Fragments - Lee Francis
A test of a very good story is you can even enjoy fragments of it. Here are two from late 1940s Amazing Stories. The named author, Lee Francis, is actually a so called "house name" (i.e., a joker-is-wild name that a pulp magazine editor used when he preferred not to identify a real-person author of the story). The originals were a husband and wife team, Leroy and Frances Yerxa.
The two fragments show signs their stories were written around 1944 and probably held unpublished in the editor's file. The editor named in the story, Raymond A. Palmer, was the most famous editor of Amazing, and reigned from 1938 to 1949. The Jackson Whites are actual people that are mentioned in records, as atavistic mountain or shore people, possibly remnants of Amerindians or escaped mixed-race slaves. Interestingly, they seem to be the same mountain people who inhabit part of Edith Wharton's short novel Summer though Wharton does not use that name. And Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle uses them as survivors of Hendrik Hudson's journey that Rip falls in with before he sleeps
OK. The text of the first fragment follows:
Fragment of Forgotten Hades from May, 1948, Amazing Stories. It lost its title page.
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My editor, Ray Palmer, warned me, "You're just a small-town boy. I'd hate to see you starve down there."
I assured him hurriedly that I owed my life to him, that I wouldn't drop one word in New York, and that I was after a "true" fantasy story.
"No one will believe this particular fantasy is true," he warned me, but---make it good and I'll see that your kids eat while you're gone, even if you starve, yourself."
Ray Palmer knows people in the high places. Through him I managed a reservation on the plane, found that I could have a berth (Ed: identifies that this was written, latest, in early 1940s when commercial fliers could buy passenger sleeping berths) all the way to the big city, and even got a cab to the airport.
I wired the source of my story, a Mr Will Dean, that I was on my way and gave him the time of my arrival.
Without waiting for his reply I took the plane that night. Palmer had done a nice job of fixing things. The ticket and the berth were ready and I settled down for a good night's sleep on the airliner.
I arrived during the early morning and Dean wasn't at LaGuardia Field.
I spent 2 hours wandering about the terminal waiting for Dean to show. How I ever thought I'd recognize him I didn't know. I'd never seen the man in my life.
After I thought a while, I decided I was a darned fool for coming all the way to New York when I didn't have the slightest idea what or who I was looking for.
Will Dean---a name---a man who had signed a letter.
Then I thought of his newspaper and spent two more hours trying to phone it.
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At last I talked with Dean's boss, Bill Proust, an editor I had known quite well back in college days.
"Dean is a scrappy guy," Proust told me. "Damn near quit his job before I would give him that vacation. I can't afford to lose him, he's that good."
I asked when he had seen Dean last.
"He left last night," he said. "Told me he'd be back today and go on his vacation Saturday. Thought he'd be in this morning. Say, why don't you come up and have breakfast with me? I eat about 10. Dean will probably show up here.
Being a pulp writer and having the habit of waking at 9 and attending Palmer's "Coffee Club" at 10, I liked the sound of coffee with Proust.
I shared a cab uptown with a couple of army lieutenants (Ed: again dates the writing to wartime 1940s) and managed to find the restaurant Proust had mentioned.
He met me, led me to a corner table and we ate. Proust had taken on 6 inches around the waist since college days, was a great guy as I had remembered him, and insisted on calling the office every 5 minutes to see if Dean had come in.
We talked until noon and Proust started to worry.
"That's Dean for you," he said upon returning from his 10th trip to the phone booth. "No sign of him. I called his boarding house. Landlady has your wire but he hasn't shown up to get it. I wonder ...?"
He didn't tell me what he was wondering so I suggested we part company and I visit my sister-in-law at her job in New Jersey. If he heard from Dean in the afternoon he could call me. Frankly, I was rather
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sour on Dean by that time and wanted to get away from New York. Just a small-town boy at heart, I was beginning to wish I'd stayed on Michigan Avenue where I belonged and made up fantasy as I went along, without any extended treks to the big city in search of the great and illusive "truth."
