Levels: Fantastic and Macabre Stories
Page 3
I know Mike can’t read more than his own name. I say, Just something she got from the bookmobile, I guess. She’s at home right now?
He nods and says, She was sleeping when I left. I set Jamie to watching her close and not let her out of the house.
I said, I don’t have a lot to do today, at least nothing I can’t put off. You want me to take her down mountain to a doctor?
Mike says, I’d really appreciate that, Joe. I’m behind on my fields as it is, and I can’t spare the day.
I say, Let me get some breakfast and then I’ll come up your way and get her. Tell the kids I shouldn’t be long.
He got up and shook my hand and went out and turned his truck around to go back up to his place. I dunked my head in a bucket and put on some clothes, made coffee and got some breakfast, and got all the way outside before I remembered that my truck couldn’t go anywhere, least not right away. I’d had the radiator out working on it last night until I lost the daylight and had to leave it torn out. So I got back in there and wrestled with it and cursed and got it back in the truck just before noon—maybe no better than it was before I got it out, but at least no worse. And I finally drove up to their house.
When I got there, all three kids were sitting outside the front door, and they looked scared to death. As soon as I got out of the truck, I heard things from inside—thumping and stuff breaking, and caterwauling that I couldn’t make out. I said, What happened? How long’s she been like this? and Rebecca said, Right after breakfast, we were cleaning up and she was washing a knife and cut her finger, and all a sudden she just stuck the knife right through her hand. I tried to get the knife away from her—and Jamie said, I helped—and Rebecca said, and then she started screaming, I want it out, I want it out, and starts breaking stuff.
The baby was crying, her nose running down off her chin, and Maeve inside sounded hoarse like she’d been yelling for hours.
I got up close to the door. Maeve, I said, this is Joe, what’s the matter? And something hit on the other side of the door like she’d thrown something, and she said, I want it out! I want all of them out!
I said, All the children are out, Maeve, what do you want out?
And she said, There’s things in my head and I want them out, that book put things in my head, how do I get them out?
I say, What things? but she just screams for an answer, and it sounds like she’s kicking and punching a wall. All I know is she’s going to hurt herself bad, no matter what’s wrong with her head, and I say, Maeve, cut it out, you’re scaring your children, let me help you.
I start to tell her that I’ll take her down mountain to a doctor, but there’s a crash from inside and I know she can’t hear me. I tell the kids to go get in my truck, far from the door, and I take a breath and then I open the front door and run in.
But it’s quiet, and I think, That crash was the last thing I heard, like a window. And there’s the window in the kitchen busted out and blood on the glass that’s left because she climbed through. I get to the window and I can see her run into the toolshed out back. I’m not spry enough to follow her through the window, so I go back out through the front and around the house and to the toolshed.
The door on the toolshed is something Mike scrounged from an old house before it fell down, and the way it swings it’s got a lock on the inside, and it’s locked. I say, Maeve, open the door, ain’t nothing that can help you in there, but I hear her crashing around with tools and what not, and then I hear her scream, and she keeps screaming, and there’s something sounds wet, too.
Well, the door may be solid, but it’s an old toolshed, so I find a gray board coming loose on the front beside the door and I start pulling, and slowly the old nail comes out of the old wood, the nail screeches like a cat, but even over that I can hear her screaming without a stop. My old arms ain’t used to this, but I keep pulling and pulling, and finally the board pulls all the way out, so’s I can reach in and grab the lock and finally get it open.
I open the door and Maeve’s not screaming anymore, she’s got her back to me and she’s shaking like nothing I ever saw before. And I say Maeve? What you doing, Maeve?
And she says, What you said, Joe, and turns around, she’s smiling, there’s a bow saw in her hand, and the front part of her forehead’s off, clean sawed off, there’s blood all down her face, and I can see her brain where her head should be.
And she says, You said cut it out, Joe, so I am. The new things in my head from the book, I don’t want ’em there, so I’m cutting them all out. All out, Joe, I’m cutting them all out.
An Eldritch Correspondence
March 23, 1932
Mr. Halward Comstock
c/o Bizarre Tales
New York, NY
Dear Mr. Comstock:
I have written to the letters column of Bizarre Tales a number of times in praise of stories published in that magazine, yours and others, but this marks the first occasion in which I have directed my praise toward the author himself. I have to let you know that your tale “The Fiend-Haunted Forest” moved me like none in my memory. The conviction with which you infused your words with the blackness of infernal necromancy was sheer genius. I stand in admiration before your supernal talent, and christen myself a devotee of your works of the first order.
With admiration,
Mel Plowers
***
March 30, 1932
Mr. Mel Plowers
Madison, Wisconsin
Dear Mel,
Thank you for your overly kind words about my story. I rarely get notes directly from readers, and thus yours, forwarded to me by Miles Philo, editor of Bizarre Tales, is both a novelty and a boon to my spirit. I earnestly hope that my future tales, some of which are already queued up to be published in Bizarre Tales, continue to earn your admiration.
