VOLUME 1 25 Cents NUMBER 1
Contents for March, 1923
TWENTY-TWO REMARKABLE SHORT STORIES
The Mystery of Black Jean JULIAN KILMAN 41
_A story of blood-curdling realism, with a
smashing surprise at the end._
The Grave ORVILLE R. EMERSON 47
_A soul-gripping story of terror._
Hark! The Rattle! JOEL TOWNSLEY ROGERS 53
_An uncommon tale that will cling to your
memory for many a day._
The Ghost Guard BRYAN IRVINE 59
_A “spooky” tale with a grim background._
The Ghoul and the Corpse G. A. WELLS 65
_An amazing yarn of weird adventure in the frozen
North._
Fear DAVID R. SOLOMON 73
_Showing how fear can drive a strong man to the
verge of insanity._
The Place of Madness MERLIN MOORE TAYLOR 89
_What two hours in a prison “solitary” did to a
man._
The Closing Hand FARNSWORTH WRIGHT 98
_A brief story powerfully written._
The Unknown Beast HOWARD ELLIS DAVIS 100
_An unusual tale of a terrifying monster._
The Basket HERBERT J. MANGHAM 106
_A queer little story about San Francisco._
The Accusing Voice MEREDITH DAVIS 110
_The singular experience of Allen Defoe._
The Sequel WALTER SCOTT STORY 119
_A new conclusion to Edgar Allen Poe’s “Cask of
Amontillado.”_
The Weaving Shadows W. H. HOLMES 122
_Chet Burke’s strange adventures in a haunted
house._
Nimba, the Cave Girl R. T. M. SCOTT 131
_An odd, fantastic little story of the Stone
Age._
The Young Man Who Wanted to Die ? ? ? 135
_An anonymous author submits a startling answer
to the question, “What comes after death?”_
The Scarlet Night WILLIAM SANFORD 140
_A tale with an eerie thrill._
The Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni
JOSEPH FAUS and JAMES BENNETT WOODING 143
_An eccentric doctor creates a frightful living
thing._
The Return of Paul Slavsky
CAPT. GEORGE WARBURTON LEWIS 150
_A “creepy” tale that ends in a shuddering,
breath-taking way._
The House of Death F. GEORGIA STROUP 156
_The strange secret of a lonely woman._
The Gallows I. W. D. PETERS 161
_An out-of-the-ordinary story._
The Skull HAROLD WARD 164
_A grim tale with a terrifying end._
The Ape-Man JAMES B. M. CLARK, JR. 169
_A Jungle tale that is somehow “different.”_
THREE UNUSUAL NOVELETTES
The Dead Man’s Tale WILLARD E. HAWKINS 7
_An astounding yarn that will hold you spellbound
and make you breathe fast with a new mental
sensation._
Ooze ANTHONY M. RUD 19
_A Remarkable short novel by a master of
“gooseflesh” fiction._
The Chain HAMILTON CRAIGIE 77
_Craigie is at his best here._
A STRANGE NOVEL IN TWO PARTS
The Thing of a Thousand Shapes OTIS ADELBERT KLINE 32
_Don’t start this story late at night._
THE EYRIE THE EDITOR 180
Also a number of odd facts and queer fancies, crowded in for good
measure
For Advertising Rates in WEIRD TALES apply to YOUNG & WARD,
Advertising Managers, 168 North Michigan Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois
_“Gooseflesh” Stories_
Tales of horror--or “gooseflesh” stories--are commonly shunned by
magazine editors. Few, if any, will consider such a story, no matter
how interesting it may be. They believe that the public doesn’t want
this sort of fiction. We, however, believe otherwise. We believe there
are tens of thousands--perhaps hundreds of thousands--of intelligent
renders who really enjoy “gooseflesh” stories. Hence--
_=Weird Tales=_.
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The Unique MAGAZINE
WEIRD TALES offers such fiction as you can find in no other
magazine--fantastic stories, extraordinary stories, grotesque stories,
stories of strange and bizarre adventure--the sort of stories, in
brief, that will startle and amaze you. Every story in this issue of
WEIRD TALES is an odd and remarkable flight of man’s imagination. Some
are “creepy,” some deal in masterly fashion with “forbidden” subjects,
like insanity, some are concerned with the supernatural and others with
material things of horror--all are out of the ordinary, surprisingly
new and unusual. A sensational departure from the beaten track--that is
the reason for
_=Weird Tales=_.
WEIRD TALES
THE UNIQUE MAGAZINE
Edited by Edwin Baird
VOLUME ONE 25c A COPY MARCH, 1923 SUBSCRIPTION $3.00 A YEAR
NUMBER ONE $3.50 IN CANADA
_For Scalp-prickling Thrills and
Stark Terror, Read_
_The_
DEAD MAN’S TALE
_By_ Willard E. Hawkins
_The curious narrative that follows was found among the papers of the
late Dr. John Pedric, psychical investigator and author of occult
works. It bears evidences of having been received through automatic
writing, as were several of his publications. Unfortunately, there
are no records to confirm this assumption, and none of the mediums
or assistants employed by him in his research work admits knowledge
of it. Possibly--for the Doctor was reputed to possess some psychic
powers--it may have been received by him. At any rate, the lack of
data renders the recital useless as a document for the Society for
Psychical Research. It is published for whatever intrinsic interest or
significance it may possess. With reference to the names mentioned,
it may be added that they are not confirmed by the records of the War
Department. It could be maintained, however, that purposely fictitious
names were substituted, either by the Doctor or the communicating
entity._
They called me--when I walked the earth in a body of dense
matter--Richard Devaney. Though my story has little to do with the war,
I was killed in the second battle of the Marne, on July 24, 1918.
