Mythos and Horror Stories

by Frank Belknap Long

  He couldn’t seem to hold jobs. Sooner or later the truth would leak out, and Bannerman would have to go to a lot of trouble to keep him off the bread lines. It was plenty gruesome. If only he could remember what Bannerman looked like.

  But he couldn’t seem to. He’d have jobs and then lose them. If only he could remember—

  “Yes, Mr. Cromer. Right this way please,” the little man was saying.

  He seemed to be in a sort of laboratory. There were tall, uncurtained windows on both sides of him, and on the table toward which he was advancing was— Good heavens, it didn’t seem possible.

  On the table was a full-course dinner—from soup to nuts!

  “This was sent down from the Midtown Hotel,” the little man said. “You’d better check each course separately.”

  Cromer nodded. He seemed to know what was expected of him. “They’re putting the screws on a new chef, eh? How about the fowl itself?”

  It’s from the Richardson Poultry Market. I suggest you concentrate on tenderness and skin fat, and forget about the seasoning. Richardson’s broilers are well shaped, but the hotel is thinking about switching to Hegarty & Reuper.

  “OK,” Cromer, said.

  He pulled up a stool, sat down and dismissed the little man with a nod. There were forks and spoons on the table, and even a paper napkin. He tucked the napkin into his vest, picked up a spoon and went to work.

  “Hm-m-m,” he murmured, as something that tasted like chicken soup slid down his gullet. “Hm-m-m, not bad.”

  He drew a chart toward him, made a notation. “No complaint on that score,” he murmured. “We’ll try the salad.”

  It was a tomato-pepper salad, decked out with sliced cucumbers.

  “Excellent,” he exclaimed, and made another notation.

  The chicken occupied him for ten full minutes. He glanced furtively over his shoulder before he ripped it apart with his fingers, and reduced the breast and one wing to a gleaming jumble of bones. He was munching on a drumstick when someone called to him from the back of the laboratory.

  “You’re wanted on the telephone, Mr. Cromer.”

  He had only the vaguest recollection of passing from the laboratory, descending three flights of stairs, and answering the call that had come for him. And yet the instant he heard Jane Wilder’s voice everything seemed to snap back into place. He had money in his pockets and could step out again. He was working again.

  “Put on your best night-club bonnet, sweetkins,” he said. “We’re going to celebrate.”

  Replacing the receiver, he had a memory of her, scornful and malicious, flinging herself away from him, and refusing to let him touch her. But all that would be changed now. He was working again, and could hold his head high.

  Traveling across the city to her apartment hotel his heart skipped a beat every time he glanced at his watch. Only fifteen minutes more now, he thought—eleven, eight, four.

  It seemed like a dream. After long ages they were together again. He was crushing her in his arms and disarranging her hair with his huge, hungry hands.

  “You’ll never be sorry, darling,” he said.

  Jane Wilder wrinkled her nose. She had no illusions on that score. She’d be sorry every other week, she told herself—married to a man who couldn’t keep the wolf at bay. But eligible bachelors were none too plentiful nowadays, what with the draft, and the way the older ones were being fought over by younger and more attractive women than herself.

  None too plentiful, and a hard-headed bachelor girl like herself, an ex-airplane hostess, had no silly romantic notions about the dependableness of males.

  Besides, she could always return his ring, and switch to a better prospect—when and if one came along.

  “You’ve got another job? Another different kind of job?” she asked, looking straight at him.

  Cromer nodded. “Darling, I’m a food taster now.”

  “But how could you just go out, and get a job like that?” she flung at him.

  One thing he had acquired was a habit of caution. He had never discussed Bannerman with Jane, and had no intention of doing so now.

  “Darling, we won’t talk about that,” he said. “See here, look—I’ve got what it takes.”

  He opened his wallet and showed her eight crisp ten-dollar bills.

  “Eighty a week, sweetkins. And I’ll soon be getting a raise.”

  Jane’s eyes became faintly luminous. She came into his arms again, and for a moment he experienced a sense of perfect fulfillment.

  “Let’s go somewhere where we can dance,” she said.

  *

  A half-hour later, seated at a secluded corner table in the Ten O’Clock Club, Cromer noticed with a little stab of pleasure that everyone was gazing at Jane Wilder with admiration. She knew how to wear clothes to the best possible advantage and was in all respects a remarkable woman.

  “Well, let’s dance,” she said.

  Cromer nodded, rose and pushed back his chair. Out on the dance floor he gave up trying to remember, what Bannerman looked like. His happiness had gone to his head and all his thoughts were centered on the woman in his arms. Around and around they waltzed, to the strains of soft music.

  Someone was tapping Cromer on the shoulder. “You’re wanted on the phone, sir. A Mr. Bannerman—”

  An ice-cold measuring worm came out at the base of Cromer’s spine and crawled up his back with little jerks and pauses. Abruptly he stopped waltzing. The waiter stepped back and Jane seemed to stiffen. Into the dreamy waltz music there crept a funeral cadence, as though even the orchestra had sensed something in Cromer’s manner which was as unnerving as a casket on wheels.

  Moving like an automaton, Cromer led Jane back to the corner table and pulled out a chair for her.

  “Who is Mr. Bannerman?” she demanded, glaring up at him. “Why is he always sending for you?”

  “He isn’t always sending for me, darling,” Cromer stammered. “I haven’t seen him for... well, for quite a long time.”

  He stooped and kissed, her, his face as grim as death. “I’ll have to take that call, darling,” he said: “But I’ll be back—I promise you.”

  “The last-time you didn’t come back.”

  Cromer looked at her steadily. “I’ll be back in five minutes,” he assured her.

