Nightmares & Geezenstacks Read online

  “It was almost as though an ignorant, prejudiced, opinionated man, narrow-minded in every way, had miraculously been given the power to sway most of the population, able to impress his narrow hatreds upon all, or almost all, of those who listened. The few who were immune, battling terrific odds, saved the world from Armageddon.

  “The exact manner of his death remains, after all this time, shrouded in mystery. Whether he was killed by a new weapon-destroyed after it had accomplished its purpose—or whether the monstrous thing seen by the throngs in the Bowl was a mere illusion, the trick of a prestidigitator extraordinary, will never be certainly known.”

  The muzzle of the rifle rested on the ledge of the window. Robert Welson steadied it and peered through the telescopic sights. His finger rested against the trigger.

  The voice of the dictator boomed through the speaker “Our day of destiny—” Sentence incompleted, he paused, leaning forward across the table behind which he stood. The audience was hushed, awaiting completion of the sentence before the cheering would rise again.

  The tall man standing behind Robert Welson put an urgent hand on Welson’s shoulder. “Don’t shoot yet,” he whispered. “Something’s happening. Look at the kid, the clairvoyant.”

  Welson turned.

  He saw that the scrawny boy had fallen back into a chair, his muscles rigid. His eyes were closed, his face twisted. His lips writhed as he spoke:

  “They’re there. Near him. Like two shining points of light, only you can’t see them. But there is a point like them—inside John Dix’s head!

  “Talking. They’re talking to him, the two points of light like his point of light. Only not words. But I can get what they’re saying, even if it isn’t words. One of them asks, ‘Why are you here? You seem strange. As though a lesser being had—’ I can’t understand that part of it; there aren’t any words I know that would say it.

  “The thing, the point, inside Dix’s head is answering. It says, ‘I’m trapped here. The matter holds me. The matter and the memories in it hold me prisoner. Can you help me free?’ ”

  “They answer that they will try. They will all three concentrate together. The combined force of the three of them will free him from his prison. They’re trying—”

  Something strange was happening. The dictator was still silent, still leaning forward across the table. Minutes had passed, and he had not moved, had not completed the sentence he had started.

  Robert Welson turned from the kid back to the window again. To see more clearly, he looked through the telescopic sights of the rifle, but his finger wasn’t on the trigger now. Maybe the half-witted kid really had something on the ball. The dictator had never paused that long before.

  Behind him the kid sang out “Free!” as though it were a triumphal thought repeated from somewhere in his brain. And, although the kid couldn’t see out of the window from where he sat, that cry came simultaneously with whatever it was that happened to John Dix.

  Welson gasped, but the sound was lost in the sudden screams and shrieks from the audience in the Bowl.

  With awful suddenness the body of the dictator vanished before their eyes, vanished into a thin white mist that disappeared into the air as his empty clothing fell to the floor.

  But the hideous thing that fell from vanished shoulders and lay in plain sight on the table did not disintegrate at once. It was a hairless, eyeless, almost fleshless, rotting thing that once had been a head.

  THE LITTLE LAMB

  She didn’t come home for supper and by eight o’clock I found some ham in the refrigerator and made myself a sandwich. I wasn’t worried, but I was getting restless. I kept walking to the window and looking down the hill toward town, but I couldn’t see her coming. It was a moonlit evening, very bright and clear. The lights of the town were nice and the curve of the hills beyond, black against blue under a yellow gibbous moon. I thought I’d like to paint it, but not the moon; you put a moon in a picture and it looks corny, it looks pretty. Van Gogh did it in his picture The Starry Sky and it didn’t look pretty; it looked frightening, but then again he was crazy when he did it; a sane man couldn’t have done many of things Van Gogh did.

  I hadn’t cleaned my palette so I picked it up and tried to work a little more on the painting I’d started the day before. It was just blocked in thus far and I started to mix a green to fill in an area but it wouldn’t come right and I realized I’d have to wait till daylight to get it right. Evenings, without natural light, I can work on line or I can mold in finishing strokes, but when color’s the thing, you’ve got to have daylight. I cleaned my messed-up palette for a fresh start in the morning and I cleaned my brushes and it was getting close to nine o’clock and still she hadn’t come.

