Johnstone Lovecraft * Jesse Stuart * Wakefield

Hodgson
Over

★
*

the
Counselman

Long
EDGE

*
Brennan
*

N E W S T O R I E S OF
THE MACABRE
Jacobi

*
*

Pocsik
Howard

15 stories
never before
*

published
*

Bailey
Shea

★
*
Campbell

Edited by
Derleth

AUG U ST DERLETH
Metcalfe * Ashton Smith * Leiber
Here is a really outstanding new
collection of tales of the macabre and
the supernatural. And when we say
“new” we mean precisely that: not
one of the eighteen memorable
stories in this collection has been
published before, anywhere, in any
form. The collection includes tales by
many of the masters of the genre—
H. P. Lovecraft (author of The
Haunter in the Dark, At the Moun­
tains o f Madness), W. H. Hodgson
(author of The House on the Border­
land, The Ghost Pirates), John Met­
calfe (author of The Smoking Leg,
The Bad Lands), H. Russell Wakefield
(author of They Return at Evening,
Imagine a Man in a Box)', and at the
other end of the spectrum, there are
several exciting newcomers, two of
whom make their first appearance in
print in this volume.
The collection opens, most fittingly,
with Hodgson’s The Crew o f the
Lancing, a tale of the days of the great
sailing ships, and $f a« desperate en­
counter with a lost'Ship which has
been seized and manned by the de­
mons of the sea. This is a story which
might have been conceived by that
greatest master of them all, Edgar
Allan Poe; as indeed might the next
in the volume, Wakefield’s The Last
Meeting o f Two Old Friends, a tale of
a mass murderer, dead for a century’,
whose tomb is reopened in our own
time.
H. P. Lovecraft died in 1937, and
left a draft of the story which we
have here. It has now been com­
pleted by his old collaborator (and
[please turn to back flap

28/-
net
Over The Edge
e d i t e d by

AUGUST DERLETH

LONDON
V K . T O R ( . 0 1 LAND/. L T D
 Copyright 1964 by A ugust D erleth

Printed in Great Britain by

Lowe & Brydonc (Printers' Ltd., London
Contents
T he C rew of th f Dtncmg Will,am H ope H odgson 3

T he L ast M f e t in g of T wo O ld F riends ..................................

H. R u u d ! Wakefield IS
T he S hadow in th e A ttic H. P, L [Link]; 50
T he R enfc ad e ........... John M etcalfe 76
T old in the D esert Clark A Colon Smith 88
W hen th e R ains Ca m e Prank Belknap Long 96
T he B l u e F lam e of V engeance . Robert E. Haward 113
Crabcrass . . . . Jesse Stuart 13 5
K in c aid ' s C ar . . Carl Jacobi 142
T he Pa tc hw o r k Q uilt August Dcrleth 161
T he B l a c k G on do lier . . Fritz Leiber 174
T he O ld L ads ' s R oom ........./. Vernon Shea 211
T he N orth K n o ll Joseph Payne Brennan 219
T he H uaco of S enor P e r e z Alary Elizabeth Counselman 227
M r . A lucard . . .David A. Johnstone 247
C ast in g th e S to n e . John Pocsik 252
A n e a n o s h ia n . . .Michael Bailey 276
T he S t o n e on th e I sland .). Ramsey Campbell 283
OVER THE EDGE
 W illiam Hot F [Link] f 1fS-101 g ) was the son of an lrssex
clergyman He hit home early in his hie to spend eight tears at sea, an
experience which profoundly [Link] his writing career, for his best
macabre tales were about the >ca H;> first hook was The [Link] o f the
"GU’t C.i".: followed a tear later in T'OS - bv his finest novel,
The H u;e >: the B o The reception accorded these tales was
so encouraging that Hodgson in rapid succession wrote and published
The Gh. it Ptrjtt t. ;*•, Gi: : [Link]. 7 he S igh t Laud, Pot mi.
Men e f tee D u ? U uter;. [Link] o > : t The Lu.k c f the Strong, and
Cjpl.i.i: He was granted a c.-mnussmn in the f i s t Brigade of
Royal Field Art tiler*. when World War I broke out. distinguished him­
self for bracer,- a: Ypres and a;ter. and was killed bv a shell while on
duty as an observation otttcer Two collections of his verse. TIh Colling
o f the Sea and The I e »•? the 0.t.:<: were published posthumously.
This story is .-r.e three unpublished tales discovered by Hodgson's
late sister, and set.: to Arkharn House lor a further collection of Hodg­
son tales

The Crezv of the Lancing

W i l l i a m H o p e H o i k , so n

"Come out on dock arid have a ltxik, Darky," shouted Jepson,

rushing into the berth. "The Old Man says there's been a sub­
marine carthejuake and the sea's all babbling and muddy.
4 OVER THE EDGE

Out I ran to find the everlasting blue of the sea mottled with
splotches of a muddy hue, and the water disturbed by huge bub­
bles floating about and bursting with a hissing pop.
The skipper and the three Mates were all on the poop with
their glasses, staring out at this strange phenomenon. Far away
to windward something like a mass of seaweed hove up into the
evening air, and fell back into the sea with a sullen splash. Then
the tropical sun fell and in the afterglow things grew shadowy.
The wind which had been fresh during the day was gradually
dropping and the night was becoming oppressively hot.
The First Mate called to me from the poop to dip a bucket of
water and bring it to him. I did, and he put the thermometer into
it.
"Just as I thought,” he muttered, taking it out and showing it
to the Skipper. "Ninety-nine degrees! Why, the sea’s hot enough
to make tea with!”
"Flope it won't get any hotter,” growled the Captain. "W e
shall be boiled alive if it does.”
I took the bucket and, after emptying it, put it back in the
rack, then I w'ent to the side while the Skipper and the Mate
paced the poop together. The air grew hotter and hotter, and
an hour or so passed in silence, broken only by the pop of some
bursting gas bubble.
The moon rose and showed water)- through a warm fog of
vapour which had risen from the heated sea, enveloping the ship
in a moist shroud that penetrated to the skin.
Slowly the interminable night rolled away and the sun rose
dimly through the steam. From time to time we tested the tem­
perature, but found only a slight increase in heat. No work was
done. A general feeling of something impending was over the
whole ship. The ship’s bell was kept going constantly, while the
lookout-man peered uselessly into the wreathing mists, and the
 THE CREW OF THF L ln c in g •>

Captain and Mates kept an anxious watch.

There was evidently some difference of opinion amongst them
for I heard the Second Mate say. "That's all rot. I've seen things
in fogs before today and they've always turned out to be nothing.”
The Third Mate made some reply which I couldn't catch,
and the matter dropped.
When I came on deck at eight bells after a short sleep, the
steam still held us, and if anything it seemed thicker. Hansard,
who had been taking the temperature at intervals while I was
below, told me that it had gone up three degrees, and that the
Old Man was getting into a rare old state.
About three bells 1 went forrard to have a look over the bows.
As I leaned on the rail Stevenson, whose lookout it was. came
and stood by me.
"Rum go. this.” he grumbled.
Suddenly there appeared up out of the water a huge, black
face, like a monstrous caricature of a human face.
I grasped his arm and pointed. "Look! I whispered, "Look!”
Stevenson turned quickly and stared down. Lord” he said,
and bent over more to see the thing "It's a devil.” he cried, and
as he spoke the thing, whatever it was, disappeared. Blankly we
both looked down into the dark water. When I glanced up at
him, his face wore a puzzled, startled look.
Better go aft and tell the Old Man,” he said, and I nodded
and went.
On the poop I found the Skipper and First Mate pacing
moodily. To them I told what 1 had seen.
"Bosh!” sneered the Captain. ' you've been looking at your
own ugly reflection in the water.' Vet in spite of his sneers, he
questioned me, and finally the Mate went forrard himself to
have a look, but returned in a few minutes to say that he could
see nothing.
6 OVER THE EDGE

Four bells went, and we were relieved for tea. After that I
went on deck again, I found the men clustered together forrard.
They were talking about the thing Stevenson and I had seen.
Several questioned me, and I told them all 1 knew.
"I suppose, Darky,” said one of the older men, "it couldn’t by
any chance have been a reflection? Johnson, here, says as he heard
the Old Man tell yer as how you’d been alookin' at yer own face
in the water.”
I laughed. "Ask Stevenson,” I replied, and went away.
At eight bells 1 made my way aft. So far nothing further had ap­
peared.
About an hour before midnight the Mate called out for me to
bring him up a match to light his pipe. He struck a light and
handed me back the box, and as he did so, there rose far out in
the night, a muffled screaming, and then a clamour of hoarse
braying like an ass’s, only deeper, and with a horribly suggestive
human note ringing through it.
"Did you hear that, Darky?” asked the Mate sharply.
"Yes, sir,” I answered. I was listening intently for a repetition
of the sounds, and scarcely noticed his question. Suddenly the
noise came again and other voices took it up. It sounded away
on our starboard bow. The Mate's pipe dropped with a clatter
to the deck.
"Run forrard!” he shouted. "Quick now, and see if you can
see anything!”
I flew forrard, and there I found the lookout man and all the
watch gathered in a dump.
"Have you seen anything?" I called out as I reached the
fo’cas’le head.
A frightened voice answered me. "Listen!”
The sound rose again. It seemed closer and almost ahead,
 the crew of the Lancing 7

though the fog confused one and made it impossible to tell for
certain.
Undoubtedly the noises were nearer, and I hurried aft to the
Mate. I reported that there was nothing to be seen but that the
sounds seemed considerably closer and to come from more ahead.
On hearing this he told the helmsman to let the ship's head go
off a couple of points.
A minute later, a shrill screaming tore its way through the
mists, followed by the braying sounds again.
"It's close on the starboard bow,’’ muttered the Mate, as he
beckoned the helmsman to let her head go off a little more.
A minute passed and then another, yet the silence was un­
broken.
Then, overpoweringly, the sounds recommenced, and so close
were they that it seemed they must be right aboard of us.
I noticed a strange booming note that mingled with the
asinine brays, and once or twice there came a sound which can
only be described as a sort of "gug, gug, gug.” Then would come
a wheezy whistling, for all the world like an asthmatic person
breathing.
The moon shone dimly through the steam which seemed to
me somewhat thinner. Once the Mate gripped my shoulder
tightly as the noises rose and fell. The sounds were coming from
right opposite us. I was staring hard into the gloom when I saw
something—something long and black, which was sliding past us
into the night. Out of it rose indistinct towers which gradually
resolved into masses of ropes and sails. Thus I saw' it, spectrally
and unreal.
"A Ship! It’s a ship!’’ I cried, excitedly. I turned to Mister
Grey. He too had seen something and was staring after the thing
fading away into our wake.
8 OVER THE EDGE

Then our sails gave a sudden slat and the Mate glanced aloft.
"W ind’s dropping," he growled, savagely. "W e shall never get
out of this infernal place at this rate."
Gradually the wind fell until not a breath stirred, and the
steamy mists closed in thicker than ever.
Hours passed. The watch was relieved and I went below.
At seven bells we were called again. As I went along the deck
to the galley, I noticed that the steam-fog was much thinner,
and the air felt cooler.
At eight bells I went on deck to relieve Hansard at coiling
down the ropes. From him I learned that the steam had started
to dear about four bells, and the temperature of the sea had fallen
ten degrees.
It must have been some half hour later that the dissolving
mists gave us a glimpse of the surrounding sea. It was still mot­
tled with darker patches but the bubbling and popping had
ceased. Such of the ocean as I coulc see had a peculiar desolate
aspect. At times a wusp of steam would float up from the nearer
sea and roll undulatingly across its silent surface until it w-as lost
in the vagueness that still held the horizon hidden. Here and
there columns of steam rose up in pillars of mist w hich gave me
the impression that the sea was hot in patches.
I crossed to the starboard side and looked over. It was the
same there. The sea preserved a forlorn, deserted look that im­
pressed me with a feeling of chilliness, though the air was quite
w’arm and muggy.
"Get me my glasses. Darky" I heard the Mate speak up on
the poop.
I ran to his berth and then up on the poop with them. He
walked aft to the taffrail and took a look astern. Here the mists
seemed to be gathered more thickly, though the water w>as much
heated thereabouts.
 THE CREW' OF THF L l ’U i r l g 9

I stayed up on the poop a minute looking in the same direc­

tion as the Mate. Presently something shadowy grew on my vi­
sion. Steadily 1 watched it until I distinctly saw the ghostly out­
line of a ship within the mists.
"See!" I cried, hut even as I spoke a lifting wreath of mist
had disclosed to view a great four-masted barque lying becalmed
with all sail set a tew hundred cards astern of us. Then the mist
fell again and the strange ship lav hidden.
The Mate was all excitement, taking quick jerky strides up
and down the poop, only to stop every few minutes to have an­
other peer through his glasses. Gradually, as the mists dispersed,
the vessel became more plainlv seen, and it was then we got an
inkling of the cause of those dreadful noises in the night.
For some time we watched her silently, the conviction growr-
ir.g on me that, in spite of the steam, I could distinguish some
sort of movement aboard her. In a little while the doubt became
a certainty, and also I could see, hazily, a continuous splashing
and churning of the water round about her hull.
Suddenly the Mate dropped the glasses from his eyes. "Fetch
me the speaking trumpet," he called quickly, without looking
round.
In a moment I was back with the instrument. He gave me his
glasses to hold while he raised the trumpet to his mouth and
sent a loud "Ship Ahoy" across the water to the stranger. We
waited intently for an answer.
A moment later came a deep hollow mutter out of the mist
that rose quickly into the asinine bellowing of the previous night.
Higher and louder druse the horrid sounds, and then they sank
and died away amongst the further mistiness.
At this unexpected answer to his hail the Mate stood amazed.
Now he turned sharply and told me to call the Old Man at once.
The watch had come aft, attracted by the noise, anil were
10 OVER THE EDGE

now climbing into the rigging to get a view over the stern. After
calling the Captain, I returned to the poop where I found the
Second and Third Mates standing by the First, all engaged in
trying to pierce the clouds of steam. A minute later the Skipper
appeared, carrying his telescope. The Mate gave him a short ac­
count of the state of affairs and handed him the trumpet. Put­
ting his telescope down, the Captain raised the trumpet to his
mouth and hailed the shadowy craft.
W e all listened breathlessly. Again came that distant mutter,
and again it rose into that ass-like bellow through which rang
that terrible, half human note, rising and falling in the dreadful
cadence.
The Skipper lowered the trumpet, and stood for a moment
with an expression of astonished horror on his face.
"Lord!" he exclaimed. "What an ungodly row!"
Suddenly the Third Mate, who had been spying through his
binoculars, broke the silence.
"Look!” he exclaimed. "There's a wind coming up astern."
At his words the Captain looked up quickly, and we all watched
the ruffling water.
"That packet yonder is bringing up the w ind with her," said
the Skipper. "She'll be alongside in a few minutes if this cat's-
paw lasts."
Some minutes passed and the bank of fog had come to within
a hundred yards of our tatfrail. The strange ship could be seen
distinctly just within the fringe of driving wisps. Then the wind
died away. A minute passed, then another, and the water became
faintly ruffled astern of us. At the same time the stranger vessel
neared us steadily. Quickly the seconds passed, and she was within
fifty yards; then the wind reached us and blew clammily through
our rigging. Our sails filled and we started to forge ahead. The
strange barque came on rapidly; she had the wind before us,
 THE CRFW OF THE Li fti ng 11

and consequently, had better way through the water.

Just as her bows came abreast of our quarter she yawed
sharply and came up into the wind with her sails all a-flutter.
I looked towards her wheel, but could see it only dimly through
the mistiness. Slowly she fell ott again and started to go through
the water
W'e, meanwhile, had gone ahead; but it was soon evident that
she was the better sailer, for she came up to us hand over fist.
The wind freshened and the fog began to clear quickly so that
each moment the detail of tier spars and cordage showed more
plainly.
The Skipper and the Mates were watching her closely through
their glasses when an almost simultaneous exclamation of fear
broke from them
"My God!"
Crawling about the decks now visible in the thinning mist,
were the most horrible creatures I had ever seen. In spite of their
unearthly strangeness I had a feeling that there was something
familiar about them Thev were like nothing so much as men.
They had bodies the shape of seals, but of a dead, unhealthily
white colour. The lower part ended in a sort of double curved
tail on which the;, had two long, snaky feelc-rs, and at the ends
a very human like hand with talons instead of nails—fearsome
parodies of humans.
Their faces, which, like their arm-tentacles, were black, were
the most grotesquely human things about them, and save that
the upper jaw shut into the lower—mucli after the manner of the
jaw of an octopus— I have seen men amongst certain tribes of
natives who had faces uncommonly like theirs; yet no native I
have ever seen could have given me the extraordinary feeling of
horror and revulsion that I experienced towards those brutal
looking creatures.

B
12 OVER THE EDGE

"What devilish beasts!" burst out the Captain in disgust.

He turned to look at the Mates and, as he did so, the expres­
sion on their faces told me that they had all realised what the
presence of those bestial looking brutes meant.
If, as was doubtless the case, these creatures had boarded this
vessel and destroyed the crew, what was to prevent them from
doing the same with us? W e were a smaller ship and a small
crew, and the more I thought about the matter the less I liked it.
Her name, L ancing, could be read easily on her bows with
the naked eye, while the lifebuoys and boats had the name
bracketed with Glasgow painted on them, showing that she hailed
from that port. At times the derelict would yaw wildly, thus loos­
ing so much ground that we were able to keep some distance
ahead of her.
Then, as we gazed at her, we noticed that there was some dis­
turbance aboard, and several of the creatures started to slide
down her side into the water.
The Mate pointed and called out excitedly.
"See! See! They’ve spotted us. They're coming after us!"
It was only too true. Scores of them were sliding into the sea,
letting themselves down with their long arm-tentacles. On they
came, slipping by scores into the water and swimming towards
us in great bodies. The ship was going some three knots an
hour, otherwdse they would have caught us in a very few min­
utes. As it was they came on, gaining slowly but surely, nearer
and nearer. Their long tentacle-like arms rose out of the water
in hundreds, and the foremost ones were already within a score
of yards of use before the Captain bethought himself to shout to
the Mates to fetch up the half dozen cutlasses comprising the
ship's armour)'. Then, turning to me, he bade me go below and
bring him the two revolvers out of the top drawer of his cabin
table, also a box of cartridges that was there.
 THE CREW OF THE L iflt.'n g 13

When 1 returned with the weapons he handed one to the

Mate, keeping the other himself. Meanwhile the pursuing crea­
tures were getting steadily closer, and soon half a dozen of the
leaders were right under our stern. Immediately the Captain
leaned over the rail and discharged the weapon amongst them;
but without apparently producing anv effect whatever. I think
he realised how puny and ineffectual all efforts against such an
enemy must be, for he did not even trouble to reload his pistol.
Some dozens of the brutes had reached us. and the arm tenta­
cle rose into the air and caught at the rail. I heard the Third
Mate scream suddenly as he was dragged violently against the
tatfrail. Seeing his danger. I snatched one of the cutlasses and
made a fierce ^ut at the thing that held him, severing it clean in
two. A gout of blood splashed me in the face, and the Third
staggered and fell to the deck. A dozen more of those grasping
arms rose and wavered but they seemed to be some yards astern.
A rapidly widening patch of clear water appeared between us
and the foremost of the monsters and I gave a crazy shout of
joy, for we were leaving them behind. The cause w-as soon ap­
parent; the wind, now that it had come, was freshening rapidly
and the ship was running some eight knots through the water.
A wav in our wake the barque was still yawing. Presently we
hauled up on the port tack and left the L am ing running away
to leeward, with her devilish crew of octopus-beasts aboard her.
The Third Mate was struggling to his feet with a dazed look.
Something fell from film as he rose and I stooped to pick it up.
It was the severed portion of the talon-like hand that had
gripped him.
• • •
Three weeks later we anchored off 'Frisco'. There the Captain
made a full report of the affair to the authorities with the result
that a gunboat was dispatched to investigate.
14 OVER THE EDGE

Six weeks later she returned to report she had been unable to
find any signs, either of the ship herself, or of the fearful crea­
tures that had attacked her. And since then nothing as far as I
know has ever been heard of the four-masted barque Lancing,
last seen by us in the possession of creatures which may be rightly
called the demons of the sea.
Whether she still floats occupied by her hellish crew, or whether
some storm has sent her to her last resting place beneath the
waves is purely a matter of conjecture. Perchance, on some dark,
fog-bound night, a ship in that wilderness of waters may hear
cries and sounds beyond those of the wailing of the winds. Then
let them look to it; for it may be that the demons of the sea are
near them.
 H. R l s se l l W a k e f i e l d i is the son ol Bishop Wake­
field of Birmingham. He vsas ctk& ated at Marlborough College and
Oxford L'mver'itv. where he took Second ( lass Honours in Modern
H istorv. He was tor a while secretary to Lord Nortlulitfe, in service in
be'th World Wars, and a writer ot tcleplavs tor the BBC. He is one
of the foremost hsing authors in the genie of the macjbre. He is the
author of rive outstanding collections of supernatural tales—They Re­
turn m Ei t O '.rc W"h : [Link] .1 [Link] m a Box, T he
Clock Si’: i t : Tin. i e. .S/[Link] "i 5e«. .’--three remarkable my stery
novels — : the Ei: Since. Bell of Suspicion. and Hostess to
Death—and two notable studies in criminology—Landru and The Green
B:c\c!e Case Mr Wakefield lives in London, where he continues to
write for the BBC. and is slowiv assembling another collection of his
excellent stories

The Last Meeting of Two

Old Friends
H R l s s l l l W a k efield

Repetition; of those ukose death is

piseed and uhose bonej are buried
Lt.'[Link] Tll.’S

Dtkellian came must abruptly and unexpectedly upon the

cemetery, for it had been entirely masked by the towering hulk
16 OVER THE EDGE

of a hospital, and he was so taken aback by the suddenness and

strangeness of the great, green vision set down in, yet rescued
from, the drab and turgid bowels of North Fulham, that he
stopped dead in his tracks for a moment before moving slowly
forward to the entrance arch on which was inscribed the legend
"1824.” As he passed through it and returned the salute of a
drowsy warden, he knew that, so deeply had that first view been
etched on his memory, that he would always be able to recall
it at will till his dying day. As he stood gazing around him he
felt, for some reason he could not in the least explain, highly
alert and "charged,” even a shade ill-at-ease. The great Death-
Place was, he roughly judged, about three-quarters of a mile in
length with a beam of some five hundred yards. It was an early
spring and the trees, in varying degrees of leaf, were already
combining to reveal a delicate blue-green shimmer. He was
standing at the head of the main axis which ran dead straight
to the south, through an avenue of horse-chestnuts for perhaps,
500 yards, when the tree-border gave place to some white struc­
tures, the nature of which distance and a thin mist rendered un­
certain. After glancing down the long vista for a few moments
he picked out, almost at the limit of vision, a figure looking toy-
soldier-size at that range. This pygmy person, male, he was pretty-
sure, was quite stationary and, it might have been supposed,
staring back at him; and so they remained for a few seconds, till
Dikelhan turned away and strolled back to Queen's Gate.
At the time of these events Victor Dikelhan had just cele­
brated his thirty-eighth birthday. He was the son of two pure-
blooded Armenians of distinguished lineage. His father had been
a partner in—and British Manager of— a huge Levantine Trad­
ing concern, who in his earl)- retirement settled permanently in
London, a city which suited his rather delicate constitution bet­
ter than any other. This was after a quarter of a century’s flaw-
 THE LAST MFFTINC. OF TWO Ol D FRIENDS 17

lcssly happy marriage to his darkly, lovely, aristocratic lady who

bore him this one child upon whom tiiev lavished all the pa­
rental fervour of their race. But during his first term at Balliol
both his parents perished in an aeroplane, which disappeared
without a trace between Athens and Rome. The psychic shock
which resulted, particularly the loss of his mother between whom
and himself the spiritual umbilical cord had never been severed,
permanentlv affected his character so that it became prema­
turely austere and, to a great extent, remained so. Thus, though
he was now a eery rub young man and by nature no celibate or
eremite, he forthwith put awav all childish things, which happily
brought him to concentrate on a great natural talent, amounting
perhaps—the question was debated by his peers—to genius. He
was bv right of birth an Inductive Historian, being possessed of
a most penetrating insight into such perennial arcana as the
Evolution of the Chinese Junk, the very odd literary sources of
Santa Teresa, the Tablets of Easter Island, and the Queens of
Heaven in Greek Mythology.
In attacking such problems lie was never dogmatic but al­
ways original, and cogent, and simple, which made the books
and lectures in which he recorded the fruits of his researches as
appealing to the educated public as to the critical expert. He was
a taut, nimble, rather swarthy person. His face was squareish,
plumpish, healthily sallow, and altogether dominated by a pair
of piercing black eves, alive with intelligence and sometimes
savage mockery. Though superficially anglicised, he was, just be­
low that surface, alien and un-Westcrn, physically and psychi­
cally. It must he mentioned that he was just beginning to collect
paunch and poundage, a pnxess he was resolute to resist, for he
knew that an Armenian of forty is only too likely to be "con­
temporary, as it were, with a Western European of sixty, and
that premature senility was one of his racial hazards to which he
18 OVER THE EDGE

had no intention of succumbing, rigid determinist though he

professed to be.
For fifteen years his headquarters and sally-port had been
All Souls College, Oxford, of which, of course, he was a Fellow,
and he had come to regard himself as a bachelor, presumably
confirmed—his occasional affairs with women having withered in
the bud—he was still so regarding himself when he met a Miss
Carlotta Gavin, who, coincidentally enough, until that moment,
had accepted with a small shrug of smiling resignment that she
was destined, if not to celibacy, certainly to spinsterhood, for she
had received no less than forty-five offers of marriage, many of
them from the most eligible young suitors in the land, all of
which she had unhesitatingly refused, and yet within two min­
utes of their meeting both had recognized, with solemn ecstacy,
that, de facto, at least, they were already inseparably one. Such
is the might and mysterious Drang of a flawless mutual affinity.
Carlotta was the daughter of a reasonably eccentric Irish noble­
man and an imperiously handsome Italian mother, and she her­
self was physically endowed enough to be the subject of a de­
tailed rhapsody, but this sombre narrative is no place for such
a paean. Suffice it to say that Celt and Latin had linked to breed
a curious masterpiece in ebony and scarlet, save for those great,
round hazel eyes, their expression meditating, a shade melan­
choly, entirely self-reliant, and occasionally blazinglv malevolent.
Technically she was neither "pretty” nor a beauty, but she pos­
sessed that so m eth in g which many times drove those who desired
her vainly to seek the Bottle or the Grave! She had an athlete's
body, an ardent, volatile temperament, reasonably well con­
trolled, and not for a second w as she anybody’s fool.
So, very soon, it was a long farewell to All Souls, and Dikel-
lian was more than ready for the change. An Armenian can read­
ily be an indomitable ascetic, lie can also be a formidable sybarite,
 the Cast meeting of two old friends 19

and Dikellian could he both He had already known ancestral

longings for a really superb abode on his oti n account, and now
he had to find one worthy of Carlotta, spacious and luxurious.
He wanted the Study of Studies, the Bedroom of Bedrooms, a
Lucullian cook, and, of course, money is the dowsing rod which
locates all such requisites, in this case a vast penthouse in Queen’s
Gate with a staggering rent and soon with appointments and
furnishings in perfect taste. The cook, too, a Mrs. Renton, a
widow of immense talent and fission-fussion temper—he found,
in fact, his Heart's Desire
And when he and Carlotta had been made (de jure) one it
was there that he and she. Arthur his valet, and Simone, her
maid, together with that most aware, beloved and happy bird,
Mick the Mynah, took up residence in the middle of March some
years ago.
During dinner he told Carlotta about the strange cemetery,
and she at once made an inspired suggestion.
"You are worrying about vour weight and so am I, for I want
you to—you ntu>!—live for a hundred years. You hate games, and
this cemetery sounds an excellent place in which to train—or
whatever vou like to call it, round and round the Stone Garden
and few to mock your humble toil, I imagine. W elle'’
"It's a sparkling idea," he replied, and turning to Arthur, who
was pouring some Montrachet into his glass, he exclaimed, "Get
out my Balliol blazer, my grey bags, and my least moth-devoured
sweater; I have need of them! I'll start tomorrow and keep it
up till I can look that weighing-machine full in the face without
a blush!”
And so it was; for after a hard morning's work and a light
lunch, he returned to the great Garden of Corruption in a
sartorial ensemble last worn at Easter Island. IH2-4," he thought,
as he passed through the arch, "It must have been right out in

B*
20 OVER THE EDGE

the country then, the nearest peopled place being Kensington

Village, two miles or so to the north-east.” Firstly, in duty bound,
he completed a fast circuit of the perimeter. It was, he found,
a slog of just about 2,500 yards and he encompassed it in a credi­
table thirty minutes. His pores responded well and when he
eased up, panting just a little, he felt a lighter and a better man.
Then he looked expertly about him and decided to examine
11lose wdiite structures, which he had noted on the previous eve­
ning, and strolled placidly down to them. He found they com­
prised a low arcade or colonnade, divided to right and left, which
first swung out to east and west and then curved back in pleasing
arcs to a domed chapel, flanked by what he judged to be the Ad­
ministrative Offices. The system was stucco on brick, and it was
in a poorish state of repair. In fact there were obvious signs that
renovation was in progress on the eastern arm. He climbed the
dozen steps which took him to the floor of that wing, and paced
slowly along it. There wrere narrow arches on both sides, about
every twenty yards, from which one could look out to right and
left upon masses of weathered, commemorative metal, perched
at varying angles above the teeming dead. It was rather dim in­
side there and would, he knew, always be so even on the bright­
est days, always somewhat sullen and uninviting. On the walls
were a few scattered, mostly battered, remnants of what must
once have been a plethora of memorial tablets. These referred
in most cases to " T h e Remains Interred B elow ," or some such
phrase; and soon he came upon some railings on the east side
across an archway. They were about four feet high and clearly
intended to prevent anybody, particularly children, from falling
through the arch. And with good reason, he soon realized, for he
found on inspection that there was a stark drop of fifteen feet
on to some stone steps leading steeply downwards. And now he
"got'' it. Down there must be the catacombs housing those de­
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 21

parted commemorated above. He'd investigate. So on reaching

the end of the wing, he made his way down and back to the
stone steps. ( He later discovered there were six of these descents,
three in each w ing). There were sixteen massive steps which, he
surmised, had been little trodden for many years, since, near the
bottom, the sprays trom two dense ivy bushes met across the way,
and he had to break through their barrier of leaves. Past it, he
felt rather isolated from the rest of the world, in a sort of
achieved Descensus Averni. At the bottom was a massive, open­
work, wrought iron door, held in place by a big rusty padlock.
He peered through the bars into a dim and uncertain beyond,
and his eyes presently ad lusting themselves to the murk, he
found himself facing a wooden-walled enclosure which, judging
from its shelves, had once held at least a dozen coffins. There
were none now. but there was one box lying in front of the en­
closure and almost blocking the passage-way. It was in a highly
indecorous state, its lid raised askew and some dubious material
protruding from its interior. What material? No amount of peer­
ing answered that question. A tart, rancid reek was coming from
its vicinity. He could now discern several other such enclosures,
family sepulchres quite obviously, some fully, some semi-occu-
pied, and he realized what had happened. When the cemetery
was first opened the Three-Handed-Mandarins ( Dikellian had
sporadic egalitarian leanings) had been persuaded, in the
cause of Conspicuous Waste, to buy space in the socially superior
catacombs, while the more polloi and impoverished persons
had to be content to await the Last Trump in the mould above.
These catacombs, the evidence of dates went to show, had been
closed about IK'D, when "House Full’ boards had had to be dis­
played. After that the only cenotaphic status symbol available
had been to build a sepulchre a b ov e ground. He had noticed a
number of these littered about, and time had revealed the
22 OVER THE EDGE

shocking jerry-building of most of them. But there were a few,

of the most massive and bulky proportions and vehement vul­
garity, which might last almost as long as time. These, no doubt,
contained the dust of most notable commercial dacoits. So that
petty problem was solved! He next turned his attention to the
lively design on the iron door. This was mainly an affair of s e r ­
pents, two vigorous specimens of which, B rillen schlan gen , in
spacial opposition, after chafing their clammy coils over much
of the sullen metal, came menacingly or matingly together near
the top. Fitted rather clumsily between them was an enigmatic
winged object, presumably a soul in process of ascent. Sup­
posedly, he thought, these reptiles were erotic symbols meant to
suggest the perennial buoyancy of Life itself as against all
Death’s individual conquests; though perhaps he w'as reading
into it more than its deviser had intended to convey; anyway it
was tolerably well conceived and executed, considering its pe­
riod. W ell, that was that, and after one more glance at the de­
plorable coffin, he began to ascend those unaccommodating
steps; how, he thought, they must have irked the coffin bearers!
As he breasted his way through the ivy barrier a cloud of small
black insects flew out at him and pounced on his face and neck,
nipping venomously. He drove them off, but they repeatedly re­
turned to the attack till he regained ground level. W hat now?
he asked himself uncertainly, as he breathed in the cool, clean
air. Then he frowned, for it suddenly came to him that, not long
before, his attention had been caught—or half caught—by some­
thing he had observed, but not, as it were, ab sorbed; its cerebral
penetration had been just insufficient. What had it been? The at­
tempt to remember was searing. W ith an effort he cleared his
head and waited for his memory to act. After a very long min­
ute it did so, and enormously to his relief, he "had" it. He re­
membered that, during his saunter down the arcade, his eye
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 23

had been alm ost caught by something which, as it were, his

clerkly su b-con sciou s had duly "signed for" and passed on to
that high level authority, his conscious, for consideration and
appropriate action. He climbed back to the arcade and retraced
his steps along it till he espied that thing cleaving to the brick.
As he did so he slackened his pace, for he had suddenly experi­
enced a sharp crisis of nerves. He had known such before, as,
for example, when he first saw Carlotta, and on other vector­
swinging occasions, occasions of urgencv—or augury—but why
came it now? Very odd! As he reached the thing he found it
was only a yard or two to the right of that entry to the catacombs
he had just visited. He fixed his gaze upon it in a prolonged, ap­
praising scrutiny. It was a bizarre, enigmatic object, apparently
a deeply corroded copper panel set in a stone frame which, in
turn, was held flush with the wall by an invisible agency. It was
some four feet high by two across and divided into three sec­
tions, the top and bottom about equalling in area the middle.
That corrosion had laid a most destructive and obscuring hand
upon it, colouring the once, doubtless, lovely chestnut into a
sour, verdigrisian, green, and the original smooth surface was
pock-marked to a diseased lunar look. Yet it was by no means
wholly ruined. For example, the top panel, the least affected,
showed in high relief the full face of a man pretty clearly de­
lineated. It was, he at once decided, an uningratiating counte­
nance. The hair was so flattened down upon the skull that it
resembled a cheap toupe. The brow was abnormally narrow,
the nose "beaky" and spread. The lips were over-full and thick
to caricature point. The expression on this disenchanting mask
w-as equally chilling, the mouth, he thought, suggesting it was
telling a very displeasing joke with glutinous relish, the eyes and
the rest of it being redolent of eager malice and vicious intent,
merciless and bestial. The portrayal was merciless, too, and quite
24 OVER THE EDGE

obviously high-voltage loathing had inspired its executant. The

big middle panel was dominated by one, clearly the same, per­
son, displayed full length in profile. The figure was crouching,
rather as a runner leans over his mark just before the starting
pistol sounds. Its guise was, however, far less innocent and sug­
gested stealthy motion in implacable pursuit of some prey
which, perhaps, was in fatal ignorance of its fearful peril and
that Death was on its trail. If moved Dikeilian more than he
cared to admit. "What's it all about?," he murmured in half-
mocking perplexity, only half, because from first to last he was
never quite candid with himself about his attitude towards that
plaque, which frailly contributed something to the obstinacy'
with which he devoted himself to it. He was never at psychic
peace with the thing. He now transferred his attention to the
bottom panel—to receive a total rebuff. It comprised merely some
lines of script, entirely illegible. The light in the arcade was al­
ways fickle owing to the capricious mode in which the sun's rays
w'ere filtered by the arches, and it was particularly so that after­
noon. Dikeilian tried a number of angles but the corrosion had
gone too far and he could de-cypher nothing. He decided that
only an expert photographer with a very good camera, after
some cunning de-corrosion, could possibly make anything of it.
But why bother about it at all? W ell, it was in its little way one
of the oddest things he’d ever seen adorning a cemetery, and he
detested being frustrated. All the same he was inclined to let the
thing drop, and thus undecided, he noted that someone was ap­
parently gazing back at him from the top of the steps. Dikeilian
was looking due north just to the west of that main axis, and
from the end of the arcade a path, with some seats, ran parallel
with that axis right to the railings. The figure filled in and thus
obscured only about half of the prospect, so Dikeilian sh o u ld
have been able to see at least the rows of young trees lining the
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 25

path on either side of that figure! Those little leafing trees—in­

stead of that sullen scarlet glare—and then he tripped on a loose
stone and glanced down for a moment. When he looked up
again that figure had disappeared and the view of path and trees
was "obeying the rules" once more. The light in such places cer­
tainly played tricks, he decided, as he started to stroll home­
wards in a somewhat irritable psychic state.
After dinner, while Carlotta studied with profound regret a
recently published report on the erotic vagaries of American fe­
males, Dikellian brooded, somewhat idle, on the afternoon's ex­
periences. Good food and a renowned vintage had induced a
mellow' mood. He d been absurdly melodramatic! That miser­
able tablet was just a little crank-product, such as no doubt all
big cemeteries could display; death made many people a little
mad—indeed it was remarkable that it didn't send every sane
person over sixty stark crazy. It would amuse him—very mildly—
to focus his small talent for investigation on this petty freak. He
w a n ted to, and it was vain to argue with such cerebral follies;
one cherished them or one didn't, that was all there was to it.
He yawned, and a picture formed itself upon his inner eye. Why
hadn't that scruffy coffin been removed? He was certain that its
deposit there had been unplanned. Could it be that the work­
men engaged in the clearance of the catacombs had started a
sort of Unofficial Strike and refused to continue handling it and
that no volunteering "scabs” had since been forthcoming? It
sounded ja r-fetch ed , but that had been true of many of his most
successful guesses. He scratched his neck and found several size­
able welts upon it. Why hadn't those tiny black devils attacked
him on the way d o w n ? Where had they been lurking? A certain
displeasing possibility occurred to him. He mentioned them to
Carlotta, who was somewhat concerned, "Your glands are up a
bit,” she said, and got busy with various germicides and medica-
26 OVER THE EDGE

ments. (Though it will not be mentioned again during the

course of this chronicle he was never free from irritation and
evidence of glandular poisoning. The insects concerned w ill be
referred to— with pertinence—o n ce again.)
So he returned to the cemetery on the following afternoon
and set forth on a sharp circuit which resulted, he was sure, in
some liquidated ounces and a charming sense of well-being. He
then wandered along to that section where the new arrivals were
being put to bed, a dismal amalgam of churned clay and decay­
ing wreaths. There he observed a solitary and elderly grave-dig­
ger plying his spade where many, many spades had been plied
before excavating holes for penurious cadavers. Down they go,
he thought, and rot and rot, but not for ever and a day; for up
they’ll come soon enough, a mingling of coffin debris and the
dust of worms, and then down will go their successors to the
same beds, like niggers in Brixton—and equally unsalubrious
and insanitary. He glanced at the Ancient who glanced back
at him—none too amicably. "Tell me, my good fellow,’’ he in-
auspiciously began—and was peremptorily interrupted. "I am not
your 'good fellow’, or any other patronishing cliche. My name
is Joshua Van Rendel. You can call me ’Van Render or ’Josh’.
You may not address me in any other manner." The voice was
rustily ’educated’ as though, like its owner, it had come down
in the world. Dikellian fancied he recognized the forcible-feeble,
low flash-point testiness of the declasse. But it sounded a good
deal more forcible than feeble.
"I’ll call you 'Van Rendel’," he laughed.
"You’re doubtless surprised," remarked the other, "that one
who was—technically—educated at Eton and Magdalen should
be pursuing so little esteemed a career in this pestilential ex­
cavation. No duobt the hushed suggestion 'Drink' at o n c e oc­
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 27

curs to you; and how right you are! Why I took to the Flagons
—there [Link] a reason—is no concern of yours. Anyway it's just
one of those conventional cautionary chronicles. And now I'm
old, and old age, as someone truly said, is like being flayed alive.”
"W ell, you look fit enough,” said Dikellian, recognizing he
thought, the defensive rhetoric of the self-destructive person, at
once boring and pathetic.
"And what’s your business?,” asked the Ancient. "I can see
you're after something, or you wouldn't have bothered with the
likes of me."
"I’m a historian by profession,” replied Dikellian rather
lamely, "and always interested in places like this which are, in
a way, historical documents.”
"You may be right, but I doubt if you find much material here.
One sportsman buried three young wives in ten years. All were
’young and faithful' he says on the stone! Whether his beard was
blue isn't stated. Then there are a lot of actors 'resting' here.
But I fancy something in particular caught, your expert eye?”
"Yes, you're right. As I was strolling along the eastern wing
of the arcade I noticed an oddish tablet on the wall, a biggish
green one. Actually it's heavily corroded copper—you know the
one?"
The old man leaned on his spade.
"Yep,” he replied slowly, "and I'd have had some ten-to-one
on it! By the wav. didn’t you notice you weren't supposed to
enter that sector? Didn't you see it was barricaded?”
"It certainly wasn’t! I noticed a couple of planks on the
ground, that was all!"
"That's typical of those lousy contractor’s sleep-walkers; Po-
lacks. Pats and Blacks, m ost of em, and dead-beats all of em.
They sh ou ld have blocked it up, but they never do a 'should'."
28 OVER THE EDGE

"But why shouldn't one go there?,’’ Dikeilian demanded. "Is

it in a dangerous condition? It doesn't look it.’’
"I’m not in a position to answer that question. It’s enough
that you're not a llo w ed in there. It was all walled-up until Herr
Adolphus Schnickelwurster lost patience with it.”
"Oh, n o w I understand—it was bombed,” exclaimed Dikeilian,
"but even so, why is that particular stretch, only 30 yards,
out-of-bounds? I’m baffled.’’
"That’s often the way with historians!,” smirked the Ancient,
"isn’t it? All right; I see I’ll have to tell you something-—just to
get rid of you. W ell, it’s all on account of that bloody tablet.
When I first came here, thirty-two years ago, a grimy, fag-stained,
foreman’s finger was waggled at me and I was instructed, under
threat of the Leather-Funnel Ordeal, never to say a word about
that closed-in section.”
"But why?"
"Look here; were you proposing to donate me a Pourboire
or Trinkgeld?”
"Certainly not, for I'm sure you’d throw it back in my face."
"Try it and see!,’’ grinned the old man. "Try it with a brace
of half-crowns—that's four pints and you might hear something
you’d never hear otherwise!”
"W ell," grunted Dikeilian, fishing out a brace of half-crowns
and handing them over, "I hope I get my money’s worth.”
"You’ll have to chance that,” replied the Ancient spitting on
and pouching them. "See; co m p lete ly pleb!"
"Self-pity’s half your trouble," snapped Dikeilian. "Proceed
and earn your obols."
"Okay. W ell, the yarn is that once upon a time, say a hundred
and twenty years ago, there was a Jack the R oper living near
here in a big house, somewhere, I take it, about the top of Ful­
ham Palace Road. He was as rich as he was wicked, and he is
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 29
said to have forced his servants to waylay young birds, whom
he first knocked-off and then tortured to death. He was never
accused of any of his crimes, but after his death his servants
gave the show away and a number of bodies were found on his
estate.”
‘'\\vas he buried in the catacombs?"
"Yeah. However, the relatives of his victims were determined
to see some justice done, so they put up that tablet, though no
one can read what they inscribed on it. Long ago that section
was filled in. I understand it was considered 'unlucky’—and with
good reason. Along comes Adolphus and opens it up again. W ell,
believe it or not—it's still unlucky."
"How d you mean?"
"He was a middle-aged, rather a mouldy-looking bloke who
was writing a guide book to Kensington and its oddities. W ell,
h e took rather an interest in that tablet—like you. This was about
two years ago. One afternoon—lateish—a woman tending a grave
about twenty yards awav saw a man running down the arcade
away from the tablet. She thought someone was chasing him.
She told a warden, who found that historian lying dead at the
bottom of the steps leading down to an entrance to the cata­
combs. The cops had a suspect, but he also died a few days later.
That’s all!"
"Just worth five bob, perhaps,” said Dikellian, w'ho was ac­
tually extremely interested. "Who told you that story about the
murderer?"
"A queer old sod. He was over ninety when he conked-out
just before the war. His father had told him it. He said that as
long as he could remember, that section had been rumoured
about."
"W hat about that open coffin in the catacombs?,” asked Dikel­
lian.
30 OVER THE EDGE

"Ah, whipped up a springer there, haven’t you!,’’ replied the

Ancient after a perceptible pause, "you notice ev ery th in g .
"W ell, if I told you it was the Raper's I’d be merely guessing.
Some say it is, and that’s why no one’ll touch the ruddy thing
—that’s why it’s still there. Some lads are said to have got a big
scare when they got hold of it, dropped it, and ran like hares.
Died of blood poisoning. That’s 'aural tradition’, isn’t it.-' And
you don’t believe a word of it, do you?"
"Frankly, no. Aural tradition is nearly always at least fifty per
cent fiction.”
"Now listen, my erudite friend. I don’t believe in anything.
Or rather the things I believe in require no faith: pubs, pints,
police stations. Yet nowr I’m right away going to contradict my­
self and tell you that cemeteries, if this one’s anything to go by,
aren’t quite 'normal places' as the miners say. They seem to have
rules of their own,”
"Rules?,” queried Dikellian.
"Possibly not the right word. For one thing—well, when I was
at Eton we had to learn a poem by Tennyson, T h e Lady o f
Shalott, and it’s odd how one remembers things learnt at school,
better not sometimes! However there were some lines in it that
went—
'And moving thro’ a mirror clear,
That hung before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear
W ell, I’ve had that sort of experience in this dump. Shadows—
of what world? I’m not sure. Of course you don’t take me?”
”1 probably will. Goon.”
"Places like this are ex ceptions which neither prove nor dis­
prove any rule. And they’re all the more sticky for that—they
catch you with your b riefs d o w n . Now a good number of times
I've been in here alone after the mob's gone, finishing off a job.
 THE LAST MEETING OF TW O OLD FRIENDS 31
And I’ve seen someone— I think it’s always the sam e one. He's
always standing a fairish way otf and staring at me. He stands
and stares.”
"Someone who'd no business to be in here, you mean?”
"I couldn't tell you his business;” replied the Ancient tartly,
"but I can tell you this: suddenly you look up and there he is.
But there's something else: now when vou see someone in a look­
ing-glass, you see what s behind you, so if that person's in a chair
you s e e him in a chair in front of you and if there's a fire blaz­
ing beside him you see that. Our Alec in the Looking-Glass
brings his props with him and bloody odd props!”
"Yes," said Dikellian, a nerve beginning to shake in his fore­
head. "W ell?"
"I’m not going to say any more, I've forgotten how to express
myself properly. To you this great Golgotha, this seethe of
worms, is just a little sepulchral park. Don't be too sure! But I
can see you're getting bored—you've had enough of my burbling.
Perhaps you’re saying to yourself; 'it's not the d u m p that’s
queer but the boozy old dope who digs holes in it!' "
"Don’t be absurd,” said Dikellian sharply. "You’re no fool,
far from it! I've been following your train of thought closely,
but remember that to me this stone garden must seem just a re­
ceptacle for dead bodies.”
"Of course you’re right, it's just a last pull-up for stiffs.”
"I suppose you're being tremendously sarcastic?”
"I’m not! Now listen! Keep away from that mucking thing
on the wall. I mean that! It'll be closed up again one day—even
British contractors finish jobs in the end. I warn you not to go
bitching about with that bloody tablet any more. I know more
than I’m telling you and saying much more than I should. Now
that’s the lot, and I must get on with the job of digging the
temporary Final Resting-Place of an exiled Jugo-Slav, who’d
32 OVER THE EDCE

have led an easier life if he’d kissed Tito’s bottom with the cor­
rect assiduity and technique. And, brother, I don’t want to talk
to you again. Get that! I like you all right, but I’ve made my
bed and must lie in it. It’s just comfortable enough, but if I saw
more of you, I might find it a job to get to sleep. I don’t want to
meet recalling people. I don’t really belong to this world, and if
I’d had the guts, I’d have left it before now. But alky has lulled
me into letting Nature do the job. Now' give me your promise;
you won’t annoy me again?”
"Most readily,” replied Dikellian, "for I understand you. It’s
odd though; you've been trying to destroy yourself for years and
yet you’re enjoying a bronzed and beery old age!”
"That’s the way of the world,” laughed the Ancient. "But if
you cvant an old age of any brand, keep away from that bloody
tablet!” And he slammed in his spade.
Though Dikellian had no intention of heeding this counsel,
he by no means despised it. The old man was impressive in his
way and he had told him a highly kinetic legend, a kind of folk­
tale, with almost certainly so m eth in g of truth as its foundation.
There w e r e 'unlucky' places, he’d known several, though -what
exactly the epithet denoted it was impossible to say. And it was
a queer and suggestive fact that the cemetery authorities, stolid­
ity personified, no doubt, had kept, and intended to go on keep­
ing, that section walled-in. How, if the sinister legend of that
plaque were sheer fiction, could the justification for that enclo­
sure have arisen? It was indisputably a stark little enigma.
He %vas in no hurry to get home, so he made his meandering
way through the intricate maze of narrow paths which perme­
ated the middle section. One of the old man’s remarks recurred
to him " ’Shadow's of the world appear’, what world? I’m not
sure.” He th o u gh t he saw what he’d meant.
Once immersed on this baby jungle one w'as, he found, very
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 33

much on one's own for a few moments and so utterly outnum­

bered by its p erm a n en t denizens. One had invaded their domain,
penetrated their preserve, violated their privacy—and without
their permission. "Let the Dead bury their Dead," an odd re­
mark! What precisely did it mean? Was it an angular disparage­
ment of aged gravediggers? He was, he realized, talking non­
sense to himself, but slightly disconcerting things were happen­
ing; flocks of feeding birds kept springing fiercely up at his very
feet from die coarse turf round the rotting stones: they seemed
terrined, like game birds before the killers guns, and as though
they were mistaking him for another. What did he mean by that!
He paused at intervals to read the worn lettering on the
weathered stones, occasionally deciphering a name he recalled
as once of some ephemeral consequence. Some groups of graves
were hemmed in by morose and sinister rings of yews. One be­
came, he amusedlv granted, rather inclined to weary of, and
break away from, all this oppressive weight of dissolution, and
it might well be possible for one who was over vulnerable to
melancholy suggestion to imagine that he or she might be on
converging courses with some enigmatic stroller in the little
labyrinth. Placing lightly with this fancy, he found to his delec­
tation that on more than one, on at least three occasions he
confessed, just when rounding a bend, that he m igh t have sur­
rendered to the suspicion—had he been one of that susceptible
set—that a slippery, shadow figure had been just discernable for
an eye-flick, almost as though it had been trailing him, keep­
ing him under sly, hostile observation. Such, he wryly confessed,
was the influence, the spirit of such sorry acres, such, doubtless,
was, in the last analysis, the fo n s et o rig o of every ghost story
ever laboriously contrived. W ell, it was time to go home, and
then to his chagrin he quite lost his bearings for a while and
found himself back near the colonnade. However, after a few
34 OVER THE EDGE

more wrong turnings and one odd little incident, he found a

straight path back to the gateway, where a warden had been
watching him in, lie thought, rather a furtive way before quickly
averting his gaze. Just before passing him Dikellian glanced back
down the main pathway, and there, in the far distance, was a
tiny motionless figure, seemingly staring back at him. Good-
day,” he said to the warden as he turned on his heel, "Good-day,
sir,” replied that official still looking down at his boots.
hor the next three days Dikellian was extremely busy, and it
was not until late on the afternoon of the fourth that, after his
regulation high-speed circuit, he returned to the "site,” as he
now termed it. He had with him both a powerful torch and mag­
nifying glass. He had only just begun certain operations when
he became conscious of the increasingly loud sounding of a hand­
bell and for a moment he was a child again harkening hungrily
to the mouth-watering angelus of the Last of the Muffin Men.
Nothing so welcome now, rather, a moment later, some raucous
remonstrances from an extensive, rosy-visaged official in a palpably
piqued emotional state.
"Now then, sir,” he wailed, ”yer didn't ought to be there yer
know, don't yer!”
”1 know’ nothing of the sort!” exclaimed Dikellian, with over­
tones of choler in his voice. "W hy sh ou ldn't I be here? What law
forbids it?"
"I’m not saying nothin’ abaht no law ,” prudently puffed the
warden, "but as you can observe there’s some sort of a barrier
up there to keep the public out of that bit. I give you its a poor
job, becos the contractor's men are a lazy lot of black and dago
d o d gers. Still, them planks is at least a 'int and the Public should
take 'ints when they gets em!”
'I quite agree,” replied Dikellian smoothly, "but I did not
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 35

realize what those two very dirty and askew pieces of wood were
meant to convey. They, strike me as a very inadequate hint in­
deed. I merely happen to be a little bit interested in the green
tablet hanging up there.”
"W ell, sir,” said the official, still a bit querulously, "I consider
them planks is an 'int to them what knows ’ow to reckenize an
'int. They’re not there for no purpose; they’re put there as a
warnin’. Disregard that warnin' and you can’t squeal if you
suffers. As for that green object, so 'ave others taken a hinterest
in it—and wished they ’adn’t! It'll be a great blessin’ when those
lazy bastards have blocked it up again—for keeps this time! Then
the Public won't be nuisances no more. Its extryordinary how
pretty decent blokes go all bloodv-minded once they become part
of the Public. Now sir, you ’eard my bell, why d'you think I ring
it?”
"For a moment I imagined vou were a muffin-man.”
"Oh yer did! A muffin-man! You, a fine gent, thinks you can
take the mickv out of a mere working man! W ell, let me tell
}’e r --------------------------------- ”
Dikellian hurriedly fished in his trouser pockets and pro­
duced a brace of florins. The Official Eye fixed itself upon them.
"My dear Mr. ?”
"W artwallah's me name, ending with hay haitch. not h e hai,”
said that person as he gracefully pocketed the largesse.
"I didn’t mean to offend vou at all,” said Dikellian warmly,
"it’s just that it’s all so mysterious. You talk about people 'suffer­
ing'. I don’t get it!”
"I can understand that sir, I’ll just say this, I wouldn’t 'ang
about ’ere meself and I wouldn't let the wife and kids neither.
I aint allowed to say no more.”
"A ll right,” said Dikellian, who was fed to the marrow with
36 OVER THE EDGE

all this chain-rattling. "Now all I want is for you to allow me to

come here just th ree more times, all within the next ten days or
so, will you give me your permission?”
"W ell sir, it's not that I want to play 'copper’. I’ve no use for
coppers—who ’as? But I ’as me orders. ’Owsoever I'll say nothin'
against three times, but that must be your lot, and don’t give
me away for allowin’ it, and be careful, sir. It’s no place to fool
about at I can tell you!” And he departed southwards, tinkling
like a tin tabernacle.
These encounters irked Dikellian. All this minatory' head-
w'agging by local cognoscenti was familiar enough to him from
his travels—usually solemn warnings against quite non-existent
perils. And this time it had cost him nine shillings and rattled
his psyche sorely. He’d have liked to have seized both recipients
of his reluctant bounty and bashed their heads together. He was
in moderately high dudgeon. As he reached the steps which led
from the arcade to ground level he happened to glance back
down the way he had come. He frowned slightly, and then began
staring intently, for it seemed to him that there was someone
standing by the panel, and though of this he couldn’t be sure—
gazing in his direction. The light had begun to fade and really
all he could pick out definitely were the sense-data "Something
whiteish about five feet from the ground, and a subfuse area
beneath it,” which co u ld be interpreted—g esta lted —as "a very
short man in a dark suit.” And then he found himself completely
fooled, for, as he was still staring, the "data” dissolved into the
air, and he laughingly exclaimed to himself, "I’ve projected an
eidetic image, and I haven’t succeeded in doing that since I was
a small boy!”
When he reached the big arch, he glanced back and there,
just where the line of the arcade began, he spied—p r o je c te d
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 37

rather, he assured himself, a diminished version of that same

image.
"I'm in form tonight!" he told himself, and he also told Car-
lotta about it during dinner. She wasn’t amused or responsive.
"I think, darling, you spend too much time in that mouldering
place."
"But you suggested it!”
"I'm talking about this wretched tablet thing, surely its not
worthy of your brains?"
"W ell, I'm only paying about three more visits to it. It’s going
to be closed in again soon.”
"W hy?"
"I'm not quite sure."
"W ell, I'm very glad to hear it," rapped Carlotta, "I've been
feeling depressed lately and dreaming bad dreams."
"W hat sort of bad dreams?"
"Never mind,” said Carlotta slowly. "I want you to give up
going to that bloody tablet." (Everyone seems agreed about that
Dikellian told himself sourly.)
This troubling little talk, coming on top of his encounters in
the cemetery, made him exacerbated and on edge. But making
Carlotta unhappy was the unforgivable, intolerable wickedness
and folly (that sentiment is the sign manual of true love); so he
took her to Claridges for supper, where physical excellence and
aristocratic bearing aroused the usual admiration and feline
envy. But the charm didn’t quite work and he, too, slept fitfully
and dreamed ill.
He returned to the site the next afternoon. Already, perhaps,
conditioned by his critics and advisers, he approached it with
some slight revulsion. He had brought with him torch, magni-
fying glass, and a piece of red chalk. He flashed the torch on the
38 OVER THE EDGE

plaque from a number of fine angles eventually marking on the

ground the one which he deemed, in the conditions of light pre­
vailing about three o'clock that week in fine weather, best "threw
up” and disclosed the eroded lettering. The job was lightly ham­
pered by the fact that he was almost persuaded someone was
spying on him, but although he kept his eyes on the flicker, he
was unable to detect the sly observer. In fact he began to doubt
liis reality and to tell himself that it was merely tire always odd
lighting in the arcade which was creating this illusion and yet— !
W ell, ibis was the queer phenomenon: he would focus on some
object; a bay tree below to the left of him, the southern end of
the arcade, a tomb framed by an arch, and as he did so, he would
get the strongest impression that some fugitive entity slipped
away from that object just at the very moment he focussed on
it and before he could decide on its shape or any of its compo­
nents. Could it be some mischievous small boy? Could it be,
which seemed rather more probable, a defect in his vision? He
wore reading glasses for astigmatism; perhaps his sight had de­
teriorated slightly—he’d make a date with his oculist, he reluc­
tantly decided. Nothing is more disturbing, he told himself, than,
around middle age, to experience an entirely novel and unex­
plained physical sensation. It is like the Bell before the Last Lap.
It suggests coming ordeals, versatile derangements, and all the
strains that deteriorating flesh is heir to. But wasn’t thirty-eight
a shade early to expect or experience such changes of life! He
mocked at himself—you pathetic hypochondriac!—and then— as he
sa\v that figure standing there, he was reminded of what the An­
cient had said "Alec in the Looking Glass brings his props with
him!" He knew what he meant ("One for women to admire, in
his finery of fire ). "W ell,” he said to himself vaguely, "I’ll try
to make your acquaintance, my friend," and strode forward to­
wards that figure. But as he drew nearer that figure flickered,
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 39

became somehow less substantial, and as he drew nearer still it

merged wholly into the freckled air, into its background of foliage
and sky. Dikellian shook himself violently—came out from his
trance-state—and the thrush in the hornbeam was improvising bril­
liantly once again.
On the walk home he tested his vision in various modes and
found no flaw at all. so his spirits rose again, and even more so
when he had a sudden bright idea, at least he hoped it would
turn out to be bright. This concerned a certain Prof. Denys Cos-
grave, F.R.S., who had a chair at London University and owned
a world repute as the leading living authority on the decypher­
ing and exegesis of historical inscriptions, a highly specialized art
for which he possessed an immense flair. He was, in addition, an
archaeologist of high renown. He was still in his forties, and had
been at one time Dikellian's best friend, and though neither was
inclined to sentimentality in friendship, they had been—and
still were genuinely fond of each other. But Carlotta had
changed all that, that dose amity had "gone with a lass." She
had told Dikellian that Denys had fallen in love with her at first
sight— she knew all the classic and far too familiar and cloying
symptoms, and that if he went on seeing her, it would be incur­
able. It would be far far better if he didn’t see her again for a very
long time. Dikellian, most reluctantly, agreed, but how exceed­
ingly indecorous, how shaming and scudering that it must be
so! How anim al—how d o g g y ! That had been just twelve months
ago. It was, therefore, in a somewhat embarrassed tone that he
said to Carlotta at dinner. "Would you mind fr ig h tfu lly if I asked
Denys to lunch on Saturday?" There was a noticeable pause and
then Carlotta replied coolly—-"Oh no, why should I? But why do
you want him here?"
"Oh, just to help me with the inscription on that blasted panel.
It’ll be the last time, I promise."
40 OVER THE EDGE

"Go ahead,” said Carlotta smoothly, but she was a shade ir­
ritated with Victor. But then she remembered he was a marvel­
lous husband on the whole, and relented and smiled. If I d id
mind I shouldn’t say so. I'll give him a very good luncheon, poor
old thing!”
So Dikellian rang him up, found him in, and said rather hur­
riedly what ages it was since they’d met and so on and so on, and
promised good food and wine and a little puzzle -which might
amuse him.
"What does Carlotta think of this?” asked Cosgrave.
"She’ll be overjoyed to see you again."
"Very -well,” said Cosgrave rather heavily. "Give her my love.”
Dikellian didn’t visit the site on the next day as he had busi­
ness to attend to. He took Carlotta to a Menuhin concert in the
evening, then supper at the Ritz—and then came Saturday.
Denys arrived punctually at one o’clock. As fitted a member of
the best looking race in the world, he was still a young and bril­
liantly handsome man. Over a tall lithe, and powerful body was
a beautifully formed and balanced head, thick black hair, vehe­
mently modelled mouth and chin, and an immediately reassur­
ing expression, suggesting humour and humaneness, spirited and
spiritual. His voice had about three-sevenths of a brogue in it
which gave it character without monotony. All the same Dikel­
lian was chagrined to observe that Carlotta had done him no
good at all. Some virtue, some elan, seemed to have gone out of
him. For a moment Dikellian glanced at her almost with ani­
mosity, based on deep affection and sexual sympathy. She sus­
tained that glance and returned it unflinchingly, understanding
precisely its significance and inevitable ephemerality.
Cosgrave was everywhere recognised as a man of absolute in-
tegrity and honour, but his love for Carlotta was consuming and
demoralising him, and he knew himself he could never recover
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 4l

from it. Seeing her again, he knew ecstatically, he was doomed—

"Liebestod!" He did his best to be a cheerful guest and to enjoy
that Lucullian luncheon, but his profound malaise was only too
apparent. He ate lightly and drank rather heavily, not heeding
it much. To Carlotta he was charmingly, though vaguely,
friendly. So the meal was a sad one, for the triangle upon which
it was based was insoluble. Then at a quarter-to-three Dikellian
forced a smile and said, "Come along, Denys, and do your stuff!"
and a little later they were entering the cemetery.
"You may possibly have come to the premature conclusion
that I've brought you here on a fool's, or at least a s lee v e le ss er­
rand, but restrain your impatience." Denys made no reply, and
Dikellian was irritated and a shade dismayed to see that his ex­
pression had become 'tight' and tense. Was he a little drunk?
Dikellian presently took him by the arm and led him down those
same stone steps and asked him to observe what was within. He
had planned this as a small pleasantry. It didn't come off and he
knew that he should not have expected that it would. For after
Denys had glanced within, he retched violently and raced back
up the steps. When Dikellian himself regained ground level, he
found Denys panting heavily and slapping at his face and neck,
slapping at those little black devils which Dikellian had tempo­
rarily forgotten about. A moment later he was doing the same
as they settled on his half-healed sores.
"What an utterly foul place!" exclaimed Cosgrave with vio­
lence.
Dikellian kept his temper, "Surely not as bad as all that!"
he protested half smiling. "I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about
those little bastards; it quite slipped my mind." Cosgrave didn’t
reply, but to Dikellian's surprise, mounted the steps of the arcade,
hurried along it, and halted in front of the tablet.
"So this is it," he said harshly.
42 OVER THE EDGE

"Yes, but how did you know?”

