by Fritz Leiber
He wouldn’t, so I shoved him in the darkroom. ‘And keep quiet,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll tell her I can’t work today.’
I knew he’d try to look at her and probably come busting in, but there wasn’t anything else I could do.
The footsteps came to the fourth floor. But she never showed at the door. I got uneasy.
‘Get that bum out of there!’ she yelled suddenly from beyond the door. Not very loud, but in her commonest voice.
‘I’m going up to the next landing,’ she said, ‘And if that fat-bellied bum doesn’t march straight down to the street, he’ll never get another pix of me except spitting in his lousy beer.’
Papa Munsch came out of the darkroom. He was white. He didn’t look at me as he went out. He never looked at her pictures in front of me again.
That was Papa Munsch. Now it’s me I’m telling about. I talked around the subject with her, I hinted, eventually I made my pass.
She lifted my hand off her as if it were a damp rag.
‘Nix, baby,’ she said. ‘This is working time.’
‘But afterwards...’ I pressed.
‘The rules still hold.’ And I got what I think was the fifth smile.
It’s hard to believe, but she never budged an inch from that crazy line. I mustn’t make a pass at her in the office, because our work was very important and she loved it and there mustn’t be any distractions. And I couldn’t see her anywhere else, because if I tried to, I’d never snap another picture of her—and all this with more money coming in all the time and me never so stupid as to think my photography had anything to do with it.
Of course I wouldn’t have been human if I hadn’t made more passes. But they always got the wet-rag treatment and there weren’t any more smiles.
I changed. I went sort of crazy and light-headed—only sometimes I felt my head was going to burst. And I started to talk to her all the time. About myself.
It was like being in a constant delirium that never interfered with business. I didn’t pay any attention to the dizzy feeling. It seemed natural.
I’d walk around and for a moment the reflector would look like a sheet of white-hot steel, or the shadows would seem like armies of moths, or the camera would be a big black coal car. But the next instant they’d come all right again.
I think sometimes I was scared to death of her. She’d seem the strangest, horriblest person in the world. But other times...
And I talked. It didn’t matter what I was doing—lighting her, posing her, fussing with props, snapping my pix—or where she was—on the platform, behind the screen, relaxing with a magazine—I kept up a steady gab.
I told her everything I knew about myself. I told her about my first girl. I told her about my brother Bob’s bicycle. I told her about running away on a freight, and the licking Pa gave me when I came home. I told her about shipping to South America and the blue sky at night. I told her about Betty. I told her about my mother dying of cancer. I told her about being beaten up in a fight in an alley back of a bar. I told her about Mildred. I told her about the first picture I ever sold. I told her how Chicago looked from a sailboat. I told her about the longest drunk I was ever on. I told her about Marsh-Mason. I told her about Gwen. I told her about how I met Papa Munsch. I told her about hunting her. I told her about how I felt now.
She never paid the slightest attention to what I said. I couldn’t even tell if she heard me.
It was when we were getting our first nibble from national advertisers that I decided to follow her when she went home.
Wait, I can place it better than that. Something you’ll remember from the out-of-town papers—those maybe murders I mentioned. I think there were six.
I say ‘maybe,’ because the police could never be sure they weren’t heart attacks. But there’s bound to be suspicion when heart attacks happen to people whose hearts have been okay, and always at night when they’re alone and away from home and there’s a question of what they were doing.
The six deaths created one of those ‘mystery poisoner’ scares. And afterwards there was a feeling that they hadn’t really stopped, but were being continued in a less suspicious way.
That’s one of the things that scares me now.
But at that time my only feeling was relief that I’d decided to follow her.
I made her work until dark one afternoon. I didn’t need any excuses, we were snowed under with orders. I waited until the street door slammed, then I ran down. I was wearing rubber-soled shoes. I’d slipped on a dark coat she’d never seen me in, and a dark hat.
