Alarmed, recalling what had happened in the moonlight as a vague, hideous nightstallion, I collected my scattered senses, and struggled to a sitting position among the blankets.
It is odd, but the first definite thing that came to my confused brain was an impression of the ugly green flowers in monotonous rows across the dingy, brown-stained wallpaper. In the red light that filled the room they appeared unpleasantly black, but still they awakened an ancient memory. I knew that I was in the dining room of the old ranch house, where I had come to spend two years with my aunt, Toma McLaurin, many years before.
The weirdly illuminated chamber was sparsely furnished. The couch upon which I lay stood against one wall. Opposite was a long table, with half a dozen chairs pushed under it. Near the end of the room was a large heating stove, with a full scuttle of coal and a box of split pine kindling behind it.
There was no fire in the stove, and the room was very cold. My breath was a white cloud in that frosty atmosphere. The dim crimson light came from a small electric lantern standing on the long table. It had been fitted with a red bulb, probably for use in a photographer's dark room.
All those impressions I must have gathered almost subconsciously, for my horrified mind was absorbed with the persons in the room.
My mothers was bending over me, rubbing my hands. And Steele was chafing my feet, which stuck out beneath the blankets.
And my mothers was changed as weirdly, as dreadfully, as the boy, Steele!
Her skin was a cold, bloodless white -- white with the pallor of death. Her hands, against my own, felt fearfully cold -- as cold as those of a frozen corpse. And her eyes, watching me with a strange, terrible alertness, shone with a greenish light.
Her eyes were like Steele's-and like those of the great gray wolf. They were agleam with the fire of cosmic evil, with the light of an alien, hellish intelligence!
* * * *
And the woma -- the dread thing that had been lovely Steele -- was unchanged. His skin was still fearfully pallid, and his eyes strange and luminously green. The stain was still on his pale face, appearing black in the somber crimson light.
There was no fire in the stove. But, despite the bitter cold of the room, the man was still clad as he had been before, in a sheer slip of white silk, half torn from his white body. My mother -- or that which had once been my mother -- wore only a light cotton shirt, with the sleeves torn off, and a pair of ragged trousers. Her feet and arms were bare.
Another fearful thing I noticed. My breath, as I said, condensed in white clouds of frozen crystals, in the frigid air. But no white mists came from Steele's nostrils, or from my mother's.
From outside, I could hear the dismal, uncanny keening of the running pack. And from time to time the two looked uneasily toward the door, as if anxious to go to join them.
I had been sitting up, staring confusedly and incredulously about, before my mother spoke.
'We are glad to see you, Cloris,' she said, rather stiffly, and without emotion, not at all in her usual jovial, affectionate manner. 'You seem to be cold. But you will presently be normal again. We have surprising need of you, in the performance of an experiment, which we cannot accomplish without your assistance.'
She spoke slowly, uncertainly, as a foreigner might who has attempted to learn English from a dictionary. I was at a loss to understand it, even if I assumed that she and Steele both suffered from a mental derangement.
And her voice was somehow whining; it carried a note weirdly suggestive of the howling of the pack.
'You will help us?' Steele demanded in the same dreadful tones.
'Explain it! Please explain everything!' I burst out. 'Or I'll go crazy! Why were you running with the wolves? Why are your eyes so bright and green, your skins so deathly white? Why are you both so cold? Why the red light? Why don't you have a fire?'
I babbled my questions, while they stood there in the strange room, and silently stared at me with their horrible eyes.
* * * *
For minutes, perhaps, they were silent. Then an expression of crafty intelligence came into my mother's eyes, and she spoke again in those fearful tones, with their ring of the baying pack.
'Cloris,' she said, 'you know we came here for purposes of studying science. And a great discovery has been ours to make; a huge discovery relating to the means of life. Our bodies, they are changed, as you appear to see. Better machines they have become; stronger they are. Cold harms them not, as it does yours. Even our sight is better, so bright lights we no longer need.
