"You have tried writing, but have had no success. Alone in the world,
your loneliness has much a family man, harassed might envy."
"That's true," I admitted, wondering if he could be a seer, a fake
mystic bent on arousing in me an interest in spiritism favorable to his
pocket-book. His next words were a little amused, but he didn't smile.
"No, I'm not a psychic--in the ordinary sense, I've visited your shop. I
was there only yesterday," he said. And I remembered him. In returning
from my lunch I had met him coming out of my humble place of business.
One glimpse into those brooding eyes was not a thing to soon forget, and
I recalled pausing to watch his stiff-legged progress down the street
and around the corner.
There was now a pause, while I watched leaves scuttling along the oiled
walk in the growling wind. Then a sound like a sigh came from my
companion. It seemed to me that the wind and the sea spoke loudly of a
sudden, as tho approaching some dire climax. The sea wind chilled me as
it had not before, I wanted to leave.
"Dare I tell you? DARE I!" His white face turned upward. It was as
though he questioned some spirit in the winds.
I was silent; curious, yet fearful of what it might be he might not be
allowed to tell me. The winds were portentously still.
"Were you ever told, as a child, that you must not attempt to count the
stars in the sky at night--that if you did you might _lose your mind_?"
"Why, yes. I believe I've heard that old superstition. Very reasonable,
I believe; based on the assumption that the task would be too great for
one brain. I...."
"I suppose it never occurred to you," he interrupted, "that this
superstition might hold even more truth than that, truth as malignant as
it is vast. Perhaps the cosmos hold secrets beyond comprehension of man;
and what is your assurance that these secrets are beneficent and kind?
Is nature rather not terrible, than kind? In the stars are
patterns--designs which if read, might lure the intrepid miserable one
who reads them out of earth and beyond ... beyond, to immeasurable
evil.... Do you understand what I am saying?" His voice quivered
metallically, was vibrant with emotion.
I tried to smile, but managed only a sickly grin. "I understand you,
sir, but I am not in the habit of accepting nebulous theories such as
that without any shred of evidence."
"There is, sad to say, only too much evidence. But do you believe that
men have _lost their minds_ from incessant study of the stars?"
"Perhaps some have, I don't know," I returned. "But in the South of this
state in one of the country's leading observatories, I have a friend who
is famous as an astronomer. He is as sane as you or I. If not saner." I
tacked the last sentence on with significant emphasis.
The fellow was muttering something into his muffler, and I fancied I
caught the words "danger ..." and "fools ..." We were silent again. Low
dark clouds fled over the roaring sea and the gloom intensified.
Presently, in his clipt speech, the stranger said, "Do you believe that
life exists on other planets, other stars? Have you ever wondered what
kind of life might inhabit the other stars in this solar system, and
those beyond it?" His eyes were near mine as he spoke, and they
bewitched me. There was something in them, something intangible and
awful. I sensed that he was questioning me idly, as an outlander might
be questioned about things with which the asker is familiar, as I might
ask a New Yorker, "What do you think of the Golden Gate Bridge?"
"I wouldn't attempt to guess, to describe, for instance, a Martian man,"
I said. "Yet I read with interest various guesses by writers of
fiction." I was striving to maintain a mood of lightness and ease, but
inwardly I felt a bitter cold, as one on the rim of a nightmare. I
suddenly realized, with childish fear, that night was falling.
"Writers of fiction! And what if they were to _guess too well_? What
then? Is it safe for them to have full rein over their imaginations?
Like the star-gazers...." I said nothing, but smiled.
"Perhaps, man, there have been those whose minds were acute beyond most
earthly minds--those who have guessed too closely to truth. Perhaps
_those who are Beyond_ are not yet ready to make themselves known to
Earthlings? And maybe THEY, are annoyed with the puny publicity they
receive from imaginative writers.... Ask yourself, _what is
imagination_? Are earth-minds capable of conceiving that which is not
and has never been; or is this imagination merely a deeper insight
into worlds you know not of, worlds glimpsed dimly in the throes of
dream? And whence come these dreams? Tell me, have you ever awakened
from a dream with the sinister feeling that all was not well
inside your mind?--that while you, the real you, were away in
Limbo--_someone_--some_thing_ was probing in your mind, invading it and
reading it. Might not THEY leave behind them in departure shadowy
trailings of _their_ own minds?"
