Balefires Read online

  The boy wore no underpants. His penis was distorted by three knotted sores slimed with yellow pus.

  Big Tom choked and staggered upright. His right hand had wrapped itself around the butt of the automatic. Smokie Joe raised an eyebrow at it. "That's a mistake, Big Tom. Don't you hear that siren? When the police arrive, they're going to think you shot your own son. Better let me take care of it-just tell me to and I'll fix it so you won't be bothered. You don't carehow I take care of it, do you?" He stretched out his hand toward the pistol.

  "I'll see you in Hell first!" Big Tom grated.

  "Sure, Big Tom," said Smokie Joe. "If that's how you want it."

  Big Tom crashed out the six shots still in the pistol's magazine. Amid the muzzle blasts rolled the peals of Smokie Joe's Satanic laughter.

  Awakening

  Many of the SF writers of the 1930s and '40s were fascinated by Charles Fort's collections of unexplained phenomena. My friend Manly Wade Wellman told me that F. Orlin Tremaine, the editor of Astounding from 1933 till John W. Campbell took over at the end of 1938, had bought the rights to Fort's collection Lo! to mine for story ideas. I'm not sure that's true, but Tremaine certainly did serialize the book. I didn't see a pulp magazine until one of my high school teachers loaned me a couple issues of Weird Tales, but as a teenager I read lots of SF from the period in anthologies.

  Fort's technique was to go through scientific journals and note oddities which he then retailed in four volumes beginning with The Book of the Damned. He threw out a number of speculations on what caused the data he reported: "I think we're property,'' or "Perhaps somebody is collecting Ambroses,'' which are familiar even to people who don't have the faintest notion of where the phrases come from. Personally, I'm convinced that Fort was joking-that is, that he believed the items were as true as anything else you'd find reported in, say, Nature, but that he understood the causes of the phenomena he reported were unknowable on the available data.

  Then again, maybe he was a humorless wacko who believed in wild conspiracies. Goodness knows, a lot of the people who've followed in his footsteps fit that category.

  SF stories led me to Charles Fort, but then I read him for his own sake. As for what I myself believe: I believe that the world is a very strange place, certainly stranger than I can explain.

  I haven't used much Fortean material in my fiction because I find attempting to explain the phenomena leads to very silly results. This is as true of fiction like Donald Wandrei's "Something from Above" as it is of Philip Klass' "scientific" explanations of all UFOs as plasma effects (a notion that plasma physicists find ludicrous). Once in a while I tried, though. "Awakening" is an example.

  I'm not sure that I'd bother to include this little mood piece in Balefires were it not for one thing: this is the only story I sold while I was in Viet Nam. I wrote it in longhand and typed up a second draft on the orderly room typewriter one Sunday morning in Di An. While I sat typing the story, there was a bang behind me. I looked back over my shoulder and watched the ammo dump destroy itself in a series of increasingly loud explosions. Never a dull moment…

  I sent my typescript to my wife Jo, at home in Chapel Hill. She retyped it and mailed it to Mr. August Derleth, the proprietor of Arkham House, who'd bought two previous stories from me. He took "Awakening" for $25. That's one of the few good things that happened to me in Southeast Asia.

  They remained some time in silence in the shadowed parlor, alternately sipping their tea and staring idly at the dim trees to be seen beyond the gauze curtains. At last Mab cleared her throat, a little coughing sound. The man looked up. "Mab?" "Frank, I think it's time we try. We'll never see Missy's equal, you know."

  Frank set down his cup and saucer on the old walnut table. He ran his left hand through the mane of iron-gray hair he cultivated, almost all that was left of the splendid man he had looked in his youth. "I suppose you're right," he finally admitted."My… aspirations aren't what they were, I suppose. And Mab, I'm very much afraid the girl isn't ready yet. She still doesn't think of herself as one of us."

  "Missy has had a year in this house, Frank."

  "She had twelve in the alley and the orphanage, learning that witches are hags that live in dark corners, learning to laugh when one is pushed into the oven. Her first reaction… well, Missy isn't a subtle child."

