Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  But there were no more prowlers now, not since Ed Durkin, the saloon keeper, had come home one night talking about a smoky black horror that he said had squatted on the roof of Benson’s cabin, watching him with flaming eyes until he had ignominiously fled.

  Doyle chuckled to himself, realizing that fantastic tales often grow up about a recluse. His task would be easier now, for there would be little danger of a chance that some passerby might hear the gunshot. He had taken the precaution of hiring a black roadster of a common make for his night’s journey, and his dark face was impassive as he steered the car along the rutted dirt road in the dusk.

  Doyle’s face seldom betrayed his emotions, save by a slight tightening of his thin lips and a peculiar glazing of the cold gray eyes. He smiled, however, when the door of the cabin opened in response to his knock and a man stepped out on the porch. But it was not a pleasant smile.

  Doyle recognized Will Benson from his photographs, although they had been taken nearly twenty years before. There was the same broad, high forehead, the same level stare of brooding dark eyes. The parenthetical lines about the mouth had grown deeper, and Benson’s thick eyebrows were drawn together in a puzzled frown; there were silver flecks about the temples. All at once his eyes lighted.

  “Why—Al!” His voice was hesitant. “It’s Al, isn’t it? I didn’t know you at first.”

  Doyle’s smile widened, but mentally he cursed his cousin’s memory. He had not been sure; he had not known whether Benson would remember him. Well, it could not be helped now. He had planned two courses of action; one would have to be discarded now in favor of the alternative plan. He put out his hand and gripped Benson’s with hypocritical cordiality.

  “It’s Al, all right. Didn’t know whether you’d remember me. It’s been almost twenty years, hasn’t it? I was just a kid when I last saw you—aren’t you going to ask me to come in?”

  An odd hesitancy was apparent in Benson’s manner. He frowned, then glanced almost furtively over his shoulder, then stood aside.

  “Yes, of course. Come in.”

  Benson double-locked the door, Doyle noticed, as his glance swept the room. Amazement gripped him. He stood there staring. The villagers had been right in naming this the Wizard’s House!

  Dark hangings swathed the walls, their sable folds giving the chamber an elusive quality of spaciousness. Tables, chairs had been pushed back against the walls, and on the bare floor was traced an extraordinary design. Doyle searched his memory; then he recognized it—a pentagram, with its circles and six-pointed star, drawn in some substance that glowed with a faint greenish light.

  About the pentagram at intervals stood intricately engraved lamps of silver metal, and within the design was a chair, a table on which a huge iron-bound book lay open, and a censer suspended from a tripod. The room of a wizard, indeed! Through Doyle went a little surge of petulant anger. What would such a fool do with old Benson’s fortune—should he inherit it? Probably waste it on mummery of some sort!

  Another thought came to Doyle: Was the murder necessary? Would it not be easier to prove Benson insane? He put the unformulated thought from him. He dared not take risks. The gun was much the surer way.

  Benson was watching him oddly. “Surprised, eh? Well, I guess it does look rather unusual at first. I’ll explain later. First, sit down and tell me about yourself—how you happened to come.”

  He dragged a chair out from the wall. Doyle sank into it, drawing out his cigarette case.

  “It’s a long story,” he said. “You’ve been out of touch with everything, haven’t you? Your grandfather and I were talking about you just the other day.”

  He watched Benson keenly, but the man made no move. Apparently he had not yet learned of old Benson’s death.

  “It started me wondering how—”

  “Er—excuse me,” Benson broke in. “Would you mind not smoking?”

  “Eh?” Doyle stared at him, then returned the cigarette to its case. “Of course.”

  Apparently Benson felt the need of an explanation.

  “I have a rather delicate—ah, experiment I’m working on. Even small things may endanger its success. I—I’m afraid you’ll think me a poor host, Al, but you really came at an inopportune time.”

  He hesitated, and again came that curiously furtive glance over his shoulder.

  “Had you planned on staying here tonight?”

  Doyle was deliberately tactful. “Why, if you put it that way—I don’t want to intrude. I didn’t mean—”

  “No. No, nothing like that,” Benson said hastily. “Only, I’ve started this experiment now, and I’ve got to finish it. Even now it’s dangerous—”

  Doyle thought quickly. The man was obviously mad. What kind of nonsense was this “experiment”, anyway? But Doyle could not leave yet. He winked, and nodded meaningfully. “Expecting some company, eh, Will?”

