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Somebody had placed her there, presumably, since she was quite unaware of the circumstances of her awakening. Then recollection began to form--Dr. Carl, the _other_, the roar of a shot. After that, nothing save a turmoil ending in blankness. A sound of movement beside her drew her attention. She turned her head and perceived Dr. Horker kneeling over a form on the floor, fingering a white bandage about the head of the figure. Her recollections took instant form; she remembered the catastrophes of the evening--last night, rather, since dawn glowed dully in the window. She had shot Nick! She gave a little moan and pushed herself to a sitting position. The Doctor glanced at her with a sick, shaky smile. "Hello," he said. "Come to, have you? Sorry I couldn't give you any attention." He gave the bandage a final touch. "Here's a job I had no heart for," he muttered. "Better for everyone to let things happen without interference." The girl, returning to full awareness, noticed now that the bandage consisted of strips of the Doctor's shirt. She glanced fearfully at the still features of Nicholas Devine; she saw pale cheeks and closed eyes, but indubitably not the grim mien of the demon. "Dr. Carl!" she whispered. "He isn't--he isn't--" "Not yet." "But will he--?" "I don't know. That's a bad spot, a wound in the base of the brain. You'd best know it now, Pat, but also realize that nothing can happen to you. I'll see to that!" "To me!" she said dully. "What difference does that make? It's Nick I want saved." "I'll do my best for you, Honey," said Horker with almost a hint of reluctance. "I've phoned Briggs General for an ambulance. Your faint lasted a full quarter hour," he added. "What can we tell them?" asked the girl. "What can we say?" "Don't you say anything, Pat. I'm not on the board for nothing." He rose from his knees, glancing out of the window into the cool dawn. "Queer neighborhood!" he said. "All that yelling and a shot, and still no sign of interest from the neighbors. That's Chicago, though," he mused. "Lucky for us, Pat; we can handle the thing quietly now." But the girl was staring dully at the still figure on the floor. "Oh God!" she said huskily. "Help him, Dr. Carl!" "I'll do my best," responded Horker gloomily. "I was a good surgeon before I specialized in psychiatry. Brain surgery, too; it led right into my present field." Pat said nothing, but dropped her head on her hands and stared vacantly before her. "Better for you, and for him too, if I fail," muttered the Doctor. His words brought a reply. "You won't fail," she said tensely. "You won't!" "Not voluntarily, I'm afraid," he growled morosely. "I've still a little respect for medical ethics, but if ever a case--" His voice trailed into silence as from somewhere in the dawn sounded the wail of a siren. "There's the ambulance," he finished. Pat sat unmoving as the sounds from outdoors detailed the stopping of the vehicle before the house. She heard the Doctor descending the steps, and the creak of the door. Though it took place before her eyes, she scarcely saw the white-coated youths as they lifted the form of Nicholas Devine and bore it from the room on a stretcher, treading with carefully broken steps to prevent the swaying of the support. Dr. Horker's order to follow made no impression on her; she sat dully on the couch as the chamber emptied. Why, she wondered, had the thought of Nick's death disturbed her so? Wasn't it but a short time since they had both contemplated it? What had occurred to alter that determination? Nick was dying, she thought mournfully; all that remained was for her to follow. There on the floor lay the revolver, and on the table, glistening in the wan light, reposed the untouched lethal draft. That was the preferable way, she mused, staring fixedly at its glowing contour. But suppose Nick weren't to die--she'd have abandoned him to his terrible doom, left him to face a situation far more ominous than any unknown terrors beyond death. She shook her head distractedly, and looked up to meet the eyes of Dr. Horker, who was watching her gravely in the doorway. "Come on, Pat," he said gently. She rose, followed him down the stairs and out into the morning light. The driver of the ambulance stared curiously at her dishevelled, bedraggled figure, but she was so weary and forlorn that even the effort of brushing away the black strands of hair that clouded her smoke-dark eyes was beyond her. She slumped into the seat of the Doctor's car and sighed in utter exhaustion. "Rush it!" Horker called to the driver ahead. "I'll follow you." The car swept into motion, and the swift cool morning air beating against her face from the open window restored some clarity to her mind. She fixed her eyes on the rear of the speeding vehicle they followed. "Is there any hope at all?" she queried despondently. "I don't know, Pat. I can't tell yet. When you closed your eyes, he half turned, dodged; the bullet entered his skull near the base, near the cerebellum. If it had pierced the cerebellum, his heart and breathing must have stopped instantly. They didn't, however, and that's a mildly hopeful sign. Very mildly hopeful, though." "Do you know now what that devil--what the attack was?" "No, Pat," Horker admitted. "I don't. Call it a devil if you like; I can't name it any better." His voice changed to a tone of wonder. "Pat, I can't understand that paralyzing fascination the thing exerted. I--any medical man--would say that mental dominance of that sort doesn't exist." "Hypnotism," the girl suggested. "Bah! Every psychiatrist uses hypnotism in his business; it's part of some treatments. There's nothing of fascination about it; no dominance of one will over another, despite the popular view. That's natural and understandable; this was like--well, like the exploded claims of Mesmerism. I tell you, it's not humanly possible--and yet I felt it!" "Not _humanly_ possible," murmured Pat. "That's the answer, then, Dr. Carl. Maybe now you'll believe in my devil." "I'm tempted to." "You'll have to! Can't you see it, Dr. Carl? Even his name, Nick--that's a colloquialism for the devil, isn't it?" "And Devine, I suppose," said Horker, "refers to his angelic ancestry. Devils are only fallen angels, aren't they?" "All right," said Pat wearily. "Make fun of it. You'll see!" "I'm not making fun of your theory, Honey. I can't offer a better one myself. I never saw nor heard of anything similar, and I'm not in position to ridicule any theory." "But you don't believe me." "Of course I don't, Pat. You're weaving an intricate fairy tale about a pathological condition and a fortuitous suggestiveness in names. Whatever the condition is--and I confess I don't understand it--it's something rational, and those things can be treated." "Treated by exorcism," said the girl. "That's the only way anyone ever succeeded in casting out a devil." The Doctor made no answer.

