunder pounding against the membranes of her mind: she had stood there! She had done nothing, nothing! A woman had been butchered and she had said nothing, done nothing. Tears had been useless, tremblings had been pointless, she had done nothing! Then she heard hysterical sounds midway between laughter and giggling, and as she stared up into that great face rising in the fog and chimneysmoke of the night, she heard herself making those deranged gibbon noises and from the man below a pathetic, trapped sound, like the whimper of whipped dogs. She was staring up into that face again. She hadn't wanted to see it again-ever. But she was locked with those smoldering eyes, overcome with the feeling that they were childlike, though she knew they were incalculably ancient. Then the butcher below did an unspeakable thing and Beth reeled with dizziness and caught the edge of the window before she could tumble out onto the balcony; she steadied herself and fought for breath. She felt herself being looked at, and for a long moment of frozen terror she feared she might have caught the attention of that face up there in the fog. She clung to the window, feeling everything growing faraway and dim, and stared straight across the court. She was being watched. Intently. By the young man in the seventh floor window across from her own apartment. Steadily, he was looking at her. Through the strange fog with its burning eyes fastening on the sight below, he was staring at her. As she felt herself blacking out, in the moment before unconsciousness, the thought flickered and fled that there was something terribly familiar about his face. It rained the next day. East 52nd Street was slick and shining with the oil rainbows. The rain washed the dog turds into the gutters and nudged them down and down to the catch-basin openings. People bent against the slanting rain, hidden beneath umbrellas, looking like enormous, scurrying black mushrooms. Beth went out to get the newspapers after the police had come and gone. The news reports dwelled with loving emphasis on the twenty-six tenants of the building who had watched in cold interest as Leona Ciarelli, 37, of 455 Fort Washington Avenue,

Manhattan, had been systematically stabbed to death by Burton H. Wells, 41, an unemployed electrician, who had been subsequently shot to death by two off-duty police officers when he burst into Michael's Pub on 55th Street, covered with blood and brandishing a knife that authorities later identified as the murder weapon. She had thrown up twice that day. Her stomach seemed incapable of retaining anything solid, and the taste of bile lay along the back of her tongue. She could not blot the scenes of the night before from her mind; she re-ran them again and again, every movement of that reaper arm playing over and over as though on a short loop of memory. The woman's head thrown back for silent screams. The blood. Those eyes in the fog. She was drawn again and again to the window, to stare down into the courtyard and the street. She tried to superimpose over the bleak Manhattan concrete the view from her window in Swann House at Bennington: the little yard and another white, frame dormitory; the fantastic apple trees; and from the other window the rolling hills and gorgeous Vermont countryside; her memory skittered through the change of seasons. But there was always concrete and the rain-slick streets; the rain on the pavement was black and shiny as blood. She tried to work, rolling up the tambour closure of the old rolltop desk she had bought on Lexington Avenue and hunching over the graph sheets of choreographer's charts. But Labanotation was merely a Jackson Pollock jumble of arcane hieroglyphics to her today, instead of the careful representation of eurhythmies she had studied four years to perfect. And before that, Farmington. The phone rang. It was the secretary from the Taylor Dance Company, asking when she would be free. She had to beg off. She looked at her hand, lying on the graph sheets of figures Laban had devised, and she saw her fingers trembling. She had to beg off. Then she called Guzman at the Downtown Ballet Company, to tell him she would be late with the charts. "My God, lady, I have ten dancers sitting around in a rehearsal hall getting their leotards sweaty! What do you expect me to do?" She explained what had happened the night before. And as she told him, she realized the newspapers had been justified in holding that tone against the twenty-six witnesses to the death of Leona Ciarelli. Paschal Guzman listened, and when he spoke again, his voice was several octaves lower, and he spoke more slowly. He said he understood and she could take a little longer to prepare the charts. But there was a distance in his voice, and he hung up while she was thanking him. She dressed in an argyle sweater vest in shades of dark purple, and a pair of fitted khaki gabardine trousers. She had to go out, to walk around. To do what? To think about other things. As she pulled on the Fred Braun chunky heels, she idly wondered if that heavy silver bracelet was still in the window of Georg Jensen's. In the elevator, the young man from the window across the courtyard stared at her. Beth felt her body begin to tremble again. She went deep into the corner of the box when he entered behind her. Between the fifth and fourth floors, he hit the off switch and the elevator jerked to a halt. Beth stared at him and he smiled innocently. "Hi. My name's Gleeson, Ray Gleeson, I'm in 714." She wanted to demand he turn the elevator back on, by what right did he presume to do such a thing, what did he mean by this, turn it on at once or suffer the consequences. That was what she wanted to do. Instead, from the same place she had heard the gibbering laughter the night before, she heard her voice, much smaller and much less possessed than she had trained it to be, saying, "Beth O'Neill, I live in 701." The thing about it was that the elevator was stopped. And she was frightened. But he leaned against the paneled wall, very well-dressed, shoes polished, hair combed and probably blown dry with a hand drier, and he talked to her as if they were across a table at L'Argenteuil. "You just moved in, huh?" "About two months ago."

"Where did you go to school? Bennington or Sarah Lawrence?" "Bennington. How did you know?" He laughed, and it was a nice laugh. "I'm an editor at a religious book publisher; every year we get half a dozen Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, Smith girls. They come hopping in like grasshoppers, ready to revolutionize the publishing industry." "What's wrong with that? You sound like you don't care for them." "Oh, I love them, they're marvelous. They think they know how to write better than the authors we publish. Had one darlin' little item who was given galleys of three books to proof, and she rewrote all three. I think she's working as a table-swabber in a Horn & Hardart's now." She didn't reply to that. She would have pegged him as an anti-feminist, ordinarily; if it had been anyone else speaking. But the eyes. There was something terribly familiar about his face. She was enjoying the conversation; she rather liked him. "What's the nearest big city to Bennington?" "Albany, New York. About sixty miles." "How long does it take to drive there?" "From Bennington? About an hour and a half." "Must be a nice drive, that Vermont country, really pretty. It's an all-girls' school, they haven't thought of making it co-ed? How many girls enrolled there?" "Approximately." "Yes, approximately." "About four hundred." "What did you major in?" "I was a dance major, specializing in Labanotation. That's the way you write choreography." "It's all electives, I gather. You don't have to take anything required, like sciences, for example." He didn't change tone as he said, "That was a terrible thing last night. I saw you watching. I guess a lot of us were watching. It was really a terrible thing." She nodded dumbly. Fear came back. "I understand the cops got him. Some nut, they don't even know why he killed her, or why he went charging into that bar. It was really an awful thing. I'd very much like to have dinner with you one night soon, if you're not attached." "That would be all right." "Maybe Wednesday. There's an Argentinian place I know. You might like it." "That would be all right." "Why don't you turn on the elevator, and we can go," he said, and smiled again. She did it, wondering why it was she had stopped the elevator in the first place. On her third date with him, they had their first fight. It was at a party thrown by a director of television commercials. He lived on the ninth floor of their building. He had just done a series of spots for Sesame Street (the letters "U" for Underpass, "T" for Tunnel, lower-case "b" for boats, "C" for cars; the numbers i to 6 and the numbers I to 20; the words light and dark) and was celebrating his move from the arena of commercial tawdriness and its attendant $75,000 a year to the sweet fields of educational programming and its accompanying descent into low-pay respectability. There was a logic in his joy Beth could not quite understand, and when she talked with him about it, in a far corner of the kitchen, his arguments didn't seem to parse. But he seemed happy, and his girl friend, a long-legged ex-model from Philadelphia, continued to drift to him and away from him, like some exquisite undersea plant, touching his hair and kissing his neck, murmuring words of pride and barely-submerged sexuality. Beth found it bewildering, though the celebrants were all bright and lively.

In the living room, Ray was sitting on the arm of the sofa, hustling a stewardess named Luanne. Beth could tell he was hustling: he was trying to look casual. When he wasn't hustling, he was always intense, about everything. She decided to ignore it, and wandered around the apartment, sipping at a Tanqueray and tonic. There were framed prints of abstract shapes clipped from a calendar printed in Germany. They were in metal Crosse frames. In the dining room a huge door from a demolished building somewhere in the city had been handsomely stripped, teaked and refinished. It was now the dinner table. A Lightolier fixture attached to the wall over the bed swung out, levered up and down, tipped, and its burnished globe-head revolved a full three hundred and sixty degrees. She was standing in the bedroom, looking out the window, when she realized this had been one of the rooms in which light had gone on, gone off; one of the rooms that had contained a silent watcher at the death of Leona Ciarelli. When she returned to the living room, she looked around more carefully. With only three or four exceptions-the stewardess, a young married couple from the second floor, a stockbroker from Hemphill, Noyes-everyone at the party had been a witness to the slaying. "I'd like to go," she told him. "Why, aren't you having a good time?" asked the stewardess, a mocking smile crossing her perfect little face. "Like all Bennington ladies," Ray said, answering for Beth, "she is enjoying herself most by not enjoying herself at all. It's a trait of the anal retentive. Being here in someone else's apartment, she can't empty ashtrays or rewind the toilet paper roll so it doesn't hang a tongue, and being tightassed, her nature demands we go. "All right, Beth, let's say our goodbyes and take off. The Phantom Rectum strikes again." She slapped him and the stewardess's eyes widened. But the smile stayed frozen where it had appeared. He grabbed her wrist before she could do it again. "Gar-banzo beans, baby," he said, holding her wrist tighter than necessary. They went back to her apartment, and after sparring silently with kitchen cabinet doors slammed and the television being turned too loud, they got to her bed, and he tried to perpetuate the metaphor by fucking her in the ass. He had her on elbows and knees before she realized what he was doing; she struggled to turn over and he rode her bucking and tossing without a sound. And when it was clear to him that she would never permit it, he grabbed her breast from underneath and squeezed so hard she howled in pain. He dumped her on her back, rubbed himself between her legs a dozen times, and came on her stomach. Beth lay with her eyes closed and an arm thrown across her face. She wanted to cry, but found she could not. Ray lay on her and said nothing. She wanted to rush to the bathroom and shower, but he did not move, till long after his semen had dried on their bodies. "Who did you date at college?" he asked. "I didn't date anyone very much." "No heavy makeouts with wealthy lads from Williams and Dartmouth… no Rensselaer intellectuals begging you to save them from creeping faggotry by permitting them to stick their carrots in your sticky little slit?" "Stop it!" "Come on, baby, it couldn't all have been knee socks and little round circle-pins. You don't expect me to believe you didn't get a little mouthful of cock from time to time. It's only, what? about fifteen miles to Williamstown? I'm sure the Williams werewolves were down burning the highway to your cunt on weekends, you can level with old Uncle Ray…" "Why are you like this?!" She started to move, to get away from him, and he grabbed her by the shoulder, forced her to lie down again. Then he rose up over her and said, "I'm like this

because I'm a New Yorker, baby. Because I live in this fucking city every day. Because I have to play patty-cake with the ministers and other sanctified holy-joe assholes who want their goodness and lightness tracts published by the Blessed Sacrament Publishing and Storm Window Company of 277 Park Avenue, when what I really want to do is toss the stupid psalmsuckers out the thirtyrseventh floor window and listen to them quote chapter-and-worse all the way down. Because I've lived in this great big snapping dog of a city all my life and I'm mad as a mudfly, for chrissakes!" She lay unable to move, breathing shallowly, filled with a sudden pity and affection for him. His face was white and strained, and she knew he was saying things to her that only a bit too much Almaden and exact timing would have let him say. "What do you expect from me?" he said, his voice softer now, but no less intense, "do you expect kindness and gentility and understanding and a hand on your hand when the smog burns your eyes? I can't do it, I haven't got it. No one has it in this cesspool of a city. Look around you; what do you think is happening here? They take rats and they put them in boxes and when there are too many of them, some of the little fuckers go out of their minds and start gnawing the rest to death. It ain't no different here, baby! It's rat time for everybody in this madhouse. You can't expect to jam as many people into this stone thing as we do, with buses and taxis and dogs shitting themselves scrawny and noise night and day and no money and not enough places to live and no place to go have a decent think… you can't do it without making the time right for some god-forsaken other kind of thing to be born! You can't hate everyone around you, and kick every beggar and nigger and mestizo shithead, you can't have cabbies stealing from you and taking tips they don't deserve, and then cursing you, you can't walk in the soot till your collar turns black, and your body stinks with the smell of flaking brick and decaying brains, you can't do it without calling up some kind of awful-" He stopped. His face bore the expression of a man who has just received brutal word of the death of a loved one. He suddenly lay down, rolled over, and turned off. She lay beside him, trembling, trying desperately to remember where she had seen his face before. He didn't call her again, after the night of the party. And when they met in the hall, he pointedly turned away, as though he had given her some obscure chance and she had refused to take it. Beth thought she understood: though Ray Gleeson had not been her first affair, he had been the first to reject her so completely. The first to put her not only out of his bed and his life, but even out of his world. It was as though she were invisible, not even beneath contempt, simply not there. She busied herself with other things. She took on three new charting jobs for Guzman and a new group that had formed on Staten Island, of all places. She worked furiously and they gave her new assignments; they even paid her. She tried to decorate the apartment with a less precise touch. Huge poster blowups of Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham replaced the Brueghel prints that had reminded her of the view looking down the hill from Williams. The tiny balcony outside her window, the balcony she had steadfastly refused to stand upon since the night of the slaughter, the night of the fog with eyes, that balcony she swept and set about with little flower boxes in which she planted geraniums, petunias, dwarf zinnias and other hardy perennials. Then, closing the window, she went to give herself, to involve herself in this city to which she had brought her ordered life. And the city responded to her overtures:

Seeing off an old friend from Bennington, at Kennedy International, she stopped at the terminal coffee shop to have a sandwich. The counter circled like a moat a center service island that had huge advertising cubes rising above it on burnished poles. The cubes proclaimed the delights of Fun City. New York is a Summer Festival they said, and Joseph Papp presents Shakespeare in Central Park and Visit the Bronx Zoo and You'll Adore our Contentious but Lovable Cabbies. The food emerged from a window far down the service area and moved slowly on a conveyor belt through the hordes of screaming waitresses who slathered the counter with redolent washcloths. The lunchroom had all the charm and dignity of a steel rolling mill, and approximately the same noise-level. Beth ordered a cheeseburger that cost a dollar and a quarter, and a glass of milk. When it came, it was cold, the cheese unmelted, and the patty of meat resembling nothing so much as a dirty scouring pad. The bun was cold and untoasted. There was no lettuce under the patty. Beth managed to catch the waitress's eye. The girl approached with an annoyed look. "Please toast the bun and may I have a piece of lettuce?" Beth said. "We dun' do that," the waitress said, turned half away as though she would walk in a moment. -"You don't do what?" "We dun' toass the bun here." "Yes, but I want the bun toasted," Beth said, firmly. "An' you got to pay for extra lettuce." "If I was asking for extra lettuce," Beth said, getting annoyed, "I would pay for it, but since there's no lettuce here, I don't think I should be charged extra for the first piece." "We dun' do that." The waitress started to walk away. "Hold it," Beth said, raising her voice just enough so the assembly-line eaters on either side stared at her. "You mean to tell me I have to pay a dollar and a quarter and I can't get a piece of lettuce or even get the bun toasted?" "Ef you dun' like it…" "Take it back." "You gotta pay for it, you order it." "I said take it back, I don't want the fucking thing!" The waitress scratched it off the check. The milk cost 27c! and tasted going-sour. It was the first time in her life that Beth had said that word aloud. At the cashier's stand, Beth said to the sweating man with the felt-tip pens in his shirt pocket, "Just out of curiosity, are you interested in complaints?" "No!" he said, snarling, quite literally snarling. He did not look up as he punched out 73c and it came rolling down the chute. The city responded to her overtures: It was raining again. She was trying to cross Second Avenue, with the light. She stepped off the curb and a car came sliding through the red and splashed her. "Hey!" she yelled. "Eat shit, sister!" the driver yelled back, turning the corner. Her boots, her legs and her overcoat were splattered with mud. She stood trembling on the curb. The city responded to her overtures: She emerged from the building at One Astor Place with her big briefcase full of Laban charts; she was adjusting her rain scarf about her head. A well-dressed man with an attache case thrust the handle of his umbrella up between her legs from the rear. She gasped and dropped her case. The city responded and responded and responded. Her overtures altered quickly.

The old drunk with the stippled cheeks extended his hand and mumbled words. She cursed him and walked on up Broadway past the beaver film houses. She crossed against the lights on Park Avenue, making hackies slam their brakes to avoid hitting her; she used that word frequently now. When she found herself having a drink with a man who had elbowed up beside her in the singles' bar, she felt faint and knew she should go home. But Vermont was so far away. Nights later. She had come home from the Lincoln Center ballet, and gone straight to bed. She heard a sound in the bedroom. One room away, in the living room, in the dark, there was a sound. She slipped out of bed and went to the door between the rooms. She fumbled silently for the switch on the lamp just inside the living room, and found it, and clicked it on. A black man in a leather car coat was trying to get out of the apartment. In that first flash of light filling the room she noticed the television set beside him on the floor as he struggled with the door, she noticed the police lock and bar had been broken in a new and clever manner New York Magazine had not yet reported in a feature article on apartment ripoffs, she noticed that he had gotten his foot tangled in the telephone cord that she had requested be extra-long so she could carry the instrument into the bathroom, I don't want to miss any business calls when the shower is running; she noticed all things in perspective and one thing with sharpest clarity: the expression on the burglar's face. There was something familiar in that expression. He almost had the door open, but now he closed it, and slipped the police lock. He took a step toward her. Beth went back, into the darkened bedroom. The city responded to her overtures. She backed against the wall at the head of the bed. Her hand fumbled in the shadows for the telephone. His shape filled the doorway, light, all light behind him. In silhouette it should not have been possible to tell, but somehow she knew he was wearing gloves and the only marks he would leave would be deep bruises, very blue, almost black, with the tinge under them of blood that had been stopped in its course. He came for her, arms hanging casually at his sides. She tried to climb over the bed, and he grabbed her from behind, ripping her nightgown. Then he had a hand around her neck and he pulled her backward. She fell off the bed, landed at his feet and his hold was broken. She scuttled across the floor and for a moment she had the respite to feel terror. She was going to die, and she was frightened. He trapped her in die corner between the closet and the bureau and kicked her. His foot caught her in the thigh as she folded tighter, smaller, drawing her legs up. She was cold. Then he reached down with both hands and pulled her erect by her hair. He slammed her head against the wall. Everything slid up in her sight as though running off the edge of the world. He slammed her head against the wall again, and she felt something go soft over her right ear. When he tried to slam her a third time she reached out blindly for his face and ripped down with her nails. He howled in pain and she hurled herself forward, arms wrapping themselves around his waist. He stumbled backward and in a tangle of thrashing arms and legs they fell out onto the little balcony. Beth landed on the bottom, feeling the window boxes jammed up against her spine and legs. She fought to get to her feet, and her nails hooked into his shirt under the open jacket, ripping. Then she was on her feet again and they struggled silently. He whirled her around, bent her backward across the wrought iron railing. Her face was turned outward.

They were standing in their windows, watching. Through the fog she could see them watching. Through the fog she recognized their expressions. Through the fog she heard them breathing in unison, bellows breathing of expectation and wonder. Through the fog. And the black man punched her in the throat. She gagged and started to black out and could not draw air into her lungs. Back, back, he bent her further back and she was looking up, straight up, toward the ninth floor and higher… Up there: eyes. The words Ray Gleeson had said in a moment filled with what he had become, with the utter hopelessness and finality of the choice the city had forced on him, the words came back. You can't live in this city and survive unless you have protection… you can't live this way, like rats driven mad, without making the time right for some god-forsaken other kind of thing to be born… you can't do it without calling up some kind of awful… God! A new God, an ancient God come again with the eyes and hunger of a child, a deranged blood God of fog and street violence. A God who needed worshippers and offered the choices of death as a victim or life as an eternal witness to the deaths of other chosen victims. A God to fit the times, a God of streets and people. She tried to shriek, to appeal to Ray, to the director in the bedroom window of his ninthfloor apartment with his long-legged Philadelphia model beside him and his fingers inside her as they worshipped in their holiest of ways, to the others who had been at the party that had been Ray's offer of a chance to join their congregation. She wanted to be saved from having to make that choice. But the black man had punched her in the throat, and now his hands were on her, one on her chest, the other in her face, the smell of leather filling her where the nausea could not. And she understood Ray had cared, had wanted her to take the chance offered; but she had come from a world of little white dormitories and Vermont countryside; it was not a real world. This was the real world and up there was the God who ruled this world, and she had rejected him, had said no to one of his priests and servitors. Save me! Don't make me do it! She knew she had to call out, to make appeal, to try and win the approbation of that God. I can't… save me! She struggled and made terrible little mewling sounds trying to. summon the words to cry out, and suddenly she crossed a line, and screamed up into the echoing courtyard with a voice Leona Ciarelli had never known enough to use. "Him! Take him! Not me! I'm yours, I love you, I'm yours! Take him, not me, please not me, take him, take him, I'm yours!" And the black man was suddenly lifted away, wrenched off her, and off the balcony, whirled straight up into the fog-thick air in the courtyard, as Beth sank to her knees on the ruined flower boxes. She was half-conscious, and could not be sure she saw it just that way, but up he went, end over end, whirling and spinning like a charred leaf. And the form took firmer shape. Enormous paws with claws and shapes that no animal she had even seen had ever possessed, and the burglar, black, poor, terrified, whimpering like a whipped dog, was stripped of his flesh. His body was opened with a thin incision, and there was a rush as all the blood poured from him like a sudden cloudburst, and yet he was still alive, twitching with the involuntary horror of a frog's leg shocked with an electric current. Twitched, and twitched again as he was torn piece by piece to shreds. Pieces of flesh and bone and half a face with an eye blinking furiously, cascaded down past Beth, and hit the cement below with sodden thuds. And still he was alive, as his organs were squeezed and musculature and bile and shit and skin were rubbed, sandpapered together and let fall. It went on and on, as the death of Leona Ciarelli had gone on and on, and she understood with the blo-

od-knowledge of survivors at any cost that the reason die witnesses to the death of Leona Ciarelli had done nothing was not that they had been frozen with horror, that they didn't want to get involved, or that they were inured to death by years of television slaughter. They were worshippers at a black mass the city had demanded be staged, not once, but a thousand times a day in this insane asylum of steel and stone. Now she was on her feet, standing half-naked in her ripped nightgown, her hands tightening on the wrought iron railing, begging to see more, to drink deeper. Now she was one of them, as the pieces of the night's sacrifice fell past her, bleeding and screaming. Tomorrow the police would come again, and they would question her, and she would say how terrible it had been, that burglar, and how she had fought, afraid he would rape her and kill her, and how he had fallen, and she had no idea how he had been so hideously mangled and ripped apart, but a seven-storey fall, after all… Tomorrow she would not have to worry about walking in the streets, because no harm could come to her. Tomorrow she could even remove the police lock. Nothing in the city could do her any further evil, because she had made the only choice. She was now a dweller in the city, now wholly and richly a part of it. Now she was taken to the bosom of her God. She felt Ray beside her, standing beside her, holding her, protecting her, his hand on her naked backside, and she watched the fog swirl up and fill the courtyard, fill the city, fill her eyes and her soul and her heart with its power. As Ray's naked body pressed tightly into her, she drank deeply of the night, knowing whatever voices she heard from this moment forward, they would be the voices not of whipped dogs, but those of strong, meat-eating beasts. At last she was unafraid, and it was so good, so very good not to be afraid. 2: J. Ramsey Campbell - The Man In The Underpass I'm Lynn. I'm nearly eleven. I was born in Liverpool, in Tuebrook. I go to Tuebrook County Primary School. This year I've been taking my little brother Jim to the Infant's. Every morning we walk to school. It's only six hundred yards away. I know that because our class had to find out for Mrs. Chandler for a project. We cross one street and then walk up Buckingham Road. At the end we go down the underpass under West Derby Road. My little brother calls it underpants. And then just at the other end, there's the school. The underpass is what my story's all about. It isn't very high, my best friend June's big sister can touch the roof without jumping. In the roof there are long lights like bright boxes. That's what Mrs. Chandler means when she says something is a nice image. Usually some of the lights are broken, and there are plugs hanging down like buds. When you walk through you can hear the traffic overhead, it feels as if your ears are shaking when buses drive over. When we were little we used to stand in the middle, so the buses would make our ears tickle. And we used to shout and make ghosty noises, because then it sounded like a cave. Then the skinheads started to wait for the little kids in the underpass, so they got a lollipop man to cross us over and we weren't supposed to go down. Sometimes we did, because some of the traffic wouldn't stop for the lollipop man and we wanted to watch our programmes on tv. Then the lady in the greengrocer's at the other end would tell on us and we got spanked. I think we're too old to be spanked. June would cry when she was spanked, because she's a bit of a little kid sometimes. So we stopped going down until the skinheads went somewhere else. June's big sister says they're all taking LSD now. When we could go down again, it wasn't like the same place. They'd been spraying paint all over the walls. The walls used to be white, but now they were like those advertisements

you see in the cinema, when the colours keep changing and dazzling you. There were all kinds of green and gold and pink like lipstick, and white and grey and blood red. There were words we wouldn't say at home, like tits, and all the things skinheads say. Like "Tuebrook Skins Rule OK", only they'd painted it over twice, so it was as if something was wrong with your eyes. June and I were reading everything on the way to school when Tonia came down. She lives in the next street from me, with her father. She used to go to St. John the Evangelist, but now she goes to Tuebrook County Primary with us. June doesn't like her because she says Tonia thinks she's better than us and knows more. She never comes round to play with me, but I think she's lonely and her mother doesn't live with them, only a woman who stays with them sometimes. I heard that in the sweetshop before the lady started nodding to tell them I was there. Anyway, Tonia started acting shocked at the things they'd painted on the walls. I don't think she was really, she's a bit of a poser. She said, "I don't think you should let your little brother see these things. They aren't good for him." Jim's seen our mother and father with no clothes on, but June said;, "Oh come on. We weren't looking anyway, only playing," and she pretended to pee at Tonia, and we ran off. Tonia was nearly late for assembly. She'd been looking at the man painted on the wall where the underpass dips in the middle. Mrs. Chandler smiled at her but didn't say anything. If it had been us she'd have pretended to be cross, but she wouldn't really mind if we laughed, because she likes us laughing. I suppose Tonia must have been looking at the man on the wall because she hadn't seen anything like him before. She was flushed and biting her lip and smiling at the same time. My story's about him too, in a funny way-at least I think it is. He was as tall as the roof, and his spout was sticking up almost as far as his chin. Someone had painted him in white-well, really they'd just drawn round him, but then someone else had written on the wall, so he was full of colours. He'd got one foot on each side of the drain in the middle of the underpass, that the gutter runs down to. Jim said he was going to pee, so I had to tell him he wouldn't be going to pee when his spout's like that. Anyway, that was the day Mrs. Chandler told us the theatre group was coming to do a play for us. June said, "Are they going to make us laugh?" and Mrs. Chandler said, "Oh yes, they'll shout at you if you don't laugh." Then we had to write about our parents. I like writing about people, but June likes writing about football and music best. Tonia suddenly started crying and tore up her paper, so Mrs. Chandler had to put her arm around her and talk to her, but we couldn't hear what she was saying. June got jealous and kept asking Mrs. Chandler things, so she put her in charge of the mice's cage all week. When we went home Tonia stayed behind in the playground. I saw her go into the underpass, but the last time I looked she hadn't come out. My mother was still at Bingo, and Jim was crying so I smacked him, then I had to make him a fried egg so he'd stop. When my father came in he said, "Should have made me one as well. You're a lot better housewife than," and he stopped. But my mother had won and gave him half, so he didn't shout at her. After tea I went to the wine shop to get them some crisps. Jim sat on the railings at the top of the underpass, and was seeing how far he could lean back holding on with his heels, so I had to chase out and smack him. I broke my arm once when I was little, doing that on the railings. Then I saw Tonia coming out of the underpass. "Haven't you had your tea yet?" I said. She must have been in a mood, because she got all red and said "I've had my dinner, if that's what you mean. We have it exactly the same time every day, if you must know. You don't think I've been down there all this time, do you?" I do try to make friends with her, but it's hard. The next afternoon we had the play. There were five people in it, three men and two women. It was very good, and everyone laughed. I liked the part best when one of the men has to be the moon, so he has a torch and tries to get into it to be the man in the moon. They bor-

rowed Mrs. Chandler's guitar, that she brings when we have singing, and they all sang at the end and we pretended to throw money, then they threw sweets for us. I told Mrs. Chandler I liked it and she said it was from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" because it was nearly midsummer. I said I'd like to read it, so she said to ask for it at the library. Then it was time to go home, and June asked one of the actors to cross her over the road. She told him he'd got a lovely face. Well, he had, but it's just like June to say something like that. She's bold sometimes. She said, "Oh, and this is Lynn. She's my best friend, so you can talk to her too." I think she wanted him to come on his own, but he called the others to look at the colours in the underpass. So we all went down there instead. I saw Tonia watching us, and she looked as if she was going to cry, as if we'd found her special hiding-place or something, then she ran after us. They were all shouting and gasping as if they were little kids looking at fireworks. "Look at that figure in the middle. It's almost a work of art," one of the women said. "Ebsolutely Eztec," a man said. I don't think he really talked like that, he was just being funny. Tonia pulled at the one with the lovely face and said, "What does he mean?" "He means Aztec, love," he said. "I'm not your love," Tonia said. The man looked upset, because he was only being friendly, but he spelt Aztec for her. "Just the place for a midsummer sacrifice," one of the men said. "I don't think the Aztecs were bothered about seasons. They had sacrifices all the year round," another one said. Then they all walked us home and said we should try to get a youth theatre going with Mrs. Chandler. But Tonia stayed in the underpass. The next day I went to the library after school. It's a nice place, except they chase you if you mess even a little bit. The librarian has a red face and shouts at the little kids if they don't understand what he means, and doesn't like showing you where the books are. But the girls are nice, and they'll talk to you and look for books for you. I got "A Midsummer Night's Dream" out. I didn't really understand it, except for the funny parts that we saw at school. I'd like Mrs. Chandler to help me with it, but I think she'd be too busy. I can read it again when I'm older. I saw Tonia's father when I was there. He was getting a book about Aztecs for her. He said it was for a project. She must have told him that. It's stupid, because she could have told the truth. The librarian got him a book out of the men's library. "This will probably be a bit advanced for her," he said. Tonia's father started shouting. "Don't talk about what you don't know," he said. "She's an extremely intelligent child. I've had more than enough of that sort of comment at home." The librarian was getting redder and redder, and he saw me looking, so I ran out. Next morning Tonia brought the book to school. "I've got something to show you," she told June and me. Then she heard Mrs. Chandler coming, so she hid the book in her desk. She could have shown her, Mrs. Chandler wouldn't have minded. At playtime she brought it out with her. We all had to crowd around her, so the teachers wouldn't see. There were pictures of Aztec statues that looked like those floors you see in really old buildings. There were some drawings as well, like drawings little kids do, funny though you're not supposed to laugh. Some of them had no clothes on. "Don't let everyone see," Tonia said. "I don't know what you're worried about. They don't worry us," I said, because the way she was showing us made the pictures seem dirty, though they weren't really. It was like a picture of Jesus we used to giggle at when we were little, because he was only wearing a cloth. I suppose she never used to play doctors and nurses, so she couldn't have seen anything, like with the man in the underpass. When we went out to play at dinnertime she brought the book again. She started reading bits out of it, about the Aztecs using pee for dying clothes, and eating dogs and burning people and cutting their hearts out and eating them. She said one part meant that when they made a sacrifice their gods would appear. "No, it doesn't," June said. "They were just men dressed

up." "Well, it does," Tonia said. "The gods came and walked among them." "You're the best reader, Lynn. You say what it says," June said. Actually June was right, but Tonia was biting her lip and I didn't want to be mean, so I said she was right. June wouldn't speak to me when we walked home. But the next day I had to be specially nice to June, because Mrs. Chandler said so, so we were friends again. June was upset all day, that was why Mrs. Chandler said to be nice to her. Someone had left the mice's cage unlocked and they'd all escaped. June was crying because she liked to watch them, because she loves animals, only she hadn't had any since when her kitten tried to get up under the railway bridge where you can hear the pigeons fluttering in their nest, and fell off and got killed. Mrs. Chandler said for everyone to be nice to June, so we were. Except Tonia, who avoided us all day and didn't talk to anyone. I thought then she was sad for June. On Saturday we went to the baths next to the library. It's like a big toilet with tiled walls and slippery floors. We said we'd teach Tonia to swim, but her father wouldn't let her come in case she got her asthma and drowned. We had to stop some boys pushing Jim and the other little kids in. There must be something wrong with them to do that. I think they ought to go and see the doctor, like Tonia with her asthma. Only June's big sister says it isn't the proper doctor Tonia needs to go and see. Then we went home to watch Doctor Who. It was good, only Jim got all excited watching the giant maggots chasing Doctor Who and nearly had to go to bed. My mother had bought some lovely curtains with her Bingo money, all red and purple, and she was putting them up in the front room so our maisonette would look different from all the others. There hadn't been any football on tv, because the season was over, so my father went out for a drink and gave us some money for lemonade. June had to go home because her auntie was coming, so I took Jim to get the lemonade. On the way we met Tonia. She didn't speak to us. She was running and she looked as if she'd been sick. I wasn't sure because it had got all dark as if someone had poured dirty dishwater into the sky. Anyway, I went to the wine shop and when I'd bought the lemonade I looked for Jim, but he wasn't there. I didn't hear him go out, because I'd told him to stay in the shop but they'd left the door open to let air in. He'd run down the underpass. Little kids are like moths when they see a light sometimes. So I ran down to get him and I nearly slipped, because someone had just been throwing red paint all over the place. It was even dripping off the lights. They'd tried to paint the man on the wall with it. Jim said it was blood and I told him not to be soft. But it did look nasty. I didn't even want my supper. It rained all Sunday, so nothing happened. Except June brought the Liverpool Echo round because one of my poems was in it. I'd sent it in so long ago that I'd forgotten about it. They only put your first name and your age, as if you didn't want anyone to know it was you. I think it's stupid. Next day when we were coming home, we saw the man who cleans the bins on West Derby Road talking to the ladies from the wine shop. There's a concrete bin on top of the underpass, with a band going round it saying LITTER LITTER LITTER. He'd found four mice cut up in the bin. June started crying when we reached our road. She cries a lot sometimes and I have to put my arm round her, like my father when he heard Labour hadn't won the election. She thought they were the mice from our classroom. But I said they couldn't be, because nobody could have caught them. The next night June and I took Jim home, then we went to the library. We left him playing with the little girls from up the street. When we got back he wasn't there. My mother got all worried, but we said we'd look for him. We looked under the railway bridge, because he liked to go in the workshop there to listen to the noise that sounds like the squeak they put on the tv to remind you to switch off. But he wasn't there, so we looked on the waste ground by the ra-

ilway line, because he likes playing with the bricks there more than the building blocks he got for Christmas. He was sitting there waiting to see a train. He said a girl had taken the little girls to see a man who showed them nice things. Some policemen had come to school one day to tell us not to go with men like that, because they were ill, so we thought we'd better tell our parents. But just as we were coming home we saw Tonia with the little girls. She looked as if she was going to run away when she saw us, then June shouted, "What've you been doing with those kids?" "It wasn't anything, only a drawing on the wall," one of the little girls said. "You wouldn't even let Jim look at him the other day," I said. "Well, he wouldn't have wanted to come," Tonia said. "You just let them play next time. Jim was having fun," I said. The next day a puppy came into the playground and we all played with it. It rolled on its back to make us tickle it, then it peed on the caretaker's bike and he chased it away. Tonia played with it most and when it came back into the playground, she threw sweets out of the window for it until Mrs. Chandler told her not to. We were painting, and Tonia did a lovely one with lots of colours in it, instead of the ones she usually does which are all dark. Mrs. Chandler said it was very good, and you could tell she was really pleased. But she asked Tonia why the man was standing with his back to us, and Tonia blushed and said she couldn't paint faces very well, though she can when she wants to. I painted a puppy eating a bone and Mrs. Chandler liked that too. When it was time to go home Tonia stayed behind to ask Mrs. Chandler about painting faces, as if she didn't know how. We thought she wanted to walk along with Mrs. Chandler, but instead she ran out of the school when everyone had gone and went down the underpass with the puppy. We. saw her because I had to get some apples from the greengrocer's. That's a funny shop, all brown boards that have got dirty from the potatoes, and they always talk to everyone and never serve us until someone says we're waiting. So we were in there a long time, and Tonia and the puppy hadn't come up. "Let's see what she's doing," June said. Just as we went down the ramp to the underpass the puppy ran out with Tonia chasing it. She had a penknife. "I was only pretending. I wouldn't kill it really," she said. "You shouldn't have a knife at all," I said. Then she went off because we wouldn't help her find the puppy to take it home. After tea Jim and the little girls were climbing on a lorry, so I had to tell them the man would shout when he came back. They all ran up the street and started shouting, "Pop a cat a petal, pop a cat a petal." Little kids are funny sometimes. I asked them what it meant and one of the little girls said, "That's what that girl said we had to say to the man on the wall." I told her not to play with Tonia, because Tonia did things she shouldn't. Next day I asked Mrs. Chandler what it meant. She had to look it up, then she said it was a volcano in Mexico. At dinnertime I asked Tonia why she'd told the little girls to say it. Tonia went red and said it was her secret. "Then you shouldn't have told them. Anyway, it's only a volcano," June said, because she'd heard Airs. Chandler tell me. "No it. isn't," Tonia said. "It's his name. It's a god's name." "It's a volcano in Mexico," I said. "Lynn should know. She's the best reader, and she had a poem in the paper," June said. "I didn't see it," Tonia said. "Well, I did. It said Lynn," June said. "That could be anyone," Tonia said. "You're making it up." "No, she isn't. She'll have you a fight," June said. So we went behind the school and had a fight, and I won. Tonia was crying and said she'd tell Mrs. Chandler, but she didn't. She was quiet all afternoon, and she waited for us when we were going home. "I don't care if you did have a poem in the paper," she said. "I've seen something you haven't." "What is it?" I said. "If you meet me tonight I'll show you," she said. "Just you. She can't come." "June's my best friend. She's got to come too, or I won't," I said. "All right, but you must promise not to tell anyone," Tonia said. "Wait until it's nearly dark and meet me at the end of my road."

