Mysteries of the Worm

by Robert Bloch

  That was when Aunt May and Uncle Roscoe found her and pulled her down from the window. They said later she had screamed at the top of her voice, or else she would have gone over without anyone noticing.

  After that Doctor Clegg took her away to the hospital where there were no high windows and they came in to see her all night long. The dreams stopped.

  When at last she was well enough to go back home, she found that the window was gone, too.

  Aunt May and Uncle Roscoe had boarded it up, because she was a somnambulist. She didn’t know what a somnambulist was, but guessed it had something to do with her being sick and the dreams not coming any more.

  For the dreams stopped then. There was no way of making them come back, and she really didn’t want them any more. It was fun to play outside with Marvin Mason now, and she went back to school when the new semester began.

  Now, without the window to look at, she just slept at night. Aunt May and Uncle Roscoe were glad, and Doctor Clegg said she was turning out to be a mighty fine little specimen.

  Avis could remember it all now as though it were yesterday or today. Or tomorrow.

  How she grew up. How Marvin Mason fell in love with her. How she went to college and they became engaged. How she felt the night Aunt May and Uncle Roscoe were killed in the crash at Leedsville. That was a bad time.

  An even worse time was when Marvin had gone away. He was in service now, overseas. She had stayed on all alone in the house, for it was her house now.

  Reba came in days to do the housework, and Doctor Clegg dropped around, even after she turned twenty-one and officially inherited her estate.

  He didn’t seem to approve of her present mode of living. He asked her several times why she didn’t shut up the house and move into a small apartment downtown. He was concerned because she showed no desire to keep up the friendships she had made in college; Avis was curiously reminded of the solicitude she had exhibited during her childhood.

  But Avis was no longer a child. She proved that by removing what had always seemed to her a symbol of adult domination; she had the high round window in her room unboarded once more.

  It was a silly gesture. She knew it at the time, but somehow it held a curious significance for her. For one thing, it reestablished a linkage with her childhood, and more and more, childhood came to epitomize happiness for her.

  With Marvin Mason gone, and Aunt May and Uncle Roscoe dead, there was little enough to fill the present. Avis would sit up in her bedroom and pore over the scrapbooks she had so assiduously pasted up as a girl. She had kept her dolls and the old fairy-tale books; she spent drowsy afternoons examining them.

  It was almost possible to lose one’s time sense in such pastimes. Her surroundings were unchanged. Of course, Avis was larger now and the bed wasn’t quite as massive nor the window as high.

  But both were there, waiting for the little girl that she became when, at nightfall, she curled up into a ball and snuggled under the sheets—snuggled and stared up at the high, round window that bordered the sky.

  Avis wanted to dream again.

  At first, she couldn’t.

  After all, she was a grown woman, engaged to be married; she wasn’t a character out of Peter Ibbetson. And those dreams of her childhood had been silly.

  But they were nice. Yes, even when she had been ill and nearly fallen out of the window that time, it had been pleasant to dream. Of course those voices and shapes were nothing but Freudian fantasies—everyone knew that.

  Or did they?

  Suppose it were all real? Suppose dreams are not just subconscious manifestations caused by indigestion and gas pressure?

  What if dreams are really a product of electronic impulse—or planetary radiations—attuned to the wavelength of the sleeping mind? Thought is an electrical impulse. Life itself is an electrical impulse. Perhaps a dreamer is like a spiritualist medium; placed in a receptive state during sleep. Instead of ghosts, the creatures of another world or another dimension can come through, if the sleeper is granted the rare gift of acting as a filter. What if the dreams feed on the dreamer for substance, just as spirits attain ectoplasmic being by draining the medium of energy?

  Avis thought and thought about it, and when she had evolved this theory, everything seemed to fit. Not that she would ever tell anyone about her attitude. Doctor Clegg would only laugh at her, or still worse, shake his head. Marvin Mason didn’t approve either. Nobody wanted her to dream. They still treated her like a little girl.

