A Touch of the Creature

by Charles Beaumont

  I thought of Gloria. Of how she must have felt when the animal jumped at her, when she realized what was going to happen. It wasn’t a lion that killed her, I thought. No. It was Grushkin. He killed her, just as he was killing all these other gullible, ignorant people—

  “For Caesar! For Rome!”

  There wasn’t any decision to be made. I tried the doors to the fortress first, found them locked; the windows, barred. I circled around and found a tree.

  I climbed it, edged out on its highest branch, swung over to a small opening. Sober I’d never have been able to do it. But I was drunk now. Drunk with hate. So I started up the stones.

  I got to the top after a couple of years and found a guard waiting. He swung with his sword and took a small strip of skin off my elbow. I wheeled and brought the mace down, hard. And let go of it.

  That left me with the sword. But it would be enough, I felt. Down below the tumult was reaching a new pitch of fury. The screams filtered like the wild, idiotic cries of birds; you could hear the cameras, though, in your mind—turning, turning, getting all the blood and death onto film.

  At the end of the stone alley, by a turret, stood one of Grushkin’s lieutenants. He held a spear and looked pretty embarrassed. Also pretty cold-blooded.

  His back was turned, though, and there was a lot of noise. The broadsword went halfway through him. I felt ashamed, but I hadn’t any choice: he guarded Grushkin, and Grushkin was killing hundreds.

  I went the length of the alley, to the corner, and flattened there. Eight or nine feet away stood “The Creature” and his pet cameraman.

  They weren’t talking. Just—looking.

  The hate bubbled up again, hot and true, and I ran forward blindly. The cameraman whipped around. Too late. Way too late.

  Grushkin turned, stared at his man—who lay draped grotesquely across the battlements—then he looked at me. His eyes probed deep.

  “You’re Arthur Wilde. A writer—”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “What are you after?”

  “You,” I said, taking a step.

  He appraised the situation, saw that I wasn’t kidding, wasn’t hunting a deal, and grinned. It gave me chills. I don’t know why.

  “Very nice,” he said, “actually. A fine war and then, a duel between the principals. Just like a movie, isn’t it, Mr. Wilde?”

  “Not quite.” His voice had started to lull me: that was the point. By the time I woke up his hand was halfway to his Luger. Almost any other gun has more muzzle velocity. But of course he’d have a Luger. “I wouldn’t shout for help, Grushkin.”

  He nodded. Slowly he unfastened his cape and let it slide down; then, in one fluid motion, he drew his sword from its scabbard. In the softest, weirdest voice imaginable—a voice that told me he’d lost his marbles long ago—he said, “Action!”

  Action he got. We slashed and hacked with those heavy swords without drawing blood once. Then I dented his breastplate and he jumped up onto the wall. He slashed down at me but missed. I joined him.

  Despite his famous foil lessons, I soon found out that broadswords weren’t his style. He was getting winded, and after a few minutes it was clear that I could kill him. Only that isn’t what I wanted to do. Because with Grushkin dead, the battle would rage on, probably until every man was finished.

  He didn’t realize his weakness, thank God. His eyes blazed and he roared with laughter every time the steel sang through the air. Then he got a little too confident.

  He raised his right arm high, poised for a long chop. I swung my blade and it connected, flat, with his wrist. His fingers spread and the sword clattered loose.

  His smile went away.

  “Over to the mike,” I said, showing him how easy it would be to disembowel him. “Fast. Turn up the speakers. Stop the fighting.”

  “That would be impossible,” he said.

  “Do it anyway.”

  He glanced at the glittering steel tip, shrugged and spoke into the microphone. “Men, lay down your arms! Cease—”

  It had no effect. He smiled triumphantly. “You see, there’s no stopping them.”

  “Wrong,” I said. “There’s a way and you know what it is. One word, pal. Good and loud.”

  The sword touched his neck. He stiffened. “I had not expected such cleverness from a fan magazine columnist. However, it doesn’t matter. It is still my finest achievement, all on film.”

  “Come on!”

  He cleared his throat and barked one word into the mike.