Proust put me on the subway and told me where to catch the ferry to New Jersey. Two hours and fifty four minutes later, I was giving my sister-in-law, Lucille, at her workplace in the police building. a proper brother-in-law kiss.
To my surprise she was quite serious about my mission and thought she could add some useful information to my meager collection.
"Wait a while," she said, "I'll talk to the Chief. I'd like you to see something we have upstairs.
She went whisking away down the clean marble hall and left me standing with mind in turmoil.
In a few minutes she was back, motioning me to follow her. We took an elevator to the 3rd floor and I followed her down the hall into a room that said "13K" on the door. It was neat and white inside and I noticed what I first thought was a child lying in a small bed, the bed clothes pulled up around her neck.
Was it a child?
I went closer and after a long time, I looked up at Lucille who stood on the far side of the bed staring at me. She shook her head.
Jackson White, she said and then I knew this was no child at all. This creature whose dead eyes stared up at me was a woman.
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Her hair was long and matted with stick-tights.
"We cleaned her up this morning," Lucille said. "The hair was hopeless."
The woman was small. I could tell from the outline under the sheets that she wasn't larger than a 12-year-old. Her face was free from wrinkles and one could detect a certain degenerate beauty about it. Her eyes had been filled with animal terror and she had died with the look still in them.
"What---happened?" I asked.
Lucille shuddered.
"I flatter myself that I'm tough," she said. "But---this ...."
She lifted the sheet. Then I saw what had given her the case of shudders. Just above the thigh, cut deep into the flesh, was a brand.
I call it a brand, for it had obviously been made with an instrument of some sort. It was a perfect outline of the fleur-de-lis, the French sign, burned centuries ago, into the skin of French convicts who must live out their years in prison.
Lucille covered the body.
"A salesman picked the body up early this morning at the edge of a swamp. It was close to the spot where we went for the picnic last summer."
I remembered.
The salesman was driving into New York. He thought this was a child. He said he couldn't just leave the body there. So he brought it in and we have it up here for post-mortem."
She continued in a hushed voice, "The woman seems to be in her thirties, but she was carrying the doll."
Now I noticed the doll. The ungodly combination of an adult woman with a brand on her hip, and the rag doll in her arms, something that struck terror in me. It didn't make sense. It didn't
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fit into any of the slick puzzles I had created for my readers.
I moved closer to the bed and saw that the doll's head was sticking out from the covers.
I drew the sheet down a bit and studied the ragged, filthy object.
It was no more than a dollar variety of rag-doll common in so many nurseries. The filth of it and the way the woman had cuddled it to her gave the thing a special significance.
I was about to cover it again when I saw what I thought was a pencil smudge on the corner of the tiny gray-white apron tied about the doll's middle. I don't know what possessed me but I clutched the doll suddenly and pulled it from the bed.
Then I was reading the scrawl on the inner side of the tiny apron.
"Don't search for the source of the brand---the man with the claw," there followed several words I could not read as they had evidently been obliterated by mud and water. Then, the signature---"Dean."
I let it go at that and returned to New York. I contacted Proust and we had dinner together. Dean had not shown up.
Forty-eight hours passed. Will Dean did not return and no one heard a word about him.
A week---and I returned to Chicago without even visiting the strange marsh where the Jackson Whites made their home.
I was rushing to finish a novel for Palmer and he called me back on the job. I meant to write my quota, turn it in, and go back to search for Will Dean.
A month passed and then the search wasn't necessary.
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I heard from Proust that Dean's body had been found, washed up by the Atlantic on the border of the Jersey marshes. A Coast Guard patrol had found the body. It was in a bad state, but on the right elbow they could make out a strange, deeply burned scar. It looked, they said strangely like a flower. A flower with three drooping petals.
The fleur-de-lis! I'm not sure? I only know that I still kept the doll's apron in my desk and I took it out and read the strange message once more.
