It was burning hot. The spoon jerked in her fingers and the porridge splattered on the floor. She looked around in frightened guilt, sucking in mouthfuls of air. Her mouth cooled, her scorched tongue became a cooling lump of numb flesh.

d.a.m.n, she muttered, why didn't I forget the plot and try the little bowl first crack out of the bag? No use running this thing into the ground. Alice still felt chipper, It is the one admirable quality these people have; a sense of humour which bubbles up to the very moment of destruction.

So Alice Grady alias Goldilocks tasted some porridge from the smallest bowl.

Ah, she said, this is just right. Haven't had anything so good since I was a kid.

And she ate it all up without a qualm.

Not only without a qualm but with a sort of perverse pleasure, wondering who was going to cry at the sight of the empty bowl.

However, when she had finished, Alice looked up from the bowl and felt guilt break out into drops on her forehead.

Now I've done it, she thought. Where do I get such nerve? This is a stranger's home. I'm no better than a housebreaker. I could be sent to jail for this. This eating I just did const.i.tutes a burglary. I better get out and quick too, before the people come back.

She got up, and with a sense of penitence, picked up the cereal from the floor and threw it and the spoon into the cold fireplace.

She looked around and shook her head. No use trying to think otherwise. There was something definitely phony here.

Well I'm going now, she said loudly as though someone were arguing the point with her. I'm going back to George and tell him all about this.

First you must see if there are really three beds upstairs, said a voice in her mind that didn't sound familiar.

She frowned. Oh no, she said, I'm leaving right off.

Oh no, said the voice insolently, you've got to see if there are three beds upstairs. You're Goldilocks, remember?

Alice looked worried. She chewed her lip. But she went to the staircase and started up. It seemed very much as if someone were piling stones in her stomach. She felt them getting heavier and heavier. They were cold stones.

She stopped abruptly and yawned.

I'm getting sleepy, she said.

That brought her up short, drove a bolt of icy dread through her. Someone with chilled hands was knocking on the door to her heart. I'm scared, she admitted at last. I want to go. I want to leave. This is spooky. It's wrong. I'm scared and I want to go.

How about getting up there and seeing if there are really three beds!

There was no use denying it. It wasn't her own mind speaking.

The porridge!

Clever girl. Too late. Too late.

She struggled to turn and go down the stairs. But she couldn't. She simply had to go to the bedroom. It wasn't a vague compulsion, it was an order. Alice Grady was losing touch. She was drifting away. With her remaining strength she tried to scream. Her throat closed up.

It was getting darker still. The hallway was dim. And her brain was whirling and her limbs felt like running lead. G.o.d protect me, she tried to whisper but the words died in a trembling of her lips. George, the name came forth in a crusty mumble. George save me!

Alice stumbled into the little bedroom, bleary-eyed, and the fear in her a jumble of words that weren't words. Tears ran down her numbed cheeks and her stomach hurt with a cutting pain. She cried out once.

Then, driven on, she went to the big bed and fell on it.

No no! cracked the voice in her head, this is too hard.

And she struggled up like an unoiled robot and fell on the second bed. Her mind called out a" no, this one is too soft and you don't like it one bit!

With eyes closed and a burning fever in her body Alice staggered to her feet and then pitched across the small bed with a choking shriek.

She felt the soft coverlet pressing against her cheek. And the voice droned off into swirling blackness a" this is the right bed. This is the right bed at last.

And when she woke up, she knew what it was all about.

The house was gone and she was lying on the forest leaves.

She got up with a smile and walked slowly up the night-shrouded hill. She even laughed aloud at that fool, Alice Grady, who had let stupid imagination get the better of her.

I was waiting for her in the car. She smiled a little as she slid in beside me.

'So,' she said, 'how long have you been one?'

'Years now,' I said, 'Remember that time Alice and George went to the seash.o.r.e? About five years ago?'

She nodded. 'Yes.'

'Well, George and I went down to Davey Jones's locker with a mermaid,' I told her, 'and he lost his mind and I came back using his body for my home.'

She smiled and I started the car.

'What about the Nelsons?' she asked.

'They've been with us for a long time,' I said.

'How many real people are left on earth now?' she asked.

'About fifty or so,' I said.

'It's really very clever,' she said 'Alice Grady never suspected it for a second.'

