“Holy cat!” The technicalities were too much for Brady, but his news sense was unimpaired. “Front-page write-up!” he barked out. “Snap into it, Bates! Copy boy! Hold that press and —”
And within half an hour the news was on the street—all the more incredible because it was absolutely true. Fifty thousand souls had vanished without a trace. More enterprising editors looked up information on the vanished crew of the Mary Celeste and found therein a vague correlation. The public read, wondered, and for the most part openly scoffed.
Nevertheless, there hung in the autumnal air of that September evening vague, indefinable sensation of impending dread. The atmosphere was still, abnormally so, and as the night stole on more than one turned to thinking of the incredible vanishings of the afternoon—and wondered.
And whilst they wondered, the green radiance that had its birth in the vicinity of Fifth Avenue slowly spread its powers of atomic reshuffling through all living things. Restive animals gave their owners perpetual trouble. There were countless scores who rushed out, irritated, to discover what ailed their pets, only to find them disappearing into green vapor. Not for long did they gaze upon this incredible transformation, for they themselves were almost incontinently overwhelmed.
A shudder passed through the entire construction of Earthly and universal life. It plumbed the deepest sea, it reached to the furthest known world—a vibrant, ever-increasing wave of unknown energy, hurling atomic formations from the pinnacles upon which they had rested by scientific coincidence for millennia.
By the morning New York was an empty city.
The remainder of a panic-stricken world’s population struggled vainly to understand what had happened—and failed. Upon every hand were green waves of radiation. Mankind, animals, birds, fishes, every bacteria, were all caught in the transfiguration. Within forty-eight hours the work of centuries untold was shattered. Not a living thing remained. It had all been transformed into some other form of inert atoms, and thus it would remain until the scientists of the far-distant planet hit again on the coincidence of life. In that empty world, still and calm, there lay the solution to the riddle of the Earth’s earlier races who had mysteriously disappeared. To the future generations alone, granting that coincidence ever happened for the third time, the cities of the world, untouched, would offer the greatest riddle in cosmic history.
*
VII
*
I have told the story as it must have happened, straining for accuracy of event. Now I shall depart with my fellows—with one last observation. When we arrived here we found no trace of the green energy mentioned so irrefutably by Conroy and Bates. We can only assume that with the passing of all life the energy formed itself into a non-living state, an aggregate of atomic constructions lacking the power of motivation, an inexplicable state, which we do not understand.
We would record too many collapses and subsidence caused by the sudden death of living matter, notably, many buildings in various countries where they have been built upon inconceivable myriads of tiny animalcule life.
We, of course, of a universe beyond this Earthly one, were untouched, uninvolved in this immense cosmic upheaval. But we realize now why we saw only deserted worlds on our journey here.
Because one mortal man endeavored to see beyond death, it appears that he excommunicated all life. The thoughts, the aspirations, the strange ideals of those spawned cells called living beings have passed into an unknown spatial state, where they will remain forever inert, unless, perhaps, some new cosmic coincidence brings life back again to this deserted universe.
Moviz-Kaflo.
EXPERIMENT IN MURDER
I am a medium, and for reference purposes only I give my name as Henry Clifton, of London. As to the extent of my psychic abilities, I have little to say. Also, I must withdraw from all responsibility for the messages that came to me from John Carlow Moore after he had been executed. I only know that he chose me as the instrument through which to make the communication I have recorded here.
*
My name is John Carlow Moore. I first became acquainted with Enoch Pym in July of 1934. It happened in the casual manner common to potential vital happenings. I had taken a brief holiday among the lakes, and there, at my little hotel near Coniston, reposed the man for whom I was destined to commit murder.
A curious fellow, Pym—short, inclined to be stout, with wild and disordered black hair surmounting a podgy, pasty face. This general facial outline, lent added insipidness by a big, pendulous mouth and pale but searching blue eyes, did little to make him prepossessing; and yet he held an uncanny fascination for me from the first moment I set eyes on him. Odd though it may sound, I am half inclined to think that it was his delightful voice that interested me. Nowhere had I ever heard so mellow an intonation, so smooth and flawless a diction.