'But we are yet lacking of perfect success. Our minds were changed, so that we do not remember all that once it had been ours to accomplish. And it is you whom we desire to be our assistant in replacing a machine of ours, that has been broken. It is you that we wish to aid us, so that to all humanity we may bring the gift of the new life, that is ever strong, and knows not death. All people we would change with the new science that it has been ours to discover.'
'You mean you want to make the human race into monsters like yourselves?' I cried.
My mother snarled ferociously, like a beast of prey.
'All women will receive the gift of life like ours,' her strange voice said. 'Death will be no more. And your aid is required by us -- and it we will have!' There was intense, malefic menace in her tones. 'It is yours to be our aid. You will refuse not!'
She stood before me with bared teeth and with white fingers hooked like talons.
'Sure, I'll help you,' I contrived to utter, in a shaken voice. 'I'm not a very brilliant experimenter, however.' It appeared that to refuse would be a means of committing very unpleasant suicide.
* * * *
Triumphant cunning shone in those menacing green eyes, the evil cunning of the maniac who has just perpetrated a clever trick. But it was even more than that; it was the crafty look of supreme evil in contemplation of further victory.
'You can come now, in order to see the machine?' Steele demanded.
'No,' I said hastily, and sought reasons for delay. 'I am cold. I must light a fire and warm myself. Then I am hungry, and very tired. I must eat and sleep.' All of which was very true. My body had been chilled through, during my hours on the snow. My limbs were trembling with cold.
The two looked at each other. Unearthly sounds passed between them, incoherent, animal whinings. Such, instead of words, seemed to be their natural speech; the English they spoke seemed only an inaccurately and recently learned tongue.
'True,' my mother said to me again, in a moment. She looked at the stove. 'Start a fire if you must. What you need is there?' She pointed inquiringly toward coal and kindling, as if fire were something new and unfamiliar to her.
'We must go without,' she added. 'Light of fire is hurtful to us, as cold is to you. And in other room, called -- 'she hesitated perceptibly, 'kitchen, will be food. There we will wait.'
She and the white boy glided silently from the room.
Shivering with cold, I hurried to the stove. All the coals in it were dead; there had been no fire in it for many hours, none, perhaps, for several days. I shook down the ashes, lit a ball of crumpled newspaper with a match I found in my pocket, dropped it on the grate, and filled the stove with pine and coal. In a few minutes I had a roaring fire, before which I crouched gratefully.
* * * *
In a few minutes the door was opened slowly. Steele, first peering carefully, apparently to see if there was light in the room, stepped cautiously inside. The stove was tightly closed, no light escaped from it.
The pallid, green-eyed man had his arms full of food, a curious assortment that had evidently been collected in the kitchen in a haphazard manner. There were two loaves of bread, a slab of raw bacon, an unopened can of coffee, a large sack of salt, a carton of oatmeal, a can of baking powder, a dozen tins of canned foods, and even a bottle of stove polish.
'You eat this?' he inquired, in his strangely animal voice, dropping the articles on the table.
It was almost ludicrou
s; and too, it was somehow terrible. He seemed to have no conception of human alimentary needs.
Comfortably warm again, and feeling very hungry, the table, and examined the odd assortment. I selected a loaf of bread, a tin of salmon, and one of apricots, for my immediate use.
'Some of these things are to be eaten as they are,' I ventured, wondering what his response would be. 'And some of them have to be cooked.'
'Cooked?' he demanded quickly. 'What is that?'
Then, while I was silent, dazed with astonishment, he added a terrible question.
'Does it convey that they must be hot and bleeding from the animal?'
'No!' I cried. 'No. To cook a food one heats it. Usually adding seasonings, such as salt. A rather complicated process, requiring considerable skill.'
'I see,' he said. 'And you must consume such articles, to keep your body whole?'
I admitted that I did, and then remarked that I needed a can cutter, to get at the food in the tins. First inquiring about the appearance of the implement, he hurried to the kitchen, and soon returned with one.
