Weird Tales volume 42 number 04 (4 page)

But, Connie says in rebuttal, didn't Bill lend us his cottage *at the shore for oux honeymoon? And wasn't it at the shore that

Heading by Jon Arfstrora

we found the bottle of amethyst glass? And wasn't it after we found the amethyst glass bottle with its surprising contents that all our troubles began?

"Well, then!" Connie has a way of saying, ending the argument.

Surely you can see that such logic is irrefutable? Particularly if you're a married man yourself?

I'm afraid Connie will never forgive Bill for blacking my eye at the ushers* dinner

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the night before the wedding, though personally I never held it against him for it was purely and simply an accident, and we were all shellacked at the time. Besides, he no more meant to black my eye, I'm sure, than I intended to tear his ear, which after all, did no great harm except that it didn't improve his looks any, and he was going to be the best man. But then, come to think of it, his looks weren't anything to write home about to begin with.

I tried to point this out to Connie afterward.

"Keep still, Pete Bartlett!" she said. "I was never so mortified in all my life as I was this morning when I came moseying up the aisle and saw you standing in the chancel. What a sight for the eyes of a blushing bride! Tsk, tsk!" At the memory, her brows swooped toward the bridge of her nose. "That drunken bum, Bill Hastings!"

"But, honey. 1 hit him first."

"That's it! Stick up for him!"

Ah, well. What was the use?

"Let's not fight on the first day of our honeymoon, baby," I said tenderly.

WE'D been married at ten o'clock that morning, left the reception at two, and now two hours later we were both lying on the warm sands of deserted Alamosa Beach, basking in the late afternoon sun. It had been a popular vacation spot in its day, but that day was long since past. Except for Bill's cottage where we were staying, the few other shacks high on the dunes behind us were deserted. There were still a few guests, we had been told, in the rkkety old hotel at the far end of the beach. But that was around a bend in the shore, and the hotel and its guests were out of our sight and we were out of theirs.

This made it convenient whenever I felt like kissing Connie, which I'm bound to say was often. For she detests love-making in public.

But now, in the intervals between kisses, we were lying'flat on our backs, with Connie at right angles to me, her bright-penny held resting none too comfortably on my stomach. We were talking of this and that, and she was letting the sands drift idly through

her hands. First she'd plunge them in, palms down, and then she'd turn them, bringing up palmsful of the golden grains only to let them spill in drifts through her slightly spread fingers.

And that was how she found the bottle.

Her fingers encountered something hard, and she burrowed deeper into the sand, dredging up at last a bottle. It was of amethyst glass with little air-bubbles embedded in the crystal. But though the air-bubbles showed up plainly when you held the bottle up against the light, it wasn't possible to see into it. It bore no labei, and it was very tightly corked.

"Dear me," Connie said thoughtfully, holding the thing aloft. "The Morton luck."

"You're a Bartlett now," I reminded her fondly.

"Why, so I am. But my luck still holds."

"You mean it's got Scotch in it?"

"Try to climb onto a spiritual plane, dear, for once in your life," Connie said. "Scotch, indeed! No. But there'll be a djinn in it, of course, who'll have to '^rant me whatever I wish for. Wait and see. I've always been lucky, haven't I? Remember the time I found the purse with seventy-nine cents in it on the park bench? And the night I found the woman's slipper in the Bijou Theater? And—"

"—this morning, when you got me up to the altar?"

"Which I'll live to regret, no doubt," Connie smiled. "Weil, anyway, A djinn. Think of it, dear."

I didn't think much of it.

"Suppose you pull the cork out?" I yawned. "And then we can both relax again."

"I've married a man with no imagination whatever," complained Connie to the sad sea waves.

But she proceeded to withdraw the cork as I'd told her, and so help me, there really was something in the bottle. I felt a peculiar sensation that wasn't entirely pleasant in the small of my back and all along the channel of my spine as I watched a thin trickle of gray vapor emerge from the bottle, and slowly begin to rise above it.

The thick mist rose higher still till it was

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hovering above us, grew denser, and began to form into a shape resembling something remotely human—something like that of the rubber man in the old Michelin tire advertisements.

It was no thing of great beauty, but if it wasn't a djinn, I thought dazedly, it was certainly a reasonable facsimile thereof. I stared at the thing, open-mouthed. I was speechless, I'll admit.

But Connie wasn't. Connie never is.

"See, Pete?" she said. "Your sneer, and your cheap cynicism!"

NOW I want to stop here a moment to indulge myself in a seemingly pointless digression, though I assure you that it really isn't. I have a confession to make, and it is this: I'd had serious qualms about marrying Connie.

Much as I loved her, the Bartlett head is never so completely overruled by its heart that I couldn't see Connie was flippant and frivolous and flutter-brained, with the emotions, undoubtedly shallow, of a child. You are please not to believe that I'm trying to set myself up here as her superior. I've had my bird-brained moments, too, and plenty of them. You have only to consider my behavior on the eve of our marriage, as an illustration of that.

But with marriage, I'd always known that I wanted to settle down, to mature, to grow serious—and wiser, too, if possible.

Many's the time after I had proposed to Connie that I'd wake up in the small gray hours of the morning, beset by serious doubts. I knew I'd never be happy for long with Connie if she didn't change. In the beginning I'd be willing to take it slowly, to match her flippancies, to be as light-hearted and light-minded as she. But would she mature? Could I change her?

Certainly it would have been a slow process. Certainly I owe a debt to the djinn.

For it was a djinn, all right, that the bottle had contained.

He yawned and stretched now, and almost immediately winced.

"Ouch!" he said, in a voice like the mutter of distant thunder. "Am I cramped! Oof, my lumbago! Just keep your shirt on there

with your wish for a moment, will you, until I pull myself together?" he asked crankily, his eyes squinted shut, seemingly with pain.