  Mab, matronly in a print of pastel roses, ducked disapproval. "Nor is she stupid. The time Missy spent here was more than enough for her to realize what she is, and what we are. It's our duty as her elders to keep her from wasting herself."

  Frank bit absently on the setting of his ring."She can't be forced-no, I don't mean physical force, of course not. But we can't make her believe what she doesn't want to believe; what she's been conditioned not to believe. It won't help even to prove to her that she has the Power. That would only mean to her that she herself is evil, and she'd hate you for it. At best she'd not join us; at worst, with her Power…"

  Mab smiled."Now Frank, it's the girl's strength that worries you. But it's time and past time that I stepped down. I was never a very good Maid-now I know what you want to say, I was very well trained. You taught me everything that could be taught; you were wonderfully patient. But I never had the Power; that can't be learned."

  "Yet she can't even read Latin," said Frank, sadly shaking his head.

  "No," agreed Mab in a firm tone, "and perhaps she never will. Our Missy isn't a scholar. But she has an understanding of things that you and I can hardly imagine."

  She reached over to the table and rang a sharp ping from the bell.

  "Madam?"

  The girl in the doorway wore a maid's uniform with a cap and apron. Dark hair and large eyes accented her triangular face.

  "Madam?" she repeated.

  "Missy, Mr. Birney and I-"

  "Oh, Mab," cut in Frank, lifting his corpulence from the overstuffed chair, "perhaps I'll leave you and Missy to discuss matters by yourselves."

  "Frank, you'll wait, won't you?"

  "In the hallway." Frank nodded to the two women and closed the hall door behind him.

  "Well, Missy," Mab continued, "I-but do sit down, Dearest; this isn't business."

  She waved to the seat Frank had vacated, but the girl took a slat-back chair farther from her mistress.

  "You've been with me some time now, and you have gotten to know myself and the group of friends that meet here. We'd like you to join us tonight."

  The girl fluttered her hands."Ma'am, that wouldn't be right, not me. I'm not your sort."

  "But you are our sort," Mab insisted calmly. "The mirror in your room, for instance-"

  Panic flashed across Missy's face and Mab quickly added, "Oh, don't worry, Dearest, that's why we put it there. It was an old glass and rather difficult to find, but we knew it was meant for you."

  "I'll not do wrong things," the girl insisted sullenly.

  There was a light squalling outside the kitchen door, a scratch of claws and a dark-tipped Siamese cat slipped into the parlor. It curled silently under the girl's chair but kept its eyes on Mab.

  "We wouldn't have you do wrong, "Mab continued with a toss of her gray hair, "but everything proves that it's right for you to join us. Even the way animals treat you-it isn't only Kaimah, is it, Dearest?"

  The girl said nothing, only squirmed a little on her seat.

  "They aren't like that with me," Mab said, "but I don't really have the Power. But you do, Missy. To an amazing degree."

  "No, Ma'am," Missy whispered. "I haven't nothing. I shan't have it."

  Mab appeared not to have heard."Frank was disappointed when you ignored the books we left about, but I understand. Perhaps you'll want them after you've been with us awhile."

  "Ma'am, Ma'am," breathed the girl, twisting her apron between narrow hands, "I don't want to be with you, I want to go…"

  "Because we're witches?" Mab questioned gently. "There's nothing wrong in being a witch, Darling."

  "I don't want to be a witch," cried Missy,
slipping from her chair and moving behind it as if the wooden back were a shield. The cat retreated between her legs, not hissing, but stiff-legged and its backbone edged with a high comb of fur.

  "But Dearest," pressed Mab inexorably, "you're already a witch-"

  "Oh, no!"

  "-the most powerful witch I have ever met."

  "NO!" the girl screamed, and a gabbling cry burst from the older woman as the first blast of searing heat struck her. Mab half rose from her chair, cocooned in white flame that melted flesh and shrank her very bones in its hissing roar.

  "Mab! Mab!" Frank shouted, bursting into the room.

  There was no answer. The room was empty save for a shrunken mummy fallen back on the scorched upholstery of the chair. That, and the thick layer of soot that covered everything.

