Things were bad enough for Marc without
having a friendly ghost messing up his
life--but Toffee only made matters worse!...
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic Adventures November 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
In his private office the guiding light of the Pillsworth Advertising
Agency sat behind his desk and looked slightly haunted.
And Marc Pillsworth was not the sort to look haunted without a good
and sufficient reason. In this case, the reason seemed to be not only
good and sufficient but rather spine-tingling into the bargain. Marc
closed his eyes and made a real effort to suppress a nagging impulse to
scream. But when he looked again the situation across the room had not
noticeably bettered itself; the shoe was still in front of the chair,
hanging indolently in mid-air.
In the last few minutes Marc had closed his eyes repeatedly, telling
himself that the shoe was only a product of his imagination, an
apparition born of a mind that had given way under an overwhelming
burden of financial and domestic worries. But always, when he opened
his eyes again, the shoe was still there, resting rakishly on nothing
at all, seeming to stare at him evilly with its beady eyeletes.
Also, there was something about the hateful thing that bespoke its
owner's rather pungent personality. It had a look about it that was
unmistakably aw-go-to-hell. It was a look that Marc found particularly
distasteful, for it could mean only one thing. No getting away from it.
George was back. And Marc wished he wasn't.
Marc had learned of George's existence through a previous experience
so bitter it all but galled him just to think about it. When the
ghost, Marc's own, to be explicit, had first descended to this region
under the misapprehension that Marc had accidentally terminated his
own earthly sojourn, he immediately impressed himself on everyone as
a trouble maker of the first hot water. And, as though his strikingly
original haunting activities hadn't been enough, he had resorted to
random methods of mayhem in an effort to make Marc's demise an untidy
actuality so that he, George, might thereby secure his own position as
a permanent earthly "haunt." The affair had not been a picnic for Marc.
Though the wayward spectre, when materialized, was an exact duplicate
of Marc in all physical respects, there the similarity did a screaming
about face and streaked rapidly in the opposite direction. Where Marc
was sober and serious-minded, George was a veritable connoisseur of all
things viceful and frivolous. And where Marc was inherently honest,
modest and retiring, George was frankly a crook, a braggart and rank
exhibitionist. Also, it was not consoling that the spirit was extremely
careless in the manipulation of his ectoplasm ... a thing that any
other, right-minded ghost would go to any lengths not to be.
If Marc looked on the reappearance of George without pleasure, his
attitude was not entirely unwarranted.
Marc glanced at the shoe again and shuddered. Absently he wondered
how he would ever manage to explain the silly thing if someone should
suddenly pop into the office unannounced. Obviously, something had to
be done about it; he couldn't just let it go on dangling there, looking
smug and complacent like that. And certainly it showed no inclination
to leave of its own accord. In fact, it seemed quite content, as though
it might just go on hanging around forever. Clearly, the situation
demanded positive action. With quiet deliberation Marc lifted a bronze
paper weight from his desk and aimed it with care.
The weight only grazed the toe of the shoe and fell dully to the
carpet. But at least it produced some effect. The shoe instantly
vanished. Marc leaned back and pressed a trembling hand to his eyes.
Then he glanced quickly up through a haze of apprehension as a
voice ... a duplicate of his own ... echoed across the room.
"Well, I'll be damned!" it exclaimed. "My ectoplasm must have slipped.
How long has that shoe been showing?"
"Showing?" Marc said in a voice sounding a good deal less like his own
than the other. "The awful thing has had me close to gurgling dementia
for nearly ten minutes now. And if you must speak to me, please have
the decent good grace to show yourself. It makes my spine fairly lurch
to hear a voice coming out of nowhere like that."
* * * * *
Marc didn't realize the folly of his request until too late. Piecemeal,
an arm, a leg, a mid-section at a time, George became visible, looking
exactly like Marc right down to the last button.
Marc gazed on this phenomenon with utmost revulsion. "Can't you
materialize all at the same time?" he asked fretfully. "Do you always
have to come into my presence looking like the victim of a hatchet
murder?"
George grinned agreeably. "Sorry," he said. "Can't concentrate on
everything at once, you know."
"It seems you could at least concentrate on consecutive things,"
Marc grumbled. "You needn't break out like a rash." He looked up and
blanched. Neckless, George's head was hovering over his collar like a
loosely anchored balloon. "Oh, Lord!" he gasped. "How sordid!"
