Tales From the Darkside Part 13

The voice spoke not from outside the house but through the television speakers.

The Goblin's furrowed face grinned at him from the screen.

Then there was only static again.

"How do you know my name?" he cried, and swung his cane at the picture tube.

Unlike the windows, the picture tube shattered. Inside, the old tubes exploded in sparks and acrid smoke.

The doorbell sounded again. Louder than before, somehow.

Insistent and clamoring.

Killup went back to the window, peering out to see the Goblin pus.h.i.+ng the buzzer.

But the Goblin wasn't at the door. He stood in the swing at the opposite end of the porch, gently rocking in the moon light.

The Goblin waved the friendly wave that somehow wasn't friendly.

The front door opened slowly. The dead, red leaves of the oak tree in front of the house blew into the entryway.

"Howa""

When he looked back out onto the porch, the Goblin was no longer in the swing. Killup turned to go to the doora"but was face-to-face with the Goblin, who perched on the table between the two locked windows.

The Goblin's furrowed face wasn't a mask.

The Goblin lightly brushed Killup's cheek with a finger that wasn't a rubber glove at all but had scaly flesh and a nail that was as sharp and tough as horn.

"Trick or treat, Killup."

With a growl that was equal parts anger, fear, despair, and confusion, Killup knocked the Goblin off the table.

But in doing so, Killup lost his balance. In attempting to regain that balance, Killup slipped on a piece of Halloween candy wrapped in purple cellophane.

Killup's head banged hard against the floor. He heard cracks that had to be his bones. The pain in his neck was cold like frozen metal, hot like burning grease, electric like a wet finger stuck into an electrical socket. He couldn't move either leg. He couldn't move his head or his left arm. His only luck was that he held the cane in his right hand. He flailed about with it, weakly calling, "Help, help, I'll give you candy, I'll give you all my Halloween candy."

But the Goblin was gone, and because Killup couldn't feel the October wind, he knew the front door was shut and locked once more.

He flailed about with his cane, calling weakly.

He knocked the telephone from the hook and dragged the receiver close to his ear.

"Operator," Killup pleaded softly. "Operator, I'ma""

"At the tone, the time will be midnight exactly."

"I'd get a lawyer if I were you." said the medical examiner.

to Michael Killup.

"A lawyer?" Michael repeated mechanically. He'd found his father's corpse that morning, when he'd brought the groceries he'd promised the day before. Real frozen waffles, not the kind you pour out of a carton.

"Clearest case of neglect I've ever seen."

Michael shook his head. "I didn't like my father very much, but I certainly didn't neglect him."

"Your father died of starvation."

"What?" said Michael.

"He starved to death," said the medical examiner simply.

He took Michael Killup's hand and dropped a sticky square of paper cellophane into it. "Your father appears to have subsisted for several weeks in this house on nothing but a bagful of Halloween candy."

Michael turned back toward the entrance way. At a nod from the medical examiner, the attendant pulled back the sheet.

Killup's frame was savagely emaciated, brittle bones rattling in a rusty cardigan. His neck was shrunken and loose in the brace that had once fit too snugly. Killup's face was a slack-jawed skull with a skin of parchment. Sunk deep in their dark sockets, his eyes stared, wide and fearing.

"Your father didn't die nice," said the medical examiner, "and he didn't die quick."

Michael Killup said nothing. He took one step closer to the shrunken corpse, to crush a c.o.c.kroach that scurried out from beneath his father's head.

THE SATANIC PIANO.

by Carl Jacobi.

Midnight, and I was seated at the old concert grand in my study, running my fingers over the keys to the wild melody of Saint-Saens's Danse Macabre. Outside, the fog, like some toothless centenarian, peered in at the glowing electroliers and drooled mist and greenish drizzle on the windowpanes.

Hollow and m.u.f.fled through the thick air, Big Ben boomed its chimes of the hour.

I was restless, the night was hardly conducive to sleep.

The empty weeks in London with Martha, my fiancee, gone for an extended visit upcountry, had reached a climax of lone linesss in the preceding solitary hours at the theater. And above all, that puzzling messsage which had come to my door a few moments past still lay there on the chair, leering up at me with the insistence of a spoken command. It read: Come at once to 94 Milford Lane. I have something of the utmost importance to show you. It concerns your music.

Wilson Farber For a moment, as I stared down upon the black card with the peculiar writing in white ink, I was almost inclined to smile. Farber, eh? Wilson Farber. Yes, I remembered the man, remembered the day I had first come upon him in his dirty little music shop on lower Telling Street. I had gone there in search of some old collection of Russian folk dances, and he, sitting amid his jumble of tarnished horns and battered violins, had led me into a conversation. And I remembered his book, which had attracted such wide interest and which psychology professors had been forced to admit opened new fields for thought in the subjects of hypnotism and telepathy.

