The screaming stopped. Something heavy and wet dropped to the floor. Then I heard a sucking sound, like an electric pump struggling with a clogged drain, and after that a series of snaps, which I knew were bones breaking.

Again, silence. The smell grew even worse.

I knew what I had to do. There was only one possibility left.

"Jeffrey," I said. "It's me. It's Jerry. Come out. I want to tell you a story. Remember?"

And from within the darkness came my brother's voice, "Play?"

"Yes," I said. "Let's go out and play."

Holding the book, I backed down the steps, and he came out onto the landing, whimpering a little as he brushed against the five-pointed stone; for he had grown so huge that he could not help but touch it.

He didn't wear clothes anymore. His whole body, even his tusks, had turned a greenish-black, the color of tarnished metal; but his muscles and numerous limbs I couldn't quite make out seemed more like a huge tangle of ropes come alive. He stumbled and thumped down the stairs, squeezing between the walls, one surprisingly human hand grasping the railing. His head, on top, seemed almost an irrelevancy, like a basketball floating on frothing water. But I could still see his eyes, and they were my brother's eyes.

Of course his pa.s.sage made complete havoc of Mother's immaculate living room. It was only there, in the better light, that I realized that Jeffrey had an extra mouth where his chest should be, vertical, like an insect's mouth, lined with needle-teeth. Praying-Mantis claws held the remains of our father firmly in place. Jeffrey streaked the living room, and the kitchen, and the back stairs, with slime and blood and the debris of smashed furniture.

Outside, in the darkness, in the swirling snow, I coaxed him through the fence, into the park. We waded through the stream once again, as he had when we were boys, and it was just as cold now, and once again I didn't care. This time I didn't fall, though. I clutched the plastic-wrapped Necronomicon tightly under one arm.

"Play," Jeffrey said, clapping his hands. "Play."

Once more we climbed the hillside, in the darkness, Jeffrey shoving the trees aside, making a terrible racket-but no one disturbed us-until we reached the terraces.

And in our secret place, we sat together, and I told him the rest of the story of the Prince and the Beast, how the younger brother released the elder from the castle's dungeon, how the Beast devoured the King, as was only fitting; and the King's guards fled in terror at their approach, and the two of them retreated far, far into the forest, where no huntsman could ever follow, until they reached the secret and eternal land of the beasts, where animals spoke in their own languages, and no human being was ever admitted.

But because the Prince was the Beast's brother, he was allowed to the very threshold of that land. He could see into it through the thick underbrush, just for an instant, as the leaves parted when the Beast and those who had come for him went back inside. The other animals did not kill the Prince, and, knowing that he would not betray them, they allowed him to leave.

"Is that the end of the story?" said Jeffrey.

"I don't know. I don't think so." I should have been sobbing. That would have been right. But I had run out of tears. As before, when I sat with Father in the kitchen during his last meal, I felt only empty and had nothing more to say.

Then They of the Air finished the story, whispering to Jeffrey in their own language. I saw them, clearly this time, huge, winged, impossible shapes with fiery faces, half like smoke, swirling in the night sky, weaving between the trees, their pa.s.sage a great whirlwind. Branches flew. Trees creaked and swayed. Jeffrey, wild with excitement, leapt up, doing a kind of dance on the hilltop, howling and hooting, stamping his several enormous feet. I was irrelevant to all this, like a pigeon that's wandered into a parade. I could have been crushed. I scrambled down the hillside, out of my brother's way, and looked up just once as a particularly brilliant flash of lightning tore the sky apart. My eyes were dazzled. I couldn't be sure. But Jeffrey seemed transformed once more, into something utterly indescribable and powerful, with wings that reached out to touch the horizons. He and the others filled the sky, rising up.

And then there was just me, sitting alone in the cold and the dark on the hillside, still clutching the plastic-wrapped book I didn't know how to read, unable to understand how the story had turned out.

THE GRAVEYARD RATS.

by Henry Kuttner.

Old Ma.s.son, the caretaker of one of Salem's oldest and most neglected cemeteries, had a feud with the rats. Generations ago they had come up from the wharves and settled in the graveyard, a colony of abnormally large rats, and when Ma.s.son had taken charge after the inexplicable disappearance of the former caretaker, he decided that they must go. At first he set traps for them and put poisoned food by their burrows, and later he tried to shoot them, but it did no good. The rats stayed, multiplying and overrunning the graveyard with their ravenous hordes.