  No, there wasn’t anything to worry about. She was with friends somewhere and she was all right. My studio is almost a mile from town, up in the hills, and there wasn’t any way she could let me know because there’s no phone. Probably she was having a drink with the gang at the Waverly Inn and there was no reason she’d think I’d worry about her. Neither of us lived by the clock; that was understood between us. She’d be home soon.

  There was half of a jug of wine left and I poured myself a drink and sipped it, looking out the window toward town. I turned off the light behind me so I could better watch out the window at the bright night. A mile away, in the valley, I could see the lights of the Waverly Inn. Garish bright, like the loud juke box that kept me from going there often. Strangely, Lamb never minded the juke box, although she liked good music, too.

  Other lights dotted here and there. Small farms, a few other studios. Hans Wagner’s place a quarter of a mile down the slope from mine. Big, with a skylight; I envied him that skylight. But not his strictly academic style. He’d never paint anything quite as good as a color photograph; in fact, he saw things as a camera sees them and painted them without filtering them through the catalyst of the mind. A wonderful draftsman, never more. But his stuff sold; he could afford a skylight.

  I sipped the last of my glass of wine, and there was a tight knot in the middle of my stomach. I didn’t know why. Often Lamb had been later than this, much later. There wasn’t any real reason to worry.

  I put my glass down in the window sill and opened the door. But before I went out I turned the lights back on. A beacon for Lamb, if I should miss her. And if she should look up the hill toward home and the lights were out, she might think I wasn’t there and stay longer, wherever she was. She’d know I wouldn’t turn in before she got home, no matter how late it was.

  Quit being a fool, I told myself; it isn’t late yet. It’s early, just past nine o’clock. I walked down the hill toward town and the knot in my stomach got tighter and I swore at myself because there was no reason for it. The line of the hills beyond town rose higher as I descended, pointing up the stars. It’s difficult to make stars that look like stars. You’d have to make pinholes in the canvas and put a light behind it. I laughed at the idea—but why not? Except that it isn’t done and what did I care about that. But I thought a while and I saw why it wasn’t done. It would be childish, immature.

  I was about to pass Hans Wagner’s place, and I slowed my steps thinking that just possibly Lamb might be there. Hans lived alone there and Lamb wouldn’t, of course, be there unless a crowd had gone to Hans’s from the inn or somewhere. I stopped to listen and there wasn’t a sound, so the crowd wasn’t there. I went on.

  The road branched; there were several ways from here and I might miss her. I took the shortest route, the one she’d be most likely to take if she came directly home from town. It went past Carter Brent’s place, but that was dark. There was a light on at Sylvia’s place, though, and guitar music. I knocked on the door and while I was waiting I realized that it was the phonograph and not a live guitarist. It was Segovia playing Bach, the Chaconne from the D Minor Partita, one of my favorites. Very beautiful, very fine-boned and delicate, like Lamb.

  Sylvia came to the door and answered my question. No, s
he hadn’t seen Lamb. And no, she hadn’t been at the inn, or anywhere. She’d been home all afternoon and evening, but did I want to drop in for a drink? I was tempted—more by Segovia than by the drink—but I thanked her and went on.

  I should have turned around and gone back home instead, because for no reason I was getting into one of my black moods. I was illogically annoyed because I didn’t know where Lamb was; if I found her now I’d probably quarrel with her, and I hate quarreling. Not that we do, often. We’re each pretty tolerant and understanding—of little things, at least. And Lamb’s not having come home yet was still a little thing.

  But I could hear the blaring juke box when I was still a long way from the inn and it didn’t lighten my mood any. I could see in the window now and Lamb wasn’t there, not at the bar. But there were still the booths, and besides, someone might know where she was. There were two couples at the bar. I knew them; Charlie and Eve Chandler and Dick Bristow with a girl from Los Angeles whom I’d met but whose name I couldn’t remember. And one fellow, stag, who looked as though he was trying to look like a movie scout from Hollywood. Maybe he really was one.

