“At thirteen-thirteen East Hodges,” Agata said dismally.
“Ah, then you know? Why are you here then instead of there?”
“Oh, Mr. Lambert, we wanted to ask you—” Agata tried to say.
“Of course it's all right,” Lambert assured her. “Get over to thirteen-thirteen at once.”
They started over to 1313. As they walked along, Madam Hexe swung her heavy wooden mallet and decapitated a cat.
“What an awful thing to do!” Agata cried out.
“Don't think of it as killing a cat, Agata,” Madam Hexe said. “Think of it as making a Katzenspuk.”
“Think of it as making a Katzenspuk,” Conrad echoed her.
“Why not as making a Spokelspuk, if you use a wooden mallet?” Agata asked with sudden suspicion.
“Oh, no. To make a Spokelspuk, you must start with a human person,” Madam Hexe said.
“—must start with a human person,” Conrad echoed. For some reason this made Agata feel unnaturally cold.
The house at 1313 East Hodges was large and empty. The windows were broken out. The doors sagged open. Yet it once had been a glorious house. Ancient nobility clung to it like old moss. It was down in its luck, that house, but it maintained an attitude of grandeur. “Oh, this is the old haunted house,” Agata said. “I remember it.”
“In we go,” cried the madam. “This may be the new home of one or both of you. Over the threshold with you, Conrad. In, Agata, in! Ah, you can hear old echoes in the air right now. Come, come, friends in residence, greet us with the laugh.”
The laugh came so powerfully that it knocked the three arrivals to their knees. The scream (bloodthirsty and foully happy), the heart-freezing clatter, the gobbling laugh that curdled all the body juices'—a laugh like that should not be allowed in hell. That was the sound of a male Spokelspuk. The tape had not done it justice.
“The element spuk in the name is spook, ghost, isn't it?” Agata asked. She had to say something to disguise her shaking.
“My, you are slow,” the medium jibed. “You'll have to sharpen up quick or you'll be no good at this. We'll want you to get mad, you know, when it's time for it. But you can't be too mad too soon. And it's only a little bit too soon for it now.”
“You knock off a person with that wood mallet, and you make a Spokelspuk?” Agata asked in her building wrath.
“Hardly ever,” Madam Hexe said sadly. “The world, as we know, has been taken over by pleasant people, and there's hardly any of any other sort left. The pleasant peasants may be good for something, but I sure don't know what it is. You can't make a Spokelspuk out of a pleasant person, I'll tell you that. It's because of this that there are now so few Spokelspuks. They fade away after a few hundred years, and they just aren't being replaced. Hardly any Spokelspuks are being made. But this afternoon we should be able to make at least one.”
“This afternoon we should be able to make at least one,” Conrad echoed.
“And, fortunately, you are not a pleasant person, Agata,” Madam Hexe said.
“And, fortunately, you are not a pleasant person, Agata,” Conrad echoed. And the wrath of Agata continued to build.
The other male Spokelspuk sounded. His gobbling laugh was stronger than that of the first.
“No human nerves can stand much of that horror,” Agata said. “Well then, perhaps I will become unhuman or post-human. Something here swims upstream or goes against the grain. I love the hateful stuff a bit. I suppose it's mostly that I love being hateful.”
“Get mad, unkempt Agata, get mad,” Madam Hexe taunted her. “It's all you're good for. When you go you have to go in a fury or it's all in vain.”
“Shut up, witch! Sound off, oh male sound! Whatever you are, you're stormier than I am. Where is the third one?”
“A monstrous noise like that could be bagged and sold to horror movies by the pound. The twin devil-ghost laughters were like rip-saws cutting the brain and meninges and every nerve. They set up a screaming in each inch of the body. Such two pillars of strident cacophony could not be topped.
Could they not? The female sounded. That cutting, killing, spirit-shriveling laughter set the very rats to tumbling fearfully out of the walls of the haunted house. Sound could never be quite the same again, after it had included this.
