HEARTTHROB (2 page)

And then he heard the words, which thrilled him. The bookseller was
saying that he had a special bound folio of Durham's work — a very
limited edition, the man said. Would Mr. Dell like to see it? There
was no question about it. It was in his hands but for a moment when
Charles knew from the first two paintings in the folio that he'd seen
none of this work before. His hands gripped the binding as if they
were vises. He would own this folio, regardless of the price.

As it happened, the price was far below what Charles had expected it
to be. Curious, though, was the comment of the bookseller as he gave
Charles his change. "For you, Mr. Dell," he said, "I
have made a special price. I know that Claude Durham himself would
want you to have this work." And then, a strange look coming
over the man's face, he said something with a tone of warning,
"Number 14, Mr. Dell. Do not under any circumstances look at
that page."

Charles, convinced that the man was mad,
nonetheless assured him that he would do as warned. As he left the
store, he saw that it still was raining, and, in order not to get his
new possession wet, he hailed a taxi. Normally taxis were considered
to be too expensive a mode of transportation for Charles, but
today... well, the thing he had under his arm would put him in the
money for some time to come. As he entered the rear of the cab, he
was overjoyed to find that there were some forty pieces in the folio.
Forty... counting that one he was warned against. Number 14, the
bearded man had said. Number 14, Charles Dell thought to himself...
that one must truly be a masterpiece. No sooner had he given the
particulars of his address to the taxi
driver than he opened the book and leafed through the first pages.

Yes... yes... the same grotesque hand of Durham. The weird grays and
greens, the wild blacks and blues, the blood-like reds. Page after
page flipped over, and suddenly Charles realized he was looking down
at Number 13, a curious picture of a fanged gargoyle chewing on what
looked to be a human skull. His fingers trembled as they prepared to
turn to the next page ... they trembled and stopped, as if of their
own will they did not wish to perform the action. "Foolish!"
Charles muttered to himself — and he turned the page.

Odd... There seemed to be nothing on it. It seemed to be totally
blank. No, that wasn't quite true. It was as if the painting were
executed in a very watered-down brown ink, but it could be made out
— barely — as he brought the page closer to his eyes. There was a
face... a laughing face. The face of... of the thin, bearded man in
the bookstore! And below that face there was a single word, in
darkening black Gothic letters. THIEF! Charles Dell screamed. He
screamed once, twice, he screamed ever so much. But the taxi driver
only heard the first cry, none of the others.

The authorities were as puzzled as the driver
who claimed that, one moment there was a man screaming in the rear of
his cab, and the next there was no one. Nothing except the book of
artwork the man had been carrying. If it hadn't been for that, there
would have been nothing at all to substantiate the driver's wild
tale. Of course, if the driver had bothered to leaf through the
book... if he would have paused to give due attention to Number 14,
he might have been ever more puzzled. He no doubt would have
recognized the face of the man on that page... the man who
seemed to be screaming for all he was worth...

Yes it's true. Artists can be
vindictive people. But I have found the same thing to be true of
certain writers. That book you're holding now, for example... are you
sure that you want to turn that next page?

 

 

 

We've all heard about occupational stress. That's when the doctor
peers at his little charts after your physical examination, peers and
shakes his head a little, and advises you that you need a vacation.
Get away from it all, all those pressures, go to some beach resort
perhaps, lie in the sun and relax. If you don't, if you keep on the
way you're going... well, doctors do have a way of sounding like
funeral directors sometimes, don't they? And yet the cure they
recommend sometimes is far worse than the ailment. Such was the case
with Frankie Ventura, but of course Frankie's occupational stress was
perhaps greater than yours or mine, due to the nature of his
occupation.

