The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  This time it was not imagination. It was alive. There was just enough daylight for us to see it approaching.

  As between man or beast, it was meant to be a man. But a sorry-looking specimen it was. It was coming toward us. We stopped in our tracks. My small pistol, which I had hoped never to have to use, flipped into my hand instantly.

  The man was a white man—perhaps an American, though his features were scarcely discernible, even at a distance of twenty yards. He was a mess of ragged hair and whiskers and rotting clothes.

  He carried an old rusty sabre. He took a wide swinging whack at the nearest bush—a gesture which seemed meaningless unless it was meant to convey an impression of power. Then he ambled toward us, swinging the sabre like a weed cutter at the clumps of grass.

  Swish—swish—swish! He limped along to the rhythm of his strokes.

  By the time he was within ten or twelve yards of us I could see the sharp insane glitter of his eyes. Those eyes were continually shifting. He acted as if he hadn’t seen us.

  “Who is he?” I whispered to Looma.

  “I’ve never seen him before.”

  The man came on with his swish-swishing rhythm. He came close enough that the sabre threw blades of grass against our legs. But his course turned away from us just as I was ready to accost him.

  “Did he see us?” Looma whispered.

  “He must have. Who could he be?”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  A stone’s throw away the man’s voice broke out in a spine-chilling demoniacal laugh. But he went on. Laughing and singing like a fiend he jogged across the hilltop. For a moment he was silhouetted crazily against the deepening sky. Then he was gone.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Stone Doll

  The following day the madman crossed our path again.

  His approach was much as it had been the evening before. He seemed to materialize out of nowhere, for we had not heard him following us. Some bushes rustled and there he was, swinging his sabre wildly, limping along with a weird rhythm.

  He must have seen my gun. He played cautious. He circled wide around us, pretended not to see us. He was only laughing at the grass he whacked down, I suppose, and singing to hear his own voice. There was nothing that I could single out as actually threatening; but his fiendish voice and the gruesome nonsensical rhymes that tumbled off his tongue were enough to make me want to blast him full of holes.

  “Slippity-slappity-slickety-slackety . . . Yoo-hoo! . . . Yoo-hoo!”

  Every few steps he would change the shouting and singing to a slightly different version. The words were only garbled childish sounds; yet somehow they bristled with subtle implications of threatening danger.

  “Slippity . . . slappity . . . slickety . . . slackety . . . slippity . . . slappity. . . slipknots!” (Over and over!) “Cut ’em down! Boil ’em dry! Burn ’em up in stewpots!” (Again and again!)

  It was silly to allow ourselves to be disturbed. Somehow there was no shaking the thought of him off. He was the only human being we had seen. All of our suppressed fears of this unknown land naturally centered on him.

  Hours after he had hobbled away over the hills, his idiotic verses kept running through my ears, keeping time to our ceaseless footsteps.

  “Slippity-slappity . . . slippity-slappity . . . Slipknots! Stewpots! . . .”

  “The silly old buzzard,” I muttered to Looma. “Do you suppose he haunts every Traysomian couple that comes on this mission?”

  Looma said she did not know. “These missions are so rare. This is the first one in many years. I do not remember the last one. I have been told that it occurred near the time of my birth, and that is why I was destined to be next.”

  “The old fellow looks as if he might have been here a hundred years,” I commented. “From his chatter you can tell that he’s soured on the world about something. Maybe he drifted onto Traysomia from a shipwreck.”

  Late the second evening when we were about to make camp for the night, Looma declared that she had caught sight of the insane old creature again. She pointed to some outcropping rocks fifty yards ahead.

  I fired two shots in the general direction that she pointed. Nothing stirred. We searched around for several minutes but found no signs of him. However, the incident was disturbing enough that neither of us felt at ease. Looma suggested that we hike on and make our night’s camp elsewhere, and I gladly complied.