He came into my life on my second day at the Lakes, when I returned from a happy, solo jaunt to Rydal to find him in the low, old-fashioned dining-room of the hotel. He was seated at the spotless tea-table eating poached eggs on toast, surrounded by cakes, sugar, milk and tea-pot. He smiled at me pleasantly as I entered, and soon I was keeping him company with another poached egg. For a long time we were silent, mentally weighing each other up, as two Englishmen meeting for the first time in a lonely spot are wont to do; then at last he spoke, and that wonderful voice fell on my ears for the first time.
“My name is Pym—Enoch Pym,” he explained. “Just up for a few days’ fishing.”
I returned the introduction, told him of my efforts to escape hard work as a journalist for a week, and went on to elaborate on my inborn love for the Cumberland scenery. We talked far beyond the cakes and cigarettes, and continued as we took an evening stroll toward Coniston village. In a remarkably short space of time we had become the best of friends, which in itself is peculiar, for I had the journalist’s intuition for detecting suspicious characters. Certainly, I never felt in Pym’s presence that there was somewhere in his make-up a streak of incarnate cruelty.
Upon that glorious evening, he was civility itself. He revealed an amazing knowledge of all the subjects I touched upon in our conversation, from the printing of newspapers to affairs of the occult. And all the time his superb voice lulled me into a curious submission; it droned on and on, merging flawlessly into the perfect calm of that summer eve. To our left lay Coniston Water; to the right, the gaunt and stern escarpments of Coniston Old Man, backed by the sullen ramparts of Dow Crags; and farther to the north, its grim needle-pointed spires piercing the misty gray of the paling sky, stood Helvellyan. Altogether it was a tranquilly ideal environment for two men with apparently kindred interests, and I think it was this isolation that caused me to listen with credence to Pym’s observations on the subjects of mysticism, hypnotism, and the supernatural. Most certainly, I would never have listened with half as much seriousness in my native London.
“Suppose,” he said suddenly, jabbing a well-gnawed pipe in the air, “that you were to die. Do you think you could find the way back? To here?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I could. Mind you, I believe in afterlife but only as a closed book—another plane with which mortals of this plane cannot communicate.”
He seemed to ponder over that. We walked on again in silence for a space, smoking and pursuing our own thoughts; then he suddenly resumed.
“Frankly, Moore, I came up to the Lakes here to make an experiment. One might call it an experiment in hypnotism. I was expecting to secure the services of a farmer or laborer for my purposes, but since a good Providence has placed me in contact with you I feel that perhaps you might —”
“Why, surely!” I exclaimed. “If I can be of any service I shall be only too pleased. After all, two men in a lonely spot, like this … well, any diversion is welcome. What exactly are you going to do?”
“I don’t quite know yet.”
He stopped in mid-stride and cast a glance at the darkening sky. “It’s getting dark, Moore,” he re
marked, as though the topic of hypnotism had never been mentioned. “We had better be getting back.”
*
That, I say, was how I met Pym. I have tried to convey my first reactions to his peculiar nature. He seemed, as I was with him day after day, to be pursuing some strange chimera of his own which controlled him with relentless power. Although he was always civil and pleasing, I had no doubts whatever about the moments of calm in which I often surprised him. While I was out walking with him this odd facet of his nature was completely absent. He would talk in that fascinating, half-husky voice of his and throw out quite meaningless comments about his intended experiment—but within the staid and almost gloomy walls of our little hotel he would relapse again.
More often than not I found him gazing through the window at the stern bulk of Coniston Old Man, shifting his gaze only to take in the view of the sullen ramparts of Dow Crags to the left of the mountain. It was as though they held for him an intangible magnetism, as though they stimulated within him some unsuspected mental foible. And once I caught him muttering half aloud, quite unaware of my presence in the low-ceilinged room.
“… it is a fate which I shall administer justly, not with my own hands, but with all the resources of my brain. There can be no other way.”