So I had to say that I was going to hear a record at June's, and she had to say the same. We met Tonia at nine o'clock. She was very quiet and wouldn't say anything, just started walking and didn't look to see if we were coming. Sometimes I don't like the dark, because all the cars look like animals asleep, and everything seems bigger. It makes me feel like a little kid again. We could see all the people in the houses watching tv with the lights out, and I wished I was back at home. Anyway, we followed Tonia, and she stopped at the top of the underpass. "Oh, it's only that stupid thing on the wall again," June said. "No, it isn't," Tonia said. "There's a real man down there if you look." "Well, I don't want to see him," June said. "What's so special about him?" I said. "He's a god," Tonia said. "He's not. He's just a man playing with his thing," June said. "He probably wouldn't want you to see him anyway," Tonia said. "I'm going down. You go home." "We'll come with you so you'll be all right," I said, but really I was excited without knowing why. We went down the ramp where nobody could see us and Tonia said we had to take our knickers off and say, "Pop a cat a petal," only whisper it so people wouldn't hear us. "You're just like a little kid," June said. "I'm not taking my knickers off." "Well, pull your dress up then," Tonia said. "No, you do it first," I said. "I don't have to," Tonia said. "You've got to go first," I said. So she did, and we all started whispering "Pop a cat a petal," and when we were behind her I winked at June and we pulled our dresses down again. Then Tonia had gone into the underpass and we were still round the corner on the ramp. We dared each other to go first, then I said, "Let's go in together." So June pushed me in and I pulled her in, and we started saying "Pop a cat a petal" again, only we weren't saying it very well because we couldn't stop giggling. But then I got dizzy. All the lights in the underpass were nickering like a fire when it's going out, and the colours were swaying, and all the passage was sort of glittering slowly, and Tonia was standing in the middle swaying as if she was dancing with the light. Then June screamed and I think I did too, because I thought I saw the man. It must have been our eyes, because the light was so funny. But we thought we saw a giant standing behind Tonia. He was covered with paint, and he was as tall as the roof. He hadn't got any clothes on, so he couldn't have been there really, but it looked as if his spout was swaying like an elephant's trunk reaching up. But it must have been the light, because he hadn't got a face, only paint, and he looked like those cut-out photographs they put in shop windows. Anyway, as soon as we screamed Tonia looked round and when she saw we weren't anywhere near her, she looked as if she could have hit us. And when we looked again there wasn't any giant, only the man back on the wall. "He wanted you," Tonia said. "You should have gone to him." "No, thank you," June said. "And if we get into trouble at home I'll belt you." Then we ran home, but they didn't ask me anything, because they'd just heard that my father had to be on strike again. Next day Tonia wouldn't speak to us. We heard her telling someone else that she knew something they didn't, so we told them that she only wanted them to take their knickers down. Then she wanted us to walk home with her. "He's angry because you ran away," she said. "He wanted a sacrifice." June wouldn't, but I said, "You can walk home on the other side of the road if you like, but we won't talk to you."-So she did, and she was crying and I felt a bit mean, but June wouldn't let me go over. Saturday was horrible, because my parents had a row about the strike, and Jim started crying and they both shouted at him and had another row, and he was sick all over the stairs, so I cleaned it up. Then there wasn't any disinfectant, and my mother said my father never bought anything we needed, and he said I wasn't supposed to be the maid to do all the dirty jobs. So I went upstairs and had a cry, and then I played with Jim in our room, and it was just getting dark when I saw June coming down our road with her mother.

I thought they might have found out where we'd been last night, but it wasn't that. June's mother wanted her to stay with us, because her big sister had been attacked in the underpass and she didn't want June upset. So Jim slept with my parents and they had to make up again, and June and I talked in bed until we fell asleep. June's big sister had just been walking through the underpass when a man grabbed her from behind. "Did he rape her?" I said. "He must have. Do you think it hurts?" June said. "It can't hurt much or people wouldn't do it," I said. On Sunday June had to go home again, because her big sister had gone to hospital. I heard my parents talking about it when I was in the kitchen. "It's most peculiar," my mother said. "The doctor said she hadn't been touched." "I wouldn't have thought people needed to imagine that sort of thing these days, not at her age," my father said. I don't know what he meant. On Monday Mrs. Chandler told us we weren't to go in the underpass again until she said. Tonia said we couldn't get hurt during the day, with the police station only up the road. But Mrs. Chandler said she'd spank us herself if she heard we'd been down, and you could tell she wasn't joking. At dinnertime there were policemen in the underpass. We went to the top to listen. The traffic was noisy, so we couldn't hear everything they said. But we heard one shout, "What's this? Here, on the drain. Bring me an envelope." And another said, "Drugs, by the look of it. Not what I'd call a hiding place." Then Tonia started coughing and we all had to run away before they caught us. I thought she was doing it on purpose. When I went home I had to go to the greengrocer's. So I pretended I was waiting for someone near the top of the underpass, because I saw a policeman just going down. He must have come to tell the one who was watching down there, because I heard him say, "You won't believe this. They weren't drugs at all. They were hearts." "Hearts?" said the other one. "Yes, mouse's hearts," he said. "Two of them. I'm just wondering how this ties in with those mice in the bin up there. There should, have been two more, if I'm right. They couldn't have gone down the drain because it's been clogged for weeks." "I think we'd better start wondering about the paint on that light there," the other one said. "I don't think it's paint." I didn't want to hear any more, so I turned round to go, and I saw Tonia listening at the other end of the underpass. Then she saw me and ran away. So I know who took the mice out of our classroom, and I think I know why she looked as if she'd been sick that night, but I don't want to speak to her to find out. I wish I could tell Mrs. Chandler about it, but we promised not to tell about the underpass, and June would be terribly upset if she heard about the mice. Her big sister is home again now, but she won't go out at night, and she keeps shivering. I suppose Tonia might leave it alone now, because it's nearly the holidays. Only I heard her talking the other day in the playground. She might have been just boasting, because she looked very proud of herself, and she looked at the policeman at the top of the underpass as if she wished he'd go away, and she said, "Pop a cat a petal did it to me too." 3: T. E. D. Klein - S. F. S. F. n., abbrev. Geog.: San Felipe, city, Chil.; San Fernando, city, Chil., U.S., Philip., Argent.; Santa Fe, city, riv., U.S.; prov., Argent.; San Francisco, earthquake site, U.S. Other: Sinn Fein (Jr., lit. 'we ourselves'), Ir. pol. movement, early 20th cent.; sacrifice fly (baseball); sinking fund (econ.); survival factor (ecol); science fiction; selective for-getfulness. -Oxford English Dictionary, Fourth Supplement (2002) Thursday 17 Sept '39 Willie, precious:

How's my little snookums? How's my snookums today? As happy as I am? I hope so, because I'm sure there's never been such a wonderful day! I woke up this morning feeling like a young girl again, and when I looked at your picture above my bed, and the sun shining outside my window, there were tears of happiness in my eyes. And do you know why, precious? Because today I've decided to sit down and write you a letter. Imagine, Willie, a letter of your very own! Baby's First Letter! There's so much I have to tell you, and I'm so excited I can hardly begin. Why, I don't remember the last time I felt so good! Just thinking about you now, and putting your picture here on the table where I can see it better, I feel as if… As if you're right here in the room with me! Of course, it's only an old photograph, not one of those 3-D holograph tilings they have nowadays-but it's a pretty picture just the same. Your Mommy and your Daddy, bless their hearts, are standing behind you looking oh so proud, the light gleaming off their chromium Helmets, and there you are in front of them, in your little plastic sunsuit, fast asleep with your thumb in your mouth, just as cute as can be! It's as if you're sitting right here beside me, I can almost reach out and touch you… Ooooh, snookums snookums snookums, Great-Granny could just eat you up you're so cute! Do you know how cute? Why, you're just the cutest little baby in the whole world, that's how cute you are! And if your Great-Granny were with you right now, do you know what she'd do? She'd just give you the biggest kiss you ever saw-and a big hug, too! That's how much she loves you. And even though they've put her in a Home (it's for my own good, I know) and she can't come round to see you like she used to, writing you this letter makes her feel so close to you… Why, so close I think I'll just reach out and tickle your little chinny-chin-chin! There! How does snookums like being tickled under his chinny-chin-chin? I remember the last time I saw you-I'm sure it wasn't very long ago-you were just the eentsy-weentsiest little baby, all swaddled up in your Baby-Sheath and looking ever so huggable! You were smiling in your sleep, with nothing but your precious little head sticking out of the top of the plastic like some relic in a museum. Your dear Mommy (God bless her) switched off the vibrator under your crib and went to get your vitamilk bottle, and just as I was leaning over to give you a Great Big Kiss, you woke up and, oh!, did you let out a howl! I guess you'd never seen such an oid woman before! (Yes, Willie, your Great Granny is oldso old she sometimes forgets her age.) Well, your Mommy had to come running back from the kitchen to turn the vibrator on again, so you'd stop crying and go back to sleep. She was a little cross with me, I'm afraid, and I felt sorry that I'd scared you, really I did. I'd only meant to kiss you Now I'm in this Home, and I won't be able to come visit you any more. But maybe after you've read this letter, you'll come visit me! Won't that be fun! But oh, Willie, your Great-Granny forgets. You ain't read this letter-I mean, not now, the 17th of Sept, 2039. You haven't learned to read yet! I'm sure you're nowhere near three years old…When I was a little girl, no one knew how to read before they were at least five or six-or even seven. Children nowadays are so smart, they being able to read much sooner than we did! Why, I'll bet my little Willie is reading and writing and multiplying and dividing by the time he's two-and-a-half, just like all my other Great-Grandchildren! There must be nearly a dozen of them by now. Funny that you're the only one I remember; I guess that's because yours is the only picture they've let me keep… But it's a lovely picture, Willie, snookums, and I don't care if you're too itty-bitty to read this now. I have such important news for you that I'm going to write it anyway, and Mommy and Daddy (bless their hearts) can save it for you till you're old enough to read it. But they're not allowed to read it themselves. This is your letter, Willie, and it's just for you. No Grown-Ups Allowed! That's because what I have to tell you concerns those shiny metal Helmets your Mommy and Daddy wear-and why they make Great-Granny Afraid.

Maybe they frighten you, too, those Helmets; I think if they'd had such things when I was little, I'd have been frightened… But that was ever so many years ago, and I'm growing a little forgetful. Or maybe you don't even think about the Helmets at all; maybe you just "take them for granted," precious-that means not noticing things-because Mommy and Daddy wear them all the time, and you've never seen them with their Helmets off… Or maybe you think they're pretty. Yes, that's it, you think, What pretty Helmets! (And they are pretty, too, snookums, especially when they're freshly polished. But they're not as pretty as a certain baby I know!) You'd like to wear one of those pretty Helmets yourself, am I right? You can hardly wait for the Big Day to arrive when, five years old, you're taken on a Little Trip to the Clinic and come back wearing a Helmet of your own, just like Mommy and Daddy (God bless them) and all the other big people. Why, I'll bet you're counting the days till your Fifth Birthday! (That's true, isn't it, snookums? Don't tell me you're five already. No, please don't tell me that! If I recollect, you should be… Still a little baby. Five is a long way off, isn't it? Sure it is. You'll be reading this long before you're five. I know that because I know what a Smart Baby you are!) But Willie, precious, even though you're so looking forward to that Little Trip, even though you want a Helmet of your. own more than anything in the world, please listen to what your Great-Granny has to say-because you know your Great-Granny loves you, even if she did make you cry that time, and you know her only thought is what's best for you. Willie, precious, don't let them put one of those Helmets on you. They aren't good for you. You can trust Great-Granny, Great-Granny knows. Don't go with Mommy and Daddy when they take you down to the Clinic. There are men there who will hurt you, Willie. Great-Granny knows. Instead, a few days before your Fifth Birthday, sneak out of the house and don't tell Mommy and Daddy where you're going. Put some food in your pockets, in case you get hungry. Maybe you could run away and come live with Great-Granny at the Home, wouldn't that be fun? Wouldn't you like to live here with me? They take very good care of you here, it's always quiet and there's plenty of heat in the winter. And I'd give you all the candy and cake you wanted, even for breakfast. I promise, Willie. Cross my heart. But the important thing, precious, is not to tell Mommy and Daddy about this part of the letter. Don't tell them what I'm saying here. And most of all, don't tell them you're going to run away before the Big Day. That way, no one will know but you and me. And then we'll have a Secret! Secrets are fun-but only if you don't tell anybody about them. Then… Why, then it wouldn't be a Secret any more! A Secret is much more fun than a Helmet, "Willie. Helmets are no good for you. I know you want one, I know they look pretty, but you mustn't let Mommy and Daddy take you to the Clinic. They love you, Willie, but I'll bet you a giant chocolate cake with candy, flowers, and five birthday candles that they don't love you as much as Great-Granny does. They mean well, but they don't know what's best for you. Great-Granny does. I'm no years old (or was the last time I looked) and they say I'm getting a little senile, but I know a thing or two. I know why more people are going to the movies than ever before-and why no more movies are being made. I know why people in this country walk around smiling-and why all the other countries laugh at us. Oh yes, I know a thing or two. I also know what Feb 24th is. That's right, Willie, it's Keyes Day, the day of the big Treasure Hunt-aren't you the smart one! But I'll bet you don't know what it really is. I'll bet you think the same as every other child, that Keyes Day is when Mommy and Daddy hide little gifts around the house, locked inside closets and boxes and drawers, then give you a set of keys and turn you loose.

But Keyes Day means more than just getting presents. It's a very special holiday, for it celebrates the birthday of Alonzo Keyes. (Isn't that a funny name? I think William is so much prettier!) And because Great-Granny knows that you like stories- of course you do, snookums, all children like stories-she's going to tell you one about Alonzo Keyes. Story-Time, snookums. Once upon a time there was a young man named Alonzo who lived on an island named Trinidad, where he spent all day playing with his pets. His pets were called guinea pigs, but they weren't real pigs, and they didn't go "oink oink!" They were fat, furry little things, like hamsters, only bigger, and Alonzo liked nothing better than watching them as they scampered around their cage, feeding them all sorts of delicious food and teaching them the most wonderful tricks. He taught them to find their way through long, twisty tunnels, and to ring a bell when they got thirsty, and to guess which trapdoor led to their supper. Alonzo was what was called a Brain Researcher. You know what a brain is, don't you, precious? It's the lump of meat that fills the inside of your head, and it's what hurts when you try too hard to remember something that happened long ago. It's colored grey and wrinkled all over like a soyburger, but the really strange thing is that, just as people's faces wrinkle as they grow older, so do their brains. My face and brain are very, very wrinkled. Every morning Alonzo used to look inside the brains of his pets. I'm sorry to say that, to do this, he usually had to cut them open, but I'm sure he did it in a nice way. Sometimes he also had to give his pets injections in their brains. (Injection means sticking someone with a needle, and then squirting some sort of drug into the hole you've made. When I was a girl I was very scared of needles; but they don't use them any more, not even for sewing-in fact, I'll bet you've never even seen a needle-so don't go having Nightmares. Nightmares-yes, that's something else brains are good for.) Alonzo was brown as a walnut and very, very smart. He worked in a building called a laboratory-a little red-brick building filled with glasses and cages and needles on the inside and with palm trees on the outside-where he spent his time teaching his guinea pigs so many wonderful tricks that they'd forget the ones they'd learned the week before. Then he would inject different sorts of drugs into their brains to see which ones helped them remember the trick they'd forgotten. Alonzo was working on a Memory Drug. So far, he hadn't found a single one that worked. Some people thought that Alonzo was doing all this for A Good Cause: if he could find a way for guinea pigs to remember their old tricks, he could find a way for people to do the same. But the truth was, he was doing all this for Money-that is, he was getting an allowance, just like, some day, you'll get an allowance. Your allowance, though, will come from Daddy or, better yet, from me. (I'll start giving you things just as soon as you come live with me here in the Home.) Alonzo's allowance, though, came from a group of men called the Trinidad Police Department. You know what Police are, don't you, snookums? They're men dressed in blue sunsuits who hit people who are bad. You've seen them on TV, and if you'd lived thirty years ago you'd have seen them on the street. The Chief of the Trinidad Police Department-the Daddy of the Department, the man who told everyone else what to do-was a fat black man named Jubal. Jubal's tummy was so big that he always had to sleep on his back; if he'd tried to sleep on his tummy, or so the story goes, he would have tipped back and forth like an old-time rocking horse, a kind of wooden toy. Jubal loved to eat more than anything else in the world, and I'm sure he always cleaned his

plate. Next to food, he loved his wife; for unlike him, Mrs. Jubal was thin and very pretty. Everyone on the island thought so, in fact. So did Alonzo. The Memory Drug was Jubal's idea; he decided that, if the men in the laboratory could make him such a drug, it would help in his Police work by making it easier to catch Criminals. (A Criminal is a grown-up who does something naughty; the only place you can see them now is on TV, along with Police.) When the Police caught a Criminal, they would hit him; but before they could catch him they had to know what he looked like. Sometimes, when a Criminal did something naughty, other people might see him do it; but after a few days they'd quite often forget they'd seen, and if they saw the Criminal again they might not know him. Jubal wondered if a drug might not help people remember, and he set Alonzo to work finding out. This very thing had once happened to Jubal himself: he had seen a Criminal with his very own eyes and, only a few days later, had forgotten what the man looked like. His memory must not have been very good; though of course, the whole thing had happened in the dark… It seems that Jubal had walked, or rather, rolled into his bedroom late one night, long after his wife was asleep, and in the moonlight pouring through the curtains he'd seen the dark shape of a man standing over his wife's bed. The man looked as if he'd just given Mrs. Jubal a Big Hug and a Kiss. When Jubal yelled, the man scampered across the room and climbed out the window-but not before Jubal saw, for barely a second, his face outlined in the moonlight. Mrs. Jubal told everyone she'd been fast asleep, and hadn't seen the Criminal. Jubal wondered if maybe she was Telling a Fib…But anyway, he knew he wouldn't need his wife's helpnot if Alonzo came up with his Memory Drug. But Alonzo wasn't coming up with the drug. He worked hard, injecting the brains of guinea pig after guinea pig-yet maybe he didn't work hard enough. True, if he found the drug, it would make him rich and famous, and Alonzo very much wanted to be rich and famous; he wanted people to point and stare, to know his name, to smile at him. And above all he wanted Mrs. Jubal to smile at him. But it was Mr. Jubal he was worried about. He didn't want Mr. Jubal to point and stare, he didn't even want Mr. Jubal to look at him too closely. Because you see, precious, Alonzo had been the man in the Jubals' bedroom, and Mr. Jubal was the only one who didn't know it. Alonzo went on testing drugs, but he never found the one he'd been paid to find-or if he did, he poured it down the sink. His guinea pigs remained as forgetful as an old woman. He did find a drug, though, that had a very interesting effect: it made his guinea pigs forget even more. Remember what I said about the brain, snookums? How it looks as wrinkled as a lump of grey soyburger? (Sure you do, your memory's OK!) Well, even though everyone's soyburger is special and belongs to them alone, they're all just about the same shape and have wrinkles in just about the same places. And there's one certain place, a little lump on a bigger one, where everyone has a certain set of wrinkles for remembering things. Do you know what we call it? Why, IT, of course! Isn't that funny? IT is short for a certain Com-pli-cat-ed Name you'll learn when you go to School. (In fact, it will probably be the first thing they teach you, though I didn't learn it-or IT-till much later.) The name is Inferior Temporal Gyrus-that's funny too, isn't it?-and Alonzo found that, when he injected a certain drug into that certain set of wrinkles, IT, and then stuck two wires into the hole and did a certain Com-pli-cat-ed Thing to them (sort of like touching them to a wall socket; do you know what E-lec-tric-i-ty is?), he could make his little pets forget the trick they'd just learned. He called it "snuffing a memory," and it worked almost every time. As for the drug, he called it simply Number 57, which we sometimes write like this: #57. (That little tic-tac-toe… board means Number.) He'd been searching for a Memory Drug, but

even though #57 was exactly the opposite, a Forgetfulness Drug, Alonzo decided that it had its uses. He didn't tell anyone about what he'd found; he worked alone for the rest of the year. Then, on New Year's Eve, just as 1976 was turning into 1977, he brought a batch of # 57 to the Chief of Police. The Jubals were in the middle of having a Big Party, and the house was filled with Policemen and their wives. There were broken bottles everywhere-bottles that had once held a certain kind of old-time drink called Rum-and everyone was doing the thing he liked best: the Policemen were drinking Rum and laughing and fighting, their wives were drinking Rum and laughing and talking, Mrs. Jubal was dancing, and Jubal himself was in the kitchen doing his own Favorite Thing, which was eating his New Year's Dinner. There was too much food for even a man as big as Jubal to eat, but he didn't mean to eat it all himself. Every year at this time he would stuff himself full of goose and chicken and pork and lamb and other precious meats that today only kings can eat; and after he had stuffed himself just as full as a soysausage, he would give what was left over to his guests. After saying hello to Mrs. Jubal, and giving her a Little Wink (can you close just one eye at a time?), Alonzo went into the kitchen where Mr. Jubal was busy eating, and showed him the #57. I'm afraid, though, that he Told a Fib: he told Jubal that #57 would help him remember the man in the bedroom. The Chief of Police asked Alonzo to pour some of the drug into the tall glass of Rum he was drinking, and Alonzo did as he was told. He also taped some wires to the man's head and ran them to a little machine he had made. Jubal drank his glass of Rum, just like a Good Little Boy drinking his vitamilk, and then nodded to Alonzo, who pressed a little button on his machine. All of a sudden Jubal's eyes closed, his mouth hung open, and he hiccupped. Alonzo let go of the little button, and the man's eyes opened again. "What am I doing here?" he asked. "And what are these wires on my head?" "You're just sitting down to your New Year's Dinner," said Alonzo. "Don't you remember? You'd been waiting so long for it that you fainted from hunger. These wires brought you back." "Well, leave them on," said the Chief of Police. "I don't want to faint again, I want to eat" He reached for a leg of lamb with one hand and his glass of Rum with the other. The glass was empty, but Alonzo quickly filled it with Rum and #57. As Alonzo watched, Jubal ate till he could eat no more. "Strange," he said, blinking, "I seem to get filled up faster than I used to." Alonzo pressed the little button, and again the Chief's eyes closed, his mouth hung open, and he hiccupped. When he awoke again, Alonzo told him the same story and refilled his glass. Once more the Chief began to eat his New Year's Dinner. An hour later, as the New Year was almost upon them, the people in the next room heard a loud crash, followed by the tinkling of breaking glass. They rushed into the kitchen to find Alonzo bent over the shape on the floor; he seemed to be reading the dial of a little machine from which two wires dangled. "Just as I thought," said Alonzo, and shook his head. He put the machine in his pocket without letting anyone see it. "We're too late, friends. The man's dead." He was right. Indeed, Jubal had split open like an overstuffed soysausage. He had eaten himself to death. And that, snookums, is the story of Alonzo Keyes. Please don't let it frighten you. I do hope, though, you can learn something from it: A Good Boy Always Cleans His Plate, but he doesn't make a pig of himself. Death? You don't know what Death means? Not now, precious…

I wish his story ended here, but I'm sorry to say that Alonzo Keyes went on to marry Mrs. Jubal. He put aside his guinea pigs and brain machines and lived happily-but not happily ever after. Within a few years, Alonzo and Mrs. Jubal took to fighting, and with great bitterness and gloom they decided to break up. The entire marriage had been a Mistake. It was Mrs. Jubal's idea to bring out the old machine and the #57; she thought that all her sadness could be erased if, somehow, Alonzo could make her forget that she'd ever seen him. Alonzo agreed; it seemed like a fine idea, and after "snuffing" their memories of the marriage, they could go their own ways without regret. So right away he cooked up some #57 on the kitchen stove, took out the little machine and gave it a few adjustments (that means turning the knobs an eentsy-weentsy bit). Then he and his wife sat down on the living room sofa, drank a glass of the drug, and fitted the wires to their heads. After giving his wife one last kiss and one last punch in the mouth, Alonzo pressed the button. The machine worked. Both closed their eyes, sagged to the floor, and hiccupped. The wires fell away, and when they awoke they didn't know one another. But Alonzo had made A Bad Mistake: he'd forgotten that people tend to repeat their own Bad Mistakes. As soon as he came to his senses and saw the beautiful stranger on the floor beside him, he immediately fell in love with her all over again. Can you guess what happened, snookums? That's right: they got married, and then broke up, and then erased their memories of the marriage, and then got married again, and then… Well, it took Alonzo almost twenty years to realize what had happened. When he did, he took the #57 and the wonderful machines and put them On the Market; that means he put together a lot and left them in stores for people to buy. Once again it seemed he had done it for A Good Cause: he went on TV and told everyone that, used correctly, his little machines could cure Troubled Thoughts. He saw the day, he said, when every Clinic and Home would have one, and they would be used to make people happy-people who were worried and fearful and full of regrets for things that had happened in the past. (Sometimes, you see, a memory gets "locked away" deep inside us like a Keyes Day Treasure Hunt, and it makes us go a little funny in the head years later. A boy whose Mommy had made fun of him while he was learning to talk might, years later, have a Stutter, a kind of shivering, on certain words. A woman whose Daddy had hit her when she was little might, years later, find it hard to fall in love. Alonzo thought his machines could help people like this by "snuffing out" the unhappy memories.) But once again he'd made A Bad Mistake. People went out and bought them, but not to cure their Troubled Thoughts. They bought them, rather, as a toy. Correctly adjusted, with the drug taken at just the right time and in just the right amounts, the machines could be made to snuff the tiniest and most recent memories. It gave many people the chance they had been looking for all their lives: to repeat, as if for the first time, whatever they liked best. A young girl whose happiest moments had been the first time she sat through Gone With the Wind (a popular movie which I'm sure you'll see some day) could sit through it again-for the first time. A man who liked reading could select his favorite book and, after correctly adjusting the machine, could read it again as if it were brand new. There had never been anything like this before. Once upon a time, people used to "drink to forget." That meant that they drank glasses of Rum, just like Jubal, and for an hour or two could escape from the past. But suddenly, overnight, everyone was drinking #57-and Rum itself was forgotten. There had even been a Rum-drinkers' club (it was known as the AA) where, night after night, sad people met and talked about their Troubled Thoughts. Now it changed its name to the Nepenthe Society. People came for just one night and went home cured. As you might expect-since the drug's first use had been to commit a Murder, a terrible thing, Willie-Criminals immediately saw the drug as a useful tool. A Criminal would walk into a shop, force the shopkeeper to give him all the Money in his Money-box (which was cal-

led a Cash Register), and then make the man forget he'd just been robbed. The poor shopkeeper would go about his day, never thinking to call in the Police, and only that night-after he'd looked inside his Cash Register-would he know that a Criminal had visited him. (Finally somebody very very smart went to the Police with A Good Idea: whenever they caught a Criminal, instead of hitting him they would simply snuff the man's whole past away. He would forget all the people and places that had taught him to become a Criminal, and would, in fact, become a little child again-a child who could be trained in Good Habits the way Alonzo had trained his guinea pigs) Those were memorable days, those first days of the Forgetfulness Drug… I, too, was caught up in the craze, and so was my husband, your dear Great-Grandaddy (God bless him). We were much younger then, and saw no danger. We returned to Paris, a beautiful city in another country, and there we visited a certain garden named Versailles-a garden we had always loved because we'd spent the day after our wedding there. As we walked the broad paths, passing statues buried in greenery and bushes in the shapes of animals, gazing at ourselves in the reflecting pools and dodging the spray from the fountains, we knew somehow that we'd done it all before that much the machine had not erased-yet it was just as wonderful as if it were the first time. Once again we thrilled to the vistas; once again we felt the vague Presence wherever we walked… Pardon me, Willie. Great-Granny does go on. It's you I should be thinking of…I see I've written of the Presence. That's not the same as Presents, Willie, like the kind you get for Keyes Day, the kind I'll give you when you come visit me. I mean that your Great-Grandaddy and I had the feeling we were being watched by Something… Well, Something was watching us all, I guess, because less than a month after Alonzo's machines came out in the stores, The Government passed a law calling #57 a Dangerous Drug and stopping sales of the wonderful machines. (If you want to know what The Government is, snookums, I'll tell you when you get here. Don't ask Daddy about it, he doesn't know. He'll only Tell you a Fib.) Policemen went from house to house searching for machines that had already been sold; most of them were taken and melted down like oleo on a slice of soytoast, and the drug was dumped into the ocean. But your Great-Grandaddy (bless his heart) unscrewed the machine into little pieces and hid them inside our TV set, where they looked like they belonged, and he poured the #57 over an aspidistra plant we had in the bedroom, where it seeped through the soil and collected in a little puddle at the bottom of the dish long after the Policemen had gone. We weren't the only ones who found a way to "save our snuffer" (as the machines came to be called). Many others did, too, and some men even made their own machines and drugs in their basements. I guess it wasn't so very hard to do. So when The Government saw that its laws weren't working, and that Alonzo's snuffers were themselves hard to snuff, it quickly passed some new laws saying that people were allowed to own snuffers-but only if they bought them from The Government. The ones The Government made were much better than Alonzo's; all you had to do was press them against your head, and there was no drug to worry about. The snuffer did it all. Soon the new snuffers became as popular as TV and as common as cars. Everybody owned one-everybody, that is, but your Great-Grandaddy (God bless him) and me. Some might say he was too cheap to buy the new model-I'm sure that's what your Mommy and Daddy would tell you- but the truth is, he just plain didn't trust The Government. In a way, I think he may have been right. There was something very funny about those snuffers…They'd been On the Market for a year or two, and suddenly they all began breaking down. People had to take them to be repaired - you know, the way a man comes to fix the air-

conditioner - only the repairs weren't made at offices. No, you had to take your broken snuffer somewhere else. To a Clinic. And when you came back, you'd be wearing the snuffer. The new models, it seems, were made to fit over the head, covering all the hair, like the chromium Helmets your Mommy and Daddy wear. This way, it is easier for people to. have their snuffer with them all the time. And that's just the way people wanted it; they liked to keep their Helmets on all day and all night, when they were handy for snuffing out Nightmares. In short, SF had become a way of life. (Some people think SF stands for Snuffers. It doesn't. It stands for Selective Forgetfulness, which is what Snuffers are for.) And it's still a way of life today. Thanks to SF, certain books have become amazingly popular; others have been left to crumble into dust. People find the book they like best and spend all their time reading it, over and over, snuffing out each previous reading. The Classics are doing well, and so is something we call Adult Fiction, which means they are written for lonely people. Mysteries are doing best of all; every home and Home, it seems, has a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I know it's a big favorite with your Mommy and Daddy-I remember seeing a copy of the special plastic-coated "Indestructo Edition" at your house and maybe some day it will be a favorite of yours. I hope, though, that you choose to read it only once… As your Great-Grandaddy used to say, SF has made it possible for a man to find a wellthumbed book on bis bookshelf, a book almost falling apart from years and years of reading, a book he knows he's read dozens of times, and studied dozens of times, and discussed, and written in the margins, and loved-and still not remember ever having read it. A funny feeling, right, snookums? Most people, of course, don't have bookshelves any more. After all, they own only one book. That's all they'll ever need… In movies the same thing has happened, only worse, since reading's too hard for many people. Young men and women quit their jobs and spend all day in downtown movie theaters, growing pale, living on popcorn and orange drink, watching the same film again and again, reel after reel, until they sicken or starve. And there's no longer any question of spending time and money on a film that turns out to be bad; there are no more unhappy surprises. All the uncertainty has been taken out of it, and whenever people go to the movies, they know they're going to see their favorite film. There's no further need for new films, and no interest in them. No one's made a film in years; the Old Greats are good enough. TV has been even crazier, maybe because each part of the country has its own choice. In Birmingham, England, episode #114 of Coronation Street was at one time shown every day for more than a year, and no one complained. But the record goes to the citizens of Calhoun County, Arkansas, who voted twenty-six years ago to have a favorite segment of / Love Lucy"Lucy Buys a Dachshund"-shown every morning, seven days a week, re-run after re-run. You guessed it, snookums. It's still on the air. Live-action sports were hard-hit, too; men have taken to watching "instant replays" of their favorite football games on TV. There was even a terrible tragedy many years ago (that means something that ends badly) during the National Crew Races of 2024. During a crew race, Willie, eight men sit in a long thin rowboat and row as fast as they can, while a ninth man cheers them on. And in the Races of 2024 the men did row as fast as they could-nine times, after which six men on one crew and four on the other died of heart attacks. It seems the audience was so excited by the Races that they snuffed them, and persuaded the crews to do the

same. The men in the boats couldn't understand why, the sixth and seventh and eighth times around, the Race seemed so tiring…… Of course, Bad Mistakes like that had to be stopped, and they were. People have learned to be more careful. And then, a lot of things, such as music, seem almost unchanged. People listen to good music-and bad music-pretty much as they did before SF. The reason, I guess, is that music depends on repetition to be enjoyed; that means hearing it over and over, snookums. I'll bet you didn't like your Nursery Rhymes the very first time you heard them… Though, of course, there are certain pieces that call for snuffing. The most popular is something by a man named Haydn; it's called The Surprise Symphony. As you can see, everything has slowed down; in fact, we're standing still. People are too busy re-living the favorite days of their pasts to worry about the future. When someone asks, "What's new?" there's only one answer: "Nothing." And it's been this way for… For twenty, thirty years now. Oh, snookums, it's been awful! The past was never like this! We're in a kind of Living Death. (It's not necessary that you know what Death means, snookums.) The rest of the world smiles at us and shakes their heads, yet The Government doesn't seem to care. I guess they're happy they've been re-elected time and again for the past two decades. (All this may be too com-pli-cat-ed for you, Willie, but I simply mean, everyone seems to like The Government now.) I've never voted for them myself; and now, of course, they won't let me, because I'm no. Your Great-Grandaddy (God bless him) never voted for them either. I wonder what he'd say if he were alive today… No, we didn't vote. But then, neither of us ever wore the Helmets. Everyone else bought them, but we were… Afraid, I guess. Those Helmets don't work right. They snuff things even when nobody's asked them to, as if Someone Else is holding the switch. And so people these days seem to forget things you'd think they'd want to remember. Like the time The Government promised all that money for the cities, and the cure for cancer, and the solar energy plants in every county. (That meant that your air-conditioner would work whenever the sun shined on your house.) The Government seemed to forget those promises-but all the people did, too. All the people with Helmets, that is. They were busy watching TV Greats and The Classics Hour. I'd tell your Mommy and Daddy about the Mayor's promise to leave office six years ago, to "give someone else a chance"-and they'd only smile and vote for him again… That's one reason I'm afraid of the Helmets. Oh, please don't think I'm just an old scaredycat, Willie; it's you I'm afraid for. I don't want you to make that Little Trip to the Clinic, and I'm so glad it won't happen till you're five. (Someone here at the Home said that, soon, children will be fitted with Helmets when they're born, and I said I didn't see how that could be true, because during the first five years the head grows too fast… But she said it'll be a new kind of Helmet that grows right along with it.) That means that, some day, everyone will wear a Helmet. But not me, I don't want one and I don't need one. I still have our old machine, the first one we bought, and what',s left of Alonzo's #57, and sometimes, when the need is great, I take it out. But I only use it for Very Special Things, precious. Harmless Things. Like the time someone (I forget who) died-someone I must have loved-and I wanted to erase the pain from my memory. Sometimes the need is very great. But I've never worn one of the Helmets. They frighten me. And I wish they frightened you as well. Listen and I'll tell you another Secret: I know why your Mommy and Daddy never take their Helmets off. They can't get them off. The Helmets are part of their heads.

