The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “We must search more!”

  “Even if there is a trapdoor somewhere in this ground, it would be so well concealed that we might search forever—”

  “I’ll gladly search forever—”

  “Listen, Vincent,” Xandibaum said brusquely. “You force me to say it. If one of these devilish trapdoor spiders pulled her into his home you would not want to look at her—afterwards. Remember her as you last saw her—a courageous little beauty, garbed in that blue velvet dress that flashed in the sunshine as she fought by your side—”

  They made two trips of it, and planted their camp in a safe nook high in the mountainside.

  And then Hunzk vanished too! It was a shocking blow.

  “They will get us the next time they come,” said Xandibaum heavily. “We haven’t much ammunition left. And the poisoned spears are gone.”

  Vincent stared. “Gone? Isn’t that odd?” Xandibaum nodded. “It is, when you stop to think of it. If a trapdoor spider got him . . .”

  There was a long silence. Then Vincent said, “May I borrow the grasshopper? I am going back to search for Penzi again.”

  The faithful Grundy clattered through the starlit sky with Vincent astride, and glided down to the river’s edge.

  The air was foul with the stench of dead trapdoor monsters. Vincent wondered if these cruel beasts had no respect for the dead. A stir from across the rivef answered his question. In the dim light of dawn he could see two grasshoppers at work. Their golden bodies moved sluggishly back and forth among the trees. They were gathering up the dead bodies and piling them in a heap by the river bank.

  Vincent rode his beast back in to the edge of the timber, watching sharply for signs of monsters as he crossed through a break in the barricade of spider web.

  Grundy suddenly became hard to manage. Salt! The beast was hungry for it, and Vincent knew, from the scientist’s instructions, that it would go to any lengths to get it.

  But Vincent also knew that a smell of salt in the air must have stimulated that want. That was a warning. Some body was not far away. It might be a dead spider, or a live one, or an injured person alive or dead. He recalled Xandibaum’s warning.

  “When they get panicky for salt, watch out for your own safety. If you’ve got any injuries and they smell blood, they’ll go for persons.”

  Vincent wasn’t sure what to do. “Get along, Grundy,” he muttered, but the animal was going its own headstrong way—toward the source of the smell—

  It couldn’t be those dead monsters, for the wind was from the north, and that was leading Grundy into the forest.

  Then the wind shifted, and the grasshopper whirled and stopped and refused to obey. Vincent wondered. Did he dare lead it to one of those carcasses of monsters? Would it be satisfied with a bite or two, or become drunk with a thirst for more—or even poisoned? Many miles lay between Vincent and the uplands.

  Id an impetuous gesture, Grundy took decision in his own front legs, so to speak. He threw Vincent off, pounced at him, grabbed him with his front feet.

  In a flash it occurred to Vincent that his own perspiration was a source of danger. If he had had a shirt on his back he would have gladly given it in exchange for a chance to escape the hungry gaze of the beast’s face.

  “Stupid!” he muttered at himself, reaching to his belt. He tore the package of lunch free as he struggled out of the grasshopper’s grasp. The package was mostly meat, wrapped in bark, and the instant he tossed it to the ground in front of the beast’s eager mouth the crisis was over.

  The grasshopper munched heartily, and though it wasn’t much of a meal the beast perked up ready for orders.

  They rode back to the edge of the clearing. Vincent took in the situation as revealed under the shafts of the rising sun, keeping himself well in the shadows.

  One lone monster spider was in command of the two servant grasshoppers. It chirped and chattered in a way that argued it had no particular feelings one way or the other for its dead compatriots. After the two grasshoppers bundled off a load of the corpses, the monster crossed the river to the clearing and went directly toward the spot where, in Vincent’s opinion, Penzi had last been seen. There it stopped, scratched at the earth.

  “Get ready, Grundy!” Vincent muttered.

  As Vincent charged in toward the monster, it turned and saw him. Then with almost lightning action it threw a trapdoor up from the ground and started into the hole.

  The trapdoor gave a wobbling motion that caught the monster unaware, and in the next second Vincent plunged his spear into the hideous black body.

