STRANGE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OMNIBUS (5 page)

Both expressed their thanks and left. Booth did not return for some time. Naturally, he was not excused from the daily round of tortures inflicted routinely on the souls of the damned in Hell. When he reappeared at Satan’s office, he handed the Devil the draft statement justifying his actions, and waited expectantly.

The arch fiend looked at the draft and whistled in admiration. “John,” he said, marking the first time Satan had ever referred to a denizen of Hell by his first name, “We have a lot of advertising geniuses here, but you are by far the best.”

And the draft written by Booth was indeed impressive. It began by referring to the fundamental religious and political authorities. The Bible, it noted, teaches that only someone who is without sin should cast the first stone, and that no one should judge, lest he be judged. The treatise repeated the famous words of the Magna Carta in 1215, that one is entitled to a trial by a jury of his peers, and to the French Bill of Rights of 1789, that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. How could he be blamed for Lincoln’s assassination, Booth pointed out, when he had not been properly convicted by a jury of his peers, for the deed?

The draft then emphasized that Booth was the victim of a poor environment, being born out of wedlock, with his mother the mistress of Booth’s already married father. The late actor was further suffering from doubt over his self image, saying at times he was an Episcopalian, and on other occasions admitting he was secretly a Roman Catholic.

Finally, it turned to describing the virtuous life booth had led, except for that one admittedly unfortunate transgression. Abraham Lincoln, it noted was widely commemorated, with a city in Nebraska named after him, as well as his face appearing on the U.S. penny coin, and the five dollar bill, not to mention an imposing monument in his honor in the nation’s capitol. This was the same man, Booth continued, who had violated the American Constitution during the Civil War, because he supported, until quite late in the Civil War, the continuation of slavery, in those American states in which it was legal. He concluded by reminding the reader that he also frequented prostitutes before he was married, and after his marriage, was believed by his wife to be treating her shabbily, and as defense attorney, hoodwinked juries into acquitting obviously guilty murderers.

“My boy,” the Devil said, “How would you like to assist me to improve my image? We have rather a serious problem with the way most people look at me, and at Hell. I’d like you to prepare an advertising campaign for me.”

The campaign Booth prepared for the Devil more than met Satan’s expectations. Booth was given a private office next to the Arch Fiend, and has free access to him. Naturally, he has not been officially exempted from the usual torture of the damned souls, but he is subjected to it only to the extent that it does not interfere with his advertising work. Of course, Booth makes certain that the advertising functions take up all of his available time.

The first phase of Booth’s advertising campaign is already in full swing. According to a public opinion poll, in 2013, only forty-three percent of all Americans believe the Devil really exists. As the actor’s shade pointed out to Satan, one cannot be alert to the Devil’s lures, if he does not believe he exists.

Jimmy Peterson was a bright little five year old boy living with his parents in a small Ohio city. His father was the star reported on the local daily newspaper. Jimmy’s mother had taught school before he was born, but now stayed at home caring for him. As a school teacher, she was especially good at dealing with children and Jimmy was exceptionally bright and outgoing for his age.

Then one day Jimmy’s father was offered a job as a copy editor on a large paper in Washington, D.C. Times were hard, the salary offered was most generous, and Jimmy’s mother was expecting another child. With only the slightest of regrets, Jimmy’s father accepted the offer and the family moved to the nation’s capital. Now they found it difficult to obtain a suitable residence. Although they had sold their old home in Ohio, they found housing prices in Washington much higher.

Although Jimmy’s father enjoyed his new job, he thought of returning back to Ohio. Fortunately one day, the family learned of a home for sale within their price range. When the real estate agent took them to see the property, they were astonished. It was an old Victorian mansion, four stories in height with a peaked roof and turrets. It occupied a large wooded lot far from the closest neighbors, whose houses could not be seen from the mansion because of the high trees surrounding the property. When they the agent the reason for the surprisingly low price for the house, he explained that it was owned by an estate that wanted very much to dispose of it quickly.

