The cold hit him like a wave, but it was stimulating. It also helped clear his mind of the thing that had been bugging him for some time.
The nerve gas had smelled like cherries. And the goddamned sweet smell that had gone along with the two bizarre incidents he’d had this morning had been, yes, the smell of cherries.
But, he told himself, there was no connection. There could be no logical connection. He’d probably imagined the smell, due to some odd mental association. It was the kind of thing that could weigh on a person’s mind—if you let it. Taylor would not be fool enough to let it.
Before he went back to his car, Taylor walked behind the trailers to the rear of the lot and on into the small stand of cattails. Outside of a few broken stems from the shotgun blast, there were no traces of the thing he’d seen. Of course there weren’t. On his way back he checked each of the trailers, but all were completely empty, or closed, with their small aluminum seals intact.
He walked through the pale moonlight, back to the old Chevy. He started the car and ran the engine for a while to get the heater up, then called in and took a mild chewing-out from the dispatcher. He let the engine run until the car was good and hot, then settled back to watch the lot.
A half hour, the moon rose a little higher in the sky, a funny moon, near full, looking as if someone had just cut a thin sliver off the edge. He saw Stahl leave the terminal and drive away, and fought down the sudden sense of loneliness.
An hour. He checked in. Everything 10-2, 10-4.
Soon it was early morning. A faint trace of frost, unpleasantly like a face, etched across the window. Taylor started the engine, turned on the defroster, melted it away.
He felt fairly confident that the trickster, whoever, had gone home for the night. Taylor slipped into a half-doze, the images of old girl friends, each with their unique, ah, qualities, coming, as inevitably they did at this hour of the morning. He heard a train pass, and perhaps did fall into a doze momentarily.
Suddenly he was wide awake. The wind had come up, the moon a shade lower. He saw something white. Something large, winged, grotesque, shuffling across the parking lot toward his car.
This was too much. He could only watch it. Suddenly it rushed forward, leaped into the air . . .
Taylor found himself clutching the seat, looking at the open newspaper plastered across the windshield.
The newspaper blew away. One thing about it he had not noticed. The date on the paper had been 1949. November 22, 1949, thirty-two years to the day.
Taylor sighed, reached for the whiskey under the seat. This shift had gotten on his nerves a bit, but it would only be a couple of hours until dawn.
Then he heard the footsteps. Running. From behind him, the direction of the woods, coming quickly.
And suddenly he just wanted to be out of there. His hands were shaking, but he did manage to start the car.
The footsteps came up on the passenger side.
In the moonlight he saw . . .
He almost collapsed with relief. The face pressed to the window was that of a young girl. A pretty young girl, smiling and shivering and pointing at the lock on the door.
He unlocked the door and pushed it open.
She tumbled into the seat with a shy laugh, bouncing up and down. She was young, perhaps nineteen, with tousled black hair and bright dark eyes. Her cloth coat, loafers, and white knee socks seemed kind of dated, somehow this only added to her charm.
“Brrrrr! Am I glad to see you! I never thought I’d find a way back to town!”
“Well,” said Taylor, “I can’t take you right back, because I’m the security cop here tonight. But I can call in and have the dispatcher call you a cab. How would that be?”
“Grrrrreat!”
“What happened, car run out of gas?”
She nodded, frowning.
“I think so. Must have bumped my head or something when it stopped.”
She rubbed her forehead briskly. “Ouch! Yep, there’s a bruise all right, funny . . .”
Slowly she turned toward Taylor, a look of almost theatrical surprise on her face.
“Yes! I kinda remember . . .”
Her voice went flat on “remember,” but he hardly noticed. This girl was pretty indeed! Maybe he could put off calling a cab for a while, say, an hour or two. It wasn’t long to dawn. She might like a little breakfast.
She was quiet, watching him with an almost embarrassing intensity. Nervously she pulled up those funny knee socks. He was not, he knew, entirely unattractive, as far as that went. Then for the first time he consciously noticed her perfume, a very faint, sweet scent. Fruity.
Cherries.