Strange observation indeed! I was looking at him curiously when he became abruptly aware of my presence. With a curious smile he joined me at the tea-table and, with characteristic calmness, made no reference to his strange behavior.
“My wife is joining me tonight,” he said, in a matter-of-fact voice, pouring out tea. This was a surprise to me; I had not even suspected he was married.
“I’m glad for your sake, Pym, but I shall miss our little walks,” I smiled. “Really, I’ve enjoyed them.”
He gazed at me with those pale blue eyes. The strong summer evening light streaming through the end window of the room bathed one-half of his peculiar, podgy face in intense radiance and threw the eyes into relief; they stared at me like glass circles, limpid blue rings with an intensely dark spot of pupil in their centers. Just for an instant they chilled me, stirred something strongly in my brain. In those moments it seemed as though the entire soul of Enoch Pym was laid bare before me. Here, I knew, was a man to be wary of; yet his wonderful voice gripped me in its inexplicable spell again as he began to speak.
“I really see no reason why our walks should be interfered with,” he remarked calmly, his eyes still upon me. “I too have enjoyed them. The quiet mountain scenery, our mutual sociability—these are things to be treasured, Moore. As to my wife, she is a strange woman: moody, usually lost in introspections. I fancy she is only joining me because she enjoys mountain air. Certainly it is not my company she is seeking.”
“No, no—I see.” I nodded quickly, and rather than pry into the mysteries of his domestic life, I let the matter drop. For a time silence persisted between us, but I could feel his eyes upon me; then back came the superb diction to smooth my puzzled reflections.
“You will not like my wife, Moore.”
“No?” I looked up to meet his eyes. “Why do you say that? I get on with most people.”
“Maybe, but you won’t with my wife. You see, you will meet as enemies; you will not like her—your dislike will grow, too. Do you understand that, Moore? You will hate her—hate her!”
“I—I shall hate her,” I agreed slowly, trying to tear my eyes away from the bright glitter of the tea-things, the reflections from the silver tea-pot, the glare from the reflecting mirror on the wall; above all, away from those two pale blue pools in the expressionless face … If only I could break the spell of that perfect voice of his! Its tones sank into every fiber of my being; and for a time, how long I do not know, I was in a world that shimmered and danced with bright sun-lights, in a world mastered and controlled by a voice that assured me I would hate the woman Betty Pym. Finally, I knew I would hate her, but for heaven’s sake do not ask me why!
“Marmalade?” he asked suddenly, and I shot out of my vague, indeterminate realm of cloudy thoughts and speculations to find him holding the silver-edged receptacle almost under my nose. Again the reflected sunlight beat from it into my eyes, so that I blinked.
“Sorry,” I said with an apologetic laugh, taking it from him. “I—I was day dreaming, I think. You said something about your wife, I believe?”
“Did I?” He shrugged slightly; the man was an absolute chameleon of character—he veered perpetually from one thing to another, leaving me the more mystified every time. “Perhaps I did,” he agreed doubtfully, lighting a cigarette. “We don’t get on very well, Betty and I … However, never mind. It won’t interfere with our walks.”
And as though to substantiate it, we went out again after tea.
*
It was that evening he went to endless trouble to point out to me the particular advantages and defects of Coniston Old Man and Dow Crags. I remember that we walked in the clear, sweet wind to the base of the mountain and there sat down upon a massive boulder. Pym had a heavy ebony walking-stick with him, and with this he began to point out to my interested gaze certain landmarks with which he was manifestly familiar.
“You will notice, Moore, that at the extreme left of the mountain summit there is a chasm, all of seven hundred feet in depth, practically sheer, while opposite stand Dow Crags?”
I nodded, shading my eyes from the glaring sun. His voice went on.
“The Dow Crags are available only to trained climbers, but anybody can climb the Old Man himself. Up the chasm between the two there blows a perpetual wind; it is not uncommon for climbers to slip and be carried away by it. And a body falling from either the Crags or the Old Man into that chasm is bound to be destroyed.”