  I went in and, thank God, the juke box stopped just as I went through the door. I went over to the bar, glancing at the line of booths; Lamb wasn’t there.

  I said, “Hi,” to the four of them that I knew, and to the stag if he wanted to take it to cover him, and to Harry, behind the bar. “Has Lamb been here?” I asked Harry.

  “Nope, haven’t seen her, Wayne. Not since six; that’s when I came on. Want a drink?”

  I didn’t, particularly, but I didn’t want it to look as though I’d come solely for Lamb, so I ordered one.

  “How’s the painting coming?” Charlie Chandler asked me.

  He didn’t mean any particular painting and he wouldn’t have known anything about it if he had. Charlie runs the local bookstore and—amazingly—he can tell the difference between Thomas Wolfe and a comic book, but he couldn’t tell the difference between an El Greco and an Al Capp. Don’t misunderstand me on that; I like Al Capp.

  So I said, “Fine,” as one always says to a meaningless question, and took a swallow of the drink that Harry had put in front of me. I paid for it and wondered how long I’d have to stay in order to make it not too obvious that I’d come only to look for Lamb.

  For some reason conversation died. If anybody had been talking to anybody before I came in, he wasn’t now. I glanced at Eve and she was making wet circles on the mahogany of the bar with the bottom of a martini goblet. The olive stirred restlessly in the bottom and I knew suddenly that was the color, the exact color I’d wanted to mix an hour or two ago just before I’d decided not to try to paint. The color of an olive moist with gin and vermouth. Just right for the main sweep of the biggest hill, shading darker to the right, lighter to the left. I stared at the color and memorized it so I’d have it tomorrow. Maybe I’d even try it tonight when I got back home; I had it now, daylight or no. It was right; it was the color that had to be there. I felt good; the black mood that had threatened to come on was gone.

  But where was Lamb? If she wasn’t home yet when I got back, would I be able to paint? Or would I start worrying about her, without reason? Would I get that tightness in the pit of my stomach?

  I saw that my glass was empty. I’d drunk too fast. Now I might as well have another one, or it would be too obvious why I’d come. And I didn’t want people—not even people like these—to think I was jealous of Lamb and worried about her. Lamb and I trusted each other implicitly. I was curious as to where she was and I wanted her back, but that was all. I wasn’t suspicious of where she might be. They wouldn’t realize that.

  I said, “Harry, give me a martini.” I’d had so few drinks that it wouldn’t hurt me to mix them, and I wanted to study that color, intimately and at close hand. It was going to be the central color motif; everything would revolve around it.

  Harry handed me the martini. It tasted good. I swished around the olive and it wasn’t quite the color I wanted, a little too much in the brown, but I still had the idea. And I still wanted to work on it tonight, if I could find Lamb. If she was there, I could work; I could get the planes of color in, and tomorrow I could mold them, shade them.

  But unless I’d missed her, unless she was already home or on her way there, it wasn’t too good a chance. We knew dozens of people; I couldn’t try every place she might possibly be. But there was one other fairly good chance, Mike’s Club, a mile down the road, out of town on the other side. She’d hardly have gone there unless she was with someone who had a car, but that could have happened. I could phone there and find out.

  I finished my martini and nibbled the olive and then turned around to walk over to the phone booth. The wavy-haired man who looked as though he might be from Hollywood was just walking back toward the bar from the juke box and it was making preliminary scratching noises. He’d dropped a coin into it and it started to play something loud and brassy. A polka, and a particularly noisy and obnoxious one. I felt like hitting him one in the nose, but I couldn’t even catch his eye as he strolled back and took his stool again at the bar. And anyway, he wouldn’t have known what I was hitting him for. But the phone booth was just past the juke box and I wouldn’t hear a word, or be heard, if I phoned Mike’s.

  A record takes about three minutes, and I stood one minute of it and that was enough. I wanted to make that call and get out of there, so I walked toward the booth and I reached around the juke box and pulled the plug out of the wall. Quietly, not violently at all. But the sudden silence was violent, so violent that I could hear, as though she’d screamed them, the last few words of what Eve Chandler had been saying to Charlie Chandler. Her voice pitched barely to carry above the din of brass—but she might as well have used a public address system once I’d pulled the juke box’s plug.

