So Dumoise left, deeply agitated; and as soon as the noise of the cart-wheels had died away, Strickland told me, in a whisper, his suspicions. They were so wildly improbable that he dared not say them out aloud; and I, who entertained all Strickland’s beliefs, was so ashamed of owning to them that I pretended to disbelieve.
“Even if the Silver Man had bewitched Fleete for polluting the image of Hanuman, the punishment could not have fallen so quickly.”
As I was whispering this the cry outside the house rose again, and the beast fell into a fresh paroxysm of struggling till we were afraid that the thongs that held it would give way.
“Watch!” said Strickland. “If this happens six times I shall take the law into my own hands. I order you to help me.”
He went into his room and came out in a few minutes with the barrels of an old shot-gun, a piece of fishing-line, some thick cord, and his heavy wooden bedstead. I reported that the convulsions had followed the cry by two seconds in each case, and the beast seemed perceptibly weaker.
Strickland muttered, “But he can’t take away the life! He can’t take away the life!”
I said, though I knew that I was arguing against myself, “It may be a cat. It must be a cat. If the Silver Man is responsible, why does he dare to come here?”
Strickland arranged the wood on the hearth, put the gun-barrels into the glow of the fire, spread the twine on the table, and broke a walking-stick in two. There was one yard of fishing-line, gut, lapped with wire, such as is used for mahseer-fishing, and he tied the two ends together in a loop.
Then he said, “How can we catch him? He must be taken alive and unhurt.”
I said that we must trust in Providence, and go out softly with polo-sticks into the shrubbery at the front of the house. The man or animal that made the cry was evidently moving round the house as regularly as a nightwatchman. We could wait in the bushes till he came by, and knock him over.
Strickland accepted this suggestion, and we slipped out from a bath-room window into the front verandah and then across the carriage-drive into the bushes.
In the moonlight we could see the leper coming round the corner of the house. He was perfectly naked, and from time to time he mewed and stopped to dance with his shadow. It was an unattractive sight, and thinking of poor Fleete, brought to such degradation by so foul a creature, I put away all my doubts and resolved to help Strickland from the heated gun-barrels to the loop of twine—from the loins to the head and back again—with all tortures that might be needful.
The leper halted in the front porch for a moment and we jumped out on him with the sticks. He was wonderfully strong, and we were afraid that he might escape or be fatally injured before we caught him. We had an idea that lepers were frail creatures, but this proved to be incorrect. Strickland knocked his legs from under him, and I put my foot on his neck. He mewed hideously, and even through my riding-boots I could feel that his flesh was not the flesh of a clean man.
He struck at us with his hand and feet-stumps. We looped the lash of a dog-whip round him, under the arm-pits, and dragged him backwards into the hall and so into the dining-room where the beast lay. There we tied him with trunkstraps. He made no attempt to escape, but mewed.
When we confronted him with the beast the scene was beyond description. The beast doubled backwards into a bow, as though he had been poisoned with strychnine, and moaned in the most pitiable fashion. Several other things happened also, but they cannot be put down here.
“I think I was right,” said Strickland. “Now we will ask him to cure this case.”
But the leper only mewed. Strickland wrapped a towel round his hand and took the gun-barrels out of the fire. I put the half of the broken walking-stick through a loop of fishing-line and buckled the leper comfortably to Strickland’s bedstead. I understood then how men and women and little children can endure to see a witch burnt alive; for the beast was moaning on the floor, and though the Silver Man had no face, you could see horrible feelings passing through the slab that took its place, exactly as waves of heat play across red-hot iron—gun-barrels for instance.
Strickland shaded his eyes with his hands for a moment, and we got to work. This part is not to be printed.
The dawn was beginning to break when the leper spoke. His mewings had not been satisfactory up to that point. The beast had fainted from exhaustion, and the house was very still. We unstrapped the leper and told him to take away the evil spirit. He crawled to the beast and laid his hand upon the left breast. That was all. Then he fell face down and whined, drawing in his breath as he did so.
