Wednesday 17 March 2021
GHOSTMAN HORROR _RING ONCE FOR DEATH BY ROBERT ARTHUR
Wolf's howl;Vampire bat wings flutter silently in the wind ;the ghostman rises from his slumber of the dead to bring you a tale of
Do you worry about your mortal life if the answer is yes why not read this tale as you know everyone dies in the end?
RING ONCE
FOR DEATH
The power of the old gods was certainly nothing for Mark and Edith—a modern, twentieth-century couple—to worry about. After all—everybody dies!
Twenty years had left no trace inside Sam Kee's little shop on Mott Street. There were the same dusty jars of ginseng root and tigers' whiskers, the same little bronze Buddahs, the same gim-cracks mixed with fine jade. Edith Williams gave a little murmur of pleasure as the door shut behind them.
"Mark," she said, "it hasn't changed! It doesn't look as if a thing had been sold since we were here on our honeymoon."
"It certainly doesn't," Dr. Mark Williams agreed, moving down the narrow aisle behind her. "If someone hadn't told us Sam Kee was dead, I'd believe we'd stepped back twenty years in time, like they do in those scientific stories young David reads."
"We must buy something," his wife said. "For a twentieth anniversary present for me. Perhaps a bell?"
From the shadowy depths of the shop a young man emerged, American in dress and manner despite the Oriental contours of his face and eyes.
"Good evening," he said. "May I show you something?"
"We think we want a bell," Dr. Williams chuckled. "But we aren't quite sure. You're Sam Kee's son?"
"Sam Kee, junior. My honored father passed to the halls of his ancestors five years ago. I could just say that he died—" black eyes twinkled—"but customers like the more flowery mode of speech. They think it's quaint."
"I think it's just nice, and not quaint at all," Edith Williams declared. "We're sorry your father is dead. We'd hoped to see him again. Twenty years ago when we were a very broke young couple on a honeymoon he sold us a wonderful rose-crystal necklace for half price."
"I'm sure he still made a profit." The black eyes twinkled again. "But if you'd like a bell, here are small temple bells, camel bells, dinner bells...."
But even as he spoke, Edith Williams' hand darted to something at the back of the shelf.
"A bell carved out of crystal!" she exclaimed. "And rose-crystal at that. What could be more perfect? A rose-crystal wedding present and a rose-crystal anniversary present!"
The young man half stretched out his hand.
"I don't think you want that," he said. "It's broken."
"Broken?" Edith Williams rubbed off the dust and held the lovely bell-shape of crystal, the size of a pear, to the light. "It looks perfect to me."
"I mean it is not complete." Something of the American had vanished from the young man. "It has no clapper. It will not ring."
"Why, that's right." Mark Williams took the bell. "The clapper's missing."
"We can have another clapper made," his wife declared. "That is, if the original can't be found?"
The young Chinese shook his head.
"The bell and the clapper were deliberately separated by my father twenty years ago." He hesitated, then added: "My father was afraid of this bell."
"Afraid of it?" Mark Williams raised his eyebrows.
The other hesitated again.
"It will probably sound like a story for tourists," he said. "But my father believed it. This bell was supposedly stolen from the temple of a sect of Buddhists somewhere in the mountains of China's interior. Just as many Occidentals believe that the Christian Judgement Day will be heralded by a blast on St. Peter's trumpet, so this small sect is said to believe that when a bell like this one is rung, a bell carved from a single piece of rose crystal, and consecrated by ceremonies lasting ten years, any dead within sound of it will rise and live again."
"Heavenly!" Edith Williams cried. "And no pun intended. Mark, think what a help this bell will be in your practise when we make it ring again!" To the Chinese she added, smiling: "I'm just teasing him. My husband is really a very fine surgeon."
The other bowed his head.
"I must tell you," he said, "you will not be able to make it ring. Only the original clapper, carved from the same block of rose crystal, will ring it. That is why my father separated them."
Again he hesitated.
"I have told you only half of what my father told me. He said that, though it defeats death, Death can not be defeated. Robbed of his chosen victim, he takes another in his place. Thus when the bell was used in the temple of its origin—let us say when a high priest or a chief had died—a slave or servant was placed handy for Death to take when he had been forced to relinquish his grasp upon the important one."
He smiled, shook his head.
"There," he said. "A preposterous story. Now if you wish it, the bell is ten dollars. Plus, of course, sales tax."
"The story alone is worth more," Dr. Williams declared. "I think we'd better have it sent, hadn't we, Edith? It'll be safer in the mail than in our suitcase."
"Sent?" His wife seemed to come out of some deep feminine meditation. "Oh, of course. And as for its not ringing—I shall make it ring. I know I shall."
"If the story is true," Mark Williams murmured, "I hope not...."
The package came on a Saturday morning, when Mark Williams was catching up on the latest medical publications in his untidy, book-lined study. He heard Edith unwrapping paper in the hall outside. Then she came in with the rose-crystal bell in her hands.
"Mark, it's here!" she said. "Now to make it ring."
She plumped herself down beside his desk. He took the bell and reached for a silver pencil.
"Just for the sake of curiosity," he remarked, "and not because I believe that delightful sales talk we were given, let's see if it will ring when I tap. It should, you know."
He tapped the lip of the bell. A muted thunk was the only response. Then he tried with a coin, a paper knife, and the bottom of a glass. In each instance the resulting sound was nothing like a bell ringing.
"If you've finished, Mark," Edith said then, with feminine tolerance, "let me show you how it's done."