  Very well, she would be a little girl; a little girl who could do as she pleased now. She would dream.

  It was shortly after reaching this decision that the dreams began again; almost as though they had been waiting until she would fully accept them in terms of their own reality.

  Yes, they came back, slowly, a bit at a time. Avis found that it helped to concentrate on the past during the day; to strive to remember her childhood. To this end she spent more and more time in her room, leaving Reba to tend to housework downstairs. As for fresh air, she always could look out of her window. It was high and small, but she would climb on a stool and gaze up at the sky through the round aperture; watching the clouds that veiled the blue beyond, and waiting for night to come.

  Then she would sleep in the big bed and wait for the wind. The wind soothed and the darkness slithered, and soon she could hear the buzzing, blurring voices. At first only the voices came back, and they were faint and far away. Gradually, they increased in intensity and once more she was able to discriminate, to recognize individual intonations.

  Timidly, hesitantly, the figures reemerged. Each night they grew stronger. Avis Long (little girl with big round eyes in big bed below round window) welcomed their presence.

  She wasn’t alone any more. No need to see her friends, or talk to that silly old Doctor Clegg. No need to waste much time gossiping with Reba, or fussing over meals. No need to dress or venture out. There was the window by day and the dreams by night.

  Then all at once she was curiously weak, and this illness came. But it was all false, somehow; this physical change.

  Her mind was untouched. She knew that. No matter how often Doctor Clegg pursed his lips and hinted about calling in a “specialist,” she wasn’t afraid. Of course Avis knew he really wanted her to see a psychiatrist. The doddering fool was filled with glib patter about “retreat from reality” and “escape mechanisms.”

  But he didn’t understand about the dreams. She wouldn’t tell him, either. He’d never know the richness, the fullness, the sense of completion that came from experiencing contact with other worlds.

  Avis knew that now. The voices and shapes that came in the window were from other worlds. As a naïve child she had invited them by her very unsophistication. Now, striving consciously to return to the childlike attitude, she again admitted them.

  They were from other worlds; worlds of wonder and splendor. Now they could meet only on the plane of dreams, but someday, someday soon, she would bridge the gap.

  They whispered about her body. Something about the trip, making the “change”. It couldn’t be explained in their words. But she trusted them, and after all, a physical change was of slight importance contrasted with the opportunity.

  Soon she would be well again, strong again. Strong enough to say yes. And then they would come for her when the moon was right. Until then, she could strengthen the determination, and the dream.

  Avis Long lay in the great bed and basked in the blackness; the blackness that poured palpably through the open window. The shapes filtered down, wriggling through the warps, feeding upon the night; growing, pulsing, encompassing all.

  They reassured her about the body but she didn’t care and she told them she didn’t care because the body was unimportant and yes, she would gladly consider it an exchange if only she could go and she knew she belonged.

  Not beyond the rim of the stars but between it and amongst substance dwells that which is blackness in blackness for Yuggoth is only a s
ymbol, no that is wrong there are no symbols for all is reality and only perception is limited ch’yar ul’nyar shaggornyth . . .

  It is hard for us to make you understand but I do understand you cannot fight it I will not fight it they will try to stop you nothing shall stop me for I belong yes you belong will it be soon yes it will be soon very soon yes very soon . . .

  Marvin Mason was unprepared for this sort of reception. Of course, Avis hadn’t written, and she wasn’t at the station to meet him—but the possibility of her being seriously ill had never occurred to him.

  He had come out to the house at once, and it was a shock when Doctor Clegg met him at the door.

  The old man’s face was grim, and the tenor of his opening remarks still grimmer.

  They faced each other in the library downstairs; Mason self-consciously diffident in khaki, the older man a bit too professionally brusque.

  “Just what is it, Doctor?” Mason asked.

  “I don’t know. Slight, recurrent fever. Listlessness. I’ve checked everything. No TB, no trace of low-grade infection. Her trouble isn’t—organic.”

  “You mean something’s wrong with her mind?”

  Doctor Clegg slumped into an armchair and lowered his head.