With gratitude,
Halward Comstock
***
April 24, 1932
Dear Mr. Comstock:
Once again, you have exceeded my already lofty expectation with your latest in Bizarre Tales, “The Shadow Under the Mansion.” Apart from your awe-inspiring command of the English language and your uncanny ability to impress the eerie atmosphere and scene upon your readers with an economy of words, I am staggered by the verisimilitude with which you ground your stories. Even when very little space is given to exposition, as in “Shadow,” you leave the unignorable impression that these images are carved from a larger history of mankind’s ill-fated encounters with a plausible yet mind-shattering pantheon of hideous realities.
I cannot help but muse that such realism has been gained by study and pondering, by an exquisite grasp of and insight into the basis of the legendary impulse within the human psyche. Please enlighten me as to the path of your studies in this regard, as I desire to follow your hallowed footprints in plumbing the depths of the truth behind myth, for I firmly believe that in your fictions you are subtly introducing the insensible world to the shadows of truth for which they are unprepared to face head-on, in the full and uncompromising light of day.
In supplication,
Mel Plowers
***
April 27, 1932
Dear Mel:
Again, glad that “Shadows Under the Mansion” struck a chord with you. Bizarre Tales is a magazine with an unimpressive circulation, and I know that within that readership, my own contributions are not commonly deemed favorites, so it is heartening to know that there is a fraction of that fractional readership which looks forward to my contributions.
Forgive me for not replying fully to your second paragraph, but to be honest, your handwriting is a bit too taxing to my weak eyes, and I have several tales in various stages of completion which demand my attention. Must feed the maw of Bizarre Tales!
Cordially,
Halward Comstock
***
Mat 2 , 1936
Dear Mr. Comstock,
I undefrstand and fully agreee with your complaints about my penmans
hip; I was a sickly youth , and rarealy attended school during the years at which one is normally xxx drilled on ones letters (although my mother spent many hours teaching meto read at home, a task which alone qualifiesd her for sainthood). Do you X like my new typewriter? I purchased it in order to facilitate further communication with youX. My own words convey poorly enough the impressions and thoughts which I attempt to elucidate through correspondence, iwthout the added difficulty of my haphazard scribblings.
As I ewas saying, I wish to learn at your feet some of the hidden things which you have uncovered in your sturdies of the occult and mythic history of mankind, for I XXXX perceive that the framework in which you ground your weird stories is more than the creative happenstance with which lesser writers adorn their yarns for color and ornamentation. I know that epistolaryy conversation is a poor substitute for a face-to-face meeting of the minds, yet is it not enough to know that , in your tireles efforts to expand the mind of man in the margins of your tales, you have gained at least one acolXyte and apprentice?
I look forward to youre next missive eith eagerness.
Sincerely,
Mel Plowers
***
May 11, 1932
Dear Mel,
You honestly purchased your typewriter for the express purpose of correspondence with me? I am flattered, and yet slightly disquieted; I never meant to be anyone’s guru or prophet, and to have you attach as much importance to my “literary” output as you indicate is, to be frank, unsettling. I am but a lowly commercial writer, of little importance even in the field of popular fiction, much less in the greater and more impressive realms of literature. While I appreciate your friendly regard (bordering on devotion) for my stories, I would be both arrogant and dishonest if I did not indicate that work of much greater importance, artistry, and significance can be found easily, both in the stacks of your local lending library, and likely on the bookshelves of your own home.
As you now own a typewriter, however, I hope that you can avail yourself of education towards its operation, as indeed it is a useful contrivance, both for creative composition and for more industrious applications.
Yours,
Halward
***
May 26, 1932
Dear Mr. Comstock,
Forgive me for the lag in my reply. I have delayed further correspondence until I acquired some sufficient mastery of the typewriter, and I think you can agree that my accuracy is much improved. I applied myself to practice by re-copying some works with which you are intimately familiar—your prior stories from Bizarre Tales! Specifically, “Oath of the Lurkers,” “Spoor of the Moon-Thing,” and “Beneath the Catacombs.” Not only did those lengthy tales afford me much-needed practice with this unforgiving contraption, but I was also afforded the opportunity to commit to memory the spelling of the words “eldritch,” “antediluvian” and “ichor.” An education, on many levels!
I should have expected your pro forma attempts to dissuade me from my apprenticeship, for one must of course be sure that it is not swine before which one displays one’s pearls. After all, how sincere is the acolyte who can be put off with a mere suggestion of other pursuits as being more worthy of his time? I would wager that the great majority of those who perceive something factual and concrete lying behind the vague hints in your fiction are thus redirected from their passing fancy, and thus continue to live out the lives of contented, if blind, common folk. I hope that my convivial but firm rejection of your attempts to thus dissuade me will be seen as a forthright sign that I am, indeed, worthy of such confidences as you might trust to paper and the post.
