Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02

by The School of Darkness (v1. 1)

  Again a pause, a study of the audience.

  “Yes,” said Shimada, “we Japanese are good at learning new things, new truths. We prosper in industry and commerce as we do in arts. But we do not forget the old truths, we do not leave them behind.”

  Now Shimada was in dead earnest. His spectacled eyes roamed here and there over the listeners.

  “I promised you that I would say something about Japanese beliefs, I promised you that when I spoke briefly at the first session of this meeting. Mankind is very old on this planet, was struggling hard to be mankind millions of years ago. In Japan, mankind was present and doing quite well indeed, about two hundred thousand years back, or earlier. Those first Japanese could make fire, had fine flint tools, had community life, and must have had a sense of the unseen world that was, though unseen, manifest. Somewhere far back—before written language, before surviving reports—the Japanese had a special religion of their own. What is called Shinto today.”

  He gazed around the auditorium again. “Do some of you know about Shinto?” he asked.

  Here and there, hands went up. Not many.

  “Then some of you have information,” said Shimada. “Let me speak briefly and simply to the others, something about Shinto. For one thing, as I have said, it is so old a religious philosophy that there can be no tracing of its beginnings. There are books of guidance—the Kojiki and the Nihongi—but those were recent, written no longer ago than the eighth century. Buddhism came to Japan as a comparatively new faith and grew strong, yet Shinto remained the official state religion until it was formally disestablished on December 15, 1945, at the end of that tragic war. Our emperor Hirohito renounced his traditional claim to descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu. But Shinto has survived. It helps its believers. It helps them here in Buford.”

  Again he let his words sink in.

  “For, yes, we have Shinto here in Buford,” he went on. “Shinto, that was bom in Japan, and was greatly significant in Japan before Buddhism came, hat in hand, to ask admittance. Shinto—Kaminomioomichi, it is described. Kami is sometimes translated in the West as the name of God. It may be better translated as power of good against evil, right against wrong, if we can be wise enough to tell the difference between right and wrong,”

  He spread his slim, tea-colored hands, as though in appeal. “I am well aware that I am no true authority on Shinto. I am not a holy man, only an educator, to some extent a scholar and an educator. You have had holy men on this platform before me. Reuben Manco is a medicine man of his impressive Cherokee faith. Father Mark Bundren is a Catholic priest, of the scholarly Jesuitical order. I say again that my Shintoism is nowhere complete, but there is a scholar here in Buford, profound in its teachings and a partaker in its powers, whose help is great. Never mind his name. As things are here, he’s better unknown than known.”

  All these things Shimada had said with the utmost calm and clarity, as though he were lecturing a class. But the whole audience listened attentively. Thunstone spared a glance toward where Grizel Fian sat. She leaned forward in her seat, raptly intent on what Shimada had said. He went on:

  “Here, then, is the fundamental belief of Shinto, and it proves the ancient basis of Shinto: There is life in all things, and not only life, but sense, awareness. I know the fashionable arguments that plants live and feel, and why did we need to be told that? We see that trees and flowers and grasses are living things. There are those who say that we should talk to plants—but Shintoists have talked to plants for many thousands of years. And not only to plants, but to stones, rivers, ponds, houses, all things. Shinto says that this auditorium has life and sense, not only the whole structure but each separate stone and brick in it. If one is strong enough, schooled enough, in Shinto, he can speak to this whole world and every living thing in it—whether animal, vegetable or mineral—and hear every living thing as it replies.”

  Again he gestured his appeal. “Is that not good to have, such a voice to speak to all things and such an ear to hear the answers? I say that it can be achieved, that it is here in your city and on your campus, and you can believe or disbelieve. I say that this ear, this voice, operate here, and just now, in the service of Shinto which is good, it reveals things which are evil.”