"Gladly," her husband agreed. She took the bell and turned away for a moment. Then she shook the bell vigorously. A clear, sweet ringing shivered through the room—so thin and etherial that small involuntary shivers crawled up his spine.
"Good Lord!" he exclaimed. "How did you do that?"
"I just put the clapper back in place with some thread," Edith told him.
"The clapper?" He struck his forehead with his palm. "Don't tell me—the crystal necklace we bought twenty years ago!"
"Of course." Her tone was composed. "As soon as young Sam Kee told us about his father's separating the clapper and the bell, I remembered the central crystal pendant on my necklace. It is shaped like a bell clapper—we mentioned it once.
"I guessed right away we had the missing clapper. But I didn't say so. I wanted to score on you, Mark—" she smiled affectionately at him—"and because, you know, I had a queer feeling Sam Kee, junior, wouldn't let us have the bell if he guessed we had the clapper."
"I don't think he would." Mark Williams picked up his pipe and rubbed the bowl with his thumb. "Yet he didn't really believe that story he told us any more than we do."
"No, but his father did. And if old Sam Kee had told it to us—remember how wrinkled and wise he seemed?—I do believe we'd have believed the story."
"You're probably right." Dr. Williams rang the bell and waited. The thin, sweet sound seemed to hang in the air a long moment, then was gone.
"Nope," he said. "Nothing happened. Although, of course, that may be because there was no deceased around to respond."
"I'm not sure I feel like joking about the story." A small frown gathered on Edith's forehead. "I had planned to use the bell as a dinner bell and to tell the story to our guests. But now—I'm not sure."
Frowning, she stared at the bell until the ringing of the telephone in the hall brought her out of her abstraction.
"Sit still, I'll answer." She hurried out. Dr. Williams, turning the rose crystal bell over in his hand, could hear the sudden tension in her voice as she answered. He was on his feet when she reentered.
"An emergency operation at the hospital," she sighed. "Nice young man—automobile accident. Fracture of the skull, Dr. Amos says. He wouldn't have disturbed you but you're the only brain man in town, with Dr. Hendryx away on vacation."
"I know." He was already in the hall, reaching for his hat. "Man's work is from sun to sun, but a doctor's work is never done," he misquoted.
"I'll drive you." Edith followed him out. "You sit back and relax for another ten minutes...."
Two hours later, as they drove homeward, the traffic was light, which was fortunate. More than once Mark, in a frowning abstraction, found himself on the left of the center line and had to pull back into his own lane.
He had lost patients before, but never without a feeling of personal defeat. Edith said he put too much of himself into every operation. Perhaps he did. And yet—No, there was every reason why the young man should have lived. Yet, just as Mark Williams had felt that he had been successful, the patient had died.
In twenty years of marriage, Edith Williams had learned to read his thoughts at times. Now she put a hand comfortingly on his arm.
"These things happen, darling," she said. "You know that. A doctor can only do so much. Some of the job always remains in the hands of Nature. And she does play tricks at times."
"Yes, confound it, I know it," her husband growled. "But I resent losing that lad. There was no valid reason for it—unless there was some complication I overlooked." He shook his head, scowling. "I ordered an autopsy but—Yes, I'm going to do that autopsy myself. I'm going to turn back and do it now. I have to know!"
He pulled abruptly to the left to swing into a side road and turn. Edith Williams never saw the car that hit them. She heard the frantic blare of a horn and a scream of brakes, and in a frozen instant realized that there had been someone behind them, about to pass. Then the impact came, throwing her forward into the windshield and unconsciousness.
Edith Williams opened her eyes. Even before she realized that she was lying on the ground and that the figure bending over her was a State Trooper, she remembered the crash. Her head hurt but there was no confusion in her mind. Automatically, even as she tried to sit up, she accepted the fact that there had been a crash, help had come, and she must have been unconscious for several minutes at least.
"Hey, lady, take it easy!" the Trooper protested. "You had a bad bump. You got to lie still until the ambulance gets here. It'll be along in five minutes."
"Mark," Edith said, paying no attention. "My husband! Is he all right?"
"Now lady, please. He's being taken care of. You—"
But she was not listening. Holding to his arm she pulled herself to a sitting position. She saw their car on its side some yards away, other cars pulled up around them, a little knot of staring people. Saw them and dismissed them. Her gaze found her husband, lying on the ground a few feet away, a coat folded beneath his head.
Mark was dead. She had been a doctor's wife for twenty years, and before that a nurse. She knew death when she saw it.
"Mark." The word was spoken to herself, but the Trooper took it for a question.
"Yes, lady," he said. "He's dead. He was still breathing when I got here, but he died two, three minutes ago."
She got to her knees. Her only thought was to reach his side. She scrambled across the few feet of ground to him still on her knees and crouched beside him, fumbling for his pulse. There was none. There was nothing. Just a man who had been alive and now was dead.
Behind her she heard a voice raised. She turned. A large, disheveled man was standing beside the Trooper, talking loudly.
"Now listen, officer," he was saying, "I'm telling you again, it wasn't my fault. The guy pulled sharp left right in front of me. Not a thing I could do. It's a wonder we weren't all three of us killed. You can see by the marks on their car it wasn't my fault—"
Edith Williams closed her mind to the voice. She let Mark's hand lie in her lap as she fumbled in her bag, which was somehow still clutched in her fingers. She groped for a handkerchief to stem the tears which would not be held back. Something was in the way—something smooth and hard and cold. She drew it out and heard the thin, sweet tinkle of the crystal bell. She must have dropped it automatically into her bag as they were preparing to leave the house.
The hand in her lap moved. She gasped and bent forward as her husband's eyes opened.