Once again after that I had visited this shop, and while I must confess I was impressed by the man's queer erudition, still I had been only too glad to remove myself from his presence. There was something disturbing about the way he stared into your eyes, seemed to plumb your very soul. Nor did I like the silent way he glided about, dragging his thick ebony cane, or that high-pitched laugh that sounded like the mirthless squeak of a ventriloquist.

Tall and gaunt, with a shock of sable hair and a ragged beard the color of slate, he was at once a commanding and repelling figure. There were rumors about the man, rumors that came into existence when his unorthodox book first appeared in the stalls. Was it the work of a trained or a neurotic brain?

And was there any significance in the fact that a James Wilson Farber had been released from St. Mary's Inst.i.tution for the Insane some nine months before?

I say now that had that last line, "It concerns your music," not been included in the missive, I should probably have dismissed the matter entirely from my mind. But the thought stole upon me that perhaps back in the shadows of his shop he had come upon some rare old music composition and was offering it for sale. Farber knew my weakness. He knew that for years I have amused myself by collecting original ma.n.u.scripts and unknown works of forgotten composers. This hobby has brought me almost as much enjoyment as my own creation for the piano, and I hated to let my valuable work slip through my fingers.

Yet even musical compositions were not so important but that they could wait until tomorrow.

I moved to my favorite armchair, and tried to immerse myself in the pages of a half-read novel. For a time the movements of the characters attracted my full attention, and the disturbing message of Farber faded slowly out of my thoughts. But when in the course of a quarter hour the narrative before me began to lag, I found my eyes inadvertently returning to the bit of paper there on the chair.

For the third time I read its imperative lines. And suddenly I began to impulse.

Five minutes later, clad in trench coat and cap, I was rolling across the wet streets in an eastbound cab past Piccadilly Circus down Haymarket and through a world of white to the Strand. The fog was even thicker here by the Embankment and it seemed to increase as we sped onward.

Milford Lane was almost a half hour's drive from my apartment. It was close to one o'clock by my watch when I stood before the frowning door of number 94, and by the light of a single street lamp, gazed upon the gigantic jumble of brick and wrought iron that formed the ancient edifice. I hesitated there, the fog and drizzle pressing close against my face like wet gauze, the rumble of a distant tram reaching my ears hollowly as if from some lower world. Then I stepped forward and rattled the knocker.

The sounds had but died away into silence when the door opened, and I found myself staring once again into the iron countenance of Wilson Farber. Even though I had known what to expect, I confess I recoiled slightly before those black eyes.

"You sent for me--?" I began.

He nodded. "I'm glad you've come, Bancroft. I think you'll find it well worth your trouble. This way, please."

He conducted me through a dark corridor to a brilliantly lighted room in the rear of the house, thrust forward a chair, and bade me sit down. Slowly unb.u.t.toning my coat, I glanced at my surroundings.

Glanced, I saya"then stared.

Without fear of contradiction, I believe I can safely put down that room to be the strangest chamber in all London.

The four walls had been painted or frescoed a dead white, and over this in black, beginning from the ceiling and continuing down to the very floor, were a series of five lines of the musical scale, adorned with notesa"full notes, half notes, and flagged eighths and sixteenths. At two-foot intervals on the wall, with no show of artistic placement, hung a line of musical instruments, the choice of which seemed to have been guided by a bizarre taste rather than a love for harmony. There were several lutes, battered and ornate, an oboe, a mandolin, a Javanese drum, and a number of queer elongated horns. Over in a far corner stood a harpsi chord dating to an early period. Heavy black drapes curtained the two windows, and a white porcelain operating table stood under the glare of a green-shaded lamp in the center of the room.

There was a desk at my side, the top littered with man uscript, chemical vials and tubes, and a disorderly array of books. Some of the volumes, I saw by the t.i.tles, were technical studies of music composers and their various works, but the majority dealt with such subjects as hypnotism, exper iments of Dr. Mesmer and telepathy.

Farber was leaning forward now, placing before me a gla.s.s and a decanter, and motioning that I help myself.

I shook my head. "It's late," I said, "and I live a long way from here.

What do you want with me?"

He settled in his chair, hooked his thumbs in the vest of his black suit and studied me closely.

"Bancroft," he said, "you're a concert pianist and a composer. Are you not?"

I looked at him carefully before I made my answer.

There was power in that face. Every line suggested cruel determination as if once he were moving toward an end, nothing could stop him. The mouth with its thin bluish lips was fixed in that characteristic half smile, half sneer. The eyes under their heavy brows gleamed like separate ent.i.ties.

"I suppose you might call me that," I replied. "My public appearances have been a source of livelihood for some years now. But although I've written a lot, only one number of mine ever acquired much notice."

He nodded slowly. "I know," he said. "Satanic Dance.

