Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural

by Marvin Kaye (ed. )

  “Let’s cut it off!” McIlnoy nervously suggested.

  “No!” Berland snapped, thinking for a second that the other meant the hands. “I can get it!”

  Sweating, he pulled again. There was a muted cracking sound within one of the corpse’s arms. McIlnoy grasped the wrists. Berland yanked once more, and at last the gown came free. As it did, the claw-like hands unclenched.

  Tossing the gown aside, Berland stood still for a moment, catching his breath. Then he looked at his companion and wanly tried to manage a smile.

  “It shouldn’t be too hard to close the eyes,” he said lightly. “I’ve seen it done in hundreds of films.” He placed his middle and index fingers on the lids and stroked downward. The eyes remained open. Pressing harder, he tried again. The lids moved, but rolled back when he took his fingers away. He tried a third time, applying still more force. He felt the tips of his fingers sink into soft membrane. He pulled his hand back violently and trembled.

  “I can’t do it. You try.”

  McIlnoy took a deep breath, held it. He felt sick. Putting his own fingers on the eye-lids, he stroked down while pushing up on the cheeks with the other hand. The eyes closed. They looked as if they were squinting. He slowly took his hands away. The lids stayed shut.

  “Now the mouth.”

  It was rigid. They applied a combination of pressure upon the skull and jaw and at last, the mouth snapped shut. Immediately, the eyes sprang open. A hollow gurgle sounded from within the dead man’s throat.

  McIlnoy sprang back, yelping. “My God! He’s not dead!”

  “Get the mouth open!”

  McIlnoy prized the jaws apart. Berland, feeling a little dizzy, stuck his hand into the gaping cavity. He grabbed the tongue, which had slipped down into the throat, and pulled it back out. He turned to McIlnoy. “It’s liable to happen again. We’ll have to clamp his mouth around it.”

  At length, they got both mouth and eyes closed and secured the jaw with a strip of black cloth, making a bow on the top of the head. The tongue dangled grotesquely over the thin, purple lips. They used another strip to hold the arms, which they folded across the chest. A third strip at the ankles kept the legs in place.

  Next they took the blanket and top sheet, which were resting at the foot of the bed, and tossed them on the floor. They placed the green plastic shroud where the bedclothes had been and tugged on its inner right corner until it began to play out in fourths. McIlnoy lifted the legs. Berland brought the shroud under them until he reached the buttocks, which still touched the bed, then let the cloth go while he picked up the torso. His companion grasped the material and yanked it further up.

  They worked quickly, intently, but were not unaware of the moans that still proceeded from some distant cubicle. The small room was hot; the air, thick. The single naked bulb glinted along the plastic shroud, making points of light that dazzled their eyes. The walls shimmered in the stifling heat as if they might collapse inward.

  The plastic, fully opened, extended below the feet and above the head, as well as on either side of the body. Berland affixed a manila tag to the right first toe, then folded the excess plastic up to the knees as McIlnoy took the upper residue and covered the face and neck with it. They lifted the surplus on either side, folded it across and tucked it in carefully so the patient was fully enclosed in the green, shiny sheath. They tied the covering with strips of cloth at the neck, chest, and feet and fastened tags to the chest and ankle ribbons.

  The wrapping complete, they stepped back and regarded the nameless, faceless bundle. McIlnoy tittered nervously.

  “It’s like a Christmas present,” he observed, then giggled. “How’d you like to find that beneath your tree?”

  Berland began to laugh, a trifle hysterically. McIlnoy tried to quiet him at first, but then he, too, was swept into the mirth. He remembered the head hitting the headboard, and somehow the pun struck him as the funniest thing in the world.

  At length, they subsided in a fit of coughing. After they caught their breath, they stared at one another somewhat ashamed.

  “We’d better get him onto the stretcher,” said Berland.

