The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  I didn’t wait to hear more. I have visions of Jim’s going down in some sort of death trap or falling victim to some, ocean monster. But before I could clamber far along my perilous trail, the others had already outdistanced me. They swam wide to bypass the village, so that they approached the area of the Twisted Arm from an unseen angle. I stopped, narrowed my eyes toward the brightly colored waters, and then I saw the horror which they surely saw, about one hundred yards to my right.

  The purple water gates slowly descended into a harmless looking line at the surface, and there was left, revealed in his full whiteness of form, the skeleton of Jim Sutter.

  There was no question about his identity. In death, he still held his shuffling pose. Whatever sea creatures had stripped him of his flesh, they had not done away with the single swimming garment that clung to his pelvic bones; nor had they molested the pedometer fastened to his right leg. The waters fell away, and he stood, his skull a gleaming white, his gaunt frame trembling a little as the waves struck at his ankles. He began to sag.

  His feet were caught in some jelly-like substance.

  Uncle Willard and David, fifty feet or so below me, stood like statues, and I thought I could hear David’s awestruck whisper . . .

  Farther on, at the shore line, three Paint-Faces walked out, seemingly having no trouble whatever crossing the purple line. They reached the skeleton. They deftly cut a block of the crystal substance which had trapped his feet. Then they lifted him—crystal base and all—and carried him on over to the circular door of the Twisted Arm tower. The door opened, they entered, and the door closed. That, I somehow knew, would be the last that anyone would ever see of Jim Sutter.

  Uncle Willard and David returned slowly and you could tell by their manner of conversing that they were weighing some heavy and difficult problem.

  Once I heard Uncle Willard say, “It’s not a decision to be made in haste. He’s young. He’s pliable. He’s not a bad hearted boy. And he is your own cousin. Besides, he’s offered to give us half a million apiece. That’s generous enough.”

  “It lacks a lot of being four million,” David said. “Why can’t we be practical?”

  And later, when I could hear them again, David was saying, “It will be as easy as snapping your fingers. No one will know. He’ll walk right into it and it will all be over—just like it was for Jim Sutter.”

  CHAPTER VI

  I eavesdropped again at the stone lattice before slipping quietly into the water and swimming up to the cave for a casual entrance. That way I knew that I was going to find everyone at home except Jim Sutter. I knew, too, that neither of the crewmen had as yet been told what had happened. They sensed something ominous in the air, however, for they were solemn and apprehensive.

  “Thank goodness, you’ve come, anyhow,” Casey said, as I climbed up over the edge.

  “Did you see anything of Jim Sutter?” David asked innocently. He put on a fine show of being anxious over Jim’s well-being.

  “I have a hunch you know where he is,” I said coolly.

  “Anyone can have hunches,” said David. “I’ve had a hunch all afternoon that he has been attending to your business while you’re skylarking around with that Loonza dame again. How’s that for a hunch?”

  “I do get around,” I said.

  “Dress,” said Uncle Willard.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Dress. It’s high time you paid your respects to his honor the Mong.”

  “Has it all been arranged?” I asked. “Do I have an appointment? Does the Mong want me to come in a full dress suit? A swimming suit with white tie and tails, perhaps.”

  “You’re the man who has the inheritance at stake. We’ve brought you down here. It’s up to you to go ahead with the business.”

  “We’re reversing our policy rather suddenly, aren’t we?” I protested. “I thought we were going to keep our presence a secret from these folks.”

  “Until we knew our grounds—yes. Now we know our grounds,” said Uncle Willard. He snapped his fingers nervously. “The Mong lives in a stone tower. You don’t swim to it. You walk across.”

  “Er—have you seen his nibs?”

  “I sent Jim in advance,” said Uncle Willard. “I didn’t tell any of you, but that’s where Jim went. I arranged that he should go and break the ice. If the Mong wasn’t willing to see you, Jim was to come back and report within an hour. He isn’t back, so that means that he has set the stage for you to follow.”