Connie sat up, hugging her satiny knees. I sat up, too, bracing myself with backward-thrust arms. I would have fallen down, otherwise, for I assure you it's startling to learn that you have unwittingly released a djinn. I should have doubted the evidence of my senses, but the sun blazed brightly so that I was forced to squint against it, and there came the sharp salt fishy smell of the sea to sting my nostrils, and the sand was hot beneath my legs.

Yes, I told myself, I was conscious, all right, difficult though I found it to believe ■—with a djinn hanging heavy over our heads like a forfeit in a game that children play.

THE silence that followed could only be described as pregnant, unbroken save for the soft wash of the sea against the shore. You may judge for yourself of the effect that the djinn had upon us when I tell you that even Connie was silent, for a change.

"What a life!" the djinn said gloomily, after a moment. He seemed to ruminate, lost in depression.

Deep within me I found my voice. I dragged it out with an effort. I sought to cheer him. "You think you've got it tough? You should try living in the postwar world."

This seemed to nettle him. He reared back as it stung, regarded me with some dudgeon. "Z have a nice life, you're telling me? Hah! Bottled up like a pickled onion till I ask myself, am I working for Heinz?" He held up a smoky hand to forestall interruption. "And that isn't all," he went on, warming to the task as he recited the litany of his grievances. "Now I'll have to work my silly head off to grant the wish, which is sure to be foolish and unreasonable, of whomever it was that released me."

"Poor you!" Connie said softly. '7 released you."

The djinn seemed to see her for the first

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time, and it must be recorded that even in his depression his eyes visibly brightened. I'm afraid any masculine eyes would brighten at the vision of Connie tastefully girbed in a brief blue-and-white polka-dotted Bikini bathing suit. Indeed, I've had trouble with this angle before.

"Well, wed, well!" said the djinn, shaking his head in seeming despond, though it was plain to be seen that he was not really distressed. "What'll they be taking off next?"

This was a rhetorcial cjuestion, purely, I gathered. But as it seemed to be addressed more or less in my direction, I thought it would do no great harm to straighten him out immediately on a few salient facts.

"This little lady happens to be my wife, repeat wife," I said.

"Oh!" For a minute the disappointment seemed almost more than the djinn could bear. But he must have been a philosopher of sorts for after a minute he said, though somewhat obscurely, "Ah well. That's life for you."

I settled back into my former state of uneasy calm, my suspicions not entirely allayed. This was one humbre, I warned myself, who would probably bear watching.

CONNIE noted my scowl, and proceeded to pour oil on troubled waters.

"The djinn was only being complimentary," she said. "No need for you to be jealous all the time, Petey-weetie-sweelie."

"If there's one thing I can't abide," I said fretfully, my nerves quivering like the fringe on a bubble-dancer's G-string, "it's being called Petey-weetie-sweetie in front of strangers."

"Oh, come, now!" the djinn protested, looking somewhat hurt. "Don't look upon me as a stranger, I implore you! Until I grant your wife's wish, which automatically releases me, I'm practically one of the family."

"Not this family," I said sullenly.

Connie said, not displeased with all this, "Now, boys Let's leave this silly argument lie for a moment, while we consider the main question."

"What main question?" I asked-

"The wish, stupid, the wish!"

"Business, always business," the djinn said, gloomy once more. "Well let's get on with it then. The sooner I grant your wish, the faster I can take a powder. What can I do for you? Seeing it's you, it'll be a pleasure almost, despite my griping."

And he looked almost amiable, even indulgent.

Connie thanked him, but she was not to be hurried. She likes to talk over all sides of a question before acting, Connie does. In fact, she likes to talk, period. She sat there in the sand now, her hands absently caressing the satiny skin of her knees, the while a dreamy look came into her large turquoise eyes. And I knew that when she did speak at last, whatever it was she would say would be the end-product of no little musing and considered thought. And Connie has a talent for the bizarre.

The djinn felt this, too, I am sure. I confess to a feeling of no little apprehension as we both waited on the well known tenterhooks.

"You know," Connie began at last conversationally, "I've often read stories about people who'd released djinns from bottles, and it really does seem to me that they're incredibly stupid. The releasers, I mean, not the stories or the djinns or the bottles. For consider! What do the releasers do? Do they consider even the minimum of intelligence in selecting their wish for the djinn to grant? They do not!" She answered herself, before we could open our mouths. "They wish for some silly thing like a million dollars, or something like that."

"A million dollars is silly?" I croaked. "Well, now, here's news!"

Even the djinn looked somewhat taken aback. "I can think of sillier things," he said defensively.

"Well, perhaps a million dollars isn't so very silly," Connie hedged.

"You're tootin', baby," I said. "For a minute there I thought you'd gone crazy in a big way."

"But the point I'm trying to make is this," Connie went on, patient with my levity. "These people just wish for something sil— something like that, and they neglect to wish

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for what seems to me to be the most obvious wish of all. One that should occur to anybody immediately, with little or no thought. Anybody, that is with even a grain of common-sense,"

I didn't get it. I don't think the djinn did, either, though he must have had his misgivings, for:

"Something tells me this wish is going to be a stinker," he said dolorously. "You should forgive the expression."

"Cheer up, man, for heaven's sake!" I barked. "What have you got to be bleating about? Have a thought for me! Allah only knows what Connie will wish for, and I've just elected to spend the rest of my Hfe with her."

"She makes you nervous, eh?" the djinn asked, with a trace of commiseration in his booming voice.

"Highly," I said. "Highly." I wiped the perspiration that had seeped out on my brow. "Now listen, Connie," I warned. "I can feel my arteries hardening by the second. All I ask is, if you love me, have a care what you wish for."