The Box: Uncanny Stories Read online

  Vares’ face was drawn and pallid now. He stared intently at the older man.

  “What am I to do, my friend?” pleaded Gheria. “How am I to save her?”

  Vares had no answer.

  How long has she—been like this?” asked Vares. He could not remove his stricken gaze from the whiteness of Alexis’ face.

  “For many days,” said Gheria. “The retrogression has been constant.”

  Dr. Vares put down Alexis’ flaccid hand. “Why did you not tell me sooner?” he asked.

  “I thought the matter could be handled,” Gheria answered, faintly. “I know now that it—cannot.”

  Vares shuddered. “But, surely—” he began.

  “There is nothing left to be done,” said Gheria. “Everything has been tried, everything!” He stumbled to the window and stared out bleakly into the deepening night. “And now it comes again,” he murmured, “and we are helpless before it.”

  “Not helpless, Petre.” Vares forced a cheering smile to his lips and laid his hand upon the older man’s shoulder. “I will watch her tonight.”

  “It’s useless.”

  “Not at all, my friend,” said Vares, nervously. “And now you must sleep.”

  “I will not leave her,” said Gheria.

  “But you need rest.”

  “I cannot leave,” said Gheria. “I will not be separated from her.”

  Vares nodded. “Of course,” he said. “We will share the hours of watching then.”

  Gheria sighed. “We can try,” he said, but there was no sound of hope in his voice.

  Some twenty minutes later, he returned with an urn of steaming coffee which was barely possible to smell through the heavy mist of garlic fumes which hung in the air. Trudging to the bed, Gheria set down the tray. Dr. Vares had drawn a chair up beside the bed.

  “I’ll watch first,” he said. “You sleep, Petre.”

  “It would do no good to try,” said Gheria. He held a cup beneath the spigot and the coffee gurgled out like smoking ebony.

  “Thank you,” murmured Vares as the cup was handed to him. Gheria nodded once and drew himself a cupful before he sat.

  “I do not know what will happen to Solta if this creature is not destroyed,” he said. “The people are paralyzed by terror.”

  “Has it—been elsewhere in the village?” Vares asked him.

  Gheria sighed exhaustedly. “Why need it go elsewhere?” he said. “It is finding all it—craves within these walls.” He stared despondently at Alexis. “When we are gone,” he said, “it will go elsewhere. The people know that and are waiting for it.”

  Vares set down his cup and rubbed his eyes.

  “It seems impossible,” he said, “that we, practitioners of a science, should be unable to—”

  “What can science effect against it?” said Gheria. “Science which will not even admit its existence? We could bring, into this very room, the foremost scientists of the world and they would say—my friends, you have been deluded. There is no vampire. All is mere trickery.”

  Gheria stopped and looked intently at the younger man. He said, “Michael?”

  Vares’ breath was slow and heavy. Putting down his cup of untouched coffee, Gheria stood and moved to where Vares sat slumped in his chair. He pressed back an eyelid, looked down briefly at the sightless pupil, then withdrew his hand. The drug was quick, he thought. And most effective. Vares would be insensible for more than time enough.

  Moving to the closet, Gheria drew down his bag and carried it to the bed. He tore Alexis’s nightdress from her upper body and, within seconds, had drawn another syringe full of her blood; this would be the last withdrawal, fortunately. Staunching the wound, he took the syringe to Vares and emptied it into the young man’s mouth, smearing it across his lips and teeth.

  That done, he strode to the door and unlocked it. Returning to Vares, he raised and carried him into the hall. Karel would not awaken; a small amount of opiate in his food had seen to that. Gheria labored down the steps beneath the weight of Vares’ body. In the darkest corner of the cellar, a wooden casket waited for the younger man. There he would lie until the following morning when the distraught Dr. Petre Gheria would, with sudden inspiration, order Karel to search the attic and cellar on the remote, nay fantastic possibility that—

  Ten minutes later, Gheria was back in the bedroom checking Alexis’s pulse beat. It was active enough; she would survive. The pain and torturing horror she had undergone would be punishment enough for her. As for Vares—

  Dr. Gheria smiled in pleasure for the first time since Alexis and he had returned from Cluj at the end of the summer. Dear spirits in heaven, would it not be sheer enchantment to watch old Karel drive a stake through Michael Vares’ damned cuckolding heart!

