“Somehow,” Clem went on, “we’ve run across something that wasn’t meant to be discovered. I don’t know what’s behind it. Maybe it’s a kind of illusion. For all we know, half the town may be affected the same way we are. And everybody hiding it…mob hysteria.”
“Do you really believe that?” Ann asked him.
“No. That was just a slap-dab attempt at scientific explanation. Psychology. That sort of thing. When I first saw you, you were running out of that building…running away from something. I’ve seen guys running and looking like you looked. But they knew what they were running from. I’ve wondered. What were you doing there?”
Ann furrowed her forehead. “I—I was passing by. All of a sudden, I had an urge to go in…see what the place looked like inside. There was only that little light on in the lobby. It was terribly dark on the stairs. Even darker up above. I listened, but the place was so quiet I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. I don’t know why, but I started to go up to the second floor. I hadn’t even a flashlight with me. I think I almost got there, then…then I got frightened.”
Her face had gone white. “I don’t know why I was frightened… I didn’t know then. I was so grateful to…to you for being there when I ran out.”
Clem drained his glass.
“I’m glad I was there,” he said quietly. “Though it wasn’t until after I met you that the building began showing up wherever I went.”
“It—it was here that night when I got home,” Ann confessed.—“I didn’t scream. I was too scared to scream. It just sat quietly across the street, and it seemed to be watching my windows. I ran into the house. When I could bring myself to look out the window, it…it was gone. After that I saw it often, even in the daytime, and all over town. I never dared tell anybody about it before.”
“There is life in a city,” Clem mused, “life that is beyond the life of the people who live there. The people build the city, then the city starts building the people. It twists them about and shapes their lives to fit into its own destiny. You would think that is allegory, but it is fact. We never consider the city itself as being sentient. It borrows the life of the people. Could the city, or part of it borrow life…and not give it back?”
“Suppose it could. Why does that horrible building follow us wherever we go? How does it do it?”
“I could explain that in too many ways to make sense. Say it is alive. Say it has super intelligence. It might hop through the fourth dimension. It might work on our minds and make us think we see it. Probably, we’ll never know. I don’t know why it does it either. Maybe because we’ve guessed its secret…found out what wasn’t meant to be discovered?”
Ann suddenly buried her face in her hands. “I’m afraid, Clem! I’m afraid to be alone. Don’t ever let me be alone, will you?”
Clem shifted uneasily, reached out and took her hand.
“Ann, we have to stand together to fight it. I don’t know how we will, but we will. We’ll be married tomorrow, then…”
She squeezed his hand, and the response was enough for Clem. A moment later, he was kissing her, murmuring comfortingly. After a while, he kissed her one last time and went away.
* * * *
Clem awoke to the shrilling alarm of the telephone. He stumbled from the bedroom into the living room, bumping his shins on a rocker on the way. It was Ann calling. There was hysteria in her voice.
“Clem! Is that you, Clem? Oh, thank God you’re there! Clem, it’s here…the building. Outside my window. It…it doesn’t go away, Clem. I shouted and screamed at it to go away. It’s still there. It has a…a voice, Clem. Like a big bell. It’s calling me. I… I… Clem!”
Her voice died away in a whimper of terror. Clem rattled the instrument but got no further response. Cursing savagely, he groped for the light switch, found it, and bounded into his clothes. He left the house running. Two blocks away, he halted, breathless, and signaled a cruising cab.
The cab waited while he bounded up the stairs to Ann’s apartment. There was no answer to his thunderous knocking. The door was unlocked. He flung it open and went in. His own hoarse breathing whistled on the blanket of silence.
Ann was not there. She was not in the sitting room. Not in the ridiculous little kitchenette. Not in the bath. Ann was not anywhere. He looked for a note and found none. The phone had been returned carefully to its cradle.
