Uncollected Stories 2003

UNCOLLECTED

STORIES

STEPHEN KING

1

CONTENTS

1. Jhonathan and the Witches

3

2. People, Places and Things

5

3. In a Half-World of Terror

13

4.

The

Glass

Floor

28

5. Slade

36

6. The Blue Air Compressor

49

7. The Cat From Hell

57

8.

The

Crate

70

9. Squad D

97

10. The King Family & the Wicked Witch 104

11. The Night of the Tiger

111

12.

Before

the

Play

123

13. Man With a Belly

136

14.

Skybar

146

15.

The

Leprechaun

157

16. Keyholes

161

17.

For

the

Birds

163

18. The

Reploids

164

19. An Evening at God’s

176

2

JHONATHAN AND THE WITCHES

From First Words: Earliest Writing from Favorite Contemporary Authors (1993).

King wrote this in 1956 at the age of 9 for his Aunt Gert who used to pay him a quarter per story.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Jhonathan. He was smart, handsome, and very brave. But Jhonathan was a cobbler’s son. One day his father said, "Jhonathan, you must go and seek your fortune. You are old enough."

Jhonathan, being a smart boy, knew he better ask the king for work.

So he set out. On the way, he met a rabbit who was a fairy in disguise.

The scared thing was being pursued by hunters and jumped into Jhonathan’s arms. When the hunters came up Jhonathan pointed excitedly and shouts, "That way, that way!"

After the hunters had gone, the rabbit turned into a fairy and said,

"You have helped me. I will give you three wishes. What are they?"

But Jhonathan could not think of anything, so the fairy agreed to give him when he needed them. So Jhonathan kept walking until he made the kingdom without incident. So he went to the king and asked for work.

But, as luck would have it, the king was in a very bad mood that day. So he vented his mood on Jhonathan.

"Yes there is something you can do. On yonder Mountain there are three witches. If you can kill them, I will give you 5,000 crowns. If you cannot do it I will have your head! You have 20 days." With this he dismissed Jhonathan.

"Now what am I to do?" thought Jhonathan. “Well I shall try.”

Then he remembered the three wishes granted him and set out for the mountain.

Now Jhonathan was at the mountain and was just going to wish for a knife to kill the witch, when he heard a voice in his ear, "The first witch cannot be pierced. The second witch cannot be pierced or smothered.

The third cannot be pierced, smothered and is invisible.”

With this knowledge Jhonathan looked about and saw no one. Then he remembered the fairy, and smiled. He then went in search of the first witch. At last he found her. She was in a cave near the foot of the mountain, and was a mean looking hag. He remembered the fairy words, and before the witch could do anything but give him an ugly look, he wished she should be smothered. And Lo! It was done. Now he went higher in search of the second witch. There was a second cave 3

higher up. There he found the second witch. He was about to wish her smothered when he remembered she could not be smothered. And the before the witch could do anything but give him an ugly look, he had wished her crushed. And Lo! It was done Now he had only to kill the third witch and he would have the 5,000 crowns. But on the way up, he was plagued with thoughts of how?

Then he hit upon a wonderful plan. Then, he saw the last cave. He waited outside the entrance until he heard the witch’s footsteps. He then picked up a couple of big rocks and wishes. He then wished the witch a normal woman and Lo! She became visible and then Jhonathan struck her head with the rocks he had. Jhonathan collected his 5,000 crowns and he and his father lived happily ever after.

4

PEOPLE, PLACES AND THINGS

Self-published book of one-page stories that King co-authored with school friend Chris Chelsey at the age of 13 (Triad Publishing 1960). The complete contents read:

Foreword – Stephen King

‘The Hotel at the End of the Road’ – Stephen King*

‘Genius’

–

Chris Kelsey

‘Top Forty News, Weather, and Sports’ – Chris Chelsey

‘Bloody Child’ – Chris Chelsey

“I’ve Got to Get Away!’ – Stephen King**

‘The Dimension Warp’ – Stephen King (listed in contents, now lost)

‘The Thing at the Bottom of the Well’ – Stephen King

‘Reward’

–

Chris Chelsey

‘The Stranger’ – Stephen King

‘A Most Unusual Thing’ – Chris Chelsey

‘Gone’

–

Chris Chelsey

‘They’ve Come’ – Chris Chelsey

‘I’m Falling’ – Stephen King (listed in contents, now lost)

‘The Cursed Expedition’ – Stephen King

‘The Other Side of the Fog’ – Stephen King

‘Scared’

–

Chris Chelsey

‘Curiosity Kills the Cat’ – Chris Chelsey

‘Never Look Behind You’ – Stephen King and Chris Chelsey

*Published in the Market Guide for Young Writers (4th Edition), by Writer’s Digest Books, this story was printed exactly as it originally appeared. In 1986, the story was slated to be published in Flip magazine, but the student literary magazine ceased publication before the story made it to press. It was finally published in 1993.

**Published in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, No. 202, Spring ’94

under the title The Killer. The story was originally written from the main character’s point of view. In 1963, when he was 14, King rewrote the story in third person and submitted it to Spacemen magazine, a companion to Famous

Monsters, but it was rejected. It was finally published in Famous Monsters 31

years later.

5

THE HOTEL AT THE END OF THE ROAD

“Faster!” Tommy Riviera said. “Faster!”

“I’m hitting 85 now,” Kelso Black said.

“The cops are right behind us,” Riviera said. “Put it up to 90.” He leaned out the window. Behind the fleeing car was a police car, with siren wailing and red light flashing.

“I’m hitting the side road ahead,” Black grunted. He turned the wheel and the car turned into the winding road – spraying gravel.

The uniformed policeman scratched his head. “Where did they go?”.

His partner frowned. “I don’t know. They just – disappeared.”

“Look,” Black said. “Lights ahead.”

“It's a hotel,” Riviera said wonderingly. “Out on this wagon track, a hotel! If that don’t beat all! The police’ll never look for us there.”

Black, unheeding of the car's tires, stamped on the brake. Riviera reached into the back seat and got a black bag. They walked in.

The hotel looked just like a scene out of the early 1900s.

Riviera rang the bell impatiently. An old man shuffled out. “We want a room,” Black said.

The man stared at them silently.

“A room,” Black repeated.

The man turned around to go back into his office.

“Look, old man,” Tommy Riviera said. “I don’t take that from anybody.” He pulled out his thirty-eight. “Now you give us a room.”

The man looked ready to keep going, but at last he said: “Room five.

End of the hall.”

He gave them no register to sign, so they went up. The room was barren except for an iron double bed, a cracked mirror, and soiled wallpaper.

“Aah, what a crummy joint,” Black said in disgust. “I’ll bet there's enough cockroaches here to fill a five-gallon can.”

The next morning when Riviera woke up, he couldn’t get out of bed.

He couldn’t move a muscle. He was paralyzed. Just then the old man came into view. He had a needle which he put into Black’s arms.

“So you’re awake,” he said. “My, my, you two are the first additions to my museum in twenty-five years. But you’ll be well preserved. And you won’t die. “You’ll go with the rest of my collection of living museum. Nice specimens.”

Tommy Riviera couldn’t even express his horror.

6

I’VE GOT TO GET AWAY

“What am I doing here?” Suddenly I wondered. I was terribly frightened. I could remember nothing, but here I was, working in an atomic factory assembly line. All I knew was that I was Denny Phillips.

