My awaking was equally instantaneous, and I sat bolt upright in bed under the impression that some bright light had been flashed in my face, though it was now absolutely pitch dark. I knew exactly where I was, in the room which I had dreaded in dreams, but no horror that I ever felt when asleep approached the fear that now invaded and froze my brain. Immediately after a peal of thunder crackled just above the house, but the probability that it was only a flash of lightning which awoke me gave no reassurance to my galloping heart. Something I knew was in the room with me, and instinctively I put out my right hand, which was nearest the wall, to keep it away. And my hand touched the edge of a picture-frame hanging close to me.
I sprang out of bed, upsetting the small table that stood by it, and I heard my watch, candle, and matches clatter onto the floor. But for the moment there was no need of light, for a blinding flash leaped out of the clouds, and showed me that by my bed again hung the picture of Mrs. Stone. And instantly the room went into blackness again. But in that flash I saw another thing also, namely a figure that leaned over the end of my bed, watching me. It was dressed in some close-clinging white garment, spotted and stained with mold, and the face was that of the portrait.
Overhead the thunder cracked and roared, and when it ceased and the deathly stillness succeeded, I heard the rustle of movement coming nearer me, and, more horrible yet, perceived an odor of corruption and decay. And then a hand was laid on the side of my neck, and close beside my ear I heard quick-taken, eager breathing. Yet I knew that this thing, though it could be perceived by touch, by smell, by eye and by ear, was still not of this earth, but something that had passed out of the body and had power to make itself manifest. Then a voice, already familiar to me, spoke.
“I knew you would come to the room in the tower,” it said. “I have been long waiting for you. At last you have come. Tonight I shall feast; before long we will feast together.”
And the quick breathing came closer to me; I could feel it on my neck.
At that the terror, which I think had paralyzed me for the moment, gave way to the wild instinct of self-preservation. I hit wildly with both arms, kicking out at the same moment, and heard a little animal-squeal, and something soft dropped with a thud beside me. I took a couple of steps forward, nearly tripping up over whatever it was that lay there, and by the merest good-luck found the handle of the door. In another second I ran out on the landing, and had banged the door behind me. Almost at the same moment I heard a door open somewhere below, and John Clinton, candle in hand, came running upstairs.
“What is it?” he said. “I sleep just below you, and heard a noise as if—Good heavens, there’s blood on your shoulder.”
I stood there, so he told me afterwards, swaying from side to side, white as a sheet, with the mark on my shoulder as if a hand covered with blood had been laid there.
“It’s in there,” I said, pointing. “She, you know. The portrait is in there, too, hanging up on the place we took it from.”
At that he laughed.
“My dear fellow, this is mere nightmare,” he said.
He pushed by me, and opened the door, I standing there simply inert with terror, unable to stop him, unable to move.
“Phew! What an awful smell,” he said.
Then there was silence; he had passed out of my sight behind the open door. Next moment he came out again, as white as myself, and instantly shut it.
“Yes, the portrait’s there,” he said, “and on the floor is a thing—a thing spotted with earth, like what they bury people in. Come away, quick, come away.”
How I got downstairs I hardly know. An awful shuddering and nausea of the spirit rather than of the flesh had seized me, and more than once he had to place my feet upon the steps, while every now and then he cast glances of terror and apprehension up the stairs. But in time we came to his dressing-room on the floor below, and there I told him what I have here described.
The sequel can be made short; indeed, some of my readers have perhaps already guessed what it was, if they remember that inexplicable affair of the churchyard at West Fawley, some eight years ago, where an attempt was made three times to bury the body of a certain woman who had committed suicide. On each occasion the coffin was found in the course of a few days again protruding from the ground. After the third attempt, in order that the thing should not be talked about, the body was buried elsewhere in unconsecrated ground. Where it was buried was just outside the iron gate of the garden belonging to the house where this woman had lived. She had committed suicide in a room at the top of the tower in that house. Her name was Julia Stone.
