by Fritz Leiber
Perhaps it was because I was thinking of this that I surreptitiously pocketed a charred notebook I happened to find among the fragments of stucco. If I gave it to the fire captain or the chief of police, I thought, there’d be small chance of my ever glimpsing the contents, and besides, I somehow felt—it was the sort of thing you’d classify as a premonition—that I was going to have a hard time learning anything about Kesserich and every pertinent fragment would be valuable. However, at the time this was just a feeling.
It may seem rather strange that of all the searchers I alone should have discovered anything that promised information and it is indeed true that coincidence seemed to stalk me at Smithville. But I believe I was the only one that searched the ruins with any imagination and—as for the coincidence—well, it is only too often a name for unnoticed (I hardly say supernatural) forces.
Dusk with its desert chill found me mechanically making my way back to the hotel in which I now intended to take a room. Several days later I learned that the chief of police had seriously suspected me of being “the bomb thrower.” He was apparently satisfied of my innocence by the casually extracted testimony of the hotel clerk and others. At least I was not arrested.
Upon reaching the hotel I remembered to inquire about the location of John Ellis’s residence. I was told by the clerk that he had temporarily left town two days before. This was rumor insofar as I could find no one who had seen Ellis leaving town. Next morning the post office was unable to give me any forwarding address.
After supper I retired to my room to examine the notebook I had discovered. I was immediately struck by a detail I should have noticed in the afternoon: the book was charred—something an explosion could hardly explain. The implication was obvious: the book had been burned previously—probably by Kesserich, for it was in his script— possibly by another. But not completely burned. True, a great sheaf of early pages was completely missing; either it had been torn out or else twisted so that it had been burned through. However, a few pages at the back were comparatively whole; either they had been overlooked or their destruction had not been imperative. These I will now copy down.
CHAPTER 2 - REMAINS OF A NOTEBOOK
…There being this time no noticeable distortion. Strange that I didn’t think of using morphine the first time; then there would have been none of those amazing distortions. (Still, what is as convincing as a distortion of reality?) But what drugs have accomplished intellect can duplicate. I need only assure myself of the reliability of the time-control. Make it automatic! Why not? Operating at regular, spaced intervals.
What will I find on the other side? But why speculate or, rather, why write down speculations? Written words never could keep up with my brain.
April 23. What can I write? Now that it is over, or rather begun. How to describe the indescribable? Not in words but possibly in metaphorical hints. There must be some way to keep a link between the two worlds—no, between the real world and its cross-section. It is like, my dear Ellis: standing between two mirrors and seeing oneself reflected back and forth between the two. Endlessly. A series of images stretching out to infinity, becoming smaller and smaller, vaguer and vaguer, until invisible or indistinguishable.
April 27. Imagine a man who had lived all his life in a tunnel, a tunnel so narrow that the sides forever pressed upon his shoulders. Never could get away from their touch. Came to think that the sides of the tunnel were as inevitable a part of his existence as the air he breathed, the blood that coursed through his body…
Then imagine him a grown man, reaching an exit somehow, getting out into the open. Seeing everything expand around him. It would be a miracle to him. Almost kill him. Like taking the ground out from under a man’s feet. For he’d be as used to the side walls as any man is today to that ground under his feet; more used. I, Kesserich the poet, say so. Kesserich the Multiple knows. “If I should take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth…” But I’ve done just that, Ellis, just that. O yes, Mr. Ellis, O yes.
Experimental conversations between John Ellis, the unenlightened, and Daniel Kesserich, the first multiple man (insert this title back to the beginning of the entry for April 23).
May 6. However.
Being a judgment upon one Daniel Kesserich’s gift to mankind by his only peer, Himself:
DANGERS:
BENEFITS:
CHAPTER 3 - SMALL TALK
With this strangely judicial, almost satirical beginning of an inventory, the entries in the diary—to give it a name— seemed to end. In spite of the book’s damaged condition I was fairly sure of this because the words “Dangers” and “Benefits” headed an empty page; none of the intended entries in the two columns had been made. Further, “Benefits” ended in a savage flourish that scratched an inky line through the paper and onto the page underneath.
There would be no point in my denying that the reading of this scribbled statement left me in a distinctly uneasy frame of mind. It is true that it was incomplete and in no real sense intelligible. True that it’s incomprehensible fantasizing and bizarre sardonicness was characteristic of Kesserich’s strange humor. True, in fact and to avoid further suppressing my chief reaction, it seemed definitely, screamingly, to hint at a serious derangement in the mind of my college friend.
Insanity, yes! But that was just what bothered me. Yesterday it might have offered me an easy explanation of Kesserich’s disappearance and the destruction of his domicile. But not today, not after… Insanity! I had myself seen strange things, things which, if they came in sufficient number, would make me scribble just such statements, wild, mad…
Madness? Can it sometimes be caught like a disease? From friend or passerby? From patting the head of a child or talking to a hotel clerk? Like a disease, does it linger in certain localities, dormant, waiting? Could I…
You can easily see where my thoughts led me that night. However, the further I went in the realm of morbid fancy the more sure I became of my own soundness, the more I became sure that I had stumbled upon something that was not hallucination.