He looked in the closet Ann’s coat was on its hanger, her pert little red hat on the shelf. Slips and dresses hung neatly. Several pairs of shoes toed an invisible line on the floor. What had Ann worn when she went out? Where had she gone?
He went slowly back to the cab, a haunting fear nagging at his mind. Since leaving Ann, he had not been stalked by the building. He felt all of a sudden as if a great load were gone from his mind. What did that mean? He was not even interested in speculating about the building. Somewhere this night, his fear had left him completely. But Ann!
A pain pierced his chest. What had she said? The building was calling to her. It had a voice, like a…a big bell. Had she answered that voice? The thought was nonsense, but had she gone to that building, downtown? He gave crisp orders to the driver…
* * * *
Tires swished on the pavement as the cab drove off and left him standing before the dark maw of the Heathcliff building. A bitter chill was in the air, and a few snowflakes had begun to drift down. An earlier rain had frozen as it fell, and the pavement was icy. It was quiet, restlessly quiet as the heart of a city is at three o’clock in the morning. It began to snow harder. Clem hunched his shoulders against the bitter wind and dodged into the building entrance.
The door should have been locked. It was not. The yellow bulb in the deserted lobby had long since been extinguished. It was as black as the throat of Hell inside, and cold.
Clem contacted a pencil-flash in his pocket. It cast a pale yellow cone through the darkness. He stood at the foot of the stairs and shot the gleam upward. Somewhere up there, the caretaker should be sleeping.
He could see nothing beyond the feeble range of his torch except greater, more all-enshrouding blackness. He started up stealthily.
“Clem!”
The voice sounded close—very close, almost as if it originated inside his own skull. It had been Ann’s voice. He halted and listened.
“Go away, Clem!”
Undoubtedly, it was Ann speaking to him. But the words still sounded as if they came from inside his skull. Or perhaps from just ahead, up the stairs. He advanced cautiously, whispering, and damp, moldy walls flung the whisper back at him.
“Take it easy, Ann, dear. I’m coming.”
“No Clem. Go away. You can’t help me. It won’t harm you, if you go away.”
He was sure, now, that the voice came from just a little way ahead of him, up the stairs. He advanced softly.
They were crazy, he thought, both of them. At least, he had been. Imagining things about a ratty old building. Ann must have gone under, wandering around in this macabre old shell. He’d have to find her and take her away. He could reason with her when he got her out of the place.
“You were right, Clem,” Ann said. Her voice was clear, unfrightened, pitched low. It sounded very sweet and very sad. “The building lives. It loves life, all the things you and I love…loved. It wanted…me, Clem. You were in the way.”
“Hold on, honey I’ll be with you in a minute,” Clem whispered fiercely.
Ann’s voice receded as he advanced. She pleaded with him to turn back. He reached the landing, found the next flight and continued up. Another flight, and another. His torch grew weaker. He could barely see the treaders under his feet. A penetrating chill came out of the unseen walls, smote through his topcoat, made his flesh cold.
“There is nothing you can do now, Clem,” Ann said, reasoning with him. “Go while you can.
And remember I loved you, Clem; but this is bigger than either of us. I understand only a little…you never would understand.”
Clem set his teeth and continued doggedly to trail the voice. Ann’s words grew faint, and he came to a door. The door was at the head of the stairs. He groped for the knob as the batteries of his flash failed, aware that he had climbed six flights and the door before him gave upon the roof. When his light went out, complete and utter blackness leaped upon him. He tugged at the door.
He met the bitter kiss of the wind, the stinging deluge of snow and flying ice particles. The storm smothered him, filled his eyes and mouth and nostrils. Upon the open roof, the wind whipped with gale-like fury. He staggered upon the treacherous footing. Faintly he heard Ann’s thin entreaty.
“Go back, go back, Clem!”
He plunged in the direction of Ann’s voice, advanced twenty yards and came to an obstruction, a wall. The voice came from above now.
