The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Once he had swum too far. At least the captain of the passing boat thought so; he was afraid to let the boy swim back. The crew took young Champlin in. That was how he was lifted out of his own little world of mystery and superstition and dropped down in the United States.

  He had raced through his years of schooling; every new truth he had learned was a bombshell that shattered the superstitious world of his childhood. At last he had burned to go back and unleash these truths that would set his fear-crushed people free. Two summers as a lifeguard, two winters of professional diving and acrobatics, and his savings were equal to the trip.

  But now, as the island came closer, Champlin was painfully aware that he did not know all the answers. The tales of occasional ghosts of sacrificed islanders he had simply rejected as falsehoods. But the unsolved mystery of the all-powerful Purple Fury burned like an electric torch in his mind.

  “That little spark of purple fire is getting brighter,” Elsa observed innocently. “Have you noticed it?”

  “The sky’s getting darker—and we’re getting closer.”

  “It can’t be a volcano—”

  No, this was not a volcanic island; only a hill of limestone jutting out of the water. Terraced? Yes, the islanders did that many generations ago. Now each class lived on its own level. Half the population—five or six hundred people—occupied the lowest level, circling all the way around the hill.

  The island was two miles across, but no one ever went straight across; roads and paths circled the cone on their own level, or spiraled to the next levels. The top of the cone-shaped hill was not more than a hundred feet above sea level—really not much altitude.

  But that altitude was the most important thing in the world to the rich, powerful Summiteers, whose ornate mansions were within a few yards of the top. Their elevation set them a world apart from the poor, mean, miserable Grubbers at the foot of the hill.

  “I was a Grubber,” said Wayne Champlin in a tone that left volumes unsaid. He might have added that his great-great grandfather had been a prosperous sea captain before a shipwreck put him ashore, crippled and broken. “I’m still a Grubber.”

  Elsa’s interest sharpened. Champlin swung the little raft in front of them. Together they planted their forearms and chins on the end of it and kicked along over the darkening waters effortlessly, pushing it ahead of them.

  “Perhaps,” Elsa facetiously probed, “you’ve come back to build your own mansion on the very top.”

  “A splendid idea!” Champlin snorted. “But it happens that top is very much occupied. It belongs to the smoky monster—”

  “Monster?”

  “The Purple Fury. He lives in that ring of purple fire at the top. He’s the invisible ruler. One whisper from him sets the whole nation trembling.”

  The girl edged closer to Champlin’s warm shoulder.

  It was nearly pitch black when they reached the island. They dressed in dry clothes and hid their luggage by starlight, then ascended the rugged cliff to the first—the Grubber—level.

  Fields and huts were dimly visible as they slipped along through the blackness. The only signs of life came from near the hilltop. They threaded their way up the terraces cautiously.

  Now they could see a host of yellow torchlights. The clearing below the summit was alive with people.

  “An assembly at the altar,” Champlin whispered. “Listen! They’re chanting! It’s a sacrifice!”

  Elsa heard a bewildering conglomeration of sounds: the low ominous roar of the purple fire on the altar; the hollow, mocking chant; but above all, the angry shouts and wails and mutterings from the lower half of the assembly.

  “Listen to them roar!” Champlin exclaimed. “That’s my people! The Grubbers! See—” He quickened his pace, leading the girl by the hand. “Look at them shake their fists!”

  Elsa saw. The assembly was divided. The line of division was exceedingly sharp. It consisted of a row of spears in the hands of husky men wearing purple and gold uniforms. They were a wall of protection for the upper assembly, the ostentatious chanters.

  The lower assembly, more properly a mob, was being held at spear’s length. Lacking weapons, the masses were nevertheless protesting as violently as they dared. Now and then a spear struck out, and a cry of pain cut the air.

  What it was all about, Elsa could only guess. But as she and Champlin approached, too close for comfort, she caught glimpses of the Grubbers’ torch-lit faces. Anguished faces they were, taut with pain. But there was something familiar in those countenances, violent as they were.