We watched the face of the beast, and saw the soul of Fleete coming back into the eyes. Then a sweat broke out on the forehead, and the eyes—they were human eyes—closed. We waited for an hour, but Fleete still slept. We carried him to his room and bade the leper go, giving him the bedstead, and the sheet on the bedstead to cover his nakedness, the gloves and the towels with which we had touched him, and the whip that had been hooked round his body. He put the sheet about him and went out into the early morning without speaking or mewing.
Strickland wiped his face and sat down. A night-gong, far away in the city, made seven o’clock.
“Exactly four-and-twenty hours!” said Strickland. “And I’ve done enough to ensure my dismissal from the service, besides permanent quarters in a lunatic asylum. Do you believe that we are awake?”
The red-hot gun-barrel had fallen on the floor and was singeing the carpet. The smell was entirely real.
That morning at eleven we two together went to wake up Fleete. We looked and saw that the black leopard-rosette on his chest had disappeared. He was very drowsy and tired, but as soon as he saw us, he said, “Oh! Confound you fellows. Happy New Year to you. Never mix your liquors. I’m nearly dead.”
“Thanks for your kindness, but you’re over time,” said Strickland. “To-day is the morning of the second. You’ve slept the clock round with a vengeance.”
The door opened, and little Dumoise put his head in. He had come on foot, and fancied that we were laying out Fleete.
“I’ve brought a nurse,” said Dumoise. “I suppose that she can come in for . . . what is necessary.”
“By all means,” said Fleete cheerily, sitting up in bed. “Bring on your nurses.”
Dumoise was dumb. Strickland led him out and explained that there must have been a mistake in the diagnosis. Dumoise remained dumb and left the house hastily. He considered that his professional reputation had been injured, and was inclined to make a personal matter of the recovery. Strickland went out too. When he came back, he said that he had been to call on the temple of Hanuman to offer redress for the pollution of the god, and had been solemnly assured that no white man had ever touched the idol, and that he was an incarnation of all the virtues laboring under a delusion. “What do you think?” said Strickland.
I said, “There are more things . . .”
FRITZ LEIBER
(1910–92)
Son of two well-known Shakespearean actors, Fritz Reuter Leiber was born in Chicago. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he worked as an editor, drama teacher, and stage and film actor, appearing in Camille (1937), The Great Garrick (1937), and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). An early work,“Two Sought Adventure” (1939), introduced two popular characters, Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser, to whom he would return for more than fifty years. His novel Conjure Wife (1943) was filmed as Weird Woman in 1944, as Burn, Witch, Burn! in 1962, and as Witches’ Brew in 1980. “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” was the basis of a 1995 film. Best known as a writer of horror fiction, he published fantasy, science fiction, and sword-and-sorcery works. Celebrated as a prolific and influential author, Leiber received the Bram Stoker Life Achievement Award, the World Fantasy Convention’s Grandmaster Award, and numerous Nebula and Hugo awards.Among his novels are Gather Darkness (1943 and 1950), The Big Time (1958), The Wanderer (1964), and Our Lady of Darkness (1977). His stories are collected in Night’s Black Agents (1947),
The Girl with the Hungry Eyes and Other Stories (1949), The World of Fritz Leiber (1976), The Ghost Light (1984), and The Leiber Chronicles (1990).
The Girl with the Hungry Eyes
(1949)
All right, I’ll tell you why the Girl gives me the creeps. Why I can’t stand to go downtown and see the mob slavering up at her on the tower, with that pop bottle or pack of cigarettes or whatever it is beside her. Why I hate to look at magazines anymore because I know she’ll turn up somewhere in a brassière or a bubble bath. Why I don’t like to think of millions of Americans drinking in that poisonous half-smile. It’s quite a story—more story than you’re expecting.
