Black Gondolier and Other Stories (20 page)

And then I saw the man. He was suspended close to the wall; a drab fearfully emaciated thing whose shrunken face awoke groping, incredulous thoughts in my mind.

Filled with a mad desire to destroy that loathsome web, I stepped forward with upraised sword.

And then my staggered senses reeled at another blow directed at the seat of sanity itself. For the man, whom I thought could be nothing else but dead, spoke. His voice was a thin cracked whisper, but it carried a note of terrible urgency.

“Back, for your life! One touch of these strands, and you would be trapped forever, like a fly. Your sword would be entangled by the very strands it cut. Get that can of heavy grease behind you. There, by the table! Smear your hands and the swordblade with it. And bring the hooked pole that stands in the corner, and those things that look like fire tongs. Smear them with grease too.”

I do not like to think of the next half hour. I have never done work one-tenth as ugly and revolting—and always behind me the threat of the creature's return. Choking on the fetid air and with that fiendish webwork often only a few inches from my body, I hooked and sliced, dodged the flicking ends of cut strands, like a damned soul performing some endless task in hell. I think it was the voice of the man that kept me sane, directing me, warning me, sometimes rambling off, but never ceasing, like the voice of a hypnotist.

“First cut the strands above her head—the inside of the hook is sharp as a sickle. That will bring her down a good three feet. Now the strands below, and then those to either side, one by one. Carefully, man! And watch that loose one swinging by your neck. Flip it to one side so it catches! That's right. Oh, I know how to do this thing backward. A dozen times I've watched him and the beast hang her up there and then hours later, take her down. It's his way of punishing her because she once laughed when Malcolm Orne the midget asked her to marry him. Her mistake was that she fell in love with him after he grew tall, and let him marry her. Through her, he seeks to revenge himself on all womankind. I tell you, to watch that man and beast work together is the most hideous sight in existence. He hasn't let it poison her yet. That distinction is reserved for me. A slight bite produces paralysis—you know the habits of spiders? How they preserve their prey? I was last bitten a month ago. The creature was loose for a while tonight, killed the dog. But he lets it range around pretty freely. Boasts of his power over it.

“Gently now! Mind those strands to the left. There, that's done it. Now pull her away from it. Don't try to lift her. Slowly. Slowly.”

I turned to the task of releasing the man, his voice still directing me. But now it rambled more often on to sidetracks.

“It must be a year I've hung here. And all because I was fool enough to change him from a midget into a giant—and a devil. He's literally no longer human. His schemes are those of a mad malign god. Do you know what he wants to make me do, besides tell him the secret of growth? He wants to force me to search for a
Negative
Growth Factor One, a degenerative hormone, something that will make living things
decrease
evenly in size so that he can infect all mankind with it, in order that he may ultimately rule over a race of pygmies. But I won't! I tell you I won't!” His voice rose in a thin scream of defiance. But his next words were sane again. “More grease on your sword. It's sticking. And now sever that strand to the left, so I swing away from the main web.”

Finally I got him down. He tried to stand, but his wasted limbs would not support him, and with a groan he sank to his knees. I saw that Cynthia Orne had recovered consciousness, and was pushing herself up from the floor. My mind, gradually emerging from the half-hour nightmare of frantic action, was beginning to function under its own power. I realized the danger that remained, and I remembered that Helen was still to be found. Perhaps she had been confined somewhere at the back of the house. I started for the door.

But through that door strode the towering form of Malcolm Orne. In his right hand was a flickering candelabrum. Slung effortlessly over his left arm like a bundle of cloth was a limp form—Helen's. Acting instinctively, I directed the flashlight at his face. It seemed hardly to startle him.

“So the fly has obligingly walked into the spider's parlor,” he murmured, with a laugh. “Most convenient. First the charming Mrs. Egan, who does not like midgets, brought to join my dear brother and wife. Then those black fools finished off for good. And last but not least my dear friend Tom, who used to pity me so much in the old days.”

But now his eyes, despite the dazzling beam of the flashlight, perceived that something was wrong with the web. Helen slipped from his arm as he placed the candelabrum on the table and called peremptorily, “Boy! Boy!”

