“Why, Mr Wran, what’s happened to you?” she asked embarrassedly, ending with a stupid titter. “Are you feeling sick? Isn’t there something I can do for you?”
He shook his head jerkily and managed to say, “No, I’m just leaving. I was doing some extra work myself.”
“But you
“Yes, I’m sure you must be sick. You’re so terribly pale.” She sounded like an enthusiastic, incompetent nurse. Her face brightened with a sudden inspiration. “I’ve got something in my bag, that’ll fix you up right away,” she said. “It’s for indigestion.”
She fumbled at her stuffed oblong purse. He noticed that she was absent-mindedly holding it shut with one hand while she tried to open it with the other. Then, under his very eyes, he saw her bend back the thick prongs of metal locking the purse as if they were tinfoil, or as if her fingers had become a pair of steel pliers.
Instantly his memory recited the words he had spoken to Miss Millick that afternoon. “It couldn’t hurt you physically – at first. . . gradually get its hooks into the world . . . might even get control of suitably vacuous minds. Then it could hurt whomever it wanted.” A sickish, cold feeling grew inside him. He began to edge toward the door.
But Miss Millick hurried ahead of him.
“You don’t have to wait, Fred,” she called. “Mr Wran’s decided to stay a while longer.”
The door to the cage shut with a mechanical rattle. The cage creaked. Then she turned around in the door.
“Why, Mr Wran,” she gurgled reproachfully, “I just couldn’t think of letting you go home now. I’m sure you’re terribly unwell. Why, you might collapse in the street. You’ve just got to stay here until you feel different.”
The creaking died away. He stood in the center of the office, motionless. His eyes traced the coal-black course of Miss Millick’s footprints to where she stood blocking the door. Then a sound that was almost a scream was wrenched out of him, for it seemed to him that the blackness was creeping up her legs under the thin stockings.
“Why, Mr Wran,” she said, “You’re acting as if you were crazy. You must lie down for a while. Here, I’ll help you off with your coat.”
The nauseously idiotic and rasping note was the same; only it had been intensified. As she came toward him he turned and ran through the storeroom, clattered a key desperately at the lock of the second door to the corridor.
“Why, Mr Wran,” he heard her call, “are you having some kind of a fit? You must let me help you.”
The door came open and he plunged out into the corridor and up the stairs immediately ahead. It was only when he reached the top that he realized the heavy steel door in front of him led to the roof. He jerked up the catch.
“Why, Mr Wran, you mustn’t run away. I’m coming after you.”
Then he was out on the gritty gravel of the roof. The night sky was clouded and murky, with a faint pinkish glow from the neon signs. From the distant mills rose a ghostly spurt of flame. He ran to the edge. The street lights glared dizzily upward. Two men were tiny round blobs of hat and shoulders. He swung around.
The thing was in the doorway. The voice was no longer solicitous but moronically playful, each sentence ending in a titter.
“Why, Mr Wran, why have you come up here? We’re all alone. Just think, I might push you off.”
The thing came slowly toward him. He moved backward until his heels touched the low parapet. Without knowing why, or what he was going to do, he dropped to his knees. He dared not look at the face as it came nearer, a focus for the worst in the world, a gathering point for poisons from everywhere. Then the lucidity of terror took possession of his mind, and words formed on his lips.
“I will obey you. You are my god,” he said. “You have supreme power over man and his animals and his machines. You rule this city and all others. I recognize that.”
Again the titter, closer. “Why, Mr Wran, you never talked like this before. Do you mean it?”
“The world is yours to do with as you will, save or tear to pieces,” he answered fawningly, the words automatically fitting themselves together in vaguely liturgical patterns. “I recognize that. I will praise, I will sacrifice. In smoke and soot I will worship you for ever.”
The voice did not answer. He looked up. There was only Miss Millick, deathly pale and swaying drunkenly. Her eyes were closed. He caught her as she wobbled toward him. His knees gave way under the added weight and they sank down together on the edge of the roof.
After a while she began to twitch. Small noises came from her throat and her eyelids edged open.
“Come on, we’ll go downstairs,” he murmured jerkily, trying to draw her up. “You’re feeling bad.”
“I’m terribly dizzy,” she whispered. “I must have fainted, I didn’t eat enough. And then I’m so nervous lately, about the war and everything, I guess. Why, we’re on the roof! Did you bring me up here to get some air? Or did I come up without knowing it? I’m awfully foolish. I used to walk in my sleep, my mother said.”
As he helped her down the stairs, she turned and looked at him. “Why, Mr Wran,” she said, faintly, “you’ve got a big black smudge on your forehead. Here, let me get it off for you.” Weakly she rubbed at it with her handkerchief. She started to away again and he steadied her.
“No, I’ll be all right,” she said. “Only I feel cold. What happened, Mr Wran? Did I have some sort of fainting spell?”
He told her it was something like that.
Later, riding home in the empty elevated railway car, he wondered how long he would be safe from the thing. It was a purely practical problem. He had no way of knowing, but instinct told him he had satisfied the brute for some time. Would it want more when it came again? Time enough to answer that question when it arose. It might be hard, he realized, to keep out of an insane asylum. With Helen and Ronny to protect, as well as himself, he would have to be careful and tightlipped. He began to speculate as to how many other men and women had seen the thing or things like it.
The elevated slowed and lurched in a familiar fashion. He looked at the roofs near the curve. They seemed very ordinary, as if what made them impressive had gone away for a while.
The Ghost
A. E. Van Vogt
Location: Agan, Gatineau Hills, Ottawa.
Time: August, 1942.
Eyewitness Description:
Author: Alfred Elton Van Vogt (1912–2000) was among the group of young writers in the Thirties who transformed fantasy and science fiction into a new “Golden Age” of imaginative writing – “the literature of ideas”, as it has been described. Born in Canada, Van Vogt moved to America where, with other authors like Fritz Leiber and Ray Bradbury, he used his talents to explore new avenues of supernaturalism. His novels cut new pathways with their variety from
