The Year's Best Horror Stories 4

by Gerald W. Page (Ed. )

  "A parallel dimension, eh?" George said, feeling strangely nervous.

  "Right." His passenger nodded emphatically. "That's the way I see it."

  Humoring him, George asked, "What's it like, this other world of yours?"

  "Why, it's just like this world—except that there's a village called Middle Hamborough, and a house on a hill, and a building firm called Milton, Jones & Kent. There are probably other differences, too, but I haven't found any yet to concern me. Do you know the theory of parallel worlds?"

  "I've read some science-fiction," George guardedly answered. "Some of these other dimensions, or whatever they're supposed to be, are just like this world. Maybe a few odd differences, like you say. Others are different, completely different. Horrible and alien—stuff like that." He suddenly felt stupid. "That's what I've read, anyway. Load of rubbish!"

  "Rubbish?" Kent grunted, stirring in his seat. "I wish it were. But, anyway, you've got the right idea. Why are you stopping?"

  "See that sign?" George said, pointing through the windshield to where the headlights lit up a village name board. "Meadington, just a few miles down the road. We're through Meadington in about five minutes. Then we turn left where it's signposted Middle Hamborough. Another five minutes after that and we're at High House. You said it would be worth my while?"

  Now comes the crunch, George told himself. This is where the idiot bursts out laughing—and that's when I brain him!

  But Kent didn't laugh. Instead he got out his checkbook, and George switched on the interior light to watch him write a note for . . .

  George's eyes bulged as he saw the numbers go down on the crisp paper. First a one, followed by three zeros! One thousand pounds! "This won't bounce?" he asked suspiciously, his hand trembling as he reached for the check.

  "It won't bounce," said Kent, folding the note and tucking it into his pocket. "Fortunately, my money was good for this world, too. You get it when we get to High House."

  "You have a deal," George told him, putting the car in gear. They drove through slumbering Meadington, its roofs and hedges silvered in a moonlight that shone through the promise of a mist. Leaving the village behind, the car sped along the country road, but after a few minutes George again pulled into the curb and stopped. His passenger had slumped down in his seat.

  "Are you OK?" George asked.

  "There's no turnoff," Kent sobbed. "We should have passed it before now. I've driven down this road a thousand, ten thousand times in the last fifteen years, and tonight it's just the same as it always is. There's no turnoff, no signpost to Middle Hamborough!"

  "Yeah." George chewed his lip, unwilling to accept defeat so easily. "We must have missed it. It wasn't this far out of Meadington last time." He turned the big car about, driving onto the grass verge to do so, then headed back toward Meadington.

  George was angry now and more than a little puzzled. He'd been watching for that signpost as keenly as his passenger. How the hell could they have missed it? No matter, this time he'd drive dead-slow. He knew the road was there, for he'd been down it and back once already tonight!

  Sure enough, with the first of Meadingtons' roofs glimmering silver in the near-distance a dilapidated signpost suddenly showed up in the beam of the car's lights. It pointed across the tarmac to where the surface of a second road ribboned away into the milky moonlight, a sign whose legend, though grimy, was nevertheless amply legible: Middle Hamborough.

  And quite as suddenly George Benson's passenger was sitting bolt upright in his seat, his whole body visibly trembling while his eyes stood out like organ stops, staring madly at the signpost. "Middle Hamborough!" he cried, his voice pitched so high it almost broke. And again: "Middle Hamborough, Middle Hamborough!"

  "Sure," said George, an unnatural chill racing up his spine. "I told you I could find it!" And to himself he added, But I'm damned if I know how we missed it the first time!

  He turned onto the new road, noticing the second signpost at his right as he did so. That was the one they'd missed. Perhaps it had been in the shadows; but in any case, what odds? They were on the right road now.

  Kent's trembling had stopped, and his voice was quite steady when he said, "You really don't know how much I owe you, Mr. Smith. You shall have your check, of course, but if it were for a million pounds, it wouldn't really be enough." His face was dark in the car's interior, and his silhouette looked different somehow.