  “That’s one more, Grundy,” Vincent smiled through clenched teeth. “Now stay right here. I’m going to—”

  The echo of something the scientist had told him gave him a choking, sickening sensation. But he would go through with it.

  He jerked the spear out of the crusty shell of the monster that had turned dead half-way through the trapdoor. He climbed cautiously down through the opening. He knew that ordinarily there was only one spider to a bole, but he was trying to watch everything.

  Clinging to the web-spun wall he peered down. He could see the whole cavern to the lower end. It was empty—almost.

  There was one little four-inch patch of blue velvet at the bottom!

  That piece of goods had been tom—carefully torn from Penzi’s dress! It was a deliberate message!

  In five minutes of careful investigating, Vincent found the other signs that Penzi had left for him. In the wall she had scraped the web away to a patch of fresh earth and there she had drawn an arrow.

  It pointed up.

  Of course she would go up! That was the only way out. But that finger mark in the damp clay meant more. It was the direction by which she would try to escape. Climbing up to the opening, Vincent caught a landmark to the north—that was the way Grundy had been taking him during those minutes of salt famine! Vincent clambered past the lid—a heavy thing. It must have taken almost superhuman strength for Penzi to struggle through—or was she carried through? There was a tinge of dark red against a rough edge, and a slight dripping of dried blood at the nearby wall of web.

  “On, Grundy! Faster! Faster!” They were headed north again, and Vincent recognized the course of a few minutes earlier.

  He took a parting glance back at the clearing. The servant grasshoppers had not returned. There was no sign of life, or of danger following. Vincent sharpened his eyes to the darkness of the forest.

  “Steady now . . . Steady . . .”

  The grasshopper began to sniff. He showed no signs of becoming hard to manage. He was holding to the exact course that Vincent put him on. But his manner betrayed an interest and a curiosity that matched Vincent’s own. This was a natural path they were following. It was dark and leafy and—

  Vincent shuddered. The deadliness of fangs was something hard to keep out of mind. After he’d seen them in action once—and so nearly a second time that it still left him breathless to think of it-r-he couldn’t ride through a narrow leafy path like this without thinking how easy it would be—

  The grasshopper gave another sniff. It had been walking. It wanted to run. It sensed something too subtle for Vincent’s senses.

  “Are you running toward—or away from?” Vincent muttered. Then, “Go ahead, fellow. Whatever it is, I’ll never be any nearer ready for it—”

  His hand froze on his spear. He bent low, patted the beast for more speed. Something white ahead—something blue—“Go it, fellow, go it!”

  The beast ran low, almost as if it would take off into flight. That white and blue—it was Penzi in her torn dress!—she was bound to a web beneath a tree!

  Across the curve of the path Vincent could see her—and beyond he saw the other living form—a black one!

  Even against the dark background of trees he knew that gleamy-shelled devilish-looking monster. It was Six-six-six!

  The monster, a few feet beyond his white prisoner, turned this way and that, looking for the approaching fo
otsteps. Vincent wondered—was the sound of an approaching grasshopper ever anything but a harmless sound to Six-six-six, the master of cruelty and death? Did this highly advanced spider know—

  At the quick turn of the monster, Vincent knew that the spider knew! He could almost feel the focus of the monster’s eyes upon him.

  In that split second the race began. The spider bared its fangs, chose its victim—not the grasshopper, not Vincent—but Penzi!

  “Faster! Faster!” Vincent slapped the beast’s side as they rounded the first curve. At the same instant the monster sprang at the girl—and Vincent came on with his spear frozen hard and sure in his hand.

  In Vincent’s dreams he would relive that moment of his life over and over. It would waft through his mind’s eye in slow motion, it would flick through at racing speed, it would stop like a suspended animation film,

  It would always seem to him, as his memory would flash back to that anguished moment, that everything in his consciousness did suspend—for the next thing that was in his memory was Penzi’s voice, a voice that was mostly breath, breath that was strangely warming to his face. He was cutting away the spider webs that bound her, binding her torn arm, asking her how she managed to get out of that trapdoor, asking her a dozen questions at once—

  “How did I ever get in that trapdoor—that’s what I’ll never forgive myself for!” she said, half-laughing, half-crying. “I was the only one that saw it happen—the lid flew up and a monster crawled out—right beside me—and I almost fainted. The thing turned around and saw you men fighting and gave a jump of surprise and started back toward me. That’s when I fell and the lid fell over me—and there I lay for hours wondering which would come down—you or the monster!”

