Joseph Payne Brennan

“ He was cold and weak. He had scarcely strength enough to slide open the elevator doors.
He stepped out of the elevator into the large open-shelf room of the library with a feeling of indescribable relief. He felt as if he had ascended from a tomb.
Mr. Twais, the head librarian, was coming down the aisle. He stopped when he came abreast of Newling. He was about to say something, but at the sight of Newling's face, his mouth fell open.
"What is it, man?" he exclaimed. "You look positively shaken!"
"Oh—nothing," Newling whispered. "I'll be all right. Just—the air—in the vault. ”

“ William Cowath thrust his torch toward the monster, but it continued to lunge at the end of its fetters. The nightmare room resounded with the Earl's screams and the creature's horrible squeals of bestial laughter. I felt that my own mind would give way unless I escaped from that anteroom of hell.
For the first time during an ordeal which would have sent any lesser man fleeing for his life and sanity, the iron control of the Factor appeared to be shaken. He looked beyond the wild lunging thing toward the wall where the fetters were fastened. ”

“ As if in response, and without paying her any other heed, the driver managed a new and positively fearful burst of speed. The bus thundered ahead until the fog seemed to be going by in white streamers of light.
Fighting back rising hysteria, Martha stood up. "Driver! Please! We'll be killed!"
For the first time the driver turned. In the poor light, his face under the visor of his driver's cap looked as blurred and white as the fog outside.
"We're late on the run! We'll never make it!"
He turned back to the wheel. Martha felt deadly fear coil up within her. ”

“ She had already made a pact with the Powers of Darkness. It was an unspeakably evil thing and it has condemned her issue to a life of torment and nightmare, a lifetime of terror and dread."
He swung his torch toward the blackened red-eyed thing. "She was a beauty once. She hated death. She feared death. And so she finally bartered her own immortal soul—and the bodies of her issue—for eternal earthly life." ”

“ As if to confirm his words, the Factor lowered his torch until its flame illuminated the floor at the foot of the stone bench where the vampiric monster was fettered.
Strewn about the floor were the scattered bones and skull of an adult male, red with fresh blood. And at some distance were other human bones, brown and crumbling with age.
At this point young Earl Frederick began to scream. His shrill hysterical cries filled the chamber. Although the Factor shook him roughly, his terrible shrieks continued, terror-filled, nerve-shaking. ”

“ He awoke with a scream, sat up in bed, half turned toward the window—and found himself staring straight into the luminous yellow eyes of the cat.
The beast did not offer to move. It squatted on the window ledge and fixed its eyes on his own with unmoving intensity. For a long moment he sat paralyzed with horror. The beast hated him; it had waited until he was asleep, helpless, and only the wire screen had kept it from the room. ”

“ Martha suddenly remembered that splintering crash which had followed shortly after her frenzied leap from the speeding bus.
"Oh, that poor man!" she said. "Has anybody gone to help him?"
They both looked at her. "What man, dear?" the woman asked.
"The bus driver," Martha said. "That was such a horrible crash!"
They went on looking at her without saying anything. A queer uneasiness overcame her. "Didn't you—hear it?" she asked.
The man shook his head. "We heard you scream. ”

“ Squatting on the edge of the slab was a shape which lived in nightmare, a squamous taloned thing like a monstrous gargoyle or a malformed toad which stared at him out of questing red eyes.
He froze in horror and a sudden rage flamed in the thing's eyes. It thrust out its neck and an angry hiss issued from its mottled beak.
Emmet Telquist was galvanized into action. He knew what the thing wanted—life blood. ”

“ In spite of the almost opaque wall of fog, the bus driver was steadily increasing the speed of his vehicle. The bus careened along at a constantly accelerated rate, bumping and lurching and swaying from side to side.
Martha felt a funny little knot of fear and apprehension begin to tighten in her breast. For a block or two she held tight to her seat, stifling an urge to shout at the driver, but finally she could stand it no longer.
"Driver," she called out in a strained voice which didn't sound at all like her own, "you're going much too fast! Won't you please slow down?" ”

