The Weird Fiction Megapack

by Various Writers

  But Schommer was far away in the city, asleep by now. Haverland leaped to his feet and knocked the microscope crashing to the floor. He had a grim purpose in mind, but even now was arrested by the second ringing of the bell, which broke the comparative silence in the building in the most startling manner.

  * * * *

  It was a late hour for anyone to return, and the hunkies of South had all rather sleep in coffins than come anywhere near this place. The bell continued to ring as he made his way to the door. Someone out there was passionately, or mischievously, ringing the bell again and again. Longs and shorts. Staccato rings in series, rings that set the nerves on edge; a whole wild, weird variety of ringings by some impatient lunatic. The bell still sounded alarmingly when he reached the door, which he snatched open at once. The steps were devoid of any presence but his own.

  Nearly hysterical with exasperation, Haverland looked into the black, wrathful night, but not for long. A blockade of vines crowded up the steps with a rush, and advancing tendrils whipped through the doorway. Haverland flung the door to with a re-echoing crash. A few short lengths of the vine were caught in the crack, and there they writhed, like the sprouting tails of snakes. One he gripped, which instantaneously snapped about his wrist and entered the flesh. He cried out with pain; taking a shorter grip on the vine with his other hand, at the same time bracing his feet against the door, he tugged with all his might, gasping with panic. It was like trying to break a wet leather thong, but the gods gave him the advantage of weight and terror. The vine parted abruptly; he caught himself as he staggered crazily past the first of the series of generators that ran back from the door.

  It was the thing that had nearly got Schommer. Vines gone soft; vines turned animal. Vines as flexible as rubber. Vines whose wooden hearts had been turned into some kind of unholy flesh, vile with rich, putrid yellow sap. Those tendrils remaining in the door writhed spasmodically; there was a heavy scraping sound, and they were withdrawn through the crack with a powerful jerk, leaving a leaf or two in the room. Haverland still held the piece that had broken off. It was quite limp, like a rounded, dirty strip of flesh, and was bleeding that sticky, pale yellow sap into his hand. He flung the thing away across the floor and walked unsteadily back to his rooms, drawing the palms of his hands heavily down his cheeks. He could hear vines beating against the door and grinding along the walls, unimaginable vines, foul things that were hosts to billions of lice. There was something definite and malicious in their movement as they worked along the window-ledges, tapping at the panes that were now streaming with moisture.

  In the downpour outside, the trees in the woods arched and lashed the air with foliage. Haverland listened bewildered to the stunning impact of barrage after barrage of thunder, and fancied that the living voices that issued from the grove of cottonwoods were many times multiplied. Then the lights throughout the laboratories brightened unbearably. As the engineer approached the end of his table the lights went out. The wires had gone down in the storm.

  He stumbled over some rope-like thing on the floor, and noticed wildly as he fell that the window was open. Something had come in. He reached out in the darkness, however splintered with lightnings, and found it, pulled at it. Clutching it was like squeezing the compact, corded flesh of a squid. A long, eel-shaped thing that passed through the window into the outside.

  At that moment ragged lightning seemed to tear the southern sky in two, answered by an eruption of light in the north. As the following thunder battered the place with sound, Haverland stood up thrilling. He had a brilliant vision of the dying Keene; for indeed, this again was the legendary halo. The two colossal charges of electricity in the sky seemed to serve as electrodes, each bolt a pole, the laboratory between; and in this room the halo appeared once more, just as Haverland had seen it over the tube of gas three months past. There was a full, mysterious effulgence throughout the room. A pale, thin radiance flowed out from the thing on the floor and filled the room with a glory of soft light. By this illumination the engineer saw that it was really a denuded length of vine, now more like a hideous, tapering worm; saw, too, that there was scarcely a leaf remaining on the tangle of vines at the window. In the glory of the halo these boneless arms serpentined in a terrible dance; every tentacle glittered with sweat in small beads, that winked at the lightning like innumerable eyes. The vine in the room began to raise itself from the floor.