  The open door to the kitchen quivered in the draft.

  Denkirch

  This is where I started. Everybody has to start somewhere, but I've got to admit that a lot of writers have done so more auspiciously.

  In 1961 I borrowed a few issues of Weird Tales from my high school teacher. One had a box ad for Skull-Face and Others by Robert E. Howard, who'd written the Conan stories. I'd read Conan the Conqueror as half of an Ace Double and loved it. Even though the ad was over ten years old, I took a chance and wrote the publisher, Arkham House, to see if the book was still available.

  Mr. August Derleth wrote back, saying Skull-Face was out of print but enclosed a catalog of available titles. I began buying Arkham House books, getting an introduction to pulp fantasy and horror as Mr. Derleth selected it. (Incidentally, a few years later he sold me a copy of Skull-Face, which wasn't quite as out of print to a good customer as it had been to a stranger.)

  In the Summer of 1965 my fiancee Jo (since 1967 my wife Jo) and I drove from Dubuque to Sauk City to see Arkham House. We met Mr. Derleth and his children, saw Arkham House, Publishers (which he was running out of his house), and bought books.

  One of those books had just come in; The Inhabitant of the Lake: a collection of horror stories by a young Briton, J. Ramsey Campbell. There was a flap photo of the author. Young was right-Ramsey looked no more than fifteen and in fact was only eighteen. He'd sold Mr. Derleth his first story two years earlier for an Arkham House anthology.

  I was nineteen. The teacher who'd loaned me the Weird Tales, Mr. Eugene Olson, had sold fiction himself; indeed, the year after I graduated, he became a full-time writer under what's now his legal name, Brad Steiger. Because of Mr. Olson I knew it was possible to write professionally, and I'd told myself for a number of years that when I got old enough I was going to sell a story.

  "Old enough" was obviously sixteen. I was well past that already.

  I went home (with the pile of books I'd bought) and sent Mr. Derleth a letter asking whether he might be willing to buy a story if I wrote one good enough to publish. He grudgingly said yes.

  I wrote what I thought was a story and sent it to him. It was 1,600 words long and titled "Post Mortem." (I was a Latin major and thought a Latin pun was a great idea for a title. Really.) Mr. Derleth sent the story back with the note that it was a good outline, now I should expand it into a story; and by the way, the title was terrible. I went busily to work and emerged with a piece about 4,000 words long and titled (as I best I can remember) "The Stars Are Hell."

  Mr. Derleth sent it back again, saying that I was close. I just needed to take out the purple passages. I didn't know what a purple passage was, but I did my best. Since I was modeling the writing style on that of Mr. Derleth's own worst copies of bad H.P. Lovecraft prose, there was a lot of florid writing in the story. I sent it off again.

  This time I got back a check for $35 and a note from Mr. Derleth saying that the story still wasn't right. He'd edit it himself; I should compare the published version with my carbon (this was in the days before copy machines were everywhere) to learn how not to write a story the next time.

  I hadn't even known I was supposed to keep a carbon.

  I don't think the edit was very extensive, but Mr. Derleth changed the title to the name of the central character. I don't like that style of title (which Mr. Derleth used frequently in his own work), but it was better than any of mine.

  I recently reread "Denkirch" for the first time in forty years and realized it was a good pastiche of minor Weird Tales stories from about 1938. That's a positive comment on my craftsmanship, but it was a very silly thing to do in 1966.

  So that was my first sale. You could call it a remarkable success story: I sold the first story I submitted to the first editor I sent it to. But I've heard of would-be writers being crushed by rejection letters. I was so devastated by my first acceptance that it was six months before I even tried to write another story.

  Now I sleep only by day or when the sky is cloudy, and when the stars gleam bright in the heavens I walk little back streets, avoiding other people, for I do not care to be reminded of my humanity and my inevitable fate. My acquaintances think me odd, but they would not understand if I told them that on dear nights the stars speak to me, and that if I did not walk I would go mad. So I walk the lonely streets, and the echoing cadence of my stride helps to muffle the rhythmic whispers, but still my mind is forced back to Denkirch, who proved Man's unique place in the universe.

