The Halfling and Other Stories

by Leigh Brackett

  CHAPTER III Terror from Outside

  The Ohio farmland vanished, forgotten. Sherwin bent closer over the uncanny thing held in the hands of his child.

  He was looking at another world.

  Pictured small and faraway in the tiny oval, he glimpsed a city built all of some glassy substance as pure and bright as diamond, half veiled in a misty glory of light.

  The high slim towers swam in a sort of lambent haze, catching soft fire from the clouds that trailed their low-hung edges over them, rose and purple and burning gold. Above in the glowing sky two suns poured out muted, many-colored lights as of an eternal sunset.

  And through that shining city that was never built for human kind shackled to the land, flame-winged creatures soared— creatures large and small, coming and going between the diamond spires.

  As from a remote distance Sherwin heard Janie’s voice, wistful and eager. “It’s where They live, Daddy, way off in the sky. Isn’t it just like fairyland? And look at this!”

  The scene shifted as she spoke. Sherwin looked into a nightmare gulf of black and utter emptiness. He seemed to be racing through it at incredible speed, watching the red and green and yellow stars go plunging and streaming past.

  “It’s what They saw on Their way! Oh, Daddy, isn’t it beautiful?”

  It was the tone of the child’s voice, far more than the unearthly vision in the crystal, that sent the pang of fear like a knife into Sherwin’s heart. He reached out and struck the thing from her hands, and when it fell he kicked it away in the long grass. Before she could cry out her anguish he had caught her fast.

  “What do They want with you?” he demanded. “Why do They give you things to tempt you? What do They want with you?”

  “They only want to be friends!” She pulled free of his grasp, her eyes blazing with tears and anger. “Why do you have to be so mean? Why do you have to spoil everything? They haven’t hurt anybody. They haven’t done a thing wrong. They gave me a better present than anybody ever gave me before and now you’ve gone and broken it!”

  She would have hunted for the crystal but Sherwin stopped her. “Go to your room, Jane. Lucy, go with her. Try to get her calmed down.”

  Looking at his daughter’s white rebellious face, Sherwin felt that he had blundered badly. He had roused her antagonism where he wanted to help. But the unhealthy excitement in her voice had frightened him. He had not realized that Their hold on her was already so strong.

  With full force the realization of what he had seen in the evil little toy came over him. He was not an imaginative man. He had never before looked up at the sky and shuddered, thinking what lay beyond it. He felt suddenly naked and defenseless, very small before huge unknown powers. Even the green familiar land did not comfort him. They were in the woods. And if They could come, then there were no barriers against anything.

  He saw Allerton scuffling about in the grass. Presently he found what he was looking for and stamped it methodically to bits under his heavy boots.

  “I saw into it too,” he said, “over your shoulder. I don’t know what kind of devilment it is but it’s no fit thing to have around.”

  Thud, thud, went the great earth-caked boots. Richard was crying.

  “They thought pictures into it,” he said. “They were going to make me one too.” He glared at his father, and at Sherwin. “Janie’s right. You just want to be mean.”

  Allerton finished his task and went to Richard. There was something almost pathetic in his expression.

  “Rich,” he said, “did They promise you anything else? Did They ask you to do anything?”

  Richard shook his head, looking sulky and mulish, and Sherwin could not tell whether or not the boy was holding back.

  “Can They talk to you, Rich?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. You can hear Them, sort of, inside your head. They can make you see pictures too, anything They want you to see. Stars and comets and all kinds of funny places with funny-looking people and animals and sometimes no people at all.”

  His round tear-streaked face was taking on that same remote, rapt look that had upset Sherwin so in Janie. He whispered, “I’d sure like to ride in that ship, right across the sky. I’ll bet it goes faster than a jet plane. I’d go to all those places and get a lot of things nobody ever saw before and then I’d—”

  He broke off in the middle of a dream. Allerton had caught him by the arm.