  Casey wks shaking his head. He muttered that Uncle Willard might have said something before and saved them all a lot of worry. Uncle Willard’s sharp cough hushed him.

  I began to dress. “Which of you gentlemen is accompanying me?”

  “I’ll go,” said Casey and Blanchard together.

  “We’ll let George go alone,” said Uncle Willard. “If he finds the hospitality ample, we’ll follow.”

  I skirted the shore and waded through the shallows, looking back occasionally to make sure that two of my party were keeping me in view. So this was to be their farewell to me. And their welcome to my fortune!

  I had left them with a stinging remark that must have tantalized them. I had offered a solid handshake to each, saying “You’ve been noble and generous, Uncle Willard and Cousin David, bringing me here. If this interview goes well, I’ll increase your share. Yes, that’s how I feel toward you.”

  Uncle Willard had winced, but David had looked very stony and had only urged me to hurry on.

  “If I should have some accident along the way—if I shouldn’t be back as soon as you expect—don’t wait too long, please. I’m sure the Mong will be glad to meet both of you.”

  Now I knew they had followed, and they were watching as I stopped to consult the Paint-Faces a few yards from the Leopard Walk.

  It took a long look at the two curiously painted guards. They were taking me in, too, in more ways than one. Outwardly, they welcomed me to make an excursion across the walk.

  “Your curiosity prompts you to try the entrance to the Mong’s tower, I presume,” one of them said, suppressing a mocking smile. His face, coated with heavy lines of black and yellow paint, quite obliterated his features. The design made it quite impossible to guess what he might have looked like, unpainted. I recalled the eye-deception tricks in some long forgotten puzzle book.

  His striped face gave an ugly twist which might have been, under unpainted circumstances, a wry smile. “Curiosity. That’s every stranger’s reason for knocking at the Mong’s door. Curiosity or business.”

  “I have some business,” I said.

  “I hope it isn’t urgent,” said the other Paint-Face. “It will take you about two or three hours to cross.”

  “Two or three hours!” I gauged the distance along what appeared to be a purple concrete sidewalk just about six inches below the water’s surface. It’s not more than a sixty-yard walk.”

  “Distances are deceiving. Sometimes the waters seep through.”

  “Seep!” said the other. “Seep like a waterfall! But don’t be discouraged. Just keep going. In two or three hours the Mong will see you.”

  “And if you offer him any business propositions, the chances are he’ll see right through you.” The Paint-Face gave his companion a nudge.

  They were a strange pair of wags, I thought. Husky boys with all the confidence in the world—though their world was limited. Their shoulders were painted bright colors, in different designs, with names painted over their backs, as if their hidden faces had to be compensated for by some other means of identification. They were thoroughly enjoying the send-off they were giving me.

  I waved them farewell, turned, and stepped out into the water-covered passage. The wall rose swiftly all along the right side of the walk. The swish of waters sounded like escaping steam. The wall was a barrier of the famous ghagstic, whose plastic form and metallic qualities would some day find a thousand uses. Its present use was, first, to contain a rush of water which would presently p
our in from the ocean; and second, to screen the victims of this walk from the view of the shoreline town. For the moment I was out of sight of the guards, the town, and—doubtless—David and his father as well. But I didn’t walk. I seized my opportunity. I dived into the water, turned and swam under the surface toward the nearest shore as hard as I could go. The clothing was cumbersome; but as I had observed, swimming was a much easier process against the Mercury gravity. My breath held tight. My strength stayed with me. Soon I reached a shore line, followed it until the light through the bright waters deepened into shadows, then rose cautiously to the surface.

  No, the guards couldn’t see me from here.

  My error! They had mounted a platform on the level with the water gate’s ridge, and they were peering into the waves trying to discover what had happened to me. I caught a breath and ducked under. I climbed along the shore until I came to an opening under the surface. What a pleasant surprise!

  It led up into a dimly lighted chamber which centuries of waves had hollowed out of the rock. I entered.

