She dragged herself to her feet, pausing irresolutely, looking around at the huddled houses, each set on its own acre of weeds and lawn. They were all dark in the early winter evening.
June gave a little moan and sank on the step again, hugging herself desperately against the penetrating chill. It seemed an eternity that she crouched there before the radio cut off in mid-note.
Fearfully, she roused and pressed her face to one of the door panes. Dimly through the gla.s.s curtains she could see the Eater, sluggish and swollen, lying quietly by the radio. Hysteria was rising for a moment, but she resolutely knuckled the tears from her eyes.
The headlights scythed around the corner, glittering swiftly across the blank windows next door as the car crunched into the Warren"s driveway and came to a gravel-skittering stop.
June pressed her hands to her mouth, sure that even through the closed door she could hear the choonk and slither of the thing inside as it slid to and fro, seeking sound.
The car door slammed and hurried footsteps echoed along the path. June made wild shushing motions with her hands as Mrs. Warren scurried around the corner of the house.
"June!" Mrs. Warren"s voice was ragged with worry. "Is Dubby all right? What are you doing out here?
What"s wrong with the phone?" She fumbled for the doork.n.o.b.
"No, no!" June shouldered her roughly aside. "Don"t go it! It"ll get you, too."
She heard a thud just inside the door. Dimly through the gla.s.s she saw the flicker of movement as the snout of the Eater raised and wavered toward them.
"June!" Mrs. Warren jerked her away from the door. "Let me in! What"s the matter? Have you gone crazy?"
Mrs. Warren stopped suddenly, her face whitening. "What have you done to Dubby, June?"
The girl gulped with the shock of the accusation. "I haven"t done anything, Mrs. Warren. He made a Noise-eater and ita"ita"" June winced away from the sudden blaze of Mrs. Warren"s eyes.
"Get away from that door!" Mrs. Warren"s face was that of a stranger, her words icy and clipped. "I trusted you with my child. If anything has happened to hima""
"Don"t go ina"oh, don"t go in!" June grabbed at her coat hysterically.
"Please, please, wait! Let"s geta""
"Let go!" Mrs. Warren"s voice grated between her tightly clenched teeth. "Let me go, youa"youa"" Her hand flashed out and the crack of her palm against June"s cheek was echoed by a choonk inside the house. June was staggered by the blow, but she clung to the coat until Mrs. Warren pushed her sprawling down the front steps and fumbled at the k.n.o.b, crying, "Dubby, Dubby!"
June, scrambling up the steps on hands and knees, caught a glimpse of a hovering something that lifted and swayed like a waiting cobra. It was slapped aside by the violent opening of the door as Mrs. Warren stumbled into the house, her cries suddenly stilling on her slack lips as she saw her crumpled son by the couch.
She gasped and whispered, "Dubby!" She lifted him into her arms. His head rolled loosely against her shoulder. Her protesting, "No, no, no!" merged into half-articulate screams as she hugged him to her.
And from behind the front door there was a choonk and a slither.
June lunged forward and grabbed the reaching thing that was homing in on Mrs. Warren"s hysterical grief. Her hands closed around it convulsively, her whole weight dragging back ward, but it had a strength she couldn"t match. Desperately then, her fists clenched, her eyes tightly shut, she screamed and screamed and screamed.
The snout looped almost lazily around her straining throat, but she fought her way almost to the front door before the thing held her, feet on the floor, body at an impossible angle, and stilled her frantic screams, quieted her straining lungs and sipped the last of her heartbeats, and let her drop.
Mrs. Warren stared incredulously at June"s crumpled body and the horrible creature that blinked its lights and shifted its antennae questioningly. With a m.u.f.fled gasp, she sagged, knees and waist and neck, and fell soundlessly to the floor.
The refrigerator in the kitchen cleared its throat and the Eater turned from June with a choonk and slid away, crossing to the kitchen.
The Eater retracted its snout and slid back from the refrigerator. It lay quietly, its ears shifting from quarter to quarter.