  “Mason, I could say many things to you; about the psychosomatic theory of medicine, about the benefits of psychiatry, about—but never mind. It would be sheer hypocrisy.

  “I’ve talked to Avis; rather, I’ve tried to talk to her. She won’t say much, but what she does say disturbs me. Her actions disturb me even more.

  “You can guess what I’m driving at, I think, when I tell you that she is leading the life of an eight-year-old girl. The life she did lead at that age.”

  Mason scowled. “Don’t tell me she sits in her room again and looks out of that window?”

  Dr. Clegg nodded.

  “But I thought it was boarded up long ago, because she’s a somnambulist and—”

  “She had it unboarded, several months ago. And she is not, never was, a somnambulist.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Avis Long never walked in her sleep. I remember the night she was found on that window’s edge; not ledge for there is no ledge. She was perched on the edge of the open window, already halfway out; a little tyke hanging through a high window.

  “But there was no chair beneath her, no ladder. No way for her to climb up. She was simply there.”

  Dr. Clegg looked away before continuing.

  “Don’t ask me what it means. I can’t explain, and I wouldn’t want to. I’d have to talk about the things she talks about—the dreams, and the presences that come to her; the presences that want her to go away.

  “Mason, it’s up to you. I can’t honestly move to have her committed on the basis of material evidence. Confinement means nothing to them; you can’t build a wall to keep out dreams.

  “But you can love her. You can save her. You can make her well, make her take an interest in reality. Oh, I know it sounds mawkish and stupid, just as the other sounds wild and fantastic.

  “Yes, it’s true. It’s happening right now, to her. She’s asleep up in her room at this very moment. She’s hearing the voices—I know that much. Let her hear your voice.”

  Mason walked out of the room and started up the stairs.

  “But what do you mean, you can’t marry me?”

  Mason stared at the huddled figure in the swirl of bedclothes. He tried to avoid the direct stare of Avis Long’s curiously childlike eyes; just as he avoided gazing up at the black, ominous aperture of the round window.

  “I can’t, that’s all,” Avis answered. Even her voice seemed to hold a childlike quality. The high, piercing tones might well have emanated from the throat of a little girl; a tired little girl, half-asleep and a bit petulant about being abruptly awakened.

  “But our plans—your letters—”

  “I’m sorry, dear. I can’t talk about it. You know I haven’t been well. Doctor Clegg is downstairs, he must have told you.”

  “But you’re getting better,” Mason pleaded. “You’ll be up and around again in a few days.”

  Avis shook her head. A smile—the secret smile of a naughty child—clung to the corners of her mouth.

  “You can’t understand, Marvin. You never could understand. That’s because you belong here.” A gesture indicated the room. “I belong somewhere else.” Her finger stabbed, unconsciously, towards the window.

  Marvin looked at the window now. He couldn’t help it. The round black hole that led to nothingness. Or—something. The sky outside was dark, moonless. A cold wind curled about the bed.

  “Let me close the window for you, dear,” he said, striving to keep his voice even and gentle.

  “No.”

  “But you’re ill—you’ll catch cold.”

  “That isn’t why you want to close it.” Even in accusation, the voice was curiously piping. Avis sat bolt upright and confronted him.

  “You’re jealous, Marvin. Jealous of me. Jealous of them. You would never let me dream. You would never let me go. And I want to go. They’re coming for me.

  “I know why Doctor Clegg sent you up here. He wants you to persuade me to go away. He’d like to shut me up, just as he wants to shut the window. He wants to keep me here because he’s afraid. You’re all afraid of what lies—out there.

  “Well, it’s no use. You can’t stop me. You can’t stop them!”

  “Take it easy, darling—”

  “Never mind. Do you think I care what they do to me, if only I can go? I’m not afraid. I know I can’t go as I am now. I know they must alter me.

  “There are certain parts they want for reasons of their own. You’d be frightened if I told you. But I’m not afraid. You say I’m sick and insane, don’t deny it. Yet I’m healthy enough, sane enough to face them and their world. It’s you who are too morbid to endure it all.”