It's true, I know it's true. A few days before they put me in this Home, I saw a man jump from the roof of his building. He fell toward the sidewalk, ten floors down. He fell on his head. And when it hit the sidewalk, the Helmet cracked open, and there was no head under it, so that everything that was inside ran out, and the wires were exposed… So Willie, precious, please come visit Great-Granny before your Trip to the Clinic. Please come to the Home and live here with me, I won't let them find you, and I'll let you try out my # 57 and that will be good enough. I'm so glad I've written you this letter, teaching you, warning you, scaring you, perhaps, but that's all to the good, because it means you'll come to me. Writing has made me feel so close to you, but it's nothing like having you here with me would be. Having you here safe with your old GreatGranny who loves you so dearly… I'd give you all the cookies and cake you could eat, I'd even let you try the # 57, it will be good enough… Sorry, snookums. Great-Granny repeats herself. I'll end here, praying for your reply, and I'll be waiting, even if it takes years. Your loving Great-Granny Fri 18 Sept '39 Willie, precious, How's my little snookums? How's my snookums today? As happy as I am? I hope so, because I'm sure there's never been such a wonderful day! I woke up this morning feeling like a young girl again, and when I looked at your picture above my bed, and the rain beating against my window, there were tears of happiness in my eyes. And do you know why, precious? Because today I've decided to sit down and write you a letter. Imagine, Willie, a letter of your very own! Baby's First Letter! There's so much I have to tell you, and I'm so excited I can hardly begin. Why, I don't remember the last time I felt so good… 4: Clive Sinclair - Uncle Vlad A small puff of powder cleared and I saw my aunt touch my uncle on his white cheek with such exquisite precision that she left lip marks like the wings of a ruby butterfly. I watched her for nine times nine swings of the golden pendulum as she walked from guest to guest leaving behind trails of the silver dust that sparkled in the lamplight; it was as though the entire effort of her toilette was not so much designed to establish a character as to create such an impression as to leave a colourful insignia on the memory. Her voice floated on her breath, a soft wind that bent and bared the necks of her listeners before her; I heard her whisper imaginary family secrets to an English aesthete who made notes behind her back, "I believe that Lupus thinks that Vlad married me on purely scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern butterfly." The aesthete laughed. "Well, Countess," he said, "I hope he won't stick pins into you." Then they both swirled away in a creamy whirl of silk out into the milky way of moonlight and left behind the delicate blooms and roughed cheeks. Uncle Vlad smiled at my aunt's joke and followed her silhouette as it flitted among the lace curtains, but he remained where he was, still standing beneath the candelabra, wax dripping onto his white hair, holding several glass jars, some containing ether, others containing frantic beating moths, one containing champagne. Our family is old and distinguished, descended from the ancient mountain lords down into a lowland mansion. Uncle Vlad, tall and grand, the head of the house, is himself called after our most famous ancestor, Vled the Impaler, who finally drove the Turks from Europe, so named because of his sanguine habit of tossing Turkish captives into the air and catching them

on the point of a spear. We have a portrait in the Great Hall of Vied standing in a full field of flowers amid the dying Turks who, pierced through the middle, and waving their arms and legs, look like a multitude of ecstatic butterflies. Beneath this scene in now-smoked grey this legend is painted in Roman print-Vled I called The Im-paler. Vlad is the modern corruption of the venerable Vied, the result of an obscure etymological whim. However, there is no disguising the physical similarities; it is all but impossible to detect a difference between the painting of Vied and the face of Uncle Vlad. Uncle Vlad is an honoured lepidop-terist, but, as a rule, does not sail about honey fields in short trousers; instead he goes out at night and gathers moths by candle light. He exchanges these easily, because of his skill and their unique paleness, for the more brightly coloured varieties, which he mounts, simply, by driving a needle through their bodies. Uncle Vlad's pursuit is looked upon with much interest by the distant Viennese branch of our family which maintains, to a doctor, that it is a genuine genetic manifestation of his more barbaric prototype; while another more emigre branch claims that Uncle Vlad is a veritable paragon of the pattern of behaviourism in that, having seen the painting of Vled at an early age, he has ever since sought to realise the contents within the limitations of his own civilized environment. Uncle Vlad believes greatly in tradition. Every year, on a fixed day, the entire family gathers at our home to celebrate the generations with a gorgeous extravagance. My uncle and aunt occupy weeks in anticipation of the fantastic evening, working and reworking menus, always seeking a sublime gastronomic equilibrium, so that the discards look like nothing more than the drafts of meticulous lyric poems. And what poets they are! Garbure Bearnaise, Truites au Bleu, Grives au Genievre, Canard au Sang, Crepes Flamhe aux Papillons. They strive to astonish the most sophisticated taste, the only applause they seek is the thick sound of the satisfied tongue clapping the palatine papilla. Once Uncle Vlad said to my aunt, at the supreme moment before the food is collected, "Should we not share the secrets of our art with the swine that starve?" and she replied, "Let them eat words." Our family is proud and jealous of its dark arboreal rebus. This year, being the first congregation since my coming of age, I was permitted to help in the preparations. On the eve I went out alone into the nocturnal wood carrying my rods and nets and followed the overgrown path to the gilt river. And there I sat in silence for many hours, very content, for there are few sights more beautiful than that of the silver fish struggling in the moonlight, until my nets were full. I left the fish where they were, because it was vital to keep them alive, and commenced the journey back, proud that I had completed my task so well. But I had gone no more than a kilometre towards the residence when I heard a rustling of dead leaves and the final cry of a bird in pain. I pushed my way through the bushes in the direction of the sound and came into the perfect circle of a moonbright glade. The air was full of the melodious song of a score or more thrushes. The birds were all on the ground, trapped in Uncle Vlad's subtle snares, and they did not look real but seemed to be some eccentric ornament of the night. Uncle Vlad' himself, dressed by the shadows as a harlequin, was stepping among the thrushes and killing them one by one by gently pressing their soft necks between his thumb and forefinger. Each death, save for the single scream and the frightened flap of the wings, was conducted in complete silence: until the survivors sang again. Uncle Vlad saw me and allowed me to help. "My boy," he whispered to me as we worked, "how was the fishing?" "It was good, Uncle," I replied. "I caught twenty trout." When we had finished Uncle Vlad collected all the tight bodies into a little bundle and opened a sack of the finest silk. But before he dropped the birds into it he bit off their heads. Fine tributaries of blood ran from his swelling lips. "The thrushes always come to this spot," he said, "they cannot resist my special snails." The kitchen was already full with the shadowy figures of our servants, when we returned, and my aunt was throwing resinous logs into the dancing flames. One of the anonymous cooks was apparent through a vaporous curtain of steam, stirring a dull copper soup pot bub-

bling with boiling water and vegetables. "There must be no garlic in the Garbure Bearnaise!" Uncle Vlad called out as we entered. "Of course not, my dear," replied my aunt. "Did you do well?" Uncle Vlad emptied his bag out onto the ancient wooden table, and at once long fingers fluttered out of the obscurity and plucked the feathers from the bodies. Then the birds were split open with sharp knives and stuffed till they were full with peppercorn and juniper. When this was done to the satisfaction of my uncle the breasts were sewn up, and the birds wrapped in slices of pork lard and bound, ready to be cooked. "We shall eat well tomorrow," said my aunt to me. Exactly one hour before we were due to dine, when all our guests were safely arrived, we killed the ducks. We took seven regal mallards from the lake and suffocated them by wringing their necks and pressing their breasts. The carcasses were given to the cooks, under the supervision of my aunt, to dress and draw, while Uncle Vlad and I went out with a large tank to collect the patient trout. And when we carried it back into the kitchen the oval tank seemed to have a shining lid, so full was it with fish. The remains of the ducks were ready in the great meat press needing only for my uncle to add his libation of red wine. Then the press was turned and the blood and wine was caught, as it ran, by Uncle Vlad, in goblets of gold, and poured into a silver bowl. Pure vinegar was heated in large pans, over the oven, until it boiled. "Throw in the fish while they still live," ordered my aunt, "and let them cook until they shrivel and turn steel blue." Thus everything was made complete, and we went into the incandescent dining room to join our guests. The English aesthete, protege of my blonde cousin Adorian, and Madeleine, adored but adopted daughter of the childless union of the Count Adolphus and the Countess Ada, were the only visitors I did not recognize from an earlier year. "My dear, you look absolutely ravissant," said myopic Countess Ada, "you simply must meet Madeleine." However, before that happened the implacable gong gave out with sonorous tidings of the approaching pabulum and, at the sound, we all took our places, according to the established decorum, at the ebony table. I sat in velvet, as always, between my aunt and the ageing mistress, so old as to have been long accepted as a second or rather parallel wife, of General X. The Garbure Bearnaise was served in ochre bowls of rough clay, the Truites au Bleu came on dishes of silver garlanded with circles of lemon and round potatoes, and the Grives au Genievre were carried high on plates of the finest porcelain. The bones crunched deliciously beneath white teeth, knives and forks flashed like smiles as they moved, faces shone, and the wine glowed like a living thing in the crystal glasses. Then amid a fanfare of the oohs and aahs of aroused, and admiring appetites the Canard au Sang was brought on and, as Uncle Vlad flamed the pieces of meat with the sauce of blood and wine and a bottle of cognac, I looked toward Madeleine for the first time. Her face was the shape of a slightly more serious moon than our own, and her nocturnal hair was as black as the ravens that fly in the hills beyond our lands. She seemed to be searching some distant horizon for her crescent eyebrows hovered like the wings of a gliding bird, and her mouth was slightly open as if she were holding the most delicate bird's egg between her lips. When she noticed that I was regarding her so curiously she smiled a little and she blushed. As was the custom, after the main course, our smooth glasses were filled with champagne, and we left the decadent table, before the dessert was served. The wonders of our cuisine were praised, by a familiar chorus, to the heights of our moulded ceilings; but my aunt went outside with the English aesthete to discuss synaesthesia, and Uncle Vlad took the opportunity to catch some moths. I looked for Madeleine, but I could not find her. "I say, young fellow," mumbled ancient Count Adolphus through his moustaches, "have you seen Madeleine yet?" But I did not see Madeleine again until the butterflies burst into ardent applause when we all sat down for the Crepes aux Papillons. There was something indescribably wonderful, that night, in watching those blazing palettes puff away in smoke; it was very much as if the colo-

urs evaporated into the air and were absorbed by our breath. The crepes too seemed suffused with this vibrant energy; it must be said, Uncle Vlad had created the most brilliant dessert of his life. I wondered afterwards if the extraordinary vitality had communicated itself to Madeleine, if her cheeks had grown roses, but when I looked I saw that she was already walking away from the table. "I do believe that that young lady has dropped her handkerchief," observed the mistress of General X. "If I were you, young man, I should return it to her." I nodded. I could hear the violins beginning to play discordant themes in the ballroom. The dance opened with a grand flourish of wind instruments and took off around the room on the resonant wings of the flutes and strings and joined, in counterpoint, the butterflies released simultaneously by Uncle Vlad. My uncle and aunt, as much concerned with the macula lutea as with the more alimentary organs, had carefully planned to fill in the musical space with the most unusual sights. A pellucid cube of the purest crystal was suspended from the centre of the ceiling and rotated on a fixed cycle by means of a concealed clockwork motor, creating an optical illusion, for in each of the faces a single eye was carved, and in each of the eyes a prism had been planted; so that, as it revolved above the dancing floor, it caught the occasional beam of light and projected visionary rainbows. Benevolent Uncle Vlad, having led the dancers with my aunt in an energetic pas de deux, stood resting against an ormolu commode pouring out tall glasses of punch from a commodious bowl, happily recording the performance of his decorated insects. "Ah, Nephew," he remarked as I emerged from among a crowd of dancers, "have you noticed that spinal quiver in the little beasts when a certain note is sounded, highC, I believe." "As a matter of fact I have not," I replied, "I'm trying to find Madeleine to return a handkerchief." Countess Ada and Count Adolphus came, capering by and called out, "She is beside the flowers in the garden." Madeleine was standing all alone beneath the moon, in the centre of a crazy path, skirted by a row of yellow gaslights and ghostly trees. As I approached nearer to her, along that long lane, I fancied that she was looking, as if fascinated, at the illuminated cupolas, each of which was nightly adorned with the tingling jewelry of bats. And I was reminded what a newcomer Madeleine really was, for this singular display was almost a family phenomenon; indeed, by coincidence, all true members of our family have a small but distinctive brown birth mark on the cheek that is said to resemble two open wings. Poor General X, as a result of this, was forced to grow a bushy beard, not because of his military manner nor because of his virile dignity, but because he developed an unfortunate twitch. "Hello," I spoke into the night, "hello." I do not think that I have seen anyone look so beautiful as Madeleine looked at that moment with the full curve of her throat outlined against the blackness as if by the inspired stroke of an artist's brush. She jumped a little, like a sleeper awakened, and turned towards me. Her brown eyes were excited and shining like an Indian summer. "The night is so wonderful," she said, "I feel enchanted." "Let us walk together," I replied, "and I will show you the garden." Madeleine took my arm and in the instant that I felt the warm flesh of her own bare arm brush carelessly against my cold hand I experienced a sensation that I can only call an emotional tickle; as if some hitherto secret nerve end had been suddenly revealed and stimulated. That arm of hers was a marvellous thing, it was no single colour but a multitude of hues and tints, and covered with the finest down, except inside the elbow, where the smooth skin was pale and shy, and utterly desirable. The flowers were everywhere but the famous roses were all spaced out before the French windows, so that they encircled the building like some blooming necklace. Madeleine reached out to pick one of the blossoms but managed only to prick her finger. She gave a little cry, and stared at the finger which was rapidly dropping beads of blood. "Let me see," I said, "I know how to make it better." And I took the wounded finger between my thumb and forefinger and squeezed it, very carefully, until the last few drops of blood came like red flowers, then I carried it to my lips and sucked away any hurt. I bandaged the flushed tip with Madeleine's own handkerchief. She smiled. "Will you dance?"

I asked. The slight dizziness I had felt when I tended Madeleine's hurt was heightened by our mazy movement around the dance floor to the sound of a jazzy waltz; though it was not, in fact, at all an unpleasant feeling, rather like being drunk on champagne bubbles. "Look!" shouted Countess Ada to my aunt, "look who Madeleine is dancing with." Madeleine coloured slightly, which only made her the more radiant, then as she raised her face to me the spectrum burst all over her, and all else retreated into spectral shades. In the magic of that moment I completely forgot that the entire illusion was due to the clever artifice of my uncle and aunt and quite unconsciously pulled Madeleine closer to me. She responded with a shiver along her back, as if she were waving invisible wings, and I drifted over a dream-like sea holding onto Madeleine's warm body. I have no idea how long that moment lasted, but in those seconds or minutes I experienced an extraordinary sensation, my senses were literally magnified, I saw her skin as mixtures of pure colour, I felt her every movement; the beat in her heart, the air in her lungs, the blood in her veins. But Madeleine suddenly broke the spell. "Oh no!" she cried, "we have danced over a butterfly." When, at last, a sliver of sun shone through the leadlight windows and exploded over the trumpet section the dancers all leaned against one another and walked from the floor into the corridors and dimness of the receding night. I led Madeleine by the hand to her chamber. "I must sleep now," she said, "but we will meet again in the afternoon?" "Yes, you must sleep," I replied as I touched her tired eyelids with my fingertips, "but I will plan a picnic for when you awaken, and I will show you the ruined castle of Vled." I returned to the ballroom to find my uncle and aunt, to congratulate them upon their success, and found them both upon their knees collecting the bruised bodies of the fallen butterflies. I joined them, to complete the family group, crawling about as if we were posing for a portrait of a surreal autumn in a sparkling land of leaves without trees. "Your designs were wonderful, the execution was superb," I said to them both, "even I ignored the methods for the sake of the effect." "Everything worked perfectly," agreed my aunt, "and what is more you and Madeleine liked each other." "Yes, I wanted to speak to you about that," I began. "I have asked Madeleine to come with me beyond the woods, and I would like to take some food and wine with us," I paused, "so will you be kind enough to show me the cellars?" Uncle Vlad looked very pleased with himself and beamed at my aunt as if all credit for my request was owing to him. "Of course, with pleasure," he replied, with that smile of his, and added, "tell me, Nephew, do you intend to kiss her?" No light at all came into the cellars except, that is, from the illumined rectangle at the head of the stairs, where the old oaken door was left open. I had never been into the cellars before, so it was all strange to me, but Uncle Vlad walked among the rows upon rows of green bottles as if this weird underwater world were his natural habitat. "We are standing directly beneath our small lake," he informed me. "The cellars were designed that way deliberately so as to control the air temperature in here." Soon I was moving about freely on my own, and the longer I remained in the cellars the more I felt that I too belonged to this profound environment, that I was in truth the nephew of my uncle. The air was rich with the smells of the earth, the cellars were like a distillation of night and the world, the essence of the veil, the antithesis of those bright tedious rooms where everything is visible at once, where you forget that you are breathing. There should be an art to capturing beauty, it becomes merely banal when it is not hunted. Uncle Vlad emerged from the depths of a particularly dusty rack of vintage carrying two bottles of red wine by their swans' neck; one in each hand. "These should be just the thing," he said as he rubbed a label. "Chateau Margaux." Then we went much deeper, beyond where the wine was stored, until we came to a dank natural cave, which smelt very strongly of pelardon. Uncle Vlad picked up a few small rounds of the aged goats' cheese, carefully wrapped and tied in dusky vine leaves, and weighed them in his hands. "Perfect," he adjudged, "just ripe, now all you require is some pate de joie gras."

"You must beware of the sun,", said Madeleine, regarding my pale complexion with some concern. "I do not want you to burn because of showing me the castle." She gave me her straw bonnet to wear, and the blue ribbons flew in the breeze on the slope of the hill. Lupus, the great dog, ran on through the waving corn and the poppies and waited for us, barking, at the start of the woods. Several birds flew out in a straight line squawking with alarm. The woods were much cooler and greener than the sandy daylight, a delightful diurnal anachronism, an Eden free from gardeners; what is more, I knew all the paths. Lupus darted ahead and chased rabbits through the undergrowth; usually he caught them. I carried the picnic on my back in a creamy satchel made from a pelt of the softest goatskin and led Madeleine by the hand, watching all the tonal variations that the light and the shade of the sun and the different leaves made over her body. It seemed that the life in her had come to the surface and was showing itself in this ebb and flow of moving colours. I chose the spot very carefully and spread a chequered cloth over the ground, and I put out all the food on it in the crafty design of a rather ingenious check mate. We sat beneath the tall trees in the long grass. The picnic was excellent; the pate provided the expected largesse, and the cheese had just the right temperament, and I continually filled the glasses with the flowing wine. Madeleine ate a yellow pear for her sweet, and the juice dripped from her fingers; her black hair was just touching emerald leaves, also pear-shaped, and the attracted flies flew round her head like a halo. "That was a lovely picnic," she said, smiling. "What shall we do now?" "I must tell you something, Madeleine," I confessed, by way of a reply, after some assumed consideration. "I dabble in paronomasia." Madeleine put down the core of the pear. "I thought that the game would be chess," she gave me a sly smile, "but now I suppose that it will be a cross-word puzzle, am I right?" She was right, of course. Nevertheless, I took a black crayon from the satchel and wrote on the white squares of the cloth-many alive devils enliven living even in novel evils. "Oh well," laughed Madeleine, "we all have our acrostics to bear." I don't know why, it certainly was not because Madeleine had beaten me at my own game, but her response made me shiver. Madeleine must have noticed because she touched my cheek with her lips. "You are cold," she said. "There," I said after we pushed through the last of the overgrown bushes, "is Vled's castle." The ruined keep stood erect and solitary on the motte in melancholy grandeur. Ravens flew about the grey merlons in great circles. As we looked the setting sun shone red through holes in the broken walls giving the whole, for a brief while, the appearance of a cavernous skull with bloodshot sockets. Although I had seen the same sight many times it still exerted over me an irresistible and hypnotic fascination; as if there really were some powerful force behind those empty carmine eyes. Then the sun deepened to purple and streaks of fiery clouds opened labial wounds in the sky. The castle looked even blacker, and all the more compelling. Madeleine did not blink, she stood transfixed, staring into the approaching gloom; her eyes reflected what she saw. I felt her hand tighten in mine and grow colder all the time; her entire being seemed as if frozen on the threshold of an irreversible event like a reluctant swimmer poised on the edge of a diving board. I touched her left breast with my right hand, just enough to feel the flesh. "Will you go in, Madeleine?" I asked. She came without a word. The graves of my ancestors were all covered with historic weeds, and the moat was dry, but a wooden table and twelve wooden chairs remained within the hollow keep. We walked through the grounds with all the care and respect due to fallen stones and came into the dining hall. It was evening. I lit many candles and covered the table with the chequered cloth and spread out upon it the remains of the picnic; there were a few cheeses, a little pate, much fruit, and most of a bottle of wine, so that I was able to compose a creditable still life. It glowed in the glimmering light. On the walls beside where Madeleine sat there was the mural which represented, in picturesque detail, the narrative of Vled's many military victories. Also, by way of interludes, either for himself or the spectator, the artist had included the faded de-

lights of Vled's more carnal conquests. Even as I looked a single moonbeam suddenly shot as swift as an arrow through a crack in the annals and flashed directly onto Madeleine's face and neck. "This is the most extraordinary supper," she murmured, very coyly, "that I have ever eaten." She smiled across at me and I saw at once, in the luminous night, that her upper lip was shaped exactly like the famous long bow old Vled had used to lick the Turks. It quivered a little beneath my gaze, and the more I studied that priceless object the more I was filled with an increasing need to make it mine. I wanted to taste that secret egg. Then the light changed, or she moved. I followed the graceful arch of her neck to where her ear disappeared among her rich hair and I felt again, though I knew not why, that I had to possess that mysterious lobe too that hung so full like a liquid jewel. Madeleine became in that chance instant of illumination a collection of individual treasures and temptations; I had never done it before, but I knew then that I had to kiss her. My desire was inevitable, as inevitable as the flame that burnt above the candle. In the courtyard, beyond the keep, the centre of a thirsty fountain, a small statue of Cupid was slowly falling to pieces. There is an old belief in our family to the effect that any passion, if held strongly enough, can so influence the prevailing atmosphere as to establish conditions favourable for the realisation of that passion. It happened in the gathering night that Madeleine got up from her place at a table of crumbling foods and walked towards me, slowly, languorously, through the undulant waves and splashes of candlelight and wax. I couldn't take my eyes from her mouth; the tongue was just visible through the open lips; the teeth looked sharp and white. I rose too, unawares, in a state of hard anticipation. We met, quickly, flesh against flesh; and I knew, by a kind of ecstatic instinct, exactly what I had to do. I put my hands on Madeleine's hot cheeks, making a prize cup of my hands and her cervix, and tilted her head to one side. She looked at me with a sleepy look, and half closed her eyes. Her lips started to move. I placed my face on Madeleine's offered neck and began to kiss her, moving my tongue over her smooth skin, seeking, seeking, pressing, until I could feel the blood pumping through her jugular artery. Then I took a roll of the powdered flesh between my lips so that it was pressed against my teeth. I had to hold Madeleine tight for her whole body was swept again and again with a series of short but violent tremors. I could feel her breathing right into my ear, her warm breath came in pants and clung to me for a few seconds before vanishing. I sank my teeth into the skin and pushed, harder, harder- suddenly a great wave seized me and with a convulsive spasm of my cervical spine I bit deep into Madeleine's vein. Then my mouth was filled with her blood and I think I heard her shriek of pleasure through my own blaze of delight. It was a perfect kiss! I kissed Madeleine until I had to stop for breath; by then she was quite relaxed, and the arms which had clutched me so firmly hung limp by her sides. I carried her gently to the table and rolled her over the chequered cloth so that she finished on her back. Her arms got in a bit of a tangle, so I straightened them out for her. And I leaned back in a chair, well satisfied. As I did so a rather large acherontia atropos flew into a candle flame and fell burning onto Madeleine's cheek. She was too weak to brush it off, her hands fluttered as vainly as the moth's wings. "Madeleine," I whispered in her ear as I blew off the ashes, "now you are really one of the family." 5: Brian M. Stableford - Judas Story How do you feel about Jack Queen King? You love him? Well then, listen to me for a few minutes. No, I'm not trying to steal a bit of the big gold rush. I'm not selling tears. This is the truth, and I'm giving it away. And besides, I-for one-think that you're wasting a hell of a lot of good

tears. How many tears can Jack possibly need, quite apart from the question of how many he deserves? What gives me the right to be telling you a story you don't want to hear? Well, take a look at your photographs and posters of Jack Queen King. Have you, perchance, got one which is taken from a little further back than six feet from his fly buttons? One which shows some of what goes on behind Jack's pretty face and his Ace of Hearts guitar? Take that one out of the stack. There's probably a guy standing on the left of your beloved, four or five discreet paces back of him. He's tall and sleepy-faced, and he looks as if he doesn't quite belong, which is why eighty percent of the pics cut him in half with the side of the frame. That's John Joe Hope. He was Jack's bass player. Right in back, sandwiched in between Jack and John Joe, you'll be able to see a big, shiny mountain of drums. If the focus is sharp on Jack then you won't be able to see much of me. But there might be a dull grey blur, or a pair of phantom hands attached to drumsticks. Rest assured -I'm in there somewhere. My name doesn't matter, and it doesn't sound anything like what they call me, which is Clay. John Joe and I backed Jack King for nearly two years. From the bottom rung of the ladder, to the top. Whenever you heard him play, we were behind him. Now the first thing I want to make clear is that I'm not claiming any credit for the success of Jack Queen King. There's not a shred of your affection that I want to take away from him. He can have it all. I want none of it. I was there, that's all. There's not a single atom of Jack Queen King's music that you can blame on me. At the same time, I'm saying nothing about or for John Joe Hope. He can tell his own story. This is mine and mine alone. The first time I saw Jack Queen King he made a very strong impression on me-as an untalented out-and-out bastard. It was no surprise. In our business, every guy on the road will cut your throat if you're cutting into his slice of the loaf. Which we all were. There are only so many third-rate spots for a hell of a lot of third rate outfits. Jack was playing solo in those days-mostly common-or-garden blues, some Dylan and some lukewarm rock thrown in, to try and cater to all kinds of tastelessness. They stuck him in our dressing room because they didn't have any spare, and they figured he wouldn't take up much space. He was on first, playing to the crowd while their minds were more on getting canned, stoned and paired-off than blowing their minds in a sweaty bop-session. We didn't want to hear him, but they had the p.a. turned up far too loud and the walls were like cardboard, so we had no option. He was pretty much of a dead loss. We didn't even notice when he deserted his pattern towards the end of the pitch and stuck in a couple of his own numbers. But he came back looking cool and far from unhappy, and he told us how well his own stuff had gone down compared to the standards. We said yeah, and great, and how were they, and he got a little uptight because we weren't even listening to what he was saying, but just making habitnoises. But we had no time for Jack Queen King in his self-elected role as God's gift to rock. We were nervy-especially Pete Candler, whose fingers hadn't worked too well since they put him on downers to break him of a speed habit and he'd got hooked on slowtime instead. He wasn't an addict, just a bit of a wreck. But he'd been part of the group since before my time, and it wasn't for me to suggest we get a new lead. The one thing that stuck in my mind about Jack Queen King before that gig was that when he changed his jackets he took something out of the breast pocket and flipped it on the floor. It was a playing card-the Four of Clubs. He saw me looking. "Carry it for luck," he said, absently. "Never use the same one twice." And he took out a thinned down pack, peeled the blind card off the top, and stuck it into the pocket of his working-coat.

"Don't you look to see what it is?" Marna asked him. Marna was our vocalist. "Never," he said. I thought even then-for no particular reason-that he was a damn liar. We went on and did our usual performance. Solid rock with just enough bounce-lots of effort, lots of crude noise. Lots of fun for the people out front if they were simple-minded enough not to compare us too closely to what they really liked. Mostly, they appreciated us-ifthey hadn't they wouldn't book us. We were no secret by now-we seemed to have been touring the third-class circuit for the best part of our lives. We were all trading on our illusions about how good we might be, or how much we liked the life, or how long it would be before a better bandwagon rolled close by. Up on the stage you can't hear a damn thing and you can't see much because of the fancy lighting, so you mostly concentrate on what your hands are doing and don't try to get out into the crowd. John Joe really does play gigs with his eyes shut. Occasionally, though, my mind tends to wander into the auditorium, and I try to figure what they're thinking about and what our music is doing to them. I don't try to look at them, because it's not possible. But I let myself go out there a bit, and I get this vague picture of flapping bodies and an occasional pair of staring eyes which remind me that I'm a freak in a great big goldfish bowl. I don't mind that much. A drummer has his drums to hide him. And Marna was the one who really felt the eyes-the hungry eyes and the glassy eyes. That night, though, I caught two eyes that I knew belonged to Jack Queen King, and he wasn't busy getting a charge from Mama's sweaty legs and flopping tits. He was watching all of us, from all the angles. I don't know exactly what I saw or how I knew, but Jack Queen King was out there and he was drinking us in. And it made me shiver. It was past closing time when we came off, but our ever-faithful manager had laid in a supply so we could drown our inadequacies to our heart's content. I was hoping that Jack Queen King might have pulled a disappearing act, but he was still hanging around in the dressing-room. After a gig, Pete and Marna liked to talk, and the others humored them. But I liked to have a quiet word with myself alone, perhaps aided by a bottle or two. So it was easy for Jack to corner me. "I like the way you play the drums," he said, sounding about as friendly to my buzzing ears as a rattlesnake. "Thanks," I said. "Seems to me, though," he said, "that you could do with a little more attack." "I play drums, not machine-guns," I told him, "and I sure as hell don't need you to tell me how." He could hardly have failed to get the message, but he didn't care. "The bass player and you," he said, "you got something worth keeping. The rest is rubbish. When you break up, I might be interested in making a deal. I want to change my act-switch over to my stuff and jack in the shit that everybody pulls." "We're all right," I told him, emphatically. "We aren't breaking up. We do okay." "Come off it," he said. "That lead guitar could play itself better. That guy isn't fit to cross the road. How much longer do you think he can last?" "Pete's okay," I said, and I stood up to move away and start packing up to leave. But he stood in my way a moment longer while he finished his say. "You remember, brother," he said. "If that lead man steps under a bus, you got an interested party right here. You and the bass man and Jack Queen King. We can do something, see?" He was a lot bigger than I was, but I grabbed his arms and I was ready to throw him out of my way. The moment I touched him, though, he moved, quick and easy, and ushered me past with a flip of his hand. "Fuck off," I said. He collected his gear and left.