  And now, having formed a towering, closed palisade about it, and accompanied by the sound of shouting leaves and colliding trunks, the vine-hung grove of cottonwoods was advancing on the house. It was the sound of earthquake; the hill shook, and metal clanged in the central chamber of the laboratories. Followed a stupendous crash. Haverland hurried to the door, half stunned.

  Through the broad windows of this central chamber one commanded a view of the entire countryside. The hill itself was just high enough to permit sight over the foliaged heads of the oaks and cottonwoods. Haverland, looking down at the trees, saw the entire woods bathed in cold flame. The grove was one vast phosphorescence. The tree-trunks glowed, and the masses of leaves shone like soft, burnished metal. All the great vines were alive with light, and hung from the trees in waterfalls of flame. It was a thing seen in a nightmare or read in a fairy-tale. Another Birnam Wood, that was coming by degrees, but surely, toward the central point that was the laboratories. The laboratory hill seemed to rise from a chasm whose walls were solid light. Trees and vines in motion. Before their advancing trunks and stems the earth was rolling away in waves. Then, dark off in one end of the chamber, the engineer saw that the oak on the hill had already entered the building. The end generator had been shouldered aside and crashed through the floor into the basement. Commotion was in the air. The storm entered the chamber with the oak, and rain beat on Haverland’s face.

  And still it was not too late. The engineer whirled and retreated through his own laboratories, leaping the handful of twining creepers in his way. In the back of the building he picked up a sledgehammer, then raced back through the smother of rain to the garage, in which stood three full drums of gasoline. He ran up the incline on which the drums rested, and worked rapidly with a wrench. He stepped back a little, swung the sledge in one heavy blow. The drums, released, tumbled booming down the runway, spilling their contents as they went, and bounded out the doorway to go careering down the hill.

  Haverland waited, dripping with rain and perspiration, then produced a box of matches. As he was about to strike a light the heavens gaped and a volcano of flame plunged cracking and thundering into the woods like the finger of God.

  Haverland flung himself out of the garage in time to escape the arm of fire that leaped up the hill. From the back of the laboratories he watched a tower of flame boom up in the declining storm. Above low thunders he heard three successive explosions as the gasoline drums went. There was enough of it, he felt, to suffocate, if not to consume. A shift of wind carried the sound of crackling and hissing vegetation, and carried into the engineer’s nostrils the charnel stench of all the pyres of history. Sickened, he stumbled back into the laboratories.

  * * * *

  The following day dawned calm and clear. Roman Sholla came out early and stood on his front lawn, smoking his pipe deliberately and looking up at the hill. A crew had appeared several hours before, and were making much noise as they repaired the damage done to the laboratories by a falling oak. There had been a strong, unpleasant odor in the air all morning, which likely enough came with the shift of the wind from the packing-plant in the city. The members of the crew, as one occasionally came down into South, found the work distasteful, the stench seemingly worse the higher one got up the hill.

  One man alone in the building, the chief engineer, Haverland, had escaped serious injury when lightning had touched off three drums of gasoline in the garage and burned it. The South woods had suffered heavily, with a number of the trees and the extraordinarily large vines that grew here either totally burned or badly charred. The famous oa
k that had taken a journey away from Sholla’s own yard, though not burned, was now dead, its leaves already withered.

  Eric Shane came out presently, scratching his head and blinking cautiously. He and Sholla were joined shortly by little Fred Yanotsky and Papa Freng. Sholla, situated as he was nearest the laboratory, took on some importance. He told how the storm had wakened him. The woods had caught on fire somehow, and three explosions (“when those gasoline go off”) illuminated the room he slept in.

  “It was one big bonfire,” he said, holding out his arms.

  He told of seeing the lightning strike. “Big,” he said helplessly, shaking his head. The bolt was indescribably huge. He could tell of the sharp burned-leather and ozone smell in the air afterward, though, and did. But the thunder, ah! They all remembered that sound of cataclysm when the big bolt struck, but that could not be described either.

