Weird Tales volume 42 number 04 (19 page)

Her chance came in the third game to force me to sacrifice—if she could be reasonably sure of her calculations. As she concentrated on the alternative moves I watched her, though in a moment she screened her brow with her hand, and I could no longer see her face.

Suddenly the air became heavy, a stillness that almost seemed sound ensued, as if silent black wings beat down upon the air. The telephone went "ting"—not ringing, but ticking as these country lines do in a thunderstorm. I looked up at the windows, wondering if a storm were coming, but could see only darkness. Then I saw a face pressed against the ell courtyard win-

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dow, a white face, wide-eyed in terror. It was the face of Etiza Blaine! Breaking my gaze from this onlooker's, I turned in amazement to the girl across the checkerboard. Her face was utterly alien, an abominable satyr's mask, looking in cool, sardonic amusement at its counterpart's features pressed so fearfully against the windowpane,

I think that I did the right thing at last. I ran to the outer ell door and threw it open upon the courtyard. Switching on the outdoor light, I saw the courtyard was empty and the impress of no footprints were in the garden plot under the window. I turned back at once to find Oliver Orne just catching the fainting Eliza.

I think 1 did right, I say, because if I had turned and slapped the face or shaken the shoulders of the creature across the checkerboard from me, there'd be danger of psychic trauma for Eliza, with negative results as far as the poltergeist went. June 12, 1949—This morning I visited Chad wick, telling him what appears here. His advice to me was:

"Your best bet is to find some action which will fit all the various theories about poltergeists, since you are concerned with sure counteraction rather than theorizing. You must apply this action when the poltergeist is dominant, and in such a way that Eliza is done neither bodily nor mental harm. You must surprise the poltergeist, confronting him as strongly as possible at the moment of his greatest aggression. And you must do so with something as opposite in ail respects as possible."

I agreed and we concocted, rejected and sorted over a number of possible plans. Finally we hit upon two or three schemes which seem more substantial, if they can be worked out.

I DO not propose to report on them now, as they may never be tested. Since one of them involved the services of a. skilled dental technician friend, I spent the rest of the day with him in the hospital laboratory. June 15, 1949—Fortunately no manifes-

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tations took place while I was completing a variety of preparations, to cover as many contingencies as I could. Today I brought back the acrylic plastic candlestick which my dental technician had produced (using his false teeth manufacture thus divert-edly). It was a curious piece, anything but artistic, with shapeless, topheavy bulges. Remarking upon its amateurish appearance and saying that I could do better with more practice, I put the object on the mantel with my tobacco jar and smoking apparatus. Since it seemed highly improbable that the poltergeist would appear in the presence of any object which it knew to be inimical, I hoped that this candlestick would not appear so.

It had been a hot day, with thunder-showers likely to break the oppressively muggy air. Shortly after supper I was standing up, filling my pipe, as is my custom. I was reaching for a wooden match from the wall receptacle and idly looking into the mirror in front of me. My gaze rested on the image of Eliza, or what displaced it. The face was turned as she talked to Mrs. Ornc. But the mirror reflected the abhorrent satyr's head, self-confident with the myriad abominations of hell itself.

As I watched, Eliza—or this horror— saw me staring at the mirror, and broke into a Sardonian smile. I turned from the mirror to El 12a. Her features were nearly normal, though the alterations were even now taking place, as if challenging me for my looking-glass view.

I was not idle either, for the time had come. And yet my mind continued turning over the matter of mirrors, the lore of the speculum of Mage Merlin, the Devil's Looking Glass of Dr. Lee, of katoptro-mancy and vampirism. I had picked up the candlestick and advanced slowly, with a show of irresolution, to the stove. Doctors and acrobats, bull-fighters and actors must have a sense of timing; it is often extremely important. Here the poltergeist must think me uncertain, or bent upon hurting Eliza—at which misdirected aim he could laugh, exult and grow stronger. So I advanced to the stove as the transfor-

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mation, unabated, reached its completion.

Mr. and Mrs. Orne sat still, as 1 lifted the lid of the hot kettle. I had to trust them to heed my injunction not to stir.

Then the lights went out. The electricity in this part of the country sometimes does cut out when there are thunderstorms. But this was too opportune to be chance.

From Eliza's figure sprouted mushroom blobs of static light like St. Elmo's Fires, shining yet not igniting, forming at the hem of her skirt, her waist, the nape of her neck, swamp fire of the fiend's finding. With the room thus weirdly illumined, the poltergeist held both hands alcft with palms taut and fingers rad iating, outstretched to tlit- area above my head. Shrilly Eliza's strained vocal cords emitted the fiend's curses and evocations.

All around me stones fell, yet I was unhurt. I drew from the kettle the acrylic plastic figure. The action of the boiling water had fulfilled our anticipations by invoking the peculiar properties of the candlestick's substances, reshaping it into the form of a crucifix.

As I walked forward with the talisman upraised, the demoniac creature emitted a hell-rending cry as if a bottomless pit gaped beneath him. His hands lowered spasmodically to clutch idiotically about his face. His features withered and writhed, revealed as the electricity came on again when, presumably, the fiend's will power dissolved its damning block. In a moment the struggle was over. Eliza, released, collapsed into her chair, and but for my free hand ■would have fallen to the floor. June 15, 1949—Chadwick explains the matter by calling the poltergeist a virulent mass and the crucifix an all-healing antibiotic which is an interesting way of putting it. Since the crucifix was dormant in the plastic (the acrylic being peculiar in that once fixed—in the form of a crucifix—it could be provisionally altered to the rough •shape of a candlestick, until its "memory" ■was stirred by the boiling water, when it reverted to its fixed shape it could form a perfect opposite to the poltergeist.

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