It was as if I had just awakened from a slumber. The place was guarded and the guards had guns. They looked like they meant business. There were others working and they looked like zombies. They looked like they were prisoners.

But it didn’t matter. I had to find out who I was what I was doing.

I had to get away!

I started across the floor. One of the guards yelled, “Get back there!”

I ran across the room, bowled over a guard and ran out the door. I heard gun blasts and knew they were shooting at me. But the driving thought persisted:

I’ve got to get away!

There was another set of guards blocking the other door. It looked like I was trapped, until I saw a boom swing down. I grabbed it and was pulled over three hundred feet to the next landing. But it was no good.

There was a guard there. He shot at me. I felt all weak and dizzy...I fell into a great dark pit...

One of the guards took off his hat and scratched his head.

“I dunno Joe, I just dunno. Progress is a great thing – but that x-238A Denny Phillips, name...they’re great robots...but they go haywire, now and then, and it seems like they was looking for something...almost human. Oh well.”

A truck drove away, and the sign on its side said: ACME ROBOT

REPAIR.

Two weeks later, Denny Phillips was back on the job – blank look in his eyes. But suddenly...

His eyes become clear and, the overwhelming thought comes to him: I’VE GOT TO GET AWAY!!

7

THE THING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL

Oglethorpe Crater was an ugly, mean little wretch. He dearly loved plaguing the dog and cat, pulling the wings from flies and watching worms squirm as he slowly pulled them apart. (This lost its fun when he heard worms feel no pain).

But his mother, fool as she was, was blind to his faults and sadistic traits. One day the cook threw open the door in near hysterics and Oglethorpe and Mommy came home from a movie.

“That awful little boy tied a rope across the cellar stairs so when I went down to get potatoes, I fell and almost killed myself!” she screamed.

“Don’t believe her! Don’t believe her! She hates me!” cried Oglethorpe, tears springing into his eyes. And poor little Oglethorpe began sobbing as if his little heart would break.

Mommy fired the cook and Oglethorpe, dear little Oglethorpe, went up to his room where he poked pins in his dog, Spotty. When mommy asked why Spotty was crying, Oglethorpe said he got some glass in his foot. He said he would pull it out. Mommy thought dear little Oglethorpe a good Samaritan.

Then one day, while Oglethorpe was in the field looking for more things to torture, he spied a deep, dark well. He called down, thinking he’d hear an echo.

“Hello!”

But a soft voice called up, “Hello, Oglethorpe”

Oglethorpe looked down, but he could see nothing. “Who are you”

Oglethorpe asked.

“Come on down,” said the voice, “And we’ll have jolly fun.”

So Oglethorpe went down.

The day passed and Oglethorpe didn’t come back. Mommy called the police and a manhunt was formed. For over a month they hunted for dear little Oglethorpe. Just when they were about to give up, they found Oglethorpe in a well, dead as a door-nail.

But how he must have died!

His arms were pulled out, like people pull flies’ wings. Pins had been stuck in his eyes and there were other tortures too horrible to mention.

As they covered his body (what was left of it), and trouped away, it actually seemed that they heard laughter coming from the bottom of the well.

8

THE STRANGER

Kelso Black laughed.

He laughed until his sides were splitting and the bottle of cheap whiskey he held clenched in his hands slopped on the floor.

Dumb cops! It had been so easy. And now he had fifty grand in his pockets. The guard was dead - but it was his fault! He got in the way.

With a laugh, Kelso Black raised the bottle to his lips. That was when he heard it. Footsteps on the stairs that led to the attic where he was holed up.

He drew his pistol. The door swung open.

The stranger wore a black coat and a hat pulled over his eyes.

“Hello, hello.” he said. “Kelso, I've been watching you. You please me immensely.” The stranger laughed and it sent a thrill of horror through him.

“Who are you?”

The man laughed again. “You know me. I know you. We made a pact about an hour ago, the moment you shot that guard.”

“Get out!” Black’s voice rose shrilly. “Get out! Get out!”

“It’s time for you to come, Kelso” the stranger said softly “After all –

we have a long way to go.”

The stranger took off his coat and hat. Kelso Black looked into that Face.

He screamed.

Kelso Black screamed and screamed and screamed.

But the stranger just laughed and in a moment, the room was silent.

And empty.

But it smelled strongly of brimstone.

9

THE CURSED EXPEDITION

“Well,” said Jimmy Keller, looking across to the gantry to where the rocket rested in the middle of the desert. A lonely wind blew across the desert, and Hugh Bullford said, “Yeah. It’s about time to leave for Venus. Why? Why do we want to go to Venus?”

“I don’t know,” Keller said. “I just don’t know.”

The rocket ship touched down on Venus. Bullford checked the air and said in amazed tones, “Why, it’s good old type Earth air! Perfectly breathable.”

They went out, and it was Keller’s turn for amazement. “Why, it’s just like spring on earth! Everything's lush and green and beautiful. Why...

it's Paradise!”

They ran out. The fruits were exotic and delicious, the temperature perfect. When night fell, they slept outside.

“I’m going to call it the Garden of Eden,” said Keller enthusiastically.

Bullford stared into the fire. “I don’t like this place, Jimmy. It feels all wrong. There’s something...evil about it.”

“You’re space happy.” Keller scoffed. "Sleep it off."

The next morning James Keller was dead.

There was a look of horror on his face that Bullford never hoped to see again.

After the burial, Bullford called Earth. He got no reply. The radio was dead. Bullford took it apart and put it together. There was nothing wrong with it, but the fact remained: it didn’t work.

Bullford’s worry doubled itself. He ran outside. The landscape was the same pleasant and happy. But Bullford could see the evil in it.

“You killed him!” he cried. “I know it!”

Suddenly the ground opened up and it slithered toward him. In near panic, he ran back to the ship. But not before he got a piece of soil.

He analyzed the soil and then panic took him. Venus was alive.

Suddenly the space ship tilted and went over. Bullford screamed. But the soil closed over it and almost seemed to lick its lips.

Then it reset itself, waiting for the next victim...

10

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FOG

As Pete Jacobs stepped out, the fog immediately swallowed up his house and he could see nothing but the white blanket all around him. It gave him the weird feeling of being the last man in the world.

Suddenly Pete felt dizzy. His stomach did a flip-flop. He felt like a person in a falling elevator. Then it passed and he walked on. The fog began to clear and Pete’s eyes opened wide with fright, awe and wonder.

He was in the middle of the city.

But the nearest city was forty miles away!

But what a city! Pete had never seen anything like it.

Graceful buildings with high spires seemed to reach to the sky. People walked along on moving conveyer belts.

The cornerstone on a skyscraper read April, 17, 2007. Pete had walked into the future. But how?

Suddenly Pete was frightened. Horribly, terribly, frightened.

He didn’t belong here. He couldn’t stay. He ran after the receding fog.

A policeman in a strange uniform called angrily. Strange cars that rode six inches or so off the ground narrowly missed hitting him. But Pete succeeded. He ran back into the fog and soon everything was blanked out.

Then the feeling came again. That weird feeling of falling then the fog began to clear.

It looked like home

Suddenly there was an earsplitting screech. He turned to see a huge prehistoric brontosaurus lumbering toward him. The desire to kill was in his small beady eyes.

Terrified, he ran into the fog again

The next time the fog closes in on you and you hear hurried footsteps running through the whiteness…call out.