  “You’re not going anywhere but home,” he said. “And I’ll lock you in, if I have to, to keep you there.” His eyes met Sherwin’s. “See you later, Hugh.”

  He took the boy away down the road. Sherwin went into the house. He locked the door behind him and loaded his shotgun and set it by. Then he sat down and put his head in his hands and listened dully to the beating of his own heart and wondered.

  Lucy came downstairs. “I gave her some aspirin,” she said. “She’s sleepy now.” She sat on the floor at Sherwin’s feet and put her arms around his waist. “Hugh, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on!”

  He told her slowly, past caring whether she believed him or not.

  “Sam and I both saw Them. I thought They were going to kill us, but They only burned Sam’s hand. That’s why the kids played truant today, to go to Them. There was a whole bunch there, laughing—”

  He did not tell Lucy that somehow They had made the children, Themselves and the clearing invisible. Her face was white enough already.

  She did not say much. She rose and stood for a moment with her hands clasped hard together. Then she ran back up the stairs and Sherwin heard the door of Janie’s room open and then shut tight.

  Toward evening he called Allerton. “I gave Rich a good thrashing,” Allerton said. “He’s shut in his room and his mother’s with him. They’ll be all right, Hugh. As long as we watch them the kids will be all right.”

  His voice did not carry much conviction. Sherwin hung up. He sat in the big chair in the bay window overlooking the woods. He did not turn on the lights. The clouds had broken under the rising wind and the moon threw a pale beam into the high-ceilinged room, touching the ivy wallpaper and the tall, white doors. Sherwin waited, as a man waits in dubious refuge, crouched in the chair, trembling from time to time. The silence of the old house was painful in his ears.

  He must have dozed, for when suddenly he started up in alarm the moon was gone. And They had come out of the woods.

  Even through his hatred and his fear Sherwin sensed that They were glad to be free of the confinement of the trees. The wind swept strong across the open meadow and They rose and swooped upon it, a number of Them, their cloudy wings streaking across the rifted stars in wheeling arcs of fire.

  He took the shotgun across his knees. His hands were quite steady, but very cold. He watched Them and he could not help thinking, How beautiful They are!—and he loathed Them for their beauty because it was luring his child away from him.

  His child, Allerton’s child—the children of the fahns, the village, the other ones who had gone secretly into the woods. What could They want with the human children, these creatures from outside? What dreadful game were They playing, the bright-winged demons with Their hellish toys?

  You can hear them talking inside your head. They can make you see pictures too—anything They want you to see.

  Suppose They could control the minds of the children? What would you do then? How would you fight it?

  Tears came into Sherwin’s eyes. He sat with the shotgun in his lap and watched Them frolic with the dark sky and the wind and he waited. But They did not come near the house. Suddenly They darted away, high up, and were gone. He did not see Them again that night.

  He debated in the morning whether to send Jane to school at all. Then he thought that she would be better there than cooped up brooding in the house, within sight of the woods. He drove her in himself—a silent, resentful little girl with whom he found it difficult to speak—and passed Allerton
’s car on the road. Both men were taking the same precautions.

  They took the children into the small white schoolhouse and spoke to Miss Harker about keeping a careful eye on them. Then the men went home to their work. The day was oppressive and still with great clouds breeding ominously in the sultry air. Sherwin’s uneasiness increased as the hours went by. He called the school twice to make sure Jane was there and he was back again a full hour before the last bell, waiting to take her home.

  He sat for a time in the car, growing more and more nervous. The leaves of the trees hung utterly motionless. He was drenched with sweat and the heavy humid air was stifling.

  A thunderhead gathered in the west, pushing its boiling crest with terrible swiftness across the sky. He watched it spread and darken to the color of purple ink and then the little ragged wisps of dirty white began to blow underneath its belly and the wind came with sudden violence across the land.