  He pushed it up flush against the left side of the bed, but forgot to lock the wheels. McIlnoy cranked the bed up level to its fullest height. They hefted the corpse by the bottom bed-sheet and moved it toward the stretcher. But the dead weight, sagging against the unanchored vehicle, pushed it away. They lowered the bundle, but there was nothing solid to rest it on. It twisted from their grasp and fell to the floor. As it did, escaping air billowed the shroud from within. McIlnoy regarded the ballooning plastic and shook his head.

  “Looks like he’s breathing in there,” he said. “Imagine if he were still alive!”

  Berland glared at him. “Knock it off!” Moving the stretcher back, he ran over the legs. They set the vehicle to one side, fixed the casters in place, and struggled with the corpse until they got it on the platform. McIlnoy strapped it on and Berland spread the white bed-sheet over the body.

  After the gloomy room, the hallway seemed remarkably bright. The air was much fresher. They wheeled the body down a hall past closed doors. Within, the patients were oddly silent, and the only noises in the corridor were the squeal of metal casters and the scrabbling sound of the rustling shroud.

  They stopped in front of the elevator doors. McIlnoy sighed in exhaustion, pushing the button. “The worst is over,” he said. “From here on, the morgue attendant takes care of the rest.”

  “And that is the worst,” said the other, shuddering. “The other day, I had lunch with an inhalation therapist who went to embalming school. She said that when muscular contractions set in, it’s not unusual for corpses to move around, sit up—”

  McIlnoy gestured. “Please! I don’t want to hear about it.”

  It took the decrepit elevator ten minutes to arrive. When the doors opened, they had to shove and strain to fit the stretcher into the small car. After much effort, they managed it, but McIlnoy was practically pinned against the back wall by the vehicle. Berland, nearer to the panel of buttons, had to sit on the stretcher to reach them. He pushed the basement button.

  The doors closed.

  The car descended slowly, jerkily. When it was halfway between the first and second floors, the elevator shivered to a halt.

  The lights went out.

  A. MERRITT (1884—1943) is one of America’s most important fantasists, but he was never prolific. His handful of novels and short stories include the popular Seven Footprints to Satan, “Three Lines of Old French” and the novel that H. P. Lovecraft labeled a classic: The Moon Pool. “The Pool of the Stone God,” also known as “The God in the Pool” was not included in Merritt’s sole short story collection, The Fox Woman. It first appeared in the September 23, 1923, issue of American Weekly (which Merritt edited) under the byline of W. Fenimore. Sam Moskowitz anthologized it in 1971 with the opinion that Merritt probably wrote it. Now, fourteen years later, in Mr. Moskowitz’ soon-to-be-published A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool, it has been definitely established that this grisly little tale was indeed penned by Merritt himself.

  The Pool of the Stone God

  By A. Merritt

  This is Professor James Marston’s story. A score of learned bodies have courteously heard him tell it, and then among themselves have lamented that so brilliant a man should have such an obsession. Professor Marston told it to me in San Francisco, just before he started to find the island that holds his pool of the stone god and the wings that guard it. He seemed to me very sane. It is true that the equipment of his expedition was unusual, and not the least curious part of it are the suits of fine chain mail and masks and gauntlets with which each man of the party was provided.

  “The five of us,” said Professor Marston, “sat side by side on the beach. There was Wilkinson the first officer, Bates and Cassidy the two seamen, Waters the pearler and myself. We had all been on our way to New Guinea, I to study the fossils for the Smithsonian. The
Moranus had struck the hidden reef the night before and had sunk swiftly. We were then, roughly, about five hundred miles northeast of the Guinea coast. The five of us had managed to drop a lifeboat and get away. The boat was well stocked with water and provisions. Whether the rest of the crew had escaped we did not know. We had sighted the island at dawn and had made for her. The lifeboat was drawn safely up on the sands.

  “ ‘We’d better explore a bit, anyway,’ said Waters. ‘This may be a perfect place for us to wait rescue. At least until the typhoon season is over. We’ve our pistols. Let’s start by following this brook to its source, look over the place and then decide what we’ll do.’