"Don't search for the source of the brand --- the man with the claw --- Dean."
It made no sense to me this time, nor had it before. I tried to put it aside and finish a short-short I was working on. It was no good. I went out and got tight. Palmer tried to contact me for three days, but as he said afterward, he gave it up, "knowing your habit of hiding out in the damned-est places."
I don't know myself where I went. When I returned to my office, Palmer was waiting for me. He had a thick envelope with him.
"This came yesterday," he said. "Knowing you as I do, and with your usual three-day vacation used up, I have been expecting your remains to be carted up here for the past hour.
"You're ready for coffee?"
I thanked him for bringing up the envelope, and I guess he was curious as I about it.
It was dated three days before and posted at a small sub-station on the Jersey shore. I'll swear that envelope had been dunked in the Atlantic, dragged through every mud hole in New Jersey and mailed by the dirtiest fingered gent in the coal-hauling business. It was a tough envelope. An 8 by 10, very full of pages and
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seemingly able to take the punishment it had been given.
I tore it open and a mess of odds & ends of paper fluttered out. Palmer and I collected them, placed them on the desk and tried to make sense of the writing.
It was evidently scrawled with a heavy black pencil and I thought the words looked familiar. I skipped back to the last page and found the signature.
"Will Dean."
No wonder I had recognized the handwriting. It was the same scrawl that had been used on the doll apron.
I think, when I had finished reading the script to Ray, he agreed that although people might not believe all they read, at least this story, tossed up from God knows what hole in Hell, was due to give them a great deal to think about. Here are Will Dean's words:
I told you it would be hard to stay in High Junction this winter. I'm lonely for those cloudless, warm skies and for you. I'll stick it out for I know that a young doctor, and especially one of the weaker sex, doesn't get a chance to hang out her shingle every day.
High Junction is up here in the Divide where it gets snowed in sometimes for several weeks. The temperature drops to thirty below Fahrenheit (c.minus 34 degrees C) and shows a strange reluctance to rise again. I'm afraid I'd rather be Mrs Doc Fromm this winter but I decided to become a career girl and I'll stick it out.
I do have an interesting case. Frederick Cool is his name and he used to run the telephone exchange here. I'm afraid he's slightly wacky, Peter. Yet, he's nearly sixty and quite harmless. He has the smoothest face and kindest blue eyes I've ever seen.
Mr Cool came into to see me three weeks ago. He said he had retired from his job at the exchange because they had installed one of those mechanical relay systems here for handling telephone calls. You remember the one downtown in Riley Township? A small brick building, locked up, windowless, with a magic inside that sorts and puts through any call you care to dial? With them, one operator can handle several towns. That gives you the picture.
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Frederick Cool is insane for sure, Peter. I would say, after questioning him for some time, that he retains only a vague idea of what goes on about him. I treated him kindly, advising him to get away from the town and take a vacation in a more friendly climate. He had a temper tantrum and wanted to know what a woman doctor would know about that. Threatened to change doctors. I reminded him I was the only one in town and he calmed down a lot.
He said he was sorry and that there was something I ought to know about. I'll never forget how the poor old man affected me. It was a cold, unfriendly day to begin with, and a first snow had placed a wet blanket on everything, including my state of mind. Mr Cool leaned forward and said:
"You see, Doctor, I know I'm crazy. That's unusual isn't it?" Most insane people think they are normal. I know better, and I know why."
His words were spoken hardly above a whisper.
"I haven't told anybody," he continued, "and I'm not going to tell you. My mind isn't clear now. I couldn't remember all the details so I wrote them down."
He was wearing an old tweed suit with frayed cuffs, and trousers neatly patched at the knees with a slightly different colored fabric. He brought from his inside coat pocket a collection of papers. They were as many as the colors in biblical Joseph's coat of many-colors---pages torn from magazines with notes made in the margin---sheets from nickel scratch pads.