That would be Pete Jacobs, trying to find his side of the Fog Help the poor guy.

11

NEVER LOOK BEHIND YOU

George Jacobs was closing his office, when an old woman felt free to walk right in. Hardly anyone walked through his door these days. The people hated him. For fifteen years he’d picked the people’s pockets clean of money. No one had ever been able to hook him on a charge.

But back to our little story. The old woman that came in had an ugly scar on her left cheek. Her clothes were mostly filthy rags and other crude material. Jacobs was counting his money.

“There! Fifty-thousand, nine hundred and seventy-three dollars and sixty-two cents.”

Jacobs always liked to be precise.

“Indeed a lot of money,” she spoke up. “Too bad you won’t be able to spend it.” Jacobs turned around.

“Why – who are you?” he asked in half surprise. “What right have you to spy on me?”

The woman didn’t answer. She held up her bony hand. There was a flash of fire on his throat – and a scream. Then, with a final gurgle, George Jacobs died.

“I wonder what – or who – could have killed him?” said a young man.

“I’m glad he’s gone,” said another. That one was lucky.

He didn’t look behind him.

12

IN A HALF-WORLD OF TERROR

King's first published story; he was 18 when this thriller appeared in a 1965

issue of Comics Review as ‘I Was a Teenage Graverobber’. It was published in

Stories of Suspense the following year under the present title.

Chapter One

It was like a nightmare. Like some unreal dream that you wake up from the next morning. Only this nightmare was happening. Ahead of me I could see Rankin's flashlight; a large yellow eye in the sultry summer darkness. I tripped over a gravestone and almost went sprawling.

Rankin whirled on me with a hissed oath.

"Do you want to wake up the caretaker, you fool?"

I muttered a reply and we crept forward. Finally, Rankin stopped and shone the flashlight's beam on a freshly chiseled gravestone.

On it, it read:

DANIEL WHEATHERBY

1899-1962

He has joined his beloved wife in a better land.

I felt a shovel thrust into my hands and suddenly I was sure that I couldn't go through with it. But I remembered the bursar shaking his head and saying, "I'm afraid we can't give you any more time, Dan.

You'll have to leave today. If I could help in any way, I would, believe me..."

I dug into the still soft earth and lifted it over my shoulder. Perhaps fifteen minutes later my shovel came in contact with wood. The two of us quickly excavated the hole until the coffin stood revealed under Rankin's flashlight. We jumped down and heaved the coffin up.

Numbed, I watched Rankin swing the spade at the locks and seals. After a few blows it gave and we lifted the lid. The body of Daniel Wheatherby looked up at us with glazed eyes. I felt horror gently wash over me. I had always thought that the eyes closed when one died.

"Don't just stand there," Rankin whispered, "it's almost four. We've got to get out of here!"

We wrapped the body in a sheet and lowered the coffin back into the earth. We shoveled rapidly and carefully replaced the sod. The dirt we had missed was scattered. By the time we picked up the white-sheeted 13

body, the first traces of dawn were beginning to lighten the sky in the east. We went through the hedge that skirted the cemetery and entered the woods that fronted it on the west. Rankin expertly picked his way through it for a quarter of a mile until we came to the car, parked where we had left it on an overgrown and unused wagon track that had once been a road. The body was put into the trunk. Shortly thereafter, we joined the stream of commuters hurrying for the 6.00 train. I looked at my hands as if I had never seen them before. The dirt under my fingernails had been piled up on top of a man's final resting place not twenty-four hours ago. It felt unclean.

Rankin's attention was directed entirely on his driving. I looked at him and realized that he didn't mind the repulsive act that we had just performed. To him it was just another job. We turned off the main road and began to climb the twisting, narrow dirt road. And then we came out into the open and I could see it, the huge rambling Victorian mansion that sat on the summit of the steep grade. Rankin drove around back and wordlessly up to the steep rock face of a bluff that rose another forty feet upward, slightly to the right of the house.

There was a hideous grinding noise and a portion of the hill large enough to carve an entrance for the car slid open. Rankin drove in and killed the engine. We were in a small, cube-like room that served as a hidden garage. Just then, a door at the far end slid open and a tall, rigid man approached us. Steffen Weinbaum's face was much like a skull; his eyes were deep-set and the skin was stretched so tautly over his cheekbones that his flesh was almost transparent.

"Where is it?" His voice was deep, ominous.

Wordlessly, Rankin got out and I followed his lead. Rankin opened the trunk and we pulled the sheet-swaddled figure out.

Weinbaum nodded slowly.

"Good, very good. Bring him into the lab."

Chapter Two

When I was thirteen, my parents were killed in an automobile crash. It left me an orphan and should have landed me in an orphan's home. But my father's will disclosed the fact that he had left me a substantial sum of money and I was self-reliant. The welfare people never came around and I was left in the somewhat bizarre role as the sole tenant of my own house at thirteen. I paid the mortgage out of the bank account and tried to stretch a dollar as far as possible. By the time I was eighteen and was out of school, the money was low, but I wanted to go to college. I sold the house for $10,000.00 through a real estate buyer. In early 14

September, the roof fell in. I received a very nice letter from Erwin, Erwin and Bradstreet, attorneys at law. To put it in layman's language, it said that the department store at which my father had been employed had just got around to a general audit of their books. It seemed that there was $15,000.00 missing and that they had proof that my father had stolen it. The rest of the letter merely stated that if I didn't pay up the $15,000.00 we'd go to court and they would try to get double the amount. It shook me up and a few questions that should have stood out in my mind just didn't register as a result. Why didn't they uncover the error earlier? Why were they offering to settle out of court? I went down to the office of Erwin, Erwin, & Bradstreet and talked the matter over.

To make a long story short, I paid the sum they were asking, I had no more money. The next day I looked up the firm of Erwin, Erwin & Bradstreet in the phone book. It wasn't listed. I went down to their office and found a For Rent sign on the door. It was then that I realized that I had been conned like gullible kid which, I reflected miserably, was what I was.

I bluffed my way through the first for months of college but finally they discovered that I hadn't been properly registered. That same day I met Rankin at a bar. It was my first experience in a tavern. I had a forged driver's license and I bought enough whiskey to get drunk. I figured that it would take about two straight whiskeys since I had never had anything but a bottle of beer now and then prior to that night. One felt good, two made my trouble seem rather inconsequential. I was nursing my third when Rankin entered the bar.

He sat on the stool next to me and looked attentively at me.

"You got troubles?" I asked rudely.

Rankin smiled. "Yes, I'm out to find a helper."

"Oh, yeah?" I asked, becoming interested. "You mean you want to hire somebody?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm your man."

He started to say something and then changed his mind.

"Let's go over to a booth and talk it over, shall we?"

We walked over to a booth and I realized that I was listing slightly.

Rankin pulled the curtain.

"That's better. Now, you want a job?"

I nodded.

"Do you care what it is?"

"No. Just how much does it pay?"

"Five hundred a job."

I lost a little bit of the rosy fog that encased me. Something was wrong here. I didn't like the way he used the word "job".

15

"Who do I have to kill?" I asked with a humorless smile.

"You don't. But before I can tell you what it is, you'll have to talk with Mister Weinbaum."

"Who's he?"

"A scientist."

More fog evaporated. I got up.

"Uh-uh. No making a human guinea pig out of yours truly. Get yourself another boy."

