In the dimness Norton shook his head. The group fell into a taut silence, sliced only by their strained breathing.
What, indeed? Mr. Sebastian waited in alert expectancy. Was it a contrived sound effect? Or something else? He glanced sideways at the dark forms of his companions and felt a sharp throb of contempt. He was so far beyond them, so remote, so superior...
The professor with his amateur’s interest and academic sense of shame about that very interest, something to be hidden from his professional colleagues back home. The American couple, she predictably suggestible, and he all swelling fright behind his bluster, although he would never admit it. And Norton. The paid employee, playing his role with just the right amount of innuendo and commercial bonhomie, but still somehow an unknown quantity.
They were such blundering novices, so superficial in their responses, so ridiculously normal. Way out of their depths in these surroundings, of course. Even if there were — other things here, they wouldn’t understand what it meant, what it meant to him. Unless Norton himself...
“Down the hall,” Mrs. Randall whispered.
They stiffened and looked, eyes boring into the blackness.
“What was it?” Professor Wilkes asked. “I can’t see anything.”
She was too near total fright to answer; they could sense her trembling. Randall moved closer and put his arm around her.
“Shine that light down the hall, Mr. Norton,” the professor said somewhat sharply. “What good is it aimed at the floor?”
“Oh, no, sir, I’d rather not.”
“But why?”
“Wouldn’t be advisable. I’ve been here before, sir, you know.”
“Well?”
“Wise not to bother whatever’s there. If there is something.”
The professor looked meaningfully at Mr. Sebastian as if to establish a united front with him against Norton; then, noticing not even a muscle-quiver of sympathetic reaction, he turned away, shaking his head peevishly.
“Not exactly a very scientific approach, is it? What do you expect us to see, standing here like statues gaping into a cave? Three pounds — I didn’t pay three pounds to take eye exercises.”
Although angry, the professor remained in full control of himself: he was careful to keep his voice down.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Norton said calmly. “But I’m not going to lift this torch one bloody bit. In fact, I have a good mind to put it out entirely. Look now, folks,” he went on in the same unhurried tone. “Can you see it?”
Mr. Sebastian tensed. He had caught a glimpse of something, something faintly luminous that danced around the edges of his vision just for an instant before vanishing. A feverish spasm shook him. What if this house really war? What if he had dragged his way through a dozen countries on two continents, to find this?
“Oh, God,” Mrs. Randall quavered.
“Steady, ma’am.” Norton switched off his flashlight.
And now they all saw it distinctly, moving toward them through the long corridor. It had the blurry outline of a human shape without limbs, a grotesque glowing torso. Its motion was odd. The thing did not seem to be either walking or floating, but rather jerking forward in an almost hesitant way, nor did it appear to be touching the floor, although it was so dark they couldn’t be sure of that.
Yet its advance was steady despite the convulsive movements.
“Thorpe, for God’s sake don’t let it come in here,” Mrs. Randall whispered, clinging to her husband. Undoubtedly she would have fled if the thing had not been in the corridor, blocking the only way out.
“Probably won’t,” Norton said, pitching his voice to a normal level in order to calm her.
“What?” her husband asked.
“It probably won’t come in.”
The dark bulk that was the Randalls shuddered a little.
“What if it does?” one of them said.
“Don’t move. Don’t move or talk.”
It was only about twenty feet from the doorway now, and they realized that it was not becoming clearer and more distinct as it neared them; the thing remained a hazy phosphorescence without detail, shape, form. It was bigger, but no more identifiable. It looked like nothing on earth. And it made no sound at all.
“Fascinating.” Staring, the professor was awed and exultant. “But what the devil is it?”
They saw that it was between five and six feet in height. It seemed to have substance. There was a suggestion, a shadow behind its glowing surface, a shadowy aura of something tangible, something that could be grasped. But they still could not be positive; the thing was much too nebulous, as difficult to pin down as quicksilver.
Mrs. Randall whimpered.
“Stop it,” her husband murmured hoarsely.
Mr. Sebastian’s eyes were following its progress like an avid leech, never relaxing their grip. He was leaning forward in his eagerness to study it, lips drawn back against his teeth.
Suddenly he nodded. His lips loosened and formed a kind of smile. Then he straightened.
“Have you received your money’s worth now, Professor Wilkes?” he asked in that oddly accented voice.
Wilkes looked at him, puzzled. “Yes. Yes, I have.”
Mr. Sebastian’s saturnine features shifted into a smirk of amusement. “You are mistaken, sir. You have not had full value for your three pounds. So far. But you shall, you shall.” His teeth glistened in the dark.
“What are you talking about?” Norton asked Sebastian, obviously irritated.
He paid no attention. The thing was fake, he was sure of it now. And a rather amateurish kind of fake at that. The flashlight signals, phosphorous paint, trained employee inside the black cloth sack, scrupulously tied around the ankles and resulting in those jerky forward movements... Relief swept through him. He was free to take over, this virgin territory was his.
He shook with excitement. No one knew better than he how ferociously selfish the spirits were about big old mansions; they’d forced him out of house after house on three continents, houses he had discovered, only because he preferred to operate as a single. But this wonderful place was so remote and so recently available that it might take years before any of the others found out about it.
Mrs. Randall screamed as Mr. Sebastian dematerialized. They all stood frozen in terror, staring at him for an awful moment longer. Then the group fled down the corridor and out of the house, followed by a clumsy, frantic, hobbling figure inside a black bag.
But the creature that had been called Mr. Sebastian didn’t even notice. It was floating from room to room in quiet ecstasy, inspecting its new quarters.
A Matter of Patience
by Norman Daniels
An unfaithful wife, he fold himself, deserves a hard life... an even harder death.
Leo Damion had smoked his second cigar before the couple emerged from the motel and he saw the man help the woman into the sleek, fire-engine-red sports car which had been parked outside the cabin.
His rage was the quiet kind for the moment, but the most dangerous kind because the woman was his wife and he’d warned her before about this sort of thing.
He wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d had an unhappy marriage with him. In their thirteen years together, he’d provided well. As a successful manufacturer, he’d made sufficient money to keep her in mink coat, cape and stole. Her perfumes were imported and her dresses came from only the best couturiers.
He had provided a nine room, three-and-a-half-bath ranch-suburban home which was as nice a place as the whole section boasted of. She had her own car, a by-the-day maid and a laundress. He took her to the best restaurants and night clubs. If they didn’t make first night at the theatre, they were there the second.