He passed them to me and ducked his head as he spoke, as though talking to the floor.
"I'm ashamed of the condition of my diary. I wrote when I could---when my mind was clear."
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Truthfully, Pete, I didn't want to read the stuff but I couldn't hurt his feelings.
"I'll keep this in my desk," I promised, and read it when I can. Perhaps it will give us a basis for treatment of your case."
That ended our conversation. He wandered out into the street and down past the new telephone building. It's a small, fifteen foot affair with a freshly painted, locked door. Inside, the mechanical 'operator' takes care of the job Mr. Cool used to take so much pride in. Cool hesitated opposite the building, then as I watched him, he shook his head slowly and went shuffling onward.
I didn't have time to look at the diary until the following Thursday. Then, as I expected Cool on Friday, I scooped his papers from my desk, dropped them into my bag and took them to my hotel room. My room is very lonely, Pete. I guess I've mentioned that in every letter. I'll be very happy when I've proved to the world I can be a good doctor, and then have the chance to settle down and prove I'm just as good a wife. Do I bore you, future husband?
Finally I put my bare feet on a hot water bottle, picked up Frederick Cool's strange manuscript and started to read. I intended to put it aside in twenty minutes. When the Central Divide freight train came through town at three this morning, I was still reading. Pete, I'm going to say the same thing that Cool said in my office the other day.
I'm ashamed of the condition of the diary. Cool wrote only when his mind was clear. He didn't write well. I tried to read with a calm, scientific approach. Now I'm exhausted and all tied up inside. I'm not at all sure of my own sanity. I'm sending the diary to
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you because it has given me a queer, lopsided viewpoint on life. Perhaps the intense cold has affected my brain. Perhaps I'm going crazy. You're the only one I can depend on. I've always come to you when I couldn't plan for myself, and you've never let me down.
You're so far away from this icy bit of Hades, perhaps you can read with a clear mind. I want your clear, honest opinion of Fred Cool's manuscript. I'm only sure of one thing now. When I pass that tightly locked phone building on Main Street, I stare at the windowless walls and wonder if strange death lurks within the sealed crypt. For heaven's sake, don't tell me I'm mad until you've read every last word.
I love you, Doctor, in case you've forgotten.
Jean.
(Dr Fromm) The diary was in bad order when I started to assemble it. I became so fascinated by the warn pages that I asked my secretary to transcribe them at once. She worked on them as I read and soon the whole story was assembled in some order and ready for study. For some time I wondered if a trip to High Junction would be necessary. It would be a good excuse to rush to Jean's side. However, we had both decided that we must live alone, at least until we could convince Jean's father that her study at medical college had not been wasted time or effort. We hoped that once she had proven her worth to High Junction, the old man would bless our marriage and look at me as a son instead of a rank imposter.
It was a difficult decision but I knew that I must stay away from Jean as long as I could. We would weaken easily if fate threw us together. We planned to marry in the spring.
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Perhaps, also, the diary of Fred Cool had the power to upset a man's thought processes, until a reader felt that he might be slightly mad to accept the material he found on those pages. Perhaps I, like Jean Medeor, wasn't able to think clearly after reading so unusual a story. You may judge.
Doctor Peter Fromm
Fresno, California
(Fred Cool's Manuscript)
Ny name is Frederick Cool. I am an old man now, yet not old judged by normal standards. I am done with life. Even now I am dead. Dead as surely as someone held a knife at my throat. More accurately, my brain is being dissected bit by bit, and placed in another receptacle, prepared for it long ago. It will go on functioning yet it will not be mine. My brain is helping a killer. A killer so powerful and so subtle that no one recognizes it or is able to prepare war against it.
Let me tell you why I die without a brain, without knowing much of what goes on about me---or caring.
