Perhaps they were only a few heaps of rubbish which were propped there—heaps which he hadn’t been able to distinguish on first entering. He had begun to convince himself that this was true, and that in any case it didn’t matter, when he noticed that the dimness was not altogether still. Part of it was moving.
No, it was not dimness. It was a glow, which was crawling jerkily over the rows of seats, toward the first of the objects propped up in them. Was the glow being carried along the central aisle? Thank God, he couldn’t quite distinguish its source. Perhaps that source was making a faint sound, a moist somewhat rhythmic muttering that sounded worse than senile, or perhaps that was only the wind.
Lee began to creep along the front of the cinema, just beneath the screen. Surely his legs wouldn’t let him down, though they felt flimsy, almost boneless. Once he reached the side aisle he would be safe and able to hurry, the gaslights would show him the way to the gap in his wall. Wouldn’t they also make him more visible? That ought not to matter, for—his mind tried to flinch away from thinking—if anything was prowling in the central aisle, surely it couldn’t outrun him.
He had just reached the wall when he thought he heard movement in the theater box above him. It sounded dry as an insect, but much larger. Was it peering over the edge at him? He couldn’t look up, only clatter along the bare floorboards beneath the gaslights, on which he could see no flames at all.
He still had yards to go before he reached the gap when the roving glow touched one of the heaps in the seats.
If he could have turned and run blindly, nothing would have stopped him; but a sickness that was panic weighed down his guts, and he couldn’t move until he saw. Perhaps there wasn’t much to see except an old coat, full of lumps of dust or rubble, that was lolling in the seat; nothing to make the flashlight shudder in his hand and rap against the wall. But sunken in the gap between the lapels of the coat was what might have been an old Halloween mask overgrown with dust. Surely it was dust that moved in the empty eyes—yet as the flashlight rapped more loudly against the wall, the mask turned slowly and unsteadily toward him.
Panic blinded him. He didn’t know who he was nor where he was going. He knew only that he was very small and at bay in the vast dimness, through which a shape was directing a glow toward him. Behind the glow he could almost see a face from which something pale dangled. It wasn’t a beard, for it was rooted in the gaping mouth.
He was thumping the wall with the flashlight as though to remind himself that one or the other was there. Yes, there was a wall, and he was backing along it: backing where? Toward the shop, his shop now, where he wouldn’t need to use the flashlight, mustn’t use the flashlight to illuminate whatever was pursuing him, mustn’t see, for then he would never be able to move. Not far to go now, he wouldn’t have to bear the dark much longer, must be nearly at the gap in the wall, for a glow was streaming from behind him. He was there now, all he had to do was turn his back on the cinema, turn quickly, just turn—
He had managed to turn halfway, trying to be blind without closing his eyes, when his free hand touched the object which was lolling in the nearest seat. Both the overcoat and its contents felt lumpy, patched with damp and dust. Nevertheless the arm stirred; the object at the end of it, which felt like a bundle of sticks wrapped in torn leather, tried to close on his hand.
Choking, he pulled himself free. Some of the sticks came loose and plunked on the rotten carpet. The flashlight fell beside them, and he heard glass breaking. It didn’t matter, he was at the gap, he could hear movement in the shop, cars and buses beyond. He had no time to wonder who was in there before he turned.
The first thing he saw was that the light wasn’t that of streetlamps; it was daylight. At once he saw why he had made the mistake: the gap was no longer there. Except for a single brick, the wall had been repaired.
He was yelling desperately at the man beyond the wall, and thumping the new bricks with his fists—he had begun to wonder why his voice was so faint and his blows so feeble—when the man’s face appeared beyond the brick-sized gap. Lee staggered back as though he was fainting. Except that he had to stare up at the man’s face, he might have been looking in a mirror.
He hadn’t time to think. Crying out, he stumbled forward and tried to wrench the new bricks loose. Perhaps his adult self beyond the wall was aware of him in some way, for his face peered through the gap, looking triumphantly contemptuous of whoever was in the dark. Then the brick fitted snugly into place, cutting off the light.
Almost worse was the fact that it wasn’t quite dark. As he began to claw at the bricks and mortar, he could see them far too clearly. Soon he might see what was holding the light, and that would be worst of all.
THE HOUSE AT EVENING
by Frances Garfield
Frances Garfield was born Frances Marita Obrist on December 1, 1908 in Deaf (rhymes with “leaf”) Smith County, Texas. Not long afterward, her family moved to Wichita, Kansas, where Garfield grew up, attending Wichita University (now Wichita State University). There she met neophyte writer, Manly Wade Wellman; in 1930 she and Wellman were married, and the couple soon moved to New York, where Wellman became a regular contributor to Weird Tales and to the science fiction pulps. Although Garfield’s background was in music, it was perhaps inevitable that she would try her own hand at writing, which she did quite successfully. In 1939 and 1940 Garfield published three stories in Weird Tales and another in Amazing Stories. The birth of a son at this time brought a halt to her budding writing career, and one wonders what might have been. However, there is something about having once been a Weird Tales author that draws writers back to the horror-fantasy genre even after decades of abstinence. E. Hoffmann Price, Hugh B. Cave, and the late H. Warner Munn are cases in point—and so is Frances Garfield. In recent years she has written a number of horror stories and sold them to today’s new publications—Whispers, Fantasy Tales, Kadath, Fantasy Book, as well as several anthologies. In 1951 Frances Garfield and Manly Wade Wellman moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and if you pass by their pine-guarded house on a foggy evening, you probably will hear two typewriters at work.
The sun had set and another twilight had begun. The western sky took on a rosy tinge, but none of the soft color penetrated into the lofty bedroom.
Claudia leaned toward the bureau. Her stormy black locks curtained her face as she brushed and brushed them. It was a luxurious, sensuous brushing. Her hair glistened in the light of the oil lamp.
Across the room sat Garland. She quickly combed her short blonde hair into an elfish mop of curls. “Thank goodness I don’t have to worry about a great banner like yours,” she said.
“Never you mind,” Claudia laughed back. “We both know it’s impressive.”
They both applied makeup generously. Claudia fringed her silvery eyes with deep blue mascara and Garland brushed her pale eyebrows with brown. Each painted her lips a rosy red and smiled tightly to smooth the lipstick.
They finished dressing and went down the squeaking staircase to the big parlor. Darkness crept in, stealthily but surely. They picked up jugs of oil and went about, filling and lighting all the ancient glass-domed lamps. Light flickered yellow from table and shelf and glistened on the wide hardwood floor boards. Claudia took pride in those old expanses, spending hours on her knees to rub them to a glow. Garland arranged a bowl filled with colorful gourds on the mahogany table that framed the back of a brocaded couch. She put two scented candles into holders and lighted them.