Mrs. Rahlo's Closet and Other Mad Tales Page 4

  “Very little.”

  “What if there were no sharks, and suddenly one day a shark appeared? Would you call the world a horror?”

  “I see your point. Familiarity lessens our terror of things. But things don’t just appear.”

  “Things do appear, William. What of those accounts of stones falling from the sky, or of inundations of frogs and fishes?”

  “Curiosities.”

  “Yes, they are merely curious, because they are harmless. It might be different now.”

  “What you are saying is—”

  “Something sharklike may have come among us.”

  • • •

  When the two met again, it was late the next day.

  “I hope you have dined,” said Rosen.

  “Quite well,” Shanks said. “And you?”

  “I have not had the time. Forgive me, would you much mind if I feed myself while we talk? I’ve had some wine and cheese brought in. Pray help yourself to either.” Despite signs of weariness, the doctor seemed well pleased with himself. His cold blue eyes glistened behind the gold spectacles. “I spent the day at the university library,” he said between mouthfuls, “taking endless notes from forgotten texts. I’ve found things.” The doctor finished the last of his meal and wiped his lips. “Do you remember our conversation of a few weeks back? About causes and effects?”

  “Go on.”

  “Think of the queer events in June. That was the beginning. That is when the thing broke through. A motorist claimed to see a giant lizard emerging from the highway.

  “Now, recall your medieval science. Remember the humors, and the elements behind them?”

  “Yes, earth, air, fire, and water. The four primal elements.”

  “Precisely. And each element has its corresponding spirit, or elemental. In air there is the sylph; in earth, the gnome; in water, the undine; in fire, the salamander. All four tribes accommodate a hierarchy of elementals. The greatest is slightly lower than the lowest angel; the least has the character of a demon. Each tribe inhabits its own sphere and is hostile to the other tribes. Yet all four maintain a precarious alliance. They keep one another in balance.”

  “But this is mythology,” Shanks insisted. “Such things never existed.”

  “Clear your mind,” Rosen said. “Wipe away the textbook fallacies and newspaper learning.” He produced the printout. “Here are incontestable facts of fires.” He looked earnestly at his friend. “Are you aware of the abundance of fire gods in ancient civilizations? You know Haephestus. What about Agni in India? Loki in Scandinavia? Or Xiuhtecutli in Mexico? Have you heard of the vestal fires in ancient Greece? And there are not only fire gods but earth gods, air gods, water gods—it is all there in the true history, the essential, kernel history that passes by the name of folklore.

  “These elementals, mistakenly called gods, what are they like? We have answers for this, too. Neither good nor evil, they sometimes traffic with mankind. The gnome will reveal secret treasure; the undine, the lore of the sea. But the salamander, he serves the philosophers. Have you read much alchemy? Do you know of the secret fire of the philosophers? Of the elixir that transforms base metals into solid gold? Think of your historic pacts with the devil. The salamander will make the alchemist’s gold, but in exchange for what?”

  “Preposterous,” protested Shanks.

  “Remember Prometheus. Recall Nero’s burning of Rome. There are hints throughout history. There are hints!” Of usually a sanguine complexion, the doctor flushed nearly crimson with excitement.

  “What you are saying,” said Shanks, “is that the fires—our fires—in the city—”

  “Yes,” Rosen almost shouted. “We are dealing with a fire elemental!”

  • • •

  Shanks slept ill that night, his dreams tormented by cowled shapes, burning gold in half-timbered garrets—but gold in exchange for what?

  For his part, Dr. Rosen worked almost till daylight, indexing and arranging his mass of notes, correlating them with Shanks’s data. Even as he worked, near the stockyards a laborer coughed into flame.

  At first Shanks thought he had a fever. No, it was the room, stifling with heat. In the night he had thrown off the covers, but the sheet clung to him, cemented with his perspiration. A cold shower provided some relief; still, he’d have to step outside into the blast furnace of the summer morning. Silly of him never to have installed air-conditioning, yet he never really needed it. Till now.

