Peculiar Tales

by Ron Miller

  I had pretty much realized by this point that I wasn’t going to make a Lustron porcelain-clad siding sale and began edging toward the door, hoping that whatever it was beyond the window that was exciting Helsinki so much would keep him distracted from me. I threw a final glance through the window and was amazed to see the fireflies still there. Strange fireflies that didn’t blink and, oddest thing of all, still moved about in pairs, like luminous dancing partners. No, I take that back. The oddest thing was that they all seemed to be moving toward the house.

  The moon cleared the last branches and the room was as brilliantly lit as if someone had thrown a switch. I instinctively turned away from the window, toward the walls covered with the gruesome trophies. The hairy, scaley, feathered, armored, brutish faces glowed in the moonlight as though splashed with phosphorescent paint. Then...

  Then they began to change.

  Where there had once been decapitated boars, wolves, cats and God knows what all, there were now the heads of men. Men of all ages and races, their faces filled with fury and...and surprise. And then I realized that there were not only the heads of men but women, too, some of them heart-stoppingly beautiful, others with the faces of degenerate hags. But worst of all were the children...

  I didn’t wait to see any more of that. I bolted through the door, not really bothering to see if it were open or not, and flung myself headlong down the hall toward the front door. The latter was unlocked, thank God, and my car was still where I’d left it. As I wrenched the door open and started to clamber into the front seat I heard shots from the house, then a terrible, terrible wailing. An ululation—if ululation is the word I want—that rose and rose and rose, then collapsed into a horrible gurgle.

  Before I could even begin to imagine what that had been all about, I had the engine started and was half a mile away from that damned house.

  I don’t know how long I drove before I realized that I wasn’t alone in the car. I could hear something breathing softly in the back seat. I glanced into the rear view mirror but whatever it was was hiding behind my seat.

  “Wh-wh-who...?” I managed to croak.

  “Mr. Barrow?”

  It wasn’t a snarl or a hiss or a growl, so I was reassured. In fact, it was a very pleasant voice indeed...which was even more reassuring.

  “Who is it?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer already. As I glanced again in the mirror I saw a pale face rise into the glass. It reminded me, for a terrifying moment, of the moon rising into the window back at the house. But it was who I thought it was: the “ward” I’d met earlier that evening. Her face looked like a hard-boiled egg nestled in black velvet. The only color was in her vast green eyes.

  “It’s me, Mr. Barrow. Mr. Helsinki’s ward...”

  “Yes, of course. Uh, Susi. But what are you doing here?”

  “The same thing you are, Mr. Barrow...escaping that awful house!”

  “You’d better climb into the front seat with me. I have to look at you to talk and if I keep my eyes on the mirror we’re going to get killed because I can tell you right now, I’m not stopping for anything!”

  “I don’t blame you one little bit, Mr. Barrow!” she said as she clambered over the seat back. I was astonished at the grace with which she did that—and maybe a little disappointed at the lack of leg revealed in the process. She seemed to flow over the seat like warm taffy. “Where are we going?”

  “Which way is Helsinki’s place?”

  “Back there,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder.

  “Then we’re going this way,” I replied, pointing straight ahead.

  We didn’t say much to one another after that, but instead drove deeper into the night. It took a couple of hours before either of us calmed down enough to trust our thoughts to words.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Mr. Barrow.”

  “Please, call me Creighton.”

  “Yes...Creighton. It must have been an awful experience for you.”

  “You aren’t just whistling Dixie, baby! What in the hell was that all about?”

  “I guess it was pretty much what Helsinki told you—I was listening at the door, I confess. He was a monomaniac...and a megalomaniac at the same time. A pretty bad combination, I guess.”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, anyway, I was practically a prisoner back there. He...he’d taken me in when my parents were killed.”

  “I’m sorry...”

  “I’m pretty sure he killed them, too.”

  “What? Why?”

  “He’s...he was a collector. I suppose I was just one more specimen for him. I guess he must have thought I was beautiful.”