  Benson’s pale face flushed. “No,” he said. “You’re wrong there. It really is an experiment—and a dangerous one, believe me. Look here, Al. Can you go back to the village tonight—now— and come back tomorrow? I’m really awfully pleased to see you, but it’s—well, I can’t very well explain. These things always sound incredible at first. Think of it as a scientific experiment— with high explosives.”

  “Lord, I’m sorry,” Doyle said quickly. “I’d be glad to go back, but I can’t. Something’s wrong with my car. I just managed to make it up here, and I’m no mechanic. Can’t we phone the village for somebody to pick me up?”

  For a moment he held his breath. He did not believe Benson would have a telephone, but—

  “I haven’t a phone,” Benson replied, gnawing at his lip. “You’re here now, Doyle, and I’m responsible for you. I’ll—there’s no danger, really, if you do as I tell you.”

  “Of course. If you want me to, I’ll go in another room and read ‘til you’re finished. I—”

  He paused, astonished at the curious look that came into Benson’s face.

  “God, no! You stay with me! That’s the only place you’ll be safe. The—the—”

  He looked quickly over his shoulder. Doyle saw that a thick, bluish coil of smoke was ascending from the censer.

  “Come on!” Benson said urgently and Doyle rose, watched his cousin carry a chair within the pentagram. Slowly he followed.

  From somewhere, Benson produced a candle, set it in a candlestick on the table. He extinguished the oil lamp that had illuminated the room, so that the only light came from the candle and the six silver lamps. Shadows crept in. Outside the pentagram a wall of darkness seemed to press forward, and the black hangings lent a disturbing air of measureless distances to the blackness. It was utterly silent.

  “I’d already started this,” Benson explained. “And it’s something that can’t be stopped. It’s got to run its course. Sit down; you’ve got a long wait.”

  He bent over the great iron-bound book on the table, turned a yellowed page. The volume was in Latin, Doyle saw, but he knew little of the language. The pale face of Benson, brooding over the book, reminded Doyle of some medieval magician working his sorcery. Sorcery! Well, the gun in his pocket was a stronger magic than the mumbo-jumbo of half-cracked fools. Still, he would have to humor Benson. The man had an awkward habit of glancing up quickly, and Doyle had no relish for a physical conflict. The first shot must be fatal.

  Benson threw some powder into the censer, and the smoke rose more thickly. Gradually a faint haze was beginning to pervade the atmosphere. Doyle quickly repressed a tight smile as Benson glanced at him.

  “You think I’m mad, don’t you?” asked Benson.

  “No,” Doyle said, and was silent. He had gauged his opponent too well to start a stream of protestations which would inevitably ring false.

  Benson, smiling, leaned back, facing his cousin. From his pocket, he drew a battered pipe, eyed it longingly, and thrust it back.

  “This is the worst of it,” he said irrelevantly, and chuckled. Abruptly he grew serious.


  “They may have told you in the village that I’m mad. But they don’t think so. They fear me, Al—God knows why, for I’ve never harmed them. All I’m after is knowledge, and they wouldn’t understand that. But I don’t mind, for it keeps them away from here, and I need solitude for my research. Besides, it keeps them from blundering in where ordinary people shouldn’t be.”

  “They call this the ‘Wizard’s House,”’ Doyle said, anxious to agree.

  “Yes, I suppose so. Well, after all, they may be right. Long ago men who sought after hidden knowledge were called wizards. But it’s all science, Al, although a science of which the ordinary man— even your conventional scientist—knows nothing. The scientist is wiser, though, for he realizes that beyond his three-dimensional world of sight and hearing and tasting and smelling there are other worlds, with another kind of life on them.

  “What I’m going to tell you may seem unbelievable, I know— but I must tell you, for the sake of your sanity. You must be prepared for what you’re going to see tonight. Another cosmos—.” He pondered, glancing down at the book. “It’s hard. I’ve gone so far, and you know so little.”