"From your description, of course."
"But I didn't describe it. I merely spoke of a tablet.”
"Never mind,” said Cosgrave. "Tell me its history.” He
seemed much troubled in mind and was sweating profusely.
Dikellian told him, briefly but succinctly, though the whole
affair was beginning to go very sour on him. When he’d fin­
ished Cosgrave exclaimed, "How repulsive! Odious to the 9th
degree.”
"Oh, don’t take all so bloody seriously,” said Dikellian ex­
plosively. "A ll concerned are dust long ago, and it may be mostly
sheer fable!”
"What d’you want me to do precisely?”
"Decipher the words in the bottom panel, I found that red
mark seems to show the best angle in this light. Even if you can’t
read it, you may be able to say if it’s worth photographing.”
Cosgrave paced up and down for some moments, his gaze
hard on the plaque. Then he said, "Yes, you found the angle—
give me the emery paper.” Dikellian handed him a sheet and he
began rubbing the copper with vigorous, obviously calculated,
strokes, till he seemed satisfied. Then he went back to the chalk
mark and gave the plaque a long steady stare. "All right,” he
said. "Ready? Then take this down. 'Directly beneath this me­
morial lie the remains of the bestial and infamous assassin’— 1
can’t get his name— 'Passers by, pray for his eternal damnation.
But beware; de not linger here’. That's all, I’ll have a last try at
the name.” He had just began rubbing again when he stopped
abruptly. "Whose that?” he asked urgently, staring to his
right. Dikellian followed the direction of his gaze, but saw noth­
ing.
Oh, he replied lightly, "people naturally wonder what I’m
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 43

up to here and come and have a look. Actually 1 didn't see

that one.”
"Get out!” exclaimed Cosgrave harshly, still staring at the
same spot.
"Don't bother about him,” said Dikellian irritably, for he was
not at his ease. "I wonder they were ever allowed to inscribe such
invective in a public grave-yard. I suppose it shows what public
feeling must have been at the time. W ell. Denys, it was very
clever of you to read it off like that, but I wish we could get his
name.”
"I'm going now,” said Cosgrave with intensity. "This is no
place for a decent man, and it’s dangerous!”
"You’re in an odd mood, Denys,” said Dikellian, "I’ve never
known you to be like this before.”
"You don’t possess a faculty that I do!”
"W hat faculty?”
"It is 'sans nom’ but it is also infallible. It tells me that this
is an evil place for m e!" His face was set and sweat showing
thickly upon it. Suddenly he began to run down the arcade to
the north. Dikellian shrugged his shoulders and hurried after
him. He was very much perturbed by Denys’s behaviour. When
the latter reached the end of the arcade he swung to the right
and shouted out loudly something unintelligible, then he thrust
out violently with both arms, as though fighting off an adversary,
and disappeared. Dikellian following hard upon him, heard some
vague shouting, but saw Cosgrave no more. As he reached the
arch a warden was watching him, an odd look on his face. Dikel­
lian could not quite meet his eyes and walked home in a wicked
mood.
"D ’you think Denys was drunk?” he asked Carlotta.
"I think you were mad to ask him here! Of course he drank!

c
44 OVER THE EDGE

Why d’you ask?"

"He behaved very queerly."
"It's because he’s hopelessly in love with me!"
"Is he still? I thought he seemed a bit better —less keen."
"That’s what he wants you to think, but it isn’t so. I wish it
were! I warn you, in a way he bates you, Victor!
"Hates me!"
"I said in a way. You’re frightfully naive at times, darling.
Don’t ever have him here again. Falling in love for the first time
—so he says— and hopelessly—is the Devil and all his Angels for
a man of his temperament. Keep him away! Something might
happen if you don't."
"What d'you mean?"
"Oh shut up! Shut up!" she suddenly screamed. "Don’t make
me despise and loathe you!" and she ran from the room.
Dikellian felt a righteous wrath rising within him. This talk
of loathing and despising him! What had triggered all this? The
notion of being the innocent object of such violent and frenetic
emotions was utterly repugnant to him, a relapse into the Irra­
tional Primitive. Being assailed like this by Carlotta, who alone
made life worth enduring, and by his oldest friend, was simply
dumbfounding. He and Carlotta shared a silent meal, but not a
silent bed, for they lay miserably awake in sorry separate rooms.
The next morning he received the following communication.
"Victor, I have something of the utmost importance and ur­
gency to put before you. You must n e i e r n e v e r visit that foul
and lethal place again; it is a matter of Life or Death. You must
try to realize this, though in such matters you are grossly im-
percipient. The ’occult’, as I suppose you would term it, is alto­
g e t h e r evil. There are no g o o d spirits, no god, no hell, or heaven.
All such is wishful mythopaeia. There is no system governing
the shades, we are surrounded by, submerged in, inchoate evil.
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 45

The fact that you are innocent, that you are a tool who has done
nothing to deserve his fate, will not save you, it will make your
destruction more certain. W lnt you cannot realize, what seems
incredible, mere raving, to you would be revealed,—were the
aeons scrutinized and analysed, as almost a commonplace. Every
wicked idea or concept, once formed, is perennial and inde­
structibly possessed of an evil life of its own. Ever}- evil spirit has
an inherent tendency to realize itself, repeatedly and eternally,
in some physical form, some vulnerable person, whom it invades,
seizes, and compels to its will. It does so with irresistible powder
and by any means, however foul. Take that potent spirit com­
memorated on that tablet— " Dikellian ceased to read for a mo­
ment, Denys, he remembered, could command a decorative, if
rather characterless, script, but here he was employing a most
loutish scrawl, which now degenerated even further. With an
effort he read on. “Against whom might it feel a murderous hate?
Surely against you. Victor, who are prying into its secrets and
intending to reveal them to the world. T here is a motive for
your destruction! And how would it bring that about? Might it
not enter and seize upon the living body of one who wishes you
ill? Do you know of any such person, Victor? One who madly
covets, for example, something you possess, do you, Victor? One
who could only obtain possession of that something through your
death. Do you, Victor? Something exquisite, infinitely desirable.
Do you, Victor? I have said that this spirit is altogether evil. That
might not, in its own estimation, be so. During its carnal career
it killed, it seems, certain women. What sort of women? May
they not have been abandoned harlots, sowers of pestilence, far
better dead? Victor, I implore you not to continue with this
thing. That arcade is a place of terrible danger to you. It has
killed and it will kill again—if h e can! Soon it will be enclosed
and safe, cut off from the world again, perhaps for ever. Do not
46 OVER THE EDGE

visit it again! You are out of your depth, in contact with forces
you cannot comprehend or control. Why was that warning given
to you? How did those others die? Victor, do this last service for
me! Victor, remember this, whatever happens, I, the real I, w ill
always love you, and I blame you not at all. Superb good luck—-
I mean Carlotta—merits only praise. Victor, I know your im-
percipience, your doltish stubbornness, only too well. You may
think it to be a virtue. W ell it can be a fatal one and not only
for yourself. I have learnt much of this in the deeply significant
domain of dreams. W e two, Victor, are on converging courses to
mutual death. Disregard this warning and you will betray us
both, and it will be due to a fatal frailty of character. How and
why did those others perish! Heed me, I implore you, or we
shall all three of us suffer the ultimate agonv because . . ."
Thus did this astounding composition break off, un­
signed. Dikellian fluttered his hands in a Levantine mode and
for some moments his thoughts were inchoate. Denys was defi­
nitely unbalanced, was there anything he could do for him?
Partly, he thought, this was the perennial Celtic Cringe before
that ign is jatuus, the supernormal. The Irish were potentially
the most brilliant race in the world, but they were often near-
aborted by their credulity. W ell, this was no time for ruminating
racial dissection. This man had been his best friend. He believed
he'd understood him better than well. But this dreadful missive
shewed he had hardly known him at all. How little one really
knew of one's "Best Friends!" "Oh, yes, he's one of my 'best
friends’ and that’s all I know about him !” What was the matter
with Denys? Was it late-love and its agonising frustrations? Or
was it just growing old, the last change of Life? Or was it some
thing other? Dikellian shivered slightly and his lips moved. He
had his full share of am our p r o p re and he was little pleased at
those caustic references to his character flaws. All the same it was
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 47

a tribute to Denys's rhetoric that lie began a sharp inner debate

as to whether or not he m igh t take his advice. Had he, in fact,
been making a bit of a fool of himself and wasting his time? He
hadn t much more time to waste—how close that Winged Chariot
seemed at dejected moments, the Charioteer’s dark breath upon
his neck!
No, no, what nonsense! He'd been working hard and had spent
in reality a very very few hours on that trifling tablet. It was
most definitely a lively little puzzle and sui gen e ris in his ex­
perience. Anyhow he'd only one more visit to pay—his promise
to the warden held absolutely. Was there anything he could do
for Denys, anything better than a sympathetic, affectionate reply?
How odd that so tart a moralist should seem almost perversely
intent upon finding some excuse for tins de Sade of North Ful­
ham! He'd heard that Irishmen of a certain type had a most
frenetic loathing for strumpets, but being his B est Friend, he
naturally didn't know if Denys was one of them! Yet it was un­
expected to find him fabricating excuses for that reeking butcher.
"Pray for his eternal damnation!” That hadn't been devised in
the M id dle -Ages, but in the reign of Victoria, relatively the day
before yesterday; so it m u-t be a true story, and there had lived
and died this typical sex-slaughterer, this unspeakable rogue.
Yet Denys----------oh well!
The next morning was flawless and eager-aired and Dikellian
worked hard all through it preparing a lecture. At luncheon
Carlotta suddenly burst into a fury of tears.
"I’m terribly depressed, Victor," she cried. "I had a most
frightful night and most beastial dream. I saw you—I saw my­
self—no, I won’t say it, it was too foul."
"I apologize, my darling, profoundly for asking Denys here,”
said Dikellian emphatically, "it was a selfish and crass thing to
do."
48 OVER THE EDGE

"I loathe him,” said Carlotta, "he's d a n g ero u s!”

"Oh darling!”
"He is, I tell you! Don't go there again!”
"I swear to you this will be the very last time. I’ll never go
near the plaque again. Anyhow it will be enclosed any day now.”
"I’m thankful to hear it. I have a horror of it!” said Carlotta,
wiping her eyes. "Now please be back by five at the latest, or I’ll
start worrying.”
"I promise I w ill,” said Dikellian, know ing in his heart he was
being selfish again.
The splendour of the day had brought many visitors to the
great Garden of Death; some tending graves, some praying be­
side them, some drowsing on seats, some pacing the paths. But
they did not stroll the arcade, Dikellian noted again, no, not one,
by communal consent they shunned it. It was possible, he
thought, to explain that rationally, or to surmise fancifully. Yet
surely on that triumphant afternoon fear could be repelled and
mocked, the tabu defied, the Worm derided. Not so! W ildly
winging, fiercely singing birds were furiously pursuing their
procreant commerce, a myriad of fresh flowers were drinking in the
sun, Death itself, just for those few fleeting hours, seemed held
at easy bay by that intense creative surge. But no one strolled
the arcade. Not one!
As he climbed its steps Dikellian knew he had never seen that
morose parabola so cleansed by light, so, as it were, benign . Even
the Tablet, when he reached its ever-dim abode, seemed almost
reassuring. And this was the last time he'd thus come upon it—
always with that slight sense of tension. After glancing about
him for a while and then remembering his promise to Carlotta,
he took the emery paper from his pocket and began rubbing
with vigorous delicacy where that elusive name retained its se­
cret. And just at that moment a slow riding, very dense little
 THE LAST MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS 49

cloud, the vanguard of a great storm to be, passed across the

sun and a fierce gust of wind pulsed down the arcade.
Dikellian got out his torch and had just begun rubbing again
when he stopped abruptly, stiffened, and became inert. The
torch clattered, the emery paper fluttered, down. Then, very
very slowly he straightened himself and began turning his head,
trembling convulsively, and suddenly his virtue fell from him
for he was staring into the foully contorted and murderous mask
of Denys Cosgrave.
But he uttered no sound.
t • •

The passage of the little black cloud across the sun stirred
Carlotta from a haunted drowse. She shivered and her hazel eyes
became stretched and huge. Suddenly she dashed from the room
screaming, "He’s dead! He's dead!"
Simone came rushing down the passage to her crying, "What
is it, Madame! Oh Madame!" Carlotta threw open the front door
and seemed to fling herself forward as though at some adversary.
For a moment she struggled and writhed and then it seemed,
was hurled back, striking her head violently on the floor and
dying instantlv. There v. as the sound of confused shouting and
outcry and then the door slammed to. Mike the Mynah whistled
the first few bars of "L\i b ell G iom o/ ’ and then screamed stri­
dently, leaping hysterically up and down upon his p"rch.
 H oward P hillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) has achieved for all
time a place as a minor master of the macabre. Lovecraft was born in
and spent most of his life in and around Providence, Rhode Island, with
but brief excursions to older cities on the American continent, indulging
his taste for antiquities. Chronic illness in youth led him to omnivorous
reading, and his solitary nature directed him toward astronomy, amateur
press work, and an active imagination in the development of which he
sought to compensate his solitudes by the creation of a memorable
pantheon of mythical lands and beings. His crowning achievement was
the Cthulhu Mythos, to which a majority of his fictions belong. His
work has been collected into several volumes, notably The Outsider and
Others, Beyond the Wall o f Sleep, Marginalia, The Lurker at the
Threshold (with August Derleth), Something About Cats and Other
Pieces, The Survivor and Others (with August Derleth), The Shuttered
Room and Other Pieces, and Selected Letters, and recently the best of it
has been published in two companion volumes. The Dunuich Horror
and Other Stories, and At the Mountains o f Madness and Other Novels.
Lovecraft’s work has been widely published abroad.

in
H. P. L ovecraft *

I
My Great-uncle Uriah Garrison was not a man to cross—a
dark-faced, shaggy-browed man with wild black hair and a face
Completed by August Derleth.
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 51
that haunted my childhood dreams. I knew him only in those
early years. My father crossed him, and he died—strangely,
smothered in his bed a hundred miles from Arkham, where my
great-uncle lived. My Aunt Sophia condemned him, and she
died—tripped on a stair by nothing visible. How many others
might there have been? Who knows? Who could do more than
whisper fearfully of what dark powers were at Uriah Garrison’s
command?
And ot how much of what was said of him was superstitious
gossip, baseless, and malicious, none could say. We never saw
him again after my father's death, my mother hating her uncle
then and until the day she died, though she never forgot him.
Nor did I, either him or his gambrel-roofed house on Aylesbury
Street, in that part of Arkham south of the Miskatonic River,
not far from Hangman's Hill and its wooded graveyard. Indeed,
Hangman's Brook flowed through his grounds, wooded, too, like
the cemetery on the hill; I never forgot the shadowed house
where he lived alone and had someone in—by night—to keep his
house for him—the high-cc-ilinged rooms, the shunned attic
which no one entered by day and into which no one was per­
mitted, ever, to go with a lamp or light of any kind, the small-
paned windows that looked out upon the bushes and trees, the
fan-lit doors; it was the kind of house that could not fail to lay
its dark magic upon an impressionable young mind, and it did
upon mine, filling me with brooding fancies and, sometimes, ter­
rifying dreams, from which I started awake and fled to my
mother's side, and one memorable night lost my way and came
upon my great-uncle's housekeeper, with her strange emotion­
less, expressionless face—she stared at me and I at her, as across
unfathomable gulfs of space, before I turned and sped away,
spurred by new fear imposed upon those engendered in dreams.
I did not miss going there. There W’as no love lost between

c*
52 OVER THE EDGE

us, and there was little communication, though there were oc­
casions on which I was moved to send Uriah Garrison a short
greeting—the old man's birthday, or Christmas—to which he
never responded, which was as well.
It was, therefore, all the more surprising to me that I should
have inherited his property and a small competence at his
death, with no more annoying a provision but that I inhabit
the house for the summer months of the first year after his death;
he had known, clearly, that my teaching obligations would not
permit occupancy throughout the year.
It was not much to ask. I had no intention of keeping the
property. Arkham had even in those years begun to grow out­
ward along the Aylesbury Pike, and the city which had once
been so detached from my great-uncle’s home, was now pressing
close upon it, and the property would be a desirable acquisition
for someone. Arkham held no particular attraction for me,
though I was fascinated by the legends that haunted it, by its
clustering gambrel roofs, and the architectural ornamentation
of two centuries ago. This fascination did not run deep, and
Arkham as a permanent home did not appeal to me. But before
I could sell Uriah Garrison's house, it was necessary to occupy
it in accordance with the terms of his will.
In June of 192S, over my mother's protests and in spite of
her dark hints that Uriah Garrison had been peculiarly cursed
and abhorred, I took up my residence in the house on Aylesbury1
Street. It required little effort to do so, for the house had been
left furnished since my great-uncle s death in March of that year,
and someone, clearly, had kept it clean, as I saw' on my arrival
from Brattleboro. My great-uncle’s housekeeper had evidently
been instructed to continue her duties at least until my occu­
pancy.
But my great-uncle's lawyer—an ancient fellow who still af­
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 53

fected high collars and solemn black attire—knew nothing of any

arrangements Uriah Garrison had made, when I called upon
him to investigate the provisions of the will. "I’ve never been in
the house, Mr. Duncan," he said. "If he made arrangements to
have it kept clean, there must have been another key. I sent you
the one I had, as you know. There is no other, to my knowledge."
As tor the provisions of mv great-uncle’s w ill—these were bar­
renly simple. I was merely to occupy the house through the
months of June, July and August, or for ninety days following
my coming, if my teaching obligations made it impossible to take
up occupancy on the first of June. There were no other condi­
tions whatsoever, not even the ban on the attic room I had ex­
pected to see set down.
"You may find the neighbors a trifle unfriendly at first,” Mr.
Saltonstall went on. "Your great-uncle was a man of odd habits,
and he rebuffed the neighbors. I suppose he resented their mov­
ing into the neighborhood, and they for their part took umbrage
at his independence and made much of the fact that, because he
took walks into the cemeterv on Hangman’s Hill, he seemed to
prefer the company of the dead to that of the living."
As to what the old man had been like in his last years, about
which I asked,— "He was a lusty, vigorous old fellow, very tough,
actually,” answered Mr. Saltonstall, "but, as so often happens,
when his decline came, it came fast—he was dead in just one
week. Senility, the doctor said.”
"His mind.>" I asked.
Mr. Saltonstall smiled frostily. "W ell, now, Mr. Duncan, you
must know there was always some question about your uncle’s
mind. He had some very strange ideas which were, in a real
sense, archaic. This w'itchcraft exploration, for one thing—he
spent a good deal of money investigating the Salem trials. But
you'll find his library intact—and filled with books on the sub-
54 OVER THE EDGE

jcct. Other than this obsessive interest in one subject, he was

a coldly rational man—that describes him best. Unfriendly, and
holding himself aloof."
So Great-uncle Uriah Garrison had not changed in the years
that had intervened between my childhood and my late twenties.
And the house had not changed, either. It still had that air of
watchful waiting—like someone huddled together against the
weather, waiting for a stage-coach— nothing more recent, cer­
tainly, for the house was two hundred years old, and, though
well kept up, it had never been invaded by electricity and its
plumbing -was archaic. Apart from its appointments, and some
aspects of its finishing lumber, the house had no value—only the
property on which it stood had considerable monetary worth in
view of the expansion of Arkham along the Aylesbury Pike.
The furniture was in cherry and mahogany and black walnut,
and I more than half suspected that if Rhoda^m y fiancee, saw
it, she would want to keep it for our own house when we built
one—and, what with the money the sale of the property and the
furniture might realize, we should be able to build that house,
leaving my salary as an English Department assistant and hers
as an instructor in philology and archaeology to keep it up.
Three months’ time was net long to do without electricity, and
I could endure the ancient plumbing for those weeks, but I de­
cided forthwith that I could not do without a telephone; so I
drove into Arkham and ordered a telephone installed without
delay. W hile I was in the business section, I stopped in at the
telegraph office on Church Street and sent wires to both my
mother and Rhoda, assuring them of my arrival and inviting
Rhoda, at her leisure, to drive around and inspect my newly ac­
quired property. I stopped long enough, too, for a good meal at
one of the restaurants, bought a few necessary provisions for
breakfast—however little inclined I might be toward building a
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 55

fire in the old iron range in the kitchen—and went hack fortified
against hunger for the remainder of that day.
I had brought with me various books and papers necessary to
the doctoral dissertation on which I was at work, and I knew
that the shelves of the library of Miskatonic University, scarcely
a mile from the house, would offer me all the additional assist­
ance I might need: Thomas Hardy and the Wessex country hardly
constituted a subject so obscure as to make necessary application
to the Widener or some more expanded college library. So to
that work I set myself until mid-evening of my first day in Uriah
Garrison's old house, when, being tired. I went to bed in what
had been my great-uncle's room on the second floor rather than
in the guest-room on the ground floor.

II
Rhoda surprised me by coming to visit late the following day.
She arrived without any prior notice, driving her own roadster.
Rhoda Prenri-s. It was, actually, a ridiculously prim name for
such a livelv young ladv, one so filled with excitement and so
vigorously alive. I failed to hear her drive in, and was not aware
of her until she opened the front door of the house and called
out. "Adair,.' Are you home.'”
I bounded out of the study where I was at work—by lamp­
light, for the dav was dark and louring with squalls—and there
she stood, with her shoulder-length ash-blonde hair damp with
raindrops, and her thin-lips parted, and her candid blue eyes
taking in what she could see of the house with lively curiosity.
But when I took her in my arms, a faint tremor ran through
her body.
"How can you bear three months in this house?” she cried.
"It was made for doctoral dissertations," I said. "There's
nothing here to disturb me.’1
56 OVER THE EDGE

"The whole house disturbs me, Adam," she said with unac­
customed gravity. "Don't you feel anything wrong?”
"What was wrong about it is dead. That was my great-uncle.
When he was here, I admit, the house reeked of evil."
"And it still does.”
"If you believe in psychic residue.”
She might have said more, but I changed the subject.
"You’re just in time to drive into Arkham for dinner. There's
a quaint old-fashioned restaurant at the foot of French H ill.”
She said no more, however much, as I saw by the small frown
that held for a while, she was of a mind to say. And at dinner her
mood changed, she spoke of her work, of our plans, of herself
and of me, and we spent over two hours in the French House
before we returned to the house. It was only natural that she
should stay for the night, taking the guest room, which, being
below my own, enabled her simply to rap on the ceiling if she
wanted for anything, or if, as I put it, "the psychic residue
crowds you.”
Nevertheless, despite my jesting, I was aware from the mo­
ment of my fiancee's arrival of a kind of heightened awareness
in the house; it was as if the house had shaken off its indolence,
as if, suddenly, it had come upon need to be more alert, as if it
apprehended some danger to itself in somehow learning of my
intention to dispose of it to someone who would unfeelingly tear
it down. This feeling grew throughout the evening, and with it
a curious response that was basically sympathetic, unaccount­
ably. Yet, I suppose this should not have been so strange to me,
since any house slowly assumes an atmosphere, and one of two
centuries in age has undeniably more than a house less old. In­
deed, it was the great number of such houses that lent to Arkham
its chief distinction—not alone the architectural treasures, but
the atmosphere of the houses, the lore and legendry of human
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 57

lives come into being and spent in the relatively small confines
of the city.
And from that moment, too, I was aware of something on
another plane about the house—not that Rhoda’s intuitive re­
action to it had been communicated tea me, but simply that her
arrival spurred events, the first of which took place that very
night. I have thought afterward that Rhoda’s appearance on the
scene hastened the happenings that were bound to take place in
any event, but which would, in the normal course of circum­
stances, have taken place more insidiously.
W e went to bed late that night. For my part, I fell asleep in­
stantly, for the house was set well away from most of the city
traffic, and there was nothing in the house of those settling and
creaking noises so common to old houses. Below me, Rhoda still
moved restlessly about, and she was still up and around when I
drifted off.
It was sometime after midnight when I -was awakened.
I lay for a few seconds growing to full wakefulness. What was
it that had awakened me? A sound of breathing not my own?
A nearby presence? Some-tiling cn my bed? Or all these things
together?
I thrust forth a hand and encountered, unmistakably, a
woman's naked breast! And at the same moment I was aware of
her hot. fervid breath—and then, instantaneously, she was gone,
the bed lightened, I felt, rather than heard, her movement to­
ward the door of the bedroom.
Fully awake now, I thrust back the light sheet covering me—
for the night was sultry and humid, and got out of bed. With
hands that trembled a little. I lit the lamp and stood there, un­
decided as to what to do. I was clad only in my shorts, and the
experience had unsettled me more than 1 cared to say.
I am ashamed to admit that I thought at first it had been
58 OVER THE EDGE

Rhoda—which was only evidence of the mental confusion the in­

cident had brought me to, for Rhoda was incapable of such an
act; had she wished to spend the night in my bed, she would
have said as much—she had done so before this. Further, the
breast I had touched was not Rhoda's; her breasts svere firm,
beautifully rounded—and the breast of the woman who lay next
to me on my bed was flaccid, large nippled, and old. And the
effect of it, unlike Rhoda’s, was one of shuddering horror.
I took up the lamp and stepped outside my room, determined
to search the house. But at the moment of my entry into the hall
I heard, drifting down as if from somewhere outside, high up
over the house, the wailing and screaming of a woman’s voice,
the voice of a woman being punished—only a drift of sound that
grew more and more tenuous and was finally lost. It could not
have lasted thirty seconds in all, but it w as, in its way, as unmis­
takable as what I had felt beside me on my bed.
I stood, shaken—and in the end retreated to my bed and lav
sleepless for over an hour, waiting for what might happen.
Nothing did, and when at List I slept again, I had begun to
wonder whether I had not confused dream with reality.
But in the morning, the cloud on Rhoda’s face told me that
something was wrong. She had got up to prepare breakfast for
the two of us, and I came upon her in the kitchen.
Without a greeting, she turned and said, "There was a woman
in the house last night!’*
"Then it wasn’t a dream!’’ I cried.
"Who was she?" she demanded.
I shook my head. "I wish I could tell you."
"It seems to me an extraordinary thing to have a cleaning
woman in in the middle of the night," she went on.
"You saw her?"
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 59

"I saw her, yes. W hy?"

"What did she look like?”
She seemed to be a young woman—but I had a strange feel­
ing that she wasn t young at all. Her face was expressionless—
fixed. Only her eyes seemed to be alive."
"She saw you?"
"I don't think so."
"My great-uncle's cleaning woman!" I cried. "That’s who it
must ha%e been. I found the house clean when I came. You see
how clean it is. He must never have left orders for her not to
come again. I remember seeing her once when I was a child. He
always had her in at n ig h t. . ."
"How utterly ridiculous! Uriah Garrison died in March—over
three months ago. Onlv a cretin couldn't tell by this time that
he was no longer alive. Who pays her?"
Who. indeed? I could not answer.
Furthermore, in the circumstances, 1 could not tell Rhoda of
my experience in the night. I could only assure her that I had
not seen a woman in the house since that night in my early years
when I had inadvertently caught a glimpse of the cleaning
woman at her work.
"I remember having the same impression, too— the expression­
lessness of her face," I said.
"Adam, that was twenty years ago— perhaps more,” Rhoda
pointed out. "It couldn’t be the same woman."
"I shouldn't think so. Still, I suppose it isn't impossible. And
in spite of what Mr. Saltonstall said, she must have a key."
"It simply doesn't make sense. And you've hardly been here
long enough to hire anyone yourself."
"I didn't."
"I believe it. You wouldn’t lift a finger to dust and if you were
60 OVER THE EDGE

drowning in it." She shrugged. "You’ll have to find out who she
is and put a stop to it. It won't do to have people gossiping, you
know."
On this note we sat down to breakfast, after which, I knew,
Rhoda intended to be on her way.
But the troubled frown remained on Rhoda’s forehead, and
she said very little during the meal, responding to my comments
with only the briefest of monosyllables, until at last she burst
forth with, "Oh, Adam—can't you f e e l it?”
"Feel what?"
"Something in this house wants you, Adam—I sense it. It’s
you the house wants.”
After my initial astonishment, I pointed out soberly that the
house was an inanimate object, I was to the best of my knowl­
edge the only living creature in it, exclusive of mice I may not
have seen or heard, and that the house could not want or not
want anything.
She was not convinced, and when, an hour later, she was ready
to leave, she said impulsively, "Adam come away with me— now."
"It would be folly to surrender a valuable property we can
both turn to good use simply to satisfy vour whim, Rhoda." I
answered.
"It’s more than a whim. Take care, Adam.”
On this note we parted, Rhoda promising to come again later
in the summer, and exacting my promise to write her faithfully.

Ill
The experience of that second night in the house stirred my
memory to thoughts of the sinister gloom that had pervaded the
house for me as a boy —gloom which radiated from my Great-
uncle Uriah’s forbidding countenance, and from the locked attic
room which no one dared enter, however often my great-uncle
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 61
went in and out of it. I suppose it was only natural that eventu­
ally I would think again of the challenge represented by the attic
room and would respond to it.
The rain of yesterday had given way to bright sunlight which
streamed into the house through the windows on the sunny side
and gave to it an air of genteel and mellow age, one far removed
from the sinister. It was such a day as to make all that was dark
and ominous seem very far away, and I did not hesitate to light
a lamp to dispel the darkness in the windowless attic and set out
forthwith for the top of the old house, carrying along all the keys
Mr. Saltonstall had surrendered to me.
None was necessary, however. The attic room was unlocked.
And empty, too, I thought, when I stepped into it. But not
quite. A single chair stood in the middle of that gabled room,
and on it lay a few' prosaic objects and one which could not be
so described— some woman's clothing—and a rubber mask—one
of that kind which moulds to the features of the wearer. I
crossed to it, astonished, and put the lamp down on the floor the
better to examine the things on the chair.
They were nothing more than what I had seen at a glance—
a common cotton house dress in a very old-fashioned square
print design, in various shades of grey—an apron—a pair of skin­
tight rubber gloves—elastic stockings—house slippers—and then
the mask, which, on examination, proved to be ordinary enough,
save for having hair attached to it—however unusual it was to
find it here. The clothinc could very likely have belonged to
Great-uncle Uriah's cleaning woman—it would have been like
him to let her use only the attic room in which to change. And
yet, of course, this did not ring true, considering the care he had
always taken to allow no one to enter that room but himself.
The mask could not be so readily explained. It was not at all
hardening, betokening long disuse; it had the softness and flexi­
62 OVER THE EDGE

bility of rubber that is being used, which was all the more mys­
tifying. Moreover, in common with all the rest of the house, the
attic was spotless.
Leaving the clothing undisturbed, I picked up the lamp again
and held it high. It was then that I saw the shadow, which lay
beyond my own, against the wall and sloping c e ilin g ^ a mon­
strous, misshapen, blackened area, as if some vast flame had flared
forth and burnt its image into the wood there. I stared at it for
some time before I realized that, however grotesque it was, it
bore a resemblance to a distorted human figure, though its head
— for it had a surmounting blob of shapelessnes that served it as
head—was horribly out of shape.
I walked over to examine it, but its outlines faded as I drew'
close. Yet, undeniably, it had the appearance of having been
burned into the w:ood by some searing blast. I moved back again,
toward the chair, and a trifle beyond it. The shadow bore the
appearance of having come from a blast of flame virtually at
floor level; its angle was odd and inexplicable. I turned, accord­
ingly, and tried to find the possible point from which whatever
had made this strange blemish on the wall and ceiling could
have come.
As I turned, the light fell upon the opposite side of the attic
room and disclosed, at the point I sought, an opening at the
juncture of the roof and the floor— for there was along this side
of the house no wall between floor and roof— an opening no
larger than that for a mouse, and I assumed instantly that it
was, indeed, a mouse-hole, and it did not attract my attention
for more than a second, but what was painted in garish red chalk
or nil all around it did—a sequence of curious angular lines,
which seemed to me completely unlike any geometrical designs
with which I wms familiar and which were arranged in such a
fashion as to make the mouse-hole seem their precise center. I
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 63

thought instantly of my great-uncle's absorption in witchcraft,

but no, these were not the familiar pentagrams and tetrahedrons
and circles associated with sorcery—rather their opposite.
I carried the lamp toward the painted lines and examined
them; up close, they were simple lines, no more—but from the
middle of the attic they had a strange kind of design, essentially
other-dimensional. I thought. There was no telling how long they
had been there, but they did not seem to be of recent origin—
that is, within the last three decades or so, and they might very
well have been a century old.
It was while I was pondering the meaning of the strange
shadow and the painted lines opposite it, that I began to grow
aware of a kind of tension in the attic; it was actually indescrib­
able; it felt—how curious it is to put it into words—as if the attic
w e r e h o ld i n g its breath.! I began to grow uneasy, as if not the at­
tic but I were under observation, and the flame on the wick wav­
ered and began to smoke, and the room, seemed to grow dark.
There was a moment that was as if the earth had taken a half
turn backward or something of that kind, and I had not gone
along with it but were suspended somewhere far out in space at
the instant before plunging into orbit of my own—and then the
moment passed, the earth resumed its regularity of turning, the
room lightened, the flame in the lamp steadied.
I left the attic in unseemly haste, with all the whispered lore
of my childhood pressing after me out of the store of memories.
I wiped away from my temples the fine beading of perspiration
which had gathered there, blew out the lamp, and started down
the narrow stairs, considerably shaken, though, by the time I
reached the ground floor I had regained my composure. Never­
theless, I was now a little less ready than I had been to brush
aside my fiancec-’s perturbation about the house in which I had
consented to spend the summer.
64 OVER THE EDGE

I pride myself on being a methodical man. In her lighter mo­

ments, Rhoda has referred to me as her "little pedant,’’— refer­
ring strictly, of course, to my concern with books and writers and
the circumstances of literature. Not that I mind. The truth, no
matter how it is put, is no less truth. Once recovered from my
momentarily frightening experience in the attic, following so
hard upon the events of the night, I resolved to get to the bot­
tom of the matter and uncover some tenable explanation for
what had happened in both instances. Had I, in fact, been in an
hallucinatory state on both occasions? Or had I not?
The cleaning woman obviously was the nearest point of de­
parture.
An immediate telephone call to Mr. Saltonstall, however,
only confirmed what he had said before—he knew of no clean­
ing woman, he had no knowledge that my great-uncle had ever
employed a housekeeper of any kind, and to the best of his know'l-
edge there was no other key to the house.
"But you do understand, Mr. Duncan." finished Mr. Salton­
stall, "that your great-uncle was a reclusive sort of man, secretive
almost to the point of fanaticism. What he did not wish others
to know, others did not know. But, if I may make a suggestion—
why not make inquiry among the neighbors? I’ve set foot in the
house only once or twice, and they've had it under daily observa­
tion for years. There isn’t much, you know, that neighbors don’t
find out."
I thanked him and rang off.
Approaching the neighbors, however, apart from a frontal at­
tack, represented a problem, for most of the houses in the area
were at more than lot-line distances from my great-uncle’s house.
The nearest house was two lots away, off to the left of my great-
uncle's ancient house; I had noticed very little sign of life about
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 65

it, but now that I peered from the windows, I saw someone in
a rocking-chair taking the sun on the porch of that house.
I pondered for a few minutes about my best approach, but I
could think of nothing but a direct question. So I walked out of
the house and down the lane to the house next door. As I turned
into the yard, I saw that the occupant of the chair was an old
man.
"Good morning, sir," I greeted him. "I wonder if you could
help me."
The old man stirred. "Who re you?"
I identified myself, which aroused an immediate responsive
interest. "Duncan, eh? Never heard the old man mention you.
But then, I never spoke with him more’n a dozen times. What
can I do for you?”
"I’m trying to find out how to reach my great-uncle’s cleaning
woman.”
He gave me a sharp glance out of suddenly narrowed eyes.
"Young fellow, I'd like to have known that myself—just out of
curiosity,” he said. "I never knew her to have any other place,”
"You've seen her come?”
"Never. Saw her through the windows at night.”
"You’ve seen her leave, then?”
"Never saw her come, never saw her leave. Neither did any­
body else. Never saw her by day, either. Maybe the old man kept
her there—but I wouldn't know where."
I was baffled. I thought briefly that the old man was being
deliberately obstructive, but no, his sincerity was self-evident. I
hardly knew what to say.
"That's not the only thing, Duncan. You seen the blue light
yet?”
"No.”
66 OVER THE EDGE

"You heard anything you couldn’t explain?"

1 hesitated.
The old man grinned. "I thought so. Old Garrison was up to
something. I wouldn't be surprised if he's still at it."
"My great-uncle died last March," I reminded him.
"You can’t prove it by me," he said. "Oh, I saw' a coffin car­
ried out of that house up to the cemetery on Hangman's H ill—
but that's as much as I know about it. I don't know who or what
was in the coffin.”
The old fellow went on in this vein until it was clear to me
that he knew nothing, no matter how much he suspected. He
gave me hints and innuendos, but nothing tangible, and the sum
of what he hinted was little more than what I had known my­
self—that my great-uncle kept to himself, that he was engaged in
some "hellish business," and that he was better dead than alive—
if in fact he were dead. He had concluded also that there was
something "-wrong” with my great-uncle's house. He did concede
that, left alone, he did not trouble the neighbors. And he had
been left strictly alone ever since old Mrs. Barton had gone to
his house and upbraided him for keeping a woman there— and
was found dead of a heart attack next morning at her home,
"scared to death, they said."
There was plainly no short-cut to information about my great-
uncle to be had; unlike the subject of my doctoral dissertation,
there were no references in libraries—other than my great-uncle’s
own, to which I repaired at once, only to find there an almost
solid array of books, both ancient and modern, on the subject of
sorcery and witchcraft and allied superstitions—the M alleus
Malefic arum, for example, and very' old books by Olaus Magnus,
Eunapius, de Rochas and others. Few titles meant anything to
me; I had never heard of Anania’s De Natura D aem on um or De
Vignate’s Quaestio d e Damns or Stampa's Vugu Satatiae.
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 67

It was evident that my great-uncle had read his books, for

they were marked up with annotations—principally cross-refer­
ences jotted down for his easy use. I had no difficulty reading
the often ancient printing, but it was all on related themes—my
great-uncle’s interest ran not only to the ordinary practises of
witchcraft and demonology, but to a persistent fascination with
succubi, the retention of the "essence” from one existence to an­
other—not, apparently, a reference to reincarnation, familiars,
the wreaking of vengeance by means of sorcery, incantations,
and the like.
I had no intention of studying the books, but I took time to
follow through some of his references on the "essence," and
found myself led from book to book from a discussion of the
"essence” or "soul" or "life-force,” as it was variously called,
through chapters on transmigration and possession, to a disserta­
tion on taking over a new body by driving out the life-force
■within and substituting one's own essence—the sort of rigmarole
which might conceivably have appealed to an aging man on
the threshold of death.
I was still at work among the books when Rhoda called from
Boston.
"Boston!" I was astonished. "You didn’t get very far."
"No," she said. "I just began to think about your great-uncle
and stopped off here at the Widener to look at some of their rare
books."
"Not on sorcery?" I hazarded a guc-ss.
"Yes. Adam, I think you ought to get out of that house.”
"And just throw a tidy little inheritance over my shoulder?
Not a chance."
"Please don't be stubborn. I’ve been doing some research. I
know' what a closed mind you have, but believe me," she said
earnestly, "your uncle was up to no good when he made that
68 OVER THE EDGE

stipulation. He wants you there for a definite reason. Are you all
right, Adam?"
"Perfectly."
"Has anything happened?"
I told her in detail what had taken place.
She listened in silence. When I had finished, she said again,
"I think you ought to leave, Adam."
As she spoke, I was conscious of a growing irritation with
her. Her possessiveness, her assumption of the right to tell me
what I ought to do— which did, certainly, postulate her convic­
tion of knowing better than I what served my welfare, angered
me.
"I’m staying, Rhoda,” I said.
"Don’t you see, Adam—that shadow in the attic—some mon­
strous thing came in by way of that hole and blasted that shadow
there,” she said.
I’m afraid I laughed. "I've always said women simply aren't
rational creatures.”
"Adam—this isn’t a man-woman thing. I'm scared.”
"Come back," I said. "I'll protect you."
Resigned, she rang off.

IV
That night was memorable for what I chose then to believe
pure hallucination. It began, literally, with a step on the stair
some time after I had gone to bed. I listened for a moment, to
hear it again; then I slipped out of bed, made my way in the
dark to the door, and opened it just enough to enable me to look
out.
The cleaning woman had just passed my door, bound for the
ground lloor. I backed into my room at once, fumbled my way to
my dressing-gown in my bag—I had not had occasion to use it
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 69

before—and left myself out of the room, bent upon facing the
woman at her work,
I moved quietly in the darkness down the stairs, though the
dark was alleviated somewhat by the iridescence of moonlight
flowing into the house from outside. Not quite midway down, I
experienced that curious sensation I had known previously—of
being watched.
I turned.
There in the well of glowing darkness behind and a little
above me hung the spectral likeness of Great-uncle Uriah Gar­
rison—something as ephemeral as air—the heavy bearded face
distorted a little by the moonlight’s iridescence, the burning eyes,
the shock of touseled hair, the high bones of his cheeks with the
parchment skin tight over them—seen for an instant so, unmis­
takably—then it collapsed like a pricked balloon and vanished,
save for a thin, serpentine coil or rope of some dark substance
which seemed to flow' writhing and turning, down the stairs to
where I stood, until it, too, disappeared like smoke.
I stood frozen with terror until reason reasserted control. I
told myself I had had an hallucination of a kind not to be en­
tirely unexpected, in view of my concern during the day about
my great-uncle and his curious preoccupations, though I should
have thought this far more likely to have occurred in dream than
in a vision while awake. But at this moment, too, I questioned
the degree of my wakefulness. 1 had to think what I was doing
on the stairs, and remembered the cleaning woman. I had an
impulse to return to my room and go to sleep, but I would not.
I pulled myself together and went on.
There was a light in the kitchen—a lamp burning dimly and
low, by the glow of it. I crept silently toward the kitchen and
stood where I could look in.
The woman was there, cleaning, as always. Now was the time
70 OVER THE EDGE

to front her directly and demand an accounting of her presence.

But something held me where I was. Something about the
woman repelled me. Something other stirred my memories, and
I remembered that other woman I had seen there in the years of
my childhood. Slowly, certainly, I became aware that they were
one and the same; the woman's impassive, expressionless face
was unchanged over twenty years or more, her actions wrere me­
chanical, and she seemed even to be wearing the same clothing!
And intuitively I knew that this was the woman whose body
I had felt beside me on the bed in the night!
My reluctance to face her grew. But I forced myself to step
into the room just over the threshold, on the tip of my tongue
the demand for an accounting of her presence.
But no word left my lips. She turned and for but a brief few
moments our eyes met—and I looked into pools of glowing fire,
eyes that were hardly eyes at all but so much more—the epitome
of passion and hunger, the apex of evil, the embodiment of the
unknown. In every other respect the confrontation was no dif­
ferent from what it had been in the earlier years—she did not
move, her face save for her eyes remained expressionless. Then I
lowered my eyes, unable to gaze into hers any longer, and stepped
back across the threshold into the darkness behind me.
And fled up the stairs to my room, where I stood trembling,
my back to the door, my thoughts confused, for I knew that what
I had seen was something more than a woman, but I did not
know what, something in bondage to my dead uncle, something
bound to return night after night and perform these rites. Where
she came from remained unknown.
It was while I still stood there that I heard her once again on
the stairs, starting up from below. For a few moments I thought
her bound for my room— as once before—and I felt myself grow
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 71

cold with fear—but her steps carried her past, on to the stairs
that led to the attic.
As the sound of her steps receded, my courage returned, and,
emboldened, 1 opened the door and looked out.
All was in darkness. But no— up at the top of the stairs, out
from under the attic door, shone a blue glow.
Even as I mounted to the attic, the blue glow began to fade.
I stood with my ear pressed to the door, listening. There was
no sound.
Pressed by mounting courage, I threw open the door.
There was no sign of the woman. But over against the floor,
where the angle of the roof joined it, the blue light I had noticed
under the door was flowing out like water through the mouse-
hole there! And the painted lines all around the hole glowed as
with a light all their own, which faded even as I watched.
I lit a match and held it high.
The clothing the woman had worn lay as before, on the chair.
And the mask.
I crossed to the chair and touched the mask.
It was warm.
The match burned my ringers and went out.
All was now black as pitch. But from the direction of the
mouse-hole I felt such a drawing power as must I fling myself
on my knees and try to follow the blue light, if I did not at once
escape— a pulsing, sensate evil—and once again the earth seemed
to stop in its turning, there was a lurch in time, and a great cloud
of paralyzing fear enveloped me.
I stood as if transfixed.
Then, from the mouse-hole, a drift of blue light like smoke
came seeping into the attic. The sight of it burgeoning there
broke the spell that held me— I ran, crouching, to the door, and
72 OVER THE EDGE

flung myself out of the attic. I raced down the stairs to my room,
looking back as if I expected some eldritch thing to be hot on
my heels.
There was nothing but blackness, nothing but the dark.
I went into my room and threw myself upon the bed, fully
clothed, and there I lay, waiting apprehensively, for whatever
might come—knowing I should do as Rhoda had asked, yet cu­
riously reluctant to leave the house on Aylesbury Street—not be­
cause it was my inheritance, but for a frightening kind of bond­
age, almost kinship, that kept me there.
I waited in vain for even the ghost of a sound to disturb the
quiet. Nothing whatsoever came to ear but the natural sounds
the house made on a windy night, for a wind had come up— and
the occasional keening of a screech owl from the direction of
Hangman’s Hill.
And presently I slept, fully clothed as I was, and in my sleep
1 dreamed—dreamed that the blue light burgeoned and mush­
roomed into the attic, came flowing down the stairs and into the
room where I lay, and out of the mouse-hole at the apex of the
angle of roof and floor came to swell and grow the figures of the
cleaning woman, now' clad and rubber-masked, now- hideous with
age, now naked and beautiful as a young woman, and beside her
my Great-uncle Uriah Garrison, invading tire house and the
room and at last me—a dream from which I woke bathed in
perspiration on the edge of dawn which lay pale blue in the room
before it gave way to the roseate hue of the morning sky.
What kept me awake, exhausted as I was, was the pounding
at the outside door. I struggled to my feet and made my way to
the door.
Rhoda stood there.
"Adam!" she cried. "You look terrible.”
Go away,” I said. "W e don't need you.”
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC 73

I was momentarily shocked to b. u im (Jwn words, hut in a

few moments I was resigned to them, 1 began to understand that
I meant them, I resented Rhoda's interference—as if she thought
I could not take care of myself.
"So— I'm too late then," she said.
"Go away," I said again. "Just leave us alone."
She pushed past me and strode into the house. I went after
her. She was bound tor the study, and when she got there she
put together my notes and manuscript for my Hardy dissertation
and confronted me with them.
"You won’t need these any more, will you?” she asked.
"Take them," I said. "Take them all."
She took them. "Goodbye, Adam," she said.
"Goodbye, Rhoda,” I said.
I could hardly believe the evidence of my eyes, but Rhoda
went, as meek as any lamb. And though I was still vaguely trou­
bled by it, I was aware of a secret satisfaction at the way things
were turning out.
V
I spent most of the rest of that day just relaxing and, in a
sense, waiting upon the events of that night. It is impossible now
to describe my frame of mind. All fear had left me, and I was
consumed with a vivid curiosity, even with a kind of eagerness.
The day dragged. I slept through part of it. I ate very little.
My appetite now was for something no food could satisfy, and it
did not trouble me that this was so.
But the night and darkness came at last, and I set myself to
waiting with keen anticipation for whatever might come from
that room in the attic. I waited at first down stairs, but at last I
understood that it was the room above—my Great-uncle Uriah’s
old room—where I must wait upon the events of night in the
house; so I went there and sat in the darkness.
74 OVER THE EDGE

I waited while the nigh' grew older, hearing the old clock
downstairs strike the fours of nine and ten and eleven. I ex­
pected to hear, soon, the step of the woman on the stair, the
woman called Lilith, but it was the blue light that came first,
seeping in under the door—as in my dream.
But I was not sleeping, I was not dreaming.
The blue light came, filling the room, until I could just
faintly see the naked form of the woman and the shaping form
of Great-uncle Uriah looming up, with a writhing, twisting, ser­
pentine coil reaching out from where he was taking shape to
where I sat on the bed . . .
And then something more, something that filled me with
sudden terror. I smelled smoke—and I heard the crackling of
flames.
And from outside came Rhoda's voice calling, "Adam!
Adam!’’
The vision collapsed. The last thing I saw was the expres­
sion of terrible rage on my great-uncle’s spectral face, the fury
on the face of the woman changing in that light from that of a
lissome girl to that of an ancient hag. Then I flung myself to
the window and opened it.
"Rhoda!" I cried.
She had taken no chances. There was a ladder up against the
windowsill.
* # t

The house burned to the ground with everything in it.

Its burning did not affect my great-uncle's will. As Mr. Salton-
stall put it, I had been fulfilling his condition when circumstances
beyond my control made it impossible to continue. So I did in­
herit the property, and I sold it, and Rhoda and I were married.
In spite of her insistently feminine delusions.
"I set fire to it myself,” she said. She had spent the day after
 THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC. T>

she had left with my papers and hooks at the library of Miska-
tonic University, famed for its collection of arcane books, study­
ing witchcraft lore. She had concluded that the spirit animating
the house and responsible for the events in it was that of Great-
uncle Uriah Garrison, and that his sole reason for the condition
that I must live there was to place me within his reach so that
he could usurp my own life-force and take possession of my body.
The woman was a succubus, perhaps his mistress. The mouse-
hole obviously an opening into another dimension.
Trust a woman to construe some kind of romantic angle out
of even the most curious events. Succubus, indeed!
There are times even now when her notions affect me. From
time to time I find myself unsure of my own identity'. Am I Adam
Duncan or Uriah Garrison? It does no good to mention it to
Rhoda. I did so once and she said only, "It seems to have im­
proved you, Adam.”
Women are fundamentally not rational creatures. Nothing
will shake her free of her notions about the house on Aylesbury
Street. It annoys me that I find myself unable to come up with a
more rational explanation myself, one that will satisfy all the
questions that occur to me when I sit down and think about the
events in which I played such a small, if motivating, part.

D
 John M etcalfe (1891- ) belongs to that distinguished group
of British authors whose work in the genre of the macabre has set
such high standards for all who have followed them. Among his classic
tales in the genre are The Smoking Leg, The Bad Lands. Brenner's Boy,
The Feasting Dead, and many others. His published books—not limited
to the field of the uncanny—include Judas and Other Stories, The
Smoking Leg and Other Stories, Arm’s Length, Spring Darkness, Foster-
Girl, All Friends Are Strangers, and My Cousin Geoffrey. Mr. Metcalfe
now lives in New York, where he writes and teaches.

