And it came.
It was not thought in words so much as raw sensation. It pulsed and tremored in his mind electrically. Fear—Dread—Hatred—all cruelly unmistakable.
Mr. Moffat shuddered on the bench. Of himself, there remained only enough to think, in horror—She does know! The rest was lost beneath overcoming power. It rose up higher, filling him with black contemplations. The church was gone, the congregation gone, the Reverend and Wendall gone. The old man pendulumed above a bottomless pit while fear and hatred, like dark winds, tore at him possessively.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
Wendall’s urgent whisper jarred him back. Mr. Moffat blinked.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You were turning on the organ.”
“Turning on—?”
“And smiling,” Wendall said.
There was a trembling sound in Mr. Moffat’s throat. Suddenly, he was aware of the Reverend’s voice reading the words of the final hymn.
“No,” he murmured.
“What is it?” Wendall asked.
“I can’t turn her on.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just—”
The old man felt his breath thinned as, below, the Reverend ceased to speak and looked up, waiting. No, thought Mr. Moffat. No, I mustn’t. Premonition clamped a frozen hand on him. He felt a scream rising in his throat as he watched his hand reach forward and push the switch.
The motor started.
Mr. Moffat began to play. Rather, the organ seemed to play, pushing up or drawing down his fingers at its will. Amorphous panic churned the old man’s insides. He felt an overpowering urge to switch the organ off and flee.
He played on.
He started as the singing began. Below, armied in their pews, the people sang, elbow to elbow, the wine-red hymnals in their hands.
“No,” gasped Mr. Moffat.
Wendall didn’t hear him. The old man sat staring as the pressure rose. He watched the needle of the volume gauge move past mezzo toward forte. A dry whimper filled his throat. No, please, he thought, please.
Abruptly, the swell to great stop slid out like the head of some emerging serpent. Mr. Moffat thumbed it in desperately. The swell unison button stirred. The old man held it in; he felt it throbbing at his finger pad. A dew of sweat broke out across his brow. He glanced below and saw the people squinting up at him. His eyes fled to the volume needle as it shook toward grand crescendo.
“Wendall, try to—!”
There was no time to finish. The swell to great stop slithered out again; the air ballooned with sound. Mr. Moffat jabbed it back. He felt keys and pedals dropping in their beds. Suddenly, the swell unison button was out. A peal of unchecked clamor filled the church. No time to speak.
The organ was alive.
He gasped as Wendall reached over to jab a hand across the switch. Nothing happened. Wendall cursed and worked the switch back and forth. The motor kept on running.
Now pressure found its peak, each pipe shuddering with storm winds. Tones and overtones flooded out in a paroxysm of sound. The hymn fell mangled underneath the weight of hostile chords.
“Hurry!” Mr. Moffat cried.
“It won’t go off!” Wendall shouted back.
Once more, the swell to great stop jumped forward. Coupled with the volume pedal, it clubbed the walls with dissonance. Mr. Moffat lunged for it. Freed, the swell unison button jerked out again. The raging sound grew thicker yet. It was a howling giant shouldering the church.
Grand crescendo. Slow vibrations filled the floors and walls.
Suddenly, Wendall was leaping to the rail and shouting, “Out! Get out!”
Bound in panic, Mr. Moffat pressed at the switch again and again; but the loft still shook beneath him. The organ still galed out music that was no longer music but attacking sound.
“Get out!” Wendall shouted at the congregation. “Hurry!”
The windows went first.
They exploded from their frames as though cannon shells had pierced them. A hail of shattered rainbow showered on the congregation. Women shrieked, their voices pricking at the music’s vast ascension. People lurched from their pews. Sound flooded at the walls in tidelike waves, breaking and receding.
The chandeliers went off like crystal bombs.
“Hurry!” Wendall yelled.
Mr. Moffat couldn’t move. He sat staring blankly at the manual keys as they fell like toppling dominoes. He listened to the screaming of the organ.
Wendall grabbed his arm and pulled him off the bench. Above them, two last windows were disintegrated into clouds of glass. Beneath their feet, they felt the massive shudder of the church.
“No!” The old man’s voice was inaudible; but his intent was clear as he pulled his hand from Wendall’s and stumbled backward toward the railing.
“Are you crazy?” Wendall leaped forward and grabbed the old man brutally. They spun around in battle. Below, the aisles were swollen. The congregation was a fear-mad boil of exodus.
“Let me go!” screamed Mr. Moffat, his face a bloodless mask. “I have to stay!”
“No, you don’t!” Wendall shouted. He grabbed the old man bodily and dragged him from the loft. The storming dissonance rushed after them on the staircase, drowning out the old man’s voice.
“You don’t understand!” screamed Mr. Moffa. “I have to stay!”
Up in the trembling loft, the organ played alone, its stops all out, its volume pedals down, its motor spinning, its bellows shuddering, its pipe mouths bellowing and shrieking.
Suddenly, a wall cracked open. Arch frames twisted, grinding stone on stone. A jagged block of plaster crumbled off the dome, falling to the pews in a cloud of white dust. The floors vibrated.
