Nightmare Alley

by William Lindsay Gresham

  The whisper was gentle and caressing. “Mother. Mother. Mother.”

  It was gone. Mrs. Peabody took off her glasses and wiped her eyes. At last Caroline had come through to her. The perfect image of the child! They seem to stay the age when they pass over. That would make Caroline still sixteen, bless her heart. “Carol—don’t leave! Don’t go, darling! Come back!”

  Darkness. The oil lamp sputtered, the flame died down and pitch black enfolded them. But Mrs. Peabody did not notice it. Her eyes were tight shut against the tears.

  The Rev. Carlisle spoke. “Will someone turn on the lights?”

  Orange glow leaped out brilliantly, showing the reverend still sitting with his hands on his knees. He rose now and went to the medium; with a handkerchief he wiped the corners of her eyes and her lips. She opened her eyes and got to her feet swaying, saying nothing.

  The spiritualist steadied her arm and then she smiled once at the company. “Let me go upstairs,” she said breathlessly.

  When she was gone they crowded around the Rev. Stanton Carlisle, pressing his hand and all talking at once from the release of the tension.

  “My dear friends, this is not our last evening. I see many more in the future. We shall indeed explore the Other Side together. Now I must go as soon as Miss Cahill is ready. We must look after our medium, you know. I will go up to her now and I shall ask all of you to remain here and not to say good-bye. She has been under tremendous strain. Let us leave quietly.”

  He smiled his blessing on them and closed the door softly behind him. On the hall table was a blue envelope, “To our dear medium as a token of our appreciation.” Inside was Mrs. Peabody’s check for seventy dollars.

  “Ten bucks apiece,” Stan said under his breath and crushed the envelope in his fingers. “Hang on to your hat, lady; you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  Upstairs he entered Mrs. Peabody’s room and shut the door. Molly was dressed and combing her hair.

  “Well, kid, we laid ’em in the aisles. And with the light on every minute and the medium visible. The robe business was terrific. Jesus, what misdirection! They couldn’t have pried their eyes away even if they’d known what I was doing.”

  From under his clerical vest he drew two papier-mâché replicas of a man’s hands and two black mittens. From a large flat pocket inside his coat came a piece of black cardboard on which was pasted a picture of a movie actress cut from a magazine cover and touched up with luminous paint. From his sleeve he took a telescopic reaching-rod made of blue steel. Bundling all the props into the white robe he stuffed them into the valise which he had brought upstairs. Then he lifted his shoe, pulled a luminous-headed thumbtack from the instep, tossed it in, and shut the bag.

  “You all set, kid? You better endorse this before I forget it. It’s only seventy skins, but, baby, we’re just starting. I got it fixed so we can slip downstairs and out without a lot of congratulations and crap. Baby, next time we really turn the heat on the old gal.”

  Molly’s lip was trembling. “Stan, Mrs. Peabody’s awful sweet. I—I can’t go on with this sort of stuff. I just can’t. She wants to speak to her daughter so bad and all you could do was whisper at her a little.”

  The Rev. Stanton Carlisle was an ordained spiritualist minister. He had started by sending two dollars and an affidavit, saying that he had produced spirit messages, to the United Spiritual League, and had received a medium’s certificate. To get his Minister’s certificate he had sent five dollars and had been interviewed by an ordained minister who turned his rostrum over to Candidate Carlisle for a few minutes one Thursday night. Messages were forthcoming and the new minister of the spiritualist gospel was sworn in. He was now entitled to perform marriages, conduct services, and bury the dead. He threw back his head and laughed silently.

  “Don’t worry, kid. She’ll hear from her daughter. And in something louder than a whisper. And she’ll see her too. This routine with the lights on and the medium in view all the time was just the convincer. The next time we work with this bunch we’ll work in a regular dark séance or a curtain over the cabinet. And do you know who’s going to give Mrs. Peabody the big thrill of talking to her daughter? See if you can guess.”

  “No. Not me, Stan. I couldn’t.”

