Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 Canadian (17 page)

T WAS awakened the next morning by an eerie sense of something unreal and terrible. I fought to adjust myself, and rose on the bed to peer out. I could see nothing except a yellow mass of something plastered against the window, and I fell back on the bed. Strangely,

at the same time, I had a curious sensation of being both awake and in full possession of my senses, and in the grip of some awful nightmare. I was vaguely aware of a noise outside, and finally identified it positively as Buck's raging voice. There was a heavy, nauseous scent in my nostrils, but finally I shook myself awake and leaped out of bed. Just at that moment the window shattered and the terrible, complete reality of what was outside burst upon me with all the sharpness of a stinging whip lash.

I tried to run, to escape from the bedroom into the kitchen and get my hands on the revolver I kept there. But the great jaws that were thrust through the open window opened and closed on my pajamas. I was dragged back through the window and dropped to the grass beneath it. I lay motionless there, unable to cry out, or move, or do anything except stare.

Tsan-Lo stood over me, and even my most horrible nightmares had never painted a picture so terrible. As he squatted there, the top of his head touched the top of the second-story window. His yellow, expressionless eyes were big as saucers. He panted slightly, and the fangs over which his lips were curled were a full six inches long. His paws were the size of elephant's feet, and still all I could do was lie and stare. It had happened, as Ibcllius Grut's book had said it could I Something—! Somehow—!

My shocked brain began to function, and for some reason I remembered an excerpt from Grut's letter. "I have experimented on Tsan-Lo myself." He had! Indeed he had! And the tap on the head I had given Tsan-Lo last night had set in active motion all the hellish things

THE FANGS OF TSAN-LO

85

with which Grut had been working. Tsan-Lo, with the brain of a killer, was bigger tnan tne biggest Percheron stallion! Desperately I gauged my chances of doing anything at all. And then the dog moved.

He reached down to rip my pa jama coat from me, and a scrape of his immense paw carried away the trousers. I lay stark naked, and he dipped his head to gather me in his jaws. I felt his hot tongue on my belly, the roof of his mouth gritted on my back. I was to Tsan-Lo what a rabbit is to an ordinary Springer or Labrador. Had he so desired he might have bitten me in half and swallowed me in six gulps.

But he didn't. He hardly more than pinched, and it was not difficult to understand the reason for that. He was a retriever, undoubtedly one which had had some training', and they are taught to be lender mouthed. Even though this one had reverted four hundred thousand years, he still was unable to forget the training that had been drummed into his brain.

With my head, shoulders, and arms dangling from one side of his jaws, and my thighs and legs from the other, Tsan-Lo began to trot away. I was half numb with terror, but still noticed hazily what went on about me. There was Buck, leaping against his run and trying to tear it down as he strove to close with this monstrous thing. A half dozen of the other dogs, the braver ones, were likewise snarling and barking. But most of them cowered in their kennels. I saw Tsan-Lo's shattered run.

Paying not the least attention to the other dogs, Tsan-Lo threaded his way among the kennels and started for the lake. Si; ill only half-conscious, but think-

ing with the detached clarity that a numbed man sometimes will achieve, I tried to fathom his design. Tsan-Lo entered the lake, waded out far beyond the depth where an ordinary dog would have been swimming, and struck across the deep water. It was then that I knew his intent. There was a woods on the other side of the lake. Tsan-Lo was a wild thing, and like all such wanted to eat his captured prey in solitude. We were three-quarters of the way across the lake when he suddenly opened his jaws to drop me. I heard a high-pitched, excited voice:

"Buck, fetch!"

T SWAM groggily, trying to keep my -"- head above water, and turned to gaze at the shore. My blood froze in my veins. Standing on the shore, trim and slender and unafraid was Sally. Tsan-Lo swam toward her with his head high, churning the water and leaving a curling wake behind. I screamed:

"Sally, run! For God's sake, run !"

