"I suppose that applies to Machen and a man named Derleth and one named
Ambrose Bierce, also?"
"Yes." She shut the file cabinet. "All burned. And good riddance." She
gave him an odd warm look of interest. "I bet you've just come back
from Mars."
"Why do you say that?"
"There was another explorer in here yesterday. He'd just made the Mars
hop and return. He was interested in supernatural literature, also. It
seems there are actually 'tombs' on Mars."
"What are 'tombs'?" Lantry was learning to keep his mouth closed.
"You know, those things they once buried people in."
"Barbarian custom. Ghastly!"
"_Isn't_ it? Well, seeing the Martian tombs made this young explorer
curious. He came and asked if we had any of those authors you
mentioned. Of course we haven't even a smitch of their stuff." She
looked at his pale face. "You _are_ one of the Martian rocket men,
aren't you?"
"Yes," he said. "Got back on the ship the other day."
"The other young man's name was Burke."
"Of course. Burke! Good friend of mine!"
"Sorry I can't help you. You'd best get yourself some vitamin shots and
some sun-lamp. You look terrible, Mr. ----?"
"Lantry. I'll be good. Thanks ever so much. See you next Hallows' Eve!"
"Aren't you the clever one." She laughed. "If there _were_ a Hallows'
Eve, I'd make it a date."
"But they burned _that_, too," he said.
"Oh, they burned everything," she said. "Good night."
"Good night." And he went on out.
* * * * *
Oh, how carefully he was balanced in this world! Like some kind of
dark gyroscope, whirling with never a murmur, a very silent man. As
he walked along the eight o'clock evening street he noticed with
particular interest that there was not an unusual amount of lights
about. There were the usual street lights at each corner, but the
blocks themselves were only faintly illuminated. Could it be that these
remarkable people were not _afraid of the dark_? Incredible nonsense!
_Every one_ was afraid of the dark. _Even he_ himself had been afraid,
as a child. It was as natural as eating.
A little boy ran by on pelting feet, followed by six others. They
yelled and shouted and rolled on the dark cool October lawn, in the
leaves. Lantry looked on for several minutes before addressing himself
to one of the small boys who was for a moment taking a respite,
gathering his breath into his small lungs, as a boy might blow to
refill a punctured paper bag.
"Here, now," said Lantry. "You'll wear yourself out."
"Sure," said the boy.
"Could you tell me," said the man, "why there are no street lights in
the middle of the blocks?"
"Why?" asked the boy.
"I'm a teacher, I thought I'd test your knowledge," said Lantry.
"Well," said the boy, "you don't need lights in the middle of the
block, that's why."
"But it gets rather dark," said Lantry.
"So?" said the boy.
"Aren't you afraid?" asked Lantry.
"Of what?" asked the boy.
"The dark," said Lantry.
"Ho ho," said the boy. "Why should I be?"
"Well," said Lantry. "It's black, it's dark. And after all, street
lights were invented to take away the dark and take away fear."
"That's silly. Street lights were made so you could see where you were
walking. Outside of that there's nothing."
"You miss the whole point--" said Lantry. "Do you mean to say you would
sit in the middle of an empty lot all night and not be afraid?"
"Of what?"
"Of what, of what, of what, you little ninny! Of the dark!"
"Ho ho."
"Would you go out in the hills and stay all night in the dark?"
"Sure."
"Would you stay in a deserted house alone?"
"Sure."
"And not be afraid?"
"Sure."
"You're a liar!"
"Don't you call me nasty names!" shouted the boy. Liar was the improper
noun, indeed. It seemed to be the worst thing you could call a person.
Lantry was completely furious with the little monster. "Look," he
insisted. "Look into my eyes...."
The boy looked.
Lantry bared his teeth slightly. He put out his hands, making a
clawlike gesture. He leered and gesticulated and wrinkled his face into
a terrible mask of horror.
"Ho ho," said the boy. "You're funny."
"_What_ did you say?"
"You're funny. Do it again. Hey, gang, c'mere! This man does funny
things!"
"Never mind."
"Do it again, sir."
"Never mind, never mind. Good night!" Lantry ran off.
"Good night, sir. And mind the dark, sir!" called the little boy.
* * * * *
Of all the stupidity, of all the rank, gross, crawling, jelly-mouthed
stupidity! He had never seen the like of it in his life! Bringing the
children up without so much as an _ounce_ of imagination! Where was the
fun in being children if you didn't imagine things?
He stopped running. He slowed and for the first time began to
appraise himself. He ran his hand over his face and bit his finger
and found that he himself was standing midway in the block and he
felt uncomfortable. He moved up to the street corner where there was a
glowing lantern. "That's better," he said, holding his hands out like a
man to an open warm fire.
He listened. There was not a sound except the night breathing of the
crickets. Faintly there was a fire-hush as a rocket swept the sky. It
was the sound a torch might make brandished gently on the dark air.
He listened to himself and for the first time he realized what there
was so peculiar to himself. There was not a sound in him. The little
nostril and lung noises were absent. His lungs did not take nor give
oxygen or carbon-dioxide; they did not move. The hairs in his nostrils
did not quiver with warm combing air. That faint purring whisper of
breathing did not sound in his nose. Strange. Funny. A noise you never
heard when you were alive, the breath that fed your body, and yet, once
dead, oh how you missed it!
The only other time you ever heard it was on deep dreamless awake
nights when you wakened and listened and heard first your nose taking
and gently poking out the air, and then the dull deep dim red thunder
of the blood in your temples, in your eardrums, in your throat, in
your aching wrists, in your warm loins, in your chest. All of those
little rhythms, gone. The wrist beat gone, the throat pulse gone, the
chest vibration gone. The sound of the blood coming up down around and
through, up down around and through. Now it was like listening to a
statue.
And yet he _lived_. Or, rather, moved about. And how was this done,
over and above scientific explanations, theories, doubts?
By one thing, and one thing alone.
Hatred.
Hatred was a blood in him, it went up down around and through, up down
around and through. It was a heart in him, not beating, true, but warm.
He was--what? Resentment. Envy. They said he could not lie any longer
in his coffin in the cemetery. He had _wanted_ to. He had never had any
particular desire to get up and walk around. It had been enough, all
these centuries, to lie in the deep box and feel but _not feel_ the
ticking of the million insect watches in the earth around, the moves of
worms like so many deep thoughts in the soil.
But then they had come and said, "Out you go and into the furnace!" And
that is the worst thing you can say to any man. You cannot tell him
what to do. If you say you are dead, he will want not to be dead. If
you say there are no such things as vampires, by God, that man will try
to _be_ one just for spite. If you say a dead man cannot walk, he will
test his limbs. If you say murder is no longer occurring, he will make
it occur. He was, _in toto_, all the impossible things. They had given
birth to him with their damnable practices and ignorances. Oh, how
wrong they were. They needed to be shown. He would _show_ them! Sun is
_good_, so is _night_, there is nothing wrong with dark, _they_ said.
Dark is horror, he shouted, silently, facing the little houses. It is
_meant_ for contrast. You must fear, you hear! That has always been
the way of this world. You destroyers of Edgar Allan Poe and fine
big-worded Lovecraft, you burner of Hallowe'en masks and destroyer of
pumpkin jack-o-lanterns! I will make night what it _once_ was, the
thing against which man built all his lanterned cities and his many
children!
As if in answer to this, a rocket, flying low, trailing a long rakish
feather of flame. It made Lantry flinch and draw back.