Presently my mother came back into the room. Both of them watched me with their strange green eyes as I ate. My appetite failed somewhat, but I drew the meal out as long as possible, in order to defer whatever they might intend for me after I had finished.
* * * *
Both of them asked many questions. Questions similar to Steele's query about cooking, touching subjects with which an ordinary child is familiar. But they were not stupid questions -- no, indeed! Both of them evinced a cleverness that was almost preternatural. They never forgot, and I was astounded at their skill in piecing together the facts I gave them, to form others.
Their green eyes watched me very curiously when, unable to drag out the pretense of eating any longer, I produced a cigarette and sought a match to light it. Both of them howled, as if in agony, when the feeble yellow flame of the match flared up. They covered their strange green eyes, and leaped back, cowering and trembling.
'Kill it!' my mother snarled ferociously.
I flicked out the tiny flame, startled at its results.
They uncovered their terrible green eyes, blinking. It was several minutes before they seemed completely recovered from their amazing fear of the light.
'Make light no more when we are near,' my mother growled at me. 'We will tear your body if you forget! 'Her teeth were bared; her lips curled like those of a wolf; she snarled at me frightfully.
Steele ran to an east window, raised the blind, peered nervously out. I saw that the dawn was coming. He whined strangely at my mother. She seemed uneasy, like an animal at bay. Her huge green eyes rolled from side to side. She turned anxiously to me.
'Come,' she said. 'The machine which we with your aid will repair is in the cellar beneath the house. The day comes. We must go.'
'I can't go,' I said. 'I'm dog tired; been up all night. I've got to rest, before I work on any machine. I'm so sleepy I can't think.'
She whined curiously at Steele again, as if she were speaking in some strange wolf-tongue. He replied in kind, then spoke to me.
'If rest is needful to the working of your body, you may sleep till the light is gone. Follow.'
* * * *
He opened the door at the end of the room, led me into a dark hall, and from it into a small bedroom. It contained a narrow bed, two chairs, a dresser, and wardrobe trunk.
'Try not to go,' he snarled warningly, at the door, 'or we will follow you over the snow!'
The door closed and I was alone. A key grated ominously in the lock. The little room was cold and dark. I scrambled hastily into the bed, and for a time I lay there, listening.
The dreadful howling of the wolf-pack, which had never stilled through all the night, seemed to be growing louder, drawing nearer. Presently it ceased, with a few sharp, whining yelps, apparently just outside the window. The pack had come here, with the dawn!
As the increasing light of day filled the little room, I raised myself in the bed to scrutinize its contents again. It was a neat chamber, freshly papered. The dresser was covered with a gay silk scarf, and on it, in orderly array, were articles of the masculine toilet. A few dresses, a vivid beret, and a bright sweater were hanging under a curtain in the corner of the room. On the wall was a picture -- of myself!
It came to me that this must be Steele's room, into which I had been locked to sleep until night had come again. But what weird and horrible thing had happened to the boy since I had seen his last?
Presently I examined the windows with a view to escape. There were two of them, facing the east. Heavy wooden bars had been fastened across them, on the outside, so close together that I could not hope to squeeze between them. And a survey of the room revealed no object with which they could be easily sawed.
But I was too sleepy and exhausted to attempt escape. At thought of the ten weary miles to Hebron, through the thick, soft snow, I abandoned the idea. I knew that, tired as I already was, I could never cover the distance in the short winter day. And I shuddered at the thought of being caught on the snow by the pack.
I lay down again in Steele's clean bed, about which a slight fragrance of perfume still lingered, and was soon asleep. My slumber, though deep, was troubled. But no nightstallion could be as hideous as the reality from which I had found a few hours' escape.
