The Second Haunts & Horrors MEGAPACK®: 20 Tales by Modern and Classic Authors

by Fritz Leiber

  As I gazed upon the circles, they began to move and intermesh like gears in a machine. The figure took on a vampire like personality, sucking me into the heart of its being, impelling me to put the mask over my face.

  II

  When I emerged from the machine’s embrace, it was dark. The night sky hung heavy with an overwhelming cacophony of stars that violently impelled themselves like a raging juggernaut into my fragile consciousness. Vainly, I tried to draw coherence out of these celestial chaotic abnormalities in an effort to afford me some relationship to the cosmos. However, the nightmare of discord continued to maintain its suffocating anomaly, and the infinite possibilities offered by the stars gave no resolution to my questing cognizance.

  How long I was subjected to this condition, I don’t know. I do recall, that quite unexpectedly, the sequined black colossus that was the night sky melted like gelatin in water. The denizens of another dimension, as though entering by way of a back door, moved into and melded with my mind as unknown and uninvited guests.

  At first, I assumed that the gate of the other dimension was in the sky, but now having had the time to reflect on the situation, I realize that my own inner turmoil, caused by the images on the inside of the mask, was the catalyst that opened the gate, breaching time and space. For an instant, as a star gate opened, the universe was folded and a leap of unfathomable proportion was achieved.

  Further examination of the experience has made me realize that I am not the person I was; I am less, and yet, I am more. The part of me that passed through the threshold is lost, but what came out through the aperture, I have gained. There has been an exchange. Some form of other dimension consciousness has been spliced, or absorbed into my own, making me a hybrid. Since this occurrence, I have been afflicted by feelings of alienation. I am sure that these sensations originate from the alien intrusion and its feeling of disassociation in my consciousness. Therefore, the grafting of this intelligence into my own has not yet been fully accomplished, and we coexist as a dual personality. When I experience feelings of anxiety, I know that the entity or substance, or what ever it might be, is communicating with me in an endeavor to align my own sense of perspective with its own. It is pushing me into unfamiliar territory. It is endeavoring to get me to think like it. What for me is anxiety, is to it frustration at my lack of enterprise and daring when confronted by original and challenging situations. It is hungry for experience, adventure and growth; for, this is what feeds it. Does this now make me the unwitting host of a species incubating in me, waiting for its time to break out and populate our dimension; or, have I been uniquely bequeathed a gift of higher intelligence that will allow me to make a leap in consciousness. Is there a difference?

  SERAPION, by Francis Stevens

  Originally published as a 4-part serial in Argosy, June 19, 1920 through July 10, 1920.

  CHAPTER I

  SEAWEED AND A PURPLE VEIL.

  It began because, meeting Nils Berquist in town one August morning, he dragged me off for luncheon at a little restaurant on a side street where he swore I should meet some of the rising geniuses of the century.

  What we did meet was the commencement for me of such an extraordinary experience as befalls few men. At the time, however, the whole affair seemed incidental, with a spice of grotesque but harmless absurdity. Jimmy Moore and his Alicia! How could anyone, meeting them as I did, have believed a grimness behind their amusing eccentricity?

  I was just turned twenty-four that August day. A boy’s guileless enthusiasm for the untried was still strong in me, coupled with a tendency to make friends in all quarters, desirable or otherwise. Almost anyone who liked me, I liked. My college years, very recently ended, had seen me sworn comrade to a reckless and on-his-way-to-be-notorious son of plutocracy, while I was also well received in the room which Nils Berquist shared with two other embryo socialists of fanatic dye. A certain ingenuous likableness must have been mine even then, I think, to have gained me not only toleration, but real friendship in both camps.

  Berquist, however, was older than I by several years. He had earned his college days before enjoying them and, college ended, he dropped back into the struggle for existence and out of my sight—till I ran across him in town that August day.

  To play host even at a very moderate luncheon must have been an extravagance for Nils, though I didn’t think of that. He was a man with whom one somehow never associated the idea of need. Tall, lean with a dark, long face, high cheek-bones and deep eyes set well apart, he dressed badly and walked the world in a careless air of ownership that mere clothes could not in the least affect.

  His intimates knew him capable of vast, sudden enthusiasms, and equally vast depressions of the spirit. But up or down, he was Nils Berquist, sufficient unto himself, asking no favors, and always with an indefinable air of being well able to grant them.

  I admired and liked him, was very glad to see him again, and cheerfully let him steer me around two corners and in the door of his bragged-of trysting-place for incipient genius.

  On first entering, my friend cast an eye about the aggregation of more or less shabby individuals present and muttered: “Not a soul here!” in a disappointed tone. Then, glimpsing a couple seated at a corner table laid for four, he brightened a trifle and led me over to them.

  Nils’s idea of a formal presentation was always more brief than elaborate. After addressing the fair-haired, light-eyelashed, Palm-Beach-suited person on one side of the table as “Jimmy,” and his vis-à-vis, a darkly mysterious lady in a purple veil, as “Alicia,” he referred to me casually as “Clay,” and considered the introduction complete.