  His car was unbearable; even with the windows and the vents open, the upholstery scorched his back as with electric coils. The steering wheel seared his hands. The engine drove sluggishly, the pistons beating more heat into the cylinders; there was a tire smell of burning rubber. By the time he reached Rosen’s house, he needed another shower.

  The study felt delightfully cool; icy wind from the air conditioner stung his dry nostrils.

  His friend’s eyes glistened behind the gold spectacles. His black curly beard in the morning light shone almost copper. The two sat in the book-lined study, sipping tall glasses of lemonade. The doctor reclined in his chair and stared out at the heat waves rising off the pavement and parked automobiles.

  “Halfway around the world,” he said, “fire elementals have been seen in the great Gobi Desert, where they’re known as Djinns. Lonely travelers tell of immense fiery columns burning at night in far-desert wastes, where the only fuel is desolate rock. Who knows? Perhaps it is these elementals that made the land into a desert.”

  “Do they never leave the desert?”

  “No. According to old authorities, there is a perimeter around the point where they enter our world, and beyond that line they cannot travel. But it is complicated. Within each circle, each elemental inhabits a distinct area: the undine, west; the sylph, east; the gnome, north; and the salamander, south.”

  “Then, our city—”

  “Yes, the man’s disappearance, the monster in the highway, all the strange events of last June—everything took place just a few miles north of where we are. Have you any other questions?” The study remained an island of coolness and repose within a fiery, shimmering sea. To Shanks the heat and all it symbolized began to seem faraway and unreal.

  “Where do these elementals come from?” he asked.

  “From somewhere else,” the doctor said. “Someplace beyond, whence they work their influence. From time to time one falls into our plane of reality, perhaps, as one philosopher suggests, as a substitute for something removed from us. Remember, a man vanished in front of his family—in his own living room.”

  “Well,” said the marketing executive, “this is all most learned and logical, but, Emile, what are we going to do about it?”

  “My friend, we must know our enemy. I mentioned that within each category of elemental there are hierarchical divisions; we must determine just where on the scale our creature belongs. If it is of a high order, we may be able to communicate with it, maybe even persuade it to return to its proper sphere.”

  “Communicate with it? How?”

  Dr. Rosen smiled. “We will hold a séance.”

  • • •

  A week went by. The heat continued—searing, scorching, steaming the body in its own sweat.

  Seated in his office one blazing afternoon, Shanks received a phone call.

  “It is tonight,” Rosen’s voice told him. “Can you pick me up at seven? Good. Perhaps we shall speak with our elemental.”

  “Queer things indeed,” Shanks mumbled, and continued with the day’s work.

  Sunset brought no abatement of the heat, as the dying sun sent a great scarlet flare bursting across the horizon, to turn the air itself into fire. Shanks arrived at Rosen’s. A few minutes later, the two men drove down the baking highway.

  Rosen sat strangely silent, speaking only to give directions. But Shanks could sense the suppressed excitement in his friend.

  The car swept through the East Side, the old district, region of industry. Here were factories, mac
hine works, tool and die firms, loading docks, chemical smells, and the muffled clang of metal against metal. Concrete warehouses stood with faded cream exteriors rust-stained beneath tiny barred windows. They passed an auto wrecking yard: piles of corroding metal on hard-packed, oil-stained earth. They went by parking lots abandoned for the evening fortified by chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. All around were clumps of withered crabgrass breaking through cracks on discolored asphalt; papers; tin cans. Rubbish-filled plots.

  They turned down an alley and into a street of shabby houses whose peeling stucco revealed the chicken wire and tar paper beneath. Dead weeds served as front lawns.

  “Here is the address,” Rosen said abruptly. They parked in front of a stucco box.

  A stout redheaded old woman in a florid silk gown answered their knock. Rosen introduced her as Madame Medina. The three stood in a musty room lit only by an old brass lamp burning perfumed oil. There was little furniture.

  “Ah, Doctor,” she said in a heavy accent, “I have accomplish what you tell me. You will see. Please come into the séance room.”

