Crane leaped backward, slamming the door. His breath came hard and fast. There was sweat on his forehead.
He snapped the night-latch, groped his way to the telephone and dialed the residence number on the card Dr. Medas had given him. The Doctor’s voice sounded far away, aloof and pleasant.
“Doctor!” gasped Crane. “It—it’s here again…the…the green—”
“What can I do about it?” interposed the psychiatrist coolly.
“Help me, Doctor. Help me!”
“Ah,” there was a tone of pleased satisfaction in Medas’ voice. “Well, there isn’t much I can do over the phone, Crane. I will go down and meet you at my office. We’ll talk this thing over.”
“No,” Crane objected, trembling and sweating. “It—it’s waiting outside my door to snatch me!”
“It is?” asked the Doctor. “Well, don’t worry. Suppose I send Flannery around to pick you up?”
Crane hesitated a moment, then agreed. He hung up.
His tray came up from the restaurant, finally, but he wasn’t hungry. He gave the busboy a tip and told him to take it back down again. He took the opportunity also to look sharply up and down the hall, but the green thing was not in sight.
After a while, Officer Flannery knocked heavily on the door. Crane assured himself of his caller’s identity, then donned hat and overcoat and joined him in the hall.
The policeman was loquaciously pleasant, but Crane squirmed with every step they took along the street. Flannery hailed a cab and held the door while Crane got in. The latter would have refused this cab had he been alone. The driver looked like a gunman. But the policeman’s presence reassured him.
Doctor Medas had already arrived at his office when they got there. He greeted them pleasantly, asked Crane to sit down, then chatted a moment with the officer before letting him out the door, “Now, you just take it easy, Mr. Crane,” Flannery observed pleasantly over his shoulder as he was leaving. “The Doc here is an expert at chasing green things and pink things and any color of things you can mention!”
He winked with well-meaning good humor and went away. Medas came back and sat down, across his desk from Crane.
“Now tell me your trouble,” he said.
Crane told him. He told him of the wretched condition of the world at large, described the lurking monsters and spirits, and with infinite loathing told about the horrid, skinny green thing that lurked and snatched at him.
“And if I thought,” Crane finished, “that I was crazy, too, as well as living in a world as mad as this one, I’d—I’d—”
“Of course you would,” Medas smiled kindly.
He stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.
“Have you ever thought of asking the—green thing—what it wants?”
“I know what it wants,” Crane shuddered.
“I see. Suppose the world is not as mad as you think?”
“I know it is mad.”
“I see. Has it occurred to you that you might be in touch—by virtue of a superior mind—with two worlds, two planes of existence at once?”
Crane looked at him questioningly.
Medas leaned forward. “I mean,” he said seriously, that you—your physical self—occupies our normal, quite sane world, while your mental self, your psyche, occupies both this world and another world that is beyond the perception of ordinary people, like myself for instance.”
“I had not thought of that,” Crane replied.
“Very well. It is a possibility, is it not? Now, these creatures that you perceive you actually perceive on that other plane, yet since your perceptions include both planes simultaneously, they are superimposed upon your perception of this plane. They are not here at all. They just seem to be. Isn’t that logical?”
Crane puzzled over the concept a little.
“Yes,” he admitted hesitantly at last.
“Very well,” smiled Doctor Medas. “By accepting your original perception, that the monsters and the green thing actually occupy this plane, you are inviting them more and more to manifest themselves. That is why they will no longer leave you alone, even in your room.”
“You said you could help me,” Crane said suspiciously. “How is all this going to help me?”
Doctor Medas explained. He explained at length. When he had finished, Crane looked almost cheerful.
“It is a peculiarity of the psyche,” Medas concluded sonorously, “that it exerts an enormous influence upon the physical. You can actually destroy the physical self by means of psyche-created elementalf of imagination that have no existence at all in the plane of your physical being.
“All you need do when your psyche-created ‘green thing’ confronts you is walk right through it, as if it were not there. And it won’t be there!”