Many times, as men were wont to do who felt the daily, hourly imminence
of death in the trenches, I had pictured that event in my mind and
wondered what it would be like. Mainly I had inclined toward a belief
in total extinction. That, when the vigorous, full-blooded body I
possessed should lie bereft of its faculties, I, as a creature apart
from it, should go on, was beyond credence. The play of life through
the human machine, I reasoned, was like the flow of gasoline into the
motor of an automobile. Shut off that flow, and the motor became inert,
dead, while the fluid which had given it power was in itself nothing.
And so, I confess, it was a surprise to discover that I was dead and
yet not dead.
I did not make the discovery at once. There had been a blinding
concussion, a moment of darkness, a sensation of falling--falling--into
a deep abyss. An indefinite time afterward, I found myself standing
dazedly on the hillside, toward the crest of which we had been pressing
against the enemy. The thought came that I must have momentarily lost
consciousness. Yet now I felt strangely free from physical discomfort.
What had I been doing when that moment of blackness blotted everything
out? I had been dominated by a purpose, a flaming desire----
Like a flash, recollection burst upon me, and, with it, a blaze of
hatred--not toward the Boche gunners, ensconced in the woods above us,
but toward the private enemy I had been about to kill.
It had been the opportunity for which I had waited interminable days
and nights. In the open formation, he kept a few paces ahead of me.
As we alternately ran forward, then dropped on our bellies and fired,
I had watched my chance. No one would suspect, with the dozens who
were falling every moment under the merciless fire from the trees
beyond, that the bullet which ended Louis Winston’s career came from a
comrade’s rifle.
Twice I had taken aim, but withheld my fire--not from indecision, but
lest, in my vengeful heat, I might fail to reach a vital spot. When I
raised my rifle the third time, he offered a fair target.
God! how I hated him. With fingers itching to speed the steel toward
his heart, I forced myself to remain calm--to hold fire for that
fragment of a second that would insure careful aim.
Then, as the pressure of my finger tightened against the trigger, came
the blinding flash--the moment of blackness.
_II._
I had evidently remained unconscious longer than I realized.
Save for a few figures that lay motionless or squirming in agony on the
field, the regiment had passed on, to be lost in the trees at the crest
of the hill. With a pang of disappointment, I realized that Louis would
be among them.
Involuntarily I started onward, driven still by that impulse of burning
hatred, when I heard my name called.
Turning in surprise, I saw a helmeted figure crouching beside something
huddled in the tall grass. No second glance was needed to tell me that
the huddled something was the body of a soldier. I had eyes only for
the man who was bending over him. Fate had been kind to me. It was
Louis.
Apparently, in his preoccupation, he had not noticed me. Coolly I
raised my rifle and fired.
The result was startling. Louis neither dropped headlong nor looked up
at the report. Vaguely I questioned whether there had been a report.
Thwarted, I felt the lust to kill mounting in me with redoubled fury.
With rifle upraised, I ran toward him. A terrific swing, and I crashed
the stock against his head.
It passed clear through! Louis remained unmoved.
Uncomprehending, snarling, I flung the useless weapon away and fell
upon him with bare hands--with fingers that strained to rend and tear
and strangle.
Instead of encountering solid flesh and bone, they too passed through
him.
Was it a mirage? A dream? Had I gone crazy? Sobered--for a moment
forgetful of my fury--I drew back and tried to reduce the thing to
reason. Was Louis but a figment of the imagination--a phantom?
My glance fell upon the figure beside which he was sobbing incoherent
words of entreaty.
I gave a start, then looked more closely.
The dead man--for there was no question about his condition, with a
bloody shrapnel wound in the side of his head--_was myself_!
Gradually the import of this penetrated my consciousness. Then I
realized that it was Louis who had called my name--that even now he was
sobbing it over and over.
The irony of it struck me at the moment of realization. I was dead--_I_
was the phantom--who had meant to kill Louis!
I looked at my hands, my uniform--I touched my body. Apparently I was
as substantial as before the shrapnel buried itself in my head. Yet,
when I had tried to grasp Louis, my hand seemed to encompass only space.
_Louis lived, and I was dead!_
The discovery for a time benumbed my feeling toward him. With
impersonal curiosity, I saw him close the eyes of the dead man--the man
who, somehow or other, had been me. I saw him search the pockets and
draw forth a letter I had written only that morning, a letter addressed
to----
With a sudden surge of dismay, I darted forward to snatch it from his
hands. He should not read that letter!
Again I was reminded of my impalpability.
But Louis did not open the envelope, although it was unsealed. He read
the superscription, kissed it, as sobs rent his frame, and thrust the
letter inside his khaki jacket.
“Dick! Buddie!” he cried brokenly. “Best pal man ever had--how can I
take this news back to her!”
My lips curled. To Louis, I was his pal, his buddie. Not a suspicion
of the hate I bore him--had borne him ever since I discovered in him a
rival for Velma Roth.
Oh, I had been clever! It was our “unselfish friendship” that endeared
us both to her. A sign of jealousy, of ill nature, and I would have
forfeited the paradise of her regard that apparently I shared with
Louis.
I had never felt secure of my place in that paradise. True, I could
always awaken a response in her, but I must put forth effort in order
to do so. He held her interest, it seemed, without trying. They were
happy with each other and in each other.