J ohn M etcalfe

Barbara St. John Cass used frequently to accompany her uncle,

Mr. Theodore St. John Cass, F. Z. S. (and a host of other letters)
to the Zoo. She liked the Zoo well enough, and Uncle Thedie
just well enough too, but she might probably not have gone
there with him quite so often had it not been tacitly assumed in
the Cass family that she was to be his heiress.
That she sh ou ld be his heiress was rendered urgently desir­
able by the low ebb, at present, of the Cass finances. Papa Cass—
a gaunt, low-slung, long-toothed man of sanguine complexion
 THE RENEGADE 77

and with a general unanalysable resemblance to a rocket—was

in poorish health and needed delicacies and more of what he
called 'purchasable refinement'. Night-work was telling on him,
he complained, and therefore also indirectly, on Mama. Old
Thedie was a rum'n and it was hard on Babs to have to suck up
to him as she did, but it would be worth it, for her and all of
them, in the end.
Uncle Thedie, when Barbara was ten, had returned from a
protracted sojourn in east Africa, and now that she was over
twenty, and an assistant librarian to boot, was still blethering
about salt-licks and drinking-pools and safaris. In London, how­
ever, he had become very respectable and unsafarilike, wearing,
on Sundays, a top hat and churchwardenish sort of overcoat even
at the Zoo. He had a big nose, little twinkling pig-eyes and a
trick of splaying out his elbows as if he were a frog, but belonged
to a number of those learned societies to membership of which
the lack of personal charm is not a bar. Barbara had attended
an exquisitely boring reception-dinner once whereat, in evening
dress, he had looked comically hideous enough to stop a clock
and made a lengthy speech, declaring, in preliminary, that "the
Pachydermata were his passion and eternal theme-song and the
rhinoceroses in particular his love-life.’’ The assembled savants
had politely tittered, but Barbara, who was a temperately-
minded maiden and abhorred exaggerations, had thought it
merely silly.
As for the Pachydermata, there were plenty of them, of course,
at the Zoo, and Barbara grew rather tired of always being lugged
by Uncle Thedie to their houses. Why not the monkeys, or lions,
for a change? she protested inwardly; but no, it must be those
old ever-lasting Pachyderms, and, at that, not even elephants or
hippopotamuses as some slight variation but continually the
rhinos. And, at last, and at that again, not even just the rhinos,
78 OVER THE EDGE

but continually one especial and perpetual ugly brute of a rhi­

noceros called Bob'. Barbara was desolated with ennui, and a
faint disgust, at standing, doing nothing, while Bob and Uncle
Thc-die also stood, similarly doing nothing, except stare, in a
maudlin fashion, at each other for a solid quarter-of-an-hour.
"Do you love Bob very much?" she had asked Uncle Thc-die
one afternoon, demurely, yet, for her, quite cuttingly. She re­
alised, before the words were properly out of her mouth, that
she ought never to have risked saying such a tactless thing, for
Uncle Thedie made an offended, bulkily bridling motion. He
vouchsafed no answer to her query, but, on the way back, re­
galed with a dissertation upon African tribal customs and be­
liefs. The M ’bungwi-bhatas, for example, Barbara gathered
scornfully, not merely feared but r e v e r e n c e d the rhinoceros. "It
is a superstition," Uncle Thedie had expounded, "cognate with
the widespread myth, in Europe, of lycanthropy. And while, in
Europe, you have were-wolves, or, in Burma, the were-tiger, so,
in these parts of Africa, there is the were-leopard or more subtly
terrible were-rhino, a creature whose distinctive vampire-char­
acteristics are developed, as a rule, upon the passing into it, im­
mediately after the demise, of the congenial, freshly disembodied
soul of an appropriately sympathetic human being." Barbara re­
pressed a sniff. How co u ld people be such idiots? And for her
Uncle Thedie, the old hypocrite, to talk of 'myth’. . . . W hat a
colossal humbug he must be! But she had concealed all outward
signs of her contempt and dedicated the rest of an unprofitable
day to pleasing her relative.
This had been in March, and soon Barbara had even greater
reason for regretting her unwise speech about the wretched
'Bob’, for Uncle Thedie in the following month fell dangerously
ill. Barbara used to journey from her home in Kensington to his
house in Eaton Square and chat with him, or leave him flowers.
 THE RENEGADE 79

She was genuinely sorry for the old, lonely chap, notwithstand­
ing his whims and oddities, but, besides that, she was a practical,
common-sensible type of girl and appreciated perfectly that
there was little point in dreaming of a nice home w'ith Tony
(the young man to whom, and unknown to her parents, she was
all-but-engaged) unless, from somewhere, she procured money
to endow this home. And, Tony’s salary being unfortuntely what
it was, the only calculable or envisageable source of such endow­
ment was her ailing uncle.
"W ell," Uncle Thedie would demand in anxious petulance
from his sick-bed, "and how was he this morning? Still off his
feed?"
For, oddly enough, the rhinoceros Bob had also, almost si­
multaneously, contracted some complaint, and it was Bob’s
health, rather than his own, that now' seemed Uncle Thedie’s
chief concern. Barbara, at his behest, had to visit the brute and,
from its keeper, a Mr. Finquist, bring back detailed reports. Be­
tween the two invalids, recently, she was pretty busy, and upon
one occasion she had nearly left a bunch of dahlias tor the rhi­
noceros by mistake.
Easter was just over when, rather suddenly, Uncle Thedie
grew much weaker, and expired. Barbara, attending his funeral,
was sorrier than ever about all the times she had been misun­
derstanding or intolerant of him. She was not, at heart, a merce­
nary girl, but human nature is human nature, and, thinking of
her home-to-be with Tony, she could not hel^> feeling just a lit­
tle grateful to her poor dead uncle in advance.
Her gratitude, however, wa-, ere long appreciably dimmed
when, on the reading of the will, it turned out that her uncle
had rewarded her devotion with a mere thousand pounds to­
gether with what he was pleased to call a ’lucky trinket’. The
bulk of his considerable fortune went to a couple of his beastly
80 OVER THE EDGE

old societies and to the Zoo with, as regards the last bequest, an
express stipulation that the money be applied to the 'upkeep
and liberal provisioning’ of the rhinoceros house!
This was enormity enough, but the disgustingness did not end
there. After (one might almost have said) robbing her and dis­
appointing her in the way he had and putting olf her dream-
cottage in Bucks with Tony until kingdom-come, her uncle had
the callous nerve, the gall, to leave a special message 'to my
niece’ requesting her 'in memory of so many happy hours’ to
go on visiting the Zoo and, should that animal survive him, Bob.
Papa and Mama, of course, were livid. They had been used,
before Barbara was born, to far less straitened circumstances than
at present, and consequently their yearnings after a return to
affluence amounted to nostalgia. As for Barbara herself, she was,
as had been indicated, most annoyed. A thousand pounds is all
right, and nearly always proves enjoyable so long as you have
not too eagerly and confidently been expecting about twenty
times as much. As Barbara had. It was in no sunny or contented
frame of mind that she again, and with a measure of surprise,
found her steps trending towards Regents Park.
At first, rebelliously, she had vowed not to go. Why should
she? The Zoo had been the spring of all her trouble, for she had
now the wretched inward certainty that, had she only held her
tongue, that time, concerning the unutterable Bob, her uncle
would have been more generous. And the absurd ’lucky trinket’
had but rubbed-in and reinforced this mortifying conclusion. It
was a silver bracelet, actually quite pretty and of unusual work­
manship and pattern, with a sort of locket-clasp containing,
coiled, what was described in an accompanying note as a 'rhi-
nocerous hair’. "Hair?” Barbara had demurred in dull, cha­
grined dejection. An "Oh yes," Mr. Cass conjectured glumly.
"From the tail, I suppose . . . ”
 THE RENEGADE 81

W hat with one thing and another, there had been more than
a surfeit, lately, of rhinoceros, and every possible excuse and
provocation, Barbara thought, for never setting eyes upon a
pachyderm again; but something, curiosity perhaps, had drawn
her in her own despite. Three months had passed since Uncle
Thedie's death. It was summer, a July Saturday, and houses,
terraces and walks were thronged. She wandered slowly here and
there,—hot, dusty, jaded, and jostled by the crowds. Tony was
not with her. His expectations too had crucllv been dashed, and
there was—well, not exactly an estrangement but a perceptible
degree of coolness now between them.
Eventually, of course, she drifted to the rhinoceros house. She
would not tell her parents she had been. She wanted to keep up
the pretence, to them, of sticking to her resolution to avoid rhi­
noceroses, in future, as the plague. How funny it all was, how
funny. . . . She recalled the innumberable occasions of her previ­
ous pilgrimagings here with Uncle Thedie, his tranced eternal
communings with soul-mate Bob. It was like visiting a grave . . .
Mr. Finquist, the keeper, welcoming her at once, expressed
respectful sorrow at her loss. "A pity!” he deplored. "Ah, a sad
pity! A most uncommon kind of gentleman, your uncle, Miss.
And I’m quite certain as old Bob 'as missed ’im too!”
T ill now, oddly, 'old Bob' had not been uppermost in Bar­
bara’s conscious mind. Unrealisedly, maybe, she had presumed
him dead, but of this notion Mr. Finquist disabused her. "Oh
no! E's right as rain agen, old Bob is. Perked up surprisin' just
about the time your unde was took worse arter that last bad
turn of 'is—of Bob’s I mean—round Easter. Fit as a fiddle now,
with all them extry rations that ’e gets. Oh, ’e’s a card, ’is nibs is
. . . a proper card. Encher boy, eh?”
"U m pb,” assented Bob. The sound was a rich, guttural chortle,
laconic but indulgent. Barbara shivered. The animal’s unwieldy
82 OVER THE EDGE

bulk was stationed in a far corner of the pen, by a low doorway

leading to the enclosed exercising-yard without. Mr. Finquist by
and by removed himself to attend to denizens of neighbouring
pens, and it was not until the keeper had departed that the brute
slowly wheeled and lumbered heavily across hay-littered floor­
boards to the rails.
Barbara confronted it with unmixed feelings. It was Bob who
had cut her out with Uncle Thedie and she had no doubt at all
about her sentiments towards the creature. Bob, for his part, con­
sidered her intently though impassively. His tiny eyes (one of
them narrowing slyly in the fantastic semblance of a wink) held,
as before, a clumsy and remote malevolence.—a precarious, sul­
len semi-humour (at the moment) that could turn instantly to
hate. Yet was there not a new' alertness in his gait and posture,
an almost waggish glint in his once sluggish gaze? Could she not
recognise an actual rakishness, a dim reminding hint of impish
and deliberate drollery, in that ungainly form? The animal’s
horned head was cocked spryly in a manner little short (and
difficult as it must always be for a rhinoceros to compass such
a mien) of debonair; his prehensile upper lip was lifted slightly
in what might have been a prehistorically sub-human leer, and his—
Suddenly Barbara, overcome either by the heat or by she did
not quite know what, uttered a faint, half-startled exclamation,
strode quickly from the pen, and, not delaying for goodbyes to
Mr. Finquist, left the rhinoceros house and, presently, the Zoo.
The late afternoon was still sultry and she felt limp, 'done up’,
and, for some reason singularly disconcerted and disturbed. Next
day, Sunday, she spent fractiously at home, ’nervy’ with her par­
ents and quarrelsome with her younger sister. The ’lucky’ brace­
let, she gave out with baldness, had been lost ( 'good riddance
too’ ), and nobody had bothered to challenge or query the state­
ment, or even to ask, in the silly way that people do, just w h e r e
 THE RENEGADE 83

she had mislaid or dropped it. In fact, and far more enteipris-
ingly, she had without compunction pawned it and, on the pro­
ceeds, had a most successful perm.
Should she revisit the rhinoceros house or shouldn't she?
Tony had met Lncle 1 hedie once or twice and she would like
Tony, if she did go, to be with her and—and compare notes . . .
What ritbbi'h, she thought. What r u b b i s h . . . She did not, ever,
want to venture so much as a further little-finger or big-toe in­
side the hateful place, yet. at the same time, seemed compelled
to. A maggot, a nonsensicalitjv^some odd uneasy fidget of the
mind, some curious unstilled preposterous doubt that must be
set at rest—constrained her. Till she ka.i gone, and seen, she
would enjoy no peace.
It was a week and more however before she passed again
through the familiar stiles. Tony, snowed under, he explained
in dudgeon, with Inis office-work, would be unable to escort her
yet awhile, and at last, rather than wait longer, she had come
alone.
Her mood of irritation, in this interval, had not abated. Some­
thing that cloaked its actuality, at first, in trivial symptoms of
malaise, impatience and short temper—attributable to general
exhaustion or heat-sickness'—must, she was fain now to confess,
have scared and jolted her; and, recently, she had become the
prey of queer imaginings. What could be wrong with her? Try
to deny and scout such megrims as she might, she appeared
forced to harbour a grotesque delusion, and must admit the im­
pact of a monstrous, a bizarre, suspicion. For several nights she
had slept poorly, with appalling dreams. A gust would seem to
blow under her bed,—a slowly panting, heavy-breathing gust that
dreadfully compressed the mattress-springs and nosed uncertainly
about the floor beneath. 'Utnph', it said. ’U m ph’ . . . And then
the ploughing, 'rootling' and exploring sounds would cease and

D*
84 OVER THE EDGE

she would have instead a vision of—yes, 'Bob’. But not of the
beast merely. In the repellent, brutish lineaments of Caliban
would be reflected, flitkeringly, other features . . . As through a
mask, another face would look, another well-remembered coun­
tenance too plainly peer. A fiendish resemblance waxed and
waned, and faded. Before her eyes a hideous parody took smirk­
ing shape and substance. A gross absurdity, a sheer unthinka­
bility, crowned with a glossy ’topper’ although horned and
hooved, solicited her entertainment and assent. W ith the high,
thready gasp of terror she would awaken and switch on the lig h t. . .
And now', as she had reapproached the scene of her first shock,
her steps had lagged and her heart laboured. It was still ex­
tremely hot. The shabby pastures of the park were sun-baked to
a sallow slipperiness, and she had stumbled. For a while, crav­
ing a reprieve, she had delayed the moment that would put anything
to any further test.
But eventually, conquering her qualms, she had paid her
shilling and gone in. Done with all cowardly evasions and post­
ponements, she walked straight to the rhinoceros house, ready
to face the worst.
"It can’t be,’’ she essayed to encourage herself on the way. "It’s
ridiculous. The brother of my father . . . It can't be!" Yet a sense
of portent, tipping the scales increasingly against her reason,
outweighed both probability and logic. She thought, too, of her
dreams, which had dated, in milder form, not merely from her
last visit to the Zoo but from her uncle's death. And she recalled
how Bob, according to his keeper, had got suddenly much better
just when her uncle had collapsed, and. when she saw him in his
pen the other day, had given her, she was convinced, that mean­
ing wink. "It can't be," she went on none the less repeating, val­
iantly but now more faintly, "Oh, it can't be . . . !
As before, Mr. Finquist met her, but this time with a worried
 THE RENEGADE 85

frown replacing his accustomed smile.

"Good afternoon," Barbara began awkwardly. "I’m back again
you see. I—"
She stopped as Mr. Finquist, obviously moved, made a pecul­
iar shushing’, warning gesture with a hand, and shook his
head. "Not ere no more," he said. "Not 'ere. You won't sec Bob
no more. Not 'ere . . . "
Not here , echoed Barbara, stupidly. "But—but why? How
—Why 'not here’?"
1 here was an embarrassed pause. Mr. Finquist scowled at
her pensively a v. idle, then added, almost in a whisper: "Shot . . .
W e ad to."'
Something cold and uncanny unwound itself in Barbara’s re­
luctant brain. Mastering an intense disinclination, she persisted:
"Shot? But u
The keeper shifted his weight to the other foot, opened his
mouth, closed it, and opened it again. He spoke slowly, coyly,
with a sort of sickly [Link]: "Bad dibits. At—at night.
E— There, we knows n ot we know s, don’t we? Or we can ’ave
a guess . . . It's no good talking.”
Barbara did not press him for elucidation but, with confused
adieux, left the rhinoceros house and regained the outer air. She
felt stifled and wanted to think, or rather, maybe, did not want
to. Always a girl with a neat, wc-ll-dusted mind, she found both
her intelligence and her sentimental prejudices affronted by the
interpretation she now seemed forced to place upon events. A
second viewing of Bob in his new Cdiiti'US r e d n i v u s phase might
or might not have strengthened her original suspicions, but her
few words with Mr. Finqubt certainly had done so. However
painful and unusual this phenomenon, the harsh unpalatable
truth must be accepted.
" ’Were-rhino’," she mused. "How odd! People just don’t
86 OVER THE EDGE

h a ve uncles like that, in this country, as a rule. I hope they took

care to shoot him with a silver bullet if—if he was that . . . It
simply doesn't altogether add up, either. According to that book
in B.M. were-rhinos are absolutely different from w e s e - w o l v e s . . .
Papa and Mama, being so stuck on Lineage and Tradition as
they are, would never believe it. I can hardly believe it myself.
I shan’t tell them, and I don't actually thnik I shall tell Tony.
Better not . . ."
Opportunely, she noticed, by the gravel path, a litter-bin.
Unclipping her hand-bag, she removed from one of its compart­
ments the pawn-ticket, tore the ticket into shreds and thought­
fully dropped them in the receptacle. Was it a 'precaution'? She
wasn’t sure. But she wanted as much distance and disconnection
as possible between Barbara St. John Cass and anything to do
with Uncle Thedie—even (.as, she supposed, it now might be
considered) just his hair. Oh, what a skeleton-in-the-cupboard-
he had become,—or at least might become if only she dare pub­
lish the facts! Very, yes very, fervently she trusted that the pow­
ers of were-rhinos had been exaggerated . . .
Still, the affair was not without its compensations,— if she
could but regard it as completely closed. How many girls were
able nowadays to boast (not that they would, perhaps) of a
were-rhino uncle? Were-K'c/rer. or—wolverines, maybe, but not
were-rhinos, which were another kettle-of fish entirely as the au­
thorities unanimously agreed. The mechanics, so to speak—the
"know-how"—of the racket (thus to term it) appeared quite dis­
similar; and, in the case of orthodox conforming lycanthropes,
the vampire faculty, while not inheritable or, save by infection
of a 'victim', ordinarily transmissible, did tend to 'run' in fami­
lies,—as she could testify! Such of h e r forebears as had been
'wcrcs' at all had been w cs e-tr o l; es. the whole absorbing busi­
ness starting with the coming-over, from Prague, in the fifteenth
 THE RENEGADE 87

century, of Wenceslas and Hragny Cassnius (or knassis’ ), from

the first-named of whom her own remarkable papa was proud to
trace descent. Then there had been her great-great-uncle Mark
Abner Cass who, in his hevdav, had operated in Salisbury, and,
more recently, her cousin Sarah, practising around Balham, till
discovered and denounced, in 1903, bv a vulpaphobe of a vestry­
man, who had her transfixed in her coffin, shrieking and spout­
ing blood in the customary way.
W e t e - u v l i e s , bv all means, but wxic-rkinos, no. That her
uncle should prove so doublc-dved a renegade and innovator
staggered credence.
It was really, she reflected, the one truly out-of-the-common thing
that had ever happened to her,—or, she hoped, ever would.
 Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was one of America’s foremost
writers of fantasy. He was associated with Ambrose Bierce and George
Sterling, and, later, with H. P. Lovecraft, to whose Cthulhu Mythos he
contributed many features in his tales. He spent his life in California,
where he wrote poems and short stories, and carved out of minerals and
rocks the strange sculptures which have become collectors' items. His
work appeared widely in magazines ranging from Poetry to The London
Mercury, The Black Cat to Weird Tales, The Yale Review to Smart Set.
One of the most effective lyric poets of his time, he collected his verse
into seven books, from The Star-Treader and Other Poems to Spells and
Philtres, and prepared his forthcoming Selected P it/jJ before his death.
His remarkable macabre fiction has been widely anthologized and col­
lected into four published books—Out or Space and Time, Lost Worlds,
Genius Loci and Other Tales, The Abominations o f Yondo.—and one
forthcoming book, Tales o f Science and SorCz fy.

Told in the Desert

Clark A shton Smith

Out of the fiery furnace of the desert sunset, he came to meet

our caravan. He and his camel were a single silhouette of
shadow-like thinness that emerged above the golden-crested
dunes and disappeared by turns in their twilight-gathering hol­
low's. When he descended the last dune and drew near, we had
 TOLD IN THE DESERT 89

paused for the night, we were pitching our black tents and light­
ing our little fires.
The man and his dromedary were like mummies that could
find no repose in the subterranes of death, that had wandered
abroad beneath the goading of a cryptic spur, ever since the first
division of the desert from the town. The face of the man was
withered and blackened as by the torrefaction of a thousand
flames; his beard was grey as ashes; and his eyes were expiring
embers. His clothing was like tatters of the ancient dead, like
the spoils of ghoulish rag-pickers. His camel evas a mangy, moth-
eaten skeleton such as might bear the souls of the damned on
their dolorous ride to the realms of Iblis.
W e greeted him in the name of Allah and bade him welcome.
He shared our meal of dates and coffee and dried goat-flesh; and
later, when we sat in a circle beneath the crowding stars, he told
us his tale in a voice that had somehow taken on the loneliness,
the eerie quavers and disconsolate overtones of the desert wind,
as it seeks among infinitely parching horizons for the fertile,
spicy valleys it has lost and cannot find.
Of my birth, my youth, and the appelation by w'hich I was
known and perhaps renowned among men, it would now be
bootless to speak: for those days are one in remoteness with the
reign of A1 Raschid, they have gone by like the Afrit-builded
halls of Suleiman. And in the bazaars or in the harems of my
natal city, none w'ould recall me; and if one spoke my name, it
would be as a dying and never-repeated echo. And my own mem­
ories grew dim like the fires of hesternal wanderings, on which
the sands are blow n by an autumn gale.
But, though none will remember my songs, I was once a poet;
and like other poets in their prime, I sang of vernal roses and
autumnal rose-leaves, of the breasts of dead queens and the
mouths of living cup-bearers, of stars that seek the fabled ocean-
90 OVER THE EDGE

isles, and caravans that follow the eluding and illusory horizons.
And because I was fevered with the strange disquietude of youth
and poesy, for which there is neither name nor appeasement, I
left the city of my boyhood, dreaming of other cities where wine
and fame would be sweeter, and the lips of women more desir­
able.
It was a gallant and merry' caravan with which I set forth in
the month of the flowering of almonds. Wealthy and brave were
the merchants with whom I travelled; and though they were
lovers of gold and wrought ivory, of rugs and damascus blades
and olibanum, they also loved my songs and could never weary
of hearing them. And though our pilgrimage was long, it was
evermore beguiled with recital of odes and telling of tales; and
time was somehow cheated of its days, and distance of its miles,
as only the divine necromancy of song can cheat them. And the
merchants told me stories of the far-off, glamorous city' which
was our goal; and hearkening to their recountal of its splendors
and delights, and pondering my own fancies, I was well content
with the palmless leagues as they faded behind our dromedaries.
Alas! for we were never to behold the bourn of our journey,
with its auriphrygiate domes that were said to ascend above the
greening of paradisal trees, and its minarets of nacre beyond
waters of jade. W e were waylaid by the fierce tribesmen of the
desert in a deep valley between hills; and though we fought
valiantly, they bore us down from our hamstrung camels with
their over-numbering spears; and taking our corded bales of mer­
chandise, and deeming us all securely dead, they left us to the
gier-eagles of the sand.
All but myself, indeed, had perished; and sorely wounded in
the side, I lay among the dead as one on whom there descends
the pall-like shadow of Azrael. But when the robbers had de­
parted, I somehow stanched my streaming wound with tatters of
 TOLD IN THE DESERT 91
my torn raiment; and seeing that none stirred among my com­
panions, I left them and tottered away on the route of our jour­
ney, sorrowing that so brave a caravan should have come to a
death so inglorious. And beyond the defile in which we had been
overtaken with such dastardy, I found a camel who had strayed
away during the conflict. Even as myself, the animal was maimed,
and it limped on three legs and left a trail of blood. But I made
it kneel, and mounted it.
Of the hours that ensued I remember little. Blinded with
pain and weakness, I heeded not the route that the camel fol­
lowed, whether it were the track of caravans or a desert-ending
path of Bedouins or jackals.- But dimly I recalled how the mer­
chants had told me at morn that there were two days of travel­
ling in a desolation where the way was marked by serried bones,
ere we should reach the next oasis. And I knew not how I should
survive so arduous a journey, wounded and without water; but
I clung dizzily to the camel.
The red demons of thirst assailed me; and fever came, and
delirium, to people the waste with phantasmagoric shadows. And
I fled through aeons from the frightful immemorial Things that
held lordship of the desert, and would have proffered me the
green, beguiling cups of an awful madness with Their bone-white
hands. And though I fled, They dogged me always; and I heard
Them gibbering all around me in the air that had turned to blood-
red flame.
There were mirages on the waste; there were lucent meres
and palms of fretted beryl that hovered always at an unattain­
able distance. I saw them in the interludes of my delirium; and
one there was at length, which appeared greener and fairer than
the rest; but I deemed it also an illusion. Yet it faded not nor
receded like the others; and in each interval of my phantom-
clouded fever it drew nearer still. And thinking it still a mirage,
92 OVER THE EDGE

I approached the palms and the water; and a great blackness

fell upon me, like the web of oblivion from the hands of the
final Weaver; and I was henceforth bereft of sight and knowl­
edge.
Waking, I deemed perforce that I had died and was in a se­
questered nook of Paradise. For surely the sward on which I lay,
and the waving verdure about me, were lovelier than those of
earth; and the face that leaned above me was that of the young­
est and most compassionate houri. But when I saw my wounded
camel grazing not far away, and felt the reviving pain of my
own hurt, I knew that I still lived; and that the seeming mirage
had been a veritable oasis.
Ah! fair and kind as any houri was she who had found me
lying on the desert's verge, when the riderless camel came to
her hut amid the palms. Seeing that I had awakened from my
swoon, she brought me water and fresh dates, and smiled like a
mother as I ate and drank. And, uttering little cries of horror
and pity, she bound my wound with the sootheness of healing
balsams.
Her voice was gentle as her eyes; and her eyes were those of
a dove that has dwelt always in a vale of myrrh and cassia.
When I had revived a little, she told me her name, which was
Neria; and I deemed it lovelier and more melodious than the
names of the sultanas who are most renowned in song, and re­
motest in time and fable. She said that she had lived from in­
fancy with her parents amid the palms; and now her parents
were dead, and there was none to companion her except the
birds that nested and sang in the verdant frondage.
How shall I tell of the life that began for me now, while the
spear-wound was mending? How shall I tell of the innocent
grace, the child-like beauty, the maternal tenderness of Neria? It
was a life remote from all the fevers of the world, and pure from
 TOLD IN THE DESERT 93

every soilure; it was infinitely sweet and secure, as if in the whole

of time and space there were no others than ourselves and naught
that could ever trouble our happiness. My love for her, and
hers for me, was inevitable as the flowering of the palms and
their fruiting. Our hearts were drawn to each other with no
shadow of doubt or reluctance; and the meeting of our mouths
was simple as that of roses blown together bv a summer wind.
W e felt no needs, no hungers, other than those which were
amply satisfied by the crystal well-water, by the purple fruit of
the trees, and by each other. Ours were the dawns that poured
through the feathering emerald of fronds; and the sunsets whose
amber was flung on a blossom-purified sward more delicate than
the rugs of Bokhara. Our was the divine monotony of content­
ment, ours were the kisses and endearments ever the same in
sweetness yet inimitably various. Ours was a slumber enchanted
by cloudless stars, and caresses without denial or regret. W e spoke
of naught but our love and the little things that filled our days;
yet the words we uttered were more than the weighty discourse
of the learned and the w ise. I sang no more, I forgot my odes and
ghazals; for life itself had become a sufficing music.
The annals of happiness are without event. I know not how
long it was that I dwelt with Neriaj for the days were molten
together in a dulcet harmony of peace and rapture. I remember
not if they were few or many; since time was touched by a su­
pernal sorcery, and was no longer time.
Alasl for the tiny whisper of discontent that awakens sooner
or later in the bosoms of the blest, that is heard through the cen­
tral melodies of heaven! There came a day when the little oasis
seemed no longer the infinite paradise I had dreamt, wdien the
kisses of Neria were as honey too often tasted, when her bosom
was a myrrh too often breathed. The sameness of the days was
no longer divine, the remoteness was no longer security but a
94 OVER THE EDGE

prison-house. Beyond the fringed horizon of the trees there

hovered the opal and marble dream of the storied cities I had
sought in former time; and the voices of fame, the tones of sul­
tana-like women, besought me with far, seductive murmurs. I
grew sad and silent and distraught; and, seeing the change that
was on me, Neria saddened also and watched me with eyes that
had darkened like nocturnal wells in which there lingers a sin­
gle star. But she uttered no breath of reproach or remon­
strance.
At last, with halting words, I told her of my longing to depart;
and, hypocrite that I was, I spoke of urgent duties that called
me and would not be denied. And I promised with many oaths
to return as soon as these duties w'ould permit. The pallor of
Neria’s face, and the darkening of her violet-shadowed eyes, were
eloquent of mortal sorrow. But she said only, "Go not, I pray
thee. For if thou goest, thou shalt not find me again."
I laughed at her words and kissed her; but her lips were
cold as those of the dead, they were unresponsive as if the es­
tranging miles had already intervened. And I too, -was sorrowful
when I rode away on my dromedary.
Of that which followed there is much, and vet little, to tell.
After many days among the veering boundaries of the sand, I
came to a far city; and there I abode for awhile and found in a
measure the glory and delight of which I had dreamed. But amid
the loud and clamoring bazaars, and across the silken whisper
of harems, there returned to me the parting words of Neria; and
her eyes besought me through the flame of golden lamps and
the luster of opulent attire; and a nostalgia fell upon me for the
lost oasis and the lips of abandoned love. And because of it I
knew no peace; and after a time I returned to the desert.
I retraced my way with exceeding care, by the dunes and re­
motely scattered wells that marked the route. But when I thought
to have reached the oasis, and to see again the softly waving
 TOl.D IN THE DESERT 95

palms above N eria’s abode, and the glimmering waters beside

it, I saw no more than a stretch of featureless sand, where a
lonely, futile wind was writing and erasing its aimless furrows.
And I sought across the sand in every direction, till it seemed
that I must overtake the very horizons as they fled; but I could
not find a single palm, nor a blade of grass that was like the
blossomy sward on which I had lain or wandered with Neria;
and the wells to which I came were brackish with desolation
and could never have held the crystalline sweetness of the well
from which I had drunk with her. . . .
Since then, I know not how- many suns have crossed the bra­
zen hell of the desert; nor how many moons have gone down on
the waters of mirage and marah. But still I seek the oasis; and
still I lament the hour of careless folly in which I forsook its per­
fect paradise. To no man, mayhap, is it given to attain twice the
happiness and security, remote from all that can trouble or assail,
which I knew with Neria in a bygone year. And woe to him who
abandons such, who becomes a voluntary exile from an irretriev­
able Aidann. For him, henceforward, there are only the fading
visions of memory, the tortures and despairs and illusions of the
quested miles, the waste whereon there falls no lightest shadow
of any leaf, and the wells whose taste is fire and madness. . . .
W e were all silent when the stranger ceased; and no one cared
to speak. But among us all there was none who had not remem­
bered the face of her to whom he would return when the caravan
had ended its wayfaring.
After awhile, we slept; and we thought that the stranger also
slumbered. But awaking before dawn, when a horned moon was
low above the sands, we saw that the man and his dromedary had
disappeared. And far-off in the ghostly light a doubtful shadow
passed from dune to dune like a fever-driven phantom. And it
seemed to us that the shadow was the single silhouette of a camel
and its rider.
 F rank B e l k n a p L ong 0 903- ) is a New Yorker by birth and
inclination. He was a longtime friend of H. P. Lovecraft and an early
recruit to the group of writers who contributed to Lovecraft's Cthulhu
Mythos. His first book was a collection of verse, A Man from Genoa and
Other Poems. His work has been widely published arid almost as fre­
quently anthologized. He has contributed to all the magazines in the
domain of fantasy, and under his own and various pen names has written
many books, of which the most important are The Hounds o f Tindalos,
a collection of his best stories, and a novel. The Horror from the Hills.
Mr. Long lives in New York, where he edits a detective story magazine.

When the Rams Came

F rank B elkn ap L ong

"fm the luckiest fellow' alive!" Conovan said, aloud to him­

self.
Conovan felt himself to be lucky primarily because the Kra-
jans were such friendly people. They were a delight to behold,
too. Easy on the eyes—when once you became accustomed to
having a daily talk with completely transparent philosophers and
joyous pagans in deep forest glades. Delicately fashioned they
were, and they moved with a strange, almost unbelievable grace
—a lightness and an elasticity which conjured up unrealistic but
wholly enchanting visions of ballet dancers on a tightrope.
 WHEN THE RAINS CAME 97

When a man is cut off from all human companionship thou­

sands of light years from Earth he is likely to seek good fellow­
ship at any price. And the price Conovan had to pay was not
high. He had only to give up a small fraction of his independ­
ence and be a good listener.
It had been necessary for him to overcome a few prejudices,
of course. Mastering the language difficulty had required study,
tact and patience, and it had not been easy for him to grow ani­
mated and enthusiastic when a Krajan male started boasting
about his love life.
The Krajans mated, apparently—just as Terrans did. But
their courtship was dull and unromantic in the extreme from a
Terran point of view.
A male Krajan would say: "You are a pleasant person. I like
you.” And a female Krajan would reply: "I like you, too.’’
"Shall we build a home together?"
"Yes, we will build a home."
"Until the rains come?"
"Until the rains come."
And that was all!
It was hard for Conovan to understand why the Krajans were
alwavs talking about the possibility of rain when the entire
planet was as dry as a tinder-box. If rain had fallen even a year
before his arrival he would have known about it, for the Krajans
seemed at times to have an obsessive-compulsive need to talk
about nothing else.
Rain, rain, rain—someday it will arrive! It was amazing how
luxuriant vegetation could become without rain, and how nat­
urally a man—and the Krajans—could adjust to the complete
absence of water when a refreshing, fruit-juice beverage hung
suspended in a ready-shell container on virtually every tree.
Perhaps there was something beneath the surface soil which
98 OVER THE EDGE

stored up water like a sponge—or a camel. The surmise, while

superficially a little wild, was certainly worth exploring. But
whenever Conovan asked the Krajans about it they pretended
not to hear him, and quickly guided the conversation into other
channels.
It was horribly frustrating, of course. It undermined a man's
confidence in his own powers of persuasion and made him feel
that he was the victim of a secret conspiracy that stopped just
short of showing its teeth. But Conovan was grateful to the Kra­
jans notwithstanding. They had accepted him almost immedi­
ately as a fellow human; and despite the etymological restrictions
commonly associated with the term "human" it would have been
a gross injustice to have refused to apply it to the Krajans.
The Krajans were not men but they w e r e human. They were
so human, in fact, that Conovan was afraid to protest too strenu­
ously. Much as he disliked unsolved riddles he had no desire to
cause them pain or have them think him ungrateful.
They had given him a hut of his own, clothing suited to the
planet and an abundance of edibles. It was certainly not their
fault that the ship which had brought him to their planet had
been wrecked beyond repair and that he had experienced a
w'orse-than-post-operative shock reaction which was only now be­
ginning to wear off.
Good friends they had been to him! Wonderful, generous,
light-hearted friends. How could he doubt it?
Sitting now in the door of his hut Conovan raised his eyes,
and saw that his friend Kolat-Mur had stopped gyrating and was
smiling down at him.
It was a smile, surely. What reason did he have for thinking
otherwise? And why should he even want to think otherwise? A
smile was simply a contraction of the features in an upward di­
rection—a natural response to emotions of pleasure.
 WHEN THE RAINS CAME 99

All right. The convolution of amusement and good fellow­

ship on the Krajans- alert, intelligent faces were no more than
evanescent crinklings—conspicuous one minute, gone the next.
But Conovan had seen men smile in almost the same fashion,
and a smile was a smile, no matter how thin you sliced it.
That didn't mean, of course, that the physical appearance of
the Krajans wouldn't have kept most Terrans guessing. There
were animals on Earth just as transparent—the newly hatched
fry of certain fishes and glass snakes, glass lizards. But the Kra­
jans were in all respects the opposite of fishlike and they were
certainly not reptilian. They were, in fact, startlingly manlike
in aspect—bipeds with almost human features, three-jointed
limbs and long, flexible fingers.
Despite their fragile build and the strange, frondlike growths
on their chest—tinted green and coral pink—it was easy to pic­
ture them winning almost instant acceptance in imaginative cir­
cles on Earth.
They were, in brief, fantastic, but somehow very real. And
of course they u er e real—indigenous to a planet which had its
own evolutionary patterns and adhered to them with an Alice-
in-Wonderland kind of tenacity.
It was only when they were in motion that Conovan had to
blink furiously to convince himself of their reality. When the
Krajans were whirling gracefully about their bodies became
translucent lenses, mirroring entire sections of the forest in ka­
leidoscopic fashion.
It was extremely unnerving at times. But there was no need
for Conovan to be disturbed now, for Kolat-Mur was standing so
still that only a single tree was visible through him. The tree had
wide, spreading branches, and it was stirring a little in the faint
breeze which was blowing across the clearing, its tremblings mag­
nified by the pale sheen of Kolat-Mur’s stationary body.
100 OVER THE EDGE

"Tell me, Miss-tur Conovan,” Kolat-Mur said. "How did you

occupy your days on Earth? Were your tasks agreeable and of
your own choosing? Or were they difficult and unpleasant?”
Conovan sighed, "It’s M ister Conovan, Kolat-Mur,” he said.
"Repeat it after me—short and quick. Mister."
"Mister Conovan. Mister—Mister. Yes, I shall remember."
"Thank you, Kolat-Mur. As for your question— I’m afraid that
answering it accurately would be a pretty big order.”
"But what did you do, Mister Conovan? How did you pass
the time? You must have done something.”
"Brother, you don’t know the half of it,” Conovan said. "W e’ve
never found the key to the kind of peace and serenity you have
here. You eat, drink, dance and are merry most of the time. We
work hard for a living.”
"But why, Mister Conovan? The forest takes care of us. We
have enough to eat and wear without working. W hy should we
make ourselves miserable?”
"Oh, it’s been tried on Earth,” Conovan said. "Primitives live
that way and so do some civilized people. But the primitives get
no credit for it and the others— w ell!”
"You talk very strangely at times, Mister Conovan. W e just
try to be happy—until the rains come.”
"And you are happy. I'd give my right arm to be as happy
as you are, Kolat-Mur. If I stay here long enough I may not even
have to sacrifice an arm. I'll just be like you. It’s a fine way to
be, Kolat-Mur. My advice to you is to stick with it. Don't ever
change.”
"You haven’t answered my question, Mister Conovan.”
"I told you it was a big order. Actually that’s something of an
understatement. The things we do on Earth are almost all based
on unreason. But unreason can be a cruel taskmaster. It never
relaxes its grip. You have to get away from it completely to re-
 WHEN THE RAINS CAME 101 *

alize what a jackass you were to knuckle under in the first place.”
"But you ure happy here with us. Mister Conovan?”
"You bet I axn. At least. I'm learning to be—much happier
than I ever was on Earth."
"I'm glad. Mister Conovan. W e are all glad.”
"So am I. Oh, and just incidentally. Kolat-Mur. There’s a
question I've been meaning to ask yo u for some time. A very
little one. What actually happens when the rains come?”
"It is very late, Mister Conovan. You should be having your
dinner now. It is not wise to put off eating the way you do."
"Thanks, Kolat-Mur. On Earth we often have to eat at odd
hours—on the run. you might say. But thanks for reminding me.
I'll eat now— and until the rains come.”
"Just eat now, Mister Conovan. Let us do the worrying."
"You do worry then—about the rains? W hy?”
"Mister Conovan, if you found a seed in the forest and you
opened it. and out of it came another seed, and when you opened
that second seed you found still another seed and after that a
fourth seed—how long would you go on opening seeds?"
"Are you trying to tell me something important, Kolat-Mur?
Or are you just trying to discourage m et”
"Perhaps both, Mister Conovan. It is not wise to question the
wisdom of a mystery if you can never hope to understand it.
What will be— will be."
Conovan was about to protest when Kolat-Mur terminated
the interview with ceremonious dispatch. He bowed slightly,
paid a flattering verbal tribute to Conovan’s gifts as a conver­
sationalist, and was in motion again, flitting away over the leaf-
strewn clearing without a backward glance.
Conovan cursed softly, his hand gripping hard on his knee.
He wondered what would happen if the rains should come and
catch Kolat-Mur by surprise. Would the Krajan throw in the
102 OVER THE EDGE

sponge? Would he thrust aside all reticence and take refuge in

a complete reversal of his present attitude? Would he break
down and become a shoulder-weeper? Or would he maintain his
composure to the bitter end, ignoring the downpour, and pre­
tending that a mystery so solemn was still too much of a Krajan
personal matter to be discussed with an outsider?
Conovan went inside his hut and ate his evening meal. It con­
sisted solely of fruit and undersoil vegetables. One of the vege­
tables looked so stringy and dried out that he was astonished to
discover that it tasted remarkably like a well-cooked garden slug.
Not only was it rich and succulent— it was almost meaty in flavor.
And there was a small red vegetable that resembled a tomato
but tasted instead like an oyster on the half-shell. The cucumber­
like vegetable was the most surprising of all. It made a faint,
whistling sound when he cut it open and for an instant he feared
that it might be suffering pain.
For an instant a culinary episode from the remote past
flashed unpleasantly across his mind. In his mind's gaze he was
a boy again, and his aunt was dropping clams into boiling water.
Impassively, wdth a stony-eyed stare, she was watching the bi­
valves ,rcrunch and open while he cringed with the excessive kind-
heartedness of the very young.
Conovan did not enjoy his meal very much and that night he
scarcely slept at all. A strange feeling came upon him—the feel­
ing that he was being smothered. It wasn’t a dream. The feeling
only came when he awoke in fitful starts and slared into the
darkness. He wasn’t being smothered by anything solid or visi­
bly threatening. It was as if a film of moisture had grown up
about him and was preventing him from breathing freely.
Moisture—the rains! Of course. It was quite obviously an in­
ward frustration —the way he felt about the rains— subconsciously
imposed ou the darkness by his tormented mind. If you want
 WHEN THE RAINS CAME 103

something to happen badly enough and it fails to happen the

human brain can rebel in strange ways.
A too disturbing mystery can create its own pressure valves.
Starting as it invariably does in the pre-frontal region—the worry
center—the pressure can rise quite high without agitating the
temporal and occipital lobe nerve centers at all. But if it rises
too high hallucinations set in—hallucinations of sight and hear­
ing and smell.
Conovan could almost smell the moisture filling the hut now.
He could almost hear the persistent, monotonous patter of the
rain. And when he raised his hand to his forehead his fingers en­
countered a dampness and came away sticky to the touch.
Perspiration? Why not? What could be more natural under
the circumstances? As for the rest—the patter and the smell of
rain—he could quickly enough banish such bogies by refusing to
believe in them. In fact—
Conovan leapt from his cot with a startled cry, his eyes wide
and staring. The leap itself was a triggered reflex, sot off by the
sudden, totally unexpected descent of a raindrop on his head.
But when several more drops descended, and the first drop burst
and ran down his face his wavering disbelief was replaced by a
certainty so acute that he recoiled as if he had been struck.
Like great tears the raindrops seemed—tears shed in compas­
sion by some towering elder god of a man-pitying race. But Con­
ovan knew they were coming from the roof. The doorway of the
hut was only a small dark oval but by straining his eyes Conovan
could make out a shining in the darkness—a shining which pro­
pelled him almost automatically forward and out through the
doorway into the night.
It was not only raining. It was raining hard and steadily, it
was coming down in sheets. It soaked through Conovan's clothes
and drenched him to the skin. His teeth started chattering and
104 OVER THE EDGE

after a moment the weight of the descending water so oppressed

his limbs that he felt as helpless as a swimmer trapped by an
undertow that was carrying him swiftly out to sea. Almost he had
to beat his way back into the hut.
For four days and four nights the downpour continued, while
between the sky and the ground a vertical ocean seemed to hang
suspended. Then gradually the ocean thinned out and he could
see the trees in the clearing leaning sharply to windward amidst
confused reflections of light. Finally the rain stopped.
Conovan was grateful for the respite, but when he studied the
sky he knew that it would be of short duration. A few of the
storm clouds had beat a retreat, but far to the east the sky was
bringing up reinforcements. The new clouds were so dense and
black that he could visualize tons upon tons of rain pouring out
of them.
Or was "tons” precisely the right word? Surely rain such as he
had endured couldn’t be weighed or measured. Its drenching
w etn ess was the most intolerable thing about it, and wetness was
a puzzling intangible. A meteorologist who insists that when
moisture reaches a saturation point it has no gradients may have
sound science on his side. But he could just as well be wrong.
There was a very wet stage of wetness that piled insult on in­
jury, that went contrary to all the rules. Conovan found him­
self wondering if the myth of Noah's Flood had not originated
from just such an exaggerated piling up and concentration of
wetness.
The escape mechanism which enables the frustrated to erect
incredible mental structures simply by splitting hairs occupied
Conovan for most of the morning. Then he got to thinking about
the Krajans. Why had none of the Krajans paid him a visit dur­
ing his almost unbearable, four-day incarceration? Where was
Kolat-Mur and why had he not appeared before the hut with his
customary reassuring smile and graceful cavortings?
 WHEN THE RAINS CAME 105

At the very least, why had Kolat-Mur not come slushing

through the ankle-deep rain to apologize and made amends, to
say in wonderment: "W e never really believed ourselves that it
could happen—at least, not so unexpectedly. Now you know. We
could have stopped talking in riddles, but we just didn't want to
worry you.”
Here is good old Kolat-Mur to make amends. Kolat-Mur dis­
sected and analyzed and fullv explained. Not really such an im­
possible fellow after all. If Kolat-Mur would only—
When a longed-for presence appears in Aladdin-lamp fash­
ion—at the very instant when he's being conjured up—only a
fool would contend that the coincidence does violence to rea­
son and common sense. A coincidence of that sort only does vio­
lence to mathematical probability, and mathematical probability
has avenues long and wide which no reasonable man would at­
tempt to navigate.
A reasonable man can be sure of only one thing. The most
incredible coincidences d o happen—very frequently and under
circumstances which seem to link them to psychological wishing
in moments of great stress.
And of course Kolat-Mur didn't actually materialize before
the hut out of thin air. He did come slushing through the rain,
and there was a look on his face which was in all respects the
exact opposite of a suddenly-freed genie look.
He was real and he was earnest, and he paused for only an
instant to wipe the moisture from his face before he spoke.
"It has happened, Mister Conovan," he said. "I am very sorry.
When we go into the water you will be left without friends.
You’ll be entirely alone. We are all very sorry.”
Conovan said nothing. He was not only stunned. He could
think of no words which would have satisfied self-interest with­
out implying that he felt outraged and betrayed and angry
enough to have sent his fist crashing into Kolat-Mur’s face.
106 OVER THE EDGE

It was incredible, in a way—but he knew exactly what was go­

ing to happen. He knew just how frightful his predicament had
become. He found himself suddenly drenched with moisture
from his own ice-cold limbs—trembling and aghast and unable
to utter a word.
Whatever Conovan's human deficiencies, he was, in moments
of crisis, an aggressive and observant man. He had noticed al­
most instantly the change in the coral-pink, frondlike growths on
Kolat-Mur’s chest and the Krajan’s statement had simply con­
firmed what he could see with his own eyes.
The frondlike growths had broadened out. They had become
bladder-like projections which terminated in gill slits—unmis­
takable gill slits high up on Kolat-Mur's thorax.
If Kolat-Mur had been a captive animal in a zoo, and his cage
had been adorned with a small, neatly-lettered information card
it would in all probability have read: "Notice the unusual,
amazingly adaptive breathing apparatuses which nature has be­
stowed upon these creatures. In periods of drought the structures
have an undifferentiated, flowerlike aspect. But at the slightest
hint of moisture they expand and exhibit structural peculiari­
ties without parallel on this or any other planet. It is a biologi­
cal miracle of the first water— a perfect example of what natural
selection can accomplish when it operates over a sufficiently long
period of time with just one mutational idea in mind!”
"Mister Conovan, we are truly sorry,” Kolat-Mur said. "W e
will miss you and we will grieve. When we go underwater we
must stay submerged. It is dangerous for us to even approach
the surface, because of the crushing weight of the rain. But you
must not despair, Mister Conovan. You may live to see us again.
You are strong and without fear, and there is a mountain—that
one over there— Kolat-Mur gestured toward the lofty peaks of
Mount Troj-Ula, purple-capped in the evanescent sun glow, and
 WHEN THE RAINS CAME 107

fell silent, as if fearful that he might have said too much.

Then he seemed to regret his silence and Went on quickly:
"Climb, Mr. Conovan. Climb high and take some food with you.
What is the word you use. Ah, yes—camp. Camp on the highest
peak and wait for the rains to cease. That mountain is so very
high that sometimes the rising water becomes a coward, not dar­
ing to embrace the highest peak. It does not always happen but
it could happen—it has happened.
"Mr. Conovan. we like you so very much. W e will miss you
and remember veil—even if the rains should take you from us.
W e will always remember you, Mr. Conovan.’'
T he h e ll m i l ! thought Conovan, and for an instant he
had difficulty in keeping his anger in check. And then his anger
evaporated. Intelligence, humanoid life everywhere, could not
be blamed for its shortcomings. Pervading all the assemblage of
humanoid macrocosms were blind spots, tragic defects of char­
acter which nature had implanted and which could never be
erased.
It was curious, but as Conovan watched Kolat-Mur go slosh­
ing away through the now almost totally eclipsed sunlight he
felt a tug of wholly illogical affection constricting the muscles of
his throat.
He went back into his hut and gathered together a few of his
things. His things! How much that phrase embraced—camping
utensils, and edibles, and a stout weather garment salvaged from
the wreck of his ship. A faded photograph, a dog-eared, log-book
recording which no one would ever read, A needle and a thread.
A needle and a thread, a needle on a haystack. The haystack was
the mountain and he was the needle—a thin sliver of human
awareness shivering on the highest peak, fighting off despair.
Fighting off fear.
The rain had commenced again when he emerged from the

E
108 OVER THE EDGE

hut and turned his face toward Mount Troj-UIa. Surely the injunc­
tion to "turn the face'’ was the opposite of meaningless, and he
could hardly fail to draw strength from it if he repeated it to
himself often enough. In heroic ages on Terra the most pride­
ful of men—kings and merchant princes—turned their faces to­
ward some shining but unattainable goal and obstacles fell away
or ceased to matter. In the wilderness we remembered Zion, we
turned our faces toward Zion.
It symbolized something magnificent and obdurate in human
nature, the courage of the condemned warrior who has not for­
gotten his chosen lines.
Turn your face toward the battle axes, be strong in the teeth
of the foe. Only—there was no foe and no battle axes. There was
only the rain.
For forty hours it rained without ceasing, in cloudbursts so
torrential that he seemed to be ascending the mountain through
an almost vertical sea. The trees and the plants on the slopes
became waving marine growths, lifting pale, beseeching tenta­
cles to the darkness.
Onward and upward he climbed, his face turned continually
in only one direction—toward the rain. Just how to manage to
reach the summit he never quite knew. But reach it he did and
for a moment stood triumphant on the heights, remembering
how as a boy he had run recklessly through the rain on Terra,
and had ended up in a doorway almost skin-dry.
Then all at once he became frightened again—more terrified
and sick at heart than he had ever been before in his entire life.
It rained, rained, rained. It came down in thin sheets and thick
torrents. It formed puddles everywhere and when he tried to set
up camp he found himself floundering around in sticky mud or
sprawling headlong over misplaced eating utensils. It rained for
fifteen days and fifteen nights.
A few of his utensils were washed away. They became metal-
 WHEN THE RAINS CAME 109

bottomed boats sailing a new Pacific down into the valley be­
low, and up from the valley came floating the huts of the Kra-
jans, cylindrical and palm-thatched.
He longed in vain for his own hut, the home that had been
so graciously bestowed upon him by creatures he had come to
like, but could never hope to understand. Never hope to under­
stand—Suddenly Conovan sat up straight. Suddenly he knew.
Sitting there watching the water rise, a flash of psychological
intuition played like sheet-lightning over the darkest recesses of
his mind.
The Krajans were friendly, joyous, carefree—wonderful crea­
tures easy to like. But—they lacked something. What was it they
lacked? Human sympathy, of course—human empathy—deep hu­
man concern. His plight had certainly not passed unnoticed by
them. On the contrary, they were sad because of it and they
wanted—oh, so much—to see him again. But their concern had
ended there.
W hat had they really done for him? Nothing—beyond point­
ing to an elevated stretch of land and informing him that he
might have a chance of surviving the flood if he camped on the
heights until the rains ceased, and the water receded again. And
he would have done that anyway.
If they had warned him sooner he might have set about
building a boat. But the thought of warning him had seemingly
never even crossed their minds. How self-centered could you get?
To the Krajans just thinking about the rains meant conjuring
up an unpleasant prospect of underwater living, an existence-
cycle change which they did not relish at all. Sure, they talked
about the rains. Like people on Terra talked about sex when
they were afraid of sex or frustrated by it. But actually they
could only talk about the rains by pretending that it was a rid­
dle which shouldn’t be talked about at all.
Hence just thinking about the rains in an honest way had be­
110 OVER THE EDGE

come taboo, sacrilegious, and that taboo had been widened to

include a well-liked visitor from Earth.
On Earth most people were fools. Nine-tenths of the things
they did were completely meaningless. But just doing those
meaningless things endowed them with a certain empathy. They
became violently attached to one another. They could hate one
another too—as only people crowded together in a storm-tossed
boat could hate. But at least they built boats and urged their
friends to do likewise. They passed out storm warnings in ad­
vance, and when the rains came they were united in their folly,
living pillars of sympathy, resourcefulness and strength. They
knew that drowming could be— horrible, horrible.
The valley was gone now. It had become a lake completely
surrounding the mountain. It w'as turning the mountain into
an island so small that the rising water was less than a yard from
Conovan’s dangling feet.
He got up quickly and retreated up the slope. The water fol­
lowed him. It followed him like a streak of mercury rising in a
thermometer, faster and faster and with the chill, clear intention
of outdistancing the patient’s fever chart.
There was a basalt-smooth, slablike rock just below the sum­
mit of the peak. Breathless from his exertions, Conovan sank
down upon it and stretched out at full length. Then something
about the rock—its shape perhaps—caused him to leap up with
a shudder and descend to the ground again.
He climbed higher through the pelting rain, climbed to the
top-most crag and stood motionless while a tree was torn from its
moorings far below and carried away by the flood.
There was something mandrakelike about the tree's bobbing,
outfking roots and for an instant a mandrake scream seemed to
echo through the corridors of Conovan’s tormented mind.
How much like a mandrake scream would a man’s last scream
 ■WHEN THE RAINS CAME 111

be—if he surrendered utterly to terror in the last few seconds of

his life? Conovan couldn't believe that lie would die with a scream
on his lips. He was a coward, of course—like everybody else. But
even without witnesses he was convinced he could carry it off
without damaging the picture which he had of himself.
The picture was a little absurd, of course. But it was the only
picture he'd ever created with complete honesty according to his
lights, and he didn't want to spoil it.
As Conovan stared downward the flood waters held him en­
tranced for an instant, casting an almost hypnotic spell upon his
thoughts, and conjuring up horribly unnerving, imaginary pic­
tures.
W hat could be more mind-congealing than to actually see
Kolat-Mur sw imming up toward the surface, looming in ghoulish
dimness through the waves? For an instant he thought he did see
a stirring in the depths, a slender form gyrating about like a skin-
diving ballet dancer. But of course it wasn’t Kolat-Mur and after
a moment his sane, waking mind resumed its sway. He had no
intention of countenancing such a weakness in himself, for he
knew from experience that from its first monstrous assumption
in the wrong direction the unconscious could erect an edifice of
pure horror impossible to overthrow'.
The water was less than eighty feet beneath him now. The
last tree had been uprooted, but a few sturdy little shrubs re­
mained upright and firmly rooted, defying even the rain. Down­
ward into the flood they marched, like tiny soldiers bristling with
defiance and determined to prove that valor had nothing to do
with size.
The flood reached the slablike rock, swirled around it, and
cut a deep channel at its base. The rock seemed to half-glide,
half-float down into the depths.
Conovan stood very straight and still, watching the water
112 OVER THE EDGE

creep up over the base of the topmost crag. A patch of gray

lichen began to glisten and swell with moisture less than forty
feet beneath him. Numbly he watched it float free, his breathing
shallow, his eyes distended.
The water rose another ten feet. . . another five.
Then, abruptly, the rain ceased.
The cynic who said: "Troubles never come singly, but in
pairs,” might just as easily have been talking about strokes of
good fortune. Even the other variant of that discerning remark:
"It never rains but it pours,” might with equal verisimilitude
been turned completely about and plumped down on its head
in a mud puddle.
Two days after the rains stopped Conovan was rescued by a
ship from a far-away planet—a little green world spinning
through zodiacal beams half across the great curve of the uni­
verse. The planet was called Earth by its incredibly self-centered
inhabitants and Conovan just happened to be self-centered, too.
He was very glad to depart without even bidding goodbye to
the Krajans. In fact, he never had a chance, for th eir planet was
still nine-tenths submerged on the day of his leavetaking. So he
waved farewell only to the receding water and the tops of the
tallest trees, and went on board without a backward glance, re­
joicing, deep in his heart, that he had not been born a Krajan.
 R o b e r t E r v i n H o w a r d (1906-1936) was born and lived his short
life in Texas. He began writing at l*'. and sold his first story to Weird
Tales. which later published most of his stones, a great many of which
were distinguished for the rapid and relatively gory action associated
with his work. He wrote macabre fiction, sports stories, mystery stories,
tales of Oriental adventure, and poems, and invented a number of
memorable characters, including Conan the Cimmerian, Solomon Kane,
King Kull. Bran Mak Morn, Brule the Spear-Slayer, Breckinridge
Elkins. Sailor Steve Costigan. and others. Howard’s books include A
Gci:t from [Link] Creek, SkulTFace and Others, The Coming o f Conan,
Corun the Barbarian. The Su ord o f Conan. King Conan, Conan the
Conqueror. The Dark and Others, and the collected poems, Al­
ways C ernes Ereniss. Among stories left unpublished at the time of
Howard's death was this final tale of Solomon Kane.