  Avis Long was wailing now; a thin, high-pitched wail of a little girl in a tantrum.

  “You and I are leaving this house tomorrow,” Mason said. “We’re going away. We’ll be married and live happily ever after—in good old storybook style. The trouble with you, young lady, is that you’ve never had to grow up. All this nonsense about goblins and other worlds—”

  Avis screamed.

  Mason ignored her.

  “Right now I’m going to shut that window,” he declared.

  Avis continued to scream. The shrill ululation echoed on a sustained note as Mason reached up and closed the round pane of glass over the black aperture. The wind resisted his efforts, but he shut the window and secured the latch.

  Then her fingers were digging into his throat from the rear, and her scream was pouring down his ear.

  “I’ll kill you!” she wailed. It was the wail of an enraged child.

  But there was nothing of the child, or the invalid, in the strength behind her clawing fingers. He fought her off, panting.

  Then, suddenly, Doctor Clegg was in the room. A hypodermic needle flashed and gleamed in an arc of plunging silver.

  They carried her back to the bed, tucked her in. The blankets nestled about the weary face of a child in sleep.

  The window was closed tightly now.

  Everything was in order as the two men turned out the light and tiptoed from the room.

  Neither of them said a word until they stood downstairs once again.

  Facing the fireplace, Mason sighed.

  “Somehow I’ll get her out of here tomorrow,” he promised. “Perhaps it was too abrupt—my coming back tonight and waking her. I wasn’t very tactful.

  “But something about her; something about that room, frightened me.”

  Doctor Clegg lit his pipe. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I couldn’t pretend to you that I completely understand. There’s more to it than mere hallucination.”

  “I’m going to sit up here tonight,” Mason continued. “Just in case something might happen.”

  “She’ll sleep,”
Doctor Clegg assured him. “No need to worry.”

  “I’ll feel better if I stay. I’m beginning to get a theory about all this talk—other worlds, and changes in her body before a trip. It ties in with the window, somehow. And it sounds like a fantasy on suicide.”

  “The death impulse? Perhaps. I should have thought of that possibility. Dreams foreshadowing death—on second thought, Mason, I may stay with you. We can make ourselves comfortable here before the fire, I suppose.”

  Silence settled.

  It must have been well after midnight before either of them moved from their place before the fire.

  Then a sharp splinter of sound crashed from above. Before the tinkling echo died away, both men were on their feet and moving towards the stairway.

  There was no further noise from above, and neither of them exchanged a single word. Only the thud of their running footsteps on the stairs broke the silence. And as they paused outside Avis Long’s room, the silence seemed to deepen in intensity. It was a silence palpable, complete, accomplished.

  Doctor Clegg’s hand darted to the doorknob, wrenched it ineffectually.

  “Locked!” he muttered. “She must have gotten up and locked it.”

  Mason scowled.

  “The window—do you think she could have—? Doctor Clegg refused to meet his glance. Instead he turned and put his massive shoulder to the door panel. A bulge of muscle ridged his neck.

  Then the panel splintered and gave way. Mason reached around and opened the door from inside.

  They entered the darkened room, Dr. Clegg in the lead, fumbling for the light switch. The harsh, electric glare flooded the scene.

  It was a tribute to the power of suggestion that both men glanced, not at the patient in the bed, but at the round window high up on the wall.

  Cold night air streamed through a jagged aperture, where the glass had been shattered, as though by the blow of a gigantic fist.

  Fragments of glass littered the floor beneath, but there was no trace of any missile. And obviously, the glass had been broken from the outer side of the pane.

  “The wind,” Mason murmured weakly, but he could not look at Dr. Clegg as he spoke. For there was no wind, only the cold, soft breeze that billowed ever so gently from the nighted sky above. Only the cold, soft breeze, rustling the curtains and prompting a sarabande of shadows on the wall; shadows that danced in silence over the great bed in the corner.