Buck's silky black coat shone like a polished mirror as he sprang into the lake, I saw Tsan-Lo gain the bank, bear down on Sally. I tried, with all the strength I had left, to swim toward them, to reach her side before that horror did. But even as I swam I knew that it was hopeless. And something seemed to have hold of me now, something that gripped my limbs and dragged me back into the water. The bright morning faded into night.

. . . When I awakened I was lying on the lake shore, with my head pillowed on Sally's lap. I looked up into her eyes, and saw tears there.

"Clint! Darling!" she moaned.

I moved then. I think that word from

THE FANGS OP TSAN-LO

Sally would have brought me back from the dead.

"I_ What happened?"

"Clint!" she kissed me then. "You're alive!"

"What'd you call me?"

"Darling," her eyes were shining.

"What about Harris H. Harris?"

"He told me last night that he's going to marry Lucy Stanner, of the banking Stanners. But I like dogs — and dog trainers.

"Tsan-Lo?"

"He fell in the mudhole, Gint. I ran down this morning when I heard Buck raising the fuss. I saw that Tsan-Lo had broken out of his pen, and that you'd broken your bedroom window when, in the grip of a nightmare, you left your bed. I sent Buck to bring you out of the lake. Tsan-Lo attacked me. But I was on the other side of the mudhole, and he tried to cross it. But he went down."

"He—. He was big as a horse," I murmured.

"Clint, darling, you're still dreaming. I always knew you needed a woman to take care of you."

"I—. I need some clothes," I said.

Sally smiled. "The care's already started, Clint I got some trousers from

the house and put them on you."

That's about all, except that when I wrote to tell Dr. IbelHus Grut of Tsan-Lo's death I received word that Grut had been found dead in his office. That was three years ago, and Sally's Mrs. Roberts now. We live here, and train retrievers, and we're doing all right too. Little Sally—she's the image of her mother and I hardly know which one to love the most.

Of course there is one other item worth mentioning, and you have to remember that there was never yet a situation with which Sally was unable to cope. For instance, if she could possibly arrange it, her husband would look back on some things as just a terrible fantasy, and never as reality. After all. I have to work with dogs. But I finally had the mudhole drained. They took a skeleton out of there, a skeleton of a huge dog that scientists said was at least a quarter of a million years old. It made quite a stir in the papers. Then, too, I'd always been of the opinion that any ordinary dog could easily have crossed that mudhole. But if something weighing three thousand pounds ever fell into it—. I didn't say anything.

There are times when it's just as well not to.

IT . . . IT'S impossible." His concentration was so great that he didn't know he had spoken aloud. He closed one eye entirely, then opened it, slowly, Hoping against hope, he then worked his tongue into a corner of his cheek and rotated it about. He watched. Stared. A pulse was drumming fiercely in his forehead as he backed away from ihe mirror.

He had first noticed it a short time ago; seven days to be exact. It is logical to suppose that he would have known of it sooner if he had been a vainer man. Most certainly, then, he would have looked into mirrors a great deal oftener.

But Jay Swarz was a mild man; a meek man; a man completely devoid of ego. He wore his habits the way he wore his clothes . . . soberly. He did not sin; he would not. He did not cheat; he could not. Three drinks before dinner and his reactions unmistakably informed him that he'd had enough. . He was like that.

Once again he shot a covert glance at the miiror. There it was . . . plain to see . . .

Jay Swarz had been brought up properly. But that is an expression that has lost its true meaning. To speak with exactitude, it is better to say that he had been brought up primly.

It was only a week ago that his reflection had abruptly rebelled.

H

By CHARLES KING

In an era where modesty was considerably more than a fetish; an era where the most innocuous words called down condemnation upon the luckless user. Jay Swarz' family proudly outdid themselves in righteous self-effacement.

Completely cloaked with the mantle of selflessness ... or so they insisted . . . they balanced themselves with practiced step upon the tightrope of virtue. No matter the season, their bodies were swathed in layer upon layer of raiment. Indoors, their comportment was such as to assure them frontrow seats in the heavenly orchestra of harpists ... or so they insisted.