  He knew it was going to be a bad one. He left the car and went into the schoolhouse. It was already too dark to see inside the building and the lights came on as he pushed open the door to Janie’s classroom. Miss Harker glanced up and then smiled.

  “It’s going to storm,” he said rather inanely. “I thought I’d wait inside.”

  “Why of course,” she answered and pointed out a chair. He sat down. Miss Harker shook her head, remarking on the blackness of the sky. Two boys were shutting the windows. It was very hot and close. Richard and Janie sat in their places but Sherwin noticed that several seats were empty.

  “More truancy?” he asked, trying to be casual.

  Miss Harker peered sternly at the class.

  “I’m ashamed of them. They’ve spoiled a perfect record for attendance and they seem to have infected the whole school. There are several missing from other classes today. I’m afraid there’s going to be serious trouble unless this stops!”

  “Yes,” said Sherwin. “Yes, I’m afraid there is.”

  The first bolt of lightning streaked hissing out of the gloom with thunder on its heels. The little girls squealed. Rain came in a solid mass and then there was more lightning, coming closer, the great bolts striking down with a snarl and a crack. Thunder shook the sky apart and abruptly the lights went out.

  Instantly there was turmoil in the dark room. Miss Harker’s voice spoke out strongly. The children quieted somewhat. Sherwin could see them dimly, a confusion of small forms milling about, gathering toward the windows. There was a babble of excited whispering and all at once a smothered but triumphant laugh that he knew came from Janie.

  Then a positive fury of whispers out of which he heard the words, “Billy said he’d tell Them we couldn’t come!”

  Sherwin rose. He looked over the crowding heads out the window. A blue-white flare, a crash that made the walls tremble and then he saw shapes of fire tossing and wheeling in the sky.

  They had come into the village under cover of the storm. They were circling the schoolhouse, peering in, and the children knew it and were glad.

  “What strange shapes the lightning takes!” said Miss Harker’s cheerful voice. “Come away from the windows, children. There’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all.”

  She marshaled them to their seats again and Sherwin clung to the window frame, feeling a weakness he could not control, watching the bright wings play among the blazing bolts.

  They did not try to enter the school. They moved away as the storm moved, swooping and tumbling along the road and across the fields, overturning hayricks, putting the frightened cows to flight, ripping slates from the roofs of houses and whirling them on the wind. Even Miss Harker watched, fascinated, and he thought surely she must realize what They were.

  But she only said in a rather shaken voice, “I never saw lightning behave like that before!”

  The flashes grew more distant, the thunder lessened and she sighed. “My, I’m glad that’s over.”

  She went back to her desk and began to straighten up the ends of the day’s school work. Even the rain had stopped when Sherwin took Janie and Richard out to the car and drove them both home. But the sky was still leaden and fuming and all that afternoon and evening distant storms prowled on the horizon and the air was heavy with thunder.

  Sherwin watched his daughter. His nerves were drawn unbearably taut as by long tension growing toward a climax. He smoked his pipe incessantly and started at every flicker of far-off lightning.

  Shortly after nine, from the village, there came a sound like the final clap of doom and immediately afterward the trees and even the house itself seemed to be pulled toward the source of the sound by a powerful suction of air.

  It was all over in a minute or two. Sherwin ran outside but there was nothing to see except a violent boiling of the clouds.

  He heard the phone ring and then Lucy cried out, “Hugh, there’s been a tornado in the village!”

  Sherwin hesitated briefly. Then he returned to the house and locked Janie carefully in her room and gave Lucy instructions about the doors.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told her. “I’ve got to see what’s happened.”

  He was thinking of Them, playing in the heart of the storm.

  Before he could get his own car out he heard Allerton sound his horn from the road.

  “Tornado, huh?” said Allerton. “What it looked like, all right. I figured they might need help. Climb in.”

  They had no trouble finding the center of damage. There was a crowd already there and growing larger every second, shouldering, staring, making a perfect explosion of excited talk.

  The schoolhouse was gone, lifted clean from the foundations.