Had Kesserich? Careful perusal of his document showed that it made especial reference to two things: drugs, and states of mind not ordinarily to be found in man. This suggested to me mysticism, occult trances, yogis, fakirs… with a start I remembered that these were subjects in which Kesserich had once shown something more than a passing interest. Eagerly I reread the smoke-yellowed fragments, noting with a nod that the “time-control” mentioned might refer to some device for awakening a man from a trance that might have dangerous consequences if indefinitely prolonged. Only what could he then mean by “distortions” and how could the use of morphine have an effect on such distortions, whatever they might be? Reluctantly I had to admit that I had not yet enough material in my hands to make sure that my idea of “drug experiments” was more than a promising hypothesis.
The course of action I decided upon was the obvious one. I would at least stay on for a while. I was on vacation and I was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery I had walked into. By this time I was convinced of my own sanity and beginning to doubt the sanity of nature.
So next morning I set out on a conscientious campaign of investigation. I talked freely to whomever I could, slipping in cautiously worded questions. I looked through the files of the local newspaper. In one a couple of days old I found the following article:
Mrs. Olga Peterson was treated by Dr. John Ellis for a superficial head injury. She claims that while walking along Dory Lane a stone came through the air and struck her. It is thought to be the work of mischievous boys. We urge parents to remind their children of the criminal element in such pranks.
Mrs. Peterson claims that she saw no one and that if there had been anyone near enough to throw the stone she would have seen them. Naturally this contention that “the stone just came through the air from nowhere” is not to be taken seriously; Mrs. Peterson does not realize that it is the ideal of every small boy to throw accuratel
y over long distances.
Afterwards I examined the scene of this occurrence myself. As I half expected, half feared, it was just beyond the orchard I had been led to the day before. From the spot where Mrs. Peterson had been struck to the nearest place of concealment in the orchard was approximately four hundred feet.
Returning from the newspaper office I noticed that something was going on at the courthouse, dropped in, and found that James Totten, hired hand, was being tried for criminal negligence in the matter of the death of the wife of Dr. Ellis. The place was packed. Totten was on the stand. Under a fire of biting questions he was maintaining his innocence.
“Why, Mister Lawyer, I distinctly remember that Mr. Elstrom never told me nothin’ special about puttin’ up a sign on the tree where I’d used the new spray. Course I was careful myself, but I never even remembers him sayin’ anything about its bein’ ’specially poisonous, and—”
At this moment a thin, sour-faced, middle-aged man jumped up and cut in with, “He lies! I distinctly told him to be very careful and to put up a warning, some kind of a warning. I got a weak heart and I won’t have him contradicting me! He’s only trying to squirm out from—”
There was a flurry of excitement in the audience. The judge rapped for order. The sour-faced man glared around for a moment and then sat down. I afterwards verified my guess that he was Elstrom, Mary Ellis’s former guardian. He, and the whole affair for that matter, created a distinctly disagreeable sensation in my mind. I remembered a phrase in the letter I had gotten from Ellis: “And I can’t help being bitter toward Elstrom. It was his business to see that all precautions were used when the new spray was being tested. And I can’t keep myself from thinking that he was secretly delighted when Mary died. He wanted her for himself, always did. Couldn’t bear the sight of me—or of Mary, after she married me. These are nasty and unfounded notions of mine, but it’s just that sort of thing that I can’t keep out of my mind now.”
I left the courtroom. The next day I read that Totten had been acquitted on the grounds of insufficient evidence. A couple of days later he left town. He had no chance of getting a local job, I suppose. I didn’t get to talk to him.
And still I found myself just as far as ever from the beginning of a solution of the mystery. I did find out that the orange tree that the trail had led me to had been the one from which Mary had eaten the poisoned fruit. That tied things together but did not make them any clearer. What invisible thing would lay a pebble trail to the tree that everyone knew about? What… but why continue with speculations that only end with making one superstitious?
My attempts to get in touch with John Ellis and Daniel Kesserich ended in failure.
I read everything I could find concerning the circumstances surrounding the death of Mary Ellis. Without telling anyone, she had come over to spend an afternoon reading in the pleasant shade of the orchard trees. She had been found lying dead near the new-sprayed tree, a half-eaten orange and her book beside her. Evidently death had overtaken her unexpectedly.
All this told me little.
However, when I interviewed the slightly bruised Mrs. Peterson, she told me that the small rock that had struck her had been a fragment of red sandstone.
CHAPTER 4 - TEMPORARY INTERRUPTION OF A CHURCH SERVICE
I spent the next two days in wandering about the town. I seemed to have exhausted all the obvious and reasonable sources of information. Yet there was something in the atmosphere of the town that hinted at clues just beyond my reach. It seemed to have something to do with the people. A furtive and fearful unrest was the nearest I could come to describing it. There were some definite incidents that seemed to hook up with it but, without the atmosphere, I’d hardly have noticed them.