No, I haven’t suddenly developed any long-haired indignation at the evils of advertising and the national glamorgirl complex. That’d be a laugh for a man in my racket, wouldn’t it? Though I think you’ll agree there’s something a little perverted about trying to capitalize on sex that way. But it’s okay with me. And I know we’ve had the Face and the Body and the Look and what not else, so why shouldn’t someone come along who sums it all up so completely, that we have to call her the Girl and blazon her on all the billboards from Times Square to Telegraph Hill?
But the Girl isn’t like any of the others. She’s unnatural. She’s morbid. She’s unholy.
Oh, these are modern times, you say, and the sort of thing I’m hinting at went out with witchcraft. But you see I’m not altogether sure myself what I’m hinting at, beyond a certain point. There are vampires and vampires, and not all of them suck blood.
And there were the murders, if they were murders. Besides, let me ask you this. Why, when America is obsessed with the Girl, don’t we find out more about her? Why doesn’t she rate a Time cover with a droll biography inside? Why hasn’t there been a feature in Life or the Post? A profile in The New Yorker? Why hasn’t Charm or Mademoiselle done her career saga? Not ready for it? Nuts!
Why haven’t the movies snapped her up? Why hasn’t she been on “Information, Please”? Why don’t we see her kissing candidates at political rallies? Why isn’t she chosen queen of some sort of junk or other at a convention?
Why don’t we read about her tastes and hobbies, her views of the Russian situation? Why haven’t the columnists interviewed her in a kimono on the top floor of the tallest hotel in Manhattan and told us who her boyfriends are?
Finally—and this is the real killer—why hasn’t she ever been drawn or painted?
Oh no she hasn’t. If you knew anything about commercial art, you’d know that. Every blessed one of those pictures was worked up from a photograph. Expertly? Of course. They’ve got the top artists on it. But that’s how it’s done.
And now I’ll tell you the why of all that. It’s because from the top to the bottom of the whole world of advertising, news, and business, there isn’t a solitary soul who knows where the Girl came from, where she lives, what she does, who she is, even what her name is.
You heard me. What’s more, not a single solitary soul ever sees her—except one poor damned photographer, who’s making more money off her than he ever hoped to in his life and who’s scared and miserable as hell every minute of the day.
No, I haven’t the faintest idea who he is or where he has his studio. But I know there has to be such a man and I’m morally certain he feels just like I said.
Yes, I might be able to find her, if I tried. I’m not sure though—by now she probably has other safeguards. Besides, I don’t want to.
Oh, I’m off my rocker, am I? That sort of thing can’t happen in the Era of the Atom? People can’t keep out of sight that way, not even Garbo?
Well, I happen to know they can, because last year I was that poor damned photographer I was telling you about. Yes, last year, when the Girl made her first poisonous splash right here in this big little city of ours.
Yes, I know you weren’t here last year and you don’t know about it. Even the Girl had to start small. But if you hunted through the files of the local newspapers, you’d find some ads, and I might be able to locate you some of the old displays—I think Lovelybelt is still using one of them. I used to have a mountain of photos myself, until I burned them.
Yes, I made my cut off her. Nothing like what that other photographer must be making, but enough so it still bought this whiskey. She was funny about money. I’ll tell you about that.
But first picture me then. I had a fourth-floor studio in that rathole the Hauser Building, not far from Ardleigh Park.
I’d been working at the Marsh-Mason studios until I’d gotten my bellyful of it and decided to start in for myself. The Hauser Building was awful—I’ll never forget how the stairs creaked—but it was cheap and there was a skylight.
Business was lousy. I kept making the rounds of all the advertisers and agencies, and some of them didn’t object to me too much personally, but my stuff never clicked. I was pretty near broke. I was behind on my rent. Hell, I didn’t even have enough money to have a girl.
