Horrible Imaginings

by Fritz Leiber

  Glasses handed it over and, taking care always to point it at the floor, I unloaded it, put it back on the table, and put the bullets in my coat pocket. Then we tried to go on with our card game.

  “My red bullet bets ten cents,” I said, referring to my ace of hearts.

  “My king raises you ten cents,” responded Glasses.

  But it was no use. Between Inky’s automatic and Luke Dugan I couldn’t concentrate on my cards.

  “Do you remember, Glasses,” I said, “the evening you said there was maybe something queer about Inky’s gun?”

  “I do a lot of talking, No Nose, and not much of it is worth remembering. We’d better stick to our cards. My pair of sevens bets a nickel.”

  I followed his advice, but didn’t have much luck, and lost five or six dollars. By two o’clock we were both pretty tired and not feeling quite so jittery; so we got the blankets and wrapped up in them and tried to grab a little sleep. I listened to the sea-grass and the tooting of a locomotive about two miles away, and worried some over the possible activities of Luke Dugan, but finally dropped off.

  It must have been about sunrise that the clicking noise woke me up. There was a faint, greenish light coming in through the shades. I lay still, not knowing exactly what I was listening for, but so on edge that it didn’t occur to me how prickly hot I was from sleeping without sheets, or how itchy my face and hands were from mosquito bites. Then I heard it again, and it sounded like nothing but the sharp click the hammer of a gun makes when it snaps down on an empty chamber. Twice I heard it. It seemed to be coming from the inside of the room. I slid out of my blankets and rustled Glasses awake.

  “It’s that damned automatic of Inky’s,” I whispered shakily. “It’s trying to shoot itself.”

  When a person wakes up sudden and before he should, he’s apt to feel just like I did and say crazy things without thinking. Glasses looked at me for a moment, then he rubbed his eyes and smiled. I could hardly see the smile in the dim light, but I could feel it in his voice when he said, “No Nose, you are getting positively psychic.”

  “I tell you I’d swear to it,” I insisted. “It was the click of the hammer of a gun.”

  Glasses yawned. “Next you will be telling me that the gun was Inky’s familiar.”

  “Familiar what?” I asked him, scratching my head and beginning to get mad. There are times when Glasses’ college professor stuff gets me down.

  “No Nose,” he continued, “have you ever heard of witches?”

  I was walking around to the windows and glancing out from behind the blinds to make sure there was no one around. I didn’t see anyone. For that matter, I didn’t really expect to.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “Sure I have. Why, I knew a guy, a Pennsylvania Dutchman, and he told me about witches putting what he called hexes on people. He said his uncle had a hex put on him and he died afterward. He was a traveling salesman—the Dutchman that told me, I mean.”

  Glasses nodded his head, and then went on, sleepy-like, from the floor, “Well, No Nose, the Devil used to give each witch a pet black cat or dog or maybe a toad to follow it around and protect it and revenge injuries. Those little creatures were called familiars—stooges sent out by the Big Boy to watch over his chosen, you might say. The witches used to talk to them in a language no one else could understand. Now this is what I’m getting at. Times change and styles change—and the style in familiars along with them. Inky’s gun is black, isn’t it? And he used to mutter at it in a language we couldn’t understand, didn’t he? And—”

  “You’re crazy,” I told him, not wanting to be kidded.

  “Why, No Nose,” he said, “you were telling me yourself just now that you thought the gun had a life of its own, that it could cock itself and shoot itself without any human assistance. Weren’t you?”

  “You’re crazy,” I repeated, feeling like an awful fool and wishing I hadn’t waked Glasses up. “See, the gun’s here where I left it on the table, and the bullets are still in my pocket.”

  “Luckily,” he said in a stagy voice he tried to make sound like an undertaker’s. “Well, now that you’ve called me early, I shall wander off and avail us of our neighbor’s newspaper. Meanwhile you may run my bath.”

