Smoke Ghost & Other Apparitions Read online

  Smoke Ghost and Other Apparitions

  Fritz Leiber

  Acknowledgements

  The editors would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Susan Chernauskas, David Read, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Darrell Schweitzer, Allen Koszowski, Jim Rockhill, Peter Enfantino, Brian Metz of Green Rhino Graphics, and most especially Julie Grob of the Special Collections Department at the University of Houston for their help in the preparation of this volume.

  Introduction

  "Nor will science ever be able to kill the feelings of wonder in the human spirit. The mystery of the black outer gulfs, and of the deepest cognitive processes within us, must always remain unplumbed–and against these imagination must always frantically pound..."

  So wrote H. P. Lovecraft to his young correspondent Fritz Leiber on 19 December 1936, somewhat less than three months before his own death. Lovecraft had sought to educate his new friend in the classics of the various imaginative genres, from M. R. James through Lord Dunsany all the way to Olaf Stapledon. Like Lovecraft, Leiber would base his writing on this study and use the knowledge to unite British and American methods in developing – what exactly? Quite a few of his tales seem to occupy a territory that is purely his. We shall encounter some in the present collection, though it's devoted to the supernatural and macabre.

  It takes its title from one of his radical tales, in which the modern urban environment is the source of the supernatural rather than being invaded. Here and in "The Hill and the Hole" there's more than a touch of M. R. James at his most reticent, but nobody could mistake the tales for imitations. They first saw pulp publication, as did "The Power of the Puppets". Here one may detect a yellowing smell, but the blend of noir fiction and the supernatural has life in it yet, and deserves its resurrection. By contrast, the later "Cry Witch!" feels based on folklore, though its haunting eroticism is typical of Fritz. The erotic is more openly expressed in "The Enormous Bedroom", which progresses in a series of tableaux reminiscent of a perverse MGM musical.

  I like to think that "Black Glass" may have derived from Fritz's stay in New York around the 1976 World Fantasy Convention, after which occasion he delighted a party at Jack Sullivan's apartment with a reading of "Little Old Miss Macbeth". When we walked him to the subway the notion of his travelling alone worried my wife, but he was forever adventurous. The setting of the climax of "Black Glass" at the top of the World Trade Center above a devastated city is far too poignant now. Nevertheless the tale was one of his most evocative transformations of an urban landscape into a vista of fantastic menace, though let me hear no talk of prescience.

  "I'm Looking for Jeff" mates noir and supernatural to create an apparition as lyrically sexual as it is eerie: M. R. James wouldn't have cared for it at all. "The Eeriest Ruined Dawn World" is a post-apocalyptic elegy; perhaps a distant echo of Donald Wandrei may be heard. Like "Jeff", "The Winter Flies" is an alcoholic's tale, though I hesitate to suggest how much of its unique Leiberesque surrealism may derive from that state. "Replacement for Wilmer" seems to reminisce about the condition too, with an affection that doesn't preclude criticism, while it subtly evokes the spectral.

  "The House of Mrs. Delgato" is ingenious and, as you'll see when you finish it, very Fritz, if minor. I imagine Jeffrey Archer would like it. "The Black Ewe", on the other hand, takes on the future as an unknowable nightmare. Although it was published in Startling Stories, it can be seen as anti-science, though perhaps that isn't singular in that magazine. It demonstrates how Fritz was as much at home with science fiction as fantasy and horror, not a common range. "Richmond, Late September, 1849" is equally at ease with the past, and offers an ingeniously visionary interpretation both of Poe's tales and of his fascination with the mysterious feminine, one of the threads of the present book and indeed of Fritz's career.

