Part 13 (1/2)

The voice spoke not from outside the house but through the television speakers.

The Goblin's furrowed face grinned at him from the screen.

Then there was only static again.

”How do you know my name?” he cried, and swung his cane at the picture tube.

Unlike the windows, the picture tube shattered. Inside, the old tubes exploded in sparks and acrid smoke.

The doorbell sounded again. Louder than before, somehow.

Insistent and clamoring.

Killup went back to the window, peering out to see the Goblin pus.h.i.+ng the buzzer.

But the Goblin wasn't at the door. He stood in the swing at the opposite end of the porch, gently rocking in the moon light.

The Goblin waved the friendly wave that somehow wasn't friendly.

The front door opened slowly. The dead, red leaves of the oak tree in front of the house blew into the entryway.

”Howa””

When he looked back out onto the porch, the Goblin was no longer in the swing. Killup turned to go to the doora”but was face-to-face with the Goblin, who perched on the table between the two locked windows.

The Goblin's furrowed face wasn't a mask.

The Goblin lightly brushed Killup's cheek with a finger that wasn't a rubber glove at all but had scaly flesh and a nail that was as sharp and tough as horn.

”Trick or treat, Killup.”

With a growl that was equal parts anger, fear, despair, and confusion, Killup knocked the Goblin off the table.

But in doing so, Killup lost his balance. In attempting to regain that balance, Killup slipped on a piece of Halloween candy wrapped in purple cellophane.

Killup's head banged hard against the floor. He heard cracks that had to be his bones. The pain in his neck was cold like frozen metal, hot like burning grease, electric like a wet finger stuck into an electrical socket. He couldn't move either leg. He couldn't move his head or his left arm. His only luck was that he held the cane in his right hand. He flailed about with it, weakly calling, ”Help, help, I'll give you candy, I'll give you all my Halloween candy.”

But the Goblin was gone, and because Killup couldn't feel the October wind, he knew the front door was shut and locked once more.

He flailed about with his cane, calling weakly.

He knocked the telephone from the hook and dragged the receiver close to his ear.

”Operator,” Killup pleaded softly. ”Operator, I'ma””

”At the tone, the time will be midnight exactly.”

”I'd get a lawyer if I were you.” said the medical examiner.

to Michael Killup.

”A lawyer?” Michael repeated mechanically. He'd found his father's corpse that morning, when he'd brought the groceries he'd promised the day before. Real frozen waffles, not the kind you pour out of a carton.

”Clearest case of neglect I've ever seen.”

Michael shook his head. ”I didn't like my father very much, but I certainly didn't neglect him.”

”Your father died of starvation.”

”What?” said Michael.

”He starved to death,” said the medical examiner simply.

He took Michael Killup's hand and dropped a sticky square of paper cellophane into it. ”Your father appears to have subsisted for several weeks in this house on nothing but a bagful of Halloween candy.”

Michael turned back toward the entrance way. At a nod from the medical examiner, the attendant pulled back the sheet.

Killup's frame was savagely emaciated, brittle bones rattling in a rusty cardigan. His neck was shrunken and loose in the brace that had once fit too snugly. Killup's face was a slack-jawed skull with a skin of parchment. Sunk deep in their dark sockets, his eyes stared, wide and fearing.

”Your father didn't die nice,” said the medical examiner, ”and he didn't die quick.”

Michael Killup said nothing. He took one step closer to the shrunken corpse, to crush a c.o.c.kroach that scurried out from beneath his father's head.

THE SATANIC PIANO.

by Carl Jacobi.

Midnight, and I was seated at the old concert grand in my study, running my fingers over the keys to the wild melody of Saint-Saens's Danse Macabre. Outside, the fog, like some toothless centenarian, peered in at the glowing electroliers and drooled mist and greenish drizzle on the windowpanes.

Hollow and m.u.f.fled through the thick air, Big Ben boomed its chimes of the hour.

I was restless, the night was hardly conducive to sleep.

The empty weeks in London with Martha, my fiancee, gone for an extended visit upcountry, had reached a climax of lone linesss in the preceding solitary hours at the theater. And above all, that puzzling messsage which had come to my door a few moments past still lay there on the chair, leering up at me with the insistence of a spoken command. It read: Come at once to 94 Milford Lane. I have something of the utmost importance to show you. It concerns your music.

Wilson Farber For a moment, as I stared down upon the black card with the peculiar writing in white ink, I was almost inclined to smile. Farber, eh? Wilson Farber. Yes, I remembered the man, remembered the day I had first come upon him in his dirty little music shop on lower Telling Street. I had gone there in search of some old collection of Russian folk dances, and he, sitting amid his jumble of tarnished horns and battered violins, had led me into a conversation. And I remembered his book, which had attracted such wide interest and which psychology professors had been forced to admit opened new fields for thought in the subjects of hypnotism and telepathy.

Once again after that I had visited this shop, and while I must confess I was impressed by the man's queer erudition, still I had been only too glad to remove myself from his presence. There was something disturbing about the way he stared into your eyes, seemed to plumb your very soul. Nor did I like the silent way he glided about, dragging his thick ebony cane, or that high-pitched laugh that sounded like the mirthless squeak of a ventriloquist.

Tall and gaunt, with a shock of sable hair and a ragged beard the color of slate, he was at once a commanding and repelling figure. There were rumors about the man, rumors that came into existence when his unorthodox book first appeared in the stalls. Was it the work of a trained or a neurotic brain?

And was there any significance in the fact that a James Wilson Farber had been released from St. Mary's Inst.i.tution for the Insane some nine months before?

I say now that had that last line, ”It concerns your music,” not been included in the missive, I should probably have dismissed the matter entirely from my mind. But the thought stole upon me that perhaps back in the shadows of his shop he had come upon some rare old music composition and was offering it for sale. Farber knew my weakness. He knew that for years I have amused myself by collecting original ma.n.u.scripts and unknown works of forgotten composers. This hobby has brought me almost as much enjoyment as my own creation for the piano, and I hated to let my valuable work slip through my fingers.

Yet even musical compositions were not so important but that they could wait until tomorrow.