Microcosmic God (11 page)

“Why?”

“Oh, I got to. I—don’t know why. I just—got to.”

“What do you do here?”

“I just stay here and think about things. Once a lady lived here, had a little girl just like me. We used to play together until the lady watched us one day. She carried on somethin’ awful. She said her little girl was possessed. The girl kept callin’ me, ‘Ginny! Ginny! Tell Mamma you’re here!’; an’ I tried, but the lady couldn’t see me. Then the lady got scared an’ picked up her little girl an’ cried, an’ so I was sorry. I ran over here an’ hid, an’ after a while the other little girl forgot about me, I guess. They moved,” she finished with pathetic finality.

I was touched. “What will become of you, Ginny?”

“I dunno,” she said, and her voice was troubled. “I guess I’ll just stay here and wait for Mummy to come back. I been here a long time. I guess I deserve it, too.”

“Why, child?”

She looked guiltily at her shoes. “I couldn’ stand feelin’ so awful bad when I was sick. I got up out of bed before it was time. I shoulda stayed where I was. This is what I get for quittin’. But Mummy’ll be back; just you see.”

“Sure she will,” I muttered. My throat felt tight. “You take it easy, kid. Any time you want someone to talk to, you just pipe up. I’ll talk to you any time I’m around.”

She smiled and it was a pretty thing to see. What a raw deal for a kid! I grabbed my hat and went out.

Outside things were the same as in the room to me. The hallways, the dusty stair carpets wore new garments of brilliant, nearly intangible foliage. They were no longer dark, for each leaf had its own pale and different light. Once in a while I saw things not quite so pretty. There was a giggling thing that scuttled back and forth on the third floor landing. It was a little indistinct, but it looked a great deal like Barrel-head Brogan, a shanty-Irish bum who’d returned from a warehouse robbery a year or so ago, only to shoot himself accidentally with his own gun. I wasn’t sorry.

Down on the first floor, on the bottom step, I saw two youngsters sitting. The girl had her head on the boy’s shoulder, and he had his arms around her, and I could see the banister through them. I stopped to listen. Their voices were faint, and seemed to come from a long way away.

He said, “There’s one way out.”

She said, “Don’t talk that way, Tommy!”

“What else can we do? I’ve loved you for three years, and we still can’t get married. No money, no hope—no nothing. Sure, if we did do it, I just
know
we’d always be together. Always and always—”

After a long time she said, “All right, Tommy. You get a gun, like you said.” She suddenly pulled him even closer. “Oh, Tommy, are you sure we’ll always be together just like this?”

“Always,” he whispered, and kissed her. “Just like this.”

Then there was a long silence, while neither moved. Suddenly they were as I had first seen them, and he said:

“There’s only one way out.”

And she said, “Don’t talk that way, Tommy!”

And he said, “What else can we do? I’ve loved you for three years—” It went on like that, over and over and over.

I felt lousy. I went on out into the street.

It began to filter through to me what had happened. The man in the shop had called it a “talent.” I couldn’t be crazy, could I? I didn’t
feel
crazy. The draught from the bottle had opened my eyes on a new world. What was this world?

It was a thing peopled by ghosts. There they were—storybook ghosts, and regular haunts, and poor damned souls—all the fixings of a storied supernatural, all the things we have heard about and loudly disbelieved and secretly wonder about. So what? What had it all to do with me?

As the days slid by, I wondered less about my new, strange surroundings, and gave more and more thought to that question. I had bought—or been given—a talent. I could see ghosts. I could see all parts of a ghostly world, even the vegetation that grew in it. That was perfectly reasonable—the trees and birds and fungi and flowers. A ghost world is a world as we know it, and a world as we know it must have vegetation. Yes, I could see them. But they couldn’t see me!

O.K.; what could I get out of it? I couldn’t talk about it or write about it because I wouldn’t be believed; and besides, I had this thing exclusive, as far as I knew; why cut a lot of other people in on it?

On what, though?

No, unless I could get a steer from somewhere, there was no percentage in it for me that I could see. And then, about six days after I took that eye-opener, I remembered the one place where I might get that steer.

The Shottle Bop!