“I wonder if I could do that?” Agata asked almost rationally. Almost, but her eyes weren't rational now. She bled copiously from the mouth from her self-bitten tongue and lips, and from the ears as they all did. And there was white froth gathering in the mouth corners.
“Sure you could do it, Agata,” Madam Hexe purred. “And it is almost time that you do it now.”
“And it is almost time that you do it now,” Conrad echoed.
“What is your real interest in this, Madam Hexe?” Agata asked. They seemed sane words, but they came almost automatically from an insane mind.
“Oh, I'm a paid lobbyist for the Spokelspuks,” Madam said.
“Then why are you so avid for our pay also?” Agata questioned.
“They don't pay me in material coin. I need that also.”
The horrible triple laughing of the Spokelspuks rose to a crest, then to a higher crest, then still higher. Would it never break?
“Come here, mad Agata,” Madam Hexe ordered in her own delight. “You are ripe for it now. Come here.” The Madam was happy in her coming triumph. She was one happy medium.
Agata came to them. She saw Conrad sitting on the numinous knees of Madam Hexe on an old worm-eaten deacon's bench.
“Conrad, you know how such silly carry-on always irritates me,” Agata said. She spoke gently, but she was mad as a gooney-bird. Then she screamed and laughed. It was the nearest possible thing to the Spokelspuk sounding for one still wearing the mortal coil.
She took the bemused Conrad by the hair and ears and flung him across the room where he crashed against the wall and came to rest beside the wooden mallet.
Madam Hexe rose smiling. Everything was going just as she wanted it. Agata struck that happy medium full-handedly and set her on her numinous rump on the floor.
“She's ready,” Madam Hexe giggled. “Where's the mallet?”
“She's ready,” Conrad echoed.
“Here's the mallet.”
Conrad wobbled to his feet with the heavy, sound, wooden mallet held high in his two hands. He bashed his wife heavily and loudly on the head with it.
Killed her too.
The Spokelspuk population had been increased by one.
Then there were four sources of that killer laughter sounding in the old haunted house. Oh, oh, oh, oh, bleeding ears and blown medullae! It was more than flesh could stand.
In the courtroom there was a fundamental disorder that could not be cured. There was, mainly, a loud weird noise like demented laughter, demented female laughter, or the laughter of something that had once been female. The source of this noise could not be located, but the rampant sound was nerve-wracking and abrasive. And then there was the defendant Conrad Scampo who refused to plead insanity.
“No, no, I am not insane,” he insisted. “It is just that insane things have been happening to me.”
“You still insist that you killed your wife while under the influence of a witch known to you only by the approximate name (your own term) of Madam Haddem?” the prosecutor was questioning him. “And now you don't know where this witch is?”
“She is everywhere. I see her everywhere and all the time. I see her in the courtroom now, right there, right back there, sweet-talking one of the guards. See her, the witch?”
“No, Mr. Scampo, I do not see the witch. And you are not able to describe her further?”
“Yes. She has numinous knees. Examine all the women, and she will be the one with numinous knees. You can't miss her. Shut up, Agata!! Damn it, shut up!!!”
“Yes, the noise is irritating, isn't it, Mr. Scampo? We apologize for it, but we still have not been able to locate the source of it. And you still insist that it is the
laughter of your dead wife?”
“Yes. Before it happened, she said she believed it was a female having the last laugh. Well, she won't get away from it. I intend to have the last laugh myself. Wait till I get my hands on her!”
“Mr. Scampo, you have stated that the approximately-named Madam Haddem was a paid lobbyist for a gang of ghosts. Does this not strike you as insane?”
“It sure does, but I did not state it. I stated that the Madam stated it.”
“But you did state that Director Benoni Lambert of the Species Conservation Bureau had declared this gang of ghosts to be an endangered species and had assigned you and your wife to finding means of increasing the number of these ghosts. But Mr. Lambert completely denies this himself. What do you say to that?”