  *

  Why had he said that? He could still hear Bannerman’s voice coming furiously over the wire. “This is just about the last straw, Cromer. I got you a job which was right down your alley. Don’t you ever catch on?”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “You’d better be. Grab a taxi and come right over here.”

  He was sitting now as rigid as a tailor’s dummy in a speeding taxi, his hat wedged between his knees.

  “What address did you say, buddy?” the driver asked, scowling back at him.

  “I told you. No. 13 Oak Street.”

  “Well, this is it, buddy,” the driver said, drawing in to the curb.

  The same old steps again, crumbling, moldy. The wallpaper peeling off. Although he had only a vague memory of watching the cab drive away every aspect of Bannerman’s house seemed to impinge on his senses with the force of a physical blow.

  Climbing the bare oak stairway, he had to cling to the banisters to steady himself, and as he neared the first-floor landing his hearing became so abnormally, acute he could have heard a pin dropping.

  He had paused, before a familiar, light-rimmed door halfway down the upper hallway, and was blinking quite steadily when Bannerman’s voice rang out.

  “Come in, Cromer.”

  Cromer didn’t want to obey. He didn’t want to face Bannerman. But though cutting off his right arm would have been easier, he had no choice. Gulping something out of his throat he stepped into Bannerman’s study and shut the door behind him.

  Bannerman was standing in shadows a little to the left of the crystal, a black felt hat pulled far down over his face. He was puffing on a cigar, but he took it out of his mouth t
he instant the door clicked shut.

  “I’ve been waiting for this moment, Cromer,” he said. “You’ve tripped over every opportunity' I’ve thrown in your path. I’ve been telling myself it was partly my fault, but you can’t alibi yourself this time, Cromer, and you’d better not try.”

  Cromer scarcely heard him. His gaze was riveted on the huge crystal globe which stood on a black onyx pedestal near the center of the room. He had seen the globe before, but now it was brimming with a blood-red radiance and there were... yes, there were two livid forms stretched out in the midst of the glow.

  “I knew you’d be startled, Cromer,” Bannerman said.

  Cromer wasn’t merely startled. His eyes bulged, his teeth clicked together, and sweat poured out all over him. He had recognized one of the stiff, livid figures. It was the little man who had ushered him into the laboratory. He had never seen a face so gray, limbs so rigid.

  “Are... are they dead?” he croaked.

  Bannerman shook his head. “Ptomaine poisoning,” he said. “They are very sick men. It’s all your fault, Cromer.”

  “My fault—”.

  “That’s what I said. Cromer, I prepared some splendid recommendations for you. I even... oh, what’s the use. You OK’d that food on the chart, and these two men, your fellow laboratory workers, helped themselves to a drumstick you left lying about. A fine food taster you turned out to be.”

  Cromer’s face was how dead-white in its pallor. “But that chicken was all right, sir,” he gasped.

  “You mean it tasted all right to you, Cromer?”

  “Yes, it did. I—”

  “Cromer, how-can you be so stupid? If it tasted all right to you it had to be as high as a kite.”

  “I don’t understand, sir,” Cromer blurted hoarsely.

  It was Bannerman’s turn to evince agitation. “You mean to say you’ve had another lapse of memory?”

  “Another lapse of... did I have one before, sir?”

  “Twice before,” Bannerman almost groaned, “no wonder you thought that chicken was all right.”

  The lighted end of Bannerman’s cigar described a glowing arc in the shadows.

  “It will come to you, Cromer,” he said. “Look into the crystal. Concentrate.”

  Cromer obeyed, his heart hammering against his ribs.

  In the midst of the glow, above the two stricken laboratory workers, a tall, emaciated figure came slowly into sight. First the head took shape, then the shadowy outlines of bony shoulders, and finally there emerged a complete figure enveloped in a black aura which inked out the blood-red radiance in the depths of the globe.

  The figure had the look of something that ought never to have been dug up. There was hardly any flesh on it, and its teeth were pointed like those of a beast of prey, and there was that about it which seemed to fasten on Cromer, as though it wanted to draw his brain out through his mouth, and suck all the marrow from his bones.

  “Cromer, that is you,” Bannerman said. “You are looking at your own real self.”

  Cromer couldn’t seem to breathe.

  “Cromer, you can’t say that I don’t treat my minions right. I built a fleshly tenement for you which could pass muster anywhere on earth, and I got you a job which was right down your alley. I thought, of course, you would make good and be in a position to serve me. You have to be a good worker before you can be a bad worker, Cromer. You have to win the confidence of employers.

  “Cromer, you fell down on your job. You forgot that an unsavory fowl would taste good to you—delicious, in fact. Why did you forget, Cromer? Was it because you wanted to escape from yourself?”

  A devilish smile came into Bannerman’s face. “You know what you are now, Cromer. Do you still want to escape?”

  “I do, I do,” Cromer sobbed. “I have always wanted to escape. I couldn’t stand it.”

  “I see. Compensatory amnesia. Cromer, you may as well face it. What are you?”

  “Oh, God, I—”

  Bannerman turned pale. “Don’t ever... watch your tongue, Cromer.”

  “I’d rather die than be what I am,” Cromer choked.

  “Come, come, Cromer,” Bannerman chided. “Get a grip on yourself. Face it like a man. Face it and I’ll see what I can do about getting you another job.” _

  As he spoke, Bannerman removed his hat and exposed a shining, hairless pate from which sprouted two stubby horns.

  Cromer fell to his knees, clawed despairingly at his chest.

  “Well?” Lucifer prodded. “What are you, Cromer?”

  Cromer’s voice, when it came, was like a whisper from the tomb.

  “I am a ghoul,” he said.