I was on Sixth Avenue at the time, trying to find something in a five-and-dime that Ginny might like. She couldn’t touch anything I brought her but she enjoyed things she could look at—picture books and such. By getting her a little book of photographs of trains since
the “DeWitt Clinton,” and asking her which of them was like ones she had seen, I found out approximately how long it was she’d been there. Nearly eighteen years. Anyway, I got my bright idea and headed for Tenth Avenue and the Shottle Bop. I’d ask that old man—he’d tell me. And when I got to Twenty-first Street, I stopped and stared. Facing me was a blank wall. The whole side of the block was void of people. There was no sign of a shop.

I stood there for a full two minutes not even daring to think. Then I walked downtown toward Twentieth, and then uptown to Twenty-first. Then I did it again. No shop. I wound up without my question answered—what was I going to with this “talent”?

I was talking to Ginny one afternoon about this and that when a human leg, from the knee down, complete and puffy, drifted between us. I recoiled in horror, but Ginny pushed it gently with one hand. It bent under the touch, and started toward the window, which was open a little at the bottom. The leg floated toward the crack and was sucked through like a cloud of cigarette smoke, reforming again on the other side. It bumbled against the pane for a moment and then ballooned away.

“My gosh!” I breathed. “What
was
that?”

Ginny laughed. “Oh, just one of the Things that’s all ’e time flying around. Did it scare you? I used to be scared, but I saw so many of them that I don’t care any more, so’s they don’t light on me.”

“But what in the name of all that’s disgusting are they?”

“Parts.” Ginny was all childish
savoir-faire
.

“Parts of what?”

“People, silly. It’s some kind of game,
I
think. You see, if someone gets hurt and loses something—a finger or an ear or something, why, the ear—the
inside
part of it, I mean, like me being the inside of the ‘me’ they carried out of here—it goes back to where the person who owned it lived last. Then it goes back to the place before that, and so on. It doesn’t go very fast. Then when something happens to a whole person, the ‘inside’ part comes looking for the rest of itself. It picks up bit after bit—Look!” she put out a filmy forefinger and thumb and nipped a flake of gossamer out of the air.

I leaned over and looked closely; it was a small section of semitransparent human skin, ridged and whorled.

“Somebody must have cut his finger,” said Ginny matter-of-factly, “while he was living in this room. When something happens to um—you see! He’ll be back for it!”

“Good heavens!” I said. “Does this happen to everyone?”

“I dunno. Some people have to stay where they are—like me. But I guess if you haven’t done nothing to deserve bein’ kept in one place, you have to come all around pickin’ up what you lost.”

I’d thought of more pleasant things in my time.

For several days I’d noticed a gray ghost hovering up and down the block. He was always on the street, never inside. He whimpered constantly. He was—or had been—a little inoffensive man of the bowler hat and starched collar type. He paid no attention to me—none of them did, for I was apparently invisible to them. But I saw him so often that pretty soon I realized that I’d miss him if he went away. I decided I’d chat with him the next time I saw him.

I left the house one morning and stood around for a few minutes in front of the brownstone steps. Sure enough, pressing through the flotsam of my new, weird coexistent world, came the slim figure of the wraith I had noticed, his rabbit face screwed up, his eyes deep and sad, and his swallowtail coat and striped waistcoat immaculate. I stepped up behind him and said, “Hi!”

He started violently and would have run away, I’m sure, if he’d known where my voice was coming from.

“Take it easy, pal,” I said. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Who are you?”

“You wouldn’t know if I told you,” I said. “Now stop shivering and tell me about yourself.”

He mopped his ghostly face with a ghostly handkerchief, and then began fumbling nervously with a gold toothpick. “My word,” he said. “No one’s talked to me for years. I’m not quite myself, you see.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, take it easy. I just happen to’ve noticed you wandering around here lately. I got curious. You looking for somebody?”

“Oh, no,” he said. Now that he had a chance to talk about his troubles, he forgot to be afraid of this mysterious voice from nowhere that had accosted him. “I’m looking for my home.”

“Hm-m-m,” I said. “Been looking for a long time?”