They were large, even for the mus dec.u.ma.n.u.s, which sometimes measures fifteen inches in length, exclusive of the naked pink and grey tail. Ma.s.son had caught glimpses of some as large as good-sized cats, and when, once or twice, the grave-diggers had uncovered their burrows, the malodorous tunnels were large enough to enable a man to crawl into them on his hands and knees. The ships that had come generations ago from distant ports to the rotting Salem wharves had brought strange cargoes.

Ma.s.son wondered sometimes at the extraordinary size of these burrows. He recalled certain vaguely disturbing legends he had heard since coming to ancient, witch-haunted Salem-tales of a moribund, inhuman life that was said to exist in forgotten burrows in the earth. The old days, when Cotton Mather had hunted down the evil cults that worshipped Hecate and the dark Magna Mater in frightful orgies, had pa.s.sed; but dark gabled houses still leaned perilously towards each other over narrow cobbled streets, and blasphemous secrets and mysteries were said to be hidden in subterranean cellars and caverns, where forgotten pagan rites were still celebrated in defiance of law and sanity. Wagging their grey heads wisely, the elders declared that there were worse things than rats and maggots crawling in the unhallowed earth of the ancient Salem cemeteries.

And then, too, there was this curious dread of the rats. Ma.s.son disliked and respected the ferocious little rodents, for he knew the danger that lurked in their flashing, needle-sharp fangs; but he could not understand the inexplicable horror which the oldsters held for deserted, rat-infested houses. He had heard vague rumors of ghoulish beings that dwelt far underground, and that had the power of commanding the rats, marshalling them like horrible armies. The rats, the old men whispered, were messengers between this world and the grim and ancient caverns far below Salem. Bodies had been stolen from graves for nocturnal subterranean feasts, they said. The myth of the Pied Piper is a fable that hides a blasphemous horror, and the black pits of Avernus have brought forth h.e.l.l-sp.a.w.ned monstrosities that never venture into the light of day.

Ma.s.son paid little attention to these tales. He did not fraternize with his neighbors, and, in fact, did all he could to hide the existence of the rats from intruders. Investigation, he realized, would undoubtedly mean the opening of many graves. And while some of the gnawed, empty coffins could be attributed to the activities of the rats, Ma.s.son might find it difficult to explain the mutilated bodies that lay in some of the coffins.

The purest gold is used in filling teeth, and this gold is not removed when a man is buried. Clothing, of course, is another matter; for usually the undertaker provides a plain broadcloth suit that is cheap and easily recognizable. But gold is another matter; and sometimes, too, there were medical students and less reputable doctors who were in need of cadavers, and not overscrupulous as to where these were obtained.

So far Ma.s.son had successfully managed to discourage investigation. He had fiercely denied the existence of the rats, even though they sometimes robbed him of his prey. Ma.s.son did not care what happened to the bodies after he had performed his gruesome thefts, but the rats inevitably dragged away the whole cadaver through the hole they gnawed in the coffin.

The size of these burrows occasionally worried Ma.s.son. Then, too, there was the curious circ.u.mstance of the coffins always being gnawed open at the end, never at the side or top. It was almost as though the rats were working under the direction of some impossibly intelligent leader.

Now he stood in an open grave and threw a last sprinkling of wet earth on the heap beside the pit. It was raining, a slow, cold drizzle that for weeks had been descending from soggy black clouds. The graveyard was a slough of yellow, sucking mud, from which the rain-washed tombstones stood up in irregular battalions. The rats had retreated to their burrows, and Ma.s.son had not seen one for days. But his gaunt, unshaved face was set in frowning lines; the coffin on which he was standing was a wooden one.

The body had been buried several days earlier, but Ma.s.son had not dared to disinter it before. A relative of the dead man had been coming to the grave at intervals, even in the drenching rain. But he would hardly come at this late hour, no matter how much grief he might be suffering, Ma.s.son thought, grinning wryly. He straightened and laid the shovel aside.

From the hill on which the ancient graveyard lay he could see the lights of Salem flickering dimly through the downpour. He drew a flashlight from his pocket. He would need light now. Taking up the spade, he bent and examined the fastenings of the coffin.

Abruptly he stiffened. Beneath his feet he sensed an unquiet stirring and scratching, as though something were moving within the coffin. For a moment a pang of superst.i.tious fear shot through Ma.s.son, and then rage replaced it as he realized the significance of the sound. The rats had forestalled him again!

In a paroxysm of anger Ma.s.son wrenched at the fastenings of the coffin. He got the sharp edge of the shovel under the lid and pried it up until he could finish the job with his hands. Then he sent the flashlight's cold beam darting down into the coffin.

Rain spattered against the white satin lining; the coffin was empty. Ma.s.son saw a flicker of movement at the head of the case, and darted the light in that direction.

