Karl Wagner - Why Not You and I?

The salamander screamed — a cry like a ton of white-hot steel dumped into the sea. Writhing back in rage — or agony — it flung itself away from the smouldering doorway, out into the night.

It raked its foreclaws into its jaws, tearing at its throat — vomiting great gouts of flame. Its hissing roar pierced the night, as the elemental rolled and bucked across the clearing. Still writhing in great spasms, the salamander turned and crawled like a broken-backed thing into the forested ridge beyond the clearing.

For a minute they saw its eerie brilliance flashing along the ridge, then the trees completely hid the creature.

Wells finished dumping water onto the smouldering wreckage of his doorway. He produced a crockery jug of his own blockade whiskey and took a long pull.

“I told you that shotgun would sure enough clear off the porch,” he managed to say, handing the jug to Chance.

High up on the mountainside, a blue-white volcano burst upward for an instant against the night — then faded slowly out.

John Chance took a deep drink.

This one starts with a blazing bright day and a trim split-level house looking woodsy against the pines.

Wind shrieked a howling toscin as John Chance slewed his Duesenberg Torpedo down the streaming mountain road. A sudden burst of lightning picked out the sinister silhouette of legend-haunted Corrington Manor, hunched starkly against the storm-swept Adirondacks. John Chance’s square jaw was grim-set as he scowled at the Georgian mansion just ahead. Why had lovely Gayle Corrington’s hysterical phone call been broken off in the midst of her plea for help? Could even John Chance thwart the horror of the Corrington Curse from striking terror on the eve of Gayle and young Hartley’s wedding?

“Humph,” was the sour comment of Curtiss Stryker, who four decades previous had thrilled thousands of pulp readers with his yarns of John Chance, psychic detective. He stretched his bony legs from the cramped interior of his friend’s brand-new Jensen Interceptor and stood scowling through the blacktop’s heat.

“Well, seems like that’s the way a haunted house ought to be approached,” Mandarin went on, joining him on the sticky asphalt driveway.

Stryker twitched a grin. Sixty years had left his tall, spare frame gristled and knobby, like an old pine on a rocky slope. His face was tanned and seamed, set off the bristling white mustache and close-cut hair that had once been blond. Mandarin always thought he looked like an old sea captain — and recalled that Stryker had sailed on a Norwegian whaler in his youth.

“Yeah, and here comes the snarling mastiff,” Stryker obliged him.

A curious border collie peered out from around the Corvette in the carport, wondered if it ought to bark. Russ whistled, and the dog wagged over to be petted.

The yard was just mowed, and someone had put a lot of care into the rose beds that bordered the flagstone walk. That and the pine woods gave the place a cool, inviting atmosphere — more like a mountain cabin than a house only minutes outside Knoxville’s sooty reach. The house had an expensive feel about it. Someone had hired an architect — and a good one — to do the design. Mountain stone and untreated redwood on the outside walls; cedar shakes on the roof; copper flashings; long areas of glass. Its split-level design adapted to the gentle hillside, seemed to curl around the grey outcroppings of limestone.

“Nice place to haunt,” Mandarin reflected.

“I hope you’re going to keep a straight face once we get inside,” his friend admonished gruffly “Mrs Corrington was a little reluctant to have us come here at all. Doesn’t want folks laughing, calling her a kook. People from all over descending on her to investigate her haunted house. You know what it’d be like.”

“I’ll maintain my best professional decorum.”

Styker grunted. He could trust Russ, or he wouldn’t have invited him along. A psychiatrist at least knew how to listen, ask questions without making his informant shut up in embarrassment. And Russ’s opinion of Gayle Corrington’s emotional stability would be valuable— Stryker had wasted too many interviews with cranks and would-be psychics whose hauntings derived from their own troubled minds. Besides, he knew Mandarin was interested in this sort of thing and would welcome a diversion from his own difficulties.

“Well, let’s go inside before we boil over,” Stryker decided.

Russ straightened from petting the dog, carelessly wiped his long-fingered hands on his lightweight sportcoat. About half the writer’s age, he was shorter by a couple inches, heavier by forty pounds. He wore his bright-black hair fashionably long for the time, and occasionally trimmed his long mustache. Piercing blue eyes beneath a prominent brow dominated his thin face. Movie-minded patients had told him variously that he reminded them of Terence Stamp or Bruce Dern, and Russ asked them how they felt about that.

On the flagstone walk the heady scent of warm roses washed out the taint of the asphalt. Russ thought he heard the murmur of a heat pump around back. It would be cool inside, then — earlier he had envied Stryker for his open-collar sportshirt.

The panelled door had a bell push, but Stryker crisply struck the brass knocker. The door quickly swung open, and Russ guessed their hostess had been politely waiting for their knock.

Cool air and a faint perfume swirled from within. “Please come in,” Mrs Corrington invited.

She was blond and freckled, had stayed away from the sun enough so that her skin still looked fresh at the shadow of forty. Enough of her figure was displayed by the backless hostess ensemble she wore to prove she had taken care of herself in other respects as well. It made both men remember that she was divorced.

“Mrs Corrington? I’m Curtiss Stryker.”

“Please call me Gayle. I’ve read enough of your books to feel like an old friend.”

Stryker beamed and bent low over her hand in the continental mannerisms Russ always wished he was old enough to pull off. “Then make it Curt, Gayle. And this is Dr Mandarin.”

“Russ,” said Mandarin, shaking her hand.

“Dr Mandarin is interested in this sort of thing, too,” Stryker explained. “I wanted him to come along so a man of science could add his thoughts to what you have to tell us.”

“Oh, are you with the university center here, Dr Mandarin?”

“Please— Russ. No, not any longer.” He kept the bitterness from his voice. “I’m in private practice in the university area.”

“Your practice is…?”

“I’m a psychiatrist.”

Her green eyes widened, then grew wary— the usual response — but she recovered easily. “Can I fix something for you gentlemen? Or is it too early in the afternoon for drinks? I’ve got ice tea.”

“Sun’s past the yardarm,” Stryker told her quickly. “Gin and tonic for me.”

“Scotch for you, Russ?” she asked.

“Bourbon and ice, if you have it.”

“Well, you must be a southern psychiatrist.”

“Russ is from way out west,” Stryker filled in smoothly. “But he’s lived around here a good long while. I met him when he was doing an internship at the Center here, and I had an appendix that had waited fifty years to go bad. Found out he was an old fan — even had a bunch of my old pulp yarns on his shelves alongside my later books. Showed me a fan letter one magazine had published: he’d written it when he was about twelve asking that they print more of my John Chance stories. Kept tabs on each other ever since.”

She handed them their drinks, poured a bourbon and ginger ale for herself.