  Doyle shifted uneasily. His hand went into his pocket, and remained there as Benson looked up at him. He knew better than to jerk it out with betraying haste.

  “Put it this way,” Benson went on. “Man isn’t the only type of intelligent life. Science admits that. But it does not admit that there is a super-science which enables man to get in contact with these ultra-human entities. There has always been a hidden, necessarily furtive lore, persecuted by the mob, which delves deeply into this secret wisdom. Many of the so-called wizards of ancient times were charlatans, like Cagliostro. Others, like Albertus Magnus and Ludwig Prinn, were not. Man must indeed be blind to refuse to see the unmistakable evidences of these hidden things!”

  There was a flush creeping into Benson’s cheeks as he talked, and he stabbed a slender forefinger down upon the book that lay open before him.

  “It’s here, in the Book of Karnak—and in the other books, La Tres Sainte Trinosophie, the Chhaya Ritual, the Dictionnaire Infernal of de Plancy. But man won’t believe, because he doesn’t want to believe.

  He has forced belief from his mind. From ancient times the only memory that has come down is fear—fear of those ultra-human entities which once walked the Earth. Well, dynamite is dangerous, but it can be useful too.

  “My God!” Benson exclaimed, a strange fire burning in his somber eyes. “If I had only been alive then, when the old gods walked the Earth! What might I not have learned!”

  He caught himself, stared at Doyle almost suspiciously. A gentle hissing began to come from the censer. Benson got up hastily to inspect the six lamps. They were still burning, although a curious blueness now tinged their flames.

  “As long as they burn we’re quite safe,” he said. “As long as the pentagram is not broken.”

  Doyle could not repress an irritable frown. Benson was mad, of course, but nevertheless Doyle was becoming nervous, and no wonder. Even a man not keyed up to high tension might well be shaken by these fantastic preparations, Benson’s insane hints of monstrous—what was the term—“ultra-human entities?” Doyle determined to end the grotesque comedy swiftly, and his finger caressed the trigger of the gun.

  “It’s one of these beings that I am summoning,” Benson went on. “You must not allow yourself to be frightened, no matter what happens, for you’re quite safe within the circle. I am calling up an entity which mankind worshiped eons ago as—Iod. Iod, the Hunter.”

  Silently Doyle listened as his cousin spoke of the secret and forgotten lore hidden in the ancient tomes and manuscripts he had studied. He had learned strange, well-nigh incredible things, Benson related. And perhaps strangest of all was the legend of Iod, the Hunter of Souls.

  Man had worshiped Iod in older days, under other names. He was one of the oldest gods, and he had come to Earth, the tale went, in pre-human eons when the old gods soared between the stars, and earth was a stopping place for incredible voyagers. The Greeks knew him as Torphonios; the Etruscans made nameless sacrifices diurnally to Vediovis, the Dweller beyond Phlegethon, the River of Flame.

  This ancient god did not dwell on Earth, and a certain apt phrase the Egyptians had coined for him meant, rendered into English, the Dimension Prowler. The evilly famous De Vermis Mysteriis spoke of Iod as the Shining Pursuer, who hunted souls through the Secret Worlds—which, Prinn hinted, meant other dimensions of space.

  For the soul has no spatial limitations, and it was the human soul, the Flemish magician wrote, which the ancient god hunted. It was his monstrous pleasure to hunt the soul, as a hound will course and run down a frightened rabbit; but if an adept took the necessary precautions, he could safely summon Iod, and the god would serve him in certain curious but desirable ways. Yet not even in the suppressed De Vermis Mysteriis could the incantation be found which would summon the Dimension Prowler from his secret dwelling place.

  Only by diligent searching through certain half-fabulous cryptograms—the monstrous Ishakshar and the fabled Elder Key—had Benson been able to piece together the incantation which would summon the god to Earth.

  No man could say, moreover, what shape Iod would assume; it was whispered that he did not always retain the same form. In Rajgir, the cradle of Buddhism, the ancient Dravidians wrote with a peculiar horror of the god. Reincarnation is a vital factor in the religions of India, and to the mind of an Indian the only true type of death is that of the soul.