  I waited until I was sure he was gone, because I didn’t want him to make a fool of me again. Then I went over and examined the gun. First I looked for the trade mark or the name of the maker. I found a place which had been filed down, where it might have been once, but that was all. Before this I would have sworn I could have told the make, but now I couldn’t. Not that in general it didn’t look like an ordinary automatic; it was the details—the grip, the trigger guard, the safety catch—that were unfamiliar. I figured it was some foreign make I’d never happened to see before.

  After I’d been handling it for about two minutes I began to notice something queer about the feel of the metal. As far as I could see it was just ordinary blued steel, but somehow it was too smooth and slick and made me want to keep stroking the barrel back and forth. I can’t explain it any better; the metal just didn’t seem right to me. Finally I realized the gun was getting on my nerves and making me imagine things; so I put it down on the mantel.

  When Glasses got back, the sun was up and he wasn’t smiling any more. He shoved a newspaper on my lap and pointed. It was open to page five. I read:

  ANTON LARSEN SOUGHT IN KOZACS KILLING

  Police Believe Ex-Bootlegger Slain by Pal

  I looked up to see Larsen standing in the bedroom door. He was in his pajama trousers and looked yellow and seedy, his eyelids puffed and his pig eyes staring at us.

  “Good morning, boss,” said Glasses slowly. “We just noticed in the paper that they are trying to do you a dirty trick. They’re claiming you, not Dugan, had Inky shot.”

  Larsen grunted, came over and took the paper, looked at it quickly, grunted again, and went to the sink to splash some cold water on his face.

  “So,” he said, turning to us. “All the better we are here at the hideout.”

  That day was the longest and most nervous I’ve ever gone through. Somehow Larsen didn’t seem to be completely waked up. If he’d been a stranger I’d have diagnosed it as a laudanum jag. He sat around in his pajama trousers, so that by noon he still looked as if he’d only that minute rolled out of bed. The worst thing was that he wouldn’t talk or tell us anything about his plans. Of course he never did much talking, but this time there was a difference. His funny pig eyes began to give me the jim-jams; no matter how still he sat they were always moving—like a guy having a laudanum nightmare and about to run amuck.

  Finally it started to get on Glasses’ nerves, which surprised me, for Glasses usually knows how to take things quietly. He began by making little suggestions—that we should get a later paper, that we should call up a certain lawyer in New York, that I should get my cousin Jake to mosey around the police station at Bayport and see if anything was up, and so on. Each time Larsen shut him up quick.

  Once I thought he was going to take a crack at Glasses. And Glasses, like a fool, kept on pestering. I could see a blow-up coming, plain as the absence of my nose. I couldn’t figure what was making Glasses do it. I guess when the college professor type gets the jim-jams they get them worse than a dummy like me. They’ve got trained brains which they can’t stop from pecking away at ideas, and that’s a disadvantage.

  As for me, I tried to keep hold of my nerves. I kept saying to myself, “Larsen is O.K. He’s just a little on edge. We all are. Why, I’ve known him ten years. He’s O.K.” I only half realized I was saying those things because I was beginning to believe that Larsen wasn’t O.K.

  The blow-up came at about two o’clock. Larsen’s eyes opened wide, as if he’d just remembered something, and he jumped up so quick that I started to look around for Luke Dugan’s firing- squad—or the police. But it wasn’t either of those. Larsen had spotted the automatic on the mantel. Right away as he began fingering it, he noticed it was unload
ed.

  “Who monkeyed with this?” he asked in a very nasty, thick voice. “And why?”

  Glasses couldn’t keep quiet.

  “I thought you might hurt yourself with it,” he said.

  Larsen walked over to him and slapped him on the side of the face, knocking him down. I took firm hold of the chair I had been sitting on, ready to use it like a club. Glasses twisted on the floor for a moment, until he got control of the pain. Then he looked up, tears beginning to drip out of his left eye where he had been hit. He had sense enough not to say anything, or to smile. Some fools would have smiled in such a situation, thinking it showed courage. It would have showed courage, I admit, but not good sense.

  After about twenty seconds Larsen decided not to kick him in the face.