  And that was Wayne Champlin. His strength and his vision was in every face. Something tugged at Elsa’s very soul. These were Champ’s people!

  A moment later the violence reached its peak and the scene became one of unspeakable horror. A wave of Grubbers charged at the line of spears. They charged in arrow formation, and the front man spread his arms, seized several spears, and plunged them in his body. The wall of spears broken, the others poured through—but only for an instant.

  A heavy sullen roar came from the altar. The chanting stopped. The charging Grubbers froze. The shouting and wailing gave way to a gasp of terror as wide as the hillside. All eyes were on the altar.

  Suddenly there appeared above the circle of fire a huge smoky monster. In size, it might have been an upended locomotive. In form it might have been a gory-mouthed demon patterned on human lines. Its face opened hungrily, its head drew down, its arms reached to grab.

  The whole body was enshrouded in purplish black smoke, and before anyone could so much as shrink, the smoke thickened and the sight was lost from view.

  “The Purple Fury!” Elsa gasped.

  “It’s a lie!” Champlin hissed. He held the trembling girl tightly, and whispered staunch angry denials of the thing they had both seen. But his whisper came through his teeth, and his own body involuntarily trembled.

  Again the Purple Fury roared, and the people fell back in terror; all except the corps of officials attending the details of the sacrifice. They were busy carrying out the dastardly deed that the smoky monster had commanded. For the monster was hungry.

  “There’s no stopping them now.”

  Champlin whispered bitterly. The mob had tried to break up the ceremony, but the sight of the Purple Fury had paralyzed them with terror. “Here comes the feeder!”

  Now a long beam began to rise like a derrick arm. It was a thirty-foot beam, a trough in shape, like an elongated bath tub or a deep-walled slippery-slide. The hollowed-out surface gleamed with a high polish.

  The end of the feeding chute rose swiftly. A decrepit-looking old man occupied that end. The lower, the pivot end of the chute, hovered over the blazing altar. The man began to slide.

  With a piteous outcry like that of a dog in a vivisection surgery, the man shot down. As he flew out the open end, he slapped his bony hands over his eyes. Then he was lost from view forever within the ring of purple flames.

  CHAPTER II

  The Living Ghost

  Now the upper congregation chanted, with a note of sadistic victory in their hollow voices. The lower assembly raised its defiant cry. Its ranks surged threateningly.

  But the prize for which the Grubbers had charged, their comrade’s life, was gone now. The wall of spears pressed them back.

  Champlin watched them proudly. “They’ve got plenty of scrap!” he muttered. At least the past ten years hadn’t dented their spirit. But Champlin knew only too well how rarely his people ever saved a victim from the sacrifice. Whenever a victory seemed near, the hideous Purple Fury would turn visible. That fearful sight would paralyze their blow.

  Now under the pressure of spears, some of the Grubbers knelt and pretended to join the chant; others retreated down the hillside. There were wounded and dying among them, the heroic ones who had charged the spears.

  “But why,” Elsa asked, “was that man sacrificed? And how can those other people sit there and chant as if nothing had happened? Haven’t they an
y feelings?”

  “Not for the Grubbers,” Champlin answered. “The chanters are mostly Higher-ups. They live on higher levels than the Grubbers . . .”

  There was the key, he explained bitterly, to the island’s social system. The highest of the Higher-ups were the Summiteers. Their closeness to the Purple Fury gave them an iron hand over all other levels. Theirs was the privilege of hearing and interpreting the Purple Fury’s commands.

  “Those handsomely dressed people in the first few rows are Summiteers. If one of them decides a Grubber should be punished for some offense, he will declare that the Purple Fury has whispered. When the Purple Fury whispers, it usually means tragedy for the Grubbers. Someone is fed to the flames.”

  “Then this man who slid into the fire was guilty of some crime?”

  “Probably the crime of stealing grain from his own field—vulcatching, as we call it.”