I stood in the doorway until I spotted her. She was walking by Ardleigh Park toward the heart of town. It was one of those warm fall nights. I followed her on the other side of the street. My idea for tonight was just to find out where she lived. That would give me a hold on her.
She stopped in front of a display window of Everly’s department store, standing back from the glow. She stood there looking in.
I remembered we’d done a big photograph of her for Everly’s, to make a flat model for a lingerie display. That was what she was looking at.
At the time it seemed all right to me that she should adore herself, if that was what she was doing.
When people passed she’d turn away a little or drift back farther into the shadows.
Then a man came by alone. I couldn’t see his face very well, but he looked middle-aged. He stopped and stood looking in the window.
She came out of the shadows and stepped up beside him.
How would you boys feel if you were looking at a poster of the Girl and suddenly she was there beside you, her arm linked with yours?
This fellow’s reaction showed plain as day. A crazy dream had come to life for him.
They talked for a moment. Then he waved a taxi to the kerb. They got in and drove off.
I got drunk that night. It was almost as if she’d known I was following her and had picked that way to hurt me. Maybe she had. Maybe this was the finish.
But the next morning she turned up at the usual time and I was back in the delirium, only now with some new angles added.
That night when I followed her she picked a spot under a street lamp, opposite one of the Munsch Girl billboards.
Now it frightens me to think of her lurking that way.
After about twenty minutes a convertible slowed down going past her, backed up, swung in to the kerb.
I was closer this time. I got a good look at the fellow’s face. He was a little younger, about my age.
Next morning the same face looked up at me from the front page of the paper. The convertible had been found parked on a side street He had been in it. As in the other maybe-murders, the cause of death was uncertain.
All kinds of thoughts were spinning in my head that day, but there were only two things I knew for sure. That I’d got the first real offer from a national advertiser, and that I was going to take the Girl’s arm and walk down the stairs with her when we quit work.
She didn’t seem surprised. ‘You know what you’re doing?’ she said.
‘I know.’
She smiled. ‘I was wondering when you’d get around to it.’
I began to feel good. I was kissing everything good-bye, but I had my arm around hers.
It was another of those warm fall evenings. We cut across into Ardleigh Park. It was dark there, but all around the sky was a sallow pink from the advertising signs.
We walked for a long time in the park. She didn’t say anything and she didn’t look at me, but I could see her lips twitching and after a while her hand tightened on my arm.
We stopped. We’d been walking across the grass. She dropped down and pulled me after her. She put her hands on my shoulders. I was looking down at her face. It was the faintest sallow pink from the glow in the sky. The hungry eyes were dark smudges.
I was fumbling with her blouse. She took my hand away, not like she had in the studio. ‘I don’t want that,’ she said.
First I’ll tell
you what I did afterwards. Then I’ll tell you why I did it. Then I’ll tell you what she said.
What I did was run away. I don’t remember all of that because I was dizzy, and the pink sky was swinging against the dark trees. But after a while I staggered into the lights of the street. The next day I closed up the studio. The telephone was ringing when I locked the door and there were unopened letters on the floor. I never saw the Girl again in the flesh, if that’s the right word.
I did it because I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want the life drawn out of me. There are vampires and vampires, and the ones that suck blood aren’t the worst. If it hadn’t been for the warning of those dizzy flashes, and Papa Munsch and the face in the morning paper, I’d have gone the way the others did. But I realized what I was up against while there was still time to tear myself away. I realized that wherever she came from, whatever shaped her, she’s the quintessence of the horror behind the bright billboard. She’s the smile that tricks you into throwing away your money and your life. She’s the eyes that lead you on and on, and then show you death. She’s the creature you give everything for and never really get. She’s the being that takes everything you’ve got and gives nothing in return. When you yearn towards her face on the billboards, remember that. She’s the lure. She’s the bait. She’s the Girl.