  “Cut!”

  And that did it. Like old trick horses, the extras responded to the command and laid down their weapons.

  The battle was over.

  I must have glanced away, because I was too late to stop Grushkin. He loped over to the highest turret, crawled to the top and stood on the edge. He swayed there a second, and I searched his face; but it wasn’t pain I saw. It wasn’t surrender, either. I don’t know what it was. I don’t think he knew himself.

  He had fifty feet, straight down, to figure it out . . .

  I’m back at Movie Secrets now, putting down the facts on Piper Laurie’s hidden romance. People don’t talk about Resurrection Island any more; they’ve forgotten the sixteen hundred men and women who died there. It was Big News for a while, sure. Spreads in Life and Time. Pictures of Grushkin, of me, of the hired goons, the battlefields, the fortress—

  But news doesn’t stay hot long.

  Particularly in Hollywood.

  Welch got his story, though, and I got a raise, and I guess that’s something. And when the nights get too lonely, there’s always Las Vegas.

  I mean, there’s nothing really wrong with that receptionist. She’s a doll, and pretends to understand when I wake up sometimes, screaming.

  The Pool

  The warm blood of a freshly killed pigeon, his mother explained from the shadowed chiffonier, is what gives the vase its streaky marbled effect and also accounts for its value. The Japanese first made Pigeon’s Blood vases many years before Christ’s death and people thought only of their beauty; nowadays there are eccentric laws forbidding their manufacture.

  In the silken blackness of the room—silken because of the faint moonglow—Paul tensed and then yielded to the image he knew would soon be gone and replaced by another: Slender, disembodied hands grasping a fat grey bird, pressing from the full breast a crimson stream, pressing until the wings no longer fluttered and the silver cup flowed over.

  Della twitched and snored slightly. The image vanished, and the words, and for a moment there was only the moon in the corners of the room.

  Then Aunt Pearl’s voice slithered into being. “The most beautiful funeral you ever saw . . .”

  By the dresser, over the heating system, the all-steel coffin appeared slowly and the distant hum of cicadas subdued to a thin trail of organ music. Paul closed his eyes and saw it more clearly, opened his eyes but the coffin was still there. White roses adorned its heavy lid and the room became filled with the sweet odor of flowers. Dimly, as though in line caricature, were the rows of people, their heads bowed and some tremulous with softly heard sobbing.

  Within the coffin, waxen, stiff, surrounded in snowy satin, lay himself. “Well, there he is,” echoed Aunt Dode’s lament in militant sadness.

  Paul crushed the sides of his cigarette as he watched himself walk, not grieving and mournful, but terrified, to the coffin. He cried a slight low cry as he saw his hand reach out and then withdraw quickly. He had been afraid that if he were to touch that corpse, it would surely leap up at him, eyes blazing, and the dead fingers would claw at his face.

  From another corner of the room came a tiny strangulated sound and Paul sank back onto the pillow. The baby whimpered one more time, turned over in its crib, and soon breathed normally.

  It had been the girl’s strange nearness and the drinks and the excitement—or perhaps the shrimp and onions—that made him see things and hear things and remember the nightmare. Because he ha
dn’t thought of it until this evening and this evening he could think of nothing else; because it had never frightened him before and now he was frightened. He had walked out of the party, the party in his honor, and made no excuses and driven his car very fast down the empty streets, fighting the nightmare; his hands had trembled on the steering wheel all the way home, but with the lights on and the familiar sight of Della and little Greg, then he had had to fight and strain to think of other things.

  A cloud passed the moon and the room was suddenly light. Not remembering that in this house there were no softwood panels to squeak, Paul carefully drew down his corner of the covers, swung his legs to the floor and gradually transferred his weight; he left the bed in one swift movement. Where a few minutes ago a casket had hung suspended, was a chair: Paul got from the chair his robe and slippers, padded across to the big French window and listened a final time, glanced at the outlines of his wife and of his child, and stepped noiselessly outside.