“I think he was taken by a hoax that was started somewhere in the organization by some tool of the Spokelspuks. He was ashamed to admit that he didn't know what Spokelspuks were, so he passed it along to us. And we were ashamed to have to ask what they were.”
“And now you are worried, not so much that you may be executed for the murder of your wife, but that the manner of execution might somehow be wrong?”
“Yes. If I die in the electric chair, I won't become a Spokelspuk at all. I will become something else, possibly a Spassenspuk or a Spottelspuk. As such, there is no guarantee that I will meet my wife again or even be on the same plane with her. Is it too much to ask that I be bashed on the head until dead with that stout, wooden mallet that is in the evidence section there? I'll put an end to that crazy noise quick enough then. Just let me get my hands on the throat of that loud-throated wife of mine and I'll put an end to it.” And Conrad was making insane and throttling motions with his hands.
There came the Agata laugh again, maddening.
“No, you will not have the last laugh,” Conrad sputtered angrily. “I'll get you, Agata, I'll get you!”
“Be calm, Mr. Scampo,” the judge said. “And just what is the mallet business?”
“It is a requirement for becoming a Spokelspuk. After all, you have to have some rules for admission.”
“Where, by the way, do these ghosts live?” the judge asked further.
“In old wooden houses mostly,” Conrad told him. “They can't live in a sod house at all. They can inhabit a brick or stone house if there is enough wood in the interior, but they are not comfortable there. They can inhabit, for a while, a courtroom in a terra cotta and glass courthouse, if there is wooden paneling and wooden benches and tables, but they sure are not comfortable in such. I'm not either. I'm leaving. This whole thing is a farce anyhow.”
“You are not leaving, Mr. Scampo. You are not going anywhere,” the judge said. “Do you realize that you are on trial for your life?”
“I've told you already that I didn't want my life,” Conrad said with a new chill in his voice. “I forfeit it. The only question now is whether the condemned man should be allowed to choose his own method of execution. I choose the mallet and you all look at me like a bunch of barefaced idiots. And you say that I'm insane.”
Conrad left the chair, and he seemed about to leave the courtroom with resolute step. There was the taunting, terrifying Agata laugh again.
And there was a sudden motion by a pink-haired lady who had been standing by the evidence box and sweet-talking one of the guards. She grabbed the stout, wooden mallet out of that evidence box, and she bashed Conrad Scampo heavily and loudly over the head with it.
Killed him too.
“That was really a lot of fun,” said Madam Hexe, or Madam Haddem as Conrad had approximately called her. Several things happened then.
The screaming, gobbling, sickening laugh of Agata was throttled down to sickening silence. Conrad had finally got his hands on that loud-throated wife of his and was choking her, not to death for she was already dead, but into a queasy quiet.
Then the unpracticed but powerful death-moment laugh of Conrad Scampo sounded deafeningly. He had made it! He was a Spokelspuk now and he had, for the moment, the last laugh.
“You had better put that body in the disposal,” Madam Hexe said briskly to the judge, “and then have someone mop up the brains which were so clumsily spilled.”
“—had better put that body in the disposal,” murmured the nine parts bemused judge, “and then have someone mop up the spilled brains. But wait a minute, lady. You have killed a man in my courtroom. Shouldn't I do something?”
“Yes,” said the Madam. “You are a judge. Give the judgment that the Spokelspuk is no longer to be considered an endangered species. The two new ones should keep them going for another hundred years.”
“—make a judgment,” the now totally bemused judge was mumbling, “that the Spokelspuk be no longer considered an endangered species.”
“I really have to go now,” said the Madam. “Here's my card. (It was a simple queen of spades.) “Put it on the bulletin board. I give psychosomatic readings every morning from ten to twelve. Perhaps I can be of help to some of you.”
“—every morning from ten to twelve. Perhaps she can be of help to some of us.”
Madam Hexe left the courtroom and went about her affairs.
She had some odd groups for clients.
And she had a lot of class. She looked like a younger member of an older endangered species.
Royal Licorice
From Catfish crop and Mud-Goose tears
And Cimmaron mud River:
For fifty cents a thousand years,
And for a brick for-ever.
