Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories (14 page)

Introduction to

THE HUNGER
by Richard Christian Matheson

I was young and saw him rarely.
But when he was around, I always watched him secretly; entranced.
As if he were lined with silk.
He wasn't feeling well by then and seemed like a weary Merlin. Grey; half-voiced. But incantation phosphored in his tired eyes.
Wizards are strong.
For years he'd alchemized words into sublime ideas. Those into haunting tales of charm and tragedy. Mystic. Despairing. Beautiful.
Magically, he even turned too few years into a stunning lifetime. And when he disappeared for the final time, not in a puff of smoke, but quiet sleep, he left us a few secrets; maps to his miracles. This one is called The Hunger.
Water to wine. Brilliance and poetry from paper and ink. He could do anything.
Except live forever.
Farewell great magician.

THE HUNGER

by Charles Beaumont

Now, with the sun almost gone, the sky looked wounded-as if a gigantic razor had been drawn across it, slicing deep. It bled richly. And the wind, which came down from High Mountain, cool as rain, sounded a little like children crying: a soft, unhappy kind of sound, rising and falling. Afraid, somehow, it seemed to Julia. Terribly afraid.
She quickened her step. I'm an idiot, she thought, looking away from the sky. A complete idiot. That's why I'm frightened now; and if anything happens-which it won't, and can't-then I'll have no one to blame but myself.
She shifted the bag of groceries to her other arm and turned, slightly. There was no one in sight, except old Mr. Hannaford, pulling in his newspaper stands, preparing to close up the drug-store, and Jake Spiker, barely moving across to the Blue Haven for a glass of beer: no one else. The rippling red brick streets were silent.
But even if she got nearly all the way home, she could scream and someone would hear her. Who would be fool enough to try anything right out in the open? Not even a lunatic. Besides, it wasn't dark yet, not technically, anyway.
Still, as she passed the vacant lots, all shoulder-high in wild grass, Julia could not help thinking, He might be hiding there, right now. It was possible. Hiding there, all crouched up, waiting. And he'd only have to grab her, and-she wouldn't scream. She knew that suddenly, and the thought terrified her. Sometimes you can't scream…
If only she'd not bothered to get that spool of yellow thread over at Younger's, it would be bright daylight now, bright clear daylight. And- Nonsense! This was the middle of the town. She was surrounded by houses full of people. People all around. Everywhere.
(He was a hunger; a need; a force. Dark emptiness filled him. He moved, when he moved, like a leaf caught in some dark and secret river, rushing. But mostly he slept now, an animal, always ready to wake and leap and be gone…)
The shadows came to life, dancing where Julia walked. Now the sky was ugly and festered, and the wind had become stronger, colder. She clicked along the sidewalk, looking straight ahead, wondering, Why, why am I so infernally stupid? What's the matter with me?
Then she was home, and it was all over. The trip had taken not more than half an hour. And here was Maud, running. Julia felt her sister's arms fly around her, hugging. "God, my God."
And Louise's voice: "We were just about to call Mick to go after you."
Julia pulled free and went into the kitchen and put down the bag of groceries.
"Where in the world have you been?" Maud demanded.
"I had to get something at Younger's." Julia took off her coat. "They had to go look for it, and-I didn't keep track of the time."
Maud shook her head. "Well, I don't know," she said wearily. "You're just lucky you're alive, that's all."
"Now-"
"You listen! He's out there somewhere. Don't you understand that? It's a fact. They haven't even come close to catching him yet."
"They will," Julia said, not knowing why: she wasn't entirely convinced of it.
"Of course they will. Meantime, how many more is he going to murder? Can you answer me that?"
"I'm going to put my coat away." Julia brushed past her sister. Then she turned and said, "I'm sorry you were worried. It won't happen again." She went to the closet, feeling strangely upset. They would talk about it tonight. All night. Analyzing, hinting, questioning. They would talk of nothing else, as from the very first. And they would not be able to conceal their delight.
"Wasn't it awful about poor Eva Schillings?"
No, Julia had thought: from her sister's point of view it was not awful at all. It was wonderful. It was priceless.