  The stars were faraway and cold in the night sky, and there was no warmth from the moon’s white smudge. Paul dropped his cigarette, crushed it and lit another. The chilled air mixed with the smoke and made it burn his throat.

  Quickly, because he didn’t want to, he turned and faced the house. There was nothing of symbol in it now, only the brown-painted shingles sitting squat and colorless, beaded with early dew.

  He wished that he could feel foolish and childish. After all, he did recognize the half-nightmare hallucinations in his room for what they were. Utterly normal frights, the like experienced by every decently sensitive person alive, at one time or another. Kids with stomach-aches had worse dreams.

  He pulled up his collar, for he was shivering, and began to walk. He’d never gotten used to the stillness, and it was particularly oppressive tonight. No automobile could be heard, no muted drone of distant activity, no radio; nor could there be seen a single light. Only the calm agitated sounds of night creatures, and listless wind whispering through trees and foliage, whining across the cuts in the hills, and the dull silver mists close upon the ground.

  As he approached the swimming pool, Paul stopped and waited for the dwarf. Soon it would come, hideous, dressed in priest’s habit and mounted upon a freak pillar, and screaming, entreating, begging, in the shrill unworldly voice of the deaf-mute. Paul watched and soon the dwarf came; he clenched his fists and presently the image was gone.

  There was only the pool. Shafted moonlight fell over it and hid everything but the green shimmering water, nearly still now, only slightly disturbed by the wind. The fence was of the thinnest twists of wire and surrounded the pool invisibly, like a gauze. The water made no sound. And there was not a twig or leaf upon its surface.

  The edge of the bed in his room could be seen, and Della had turned; the covers had been thrashed to the floor. The crib was a dark outline.

  The coldness of the cement entered his thin leather slippers and he walked on. No other thought would come now: only the remembering. He knew the question it would lead to, the question he’d asked only on infrequent times in the near past—when all the guests had left and he hadn’t been sleepy, or on those few odd grey days turning to dusk on the long drive from the studio.

  He walked to the fence and put his fingers through the looped wires and looked steadily at the pool’s still water. And realized that it was something he’d not been able to do, ever, not since that first time. The dwarf was gone, but the thought remained. Della. God, did he love her anymore?

  Four years, he thought. Four years of waiting, working in traffic agencies, insurance offices, waiting for it: and then, with one little call from an employment agency, the studio job. So what if it meant only forty dollars a week, and running a machine? It was an environment of atmosphere and romance; he would be around people of similar interests. The change alone would make him work all the harder at night.

  But then, a little core had begun to hate, to despise all the Brooks Brothers men walking around, doing work he could do with his hands tied behind him, and making fabulous money. The little core hated to see Della sitting in the living room while he worked in the kitchen hours, hours, until morning sometimes, getting the enthusiastic letters from the editors and watching the bills stack up like garbage. It hated to miss any chance that would get Della some of the clothes she needed so desperately, or allow him the time to give his writing the attention it required. One movie sale would bring enough money to allow him to quit his job and give that time to his work—and the evenings to a little living.

  The biggest magazine had returned Wanderer’s Shoes with the best letter of all. Moreso than any of the others, it had given him hope and courage. Wanderer’s Shoes, his writer friends said, was a story which promised much of the author. Still too ‘special,’ but the next time! The editor had said as much himself. The next time Anderson would hit print and people would read his story all over the world and love it, be moved by it and say: “Who is this guy, anyway? What a great yarn!”

  And before beginning on another, already titled—The Holy Fountain—had come the idea. It would be fun, for one thing, but neither he nor Della for a moment took it seriously.

  The pool, the night, faded for a while as Paul remembered this, and smiled.

  Including every dated, crotchety, shopworn situation they could remember, they’d devoted one evening to whipping up a motion picture synopsis. Della had named it, scowling and then laughing with him: The Gentle Headsman. Eight pages of ridiculous mystery, together with trick ending, love interest and even dual identity. They’d retyped it on good bond, put it in an envelope and turned it in to the story department of the studio, and promptly forgotten about it.