“ She would sit for hours thinking about the dump—the sea gulls squealing, the trash fires flaring, soot flying past the windows and finally Ralph tramping in with his crazy stories about the rats or the mulligan stew or the fortune someone had found in a discarded fruit jar.
She had hated it all before but now she wasn't sure she hated it very much. Maybe she no longer hated it at all. What was it Ralph had said? How did it go? Oh yes: "We ain't got much here, but at least we're alive." ”

“ They were just waiting for death, day after day. Consciously, they swallowed their capsules, read their daily newstapes and sat with their eyes riveted on the screens. But subconsciously they had stopped living. Subconsciously they longed for death to release them from the bondage of State security, State brainwashing, the bland and eternal aura of State assurance and reassurance.
She began to feel that she was being smothered to death in the plastic prefab. She grew to loathe the food capsules. The endless entertaintime programs finally filled her with boredom. ”

“ Shivering a little, Martha reached the bus stop and sat down on the cold bench. Glancing along the street, she saw that it was quite empty. The river fog was swirling in rapidly and now even the trunks of trees were becoming blurred and half-shadowy.
It was too bad, Martha thought, that people had to become old. Old and lonely and hungry for talk. Leading such dreary, uneventful lives that a little thing like imported marmalade assumed vast importance. ”

“ If he saw a false face harmlessly dangling in the window of a novelty shop, he would shudder and turn away. The memory of it would haunt him all evening long—even intrude in his dreams and torment him until he awoke, limp with nightmare panic.
The detailed circumstances surrounding the inception of Mr. Apondee's mask fear were somewhat hazy, since he was scarcely three years old at the time. But the particular moments of terror he remembered vividly, as if they had transpired within his recent adult life.
He was sitting in a huge circus tent with his father. It was his first circus ”

“ He'd die alone, some dismal night, while the dump fires flickered and the filthy rats squealed and scuttled in the darkness.
After the first week she got to know some of her new neighbors. There were twenty-nine other units on her block, each with its own trugrass lawn. Some, like hers, boasted a simulated maple tree. Others were graced with one of the permajade juniper bushes. She was welcomed warmly. They were all very friendly, all very polite. She never mentioned the dump. They talked about the past as if it were life on another planet. ”

“ One moment he told himself he was a superstitious fool, and the next he pictured the cat as an incarnation of calculated evil and malice. He had heard stories of the dead entering the bodies of animals in order to wreak their unholy revenge. Tales of werewolves and vampires had haunted the race since the misty beginnings of recorded time. Why not a cat? especially one that had been so closely allied to the dead? one that had, perhaps, with that strange insight sometimes possessed by high-bred animals, read his very thoughts? ”

“ Tireless sea gulls flapped above the refuse heaps, screeching raucously. Sighing with relief, she looked away, concentrating on the tronicar's gleaming interior. Within seconds the dump was far behind her.
Her new life was like a dream. She had two private rooms in a plastic prefab, complete with entertaintime screen, newstape projector and remote music disc. Food, mostly in capsule form, was delivered daily. The trugrass lawn, freshly sprayed, boasted a simulated maple tree over eight feet high. ”

“ Thousands of his kind inhabit the modern city, gnawed by a sense of their own rootlessness, hungering in vain for a home, a habitation which partakes of the flavor of time, a continuing and cherished spot of earth which links their own past with some kind of hopeful future.
With these depressing thoughts in mind, I stood before the lost red brick house of my childhood. I had an impulse to enter, but I supposed it was unsafe and very probably forbidden.
Dusk fell; the mist grew heavier; and still I lingered in that area. ”

“ If the Chilton-Paynes had been stubborn fighters in their day, the warrior blood appeared to have become considerably diluted in the veins of Frederick, the young heir and now Thirteenth Earl. I saw before me a thin, pale-complexioned young man whose dark sunken eyes looked haunted and fearful. ”