  Pattern for

  Survival

  And they stood beneath the crystal towers, beneath the polished heights which, like scintillant mirrors, caught rosy sunset on their faces until their city was one vivid, coruscated blush.

  Ras slipped an arm about the waist of his beloved.

  “Happy?” he inquired, in a tender voice.

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed. “Here in our beautiful city where there is peace and happiness for all, how could I be anything but happy?”

  Sunset cast its roseate benediction upon their soft embrace.

  THE END

  The clatter ceased. His hands curled in like blossoms and his eyes fell shut. The prose was wine. It trickled on the taste buds of his mind, a dizzying potion. I’ve done it again, he recognized, by George in heaven, I’ve done it again.

  Satisfaction towed him out to sea. He went down for the third time beneath its happy drag. Surfacing then, reborn, he estimated wordage, addressed envelope, slid in manuscript, weighed total, affixed stamps and sealed. Another brief submergence in the waters of delight, then up withal and to the mailbox.

  It was almost twelve as Richard Allen Shaggley hobbled down the quiet street in his shabby overcoat. He had to hurry or he’d miss the pickup and he mustn’t do that. Ras and the City of Crystal was too superlative to wait another day. He wanted it to reach the editor immediately. It was a certain sale.

  Circuiting the giant, pipe-strewn hole (When, in the name of heaven would they finish repairing that blasted sewer?), he limped on hurriedly, envelope clutched in rigid fingers, heart a turmoil of vibration.

  Noon. He reached the mailbox and cast about anxious glances for the postman. No sign of him. A sigh of pleasure and relief escaped his chapped lips. Face aglow, Richard Allen Shaggley listened to the envelope thump gently on the bottom of the mailbox.

  The happy author shuffled off, coughing.

  Al’s legs were bothering him again. He shambled up the quiet street, teeth gritted slightly, leather sack pulling down his weary shoulder. Getting old, he thought, haven’t got the drive any more. Rheumatism in the legs. Bad; makes it hard to do the route.

  At twelve-fifteen, he reached the dark green mailbox and drew the keys from his pocket. Stooping, with a groan, he opened up the box and drew out its contents.

  A smiling eased his pain-tensed face; he nodded once. Another yarn by Shaggley. Probably be snatched up right away. The man could really write.

  Rising with a grunt, Al slid the envelope into his sack, relocked the mailbox, then trudged off, still smiling to himself. Makes a man proud, he thought, carrying his stories; even if my legs do hurt.

  Al was a Shaggley fan.

  When Rick arrived from lunch a little after three that afternoon, there was a note from his secretary on the desk.

  New ms. from Shaggley just arrived, it read. Beautiful job. Don’t forget R.A. wants to see it when you’re through. S.

  Delight cast illumination across the editor’s hatchet face. By George in heaven, this was manna from what had threatened to be a fruitless afternoon. Lips drawn back in what, for him, was smiling, he dropped into his leather chair, restrained emphatic finger twitchings for the blue pencil (No need of it for a Shaggley yarn!) a
nd plucked the envelope from the cracked glass surface of his desk. By George, a Shaggley story; what luck! R.A. would beam.

  He sank into the cushion, instantly absorbed in the opening nuance of the tale. A tremor of transport palsied outer sense. Breathless, he plunged on into the story depths. What balance, what delineation! How the man could write. Distractedly, he brushed plaster dust off his pinstripe sleeve.

  As he read, the wind picked up again, fluttering his straw-like hair, buffeting like tepid wings against his brow. Unconsciously, he raised his hand and traced a delicate finger along the scar which trailed like livid thread across his cheek and lower temple.

