"There—did you see that," he called out. "Something came down The Falls. What could it possibly be?"
Bodum nodded wisely. "Over forty years I have been here and I can show you what comes down The Falls." He thrust a splint into the fire and lit a lamp from it. Then, picking up the lamp, he waved Carter after him. They crossed the room and he held the light to a large glass bell jar.
"Must be twenty years ago it washed up on the shore. Every bone in its body broke too. Stuffed and mounted it myself."
Carter pressed close, looking at the staring shoe-button eyes and the gaping jaws and pointed teeth. The limbs were stiff and unnatural, the body under the fur bulging in the wrong places. Bodum was by no means a skillful taxidermist. Yet, perhaps by accident, he had captured a look of terror in the animal's expression and stance.
"It's a dog," Carter said. "Very much like other dogs."
Bodum was offended, his voice as cold as shout can be. "Like them, perhaps, but not of them. Every bone broken I told you. How else could a dog have appeared here in this bay?"
"I'm sorry, I did not mean to suggest for an instant—down The Falls, of course. I just meant it is so much like the dogs we have that perhaps there is a whole new world up there. Dogs and everything, just like ours."
"I never speculate," Bodum said, mollified. "I'll make some coffee."
He took the lamp to the stove and Carter, left alone in the partial darkness, went back to the window. It drew him. "I must ask you some questions for my article," he said but did not speak loudly enough for Bodum to hear. Everything he had meant to do here seemed irrelevant as he looked out at The Falls. The wind shifted. The spray was briefly blown clear and The Falls were once more a mighty river coming down from the sky. When he canted his head he saw exactly as if he were looking across a river.
And there, upstream, a ship appeared, a large liner with rows of portholes. It sailed the surface of the river faster than any ship had ever sailed before and he had to jerk his head to follow its motion. When it passed, no more than a few hundred yards away, for one instant he could see it clearly. The people aboard it were hanging to the rails, some with their mouths open as though shouting in fear. Then it was gone and there was only the water, rushing endlessly by.
"Did you see it?" Carter shouted, spinning about.
"The coffee will be ready soon."
"There, out there," Carter cried, taking Bodum by the arm. "In The Falls. It was a ship, I swear it was, falling from up above. With people on it. There must be a whole world up there that we know nothing about."
Bodum reached up to the shelf for a cup, breaking Carter's grip with the powerful movement of his arm.
"My dog came down The Falls. I found it and stuffed it myself."
"Your dog, of course, I'll not deny that. But there were people on that ship and I'll swear—I'm not mad—that their skins were a different color from ours."
"Skin is skin, just skin color."
"I know. That is what we have. But it must be possible for skins to be other colors, even if we don't know about it."
"Sugar?"
"Yes, please. Two."
Carter sipped at the coffee—it was strong and warm. In spite of himself he was drawn back to the window. He looked out and sipped at the coffee—and started when something black and formless came down. And other things. He could not tell what they were because the spray was blowing toward the house again. He tasted grounds at the bottom of his cup and left the last sips. He put the cup carefully aside.
Again the eddying wind currents shifted the screen of spray to one side just in time for him to see another of the objects go by.
"That was a house! I saw it as clearly as I see this one. But wood perhaps, not stone, and smaller. And black as though it had been partially burned. Come look, there may be more."
Bodum banged the pot as he rinsed it out in the sink. "What do your newspapers want to know about me? Over forty years here—there are a lot of things I can tell you about."
"What is up there above The Falls—on the top of the cliff? Do people live up there? Can there be a whole world up there of which we live in total ignorance?"
Bodum hesitated, frowned in thought before he answered.
"I believe they have dogs up there."
"Yes," Carter answered, hammering his fist on the window ledge, not knowing whether to smile or cry. The water fell by; the floor and walls shook with the power of it.