  For a short time after the night’s darkness swept down we stopped and rested, waiting for the late moon. Then we tramped on. We followed along the grassy thinly-wooded hillsides. Under the shower of orange moonlight we could look down upon the misty purple tree-tops that flanked the black waters of the Lakawog. Another day would bring us to the headwaters.

  It was a glorious night to walk under the stars hand in hand with one so beautiful as Looma. Not until the moon began to descend did we stop for a brief night’s sleep.

  Long after Looma had fallen asleep I sat, wide awake, watching the moonlight and shadows steal across her lovely face. New thoughts were crowding my mind; new inspirations were pounding at my heart.

  Once I tried to sleep; but for all my tiredness I could not. The people of Traysomia were too far behind; their superstitions and childish rituals seemed as impotent as dreams. But the memories of my own ways—those superstition-free ways that had been my life before I came to Traysomia—came shining back to me as clearly as the moon and stars overhead.

  If Looma could only see life my way—if I could only teach her—liberate her from these superstitious bonds that were as futile as black magic—

  “Are you awake, Trodo?” came Looma’s soft voice.

  “Yes.”

  “What are you thinking about, that you cannot sleep?”

  “Magic,” I muttered. Magic! That was it—Looma and her people were victims of belief in magic. Looma was to be pitied, being made to come on this long fatiguing journey in pursuit of some non-existent sacred phantom.

  “You must sleep,” said Looma with a little smile. Then she closed her eyes.

  Poor child! Was it too late to emancipate her from her false world? Might I not yet persuade her? Dared I ask her to delay her journey until I had time to teach her that she had been caught in the grip of shabby lies? If she could only see the light—perhaps she would let me build a boat—we could escape this web.

  I closed my eyes. Magic. Magic. A victim of magic—

  But I was mistaken. Before dawn I was forced to reverse my judgment.

  I was almost asleep when I heard the footsteps approaching.

  They were stealthy, rhythmic, limping steps. They were accompanied by a swish-swish-swish. It was the madman. I caught sight of his approaching form. Silhouetted against the bright blue sky he looked tall and massive. His head was a huge fluffy mass, ragged with whiskers, as he paused against the background of the descending moon.

  I leaped up, seized my pistol, and started toward him.

  Looma stirred out of her sleep and came up on one elbow. “What is it?” she asked.

  “The madman,” I answered. “Keep down!”

  Then I charged swiftly toward the weaving tottering black figure. “Get away from here!” I shouted. “Get away or I’ll blow your addled brain to bits!”

  There was a rustle of motion. The madman’s arm flew up, his hand released a missile. Something whizzed through the air, fell harmlessly to the ground at the edge of our camp.

  I fired a shot into the air. Whether it frightened him in the least I do not know. He emitted a long fiendish cackling laugh and went racing away at a hard limping pace. The sounds melted away in the deep distance—the swish of his sabre at the grass—his gruesome idiotic singsong verses. He was gone.

  I hurried back to Looma. She was on her knees, looking up at me. I put an arm around her.

  “Are you—all right, Looma?”

  “Vling-gaff,” she breathed. I had never heard the word spoken so tenderly. It seemed to mean, I am terribly frightene
d, and yet I dare not say it. “What did he throw at us, Trodo?”

  “A stone, I think.” I strolled to the other side of our heaps of luggage and picked up a white object as large as a shoe. “A stone . . . What the devil—”

  “Let me see.”

  I brought the object back to Looma. I lighted the end of a fnlgor twig at the embers of our camp fire to serve as a torch. Under the flicker of light we studied the curious chunk of stone.

  “It’s a doll!” Looma gasped.

  Stone though it was, it had been crudely carved into the form of a woman. The features of the face had been daubed on with clay. The body was partially dressed in scraps of rags, which the madman had evidently torn from his own clothing.

  As a crowning detail, the stone doll had hair. Fine white fibers from a thistle had somehow been glued over the head to achieve the effect of a woman’s hair.

  “He’s insane!” I muttered, tossing the doll into one of the provision bags. “Go back to sleep, Looma.”