  Suddenly the attention of the multitude was again captured by the feeder. It swung upward. The chanting ceased. The throngs of Grubbers who had started down the hillside turned. Their shocked eyes beheld another sacrifice, obviously a surprise.

  The gleaming trough contained a tiny figure—a child! Cries of terror rang from the hillside. The child slid down, screaming, and shot into the flames!

  Elsa hid her face in her hands. When she looked again, she saw that the enraged mob had gone berserk. They hurled rocks and swung torches and clubs; they wailed and cursed and stormed; they surged into a solid group and fought their way back against the wall of spears.

  But again the low sullen roar of the Purple Fury thundered forth. And again, for an electrifying instant, the gigantic demon reappeared.

  The mob halted. The glowering countenance was obscured in a smoke cloud; but that moment’s glimpse had done its work.

  The Grubbers fell back. Reluctantly they resumed their retreat down the hillside, under the urging of spears. A few of them hovered over the young mother who had collapsed, and they bore her away tenderly.

  For many minutes Wayne Champlin did not trust himself to speak. He breathed hard. His white teeth were set.

  The ceremony was over. People of all classes made their way toward their homes.

  Though it was after midnight, the officers in purple and gold paraded in full force, marching noisily up and down the roads. They were the Disps, or more properly the Disciplinarians, who ranked next to the Summiteers themselves. They were the dashing military force. Their spears and broadswords were the teeth of the island’s laws. The Purple Fury’s sacred whims, as conceived by the Summiteers, were theirs to enforce.

  For two full hours the Disps strode through the dusty roads of the Grubber level, to make sure that the rebellious toilers were quiet for the night. At last they returned to their headquarters, and soon their torchlights were extinguished for the brief remainder of the night.

  Elsa and Champlin circled the island on the Grubber level. A few of the shanties were lighted. A few people clustered together at each of the bereaved homes.

  Far from being broken in spirit over their losses, their talk sounded as if they were jubilant over their gains. Elsa was amazed at the overtones of enthusiasm. What did it mean?

  “It means that they’ve got the greatest fighting spirit you ever saw,” Champlin declared as they approached one of the little houses. “The odds are all against them, but they won’t be downed. And they gave the Higher-ups an awful close run for their money tonight.”

  Elsa shuddered involuntarily. She knew that if it hadn’t been for protecting her, Champ would have led that plunge against the spears. Nothing he could have done would have prevented those sacrifices tonight; nevertheless, Wayne Champlin might have recklessly given his life in the effort.

  Panic shot through Elsa with these thoughts. Secretly she resolved that she would never leave this island until Champ would go with her.

  “I’m sending you back at dawn,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “But first, you’ll have a chance to meet some of my people.”

  He called softly to the group of people who sat near the entrance of the shanty.

  “Who is it?” someone demanded.

  “Wayne Champlin. I’ve come back.”

  Torchlights and incredulous faces gathered around the strange young couple. Wayne Champlin repeated his claim, announced that he had come back to help them fight their fight, explained that he had brought a friend with him. The Grubbers studied him dubiously.

  But his story of his departure from the island ten years ago impressed them.

  “So you’re Champ, are you?” said one of them, a short young man of Champlin’s own age. Without warning, the speaker tossed a knife. A torchlight showed it coming.

  It was a long-bladed corn knife, aimed for somewhere above Wayne Champlin’s head. Champlin reached into the air and caught it by the handle. The next moment he and the short young man were gripped in the handshaking of long lost brothers.

  Bosom friends were “Shorty Joe” San burn and Wayne Champlin, and the knife-catching was a fond stunt of their boyhood days. At once there was an impromptu rally around Champlin and his girl friend. In soft but exultant voices the news quickly spread around the lower level of the island. Young Champlin was back! Young Champlin, grown to manhood!

  It was a sleepless night: the night’s tragedies had made it that; but Champlin’s homecoming ushered the dawn in with clandestine rejoicing.

  “We can’t say we’ve gained a great deal of ground in the past ten years,” said Shorty Joe Sanburn, “but we haven’t lost any. If we could once get our hands on some weapons, we’d fight our way to the summit.”