  Sholla’s three friends were silent. They had said nothing yet, and seemed very much satisfied about something as they looked up at the crew busy at the shattered masonry and twisted metal above them.

  “Well, Fred,” said Sholla, “what you think of it, eh?”

  “I t’ink,” said dark little Yanotsky, “maybe it vas a good t’ing if all the plant fall in. Never, no good come of machines.”

  “Ah!” said Sholla contemptuously. “Always the same. Crazy stubborn like your father. You should go to school, Fred Yanotsky!”

  “This morning,” said white-haired Papa Freng, “a squirrel came to my window for nuts. He was very tame, and the first I have seen in a long time.” His eyes were fixed on the dreaming distance. As he spoke, something moving near by brought him to sharp attention. With something of eagerness in his voice he exclaimed, “Look!”

  He pointed up the road. A small cottontail, pursuing a rather aimless course of exploration or foraging, was proceeding along the ditch, nibbling at green shoots. Its way was blocked presently by a creeper that lay along the road and sagged under its own weight. It was remarkable in being almost totally leafless.

  The rabbit, in skipping over it, suddenly froze, as beast does in the presence of beast. But if the grotesque old Keene had been responsible for the mockery of sentience in these singular growths of South, his ghost must have rested at last. The watchers saw the rabbit pass carelessly, unmolested, over the stiff tangle of vines and disappear among the ruins of the South woods.

  Roman Sholla walked the few paces up to the vine, and, toeing its snarled trunks and leafless tendrills, said, “Dead.”

  THE PALE MAN, by Julius Long

  I have not yet met the man in No. 212. I do not even know his name. He never patronizes the hotel restaurant, and he does not use the lobby. On the three occasions when we passed each other by, we did not speak, although we nodded in a semi-cordial, noncommittal way. I should like very much to make his acquaintance. It is lonesome in this dreary place. With the exception of the aged lady down the corridor, the only permanent guests are the man in No. 212 and myself. However, I should not complain, for this utter quiet is precisely what the doctor prescribed.

  I wonder if the man in No. 212, too, has come here for a rest. He is so very pale. Yet I can not believe that he is ill, for his paleness is not of a sickly cast, but rather wholesome in its ivory clarity. His carriage is that of a man enjoying the best of health. He is tall and straight. He walks erectly and with a brisk, athletic stride. His pallor is no doubt congenital, else he would quickly tan under this burning, summer sun.

  He must have traveled here by auto, for he certainly was not a passenger on the train that brought me, and he checked in only a short time after my arrival. I had briefly rested in my room and was walking down the stairs when I encountered him ascending with his bag. It is odd that our venerable bell-boy did not show him to his room.

  It is odd, too, that, with so many vacant rooms in the hotel, he should have chosen No. 212 at the extreme rear. The building is a long, narrow affair three stories high. The rooms are all on the east side, as the west wall is flush with a decrepit business building. The corridor is long and drab, and its stiff, bloated paper exudes a musty, unpleasant odor. The feeble electric bulbs that light it shine dimly as from a tomb. Revolted by this corridor, I insisted vigorously upon being given No. 201, which is at the front and blessed with southern exposure. The room clerk, a disagreeable fellow with a Hitler mustache, was very reluctant to let me have it, as it is ordinarily reserved for his more profitable transient trade. I fear my stubborn insistence has made him an enemy.

  If only I had been as self-assertive thirty years ago! I should now be a full-fledged professor instead of a broken-down assistant. I still smart from the cavalier manner in which the president of the university summarily recommended my vacation. No doubt he acted for my best interests. The people who have dominated my poor life invariably have.

  Oh, well, the summer’s rest will probably do me considerable good. It is pleasant to be away from the university. There is something positively gratifying about the absence of the graduate student face.

  If only it were not so lonely! I must devise a way of meeting the pale man in No. 212. Perhaps the room clerk can arrange matters.