Twenty years ago I rode into High Junction in an empty freight-train car bound for California. In those days three engines puffed up the mountain, dragging their heavy trains over the hump. I was young then, disowned by my family in England and recently arrived in America on a tramp steamer. I stayed in High Junction. I hadn't planned to do that , but a yard detective found me, half-frozen,jumping up and down beside the freight trying to warm myself. He warned me to get away from the train and foolishly I tried to quarrel with him. I awakened in jail, a hard lump on my head where he had hit me with his billy.
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A sheriff with a walrus mustache warned me out of town in 24 hours---"or get yourself a job."
My last dollar was gone. I went to work for the High House, a two-story, shingled affair, where I got three dollars a week and a small room beneath the stairs where I could sleep. Those first years were hard, but, somehow, High Junction got into my blood. I would lie quietly on my bunk at night, listening to the freight trains as they puffed over the Divide. I would listen to the thin, high scream of the train whistle and the howl of the north wind, and somehow I knew I'd never go beyond this place. I hated it, and yet it was home. Perhaps I didn't hate it at all. It had a power that kept me from going on.
I worked for the railroad, laying ties for a spur line up to the mine. I worked one summer, deep in the mine.
Then, at last I had a steady job.
The job wasn't important to the world but It was very important to me. The day I walked into the loft above the General Store I was as proud as a king looking for the first time at his throne.
"High Junction depended on the "valley" for everything. The "valley" was Denver Colorado. If a woman needed a doctor---if the hotel needed supplies---they phoned the "valley" for help. The Mayor called the "valley" for a sheriff to come up after a murderer.
Every call---every bit of business transacted with the "valley" had to go through my office. I ran the telephone exchange.
I thought I was the most important person in High Junction. Once we were snowed in for a week. I walked a mile through waist-deep snow and found the break in the wire. I made contact with a portable phone and asked for a
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doctor to come and see Mayor Wiggins through a spell of the flu. Doc Deverish came. He had to leave the train three miles down the pass and ski from there. He saved Wiggins and the Mayor gave me a gold watch for doing what I did.
"You saved my life, Fred," he told me. "I was about ready to kick off my boots and give up the ghost."
So you may see I was very important to High Junction in those days.
In looking back across the years, I see many things clearly that at the time were confusing to me. I recall the first time I felt cause for alarm, and how it affected my entire nervous system.
I had been alone in the office all evening. It was well after midnight and few calls were coming through. To some, the loft would've been a lonely place. To me it was home. I had a small stove which kept me warm and brewed my coffee.
I decided to close up for the night and was banking my fire when the warning light flashed on above the switchboard. No one was formal on the telephone in those days. I put the speaker over my shoulder and spoke.
"Yes---who is it?"
I thought I could recognize any voice in town, but I asn't familiar with the cold, impersonal voice that spoke now.
"This is you, Fred Cool," it said. "Just testing."
Someone must be joking and yet it didn't seem very funny at the time.
I chuckled but deep inside the voice gave me a start.
"I suppose, then," I said, "that I'm speaking to myself?"
There was no answer.
"Who is this---really?" I asked sharply.
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I could have waited all night. There was no reply. I hung up. I was shivering slightly, though the room was warm. The complete strangeness of that troubled me. I returned to the fire and drank a cup of coffee. I tried, after a time to convince myself that the whole think could be blamed on my imagination. It was no good. Then, the content of the message started to get under my skin.
"This is you---Fred Cool ..."
That sounded so damned silly that I decided I was a fool to be taken in by such an un-funny joke. I left it that way.
The next day I was careful not to say a word about the incident. I felt sure that whoever the person who called, he or she would rib me about about what had happened. Such an opportunity would be too good to miss.
No one spoke about it. The owner of the voice did not call again---that night.
Those were strange years at High Junction. The town wasn't much. The main road came through here once but they changed the road-bed to a deeper, safer pass over the Divide. It left High Junction, a small iron-mine town with a single train that puffed through once a day, weather permitting. People kept to themselves. They went to the "valley" only when it was necessary. Each man was respected for what he was and not for the earthly goods he had collected. I held a respected place in the community. I was not an attractive man and I never married. I lived alone and, I suppose, seemed somewhat of a hermit.