  She was all of that, all right. For all that he was a nut of the first order, I couldn’t fault him on his taste. I stole a quick glance toward the girl, just to confirm my conclusion that she was the most perfectly beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  We drove along like that for hours, not saying much at all. I started to slow down and pay attention to where I was going as my nerves got back to normal. And as these things happened, I became more and more aware of the girl sitting quietly next to me. I was aware of the almost phosphorescent quality of her pale skin, which was the color of a cup of cream with a single drop of blood stirred into it, of the way her black hair glistened in the light of passing cars and street lamps, but mostly of that sweet, musky scent she had. It was almost unpleasant but never quite crossed that line. Instead, it seemed to get into my head like one of those tunes you hear and can’t shake for days.

  “It must be nearly dawn,” she said. They were the first words she’d spoken in hours and the sound of her voice startled me. I’d forgotten how husky and sibilant it was...or maybe I’d never noticed before. She was right, though. Dead ahead of us the sky was growing light.

  “I suppose it’s about time we thought about where we’re going,” I said. “I haven’t been paying a lot of attention. We must be in the middle of nowhere.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me. All I care about is being as far away as I can get from...from that cage!”

  I wouldn’t have thought it possible to hiss a word that had no S’s in it, but she managed to do it—and the vehemence with which she spit it out startled me. Scared me a little, too. I was a little surprised, too, at her use of the word “cage”. Helsinki had a pretty swank place, as near as I could tell, so “cage” seemed to me a little over-dramatic.

  “I guess I can’t imagine what Helskinki was doing to you back there.”

  “No, no you can’t. Nor what he has done.”

  “He had something to do with your parents’ death,” I said in a sudden flash of inspiration. “Didn’t he?”

  “Yes!” This time the word had an S in it and she used it. “And he forced me to marry him. It was easily done back in the old country. But he didn’t care about me...never loved me. I was nothing but a trophy wife to him. Just another trophy.”

  Well, I had to admit to myself I could hardly blame the man. The girl was a looker, for sure. But that was no reason for anyone to abuse her. There’s never a good excuse for abusing a woman. I’m a gentleman and I know better.

  “He collected were-animals; you know that now. He was obsessed with them and, to the were-world, he became a murderer. No, worse: a serial killer. A mad criminal to be hunted down and eliminated. They were determined to stop him...and finally did, as you saw last night.”

  “But what could all of that have to do with you? I know you’re not a were-something-or-another. I mean, we’ve been driving under a full moon all night and you’re still you.”

  “My dear new friend. If there are were-animals doesn’t it make sense that there must also be were-humans?”

  As she turned to look at me the first rays of the rising sun topped the horizon ahead of us and fell fully onto her face. Her pale skin seemed to become incandescent, like white-hot iron, and for a moment I imagined her face melting in the glare.

  “Good grief!” I said.
“I had no idea that your eyes were so big and round!”

  “All the better to see my handsome new friend!”

  “Your ears, too! I never noticed before how large they were!”

  “All the better to listen to the wonderful things you say to me!”

  “And your mouth...Holy smoke! Your teeth!”

  “Oh, Creighton, all the better to eat with!”

  Fortunately, there was a roadside diner just around the next bend. I wasn’t terribly hungry after everything I’d been through and just picked at my food but Susi ate like a wolf.

  THE BRIDGE

  She had one long, slim leg over the railing when I first spotted her. It was nearly midnight and what with that and the fog rolling over the bridge I would have missed her if I’d been on the other walkway. I trotted over and laid a hand on her arm. She hadn’t heard me coming and turned with a sharp gasp. I spoke before she could.

  “Jesus, lady, you gotta be more careful.”

  She shook her hair out of her face so she could see me. It was very nice hair and a very nice face. And the leg she swung back onto the walk was very nice, too.

  “What the hell is it to you?”

  “Nothing, I guess...”

  “Then why don’t you leave me the hell alone?”

  “I guess it’s just not in me to stand by and let someone have an accident.”

  “This wasn’t going to be no accident.”