  A murmur at that. Thunstone, glancing around, saw the huge, bearded man who had played Hume at the Playmakers Theater, had been at the ceremony in Grizel Fian’s basement, had pursued him in the cemetery. He leaned powerfully forward, his heavy muscles bunching inside his denim jacket. He seemed almost ready to rise, to say something. Shimada saw his motion, recognized him, and smiled as though in recognition.

  “I want to tell some diverting stories,” he said. He told the stories. They dealt with various men and women, whose Japanese names were hard to understand, and their supernatural difficulties. Into one story came a malignant fox, into another a friendly badger. Evil forces lurked in the stories, and were detected and defeated by experts in Shinto.

  “You think these things are fables?” asked Shimada. “I venture to assure you of the contrary. They are matter-of- fact records, well authenticated and known to students. But what is all this to the point, ladies and gentlemen? My duty is to speak of conditions here and now. Here and now in Buford. The apostles of hate and destruction are here among us. Shinto reveals them. Shall I name names? Then suppose I begin with a name well known in this community, the name of—”

  He paused. Then: “The name of Grizel Fian!” he fairly shouted into the microphone.

  A stir, a bustle among the listeners. “No!” cried someone.

  “Yes,” insisted Shimada, more quietly but forcefully for all that. “Grizel Fian, whose selections from Shakespeare we witnessed on the campus last night. Who leads a following of deluded disciples to do whatever perverted evil comes into their heads. Who means to use this university to promote her gospel of anarchic evil.”

  “That’s a he!” roared out the big man,

  “A truth,” came back Shimada, “John Keats once said that beauty is truth, truth beauty. But truth can be ugly things, and I am telling you one of them, I am afflicted to have to accuse a woman, but with Grizel Fian this is necessary. She represents a night side of infamies that has afflicted you since this school’s beginning, and I mean to make my charge clear.”

  Somebody sprang up in a section of the audience away from where Thunstone and the others sat. It was red-clad Grizel Fian. Her dress fluttered as she fairly ran up the aisle and toward the door and out. She was like a scarlet bird in flight.

  “Sayonara, ” called Shimada after her. “Goodbye.”

  The giant man was up and out of his seat and into the aisle. He loomed there. “Look here, you,” he blustered at the top of his voice. “You’re no gentleman to talk like that to Grizel. You’D be sorry about this.”

  “I am already sorry that I had to speak to her so,” Shimada said back. “But you Occidentals have a proverb— Needs must when the Devil drives—and the DevD is out here in Buford, whip in hand.”

  “I’D make you shut up!”

  “Wifl you indeed?” Shimada said silkfly. “How wifl you go about that? Would you like to come up on the platform with me, or shaU I come down there to you? Remember how you tried it last night, and how it turned out. These people might be amused to watch you and me fight for, say, thirty seconds. It should not take me longer than that.”

  “My name is—”

  “I don’t care to hear your name,” said Shimada.

  The big man turned and fled up the aisle, as hurriedly as had Grizel Fian. Shimada watched him go, took off* his spectacles and wiped them carefully on his handkerchief, and put them on again. He returned to the microphone.

  “My apologies,” he said, his voice gentler than ever. “My apologies for this interruption. I am deeply hurt that those two wanted to leave, but the rest of you are still here. Unless others want to go also, want to be where they will not hear the rest of what I have come to say to you.”

  There was
a stir in the audience, but nobody else got up and went away.

  “Then let me continue,” said Shimada. “Let me go on with what some of us have been at pains to find out here.” He bowed briefly above the microphone. “About the evil that has been here, grown here, since the founding of this school.”

  They listened. All of them listened.

  “In the beginning, devils were worshiped here. When Buford got money to found its college those long years ago, there was also money to prosper the cult of evil, prosper it to this day. Grizel Fian has been its latest leader, its queen. She has had a considerable ally by the name of Rowley Thome. Do you know that name?”

  He waited. Everyone sat still. Nobody spoke or gestured.

  “I am certain that some of you do know Rowley Thome. If so, you know he has suffered defeat here. He suffered it twice last night. I have witnessed those defeats. Rowley Thome, ladies and gentlemen, is a renowned sorcerer and evildoer, but just now he is a loser. And we who have defeated him are winners and are strengthened by winning. He and his companions are weakened by losing.”