It was news.
Julia's sisters… Sometimes she thought of them as mice. Giant gray mice, in high white collars: groaning a little, panting a little, working about the house. Endlessly, untiringly: they would squint at pictures, knock them crooked, then straighten them again; they swept invisible dust from clean carpets and took the invisible dust outside in shining pans and dumped it carefully into spotless applebaskets; they stood by beds whose sheets shone gleaming white and tight, and clucked in soft disgust, and replaced the sheets with others. All day, every day, from six in the morning until most definite dusk. Never questioning, never doubting that the work had to be done.
They ran like arteries through the old house, keeping it alive. For it had become now a part of them, and they a part of it-like the handcrank mahogany Victrola in the hail, or the lion-pelted sofa, or the Boutelle piano (ten years silent, its keys yellowed and decayed and ferocious, like the teeth of an aged mule).
Nights, they spoke of sin. Also of other times and better days: Maud and Louise- sitting there in the bellying heat of the obsolete but steadfast stove, hooking rugs, crocheting doilies, sewing linen, chatting, chatting.
Occasionally Julia listened, because she was there and there was nothing else to do; but mostly she didn't. It had become a simple thing to rock and nod and think of nothing at all, while they traded dreams and dead husbands, constantly relishing their mutual widowhood-relishing it!-pitching these fragile ghosts into moral combat. "Ernie, God rest him, was an honorable man." (So were they all, Julia would think, all honorable men; but we are here to praise Caesar, not to bury him…)"Jack would be alive today if it hadn't been for the trunk lid slamming down on his head: that's what started it all." Poor Ernie! Poor Jack!
(He walked along the railroad tracks, blending with the night. He could have been young, or old: an age-hiding beard dirtied his face and throat. He wore a blue sweater, ripped in a dozen places. On the front of the sweater was sewn a large felt letter: E. Also sewn there was a small design showing a football and calipers. His gray trousers were dark with a stain where he had fouled them. He walked along the tracks, seeing and not seeing the pulse of light far ahead; thinking and not thinking, Perhaps I'll find it there, Perhaps they won't catch me, Perhaps I won't be hungry any more…)
"You forgot the margarine," Louise said, holding the large sack upside down.
"Did I? I'm sorry." Julia took her place at the table. The food immediately began to make her ill: the sight of it, the smell of it. Great bowls of beans, crisp-skinned chunks of turkey, mashed potatoes. She put some on her plate, and watched her sisters. They ate earnestly; and now, for no reason, this, too, was upsetting.
She looked away. What was it? What was wrong?
"Mick says that fellow didn't die," Maud announced. "Julia-"
"What fellow?"
"At the asylum, that got choked. He's going to be all right."
"That's good."
Louise broke a square of toast. She addressed Maud: "What else did he say, when you talked to him? Are they making any progress?"
"Some. I understand there's a bunch of police coming down from Seattle. If they don't get him in a few days, they'll bring in some bloodhounds from out-of-state. Of course, you can imagine how much Mick likes that!"
"Well, it's his own fault. If he was any kind of a sheriff, he'd of caught that fellow a long time before this. I mean, after all, Burlington just isn't that big." Louise dismembered a turkey leg, ripped little shreds of the meat off, put them into her mouth.
Maud shook her head. "I don't know. Mick claims it isn't like catching an ordinary criminal. With this one, you never can guess what he's going to do, or where he'll be. Nobody has figured out how he stays alive, for instance.
"Probably," Louise said, "he eats bugs and things."
Julia folded her napkin quickly and pressed it onto the table.
Maud said, "No. Most likely he finds stray dogs and cats."
They finished the meal in silence. Not, Julia knew, because there was any lull in thought: merely so the rest could be savored in the living room, next to the fire. A proper place for everything.
They moved out of the kitchen. Louise insisted on doing the dishes, while Maud settled at the radio and tried to find a local news broadcast. Finally she snapped the radio off, angrily. "You'd think they'd at least keep us informed! Isn't that the least they could do?"
Louise materialized in her favorite chair. The kitchen was dark. The stove warmed noisily, its metal sides undulating.