The Blue Flame of Vengeance

Robert E. H oward*
"At birth a witch laid on me monstrous spells, and I have
trod strange highroads all my days . . ."—Solomon Kane

1. T he F lame B urns B right

The stranger paused beside the gnarled oak at the cliff's edge
to study the melancholy scene before him. To his right, the cliffs
Completed by John Pacsik.
114 OVER THE EDGE

fell away sheer to the moor, an ugly waste of raw earth sparsely
covered by the rotting grass. Fanglike spires of granite, thrusting
up out of the foam-slashed water at the base of the palisades,
straggled out in forbidding lines to oppose the angry breakers.
Farther out, the sea sent up a low, continuous murmuring as it
washed grey and restless against the reef's jagged spine. An un­
marked ship was anchored in a cove some distance down the
driftwood-strewn beach.
Turning, he gazed across the moorland with its stark rock
out-croppings and solitary trees to where in the distance could
be seen the drab roofs of a village. And there, about a mile be­
yond the cluster of cottages—barely visible through the gloom—
stood the manor house of Sir George Banway.
The stranger's hand tightened on his rapier hilt. The keen
wind cut through his clothing like a knife, making him pull the
worn cloak more tightly around him. Beads of moisture dripped
from the brim of his featherless slouch hat. Taller than most
men, he was spare of frame; his broad shoulders, deep chest, and
long arms betokened strength and agility in swordplay. There
were no golden buttons on his close-fitting garments, no silver
buckles on his shoes, no gems flashing on the hilt of his leather-
sheathed rapier. A dirk and two duelling pistols hung at his side.
But if the man's appearance was such as to command atten­
tion, even more so was his face, which was rather long, smooth
shaven, and of an odd pallor that lent it an almost corpselike
aspect—until one looked at the eyes. These gleamed with vibrant
life, rigidly suppressed. What their color was men never had
been able to say for they held both the greyness of the storm-
swept midsea and the blueness of ancient ice. Heavy brows hung
above them and the whole effect of his countenance was vaguely
sinister. He was as grim and cheerless as the setting he was in.
The day’s cold aura lay like a shroud over his soul as he
 THE BLUE FLAME OF VENGEANCE 115
thought of the man he had come to kill. There rose in his mind
a picture of another coastal town much like this, but one lit by
the red flames of its own destruction; of squat figures leaping
and blaspheming to the sullen roar of the cannonade; and of
seas torn by winds and the sheet lightning of an outraged heaven.
The bleak seascape faded out of existence for an instant as he
saw again the smoke, flame, and mindless chaos, shapes dangling
from yard-arms, writhing bodies hurtling from a plank laid over
a rail—and the girlish form whose lips framed frenzied pleas as
muscular arms pulled her to the bloodstained deck—
His face twisted by hate. Solomon Kane raised a clenched fist
to the brooding sky. The muscles at the side of his neck corded
in the violence of his passion.
"Hear me. God," he said in a terrible voice. "The blue flame
of vengeance burns in my heart by night and by day, allowing
me no rest. It must be quenched in blood, in the blood of that
filth known to men as George Banwav. I shall slay this man ere
dawn’s light or. bv the hounds of hate, may Satan carry me down
to the twinkling floors of Heil. Upon my soul be it!"
A gull's lunch, erv answered him and the wind moaned
sadlv. The fires that had sprung into Kane’s eyes flickered down
to a steady pulse. His face relaxed into its usual calm exterior.
As the light began; to fade, lie made his way down the steep h ill­
side and out across the wasteland towards the manor house now
hidden by the gathering mist.

2. T he M a n W ho C a m e in t h e N ight
Slowly Jack Hollinstcr drifted back to consciousness. A red
glow was in his eves and his head throbbed agonizingly. He shut
them against the glare, hoping to ease the pain, but the radiance
beat through his lids mercilessly. Where was he? What had hap­
pened? A medley of laughing, cursing voices bore in upon his

E*
116 OVER THE EDGE

ears. Raising his head, he again opened his eyes. The memory of
the treachery suddenly returned: he was fully awake.
Bound hand and foot, he was lying on the floor of a vast cel­
lar piled high with casks and barrels. The lofty ceiling was
braced with massive, smoke-begrimed beams, from one of which
hung the lanthorn that only partially illumined the room. There
was a flight of broad stone stairs at one end; at the other, a
barred archway gave onto darkness.
Many men were in the cellar. Jack saw the mocking face of
Banway, the goatlike traitor Sam's drink-flushed countenance,
and the inscrutable masks of the two mulattoes who were Sir
George’s only servants. The rest—some ten or twelve men—he did
not know, but recognized for what they were.
Pirates! So his suspicions about Banway's nocturnal activities
had been right after all! No honest seamen, these, with their
tarry [Link] and silken shirts. They wore no stockings, yet many
had shoes of the finest hand-tooled leather. Costly rings glittered
on their stubby fingers; gems, tied with bits of bright-colored
ribbon, dangled from their ear rings. There was not a sailorman’s
dagger among them, only elaborately fashioned Spanish cutlasses
and jewel-crusted poniards from Italy. Their grotesque clothing,
scarred faces, and wild bearing stamped them with the mark of
the vulture’s trade.
A man who was casting dice beside Sir George turned toward
the captive. "Ho, George, our prey wakes! ’ he shouted jeeringly.
"By Zeus, Sam, I thought you'd give him his resting dose, but
he's a thicker pate than I imagined."
The pirate crew ceased their gaming and drinking to stare
curiously or mockingly at the youth. Sir George’s saturnine face
darkened as he walked over to him. Holding his left arm out so
that the bandage could be seen through the ruffled silk, he
smiled thinly. The lanthorn-light shone on his silky hair.
 THE BLUE FLAME OF VENGEANCE 117
"You spoke truth, Hollinster, when you said no magistrate
should intervene at our next meeting. Only now, methinks, t'is
your cursed hide that shall suffer for what you did to me today."
"Jack!"
The sudden, agonized voice cut deeper than Banway's taunt.
His heart pounded violently as he twisted around to see a girl,
tied to a ring in an oaken support, kneeling on the floor nearby.
She was straining toward him, her face white and eyes wide with
fear. Her golden hair was tangled and her dress torn—
"Mary! Oh my God!" he cried out in anguish. A wave of
brutal laughter drowned his words.
"Drink a health to the loving pair," roared a tall man with a
cocked hat and a hooklike nose. He lifted a brimming mug.
"Let's drink to the lovers, lads! Meseemeth he dislikes our com­
pany. Wouldst rather be alone with the saucy wench, eh, boy?"
"You scum, you gutter sw ill,” Jack raved, wrenching at his
bonds while Banway looked on, amused. "Gods, if my arms were
but free! Loose me, if any of you have a drop of manhood be­
tween you and I'll be at your throats with my bare hands!”
Banway’s lips drew back in a snarl. "You waste your breath,
you stupid fool. Be silent! Not this time do I face you with naked
blade. I should have blasted you on the spot that night you dared
strike me at the inn, but that would have given my secret away.
So, perforce, I had to submit to a duel with you and again you
hurt me. But the third time pays for all, Hollinster: tonight I
shall finish what you started."
His hand closed on Hollinster's shirt and he bent his face
close. "You don’t know who I really am, do you? If you did, you
would have fled this place long ago and gladly left the girl for
me. But because you chose to meddle, you're going to die the
way wild beasts die—beneath fang and claw. The sea hides bet­
ter bodies than yours and shall conceal many more after your
118 OVER THE EDGE

bones have turned to slime. As for her— he nodded toward the

girl, "she'll abide with me in this house awhile. I'll wager she’ll be
a lithesome mount to ride. Then, when I've wearied of her . .
"Hadst better be, Fish Hawk, by the time I return,’’ broke in
the man with the cocked hat sourly. "If I h ive to take clay out
this trip -which, Satan knoweth, is a plaguey cargo— I must have
a fairer passenger next time. A bargain. Sir Aristocrat.-' ’
Sir George eyed him narrowly. "So be it, Hardraker. In two
months she's yours, unless she dies on me aforetime. But, Jonas,’’
he added in a steely voice, "anger me not. I’ve changed since
the old days with the Brotherhood. I've learned the secrets of the
spheres—secrets that are mine alone—that may some day make
me master of all England.”
"No good’ll come of your mixing with magic, Fish Hawk,”
Hardraker replied w-ith just the hint of a quiver in his voice.
"Having us steal them books and those bottles and bringing you
that, that . . .” He nodded toward the archway. Some of the men
stirred uneasily. Eyes flashed and one or two shaggy heads bobbed
in assent.
"It’s one thing to rob the dead, but quite another to have
dealing with them as you do,” he finished lamely, lapsing into
silence while Banway continued to stare at him as if he were
just seeing the man for the first time. The rest resumed their
former activities, though with noticeably lesser enthusiasm.
Jack's mind was whirling from what he had heard. He turned
toward the girl.
"Mary, lass, how did they get you here?”
"A man brought a missal,” she whimpered. “It had a message
written in it in a hand much like yours with your name signed.
He told me you’d been hurt near the beacon and asked me come
with him. But as we passed this house Sir George had his men
seize me and bring me down here.”
 THE BLUE FLAME OF VENGEANCE 119

"As I told 'e, maaster!” Sam mumbled drunkenly. "I told ’e

she was here, d i’n’t I? Trust ole Sam to trick ’em. 'E come along
like a lamb, boys. Thought ’e'd just have the Sair Garge to deal
wi'. Oh, that were a rare trick—an' a rare fool 'e were too!”
"Belay!” spoke up a one-armed man with sad eyes who was
evidently the first mate. "T is perilous enough puttin’ in this
way to get rid o’ the loot we takes and bring them ungodly things
the Fish Hawk wants. W hat it" the girl escapes and tips ’em to
the lay? It’ud be Gallowsgate for us all.”
Sir George laughed. "Be at ease, Allardine. W; ast ever a mel­
ancholy chap even when you sailed for me. No one knows they’ve
come here; no one ever will. The villagers will think they
eloped: I've heard his father is against the match. They'll never
be seen on this earth again. Besides, I can summon powers un­
dreamt of should any man jack among them suspect and come
ferreting about."
"Machap. But I’ll feel safer wi’ these waters and this house
far behind. The day o' the Brotherhood is passin’ in these climes.
Best the Caribs for us. Here 1 feel evil creepin’ through my
bones. Death’s a'hoverin’ over all of us with his black wings
a’fluppin' and even your sorceries mayn't keep him from us . .
Hardraker slammed his mug down, strode swiftly over to the
mate, and sent him reeling across the room with a mighty blow
of his fist. "That’s ill talk, man! Execution Dock—that’s all we
got to fear and we're veil to windward of [Link].'1
He pointed at Banway. "T ’is him what has to fear. Taking
chances with them bods and those spirits. Hast forgotten you ve
a human wolf on your trail. Sir Aristocrat? Hast forgotten the
word he sent you nigh two years ago after you thought you killed
him?"
Sir George paled slightly. He glanced nervously from Hard­
raker to the puzzled Hollinster and back again. The wild blood
120 OVER THE EDGE

which the pirate captain's words had stirred threatened momen­

tarily to burst through his civilized veneer.
"Hardraker, you try my patience! All of you oafs, listen to me.
I fear nothing, do you understand; nothing. Have I not proved
it before? Wouldst die along with the youth, Jonas? Then you
had better curb that wagging tongue. The trail’s too long, I tell
you. It’s too long and too faint even fo r. . .”
A long shadow fell across him, causing him to whirl around.
His face turned white; his mouth hung open. The others turned
and all eyes sought the stairway. No one had heard the door
open or shut, but there on the stairs stood a tall man, clad all in
black. His eyes shone like burning coals beneath heavy brows.
He held a cocked pistol in each hand.
"Solom on K a n e!’’ Allardine gasped.

3. I nto the V ault

"Move not, George Banway,” Kane said tunelessly, ’’Nor you,
Jonas Hardraker. All of you, keep your hands in front of you.
Let no man so much as think of touching his sword or musket
if he wishes to live.” He came down the stairs slowly into the
light.
"Kane! I knew it,” muttered the first mate. "Death's in the air
when he’s about. He comes like a shadow and slays like a ghost.
Oh, the Indians of the New Lands are naught to him in sub­
tlety . . . ”
The Puritan's sombre gaze chilled him into silence. "You re­
member me of old, do you not, Ben Allardine? You knew me be­
fore* the Brotherhood of Buccaneers turned into a cut-throat
pack under the Fish Hawk. But how many of you others remem­
ber th ose days? As for my subtlety—Darien schools one well in
the art of stealth so that I had no difficulty slipping past the
guards in the fog. In sooth, your true pirate is a very hog: stupid
 THE BLUE FLAME OF VENGEANCE 121

and quite careless as was the man at the top of the stairs. But
he’ll make no more such mistakes, I trow.”
Sir George had recovered his composure somewhat by this
time. He stepped forward cautiously, keeping an eye on the
long barrel of Kane's pistol which followed his every move. He
spoke calmlv. almost conversationally.
"What do you want here. Sir? Why have you entered my
house in such a fashion?”
Concentrated hate flamed in the Puritan's eyes and, even
more disturbing, a relentless bloodlust that was sure of satisfac­
tion.
"To kill you, George Banwav.” Passion hummed at the back
of his level voice.
"Now hearken to me. You know well why I’ve hunted you
from the Main to Portugal and from Portugal to England. Two
years ago you attacked a ship in the Tortugas: the 'Flying Heart’
by name. I was on that ship, accompanying a young girl, the
daughter of—never mind the name—to Dover. Her father was a
very dear friend of mine; many a time in byegone years had I
dandled his child upon my knee. Your men took our ship and
mercilessly butchered every man aboard. T ’was your own mate
who struck me down from behind while I was trying to cut my
way to your murdering throat. I fell with three feet of his steel
in me. but before I lost consciousness I saw what you and your
crew did to the women. Death was kinder to that girl than you
were. When I came to my senses the next morning I found her
torn body among the dead and though the deck was awash and
I half dead from fever and loss of blood I vowed I would track
you even to the Pit’s entrance if need be to take vengeance.”
Kane sighed. "It hath been a long trail to follow. I’ve jour­
neyed among godless peoples, through deserted villages that bore
the sign of your coming. But now the hunt is over. You've an
122 OVER THE EDGE

added mark against you also for when the girl's father learned
of the massacre and her fate he went mad and is in such a state
to this day. He had no sons, no one to avenge her— ”
"Except you, Sir Galahad?” Banway sneered.
"Yes, I, yo u d a m n ed ivhoreson!" The unexpected crash of
Kane’s oath shattered the silence. For an instant the Puritan lost
his iron control and flamed into a withering blast of fury. In that
instant Hardraker acted. He snatched up a pistol from a table
and, scarcely taking time to aim, pulled the trigger.
The ball grazed Kane's cheek and ricocheted off the wall with
an angry whine. Simultaneously the pistol in his left hand roared
its reply of death. Hardraker's head snapped back. Blood spurted
from the hole in the center of his forehead. He fell against the
table, upsetting it. His blood mixed with the spilt wine on the
floor.
The other black muzzle centered on Banway’s heart.
"You deserve a cruder death," he said as his finger tightened
on the trigger.
What he saw happen next made Jack Hollinster doubt his
very senses. Stepping back, Sir George drew’ a triangle in front
of him with his forefinger. The chamber darkened and a soft
buzzing sounded even before the figure was completed. The Puri­
tan’s arm was savagely jerked up into the air as if seized in an
invisible grasp. The pistol, torn from his hand, landed on the
floor some distance away. All of the pirates were frozen in a fear-
stricken tableau, but not so Kane. He sprang forward with the
swiftness of a wolf, the long steel finger of his dirk glimmering
in the murky light.
"Norte nulada, lameshta." Banwav’s tingers wove a constantly
intertwining pattern.
The droning grew louder, angrier. Kane was halted in mid­
rush, bent double with an agonized expulsion of breath, and
 THE BLUE FLAME OF VENGEANCE 123

hurled backward to crash against the steps. His head cracked

audibly on the stone. As his vision blurred and whips of fire
coiled round his brain, he seemed to glimpse a bluish, wraithlike
Shape leaning over him. Then Banway was slapping him in the
face with stinging blows.
"Come on. Broadbrim! Wake up or must I have conscious­
ness beaten back into you?” He kicked him viciously in the
side.
Kane's eyes flicked open and the men who were tying him fell
back before his baleful gaze.
" E's got the look o' Satan about dm. Gaw’, look at 'is eyes!"
"Best thrust him in the brisket. Banway," advised Allardine.
Every moment he breathes is a moment lost to us. I remember
hearin’ a man once tell how Kane lay all but dead on the rack
in the Spanish dungeons, yet when they came to cart his body
otf for burnin' he rose up from the heap o’ corpses and snapped
the Inquisitor's neck. Kill him now, I say. Let us leave this ac­
cursed place for cleaner waters. Hardraker’s already dead and
more mac go into the dark before this man’s soul has passed the
Judge's seat."
Sir George’s face was flushed with triumph. None of the un­
couth seimen ventured to meet his wild eyes just as they
shunned the Puritan’s. He studied each face carefully before he
spoke.
"The plans are changed, Allardine. You're in command now.
You can stay here or you can go—as you choose. I’ve decided to
keep Hollinster with me for awhile so that he may see with what
festive sport I entertain my female guests."
He motioned curtly to his servants who pulled Kane roughly
to his fec-t and dragged him over to the arched portal. The bars
of its gate glistened in the guttering lamp light. The nobleman
picked up a stout length of wood from among the chests, tied
124 OVER THE EDGE

an oil-soaked rag around it, and lit it. His face was like a M an­
darin’s death mask in the gloom.
"Come with me or leave, Allardine: it matters naught to me.
Only remember what you’ve seen here tonight and know that I
am your master in all things. Each day while you reap paltry
plunder I shall be growing in the mantic arts. Therefore, think
not of treachery or, by the Cevinnes, I will rend you from where-
ever ] chance to be. Take the girl up to my chamber and lock
her in—and touch not a hair on her head, any of you. Leave
Hollinster down here: I want him to hear Kane’s death cries—
if the Puritan has any throat left to scream with.’’
The first mate signed for two of his men to carry the body of
their former captain from the cellar.
"I’ll not truck w i’ this devil’s work, Fish Hawk. Come on,
lads; we got our due. W e’ll be back in two months and that’ll be
none too soon.”
Sir George watched them in contemptuous silence as they
filed up the stairs, taking the struggling girl with them. No one
turned back to look upon the small group they left behind.
Jack called out to Mary, but the spirit had gone out of his
voice. His heart was like a dead limp thing within him as he
thought of what lay ahead for them all at the hands of this war-
lock. There flashed into his mind the memory of the man that
had been found, frightfully mangled, in Banway's yard one win­
ter morning. The body had been almost torn in half and great
gouts of frozen blood stained the snow for many feet around.
When questioned, the aristocrat said his dogs had attacked the
poacher, but many were the tongues in the village to point out
how curious it was that Sir George never purchased meat for
these hounds, how odd it was that the beasts had never been
seen or heard. The nobleman’s influence had kept these mutter-
ings just mutterings.
 THE BLUE FLAME OF [Link]: 125

Banway unlocked the gate and led the way down a long tun-
ncl-like corridor. His torch cast shadows that capered like antic
gnomes upon are wall. Their footsteps echoed hollowly. Feign­
ing a slight unsteadiness, Kane made no move to break free. He
had tested his bonds as they entered the tunnel and found them
to be strong and wc'l tied. The man on his left kept a pistol
thrust against his temple: they were taking no chances. The Puri­
tan's anger still boiled deep, but uppermost in his mind now was
the frantic need for destroying Banway before he should harm
the helpless pair.
They came to the end of the tunnel where a heavy grate was
set in the door. Handing the pistol to Sir George the servant on
the left wen: over and lifted it out. A dank miasma and a soft
rustling floated up out of the hole.
"These are my vaults, Kane." said Banway in a quiet voice.
"Hast heard of the 'Low Dungeon with the Rats'? A tunnel leads
from them out to the sea. When the tide is full, as it is now, I
can flood the whole chamber just by opening the seaward door.
Ah, but drowning is not the death I have planned for you.”
He paused to see what effect his words were having, but Kane’s
eyes were pools of dark fire.
"I intended to put Hollinster down there, though methinks
he would have put on but a poor show with his puny arms. You
are fairer game, equal to your doom. Naytheless, no matter how
strong you may be, there is no escaping. Be thankful I did not
blot you out of existence with the Spell of the Worm. I offer you
a fighting man's death: in this regard I have mercy.”
He gestured with the pistol and the other mulatto forced Kane
over to the yawning aperture. A sickening fish odor mingled with
smell of decaying seaweed wellc-d up from the blackness. Some­
where far off a faint booming could be heard.
"Loose him.” Sir George’s voice was tinged by a fear that be-
126 OVKR THE EDGE

lied his confidence and bravado. The servant drew a knife and
cut the ropes. As Kane began massaging his aching arms to re­
store circulation, the aristocrat suddenly cast the torch into the
chamber below. Something scuttled back into the darkness.
" 'Vial l u x ’ Any last words, Broadbrim?”
"Yes, offal of Purgatory,” Kane replied. ''You think to rid w
yourself of me by doing this, but know that I have vowed to kill
you before corkscrew and I shall keep that pledge though I be
thrice cursed and triply damned. You are a stench in the nostrils
of God, a black smirch on the books of men. Take heed, for your
life is slowly sifting away with each grain in the hour-glass.”
"Push him in!” snarled Banway. The hand that held the
pistol was trembling.
The servant gave a shove and Kane fell through the hole,
landing catlike on his hands and feet. He rose and gazed up at
the faces framed in the circular opening. Sir George no longer
smiled.
"Think of the wench, Kane; mayhap she will help you to die
well. And think of the other wench too.”
The grate clanged down into place over the opening. A broad
flagstone was laid on top of that, leaving Solomon in the chill
dankness with his hate.

4. S ea C hange
He was not alone. A man was watching him from beyond the
small circle of light cast by the torch. He was taller than the
Puritan by a head and incredibly gaunt. His skin had that sickly
unborn pallor ot those who have been confined in the dark too
long. 1 litre was not a trace of hair anywhere on his naked body.
His arms were unnaturally long, possessing ropelike muscles that
gavf indication ot great strength despite his skeletal thinness.
Prom the look in the man s eyes, Kane judged; that he must be
half mad.
 THE BLUE FLAME OF VENGEANCE 127

The two studied cadi other for a time before Kane took in
the rest oi his surroundings. The chamber was long and rather
low. A forest of thick pillars supported the vaulted ceiling. The
floor was nearly hidden under mounds of ooze and shallow
patches of water in which seaweed and the half-eaten bodies of
many fish floated. The stale air reeked of the nauseating musk
of the sea. A rustv metal door of large proportions was recessed
deeply in the wall opposite, behind which he fancied he heard
a distant thundering. Then his eves shot back to the man who
started to speak.
“Aye, another life. Woe piled on woe." The quality of his
voice shocked the Puritan. He had great difficulty in forming the
words as if his throat was long unused to the speech of men.
They were hideously distorted, like the words that might rise
from the decaving lips of mariners buried beneath the muck on
the ocean floor.
Kane picked the torch up and stuck the shaft in the bracket
of a nearby pillar. He walked back toward his companion, not­
ing with revulsion his long nails and the filth that caked his
serpentlike hide.
“Who are you? What have you to do with the master of this
place?”
“W hat doth it matter to vou?” the other replied with a groan.
For the first time Kane saw the tears that were rolling down his
cheeks. But any pity the Puritan might have had for this suffer­
ing wretch was killc-d by the unholy hunger and evil longing
that swam in his eyes.
His thick, bubbly voice went on. “He put me down here many
years ago, it seemeth. I cannot remember how long it has been.
I only remember that I was an outcast in the Northern Isles—
hated, shunned, and feared—until his men came and took me
away. He knew what I was and did not fear me . . .
"But have done with your questions! I care not for memory:
128 OVER THE EDGE

t'is a cursed loathly thing that haunts me waking and sleeping.

Mine is not a barren lot. He feeds me well, you see, for any­
thing that enters these vaults is my prey. That is the way it is,
stranger. Behold.”
A taloned forefinger pointed to the massive door which was
slowly sliding upward. Sea water gushed through the widening
opening in a foaming wave that swept up to Kane's feet and
then receded. He stood awestruck for a moment before a guttural
croak brought him round to a horrifying sight.
The dweller of the vaults was changing shape before him. His
face had lengthened and flattened and his eyes bulged like dead
pearls. Two ragged holes marked the place where his nose had
been. A flap at each side of his neck pulsed rhythmically. His
skin was assuming a greenish hue while thick scales overspread
it. He lifted one hand and the Puritan saw the webbing between
the fingers. He shambled with an odd limping gait into the light.
The gash of a mouth opened to reveal needlelike fangs that
glistened.
" 'a wter. Shange, t'comes,” gurgled from the puffed throat.
"Satan’s work!” Kane gasped, backing away. The water frothed
whitely among the pillars and an ever increasing roar filled the
chamber. The creature turned and dove into the water, reveal­
ing for an instant the fins that jutted from his back. So this was
the doom Banway had spoken of! Kane had heard of such beings
before: sea changelings, men who turned into things less than
human when the tide ran and they were near the water.
An eddy tugged at his legs as the water rose to his knees. There
was no sign of the changeling in the swiftly rising flood. Kane
began to wade toward the flickering torch which the spray
threatened to extinguish.
A scaled body suddenly erupted from the water in front of
him. Long arms reached toward him and talons flexed to sink
 THE BLUE FLAME OF VENGEANCE 129

into flesh. The face was a mocking travesty of its former human­
ity. Only the eyes glowed with the same hunger. He hurled him­
self out of the wav. but the fish-man moved even more quickly,
leaping after him and flailing out with its $.cvthing claws. A fore­
arm struck Kane on the side of the neck, knocking his feet from
under him. He tell backward and the cold water closed over his
head.
As he struggled to rise, a heavy body pressed down upon him.
Talons sank deep into his breast. The changeling grabbed at his
long hair with its other hand and dragged his head beneath the
water. Choking for breath, Kane exploded into furious activity.
He lashed out with his feet and fists and felt the monster’s grip
relax before his hammerlike blows. He floundered away to lurch
to his feet. Blood dripped from his torn hand.
Water washed against his waist as he wallowed toward the
torch—his last hope. His Angers closed round the hard wood and
he jerked it out of the holder. A wild splashing sounded directly
behind him. W hirling, he brought the brand whistling around
with all the force he could muster. The flaming end cracked
against the fish-man's skull. Its eyes glimmered whitely with pain
as it reeled backward. Without giving the creature a chance to
escape into the water, Kane swung the torch like a madman; he
drove it before him under a hail of smashing blows to its head
and side. Wood thudded savagely against leathery flesh. Sparks
showered and flame laced the changeling's hide. But then the
Puritan’s foot slipped on the mud. He fell forward and the torch
flew from his grasp, winking out of existence.
An arm coiled round his neck, pulling him under. His own
fingers sought and found the throbbing gill slits. He began to
tear even as the beast was tearing at him. Locked in their deathly
embrace they crashed against the pillars, but neither felt this. It
was a nightmare battle of snapping fangs and inhuman pain,
130 OVER THE EDGE

barbaric and to the death. The Puritan, realizing that his

strength was fast waning, sent the last of his energy flowing into
his powerful fingers. His lips split in a ghastly grin of superhu­
man effort. A blinding light flashed before his eyes and his heart
thundered deafeningly beneath the water. His mouth opened to
scream his defiance of Satan's minions . . .
He found himself treading the water weakly, sucking in great
gasping breaths of air. His muscles were numbed by the cold wa­
ter. A limp body floating beside him nudged him. Kane was
mildly surprised to find his fingers still sunk in the stringy neck.
He pulled them loose and pushed the corpse away from him in
disgust. Every move he made caused him excruciating pain, but
he knew that he had to get out before he drowned.
The water had risen above the top of the sea door and it was
strangely quiet In the vaults now that the roaring had subsided.
All that could be heard was the slapping of tiny waves against
the walls. Nevertheless, the swift current told him that the sea
was pouring in as fast as it had been and was rapidly nearing
the domed ceiling.
He swam off among the pillars, hurriedlv groping for the
grate that marked his only means of escape. After what seemed
like centuries, his fingers caught hold of the iron bars. He uttered
a silent prayer and pushed upward with a volcanic surge of en­
ergy. His muscles knotted with the effort as he trod the water
furiously. Water poured into his mouth, making him cough. But
the grate moved upward bit by bit until he was able to slide his
fingers between the rough metal and the rim of the opening.
He heaved with a final burst of power and the grate and the
flagstone fell back with a loud crash. Kane hauled himself out
of the whirlpooling darkness to lay on the floor like a sodden
dead thing.
 THE BLUE FLAME OF VENGEANCE 131

5. T he Q uenching of the F lame

George Banway let the curtain fall and turned away from the
window. He was rapt in thought for a moment as he gazed at
the age-stained wainscotting, the funereal hangings, and the dust-
filmed table on which the ponderous astrolabe stood. One whole
wall was lined with battered books of all shapes and sizes. The
dry odor of the years filled the room like a pungent incense. Re­
moving his coat, he started to unbutton his shirt angrily.
"They're going, the pack of cowards!” he said to the girl who
lay on the couch before him. "They're going because they can­
not understand what I've done and hence fear me. Soon, ah,
soon England will be mine for the taking. Now that I’ve gotten
that black hunter off my trail, there's naught for me to fear—
either from demons or from men.”
He laughed as he poured himself a goblet of wine.
"The look on Galahad’s face when I put down in the hole—
he actually had the gall to threaten me. Give us a kiss for him,
girl; give us a kiss for your boy and your rescuer.”
He bent toward her and his lips pressed brutally upon hers.
She tried to twist her head away, but he held her in an iron grip.
When he lifted his head, there was blood on his lips.
"By God, you're a fierce one, you hussy! I'll tame you though
—n o u !"
He picked her up and rushed over to the slab of milk-white
marble that stood in the center of the chamber. Star-shaped
candlesticks containing long scarlet tapers had been placed at
each corner. He laid her on the purple velvet cloth that covered
the block's surface.
"This room is also my chapel, wench, and this is my altar
which no hammer has ever touched. Hast heard of the Black
Venus? No, I suppose not. W ell, know then that whosoever takes
132 OVER THE EDGE

a girl's maidenhood on this altar and offers the act to the N igra
M uller receives sorcerous powers threefold.”
He placed a missal-like volume trimmed with gold on the altar
and turned the pages rapidly. Mary Garvin shuddered, closing
her eyes in horror when she saw a picture of an obscenely fat
witch posturing brazenly before the leering Master of the Sabbat.
Sweat beaded the nobleman's forehead as he lit the candles
and the silver lamp which bore the Hydra’s sigil. When he fin­
ished, he took his shirt off. His hairy chest was criss-crossed with
the scars of many a fight; on his left breast was branded the fate­
ful sign of the cloven hoof. Mary's heart sank. She wept bitterly.
Scarcely heeding her, Banw'ay raised his arms and intoned
solemnly. "Iu fa m es am ores incubi su ccu biq u e ven ism t accept!
tibi, N igra Mulier. Sic qu oq u e m ens am or veniat.”
One hand closed over her mouth before she could scream while
the other grabbed the front of her dress and ripped it down to
her waist.
"M eus amor . . .” He stooped toward her, his eyes fierce slits
of lust.
"Banway!'’
The shout came like the crack of a pistol in the silence. He
stiffened and wheeled around, but was unable to collect himself
for a second. Jack Hollinster stood in the doorway, a heavy broad­
sword in his hand. The bloody form of one of the servants
sprawled at his feet. His face was a terrifying sight, but he made
no move to enter the room.
"Hollinster! How did you get out of the cellar? Do you think
to thwart me even now? Fool, I’ll have your heart for this.”
He raised his hand and inscribed a circle.
"Lameshta.”
The swordblade exploded into glowing fragments. The use­
less hilt dropped to the carpet from the youth’s numbed hand.
 THE BLUE FLAME OF VENGEANCE 133

Banway came closer, smiling in spite of his anger.

Mary screamed. "Run. Jack! He'll kill you . .
"Your limbs are bound, you may not move or stir," the war-
lock chanted in a sing-song voice. Fear sprang into Jack's eyes as
he tried to lift his arm and found he could not.
"Now, Hollinster, die like a dog in front of your girl ..
Solomon Kane stepped through the doorway past the par­
alyzed youth. His garments were in tatters and stained a deep
ruby red; his iron-gray hair was matted to his forehead with dry­
ing blood. But his eyes burned with the same cold light they had
held before.
"Kane!" Banway gasped in a choked whisper. "No, i t . .
There was a sudden blinding flurrv of light and then Sir
George Banway lay at the Puritan's feet, twitching a little. Saliva
dribbled from his gaping mouth; only a slight trickle of blood
seeped from his left eye. A blue flame seemed to play about the
dead man's head for an instant before it vanished.
"Through the eyeball and into the brain," Kane said moodily,
wiping his rapier blade on a tapestry. "He merited not a quick
and easy death. My heart lies heavy within me for giving him
such."
He looked up to see Jack, now uncharmed, freeing the weep­
ing girl and calming her as he wrapped his coat about her. The
room was strangely chill and the house creaked around them as
they made their way down the great central staircase, past the
cellar entrance and the other dead mulatto, and out the front
door into the crisp air and the wholesome night.
They paused in the yard before the ominously bulking house.
A crescent moon shone frostily through the bluish mist veil, re­
vealing the dark bent ghosts of trees and hedges. Each was lost
in his own thoughts until the Puritan spoke at last.
"He sailed an ocean of blood, lad, and tampered with vile un­
134 OVER THE EDGE

earthly things. God grant death and destruction follow him to

Hell for all eternity. Crimson is his ruin; black be his doom!"
His sombre mood passed as quickly as it had come. He smiled
tenderly at the couple. When he put his hands on Jack's shoulders,
the youth felt their power.
"Soon your friends will be about you, Jack, and the memories v
of this house shall be forgotten. Out of travail cometh strength,
peace, and happiness. Mayhap your paths will run the straighter
for this night of horror."
The girl clutched at his hand. "W e know not how to thank
you ..
"Thou hast thanked me enough already, little one," Solomon
replied in his deeply vibrant voice. "T'is enough to see you well
and delivered from evil. May you thrive to wed and bear strong
sons and rosy daughters.”
"But, Sir, who are you? What do you seek?"
A mystic look flashed into the Puritan’s eyes; his voice held
just a hint of sadness. "I am but a landless wanderer, one time
of Devon. Out of the sunset I have come and into the sunrise
must I go—where ever the Lord doth guide my feet, whether
along fair ways or foul. Perhaps I seek my soul s salvation, per­
haps not. I came here following a trail of vengeance. Now I must
leave you for the dawn is not far off and I fain would not have it
find me idle. Aye, my feet grow wears- of wandering and age
comes on apace, yet while men are persecuted and women
wronged, while the weak things of the earth suffer, there can be
no rest for me beneath the blue skies, nor peace at any bed or
board. Fare thee well."
"Stay!" Jack called out, his throat aching oddly.
"Oil, please w ait awhile. Sir!" cried Mary,
But the tall figure had vanished in the darkness and the only
sound to be heard was the pattering of the mist droplets on the
dead leaves.
 Jesse Stuart y l 9(P~ ) was born and has lived all his life in
or near W-Hollow, Kentucky. He is of Scottish-English descent, and
is today perhaps America's best regional writer. He is devoted to his
region and the people of that land, and his books arc permeated with
his affection for them. In 1934 he startled the literary w’orld with his
book of 703 poems. fVLrw with Bull-Tongue Plow, many of which
were written on scraps ot paper and even on leaves while he worked
on his father's farm. This was followed by a book of short stories,
Head o' \\"-H:iieu. In 1937 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellow­
ship. and in the following year he published his autobiography, Beyond
Dark Hills, His first no\el, T n a o f Heaven, came in 1940, after which
books for old and young came with fair frequency, including Men of
toe Mountains, Taps fo r Private Tussie (a Book-of-the-Month Club
selection), M ongrel Mettle, Album o f Destiny, Foretaste o f Glory,
Tales from the Plum Grove Hills, The Thread That Runs So True (a
second volume of autobiography), Hie to the Hunters, Clearing in the
Sly. Kentucky Is dfy Land, and many others. His most recent works are
God's Odd ling, The Year of d ij Rebirth, Hold April, and The fesse
Stuart Reader—these are also among his best books.

Jesse Stuart

I was taking down a clothesline wire that had rusted and re­
placing it with one that wouldn’t rud when I heard footsteps
coming around the house. I turned to look and there was Pa.
"Pa!" I said, tightening my grip on the hatchet-handle.
136 OVER THE EDGE

Pa laughed in his old familiar way. "What's the matter with

you, Shan? Aren't you glad to see me? You act like you don’t
know me!''
"Sure, I know you," I told him as he came closer.
There he stood dressed in his brown suit, white shirt, and
polkadot bow tie. But time was the same. The house, the back
yard, the stream flowing under the house and the surrounding
hills covered with dogwood and redbud had not changed.
"I must be dreaming," I said.
"Wake up, Shan," he said. "Don't get old before your time!
Wake up, boy, and let's laugh like we used to."
"But somehow I can’t understand," I said. "Is that really you,
Pa? Am I seeing and hearing you?"
"Sure you are, my boy,” he replied with words quicker than
the wind that rustled the dogwood leaves on the tree above us.
"Don’t let my little visit upset you. If I seem a little too happy
remember it’s the -way I've always felt after I've been away on
a visit and got back home to my valley."
Then he laughed again and slapped his long thin calloused
hands on his sharp creased pant legs. "You ought to know your
own father,” he said, his voice louder than the murmur of sum­
mer wind in the dogwood leaves.
Same old Pa, I thought. Can’t be away anytime he doesn't
worry about his home and valley. Tools can't be left out. Each
tool must have a place. Each animal must have a home inside the
barn away from the icy winds and winter snows. Every living
thing must have a home. It must be fed regularly, too.
"Come to think about it,” I spoke too quickly, "that ditch
above the barn has filled up and the surface water has rotted
the ends of the barn siding. And the barn roof sags and leaks— ”
The smile lett his red clean-shaven face but his blue eyes still
looked searchingly at me.
 CRABGRASS 137

"Where's the family?" he asked.

"At Blakesburg, I replied. "You should have met the car com­
ing up the road!"
"The old black one?" he asked.
"No, sand-colored," I corrected him. "It's been quite awhile
since we had a black car.”
"Oh, that’s right," he said. "I should have known that."
He fidgeted around, putting his hands in his pockets and tak­
ing them out again. He took a step forward and then turned
around. He was always as restless as an impatient high-spirited
horse lined up for a race.
"Are you treating your Deanems all right?" he asked chuck-
ling.
"Sure am," I said.
But that was Pa all right. He had always liked to tease.
"Say, Shan, what about old Dinah?”
"Dinah?" I said. "First time I've heard that mule mentioned
in a long time. You remember she didn't live long after Old
Dick died. W e retired her on the green pasture. She died in three
months. She grieved herself to death!"
"Oh, yes, I remember,” he said. "I wondered if you’d remem­
ber!"
"Don't you remember her bones were picked clean by the
scavengers before we found her," I asked him. "And don’t you
remember a forest fire got into our pasture, raced over the brown
autumn grass and burned her bones!"
"But fire, Shan," he said, "you know how I fit fire and copper­
head snakes with my little gooseneck hoe! Have you forgot that?”
I had neglected his land. I had not taken care of the farm
like he had before he went away. He watched about forest fires,
waterholes in the pastures, brush growing in fencerows and along
the banks of the creek that flowed past his meadows. He in-
138 OVER THE EDGE

spected the roofs for leak's in all of his buildings before winter
and cleaned the ditches.
He'd never let but one fire get on his fifty acres as long as he
owned them. Lightning set that fire in three places but he soon
reached these fires and put them out before each one got a head
start.
"Watch fire while I'm away, Shan,” he warned me. ' You can’t
have me always to take the lead running to a fire with my little
gooseneck hoe across my shoulder. I'm getting to be an old man
you know'! I can’t run like a turkey, for my old ticker won’t let
me.”
I nodded to him that I would.
"And something else I want to mention to you,” he talked on,
his face serious as he pointed his skinny index finger at me,
"Have you watched the tires on the joltwagon wheels and when
have you put axle grease in the hubs? Have you put the wagon
wheels in water to soak the rims and spokes and tighten the
tires?”
"Pa, what are you talking about?” I asked him. "W e use the
tractor and the tractor wagon now."
Pa didn't answer me. Something was troubling him now. He
wasn’t as happy as he’d been when he first walked around the
house. But it was like him to change his mood as suddenly as a
wind can reverse itself and blow back the way it came. His mood
had lined his red face with a serious expression.
"W hat’s the matter?” I asked. "What's gone wrong now?"
"The Valley," he said. "My tracks have barely washed away
from the fields and The Valley is neglected! Creek banks need
scythin’ and the brush is crowdin’ in. Son, you’re too young to
let the brush whip you."
"I know I am," I said apologetically.
Words spoken in his familiar voice always made me think.
 CRABGRASS 139

And after each little visit he had ever taken he came back find­
ing fault when the little jobs had been neglected. This trip was
no different from the rest. He had always been like this and he
would never change.
W hile there was silence between us, I thought of the time
once when he told me that he’d dug up so much crabgrass from
corn and tobacco with his little gooseneck hoe that when he de­
parted from this life and was planted at Plum Grove, if we let
that stuff grow over him he would grow restless in his grave.
And, if there was a way he would get out of his grave.
He requested that I keep the crabgrass from his grave and
that I use his little gooseneck hoe, as long as it lasted, to dig this
grass up. I promised him that I would. And a promise to him,
living or dead, was one I’d better keep. If any man could ever
return from that silent homeland where Plum Grove men were
laid, he would be that man.
"W ell, I must be leavin’ you, Shan," he said. "I want to get
up on the hill and see the place—the barn and garden—oh, yes,
I’m about to forget—what about my bull.'"’'
"Which one?" I asked.
"You know—Old Boss, the last one and the best one," he re­
plied instantly.
"Old Boss," I said. "Pa, what’s between us?"
"Oh, maybe a little time," he said. "A little time—that’s all.
A little time can change everything. Let a man be gone—yes,
even a little while and his wife and dog won’t know him. A man
and his bull are forgotten, and his place goes down. Shan, I tell
you, you're lettin’ this place go to hell.”
I stood there beside him as stunned as when he first came
around the corner of the house into the backyard in his Sunday
Clothes. I was glad to hear the sound of the car pull up in front
of the house and slow down for the driveway.

F
140 OVER THE EDGE

"There they are,” I sighed. "Pa, you wanted to see them.

They’re coming home now.”
He didn't seem to hear what I was saying. He had something
more on his mind to tell me before he went up on the hill.
"Shan, when have you been to Plum Grove?”
"W ell, let me see,” I said, putting my hand on my head as I
tried to remember.
"I ll tell you,” he interrupted me with words that came faster
than a mad March wind. "Decoration Day— last May . . .”
"W ell, that’s . . .”
"Sure it’s right,” he interrupted. "That place is a wild hurri­
cane of tall grass. I always saw to it that Old Alec cut the grass.
My flesh and blood so neglectful, so full of broken promises . . .’’
"But, Pa . . .”
"You promised me once,” he went on, with his skinny index
finger pointed at me.
"Oh, now I see," I said, but he was gone.
"Who were you apologizing to this time?” Deanems asked.
She had come through the garage to the back of the house with
Janet beside her.
When I looked quickly at Deanems and Janet, time was the
present. Pa died in 1954. Deanem’s hair was a dark brown then
as an October whiteoak leaf. Now that brown was streaked with
late October’s frosted gray. Janet wasn’t the pudgy little girl with
the long pigtails and pink cheeks who came running to me for
candy. She was tall as her mother now and she had her mother’s
eyes and hair. She was a sophomore at the University. Now she
watched me carefully to see if my necktie was tied properly and
if my cigar had a pleasant aroma. If time had reverted to the
past, it now jumped back to the present.
"I was talking to Pa,” I told Deanems. She gave me an under­
standing look. "He seems to think I’ve been neglecting things."
 CRABGRASS 141

"W ell, have you?” Deanems asked.

“Pa reminded me again of the things he told me to do before
he went away. He accused me of being asleep when I was never
more awake in my life.”
"Daddy, are you sure Grandpa was here?” Janet asked.
"As sure as I live and breathe,” I replied.
Deanems looked at me knowingly while Janet half-smiled as
if she were a little amused by her aging father who wasn't fifty-
four yet.
"It isn't hard to believe,” Deanems said. "I knew your voice
and the other voice sounded so familiar.”
"If he wasn't here, then I’m the one who is dead,” I said.
"Knowing your father as well as I did, I know he never came
to see you without a reason," Deanems said softly. "Did he have
one this time?”
"Do I have to answer that?" I asked.
"You could never break a promise w'ith him,” she said. "Have
you broken one? Did you promise him something this time? Tell
me, and maybe I can help you.”
"Yes, if you can find Pa’s little gooseneck hoe for me,” I re­
plied. "I put it away—but I’ve forgotten where.”
Now she understood. But perhaps she had never doubted what
I had told her.
 Carl Jacobi (1908- ) is a native and resident of Minnesota,
where he is at present employed as a journalist while he writes in his
leisure hours. He was launched on a writing career when he won a
short story contest at the University of Minnesota with his fine macabre
tale, Alive. His short fiction has appeared in Ghost Stones, Mac Lean' 5
Magazine, Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, The Toronto Star, Strange
Stories, etc.; the best of his tales have been collected into two volumes—
Revelations in Black and the forthcoming Portraits in Moonlight.

K incaid's Car
Carl Jacobi

The boxcar which arrived in Bayou City via the Southbound

6:25 that July morning was an oddity. According to the mani­
fest, it contained one hundred wish suppliers—station agent Jeb
Collins checked this twice to make sure his bifocals were not
playing him tricks—and was consigned to the Standard Chair
Factory.
There was no Standard Chair Factory in Bayou City. Twenty
years ago the old Latham place had housed for a brief time such
a concern. But the company had gone out of business and the
house had been abandoned for as long as the station agent could
remember.
 KINCAID'S CAR 143

Collins, however, was not an imaginative man. If the mani­

fest said "chair factory", his not to reason why. He watched the
brakeman oil the rusted switch and a moment later saw the car
creak slowly down the weed-overgrown spur.
The 6:25 had another observer that morning. Up on Grover’s
H ill, a half mile south of town, Durgan Kincaid looked through
field glasses out across the valley. He was a thin, erect man, with
copper-colored hair, and at that hour he had finished milking
and had a few moments before starting the rest of his chores.
There he could quietly contemplate the vista across the river, of
which he never tired. Today, while the approaching train was
still a smear of smoke on the horizon, he gazed at the farther
shore, the trees all grey and misty in the early light.
Then the train pulled into the station, and he saw the car.
He lowered the binoculars and wiped the lenses with his
handkerchief.
At first he thought he had seen an ordinary boxcar. Then, as
if viewed through water, it seemed to blur, become silver in color
and elongate like a bullet. He thought he saw a bluish aura, like
foxfire, hover over it, moving slow ly from stem to stern.
Kincaid cased the glasses. Half an hour later he had driven
his vintage station wagon to the depot and confronted station
agent Collins.
"Circus come to town, Jeb?"
The station agent looked mildly irritated. "Not that I know
of.”
"W hat became of that silver car?"
Collins applied a match to his pipe. "I don’t know nothin'
about a silver car. If you mean the one that come in on the 6:25,
it was sided on the old spur."
"The Latham place! exclaimed Kincaid. "W hat’s it doing
there?"
144 OVER THE EDGE

But the station agent shrugged and limped off down the plat­
form. Kincaid stood in puzzled silence, then turned and strode
down the abandoned spur. Presently he came upon the car,
stopped short and viewed it with disappointment.
It wasn’t silver at all, but faded red, with rusty trucks and iron
work, a commonplace, swaybacked boxcar. Standing there before
the boarded-up windows of the Latham house, it looked strangely
lonely and forlorn.
Kincaid approached it slowly. The seal on one of the doors
was broken and the door stood slightly open. It wasn’t like Col­
lins to overlook such a discrepancy. He moved to the open door,
hesitated and then climbed in.
It took a moment for his eyes to accustom themselves to the
half light.
The car was divided into two parts. On the right, piled al­
most ceiling-high, were rows of cartons, each bearing the stenciled
legends, FRAGILE, THIS SIDE UP, DO NOT CRUSH.
On the left of the door a six foot square section had been ar­
ranged to resemble the corner of a room. An old-fashioned room.
Quaint, homelike.
A white flounced curtain draped from a high painted like­
ness of a window. An oval braided rug covered the floor. Drawm
up before a pot-bellied stove was a spindle rocking chair. On the
table stood a Rochester lamp and beside it a w'icker sewing
basket with several black stockings peeping out. A Currier & Ives
print hung upon the wall.
But apart from the utter incongruity of its presence here,
there was something magic about the room likeness. It carried
Kincaid back to his boyhood and his holiday visits to his grand­
mother s house. He could almost see the Connecticut snow' blow­
ing past the wdndow', hear the wood crackling in the stove, see
his grandmother rocking slowly to and fro.
 KINCAID'S CAR 145

He turned and looked at the stacked cartons. One lay at his

feet where it had fallen after breaking loose from the steel re­
straining tape. The box was open and its contents spilled out.
Revealed there in miniature was a duplicate of the old-fash­
ioned room beside him. In amazingly perfect detail he saw a tiny
replica of the flounced curtain, the spindle rocking chair,
braided rug and Rochester lamp.
Kincaid left the car and headed thoughtfully down the track.
He had gone only a few yards when he saw a woman coming to­
ward him. Dressed entirely in lavender with an oversized hat,
she might have stepped out of a Godey’s print. Her skirts all but
swept the ground and her fringed parasol belonged to another
age.
"I beg your pardon,” she said. "Do you live here?”
"No, I don't,” Kincaid replied.
The woman nodded toward the vacant house. "Then can you
tell me who handles the leasing of this property? That is, if
it’s available for rent.”
"It’s been empty for a long time,” Kincaid said somewhat un­
certainly. "I believe the South Shore Agency has the listing.”
She nodded. “And where will I find the South Shore Agency?”
"On River Street. You can't miss it, M iss. . .?”
“Lavinia Parker. I'm new to Bayou City.”
There was something mildly disturbing about the woman.
Something alien in the way she twisted her head jerkily and
peered at him with fixed lashless eyes.
“Can I drive you into town, Miss Parker?” Kincaid said. "My
car is down by the depot.”
"Thank you, no." She shook her head. "This house attracts
me. I think I'll look about a while.”
Driving back to his farm, Kincaid found himself smiling at
the woman's out-dated costume and her interest in the tumble-
146 OVER THE EDGE

down mansion. Then his face sobered as his thoughts returned

to the boxcar and its strange contents.

On Wednesday morning Miss Lavinia Parker appeared at the

office of the South Shore Real Estate Agency. That afternoon
three repair men began a hasty refurbishing job on the old La­
tham mansion. They patched the roof, put new panes in broken
windows, straightened the lintels on jammed doors. And on Fri­
day Miss Parker moved in.
Meanwhile, agent Collins had notified the railroad that the
Standard Chair Factory, the consignee of car No. 165943, Seal
MS 2960, was no longer in existence. That report, plus an ir­
regularity in the car's serial number, resulted in the matter be­
ing turned over to Railroad Police.
In due course, Lieutenant Dane Woodrow was dispatched to
Bayou City. He was a heavy-set, ruddy man who smoked too many
cigars and was completely devoted to detail. After conferring
briefly with Collins, he set off down the spur to the boxcar.
The first thing he saw was Miss Lavinia Parker sitting on the
Latham veranda, busy with her knitting. Then he saw some­
thing else. In the open doorway of the boxcar Durgan Kincaid
appeared, a camera under his arm.
"Here, you!” Woodrow cried. "Don’t you know you can be
arrested for breaking into railroad property?"
Kincaid shrugged. "The door was open,” he said. "I haven’t
taken anything except a few pictures.”
With an agility unusual for a man of his bulk, Woodrow
vaulted into the car. A moment later he was back at the door,
glaring down at Kincaid.
"Have you been living in this car?” he demanded.
"Certainly not,” Kincaid said.
"Then what’s this furnished room doing here?”
 k i n c a i d ’s car 147

Kincaid shook his head. "I don't know.”