The end of the sarcophagus had been gnawed through, and a gaping hole led into darkness. A black shoe, limp and dragging, was disappearing as Ma.s.son watched, and abruptly he realized that the rats had forestalled him by only a few minutes. He fell on his hands and knees and made a hasty clutch at the shoe, and the flashlight incontinently fell into the coffin and went out. The shoe was tugged from his grasp, he heard a sharp, excited squealing, and then he had the flashlight again and was darting its light into the burrow.

It was a large one. It had to be, or the corpse could not have been dragged along it. Ma.s.son wondered at the size of the rats that could carry away a man's body, but the thought of the loaded revolver in his pocket fortified him. Probably if the corpse had been an ordinary one Ma.s.son would have left the rats with their spoils rather than venture into the narrow burrow, but he remembered an especially fine set of cufflinks he had observed, as well as a stickpin that was undoubtedly a genuine pearl. With scarcely a pause he clipped the flashlight to his belt and crept into the burrow.

It was a tight fit, but he managed to squeeze himself along. Ahead of him in the flashlight's glow he could see the shoes dragging along the wet earth of the bottom of the tunnel. He crept along the burrows as rapidly as he could, occasionally barely able to squeeze his lean body through the narrow walls.

The air was overpowering with its musty stench of carrion. If he could not reach the corpse in a minute, Ma.s.son decided, he would turn back. Belated fears were beginning to crawl, maggot-like, within his mind, but greed urged him on. He crawled forward, several times pa.s.sing the mouths of adjoining tunnels. The walls of the burrow were damp and slimy, and twice lumps of dirt dropped behind him. The second time he paused and screwed his head around to look back. He could see nothing, of course, until he had unhooked the flashlight from his belt and reversed it.

Several clods lay on the ground behind him, and the danger of his position suddenly became real and terrifying. With thoughts of a cave-in making his pulse race, he decided to abandon the pursuit, even though he had now almost overtaken the corpse and the invisible things that pulled it. But he had overlooked one thing: the burrow was too narrow to allow him to turn.

Panic touched him briefly, but he remembered a side tunnel he had just pa.s.sed, and backed awkwardly along the tunnel until he came to it. He thrust his legs into it, backing until he found himself able to turn. Then he hurriedly began to retrace his way, although his knees were bruised and painful.

Agonising pain shot through his leg. He felt sharp teeth sink into his flesh, and kicked out frantically. There was a shrill squealing and the scurry of many feet. Flashing the light behind him, Ma.s.son caught his breath in a sob of fear as he saw a dozen great rats watching him intently, their slitted eyes glittering in the light. They were great misshapen things, as large as cats, and behind them he caught a glimpse of a dark shape that stirred and moved swiftly aside into the shadow; and he shuddered at the unbelievable size of the thing.

The light had held them for a moment, but they were edging closer, their teeth dull orange in the pale light. Ma.s.son tugged at his pistol, managed to extricate it from his pocket, and aimed carefully. It was an awkward position, and he tried to press his feet into the soggy sides of the burrow so that he should not inadvertently send a bullet into one of them.

The rolling thunder of the shot deafened him, for a time, and the clouds of smoke set him coughing. When he could hear again and the smoke had cleared, he saw that the rats were gone. He put the pistol back and began to creep swiftly along the tunnel, and then with a scurry and a rush they were upon him again.

They swarmed over his legs, biting and squealing insanely, and Ma.s.son shrieked horribly as he s.n.a.t.c.hed for his gun. He fired without aiming, and only luck saved him from blowing a foot off. This time the rats did not retreat so far, but Ma.s.son was crawling as swiftly as he could along the burrow, ready to fire again at the first sound of another attack.

There was a patter of feet and he sent the light stabbing behind him. A great grey rat paused and watched him. Its long ragged whiskers twitched, and its scabrous, naked tail was moving slowly from side to side. Ma.s.son shouted and the rat retreated.

He crawled on, pausing briefly, the black gap of a side tunnel at his elbow, as he made out a shapeless huddle on the damp clay a few yards ahead. For a second he thought it was a ma.s.s of earth that had been dislodged from the roof, and then he recognized it as a human body.

It was a brown and shriveled mummy, and with a dreadful unbelieving shock Ma.s.son realized that it was moving.

It was crawling towards him, and in the pale glow of the flashlight the man saw a frightful gargoyle face thrust into his own. It was the pa.s.sionless, death's-head skull of a long-dead corpse, instinct with h.e.l.lish life; and the glazed eyes swollen and bulbous betrayed the thing's blindness. It made a faint groaning sound as it crawled towards Ma.s.son, stretching its ragged and granulated lips in a grin of dreadful hunger. And Ma.s.son was frozen with abysmal fear and loathing.

