Fritz Leiber

“ It was as if he were forcing himself into the heart of a monster. Detestation of the city grew within him. As yesterday the crowded aisles seemed only hiding places, and he avoided the locker room. Gertrude Rees remarked sympathetically on his fatigued look, and he took the opportunity to invite her out that evening. ”

“ As they sipped coffee in the empty little restaurant, Tom poured out a flood of talk about old times. David would have been able to listen better, had not the uncertain shadowy shapes outside the window been continually distracting his attention. Eventually he found an opportunity to turn the conversation down the channels which absorbed his mind.
"The supernatural beings of a modern city?” Tom answered, seeming to find nothing out of the way in the question. "Sure, they’d be different from the ghosts of yesterday. Each culture creates its own demons. ”

“ Instead, Tom sounded almost serious—mocking, but serious. David started to speak, but Tom held up his finger for silence, aping the gesture of a schoolteacher.
"Meanwhile, what’s happening inside each one of us? I’ll tell you. All sorts of inhibited emotions are accumulating. Fear is accumulating. Horror is accumulating. A new kind of awe at the mysteries of the universe is accumulating. A pyschological environment is forming, along with the physical one. Wait, let me finish. Our culture becomes ripe for infection. ”

“ What better words would you want to describe the inquisitive, persistent pryings of the beast that had crouched outside the bedroom door all night in his dreams and then finally pushed through to plant its dirty paws on his chest. For a moment, he saw superimposed on the yellow ceiling and garish advertising placards of the street car, its malformed muzzle . . . the red eyes like thickly scummed molten metal . . . the jaws slavered with thick black oil. ”

“ He continued to stare at her blankly. "A joke,” she explained patiently, and returned to her work.
"I’ve got to get a grip on myself,” he found himself muttering tritely as the elevator lowered him noiselessly to the basement.
"I’ve got to get a grip on myself,” he kept repeating as he hurried to the locker room, left his coat and lunch, gave his hair a quick careful brushing, hurried again through the still-empty aisles, and slipped in behind the socks-and-handkerchiefs counter. "It’s just nerves. I’m not crazy. But I got to get a grip on myself. ”

“ Then a voice from the darkness, the voice of a man paralyzed by horror and supernatural fear. "God, God, God,” over and over again. Each word dragged out with prodigious effort.
An unfamiliar sensation stirred in David, a feeling almost of security and relief though he could never have told why.
"You—saw it then?” he heard issue from his own dry throat. "The hound? The—wolf?”
"Wolf? Hound?” The voice from behind the flashlight was hideously shaken. "It was nothing like that. God, I never believed in such things. But now—” Then the voice spoke out with awful certainty and conviction. ”

“ It’s just like a bacteriologist’s culture—I didn’t intend the pun—when it gets to the right temperature and consistency for supporting a colony of germs. Similarly, our culture suddenly spawns a horde of demons. And, like germs, they have a peculiar affinity to our culture. ”

“ They can’t take root in the new environment. Science goes materialistic, proving that there isn’t anything in the universe except tiny bundles of energy. As if, for that matter, a tiny bundle of energy mightn’t mean—anything.”
"But wait, that’s just the beginning. We go on inventing and discovering and organizing. We cover the earth with huge structures. We pile them together in great heaps that make old Rome and Alexandria and Babylon seem almost toy-towns by comparison. The new environment, you see, is forming.”
David stared at him with incredulous fascination, profoundly disturbed. ”

“ No nice clean fur, white teeth and shining eyes. Oh, no. Instead you’d get some nasty hound that wouldn’t surprise you if you saw it nosing at a garbage pail or crawling out from under a truck. Frighten and terrorize you, yes. But surprise, no. It would fit into the environment. Look as if it belonged in a city, and smell the same. Because of the twisted emotions that would be its food, your emotions and mine. A matter of diet.”
Tom Goodsell chuckled loudly, and lit another cigarette. But David only stared down at the scarred counter. ”

“ Warehouses gave way to factories, factories to apartment buildings, apartment buildings to dwellings which were at first small and dirty white, then large and mansion-like but very much decayed, then new and monotonous in their uniformity. Peoples of different economic status and racial affiliations filed into and emptied from the street car as the different strata of the city were passed through. Finally the vacant lots began to come, at first one by one, then in increasing numbers, until the houses were spaced out two or three to a block. ”

“ For the city has spawned its own horde of horrors. Yes, the city has its own werewolves.
A devilish monster looms over a distressed man, with a man, wolf, and wolf-man in the bottom corner "It’s late, I’ll have to rush,” he said.
She accompanied him to the door, so accustomed to his hastiness that she saw in it nothing unusual. Her wan voice followed him down the dark apartment stair: “I hope a rat hasn’t died in the walls. ”

“ None of the girls had been close to him—a not-very-competent young man tied down to the task of supporting parents whose little reserve of money had long ago dribbled away. He had dated them for awhile, talked to them, told them his beliefs and ambitions, and then one by one they had drifted off to marry other men. ”