Six days later some lunatic let Pete loose at the wheel of a car, and he ran it straight up the front of an articulated lorry. They had to scrape him off the motorway with a fish-slice. You figure I could have steered clear of my conscience and Jack Queen King at one and the same time? Maybe you're right, but hell, a few bitter words in a worldful of bitter facts just didn't seem that important. The business is full of guys I can't stand the sight of. I've worked with a dozen or more in my time. I like beating the skins and at my rates, I can't afford to stop for long without going back to being a milkman. I'm no man of means and the Social Security don't figure me as a worthy cause. The breaks of the business are my bread and butter, and you know how these things go. One thing I held out for and one only, in order to try and save my pride. I insisted that Jack took Marna, along with John Joe and me. John Joe agreed that we couldn't leave her in the lurch, and between us we managed to put it over on Jack. But Jack didn't think that anyone could handle his lyrics except Jack Queen King, and the weeks we put into learning the new style and rehearsing seemed to illustrate his point perfectly. Marna could sing as well as any other cheap warbler, but Jack Queen King's songs were threaded through and through with sarcasm and accusation and plain, simple hatred, and she hadn't a cat in hell's chance of carrying things like that. They simply weren't her scene at all. But I was prepared to argue, and Jack knew it. He and I were already having our differences. He wanted attack in his beat, just like he'd said before, and I was slow in delivering. I'd been playing bouncy-bouncy with the sticks for a good many years, and it wasn't really in me to go at them like I was trying to beat the shit out of my ugliest enemy. Anyhow, Jack let things go pretty easy while we were warming up to the big day when we could go back on the road. He seemed content that we were getting his foul-minded songs into our systems, and he didn't try to push too hard. I kidded myself that it would all work out okay enough for us to pay our way, and support ourselves in the miserable manner to which we'd become accustomed. The night that we first went on stage with Jack Queen King was the night I stopped kidding. John Joe was at his turgid, fantastic best. Jack, for the first time, looked way out of the rock-bottom class. I put a lot of crash and bang into the hammers, but I could feel that my performance was still short of the guts which we needed. Brute force and ignorance weren't enough-Jack's music needed real violence -viciousness and anger and hate-and I just hadn't got it. And on top of that, Marina was a grade A catastrophe. After just one song, Jack moved in on the mike with her, and I just couldn't blame him. Jack had invested a lot of his time and his sweat into making those lyrics what he wanted them to be. He'd wasted a lot of words trying to make Mama understand them when he knew all the time that she couldn't get near them. He'd improved John Joe's bass beyond all recognition and he'd tried to make me into what he needed. I'd known that he was trying to make me fight, trying to set me up, and I'd resisted. He hadn't forced me-maybe because he knew that I'd catch on as soon as we started in for real. It was deadly. We went down like a lead-loaded lifebelt. Even with Jack singing loud and deep-throated, Marna somehow contrived to throw the whole thing away. Her weakness contaminated the whole session. So did mine. I was the foundation, she was the roof. Neither of us had what it took. I honestly hadn't realised in rehearsal that we were anything more than a second-rate rock machine. But on stage, with real people listening, I knew that we were trying to be something much bigger than that, and because we were failing we were shoving across a load of utter crap.

The audience didn't hold it against us too much. Tasteless audiences are prepared to hear tasteless music. They appreciate competence, but they don't vilify bad play-they just don't care that much. We got more than our fair share of lack-lustre applause. Then Jack exploded. At last. He ranted at John Joe for getting lost-which was maybe a little unfair-and he ranted at me for never getting there at all. I expected to take the big part of the hammer, but I was wrong. He wasted only a couple of minutes on me before he swung on Marna. That was a massacre. I was very slow to react. You're always slow after a spot. The noise beats up your ears so much your brain gets numb. Also, I thought she could make it. Marna was a hard girl. She'd jerked a good many tears in her time-including a lot of Pete Candler's, and some of mine. I knew that there was a sort of something between Marna and Jack King, and I'd suspected it was more her side than his. But that was nothing new either, and it had never hurt her before. But this time it was different. Jack was all set to take Marna apart. It was deliberate and premeditated-the hatchet job to end all hatchet jobs, timed when she was so sick at heart she couldn't take it. It had never struck me before what kind of a man Jack would have to be inside himself, in order to write his kind of music. It struck me then. First, I was amazed-amazed that anything could crease Marna so fast, so hard and so much. Then, I was appalled- appalled at what happened to Marna, who cracked up right in front of me, who lost her plastic-pretty face and her baby-brittle mind in the space of ten or fifteen minutes. Finally, I was frightened-frightened of what Jack had done and what Jack might one day do again. He cut Marna out. Right out. Hours later, I realised that he had killed her. I took her home, I tried to talk to her, I tried to listen to her, and all the time, I was getting this feeling stronger and stronger that I was in the presence of something dead. She was walking and talking, but she was dead inside. She had been written clean out of Jack Queen King's existence, but she loved him, with a horrible, total love that left her nothing for herself. She was dead. I thought she might recover. I was a fool. Later still, in the very early hours of the morning, John Joe Hope showed me what he had salvaged from Jack's waste-basket. Two cards-the Ace and Queen of Spades, He offered them to me without comment, but I knew what he meant. They were death cards. Jack Queen King had carried Mama's execution around with him all day. We had a little talk, John Joe and I. We agreed finally to chalk it up to the breaks of the business. It's a cruel world, we said. You never can tell who's going to take the big crunch next, we said. Who could have known that Mama would fall apart at the seams like that, we said. Poor Jack must be feeling as guilty as hell, we said. Poor Jack! Poor us. Marna had just ceased to be a fully paid up member of the human race. She'd be a tourist in the land of the living until the day she decided that the joke was over. And we found some sympathy for Jack Queen King. It occurs to me now that's exactly the sort of thing Jack wrote lyrics about. Blindness to the truth. Misdirected sympathy. The savage cruelty of the puppet-master which tells us the way to think and protects us from believing. You've all heard the story of how we sprang to fame overnight. Well, that's a lie too. Once Jack had taken over lead vocal, we looked exactly the same as what we eventually became, nineteen months later. We did the same songs and we had the same style. We got a lot better, with practice, but the difference wasn't spectacular-not half so spectacular as the difference which we saw over our first few performances, which had nothing to do with practice, but a lot to do with attitude.

What had happened to Marna set me a fine example. I swear that it wasn't fear, in case the same thing happened to me, that made me into what Jack wanted. That incident was responsible, all right, but only in that it hardened me considerably. I didn't hate Jack Queen King at that point, but I was prepared to attack him. I was prepared to put my heart and soul into battering those drums as if I was committing murder. I was even prepared to imagine that I was getting a thrill out of the murder angle. I'd changed, you see. No more bounce and easy going. I still enjoyed playing drums, but the source of the enjoyment was new. I was committed-not just to hammering the skins, but also to what I hammered out- Jack King's songs and Jack King's style. The music which would sweep us to fame. Eventually. You can still hear the music. Even now. It's immortalized in black plastic. Put one of our records on, and listen to it carefully. Now tell me: is that good rock or isn't it? But the rock on the record isn't more than a tiny fraction of the real story. By no means. Nobody leaps to stardom in ten days flat. We were second-rate, remember? We were playing in cellars and wood huts and the cheapest of clubs. We had our musical feet six inches deep in the musical shit. Nobody leaps out of that. There's no way out except to crawl. Nobody knew us. Nobody wanted to know us. Each step of the ladder takes time and effort and cash. The rock which we had to offer was good, but it didn't sound so much better on black plastic than half a hundred other groups who were recently graduated from the shit-circuit. You may rave over those discs, but that's because you've been told to, or taught to. Where we were-the real power of Jack Queen Kingwas in our live performance. It was in Jack's voice and Jack's person, and the shape of the noise which Jack Queen King had made us produce. I never thought that maybe the audiences were digging us just a little too much, that they were getting more out of us than had any right to be there to be gotten. What performer would think like that? They thought we were great. I thought it was great that they thought we were great. Who'd ask questions? But as time went by, even all-out attack became simply a way of doing things. The habit was built into my system. I found myself with time to look out of the drumstack at John Joe, and at Jack King. I found myself with a little attention to spare, that I could use for thinking. I found myself wondering, which card Jack was carrying. I found myself reaching out into the sound-space where the people were, just as I used to do in the old days. And I found myself beginning to pick up some of Jack's lyrics, delivered Jack's way with our help. I began to get some idea of what we sounded like. Slowly, it began to dawn. I never listen to lyrics. I don't suppose many other people do, either. What the words soy, when they're written down, is usually pretty meaningless and almost invariably irrelevant. What matters in a lyric is where you put the emphasis, and which words you support with which kind of sound. The guitar obliterates some words, puts power into others. What matters about lyrics is how they feel. And Jack Queen King, singing live could give his lyrics a feel that was absolutely new. Let's briefly review your career as a Jack Queen King fan. The first time you heard him on the radio it was just rock music, right? It took two or three times of hearing before you picked up the title of the disc and the name of the artist. Black Star Children by Jack Queen King. Heavy beat, words with the right hint of meaning, the right element of aggression and nastiness to appeal to your young and hungry mind. You began to listen closer, and you liked it. It didn't put your soul on ice, but it had you interested enough to want to see him. And he was cheap and easy to see. We were on the road, playing every date we could, fighting for recognition, angling for the big time. Our price was going up in little jerks as our record climbed into the charts and began to accelerate on its way to the top. You heard that Jack was the greatest in the flesh-far better than in plastic. You caught a few tracks of the LP.

You were keen, you were really looking forward to a good time. You were just looking to be hooked, weren't you? You wanted a new idol, because the last one was developing rust. You wanted a new talking point. You wanted to get a real charge out of Jack Queen King. You were looking to love him, to be knocked out by him, to be taken over by him. You were a pushover. A real pushover. What surprises me now is not so much that Jack Queen King stole your soul, but that you still had it to lose. I remember Jack walking offstage, reaching into his pocket, and taking out the Jack of Diamonds. It was the first Jack I'd seen him carry. He tore it up and he was smiling all the time, like the goddamned Cheshire cat. "Diamonds," he said. "That's money. We've done our time, now. The money's going to take us up from here. Up like a rocket." And he was right. How could he be wrong? We weren't in any hurry to cut a follow-up disc to Black Star Children. Jack's attitude to the singles market was lukewarm. He thought that we could afford to fancy ourselves and our music a little bit more than that. He knew we could sell records and he wasn't averse to making money, but he thought the records went to a totally mindless public. Their money was good, but they didn't turn him on the way that the crowds who came to watch us did. And so we stayed on the road, hammering ourselves at a tremendous pace. The price on our heads skyrocketed, but Jack kept it down to a level which wouldn't leave us short of dates. I think he forced our ever-loving manager to make a couple of cheap deals which that worthy gentleman would never otherwise have touched in a month of Sundays. Like I said, I knew that something was happening, because I could feel it too-not only in the lyrics, but in the whole shape of the music. But I was drunk for a while on drums and success, and I didn't really know what it felt like, only that it felt. I looked at the people and watched them feel, but I couldn't understand. In time, though, just as the fury had worn down to habit, so the intoxication drained away and left me a little bit cold, and made me take a sudden sharp glance around at where and what and how we were. The night I found out there were a couple of thousand out front. It was a big crowd by any standards-there aren't a lot of places you can get that many indoors without them being stacked three deep. Before we went on, Jack was jittery with elation, shouting about how good we were going to be, and how much they'd love us. Jack always needed them to love us. John Joe was taciturn, as he always was, but I remember his making some dour comment about Jack carrying the Queen of Hearts in his top pocket, which made Jack mad. He didn't like jokes about his cards-he was still adamant that he never looked at them in advance. And I still thought he was a liar. We went out on stage. And we played. And they loved us. In a manner of speaking. I was stone cold. The hatred and the violence and the bloodlust was all coming out of the drums, but it was in my hands by now. My head was a million miles away. I guess all that stuff had to be in my heart as well, or it could never have got into my hands, and for that matter I guess it's still here now, but it was so deep set there that it didn't give me any pain, or put any kind of a bite on my mind. It was cold inside my head. And I looked at the kids who had come to see us. I reached out way beyond the cage of lights, and even tried to double back. I tried to be with them-I tried to feel what they were feeling. I got inside the expressions on their faces. You know those expressions. You've seen them at the concerts. You've seen them on TV. Adoration, you think? Idolatory? You're wrong.

Those faces are the faces of people whose souls are being ripped right out from inside them. Those masks of love are shaped and painted by death. Jack Queen King was killing those people. Killing them inside, just like he'd killed Marna. He had the power, did Jack Queen King. The power of life and death. But he'd been right. They were loving him. Genuine, tender, bloody, passionate, heartaching love. And he was teasing and tearing their lives right out of their bodies. That's what I felt, and I know that it was true, but I didn't understand it. I knew that when we finished the last crescendo, and followed it with a silence like the grave, that those people out there would explode into applause. They would leap and scream and look as alive as anything you could ever see. And eventually, they'd get up on their legs and walk away. And someday, some of them would walk back again to go through it all for a second time, or a third. But I knew as well that what Jack Queen King was handing out in return for their love was murder, and that they were paying his price with their souls. I hope that you know what I'm saying. Because I can't tell you any clearer than that. Believe me, I was there. And you weren't. Because inside of you, you're dead. Afterwards, I asked John Joe Hope how he had known that the card Jack was carrying had been the Queen of Hearts. Jack had shown it to us briefly, with a half-smile on his face, before he tore it up and burned the pieces in an ashtray. "Can't you tell?" said John Joe. "Doesn't it stick out a mile which card he's carrying? The way he acts, the way he walks, everything goes with the card." "I don't think so," I told him. "I always know," John Joe said, definitely. "Sometimes I can only tell the suit, but usually I can pin the rank as well. Always, when it's a court card. There's always something which says 'tonight, it's the Jack of Clubs', or 'tonight, it's Hearts':' "I always figured he was lying about not looking at them," I said. And John Joe said, "I don't think he does look at them." That was a shock. I realised then that John Joe knew there was something more than rock guitar and fake superstition to Jack Queen King. He might play with his eyes shut, but he'd seen something, somewhere. He knew. But what? And did he care? It struck me with sudden forcefulness that John Joe might be a part of it-with Jack. It hadn't occurred to me before that anyone but Jack was involved. You know how John Joe looks on stage-like something six weeks dead. You don't think of him as alive-just as a booming rhythm on a bass guitar. But he was a real person, all right, and an integral part of Jack Queen King's sound. And if John Joe was a killer too… What about me? I didn't try to talk to John Joe any more just then. I wanted to think about what Jack Queen King might be, and why; about what Jack Queen King did to the people who loved him. So I bid John Joe goodnight, and we went our separate ways. I never socialized with John Joe, much less with Jack. It was never my style. Except for the ill-fated onetime liaison with Marna, I never dragged work-time proximities into our own time. That night I got out my own personal copy of our album- the one that was called simply JQK-and I played it for the first time. I guess that might seem improbable to you. But I never had listened to us play. I'd heard Black Star Children on the radio a couple of times, and I'd listened to them hacking things up in recording studios. But I'd never sat down to feel what the music actually sounded like. Haven't you ever been too close to something to know what it's really like? How well do you know the back of your hand?

The record was a minor revelation to me. I already knew that we preached a dark message, but everybody and his cousin is a doom merchant these days-it's the fashion. The masses won't love you nowadays for offering them love and kisses. The going price for frame is blood and despair. But that was the first time I realised how very full of misery and despair those lyrics were. It was the first time I ever sat on the receiving end of the blackness and the bestiality of Doctor Faust, Zero Man, Beast Child, Pain Killer, and Down in the Hole. It was good. It had a lot of class and quality. But it was viciously and unrelievedly downbeat. It was purely and simply hate-music. But it wasn't going to steal anybody's soul. The answer to all my questions wasn't in the plastic. It was in the flesh. The record, however nasty, was only a record. I guess you could claim that there's already something soulless about someone who can glory in those brutal rhythms, and bathe in thundered words that all contain ideas of death and disease and pain and no escape at all, but you couldn't claim that the record was killing people in their own sitting rooms. All I found out that night was that you can't steal someone's soul by proxy. Murder, like love, is intimate. I went to see Marna during the week after Jack's superstition about the playing cards became common property. I don't know who leaked it. It wasn't me. It was probably our everwonderful manager hunting up another publicity angle. The market was suddenly flooded with fancy cards. In the panel they had photographs or caricatures of Jack, double-headed like picture cards in a normal pack. In each corner, instead of the denomination and suit, they bore the legend J Q K Thousands of loyal fans were carrying them around in their breast pockets. For luck. Girls clipped them onto their sweaters, or stuck them down their cleavages. I was horror-struck when I saw that Marna had one too. I just didn't get it. But why not? Wasn't what he'd done to her exactly what he was doing to them? Why shouldn't she love him for it as well? "You're really making waves," she said. "Have you seen anything of Jack?" I asked. "No." "But you'd like to?" "What do you think?" I shook my head. "I don't know," I said, with some intensity, to show that I meant it. "I'm asking." "Jack was right, you know," she told me. "About what?" "About my singing. He had to get rid of me. It was a mistake trying to use me in the first place." "Sure," I said. "He must have been carrying the wrong card that day. Or maybe he forgot it altogether." All the while I was staring at the thing pinned to her chest. "I don't have to hate him," she said.

"No," I replied. "Anyone else might. But you don't. That's the way the magic works. But do you really have to love him? For Christ's sake, remember what he did to you. Kid, it doesn't matter a damn how right he was. What counts is what he did." "That's right," she said. "I don't have to love him." One time, she'd have hurled that line like it was a ton of bricks. She'd have had a voice like she was spitting acid. But not this time. Not any more. She said it clean and clear, right out, with no trace of anything in her voice. "Do you love him?" I asked her. "Yes," she said. And that was all of it. The long and the short. Yes, she loved him. It cut me up. Not because anything lingered in my heart for Marna-the payoff in that game had come and gone a long time ago. Because it made her game an out and out bummer. She was lost. Walking dead. Jack Queen King had stolen her soul. Hers and a thousand others. In this kind of market, old Satan wouldn't have stood a chance. Faust was the hungry millions, and Jack wasn't paying them out with any coin that they could use. He was working a massive heist. But where was he going and why? I just couldn't see it. What the hell use is a million Zombies? I stayed with Jack. There was never any real question of my quitting. There were no long sessions of heart-searching. I didn't feel that there was any crucial dilemma. I'm not offering any excuse. I could say that I stayed because he'd have had no trouble at all replacing me, but that wasn't the way my thinking ran. The simple fact is that it didn't run at all. I stayed because I was there, and that's all there is to it. If you believe my story, then you can blame me for being a part of it. You can call me Judas, on account of all the people who lost their souls to Jack Queen King. If you don't believe me, you'll call me Judas anyhow for betraying his beloved memory. So okay, I'm Judas-I don't know how to go about defending myself. During the next few months, things simply went on. We played the same music the same way. Jack went on stage boasting that he was no longer the Jack that figured in his phony name, but the King. He forgot to be coy about his playing cards, and he showed the audiences Kings to prove his point. Black Kings-Spades and Clubs. And still he said that he didn't know they were there until he pulled them out. I half expected him to change his name so that it was back to front. We released the second album. Zero Man had been out as a single cashing in on the success of Black Star Children, but because it was just another track off the album it hadn't broken any new ground for us. We were off the circuit for a few weeks producing some new sounds, but we didn't find it too difficult. They weren't really new sounds at all-just more of the same. Road to Hell, Desert Sky, and No Way Home… Eventually, I got to talk to John Joe about it: I caught him when he was stoned, and his tongue was looser than usual. We'd both been rocked a bit by the afternoon performance. It was the day we played up to the total eclipse at the festival. You remember it, of course. A once-in-a lifetime occasion. It was a bright, clear daywarm, with no wind. But we all knew, didn't we, that the sun was due to be turned off? It was easy enough for Jack Queen King to drown the audience in an intimate, intangible darkness, which became a real blackout as we approached the climax of our last number. It was Black Star Children. Of course. I've never been so frightened as when I hammered out the bleak backing to those last few frantic chords of Jack's guitar, and the sky turned grey. At the same moment, the air turned cold and a single blast of wind slashed the crowd. It wasn't us. Not even Jack Queen King co-

uld command the weather. Either it was pure coincidence, or something like that always happens in an eclipse. I don't know. All I know is that it took the nerve clean out of John Joe Hope and me, and we both needed to get out of ourselves for a while. And so I got to him at last, to try and find out what he knew. "How do you take it?" I asked him, my voice fraying a bit with the residue of the day's tension. "I take it easy," he said. "I don't let it bother me the way you do." "I've seen their faces, John Joe," I told him. "I've watched what Jack does to them. You do know, don't you? You do know what he does?" He looked at me, his face calm and coked-up with dope. His eyes were sleepy, like when he plays, and I could imagine his mind ticking like an atomic watch-nothing could shake his deep rhythm. "Sure I know," he said. "They blow their tiny minds and scatter the pieces on the four winds." "Not their minds, John Joe," I said, my voice cracking slightly with the pressure of the words I had to let loose. "It's their souls. Their lives. He's stealing the souls right out of them. He's killing them inside, John Joe, and we're helping him to do it." John Joe shook his head. "You've got the wrong end, Clay. So okay, that's a real something those people have to lose. But Jack isn't stealing anything. Far from it, brother. It costs him. These things- souls, you call them-they have to be paid for. Jack couldn't rip off a soul if he wanted to. It's the other way around. They come to throw their souls away. They're longing to have their lives ripped out of themselves. And Jack Queen King gives them the charge they need to do it. They take it from him. They rip it off and he lets them have it. They want to be dead, brother, because it's the only way they can see how to be. They're scared rigid of life, Clay. The kind of people who come to us aren't any prize for the devil. Jack Queen King is the prize-he's footing the bill. "You say you've watched the people, brother. You always did want to be out there with the people, you poor fool. Well, just for once in your life look at Jack Queen King. Forget what's happening to them-they aren't worth it. Look at what's happening to him. Watch him and see if you can tell me he's killing anyone but himself. Hell, he needs their love, and he's paying them in the only coin they'll accept. They love him with all their hearts. Do you think they do that because he's ripping them off? Do you think a guy like Jack would rip off the souls of the people who love him?" Yes, was my answer to that. But I couldn't give that answer to John Joe Hope. Nor could I say: what about what happened to Marna? Because John Joe didn't care what had happened to Marna. Nor could I say: but it doesn't make sense. Because to John Joe, it did make sense. You see, John Joe Hope loved Jack Queen King. Just like all the rest. Except me. I watched Jack King, like John Joe had asked me to. And what I saw was Jack King, soul stealer. I watched him, and I felt the only thing that I could. I hated Jack Queen King. You can say, if you want, that I was blinded by that hate. You can say that John Joe Hope was right, and that it's poor, deluded Clay who's wrong. But isn't it love that's reputed to be blind? Couldn't it be you that doesn't see, that doesn't understand? And that's all I have to say, except to tell you the end of the story. It doesn't add anything. It's just an account of what happened. It didn't explain anything. It doesn't tie the whole damn

argument up in a fucking pink ribbon. I can't give you any proof of what I say. But this is what happened at the end,… They were crammed in like sardines. Far more than the safety limit. But you could see just by looking that there wasn't going to be any fire. It wouldn't stand a chance. Even fires have to breathe. They seemed to be hysterical before we even came on stage. There was no back-up group to fill in time. They just came and they waited. When we walked on stage, John Joe Hope came over to the drumstack, and he stood beside me while he tuned the bass guitar. He didn't look up at me, but he said in his calm and level voice, "You watch him tonight, Clay. He's carrying two cards tonight. They have to be the Ace and the Queen." He meant the Ace and Queen of Spades. The death cards. Jack had carried two cards only once before. The night he'd dispensed with Marna. "They won't be for him," I said. "If they're death cards, they're for you or for me." He smiled a long, lazy smile. "I'm not scared," he said. Strangely enough, neither was I. John Joe moved away, and the screams of Jack's guitar jerked my hands and feet into action as we whirled away into Zero Man. It was another night, like all the rest. Everybody wanted to see Jack Queen King. They didn't mind the heat and the crush and the stink. They were willing to endure it all just to be with him. And then he snatched their souls. We played through Cut Price Coffins and No Way Home and Down in the Hole, and the long, long agonizing crescendo of Doctor Faust. And we did Sad Times, to get a rest, and The Alley and an extra-long version of Hold Me Down. We did a couple of new numbers, for a special treat. And then we launched into Black Star Children, which was the last before they made us do our encores. Jack really belted into it. He pounded the guitar, and gave it a little bit of extra pain with the fuzzbox, and he fed it back into the speaker. The more he piled it on, the more I stacked up the attack. We were really making it, and I felt as if I'd gone way past all-out and was flying on pure adrenalin. We were taking the audience as high as a kite-I could feel the hysteria coming across the stage in waves. I could smell the high fever. Something happened inside Jack's amp. It got hot and something gave. His mike was no longer earthed. The whole shebang was live. He came back across the stage to sing the last few words that were the final chorus, and he took hold of the mike-stand. And it struck him dead. Somebody started pulling plugs out all over the place, and a sea of panic washed all around the hall. The crowd didn't dissolve into a fatal scramble. It was still. Nobody out front was killed. John Joe Hope and I stood over the body, one on each side. "I told you so," he said. But I still didn't figure it that way. I looked out over the scream strewn auditorium, and I could taste the tears. The air smelled like something was six weeks dead, not just six seconds. I picked up the two cards out of Jack's breast pocket, and I showed them to John Joe Hope. Both cards were jokers. I said to him-and I didn't just mean it for him, but for everybody:-I said: "How do you feel?" 6: Brian Lumley - The House Of Cthulhu

Where weirdly angled ramparts loom, Gaunt sentinels whose shadows gloom Upon an undead hell-beast's tombAnd gods and mortels fear to tread; Where gateways to forbidden spheres And times are closed, but monstrous fears Await the passing of strange yearsWhen that will wake which is not dead…. "Arlyeh"-a fragment from Teh Atht's Legends of the Olden Runes. As translated by Thelred Gustau from the Theem'hdra Manuscripts. Now it happened aforetime that Zar-thule the Conqueror, who is called Reaver of Reavers, Seeker of Treasures and Sacker of Cities, swam out of the East with his dragonships; aye, even beneath the snapping sails of his dragonships. The wind was but lately turned favorable, and now the weary rowers nodded over their shipped oars while sleepy steersmen held the course. And there Zar-thule descried him in the sea the island Arlyeh, whereon loomed tall towers builded of black stones whose tortuous twinings were of angles all unknown and utterly beyond the ken of men. Aye, and this island was redly lit by the sun sinking down over its awesome black crags and burning behind the aeries and spires carved therefrom by other than human hands. And though Zar-thule felt a great hunger and stood sore weary of the wide sea's expanse behind the lolling dragon's tail of his ship Redfire, and even though he gazed with red and rapacious eyes upon the black island, still he held off his reavers, biding them that they ride at anchor well out to sea until the sun was deeply down and gone unto the Realm of Cthon; aye, even unto Cthon, who sits in silence to snare the sun in his net beyond the edge of the world. Indeed, such were Zar-thule's raiders as their deeds were best done by night, for then Gleeth the blind Moon God saw them not, nor heard in his celestial deafness the horrible cries which ever attended unto such deeds. For notwithstanding his cruelty, which was beyond words, Zar-thule was no fool. He knew him that his wolves must rest before a whelming, that if the treasures of the House of Cthulhu were truly such as he imagined them-then that they must likewise be well guarded by fighting men who would not give them up easily. And his reavers were fatigued even as Zar-thule himself, so that he rested them all down behind the painted bucklers lining the decks, and furled him up the great dragon-dyed sails. And he set a watch that in the middle of the night he might be roused, when, rousing in turn the men of his twenty ships, he would sail in unto and sack the island of Arlyeh. Far had Zar-thule's reavers rowed before the fair winds found them, aye, far from the rape of Yaht-Haal, the Silver City at the edge of the frostlands. Their provisions were all but eaten, their swords all oceanrot in rusting sheaths; but now they ate all of their remaining regimen and drank of the liquors thereof, and they cleansed and sharpened their dire blades before taking themselves into the arms of Shoosh, Goddess of the Still Slumbers. They well knew them, one and all, that soon they would be at the sack, each for himself and loot to that sword's wielder whose blade drank long and deep. And Zar-thule had promised them great treasures from the House of Cthulhu, for back there in the sacked and seared city at the edge of the frostlands he had heard it from the bubbling, anguished lips of Voth Vehm, the name of the so-called "forbidden" isle of Arlyeh. Voth Vehm, in the throes of terrible tortures, had called out the name of his brother-priest, Hath Vehm, who guarded the House of Cthulhu in Arlyeh. And even in the hour of his dying

Voth Vehm had answered to Zar-thule's additional tortures, crying out that Arlyeh was indeed forbidden and held in thrall by the sleeping but yet dark and terrible god Cthulhu, the gate to whose House his brother-priest guarded. Then had Zar-thule reasoned that Arlyeh must contain riches indeed, for he knew it was not meet that brother-priests betray one another; and aye, surely had Voth Vehm spoken exceedingly fearfully of this dark and terrible god Cthulhu only that he might thus divert Zarthule's avarice from the ocean sanctuary of his brother-priest, Hath Vehm. Thus reckoned Zar-thule, even brooding on the dead and disfigured hierophant's words, until he bethought him to leave the sacked city. Then, with the flames leaping brightly and reflected in his red wake, Zar-thule put to sea in his dragon-ships. All loaded down with silver booty he put to sea, in search of Arlyeh and the treasures of the House of Cthulhu. And thus came he to this place. Shortly before the midnight hour the watch roused Zar-thule up from the arms of Shoosh, aye, and all the freshened men of the dragonships; and then beneath Gleeth the blind Moon God's pitted silver face, seeing that the wind had fallen, they muffled their oars and dipped them deep and so closed in with the shoreline. A dozen fathoms from beaching, out rang Zarthule's plunder cry, and his drummers took up a stern and steady beat by which the trained but yet rampageous reavers might advance to the sack. Came the scrape of keel on grit, and down from his dragon's head leapt Zar-thule to the sullen shallow waters, and with him his captains and men, to wade ashore and stride the night-black strand and wave their swords… and all for naught! Lo, the island stood quiet and still and seemingly untended… Only now did the Sacker of Cities take note of this isle's truly awesome aspect. Black piles of tumbled masonry festooned with weeds from the tides rose up from the dark wet sand, and there seemed inherent in these gaunt and immemorial relics a foreboding not alone of bygone times; great crabs scuttled in and about the archaic ruins and gazed with stalked ruby eyes upon the intruders; even the small waves broke with an eery hush, hush, hush upon the sand and pebbles and primordial exuviae of crumbled yet seemingly sentient towers and tabernacles. The drummers faltered, paused and finally silence reigned. Now many of them among these reavers recognized rare gods and supported strange superstitions, and Zar-thule knew this and had no liking for their silence. It was a silence that might yet yield mutiny! "Hah!" quoth he, who worshipped neither god nor demon nor yet lent ear to the gaunts of night. "See-the guards knew of our coming and are all fled to the far side of the island-or perhaps they gather ranks at the House of Cthul-hu." So saying, he formed him up his men into a body and advanced into the island. And as they marched they passed them by other prehuman piles not yet ocean-sundered, striding through silent streets whose fantastic facades gave back the beat of the drummers in a strangely muted monotone. And lo, mummied faces of coeval antiquity seemed to leer from the empty and oddlyangled towers and craggy spires, fleet ghouls that flitted from shadow to shadow apace with the marching men, until some of those hardened reavers grew sore afraid and begged them of Zar-thule, "Master, let us get us gone from here, for it appears that there is no treasure, and this place is like unto no other. It stinks of death, aye even of death and of them that walk the shadow-lands." But Zar-thule rounded on one who stood close to him muttering thus, crying, "Coward!Out on you!" Whereupon he lifted up his sword and hacked the trembling reaver in two parts, so that the sundered man screamed once before falling with twin thuds to the black earth. But now Zar-thule perceived that indeed many of his men were sore afraid, and so he had him torches lighted and brought up, and they pressed on quickly into the island.

There, beyond low dark hills, they came to a great gathering of queerly carved and monolithic edifices, all of the same confused angles and surfaces and all with the stench of the pit, aye, even the fetor of the very pit about them. And in the center of these malodorous megaliths there stood the greatest tower of them all, a massive menhir that loomed and leaned windowless to a great height, about which at its base squat pedestals bore likenesses of blackly carven krakens of terrifying aspect. "Hah!" quoth Zar-thule. "Plainly is this the House of Cthulhu, and see-its guards and priests have fled them all before us to escape the reaving!" But a tremulous voice, old and mazed, answered from the shadows at the base of one great pedestal, saying, "No one has fled, O reaver, for there are none here to flee, save me -and I cannot flee for I guard the gate against those who may utter The Words." At the sound of this old voice in the stillness the reavers started and peered nervously about at the leaping torch-cast shadows, but one stout captain stepped forward to drag from out of the dark an old, old man. And lo, seeing the mien of this mage, all the reavers fell back at once. For he bore upon bis face and hands, aye, and upon all visible parts of him, a gray and furry lichen that seemed to crawl upon him even as he stood crooked and trembling in his great age! "Who are you?" demanded Zar-thule, aghast at the sight-of so hideous a spectacle of afflicted infirmity; even Zar-thule, aghast! "I am Hath Vehm, brother-priest of Veth Hehm who serves gods in the temples of YahtHaal; I am Hath Vehm, Keeper of the Gate at the House of Cthulhu, and I warn you that it is forbidden to touch me." And he gloomed with rheumy eyes at the captain who held him, until that raider took away his hands. "And I am Zar-thule the Conqueror," quoth Zar-thule, less in awe now. "Reaver of Reavers, Seeker of Treasures and Sacker of Cities. I have plundered Yaht-Haal, aye, plundered the Silver City and burned it low. And I have tortured Veth Vehm unto death. But in his dying, even with hot coals eating at his belly, he cried out a name. And it was your name! And he was truly a brother unto you, Hath Vehm, for he warned me of the terrible god Cthulhu and of this 'forbidden' isle of Arlyeh. But I knew he lied, that he sought him only to protect a great and holy treasure and the brother-priest who guards it, doubtless with strange runes to frighten away the superstitious reavers! But Zar-thule is neither afraid nor credulous, old one. Here I stand and I say to you on your life that I'll know the way into this treasure house within the hour!" And now, hearing their chief speak thus to the ancient priest of the island, and noting the old one's trembling infirmity and hideous disfigurement, Zar-thule's captains and men had taken heart. Some of them had gone about and about the beetling tower of obscure angles until they found a door. Now this door was great, tall, solid and in no way hidden from view; and yet at times it seemed very indistinct, as though misted and distant. It stood straight up in the wall of the House of Cthulhu, and yet looked as if to lean to one side… and then in one and the same moment to lean to the other! It bore leering, inhuman faces carven of its surface and horrid hieroglyphs, and these unknown characters seemed to writhe about the gorgon faces; and aye, those faces too, moved and grimaced in the light of the flickering torches. The ancient Hath Vehm came to them where they gathered in wonder of the great door, saying: "Aye, that is the gate of the House of Cthulhu, and I am its guardian." "So," spake Zar-thule, who was also come there, "and is there a key to this gate? I see no means of entry." "Aye, there is a key, but none such as you might readily imagine. It is not a key of metal, but of words…" "Magic?" asked Zar-thule, undaunted. He had heard aforetime of similar thaumaturgies. "Aye, magic!" agreed the Guardian of the Gate.