  Sherwin felt a cold and heavy weight within him. He looked at Allerton and then he began to question the men there.

  Nothing else had been touched by the freak tornado—only the schoolhouse and that was not wrecked but gone. Several people had seen what they took to be lightning striking all around the building just before it vanished with the clap of thunder and the violent sucking of air.

  Sherwin took Allerton by the arm and drew him aside. He told him what he had seen that afternoon.

  “They didn’t like the school, Sam. It kept the kids away from Them.” He stared at the bare foundations, the gaping hole of the cellar. “They didn’t like it, so it’s gone.”

  A man came running up to the crowd. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey, my wife just got a call from her sister down by the state line. You know what that wind did? It took the schoolhouse clear down there and sat it on a hill, just as clean as a whistle!”

  A chill and desperate strength came to Sherwin. “This has got to be stopped, Sam. The devil alone knows what They’re up to but it’ll be the kids next. I’m going to try something. Are you with me?”

  “All the way.”

  Sherwin fought his way through the crowd. He got to the center of it and began to yell at the men and women until they turned to look at him. A story had come into his head—a wild one but less wild than the truth and he told it to them.

  “Listen, while you’re all here together! This doesn’t have anything to do with the tornado but it’s more important. How many of you have had kids playing hooky out of school?”

  A lot of them had and said so.

  “I can tell you where they’re going,” Sherwin said. “Down in my woods. There’s somebody hiding out in there. Escaped convicts maybe, or men running from the law. They’ve got the kids bringing them food, helping them out. That’s why they’re ducking school. Isn’t that so, Sam?”

  Allerton took his cue. “It sure is! Why, my boy’s locked up in his room right now to keep him out of trouble.”

  The crowd began to mutter. A woman cried out shrilly. Sherwin raised his voice. There was a deadly earnestness about him that carried more conviction than any mere words.

  “I’m afraid for my daughter,” he said. “I’m afraid for all our children unless we clean those—those criminals out of the woods! I’m going home and get my gun. Do any
of you men want to come with me?”

  They roared assent. They forgot the freak wind and the vanished schoolhouse. This was something that threatened them and their homes and families, something they could understand and fight.

  “Call the sheriff!” somebody yelled. “Come on, you guys! I’m not going to have my kids murdered.”

  “We’ll use my house as a starting point,” Sherwin told them. “Come as soon as you can.”

  The men of the village and the nearby farms dispersed, calming their women. Sherwin wondered how they would feel when they learned the truth. He wondered if bullets would kill Them. At any rate, it was something to try, a hope.

  Allerton drove him home, racing down the dark road. He dropped Sherwin off and went on to his own place to get his rifle. Sherwin ran into the house. He found Lucy sitting in the middle of the living room floor. Her eyes had a dreadful vacant look. He shook her and it was like shaking a corpse.

  “Lucy!” he cried. “Lucy!’ He began to slap her face, not hard, and plead with her.

  After a bit she saw him and whispered, “I heard a little noise, just a little noise, and I went upstairs to Janie’s room…”

  Tears came then. He left her crying and went with great strides up the stairs. The door to Janie’s room was open. He passed through it. The room was in perfect order, except that the northwest corner had been sheared clean away, making a narrow doorway into the night.

  The child was gone.

  CHAPTER IV Truants’ Reckoning

  He had looked for Janie’s body on the ground below her room. He had not found it. He had known it would not be there. He had given Lucy sedatives and talked her into quietness with words of reassurance he did not feel himself.

  Now the men from the village were coming. The cars blocked the drive, formed long lines on the road. The men themselves gathered on the lawn, hefting their rifles and their shotguns and their pistols, talking in undertones that held an ugly note, looking toward the black woods.

  Some of them were afraid. Sherwin knew they were afraid but they were angry too and they were going. They had a peaceful lawful place to live and they were willing to go into the woods by night with their guns to keep it so.