Woodrow ducked back into the car again. When he reappeared
at the door he looked bewildered.
"I'm damned!” he said slowly.
On the veranda Miss Lavinia Parker put aside her knitting
and strode down the steps to the two men.
"Mr. Kincaid,” she said, "I think you should give some
thought to the suggestion I made to you this morning. That is,
since the company this merchandise was sent to is no longer in
business, why not offer the officer a price for the contents of the
car. Plus demurrage charges, of course.”
Lieutenant Woodrow shook his head. "Sorry. The railroad
doesn't operate that way. If the consignee no longer is in busi­
ness, the merchandise goes back to the shipper—at the shipper's
expense.”
Miss Parker nodded. "I'm sure Mr. Kincaid appreciates that.
But it occurred to me—to him, that is—that if there should be
any mix-up over the identity of the shipper, Mr. Kincaid could
put in a bid, couldn't he?”
Woodrow shrugged. "It's out of my field,” he said. "But I’ll
speak to the freight agent.”
Bayou City, steeped in midsummer boredom, awoke abruptly
that July day to find itself seized by boredom-inspired curiosity.
In one bound the boxcar became the settlement’s principal topic
of conversation. Like crown fire word of the car raced up one
side of River Street and down the other. Rumor mounted ru­
mor and the fact that no one seemed to know anything definite
only added to the enigma.
When the story reached Sam Wharton, editor of the Bayou
City Sentinel—he would have heard of it sooner had he not cho­
sen that particular day to go fishing—he viewed it with a news­
paperman’s characteristic suspicion. Not discounting its news

F*
148 OVER THE EDGE

value, however, he nosed around, asked a lot of questions and

eventually drove out to see Kincaid who, gossip said, knew more
about the matter than anyone else.
"Kincaid,’’ he said, accepting gratefully the dipper of cold
water from the pump, "what the devil's in that car and what’s
it doing by the old Latham place?”
Kincaid shrugged. "W hy don’t you see for yourself?" he said.
"Why? Because it's locked now, that’s why, and that fool Col­
lins refuses to open it. And, because that Parker woman—the
one who dresses as if this were the year, 1910—sits on her front
porch with a shotgun and threatens to shoot anyone who comes
near it.”
Kincaid chuckled.
"Collins says that car is supposed to contain wish suppliers,”
Warton continued. "W hat’s a widi supplier?”
"I don’t know.”
W'arton lit a cigar. “This chap who was around here the other
day—Woodrow or Woodring—he’s from the Railroad Police, isn’t
he?”
"Yes.”
"What did he want?”
"I’m not sure. He asked a lot of questions.”
The editor gave up in despair, but he wasn’t through yet by
any means. Next day he ran a three column picture of the boxcar
on page one of the Sentinel under the caption, "Mystery Car,”
and had the satisfaction of having the story picked up by one of
the press associations with a request for "more”.
As for Kincaid, he forgot about the matter until he received
that odd letter from the assistant freight agent of the railroad
company.
This is to inform you that this office has taken under ad­
visement your bid of one hundred dollars for merchandise
 Ki n c a i d ’ s car 149

in car No. 165943, now sided at Bayou City. As there are no

claims outstanding and as both shipper and consignee re­
main unidentifiable, this bid has been accepted, and you are
hereby authorized to remove the merchandise immediately.
Kincaid read the letter again and frowned. Somehow it didn’t
ring true. Since when did a railroad company, always a stickler
for red tape, accept an unwritten bid that hadn't gone through
the regular channels?
He brooded over the matter. He didn’t want any of the silly
doll housc-s that were loaded in the car and neither, he felt sure,
would anvone else. Moreover he certainly wasn't going to pay a
hundred dollars for them simply because of the whim of some
senile woman.
Next day, however, he drove to the car—it wasn’t locked as
Warton had said. The broken seal had been fixed so that casual
inspection made it look intact. He entered and stood looking at
the cartons. And there in the hot silence of the car he felt his
determination slip away and an overwhelming obsession sweep
over him. As in a dream he began to carry the cartons out and
stack them in neat rows on the Latham house veranda.
Miss Parker viewed his work with silent approval. When the
task was completed she scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper
and handed it to him. "Take this over to the Sentinel office,”
she said.
"What is it?”
"Notice of an auction. W e’re going to hold a public sale to
dispose of those cartons.”
"But we can’t sell merchandise we haven’t paid for. W e
can’t . . .”
Miss Parker smiled benignly. "Never you mind. I’ll take care
of the details.”
Two mornings later a crowd of several hundred persons
150 OVER THE EDGE

gathered before the Latham house. The temperature was 97, the
humidity high and handkerchiefs appeared frequently, mopping
perspiring brows. Kincaid watched Lavinia Parker take a posi­
tion on the veranda steps.
The woman did not begin to speak at once. She drew a lor­
gnette from her pocket, raised it to her eyes and surveyed the as­
semblage before her. She moved the glass slowly from left to
right, lingering momentanly as it focused on individuals and
groups and causing noticeable unease as each person felt him­
self the object of her inspection.
For the lorgnette was unlike any they had ever seen. Between
the two lenses a small prism caught and radiated the sunlight;
and circling about the prism, seemingly without support, a se­
ries of tiny globes looked like transparent marbles.
Later, when the sale was over and the last of the crowd had
gone, Kincaid looked at the money on the veranda table with
disbelief.
"They didn’t even ask that the cartons be opened . . to see if
their contents were damaged or not," he said. "They bought
them as if they were hypnotized."
Miss Parker smiled. "Maybe they were. Sometimes people are
so curious they want something without knowing what it is.”
She bent down and lifted a carton to the table. "I saved one for
you, Durgan. Take it along home.”
If the citizens of Bayou City thought themselves cheated with
their strange purchases, they made no complaints. Neither did
they discuss them openly. It was as if some strange tabu cloaked
the subject. True, the Sentinel carried a sly dig at two town
bachelors who had bought doll houses. And the press associa­
tion which had used the original story of the boxcar created a
mild sensation when it interviewed a professor of psychology at
the state university on the subject. But in newspaper parlance
 KINCAID'S CAR 151

this was the "silly season", and the story died a natural death.
It was some time before Kincaid opened the carton he had
brought home from the auction sale. To his surprise, he found
it did not contain a doll house but an object vaguely reminiscent
of Miss Parker's lorgnette. There were two tubes between which
a prism was encircled by a row of tiny globes. From the under
side, two appendages hung down; they looked like roots of a
plant but they were formed of a strange metal that was hard to
the touch, yet soft and pliable.
A card wired to one corner bore the words: N e ga tiie Receiver.
K e e p in an o p en space.
After a moment's thought, Kincaid picked the thing up and
carried it outside. He walked across the furrowed fields until he
was some distance from the house and threw it out before him.
He then tidied up his thoughts and turned his attention to
a number of tasks he had been putting off for sometime. One
morning as he was heading across the yard the banging of the
tool-shed door caught his attention. He strode to it and stopped
on the threshold.
The interior of the tool shed was filled almost wall to wall
with a car he recognized instantly. Ed Hinkle’s dilapidated '35
Ford.
For years Hinkle, the town druggist, had been the laughing
stock of Bayou City because he persisted in driving that beat-up
jalopy. But what was the car doing here?
Out in the yard again, he looked at the ground before the
doorway, still moist from the heavy rain of two nights ago. Lips
tight, he trailed the tracks down the slope and into the night
pasture. The sprawled, motionless bodies of two of his best milch
cow's loomed up before him.
Kincaid's jaw set hard as he saw the skid marks where the
car had struck and done its killing. Then he saw something else.
152 OVER THE EDGE

T he tracks began th ere in m id-ca reer as i f th e car had d e s c e n d e d

fr o m the sky.
He retraced his steps, got into the station wagon and headed
down the lane. At the junction with the highway he drew up.
A shiny new convertible was barreling down the highway,
motor snarling like an angry hornet. When the driver sighted
Kincaid he blew a blast from his horn and slewed to a stop.
"Hi, Durgan." It was Ed Hinkle. "Got myself a new chariot."
Kincaid nodded coldly.
"Yep," Hinkle went on, "I made a good deal, and I cashed in
on it.”
"Funny thing,” the man went on, "know' that rock-covered
hundred and sixty acres of mine out on the Old Timber Road?
I was saying only the other day I wished I could get rid of that
property and then out of a clear sky Sam Warton made me an
offer. I put the money down kerplunk on this car before I could
change my mind. It's got power brakes," he said proudly.
"What did you do with your old '35?” Kincaid said.
Hinkle scratched his head. "Now that’s a funny thing. Feller
at the agency said it was too old to trade in, so I left it in my back
yard and somebody stole it."
"Then you didn’t put it in my tool shed?”
It was Hinkle's turn to stare. "What are you talking about?”
"Never mind,” said Kincaid slow ly.
Hinkle sat in puzzled silence. "W ell, I gotta go," he said. "Be
seein’ you."
He drove off with a screech of tires.

Next morning after coffee, curiosity prompted Kincaid to go

out and look at the thing which had been labeled a "negative
receiver” but which he preferred to think of as an oversized lor­
gnette. He was half way through that section of field before he
 k in c a id ' s car 153
became aware of his surroundings. Then an exclamation of wrath
and astonishment burst from him.
The entire east-forty was a sea of rocks!
Rocks were everywhere . . . in piles . . . in cairns in scattered
formless array. They stretched as far as the road on the right,
to the pine copse on the left. What had once been one of the
finest farming tracts in the state now resembled a spread-out
quarry.
He stood there, mouth open, a man stunned. Who could have
done such a thing? And in the name of all that was eternal . . .
why?
Half an hour later, he drove down River Street in defiance of
speed laws. Abreast of the hardware store, he jammed on the
brakes, thrust open the car door and yelled, "Get in!" Miss
Parker climbed in the car.
"W hat's wrong, Durgan? You look upset."
His hands tightened on the wheel. "I don't know what's going
on around here," he said savagely, "but somebody’s going to
pay . . .''
"Pay for what?"
"For my land. It's full of rocks.”
"Whatever are you talking about?”
He told her what happened. Miss Parker patted his hand re­
assuringly. "Now, Durgan,” she said, "you stop fretting. I’m sure
everything will turn out all right.”
A muscle on Kincaid’s cheek began to pulsate. "Ever since
that boxcar arrived here I've felt something strange hanging
over this town.
"Another thing,” he continued, "that carton I took home con­
tained something called a negative receiver.”
A gleam entered the woman’s eyes.
"It's made of some funny kind of metal and . . it’s growing . . .!’’
154 OVER THE EDGE

Kincaid was not by nature an apprehensive man. Yet the chain

of events which now began and cataclysmically reached a climax
in Bayou City left him badly shaken.
Quite suddenly the town changed into a place of mystery and
confusion.
Without warning everybody, it seemed, had his innermost
wish gratified. New cars, driven by smugly content townsfolk, ap­
peared on the streets. Trucks moved back and forth, delivering
new washing machines, television sets and refrigerators. Houses
had fresh coats of paint. Garages were built, porches enclosed
and the Bayou City Clothing Store did a rush business.
The queer part of it was that all of these transactions were
part of an endless chain. A man suddenly learned that his stock
holdings in a light and pow’er utility had tripled its value. He
sold and with the money contracted to have a new front erected
on his variety store, a dream which had been his for a long time.
The two contractors profited nicely from this job, and each
bought a new car. The double purchase boosted the car sales­
man’s record over the top in the annual sales contest. . .
And so it went. Wishes . . . dreams . . . suddenly brought
into realization, spreading through Bayou City’s populace like
a ripple in a pool of water.

Questioned, Sam Warton, editor of the Sentinel, said vaguely

that he always had had an eye on Ed Hinkle’s Timber Road
property but never knew how 1 5 get rid of the rocks. On the
other hand, Tom Owens who farmed the land to the east, the
other side of the ridge, said that while there were no rocks on his
property, there was a lake smack-dab in the center of it. "I’ve
wished a hundred times there was a way to drain that lake,” he
said.
Back home, Kincaid went over the day’s events with a sense
 KINCAID’S CAR 155

of desperation. He had the feeling he had become enmeshed in

a web which was slowly tightening about him and from which
there was no escape. He went to bed and fell into a restless
slumber.
Some time after midnight he awoke with a low pitched, muf­
fled sound in his ears. As he lay there it steadily grew louder.
He slid out of bed, got into his trousers and shoes and went
out into the star-softened darkness. He headed for Clover Creek,
a normally placid stream that meandered through his property.
Then he was on the creek bank, facing a stream gone mad, rush­
ing past him in the darkness.
The truth filtered into him slowly. Owens’ Lake! In some im­
possible way it had found a channel through the ridge.
Tom Owens had had his wish!
As had Sam Warton . . . As had Ed Hinkle . . . !
He knew what it meant. The lake, seeking its own level, would
inundate his farm. His house, set on low' ground, would be the
first to go.
He stood there, the muddy water swirling up over his ankles,
the smell of wet earth thick and heavy in his nostrils. Then he
turned and ran stiff-legged toward the house.
Water was already swirling across the lane as he headed the
station wagon toward the highway.
And now he saw an incredible sight. There were things in She
fields on either side of the lane which no sane person would
expect to see on farmland . . . discarded things that w'ere old. He
looked upon scratched and worn television sets, rusty, paint-
faded cars, piles of outmoded appliances. He saw stacks of old
lumber, studded with rusty nails, weatherbeaten store signs and
hand-push lawn mowers. All there in the glare of his headlights,
partially covered with brown, silt-heavy water that was rising
with fantastic speed. His farm had bc-en turned into one vast
junk yard.
156 OVER THE EDGE

Fifteen minutes later, he was driving past the silent stores of

Bayou City. He turned left and drew up before the Latham
place. The house was in darkness. He got a flashlight out of the
glove compartment and, after a moment's thought, a heavy iron
bar from the floor of the station wagon. Then, switching out the
lights, he moved toward the boxcar which still stood on the weed-
grown spur.
He climbed in and played the beam of the flashlight before
him. In the far corner was the familiar furnished room.
He walked over to it, idly lifted the sewing basket from the
table. When he put it down again he was conscious of its click­
ing into position like the piece of a puzzle moving into its proper
slot.
Far back in a corner of his brain the suggestion of an idea
began to grow.
When this boxcar h'ad first arrived in Bayou City, there had
been three different items in the car: the large room, the minia­
ture rooms packed in cartons, and the negative receiver.
Suppose, he told himself, the miniature rooms were exactly
what they were listed as on the railroad manifest—wish suppliers.
In some incredible way they gave their owners the gratifications
of their desires. Kincaid chewed his upper lip. He was stretching
the thin cord of logic. Anyway, why a room?
A room was a symbol, wasn't it, representing one of the basic
elements of our culture—the living quarters of the family. What
better device in which to incorporate something which would
affect the very foundations of that culture?
Kincaid moved across to the Currier and Ives print that hung
upon one wall of the furnished room. Like the other objects, it
brought a host of memories rushing to him.
Suppose the entire chain of events part of a plan in which this
town had been selected as a focal point. And assume for the pur­
pose of argument that an alien intelligence—there, he had said
 KINCAID'S CAR 157

it! — had chosen what it considered routine details to accomplish

its end.
And what was that end? His pulse quickened as his hands
lifted the Rochester lamp and then returned it to the table.
Again he was conscious of the object s clicking into position like
the final piece in a picture puzzle.
Grant a cross section of human society the attainment of its
wants without the benefit of labor and you had—luxury spoon
fed . . . magnified a thousand times. That, in essence, is what had
happened to Bayou City, and it was not a pleasant happening.
The town had become a smug town. With the realization of its
wishes, complacency and self-satisfaction were the order of the
day.
And i f s o m e h o w th e w ish suppliers g a v e their o w n ers the ma­
terial th in gs o f our culture and th ose o b jects cam e f r o m outside
our Universe, th en th e o b jects w h ich th e y rep la ced w o u ld by
physical la w h a ve to be rem o ved .
That's where the negative receiver fitted in. It had made of his
farm a vast receptacle for all things which the simple act of wish­
ing had replaced. Gathered them in one place preparatory to
their obliteration, he supposed. Kincaid’s head began to ache.
He bent down and opened and closed the sewing basket on
the table. As he did, he was vaguely aware that the air above
the table staggered slightly. And for one fleeting second he had
the impression he was standing before a surrealist panel faced by
an array of fantastic dials and gauges.
It came to him then with sudden insight. The life-sized fur­
nished room was the master control, the operation-console from
which the plan was directed. The quaint, old-fashioned trappings
were only a mask.
In his mind s eye, he saw a woman dressed in lavender seated
before that panel while her hands played with the switches and
dials.
158 OVER THE EDGE

And, as he considered, why shouldn’t an alien look like a

lady of quality of 1900? In crossing the vast gulf of space-time
that must separate her from her own culture, wasn’t an oversight
of a few decades to be taken as a matter of course?
He remembered other discrepancies: The letter from the rail­
road company; the listing of the wish suppliers as such on the
manifest; the mix-up over the boxcar’s serial and seal numbers;
and the selection of a concern which had been out of business
twenty years as consignee.
All rough edges in the plan. But what was in cr ed ib le was that
the plan had b een carried out at all, that th e d iscrep a n cies had
b een so f e w and so minor.
A v o ic e cut through the silence of the boxcar. "W hat are you
doing here, Mr. Kincaid?"
He swung the flash. Lavinia Parker stood there, just inside
the door of the car. In one hand she held her lorgnette.
He said, "I told you I don't like what’s been happening to
me. W ell, I don’t like what’s happening to this town either."
She smiled a hard smile. "Are you quite sure the townspeople
will thank you for interfering with their lives? They seem quite
satisfied with conditions as they are."
"But don’t you see," Kincaid said, "you've spoiled the very
concept our culture is based on—that a man must earn the things
he wants, to appreciate them."
The woman continued as if she hadn’t heard the interruption.
"You fail to understand. I may as well tell you now that this in­
significant planet was being considered for one of the greatest
sociological and cultural honors known to intelligent life— a place
in the Galactic Federation. As a member you wouid have found
yourself rich beyond your loftiest dreams in opportunity af­
forded by contact with cultures eons older than yours. Some of
us objected on the grounds that you had not yet reached a high
 kincajd ’ s car 159
enough point in the Mokart civilization scale. But others thought
different. They examined your art and your music and your lit­
erature, and they assumed you had advanced farther than you
had. So they sent me here to make a test . . . and you failed . . .”
"W hat do you mean?" Kincaid said.
"I mean that when the citizens of this community were granted
the fulfillment of their wishes—a basic checkpoint of the test—
they gave no thought to the advancement of their society or en­
richment of their culture but reacted to elemental desires. They
wanted things material. They showed themselves to be an im­
mature race close to the primordial slime from which they
evolved.
"Of course this is but a minute segment of your civilization,
but what happened here would happen other places; it is a rep­
resentative cross section.
"Now, Mr. Kincaid, I suggest you leave this car immediately!"
But Kincaid didn't leave. He turned to the life-sized room at
his side, reached out and seized the wicker sewing basket. Mov­
ing with an instinctive sense of direction he twisted it in its in­
visible slot until the air directly above staggered again and a
hum sounded as if hidden machinery somewhere were put into
operation.
Eyes glittering, Lavinia Parker leveled her lorgnette. From
the twin tubes a mother-of-pearl radiance fanned outward to
bathe Kincaid in its glow.
Even as the malignant mist thickened about him, Kincaid
saw the Rochester lamp on the table transform itself into an
elliptic shaped dial and a strangely calibrated gauge above it.
He raised the iron bar still gripped in his hand and brought it
smashing down upon them.
There was a slight implosion like an electric light bulb break­
ing. Then the shock wave came. The furnished room disinte-
160 OVER THE EDGE

grated before his eyes and Kincaid felt himself flung forward and
bludgeoned against the car wall. The last thing he saw before
blackness closed down on him was the woman in lavender
stretched motionless on the floor, the broken lorgnette beside her.
But it was a woman in costume only. The face and form—
were those of a creature—indescribably alien!

On August 2nd Durgan Kincaid was released from the hospital.

He returned to his farm and the newly formed lake there, but he
made no mention of Lavinia Parker who was never seen again
in Bayou City.
Nor did he speak of the boxcar which also vanished com­
pletely.
Curiously, only a brief mention of car appeared in the Senti­
nel. It quoted the night operator at Thatcher’s Bend, the next
station north, who insisted he had seen a boxcar running wild
down main line trackage.
"It went past me like a bat out of H ell,'' he said. "It was all
silver and shaped like a bullet.”
The operator was suspended for drunkenness and turning in
false reports. "And rightly so,” the Sentinel concluded editorially.
 A ugust D erleth (1909- ) is the author of well over a hundred
books ot all kinds, though the macabre was his first love and it was in
this genre that he first published in 1926. Among his macabre books
are such titles as S^tuattg in the D.;rk. Lonesome Places, Mr. George
and Other Odd Persons. The Linker at the Threshold (with H. P.
Lovecratt), S e t Long far This W o ld , and others. As the publisher of
H. P. Lovecratt, he has won the admiration of Lovecraftians the world
over for his assiduous devotion to the perpetuation of Lovecraft's literary
reputation. He is also a columnist, a literary editor, a publisher, a lec­
turer and a teacher—though his career as a writer takes first place in his
affections. Once married, now divorced, he is the father and sole
custodian of two children, a boy and a girl, who demand as much of
his time as his creative work. He is listed at length in both Twentieth
Century Authors and Contemporary Authors.

The Patchwork Quilt

A ugust D erleth

In the second night of Ariel Bennett's visit to her aunts, the

weather turned cold. She woke from sleep, feeling it in this old
house to which her aunts had come to live during the year just
past, and lay for a few minutes trying to imagine herself warm­
ing, trying to believe that the chill would pass. But the room was
cold; there was no denying it; so she got resolutely out of bed
162 OVER THE EDG~

and turned on the lamp so that she could look about for some­
thing to add to the thin covers on the bed. She regretted now
that she had left her coat hanging downstairs, and she would
not disturb either Aunt Ellen or Aunt Beatrice by leaving her
room to go for it.
She opened one drawer after another of the old-fashioned high
bureau against the wall. There were sheets and pillow-cases, but
no blankets. She looked into the closet. It was empty save for a
cardboard carton pushed away in one corner of the overhead
shelf. She was about to turn away when, on impulse, she turned
and took down the carton.
She carried it into the room, untied the string around it, and
opened it. A kind of tissue paper met her eyes, yellowing and
old. She pushed it aside and was immediately gratified at the
sight of what could be only a quilt, handmade of patchwork. As
she took it out of the carton, she could see that it was almost new,
virtually unused, and of exquisite workmanship, in a pattern of
blues and reds and dark gray.
Without hesitation, she spread it over the bed, put out the
light, and got back into bed once more, snuggling into the
warmed spot she had left.
Within a few minutes she was asleep once more.
She -woke again in an hour, uncomfortably warm. Somehow
the quilt had bunched up over her shoulders and drawn up from
her feet, so that her feet, at the same time that her head and
shoulders were overly warm, were chilled. She straightened the
blanket carefully, without getting out of bed to do it, and settled
back.
By this time she had worn off the edge of the need to sleep,
and getting back to sleep took longer. The moonlight from out­
side made a pale luminosity in the room, making a parallelogram
on the floor immediately off the sill of the one window in the
south wall, and along the eastern horizon there was just the hint
 THE PATCHWORK QUILT 163
that dawn was not far away. Far off somewhere across the fields
a dog barked, and an errant rooster crowed; all else was silence.
She waited upon sleep to come again, growing slowly drowsy.
The room dimmed and darkened, her eyelids lowered. On the
outer boundary of sleep she thought she saw one of her aunts
bending over the bed, tucking the blanket in; she smiled but
was too close to sleep to speak.

In the morning she folded the patchw ork quilt and lay it across
the bottom of the bed. Then she went downstairs, refreshed.
Her aunts were up. Aunt Beatrice was just pouring coffee; Aunt
Ellen was in tfie pantry.
"Good morning, dear," said Aunt Beatrice, her thin face lit
with a smile. "Did you sleep well?"
"Oh, yes, of course," she answered. "I was a little cold at first,
but after I put the quilt on, I was warm enough.”
"That's good,” said Aunt Beatrice. "There’s some real cream
for your coffee, Ariel." She pushed the pitcher toward her.
Aunt Ellen bustled in from the pantry and plumped her fat
little body into her chair. "It u .ji cold last night. The weather
does turn fast sometimes like this in Vermont."
"A ll over New England," said Aunt Beatrice.
"W e should have thought to leave an extra blanket on your
bed,” Aunt Ellen went on.
Aunt Beatrice paused in the act of stirring the sugar in her
coffee. She looked blankly at her niece. "W hat quilt?" she asked
suddenly.
"The one in the closet," said Ariel.
Aunt Beatrice took the spoon from her cup and laid it care­
fully beside her plate. She looked across the table at her sister.
For a moment neither of them spoke a word. A sort of restraint
seemed to have fallen upon the breakfast table.
"It was just a patchwork quilt,” Ariel went on. "I didn’t think
164 OVER THE EDGE

you'd mind if I used it. Of course, I realized it was put away,

but it was a perfectly good quilt—almost like new. I thought,”
she ended lamely, "you knew I had it on the bed. Didn t one of
you come in during the night to tuck it in?”
Aunt Beatrice ignored her question. "That quilt was in the
house when we came here. It's not really ours. I don’t think we
ought to use it. W e always understood someone would come for
it.”
"Yes,” put in Aunt Ellen hastily, "Miss Flora Payne, who sold
us the house, said it had belonged to a niece of hers and some
day she might come for it. So it ought not to be used. W e’ll put
another blanket in your room today—this morning.”
"We surely w ill,” added Aunt Beatrice, with an undeniable air
of having settled the matter.
And the blanket was on her bed before dinner time that noon.
The patchwork quilt had been folded and put back into its car­
ton, which in turn had been restored to the shelf in the closet.
Ariel felt guilty; she would not have been surprised to find the
closet locked, too; but it was not.
Nevertheless, in spite of the strange disapproval she had felt
so strongly in her aunts—strange because they had indulged her
since her childhood—she took the quilt out of its carton again
that night and sat examining it. Its workmanship was exquisite,
she saw at once. And it was quite obviously the work of but one
hand-—-not the product of a quilting party— for the quality of the
work was the same from one end of the quilt to the other. A
labor of love, she decided—and felt that her decision was con­
firmed when she found, sew n in pink thread into one corner of
it, up along the edge of a blue patch, the words Baby's Quill.
She concluded forthwith that the quilt must have been made for
an undersized bed, not a baby’s bed exactly, but perhaps a child’s
 THE PATCHWORK QUILT 165
bed, which explained in part why it had just barely served her
the previous night.
She had already put the extra blanket on her bed, spreading
it to her pillow; now, rather than fold the quilt, she laid it across
the bottom of the bed against the possibility of even colder
weather in the night. And, feeling thus fortified against any bit­
ter weather, she opened the window a little, and stood for a mo­
ment there looking out to where the moon was rising, a waning
moon, quite orange in that sky, with an unleafing tree silhouetted
against it, and the few stones below it which belonged to the
neighborhood cemetery.
How- quiet and peaceful the country was! she thought again.
And how -welcome after months in the city! Save for the moon,
all was dark except for a few yellow squares of windows, and in
one place a light flowing from a barn. A dog barked, another
answered far down the valley, a cow lowed, an owl hooted near­
by—all else was still. And the house, too, was still, for her aunts
had gone to their rooms well before her; perhaps they were al­
ready asleep.
She read for half an hour in a book of poems by Robert Frost
and then yielded to her growing languor and went to bed. When
the light was out, the pale glowing of the moon made a wan
iridescence in the room, filling it with a personality it did not
have under the clearer glow from the lamp. She lay for a little
while contemplating the room, learning to "feel”, as it were, the
changed character of the room—the "guest” room, as her aunts
had described it.
Under the moonlight, the room seemed to expand, and she,
curiously, to seem smaller by comparison, and younger. How
strange it was! It was a not altogether unpleasant sensation to
feel very young again, almost helplessly young, and she indulged
166 OVER THE EDGE

it briefly before resolutely thrusting it from her thoughts and

turning drowsily on her side to drift into sleep.
But she did not sleep as readily as she thought she might. The
feeling of being young and helpless persisted, and with it came
a sort of apprehension; it was nothing tangible, but only some­
thing that had a tenuous existence on the perimeter, as it were,
ot awareness, somewhere between the world of waking and the
night of sleep, something that seemed to nag at her dispiritedly,
not insistently, so that at last she was able to overcome it and
close her eyes in sleep, shutting away the moonlit room and its
odd character.
She started awake in less than an hour, and lay wondering
what had awakened her. She lay quite stiii. senses alert, until
she felt a movement at the foot of her bed. Then she turned her
head slowly and cautiously.
In the room’s reflected moonlight, she saw a woman bending
over the bed, drawing the patchwork quilt up over the blankets.
"Aunt Ellen?" she murmured.
There was no answer.
She lay motionless. The woman was too slender to be Aunt
Ellen, but not slender or tall enough to be Aunt Beatrice. And
there was an indefinable quality of youth about her, too. Ariel
could not see her face, but the moonlight did not glow there.
She pretended to be asleep; the woman had evidently not heard
her question; perhaps she was one of the domestics who "did”
for her aunts, thought Ariel, though this would hardly explain
her concern for the house guest.
The patchwork quilt came slowly, snugly up about Ariel's
shoulder; she could fed the woman tucking it into place around
her. But it had been drawn up too high, up over her feet, al­
most to her knees, so that it was bunched on top of her, where
it would certainly leave her too warm before the night was done.
 THE PATCHWORK QUILT 167

She had the impulse to straighten it, but refrained from doing
so.
She strove to catch a glimpse of the woman's face, so that she
might be able to identify her among the domestics; but there
was only a moment when the woman looked down at her, the
moonlight at her back, and then turned away, leaving Ariel con­
scious only of eyes that seemed to burn with longing, and a slight
body as evanescent as the wind that had begun to billow the
light lace curtains into the room at the window left open to the
night.
Then the woman turned away and, though Ariel did not see
the door open, for lying with her back to it, she knew intuitively
that she was gone. She sat up and pulled down the quilt, then
lay back and went wonderingly to sleep once more.
She woke again, past midnight, unbearably warm.
The quilt was back in place, bunched over her body.
She pulled it down once more, folding it loosely across the
foot of the bed. Having now satisfied her most urgent need for
sleep, she lay for a while on her back, waiting for sleep to over­
take her again. Some of the moonlight had now withdrawn from
the room, for the moon had risen higher, and only a small paral­
lelogram of light lay under one window; though still airy, the
room had grown darker and the foot of the bed was now shad­
owed.
It seemed to her presently that the shadows beyond the bed
coalesced into one, and a vague apprehension stole into her aware­
ness. She raised herself on her elbows, straining to look into the
darkness, banishing the shadows. There was enough reflected
light from this perspective to enable her to see that the door of
the room was still closed, all the furniture was in its place, every­
thing was as she had left it. Her apprehension washed away, and
she lay back.
168 OVER THE EDGE

Almost at once, after she had composed herself, she felt a dis­
tinct movement at the foot of the bed. In a quick access of fear,
she leaped from bed and reached for the lamp.
The patchwork quilt had been partly unfolded. It lay up along
the bed by almost two feet further than she had left it.
She looked wildly around, her pulse racing. There was no one
else in the room. In the soft lamplight, the room seemed almost
naked in its ordinariness.
She stood until she grew aware of the chill air flowing in
through the open window, looking unbelievingly at the patch-
w’ork quilt. Though her pulse subsided in the face of silence and
the plainness of the room in the light of the lamp, her perplexity
remained. How had the quilt moved? She had not touched it—
nor had anyone else done so? She began to think that the quilt
had a life all its own, but the absurdity' of this smote her and
drove her at last to snatch up the quilt, fold it resolutely, and
put it back into its carton, which she carried back to the closet
and restored to the shelf where she had found it.
Nothing further disturbed her sleep.

In the morning she saw at once in the way her aunts looked at
her when she came into the kitchen for breakfast that they
waited on her words, afraid of what she might say. So they know
something’s the matter with that room, she thought. She said
only "Good morning!” as cheerfully as possible.
"Was the extra blanket enough to keep you warm, A riel?”
asked Aunt Beatrice.
"Oh, yes, thank you.”
"You slept all right?” asked Aunt Ellen.
"Shouldn’t I have?”
Being at the southeast corner with cross-window circulation,”
put in Aunt Beatrice easily, "that room’s subject to more tem­
perature changes.”
 THE PATCHWORK QUILT 169

It did not sound quite reasonable to Ariel, so she only smiled

and said nothing.
"Besides, it's the only guest room we have," said Aunt Ellen
apologetically. "Of course, you could sleep in the parlor on the
lounge," she added.
Aunt Beatrice interposed hastily, "Why on earth should she?"
her manner formidably forbidding.
Aunt Ellen retreated meekly. "I only meant, if the room grew
too cold."
Silence fell.
Ariel consumed a slice of toast. She felt the wary tension be­
tween her aunts as some sentient thing that had risen up to domi­
nate the breakfast table. The silence grew oppressive.
"How many people help you here?” she asked presently.
"Oh, just two or three," said Aunt Ellen with manifest relief.
"You know Mrs. Arons, who cooks for us. Then there’s Johnson,
who works outside—he’s our hired man. And Mrs. Vickers comes
in sometimes to ’do’ the house for us.”
"A small, slight woman?" asked Ariel.
"Yes, I guess you'd say she was that," said Aunt Ellen.
It wjas on the tip of her tongue to say "Then it must have
been she who came to tuck me in last night," but something
in her Aunt Beatrice's intent gaze kept the words unspoken. In­
stead, she said, "I should think it would be too much for just the
two of you."
A few moments passed. Aunt Beatrice grew a little less tense.
"You said you bought this house from an old lady named
Payne,” Ariel ventured presently. "Is she dead?"
"Oh, no,” said Aunt Ellen. "She's still alive. She must be eighty,
wouldn't you say, Bea?"
"Yes, just eighty,” said Aunt Beatrice.
"She lives down the road on that farm just across from the
cemetery—her family cemetery it is, that little one on the knoll.
170 OVER THE EDGE

The Paynes settled this valley two hundred years ago.”

By degrees, the tension thawed and vanished. They spoke of
Ariel’s life in Portland, Maine and of less prosaic matters, through
breakfast and the morning.
Immediately after the noon meal, Ariel set out for a walk in
the country. The day was pleasant; the autumn sun shone out of
a clear sky and its light lay warmly on the leaves still clinging to
the trees here and there, and on the sere grass in pastures and
along the roadsides and woodlots. Her destination was Miss Flora
Payne’s house, but, so as not to seem obvious to her aunts, she
went by a roundabout way and found herself presently in the
cemetery on the knoll.
A stone wall that bounded it had broken down in three
places. The tree Ariel had seen rose almost in the middle of it.
The entire cemetery could not have been more than fort)' feet
square, yet it was crowded with stones. She walked among them,
reading the names now and then. fosiab Payne, ae. 90—Hezekiah
—Mary pabor, gathered in at but seven—A bel Pa)ne, struck down
in his middle years—Rella Payne Pabor, dead in her early twen­
ties—J oh n Pabor, also dead in his early years—H elen P ayne—
Marilla Payne Forster—there were four or live generations of
them represented in the little graveyard, which was bathed in
an air of sweet melancholy, and which afforded the visitor a
splendid view of the surrounding countryside, so that Ariel stayed
long enough to look all up and down the valley and enjoy the
rolling countryside so beautiful in the autumn sunlight, before
she went on down the slope toward the home of Miss Flora Payne.
The old lady was at home. She was a hawk-nosed, thin-faced
old lady, very slight of frame, but evidently quite alert, for her
eyes lit up at sight of company and she welcomed Ariel with
patent delight. Ariel was not sure, but it seemed to her that a
 THE PATCHWORK QUILT 171

wariness came into the old lady’s eyes when she learned who
Ariel was and where she had come from.
Ariel was determined to give her no chance to put up her de­
fences, as her aunts had done. “They've p>ut me into that room
in the southeast corner,’’ she said. “What happened there, Miss
Payne?”
The old lady shook her head. "Ah. it’s a sad house, Miss Ben­
nett. It was originally my uncle's, but it came to his daughter.
She lived there, and she died there—pined away, I expect you’d
say. Her husband was killed—a runaway horse—such a young
man, too. Then little Mary took sick and died.”
“In that room.”
"Yes. And her mother lost her will to live after that. Seemed
she couldn't wait to get up there on that hill with John and
Mary.
“And the patchwork quilt you left there in the closet?”
The old lady gasped. "You’ve used it!” she said, accusingly.
"It was cold one night. There was no blanket,” said Ariel.
"It shouldn’t have been left there.”
“I know. I couldn’t bear to destroy it. Rella made it for her
little girl. It’s a beautiful quilt. But I couldn’t take it with me,
either—because—well, because the house was u n co m forta b le with
the quilt, and I was afraid this one would be, too— wherever the
quilt might be.’ She hesitated; then she asked, "Has tiie room
been—difficult for you, Miss Bennett?”
"Not particularly.”
"Because it seems to be just in that room—I suppose because
Mary died there, under that quilt—I tried to figure it out, but I
gave up at last. They’ve been dead ten or eleven years. A body’d
think—in all that time— ” Her sentence trailed off, unvoiced.
"You’ve never told anyone the room was haunted?”

G
172 . OVER THE EDGE

''I’ve never said such a thing. Is it haunted, Miss Bennett? It s

just the quilt that keeps coming up on the bed—you can’t keep it
off if you put it on the bed at all. I don’t know what to make of
it. I wish n o w if v e wished it often—we’d have done what Rella
wanted—buried the quilt with her. It was such a crazy thing to
ask and we all thought she was out of her mind.”
W alking back down the road, Ariel thought she understood.
The quilt had been bunched up on her in the night as if a child
slept beneath it. A ll else was beyond her comprehension, and her
entire experience required a suspension of disbelief which she
was not entirely ready to concede. That she was not alone in this
seemed to her evident in the curious hesitation everyone had in
speaking about the house and the room and the patchwork quilt.

That night she took out the patchwork quilt and laid it at the
foot of the bed. Then she put out the light and sat down to wait.
Once again moonlight flooded into the room, and the night
wind blew, and the character of the room seemed to alter. She
sat near the quilt at the foot of the bed, tense with apprehension,
but firm in her determination. This time she would not be asleep
or drowsy; this time she would see the woman who came.
From outside came the sounds of the countryside at night, ris­
ing, subsiding. The moon rose higher and the wind died down
to a gentle breeze. The clock downstairs struck ten, then eleven.
She began to feel a little absurd, and her tension thinned.
Then suddenly she was aware of a thickening of the shadows
between the door and the bed.
The woman was there—the frail woman with the luminous
eyes—coming toward the quilt.
Despite the quickening of fear that enveloped her, Ariel came
to her feet, strode forward, picked up the quilt, and held it out.
’'Here,” she said. "Please take it.”
 THE PATCHWORK QUILT 173
She felt the patchwork quilt sliding from her hands.
In a few moments, the door of the bedroom opened and closed.
Ariel was alone. Her relief was so great that she stumbled to
the bed and fell across it.

Next morning Aunt Beatrice asked anxiously how she had

slept.
"Fine, when I once got to sleep,” said Ariel. "I should tell you,
though, that the patchwork quilt is gone.”
"Gone!” cried Aunt Ellen. "Wherever did it go?”
"That 'someone' you mentioned came for it and I gave it to
her,” said Ariel.
A long minute of profound silence engulfed the breakfast ta­
ble and everyone around it. Ariel expected that now, at last, her
aunts would speak out, would admit what she herself could
hardly deny.
But Aunt Beatrice only said, at last, "W ell, it's a good thing.
W e re going to have a lovely day. There's a west wind blowing,
and it's going to be warm.”
Not another word.
By mid-morning she began to wonder herself whether it had
really happened.
The quilt was gone; there w’as no doubt whatever about that.
She was impelled by wild curiosity to walk to the cemetery
on the knoll, and there, as she had feared, she found that some­
thing had disturbed the grave of Rella Payne Fabor. It looked
as if something had dug down into it and covered it up again—
something like a mole or a woodchuck.
The day was so pleasant that she stood for a few moments
looking down in disbelief. She resisted the impulse to dig down
a little to see what she could find. She was afraid of what might
be there.
 F ritz L eiber ( 1910- ) is the son of the distinguished Shakes­
pearean actor of the same name. He spent two seasons acting in his
father's Shakespearean company, under the name of Francis Lathrop.
His stories of the macabre have been widely published in magazines
and anthologies, and his characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, have
long since taken a prominent place in the world of fantasy. He is the
author of many books, among them S i g h t ’s Black Agents, Gather
Darkness! Conjure Wife, Tu-o Sought Adventure, etc. Though he
lived for many years in Chicago, where he was an associate editor of
Science Digest, he now makes his home in California.

The Black Gondolier

F r it z L e ib e r

Daloway lived alone in a broken-down trailer beside an oil

well on the bank of a canal in Venice near the cafe La Gondola
Negra on the Grand Canal not five blocks from St. Mark’s Plaza.
I mean, he lived there until after the fashion of intellectual
lone wolves he got the wander-urge and took himself off, abruptly
and irresponsibly, to parts unknown. That is the theory of the
police, who refuse to take seriously my story of Daloway s strange
dreads and my hints at the weird world-spanning power which
was menacing him. The police even make light of the very ma­
terial clues which I pointed out to them.
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 175

Or else Daloway was taken off, grimly and against his will, to
parts utterly unknown and blackly horrible. That is my own
theory, especially on lonely nights when I remember the dreams
he told me of the Black Gondolier.
Of course the canal is a rather small one, showing much of
its rough gravel bottom strewn with rusted cans and blackened
paper, except when it is briefly filled by one of our big winter
rains. But gondolas did travel it in the illusion-packed old days
and it is still spanned by a little sharply humped concrete bridge
wide enough for onlv one car. I used to cross that bridge coming
to visit Daloway and I remember how I'd slow down and tap my
horn to warn a possible car coming the other way, and the mo­
mentary’ roller-coaster illusion I’d get as my car heaved to the
top and poised there and then hurtled down the opposite dusty
slope for all of a breathless second. From the top of the little
bridge I’d get my first glimpse of the crowded bungalows and
Daloway’s weed-footed trailer and close beside it the black
hunch-shouldered oil well which figured so strangely in his
dreads. "T heir closest listening post,” he sometimes called it dur­
ing the final week, when he felt positively besieged.
And of course the Grand Canal is pretty dismal these days,
with its several gracefully arching Bridges of Sighs raddled with
holes showing their cc-ment-shell construction and blocked off
at either end by heavy wire barricades to keep off small boys,
and with both its banks lined with oil wells, some still with their
towering derricks and some—mostly those next to beachside
houses—with their derricks dismantled, but all of them wearily
pumping twenty four hours a day with a soft slow syncopated
thumping that the residents don't hear for its monotony, inter­
minably sucking up the black petroleum that underlies Venice,
lazily ducking and lifting their angularly oval metal heads like
so many iron dinosaurs or donkeys forever drinking—donkeys
176 OVER THE EDGE

moving in the somnambulistic rhythm of Ferde Grofe’s Grand-

Canyon donkey when it does its sleepy hee...haw. Daloway had
a very weird theory about that—about the crude oil, I mean— a
theory which became the core of his dreads and which for all its
utter black wildness may still best explain his disappearance.
And La Gondola Negra is only a beatnik coffee house, suc­
cessor to the fabulous Gashouse, though it did boast a rather
interesting dirty drunken guitarist, whose face always had
blacker smears on it than those of his stubbly beard and who
wore a sweatshirt that looked like the working garment of a coal
miner and whom Daloway and I would hear trailing off (I won’t
venture to say home) in the small hours of the morning, picking
out on his twangy instrument his dinky "Texas Oilman Suite,"
which he’d composed very much in imitation of Ferde Grofe’s
one about the Grand Canyon, or raucously wailing his eerie
beatnik ballad of the Black Gondola. He got very' much on Dalo-
way’s nerves, especially towards the end, though I was rather
amused by him and at the same time saw no harm in his cater­
wauling, except to would-be sleepers. W ell, he’s gone now, like
Daloway, though not by the same route . . . I think. At least
Daloway never suggested that the guitarist was one of their agents.
No, as it turned out, their agent was a rather more formidable
figure.
And they don’t call the plaza St. Mark’s, but it was obviously
laid out to approximate that Adriatic-lapped area when it was
created a half century' ago. The porticos still shade the sidewalks
in front of the two blocks of bars and grimy shops and there are
still the authentic Venetian pillars, now painted salmon pink and
turquoise blue—you may have seen them in a horror movie called
Delirium where a beautiful crazy slim Mexican girl is chased
round and round the deserted porticos by a car flashing its head­
lights between the pillars.
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 177

And of course the Venice isn’t Venice, Italy, but Venice,

USA—Venice, California—now just another district and postal ad­
dress in the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles, but once a
proud little beachside city embodying the laughably charming
if grotesque dream of creating Venice, Italy, scaled down but
complete with canals and arched bridges and porticos, on the
shores of the Pacific.
Yet for all the childish innocence of its bizarre glamor, Ven­
ice developed an atmosphere, or became the outpost of a sinister
deep-rooted power, that did in Daloway. It is a place of dreams,
not only the tinseled ones, but also the darker sort such as tor­
mented and terrified my friend at the end.
For a while toward the beginning of this century the movie
folk and real estate agents and retired farmers and the sailors
from San Pedro went to spanking-new Venice to ride the gon­
dolas—they had authentic ones poled by Italian types possibly
hired from Central Casting—and eat exotic spaghetti and gambol
romantically a bit with their wide-hatted long-skirted lady
friends who also wore daring bathing suits with bare arms and
rather short skirts and long black stockings—and gamble too with
piled big yellow-backed green bills—and, with their caps turned
front to rear, roar their wooden-spoked or wire-wheeled open
touring cars along the Speedway, which is now a cramped one­
way street that changes direction every block.
But then Redondo and Laguna and Malibu called away the
film folk and the other people with fat pocketbooks, but as if to
compensate for that they struck oil in Venice and built wells al­
most everywhere, yet despite this influx of money the gambling
never regained its eclat, it became just bingo for housewives, and
the Los Angeles police fought that homely extramural vice for
a weary decade, until sprawling LA reached out a pseudopod
one day and swallowed Venice up. Then the bingo stopped and
178 OVER THE EDGE

Venice became very crowded indeed with a beach home or a

beach apartment or a beach shack on every square yard that
wasn’t sidewalk or street—or oil w ell!—and with establishments
as disparate as Bible Tabernacle and Colonic Irrigation Clinic
and Mother Goldberg’s Home for the Aged. It would have been
going too far to have called Venice a beach slum, but it was
trending in that direction.
An then, much later, the beats came, the gutter geniuses,
the holy barbarians, migrating south in driblets from Big Sur
and from North Beach in Frisco and from Disillusion, USA,
everywhere, bringing their ratty art galleries and meager avant
g a rd e bookstalls and their black-trousered insolent women and
their Zen and their guitars, including the one on which was
strummed the Ballad of the Black Gondola.
And with the beats, but emphatically not of them, came the
solitary oddballs and lone-wolf intellectuals like Daloway.
I met Daloway at a check-out desk of the excellent Los An­
geles downtown public library, wBere our two stacks of books
demonstrated so many shared interests—world history, geology,
abnormal psychology, and psychic phenomena were some of
them—that we paused outside to remark on it. This led to a con­
versation, in which I got some first intimations of his astonishing
mentality, and eventually to my driving him home to save him
a circuitous bus-trip, or, more likely, as I learned later, a weary
hitch-hike.
Our conversation continued excitingly throughout most of the
long drive, though even in that first exploratory confabulation
Daloway made so many guarded references to a malefic power
menacing us all and perhaps him in particular, that I wondered
if he mightn't have a bee in his bonnet about W orld Commu­
nism or the Syndicate or the John Birch Society. But despite this
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 179
possible paranoid obsession, he was clearly a most worthy partner
for intellectual disputation and discourse.
Toward the end of the drive Daloway suddenly got nervous
and didn't want me to take him the last few blocks. However, I
overcame his reluctance. I remarked on the oil well next to his
trailer—not to have done so would have implied I thought he
was embarrassed by itB-and he retorted sardonically, "My me­
chanical watchdog! Innocent-looking ugly beast, isn’t it? But
you’ve got to keep in mind that much more of it or of its domain
is below the surface, like an iceberg. Which reminds me that I
once ran across a seemingly well-authenticated report of a black
iceberg—’’
Thereafter I visited Daloway regularly in his trailer, often
late at night, and we made our library trips together and even
occasional brief expeditions to sleazily stimulating spots like La
Gondola Negra. At first I thought he had merely been ashamed
of his battered aluminum-walled home, though it was neat
enough inside, almost austere, but then I discovered that he
hated to reveal to anyone where he lived, in part because he hesi­
tated to expose anyone else to the great if shadowy danger he
believed overhung him.
Daloway was a spare man yet muscular, with the watchful
analytic gaze of an intellectual, but the hands of a mechanic.
Like too many men of our times, he was amazingly learned and
knowledgeable, yet unable to apply his abilities to his own ad­
vancement—for lack of connections and college degrees and be­
cause of nervous instabilities and emotional blockages. He had
more facts at his fingertips than a Ph.D. candidate, but he used
them to buttress off-trail theories and he dressed with the austere
cleanly neatness and simplicity of a factory hand or a man newly
released from prison.

G*
180 OVER THE EDGE

He’d work for a while in a machine shop or garage and then

live very thriftily on his savings while he fed his mind and pon­
dered all the problems of the universe, or sometimes—this was
before our meeting and the period of his dreads—organized
maverick mental-therapy or parapsychology groups.
This unworldly and monetarily unprofitable pattern of exist­
ence at least made Daloway an exciting thinker. For him the
world was a great conundrum or a series of puzzle boxes and he
a disinterested yet childishly sensitive and enthusiastic observer
trying to unriddle them. A scientist, or natural philosopher,
rather, without the blinkered conformity of thought which some­
times characterizes men with professional or academic standing
to lose, but rather with a fiercely romantic yet clear-headed and
at times even cynical drive toward knowledge. Atoms, molecules,
the stars, the unconscious mind, bizarre drugs and their effects
(he’d tried out LSD and mescaline), the play of consciousness,
the insidious interweaving of reality and dream (as climatically
in his dreams of the Black Gondola), the bafflingly twisted and
folded strata of Earth's crust and man’s cerebrum and all his­
tory, the subtle mysterious swings of world events and literature
and sub-literature and politics—he was interested in all of them,
and forever searching for some unifying purposeful power be­
hind them, and sensitive to them to a preternatural degree.
W ell, in the end he did discover the power, or at least con­
vinced himself he did, and convinced me too for a time— and
still does convince me, on lonely nights—-but he got little enough
satisfaction from his knowledge, that I know of, and it proved
to be as deadly a discover)’, to the discoverer, as finding out who
is really back of Organized Crime or the Dope Traffic or Ameri­
can Fascism. Gunmen and poisoners and scientifically-coached
bombers would be loosed against anyone making any of the last
three discoveries; the agent who did away with Daloway was
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 181

murkier-minded and deadlier even than the man who shot Ken­
nedy.
But I mentioned sensitivity. In many ways it was the hall­
mark of Daloway. He'd start at sounds I couldn’t hear, or that
were blanked out for me by the ceaseless ponderous low throb
of the oil wells, especially the one a few yards beyond the thin
wall of his trailer. He'd narrow his eyes at changes in illumina­
tion that didn't register on my retinas, or dart them at little
movements I usually missed. He'd twitch his nostrils for special
taints that to me were blanketed, at least in Venice, by the
stench of the petroleum and the salt-fishy reek of the ocean.
And he'd read meanings in newspaper articles and in paragraphs
of books that I would never have seen except for his pointing
them out, and I am not exactly unsubtle.
His sensitivity was almost invariably tinged with apprehension.
For example, my arrivals seemed always to startle and briefly up­
set him, no matter how quiet or deliberately noisy I made them,
and regardless of how much he seemed afterwards to enjoy my
company—or at the very least the audience-of-one with which I
provided him. Indeed this symptom—this jitteriness or jumpi­
ness—was so strong in him that, taken together with his solitary
fugitive mode of life and his unwillingness to have his dwelling
known, it led me to speculate early in our relationship whether
he might not be in flight from the law, or the criminal under­
world, or some fearsomely ruthless political or sub-political or­
ganization, or from some less tangible mafia.
W ell, considering the nature of the power Daloway really
feared, its utter black inhumanity, its near-omnipresence and al­
most timeless antiquity, his great apprehension was most under­
standable—provided of course that you accepted his ideas, or at
least were willing to consider them.
It was a long time before he would unequivocally identify the
182 OVER THE EDGE

power to me—give a specific name to his T hey. Perhaps he

dreaded my disbelief, my skeptical laughter, even feared I would
cut him off from me as a hopeless crank. Perhaps— and this I
credit—he honestly believed that he would subject me to a very
real danger by telling me, the same danger he was darkly shad­
owed by, or at least put me into its fringes— and only took the
risk of doing so when the urge to share his suspicions, or rather
convictions, with someone capable of comprehending them, be­
came an overpowering compulsion.
He made several false starts and retreats. Once he began,
"When you consider the source of the chemical fuels which
alone make modern civilization possible, and modern warfare
too, and the hope—or horror— of reaching other planets— ” and
then broke off.
Another time he launched off with, "If there is one single sub­
stance that has in it all of life and the potentiality for life, all
past life by reason of its sources and all future life by the innu­
merable infinitely subtle compounds it provides— ’’ and then shut
tight his lips and opened them only to change the subject.
Another of these abortive revelations began with, "I firmly
believe that there is no validity whatever in the distinction be­
tween the organic and the inorganic— I think it’s every' bit as
false as that between the artificial and the natural. It’s my abso­
lute conviction that consciousness goes down to the level of the
electrons—yes, and below that to the strata of the yet-undiscov-
ered sub-particles. The substance which before all others con­
vinces me that this is so, is— "
And once when I asked him without warning, "Daloway, what
is it you're afraid of, anyhow?" he replied, "W hy, the oil, of
course,” and then immediately insisted he was thinking of the
possible role of hydrocarbons and coal tars—and their combus­
tion products—in producing cancer.
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 183
I had better state as simply as possible Daloway's ideas about
the power, as he finally revealed them to me.
Daloway’s theory, based on his wide readings in world history,
geology, and the occult, was that crude oil—petroleum—was more
than figuratively the life-blood of industry and the modern world
and modern lightning-war, that it truly had a dim life and will
of its own, an inorganic consciousness or sub-consciousness, that
we were all its puppets or creatures, and that its chemical mind
had guided and even enforced the development of modern tech­
nological civilization. Created from the lush vegetation and ani­
mal fats of the Carboniferous and adjoining periods, holding in
itself the black essence of all life that had ever been, constitut­
ing in fact a great deep-digged black graveyard of the ultimate
eldritch past with blackest ghosts, oil had waited for hundreds of
millions of years, dreaming its black dreams, sluggishly pulsing
beneath Earth’s stony skin, quivering in lightless pools roofed
with marsh gas and in top-filled rocky tanks and coursing through
myriad channels and through spongy rocky bone, until a being
evolved on the surface with whom it could live symbiotically and
through whom it could realize and expend itself. When man had
appeared and had attained the requisite sensitivity and technical
sophistication, then oil—like some black collective unconscious—
had begun sending him its telepathic messages.
"Daloway, this is beyond belief!” I burst out here the first
time he revealed to me his theory in toto. "Telepathy by itself
is dubious enough, but telepathic communication between a life­
less substance and man— ”
"Do you know that many companies hunting oil spend more
money for dowsers than they do for geologists?” he shot back at
me instantly. "For dowsers and for those psionic-electronic gadg­
ets they call doodlebugs. The people whose money’s at stake and
who know the o;I lands in a practical way believe in dowsing,
184 OVER THE EDGE

even if most scientists don’t. And what is dowsing but a man

moving about on the surface until he gets a telepathic signal
from . . . something below."
In brief, Daloway’s theory was that man hadn't discovered oil,
but that oil had found man. Venice hadn’t struck oil; oil had
thrust up its vicious feelers like some vast blind monster, and
finally made contact with Venice.
Everyone admits that oil is the lifeblood of modern techno­
logical culture—its automobiles and trucks and airplanes, its bat­
tleships and military tanks, its ballistic missiles and reekingly
fueled space vehicles. In a sense Daloway only carried the argu­
ment one step further, positing behind the blood a heart— and
behind the heart, a brain.
Surely in a great age-old oil pool with all its complex hydro­
carbons—the paraffin series, the asphalt series, and many others—
and with its subtle gradients of heat, viscosity, and electric charge,
and with all its multiform microscopic vibrations echoing and
re-echoing endlessly from its lightless walls, there can be the
chemical and physical equivalent of nerves and brain-cells; and
if of brain-cells, then of thought. Some computers use pools of
mercury for their memory units. The human brain is fantasti­
cally isolated, guarded by bony walls and by what they call the
blood-brain barrier; how much more so subterranean oil, within
its thick stony skull and earthen flesh.
Or consider it from another viewpoint. According to scientific
materialism and anthropologic determinism, man's will is an il­
lusion, his consciousness but an epiphenomenon—a useless mir­
roring of the atomic swirlings and molecular churnings that con­
stitute ultimate reality. In any such world-picture, oil is a far
more appropriate primal power than man.
[Link] even discovered the chief purpose animating oil’s
mentality, or thought he did. Once when we were discussing
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 185

spaceflight, he said suddenly, "I’ve got it! Oil wants to get to

other planets so that it can make contact with the oil there, con­
verse with extraterrestrial pools—fatten on their millennial
strength, absorb their graveyard wisdom . .
Of course a theory like that is something to laugh at or tell
a psychiatrist. And of course Daloway may have been crazy or
seeking a dark sort of laughter himself. I mean it is quite possi­
ble that Daloway was deceiving and mystifying me for his own
amusement, that he elaborated his whole theory and repeatedly
simulated his dreads simply as part of a long-drawn-out practical
joke, that he noted a vein of credulity in me and found cruel de­
light in fooling me to the top of my bent, and that—as the police
insist—even the starkly material evidence for the horror of his
disappearance which I pointed out to them was only a final crude
hoax on his part, a farewell jest.
Yet I knew the man for months, knew his dreads, saw him
start and shiver and shake, heard him rehearse his arguments
with fierce sincerity, witnessed the birth-quivers of many of his
ideas—and I do not think so.
Oh, there were many times when I doubted Daloway, doubted
his every' word, but in the end his grotesque theory about the oil
did not elicit from me the skepticism it might have from another
hearing it elsewhere—perhaps, it occurs to me now, because it
was advanced in a metropolis that is such a strange confirmation
of it.
To the average tourist or the reader of travel brochures, Los
Angeles is a gleaming city or vast glamorous suburb of movie
studios and orange groves and ornate stucco homes and green-
tiled long swimming pools and beaches and now great curving
freesvays and vast white civic centers and sleekly modern plants—
aviation, missile, computer, research and development. What is
overlooked here is that the City of the Angels, especially in its
186 OVER THE EDGE

southern reaches stretching toward Long Beach, is almost half

oil-field. These odorous grim industrial barrens interweave elabo­
rately with airfields and showy tract housing developments— with
an effect of savage irony. There is hardly a point from which one
cannot see in the middle or farther distance, looming through
the faintly bluish haze of the acrid smog, a hill densely studded
with tall oil derricks. Long Beach herself is dominated by Signal
H ill with oil towers thick as an army’s spears and cruel as the
murders which have been committed on its lonely slopes.
The first time I ever saw one of those hills—that near Culver
City—I instantly thought of H. G. W eils' War o f the W orlds and
of his brain-heavy Martians on their lofty metal tripods where­
with they strode ruthlessly about the British countryside. It
seemed to me that I was seeing a congeries of such tower-high
beings and that the next moment they might begin to stride
lurchingly toward me, with something of the feeling, modernis-
tically distorted, of Macbeth’s Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane.
And here and there along with the oil derricks, like their al­
lies or reinforcements, one sees the gleaming distillation towers
and the monstrous angular-shouldered cracking plants with mus­
cles of knotted pipe, and the fields of dull silver oil tanks, livid
in the smog, and the vaster gas tanks and the marching files of
high-tension-wire towers, which look at a distance like oil der­
ricks.
And as for Venice herself, with the oil's omnipresent reek,
faint or heavy, and with her oil wells cheek-by-jowl with houses
and shacks and eternally throbbing, as if pulsing the beat of a
vast subterranean chemic heart—well, it was only too easy to be­
lieve something like Daloway's theory there. It was from the beach
by Venice, in 1926, that Aimee Semple McPherson was mysteri­
ously vanished, perhaps teleported, to the sinisterly-named M exi­
can town of Black Water—Agua Pacta. The coming of the il-
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 187

lusioneers to Venice, and of the beatniks—and of the black oil,

aceite p rieto — all seemed alike mindless mechanic movements, or
compulsive unconscious movements, whether of molecules or peo­
ple, and in either case a buttressing of Daloway's wild theory—
and at the very least an ironic picture of modern man’s indus­
trial predicament.
At all events the black savage sardonicism of that picture,
along with Daloway’s extreme sensitivity, made it easy to under­
stand why his nerves were rasped acutely by the ballad of the
Black Gondola, as the black-smeared lurching beatnik guitarist
came wailing it past the thin-walled trailer in the small hours of
the night. I heard it only two or three times and the fellow’s
voice was thick to unintelligibility, though abominably raucous,
so it was mostly from Daloway that I got the words of the few
scattered lines I remember. They were a half-plagiarized melange
of ill-ficted cadences, but with a certain garishly eerie power.
Oh, the Black Gondola’s gonna take you for a ride
W ith a cargo of atom bombs and Atlases and nightmares . . .
The Black Gondola's gonna stop at your door
W ith a bow-wave of asphalt and a gravel spray . . .
The Black Gondola’ll . . . g e t. . . you .. . yet!
Even of those five lines, the second comes—with a few changes
of word— from a short poem by Yeats, the fifth derives from
Vachel Lindsay s The Congo, while the Black Gondola itself
sounds suspiciously like the nihilism-symbolizing Black Freighter
in Brecht’s and Wc-ill's The Three-Penny Opera. Nevertheless,
this crude artificial ballad, in which the Black Gondola seems to
stand for our modern industrial civilization—and so, very easily,
for petroleum too— may well have shaped or at least touched off
Daloway's dreams, though his Black Gondola was of a rather dif­
ferent sort.
But before I describe Daloway’s dreams, I had better round
188 OVER THE EDGE

out his picture of the power which he believed dominated the

modern world and, because he was coming to know too much
about it, menaced his own existence.
According to Daloway, oil had intelligence, it had purpose . . .
and it also had its agents. These beings, Daloway speculated,
might be parts of itself, able to move independently, man-shaped
and man-sized for purposes of camouflage, composed of a sort of
infernal black ectoplasm or something more material than that—
a darkly oleaginous humanoid spawn. Or they might be, at least
to begin with, living men who had become oil’s worshippers and
slaves, who had taken the Black Baptism or the Sable Consecra­
tion— as he put it with a strange facetiousness.
"The Black Man in the Witch-cult!” he once said to me
abruptly. "I think he was a forerunner—spying out the ground,
as it were. We have to remember too that oil was first discovered,
so far as the modern world is concerned, in Pennsylvania, the
hexing state, though in another corner than the Dutch territory’—
at Titusville, in fact, in 1859, just on the eve of a great and tragic
war that made fullest use of new industrial technologies. It’s im­
portant to keep in mind, incidentally, that the Black Man wasn’t
a Negro, which would have made him brown, but simply a man
of Caucasian features with a dead-black complexion. Though
there are dark brown petroleums. f> r that matter, and greenish
ones. Of course many people used to equate the Black Man with
the Devil, but Margaret Murray pretty well refuted that in her
God o f the W itches and elsewhere.
"Which is not to say that the Negro’s not mixed up in it,”
Daloway continued on that occasion, his thoughts darting and
twisting and back-tracking as rapidly as they always did. "I think
that the racial question and—as with spaceflight— the fact that
it s come to the front today, is of crucial significance. Oil’s using
the blacks as another sort of camouflage.”
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 189