  As they followed, Shanks gave his friend a quizzical look.

  “She has an impressive record,” the doctor whispered in his ear.

  The séance room contained nothing but a deal table and three metal chairs set in the middle of a crude five-sided figure painted on the bare floorboards. An assortment of glass utensils littered the table.

  “Doctor, and you, sir,” the medium said, “your equipment all here. Do we try now to reach the other side?”

  “Yes, but a moment of explanation first,” said Rosen. “William, no elemental is ever without the other three. In order to invoke our fire spirit, we must invoke all four. Madame Medina here has undertaken the preliminaries for this by consecrating the four elements—that is, the physical realities that are the earthly emblems of the spirits we propose to conjure.

  “You will notice on the table a large glass globe. Inside, as you can see, is an arrangement of concave mirrors. I had it constructed according to a design of Paracelsus. If we are successful, within the globe will appear a manifestation of the salamander.”

  “All well and fine,” said Shanks. “But how do we protect ourselves? Remember, this thing has burned people to death.”

  “No,” interrupted Madame Medina. “No danger. Look. Here I have salt, camphor, resin, sulfur—all mixed together. If demon try to hurt us, I throw into fire. He go away fast.”

  She extinguished the oil lamp. A metal brazier standing on a tripod in the corner of the room provided a weak red glow. All three silently took their places at the table.

  Whispering at first, the medium passed imperceptibly into a dreary, sustained monotone. Rosen sat stiffly erect, concentrating.

  To Shanks it was a wearisome affair. Madame Medina droned away in Spanish, a language he had never learned. The room felt uncomfortably warm. He shifted in his chair. The droning began to get inside his head. He shifted again. It was all theatrical in the worst sense, this ridiculous old woman muttering to herself in this dark, stuffy room. The whole thing was ludicrous, vulgar.

  Somewhere the Spanish had given way to another tongue. Shanks could not say which. The closeness of the room was making him sleepy. He shook himself awake and realized the medium was chanting.

  “Gob, Peralda, Djinn, y Necksa—” Her body swayed spasmodically. “Djinn. Djinn. Djinn. Djinn. Djinn. Djinn.” “Gob, Peralda, Djinn y Necksa—.” On and on and on.

  The air had grown thick and stale. He should probably get up and walk around a bit. Or go outside. But that would hurt poor old Emile’s feelings. The glass ball, he noticed, shone with light. Emile had said something about that.

  He closed his eyes and sank deeper into his chair. He really should get up, but in a minute. His head felt stuffed with cotton. It was better to rest first. The medium—the whole thing was absurd. He opened his eyes.

  The room was uncomfortably bright. What caused that unpleasant smell? The medium stood now.

  She was burning.

  She was still chanting. “Djinn! Djinn! Djinn!”

  She doesn’t know she’s on fire, mused Shanks. Emile and I ought to tell her.

  White flames crawled up her arms, her neck, her face.

  She’s stopped chanting now, thought Shanks. Maybe she will start again.

  “William,” a voice called from far away. “William.”

  It sounded like good old Emile. Only it couldn’t be Emile, because he and Emile were at a séance, where—

  “William, wake up! We’ve been hypnotized!”

  What? Oh, it was Emile, and—Shanks stood up.

  “Water!” Rosen shouted. “Or our coats! Something!”

  She was like glowing iron. Cowled in a robe of fire, she collapsed to the floor. The flames vanished. Nothing remained but ashes.

  “Behind you!” Rosen yelled.

  Shanks turned to the wall behind him—then threw his arms before his face as he staggered back.

  The entire wall was a saurian head, bulging into the room, a rapid tongue—a grinning, wedge-shaped mouth, and an eye staring, staring,—boring straight to the backbone, paralyzing, hollowing out, emptying.

  A ferocious sound like a blast of steam sent them reeling into the hall. They returned moments later to find the wall empty and unbroken.