"There—more and more things going by." He spoke quietly, to himself. "I can't tell what they are. That—that could have been a tree and that a bit of fence. The smaller ones may be bodies—animals, logs, anything. There is a different world above The Falls and in that world something terrible is happening. And we don't even know about it. We don't even know that world is there."
He struck again and again on the stone until his fist hurt.
The sun shone on the water and he saw the change, just here and there at first, an altering and shifting.
"Why—the water seems to be changing color. Pink it is—no, red. More and more of it. There, for an instant, it was all red. The color of blood."
He spun about to face the dim room and tried to smile but his lips were drawn back hard from his teeth when he did.
"Blood? Impossible. There can't be that much blood in the whole world. What is happening up there? What is happening?"
His scream did not disturb Bodum, who only nodded his head in agreement.
"I'll show you something," he said. "But only if you promise not to write about it. People might laugh at me. I've been here over forty years and that is nothing to laugh about."
"My word of honor, not a word. Just show me. Perhaps it has something to do with what is happening."
Bodum took down a heavy Bible and opened it on the table next to the lamp. It was set in very black type, serious and impressive. He turned pages until he came to a piece of very ordinary paper.
"I found this on the shore. During the winter. No one had been here for months. It may have come over The Falls. Now I'm not saying it did—but it is possible. You will agree it is possible?"
"Oh, yes—quite possible. How else could it have come here?" Carter reached out and touched it. "I agree, ordinary paper. Torn on one edge, wrinkled where it was wet and then dried." He turned it over. "There is lettering on the other side."
"Yes. But it is meaningless. It is no word I know."
"Nor I, and I speak four languages. Could it have a meaning?"
"Impossible. A word like that."
"No human language." He shaped his lips and spoke the letters aloud. "Aich—Eee—Ell—Pea."
"What could HELP mean," Bodum shouted, louder than ever. "A child scribbled it. Meaningless." He seized the paper and crumbled it and threw it into the fire.
"You'll want to write a story about me," he said proudly. "I have been here over forty years, and if there is one man in the entire world who is an authority on The Falls it is me.
"I know everything that there is to know about them."
The End
* * *
Author's Note
This is the only story I have ever written that is (a) based upon a vision and (b) dependent upon the emotional content of that vision. Quickly, lest I be misunderstood, I state that there was nothing at all religious about the vision—it was one engendered by sleep and fright.
We lived in a house in California at the foot of an incredibly steep hill. The local name for it was Suicide Hill, which was a fair description. Children would come down the hill road on bikes and break arms, drunks would run their cars off the road and knock down telephone poles—all great fun.
At the time of my vision this part of the world was still the boonies, nothing but jackrabbits and sagebrush in all directions. Very quiet at night—which meant that the occasional car could be heard a mile off. This night in particular I had just fallen asleep. Or rather I was in that borderland between awake and asleep that is neither one nor the other when this car c
ame over the hill. It stopped at the top, revved its engine—and then raced down at top speed, shifting gears with a roar and a whine. The headlights swept through the bedroom window and I was absolutely certain that the car was going to crash into the house. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of absolute panic. I swear I rose an inch off the bed, every muscle twitching. The automobile swept by and was gone, and I lay there, wide awake on the instant, staring into the darkness at this vision.
In my half-unconscious state I had not seen a car rushing down upon me but, instead, had seen a waterfall so wide that the distant shore could not be seen, so high that the top was invisible, its sound so overwhelming that it shook the earth.
Next morning when I thought of that waterfall I remembered the feelings I had had when I'd seen it. All life is grist for the authorial mill. I went out to the study and, before evening, I had written the story of these falls. Whenever energy flagged I recalled the vision along with all its accompanying emotion. This recharged my emotional batteries and enabled me to capture my original strong feelings intact.
© 1970 by Harry Harrison. First published in If.
The Hat Trick
Fredric Brown
In a sense, the thing never happened. Actually, it would not have happened had not a thundershower been at its height when the four of them came out of the movie.