  George said, "You realize that fat Harvey's been having you on all this time, don't you?" His voice became quite gentle as he added, "You know, you really ought to see someone about it, about all . . . this, I mean. People can take advantage of you. Harvey could have brought you here anytime he wanted."

  Suddenly Kent laughed, a young laugh that had the merest trace of weary hysteria in it. "Oh, you don't know the half of it, do you, Mr. Smith? Can't you get it through your head that I'm not mad and no one is trying to make a fool of you? This is all real. My story is the truth. I was lost in an alien dimension, in your world, but now I'm finally back in my own. You may believe me, Mr. Smith, that you have earned your thousand pounds!"

  George was almost convinced. Certainly Kent was sincere enough. "Well, OK—whatever you say. But I'll tell you something, Mr. Kent. If that check of yours bounces when I try to cash it tomorrow, I'll be back, and you better believe I'll find High House again!"

  The silhouette turned in its seat in an attitude of concern. "Do me a favor, will you, Mr. Smith? If—just if, you understand—if you can't find the road back to Meadington, don't hesitate to—"

  George cut him off with a short bark of a laugh. "You must be joking! I'll find it, all right." His voice went hard again. "And I'll find you, too, if—"

  But he paused as, at the top of the next low hill, the headlights illuminated a house standing above the road at the end of a winding drive. George's passenger suddenly gripped his elbow in terrific excitement. "High House!" Kent cried, his voice wild and exultant. "High House! You've done it!"

  George granted in answer, revving the car down into the valley and up the hill to pull it to a halt outside the wrought-iron gates. He reached across to catch hold of his passenger's coat as Kent tried to scramble from the car. "Kent!"

  "Oh, yes, your check," said the young man, turning to smile at George in the yellow light from the little lamp on the gate . . .

  George's jaw dropped. Oh, this was Kent, all right. Little doubt about that. Same features, same suit (though it hung a little baggily on him now), same trembling hand that reached into a pocket to bring out the folded check and place it in George's suddenly clammy hand. But it was a hand that trembled now in excitement and not frustrated but undying hope, and it was a Kent fifteen years younger.

  One thousand pounds, and at last George knew that he had indeed earned it!

  Kent turned and threw open the gates, racing up the drive like a wild man. In the house, lights were starting to go on. George fingered the check unbelievingly and ran his tongue over dry lips. His mind seemed to have frozen over, so that only one phrase kept repeating in his brain. It was something Kent had said: "If you can't find the road back to—"

  He gunned the motor, spinning the car wildly around in a spray of gravel. Up on the hill at the top of the drive, Kent was vaulting the fence, and a figure in white was waiting in the garden for him, open arms held wide. George tore his eyes away from them and roared down the hill, as for the second time that night, he headed for the Meadington road.

  The check lay on the empty passenger seat now where he'd dropped it, and money was quite the last thing in George's mind as he drove his car in an unreasoning panic, leaping the low hills like some demon hurdler as he tried to make it back to the main road before—before what? A hideous doubt was blossoming in his mind, growing like some evil genie from a bottle and taking on a horrible form. All those stories about queer dislocations of space and time—the signpost for Middle Hamborough that was, then wasn't, then was again—and, of course, Kent's story, and his . . . r
ejuvenation?

  "I will be very glad," George told himself out loud, "when I reach that junction just outside of Meadington!" For one thing, he could have sworn that it wasn't this much of a drive. He should surely have been there by now. Ah, yes, this would be it coming up now, just around this slight bend . . .

  No junction!

  The road stretched straight on ahead, narrow and suddenly ominous in the sweeping beam of his lights. All right, so the junction was a little farther than he'd reckoned. George put his foot down even harder to send the big car racing along the narrow road. The miles flew by without a single signpost or junction, and a ground mist came in that forced George to slow down. He would have done so anyway, for now the road seemed to be exerting a strange pull on his car. The big motor felt as if it were slowing down! George's heart almost leaped into his mouth. There couldn't be anything wrong with the car, could there?