The thermostat in the dining room clicked and the hot-air furnace began to hum. The Eater slid to the wall under the register that was set just below the ceiling. Its snout extended and lifted and narrowed until the end of it slipped through one of the register openings. The furnace hum choked off abruptly and the snout end flipped back into sight.
Then there was quiet, deep and unbroken, until the Eater tilted its ears and slid up to Mrs. Warren.
In such silence, even a pulse was noise.
There was a sound like a straw in the bottom of a soda gla.s.s.
A stillness was broken by the shrilling of a siren on the main highway four blocks away.
A choonk and a slither and the metallic b.u.mp of runners down the three front steps.
And a quiet, quiet house on a quiet side street.
Hush.
THE CIRCUS.
by Sydney J. Bounds.
Because he had been drinking, Arnold Bragg considered it a stroke of good fortune that the accident happened a long way from any main road and the chance of a patrolling police car.
He had no exact idea of his location, just that it was some where in the West Country.
He was on his way back from Cornwall where he"d been covering a story, an expose of a witches"
coven, for the Sunday Herald. He drove an MG sports car and, as always with a few drinks inside him, drove too fast. With time to spare, he"d left the A30 at a whim. It was a summer evening, slowly cooling after the heat of the day. The countryside was what he called "pretty," with lanes twisting between hedgerows. He took a corner at speed and rammed the trunk of a tree that jutted into the road around the bend.
Shaken but unhurt, he climbed from his car and swore at a leaking radiator. Then he got back in and drove on, looking for a garage. He found one, a couple of miles farther along, next to a pub with a scattering of cottages; there were not enough of them to justify calling them a village.
A mechanic glanced at the hood and sniffed his breath.
"ArI can fix it. Couple of hours, maybe."
Arnold Bragg nodded. "I"ll be next door when you"ve finished."
It was the kind of pub that exists only in out-of-the-way places, and then rarely; a house of local stone with a front room converted as a bar. The door stood open and he walked in past a stack of beer crates.
The walls were thick and it was cool inside. On a polished counter rested two casks, one of cider and one of beer. A gray-haired woman sat knitting behind the counter, and two oldish men sat on a wooden bench by the window.
Bragg turned on a charm that rarely failed him. "I"ll try a pint of your local beer."
The woman laid her knitting aside, picked up a gla.s.s mug and held it under the tap; sediment hung in the rich brown liquid.
Bragg tasted it, then drank deeply. "I didn"t know anyone still brewed beer like this." He glanced around the room.
"Perhaps you gentlemen will join me?"
"Ar, likely we will, sir. And many thanks."
Bragg"s gaze moved on to a poster thumb-tacked to the wall. It had obviously been hand-printed, and read: CIRCUS.
Before your very eyes, werewolf into man!
See the vampire rise from his coffin!
Bring the childrena"invest in a sense of wonder!
As Arnold Bragg stared and wondered if beer had finally rotted his brain, sluggish memory stirred. In his job, he always listened to rumors; some he hunted down and obtained a story. There had been this crazy one, crazy but persistent, of a freak circus that never visited towns but stopped only for one night at isolated villages. He"d come across it first in the fens, then on the Yorkshire moors, and again in a Welsh valley.
The knowledge that this circus was here, now, sobered him.
He set down his gla.s.s on the counter, unfinished. When he scented a lead, he could stop drinking. And this one was likely to prove the apex of a career dedicated to discrediting fakes and phonies of all kinds.
He studied the poster carefully. No name was given to the circus. There was no indication of time or place of performance. Still, it shouldn"t be hard to find.
He strolled outside, pa.s.sed the garage where the mechanic worked on his car, and sauntered toward the cottages. A few families, young husbands and wives with their offspring, were walking down a lane, and he followed them. Presently he glimpsed, in the distance, the canvas top of a large tent showing above some trees.
He kept to himself, observing the people on the way to the circus; there was no gaiety in them. With solemn faces and measured step they went, people who took their pleasure seriously.
Beyond a screen of trees was a green field with the big top and a huddle of caravans and Land-Rovers.