  Then the voice on the telephone, and: “Hello, Anderson! This is Schukin, over at Reading. We got your story, boy. Not bad! In fact, Robson kind of liked it. Maybe we can do something.”

  Seven thousand dollars was the amount of the check. Then the move into one of the writers’ bungalows, a secretary and a salary of three hundred and fifty a week.

  Of course, it was then that Della had first begun to mention money. The apartment was so small, and the walls were paper-thin—altogether uninhabitable, she’d said, jokingly.

  The powerful subjective passage in The Holy Fountain required his undivided attention. He’d tried a few times to get into the story, but there had been constant interruptions—Della asking about how this or that script was coming along, the telephone, constant interruptions, constant.

  His serious work could wait a little while, certainly, because soon he could give it its honest due.

  More scripts; more sales; more money, yes, but no time, barely enough to scribble a sentence or two or jot down an idea.

  At first Della would say, every now and then: “Hey, keed, when ya ever going to finish up the story? Gosh sakes, Burn­heim’ll forget all those nice things she said about Wanderer’s Shoes if you don’t hit them again soon.” She’d say: “We don’t want this Hollywood monster to eat us up, do we?” And he’d laugh, and sometimes, late at night when the place was quiet, sometimes he would sit down again at the typewriter. But only nausea, not words or thoughts ever came. And he had put it off to the excitement, which would surely level off. Of course he couldn’t write now: things were still in transition.

  “Take a tip from your agent, Dad—old Ash hasn’t steered you wrong yet. Gather ye rosebuds whilst ye may. You’re hot, Poppsy, but things have a way of cooling down mighty fast in this neck o’ the woods. Plenty of time for the Naked and the Dead stuff when you’ve got some real loot. Live ’er up now: way I look at it, if you’ve got it, you’ve got it, and a little thing like a cool couple of hundred grand ain’t gonna stand in your way.”

  The sale, the party, the increasing adulation, the diminishing sneers from him and Della. Only once in a while did he get a clear glimpse of the pattern. It had been the way he’d put off explaining to himself about dark cars.

  Then there was that drive through the canyon.

 
They’d driven through it before, in borrowed jalopies which threatened to give up with every turn. This time they drove a low, grey two-seated English car with double spotlights and milkwhite tires. The two-seat arrangement had been Paul’s idea.

  He remembered Della’s face, how it had looked in the steel canyon twilight.

  Set upon the newly scraped knoll, the house had loomed up deceitfully: it looked old and earned. With the full new trees and wide dichondra, the stables in the distance and the tiny guest house, it looked almost like a home. The brick was pre­weathered, as they’d said, the solid wood smoked and hand-hewn to preserve the look of proud antiquity.

  The swimming pool was in the rear and he did not see it until Della had been through the house and oh’ed at the spacious luxury, the prewar brass plumbing fixtures, the electronic heat, and the room that would be just perfect for his den. When he saw the pool it was too late.

  It didn’t have a fence, then. The salesman referred to it casually: “Incongruous, you might say in a way, but who can get along without one these days?”

  Paul remembered so clearly, how he had stood transfixed in that sudden petrifying thought, and wanted to leap into the car and never come back to the place. And how Della had looked at him, begging with her eyes: Della, who had endured so much, Della, who was so fragile and heavy with the child . . .

  Paul shook his head and searched the pockets of his robe for another cigarette. His hands trembled a bit and he saw that the skin was stretched brittly tight and red.

  There was still no sound in the night. He knew that it was only a twenty minute drive, past sleeping homes down the snake road, to life and activity; he knew this, and yet the surroundings became increasingly desolate. He saw, beyond the quaint wooden fence which bounded his acreage, only hills, stark, some of them ragged with burnt brown foliage, all looking lonely and untouched. With the low-hanging mist, it seemed to Paul that he was at the bottom of an eternal silent ocean, down where no living thing had ever penetrated.

  He directed his eyes again to the pool. Small gusts of wind had come now and they rippled the green surface into broken lights, unsteadily, dreamily. There was not yet enough for spray, but Paul put his hand to his face and found it wet and clammy. His breath showed faintly in the air.