  Two stories venture onto Robert Bloch's psychological territory, though "MS. Found in a Maelstrom" is even darker and more tortured–not least in its prose–than Bob generally got, while "Do You Know Dave Wenzel?" is surely seminal in showing an everyday marriage psychotically invaded from within. "A Visitor from Back East" might have been written to demonstrate Lovecraft's contention that if "atmosphere is genuine while it lasts", a final rationalisation need not rob apparently supernatural images of their power. "Dark Wings" is an unqualified fantasy, but rooted in Jung. When I bought it for my first anthology, Fritz mentioned that he hoped to see it produced as a play; alas, I'm not aware that it was. As for "The Button Molder", which I take out of sequence in order to end with it, it represents Fritz's relaxed later mode. A story both discursive and precise, it deals with a ghost but touches on science fiction too, and is one of his most openly autobiographical tales.

  On with the feast! This book demonstrates not only Fritz's scope but also that of horror fiction at its best, to the development of which he was crucial. I was privileged to meet the man, but those who know only the work may learn a good deal about him–a gentle and generous spirit, and a great dreamer. He left us much to build upon.

  Ramsey Campbell

  Wallasey, Merseyside

  1 October 2001

  SMOKE GHOST

  MISS MILLICK wondered just what had happened to Mr. Wran. He kept making the strangest remarks when she took dictation. Just this morning he had quickly turned around and asked, "Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Millick?" And she had tittered nervously and replied, "When I was a girl there was a thing in white that used to come out of the closet in the attic bedroom when I slept there, and moan. Of course it was just my imagination. I was frightened of lots of things." And he had said, "I don't mean that kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world today, with the soot of the factories on its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal yards and slip around at night through deserted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of books." And she hadn't known what to say.

  He'd never been like this before. Of course he might be joking, but it didn't sound that way. Vaguely Miss Millick wondered whether he mightn't be seeking some sort of sympathy from her. Of course, Mr. Wran was married and had a little child, but that didn't prevent her from having daydreams. The daydreams were not very exciting, still they helped fill up her mind. But now he was asking her another of those unprecedented questions.

  "Have you ever thought what a ghost of our times would look like, Miss Millick? Just picture it. A smoky composite face with the hungry anxiety of the unemployed, the neurotic restlessness of the person without purpose, the jerky tension of the high-pressure metropolitan worker, the uneasy resentment of the striker, the callous opportunism of the scab, the aggressive whine of the panhandler, the inhibited terror of the bombed civilian, and a thousand other twisted emotional patterns. Each one overlying and yet blending with the other, like a pile of semi-transparent masks?"

  Miss Millick gave a little self-conscious shiver and said, "That would be terrible. What an awful thing to think of."

  She peered furtively across the desk. Was he going crazy? She remembered having heard that there had been something impressively abnormal about Mr. Wran's childhood, but she couldn't recall what it was. If only she could do something – laugh at his mood or ask him what was really wrong. She shifted the extra pencils in her left hand and mechanically traced over some of the shorthand curlicues in her notebook.

  "Yet, that's just what such a ghost or vitalized projection would look like, Miss Millick," he continued, smiling in a tight way. "It would grow out of the real world. It would reflect all the tangled, sordid, vicious, things. All the loose ends. And it would be very grimy. I don't think it would seem white or wispy or favour graveyards. It wouldn't moan. But it would m
utter unintelligibly, and twitch at your sleeve. Like a sick, surly ape. What would such a thing want from a person, Miss Millick? Sacrifice? Worship? Or just fear? What could you do to stop it from troubling you?"

  Miss Millick giggled nervously. There was an expression beyond her powers of definition in Mr. Wran's ordinary, flat-cheeked, thirtyish face, silhouetted against the dusty window. He turned away and stared out into the grey downtown atmosphere that rolled in from the railroad yards and the mills. When he spoke again his voice sounded far away.

  "Of course, being immaterial, it couldn't hurt you physically – at first. You'd have to be peculiarly sensitive even to see it, or be aware of it at all. But it would begin to influence your actions. Make you do this. Stop you from doing that. Although only a projection, it would gradually get its hooks into the world of things as they are. Might even get control of suitably vacuous minds. Then it could hurt whomever it wanted."