—Boomer Flats Ballads
Black Red had been sixteen years at stud. This was after a strict colthood and eight years of competitive horse racing. Now he had become a very slow and undependable stud. He was one old horse.
He gnawed a clump of prickly pear. He had been a stupid and rock-headed horse from his youth, and now that his eyes were shot he would eat anything. His owner chewed on a length of big bluestem grass and contemplated him. It was too bad to sell, for nine dollars for cat meat, a horse that had earned five million dollars. But what else could be done with the old animal?
But Black Red smelled a brother horse, an old flyer like himself, and he raised his head. So did the owner, and he saw in the distance a rare contraption: an ancient horse pulling an ancient medicine wagon that had once known gay paint; and the driver was more than ancient; he was timeless.
Then the contraption had bridged the distance too quickly to be believed, and it came to a halt in that grassy lane across the rail fence from Black Red and his owner.
“I, sir,” said the driver of the contraption, “am selling Royal Licorice, the concoction that will halt and reverse aging in any creature. Buy it and use it, and you can have for your horse restored youth and great length of days. I sell it for fifty cents a small jug and a dollar a large.”
“Why don't you use it yourself, old man?” the owner of Black Red asked.
“I do. Would you believe that I am more than a thousand years old?”
“No, I wouldn't, but you look as if you were. And your own horse?”
“Would you believe that he also is more than a thousand years old? Why do you hesitate? I don't make a lot of this, and I offer it only by chance as I go. It's by your happy chance that I've met you here today, sir.”
Black Red neighed hopefully.
“See,” said the peddling man. “He wants it. Your horse is smarter than yourself, sir.”
“Not at all. Some of my horses may be, but Black Red is a rock-head. In his own day he made his way by his great speed and strength. He'd never have made it by his wits.”
Black Red had reached a very long neck through the rail fence, grasped the small jug of Royal Licorice in his uneven teeth, and then swallowed the whole thing on one brave, horsey gulp.
“Will it hurt him, do you think?” the owner asked. “It won't matter really, for he's about at the end of his line. But I like the Roman-nosed fool, and I'd not have him suffer a choking death.”
“It
will hurt him not at all,” the timeless peddling man said. “The clay of the jug dissolves at once when it reaches the stomach. Watch now! The change is startling when you've never seen it before. You have the finest and fastest colt in the world here, Sir. Watch.”
Black Red gave a great snort, a youthful snort. He took off through the short cropped Blue-Stem with a clatter of hoofs. He ran, and he changed. His was a great coltish gallop, and he now had the movements and appearance of a fine colt. When he was a half mile off, he half-turned as if going into the backstretch. He stretched and he ran, and the owner was seized with the shouting madness. That man knew speed when he saw it, real speed, winning speed. And the big colt was growing more glossy and more beautifully muscled by the second. He was dark cherry color. He was heroic and swift.
“You owe me fifty cents for the small jug he took,” the peddler said.
“Yes, here,” said the owner. “I don't believe it, but my eyes have never lied to me before. Where can I find you if I want some more of it?”
“Oh, I'll be around before he needs it again.”
“What's your name, old fellow? Or should I say Thousand-Year Young fellow?”
“They call me the Licorice Man.”
Old Cyrus Slocum was throwing rocks at a fence post. This was up in the gypsum hills where old Cy had his ranch. It wasn't much of a ranch, but the rocky, bitter gypsum of it was in accord with the man himself. Slocum wasn't really unhappy. He had money; he had his stingy land (as stingy as he had used to be with a bingle); he had his memories; he had his good right arm, a little mellow now it's true; he had a few cattle.
Cy Slocum (you may not remember it about him if you are young, for the first time) had been about the greatest baseball pitcher ever. But the end of his career had been more than forty years before. He had been a six hundred game winner. He had once pitched ninety-nine consecutive scoreless innings; he had maintained an earned run average of .92 over a five year period. He had had it all.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 169
