House of Many Worlds Read online

  House of Many Worlds

  by Sam Merwin, Jr.

  As first published in Startling Stories, September 1951

  I

  ELSPETH MARRINER fingered the sticky roundness of the thick tumbler on the gimpy-legged table in front of her and wondered what in heaven, earth or hell she was doing in the dingy little restaurant. As a poet she knew it was her duty to have her feet in the mire as well as her head in the clouds, but this was going a little too far.

  Seeking to shut out Mack's insistent and unsubtle prodding of the leather-skinned native he was plying with the hot and heavy liquid molasses that passed for rum in this incredibly backward little Carolina community, she concentrated on the strip of flypaper that dangled from the ceiling less than six feet from her head.

  Alternate sections of its spiral glistened evilly in the dim reflection of the green-shaded lamp that hung beyond it. At intervals a trapped insect buzzed its hysterical protest at such unmannerly death as faced it. She counted the flies she could see trapped on its sticky surface. There were exactly fourteen, five more than had been there the night before.

  FOURTEEN, she thought, the magic number that spells sonnet. She began to frame a sonnet to fourteen flies caught in a spiral of flypaper. Surely even such unpleasant living creatures merited some memorial to their passing.

  She lost the thread, realized that her head was aching—whether from lack of sleep in the course of the assignment or from the badly fried food which was all the Carolina community seemed to offer or from the drink and a half of heavy rum she had consumed, she could not tell. Perhaps it was a combination of the three. If Mack didn't get her back to New York on the morrow, she would—

  She glanced covertly at the photographer, who was leaning toward the native as if eager to hear his half-drunken blather. It would be nice to do something to wipe the conscientious eagerness from his face, she thought, from his too-old, too-young gladiator's face. According to Orrin Lewis, the hard-bitten and suave managing editor of Picture Week, who had teamed them for the assignment, Mack Fraser had once been a fighter. She believed him.

  His nose was slightly flattened across the bridge, a trifle off center. His cheekbones were not quite symmetrical, as if one—the left—had been broken by a fist. His eyes had a sleepy look, which she suspected came from scar tissue on the upper lids.

  SHE told herself she was being a snob, that she had no right to mind the fact he had been in the ring. But she could not help resenting the fact that he always treated her as if, merely because she had not struggled out of some similar gutter, she did not quite belong to the human race.

  ". . . and I'm telling you, Mack," the native was saying as the photographer signaled the bar for a refill, "that there's still some mighty funny stuff going on around here." He paused and the Adam's apple vibrated beneath the scaly skin of his turkey neck. "We don't make much talk of it to outsiders." He paused to chuckle. "Matter of fact we don't talk about it much among ourselves."

  "What sort of things, Corey?" Mack asked quietly. He was leaning back in his chair now, apparently disinterested since his fish was nibbling at the bait. Elspeth thought it painfully obvious. If she were that naive—but she wasn't.

  Lacking a waiter, the bartender himself, a large lame individual with faded blue eyes and thick hair on the backs of his fingers, brought drinks over to the men. The native, Corey, mumbled his thanks, lifted his glass with clumsy courtesy to Elspeth, who managed a lip smile. Then he downed half of it at a draught. Elspeth shuddered, but it had no visible effect on Corey.

  "Well," Corey went on, planting his forearms on the table after wiping his mouth with one dirty sleeve, "it goes back a long way—some say to the Bankers and even beyond."

  "I've heard of them," said Elspeth, thinking she ought to put in something for the courtesy of the toast. "They used to do things to the beacon lights to force ships ashore on the Hatteras shoals and then loot them. Nice people."

  JUANA

  "That they weren't," said Corey, apparently missing her sarcasm. "Some say they killed ten thousand men—aye, and women and little children. They could not afford to let them live."

  "But what's this 'funny stuff' you were telling us about?" said Mack. His voice, Elspeth thought, was not actually bad. But it was rough around the edges, not cut for subtlety. On the whole, it went with its owner.