Nonetheless, that afternoon as he lay on an almost deserted stretch
of Florida sand, Frankie Ventura vowed that he'd make every attempt
to get body and mind back into a state of equilibrium. The last job
had been particularly unnerving. Every time he closed his eyes at
night — or now behind his dark sunglasses — he could see the face
of the man, the horrified man whose eyes widened in terror at the
sight of Frankie's big automatic, the man whose well-tanned face
turned a pale, jaundiced yellow at the sight of his own death coming
at him... and then that same face losing all shape as the slugs from
Frankie's gun smashed into its center just to the right of the man's
nose, splattering bone and brain matter in blood-drenched explosions
every which way. A very sloppy killing, it had been, but that's the
way it had been ordered up. The man who had assigned Frankie the
contract wanted the kill to demonstrate the seriousness of crossing
the organization.

But that haunting face... And lately too there were other faces, not
as torn apart as that last one, but faces which were in their own way
distorted in death. Gray faces... moaning like some lonely wind...
faces which seemed to loom over misshapen bodies, the hands of which
seemed to be grasping outward, forward, gnarled gray fingers reaching
toward...

He woke up with a start, the sweat caused by the heat of the
afternoon sun stinging his eyes, his right hand moving up to adjust
his sunglasses. His head snapped up in fright as he realized that
something was holding down his right hand, dragging on it, grasping
it with a clutch of death! And then he laughed at himself and at the
two small boys, the older of the two no more than four or five, and
the two boys with their sand buckets and shovels who systematically
had been covering his body with the fine grains of sand. At first
they looked frightened of him, but when he didn't yell at them they
laughed buck at him. "Where's your mother?" he asked them,
turning about and looking up and down the beach. One of the boys
pointed. In three or four places farther up the beach sat individual
women, reading, knitting, or just looking at the sea. "She told
us not to bother you," the second boy said. "She said that
you probably would get mad at us." One of the women Frankie had
been looking at now stood, her body an excellent one. She waved to
him. He waved back, then told the kids to continue their work. The
cooling sensation of the sand felt good in any case and, it just
might be that after the boys had dinner and were in bed, Frankie and
the mother might hit it off together. Florida, after all, was full of
young divorcees...

He closed his eyes, trying to think what the
woman might look like close up, feeling the small shovels of sand
drop their tiny loads upon his arms and his trunk and his legs. So
cool, so very cool... And then his dreams were disturbed once more by
those faces of dead men, those pale faces which now seemed to be
coining closer, their twisted fingers reaching out toward him
,
fingers as cold as ice...

He woke then, a shiver of dread running down his spine. His eyes at
first could not comprehend the grayness, and then he realized that he
must have been asleep for some time. The sun was low in the sky and
its rays were almost completely blocked by shroud-like clouds. A bolt
of fear shot through him, but it wasn't until he tried to rise that
he found himself to be in real panic. He could not rise... he could
not move any part of his body. Only his head could he turn, a huge
and crushingly heavy mound of sand covered the rest of him. Those
kids...

But they were nowhere to be seen. In fact was no one on the beach at
all — no one except there woman who spoke from behind him, the woman
he could not see because his head would not turn in that one backward
direction.

"I told the boys I would finish, Mr.
Ventura," she said. Her voice was as cold as the sand, which now
was unbearable upon his body. He tried to struggle upward, but he
knew it was useless. And then he understood. This woman and her
children, they had belonged to one of those he had killed. But which
one —
which
one? Even now as, in the back of his mind those
gray moaning faces and those fingers of death came ever closer, he
had to know.
"Which one?"
he cried.

But he gagged upon the last word, the small
particles of sand which fell from the suddenly appearing bucket, its
bright red and yellow colors looking dull and deadly in the smothered
gray light, those particles of sand entering his mouth, flowing down
to the base of his tongue, choking as they reached his windpipe. As
well-tanned fingers removed his sunglasses, he again tried to scream,
and this time the grains of sand dropped grittily into his eyes as
well as his mouth. And he knew now that she would not speak to
him
again, that she would not tell him for whom her act of vengeance was
performed. But as the grams of sand followed grains of sand, into his
eyes, his nose, his mouth, one of the gray faces, which haunted him
in his dreams, came closer than the others. He strained to recognize
it, but before he could his brain was bathed in a blood-drenching
explosion of choking and heaving, as within his chest his lungs burst
and collapsed in agonizing death.

