The Fantasy MEGAPACK ®

by Lester Del Rey

  Ann dropped her hand from the tree and nodded faintly. “Perhaps. You’re late, Mother Brian. Did you find the remedy?”

  “That I did, and simple enough, too. Dried dust of balsam needles, the book said, and I have it with me. Here’s your bag with it, though I’d not open the same, was I you. And the bullet. What you’ll be doing, though—”

  “Your pay,” the girl suggested, stripping a curious green-set ring from her finger. “It’s all I have now.”

  Mother Brian—Madame Olga, the seeress, she called herself now—pushed it aside. “Then you keep it, dearie. I’ve whiskey money this night, and you used to be a good girl, once. It’s a long memory only that brings Madame Olga into this God-forsaken place, not pay. Hee! A sweet girl, if a bit headstrong and foolish before—”

  “Yes. Thank you, Mother Brian. What night is it?”

  “Friday.” She bit the word out reluctantly, and the girl jerked back at it, her fingers trembling as she caught at the oak bark again. In the dark, the old dealer in spells stretched forth a solicitous hand.

  “Friday! Are you sure?” Ann’s eyes strained against the darkness, and saw truth on the other’s face. “Then that’s why he was with me when I woke. He doesn’t trust me now, but whispers his orders in my ear while I’m sleeping.”

  “Lot of good it’ll do him this night. They’ve a police guard all about the place so only them as know the old tunnel can squeeze through the bulls and get in. It’s an empty night for him, the slimy thing. For a thimble of smoke, I’d be—”

  “No.” Ann interrupted again, wearily. She was strangely tired, and the assurance of Madame Olga failed to bring hope with it. “No, they wouldn’t believe you, and he’d—hunt. You’d better leave now, Mother Brian. He might come.”

  “Hee! He’ll be busy still.” But she turned away and went creaking out through the gloom with a grunted farewell.

  Ann slumped against the tree, noting that the rift in the clouds was only a brief flash this time, and that it promised to be the last that night. But her eyes were accustomed to the dark, and she watched the old figure hobble away, down into a weed-grown hole, and out of sight toward safety.

  Then she twitched her shoulders and stepped out from under the tree, picking her way through the tangle around. At one time Lefferts Park had been the mecca of the amusement-minded, with theater, roller-skating rink, picnic grounds, and places where barkers announced the admission price was “only a thin dime, folks, the tay-yenth paht of a dollah.” But that had been years before.

  Now weeds and sumac had overgrown it, crowding against the few deserted beech-trees. Where the wooden recreation buildings and flashy theater had been, there was only an irregular series of pock-marks in the ground, cellars half filled in by dirty cans, bottles, and general debris, or crumbling foundation walls, overgrown with a mossy fungus of some kind. Charred boards and cinders of old dead fires showed that the last occupants had been bums seeking its weedy privacy for the night.

  Ann picked her way with uncannily sure feet through the maze, hardly glancing at the tangle about her. She was thinking of other things, chiefly of him and his reasons, and her thoughts were barely rational. If only the control were less complete, so that she could pierce through to his object, or remember details, if—But there were too many ifs. It was Friday night, when his commands were always strongest; what those commands were or had been was hazy, but the repressed memories in the back of her mind filled her with a dread that was greater because of its vague uncertainty.

  She skirted the roller-skating pavilion, an area treacherous with covered holes, and slipped quickly past what had been the Apollo Theater. Across town a bell sounded, laboring under the twelve strokes of midnight, and yellowish light began to shine through the back windows of the theater. They were getting ready for another performance, apparently, though the marquee was still either missing or hidden by the shadows. Probably her duties would lead her there before the night finished.

  The gateway leading from the park was in front of her then, and she looked out cautiously. Mother Brian had been right; two police were moving slowly up and down in front. Some of their words spilled back to her.

  “‘Tis the very broth of hell’s kettle in there, MacDougall, I’m thinking. I’d put face to the Old One himself before I’d be sleeping in there, sure as my name’s O’Halloran.”