  "Some nights the lights still shine," said Corey, placing his gnarled fisherman's hands flat on the oilcloth table top. His voice dropped half an octave. "And when they are seen, things happen. Other times there's darkness—not even the stars shine through although there may not be a cloud in the sky. And that's worse."

  "Not so fast, Corey," said Mack, his forehead furrowing. You say 'things' happen when these lights show. What sort of things?"

  "Bad things—big things," the native told them. "Things like wars and troubles to match. Sometimes we don't get to know of them until a while after. But we know when they happen."

  "Why is this darkness you speak of worse?" Mack inquired.

  COREY hesitated and scratched his unkempt coarse black hair. He looked around him a trifle furtively and leaned forward. "It's hard to say," he told them, his voice low and hoarse, "but it is. You've got to see it when it happens to believe it."

  "You mean the whole locality just blacks out?" Elspeth asked incredulously. Although their assignment, to come up with a romantic picture story about the Hatteras Keys and their inhabitants, had been a notable fizzle to date she was in no mood for haunts.

  "Not so you'd notice," said Corey, regarding her as if she were a toddler who had failed to pass a first-grade test. "What I'm telling you is that Spindrift Key is the place."

  He paused and Mack cut in with, "Let's see—that's the island just beyond the mouth of the inlet. Looks too well groomed for this story of ours. You mean to say that—"

  "I mean to say that that's where these things happen," the native said earnestly. "Listen, you people may be outsiders, but you've been mighty decent to me. I wouldn't sell you short, not so you'd notice it. I know what I know."

  "But the place can't be haunted," Mack protested. "I cruised around it with Elspeth just the other day on our way to the outer shoals. It looks like a Southdown estate compared to the rest of these desolate spots. And that big house is well kept up."

  "Didn't say it was haunted," said Corey, looking aggrieved. "All I said was that's where things happen—have always happened."

  "But doesn't someone live there?" Mack asked insistently.

  "The Frenchman lives there—him and his people," said Corey. "His folks always have, far as we know."

  "Frenchman?" said Elspeth, more to keep awake than to contribute to the conversation. She was desperately tired. Three days of traipsing to and about this rough-hewn Carolina country with Mack were enough to have any girl on the ropes.

  "Foreigner, anyway. Got a French name—Horelle," said Corey.

  MACK gave Elspeth a quick speculative look. Then, to the native, "Might be worth a visit. Will he be in tomorrow ?"

  "But we've got to get back to New—" Elspeth began.

  "Can't tell you that," said Corey as if she hadn't spoken at all. "Sometimes he's there, sometimes he isn't."

  "Someone must be there—a big place like that," said Mack.

  "Can't tell you that either," said the native. "We leave the Spindrift folks pretty much alone. Always have. Suits them and us fine. But there's times it's empty ground."

  Mack looked at the watch on his wrist. "It's only a little after eight," he said. "Could you get us out there, Corey?"

  "I could," said Corey in a tone of deep reluctance. "Can't say Horelle likes visitors much."

  "Mack, I'm beat," Elspeth protested. They had risen at
five that morning so Mack could get shots of sunrise over the keys.

  But the photographer was not to be denied. To her considerable surprise and disgruntlement Elspeth found herself, minutes later, standing outside the dingy restaurant in the poorly paved main street of the little Carolina town. Despite the earliness of the evening apparently most of the denizens had gone to bed.

  "No wonder they have so many children," she murmured.

  "Shut up," said Mack. "It's hard enough to get next to any of these natives without you insulting them. If you hadn't run the Pipit into that ditch we wouldn't have to have Corey take us over."

  "I said I was sorry," she replied irritably. Mack's neat and shiny little English-made vehicle was reposing in the town's one garage thanks to a driving lapse of Elspeth. She had spotted a flock of bright red cardinal birds while guiding it along a high-crowned country lane, had managed to get the front wheels out of line in the resultant slip from the road.

