by Otto Penzler
I had a splendid walk, and was striding homeward in a fine glow. But as I turned the corner and came in sight of the house, it was as if I looked at death itself. I could hardly drag myself up the stairs, and when I peered into the shadowy chamber, and saw the man hunched up on the couch, with his eyes fixed intently on my face, I could have screamed like a woman. I wanted to fly, to rush out into the clear cold air and run—to run and never come back! But I controlled myself, forced my feet to carry me to my room.
There is a weight of hopelessness at my heart. The darkness is advancing, swallowing up everything, but I have not the will to light the gas.…
Now there is a flicker in the front room. I am a fool; I must pull myself together. Arthur is lighting up, and downstairs I can hear the thumping that announces dinner.…
It is a queer thought that comes to me now, but it is odd I have not noticed it before. We are about to sit down to our evening meal. Arthur will eat practically nothing, for he has no appetite. Yet he remains stout. It can not be healthy fat, but even at that it seems to me that a man who eats as little as he does would become a living skeleton.
October 5—Positively, I must see a doctor about myself, or soon I shall be a nervous wreck. I am acting like a child. Last night I lost all control and played the coward.
I had gone to bed early, tired out from a hard day’s work. It was raining again, and as I lay in bed I watched the little rivulets trickling down the panes. Lulled by the sighing of the wind among the leaves, I fell asleep.
I awoke (how long afterward I can not say) to feel a cold hand laid on my arm. For a moment I lay paralyzed with terror. I would have cried aloud, but I had no voice. At last I managed to sit up, to shake the hand off. I reached for the matches and lighted the gas.
It was Arthur who stood by my bed—Arthur wrapped in his eternal reddish-brown dressing-gown. He was excited. His blue face had a yellow tinge, and his eyes gleamed in the light.
“Listen!” he whispered.
I listened but heard nothing.
“Don’t you hear it?” he gasped, and he pointed upward.
“Upstairs?” I stammered. “Is there somebody upstairs?”
I strained my ears, and at last I fancied I could hear a fugitive sound like the light tapping of footsteps.
“It must be somebody walking about up there,” I suggested.
“No!” he cried in a sharp rasping voice. “No! It is nobody walking about up there!”
And he fled into his room.
For a long time I lay trembling, afraid to move. But at last, fearing for Arthur, I got up and crept to his door. He was lying on the couch, with his face in the moonlight, apparently asleep.
October 6—I had a talk with Arthur today. Yesterday I could not bring myself to speak of the previous night’s happening, but all of this nonsense must be cleared away.
We were in the library. A fire was burning in the grate, and Arthur had his feet on the fender. The slippers he wears are as objectionable to me as his dressing-gown. They are felt slippers, old and worn, and frayed around the edges as if they had been gnawed by rats. I can not imagine why he does not get a new pair.
“Say, old man,” I began abruptly, “do you own this house?”
He nodded.
“Don’t you rent any of it?”
“Downstairs—to Mrs. Harlan.”
“But upstairs?”
He hesitated, then shook his head.
“No, it’s inconvenient. There’s only a peculiar way to get upstairs.” I was struck by this.
“By Jove! you’re right. Where’s the staircase?”
He looked me full in the eyes.
“Don’t you remember seeing a bolted door in a corner of your room? The staircase runs from that door.”
I did remember it, and somehow the memory made me uncomfortable. I said no more and decided not to refer to what had happened that night. It occurred to me that Arthur might have been walking in his sleep.
October 8—When I went for my walk on Tuesday I dropped in and saw Doctor Lorraine, who is an old friend. He expressed some surprise at my rundown condition and wrote me a prescription.
I am planning to go home next week. How pleasant it will be to walk in my garden and listen to Mrs. O’Brien singing in the kitchen!
October 9—Perhaps I had better postpone my trip. I casually mentioned it to Arthur this morning.
He was lying relaxed on the sofa, but when I spoke of leaving he sat up as straight as a bolt. His eyes fairly blazed.
“No, Tom, don’t go!” There was terror in his voice, and such pleading that it wrung my heart.