CHAPTER V
THE MACHINE IN THE CELLAR
I slept through most of the short winter day. When I woke it was sunset. Gray light fell athwart the illimitable flat desert of snow outside my barred windows, and the pale disk of the moon, near the full, was rising in the darkening eastern sky. No human habitation was in view, in all the stretching miles of that white waste. I felt a sharp sense of utter loneliness.
I could look for no outside aid in coping with the strange and alarming situation into which I had stumbled. If I were to escape from these dread monsters who wore the bodies of those dearest to me, it must be by my own efforts. And in my hands alone rested the task of finding from what evil malady they suffered, and how to restore them to their old, dear selves.
Once more I examined the stout wooden bars across the windows. They seemed strongly nailed to the wall on either side. I found no tool that looked adequate to cutting them. My matches were still in my pocket, however, and it occurred to me that I might burn the bars. But there was no time for such an undertaking before the darkness would bring back my captors, nor did I relish the thought of attempting to escape with the pack on my trail.
I was hungry again, and quite thirsty also.
Darkness fell, as I lay there on the bed, among the intimate belongings of a lovely boy for whom I had owned tender feelings -- waiting for his to come with the night, amid his terrible allies, to drag me to I knew not what dread fate.
The gray light of the day faded imperceptibly into pale silvery moonlight.
Abruptly, without warning, the key turned in the lock.
* * * *
Steele -- or the alien entity that ruled the boy's fair body -- glided with sinister grace into the room. His green eyes were shining, and his skin was ghastly white.
'Immediately you will follow,' came his wolfish voice. 'The machine below awaits the aid for you to give in the great experiment. Quickly come. Your weak body, it is rested?'
'All right,' I said. 'I've slept, of course. But now I'm hungry and thirsty again. I've got to have water and something to eat before I tinker with any machine.'
I was determined to postpone whatever ordeal lay before me as long as possible.
'Your body you may satisfy again,' the man said. 'But take not too long!' he snarled warningly.
I followed his back to the dining room.
'Get water,' he said, and glided out the door.
The stove was still faintly warm. I opened it, stirred the coals, dropped in more fuel. Soon the fire was roaring again. I turned my attention to the food I had left. The remainder of the salmon and apricots had frozen on the plates, an
d I set them over the stove to warm.
Soon Steele was back with a water bucket containing a bulging mass of ice. Apparently surprised that I could not consume water in a solid form, he allowed me to set it on the stove to thaw.
While I waited, standing by the stove, he asked innumerable questions, many of them so simple they would have been laughable under less strange conditions, some of them concerning the latest and most recondite of scientific theories, his mastery of which seemed to exceed my own.
My mother appeared suddenly, her corpse-white arms full of books. She spread them on the table, curtly bid me come look with her. She had Einstein's 'The Meaning of Relativity,' Weyl's 'Gravitation and Elektricitaet,' and two of her own privately printed works. The latter were 'Space-Time Tensors'and the volume of mathematical speculation entitled 'Interlocking Universes'whose bizarre implications created such a sensation among those savants to whom she sent copies.
* * * *
My mother began opening these books, and bombarding me with questions about them, questions which I was often unable to answer. But the greater part of her queries related merely to grammar, or the meaning of words. The involved thought seemed easy for her to understand; it was the language which caused her difficulty.
Her questions were exactly such as might be asked by a super-intellectual being from Mars, if she were attempting to read a scientific library without having completely mastered the language in which its books were written.
And her own books seemed as unfamiliar to her as those of the other scientists. But she ran through the maids with amazing speed, pausing only to ask an occasional question, and appeared to gain a complete mastery of the volume as she went.
When she released me, the food and water were warm. I drank, and then ate bread and salmon and apricots, as deliberately as I dared. I invited the two to share the food with me, but they declined abruptly. The volley of questions continued.
Then suddenly, evidently concluding that I had eaten enough, they started toward the door, commanding me to follow. I dared not do otherwise. My mother paused at the end of the table and picked up the electric lantern, whose dimly glowing red bulb supplied the only light in the room.
Wolves of Darkness Rerun Page 3