“ Running his hand through his thinning hair, Newling pushed the book truck into the staff elevator. Mrs. Joy, the desk attendant, watched him with an abstracted expression. There was no one else in sight. Mr. Twais was in his private office, reading the morning mail.
The elevator glided to a smooth stop and Newling rolled out the truck. Fretting with irritation, he started down the long, dimly-lighted corridor which led to the locked vault.
Preston Haver always had been a nuisance. Always poking and prying around the library, looking for some outlandish book which no one had ever heard of. ”

“ The cat had often slept on his aunt's bed and had happened to climb up on his for a cozy place to spend the night.
He felt uneasy though, when he recalled how wide-awake the cat had been when he opened his eyes.
For well over a week nothing further happened to upset him. The cat skulked out of sight most of the time.
Then he had an experience which thoroughly frightened him and he determined to get rid of his aunt's old pet.
Again he had a dream. Again he was in darkness. And this time he was being smothered. He was rigid, unable to stir, struggling to breathe, and there was no air to be had. ”

“ He pointed out that the mask fear was far more than a physical one. True, the child had been buffeted by the circus crowd, had been shoved and pushed down between the seats—painfully and perhaps severely bruised. But the fear went deeper than that. When the lights in the circus tent went out, the child had been holding tight to his father's hand. The father represented security, comfort, protection, home. Suddenly the child was hurled into milling blackness and then out of the darkness appeared a hideous leering face which bore down on him with apparent evil intent. ”

“ Although the vampire's capacity is limited, this little light-hating bat makes a circular incision in its slumbering victim's flesh with such precision and stealthy finesse that the sleeper rarely awakens. After the vampire laps up its fill of blood and flies away, blood usually continues to flow from the wound. It is this continuing flow of blood which ordinarily awakens the victim. By the time the victim becomes fully alert, however, he may have lost much more blood than the bat itself has actually absorbed. ”

“ It surveyed us with a malignancy which was beyond anything merely human. It was impossible to stare back into those monstrous red eyes. They were so inexpressibly evil, one felt that one's soul would be consumed in the fires of their malevolence.
Glancing aside, I saw that the Factor was now supporting Earl Frederick. The young heir had sagged against him. The Earl stared fixedly at the fearful apparition with terror-glazed eyes. In spite of my own sense of horror, I pitied him. ”

“ The State always stood ready to house and feed the indigent.
Broken springs groaned as the man arose from a cot. He shook his head. "Wish you'd relax, Lucy. Little smoke ain't hurtin' you none."
She turned, eyes bright with anger. "Little smoke!" she repeated. "Smoke that seeps right through the shingles into the house! Smoke that gets in your lungs, in your hair, in your food, in your clothes—even in your skin! I tell you I've had enough of smoke and cinders and rats—and sea gulls! Sea gulls! Hah! Those dirty birds screeching like hungry cats all the time. They're dump gulls. ”

“ His cold eyes held my own. "It is not legend that confronts us; it is fact."
A thrill of fear and excitement ran through me. "You are going there—tonight?"
He nodded. "Tonight. Myself, the young Earl—and one other." ”

“ At the bottom of the steps we faced a tunnel, pitch-black and silent.
The Factor raised his torch. "Chilton Castle is Norman but is said to have been reared over a Saxon ruin. It is believed that the passageways in these depths were constructed by the Saxons." He peered, frowning, into the tunnel. "Or by some still earlier folk."
He hesitated briefly, and I thought he was listening. Then, glancing round at us, he proceeded down the passage.
I walked after the Earl, shivering. The dead, icy air seemed to pierce to the pith of my bones. The stones underfoot grew slick with a film of slime. ”

“ Dim, mist-circled figures sat on some of the porches. An old man, twisted with some arthritic malady, worked feebly in a tiny front garden. A middle-aged woman, white as death, but with a kind of hopeless fury stamped on her face, stood glaring near a broken gate.
Worse than these were other sights. I saw a rocker moving to-and-fro on a porch, although there was no one in it. ”