  * * * *

  I have been here exactly a week, and if there is a friendly soul in this miserable little town, he has escaped my notice. Although the tradespeople accept my money with flattering eagerness, they studiously avoid even the most casual conversation. I am afraid I can never cultivate their society unless I can arrange to have my ancestors recognized as local residents for the last hundred and fifty years.

  Despite the coolness of my reception, I have been frequently venturing abroad. In the back of my mind I have cherished hopes that I might encounter the pale man in No. 211. Incidentally, I wonder why he has moved from No. 212. There is certainly little advantage in coming only one room nearer to the front. I noticed the change yesterday when I saw him coming out of his new room.

  We nodded again, and this time I thought I detected a certain malign satisfaction in his somber, black eyes. He must know that I am eager to make his acquaintance, yet his manner forbids overtures. If he wants to make me go all the way, he can go to the devil. I am not the sort to run after anybody. Indeed, the surly diffidence of the room clerk has been enough to prevent me from questioning him about his mysterious guest.

  * * * *

  I wonder where the pale man takes his meals. I have been absenting myself from the hotel restaurant and patronizing the restaurants outside. At each I have ventured inquiries about the man in No. 210. No one at any restaurant remembered his having been there. Perhaps he has entree into the Brahmin homes of this town. And again, he may have found a boarding-house. I shall have to learn if there be one.

  The pale man must be difficult to please, for he has again changed his room. I am baffled by his conduct. If he is so desirous of locating himself more conveniently in the hotel, why does he not move to No. 202, which is the nearest available room to the front?

  Perhaps I can make his inability to locate himself permanently an excuse for starting a conversation. “I see we are closer neighbors now,” I might casually say. But that is too banal. I must await a better opportunity.

  * * * *

  He has done it again! He is now occupying No. 209. I am intrigued by his little game. I waste hours trying to fathom its point. What possible motive could he have? I should think he would get on the hotel people’s nerves. I wonder what our combination bellhop-chambermaid thinks of having to prepare four rooms for a single guest. If he were not stone-deaf, I would ask him. At present I feel too exhausted to attempt such an enervating conversation.

  I am tremendously interested in the pale man’s next move. He must either skip a room or remain where he is, for a permanent guest, a very old lady, occupies No. 208. She has not budged from her room since I have been here, and I imagine that she does not intend to.

  I wonder what the pale man will do. I await his decision with the nervous excitement of a devotee of the track
on the eve of a big race. After all, I have so little diversion.

  * * * *

  Well, the mysterious guest was not forced to remain where he was, nor did he have to skip a room. The lady in No. 208 simplified matters by conveniently dying. No one knows the cause of her death, but it is generally attributed to old age. She was buried this morning. I was among the curious few who attended her funeral. When I returned home from the mortuary, I was in time to see the pale man leaving her room. Already he has moved in.

  He favored me with a smile whose meaning I have tried in vain to decipher. I can not but believe thai he meant it to have some significance. He acted as if there were between us some secret that I failed to appreciate. But, then, perhaps his smile was meaningless after all and only ambiguous by chance, like that of the Mona Lisa.

  * * * *

  My man of mystery now resides in No. 207, and I am not the least surprised. I would have been astonished if he had not made his scheduled move, I have almost given up trying to understand his eccentric conduct. I do not know a single thing more about him than I knew the day he arrived. I wonder whence he came. There is something indefinably foreign about his manner. I am curious to hear his voice. I like to imagine that he speaks the exotic tongue of some far-away country. If only I could somehow inveigle him into conversation! I wish that I were possessed of the glib assurance of a college boy, who can address himself to the most distinguished celebrity without batting an eye. It is no wonder that I am only an assistant professor.

  * * * *

  I am worried. This morning I awoke to find myself lying prone upon the floor. I was fully clothed. I must have fallen exhausted there after I returned to my room last night.

  I wonder if my condition is more serious than I had suspected. Until now I have been inclined to discount the fears of those who have pulled a long face about me. For the first time I recall the prolonged hand-clasp of the president when he bade me good-bye from the university. Obviously he never expected to see me alive again.