A Pleasure to Burn (13 page)

Stendahl confronted the robot Garrett. “You have your orders, Garrett?”

“Yes, sir.” The robot sat up. “I'm to return to Moral Climates. I'll file a complementary report. Delay action for at least forty-eight hours. Say I'm investigating more fully.”

“Right, Garrett. Good-by.”

The robot hurried out to Garrett's rocket, got in, and flew away.

Stendahl turned. “Now, Pikes, we send the remainder of the Invitations for tonight. I think we'll have a jolly time, don't you?”

“Considering we waited twenty years, quite jolly!”

They winked at each other.

 

S
EVEN O'CLOCK
.
Stendahl studied his watch. Almost time. He twirled the sherry glass in his hand. He sat quietly. Above him, among the oaken beams, the bats, their delicate copper bodies hidden under rubber flesh, blinked at him and shrieked. He raised his glass to them. “To our success.” Then he leaned back, closed his eyes and considered the entire affair. Now he would
savor
this in his old age. This paying back of the antiseptic government for their literary terrors and conflagrations. Oh, how the anger and hatred had grown in him through the years. Oh, how the plan had taken a slow shape in his numbed mind, until that day, three years ago, when he had met Pikes.

Ay, yes, Pikes. Pikes, with the bitterness in him as deep as a black, charred well of green acid. Who was Pikes? Only the greatest of them all! Pikes, the man of ten thousand faces, a fury, a smoke, a blue fog, a white rain, a bat, a gargoyle, a monster, that was Pikes! A whisper, a scream, a terror, a witch, a puppet, all things was Pikes! Better than Lon Chaney, the father?

Stendahl ruminated. Night after night he had watched Chaney in the old films. Yes, better than Chaney. Better than that other ancient mummer? What was his name? Karloff? Far better! Lugosi? The comparison was odious! No, there was only one Pikes, and he was a man stripped of his fantasies, now, no place on earth to go, no one to show off to. Forbidden even to perform for himself, before a mirror!

Poor impossible, defeated Pikes! How must it have felt, Pikes, the night they seized your films, like entrails yanked from the camera, out of your guts, clutching them in rolls and wads to stuff them up a stove to burn away! Did it feel as bad as having some fifty thousand books annihilated with no recompense? Yes. Yes. Stendahl felt his hands grow cold with the senseless anger. So what more natural than they would one day talk over endless coffee-pots into innumerable midnights, and out of all the talk and the bitter brewings would come—the House of Usher.

A great church bell rang. The guests were arriving.

Smiling, he went to greet them.

 

F
ULL GROWN WITHOUT MEMORY
the robots waited. In green silks the color of forest pools, in silks the color of frog and fern they waited. In yellow hair the color of the sun and sand, the robots waited. Oiled, with tube-bones cut from bronze and sunk in gelatin, the robots lay. In coffins for the not dead and not alive, in planked boxes, the metronomes waited to be set in motion. There was a smell of lubrication and lathed brass. There is a silence of the tombyard. Sexed but sexless, the robots. Named but unnamed, and borrowing from humans everything but humanity, the robots stared at the nailed lids of their labeled F.O.B. boxes, in a death that was not even a death for there had never been a life. And now there was a vast screaming of yanked nails. Now there was a lifting of lids. Now there were shadows on the boxes, and the pressure of a hand squirting oil from a can. Now one clock was set in motion, a faint ticking. Now another and another, until this was an immense clock shop, purring. The marble eyes rolled wide their rubber lids. The nostrils winked.

The robots, clothed in hair of ape and white rabbit arose, Tweedledum following Tweedledee, Mock-Turtle, Dormouse, drowned bodies from the sea compounded of salt and white-weed, swaying; hung, blue-throated men with turned up, clam-flesh eyes, and creatures of ice and burning tinsel, loam-dwarves and pepper-elves, Tik-Tok, Ruggedo, Saint Nicholas with a self-made snow flurry blowing on before him, Bluebeard with whiskers like acetylene flame, and sulphur clouds from which green fire snouts protruded, and in scaly and gigantic serpentine, a dragon, with a furnace in its belly, reeled out the door with a scream, a tick, a bellow, a silence, a rush, a wind.

Ten thousand lids fell back. The clock shop moved out into Usher. The night was enchanted.

 

A
WARM BREEZE CAME OVER THE LAND
.
The guest rockets, burning the sky and turning the weather from autumn to spring, arrived.

The men stepped out in evening clothes and the women stepped out after them, their hair coifed up in elaborate detail.

“So that's Usher!”

“But where's the door?”

At this moment, Stendahl appeared. The women laughed and chattered. Mr. Stendahl raised a hand to quiet them. Turning, he looked up to a high castle window and called:

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”

And from above, a beautiful maiden leaned out upon the night wind and let down her golden hair. And the hair twined and blew and became a ladder upon which the guests might ascend, laughing, into the House.

What eminent sociologists! What clever psychologists! What tremendously important politicians, bacteriologists, and neurologists! There they stood, within the dank walls.

“Welcome, all of you!”

Mr. Tryon, Mr. Owen, Mr. Dunne, Mr. Lang, Mr. Steffens, Mr. Fletcher, and a double-dozen more.

“Come in, come in!”

Miss Gibbs, Miss Pope, Miss Churchill, Miss Blunt, Miss Drummond, and a score of other women, glittering.

Eminent, eminent people, one and all, members of the Society for the Prevention of Fantasy, advocators of the banishment of Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes, killers of bats, burners of books, bearers of torches; good clean citizens, every one! And what is more, friends! Yes, carefully, carefully, he had met and befriended each, in the last year!

“Welcome to the vasty halls of Death!” he cried.

“Hello, Stendahl, what
is
all this?”

