19 Tales of Terror

by Whit Burnett

  that day in Laurel Canyon. Not only the truth of physical

  events, but the truth of what happened in the defendant's mind.

  The qualifications of Doctor Nicholson as a medical expert are

  beyond question. And . he feels, as do I, that he cannot give

  conclusive medical testimony without a discussion of the evidence."

  The judge was silent for about ten ticks of my darkroom

  timer. Then he spoke : "The court will withhold its ruling. The

  witness may proceed with his testimony. If the testimony is

  found to be irrelevant, the court will instruct the jury to disregard it, and will order it stricken from the record."

  Doctor Nicholson continued : "I have suggested how the accident might have occurred. I do not bear witness that it did happen that way. Or even that it was an accident. But, working

  backwards from the results in clinical evidence of my examination of the defendant, I have reached the personal conclusion that that is what happened. The accident occurred just as Wilkinson described it--except, of course, that the woman

  died and not the dog.

  ·

  "Now let us look into Wilkinson's mind. When he stopped

  his car too late, jumped out, and saw what he had done, he

  must have been horrified. Just as you or I would have been

  horrified.

  "Previous medical testimony by the coroner has established

  that the first impact of the automobile crushed the woman's

  spine at its base. Such an injury might well have resulted in

  paralysis of the legs and lower part of the woman's body. It

  would not necessarily have resulted in loss of consciousness. It

  would surely have meant extreme agony.

  "Thus, you see, it could well have been that the woman

  screamed in her terrible pain and attempted to raise the forepart of her body upon her hands. This is precisely the behavior Mr. Wilkinson ascribes to the dog which he insists was the

  victim.

  "We see the woman lying in the roadway and trying in her

  agony to struggle to her feet. The sight must have terrified Wilkinson and filled him with unbearable guilt. The woman's continued screams provided further auditory stimuli to Wilkinson's panic-stricken mind. Finally, it is possible that at this moment Wilkinson recognized the deceased as an actress of great fame-a further surprise and shock.

  "As the woman's screams continued to reverberate in the

  narrow driveway, Wilkinson's mind neared its limit of shock

  tolerance. Probably feeling that she was dying anyway, he

  turned in desperation to the only available means of silencing

  her screams and ending her misery. His automobile. He backed

  216 • Nineteen Tales of Terror

  his automobile over her body and then ran forward over it

  once again, just as be related on the stand he bad again driven

  over the dog.

  "Now the full realization of what be bad done came over

  him. There is a limit of emotional trauma beyond which a

  mind loses its balance. Wilkinson had reached his, and was on

  the verge of the same kind of hysterical madness which afllicts

  fear-driven soldiers on the battlefield.

  "At this moment the dog Prince Igor might well have come

  running up the driveway in answer to his mistress' screams. Wilkinson's mind, casting about in panic for some means of maintaining its balance, immediately seized upon the likeness

  between the dog's white fur and the woman's white clothing

  and famous blonde hair, and transposed the two. His mind

  could. not, this side of sanity, allow itself to believe what bad

  actually happened. So it immediately accepted as truth the

  survival of the young woman and the death of the dog.

  ''Then," continued the psychiatrist, "still sane but with this

  one fixed delusion, be pacified the disturbed dog, made friends

  with it, actually believing the dog was the woman. He must

  have taken the dog to the house, found the liquor cabinet, and

  acted out the friendly gesture of having two sociable drinks

  with the deceased.

  "But now some lingering awareness of what be had done

  must have struggled near the level of Wilkinson's consciousness. To lock this terror deep in his subconscious mind, he perhaps felt a need to perform some familiar and habitual act, to go through the motions of some normal activity so that his unreal understanding of the preceding events might also seem normal and true.

  "Then it no doubt was that Wilkinson took up his camera and

  made the twelve photographs now on evidence in this court.

  Handling his camera was a familiar habit pattern. He made the

  pictures almost automatically. The customary work eased his

  mind, made him feel everything was all right.

  "When he had finished his work, what would have been

  more natural than for him to place his business card on a table?

  This was another professional habit pattern. And then he drove

  off to complete the original errand which brought him to Laurel

  Canyon-the delivery of a set of photographs to a customer.

  He left, by the other gate, a victim of his mind-made fantasy

  that he had killed only a dog."

  The judge split hairs. He ruled that the psychiatrist's testimony was admissible. But he cautioned the jury to make its own judgment of its value and to distinguish carefuJly as to what

  part of it was the testimony of an expert medical witness and

  what part was simply opinion.

  Tha Blond Dog • 2 1 1

  Next day, the prosecutor brought to the stand two more

  psychiatrists, who had also talked with me in my cell, but more

  briefly than Doctor Nicholson. They agreed that I was sane. But

  they said they found no evidence of delusion. The district attorney told the jury that this meant I had invented my delusion for the purpose of feigning insanity and saving my "criminal"

  skin.