  The mention of the summit called up a fearsome picture in the minds of the Grubbers who had gathered around to join in the talk.

  “That damned demon is a fake!” Champlin declared solidly. “I’ve studied and learned about things, and I know. There can’t be such a thing!” There was an uncomfortable silence. Several wistful glances shot toward the graying darkness, in the fear that some Higher-ups might be listening.

  “Yes, I saw what you saw tonight,” Champlin continued. “I can’t explain it, but I still say it’s a fake.”

  Shorty Joe picked up the argument. “But there’s where they’ve got us. One way or another it does consume us, even if it is made of thin air. And none of us knows who’ll be next.”

  “Thin air!” someone mocked. “The old devil’s thicker than your head!”

  For Champlin’s benefit the group rehashed many past incidents. Elsa listened with bated breath. The unspeakable cruelties and oppressions were almost too much for her. That there should be a regular custom of murder practiced upon the first-born of each family, in the name of reverence for the hideous smoky beast, seemed the height of outrage.

  Only the lower class families, to be sure, were victims of this child killing. To her horror, Elsa learned that Wayne Champlin himself was a first-born child. Miraculously he had escaped the sacrifice. But his parents, when their crime of hiding him had been discovered, had paid bitterly with their own lives.

  “Back of it all,” Champlin declared with his new-world insight, “is the food shortage. If these sacrificial murders didn’t keep our numbers down, we’d soon outnumber the rest of the population. Then we would demand a larger share of the food we raise, and the Higher-ups would have a revolution on their hands. That’s why they murder us in the name of a horrible superstition.”

  “Then you don’t fear the Purple Fury?” someone asked, breaking a tense silence.

  “I’ve come back to blast the Purple Fury to hell!” Champlin shouted.

  Shorty Joe leaped to Champlin’s side, slapped him on the back, shook his arm.

  “Tell them about it, Champ, old boy! Maybe they’ll listen to you. They won’t to me. I’ve tried to tell them that the monster is nothing but thin air—”

  “What makes you say it’s only thin air?” Champlin demanded.

  “Because once during a ceremony, I hurled this corn knife through i
t.”

  The group mumbled skeptically. One old man complained that the Grubbers possessed too few knives to be throwing any of them away. It was obvious that everyone had heard Shorty Joe’s story before, and that no one believed it.

  “I’ve come back for business,” said Wayne Champlin, rising and clenching his fists. The group rose with him, and for a second time Elsa saw his indomitable courage reflected in their faces. The very air was charged with the magnetism of decision.

  “We’ll follow you through hell and high water, Champ!” said the old man. Then with a note of caution he added that plans had best be laid on the quiet. Dawn was at hand now, and the ever vigilant Disps would soon be watching from their upper level. Their field glasses were sharp to catch signs of trouble.

  “I’ll talk over my plans with you people through the day,” Champlin advised. They must go to work as usual, and not cross the path of a Disp if they could avoid it. “Before it gets any lighter, I’ll take my girl friend over to the mainland to safety. I’ll be back with you soon.”

  The Grubbers departed quietly; inwardly they seethed with enthusiasm. Before breakfast was over, every Grubber on the island would know that a revolution was brewing.

  Elsa and Champlin circled to the opposite side of the island, where their raft and luggage were stored. Determined as Elsa was to stay, she saw that she would have to leave. These Grubbers were ready to follow Champ’s every order. She must do the same.

  But her whole soul was already in this fight—her every thought of Champ, who was her very life—

  Suppose she should fall from this low cliff and break an arm or sprain an ankle. Then she would have to stay . . .

  Slip! Zip—splash!

  Stubbornness, recklessness and mischief were all combined in that impulsive misstep. Over the cliff and into the water Elsa plunged.

  On the instant Wayne Champlin dived after her. He dived in shallow water. It was low tide, and he feared the girl had struck a rock floor a few feet under the surface.