"Mark!" she whispered. "Mark, darling!"
"Edith," Mark Williams said with an effort. "Sorry—damned careless of me. Thinking of the hospital...."
"You're alive!" she said. "You're alive! Oh, darling, darling, lie still, the ambulance will be here any second."
"Ambulance?" he protested. "I'm all right now. Help me—sit up."
"But Mark——"
"Just a bump on the head." He struggled to sit up. The State Trooper came over.
"Easy, buddy, easy," he said, his voice awed. "We thought you were gone. Now let's not lose you a second time." His mouth was tight.
"Hey, I'm sure glad you're all right!" the red-faced man said in a rush of words. "Whew, fellow, you had me all upset, even though it wasn't my fault. I mean, how's a guy gonna keep from hitting you when—when——"
"Catch him!" Mark Williams cried, but the Trooper was too late. The other man plunged forward to the ground and lay where he had fallen without quivering.
The clock in the hall struck two with muted strokes. Cautiously Edith Williams rose on her elbow and looked down at her husband's face. His eyes opened and looked back at her.
"You're awake," she said, unnecessarily.
"I woke up a few minutes ago," he answered. "I've been lying here—thinking."
"I'll get you another phenobarbital. Dr. Amos said for you to take them and sleep until tomorrow."
"I know. I'll take one presently. You know—hearing that clock just now reminded me of something."
"Yes?"
"Just before I came to this afternoon, after the crash, I had a strange impression of hearing a bell ring. It sounded so loud in my ears I opened my eyes to see where it was."
"A—bell?"
"Yes. Just auditory hallucination, of course."
"But Mark—"
"Yes?"
"A—a bell did ring. I mean, I had the crystal bell in my bag and it tinkled a little. Do you suppose—"
"Of course not." But though he spoke swiftly he did not sound convincing. "This was a loud bell. Like a great gong."
"But—I mean, Mark darling—a moment earlier you—had no pulse."
"No pulse?"
"And you weren't—breathing. Then the crystal bell tinkled and you—you...."
"Nonsense! I know what you're thinking and believe me—it's nonsense!"
"But Mark." She spoke carefully. "The driver of the other car. You had no sooner regained consciousness than he—"
"He had a fractured skull!" Dr. Williams interrupted sharply. "The ambulance intern diagnosed it. Skull fractures often fail to show themselves and then—bingo, you keel over. That's what happened. Now let's say no more about it."
"Of course." In the hall, the clock struck the quarter hour. "Shall I fix the phenobarbital now?"
"Yes—no. Is David home?"
She hesitated. "No, he hasn't got back yet."
"Has he phoned? He knows he's supposed to be in by midnight at the latest."
"No, he—hasn't phoned. But there's a school dance tonight."
"That's no excuse for not phoning. He has the old car, hasn't he?"
"Yes. You gave him the keys this morning, remember?"
"All the more reason he should phone." Dr. Williams lay silent a moment. "Two o'clock is too late for a 17-year-old boy to be out."
"I'll speak to him. He won't do it again. Now please, Mark, let me get you the phenobarbital. I'll stay up until David—"
The ringing phone, a clamor in the darkness, interrupted her. Mark Williams reached for it. The extension was beside his bed.
"Hello," he said. And then, although she could not hear the answering voice, she felt him stiffen. And she knew. As well as if she could hear the words she knew, with a mother's instinct for disaster.
"Yes," Dr. Williams said. "Yes ... I see ... I understand ... I'll come at once.... Thank you for calling."
He slid out of bed before she could stop him.
"An emergency call." He spoke quietly. "I have to go." He began to throw on his clothes.
"It's David," she said. "Isn't it?" She sat up. "Don't try to keep me from knowing. It's about David."
"Yes," he said. His voice was very tired. "David is hurt. I have to go to him. An accident."
"He's dead." She said it steadily. "David's dead, isn't he, Mark?"
He came over and sat beside her and put his arms around her.
"Edith," he said. "Edith—Yes, he's dead. Forty minutes ago. The car—went over a curve. They have him—at the County morgue. They want me to—identify him. Identify him. Edith! You see, the car caught fire!"
"I'm coming with you," she said. "I'm coming with you!"
The taxi waited in a pool of darkness between two street lights. The long, low building which was the County morgue, a blue lamp over its door, stood below the street level. A flight of concrete steps went down to it from the sidewalk. Ten minutes before, Dr. Mark Williams had gone down those steps. Now he climbed back up them, stiffly, wearily, like an old man.
Edith was waiting in the taxi, sitting forward on the edge of the seat, hands clenched. As he reached the last step she opened the door and stepped out.
"Mark," she asked shakily, "was it—"
"Yes, it's David." His voice was a monotone. "Our son. I've completed the formalities. For now the only thing we can do is go home."
"I'm going to him!" She tried to pass. He caught her wrist. Discretely the taxi driver pretended to doze.
"No, Edith! There's no need. You mustn't—see him!"
"He's my son!" she cried. "Let me go!"
"No! What have you got under your coat?"
"It's the bell, the rose-crystal bell!" she cried. "I'm going to ring it where David can hear!"
Defiantly she brought forth her hand, clutching the little bell. "It brought you back, Mark! Now it's going to bring back David!"
"Edith!" he said in horror. "You mustn't believe that's possible. You can't. Those were coincidences. Now let me have it."
"No! I'm going to ring it." Violently she tried to break out of his grip. "I want David back! I'm going to ring the bell!"
She got her hand free. The crystal bell rang in the quiet of the early morning with an eerie thinness, penetrating the silence like a silver knife.
