Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

"He didn't call me up until next afternoon, and then asked what I had heard about the specimens. I replied that what reports I had received showed him perfectly healthy. He said, quietly: 'I thought they would.' I asked what kind of a night he had had. He laughed, and said: 'A very interesting one, Bill. Oh, very. I followed your advice and drank plenty of liquor.' His voice was quite normal, even cheerful. I was relieved, yet felt a vague uneasiness. I asked: 'How about your shadow?' 'And plenty of shadow,' he said. 'I told you, didn't I, that I thought it a woman's shadow? Well, it is.' I said: 'You are better. Was your woman shadow nice to you?' He said: 'Scandalously so, and promises to be even scandalouser. That's what made the night so interesting.' He laughed again. And abruptly hung up.

"I thought: 'Well, if Dick can joke like that about something that had him terrorized to the liver a day ago, he's getting over it.' That, I said to myself, was good advice I gave him.

"Still, I felt that vague uneasiness. It grew. A little later I rang him up, but Simpson said he had gone out to play golf. That seemed normal enough. Yes – the whole trouble had been only a queer evanescent quirk that was righting itself. Yes – my advice had been good. What – " Bill broke out suddenly – "What Goddamned fools we doctors can be."

I stole a look at the Demoiselle. Her great eyes were wide and tender, but deep within them something mocked. Bill said:

"The next day I had more reports, all equally good. I called Dick up and told him so. I forgot to say I had also instructed him to go to Buchanan. Buchanan," Bill turned to de Keradel, "is the best eye man in New York. He had found nothing wrong, and that eliminated many possibilities of cause for the hallucination – if it was that. I told Dick. He said, cheerfully: 'Medicine is a grand science of elimination, isn't it, Bill? But if after all the elimination you get down to something you don't know anything about – then what do you do about it, Bill?'

"That was a queer remark. I said: 'What do you mean?' He said: 'I am only a thirsty seeker of knowledge.' I asked, suspiciously: 'Did you drink much last night?' He said: 'Not too much.' I asked: 'How about the shadow?' He said: 'Even more interesting.' I said: 'Dick, I want you to come right down and let me see you.' He promised, but he didn't come. I had a case you see that kept me late at the hospital. I got in about midnight and called him up. Simpson answered, saying he had gone to bed early and had given orders not to be disturbed. I asked Simpson how he seemed. He answered that Mr. Dick had seemed quite all right, unusually cheerful, in fact. Nevertheless, I could not rid myself of the inexplicable uneasiness. I told Simpson to tell Mr. Ralston that if he didn't come in to see me by five o'clock next day I would come after him.

"At exactly five o'clock he arrived. I felt a sharp increase of my doubt. His face had thinned, his eyes were curiously bright. Not feverish – more as though he had been taking some drug. There was a lurking amusement in them, and a subtle terror. I did not betray the shock his appearance gave me. I told him that I had gotten the last of the reports, and that they were negative. He said: 'So I have a clean bill of health? Nothing wrong with me anywhere?' I answered: 'So far as these tests show. But I want you to go to the hospital for a few days' observation.' He laughed, and said: 'No. I'm perfectly healthy, Bill.'

"He sat looking at me for a few moments silently, the subtle amusement competing with the terror in his over-bright eyes – as though he felt himself ages beyond me in knowledge of some sort and at the same time bitterly in fear of it. He said: 'My shadow's name is Brittis. She told me so last night.'

"That made me jump. I said: 'What the hell are you talking about?'

"He answered with malicious patience: 'My shadow. Her name is Brittis. She told me so last night while she lay in my bed beside me, whispering. A woman shadow. Naked.'

"I stared at him, and he laughed: 'What do you know about the Succubae, Bill? Nothing, I at once perceive. I wish Alan were back – he'd know. Balzac had a great story about one, I remember – but Brittis says she really wasn't one. I went up to the library this morning and looked them up. Plowed through the Malleus Maleficarum-'

"I asked: 'What the hell is that?'

"'The Hammer Against Witches. The old book of the Inquisition that tells what Succubae and Incubi are, and what they can do, and how to tell witches and what to do against them and all of that. Very interesting. It says that a demon can become a shadow, and becoming one may fasten itself upon a living person and become corporeal – or corporeal enough to beget, as the Bible quaintly puts it. The lady demons are the Succubae. When one of them lusts for a man she beguiles him in this fashion or another until – well, until she succeeds. Whereupon he gives her his vital spark and, quite naturally, dies. But Brittis says that wouldn't be the end of me, and that she never was a demon. She says she was – '

"'Dick,' I interrupted him, 'what's all this nonsense?' He repeated, irritably: 'I wish to God you wouldn't keep on thinking this thing is hallucination. If I'm as healthy as you say, it can't be-' He hesitated. '-But even if you did believe it real, what could you do? You don't know what those who sent the shadow to me know. That's why I wish Alan were here. He'd know what to do.' He hesitated again, then said slowly: 'But whether I'd take his advice… I'm not sure… now!'

"I asked: 'What do you mean?'

"He said: 'I'll begin from the time we agreed I'd better go home and fight. I went to the theater. I purposely stayed out late. There was no unseen whisperer at the door when I let myself in. I saw nothing as I went upstairs to the library. I mixed a stiff highball, sat down and began to read. I had turned on every light in the room. It was two o'clock.

"'The clock struck the half hour. It roused me from the book. I smelled a curious fragrance, unfamiliar, evocative of strange images – it made me think of an unknown lily, opening in the night, under moon rays, in a secret pool, among age-old ruins encircled by a desert. I looked up and around seeking its source.

"'I saw the shadow.

"'It was no longer as though cast against curtains or walls. It stood plain, a dozen feet from me. Sharp cut, in the room. It was in profile. It stood motionless. Its face was a girl's, delicate, exquisite. I could see its hair, coiled around the little head and two braids of deeper shadow falling between the round, tip-tilted breasts. It was the shadow of a tall girl, a lithe girl, small-hipped, slender-footed. It moved. It began to dance. It was neither black nor gray as I had thought when first I saw it. It was faintly rosy – a rose-pearl shadow. Beautiful, seductive – in a sense no living woman could be. It danced, and trembled – and vanished. I heard a whisper: 'I am here.' It was behind me dancing – dancing… dimly I could see the room through it.

"'Dancing,' he said, 'weaving – weaving my shroud-' he laughed. 'But a highly embroidered one, Bill.'

"He said he felt a stirring of desire such as he had never felt for any woman. And with it a fear, a horror such as he had never known. He said it was as though a door had opened over whose threshold he might pass into some undreamed of Hell. The desire won. He leaped for that dancing, rosy shadow. And shadow and fragrance were gone snuffed out. He sat again with his book, waiting. Nothing happened. The clock struck three – the half-hour – four. He went to his room. He undressed, and lay upon the bed.

"He said: 'Slowly, like a rhythm, the fragrance began. It pulsed – quicker and quicker. I sat up. The rosy shadow was sitting at the foot of my bed. I strained toward it. I could not move. I thought I heard it whisper – 'Not yet… not yet… '"