'Of course not,' I said. 'That's the charm of it.'

And it is charming how we are inheriting the earth. Without a shot. With no one's ever knowing.

One by one we've taken your bodies and made them our own. We've let your minds destroy themselves by letting your childishness extend itself beyond intelligence; until it reaches that inevitable point where we can gain complete control.

And soon there will be only us and no more earth people. Oh, the outward picture will remain. But the plan will change.

And until our work is done, the remainder of genuine earth people will never know about it.

A little more than fifty left.

Watch out.

You're one of them.

And you know.

VI a" SLAUGHTER HOUSE.

I submit for your consideration, the following ma.n.u.script which was mailed to this office some weeks ago. It is presented with neither evidence nor judgment as to its validity. This determination is for the reader to make.

Samuel D. Machildon, a.s.sociate Secretary, Rand Society for Psychical Research I.

This occurred many years ago. My brother Saul and I had taken a fancy to the old, tenantless Slaughter House. Since we were boys the yellow-edged p.r.o.nouncement-FOR SALE- had hung lopsided in the grimy front window. We had vowed with boyish ambition that, when we were old enough, the sign must come down.

When we had attained our manhood, this aspiration somehow remained. We had a taste for the Victorian, Saul and I. His painting was akin to that roseate and buxom transcription of nature so endeared by the nineteenth century artists. And my writing, though far from satisfactory realization, bore the definite stamp of prolixity, was marked by that meticulous sweep of ornate phrase which the modernists decry as dullness and artifice.

Thus, for the headquarters of our artistic labours, what better retreat than the Slaughter House, that structure which matched in cornice and frieze our intimate partialities? None, we decided, and acted readily on that decision.

The yearly endowment arranged by our deceased parents, albeit meager, we knew to suffice, since the house was in gross need of repair and, moreover, without electricity.

There was also, if hardly credited by us, a rumour of ghosts. Neighbourhood children quite excelled each other in relating the harrowing experiences they had undergone with various of the more eminent spectres. We smiled at their clever fancies, never once losing the conviction that purchase of the house would be wholly practical and satisfactory.

The real estate office b.u.mbled with financial delight the day we took off their hands what they had long considered a lost cause, having even gone so far as to remove the house from their listings. Convenient arrangements were readily fashioned and, in a matter of hours, we had moved all belongings from our uncommodious flat to our new, relatively large house.

Several days were then spent in the most necessary task of cleaning. This presented itself as far more difficult a project than first antic.i.p.ated. Dust lay heavy throughout the halls and rooms. Our energetic dusting would send clouds of it billowing expansively, filling the air with powdery ghosts of dirt. We noted in respect to that observation that many a spectral vision might thus be made explicable if the proper time were utilized in experiment.

In addition to dust on all places of lodgement, there was thick grime on gla.s.s surfaces ranging from downstairs windows to silver scratched mirrors in the upstairs bath. There were loose banisters to repair, door locks to recondition, yards of thick rugging out of whose mat to beat decades of dust, and a mult.i.tude of other ch.o.r.es large and small to be performed before the house could be deemed liveable.

Yet, even with grime and age admitted, that we had come by an obvious bargain was beyond dispute. The house was completely furnished, moreover furnished in the delightful mode of the early 1900s. Saul and I were thoroughly enchanted. Dusted, aired, scrubbed from top to bottom, the house proved indeed a fascinating purchase. The dark luxurious drapes, the patterned rugs, the graceful furniture, the yellow keyed spinet; everything was complete to the last detail, that detail being the portrait of a rather lovely young woman which hung above the living room mantel.

When first we came upon it, Saul and I stood speechless before its artistic quality. Saul then spoke of the painter's technique and finally, in rapt adulation, discussed with me the various possibilities as to the ident.i.ty of the model.

It was our final conjecture that she was the daughter or wife of the former tenant, whoever he had been, beyond having the name of Slaughter.

Several weeks pa.s.sed by. Initial delight was slaked by full-time occupancy and intense creative effort.

We rose at nine, had our breakfast in the dining room, then proceeded to our work, I in my sleeping chamber, Saul in the solarium, which we had been able to improvise into a small studio. Each in our places, the morning pa.s.sed quietly and effectively. We lunched at one, a small but nourishing meal and then resumed work for the afternoon.