  “Aye.”

  “Yet fools there are, and newspapermen, like as not the one under two names. Devil a bit of it do I like.”

  “Aye.”

  Back in the park, a shrill burble of sound keened out in what might have been a laugh or a shriek of derision. O’Halloran hunched his big shoulders and scowled in its general direction. “Faith, what a noise, not human at all, at all. Well, ‘twas probably the wind a-howling through a hole. No need to be looking again for what made it, d’you think? Better to stick to our beat.”

  “Aye.”

  The girl turned back aimlessly, still mumbling over the dark suspicions in her mind. That shriek had been his voice, directed at her for loitering. Ann knew, but what good were his orders if no one entered the park? Of course, there was no one there, so she had nothing to fear. He—but who was he? Something probed at her mind, and vanished, leaving her standing there uncertainly. She knew where she was, but how had she got there, and why? What was she doing at night in Lefferts Park? She was sure she had known an instant before, but now the memory eluded her.

  Then she was conscious of being cold, and the faint smell of wood-smoke coming to her from the back of the park. Someone must have a fire there that would offer warmth and companionship until her vagrant memory returned. She shivered and moved forward toward it, now picking out her way carefully, and stumbling a little over the tangled ruins under her feet. Down in a hollow beyond her, sheltered by a corner of a wall that still stood, she caught a flicker of yellow light and hastened toward it, drawing the inconspicuous dark suit closer to her thin, small body, and clutching tightly on the odd handbag, decorated with bright beads and closed at the top by means of a drawstring.

  There was a man at the fire, she saw now, and hesitated. But he was well dressed and pleasant-faced as he bent over to light his cigarette from the fire and put on more wood. As he straightened, he caught sight of her from the corner of his eye and jerked around in surprise. “Hello, there,” he called uncertainly, staring at her doubtfully. But her large gray eyes, contrasting with the white face, must have been reassuring, for he motioned her forward. “Care to join me?”

  “Please, yes…I hope you don’t mind.” She shouldn’t be here, talking to a strange man, but until the vanished thread of memory returned, there was little else to do. “It was so dark and cold out there alone, and I saw your fire. I’ll go away, if you wish.”

  He smiled quickly at that. “No, glad to have you. Coffee? There. Afraid the rock is the best seat I can offer you.” As she settled down beside the fire, he smiled again, and she was no longer afraid of him; only of the dark outside the rim of light thrown by the fire. Then, suddenly he frowned. “How’d you get in here? I thought the police were guarding the whole place.”

  “Were they? I didn’t know. Nobody stopped me… And how’d you get here, then?”

  “Oh, they know I’m here; got a permit from the captain to stay here and see what happens for my newspaper—the Kendicon Daily Leader. I’m Harry Chapman, Miss—”

  “Ann Muller.”

  “Hmm. Well, anyway, White—the editor—sent me down here. We couldn’t find any trace or clue of the heads that have been missing, so he figured it would at least make a good suspense story, and might even trap the maniac who’s responsible.” At her uncertain look, he stopped. “You know about the missing heads, don’t you?”

  Was she supposed to? There was something vaguely familiar about it, but nothing clear. “No.”

  “Don
’t read the papers, eh? Well, briefly it’s like this. Every week for the past four weeks, there’s been a man killed here. Every Saturday morning the police find a body—but no head. They’ve hunted for the missing heads, but there’s not even a speck of blood left to show where they went. Either some maniac’s loose here, or there’s black magic—which we don’t believe. But nobody can find any traces.”

  Ann nodded, poking at the fire with a stick and only half listening. “I must have heard something about it, I guess, but not much. What happened?”

  “That’s the catch; nobody knows. The first three were bums, probably just hiding out here for the night, but the fourth was Dean Mallory…had an orchestra playing at the Dug-Out. At a guess, I’d say he stumbled here in looking for atmosphere for a modern thing he was writing, and it got him. His head was sheared off as clean as a cut of meat from the butcher…Hope I’m not frightening you?”