And it was time.
"Where do you suppose he is right now?" Maud asked.
Louise shrugged. "Out there somewhere. If they'd got him, Mick would of called us. He's out there somewhere."
"Yes. Laughing at all of us, too, I'll wager. Trying to figure out who'll be next."
Julia sat in the rocker and tried not to listen. Outside, there was a wind. A cold wind, biting; the kind that slips right through window putty, that you can feel on the glass. Was there ever such a cold wind? she wondered.
Then Louise's words started to echo. "He's out there somewhere…"
Julia looked away from the window, and attempted to take an interest in the lacework in her lap.
Louise was talking. Her fingers flashed long silver needles. ". - . spoke to Mrs. Schillings today."
"I don't want to hear about it." Maud's eyes flashed like the needles.
"God love her heart, she's about crazy. Could barely talk."
"God, God."
"I tried to comfort her, of course, but it didn't do any good."
Julia was glad she had been spared that conversation. It sent a shudder across her, even to think about it. Mrs. Schillings was Eva's mother, and Eva-only seventeen
The thoughts she vowed not to think, came back. She remembered Mick's description of the body, and his words: ". . . she'd got through with work over at the telephone office around nine. Carl Jasperson offered to see her home, but he says she said not to bother, it was only a few blocks. Our boy must have been hiding around the other side of the cannery. Just as Eva passed, he jumped. Raped her and then strangled her. I figure he's a pretty man-sized bugger. Thumbs like to went clean through the throat…"
In two weeks, three women had died. First, Charlotte Adams, the librarian. She had been taking her usual shortcut across the school playground, about 9:15 P.M. They found her by the slide, her clothes ripped from her body, her throat raw and bruised.
Julia tried very hard not to think of it, but when her mind would clear, there were her sisters' voices, droning, pulling her back, deeper.
She remembered how the town had reacted. It was the first murder Burlington had had in fifteen years. It was the very first mystery. Who was the sex-crazed killer? Who could have done this terrible thing to Charlotte Adams? One of her gentleman friends, perhaps. Or a hobo, from one of the nearby jungles. Or…
Mick Daniels and his tiny force of deputies had swung into action immediately. Everyone in town took up the topic, chewed it, talked it, chewed it, until it lost its shape completely. The air became electrically charged. And a grim gaiety swept Burlington, reminding Julia of a circus where everyone is forbidden to smile.
Days passed, uneventfully. Vagrants were pulled in and released. People were questioned. A few were booked, temporarily.
Then, when the hum of it had begun to die, it happened again. Mrs. Dovie Samuelson, member of the local P.T.A., mother of two, moderately attractive and moderately young, was found in her garden, sprawled across a rhododendron bush, dead. She was naked, and it was established that she had been attacked. Of the killer, once again, there was no trace.
Then the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane released the information that one of its inmates-a Robert Oakes-had escaped. Mick, and many others, had known this all along. Oakes had originally been placed in the asylum on a charge of raping and murdering his cousin, a girl named Patsy Blair.
After he had broken into his former home and stolen some old school clothes, he had disappeared, totally.
Now he was loose.
Burlington, population 3,000, went into a state of ecstasy: delicious fear gripped the town. The men foraged out at night with torches and weapons; the women squeaked and looked under their beds and… chatted.
But still no progress was made. The maniac eluded hundreds of searchers. They knew he was near, perhaps at times only a few feet away, hidden; but always they returned home, defeated.
They looked in the forests and in the fields and along the river banks. They covered High Mountain-a miniature hill at the south end of town-like ants, poking at every clump of brush, investigating every abandoned tunnel and water tank. They broke into deserted houses, searched barns, silos, haystacks, treetops. They looked everywhere, everywhere. And found nothing.
When they decided for sure that their killer had gone far away, that he couldn't conceivably be within fifty miles of Burlington, a third crime was committed. Young Eva Schillings' body had been found, less than a hundred yards from her home.
And that was three days ago .
". . . they get him." Louise was saying, "they ought to kill him by little pieces, for what he's done."