"Don't be silly," he said, "No harm will come to you."

Against my better judgement, I said, "Okay, let's go."

Chapter Three

Weinbaum approached the subject of my duties after a tour of the house, including the laboratory. He wore a white smock and there was something about him that made me crawl inside. He sat down in the living room and motioned me into a seat. Rankin had disappeared.

Weinbaum stared at me with fixed eyes and once again I felt a blast of icy coldness sweep over me.

"I'll put it to you bluntly," he said, "my experiments are too complicated to explain in any detail, but they concern human flesh.

Dead human flesh."

I was becoming intensely aware that his eyes burnt with flickering fires. He looked like a spider ready to engulf a fly, and this whole house was his web. The sun was striking fire to the west and deep pools of shadows were spreading across the room, hiding his face, but leaving the glittering eyes as they shifted in the creeping darkness. He was still speaking.

"Often, people bequeath their bodies to scientific institutes for study.

Unfortunately, I'm only one man, so I have to resort to other methods."

Horror leapt grinning from the shadows and across my mind there flitted the black picture of two men digging by the light of an uncertain moon. A shovel struck wood the noise chilled my soul.

I rose quickly.

"I think I can find my own way out, Mr. Weinbaum."

He laughed softly. "Did Rankin tell you how much this job pays?"

"I'm not interested."

"Too bad. I was hoping you could see it my way. It wouldn't take a year before you would make enough money to return to college."

I started, and got the uncanny feeling that this man was searching my soul.

"How much do you know about me? How did you find out?"

16

"I have my ways." He chuckled again. "Will you reconsider?"

I hesitated.

"Shall we put it on a trial basis?" he asked softly. "I'm quite sure that we can both reach a mutual satisfaction."

I got the eerie feeling that I was talking to the devil himself, that somehow I had been tricked into selling my soul.

"Be here at 8.00 sharp, the night after next," he said.

That was how it started.

As Rankin and I laid the sheeted body of Daniel Whetherby on the lab table, lights flashed on behind sheeted oblongs that looked like glass tanks.

"Weinbaum," I had dropped the title, Mister, without thinking, "I think – "

"Did you say something?" he asked, his eyes boring into mine. The laboratory seemed far away. There were only the two of us, sliding through a half-world peopled with horrors beyond the imagination.

Rankin entered in a white smock coat and broke the spell by saying,

"All ready, professor."

At the door, Rankin stopped me. "Friday, at eight."

A shudder, cold and terrible raced up my spine as I looked back.

Weinbaum had produced a scalpel and the body was unsheeted. They looked at me strangely and I hurried out.

I took the car and quickly drove down the narrow dirt road. I didn't look back. The air was fresh and warm with a promise of budding summer. The sky was blue with fluffy white clouds fleeting along in the warm summer breeze. The night before seemed like a nightmare, a vague dream, that, as all nightmares, is unreal and transparent when the bright light of day shines upon it. But as I drove past the wrought iron gates of the Crestwood Cemetery I realized that this was no dream. Four hours ago my shovel had removed the dirt that covered the grave of Daniel Wheatherby. For the first time a new thought occurred to me.

What was the body of Daniel Wheatherby being used for at that moment? I shoved the thought into a deep corner of my mind and let out onto the go-pedal. The car screamed ahead. I put my thoughts into driving, glad to put the terrible thing I had done out of my mind, for a short time, anyway.

Chapter Four

The California countryside blurred by as I tried for the maximum speed.

The tires sang on the curve and, as I came out of it, several things happened in rapid succession. I saw a panel truck crazily parked right on 17

the broken white line, a girl of about eighteen running right toward my car, an older man running after her. I slammed on the brakes and they exploded like bombs. I jockeyed the wheel and the California sky was suddenly under me. Then everything was right-side up and I realized that I had flipped right over and up. For a moment I was dazed, then a scream, shrill and high, piercing, slit my head. I opened the door and sprinted toward the road. The man had the girl and was yanking her toward the panel truck. He was stronger than her and winning, but she was taking an inch of skin for every foot he made.

He saw me.

"You stay out of this, buddy. I'm her legal guardian."

I halted and shook the cobwebs out of my brain. It was exactly what he had been waiting for. He let go with a haymaker that got me on the corner of the chin and knocked me sprawling. He grabbed the girl and practically threw her into the cab. By the time that I was on my feet he was around to the driver's side and peeling out. I took a flying leap and made the roof just as he took off. I was almost thrown off, but I clawed through about five layers of paint to stay on. Then I reached through the open window and got him by the neck. He cursed and grabbed my hand.

He yanked, the truck spun crazily off the ledge of a steep embankment.

The last thing I remember is the nose of the truck pointing straight down. Then my enemy saved my life by viciously yanking my arm. I tumbled off just as the truck plunged over the cliff. I landed hard, but the rock I landed on was harder. Everything slid away.

Something cool touched my brow as I came to. The first thing I saw was the flashing red light on top of the official looking car parked by the embankment. I sat bolt upright and soft hands pushed me down. Nice hands, the hands of the girl who had landed me into this mess. Then there was a Highway Patrolman over me and an official voice said, "The ambulance is coming. How do you feel?"

"Bruised," I said and sat up again. "But tell the ambulance to go away.

I'm all right."

I tried to sound flippant. The last thing I needed after last night’s ‘job’

was the police.

"How about telling me about it?" the policeman said, producing a notebook. Before I answered, I walked over to the embankment.

My stomach flipped over backwards. The panel truck was nose- deep in California dirt and my sparring partner was turning that good California soil into a reddish mud with his own blood. He lay grotesquely sprawled half in, half out of the cab. The photographers were getting their pictures. He was dead. I turned back. The patrolman looked at me as if he expected me to throw up, but, after my new job, my stomach was admirably strong.

18

"I was driving out of the Belwood district, "I said, "I came around that curve..."

I told the rest of the story with the girl's help. Just as I finished the ambulance came to a halt. Despite my protestations and those of my still-unnamed girl friend, we were hustled into the back. Two hours later we had a clean bill of health from the patrolman and the doctors and we were requested to be witnesses at the inquest set for the next week.

I saw my car at the curb. It was a little worse for wear, but the flats had been replaced. There was a witnessed bill on the dash for a wrecker, tires, and clean-up squad! It came to about $250.00 half of the last night's pay-check.

"You look preoccupied," the girl said.

I turned to her. "Um, yeah. Well, we almost got killed together this morning, how about telling me your name and having lunch together?"

"Okay," she said. "The name's Vicki Pickford. Yours?"

"Danny," I said unemotionally as we pulled away from the curb. I switched the subject rapidly. "What was going on this morning? Did I hear that guy say that he was your legal guardian?"

"Yes" she replied.

I laughed. "The name is Danny Gerad. You'll get that out of the afternoon papers."

She smiled gravely. "All right. He was my guardian. He was also a drunkard and an all-around crumb." Her cheeks flamed red. The smile was gone. "I hated him and I'm glad he's dead."

She gave me a sharp glance and for a moment I saw fear shine wetly in her eyes; then she recovered her self-control. We parked and ate lunch. Forty minutes later I paid the check out of my newly acquired cash and walked back out to the car.

"Where to?" I asked.

"Bonaventure Motel," she said. "That's where I'm staying."