He smiled his thin smile and Crane felt vastly reassured.
“I believe you’re right, Doctor,” he admitted.
“That’s it!” beamed the psychiatrist. “Now I want you to walk out that door, hail the first cab you see in the street, and go home. Telephone me when you get there. I’ll wait! I want you to assure me that you met no ‘green things’ on the way.”
Crane stood up with alacrity.
“I’ll do that, Doctor!”
He strode to the door and hesitated moment, adjusting his hat and overcoat. He beamed with gratitude.
“Boy, I feel a million percent better!”
Doctor Medas nodded and smiled.
Jonathan Crane opened the door.
A pair of long, skinny green arms snatched at him from the dark hallway. Crane uttered an incredibly thin, frightened shriek. Then he was snatched right out of his overcoat, out of his jacket and trousers and socks and underwear and shoes; and the whole wardrobe fell shivering down in a lumpy, incongruously empty heap in Doctor Medas’ doorway.
CRY WOLF!
Originally published in Nekromantikon, Spring 1950.
You couldn’t live like this…and like it, you couldn’t—not if you lived a million years; which you would, of course, unless you happened to run afoul of silver.
Ernot Les Os shivered. He always shivered when he thought of living a million years, and that made him think of ending it all right now…and then he thought of silver! And thought of silver turned his shiver into a deep, intense shudder that shook him through and through like a gale shakes a willow.
Ernot had not lived long—not long like some of the Others. Not like Amphidias, for instance, who Others had said was at least five thousand years along, and perhaps closer to forty thousand!
Ernot had seen Amphidias only three times in his own hundred years. One moved about so, and even though there was a considerable number of the Others, their paths crossed not often. You lived ten years in one place, and your neighbors said, “Ernie, you don’t look a day older than you did when you moved in.” And then it was time to move.
Where Amphidias actually looked old—gnarled, seamed, whiskered, and gray—Ernot held his youth well. He looked maybe twenty-five. At least, he compared well with twenty-five-year-old men of his neighborhood and occupation. Although Ernot felt that age was bound to catch up with one by and by, he secretly believed that he could look so young forever, with proper precautions. He believed, too, that Amphidias could look as young as he, only Amphidias was a great iconoclast and believed in looking to suit himself.
Amphidias not only looked dingy; he lived in dingy fashion.
When you came right down to it, Amphidias was still as hale as any of the Others, and able to live a life of luxury. It was rumored he had a great deal put by—stocks, bonds, diamonds, money—all over the world. Well! In forty thousand years—or even in five thousand—one should accumulate a little. It disgusted Ernot only that Amphidias seemed never to spend any of it. Or so Ernot believed.
Poor Ernot! He was cursed, not with a lifetime of poverty, but with an eternity of it! His thoughts turned again to his misery. No, you could not bear this forever. There must be…
He heard a knock at his door and went slowly to answer it. Amphidias grinned at him from a bushel of moldy whiskers. He shuffled in.
“Your Uncle Kenneth told me where I’d find you,” he said affably.
Incredibly white, polished teeth shone briefly among his whiskers. He gathered the mud-gray flesh about his eyes into little crinkles, nimbly sidestepped Ernot, who sought to block his passage, and sat down in the only rocker Ernot’s cheap room afforded.
“Before I begin, Ernot—I am not poaching on your preserve.”
Ernot relaxed, but he felt sullen. He thought of all the wealth this old fool had tied up someplace; while he, Ernot, grubbed eternally for a living, like any common mortal, working with them, talking with them, even eating with them, Heaven knew, when he’d rather…
“What do you want?” he muttered.
Amphidias smiled and rocked gently.
“Don’t be impatient with an old man, Ernot. I am old, you know. I forget how old, but it’s old enough.” He blinked solemnly.
Ernot said, “What do you want?”
Amphidias laughed outright.
“How are you getting along, Ernot?”