“You'll see. Everyone off with your clothes. You'll find booths to one side there. Change into costumes you find there. Men on this side, women that.”

The people stood uneasily about.

“I don't know if we should stay,” said Miss Pope. “I don't like the looks of this. It verges on—blasphemy.”

“Nonsense, a costume ball!”

“This seems quite illegal,” said Mr. Steffens, sniffing about.

“Oh, come off it,” said Stendahl, laughing. “Enjoy yourselves. Tomorrow, it'll be a ruin. Get in there, all of you. The booths!”

The House blazed with life and color, harlequins rang by with belled caps and white mice danced miniature quadrilles to the music of dwarves who tickled tiny fiddles with tiny bows, and flaps rippled from scorched beams while bats flew in clouds about the gargoyle turrets and the gargoyles spouted down red wine from their mouths, cool and wild and foaming. There was a creek which wandered through the seven rooms of the masked ball, and the guests were bade to sip of it and found it to be sherry.

The guests poured forth from the booths transformed from one age into another, their faces covered with dominoes, the very act of putting on a mask revoking all their licenses to pick and quarrel with fantasy and horror. The women swept about in red gowns, laughing.

The men danced them attendance. And on the walls were shadows with no people to throw them, and here or there were mirrors in which no image showed.

“All of us vampires!” laughed Mr. Fletcher. “Dead!”

There were seven rooms, each a different color, one blue, one purple, one green, one orange, another white, the sixth violet, and the seventh shrouded in black velvet. And in the black room was an ebony clock which struck the hour loud. And through these rooms the guests ran, drunk at last, among the robot fantasies, amid the Dormice and Mad Hatters, the trolls and giants, the Black Cats and White Queens, and under their dancing feet the floor gave off the massive pumping beat of a hidden telltale heart.

“Mr. Stendahl!”

A whisper.

“Mr. Stendahl!”

 

A
MONSTER WITH THE FACE OF DEATH
stood at his elbow. It was Pikes. “I must see you alone.”

“What is it?”

“Here.” Pikes held out a skeleton hand. In it were a few half-melted, charred wheels, nuts, cogs, bolts.

Stendahl looked at them for a long moment. Then he drew Pikes into a corridor.

“Garrett?” he whispered.

Pikes nodded. “He sent a robot in his place. Cleaning out the incinerator a moment ago, I found these.”

They both stared at the fateful cogs for a time.

“This means the police will be here any minute,” said Pikes. “Our plan will be ruined.”

“I don't know.” Stendahl glanced in at the whirling yellow and blue and orange people. The music swept through the misting halls. “I should have guessed Garrett wouldn't be fool enough to come in person. But wait!”

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing. There's nothing the matter. Garrett sent a robot to us. Well, we sent one back. Unless he checks closely he won't notice the switch.”

“Of course!”

“Next time, he'll come
himself.
Now that he thinks it's safe. Why, he might be at the door any minute, in
person!
More wine, Pikes!”

The great bell rang.

“There he is now, I'll bet you. Go let Mr. Garrett in.”

Rapunzel let down her golden hair.

“Mr. Stendahl?”

“Mr. Garrett. The
real
Mr. Garrett?”

“The same.” Garrett eyed the dank walls and the whirling people. “I thought I'd better come see for myself. You can't depend on robots. Other people's robots, especially. I also took the precaution of summoning the Dismantlers. They'll be here in one hour to knock the props out from under this horrible place.”

Stendahl bowed. “Thanks for telling me.” He waved his hand. “In the meantime, you might as well enjoy this. A little wine?”

“No thank you. What's going on? How low can a man sink?”

“See for yourself, Mr. Garrett.”

“Murder,” said Garrett.

“Murder most foul,” said Stendahl.

A woman screamed. Miss Pope ran up, her face the color of a cheese. “The most horrid thing just happened! I saw Miss Blunt strangled by an ape and stuffed up a chimney!”

They looked and saw the long yellow hair trailing down from the flue. Garrett cried out.

“Horrid!” sobbed Miss Pope, and then ceased crying. She blinked and turned. “Miss Blunt!”

“Yes,” said Miss Blunt, standing there.

“But I just saw you crammed up the flue!”

“No,” laughed Miss Blunt. “A robot of myself. A clever facsimile!”

“But, but—”

“Don't cry, darling. I'm quite all right. Let me look at myself. Well, so there I
am!
Up the chimney, like you said. Isn't that funny?”

Miss Blunt walked away, laughing softly.

“Have a drink, Garrett?”

“I believe I will. That unnerved me. My God, what a place. This
does
deserve tearing down. For a moment there …” Garrett drank.

 

A
NOTHER SCREAM
.
Mr. Steffens, borne upon the shoulders of four white rabbits, was carried down a flight of stairs which magically appeared in the floor. Into a pit went Mr. Steffens, where, bound and tied, he was left to face the advancing razor steel of a great pendulum which now swept down, coming closer and closer to his outraged body.

“Is that me down there?” said Mr. Steffens, appearing at Garrett's elbow. He bent over the pit. “How strange, how odd, to see yourself die.”

The pendulum made a final stroke.

“How realistic,” said Mr. Steffens, turning away.

“Another drink, Mr. Garrett?”

“Yes, please.”

“It won't be long. The Dismantlers will be here.”

“Thank God!”

And for a third time, a scream.

“What now?” said Garrett, apprehensively.

“It's my turn,” said Miss Drummond. “Look.”

And a second Miss Drummond, shrieking, was nailed into a coffin and thrust into the raw earth under the floor.

“Why I remember
that,
”
gasped the Investigator of Moral Climates. “From the old forbidden books. The Premature Burial. And the others. The Pit, the Pendulum, and the ape; the chimney, the Murders in the Rue Morgue. In a book I burned, yes!”

“Another drink, Garrett. Here, hold your glass steady.”