Just before the Horror touched him, Ma.s.son flung himself frantically into the burrow at his side. He heard a scrambling noise at his heels, and the thing groaned dully as it came after him. Ma.s.son, glancing over his shoulder, screamed and propelled himself desperately through the narrow burrow. He crawled along awkwardly, sharp stones cutting his hands and knees. Dirt showered into his eyes, but he dared not pause even for a moment. He scrambled on, gasping, cursing, and praying hysterically.

Squealing triumphantly, the rats came at him, horrible hunger in their eyes. Ma.s.son almost succ.u.mbed to their vicious teeth before he succeeded in beating them off. The pa.s.sage was narrowing, and in a frenzy of terror he kicked and screamed and fired until the hammer clicked on an empty sh.e.l.l. But he had driven them off.

He found himself crawling under a great stone, embedded in the roof, that dug cruelly into his back. It moved a little as his weight struck it, and an idea flashed into Ma.s.son's fright-crazed mind: If he could bring down the stone so that it blocked the tunnel!

The earth was wet and soggy from the rains, and he hunched himself half upright and dug away at the dirt around the stone. The rats were coming closer. He saw their eyes glowing in the reflection of the flashlight's beam. Still he clawed frantically at the earth. The stone was giving. He tugged at it and it rocked in its foundation.

A rat was approaching-the monster he had already glimpsed. Grey and leprous and hideous it crept forward with its orange teeth bared, and in its wake came the blind dead thing, groaning as it crawled. Ma.s.son gave a last frantic tug at the stone. He felt it slide downwards, and then he went scrambling along the tunnel.

Behind him the stone crashed down, and he heard a sudden frightful shriek of agony. Clods showered upon his legs. A heavy weight fell on his feet and he dragged them free with difficulty. The entire tunnel was collapsing!

Gasping with fear, Ma.s.son threw himself forward as the soggy earth collapsed at his heels. The tunnel narrowed until he could barely use his hands and legs to propel himself; he wriggled forward like an eel and suddenly felt satin tearing beneath his clawing fingers, and then his head crashed against something that barred his path. He moved his legs, discovering that they were not pinned under the collapsed earth. He was lying flat on his stomach, and when he tried to raise himself he found that the roof was only a few inches from his back. Panic shot through him.

When the blind horror had blocked his path, he had flung himself desperately into a side tunnel, a tunnel that had no outlet. He was in a coffin, an empty coffin into which he had crept through the hole the rats had gnawed in its end!

He tried to turn on his back and found that he could not. The lid of the coffin pinned him down inexorably. Then he braced himself and strained at the coffin lid. It was immovable, and even if he could escape from the sarcophagus, how could he claw his way up through five feet of hard-packed earth?

He found himself gasping. It was dreadfully fetid, unbearably hot. In a paroxysm of terror he ripped and clawed at the satin until it was shredded. He made a futile attempt to dig with his feet at the earth from the collapsed burrow that blocked his retreat. If he were only able to reverse his position he might be able to claw his way through to air...air....

White-hot agony lanced through his breast, throbbed in his eyeb.a.l.l.s. His head seemed to be swelling, growing larger and larger; and suddenly he heard the exultant squealing of the rats. He began to scream insanely but could not drown them out. For a moment he thrashed about hysterically within his narrow prison, and then he was quiet, gasping for air. His eyelids closed, his blackened tongue protruded, and he sank down into the blackness of death with the mad squealing of the rats dinning in his ears.

TOADFACE.

by Mark McLaughlin.

John Masters was always hungry. Hungry enough to eat a whale. That's all there was to it. He was on a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet and so far, he'd lost fourteen pounds. At work, he found himself constantly looking up at the clock, wishing those sluggish mechanical hands would spin him closer, always closer to his next meal, so he could leave his computer monitor and hurry to the company cafeteria and wolf down a plate of meat-any kind of meat-and some green vegetables.

Every evening after work, he would stop at the Pantheon Coffeehouse to enjoy a sugar-free caramel mocha latte. It was hot, rich, creamy and altogether wonderful, and it didn't break any of the rules of his diet. The coffeehouse was also a great place to hang out because some of his friends and coworkers went there, so there was usually someone to chat with while he enjoyed his drink. The walls were covered with loaded bookshelves, so if none of his friends were there, he could at least find something to read.