In that instant I flung the tongs. They struck him full across the forehead, and he swayed like a great tree and crashed headlong to the floor. I snatched up the sword and directed the flashlight at the open door. Then, before I could move to close it, there came a rustling and scurrying, and the horror was upon us.

Big as the dog it had killed, it regarded us from the doorway, its eight reddish eyes glowing evilly. I could see the swollen black abdomen and the black poison-dripping chelicerae, fangs that projected inches forward from its ugly little mouth. Then it struck with a rush, one spring sufficing to carry it across Helen's supine silk-clad form. With instinctive cunning it had chosen me as the most active opponent and therefore the one first to dispose of. Blindly I thrust out my sword, and, as it swerved away from the point, slashed out toward it. The wound it received was only slight, but it scuttled away to the shadows.

Someone was standing beside me. It was Cynthia Orne. Without a word she took the flashlight from me. I never expected such courage from her, but during all that hideous duel she kept the light fixed on the creature, leaving me free to wield the sword alone. The beam never once wavered, nor did the creature manage to escape from the circle of light.

And then I noted that Marvin Orne was painfully crawling straight toward his prostrate brother, unmindful of the scuttling monster. Death was in Marvin Orne's sere face!

When my sword found its black body for a second time, the spider changed its tactics, ran with incredible rapidity up the tapestry, and launched itself down at me. I sidestepped. It only missed my sword by an inch!

And Malcolm Orne had risen dizzily to his knees, but simultaneously his brother was upon him, clawing at his throat. It was an unequal contest, but for a moment Marvin Orne had the advantage. They rolled against the table, knocking off the candelabrum, whose flames began to lick at the bone-dry tapestry.

The glance I spared on this other conflict nearly cost me my life. A sticky strand whipped around the hilt of my sword, almost wrenching it from my hand.

I tore at the sword to free it. Malcolm Orne, I saw, had warded off his brother's feeble attack. And now for the first time I realized the full strength of the giant. His fist rose and fell, again and again, smashing in the skull of Marvin Orne as if it were an eggshell. Flame was roaring up the tapestry now, and the whole room was illuminated by a wild reddish glow.

The monster swooped down at me like a nightmare. I threw myself down, thrusting upward with the sword. This time it went home, thick blood oozing from the wound. I scrambled to my feet, raising my weapon for a second blow. But the monster, badly hurt, was moving away from me now toward Malcolm Orne. What the giant saw in those eight evil eyes I do not know—perhaps some long-nurtured hate for its master—but he threw up his hands and screamed horribly. The dying monster ran up his body. I followed it thrusting again at the black abdomen. But the chelicerae had done their work. Malcolm Orne screamed once again, a tortured bellow of anguish. Then Cynthia Orne was pulling me backward, out of the path of the falling tapestries, which collapsed with a roar, wrapping the monster and its master—and the dead body of Marvin Orne—in a flaming shroud.

It missed Helen by inches. But before the flames could reach out across the carpet, I had dragged her aside. As I raised her in my arms I saw her eyes blinking wonderingly open, and felt her hand tighten on my shoulder.

Then, like lost souls escaping from some hell, we fled from that house of monstrous growth and forbidden secrets, lost to science. As I sent the coupe roaring down the drive, I spared time for one glance over my shoulder. Flames were already eating through the shutters below the pillared facade. Soon, I knew, the whole white mask of Orne House would be one roaring holocaust.

THE SECRET SONGS

PROMPTLY AFTER SUPPER, before Gwen had cleared away the dishes, Donnie began the Sleep Ritual. He got a can of beer from the refrigerator, selected a science-fiction magazine, and shut off the TV sound.

“The picture too?” he asked, “Might as well.”

Gwen smiled at him as she shook her head. With the gesture of one who eats peanuts she threw her right hand to her mouth swallowed, then dropped her hand with the tiny bottle it held back to the pocket of her smock.

Donnie sighed, shrugged his shoulders, settled himself in the easy chair, opened his magazine, and began to read and sip rapidly.