It had been a horror picture. A really horrible one—not trapdoor claptrap, but a subtle, insidious thing that made the rain-laden night air seem clean and sweet and welcome. To three of them. The fourth—
They stood under the marquee, and Mae said, "Gee, gang, what do we do now, swim or take taxis?" Mae was a cute little blonde with a turned-up nose, the better for smelling the perfumes she sold across a department-store counter.
Elsie turned to the two boys and said, "Let's all go up to my studio for a while. It's early yet." The faint emphasis on the word "studio" was the snapper. Elsie had had the studio for only a week, and the novelty of living in a studio instead of a furnished room made her feel proud and Bohemian and a little wicked. She wouldn't, of course, have invited Walter up alone, but as long as there were two couples of them, it would be all right.
Bob said, "Swell. Listen. Wally, you hold this cab. I'll run down and get some wine. You girls like port?"
Walter and the girls took the cab while Bob talked the bartender, whom he knew slightly, into selling a fifth of wine after legal hours. He came running back with it and they were off to Elsie's.
Mae, in the cab, got to thinking about the horror picture again; she'd almost made them walk out on it. She shivered, and Bob put his arm around her protectively. "Forget it, Mae." he said. "Just a picture. Nothing like that ever happens, really."
"If it did—" Walter began, and then stopped abruptly.
Bob looked at him and said, "If it did, what?"
Walter's voice was a bit apologetic. "Forget now what I was going to say." He smiled, a little strangely, as though the picture had affected him a bit differently than it had affected the others. Quite a bit.
"How's school coming, Walter?" Elsie asked.
Walter was taking a premed course at night school; this was his one night off for the week. Days he worked in a bookstore on Chestnut Street. He nodded and said, "Pretty good."
Elsie was comparing him, mentally, with Mae's boy friend, Bob. Walter wasn't quite as tall as Bob, but he wasn't bad-looking in spite of his glasses. And he was sure a lot smarter than Bob was and would get further some day. Bob was learning printing and was halfway through his apprenticeship now. He'd quit high school in his third year.
When they got to Elsie's studio, she found four glasses in the cupboard, even if they were all different sizes and shapes, and then she rummaged around for crackers and peanut butter while Bob opened the wine and filled the glasses.
It was Elsie's first party in the studio, and it turned out not to be a very wicked one. They talked about the horror picture mostly, and Bob refilled their glasses a couple of times, but none of them felt it much.
Then the conversation ran down a bit and it was still early. Elsie said, "Bob, you used to do some good card tricks. I got a deck in the drawer there. Show us."
That's how it started, as simply as that. Bob took the deck and had Mae draw a card. Then he cut the deck and had Mae put it back in at the cut, and let her cut them a few times, and then he went through the deck, face up, and showed her the card, the nine of spades.
Walter watched without particular interest. He probably wouldn't have said anything if Elsie hadn't piped up, "Bob, that's wonderful. I don't see how you do it." So Walter told her, "It's easy; he looked at the bottom card before he started, and when he cut her card into the deck, that card would be on top of it, so he just picked out the card that was next to it."
Elsie saw the look Bob was giving Walter and she tried to cover up by saying how clever it was even when you knew how it worked, but Bob said, "Wally, maybe you can show us something good. Maybe you're Houdini's pet nephew or something."
Walter grinned at him. He said, "If I had a hat, I might show you one." It was safe; neither of the boys had worn hats. Mae pointed to the tricky little thing she'd taken off her head and put on Elsie's dresser. Walter scowled at it. "Call that a hat? Listen, Bob, I'm sorry I gave your trick away. Skip it; I'm no good at them."
Bob had been riffling the cards back and forth from one hand to the other, and he might have skipped it had not the deck slipped and scattered on the floor. He picked them up and his face was red, not entirely from bending over. He held out the deck to Walter. "You must be good on cards, too," he said. "If you could give my trick away, you must know some. G'wan, do one."
