The Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack, Volume 5

by David H. Keller

  Yet amid those mountains lies the ancient city and the Hall of the Dragon. There on their silken cushions, their beds of goose feathers, lie the boneless Emperor and the boneless Seven Wise Men; and, though their bodies are chilled with the frost of centuries, should there come a pleasant day of springtime with blossoming almond trees and a warm, gentle shower, those frozen hearts would once again send pulsing life through those boneless sacks. Full of the jelly food of the queen bee, they can never die, at least not for a long, long, time.

  On the floor in front of the Emperor lies the body of Heracles, dead of a dagger thrust by the nervous hand of the woman beloved by the Emperor. The body of the physician, frozen, decays not.

  Neither does the body of the beloved woman.

  And frozen in her body lies the unborn Prince of Gobi, last of a royal line that dared all for their hatred of a bitter enemy.

  Thus perished Gobi.

  A PIECE OF LINOLEUM

  Originally published in 10 Story Book, December 1933.

  It was a plain case of suicide. The coroner absolutely refused to consider any other verdict. And Mrs. Harker had the profound sympathy of her neighbors.

  “I can’t explain it at all,” she whispered to two of her friends. “Just why John had to do a thing like that, when we were so happy, is beyond me.

  “It would have been different if I hadn’t been a kind, loving wife to him. I was more than a wife: I was a helpmate. Take this house, for example. Do you suppose for one moment it would belong to us, and every cent paid on the mortgage, if John Harker had been left to do it? Not in a hundred years. The first few weeks we were married and I found he was stopping at the station to buy flowers for the house on his way home, I knew what my duty was as a loving wife, and I lost no time doing it. From that time on I handled the pay check. Of course, I gave him some spending money every week, and saw to it that he had his evening paper after supper, but I wouldn’t let him buy the paper on his way home, because he always mussed it so on the train and it never was fit to put on the shelves afterwards; but when I gave it to him after supper and spoke to him now and then about wrinkling it, it hardly got mussed at all.

  “If we had had children, I wouldn’t have been able to take such good care of him and the house and the furniture, but before we married the doctor told me I was delicate and better off without the responsibility of maternity. He was so sweet about it, when he said I could look on my future husband as my baby. Of course, it was hard for John to understand, so many men do not have the feminine viewpoint, but he finally submitted to the inevitable, though he always failed to see why I decorated his bedroom in pink.

  “Being alone all day gave me lots of time for sewing, and in a few years I was making all my own clothes and most of John’s. He used to ask me to buy his shirts, told me I was too busy to spend time on them, but I told him I just loved to do things like that for him, and that he was all the baby I had; so by and by, he stopped talking about it.

  “I studied his health. Even sent to Washington for special books on invalid feeding, and if, in the twenty years of our sweet married life John Harker ever ate a spoonful of anything that was not pure and wholesome and fit for a man of his weight and digestive peculiarities, he must have bought it at a restaurant, he never ate it at his own table.

  “I was always careful about his health. Every morning the same thing. Remind him of his umbrella, be sure he had his rubbers on, and the right weight of underwear. If it was clear in the morning and damp at night, I would meet his car with a raincoat and overshoes. Nothing was too much trouble for me.

  “And I kept a clean house for him. That wasn’t easy to do with a man in it. What he did not know, I taught him, patiently, just as you would a little child. It took over two years to train him to come in the back door, take off his shoes in the woodshed and put on his carpet slippers before he came into the house. But patience and love and repetition finally helped him to form the habit.

  “We had lovely carpets, beautiful things that would last three generations if properly cared for, and when I found out how careless he was I put squares of linoleum around where he was in the habit of sitting, and when his friends came in, and he would forget himself and ask them to smoke, I would always run and put a piece of linoleum under them so the ashes wouldn’t get on the floor. I was delicate and nervous after I was thirty; the dear doctor thought it was the change of life working on me; so I suggested that John save me by washing the supper dishes every night; but, do you know, he was so careless that I had to put several pieces of linoleum where he was working or he would get drops of soapy water on the beautiful waxed floor?

  “I let him have his recreation. Once a year I insisted on his attending a meeting of his lodge of Lofty Pine Trees, even though he would smell of cigar smoke when he came back, but I was patient with him and never threw it up to him how hard I had to work to get the smell out of his best suit. At last I used lavender and heliotrope alternately and, finally, when he wore the suit to church, you could not smell anything but the perfume. It seems that the lodge appreciated what kind of loving wife John Harker had because the floral piece they sent to the funeral was perfectly lovely. Perhaps you ladies noticed it? I placed it in a conspicuous place at the head of the coffin. It was a large pillow made of little daisies with the words ‘At Peace’ worked out in violets.

  “But, of course, you want to know just how it happened. You realize that in my delicate health we always had separate bedrooms. But, as the dear doctor said, every husband has his rights, and so I never once shut the door between the rooms at night. I will say this, that John was a gentleman, and never once took advantage of my kindness. You sec, I told him right after we were married just what the doctor said, about any sudden shock being likely to kill me, and of course, he, realizing how delicate I was, didn’t want to have my death on his conscience.