Weinbaum, Stanley G. (Stanley Grauman) - The Dark Other

The wailing vehicle ahead of them swung rapidly out of sight into an alley, and Horker halted his car before the gray facade of Briggs General. "Come in here," he said, helping Pat to alight. "You'll want to wait, won't you?" "How long," she queried listlessly, "before--before you'll know?" "Perhaps immediately. The only chance is to get that bullet out at once--if there's still time for it." She followed him into the building, past a desk where a white-clad girl regarded her curiously, and up an elevator. He led her into a small office. "Sit here," he said gently, and disappeared. She sat dully in the chair he had indicated, and minutes passed. She made no attempt to think; the long, cataclysmic night had exhausted her powers. She simply sat and suffered; the deep scratches of fingernails burned in the flesh of her back, her cheek pained from the violent slap, and her head and jaw ached from that first blow, the one that had knocked her unconscious last evening. But these twinges were minor; they were merely physical, and the hurts of the demon had struck far deeper than any physical injury. The damage to her spirit was by all odds the more painful; it numbed her mind and dulled her thoughts, and she simply sat idle and stared at the blank wall. She had no conception of the interval before Dr. Horker returned. He entered quietly, and began rinsing his hands at a basin in the corner. "Is it over?" she asked listlessly. "Not even begun," he responded. "However, it isn't too late. He'll be ready in a moment or so." "I wish it were over," she murmured. "One way or the other." "I too!" said the Doctor. "With all my heart, I wish it were over! If there were anyone within call who could handle it, I'd turn it to him gladly. But there isn't!" He moved again toward the door, leaning out and glancing down the hall. "You stay here," he admonished her. "Don't try to find us; I want no interruptions, no matter what enters that mind of yours!" "You needn't worry," she said soberly. "I'm not fool enough for that." She leaned wearily back in the chair, closing her eyes. A long interval passed; she was vaguely surprised to see the Doctor still standing in the doorway when she opened her eyes. She had fancied him already in the midst of his labor. "What will you do?" she asked. "About what?" "I mean what sort of operation will it need? Probing or what?" "Oh," he said. "I'll have to trephine him. Must get that bullet." "What's that--trephine?" He glanced down the hall. "They're ready," he said, and turned to go. At the door he paused. "Trephining is to open a little door in the skull. If your devil is in his head, we'll have it out along with the bullet." His footsteps receded down the hall. Revelation "Is it over now?" queried Pat tremulously as the Doctor finally reappeared. The interminable waiting had left her even more worn, and her pallid features bore the marks of strain. "Twenty minutes ago," said Horker. His face too bore evidence of tension; moreover, there was a puzzled, dubious expression in his eyes that frightened Pat. She was too apprehensive to risk a question as to the outcome, and simply stared at him with wide, fearful, questioning eyes. "I called up your home," he said irrelevantly. "I told them you left with me early this morning. Your mother's still in bed, although it's after ten." He paused. "Slip in without anyone seeing you, will you, Honey? And rumple up your bed." "If I haven't lost my key," she said, still with the question in her eyes. "It's in the mail-box. Magda found it on the porch this morning. I talked to her." She could bear the uncertainty no longer. "Tell me!" she demanded. "It's all right, I think." "You mean--he'll live?" The Doctor nodded. "I think so." He turned his puzzled eyes on her. "Oh!" breathed Pat. "Thank God!" "You wanted him back, Honey, didn't you?" Horker's tone was gentle. "Oh, yes!" "Devil and all?" "Yes--devil and all!" she echoed. Suddenly she sensed something strange in the other's manner. She perceived the uncertainty in his visage, and felt a rising trepidation. "What's the matter?" she queried anxiously. "You're not telling me everything! Tell me, Dr. Carl!" "There's something else," he said. "I'm not sure, Pat, but I think--I hope--you've got him back without the devil!" "He's cured?" Her voice was incredulous; she did not dare accept the Doctor's meaning. "I hope so. At least I located the cause." "What was it?" she demanded, an unexpected vigor livening her tired body. "What was that devil? Tell me! I want to know, Dr. Carl!" "I think the best name for it is a tumor," he said slowly. "I told them in there it was a tumor. I wish I knew myself." "A tumor! I don't understand!" "I don't either, Pat--not fully. It's something on or beyond the border of medical knowledge. I don't think any living authority could classify it definitely." "But tell me!" she cried fiercely. "Tell me!" "Well, Honey--I'll try." He paused thoughtfully. "Cancers and tumors--sarcomas--are curious things, Dear. Doctors aren't at all sure just what they are. And one of their peculiarities is that they sometimes seem to be trying to develop into separate entities, trying to become human by feeding like parasites on their hosts. Do you understand?" "No," said the girl. "I'm sorry, Dr. Carl, but I don't." "I mean," he continued, "that sometimes these growths seem to be trying to develop into--into organisms. I've seen them, for instance--every surgeon has--with bones developing. I've seen one with a rather perfect jaw-bone, and little teeth, and hair. As if," he added, "it were making a sort of attempt to become human, in a primitive, disorganized fashion. Now do you see what I mean?" "Yes," said the girl, with a violent shudder. "Dr. Carl, that's horrible!" "Life sometimes is," he agreed. "Well," he continued slowly, "I opened up our patient's skull at the point where the fluoroscope indicated the bullet. I trephined it, and there, pierced by the shot, was this--" He hesitated, "--this tumor." "Did you--remove it?" "Of course. But it wasn't a natural sort of brain tumor, Honey. It was a little cerebrum, apparently joined to a Y-shaped branch of the spinal cord. A little brain, Pat--no larger than your small fist, but deeply convoluted, and with the pre-Rolandic area highly developed." "What's pre-Rolandic, Dr. Carl?" asked Pat, shivering. "The seat of the motor nerves. The home, you might say, of the will. This brain was practically all will--and I wonder," he said musingly, "if that explains the ungodly, evil fascination the creature could command. A brain that was nothing but pure will-power, relieved by its parasitic nature of all the distractions of a directing body! I wonder--" He fell silent. "Tell me the rest!" she said frantically. "That's all, Honey. I removed it, and I guess I'm the only surgeon in the world who ever removed a brain from a human skull without killing the patient! Luckily, he had two of them!" "Oh God!"