Maud nodded. "Yes; but they won't."
"Of course they-"
"No! You wait. They'll shake his hand and lead him back to the bughouse and wait on him hand and foot-till he gets a notion to bust out again."
"Well, I'm of a mind the people will have something to say about that."
"Anyway," Maud continued, never lifting her eyes from her knitting, "what makes you so sure they will catch him? Supposing he just drops out of sight for six months, and-"
"You stop that! They'll get him. Even if he is a maniac, he's still human."
"I really doubt that. I doubt that a human could have done these awful things." Maud sniffed. Suddenly, like small rivers, tears began to course down her snowbound cheeks, cutting and melting the hard white-packed powder, revealing flesh underneath even paler. Her hair was shot with gray, and her dress was the color of rocks and moths; yet, she did not succeed in looking either old or frail. There was nothing whatever frail about Maud.

"He's a man," she said. Her lips seemed to curl at the word. Louise nodded, and they were quiet.
(His ragged tennis shoes padded softly on the gravel bed. Now his heart was trying to tear loose from his chest. The men, the men… They had almost stepped on him, they were that close. But he had been silent. They had gone past him, and away. He could see their flares back in the distance. And far ahead, the pulsing light. Also a square building: the depot, yes. He must be careful. He must walk in the shadows. He must be very still. The fury burned him, and he fought it.
Soon.
It would be all right, soon…)
". . . think about it, this here maniac is only doing what every man would like to do but can't."
"Maud!"
"I mean it. It's a man's natural instinct-it's all they ever think about." Maud smiled. She looked up. "Julia, you're feeling sick. Don't tell me you're not."
"I'm all right," Julia said, tightening her grip on the chairarms slightly. She thought, they've been married! They talk this way about men, as they always have, and yet soft words have been spoken to them, and strong arms placed around their shoulders…
Maud made tiny circles with her fingers. "Well, I can't force you to take care of yourself. Except, when you land in the hospital again, I suppose you know who'll be doing the worrying and staying up nights-as per usual."
"I'll… go on to bed in a minute." But, why was she hesitating? Didn't she want to be alone?
Why didn't she want to be alone?
Louise was testing the door. She rattled the knob vigorously, and returned to her chair.
"What would he want, anyway," Maud said, "with two old biddies like us?"
"We're not so old," Louise said, saying, actually: "That's true; we're old." But it wasn't true, not at all. Looking at them, studying them, it suddenly occurred to Julia that her sisters were ashamed of their essential attractiveness. Beneath the 'twenties hair-dos, the ill-used cosmetics, the ancient dresses (which did not quite succeed in concealing their still voluptuous physiques), Maud and Louise were youthfully full and pretty. They were. Not even the birch-twig toothbrushes and traditional snuff could hide it.
Yet, Julia thought, they envy me.
They envy my plainness.
"What kind of man would do such heinous things? Louise said, pronouncing the word, carefully, heen-ious.
And Julia, without calling or forming the thought, discovered an answer grown in her mind: an impression, a feeling.
What kind of a man?
A lonely man.
It came upon her like a chill. She rose from the pillowed chair, lightly. "I think," she said, "I'll go on to my room."
"Are your windows good and locked?"
"Yes."
"You'd better make sure. All he'd have to do is climb up the drainpipe." Maud's expression was peculiar. Was she really saying, "This is only to comfort you, dear. Of the three of us, it's unlikely he'd pick on you."
"I'll make sure." Julia walked to the hallway. "Good night."
"Try to get some sleep." Louise smiled. "And don't think about him, hear? We're perfectly safe. He couldn't possibly get in, even if he tried. Besides," she said, "I'll be awake."
(He stopped and leaned against a pole and looked up at the deaf and swollen sky. It was a movement of dark shapes, a hurrying, a running.
He closed his eyes.
"The moon is the shepherd, The clouds are his sheep…"
He tried to hold the words, tried very hard, but they scattered and were gone.
He pushed away from the pole, turned, and walked back to the gravel bed.
