Fritz Leiber - Horrible Imaginings

“Yes, my father, the owner,” Wolf called back. “He’s leaving shortly, in another car.”

They thanked him, but as he drove off, he saw them get out and start trudging up the hill.

“I’m glad they’re doing that,” he told Terri. “Make sure Cassius is rooted out.”

But the incident left a bad taste in his mouth, because it reminded him of what he’d heard about the two policemen calling there the morning after his mother died.

At the first sizable intersection a roadblock was being set up to stop cars entering Goodland Valley. That didn’t hold them back, but the drive into San Francisco took half again as long as he’d anticipated, what with the rain and slow traffic and a mudslide blocking two lanes of the freeway near Waldo Tunnel just north of the bridge.

Lombard Street, when they reached it just south of the bridge, reminded Wolf and Terri of western towns built along main highways in the days before freeways. Wide, but with stoplights every block and the sides garish with the neon of gas stations, chain restaurants, and motels. They located theirs and checked in with relief. Tommy had been starting to get cranky and the storm was making late afternoon seem like night.

Only Terri didn’t seem to Wolf as relieved as she should be. Tommy was running a bath for himself and his boats. Wolf asked her, “Something bothering you, Hon?”

She was scowling nervously at the floor. “No, I guess I’ve just got to tell you,” she decided reluctantly. “Wolf, when I kissed your father—”

“I know!” he interjected. “I was going to ask you about it, if he’d goosed you, tried to cop some other sort of feel, or what? You looked so strange.”

“Wolf,” she said tragically, “it was simply that his breath was reeking with alcohol. That was why he was making such a point of keeping a distance from us all day.”

“Oh God,” he said despondently, closing his eyes and slumping.

“Wolf,” she went on in a small voice after a moment, “I think we’ve got to call up Tilly to check if he ever got there.”

“Of course,” he said, springing to the phone. “I guess we were going to do that in any case.”

He got through to the Marin lady after some odd delays and found their worry realized: Cassius had not arrived. Wolf cut short Tilly’s counter-questions with “Look, Til, I’ll try to call him at the house, then get back to you right away.”

This time the response was quicker. The number he was trying to reach was out of service due to storm damage.

He tried to call Tilly back and this time, after still more delays, got the same response as when he’d tried to call his father.

“All over Marin County the phones are going out,” he told Terri, trying to put a light face on bad news. “Well, Hon,” he went on, “I don’t think I’m left much choice. I’ve just got to go back up there.”

“Oh no, Wolf,” she said apprehensively, “don’t you think you should try calling the police first, at least? Cassius may still be at the house, I suppose, but then again he may simply have driven off somewhere else, anywhere, maybe to some bar. How can you know?”

He thought a bit, then said, ‘Tell you what, Hon. I’ll go down to the coffee shop and have a couple of cups and a Danish or something; meanwhile you try calling the police. You may be able to find out something, they seem to have pretty good organization on this storm thing.”

When he got back some twenty minutes later, she was on the phone. “Shh, I think I’m finally getting something,” she told him. She listened concentratedly, nodded sharply twice, asked, “About the mudslides?” nodded at the answer she got to that, and finally said, “Yes, I’ve got that. Thank you very much, officer,” and put down the phone.

“Nothing specifically on any Kruger,” she told Wolf, “but there arc still holdouts in Goodland Valley, houses that won’t vacate. And, at latest available report, there’s been no major earth movement there, though they’re expecting one at any time, it’s ‘a real and present danger.’ Wolf, I still don’t think you should go, just on the chance he’ll be there.”

She was watching him intently, as was a moist and robed Tommy in the bathroom door.

Grinning sympathetically, he shook his head. “Nope, got to go,” he said. “I’ll be cautious as hell, on the watch every second. Maybe just have to check the garage.”

Outside, thunder rumbled. ‘That’s my cue,” he said and got out of the room as quickly as he could, and by the time he’d got the Volks on the bridge again, its gas tank once more topped off, he was feeling pretty good. Caffeine had done its work, thunderstorms always gave him a high, and now that he had only Cassius to worry about, everything was wonderfully simplified. It was great to be outdoors, alone, the city behind him, space around him, water under him, with lightning to reveal vividly every ten seconds or so the multiple mazy zigzag angles of the marvelous structure the Volks was traversing, and thunder to shake his bones. And himself free on a quixotic errand that had to be carried out but that really didn’t matter all that much when you got down to it, since worry about Cassius was hardly to be compared with worry about Tommy or Terri, say. Oh, this storm was good, though awfully big, much too big for any sentimentalities or worrisome petty human concerns. It washed those away, washed away his own concern about whether he was being, had been, a good son (or husband or father, for that matter) and whether he was being wise to make this trip or not, washed away Terri’s and Tilly’s concern as to what indignities, exactly, Cassius had visited on Loni, washed away Cassius’ own dreadful wondering as to whether or not he’d strangled his wife in a blackout, washed all those away and left only the naked phenomena, the stuff of which it, the storm itself, was composed, and all other storms, from those in teapots and cyclotrons to those out at the ends of the universe, that blustered through whole galaxies and blew out stars.

This almost suspiciously exalted state of mind, this lightning high, stuck with Wolf after the Volks had got across the bridge and come to the first traffic hold-up, the one a little beyond the Waldo tunnel. It was worse this time, tour lanes were blocked, and took longer to get past; they were only letting cars through in one direction at a time. But now that his mind had time to move around, free for seconds and minutes from the task of driving, he found that it was drawn to phenomena and awarenesses rather than worries and concerns. For instance, those so-alike dreams Cassius and Tommy had had (they’d both used the same word “buzz” of the swooping green face), he now found himself simply lost in wonder at the coincidence. Could one person transmit his dreams to another? Could they travel through flesh and skin? And would they look like dreams if you saw them winging through darkness?

And that black sonic generator, or whatever, Esteban was supposed to have invented, how shockingly it had come alive in his hands when Cassius had thrown the switch—that strong and deep vibration! Whatever had made it work after a quarter century of disuse? And why had the puzzle of that slipped completely from his mind? He knew one thing: if he got the chance tonight, he’d certainly glom onto the black cylinder and bring it away with him!

And the color green, the witch green and death blue of Tommy’s ghost light, were colors more than the raiments of awareness, the arbitrary furniture of the mind? Were they outside the mind too: feelings, forces, the raw stuff of life? and could they kill? Wave motions, vibrations, buzzings —vibes, vibes, vibes, vibes.

In such ways and a thousand others his thoughts veered and whirled throughout the trip, while thunder crackled and ripped, lightning made shiny sheets of streets awash, unceasing rain pattered and pelted.