“You’ve stood it alone here ten years,” I protested. “And now—”
“It’s not that,” he said. “But if you go, you will never come back.”
“Is that all the faith you have in me?”
“I’ve got faith, Tom. But if you go, you’ll never come back.”
I decided that I must humor the vagaries of a sick man.
“All right,” I agreed. “I’ll not go. Anyway, not for some time.”
October 12—What is it that hangs over this house like a cloud? For I can no longer deny that there is something—something indescribably oppressive. It seems to pervade the whole neighborhood.
Are all the houses on this block vacant? If not, why do I never see children playing in the street? Why are passers-by so rare? And why, when from the front window I do catch a glimpse of one, is he hastening away as fast as possible?
I am feeling blue again. I know that I need a change, and this morning I told Arthur definitely that I was going.
To my surprise, he made no objection. In fact, he murmured a word of assent and smiled. He smiled as he smiled in the library that morning when he pointed at the Aster trifolium. And I don’t like that smile. Anyway, it is settled. I shall go next week, Thursday, the 19th.
October 13—I had a strange dream last night. Or was it a dream? It was so vivid.… All day long I have been seeing it over and over again.
In my dream I thought that I was lying there in my bed. The moon was shining brightly into the room, so that each piece of furniture stood out distinctly. The bureau is so placed that when I am lying on my back, with my head high on the pillow, I can see full into the mirror.
I thought I was lying in this manner and staring into the mirror. In this way I saw the bolted door in the far corner of the room. I tried to keep my mind off it, to think of something else, but it drew my eyes like a magnet.
It seemed to me that some one was in the room, a vague figure that I could not recognize. It approached the door and caught at the bolts. It dragged at them and struggled, but in vain—they would not give way.
Then it turned and showed me its agonized face. It was Arthur! I recognized his reddish-brown dressing-gown.
I sat up in bed and cried to him, but he was gone. I ran to his room, and there he was, stretched out in the moonlight, asleep. It must have been a dream.
. . .
October 15—We are having Indian Summer weather now—almost oppressively warm. I have been wandering about all day, unable to settle down to anything. This morning I felt so lonesome that when I took the breakfast dishes down, I tried to strike up a conversation with Mrs. Harlan.
Hitherto I have found her as solemn and uncommunicative as the Sphinx, but as she took the tray from my hands, her wrinkles broke into the semblance of a smile. Positively at that moment it seemed to me that she resembled Arthur. Was it her smile, or the expression of her eyes? Has she, also, something to tell me?
“Don’t you get lonesome here?” I asked her sympathetically.
She shook her head. “No, sir, I’m used to it now. I couldn’t stand it anywhere else.”
“And do you expect to go on living here the rest of your life?”
“That may not be very long, sir,” she said, and smiled again.
Her words were simple enough, but the way she looked at me when she uttered them seemed to give them a doub
le meaning. She hobbled away, and I went upstairs and wrote Mrs. O’Brien to expect me early on the morning of the 19th.
October 18—Ten a.m.—Am catching the twelve o’clock train tonight. Thank God, I had the resolution to get away! I believe another week of this life would drive me mad. And perhaps Arthur is right—perhaps I shall never come back.
I ask myself if I have become such a weakling as that, to desert him when he needs me most. I don’t know. I don’t recognize myself any longer.…
But of course I will be back. There is the translation, for one thing, which is coming along famously. I could never forgive myself for dropping it at the most vital point.
As for Arthur, when I return I intend to give in to him no longer. I will make myself master here and cure him against his will. Fresh air, change of scene, a good doctor, these are the things he needs.
But what is his malady? Is it the influence of this house that has fallen on him like a blight? One might imagine so, since it is having the same effect on me.
Yes, I have reached that point where I no longer sleep. At night I lie awake and try to keep my eyes off the mirror across the room. But in the end I always find myself staring into it—watching the door with the heavy bolts. I long to rise from the bed and draw back the bolts, but I’m afraid.
How slowly the day goes by! The night will never come!
