But they’re not psychiatric cases. It really happened.
So if they’re not psychiatric cases, what does that make you and me? Blind men?
I’ll tell you something else, Milt: meeting Al reminded me of what Cissie once said before the whole thing with My Boat but after we’d become friends enough for me to ask her what had brought her out of the hospital. I didn’t ask it like that and she didn’t answer it like that, but what it boiled down to was that sooner or later, at every place she visited, she’d meet a bleeding man with wounds in his hands and feet who would tell her, “Cissie, go back, you’re needed; Cissie, go back, you’re needed.” I was fool enough to ask her if he was a white man or a black man. She just glared at me and walked away. Now wounds in the hands and feet, you don’t have to look far to tell what that means to a Christian Bible-raised girl. What I wonder is: will she meet Him again, out there among the stars? If things get bad enough for black power or women’s liberation, or even for people who write crazy books, I don’t know what, will My Boat materialize over Times Square or Harlem or East New York with an Ethiopian warrior-queen in it and Sir Francis Drake Coppolino, and God-only-knows-what kind of weapons from the lost science of Atlantis? I tell you, I wouldn’t be surprised. I really wouldn’t. I only hope He—or Cissie’s idea of Him—decides that things are still okay, and they can go on visiting all those places in Al Coppolino’s book. I tell you, I hope that book is a long book.
Still, if I could do it again.…
Milt, it is not a story. It happened. For instance, tell me one thing, how did she know the name Nofretari? That’s the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, that’s how we all learned it, but how could she know the real name decades, literally decades, before anybody else? And Saba? That’s real, too. And Benin? We didn’t have any courses in African History in Central High, not in 1952! And what about the double-headed ax of the Cretans at Knossos? Sure, we read about Crete in high school, but nothing in our history books ever told us about the matriarchy or the labrys, that’s the name of the ax. Milt, I tell you, there is even a women’s lib bookstore in Manhattan called—
Have it your own way.
Oh, sure. She wasn’t black; she was green. It’d make a great TV show. Green, blue, and rainbow-colored. I’m sorry, Milty, I know you’re my agent and you’ve done a lot of work for me and I haven’t sold much lately. I’ve been reading. No, nothing you’d like: existentialism, history, Marxism, some Eastern stuff—
Sorry, Milt, but we writers do read every once in a while. It’s this little vice we have. I’ve been trying to dig deep, like Al Coppolino, though maybe in a different way.
Okay, so you want to have this Martian, who wants to invade Earth, so he turns himself into a beautiful tanned girl with long, straight blonde hair, right? And becomes a high-school student in a rich school in Westchester. And this beautiful blonde girl Martian has to get into all the local organizations like the women’s consciousness-raising groups and the encounter therapy stuff and the cheerleaders and the kids who push dope, so he—she, rather—can learn about the Earth mentality. Yeah. And of course she has to seduce the principal and the coach and all the big men on campus, so we can make it into a series, even a sitcom maybe; each week this Martian falls in love with an Earthman or she tries to do something to destroy Earth or blow up something, using Central High for a base. Can I use it? Sure I can! It’s beautiful. It’s right in my line. I can work in everything I just told you. Cissie was right not to take me along; I’ve got spaghetti where my backbone should be.
Nothing. I didn’t say anything. Sure. It’s a great idea. Even if we only get a pilot out of it.
No, Milt, honestly, I really think it has this fantastic spark. A real touch of genius. It’ll sell like crazy. Yeah, I can manage an idea sheet by Monday. Sure. “The Beautiful Menace from Mars”? Uh-huh. Absolutely. It’s got sex, it’s got danger, comedy, everything; we could branch out into the lives of the teachers, the principal, the other kids’ parents. Bring in contemporary problems like drug abuse. Sure. Another Peyton Place. I’ll even move to the West Coast again. You are a genius.
Oh, my God.