The hunger grew: with every step it grew. He thought that it had died, that he had killed it at last and now he could rest, but it had not died. It sat inside him, inside his mind, gnawing, calling, howling to be released. Stronger than ever before.
"The moon is the shepherd…"
A cold wind raced across the surrounding fields of wild grass, turning the land into a heaving dark-green ocean. It sighed up through the branches of cherry trees and rattled the thick leaves. Sometimes a cherry would break loose, tumble in the gale, fall and split, filling the night with its fragrance. The air was iron and loam and growth.
He walked and tried to pull these things into his lungs, the silence and coolness of them.
But someone was screaming, deep inside him. Someone was talking.
"What are you going to do-"
He balled his fingers into fists.
"Get away from me! Get away!"
"Don't-"
The scream faded.
The girl's face remained. Her lips and her smooth white skin and her eyes, her eyes…
He shook the vision away.
The hunger continued to grow. It wrapped his body in sheets of living fire. It got inside his mind and bubbled in hot acids, filling and filling him.
He stumbled, fell, plunged his hands deep into the gravel, withdrew fists full of the grit and sharp stones and squeezed them until blood trailed down his wrists.
He groaned, softly.
Ahead, the light glowed and pulsed and whispered, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here.
He dropped the stones and opened his mouth to the wind and walked on…)
Julia closed the door and slipped the lock noiselessly. She could no longer hear the drone of voices: it was quiet, still, but for the sighing breeze.
What kind of a man…
She did not move, waiting for her heart to stop throbbing. But it would not stop.
She went to the bed and sat down. Her eyes travelled to the window, held there.
"He's out there somewhere…"
Julia felt her hands move along her dress. It was an old dress, once purple, now gray with faded gray flowers. The cloth was tissue-thin. Her fingers touched it and moved upward to her throat. Then undid the top button.
For some reason, her body trembled. The chill had turned to heat, tiny needles of heat, puncturing her all over.
She threw the dress over a chair and removed the underclothing. Then she walked to the bureau and took from the top drawer a flannel nightdress, and turned.
What she saw in the tall mirror caused her to stop and make a small sound.
Julia Landon stared back at her from the polished glass.
Julia Landon, thirty-eight, neither young nor old, attractive nor unattractive, a woman so plain she was almost invisible. All angles and sharpnesses, and flesh that would once have been called "milky" but was now only white, pale white. A little too tall. A little too thin. And faded.
Only the eyes had softness. Only the eyes burned with life and youth and-.
Julia moved away from the mirror. She snapped off the light. She touched the window shade, pulled it slightly, guided it soundlessly upward.
Then she unfastened the window latch.
Night came into the room and filled it. Outside, giant clouds roved across the moon, obscuring it, revealing it, obscuring it again.
It was cold. Soon there would be rain.
Julia looked out beyond the yard, in the direction of the depot, dark and silent now, and the tracks and the jungles beyond the tracks where lost people lived.
"I wonder if he can see me."
She thought of the man who had brought terror and excitement to the town. She thought of him openly, for the first time, trying to imagine his features.
He was probably miles away.
Or, perhaps he was nearby. Behind the tree, there, or under the hedge .
"I'm afraid of you, Robert Oakes," she whispered to the night. "You're insane, and a killer. You would frighten the wits out of me."
The fresh smell swept into Julia's mind. She wished she were surrounded by it, in it, just for a little while.
Just for a few minutes.
A walk. A short walk in the evening.
She felt the urge strengthening.
"You're dirty, young man. And heartless-ask Mick, if you don't believe me. You want to love so badly you must kill for it-but nevertheless, you're heartless. Understand? And you're not terribly bright, either, they say. Have you read Shakespeare's Sonnets? Herrick? How about Shelley, then? There, you see! I'd detest you on sight. Just look at your fingernails!"
She said these things silently, but as she said them she moved toward her clothes.
She paused, went to the closet.
The green dress. It was warmer.
A warm dress and a short walk-that will clear my head. Then I'll come back and sleep.
It's perfectly safe.
She started for the door, stopped, returned to the window. Maud and Louise would still be up, talking.
She slid one leg over the sill; then the other leg.