  “The trees began to thin out. We saw ahead an open space. We reached it and stopped in sheer amazement. The clearing was perfectly square and about five hundred feet wide. The trees stopped abruptly at its edges as though held back by something unseen.

  “But it was not this singular impression that held us. At the far end of the square were a dozen stone huts clustered about one slightly larger. They reminded me powerfully of those prehistoric structures you see in parts of England and France. I approach now the most singular thing about this whole singular and sinister place. In the center of the space was a pool walled about with huge blocks of cut stone. At the side of the pool rose a great stone figure, carved in the semblance of a man with outstretched hands. It was at least twenty feet high and was extremely well executed. At the distance the statue seemed nude and yet it had a peculiar effect of drapery about it. As we drew nearer we saw that it was covered from ankles to neck with the most extraordinary carved wings. They looked exactly like bat wings when they were folded.

  “There was something extremely disquieting about this figure. The face was inexpressibly ugly and malignant. The eyes, Mongol-shaped, slanted evil. It was not from the face, though, that this feeling seemed to emanate. It was from the body covered with the wings—and especially from the wings. They were a part of the idol and yet they gave one the idea that they were clinging to it.

  “Cassidy, a big brute of a man, swaggered up to the idol and laid his hand on it. He drew it away quickly, his face white, his mouth twitching. I followed him and, conquering my unscientific repugnance, examined the stone. It, like the huts and in fact the whole place, was clearly the work of that forgotten race whose monuments are scattered over the Southern Pacific. The carving of the wings was wonderful. They were batlike, as I have said, folded and each ended in a little ring of conventionalized feathers. They ranged in size from four to ten inches. I ran my fingers over one. Never have I felt the equal of the nausea that sent me to my knees before the idol. The wing had felt like smooth, cold stone, but I had the sensation of having touched back of the stone some monstrous, obscene creature of a lower world. The sensation came of course, I reasoned, only from the temperature and texture of the stone—and yet this did not really satisfy me.

  “Dusk was soon due. We decided to return to the beach and examine the clearing further on the morrow. I desired greatly to explore the stone huts.

  “We started back through the forest. We walked some distance and then night fell. We lost the brook. After a half hour’s wandering, we thought we were approaching the beach. Then Waters clutched my arm. I stopped. Directly in front of us was the open space with the stone god leering under the moon and the green water shining at his feet!

  “We had made a circle. Bates and Wilkinson were exhausted. Cassidy swore that devils or no devils he was going to camp that night beside the pool.

  “The moon was very bright. And it was so very quiet. My scientific curiosity got the better of me and I thought I would examine the huts. I left Bates on guard and walked over to the largest. There was only one room and the moonlight shining through chinks in the wall illuminated it clearly. At the back were two small basins set in the stone. I looked in one and saw a faint reddish gleam reflected from a number of globular objects. I drew a half dozen of them out. They were pearls, very wonderful pearls of a peculiarly rosy hue. I ran toward the door to call Bates—and stopped.

  “My eyes had been drawn to the stone idol. Was it an effect of the moonlight or did it move? No, it was the wings! They stood out from the stone and waved—they waved, I say, from the ankles to the neck of that monstrous statue.

  “Bates had seen them, too. He was standing with his pistol raised. Then there was a shot. And after that the air was filled with a rushing sound like that of a thousand fans. I saw the wings loose themselves from the stone god and sweep down in a cloud upon the four men. Another cloud raced up from the pool and joined them. I could not move. The wings circled swiftly around and about the four. All were now on their feet and I never saw such horror as was in their faces.

  “Then the wings closed in. They clung to my companions as they had clung to the stone.

  “I fell back into the hut. I lay there through the night insane with terror. Many times I heard the fanlike rushing about the enclosure, but nothing entered my hut. Dawn came, and silence, and I dragged myself to the door. There stood the stone god with the wings carved upon him as we had seen him ten hours before.