  Miss Millick squirmed and read back her shorthand, like the books said you should do when there was a pause. She became aware of the failing light and wished Mr. Wran would ask her to turn on the overhead. She felt scratchy, as if soot were sifting down on to her skin.

  "It's a rotten world, Miss Millick," said Mr. Wran, talking at the window. "Fit for another morbid growth of superstition. It's time the ghosts, or whatever you call them, took over and began a rule of fear. They'd be no worse than men."

  "But" – Miss Millick's diaphragm jerked, making her titter inanely – "of course there aren't any such things as ghosts."

  Mr. Wran turned around.

  "Of course there aren't Miss Millick," he said in a loud, patronizing voice, as if she had been doing the talking rather than he. "Science and common sense and psychiatry all go to prove it."

  She hung her head and might even have blushed if she hadn't felt so all at sea. Her leg muscles twitched, making her stand up, although she hadn't intended to. She aimlessly rubbed her hand back and forth along the edge of the desk.

  "Why, Mr. Wran, look what I got off your desk," she said, showing him a heavy smudge. There was a note of clumsily playful reproof in her voice. "No wonder the copy I bring you always gets so black. Somebody ought to talk to those scrubwomen. They're skimping on your room."

  She wished he would make some normal joking reply. But instead he drew back and his face hardened.

  "Well, to get back to that business of the second class mailing privileges," he rapped out harshly, and began to dictate.

  When she was gone he jumped up, dabbed his finger experimentally at the smudged part of the desk, frowned worriedly at the almost inky smears. He jerked open a drawer, snatched out a rag, hastily swabbed off the desk, crumpled the rag into a ball and tossed it back. There were three or four other rags in the drawer, each impregnated with soot.

  Then he strode over to the window and peered out anxiously through the gathering dusk, his eyes searching the panorama of roofs, fixing on each chimney and water tank.

  "It's a neurosis. Must be compulsions. Hallucinations," he muttered to himself in a tired, distraught voice that would have made Miss Millick gasp. "It's that damned mental abnormality cropping up in a new form. Can't be any other explanation. But it's so damned real. Even the soot. Good thing I'm seeing the psychiatrist. I don't think I could force myself to get on the elevated tonight -" His voice trailed off, he rubbed his eyes, and his memory automatically started to grind.

  It had all begun on the elevated. There was a particular little sea of roofs he had grown into the habit of glancing at just as the packed car carrying him homeward lurched around a turn. A dingy, melancholy little world of tar-paper, tarred gravel, and smoky brick. Rusty tin chimneys with odd conical hats suggested abandoned listening posts. There was a washed-out advertisement of some ancient patent medicine on the nearest wall. Superficially it was like ten thousand other drab city roofs. But he always saw it around dusk, either in the smoky half-light, or tinged with red by the flat rays of a dirty sunset, or covered by ghostly wind-blown white sheets of rain-splash, or patched with blackish snow; and it seemed unusually bleak and suggestive, almost beautifully ugly, though in no sense picturesque; dreary, but meaningful. Unconsciously it came to symbolize for Catesby Wran certain disagreeable aspects of the frustrated, frightened century in which he lived, the jangled century of hate and heavy industry and total wars. The quick, daily glance into the half darkness became an integral part of his life. Oddly, he never saw it in the morning, for it was then his habit to sit on the other side of the car, his head buried in the paper.

  One evening toward winter he noticed what seemed to be a shapeless black sack lying on the third roof from the tracks. He did not think about it. It merely registered as an addition to the well-known scene and his memory stored away the impression for further reference. Next evening, however, he decided he had been mistaken in one detail. The object was a roof nearer than he had thought. Its colour and texture, and the grimy stains around it, suggested that it was filled with coal dust, which was hardly reasonable. Then, too, the following evening it seemed to have been blown against a rusty ventilator by the wind – which could hardly have happened if it were at all heavy. Perhaps it was filled with leaves. Catesby was surprised to find himself anticipating his next daily glance with a minor note of apprehension. There was something unwholesome in the posture of the thing that stuck in his mind – a bulge in the sacking that suggested a misshapen head peering around the ventilator. And his apprehension was justified, for that evening the thing was on the nearest roof, though on the farther side, looking as if it had just flopped down over the low brick parapet.