People formed a small line at an open flap of the tent, where a little old man sold tickets. He sported a fringe of white hair, nut-brown skin and the wizened appearance of a chimpanzee.
Bragg dipped a hand into his pocket and brought out some loose change.
"I don"t believe you"ll like our show, sir." The accent was foreign.
"It"s purely for the locals, you understand.
Nothing sophisticated for a London gentleman."
"You"re wrong," Bragg said, urging money on him. "This is just right for me." He s.n.a.t.c.hed a ticket and walked into the tent.
Seats rose in tiers, wooden planks set on angle irons. In the center was a sawdust ring behind low planking; an aisle at the rear allowed performers to come and go. There was no provision for a high-wire act.
Bragg found an empty seat away from the local people, high enough so that he commanded a clear view, but not so far from the ringside that he would miss any detail.
Not many seats were occupied. He lit a cigarette and watched the crowd. Grave faces, little talk; the children showed none of that excitement normally a.s.sociated with a visit to the circus. Occasionally eyes turned his way and were has tily averted. A few more families arrived, all with young children.
The old man who sold tickets doubled as ringmaster. He shuffled across the sawdust and made his announcement in hardly more than a whisper. Bragg had to strain to catch the words.
"I, Dr. Nis, welcome you to my circus. Tonight you will see true wonders. The natural world is full of prodigies for those who will open their eyes and minds. We begin with the vampire."
Somewhere, pipe music played; notes rippled up and down a non-Western scale, effecting an erie chant.
Two laborers came down the aisle, carrying a coffin. The coffin was far from new and they placed it on the ground as if afraid it might fall to pieces.
The pipes shrilled.
Bragg found he was holding his breath and forced himself to relax.
Tension came again as the lid of the coffin moved.
It moved upward, jerkily, an inch at a time. A thin hand with long fingernails appeared from inside. The lid was pushed higher, creaking in the silence of the tent, and the vampire rose and stepped out.
Its face had the pallor of death, the canine teeth showed long and pointed, and a ragged cloak swirled about its human form.
One of the laborers returned with a young lamb and tossed it to the vampire. Hungrily, teeth sank into the lamb"s throat, bit deep, and the lips sucked and sucked . . .
Bragg stared, fascinated and disgusted. When, finally, the drained carca.s.s was tossed aside, the vampire appeared swollen as a well-filled leech.
The laborers carried the coffin out and the vampire walked behind.
Jesus, Bragg thoughta"this is for kids?
Dr. Nis made a small bow.
"You who are present tonight are especially fortunate.
Not at every performance is it possible to show a shape changer.
Lycanthropy is not a condition that can be perfectly timeda"and now, here is the werewolf"
He placed a small whistle to his lips and blew into it.
No sound came, but a large gray wolf trotted into the sawdust ring, moving as silently as the whistle that called it. Slanting eyes glinted yellowish-green. The animal threw back its head and gave a prolonged and chilling howl.
Hairs p.r.i.c.kled on the back of Bragg"s neck and he almost came out of his seat. He blinked his eyes as the wolf-shape wavered. The creature appeared to elongate as it rose high on its hind limbs. The fur changed. Bragg moistened suddenly dry lips as the wolf became more manlike . . . and more . . . till it was a naked man who stood before them.
An attendant draped a blanket about his shoulders and together they walked off. Blood pounded through Bragg"s head; it had to be a fake, obviously, but it was a convincing fake.
"The ancient Egyptians believed in physical immortality,"
Dr. Nis whispered. "They had a ceremony known as the Opening of the Mouth. This ceremony restored to the body, after death, its ability to see, hear, eat and speak. Here now, a mummy from the land of the Pharaohs."
A withered mummy, wrapped in discolored linen bandages, its naked face dark-skinned, was carried into the ring. Four jars were placed about it.
"These are canopic jars, containing the heart and lungs and the viscera of the deceased."
A voice spoke, a voice that seemed to come from the mummy.
It spoke in a language unfamiliar to Bragg.