Our relations might be expressed by likening her to the water of a
placid pool, Louis to the basin that held her, me to the wind that
swept over it. By exerting myself, I could agitate the surface of her
nature into ripples of pleasurable excitement--could even lash her
emotion into a tempest. She responded to the stimulation of my mood,
yet, in my absence, settled contentedly into the peaceful comfort of
Louis’ steadfast love.
I felt vaguely then--and am certain now, with a broader perspective
toward realities--that Velma intuitively recognized Louis as her
mate, yet feared to yield herself to him because of my sway over her
emotional nature.
When the great war came, we all, I am convinced, felt that it would
absolve Velma from the task of choosing between us.
Whether the agony that spoke from the violet depths of her eyes when we
said good-by was chiefly for Louis or for me, I could not tell. I doubt
if she could have done so. But in my mind was the determination that
only one of us should return, and--Louis would not be that one.
Did I feel no repugnance at thought of murdering the man who stood in
my way? Very little. I was a savage at heart--a savage in whom desire
outweighed anything that might stand in the way of gaining its object.
From my point of view, I would have been a fool to pass the opportunity.
Why I should have so hated him--a mere obstacle in my path--I do not
know. It may have been due to a prescience of the intangible barrier
his blood would always raise between Velma and me--or to a slumbering
sense of remorse.
But, speculation aside, here I was, in a state of being that the world
calls death, while Louis lived--was free to return home--to claim
Velma--to flaunt his possession of all that I held precious.
It was maddening! Must I stand idly by, helpless to prevent this?
_III._
I have wondered, since, how I could remain so long in touch with the
objective world--why I did not at once, or very soon, find myself shut
off from earthly sights and sounds as those in physical form are shut
off from the things beyond.
The matter seems to have been determined by my will. Like weights of
lead, envy of Louis and passionate longing for Velma held my feet to
the sphere of dense matter.
Vengeful, despairing, I watched beside Louis. When at last he turned
away from my body and, with tears streaming from his eyes, began to
drag a useless leg toward the trenches we had left, I realized why he
had not gone on with the others to the crest of the hill. He, too, was
a victim of Boche gunnery.
I walked beside the stretcher-bearers when they had picked him up and
were conveying him toward the base hospital. Throughout the weeks that
followed I hovered near his cot, watching the doctors as they bound up
the lacerated tendons in his thigh, and missing no detail of his battle
with the fever.
Over his shoulder I read the first letter he wrote home to Velma, in
which he gave a belated account of my death, dwelling upon the glory of
my sacrifice.
“_I have often thought that you two were meant for each other_” [he
wrote] “_and that if it had not been for fear of hurting me, you would
have been his wife long ago. He was the best buddie a man ever had. If
only I could have been the one to die!_”
Had I known it, I could have followed this letter across seas--could,
in fact, have passed it and, by an exercise of the will, have been
at Velma’s side in the twinkling of an eye. But my ignorance of the
laws of the new plane was total. All my thoughts were centered upon a
problem of entirely different character.
Never was hold upon earthly treasure more reluctantly relinquished
than was my hope of possessing Velma. Surely, death could not
erect so absolute a barrier. There must be a way--some loophole of
communication--some chance for a disembodied man to contend with his
corporeal rival for a woman’s love.
Slowly, very slowly, dawned the light of a plan. So feeble was the
glimmer that it would scarcely have comforted one in less desperate
straits, but to me it appeared to offer a possible hope. I set about
methodically, with infinite patience, evolving it into something
tangible, even though I had but the most indefinite idea of what the
outcome might be.
The first suggestion came when Louis had so far recovered that but
little trace of the fever remained. One afternoon, as he lay sleeping,
the mail-distributor handed a letter to the nurse who happened to be
standing beside his cot. She glanced at it, then tucked it under his
pillow.
The letter was from Velma, and I was hungry for the contents. I did not
then know that I could have read it easily, sealed though it was. In a
frenzy of impatience, I exclaimed:
“Wake up, confound it, and read your letter!”
With a start, he opened his eyes. He looked around with a bewildered
expression.
“Under your pillow!” I fumed. “Look under your pillow!”
In a dazed manner, he put his hand under the pillow and drew forth the
letter.
A few hours later, I heard him commenting on the experience to the
nurse.
“Something seemed to wake me up,” he said, “and I had a peculiar
impulse to feel under the pillow. It was just as if I knew I would find
the letter there.”
The circumstances seemed as remarkable to me as it did to him. It might
be coincidence, but I determined to make a further test.
A series of experiments convinced me that I could, to a very slight
degree, impress my thoughts and will upon Louis, especially when he
was tired or on the borderland of sleep. Occasionally I was able to
control the direction of his thoughts as he wrote home to Velma.
On one occasion, he was describing for her a funny little French woman
who visited the hospital with a basket that always was filled with
cigarettes and candy.
“_Last time_” [he wrote], “_she brought with her a boy whom she
called...._”
He paused, with pencil upraised, trying to recall the name.
A moment later, he looked down at the page and stared with
astonishment. The words, “_She called him Maurice_,” had been added
below the unfinished line.
“I must be going daffy,” he muttered. “I’d swear I didn’t write that.”
Behind him, I stood rubbing my hands in triumph. It was my first
successful effort to guide the pencil while his thoughts strayed
elsewhere.
Another time, he wrote to Velma:
“_I’ve a strange feeling, lately, that dear old Dick is near.
Sometimes, as I wake up, I seem to remember vaguely having seen him in
my dreams. It’s as if his features were just fading from view._”
He paused here so long that I made another attempt to take advantage of
his abstraction.