I must at this juncture congratulate you on your latest work published in Bizarre Tales, “Upon the Altars of Dead Gods.” I perceive only vaguely, but still strongly, the gnosis which informs your tales of horror and dread, as one perhaps sees obscured shapes in those medieval paintings which were meant to convey sacred formulae to Templars and Freemasons but shut out the understanding of those whose lot it was not to understand. He who has ears, let him hear!
Now that, as demonstrated, my proficiency with this typewriter no longer admits to an impediment in the legibility of my correspondence, I hope fervently that said correspondence can yield fruit from the seeds which you have planted so surreptitiously in my mind.
Trustworthily yours,
Mel Plowers
***
June 1, 1932
Dear Mel,
I must tell you plainly: You are seeing things that are not there. Again, I find great flattery in the idea that you—and, presumably other readers to a greater or lesser degree—can find in my tales of shock and horror the impression of verisimilitude on which to hang a greater suspension of disbelief than one normally finds in “pulp” magazines. I thus find myself in the uneasy position of working against my own talents, such as they are, to disabuse you of your fond notions. The entities, cults, formulae, etc. in my tales are mere fancy and froth. As a youth I read copiously but shallowly in various eastern and western mythologies, and those half-remembered details, admixed and adulterated by childish misunderstanding and years of neglect, form the only documentary basis of the schema of lore upon which my stories are putatively based.
I say again, they are not real. I am not a church-going man, but I would recommend that, if you must put your faith and efforts toward a mythology of supernature, it should of necessity be the one which has informed our civilization to good effect for two millennia rather than one borrowed piecemeal from stories scattered about on the newsstands.
Yours,
Halward
***
June 4, 1932
Dear Mr. Comstock,
Forgive me for following so hard upon the heels of my previous correspondence, but I am almost overcome with a triumph which will go uncomprehended by my family and neighbors. Through diligence, I have tracked down a copy, dog-eared and unfairly neglected, of the September 1926 issue of Bizarre Tales, which carried your first story for that vaunted periodical! I had to make several inquiries at those few newsstands in this city which carry Bizarre Tales—most apportion their space to such piffle as sports stories and motion picture gossip—until I could track down those individuals who habitually bought such fare, and at last persuade one to part with his own half-forgotten copy, at several times the original cover price! Your story in that issue, “Wanderlust of the Night Creatures,” was like a missing piece of the occult puzzle which is forming in my psyche, and while I exulted upon acquiring said issue, I rejoiced all the more when I had read it and discovered the treasures of hidden knowledge it contained! I am now embarking on a mission to re-read all of your stories in those hallowed pages, in order of publication (unless you could recommend a more beneficial order in which to absorb them), the better to hold at once in my mind the disparate pieces of the greater tapestry which you are so meticulously constructing.
Your devotee,
Mel Plowers
P.S. Between finishing the above letter and posting it, I received your most recent reply. I of course sigh at the effort necessary to convince you of my discretion and maturity of mind so that I may be inducted into the secrets of which you only hint to the outside world, but at the same time I am heartened, for if you expend this much energy to repel all but the most determined and devoted of seekers, the prize awaiting the successful claimant must be all the greater!
I feel that I am on the verge of some great breakthrough, as if there were a wall across the mental vision of mankind which is, in my case, at last showing cracks. If my premonitions hold true, your next story for Bizarre Tales will contain the capstone of the edifice of knowledge, the prism through which all previous hints and fragments shall achieve full comprehension. Hasten the day!
M.P.
***
June 9, 1932
Mel,
I have tried to be both honest and kind, but obviously the latter dulls the edge of the former, forcing me to dispense with kindness and be blunt.
THERE IS NO SECRET. There IS no hinted knowledge in my yarns for Bizarre Tales. I am simply an industrious writer, trying to make a precarious living by selling to various pulp magazines the stories they will publish. I write what I write for Bizarre Tales because that first story, “Wanderlust of the Night Creatures,” was moderately well received by the editor and readership, and I try to be efficient by going back to the well repeatedly for more of the same until it runs dry.
Indeed, I am more than an industrious writer; I am what is branded a “hack.” I write what I can sell, and what I sell, I write more. In addition to the stories cranked out for Bizarre Tales, I also contribute Western stories on a roughly monthly basis to Frontier Adventures under the name “Hal Stockman,” and have also contributed several adventures of Dusty Donovan, two-fisted seaman, to Fighting Adventure Tales as “Stock Halliday.” In lean times, I have even dabbled in the romance pulps, a genre to which I am not naturally inclined, to keep bread on my table; if you happen to come across stories by “Holly Stockworth” in last year’s issues of Romance For Brides, you now know that they are mine.