Do you feel
overworked? Are the pressures of your job getting to be just a little
too much? Consider the beach, my Mend.
It can be most relaxful, even on the darkest of days. But do be
careful of little boys, especially if they approach you, their little
hands grasping tightly little buckets and sand shovels...

 

 

 

I know, you would love to give up smoking, you really
wish you could free yourself of the habit... if only you had the
required amount of willpower, you say. Fortunately, if you are
serious in your wish, there are a number of methods and products,
which can be of effective assistance. Do be careful, though, in your
selection. And be sure to follow that age-old advice which appears on
a variety of cure-alls... use only as directed...

Malcolm Hatch was a determined young man. He
had successfully made the transition from consuming the smoke of two
and a half packets of cigarettes to taking up the pipe.
Unfortunately, the amount of tobacco consumed in his wooden bowl had
risen to the point where he felt he had gained nothing as a result.
Thus, on that September afternoon when he stood across the counter of
the small tobacconist's shop, he emphasized that he was not
interested in anything with a gimmick.
Purely and simply, he wanted to quit smoking.

The tobacconist brought out a number of items — liquids and powders,
pills of various sorts, which for the most part worked on the
smoker's senses of taste and smell. But Malcolm was not interested.
He had known too many people who had tried such preparations for a
time, then simply stopped using them, their level of tobacco
consumption again rising to where it had been. "You have nothing
else?" Malcolm insisted.

The store proprietor looked at his customer with a strange intensity.
Yes, there was something else... something from the rear of his shop.
If the gentleman would kindly wait for just a moment... Malcolm
waited, and soon he was looking down at a small tobacco tin. There
was no label on the tin, just the single word VALEFAR. A brand name?
Malcolm asked, adding the second question regarding the manufacturer.
The storeowner said that he himself made the preparation. As for the
name, it was that of one of the demons from Hell.

Odd name for a product, Malcolm thought, but he
was more interested in how the dark rich powder in the tin was to be
used. "You place a small amount of it in your pipe just before
you light it. This much only," the tobacconist said. First
Malcolm was to load his pipe with ordinary tobacco, then just a pinch
of the black powder at the top of the bowl. The price was most
reasonable. But how did the powder work? Malcolm wanted to know.
Again the tobacconist looked at Malcolm with that intense, strangely
piercing look. As
if
wondering whether he might tell his
customer the truth, Malcolm thought. "It works," the man
said finally. Then he added that he'd developed the powder for
another purpose, one, which had nothing at all to do with
curing a smoking habit — "but
its effects," he said, "are such to accomplish that as
well. Repeated use and within a month's time you will no longer wish
to smoke. But remember... no more than just a pinch!"

No sooner was Malcolm outside of the store when he loaded his briar
pipe with his favorite brand of tobacco. He added just a bit of the
black powder and struck a match. As the flame touched the top of the
bowl, a stench — something like sulfur — poured through Malcolm's
nostrils. But there was more. Before his eyes the air seemed to move,
to rearrange itself. Something, which was dark green in color,
something with matted hair and three bulbous eyes... and yellow teeth
surrounding a mouth which seemed to breathe fire...

Malcolm Hatch screamed, the pipe dropping from his open mouth.
Shaking his head, he found that the vision was gone, the day was
still bright — and there on the sidewalk was his pipe, broken in two
pieces at the stem. The first test of the powder had its results, he
thought to himself.

As did the times which followed, these experiments made in the
comfort of Malcolm's own apartment. Each time, the horrible vision
would appear along with the sulfur smell. Each time his cry would
expel the pipe from his mouth, not however breaking the instrument as
before. And yet, as effective as the black powder seemed to be,
Malcolm was not satisfied. In spite of the fact that he had taken no
inhale of tobacco smoke in all his attempts, the fact was that he
still wanted that smoke — he craved it.