Weinbaum, Stanley G. (Stanley Grauman) - The Dark Other

murmured the girl faintly. She turned to Horker. "But he will live?" "I think so. Your shot killed the devil, it seems." He frowned. "I said it was a tumor; I told them it was a tumor, but I'm not sure. Perhaps, just as some people are born with six fingers or toes on each member, he was born with two brains. It's possible; one developed normally, humanly, and the other--into that creature we faced last night. I don't know!" "It's what I said," asserted Pat. "It's a devil, and what you've just told me about tumors proves it. They're devils, that's all, and some day some student is going to cut one loose and raise it to maturity outside a human body, and you'll see what a devil is really like! And go ahead and laugh!" "I'm not laughing, Pat. I'd be the last one to laugh at your theory, after facing that thing last night. It had satanic powers, all right--that paralyzing fascination! You felt it too; it wasn't just a mental lapse on my part, was it?" "I felt it, Dr. Carl! I'd felt it before that; I was always helpless in the presence of it." "Could it," he asked, "have imposed its will actively on yours? I mean, could it have made you actually do what it asked there at the end, just before I recovered enough sense to let out that bellow?" "To take off--my dress?" She shivered. "I don't know, Dr. Carl.--I'm afraid so." She looked at him appealingly. "Why did I yield to it so?" she cried. "What made me find such a fierce pleasure in its kisses--in its blows and scratches, and the pain it inflicted on me? Why was that, Dr. Carl?" "Why," he countered, "do gangsters' girls and apache women enjoy the cruelties perpetrated on them by their men? There's a little masochism in most women, and that--creature was sadistic, perverted, abnormal, and somehow dominating. It took an unfair advantage of you, Pat; don't blame yourself." "It was--utterly evil!" she muttered. "It was the ultimate in everything unholy." "It was an aberrant brain," said Horker. "You can't judge it by human standards, since it wasn't actually human. It was, I suppose, just what you said--a devil. I didn't even keep it," he added grimly. "I destroyed it." "Do you know what it meant by saying it was a question of synapses?" she asked. "That was queer!" The Doctor's voice was puzzled. "That remark implies that the thing itself knew what it was. How? It must have possessed knowledge that the normal brain lacked." "Was it a question of synapses?" "In a sense it was. The nerves from the two rival brains must have met in a synaptic juncture. The oftener the aberrant brain gained control, the easier it became for it to repeat the process, as the synapse, so to speak, wore thin. That's why the attacks intensified so horribly toward the end; the habit was being formed." "Last night was the very worst!" "Of course. As the thing itself pointed out, I made the mistake of drugging the normal brain and giving the other complete control of the body. At other times, there'd always been the rivalry to weaken whichever was dominant." "Does that mean," asked Pat anxiously, "that Nick's character will be changed now?" "I think so. I think you'll find him less meek, less gentle, than heretofore. More spirited, perhaps, since his energies won't be drained so constantly by the struggle." "I don't care!" she said. "I'd like that, and anyway, it doesn't make a bit of difference to me as long as he's just--_my_ Nick." The Doctor gave her a tender smile. "Let's go home," he said, pinching her cheek in his great hand. "Can you leave him?" "I'll run back after a while, Honey. I think he'll do." He took her hand, drawing her after him. "Don't forget to slip in unseen, Pat, and rumple up your bed." "Rumple it!" She gave him a weary smile. "I'll be _in_ it!" "Good idea. You look a bit worn out, Honey, and we can't have you getting sick now, or even pull a temporary faint like that one last night." "I didn't faint!" "Maybe not," grinned Horker. "Perhaps the proceedings grew a little boring, and you just lay down on the couch for a nap. It _was_ a dull

Weinbaum, Stanley G. (Stanley Grauman) - The Dark Other

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net The Golgotha Dancers By MANLY WADE WELLMAN [Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales October 1937. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] [Sidenote: _A curious and terrifying story about an artist who sold his soul that he might paint a living picture_] I had come to the Art Museum to see the special show of Goya prints, but that particular gallery was so crowded that I could hardly get in, much less see or savor anything; wherefore I walked out again. I wandered through the other wings with their rows and rows of oils, their Greek and Roman sculptures, their stern ranks of medieval armors, their Oriental porcelains, their Egyptian gods. At length, by chance and not by design, I came to the head of a certain rear stairway. Other habitués of the museum will know the one I mean when I remind them that Arnold Böcklin's _The Isle of the Dead_ hangs on the wall of the landing. I started down, relishing in advance the impression Böcklin's picture would make with its high brown rocks and black poplars, its midnight sky and gloomy film of sea, its single white figure erect in the bow of the beach-nosing skiff. But, as I descended, I saw that _The Isle of the Dead_ was not in its accustomed position on the wall. In that space, arresting even in the bad light and from the up-angle of the stairs, hung a gilt-framed painting I had never seen or heard of in all my museum-haunting years. I gazed at it, one will imagine, all the way down to the landing. Then I had a close, searching look, and a final appraising stare from the lip of the landing above the lower half of the flight. So far as I can learn--and I have been diligent in my research--the thing is unknown even to the best-informed of art experts. Perhaps it is as well that I describe it in detail. It seemed to represent action upon a small plateau or table rock, drab and bare, with a twilight sky deepening into a starless evening. This setting, restrainedly worked up in blue-grays and blue-blacks, was not the first thing to catch the eye, however. The front of the picture was filled with lively dancing creatures, as pink, plump and naked as cherubs and as patently evil as the meditations of Satan in his rare idle moments. I counted those dancers. There were twelve of them, ranged in a half-circle, and they were cavorting in evident glee around a central object--a prone cross, which appeared to be made of two stout logs with some of the bark still upon them. To this cross a pair of the pink things--that makes fourteen--kneeling and swinging blocky-looking hammers or mauls, spiked a human figure. I say _human_ when I speak of that figure, and I withhold the word in describing the dancers and their hammer-wielding fellows. There is a reason. The supine victim on the cross was a beautifully represented male body, as clear and anatomically correct as an illustration in a surgical textbook. The head was writhed around, as if in pain, and I could not see the face or its expression; but in the tortured tenseness of the muscles, in the slaty white sheen of the skin with jagged streaks of vivid gore upon it, agonized nature was plain and doubly plain. I could almost see the painted limbs writhe against the transfixing nails. By the same token, the dancers and hammerers were so dynamically done as to seem half in motion before my eyes. So much for the sound skill of the painter. Yet, where the crucified prisoner was all clarity, these others were all fog. No lines, no angles, no muscles--their features could not be seen or sensed. I was not even sure if they had hair or not. It was as if each was picked out with a ray of light in that surrounding dusk, light that revealed and yet shimmered indistinctly; light, too, that had absolutely nothing of comfort or honesty in it. * * * * * "Hold on, there!" came a sharp challenge from the stairs behind and below me. "What are you doing? And what's that picture doing?" I started so that I almost lost my footing and fell upon the speaker--one of the Museum guards. He was a slight old fellow and his thin hair was gray, but he advanced upon me with all the righteous, angry pluck of a beefy policeman. His attitude surprised and nettled me. "I was going to ask somebody that same question," I told him as austerely as I could manage. "What about this picture? I thought there was a Böcklin hanging here." The guard relaxed his forbidding attitude at first sound of my voice. "Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. I thought you were somebody else--the man who brought that thing." He nodded at the picture, and the hostile glare came back into his eyes. "It so happened that he talked to me first, then to the curator. Said it was art--great art--and the Museum must have it." He lifted his shoulders, in a shrug or a shudder. "Personally, I think it's plain beastly." So it was, I grew aware as I looked at it again. "And the Museum has accepted it at last?" I prompted. He shook his head. "Oh, no, sir. An hour ago he was at the back door, with that nasty daub there under his arm. I heard part of the argument. He got insulting, and he was told to clear out and take his picture with him. But he must have got in here somehow, and hung it himself." Walking close to the painting, as gingerly as though he expected the pink dancers to leap out at him, he pointed to the lower edge of the frame. "If it was a real Museum piece, we'd have a plate right there, with the name of the painter and the title." I, too, came close. There was no plate, just as the guard had said. But in the lower left-hand corner of the canvas were sprawling capitals, pale paint on the dark, spelling out the word _GOLGOTHA_. Beneath these, in small, barely readable script: _I sold my soul that I might paint a living picture._ No signature or other clue to the artist's identity. The guard had discovered a great framed rectangle against the wall to one side. "Here's the picture he took down," he informed me, highly relieved. "Help me put it back, will you, sir? And do you suppose," here he grew almost wistful, "that we could get rid of this other thing before someone finds I let the crazy fool slip past me?" I took one edge of _The Isle of the Dead_ and lifted it to help him hang it once more. "Tell you what," I offered on sudden impulse; "I'll take this _Golgotha_ piece home with me, if you like." "Would you do that?" he almost yelled out in his joy at the suggestion. "Would you, to oblige me?" "To oblige myself," I returned. "I need another picture at my place." And the upshot of it was, he smuggled me and the unwanted painting out of the Museum. Never mind how. I have done quite enough as it is to jeopardize his job and my own welcome up there.