"What about atomic energy? You haven’t brought that in yet,”

I demanded a little crossly, or more likely nervously.
Daloway gave me a strange penetrating look. "Nuclear en­
ergy is, I believe, an entirely separate subterranean mentality,”
he informed me. "Helium instead of marsh gas. Pitchblende in­
stead of pitch. It’s more introspective than oil, but it may soon
become more active. Perhaps the conflict of these two vampiristic
mentalities will be man's salvation!—though more likely, I’m
afraid, only a further insurance of his immediate destruction."
O il’s dark agents not only spied, according to Daloway, but
also dispersed clues leading to the discovery of new oil fields and
new uses for oil, and on occasion removed interfering and overly
perceptive human beings.
"There was Rudolf Diesel for one, inventor of the all-impor­
tant engine,” Daloway asserted. "W hat snatched hina off that little
North Sea steamer back in 1913?— just before the first war to prove
the supremacy of petrol-powered tanks and armored cars and
Zeppelins and planes. No one has ever begun to explain that
mystery. People didn't realize so well then that oil is as much
a thing of the salt water—especially the shallows above the con­
tinental shelves— as it is of the shores. I say that Diesel knew too
much—and was snatched because he did! The same may have
been true of Ambroie Bierce, who disappeared at almost the same
time down in the oil lands between Mexico and Texas, though I
don’t insist on that. The history of the oil industry is studded
with what some call legends, but I believe are mostly true ac­
counts, of men who invented new fuels, or made other key dis­
coveries, and then dropped out of existence without another
word spoken. And the oil millionaires aren’t exactly famous for
humanitarianism and civilized cosmopolitan outlook. And every
oil field has its tales of savagery and its black ghosts—the fields of
Southern California as much as the rest.”
190 OVER THE EDGE

I found it difficult—or, more truthfully, uncomfortable— to ad­

just to Daloway's new mood of piled revelations and wild sudden
guesses, in contrast to his previous tight-lipped secrecy, and espe­
cially to these last assertions about a black lurking infernal host—
here, in the ultramodern, garishly new American Southwest. But
not too difficult. I have never been one to be dogmatically skepti­
cal about preternatural agencies, or to say that Southern Califor­
nia cannot have ghosts because its cities are young and philistine
and raw that sprawl across so much of the inhospitable desert
coast and because the preceding Amerind and Mission cultures
were rather meagre—the Indians dull and submissive, the padres
austere and cruel. Ghostliness is a matter of atmosphere, not age.
I have seen an unsuccessful subdivision in Hollywood that was
to me more ghostly than the hoariest building I ever viewed in
New England. Only thirty years ago they had scythed and sawed
down the underbrush and laid out a few streets and put in side­
walks and a water pipe and a few hydrants. But then the lot-buy­
ers and home-builders never materialized and now the place is a
wilderness of towering weeds and brush, with the thin-topped
streets eroded so that at some points they are a dozen feet below
the hanging under-eaten sidewalks, and the water pipe is exposed
and rusting and each hydrant is in the midst of a yellow thicket
and the only living things to be seen are the tiny darting lizards
and an occasional swift sinuous snake or velvet dark shifty tar­
antula and whatever else it is that rustles the dry near-impassable
vegetation.
Southern California is full of such ghost-districts and ghost-
towns despite the spate of new building and hill-chopping and
swamp-draining that has come with the rocket plants and tele­
vision and the oil refineries and the sanatoria and the think-fac­
tories and all the other institutions contributing to the area’s
exploding population.
Or I could let you look down into Potrero Canyon, an eroded
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 191

earthquake crack which cuts through populous Pacific Palisades,

another postal address in Los Angeles. But I could hardly lead
you down into it, because its sides are everywhere too steep and
choked with manzanita and sumac and scrub oak, where they
don't fall away altogether to the clay notch of its bottom. Track­
less and almost impenetrable, Potrero Canyon dreams there mys­
teriously, the home of black foxes and coyotes and silently-soar­
ing sinister hawks, oblivious to the bright costly modern dwellings
at its top— "that deep romantic chasm . . . a savage place . . .
holy and enchanted.” to borrow the words of Coleridge.
Or I could invite you on any clear dav to look out across the
Pacific at the mysterious, romantically crested Santa Barbara Is­
lands—all of their 218,000 acres, save for Santa Catalina's 55,000,
forbidden territory by Government ukase or private whim.
Even the earth of Southern California, sedimentary, lacking
a strongly knit rocky skeleton, seems instinct w'ith strange ener­
gies hardly known in geologically stabler areas and lending a
weird plausibility to Daloway’s theory of sentient, seeking, secre­
tive oil. Every year there are unforseen earth-falls—and falls of
houses too—and mud-slides that drown dwellings and engulf cars.
Only in 1958 one of them sent half of a hundred-foot-high hill
slumping forward to bury the Pacific Coast Highway; they were
more than six months filling in beach, trucks running rock night
and day, to get a bed on which to lay the road around it.
Once, not too long ago, they called that road Roosevelt High­
way, but now it is Cabrillo Highway or even El Camino Real.
Just as the street names, straining for glamor, have progressed
from Spanish to British to Italian and back to Spanish again, and
the favorite subdivision names from Palisades to Heights to
Knolls to Acres to Rivieras to Mesas to Condominiums. In
Southern California, seemingly, history can run backwards, with
an unconscious fierce sardonicism.
And then there are all the theosophists and mystics and oc-
192 OVER THE EDGE

cultists, genuine and sham, who came swarming to Southern Cali­

fornia in the early decades of the century. A good many of those
were sensitive to the uncanny forces here, I think, and were drawn
by them—as well as by the lavish gypsy camp of the movie-makers,
the bankrolls of the retired and the elderly, and a health-addict’s
climate, the last somewhat marred by chilly damp western winds
and by burningly dry Santa Anas, threatening vast brush fires,
and now by smog. And the occultists keep swarming here—the I
Am folk with their mysterious mountain saints and glittering
meetings in evening dress; the barefoot followers of Krishna
Venta and the mysterious errand-of-mercy appearances they made
at local disasters and finally their own great Box Canyon mystery-
explosion of December 7, 1958, which claimed ten lives, includ­
ing—possibly—their leader’s; the Rosicrucians and Theosophists;
Katherine Tingley and Annie Besant; the latter’s W orld Master,
Krishnamurti, still living quietly in Ojai Valley; the high-minded
Self-Realization movement, the dead body of whose founder Par-
amhansa Yogananda resisted corruption for at least twenty days,
as testified by Forest Lawn morticians; Edgar Rice Burroughs,
who fictionalized the fabulous worlds of theosophy on Mars and
is immortalized in Tarzana; the flying-saucer cultists with their
great desert conventions; beautiful Gloria Lee listening raptly
to her man on Jupiter—there is no end to them.
So when Daloway began to rehearse to me his fearful suspi­
cions, or beliefs rather, about oil’s black ghosts—or acolytes, or
agents, or budded-off black ameboid humanoid creatures, or
whatever they exactly might be—I was uneasily sympathetic to
the idea if not consciously credulous. Good Lord, if there could
be such things as ghosts, it would be easy to imagine them in
Venice—ghosts of the Channel Indians and those whom the In­
dians called "the Ancient Ones,” ghosts of Cabrillo’s men when
he discovered this coast in 1542 before he died on windswept for-
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 193
bidden San Miguel, westernmost of the Santa Barbara Islands:
ghosts from the harsh theocratic Mission days and the lawless
Mexican years that followed, ghosts of the Spanish and Yankee
Dons, ghosts of gold-seekers and vigilantes, anarchists and strike­
breakers, and ghosts of the gamblers and gondoliers and the
other folk from the illusion-packed years. Especially now that
the illusions are edging back again: in the swampy south end of
Venice they've just built a great marina or small-boat harbor,
with fingers of sea interlocking fingers of low-lying land and with
all sorts of facilities for luxurious dockside apartments and
homes— if the buyers materialize and if they fully subdue the
strange tidal waves which first troubled the marina. There is even
talk of linking the marina to the old canal system and cleaning
that up and filling it all year round and perhaps bringing back
the gondolas. Though at the same time, by a cackling irony, a
battle goes on in the courts as to whether or not industry may
be licensed to drill for offshore oil, setting up its derricks in the
shallows of the Pacific, just beyond the breakers that beat against
the beaches of Venice—W ells’ Martians submerged to their chests
in waves. In our modern world, illusion and greed generally walk
hand in hand.
So it was by no means with complete skepticism about his wild
theory of black buried oil and its creatures that I listened to Dalo-
way’s accounts of his dreams of the Black Gondola, or rather his
dream, since it was always basically the same, with minor varia­
tions. I will tell it one time in his words, as he most fully told
it, remembering too how I heard it—in his cramped trailer, late
at night, perhaps just after the passing of the wailing drunken
guitarist, no other sound but the faint distant rattle of the break­
ing waves and the slow throb of the oil pump a few yards beyond
the thin metal wall with the small half-curtained window in it,
the edges of my mind crawling with thoughts of the black prefer-
194 OVER THE EDGE

natural creatures that might be on watch outside that same wall

and pressing even closer.
"I’m always sitting in the Black Gondola when the dream be­
gins," Daloway said. "I'm facing the prow’ and my hands grip
the gunwales to either side. Apparently I've just left the trailer
and got aboard her, though I never remember that part, for we’re
in the canal outside, which is full to the top of its banks, and
we’re headed down the middle of it toward the Grand Canal.
There’s oil on my clothes, I can feel it, but I don’t know’ how it
got there.
"It’s night, of course, dark night. The street lights are all out.
There’s just enough glow in the sky to silhouette the houses. No
light show’s in any of their windows, only the glimmer coming
between them—a glimmer no brighter than the phosphorescence
that paints the breakers some summer nights when the sewage
breeds too big an algae crop and there’s a fish-kill. Yet the glim ­
mer and glow are enough to show the tiny ripples angling out
from the gondola’s prow’ as we move along.
"It’s a conventional gondola, narrow and with a high prow,
but it’s black—sooty black— no highlights reflect from it. You
know, gondola also means coal car. those black open-topped cars
on the railroads. I’ve ridden the freights often enough—perhaps
there’s a connection there.
"I can hear the swish and the faint fluid-muffled thump of the
gondolier’s pole against the bottom as he drives us along. It's
thudding in the same slow rhythm as the pumping of the oil wells.
But 1 cannot look around at him— I daren't! The fact is, I'm
frozen with terror, botn of the voiceless gondolier standing be­
hind me and of our destination, though I cannot yet conceive or
name that. My grip on the gunwales tightens convulsively.
"Sometimes I try to visualize what the gondolier looks like—
never in my dreams, but at times like this—what his appearance
would be if I had the courage to turn my head, or if the dream
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 195
changed so that I was forced to look at him. And then I get a
glimpse of a thin figure about seven feet tall. His shoulders are
twisted and his head, bent forward, is hooded. The rest of his
clothing is tight-fitting, down to his long narrow sharply pointed
shoes. His big long-fingered hands grip the black pole strongly.
And everywhere he himself is black, not dull black like the gon­
dola, but gleaming black as if he were thickly coated with black
oil which has just the faintest greenish sheen to it—as if he were
some infernal merman newly swum up from the depths of a great
oil ocean.
"But in my dream I dare not look or even think of him. We
turn into the Grand Canal and head toward the Marina, but there
are no lights there or on the heights of Playa del Rey beyond.
There are no stars in the sky, only that exceedingly faint distant
shimmer. I watch for the lights of a plane mounting from the
International Airport. Even one tiny red-green pair moving across
the sky out to sea so far away would be a great comfort to me.
But none comes.
"The reck of the oil is strong. (In how many dreams do we
experience odors? This is the only one where it’s happened to
me.) W e pass under two of the bridges. The glimmer shows me
their curving ruin-notched outlines and one or two ragged frag­
ments of cement dangling by the wires imbedded in them.
"The reek grows stronger. And now at last I notice a change
in our movement, although the bow ripples have the same angles
and the muffled thud of the pole has the same slow rhythm. The
change is simply that the gondola has settled a little deeper in
the water, not more than two Or three inches.
"I ponder the problem. Nothing has entered the boatu-noth-
ing before me that I have seen or behind me that I have felt. I
scrape my feet against the bottom— it is dry, no w-ater has entered.
Yet the gondola is riding deeper. Why?
"The reek grows stronger still—suffocatingly so, almost. The
196 OVER THE EDGE

gondola settles still deeper in the water, so deep that the ends of
my fingers on the outside of the gunwales are immersed. And
now the problem is solved. Touch tells me that the gondola is
riding not in water, but in oil. Or rather in an ever-thickening
layer of oil floating on top of the water. The thicker the layer
gets, the deeper the boat sinks."
Daloway stared at me sharply. "That would actually be true,
you know,” he interjected. "A boat would ride very high in a sea
of mercury, because the stuff is heavier than lead, but low in a
sea of gasoline or petroleum—sink, in fact, if it hadn't enough
freeboard—because the stuff is light. Petroleum may have as lit­
tle as seven-tenths the weight of water. Which is odd considering
the thick greases we get out of it. Yet thick greases like vaseline
float.
"And it would be true, too, that a boat riding in a layer of oil
floating atop water— an oil-layer thinner than the boat’s draught
—would sink proportionately deeper as the layer got thicker, un­
til it was riding wholly in oil. Then it would steady— or sink for
good.
"The layer of oil in which my gondola is riding is getting
thicker, at all events," he went on, resuming the narration of his
dream.
"I get the impression that we are reaching a length of the
Grand Canal in which there is nothing but oil. The black stuff
begins to pour over the gunwales in a thin sleek waterfall. Yet
the Black Gondola is moving ahead as steadily and strongly as
ever and even more swiftly. W e are like an airplane taking off—
downward. Or like a submarine diving.
"I nerve myself to loosen my grip on the gunwales and make
a wild plunge toward the bank, though I fear I will drown in
even that short distance. But at that instant the gondolier’s pole
comes down firmly on my right shoulder, projecting perhaps a
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 197

yard ahead of me and pinning me to my seat. Though its injunc­

tion not to move is more hypnotic, or magical, than physical, it
is absolute. I cannot stir, or break my grip on the submerging
gondola.
"I know this is Death. I peer yearningly one last time for the
lights of a mounting airplane. Then as the oil, moving past me
in an unending sleep caress, mounts to my face, I shut my lips,
I hold my breath, I close my eyes.
"The oil covers me. I am aware in those last paralyzed seconds
that we are moving still more swiftly through the black stuff. Yet
the solid oil rushing past does not unseat me from the gondola,
or even tug at me. The effect is always of a great unending caress.
' Death and Agony do not come. I wait for the urge to breathe
to become overpowering. There is no urge. The straining muscles
of my chest and jaw and face relax.
"I open my eyes. I can see through the oil. It has become my
medium of vision. By a darkly green shimmering I can see that,
still descending and even more swiftly now, we are traversing a
great rocky cavern hilc-d with oil. Evidently we plunged into it
from the Grand Canal, by way of some unsuspected gate or lock,
while I waited with closed eyes for my death-spasm.
"During the same period of blindness, the Black Gondolier has
moved from behind me and taken up a position below and a
little ahead of the Black Gondola, dragging it along like some
mythic slim long dolphin or infernal merman. Now and again
past the forward gunwales I glimpse, greenly outlined in mid­
kick, the black soles of his long narrow sharply pointed feet—or
bifid narrow tail-fin.
"I say to myself, 'I have received the Black Baptism. I have
partaken of the Black Communion.’
"Our speed ever increasing, we pass through weird grottos, we
twist and turn through narrow passageways whose irregular walls
198 OVER THE EDGE

flash with precious gems and nuggets of gold and copper, we soar
across great vaults domed with crusty salt crystals glittering like
thick-packed diamonds.
"I know, even in my dream, that this picture of underground
oil in vast interconnected lakes and tanks is false by all geology
—that untapped oil is mixed with earth and porous rocks and
shales and sand, not free—but the picture and experience re­
main the same and exquisitely real. Perhaps I have suffered a
size-change, become microscopic. Perhaps I have suffered a sense-
change and see things symbolically. Perhaps geology is false.
"Our speed becomes impossible. We flash about like a single
black corpuscle in the oil plasma of the great world-creature. I
know', intuitively, that one instant we are beneath Caracas; the
next, Ploesti; then Baku, Iraq, Iran, India, Indonesia, Argentina,
Colombia, Oklahoma, Algeria, Antarctica, Atlantis . . .
"It is more as if w>e were flashing through black outer space,
softly gleaming with galaxies, than through earth’s depths.
"There is a feeling of nightmare-ride now . . . wild whirlings
and spiralings . . . a blurred glitter . . . a blessed sense of
fatigue . . .
"Yet at the same time I become aware that the white-green
sinuous gleamings I see are the nerves of oil. which stretch
everyw'here, to every tiniest well; that I am approaching the
great brain; that I will soon see God.
"And I never, even in this nightmare phase, lose the aware­
ness of the close presence of my conductor. From time to time I
still glimpse, in frozen instants, standing out sharply against the
glistening gi^en, the black shapes of his long narrow' sharply
pointed low'er extremities.
"There the dream ends. I can no longer endure its flashing
transitions. I am out wearied. I awake sweating and groaning or
fall into a deeper dreamless sleep from which I slowly arouse
hours later, lethargic and spent.”
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 199

As he finished his narrative lie would generally give me a tired

questioning look, smiling thinly as if at the extravagance of it all,
but with a loneliness in his eyes that made me think of him look­
ing hopelessly in his dream for the lights of a distant plane as
the Black Gondola went under.
That was Daloway's dream. To describe my reactions to it is
more difficult. Remember that he did not tell it to me all at
once, but only sketchilv at first with an air of, "Here’s a ridicu­
lous dream;" later much more seriously, putting in the details,
building the picture. Also remember that he dreamed it about
six times during the period of our friendship, and that each time
the dream was somewhat fuller and he told me more of it—and
between times revealed to me more of his wild theory' of world
oil, bit by bit. and revealed, bit by bit, too, how deeply he be­
lieved or at least felt this theory. Remember finally that his
nerves were in pretty good shape when he first told me the
dream, but pretty bad toward the last.
I seem to recall that the first time or two, we both poked at
the dream psychoanalytically. There were obvious birth and
death and sex symbols in it: trips through fluid, return to the
womb, the caress of oil, the gondolier's punting pole, passage
under bridges, twisting tunnels, difficulties in breathing, flying
sensations, all the usual stuff. I think he advanced the rather far­
fetched notion that his disappearing into strangling darkness
with an unknown menacing male indicated unconscious fears of
homosexuality, while I championed the prosier explanation that
the whole horror of oil might merely stand for his resentment at
having to work as a mechanic to earn a living. We speculated as
to whether the racial question might not be tied up in it—Dalo-
way had a touch of Indian blood—and tried to identify the per­
son in his early life whom the Black Gondolier might represent.
But the last time he told it to me, we just looked at each other
for a long while and I went over stoopingly and drew the curtain
200 OVER THE EDGE

fully across the little window in the side of the low-ceilinged

trailer toward the oil well and the night, and we began to talk
about something else, something trivial.
By that time, you see, he’d had the first of his outbursts of
more active fear. It had been touched off by a rumour or report
that petroleum was leaking into the Grand Canal through some
underground fissure, perhaps from a defective well. He wanted
us to walk over to the spot and have a look, but the sun set be­
fore we got there and we couldn’t see any lights indicating men
at work or hunting for the leak, and he suddenly decided it
would be too much trouble and we turned back. The dark comes
quite quickly in Venice—Los Angeles is near enough to the
Tropic of Cancer so you can see all of Scorpius and the South­
ern Crown too, while Fomalhaut rides high in the southern sky.
And Venice’s narrow streets, half of them only pedestrian pas­
sageways blocked off to cars, swiftly grow' gloomy. I remember
that going back we hurried a bit, stumbling through sand and
around rubbish, but hardly enough to account for the way Dalo-
way was gasping by the time we reached his trailer.
Once during that unconfessed flight, while we were crossing
an empty lot by the Grand Canal, he stopped me by catching
hold of my elbow and then he led us in a circle around a slightly
darker stretch of ground—almost as if he feared it were a
scummed-over dust-camouflaged oil pool which might engulf us.
You do run into such things in oil fields, though I’ve never heard
of them in Venice.
And two or three times, later that night, Daloway made ex­
cuses to go out and scan the light-patched darkness toward the
Grand Canal, almost as if he expected to see tongues of petro­
leum runneling toward us across the low ground, or other shapes
approaching.
do quiet his nerves and put the thing on a more rational
 THE BLACK CONDOUER 201 *

basis, I pointed out that, as he himself lud told me, natural oil
leakages are by no means uncommon in the Pacific Southland.
Ocean bathers are apt to get bits of tar on their feet and they
usually blame it on modern industry and its poorly-disposed
wastes, seldom discovering that it is asphalt from undersea leak­
ages which were recurring regularly long before Cabrillo’s time.
Another example, this one in the heart of western Los Angeles,
is La Brea tar pits, which trapped many saber-toothed tigers
and their prey, as the asphalt-impregnated bones testify. (There’s
a tautology there: brea means tar. Other glamorous-sounding old
Los Angeles street names have equally ugly or homely meanings:
Las Pulgas means "the fleas,’’ Temescal means "sweat house,”
while La Cienega, street of the wonder-restaurants, means "the
swamp. ” )
My effort was ill-considered. Daloway's nerves were not quieted.
He muttered, "Damned oil killing animals too! W ell, at least it
got the exploiters as well as the exploited," and he stepped out
again to scan the night, the growl of the pump growing suddenly
louder as he opened the door.
The report of the petroleum leakage turned out to have been
much exaggerated. I don’t recall hearing how they fixed it up, if
they ever did. But it gave me an uncomfortable insight into the
state of Daloway's nerves— and didn’t do my own any good,
either.
Then there was the disastrous business of Daloway’s car. He
bought an old jalopy for almost nothing at about this time and
put it in good shape, expending most of his dwindling cash-re­
serve buying essential replacements at second hand. I inwardly
applauded— I thought the manual work would be therapeutic.
Incidentally, Daloway repeatedly refused my offers of a small
loan.
Then one evening I dropped over to find the car gone and
202 OVER THE EDGE

Daloway just returned from - long, half hitch-hiked trudge and

pitifully strained anil shaky.. It seemed he'd been driving the car
along the San Bernadino Freeway when a huge kerosene truck
just ahead of him had jackknifed in an underpass and split its
tank and spilled its load and caught afire. I’d heard about the
accident on the radio a few hours earlier—it tied up the freeway
for almost half a day. Daloway had managed to bring his car to
a swerving stop in the swift-shooting oil. Two other cars, also
skidding askew, crashed him lightly from behind, preventing his
car’s escape. He managed to leap out and run away before the
fire got to it—the truck driver escaped too, miraculously—but
Daloway’s car, uninsured of course, was burned to a shriveled
black ruin along with several others.
Daloway never admitted to me straight out that he had been
escaping from Venice and LA, leaving them for good, when that
catastrophe on the San Bernadino Freeway thwarted him. I suppose
he was ashamed to admit he would go away without telling me
his plans or even saying goodby. (I would have understood, I
think: some partings have to be made with ruthless suddenness,
before the fire of decision burns out.) But a big old suitcase that
had used to stand inside the door of the trailer was gone and I
imagine it burned with the car.
Later the police neatly turned all this into an argument for
their theory that Daloway’s ultimate departure from Venice was
voluntary. He'd once started to leave without informing me,
they pointed out—and would have, except for the accident. His
money was running out. (There was a month’s rent owing on
the trailer at the end.) He had a history of briefly-held jobs al­
ternating with periods of roving or dropping out of sight—or so
they claimed. What more natural than that he should have seized
on some sudden opportunity or inspiration to decamp?
I had to admit they had a point, of sorts. It turned out that
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 203

the police had an old grudge against Daloway: they'd once sus­
pected him of being mixed up in the marijuana traffic. W ell,
that may have been true, I suppose; he admitted to me having
smoked hemp a few times, years before.
I used to carp at horror stories in which the protagonist could
at any time have departed from the focus of horror—generally
some lonely dismal spot, like Daloway's trailer—but instead in­
sisted on staying there, though shaking with fear, until he was
engulfed. Since my experience with Dalowav, I’ve changed my
mind. Daloway did try to leave. He made that one big effort with
the car and it was foiled. He lacked the energy to make another.
He became fatalistic. And perhaps the urge to stay and see what
would happen— always strong. I imagine, curiosity being a funda­
mental human trait—at that point became somewhat stronger
than the opposing urge to flee.
That evening after the freeway accident I stayed with him a
long time, trying to cheer him up and get him to look at the ac­
cident as a chance occurrence, not some cat-and-mousing malig­
nancy aimed directly and solely at him. After a while I thought
I was succeeding.
"You know, I hung back of that truck for fully ten minutes,
afraid to pass, though I had enough speed,’’ he admitted. "I
kept thinking something would happen while I was passing it."
"You see," I said. "If you’d passed it right off, you wouldn’t
have been involved in the accident. You courted danger by stick­
ing close behind a vehicle that you probably knew, at least sub­
consciously, was behaving dangerously. W e can all have accidents
that way."
"No,” Daloway replied, shaking his head. "Then the accident
would have come earlier. Don’t you understand?—it was an oil
truck! And if I had got by it, the oil would have stopped me
some way, I’m convinced of that now—even if it had had to burst

H
204 OVER THE EDGE

out in a spontaneous gusher beside the highway and skid my car

into a wreck! Remember how the oil burst out of Signal H ill in
the 1933 Long Bead) earthquake and flowed inches thick down
the streets?”
"W ell, at any rate you escaped with your life,” I pointed out,
trying to salvage a little of my imagined advantage.
"It didn't want to kill me there,” Daloway countered gloom­
ily. "It just wanted to herd me back. It's got something else in
store for me.”
"Now look here, Daloway," I burst out, a little angry and try­
ing to sound more so, "if we all argued that way, there wouldn’t
be any trifling mischance that couldn't be twisted into a murder-
attempt by some weird power. Just this morning I found a little
gas-leak in my kitchen. Am I to suppose— ?”
"It's after you too now'!” he interrupted me, paling and start­
ing to his feet. "Natural gas—petroleum—the same thing—sib­
lings. Keep off me, it's not safe! I've warned you before. You bet­
ter get out now.”
I wouldn't agree to that, of course, but the couple hours more
I stayed with Daloway didn't improve his mood, or mine either.
He set himself to analyzing last year's Los Angeles catastrophe,
when a three hundred million gallon water reservoir broke its
thick earthen wall in the Baldwin Hills and did tens of millions
of dollars worth of damage, floating and tumbling cars and flood­
ing thousands of homes and smashing hundreds of buildings with
a deluge of water and mud though only a few' lives w e r e lost be­
cause of efficient warning by motorcycle police and a helicopter
cruising with a bullhorn.
"There were oil wells by the reservoir," he said. "Even the
purblind officials admit that soil subsidence from oil drilling
may have started the leaks. But do you remember the east-west
bounds of the flood? From La Brea to La Cienega— the tar to the
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 203

swamp! And what was the substance lining the reservoir? What
was the stuff that craftily weakened from point to point and then
gave way at the crucial moment, triggering the thing? Asphalt!”
"Men did the drilling, Daloway,” I argued wearily. "Asphalt
is inert . . . ”
"Inert!” he almost snarled back at me. "Yes, like the uranium
atom! What moves the dowsers' wands? Do you still think that
men run things up here?"
By the time I left I was glad to be gone and disgusted with
myself for wasting too much time, and very irked at Daloway too
and glad I had an engagement the next evening that would pre­
vent me from visiting him.
For the first time in weeks, going home that night, I w'ondered
if Daloway mightn't be an all-out psychopath. At the same time
I found myself so nervous about the very7 faint stench of oil in
nay car that I opened all the windows, though there was a chilly
fog, and even then I kept worrying about the motor and the oil in it,
as it heated. Damn it, the man was poisoning my life with his para­
noid suspicions and dreads! He was right, I’d better keep off him.
But the next night a thunderstroke woke me about two, there
was rain sizzling and rattling on the roof and gurgling loudly in
the resonating metal drain pipes, and right away I was thinking
how much louder it must be pounding on Daloway’s trailer and
wondering how apt lightning striking an oil well w;as to cause a
fire—things like that. It was our first big downpour of the season,
rather early in the fall too, and it kept on and on, a regular
cloudburst, and the lightning too. I must have listened to them
for a couple of hours, thinking about Daloway and his wild ideas,
which didn’t seem so wild now' with the storm going, and pictur­
ing Venice with its canals filling fast and with its low crowded
houses and oil wells and derricks under the fist of the rain and
the lightning’s shining spear.
206 OVER THE EDGE

I think it was chiefly the thought of the canals being full

that finally got me up and dressed around five and off in the dark
to see how Daloway was faring. The rain had stopped by now
and of course the thunder too, but there were signs of the storm
everywhere—my headlights showed me falling branches, fans of
eroded mud and gravel crossing the street, gutters still brimming,
a few intersections still shallowly flooded, and a couple of wide
buttons of water still pouring up from manholes whose heavy
tops had been displaced by the pressure from brim-filled flumes.
Hardly any private automobiles were abroad yet, but I met
a couple of fire trucks and light-and-power trucks and cars off on
emergency errands, and when I got to Venice, Daloway's end
was dark—there’d evidently been a major power failure there. I
kept on, a bit cautious now that my headlights were just about
the only illumination there was. Venice seemed like a battered
city of the dead—a storm-bombed ruin—I hardly saw a soul or a
light, only a candle back of a window here and there. But the
streets weren’t flooded too deep anywhere along my usual route
and just as I sensed the eastern sky paling a little I crossed the
narrow high-humped bridge— no need to tap my horn this time!—
and swung into my usual parking place and stopped my car and
switched off the lights and got out.
I must be very careful to get things right now.
My first impression, which the motor of my car had masked
up to now, was of the great general silence. All the sounds of the
storm were gone except for the tiny occasional drip of the last
drop off a leaf or a roof.
The oil well by Daloway's trailer was still pumping, though.
But there was an odd wheezy hiss in it I'd never heard before,
and after each hiss a faint tinkly spatter, as of drops hitting sheet
metal.
I walked over to the edge of the canal. There was just enough
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 207
light for me to manage that safely. I stooped beside it. Just as
I’d imagined, it was full to the brim.
Then I heard the other sounds: a faint rythmic swish and,
spaced about three seconds apart, the faint muffled thuds that
would be made by a gondolier's pole.
I stared down the black canal, my heart suddenly pounding
and my neck cold. For a moment I thought I saw, in murkiest
silhouette, the outlines of a gondola, with gondoliers and pas­
senger, going away from me, but I simply couldn’t be sure.
Fences blocked the canal for me that way, even if I’d had the
courage to follow, and I ran back to my car for my flashlight.
Halfway back with it, I hesitated, wondering if I shouldn’t drive
the car to the canal edge and use my high headlight beams, but
I wasn’t sure I could position it right.
I kept onto the canal and directed my flashlight beam down it.
In the flrst flare of light and vision, I again thought I saw the
Black Gondola, much smaller now, near the turn into the Grand
Canal.
But the beam wave-red and when I got it properly directed
again—a matter of a fraction of a second—the canal seemed
empty. I kept swinging my flashlight a little, up and down, side
to side, for quite a few seconds and studying the canal, but it stayed
empty.
I was half inclined to jump into my car and take the long
swing around to the road paralleling the Grand Canal. I did do
that, somewhat later on, but now I decided to go to the trailer
first. After all, I hadn't made any noise to speak of and Daloway
might well be there asleep— it would take only seconds to check.
Everything I had heard and seen so far might conceivably be
imagination, the auditory and visual impressions had both been
very faint, though they still seemed damnably real.
There was a hint of pink in the east now. I heard again that
208 OVER THE EDGE

unfamiliar hissing wheeze- from the oil well, with subsequent

faint splatter, and I paused to direct my light at it and then,
after a bit, at the wall of Daloway’s trailer.
Something had gone wrong with the pump so that it had
sprung a leak and with every groaning stroke a narrow stream of
petroleum was sprayed against the wall of Daloway’s trailer,
blotching it darkly, and through the little window, which stood
open.
It was never afterwards established whether a lightning stroke
had something to do with this failure of the valves of the pump,
though several people living around there later assured me that
two of the lightning strokes had been terrific, seeming to hit their
roofs. Personally I’ve always had the feeling that the lightning
unlocked something.
The door to the trailer was shut, but not locked. I opened it
and flashed my light around the walls. Daloway wasn't anywhere
there, nobody was.
The first thing I flashed my light steadily on was Daloway's
bunk under the little open window. At that moment there came
the hissing wheeze and oil rattled against the wall of the trailer
and some came through the window, pattering softly on the
rough brown blankets, adding a little to the great black stain on
them. The oil stank.
Then I directed my flashlight another way . . . . and was frozen
by horror.
What I’d heard and seen by the bank of the canal might have
been imagination. One has to admit he can always be fooled
along the faint borderlines of sensation.
But this that I saw now was starkly and incontrovertible real
and material.
The accident to the oil pump, no matter how sardonically
grim and suggestive in view of Daloway’s theories, could be . . .
merely an accident.
 THE BLACK GONDOLIER 209

But this that I saw now could be no accident. It was either

evidence of a premeditated supernormal malignancy, or—as the
police insist—of a carefully planned and executed hoax. Inci­
dentally, the police looked at me speculatively as they made this
last suggestion.
After a while I got control of myself to the point where I
could trace what I saw to its ending and then back again, still
using my flashlight to supplement the gathering dawn.
A little later I made the round-about car trip I mentioned
earlier to the Grand Canal and searched furiously along it, run­
ning down to its bank at several spots and venturing out on a
couple of the ruined bridges.
I saw no signs of any boat or body at all, or of any oil either,
for that matter, though the odor is always strong there.
Then I went to the police. Almost at once, a little to my shame,
I found myself resorting to the subterfuge of emphasizing the
one point that my friend Daloway had an almost crazily obsessive
fear of drowning in the Grand Canal and that this might be a
clue to his disappearance.
I guess I had to take that line. The police were at least willing
to give some serious attention of the possibility of a demented
suicide, whereas they could hardly have been expected to give
any to the hypothesis of a black, inanimate, ancient, almost ubiq­
uitous liquid engineering a diabolical kidnapping.
Later they assured me that they had inspected the canal and
found no evidence of bodies or sunken boats in it. They didn’t
drag it, at least not all of it.
That ended the investigation for them. As for the real and ma­
terial evidence back at the trailer, well, as I've said at least twice
before, the police insist that was a hoax, perpetuated either by
Daloway or myself.
And now the investigation is ended for me too. I dare not tor­
ture my mind any longer with a theory that endows with pur-
210 OVER THE EDGE

poseful life the deepest buried darkness, that makes man and his
most vaunted technological achievements the sardonic whim of
that darkness and invests it with a hellish light visible only to its
servitors, or to those about to become its slaves. No, I dare no
longer think in this direction, no matter how conclusive the evi­
dence I saw with my own eyes. I almost flipped when I saw it,
and I will flip if I go on thinking about it.
What that evidence was—what I saw back at the trailer when
I directed my flash another way, froze in horror, and later traced
the thing from end to end—was simply this: a yard-long black
straight indentation in the bank of the canal by Dalow'ay’s trailer,
as if cut by one end of the keel of an oil-drenched boat, and then,
leading from that point to Daloway’s oil-soaked bunk and back
again—a little wider and more closely spaced on the way back, as
if something were being carried— the long narrow sharply
pointed footprints, marked in blackest thickest oil, of the Black
Gondolier.
 J V ernon S hea (1 9 1 2- ) is the son of a professional magician.
Though he was born in Kentucky, he has spent most of his life in
Pennsylvania and Ohio. He was in the Army Medical Corps in World
War II, and is currentlv employed in Cleveland, Ohio. He began to
write at 14, and has edited two anthologies in the domain of the
macabre—Strange D esires and Strange Burners.

The Old Lady's Room

]. V ernon Shea

It was after midnight when Roger Crell returned to his room­

ing house. On the landing he observed that there was still a light
in the Herseys' kitchen— the Herseys were his landlords—and he
climbed the stairs with elaborate caution, for he didn't want them
to know that he had been drinking again.
Nevertheless, he stumbled on the top step and had his usual
difficulty in finding the keyhole. When were they ever going to
get a larger bulb for that dimly lit hallway? The door finally
swung open; he switched on the light and was starting to unzip
his jacket when he stopped dead still.
There was someone in his room. Seated in his chair by the
window was an old lady of about seventy. Her gray hair was

H:
212 OVER THE EDGE

swept up into an old-fashioned bun, and her eyes through thick

glasses were intent upon the crotchcting in her lap. She wore a
lavender dress that reached almost to the floor and a startlingly
white cardigan was gathered together by a large red cameo at
her neck.
She did not look up as he entered but continued her crotchet-
ing with practiced fingers. Roger Crell leaned heavily against the
door frame and rubbed his eyes as if to dislodge the unexpected
sight. His head was swimming. "What are you doing here? Who
are you?" he tried to say, but nothing came out but a series of
grunts.
He turned and hurried down the stairs. He rapped heavily
upon the Herseys’ door.
After a moment he could hear someone approaching the door.
"Who is it?”
"It's me. Roger—Roger Crell.”
"Oh, Mr. Crell!” The door was opened, and Mrs. Hersey, draw­
ing a robe closer to her, looked at him inquisitively.
"Who is she?" Roger Crell demanded. "W hat’s that old
woman doing in my room?"
"What old woman? I don't know what you're talking about.”
"You mean you didn’t let her into my room?"
"W hat’s this all about?" Mr. Hersey appeared in the doorway
beside his wife. He surveyed Crell coldly. "Mr. Crell, I thought
I warned you that we don’t tolerate drinking here.”
"W ho’s drunk? I just had one drink. . . . What are you going
to do about that old woman in my room?"
"Now, Mr. Crell, be reasonable. You know- we never permit
any one to go into our roomers’ rooms. Certainly not at this hour
of the night. There couldn’t be an old lady in your room."
"I know you think I'm drunk, but I saw her as plainly as I’m
seeing you. There she was, sitting in the chair by the window,
 THE OLD LADY'S ROOM 213

with some needles in her hand, an old woman in a white sweater

with some kind of brooch at her ne^k."
The Herseys exchanged glances. Did he imagine it, or was
there was a touch of fear in their look?
"There's only one way to settle this,'' said Mr. Hersey. "W e ll
go upstairs and see if we can find an old woman.”
Mr. Hersey led the way up the stairs, with Crell at his heels,
and Mrs. Hersey following them with what seemed to Crell like
reluctance.
The light was still on in Crell's room. The chair by the win­
dow' was empty.
"See, what did I tell you? Where's your old woman? Is she in
the chair? On the bed? Or is she in the clothes closet?" Mr. Her­
sey walked about the room with heavy irony. "Do you see any­
one? Mr. Crell, you've got to cut down on your drinking or we’ll
have to ask you to leave."
"1 don't know where she went to, but she was here,” Crell in­
sisted doggedly. He had observed that Mrs. Hersey was leaning
against the wall with her hand to her head. She had looked about
the room when she had first entered with an expression half of
expectancy, half of fear, and her look nfw was one of relief.
"She was here, all right.”
Nothing untoward happened in the next few weeks. Roger
Crell, his drinking curtailed, was beginning to accept Mr. Her-
sey’s version of the matter. He bad been drinking much too
heavily for weeks, and it was possible that what he had seen was
but an hallucination or the beginning of delirium tremens. Cer­
tainly the old woman had done or said nothing. Was it reason­
able to assume that she would be sitting in the dark—for there
had been no light in the room until he had entered and switched
the light on—in a stranger's room at that hour? She was no one
he had ever seen before in his life. He had inquired among the
214 OVER THE EDGE

other roomers, and no one had seen such a visitor or heard any­
thing unusual in his room. How could she possibly have got in
without a key?
But his equanimity was shattered one evening when he came
home and detected an unusual odor in the room. It was faint,
but it seemed to pervade the room: not unpleasant, a kind of
perfume. He was reminded of the smell he had known as a boy
in his grandmother's house, from the sachets she kept in her
bureau drawers.
"Mrs. Hersey, did you spill some perfume in my room—or put
some there for some reason?" he asked his landlady.
"Of course not, Mr. Crell. Why would I do that?"
"Come upstairs and see if you can't smell something."
"Really, Mr. Crell. You get some of the strangest ideas."
But she permitted him to lead her upstairs. The odor, if any­
thing, was stronger now. Mrs. Hersey sniffed deeply. He thought
that apprehension flashed across her face.
"I don’t smell a thing, Mr. Crell.” But she crossed the room
and threw open the wdndow. "Here, this room needs airing.
How you men can stay in a room with the windows down!"

It was about a week later that Roger Crell found the cardi­
gan. It was flung across the back of the chair by the window as
if someone had left it there hurriedly upon hearing his step upon
the stairs. He recognized it immediately. It needed only a deep
red brooch to complement its startling white.
He examined his room carefully and opened his door to see if
he could see a retreating figure in the hallway or upon the stairs.
There was, of course, no one to be seen.
No need to call Mrs. Hersey. She would deny having put the
cardigan there and would probably accuse him of having pur­
chased it himself to collaborate his story. On an impulse, he put
 THE OLD LADY'S ROOM 215

the cardigan upon a hanger in his clothes closet. Perhaps it would

give Mrs. Hersey a turn when she came into his room to clean.
The next day the cardigan was missing from the closet and
Mrs. Hersey made no mention of it whatsoever.

Roger Crell awoke from a deep sleep with a feeling of unease.

He looked at the alarm clock on his bedside table and saw that
the luminous hands registered 12:32. Something had awakened
him, of that he was sure. He looked about him, listened appre­
hensively. After a while he became aware of an unusual sound,
something heard barelv above the level of consciousness. A very
faint sound, not far away from him. He listened acutely. A click­
ing sound, somehow hollow, somehow wooden.
A faint light came from the window, and with its aid he
thought he discerned a misty- figure in the chair. The figure sat
stiffly, but its hands were busily engaged with something. Some­
thing long and white extended from the lap of the figure, some­
thing the hands were worrying, and now he saw- the busy, busy-
needles.
He got up slowly from the bed, his throat suddenly dry, and
switched on the light.
The old lady sat there as he had seen her before. He ap­
proached her slowly, forcing his feet along. He felt zero at the
bone. He approached her slowly, for he knew what she was.
And now she turned to look at him. He wished that she hadn’t,
for part of her face w-as missing. Where her right cheek should
have been, he looked down into bone. The eyes behind the thick
glasses blazed with malignancy.
He approached her slowly. He had been sober for weeks now,
and he was filled with a cold desperation. He wasn't going to al­
low an old woman, or what had been an old woman, to drive him
from his room. He reached out to touch her.
216 OVETC THE EDGE

She vanished. Suddenly, completely, she was gone from the

chair. Only the crotcheting remained, in a sickly white bundle
at his feet.

He didn't tell the Herseys. They wouldn’t have believed him.

He started drinking again, anything to still his shaking hands.
He could scarcely believe now that he had summoned up enough
courage to approach the figure. It was an unrecognizable Roger
Crell, like the vigorous daredevil of his youth. He felt safe now,
here in the obscurity of bars, safe from the past, safe from the
harpy who had divorced him. Here no one could make demands
upon him.
He had flung down a challenge to the old lady, tacitly recog­
nized. Therefore he was not surprised in the subsequent weeks
to find that challenge accepted. Now he was continually finding
the old lady’s effects in his drawers or scattered about the room:
balls of thread, needles, a button hook, sachets of perfume, a pin
cushion with a faded legend ( Souvenir o f Si.-[Link] Falls), a small
purse with a few old-sized large dollar bills, bits of lace, worthless
mementoes. Sometimes he would even find some of her old cloth­
ing hanging in the closet, and he would throw it out immediately.
When the cardigan reappeared, this time in the clothes closet,
with the cameo brooch still attached to one side, he took it dowm
to Mrs. Horsey, half expecting it to disappear along the way.
"Tell me, who was she?” he asked.
At sight of the brooch Mrs. Hersey looked suddenly ill. She
sat down heavily in the kitchen chair and the color drained from
her face.
"Where did you get that?" she breathed.
"Where I’ve been getting all the old woman's clothes—scattered
all over my room. There's no use denying it now. Who was she?"
She was my husband's mother, and that was her room."
 THE OLD LADY'S ROOM 217

"She’s dead now?"

Mrs. Hersey nodded. "She died over a year ago. We ve been
having trouble renting her room ever since. You're not the first
one who’s complained of seeing her. She just won’t leave! She
never would let go of anything.”
"You didn’t like her?”
"I hated her." Mrs. Hersev spoke matter-of-factly. "She tried
to run everything. Nothing I could ever do would please her.
She never let go of Jim —Mr. Hersey.”
"W as this her house?”
"No! It was Jim 's—paid for out of his hard-earned money. But
her room, when Jim brought her here to live with us, she thought
was hers. She wouldn't let me near it, not even to dean. I wasn’t
good enough for her Jim, she thought. She tried to separate us,
so she could have Jim all to herself.”
"And Jim— Mr. Hersey—put up with this?"
"You didn’t know her! She dominated Jim; she dominated
everyone she could. I fought her as best I could. But she always
had her way with Jim .”
"How did she die?"
"Her face was bashed in.” She offered no further explanation.
"But I suppose you’ll be moving out. Or perhaps I could fix you
up another room?"
"No, I want to stay where I am." He surprised himself by say­
ing it-
"But, Mr. Crell! Everyone—everyone else was afraid of her.”
"So am I, to a certain extent. But she’s not going to get the
best of me. I pay for my room, so she’ll just have to vacate.”
The jaunty tone sounded hollow' even to himself. But the words
seemed to steady him, to steel his determination. After all, what
could an old lady—even a dead old lady, especially a dead old
lady—do?
218 OVER THE EDGE

The showdown came less than a week later. When he returned

to his room one night, Roger Crell realized that the old lady had
taken over. Never had he been so conscious of her influence. His
nostrils were besieged by the familiar trace of perfume, now
heavier than ever. The room itself had undergone a change: it
no longer reflected a masculine tenant, but was completely ef-
feminized. Upon the dresser was a lace spread holding the faded
pincushion and the crotcheting paraphernalia; the chair by the
window now bore an antimacassar; there was a crazyquilt upon
the bed, faded photographs upon the wall f in one of them, stand­
ing with ramrod stiffness, was a wedding couple, and in the
young bride clutching the arm of her groom with simulated coy­
ness but actual possessiveness he could discern traces of the old-
lady-to-be) , and a profusion of pink bows.
Crell set to work immediately upon a campaign of destruction,
ripping the quilt from the bed, taking the photographs from the
wall and placing them in the hallway, sweeping the crotcheting
paraphernalia into the wastebasket. It was not until he had al­
most finished that he saw that he had overlooked the clothes
closet. All his clothing had been removed; hanging there in their
stead was a line of svomen’s dresses long out of fashion.
"Damn!” he said, and went to the closet.
He reached in to remove the white cardigan. In the crepus­
cular gloom of the closet the deep red brooch gleamed high on
the collar.
As he wras busy with the cardigan, a pair of long bloodless
hands emerged from the closet. The knotted veins on their backs
stood out prominently as the hands found Roger Crell's neck,
found it and pressed and pressed. Roger Crell's hands sought to
dislodge their iron clasp but were powerless to do so, and now
his hands were clutching convulsively only at air.
Downstairs Mrs. Hersey heard Roger Crell’s body falling
heavily. Drinking again. This tim e he's g o n e too jar. H e w o n ’t
be around here m uch lo n ger.
 Joseph Payne Brennan (1918- ) was born in Bridgeport,
Connecticut, and reared in New Haven, where he still lives and works
at the Yale Library. A onetime member of the staff of Theatre News,
he now edits Essence, a magazine of poetry, and Macabre, one devoted
to prose and verse indicated by its title. His work has been widely pub­
lished, in magazines ranging from The American Scholar, Coronet, and
The Chicago R en ew to Weird Tales and Esquire. He is the author of
three collections of macabre tales—Nine Horrors and a Dream, The
Dark Rtturners, Scream at Midnight—and of four volumes of verse—
Heart o f Earth, The Humming Stair, The Wind o f Time, and Nightmare
Need.

The North Knoll

Joseph Payne Brennan

When I received a message from my Uncle Ira, revealing that

he was desperately ill, I packed a suitcase at once and started for
the ancestral farm near the village of Juniper Hill in northern
Connecticut. I had not seen Uncle Ira in years, and there was
no particular attachment between us, but I found it impossible
to ignore his note. He was alone and sick; he needed help—that
was enough.
I found him already hovering near death. Wasted and wan, he
lay unattended on a cot in the littered farmhouse kitchen. I
220 OVER THE EDGE

changed his bed linen, fed him the little soup he could eat,
cleaned up the kitchen, and called a doctor, who could do no
more than confirm my own forebodings when he had completed
his examination of my uncle.
"He may live two days— or maybe just two hours, ’ he said.
"There's no hope now. I’m sorry."
That same night Uncle Ira lapsed into delirium. I sat at his
bedside while he babbled of his boyhood and youth. His mutter­
ing® were disjointed and irrational. Sometimes he talked of events
of his childhood; occasionally he recalled scenes of the nearer
past; once he started up with a rather wild look and murmured
fearfully about "the fourth knoll.”
His feverish ramblings recalled to me the happier days of my
own boyhood, when I had spent long summers at the farm with
Uncle Ira and my two maiden aunts. Almost every day during
the summer, weather permitting, Aunt Hess and Aunt Minerva
would take me with them on blueberrying expeditions. Although
Uncle Ira’s land included large swamp areas and was much over­
run by brush and saplings, it grew a rich blueberry crop.
There were many knolls—small rounded hillocks, sometimes
rising to plateaus of land lifting above the surround terrain—
which yielded blueberries by the bucketful. These sunny knolls
were my aunts’ favorite picking areas. Some knolls, of course,
bore little more than juniper brush and ground lichen, but it
was always pleasant to come upon these gently rising areas in
either the deep woods or the desolate marshland.
I remembered, too, if vaguely, that there was some kind of for­
bidding mystery connected with one particular knoll; but so
many years had passed that the details now eluded me.
I was still reminiscing, only half awake in the early morning
hours, when Uncle Ira began to sink rapidly. Toward the very
end he rallied a bit, recognized me, and nodded with seeming
 THE NORTH KNOLL 221

satisfaction. Perhaps he was grateful that he was not destined to

die alone in the house. Presently he fell into a peaceful sleep
from which he mver awakened.

After the obsequies. I learned that I had inherited the farm.

My first impulse v. ..s to offer it for sale, but. on reflection, I
changed my mind. City life had begun to depress me, and it was
no difficult task to give up my urban apartment and move back
to the ancestral homestead, where I immediately began to reno­
vate the house before I resumed my writing.
Ordinarily, I wrote mornings and then, if the weather was fav­
orable, I strolled about the farm for a good part of the afternoon.
There were over eighty acres of woodland, swamp and meadow,
offering me a satisfying variety of terrain to explore. I wandered
about leisurely, taking stock, as it were, of my property, and
undisturbed by the fact that birch saplings had carried a field by
storm, or that a scattered stone wall no longer separated pasture
from overgrown orchard. The wild aspect of the place I had in­
herited had a distinct appeal for me.
One blistering August afternoon, when the sun was merciless
in the open fields, I made for the relative coolness of the woods,
and found myself presently at the fringe of a rather gloomy
swamp area. Thinking that lowland ought to be cooler than up­
land woods, I slipped into the area, confident that it did not ex­
tend for any great distance. I could find no path, and had to
watch my footing as I advanced. I sprang from tussock to tus­
sock, from root cluster to sand bank. Cattails, rank bog grasses,
and a great tangle of creeper-laden trees extended on all sides.
The morass did seem cooler, but I began to feel a faint sense
of uneasiness as I struggled ahead. The swamp was apparently
larger and more dense than I had realized. But it was not pri­
marily this that troubled me, for I had a good sense of direction
222 OVER THE EDGE

and I was not easily fatigued. Perhaps it lay in the awareness of

a diminution of bird and insect life. Standing to listen, I heard
nothing but the trickle of dark water, the suck of wet earth at my
shoes. The swamp was unnaturally still, though customarily it
was the haunt of many birds and insects, as well as of frogs and
other small animal life.
Though I told myself that silence in the depths of any swamp
was not unusual—more wild life showing a preference for the
edges of marshland and bog—my uneasiness persisted and did not
diminish even when I found myself emerging from the pines and
moving up the slope of a large knoll, at the near end of which
a cluster of big quartz boulders gleamed whitely in the afternoon
sunlight.
I could not immediately recall having been at this place before,
and I looked all around. Near the center of the knoll was a slight
depression in which stood all that remained of an old wild crab-
apple tree. Beyond it lay a sizable plateau, consisting almost en­
tirely of a thickly massed carpet of dry, dead-looking, grey-white
lichen which had the appearance of having accumulated undis­
turbed for decades. Over all the knoll hung the heavy August
heat in an intense, shimmering haze. The marsh had made few
inroads on the knoll; it had sent a few creepers up the slopes, but
these stopped abruptly where the flat carpet of lichen began.
I was conscious of a curious sense of antiquity. It was as if the
quartz boulders, the rotting crabapple tree, and the deep growth
of dense lichen had remained undistrubed for centuries. Even
the oppressive August heat and the queer dancing haze seemed
somehow timeless. The silence of the knoll only augmented the
sense of age. There was no evidence of animal, bird or insect life.
Not even a sulphur butterfly or an industrious bee was to be seen,
and, though it was cicada time, I listened in vain for the harsh,
steel-coil sound of a cicada. I heard nothing at all.
 THE NORTH KNOLL 223

My uneasiness grew. Though I wanted to believe that the iso­

lation of the slope in the surrounding swamp area accounted for
the lack of any life. I could not bring myself to believe it. I
moved past the quartz boulders in a curiously chary mood. I
crossed through the depression where the crabapple’s trunk
stood, and went on until my feet crunched into the dried-out
lichen which completely covered the rest of the knoll. I sank into
it almost half way to my knees; it must have been growing there
for untold years.
Slowly, insidiously, uneasiness gave way to apprehension. As
I advanced, ever more hesitantly, my eyes were dazzled by the
shimmering heat waves which were almost palpable. I paused
presently and stood in the lichen with the heat pressing in upon
me like a wall, and as I stood there, a memory grew in some far
corner of my mind, a memory from far in the p ast. ..
I was a child, out blueberrying with Aunt Minerva and Aunt
Hess. It was a hot afternoon and my aunts had not picked many
blueberries because the late summer crop had finally become
scant and scattered. In an impulsive moment Aunt Minerva had
suggested that we look for berries on the north knoll. I remem­
bered Aunt Hess staring at her, as if she had suddenly said some­
thing terribly wrong. "Minerva Searles!" she had cried. "Have
you lost your mind?" And both of them had looked at me, ex­
changed glances, and said no more. Later, when they thought me
out of earshot, I had heard Minerva murmur something about
"it" all being years ago and "it might have gone by now.”
This was the place—the north knoll! The forbidden place of
my childhood! I recalled an elderly neighboring farmer’s de­
scribing it to me years later, even to the quartz boulders and the
crabapple tree, but he had said nothing of its mystery, telling me
only to avoid it, saying "something’s not right there, hinting at
fearful things. But he had only echoed a frequently repeated
224 OVER THE EDGE

warning from my aunts, who had often made me promise never

to go near the north knoll.
And, of course, it was the north knoll—not the "fourth knoll"
—my Uncle Ira, dying, had risen in his bed to mutter about, fear
of it still in his eyes!
Standing there, I groped backward into memory, trying to re­
call what I should be on guard against. But there had never been
anything definite—only vagueness, fear, warnings, promises—
quick looks, furtive, lowered voices, always the hints of something
unnamable and wholly malignant.
Nothing came out of the past, but something pressed in upon
me where I stood, something more than the oppressive heat. I
felt it beyond reason. I looked down at the carpet of dead lichen;
it gave back nothing but its grey deadness. I stared across its flat
expanse, all my senses aware of some alien an .weness. some lethal
th in g watching me as a great predator watches its prey.
I looked quickly up and around. My eves strained through the
wavering layers of August heat that hung over the knoll.
And I saw it—half way across the expanse of lichen, shambling
and writhing in the heat waves, bearing down upon me. For a
frozen moment I stood and stared at it, unable to move. If it had
solidity, I could not say what it was. It looked like a concentra­
tion of the heat waves themselves. Its color was like the lichen,
a dead grey-white. Its shape was ever-changing, prancing, twist­
ing—now like a whirlwind, now like a goatlike creature, now like
a repellent anthropoid being, apelike, but with appendages, coil­
ing in and whipping the hot summer air. Now it was but inches
above the ground, now looming tall, alternately solid and sentient
and tenuous as wind. And from it radiated evil—and h u n g er. I
knew that it ate. I knew that I was its prey!
In an access of terror, I broke and ran. I leaped into the de­
pression, I raced past the broken crabapple tree, I bounded to-
 THE NORTH KNOLL 225

ward the quartz boulders and the pine slope up which I had come
but minutes before.
I did not dare turn, but I felt the thing behind me, twisting
and turning in its attempt to fasten upon me even as its forward
movement through the hot dead air was inhibited by its inde­
scribable convolutions. Terror and physical loathing encom­
passed me. I felt that everything nauseous and obscene that could
be concentrated in so little a place as the north knoll was at my
back.
Crazed with fear, I rushed forward.
In my haste, I misjudged my direction when I reached the
quartz boulders, ran into one of them, severely gashing my leg,
and fell prone. And at that moment I felt rather than saw my
pursuer pass by, I felt that its avenue to me was through the fun­
nel of my ov«.n fear. The gash in my leg briefly broke the psychic
connection of fear.
Even as the thing was reforming above me, I twisted and
rolled down the slope away from the north knoll, into the marsh­
land that now sc-emed like a haven, while behind me the spiral­
ing thing leveled into heat waves.
Somehow I reached the house. Somewhere along the way I
paused long enough to apply a handkerchief tourniquet to my
bleeding leg. But there was nothing I could apply to the shock
of horror I felt.