  The wind grew stronger. It moaned by pretzeled I-beams and scattered brown-edged papers on the soggy rug. Rick stirred restlessly and stabbed a glance at the gaping fissure in the wall (When, in the name of heaven, would they finish those repairs?), then returned, joy renewed, to Shaggley’s manuscript.

  Finishing at last, he fingered away a tear of bittersweetness and depressed an intercom key.

  “Another check for Shaggley,” he ordered, then tossed the snapped-off key across his shoulder.

  At three-thirty, he brought the manuscript to R.A.’s office and left it there.

  At four, the publisher laughed and cried over it, gnarled fingers rubbing at the scabrous bald patch on his head.

  Old hunchbacked Dick Allen set type for Shaggley’s story that very afternoon, vision blurred by happy tears beneath his eyeshade, liquid coughing unheard above the busy clatter of his machine.

  The story hit the stand a little after six. The scar-faced dealer shifted on his tired legs as he read it over six times before, reluctantly, offering it for sale.

  At half past six, the little bald-patched man came hobbling down the street. A hard day’s work, a well-earned rest, he thought, stopping at the corner newsstand for some reading matter.

  He gasped. By George in heaven, a new Shaggley story! What luck!

  The only copy, too. He left a quarter for the dealer who wasn’t there at the moment.

  He took the story home, shambling by skeletal ruins (strange, those burned buildings hadn’t been replaced yet), reading as he went.

  He finished the story before arriving home. Over supper, he read it once again, shaking his lumpy head at the marvel of its impact, the unbreakable magic of its workmanship. It inspires, he thought.

  But not tonight. Now was the time for putting things away: the cover on the typewriter, the shabby overcoat, threadbare pinstripe, eyeshade, mailman’s cap and leather sack all in their proper places.

  He was asleep by ten, dreaming about mushrooms. And, in the morning, wondering once again why those first observers had not described the cloud as more like a toadstool.

  By six a.m. Shaggley, breakfasted, was at the typewriter.

  This is the story, he wrote, of how Ras met the beautiful priestess of Shahglee and she fell in love with him.

  Mute

  The man in the dark raincoat arrived in German Corners at two-thirty that Friday afternoon. He walked across the bus station to a counter behind which a plump, gray-haired woman was polishing glasses.

  “Please,” he said, “where might I find authority?”

  The woman peered through rimless glasses at him. She saw a man in his late thirties, a tall, good-looking man.

  “Authority?” she asked.

  “Yes—how do you say it? The constable? The—?”

  “Sheriff?”

  “Ah.” The man smiled. “Of course. The sheriff. Where might I find him?”

  After being directed, he walked out of the building into the overcast day. The threat of rain had been constant since he’d woken up that morning as the bus was pulling over the mountains into Casca Valley. The man drew up his collar, then slid both hands into the pockets of his raincoat and started briskly down Main Street.

  Really, he felt tremendously guilty for not having come sooner; but there was so much to do, so many problems to overcome with his own two children. Even knowing that something was wrong with Holger and Fanny, he’d been unable to get away from Germany until now—almost a year since they’d last heard from the Nielsens. It was a shame that Holger had chosen such an out-of-the-way place for his corner of the four-sided experiment.

  Professor Werner walked more quickly, anxious to find out what had happened to the Nielsens and their son. Their progress with the boy had been phenomenal—really an inspiration to them all. Although Werner felt, deep within himself, that something terrible had happened, he hoped they were all alive and well. Yet, if they were, how to account for the long silence?

  Werner shook his head worriedly. Could it have been the town? Elkenberg had been compelled to move several times in order to avoid the endless prying—sometimes innocent, more often malicious—into his work. Something similar might have happened to Nielsen. The workings of the small town composite mind could, sometimes, be a terrible thing.

  The sheriff’s office was in the middle of the next block. Werner strode more quickly along the narrow sidewalk, then pushed open the door and entered the large, warmly heated room.

  “Yes?” the sheriff asked, looking up from his desk.

  “I have come to inquire about a family,” Werner said, “the name of Nielsen.”