It was one of those dark gray afternoons. The building was very quiet—I’d just finished developing some pix I was doing on speculation for Lovelybelt Girdles and Budford’s Pool and Playground. My model had left. A Miss Leon. She was a civics teacher at one of the high schools and modeled for me on the side, just lately on speculation, too. After one look at the prints, I decided that Miss Leon probably wasn’t just what Lovelybelt was looking for—or my photography either. I was about to call it a day.
And then the street door slammed four storys down and there were steps on the stairs and she came in.
She was wearing a cheap, shiny black dress. Black pumps. No stockings. And except that she had a gray cloth coat over one of them, those skinny arms of hers were bare. Her arms are pretty skinny, you know, or can’t you see things like that any more?
And then the thin neck, the slightly gaunt, almost prim face, the tumbling mass of dark hair, and looking out from under it the hungriest eyes in the world.
That’s the real reason she’s plastered all over the country today, you know—those eyes. Nothing vulgar, but just the same they’re looking at you with a hunger that’s all sex and something more than sex. That’s what everybody’s been looking for since the Year One—something a little more than sex.
Well, boys, there I was, alone with the Girl, in an office that was getting shadowy, in a nearly empty building. A situation that a million male Americans have undoubtedly pictured to themselves with various lush details. How was I feeling? Scared.
I know sex can be frightening. That cold heart-thumping when you’re alone with a girl and feel you’re going to touch her. But if it was sex this time, it was overlaid with something else.
At least I wasn’t thinking about sex.
I remember that I took a backward step and that my hand jerked so that the photos I was looking at sailed to the floor.
There was the faintest dizzy feeling like something was being drawn out of me. Just a little bit.
That was all. Then she opened her mouth and everything was back to normal for a while.
“I see you’re a photographer, mister,” she said. “Could you use a model?”
Her voice wasn’t very cultivated.
“I doubt it,” I told her, picking up the pix. You see, I wasn’t impressed. The commercial possibilities of her eyes hadn’t registered on me yet, by a long shot. “What have you done?”
Well, she gave me a vague sort of story and I began to check her knowledge of model agencies and studios and rates and what not and pretty soon I said to her, “Look here, you never modeled for a photographer in your life. You just walked in here cold.”
Well, she admitted that was more or less so.
All along through our talk I got the idea she was feeling her way, like someone in a strange place. Not that she was uncertain of herself, or of me, but just of the general situation.
“And you think anyone can model?” I asked her pityingly.
“Sure,” she said.
“Look,” I said, “a photogra
pher can waste a dozen negatives trying to get one halfway human photo of an average woman. How many do you think he’d have to waste before he got a real catchy, glamorous photo of her?”
“I think I could do it,” she said.
Well, I should have kicked her out right then. Maybe I admired the cool way she stuck to her dumb little guns. Maybe I was touched by her underfed look. More likely I was feeling mean on account of the way my pictures had been snubbed by everybody and I wanted to take it out on her by showing her up.
“Okay, I’m going to put you on the spot,” I told her. “I’m going to try a couple of shots of you. Understand it’s strictly on spec. If somebody should ever want to use a photo of you, which is about one chance in two million, I’ll pay you regular rates for your time. Not otherwise.”
She gave me a smile. The first. “That’s swell by me,” she said.
Well, I took three or four shots, close-ups of her face since I didn’t fancy her cheap dress, and at least she stood up to my sarcasm. Then I remembered I still had the Lovelybelt stuff and I guess the meanness was still working in me because I handed her a girdle and told her to go behind the screen and get into it and she did, without getting flustered as I’d expected, and since we’d gone that far, I figured we might as well shoot the beach scene to round it out, and that was that.
All this time I wasn’t feeling anything particular one way or the other, except every once in a while I’d get one of those faint dizzy flashes and wonder if there was something wrong with my stomach or if I could have been a bit careless with my chemicals.
Still, you know, I think the uneasiness was in me all the while.
I tossed her a card and pencil. “Write your name and address and phone,” I told her and made for the darkroom.
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