  “Well, are you going to keep your mouth shut?” he asked.

  Glasses nodded. I let go my grip on the chair.

  “Where’s the load?” asked Larsen.

  I took the bullets out of my pocket and put them on the table, moving deliberately.

  Larsen reloaded the gun. It made me sick to see his big hands sliding along the blue-black metal, because I remembered the feel of it.

  “Nobody touches this but me, see?” he said.

  And with that he walked into the bedroom and closed the door.

  All I could think of was, “Glasses was right when he said that Larsen was crazy on the subject of Inky’s automatic. And it’s just the same as it was with Inky. He has to have the gun close to him. That’s what was bothering him all morning, only he didn’t know.”

  Then I kneeled down by Glasses, who was still lying on the floor, propped up on his elbows looking at the bedroom door. The mark of Larsen’s hand was brick-red on the side of his face, with a little trickle of blood on the cheekbone, where the skin was broken.

  I whispered, very low, just what I thought of Larsen. “Let’s beat it first chance and get the police on him,” I finished.

  Glasses shook his head a little. He kept staring at the door, his left eye blinking spasmodically. Then he shivered, and gave a funny grunt deep down in his throat.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said.

  “He killed Inky,” I whispered in his ear. “I’m almost sure of it. And he was within an inch of killing you.”

  “I don’t mean that,” said Glasses.

  “What do you mean then?”

  Glasses shook his head, as if he were trying to change the subject of his thoughts.

  “Something I saw,” he said, “or, rather, something I realized.”

  “The gun?” I questioned. My lips were dry and it was hard for me to say the word.

  He gave me a funny look and got up.

  “We’d better both be sensible from now on,” he said, and then added in a whisper. “We can’t do anything now. Maybe we’ll get a chance tonight.”

  After a long while Larsen called to me to heat some water so he could shave. I brought it to him, and by the time I was frying hash he came out and sat down at the table. He was all washed and shaved, and the straggling patches of hair around his bald head were brushed smooth. He was dressed and had his hat on. But in spite of everything he still had that yellow, seedy, laudanum-jag look. We ate our hash and beans and drank our beer, no one talking. It was dark now, and a tiny wind was making the blades of sea-grass whine.

  Finally Larsen got up and walked around the table once and said, “Let’s have a game of stud poker.”

  While I was clearing off the dishes he brought out his suitcase and planked it down on the side table. He took Inky’s automatic out of his pocket and looked at it a second. Then he laid the automatic in the suitcase, and shut it up and strapped it tight.

  “We’re leaving after the game,” he said.

  I wasn’t quite sure whether to feel relieved or not.

  We played with a ten-cent limit, and right from the start Larsen began to win. It was a queer game, what with me feeling so jittery, and Glasses sitting there with the left side of his face all swollen, squinting through the right lens of his spectacles because the left lens had been cracked when Larsen hit him, and Larsen all dressed up as if he were sitting in a station waiting for a train. The shades were all down and the hanging light bulb, which was shaded with a foolscap of newspaper, threw a bright circle of light on the table, but left the rest of the room too dark to please me.

  It was after Larsen had won about five dollars from each of us that I began hearing the noise. At first I couldn’t be sure, because it was very low and because of the dry whining of the sea-grass, but right from the first it bothered me.

  Larsen turned up a king and raked in another pot.

  “You can’t lose tonight,” observed Glasses, smiling—and winced because the smile hurt his cheek.

  Larsen scowled. He didn’t seem pleased at his luck, or at Glasses’ remark. His pig eyes were moving in the same way that had given us the jim-jams earlier in the day. And I kept thinking, “Maybe he killed Inky Kozacs. Glasses and me are just small fry to him. Maybe he’s trying to figure out whether to kill us too. Or maybe he’s got a use for us, and he’s wondering how much to tell us. If he starts anything I’ll shove the table over on him; that is, if I get the chance.” He was beginning to look like a stranger to me, although I’d known him for ten years and he’d been my boss and paid me good money.