Walter took the deck a little reluctantly, and thought a minute. Then, with Elsie watching him eagerly, he picked out three cards, holding them so no one else could see them, and put the deck back down. Then he held up the three cards, in a V shape, and said, "I'll put one of these on top, one on bottom, and one in the middle of the deck and bring them together with a cut. Look, it's the two of diamonds, the ace of diamonds, and the three of diamonds."
He turned them around again so the backs of the cards were towards his audience and began to place them one on top the deck, one in the middle, and—
"Aw, I get that one," Bob said. "That wasn't the ace of diamonds. It was the ace of hearts and you held it between the other two so just the point of the heart showed. You got that ace of diamonds already planted on top the deck." He grinned triumphantly.
Mae said, "Bob, that was mean. Wally anyway let you finish your stunt before he said anything."
Elsie frowned at Bob, too. Then her face suddenly lit up and she went across to the closet and opened the door and took a cardboard box off the top shelf. "Just remembered this," she said. "It's from a year ago when I had a part in a ballet at the social centre. A top hat."
She opened the box and took it out. It was dented and, despite the box, a bit dusty, but it was indubitably a top hat. She put it, on its crown, on the table near Walter. "You said you could do a good one with a hat, Walter," she said. "Show him."
Everybody was looking at Walter and he shifted uncomfortably. "I—I was just kidding him, Elsie. I don't—I mean it's been so long since I tried that kind of stuff when I was a kid, and everything. I don't remember it."
Bob grinned happily and stood up. His glass and Walter's were empty and he filled them, and he put a little more into the girls' glasses, although they weren't empty yet. Then he picked up a yardstick that was in the corner and flourished it like a circus barker's cane. He said, "Step this way, ladies and gentleman, to see the one and only Walter Beekman do the famous non-existent trick with the black top hat. And in the next cage we have—"
"Bob, shut up," said Mae.
There was a faint glitter in Walter's eyes. He said, "For two cents, I'd—"
Bob reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change. He took two pennies out and reached across and dropped them into the inverted top hat. He said
, "There you are," and waved the yardstick-cane again. "Price only two cents, the one-fiftieth part of a dollah! Step right up and see the greatest prestidigitatah on earth—"
Walter drank his wine and then his face kept getting redder while Bob went on spieling. Then he stood up. He said quietly, "What'd you like to see for your two cents, Bob?"
Elsie looked at him open-eyed, "You mean, Wally, you're offering to take anything out of—"
"Maybe."
Bob exploded into raucous laughter. He said, "Rats," and reached for the wine bottle.
Walter said, "You asked for it."
He left the top hat right on the table, but he reached out a hand toward it, uncertainly at first. There was a squealing sound from inside the hat, and Walter plunged his hand down in quickly and brought it up holding something by the scruff of the neck.
Mae screamed and then put the back of her hand over her mouth and her eyes were like white saucers. Elsie keeled over quietly on the studio couch in a dead faint; and Bob stood there with his cane-yardstick in midair and his face frozen.
The thing squealed again as Walter lifted it a little higher out of the hat. It looked like a monstrous, hideous black rat. But it was bigger than a rat should be, too big even to have come out of the hat. Its eyes glowed like red light bulbs and it was champing horribly its long scimitar-shaped white teeth, clicking them together with its mouth going several inches open each time and closing like a trap. It wriggled to get the scruff of its neck free of Walter's trembling hand; its clawed forefeet flailed the air. It looked vicious beyond belief.
It squealed incessantly, frightfully, and it smelled with a rank fetid odor as though it had lived in graves and eaten of their contents.
Then, as suddenly as he had pulled his hand out of the hat, Walter pushed it down in again, and the thing down with it. The squealing stopped and Walter took his hand out of the hat. He stood there, shaking, his face pale. He got a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped sweat off his forehead. His voice sounded strange: "I should never have done it." He ran for the door, opened it, and they heard him stumbling down the stairs.
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 1 Page 47