Wellman, Manly Wade - The Golgotha Dancers

* * * * * It was not until I had paid off my taxi and lugged the unwieldy parallelogram of canvas and wood upstairs to my bachelor apartment that I bothered to wonder if it might be valuable. I never did find out, but from the first I was deeply impressed. Hung over my own fireplace, it looked as large and living as a scene glimpsed through a window or, perhaps, on a stage in a theater. The capering pink bodies caught new lights from my lamp, lights that glossed and intensified their shape and color but did not reveal any new details. I pored once more over the cryptic legend: _I sold my soul that I might paint a living picture._ A living picture--was it that? I could not answer. For all my honest delight in such things, I cannot be called expert or even knowing as regards art. Did I even like the Golgotha painting? I could not be sure of that, either. And the rest of the inscription, about selling a soul; I was considerably intrigued by that, and let my thoughts ramble on the subject of Satanist complexes and the vagaries of half-crazy painters. As I read, that evening, I glanced up again and again at my new possession. Sometimes it seemed ridiculous, sometimes sinister. Shortly after midnight I rose, gazed once more, and then turned out the parlor lamp. For a moment, or so it seemed, I could see those dancers, so many dim-pink silhouettes in the sudden darkness. I went to the kitchen for a bit of whisky and water, and thence to my bedroom. I had dreams. In them I was a boy again, and my mother and sister were leaving the house to go to a theater where--think of it!--Richard Mansfield would play _Beau Brummell_. I, the youngest, was told to stay at home and mind the troublesome furnace. I wept copiously in my disappointed loneliness, and then Mansfield himself stalked in, in full Brummell regalia. He laughed goldenly and stretched out his hand in warm greeting. I, the lad of my dreams, put out my own hand, then was frightened when he would not loosen his grasp. I tugged, and he laughed again. The gold of his laughter turned suddenly hard, cold. I tugged with all my strength, and woke. * * * * * Something held me tight by the wrist. * * * * * In my first half-moment of wakefulness I was aware that the room was filled with the pink dancers of the picture, in nimble, fierce-happy motion. They were man-size, too, or nearly so, visible in the dark with the dim radiance of fox-fire. On the small scale of the painting they had seemed no more than babyishly plump; now they were gross, like huge erect toads. And, as I awakened fully, they were closing in, a menacing ring of them, around my bed. One stood at my right side, and its grip, clumsy and rubbery-hard like that of a monkey, was closed upon my arm. * * * * * I saw and sensed all this, as I say, in a single moment. With the sensing came the realization of peril, so great that I did not stop to wonder at the uncanniness of my visitors. I tried frantically to jerk loose. For the moment I did not succeed and as I thrashed about, throwing my body nearly across the bed, a second dancer dashed in from the left. It seized and clamped my other arm. I felt, rather than heard, a wave of soft, wordless merriment from them all. My heart and sinews seemed to fail, and briefly I lay still in a daze of horror, pinned down crucifix-fashion between my two captors. Was that a _hammer_ raised above me as I sprawled? There rushed and swelled into me the sudden startled strength that sometimes favors the desperate. I screamed like any wild thing caught in a trap, rolled somehow out of bed and to my feet. One of the beings I shook off and the other I dashed against the bureau. Freed, I made for the bedroom door and the front of the apartment, stumbling and staggering on fear-weakened legs. One of the dim-shining pink things barred my way at the very threshold, and the others were closing in behind, as if for a sudden rush. I flung my right fist with all my strength and weight. The being bobbed back unresistingly before my smash, like a rubber toy floating through water. I plunged past, reached the entry and fumbled for the knob of the outer door. They were all about me then, their rubbery palms fumbling at my shoulders, my elbows, my pajama jacket. They would have dragged me down before I could negotiate the lock. A racking shudder possessed me and seemed to flick them clear. Then I stumbled against a stand, and purely by good luck my hand fell upon a bamboo walking-stick. I yelled again, in truly hysterical fierceness, and laid about me as with a whip. My blows did little or no damage to those unearthly assailants, but they shrank back, teetering and dancing, to a safe distance. Again I had the sense that they were laughing, mocking. For the moment I had beaten them off, but they were sure of me in the end. Just then my groping free hand pressed a switch. The entry sprang into light. On the instant they were not there. * * * * * Somebody was knocking outside, and with trembling fingers I turned the knob of the door. In came a tall, slender girl with a blue lounging-robe caught hurriedly around her. Her bright hair was disordered as though she had just sprung from her bed. "Is someone sick?" she asked in a breathless voice. "I live down the hall--I heard cries." Her round blue eyes were studying my face, which must have been ghastly pale. "You see, I'm a trained nurse, and perhaps----" "Thank God you did come!" I broke in, unceremoniously but honestly, and went before her to turn on every lamp in the parlor. It was she who, without guidance, searched out my whisky and siphon and mixed for me a highball of grateful strength. My teeth rang nervously on the edge of the glass as I gulped it down. After that I got my own robe--a becoming one, with satin facings--and sat with her on the divan to tell of my adventure. When I had finished, she gazed long at the painting of the dancers, then back at me. Her eyes, like two chips of the April sky, were full of concern and she held her rosy lower lip between her teeth. I thought that she was wonderfully pretty. "What a perfectly terrible nightmare!" she said. "It was no nightmare," I protested. She smiled and argued the point, telling me all manner of comforting things about mental associations and their reflections in vivid dreams. To clinch her point she turned to the painting. "This line about a 'living picture' is the peg on which your slumbering mind hung the whole fabric," she suggested, her slender fingertip touching the painted scribble. "Your very literal subconscious self didn't understand that the artist meant his picture would live only figuratively." "Are you sure that's what the artist meant?" I asked, but finally I let her convince me. One can imagine how badly I wanted to be convinced. She mixed me another highball, and a short one for herself.