  He even dug back into the 1932 yearbook of Hollywood

  High School to show the jury that I had been president of the

  high school dramatic club and was therefore, so be said, a skillful actor. So I don't know what good Doctor Nicholson's testimony did me.

  In his summation to the jury the district attorney used the

  quality of my own professional work against me. Brandishing

  my twelve prints of the actress' house in the faces of the twelve

  jurors, and then passing out one print to each of them, he asked

  them to observe how sharp and attractive my pictures were.

  "It took a steady hand to produce photography such as this,"

  he told the jurors. "Who except a man in full possession of his

  faculties could have produced photographs of such high caliber

  immediately after committing a deliberate and cruel murder?

  For this was murder. A cruel and cold-blooded crime of passion. The state bas proven in this case that a crime of passion can be committed in cold blood. The state feels that you honorable ladies and gentlemen can only return with a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree.

  "As you know, California law gives you the option of recommending either life imprisonment or the death penalty. So unusually cruel and deliberate was this crime that the state does not hesitate to expect that you will in good conscience recommend the death penalty ...

  Well, you read the papers. You know the jury is still out,

  after four days.

  What do I think about the case now? I must admit it's still

  no clearer in my mind than when the police got me out of bed

  that mor
ning.

  The woman is dead all right. I saw a picture of her body in

  the papers. A closer, more terrible, view was on evidence in

  court. It was her body. She's dead.

  The blond dog is alive, too. I saw him in court. My lawyer

  checked with the dog-license bureau, and found there are exactly eighteen more grown Russian wolfhounds in all of Los Angeles county. He and my wife Maria tracked down the owner

  of each dog, and saw personally that each dog was still alive.

  All the evidence seems to indicate that what Dr. Nicholson

  said might have happened, actually did happen. My car struck

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  Nineteen Tales of Terror

  •

  down the actress, and her screams and agony and the shock of

  recognizing her were all so terrible to me that my mind did a

  flip-flop and made me sure it was the dog I'd killed. Made me

  fool myself right up to now.

  Yet against the weight of all evidence, a man must at last

  trust only the testimony of his own senses. I know I killed the

  dog. I know I talked with the woman, and drank with her, and

  posed her when I made the pictures, and left her perfectly alive

  when I drove away.

  I also know that all three psychiatrists were right in agreeing

  I'm sane. I think clearly still. My conduct on the stand was

  reasonable. I love my wife in an achingly normal way. I'm perfectly rational. Hasn't the story I've just told you been straightforward? Has it sounded like the invention of a demented man?

  There's only one bit of evidence left that I can't get myself to

  understand. Maybe it does mean I'm mad. Maybe, at least, I do

  have a fixed delusion.

  You remember how I told you about the woman slapping me

  across the face after I'd killed the dog? She slapped me twice,

  and on the third swing I raised my ann to protect my face and

  got my hand scratched with her long fingernails.

  Well, those scratches are all healed now. But the back of my

  hand still shows the scars. Here, look at it. See how long and

  deep and parallel those scratches were.

  Well, I sit here wondering what the jury is going to do, and I

  keep studying those scars. They don't look to me quite like

  fingernail scratches. It worries me that they look almost like the

  claw marks of a dog.

  JOHN METCALFE

  TH E C H I LD I SH TH I N G

  TI:IE day they heard that Bella, their maid, had

  died in the hospital, little Dulcie, rummaging about the derelict

  shed in the wood lot, came upon something odd.

  At the time, the two things were not very closely connected

  in her mind, but it is possible she had been prompted to her investigations, here and there, that evening by a vague idea that something of Bella'�me object of worth or interest-might

  have been left behind.

  All afternoon there had been a faint depressed disturbance

  consequent on what had happened to Bella, whose young-man

  cousin had called with the news, and gone away again, after

  clearing up Bella's room, carrying a corded box. Father had

  been grumpy, and mother had pensively taken the trap into

  Wandleton to the labor exchange to try for a new maid.

  Dulcie, aged eight, had not cared much for Bella, though

  now she half imagined, as was proper, that she had. Actually,

  Bella had been a rather sullen, ugly-pretty creature, addicted

  to cheap finery and attractive only to numerous undesirables,

  but Dulcie, then, was not to know that. Avoiding her elder

  brother Vic, she had loitered out alone, toward sundown,

  through the meadow and over the brook, and on into the little

  lost orchard beyond the spinney, where the disused shed was.

  And there, poking around inside the shed, she had found the

  male doll.

  This doll was not as other dolls. It was of dull leadenish-yellow wax, small but cleverly modeled despite a misshapenness of one leg, with a gray tuft of beard upon the chin and, circling

  the thin neck, a narrow band, it seemed, of gold.