"There!" Edith Williams panted. "I've rung it. I know you don't believe, but I do. It'll bring David back." She raised her voice. "David!" she called. "David, son! Can you hear me?"
"Edith," Dr. Williams groaned. "You're just tormenting yourself. Come home. Please come home."
"Not until David has come back.... David, David, can you hear me?" She rang the bell again, rang it until Dr. Williams seized it, then she let him take it.
"Edith, Edith," he groaned. "If only you had let me come alone...."
"Mark, listen!"
"What?"
"Listen!" she whispered with fierce urgency.
He was silent. And then fingers of horror drew themselves down his spine at the clear, youthful voice that came up to them from the darkness below.
"Mother?... Dad?... Where are you?"
"David!" Edith Williams breathed. "It's David! Let me go! I must go to him."
"No, Edith!" her husband whispered frantically, as the voice below called again.
"Dad?... Mother?... Are you up there? Wait for me."
"Let me go!" she sobbed. "David, we're here! We're up here, son!"
"Edith!" Mark Williams gasped. "If you've ever loved me, listen to me. You mustn't go down there. David—I had to identify him by his class ring and his wallet. He was burned—terribly burned!"
"I'm going to him!" She wrenched herself free and sped for the steps, up which now was coming a tall form, a shadow shrouded in the darkness.
Dr. Williams, horror knotting his stomach, leaped to stop her. But he slipped and fell headlong on the pavement, so that she was able to pant down the stairs to meet the upcoming figure.
"Oh, David," she sobbed, "David!"
"Hey, Mom!" The boy held her steady. "I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry. But I didn't know what had happened until I got home and you weren't there and then one of the fellows from the fraternity called me. I realized they must have made a mistake, and you'd come here, and I called for a taxi and came out here. My taxi let me off at the entrance around the block, and I've been looking for you down there.... Poor Pete!"
"Pete?" she asked.
"Pete Friedburg. He was driving the old car. I lent him the keys and my driver's license. I shouldn't have—but he's older and he kept begging me...."
"Then—then it's Pete who was killed?" she gasped. "Pete who was—burned?"
"Yes, Pete. I feel terrible about lending him the car. But he was supposed to be a good driver. And then them calling you, you and Dad thinking it was me
Then Mark was right. Of course he was right." She was laughing and sobbing now. "It's just a bell, a pretty little bell, that's all."
"Bell? I don't follow you, Mom."
"Never mind," Edith Williams gasped. "It's just a bell. It hasn't any powers over life and death. It doesn't bring back and it doesn't take away. But let's get back up to your father. He may be thinking that the bell—that the bell really worked."
They climbed the rest of the steps. Dr. Mark Williams still lay where he had fallen headlong on the pavement. The cab driver was bending over him, but there was nothing to be done. The crystal bell had been beneath him when he fell, and it had broken. One long, fine splinter of crystal was embedded in his heart.
The ghostman crackle s and lays back down in his coffin and as the lid slowly closes he turns and says.
"Don't have too many nightmares my children "
Tuesday 16 March 2021
Monday 15 March 2021
NEW SPECIES NEWSLETTER 16 _03_2021
Google Alert - new species discovered
G

Google Alerts
to me
16
Three New Species Of Beetle Have Been Named After Legendary Pokémon
Screen Rant
Three new species of beetle discovered in Australia have been named after the Legendary Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos from Pokémon Red & Blue. By ...
Yes, America, There Is (Some) Hope for the Environment
The New York Times
Creatures we've never seen before keep turning up. New species, and previously unknown populations of rare species, are constantly being discovered ...
Sea slugs discovered with ability to self-decapitate and grow new bodies
CBS News
An Elysia marginata, a species of sea slug, is seen after shedding its body in an act of self-decapitation in a handout photo taken at the laboratory at ...
New Virus Discovered In China Similar To COVID-19, Say Scientists
Republic World
According to Express, the new virus that Chinese virologists have discovered has been detected in a bat species and is reportedly about 94 per cent ...
Who was the Basilosaurus, the 'king lizard' that was neither king nor lizard?
ZME Science
But this species likely had no issues getting full, as the Basilosaurus was, by all ... starts with B. cetoides, the first ancient whale species ever discovered, which was ... and naturalists, who would end up christening the new species.
MASTER GARDENERS: Hearty Sonoran native full of history
Odessa American
On this trip they discovered a new species of Tagetes which is named for them. They introduced Tagetes lemmonii to the California plant trade and the ...
COVID-19: Scientists Discover Novel SARS-CoV-2 Genomes In Chinese Bats
Republic World
Species of wild animals have a great number of viruses and it's possible for one to emerge and cause an epidemic or a pandemic in humans, Holmes ...
How road works on the N2 helped disprove a long-standing theory on where humans come from
Business Insider South Africa
... a series of fossilised eel-like fish were discovered. Since the 19th century, it was believed that animals, fish and humans descended from creatures ...
Oldest Ever Fly With Stomach Full Of Food Found After 47 Million Years
India Times
... “The rich pollen content we discovered ...
Police record statement from Lakshapathi contestant on allegations of environmental destruction
Newsfirst.lk
Wildlife minister C.B. Ratnayake responded to the views expressed by the contestant ... 'Hanuman Plover' – New bird species discovered in Sri Lanka.
Sunday 14 March 2021
GHOSTMAN HORROR PRESENTS BROWN JOHNS BODY BY WINSTON MARKS
Wolf's howl;Vampire bat wings flutter silently in the wind ;the ghostman rises from his slumber of the dead to bring you a tale of
Rats are clever; able to chew through most materials know to human kind so if you don't like rats this story is not for you.