Ernot glanced at him suspiciously. He propped up a pillow at the head of his sagging bed and leaned back upon the tattle-tale gray pillow-slip before answering.
“So-so. I can’t complain.”
Amphidias’ amused glance took in the mean surroundings. The dark, open doorway to his left, he surmised, led to a shabby little kitchen, dirty and roach-ridden.
“I’ll wager you do, though,” he opined gently. He pursed his lips and made a small humming noise.
…Not for a million years, Ernot thought. No, you couldn’t stand it for so long as that. If you had money, now…
“You obviously do not have much money,” Amphidias said, as if reading his thoughts, “but I trust you manage to keep—er—well fed?”
Ernot showed his teeth. It was a peculiar grimace, reminding one of a wolf yawning. Ernot affected it for the disgust it seemed to inspire in his contemporaries. Amphidias was not moved by it.
“You haven’t,” pressed Amphidias, “transgressed the Law?”
“So that’s why you’re here!” blurted Ernot. “Spy!”
Amphidias chuckled, deep in his throat.
“I am willing to assume that you avoid the Quick, as the Law prescribes. Your room,” he cast a slow glance around, “indicates as much. Though I have little doubt you have not been above hurrying a case or two along…”
Ernot relaxed, still sullen.
“I live.”
“You exist,” corrected Amphidias. His eyes narrowed to pinpoints and became glaring. He leaned forward in the rocker. “Ernot, I have come to change your fortune!”
Ernot sat straight, then settled slowly back with a smile of disbelief. “That puts us back where we started, Amphidias. What’s up?”
He thought of the old man’s money, his caches of wealth in all the bizarre places of the world. His little eyes sharpened and shone with greed.
“I need your help, Ernot.” Amphidias spoke quietly, forcefully.
Ernot had heard stories about Amphidias. The Others were not too respectful of Amphidias’ age. They said…the bare recollection what they said was enough for Ernot. He quivered with sudden terror. He slid to his knees on the threadbare carpet and bowed his back, almost touching the old one’s patched brogans with his brow.
“I hear and I obey, O Amphidias!”
The grizzled veteran chuckled. “You are lucky, Ernot. I am going to make you rich. You are only a hundred or so. I lived my first thousand years in caves, and after that I lived in a tree—in many trees.” He paused and bent an amused glance upon Ernot’s twitching back. He stood up, fumbled in a pocket of his wretched garments, dropped a thick, green bundle by Ernot’s left ear.
“Money, Ernot. It will seem like a lot to you, but there is more where that came from. I may be needing you quite a lot.”
Ernot stilled his breath in an effort to restrain the panic that clutched at his vitals.
“But not until after the Moon, Ernot,” Amphidias concluded softly. “I’ll not see you again before then. You will receive an invitation in the mail. Accept it.”
Ernot scarcely heard the soft opening and closing of the door, the shuffling steps of the old man, picking his way cautiously down the long stair. Ernot lay quaking and convulsed. The stories the Others had told him of Amphidias rushed pell-mell through his brain and roared in his ears with a cadence of ghastly horror. For Amphidias was different, They said. Amphidias preyed on his own kind!
At length Ernot drew a sobbing breath and quivered to his knees. He snatched up the money Amphidias had left and counted it. A thousand dollars. Ernot laughed recklessly, Well! Perhaps Amphidias was not so bad an old goat, after all!
* * * *
Ernot Le Os lay belly down on a bed of dry leaves. Brush concealed him well, but he could look down easily and watch the traffic on the turnpike road. It was not plentiful. That was one reason Ernot had chosen this location. Another was that it had been nearly a year since last he had hunted here.
The sun was low in the west, its yellow rays slanting almost into his eyes. The air was still and warm. Not even a bird sounded on the hillside. Far down the road, a motor car purred softly, roared into crescendo, then dwindled again as the machine passed and was gone, Ernot grinned, A sedan—not good, anyway.