  Dulcie, in the failing light, stood looking at it queerly. It had

  been lying in a comer, not obvious, but swaddled underneath

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  Nineteen Tales of Terror

  •

  a pile of litter, rags and sacking, as if hidden there. Just what

  inspired Dulcie to turn this rubbish over and discover it (except

  perhaps the general notion that, as the young-mao cousin had,

  she was making sure that no stray belongings of the departed

  maid should remain ungamered ) , she could not tell. And now

  that it was unexpectedly revealed she had a blankly disconcerted, puzzled feeling-not of delight and hardly, even, of excited curiosity or satisfaction, but of a slightly glum, unthrilled bewilderment. This doll, if it was a doll, was too different. It

  must, she thought dimly, be somebody, it was so lifelike.

  Vaguely, its lack of orthodox engagingness, its carelessness of

  the least effort to ingratiate and win her favor by an ordinary

  doll prettiness, affronted her. And it had startled her, too. Instead of her finding it, as she had, it was as if it had popped out upon her and taken her by a description of surprise.

  She was still grasping the object gingerly when she swung

  around at the sound of footsteps. Vic, having tracked her to

  the orchard, stumped masterfully in.

  "What's that?" he said. "Oo . • • whatever is it? Here, give it

  to me. Let's have a squint."

  "No," refused Dulcie, with instinctive obstinacy, "No . . .

  "

  At that moment he did not press his demand, and merely

  stood at her side, staring with her.

  Together they marveled, but as yet, for some reason, with

  little spoken comment or conjecture.

  "I'll keep it," announced Dulcie, a shade undecidedly. "I'll

  call it-l'll call it Oomosassoway . . . . It's mine."

  "Oh . . . all right," conceded Vic. "You can have the old

  thing. For a bit anyway. Till-till I say."

  She knew that he was only biding his time and holding what

  he thought his claims upon her in reserve.

  For quite a while, after that, Dulcie used to play--desultorily, and when she . chanced to think of it, and when mood and opportunity conspired-with the waxen manikin in the deserted shed. It did not by any means engross her, but she was conscious of it, almost uneasily, as of a rather mystifying and

  irritating something she did not entirely understand and was

  not entirely certain what to do about. This uncertainty, shared

  apparently by Vic, was reflected in the fact that Oomosassoway's existence continued hidden from her parents.

  How had the thing got where it was, and why, in particular,

  had there been a pin transfixing its left leg? She had not noticed the pin till the day after the doll's discovery, and it was very small--one of those tiny pins that people use for fastening

  papers. But the pin had been enough to crystallize an attitude

  and to suggest a line of action, and, presently, to start her on a

  The Childish Thine • 221

  train of further imitative prickings. She had no stronger strain

  of cruelty in her nature than most little girls-yet she did not

  really like the doll (which was only a doll after all), and to

  "torture" it in make-believe was fun. Oomossasoway, the red

  Indian
chief of her private legend, had tortured captive palefaces innumerable in the most horrible fashion, and now he was getting paid out. Anyhow, Bella, or whoever it was that had

  had him first, had evidently not liked the bearded doll either,

  and Dulcie was merely following an example . . . .

  By and by, however, she grew a trifle tired of such pastimes. In a sense, because she could not discuss it or play with it openly, the doll was actually a sort of nuisance; and she had

  thoughts, occasionally, of just throwing it away. The jabbings,

  prickings, eye-gougings, and other "teasings" of the manikineven to the accompaniment of "magic" rites and incantations

  -began gradually to pall; so that she was, at length, the less inclined to grumble when Vic, now and then, would grab it from her lap, or to dispute his right to play with it as well

  Vic was two years older than his sister, going to school each

  day in Wandleton, while Dulcie, so far, merely had a morning

  governess, Miss Todd. He was interested in chemistry, and his

  designs on Oomosassoway were probably of the blackest; but,

  by this, Dulcie did not greatly care what happened to the puppet, which had suffered so many agonies and minor mutilations at her own hands already. She had, for instance, half lopped an

  ear, then stuck it on again by melting the wax, and once she

  had all but singed off the beard with lighted matches . . . . Even

  if Vic put an end to Oomosassoway entirely by "experimenting" or "exploding" him she would not deeply grieve. Indeed, it would be almost a relief.

  On the September afternoon when she at last resigned the

  midget to Vic's tender mercies, Dulcie was to be driven in to

  Wandleton by Mummy. Before she raced off to the cobbled

  side yard where the trap was waiting, she and her brother had

  been down there together, in the orchard shed.

  He was standing by the narrow cobwebbed oblong of

  cracked glass slats that served for window, his blond curls

  catching the dusty light. Though he did bully her she was fond

  of him, with the uneasy and aggrieved devotion that was a

  tribute to his power to hurt.

  "He's mine, remember, old Oomo is," she adjured him, in a

  formal assertion of continued ownership. "You be good to him,

  mind!"

  Vic grinned. "Oh, I'll be good to him!" he answered, ironically and with a glint in his eye that boded, on the contrary, every variety of ill to the forsaken manikin. "I'll-" He broke