By an effort of the will that it is difficult to explain, I guided his
hand into the formation of the words:
“_With a jugful of kisses for Winkie, as ever her...._”
Just then, Louis looked down.
“Good God!” he exclaimed, as if he had seen a ghost.
_IV._
“Winkie” was a pet name I had given Velma when we were children
together.
Louis always maintained there was no sense in it, and refused to adopt
it, though I frequently called her by the name in later years. And
of his own volition, Louis would never have mentioned anything so
convivial as a jugful of kisses.
So, through the weary months before he was invalided home, I worked.
When he left France at the debarkation point, he still walked on
crutches, but with the promise of regaining the unassisted use of
his leg before very long. Throughout the voyage, I hovered near him,
sharing his impatience, his longing for the one we both held dearest.
Over the exquisite pain of the reunion--at which I was present, yet
_not_ present--I shall pass briefly. More beautiful than ever, more
appealing with her vivid, deep coloring, Velma in the flesh was a
vision that stirred my longing into an intense flame.
Louis limped painfully down the gangplank. When they met, she rested
her head silently on his shoulder for a moment, then--her eyes brimming
with tears--assisted him, with the tender solicitude of a mother, to
the machine she had in waiting.
Two months later they were married. I felt the pain of this less deeply
than I would have done had it not been essential to my designs.
Whatever vague hope I may have had, however, of vicariously enjoying
the delights of love were disappointed. I could not have explained
why--I only knew that something barred me from intruding upon
the sacred intimacies of their life, as if a defensive wall were
interposed. It was baffling, but a very present fact, against which I
found it useless to rebel. I have since learned--but no matter. * * *
This had no bearing on my purpose, which hinged upon the ability I was
acquiring of influencing Louis’ thoughts and actions--of taking partial
control of his faculties.
The occupation into which he drifted, restricted in choice as he was by
the stiffened leg, helped me materially. Often, after an interminable
shift at the bank, he would plod home at night with brain so weary and
benumbed that it was a simple matter to impress my will upon him. Each
successful attempt, too, made the next one easier.
The inevitable consequence was that in time Velma should notice his
aberrations and betray concern.
“Why did you say to me, when you came in last night, ‘There’s a blue
Billy-goat on the stairs--I wish they’d drive him out’?” she demanded
one morning.
He looked down shamefacedly at the tablecloth.
“I don’t know what made me say it. I seemed to _want_ to say it, and
that was the only way to get it off my mind. I thought you’d take it
as a joke.” He shifted his shoulders, as if trying to dislodge an
unpleasant burden.
“And was that what made you wear a necktie to bed?” she asked,
ironically.
He nodded an affirmative. “I knew it was idiotic--but the idea kept
running in my mind. It seemed as if the only way I could go to sleep
was to give in to it. I don’t have these freaks unless I’m very tired.”
She said nothing more at the time, but that evening she broached
the subject of his looking for an opening in some less sedentary
occupation--a subject to which she thereafter constantly recurred.
Then came a development that surprised and excited me with its
possibilities.
Exhausted, drained to the last drop of his nerve-force, Louis was
returning late one night from the bank, following the usual month-end
overtime grind. As he walked from the car-line, I hovered over him,
subduing his personality, forcing it under control, with the effort
of will I had gradually learned to direct upon him. The process can
only be explained in a crude way: It was as if I contended with him,
sometimes successfully, for possession of the steering-wheel of the
human car that he drove.
Velma was waiting when we arrived. As Louis’ feet sounded on the
threshold of their apartment, she opened the door, caught his hands,
and drew him inside.
At the action, I felt inexplicably thrilled. It was as if some
marvelous change had come over me. And then, as I met her gaze, I knew
what that change was.
I held her hands in real flesh-and-blood contact. I was looking at her
with Louis’ sight!
_V._
The shock of it cost me what I had gained. Shaken from my poise, I felt
the personality I had subdued regain its sway.
The next moment, Louis was staring at Velma in bewilderment. Her eyes
were filled with alarm.
“You--you _frightened_ me!” she gasped, withdrawing her hands, which I
had all but crushed. “Louis, dear--don’t _ever_ look at me again like
that!”
I can imagine the devouring intensity of gaze that had blazed forth
from the features in that brief moment when they were mine.
From this time, my plans quickly took form. Two modes of action
presented themselves. The first and more alluring, however, I was
forced to abandon. It was none other than the wild dream of acquiring
exclusive possession of Louis’ body--of forcing him down, out, and into
the secondary place I had occupied.
Despite the progress I had made, this proved inexpressibly difficult.
For one thing, there seemed an affinity between Louis’ body and his
personality, which forced me out when he was moderately rested. This
bond I might have weakened, but there were other factors.
One was the growing conviction on his part that something was radically
wrong. With a faculty I had discovered of putting myself _en rapport_
with him and reading his thoughts, I knew that at times he feared that
he was going insane.
I once had the experience of accompanying him to an alienist and there,
like the proverbial fly on the wall, overhearing learned scientific
names applied to my efforts. The alienist spoke of “dual personality,”
“amnesia,” and “the subconscious mind,” while I laughed in my (shall I
say?) ghostly sleeve.
But he advised Louis to seek a complete rest and, if possible, to go
into the country to build up physically--which was what I desired most
to prevent.
I could not play the Mr. Hyde to his Dr. Jekyll if Louis maintained his
normal virility.
Velma’s fears, too, I knew were growing more acute. As insistently as
she could, without betraying too openly her alarm, she pressed him to
give up the bank position and seek work in the open air--work that
would prove less devitalizing to a person of his peculiar temperament.