Wellman, Manly Wade - The Golgotha Dancers

Over it she told me her name--Miss Dolby--and finally she left me with a last comforting assurance. But, nightmare or no, I did not sleep again that night. I sat in the parlor among the lamps, smoking and dipping into book after book. Countless times I felt my gaze drawn back to the painting over the fireplace, with the cross and the nail-pierced wretch and the shimmering pink dancers. After the rising sun had filled the apartment with its honest light and cheer I felt considerably calmer. I slept all morning, and in the afternoon was disposed to agree with Miss Dolby that the whole business had been a bad dream, nothing more. Dressing, I went down the hall, knocked on her door and invited her to dinner with me. It was a good dinner. Afterward we went to an amusing motion picture, with Charles Butterworth in it as I remember. After bidding her good-night, I went to my own place. Undressed and in bed, I lay awake. My late morning slumber made my eyes slow to close. Thus it was that I heard the faint shuffle of feet and, sitting up against my pillows, saw the glowing silhouettes of the Golgotha dancers. Alive and magnified, they were creeping into my bedroom. I did not hesitate or shrink this time. I sprang up, tense and defiant. "No, you don't!" I yelled at them. As they seemed to hesitate before the impact of my wild voice, I charged frantically. For a moment I scattered them and got through the bedroom door, as on the previous night. There was another shindy in the entry; this time they all got hold of me, like a pack of hounds, and wrestled me back against the wall. I writhe even now when I think of the unearthly hardness of their little gripping paws. Two on each arm were spread-eagling me upon the plaster. The cruciform position again! I swore, yelled and kicked. One of them was in the way of my foot. He floated back, unhurt. That was their strength and horror--their ability to go flabby and non-resistant under smashing, flattening blows. Something tickled my palm, pricked it. The point of a spike.... "Miss Dolby!" I shrieked, as a child might call for its mother. "Help! Miss D----" The door flew open; I must not have locked it. "Here I am," came her unafraid reply. She was outlined against the rectangle of light from the hall. My assailants let go of me to dance toward her. She gasped but did not scream. I staggered along the wall, touched a light-switch, and the parlor just beyond us flared into visibility. Miss Dolby and I ran in to the lamp, rallying there as stone-age folk must have rallied at their fire to face the monsters of the night. I looked at her; she was still fully dressed, as I had left her, apparently had been sitting up. Her rouge made flat patches on her pale cheeks, but her eyes were level. * * * * * This time the dancers did not retreat or vanish; they lurked in the comparative gloom of the entry, jigging and trembling as if mustering their powers and resolutions for another rush at us. "You see," I chattered out to her, "it wasn't a nightmare." She spoke, not in reply, but as if to herself. "They have no faces," she whispered. "No faces!" In the half-light that was diffused upon them from our lamp they presented the featurelessness of so many huge gingerbread boys, covered with pink icing. One of them, some kind of leader, pressed forward within the circle of the light. It daunted him a bit. He hesitated, but did not retreat. From my center table Miss Dolby had picked up a bright paper-cutter. She poised it with the assurance of one who knows how to handle cutting instruments. "When they come," she said steadily, "let's stand close together. We'll be harder to drag down that way." I wanted to shout my admiration of her fearless front toward the dreadful beings, my thankfulness for her quick run to my rescue. All I could mumble was, "You're mighty brave." She turned for a moment to look at the picture above my dying fire. My eyes followed hers. I think I expected to see a blank canvas--find that the painted dancers had vanished from it and had grown into the living ones. But they were still in the picture, and the cross and the victim were there, too. Miss Dolby read aloud the inscription: "_A living picture_ ... The artist knew what he was talking about, after all." "Couldn't a living picture be killed?" I wondered. It sounded uncertain, and a childish quibble to boot, but Miss Dolby exclaimed triumphantly, as at an inspiration. "Killed? Yes!" she shouted. She sprang at the picture, darting out with the paper-cutter. The point ripped into one of the central figures in the dancing semicircle. All the crowd in the entry seemed to give a concerted throb, as of startled protest. I swung, heart racing, to front them again. What had happened? Something had changed, I saw. The intrepid leader had vanished. No, he had not drawn back into the group. He had vanished. Miss Dolby, too, had seen. She struck again, gashed the painted representation of another dancer. And this time the vanishing happened before my eyes, a creature at the rear of the group went out of existence as suddenly and completely as though a light had blinked out. The others, driven by their danger, rushed. I met them, feet planted. I tried to embrace them all at once, went over backward under them. I struck, wrenched, tore. I think I even bit something grisly and bloodless, like fungoid tissue, but I refuse to remember for certain. One or two of the forms struggled past me and grappled Miss Dolby. I struggled to my feet and pulled them back from her. There were not so many swarming after me now. I fought hard before they got me down again. And Miss Dolby kept tearing and stabbing at the canvas--again, again. Clutches melted from my throat, my arms. There were only two dancers left. I flung them back and rose. Only one left. Then none. They were gone, gone into nowhere. "That did it," said Miss Dolby breathlessly. She had pulled the picture down. It was only a frame now, with ragged ribbons of canvas dangling from it. I snatched it out of her hands and threw it upon the coals of the fire. "Look," I urged her joyfully. "It's burning! That's the end. Do you see?" "Yes, I see," she answered slowly. "Some fiend-ridden artist--his evil genius brought it to life." "The inscription is the literal truth, then?" I supplied. "Truth no more." She bent to watch the burning. "As the painted figures were destroyed, their incarnations faded." We said nothing further, but sat down together and gazed as the flames ate the last thread of fabric, the last splinter of wood. Finally we looked up again and smiled at each other. All at once I knew that I loved her.