  “No.” Whatever reaction came to her from Chapman’s words, it wasn’t fear, though there had been a tinge of fright since the moment when she first noticed the park about her. Her eyes wandered out into the shadows and back to him quickly. “They think it’s a maniac?”

  “All except a drunken old fortune-teller named Olga. She’s been pestering the police sergeant with tales of the supernatural. Claims it’s a nis. And I think he about half believes her, judging by the stress he lays on the absence of rats from the ruins, and the cross he made me wear around my neck.” Harry tapped his shirt to indicate the faint bulge of the tiny object. “You know, it’s lucky you found me; running around here alone might be bad. More coffee?”

  “No, thanks.” Funny the way the flickering light on his face made it seem quixotical and boyish. Ann slipped closer to him. “What’s a nis, some kind of evil ghost? I…I’ve heard the name somewhere, I think.”

  “Mmm. I had to look it up in a book.” He bit off the corner of a cigarette package, pulled one out, and lighted it without disturbing the arm on the stones behind her. Where his fingers touched her back, little dancing tingles went tripping up as he continued. “Seems a nis is someone who was too interested in life and too contrary to die, so he turns into a half-demon, decides on what he wants to do and does it, not bothering about normal men anymore. According to the book, there used to be one who stole colors from living people to paint his pictures, leaving them with eyes black as a stoat’s and hair like the feathers of a crow. But nisses can’t stand sunlight, so it killed him when he tried to steal the colors from the sunlight.”

  Ann stirred restlessly. “Good always triumphs in the stories, doesn’t it? And I think you used the wrong plural.”

  “Probably. There’s another story with a somewhat neater ending, if you’d care to hear it…Mmm. One of them took up lodging in a valley hidden from civilization and went about building up a choir. He swiped the voices from all the yokels around and played on them like an organ, thundering his music down from the hills in a great symphony. Naturally, without voices, the people were struck dumb. Then word got out, and musicians began stemming in from the far corners of the earth to listen. But so many who came left their voices behind in the valley that in time they stopped coming, and even the location of the valley was lost to man’s memory.”

  “Rather horrible, those legends, aren’t they?” She stretched out suddenly and got to her feet, restlessness stirring in her. “Let’s go somewhere to a show; I’ll pay my way. At least, it’s more cheerful than sitting out here all night.”

  Harry glanced at his watch. “It’s rather late. What show’d you have in mind?”

  “Apollo, I guess.” What other show would they see, with the Apollo only a few yards away across the park? There was no point to going clear across town to another. “Just cheap vaudeville, of course, but better than usual this week; at least everybody says so.”

  Chapman made no comment, but came to his feet quickly, one hand sliding back to his pocket and clutching at something there; in the flickering light, it looked like the handle of a gun. His actions were suddenly unfriendly and odd. She turned at his motion, leading the way, and he followed a few feet behind. She could feel his eyes riveted on the nape of her neck, and hear him muttering something that sounded suspiciously like “maniac,” but she shook her head and stopped puzzling about it, heading toward the theater. From the dark ahead, a gurgling ululation sounded. There was something about it—where had she heard that before?

  “Lord!” Harry’s gasp behind her cut through her thoughts and brought them back to him. “Look! It’s there!”

  His fingers were pointing ahead to the building that reared up from the tangled ground, its marquee blazing with light, announcing the stellar attraction of Loto, the Incomparable. The lights spelled out Apollo Theater in no uncertain letters.

  “Of course it’s there. What did you expect?” His odd surprise was amusing, though it annoyed her a little. “Shall we go in?”

  “Listen, I may be crazy, but O’Halloran and I went over the grounds this morning, and it wasn’t there then. I even dug part of that sign out of the wreckage. There hasn’t been an Apollo Theater for forty years. You’ll be telling me next I’m the headhunting maniac.” He stared about hastily, and his fingers clutched more tightly on the object in his pocket. “What’s the game?”