  I do not mean that the lady’s costume was limited to the veil. Only that this article was of such a peculiar, brilliantly, fascinatingly ugly hue that the rest of her might have been clothed in anything from a mermaid’s scales to a speckled calico wrapper. I can imagine nothing except a gown of the same color which would have distracted one’s attention from that veil.

  The thing was draped over a small hat and hung all about her head and face in a sort of circular curtain. Behind it I became aware of two dark, bright eyes watching me, like the eyes of some sea creature laired behind a highly futurist wave. Having met peculiar folk before in Berquist’s company, I took a seat opposite the veil without embarrassment.

  “Charming little place, this,” I lied, glancing about the low-ceilinged, semi-ventilated, architectural container for chairs, tables and genius which formed a background to the veil. “Sorry I didn’t discover it earlier.”

  The dark eyes gleamed immovably from their lair. I essayed a direct question. “You lunch here frequently, I presume?”

  No answer. The veil didn’t so much as quiver. Even my genial amity began to suffer a chill.

  Suddenly “Jimmy” of the Palm Beach suit transferred his attention from Berquist to me. “Please don’t try to talk with Alicia,” he said. “She is in the silence today. If you draw her out it will disturb the vibrations for a week and make the deuce of a hole in my work. Do you mind?”

  With a slight gasp I adjusted myself to the unusual. I said I didn’t mind anything.

  “You’re the right sort, then. Might have known it, or you wouldn’t be traveling with old man Nils, eh? What you going to have? Nothing worth eating except the broiled bluefish, and that’s scorched. Always is. What you eating, Nils?”

  “Rice,” said Berquist briefly.

  “On the one-dish-at-a-time diet, eh? Great stuff, if you can stick it out. Make an athlete out of a centenarian—if you can stick it out. Bluefish for—one or two?” he added, addressing the waiter and myself in the same sentence.

  “Two,” I smiled. Palm Beach Jimmy seemed to have usurped my friend’s role of host with calm casualness. The man’s blond hair and faintly yellow lashes and eyebrows robbed his face of emphasis, so that the remarkably square chin and high, sloping
forehead did not impress one at first. His way of assuming direction of even the slightest affairs about him struck me as easy-going and careless, rather than domineering.

  He gave the rest of the order, with an occasional kindly reference to my desires. “And boiled rice for one,” he finished.

  The waiter cast a curious glance at the purple veil. “Nothing for the lady?” he queried.

  “Seaweed, of course,” retorted Jimmy. “You’re new at this table, aren’t you?”

  “Just started working here. Seaweed, sir?”

  “Certainly. There it is, staring you in the face under ‘Salads.’ Study your menu, man.”

  “That,” explained Jimmy, after the waiter’s somewhat dazed departure, “is the only reason we come here. One place I know of that serves rhodymenia serrata. Great stuff. Rich in mineral salts and vitamins.”

  “You didn’t order any for yourself,” I ventured.

  “No. Great stuff, but has a horrid taste. Simply—horrid! Alicia eats it as a martyr to the cause. We have to be careful of her diet. Very—careful! Nils, old man, what’s the new wrong to the human race you’re being so silent over?”

  “Can’t say without becoming personal,” retorted Berquist calmly.

  “What? Oh, by Jove, I forgot you don’t approve. Still clinging to the sacred barrier, eh?”

  “The barriers exist, and they are sacred.” Nils’s long, dark face was solemn, but as he was capable of cracking the wildest jokes with just that solemn expression, I wasn’t sure if the conversation were light or serious. I only knew that as yet I had failed to get a grip on the situation. The man talked about his seaweed-fed Alicia as if the lady were not present.

  What curiosity in human shape did that veil hide? One thing I was uneasily aware of. Not once, since the moment of our arrival, had those laired bright eyes strayed from my face.

  “The barriers exist,” Berquist repeated. “I do not believe that you or others like you can tear them down. If I did, I should be justified in taking your life, as though you were any other dangerous criminal. When those barriers go down, chaos will swallow the world, and the race of men be superseded by the race of madmen!”

  Jimmy laughed, unstartled by my friend’s reference to cold-blooded assassination. “In the world of science,” he retorted, “what one can do, one may do. If every investigator of novel fields had stopped his work for fear of scorched fingers—”

  “In the material, physical world,” interrupted Berquist, speaking in the same solemn, dogmatic tone, “what one can do, one may do. There the worst punishment of a step too far can be only the loss of life or limb. It is man’s rightful workshop. Let him learn its tools at the cost of a cut or so. But the field that you would invade is forbidden.”

  “By whom? By what?”

  “By its nature! A man who risks his life may be a hero, but what is the name for a man who risks his soul?”

  “Oh, Nils—Nils!—you anachronism! You—you Inquisitioner! Here, you say the physical world is open ground—don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that what is commonly referred to as the ‘supernatural’ is forbidden?”

  “In the sense we speak of—yes.”

  “Very well. Now, where do you draw the fine dividing line? How do you know that your soul, as you call it, isn’t just another, finer form of matter? A good medium—Alicia here can do it—stretches out a tenuous arm, a misty, wraithy, semi-formless limb, and lifts a ten-pound weight off the table while her ‘physical’ hands and feet are bound so they can’t stir an inch. Telekinesis, that is called, or levitation, and you talk about it as if it were done by some sort of supernatural will power.