  They sat and listened. Thunstone could see the red-haired girl he knew. Perhaps she was staying to make report to her comrades.

  “Reduced to its simplest terms, the conflict is understandable,” said Shimada. “It is between good and evil, if you know what is good and what is evil. Decide on that for yourselves.”

  He walked clear away from the lectern and the microphone. He held out his hands.

  “It is between love and hate!” he cried, so loudly, that his unamplified voice rang through the auditorium. “Which of those will win? Wait until tonight. I think all this will be decided. Decided definitely.”

  He bowed low- He raised his hands before him. Still bowing low, he moved backward, across the stage, into the wings and out of sight.

  And silence- It was an oppressive silence. Nobody applauded. Nobody moved.

  Lee Pitt appeared and came to the microphone.

  “Tonight, at eight o’clock, we will hear from John Thunstone,” he said, and no more.

  People rose, moved along the aisles. They chattered, as usual, but it was subdued chatter. Thunstone and Sharon and their companions walked out in a group. Shimada came to join them. The light and the air outside were like a release.

  Someone confronted them on the sidewalk in front. It was the red-haired girl who had been at the theater, who had been at the witch ceremony in Grizel Fian’s basement. Her hair was disordered, her face was pale. Makeup stood out on it, grotesque patches of makeup.

  “Did you have to do what you did?” she burst out at Shimada. “Did you have to say those things about Grizel?”

  “Indeed, I felt that I had to,” said Shimada courteously. “Did I not tell the truth?”

  “You’ll pay for this!”

  “I shall pay whatever is honestly due, whenever you present your bill.”

  She shifted her angry gaze to Sharon. “And as for you—”

  “Won’t you please go?” Thunstone interrupted.

  The girl turned and hurried off across the campus. They watched her go, then went on, crossed to the Inn, and entered the lobby. They found a group of chairs and a sofa, where they all sat down together.

  “Ahi, ” intoned Manco. “I’d say it’s working, that they’re coming out into the open, to be seen and faced.”

  “And they do not know what to do,” added Shimada.

  “They are afraid. Maybe fear will help them. It’s supposed to stimulate the thyroid, suprarenal and pituitary glands.” “But do we know what to do?” asked Thunstone, and all of them looked at him fixedly.

  “We’ll cue ourselves by what you yourself do,” said Father Bundren. “When you speak tonight. That will be after dark, and I judge that they’ll have to make their decisive move, then and there. What are you going to say to the people, to back up what Professor Shimada began?” Thunstone shook his massive head. “I had some notes, but as of just now they’re no good anymore. I’m afraid I’ll be up there ad-libbing, playing it by ear.”

  “Ahi, good,” said Manco. “Your words will be strong, the words of a chief.”

  “I hope so,” said Thunstone. “It strikes me that I’m the one who has talked with these devil people more than any of you. They’ve tried to frighten me, they’ve tried to cajole me. But their talk is empty. Banal.”

  “Cliches,” supplied Father Bundren. “Is that it?” “That’s it exactly,” said Thunstone. “They say things out of their teachings, words that have been chewed over already. They’re like people mouthing crazy religious or political jargon. It’s—well, it’s colorless. I can’t think of any other word for it.”

  “But what you are going to say will force these devil followers,” said Manco. “And we others, we will be there with you, to back you up.”

  “Yes,” said Shimada. “I say, it is for us all to be on stage but out of sight in the wings, ready.”

  “Good,” said Manco again, and, “Good,” Father Bundren echoed him.

  Shimada was frowning slightly. “I could wish for my young friend Oishi,” he said. “He can see and hear into these matters so much better than I do. I wish he were here.”