Zar-thule put the point of his sword to the old man's throat, observing as he did so the furry gray growth moving upon the elder's face and scrawny neck, saying: "Then say those words now and let's have done!" "Nay, I cannot say The Words-I am sworn to guard the gate that The Words are never spoken, neither by myself nor by any other who would foolishly or mistakenly open the House of Cthulhu. You may kill me-aye, even take my life with that very blade you now hold to my throat-but I will not utter The Words… " "And I say that you will-eventually!" quoth Zar-thule in an exceedingly cold voice, in a voice even as cold as the northern sleet. Whereupon he put down his sword and ordered two of his men to come forward, commanding that they take the ancient and tie him down to thonged pegs made fast in the ground. And they tied him down until he was spread out flat upon his back, not far from the great and oddly fashioned door in the wall of the House of Cthulhu. Then a fire was lighted of dry shrubs and of driftwood fetched from the shore; and others of Zar-thule's reavers went out and trapped certain great nocturnal birds that knew not the power of flight; and yet others found a spring of brackish water and filled them up the waterskins. And soon tasteless but satisfying meat turned on the spits above a fire; and in the same fire sword-points glowed red, then white. And after Zar-thule and the captains and men had eaten their fill, then the Reaver of Reavers motioned to his torturers that they should attend to their task. These torturers had been trained by Zar-thule himself, so that they excelled in the arts of pincer and hot iron. But then there came a diversion. For some little time a certain captain-his name was Cushhad, the man who first found the old priest in the shadow of the great pedestal and dragged him forth-had been peering most strangely at his hands in the firelight and rubbing them upon the hide of his jacket. Of a sudden he cursed and leapt to his feet, springing up from the remnants of his meal. He danced about in a frightened manner, beating wildly at the tumbled flat stones about with his hands. Then of a sudden he stopped and cast sharp glances at his naked forearms. In the same second his eyes stood out in his face and he screamed as if he were pierced through and through with a keen blade; and he rushed to the fire and thrust his hands in its heart, even to his elbows. Then he drew his arms from the flames, staggering and moaning and calling upon certain trusted gods. And he tottered away into the night, his ruined arms steaming and dripping redly upon the ground. Amazed, Zar-thule sent a man after Cush-had with a torch, and this man soon returned trembling with a very pale face in the firelight to tell how the madman had fallen or leapt to his death in a deep crevice. But before he fell there had been visible upon his face a creeping, furry grayness; and as he had fallen, aye, even as he crashed down to his death, he had screamed: "Unclean… unclean… unclean!" Then, all and all when they heard this, they remembered the old priest's words of warning when Cush-had dragged him out of hiding, and the way he had gloomed upon the unfortunate captain, and they looked at the ancient where he lay held fast to the earth. The two reavers whose task it had been to tie him down looked them one to the other with very wide eyes, their faces whitening perceptibly in the firelight, and they took up a quiet and secret examination of their persons; aye, even a minute examination… Zar-thule felt fear rising in his reavers like the east wind when it rises up fast and wild in the Desert of Sheb. He spat at the ground and lifted up his sword, crying: "Listen to me! You are all superstitious cowards, all and all of you, with your old wives' tales and fears and mumbo-jumbo. What's there here to be frightened of? An old man, alone, on a black rock in the sea?" "But I saw upon Cush-had's face-" began the man who had followed the demented captain.

"You only thought you saw something," Zar-thule cut him off. "It was only the flickering of your torch-fire and nothing more. Cush-had was a madman!" "But-" "Cush-had was a madman!" Zar-thule said again, and his voice turned very cold. "Are you, too, insane? Is there room for you, too, at the bottom of that crevice?" But the man shrank back and said no more, and yet again Zar-thule called his torturers forward that they should be about their work. The hours passed… Blind and coldly deaf Gleeth the old Moon God surely was, and yet perhaps he had sensed something of the agonized screams and the stench of roasting human flesh drifting up from Arlyeh that night. Certainly he seemed to sink down in the sky very quickly. Now, however, the tattered and blackened figure stretched out upon the ground before the door in the wall of the House of Cthulhu was no longer strong enough to cry out loudly, and Zar-thule despaired for he saw that soon the priest of the island would sink into the last and longest of slumbers. And still The Words were not spoken. Too, the reaver king was perplexed by the ancient's stubborn refusal to admit that the door in the looming menhir concealed treasure; but in the end he put this down to the effect of certain vows Hath Vehm had no doubt taken in his inauguration to priesthood. The torturers had not done their work well. They had been loth to touch the elder with anything but their hot swords; they would not-not even when threatened most direly-lay hands upon him, or approach him more closely than absolutely necessary to the application of their agonizing art. The two reavers responsible for tying the ancient down were dead, slain by former comrades upon whom they had inadvertently lain hands of friendship; and those they had touched, their slayers, they too were shunned by their companions and stood apart from the other reavers. As the first gray light of dawn began to show behind the eastern sea, Zar-thule finally lost all patience and turned upon the dying priest in a veritable fury. He took up his sword, raising it over his head in two hands… and then Hath Vehm spoke: "Wait!" he whispered, his voice a low, tortured croak. "Wait, O reaver-I will say The Words." "What," cried Zar-thule, lowering his blade. "You will open the door?" "Aye," the cracked whisper came, "I will open the Gate. But first, tell me: did you truly sack Yaht-Haal the Silver City. Did you truly raze it down with fire, and torture my brotherpriest to death?" "I did all that," Zar-thule callously nodded. "Then come you close," Hath Vehm's voice sank low. "Closer, O reaver king, that you may hear me in my final hour." Eagerly the Seeker of Treasures bent him down his ear to the lips of the ancient, kneeling down beside where he lay-and Hath Vehm immediately lifted up his head from the earth and spat upon Zar-thule! Then, before the Sacker of Cities could think or make a move to wipe the slimy spittle from his brow, Hath Vehm said The Words. Aye, even in a loud and clear voice he said them-words of terrible import and alien cadence that only an adept might repeat-and at once there came a great rumble from the door in the beetling wall of weird angles. Forgetting for the moment the tainted insult of the ancient priest, Zar-thule turned to see the huge and evilly carven door tremble and waver and then, by some unknown power, move or slide away until only a great black hole opened where it had been. And lo, in the early dawn light, the reaver horde pressed forward to seek them out the treasure with their eyes; aye, even to seek out the treasure beyond the open door. Likewise Zar-thule made to enter the House of Cthulu, but again the dying hierophant cried out to him:

"Hold! There are more words, O reaver king!" "More words?" Zar-thule turned with a frown. The old priest, his life quickly ebbing, grinned mirthlessly at the sight of the furry gray blemish that crawled upon the barbarian's forehead over his left eye. "Aye, more words. Listen: long and long ago, when the world was very young, before Arlyeh and the House of Cthulhu were first sunken into the sea, wise elder gods devised a rune that should Cthulhu's House ever rise and be opened by foolish men, it might be sent down again-aye, and even Arlyeh itself sunken deep once more beneath the salt waters. Now I say those other words!" Swiftly the king reaver leapt, his sword lifting, but ere that blade could fall Hath Vehm cried out those other strange and dreadful words; and lo, the whole island shook in the grip of a great earthquake. Now in awful anger Zar-thule's sword fell and hacked off the ancient's whistling and spurting head from his ravened body; but even as the head rolled free, so the island shook itself again, and the ground rumbled and began to break open. From the open door in the House of Cthulhu, where into the host of greedy reavers had rushed to discover the treasure, there now came loud and singularly hideous cries of fear and torment, and of a sudden an even more hideous stench. And now Zar-thule knew truly indeed that there was no treasure. Great ebony clouds gathered swiftly and livid lightning crashed; winds rose up that blew Zar-thule's long black hair over his face as he crouched in horror before the open door of the House of Cthulhu. Wide and wide were his eyes as he tried to peer beyond the reeking blackness of that nameless, ancient aperture-but a moment later he dropped his great sword to the ground and screamed; aye, even the Reaver of Reavers screamed. For two of his wolves had appeared from out of the darkness, more in the manner of whipped puppies than true wolves, shrieking and babbling and scrambling frantically over the queer angles of the orifice's mouth… but they had emerged only to be snatched up and squashed like grapes by titanic tentacles that lashed after them from the dark depths beyond! And these rubbery appendages drew the crushed bodies back into the inky blackness, from which there instantly issued forth the most monstrously nauseating slobber-ings and suckings before the writhing members once more snaked forth into the dawn light. This time they caught at the at the edges of the opening, and from behind them pushed forward-a face! Zar-thule gazed upon the enormously bloated visage of Cthulhu, and he screamed again as that terrible Being's awful eyes found him where he crouched-found him and lit with an hideous light! The reaver king paused, frozen, petrified, for but a moment, and yet long enough that the ultimate horror of the thing framed in the titan threshold seared itself upon his brain forever. Then his legs found their strength. He turned and fled, speeding away and over the low black hills, and down to the shore and into his ship, which he somehow managed, even single-handed and in his frantic terror, to cast off. And all the time in his mind's eye there burned that fearful sight-the awful Visage and Being of Lord Cthulhu. There had been the tentacles, springing from a greenly pulpy head about which they sprouted like lethiferous petals about the heart of an obscenely hybrid orchid, a scaled and amorphously elastic body of immense proportions, with clawed feet fore and hind; long narrow wings ill-fitting the horror that bore them in that it seemed patently impossible for any wings to lift so fantastic a bulk-and then there had been the eyes! Never before had Zar-thule seen such evil rampant and expressed as in the ultimately leering malignancy of Cthulhu's eyes! And Cthulhu was not finished with Zar-thule, for even as the king reaver struggled madly with his sail the monster came across the low hills in the dawn light, slobbering and groping down to the very water's edge. Then, when Zar-thule saw against the morning the mountain that was Cthulhu, he went mad for a period; flinging himself from side to side of his ship so

that he was like to fall into the sea, frothing at the mouth and babbling horribly in pitiful prayer-aye, even Zar-thule, whose lips never before uttered prayers-to certain benevolent gods of which he had heard. And it seems that these kind gods, if indeed they exist, must have heard him. With a roar and a blast greater than any before, there came the final shattering that saved Zar-thule for a cruel future, and the entire island split asunder; even the bulk of Arlyeh breaking into many parts and settling into the sea. And with a piercing scream of frustrated rage and lust-a scream which Zar-thule heard with his mind as well as his ears-the monster Cthulhu sank Him down also with the island and His House beneath the frothing waves. A great storm raged then such as might attend the end of the world. Banshee winds howled and demon waves crashed over and about Zar-thule's dragonship, and for two days he gibbered and moaned in the rolling, shuddering scuppers of crippled Redfire before the mighty storm wore itself out. Eventually, close to starvation, the one-time Reaver of Reavers was discovered becalmed upon a flat sea not far from the fair strands of bright Theem'hdra; and then, in the spicy hold of a rich merchant's ship, he was borne in unto the wharves of the city of Kluhn, Theem'hdra's capital. With long oars he was prodded ashore, stumbling and weak and crying out in his horror of living-for he had gazed upon Cthulhu! The use of the oars had much to do with his appearance, for now Zar-thule was changed indeed, into something which in less tolerant parts of the world might certainly have expected to be burned. But the people of Kluhn were kindly folk; they burned him not but lowered him in a basket into a deep dungeon cell with torches to light the place, and daily bread and water that he might live until his life was rightly done. And when he was recovered to partial health and sanity, learned men and physicians went to talk with him from above and ask him of his strange affliction, of which all and all stood in awe. I, Teh Atht, was one of them that went to him, and that was how I came to hear this tale. And I know it to be true, for oft and again over the years I have heard of this Loathly Lord Cthulhu that seeped down from the stars when the world was an inchoate infant. There are legends and legends, aye, and one of them is that when times have passed and the stars are right Cthulhu shall slobber forth from His House in Arl-yeh again, and the world shall tremble to His tread and erupt in madness at His touch. I leave this record for men as yet unborn, a record and a warning: leave well enough alone, for that is not dead which deeply dreams, and while perhaps the submarine tides have removed forever the alien taint which touched Arlyeh -that symptom of Cthulhu, which loathsome familiar grew upon Hath Vehm and transferred itself upon certain of Zar-thule's reaversCthulhu himself yet lives and waits upon those who would set Him free. I know it is so. In dreams… I myself have heard His call! And when dreams such as these come in the night to sour the sweet embrace of Shoosh, I wake and tremble and pace the crystal-paved floors of my rooms above the Bay of Kluhn, until Cthon releases the sun from his net to rise again, and ever and ever I recall the aspect of Zar-thule as last I saw him in the flickering torchlight of his deep dungeon cell: a fumbling gray mushroom thing that moved not of its own volition but by reason of the parasite growth which lived upon and within it… 7: Allan Weiss - Satanesque Sheriff Holland stood with his daughter in silence behind a sea of excited chatter. Before him stood a small and undulating crowd which had gathered in the park and had kept a steady

rumble. Their voices reeked of skepticism, many people mentioning how the artist who had brought them here had had no talent whatsoever as a child. Only yesterday the sculptor had returned to his birthplace, with the delivery of a gift he felt was the greatest he could give. The culmination of nearly two years' effort, his largest and most elaborate statue, stood cloaked in the center of Hilden's Park. With glee the mayor had accepted the gift sight unseen, and it was erected in the park almost directly at the center of town. The twelve-foot monolith now stood with its cover glistening with ice after an exceptionally cold night, waiting impatiently for its creator. Paul Riley was a small man, thinly built and with short-cropped yellow hair, but his hands were large as suited a sculptor. His mouth was closed shut as he emerged from the hotel and marched past Holland to stand beside his statue. Mayor Williams read his prepared speech, expressing the town's thanks and appreciation. Riley just nodded in acknowledgement as the thanks dribbled out; "… and we appreciate your having abandoned your world-wide audience for a little while to honor our town…" To the relief of the chilly spectators he finally wound up his wordy speech with: "It is my great privilege to present to you Paul Riley and his gracious gift to our fair town." Brief half-hearted applause accompanied Riley's ascent to the statue's base; he heard someone mutter, "He warn't nothing as a kid." Holland searched the faces in the crowd, noticing anticipation, boredom, relief. Only Amos Sharton's face disrupted the pattern; his was creased with anger and anticipation. Riley thanked the mayor tersely and took hold of one corner of the white sheet. His mouth almost opened, but instead was quickly shut tighter, and he yanked at the cloth. There followed a gasp from the spectators, who recoiled from the work of art. "God preserve us!" a woman screamed from the back, and the impatient rumble of the crowd became an angry roar. Men crossed themselves; children were stuffed behind mothers' backs; eyes turned towards Riley. He stood in the shadow of his statue, his expression unreadable. He showed no surprise at the reaction. It stood, an ebon giant, in a proud and sweeping pose. Its feet were bare, its legs loosely skirted, its waist tied with a detailed rope. The cloths that straddled its chest seemed to flap in the breeze. From its back sprawled two half-folded angelic wings. Its face had a childish innocence about it, its eyes wide and full of wonderment, its lips clinging to questions it needed answered. Its head was crowned with a shock of rampant hair. And yet, despite the handsome angelic features, there was something too proud, too subtly pompous, for any angel of God. Sharton pushed his way to Riley and pointed an unmoving finger at him. "Blasphemer! It's Satan, Archenemy of God! How dare you curse us with this loathsome pile of stone, this foul rendering of the Eternal Sinner! May God forgive your idolatry!" Others grumbled in agreement. Holland put himself between Riley and the angry crowd. "God's wrath!" Sharton continued, though Holland tried to silence him. "Beware of God's wrath! I know your reputation. I know of your Godless works of so-called art! You were a fool and irreverent as a child. You are worse now!" "Move back, Sharton," demanded the sheriff. "All of you." "Eternal damnation!" "Go home, Sharton." Holland pointed him in the right direction and told the crowd to go home as well. Riley just stood there, his head bowed, unspeaking. "Go back to your hotel room, Riley. You've caused enough excitement for one day." Holland's daughter, sixteen and small for her age, was caressing one wingtip. Her eyes flashed and her budding chest heaved. "Come on, Miriam," he called, and held out a hand to her. She hesitated, then smiled at him and took his hand. She glanced back at the giant, looking up into the youthful black eyes that seemed almost to follow hers.

Holland lived above his office and usually spent his spare time at his desk doing all manner of senseless paperwork. The sun had gone down and the last of the crowd at the park had gone home. He sat uncomfortably trying to concentrate on his work but he kept turning his attention to Miriam, who stood just outside the door. Her face was illuminated by houselights, and she appeared to be smiling thoughtfully. Her eyes suddenly jerked upwards, and she began searching the skies for something. She opened the door quickly and said, "Daddy, did you hear anything?" "No, honey, why?" "Thought I heard a big bird, maybe a stray eagle from the mountains." She searched his attentive face. "Oh, never mind." She returned to her place outside the door, and scanned the skies with utmost concentration. Some deep and foreboding thought clung to the back of his mind, and did not leave him even as he slept. Morning arrived frigid, and Holland hoped it would have a cooling effect on the townspeople. Miriam served breakfast without really thinking about what she was doing, only once breaking her silence to remark mostly to herself, "Wish Momma were here to see that statue." She left for school early, leaving Holland alone and with little to do. He donned his heavy jacket and cap and stepped out into the unusually still street. The appliance shop, which provided the town with its radios and TV's which in turn provided the town with its only link to the big cities, was usually bustling with male gossipers. This morning, however, only Ben Reynolds and Mike Young sat at owner Vic Montaugh's counter. They only moved to greet him and ask him the social questions. Mike said, "Cold as death's breath, I tell you. Crops gonna freeze to hell." No one challenged him, as would have happened at any other time. "What about that statue, Sheriff?" "I'll handle it. No trouble, Vic?" "None." There was none of the usual tirade about the present state of law and order. The three men sat speechless about the counter, and Holland left. Sharton had apparently gone looking for him and had been disappointed at the office, for he emerged just then and looked up and down the street. Seeing Holland, he rushed towards him and called his name. Holland could only resign himself to his fate. "Sheriff Holland," Sharton began, his white breath billowing out. "The blasphemous object that has invaded our town must go. You can feel its presence, its evil, almost taste it in the air." They walked, riot together, to the office. "The thing that rises in our midst must be stricken down!" Holland took his time, unzipping his jacket and tilting his cap upwards. He made himself comfortable. "Look, Sharton. That thing's a statue, one any art museum in the world would pay a fortune for, and we should be grateful Riley donated it to our town park. It's not a demon or whatever. It's made of rock. I have no power nor desire to take it down." "How dare you…" "I'd advise you to stop making trouble for everyone and especially Riley." "This is an outrage!" He stomped towards the door "Those who joined Satan in his exile from Heaven were no less sinful than he! Beware, Sheriff Holland!" He slammed the door behind him as he left, and Holland sighed with relief and fear. Perhaps his job up till now had been too easy. His worrying made him restless, and he resumed his interrupted walk later on that morning. He strolled along some tiny offshoots of the main street, and saw women whose husbands were at work staring absently out their windows. His feelings of the night before nagged at him again, and were fortified by the small children who played without enthusiasm in their front yards. He continued along, trying to shake off the feeling but finding it impossible. The school now was an island in a sea of children; it was recess, and a time for the little ones

to let out restrained energy. Yet no laughter bounced across the schoolyards with the basketballs; no loud screams slapped the cement with the skipping ropes. The air seemed to have a smothering weight to it, and Holland noticed that for the first time he did not laugh at the children's antics. Miriam, he saw, sat alone upon a too-small swing staring blankly towards the center of town. Holland walked quickly away lest she see him. He soon found himself beside the towering michelangeline giant, studying it carefully as if expecting to find some clue as to how it could cause such town-wide turmoil. Its unholy stature did indeed send shivers over one's flesh, but was that not the genius of the sculptor? He himself did not particularly like it; but then, he was no art critic, and Riley was world-renowned for statues depicting supernatural and macabre subjects. Still, the town was religious, and it was almost expected that genius went unrecognized in a man's own home. Holland averted his eyes from the dark angel and glanced up at the top room of the small hotel. He saw Riley's unmoving head at the window, staring down at him and the statue. Miriam came home late from school and, when Holland asked her why, said, "I went to see Mr. Riley." She sat down on a chair across the desk from him. "He's really angry at everyone for the way they've been treating his statue. He let me see his tools, his chisels and all, and a big hammer and drawings." She turned to face the outside. "He says a part of his own soul goes into everything he creates, that he feels like everything he makes is real and alive." She just rambled on, describing his room and his set of tools as if no one and everyone was listening. "… keeps his tools sharpened and with him in case he gets the urge to scrape out something…" He watched her more than listened to her, as she sat, rapt, and stared out the window. Her face bloomed with wonder, awe, desire. She soon retired to her room, still unapproachable, and Holland remained behind to gather his thoughts. Night rubbed him stiffly. Sleep would not come, and he tossed and turned in bed under the buffeting of uneasiness and suspicion. There was something about the artist, something he didn't like. The pnly word he could find that matched Riley was 'insane'; his aloofness, it even showed in his art. And associating with a 'cult'. Who knows what sort of ideas inhabited that mind. He made a mental note to tell Miriam to avoid him. Un-nameable emotions passed through him until it was finally dawn and he watched the sun rise. Around seven o'clock he dressed and went downstairs to prepare breakfast; it was already on the table and Miriam was nowhere to be found. He ate slowly, bis mind rocking and reeling. It was Saturday. Where could she have gone? Saturdays were usually busier for a small town sheriff than most days, not because of an increase in crime but rather because of an increase in gossipers. Every Saturday Holland could remember brought five or six good talkers to his office. This Saturday, however, only Ben Reynolds came in, and he appeared more sombre than anything else. "How's everything? How's Miriam?" "Fine." "Darned weird the way your daughter dotes on that statue. This morning she kept touching it and admiring its wings and all. Suppose she's saying goodbye. When you taking it d…" "Miriam's in the park?" "Last I saw, yeah. I figured you knew. She don't seem to want to leave its side, staring up all glassy-eyed. What about that Godless monstrosity, anyways?" "I don't plan on touching it." He began thinking about Miriam. His forehead creased as worry enveloped him. "Eh?" Ben got off the desk and looked at him in disbelief. "Amos said sooner or later you was gonna make that atheistic nut take his statue back." "He's no atheistic nut. And his statue does no one any harm…" "No, huh? How about our children? Admirin' Satan!"

"Ben, listen. Amos…" "Amos is right. That thing's gotta go. I'm really surprised at you. I want that thing down and so does everyone else. A piece of hell, that's what it is. A piece of hell in our midst." "Ben, that's ridiculous…" But the gray-haired retired clerk was gone. He knew somehow that no one else would come that day; the air tingled with an unfriendly feeling. He just waited for Miriam to come home, and when she did he wasted no time. "Where have you been?" "Ummm…" She appeared shaken and tired, and fell weakly onto the chair. "Just walking around. Mr. Riley got real mad today." "You went to see him?" "Yeah. He watched everyone walking around and away from his statue and he got real mad and kicked me out. I don't think he's my friend any more. I don't think he ever was." "Miriam, I don't want you going anywhere near him again, do you understand?" "He doesn't want me around." "Listen. As a kid he always kept to himself, at least from what I can remember. Now… I just don't trust him. I don't think he's normal. Or ever was." "That's silly. He seems nice to me, just hurt by the way people act but not wanting to show it." "Still, I want you to stay away from him." Never had a Saturday taken so long to become Sunday, and Holland experienced his second straight sleepless night. The bed resisted every effort to relax. Pastor Mark Lockwood was not in his usual mood the next morning. As Holland and Miriam prepared to enter the little church across the street from the park the pastor took Holland to the side and said, "I want to speak to you after services." The sheriff entered and sat down beside his daughter, his uneasiness still gnawing at him. "Friends," Lockwood began as he mounted the rostrum. "We meet again in the house of God. This day I wish to speak to you about a sacreligious artifact that has found its way into our midst." Holland could make out Sharton, who sat on a pew near the rostrum. The former store-owner was nodding his head. "You have all probably seen it. It is a likeness of Satan, the Archenemy. It is obvious that the sculptor of such a statue has never found God and the demon madness has entered his brain. His despair is such that he does not come to service, but remains locked away in his room. I have assurance from our fine sheriff that the blasphemy will be taken from our midst." Holland cast him a glance he was sure reached its target and was understood. "The artist's reputation as depictor of the bizarre is well known and well appreciated, I'm sure, but…" An icy steam of air sliced across the church and set many teeth to chattering. It slapped at the pastor and he reacted violently. The frigid breeze died away as swiftly as it had come, and when it had left many people began standing up. Frightened muttering began, and panic seemed sure to break out despite the efforts of the pastor. "Be calm! God shall warm you!" It was no use. The church emptied in seconds, and Holland rushed outside. As he had feared, Sharton was gathering a crowd. "It is Satan himself who has invaded our town!" Members of the crowd agreed loudly. "He must be banished!" Holland forced his way to Sharton's side and started to call for peace and cooler heads. The object of their anger cast a frozen black shadow across the park lawn onto a portion of the crowd, and all heads turned in its direction. Miriam stood at the periphery of the circle around Sharton and her father, ignoring them and staring up into the eyes that appeared to extend themselves from the silhouetted stone face. "Go on home! Go home and relax until your common sense returns!" Holland got through to very few; the rest watched Sharton rip the crucifix from around his neck. He told Reynolds to get his ladder and a long piece of string. Holland could only stand back and watch the proceedings. Perhaps this would cool them down.

The parson looked on with approval. The power of God would stay the evil forces at work; yes, a cross upon the throat of Satan. Sharton tied the string to the crucifix chain. In a way that seemed impossible for a man of his age, he climbed the ladder until he stood just under the statue's chin. He tied the crucifix around its neck, bringing a roar of approval from the crowd. A miniature Jesus, head bowed and arms extended, glittered just below the cross' intersection. Sharton descended and pointed to Holland. "Now, you who are close to being a blasphemer yourself, make preparations to pull down this wretched evil!" Holland had to escape this lunacy. He walked quickly to his office and sat at his desk. Head in hands, he sat for an hour. Miriam had remained behind. The night air seemed alive with the combined anger of a townful of people and of something more, something intangible. Holland had not left his office for hours; he'd moved without thinking from desk to file cabinet to cell and back to desk. Now his rambling thoughts were interrupted by the sound of church bells ringing madly. "Sheriff!" He looked towards the frantically opened door. "It's a fire!" Soon a hundred voices took up the refrain of, "Fire!" Holland rushed outside and saw that the entire park area glowed eerily. Men raced by him carrying splashing pails of water. "The parsonage!" Someone called. Hoses slithered along the ground. An army of men, summoned by the deafening cadence of the bells, began blanketing the flaming walls of the parsonage with water. "They're inside!" a. woman screamed hysterically. He caught a helmet thrown to him as he ran by and saw that the front portion of the house was not as badly off as the rear where the bedrooms were located. He donned the helmet and pushed the door open, only to stop cold. Lockwood had grabbed his children and tried to take them out of the house himself. The evidence lay graphically before him; the parson lay sprawled over the staircase, Martin clutched in his left hand, Shawn in his right. All three were burned black, beyond hope. Mrs. Lockwood was at the top of the stairs bent over the banister, with a long charred stripe running the length of her back. Smoke painted the air. He turned and left as blood sizzled in the flames. Men in masks went inside to collect the bodies. "Satan lives!" The call crushed Holland's light slumber. He muttered, "Miriam?" just as the haze was clearing. Lifting his head, he opened his eyes and realized he had slept at his desk. The events of the night before seemed to pull at his brain. "Come, please, Sheriff Holland." It was Mrs. Montaugh, who by nature rose before dawn, and she stood trembling before him. "It's the devil himself, Sheriff. But I don't want to cause any more trouble. Come, please." He shook the sleep away and grabbed his hat. They walked to the park. "I didn't know what to do." He nodded. Sharton was at the statue, trying to hoist a sledgehammer he had had in his store and never sold. Rust from his cellar caked it. Holland grabbed the hammer from him and threw it to the ground. "What's going on here, Sharton?" "The work of Satan, Sheriff!" He pointed to the feet of the statue. The crucifix that had been attached to its neck now lay melted at its base. Jesus and cross had become one, dribbling down the side of the foundation to the grass. The string was ashes. "See, Sheriff? Satan's power works among us. What else but his dark forces could have caused this?" Abruptly, he turned and walked away. Holland stared after him, wondering what was going through Sharton's mind.

The sheriff needed time more than anything. School was closed for the day, and he looked forward to a peaceful day at home with Miriam. He went up to her room and found her bed empty. Last night she hadn't come home at all. His walk down the main street dragged on, as did his thoughts. It all smelled like an attempt at frightening the townspeople for some crooked purpose. All he could think of was Riley, the rejected artist, the disturbed artist, whose work was now shunned by a townful of people. For gain, no. For revenge, maybe. Morning gradually became afternoon. As he passed by homes he noticed mothers growing unnaturally irritated with their children; fathers, having refused to go to work, reading the paper without seeing a word, old people on their balconies rocking and staring down at him. He slid into a diner and ate tasteless food, drank the water-like Coke. Where had Miriam spent the night? She was almost a woman. After paying, and inadvertently leaving a ridiculous tip, he continued his walk and took himself to the very fringes of town. A couple of abandoned barns, hideouts of generations of eight-year-old gangsters, were stuffed between lawns of new homes. Their demolition was to have taken place long ago but no one had had the heart to deprive the children. A gang was there now, running in and out of one of the barns and shooting at the posse. His memory swung back to when Miriam was eight. Her mother had just been buried… One of the children said, "Hey, lookit this." "What is it?" "I dunno. Hey, Sheriff Holland! What's this?" he went to the barn and peeked onside. A shaft of light struck something in one corner. As he took a closer look he realized it was a red mass of something. He told the kids to go home, his voice shaking a little, and tried to ignore their protests. When they were gone he walked stiffly to the red pile. It was a body all right, with not two square inches of untorn skin on its bones. He turned it over. "Miriam!" His tears were gone, and so was the sun. He again sat at his desk, while the town outside hummed with the news. Her voice came in and drowned out the rest; "… keeps his tools sharpened… got real mad and kicked me out… don't think I'm his friend any more…" Riley never knew what friends were. He grabbed his holster and buckled it around bis waist, then slid into his jacket and left. A mob had formed outside, Sharton at its head. Some were already at the statue, on fire ladders, tying ropes around it. "We have given up on your help, blasphemer! Your own child slain by the hand of Satan and still you do not act." Holland heard nothing. He marched towards the hotel. Even Mayor Williams was in the mob. Holland climbed the steps and called, "Riley, open up!" He reached the door to his room and pressed against it. "Open up now!" He pushed the door down and stopped. There was a red pile on the floor, in the same condition as Miriam had been. He turned it over. It was Riley, and the look on the near-shredded face was one of sheer terror. Confused, he looked around. There were no tools strewn about, no potential murder weapon, no evidence of suicide. Then, screams crackled through the open window. Holland looked down across the street and gasped at the sight in the park. The twelve foot giant had taken the ropes in his hands and leapt from the stone pedestal, breaking his bonds and swinging those who clung to the rope ends. Those who were too terrorized even to drop their ropes and flee were dashed to the pavement and badly injured. The angered ebon Satan lashed out at the mob which had tried to bind him, and sent men flying to their deaths. Sharton, bold and foolish, approached uncautiously, shouting biblical passages

and holding his new wooden crucifix to the giant. A huge hand darted down and knocked the impotent fetish away. Then Sharton was raised by incredibly strong arms high into the air and thrown hard against a brick wall, without even enough time to scream on his way. Holland whipped out his gun and fired uselessly at the black giant. A dark face turned upwards to glare at the source of minor irritation, its eyes glowing a bright red. The sweeping wings unfolded and Satan burst into deep, echoing laughter. Holland backed away from the window, a scream lodged in his throat. And in the street, mortal men ran before the onslaught. 8: Steve Chapman - Burger Creature First I should tell you about our manager. He weighed about 300, composed of equal parts of grease and fat, like our burgers, except that our burgers weigh nothing. I would say that his most annoying habit (aside from chain smoking and making us counter girls pick up his butts, so he could look up our uniforms, or down them, or through them) was to put an inch of orange drink in a cardboard cup every morning, fill it up with vodka, and call it a screwdriver. "Screwdriver," he would say, wiping his greasy chin. After two of these, he was ready to face the day, lying on his back in the storeroom. "Never skip breakfast," he'd say, popping a french fry into his greasy mouth. One day he delayed his breakfast to introduce me to a new girl. The last one had quit because of heat exhaustion aggravated by a growing fear of food. It had been pitiful to watch her. When fishburgers were introduced, she'd been robbed of the last form of protein she could still stomach. She'd show up for work with her eyeliner smeared across her bloodshot lids. She'd unwrap patties in her little hands and sweep a limp strand of blond hair out of her face, biting at her lip frost to get the smell out of her mouth. Some of us got it, and she got it bad. Finally, one noon rush, she threw her cage of fries down into the boiling grease and staggered out the service door, muttering. "The pickles are dyed green. The Coke is dyed brown. My hair is dyed blond. I'm turning into a cheeseburger." She never even picked up her last paycheck. We did smell like cheeseburgers. Our uniforms are the same white as the paper bags. I don't want to think about it. "This is Trudy," says the manager with a greasy hand on her shoulder. "She's going to be a novice here for a while, so we'll have to show her around." Your hair is greasy, I thought at the manager. Even your pimples are greasier than my pimples. The manager ran his hand down his tie. "Trudy, this is Maureen. She calls herself Girl Burger." Even your eyes are greasy, I thought. Trudy walks on over to me, looking the place up and down. I don't mind admitting she did things for that starchy white shift I never conceived of. The weight I have in my rump and thighs, she has elsewhere. Her hair was short and black. Her eyeshadow was green and premeditated. "I worked at a burger place before," she said, pretending to chew gum. "You can call me Burger Queen." I could see right then we were going to get along. Burger Queen turned out to be excellent with shakes and male customers. We spent our lunch hours at the chicken place across the highway, conspiring to perfect a code for insulting the manager and yelling orders at the same time.

It was late one night shift. Everyone else had deserted. I was mopping the linoleum when I heard a scraping and whimpering at the service door. I opened the door and swung the mop into the thing's face. With a sort of liquid snort, it eeled under my arm and fell in a heap against the grill. It looked like a tall, stringy man made of gritty, burnt hamburger meat in jeans, track sneakers, and a dirty undershirt. Its hair was a tangle of french fries. Its mouth, a wedge of onion smeared around the edges with ketchup. Its eyes were pickle slices, and it had no nose. Since it wasn't making any moves, but only gibbering with its little head cocked sideways on the end of its neck, I beat it with my mop into the walk-in freezer and slammed the door, I figured the guy on the morning shift would attend to it the next day. I was on overtime already. But the next afternoon, Burger Queen pulled some potatoes out of the walk-in, and when I was gossiping to her over the fries pit, she put her mouth to one side and stared into her scoop and said, "Have you seen what we've got in the freezer?" I said yes and suggested we call it Burger Creature. When business was slow, and our manager was taking his afternoon coma, we looked in on Burger Creature again. He was crouched in a corner by the floor drain, nibbling at his fingers and drooling Coke syrup. Queen stood with one hand on her hip and massaged her eyes, unsticking one of her lashes. Then she leaned on the meat rack for support. I took another look at the Creature, scratching his french fries with his thin, brown fingers and smiling a sweet ketchup grin. Then I leaned against Burger Queen. "What do we do with it?" she asked with the most mournful expression on her pretty, smeared face. "I mean, we can't cook it!" "I suppose we could take it on as an apprentice." I still don't know why I said that. Genius probably. Genius. The Creature turned out to be an obedient pet and helpful with simple tasks like after-hours mop-up. We let him out secretly, and he was content to look through the garbage or press his face to a window, watching the cars go by and gurgling to himself. Burger Queen was very attached to him. She'd lead him by the hand to a counter she had wiped, get him to spring his rear up there, and she'd rest her arms on his knees and bitch about the day's bastards. Then she'd mess his head of fries, say, "You're cute," and walk him back to the freezer with her arm slung around his waist. I'd just chew my split ends and watch the two of them. During the day he lived among the buns, counting inventories on his fingers and wetly humming the commercials he learned from my radio. He had a talent for fitting himself into things, and if I opened the freezer without knocking, I'd catch his fingers folding the flap of some carton down over himself. His favorite hiding place, the box that came with the orange drink/purple drink fountain, was a reliable place to dump him out of when he was asleep. A playful kick in the side would send him to his work, murmuring and squishing at his eyes. We even bought a new undershirt for him. But we couldn't coax him into trying it on. He just stood in a corner with his arms pressed to his sides. We thought he might be modest, so we left him alone for a minute, but he stayed inside his old rag. I tried to pull it off him, but it came loose with a sucking, tearing sound, and I let go. Where the strap left his shoulder, I'd seen a rut. He whimpered for a while, and Burger Queen stroked his arm. I handed her a napkin, but instead of wiping her hands, she used it to dab some mustard off his cheek. I never messed with him after that. He was thin but tall. We used to debate the question of Burger Creature's origin. Queen's theory was that he'd been a gawky, horny boy who'd stuffed himself with greasy food until he became a mass of acne and mail-ordered a pimple cream that turned him into Burger Creature. Unlikely.