Subsequently the body was again secretly dug up, and the coffin was found to be full of blood.
RAY BRADBURY
(1920–)
Born in Waukegan, Illinois, Ray Douglas Bradbury lived briefly in Tucson, Arizona, and moved to Los Angeles when he was thirteen. After graduation from Los Angeles High School, he worked as a newsboy, selling papers on the city streets. “Hollerbrochen’s Dilemma,” his first published story, appeared in the fanzine Imagination! ( 1938), and within several years, he had become a full-time writer of science fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction. Many of his stories were dramatized on television with Bradbury adapting some sixty-five of his works for The Ray Bradbury Theater, a series he hosted from 1985 to 1992. Among the full-length films based on his work are It Came from Outer Space (1953), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), The Illustrated Man (1969), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), and The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1999). He has received the Bram Stoker Award, the World Fantasy and SFWA Lifetime Achievement awards, the National Medal of Arts, and the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
The Man Upstairs
(1947)
He remembered how carefully and expertly Grandmother would fondle the cold cut guts of the chicken and withdraw the marvels therein; the wet shining loops of meatsmelling intestine, the muscled lump of heart, the gizzard with the collection of seeds in it. How neatly and nicely Grandma would slit the chicken and push her fat little hand in to deprive it of its medals. These would be segregated, some in pans of water, others in paper to be thrown to the dog later, perhaps. And then the ritual of taxidermy, stuffing the bird with watered, seasoned bread, and performing surgery with a swift, bright needle, stitch after pulled-tight stitch.
This was one of the prime thrills of Douglas’s elevenyear-old life span.
Altogether, he counted twenty knives in the various squeaking drawers of the magic kitchen table from which Grandma, a kindly, gentle-faced, white-haired old witch, drew paraphernalia for her miracles.
Douglas was to be quiet. He could stand across the table from Grandma, his freckled nose tucked over the edge, watching, but any loose boy-talk might interfere with the spell. It was a wonder when Grandma brandished silver shakers over the bird, supposedly sprinkling showers of mummy-dust and pulverized Indian bones, muttering mystical verses under her toothless breath.
“Grammy,” said Douglas at last, breaking the silence. “Am I like that inside?” He pointed at the chicken.
“Yes,” said Grandma. “A little more orderly and presentable, but just about the same. . . .”
“And more of it!” added Douglas, proud of his guts.
“Yes,” said Grandma. “More of it.”
“Grandpa has lots more’n me. His sticks out in front so he can rest his elbows on it.”
Grandma laughed and shook her head.
Douglas said, “And Lucie Williams, down the street, she . . .”
“Hush, child!” cried Grandma.
“But she’s got . . .”
“Never you mind what she’s got! That’s different.”
“But why is she different?”
“A darning-needle dragon-fly is coming by some day and sew up your mouth,” said Grandma firmly.
Douglas waited, then asked, “How do you know I’ve got insides like that, Grandma?�
�
“Oh, go ’way, now!”
The front doorbell rang.
Through the front-door glass as he ran down the hall, Douglas saw a straw hat. The bell jangled again and again. Douglas opened the door.
“Good morning, child, is the landlady at home?”
Cold gray eyes in a long, smooth, walnut-colored face gazed upon Douglas. The man was tall, thin, and carried a suitcase, a briefcase, an umbrella under one bent arm, gloves rich and thick and gray on his thin fingers, and wore a horribly new straw hat.
Douglas backed up. “She’s busy.”
“I wish to rent her upstairs room, as advertised.”
“We’ve got ten boarders, and it’s already rented; go away!”
“Douglas!” Grandma was behind him suddenly. “How do you do?” she said to the stranger. “Never mind this child.”
Unsmiling, the man stepped stiffly in. Douglas watched them ascend out of sight up the stairs, heard Grandma detailing the conveniences of the upstairs room. Soon she hurried down to pile linens from the linen closet on Douglas and send him scooting up with them.