  “I ran over to the four lying on the grass. I thought that perhaps I had had a nightmare. But they were dead. That was not the worst of it. Each man was shrunken to his bones! They looked like collapsed white balloons. There was not a drop of blood in them. They were nothing but bones wrapped around in white skin.

  “Mastering myself I went close to the idol. There was something different about it. It seemed larger—as though, the thought went through my mind, as though it had eaten. Then I saw that it was covered with tiny drops of blood that had dropped from the ends of the wings that clothed it.

  “I do not remember what happened afterward. I awoke on the pearling schooner Luana which had picked me up, crazed with thirst as they supposed in the boat of the Moranus.”

  OODEN NASH (1902—71), best known for his whacky, sort-of-semi-metrical verse, here “plays it straight” with a dark poem worthy of Damon Runyon in his more sombre moods.

  A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor

  By Ogden Nash

  The hands of the clock were reaching high

  In an old midtown hotel;

  I name no name, but its sordid fame

  Is table talk in Hell.

  I name no name, but Hell’s own flame

  Illumes the lobby garish,

  A gilded snare just off Times Square

  For the virgins of the parish.

  The revolving door swept the grimy floor

  Like a crinoline grotesque,

  And a lowly bum from an ancient slum

  Crept furtively past the desk.

  His footsteps sift into the lift

  As a knife in the sheath is slipped,

  Stealthy and swift into the lift

  As a vampire into a crypt.

  Old Maxie, the elevator boy,

  Was reading an ode by Shelley,

  But he dropped the ode as it were a toad

  When the gun jammed into his belly.

  There came a whisper as soft as mud

  In the bed of an old canal:

  “Take me up to the suite of Pinball Pete,

  The rat who betrayed my gal.”

  The lift doth rise with groans and sighs

  Like a duchess for the waltz,

  Then in middle shaft, like a duchess daft,

  It changes its mind and halts.

  The bum bites lip as the landlocked ship

  Doth neither fall nor rise,

  But Maxie the elevator boy

  Regards him with burning eyes.

  “First to explore the thirteenth floor,”

  Says Maxie, “would be wise.”

  Quoth the bum, “There is moss on your double cross,

  I have been this way before,

  I have cased the joint at every point,

  And there is no thirteenth floor.

  The architect he skipped direct

  From twelve unto f
ourteen,

  There is twelve below and fourteen above,

  And nothing in between,

  For the vermin who dwell in this hotel

  Could never abide thirteen.”

  Said Max, “Thirteen, that floor obscene,

  Is hidden from human sight;

  But once a year it doth appear,

  On this Walpurgis night.

  Ere you peril your soul in murderer’s role,

  Heed those who sinned of yore;

  The path they trod led away from God,

  And onto the thirteenth floor,

  Where those they slew, a grisly crew,

  Reproach them forevermore.

  “We are higher than twelve and below fourteen,”

  Said Maxie to the bum,

  “And the sickening draft that taints the shaft

  Is a whiff of kingdom come.

  The sickening draft that taints the shaft

  Blows through the devil’s door!”

  And he squashed the latch like a fungus patch,

  And revealed the thirteenth floor.

  It was cheap cigars like lurid scars

  That glowed in the rancid gloom,

  The murk was a-boil with fusel oil

  And the reek of stale perfume.

  And round and round there dragged and wound

  A loathsome conga chain,

  The square and the hep in slow lock step,

  The slayer and the slain.

  (For the souls of the victims ascend on high,

  But their bodies below remain.)

  The clean souls fly to their home in the sky,

  But their bodies remain below

  To pursue the Cains who emptied their veins

  And harry them to and fro.

  When life is extinct each corpse is linked

  To its gibbering murderer,

  As a chicken is bound with wire around

  The neck of a killer cur.

  Handcuffed to Hate come Doctor Waite

  (He tastes the poison now),

  And Ruth and Judd and a head of blood

  With horns upon its brow.