Fritz Leiber - Our Lady of Darkness

There were spidery chalk marks on the slate—a half dozen faint triangles that narrowed toward the downward corner, as if someone or some force had been lightly outlining (the chalk perhaps moving like the planchette of a ouija board) the snouted face of his paramental. And now the chalk and one of the prisms were jumping about like planchettes, his hands holding the slate were shaking so.

His mind was almost paralyzed—almost blanked—by sudden fear, but a free corner of it was thinking how a white five-pointed star with one point directed upward (or outward) is supposed in witchcraft to protect a room from the entry of evil spirits as if the invading entity would be spiked on the star’s upward (or outward) point, and so he was hardly surprised when he found that he’d put down the slate on the end of his piled coffee table and was chalking such stars on the sills of his windows, the open one and the locked one in the bathroom, and above his door. He felt distantly ridiculous, but didn’t even consider not completing the stars. In fact, his imagination ran on to the possibility of even more secret passageways and hiding places in the building than the airshafts and broom closets (there would have been a dumbwaiter and a laundry chute in the Rhodes Hotel and who knows what auxiliary doors) and he became bothered that he couldn’t inspect the back walls of the closet and clothes cabinet more clearly, and in the end he closed the doors of both and chalked a star above them—and a small star above the transom.

He was considering chalking one more star on the wall by his couch where it abutted the broom closet in the hall, when there sounded at his door a sharp knock-knock . He put on the chain before he opened it the two inches which that allowed.

Half of a toothy mouth and large brown eye were grinning up at him across the chain and a voice saying, “E-chess?”

Franz quickly unhooked the chain and opened the door eagerly. He was vastly relieved to have a familiar person with him, sharply disappointed that it was someone with whom he could hardly communicate at all—certainly not the stuff crowding his mind—yet consoled by the thought that at least they shared the language of chess. Chess would at least pass some time, he hoped.

Fernando came in beaming, though frowning questioningly a moment at the chain, and then again at Franz when he quickly reclosed and double-locked the door.

In answer, Franz offered him a drink. Fernando’s black eyebrows went up at sight of the square bottle, and he smiled wider and nodded, but when Franz had opened the bottle and poured him a small wineglass, he hesitated, asking with his mobile features and expressive hands why Franz wasn’t drinking.

As the simplest solution, Franz poured himself a bit in another wineglass, hiding with his fingers how little, and tilted the glass until the aromatic liquid wet his closed lips. He offered Fernando a second drink, but the latter pointed towards the chessmen, then at his head, which he shook smilingly.

Franz set the chessboard somewhat precariously on top of the piled folders on the coffee table, and sat down on the bed. Fernando looked somewhat dubiously at the arrangement, then shrugged and smiled, drew up a chair and sat down opposite. He got the white pawn and when they’d set up the men he opened confidently.

Franz made his moves quickly, too. He found himself almost automatically resuming the “on guard” routine he’d employed at Beaver Street while listening to Byers. His watchful gaze would move from the end of the wall behind him to his clothes cabinet to the door, then past a small bookcase to the closet door, across the table crowded with the unopened mail and all, past the bathroom door to the larger bookcase and desk, pause at the window, then travel along his filing cabinets to the steam radiator and to the other end of the wall behind him, then start back again. He got the ghost of a bitter taste as he wet his lips—the kirschwasser.

Fernando won in twenty moves or so. He looked thoughtfully at Franz for a couple of moments, as if about to make some point about his indifferent play, but instead smiled and began to set up the men with colors reversed.

With deliberate recklessness Franz opened with the king’s gambit. Fernando countered in the center with his queen’s pawn. Despite the dangerous and chancy position, Franz found he couldn’t concentrate on the game. He kept searching his mind for other precautions to take besides his visual guard. He strained his ears for sounds at the door and beyond the other partitions. He wished desperately that Fernando had more English, or weren’t so deaf. The combination was simply too much.

And the time passed so slowly. The large hand of his wristwatch was frozen. It was like one of those moments at a drunken party—when you’re on the verge of blackout—that seem to last forever. At this rate it would be ages before the concert was over.

And then it occurred to him that he had no guarantee that Cal and the others would return at once. People generally went to bars or restaurants after performances, to celebrate or talk.

He was faintly aware of Fernando studying him between the moves.

Of course he could go back to the concert himself when Fernando left. But that wouldn’t settle anything. He’d left the concert determined to solve the problem of de Castries’s curse and all the strangeness that went with it. And at least he’d made progress. He’d already answered the literal 607 Rhodes question, but of course he’d meant a lot more than that when he’d spoken to Saul.

But how could he find the answer to the whole thing anyway? Serious psychic or occult research was a matter of elaborate preparation and study, using delicate, carefully checked-out instruments, or at any rate sensitive, trained people salted by previous experience: mediums, sensitives, telepaths, clairvoyants and such—who’d proved themselves with Rhine cards and what-not. What could he hope to do just by himself in one evening? What had he been thinking of when he’d walked out on Cal’s concert and left her that message?

Yet somehow he had the feeling that all the psychical research experts and their massed experience wouldn’t really be a bit of help to him now. Any more than the science experts would be with their incredibly refined electronic and radionic detectors and photography and what-not. That amid all the fields of the occult and fringe-occult that were flourishing today—witchcraft, astrology, biofeedback, dowsing, psychokinesis, auras, acupuncture, exploratory LSD trips, loops in the time stream, astrology (much of them surely fake, some of them maybe real)—this that was happening to him was altogether different.

He pictured himself going back to the concert, and he didn’t like the picture. Very faintly, he seemed to hear the swift, glittery music of a harpsichord, still luring and lashing him on imperiously.

Fernando cleared his throat. Franz realized he’d overlooked a mate in three moves and had lost the second game in as few moves as the first. He automatically started to set up the pieces for a third.

Fernando’s hand, palm down in an emphatic no, prevented him. Franz looked up.

Fernando was looking intently at him. The Peruvian frowned and shook a finger at Franz, indicating he was concerned about him. Then he pointed at the chessboard, then at his own head, touching his temple. Then he shook his head decisively, frowning and pointing toward Franz again.

Franz got the message: “Your mind is not on the game.” He nodded.

Fernando stood up, pushing his chair out of the way, and pantomimed a man afraid of something that was after him. Crouching a little, he kept looking around, much as Franz had been doing, but more obviously. He kept turning and looking suddenly behind him, now in one direction, now the other, his face big-eyed and fearful.