In time, I carried on my own inquiry. I inspected ancient

town records, tattered diaries of early Juniper Hill residents,
crumbling newspaper files. I listened to the disjointed anecdotes
of a Juniper Hill centenarian, and at last I pieced together a
sketchy history of the north knoll.
Legend had it that an indescribable malignance had inhabited
the knoll since the first white settlers came to Juniper Hill. The
226 OVER THE EDGE

Pequot Indians of an earlier time had bound prisoners of war

and left them on the knoll as sacrifice to some baleful presence,
and there was a tale that a poacher, only a few decades before,
had chased a deer onto the knoll and come away babbling with
terror.
No sure explanation of the loathsome thing on the knoll
could be found. Perhaps it was some monstrous sort of surviving
elemental spawned when nature was experimenting with early
life forms. Perhaps it was what the ancients called a g e n iu s loci,
an entity, often malevolent, which has attached itself to a spe­
cified limited area of landscape.
Though years have passed since that day, there are still times
on hot August afternoons, when heat waves shimmer visibly above
the fields, that I feel again the chill of that brief horror.
I have never gone back to the north knoll.
 Mary Elizabeth Counselman (1921- ) is an Alabaman. She
has contributed prose and poetry to many magazines, including The
Saturday Et ening Post, Collier's, The Ladies’ Home journal, Good
Housekeeping, Weird Tales, etc. Her work has appeared in many
anthologies.

The Huaco of Senor Peri\

M ary Elizabeth Counselman

Standing beside the ancient fountain in the square, letting his

shrewd eyes wander over the peaceful scene, Joe Conti thought:
Excellent place to find artifacts, relics—antiques to be bought for
a song! His alert gaze missed nothing.
Stone block buildings with red tile roofs huddled close to the
narrow streets, where a scattering of Spanish-Indian inhabitants
moved with slow deliberation about their morning tasks. Beyond
the town, one could see little terraced farms clinging to this bleak
slope of the Andes, with here and there a herd of llamas or al­
pacas like long-necked sheep. Those low, thatch-roofed stone huts
had housed these highlanders for centuries—cold, cramped abodes
with no more modern conveniences than their grandsires had
possessed.
228 OVER THE EDGE

There was a timeless quality about the scene that vaguely

disturbed Conti. That temple-to-the-sun, for instance—those mor­
tarless granite blocks must have been put together by man-power
as early as 1200 A.D. Wind-gnawed, sun-bleached, crumbling be­
fore the onslaughts of time and weather, the old ruins yet seemed
to defy destruction. Even the smells—damp wool, bird guano,
quinoa grain—had probably changed little since the time of
Francisco Pizarro!
Conti had a perverse desire to toss a grenade into the center
of that temple courtyard, if only to see these stolid Peruvians
jolted out of their granite serenity. Contentment irritated him.
How could one make a sharp trade with a man who desired noth­
ing more than this?
A thin piping caught his ear above the murmur in the square.
As he glanced toward the sound, an old mestizo came trudging
along the worn street, playing a folktune on his quena and driv­
ing before him two bony, over-burdened llamas. The pack-ani­
mals veered to drink at the fountain, and the Spanish-Indian
followed suit, sweeping off his round-crowned, broad-brimmed
hat to splash water over his white hair.
The rising sun was beginning to beat down with a vengeance.
He grinned at Conti wilting in his immaculate grey flannels and
gasping a bit from soroche, the altitude-sickness that always af­
fected foreign visitors at more than thirteen thousand feet above
sea-level.
''B u o w s iliits," Conti greeted, because it was expected.
All, Senor tourist! B uenos J u u !" The Peruvian bowed po­
litely. "It is very hot today, no? I, whose family have lived here
in Sinchi Rocca for many centuries, even I am melting like the
snows on the crest of old Huascaran!"
Yes. Very hot. Conti suppressed an amused smile at the
flowery manner of speech these South Americans used, even for
 THE HUACO OF SEN O R P E R tz 229
remarks about die weather. Brushing aside further amenities, he
came straight to the point of his visit. "A migo mio, do you know
where I can buy any—old things? Family heirlooms? I’m Joseph
Conti, purchasing agent for the Hanover Museum in New York.
Private collection. Not open to the public except for charity ex­
hibits or— ”
He broke off, telling himself that this ignorant half-breed would
have no idea what lie was talking about in his careful textbook
Spanish.
But the bright black eyes set high in the narrow swarthy face
were regarding him with unusual intelligence.
' ’Antiques?" The old man nodded knowingly. "Ah, yes. Always
the North American tourists wish to buy the mementoes of our
historic past— for reasons unknown to me! Inca relics? Gold orna­
ments? Feather-work? Or— " His voice turned faintly harsh and
bitter— "perhaps some trifle discarded by the Conqui stud ores,
when they came here seeking power over our ancient people.
And gold! Always more and more gold!"
He lapsed abruptly into Quichua, the Indian language. Conti
caught a few words he knc-w, and they were certainly not very
complimentary to the Spanish invaders. The old mestizo spat
with such venom that one of his llamas shied nervously.
The North American smiled. "But you are half-Spanish your­
self, are you not?" he taunted. "At least one of your Inca ances­
tors made peace with the Conquistadors! No?"
The old man’s pleasant expression faded.
"One must live,” he murmured in coldly formal Spanish that
made Conti abruptly change his tack, with the psychology of the
clever trader.
"How true! I, too, am half-Indian," he lied skillfully. "Span­
ish and Comanche.” Actually he was a Sicilian immigrant, but
he had long ago learned to identify himself with the ethnic back-
230 OVER THE EDGE

ground of a possible sucker. "The Spanish invaders overran our

continent also, you know. Greedy for land and gold! In this, we
are brothers, Scnor ..
"Perez. Juan Proana Cusi y Perez. Your servant!”
The old man, ludicrously shabby in his peasant garb, made
a low bow, and rewarded Conti with a smile of total acceptance.
He knelt beside his llamas to adjust the woven straps that held
their baskets of vicuna wool in place.
Then, bending over the fountain, he thrust a native drink­
ing-bottle under the thin trickle, piped long ago from some icy
spring far up the mountainside. Patiently he held the double­
flask until one of them brimmed over. Conti watched idly—
And then, suddenly, he came to a point like a birddog scent­
ing game.
The bottle was handsomely cast of bronze, its dual flagons
joined at neck and bottom by two thin pipes that allowed their
contents to flow from one to the other. Each flask was molded in
the likeness of an Inca face—one calmly smiling, the other scowl­
ing in fierce anger, much like the two masks of Comedy and
Tragedy in Greek drama. The mouths of the flasks, corked with
ornate metalwork, sprouted up from each head like a feather
headdress. In the center of each forehead was a medallion in the
likeness of the rising sun.
Conti ran his tongue over dry lips. The bottle was pre-Colum­
bian, and therefore very valuable. The workmanship was early
Inca, perhaps 1000 A.D. if he had learned anything while work­
ing as a guide for the Metropolitan. The molded hair was long
and straight in the Indian style, the slightly almond-shaped eyes
set high in the long-nosed, large-eared faces. Not peasant faces,
but those of the O rejo n cs—Great Ears; the Inca nobility.
Conti leaned closer. On the thin bronze pipe that joined the
two bottlenecks there was some sort of inscription—not Inca, cer-
 THE HUACO OF SENOR PE JtfZ 231

tainly, since they had no written language of any kind. He tried

to make out the words, worn almost away by years of handling.
"W hat does it say there?” he asked casually as the mestizo
glanced up and noted his interest. "That drinking-bottle . . . It
looks as though it might be a bu nco—a holy object found in some
Inca tomb. But, the inscription! Spanish words on an Inca relic?
Er . . . May I . .
W ith native courtesy the Peruvian handed him the half-filled
bottle.
"Si.'’ he nodded reverently. "It is indeed a bunco, senor—our
Quichua word, spelled many ways by the Spanish. It once be­
longed to an ancestor of mine. The Inca—the word originally
meant ruler—of this village, in fact. A cousin of the Great One,
Atahualpa—descendant of all the great Incas as far back as Manco
Capac, he who led our people out of the south into the rising
sun . . ."
"Yes, yes, of course . . .”
Conti was peering at the inscription, trying hard to hide the
glint of cupidity in his eyes.
''B ebaselo c o n i n o c e n c i a ” he read with difficulty, then trans­
lated: ’’Drink up . . . u ith . . . in n o cen ce? Of what, Senor Perez?”
he laughed. "The misery of In p ersegu id ora —hang-over? This is
a drinking-bottle, is it not? Used at banquets?" He winked broadly.
"I've heard your Inca grandees really lived it up! Carousing and
making love to the Chosen Ones, the temple virgins. Some of
those figures on Inca pottery are so frank, they can’t be exhibited
to the public! . . . Servant!" he called in mocking mimicry.
"More cbicbcs—at once!"
Rakishly he placed the mouth of the empty flask to his lips
and blew into it, to make the whistling sound with which Inca
revelers once signaled for a refill of the strong native beer brewed
from sprouted maize. The old mestizo nodded, with a slight smile
232 OVER THE EDGE

acknowledging the foreigner’s uncommon erudition about Peru­

vian customs. But his eyes registered disapproval of Conti's flip­
pant manner.
"En v erd a d ! Just so did my ancestors call for more wine at
feasts. But the Old Ones were beyond sin, senor.” His tone ot
reproof matched his eyes. "They were gods—children of the Sun,
our ancient deity . .
He took back the huaco gently but firmly, as one might re­
move a crucifix from profane hands.
"But the inscription?” Conti insisted. "Isn't it a kind of toast?
An invitation to drink and be merry, with no . . . qualms of con­
science?"
"Perhaps it has a deeper meaning," the Peruvian suggested
humbly. "I am not a man of letters, but . . . Perhaps it means:
Drink with . . . an in n o cen t heart? Innocent of treachery, of
greed?”
The purchasing agent squirmed, eyeing him narrowly. But
there was no hidden look of accusation in the stolid half-Indian
face.
"W ith an innocent heart, eh? Peace, good will toward men . . .?”
"Si!” The old man nodded, with the quick smile of a child.
"As Christians take Communion. Even as the Disciples drank
wine together at the Last Supper—so drank the ancient ones of
my people as they dined together in harmony. Besides,” his voice
sank to a near-whisper, "that meaning would bear out the . . .
the legend!"
"Legend?" Conti stiffened. "There's some sort of legend con­
nected with your huaco there?"
Lie lowered his gaze to the bottle in the m estiz o’s hand as he
held the empty flask at the fountain to fill it also. Like any ex­
perienced dealer in antiques, the agent knew well how a story
attached to some relic could zoom its value to buyers. Even an
 THE HUACO OF SENOR P E R f z 233

undocumented story—since one could always forge proof by some

obscure authority.
"Not a story recorded in writing by the Spanish," the old man
deprecated. "Only by word-of-mouth among my people, the
Quichua. The bottle is cursed, senor! For this reason I have not
given it to the museum at Sucre, where other such buncos are
kept safe from . . .”
"Oh, I see!" Conti peered at him sharply. Perhaps the old
half-breed was not as naive as he seemed! Was this only a clever
pitch to raise the price? But. again, as he looked into the direct
dark eyes, he saw no trace of the hidden deception in his own.
"It is dangerous,” the Peruvian explained. "Many have died
because of its power. Many! This is why I can not bring myself
to sell it. Only a simple man, like myself, could use it, drink from
it daily, w ithout. . . consequences."
"Consequences?" The purchasing agent struggled to make his
tone casual. "W hat sort of— ?"
"Death, senor! Death by thirst, a slow and painful one! As I
said, the bottle once belonged to my ancestor, Titu Cusi, Inca of
this village in the time of Atahualpa. He whom the invaders . . .”
"Yes, yes; I know about Atahualpa,” Conti cut him short, un­
able to curb his impatience. "How Pizarro captured him at
Cuzco, and imprisoned him in a room about fifteen feet square.
How he promised to fill that room with gold, if they would re­
lease him. Gold to the height of a man's head—imagine!" The
agent’s eyes glittered. "Literally a king's ransom!"
"C orrecto! And he paid that ransom, as promised! But— ”
The old man’s face went hard as the crumbling granite wall be­
hind him. "Pizarro killed him anyway! El a lev o so —the treacher­
ous one! He feared Atahualpa's power! And even a roomful of
gold was not enough for those greedy ones. After his murder, the
C onquistadores came fcven to this village, seeking the source of
234 OVER THE EDGE

the gold! My ancestor had sent seven llamas loaded with it, to
help raise the ransom. They captured him, our Titu Cusi, and
staked him out on the mountainside . .
"Nof" Conti pretended shocked sympathy. "They tortured
him?’’
"Si!” The m estizo’s voice was a harsh whisper, like the sound
of a chill wind blowing down the narrow street. "They tortured
him, senor, beyond belief! First, they fed him over-salted meat.
Then, they . . . they staked him out, face up tc the blazing sun!
His eyelid muscles were cut, you understand, so that he could
not close his eyes; could not even blink. He lay thus for endless
days of thirst and heat. It shriveled his skin! Blackened his
parched tongue! Baked his eyeballs until they were as rotten
grapes! At last thirst closed his throat, like a hand . . . choking . . .!”
The dark eyes narrowed with hate. "A refinement of cruelty that
only the Spanish could have conceived, senor—to torture an Inca
with sunlight!"
Involuntarily Conti gulped, his own throat gone dry'. He tried
to shake off the spell of the old man’s story. But the harsh whisper
went on and on;
"Si, senor! And above Cusi’s head they tied his drinking-bot­
tle, this huaco, so that its contents dripped out, inches from his
parched lips! Drop by drop . . . Driving him mad with thirst!
When it hung empty, the soldiers blew into it to make it whistle
for a refill—as you yourself did just now, with unintended sacri­
lege. Mocking our ancient custom! For, it is actually a prayer to
the Sun, our deity; a plea to fill our need, whatever it may be.
Warmth. Food. Or, in the case of my brave ancestor, only a swal­
low of water! Or—merciful death!"
"But, the inscription?" Conti reminded. "You haven't. .
"Ah!" The old man nodded. "It was then that it appeared on
 THE HL'ACO OF SENOR P E R f z 235

that metal pipe. A warning! In Spanish, so that the greedy ones

might have their last fair chance to . . . No one knows who in-
scribed it there. Perhaps the spirit of Athualpa? Perhaps even
great Mnnco Capac himself! Or— " The mestizo smiled blandly.
"Perhaps there is no inscription, but only some corrosion on the
bronze . . . ? £ ; posible. The words are faint.
"For seven days they tortured mv ancestor. But Cusi would
not tell the secret of our village gold! Alas for our people, it died
with him. there on that mountainside. Then they came to bury
him, breaking pottery and killing many beasts and tearing much
woven cloth—-a funeral custom of the Quicua, senor, so that the
dead may carry their possessions with them to the spirit world . . .
They were about to smash this bottle, too, for his use. But a sol­
dier named Perez," the old man spat out the name like a bad
taste, "took a fancy to it. He stole it—along with my ancestor’s
young daughter, a temple virgin! He took them, and drained
them both, and tossed them aside, that evil one, when he had
had his fill!”
"El p erro —the dog!” Conti murmured. But his lips twdtched
with covert amusement at this old fool’s vehemence about some­
thing that had happened so long ago. "So he was the Conquista-
d o r e who . . .?”
”A conquered people,” the mestizo nodded bitterly, "must
bear the features of the conqueror, along with his yoke! But, he
was punished, that one!” The Indian eyes gleamed with triumph.
"Oh, yes! He died even as my ancestor died—screaming in a de­
lirium of thirst! Begging for a drink!”
Conti grinned openly. "An alcoholic, was he? Yes, I don’t sup­
pose the Spanish could handle your native chicba! “ he agreed
lightly. "Ah well, it served him right. A wonderful tale of poetic
justice!” he murmured, casually fingering the buaco hanging now

i
236 OVER THE EDGE

from the llama’s pack. "A very interesting relic. My directors

might be pursuaded to pay you —” The agent moved in smoothly
—"say, fifty sols for it?’’
"Oh no." The Peruvian smiled politely, but shook his head.
"I dare not, senor! What if others like that Spanish soldier should
drink from it, without heeding the inscription? Many have done
so . . . and died as he died.' And who, in these days of avarice and
deception, can truly be said to have an innocent heart? A heart
like those of . . . the Children of the Sun?"
Once more Conti threw him a sharp look, trying to read that
stolid Indian face. But there seemed to be no double-meaning
to the old man’s words. What nonsense! Though the Peruvian
obviously believed it. If he was to obtain that valuable relic—
"You are right!” the purchasing agent agreed skillfully. "The
curse is dangerous! Therefore—would it not be safer, Senor Perez,
for this [Link] to be placed in a sealed showcase? In a museum,
where no one at all would ever drink from it again? W ith, beside
it,” Conti pursued, "a printed account of the legend, so that all
men may learn the wisdom of your ancient people? What a gift
to the modern world!” he gestured dramatically. "And what a
fitting tribute to your unfortunate ancestor—the Inca, Cusi, who
died a noble death . . .!"
He kept his gaze on the [Link], watching Perez from the corner
of his hard eyes. Conti's lips twitched as he saw the shabby old
half-breed draw himself up with a lost pride. His stolid face was
alight with something that poverty and toil had all but worn
away, like the altar stone of the temple ruins behind him.
"Did I say fifty sols?" Conti murmured. "Perhaps my directors
would make it a hundred. Not for the value of the b u a c o he
shrugged, "for it has none. An old bottle? But—as a gesture of
good will, senor, from my America to yours? The money, of
course, will be put in your trust. For those of your village who
 THE HUACO OF SEN OR PERf.Z 237

may be in need of . . . oh. some little bonita such as your ancestor

might bestow on the poor.” Conti pretended not to notice the
old man's worn poncho, his ragged blue pants, his bare feet. "An
extra ration of ch u bs.? Or . . . coca ?"
The native beamed, drawing himself up still further with a
pathetic dignity.
"Coi.j?’’
For the first time Conti noticed an old Quichua woman, hov­
ering in the background with a stairstep flock of children. She
edged forward—evidently the old man's wife. Her calloused fin­
gers still moved, ceaselessly spinning alpaca wool in the old way
on two rough spindles. One of the thin children was fondling a
cuy. the domesticated rat of the Indians, raised as pets—and,
eventually, food. The boy spoke eagerly, but the old woman
silenced him with a gesture. Conti noted the avid way she was
clutching a small bag of the narcotic leaves, chewed by the In­
dians as their only bulwark against disease and exhaustion and
the rigors of their daily life.
"Coc.:— j i, m ueba coca'." the agent promised enticingly.
To clinch the sale, he pulled from his pockets all the small
change and American bills he had on him—about fourteen dollars.
W ith a flourish he tossed it into one of the pack-baskets of vicuna
wool, cannily aware of how little cash this poverty-stricken family
must have seen in their entire lifetime.
The old man gasped. His wife crow'ded closer, the children
clustering about them with excited questions about the money.
''M adre d e D ios!" The mestizo touched it with one finger, fum­
bling fo r his quipu, that small cluster of colored strings with
which the natives keep accounts. "How many sols is that? Fifty?”
"Enough to serve you until I can send more,” Conti evaded.
"W ell? A bargain?"
He reached out gently, with a great show of reverence, and
238 OVER THE EDGE

untied the huaco from the pack-animal. The old man lifted his
hand, hesitant, then shrugged and let it fall.
"So be it," he murmured. "For the honor of my ancestor.
And the welfare of our village poor!”
He was trying to count the money, waving back his eager
family with stern gestures. Conti tucked the drinking-bottle un­
der his coat, and bowed farewell before the Peruvian could
change his mind.
"Vaya co n Dios, Senor Perez! I will guard your huaco with
my life!”
"Con Dios . . . "
The purchasing agent moved away quickly. Dazzled by the
sight of the cash, the Indian had not even asked him for a receipt
with statement of balance due!
Then—Conti’s eyes narrowed suddenly. In that case, why
should he turn over this costly relic to the Hanover Museum for
a mere commission? W hy not smuggle it through customs, by
methods he had used before, and sell it himself in New' York for
a small fortune? Conti grinned as he ducked into the doorway of
a nearby tambo. What collector would not pay well for such a
find? And then? W ine and women for Joe Conti, he exulted, the
like of which no Inca had ever enjoyed!
He glanced back at the little group by the fountain, still in an
excited huddle, their faces transfigured like those of slum chil­
dren promised their first Christmas Tree. The agent watched
them as they moved out of sight down the hilly, cobble-stone
street. The thin piping of the old man’s flute drifted back to
him—
Or—Was that eerie whistling sound coming from the drink­
ing-bottle hidden under his coat5 Conti shook his head sharply;
slapped his temple. Confound this rarified atmosphere! There
was a ringing in his ears. The so r o c h e made him feel light and
queer, strangely nervous and uneasy.
 THE HUACO OF SEN O R P E R fiz 239
He strode out into the street, [Link] for the airport. The
sooner he got out of South America with this contraband his­
torical relic, the better! Three bronze axes and a ch am pi—an
Indian crowbar—which he had purchased last week in Cuzco
would satisfy the Hanover board-of-directors. Once back in New
York, he would sell this huaco, under the counter, to— Conti
grinned. Perhaps he would even sell it back to the Archaeologi­
cal Museum in Sucre, where it rightfully belonged!
As for sending Sefior Perez the rest of the promised hundred
sols— Conti laughed shortly. W hat man needed to remain poor?
Do o th ers b e fo r e t he y d o you, was his Golden Rule, since his
parents had abandoned him on a church doorstep!
Chuckling, he hurried toward the Sinclii Rocca airport, where
a light plane was about to take off for Lima.
A week later he was aboard an airliner out of Rio, headed for
New’ York. The huaco, gaudily painted with a removable water-
paint to resemble some cheap souvenir, he carried with him,
wrapped in brown paper like a last-minute gift for someone
back home. The customs officer waved it by with scarcely a
glance—a quarter of a million dollars worth of pre-Columbian
artifact which was not supposed to leave the country.
Vastly pleased with himself, Joe Conti dozed in his plane seat.
When a pretty' stewardess offered hot coffee, he leered at her with
appreciation and shook his head.
"No, thanks, beautiful! I brought my lunch!” He winked and
patted the half-wrapped bottle, which passengers often carried
aboard filled with rum punch for the journey.
The stewardess raised her brows, and dodged his caressive
hand.
It was at that moment that the big plane lurched and slid
sidewise. It lost altitude quickly. The warning sign—Fasten Seat
B elts— flashed on, and the copilot spoke soothingly over the in­
tercom. T h ere w as no real d a n ger, i f e v er y o n e w o u ld k eep ca lm —
240 OVER THE EDGE

life-jackets u n d er the seats, with instructions f o r inflating—life-

rafts to a ccom m o d a te ev eryon e.
In twenty minutes, incredulous and badly shaken, Joe Conti
found himself huddled in a bouncing rubber raft with nine more
of the sunken plane’s passengers. His luggage was gone, along
with the relics he had purchased in Cuzco. But he was still clutch­
ing the its camouflage paint washing off in spots as a
breaker rolled over them. Two of the women were sobbing hys­
terically, and an elderly gentleman was threatening to sue the
airline.
As the morning sun rose higher, blue water stretched out
around them, melting into the horizon. The sea was calm enough,
but the sun beat down, unmercifully hot. By noon the passengers
in Conti's raft had drunk up half the emergency -water-ration.
One of the women noticed his drinking-bottle, from which he
kept taking covert sips. Her whimpering child reached for it, but
Conti shrugged and shook his head.
"Rum and cola,’’ he lied quickly.
It was lucky he had forgotten to empty the twin-flasks since
buying it from Senor Perez. The water from that Sinchi Rocca
fountain tasted stale and faintly brackish, but it might save his
life. And why share it with strangers who meant nothing to him?
The purchasing agent tilted the huaco to his lips again. How
hot and dry he felt! His mouth seemed to be filled with sand.
And his eyes! He found himself staring up at that bronze disk of
of sun, unable to look away, unable to blink—Conti laughed at
himself uneasily. That little horror-tale of the old m estiz o’s had
been a trifle too vivid!
By sundown the rescue planes still had not located their posi­
tion. Night fell like a sooty lid clapped over the cauldron of the
Atlantic. A few stars twinkled overhead, like holes in the sooty
lid, but there was no moon. A wind sprang up, blowing them
 THE H l'A C O OF SENOR r F R f Z 2 41

further from the crash area. And when morning came, the sun
heat down again as though determined to hake them alive.
Thirst was plaguing all those huddled in the raft. But, Conti
noted with irritation, he himself seemed to he suffering most,
despite his covert pulls at the douhlc-hottle, Bv noon he had
drained the last drop from both flasks, but his mouth seemed
stuffed with cotton His skin had shriveled. His lips were cracked
and swollen. By three o'clock he lay panting in the bottom of
the raft, his tongue protruding from his mouth.
"W ater!” Conti gasped as a crewman bent over him. "For God's
sake, give me—a drink!"
"You should know better than to keep swigging that rum
punch!" tiie man snapped. He took the huaco from Conti’s limp
hand, and sniffed, then tasted the contents. His face changed.
"Water? You had more— ?" His stern look softened at sight of
Conti's tortured face. "W hat’s wrong with you, fella? Some kind
of fever? You've had more liquid than any five of us! And yet . . .
You look as if you’d been adrift for two weeks instead of two
davs! Hang-over, maybe?"
"No!" Conti rasped. "I just . . . need a drink! Please! P lea se!
These other people can spare . . . "
By five o’clock he had lapsed into delirium. The frightened
women hunched as far from him as they could get, listening to
him rave—first in English and Spanish, then in Quichua. . . . He
seemed to be cursing and praying both at once—cursing that
blazing ball of fire overhead, and the next moment praying to
it as though it could hear!
As dusk fell, the rescue plane located them. Joseph Conti,
agent for the Hanover Museum, was the first passenger to be
lifted aboard and given aid. The medic took one look at him
and frowned in bewilderment.
"1000 cc’s of glucose for this one!" he snapped. "And another
242 OVER THE EDGE

thousand of normal saline solution. He may not make it to the

hospital! Only two day's exposure? Why, 1 never saw such a case
of dehydration!"
Conti opened his eyes briefly— shriveled, bloodshot orbs that
shocked even the medic.
"W ater!” he whispered feebly, and lapsed again into delirium.
Distorted shapes moved about him. At first he thought he was
lying in a hospital bed, with a worried-looking intern bending
over him on one side, an elderly resident doctor on the other. A
subdued light shone down from the ceiling—
Then the figures changed. The intern's face took on the thin,
cruel features of a Spanish soldier in the ornate armor of Pizar-
ro’s men. The resident— a bearded Conquistadore! There was a
pointed stiletto in his hand, flashing in the blazing sun that
shone overhead. W ith its sharp point he jibbed at Conti’s upper
arm, demanding again and again in an echoing yammer: ” W h e r e
is th e g o ld ? T h e g o l d ? T he g o ld ? W h ere . , .?”
Conti’s vision cleared. The resident stepped back, hypodermic
in hand.
"That’s his third thousand cc's of glucose,” he grunted to the
young intern on Conti’s left. "But he's not responding! I don’t
understand . . He shook the agent gently, "W here did you get
the water in that souvenir bottle, man? You may have been
poisoned!”
"P-poisoned?” Conti rallied briefly to scowl up at them. "Yes!
That's it! That damned m estizo! He was afraid I’d want my
money back, that lousy fourteen dollars I . . .”
He turned his head weakly on the pillow, nodding toward the
huaco on the bedside table with his watch and wallet. His blood­
shot eyes rolled toward the intern, who caught his meaning. He
shrugged.
Oh yes, of course. W e’ve already analyzed the contents. Noth-
 THE HUACO OF SEN O R P E R itZ 243

ing! Pure spring water. There may be something in the metal.

To test it," he smiled, "we would have to melt it down. Is it
worth anything? The way you hung onto it, even half-con­
scious . . .!"
"Si/.’ No. no. you—musn't destroy it! Sentimental value— "
Conti shook his head violently, reaching for his prize. His hand
fell limply. He stared at it, stunned by the sight of his dessicated
flesh. Like a mummy's hand! Like a sere leaf from which the sap
has drained away! His dry tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.
The intern bent over him with a glass of water, but Conti could
not seem to swallow.
''W e've been pouring liquids into you on the half-hour,’’ the
resident said grimly. "W e've tried everything! What is it, man?
Something chronic? Have you ever before . . .?’’
"N-no . .
Conti stared up at him. His eyes wandered from the grave
bearded face to the splotchily painted drinking-bottle on the ta­
ble. The smiling features of the left-hand flask were obscured by
paint. But the angry one glowered at him accusingly. The almond
eyes and sad mouth reminded him of someone. Where had he
seen such a face? On a shabby old Peruvian native, driving two
over-burdened llamas to market for a few sols to feed his half-
starved family? The bronze eyes seemed to bore into his fevered
brain. The bronze lips whispered something. "B ebaselo con . .
Conti pointed frantically toward his possessions on the table.
The intern bent close to catch his faint whisper.
"My wallet! Hundred dollars . . . inside. W ire at once to . . .”
He whispered a name and the address of a little village high in
the Andes. The intern wrote it down, nodding.
"Last request, I suppose,” he murmured, aside to the resident.
"Poor devil! I guess he knows he's dying . . . Confound it! ’ the
young man exploded. "W hy can't we do something for him?

i*
244 OVER THE EDGE

The older medic pursed his lips thoughtfully, and picked up

the huaco. He turned it around and around in his hands.
"Maybe there's some kind of secret compartment for poison.
Like those Borgia wine goblets; you know? With a cache inside,
to dissolve and poison their enemies at banquets' Or . . . Maybe
the metal is toxic. If he'd only let us test it! Surely, to save his
life . . .!”
He glanced at Conti, who had overheard. The mummy-face
on the pillow was contorted with some emotional conflict—greed,
vying with fear. But there was no kindness, no remorse, no feel­
ing for anyone but himself in Conti’s look. He glared up at the
two doctors.
"Allright!" The purchasing agent nodded weakly. "Melt it
down! Test it! But— ’’ His cracked lips curled in a sneer.
"Never mind wiring that . . . that money! The telegram to Sin-
chi Rocca—cancel it!”
The intern glanced around suddenly. There was a faint, shrill
w h istlin g s o u n d -in the quiet room. It seemed to be coming from
that curious double-bottle in the resident’s hands, like air escap­
ing from a balloon. Or, no— not coming from it, but entering into
it, as if some eerie force of wind were blowing into the uncorked
mouth, as hillbilly musicians blow into a jug.
At the sound, Joseph Conti began to choke. . . .
Turning swiftly, the resident strode out into the hospital cor­
ridor, heading for the laboratory. He thrust his patient's drink­
ing-bottle into the technician's hands.
"Take this thing apart like a dollar watch. Examine every
crack! Test the metal for anything toxic. Arsenic; something of
the kind. But—make it fast!"
He hurried back to Conti's room, where the intern was insert­
ing a glucose tube in the agent s nose. He was about to inject an-
 THE HUACO OF SEN O R P E R f.Z 245

other normal saline solution into his veins, when Conti sat erect
with a strangled cry, clawing at his throat and gagging.
"W a ter!” he rasped. "Aqu.t"'
His shriveled eyes bulged as he gasped for breath. Frantically
he pointed to his wallet on the bedside table; struggled to speak.
But only a dry rattle came from his closing throat. He fell back,
dead.
Minutes later, as the intern was pulling the sheet up over Con­
ti's face, the lab technician burst into the room. In his hands
were twisted bits of bronze that had once been molded into two
Inca faces, now quite unrecognizable. He held them out to the
resident, who was writing on the chart at the foot of Conti's bed.
"Good tiling this wasn't valuable," the technician began. "We
tested every square inch of it. just as you . . . Oh!” he broke off
and shook his head ruefully. "Too late, huh? W ell," he shrugged,
"we didn't find a thing, anvhow. Just an old bronze bottle, with
a drop or two of water still in that little connecting pipe. I ana­
lyzed it. Pure water. With a slight metallic sediment, non-toxic . . .”
Moving together, the three stared down at Conti's body—more
mummy-like than ever under the sheet. The resident flipped back
a corner of it briefly, frowning at the desiccated face. The
mouth, in rigor mortis, had taken on a weirdly ironic grin, as if
the dead man had just caught the point of some macabre joke.
The resident laid the remnants of the hitaco on the table beside
Conti’s wallet.
"Death by . . . thirst? It's incredible! Didn’t the ancient Peru­
vians bury broken household objects with their dead?" he com­
mented wryly. "Pots, tools, weapons? Our patient will at least
have a drinking-bottle to take with him—wherever he's going!"
The intern grunted in response to the mirthless jest.
"Strange case, all right," he murmured. "Could his condition
246 O V E R THE EDGE

have been psychosomatic? He kept muttering something about

a . . . a curse! Every time he lapsed into delirium . . .”
"Your guess is as good as mine!” the resident admitted. "There
was nothing organic to cause a condition like that, absolutely
nothing! By the way,” he turned to the lab man, "you mentioned
some non-toxic sediment in the water. Metallic . . .?”
"Yes. Gold dust,” the technician shrugged. "Quite a lot of it!
It had settled in that little connecting pipe between the flasks.
You say the bottle was filled at a fountain in Sinchi Rocca? Prob­
ably flows from a spring high in the mountains above town.
Smack through the middle of a gold mine, from the looks of it!
If a man were to trace that stream,” he laughed lightly, "he
could make himself as rich as one of those Inca kings!”
 David A. Johnstone (1937- ) is a British writer who lives in
Liverpool, where he works in a "wine and spirits" store. This is one
of his first published stories.

Mr. Alucard
D avid A Johnstone

The grandfather clock chimed seven as Mrs. Grimm drew the

heavy brocade curtains across the window. Her last glimpse into
the dusk outside was of the rear lights of the coach disappearing
among the trees. Another day was over, and the old lady sighed
wearily. There was still a great deal of cleaning up to do before
she could sit down by the fire and watch her favorite television
programs.
Since moving into the castle, Mrs. Grimm had ordered the elec­
tricity company to wire up only her small kitchen. The rest of
the castle remained dark. Nobody ever came after sunset. If they
did, there were three oil lanterns and plenty of candles avail­
able.
She walked slowly along the hall, noticing with annoyance the
marks of greasy fingers on the suits of armor. On reaching the
248 OVER THE EDGE

main entrance, she turned the huge key stiffly in its lock. Ah,
she murmured, "now I feel better." Yet somehow Mrs. Grimm
never could get used to the stillness when evening came— no
screams or shouts from cheeky children, no exclamations of sur­
prise or wonder from their parents. Gone was the clicking of
high heels in the corridors, gone the flapping of sandals on the
wooden stairs.
The castle was quiet now'. Bats fluttered outside the windows,
and an owd hooted somewhere in the woods. Mrs. Grimm
shivered in the cold of the hall. Soon it would be the end of the
season, the dying of the year, and the end of the coach parties
from London. Winter would be lonely without the tourists— and
whatever tvould poor Mr. Alucard do?
The thought of Mr. Alucard brought her abruptly out of her
daydreaming. She hurried down the passage toward the cellar
door where the candlestick stood waiting. She fumbled with the
matches, breaking two in her haste, before she managed to light
the candle.
Mrs. Grimm pulled open the heavy door and descended the
stone steps. A coffin stood in the center of the cellar. She went up
to it, and rapped sharply on the lid.
The sound echoed around the cellar as another sound came
from inside the coffin. Mrs. Grimm pushed back the creaking lid,
her face wrinkling painfully as the hinges squealed.
"Going to be a nice evening. Mr. Alucard," she said.
Mr. Alucard sat up in his coffin, blinking in the candlelight.
"Good evening, Mrs. Grimm,” he said. "What sort of day have
you had?"
"W ell, the usual, luv, quite a good crowd in this afternoon,
though, from the married quarters at the American Air Force
Base. The kiddies were very well behaved, really."
 MR. ALUCARD 249
"Ah, yes! The 'Yanks,' as the village people call them," said
Mr. Alucard.
He got carefully out of the coffin and brushed himself. Some
particles of soil clung to his back, but Mrs. Grimm, seeing them,
brushed them off. He took the candle from her and started toward
the stairs. "I only hope they were a little tidier than those Lon­
doners the other day," he added, over his shoulder.
"W ell, not much to choose between them—still the same amount
of sweet papers, empty cigarette packets and Coca-Cola bottles.
But not, I’m glad to say. any winkle shells or Guinness cans.’’
Mr. Alucard laughed as they climbed the steps. The two fig­
ures, one throwing a weird dancing shadow on the opposite wall,
crossed the hall, leaving the cellar door open, because, as Mrs.
Grimm explained, "W e 11 leave in some fresh air."
She threw open her kitchen door and stood back. "Come in
for a moment. Mr. Alucard. I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.”
Although Mr. Alucard had been working now for over four
months in the castle, he had never, before entered Mrs. Grimm’s
sanctuary. He bent his tallness a little and walked into the room.
The electric light was so bright as to be painful to his eyes; he
blinked rapidly, feeling tears pricking the corners.
"Sit down, Mr. Alucard. Sit down, do,” cried Mrs. Grimm,
bustling around to sweep magazines from the armchairs.
A large orange cat, which had been washing itself by the glow­
ing bars of the fireplace, stiffened and arched its back as Mr.
Alucard approached.
"Now, Sheba, don't start spitting,” said Mrs. Grimm. "It’s only
Air. Alucard come in to have a nice cup of tea with us.”
The cat, however, backed away and retreated under a chair.
Mrs. Grimm poured the boiling water into the teapot. "Take
no notice of her, the old silly,” she said. "Funny thing, though—
250 OVER THE EDGE

she never spits at anyone but you.”

Mr. Alucard said mildly, "That’s quite all right.”
"How do you like my kitchen?” asked Mrs. Grimm.
"Very charming, indeed.”
"You must come in more often of an evening and have tea
with me. Heaven knows you could probably do with a cup after
being down there all day long in that cold old Coffin.” She paused
to pass him his cup, which he took but did not raise to his lips.
"But I'll say this— I've been very grateful to you for that idea. It's
worked like a charm. I’ve never taken in so much money before.
See the Vampire S leep in g in Its Coffin—5/- extra! —they can’t re­
sist it. The half crowns tumbled out of their pockets and purses
so fast it fair takes my breath away. I never realized people were
so morbid. Still, not everyone would take on a job like that, Mr.
Alucard.”
"My dear lady, I love my job. Why, sleeping in the daytime
has always been easy for me—and then, of course, I have my other
job at night.”
Mrs. Grimm wanted to ask what his other work was, but po­
liteness forbade such intrusion into his private affairs.
"W ell, it takes all sorts to make a world," she said kindly, dip­
ping a biscuit into her tea. "Come along, you're not drinking
your tea, Mr. Alucard. It'll get cold.” She pushed the plate of
biscuits toward him. "No need to be shy.”
"It’s not shyness,” said Mr. Alucard. "and I don’t wish to be
rude, but I never touch tea.”
"Oh,” was all that Mrs. Grimm could say. It seemed incredible
to her that people who didn't drink tea existed.
Mr. Alucard stood up suddenly, causing Sheba, who had ven­
tured out to lap up some milk from a saucer Mrs. Grimm had
put down, to fly back under the chair once more.
"I must be off now,” he said.
 M R. A IL 'C A R D 251

"Oh, so soon?” cried Mrs. Grimm, who had had visions of a

long talk with Mr. Alucard. "I wanted to tell you about one of
the American boys today—he almost fainted when he touched
your face; he said you were so cold you must be dead. I'd only
just pushed back the lid slightly when he put out his hand, shout­
ing to his sister, 'Hey, Sis, look! I'm going to wake up the Vam­
pire.’ ”
Mr. Alucard smiled. "Cheeky youngsters these days. Still, no
harm done, as long as they don’t want to bring wooden stakes in
with them.”
A ll the questions Mrs. Grimm thought she might ask faded
within her—about his job by night, about the source of the old
coffin he had brought to the castle the night he came. Perhaps
there would be another time before the season ended.
"Goodnight, Mrs. Grimm,” he said from the threshold, show­
ing his long white teeth in a pleasant smile.
When he was gone, Airs. Grimm locked the door once more
and sat down again. Sheba jumped on to her lap. "You’ve been
very rude to Mr. Alucard,” she said, stroking the warm orange
fur. "He’s a very kind man and we owe him a great deal. It if
weren't for his idea we shouldn’t have taken half the money I
need to run this big old castle.”
She took a swallow of tea and set about totting up the day’s
receipts.
 J o h n P o c s i k (19)3- ) is a young devotee of the macabre w h o
lives and writes in Kansas City, where he has just been graduated from
college. This is his first published story.

Casting the Stone

John Pocsik

J had just finished my second year at Lacombe University and

was resigning mysedf to another tiresome summer at the Records
Bureau when Dr. Wallace, head of the Classics department,
brought the advertisement to my attention. Even for the Star's
classified section, it was somewhat out of the ordinary:
"Desire young man—white, unmarried—to serve as housekeeper
and secretary for the summer. Must be proficient in the Classical
languages and have some knowledge of French and German. For in­
formation, contact: Sebastian Quarry, Lairneth Hall.’’
Since it was obvious that a translator of sorts was wanted, W allace
advised me to apply at once, thinking it would be a perfect op­
portunity for me to gain experience in my chosen field. I really
did not need any further urging though: relief from the monoto­
nous routine of filing was reason enough in itself for me to seek
 CASTING THE STONE .2 5 }
the job. Too, there was something about the ad—even today I
cannot put my finger on it—which intrigued me and drew me
on.
When I asked him what he knew of this man Quarry, all W al­
lace could tell me was that he was reputedly a very wealthy man
of culture who kept to himself and expected, indeed commanded,
that others do the same. For more than two years he had been
living, a semi-recluse, at Lairneth, a rambling, pseudo-Gothic
structure located out in the marshlands ten miles south of New­
ark. Quarry, I learned, had once been an explorer and anthro­
pologist of some note until the ill-fated Cordelle expedition.
Something had happened to him in that desolate region west of
Shire Nor to make him withdraw from public life when he re­
turned to the States; but no one knew what that something was.
All attempts to draw him out, to get him to tell the reason for
his retirement, had been in vain and after a time people simply
ceased to wonder. To Wallace it was surprising that he should
now want to throw off his cloaking solitude to receive an abso­
lute stranger.
I was more than ever intrigued. It was evident that Quarry
was probably engaged in some sort of research dealing with the
ancient civilizations and needed someone to correlate the vast
amount of information that invariably piles up in such pursuits.
Perhaps it might even have something to do with the Cordelle
expedition . . . for a moment I gave way to my vice of daydream­
ing as I pictured sunburnt men in the thin, cold air beneath a
high, waferlike sun, unearthing Grecian artifacts from the Chi­
nese sands. And to think I might play a p » t in such a discovery!
. . . The bubble popped and I snapped back to reality. Wallace
was glad to hear I was going to apply early the next morning
and, before leaving, gave me directions to the Hall and a short
letter of recommendation.
254 OVER THE EDGE

The country through which I drove the next day was pro­
foundly depressing. Beyond Newark, the marshes held sway and
stretched away in all directions like a great canvas done in sickly
browns and grays. Only occasionally was the scene s dreariness
broken by the lonely pools that gleamed dully amid the sedges
and the clumps of bobbing cat-tails. The Hall itself— a grim,
gaunt building flanked cn one side by a cohort of black pines
and on the other by the lapping waters of a green-scummed pool
— did little to raise my spirits when I finally came to it. Here and
there mullioned windows peeped forth slyly through the tangle
of dead vines that snaked up the stone walls. Beneath the dun
sky, the gray waste of the slate roof with its steep peaks, ornate
gables, and rusted guttering had a peculiarly melancholy effect
on me.
I parked my car in front of the arched entrance and got out.'
An unseasonably chill wind had sprung up, whirling clouds of
dust and pine needles down the weed-grown drive, so that I
turned my collar up as I mounted the cracked steps. An iron
knocker, wrought in the likeness of a faintly impish cherub, pro­
duced a sepulchral noise that echoed hollowly.
I waited for about five minutes without getting an answer.
Then, just as I was getting ready to go around the house in
search of another entrance, the oak door swung silently open.
Framed in the doorway stood a tall man, well past middle age.
His massive, leonine head, with its blazing eves and mane of un­
kempt hair, perched precariously upon his lean frame. W e
stared at each other for a moment before I spoke.
"Mr. Quarry? My name is Gerald Nadan, I came to apply for
the secretarial job, if it's still available." He did not take the
hand I held out to him.
His luminous eyes looked me up and down. A guttural voice
forced itself out from deep within his throat. "It’s still available,
Mr. Nadan. I presume you've brought credentials of some kind.
 CASTING THE STONE 2S5

Good, let me see them.” Having glanced at Wallace's letter, he

looked up. "Lacombe University thinks highly of you. Tell me,
precisely, what language experience do you have? Give me an
outline of the courses you've taken and also say a few words
about yourself.”
I gave him the information he requested and awaited the ver­
dict, shivering a little in the cold. At last, he spoke. "I think
you'll do, Mr. Nadan; I don't imagine there’ll be any other re­
plies to my advertisement anyway. How soon can you begin work
here?”
I told him I could begin my duties as soon as I made arrange­
ments in town and packed my things. Receiving his grunted ap­
proval, I drove back to Newark, mulling over the impressions I
had formed. That night I returned.
My initial duties were not very exacting: I was to prepare
the meals, keep the house and adjacent grounds in order, and
generally be at Quarry's disposal. For the first few days I kept
busy, getting accustomed to the new routine and my employer.
Sebastian Quarry was a solitary, preoccupied person who
rarely, if ever, spoke to me and thc-n only to issue some curt or­
der. Sometimes I would not see him for hours at a stretch as I
moved through the lonely house; at other times I might unex­
pectedly come upon him in one of the dark halls or musty rooms
which he haunted like an antique spectre. It was in the library,
a large room on the second story, where he was usually to be
found, poring over one of the archaic volumes that filled the place
or jotting down notations in his crabbed script or, once in awhile,
merely sitting there with a drugged look in his eyes. W e came to
the subject of my secretarial duties after my first week.
Summoning me one day to the gloom-filled chamber, he ges­
tured to the booklined walls and said, "You’ll be spending most
of your time here in the library. I want you to make a detailed
list of every volume in this room and an accurate cross-index of
256 OVER THE EDGE

each. Since many are Latin and Greek works, you 11 probably
have to do a good deal of reading, which I m sure w ill pose no
problem to a man of your capability. Let it be said now that I m
paying you highly for this work and expect maximum efficiency.
Is that cleat?”
"Yes, Mr. Quarry,” I replied.
"One thing more. The bulk of this library deals with the oc­
cult, a subject which has been of great interest to me for many
years. If I may say so, I believe that I have the third largest col­
lection of books on the subject in the United States. I trust the
fact that you’ll be examining some fairly—ah—lurid works won't
bother you?”
I assured him that it would not.
"Very well. Here's the desk you can work at and there's all the
material you'll need. Start with the shelf next to the west win­
dow and work your way counter-clockwise around the room. If
you run into any volumes you can't deal with, set them aside for
me to check.” He left me with instructions as to the exact form
I evas to follow and an admonition to be careful when handling
the old manuscripts.
So began the second phase of my work. Every morning, after
attending to my other duties, I would retire to the library to
spend the day glancing over each book, typing the desired infor­
mation, and then filing it away in a large cabinet set up for the
purpose. It was a good thing I had developed a keen interest for
books and languages early in life, else the tedium of translating
and indexing might soon have gotten wearisome. As the work
slowly progressed, I would often wonder what Quarry's reason
was in having this job done.
As he had said, the majority of his collection dealt with the
occult in a variety of aspects, all equally interesting. Rare books,
whose existence I had only heard vague rumors of, and ancient
 C ASTING THE STONE 2V

brass-bound tomes lay open beneath my questing eye, their aye-

stained pages covered with strange drawings, diagrams, and even
stranger text. Besides such modern works as Pursuivant's I 'am-
pyrkm i. Tiiunstonc's Afy/,'« Patterns o f th e Shonokins. and
Spences E ncyclopaedia o f Occultism, there were older, darker,
and more fabulous volumes, like Nathaniel Crouch’s K in gd o m
o f Darkness, d Erlette's unexpurgated C ulte. d cs Go-ales, and
even a battered copy of Eibon's Book in the Norman-French
edition. I became so engrossed in my work that the long sum­
mer days began to pass without my least notice. At times, certain
hints which I gleaned in my study would trouble me when I
thought I detected veiled patterns and significances underlying
the books' apparent meanings; but at first this was rare.
That Quarry was more than a mere addict, that he was an ar­
dent believer in the occult I had no doubt for often I would find
certain objects around the house which I recognized at once
from my readings; things like flannel "hands" and cunningly
fashioned talismans of gold, copper, and silver—all charms of a
protective nature. Even the library in which I worked offered
proof of my observation; worked into the parquet flooring in gilt
was the Seal of Solomon which a large Hebrew pentacle of the
Tozgrec type encircled; at each corner of the room was drawn
Silurses’ Diamond of Evocation; and in a cupboard in the shad­
ows at the room s far end, over which brooded the massive statue
of a Greek athlete carved from a large piece of porphyry, I dis­
covered such items as the Globe, the Ring of Gygc-s, the Trident,
and the almond-wood Wand—instruments which had a deep
meaning for me. The tenuous wisp of suspicion which I had re­
pressed for its absurdity grew into a definite feeling of unease,
coupled with the obscure repulsion 1 had begun to feel towards
Quarry himself.
The first definite proof that all was not as it should be at the
253 OVER THF. EDGE

Hall occurred about two weeks after my arrival. It had been dif­
ficult the first few nights to get used to the different moods of the
marshland. One night the silence might be so absolute that I
would lie awake for hours, listening for the faint droning of in­
sects or the distant calls of night-birds; the next, a storm might
keep me awake as the wind hushed through the dripping
branches and hurled fitful gusts of rain against the panes.
The night in question w'as overcast, Very warm, and humid.
Not a breath of air came through the open window; a shroud­
like silence lay over all. It seemed I had been tossing and turn­
ing for ages, trying to find the coolest spot on the bed, when I
became aware of dim, muffled music coming from directly out­
side the south window. Getting out of bed, I groped my way over
to the french doors and unlatched them.
Yes, it was music, organ music, which came from the yellow
square of a window a floor below' and to my right. Leaning out
and listening intently, I decided that it sounded like a Bach
fugue, though somehow subtly distorted to give one a tingling
sensation of evil. The fact struck me that Quarry had not once
shown any enthusiasm for music since I had come to Lairneth;
but then the man would always be a mystery to me.
Suddenly, far out in the midnight darkness of the marsh, in
the general location where I knew a large mere lay, I saw a light
shine forth and begin to weave slowly in intricate patterns, al­
most as if keeping time to the beat of the music. Simultaneously,
a stridently metallic voice— Quarry's—murmured forth into the
night in a language that was either so mumbled as to be unin­
telligible or entirely foreign. The light (I saw now that it re­
sembled a small globe of radiant blue fire) shot toward the house
as Quarry stopped speaking and disappeared around the south­
west corner. All sound ceased immediately thereafter. I was left
in the stillness to ponder, fruitlessly, what I had just seen.
 CASTING THE STONE 259

The rest of the night passed like the previous ones, save that
I had an odd dream in which I seemed to be running down a
long, tiled passage w ith a black, loping creature—known to me
as the Shifony—in pursuit and I ran and ran until I came to a
triangular bronze door with a fiery sign emblazoned on it and I
could go no farther and the Shifony was right on top of me, its
Darkness of a Face bending towards mine, and the tunnel began
to reverberate with hysterical screaming . . . I found myself sit­
ting up in bed. shivering, my pajamas damp with sweat. For a
moment I could have sworn that the screaming of my dream still
rang in mv cars, but when I saw the gray light of dawn creeping
in through the window I realized that the cry of some nocturnal
bird must have awakened me and perhaps caused the dream­
eries. I lay back, but was not able to fall asleep again.
That morning, as I passed the library on my way to fix break­
fast, I happened to glance in; what I saw there brought me up
short. The room was a shambles: books had been hurled from
the shelves and lav like birds amid fragments of broken phono­
graph records; the big mahogany table had been overturned; and
the south window—framework and all—was completely shattered.
The air reeked with incense—a pungent, cinnamon-cedar odor.
Quarry slouched in a chair, unmoving, ignoring my entrance. He
was clad in a robe of black velvet girt with a belt of lead. There
was a haunted look in his eyes as he gazed in fascination at the
pedestal where the Greek statue had been, but now was not.
His c-yes, mate with terrible fear, sought mine; his hands
shook. Glass crunched beneath my feet as I knc-lt beside him.
"What happened, Mr. Quarry?" I asked, helping him to his feet.
"W as it a burglar?’’
"No, I don’t know . . .’’ he mumbled drunkenly. "No, not that,
it wasn't that at all. Nothing really to worry about at all!" He
almost shrieked as if he were trying to impress the fact upon the
260 OVER THE EDGE

universe. "I'm just a little tired, Nadan. Help me to my room.’’