A tale by Winston Marks
JErd Neff wanted as little to do with his fellow men as possible. So he lived alone in his big cash-vault. Alone, except for John....
Jerd Neff dropped a thin bundle of currency into the $100 bill drawer of the flat-top desk and kicked the drawer shut with a dusty boot.
He flicked the drip from his hooked nose, which was chronically irritated by the wheat dust of the warehouse, then he wiped his fingers down the leg of his soiled denims. Across the 12 X 12, windowless room John stirred awake from the noise and began nosing in the debris of his filthy cage.
"Time for supper, John?" Neff tugged at the twine at his belt and examined his $3 watch. He pinched a dozen grains of wheat from a two-pound coffee can and let them sift through the wires of the cage. John pounced on the grain hungrily.
"Wait a minute! What do you say, dammit?" Neff's hand reached for the marshmallow-toasting fork that hung from a hook on the wall. He touched the points, filed needle sharp. "What do you say?" he repeated, twanging the tines like a tuning fork.
John skittered to the far corner, tearing new holes in the old newspaper with frantic claws. Cowering against the wires he spat half-chewed flecks of wheat trying to say the magic words that would spare him from the fork. "Tinkoo! Tinkoo!" he squeaked, straining to make the two syllables distinct.
Neff hung up the fork, and John turned to lick at the old scabs clotted from earlier jabs, taking sullen inventory to be sure there were no new crimson leaks in his louse-infested hide. Until two months ago, he had been just one more gregarious specimen of Mammalia Rodentia Simplicidentata Myomorphia Muridae decumanus. Now he had another name. Like each of his predecessors in the cage, he was a large, brown rat called John—after Erd Neff's despised and deceased father. Neff named all his rats John.
"Well, don't get fat."
John finished the grain, pawed the air and squeaked, "Mur!"
"More, hey? You talk fine when you're hungry."
"Peef, mur, mur!" John begged. He did well with his vowels, but "I" and "s" sounds were beyond him. He said "f" for "s". "L's" he ignored entirely.
Neff gave him one more wheat head. "Okay, get fat!"
He turned to the door, lifted the inside, mechanical latch, shoved with his foot and snatched his revolver from his hip-holster. The vault door opened ponderously revealing an empty warehouse. Neff peeked through the crack between the hinges to clear the area concealed by the door itself.
One hoodlum hopeful had hidden there. Spotting him through the crack, Neff had simply beefed into the foot-thick slab of fireproof steel. Inertial plus surprise had disposed of that one. Neff hadn't even had to shoot.
onight there was no one. Funny. The wheat country was getting tame, or else the tin-horns had learned their lesson. It was no secret that Erd Neff never visited the local bank, yet it had been more than six months since anyone tried to hold him up.
The local bank hated him plenty. He was costing them. His five loan offices in the rich wheat county skimmed the cream of the mortgage loan business. Of course, nowadays most people paid off their loans, and the low interest rates he charged to lure the business barely paid expenses. Yet, he still picked up an occasional foreclosure. Farmers still got drunk, divorced, gambled, broke legs or committed suicide once in awhile, and Neff's loan documents were ruthless about extensions of time.
These foreclosed acreages he traded for grain elevators and warehouses when crops were small and operators were desperate. Then came the bumper years during and after World War II. Wheat on the ground and no place to store it but in Erd Neff's sheds. It wasn't cheap to store with Neff, and he had a virtual monopoly in Ulma County.
Neff swung the great door back into place with its whoosh—thunk that sealed in air, sound and nearly a hundred thousand dollars in currency. He levered the bolts into place and spun the expensive combination lock.
The vault, tucked away in the front, left-hand corner of the old frame warehouse expressed Neff's distrust and contempt for mankind. Concrete and steel. Bed, shower, toilet and desk. In this walk-in cash box he was fireproof, bomb-proof, theft-proof and, most important of all, people-proof. There he consorted unmolested with the one mammal on earth he found interesting—John, the brown rat.
He slid the broad warehouse door closed behind him with a cacophony of dry screeches and padlocked it. The dusty street was deserted except for a black sedan which two-wheeled the corner a block away and sped toward him. Neff dropped his pistol back in its holster. "Now, what the hell—?"
He waited on the splintery platform, a huge man, ugly of face, shortlegged and long-bodied with a belly swollen from regular overeating. His shaved head swivelled slowly as the police car leaned into a skid-stop.
Officer Collin Burns got out and stared up at the motionless statue in sweat-dust stained denims. Burns was half Neff's 56 years, tall and thin. He wore gray, a silver star and a big black hat. He said, "I'll take your gun, Erd."
"Now what? I got a permit."
"Not any more. It's revoked."
"For why?"
"There were witnesses this afternoon."
"Witnesses? What in hell are you—oh, no! Not that damned dog?"
"The puppy belonged to a little girl. You can't claim self-defense this time."
"He was coming down here chasing the cats away every day."
"So you shot him, like you did Greeley's collie."
"Cats count for more. You know well as I do, you can't control the rats around a warehouse without cats."
"You've shot five men, too, Erd. Three of them are dead."
"I was cleared, you know damned well! Self-defense."
"You're too handy with that pistol. Anyway, I didn't file this complaint. It was the child's mother, and she made it stick with the chief. Give me the gun, Erd."
"You got a warrant for my arrest?"
"No, but I will have in an hour if you insist."
"I got a perfect right to protect my property."
"Not with a gun. Not any more."
