"It's all part of a system," Sanders said slowly. "You can't change
that system any more than you can change human nature, Terry. All you
can do is make the best of it. I hope you'll look at it that way. I've
seen too many good reporters go sour over what they keep running into."
A telephone jangled on the desk. Sanders spoke into it briefly and
returned his attention to Bryan.
"Working on anything now, Terry?"
Bryan explained about the three weirdly afflicted men who had been
found in Grant Park. "I'm planning to look into it," he finished.
"Sounds like something big is involved," Sanders approved. "Go ahead
with it, Terry.... And take things easy, will you?" he added as Bryan
started toward the door.
"Sure," Bryan said.
Back at his desk, Bryan finished typing his copy. He was pencilling
corrections when Joyce Mayhew appeared.
"Hi, Terry!" She perched on the edge of a neighboring desk, a slim
dark girl with a wide humorous mouth and expressive hazel eyes. She
was simply dressed as always, but gave a characteristic impression of
fashionable elegance. "What have you got there--a scoop, or a love
letter?"
"It could be my last will and testament," Bryan said. He stood up and
called to a copyboy. "Have you had lunch?" he asked Joyce, then.
"I was hoping somebody would ask me. Somebody like you, Terry."
"Consider yourself asked. Let's go."
* * * * *
They sat in a booth in a small restaurant on a side street near the
_Courier_ Building. Joyce's eyes were grave as she studied Bryan's face
over the top of her menu.
"Anything in that last will and testament crack you made, Terry?" she
asked at last. "I saw you come out of Sanders' office."
He shrugged, mobile lips twisting into a wry grin. "Nothing that
serious. I just had my wrist slapped. Over the way I handled the
Holzheimer story."
"There was quite a bit of talk about that up at the office. Sanders let
you off easy. But Terry, you seem to have been hitting out at things a
little too hard. What's the matter--a disappointed love life?"
"You know as much about my love life as I do."
"Really?" She looked down to finger a spoon, sudden pain and
wistfulness in her averted face.
"I saw Dave at the County Hospital," he went on. "You remember Dave."
"Yes--and his wife's cooking and his lovely children."
"Dave mentioned you. He seemed to feel I've been neglecting him."
"Maybe you've been neglecting a lot of people, Terry."
He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, an action compounded of
agreement, weariness--and despair. "I suppose that's true. People and
I seem to have been going off in opposite directions. Take Dave. He's
satisfied with what he's doing. I can't talk to him without being
reminded of my own dissatisfaction. He can't talk to me without knowing
that something's wrong."
Joyce reached across the table and caught his hand. "Terry--don't let
it get you!"
He forced a grin. "With me it's work as usual. And this time it's
something off the beaten path--something darned queer." He told her of
the dead-alive man at the hospital and of the link to the other Grant
Park victims. He straightened, animation quickening in his face, his
melancholy forgotten.
"Three men," he finished grimly. "There's a kind of continuity to the
thing. I'm going to watch the park, Joyce. I have the idea that what
happened is going to happen again. I want to know just what was done to
those men, just what sort of agency is at the bottom of it."
Her face was troubled. "Terry ... it frightens me! If something strange
is really going on, you might get hurt--the way those men were hurt.
I wish--" She broke off with a helpless gesture. "Be careful, Terry!
Please be careful!"
* * * * *
Bryan sat on a stool in one corner of a small dimly lighted bar,
frowning down at an envelope on which he had drawn a diagram of
Grant Park. He had spent part of the afternoon checking on the
locations where the three men had been found. These, it appeared,
were concentrated roughly near the middle of the park, around a large
sandstone memorial pavilion which was the center of numerous converging
walks. He had visited the spot while daylight remained, familiarizing
himself with it in preparation for his night vigil.
Glancing at his watch now, Bryan slid off the stool and went to a
telephone alcove. He dialed a number quickly. There was a delay while
an extension connection was made.
"Dave?" he said, then. "Terry at this end. How's the patient?"
"Dead, Terry. Not half an hour ago. We tried everything--oxygen, heart
stimulants. It was no use. I knew it was going to happen all along and
stayed to do what I could. I was just getting ready to go home."
"I checked up on the others who were found in the park," Bryan resumed.
"They died, too. In about the same length of time as your patient."