I think he just assembled himself from the garbage at a landfill project. I can see him clawing up through the clay, running from a bulldozer, jumping into the scoop of an outbound garbage truck, and hitchhiking by instinct toward his source: a burger joint. There is another possiblity. There's the chance that Burger Creature was designed and molded by one of the corporations who own these franchises, but he escaped or was abandoned. He could be a reject from Research and Development. Maybe there's a whole race of them in production. Waiting to be released. Behind the counter, life went on. "Two big Cokes. One no ice. Two fries. Two double cheese vodka stinking drunk with no mustard." "Girl Burger, I've been thinking," says my partner to me, "why not let Creature out in the open all day?" I looked at her opening a carton of foil wrappers, then at Creature, squeegeeing a window in the early morning light. Was he beginning to look normal to her? "Because the customers would see him. How's that?" "Would they really? I mean, think about it. I mean, do they see you?" I knew what she meant. Nobody looks at you when you run counter. They look at your uniform. "Will that be all, sir?" "No, that'll be it." Unless you're built like Burger Queen, you could be anything. "You mean have him take orders?" "Why not?" "Does he know how?" "Of course he does. He's been watching." She proudly pecked him on the cheek and licked her lips. "I've been waiting to try it, and with the manager called in sick…" "Hangover." "Overdose of grease… there's no better time. People are groggy in the morning anyhow." I took the squeegee from him. I was counting on one thing: nobody sees specifics at a burger place. Only a network of chromium and yellow parking lines and plastic cups and grilled meat. Who could possibly fit in better than Burger Creature? While I unlocked the place, Burger Queen tied an apron on him. He stepped toward the customer window. His hands wandered unsurely up his front and into his mop of french fries. He looked around as if he'd lost something. He rummaged through some drawers and pulled out a disposable white two-corner cap. He fitted it on his head. He stood up straight. Something inside him snapped into place. Our first customer pulled into the parking lot and climbed out of his Impala. He looked like a salesman on the road, the middle-class equivalent of a hungry truck driver. Creature was standing behind the counter. The man pushed through the door. We pretended to be busy. The man put his elbows on the counter and read the menu board. "Double hamburger and a vanilla shake." He stared at the formica counter. "And french fries." Then the Burger Creature did three things at the same time and never slowed down. With one hand he grabbed a carry-out box and snapped it open with a flick of the wrist. With the other he slung two patties off their wrappers onto the grill. Flipping on the gas, he stepped to the frier, dumped fries, wiped counter, pulled cup, pumped vanilla, pushed burger, shpritzed milk, shook fries. He was working in front of himself, beside himself with a frightening reach, opening shelves with his sneakers, casual, perfectly timed, unstoppable. He set the order on the counter and rang it up on the register.

The man looked at the price on the register, pulled two dollars from his wallet onto the counter, scooped his change out of the change scoop, took his order in one arm, and pushed out through the door. Burger Queen hugged Creature around the waist. He wiped his hands on the back of her uniform and seemed confused by the attention. We sat and watched him through the noon rush. Years of training could never have produced such a short-order cook. He kept a dozen orders going at once, and still had time to sit on the sizzling grill and keep the burgers company. But we had a bad moment when he ran low on meat. I caught him ripping a chunk from the inside of his arm, and Queen used up half a tin of Band-Aids, trying to make one stick to him. Also, if you watched close, you'd see him use a healthy spit in place of the bottled ketchup. The customers loved the service regardless. A couple of high-school kids even talked to him. "You're new here aren't you?" He nodded. "I didn't think I ever saw you here." He shook his head. "Well, you sure are keeping busy." He smiled. "Yeah, I may try to get a job here over the summer." The kids walked out, cracking jokes, giggling, chewing. He fitted in so well. That night, humming softly, Burger Queen walked a weary Burger Creature to the freezer with her hand on his back. She tied his sneaker laces, folded his gangly legs into his box, and tucked him in with some brown wrapping paper. I left her there, watching over him under the dim buzz of the fluorescent light. I think she was waiting for me to go. *** The manager showed up bright and early the next afternoon and pulled a thermos of readymix martinis out of his briefcase. He was back in the pink, and Creature was back in cold storage, whining like a lonely TV dinner. "I'm celebrating!" quipped the manager, his thumbs feeling for his belt under his paunch. "I'd ask you to join me, but you girls have to face the public." We smiled, teeth brushed, uniforms spotless. "Right, sir." Burger Creature howled behind his door. "Do you know why I'm celebrating?" We shook our heads. "No sir." "Because next Friday at two o'clock, the regional manager is giving us a surprise inspection." I slipped Creature one of his special favorite burgers with extra pickles. I heard him writhe in ecstasy against the other side of the door. "I want the golden arches hosed down. I want the trash can lids oiled." I slipped Creature some fries to wash down his burger. "Maureen, look at me. I want the freezer cleaned up." I slammed the door. "What the hell is that?" Four ground beef fingers were sticking out the door, tying themselves into knots of pain. Burger Creature said his first word: "Ahnggg." I looked to Burger Queen for some instant genius. She dug her plastic nails into her blouse and screamed.

The manager yanked open the door, froze, then went reeling back into the grill, slamming the door, his greasy eyes wider than I'd ever seen them. "Aaauih!" he said. "Sir?" "It's a… There's a… a goddam thing in there… a… filthy ugly whatthehell I don't know a pickle a meat a… with all greasy and…" "Now, sir, it's true we haven't cleaned up in there for a while, but…" "No! Nooo! Waving its arms! Dancing goddammit! It was dancing! Pouring ketchup over itself! I think it was drinking the goddam ketchup! Bun on its… lettuce in its hair! Thin… greasy … hamburger!" I shrugged coyly. The freezer banged open, and Queen jumped back, mouthing my baby, my baby in mute hysteria and bouncing everything she had. Pickle-eyes bulging, his french fries trembling, flushed like raw meat, Burger Creature filled the doorway, the front of him flattened by the slamming of the door. A burnt smell hit me. He roared the roar of an angry hamburger. "It's going to eat me," the manager whispered. He sucked • in his gut, lunged at the service door, and ran into the parking lot, throwing a straw dispenser behind him. He jumped in his convertible, backed over the curb into the side wall, shrapneling red and white tiles, and stripped gears out the entrance onto the highway. "Police!" he was yelling hoarsely. "Police! Garbage!" In her distress, Burger Queen ripped the top button off her uniform. "You better move on," I said to Creature. "Try the drive-in ten miles west. Follow I-12. Get out!" Creature was panicked. I could tell. He dove over the grill, scrambled through the customer window, slid around a glass door, and staggered off across the asphalt toward the open highway. Burger Queen ran after him, and I saw her pull his arm. She talked to him feverishly, biting on her lower lip. He bowed his little head and shook it slowly. Limp french fries brushed her nose. He started down the road with a wet glisten in his pickle-eyes. He jammed his fists between his legs in terror and nearly swallowed his mouth when he saw the red convertible bearing down on him. The manager had U-turned, chrome grill gleaming in the sun, teeth bared behind the heat waves and manic gasoline whine. Creature stood frozen. The manager revved into fourth gear. Waving her arms like a crazed cheerleader, Burger Queen ran into the path of the Corvair. Creature's head shot out, his body snapping after. His sinewy legs coiled and sprang to new lengths. His head jammed down between his undershirt straps when it rammed Queen's shoulder. The manager downshifted out of sight around the bend, and I was ready to see only a ragged patty on the blacktop, but Creature and Queen were lying in the roadside gravel in a cheerfully struggling pile of jeans and arms and ripped uniform. He helped her to her feet, straightened her bobby-pinned two-corner cap, and gazed into her eyes. Then he braced his sneakers, bent her over backward, and pressed his face to hers in the longest, most nose-breaking kiss it has ever been my pleasure to see. He stood her up. She stepped after him dizzily, her bodice rippling loose in the breeze, her makeup smeared under a mess of greasy sweet ketchup. He jogged up to a passing track, grabbed the gate with one hand, and swung aboard. They waved to each other, slowly and wistfully, though Burger Creature's arm was pulled slightly out of shape, until he disappeared in the smoggy distance.

9: Tim Stout - Wake Up Dead In view of its amazing and hideous outcome, those of us involved in the Kellin experiment have agreed that an account of what we saw should be prepared at once. Dr. Kellin's tragic suicide has robbed the medical world of a detailed explanation of his extraordinary dream projector. In undertaking to speak for the dead man myself, I anticipate a great deal of scoffing and incredulity. However, as my two colleagues will testify, what follows is no wild fancy but a report of plain, terrible facts. Those who cannot accept our word may care to advance their own explanation of what befell John Vanner, of whose body there now exists not the slightest trace. For me, the affair began with a sheet of notepaper headed "Comber Fell-Her Majesty's Prison for the Criminally Insane" and an invitation from Kellin, then and until recently the resident director of psychiatry. The letter read more like a summons than an invitation. He would be glad if I could join him and other medical guests for dinner at Comber Fell, where afterwards we would be viewers of a unique experiment. Since it could not proceed without witnesses I was urged to attend. The nature of the experiment was not mentioned, but I knew of Kellin's long-standing interest in the unconscious, and in particular of the sleeping mind. Partly out of curiosity and partly out of a sense of courtesy to an old acquaintance, I wrote back accepting. His hospitality was very welcome after the long drive to the Warwickshire border. Our party dined alone in a large, panelled room overlooking the sweep of a dense fir plantation that ranged below the hilltop prison. The meat course was excellent, the German hock delightful and we were a merry table. Kellin's other two guests were known to each other, although not to myself. The first, a heavily-built, short-winded man named Torry, was introduced as a specialist in nervous disorders. His companion, Hasshe, was a very pleasant American with a fund of outrageous yarns about his experiences as an army surgeon. Our conversation was buoyant, if not brilliant, and I wondered when Kellin would turn it to the subject of his experiment. It was some time since our last meeting, and I was startled to see that his hair, surprisingly white for a man of middle age, was very nearly matched in pallor by his lean, scooped-out features. He looked as though the light of day had hardly touched him. I was about to remark on this when he opened up. Hasshe, I remember, had commented, "Doctor, that was a real dream of a meal." Kellin refilled his glass with a smile. "A dream, you say. Now there's a word that shouldn't be used lightly." Hasshe sipped the hock. "Well, I was speaking figuratively." "Of course. But we should never forget that the word has a literal meaning too. An important one." He sat back and looked at us thoughtfully. "You see, I believe that a dream is a clue." "A clue?" Torry's eyebrows rose. "Hmmm." "A glimpse, then, if you prefer. A glimpse of a 'somewhere else' just beyond our reach. It does exist, as all of us know. There's glory waiting there, a rapture-and there are nightmares, too, terrors we dare not face, sights that would blast us if we were forced to behold them. "Most of all, don't you think, a dream is a chance to peep into a land of mystery. Just a brief look from sleep's revolving door. Before we can venture further, our bodies awaken and drag us away." Hasshe caught my eye, but it was Torry who voiced our reaction.

"Isn't this a bit-well, fanciful, old man?" Kellin looked at him in astonishment. "Fanciful? I dare say it is. What on earth does that matter? These fancies, as you call them, have gripped the minds of human beings ever since… well, ever since we became human beings. Think about it for a moment: dreams of prophecy, that have been handed down the centuries until the events foretold came true; visionary dreams, with the power to make a common man into a saint; dreams of supernatural intensity that haunt the sleeper nightly until they topple him into his grave." He paused, turned his glass between his fingers and stared at the wine. "Where do our minds go when sleep fills them? Where do they come back from?" He lifted his pale face and looked at me. "I don't know. Do you?" I shrugged and dropped my gaze. Cigar ash, I saw, had scattered over his shirt cuff. "Of course," said Torry, "certain points have been established. From questioning the sleeper after he has awoken, we can state with confidence-" "Utter rubbish!" His vehemence startled us. Torry bridled and turned red. Looking somewhat contrite, Kellin modified his tone. "I'm sorry if I was a trifle sharp, but really it won't do. It's time medical men moved on from such hit and miss enquiries. You all know yourselves how easily the shreds of memory fade away. Dreams vanish with the night breeze. "In other branches of knowledge we gather facts at first hand. We make an exception of the study of dreams? We need to see things for ourselves, as they actually are." I felt a thrill of excitement at the implication of his words. Torry, sitting beside me, made no effort to conceal his reaction. He took the first puff from his cigar and announced: "Quite preposterous. Absolutely. You may want to see things for yourself, Kellin, but to want to look at a dream… Well, really, old man! Nobody can." Kellin got to his feet and looked down across the table at the complacent neurologist. "I think I can, Torry," he said calmly. "I think I can." More than that he would not say and, as at his suggestion we then rose to proceed on foot to where the experiment was to be held, none of us pressed him. The nature of the experiment now seemed plain, but my own attitude towards it was very largely one of scepticism, as well as a natural curiosity. I could tell from their faces that Hasshe and Torry were of the same mind. It was late in the evening and the austere prison buildings of pale brick loomed in the darkness like icebergs square-chiselled by a monster hand., Kellin's short figure strode ahead, his hands deep in the pockets of his black overcoat and his white hair stirred in the steady breeze. I fell in beside him. "Have you been working on this line of research for long?" I asked. "For some years." "A prison is a strange place to choose." "Not so strange, as it happens. My task here is the development and testing of psychiatric therapy for deranged prisoners. We try to eliminate, or at least to control, the criminal urge. It's a far more useful and humane treatment than locking them and their problems away together. As you can imagine, opportunities for research are endless." Torry, still sore from Kellin's criticism, glared at him. "I can imagine all right. But suppose your deranged prisoners decide they'd prefer to be locked away than undergo your psychiatric therapy? What then?" Kellin's face snapped shut. "There is no supposing about it. That is what they do decide. But they have not been sent here to make decisions."

His tone did not invite further conversation. None of us spoke until we reached a long, white building, splashed by the beams of two revolving floodlights set in a look-out cabin topping the nearby prison wall. Kellin motioned us to wait. The beams played over the building and then swung away to traverse the trees beyond. Once the door was in deep shadow, we moved forward. "There's a certain degree of secrecy about your presence here tonight," Kellin told us. "I'd rather we were not interrupted." My curiosity was as strong as ever, but as we hurried through the darkness ahead of the sweeping lights my scepticism was tinged with something close to alarm. Why, I wondered, had Kellin seen fit to behave so stealthily? What kind of medical experiment was it that required three witnesses? A hundred times since that night I have reproached myself for not having the courage of my doubts, and staying clear of the whole business. Yet I am sure that not even Kellin himself could have foreseen the frightful potential of his experiment, or guessed at its ghastly aftermath. Once inside the building echoes of our footsteps, coughs and guarded whispers heralded us through empty corridors and past closed doors. At length Kellin halted. There was a clink as he unfastened a padlock. Then he opened a door and ushered us into the blackness beyond. My first reaction was to fumble for a light switch, but there was none to be found. My eyes smarted for a few moments from the almost complete absence of light. Then I saw the faint glimmer of dials and the dull sheen of metal, and made out bulky shapes I took for laboratory equipment arranged against the walls like statues in a museum. My companions seemed similarly at a loss, and we stood together awkwardly. Kellin, evidently used to finding his way in the dark, brushed past us and crossed the room. There came a click, and slowly two green lamps began to make a place for themselves in the blackness. "Over here." Kellin motioned us towards three steel-framed chairs. The green glow was just enough for us to see him and each other. "Excuse the darkness," he said. "It is necessary, as you'll see in a few moments." He perched on a bench, where his white hair and pale face stood out like a huge moth amidst the shadows. The lecture began. "As doctors, you will all know that the brain, for reasons we don't fully understand, constantly emits electrical signals. All brains do this, healthy or not. This we know." "It's not my own field," Hasshe interrupted, "but aren't these the signals measured and interpreted by the electroencephalogram?" "Perfectly correct. I'm certain that you, Torry, as a neurologist, will be familiar with this machine." "I certainly know a good deal about the electro-encephalogram," Torry admitted. "EEG readings are used in the treatment of many nervous disorders; epilepsy, for instance. The machine produces a series of graphs showing variations in the brain's emissions. But reading and understanding them is a matter for the expert. If you expect the EEG to give you direct evidence of a sleeper's dream, you'd better think again." "I expect nothing of the kind," Kellin replied crisply. "The apparatus you see around us-I'm sorry I can't allow you to examine it yet-receives the brain's electrical discharges. But far from producing graphs, it changes those signals into another form of energy." Suddenly I caught his meaning. "You mean into light?" I asked. He nodded. "Although let us say rather into light patterns which, I hope, will be intelligible." "So what you're really telling us is that you can produce a picture of a dream," said Hasshe. "It sounds almost like television."

Before Kellin could reply, Torry broke in. "You hope the patterns will be intelligible, you say. Are we to understand that as yet you have made no test yourself?" "That is so." A note of entreaty crept into his voice. "I believe my theories are sound, and I am sure we shall see a clear image of an actual dream. But I want you to appreciate that there is a certain risk involved. Compared with the power needed to project images, the strength of the brain's emissions is weak. To compensate, I am using a recycling device. Considerable electric current will be passing through the sleeper's brain cells. I am convinced that this will do him no harm. But I felt it wrong to proceed without witnesses. That is why I have asked you all to come here tonight." "Who is this sleeper?" Torry asked. "I presume you don't intend to electrocute any one of us." "Hardly that, Doctor. Your minds are too useful to me where they are. No, I have a volunteer available." He turned a knob, and one of the green lamps gleamed brighter. "I'm sorry we have to remain in semi-darkness, but there could be no experiment at all if my volunteer awoke. Green is the most restful of colours, but even so I cannot risk more than this soft glow." In the small pool of light we now saw a bed on which a man lay asleep. He was hunched beneath the clothes, and we could see nothing of his face, for bolted to the head of the bed, which in turn was bolted to the floor, was something resembling a large black cowl or helmet. This seemed to encase the man's entire head, giving the passing but unnerving illusion of a decapitated body. The picture was weird enough, but what followed added a grim touch. The lighting must have seeped into the sleeper's mind, for a shudder passed through the sheeted body and his right hand fell into view with an audible clank of metal. The volunteer was manacled to his bed. I could not tell whether Kellin noticed the distaste in our faces as he lifted the hand and slid it back under the bed clothes. "A precaution, nothing more," he said easily. "The man knew he was to be restrained for his own safety." He peered at a dial set in the cowl. "He is now in a deep sleep, so I can remove this. You may look at him if you wish." He pulled gently at the cowl. "Remember one thing. This is not a hospital but a prison. A prison for the criminally insane." The cowl came free. We saw the man's face. Even in sleep, it was repulsive. There was a greasy sheen on the broad, slab-like features. The straggle of moustache glistened unhealthily in the green light. Thick neck folds all but swallowed the chin. And for some reason it was a familiar face. I was trying to place it when Hasshe spoke. "John Vanner. Luckily for him he was brought to trial in this country. Back home, a man like that ends up lynched." Then I remembered. Three years ago, I had performed post-mortems on Vanner's four victims. The prosecution had called me to the Old Bailey to give evidence. Few murder trials can have equalled the Vanner case in gruesome detail. It aroused so much popular fury that the public gallery had to be cleared twice. The editor of a leading evening newspaper was summonsed for printing the medical evidence in its entirety, against a direction from the bench. "Thirteen years was the sentence, wasn't it?" I asked Kellin.

He nodded. "I believe you were connected with the case." "I've seen nothing so sickening since the war. Most of it was too atrocious to go to the jury. First, that old fellow in the railway sidings: his head was literally wrenched from his shoulders. Then there was the flat where we found the woman. The Police took me with them. I can still remember moving aside on the stairs when the blood came dripping down to meet us. Thank God you've got him chained up. "But the last time was the worst. Twin brothers, each nine years old. What was left of them came to the hospital in two buckets. "I'm sorry, Kellin. If Vanner's the man whose dream you want us to watch, I don't think I'm interested." Kellin was unmoved. "The killings were appalling, I agree," he said. "But do the man the courtesy of considering his own account." "What account?" asked Hasshe. "The press said he was convicted on his own admission." "He admitted he killed four people. He never confessed to murder." Kellin pointed towards the bed. "You saw the chains. Does it need me to tell you the poor fellow's a somnambulist? When he walks in his sleep he ceases to behave like a human being. He becomes a machine that strikes out blindly." Torry had been staring at Vanner's face. He turned away and looked at Kellin. "Wasn't there some nonsense talked about during the trial of a dream being responsible for what he did?" Kellin nodded. "I'm surprised you should regard a recurrent nightmare as nonsense, Torry. Doubtless your lack of sympathy for my patient is matched by your obvious ignorance of the possible effects. The story's wretched enough. "Yes, mention was made of a dream. It was the result of something that happened to Vanner while he was a young boy. He was born illegitimate. Home was an alley basement, and a screaming slut of a mother who eked out her dole money with what she could earn on the streets. One night when Vanner was about nine, there was a violent argument between her and the particular lout with whom she was living at that time. The boy was hiding under the bed, but saw the whole thing. The woman lost control completely and seized a kitchen knife. Before the man could stop her, she ripped open his cheek from eye to the mouth and rammed the blade into his chest, until jammed against the collar-bone. He dragged out the knife and grabbed her throat. Vanner says he watched him start to squeeze, but then became frightened by the noises his mother was making and looked away. When he heard the noises cease he made a dash for the door. "In a moment the man was after him. "Young Vanner ran for his life. He could hear the wounded killer stumbling after him, shouting out offers of money and sweets if he would hold still and wait. The knife was still in the man's hand. The boy kept running. "The houses around were empty slums awaiting demolition. He knew no one would hear his cries for help. So he sought sanctuary among the yards and side-streets, although every moment he fancied that the murderer was upon him. Wherever he hid, the footfalls seemed to follow. Each time they came closer and closer. The boy feared that if he were caught he would be silenced for what he had seen. Finally, he could think of only one last hiding place. In his panic, he clambered over the railings of a nearby cemetery, squirmed under a tarpaulin and concealed himself in a freshly dug grave. "He cowered there all night. His macabre refuge scared the wits out of him. But even more terrifying than the grave's dark depths was the thought that he would hear footsteps dragging towards its brink, and look up to see the tarpaulin torn aside.

"In the morning, the boy was rushed to hospital by undertakers who discovered him unconscious. Later, he was placed in a children's home until foster parents were found for him. Years afterwards, he learned that the man who murdered his mother had actually collapsed not far from the scene of his crime." "So he'd been running away from nothing?" said Torry. Kellin shook his head. "You're wrong. He was running from something all right. Running, fleeing, desperately trying to get away. Today- tonight-over twenty years later, he still hasn't escaped." "But you said he got away! He was safe." "But you never get away from your own fears," Hasshe put in. "That's what you're saying, isn't it?" "Exactly that," Kellin agreed. "You see, what came after that little boy was a spectre of his own making, called up by all the fears and horrors that haunt a child's mind. Fear of the dark; fear of being alone. Fear of pursuit, of footsteps and of unseen padding things. Insubstantial things, yes. But to young Vanner, as real as the most dreadful monster that ever walked the earth. "Dreams, of course, were inevitable. His childhood was tortured by them. Almost nightly, he tells me, he was visited by the same nightmare in which something huge and menacing clumped after him." "This dream persisted from childhood until now?" I asked in surprise. "Not quite. It troubled him less as he grew older, and possibly would have faded altogether. No, its resurgence, and also his habit of sleep-walking, date from a bad road accident in which he received a serious head wound. It was necessary to operate to remove an extensive blood clot, but unfortunately brain damage set in before the clot could be drained. The nightmare returned. "As you know, head injury patients often reveal a strength far greater than one would expect and Vanner was a powerful man to start with. Although at first friends controlled his wild fits and leanings towards somnambulism by locking him in at night, the time came when while still asleep he broke out and escaped into the streets. The four killings were committed during the next eleven days, while he was sleeping rough. "Now this is the point to grasp." Kellin seized my arm. "In his sleeping, dream-ridden mind anyone, even a young child who happened to come near him, was mistaken for the beast, monster, call it what you will, which he believed was hunting him down. You can see he's a heavily-built fellow. I believe he was a quarryman before his arrest." We looked at the still figure lying chained upon the bed. Kellin walked over to it. "It almost goes without saying that, in common with most people, Vanner has only a sketchy memory of what he dreams. I hope that after tonight's experiment we can tell him exactly what happens. Perhaps once he knows the nature of his nightmare, it will trouble, him no more." He tapped a bank of quietly humming equipment. "This is the heart of the circuit. Now here-" He pointed to an arrangement of dark glass cubes-"is what we may term the dream projector. It will cast an image upon the screen you see at the foot of the bed. "This regulator-" He laid his fingers on a long steel lever-"controls the strength of the current pulsing through the sleeper's brain. A weak current may show us little or nothing. A strong current will give a much clearer picture." He grasped a bundle of electrodes hanging from the sides of the cowl.

"I have to connect Vanner's scalp to the circuit. Perhaps you would consider the experiment." We watched in silence as his hands moved deftly over Vanner's head, attaching the metal pins beneath his hair and gluing them lightly into position. He plugged the leads into a grey cabinet and turned back to us. "Unless any of you wish to raise an objection, I shall commence the experiment now." Hasshe glanced at Torry and myself. "Well, how about it? I can't see any harm." "It seems all right," Torry frowned. "The fellow's an absolute brute, anyway. Let's see what you get." Kellin looked at me. With misgivings, I nodded. "Very well," he said and moved the big lever. At the same moment the lamps went out. We all stared at the vacant screen. At first there was nothing, and with the passing of the minutes our eagerness began to evaporate. There was only the pale square before us to look at, and all that broke the silence was the hum of Kellin's electrical apparatus. Deprived of everything except my thoughts, I pondered over what young Vanner must have felt as he fled from his mother's killer. I was still trying to imagine the horrible scene when Kellin tapped my shoulder. I looked up quickly. His rapt features were tinged with a pale blue glow. The light came from lengths of glass tubing, which had suddenly become illuminated. Within the glass, sparks flashed and sprang with an icy radiance along thick strands of copper wire. The tubes ran from all corners of the laboratory into the base of the dream projector. Kellin stood calmly beside the projector, but his voice trembled with excitement as he announced, "It's working! You're looking at the electrical signals from Vanner's brain. Soon they will become stronger." The twinkling settled into a steady pulse of blue light. The four of us could see each other quite clearly, although the rest of the laboratory remained in shadow. As far as we could make put, Vanner seemed unaffected by the experiment. Intense excitement now gripped us. We were anxious to see if all would take place as Kellin had predicted. At length, there came a flicker upon the screen. Amazed whispers broke out amongst us. Kellin ignored them. He seemed to be juggling with a dial and a knob. The flicker returned, danced back and forth for a moment and cascaded into specks of light that pattered across the screen like snowflakes against a window. Kellin left us to busy himself amongst his transformers and other mysterious machines. Torry, Hasshe and myself were fearful lest Vanner's dreams should slither out of Kellin's grasp and vanish from the screen. Incredibly, it seemed that the experiment might succeed; and so far it had hardly begun. Kellin's face reappeared from the darkness. "The current is too weak," he told us. "I shall have to increase the flow through his brain, as I expected." Torry began to protest, but Kellin ignored him and tugged at the lever. There came a troubled groan, and Vanner's body jerked as from a spasm of pain. Then he relaxed. I was about to protest myself, when a gasp from Hasshe drew my attention back to the screen. The patterns of light were forming themselves into a picture. I was ready for astonishment, even for marvel. But the warning shiver I actually felt took me unawares. It had not occurred to me that the experiment could be frightening, yet to look down at Vanner's sleeping face and then bypass the closed eyes into the secrets of his mind now seemed unwise and something better left alone. Nevertheless, I said nothing. On the screen, a cloud of red flecks whirled within a square of what I can only describe as dark light. Out of the kaleidoscope appeared, in weird and shifting colours, a landscape.

An empty plain, lonely as the beginning of time, lay beneath a dusky, fire-streaked sky. Its grey wastes were dotted with patches of glowing cinders, and here and there great gouts of flame erupted from the smoking earth. As I looked I grew sick with sudden certainty that I myself had wandered dismally over this land, and would finally return to do so once more. A movement by a mound of cinders caught my eye. In a flash, my gloom became excitement as I saw Vanner's figure come into view. He was naked from head to foot, but was otherwise identical with his sleeping self upon the bed. Moving with slow, floating steps as if the air were taking his weight he silently circled the cinder pile and halted, poised ballerina-fashion. He was now close enough for us to see his face. Despite the easy grace of his motion, he looked badly scared. Again, I looked across to the bed. It was uncanny to compare the sleeper's calm, closed features with the wide-eyed panic of the dream-Vanner. My heart grew clammy. How would the experiment end? It was the first time I had felt sympathy for the helpless man whose mind we were dredging. With agonised slowness Vanner turned, like a bobbing balloon. He looked behind him. Some distance back, something was snuffing out the burning embers and jets of flame as it stalked him under cover of darkness. The projector did not reproduce the sounds of the nightmare, but we could all imagine his desperate cry. I itched to help the man. But his body was still quiet and at rest. He tried to run, but a baby could have out-distanced him. There was no strength for motion left in his rolling, swaying body. Our viewpoint shifted, and with Vanner we saw beyond the plain to the mists and oozing dampness of a marsh, or swamp. This seemed to be his objective. Then the picture shattered into a whirlpool of broken images, which gave way to drifting smoke and tongues of flame. Whatever was following Vanner's trail passed by unseen. The picture cleared. Again we saw the sullen plain, now barren of life and movement. There were no flickers of fire. Instead, across the dead expanse stretched a trail of gigantic tracks where flame had been smothered and stone crushed and splintered by ponderous feet. "Great God!" whispered Hasshe. "What does he think is after him?" "He does not know," said Kellin. "To see the face of his own fear would kill him. He cannot bring himself to look upon it." A shriek from the bed interrupted him. The nightmare had Vanner full in its grip. His teeth were clenched and his face was contorted. Torry was the first to protest. "Stop this at once!" he demanded. "Can't you see that the man's in pain?" Kellin glanced dispassionately at the bed. "It's nothing new," he said calmly. "As I've told you, Vanner and his dream are old friends. His gaoler tells me this happens almost every night when he is in his cell." Unwillingly, we turned back to the screen and left Vanner to toss in his sleep. During our brief inattention, the dream-Vanner had floundered into the swamp. He was making no better progress through the reeds and wet, boggy soil than he had done on land. The picture put me in mind of dreams of my own, in which I had tried to escape but could hardly move my legs. The morass seemed never-ending. We realised Vanner was trying to get away from a dense bank of mist that had rolled off the firm ground and was crawling over the marsh. Forth from behind the grey curtain slid ripples of churning water, as something plunged in his wake. On seeing the ripples breaking around his legs, Vanner gathered new strength. He threw himself forwards to the brink of a ditch. Vomited from the unhealthy ground, the water welled up suddenly and dripped sluggishly over a rocky fall. Like a flow of thick green oil, it dropped some twenty feet into the rush and spray of the river below. At the water's edge, Vanner hesitated. But the mist was almost upon him. Patches wafted away until only a tall, massive column remained, facing the fugitive. Still, Vanner wavered.

A colossal silhouette began to appear inside the opaque, grey envelope. Tendrils of drifting greyness stole out towards him and hardened into the semblance of a clutching hand. Before the fingers could fasten upon him, Vanner spun round and toppled into the stream. We jumped with shock as his silent scream found vent in a soul-freezing cry from the sleeping Vanner. But it was not the shout that suddenly clogged my throat. "Look!" cried Hasshe. "Look at his body!" The prisoner was drenched. I actually saw a dark water-line sweep over the bed clothes until his limbs, chest and even his hair were as sodden as if he had been swimming. Kellin's excited voice broke in. "Incredible! His physical, sleeping body is feeling the effects of his own dream." "For God's sake turn the thing off!" Torry urged him. It was a fascinating, frightening thing to behold. Taking care not to get too close, we all examined Vanner. There was no doubt that he was soaked through. But where the water came from, or passed to, we could not understand. Meanwhile, the dream-Vanner was borne over the falls into the river below. "There can be only one explanation," Kellin decided. "He's starting to live the dream. It parallels those cases of devout priests whose bodies reproduce the wounds of Christ on the cross. What if we increase the current?" "Do you want the poor devil to die of fright?" cried Torry. "If you're right, he thinks he's drowning." Kellin ignored him and moved the regulator further forward. Vanner shrieked in pain, and the incandescent light from the glass tubes overhead cast a contorting shadow of his wildly plunging body against the ceiling. Hasshe gripped my arm. "We'll have to stop this," he whispered. "He can't wake up as long as he's attached to that contraption of Kellin's. And if the dream keeps going like it's going now, pretty soon he'll be wanting to wake up real badly." We were rising to our feet when once more the scene changed. Vanner sought to breast the flow, but could barely keep his balance against the onrush of the river. In place of the mist, a snow blizzard raged around him. As he struggled to make headway, Vanner cast terrified glances over his shoulder. Some way back, the snow was settling upon a looming shape cloaked by the storm. Although the blizzard all but obliterated the scene, Hasshe and I were pinned to our seats. Then, at that instant, the storm ceased. The last flakes fell away. In the stillness, we saw the river was now a strip of blue ice winding between the heights of a great canyon. Vanner was caught between its banks, held firmly by the ice sheet. He was frozen in such a position that he could not but behold the monstrous pillar of snow confronting him. It was faceless and featureless and menacing. All of a sudden a strong wind blew up. It played with the piled-up drift and began to whisk it away. Cracks appeared at the base of the pillar. I think we were all expecting to see the thing shake itself free and stride forward. Vanner's screams had now subsided into moans. He lay huddled upon the bed. His misery was echoed in the face of the dream figure, whom the ice held almost immobile. The gusts of wind had all but bared the form of the waiting monster when the dream-Vanner made a last effort to break free. His head jerked downwards and splintered part of the ice sheet. We saw a deep gash on his forehead. Hasshe and I gasped. Simultaneously, blood spurted from the head of the whimpering man lying at our side. This time there was no delay. Hasshe got to Kellin first.