"I just get these punks convinced, and now you want to turn loose on me again. Who put you up to this Collin?"
"You did. When you shot that pup. I'm not here to debate it. You're breaking the law from this minute on if you don't hand over the gun."
"Dammit, Collin, you know how much money I got in there? You know how much I pack around on me sometimes?"
"That's your business. You can use the bank and bonded messengers—they get along with dogs."
"Telling me how to run my business?"
"I'm telling you to give me that gun. You'll get the same police protection as any other citizen."
Neff sneered openly. "I'd a been dead thirty years ago depending on cops."
"I don't doubt that a minute. You're easy to hate, Erd. Are you going to give me that gun?"
"No."
"You like things the hard way, don't you?" Burns got back in the squad car and drove off. Neff spat a crater in the wheat-littered dust and got into his own car.

wo minutes later he turned up Main Street and stopped before city hall. Inside the tiny police station he dropped his pistol on the counter. Bud Ackenbush looked up from his desk. "You could have saved Collin some trouble."
Neff stalked out without a word and crossed the street to the Palace Cafe. He ordered a double-thick steak, fried potatoes and pie. He liked the way the waitresses scrambled for the chance to wait on him. Women didn't like him. He was ugly and smelled of sweat, and on the street women looked the other way when they met him. All but the waitresses at the Palace. When he came in they showed their teeth and tongues and wiggled their hips. He was a 50-cent tipper.
The important thing was it got him his steak, really double thick and double quick. People could be real efficient. Like brown John. Prod 'em where they live and they'll do anything. Even talk to you.
"You look kinda naked tonight, Erd," Gloria kidded.
Neff wiped steak juice from his chin and stared at her breasts. It used to excite him, but now it was just habit. It was better than looking at red-smeared lips that smiled and eyes that didn't, eyes that said, "Don't forget the tip, you filthy bastard!"
Funny. Hang a gun on any other citizen in town and people would stare. Take the gun off of Erd Neff and people make cracks.
He did feel naked.
"I didn't order this damned succotash!"
"It's free with the steak dinner, Erd."
Go ahead, pinch my leg like the harvesting crews do. I'm free with the dinner, too. Like the ketchup. Like the mustard and the salt and pepper and the steak sauce and the sugar and the extra butter if you ask for it, just don't forget the tip.
Clarence Hogan, the fry-cook, came around the counter and leaned on the booth table beside Gloria. "You don't like succotash? How about some nice peas, Erd?"
Clarence was Gloria's husband.
Pimp!
"Put some ice-cream on my pie," Neff said. He looked up at Clarence. "No, I don't want any goddamned peas!"
They brought his pie and left him alone. He finished it and felt in his pocket for the tip. He changed his mind. To hell with Gloria and her fat leg! The steak was tough.
He paid the check and went out. The sky was pink yet. Later in the week the sunsets would be blood-red, as the great combines increased in number and cruised the rippling ocean of wheat, leaving bristly wakes and a sky-clogging spray of dust.
Neff's busiest season. Damn that dog! Damn Collin Burns!
His hand brushed his leg where the leather holster should be. Damned laws that men made. Laws that acquitted him of homicide and then snatched away his only weapon of self-defense because he shot a yapping dog.
As he got in his car Collin Burns came out of the station. He tossed Neff's gun through the open window onto the seat. "Here's your property. The Marshal came in, and he changed everybody's mind. It's going to cost you a hundred dollars and a new pup for the little girl, probably. Here's the subpoena. Tuesday at ten."
"I don't get it."
"The Marshal said to let you fight your own battles."

eff started the car and let the clutch out. The Marshal knew his way around. The transient harvesting crews were a wild bunch. If word got out that Neff was unarmed, packing thousands of dollars the length of the county, the enforcement people would have a lot of extra work on their hands.
He parked behind the warehouse, next to the railroad tracks.
He came around front, unlocked the big door, pulled it shut behind him and bolted it. The warehouse was jet black now, but he knew every inch of the place. He could fire his pistol almost as accurately at a sound as at a visible target.
He practiced on rats.
Holding a pocket flash, he worked the combination. As the final tumbler fell silently, a faint, raspy screech came to his ears, like a board tearing its rusty nails loose under the persuasion of a wrecking bar. He listened a minute, then he levered the bolts back, stepped into the vault-room, closed the door and shot the mechanical bolts.
Sure. Someone was out there, but they'd get damned tired before morning. He flicked on the light and touched the other wall switch beside it. The powerful blower and sucker fans cleared out the musty air and rat-stink.
John rustled in the cage, blinking at the sudden light. "Hi, Neff! Meat! Meat! Meat!"
Smart little devil! Neff sometimes brought him a scrap from his dinner, but he hadn't thought to tonight. He sucked at his teeth and pulled out a tiny string of steak. "Here. Bite my finger and I'll poke both your eyes out."
John picked the thread of gristle from Neff's finger with his fore-paws and devoured it, trembling with pleasure. Neff lifted the cage. "Okay, now let's have a few tricks."
At once John made for the can of wheat. "Get outta there!" Neff scooped him up and dropped him on the desk, snapping his tail with a forefinger. John whirled, laid his ears back and opened his mouth. At bay, the brown rat, Neff knew, is the most ferocious rodent of the 2000 species, but Neff held his hand out daring John to bite.
Neff knew all about rats. More than anybody in the world knew about rats. When you live among them for three decades you find out about their cunning wariness, fecundity, secretiveness, boldness, omnivorous and voracious appetites. Fools reviled them as predators and scavengers. Neff appreciated them for what they really are: The most adaptable mammal on earth.