Nothing. Keep on talking. It’s just—see that little skinny kid in the next booth down? The one with the stuck-out ears and the old-fashioned haircut? You don’t? Well, I think you’re just not looking properly, Milt. Actually I don’t think I was, either; he must be one of the Met extras, you know, they come out sometimes during the intermission: all that Elizabethan stuff, the plum-colored cloak, the calf-high boots, the silver-and-black. As a matter of fact, I just remembered—the Met moved uptown a couple of years ago, so he couldn’t be dressed like that, could he?
You still can’t see him? I’m not surprised. The light’s very bad in here. Listen, he’s an old friend—I mean he’s the son of an old friend—I better go over and say hello, I won’t be a minute.
Milt, this young man is important! I mean he’s connected with somebody very important. Who? One of the biggest and best producers in the world, that’s who! He—uh—they—wanted me to—you might call it do a script for them, yeah. I didn’t want to at the time, but—
No, no, you stay right here. I’ll just sort of lean over and say hello. You keep on talking about the Beautiful Menace from Mars; I can listen from there; I’ll just tell him they can have me if they want me.
Your ten percent? Of course you’ll get your ten percent. You’re my agent, aren’t you? Why, if it wasn’t for you, I just possibly might not have— Sure, you’ll get your ten percent. Spend it on anything you like: ivory, apes, peacocks, spices, and Lebanese cedarwood!
All you have to do is collect it.
But keep on talking, Milty, won’t you? Somehow I want to go over to the next booth with the sound of your voice in my ears. Those beautiful ideas. So original. So creative. So true. Just what the public wants. Of course there’s a difference in the way people perceive things, and you and I, I think we perceive them differently, you know? Which is why you are a respected, successful agent and I—well, let’s skip it. It wouldn’t be complimentary to either of us.
Huh? Oh, nothing. I didn’t say anything. I’m listening. Over my shoulder. Just keep on talking while I say hello and my deepest and most abject apologies, Sir Alan Coppolino. Heard the name before, Milt? No? I’m not surprised.
You just keep on talking.…
* Originally published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1976.
Sticks*
KARL EDWARD WAGNER
I
The lashed-together framework of sticks jutted from a small cairn alongside the stream. Colin Leverett studied it in perplexment—half a dozen odd lengths of branch, wired together at cross angles for no fathomable purpose. It reminded him unpleasantly of some bizarre crucifix, and he wondered what might lie beneath the cairn.
It was the spring of 1942—the kind of day to make the War seem distant and unreal, although the draft notice waited on his desk. In a few days Leverett would lock his rural studio, wonder if he would see it again—be able to use its pens and brushes and carving tools when he did return. It was goodby to the woods and streams of upstate New York, too. No fly rods, no tramps through the countryside in Hitler’s Europe. No point in putting off fishing that trout stream he had driven past once, exploring back roads of the Otselic Valley.
Mann Brook—so it was marked on the old Geological Survey map—ran southeast of DeRuyter. The unfrequented country road crossed over a stone bridge old before the first horseless carriage, but Leverett’s Ford eased across and onto the shoulder. Taking fly rod and tackle, he included pocket flask and tied an iron skillet to his belt. He’d work his way downstream a few miles. By afternoon he’d lunch on fresh trout, maybe some bullfrog legs.
It was a fine clear stream, though difficult to fish as dense bushes hung out from the bank, broken with stretches of open water hard to work without being seen. But the trout rose boldly to his fly, and Leverett was in fine spirits.
From the bridge the vall
ey along Mann Brook began as fairly open pasture, but half a mile downstream the land had fallen into disuse and was thick with second-growth evergreens and scrub-apple trees. Another mile, and the scrub merged with dense forest, which continued unbroken. The land here, he had learned, had been taken over by the state many years back.
As Leverett followed the stream he noted the remains of an old railroad embankment. No vestige of tracks or ties—only the embankment itself, overgrown with large trees. The artist rejoiced in the beautiful dry-wall culverts spanning the stream as it wound through the valley. To his mind it seemed eerie, this forgotten railroad running straight and true through virtual wilderness.