  The girl’s eyes searched my face sharply. Her lips parted, then pressed together tightly. She turned her face away from me. I did not know what emotion had suddenly filled her. My own thoughts leaped upon the dreadful word, magic! I jumped at conclusions. A doll, thrown at us by this demon of our unknown land, might easily start Looma’s superstitious mind off on a dangerous tangent. I must head off that tangent.

  “It’s nothing but a piece of stone, Looma.”

  Looma didn’t answer.

  “I’ll throw it away if you wish.”

  “It makes no difference,” said Looma. She kept her head turned away from me.

  “It hasn’t any power—that stone— it’s dead—

  “Why should I think otherwise?” Looma asked listlessly.

  “But I was afraid you—with your beliefs—might think it held some magic virtue—or evil—”

  “It is only a stone,” Looma murmured. “A dead stone. Not like my beliefs. They are living—they have been living for ages—they have grown out of the experiences of my people. They are the truths that we cannot escape.”

  She clutched the little sacred package which the priestess had given her, held it tightly to her breast. Her head tilted toward the soft starry skies. For a few moments she was as motionless as a statue, a perfect symbol of the exotically beautiful night. Then, without a word to break whatever strange enchantment had held her, she nestled back to the warm earth and went to sleep.

  It was the following morning, while we were breakfasting, that she uttered her only further comment upon the little stone doll. I had happened onto it as I was reaching into one of the bags, had picked it up and passed it over to her.

  “Do you want to keep it?” I asked. She shook her head. “Then I’ll throw it away. After all, it doesn’t mean anything to us.” I tossed it aside.

  “It had a meaning for the madman,” said Looma quietly. “Are you through eating? Let us be on our way.”

  CHAPTER V

  Insane Barrier

  My pistol was gone!

  We had been hiking briskly for two hours over rugged lands. We had crossed many steep ravines, and I have no doubt that the weapon slipped from my pocket during some perilous climb over precipitous rocks.

  “I will wait,” said Looma. “You go back. You will find it.”

  “I don’t like to leave you alone, Looma.”

  Looma patted her side where the poison-tipped dagger was concealed, and smiled at me confidently. “I will be all right.”

  I retraced our steps swiftly. I stopped to peer down into the dark chasms over which we had leaped; I tramped barefoot through dashing rivulets over which I had carried Looma. There were a thousand places where the pistol might have fallen, out of sight and out of reach.

  The search was a vain one. At the camp where we had spent the night and breakfasted I plodded about hopefully. All I found was the stone doll, lying where I had thrown it. I chucked it into my pocket. Then I bounded back over the rugged trail to Looma.

  The stone doll, I had hoped, might fall out of my pocket exactly as the gun had. Where it would fall would be where the gun had fallen.

  No such luck. The doll stuck to my pocket all the way back.

  “It is of no importance,” I said to Looma. We hiked on.

  As we neared the headwaters of the main stream Looma’s silence became oppressive. Left to my own thoughts I lapsed back into the vain hopes that I might even yet turn her from her purpose.

  I spoke casually of the interesting customs of my people back in America. She seemed not to hear me. I mentioned instances of natives from savage lands who had ventured into the American continents and had been so enticed by the civilization they found there that they had never cared to return. Looma only quickened her pace.

  She kept a step or two ahead of me. We passed through a light rain. Blustery clouds tumbled along the tops of the low mountains. Fresh winds puffed against our faces, brought to my nostrils the exotic aromas of nameless mountain flowers. I breathed deeply. It was the breath of an Undreamed paradise, it was the breath of Looma’s hair blowing back in my face.

  We stopped for a mid-afternoon lunch. The sun broke through the puffy white clouds. The Lakawog valley was an artist’s orgy of colors—streaks of blues and greens and purples strung together with winding laces of silver and gold.

  “Look, Looma!” I said, and the thrill of the discoverer was in my voice. “What a glorious country—and no one living in it!”