Now I was indeed speechless. For a strange nothing had started my
neck-hairs to prickling. Authors who might have guessed too well....
Two, no three, writers whose stories had hinted at inconceivable yet
inevitable dooms; writers I had known; had recently died, by accident.
"What of old legends? Of the serpent who shall one day devour the sun.
That legend dates back to Mu and Atlantis. Who, man, was and is Satan?
Christ? And Jehovah? benevolent and all-saving, were but a monstrous
jest fostered by THEY to keep man blindly content, and keep him divided
among himself so that he strove not to unravel the stars?"
"Man, in my foolish youth I studied by candleflame secrets that would
scorch your very soul. Of women who with their own bare hands have
strangled the children they bore so that the world might not know....
Disease and sickness at which physicians throw up their hands in
helpless bafflement. When strong men tear at their limbs and heads and
agony--seeking to drive forth alien forces that have netted themselves
into their bodies. I need scarcely recount them all, each with its own
abominable significance. It is THEM. Who are eternal and nameless, who
send their scouts down to test earth-man. Don't you realize that they
have watched man creep out of primal slimes, take limbs and shamble, and
finally walk? And that they are waiting, biding their time...." I
shivered with a fear beyond name. I tried to laugh and could not. Then,
bold with stark horror, I shouted quite loudly: "How do you know this?
Are you one of THEM?" He shook his head violently. "No, no!" I made as
to go, feeling an aching horror within me.
"Stay only a moment more, man. I will have pity on you and will not tell
you all. I will not describe _them_. And I will not assay that which,
when upon first seeing you here by the sea, _I first intended_...." I
listened. Not daring to look at him; as in the grip of daemonaic dream.
My fingers clutched at the edges of the bench so tightly that I have
been unable to write with them until now. He concluded thus:
"So you see that I am everywhere a worldless alien. Sometimes this
secret is too great for one mind to contain, and I must talk. I must
feel the presence of someone human near me, else I shall attempt to
commit suicide and again fail. It is without end--my horror. Have pity
on me, man of earth, as I have had pity on you."
It was then that I gripped him by the shoulders and looked with pleading
desperation into his staring eyes. "Why have you told me? What--" My
voice broke. My hands fell to my sides. I shuddered.
He understood. Shrieked one word: "PITY!" into my insensible ear, and
was gone.
That was 3 nites ago and each nite since has been hell. I cannot
remember how long it was after the STRANGER left that I found myself
able to move, to rise, hobble home, suddenly ancient with knowledge. And
I cannot--WILL NOT--reveal to you all that I heard.
I thot myself insane, but after an examination, a physician pronounced
me that I had been strained mentally. I am competent. But I wonder if he
is wrong.
I view the silken stars tonight with loathing. HE sought to master their
inscrutable secret meaning, and succeeded. He imagined, he dreamed; and
he fed his sleep with potions, so that he might learn where his mind
might be during sleep, and himself probe into the mind that wandered
from space into his resting body-shell. I am no scientist, no
bio-chemist, so I learned little of his methods. Only that he did
succeed in removing his mind from Earth, and soaring to some remote
world over and beyond this universe--where THEY dwell. And THEY knew him
to be a mind of Earth, he told me. He but hinted of the evil he beheld,
so potent with dread that it shattered his mind. And THEY cured him, and
sent him back to earth.... "They are waiting!" he shrieked, in his
grating skeleton of a voice. "They are contemptuous of man and his
feeble colonies. But they fear that some day, like an overgrown idiot
child, he may do them harm. But before this time--when Man has
progressed into a ripeness--THEY will descend! Then they will come in
hordes to exploit the world as THEY did before!"
Of his return, and his assuming the role of a man, the Alien spoke
evasively. It was to be assurred that this talk of his was not some
repulsive caprice; to know that all of it was true, that I gripped him
and beheld him. To my everlasting horror, I must know. Little in itself,
what I saw, but sufficient to cause me to sink down on the stone bench
in a convulsive huddle of fear. Never again in life can I tear this
clutching terror from my soul. Only this: That when I looked into his
staring eyes in the dimness of murky twilight, and before he understood
and quickly avaunted, I glimpsed with astoundment and repugnance that
between the muffling of his coat and black scarf _the INTRUDER wore a
meticulously painted metal mask--to hide what I must not see_....
[Illustration]