  “That’s kind of what I figured. Want to talk about it?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. And what’s it to you, anyway?”

  “Nothing. But what difference is it going to make one way or the other?”

  “You some sort of missionary or something? You trying to save my soul?”

  “Don’t make me laugh. I ain’t got a soul I’m aware of, so I’m in no position to try to save anyone else’s.”

  “Yeah, well, why don’t you just keep on heading toward wherever you were heading and let me get on with my...”

  “Life?”

  “Jesus Christ, mister—if I ain’t got enough problems already...”

  “We all got problems, lady.”

  I pulled out my last two Luckies and handed her one. I lit it for her. In the brief flare of the match her pale face looked as cold and smooth as vanilla ice cream. I sat on the curb and dragged on my butt. There was no traffic. It was late and the bridge went nowhere.

  Behind me, the girl was quiet. Then she said, “I made a mistake... I—I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I—I saw something I shouldn’t have. I talked about it. It—it made some people angry...very angry. They—they want to hurt me. Hurt me real bad.”

  “So jumping off a bridge is an improvement? Kind of like cutting off your nose to spite your face, ain’t it?”

  “Not if you know these people. Better this way. Quicker.” She shuddered. “I know for sure it’d be quicker.”

  “Why not just run? Why not get out of town?”

  “What with? I ain’t got a dime to my name. How far could I get?”

  “I guess I can’t argue with you there. I ain’t had a job in two years. Got a wife and kid back in Oklahoma I ain’t seen in all that time. All I can do is send ‘em a couple a bucks whenever I can get work. It’s been pretty tough.”

  “It’s been tough all over, mister.”

  It was starting to drizzle and I stood up. I had a hat and even if my coat didn’t look like much any more it could still keep me dry. The girl didn’t have a hat or coat. She was shivering in a thin, damp dress and her wet hair looked like butterscotch poured over that ice cream face of hers. She took a final drag on her butt and threw it over the railing.

  “Yeah,” she said again, “it’s been rotten tough.”

  “I’ve had to take whatever I can get,” I told her, “and sometimes I’ve had to do things I ain’t been so proud of.”

  “We all gotta do that sometime, mister, just to stay alive.”

  “Yeah, you gotta do some pretty awful things sometime. Things you ain’t so proud of. Things you don’t ever want your kid to know you had to do to keep ‘em alive.”

  I heard a clock chiming somewhere. I figured it for a church. It must be midnight, I guessed. Time was running out. When I turned back, the girl was leaning over the railing, looking down at the invisible water. Her hair hung around her face like yellow icicles. I couldn’t see her expression, but I didn’t really have to.

  “Life’s only worth living, mister, if you got something to live for.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When you stopped me I was going to die to spite someone. It’s all I got, spite. I ain’t got nothing else. So I guess I got more to die for than live for. You should just keep on walking, mister, and forget you ever saw me. You got enough problems of your own.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  I pulled out the gun they’d given me and shot her behind her right ear. I knew she was going to be dead soon anyway but I didn’t want to lose my fifty bucks.

  INTERVIEW WITH THE MAD SCIENTIST

  That’s sure something you got there,” I told the carny who was lounging in front of a tent festooned with banners proclaiming “See the Monster!” and “Man-Made Freak!” and “Frankenstein Lives!” and which were illuminated by pretty nifty paintings of something that looked like a cross between Boris Karloff and the lead in a high school driver’s ed film. It was just before noon on Thursday and the carnival grounds were practically deserted. I had just covered the arrival of a litter of new dalmatian puppies at Fire Station #3, which was across the street from the open lot where Gluberg’s Grand World-Wide Wonder Fun Fest had set up a couple of days before. The puppy story was set for the Saturday ‘Round ‘Bout Town section so, it being such a swell day, I was in no particular hurry to get back to the paper. I wandered over to see what I could see and maybe promote myself a free hot dog for lunch.