One of the results of debility from overwork is, apparently, that it
deprives the victim of his initiative--makes him fearful of giving up
his hold upon the meager means of sustenance that he has, lest he shall
be unable to grasp another. Louis was in debt, earning scarcely enough
for their living expenses, too proud to let Velma help as she longed to
do, his game leg putting him at a disadvantage in the industrial field.
In fact, he was in just the predicament I desired, but I knew that in
time her wishes would prevail.
The circumstances, however, that deprived me of all hope of completely
usurping his place was this: I could not, for any length of time,
face the gaze of Velma’s eyes. The personified truth, the purity that
dwelt in them, seemed to dissolve my power, to beat me back into the
secondary relationship I had come to occupy toward Louis.
He was sometimes tempted to tell her: “You give me my one grip on
sanity.”
I have witnessed his panic at the thought of losing her, at the thought
that some day she might give him up in disgust at his aberrations, and
abandon him to the formless “thing” that haunted him.
Curious--to be of the world and yet not of it--to enjoy a perspective
that reveals the hidden side of effects, which seem so mysterious from
the material side of the veil. But I would gladly have given all the
advantages of my disembodied state for one hour of flesh-and-blood
companionship with Velma.
My alternative plan was this:
If I could not enter her world, what was to prevent me from _bringing
Velma into mine_?
_VI._
Daring? To be sure.
Unversed as I was in the laws that govern this mystery of passing from
the physical into another state of existence, I could only hope that
the plan would work. It might--and that was enough for me. I took a
gambler’s chance. By risking all, I might gain all--might gain--
The thought of what I might gain transported me to a heaven of pain and
ecstasy.
Velma and I--in a world apart--a world of our own--free from the sordid
trammels that mar the perfection of the rosiest earth-existence. Velma
and I--together through all eternity!
This much reason I had for hoping! I observed that other persons passed
through the change called death, and that some entered a state of
being in which I was conscious of them and they of me. Uninteresting
creatures they were, almost wholly preoccupied with their former
earth-interests; but they were as much in the world as I had been in
the world of Velma and Louis before that fragment of shrapnel ruled me
out of the game.
A few, it was true, on passing from their physical habitations,
seemed to emerge into a sphere to which I could not follow. This
troubled me. Velma might do likewise. Yet I refused to admit the
probability--refused to consider the possible failure of my plan. The
very intensity of my longing would draw her to me.
The gulf that separated us was spanned by the grave. Once Velma had
crossed to my side of the abyss, there would be no going back to Louis.
Yet I was cunning. She must not come to me with overpowering regrets
that would cause her to hover about Louis as I now hovered about her.
If I could inspire her with horror and loathing for him--ah! if I only
could!
As a preliminary step, I must induce Louis to buy the instrument with
which my purpose was to be accomplished. This was not easy, for on
nights when he left the bank during shopping hours he was sufficiently
vigorous to resist my will. I could work only through suggestion.
In a pawnshop window that he passed daily I had noticed a revolver
prominently displayed. My whole effort was concentrated upon bringing
this to his attention.
The second night, he glanced at the revolver, but did not stop. Three
nights later, drawn by a fascination for which he could not have
accounted, he paused and looked at it for several minutes, fighting an
urge that seemed to command: “_Step in and buy! Buy! Buy!_”
When, a few evenings later, he arrived home with the revolver and a box
of cartridges that the pawnbroker had included in the sale, he put them
hastily out of sight in a drawer of his desk.
He said nothing about his purchase, but the next day Velma came across
the weapon and questioned him regarding it.
Visibly confused, he replied: “Oh, I thought we might need something of
the sort. Saw it in a window, and the notion of having it sort of took
hold of me. There’s been a lot of housebreaking lately, and it’s just
as well to be prepared.”
And now with impatience I waited for the opportunity to stage my
_dénouement_.
It came, naturally, at the end of the month, when Louis, after a
prolonged day’s work, returned home, soon after midnight, his brain
benumbed with poring over interminable columns of figures. When his
feet ascended the stairs to his apartment it was not his faculties that
directed them, but mine--cunning, alert, aflame with deadly purpose.
Never was more weird preliminary to a murder--the entering, in guise of
a dear, familiar form, of a fiend incarnate, intent upon destroying the
flower of the home.
I speak of a fiend incarnate, even though I was that fiend, for I did
not enter Louis’s body in full expression of my faculties. Taking up
physical life, my recollection of existence as a spirit entity was
always shadowy. I carried through the dominating impulses that had
actuated me on entering the body, but scarcely more.
And the impulse I had carried through that night was the impulse to
kill.
_VII._
With utmost caution, I entered the bedroom.
My control of Louis’s body was complete. I felt, for perhaps the first
time, so corporeally secure that the vague dread of being driven out
did not oppress me.
The room was dark, but the soft, regular breathing of Velma, asleep,
reached my ears. It was like the invitation that rises in the scent of
old wine which the lips are about to quaff--quickening my eagerness and
setting my brain on fire.
I did not think of love. I lusted--but my lust was to destroy that
beautiful body--to _kill_!
However, I was cunning--_cunning_. With caution, I felt my way toward
the desk and secured the revolver, filling its chambers with leaden
emissaries of death.
When all was in readiness, I switched on the light.
She wakened almost instantly. As the radiance flooded the room,
a startled cry rose to her lips. It froze, unuttered, as--half
rising--she met my gaze.