She saw curiosity jump into my eyes and sighed, "All right, I was running away. My Uncle David caught up with me and tried to drag me back to the house. When I told him I wouldn't go, he dragged me out to the truck. We were going around that curve when I wrenched the wheel out of his hands. Then you came along."

She closed up like a clam and I didn't try to get any more out of her.

There was something wrong about her story. I didn't press her. I drove her into the parking lot and killed the engine.

"When can I see you again?" I asked. "A movie tomorrow?"

"Sure," she replied.

"I'll pick you up at 7.30," I said and drove out, thoughtfully pondering the events that had befallen me in the last twenty-four hours.

19

Chapter Five

When I entered the apartment the phone was ringing. I picked it up and Vicki, the accident and the bright workaday world of suburban California faded into the half-world of phantom-people shadows. The voice that whispered coldly out of the receiver was Weinbaum's.

"Troubles?" He spoke softly, but there was an ominous tone in his voice.

"I had an accident," I replied.

"I read about it in the paper..." Weinbaum's voice trailed off.

Silence hung between us for a moment and then I said, "Does this mean you're canning me?"

I hoped that he would say yes; I didn't have the guts to resign.

"No," he said softly, "I just wanted to make sure that you didn't reveal anything about the work you're doing for me."

"Well, I didn't," I told him curtly.

"The night after this," he reminded me, "At eight."

There was a click and then the dial tone. I shivered and hung up the receiver. I had the oddest feeling that I had just broken a connection with the grave.

The next morning at 7.30 sharp, I picked up Vicki at the Bonaventure Motel. She was all decked out in an outfit that made her look stunning. I made a low whistle; she flushed prettily. We didn't talk about the accident. The movie was good and we held hands part of the time, ate popcorn part of the time and kissed once or twice. All in all, a pleasant evening. The second feature was just drawing to the climax when an usher came down the aisle. He was stopping at every row and looked peeved. Finally, he stopped at ours. He swept the flashlight down the row and asked "Mr. Gerad? Daniel Gerad?"

"Yes?" I asked, feeling guilt and fear run through me.

"There's a gentleman on the phone, sir. He says it's a matter of life or death."

Vicki gave me a startled look and I followed the usher hurriedly. That let out the police. I mentally took stock of my only remaining relatives.

Aunt Polly, Grandma Phibbs and my great-uncle Charlie. They were all healthy as far as I knew. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I picked up the telephone and heard Rankin's voice.

He spoke rapidly and a raw note of fear was in his voice. "Get out here, right now! We need – "

There were sounds of a scuffle, a muffled scream, then a click and the empty dial tone.

I hung, up and hurried back for Vicki. "Come on," I said.

20

She followed without questioning me. At first I wanted to drive her back to the motel but the muffled scream made me decide that this was an emergency. I didn't like either Rankin or Weinbaum, but I knew I would have to help them.

We took off.

"What is it?" Vicki asked anxiously as I stamped on the go-pedal and let the car unwind.

"Look," I said, "something tells me that you've got your secrets about your guardian. I've got some of my own. Please, don't ask."

She didn't say another word.

I took possession of the passing lane. The speedometer climbed from seventy-five to eighty-five, kept rising and trembled on the verge of ninety. I pulled into the turnoff on two wheels and the car bounced, clung and exploded up the road. Grim and gaunt against the overcast sky, I could see the house. I pulled the car to a stop and was out in a second.

"Wait here," I cried over my shoulder to Vicki. There was a light on in the laboratory and I flung the door open. It was empty but ransacked.

The place was a mess of broken test tubes, smashed apparatus, and, yes, bloodstains that trailed through the half-open door that led to the darkened garage. Then I noticed the green liquid that was flowing over the floor in sticky rivulets. For the first time I noticed that one of the several sheeted tanks had been broken. I walked over to the other three.

The lights inside them were off and the sheets that draped them let by no hint of what might have been under them – or, for that matter, what was still under them. I had no time to see. I didn't like the looks of blood, still fresh and uncoagulated, that led out of the front door into the garage. I swung open the door and entered the garage. It was dark and I didn't know where the light switch was. I cursed myself for not bringing the flashlight that was in the glove compartment. I advanced a few steps and realized that there was a cold draft blowing against my face. I advanced toward it. The light from the lab threw a golden shaft of light along the garage floor, but it was next to nothing in the Stygian blackness of the garage. All my childish fears of the dark returned. Once again I entered the realms of terror that only a child can know. I realized that the shadow that leered at me from out of the dark might not be dispelled by bright light.

Suddenly, my right foot went down. I realized that the draft was coming from a stairway I had almost fallen down. For a moment I debated, then turned and hurried back through the lab and out to the car.

21

Chapter Six

Vicki pounced on me as soon as I opened the door. "Danny, what are you doing here?"

Her tone of voice made me look at her. In the sickly yellow glow of the light her face was terrified.

"I'm working here," I said shortly.

' At first I didn't realize where we were," she said softly. “I was only here once before.”

"You've been here?" I exclaimed. "When? Why?"

"One night," she said quietly "I brought Uncle David his lunch. He forgot it."

The name rang a bell. She saw me grasping for it. "My guardian," she said. "Perhaps I'd better tell you the whole story. Probably, you know that people don't get appointed guardians when they drink. Well, Uncle David didn't always do those things. When my mother and father were killed in a train-wreck four years ago, my Uncle David was the kindest person you could imagine. The court appointed him my guardian until I came of age, with my complete support."

For a moment she was quiet, living in memories and the expression that flitted rapidly through her eyes was not pretty. Then she went on.

"Two years ago the company he was working for as a night watchman folded up and my uncle was out of a job. He was out of work for almost half a year. We were getting desperate, with only unemployment checks to feed us and college looming up for me. Then he got a job. It was a good paying one and it brought in fabulous sums. I used to joke with him about the banks he robbed. One night he looked at me and said,

'Not banks.'"

I felt fear and guilt tap me on the shoulder with cold fingers. Vicki went on.

"He started to get mean. He started bringing home whiskey and getting drunk. The times I asked him about his job he evaded me. One night he told me point-blank to mind my own business.

"I watched him decay before my very eyes. Then one night he let a name slip – Weinbaum, Steffen Weinbaum. A couple of weeks later he forgot his midnight lunch. I looked up the name in the telephone book and took it out to him. He flew into the most terrible rage I have ever seen.

"In the weeks that followed he was away more and more at this terrible house. One night, when he came home he beat me. I decided to run away. To me, the Uncle David I knew was dead. He caught me –

and you came along." She fell silent.

22

I was shaken right down to my boots. I had a very good idea what Vicki's uncle did for a living. The time Rankin had signed me up coincided with the time Vicki's guardian would have been cracking up. I almost drove away then, despite the wild shambles the lab was in, despite the secret stairway, despite the blood trail on the floor. But then a faraway, thin scream reached us. I thumbed the glove compartment button, and reached in, fumbled around and got the flashlight.

Vicki's hand went to my arm "No, Danny. Please, don't. l know that there's something terrible going on here. Drive away from it!"

The scream sounded again, this time fainter, and I made up my mind. I grabbed the flashlight. Vicki saw my intention. "All right, I'm coming with you."

"Uh-uh," I said. "You stay here. I've got a feeling that there's something...loose out there. You stay here."

She unwillingly sat back. I shut the door and ran back to the lab. I didn't pause, but went back into the garage. The flashlight illuminated the dark hole where the wall had slid away to reveal the staircase. My blood pounding thickly in my temples, I ventured down into it. I counted the steps, shining the flashlight at the featureless walls, at the impenetrable darkness below.

"Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three – "

At thirty, the stairway suddenly became a short passage. I started cautiously along it, wishing that I had a revolver, or even a knife to make me feel a little less naked and vulnerable.

Suddenly a scream, terrible and thick with fear soon sounded in the darkness ahead of me. It was the sound of terror, the sound of a man confronted with something out of the deepest pits of horror. I broke into a run. As I ran I realized that the draft was blowing coldly against my face. I reasoned that the tunnel must come out in the outdoors. I stumbled over something. It was Rankin, lying in a pool of his own blood, his eyes staring in glazed horror at the ceiling. The back of his head was bashed in. Ahead of me I heard a pistol shot, a curse, and another scream. I ran on and almost fell on my face as I stumbled over more stairs. I climbed and saw stairs framed vaguely in an opening screened with underbrush above me. I pushed it aside and came upon a startling tableau: a tall figure silhouetted against the sky that could only be Weinbaum, a revolver hanging in his hand, looking down at the shadowed ground. Even the starlight was blotted out as the hanging clouds that had parted briefly, closed together again. He heard me and wheeled quickly, his eyes glazing like red lanterns in the dark.

"Oh, it’s you, Gerad."

"Rankin's dead," I told him.

23

"I know," he said, "you could have prevented it if you had come a little quicker."

"Now just hold on," I said, becoming angry. "I hurried "

I was cut off by a sound that has hounded me through nightmares ever since, a hideous mewing sound, like that of some gigantic rat in pain. I saw calculation, fear, and finally decision flicker across Weinbaum's face in a matter of seconds. I fell back in terror.

"What is it?" I choked.

He casually shone the light down into the pit, for all his affected casualness, I noticed that his eyes were averted by something. The thing mewed again and I felt another spasm of fear. I craned to see what horror lay in that pit, the horror that made even Weinbaum scream in abject terror. And just before I saw, a horrible wall of terror rose and fell from the vague outline of the house. Weinbaum jerked his flashlight from the pit and shone it in my face.

"Who was that? Whom did you bring up here?"

But I had my own flashlight trained as I ran through the passage way, Weinbaum close behind. I had recognized the scream. I had heard it before, when a frightened girl almost ran into my car as she fled her maniac of a guardian.

Vicki!

Chapter Seven

I heard Weinbaum gasp as we entered the lab. The place was swimming in the green, liquid. The other two cases were broken! I didn't pause, but ran past the shattered, empty cases and out the door. Weinbaum did not follow me. The car was empty, the door on the passengers side open. I shone my light over the ground. Here and there were footprints of a girl wearing high heels, a girl who had to be Vicki. The rest of the tracks were blotted out by a monstrous something I hesitate to call it a track. It was more as if something huge had dragged itself into the woods. Its hugeness was testified, too, as I noticed the broken saplings and crushed underbrush. I ran back into the lab where Weinbaum was sitting, face pale and drawn, regarding the three shattered empty tanks.

The revolver was on the table and I grabbed it and made for the door.

"Where do you think you're going with that?" he demanded, rising.

"Out to hunt for Vicki," I snarled. "And if she's hurt or – " I didn't finish.

I hurried out into the velvet darkness of the night. Gun in hand, flashlight in the other, I plunged into the woods, following the trail blazed by something that I didn't want to think about. The vital question 24

that burned in my mind was whether it had Vicki or was still trailing her. If it had her...

My question was answered by a piercing scream not too far away from me. Faster now, I ran and suddenly burst into a clearing. Perhaps it is because I want to forget, or perhaps it is only because the night was dark and beginning to become foggy, but I can only remember how Vicki caught sight of my flashlight, ran to me, buried her head against my shoulder and sobbed. A huge shadow moved toward me, mewing horribly, driving me almost mad with terror. Stumblingly, we fled from the horror in the dark, back toward the comforting lights of the lab, away from the unseen terror that lurked in the dark. My fear-crazed brain was putting two and two together and coming up with five. The three cases had contained three somethings from the darkest pits of a twisted mind. One had broken loose. Rankin and Weinbaum had been after it. It had killed Rankin, but Weinbaum had trapped it in the concealed pit. The second one was floundering in the woods now and I suddenly remembered that whatever-it-was, was huge and that it had a hard time lifting itself along. Then I realized that it had trapped Vicki in a gully. It had started down easy enough! But getting up? I was almost positive that it couldn't. Two were out of commission. But where was the third? My question was answered very suddenly but a scream from the lab.

And...mewing.

Chapter Eight

We ran up to the lab door and threw it open. It was empty. The screams and the terrible mewing sounds came from the garage. I ran through, and ever since have been glad that Vicki stayed in the lab and was spared the sight that had wakened me from a thousand awful nightmares. The lab was darkened and all that I could make out was a huge shadow moving sluggishly. And the screams! Screams of terror, the screams of a man faced with a monster from the pits of hell. It mewed horribly and seemed to pant in delight.

My hand moved around for a light switch. There, I found it! Light flooded the room, illuminating a tableau of horror that was the result of the grave thing I had performed, I and the dead uncle. A huge, white maggot twisted on the garage floor, holding Weinbaum with long suckers, raising him towards its dripping, pink mouth from which horrid mewing sounds came. Veins, red and pulsating, showed under its slimy flesh and millions of squirming tiny maggots – in the blood vessels, in the skin, even forming a huge eye that stared out at me. A huge maggot, 25

made up of hundreds of millions of maggots, the feasters on the dead flesh that Weinbaum had used so freely. In a half-world of terror I fired the revolver again and again. It mewed and twitched. Weinbaum screamed something as he was dragged inexorably toward the waiting mouth. Incredibly, I made it out over the hideous sound that the creature was making.

"Fire it! In the name of heaven, fire it!"

Then I saw the sticky pools of green liquid which had trickled over the floor from the laboratory. I fumbled for my lighter, got it and frantically thumbed it. Suddenly I remembered that I had forgotten to put a flint in.

I reached for matches, got one and fired the others. I threw the pack just as Weinbaum screamed his last. I saw his body through the translucent skin of the creature, still twitching as thousands of maggots leeched onto it. Retching, I threw the now flaring matches into the green ooze. It was flammable, just as I had thought. It burst into bright flames. The creature was twisted into a horrid ball of pulsing, putrid flesh. I turned and stumbled out to where Vicki stood, shaking and whitefaced.

"Come on!" I said, "Let's get out of here! The whole place is going to go up!"

We ran out to the car and drove away rapidly.

Chapter Nine

There isn't too much left to say. I'm sure that you have all read about the fire that swept the residential Belwood District of California, leveling fifteen square miles of woods and residential homes. I couldn't feel too badly about that fire. I realize that hundreds might have been killed by the gigantic maggot-things that Weinbaum and Rankin were breeding. I drove out there after the fire. The whole place was smoldering ruins.

There was no discernable remains of the horror that we had battled that final night, and, after some searching, I found a metal cabinet. Inside there were three ledgers. Once of them was Weinbaum's diary. I clears up a lot. It revealed that they were experimenting on dead flesh, exposing it to gamma rays. One day they observed a strange thing. The few maggots that had crawled over the flesh were growing, becoming a group. Eventually they grew together, forming three separate large maggots. Perhaps the radioactive bomb had speed up the evolution.