  “… may be at Hans’s.” Bitten off suddenly, if she’d intended to say more.

  Her eyes met mine and hers looked frightened.

  I looked back at Eve Chandler. I didn’t pay any attention to Golden Boy from Hollywood; if he wanted to make anything of the fact that I’d ruined his dime, that was his business and he could start it. I went into the phone booth and pulled the door shut. If that juke box started again before I’d finished my call, it would be my business, and I could start it. The juke box didn’t start again.

  I gave the number of Mike’s and when someone answered, I asked, “Is Lamb there?”

  “Who did you say?”

  “This is Wayne Gray,” I said patiently. “Is Lambeth Gray there?”

  “Oh.” I recognized it now as Mike’s voice. “Didn’t get you at first. No, Mr. Gray, your wife hasn’t been here.”

  I thanked him and hung up. When I went out of the booth, the Chandlers were gone. I heard a car starting outside.

  I waved to Harry and went outside. The taillight of the Chandlers’ car was heading up the hill. In the direction they’d have gone if they were heading for Hans Wagner’s studio—to warn Lamb that I’d heard something I shouldn’t have heard, and that I might come there.

  But it was too ridiculous to consider. Whatever gave Eve Chandler the wild idea that Lamb might be with Hans, it was wrong. Lamb wouldn’t do anything like that. Eve had probably seen her having a drink or so with Hans somewhere, sometime, and had got the thing wrong. Dead wrong. If nothing else, Lamb would have better taste than that. Hans was handsome, and he was a ladies’ man, which I’m not, but he’s stupid and he can’t paint. Lamb wouldn’t fall for a stuffed shirt like Hans Wagner.

  But I might as well go home, now, I decided. Unless I wanted to give people the impression that I was canvassing the town for my wife, I couldn’t very well look any farther or ask any more people if they’d seen her. And although I don’t care what people think about me either personally or as a painter, I wouldn’t want them to think I had any wrong ideas about Lamb.

  I walked off in the wake of the Chandlers’ car, through the bright moonlight. I came in
sight of Hans’s place again, and the Chandlers’ car wasn’t parked there; if they’d stopped, they’d gone right on. But, of course, they would have, under those circumstances. They wouldn’t have wanted me to see that they were parked there; it would have looked bad.

  The lights were on there, but I walked on past, up the hill toward my own place. Maybe Lamb was home by now; I hoped so. At any rate, I wasn’t going to stop at Hans’s. Whether the Chandlers had or not.

  Lamb wasn’t in sight along the road between Hans’s place and mine. But she could have made it before I got that far, even if—well, even if she had been there. If the Chandlers had stopped to warn her.

  Three quarters of a mile from the inn to Hans’s. Only one quarter of a mile from Hans’s place to mine. And Lamb could have run; I had only walked.

  Past Hans’s place, a beautiful studio with that skylight I envied him. Not the place, not the fancy furnishings, just that wonderful skylight. Oh, yes, you can get wonderful light outdoors, but there’s wind and dust just at the wrong time. And when, mostly, you paint out of your head instead of something you’re looking at, there’s no advantage to being outdoors at all. I don’t have to look at a hill while I’m painting it. I’ve seen a hill.

  The light was on at my place, up ahead. But I’d left it on, so that didn’t prove Lamb was home. I plodded toward it, getting a little winded by the uphill climb, and I realized I’d been walking too fast. I turned around to look back and there was that composition again, with the gibbous moon a little higher, a little brighter. It had lightened the black of the near hills and the far ones were blacker. I thought, I can do that. Gray on black and black on gray. And, so it wouldn’t be a monochrome, the yellow lights. Like the lights at Hans’s place. Yellow lights like Hans’s yellow hair. Tall, Nordic-Teutonic type, handsome. Nice planes in his face. Yes, I could see why women liked him. Women, but not Lamb.

  I had my breath back and started climbing again. I called out Lamb’s name when I got near the door, but she didn’t answer. I went inside, but she wasn’t there.