Karl Wagner - Why Not You and I?

“Instead I went out of the cockpit into mud hip-deep when I smashed. The Huns were amazed when they pulled what was left of me out of the slime and found I was still alive. It was novelty enough to rate evacuation from the field hospital to a special hospital deep in the Harz Mountains.

“Jerry was interested even then in ‘superior beings’—wondered what made a fellow tick who could survive all I’d been through. I won’t attempt to go into the things that were done — a lot of it I have no memory of myself, thank God! They rebuilt me from the scrap parts I was — stuck me back together, taking microscope slides and lab notes each step of the way. I suppose I should be grateful to those soulless doctors for saving my life. I’m not, really.

“There were others of us there — other ‘experimental subjects.’ I think most of them died — or I hope they did. I later learned that the Germans had destroyed all records of that hospital shortly before the Armistice.

“I became friends of a sort with one of my fellow inmates — a Dr. Gerhard Modred. I never learned all that much about his life before the War — we were all a bit distant and reticent. But I gathered he’d been an up-and-coming physician and researchist. Volunteered as a battlefront surgeon. Shells don’t recognize red crosses, and the Huns picked what was left of him up after a successful push.

“Dr. Modred was not one of their most successful reconstructions. I never saw him except with his upper face enswathed in bandages. I think he rather resented the fact that the surgeons used techniques perfected on such as him to reconstruct my own physiognomy.

“The hospital was in an old half-ruined castle — isolated in the Harz. The Huns didn’t want publicity. There were certain experiments… But I’d rather not dwell on it. Many of us died and were better so. It was somewhat like a transition back into the dark ages…

“Dr. Modred and I used to discuss this at length. Oh, they gave us some little freedom — liberty to bemoan our plight among ourselves. I’m certain none of us were ever intended to be released, regardless of the outcome of the War. Modred was an incredibly well-read, erudite person. In my sophomoric flush, I felt rather his disciple. Modred would go on for hours on his pet subjects. I always wondered how such a medievalist of Modred’s brilliance ever ended up in the area of medical research. Lord, the things we’d lie there in the darkness carrying on about — quite mad, most of it. Here in this hell-world of barbed wire, machine guns, poison gas, tanks, dysentery, aeroplanes, mud and patriotism and wholesale slaughter — Modred would rant on and on about a spiritual Hell: a Hell of actual demons and devils and elemental creatures and dark forces who shaped man’s destiny…

“‘Why talk of reason and free will!’ Dr. Modred would shout, ‘I’ll show you artists and accountants, Calvinists and drunkards, beggars and baronets — name the class and intellect — who’ll rise from vermin-infested trenches and march like puppets into machine gun and shell! Why? Why! Out of reason? Out of free will?

“‘Damn it, man! We are not creatures of reason and of free will! We are prisoners of nameless powers and hidden forces who move us about like chess pieces! What do they care of our suffering? With a yawn, they can scrap the whole board and begin the game anew!’

“As I say, we were all a bit mad there. Dr. Modred more so than most of us, perhaps. But I agreed with him — and that bound us together. For among these drudges, Modred and I had, in theory, volunteered to die for our personal ethical rationale. And neither of us was pleased with the blow our high aspirations had dealt us. When one seeks martyrdom, after having seen the pious smiles of the saints, it comes as a shock to see the reality of pain and death…

“So we were agreed on the insane injustice, the evil portent of it all. Man, we agreed, has little or no idea of the hostile cosmic forces that play with him. He believes himself to be rational, and his universe to be logical and bound by laws of science — but this is a lie. Mankind is but a struggling swimmer, perilously floating over a vortex whose depths and currents are beyond his comprehension.

“Modred and I were of like mind in these dark and pessimistic philosophies. And then we differed:

“I vowed to learn to understand these forces, so that I might combat them…

“Modred swore to do the same — so that he might control them.

“We escaped together one night… and separated. I never knew for certain whether Dr. Gerhard Modred survived the morass of mud and barbed wire and machine guns. Somehow I did make it through.”

Chance looked into the smoke of his cigar. After a moment he began again. “You know most of the rest. Later I became a student of the occult, of the paranormal — of the dark, undefined forces that move mankind and his world in defiance of all sane logic. The obsession drove me to strange places here and abroad, to study at the feet of madmen and geniuses. And as I searched through the shadows, I now and again encountered whispers of another demon-driven madman such as I — a sinister, masked creature who called himself Dread.”

Moore dragged on his cigarette and stared at him, listening in silence. He seemed to have aged a century that night — from the bitter, self-indulgent bon vivant who had sought death in the face of failure and self-pity, to a man cut adrift from all certainty who now clung to life with the hopeless tenacity of a castaway holding to his broken bit of wreckage in a growing hurricane. He had sought oblivion and found instead horror.

What wonder that his closest friend whom he had grown to hate had returned to him from the dead? What marvel that this man whom the world proclaimed a brilliant scientist talked to him now in sober tones of medieval witchcraft and elder sorceries, of creatures from time’s dawn and monstrosities of depraved science, of Carsultyal and Carcosa and those who dwelt there, of the Somme and Verdun and those who died there, of ancient grimoires and suppressed tomes of forbidden research, of fiends from blackest Hell and demons spawned by man himself.

The night was haunted with soulless horror, for Chance spoke to him of Dread. And Compton Moore could only listen and believe, for earlier he had examined the Luger’s magazine and found only seven bright bullets, and he knew that even in death there was no refuge from Dread.

The clatter of spurned gravel was a death-knell to her terrified senses. Kirsten bit her lips to stifle a scream. Polished bits of river gravel sifted down from on top of the boulder beneath which she crouched. Her keen nostrils caught an animal stench on the mountain air — then a sudden frantic scramble as something heavy slid down the smooth rock.

A black muzzle thrust into her refuge, foul breath and gnashing teeth inches from her cringing flesh. A fierce growling ululation deafened her. Kirsten screamed. The muzzle lunged closer.

Booted feet hit the gravel bar. “Hold him, Ben!” a hoarse voice yelled. “Hold him, boy!”

A beefy hand dragged at the Plott hound’s collar, pulling him back from the crevice. An unshaven face peered in at her. The eyes beneath the slouch hat were round and black and nearly as close-set as the double barrels of the ten-gauge shotgun whose muzzle replaced that of the hound at the opening.

“All right now!” The voice warned, undercutting the bearhound’s growl. “I reckon you’d best skin out of there!”

A human face was a relief to Kirsten — whose terror of the salamander outweighed all other fears. Friend, or one of Dread’s henchmen, mattered little in that instant of relief. The barrel of the shotgun gestured impatiently, and the girl obediently crawled out from her useless concealment.