  "Hope the local mechanic doesn't butcher the Pipit," Mack said gloomily. It was like him, Elspeth thought, to worry over a vehicle. He was the same about his cameras. He was always fussing with them, handling them as if they were precious works of art. Elspeth, whose interest lay in nature, in people, in ideas and the emotional responses they aroused, had a certain contempt for machines. They were so—coldly tangible.

  "I'm sleepy," she said, yawning with no attempt to cover it.

  "After the way you've been beefing about the beds at the local hostelry," said Mack, his white teeth gleaming in the early darkness as he smiled, "I should think you'd be grateful for a chance to stay out of them for an extra hour or two."

  "Your logic," said Elspeth coldly, "leaves me frigid."

  "Just as it found you, eh?" said Mack, chuckling.

  Mercifully Corey loomed up in the shadows of the street just then. He rolled a little as he walked, but Elspeth decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and put it down to his years on a fisherman's deck rather than to the rum he had consumed.

  "This is a bit daft," he said, leading them toward the shimmer of moonlight on the water beyond the small quay at the end of the street. "Still, you people been mighty decent to me. If it'll do you any good, I'm glad to help. I'll wait at the dock."

  "Listen," said Mack, fingering the case of the infrared camera which hung on a strap from his shoulder, "we'll be glad—"

  "We wouldn't miss a moonlight trip on the water for anything," said Elspeth. She sensed intuitively that Corey would be hurt beyond words if Mack offered him money as he was going to. By way of emphasis she jabbed an elbow in the photographer's ribs.

  "Ouch!" said Mack. He glared at her, and Corey stopped, turning to glance back at him with evident concern. The cameraman finally caught on and added, "Sorry. I must have stepped in a hole."

  "Gotto watch your step in these parts," Corey told them.

  His boat's lack of paint and its all-around battered appearance were not hidden by the moonlight. It smelled of machine oil and long-dead fish. Elspeth, who had considerable grace for a tall girl, scrambled aboard and found a seat near the stern, across the cockpit from Mack, who was smoking a cigarette.

  "Light one for me, will you?" she asked. Illogically, although she prided herself on being able to meet men on equal grounds, she resented his not having offered her one. Mack complied casually and reached across the cockpit to hand it to her, forcing her to reach too. He was, she thought, a bit of a boor.

  At that moment Corey got the big flywheel spinning, and the motor sputtered to life, seeming to cut the entire peaceful scene with its sharp barking sounds. It coughed, then caught and subsided to a steady thrum. Corey cast off and they putt-putted out across the dappled moonlight that seemed to dance in front of them.

  "That Spindrift on our port bow?" Mack inquired moments later. Corey denied it, informed them they would not see their destination until they had rounded the point just ahead.

  "Forgot the point," said Mack apologetically. Elspeth decided he was being subtle. They had seen the harbor layout from the Pipit just the afternoon before and Mack was not dumb about things like that. He was just dumb where it counted.

  "There she is," Corey said after a silent fifteen minutes when his boat had made slow progress around the point.

  ELSPETH, who had noticed the island earlier only as a civilized anachronism in the general desolation of their Hatteras surroundings, studied the dark rise of land ahead of them with interest. It was remarkable for its single low hill, for its obviously landscaped and well pruned trees, for the large white pillared mansion that reposed on its highest point.

  "Mack!" she said, suddenly excited. "There are lights."

  "Yeah," said the photographer. "Somebody seems to be home."

  "That's not what I mean," protested Elspeth. "Didn't Mr. Corey just tell us that when there are lights on Spindrift, it—"

  "They're just the lights in the big house windows," said the fisherman, un-excited. "They're not the lights I was meaning."

  "What's different about them?" Elspeth wanted to know.

  "It's hard to say exactly," replied Corey slowly. He hesitated, evidently seeking words beyond the limits of his meager vocabulary. "The lights I was meaning are higher up—and move."

  "Could be St. Elmo's fire," said Mack casually. He had opened his camera case and was squinting through an infrared viewer. "Ought to be something for your story, Elly, in this. It's the first new slant we've come up with for Orrin."

