But the time ran, and the years sped, until was come the last month of that fifth year, which meant the end of years for Orange. When in the days of his happiness and strength, he had dwelt on this time at all, he had planned to seek out, on the last day of the year, some mountain crag in Switzerland, and there meet death, coming in the train of the rising sun, with calm and steady eyes. Alas! Now to his anguish he felt a desire, which was stronger than his will, tearing at his heart to visit once more the scene of his hardships, to look again on the place where his bargain was concluded. I make certain, from a letter of his which I have seen, that in taking passage for New York, Rupert had no idea of turning aside his doom. The Cambria, on which he sailed, was due to arrive at New York a full week before the end of the year; but she encountered baffling winds and seas, and it was not till the evening of the thirty-first of December that she sighted the light on Fire Island.
As the steamer went at speed towards Sandy Hook, Orange stood alone on the deck, watching the smoke from her funnel rolling seaward: of a sudden he saw rise out of the cloud, the presentment, grim and menacing, of God the Father.
Chapter IV
As the Cambria moved up towards the city, on the morning of New Year’s Day, a certain frenzy which was half insane, and a fierce loathing of familiar sights--Castle Garden, the spire of Trinity Church--took hold of Orange. He passionately cursed himself for not staying in Europe; he cursed the hour he was born; he cursed, above all! The hour in which he had made that fatal bargain. As soon as the vessel was made fast to the dock, he hastened ashore; and leaving his servant to look after his luggage, he sprang into a hack, and directed the driver to go “up town.”
“Where to, boss?” inquired the man, looking at him curiously.
“The Hoffman House,” replied Orange, before he thought. Then he cursed himself again, but he did not change the order.
I have said that the driver looked at Orange curiously; and in truth he was a strange sight. All the dignity of his demeanour was gone: his eyes were bloodshot, and his complexion a dirty yellow: he was unshorn, his tic was loose, and his collar open. His terror grew as he passed along the well-known streets: he screamed out hateful, obscene things, rolling about in the vehicle, while moam came from his mouth; and as he arrived at the hotel, in his distraction he drove his hand through the window glass, which cut him into the bone.
“An accident,” he panted hoarsely to the porter who opened the door: “a slight accident! God damn you!” he yelled, “can’t you see it was an accident?” and he went up the hall to the office, leaving behind him a trail of blood. The clerk at the desk, seeing his disorder, was on the point of refusing him a room; but when Orange wrote his name in the visitor’s book, he smirked, and ordered the best set of apartments in the house to be made ready. To these apartments Orange retired, and sat all day in a sort of dull horror. For a sudden death he had in a measure prepared himself: he had made his bargain, he had bought his freedom from the cares which are the burthen of all men and he knew that he must pay the debt: but for some uncertain, treacherous calamity he had not prepared. He was not fool enough to dream that the one to whom the debt was owed would relent: but before his creditor’s method of exacting payment he was at a stand. He thought and thought, rubbing his face in his hands, till his head was near bursting: in a sudden spasm he fell off the chair to the floor; and that night he was lying stricken by typhoid fever.
And for weeks he lay with a fiery forehead and blazing eyes, finding the lightest covering too heavy and ice too hot. Even when the known disease seemed to have been subdued, certain strange complications arose which puzzled the physicians: amongst these a painful vomiting which racked the man’s frame and left an exhaustion akin to death, and a curious loathly decay of the flesh. This last was so venomous an evil, that one of the nurses having touched the sick man in her ministrations, and neglected to immediately purify herself, within a few hours incontinently deceased. After a while, to assist these enemies of Orange, there came pneumonia. It would seem as though he were experiencing all the maladies from which he had been free during the past five years; for besides his corporal ills he had become lunatic, and he was raving. Those who tended him, used as they were to outrageous scenes, shuddered and held each other’s hands when they heard him shriek his curses, and realised his abject fear of death. At times, too, they would hear him weeping softly, and whispering the broken little prayers he had learned in childhood: praying God to save him in this dark hour from the wiles of the devil.