Her beauty--the raven blackness of her hair falling over her bare
shoulders and full, heaving bosom, fanned the flame of my gory passion
into fury. In an ecstasy of triumph, I stood drinking in the picture.
While I temporized with the lust to kill--prolonging the exquisite
sensation--she was battling for self-control.
“_Louis!_” The name was gasped through bloodless lips.
Involuntarily, I shrank, reeling a little under her gaze. A dormant
something seemed to rise in feeble protest at what I sought to do. The
leveled revolver wavered in my hand.
But the note of panic in her voice revived my purpose. I
laughed--mockingly.
“Louis!” her tone was sharp, but edged with terror. “Louis--_put down
that pistol_! You don’t know what you are doing.”
She struggled to her feet and now stood before me. God! how
beautiful--how tempting that bare white bosom!
“_Put down that pistol!_” she ordered hysterically.
She was frantic with fear. And her fear was like the blast of a forge
upon the white heat of my passion.
I mocked her. A shrill, maniacal laugh burst from my throat. She had
said I didn’t know what I was doing! Oh, yes, I did.
“I’m going to kill you!--_kill you!_” I shrieked, and laughed again.
She swayed forward like a wraith, as I fired. Or perhaps that was the
trick played by my eyes as darkness overwhelmed me.
_VIII._
A few fragmentary pictures stand out in my recollection like
clear-etched cameos on the scroll of the past.
One is of Louis, standing dazedly--slightly swaying as with
vertigo--looking down at the smoking revolver in his hand. On the floor
before him a crumpled figure in ebony and white and vivid crimson.
Then a confusion of frightened men and women in oddly assorted
nondescript attire--uniformed officers bursting into the room and
taking the revolver from Louis’s unresisting hand--clumsy efforts at
lifting the white-robed body to the bed--a crimson stain spreading over
the sheet--a doctor, attired in collarless shirt and wearing slippers,
bending over her * * *
Finally, after a lapse of hours, a hushed atmosphere--efficient
nurses--the beginning of delirium.
And one other picture--of Louis, cringing behind the bars of his cell,
denied the privilege of visiting his wife’s bedside--crushed, dreading
the hourly announcement of her death--filled with unspeakable horror of
himself.
Velma still lived. The bullet had pierced her left lung and life
hung by a tenuous thread. Hovering near I watched with dispassionate
interest the battle for life. For the time I seemed emotionally spent.
I had made a supreme effort--events would now take their inevitable
course and show whether I had accomplished my purpose. I felt neither
anxious nor overjoyed, neither regretful nor triumphant--merely
impersonally curious.
A fever set in lessening Velma’s slender chances of recovery. In her
delirium, her thoughts seemed always of Louis. Sometimes she breathed
his name pleadingly, tenderly, then cried out in terror at some
fleeting rehearsal of the scene in which he stood before her, the
glitter of insanity in his eyes, the leveled revolver in his hand.
Again she pleaded with him to give up his work at the bank; and at
other times she seemed to think of him as over on the battlefields of
Europe.
Only once did she apparently think of me--when she whispered the name
by which I had called her, “_Winkie!_” and added, “_Dick!_” But, save
for this exception, it was always “Louis! Louis!”
Her constant reiteration of his name finally dispelled the apathy of my
spirit.
_Louis!_ All the vengeful fury toward him I had experienced when my
soul went hurtling into the region of the disembodied returned with
thwarted intensity.
When Velma’s fever subsided, when the long fight for recovery began and
she fluttered from the borderland back into the realm of the physical,
when I knew I had failed--balked of my prey, I had at least this
satisfaction:
Never again would these two--the man I hated and the woman for whom I
hungered--never again would they be to each other as they had been in
the past. The perfection of their love had been irretrievably marred.
Never would she meet his gaze without an inward shrinking. Always on
his part--on both their parts--there would be an undercurrent of fear
that the incident might recur--a grizzly menace, poisoning each moment
of their lives together.
I had not schemed and contrived--and dared--in vain.
This was the thought I hugged when Louis was released from jail, upon
her refusal to prosecute. It caused me sardonic amusement when, in
their first embrace, the tears of despair rained down their cheeks. It
recurred when they began their pitiful attempt to build anew on the
shattered foundation of love.
And then--creepingly, slyly, like a bird of ill omen casting the shadow
of its silent wings over the landscape--came retribution.
Many times, in retrospect, I lived over that brief hour of my return to
physical expression--my hour of realization. Wraithlike, arose a vision
of Velma--Velma as she had stood before me that night, staring at me
with horror. I saw the horror deepen--deepen to abject despair.
How beautiful she had looked! But when I tried to picture that beauty,
I could recall only her eyes. It mattered not whether I wished to see
them--they filled my vision.
They seemed to haunt me. From being vaguely conscious of them, I
became acutely so. Disconcertingly, they looked out at me from
everywhere--eyes brimming with fear--eyes fixed and staring--filled
with horrified accusation.
The beauty I had once coveted became a thing forbidden, even in memory.
If I sought to peer through the veil as formerly--to witness her
pathetic attempts to resume the old life with Louis--again those eyes!
It may perhaps sound strange for a disembodied creature--one whom you
would call a ghost--to wail of being haunted. Yet haunting is of the
spirit, and we of the spirit world are immeasurably more subject to its
conditions than those whose consciousness is centered in the material
sphere.
God! Those eyes. There is a refinement of physical torture which
consists of allowing water to fall, drop by drop, for an eternity
of hours, upon the forehead of the victim. Conceive of this torture
increased a thousandfold, and a faint idea may be gained of the torture
that was mine--from seeing everywhere, constantly, interminably, two
orbs ever filled with the same expression of horror and reproach.