  "Nothing like an unhaunted house to spice up a travelogue," said Elspeth with definite irony. She disliked the fact that Mack spoke of Orrin Lewis as Orrin. Lewis still called her Miss Marriner.

  "Could be St. Elmo's fire," said Corey, picking up the conversation several sentences back as if nothing had intervened. "But it isn't. It shows up on clear nights as well as rainy ones."

  "These phenomena only occur at night?" the girl inquired.

  "Whatever you call them, that's right," said Corey. "It's hard to explain. There are a lot of things hard to explain about Spindrift. Take those house lights —they weren't showing last night. The place was dark as my cellar."

  "Maybe this—Horelle—was away and just got back," Mack suggested. He stood up to take a shot of the island.

  "Sure—maybe," said Corey. "But if he was, when did he go? And how did he get back here without being seen?"

  "We'll ask him and tell you about it on the way back," said Elspeth. In spite of herself she was beginning to get interested in Spindrift Key and its unseen inhabitants. It might be a boon to an otherwise dull picture story, after all.

  "I'll be waiting," said Corey and there was something in his tone that caused Elspeth to glance sharply at the dark shape of him, standing up front, his hands on the wheel.

  "What does that mean?" she asked.

  He replied, without turning around, "Just what it says. I'll be waiting—unless I get word you don't want me to." He sounded as if he were not looking forward with pleasure to his vigil.

  "We'll bring you word ourselves if this Mr. Horelle asks us to spend the night," said Mack, putting his night camera back into its case. He sat down, this time lit two cigarettes, handed one of them to Elspeth. "Nice night for haunting a house," he added.

  "Shut up," she told him. It occurred to her that they had switched roles. Now she was the one who was genuinely interested in Spindrift Key while Mack had become the scoffer. This annoyed her and she told herself she was acting like an emotional fool.

  "There's the dock," said Corey suddenly, pointing ahead.

  They were coming in to a neat little pier whose base was lost in the shadow of a clump of poplars which made dark inverted fangs against the star-studded sky. Its white pilings gleamed their answer to the moonlight and it looked new and well built.

  "Funny," said Mack suddenly as Corey cut the motor and they began to drift in with their momentum. "There are no boats."

  "There never are," said the fisherman cryptically. Elspeth and Mack exchanged glances acr
oss the cockpit. But there seemed nothing to say, nothing to ask. They would soon be close to the source of all knowledge about Spindrift Key.

  Elspeth shivered a little although the night was warm. She tried to tell herself that it was just fatigue rippling her muscles. But within herself she knew different. Corey's talk about the island might be the cause—but she felt a definite fear. She couldn't have said what she feared. None the less she was afraid.

  Their bow bumped the dock then—a prosaic sound. Corey scrambled onto the dock and made fast the painter. Then he helped Elspeth ashore and she shook down her travel-rumpled tweed skirt while Mack, nursing his camera, climbed up beside them.

  "Which way—ah!" said Mack, nodding toward a neat path which began a hedge-lined progress inland at the far end of the dock.

  "That'll take you to the house," said Corey, who was engaged in stuffing his pipe. "Got nowhere else to go."

  He chuckled at his own joke and Elspeth sighed. They thanked their Charon dutifully and began to walk slowly up the path. It headed straight toward a large landscaped clump of some sort of shrubbery, indistinguishable in the night, fifty yards from the dock. There it took a right-angle turn to the left.

  And there the darkness struck them. It came without sound, without motion, without warning. One moment Elspeth was looking ahead in the moonlit blue and gold of the evening—the next she was in a world without light, without stars, without moonlight.

  She cried out in alarm and it seemed to her that she was surrounded by an airlessness that must mean asphyxiation. Instinctively she stretched out an arm to where she remembered Mack was, drew reassurance from the feel of his jacket.

  "Mack," she whispered, for somehow it seemed wrong to speak normally in the blackness. "Mack, what is it?"

  "I dunno," he replied, his strong fingers finding hers and drawing her into the circle of his arm. "But it would make one wonderful dark-room."