  He was being silly about something. Perhaps it would be best to forget about taking him in, she thought, then felt a pressing urgency lo have him accompany her. “It’s always been there, Harry,” she assured him soothingly. “You must have been imagining things by the fire; people do that sometimes.”

  “Mmm. All right, I’m crazy…I must be, unless I’m asleep by the fire. Okay, in we go. This wouldn’t make good copy, but it may be interesting—maybe.” He strode forward grimly, glancing back at her once as if expecting her to be gone. She smiled at him, but there was no lightening of his face.

  Suppose he was right? He seemed so positive, and there were alarming gaps in her memory. Something had happened before she found herself in the park, but she could recall none of it. And this building, standing in the wilderness about, didn’t make sense. She glanced at the sign again, studying the billing. Loto, the Incomparable. Who and what was Loto? Harry was back at her side then, and she clutched his arm.

  “Let’s not go in; I’ve changed my mind. There’s something wrong here; I can feel it.”

  “You’re darned right there is. They aren’t charging amusement tax, for one thing. Still trying to tell me I’m crazy?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember what I should about all this; there’s a blank in my head.”

  “Mmm. You’re a queer kid, Ann, and I should take you to O’Halloran, but I’m going to trust you instead. Maybe there’s a cog slipped in your memory—amnesia; we’ll see about it later.” He took her hand and the friendliness she wanted from him was back, though determination pulled his face in stern lines. “Come on, we’re in this now, and whatever it is, I’m seeing it through. It wouldn’t surprise me to find the missing heads somewhere at the bottom of it. Game to try it?”

  Ann tossed her head, though a prickling of her skin seemed like a warning, and they passed into the lobby. There was a moldy smell in the air, and a look of cheap opulence to the place that dated it. The unsmiling usher greeted them, his face masked in shadows, and led them down the middle aisle and to fancy plush-covered seats at the edge. The place was dimly lighted, probably by gas lamps, and the shadows spewed over the audience and up to the stage, which stood out in a contrasting glare of brilliance, though the curtain was still down. The musty odor was stronger, and the hissing buzz of the audience already seated carried a note that was half familiar, but entirely unpleasant.

  Harry nudged her. “Notice anything queer about the audience? No? Well, try and pick out any details. All I can see are dark blobs. I can’t focus on them—might as well be a veil over the whole place—and I don’t like it
, Ann. Maybe you shouldn’t be here.”

  “Shh. I’m here now.” She caught his hand. It was nice to be worried over. Whatever her past, she was sure there had been too little of that. “Curtain’s going up.”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a fanfare from the orchestra pit and a blurred announcement from the stage, followed by a quartet, all with long moustaches and dressed in tight pants, who came out and sang sentimental ballads, ending on the sad song of “Nelly, the Bartender’s Daughter,” unexpurgated. Ann had the impression that it was old to her, even the disgust at the cheap words. Harry grunted, but said nothing.

  A team doing stunts on roller skates to jingling ragtime came next, followed by a man who juggled little balls that looked like glass eyes. Ann was still puzzling over the feeling of familiarity with the acts. Harry sat with his eyes glued on the stage, and his nerves sticking out all over. A hush settled over the audience, and the stage lights cut to a center spot, coming from the wings, and leaving two lanes of black around the lighted section.

  Offstage a ratty voice announced the main feature with unctuous pride. “The Great Loto, with his Carillon of Skulls, the Delight of the Crowned Heads of Europe, in Person. Rasputin himself was proud to honor the art of the Incomparable Loto. Ladeezngents, we now bring you a new and hitherto Unplayed Symphony of his own composition. I give you—Loto!”

  A full roll from the drums brought Loto out, dressed like a clown and carrying a large, covered object that must surely be his instrument. But his chalk-white face and long, red mouth were entirely unfunny, and the tapering fingers of his hands might have belonged to an Inca priest, adept at tearing the living heart out of a sacrifice. When he removed the covering from his instrument, it was revealed to be in truth a long line of skulls, suspended from a shining bar by small chains. The effect was appalling, and a low shudder of expectancy ran through the audience.