Much have I learned since entering the Land of the Shades. At that time
I did not know, as I know now, that my punishment was no affliction
from without, but the simple result of natural law. Causes set in
motion must work out their full reaction. The pebble, cast into a quiet
pool, makes ripples which in time return to the place of their origin.
I had cast more than a pebble of disturbance into the harmony of human
life, and through my intense preoccupation in a single aim had delayed
longer than usual the reaction, I created for myself a hell. Inevitably
I was drawn into it.
Gone was every desire I had known to hover near the two who had so long
engrossed my attention. Haunted, harried, scourged by those dreadful
accusers, I sought to fly from them to the ends of the earth. There was
no escape, yet, driven frantic, I still struggled to escape, because
that is the blind impulse of suffering creatures.
The emotions that had so swayed me when I tried to blast the lives of
two who held me dear now seemed puny and insignificant in comparison
with my suffering. No physical torment can be likened to that which
engulfed me until my very being was but a seething mass of agony.
Through it, I hurled maledictions upon the world, upon myself, upon the
creator. Horrible blasphemies I uttered.
And, at last--I prayed.
It was but a cry for mercy--the inarticulate appeal of a tortured soul
for surcease of pain--but suddenly a peace seemed to have come upon the
universe.
Bereft of suffering, I felt like one who has ceased to exist.
Out of the silence came a wordless response. It beat upon my
consciousness like the buffeting of the waves.
Words known to human ears would not convey the meaning of the message
that was borne upon me--whether from outside source or welling up from
within, I do not know. All I know is that it filled me with a strange
hope.
A thousand years or a single instant--for time is a relative thing--the
respite lasted. Then, I sank, as it seemed, to the old level of
consciousness, and the torment was renewed.
Endure it now I knew that I must--and why. A strange new purpose filled
my being. The light of understanding had dawned upon my soul.
And so I came to resume my vigil in the home of Velma and Louis.
_IX._
A brave heart was Velma’s--dauntless and true.
With the effects of the tragedy still apparent in her pallor and
weakness, and in the shaken demeanor and furtive, self-distrustful
attitude of Louis, she yet succeeded in finding a place for him as
overseer of a small country estate.
I have said that I ceased to feel the torment of passion for Velma in
the greater torment of her reproach. Ah! but I had never ceased to love
her. As I now realized, I had desecrated that love, had transmuted
it into a horrible travesty, had, in my abysmal ignorance, sought to
obtain what I desired by destroying it; yet, beneath all, I had loved.
Well I know, now, that had I succeeded in my intention toward her,
Velma would have ascended to a sphere utterly beyond my comprehension.
Merciful fate had diverted my aim--had made possible some faint
restitution.
I returned to Velma, loving her with a love that had come into its own,
a love unselfish, untainted by thought of possession.
But, to help her, I must again hurt her cruelly.
Out of the chaos of her life she had slowly restored a semblance of
harmony. Almost she succeeded in convincing Louis that their old
peaceful companionship had returned; but to one who could read her
thoughts, the nightmare thing that hovered between them weighed cruelly
upon her soul.
She was never quite able to look into her husband’s eyes without a
lurking suspicion of what might lie in their depths; never able to
compose herself for sleep without a tremor lest she should wake to find
herself confronted by a fiend in his form. I had done my work only too
well!
Now, slowly and inexorably, I began again undermining Louis’ mental
control. The old ground must be traversed anew, because he had gained
in strength from the respite I had allowed him, and his outdoor life
gave him a mental vigor with which I had not been obliged to contend
before. On the other hand, I was equipped with new knowledge of the
power I intended to wield.
I shall not relate again the successive stages by which I succeeded,
first in influencing his will, then in partially subduing it, and,
finally, in driving his personality into the background for indefinite
periods. The terror that overwhelmed him when he realized that he was
becoming a prey to his former aberrations may be imagined.
To shield Velma, I performed my experiments, when possible, while he
was away from her. But she could not long be unaware of the moodiness,
the haggard droop of his shoulders which accompanied his realization
that the old malady had returned. The deepening terror in her
expression was like a scourge upon my spirit--but I must wound her in
order to cure.
More than once, I was forced to exert my power over Louis to prevent
him from taking violent measures against himself. As I gained the
ascendancy, a determination to end it all grew upon him. He feared
that unless he took himself out of Velma’s life, the insanity would
return and force him again to commit a frenzied assault upon the one
he held most dear. Nor could he avoid seeing the apprehension in her
manner that told him she knew--the shrinking that she bravely tried to
conceal.
Though my power over him was greater than before, it was intermittent.
I could not always exercise it. I could not, for example, prevent his
borrowing a revolver one day from a neighboring farmer, on pretense of
using it against a marauding dog that had lately visited the poultry
yard.
Though I knew his true intention, the utmost that I could do--for his
personality was strong at the time--was to influence him to postpone
the deed he contemplated.
That night, I took possession of his body while he slept. Velma lay,
breathing quietly, in the next room--for as this dreaded thing came
upon him they had, through tacit understanding, come to occupy separate
bedrooms.
Partially dressing, I stole downstairs and out to the tool-shed where
Louis--fearing to trust it near him in the house--had hidden the
revolver. As I returned, my whole being rebelled at the task before
me--yet it was unavoidable, if I would restore to Velma what I had
wrenched from her.
Quietly though I entered her room, a gasp--or rather a quick,
hysterical intake of breath--warned me that she had wakened.
I flashed on the light.