Wellman, Manly Wade - The Golgotha Dancers

listen, children ... listen! By Wallace West The old man was long dead--but his widow still awaited his return. And one night she heard.... _The elements of horror are as many and varied as the threads in a Gobelin tapestry--with special stimuli for each of us. Perhaps terror lies in the howl of a coyote, in the noises of an old house, in a blaze of fire. Or perhaps it responds to the mournful creak of wheels on a gravel road, to moonlight reflected from a huge old mirror._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe October-November 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] My grandmother was fey. At least that's what the neighbors said. She could predict the weather by the way her left heel "eetched." She always knew by some sixth sense when any of her blood was coming down from Indianapolis to visit our tumbledown farm. She insisted she heard angels singing (or sounds considerably more terrifying) during funerals at the New Harmony Church over the hill. In the eyes of myself and my sister Annette Maw was as old as the gullies which cut up our clay fields. Probably she was about sixty when I first remember her. She still carried her lean body proudly though her back was bowed. She had a gift for mimicry and a merry smile marred by the fact that she had been salivated by taking too much calomel to fight off fever'n'aiger. This misfortune had caused her gums to recede and gave her a snaggle-toothed look. Some of her fangs moved when she ate but, to our eternal wonder, they never fell out. She had the untiring wreck of a fine alto voice and regaled us with renditions of bloody old hymns or ballads like "The Ship's Carpenter" (_And three times 'round went our gallant ship e'er she sank to the bottom of the sea_) or an endless garbled song about a girl who masqueraded as a soldier to join her sweetheart in the wars between "Tors and Highlanzer." I still have nightmares about those childhood years. The Brown murder was a recent memory--Patriarch Brown and his blind wife had been slaughtered by "persons unknown" in a hemlock-shrouded farmhouse half a mile from our cabin. Repercussions of the trial had hardly died away. There was talk of another investigation and the _persons_--well known to everyone but the law--were prowling the countryside, flashing dark lanterns under doors and shouting threats of what would happen to neighbors who dared tell what they knew. Paw woke one night and fired his squirrel rifle at what he thought was a lantern but which was only a suddenly-flaming fireplace ember. The bullet knocked a newel post off my bed. Despite the campaign of terror Paw just had to drive to the county seat once a month for supplies. Always he promised to be back by sundown. Always he met some old Butternut cronies--comrades-at-arms in the Knights of the Golden Circle during Civil War days. And in talking about how they had outfoxed and outfought the National Guard sent to punish them for desertion from the Union Army he usually would be delayed until the night closed in. Then, as Annette and I lay in our bed beside the fireplace, refusing to go to sleep because we knew Paw would bring us presents, Maw would open the front door, hook her bare foot around it and listen, tense with a fear which communicated itself to us. The katydids might be quarreling. Or the baying of Mr. Morningstar's coon dogs might drift through the fall or winter air. A screechowl's sobbing might cause us to cling together in a shiver. Finally we'd start whimpering. Then Maw would twist her wrinkled head back through the crack in the door and whisper, "Shhh! Listen, children.... Listen! I think I hear Josiah's wagon. They hain't got him this time." Often the belated team turned down some side road. And she would murmur, hardly louder than the katydids, as she resumed her vigil, "Shhh! Listen, children.... Listen!" When the hours of tension had set my whole body aching with what folks who don't know call "growing pains" and when the half-opened door had made the room almost as chill as the night, we would actually hear the faraway mournful creak of wheels on the gravel road, the jingle of trace chains, the rumble of a half-empty jolt-wagon bed. "Thank you, dear just God!" Maw would breathe at last. Then she would follow her bare foot through the door and bustle about reheating the supper coffee and fixing a snack for Paw. We would hear the wagon rumble into the yard. Next Paw would cuss Old Nell for her contrariness as he unhitched and led her to the stable. And at last a great grey-bearded man, his arms laden with bundles, would stumble through the front door to be greeted by two elves in long underwear, dancing about him and screaming, "Whatcha got for me, Paw? Whatcha got this time?" Usually it was jawbreakers or peppermint sticks. Once, when we sold the hogs, it was a store doll for Annette and a marvelous steamboat for me that you wound up with a key and sank the first time I tried it in the branch. * * * * * He always brought something pretty and useless for Maw too. And she always scolded and loved him for buying it. Then he'd go over to the creaky chair where Aunt Ellen rocked slowly, pat her plump shoulder and hold out a shell comb, a cheap ring or a handkerchief. And Aunt Ellen would look away from the mirror--for the first time that day, perhaps--take the thing in her plump white hand, and smile. I should have mentioned Aunt Ellen before but I forgot. In fact, everybody forgot Aunt Ellen. She wanted it so. She had been deeply in love when she was a girl, they said. But her young man had had to see the world before he settled down. So he set out for that strange half-mythical land called Europe. And he never returned. After she was sure he would not come back Aunt Ellen stopped speaking to people. She took her seat and just looked into the mirror. I remember the rockers of that chair were worn almost through from constant use. The mirror fascinated Annette and me. It was big--big as our front door and placed against the wall directly across from the entrance, so that if you didn't look closely you thought it _was_ another door. And it had a great deeply-polished frame carved with intricate lacelike patterns that hurt your eyes if you looked at them too long. I now know that it was the only thing of real value in the draughty log cabin. Maw said it was a "hear-loom," brought from Virginia by her parents, the Whites, who had been "quality" in the Old Dominion before they migrated after the war of 1812, were stampeded by land agents into "locating" in the wrong part of the state and rapidly dissipated their means on an unproductive wilderness. Maw had made up a song about that mirror.

West, Wallace - Listen, children ... listen!

