Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

Her grip on his arm tightened. “I knew—somehow. I remember Hungary—its ancient horror. My father inherited an ancient castle. I remember long cold corridors and sticky dungeons, and cobwebbed rooms thick with dust. My real name is Burhmann. I changed it because I thought Bailey more American.”

“Both from Hungary,” mused Doctor Spechaug. “I remember very little of Hungary. I came here when I was three. All I remember are the ignorant peasants. Their dumb, blind superstition—their hatred for—”

“You’re afraid of them, aren’t you?” she said.

He started. “The peasants. I—” He shook his head. “Perhaps.”

“You’re afraid,” she said. “Would you mind telling me, Doctor, how these fears of yours manifest themselves?”

He hesitated; they walked. Finally he answered. “I’ve never told anyone but you. There are hidden fears. And they reveal themselves consciously in the absurd fear of seeing my own reflection. Of not seeing my shadow. Of—”

She breathed sharply. She stopped walking, turned, stared at him. “Not—not seeing your—reflection!”

He nodded.

“Not seeing your—shadow—!”

“Yes.”

“And the full moon. A fear of the full moon, too?”

“But how did you know?”

“And you’re allergic to certain metals, too. For instance—silver?”

He could only nod.

“And you go out in the night sometimes—and do things—but you don’t remember what?”

He nodded again.

Her eyes glowed brightly. “I know. I know. I’ve known those same obsessions ever since I can remember.”

Doctor Spechaug felt strangely uneasy then, a kind of dreadful loneliness.

“Superstition,” he said. “Our Old World background, where superstition is the rule, old, very old superstition. Frightened by them when we were young. Now those childhood fixations reveal themselves in crazy symptoms.”

He took off his coat, threw it into the brush. He rolled up his shirt sleeves. No blood visible now. He should be able to catch the little local passenger train out of Glen Oaks without any trouble. But why should there be any trouble? The blood—

He thought too that he might have killed the tramp, that popping sound.

She seemed to sense his thoughts. She said quickly: “I’m going with you, Doctor.”

He said nothing. It seemed part of the inevitable pattern.

They entered the town. Even for mid-morning the place was strangely silent, damply hot, and still. The ‘town’ consisted of five blocks of main street from which cow paths wound off aimlessly into fields, woods, meadows and hills. There was always a few shuffling, dull-eyed people lolling about in the dusty heat. Now there were no people at all.

As they crossed over toward the shady side, two freshly clothed kids ran out of Davis’ Filling Station, stared at them like vacant-eyed lambs, then turned and spurted inside Ken Wanger’s Shoe Hospital.

Doctor Spechaug turned his dark head. His companion apparently hadn’t noticed anything ominous or peculiar. But to him, the whole scene was morose, fetid and brooding.

They walked down the cracked concrete walk, passed the big plate-glass windows of Murphy’s General Store which were a kind of fetish in Glen Oaks. But Doctor Spechaug wasn’t concerned with the cultural significance of the windows. He was concerned with not looking into it.

And oddly, he never did look at himself in the glass, neither did he look across the street. Though the glass did pull his gaze into it with an implacable somewhat terrible insistence. And he stared. He stared at that portion of the glass which was supposed to reflect Edith Bailey’s material self—but didn’t reflect anything. Not even a shadow.

They stopped. They turned slowly toward each other. He swallowed hard, trembled slightly. And then he knew deep and dismal horror. He studied that section of glass where her image was supposed to be. It still wasn’t.

He turned. And she was still standing there. “Well?”

And then she said in a hoarse whisper: “Your reflection—where is it?”

And all he could say was: “And yours?”

Little bits of chuckling laughter echoed in the inchoate madness of his suddenly whirling brain. Echoing years of lecture on—cause and effect, logic. Little bits of chuckling laughter. He grabbed her arm.

“We—we can see our own reflections, but we can’t see each other’s!”

She shivered. Her face was terribly white. “What—what is the answer?”

No. He didn’t have it figured out. Let the witches figure it out. Let some old forbidden books do it. Bring the problem to some warlock. But not to him. He was only a Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology. But maybe—

“Hallucinations,” he muttered faintly. “Negative hallucinations.”

“Doctor. Did you ever hear the little joke about the two psychiatrists who met one morning and one said, ‘You’re feeling excellent today. How am I feeling?’”

He shrugged. “We have insight into each other’s abnormality, but are unaware of the same in ourselves.”

“That’s the whole basis for psychiatry, isn’t it?”

“In a way. But this is physical—functional—when psychiatry presents situation where—” His voice trailed off.

“I have it figured this way.” How eager she was. Somehow, it didn’t matter much now, to him. “We’re conditioned to react to reality in certain accepted ways. For instance that we’re supposed to see our shadows. So we see them. But in our case they were never really there to see. Our sanity or ‘normalcy’ is maintained that way. But the constant auto-illusion must always lead to neuroticism and pathology—the hidden fears. But these fears must express themselves. So they do so in more socially acceptable ways.”

Her voice suddenly dropped as her odd eyes flickered across the street. “But we see each other as we really are,” she whispered tensely. “Though we could never have recognized the truth in ourselves.”

She pointed stiffly. Her mouth gaped, quivered slightly.

He turned slowly. His mouth twitched with a growing terrible hatred. They were coming for him now.

Four men with rifles were coming toward him. Stealthily creeping, they were, as though it were some pristine scene with caves in the background. They were bent slightly, stalking. Hunters and hunted, and the law of the wild and two of them stopping in the middle of the street. The other two branched, circled, came at him from either side, clumping down the walk. George recognized them all. The town marshal, Bill Conway, and Mike Lash, Harry Hutchinson, and Dwight Farrigon.

Edith Bailey was backed up against the window. Her eyes were strangely dilated. But the faces of the four men exuded cold animal hate, and blood-lust.

Edith Bailey’s lips said faintly, “What—what are we going to do?”

He felt so calm. He felt his lips writhe back in a snarl. The wind tingled on his teeth. “I know now,” he said. “I know about the minutes I lost. I know why they’re after me. You’d better get away.”

“But why the—the guns?”

“I murdered my wife. She served me greasy eggs. God—she was an animal—just a dumb beast!”

Conway called, his rifle crooked in easy promising grace. “All right, Doc. Come on along without any trouble. Though I’d just as soon you made a break. I’d like to shoot you dead, Doctor.”

“And what have I done, exactly,” said Doctor Spechaug.

“He’s hog-wild,” yelled Mike Lash. “Cuttin’ her all up that way! Let’s string ’em up!” Conway yelled something about a “fair trial,” though not with much enthusiasm.

Edith screamed as they charged toward them. A wild, inhuman cry.