Gwen, who had been ignoring the TV, now began to study the screen. A kindly old rancher and a tall young cowpoke, father and son, were gazing out across broad acres framed by distant mountains. Gwen turned her ears and after a bit she could faintly hear what they were saying.

THE OLD RANCHER:
Aim to plant her to hemp and opium poppy, Son, with benzedrine bushes between the rows.

THE YOUNG COWPOKE:
Yeah, but what
legal
crop you fixin' to raise, Dad
?

THE OLD RANCHER: (smiling like God)
Gonna raise babies, Son
.

Gwen looked away quickly from the screen. It never paid to try to hear too much too soon.

Donnie was studying her with a teasing grin.

“I bet you imagine all sorts of crazy things while you watch it,” he said. “Those terrible bennies get your mind all roiled up.”

Gwen shrugged. “You won't allow any noise while you're putting yourself to sleep. I have to have something,” she said reasonably. “Besides,” she added, “you're having orgies out in space with those girls in fluorescent bikinis.”

“That shows how little you know about science fiction,” Donnie said. “They dropped the sex angle years ago. Now it's all philosophy and stuff. See this old guy?”

He held up the magazine, keeping his place with his forefinger. On the cover was a nicely drawn picture of a smiling intelligent-looking young man in a form-fitting futuristic uniform and standing beside him, topping him by a long head, a lean green-scaled monster with a large silver purse slung over his crested shoulder. The monster had a tentacle resting in comradely fashion across the young man's back and curling lightly past his feather epaulet.

“You mean that walking crocodile?” Gwen asked.

Donnie sniffed. “That walking crocodile,” he said, “happens to be a very wise member of a civilization that's far advanced beyond man's.” He lifted his other hand with two fingers pressed together. “Him and me are like that. He tells me all sorts of things. He even tells me things about you.”

“Science fiction doesn't interest me,” Gwen said lightly, looking back to the TV. There was a commercial on now, first a white-on-black diagram of the human body with explosions of bubbles occurring in sequence at various points, then a beautiful princess in a vast bathroom, then a handsome policeman. Gwen expertly retuned her ears.

VOICE OF MEDICAL EXPERT:
Benzedrine strikes at hidden sleepiness! Tones muscles! Strengthens the heart! Activates sluggish wake centers . . .One . . . Two . . . Three!

THE BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS: (looking depressed)
Yesterday I was overweight, listless, intensely unhappy. Mother called me The Ugly Dumpling. Now
(becoming radiant)
I build beauty with benzedrine!

THE HANDSOME POLICEMAN: (flashing badge with huge “N” for Narcotic Squad)
You're all under arrest! Grrr . . . aarrarrgghhh!

Gwen quickly looked away. It was the only thing you could do when you got static or the wrong voice channel. She began to carry the supper dishes to the sink.

Donnie winced violently without putting down his beer can or looking up from his page. “Don't clank them,” he said. Gwen removed her shoes and began to do the dishes as if she were a diver in the silent world under the surface of the sea, ghosting between table, sink and cupboard.

She was still lost in this rather fascinating operation and even beginning to embroider it with little arabesques when Donnie continued the Sleep Ritual by opening his second can of beer, this time a warm one by choice. Before taking the first sip he swallowed a blue capsule of amytal. At the ker
zing!
of the opener Gwen stopped to watch him. She carefully dried the suds off her right hand, popped onto her tongue another benzedrine tablet from the bottle in her smock pocket, and still watching him thoughtfully, rinsed a glass, ran an inch of water into it and drank it.

If Donnie had his Sleep Ritual, she told herself in not exactly those words, she had her Vigil.

Donnie stood shaking her head at her.

“I suppose now you'll be wandering around all night,” he said, “making all sorts of noise and disturbing me.”

“I don't make any more noise than a snowflake,” Gwen countered. “Not one-tenth as much as the autos and streetcars and planes. Almost every night the people next door have their TV on high.”

“Yes, but those noises are outside,” Donnie said. “It's your noises that bother me—the inside noises.” He looked at Gwen speculatively. “Why don't you try a sleeping pill just for once?” he said with insidious appeal.