Now the congregation flooded from the doors like water. Behind their screaming, shoving ranks, a window frame broke loose and somersaulted to the floor. Another crack ran crazily down a wall. The air swam thick with plaster dust.
Bricks began to fall.
Out on the sidewalk, Mr. Moffat stood motionless staring at the church with empty eyes.
He was the one. How could he have failed to know it? His fear, his dread, his hatred. His fear of being also scrapped, replaced; his dread of being shut out from the things he loved and needed; his hatred of a world that had no use for aged things.
It had been he who turned the overcharged organ into a maniac machine.
Now, the last of the congregation was out. Inside the first wall collapsed.
It fell in a clamorous rain of brick and wood and plaster. Beams tottered like trees, then fell quickly, smashing down the pews like sledges. The chandeliers tore loose, adding their explosive crash to the din.
Then, up in the loft, the bass notes began.
The notes were so low they had no audible pitch. They were vibrations in the air. Mechanically, the pedals fell, piling up a mountainous chord. It was the roar of some titanic animal, the thundering of a hundred, storm-tossed oceans, the earth sprung open to swallow every life. Floors buckled, walls caved in with crumbling roars. The dome hung for an instant, then rushed down and mangled half the nave. A monstrous cloud of plaster and mortar dust enveloped everything. Within its swimming opacity, the church, with a crackling, splintering, crashing, thundering explosion, went down.
Later, the old man stumbled dazedly across the sunlit ruins and heard the organ breathing like some unseen beast dying in an ancient forest.
Clothes Make
the Man
I went out on the terrace to get away from the gabbing cocktailers.
I sat down in a dark corner, stretched out my legs and sighed in complete boredom.
The terrace door opened again and a man reeled out of the noisome gaiety. He staggered to the railing and looked out over the city.
“Oh, my God,” he said, running a palsied hand through his thin hair. He shook his head wearily and gaz
ed at the light on top of the Empire State Building.
Then he turned with a groan and stumbled toward me. He tripped on my shoes and almost fell on his face.
“Uh-oh,” he muttered, flopping into another chair. “You must excuse me, sir.”
“Nothing,” I said.
“May I beg your indulgence, sir?” he inquired.
I started to speak but he set out begging it immediately.
“Listen,” he said, waving a fat finger. “Listen, I’m telling you a story that’s impossible.”
He bent forward in the dark and stared at me as best he could through martini-clouded eyes. Then he fell back on the chair, breathing steam whistles. He belched once.
“Listen now,” he said. “Make no mistake. There are stranger things in heaven and earth and so on. You think I’m drunk. You’re absolutely right. But why? You could never tell.
“My brother,” he said, despairingly, “is no longer a man.”
“End of story,” I suggested.
“It all began a couple of months ago. He’s publicity head for the Jenkins ad agency. Topnotch man.
“That is,” he sobbed, “I mean to say . . . he was.”
He mused quietly, “Topnotch man.”
Out of his breast pocket he dragged a handkerchief and blew a trumpet call which made me writhe.
“They used to come to him,” he recalled, “all of them. There he’d sit in his office with his hat on his head, his shiny shoes on the desk. Charlie! they’d scream, give us an idea. He’d turn his hat once around (called it his thinking cap) and say, Boys! Cut it this way. And out of his lips would pour the damnedest ideas you ever heard. What a man!”
At this point he goggled at the moon and blew his nose again.
“So?”
“What a man,” he repeated. “Best in the business. Give him his hat—that was a gag, of course. We thought.”
I sighed.
“He was a funny guy,” said my narrator. “A funny guy.”
“Ha,” I said.
“He was a fashion plate. That’s what he was. Suits had to be just right. Hats just right. Shoes, socks, everything custom made.
“Why, I remember once Charlie and his wife Miranda, the missus and me—we all drove out to the country. It was hot. I took off my suitcoat.
“But would he? No sir! Man isn’t a man without his coat, says he.
“We went to this nice place with a stream and a grassy plot for sitting. It was awful hot. Miranda and my wife took off their shoes and waded in the water. I even joined them. But him! Ha!”
“Ha!”
“Not him,” he said. “There I was, no shoes and socks, pants and shirt sleeves rolled up, wading like a kid. And up there, watching amused, was Charlie, still dressed to kill. We called him. Come on Charlie, off with the shoes!
“Oh, no. A man isn’t a man without his shoes, he said. I couldn’t even walk without them. This burned Miranda up. Half the time, she says, I don’t know whether I’m married to a man or a wardrobe.
“That’s the way he was,” he sighed, “that’s the way.”
“End of story,” I said.
“No,” he said, his voice tingling; with horror I suppose.
“Now comes the terrible part,” he said. “You know what I said about his clothes. Terrible fussy. Even his underwear had to be fitted.”
“Mmm,” I said.
“One day,” he went on, his voice sinking to an awed murmur, “someone at the office took his hat for a gag.
“Charlie seemed to pretend he couldn’t think. Hardly said a word. Just fumbled. Kept saying, hat, hat and staring out the window. I took him home.