Douglas paused at the room’s threshold. The room was changed oddly, simply because the stranger had been in it a moment. The straw hat lay brittle and terrible upon the bed, the umbrella leaned stiff against one wall like a dead bat with dark wings folded.
Douglas blinked at the umbrella.
The stranger stood in the center of the changed room, tall, tall.
“Here!” Douglas littered the bed with supplies. “We eat at noon sharp, and if you’re late coming down the soup’ll get cold. Grandma fixes it so it will, every time!”
The tall strange man counted out ten new copper pennies and tinkled them in Douglas’s blouse pocket. “We shall be friends,” he said, grimly.
It was funny, the man having nothing but pennies. Lots of them. No silver at all, no dimes, no quarters. Just new copper pennies.
Douglas thanked him glumly. “I’ll drop these in my dime bank when I get them changed into a dime. I got six dollars and fifty cents in dimes all ready for my camp trip in August.”
“I must wash now,” said the tall strange man.
Once, at midnight, Douglas had wakened to hear a storm rumbling outside—the cold hard wind shaking the house, the rain driving against the window. And then a lightning bolt had landed outside the window with a silent, terrific concussion. He remembered that fear of looking about at his room, seeing it strange and awful in the instantaneous light.
So it was, now, in this room. He stood looking up at the stranger. This room was no longer the same, but changed indefinably because this man, quick as a lightning bolt, had shed his light about it. Douglas backed up slowly as the stranger advanced.
The door closed in his face.
The wooden fork went up with mashed potatoes, came down empty. Mr. Koberman, for that was his name, had brought the wooden fork and wooden knife and spoon with him when Grandma called lunch.
“Mrs. Spaulding,” he said, quietly, “my own cutlery; please use it. I will have lunch today, but from tomorrow on, only breakfast and supper.”
Grandma bustled in and out, bearing steaming tureens of soup and beans and mashed potatoes to impress her new boarder, while Douglas sat rattling his silverware on his plate, because he had discovered it irritated Mr. Koberman.
“I know a trick,” said Douglas. “Watch.” He picked a fork-tine with his fingernail. He pointed at various sectors of the table, like a magician. Wherever he pointed, the sound of the vibrating fork-tine emerged, like a metal elfin voice. Simply done, of course. He pressed the fork handle on the table-top, secretly. The vibration came from the wood like a sounding board. It looked quite magical. “There, there, and there!” exclaimed Douglas, happily plucking the fork again. He pointed at Mr. Koberman’s soup and the noise came from it.
Mr. Koberman’s walnut-colored face became hard and firm and awful. He pushed the soup bowl away violently, his lips twisting. He fell back in his chair.
Grandma appeared. “Why, what’s wrong, Mr. Koberman?”
“I cannot eat this soup.”
“Why?”
“Because I am full and can eat no more. Thank you.”
Mr. Koberman left the room, glaring.
“What did you do, just then?” asked Grandma at Douglas, sharply.
“Nothing. Grandma, why does he eat with wooden spoons?”
“Yours not to question! When do you go back to school, anyway?”
“Seven weeks.”
“Oh, my lord!” said Grandma.
Mr. Koberman worked nights. Each morning at eight he arrived mysteriously home, devoured a very small breakfast, and then slept soundlessly in his room all through the dreaming hot daytime, until the huge supper with all the other boarders at night.
Mr. Koberman’s sleeping habits made it necessary for Douglas to be quiet. This was unbearable. So, whenever Grandma visited down the street, Douglas stomped up and down stairs beating a drum, bouncing golf balls, or just screaming for three minutes outside Mr. Koberman’s door, or flushing the toilet seven times in succession.
Mr. Koberman never moved. His room was silent, dark. He did not complain. There was no sound. He slept on and on. It was very strange.
Douglas felt a pure white flame of hatred burn inside himself with a steady, unflickering beauty. Now that room was Koberman Land. Once it had been flowery bright when Miss Sadlowe lived there. Now it was stark, bare, cold, clean, everything in its place, alien and brittle.