Nine p.m.—Have packed my suitcases and put the room in order. Arthur must be asleep.… I’m afraid the parting from him will be painful. I shall leave here at eleven o’clock in order to give myself plenty of time … It is beginning to rain.…
October 19—At last! It has come! I am mad! I knew it! I felt it creeping on me all the time! Have I not lived in this house a month? Have I not seen?… To have seen what I have seen, to have lived for a month as I have lived, one must be mad.…
It was ten o’clock. I was waiting impatiently for the last hour to pass. I had seated myself in a rocking-chair by the bed, my suitcases beside me, my back to the mirror. The rain no longer fell. I must have dozed off.
But all at once I was wide awake, my heart beating furiously. Something had touched me. I leapt to my feet, and, as I turned sharply, my eyes fell upon the mirror. In it I saw the door just as I had seen it the other night, and the figure fumbling with the bolt. I wheeled around, but there was nothing there.
I told myself that I was dreaming again, that Arthur was asleep in his bed. But I trembled as I opened the door of his room and peered in. The room was empty, the bed not even crumpled. Lighting a match, I groped my way through the bathroom into the library.
The moon had come from under a cloud and was pouring in a silvery flood through the windows, but Arthur was not there. I stumbled back into my room.
The moon was there, too … And the door, the door in the corner was half open. The bolt had been drawn. In the darkness I could just make out a flight of steps that wound upward.
I could no longer hesitate. Striking another match, I climbed the back stairway.
When I reached the top I found myself in total darkness, for the blinds were tightly closed. Realizing that the room was probably a duplicate of the one below, I felt along the wall until I came to the gas jet. For a moment the flame flickered, then burned bright and clear.
O God! what was it I saw? A table, thick with dust, and something wrapped in a reddish-brown dressing-gown, that sat with its elbows propped upon it.
How long had it been sitting there, that it had grown more dry than the dust upon the table! For how many thousands of days and nights had the flesh rotted from that grinning skull!
In its bony fingers it still clutched a pencil. In front of it lay a sheet of scratched paper, yellow with age. With trembling fingers I brushed away the dust. It was dated October 19, 1912. It read:
“Dear Tom:
“Old man, can you run down to see me for a few days? I’m afraid I’m in a bad way—”
SCHOOL FOR THE UNSPEAKABLE
Manly Wade Wellman
MANLY WADE WELLMAN (1903–1986) began writing in the 1920s, mainly in the horror field. By the 1930s, he was selling stories to the leading pulps in the genre: Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, and Astounding Stories. He had three series running simultaneously in Weird Tales: Silver John, also known as John the Balladeer, the backwoods minstrel with a silver-stringed guitar; John Thunstone, the New York playboy and adventurer who was also a psychic detective; and Judge Keith Hilary Persuivant, an elderly occult detective, written under the pseudonym Gans T. Fields.
His short story, “A Star for a Warrior,” won the Best Story of the Year award from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in 1946, beating out William Faulkner, who wrote an angry letter of protest. Other major honors include Lifetime Achievement Awards from the World Fantasy Writers (1980) and the British Fantasy Writers (1986), and the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection for Worse Things Waiting (1975).
Several stories have been adapted for television, including “The Valley Was Still” for The Twilight Zone (1961), “The Devil Is Not Mocked” for Night Gallery (1971), and two episodes of Lights Out, “Larroes Catch Meddlers” (1951) and “School for the Unspeakable” (1952).
Wellman also wrote for the comic books, producing the first Captain Marvel issue for Fawcett Publishers. When D.C. Comics sued Fawcett for plagiarizing their Superman character, Wellman testified against Fawcett, and D.C. won the case after three years of litigation.
“School for the Unspeakable” was originally published in the September 1937 issue of Weird Tales.
School for the Unspeakable
MANLY WADE WELLMAN
BART SETWICK DROPPED OFF the train at Carrington and stood for a moment on the station platform, an honest-faced, well-knit lad in tweeds. This little town and its famous school would be his home for the next eight months; but which way to the school? The sun had set, and he could barely see the shop signs across Carrington’s modest main street.