Her face contorted, maniacal, teeth bared like a beast.
Long pointed nails streaking for his face.
Cherries.
Taylor screamed and lashed out. The impact of the blow flung her across the seat, against the half-latched passenger door as he jammed the car into gear, still screaming.
The Chevy spun in a full circle in the loose gravel as he fought to straighten it out, not realizing that he had the accelerator all the way to the floor. He was vaguely aware of the passenger door swinging open and slamming shut again as it crashed against a post going through the entrance.
Taylor did not slow until a State trooper racing beside him fired a shot across the hood. By that time, he was halfway through Kentucky.
Slowly he rolled down the window. Somewhere deep inside a touch of rationality surfaced, reminding him of the size of the fine he could well wind up paying. Loss of money is always good for restoring sanity. The voice told him, gathering confidence, that he’d had one hell of a nightmare, a stupid, vivid nightmare, and that now he’d make a total ass of himself as a result.
The trooper flashed his light around the front seat.
“What’s the gun doing there?”
“I’m a security cop.”
“I’d hate to have you watching my place.”
He flashed his light back to Taylor’s face.
“Shoulda been a race driver, buddy. If you’re not sober, your ass is fried.” The cop peered closer. “Say what’s that on your face? Jesus Christ! You been makin’ out with a wildcat, or what?”
But Taylor, whose hand had lightly traced the dried blood from the five deep scratches in his cheek, had fainted.
A POSTHUMOUS BEQUEST by David Campton
Robert Bloch has commented that horror and humor are two sides of the same coin, and while this is true, it demands a certain elegance of wit and precise control of language to preserve a genuine mood of fear in the presence of underlying humor, however morbid. David Campton is one of the few writers today who is capable of accomplishing this. A native of Leicester, Campton is far better known as a playwright, having written some seventy plays, in addition to numerous radio and television dramas. Born June 5, 1924, Campton served in the Royal Air Force during World War II and afterward performed on stage himself before giving up acting in 1963. Beginning with Going Home in 1950, Campton’s plays have ranged from romantic comedy (Roses Round the Door) to imaginative drama (The Life and Death of Almost Everybody) to science fiction satire such as Mutatis Mutandis, Then, Incident, Soldier from the Wars Returning, or Little Brother, Little Sister, a post-nuclear holocaust drama in which two children are raised in a bunker by the family cook. The Haymarket Theatre in Leicester recently produced Campton’s stage adaptation of Frankenstein. This past year, however, has been very ordinary: “The highest point has been the launching of a new soap opera I am writing for local radio here in Leicester—about an Asian immigrant family. However they are all very normal, and there is nothing horrific about it at all (except perhaps in the very idea of writing soap opera).”
The message from Miss Coule turned up at the bottom of Hugo Pentrip’s morning mail. At first he refused to believe that it had really come from her, even though he recognized her distinctive handwriting: like sparrow tracks in the snow, as he had once described it. All the other letter’s had been consid
ered and neatly stacked to await dictated replies. This sinister scrap alone lay in the middle of the polished expanse of the lawyer’s desk, disturbing and confusing. For Miss Coule had been buried almost a year earlier.
This in fact was the anniversary of the day when a home-help had found her, slumped over a window sill, breadcrumbs still in her hand, having breathed her last while feeding the robins. Recalling his client’s death perfectly well, Pentrip at first refused to believe his eyes—changing his spectacles then cleaning them. At last, though, he was left with no alternative but to read on.
“Pray do not allow me to take precedence over more important matters,” the note began. He could almost hear her voice, like a bird scratching dry leaves. “There is little urgency, as I have all the time in the world. I have been somewhat remiss in not communicating earlier; but I fail to mark the passing of time as I used to. I fear my birds wait in vain for their breakfast.” Until that point the lawyer had been prepared to believe the letter might have been delayed in the post for a year; but those words indicated not only that Miss Coule was dead, but that she was aware of the fact.
“I wish to pursue the matter of my will,” she went on. “I realize, of course, that extra detail must constitute a considerable chore, but I trust you to bear such additional work in mind when you submit your account.