  “We looked everywhere for you, Penzi . . .”

  “That’s what I decided. I couldn’t hear you—I screamed my head off but I knew you couldn’t hear me.”

  “But you got out—”

  “Look at my hands, Ponpo!” she laughed. “I had to dig out one side from under the door. Then the lid finally tipped, and I saw I could get out, but I was almost afraid to go. I finally heard a voice—I thought it must be you, Ponpo. It sounded like you were calling—only I couldn’t understand you. I crawled out and listened.

  “I groped my way through the trees. The voice kept going back farther and farther in the woods. Then I got suspicious. It wasn’t you—I knew it wasn’t—and I began to run the other way—and then the voice came closer and closer—and just at daybreak—”

  “Lie down, Penzi, you’re going to faint.”

  “I’m all right now,” the girl smiled.

  “I found your messages, Penzi—the velvet and the arrow. And Grundy here showed me the way—”

  The grasshopper looked up at hearing his name called. He was nibbling at the dark mass with the spear sticking up through it. He turned around and spread his wings to let them mount.

  In a few moments they were clattering through the air on their way to the safe mountain camp.

  “Hold on tight, Penzi!” Vincent shouted, as the wind blew against their faces. “We’ve got to get back to Xandibaum. He’s alone now . . .”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, Hunzk has disappeared, too. I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  But Xandibaum wasn’t alone when they got back, he was right in the middle of a one man battle, and as they flew in, they saw him surrounded by hundreds of the trapdoor monsters. Even as they watched, horror-stricken, one of them darted past a force bolt that struck down a half-dozen of its companions, and leaped on the old man’s back. He went down, buried beneath the horrid bodies of his killers.

  Vincent ordered Grundy down, and they landed at the base of a small cliff. There he found a small cave.

  “We’ll stay here,” he said hopefully. “Maybe they haven’t seen us, and will not find us. When night comes, we will try for the higher altitudes and see if we can’t stick it out until the time chain returns . . .”

  But his hopes were vain. The spiders had seen them, and they came swarming up the canyon now.

  Penzi saw them coming.

  “It is the end, my Vincent,” she said simply, a brave smile on her white face. “We will not leave this cave.”

  Vincent said nothing, because there was nothing to say. But he took his spears from Grundy’s back, and slapped the faithful animal’s flank.

  “Go, Grundy,” he said. “No need for you to die.”

  Then he pulled Penzi into the small cave and began piling rocks before the entrance. Before the oncoming spiders had climbed to the cliff base, he had the opening sealed, except for several places where he could thrust out his spear, to keep off any spiders who tried to tear down the barrier.

  “They won’t get us soon,” he said grimly.

  Penzi kissed him, and bravely she took up a spear and took her place beside him. “We will kill a lot of them,” she said.

  Something went through Vincent in that moment, and he wished mightily that he didn’t have to die. What he was about to lose was too great . . .

  Outside, the first of the spiders arrived. They began to tear at the barrier. Vincent jabbed with his spear. A spider went limp, flopped back. His companions dragged him away, took his place. Vincent jabbed again and again, and always it was the same. More spiders took the dead one’s place.

  Penzi stabbed, too, and she got her share of the trapdoor monsters. But Vincent could see that the grim business was getting to be too much for her. She was getting deathly pale and her eyes held a haunted look.

  He pulled her away from the barrier, took her tenderly in his arms, and kissed her. Then he made her sit down at the back of the tiny cave, and went back to his defense work.

  Once a spear was torn from his grasp. Another time a blow at the other end slammed him against the stone wall, and his arm and shoulder dripped blood. Finally he had only two spears left.

  Then, at last, dark descended, and the attack ceased. It got chilly in the cave, and Vincent knew it must be colder outside. He turned to Penzi.