I don't know.

Furthermore, I don't want to know.

In a way, I suppose, I assisted in Rankin's death; the flesh of the body whose grave I had robbed had fed perhaps the very creature that had 26

killed him. I live with that thought. But I believe that there can be forgiveness. I'm working for it. Or, rather, we're working for it.

Vicki and I. Together.

27

THE GLASS FLOOR

From Weird Tales, Fall, 1990

INTRODUCTION by Stephen King

In the novel Deliverance, by James Dickey, there is a scene where a country fellow who lives way up in the back of beyond whangs his hand with a tool while repairing a car. One of the city men who are looking for a couple of guys to drive their cars downriver asks this fellow, Griner by name, if he's hurt himself. Griner looks at his bloody hand, then mutters: "Naw – it ain't as bad as I thought."

That's the way I felt after re-reading "The Glass Floor," the first story for which I was ever paid, after all these years. Darrell Schweitzer, the editor of Weird Tales invited me to make changes if I wanted to, but I decided that would probably be a bad idea. Except for two or three word changes and the addition of a paragraph break (which was probably a typographical error in the first place), I've left the tale just as it was. If I really did start making changes, the result would be an entirely new story.

"The Glass Floor" was written, to the best of my recollection, in the summer of 1967, when I was about two months shy of my twentieth birthday. I had been trying for about two years to sell a story to Robert A.W. Lowndes, who edited two horror/fantasy magazines for Health Knowledge ( The Magazine of Horror and Startling Mystery Stories) as well as a vastly more popular digest called Sexology. He had rejected several submissions kindly (one of them, marginally better than "The Glass Floor," was finally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction under the title "Night of the Tiger"), then accepted this one when I finally got around to submitting it. That first check was for thirty-five dollars. I've cashed many bigger ones since then, but none gave me more satisfaction; someone had finally paid me some real money for something I had found in my head!

The first few pages of the story are clumsy and badly written – clearly the product of an unformed story-teller's mind – but the last bit pays off better than I remembered; there is a genuine frisson in what Mr. Wharton finds waiting for him in the East Room. I suppose that's at least part of the reason I agreed to allow this mostly unremarkable work to be reprinted after all these years. And there is at least a token effort to create characters which are more than paper-doll cutouts; Wharton and Reynard are antagonists, but neither is

"the good guy" or "the bad guy." The real villain is behind that plastered-over door. And I also see an odd echo of "The Glass Floor" in a very recent work called "The Library Policeman." That work, a short novel, will be published as part of a collection of short novels called Four Past Midnight this fall, and if you read it, I think you'll see what I mean. It was fascinating to see the same image coming around again after all this time.

28

Mostly I'm allowing the story to be republished to send a message to young writers who are out there right now, trying to be published, and collecting rejection slips from such magazines as F&SF, Midnight Graffiti, and, of course, Weird Tales, which is the granddaddy of them all. The message is simple: you can learn, you can get better, and you can get published.

If that Little spark is there, someone will probably see it sooner or later, gleaming faintly in the dark. And, if you tend the spark nestled in the kindling, it really can grow into a large, blazing fire. It happened to me, and it started here.

I remember getting the idea for the story, and it just came as the ideas come now – casually, with no flourish of trumpets. I was walking down a dirt road to see a friend, and for no reason at all I began to wonder what it would be like to stand in a room whose floor was a mirror. The image was so intriguing that writing the story became a necessity. It wasn't written for money; it was written so I could see better. Of course I did not see it as well as I had hoped; there is still that shortfall between what I hope I will accomplish and what I actually manage. Still, I came away from it with two valuable things: a salable story after five years of rejection slips, and a bit of experience. So here it is, and as that fellow Griner says in Dickey's novel, it ain't really as bad as I thought.

Wharton moved slowly up the wide steps, hat in hand, craning his neck to get a better look at the Victorian monstrosity that his sister had died in. It wasn't a house at all, he reflected, but a mausoleum – a huge, sprawling mausoleum. It seemed to grow out of the top of the hill like an outsized, perverted toadstool, all gambrels and gables and jutting, blank-windowed cupolas. A brass weather-vane surmounted the eighty degree slant of shake-shingled roof, the tarnished effigy of a leering little boy with one hand shading eyes Wharton was just as glad he could not see.

Then he was on the porch, and the house as a whole was cut off from him. He twisted the old-fashioned bell, and listened to it echo hollowly through the dim recesses within. There was a rose-tinted fanlight over the door, and Wharton could barely make out the date 1770 chiseled into the glass. Tomb is right, he thought.

The door suddenly swung open. "Yes, sir?" The housekeeper stared out at him. She was old, hideously old. Her face hung like limp dough on her skull, and the hand on the door above the chain was grotesquely twisted by arthritis.

"I've come to see Anthony Reynard," Wharton said. He fancied he could even smell the sweetish odor of decay emanating from the rumpled silk of the shapeless black dress she wore.

"Mr Reynard isn't seein' anyone. He's mournin'."

29

"He'll see me," Wharton said. "I'm Charles Wharton. Janine's brother."

"Oh." Her eyes widened a little, and the loose bow of her mouth worked around the empty ridges of her gums. "Just a minute." She disappeared, leaving the door ajar.

Wharton stared into the dim mahogany shadows, making out high-backed easy chairs, horse-hair upholstered divans, tall narrow-shelved bookcases, curlicued, floridly carven wainscoting.

Janine, he thought. Janine, Janine, Janine. How could you live here?

How in hell could you stand it?

A tall figure materialized suddenly out of the gloom, slope-shouldered, head thrust forward, eyes deeply sunken and downcast.

Anthony Reynard reached out and unhooked the door-chain. "Come in, Mr. Wharton, " he said heavily.

Wharton stepped into the vague dimness of the house, looking up curiously at the man who had married his sister. There were rings beneath the hollows of his eyes, blue and bruised-looking. The suit he wore was wrinkled and hung limp on him, as if he had lost a great deal of weight. He looks tired, Wharton thought. Tired and old.

"My sister has already been buried?" Wharton asked.

"Yes." He shut the door slowly, imprisoning Wharton in the decaying gloom of the house. "My deepest sorrow, sir. Wharton. I loved your sister dearly." He made a vague gesture. "I'm sorry."

He seemed about to add more, then shut his mouth with an abrupt snap. When he spoke again, it was obvious he had bypassed whatever had been on his lips. "Would you care to sit down? I'm sure you have questions.”

"I do.” Somehow it came out more curtly than he had intended.

Reynard sighed and nodded slowly. He led the way deeper into the living room and gestured at a chair. Wharton sank deeply into it, and it seemed to gobble him up rather than give beneath him. Reynard sat next to the fireplace and dug for cigarettes. He offered them wordlessly to Wharton, and he shook his head.

He waited until Reynard lit his cigarette, then asked, "Just how did she die? Your letter didn't say much.

Reynard blew out the match and threw it into the fireplace. It landed on one of the ebony iron fire-dogs, a carven gargoyle that stared at Wharton with toad's eyes.

"She fell," he said. "She was dusting in one of the other rooms, up along the eaves. We were planning to paint, and she said it would have to be well-dusted before we could begin. She had the ladder. It slipped.

Her neck was broken." There was a clicking sound in his throat as he swallowed.

"She died – instantly?"

30

"Yes." He lowered his head and placed a hand against his brow. "I was heartbroken.