Douglas climbed upstairs on the fourth morning.
Halfway to the second floor was a large sun-filled window, framed by six-inch panes of orange, purple, blue, red, and burgundy glass. In the enchanted early mornings when the sun fell through to strike the landing and slide down the stair banister, Douglas stood entranced at this window peering at the world through the multi-colored panes.
Now a blue world, a blue sky, blue people, blue streetcars, and blue trotting dogs.
He shifted panes. Now—an amber world! Two lemonish women glided by, resembling the daughters of Fu Manchu! Douglas giggled. This pane made even the sunlight more purely golden.
It was eight a.m. Mr. Koberman strolled by below, on the sidewalk, returning from his night’s work, his umbrella looped over his elbow, straw hat glued to his head with patent oil.
Douglas shifted panes again. Mr. Koberman was a red man walking through a red world with red trees and red flowers and—something else.
Something about—Mr. Koberman.
Douglas squinted.
The red glass did things to Mr. Koberman. His face, his suit, his hands. The clothes seemed to melt away. Douglas almost believed, for one terrible instant, that he could see inside Mr. Koberman. And what he saw made him lean wildly against the small red pane, blinking.
Mr. Koberman glanced up just then, saw Douglas, and raised his umbrella angrily, as if to strike. He ran swiftly across the red lawn to the front door.
“Young man!” he cried, running up the stairs. “What were you doing?”
“Just looking,” said Douglas, numbly.
“That’s all, is it?” cried Mr. Koberman.
“Yes, sir. I look through all the glasses. All kinds of worlds. Blue ones, red ones, yellow ones. All different.”
“All kinds of worlds, is it!” Mr. Koberman glanced at the little panes of glass, his face pale. He got hold of himself. He wiped his face with a handkerchief and pretended to laugh. “Yes. All kinds of worlds. All different.” He walked to the door of his room. “Go right ahead; play,” he said.
The door closed. The hall was empty. Mr. Koberman had gone in.
Douglas shrugged and found a new pane.
“Oh, everything’s violet!”
Half an hour later, while playing in his sandbox behind the house, Douglas heard the crash and the shattering tinkle. He leaped up.
A moment later, Grandma appeared on the back porch, the old razor strop trembling in her hand.
“Dou
glas! I told you time and again never fling your basketball against the house! Oh, I could just cry!”
“I been sitting right here,” he protested.
“Come see what you’ve done, you nasty boy!”
The great colored window panes lay shattered in a rainbow chaos on the upstairs landing. His basketball lay in the ruins.
Before he could even begin telling his innocence, Douglas was struck a dozen stinging blows upon his rump. Wherever he landed, screaming, the razor strop struck again.
Later, hiding his mind in the sandpile like an ostrich, Douglas nursed his dreadful pains. He knew who’d thrown that basketball. A man with a straw hat and a stiff umbrella and a cold, gray room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He dribbled tears. Just wait. Just wait.
He heard Grandma sweeping up the broken glass. She brought it out and threw it in the trash bin. Blue, pink, yellow meteors of glass dropped brightly down.
When she was gone, Douglas dragged himself, whimpering, over to save out three pieces of the incredible glass. Mr. Koberman disliked the colored windows. These—he clinked them in his fingers—would be worth saving.
Grandfather arrived from his newspaper office each night, shortly ahead of the other boarders, at five o’clock. When a slow, heavy tread filled the hall, and a thick, mahogany cane thumped in the cane-rack, Douglas ran to embrace the large stomach and sit on Grandpa’s knee while he read the evening paper.
“Hi, Grampa!”
“Hello, down there!”
“Grandma cut chickens again today. It’s fun watching,” said Douglas.
Grandpa kept reading. “That’s twice this week, chickens. She’s the chickenist woman. You like to watch her cut ’em, eh? Cold-blooded little pepper! Ha!”
Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves And Ghosts - 25 Classic Stories Of The Supernatural Page 5