He hesitated, and a soft voice spoke at his very elbow:
“Are you for the school?”
Startled, Bart Setwick wheeled. In the gray twilight stood another youth, smiling thinly and waiting as if for an answer. The stranger was all of nineteen years old—that meant maturity to young Setwick, who was fifteen—and his pale face had shrewd lines to it. His tall, shambling body was clad in high-necked jersey and unfashionably tight trousers. Bart Setwick skimmed him with the quick, appraising eye of young America.
“I just got here,” he replied. “My name’s Setwick.”
“Mine’s Hoag.” Out came a slender hand. Setwick took it and found it froggy-cold, with a suggestion of steel-wire muscles. “Glad to meet you. I came down on the chance someone would drop off the train. Let me give you a lift to the school.”
Hoag turned away, felinely light for all his un-gainliness, and led his new acquaintance around the corner of the little wooden railway station. Behind the structure, half hidden in its shadow, stood a shabby buggy with a lean bay horse in the shafts.
“Get in,” invited Hoag, but Bart Setwick paused for a moment. His generation was not used to such vehicles. Hoag chuckled and said, “Oh, this is only a school wrinkle. We run to funny customs. Get in.”
Setwick obeyed. “How about my trunk?”
“Leave it.” The taller youth swung himself in beside Setwick and took the reins. “You’ll not need it tonight.”
He snapped his tongue and the bay horse stirred, drew them around and off down a bush-lined side road. Its hoof-beats were oddly muffled.
They turned a corner, another, and came into open country. The lights of Carrington, newly kindled against the night, hung behind like a constellation settled down to Earth. Setwick felt a hint of chill that did not seem to fit the September evening.
“How far is the school from town?” he asked.
“Four or five miles,” Hoag replied in his hushed voice. “That was deliberate on the part of the founders—they wanted to make it hard for the students to get to town for larks. It fo
rced us to dig up our own amusements.” The pale face creased in a faint smile, as if this were a pleasantry. “There’s just a few of the right sort on hand tonight. By the way, what did you get sent out for?”
Setwick frowned his mystification. “Why, to go to school. Dad sent me.”
“But what for? Don’t you know that this is a high-class prison prep? Half of us are lunkheads that need poking along, the other half are fellows who got in scandals somewhere else. Like me.” Again Hoag smiled.
Setwick began to dislike his companion. They rolled a mile or so in silence before Hoag again asked a question:
“Do you go to church, Setwick?”
The new boy was afraid to appear priggish, and made a careless show with, “Not very often.”
“Can you recite anything from the Bible?” Hoag’s soft voice took on an anxious tinge.
“Not that I know of.”
“Good,” was the almost hearty response. “As I was saying, there’s only a few of us at the school tonight—only three, to be exact. And we don’t like Bible-quoters.”
Setwick laughed, trying to appear sage and cynical. “Isn’t Satan reputed to quote the Bible to his own——”
“What do you know about Satan?” interrupted Hoag. He turned full on Setwick, studying him with intent, dark eyes. Then, as if answering his own question: “Little enough, I’ll bet. Would you like to know about him?”
“Sure I would,” replied Setwick, wondering what the joke would be.
“I’ll teach you after a while,” Hoag promised cryptically, and silence fell again.
Half a moon was well up as they came in sight of a dark jumble of buildings.
“Here we are,” announced Hoag, and then, throwing back his head, he emitted a wild, wordless howl that made Setwick almost jump out of the buggy. “That’s to let the others know we’re coming,” he explained. “Listen!”
Back came a seeming echo of the howl, shrill, faint, and eery. The horse wavered in its muffled trot, and Hoag clucked it back into step. They turned in at a driveway well grown up in weeds, and two minutes more brought them up to the rear of the closest building. It was dim gray in the wash of moonbeams, with blank inky rectangles for windows. Nowhere was there a light, but as the buggy came to a halt Setwick saw a young head pop out of a window on the lower floor.