One night, he stopped by the coffeehouse and saw Meg, a project manager from work. She was very pretty, with green eyes, black hair and a friendly smile, and Masters often thought about asking her out for dinner. He hadn't done so yet because he had a couple worries holding him back: he was still about twenty pounds overweight, and he was ten years older than her. Maybe she didn't consider him attractive.

Masters walked up to her table. "Hi! How's life been treatin' ya?" He waved a hand toward the other chair at her table. "Are you here with somebody?"

"No, go ahead and sit down," she said. "Well, we have a new director in our department. She works from eight A.M. to eight P.M., so of course she expects the rest of us to work around the clock, too. She must have the words 'salary' and 'slavery' mixed up-she thinks they mean the same thing."

"Tell me about it. My director is the same way. I think he just sleeps under his desk at night." Master took a sip of his drink and then continued. "He's always asking me to do things outside of my regular duties. Last week he asked me to fix his computer-as if I knew how. I just called one of the guys in technical support."

"Makes sense. So what was wrong with it?"

Masters smiled. "Loose nut near the keyboard."

Meg shook her head slightly toward the other side of the room. "Speaking of loose nuts," she whispered, "look over there. The booth near the men's room."

Masters lifted his mug to sip from it, and also to hide his face as he glanced in that direction.

The man in the booth had gray-white hair and a greasy, heavily wrinkled face, with huge, startled black eyes, a thick-lipped mouth and a puffy double-chin.

"He looks like the frog prince," Masters whispered.

"More like the toad king," Meg replied softly. "Maybe he's on the same diet as you. Earlier, he was eating a tuna salad sandwich, but he just ate the tuna salad and didn't touch the bread. No, I take that back-he did touch it, he just didn't eat it. He licked off all the salad gunk. So how's your diet coming along?"

They began to talk about his meal plans. Masters told her what foods he was allowed to eat and which ones were strictly out-of-bounds. He told her about some of the ways he prepared different foods to make them more interesting, since boredom was the usual reason for people straying from diets.

"So would your diet help me with my thighs?" Meg asked.

"Your thighs are fine," he replied. He then lowered his voice. "If you want a second opinion, ask old Toadface. He's coming this way."

A moment later, the thick-lipped man was standing over them. Masters noticed that he had a flabby, pear-shaped physique, probably from licking up too much salad gunk. The man's shirt was wet and stained around the armpits.

"I wasn't eavesdropping," Toadface said in a high, nasal voice, "but I happened to overhear you two talking about some diet. May I join you?" Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed a chair from a nearby table, pulled it over and sat down. "I'd like to hear more about this diet. It sounds extremely interesting."

"Basically, it's all about eating protein." Master didn't want to explain the whole complex matter to this bizarre man, so he decided to give him the condensed version. "You just eat a lot of meat and some vegetables, and no sugar or complex carbohydrates. Drink plenty of water and the weight just melts off."

"The water wouldn't be a problem. Can it be any sort of meat?" Toadface blinked his wide eyes with rapt curiosity.

"Yes, I think so," Masters said. "After all, meat is meat."

The man c.o.c.ked his head to one side. "But do some meats have more protein in them than others?"

"I suppose so." Masters had never thought about it before. "I guess lean meat would have more protein in it, since there's less fat content."

The man smiled, revealing an abundance of yellowed, oddly narrow teeth. "But if the animal-the source of the meat-ate a lot of protein itself... Then it would probably contain even more protein. Yes?"

Masters couldn't bear to look at that hideously eager, hungry smile a second longer, so he glanced at his watch, pretended to be surprised at the time, and stood up. "Wow, I almost forgot. There's a movie on TV tonight I'd really like to see. I'd better get going."

"Yeah, I'm running late myself," Meg said. "See you at work, John." She gave him a big hug-something she'd never done before. He wondered if it would be okay to give her a little kiss, a peck on the cheek. But no, not with Toadface standing by.

Masters watched her leave, lost in thought. Toadface said, "What's the name of the movie?"

"What movie?" he replied without thinking. Then he remembered his impromptu lie, but it was too late.

Toadface was clearly upset. His mouth stretched wide in an ugly grimace. Then the grimace turned into a vicious smile as the man looked down from Master's face. "You just came from work, didn't you?"

With a rush of panic, Masters realized he was still wearing his name tag. JOHN MASTERS, ACCOUNTING. INNSMOUTH QUALITY CONSTRUCTION.

There was nothing for him to say, so he just turned and walked away from the table, dismayed that the clammy creep now knew his name and where he worked.

Later that night, Masters fried some chicken and made himself a salad. He wondered if Toadface would give him any trouble. Would the flabby freak suddenly show up at his office?