"Can't you see the man can't take any more? He's dreaming himself to death! Turn off the machine, or you'll make that dream come true." He bent over the bed. "Unless he gets treatment right now, your patient will be a corpse." "Get back!" Kellin lunged forward and dragged Hasshe away from Vanner. "Remember what happened to the other people who got too close to him." "You maniac!" There was a blow and a thud. Kellin's slight figure collapsed as the burly Torry flung him away from the projector. "Don't you realise what's happening? First the water… then the blood-you're bringing his nightmare to life, not just for him but for all of us! Any moment now, the thing on that screen will come looking for him, right here in this room!" Torry grabbed the regulator and dragged it down. "Someone has to stop this experiment!" Instantly, the light from the tubes became almost blinding. Scream after scream rang from the bed, as the writhing sleeper all but tore his ankles and wrists from the manacles. "No!" Kellin gasped. "Oh God, you've turned it to full power!" The hum of the electrical apparatus rose to a crescendo. The brightness became an explosion, and the laboratory lights went out. So did the picture on the screen. I think we all dropped on our hands and knees. Vanner's shrieks rang out beside us, even more horrible in the sudden blackness. But this time they had a different tone. They were not the cries of a sleeping man. We cringed together in terror. At first faintly, but growing stronger by degrees, a new sound was borne to our shrinking ears. It came from nowhere within the laboratory: indeed, it seemed to issue from very far away. As a rail thrums from the pounding of a distant locomotive, so the room and air around us throbbed, louder and louder, with the approaching tread of mighty feet. A presence, awful and inevitable, entered the laboratory. Footfalls trod past us in the darkness. They crossed the floor to the bed. Vanner's shrieks came thick and fast in an avalanche of sound. We heard the clatter of chains being ripped away. Horribly, the screams rose above us as though he had been snatched up into space. There was a series of sickening crunches such as I cannot bring myself to describe, and the cries ceased abruptly. At that moment, the presence vanished. We froze. With courage such as I have never seen, Hasshe struck a match. The flame roamed round the dark room like a giant's candle. Our hearts in our mouths, we stepped towards the bed. Perhaps one day many years from now I shall forget what I saw: the empty bed swimming in blood, the sheets and blankets ripped to shreds by monstrous talons. But how can I ever forget the terrible implications of what I did not see? For of Vanner's body we found never a trace. 10: Bernard Taylor - Forget-Me-Not "That's the house where Christie lived…" Sandra followed the direction of the young man's pointing finger and saw, through the window, below them, a shabby cul-de-sac. "The one at the end," he said. "Right next to that factory wall."

Quickly, Sandra shifted her gaze, but there was only time to catch the briefest glimpse of the drab-looking terrace house before the tube train-travelling overground for this stretch-took them past. The house vanished from sight. "Who is Christie?" she asked in her New York accent; she was a stranger to England, and curious about everything. "Who was Christie," he corrected her. "Reginald Halliday Christie… Oh,-just a harmless-looking little man who killed-murdered-a number of women. He was hanged for it." "Really?" Sandra thought of the very ordinary house she had just seen. "And he lived there}" "Yes. And committed all the murders there." She shivered slightly, in spite of the warm September air. The young man went on: "His victims were all female. Most of them were-" he broke off suddenly, grinning. "Listen to me," he said, "-a fine introduction to London for you!" She laughed. "No, no, it's fascinating! Anyway, I want to know everything-the good and the bad." She paused, then added: "It's funny, but somehow I never thought of associating London with any kind of violence…" "Oh, we have our share," he said, then, changing the subject, asked: "Have you got a place to stay?" "Yes, I've booked into a hotel for a while. Just till I can find a room or an apartment…" "That might not be so easy." She smiled, undeterred. "I'll find something. I'll start looking tomorrow. I've got a whole week before I start school." Sandra, pretty, blonde, twenty-six years old, had come to London from the U.S.A. to teach in the London Education system-just for a year, on an exchange basis. For months she had looked forward to it, and now the actual day of her arrival was here; it was one of the most exciting days of her life. "The next stop is yours," the young man said. He had been scribbling on a piece of paper and now, as she stood up, he handed it to her. "My name and 'phone number," he explained. "Perhaps when you're settled you might give me a ring…" "Thanks. I'll do that." She stuffed the note into her pocket and picked up her two suitcases. "You've been a great help. Honestly, I don't know how. I'd have managed." He was eager to be even more helpful. "Can you find your way to the hotel?" he asked. She nodded. "I got me a street map. An A to Z." (She pronounced it Zee.) "I'll get there okay." The tube was slowing. She moved towards the doors. "Bye. And thanks again." He turned to wave a hand. "Goodbye. Nice to meet you. Don't forget-'phone me…" Outside the station she looked at the slip of paper he had given her. David Hampshire, she read. Below the name was his telephone number. "Yeh, maybe I will give him a call," she said to herself. With the help of her A to Z it was relatively easy to locate the hotel, and the room to which she was then shown looked cozy and inviting. Left alone, she kicked off her shoes, lit a cigarette and lay back on the bed. She was relaxed. There was no one to drag her into conversation; no one to tell her that she shouldn't smoke: she was wonderfully comfortable and alone. "But don't get too comfortable, girl," she told herself. "Don't get too settled. You've got to go out and find something a little more permanent. And if David was right, that is not going to be easy." She was not worried, though, the hunting might be fun. And anyway, one thing was certain: she was going to adore her stay in London-absolutely adore it. David proved to be right. Finding something a little more permanent proved to be very difficult. My God! she thought, it's as bad as New York! It seemed that no matter how swift she

was to answer the ads in the papers, or those in the shop windows, she was always just one bit too late; the room or the flat was always gone. But she'd get something, she told herself; she wasn't easily daunted. In the meantime, the hotel made a comfortable haven. It was during her flat-searching that she found, in a small corner-bookshop, the volume on Christie. As soon as she saw the title: Reginald Christie, Mass Murderer, she remembered her conversation on the tube with David. The book was secondhand and at a ridiculously low price. Sorting out the still strange coins from her purse she handed them, along with the book, to the assistant, "I'll take it," she said. She began to read the book that same afternoon, continuing with it into the evening. And even when she went down to the litde cafe, she took it with her to study over her steak pie and chips. The story was absolutely fascinating. Reginald Halliday Christie was known to have killed at least seven women-by strangulation-and then to have secreted their bodies either in the house or the adjoining garden. His wife had been one of the victims, and a young tenant of the house another. Equally horrifying to Sandra, with her sheltered upbringing, was the fact that after killing each of the women he had undressed them and-and…She closed her eyes tight. The image in her mind was too terrible to bear. Later, when she took up the book again, she came upon a photograph of the house. The sight of it caused her to catch at her breath. Ten, Rillington Place, she read…But was that the name she had seen on the street sign…? No, surely not. Quickly she flicked through the pages to the appendix. Yes, there it was: Ruston Close. That was the name she had seen. After Christie's trial and execution the local authorities had-for obvious reasons-renamed the ugly little dead-end street. She remembered suddenly that David had pointed out the house just before she got off the tube. With a strange little thrill she realised that Ruston Close was very, very near… That night she found herself thinking more about the house where Christie had lived. And the things that had happened there. Stop it! she admonished herself; she was getting morbid! What she needed was to start work-to meet people, make a few nice friends… She thought of David. He had said he'd be glad to hear from her-maybe she'd give him a ring. Yes, that was a good idea. For some minutes she made a concerted effort to find the scrap of paper on which he had written his telephone number. Then, meeting with no success, she gave up the attempt. She'd find it later; there was plenty of time. She went back to her reading. All at once, there was Christie, staring at her from the page. He had a thin, rather gaunt aspect. The hair on his domed head was thinning, and the cold, pale eyes that peered out through the steel-rimmed spectacles were merciless. He had been photographed standing in the tiny, untidy garden of his home, standing with his plump smiling wife… Sandra found herself addressing the unfortunate, unattractive victim: "You poor, poor thing," she whispered, "you wouldn't be smiling if you knew…" Her first day at school the following Monday was very tiring. But that was to be expected,teaching was never an easy job, no matter what the age of your pupils. Sandra was given a class of eleven-year-olds,-a vital, noisy group that left her, at four o'clock, feeling drained and exhausted. She departed through the school gates with aching feet, a throat sore from constant shouting, and a mouth that was dry and dusty from the chalk-laden air. Reaching Edgware Road tube station, she got on the train and settled back with a sigh of relief: her first day was over. The feeling was only temporary, though-she'd have to face another day tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. The days stretched before her into infinity. "Don't worry," she told herself, "it's just because you're not used to it. It'll be all right in time…" And there was another problem, also: the need for a flat of her own. The worry nagged like toothache. She'd try again this weekend, she decided-really make an all-out effort. There had to be something somewhere. She lit a cigarette and, gazing from the window, idly noted the

stations as they passed by; after Edgware Road came Paddington, then Royal Oak, then Westbourne Park, then Ladbroke Grove, then- And suddenly the house was there-Christie's housestanding forlorn and dirty at the end of the cul-de-sac, shadowed by the tall, grey, ugly chimney. She turned as the train sped past, craning her neck to catch the last little glimpse. Every day that week she saw the house. Sitting on the tube, she found herself counting the stations-almost impatient-just waiting for the street to come in sight. And always, at the end of the street was the house. But it looked so-innocuous, she thought. It was hard to believe diat that was the scene of so many hideous crimes. And yet… there was something about the place, that last tired-looking three-storey dwelling. Something about the whole street. And then she realised what it was that gave it all that air of-difference: the street was uninhabited. No people walked there, no children played. The windows were dark and empty-some of them boarded up. In the mornings, on the way to school, she couldn't see the house-the train, running on the left tracks, was too far over, affording her no possible view. But on the way back- well-that was a different matter. Her days at school could be bearable when there was something to look forward to. And Sandra did look forward to the house. Each teaching day, with thumping heart and damp palms, she watched, waited for the house to come into view. Soon-she could see-the house was waiting for her. She needed something to look forward to at this time. Somehow, her life was becoming increasingly lonesome. It just wasn't that easy to make friends. For some people it was, but not for Sandra. The warm, satisfying relationships she had envisaged somehow seemed never to materialize. Why was it? she wondered. She had tried, too. Though there was, at school, no one with whom she thought she'd really like to be friends, she had, even so, made two or three halfhearted attempts to strike up more than the passing acquaintanceship. But her attempts were not very successful, and she was forced to continue with the amusements of her own designing. Having no television set and no radio, she spent a great deal of her time reading, getting the books from the local library. Many of the books she read were about Christie. Reginald… Halliday… Christie… What a name! she thought. The syllables just rolled off the tongue… Reginald … Halliday… Christie… Beautiful. She felt she was beginning to know him so well-she almost thought of him as-Reginald… But that was silly. One afternoon, returning from school, she looked down at the street and saw workmen moving about. And there was a bulldozer and other machines of demolition! "My God!" she whispered; then louder: "They're knocking it down!" A woman on the opposite seat looked up from her knitting and gave her an odd, uncomprehending glance. And they were knocking it down. The next day on her return, Christie's house was just a pile of rubble, and the workmen were starting on the house next door. At school in the staff-room, one of the young teachers came to her holding out a newspaper. "Here," he said, "you're the one who's always reading about Christie…" He pointed to a short column on the back page. Concealing her eagerness, she took the paper from him, read the words. It only told her what she already knew. But why tear it down? she asked herself. The reason given here: space needed for redevelopment-was just not good enough. It was Christie's house. They shouldn't have done it. It just wasn't fair. Smiling, shrugging, as if not really interested, she handed the paper back to its owner. It was that same evening that she found the flat. She had stopped at a small shop to buy cigarettes (she was smoking far too much these days) when she saw the card in the window. Flat to Let, it said. Suit young working person. £6. per week. Yes, she could afford that much, she reckoned. Quickly she made a note of the address, then set off at once to find it.

And now it was hers. She had paid Air. Malaczynski, the Polish landlord, a month's rent in advance, and told him that she'd be moving in the very next day. She'd take the school day off, she decided. (She didn't feel like going anyway; there was nothing to look forward to anymore.) There were three flats available, the landlord had told her, so she could have her choice. She chose the one on the first floor. At the moment the ground-floor flat was occupied by the landlord himself. "But only for a short time," he had explained. "I'll be moving to another house this coming weekend." Then, continuing in his accented English: "Will you mind being here on your own for a while? It won't be long before the other flats are let." "Oh, no," she had assured him. "It won't bother me in the least." Nor would it. She had her own place-at last. Nothing would bother her now. The next day she paid her hotel bill and moved into the flat. Now at last, she had finally arrived. She stood in her bed-sitting room and looked around her. She had just the two roomsthis one which was fairly large-and a smaller kitchen next door. The bathroom was on the floor above, and she'd have to share it with the incoming tenant-whoever that might turn out to be. But it didn't matter. The flat was hers. It was small, but it was hers. All the walls were a sort of greyish white. Not attractive. But she'd repaint them in time, she thought. For the present they'd look alright with a bit of colour added:-a few pictures, ornaments. It was going to be fun shopping for things. She could make the place-she was surereally attractive. Though it was by no means perfect-particularly to a sophisticated New Yorker-it had endless possibilities. After she had unpacked, she spent a long time arranging her few things, trying-futilely-to add a touch of her own personality. It couldn't be done, she discovered-not in a day. It could only come with living there. In the course of her sorting-out, she came across David Hampshire's name and 'phone number. She put the scrap of paper carefully between the leaves of her address book. She would invite him round for supper, she decided-but not just yet; not till she was well and truly settled. She stayed up late that night, cleaning and scrubbing. There was so much to be done when moving into a new place. Eventually, totally exhausted, she got into bed and lay there, smoking a cigarette. She gazed about her. The room didn't look quite so bare, anyway. On the wall nearest the foot of the bed she had pinned a postcard-size reproduction of Murillo's Peasant Boy Leaning on a Sill. She had bought the small print at the National Gallery during her first days in London. She loved the soft, muted tones of the picture and the boy's wide, happy smile. Next to it, making something of a contrast, she had displayed the photograph of Christie and his wife. She had torn the picture from her book. Lying there, very comfortable, she made vague plans about what she would do with the flat. She'd have to make a list of all the things that were needed-and there were so many things-still, it would come, gradually. Sighing, she put out her cigarette. She felt tired, but happy. Switching off the small lamp, she turned over to go to sleep. Four hours later, she was still wide-awake. In spite of her great exhaustion from the hectic day, sleep just would not come. Shifting restlessly, she was aware of the dawn lightening the pale curtains at the window. She gave a groan of exasperation-she had to get some rest. At last, some time after, she drifted off. She awoke hours later, having slept right through the strident ringing of her alarm clock. She saw with a shock that the time was after eleven!-it was no good going in to school now. She'd 'phone in and explain. Anyway, she remembered, next week was half-term holiday; it hardly seemed worth going in-not just for those few remaining hours. She made good use of the rest of the day. After her 'phone call to the headmistress, Sandra went out shopping. She bought china, saucepans, cutlery-those items necessary for the furnis-

hing of a home. And that evening she cooked supper for herself-no more eating out at cafes. The meal was a pleasant-(though somewhat lonely)-affair, and she experienced a real sense of achievement. After that, she washed the dishes, then read for a few hours. She wasn't sure when the idea came to her-or whether it had been there all the time, just waiting to be acknowledged. But it was the picture of Christie that actually set it. It had to be. For one thing, his eyes followed her all the time. And every time she looked up from her book, he was looking at her. She had to go there. She had to go to the place where Reginald Christie had lived and breathed-and killed. It was very late when she left the house. The last tubes had gone, and only the occasional car disturbed the silence of the dingy street. Her footsteps echoing on the pavements, she walked in the general direction of Ruston Close. She had consulted her A to Z, and knew exactly which way to go. And suddenly it was there. She came upon it at once, and the shock of the expected discovery almost took her breath away. Her heart beating wildly, she stood at the entrance to the close, gazing before her at the familiar shape of the chimney, only slightly darker than the dark night sky. Everything was so quiet. On her right a cinema poster flapped against a wall-it was the only sound in the stillness. Nothing else moved. Completely deserted, the cul-de-sac stretched dark and forbidding before her, the windows of the remaining houses like dead, blind eyes. Sandra found that she was holding her breath. She exhaled, slowly. The atmosphere-there was an atmosphere- poured over her. The place had its own feeling; and it reached out to her as she stood there on the street corner, clutching at her with soft, grasping ringers, drawing her in. She tried to walk softly, but the cold wind that swirled around the corner followed her, buffeting, so that her raincoat flapped noisily against her legs. No moon or stars were visible; the old street was all a dark greyness, almost at one with the sky. And then she had reached the end. Standing beneath the chimney, she peered into the gloom of the place where Christie's house had stood. As she gazed, shivering, the moon appeared from behind a cloud. All at once the scene was lit up before her, and she saw in the sudden light that the house-wall on the right- the one adjoining the factory wall-had not, like all the others, been torn down. It stood there still. And there, yawning in the wall-like grotesque mouths-were the fireplaces-Christie's fireplaces. Scraps of torn, discoloured wallpaper still adhered to some of the surfaces around. Crossing over the rubble, she touched the wall with the tips of her fingers. Then, gaining courage, she laid her whole hand, fiat, against it. Underneath her palm the wallpaper was brittle and flaking. After a moment, she took hold of a piece of the paper… and pulled… There was a loud tearing noise, and a strip-about nine inches long and four inches wide-came away in her grasp. She had taken the piece from an area just above her own head. It might well, she thought, be an area that Reginald (-Christie! she corrected herself-) had actually touched; have actually leaned his own domed, balding head against. Carefully she eased the strip-it was made from several thicknesses-into a roll, then tucked it away inside her coat. Arriving back at the downstairs entrance to her own flat, she let herself in and climbed the stairs. The silence was as complete as that which she had just left. It would be even more silent when the landlord left tomorrow… In her room, she unrolled the paper and laid it flat on the table. She was pleased. It made a nice souvenir. Then, later, she pasted it on the greying wall-just to the right of the gas fire, slightly above the level of her head. She studied the result judiciously for some moments, then, with a smile of satisfaction, she climbed into bed. But once again, rest did not come

easily. It was only after tossing and turning for a very long time that she eventually dropped off into a fitful, uneasy sleep-a sleep disturbed by dreams that kept her peace at bay. Next day she awoke very late. Still, it being Saturday, this time it didn't matter. She lay in bed looking at Reginald's wallpaper. It really stood out against the dull background of the painted wall. The paper had been so affected by dirt and age that it was difficult to determine what its original colour had been. Probably blue, she decided at last; blue with some kind of small design on it. Flowers? Yes, perhaps, but she couldn't possibly identify what species. She gazed at the paper for a long, long time. Yes, definitely flowers, she decided, and the background most certainly blue. It had probably been quite pretty when newly bought. She felt rather smug; for one thing, she hadn't remembered tearing off such a large piece. With a last look, she turned over and went back to sleep. She stayed up very late again on Saturday night, then slept well into the afternoon of the following day. She awoke about two o'clock, feeling sluggish and heavy-headed-not feeling like getting up at all. Anyway, there was nothing she had planned to do, no shopping could be done, and there was no one she had planned to see, so the day-or what was left of it-was her own. She could do exactly as she pleased. Later on, she thought, she'd get up and make herself a snack -something light-maybe a boiled egg. But she wasn't really hungry. Propping up the pillows behind her head, she sat up, lit a cigarette, and reached for her book. It was a new one from the library, all about famous trials. There was a particularly interesting chapter on Reginald. She forgot about eating until it was quite late. Hardly worth it now, she thought. She'd just have a cup of coffee and a biscuit. As she waited for the water to boil, her thoughts went back to her own home in New York City-the home she had shared with her parents and her four sisters. My God! Sandra thought, if my mother could see me now she'd have a fit! There had always been so much emphasis placed on regular habits-regular meals and regular sleeping times. But Sandra had wanted this independence, this solitude. They were all part of her reasons for coming to this strange city. All around her, the house was as silent as a tomb. There was no longer even the soft, considerate movements of the landlord to disturb the stillness. He had left the day before and, until the new tenants moved in she would be completely alone. Having no intention of going out, there seemed little purpose in getting dressed, so when the coffee was made she carried it back to bed. Over the rim of the cup she gave a casual glance at the strip of wallpaper. Then she looked harder, studying intently the size, the shape and the colour of the piece. It seemed different somehow. But how? And how could it? No. It was silly, such a thing just wasn't possible. She stared at it, unblinking. But it was true. It was different. The piece of paper had grown bigger. She hardly stirred from the house all that week, except to go to the shop for cigarettes and the odd items of food; not so much for the latter, as she had found that her appetite had decreased considerably. And there was the silence in the house. It was complete… She began to wish that she owned a television set, a radio or a record-player. It was as if the silence, unchecked, seemed to gain in potency and, with Reginald's wallpaper, grew with each passing day. Friday came, then Saturday, then Sunday, and then Monday loomed up over her head, threatening, and suddenly she knew that she just could not face the prospect of school that day. She couldn't face those children in the classrooms, the idle talk with the other teachers during the breaks between sessions. She'd just have to telephone in again, tell them she was sick. They'd understand. She got to the telephone on the floor and started to dial the school's number. Half-way through she stopped, replaced the receiver, then turned and went back up the stairs to her room. There was no need to call them, anyway, she rationalized later; they would

call her as soon as they discovered her absence. But then, in a moment the thought came to her: How could they? No one at the school was aware of her new address or telephone number. She had not even told her parents, she realised-in fact, she had not even written to her parents since before leaving the hotel. Only Mr. Malaczynski, the landlord, knew of her whereabouts, and he didn't really count. Monday went by in silence. Tuesday morning came. She forced herself to get up, and began to get ready for school. There was a pounding in her head, and a constricted feeling at her temples as if a metal band had been placed there and was being slowly tightened. The pain was throbbing. She sat down on the chair and pulled on her boots. The wallpaper had spread inches during the night. She was fully dressed. It was time to go. But the thought of facing those people-the teachers, the children- All those questions that would have been asked: "Has anyone seen or heard from Miss Timms?" "Does anyone know Miss Timms' address…?" And the questions and the comments when she did get there: "Where were you?… What happened?"… "You should have let us know"…"Are you ill?…Why didn't you telephone…?" All those looks, all those words… It was the thought of the looks, the faces, the words that settled the matter. She took off all her clothes, threw them over the back of the chair and got back into bed. She was awakened some hours later by someone tapping at her door. She got out of bed and slipped on her dressing-gown. "Who is it?" she called. The landlord's voice came to her, the Polish accent strong: "It's Mr. Malaczynski…" Sandra opened the door a few inches. "Yes, what is it?" He smiled broadly at her. "It's just that-" He broke off, gazing at her with concern. "Are you all right?" "Yeh, I'm fine. Why?" "You… You don't look well… Are you ill?" She felt a growing impatience under the well-meaning questions. "Of course I'm not ill. What did you want?" Her tone was slightly sharp. "I'm very sorry," he said, wilting a little under the edge on her voice. "I just wanted to tell you that if you hear footsteps above, there is no need to be frightened. Mr. Robertson, the new tenant, is moving in today. He is an old man. He will not cause you worry with rockand-roll music." He smiled again, trying to break through the impatient, cold exterior she presented. He added lamely: "He will be here soon." There seemed to be nothing more to say. They looked at each other for a few seconds, and Sandra, trying to ease the warmth into her voice, said: "Thank you, very much…" He smiled back at her, grateful. "Thank you" he answered, and moved towards the stairs. When he had gone from sight, she closed the door and walked over to the mirror. She stood there, gazing at her reflection. She certainly didn't look one hundred percent, she had to admit. Her face was drawn and pale, and the lines around her eyes made her look older than her twenty-six years. And her hair needed washing, she observed. It hung limp, lifeless and uncombed to her shoulders. She'd do it tomorrow, she decided. About seven o'clock she heard the arrival of the new tenant; she could hear the soft movements of his feet as he moved around on the floor above. What was his name? Robertson? Yes, that's what Malaczynski had said. Perhaps they could be friends. It might be nice to talk to someone. Just a little talk. Just something to relieve the silence… The days went by. And each day was like the one before. The only way of actually seeing that time had progressed was by watching the wallpaper. It looked different each time she awoke. Always it grew during the night-some nights more than others. The silence grew with it.

The arrival of Mr. Robertson upstairs had made no difference to the house at all. It was just as quiet. Other people were plagued with neighbours who played their radios and their records too loudly-not so Sandra. Mr. Robertson had none of these and lived as silently as herself. The only evidence of his presence was the soft sound of his feet as he occasionally moved about the room. These faint noises did nothing to alleviate the stillness. They just seemed to emphasise it. The stillness grew louder all the time, and the paper seemed to feed upon the stillness. Yes! That was what was happening. She suddenly realised. Although normally silent-the house-throughout the day-it was at night when the silence became absolute, so strong, so complete that it was almost tangible. And it was during the night that the wallpaper seemed to grow at such an alarming rate… All the plans for transforming the ugly little flat into something that was truly her own were now forgotten. They had ceased to be important. Sandra sat on the bed, a cup of cold, untouched coffee in her hand, looking about her. What was happening to her? She didn't understand it. How long had she been here in this room-three weeks?-four? She shivered violently. The room was cold, and she had run out of shillings for the meter. She'd have to go down to the shop to get some more. Sighing, she put down her cup and began to get dressed. As she moved quietly about, the idea came into her mind that she should buy herself a radio. She had seen some inexpensive transistors not too far away. And she could just about afford it from the little she had left of her savings. The idea added impetus to her movements and she finished dressing quickly, anxious to be out. As she turned towards the door she caught sight of her reflection. Hurriedly she crossed to the sink and splashed cold water on her face. (The soap she had bought on her first day lay unused, still in its wrapper.) Then she raked a hand through her tangled hair. First of all she got the supply of shillings. She got them from the bank-two pounds' worth. Now, she thought, she'd get that radio. It was while she stood outside the entrance to the bank, wondering which way to go, that the weakness came over her. Suddenly she felt that her legs were about to give way. Her knees wobbled, she thought she was about to fall and she clutched at the wall for support. "Are you feeling all right, love…?" She turned at the soft voice and tried to focus on the man who stood there, leaning towards her. For a moment she stared at herself mirrored in the lenses of his steel-rimmed glasses, and then she turned, swinging away on her unsteady feet. Back in her room, she collapsed, gasping, on the bed. It was a long time before she gathered the strength to undress and get in between the sheets. On the wall, Reginald's paper was enormous. Later, feeling calm again, she lay back and studied the paper. It had now spread in all directions, reaching out to the right as far as the mirror, and on the left almost as far as the shabby wardrobe. But she was no longer shocked by it. It had long since ceased to amaze her in any way. She looked at it now with acceptance, interest. After all, there was nothing she could do about it. With the change in its size, the wallpaper had also changed in quality-or rather than that-it appeared to be newer. In fact it looked brand-new, now. She wondered how she could ever have had to decide on its colour; it was quite obviously blue, a rather pretty pale blue. Likewise, the flowers that dotted its surface were now easily identifiable. They were the prettiest forget-me-nots, always among her favourite flowers. She thought: So goddamn English, too, and found herself smiling. The wallpaper was like a fungus- a creeping, thriving, rapacious, beautiful, beautiful fungus. After a while, she got out of bed, lit the gas fire and put on some water for coffee. Nervously she stretched out a hand and touched the paper. It felt slightly damp, yet the other walkthe grey ones-were quite dry under her ringers. Gently she tried to insert a fingernail under

the edge of the paper, but she couldn't do it-the paper was too firmly fixed. With the second try-in a different spot-she only succeeded in breaking her nail. Without any sense of disappointment, she picked up her coffee and moved back to the bed. School, her job as a teacher, her home in New York- all seemed to be disconnected somehow. None of it was real. Not any more. These were the only things that were real: this room, this silence, and Reginald's forget-me-not wallpaper. The paper had spread so far now. It had reached the far end of the wall and was beginning to turn the corner. There seemed to be no pattern to its actual movement-it just seemed to move, creeping, spreading-rather like liquid spilt on a polished surface. Some areas of the wall would be left bare, she noticed. Then, later, she would see that they had been filled in. The paper was relentless and very, very thorough. Even the little postcard of the peasant boy was not safe. She had pinned it up on the wall far away from the paper, and even though the mass of paper had not yet reached it, she could see that the lovely little picture had become infected. It started with just a tiny dot of blue down in one corner. She had noticed it one morning-her eyes seemed to be drawn to it-a little spot that had surely not been in the original. She knew what was happening. The little peasant boy did not, though, and-like Mrs. Christie in the photograph-he smiled his smile, unaware of the nearness of the evil. Unconcerned, he continued to lean on the sill, his tanned, peasantboy's face beaming, while the forget-me-nots grew up around him. Sandra thought the picture was prettier. It's a pity, she thought, that Murillo can't be here to see it. Looking towards the photograph of Reginald and his wife, she was not surprised to see that it remained exactly as before. No forget-me-nots grew on that one. Looking closer, she saw that the paper was spreading underneath it. Nothing was staying the same. Nothing. Even the quality of the silence was changing. Looking towards the window she saw the reason why. Snow was falling, thick and fast, the great soft shapes tumbling against the pane, settling. They fell without sound, insulating her more completely against the outside world. And suddenly, she began to grow afraid. It had to stop. Everything had to stop. She had to do something. She didn't know what she was afraid of, but the fear grew, unexplain-able, threatening, at any moment it would engulf her. She knew at once that she had to see someone, talk to someone. But who? There was no one she knew. Not Mr. Robertson; she had only glimpsed him on the stairs on two or three occasions. He had nodded to her, smiling, a slow-moving, sad old man of seventy-odd. He couldn't help. Who then? David. David Hampshire. She saw his face before she thought of his name; that nice young man who had been so helpful on the tube that day of her arrival. She took the piece of paper bearing his 'phone number and snatched a handful of coins from the shelf. Then, throwing on a coat and slippers, she went downstairs. Carefully, her hands trembling, she dialled his number. "Hello…?" And there was his voice. "Hello?…David?" "Yes. Who's that?" She paused, then said quickly: "Sandra Timms." "Who?" Oh, God, oh Jesus, he'd forgotten. "I'm the girl you met on the tube. The American girl…" She could hear herself almost whimpering. "Don't you remember…? You helped me…" And then she heard the smile in his voice as recollection returned. "Oh, yes!" he said. "Yes, of course, I remember. How are you? Have you been okay?" She began to blurt out her need for help. She had not meant to do this; she had meant to ask him to come round to see her-to tell him then-to do it more-casually. But somehow the desperation inside her had taken over, and she was pleading with him.

"Help me. You've got to help me!" "But what's wrong?" he asked, his voice loaded with concern. "I don't know-I don't know-I don't know…!" "Right, listen," he said, forcing the calmness into the situation. "Tell me where you are. I'll drive round straightaway." He took up a pencil. "Give me your address." She was almost incoherent, but he managed to write down the address she gabbled out. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes." "Yes, yes! Please hurry… Please hurry!" And she was gone. David heard the click of the receiver and put the 'phone down. As he reached for his coat he looked at the address he had scribbled on the notepad. He stopped, gazing at it. Perhaps she was having some kind of joke with him-some joke on a night like this! He screwed the paper into a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket. It doesn't make sense, he thought, there was no longer any such address as 10, Rilling-ton Place. Reaching her own room, Sandra ran in and closed the door behind her. In her absence the wallpaper had spread even further. Almost three walls were covered now, and the peasant boy had been completely wiped out. Reginald continued to smile. Fifteen minutes, he had said. Fifteen minutes. She could hold out that long. It wasn't very long. Not too long. She could try counting them off-that might help. Count the seconds: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… She closed her eye's, shutting out the forget-me-nots that grew all around her. Eight… nine… ten…Now the silence was getting in the way. Where was she? Eight… nine… ten… eleven…She tried to shut her ears to the silence, but it was no good. It got through. Whatever you did it got through. Make some coffee, smoke a cigarette, do something. Act naturally. The paper had crept onto the fourth wall now. It was moving faster than ever. She hurried to the kitchen, lit the gas under the kettle. That's it-be steady- be calm. Get the jar of coffee-don't spill any. One spoonful… sugar… milk ready… the wallpaper had gotten into the kitchen too. There were forget-me-nots everywhere. Take no notice. David will be here soon. Everything will be all right then. You can wait till then. Not long now. The water's boiling. The sound of the steam and the gas are the only sounds. Turn off the gas, pour on the water. Silence. The coffee's made. Add the milk. Sip it slowly. Concentrate… concentrate…She looked at the clock. Half an hour had gone by since she had called David! What had happened to him? Why wasn't he here? Fifteen minutes, he had told her. It was over half an hour… She sipped at the coffee. It was stone-cold, and she put it down in disgust. She moved from the kitchen, back into the larger room, walking slowly, forcing her way through the silence. The silence was like the sea, and it was rising, moment by moment. Reginald liked the silence. He smiled into it from his forget-me-not heaven. Would David never come? Yes! He was here! At last! The gentle tap at her door had taken her completely by surprise. She pressed herself against the silence, pushing a way through. She got to the door, opened it. She saw the thin face, the smile, and the blue eyes behind the glasses. She spun, and the sweet, sweet forget-me-not fungus lurched, reaching out. The whole room was blue, quivering in silence. Then the man spoke. After a second, the silence itself was shattered. "I wonder if I could borrow a little milk?" the man on the landing had said, holding out an empty cup. "I've just moved in downstairs…" The girl-dirty, emaciated, her tangled hair hanging about her face-just stood there in the open doorway, staring at him dumbly from wide, frightened eyes. He smiled at her, adding: "My name is Reg," and suddenly she screamed. Her voice echoed in the quiet house-the sound of something in pain. The screams continued, the loudness cutting into the snowbound silence. When the screaming stopped, her mouth went on moving, opening and closing like the mouth of a ventriloquist's dummy.