  “Your wish comes true,” said Manco, looking toward the outer door. “Here he comes, just as you say his name.” They all looked. Oishi Kyoki ran across the floor toward them. Shimada rose to meet him. Kyoki spoke, a rattling flood of Japanese, Shimada stared,

  “He tells us that Exum Layton, poor Exum Layton, has died suddenly,” Shimada said.

  XIII

  They were all on their feet at once, even Sharon. Kyoki stood among them, trembling. His eyes stared. His face that had been brown looked gray, bloodless.

  “Tell us how it happened,” Shimada said to him. “Speak English.”

  “It just happened,” said Kyoki. “We had been together at my room. I was sensing some unusual things. He seemed to be all right then. Perhaps I did not pay attention, I was deep in seeing, in hearing. I had tried to see and hear Rowley Thorne—I had a sense of blood, a blood sacrifice—”

  “How did this poor man die?” broke in Shimada.

  “We looked at our watches. We thought that you had nearly finished speaking, and we left to come to you here, at the Inn. We walked together on the campus. We talked. Poor Exum, he seemed all right then. But as we came to the center of the campus, he made a moaning noise— Mmmmmm! And down he fell.”

  “Dead?”

  “Dead at once, I think. He fell and he lay. I knelt to touch him—he did not breathe. Others came to see, a call was made for the campus police. They got an ambulance, took him to the hospital. The ambulance men said that he had died.”

  “How?” said Sharon. “How did he die?”

  “Rowley Thome and Grizel Fian can kill at a distance,” said Thunstone. “Say certain words, point a certain way. They tried it on me last night, but it didn’t work.”

  Father Bundren bowed his head.

  “Exum Layton died in the hands of God,” he said. “I’d heard his confession, I had told him that his sins were forgiven. He had repented.”

  “You say they took him to the hospital,” said Thunstone. “We’d better go there. Where is it—the hospital?”

  “Not far.” Kyoki pointed somewhere. “Edge of the campus. Half a mile, maybe.”

  “Then let’s go,” said Thunstone. “You too, Sharon. Don’t ever get out of my sight.”

  “I have protection,” she half whispered. “My cross and the bell you gave me.”

  But she came. They went out and across the campus, Kyoki leading the way. They came to the University library, walked down steps beside it, crossed another street and a big parking lot. At the far side they mounted another flight of stairs, made of iron like a fire escape, and came out upon the hospital grounds. Kyoki still led the way swiftly. Sharon had almost to trot to keep up. He brought them to a pillared entrance where cars stopped and started again, where people came in and out, some in wheelchairs. Inside
the lobby was a long desk with businesslike young women sitting in a row behind. One of these heard their errand, frowned hesitatingly over it, then made a telephone call. They waited, and a plump man came into view and joined them.

  “I’m Dr. Harold Forrester,” he introduced himself. “A pathologist. What’s the problem here, and how can I help you?”

  Thunstone explained their wish for information as to Layton’s death. Dr. Forrester listened, nodding importantly.

  “Mr. Layton was pronounced dead on arrival,” he said. “No marks of violence on him. It seems to have been a sudden stoppage of the heart action, but we can’t be sure. We’re trying to locate any relatives or close friends.”

  “He had no relatives,” said Thunstone, “and I’d judge that we were his only true friends when he died. Lately he had severed relations with a group of others. We’d like to speak for arrangements.”

  Dr. Forrester squinted at him. “You’re quite sure about no relatives? Dr. Lee Pitt was his faculty adviser, and he says about the same thing.”

  “When it comes to that, I was his spiritual advisor,” said Father Bundren. “He told me that he had no relatives, none at all.”

  “Do you want to see him?” asked Forrester. “Come along with me.”

  He led them to a flight of stairs going down. Below were bleak halls, with doors to laboratories and storage rooms. Forrester opened a metal door and ushered them into a long slice of a chamber with pallid fluorescent lights. Its ceiling and one side wall were of blue-gray tile. The other side showed hatchlike doors of stainless steel. There was a closeness in the air, a hush. Forrester checked along the doors and opened one. He drew out a sort of great tray with a silent body upon it.