Clem was beyond power to reason. His mind was possessed by an idée fixe. He must find Ann and take her away from here. Out of breath from the six-story climb, he panted harshly. The wind whipped and beat at him, hurled blinding snow into his face. He stumbled over something that lay flat on the roof. He stooped, discovered a ladder. Grunting his triumph, he heaved it against the obstruction that blocked his advance. He started up the icy rungs.
Ann was crying now. He could detect the tears in her voice.
“Go back, Clem. Please go back!”
He stopped, flung his head back, yelled into the storm.
“I’m taking you back with me, Ann!”
“Clem!”
His groping hands went past the top rung of the ladder, found a slanting surface, rounded, slated, slippery with a coating of ice. It was the roof of the angle-tower at the corner of the Heathcliff building. He paused while this knowledge percolated into his numbed brain.
But Ann was up there. She was up there somewhere, on the tower. He could hear her crying. It wasn’t right for Ann to cry. Ann was too lovely ever to cry or be unhappy. He would have to reason with her. Make her understand it was just a silly notion she had that the building was haunting her…
“Clem.” Ann’s voice was very close, plain in spite of the howling wind. “Clem, I told you the…the building wanted me. It…it heard us, Clem, planning to get married. It was jealous and took me away. Go back now, while you can. You can’t have me, not ever. I’m already married, Clem… I’m married to the building!”
Clem flung himself toward Ann’s voice, reaching out and clawing with both hands, as if he might thus seize her. He did not seize Ann. He did not seize anything. There was no purchase, not anywhere. There was only steeply slanting tile covered thickly with ice, and the snow swirled around.
The shriek of the wind grew louder in his ears, and the thought occurred to him that he was falling. But it was too dark to see the grimed, opaque windows hurtling upward past him. With his last thought, he wondered if Ann would be unhappy without him…
DEVIL DOG
Originally published in Weird Tales, July 1945.
The marines had established a beachhead on Watinau. For three days they had driven inland against an enemy who crept from palm to palm, dodged from foxhole to foxhole. He was seldom seen alive, plentifully so dead. The advance was grimly cheerful, though slow.
The conditions were anomalous, elsewhere than at war. Lieutenant Barkis, in charge of the War Dog Detachment, felt cheerful, too. The entire three days had cost him no more than one dog and one handler.
The dog, a Doberman Pinscher scout, had been caught in a crossfire of Nipponese machine-guns and slashed to ribbons. The same storm of lead had lodged a couple of bullets in the handler’s thigh.
The jungle was bad on Watinau. It was thick and treacherous. Signalman struggled through rancid growth and clouds of mosquitoes, splashing sometimes chest-deep through swamp, to lay the wire. And the Nips sneaked through the Lines and snipped it. Or their artillery and mortars blew it to shredded ends, and the weary signalmen struggled some more to keep the communication lines open.
The dogs were a Godsend. All the Marines agreed that they were. Bluff, red-faced Colonel Marty congratulated Lieutenant Barkis, whenever they met, on the work his dogs were doing. He dictated a paragraph of praise to the combat correspondents, and the Colonel’s words were reprinted in the daily papers of every state in the Union. Lieutenant Barkis was justifiably proud of his dogs.
The dogs crept through the thickest jungle, bellies on the ground, faster than a man could travel in the open. They carried messages, requesting reinforcements and supplies. They scouted for the advancing troops, alerting enemy machine-gun nests, snipers, and sundry ambuscades. They saved lives, Colonel Marty said, and they saved time—two of the most priceless commodities in the store of an attacking force. Then…
* * * *
“Alex—poor old Alex!” babbled the corporal. “Stretched out like a sack, he is, and blood all over.”
Lieutenant Barkis erupted from the shallow slit-trench in which he had slept, rolled in tars poncho. It was barely light. A mist hovered at the edge of the jungle.
“Alex? Where?”
The corporal gestured vaguely into the dirty gray mist. His stubbled cheeks looked wan in the death-light.