  Then I heard the noise again, a little plainer this time. It was very peculiar and hard to describe—something like the noise a rat would make if it were tied up in a lot of blankets and trying to work its way out. I looked up and saw that the bruise on Glasses’ left cheek stood out plainer.

  “My black bullet bets ten cents,” said Larsen, pushing a dime into the pot.

  “I’m with you,” I answered, shoving in two nickels. My voice sounded so dry and choked it startled me.

  Glasses put in his money and dealt another card to each of us.

  Then I felt my face going pale, for it seemed to me that the noise was coming from Larsen’s suitcase, and I remembered that he had put Inky’s automatic into the suitcase with its muzzle pointing away from us.

  The noise was louder now. Glasses couldn’t bear to sit still without saying anything. He pushed back his chair and started to whisper, “I think I hear—”

  Then he saw the crazy, murderous look that came into Larsen’s eyes, and he had sense enough to finish, “I think I hear the eleven o’clock train.”

  “Sit still,” said Larsen, “very still. It’s only ten forty-five. My ace bets another ten cents.”

  “I’ll raise you,” I croaked.

  I wanted to jump up. I wanted to throw Larsen’s suitcase out the door. I wanted to run out myself. Yet I sat tight. We all sat tight. We didn’t dare make a move, for if we had, it would have shown that we believed the impossible was happening. And if a man does that he’s crazy. I kept rubbing my tongue against my lips, without wetting them.

  I stared at the cards, trying to shut out everything else. The hand was all dealt now. I had a jack and some little ones, and I knew my face-down card was a jack. Glasses had a king showing. Larsen’s ace of clubs was the highest card on the board.

  And still the sound kept coming. Something twisting, straining, heaving. A muffled sound.

  “And I raise you ten cents,” said Glasses loudly. I got the idea he did it just to make a noise, not because he thought his cards were especially good.

  I turned to Larsen, trying to pretend I was interested in whether he would raise or stop betting. His eyes had stopped moving and were staring straight ahead at the suitcase. His mouth was twisted in a funny, set way. After a while his lips began to move. His voice was so low I could barely catch the words.

  “Ten cents more. I killed Inky you know. What does your jack say, No Nose?”

  “It raises you,” I said automatically.

  His reply came in the same almost inaudible voice. “You haven’t a chance of winning, No Nose. He didn’t bring the money with him, like he said he would. But I made
him tell me where he hid it in his room. I can’t pull the job myself; the cops would recognize me. But you two ought to be able to do it for me. That’s why we’re going to New York tonight. I raise you ten cents more.”

  “I’ll see you,” I heard myself saying.

  The noise stopped, not gradually but all of a sudden. Right away I wanted ten times worse to jump up and do something. But I was stuck to my chair.

  Larsen turned up the ace of spades.

  “Two aces. Inky’s little gun didn’t protect him, you know. He didn’t have a chance to use it. Clubs and spades. Black bullets. I win.”

  Then it happened.

  I don’t need to tell you much about what we did afterward. We buried the body in the sea-grass. We cleaned everything up and drove the coupe a couple of miles inland before abandoning it. We carried the gun away with us and took it apart and hammered it out of shape and threw it into the bay part by part. We never found out anything more about Inky’s money or tried to. The police never bothered us. We counted ourselves lucky that we had enough sense left to get away safely, after what happened.

  For, with smoke and flame squirting through the little round holes, and the whole suitcase jerking and shaking with the recoils, eight slugs drummed out and almost cut Anton Larsen in two.

  CRAZY ANNAOJ

  Two things will last to the end of time, at least for the tribes of Western Man, no matter how far his spaceships rove. They are sorcery and romantic love, which come to much the same thing in the end.

  For the more that becomes possible to man, the more wildly he yearns for the impossible, and runs after witches and sorcerers to find it.

  While the farther he travels, to the star-ribboned rim of the Milky Way and beyond, the more he falls in love with far-off things and yearns for the most distant and unattainable beloved.

  Also, witchcraft and sorcery are games it takes two to play; the witch or sorcerer and his or her client.