  He was suddenly steely. “You don’t want me to let on to all those nice old folks down there that I have been deceived by a fraudulent medium, do you, sugar? You’ve got ’em eating out of your hand, my little kooch dancer. And when the time comes— you’re going to be one ghost that talks. Come on, kid. Let’s beat it out of here. The sooner I ditch this bag of props the rosier life will get. You think you’re the only one in this show that ever gets the shakes?”

  The guests stayed late for a buffet supper. Mrs. Peabody had rallied from the shock of recognizing her daughter and was fully launched in praise of the new medium and her mentor, the Rev. Stanton Carlisle. “You know, I got a definite psychic flash the moment that man touched the doorbell, the very moment. And when I opened the door there he was with the light shining on his hair—just like a halo in the sun, it was a perfect halo effect. He’s like Apollo, I said to myself. Those were the very words.”

  When the other sitters had gone Addie Peabody was too excited to sleep. At last she drew on a housecoat and came downstairs, feeling constantly the unseen presence of Caroline beside her. At the organ she let her hands fall on the keyboard in chords, and they sounded so spiritual and inspired. There was certainly a new quality about her playing. Then from beneath her fingers a melody took shape and she played with her eyes closed, from memory:

  On the other side of Jordan

  In the sweet fields of Eden,

  Where the Tree of Life is blooming

  There is rest for me.

  CARD IX

  The Hierophant

  They kneel before the high priest, wearer of the triple crown and bearer of the keys.

  THE FACE floated in air, unearthly in its greenish radiance, but it was the face of a girl and when it spoke Addie could see the lips move. Once the eyes opened, heartbreakingly dark and empty. Then the glowing lids closed again; the voice came:

  “Mother … I love you. I want you to know.”

  Addie swallowed hard and tried to control her throat. “I know, darling. Carol, baby—”

  “You may call me Caroline … now. It was the name you gave me. You must have loved it once. I was so foolish to want a different name. I understand so many things now.”

  The voice grew fainter as the face receded in the darkness. Then its glow changed and diminished until it was a pool of light near the floor. It vanished.

  The voice whispered again, this time amplified by the metal trumpet which had been placed in the cabinet with the medium. “Mother … I have to go back. Be careful. … There are bad forces here, too. All of us are not good. Some are evil. I feel them all around me. Evil forces … Mother … good-bye.”

  The trumpet clanged against the music rack of the organ and tumbled to the floor. It rolled against the leg of Addie’s chair and stopped. Groping for it, she picked it up eagerly but it was silent and chill except at the narrow end where it was warm as if from Caroline’s lips.

  The raps which had disturbed them on the last two evenings now began and jumped from the walls, the organ, her own chair back, the floor, everywhere. They rapped in the mocking cadences and ridiculous rhythms that spiteful children use to torment a teacher.

  A vase crashed from the mantelpiece and shattered on the tiles of the hearth. Addie screamed.

  The tones of the Rev. Carlisle came from the darkness near her. “Let us have patience. I call upon the presence which has come here unbidden to listen to me. We are not hostile to you. We wish you no harm. We are here to help you attain liberation by prayer, if you can only listen.”

  A mocking rap on the back of his own chair answered him.

  Mrs. Peabody felt the trumpet snatched from her hands. It clanged on the ceiling above her head and then a voice came from it and the
rappings and rustlings stopped. The voice was low and vibrant and deeply accented.

  “The way to God lies through the Yoga of Love.” It was the control spirit, Ramakrishna. “You little, mischievous ones of the baser planes, listen to our words of love and grow in spirit. Do not plague us nor our medium nor the sweet spirit of the girl who has visited her mother and was driven away by you. Listen to the love in our hearts which are as mountain streams pouring out their love to the distant sea which is the great heart of God. Hari Aum!”

  With the fall of the trumpet to the floor the room became still.

  At the door, while he was saying good night, the Rev. Carlisle took Addie’s hand firmly between his own. “We must have faith, Mrs. Peabody. Poltergeist disturbances are not infrequent phenomena. Sometimes it is possible for us, and our liberated dear ones, to overcome them by prayer. I shall pray. Your little girl, Caroline, may not be able to aid us very much but I am sure she will try—from her side of the River. And now, take courage. I will be near you even after I have gone. Remember that.”