“Thirty yards from my foxhole. I woke up, and Alex was gone. I got up and looked around—”
Barkis pulled on his steel helmet and spoke curtly.
“Show me.”
“He must have heard something and went to investigate,” the corporal added nervously. “A jap knifed the life out of him.”
Barkis shrugged irritably. Mist-dampened folds of his camouflaged poncho rustled against his legs.
“The fighting is five miles from here,” he objected.
The earth glistened blackly about the rigid, splayed figure. The foggy illumination glinted dully on reddish highlights. The surf throbbed a muffled tempo. Mist coiled and drifted among the palms, holding itself aloof from the two men and the dead thing at their feet.
Alex had not died easily. His feet were stretched out from his body as if still clawing an illusive enemy. The eyes were wide and glaring, lips curled back upon a welter of bloody foam and glistening teeth, snarling dead, futile hatred—futile, for hate nor courage had prevailed, and Alex had died with the wind whistling from the gory rent in his throat.
Lieutenant Barkis dropped to one knee beside the dead dog, lifted the sleek head of the Doberman, and let it drop gently.
“No Jap knife did that,” he observed shakily. “His throat was ripped out by teeth. He must have fought with another dog.”
“We’d a heard that, Lieutenant, wouldn’t we?”
“Not necessarily. They’re trained to be silent. Have you checked the other dogs?”
“No, sir. I found Alex like that and came straight to get you.”
“Get me Sergeant Stranger. I’ll wait here.”
The corporal drifted into the mist. Barkis pondered a moment more, then got close to the ground, combed the territory for sign.
He straightened at a sound. The corporal returned in the company of a lean, saturnine looking man. Sergeant Stranger wiped his hands on his dungarees, rubbed a stubbled jaw.
“Corporal Hanocek says you think Alex was in a fight with a dog.”
Barkis got to his feet, slapped detritus from his knees, adjusted the folds of his poncho.
“I knew he was. There are dog traces all around. Some are Alex’s. Some are bigger. We’ll check the other dogs at once, Sergeant.” He turned to the corporal. “Hanocek—that’s your name?—run along and find out if the watch heard anything. When you come back, look for me. I’ll be with the handlers.”
“I got six scouts and four messengers at the front,” Stranger volunteered. “The rest of them are here.
I could check my records—”
“The dogs at the front don’t concern us,” Barkis told him. “It was a dog here at hand who did that to Alex.”
“The handlers keep their dogs pretty close,” Stranger put in dubiously.
“Alex got away from Hanocek.”
The sergeant was silent.
A check of the dogs proved fruitless. “Alex couldn’t have got what he did without giving a little in return,” Stranger observed. “And the dogs are all where they belong, and clean.”
“Not a scratch, not a drop of blood,” agreed Barkis. He was puzzled.
Hanocek came out of the soupy mist. “The guards didn’t hear a thing, sir.”
Barkis nodded. “I didn’t suppose they had. We’d have known.” He frowned. “Another team out of action. Yours, Hanocek? The corporal nodded. “Of course,” Barkis went on. “Well, give your men the word, Sergeant. Keep the dogs on leash at all times. We can’t afford to have this.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed the sergeant. He scowled at Hanocek. Barkis went away.
* * * *
They buried Alex and piled lumps of coral upon his grave. On top, they stuck a crude cross made by tying broken boughs together. They hung Alex’s bloody collar on the cross, and below it a board with the scrawled inscription: “ALEX, a U.S. Marine. Killed in the line of duty.” It was terse, a fitting epitaph for a Marine.
The swift flow of battle progressed throughout the day. The enemy ebbed to the crest of Watinau’s hills and hid out in caves and among boulders. The advance rested, waiting for the artillery to catch up.
The sun drifted through clouds of red and gold to its setting behind the hills of Watinau. A shadow rose up from out of the ground, embraced the flaming sky, and came down upon the Marines lying in the fetid jungle.
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 9