And this is what she said, ‘I want you. I want your high spots. I want everything that’s made you happy and everything that’s hurt you bad. I want your first girl. I want that shiny bicycle. I want that licking. I want that pinhole camera. I want Betty’s legs. I want the blue sky filled with stars. I want your mother’s death. I want your blood on the cobblestones. I want Mildred’s mouth. I want the first picture you sold. I want the lights of Chicago. I want the gin. I want Gwen’s hands. I want your wanting me. I want your life. Feed me, baby, feed me.’
WHILE SET FLED
After centuries of fear and rumor, the Hyborean tribes were streaming southward in a holocaust of destruction and conquest. The northern marches of Set had been breached and the broken armies of Tuthothomes XX were in full flight, nor would they be rallied until they reached the Styx and ancient Khemi—that great stand which saved the old Southern Kingdom was yet to be made. Meanwhile, the rich northern provinces of Set were doomed.
Nuthmekri was a craftsman of little fame, yet he chose to stay behind while greater artists fled. All yesterday the castle had been frantically a-bustle as the servitors of his patron Megshastes prepared for the flight southward too long delayed. Hurried footsteps, stumblings, strained puffings of slaves seeking to carry too much too swiftly, impatient, shinny and stomp in the courtyard of horses harnessed and hitched too soon, creaking of overladen wagons, now and then a hallow snap as lashings parted that had been drawn too tight over loads too high—shouts, curses, wailings, and commands. Now all was delightfully quiet.
It was only a small statuette that Nuthmekri was preparing to cast, yet its form seemed to him perfect. The sand mold was ready, the little furnace was aglow, and now Nuthmekri reached for an ingot of bronze. But there disappointment awaited him. His chest of metals was empty. Some slave must have looted it last night while he strolled in the meadows. Perhaps the fellow had heard the Hyboreans coveted bronze beyond all else and would sometimes show mercy to a man who gave it to them.
Nuthmekri’s eyes roved questingly about his small tower room. There were a few statuettes and pleasingly shaped implements and utensils. These he passed over. High on one bare wall hung an ancient sword of bronze, dusty, cobwebbed fast, almost black. Putting stool on table, Nuthmekri was enabled to climb up and detach it.
Holding the antique weapon in his hand, Nuthmekri moved to the window. Through the narrow embrasure he could make out a nearby hilltop in the hot sunlight and a road crossing it. Suddenly there puffed up a cloud of dust, and horsemen burst from it—ragged fellows on small bony mounts, with bows and circular shields and spears on whose barbed blades Nuthmekri fancied he could discern the lust of blood. There came to his ears a faint eager shouting.
Nuthmekri stiffened and for a moment he gripped the old sword like a fencer. Then he smiled bitterly and shook his head and while the horde continued to pour across the hilltop, turned away from the window to the furnace and sheathed the sword in the narrow, glowing crucible. The slim, unbroken object was a long time melting. Again noise filled the castle—wild laughter, stampings, treadings, smashings and breakings, snarling curses of disappointment as signs of the previous looting were uncovered (an owner’s self-looting—unforgivably mean and cheap—and in this Nuthmekri agreed with them) yells as edibles and potables came to light, ludicrous and unintelligible howlings the emotional significance of which only a barbarian mind could hope to comprehend.
By jerky stages the sword descended into the crucible. Then the guard rested against the rosy lip, Nuthmekri took up the tongs and prepared to pour.
There was a heavy tramping on the tower stairs and a jabbering that increased in volume, then a jerking and pounding at the door, which was unlocked and only failed to open because it was being tried the wrong way—pushed instead of pulled. In the center of the shadowy room the crucible made a little sun. From it there jetted into the mold a slim perfect stream, blindingly white.
The door was jerked open. For a moment the barbarians stood there, puzzled. Then one—perhaps he had seen molten lead poured on his fellows when they stormed the march fortresses—lunged forward and with one great swipe of his notched yet razor-sharp longsword cut off Nuthmekri’s head.
In the pulsing crimson fountain that arched up lazily fell finally straight upon the mold. There was a hissing and a puff of steam. The barbarian drew back a step. Then something tickled his primeval sense of humor. He laughed loud and harshly and long.