  “What are you thinking now, Trodo?” Looma’s quiet murmur was almost accusing.

  “Just this, Looma,” and I was suddenly clutching her hands tightly, whispering. “In the past hour I have come to realize that I could never persuade you to leave this island, to try the civilization that I have known. You do not hear me when I talk of such things. Very well. But let us face the facts, Looma—”

  “What facts?”

  “That you and I were meant to love each other—that we are husband and wife. Oh, Looma, if I could just unchain you from this tangle of superstition, you and I could live here—in this magic unknown land! It could be ours—”

  Looma clasped the little blue packet which the priestess had given her. It hung at her throat, a little sacred ornament of colored leather. What it contained neither of us knew, for she was under oath not to open it until she reached the sacred spring. But whenever she pressed it to her breast I knew that my foolish words were powerless to swerve her from her purpose.

  “We have only a little farther to go, Trodo. Then it will all be over.”

  “Yes,” I said. What would all be over? Did Looma know? Did she mean that this vast hovering ominous danger would be past and gone—that the crisis would be over? Or did she mean that hope would be forever gone?

  “Are you afraid, Trodo?”

  “Vling-gaff!” I ejaculated.

  Looma smiled and slipped an arm across my shoulder. “That was what I wanted you to say, Trodo.”

  The pride that glowed in her eyes was good to see. I knew the tortured feelings behind that mask of pride. There were too many subtle evidences that she was fighting invisible tensions. What she feared now lay less than an hour’s journey before us. And she was glad that I could blanket our inescapable emotions with vling-gaff.

  But the Traysomian word I had uttered had strange reverberations upon me. Vling-gaff! I had blurted it on the instant. It was a part of me. The logic of this strange taboo had somehow penetrated the depths of me, had fastened itself upon me to stay. I would never lose it, not as long as I lived . . .

  The spring!

  Those faint sounds of bubbling and gushing grew louder with every foot of our progress up the little canyon. Suddenly it was before us, a dashing noisy little cascade of water that spurted from a bold wall of purplish-brown rock. It raced down to a crystal pool and scampered on to form the main stem of the Lakawog.

  No wonder that spring had been made sacred. There was a haunting mystery in its rhythmic sounds. Its music would come and
go. Sometimes it was full of the voices of little children laughing. Then it would hush, as if the playful little imps were up to some mischief. Next, the teasing voices would melt away, there would be a moment of soft moaning, followed by a low sullen scolding voice of old age. And again—laughing children.

  We both drank deeply. For a few minutes we rested, listening, wondering.

  We ascended to the top of the rock cliff high above the spring, stood hand in hand. Looma’s fingertips were icy. Her body was trembling. I was carried back to a similar moment during our wedding ceremony. Then, the sea had stretched before us. Now it was the fathomless Lakawog valley. Then, the great unknown land had been behind us. Now—a cave!

  Looma opened the little blue leather packet which the priestess had given her. It contained a picture.

  The picture, drawn on parchment with indelible colors, was a diagram of the scene above the cliff on which we stood. Crude and old and worn from tight folding, the diagram was an unmistakable representation. The skyline of four irregular crags was at the top. Beneath the tallest crag was the wide open cavern.

  From where we stood, only a steep bank of rocks and drifted sand separated us from the mouth of that cavern. On the picture that bank was marked with an arrow pointing upward.

  The implication was obvious. Looma’s footsteps were being directed into that cave. Moreover, the picture instructed her, in the clearest of picture language, to go into that cave and stay there through a night, a day, and a night.

  This effect was achieved by two further details of the ingenious drawing. One was the small figure of a woman kneeling within the cave. The other was a series of three suns in the sky—the first one blacked out, the second shining, and the third blacked out.

  We both studied the diagram for several minutes, comparing the topographical details to those in the scene before us. When we discussed the meaning of the picture we found that each of us had come to the same interpretation. Looma was to enter the cave. She was to spend a night, a day, and a night there. That, then, was the only ritual for which the tribe had sent her here.