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diff --git a/29954.txt b/29954.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4c9f56c --- /dev/null +++ b/29954.txt @@ -0,0 +1,607 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of There is a Reaper ..., by Charles V. De Vet + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: There is a Reaper ... + +Author: Charles V. De Vet + +Illustrator: W. E. Terry + +Release Date: September 10, 2009 [EBook #29954] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THERE IS A REAPER ... *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +There Is A Reaper ... + +_By Charles V. De Vet_ + + + Doctors had given him just one month to + live. A month to wonder, what comes afterward? + There was one way to find out--ask a dead man! + + +The amber brown of the liquor disguised the poison it held, and I +watched with a smile on my lips as he drank it. There was no pity in my +heart for him. He was a jackal in the jungle of life, and I ... I was +one of the carnivores. It is the lot of the jackals of life to be +devoured by the carnivore. + +Suddenly the contented look on his face froze into a startled stillness. +I knew he was feeling the first savage twinge of the agony that was to +come. He turned his head and looked at me, and I saw suddenly that he +knew what I had done. + +"You murderer!" he cursed me, and then his body arched in the middle and +his voice choked off deep in his throat. + +For a short minute he sat, tense, his body stiffened by the agony that +rode it--unable to move a muscle. I watched the torment in his eyes +build up to a crescendo of pain, until the suffering became so great +that it filmed his eyes, and I knew that, though he still stared +directly at me, he no longer saw me. + +Then, as suddenly as the spasm had come, the starch went out of his body +and his back slid slowly down the chair edge. He landed heavily with his +head resting limply against the seat of the chair. His right leg doubled +up in a kind of jerk, before he was still. + +I knew the time had come. "Where are you?" I asked. + +This moment had cost me sixty thousand dollars. + +Three weeks ago the best doctors in the state had given me a month to +live. And with seven million dollars in the bank I couldn't buy a minute +more. + +I accepted the doctors' decision philosophically, like the gambler +that I am. But I had a plan: One which necessity had never forced me to +use until now. Several years before I had read an article about the +medicine men of a certain tribe of aborigines living in the jungles at +the source of the Amazon River. They had discovered a process in which +the juice of a certain bush--known only to them--could be used to poison +a man. Anyone subjected to this poison died, but for a few minutes after +the life left his body the medicine men could still converse with him. +The subject, though ostensibly and actually dead, answered the medicine +men's every question. This was their primitive, though reportedly +effective method of catching glimpses of what lay in the world of death. + +[Illustration] + +I had conceived my idea at the time I read the article, but I had never +had the need to use it--until the doctors gave me a month to live. Then +I spent my sixty thousand dollars, and three weeks later I held in my +hands a small bottle of the witch doctors' fluid. + +The next step was to secure my victim--my collaborator, I preferred to +call him. + +The man I chose was a nobody. A homeless, friendless non-entity, picked +up off the street. He had once been an educated man. But now he was only +a bum, and when he died he'd never be missed. A perfect man for my +experiment. + +I'm a rich man because I have a system. The system is simple: I never +make a move until I know exactly where that move will lead me. My field +of operations is the stock market. I spend money unstintingly to secure +the information I need before I take each step. I hire the best +investigators, bribe employees and persons in position to give me the +information I want, and only when I am as certain as humanly possible +that I cannot be wrong do I move. And the system never fails. Seven +million dollars in the bank is proof of that. + +Now, knowing that I could not live, I intended to make the system work +for me one last time before I died. I'm a firm believer in the adage +that any situation can be whipped, given prior knowledge of its +coming--and, of course, its attendant circumstances. + + * * * * * + +For a moment he did not answer and I began to fear that my experiment +had failed. "Where are you?" I repeated, louder and sharper this time. + +The small muscles about his eyes puckered with an unnormal tension +while the rest of his face held its death frost. Slowly, slowly, +unnaturally--as though energized by some hyper-rational power--his lips +and tongue moved. The words he spoke were clear. "I am in a ... a ... +tunnel," he said. "It is lighted, dimly, but there is nothing for me