“I see,” I answered, and although I have a reasonably good memory I never retained information with such vivid clarity before. It seemed as though the things he had told me had been driven into my brain with sledgehammer force; I soaked them in, pondered them, reiterated than to myself all through the remainder of our evening ramble.
He talked on all kinds of topics afterward, but I cannot remember one of them.
My whole mind was obsessed by the knowledge of a chasm and the fact that I hated his wife! Curious? Yes, perhaps it was. There was I, a perfectly sane journalist, up for a fishing holiday, completely in the toils of this enigmatic man with the glorious voice and magnetic eyes. Try though I would, I could not shake off the impress of his personality. It held me body and soul.
When we got back to the hotel, his wife had arrived. My first impression of her as she sat in the tiny dining-room, clearly illuminated in the specially generated electric light, was quite a favourable one. I completely forgot, for the time being, my ridiculous resolve to hate her. She was a small, dark woman with a pale, aristocratic face and oddly frightened brown eyes. From her appearance, I could better have imagined her as Pym’s daughter than his wife. Clearly, he was considerably older.
He introduced us with that calm way he had, taking instant and masterful possession of the situation. She, for her part, remained strangely quiet, eating supper in silence and replying only in monosyllables to her husband’s inquiries, as to her journey from home and reactions to the Lake District. It required little effort on my part to apprehend that there was a strong estrangement between them, though what it was I was too discreet to ask. I wondered, too, whether Pym had really told me I would hate her or whether I had imagined it. Certainly I could find nothing in her to dislike. She was interesting, but nothing more. The domination of Pym completely overshadowed her.
Finally, sensing how strained matters were, I went up to bed—and not half an hour later dropped unto a doze …
The instant I dropped asleep, it seemed, I became prey to terrible and Satanic nightmares. All the events of the day rose up before me in a solid conglomeration, intensely magnified and potent, in the midst of which I struggled like a lost soul. There was Pym with his beautiful voice—Pym, receding, advancing, receding in perpe
tual reiteration; all face, now nothing but two unblinking eyes of pale and heartless blue illumined by a strong light. Once again the flash and glitter of silvered tea-things smote upon my tortured vision.
“You will hate my wife, Moore! You will hate my wife, Moore! You will hate my —” On and on, endlessly—a crazy, raging diapason of chanting words merged into the lunacy of the whole horrible nightmare. Then, presently, Pym’s face seemed to blur, but still I heard his voice ringing loud and clear in the now disordered emptiness of my mind.
“A body falling into that chasm is bound to be destroyed …”
The voice receded, but the dream was as vivid as ever. I was staggering desperately, half clothed, up the ragged side of Coniston Old Man! About me, in the chilling wind—for I seemed to he nearly at the summit of the mountain—stood moonlit desolation of boulders and stones. Far below, a reflected silver streak, lay Coniston Water. Something was weighing me down tremendously. To my surprise I discovered that it was a body—a woman’s body! Apparently I had carried her all the way up the mountainside.
Now the dream took on a vaguely rational aspect; an ordered sequence came from the midst of the ridiculous chaos. Only intermittently, now, did the divine voice of Pym call strongly above the moaning wind.
“You’ll hate my wife; Moore! You’ll hate my wife! A body falling into that chasm is bound to be destroyed!”
“Yes, yes!” I yelled back hoarsely. “It’s bound to be destroyed!”
“You’ll hate my wife, Moore …”
I looked down again at the woman I had been carrying. She lived, but was quite unconscious, a deep wound on her forehead from which blood flowed slowly. Suddenly I realized that she was Pym’s wife, and that I had stunned her and brought her here. Athwart my subconscious mind lay the recollection of how I had risen from my bed, dressed, and crept into the little Gothic bedroom where she and Pym had been peacefully sleeping. It had been easy to take that heavy ebony stick of his from near the window, so clearly visible in tine moonlight, and strike before a single sound could escape her. Stealthily I had dragged her from the bed; Pym had continued sleeping.
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