The sand mold split from its bloody drenching and fell away from the tiny, black scaled figure, still faintly glowing, of a slim, and robed and hooded woman, who regarded the intruders enigmatically. Her head was complete yet no spike of waster metal stuck up from it—Nuthmekri had poured just enough and no more.
Nuthmekri’s body stopped writhing. His fingers uncurled from the tongs. A tiny branch of the metal from the fallen crucible ran along his arm, hardening almost instantly.
But the slayer of the sculptor was laughing at one of those circumstances. What had struck him as very funny was that the slim shining stream of the statuette’s pouring had been neatly twitched off by his victim a full three red-jetting heartbeats after the Hyborean’s sword had shorn through Nuthmekri’s neck.
DIARY IN THE SNOW
Jan. 6: Two hours since my arrival at Lone Top, and I’m still sitting in front of the fire, soaking in the heat. The taxi ride was hellishly cold and the breathtaking half-mile tramp through the drifts with John completed my transformation to an icicle. The driver from Terrestrial told me this was one of the loneliest spots in Montana, and it surely looked like it—miles and miles of tenantless, starlit snow with mysterious auroral splotches and ghostly beams flickering to the north—a beautiful, if frightening sight.
And I’ve even turned the cold to account! It suggested to me that I put my monsters on a drearily frigid planet, one that is circling a dead or dying sun. That will give them a motivation for wanting to invade and capture the Earth. Good!
Well, here I am—a jobless man with a book to write. My friends (such as they are, or were) never believed I’d take this step, and when they finally saw I was in earnest, they tried to convince me I was a fool. And toward the end I was afraid I’d lose my nerve, but then—it was as if forces beyond my knowledge or control were packing my bag, insulting my boss, and buying my ticket. A very pleasant illusion, after weeks of qualms and indecision!
How wonderful to be away from people and newspapers and advertisements and movies—all that damnable intellectual static! I confess I had a rather unpleasant shock when I first came in here and noticed the big radio standing right between the fireplace and window. How awful it would be to have that thing blatting at y
ou in this cabin, with no place to escape except the tiny storeroom. It would be worse than the city! But so far John hasn’t turned it on, and I have my fingers crossed.
John is a magnificent host—understanding as well as incomparably generous. After getting me coffee and a snack, and setting out the whiskey, he’s retired to the other armchair and busied himself with some scribbling of his own.
Well, in a moment I’ll talk as much as he wants to (if he wants to) though I’m still reverberating from my trip. I feel as if I’d been catapulted out of an intolerable clangor and discord into the heart of quietness. It gives me a crazy, lightheaded feeling, like a balloon that touches the earth only to bounce upward again.
Better stop here though. I’d hate to think of how quiet a quietness would have to be, in order to be as much quieter than this place, as this is quieter than the city!
A man ought to be able to listen to his thoughts out here— really hear things.
Just John, and me—and my monsters!
Jan. 7: Wonderful day. Crisp, but no wind, and a flood of yellow sunlight to put a warmth and dazzle into the snow banks. John showed me all around the place this morning. It’s a snug little cabin he’s got, and a good thing too!—because it’s quite as lonely as it seemed last night. No houses in sight, and I’d judge there hasn’t been anything down the road since my taxi—the marks where it turned around stand out sharply. John says a farmer drives by, though, every two days—he has an arrangement with him for getting milk and other necessities.
You can’t see Terrestrial, there are hills in the way. John tells me that power and telephone wires have never gotten closer than six miles. The radio runs on storage batteries. When the drifts get bad he has to snowshoe all the way into Terrestrial.
I confess I feel a little awestruck at my own temerity—a confirmed desk-worker like myself plunging into a truly rugged environment like this. But John seems to think nothing of it. He says I’ll have to learn to snowshoe. I had my first lesson this morning and cut a ludicrous figure. I’ll be virtually a prisoner until I learn my way around. But any price is worth paying to get away from the thought-destroying din and soul-killing routine of the city!