He could imagine an old wood-burner with its conical stack, steaming along through the valley dragging two or three wooden coaches. It must be a branch of the old Oswego Midland Rail Road, he decided, abandoned rather suddenly in the 1870s. Leverett, who had a memory for detail, knew of it from a story his grandfather told of riding the line in 1871 from Otselic to DeRuyter on his honeymoon. The engine had so labored up the steep grade over Crumb Hill that he got off to walk alongside. Probably that sharp grade was the reason for the line’s abandonment.
When he came across a scrap of board nailed to several sticks set into a stone wall, his darkest thought was that it might read “No Trespassing.” Curiously, though the board was weathered featureless, the nails seemed quite new. Leverett scarcely gave it much thought, until a short distance beyond he came upon another such contrivance. And another.
Now he scratched at the day’s stubble on his long jaw. This didn’t make sense. A prank? But on whom? A child’s game? No, the arrangement was far too sophisticated. As an artist, Leverett appreciated the craftsmanship of the work—the calculated angles and lengths, the designed intricacy of the maddeningly inexplicable devices. There was something distinctly uncomfortable about their effect.
Leverett reminded himself that he had come here to fish and continued downstream. But as he worked around a thicket he again stopped in puzzlement.
Here was a small open space with more of the stick lattices and an arrangement of flat stones laid out on the ground. The stones—likely taken from one of the many dry-wall culverts—made a pattern maybe twenty by fifteen feet, that at first glance resembled a ground plan for a house. Intrigued, Leverett quickly saw that this was not so. If the ground plan for anything, it would have to be for a small maze.
The bizarre lattice structures were all around. Sticks from trees and bits of board nailed together in fantastic array. They defied description; no two seemed alike. Some were only one or two sticks lashed together in parallel or at angles. Others were worked into complicated lattices of dozens of sticks and boards. One could have been a child’s tree house—it was built in three planes, but was so abstract and useless that it could be nothing more than an insane conglomeration of sticks and wire. Sometimes the contrivances were stuck in a pile of stones or a wall, maybe thrust into the railroad embankment or nailed to a tree.
It should have been ridiculous. It wasn’t. Instead it seemed somehow sinister—these utterly inexplicable, meticulously constructed lattices spread through a wilderness where only a tree-grown embankment or a forgotten stone wall gave evidence that man had ever passed through. Leverett forgot about trout and frog legs, instead dug into his pockets for a notebook and stub of pencil. Busily he began to sketch the more intricate structures. Perhaps someone could explain them; perhaps there was something to their insane complexity that warranted closer study for his own work.
Leverett was roughly two miles from the bridge when he came upon the ruins of a house. It was an unlovely colonial farmhouse, box-shaped and gambrel-roofed, fast falling into the ground. Windows were dark and empty; the chimneys on either end looked ready to topple. Rafters showed through open spaces in the roof, and the weathered boards of the walls had in places rotted away to reveal hewn timber beams. The foundation was stone and disproportionately massive. From the size of the unmortared stone blocks, its builder had intended the foundation to stand forever.
The house was nearly swallowed up by undergrowth and rampant lilac bushes, but Leverett could distinguish what had been a lawn with imposing shade trees. Farther back were gnarled and sickly apple trees and an overgrown garden where a few lost flowers still bloomed—wan and serpentine from years in the wild. The stick lattices were everywhere—the lawn, the trees, even the house, were covered with the uncanny structures. They reminded Leverett of a hundred misshapen spiderwebs—grouped so closely together as to almost ensnare the entire house and clearing. Wondering, he sketched page on page of them, as he cautiously approached the abandoned house.
He wasn’t certain just what he expected to find inside. The aspect of the farmhouse was frankly menacing, standing as it did in gloomy desolation where the forest had devoured the works of man—where the only sign that man had been here in this century were these insanely wrought latticeworks of sticks and board. Some might have turned back at this point. Leverett, whose fascination for the macabre was evident in his art, instead was intrigued. He drew a rough sketch of the farmhouse and the grounds, overrun with the enigmatic devices, with thickets of hedges and distorted flowers. He regretted that it might be years before he could capture the eeriness of this place on scratchboard or canvas.