  “They have gone for the night. The cold is too much for them.”

  He lay down beside her and took her in his arms. She snuggled in the warmth of his arms, and after awhile she went to sleep. Vincent looked down at her and kissed her tenderly.

  He didn’t mean to go to sleep. He intended to remain awake on guard. But he didn’t. And so it was that when he awoke, it was to the echoes of a ringing scream of terror in his very ear.

  He leaped to his feet. It had been Penzi who screamed. It was bright daylight, and outside the sun streamed through a gap in the barrier of rocks. And through that gap was coming the horrid body of a trapdoor spider.

  Vincent leaped forward with a shout, snatched up one of his last two remaining spears and stuck it into the spider’s body. The spider screeched in agony, stiffened, jerked back, and rolled down the slope outside stone dead. It carried Vincent’s spear with it.

  Grimly Vincent took up his last spear and stood squarely in the gap the spiders had made. He wielded the weapon until his arms were weary, and the ring of bodies around him was shoulder high.

  Then, finally, the poison of its tip seemed gone. When he prodded the spider, the insect did not die. Instead it screamed insanely and lunged forward again, even more ferociously.

  Vincent knew this was the end. And he faced it. But suddenly the spider stiffened, fell. From its back protruded a spear. And outside there was a great yelling and screaming. And in the cave opening there was a familiar figure.

  “Hunzk!” yelled Vincent. “Hunzk! You’re alive!”

  Hunzk leaped into the cave, his face wreathed in smiles; smiles that struggled through obvious pain. He was severely bitten by spiders. “Yes,” he said. “I am alive. But soon there will be no live spiders in this world. I have brought an ape army, with poison spears. Already we have killed over a thousand . . .”

  He pitched forward on his face.

  Several hours later Vincent and Penzi knew the
whole truth. But it wasn’t in a happy way they learned it. Because they got it from the stiffening lips of a dying Hunzk.

  The main battle was over, and all through the countryside trapdoor spiders were being hunted down and dug out by vengeful apes, now at last given the weapons that made them powerful enemies to the spiders. Unlike the tiger, the ape was powerful on the ground and in the trees, and it was death to the unwary spider who ventured beneath a tree.

  Hunzk had gone into the forest, found the ape chief, and talked to him in the tongue which was their common root language, Cro-Magnon and anthropoid ape. He had easily enlisted their services, for life had been constant flight and death for them while the spiders ruled.

  So, he had come out of the forest with an army of apes, armed with poisoned spears. And he had arrived in time to rescue Vincent and Penzi.

  Now he called the ape chief to him.

  “Guide them,” he told Vincent and Penzi. “Give them the push that will make them the human beings of 1941, your own world. From this day on, and I speak the words of the ape chief also, you are sister and brother, kin of the same family, honored by each other. Mingle, and teach and learn from each other, for the destiny of man lies in your hands and in the apes’.”

  And Hunzk lay back, in his glazing eyes the brightness of a dream—a Cro-Magnon’s dream of a great civilization that might have been, had it not been for the trapdoor monsters. But somehow it was a dream realized. And perhaps, in that moment, he foresaw in Vincent and Penzi a legend that would ring down through the twentieth century—a legend that he had never known, because it was out of his future.

  But as Hunzk died, Vincent turned to Penzi, wonder in his eyes. It was still there when he took her in his arms. And it became a strange joy to him, days later, when the ape chief led them to a warm country, where life was easy, and the whole land was a beautiful garden where the apes might one day become men.

  [1] Obviously the machine invented by the mysterious Mr. Xandibaum is fixed in our own world of 1941, and the circle of time-defying lights which possess the power to energize any object touching them with the time-energy of the particular time-world to which it is attuned, exists not only in our world, but in other worlds, simultaneously. Perhaps it is the fluctuating of this ring of energy through the various phases of time which makes it rise and fall so mysteriously upon each time-world. Naturally, to our eyes, and senses, travel through other than three dimensions would be impossible to perceive. Thus, the up-and-down motion is the only indication we could have of the actual motion of the time lights through the unknown dimension of its true motion.