Softly she dropped to the frosted lawn.
The gate did not creak.
She walked into the darkness.
Better! So much better. Good clean air that you can breathe!
The town was a silence. A few lights gleamed in distant houses, up ahead; behind, there was only blackness. And the wind.
In the heavy green frock, which was still too light to keep out the cold-though she felt no cold; only the needled heat-she walked away from the house and toward the depot.
It was a small structure, unchanged by passing years, like the Landon home and most of the homes in Burlington. There were tracks on either side of it.
Now it was deserted. Perhaps Mr. Gaffey was inside, making insect sounds on the wireless. Perhaps he was not.
Julia stepped over the first track, and stood, wondering what had happened and why she was here. Vaguely she understood something. Something about the yellow thread that had made her late and forced her to return home through the gathering dusk. And this dress-had she chosen it because it was warmer than the others… or because it was prettier?
Beyond this point there was wilderness, for miles. Marshes and fields overgrown with weeds and thick foliage. The hobo jungles: some tents, dead campfires, empty tins of canned meat.
She stepped over the second rail, and began to follow the gravel bed. Heat consumed her. She could not keep her hands still.
In a dim way, she realized-with a tiny part of her-why she had come out tonight.
She was looking for someone.
The words formed in her mind, unwilled: "Robert Oakes, listen, listen to me. You're not the only one who is lonely. But you can't steal what we're lonely for, you can't take it by force. Don't you know that? Haven't you learned that yet?"
I'll talk to him, she thought, and he'll go along with me and give himself up…
No.
That isn't why you're out tonight. You don't care whether he gives himself up or not. You… only want him to know that you understand. Isn't that it?
You couldn't have any other reason.
It isn't possible that you're seeking out a lunatic for any other reason.
Certainly you don't want him to touch you.
Assuredly you don't want him to put his arms around you and kiss you, because no man has ever done that-assuredly, assuredly.
It isn't you he wants. It isn't love. He wouldn't be taking Julia Landon…
"But what if he doesn't!" The words spilled out in a small choked cry. "What if he sees me and runs away! Or I don't find him. Others have been looking. What makes me think I'll-"
Now the air swelled with signs of life: frogs and birds and locusts, moving; the wind, running across the trees and reeds and foliage at immense speed, whining, sighing.
Everywhere there was this loudness, and a dark like none Julia had ever known. The moon was gone entirely. Shadowless, the surrounding fields were great pools of liquid black, stretching infinitely, without horizon.
Fear came up in her chest, clutching.
She tried to scream.
She stood paralyzed, moveless, a pale terror dying into her throat and into her heart.
Then, from far away, indistinctly, there came a sound. A sound like footsteps on gravel.
Julia listened, and tried to pierce the darkness. The sounds grew louder. And louder. Someone was on the tracks. Coming closer.
She waited. Years passed, slowly. Her breath turned into a ball of expanding ice in her lungs.
Now she could see, just a bit.
It was a man. A black man-form. Perhaps-the thought increased her fear-a hobo. It mustn't be one of the hobos.
No. It was a young man. Mick! Mick, come to tell her, "Well, we got the bastard!" and to ask, narrowly, "What the devil you doing out here, Julia?" Was it?
She saw the sweater. The ball of ice in her lungs began to melt, a little. A sweater. And shoes that seemed almost white.
Not a hobo. Not Mick. Not anyone she knew.
She waited an instant longer. Then, at once, she knew without question who the young man was.
And she knew that he had seen her.
The fear went away. She moved to the center of the tracks.
"I've been looking for you," she said, soundlessly. "Every night I've thought of you. I have." She walked toward the man. "Don't be afraid, Mr. Oakes. Please don't be afraid. I'm not."
The young man stopped. He seemed to freeze, like an animal, prepared for flight.
He did not move, for several seconds.
Then he began to walk toward Julia, lightly, hesitantly, rubbing his hands along his trousers.
When Julia was close enough to see his eyes, she relaxed, and smiled.
Perhaps, she thought, feeling the first drops of rain upon her face, perhaps if I don't scream he'll let me live.
That would be nice.