"Good Lord, Terry! It ... it's horrible somehow. What in the name of
reason could be back of it?"
"I'm working on that angle right now. I'll let you know if I turn up
anything.... Thanks, Dave." Bryan hung up and went back to the bar. He
finished his drink, lighted a cigarette, and strode outside.
Darkness had thickened along the street, a soft warm darkness, rich
with the promise of approaching summer. A block's walk brought Bryan
to the boulevard. Grant Park lay just across from him, lights shining
fairy-like throughout its shadowed length.
He crossed with the traffic light, hands in his pockets, a man just
strolling along on a pleasant evening. But his gray eyes were alert and
grim. Vivid in his mind was the memory of a man in a hospital bed, a
man who breathed and yet was not alive.
The park swallowed him. He walked directly toward the memorial
pavilion, moving without haste, without apparent purpose or destination.
The pavilion took shape in the quiet gloom, a temple-like place
of flowerbeds and radiating walks. On the benches around it was a
scattering of romantic couples and lonely men sprawled in sleep. The
atmosphere was one of serenity and peace. To Bryan it seemed briefly
incredible that danger could threaten here. Yet in this vicinity three
men had been struck down by something that had left them mere shells of
flesh without the will to live.
He made a complete circuit of the pavilion without a glimpse of
anything unusual or suspicious. Finally, choosing a bench thick in
shadow and partly screened by bushes, he sat down to wait.
Time passed slowly in the lulling murmur of leaves and the distant
drone of passing automobiles. The sleeping men on neighboring benches
awoke one by one, stretched, and plodded away into the darkness. The
spooning couples shared a last embrace and vanished in turn. Before
much longer the benches around Bryan were deserted. But he knew that
other persons might still be lingering in spots not visible to him.
The quiet had deepened. Bryan shifted cramped and protesting muscles
and peered impatiently at the radium dial of his watch. The hour was
already a late one. Soon it would be too late for what he had hoped
would happen. Everyone would have left the neighborhood of the pavilion.
Hope was fading in Bryan, but he forced himself to remain where he
was. More time passed. A deep somnolent hush lay over the pavilion.
Even the continual rustling of leaves now seemed muted and remote. The
sky pressed down, a soft dark blanket lavishly strewn with points of
brilliance. In the silver gloom the lamps spaced along the walks shone
with an ethereal phosphorescent quality.
Bryan slumped on the bench in resignation. He was certain now that
nothing would happen. Not tonight, at least. And in his disappointment
he wondered if there had been some warning of his presence. Or had what
he had been waiting for already taken place, without his having been
aware of it?
His tiredness blunted the question. Rest seemed more important now.
He'd go to his furnished room and sleep. This was just the first night.
There would be other nights. He'd wait and watch until something
finally happened.
But right now there was no further need for caution. He could have a
smoke. He could stand up to ease his aching muscles.
* * * * *
He was reaching for his cigarettes when he heard the sound rising above
the murmur of leaves. The sound of wings. There was a rushing power to
them, a massive beat. And listening, Bryan had the swift certainty
that it was nothing familiar that flew through the night. He crouched
on the bench, frozen, searching the jeweled sky.
Then another sound--a girl's questioning voice, shrill with alarm.
Bryan swung and saw two figures against the pale outlines of the
pavilion, one evidently the girl he had heard and the other that of a
man accompanying her. They must have been nearby without his having
noticed them. The sound of approaching wings had drawn them into view.
Bryan's pulses leaped in dread excitement. Was it going to happen
now--like this? Did whatever it was that had deprived three men of the
will to live ride the air on great wings?
The thought brought a chill dismay. His eyes widened on the two figures
before the pavilion. If some strange attack portended, he could not
stand idly by and watch it happen. The man and girl were too clearly
exposed, in possible great danger.
Bryan was tensing his muscles when the beating wings swept by overhead.
His glance jerked upward. He stared in numbed disbelief.
A huge bird-like shape was gliding down toward the pavilion. Flying
beside it, grotesquely like fighter planes escorting a giant bomber,
were a number of smaller shapes--vaguely man-like. But it was not this
sight alone that filled Bryan with nightmare amazement. For astride
the bird-thing was a slender-limbed figure in veil-like garments--a
girl. And against the dark backdrop of the sky, girl and winged
creatures alike all seemed to shine with an eerie glow, a luminous
radiance.