"The Whites, 'tis said, were privateers when England ruled the waves ..." was the way it started. And it went on to tell how the mirror was part of their loot when they sacked and scuttled some tall merchantman. To corroborate this story we had another relic, a "treasure chest" of the same dark wood, iron-bound and strong, which was used as a hens' nest beneath the house. Annette and I crawled under the floor from time to time to see if we could find any treasure still in it. But all we ever found were eggs. After Paw had taken off his overcoat and Maw had put his packages in the leanto kitchen he would sit before the fire, suck coffee through his beard and regale us with news from the outside--how Uncle Joe Cannon's control of Congress was about to be broken, what the Young Turks were up to, how T.R. 's trust-busting would boost farm prices and make us all rich again and how they had just found a rusted and bloody monkey wrench in Brown's well. At last, tired and happy, with our mouths puckered from too many jawbreakers, we'd go back to bed. And we'd wake to a humdrum world which included school, collecting wood, milking our cow, riding Old Nell when she would let us and maybe going to an ice cream social at New Harmony, until it was time for Paw to make another epic trip to Martinsville. But life was never completely humdrum when Paw was around. He knew every bird by its call, could lead us unerringly to the best raspberry patches and made marvelous popguns, slingshots and "fly killers" out of elder bushes and bits of string. When he tired of such things as the sun went down his tales about Napoleon and Hannibal crossing the Alps would hold us spellbound. Openhanded to a fault Paw had lost most of his farm through the years by going on neighbors' worthless notes or lending them money and not having the heart to ask for its return. Yet he was the materialist of the family and never tired of poking fun at Maw's voices and premonitions. Dressed in overalls, shaggy, massive and not always clean, he looked like a poor white. Nevertheless he had had a good education and once confessed to me, when Maw's back was turned, that in his youth he had made a tour of the state lecturing on atheism. And he had an endless fund of slightly bawdy sacrilegious stories which made May click her teeth at him and mourn that he would never go to heaven when he died. Years slip past like water when one is young. We hardly noticed, Annette and I, that the bend in Maw's back was growing more pronounced and that Paw stopped oftener for breath when he plowed our stubby fields or sawed the endless cords of wood which still could not keep the living room warm when wintry winds swept down from some place that he called Medicine Hat. (Annette and I used to pretend we were on a ship as we walked across the rag carpet in the living room while it billowed upward as air blew under it through cracks in the floor.) And then one night, after the usual period of listening, when Maw finally had heard the wagon creaking, closed the door and put on the bitter coffee, Old Nell jogtrotted into the yard and stopped without the usual accompaniment of curses. For a while Maw noticed nothing wrong. Then she slowly faced the door, lips firmly drawn over those wobbly teeth. Annette and I, all ready for our jump out of the warm bed onto the icy floor, watched her uncomprehendingly until we saw that Aunt Ellen had given over her unending vigil at the mirror and turned her head questioningly. Then we too knew that something was very strange. As though moved by strings, placing one foot before the other with obvious effort, Maw started toward the door. After an eternity she reached it, opened it, closed it against her bare shank in the old accustomed gesture. "_Josiah!_" we heard her scream as the foot disappeared. With a sigh Aunt Ellen rose and waddled after her. Maw--she was still strong as an ox and could swing an axe like a man--backed through the door after awhile, holding Paw under the armpits. Aunt Ellen carried his feet as they brought him in. "The old fool!" Maw was whimpering. "I knew they'd get him. The old fool! I told him not to stay so danged late." Her eyes were dry and glittering. * * * * * After the funeral--Annette and I boasted at school that the Brown murderers had done for Paw although a stroke undoubtedly was responsible--the old cabin never felt quite like home again. First a deluge of uncles, aunts and cousins descended upon us and insisted we sell the farm and move to town. "Josiah would not have it so," Maw told them while Aunt Ellen nodded corroboration. So they compromised by having a hired hand in to do the plowing and heavier work. At the start nothing seemed vitally wrong except the absence of Paw's explosive laughter and endless stories, plus a growing dearth of first-class popguns and slingshots. Then, one rainy day when I had been brooding over one of his dog-eared books--"Vanity Fair," I think it was--I looked up, caught sight of Maw, her potato peeling forgotten, sitting tense beside the kitchen table. I knew what it was that had been bothering me. Maw was still listening ... always listening now. What I did not realize was that, without Paw's quizzical common sense to balance her, she was slipping imperceptibly into that never-never land which had so often beckoned. Not long after this discovery I awakened, chilled, as the decrepit Seth Thomas clock clinked midnight. The door was open a crack and I could glimpse, by the last flickering embers, Maw's foot in its accustomed place. "Maw," I called. "Shhh! Listen! I think I hear a wagon." "Maw," I screamed. "_Maw!_" "What is it, honey?" she asked in her normal voice as she came inside, crossed the room and placed a horny hand on my forehead in one of her rare caresses. "You'll catch cold," I mumbled, somehow ashamed. "I was just listening to the katydids. They sound--fresh, like spring-water," she lied. "Don't listen any more." "All right, honey, I'll go to bed. Don't worrit yourself." But she did not keep her promise. Several months later I came home from school ahead of Annette, who was dusting erasers for the teacher. At the front door I stopped as I heard animated conversation inside. Thinking it was one of the neighbor women, who called occasionally to gossip, I rushed in, eager not to miss anything, then stopped, heart in mouth, terrified. * * * * * Aunt Ellen was out of the house on one of the chores to which she now condescended to put her white hands and Maw was occupying the old rocker before the mirror. But what frightened me was the chatter in two distinct voices which still continued. "Maw," I gulped. "Who--who you talking to?" "Why, with Mrs.--Mrs. Jones here, of course." She laughed although her eyes refused to meet mine. "Mrs. Jones, this is my grandson I was telling you about. Take off your cap, son, and say--" "But Maw," I gulped. "There's no one there.

West, Wallace - Listen, children ... listen!

It's just your reflection in the looking glass." "Why--why so it is," she stammered, brushing one brown hand across her eyes. "I was just fooling." She jumped to her feet and started bustling about like her old indefatigable self. "Now run along and fill the wood box. Then wash your hands and help me peel these 'taters. I'm way late with supper, what with having to stop to talk--I mean I must have set down to rest and went to sleep." Then began one of the strangest battles in the history of fairie--two children against a mirror, for of course I enlisted poor Annette on my side. I tried to explain to Aunt Ellen but she merely smiled understandingly and patted me with one fat hand while her prominent eyes fluttered back to the glass. I wrote a scrawl to Uncle Bill, my favorite, and he left his hardware store the next weekend and came down from the city with a little chinwhiskered doctor. Since psychiatry was almost unknown in those days the physician looked at Maw's tongue, thumped her chest, asked her a few questions, which she answered with sly humor, and pronounced her sound. "I think it's you that's imagining things, boy," said Uncle Bill when he took me for a walk in the woods after one of Maw's wonderful chicken dinners. "We're all upset by Paw's going. Just don't worry about things." "But Uncle Bill," I protested. "I heard what I saw." "I know--I know." His lean shrewd face had a worried look, I noticed with an upward glance. "You're a highstrung youngster. Write me often, though. And I'll come down every time I can. Say--look!" I could almost hear him sigh with relief at an opportunity to change the subject. "There's a patch of violets already. Let's pick some and take them back to Maw and Ellen. It'll make them happy." After that, of course, I had to carry on the fight with only Annette to help. We tried everything--went right home when we could have been playing with the other kids after school--got Maw to sing for us by the hour--read out loud to her--inveigled her into the spring woods to pick flowers and look for birds' nests. Oh, it was a brave battle put up by a twelve- and a ten-year-old against something alien and, somehow, far wiser than we. * * * * * At first Maw managed to banish her visions when she heard us come into the yard. Then we had to strive hard and harder to break the spell. And one day we both became twins! It happened when Annette and I came home one time the teacher took sick. It was much earlier than usual and we caught Maw rocking happily before the mirror, gossiping with her reflection. "I'm so glad you brought your own children to visit me today, Mrs. Jones," she exclaimed the moment our images appeared in the glass behind hers. "My Tommy and Annette don't have many playmates, we live so far from any neighbors. I'm sure they'll be much happier now." "Aw, Maw," Annette protested as we instinctively ducked out of range. "Those ain't teal children. You're just looking at us in the looking glass." But the damage had been done. For once in my life I saw grandmother grow really angry. "I'll have none of your sass, Annette," she stormed, rising and straightening her back until it cracked. "Mrs. Jones, I don't know what has come over my younguns. Now, will you two say you're sorry or must I whip you right before company?" Shamefaced and shaken, we apologized to the empty air. And from that hour Mrs. Jones and her ghostly brats became our constant companions. At first we hated and resented them, then, childlike, accepted the inevitable and even made the best of it. Sometimes, so real did Maw make the delusion become, we almost believed with her that the shadows were real. On rainy weekends we found ourselves inventing games to play with them. Perhaps, in time, we might have gone to inhabit her world of dreams. But Maw's health was failing rapidly. We tried to ignore the fact as she did, though it soon became pitifully obvious that Paw's loss had broken the iron will which had sustained her through so many adversities. Aunt Ellen more and more ceded her place before the mirror as she helped Annette and me do the lighter chores and even some of the cooking. Bill Pailey came over every day now--Maw never paraded her shadows when _he_ was around, knowing that the bluff farmer was somehow not to be trusted with such dream stuff. And the money which aunts and uncles contributed, willingly or grudgingly, was more and more needed to fill the gaps in our finances. "Tommy," Annette said to me one afternoon as we were plodding home from school along the muddy dogwood-bordered road. "What happens to people when they die?" "Aw, I don't know," I muttered, kicking a loose stone with my copper-toed shoe. "Maw says the angels come and get 'em and take 'em to heaven." "But the angels didn't come and get Dickie." Dickie was a wry-necked pin-feathered rooster that Paw had taught to come when we called, dig fishing worms for us and jump through a barrel hoop. "I went to look at Dickie's grave the other day. A dog had dug him up. There were just feathers--and bones." "Aw," I said. "Chickens don't have souls. But Maw says that when Miz Pailey died last year she was there and she saw--" "We're going to be awful lonesome, though," my sister sighed. "And you'll have to get up and make the fire every morning." "What you mean?" I challenged. "Nothing. Let's run. I'm cold." And she was off in a flutter of long legs, gingham and pale yellow braids. After such a conversation I hardly dared enter the house that day. When I did go in, after fooling around at the barn as long as possible, I found Maw singing lustily about some man who had gone to the gallows with a white dove riding on his shoulder to prove him innocent of the murder of his sweetheart. "Where's Mrs. Jones and her kids?" I asked, flabbergasted. "They went home," said Maw. "I told them to. Can't spend all my time gassing with a ugly old woman like that when I've got housecleaning to do." And until long after sunset she made the feathers fly from the old pillows, beat up the crackling corn-shuck mattresses, sprinkled and swept the floors and polished the meager kitchen utensils till they shone. Annette and I, feeling as if we had been released from jail, helped with a will. Aunt Ellen, reinstated in her rocking chair, frowned and sneezed by turns and said nothing as always. "There," said Maw at last as she hung the home-made broom behind the kitchen range and sank into a chair, looking suddenly more worn and old than I had ever seen her. "There. It's all swept and garnished for when the bridegroom cometh." "The bridegroom?" I glanced at her sharply. "I was just fooling again, son." She stared down at her big-veined hands as they lay clasped in her lap. "Must be getting old, I guess. I just meant that I have a feeling your Uncle Bill will come tomorrow. And you know how fussy he is about everything being neat and clean."