  The body may perish, crumble to dust, but the soul will live again in other bodies—unless it falls victim to the dreadful hunting of Iod. For Iod pursues always, Benson whispered; the soul has power to flee through the hidden worlds from the Shining Pursuer, but it has no power to escape. And for a human being to see the shape of Iod in all its frightful completeness, unprotected by the necessary precautions, meant swift and certain doom.

  “There’s a parallel in science,” Benson concluded. “Known science, I mean. The synapse gives the clue. The nerve gap over which thought impulses travel. If a barrier is erected in this gap, blocking the impulses, the result is—”

  “Paralysis?”

  “Rather, catalepsy. Iod extracts the vital forces of being, leaving only—consciousness. The brain lives, but the body dies. What the Egyptians called life-in-death. They—wait!”

  Doyle glanced up quickly. Benson was staring beyond the pentagram at a shadowy corner of the room.

  “Do you feel any change yet?” he asked.

  Doyle shook his head, and then hesitated. “It’s—cold, isn’t it?” he said, frowningly.

  Benson stood up. “Yes, that’s it. Now listen, Al, stay just as you are. Don’t move if you can help it. Whatever you do, don’t leave the pentagram until I’ve dismissed the—the thing that I’m calling up. And don’t interrupt me.’’

  Benson’s eyes were blazing in his white face. He made a curious gesture with his left hand, and in a low, toneless voice began to chant in Latin.

  “Veni diabole, discalceame . . . recede, miser . . .”

  The temperature of the room had changed. It was suddenly very cold. Doyle shuddered and stood up. Benson, his back turned, paid no heed. The incantation had become a rhymed gibberish which was in no language Doyle knew.

  Bagabi laca bachabe

  Lamac cahi achababe

  Karrelyos . . .

  Doyle took a stubby black automatic from his pocket, aimed it with painstaking care, and pulled the trigger.

  The explosion was not loud. Benson’s body jerked convulsively, and he turned to stare at his cousin with astonished eyes.

  Doyle thrust the gun back in his pocket and stepped back. There must be no bloodstains on his clothing. He watched Benson intently.

  The dying man fell forward, and his body made an ugly thudding noise as it hit the floor. The arms and legs moved feebly, as though in monstrous imitation of a swimmer. Doyle hesitated, half drew the automatic. A sound fro
m nearby made him wheel, gun lifted.

  From the darkness outside the pentagram came a faint whisper, a curious stirring in the dark air. It was as though a little breeze had sprung up suddenly within the silent room. Momentarily the darkness in the corner seemed to crawl with movement; then the whisper died. There was a tight smile on Doyle’s face as he lowered the weapon, listening intently. No further sound came until a metallic clatter brought Doyle’s gaze down to the floor.

  Benson lay sprawled, his arms outflung. Just beyond his fingers one of the silver lamps lay overturned, its flame extinguished. In Benson’s glazing eyes there was mirrored a look of malevolent amusement, and as Doyle watched, it changed and grew until the white face was all alight with a sort of triumphant, unholy merriment. The expression remained fixed, and presently Doyle realized that Benson was dead.

  He stepped outside the pentagram, not without an involuntary shrinking, and hurriedly touched the electric switch. Then, methodically, he began to ransack the room. He had carefully refrained from leaving possible fingerprints, but now, to make doubly sure, he drew on a pair of rubber gloves. There was nothing much of value—a set of silver-backed brushes, a little jewelry, perhaps a hundred dollars in cash.

  Doyle stripped a sheet from the bed and made a bundle of the loot. Then he let his gaze travel over the room. It would not do now to blunder through carelessness. He nodded, switched off the light, and left the cabin. Then he found a stick and broke a window, fumbled with the latch. It opened easily.

  The moon was rising, and a pale shaft of radiance streamed in through the open window, made Doyle’s shadow a black, misshapen blotch on the floor. He moved aside quickly, and the light fell on the white face of the dead man. Doyle stared through the window for a long moment before turning away.

  One thing remained undone. Half an hour later that too was accomplished, and the loot was at the bottom of a stagnant, marshy lake a dozen miles from the cabin. There was nothing now to prove that Benson had not died at the hands of a burglar. As Doyle headed his roadster toward the city he was conscious of a feeling of tremendous relief, as though his taut nerves were at last relaxing.