  I was disappointed. Not only was the hot dog stand closed, the whole carnival was like a ghost town—which just made the whole place creepier, and I’d always found carnivals creepy in the first place. They look their best at night and filled with people. In the daytime, deserted but for a couple dozen tough-looking carnies loitering around not doing much of anything in particular except glaring at me from under hooded, half-hostile, half-indifferent eyes, the carnival look tawdry and threadbare and inexpressibly sad. I was beginning to be sorry I came in.

  I naturally gravitated to the midway and its row of assorted freak shows since that sort of thing has always fascinated me. Armadillo Boy, Rubber Girl, The Human Paper Clip, Lobster Man, The Girl with Two-and-a-Half Heads, Two-Ton Tallulah, Blister Boy, Cellophane Man—they were all there. I strolled past their tents, scanning the gaudy banners as though I were going through the pages of my high school yearbook, gazing fondly at the faces of old friends because you know you’ve done pretty well and they’re just twenty-dollar-a-week shoe store clerks. The Man-Made Freak stopped me, though. That was a new one. God only knew what was behind the banner, since I knew perfectly well there was no particular compunction on the part of a freak show to deliver what its banners promise. The Cobra Woman, after all, was more likely to be some poor eczema sufferer than a creature discovered at the headwaters of the Amazon. I was no greenhorn.

  Another reason I stopped was because of the man sitting on the edge of the platform. All the other freak shows appeared to be deserted, so seeing someone at all caught my attention. At least, I thought, here was someone to talk to. Maybe, with both of us having a little time on our hands, I might be able to get a story out of him. It’d sure beat going back uptown and squeezing out six column inches about dalmatian puppies. I figured any carny ought to have plenty of good stories, even if that notion is in fact contrary to my actual experience. Every carny I’d ever talked to turned out to have a life no more interesting than the average bobby soxer down at the five and dime. Still, hope springs eternal—especially with the dalmatian puppy story facing me—so I strolled over, tipped my hat onto the b
ack of my head, hooked my thumb at the banner behind the fellow and said, “That sure looks like something you got there, mister.”

  He’d looked up as I approached and smiled. A handsome fellow and youngish—looked like a college boy, which I figured he probably was, working for the summer. Athletic-looking, too, but not big—not a football player or anything like that. I figured him for the rowing team. It’d go with those Frank Merriwell good looks he had. He was probably a real sheik with the ladies.

  “Sure is,” he replied. “Wanta see ‘im? Only cost you a dime.”

  I told him, sure, I wanted to see the Man-Made Freak, who wouldn’t? He hopped down beside me with a kind of lazy grace and dusted off the seat of his trousers. A boxer, maybe, I thought, or a track and field man.

  “Haven’t had many folks out this early,” he continued. “Most of the shows aren’t even set up yet. Everyone’s sleepin’ in or havin’ a late breakfast. Thursday’s are always pretty dead. Things don’t pick up much until after dark.”

  “Yeah, I noticed there’s not much action around here.”

  “Nope. Dead as a doornail.”

  He turned toward me as we reached the flap that covered the entrance. He looked expectant so I fished out a dime and handed it over. He flipped it, caught it and stuck it into a pocket without a word.

  He held the canvas flap aside and I went in. It was dark inside and much too warm. I had expected the smell of rotten straw and mildew and urine, and there was that but there was something else, too. Something like old meat and stale vomit. As my eyes adjusted I saw a low platform in the back of the tent with a tall folding screen set up on it. Standing next to it, the handsome young talker was reciting his spiel.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said with all the practiced indifference of a phonograph, “boys and girls. You are about to witness one of the greatest, most awe-inspiring, most bone-chilling wonders of this or any other world! The awful fruit of science gone wrong, the original, the one and only...Frankenstein!” And with that he pulled the screen aside.

  Well, what he revealed sure lived up to the advertising, which surprised the hell out of me, I got to admit. In fact, I was not a little sorry that it did because it was no doubt the most awful thing I’d ever seen and being a correspondent during the recent unpleasantness in Europe I’d seen some pretty godawful stuff.