The gargoyle leered at him, squat torso and flattened, sooty head. Its mouth was twisted upward in a weird, gleeful grin, and its eyes seemed turned inward at some private joke. Wharton looked away from it with an effort.

"I want to see where it happened.”

Reynard stubbed out his cigarette half-smoked. "You can't.”

"I'm afraid I must," Wharton said coldly. "After all, she was my…”

"It's not that," Reynard said. "The room has been partitioned off. That should have been done a long time ago.”

"If it's just a matter of prising a few boards off a door...”

"You don't understand. The room has been plastered off completely There's nothing but a wall there.”

Wharton felt his gaze being pulled inexorably back to the fire-dog.

Damn the thing, what did it have to grin about?

"I can't help it. I want to see the room."

Reynard stood suddenly, towering over him. "Impossible."

Wharton also stood. "I'm beginning to wonder if you don't have something to hide in there," he said quietly.

"Just what are you implying?"

Wharton shook his head a little dazedly. What was he implying? That perhaps Anthony Reynard had murdered his Sister in this Revolutionary War-vintage crypt? That there might be Something more sinister here than shadowy corners and hideous iron fire-dogs?

"I don't know what I'm implying, " he said slowly, "except that Janine was shoveled under in a hell of a hurry, and that you're acting damn strange now."

For moment the anger blazed brighter, and then it died away, leaving only hopelessness and dumb sorrow. "Leave me alone," he mumbled.

"Please leave me alone, Mr. Wharton."

"I can't. I've got to know..."

The aged housekeeper appeared, her face thrusting from the shadowy cavern of the hall. "Supper's ready, Mr. Reynard."

"Thank you, Louise, but I'm not hungry. Perhaps Mr. Wharton...?"

Wharton shook his head.

"Very well, then. Perhaps we'll have a bite later."

"As you say, sir." She turned to go. "Louise?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Come here a moment.”

Louise shuffled slowly back into the room, her loose tongue slopping wetly over her lips for a moment and then disappearing. "Sir?"

31

"Mr. Wharton seems to have some questions about his sister's death.

Would you tell him all you know about it?"

"Yes, sir." Her eyes glittered with alacrity. "She was dustin', she was.

Dustin' the East Room. Hot on paintin' it, she was. Mr. Reynard here, I guess he wasn't much interested, because...”

"Just get to the point, Louise," Reynard said impatiently.

"No," Wharton said. "Why wasn't he much interested?"

Louise looked doubtfully from one to the other.

"Go ahead," Reynard said tiredly. "He'll find out in the village if he doesn't up here.”

"Yes, sir." Again he saw the glitter, caught the greedy purse of the loose flesh of her mouth as she prepared to impart the precious story.

"Mr. Reynard didn't like no one goin' in the East Room. Said it was dangerous."

"Dangerous?"

"The floor," she said. "The floor's glass. It's a mirror. The whole floor's a mirror. "

Wharton turned to Reynard, feeling dark blood suffuse his face. "You mean to tell me you let her go up on a ladder in a room with a glass floor?"

"The ladder had rubber grips," Reynard began. "That wasn't why...”

"You damned fool," Wharton whispered. "You damned, bloody fool.”

"I tell you that wasn't the reason!" Reynard shouted suddenly. "I loved your sister! No one is sorrier than I that she is dead! But I warned her!

God knows I warned her about that floor!"

Wharton was dimly aware of Louise staring greedily at them, storing up gossip like a squirrel stores up nuts. "Get her out of here," he said thickly.

"Yes," Reynard said. "Go see to supper."

"Yes, sir." Louise moved reluctantly toward the hall, and the shadows swallowed her.

"Now," Wharton said quietly. "It seems to me that you have some explaining to do, Reynard. This whole thing sounds funny to me. Wasn't there even an inquest?"

"No," Reynard said. He slumped back into his chair suddenly, and he looked blindly into the darkness of the vaulted overhead ceiling. "They know around here about the – East Room."

"And just what is there to know?" Wharton asked tightly

"The East Room is bad luck," Reynard said. "Some people might even say it's cursed.”

"Now listen," Wharton said, his ill temper and unlaid grief building up like steam in a teakettle, "I'm not going to be put off, Reynard. Every word that comes out of your mouth makes me more determined to see 32

that room. Now are you going to agree to it or do I have to go down to that village and ... ?"

"Please." Something in the quiet hopelessness of the word made Wharton look up. Reynard looked directly into his eyes for the first time and they were haunted, haggard eyes. "Please, Mr. Wharton. Take my word that your sister died naturally and go away. I don't want to see you die!" His voice rose to a wail. "I didn't want to see anybody die!"

Wharton felt a quiet chill steal over him. His gaze skipped from the grinning fireplace gargoyle to the dusty, empty-eyed bust of Cicero in the corner to the strange wainscoting carvings. And a voice came from within him: Go away from here. A thousand living yet insentient eyes seemed to stare at him from the darkness, and again the voice spoke...

"Go away from here."

Only this time it was Reynard.

"Go away from here," he repeated. "Your sister is beyond caring and beyond revenge. I give you my word...”

"Damn your word!" Wharton said harshly. "I'm going down to the sheriff, Reynard. And if the sheriff won't help me, I'll go to the county commissioner. And if the county commissioner won't help me...”

"Very well." The words were like the faraway tolling of a churchyard bell.

"Come."

Reynard led the way into the hall, down past the kitchen, the empty dining room with the chandelier catching and reflecting the last light of day, past the pantry, toward the blind plaster of the corridor's end.

This is it, he thought, and suddenly there was a strange crawling in the pit of his stomach.

"I..." he began involuntarily.

"What?" Reynard asked, hope glittering in his eyes.

"Nothing."

They stopped at the end of the hall, stopped in the twilight gloom.

There seemed to be no electric light. On the floor Wharton could see the still-damp plasterer’s trowel Reynard had used to wall up the doorway, and a straggling remnant of Poe’s “Black Cat” clanged through his mind: “I had walled the monster up within the tomb…”

Reynard handed the trowel to him blindly. "Do whatever you have to do, Wharton. I won't be party to it. I wash my hands of it.”

Wharton watched him move off down the hall with misgivings, his hand opening and closing on the handle of the trowel. The faces of the Little-boy weathervane, the fire-dog gargoyle, the wizened housemaid all seemed to mix and mingle before him, all grinning at something he could not understand. Go away from here...

33

With a sudden bitter curse he attacked the wall, hacking into the soft, new plaster until the trowel scraped across the door of the East Room.

He dug away plaster until he could reach the doorknob. He twisted, then yanked on it until the veins stood out in his temples .

The plaster cracked, schismed, and finally split. The door swung ponderously open, shedding plaster like a dead skin.

Wharton stared into the shimmering quicksilver pool.

It seemed to glow with a light of its own in the darkness, ethereal and fairy-like. Wharton stepped in, half-expecting to sink into warm, pliant fluid.

But the floor was solid.

His own reflection hung suspended below him, attached only by the feet, seeming to stand on its head in thin air. It made him dizzy just to look at it.

Slowly his gaze shifted around the room. The ladder was still there, stretching up into the glimmering depths of the mirror. The room was high, he saw. High enough for a fall to he winced – to kill.

It was ringed with empty bookcases, all seeming to lean over him on the very threshold of imbalance. They added to the room's strange, distorting effect.