The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991)

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )

Simister decided he must get off at the next stop. But as he

  started to push past her, a fat woman beside him gave him

  such a strangely apathetic stare that Simister, whose mind

  was perhaps a little clouded by nausea, felt almost hypnotized by it, so that it was several seconds before he recalled and carried out his intention.

  Ridiculous, but the woman’s face stuck in his mind all day.

  In the evening he stopped at a hardware store. After supper

  his wife noticed him working in the front hall.

  “ Oh, you’re putting on a bolt,” she said.

  “ Well, you asked me to, didn’t you?”

  “ Yes, but I didn’t think you’d do it.”

  “ I decided I might as well.” He gave the screw a final

  turn and stepped back to survey the job. “ Anything to give

  you a feeling of security.”

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  Then he remembered the stuff he had been meaning to

  throw out that morning. The hall table was bare.

  “ What did you do with them?” he asked.

  “ What?”

  “ Those fool books.”

  “ Oh, those. I wrapped them up again and gave them to

  the postman.”

  “ Now why did you do that? There wasn’t any return address and I might have wanted to look at them.”

  “ But you said they weren’t addressed to us and you hate

  all that war stuff.”

  “ I know, but—” he said and then stopped, hopeless of

  making her understand why he particularly wanted to feel he

  had got rid of that package himself, and by throwing it in the

  trash can. For that matter, he didn’t quite understand his feelings himself. He began to poke around the hall.

  “ I did return the package,” his wife said sharply. “ I ’m

  not losing my memory.”

  “ Oh, all right!” he said and started for bed.

  That night no knocking awakened him, but rather a loud

  crashing and rending of wood along with a harsh metallic

  ping like a lock giving.

  In a moment he was out of bed, his sleep-sodden nerves

  jangling with anger. Those hoodlums! Rowdy pranks were

  perhaps one thing, deliberate destruction of property certainly another. He was halfway down the stairs before it occurred to him that the sound he had heard had a distinctly menacing aspect. Juvenile delinquents who broke down doors

  would hardly panic at the appearance of an unarmed householder.

  But just then he saw that the front door was intact.

  Considerably puzzled and apprehensive, he searched the

  first floor and even ventured into the basement, racking his

  brains as to just what could have caused such a noise. The

  water heater? Weight of the coal bursting a side of the bin?

  Those objects were intact. But perhaps the porch trellis giving way?

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  That last notion kept him peering out of the front window

  several moments. When he turned around there was someone

  behind him.

  “ I didn’t mean to startle you,” his wife said. “ What’s the

  matter, George?”

  “ I don’t know. I thought I heard a sound. Something being

  smashed.”

  He expected that would send her into one of her burglar

  panics, but instead she kept looking at him.

  “ Don’t stand there all night,” he said. “ Come on to bed.”

  “ George, is something worrying you? Something you

  haven’t told me about?”

  “ Of course not. Come on.”

  Next morning Holstrom was on the platform when Simister

  got there and they exchanged guesses as to whether the dark

  rainclouds would burst before they got downtown. Simister

  noticed the man in the oversize coat loitering about, but he

  paid no attention to him.

  Since it was a bank holiday there were empty seats in the

  smoker and he and Holstrom secured one. As usual the latter

  had his newspaper. Simister waited for him to start his ideological sniping—a little uneasily for once; usually he was secure in his prejudices, but this morning he felt strangely

  vulnerable.

  It came. Holstrom shook his head. “ That’s a bad business

  in Czechoslovakia. Maybe we were a little too hard on the

  Nazis.”

  To his surprise Simister found himself replying with both

  nervous hypocrisy and uncharacteristic vehemence. “ Don’t

  be ridiculous! Those rats deserved a lot worse than they got!”

  As Holstrom turned toward him saying, “ Oh, so you’ve

  changed your mind about the Nazis,” Simister thought he

  heard someone just behind him say at the same time in a low,

  distinct, pitiless voice: “ I heard you.”

  He glanced around quickly. Leaning forward a little, but

  with his face turned sharply away as if he had just become

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  interested in something passing the window, was the man in

  the oversize coat.

  “ What’s wrong?” Holstrom asked.

  “ What do you mean?”

  “ You’ve turned pale. You look sick.”

  “ I don’t feel that way.”

  “ Sure? You know, at our age we’ve got Co begin to watch

  out. Didn’t you once tell me something about your heart?”

  Simister managed to laugh that off, but when they parted

  just outside the train he was conscious that Holstrom was still

  eying him rather closely.

  As he slowly walked through the terminus his face began

  to assume an abstracted look. In fact he was lost in thought

  to such a degree that when he approached the iron fence, he

  started to pass it on the left. Luckily the crowd was thin and

  he was able to cut across to the right without difficulty. The

  blond young guard looked at him closely—perhaps he remembered yesterday morning.