The head glanced around pleasantly, unaware of its airy isolation.
It gazed admiringly down the length of the lean body beneath it.
"Rather a nice job," it said proudly. "No foggy spots. Everything very
flesh-and-bloody looking, I think."
"Bloody is right!" Marc croaked. "It all but drips with gore. For
heaven sake complement that head with a neck before I scream."
George flushed prettily, closed his eyes and obliged. The missing neck
sprang cooperatively into place. To Marc the spectacle was almost as
repulsive as the disconnected head.
"Don't ever do that again," he breathed. "I'd never live through it."
"I'll try to be more careful in the future," George agreed.
Marc turned a quizzical eye on the ghost. He was being far too
agreeable ... almost sickeningly so. In his face there was a sort of
determined pleasantness that looked ill at ease in such unfamiliar
surroundings. A suspicion stirred vaguely in the back of Marc's mind.
"If you think you're going to kill me with kindness, you back-stabber,
just forget it. It won't work."
"How can you think such things?" George asked woundedly.
"It just came to me, all of a sudden, looking at your smirking face."
"You do me a terrible injustice," George replied. "You cut me to the
quick."
"Believe me," Marc said relentlessly, "I'd make it deeper if I could."
"You're going to be ashamed you've spoken to me like this," George
said. "I've come here to do you a favor."
"Then do me one. Go away. I've enough trouble as it is."
"Trouble?" George asked with sudden interest. "What kind of trouble?"
"Everything serious," Marc said. "Especially now that you're here."
George smiled thoughtfully. "Conditions seem about perfect for my
mission," he murmured.
"Mission?" Marc looked on the spirit with open consternation.
"It's the High Council," George explained. "The big brass in the
spirit world. They're making me do penance for the way I behaved
the last time I was here." A shame-faced expression swept over his
features. "They threw the book at me. They say I've set Spirit-Mortal
relations back five hundred years and knocked their good neighbor
policy into a cocked hat. Anyway, the upshot of the thing is that
they've ordered me back here to haunt you until I've done you a good
turn to make up for last time. And if I don't...." Here his voice broke
with emotion and he shuddered. "They've only given me thirty-six hours
to make good." He waved an unhappy hand at his materialized body. "And
I can't stay like this too long, either. They only gave me an emergency
issue of ectoplasm, so I have to use it sparingly." He looked at Marc
pleadingly. "Though the idea thoroughly repels me, you've just got to
let me do something nice for you. What can I do?"
"Off hand," Marc said unpleasantly, "I can think of any number of
things for you to do. Without exception they are fatal and extremely
messy."
"You don't like me very well, do you?"
"Since you force me to say it," Marc said flatly, "you disgust me. You
disgust me through and through."
George glanced up, interested. "Through and through what?" he asked.
* * * * *
Marc's hand slapped hard against the desk. "Now, don't start that!" he
grated. "This time, keep your simpering banalities to yourself."
"I only wanted to know...."
"Enough!"
"But if I'm going to do something nice for you," George continued
doggedly, "I have to know what's troubling you, don't I? That's why
I've been sitting around here half the night and all morning. Ever
since midnight, I've been waiting right here for something to turn up
that I could help you with."
Marc looked distressed. "Must you help me, George?" he pleaded. "Can't
you just go on back to this Council thing of yours and tell them
everything's all right. Tell them I love you like a brother. Lie your
head off. You can do it. Only, please, please, don't try to help me."
George sank back in his chair with a sigh. "I couldn't do that," he
said. "If I did, they'd...."
Suddenly he stopped speaking as a knock sounded on the door. He shot
Marc an anxious glance.
"Dematerialize!" Marc hissed. "Disappear!"
George was instantly out of his chair, completely confused in his
eagerness to do exactly as Marc wished. First a leg disappeared, then
an arm, then his entire torso became foggy and vaporous. Suddenly the
arm and leg reappeared again. He looked up at Marc, panic stricken,
as the lower part of his face faded up to the nose, then stopped.
He closed his eyes and seemed to concentrate with all his will. For
a moment his entire body flickered like a weakening light bulb,
disappeared, and promptly rematerialized in total.