At length, one evening towards the end of March, the mental clearness of Orange somewhat revived, and he felt himself compelled to get up and put on his clothes. The nurse, thinking that the patient was resting quietly, and fearing the shine of the lamp might distress him, had turned it low and gone away for a little: so it was without interruption, although reeling from giddiness, and scorched with fever, that Rupert groped about till he found some garments, and his evening suit. Clad in these, and throwing a cloak over his shoulders, he went downstairs. Those whom he met, that recognised him, looked at him wonderingly and with a vague dread; but he appeared to have his understanding as well as they, and so he passed through the hall without being stopped; and going into the bar, he called for brandy. The bar-tender, to whom he was known, exclaimed in astonishment; but he got no reply from Orange, who, pouring himself out a large quantity of the fiery liquor found it colder than the coldest iced water in his burning frame. When he had taken the brandy, he went into the street. It was a bleak seasonable night, and a bitter frost-rain was falling: but Orange went through it, as if the bitter weather was a not unwelcome coolness, although he shuddered in an ague-fit. As he stood on the corner of Twenty-third Street, his cloak thrown open, the sleet sowing down on his shirt, and the slush which covered his ankles soaking through his thin shoes, a member of his club came by and spoke to him.
“Why, good God! Orange, you don’t mean to say you’re out on a night like this! You must be much better--eh?” he broke off, for Orange had given him a grey look, with eyes in which there was no speculation; and the man hurried away scared and rather aghast. “These poet chaps are always queer fishes,” he muttered uneasily, as he turned into the Fifth Avenue Hotel.
Of the events of terror and horror which happened on that awful night, when a human soul was paying the price of an astonishing violation of the order of the universe, no man shall ever tell. Blurred, hideous, and enormous visions of dives, of hells where the worst scum of the town consorted, of a man who spat on him, of a woman who struck him across the face with her umbrella, calling him the foulest of names--visions such as these, and more hateful than these, presented themselves to Orange, when he found himself, at three o’clock in the morning, standing under a lamp-post in that strange district of New York called “The Village.”
The rain had given way to a steady fall of snow: and as he stood there, a squalid harlot, an outcast amongst outcasts, approached, and solicited him in the usual manner.
“Come along--do!” she said, shivering: “We can get a drink at my place.”
Receiving no answer, she peered into his face, and gave a cry of loathing and fear.
“Oh, look here!” she said, roughly, coughing down her disgust: “You’ve been drinking too much, and you’ve got a load. Come ahead with me and you can have a good sleep.”
At that word Orange turned, and gazed at her with a vacant, dreary, silly smile. He raised his hand, and when she shrank away--”Are you afraid of me?” he said, not coarsely, but quietly, even gently, like a man talking in his sleep. Then they went on together, till they came to a dilapidated house close by the river. They entered, and turned into a dirty room lit by a flaring jet of gas.
“Now, dear; let’s have some money,” says the woman, “and I’ll get you a nice drink.”
Still no answer from Orange: only that same vacant smile, which was beginning to be horrible.<
br />
“Give me some money: do you hear!” cried the woman stridently. Then she seized him, and went through his pockets in an accustomed style, and found three cents.
“What the hell do you mean by coming here with only this!” bellowed the woman, holding out the mean coins to Orange. She struck him; but she was very frightened, and went to the stairs.
“Say! Tom--Tommy,” she called; “you’d better come down and put this loafer out!”
A great hulking man came down the stairs, and gazed for an instant at Rupert--standing under the gas-jet, with the woman plucking the studs from his shirt. For an instant the man stood, feeling sick and in a sweat; and then, by a great effort, he approached Orange, and seized him by the collar.
“Here, out you go!” he said. “We don’t want none of your sort around here!” The man dragged Orange to the street door, and gave the wretch such a powerful shove, that he fell on the pavement, and rolled into the gutter.
And later in the morning, one who passed by the way found him there: dead before the squalid harlot’s door.