"But something happened here, Mr. Quarry. I . . .’’
He regained a bit of his formidable composure. "Mr. Nadan,
what I do within the realm of my house is my concern, not yours.
You know your duties and you know your privileges. Don’t med­
dle in my affairs unless I ask you to."
It took me most of the day to get the library in order and
have the window repaired, during which time Quarry remained
out of sight. What little I saw of him made me begin to fear for
his sanity. He shunned the library entirely and took to flitting
through the dark corridors, restlessly, like some colossal bat lost
in the shadows. He trembled constantly and twice I caught him
with his head cocked curiously to one side as if he were listening
for something. Toward dusk, having searched all over the house
for him, I found him down in the subcellar, making cryptic
passes before a clay tablet which he ceased as I came through the
archway.
As I was on my way to my room that night, a furtive whisper
came from the shadows that clustered in the lu ll. It was Quarry,
a radically changed Quarry.
"Listen to me, Nadan," he choked out. "You've got to do what
I tell you, no matter how eccentric or, yes, insane my orders ap­
pear. I want you to lock me in my room tonight. If you have
any regard for me, do this and don't i,alack th e d o o r until m o rn ­
ing, no matter what further commands you may receive. Indeed,
it might be well for you also to retire to your room as soon as
possible—for your security of mind."
"All right, Mr. Quarry," I said. "I'll do as you say. But tell
me, i added (for I had to find out the cause of his extreme fear),
"that statue is gone from the library. That's what’s disturbing
you, isn’t it?"
Whatever reaction I expected, it certainly was not what I got.
 CASTING THE STONE 261
Sebastian Quarry, explorer of savage wastelands, whirled with­
out a word and fled down the hall in a flutter of velvet. I fol­
lowed more slowly and did as he told me.
Contrary to his implied command, I did not go to bed at once,
but returned to the library to puzzle over the growing mystery.
Something was wrong here, something, the non-skeptical part of
my mind kept insisting, that had its roots in the not-so-common-
place. Of course, there might be some natural explanation for all
that was going on—Quarry could have come upon thieves as they
were removing the statue, a valuable piece, no doubt; there
might have been a struggle that had left him in shock; for all I
knew, he might be suffering from some obscure mental disease—
but each theory offered seemed more ridiculous than the first. I
had a feeling, call it intuition, that the real solution to the prob­
lem lay in the supernormal since all of the partial evidence sug­
gested it: what I had seen and heard the night before, what I
had found in the library this morning, and what I knew of Quar­
ry's own character. It only required the final proof—the mani­
festation itself—to thoroughly convince me. I suppose I was try­
ing to balance myself on the barrier that divides the real world
from the dark borderlands.
Casting around for something to take my mind off the prob-
Icrp, I picked up the Middenbourne edition of Alibeck’s The
T ru e G rim oire which I had started that afternoon and began to
thumb idly through it. I came across a curious passage entitled
"Stone-Casting'' that was annotated in Quarry's almost indeci­
pherable handwriting. My interest rose as I read on, for one para­
graph in particular seemed especially pertinent:
"For it is given to the Wizard who holds the Keys of Power to con­
trol all manner of spirits, whether thc-y inhabit the high-most pinnacles
of Paradise or the nethermost abysses of Gehenna. Let the Adept who
reads understand these Keys, but let him also beware, lest he call up
262 OVER THE EDGE

One who has a Greater Power than he . . . To summon the Dead, a

Stone is needt'ul, that the immaterial may assume the corporeal, that the
Essence may clothe itself in a material BEING. Chant thrice the Litany
of Shaizar while drawing the Pentacle of Vau widdershins about the
Stone. Then recite the Unsaid Words of Kolomedes and by the Wand
cast the Spirit into the Stone, that it may be confined and be a pleasing
vehicle for the Mage's pleasure.”
Along the margin, Quarry had written: ' Substitute Seven Words
of Evocation and employ when Saturn is in the Eighth Elouse
and Mars in Sectile. Cakonix shall not triumph.”
My reverie was shattered suddenly by a resounding crash that
came thundering down the corridor outside in a great wave of
sound. Wondering what new mischief was up, I sprang to my feet
as another crash boomed, and dashed up the stairs to Quarry’s
room. I unlocked the door, but it would not budge when I tried
to open it: he had barred it from the inside. Nor were my at­
tempts to rouse him by shouting any more successful. The man
must have drugged himself not to hear such a racket, I thought;
or perhaps he was awake, but afraid to answer. All the while the
heavy pounding noises continued, growing in intensity and com­
ing from directly overhead.
Deciding not to waste any more time, I ran down the hall to
the circular staircase that led to the attics. The wooden steps
clattered beneath my feet as I mounted them at breakneck
speed, cursing my rashness for not bringing a light or a weapon
with which to meet the intruder, though I hesitated to imagine
what kind of intruder could be causing such mighty blows.
I emerged into the warm darkness of the main attic and
paused for a moment to get my sense of direction. The pounding
noises had given way to the sound of splintering wood and slate
which abruptly stopped. Straining my ears, I thought I could
hear a soft bumping and rasping on the roof, which at this point
 CASTING THE STONE 263

of the house was not too steep. I crept slowly through the dark­
ness toward these sounds, pushing aside cobweb blankets and
ducking the dust-furred beams. It took me some time, for the floor
was littered with a hodgepodge of rubbish; crates and articles of
furniture hulked on all sides. So quiet had it become that my
heartbeats were clearly audible.
I realized there was someone in the attic with me when I
heard the floor creak slightly a few yards to my left. "Who's
there?” I whispered, rather pointlessly. The only answer I re­
ceived was another footfall, nearer, accompanied by sharp
crunching noises.
What happened after that is a confused blur. I remember
noticing for the flrst time in that nighted chamber the two em­
berlike eyes that floated before mine—inhuman, cold eyes in
which I glimpsed a universe of hate and malignity. Beneath the
hypnotic effect of those orbs, I was literally rooted to the spot;
my legs seemed drained of all feeling and coordination. Then a
sudden flood of pain swept over my brain as something terrifi­
cally hard smashed into my chest, knocking me backward. I car­
omed off a chest of some sort, struck my head on a rafter, and fell
to the floor in a choking cloud of dust. As unconsciousness en­
gulfed me, I recall trying to utter the protective word I had seen
so often . . .
I awoke on my own bed. Quarry was patting my face with a
wet cloth. I groaned and started to sit up, but dizziness over­
whelmed me, the room seeming to spin in four directions at once.
"Just lie back for a while,” he said. "You’ll be all right. There
are no bones broken, though your chest has been bruised badly.
It’s a miracle you weren’t killed.”
"What happened?” I asked.
His eyes glittered; his hands writhed nervously, but his voice
had that old steadiness when he spoke. "It was the wind, you
264 OVER THE EDGE

know. Apparently it tore that -uh- statue on the peak loose from
its fastenings and sent it crashing through into the attic— the
roof’s quite weak there. You -were directly beneath, I guess, and
it caught you a glancing blow, fortunately nothing serious. The
sound of the impact woke me and when I came up to investigate
there you were, all huddled up in a corner with that monstrosity
nearby. Tomorrow morning I'm calling a contractor out from
town to repair the damage and haul the cursed thing away.”
I was about to tell him of the continuous pounding that had
sent me up there and to point out that there had been no wind
blow ing, but as quickly decided not to. He would explain it away,
saying that what I had seen was only an hallucination born of
the darkness and the forms my overstimulated mind peopled it
with or simply telling me to mind my business as he had done
previously. So I kept my mouth shut and nodded in agreement.
It was now plainly obvious that he was hiding something that
was somehow connected with his occult practices. No explana­
tion, however far-fetched, could explain what had just happened.
I resolved to find out what that something was.
The next day dawned bleak and forbidding, with a milky haze
enveloping everything so that the Hall appeared to be suspended
in a gray void at the world's end. Quarry did not touch his plate
at breakfast and I saw that he had lost some of his newly found
confidence of the night before. As the hours crawled by without
any sign of the contractor he had summoned, he became visibly
worried, chafing with impatience.
In the meantime, curbing a strong desire to visit the attic and
its "accidental" occupant, I began to surreptitiously examine his
numerous journals and notebooks in the hope they might con­
tain some clue to the mystery, but I found nothing out of the
ordinary. Most had been written about five years prior to the
Cordelle expedition and were detailed accounts of Quarry's ear-
 CASTING THE STONE 265

her journies to the Peruvian jungle- and the mountainous high­

lands of New Zealand. Pacts, figures, dates, and '■ketches- all com­
monplace.
It occurred to me that I might find something of value in his
room; but just then the contractor, a birdlike man named
Grately, arrived, and so we all trooped up to the attics. What we
saw there seemed to confirm Quarry’s explanation—at least on
the surface. A large hole had been torn through the roof, admit­
ting the wan daylight. Amid the debris of shattered slate, twisted
copper-sheeting, and roofing material lay the thing that con­
firmed my fears and suspicions beyond a possible doubt: the miss­
ing statue from the library. There was no mistaking those
haughty features, that rippling muscular perfection. It lay supine
on the planks before us, the whole position of its body ch a n g ed
from what it was originally. Whereas the figure had been stoop­
ing forward as if at the beginning of a race, knees bent and
hands lightly touching the pedestal, n o w it was f u l l y erect, its
lim b s rig id pillars; the hands u ere balled into fists and th e right
arm ju tted up into th e air like a sable tow er. For some reason I
could not force myself to look closely at its face and blindly star­
ing eyes, I shuddered with mind whirling as I helped the con­
tractor carry the heavy thing down the stairs and out to his sta­
tion wagon. Then, while he returned to put a temporary canvas
patch over the hole, I sought Quarry out in his study.
"What are you going to have done with the statue?"
The frightened look rose to the surface in the dark pools of
his eyes. "Have it destroyed," he replied curtly. "It’s a menace to
all concerned."
"Funny. I never noticed it on the roof before,” I said delib­
erately and left the room.
Shortly after Grateiy’s departure, Quarry came into the li­
brary, sat down at his desk, and began writing. Deciding to take
266 OVER THE EDGE

a chance and use this opportunity, I complained of a headache

and asked if I might lie down until I got over it, A few moments
later I was in Ins bedroom, hurriedly searching for I knew not
what. There was not anything out of the way in his closet or
dressers and the bookshelves only contained some harmless theo-
sophical works. I was ready to give up when I remembered I had
forgotten his bedside table. At first glance, its drawer held only
a few blank note-pads and a box of pencils; but hidden beneath
the tablets I found a small red book whose pages bore Quarry’s
unmistakable script: a diary! Elated, I shoved the drawer back
in place and rushed to my room where, lying on the bed, I be­
gan to read the short, tersely written entries—all dated for this
year:
"Jan. 8. H e has come, as indeed he promised he would so many
months ago. And how changed he is—gone that other-worldly
aura, that frightening, godlike aspect I came to know so well in
the Caverns of the Shid—so that now he may move freely among
men; he looks no different than any mortal. Cordelle and the
rest must have thought me mad when they found me afterward,
delirious and withered, babbling of dark-shining suns and the
bloated things I saw in the Deeps. But I was not mad: I had the
knowledge and had found Him whom the Shid call Chiancungi,
the Man w'ith Night in his heart. W hile the rest had given me
up for lost, I was seeing the wonders of the ages, learning the
lore of the Elder Days. And when he sent me forth, it was with
the Promise which now lie has fulfilled . . . He came in the night
in a cone of black flame and, though exhausted by the dangerous
journey through the Planes, celebrated the First Rites with me
to initiate the Undertaking. Having bound ourselves to each
other by the drinking of the blood, we have taken new names:
he, Calconix; I, Sonneilion. Together, we shall grow in the wis­
dom of the Outer Arts. The stars will hide their faces from us in
 CASTING THE STONE 267

fear and the very earth groan beneath our feet. And I shall have
power.”
The entries went on like this for some time. Quarry at first
writing in an assured manner, praising the attributes of the man
known as Cakonix and repetitiously emphasizing his hopes for
gaining magical potencies under the latter's tutelage. Oddly
enough, little was said of their activities during this period, but
I gathered it was a time of trips to various parts of the world
for certain objects Cakonix said were necessary. As the entries
went on. Quarry’s increasingly scrawled handwriting indicated
that he had become highly agitated, though what the cause of
this strain was I did not learn until I came to the passage for
March 21 :
"I begin to fear for my sanity. To what depths have I degraded
myself? And for what purpose? Where is the power Cakonix
promised me, where the glory, the splendor? I move in realms
of decay, through regions of rust and ashes. Shadows surround
me, haunt my dreams. I carry out ceremonies, but do not com­
prehend their meanings. When I ask him why, I receive no an­
swer. And doubts assail me. Last evening we were transported in
the usual manner to a darkly wooded region somewhere in Mas­
sachusetts. The domed hills with their peculiar stone rings were
the only witnesses to our sombre wizardry as we chanted the Old
Song and lit the tapers. Then, when all was prepared, Cakonix
made the motions and cursed the village. The forest seemed to
bend and writhe and moan beneath the awesome spell while I
stood nearby, cowering . . . Today I learn that all the inhabit­
ants of a certain northern Massachusetts township have van­
ished during the night, beyond the ken of man, beyond the light.
I fear nor only his ruthlessness, but also his attitude towards me
for he battens on me like a parasite, draining me of my knowl­
edge while giving nothing in return. A lethargy has snared my

K
268 OVER THE EDGE

mind and I find I am by degrees becoming his slave. I cannot

face him anymore without drowning in the glittering suns of his
eyes . . . ”
Thereafter the entries became periodic, illegible, and all but
incoherent. In the last pages, though, Quarry seemed to have ac­
quired some sort of inner courage as events moved toward their
climax.
"April 9. Surely it is Hell I move about in or else I am mad.
I dare not write of what I saw in the vault beneath the lake—H e
might find this and . . . I had never dreamt the People could be
here in this country, down there in their musky night, hissing
before those slablike altars. I was afraid to descend, but Calconix
gripped my hand and made me follow as he moved among those
loathsome, crawling shapes with his rod of crystal lighting our
way. And by its glow I could tell that some of them were once
human, though changed and still changing. He revealed all to
me in the tunnels and his words yet sear my brain like fire. He is
preparing a primal ritual awesome beyond compare to open a
Gateway in space, to unseal a Crack in time for certain . . . Things.
I pale before this insane plot: the utter destruction of the human
race for the glorification of alien gods and their minions. Now I
understand the part I have played and have yet to play. But I
cannot do the unspeakable deed he wishes; I w ill not. I know
what I must do: it will have to be soon and done while he is off
guard. Meanwhile I must rally my powers and, above all, block
my true thoughts from his all-seeing mind.
"April 19. Horror pervades the house. The Gap widens in the
subcellar and Calconix remains at the top of that yawning abyss
night and day. A chill breeze has begun to whistle up out of the
gulf; at times I think I hear a mad tittering, far down, that pains
my ears. I am going to kill him now, while his soul is abroad,
 CASTING THE STONE 269

feasting. W ith his death, the curse will be ended and I shall be
free. My arthame lies at hand, triply consecrated; I fear, but I
must go before my courage wanes and the chance be lost.
"April 20. It is done. God, the color of his blood! The Gap
has disappeared, the menace is gone. I feel such peace of mind
as I had not thought possible a few weeks ago. I think I shall
take a trip, leave this place of foulness . . .”
That was all, but it was enough. I lay back, analyzing what I
now knew. Sebastian Quarry was a sorcerer—no doubting it,
though he had kept this impossible fact well concealed from out­
siders. He had joined the Cordelle expedition not out of any sci­
entific interest, but because it gave him a chance to seek out the
Greater Adept known as Chiancungi. Apparently he had disap­
peared from the group for a good length of time: to them he was
lost, presumed dead, until he turned up in a terrible physical
shape. But during that time he had found the Chinese necro­
mancer and they had formed a pact whereby the Chinese would
come to the States at some future date and use Quarry’s house as
a base of operation, Quarry being induced by his promises of
power. This was the reason for his retirement: he had been await­
ing the other's coming. But Calconix was the stronger of the two,
in mind and influence, and used Quarry like a tool until the
frightfulness of what he was doing had struck home to the Ameri­
can. And so he had killed the Chinese and foiled the plot.
Or had he?
How did this tie in with the business about the statue? What
was the reason for my presence here in this abode of mystery?
Now that I had one part of the answer, I was going to get the
other from Quarry himself.
It was growing dark when I left my room with the diary. As I
descended the stairs, I heard the hall phone jangling. Picking it
up, I inquired who was calling.
270 OVER THE EDGE

"This is Sheriff Hillen, Benson county. May I speak to Mr.

Quarry?"
Quarry had come out of the darkened library and took the
receiver from me. After listening for a few minutes, all the color
drained from his face and he started to tremble violently. Chok­
ing out a few words of agreement, he dropped the receiver on
the hook and fell against the wall, eyes glaring madly.
"My God!" he gasped. "Oh, my good God! He’s coming back
for me, Nadan. He’s coming back to get me!"
"Calconix?" I ventured as a hideous realization struck me.
He started and for a minute I thought he was going to have
a heart attack. I gripped him by the arms and guided him to
a nearby divan. All the while he kept muttering beneath his
breath and I could only catch snatches of what he was saying:
"Shouldn’t have tried it, especially using his soul . . . aron ozi-
nom as te . . . thought I could control him after all this time . . .
he must have been waiting for such a chance, Nadan, out there
under the ooze, waiting . . . help me, ai, help me," I shook him
roughly until his white mane tossed like a flurry of snowflakes.
"Get hold of yourself, Quarry. For your own good, you’ve got
to tell me what you’ve done if I’m to know what to do. Here," I
said, pouring a tumbler of brandy. "Drink this and calm down.”
He gulped the drink down frantically and lay back, panting like
a hunted beast. However, that look of insane fear was gone, at
least for the present. Soon his eyes fixed on mine.
"What do you know?”
”1 know about Calconix, about what he planned to do. And I
know you killed him with the enchanted blade. I think I can
guess the rest, but you’d better tell me. W hat about the statue?”
He sighed. "You know about Calconix, eh? Yes, I slew him
and sank his weighted body out there in the mere. W ith him
 CASTING THE STONE 271

dead, I thought the matter ended. That was foolish, of course—

fatally foolish. I didn't reckon with his superior abilities and it
was only a few days later that I began to be haunted by his . . . by
his soul! I'd made the mistake of attacking him while his soul
was separated from his body. When that soul returned and found
the flesh untenable, submerged beneath mire and water, such
was its rage that it rose to avenge itself upon me. At first his
shade could do me no ill, but gradually it began to take on a
semblance of half-life and conjure against me. I've been besieged,
as it were, these past weeks by his magic which has been growing
steadily stronger, with only my hasty charms warding off destruc­
tion."
He paused to see if I were following him, then went on. "The
night before last I thought I would try to end it all with one bold
stroke: I planned to draw his earthbound spirit here and shackle
it in the statue of the athlete, to cast the stone." (I recalled what
I had read in T he True G rim oire and knew that my guess was
correct.) "But even in this he thwarted me for though I impris­
oned him within the rock, yet he nullified the spell’s potency by
animating the statue and broke out of the Pentacle. Had I not
uttered the Word he might have slain me on the spot. As it W'as,
the living statue hurled itself through the window and was lost
in the darkness. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly," I answered. "And last night? Calconix was trying
to get at you, wasn't he?"
"Yes, and he would have too if you hadn't somehow rendered
him powerless. I thought that if I could have Grately completely
destroy the figure before nightfall, perhaps I might beat Him
even yet. But that call just now . . . a patrol car just found the
station wagon about two miles west of here. Grately’s body was
pulped almost beyond recognition and the car was em pty." He
clutched at my arm.
272 OVER THE EDGE

"Nadan, my power has waned; I’m helpless. But you . . . you ve

learnt much during your work here: that was the reason I ad­
vertised for someone like you. Since you are a virgin in the lore,
your first magic must be infinitely more powerful than all of
Calconix’. I tried to keep all the facts from you as long as I could
for I felt that if you learned what was going on before I told you,
you might leave and my last defense vanish. If you have any re­
gard for me, please, help me."
Looking at this weeping old man, I could not help but feel
compassion for him. "What can I do?" I asked.
The words spilled forth in an excited torrent. "He cannot
enter the house—for I’ve charmed each room—save through the
roof and attics as he attempted last night. Once he’s within the
house, though, nothing may hinder him. I know he’ll return to­
night, most likely making for that hole above my room. You'll be
hiding near it on the roof. When you see the statue you must
make Ahbeck’s Eight Dispersion Gestures— a simple spell, but
one which must be recited while the statue is in motion on pain
of your life. Is that clear?”
"Yes, Quarry,” I said evenly. He took hope at that and told
me what I was to do in greater detail. As he talked, a doubt, a
vague suspicion rose in me for he was too anxious to get me on
the roof: the fear that I might refuse was plainly manifest on his
taut face, in his nervously darting eyes. I felt that he was holding
something back, but knew the senselessness of trying to find out
what. He gave me a copy of the incantation I was to employ and
a flashlight; then, asking me to lock his door as I passed by, he
turned to leave. When I inquired why, all he gave me in answer
was a sad smile.
I lingered in the library for a few minutes, meditating on
what I had undertaken. It was all so strange. I was not afraid,
but was prey to an almost indescribable feeling— like that of a
 CASTING THE STONE 273

man who, once a skeptic, has come face to face with all the hor­
rors he has denied. Here I was, setting out to do battle with a
creature of arcane lore with only a scrap of paper and a fright­
ened man’s faith. I would never be the same again, knowing
what I had seen and read and now was going to do . . . I col­
lected my material and went up the stairs toward the attics. As
I passed by Quarry’s door, I fumbled in my pocket for the key,
but found that in my preoccupation I had forgotten it. I did
not think it mattered, though, for once again he had bolted it
on the inside.
Having clambered through the trap door out onto the vast
slope of the roof, I stopped for a moment to gaze at the north­
ernmost roof-ridge where I thought I saw something looming
blackly against the convoluted storm clouds. I blinked my eyes,
trying to focus them in the dimness, but, when I looked again,
there was not anything. The wind whipped and plucked at me
as I half-slid, half-crawled down the slate incline to a point near
the patched hole. This was on a slighter incline than the slope
I had just left and was a relatively blind area, only the western
peak being in sight.
I laid out my flashlight and the notebook in which the spell
was written—though I already had it memorized—and settled
down for my lonely vigil. The pallid, half-light waned and the
deeper shades of evening began to dose down about me. A fine
rain started to trickle down, making the slates damp and even
more uncomfortable. The heavens rumbled distantly to the pip­
ing of the wind.
The first warning I had that something was approaching came
when several pieces of slate came rattling down out of the dark­
ness to land at my feet. I leaped up, peering into the rain-swept
gloom. There, about five feet away, I made out a mantislike fig­
ure moving slowly toward me. Groping for the flash, I began to
274 OVER THE EDGE

make the preliminary signs while the words poured forth almost
of their own volition:
"Pctlas aron ozinovmi, baske bantu tudan don as . . ■”
My fingers tore at the button and the light shone forth, full
into the face of . . . Quarry! His hair dripped with moisture. His
eyes were dull, vacant. He shuffled toward me queerly.
"Quarry!" I shouted above the wind and rain that had begun
to stream down. "What are you doing here? Get back, man; it’s
about time!"
"Yes," he repeated tonelessly. "It is time. Time I made re­
compense for my deed. Calconix summons me now as he has
summoned before. I must go. But before I go unto the Master,
I must destroy you, who endangers his power.” And with that he
lashed out at me with the poker he had been holding behind his
back.
Fire exploded in my left hand as the iron smashed against it
and sent the flash spinning off into the night like an errant star.
I sprang back, staggering on the slippery slates. The poker hissed
past my face and my blood turned to ice. I could just make out
the dim figure with its arm held high for another blow. Hurling
myself at him, I grabbed at his arm and smashed my fist into that
leonine face. W ith a snarl he stumbled and we both fell to the
slates, rolling over and over toward the roof’s edge. I heard the
poker go clanging off into the wet darkness. Quarry began beat­
ing my head furiously against the slates. My hands clutched at
his scrawny throat; my fingers sank deep. He started to wheeze,
but his struggles only increased in ferocity, so that even then I
had to marvel at the man's strength.
Then there occurred that which is graven deeply on my
brain, the thing I will never be able to forget. A massive shadow
loomed over Quarry. A glistening ebon arm curled itself around
his neck and jerked him with a strangled cry off my chest.
 CASTING THE STONE 275

Though glinting spirals of light spun before my eyes—the results

of Quarry’s blows—I was still able to see the two figures locked
in mortal combat at the roofedge: Quarry, whose terror-stricken
face and attitude of hopeless despair haunt me yet, and the ebon
giant, the living statue animated by a dead necromancer, with its
serene countenance twisted in a livid expression of hate, the
eyes pinpoints of golden flame. Before I could move or utter a
word, they hurtled off into space; for the rest of the night I
think I just crouched there, weeping . . .
Little more remains to be said. I found Quarry’s broken body
and the statue where they lay on the walk in front of the house
the next morning. Quarry's body I buried in an unmarked
grave east of the Hall. I destroyed all the pieces of the statue
in the proper manner—all the pieces, that is, save the right
hand. This I hunted for in the weeds and bushes that bordered
the house and beneath the sinister pines, but could not find any­
where. Then, on a sudden hunch, I ran into the house and up to
the library where I found the missing object. It lay on the desk
near the doorway with my pen clutched in its tapering fingers.
On a sheet of typing paper in a spidery script was written a gro­
tesque, but fitting epitaph:
" W h o killed me, killed h im s e lf.”
 M ichael Bailey (1944- ) is a young Wisconsin writer, attend­
ing the University of Wisconsin. This is his first published story.

Aneanosbian
M ichael Bailey

Only now, months after the events which brought me to the

threshold of death, can I bear to set down the sequence of hap­
penings leading up to that fateful occurrence in northern W is­
consin, where I had grown accustomed to vacationing at an iso­
lated cabin in well forested country which abounded in fresh
streams among which I spent many hours with my books as my
only companions. It was there one day last June that I set off
shortly before noon for the rest of the day in the woods—a day
of gentle breezes and warming sun, following hours of rain the
previous day.
I made my way towards a hill beyond a pond wdiere the frogs
were celebrating yesterday’s rainfall. What drew me to that goal
was an ancient edifice in the very center of the immense forest
overwhelming the hilltop. When first I had bought my cabin
three summers before, I had discovered the structure, which
 ANEANOSHIAN 277

seemed to be akin to a temple, when I ventured into the forest

along a trail so completely over-run and arbored over that only
a dim, perpetual twilight managed to reach the ground. The
trail, practically invisible from more than a few feet away, had
evidently not been used for decades, perhaps centuries; it was
directly opposite the side from which I first entered upon the
scene. At that time, after walking two miles through the forest,
I came into a clearing over two hundred yards in diameter. This
clearing, strewn with fallen trees, crowned the hill, and the an­
cient edifice lay at its heart.
The building had no design, only size; still, judging by its struc­
ture, it seemed to be some kind of temple. It was almost a per­
fect cube, fifty feet wide on every side. I found no distinguishing
characteristics which would help to identify it, though every side
was broken by a twenty-five-foot wide flight of hewn steps that
met at the top, allowing a square summit of ten-foot sides. It
seemed to be hewn out of a solid stone. No subsequent search
through such archeological references as I had at hand offered
me a clue to its origin; nor did a team of archaeologists I per­
suaded to examine the temple reach any conclusion about it. In
spite of hundreds of small pits sunk around the edifice in an at­
tempt to find artifacts, nothing except a few human bones could
be found. By radio-carbon dating, their ages were determined as
between eight and ten thousand years. No association could be
established between ancestors of the Algonquin Indians, which
were native to that place, and the curious temple-structure, but
it did play a role in their legendry, which had it that the edifice
had been constructed by an obscure people in worship of a being
called Aneanoshian. There was no key to what Aneanoshian rep­
resented, if an ancient deity.
On that eventful June morning, as the hour approached noon,
I reached the structure in the clearing, where I had frequently
278 OVER THE EDGE

paused to read before. I walked up the uneven steps, and, reach­

ing the top, took a small pillow and blanket out of my satchel,
put them down on the rough stone, and lay there to read. There
I read for perhaps two hours, broken by lunch, before I fell
asleep under the relaxing summer sun.
When I awoke, darkness had fallen. But it could not have been
long dark, for the full moon rode just above the eastern horizon,
and a faint afterglow still lingered in the west. Darkness did not
disturb me; I could find my way back, I was confident, though I
had never left the area so late before. I anticipated the slow walk
back to my cabin among the flutings and croakings of frogs and
the occasional crying of nocturnal birds.
I was just about to start down the temple toward the path
beyond the clearing when I was aware of a curious apprehension
in the conviction that I was being watched. I had felt it hunting
cougars in the western states; the feeling was unmistakable. I
whirled to face what I was certain was a predatory animal
crouched directly behind me on the edge of the temple’s sum­
mit. Nothing was there. Yet I was reluctant to believe that no
animal lurked nearby, however absurd the idea would have
seemed by day.
Carefully avoiding all movement. I sat quietly, attempting to
hear the betraying scuffing of an animal's padded feet. I strained
to the utmost before I heard it rising. It came of a sudden, as if
the beast had waited in ambush and then begun its charge, ram­
paging across the clearing and up the stone steps. I had nothing
with which to defend myself, but turned nevertheless, prepared
to do battle with my bare hands. Once again nothing but empty
space was there. And, hard upon my turning, again came a rush
from behind, from a new direction. And again, nothing!
Apprehension burgeoned into fear. By the light of the full
moon, I surveyed the clearing. No animal could be seen. Yet the
 ANEANOSHIAN 279

gathering, the rapid rush, the sudden retreat—all were unmistak­

able. There was no place for any sizable animal to hide between
the forest and the structure on which I stood.
Gathering my courage, I raced down the temple steps, and
stopped there to build a small fire, out of which I made a torch
of several branches in agonizing haste, for I was never uncon­
scious of being watched. W ith the torch, I ran towards the path.
As I burst into the pathway, my torch light penetrated the black­
ness to the first turn. I expected to see eyes glaring at me from
there. I saw nothing. And then the rush came upon me down the
tunnel behind!
I turned, holding the torch high. Once more the retreat was
audible, and once more nothing was visible. I wheeled and be­
gan to run with every ounce of energy I could summon towards
the end of the tunnel-like path, while the forest, now suddenly
hideous with menace, pushed in upon me from all sides. All
along the course I took, I was conscious of the rushing in and
the retreating of some great invisible beast I could hear but could
not see.
After an hour of breathless flight, stumbling over fallen boles
and limbs, I had not reached the safety of the opening from the
forest. I pushed on, less certainly, doubting my senses, in an
agony of fear, while my torch burned low, and the nerve-rend­
ing rushes toward me continued—and came suddenly once again
upon the edifice in the clearing. I had run almost across the
clearing before I realized what had happened.
And I had entered from the west, though the clearing never
had more than the one path from the east! What blasphemy was
this? I stood for a moment trying to understand; I could not. Nor
could I again enter the forest, certain as I was that the same
maze would engulf me again. I gathered an armful of dead wood
from the fallen trees lying about the structure and carried it to
280 OVER THE EDGE

the top. Back and forth I went until I had a pile of firewood
that would be enough to keep a fire burning many hours.
Conscious of the thing’s lying waiting just out of the moon­
light somewhere, I started the fire. As the warm rays of heat slowly
increased, my fear diminished a little—but only for a little while,
for once again came that frightening rush. Yet this time I seemed
to detect even more hesitation than I had noticed before, and it
occurred to me that the creature, whatever it was, disliked the
fire. Thankfully, I went as close to the flames as I could before
turning to face the foe who must surely be lurking at the base of
the stone structure which had now become my refuge.
And then I saw the trees—the trees and the forest pushing in
and the horrible, groping tendrils slithering through the moon­
light toward the temple. Before me rose an immense wall which
resembled a school of octopi writhing blindly. Impulsively, I
bent, grasped a burning branch, and flung it down the steps at
the advancing tendrils.
Instantly the mass of malevolent feelers exploded backwards.
The beast must have had a fear of fire as of something mortal.
Intoxicated by this discovery, I threw brand after brand at the
writhing mass, and each time the trees drew back, ever farther.
But I forgot to cover my rear, and did not notice the malign ad­
vance of the trees from that quarter until they were almost upon
me, turning only just in time to throw a piece of burning wood
at the tendrils and limbs closing down upon me.
I saw now that the wall of trees was advancing from all sides,
and that no matter how much I fed the fire I had started, I would
run out of wood before the sun rose to immobilize the trees. And
my shoulders already ached, while every nerve in my blistered
hands shrieked for respite.
Then it occurred to me that somehow I must fire the wood
lying at the base of the temple. Most of the brands I had previ-
 ANEANOSHIAN 281

ously thrown had landed on the bare soil beyond the wood, but
now I saw that in one or two places where the brands had fallen
short, dames were already licking up in the wood lying there. I
threw more fiery pieces down among the wood, and presently
saw that the flames were rising gratifyingly in several places. I
managed at last—between throwing firebrands at the looming for­
est—to fire a circle of wood about the temple.
The forest retreated. For a little while I felt comparatively
safe. Yet the hour was now almost three o'clock in the morning,
and there was not enough wood left on the top of the temple to
see me through until morning. And, because I had fired what
lay immediately adjacent to the temple, there was no more to
be had within ready reach. Moreover, I was now virtually ex­
hausted, and as I contemplated the monstrous size of the beast
that was Aneanoshian, waiting to claim another victim as others
must have died centuries before when the temple was erected for
its worship, I knew I must break and run.
I snatched up two long flaming brandies and ran down the
steps. I raced through the burning wood and directly tow-ard
the waiting forest, whose breathing I could hear like that of a
lurking animal, a hush and susurrus, as of wind in the pines. I
felt the forest move toward me, move back—but somehow one of
the branches I carried reached to the coniferous limbs, and the
forest caught fire. I heard its voice in one great agonizing scream
and jumped back, panic-stricken, dropping the burning branches
I carried. I bounded back to the temple and up the steps, where
I fell upon the stone, my heart pounding like a drum in my
temples.
The fire leapt from treetop to tree-top, all around the forest
which was even now’ pressing in toward me. I think I screamed.
I no longer remember. I know only that as the flaming trees bent
toward me, I was aware of their agony, as keenly as if it were my
282 OVER THE EDGE

own, and, as the flaming branches fell on all sides of me, I col­
lapsed into unconsciousness, even as the flaming tentacles of
Aneanoshian were climbing up the sides of the temple in a final
effort to reach me.

When I finally regained consciousness, the forest lay in ruins

beneath the phantom moonlight and the iridescence of the
dawn. Only a few wisps of smoke curled into the sky from the
smouldering remains of trees and great trunks. Perhaps the fire
had burned the lurking beast and its malignance forever. I could
not know. I know only that I was found by the fire-fighters who
had come to fight the spreading flames, and that nothing could
ever induce me to return again to the temple on the hill.
 J ohn R amsey C ampbell (19-16- ) lives in Liverpool, England.
He is one of the youngest—and most promising—of the recruits to the
Cthulhu Mythos. Not surprisingly, H. P. Lovecraft was one of his
earliest literary idols, though he is alive to every aspect of creativity
today, from Henry Miller to Ingmar Bergman. He began to write at
seven, and has worked patiently at the construction of a financial
British milieu that is a reflection of the Arkham-Innsmouth-Dunwich
country. His first book, The Inhabitant o f the [Link] and Less Welcome
Tenants, was published this pear by Arkham House.

on
J. Ramsey Campbell

Arriving home that night, Michael Nash thought at first that

his father svas asleep.
Dr. Stanley Nash, his father, was lying back in an armchair
in the living-room. On the table beside lam stood an empty glass,
propping up a sealed envelope, and near these lay a library book.
It was all quite ordinary, and Michael only glanced at him before
entering the kitchen in search of coffee. Fifteen minutes later he
tried to wake his father, and realized what the contents of the
glass must have been.
284 OVER THE EDGE

Nash sensed the events of the next few days with numbed
nerves. W hile he realized that any further evidence he might give
would be disbelieved, he heard the words "suicide while the bal­
ance of the mind was disturbed" with a feeling of guilt; he fin­
gered that envelope in his pocket, but forced himself to keep it
there. After that arrived those people who saw their admiration
of Nash's medical ability as a pretext for taking a half-day off
work; then the largely incomprehensible funeral service, the rat­
tle of earth on wood, and the faster journey home.
Various duties prevented Michael Nash from examining his
father's papers until October 27, 1962. He might not have
plunged into them even then, but for the explicit injunction in
his father's final note. Thus it was that as the sun flamed redly
on the windows of Gladstone Place, Nash sat in the study of No. 6,
with the envelope open before him on the desk and the enclosed
sheet spread out for reading.
"My recent research” (Michael read) "has pried into regions
whose danger I did not realize. You know enough of these hid­
den forces which I have attempted to destroy to see that, in cer­
tain cases, death is the only way out. Something has fastened it­
self upon me, but I will suicide before its highest pitch of potency
is reached. It has to do with the island beyond Severnford, and
my notes and diary will furnish more details than I have time to
give. If you want to carry on my work, confine vourself to other
powers—and take my case as a warning not to go too far.”
That was all; and no doubt man)- people would have torn
up the letter. But Michael Nash knew enough of the basis of his
father's beliefs not to treat them lightly; indeed, he held the same
creeds. From an early age he had read his father’s secret library
of rare books, and from these had acquired an awareness which
the majority of people never possess. Even in the modern office
 THE STONE ON THE ISLAND 285

building where he worked or in the crowded streets of central

Brichester, he could sense things drifting invisibly whose exist­
ence the crowd never suspected; and he knew very well of the
hidden forces which clustered about a house in Victoria Road,
a demolished wall at the bottom of Mercy Hill, and such towns
as Clotton, Temphill and Goatswood. So he did not scoff at his
father’s last note, but only turned to the private papers kept in
the study.
In the desk drawer he found the relevant documents, inside a
file cover covertly removed from his office building. The file con­
tained a photograph of the island beyond Severnford by day­
light, snapped from the Severn bank and hence undetailed; an­
other photograph, taken by a member of the Society for Psychical
Research, of the island with dim white ovals floating above it,
more likely reflexions on the camera lens than psychic manifes­
tations, but inexplicable enough to be reported in the B richester
W eekly S e n s; and several sheets of notepaper inscribed in vari­
colored inks. To these pages Michael turned.
The writing consisted of a description of the island and a
chronology of various events connected with it. "Approx. 200 ft.
across, roughly circular. Little vegetation except short grass.
Ruins of Roman temple to unnamed deity at center of island
(top of slight h ill). Opp. side of hill from Severnford, about 35
ft. down, artificial hollow extending back 10 ft. and containing
stone.
"Island continuously site of place of worship. Poss. pre-Ro­
man nature deity (stone predates Roman occupation); then Ro­
man temple built. In medieval times witch supposed to live on
island. In 17th cent, witchcult met there and invoked water ele-
mentals. In all cases ston e ai aided. Circa 1790 witch-cult dis­
banded, but stray believers continued to visit.
286 OVER THE EDGE

"1803: Joseph Norton to island to worship. Found soon after

in Severnford, mutilated and raving about going too near to
stone’. Died same day.
"1804: Recurring stories of pale object floating over island.
Vaguely globular and inexplicably disturbing.
"1827: Nevill Rayner, clergyman at Severnford, to island ('I
must rid my flock of this evil’ ). Found in church the day after,
alive but mutilated.
"1856: Attempt by unknown tramp to steal boat and spend
night on island. Returns frantically to Severnford, but will only
say that something had 'fluttered at him' as he grounded the boat.
"1866: Prostitute strangled and dumped on island, but regains
consciousness. Taken off by party of dockside workers and trans­
ported to Brichester Central Hospital. Two days later found hor­
ribly mutilated in hospital ward. Attacker never discovered.
"1870: onward: Recrudescence of rumors about pale globes
on island.
"1890: Alan Thorpe, investigating local customs, visits island.
Removes stone and takes it to London. Three days later is found
wounded horribly—and stone is back on island.
"1930: Brichester University students visit island. One is
stranded by others as joke. Taken off in morning hysterical con­
dition over something he has seen. Four days later runs scream­
ing from Mercy H ill Hospital, and is-run over. Mutilations not
all accounted for by car accident.
"To date no more visits to island—generally shunned.”
So much for the historical data; now Nash hunted for the
diary to clarify this synopsis. But the diary was not to be found
in the study, nor indeed in the house, and he had learned very
little about the island. But what he had learned did not seem
particularly frightening. After all, perhaps his father had 'gone
too near the stone', whatever that meant, which he was not go­
 THE STONE ON THE ISLAND 287

ing to do; further, he would take some of the five-pointed stones

from the study cupboard; and there was always the Saaamaaa
Ritual if things got too dangerous. He most certainly must go,
for this thing on the island had driven his father to poison him­
self, and might do worse if not stopped. It was dark now, and he
did not intend to make a nocturnal trip; but tomorrow, Sunday,
he would hire a boat and visit the island.
On the edge of the docks next day he found a small hut
("H ire a boat and see the Severn at its best!") where he paid
7/6 and was helped into a rather wet, rather unpainted motor-
boat, He spun the wheel and hissed through the water. Upriver
the island climbed into-view and rushed at him. At the top of its
hill stood an isolated fragment of temple wall, but otherwise it
was only a green dome round which water rippled, with faint
connotations of a woman in the bath. He twisted the wheel and
the island hurried to one side. The boat rounded the verdant
tip; lie switched off the motor, pulled the boat inshore and
grounded it; he looked up, and there, glimmering faintly from
the shadow)- hollow, was the stone.
It was caned of some white rock, in the shape of a globe sup­
ported by a small pillar. Nash noticed at once its vaguely lumi­
nous quality; it seemed to flicker dimly, almost as if continually
appearing and vanishing. And it looked very harmless and pur­
poseless. Further up the hill he momentarily thought something
pale wavered; but his sharp glance caught nothing.
His hand dosed on the five-pointed star he carried, but he did
not draw it out. Instead, a sudden feeling engulfed him that he
could not approach that stone, that he was physically incapable
of doing so. He could not move his foot—but, with a great effort,
he managed to lift it and take a step forward. He forced himself
toward the stone, and succeeded in pushing himself within a foot
of it. However, while he might have reached it, he was unable to
288 OVER THE EDGE

touch it. His hand could not reach out—but he strained it out
trembling, and one finger poked tire hard surface. A shiver of
cold ran up his arm, and that was all.
Immediately he knew that he had done the wrong thing. The
whole place seemed to grow dark and cold, and somewhere there
was a faint shifting noise. Without knowing why, Nash threw
himself back from the stone and stumbled down the hill to the
boat. He started the motor, slammed the wheel left and cut aw-ay
through the water—and not until the island had dropped out of
sight did he begin to approach the bank.

"You didn’t have to come back to work so soon, you know."

"I know,” Nash said, "but I think I'll feel better here," and he
crossed to his desk. The post had mounted up, he noted dis­
gustedly, though there were few enough pieces to suggest that
someone had tried to help him out—Gloria, probably. He began
to sort the bits of paper into order; Ambrose Dickens, F. M. Don­
nelly, H. Dyck, Ernest Earl— and having married the post with the
relevant files, he sat dosvn again. The first one only required is­
sue of a form, but one of which he had no stock.
"Baal," he remarked to some perverse deity, and immediately
afterward discovered that Gloria also lacked the form. A search
around the office gained him five or six, but these would not last
iong.
"I think this calls for a trip downstairs," he remarked to Gloria.
"Not today,” she informed him. "Since you've . . . been away,
they've brought in a new arrangement—everybody makes out a
list of what they want, and on Wednesdays one person goes down
and gets the lot. The rest of the time the storeroom is locked."
"Great," said Nash resignedly, "so we have to hang on for
three days. . . . What else has happened?"
"Well, you’ve noticed the new arrival over there—her name's
 THE STONE ON THE ISLAND 289

Jackie—and there's someone new on the third floor too. Don't

know his name, but he likes foreign films, so John got talking to
him at once, of course. . . . "
"Jackie— ’’ he mused. . . Oh hell, that reminds me! I’m sup­
posed to be calling on Jack Purvis today where he works in Cam-
side, to collect some monev he owes me!”
"W ell, what are you going to do?”
"Take the afternoon off, maybe— " and he began to fill in his
leave sheet. He passed the new girl's desk, where John was un­
successfully attempting to discover any interest in Continental
films ("No, Ingm .tr") and continued to a slight argument with
Mr. Faber over his projected leave, finally granted because of his
recent bereavement.
That afternoon he collected the debt in Camside and caught
the bus home. It was dark by the time the vehicle drew up at the
bottom of Mercy Hill, and the streets were almost deserted. As
he climbed the hill his footsteps clattered back from the three-
storey walls, and he slipped on the frost which was beginning to
glisten in the pavement's pores. Lunar sickles echoed from Glad­
stone Place's windows and slid from the panes of the front door
as he opened it. He hung up his coat, gathered the envelopes
from the doormat and. peeling one open, entered the living-room
and switched on the light.
He saw immediately the face watching him between the cur­
tains.
For a minute Nash considered the courses open to him. He
could turn and run from the house, but the intruder would then
be free in the building—and besides he did not like to turn his
back. The telephone was in the study, and hc-ncc- inaccessible. He
saw the one remaining course in detail, came out of his trance
and, grabbing a poker from the fireplace, slowly approached the
curtains, staring into the other's eyes.
290 OVER THE EDGE

"Come out,” he said, "or I'll split your head with this. I mean
that.”
The eyes watched him unmoving, and there was no motion
under the curtain.
"If you don’t come out now— ” Nash warned again.
He waited for some movement, then swung the poker at the
point behind the curtain where he judged the man's stomach to
be. There was no response from the face, but a tinkle of glass
sounded. Confused, Nash poised the poker again and, with his
other hand, wrenched the curtains apart.
Then he screamed.
The face hung there for a moment, then fluttered out through
the broken pane.

Next morning, after a sleepless and hermetic night, Nash de­

cided to go to the office.
On the bus, after a jolt of memory caused by the conductor’s
pale reflexion, he could not avoid thoughts of last night's events.
That they were connected with the island beyond Severnford he
did not doubt; he had acted unwisely there, but now he knew to
be wary. He must take every precaution, and that was why he
was working today; to barricade his sanity against the interloper.
He carried a five-pointed star in his pocket, and clutched it as he
left the bus.
The lift caught him up and raised him to the fourth floor. He re­
turned greetings automatically as he passed desks, but his face
stiffened any attempted smile, and he was sure that everybody
wondered "W hat’s wrong with Mike this morning?” Hanging up
his coat, he glanced at the teapot, and remembered that he and
Gloria were to make it that week.
Many of the files on his desk, he saw bitterly, related to cases
needing that elusive form. He wandered down to the third floor,
 THE STONE ON THE ISLAND 291

borrowed a few copies, and on the way out noticed someone’s

back view which seemed unfamiliar—the new arrival, he realized,
and headed for the lift.
"W ell,” Gloria broke in some time later, "I'd better collect the
cups.”
Nash collected the teapot and followed her out. In a room at
the end of the passage water bubbled in a heater, and the room’s
doorway gaped iightlessly. His thoughts turned to his pocket as
he switched on the light. They filled up the pot and transferred
the tea to the cups.
"I’ll take our end of the office,” he remarked, and balanced the
tray into the office.
Two faces were pressed against the window, staring in at him.
He managed to save the tray, but one cup toppled and inun­
dated Mr. Faber's desk. "Sorry—I'm sorry—here, let me mop it
up, quick,” he said hurriedly, and the faces rippled horribly in
a stray breeze. Thinking in a muddled way of the things outside
the window, the pentacle in his pocket, and the disgust of Mr.
Faber’s client on receiving teastained correspondence, he splashed
the tray to the remaining desks and positioned his and Gloria’s
cups atop their beermats.
He glared for a minute into the bizarrely-set eyes beyond the
pane, noticed a pigeon perched on the opposite roof, and turned
to Gloria. "W hat's wrong with that pigeon?” lie inquired, point­
ing with an unsteady finger. The faces must block any view of the
bird from her desk.
"What, that one over there? I don’t see anything wrong with
it,” she replied, looking straight through the faces.
"Oh, I . . . just thought it was injured,” answered Nash, un­
able to frame any further remark (A m I g o in g m ad or w hat?) —
and the telephone rang. Gloria glanced at him qucstioningly, then
lifted the receiver. "Good morning, can I help you?” she asked,
292 OVER THE EDGE

and scribbled on a scrap of paper. "And your initials? Yes, hold

on a minute, please. . . . G. F. E. Dickman’s one of yours, isn’t it,
Mike?"
"What? . . . Oh, yes," and he extracted the file and, one eye
on the silent watchers outside, returned to his desk. ( For God s
sake, they're only looking—not d o in g anything!) "Hello— Mr.
Dickman?”
", . . My . . . married recently . . filtered through office mur­
mur and client’s mumble.
"Would you like to speak up, please? I’m afraid I can’t hear
you." The faces wavered toward the point where his gaze was
resolutely fixed.
"My son Da— . . . "
"Could you repeat your son’s name, please?” The faces fol­
lowed his fugitive glance.
"What d'ya say?"
"Could you repeat that, please!" (Leave me alone, you bas­
tards! )
"My son D avid, I said! If I’d known this was all I’d get, I’d
of come round meself!"
"W ell, I might suggest that the next time you call, you take a
few elocution lessons first!— Hello?" . . . He let the receiver click
back listlessly, and the faces were caught by the wind and flapped
away over the rooftops.
Gloria said: "Oh, Mike, what did you do?"
The rest of the morning passed quickly and unpleasantly. Mr.
Faber became emphatic over the correct way to treat clients, and
several other people stopped in passing to remark that they
wished they had the courage to answer calls that way ("Everyone
seems to have forgotten about your father," said Gloria.) But one
o’clock arrived at last, and Nash left for the canteen. He still
looked round sharply at every reflexion in a plate-glass window,
 THE STONE ON THE ISLAND 293
but managed to forget temporarily in a search around the book­
shops for the new Lawrence Durrell, with the awareness of his
pocket’s contents comforting him.
At two o’clock he returned to the office. At three he managed
to transport the tray without mishap; at four, unknown to Nash,
a still enraged G. F. E. Dickman arrived, and at four-thirty left,
a little mollified. A few minutes later came a phone message
from Mr. Miller.
"W ell, Mr. Nash," said Mr. Miller, sitting back in his chair,
"I believe you had a little trouble this morning. With a Mr. Dick­
man, I think. I hear you got a bit impatient with him."
"I'm afraid that's true." Nash agreed. "You see, he was mum­
bling so much I couldn't make it out, and he got disagreeable
when I asked him to speak up.”
"Ah . . . yes, I know," Mr. M iller interrupted, "but I think
you said a little more to him than that. Er—abusive language.
W ell, now, I know I feel myself like saying a few things to some
of the people who phone, but I feel this isn’t the way. . . . Is
something the matter?" He followed Nash’s gaze to the window
and turned back to him. "Anything wrong?"
"No . . . no, nothing at all." ( T hree now? God, how many of
them are there?)
"W ell, as I was saying, there’s a right and a wrong way to han­
dle clients. I know 'the customer is always right’ is a stock
phrase— it often isn't true here anyway, as you know—but we
must try and avoid any direct offence. That only leads to ill feel­
ing, and that won’t do anybody any good. Now, I had Mr. Dick­
man round here this afternoon, and I found it quite hard to
smooth him down. I hope I won't have to do it again."
"Yes, I realize how you feel," Nash answered, peering fran­
tically at the window, "but you must understand my situation."
"W hat situation is that?"
294 OVER THE EDGE

"W ell, since my father died . . . That is, the way he died— ”
"Oh, of course I realize that, but really you can’t make it the
excuse for everything."
"W ell, if that’s your stupid opinion— !”
Mr. Miller looked up, but said nothing.
"All right," Nash said wearily. "I'm sorry, but—you know— ’’
"Of course,” Mr. M iller replied coldly. "But I would ask you to
use a little more tact in future."
Something white bobbed outside the pane and disappeared
in the distance.

That night, despite the strain of the day, Nash slept. He woke
frequently from odd dreams of the stone and of his father with
some mutilation he could never remember on waking. But when
he boarded the bus the next day he felt few qualms when he re­
membered the haunters; he wras more disturbed by the tensions
he was building up in the office. After all, if the faces were con­
fining themselves to mental torture, he was growing almost used
to them by now. Their alienness repulsed him, but he could bear
to look at them; and if they could attack him physically, surely
they would already have done so.
The lift hummed sixty feet. Nash reached his desk via the
cloak-room, found the Dickman file still lying before him and
slung it viciously out of his way. He stared at the heap of files
awaiting forms to he issued, then involuntarily glanced out of the
window.
"Never mind,” Gloria remarked, her back to the radiator.
"You’ll be able to stock up on those forms today."
At ten o’clock Mr. Faber looked up over the tea-tray: "I won­
der if you’d mind going down for the stock today?"
At 10:10, at ter spending ten minutes over his own cup, Nash
rose with a wry grin at Gloria and sank in the lift. The storeroom
seemed deserted, brooding silently, but as the door was open he
 THE STONE ON THE ISLAND 29^

entered and began to search for items on the list.' He dragged a

stepladder into one of the aisles and climbed to reach stocks of
the elusive forms. He leaned over, looked down, and saw the
fourth face staring up at him from the darkness of the other aisle.
He withdrew his hand from the shelf and stared at the pale
visage. For a moment there was total silence—then the thing's
lips twitched and the mouth began to open.
He knew he would not be able to bear the thing’s voice—and
what it might say. He drew back his foot and kicked the watcher
in the eye. drew it back and kicked again. The face fell out of
the orifice and Nash heard a thud on the other side of the shelves.
A faint unease overtook Nash. He clattered down the ladder,
turned into the next aisle and pulled the hanging light cord. For
a moment he glared at the man's body lying on the floor, at the
burst eyeball and the general appearance which too late he
vaguely recognized, and remembered Gloria’s remark: "There’s
somebody new on the third floor”— and then he fled. He threw
open the door at the far end of the room, reeled down the back
stairs and out the rear entrance, and jumped aboard the first bus
out of Brichester. He should have hidden the body—he realized
that as soon as he had paid his fare, for someone (please, not
Gloria!) would soon go to the storeroom in search of Nash or the
other, and make a discovery—but it was too late now. All he
could do was get out at the terminus and hide there. He looked
back as if to glimpse the situation in the office building, and saw
the four faces straggling whitely after him over the metal bus-
roofs.
The bus, he realized on reaching the terminus, went as far as
Severnford.
Though it lost him all sharp outlines, he removed his spectacles
and strolled with stiff facial muscles for some time. On the the­
ory that anything in plain sight is invisible to the searcher, he
explored bookshops and at twelve o'clock headed for the Har­
296 OVER THE EDGE

rison Hotel at the edge of dockland. Three-and-a-half hours went

quickly by, broken only by a near-argument with a darts-player
seeking a partner and unable to understand Nash’s inability to
see the board. Nash reminded himself not to draw attention in
any circumstances, and left.
A cinema across the road caught his eye, and he fumbled with
his wallet. It should be safe to don his glasses now, he thought,
put them on—and threw himself back out of sight of the police­
man talking at the paybox.
Where was there left to hide? ( And what about tomorrow' . . . ? )
He hurried away from the cinema and searched for another book­
shop, a library even—and two streets away discovered a grimy li­
brary, entered and browsed ticketless. How long, he wondered,
before the librarian approached with a "can I be of any assist­
ance?" and acquired an impression which he might later trans­
mit to the police? But five-thirty arrived and no help had been
offered; even though he had a grim few minutes as he passed the
librarian who, seeing him leave with no book apparent, might
have suspected him of removing a volume under cover of his
coat.
He continued his journey in the same direction, and the lamp-
posts moved further apart, the streets narrowed and the road­
ways grew rougher. Nearby ships blared out of the night, and
somewhere above him a child was crying. Nobody passed him,
though occasionally someone peered languidly from a doorway
or street-corner.
The houses clustered closer, more narrow' arched passages ap­
peared between them, more lampposts were twisted or lightless,
and still he event on—until he realized with a start, on reaching
a hill and viewing the way ahead, that the streets soon gave out.
He could not bring himself to cross open country at night just
yet, and turned to an alley on the left— and w-as confronted with
 THE STONE ON THE ISLAND 297

red-glowing miniature fires and dull black-leather shadows. No,

that was not the way. He struck off through another alley, past
two high-set gas lamps and was suddenly on the bank of the Se­
vern.
A wind blew icily over the water, rippling it and stirring the
weeds. A light went out somewhere behind him, the water
splashed nearby, and five faces rose from the river.
They fluttered toward him on a glacial breeze. He stood and
watched as they approached, spreading in a semicircle, a circle,
closing the circle, rustling pallidly. He threw out his arms to
ward them off, and touched one with his left hand. It was cold
and wet—the sensations of the grave. He screamed and hit out,
but the faces still approached, one settling over his face, the other
following, and a clammy film choked his mouth and nose so that
he had no chance to scream, even to breathe until they had fin­
ished.
When the Severnford police found him, he could do nothing
but scream. The)- did not connect him at first with the murderer
for whom the Brichester constabulary were searching; and when
the latter identified him he could not of course be prosecuted.
'T ve never seen anything like it,” said Inspector Daniels from
Brichester.
"W ell, we try to keep these dockside gangs under control,”
said Inspector Blackwood of Severnford, "but people get beaten
up now and then—nothing like this though . . . But you can be
sure we'll find the attacker, even so.”
They have not yet found the attacker. Inspector Blackwood
suspected homicidal mania at first, but there was no similar crime.
But he does not like to think that even Severnford's gangs would
be capable of such a crime. It would, he contends, take a very
confirmed and accomplished sadist to remove, cleanly in one
piece, the skin of a man's face.
the book’s editor), August Derleth,
and is in the authentic and spine-
chilling vein: a possession. But there
are benign ghosts in the collection
too: the father who returns to keep a
helpful eye on how his family are
running his farm; the mother who
returns to care for her sick child; and
there’s a whole benign oasis, to save
an Arab who is dying of thirst. Then,
to redress the balance again, there
are tales of monstrous evil, of the
power of an Inca curse which spans
the centuries, the powers of necro­
mancy and of vampires.
The collection ranges from the
last prodigious adventure of Robert
E. Howard’s splendidly old-fashioned
hero, Solomon Kane, swashbuckling
and indestructible, to the most sophi­
sticated science fiction of Frank
BelknapLong’s When the Rains Came.
There is an element of science fiction
in Carl Jacobi’s K incaid’s Car too;
but perhaps the remarkable range of
the collection is most strikingly seen
in J. Vernon Shea’s The Old Lady’s
Room and Fritz Leiber’s The Black
Gondolier. The former might fairly
be described as a fine example of the
classic ghost story, and the latter takes
the macabre about as far as it can go.
Its setting is a grim, broken-down
Venice of cement-shell constructions,
oil derricks and heavy wire barricades;
and its ghost is no ordinary one, no
demon or monster, no elemental or
emanation; the consciously hostile
power is quite simply, oil; the life­
blood of our modem technological
culture. This is a book packed with
good stories, all of them guaranteed
to set the scalp tingling and the blood
curdling.