  “Will power, yes; but will actuating matter to move matter. That fluidic arm is just as ‘material,’ though not so substantial, as your own husky biceps. It’s thinner—different. But material—of course it’s material! Why, you yourself are a walking case of miraculous levitation. Will moving matter. Will, a super-physical force generated on the physical plane. Where’s your fine dividing line? You talk about the material plane—”

  “I won’t any more,” broke in Berquist hastily. “But you know that there are entities and forces dangerous to the human race outside of what we call the natural world, and that your investigations are no better than a sawing at the bars of a cageful of tigers. If I thought you could loose them, I have already told you what I would do!”

  There was a dark gleam in Berquist’s deep-set eyes that suddenly warned me he meant exactly what he said—though the meaning of the whole argument was as hazy to me as the face behind that astounding veil.

  Jimmy himself looked sober. “Here comes your rice,” he said shortly. “Eat it, you old vegetarian, and get off the murder subject. I’ll expect you to be coming around some night with a carving knife, if you say much more.”

  “There are police to guard you from the carving knife. The wild reaches between this world and the invisible are patrolled by no police. Yet you fear the knife which can harm only your body, and fearlessly expose your naked soul!”

  “Thanks, old man, but my soul is well able to take care of itself. Eat your rice. There! Didn’t I say the bluefish would be scorched? And it is. Behold, a prophet among you!”

  The bluefish wasn’t worrying me. What I was awaiting was the moment when that miraculously colored veil should be uplifted. Surely, her purple screen removed, the lady would cease to stare me out of countenance.

  Before the veil a large platter of straggling, saw-edged, brownish-red leaves had been set down. The dish looked as horrid as Jimmy said it tasted. In a quiver of impatience I waited. At last I should see—a hand, white and well shaped, but slender to emaciation, was raised to the veil’s lower edge. The edge was lifted slightly. Another hand conveyed a modest forkful of the uncanny edible upward. It passed behind the veil. The fork came away empty.

  With a gasping sigh I relinquished hope, and turned my attention to scorched blue-fish.

  Jimmy may have noted my emotion. “When Alicia is in the silence,” he offered, “she has to be guarded. The vibratory rhythm of the violet light waves is less harmful than the rest of the spectrum. Hence, the veil. Invention of my own. You agree with our wild anarchist here, Mr.—er—Clay? Sacred Barrier-ist and all that?”

  “My name’s Barbour,” I said. “Clayton S. Barbour. As for the barriers, I must admit you’ve been talking over my head.”

  “So? Don’t believe it. Pardon me, but your head doesn’t look that sort. Hasn’t Nils told you what I’m doing?”

  “Nils,” said Berquist, with what would have been cold insolence from anyone else, “has something better to do than walk about the world exploiting you to his acquaintances.”

  “I’m smashed—crushed flat,” laughed Jimmy. He seemed one of the most good-humored individuals I had ever met. “Never mind, anarchist. I’ll tend to it myself.” He turned again to me. “Come to think of it, one of Nils’s introductions is an efficient disguise. I’m James Barton Moore.”

  I murmured polite gratification. For the life of me I couldn’t recall hearing the name before. His perception was as quick as his good humor. That ready laugh broke out again.

  “Never heard of me, eh? That’s a fault of mine—expect the whole world to be thrillingly expectant of results from my work. Ever hear of the Psychic Research Association?”

  “Certainly.” I looked as intelligent as possible. “Investigate ghosts and haunted houses and all that, don’t they?”

  “You’re right, son. Ghosts and haunted houses about cover the Association’s métier. Bah! Do you know who I am?”

  “A member?” I hazarded.

  “Not exactly. I’m the man the Association forced off its directing board. And I’m also the man who is going to make the Association look like a crowd of children hunting spooks in th
e nursery. Come around to my place tonight and I’ll show you something!”

  The initiation was so explosively abrupt that I started in my chair.

  “Why—er—” I began.

  Nils broke in again. “Don’t go,” he said coolly.

  “Let him alone!” enjoined Moore, but with no sign of irritation. “You drop in around seven—here,” he scribbled an address on the back of a card and tossed it across the table, “and I’ll promise you an interesting evening.”

  “You are very good,” I said, not knowing quite what to do. I already had an engagement for that evening; on the other hand, my ever-ready curiosity had been aroused.

  “Don’t go,” repeated Berquist tonelessly.

  “Thanks, but I believe I will.”

  “Good! You’re the right sort. Knew it the minute I set eyes on you. Don’t extend these invitations to everyone. Not—by—any means!”

  Berquist pushed back his chair.

  “Are you going on with me, Clay?” he inquired.

  I thought he was carrying his peculiar style of rudeness rather beyond the boundaries; but he was really my host, so I acquiesced. I took pains, however, to bid a particularly courteous farewell to the eccentric pair with whom we had lunched. I might or might not keep my appointment with Moore, but if I did I wished to be sure of a welcome.