  I rose, gasping for breath, and was relieved to see that the hidden chamber was unoccupied. I breathed deep.

  It had been occupied recently, that was plain; for the air was stuffy. It would take another low tide to change that. But I wasn’t being choosy. For the moment it was just the piece of luck I needed, and I didn’t intend to loiter long.

  It was a Paint-Face station, apparently. The painting equipment was strewn around on rock shelves—pigments and brushes. There were numerous relics stored around in corners. Best of all—there was a skeleton! This was luck.

  I climbed out of my wet clothes.

  Stripped to my trunks, I went to work with the paints. Two or three hours, the Paint Faces had said. If they didn’t worry too much over my disappearance, I would have plenty time to do a careful job. By now the waters were piling against the gate, I knew, for the level of water was rising toward the shelf-like floor of this chamber.

  I smeared a name on my back—the first name that came to me—George. I doubted whether anyone could read my crooked letters, and I hoped they wouldn’t try. Yet I couldn’t quite imagine keeping my back turned to every one all the time. If I could just get myself sufficiently decorated to pass through the danger area without being accosted—

  “There’ll surely be at least one or two Georges among those painted guards,” I said to myself.

  The watery entrance heaved and splashed. I ducked back into a corner and drew myself close against the wall.

  Two guards popped up—the same two who had given me a send-off. They would certainly notice my heap of water-soaked clothes on the floor. Or would they? I held my breath.

  “Here’s the fork,” one of them said. “But I don’t think we’ll ever overtake him now. I don’t see how he got away.”

  “I tell you a sea lizard dragged him off before his feet caught in the ghagstic.”

  “Did you see it happen?”

  “No, but by the time we got to look, he was gone.”

  “We shouldn’t lose him. He’d be a good specimen.”

  They grabbed small harpoons with coils of rope attached and then ducked under and were gone again.

  I was breathing short and hard. I hastily finished the job of painting my face and neck, and then discovered that my name across my back had smeared to illegibility. But I couldn’t take any more pains with that now. The air was stifling, and time was getting away fast.

  Hurriedly I seized the skeleton and dressed him in my clothing. This was a piece of luck I hadn’t counted on.

  Dressing the old boy gave me trouble, for his two feet were stuck solid in the ghagstic base, just as though he’d been torn out of a glass sidewalk while the glass was cooling. But I managed to crack the base around his feet, and eventually he was dressed in my best travel togs. Now—was I ready to venture forth again?

  In my trunks and war paint, quite unrecognizable even to myself, I now swam down into the water again, taking my dressed skeleton with me.

  A breath of good air—ah! The guards were rounding a bend within the channels beyond the Twisted Arm tower. The field was mine again. What I did then was sure to cause those boys some consternation on their return, but it very much needed to be done. I swam to the water gate and plunked my bony friend down into the substance that now covered the purple walk. Just as I had expected! Ghagstic—in a molten form. Like syrup. The purple walk had been covered with a layer of it. It must have poured itself automatically out of the gate, all along the Leopard Walk. If I had stepped on that walk now, I would have probably stayed right there, until the fish ate my flesh away. That, naturally, was the whole idea—but it wasn’t my idea!

  Instead, I planted my skeleton. His shoes went in solid. He was over his head in the water—for by now the level had risen about seven feet above the level of the larger Crimson Sea. Within the bright reflected purple of the walk, I could see his chalk bones waving with the movement of the water, while the brown sleeves and trouser legs of my clothing gave him a scarecrow-like appearance. A submerged scarecrow, I thought.

  “But that won’t keep away the water buzzards,” I said to myself.

  My words might have been an invitation. At that very moment I saw three of the long green water lizards that the Paint-Faces had mentioned. They were slithering through the waves in my direction. For once I wished for webbed hands and feet.

  CHAPTER VII

  The sharp pointed noses of those water creatures fascinated me, and I would have liked to examine them under more favorable circumstances. Those noses were tools designed by nature for the intricate job of stripping every shred of flesh from a human skeleton—allowing for the water’s magnifying effects, each of the three hungry beasts must have been at least twelve feet long. They possessed sharp webbed hands, not much larger than human hands—and now it occurred to me that here was where the water dwellers got their webs for their own fingers.