“We have already agreed on the main bequests, have we not? My feathered friends must be provided for. The bulk of my estate is to be divided, therefore, among various ornithological charities—and how painstakingly you have researched those various headquarters and offices, thank you so much—with a little over for a local reminder of our mutual affection, to take the form of a bird sanctuary. But . . .” Pentrip could imagine Miss Coule holding up a forefinger which any bird might have mistaken for a twig. “But on reflection I have reached the conclusion that in my preoccupation with humbler creation, I have done less than justice to my nephew, Roger. I believe you yourself once brought up this very point, but at the time I failed to grasp the full import of your suggestion.”
“Please take note, then,” concluded Miss Coule, “that I now wish my nephew to enjoy my garden. I leave my nephew to the garden.”
“You mean leave the garden to your nephew,” mentally corrected the solicitor, then continued to repeat “garden to nephew” “nephew to garden” until his head swam and he paused to rub his eyes. But how does one reply to a communication not of this world? One doesn’t. Obviously the whole fabrication was an unfunny attempt at a practical joke, probably concocted by Roger Coule himself, who had always displayed an unreliable sense of humor. Pentrip picked up the offensive letter, and was about to tear it across before committing it to the waste-paper basket, when his hand froze. The document he held was a crisply typed acknowledgment of his of the third instant and promising a speedy consideration of the points detailed therein, and signed C. J. Williams of Mitchin, Mitchin and Barlow. Miss Coule’s straggling scribble had faded without a trace.
Pentrip was roused by his secretary with his mid-morning coffee. Brenda with her blond curls, Delft-blue eyes and surplus twenty-eight pounds of puppy fat, at least belonged to this world. Pentrip passed off his slumped posture as a headache and demanded an aspirin. Brenda cast a curious glance over her shoulder as she left. Obviously she had reservations about the explanation, and Pentrip stifled an inclination to smack her fat bottom—not playfully as fantasy usually dictated, but viciously to pass on his own hurt.
Gulping his hot drink he tried to concentrate into logical order thoughts that timorously skittered in all directions. With all its guilty secrets a lawyer’s office was an obvious setting for a ghost. But what guilty secrets? Better not dwell on them in case more ghosts be raised. Nonsense! What would a ghost be doing here among the expensively leased furnishings? The place for a ghost would be one of the crazy garrets in the old quarter where crumbling attorney’s offices huddled together for fear of falling down. One might expect to encounter a specter among cobwebs and black tin boxes; but certainly not amid the glass and teak of a modem tower block. And could such a phenomenon as a nonexistent letter be counted ghostly—even when seeming to come from Miss Coule?
A mouthful of sticky syrup at the bottom of his cup reminded the solicitor that he had forgotten to stir his coffee. Brenda reappeared with a glass of water in one chubby hand, and an aspirin bottle in the other.
“Feeling poorly, Mr. Pentrip?” she asked brightly. “You do look ghastly.”
Her employer grunted and swallowed two pills.
“Get me Roger Coule on the phone,” he growled. “If his office says he’s in conference, try the golf club. This is urgent.”
As he waited for the call to come through, he doodled in the margin of the draft in front of him. He was hardly in the right frame of mind for working on a last will and testament. His scribbles developed into a flock of flying birds. Damn Miss Coule! Why had he ever agreed to draft her will? Anyway she had merely passed on before it could be properly signed and witnessed: unfortunate but not unusual. A complicated series of bequests takes time to arrange. Accuracy takes time; and Miss Coule had been ill when she first sought legal advice. Who was to blame if she died too soon? Hugo Pentrip had done nothing unlawful, nothing really unprofessional. Miss Coule’s estate had merely gone to her next of kin. Pentrip was convinced nephew Roger treated those feathered friends with the consideration his aunt would have wished for. Not perhaps so far as to establish a bird sanctuary, but that would have been unnecessarily ostentatious. Besides hadn’t the old lady herself now remembered Roger? No, she had not. The dead cannot remember anybody. Whoever heard of a posthumous bequest? The birds in the margin were no more than pencil marks, but they worried Hugo Pentrip. He buzzed his secretary. Where the devil was the call he had asked for?