“Oh, yes.” His nose twitched. “I left for work one morning a long time ago, and when I got off the ferry at Battery Place I stopped for a moment to watch the work on that new-fangled elevated railroad they were building down there. All of a sudden there was a loud noise—my goodness! It was terrible—and the next thing I knew I was standing back from the curb and looking at a man who looked just like me! A girder had fallen, and—my word!” He mopped his face again. “Since then I have been looking and looking. I can’t seem to find anyone who knows where I might have lived, and I don’t understand all the things I see floating around me, and I never thought I’d see the day when grass would grow on lower Broadway—oh, it’s terrible.” He began to cry.

I felt sorry for him. I could easily see what had happened. The shock was so great that even his ghost had amnesia! Poor little egg—until he was whole, he could find no rest. The thing interested me. Would a ghost react to the usual cures for amnesia? If so, then what would happen to him?

“You say you got off a ferryboat?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must have lived on the Island … Staten Island, over there across the bay!”

“You really think so?” He stared through me, puzzled and hopeful.

“Why sure! Say, how’d you like me to take you over there? Maybe we can find your house.”

“Oh, that would be splendid! But—oh, my, what will my wife say?”

I grinned. “She might want to know where you’ve been. Anyway, she’ll be glad to see you back, I imagine. Come on; let’s get going!”

I gave him a shove in the direction of the subways and strolled along behind him. Once in a while I got a stare from a passer-by for walking with one hand out in front of me and talking into thin air.
It didn’t bother me very much. My companion, though, was very self-conscious about it, for the inhabitants of his world screeched and giggled when they saw him doing practically the same thing. Of all the humans, only I was invisible to them, and the little ghost in the bowler hat blushed from embarrassment until I thought he’d burst.

We hopped a subway—it was a new experience for him, I gathered—and went down to South Ferry. The subway system in New York is a very unpleasant place to one gifted as I was. Everything that enjoys lurking in the dark hangs out there, and there is quite a crop of dismembered human remains. After this day I took the bus.

We got a ferry without waiting. The little gray ghost got a real kick out of the trip. He asked me about the ships in the harbor and their flags, and marveled at the dearth of sailing vessels. He
tsk, tsked
at the Statue of Liberty; the last time he had seen it, he said, was while it still had its original brassy gold color, before it got its patina. By this I placed him in the late ’70s; he must have been looking for his home for over sixty years!

We landed at the Island, and from there I gave him his head. At the top of Fort Hill he suddenly said, “My name is John Quigg. I live at 45 Fourth Avenue!” I’ve never seen anyone quite so delighted as he was by the discovery. And from then on it was easy. He turned left again, straight down for two blocks and again right. I noticed—he didn’t—that the street was marked “Winter Avenue.” I remembered vaguely that the streets in this section had been numbered years ago.

He trotted briskly up the hill and then suddenly stopped and turned vaguely. “I say, are you still with me?”

“Still here,” I said.

“I’m all right now. I can’t tell you much how much I appreciate this. Is there anything I could do for you?”

I considered. “Hardly. We’re of different times, you know. Things change.”

He looked, a little pathetically, at the new apartment house on the corner and nodded. “I think I know what happened to me,” he said softly. “But I guess it’s all right.… I made a will, and the kids
were grown.” He sighed. “But if it hadn’t been for you I’d still be wandering around Manhattan. Let’s see—ah; come with me!”

He suddenly broke into a run. I followed as quickly as I could. Almost at the top of the hill was a huge old shingled house, with a silly cupola and a complete lack of paint. It was dirty and it was tumble-down, and at the sight of it the little fellow’s face twisted sadly. He gulped and turned through a gap in the hedge and down beside the house. Casting about in the long grass, he spotted a boulder sunk deep into the turf.

“This is it,” he said. “Just you dig under that. There is no mention of it in my will, except a small fund to keep paying the box rent. Yes, a safety-deposit box, and the key and an authority are under that stone. I hid it”—he giggled—“from my wife one night, and never did get a chance to tell her. You can have whatever’s any good to you.” He turned to the house, squared his shoulders, and marched in the side door, which banged open for him in a convenient gust of wind. I listened for a moment and then smiled at the tirade that burst forth. Old Quigg was catching real hell from his wife, who’d sat waiting for over sixty years for him! It was a bitter stream of invective, but—well, she must have loved him. She couldn’t leave the place until she was complete, if Ginny’s theory was correct, and she wasn’t really complete until her husband came home! It tickled me. They’d be all right now!