  Simister had told himself that he wouldn’t again under any

  circumstances take the bus, but when he got outside it was

  raining torrents. After a moment’s hesitation he climbed

  aboard. It seemed even more crowded than yesterday, if that

  were possible, with more of the same miserable people, and

  the damp air made the exhaust odor particularly offensive.

  The abstracted look clung to his face all day long. His

  secretary noticed, but did not comment. His wife did, however, when she found him poking around in the hall after supper.

  “ Are you still looking for that package, George?” Her

  tone was flat.

  “ Of course not,” he said quickly, shutting the table drawer

  he’d opened.

  She waited. “ Are you sure you didn’t order those books?”

  “ What gave you that idea?” he demanded. “ You know I

  didn’t .”

  “ I ’m glad,” she said. “ I looked through them. There were

  pictures. They were nasty.”

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  “ You think I ’m the sort of person who’d buy books for the

  sake of nasty pictures?”

  “ Of course not, dear, but I thought you might have seen

  them and they were what had depressed you.”

  “ Have I been depressed?”

  “ Yes. Your heart hasn’t been bothering you, has it?”

  “ No.”

  “ Well, what is it then?”

  “ I
don’t know.” Then with considerable effort he said,

  “ I ’ve been thinking about war and things.”

  “ War! No wonder you’re depressed. You shouldn’t think

  about things you don’t like, especially when they aren’t happening. What started you?”

  “ Oh, Holstrom keeps talking to me on the train.”

  “ Well, don’t listen to him .”

  “ I won’t .”

  “ Well, cheer up then.”

  “ I will.”

  “ And don’t let anyone make you look at morbid pictures.

  There was one of some people who had been gassed in a

  motor van and then laid out—”

  “ Please, Joan! Is it any better to tell me about them than

  to have me look at them?”

  “ Of course not, dear. That was silly of me. But do cheer

  up.”

  “ Yes.”

  The puzzled, uneasy look was still in her eyes as she

  watched him go down the front walk next morning. It was

  foolish, but she had the feeling that his gray suit was really

  black—and he had whimpered in his sleep. With a shiver at

  her fancy she stepped inside.

  That morning George Simister created a minor disturbance

  in the smoker, it was remembered afterwards, though Holstrom did not witness the beginning of it. It seems that Simister had run to catch the express and had almost missed it, due to a collision with a small man in a large overcoat. Someone recalled that trifling prelude because of the amusing cir­

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  cumstance that the small man, although he had been thrown

  to his knees and the collision was chiefly Simister’s fault, was

  still anxiously begging Simister’s pardon after the latter had

  dashed on.

  Simister just managed to squeeze through the closing door

  while taking a quick squint at the sign. It was then that his

  queer behavior started. He instantly turned around and unsuccessfully tried to force his way out again, even inserting his hands in the crevice between the door frame and the

  rubber edge of the sliding door and yanking violently.

  Apparently as soon as he noticed the train was in motion,

  he turned away from the door, his face pale and set, and

  roughly pushed his way into the interior of the car.

  There he made a beeline for the little box in the wall containing the identifying signs of the train and the miniature window which showed in reverse the one now in use, which

  read simply EXPRESS. He stared at it as if he couldn’t believe his eyes and then started to turn the crank, exposing in turn all the other white signs on the roll of black cloth. He

  scanned each one intently, oblivious to the puzzled or outraged looks of those around him.

  He had been through all the signs once and was starting

  through them again before the conductor noticed what was happening and came hurrying. Ignoring his expostulations, Simister asked him loudly if this was really, the express. Upon receiving a curt affirmative, Simister went on to assert that he

  had in the moment of squeezing aboard glimpsed another sign

  in the window—and he mentioned a strange name. He seemed

  both very positive and very agitated about it, the conductor said.

  The latter asked Simister to spell the name. Simister haltingly

  complied: “ B . . . E . . . L . . . S . . . E . . . N . . . ” The

  conductor shook his head, then his eyes widened and he demanded, ‘‘Say, are you trying to kid me? That was one of those Nazi death camps.” Simister slunk toward the other end

  of the car.

  It was there that Holstrom saw him, looking ‘‘as if he’d

  just got a terrible shock.” Holstrom was alarmed—and as it

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  happened felt a special private guilt—but could hardly get a

  word out of him, though he made several attempts to start a

  conversation, choosing uncharacteristically neutral topics.

  Once, he remembered, Simister looked up and said, “ Do

  you suppose there are some things a man simply can’t escape,

  no matter how quietly he lives or how carefully he plans?”