West, Wallace - Listen, children ... listen!

She rose reluctantly with a sigh, half of weariness, half of content. "Come. You and Annette get undressed and get to bed. I'll sing you to sleep like I used to when you were little." "You look just like my daughter, sir, Who from me ran away...." Her old cracked voice still had its hypnotic quality and I felt my eyelids drooping despite my certain knowledge that this night, of all nights, I should stay awake. "Maw," I mumbled. "I wanna drink." Her bare feet padded into the kitchen. I heard the rattle of tin cup against galvanized bucket. Then she was back at my side again and the spring-water was fresh on my dry lips and gums. "Maw," I rambled on. "I don't wanna sleep. Tell me about when you were a little girl back in Virginia--and the big white horse and the black people...." "Not tonight, honey. You're all tuckered out," she crooned, stroking my forehead and picking up the thread of that interminable song. "I a-am not your daughter, sir, And neither do I know. I a-am from Highlanzer And they call me Jack Monroe...." I woke with a start, those last lugubrious lines still ringing in my ears. "She dre-ew out her broadsword. She bid this world adieu. Saying 'Goodbye to Jack Highlanzer' And 'Goodbye to Jack Monroe.'" Have you ever awakened in a strange place--a hotel room perhaps--tried to locate a familiar lamp, the dim outlines of your own bed-chamber, the tick of a friendly clock? Or have you, perhaps, sought frantically for a door with your hands sliding vainly along black and forbidding walls? This was the same room in which I had gone to sleep. The fire was almost out. By my side Annette breathed deep and slow. I could hear Aunt Ellen snoring not far away. Through the open door a full moon stretched its carpet almost to my bed. Yet, despite these comforting sights and sounds, everything about me seemed topsy turvy and utterly horribly wrong. My bare toes curled with terror as I realized what it was. Our front door was in the south wall of the cabin. The moonshine was pouring in through a wide opening in the north wall--through the place where the mirror stood! And a cold wind was pouring in with it. "Maw," I whispered, sitting up and rubbing my eyes. Only the chorus of katydids answered. But this was spring! Katydids sang only in the fall! At the same moment I saw a bare foot and ankle etched in moonlight as it hooked around the age-darkened frame of the opening. "Please, Maw." I still struggled between dream and waking. "You'll catch cold out there." She came partially inside the "door" then and smiled at me. And I noticed, with the lack of surprise which accompanies nightmares, that her teeth were white and firm in the moonglow. "Shhh!" she admonished. "I think I hear a wagon." "But Paw is...." I began, then stopped spellbound. Far in the distance, across rolling hills which lay bathed in beauty and above the fresh staccato mutter of katydids, I too caught the creak of wheels on a gravel road, the jingle of trace chains and the rumble of a half-empty jolt-wagon bed. I crouched, hardly breathing, until I heard the wagon stop briefly at our sagging gate--we always kept it closed now--heard the rusty hinges squeak and then the friendly thump, thumptey, thump of the wagon as it resumed its progress into the yard. "It's Uncle Bill, ain't it, Maw?" I pleaded. "Bill's not due till tomorrow, honey," she answered softly as she shaded her eyes against the moonlight. "No, it's...." "But it can't be," I sobbed. "He--the angels took him." "Not Josiah! Angels wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole, thank the dear just God," she chuckled. "He'll have a whole raft of packages after all this while." She started forward briskly. "I'll go help pack them in." "No, Maw! Don't leave--wait for me!" I screamed, plunging from bed and racing wildly after her receding back. I regained consciousness to find Aunt Ellen bathing my forehead with hot vinegar. Annette was sobbing. My face was badly cut--I still wear the scar--and the mirror was shattered in its frame. "Maw!" I struggled to get up. "She...." "I know," said Aunt Ellen in just the thread of a voice unused for years as her plump white hands continued to apply the compress. "I understand." When Uncle Bill arrived next morning there was a great to-do and the neighbors organized a search of the surrounding woods and the creek bottom. Of course they found nothing. I knew they wouldn't. Annette and Aunt Ellen knew they wouldn't. And I think Uncle Bill knew it too after he heard my story, although of course he wouldn't let on. The rest of them patted my head and said, "Too bad, poor boy. He's under an awful strain," when I tried to tell them. Several months later a woman's body was found in White River, full fifteen miles away. People said it must be grandmother, that she must have wandered that far before she died of exposure. Our aunts, uncles, cousins and nephews had a big funeral at the New Harmony Church over the hill.

West, Wallace - Listen, children ... listen!