  I had overlooked a detail in my makeup as a painted guard. That would never do. If I were ever to pass in the society of other Paint-Faces I must surely repair my hands with webs so they would pass casual inspection.

  It was something that I might have pondered over more leisurely, except for the fact that these three green, glittering water lizards were quite hungry and in the mood for action.

  I surprised myself by swimming toward them. I blew a breath of air at them. A bubble—that was about as effective a weapon as I could think of in my present state of mind. Then I suddenly ducked behind the skeleton.

  It would have been a mistake to leave such a good pocket knife in the pocket of a bony creature who would certainly never draw another blade on any enemy. In my hands the knife could be useful.

  Would it still be there?

  I jammed my hand in the right pocket.

  The nearest water lizard was coming at me angrily now. He had played games with stuck men befpre. I disconcerted him a trifle when I thrust the bony white arm at him. He whipped the water with his tail. I came up for a breath and went down again. The whipping action of the creature’s tail had caused the floundering guards in the distance to turn and look. I seized another quick breath, knowing I dared not take a chance on coming up again unless I wanted to be seen.

  The knife. I got it open, and none too soon. The ugly water lizard kicked and swam at my face. I jabbed across with the knife. He plowed into my wrist, and I felt the scrape of teeth. But the blade found the fellow’s palate, and he went into reverse, then there was a ripping and tearing of water on the surface. The red waters were pale compared to the carmine streak that snaked out. The blood that flowed over my wrist wasn’t mine, it was his.

  But the knife was mine and I went for him like a Caribbean diver for a shark. A plunge at his midsection. It was a mistake. His tough hide resisted my stab. He was fading back, however, and making room for his two hungry chums. He was hurt.

  The mouth had been his sensitive point. Two more mouths were coming as close as I could ask. />
  So I fought at their snouts. I must have whacked one of them off clean. I heard a mad croaking sound and ocean lizard number two fought at the water and plunged away. Another stream of brilliant red dyed the colored waters.

  I gave up on number three as soon as he showed an inclination to retreat. My desire for breath had almost killed me. I swam, and I wasn’t being followed. My lungs held tight and my hand caught the safety of a rock before I dared raise my head to the precious air.

  Again, a long moment of quiet breathing. Breathing—someone should write a tribute to the joy of breathing. But nothing could be written that would do justice to my relief of that moment.

  Time was getting short. And no doubt the Paint-Faces would come back this way in a few minutes.

  Still clinging to the knife, I swam under water again, exploring the perpendicular shore line until I found a place to ascend into the shadows. Many minutes later I knew that I was safe, at least temporarily. Back in the deep darkness, halfway up to the ceiling where I could hear the soft echoes of the ebbing water as it was allowed to recede from the area behind the water gate, I watched and waited and rested. The water ebbed away. Soon it would recede lower to the level of the sea beyond the gate.

  And there I stood, rising into full view.

  Yes, to all intents and purposes, it was I who stood out there on the purple walk. Somewhere, I knew the eyes of my uncle and my cousin were peering at the gate, waiting for it to lower to make sure that I—my skeleton—would be there. They wouldn’t be disappointed.

  The gate lowered slowly. The Leopard Walk came into view again. And there stood the clean white skeleton, bearing the sagging water-soaked garments of the late George Freeman . . .

  CHAPTER VIII

  The two Paint-Faces were pretty slow about their job of removing me—the skeleton, I mean—from its ghagstic base along the walk. I guessed the reason. They were undoubtedly doing considerable arguing, trying to figure out how it was that they had once lost sight of me before the water had risen. Once they had believed that the water lizards must have boldly moved up when the water was still only ankle deep and swept me from view; but after they had gone to search me with their harpoons, I had reappeared, stuck in the walk according to plan.