Roger Coule had not been located. Messages had been left for him at the office, at the club, at his home. Pentrip waited for the reply. And waited. Roger Coule was not available at office, club or home that day. Or the next.
While he waited Pentrip worked on other wills. Probate formed the greater part of his professional routine. Other partners in the firm had their own specialties—conveyancing, company law, divorce—but Pentrip had just the right attitude for intimations of mortality. His workaday solemnity was tempered by his pink rotundity and a cultivated twinkle in the eye; just as his somber suiting was livened by an almost frivolous choice of shirt and tie. If witnessing a will reminded the testator of our universal destination, Pentrip was ready with a mild quip, folding up and filing away such funereal notions along with the legal documents. He was present, too, after the melancholy event, evenly weighing congratulations and condolences, and ready with advice on investments. Pentrip was an expert on glossing over grim realities; so after a few days Roger Coule’s non-availability became a matter for self-congratulation. How fortunate the man had not replied: what might have been conjectured about a solicitor whose imagination conjured up such figments as letters from deceased aunts? Too much indulgence in a different sort of spirit, eh? Pentrip thanked the circumstances that had kept Roger Coule out of touch.
Until the crossed line.
It is not an unknown experience to be cut off in the middle of a telephone call. It is not unusual for the ear to be filled instead with a jumble of clicks, crackles and garbled chatter. But it is unusual for a clear voice to emerge from the chaos and remark, “I am so glad the garden went to the right person. I believe Roger will be happy there. Don’t you, Mr. Pentrip? But I have just recalled . . .”
Pentrip slammed down the receiver. He sat rigid until the ice, which had so suddenly congealed around his heart, began to thaw and his protesting lungs reminded him to draw breath. Although the telephone rang persistently afterwards, he refused to touch the instrument. Was that why there had been no response from Roger Coule? Was he, too, afraid to hear the old lady’s chirping?
One half of Pentrip feebly protested. What had he done to deserve such persecution? His other half briskly r
eminded him. A procession of episodes flashed before his mind’s eye like a drowning man’s reputed recall.
He remembered Miss Coule’s first appearance in his office—arriving solidly through the open door after making an orthodox appointment. He remembered her perching on the edge of the chair facing him. He could almost see her now with wispy gray hair escaping in sprays from underneath her period-piece of a hat (wobbling insecurely with her continuous nodding); her parchment skin crumpling into a hundred wrinkles as she smiled her painted smile; her long brown fingers, wasted with illness, laced together in an attitude of patience. She had cajoled her doctor into admitting that she had at most a few months to live: but she was thankful for breathing space in which to tidy her affairs. A will was an urgent necessity.
Pentrip, after noting her wishes with regard to various charities, had tactfully brought up the question of next of kin—a suggestion treated with scant consideration by Miss Coule. Her nephew was capable of looking after himself: her birds were not. Pentrip had diplomatically stifled his contrary opinion that, with bankruptcy impending, Roger was patiently incapable of looking after himself, whereas every sparrow mastered the art on leaving its nest.
Later, Pentrip appraised Roger Coule that his expectations were about to fade like a mirage. Touched by his friend’s distress, Pentrip had paid for the next round of drinks. Moreover, drawing Young Coule’s ear closer to his lips, he had breathed a message of hope. Ambiguously worded to the effect that there were more ways of killing a chicken than by wringing its neck, he had intimated that—without promising, you understand—all was not lost. In his turn Roger had intimated that Pentrip might count on a tangible expression of gratitude.
Pentrip recalled how, thereafter, he had demonstrated every aspect of the law’s delay: appointments had proved difficult to make but easy to break; clauses had been queried; precedents and authorities had proved elusive—we don’t want anything to go wrong afterwards, do we? A contested will is such an embarrassment to the firm that drew it up. In the end Pentrip’s stamina had proved stronger than Miss Coule’s—after all his life-span had not been limited to a few weeks.
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