  Next evening the sack was gone. Catesby was annoyed at the momentary feeling of relief that went through him, because the whole matter seemed too unimportant to warrant feelings of any sort. What difference did it make if his imagination had played tricks on him, and he'd fancied that the object was crawling and hitching itself slowly closer across the roofs? That was the way any normal imagination worked. He deliberately chose to disregard the fact that there were reasons for thinking his imagination was by no means a normal one. As he walked home from the elevated, however, he found himself wondering whether the sack was really gone. He seemed to recall a vague, smudgy trail leading across the gravel to the nearer side of the roof, which was marked by a parapet. For an instant an unpleasant picture formed in his mind – that of an inky humped creature crouched behind the parapet, waiting. Then he dismissed the whole subject.

  The next time he felt the familiar grating lurch of the car, he caught himself trying not to look out. That angered him. He turned his head quickly. When he turned it back his compact face was definitely pale. There had only been time for a fleeting rearward glance at the escaping roof. Had he actually seen in silhouette the upper part of a head of some sort peering over the parapet? Nonsense, he told himself. And even if he had seen something, there were a thousand explanations which did not involve the supernatural or even true hallucination. Tomorrow he would take a good look and clear up the whole matter. If necessary, he would visit the roof personally, though he hardly knew where to find it and disliked in any case the idea of pampering a silly fear.

  He did not relish the walk home from the elevated that evening, and visions of the thing disturbed his dreams and were in and out of his mind all next day at the office. It was then that he first began to relieve his nerves by making jokingly serious remarks about the supernatural to Miss Millick, who seemed properly mystified. It was on the same day, too, that he became aware of a growing antipathy to grime and soot. Everything he touched seemed gritty, and he found himself mopping and wiping at his desk like an old lady with a morbid fear of germs. He reasoned that there was no real change in his office, and that he'd just now become sensitive to the dirt that had always been there, but there was no denying an increasing nervousness. Long before the car reached the curve, he was straining his eyes through the murky twilight, determined to take in every detail.

  Afterward he realized that
he must have given a muffled cry of some sort, for the man beside him looked at him curiously, and the woman ahead gave him an unfavorable stare. Conscious of his own pallor and uncontrollable trembling, he stared back at them hungrily, trying to regain the feeling of security he had completely lost. They were the usual reassuringly wooden-faced people everyone rides home with on the elevated. But suppose he had pointed out to one of them what he had seen – that sodden, distorted face of sacking and coal dust, that boneless paw which waved back and forth, unmistakably in his direction, as if reminding him of a future appointment – he involuntarily shut his eyes tight. His thoughts were racing ahead to tomorrow evening. He pictured this same windowed oblong of light and packed humanity surging around the curve – then an opaque monstrous form leaping out from the roof in a parabolic swoop – an unmentionable face pressed close against the window, smearing it with wet coal dust -huge paws fumbling sloppily at the glass -

  Somehow he managed to turn off his wife's anxious inquiries. Next morning he reached a decision and made an appointment for that evening with a psychiatrist a friend had told him about. It cost him a considerable effort, for Catesby had a well-grounded distaste for anything dealing with psychological abnormality. Visiting a psychiatrist meant raking up an episode in his past which he had never fully described even to his wife. Once he had made the decision, however, he felt considerably relieved. The psychiatrist, he told himself, would clear everything up. He could almost fancy him saying, "Merely a bad case of nerves. However, you must consult the oculist whose name I'm writing down for you, and you must take two of these pills in water every four hours," and so on. It was almost comforting, and made the coming revelation he would have to make seem less painful.

  But as the smoky dust rolled in, his nervousness returned and he let his joking mystification of Miss Millick run away with him until he realized that he wasn't frightening anyone but himself.