  Addie closed the front door with dread of the vast, empty house behind and above her. If only she could get a girl to live in. But Pearl had left and then the Norwegian couple and after them old Mrs. Riordan. It was impossible. And Mr. Carlisle had said it would do no good to go to a hotel; the elementals attached themselves to people and not to houses and that would be horrible. In a hotel before the maids and the bellboys and everybody.

  Besides, this had been Caroline’s home when they all had been alive—in earth life, she corrected herself. They had bought this house when Caroline was three. Just before Christmas it was. And she had had her Christmas tree in the niche where Miss Cahill always sat at the séances. Addie took a chiffon handkerchief from her belt and blew her nose. It was awful that all this had to start just when Caroline had begun to come through so wonderfully.

  The armchair was still in the niche and Addie sat down in it gingerly. That corner was really Miss Cahill’s now; she had sanctified it by her sacrifices and her suffering just to enable Caroline to speak to them and appear in full form. Addie sank deeper into the chair, trying to reason away the feeling that somehow this wasn’t her home any more. She tried thinking back to Caroline’s third Christmas and the gifts. There was a little wooden telephone, she remembered, and Caroline had spent all Christmas Day “calling up” people.

  Now the house wasn’t like home any longer—it belonged to a terrifying stranger. A stupid, jealous boor of a spirit that broke things and rapped on windowpanes until Addie thought she would lose her mind. It was everywhere; there was no escaping it. Even when she went shopping or took in a movie she seemed to feel things crawling under her skin. She had tried to tell herself it was just nerves but Mr. Carlisle had once mentioned a case he had helped to exorcise—where the poltergeist actually haunted a man’s skin. And now she was positive of it. She broke into a fit of sobbing which made her sides ache. But it was a relief. You just couldn’t feel any more miserable and that was a relief in a way.

  The house was silent but on the long journey upstairs she felt herself watched. It was not by anything that had eyes, just an evil intelligence that saw without any eyes.

  Addie Peabody braided her hair hastily and threw some water on her face, rubbing it a couple of times with a towel.

  In bed, she tried to read one of the books the Rev. Carlisle had given her on Ramakrishna and the Yoga of Love but the words jumbled up and she found herself reading the same sentence over and over, hoping that the raps would not start again. They were only taps on her windowpane and the first time they came she had run to the window and opened it, thinking boys were throwing pebbles. But no one was there; the rooming houses across the street were all dark and asleep with their windows as black as caverns and the dingy lace curtains of one or two blowing out on the night wind. That was nearly a week ago.

  Tap!

  Addie jumped and looked at the bed-table clock. Ten minutes after one. She turned off the reading light and left on the night lamp in its opaque shade with the light glowing through the delicate cut-out letters: “God is Love.”

  Tap!

  Addie switched on the light and looked at the clock. One-twenty. She gripped the leather traveling clock in her hands, straining her eyes until she could see the minute hand actually moving, slowly and inevitably, like life itself going by. She put the clock down and clutched the spread tightly with both hands and waited. It was one-thirty. Maybe it wouldn’t come again. Oh, please, God, I have faith; indeed I do. Don’t let it—

  Tap!

  She threw on her robe and hurried downstairs, snapping on the lights as she went. Then the emptiness of the illumined house made her flesh creep. She put out the upstairs lights by the hall switch and the blackness up the staircase seemed to smother her.

  In the kitchen Addie filled a kettle, spilling water down her sleeve, and set it on the stove for tea. A crash from the pantry made her grab the robe together at her throat.

  “Dear—” She addressed the air, hoping, willing to make it hear her. “I don’t know who you are, dear, but you must be a little boy. A mischievous little boy. I—I wouldn’t want to punish you, dear. God—God is love.”