“Miranda and I put him on the bed and while I was talking to her in the living room, we heard an awful thump. We ran into the bedroom.
“Charlie was crumpled up on the floor. We helped him up. His legs buckled under. What’s wrong, we asked him. Shoes, shoes, he said. We sat him on the bed. He picked up his shoes. They fell out of his hands.
“Gloves, gloves, he said. We stared at him. Gloves! he shrieked. Miranda was scared. She got him a pair and dropped them on his lap. He drew them on slowly and painfully. Then he bent over and put his shoes on.
“He got up and walked around the room as if he were testing his feet.
“Hat, he said and went to the closet. He stuck a hat on his head. And then—would you believe it?—he said, What the hell’s the idea of taking me home? I’ve got work to do and I’ve got to fire the bastard who stole my hat. Back to the office he goes.
“You believe that?” he asked.
“Why not?” I answered, wearily.
“Well,” he said, “I guess you can figure the rest. Miranda tells me that day before I left: Is that why the bum is so quiet in bed? I have to stick a hat on him every night?
“I was embarrassed.”
He paused and sighed.
“Things got bad after that,” he went on. “Without a hat Charlie couldn’t think. Without shoes he couldn’t walk. Without gloves he couldn’t move his fingers. Even in summer he wore gloves. Doctors gave up. A psychiatrist went on a vacation after Charlie visited him.”
“Finish it up,” I said. “I have to leave soon.”
“There isn’t much more,” he said. “Things got worse and worse. Charlie had to hire a man to dress him. Miranda got sick of him and moved into the guest room. My brother was losing everything.
“Then came that morning . . .”
He shuddered.
“I went to see how he was. The door to his apartment was wide open. I went in fast. The place was like a tomb.
“I called for Charlie’s valet. Not a sound. I went in the bedroom.
“There was Charlie lying on his bed still as a corpse, mumbling to himself. Without a word, I got a hat and stuck it on his head. Where’s your man? I asked. Where’s Miranda?
“He stared at me with trembling lips. Charlie, what is it? I asked.
“My suit, he said.
“What suit? I asked him. What are you talking about?
“My suit, he whimpered, it went to work this morning.
“I figured he was out of his mind.
“My gray pinstripe, he said hysterically. The one I wore yesterday. My valet screamed and I woke up. He was looking at the closet. I looked. My God!
“Right in front of the mirror, my underwear was assembling itself. One of my white shirts fluttered over the undershirt, the pants pulled up into a figure, a coat was thrown over the shirt, a tie was knotted. Socks and shoes went under the trousers. The coat arm reached up, took a hat off the closet shelf and stuck it in the air where the head would be if it had a head. Then the hat doffed itself once.
“Cut it this way, Charlie, a voice said and laughed like hell. The suit walked off. My valet ran off. Miranda’s out.
“Charlie finished his story and I took his hat off so he could faint. I phoned for an ambulance.”
The man shifted in his chair.
“That was last week,” he said. “I’ve still got the shakes.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“About it,” he said. “They tell me Charlie is getting weaker. Still in the hospital. Sits there on his bed with his gray hat sagging over his ears mumbling to himself. Can’t talk, even with his hat on.”
He mopped some perspiration off his face.
“That’s not the worst part,” he said, sobbing. “They tell me that Miranda is . . .”
He gulped.
“Is going steady with the suit. Telling all her friends the damn thing has more sex appeal than Charlie ever had.”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “She’s in there now. Came in a little while ago.”
He sank back in silent meditation.
I got up and stretched. We exchanged a glance and he fainted dead away.
I paid no attention. I went in and got Miranda and we left.
The Jazz Machine
I had the weight that night
; I mean I had the blues and no one hides the blues away
You got to wash them out
Or you end up riding a slow drag to nowhere
You got to let them fly
I mean you got to
I play trumpet in this barrel house off Main Street
Never mind the name of it
It’s like scumpteen other cellar drink dens
Where the downtown ofays bring their loot and jive talk
And listen to us try to blow out notes
As free and pure as we can never be
Like I told you, I was gully low that night
Brassing at the great White way
Lipping back a sass in jazz that Rone got off in words
And died for
Hitting at the jug and loaded
Spiking gin and rage with shaking miseries
I had no food in me and wanted none
I broke myself to pieces in a hungry night
This white I’m getting off on showed at ten
Collared him a table near the stand
And sat there nursing at a glass of wine
Just casing us
All the way into the late watch he was there
He never budged or spoke a word
But I could see that he was picking up
On what was going down
He got into my mouth, man
He bothered me
At four I crawled down off the stand
And that was when this ofay stood and put his grabber on my arm
“May I speak to you?” he asked
The way I felt I took no shine
To pink hands wrinkling up my gabardine
“Broom off, stud,” I let him know
“Please,” he said, “I have to speak to you.”
Call me blowtop, call me Uncle Tom
Man, you’re not far wrong
Maybe my brain was nowhere
But I sat down with Mister Pink
and told him—lay his racket
“You’ve lost someone,” he said.
It hit me like a belly chord
“What do you know about it, white man?”
The Box: Uncanny Stories Page 13