Jay had never been one to rebel. He was the sort born to accept orders unquestioning!)'. . If, even in the privacy of one's room, it was immodest and wrong to undress before dousing the lights, he carefully put out the lights before removing his breeches. His parents had instructed him. He obeyed them. It he had to go to the lavatory it would never do to say so. That would have been grievously shocking. Any simple excuse to leave the room was acceptable under those conditions . . . but never the immodest truth.

But all these bugaboos paled before the one strict immutable rule that pervaded the Swarz household. Serving the

THE MIRROR

interests of virtue, one might do everything in one's power . . . and then fail. How ? By looking, smiling at, daring to admire one's reflected form in a mirror. The human form was a debased thing of evil that only served to lead its owner off the garden path. Thus, logically, it was a thing to remain unseen; avoided. Jay's Father used it for shaving. That was its purpose.

i~\NE of Jay's most memorable rccol-^^ lections was the time that he had been caught. He'd lost a tooth, as boys will, and was entirely engrossed in exploring the bloody cavity with an inquisitive finger. The mirror helped a great deal as he probed and poked . . . until . . .

"Jar!"

He swerved, nearly upsetting himself, and paled. "Yes, Father?"

"Ungodly brat! You were lasciviously admiring yourself !"

"I ... I don't understand, Father."

"Do not trifle with' me. I have explained the sin often enough,"

"It was the big word I didn't understand. And, honest, I was just fooling .. . "

Which is as far as Jay got. His gasp was cut off as a gnarled hand jerked at the back of his collar. The shaving strop was seized, raised aloft, then brought down with a singing swish. Jay's cry of pain suffered the same brief span that his gasp had lasted. The steadily flailing strip of leather effectively stifled everything but an agonized wish for death. Again and again it rose and fell. The regularity was monotonous. The pain eventually indescribable.

Things, after a while resolved into a v. hiding world of unbeheved torture.

Again and again rose the leather flail . . . down and down it beat against the semi-conscious jerking form that was Jay Swarz. Jay finally fainted . . .

A graphic experience is forever etched upon the consciousness of a child. Jay never forgot that beating. It bad the constant impact of a sledge-hammer swung against a huge brazen gong. The reverberations went on and on and on. . . .

Jay grew older and finally left home to establish his own way in the world. He trod in minor paths. Luckier than most men, he never was troubled by au all-consuming ambition. The highways for others—the byways for him. A small job; a small room; these quite comfortably fitted his small desires.

His position with a large insurance company was safe and steady. Nobody resents a man who doesn't covet positions that aren't better than his; nobody wields an economic knife against a man who is supremely satisfied to trudge a tuneless treadmill.

He was accepted with the same careless complacence that is usually associated with a slightly worn piece of office furniture; and he was considered very much as devoid of personality or hidden depth.

But they would have been surprised.

He did have a secret.

Jay Swars was stiU afraid of mirrors.

Psychologically conditioned by the ultra-stem conditions of his youth, his fear never diminished. To the contrary, it fed upon itself and grew constantly. Morbidly. A man incapable of making living enemies, he found himself in the anomalous position of having an inanimate foe. He used mirrors as sparingly as k was humanly possible. Brushing

THE MIRROR

bis teeth and washing his face were easy. No ordeal there. But shaving was a shuddering time of terror that had to be agonized through every morning.

And now . . .

"It's impossible!"

But it was possible.

It was there . . . plain to see . . . plain to see.

Even as his eyes clung to the mirror, and his mouth was drawn thin with horror, his reflection was laughing at him. His hand stole to his face ... his reflected hand didn't. There were new lines in his face, but his mirrored face was full and untroubled. His eyelids twitched uncontrollably, but not so in the likeness that was flung back at him. Horribly, silently, the face in the mirror kept laughing and laughing.