"For Pete's sake!" Marc cried. "Do you have to keep flashing on and off
like an electrical advertisement? Fade out, will you?"
The distress in George's face was genuine. He was earnestly doing
everything he could to cooperate. "I'm too excited," he said.
"Emotional disturbances always react on me this way."
The knock suddenly sounded on the door again, and Marc started as
though he'd been struck. "Calm down!" he yelled. "For the love of
heaven, be calm!"
George nodded, closed his eyes and breathed deeply several times.
Slowly, a section at a time, he faded from sight.
Marc turned relievedly to the door. "Come in!" he called. Then turning
back, he suddenly yelled, "No! Stay out!"
Like a great brown rat, George's shoe was loping lazily across the
room. Apparently the spirit was habitually forgetful of this particular
extremity. Marc raced after it and came abreast of it just as it
reached the chair. He swung his foot behind him and kicked viciously.
The shoe faded just in time to save itself, and Marc's foot collided
painfully with the chair. Moaning, he sat down helplessly on the floor
and began to nurse the offended member. Then, at the sound of Memphis'
voice, he glanced up with horrified eyes. The secretary was observing
him interestedly from the doorway.
"A new dance step?" she asked tonelessly.
"Just ... just getting a little exercise," Marc stammered lamely. "Got
to tone up the old system once in a while, you know. Push-ups." He
flexed his arms in half-hearted demonstration.
Memphis moved uncertainly into the room and closed the door. "Look out
that chair doesn't push back," she said.
Marc laughed nervously and got to his feet. "I slipped," he said.
"Well," Memphis said resignedly, "since you've already cracked, I guess
these can't hurt you too much." She extended a hand full of papers and
dropped them on the desk. "Bills," she announced.
"The show?" Marc asked soberly.
Memphis nodded. "I dropped in at rehearsal last night, just out of
morbid curiosity." She said it in a tone of voice generally reserved
for use in funeral parlors and morgues. "I caught one of Julie's
numbers." A look of utmost discomfort rested curiously on her ruddy
face. "Sorry, Mr. Pillsworth."
Obviously Memphis was acting as the close friend who always consoles
the bereaved.
Marc didn't know when the bug of theatrical ambition had begun to gnaw
at the foundations of his home, but he was willing to bet an attractive
sum that the craven little termite had been at its ravenous work for
years, considering the matrimonial and financial devastation its
insidious activities had wrought in just the last few weeks.
* * * * *
Julie's days as a model and "lady of the chorus" had dawned and waned
long before Marc had ever met her. And that being the case, he was all
too willing to forgive and forget them. Even in moments of domestic
stress, when their handsome ghosts stalked arrogantly through his
parlor, bedroom and bath, keeping Julie company as she proclaimed her
intention to leave him and resume her "career" ... even then he refused
to pay them any serious attention.
However, he might have displayed more wisdom had he given those days
all the studied attention due a plan of atomic control, particularly
during the last few months, during which, in Julie's reminiscences,
they had taken on a more intense, misty-eyed glamour. But what Marc
didn't know was that one of Julie's erstwhile chorus girl friends had
recently arrived at a rather spectacular Broadway success.
For Julie, certain envious reactions had followed this event like a
poison oak rash after an active day in the woods. The persistent weed
of ambition that had been languishing in her innermost heart all these
years suddenly flourished and blossomed forth like a tangle of deadly
nightshade. From that moment on, though Marc was blissfully unaware
of it at the time, the future of the Pillsworth marriage and bankroll
was in deadly peril. Even Marc's better judgment was in jeopardy, for
when it came to psychological warfare, Julie was just the girl to teach
the War Department a trick or two that would probably curl its hair.
It was no time at all before Marc was financing a fabulously expensive
musical comedy, entitled "Love's Gone Winging," and wondering what had
ever possessed him. And all this on top of several outstandingly bad
investments. The future was dusky indeed, if it still existed at all.
Marc stared unhappily at Memphis. "Pretty bad, huh?" he asked.
"If I told you what I think of your wife's talents, Mr. Pillsworth,"
Memphis said regretfully, "you'd either have to fight me or fire me.
Maybe both. Mrs. Pillsworth may be a star tonight, but I bet she does a
faster nose-dive than Halley's Comet. I hope she's getting a good rest
today. She's going to need her strength."