  • • •

  They drove home in silence. Once back in Rosen’s study, Shanks found comfort in scanning the familiar titles of the leather-bound books on the walls. Rosen sat absorbed in thought. Neither seemed willing to disturb the silence. It was only after a long while that Rosen spoke.

  “We now know that our elemental is not of the type that spoke to the alchemists, or it would have spoken to us. It is of a considerably lower order—more a force than an intelligence. Yet, like the higher powers, it wants one thing.”

  Suddenly Shanks felt anger. “Yes, it wants to kill. We’ve established that. That poor woman.”

  “Kill? It wanted to marry her!”

  “What?”

  “Think back to all the tales you know of elemental spirits.” The doctor was his old animated self. “Recall the love stories of the undine, or mermaid, luring a man to love and doom. Why, these spirits, these elementals, live a very long time, yes; but they are mortal—their souls are mortal. Their highest desire is to put on human immortality—achievable only by putting on human flesh—hence the ‘marriage’ or possession. Our fire elemental covets a human body and a human soul.”

  “But it kills people.”

  “Yes, because the victims are unwilling—or the vessels are too frail. It is the classic satanic pact. The devil delivers gold, but in exchange for what? For the body and for the soul. In the end they are the same. To gain the devil’s gold you must yield him your body and your soul. Mark what I say: sooner or later the creature will find a willing subject able to contain all that incandescent energy; then the spontaneous combustions will cease, at least for such time as the body holds together.”

  “And then?”

  “Why, then it shall seek another body.”

  “Emile, we have to notify someone about all this. Someone in authority, maybe the FBI.”

  “I’m afraid they would only hinder our work.”

  “Our work? What work? The séance was a failure. What can we do besides wait for the monster to possess somebody?”

  “We dare not wait!” the doctor thundered. “When it fell from its sphere of fire, it upset the balance of things. It now feeds off the other elements; witness the abnormal heat. That is one reason we must not wait. Another is this: you see what it does now in its unembodied form; once it gains a human body, its appetites may be even more shocking. But there is a third reason not to wait. And that reason is our own safety. When that salamander’s head came out of the wall—”

  “Yes?”

  “It saw us.”

  • • •

  The newspapers at this time joyfully shouted the misdeeds of a popul
ar film couple, and lambasted as well a whole raft of political figures for crimes unspeakable but not, apparently, unprintable. Occasionally, on some inner page, one could find an inch-long column devoted to a death by fire, but the public had long since tired of this. After a while, fire ceased to make the news at all.

  As for Shanks and Rosen, they met to weave elaborate plans based on the doctor’s almost constant research into folklore and demonology. In September came the rains.

  Without transition the air smelled fresh one evening. The citizens raised their heads to a cold sky pouring rain. In an instant the heat spell was forgotten, as woolen garments were hastily pulled on and long-disused raincoats sought for in spare closets. The rains lasted nearly a week and continued intermittently for a few days more.

  In the study, Shanks released billows of sweet-smelling pipe smoke as he sat in his armchair contemplating the droplets of water coursing down the slick windowpane. Rosen, too, stared out, but he peered into the night.

  “No more heat,” said Shanks. “No more heat, no more fires, no more elemental. It must have burned itself out or returned to its otherwhither.”

  “You forget the third alternative,” added Rosen. “It may have found a body.”

  The rain hit harder, propelled by a sudden wind. Rosen drew the curtains.

  “If it has found a body,” the doctor resumed, “we must be ready for it. I read recently an ancient account of an elemental spirit exorcised by means of a stone tablet bearing a potent inscription.”

  Shanks sighed. “Lacking any better suggestion,” he said, “I suppose we ought to put in an order for one.”

  “You are too flippant,” Rosen sniffed. “I am having one made.”

  • • •

  Two weeks passed. September became October. The news was all of the virulent new “wasting sickness,” which exhausted and emaciated and was nearly always fatal. October passed into November.

  Toward the end of November the friends spent two weeks fishing mountain streams for trout.

  When Shanks returned to the office, his secretary greeted him with a multitude of new work, then left the room but was back immediately.