THE BOTTLE IMP, by Dwight V. Swain
Originally published in Fantastic Adventures, Sept. 1942.
“Something wrong buddy?” demanded a thin, piping voice, barely audible above the din. The husky young man with the curly brown hair turned in his chair, scowling at the intrusion. But—
There was no one near him!
The brawny one reached up a somewhat unsteady hand and settled his greasy cap more firmly on the back of the kinky thatch which crowned his head. He had been sitting alone at a table in the farthest corner of Mike’s Elite Bar & Grill, paying no heed whatever to the rowdy entertainment provided for a noisy Saturday night crowd.
His garb itself set him apart from the revelers, for even in the most proletarian of saloons it is the custom to “dress up” for weekend dates. Yet he still was wearing his work clothes—heavy, battered safety shoes, baggy moleskin pants, gray shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows, and—to top off his homely but likable features and mop of chestnut hair—the above-mentioned greasy cap.
Now, he carefully scrutinized everyone within possible speaking radius. No one gave any indication of being aware of his existence, however, let alone speaking to him.
Deciding at last that his ears had been in error, the solitary one again slumped over the table. He stared moodily into the amber depths of a quart bottle of paint remover, erroneously labeled whiskey. Old Harbor Light whiskey. Slowly, mournfully, he shook his head and sighed.
A lone tear welled up in his right eye and overflowed down his stubble-covered cheek, rippling from whisker to whisker. It reached his chin. There, for a moment, it hung suspended. Then gravity won and it plummeted to the scarred table-top: splat!
“Hey, you! Are you deaf?”
It was the voice again!
The young man’s woeful but good natured face betrayed bewilderment and a certain trace of panic. He stared about almost wildly, but still failed to locate the speaker. The bartender’s dark warning came to mind: “You’re three sheets t’ the wind already, chum. Pour a quart o’ this rotgut into your belly an’ you’ll be a cinch t’ wake up in an alley with the screamin’ mee-mees day after t’morrow.” And then, philosophically: “But it’s your stummick, not mine.”
Was this, then, the beginning of the d.t.s?
“Here, stupid! Right in front of you! On the bottle!”
The young man stared. His jaw dropped. He went as stiff and incredulous as if he had just swallowed a bumblebee. His eyes bugged out.
There, on top of the Old Harbor Light bottle, sat a figure—surely the most remarkable figure he had ever seen!
“Well, quit gaping, dopey. Or does your mouth grow that way?”
Still the other stared in complete and horrified fascination at the little individual perched atop the bottle. The strange creature stood not more than six inches high. He was, in most respects, a truly striking miniature of Satan himself, for a wicked-looking pair of horns and a viciously-barbed tail were among his accouterments. His face, however, was beardless. And, from stem to stern, he was a whiskey-amber color instead of the devil’s proverbial red.
“All right, all right. So now you’ve seen me. Quit staring!”
Mopping off his sweat-beaded forehead with a bare and brawny forearm, the young man disregarded the command. Instead, he hunched forward in his seat and peered at his visitor from all angles.
“Am I crazy?” he demanded at last, in a voice that trembled slightly, “or is it just that I should take the pledge?”
The face of the creature on the bottle contorted in an exasperated grimace. “Oh, forget it. You’ll get used to me. Now hurry up and tell me what’s wrong. What’s a man your age crying for?”
The strange apparition’s words brought the husky youth’s mind back to his own troubles. His underlip quivered. Big tears again filled his eyes. He started to swallow. Then, remembering that he had a lip-full of snuff, he thought better of it and, instead, spat a stream of Copenhagen juice straight from where he sat into a gaboon some ten feet away with deadly accuracy.
His pygmy companion whistled. It sounded like one of the higher squeaks of a violin’s E-string. “Some shot!” he congratulated.
But the husky one wasn’t listening. He continued to stare straight at the spittoon. And two large tears were careening down his cheeks.
“I promised her I’d never take another chew of snuff!” he blurted in moist misery. “I swore I’d lay off the booze. But here I am.” For a moment it looked as though he were going to break down completely and sob aloud.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake! No one’s that bad off. What’s the trouble?”