There was no reason to delay. Although the mansion suffered from neglect with the windows boarded up, it would be worth many times the offering price once a few moderate repairs were made. Accordingly, the family purchased the house and moved in. It was so large and had so many rooms that the furniture they had brought with them from Ohio did not begin to fill it. Jimmy was given his room on the third floor, one floor above his parents’ bedroom.

The move from Ohio seemed to have changed Jimmy. He was no longer the cheerful, outgoing child he had been in Ohio. He missed his old friends and his comfortable old home. His mother gave birth to a daughter and had to devote most of her time to caring for the infant. What time she could spare from that had to go to her housekeeping chores, which greatly expanded due to the many rooms in the mansion. Not only did Jimmy no longer have the full attention of his mother, he now had no children to play with because the house was so isolated.

Whenever Jimmy attempted to persuade his mother to play with him, she shooed him outside. There he found the vast shaded lot depressing. Playing inside was even worse. Many of the rooms were empty and the floors covered with dust. He hated his own bedroom because it seemed so isolated. Trying to sleep in it at night was even worse because of the strange creeks and sounds he occasionally heard. When he told his parents about them, they scoffed at him, telling he was a big boy now and should dismiss such childish fears. On one occasion when he had been awakened suddenly by the noises, he ran to his parents’ bedroom and pleaded to be allowed to share their bed for the night, only to be most curtly refused.

One rainy day Jimmy decided to try the cellar. He had had only a brief glimpse of it through the open cellar door when they moved in and thought it might be warm and cozy because of the boiler located there. Turning on the cellar light, he slowly descended the stairs. The light bulb was very dim and much of the cellar remained in shadow. Along the ways he saw the outline of crates, large and small and of broken furniture. In one corner, he beheld a spinning wheel of the kind he had seen in one of his picture books.

Suddenly he glimpsed movement in the shadows. Some vague shape seemed to move. Then he saw what he believed to be two large yellow eyes staring directly at him. Then heard a loud crash, which could have been the boiler starting up. Petrified, he turned and ran up the stairs, slamming the cellar door shut behind him.

Running for safety to his mother, he found her in the kitchen feeding the baby. He blurted out what he had seen and pleaded sobbing for her to protect him. Irritated at the slamming of the door, which had upset her daughter, Jimmy’s mother rebuked him coldly, chiding him for being so foolish. When he refused to be calmed, she gave him a smack on the cheek with the back of his hand and ordered him to go straight upstairs to his room and stay there.

Jimmy’s father returned that evening from work and found his wife still furious about Jimmy’s behavior. Normally a patient man and very fond of his son, he was tired after a hard day’s work and feeling stressed by the need to learn a new job. Going upstairs to see Jimmy and hear him explain what had happened, he was as deaf as Jimmy’s mother to the story of a dangerous thing hiding in the cellar. When he was unable to talk Jimmy out of his delusion, he finally lost his temper too and gave his son the first spanking he had ever received.

Jimmy, once a cheerful, outgoing child, became increasingly sullen and morose. He stayed outside the house all day regardless of the weather and had to be dragged inside to eat. In desperation, his parents took him to a child psychological, who tried to cure him of his obsession. When that failed to cure Jimmy he was taken to other child psychologists, including several who recommended the parents going with Jimmy into the cellar and showing him that there was no dangerous thing hiding there. They did so, but despite the absence of any untoward thing in the cellar, Jimmy refused to be convinced.

Jimmy’s parents next tried taking their son to a psychiatrist specializing in childhood disorders. All agreed that Jimmy was extremely bright but suffering from an unshakable obsession which if not cured could result in series mental illness. One even mentioned the alternative of a lobotomy, very rarely used except in the most extreme cases.

Jimmy’s parents were seriously considering institutionalizing Jimmy when his maternal grandparents stepped in, offering to take their grandchild into their home. The grandfather had owned a small farm in Ohio. He was now semi-retired, renting out most of his land but still keeping a small heard of dairy cattle. His parents gratefully yielded up their troublesome son, and he was taken back to Ohio by his grandfather, who had traveled to Washington to escort him back to the farm.

