More fog evaporated. I got up.
'Uh-uh. No making a human guinea pig out of yours truly. Get yourself another boy.'
'Don't be silly,' he said, 'No harm will come to you.'
Against my better judgement, I said, 'Okay, let's go.'
Chapter Three
Weinbaum approached the subject of my duties after a tour of the house, including the laboratory. He wore a white smock and there was something about him that made me crawl inside. He sat down in the living room and motioned me into a seat. Rankin had disappeared.
Weinbaum stared at me with fixed eyes and once again I felt a blast of icy coldness sweep over me.
'I'll put it to you bluntly,' he said, 'my experiments are too complicated to explain in any detail, but they concern human flesh.
Dead human flesh.'
I was becoming intensely aware that his eyes burnt with flickering fires. He looked like a spider ready to engulf a fly, and this whole house was his web. The sun was striking fire to the west and deep pools of shadows were spreading across the room, hiding his face, but leaving the glittering eyes as they shifted in the creeping darkness. He was still speaking.
'Often, people bequeath their bodies to scientific institutes for study.
Unfortunately, I'm only one man, so I have to resort to other methods.'
Horror leapt grinning from the shadows and across my mind there flitted the black picture of two men digging by the light of an uncertain moon. A shovel struck wood the noise chilled my soul.
I rose quickly.
'I think I can find my own way out, Mr. Weinbaum.'
He laughed softly. 'Did Rankin tell you how much this job pays?'
'I'm not interested.'
'Too bad. I was hoping you could see it my way. It wouldn't take a year before you would make enough money to return to college.'
I started, and got the uncanny feeling that this man was searching my soul.
'How much do you know about me? How did you find out?'
16
'I have my ways.' He chuckled again. 'Will you reconsider?'
I hesitated.
'Shall we put it on a trial basis?' he asked softly. 'I'm quite sure that we can both reach a mutual satisfaction.'
I got the eerie feeling that I was talking to the devil himself, that somehow I had been tricked into selling my soul.
'Be here at 8.00 sharp, the night after next,' he said.
That was how it started.
As Rankin and I laid the sheeted body of Daniel Whetherby on the lab table, lights flashed on behind sheeted oblongs that looked like glass tanks.
'Weinbaum,' I had dropped the title, Mister, without thinking, 'I think – '
'Did you say something?' he asked, his eyes boring into mine. The laboratory seemed far away. There were only the two of us, sliding through a half-world peopled with horrors beyond the imagination.
Rankin entered in a white smock coat and broke the spell by saying,
'All ready, professor.'
At the door, Rankin stopped me. 'Friday, at eight.'
A shudder, cold and terrible raced up my spine as I looked back.
Weinbaum had produced a scalpel and the body was unsheeted. They looked at me strangely and I hurried out.
I took the car and quickly drove down the narrow dirt road. I didn't look back. The air was fresh and warm with a promise of budding summer. The sky was blue with fluffy white clouds fleeting along in the warm summer breeze. The night before seemed like a nightmare, a vague dream, that, as all nightmares, is unreal and transparent when the bright light of day shines upon it. But as I drove past the wrought iron gates of the Crestwood Cemetery I realized that this was no dream. Four hours ago my shovel had removed the dirt that covered the grave of Daniel Wheatherby. For the first time a new thought occurred to me.
What was the body of Daniel Wheatherby being used for at that moment? I shoved the thought into a deep corner of my mind and let out onto the go-pedal. The car screamed ahead. I put my thoughts into driving, glad to put the terrible thing I had done out of my mind, for a short time, anyway.
Chapter Four
The California countryside blurred by as I tried for the maximum speed.
The tires sang on the curve and, as I came out of it, several things happened in rapid succession. I saw a panel truck crazily parked right on 17
the broken white line, a girl of about eighteen running right toward my car, an older man running after her. I slammed on the brakes and they exploded like bombs. I jockeyed the wheel and the California sky was suddenly under me. Then everything was right-side up and I realized that I had flipped right over and up. For a moment I was dazed, then a scream, shrill and high, piercing, slit my head. I opened the door and sprinted toward the road. The man had the girl and was yanking her toward the panel truck. He was stronger than her and winning, but she was taking an inch of skin for every foot he made.
He saw me.