11: Gregory Fitz Gerald - Halloween Story I In her thirtieth year to Hell Thera Mallory at last perceived that her house was made of gingerbread. Everyone, including Firman, her perpetually absent husband, thought the house merely appeared that way, the result of (want garde and innovative construction, of extraordinary new processes designed to produce that brown pastry effect. Now and then Thera Mallory would eat a tiny piece of sill or shingle, just for confirmation-surreptitiously, of course, when no one else was about but her children. For to Thera most people were blind to truth, resentful of those who, like Moliere's misanthrope, Alceste, insisted upon it. Her children, a collection of figurines mostly made by herself in frenzies of creativity, were models of cleanliness and obedience, almost never boisterous. Thera's wan flair for mythology and history revealed itself in these children, tiny representations of Sultan Schariah, Don Juan, Zeus with swan's wings, Priapus with broken phallus, Mark Antony, a satyr, and Henry VIII of England. This brood, in compliance with their mistress' master plan, were never allowed to stray from their appointed places without severe chastisement. Thera's umber house, with its sharply pointed gables, filigreed shutters, and red chimney, nestled amongst clusters of juniper, northern pine, and blue spruce on a neglected, seldomtraveled lane meandering by, like an uncertain river, to pass beneath a frantically bustling superhighway that filled the air with fumes and an incessant, rhythmic buzzing, as of giant swarming insects. The autumn evening had already begun when Thera Mallory marched the day's platoon of dirty dishes (that never dreamed of insubordination) into their dishwater bivouac. Then she heard the knock on the front door. Drying hands on her apron, she lifted her sharply molded chin in a gesture of defiance, at once both attractive and irritating, that swirled her long dim hair about like a waltzer's gown. Quickly surveying her living room, she smiled with satisfaction. Every piece of Danish modern, every modish mirror flanking the hallway, every obedient child stood erect in his rightful place. She flowed through the mirrored hallway, glancing to right and left at her reflected youthfulness, unlined hands, her hair with as yet no hint of gray. Pausing before the door, she drew fluttering hands over taut little breasts in an unconscious motion of self-congratulation, then opened the door. Illuminated in the ochre glare of the entry light stood a nightgown-clad figure wearing a cardboard face, with jaundiced paper cheeks over which trailed ebon wisps of false hair. "Trick or treat!" shrilled Snow White through a dark mouth hole, brown eyes glittering behind mask slits in a manner strangely reminiscent of husband Firman. With her star-tipped papier mache wand, wielded more as truncheon than wand, Snow White emphasized her demand again. "Trick or treat," thrusting at Thera a large grocery bag already heavy with indigestive loot. Isolated from the rest of the world, Thera's children hadn't realized the advent of Halloween. Their mistress had never given it a moment's thought and now, as she foraged in the refrigerator, was only slightly annoyed she had forgotten. Thera discovered some apples. The one she handed to Snow White was a beautiful apple, so waxy white and rosy red that it made one's mouth water to look at it. But Snow White's glittering eyes disgustedly regarded the apple in Thera's hand. "Oh," gasped the invisible mouth in a tone vaguely like Thera's own, "is that all you have? Don't you have any candy?" "I'm afraid that's all I have just now, my dear. You see, out here, where so few people come, I forgot all about Halloween." "Then you don't have any kids of your own?" blurted out the shocked Snow White, backing through the open door. "My mommy told me to be careful of queer people with no

children. No wonder all you've got is some waxy old apples. But you just wait. When my big brother gets here, you better give him something better than an old apple, or you'll see, you'll see, you'll see!" This was too flagrant for Thera, who never permitted such liberties. She stepped toward Snow White angrily but too late, for the door slammed in Thera's face. "Nasty, horrid child!" she said aloud, looking deep into the hall mirror that reflected her image to its counterpart on the opposite wall then back again, over and over into infinity: Thera's beautiful face repeated as often as even she might wish. The only sound to obtrude itself into the room was the distant sibi-lancy of the superhighway. Thera knew that since this must indeed be Halloween, other trick-or-treaters might soon appear at her door. So she prepared for them with her usual efficiency, dispatch, and self-confidence. Outside it was already dark. Most stores would be closed, but even if they had not been, her husband Firman had their only car. Improvisation was in order, so she marched out sugar, chocolate, and other ingredients. In a few minutes she was stirring a bubbling brown mass on the stove, wondering if she would have added arsenic to the brew had there been any in the house. This fascinating speculation occupied her until she suddenly remembered her favorite ice cream still in the freezer, realizing with satisfaction that it would probably last until the fudge had time to harden. Smilingly, as one who has just solved a tricky mathematical problem, Thera poured the heavy brown sludge into a hastily greased pan and pushed it, still hot, into the humming freezing compartment, then took out the ice cream. II "It's all sicky green!" said the thirteen-year-old, staring down into the proffered bowl of ice cream. "Yukh! What is that stuff?" he asked, backing away from it. "You ain't trying to poison me, are ya? I heard all about you nutty people puttin' razor blades and worse in apples!" "It's only pistachio ice cream," Thera said, cold as her offering. "It's wonderful-my favorite flavor. Try it, you'll like it," she thrust the melting green mound toward him. "But I don't like pistachio," said the boy, having never tasted pistachio. "Ain't you got no CAN-dy?" "Not quite yet. It's hardening in the pan now." "Well, ain't you got nothin' else to put out? There's all kinds of treats," he leered at her. "They don't always have to be somethin' to eat, you know." "You can come back later when the candy's hardened." "Are you puttin' me on or somethin'?" his voice had something of the same tone of querulous irritation that pervaded Thera's own. "I got a million other places to go tonight. Gimme somethin' now" and he held open a dirty laundry bag, revealing a potpourri of parti-colored candy wrappers, "or you'll be sorry, you'll be sorry, you'll be sorry." Quick as a striking snake, Thera seized his left ear between her thumb and forefinger, squeezing and twisting. "That's too fresh." "Ow… oh, owwwww…!" he cried out, exaggerating the pain in an attempt to escape. "There," he pointed, trying to distract her, "what about that?" He indicated a small, pseudoAztec statuette among her collection. "How about that there?" Thera's eyes followed the pointing finger. "All right," she said, releasing his ear, pleased that from bad taste he had chosen her sister-in-law's birthday gift rather than one of the children she had herself made or chosen. "Take it." "You mean I can have it as a treat?" "Take it, take it, take it." "Say, you got a lot of these here puppets, ain't you. Yeah, look at this one!" He held up the Priapus, "I like this one better," exchanging it for the pseudo-Aztec statuette.

"Put that back, you little,… you little bastard!" Reaching behind to the umbrella stand, her hand emerged brandishing a purple umbrella, handle uppermost, like some murderous sceptor, "That's MINE!" "O.K., O.K., so don't get excited," he whined, replacing the tiny Priapus and discontentedly tossing the pseudo-Aztec doll into his bag instead. Thera lowered the purple umbrella, allowing him to scuttle watchfully past her. When he reached the safety of the driveway he screamed back at her in a voice breaking from higher to lower pitch, "Think you're tough, don't ya', ya' old bitch? But I'll get even, I'll bring the whole world out here-see if I don't, see if I don't, see if I don't!" Thera, shaking her umbrella furiously, like a war mace, strode out of the house after him. They're not going to intimidate ME. Seeing her coming, the boy broke into a run. From the safety of the dark lane he called back, "I bet your husband don't get much, don't get much, don't get much!" then disappeared into the darkness. Thera stared into the darkness after the vanished boy. From far down the winding road, a single street light twinkled like a large and lowering star. A chilling night breeze swished through the needles of the blue spruce, looming even blacker than the surrounding void. On the drive a brittle maple leaf, moved by the wind, scraped and scratched an erratic path through the silence. Thera, convulsed by an involuntary shudder, hurried back into her enclave of light and warmth, glad the ringing telephone so well rationalized haste. "Firman!" she said into the transmitter. "Firman, where are you? When are you coming home?" Her fingers drummed insistently against the side of the mirror next to the telephone. "What's that again? Now listen here, Firman, you haven't been home for weeks-twenty days, to be exact. Do you think I'm another Penelope or some other slave to male domination? Firman, you get home here tonight, TONIGHT, do you understand? And listen, bring some candy, a lot of candy." Her right foot tapped the carpeting soundlessly. "Yes, I did say candy. It's Halloween, Firman, and I haven't anything in the house to give the trick-or-treaters. Now you get home here right away." Her fingers laced through her long hair. "You sound just like a little boy, Firman. That's much too vague, you can be more definite than… Firman? Firman, are you there?" She held the telephone out at arm's length, because from it issued nothing but intense static. "That little bastard hung up on me!" III As she cradled the telephone, she noticed in her mirrors reflections of grotesque images lining her picture window, peering in. The faces, contorted and ghoulish in the dim light, sent involuntary shivers up Thera's back. She squeezed her raddled fingers together and threw back her head, allowing her lustrous black hair to swirl unheeded about her shoulders, then marched less confidently to the door. Five teen-agers in masks and full costume crowded the doorstoop. Without invitation they pressed into the house, following her into the kitchen, where she offered them the recently hardened fudge. "We don't want no stinkin' fudge," said the shortest. "We hear you was puttin' out better than that!" The faintly familiar ring of his tone-or was it something about the eyes?-troubled Thera. He's only a child, she reasoned, and someone no doubt loves him, but… and again the involuntary shudder racked her back and shoulders. "But what…?" she asked him apprehensively. "Them dolls over there." She stared at him a moment, almost in disbelief. "Each of you can take a phonograph record, or… yes, yes, take that bottle of whiskey." She turned back to her children, "No, no,

NO! Don't touch them!" She grasped the umbrella again and raged at the tallest boy who held Don Juan in his hands. "Don't touch them!" The boy looked at her a moment as if undecided whether or not to heed her, then he turned and motioned for the others to follow him out of the house with their other loot. The shortest, their spokesman, was last to leave. Leaning against the door, he said, "You just wait, you just wait!", and with that he broke off a piece of shingle and began to chew on it. When the trick-or-treaters had disappeared from the end of the driveway into the darkened void beyond, Thera hastily locked all the doors and turned off every light in the house. The resultant ripe darkness, like a protective black blanket, at first soothed and sheltered her. But, like the psyche, darkness spawns its own strange forms of life: sounds, crouching shapes, and movements-eerie, even menacing- all different from any under the sun. Familiar objects and sounds drowned in darkness dilate, bloat, like corpses long floating in a black ocean. The drapes she closed over the picture window made a moonlit silver screen on which shadows of trees performed gambades and arabesques in the night winds, like pavaning giants. The ancient Swiss clock on the mantel ticked more loudly than ever before. The refrigerator, still fighting the indigestive effects of hot fudge forced-fed its icy innards, groaned, quivered, and palpitated wildly. Drops from the kitchen tap crashed rhythmically into the sink with the clangor of muted gongs. And upstairs… did something move across the floor? That clicking and scraping- was it only tree branch against window pane? From her drawn curtains Thera saw-almost with relief -a sedan stopping on the darkened road, its lights, narrow and puny tunnels of yellow, less potent than the moon, only pricking the surrounding gloom. Seven android teen-agers spilled out chaotically and made separate, wraith-like ways across the lawn and driveway. Over and over again the door chime tolled, accompanied by insistent knocking. But Thera, conquering her loneliness and terror, remained silent, reserved, hidden, unwilling to reveal herself. Through the separating partition she overheard parts of their conversation. "… Sure it's the right house. Ain't it the only squirrelly one around here? My kid sister says the old bag gave her some weirdo apple. Ma threw it in the garbage can." "C'mon, let's blow. We're wastin' the best time for gettin' loot. We can come back later." "If that old witch's hidin' there in the dark, we could root her out." "Later, later, later." Milling about the front yard, they leapt and cavorted in the light of the waxing moon, whirling in circling rushes over the dry grass, crouching, now coursing and swaying in ballets of contorted shapes. Suddenly the engine roared, and with a slamming of doors, a squealing of tires, the sedan careened up the winding road leaving a new silence punctuated by the old noises: the dripping faucet, the spastic refrigerator, the old Swiss clock chiming the quarter hour, the unidentified sounds upstairs… That noise upstairs? It sounded like a stairway board that creaks, cries out when stepped on. For the first time Thera's composure began to ebb, and she waited there in the dark, trembling, unable-or unwilling-to cry out across her years of restraint. Hearing something scuttle closer through the dark, she edged silently nearer the front door, at last ready to break for the outside world. And she almost reached it, but a dark blurr rushed past her, interposing itself. Still she did not scream, only clasped her hands, her fingers, like a nest of snakes, writhing frenetically among one another. She heard the heavy, labored breathing moving nearer in the dark and lunged for the light switch to illuminate the terror; but before she could reach it, she was lifted from her feet, then hurled to the carpeted floor, with the strange form bent over her. "Trick or treat?" he whispered with humorless laughter in an almost familiar voice.

Above her, silhouetted against the moonlit screen of*the drapes, she saw the outline of his head and shoulders, at once strange and familiar, and the ears-my God, the ears-they just can't be pointed! She screamed, and it sounded like the high-pitched screech of an astrojet warming up, or outraged train brakes on a runaway decline, continuing until all breath was gone. Then she was scratching, biting, fighting with waning strength, but uselessly, as piece by piece her clothes were peeled off by force. Finally, she lay squirming and naked on the floor with the intruder on top. To save strength she had to stop screaming; so they grappled silently on the carpet. He forced her hands behind her back and held her two thumbs together fast in his one large clenched palm, groping between her thighs with his, other hand. Nearly helpless, she crossed her legs, locking them together as tightly as she could, determined to stop him. But he put his knee into the cleft of her crossed thighs, bearing down with all his weight and power, giving her such pain that she must give way to that terrible knee, followed at once by the second knee, and then… Oh Jesus, wriggling and squirming wildly, she still fought, but he lay full on top of her. She bit into his hairy neck; at that instant his finger probed deeply, and surprisingly gently, into her and began to move over and among exactly those places where… where… His scent, so gamey, rank, and musky, overwhelmed her and she stopped struggling, just moaned softly and when he supplanted his finger, she shuddered un-. controllably, broke into tears, weeping, sobbing, with no fight left. Then, when his motion became hypnotically regular, he released her hands, and they, with terrified fingers, tried to push him from her weakening thighs. But at last, feeling the spell of his incessant motion, her arms crept slowly about his waist, and she began to move with him, oblivious to what should have been the painful prodding of his hip against her softer flesh, to the prickly hair on his chest, his sweaty hot smell… A mere half-mile away late model automobiles whizzed over the great superhighway with their usual regularity. Huge trucks roaring louder as they approached, snarled away to a mere angry mutter, to be supplanted by the lighter, more constant whoosh of the cars. IV Four feet from where Thera now lay alone and exhausted, a fist-sized stone, having smashed through the picture window and momentarily parted the moon-drenched drapes, fell with a loud thud on the carpet. "We know you're in there!" came a shrill voice from outside. "No treats, so you get tricked!" She struggled to her feet, white skin glistening in the shaft of moonlight that had followed the stone to the carpet; moved dazedly to the telephone only to discover it ripped from its wall mount. Then she opened the door. The chill night wind that blew by the young people clustered on the doorstep blew unnoticed on her bare skin. "Hey, dig that crazy costume? Great!" said a tall young man emerging from the surrounding moon-blanched darkness to snap on the hall switch. "Help me! Please help me…" "Trick or treat!" They pressed in on her, and she retreated into the house again, dazed by their incessant babble. "Help me…!" "Your hair sure is a mess," said one girl, taking a comb out of her purse and pulling it rhythmically through Thera's long dim hair. "Thank you… but there's a man… he went upstairs…" "Lady," said a boy with a half-inch of down hanging on his chin like a billy goat's whiskers, "let the old jerk hide upstairs if he wants to." He went into the kitchen, opened the refri-

gerator, and began passing out its contents to his companions saying, "You do your thing and we'll do ours." "But you don't understand. My telephone won't work. Please get the police." "Me get the fuzz on Halloween? You gotta be crazy, lady. Anyway, they're all hiding out tonight. Besides, what do you want the fuzz nosing around your private life for? When my old man gets a little at the neighbour's house, my old lady sure don't call the fuzz. She just puts on her newest clothes and drives to Tony's bar." A second car arrived in the driveway and disgorged its contents into the living room. "Ain't you got no pot or acid?" asked a denimed newcomer of Thera, who merely stared straight ahead without hearing any of it. "Well, then, we got to settle for this poison," he said, opening the cellarette and extracting a bottle of arak. Outside a third car, then a fourth, drove up and parked in the lane, while inside a young woman with knee-long hair put a stack of records on the stereo turntable and began solo dancing with the volume turned up to its maximum. Soon more cars arrived, spewing their contents into the house: young men and women who immediately began writhing and squirming among one another in various dances, shouting to each other, one leading Thera, still naked and dazed, to dance among them. Her bewildered, shocked movements were hailed as a new form of expression, and they clapped and cheered her on. A young man remarked, "What a swinger she is!" and immediately one lithe young thing, not to be outdone by such an ancient square, peeled off all her clothes. Unwilling to be thus upstaged, two others followed suit, and soon the room was festooned with clothing of every description: underwear draped over lamps, bras hanging from the chandelier, and bodies in various stages of nakedness danced sensually about the room. Soon many were entwined on chairs, divans, twisting and thumping noisily about on the floor. A voice, indistinguishable as to sex, emerged from the writhing, squirming throng of bodies, "Man, what a great groupie," while Thera stood among it all disbelievingly, legs apart, as if she'd never get them together again. Thera's spent "guests" devoured the food in the refrigerator, drank all the beer and liquoreven the tequila, saki, and absinthe-rolled strange smelling cigarettes, shouted, laughed, cried, sang sad Israeli ballads, Calypso, and Ibo bush chants. One girl, who had been too reticent at first, straining to get her clothes off in time to retain the attention of her boyfriend (he was ogling and fondling a nearby nude) broke her festoon of beads. The beads rolled about on the floor and a boy, who had taken a bet he could pick up every bead in his mouth, careened and crashed chaotically like a rampant bowling ball among the few dancers still remaining upright. A young fellow with long sideburns, looking critically at a Modigliani nude on the wall, said to his girlfriend, "She looks better than you do, Jean" and lifted the framed print from the wall and carried it to Thera. "No more treats?" he asked. Thera, at last understanding the question, shook her head. "Then I'll take this for my treat," he said, carrying it toward the front door, weaving through the naked dancers. "Man, what a great idea! We got a right to some kind of treat! I'll take this stack of records." Another took a lamp, a chair; a girl bundled up the blender and the mix-master in her underclothes. A pimply-faced boy carried off the portable color television. "C'mon, let's move the party over to my place. Here, grab the other end." Two boys lifted the console stereo and carried it through the door with their clothes piled on top. "Hey, let's cut out now. There ain't nothin' left here anyway." They got up from the floor and chairs, buttoning and zipping pants and blouses, hooking bras, hunting, grasping. They carried away a sofa, tables, lamps, and even all of Thera's doll children. As each one left with his loot, new faces appeared as replacements. The lane outside was crowded with cars, as if there were a great auction going on in the house, and people, now middle-aged and even older, began to arrive. Thera, oblivious to the world around her, sat quietly on another sofa,

hands clasped over her bare stomach, listening carefully to whatever was taking root inside, while on the superhighway cars and trucks roared by with un-diminished regularity. The milling crowds stripped the house completely bare. A pair of them lifted Thera to the carpet so they could carry away the sofa. Then moving her again to the bare floor, they rolled up the carpet and pad, removing them too, chanting all the while, "Trick or treat, trick or treat, trick or treat." The latest arrivals brought furniture dollies, rollers, and moving frames. Soon they were carrying off the stove, refrigerator, and other appliances. One of the newest arrivals broke off a piece of shingle and began to eat it. "No," Thera breathed, almost unintelligibly. "Please no!" At once other hands broke off pieces from various parts of the house and, finding them delicious, began to eat with expressions of delight. Now swarms of them covered the entire house, like locusts over a fecund field, tearing it to pieces bit by bit, devouring everything-roof, walls, and finally even the floor. At last not a trace remained. It was all gone now, like drifting smoke in the autumn wind. V Dazed and shivering, Thera leaned against an oak, whose rough bark scraped insistently but unnoticed on her tender skin. A cool light breeze, presaging impending snow, played fitfully among those brittle leaves still clinging to the branches, leaves whose siblings rustled restlessly about on die hardening ground. There where her house once stood lay a crumpled, empty potato chip bag, five bent filter cigarette butts, two used condoms, and an intricate web of deep tire tracks in the earth-a reminder of no more, certainly, than what might be expected to be found in some recently abandoned lover's lane.' Behind her the cars and trucks swished toward the distant city. She sighed, moving her hands slowly up and down over her naked, crossed and goose-pimpled arms, intermittently hugging herself reassuringly. One long last look into the dark and deserted forest that had edged her world, and she finally turned around. Once having turned, Thera strode rapidly and determinedly up the steep and rocky slope edging the highway, confident that someone would soon stop for a naked and attractive woman illuminated in the frontal glare of the world's headlights. 12: Charles E. Fritch - Big, Wide, Wonderful World Chuck got the idea. "Let's have a nightmare," he said. We looked at him, wondering if he could be serious. He was, or at least he looked like he was, which in his case was the same thing. "You crazy or something, boy?" I said. "A nightmare? Count me out. I came close a couple times, but no more. Not ever again." "Aw, you're chicken," he said. "How about you, Bill? Len?" Bill looked at me and at Chuck and then at Len and then at Chuck again. He rubbed his stubble of beard uncertainly. "I-I don't know, Chuck. It-it's rather risky stuff. I've seen guys go into nightmares." He shuddered at the memory. "It's not pretty." "Of course it's not pretty. Nobody said it was. It's the excitement, the thrills. Why do you suppose they play Russian roulette?" "At least with Russian roulette," Len put in, "you're either dead or you're not. Having a nightmare you just wish you were dead."

"O.K., look," Chuck said, and I could see he was trying hard not to be exasperated, "what can we lose? We've got our needles"-he patted the one at his belt-"and if any of us is too far gone, one of the others can give him the hypo." The way he said it, it sounded pretty reasonable. "I'm with you," Len said. "O.K.," Bill said, "I'll go along with it." "Me, too," I said, without hesitating. I didn't like it, but I had no choice. I would have to give in, so I figured I might as well do it right away so they wouldn't think I was scared. I was scared, though. Plenty. I remember once I forgot my needle when I went out for a walk, and the whistle sounded for Injection and when I reached down to my belt I found the needle wasn't there. Boy, was I scared then. I ran for home as fast as I could, but before I got there the nightmare began and I felt cold and sick in my stomach and I saw the world around me start to waver like a reflection in a muddy stream of water. It was terrible. It would be terrible now, too, but I had to stick it out. "O.K., then," Chuck said, consulting his wristwatch, "here's what we'll do. The Injection whistle's gonna blow in about half an hour. We'll go over by the woods there so no one'll see us and lie down; you can take a nightmare a lot easier if you're lying down. Then, when the whistle blows we'll just stay there. We won't do anything. We won't even take our needles from the holster, got that? We'll just sit there and have ourselves a nightmare and see who can take it the longest." We nodded. I hoped I wasn't really as pale and scared-looking as I felt. I knew the one who could take it the longest wouldn't be me, but I prayed I wouldn't be die first to needle myself. Let Bill or Len do it, I thought; it wouldn't be so bad if one of them cracked first. We went over to the woods and sprawled on the ground out of sight of anyone who might pass by. It was a beautiful day, and it was a big, wide, wonderful world in which to be alive. The trees were blossoming with spring, and the grass was green and cool, and the air was fresh and clean. I wished I didn't have to go through with this. But I did, and I forced the wish from my mind. Soon it would be over, I told myself; it would be over and done and in the past and that would be that. I must have dozed, for I came awake with a start when the whistle blew. Chuck looked at his watch. "Right on the button," he said proudly. "We've got about five minutes." Five minutes never passed so slowly. We sat staring at each other. All of us were pretty nervous. I found myself tearing a leaf into shreds and discarded it and wished I'd kept it because I wanted to do something so I wouldn't have to think of what was going to happen. "It should be starting now," Chuck said. "Yes," Bill breathed. "Things are starting to get a little fuzzy. How about you, Len? Anything?" "No, not yet… wait! Yes, it's starting." I didn't say anything. I couldn't speak. Around me, the world was beginning to come apart at the seams. The needle! a voice cried inside me. No! I thought, fighting it. I felt myself getting cold, shivering. My stomach began tying itself into knots. Desperately, I looked at the others. One of them had to do it first. Needle yourself! I thought at Len. I looked at Chuck. He was trembling. His face was distorted in pain. I closed my eyes, balled my fists and struck at the ground. Someone screamed. I forced my eyes open. It was Len. He had staggered erect, was pawing frantically at the hypo in his belt. Suddenly the pain seemed more bearable. Len would be the first, I thought unashamedly, and I the second. His hypo came loose, flashing in the sunlight, and then it

dropped from his shaking hands into the grass somewhere. He cried out in despair and dropped to all fours. I'll help you, Len, I thought. But I couldn't move. The world was pressing down on me, knotting my stomach, forcing the blood to pound in my head. The air swirled in muddy currents, and there was the smell of burned waste and the odor of decay. I forced myself to one knee. The world was a nightmare. The Earth was a black, ugly thing now. The forest was a graveyard of charred stumps. The buildings in the distance were not buildings at all but skeletons of buildings. I felt sick. I turned to look at Chuck and Bill and Len. They were hideous things, pale, scarred, disfigured horribly, like grubs of humans produced by some atomic war. I vomited. The needle! I thought frantically. I got it out of the holster with a trembling hand, fearing at any moment I might drop it and lose the precious drug inside and have to spend forever in the nightmare world. I jabbed myself, and the liquid flowed warmly into my veins, and I dropped back on the ground to relax and wait. The trembling ceased. The dark mists parted before the warm rays of the sun, and the air became fresh again and the grass and the trees green, the buildings whole. I breathed a sigh of relief and stood up. Len was lying face down, unmoving, his arms outstretched and his fingers extended to within an inch of his shattered needle. Bill was sitting beside a tree, an empty needle in one hand; he was panting, eyes closed, unable to speak. Chuck was screaming. I pulled Chuck to his feet and hit him as hard as I could. He lay still and moaned. I fumbled at his needle holster, got the hypo out and with a steady hand shot the fluid into his arm. He relaxed and after a moment his eyes fluttered open. There was fear in those eyes, then relief as they saw the world was good again. I went over to see how Len was. "I never want to go through that again," Bill said. He held his head in his hands and said it over and over again. "I never want to go through that again. I never want to go through that again." "I didn't think it would be quite so bad," Chuck said, almost apologetically. "Everybody O.K.?" "Len's dead," I told him. "Oh," he said. "Look, Chuck," I said, "you're bigger than I am and older, but if you suggest something like this again I'm going to beat you into a bloody mess!" Chuck looked up at me, at my clenching fists, and over at Len, and he knew I meant it. He nodded slowly. "C'mon, then," I said. "We've got to get Len back home." Together the three of us carried the body into the day, through the big, wide, wonderful world of tall trees and green grass and fresh air and shining buildings. 13: Eddy C. Bertin - The Taste Of Your Love That night he decided to pick one up in Riccione. The last one he had had been in Bellariva, three weeks ago, and he'd had a hell of a job getting rid of the body. A pretty one, that girl had been, a small blonde German tourist with well-formed legs. Of course, she had been only a small parcel of selected items, after he'd finished making love to her, in his own way. It was not quite what he had expected. She was so soft, she had already fainted the first time, and she had been dead before he had been able to make five cuts; but he'd enjoyed it all the same.

The night had been beautiful afterwards, after he had disposed of the parcel in the sea, and he had walked on the beach for a long time. He had looked up at the sky, and almost felt himself crushed by the coldness and depth of the eternity above him. He had felt very small, and thankful for the joys life and love had brought him. He had been very careful, and though he needed love very badly, he had kept away from it for three weeks. Then the hunger, the desperate need for love became too much to bear alone any longer. He was a man who needed people, as much as food and drink. He liked to walk among people, masses of people, unnoticed; a man in the crowd, wondering about the others, who they really were deep inside, the very insides of their narrow minds. Each one had another face; another world from which he was excluded. Sometimes he wished to be able to read their faces as if they were so many open books, not out of an unhealthy curiosity to pry into their tiny secrets, but to really feel like them, understand them. After those three weeks, he couldn't wait any longer. That afternoon he had been lying on the beach; the sand scratching his back, his mind a kaleidoscope of tumbling memories, like the first time he had caught an alley cat and cut its belly open with a piece of a broken bottle. He remembered the first girl he had, a tiny built brunette, who lived two blocks away. It had been a very fumbling attempt, but they both liked it very much, till she suddenly became frightened and tried to get away from him. He had been mad, and his hands were around her throat of their own accord. Orgasm came just as her eyes turned upwards and her swollen tongue came lolling out between her purple lips. He still heard the gurgling sounds she had made in his ears. Then somebody had come up behind him, just in time they later said, and he had been kept in another place for several years before they set him free again. He was of legal age then, his mind cured, and with some pocket money on him. With the money he bought a long butcher's knife, went to a brothel, and strangled the prostitute in her room. He possessed her, then hung her body on a strong clasp in the wall and made a work of art out of her body. He had to cut away several parts before she was the shape he desired. Then he painted a landscape on the walls with the red stickiness which was everywhere by the time he had finished, cleaned himself and left the country. He had been travelling all over Europe ever since, working here and there a bit. He had also perfected his love-making techniques during those years, and discovered quite a number of unusual enjoyments. He had been dozing on the sand, and when he opened his eyes, the sun burned deep into them. Through the coloured dots and circles he saw a pair of shapely legs walking by, and the burning hunger in his insides told him that he needed a woman's love, and badly. He rented a new room in Rimini, and took the bus to Riccione. The driver took his one hundred lira, and he found a place for himself among the packed mass of humanity. It was only a short drive, in fact he could have walked the distance in less than half an hour, but he just didn't feel like walking. It was an evening for driving, with the sound of the big motor a steady roar, the ground drumming under his feet like the membrane of a heavy drum, a strong beating heart. In fact there were too many people, and he could hardly see the numbers of the stops, very inconveniently placed between trees beside the road. He went too far, and had to return one stop by foot. After walking through some of the small streets, he decided on one of the lesser known clubs. He paid his entrance fee, and stepped from the lamp-lit darkness outside into the softred and blue miniature world inside. The loud music bombarded him at the entrance, deafening his ears for a few seconds. The dancing floor was small and filled with a mass of humanity, slowly moving like a lazy dinosaur on the moors, to the sound of hard rock. Funny, he thought, how Italians dance slowly to every damn kind of music; it was in strange contrast with their hurried movements and speech to see them dancing, never leaving the square stone on which they're standing.

He found a table beside the dancing floor and ordered a bottle of cheap white wine, experience having taught him the horrible prices they considered normal for a glass of beer. Slowly he adjusted to the music, letting the rhythm build up inside his blood together with the crawling need in him. He adapted his senses to the hard electronic sounds and tried without success to hear the voice of the singer amid the music. He liked discotheques, they had a special atmosphere of intimacy. They were apart from the outside world, small worlds by themselves in which people and love affairs are born and die, in the space of one evening. They also were ideal hunting grounds. He danced a few times, but didn't find what he was looking for. Most Italian girls were with their steady boy friends, and most of the foreign girls were with tourist groups or holiday lovers. He danced with a young French girl with a delicious accent and long legs, and then with a smaller German woman whose breasts were too large for her figure and too hard to be real. But both left him cold. They were not his type. Then he noticed her. He couldn't have seen her before, because she was like a painting on the wall. One sees it but somehow doesn't really notice it. She moved shadow-like, slowly, observing yet unobserved herself. He first noticed her hair, long and dark, neither brown nor black, which lay flat against her shoulders. Then she passed under one of the few lights, her face turning into a black and white ink sketch, finely drawn features and dark lonely eyes. She attracted him immediately, there was something in her way of walking, something in her whole posture, not exciting or inviting but rather the opposite, a coldness. He knew that he needed that girl tonight. He took note of where she sat down, then simply went over and asked her for the next dance. She accepted without words. She had a very small waist, his arms almost completely circling her. He said a few things, unimportant small talk one says to a stranger. When she didn't answer, he tried a few other languages. Finally she responded in a weird combination of broken English and a few snatches of an unknown language. It could have been Greek, but he wasn't sure. He tried to find out where she was from, but she only answered with a slight smile, more a lifting of her lips, half-sad and half-mocking. He was strongly aware of her apartness, which surrounded her like a cloak. The dancing couples around them formed a fog of chaotic lights, swimming among colour waves, their heads and shoulders submerged in the flowing waves of music and movement. They were dancing apart at first, his one arm around her shoulders. There was the faintest touch of her hair against his face, and a soft smell of perfume, sweet and unoffending. He felt the desire, the burning need for her love growing in him Deliberately he pulled her closer, and they danced cheek to cheek, her flesh a warm and soothing softness next to his face. They had exactly the same time-sense and rhythm. They rode the music, something which rarely happens, two complete strangers adapting to each other's way of dancing fully. After the dance, he brought her back to her table and joined her. She didn't protest, but there was not much to talk about except senseless small things. He noticed the way her hair fell half over her left cheek, and saw to his surprise that her hair was fastened to her dress, so it always covered that cheek. She had hollows under her eyes, he also noticed, as if she'd been awake for a long time. Maybe he wouldn't use the scalpel right away this time. Why not start with the pins? It was years since he had used them. She took a sip of her drink, and he noticed with pleasure that she wore no ornaments, no rings, no watch, only a very small silver bracelet which seemed very old. It was best that way. Once he had made love to an older Belgian woman who had refused to part with her ornaments, and he had broken one of his best knives on her wrist watch during love play. He drank in the dark wine of her presence, fondly making comparisons with his earlier loves. Her breasts would be small and pointed, he thought. Yes, he would start with the breasts and use a small scalpel after all, the one he had used for detail work. He would have to truss her

up well, of course, and gag her strongly, so that she would only be able to make the little throaty sounds which excited him so strongly. He would start at the nipples, slowly working in circles around her breasts, going downwards, drawing red patterns towards her navel. Only then he would start using the pins, the wooden ones which he could drive into her sides, slowly. They danced again and again, sometimes staying on the dance floor for many minutes, pressing closer to each other, her hair against his hot cheek. He nibbled her ear and tried to kiss the corners of her mouth, but she turned away. "Not here, not now," she said. "Later." "Why not?" he asked mockingly. "I want you. I need your love." She smiled, that, half-mocking drawing of her lips. "I will taste your love tonight," she answered. Indeed you will, my dear, he thought, you'll never forget how my love tastes. Not in the short time you have left in this world. Maybe he could mix pleasures tonight? First the knives and the pins, and then conclude with the cord? If she was weak enough after his love making, and there was a hook in the wall strong enough to hold her, he could even watch her dangling, her body arching itself in spasmodic movements, her legs jerking like a spider's. Yes, he would have a wonderful night. He felt sure of that. The band broke up at closing time, and he got her coat from the checkroom. She wanted to wait for one of the late buses at first, but he convinced her that it was only a short walk. She followed him into his room without questions, and he locked the door carefully behind him. "Please wait here," she whispered, and went into the bathroom. He put on the bedside lamp, and put his love instruments into the pockets of his pajamas, and the strong cord to tie her with. There was a hook in the wall, he noticed, quite high enough. Then the bathroom door opened and she came in. The soft light played as a lover's hands over her youthful body, well-built and yet fragile looking, with slightly sagging breasts and a dark-shadowed navel. Her long hair hung loose now, still covering half of her face. She came over to him hurriedly, and pressed her body strongly against his. There was a look of fierce hunger in her eyes as their tongues met, and he felt desire rising in him, pumping in his blood. He tried to bring his left hand up along her spine, while the other searched for the cord, and suddenly found that he couldn't. Her arms were like steel, pinning down his own against his sides, unable to move. Her eyes smiled at him, and for the first time he noticed their glow. "Now, my dear," she whispered, "I will taste your love", and with a sharp movement of her head, she tossed her hair away and uncovered the left part of her face. The scream bubbled up in his throat, but was never voiced, because her tongue erupted like a burning volcano in his mouth. Unable to move, unable to shriek, he saw the slimy, dark-haired, proboscis-like thing which covered half of her face uncoil itself as a tentacle, the many teethless mouths on it opening and closing. It moved along her lips, and then it was in his mouth, wet, slimy and sickly, moving and sucking, while blood-red pain tore his mind apart into a million silently screaming shards. The landlady had seen the girl leaving the room in the middle of the night, and she had decided to throw her lodger out. After all, this was a respectable house, and she wanted nothing to do with things like that happening under her roof. She was very surprised that she didn't find her tenant in his rooms. The only things she saw were his clothes, lying in disorder on the floor, and a big plastic bag on the bed. Angrily she picked up the bag, and it felt wet and sticky and had red spots on it. The bag rattled, and she peered more closely and saw the bones through the plastic. But she definitely started to scream when she saw that part of the bag had the flattened form of a man's face. THE END