There was a note of irritation in the queer Lilliputian’s piping voice. The other caught it. His attention returned to his visitor. He studied the imp-like figure’s features.
It was a strange, wizened, little face, full of wrinkles and loose skin. But the thing you noticed was the eyes. They danced with mischievous light, like those of a merry elf. Yet, at the same time, there was a gleam of more wicked humor—as if here was an individual who didn’t draw too fine a line between mischief and malice.
“Say, who are you?” the young man demanded, interested in spite of himself. He shoved his cap back even further on his head. “I never saw anyone like you before.”
“Maybe you weren’t looking very hard,” came back the tart reply. “It certainly took you long enough to see me.”
“But who are you?”
The tiny figure posed pompously on top of the Old Harbor Light cork. “I’m a spirit!” he declared.
“A spirit!”
“Sure. A whiskey spirit.”
The husky young gentleman eyed his visitor dubiously. “I don’t get it,” he mumbled.
“Oh, quit playing dumb. You’re no sap. You’ve heard people call whiskey spirits before now.”
The other scratched his tangled mop of chestnut hair and nodded slowly. “Yes, I’ve heard that. But that’s different.”
“Different, my eye!” snorted his Lilliputian companion in vast disgust. “The reason folks call whiskey spirits is because there’re spirits in whiskey. And I’m one of ’em.” He strutted a bit. “Why, spirits and bottles always have been connected. It’s like Burke’s ‘Peerage’ sort of. Now take me, for instance. I can trace my ancestry straight back to the genii King Solomon imprisoned in bottles and threw into the sea.”
The Old Harbor Light’s owner considered this for a while. “How is it I’ve never seen one of you before, then?” he probed finally. “If there’s one of you in every whiskey bottle, I should have met quite a crowd.”
“Sure. You have,” nodded the spirit. “You just didn’t see us.” He hesitated, groped for words. “You see, you can’t see us spirits unless your brain is
tuned just right. It takes a lot of alcohol to make you sensitive enough to recognize us. Only, when you do meet us, and then try to tell someone about it afterward, they just claim you were drunk.” He shook his head in mild perturbation. “It’s quite a problem, really.”
The young man nodded with him. “Yes. I can see how it would be.” A pause. “Say, what do they call you?”
“Beezlebub. It’s a fine old name, too. Straight from the devil himself.” The bright little eyes sparkled impishly. “Don’t think they didn’t have a reason for calling me that, either. I can cause more trouble—”
At the mention of trouble, the other laughed harshly. “Trouble? Listen, little Beetlebug, or whatever your name is: I got more trouble right now than any ten spirits could cause in a thousand years.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?” snapped Beezlebub peevishly, glaring up at him. “Well, I wouldn’t be too sure of that if I was you. Why, I’ll bet your troubles don’t amount to—Say, just what is wrong with you?”
His brawny companion gulped hard.
“Everything!” he confessed miserably, reaching for the Old Harbor Light and pouring himself half a tumbler of it.
“Everything?”
“Uh-huh. I lost my job. I lost my girl. I’m broke. Isn’t that enough?”
The satanic little spirit eyed the mournful one with professional interest. “Let’s try again. First, tell me who you are.”
“My name’s Tod Barnes. I work”—a melancholy amendment, followed by a stiff swallow of Old Harbor Light—“used to work, for the Griggs Tire Company.”
“What happened?”
Tod glowered. “War. All the big wholesale tire dealers like Griggs have cut their payrolls ’way down.” His jaw hardened. His brown eyes charred the table. “I got a raw deal, though. Old Griggs wouldn’t just fire me like he did the rest of the boys. Oh, no. With me, he had to go through a lot of hocus-pocus and then end up by telling me he was firing me, only he might need me again, so he wouldn’t give me a release so I could get another job.”
The Devils & Demons MEGAPACK ®: 25 Modern and Classic Tales Page 42