  “I had his room decorated in pink, and on the wall facing the bed, just where he could see it the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning, I had an enlarged picture of us on our first trip to Atlantic City. Me on a chair and he in back, standing, holding an umbrella over me to protect my complexion from the sun. You know how sacred such experiences are during the first weeks of matrimony. He had a nice single bed and I kept it and the room scrupulously clean. There was a piece of linoleum by the side of the bed, and on it I had a china spittoon hand-painted with tea roses. I gave it to him before we were married. Of course, he wasn’t vulgar enough to chew or smoke, though goodness knows, he might have formed such habits had he been married to any other kind of woman; but he was fond of chewing gum, so every night I let him have one stick and the instructions were for him to put the wad in the spittoon just before he went to sleep. When I was well I used to turn the light out for him, but the nights of my martyrdom from headaches I made him put himself to bed.

  “The dear doctor says that just as soon as I change the headaches will stop and I hope they do. No one who isn’t married knows just what a terrible thing it is to be a woman.

  “This night I went over his weekly allowance with him, and explained how, by drinking chico instead of coffee, I had saved three dollars and had spent it for a new piece of art linoleum for his bedroom. It had the loveliest design on it—a Cupid, shooting an arrow at a trembling deer, symbolic of married life, I told him, and explained that it was a female deer, and that was why it was trembling. He did not say much, but later on his light went out and he said, ‘Goodnight’. I knew right away there was something wrong, because I had always taught him to say, ‘Goodnight, Dear’, with the loving emphasis on the last word. Later on I heard a drip, drip, drip and I knew right away that either a faucet was leaking or that it was raining a little, and I called, ‘John, did you turn off the spigot tight in the bathroom?’ and he just laughed, and told me everything was all right and to go to sleep and not worry.

  “The drip, drip, drip kept on, but fainter, so I went to sleep. When I went into his room to wake him, so he could
go down and get breakfast, for that was the way we divided the work and it gave me a half hour more of necessary rest every day, I found the poor man had cut his wrist with a safety razor blade and was dead. What I heard dripping during the night was his life’s blood.

  “The doctor explained it all to me. He said that he was psychotic; that no man who had a loving, tender wife like John Harker had would do a thing like that if he were not insane. That must be the explanation. One thing I am sure of: during all the twenty years of our sweet married life he never learned to appreciate my efforts to give him a nice, clean home. Even at the end he was careless. If he had just moved down in bed eight inches he could have bled on the linoleum, instead of on the lovely ingrain carpet.”

  THE GOLDEN BOUGH

  Originally published in Marvel Tales, Winter 1934.

  “Last night,” she said, “I had a dream. In that dream I saw a house in a dark forest. Now that we’re married let’s travel till we find that house, for it’s there I want to live.”

  Paul Gallien smiled as he looked at his bride of a few hours. This was her first request, and long ago he had promised that her first request after their marriage should be granted, no matter what it was. This idea of hunting a dream house seemed a peculiar one, but he decided it would be fun—and besides he had promised.

  Gallien was of royal blood, but it was in an age when royalty was no longer fashionable; so he contented himself with the other things he had inherited and forgot about the title. He had been bequeathed money, pride which held his head high, courage, and a kindly manner. He had married Constance Martin knowing little, and caring less, about her ancestry. All that concerned him was the plain fact that they were in love.

  So Gallien and his bride started eastward through Europe, with no definite destination, simply sliding over the hills and down through the valleys in search of their dream house.

  Constance often said to her husband, “I shan’t have any trouble knowing the house when I see it. When we find it, we’ll rest there a long time till the rest of my dream comes true. It’s a house in a dark forest and it’s more real than the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I know you’re laughing at me, but it’s not a wild goose chase. We’re seeking an actuality.”

  As they drove slowly through the country or sat over their meals at little taverns and enjoyed the sunsets at the close of day, they talked of the dream house. Gallien asked a thousand questions. Was it a house or a castle? How large was it? Was it habitable or just a mass of ruins? Were they really to live there? Was there a library? Fireplace? Thus, through long conversations they discussed the most important details of their search.

  Gallien did not care, as long as he could spend twenty-four hours with Constance; he did not care if the journey never ended, if only she remained contented and happy. On and on they went and finally came to a dark forest. There the giant pines rose a hundred feet upward before branching. There was a hush in the air and a peculiar absence of little living things, which made all still and unusually quiet. The ground was covered with a heavy matting of pine needles. In some of the little open spaces thick moss shone softly green against the copper background of the dry spills. Circles of moist ground were ringed round about by mushrooms which glowed waxy-white in the dim, uncertain light; on high barren rock shelves fool’s gold glittered in occasional sunbeams.

  From the lofty branches of the pines, cones had fallen on the road; these crackled loudly under the tires, but this and the throb of the engine were the only sounds that broke the eerie stillness. The road crossed over other roads, yet here and there, bunches of wild grass grew in the wagon ruts, showing how old the road was and how seldom used. Gallien throttled the engine down till the car made only a few miles an hour; they drifted rather than rolled; seeming to sail into a dreamland of ethereal beauty. At times an unexpected ray of sunshine illuminated a part of the forest, like light breaking through the multi-tinted windows of a Gothic cathedral, and for a moment the heart paused in its beating with the beauty of it all.