  Braking to a halt and switching off the car's engine and lights, George climbed out of the driver's seat. He breathed the damp night air. On unpleasantly rubbery legs he walked around to the front of the car and lifted the hood. An inspection light came on and he cast a quick, practiced glance over the motor. No, he'd worked in a garage for many years and he knew a good motor when he saw one. Nothing wrong with the car, so—

  As he straightened up, George felt an unaccustomed suction on his shoes and glanced down at the road. The surface was rubbery, formed of a sort of tough sponge. A worried frown crossed George's face as he bent to feel that peculiar surface. He'd never seen a road surfaced with stuff like that before!

  It was as he straightened up again that he heard the tinkling, like the sound of tiny bells from somewhere off the road. Yes, there set back from the road, he could see a row of low squat houses, like great mushrooms partly obscured by the mist that swirled now in strange currents. The tinkling came from the houses.

  The outskirts of a village? George wondered. Well, at least he'd be able to get directions. He stepped off the road onto turf and made for the houses, only slowing down when he saw how featureless and alike they all looked. The queer tinkling went on, sounding like the gentle noises the hangings on a Christmas tree make in a draft. Other than that there was only the billowing mist and the darkness.

  Reaching the first house, stepping very slowly now, George came up close to the wall and stared at it. It was gray, featureless. All the houses looked alike. They were indeed like enormous mushrooms. No windows. Overhanging roofs. Flaps of sorts that could be doors, or there again—

  The tinkling had stopped. Very carefully George reached out and touched the wall in front of him. It felt warm . . . and it crept beneath his fingers!

  Deliberately and slowly George turned about and forced one foot out in front of the other. He fought the urge to look back over his shoulder until, halfway to the mist-wreathed car, he heard an odd plopping sound behind him. It was like the ploop you get throwing a handful of mud into a pond. He froze with his back still to the houses.

  Quite suddenly he felt sure that his ears were enlarging, stretching back and up to form saucerlike receivers on top of his head. Everything he had went into those ears, and all of it was trying to tune in on what was going on behind him. He didn't turn, but simply stood still; and again there was only the utter silence, loud in his strangely sensitized ears. He forced his dead feet to take a few more paces forward—and sure enough the sound came again, repeating this time: ploop, ploop, ploop!

  George slowly pivoted on his heel as muscles he never knew he had began to jump in his face. The noises, each ploop sounding closer than the last, stopped immediately. His legs felt like twin columns of jelly, but he somehow completed his turn. He stumbled spastically then, arms flailing to keep himself from falling. The nearest house, or cottage, or whatever, was right there behind him, within arm's reach!

  Suddenly George's heart, which he was sure had stopped forever, became audible again inside him, banging away in his chest like a trip hammer. All in one movement he turned and bounded for the car, wondering why with each leap he should stay so long in the air, knowing that in fact his body was moving like greased lightning while his mind (in an even greater hurry, one his body couldn't even attempt to match) thought he was in reverse!

  Not bothering, not daring to look back again, he almost wrenched the car door from its hinges as he threw himself into the driving seat. Then, in an instant that lasted several centuries, his hand was on the ignition key and the engine was roaring. As he spun the car about in a squeal of tortured tires and accelerated up the rubbery road, he looked in his rear-view mirror—and immediately wished he hadn't!

  The "houses" were all plooping down the road after him—like great greedy frogs—and their "doors" were wide open!

  George nearly went off the road then, wrenching at the wheel with clammy hands as he fought to control his careening car on the peculiar surface. A million monstrous thoughts raced through his head as he climbed up through the gears. For of course he knew now for certain that he was trapped in an alien dimension, that the space-time elastic had snapped back into place behind him, stranding him here. Wherever "here" was!

  It was only several miles later that he thought to slow down, and only then after passing a junction on the right and a signpost saying: Middle Hamborough 5 1/2 Miles. His heart gave a wild leap as he skidded to a halt on a once-more perfectly normal tarmac road. Why, that sign meant that just half a mile up the road in front he'd find Meadington, and beyond Meadington . . . Bankhead and the Ml!