Jimmy never saw or heard from his parents or sister again. Under the sympathetic care of his grandmother and grandfather, he rapidly regained his old sunny disposition. He did very well at school, had many friends and enjoyed helping his grandfather tend the cows after school.

A few months after starting school, Jimmy returned to the farm and found his grandparents sitting in the living room. His grandmother was weeping, and his grandfather is looking very grave. When he entered, his grandmother rose and hugged him. “Jimmy” he heard his grandfather say gravely. “I have something I have to tell you.”

His grandfather placed him on his lap. “Your parents and sister have all been taken by God,” he said softly, kissing him on the cheek.”

Despite this tender age, Jimmy recognized the awful meaning of those words. “You mean I will never see them again?” he asked, seeking to confirm his understanding. “Not until you meet them again in Heaven,” his grandfather answered. Jimmy began to sob, and then abruptly stopped. The happy memories of his parents he had from his early childhood days in Ohio were crowded out by the loathing he had felt toward the Washington move. Added to this was the attitude his parents had displayed toward him about that thing in the cellar.

Under the benevolent care of his grandparents, Jimmy grew to be a fine young, very devoted to them and regarding them as his real parents. When he grew a bit older, Jimmy asked his grandfather to tell him what really happened to his parents. The older man answered that had only been informed that the entire family had been found murdered in their home, that no motive had ever been ascertained and that the killings were still kept on the books by the Washington police as an unclosed case

Jimmy graduated from high school and left the farm to attend college. He initially planned to major in agriculture and return to help run and eventually inherit has grandfather’s farm. However, he did so well in English that several of his professors suggested he switch his major and go into writing as a career. After some consideration and recalling that his father had enjoyed being a reporter, he decided to do so.

Upon graduating from college, Jimmy worked for a year to live with his grandparents, working in the nearby town as a teller in the bank to save enough money to pay for graduate work in journalism. With his savings and part time work, he was able to complete journalism school and took a job at a local Indiana weekly. From there he moved as a reporter to the Indianapolis paper, where he was considered a top reporter and was considered, but did not win, a Pulitzer Prize for a highly-praised series of stories on corruption in some state agencies.

Jimmy’s reputation was so good that he received an offer from the “New York Times” to join its staff, and he thereupon moved to New York. He married an attractive, intelligent young woman from the Mid West who worked in the paper’s business office, and they had two children. Everyone who had a chance to observe Jimmy’s behavior toward his children remarked that he was the most attentive, caring father they had ever seen.

Some years later, the newspaper asked Jimmy to go down to the nation’s capital for a few weeks to assist in its Washington Bureau. He normally would have been reluctant to go notwithstanding the opportunity this afforded to have him permanently assigned to work there because of his reluctance to be apart from his wife and children. However, his wife was planning to go with the children to stay for a short time at her parents’ beach cottage so that the short assignment in Washington would not constitute any real hardship.

His arrival in Washington marked the first time he had returned to that city since his leaving it with his grandfather as a child. For more than a week, he worked out of the Times Washington Bureau, enjoying the experience very much. One day, when he happened to be passing the offices of the “Washington Post,” he decided to go in and check the old files of the paper to see if it had published account of his parents’ murder. He had earlier tried to do so with the microfilm copies of the “New York Times” issues for the period but could find no mention. This he didn’t regard as unusual, after all the Times would not normally cover a murder in a city some two hundred miles away from New York.

Since he had a general idea of the date his grandparents had first told him about his parents’ fate, it was not too difficult for Jimmy to find and read the story. It was rather a long one on the first page of the section dealing with city events. He learned that the police had discovered the bodies, alerted that something might be amiss by his father’s paper, which reported that he had not turned up at the office for several days and that the phone had apparently been left off the hook.. The victims were not only murdered.