John was smart but no smarter than the rest. Neff had proved this by teaching every rat he captured alive to talk.
Impossible they had told him. Even parrots and parakeets only imitate sounds in their squawking—yes, and pet crows. Animals don't have thinking brains, they said. They react, trial and error, stimulus and response, but they don't think.
Neff didn't know about the others, but he knew about rats.
Keep them hungry and lonely for a mate. Hurt them. Torture them. To hell with this reward business. Rats are like men. Mentally lazy. They'll go for bait, sure, but they'll go faster to escape pain—a thousand times faster.
And rats have lived with man from the first. They have a feeling for language like the human brat. Between partitions, inches from a man's head when he lies in bed talking to his wife, under a man's feet while he's eating, over his head in the warehouse rafters while he's working. Always, just inches or feet away from man, running through sewers, hiding in woodpiles, freight-cars, ships, barns, slaughter-house, skulking down black alleys, listening, hiding, stealing, always listening.
Yes, rats know about man, but rats had never known a man like Erd Neff, a man who hated all mankind. A man who chose a rat for a companion in preference to one of his own kind. Rats named John learned about Neff. They learned that his tones and inflections had specific meaning. They learned very fast under the stabbing prod of the marshmallow fork. With just enough food to keep them alive, their blind ferocity changed into painful attention. They learned to squeak and squawk and form the sounds into a pattern with their motile tongues. In weeks and months, they learned what the human brat learned in years.
"Stand up like a goddamned man!"

ohn stood up, his tail the third point of the support.
"Say the alphabet."
"Eh—bih—fih—dih—ih—eff—jih—etch—"
Neff lit a cigar and watched the smoke float away from the ceiling blower and vanish into the overhead vent in the far corner. He bobbed one foot in time to the squeaky rhythm of the recitation. He took no exception to John's failure with "I," "s", and "z". The other Johns had been unable to handle them, too.
"Hungrih, Neff. Hungrih!"
The big man picked out three grains of wheat. He noticed the can was almost empty. One by one he handed the kernels to his pet, waiting for John's "Tinkoo!" in between.
"Mur! Mur!"
"Lazy tongue! It's more, not mur!"
John dropped to all fours and retreated. Usually Neff slapped him in the belly when he used that tone. But Neff was bemused tonight. He kept listening for sounds, sounds that he knew could never penetrate the thick walls.
They were out there, he was sure. Another damned fool or two, flashing a light around, trying to figure out something. Neff remembered one pair who had even tried nitroglycerin. He saw the burns on the outside of the door the next morning.
Amateurs! Nobody knew for sure just how much money Neff kept in the old desk, and big-time pros wouldn't tackle a job like this without a pretty fair notion of the loot. For all they knew, maybe he mailed it to an out-of-town bank.
"Okay, fetch the pencil."
John jumped from the desk and moved toward the open door of the shower-stall where Neff had thrown the pencil stub. He paused by the wheat can, then scurried on to get the pencil. He climbed Neff's leg and dropped the pencil into the open palm.
"Smart punks up at State College. So you can't teach a rat anything but mazes and how to go nuts from electric shocks, eh? Wouldn't they be surprised to meet you, John?"
"Hungrih!"
"You're always hungry!"
"Meat! Meat!"
"Yeah. You can sound your "e's" real good when you say, 'meat.' Some day I'll cut off your tail and feed it to you." He laughed, grabbed John by the coarse hair of his back and slipped him back under the cage.
Then he undressed down to his underwear, turned out the light and lay on the narrow iron bed. John rustled in his cage for a minute, then there was only the faint hum of the blower and sucker motors in the ventilating system. The incoming and outgoing air was baffled and trapped to kill sounds, and spring-loaded sliding doors poised to jam shut and seal off the room if anyone tampered with the exterior grilles in the roof.
The fans hummed softly and Erd Neff slept.
Sleck-thud, sleck-thud!

e was awake pawing the wall for the light switch, but even as his hand found it, and his eyes discovered the closed ventilator doors, a reddish vapor sank over his body. A single gasp and Neff was clawing his throat. Sharp, brown-tasting, acid-burning, eye-searing, nose-stinging!
He fell to his knees and clawed to the far corner, fighting for air, but the acrid stink stained his throat and nose. His eyes kept burning. The whole room must be full!
The door-lever! No, that's what they wanted. Blind! Gun's no good now. God, for a breath of air! Damned tears! Can't open my eyes! Air! Got to have it!
His throat refused to open. The stink, a little like iodine, a lot like a hospital smell but a million times stronger—raked at the tender tissues of his throat. Icepicks stabbed from his soft palate, up into his brain, his temples. He swayed against the door, caught the lever and heaved convulsively. The door fell away slowly. He stumbled forward, gashing his knee against the sharp jamb.
A light struck redly through his clenched, tear-soaked eye-lids.
"That did it. Get the gun!" The voice was high, almost girlish. A young boy?
A slightly heavier voice said, "Got it. Keep an eye on him while I find out why the fan stopped working."
"He's going no place. You were right. That bromine stuff really did the business. Lookit his face. Sure it won't kill him?"
"Don't care if it does now. We got the door open."
"What is this bromine, anyhow? Boy it sure stinks!"
"It's a chemical element like chlorine, only it's a liquid. It fumes if you don't keep it covered with water, and the fumes really get you. They used it in gas bombs in the war."
"That was chlorine."
"They used bromine, too. I read it."
"Air!" Neff rasped.
"Help yourself if you call this stinkin' stuff in your warehouse air."