My second evening in Smithville I passed a little church at dusk. The doors were open and, as I lingered before them, I heard the subdued intonations of the minister’s voice as he announced and commenced to read the lesson from the Old Testament. About halfway through he was interrupted by a muffled shriek from one of the women in the congregation, who pushed her way from her pew and ran down the aisle toward me as though the devil himself were at her heels. She was followed and stopped by a man, evidently her husband, and by two other women who looked equally fearful, although they managed not to scurry. None of them returned to the church.
I found that out because I listened to the rest of the service, hesitatingly resumed, from a seat in the dimly lighted last row. All the way through I got an impression of tension from the people before me. Perhaps it was the way some of them seemed to crouch in their seats, all the while spying about furtively—even in prayer. And there was occasionally just the suggestion of a shudder in the minister’s voice.
When the service was over the members of the congregation didn’t lose any time in getting away, so I had no trouble in being the last one out and in engaging the minister in conversation after he had shook my hand at the door. He was a young man, cultivated, likely new to the town. His hair was dark; his face, thin. His name was Ferguson. When I spoke of the hysterical behavior of the woman he gave me a curious look.
“It was strange,” he agreed. “Everyone’s been jumpy today. I noticed it at choir practice too. And don’t think that sort of concerted feeling doesn’t affect even me. If I were a strict fundamentalist, sir—which I’m not—I’d be inclined to say that the creatures that flew by night in the ruins of Babylon had swooped down here. I mention that, figuratively of course, because it describes the feeling well.”
“The woman’s fright,” I pressed, “couldn’t just possibly have had something to do with what you were reading?”
“Ah… no. I hardly think so. It was just, let me see, the… the thirty-seventh chapter of the book of the prophet Ezekiel. I’ve used it quite often. Ah… well… by the by, you’re a visitor in Smithville, aren’t you, sir?”
“Why, yes,” I admitted, “A friend of Dr. Ellis’s—”
My companion visibly started but immediately recovered himself; what seemed to be a look of puzzlement was on his face.
“Was he a member of your congregation?” I quickly asked.
“Why, yes… yes… I conducted the service at his wife’s funeral.”
I could not be sure in the half darkness, but when I parted from him a little later under the door light, I thought his face had paled.
Before I went to bed that night I took up from my dresser the inevitable Gideon Bible and read through the chapter the minister had mentioned, lingering over certain passages: “… and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones… and, lo, they were very dry… so I prophesied as I was commanded: and, as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.”
And what was it that Ferguson had said about “creatures that flew by night in the ruins of Babylon?”
CHAPTER 5 - EVENTS CONNECTED WITH A BURIAL
Another happening that helped to keep my interest on edge—and it hardly needed helping—was even more cryptic. I was passing down the main street when a woman rushed out of a door, a man holding on to her hand and expostulating with her.
“No, Mr. Posten!” she said wildly, “I’m going to tell them as should know. I got to—”
“Now, now, Miss Harkness,” he argued in a guarded voice that was at once persuasive and compelling. “You shan’t do anything of the sort. You’re just nervous and all you’ll do is cause a lot of excitement. And you know as well as I do that your notion is perfectly ridiculous. Come on, now, before more people see you, and talk it all over with Mrs. Simmons. She knows as well as I do how this work can get on a person’s nerves. Come on, now.”
With a doubtful look she allowed herself to be led back inside.
It was then that I noticed the sign over the door; it read: “Posten and Sons’ Funeral Parlor.”
But from the first something in my mind had connected this little incident with what had happened at the church. That something was the l
ook on the face of the frightened woman. And all the while I had the feeling that other little things were happening around me that I just missed getting in on.
So I kept on wandering. Morning of the third day found me on the grounds of the Smithville Perpetual Nest Cemetery. I chanced upon the sexton, a dour old man, and asked him to direct me to the grave of Mary Ellis. He started guiltily at the name—I was getting used to that reaction—and pointed out the way, following me up with obviously furtive glances.
The grave was partly shaded by two unhealthy eucalyptus trees. The sodded rectangle of ground was already yellowing—hardly in accord with the promises of “Perpetual Care,” I thought. Kneeling up dose in the poor light I read all of the inscription on the headstone; then my eyes wandered down to the flat stone marking the foot. Blocked out in severe lettering on its surface I read the name “Mary.” I started to look away but found my glance turned back to it. There was something queer about it, something twisted… suddenly I realized what it was.
I could see the letters where I stood and I was standing at the head of the grave! All footstones I had ever seen were made to be read from the opposite direction. Here was more evidence of the carelessness of the cemetery attendants! I reached down to turn the stone, hesitated, and rose, calling to the sexton.
He seemed to have difficulty in understanding me.
“What is it?” he shouted.
“Something wrong here,” I sent back rather brusquely.
He dropped the edger with which he had been working on a path and came hurrying.
“I knowed it, I knowed it,” he said breathlessly as he drew up. “For two days I been worrying. I felt in my bones that something was wrong.”
“What did you know? What something?” I questioned sharply.
“O, things I keep rememberin’,” he answered vaguely and again I caught the guilty glance.