She made no sound. Her face went white as marble. The expression in
her eyes was that which had tortured me into the depths of a hell more
frightful than any conceived by human imagination.
A moment I stood swaying before her, with leveled revolver--as I had
stood on that other occasion, months before.
Slowly, I lowered the revolver, and smiled--not as Louis would have
smiled but as a maniac, formed in his likeness, would have smiled.
Her lips framed the word “Louis,” but, in the grip of despair, she made
no sound. It was the despair not merely of a woman who felt herself
doomed to death, but of a woman who consigned her loved one to a fate
worse than death.
Still I smiled--with growing difficulty, for Louis’ personality was
restive and my time in the usurped body was short.
In that moment, I was not anxious to give up his body. At this new
glimpse of her beauty through physical sight, my love for Velma flamed
into hitherto unrealized intensity. For an instant my purpose in
returning was forgotten. Forgotten was the knowledge of the ages which
I had sipped since last I occupied the body in which I faced her.
Forgotten was everything save--Velma.
As I took a step forward, my arms outstretched, my eyes expressing God
knows what depth of yearning, she uttered a scream.
Blackness surged over me. I stumbled. I was being forced out--out----
That cry of terror had vibrated through the soul of Louis and he was
struggling to answer it.
Instinctively, I battled against the darkness, clung to my hard-won
ascendancy. A moment of conflict, and again I prevailed.
Once more I smiled. The effect of it must have been weird, for I was
growing weaker and Louis had returned to the attack with overwhelming
persistence. My tongue strove for expression:
“_Sorry--Winkie--it won’t happen again--I’m not--coming--back----_”
* * * * *
When I recovered from the momentary unconsciousness that accompanies
transition from the physical to spiritual, Louis was looking in
affright at the huddled figure of Velma, who had fainted away. The next
instant, he had gathered her in his arms.
Though I had come near failing in the attempt to deliver my message, I
had no fear that my visit would prove in vain. With clear prescience, I
knew that my utterance of that old familiar nickname, “_Winkie_,” would
carry untold meaning to Velma--that hereafter she would fear no more
what she might see in the depths of her husband’s eyes--that with a
return of her old confidence in him, the specter of apprehension would
be banished forever from their lives.
OOZE
_A Novelette of a Thousand Thrills_
_By_ ANTHONY M. RUD
In the heart of a second-growth piney-woods jungle of southern Alabama,
a region sparsely settled save by backwoods blacks and Cajans--that
queer, half-wild people descended from Acadian exiles of the middle
eighteenth century--stands a strange, enormous ruin.
Interminable trailers of Cherokee rose, white-laden during a single
month of spring, have climbed the heights of its three remaining walls.
Palmetto fans rise knee high above the base. A dozen scattered live
oaks, now belying their nomenclature because of choking tufts of gray,
Spanish moss and two-foot circlets of mistletoe parasite which have
stripped bare of foliage the gnarled, knotted limbs, lean fantastic
beards against the crumbling brick.
Immediately beyond, where the ground becomes soggier and
lower--dropping away hopelessly into the tangle of dogwood, holly,
poison sumac and pitcher plants that is Moccasin Swamp--undergrowth of
titi and annis has formed a protecting wall impenetrable to all save
the furtive ones. Some few outcasts utilize the stinking depths of that
sinister swamp, distilling “shinny” or “pure cawn” liquor for illicit
trade.
Tradition states that this is the case, at least--a tradition which
antedates that of the premature ruin by many decades. I believe it,
for during evenings intervening between investigations of the awesome
spot I often was approached as a possible customer by wood-billies
who could not fathom how anyone dared venture near without plenteous
fortification of liquid courage.
I knew “shinny,” therefore I did not purchase it for personal
consumption. A dozen times I bought a quart or two, merely to establish
credit among the Cajans, pouring away the vile stuff immediately into
the sodden ground. It seemed then that only through filtration and
condensation of their dozens of weird tales regarding “Daid House”
could I arrive at understanding of the mystery and weight of horror
hanging about the place.
Certain it is that out of all the superstitious cautioning,
head-wagging and whispered nonsensities I obtained only two
indisputable facts. The first was that no money, and no supporting
battery of ten-gauge shotguns loaded with chilled shot, could induce
either Cajan or darky of the region to approach within five hundred
yards of that flowering wall! The second fact I shall dwell upon later.
Perhaps it would be as well, as I am only a mouthpiece in this
chronicle, to relate in brief why I came to Alabama on this mission.
I am a scribbler of general fact articles, no fiction writer as was
Lee Cranmer--though doubtless the confession is superfluous. Lee was
my roommate during college days. I knew his family well, admiring John
Corliss Cranmer even more than I admired the son and friend--and almost
as much as Peggy Breede whom Lee married. Peggy liked me, but that was
all. I cherish sanctified memory of her for just that much, as no
other woman before or since has granted this gangling dyspeptic even a
hint of joyous and sorrowful intimacy.
Work kept me to the city. Lee, on the other hand, coming of wealthy
family--and, from the first, earning from his short-stories and
novel royalties more than I wrested from editorial coffers--needed
no anchorage. He and Peggy honeymooned a four-month trip to Alaska,
visited Honolulu next winter, fished for salmon on Cain’s River, New
Brunswick, and generally enjoyed the outdoors at all seasons.
They kept an apartment in Wilmette, near Chicago, yet, during the few
spring and fall seasons they were “home,” both preferred to rent a
suite at one of the country clubs to which Lee belonged. I suppose they
spent thrice or five times the amount Lee actually earned, yet for my