  Sheriff Harry Wheeler looked blankly at the tall man.

  Cora was pressing Paul’s trousers when the call came. Setting the iron on its stand, she walked across the kitchen and lifted the receiver from the wall telephone.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Cora, it’s me.”

  Her face tightened. “Is something wrong, Harry?”

  He was silent.

  “Harry?”

  “The one from Germany is here.”

  Cora stood motionless, staring at the calendar on the wall, the numbers blurred before her eyes.

  “Cora, did you hear me?”

  She swallowed dryly. “Yes.”

  “I—I have to bring him out to the house,” he said.

  She closed her eyes.

  “I know,” she murmured and hung up.

  Turning, she walked slowly to the window. It’s going to rain, she thought. Nature was setting the scene well.

  Abruptly, her eyes shut, her fingers drew in tautly, the nails digging at her palms.

  “No.” It was almost a gasp. “No.”

  After a few moments she opened her tear-glistening eyes and looked out fixedly at the road. She stood there numbly, thinking of the day the boy had come to her.

  If the house hadn’t burned in the middle of the night there might have been a chance. It was twenty-one miles from German Corners but the state highway ran fifteen of them and the last six—the six miles of dirt road that led north into the wood-sloped hills—might have been navigated had there been more time.

  As it happened, the house was a night-lashing sheet of flame before Bernhard Klaus saw it.

  Klaus and his family lived some five miles away on Skytouch Hill. He had gotten out of bed around one-thirty to get a drink of water. The window of the bathroom faced north and that was why, entering, Klaus saw the tiny flaring blaze out in the darkness.

  “Gott’n’immel!” He slung startled words together and was out of the room before he’d finished. He thumped heavily down the carpeted steps, then, feeling at the wall for guidance, hurried for the living room.

  “Fire at Nielsen house!” he gasped after agitated cranking had roused the night operator from her nap.

  The hour, the remoteness, and one more thing doomed the house. German Corners had no official fire brigade. The security of its brick and timbered dwellings depended on voluntary effort. In the town itself this posed no serious problem. It was different with those houses in the outlying areas.

  By the time Sheriff Wheeler had gathered five men and driven them to the fire in the ancient truck, the house was lost. While four of the six men pumped futile streams of water into the leaping, crackling inferno, Sheriff Wheeler and his deputy, Max Ederman, c
ircuited the house.

  There was no way in. They stood in back, raised arms warding off the singeing buffet of heat, grimacing at the blaze.

  “They’re done for!” Ederman yelled above the windswept roar.

  Sheriff Wheeler looked sick. “The boy,” he said but Ederman didn’t hear.

  Only a waterfall could have doused the burning of the old house. All the six men could do was prevent ignition of the woods that fringed the clearing. Their silent figures prowled the edges of the glowing aura, stamping out sparks, hosing out the occasional flare of bushes and tree foliage.

  They found the boy just as the eastern hill peaks were being edged with gray morning.

  Sheriff Wheeler was trying to get close enough to see into one of the side windows when he heard a shout. Turning, he ran towards the thick woods that sloped downwards a few dozen yards behind the house. Before he’d reached the underbrush, Tom Poulter emerged from them, his thin frame staggering beneath the weight of Paal Nielsen.

  “Where’d you find him?” Wheeler asked, grabbing the boy’s legs to ease weight from the older man’s back.

  “Down the hill,” Poulter gasped. “Lyin’ on the ground.”

  “Is he burned?”

  “Don’t look it. His pajamas ain’t touched.”

  “Give him here,” the sheriff said. He shifted Paal into his own strong arms and found two large, green-pupilled eyes staring blankly at him.

  “You’re awake,” he said, surprised.

  The boy kept staring at him without making a sound.

  “You all right, son?” Wheeler asked. It might have been a statue he held, Paal’s body was so inert, his expression so dumbly static.

  “Let’s get a blanket on him,” the sheriff muttered aside and started for the truck. As he walked he noticed how the boy stared at the burning house now, a look of masklike rigidity on his face.