  Except that Meadington wasn't there . . . Instead, the mist came up again and, worse, the road went rubbery. And no sign of Meadington. When he saw a row of mushroom "houses" standing back from the road, George did an immediate, violent about-turn, rocking the car dangerously on the rubber road. Trouble with this weird surface was that it gave too much damn traction.

  Amazing that he could still think such mundane thoughts in a situation like this. And yet, through all this protracted nightmare, a ray of hope still shone. The road to Middle Hamborough!

  Back there, down that road, there was a house on a hill and beyond that a real, if slightly different, world. A world where at least two of the inhabitants owed him a break. From what Kent had told him, it seemed to George that the other world wasn't much different from his own. He could make a go of things there. He gunned his motor back down the road and out of the mist, back onto a decent tarmac surface and into normally dark night, turning left at the leaning signpost onto the now familiar road to Middle Hamborough.

  Or was it familiar?

  The hedges bordering the road were different somehow, taller, hiding the fields beyond them from the car's probing headlights, and the road seemed narrower than George remembered it. But that must be his imagination acting up after the terrific shocks of the last ten minutes; it had to be, for this was the road to Middle Hamborough. Then, cresting the next hill, suddenly George felt that hellish drag of his tires, and his headlights began to do battle with a thickening, swirling mist. At the same time he saw the house atop the next hill, the house set back off the road at the head of a long winding drive. High House!

  There were no lights on in the place now, but it was George's refuge nonetheless. Hadn't Kent told him to come back here if he couldn't find his way back to Meadington? George gave a whoop of relief as he swept down into the shallow valley and up the hill toward the wrought-iron roadside gates. They were still open, as Kent had left them; and as he slowed down fractionally, George swung the wheel to the left, turning his car in through the gates. They weren't quite open all the way, though, so that the front of the car slammed them back on their hinges.

  Up the drive the front lights of the house instantly came on; two of them that glowed yellow as though shutters had been quickly opened—or lids lifted! George had no time to note anything else—except perhaps that the drive was very white, not the white of gravel but more of leprous flesh—for at that point the car simply stopped as if it had run head-on into a brick wall!
George wasn't belted in. He rose up over the steering wheel and crashed through the windshield, automatically turning his shoulder to the glass.

  He hit the drive in a shower of glass fragments, screaming and expecting the impact to hurt. It didn't, and then George knew why the car had stopped like that: the drive was as soft and sticky as hot toffee! And it wasn't a drive!

  Behind George the wide fleshy ribbon tasted the car and, rising up, flicked it easily to one side. Then it tasted George. He had time to scream, barely, and time for one more quite mundane thought—that this wasn't where Kent lived—before that great white chameleon tongue slithered him up the hill to the house, whose entire front below the yellow windows opened up to receive him.

  Shortly thereafter the lights went slowly out again, as if someone had lowered shutters, or as if lids had fallen . . .

  THE LOVECRAFT CONTROVERSY—WHY? by E. Hoffmann Price

  Several recent biographies have dealt with H. P. Lovecraft, that enigmatic figure many consider the leading writer of horror stories in this century. In particular, two of these biographies, one by that consummate scholar L. Sprague de Camp, and the other by Frank Belknap Long, who was one of Lovecraft's closest friends have attracted attention. A controversy sprang up over some of de Camp's statements. Many felt that de Camp did not like Lovecraft very much, while others have suggested that de Camp came from the wrong sort of background to understand a man of Lovecraft's complexity. In this sort of atmosphere, it was perhaps inevitable that when Long's more leisurely and personal reminiscences appeared, many of de Camp's critics would point to the Long book as more fair. In the following article, E. Hoffman Price comes to another conclusion.

  Born in 1898, E. Hoffman Price sold to Weird Tales Magazine as early as 1924. He was a close friend of that magazine's legendary editor, Farnsworth Wright, and with many of its leading writers, including H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. In the 1930's he was one of the top fiction writers in America, selling to most of the leading magazines. Today he lives near San Francisco, where he wrote this article just before taking off alone on an automobile trip around the country to visit old friends and autograph copies of his recent book Far Lands Other Days (Carcosa).