to +see." Blue veins showed through the flesh of his cheeks like watermarks +on translucent paper. + +He paused and I urged, "Go on." + +"I am alone," he said. "The realities I knew no longer exist, and I am +damp and cold. All about me is a sense of gloom and dejection. It is an +apprehension--an emanation--so deep and real as to be almost a tangible +thing. The walls to either side of me seem to be formed, not of +substance, but rather of the soundless cries of melancholy of spirits I +cannot see. + +"I am waiting, waiting in the gloom for something which will come to me. +That need to wait is an innate part of my being and I have no thought of +questioning it." His voice died again. + +"What are you waiting for?" I asked. + +"I do not know," he said, his voice dreary with the despair of centuries +of hopelessness. "I only know that I must wait--that compulsion is +greater than my strength to combat." + +The tone of his voice changed slightly. "The tunnel about me is widening +and now the walls have receded into invisibility. The tunnel has become +a plain, but the plain is as desolate, as forlorn and dreary as was the +tunnel, and still I stand and wait. How long must this go on?" + +He fell silent again, and I was about to prompt him with another +question--I could not afford to let the time run out in long +silences--but abruptly the muscles about his eyes tightened and subtly a +new aspect replaced their hopeless dejection. Now they expressed a +black, bottomless terror. For a moment I marveled that so small a +portion of a facial anatomy could express such horror. + +"There is something coming toward me," he said. "A--beast--of brutish +foulness! Beast is too inadequate a term to describe it, but I know no +words to tell its form. It is an intangible and evasive--thing--but very +real. And it is coming closer! It has no organs of sight as I know them, +but I feel that it can see me. Or rather that it is aware of me with a +sense sharper than vision itself. It is very near now. Oh God, the +malevolence, the hate--the potentiality of awful, fearsome +destructiveness that is its very essence! And still I cannot move!" + +The expression of terrified anticipation, centered in his eyes, lessened +slightly, and was replaced, instantly, by its former deep, deep despair. +"I am no longer afraid," he said. + +"Why?" I interjected. "Why?" I was impatient to learn all that I could +before the end came. + +"Because ..." He paused. "Because it holds no threat for me. Somehow, +someday, I understand--I know--that it too is seeking that for which I +wait." + +"What is it doing now?" I asked. + +"It has stopped beside me and we stand together, gazing across the +stark, empty plain. Now a second awful entity, with the same leashed +virulence about it, moves up and stands at my other side. We all three +wait, myself with a dark fear of this dismal universe, my unnatural +companions with patient, malicious menace. + +"Bits of ..." He faltered. "Of ... I can name it only _aura_, go out +from the beasts like an acid stream, and touch me, and the hate, and the +venom chill my body like a wave of intense cold. + +"Now there are others of the awful breed behind me. We stand, waiting, +waiting for that which will come. What it is I do not know." + +I could see the pallor of death creeping steadily into the last corners +of his lips, and I knew that the end was not far away. Suddenly a black +frustration built up within me. "What are you waiting for?" I screamed, +the tenseness, and the importance of this moment forcing me to lose the +iron self-control upon which I have always prided myself. I knew that +the answer held the secret of what I must know. If I could learn that, +my experiment would not be in vain, and I could make whatever +preparations were necessary for my own death. I had to know that answer. + +"Think! Think!" I pleaded. "What are you waiting for?" + +"I do not know!" The dreary despair in his eyes, sightless as they met +mine, chilled me with a coldness that I felt in the marrow of my being. +"I do not know," he repeated. "I ... Yes, I do know!" + +Abruptly the plasmatic film cleared from his eyes and I knew that for +the first time, since the poison struck, he was seeing me, clearly. I +sensed that this was the last moment before he left--for good. It had to +be now! + +"Tell me. I command you," I cried. "What are you waiting for?" + +His voice was quiet as he murmured, softly, implacably, before he was +gone. + +"We are waiting," he said, "for _you_." + + +THE END + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + + This etext was produced from _Imagination Stories of Science and + Fantasy_ August 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any + evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. + Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without + note. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's There is a Reaper ..., by Charles V. 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