  A crash from the cellar shook the floor under her feet. She was too frightened to go down to see but she knew that the big shovel by the furnace had fallen over. Then, through the still house, standing with its lights on in the midst of the sleeping city, she heard another sound from below, a sound which made her cover her ears and run back upstairs leaving the kettle humming on the stove.

  From the cellar had come the metallic rasp of the coal shovel, creeping over the concrete in little jumps as if it had sprouted legs like a crab. An inch at a time. Scrape. Scrape.

  This time she picked up the telephone and managed to dial a number. The voice which answered was muffled and indistinct but it was like a warm shawl thrown over her shoulders.

  “I am sorry to hear it, Mrs. Peabody. I shall start an intensive meditation at once, spending the night in mental prayer, holding the thought. I don’t believe that the phenomena will trouble you further. Or, at least, not tonight.”

  Addie fell asleep as soon as she got back in bed. She had made herself a cup of tea, and once she fancied she heard a sound from the cellar but even if she had she would not have been afraid, for the Rev. Carlisle was with her now, in spirit. If only she could persuade him to stay over for a few days at the house. She must ask him again.

  The old gray stone house was dark and as silent as its neighbors. A milkman, driving on his lonely route, saw a man in a dark overcoat pulling what looked like a length of heavy fish-line out of a cellar window. He wondered if he oughtn’t to tell the cops but the guy was probably a wack. There were a lot of ’em in this territory.

  Light was beginning to show at the window when Molly Cahill turned over and found Stan slipping into bed beside her. She buried her face in the hollow of his throat for a moment and then turned back and fell asleep. You can always smell perfume on them if they’ve been with another woman. That was what people said.

  Addie Peabody got up late and called the Rev. Carlisle but there was no answer. She had the oddest feeling that the ringing she heard in her own telephone also came from one of the rooming houses across the street but she put it down to her nerves. Anyhow, nobody answered.

  A little later when she opened the medicine cabinet to get the toothpaste one of those big brown roaches, about three inches long, was in there and flew out at her. She was sure the poltergeist had put it in there just to devil her.

  And at breakfast the milk tasted like garlic and that she knew was the poltergeist because they always sour milk or make the cows’ milk taste of garlic. And it was certified milk from the best company. She dressed hurriedly and went out. In the beauty parlor the chatter of Miss Greenspan and the heat of the dryer were restful and reassuring. Addie treated herself to a facial and a manicure, and felt better. She did some shopping and saw part of a movie be
fore she got so restless she had to leave.

  It was late afternoon when she returned. She had hardly taken off her things when she smelled smoke. For a moment she was paralyzed, not knowing whether to go and find out what was burning or call the fire department and she stood between the two ideas for several seconds while the smell got stronger. Then she saw that something was burning in the umbrella stand in the hall—evil-smelling and smoky. It wasn’t doing any damage, just smoking and Addie carried the brass stand out in the back yard. The odor was like old-fashioned phosphorous matches. That was why the ancients always said the Evil One appeared in a burst of fire and brimstone—poltergeist fires smelled like phosphorus.

  Minute by minute the evening drew on. The fire had set all her nerves on edge again; she had always been deathly afraid of fires. And then the raps started at the windows and even on the fan-light above the front door.

  What a relief it was when she heard the doorbell ring and knew it was Mr. Carlisle and Miss Cahill. The Simmonses were not coming tonight, and with a little guilty pang Addie thought of it with elation—she would have Mr. Carlisle all to herself. That always seemed to get the best results. It was hard to get good results with so many different sets of vibrations even though the Simmonses were just as dear and devoted as any spiritualists she had ever known.

  Miss Cahill seemed even more tired and run-down-looking than ever and Addie insisted on giving her a hot Ovaltine before the séance but it didn’t seem to strengthen her any. The lines about her mouth grew deeper if anything.

  After she had played “On the Other Side of Jordan” Mr. Carlisle asked her if Caroline had a favorite hymn. She had to answer truthfully that Caroline was not a religious child. She sang hymns in Sunday school, of course, but she never sang any around the house.

  “Mrs. Peabody, what did she sing about the house? That is, what songs of a serious nature? An old love song perhaps?”