Impossibility! Madness! Bryan's thoughts whirled in chaos. This bizarre
scene couldn't be real. He was suffering a delusion. His long vigil
on the bench had lulled him into a dream-like state in which he was
experiencing a fantastic vision.
But even as he told himself this, he knew he was very much awake. And
he knew that what he saw was no mere vision. For a scream from the girl
before the pavilion testified that she and her companion saw it also.
The fantastic winged shapes were slanting downward. Bryan realized
they were moving directly toward the man and girl. The couple stood
immobile, rigid, as though spell-bound by the utter weirdness of what
they saw.
Bryan shouted a hoarse warning and started forward. He did not know
what he could possibly do. No rational purpose motivated him. His
action was instinctive, an appalled protest against what he feared was
about to take place.
Bryan's warning registered upon the couple. They seemed abruptly aware
of their danger. The man caught at the girl's arm as if to draw her
with him in flight. But now terror struck her with its full impact,
and her body began crumpling in a faint even as she turned to follow.
Her companion hesitated in dismay, concern for the girl obviously
struggling against desire for escape.
One of the smaller flying monstrosities had pulled ahead of the others.
Skimming several feet above the ground, it darted at the man.
Closer now, Bryan was able to make out details that previously had
escaped him. The creature was the size of a child, with two pairs of
arms, its lean body human in shape. It had large bulging eyes in a
small hairless head. Its face projected in a long tapering needle-like
proboscis, which together with delicate gauzy wings gave the appearance
of an enormous insect--a mosquito. The luminous radiance that
glowed from the thing was not the only remaining unearthly feature;
Bryan discovered that it was mistily transparent as well, somehow
unsubstantial.
The man saw the winged apparition coming at him. His hands lifted in
defense, but in the next instant the creature's needle-shaped snout
plunged into his chest like a thrust sword. Then, with a blur of wings,
the creature pulled free and circled away. The man did not move again.
He stood with hands still defensively raised, statuesque, frozen. It
was as if a lightning paralysis had struck him.
* * * * *
Bryan checked himself sharply, shocked by what he had seen. There was
a wrenching unexpectedness about it, a chilling weirdness. And yet
it held a certain logic, a deadly significance. For Bryan recalled
what Dave had told him about the previous park victim. The man had
been found with a queer reddish mark near the shoulder--a mark that
presently had vanished. Now Bryan thought he knew how it had been
caused. But how could an object penetrate flesh and bone--as he had
seen the flying thing's needle-like proboscis pierce the chest of the
man before the pavilion--and still make no wound, leave only a reddish
mark that soon faded?
Only a few instants had passed. The winged band was still descending
toward the pavilion. But Bryan's presence on the scene had been
noticed. Two of the mosquito-men--their appearance automatically
suggested the term--were even now curving toward him.
Bryan saw them approach. He tensed, fighting back his dismay.
Flight was out of the question. He had seen the mosquito-men in action
and knew they could easily overtake him. That left only--
Bryan whipped off his jacket. He flailed at his attackers with it as
they closed in. They darted back, their huge eyes widening as if in
startled confusion. There was a quality about them as child-like as
their shapes, appealing--and somehow not evil. It was a thing Bryan did
not understand and which at the moment he had no time to fathom.
He pressed his advantage, beating at the shapes with the jacket. It was
as though he beat at phantoms. He could feel no contact with solidity
through the cloth. And the mosquito-men seemed to realize their
immunity, for abruptly they closed in, their sharp snouts thrusting at
him. He twisted aside to evade one--but the second reached him before
he could move again. Its needle-shaped organ speared his shoulder.
Bryan felt a brief pain, a sensation as though electricity had surged
through him. Then a complete terrible numbness gripped his body. He
could not move. He could still see, could still think, but his muscles
were fettered by an overwhelming paralysis.
He could still think--but it was difficult. His mind seemed detached
and vague, and somehow touched by a pulse of thought not his own. Alien
rhythms beat in it, formless, confused. And then--
"Leeta! This one resisted! He did not fear us as did the others."
Child-like, piping, filled with excitement. And yet through the thought
ran an undercurrent of wistful yearning, of trembling hope.