  But his face immediately showed he had realized there was

  at least one very obvious answer to this question, and Hol-

  strom didn’t know what to say. Another time he suddenly

  remarked, “ I wish we were like the British and didn’t have

  standing in buses,” but he subsided as quickly. As they

  neared the downtown terminus Simister seemed to brace up

  a little, but Holstrom was still worried about him to such a

  degree that he went out of his way to follow him through the

  terminus. “ I was afraid something would happen to him, I

  don’t know what,” Holstrom said. “ I would have stayed right

  beside him except he seemed to resent my presence.”

  Holstrom’s private guilt, which intensified his anxiety and

  doubtless accounted for his feeling that Simister resented him,

  was due to the fact that ten days ago, cumulatively irritated

  by Simister’s smug prejudices and blinkered narrowmindedness, he had anonymously mailed him three books recounting with uncompromising realism and documentation

  some of the least pleasant aspects of the Nazi tyranny. Now

  he couldn’t but feel they might have helped to shake Simister

  up in a way he hadn’t intended, and he was ashamedly glad

  that he had been in such a condition when he sent the package

  that it had been addressed in a drunken scrawl. He never

  discussed this matter afterwards, except occasionally to make

  strangely feelingful remarks about ‘ ‘what little things can unseat a spring in a man’s clockworks!”

  So, continuing Holstrom’s story, he followed Simister at a

  distance as the latter dejectedly shuffled across the busy terminus. “ Terminus?” Holstrom once interrupted his story to remark. “ He’s a god of endings, isn’t he?—and of human

  rights. Does that mean anything?”

  When Simister was nearing an iron fence a puzzling epi­

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  sode occurred. He was about to pass it to the right, when

  someone just ahead of him lurched or stumbled. Simister

  almost fell himself, veering toward the fence. A nearby guard

  reached out and in steadying him pulled him around the fence

  to the left.

  Then, Holstrom maintains, Simister turned for a moment

  and Holstrom caught a glimpse of his face. There must have

  been something peculiarly frightening about that backward

  look, something perhaps that Holstrom cannot adequately describe, for he instantly forgot any idea of surveillance at a distance and made every effort to catch up.

  But the crowd from another commuters’ express enveloped

  Holstrom. When he got outside the terminus it was some

  moments before he spotted Simister in the midst of a group

  jamming their way aboard an already crowded bus across the

  street. This perplexed Holstrom, for he knew Simister didn’t

  have to take the bus and he recalled his recent complaint.

  Heavy traffic kept Holstrbm from crossing. He says he

  shouted, but Simister did not seem to hear him. He got the

  impression that Simister was making feeble efforts to get out

  of the crowd that was forcing him onto the bus, but, “ They

  were all jammed together like cattle. ’ ’

  The best testimony to Holstrom’s anxi
ety about Simister is

  that as soon as the traffic thinned a trifle he darted across the

  street, skipping between the cars. But by then the bus had

  started. He was in time only for a whiff of particularly obnoxious exhaust fumes.

  As soon as he got to his office he phoned Simister. He got

  Simister’s secretary and what she had to say relieved his worries, which is ironic in view of what happened a little later.

  What happened a little later is best described by the same

  girl. She said, “ I never saw him come in looking so cheerful,

  the old grouch—excuse me. But anyway he came in all smiles,

  like he’d just got some bad news about somebody else, and

  right away he started to talk and kid with everyone, so that

  it was awfully funny when that man called up worried about

  him. I guess maybe, now I think back, he did seem a bit

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  shaken underneath, like a person who’s just had a narrow

  squeak and is very thankful to be alive.

  “ Well, he kept it up all morning. Then just as he was

  throwing his head back to laugh at one of his own jokes, he

  grabbed his chest, let out an awful scream, doubled up and

  fell on the floor. Afterwards I couldn’t believe he was dead,

  because his lips stayed so red and there were bright spots of

  color on his cheeks, like rouge. Of course it was his heart,

  though you can’t believe what a scare that stupid first doctor

  gave us when he came in and looked at him.”

  Of course, as she said, it must have been Simister’s heart,

  one way or the other. And it is undeniable that the doctor in

  question was an ancient, possibly incompetent dispenser of

  penicillin, morphine and snap diagnoses swifter than Charcot’s. They only called him because his office was in the same building. When Simister’s own doctor arrived and pronounced it heart failure, which was what they’d thought all along, everyone was much relieved and inclined to be severely critical of the first doctor for having said something that sent them all scurrying to open the windows.

  For when the first doctor had come in, he had taken one

  look at Simister and rasped, “ Heart failure? Nonsense! Look

  at the color of his face. Cherry red. That man died of carbon

  monoxide poisoning.”

  Robert Bloch

  Yours Truly, J ack the Ripper