It has been acclaimed one of the fines examples of modern music in the last decade. And at present you are working on a sonata which you plan to present at your next convert at Kensington Hall."

"Will you kindly tell me where you obtained that information?" I inquired coldly. "That sonata was to come as a complete surprise."

With a gesture of his hand he waved my question aside.

"That is beside the point," he said. "I am in possession of a number of facts this blundering world will someday be surprised to learn about. When the time comes . . . but never mind. What I want to know now is this: What, exactly is your method of composing music?"

"Method?" I repeated.

"Yes. For example, how did you go about writing Satanic Dance? What was your procedure?"

The question was so prosaic, so matter-of-fact, that I leaned back in disappointment. To be drawn out of one's apartment at such an hour, led to a distant point of the city, and then amid such surroundings, asked a simple detail about my bread-earning professiona"as I have rationally come to look upon ita"was indeed disillusioning.

"Basically speaking," I replied, "the composing of music is no different from the writing of, well . . . say fiction.

Half inspiration, half craftsmans.h.i.+p, I suppose. A central theme, a strain of melody courses through my mind. I immediately go to the piano, play as much of it as I cana"play it several times, in facta"and then put the proper notes as far as my memory permits, on paper. Is that what you mean?"

The thin lips twisted into a smile of satisfaction.

"Yes," he said. "And what do you find to be your greatest difficulties in this method?"

"That," I replied, "is obvious. In transposing from the mind to the keys of the piano, and then to the printed notes on the page, much of the original inspiration is lost. It cannot be otherwise."

He reached for the decanter, poured himself a gla.s.sful and sipped it slowly.

"Suppose," he said, "an instrument were to be placed at your disposala"a machine, let us call ita"which under certain conditions would seize this musical inspiration that courses through your brain and transform it of its own accord into the actual living sound, a device so delicate that it would record permanently, note for note, the very melody that exists in your thoughts. How valuable do you think it would be?"

"If such an instrument could be created," I said slowly, "it would bring fame to its musical owner in twenty-four hours. It would make a mere writer of songs a master musician, and it would make a great musician a genius. But it's impossible. I know something of science, and I know that telepathya"if that's what you're driving ata"has never been acknowledge. Oh, I'm aware there are so-called mind-reading machines for use in criminal courts, but they are mere lie detectors and show only the presence or absence of emotion."

Without further word he got to his feet, stepped to the door leading to the adjoining room and disappeared. Silence swept down upon me as I found myself alone. What on earth was this Farber person driving at? What was the significance of all the conversation regarding the composition of music?

And why had I of all people been summoned here to be a party to it? As my wrist.w.a.tch ticked off the pa.s.sing seconds, a mounting sense of uneasiness welled up within me.

At length, impatiently, I stepped across to one of the heavily curtained windows at the far side of the room, thrust the drapes aside and peered out into the pool of drifting fog. But my vision was interrupted.

Heavy iron bars were there, preventing access either to or from the street. A wild sudden thought that I might be a prisoner here whipped me about. The sight of the open door, however, rea.s.sured me, and when Farber put in his appearance a moment later, I chided myself for being a nervous fool.

He was staggering forward, arms strained and bent under the weight of a large object shrouded in a black cloth covering. Reaching the operating table, he set the square shaped thing under the glare of the suspended light, then turned and carefully placed my chair on a parallel five feet away.

"Bancroft," he said as I sat down, "I want you to listen and obey instructions very closely. Keep perfectly quiet, fasten your eyes on the object on the table and concentrate your mind upon it as much as you possibly can."

He turned and whipped off the cloth covering. I stared in astonishment. There before me was a midget piano, the shape of a concert grand, three feet in width and about eighteen inches high. Its sides were painted a lurid crimson, and at a glance I saw that from the ivory keys of its little keyboard to the tiny strings revealed by the open sounding-top, it was a piano complete in every detail. The carving on the diminutive legs was as intricate as that on the huge Lonway in my study, the entire woodwork perfectly formed. A thick hard-rubber baseboard served as a mounting for the instrument, and at one extreme end of this was a small box with a gla.s.s panel. The panel bore a single black-faced dial, but within I could see a world of wires, coils, queer-shaped bulbs and a thick gla.s.s winding tube filled with some black liquid.

Farber busied himself for some moments, adjusting and readjusting the dial. Presently the black liquid in the gla.s.s tube began to surge back and forth like a steam pressure gage.

Then as my concentration grew more intense, there came a slight hiss, and the fluid raced through the tube, boiling and bubbling like lava. One of the bulbs began to glow cherry red.

At last Farber looked up. "For ten years," he said, "I have worked on the instrument you see here on the table.

Until tonight I have had only ridicule and failure for my reward. But tonight, a few hours before you came, chance showed me where I erred. There was only a slight correction to be made, but it changed the principle of the entire working mechanism.

He turned to the dial again and began moving it slowly.