The door was off its hinges, and Leverett gingerly stepped within, hoping that the flooring remained sound enough to bear even his sparse frame. The afternoon sun pierced the empty windows, mottling the decaying floorboards with great blotches of light. Dust drifted in the sunlight. The house was empty—stripped of furnishings other than indistinct tangles of rubble mounded over with decay and the drifted leaves of many seasons.
Someone had been here, and recently. Someone who had literally covered the mildewed walls with diagrams of the mysterious lattice structures. The drawings were applied directly to the walls, crisscrossing the rotting wallpaper and crumbling plaster in bold black lines. Some of vertiginous complexity covered an entire wall like a mad mural. Others were small, only a few crossed lines, and reminded Leverett of cuneiform glyphics.
His pencil hurried over the pages of his notebook. Leverett noted with fascination that a number of the drawings were recognizable as schematics of lattices he had earlier sketched. Was this then the planning room for the madman or educated idiot who had built these structures? The gouges etched by the charcoal into the soft plaster appeared fresh—done days or months ago, perhaps.
A darkened doorway opened into the cellar. Were there drawings there as well? And what else? Leverett wondered if he should dare it. Except for streamers of light that crept through cracks in the flooring, the cellar was in darkness.
“Hello?” he called. “Anyone here?” It didn’t seem silly just then. These stick lattices hardly seemed the work of a rational mind. Leverett wasn’t enthusiastic with the prospect of encountering such a person in this dark cellar. It occurred to him that virtually anything might transpire here, and no one in the world of 1942 would ever know.
And that in itself was too great a fascination for one of Leverett’s temperament. Carefully he started down the cellar stairs. They were stone and thus solid, but treacherous with moss and debris.
The cellar was enormous—even more so in the darkness. Leverett reached the foot of the steps and paused for his eyes to adjust to the damp gloom. An earlier impression recurred to him. The cellar was too big for the house. Had another dwelling stood here originally—perhaps destroyed and rebuilt by one of lesser fortune? He examined the stonework. Here were great blocks of gneiss that might support a castle. On closer look they reminded him of a fortress—for the dry-wall technique was startlingly Mycenaean.
Like the house above, the cellar appeared to be empty, although without light Leverett could not be certain what the shadows hid. There seemed to be darker areas of shadow along sections of the foundation wall, suggesting openings to chambers beyond. Leverett began to feel uneasy in spite of himself.
There
was something here—a large table-like bulk in the center of the cellar. Where a few ghosts of sunlight drifted down to touch its edges, it seemed to be of stone. Cautiously he crossed the stone paving to where it loomed—waist-high, maybe eight feet long and less wide. A roughly shaped slab of gneiss, he judged, and supported by pillars of unmortared stone. In the darkness he could only get a vague conception of the object. He ran his hand along the slab. It seemed to have a groove along its edge.
His groping fingers encountered fabric, something cold and leathery and yielding. Mildewed harness, he guessed in distaste.
Something closed on his wrist, set icy nails into his flesh.
Leverett screamed and lunged away with frantic strength. He was held fast, but the object on the stone slab pulled upward.
A sickly beam of sunlight came down to touch one end of the slab. It was enough. As Leverett struggled backward and the thing that held him heaved up from the stone table, its face passed through the beam of light.
It was a lich’s face—desiccated flesh tight over its skull. Filthy strands of hair were matted over its scalp, tattered lips were drawn away from broken yellowed teeth, and, sunken in their sockets, eyes that should be dead were bright with hideous life.
Leverett screamed again, desperate with fear. His free hand clawed the iron skillet tied to his belt. Ripping it loose, he smashed at the nightmarish face with all his strength.
For one frozen instant of horror the sunlight let him see the skillet crush through the mould-eaten forehead like an axe—cleaving the dry flesh and brittle bone. The grip on his wrist failed. The cadaverous face fell away, and the sight of its caved-in forehead and unblinking eyes from between which thick blood had begun to ooze would awaken Leverett from nightmare on countless nights.
Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos Page 53