  I met Denkirch at college when, at the end of our first semester, each of our roommates requested transfers and we found ourselves shifted together. Although he was a physics and electronics engineering major, and I was prelaw in history, we found we had a surprising amount in common. Our general outlooks were very similar, both of us vaunting pure knowledge and refusing to accept anything sacred or profane, as being beyond the grasp of human intelligence.

  I was as bored by Denkirch's majors as he was contemptuous (albeit silently) of mine, but I had a tremendous respect for the work he was doing. Not only did he take staggering course loads by special permission so that he could complete both majors in four years, but he taught himself a vast assortment of foreign languages as well. These included Oriental and Oceanic dialects in addition to the normal European and classical languages, there were a few tongues of which I had never heard before. Once in particular I remember seeing an aged, oddly unpleasant-looking book bound in faded snakeskin lying on Denkirch's desk. When I asked him what it was, he had answered, "A treatise on certain antiquities, in R'lyehan."

  I am a reasonably intelligent man, but Denkirch was beyond a doubt one of the most brilliant men of this or any age. He had a superb, balanced intellect-far less common than genius-and it was this that gave him the drive and the ability to turn our idle discussions into something very tangible.

  Mostly we argued about the place of the individual man in the Universe, both from interest and because it was equally outside our dissimilar majors. We were both romantics, believing the universe was purposeful, but I argued that each man was only a steppingstone to that purpose, while Denkirch insisted that the individual was immortal. I based my argument on the extreme rarity of even possible spiritual manifestations and Denkirch took the other tack, pointing out the exceptions for which no other explanation was satisfactory. It was an inexhaustible topic since neither of us had concrete proof, but the question caught Denkirch's fancy and even in college he began to go deeper into the subject than I could follow.

  After graduation I entered a Chicago law firm while Denkirch had no trouble getting an excellent teaching position at Cal Tech. We kept in touch, and in the mounting excitement of my friend's letters I saw that the material he was uncovering on his fancy was rapidly turning it into an obsession, After a few years he left Cal Tech for MIT, simply because it would bring him nearer to the great eastern libraries he wanted to consult and, when he stopped mentioning his project a little later, I realized that it was a result of success, not failure. He was on the brink of a great discovery but feared, like all scholars, to blurt out his suspicions until he was absolutely sure. Then one day he resigned his teaching post and moved to southern Il
linois, and even without his letter I would have known that he was searching for privacy to put his theories into practice.

  For six months I heard no more from Denkirch. Then a short letter came, asking me to join him and giving directions on how to reach him. I noticed that he was not actually living in any town but was several miles outside the nearest one, a tiny place called Merriam, of only three hundred souls.

  It was foolish for me to leave then. I was a junior partner with great things ahead of me if I were successful in a major case to be tried within the month, but despite this I had no thought of refusal. Denkirch was my friend and to us who have few, that is no little thing, but even more convincing was the sense of overwhelming importance which clung to even that prosaic letter. It was not just that I knew the answer to a great philosophical question might be close at hand, it was more; and if I had known how much more, I would have hidden myself in a place so remote that I never again would have heard of Denkirch or he of me.

  In the late afternoon of the next day I reached Merriam, which was just a straggle of houses on the highway, and then turned left on to a narrow, rutted gravel road marked by a big country-type mailbox with "Samuel Denkirch" stenciled on it. On the right side of the lane the ground was cut away in a high bank to a level above the top of the car and crowned with a wobbling barbed wire fence silhouetted against the low sun. The pasture to the left looked rocky and unpromising, an occasional clump of wild sumac standing out among the tall thistles and rank grass as a deep red blotch in the waning light and giving a frightful, blood-spattered appearance to an otherwise merely ugly landscape. The road was in as uncared-for a condition as the pasture and fences but had obviously been used much more recently. Heavy trucks seemed to have driven over it shortly after a rain, and the resultant ruts were nearly six inches deep except in places where a slab of rock underlay the sprinkling of gravel and jarred my teeth, even though I was proceeding in second gear.