We discontinued our labours about four to have tea and quiet conversation in our elegant front room. By this hour it was too late to go on with our work, since darkness would be commencing its surrounding pall on the city. We had chosen not to install electricity both for reasons of monetary prudence and the less sordid one of pure aesthetics.

We would not, for the world, have distorted the gentle charm of the house by the addition of blatant, sterile electric light. Indeed we preferred the flickering silence of candlelight in which to play our nightly game of chess. We needed no usurping of our silence by noxious radio Heating's, we ate our bakery bread unsinged and found our wine quite adequately cooled from the old icebox. Saul enjoyed the sense of living in the past and so did I. We asked no more.

But then began the little things, the intangible things, the things without reason.

Walking on the stairs, in the hallway, through the rooms, Saul or I, singly or together, would stop and receive the strangest impulse in our minds; of fleeting moment yet quite definite while existent.

It is difficult to express the feeling with adequate clarity. It was as if we heard something although there was no sound, as though we saw something when there was nothing before the eye. A sense of shifting presence, delicate and tenuous, hidden from all physical senses and yet, somehow, perceived.

There was no explaining it. In point of fact we never spoke of it together. It was too nebulous a feeling to discuss, incapable of being materialized into words. Restless though it made us, there was no mutual comparison of sensation nor could there be. Even the most abstract of thought formation could not approach what we were experiencing.

Sometimes I would come upon Saul casting a hurried glance over his shoulder, or surrept.i.tiously reaching out to stroke empty air as though he expected his fingers to touch some invisible ent.i.ty. Sometimes he would catch me doing the same. On occasion we would smile awkwardly, both of us appreciating the moment without words.

But our smiles soon faded. I almost think we were afraid to deride this unknown aegis for fear that it might prove itself actual. Not that my brother or I were superst.i.tious in the least degree. The very fact that we purchased the house without paying the slightest feasance to the old wives' tales about its supposed anathema seems to belie the suggestion that we were, in any manner, inclined toward mystic apprehensions. Yet the house did seem, beyond question, to possess some strange potency.

Often, late at night, I would lie awake, knowing somehow that Saul was also awake in his room and that we both were listening and waiting, consciously certain about our expectation of some unknown arrival which was soon to be effected.

And effected it was.

II.

It was perhaps a month and a half after we had moved into Slaughter House that the first hint was shown as to the house's occupants other than ourselves.

I was in the narrow kitchen cooking supper on the small gas stove. Saul was in the dining alcove arranging the table for supper. He had spread a white cloth over the dark, glossy mahogany and, on it, placed two plates with attendant silver. A candelabrum of six candles glowed in the center of the table casting shadows over the snowy cloth.

Saul was about to place the cups and saucers beside the plates as I turned back to the stove. I twisted the k.n.o.b a trifle to lower the flame under the chops. Then, as I began to open the icebox to get the wine, I heard Saul gasp loudly and, something thumped on the dining-room rug. I whirled and hurried out of the kitchen as fast as I could.

One of the cups had fallen to the floor, its handle snapping off. I hurriedly picked it up, my eyes on Saul.

He was standing with his back to the living room archway, his right hand pressed to his cheek, a look of speechless shock contorting his handsome features.

"What is it?" I asked, placing the cup on the table.

He looked at me without answering and I noticed how his slender fingers trembled on his whitening cheek.

"Saul, what is it?"

"A hand," he said. "A hand. It touched my cheek."

I believe my mouth fell open in surprise. I had, deep within the inner pa.s.sages of my mind, been expecting something like this to happen. So had Saul. Yet now that it had, a natural sense of oppressive impact was on both of our shoulders.

We stood there in silence. How can I express my feeling at that moment? It was as though something tangible, a tide of choking air, crept over us like some shapeless, lethargic serpent. I noticed how Saul's chest moved in convulsive leaps and depressions and my own mouth hung open as I gasped for breath.

Then, in an added moment, the breathless vacuum was gone, the mindless dread dissolved. I managed to speak, trusting to break this awesome spell with words.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

His slender throat contracted. He forced a smile to his lips, a smile more frightened than pleasant.

"I hope not," he replied.

He reinforced his smile with some effort.

"Can it really be?" he went on, his joviality failing noticeably.