From the vault the deadened voice came. "This must be the switch. The other switch is for the lights."
"Look out! When you turn it on don't get dosed yourself."
"I only dumped a few drops in. There. It'll blow out in a few—phew, let me outta here. That stuff does—God, it's worse than the dose I got in the chem lab!" The voice grew, coughing and cursing. "Better wait a minute or two. How's our big brave dog-killer doing?"
On his hands and knees, Neff was on the verge of passing out, but doggedly he tried to place the voices. Highschool kids? Bromine. Sounded like a chemical they might filch from the highschool laboratory.
A kick in the ribs reminded him he was still helpless. "All right, get back in there." They aimed him through the vault door and kept kicking him until he went. They hauled him up into his chair. He tried to strike out blindly, but his chest was full of licking flames that spread pain out to his shoulders.
Now rope whipped around his feet, hands, chest and neck, jerking his body hard against the castered desk-chair and cramping his head back. "Tie him good. No way to lock him in with this door."
Neff opened his eyes. The boys were wet blurs rummaging through his desk. "Look! Just look at that! We can't carry all that."
"Get one of those burlap sacks out there. By the door."
Footsteps went and returned. "Now, just the small bills. Up to twenty. No, Jerry, leave the big stuff alone. Who'd take one from a kid?"
"Okay, let's make tracks."
"Wait!" Neff said desperately. "My legs and hands. You've cut off the circulation!"

omething hard like the barrel of a gun rapped down on the top of his head. "I ought to blow your dirty brains out. Killing my little sister's dog, damn you. Damn you, I think I will kill you. Damn you, damn you!" the voice crested.
"Wait a minute Jerry," the other voice cut in. "I got a better idea. Here. Look at this."
Short silence. "Yeah! Yeah, that's just dandy. Look how thin he is. That's just what the doctor ordered. Okay, the top's loose. Stand by the door and don't let him get by you. Wait. Got your flash? Good! In the dark. That's real good. Which switch is it?"
"Throw them both."
"Okay. Flash it over here. Look out, here I come!"
"Hurry up! Look at that hungry, black-eyed little devil. That ought to fix up the son-of-a—" ...Thunk! The compression rammed heavily into Neff's ears. The bolts shot solidly into place from the outside, and the combination knob rang faintly as it was spun. Silence.
They'd go out the same way they came in and tack the board back in place. How long before anybody would miss him? Twenty-four hours? Hell, no. Nobody would bust a gut worrying that soon. Two days? Some weeks he was gone several days making the rounds of his loan offices.
A week? Maybe. Girls at the Palace would get suspicious. Tell Collin Burns.
But a week! They'd cut off the blower when they threw both switches. No ventilation. No air.
Neff strained at the ropes. His legs were pulled under the seat so tightly that his feet were turning numb. Hands were tingling, too. Dirty little sadists. Turning John loose thinking—
He had to get loose. Less than one day's air, then—
"John!" Thank God John wasn't an ordinary rat.
"John, come over to me. These ropes. Chew them, John. Come on, John. Come on, boy."
No sound at first, then a faint motion in the old newspapers.
"John, say the alphabet!"
"Eh—bih——"
"That's right. Go on!"
"Fih——jih——" The squeaking stopped.
"Come over to me, John. Come to me, boy."
He held his breath. The beating of his heart was so loud he couldn't be sure that John was moving. The silence was long. Even the rat was blind in this blackness. He must be patient.
Sweat began oozing and trickling down his face, his armpits, his back—even his left leg. No, wait! That wasn't sweat!

he throbbing in his legs was greatest at his left knee. The trickle was blood from the gash. It ran freely, now, the ropes backing up arterial pressure. Never mind that!
"John!"
The coffee can tipped over, and the racket made Neff start against his bonds. The rope sawed his Adam's apple.
Crunch!
"Leave that damned wheat alone, John. Come over to me, boy. I'll give you a whole bag full when you chew off these ropes. Hear that, John? And a chicken foot. I'll bring you a whole chicken. A live one. I'll tie her down so she won't peck you. That's what I'll do, John."
He was breathing heavily now. "Do you get me, John? Would you like a live chicken?"
"Yeff."
The crunching resumed for a minute then stopped. Neff remembered, there had been only a dozen or so grains of wheat left. John would still be hungry. The thought of a chicken should do it. If not, he could threaten him.
Neff waited. Relax! There was all night to work this out.
Finally, he felt something at his ankles. "That's the boy, John. Up here and down my arms. They're behind me. Get the rope off my hands first. Come on boy."
It was John, all right. Neff could feel the little claws coming up his left leg.
"Come on, hurry up, John. Tell you what. I'll bring you a nice, fat female, just like yourself. A live one. You can live in the cage togeth——John, don't stop there!"
The claws had paused near his knee and were clinging to the blood-soaked cloth.
"No, no, John! Don't! I'll stick you with the fork. I'll stick you—I'll kill you! John, we got to get out of here or we'll both die. Die, do you hear! We'll suffocate! Don't do that. Stop. Stop or I'll—"
Neff's threats beat hard into the rat's brain, and now as the slanting incisors tore at the cloth and chewed the luscious, blood-smothered, hot meat, Neff's screams sent tremors through the skinny, voracious body, and the tail tucked down. The words made John nervous, but it was dark. And there was food, such wonderful food, so much food!
They were harsh words, terrible, screaming words: but words are words and food is food, and after all—
John was only a rat.
The ghostman crackle s and lays back down in his coffin and as the lid slowly closes he turns and says.
"Don't have too many nightmares my children "
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