  They came at last to a fork in the road. The main road went on down into the valley; the other climbed in tortuous curves, up the mountain. When the woman saw that up-winding road merging into the pines she whispered, as though anxious that no one, save her husband, should hear, “Let us go that way. What a beautiful road! Where will it take us? What shall we find at its end?”

  “I know,” replied her husband, as he turned off the main road. “We’ll go on and up and at the end we’ll come to the home of a wood cutter or a charcoal burner and, after much trouble, we’ll turn around and come back down.”

  “Let’s do that!” she urged enthusiastically.

  Gallien was not correct, however, in his prophecy, for at the end of the road was neither hut nor peasant burning charcoal. Rather, there was a house in the woods. Constance Martin Gallien looked at it once and looked at it twice; then, covering her face with her hands, she started to cry. Her husband, who now was accustomed to her moods, gently drew her to him, saying nothing until her sobbing ceased. At last she lifted her head from his shoulder and turned a smiling face to him.

  “It was joy, Paul, that made me cry and nothing else. Now we have come to the end of our search, for this is the house of my dreams—and in it I want to live a long time—till I know what life is and the real definition of love.”

  Gallien looked at her, surprised and slightly disappointed.

  “I didn’t know your plan included really living here. I’m sure it would be a splendid place to stay for a little while if we had servants and could entertain and had all the little accessories to make life comfortable and pleasant, but none of these things can be had here. Still, if you want to, we will stay here, if possible, for a few days. Perhaps after a day and a night of it you’ll be glad to go on with me to some city where there is light and laughter, music and dancing.”

  Constance jumped out of the car.

  “At least we can see what it’s like! I called it a house, but it’s really an old castle. I’m sure it must be very old. Do you remember anything about castles, Paul? Could you tell how old this place is just by looking at it?”

  He looked at the rough stone-walled building; the weathered parapets, then shook his head.

  “How can I tell? But there’s a part of your answer. See that tree? The one growing near the wall? That wasn’t there when the castle was built. It would have afforded too easy an access to the windows. No doubt when the place was built all the trees within a hundred yards were cut down so an enemy attacking the castle would have no shelter. This one tree, surely, and perhaps all the others, must have grown since that time. Some of them are five feet in diameter. This road must have been built by the Romans. Maybe part of this castle was built by them. Shall we go inside? No one lives here save bats and toads. However, we can look around and go on until we reach a town.”

  But again he was in error for, circling the wall, they came to an old woman, seated on a three-legged stool, herding a few goats and geese. Gallien spoke to her first in French and then in German, but she only smiled at him toothlessly. Constance tried Italian, and at once there followed a conversation that glittered in expletives as a summer storm is forked with lightning. At the end of ten minutes the bride turned to her puzzled husband.

  “You did not know I could do that?” she asked. “I was raised in a convent in Rome. This old dame says she is the caretaker of the castle. Years ago the owner went to war and simply told her to look after the place; that if anyone came who wanted to live here, to rent it for a certain sum in gold. She says there is everything in the place for comfort and she will serve us. Her people live in the valley and will bring us food. She prefers to live here with her pets.”

  The aged woman took the bride’s hand and whispered.

  Constance translated, “She says the man who went to war years ago was her lover. They were happy here for a month and a day. Since he has gone she just stayed here, with her memories for companions.”

&n
bsp; The dame showed them through the castle. They were surprised to find it so comfortable in its homely simplicity. Throughout there were signs of great age; but all had been well and lovingly cared for. A slight chill was over all, but it was not dampness; the walls were dry. The woman asked if they wished her to build fires. Constance looked pleadingly at Paul. Half reluctantly he handed the woman five pieces of gold, the price of a month’s service. Thus it was that they came to live in the dream house, now materialized as a castle in the dark forest.

  Many were the rooms in the castle which the lovers thrilled over, but two delighted them especially, each in a different way. One was a library, with solid walls and a long, horizontal slit of a window through which the sun came from morning to night, and time could be told by the position of the beam of light. The first streaming light of morning fell on Eve, graven in pink marble, conscious of the knowledge gained by the fall in the Garden. Just before night came the last light which fell on a bronze man, tortured by the surety that he must die before he achieved the wisdom greater age might have taught him. Between the marble Eve and the bronze man were books of every size, cover, and age. Paul Gallien knew that he would be very happy in this room.

  The other room was a bedroom. The floor was of wide, oaken boards covered here and there with bear skins. A bridal chest was the only furniture, save a large four-poster bed standing central in the room, and was, according to the ancient guide, the best bed in the castle. Her eyes glistened as she looked at it—glistened through tears. Many narrow windows completed one side of the room; casement windows, which could be opened, giving the night full freedom to enter. Decorations there were none; no pictures nor draperies; simply the chest and the bed.

  Constance, beholding the bedroom, quivered with delight.