He wormed back from his concealment, sniffed the air for the cool, damp smell of water. Bending almost double, he loped back athwart the flank of the hill, paralleling the road, and flopped on the moist bank of a creek. He drank.
Ernot could not see the sinking sun from his position, but he sensed its going down. He turned on his back and lazily let his gaze swim up and into the darkling blue, up where it was inter-flecked with lineaments and flufflets of crimson, lakes of nacreous mother-of-pearl and aquamarine opalescence.
This was the life! If only it were all like this. Eternity were short enough, indeed! He thought of his job as a clerk, the people he worked with, the place he lived in—he frowned. Then he thought of Amphidias and promised fortune. A chuckle of pure glee bubbled up from his chest and drowned the uneven murmur of the creek.
Dark shadows began to gather in the underbrush, Ernot set himself methodically to undress. Curse the buttons! He’d have an outfit with slide fasteners now!
When the great, round moon arose, rolling up ahead of itself the blanket of shadow laid down by the setting sun, ripples glittered golden on the cool, dark surface of the creek. A slim, gray shape came forth from the waters and shook itself in a golden shower of sparkling droplets, like a swarm of fireflies dancing a whirling tord-et-tourne before some nameless throne of glory.
Pointed, furry cars twitched forward. Ernot Les Os lifted a lupine muzzle to the gold-cascading summer moon and howled. The ecstasy of living! Ernot voiced his glad cry of joy in the night, and in the midst, it broke into a sobbing ululation of poignant grief and sorrow that quavered, fell, lifted, and died again; an ear-searing expression of the tortured joy of the werewolf kind. Far away, matched against it and defeated, was the low mumble of the city.
The werewolf prowled!
Along the turnpike he skulked, nose to earth, eyes gleaming. Anon, he paused, lifted his muzzle and savored the scent of hare, caught the sweet, heady lure of a cow in the field, then felt the bittersweet smell of Man, somewhere far away, one of the Quick, crossing the fields to his distant, lighted cottage. Hackles lifted upon the werewolf’s back, and he paced restlessly to and fro.
The night was young, many cars pass
ed. The wolf crouched in the ditch. His jaws began to slaver as hunger mounted in him, inhuman hunger. His mouth was dry and burning.
There had been no car for an hour when the wolf’s alert ears caught the hum of a distant motor. He peered eagerly through the moonlit dark. A sleek convertible raced by, a motor roared and tires sang. A man and a woman rode in it.
The girl looked back over the nested top.
“Bob—something’s following us—there in the road.”
The young man cast a quick glance into the mirror.
“Looks like a big dog, Bets. Man, can he run!”
The girl caught her breath with beginning panic.
“It—it’s gaining, Bob!”
The man laughed, pressed the accelerator, “He’ll have to go some to outrun this baby!”
The speeding shadow floated effortlessly from the road. Horny claws ripped into the nested top. The girl screamed…
* * * *
Ernot considered himself just about the nattiest looking character on the avenue. The greater part of a thousand dollars, judiciously spent, could effect an untold difference in a man’s—pardon me, a werewolf’s—appearance. And he had the long-coveted slide fasteners, artfully concealed in his clothing, but readily accessible. What a lot of bother they would save every Moon!
In spite of his glittering garb, Ernot was not particularly happy. The elder Amphidias hovered like a dark cloud upon his horizon. Whichever way his thoughts turned they managed to fall into a well-worn groove and return to the elder.
Thanks to Amphidias’ thousand dollars, Ernot had managed to secure more suitable quarters in a large apartment-hotel. Acting upon the implied promise of the elder’s parting words, Ernot had in addition quit his clerking job. He lolled now, at fitful ease, and wondered what the future—and Amphidias—held in store for him.
He had not long to wait. A missive by post (it was forwarded from his former address) informed him that Mr. Van Zant, a real estate agent in the city, desired his presence at his office in order to talk over a proposition of mutual interest.
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 22