I didn't live what was termed a "normal" life. I ate when I wished, slept part of the time at the hotel and part of the time at the exchange, and came and went as I pleased. Often I stayed I stayed up throughout the
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night, taking emergency calls.
I tell you this, so you will realize as I go on, that I knew how people talked about me. My actions, though strange, are explained entirely by the terrible fear that haunted my mind.
The voice spoke to me again one night when a terrible thunderstorm lashed at the mountains and lightning splashed its death lights across the water-swept crags. The storm was so violent that I failed to hear the bell ringing and noticed the warning light only when the lightning diminished and the room was quite dark.
I hurried to the switchboard, expecting news of fire or washout.
"How do you like the storm?" the voice asked.
I recognized it at once though four months had passed since it had first troubled me. I was trembling, but I managed to steady my voice.
I could never capture the quality of the voice. I could never explain it. Yet, I try here, for it was so important to know everything I could about it. If possible, it was a voice like drops of ice water plopping against my brain. It was cold and dephtless, yet mechanical as though recorded in hell.
The hair on my neck seemed to prickle and my heart pounded.
I said:
"Who's calling? I don't recognize ..."
"Fred Cool," the voice snapped at me. "You remembered me at once. I could tell by the fear in your voice that you know me. You are Fred Cool---so am I. Amazing, isn't it?"
I was badly frightened.
"See here," I snapped. "I don't think this is funny. Perhaps I'm a poor practical joker but I don't like this."
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The voice was suddenly very angry.
"It's no joke. You will realize that soon."
Doc Demorest decided to come to High Junction. He was an old timer from the "valley." A good man but tired. He wanted to escape the big town. I went to see him after he arrived. He was a sage as well as a medical man. In his dark office, pale-faced, bearded and fortified behind a huge roll-top desk, he stared at me with twinkling eyes.
"Sit down, Mr Cool," he said. "You don't impress me as a man troubled by minor ailments."
I was fifty then. I felt nervous and irritable. Often I forgot to speak to people I had known for years. Didn't even see them on the street, though they reminded me of our passing later. I sat down a little heavily in the leather chair opposite him. I breathed a little hard and felt tired most of the time. I heard the voice often now. Sometimes I heard it in my mind, even though I was away from the office.
"I want a complete examination, " I said.
Doc Demorest didn't move. His eyes weren't twinkling now. He stared at me solemnly, a little sternly.
"You're in good shape, Cool," he said. "Don't start taking pills at your age." Go home and forget it. You'll live a good thirty years yet."
I said:
"I'm not sure. I notice a falling off in vitality. People tell me I act odd. I'm absent-minded and a little strange. "
Demorest chuckled.
"We're all a little batty above the neck-line," he said, and tapped his head with his finger. "I'm crazy as a loon ... ."
End of fragment.
Comment: These two stories are no big deal; typical pulps of the 1940s, but Don't you think the reading is a rather pleasant time-passer even though we don't have the endings? To me that's always the sign of a good writing. It means the writing was pleasureful in and of itself separate from the actual pleasure and outcome. Would like to hear other opinions.
Fragment of Forgotten Hades from May, 1948, Amazing Stories. It lost its title page.
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My editor, Ray Palmer, warned me, "You're just a small-town boy. I'd hate to see you starve down there."
I assured him hurriedly that I owed my life to him, that I wouldn't drop one word in New York, and that I was after a "true" fantasy story.
"No one will believe this particular fantasy is true," he warned me, but---make it good and I'll see that your kids eat while you're gone, even if you starve, yourself."
Ray Palmer knows people in the high places. Through him I managed a reservation on the plane, found that I could have a berth (Ed: identifies that this was written, latest, in early 1940s when commercial fliers could buy passenger sleeping berths) all the way to the big city, and even got a cab to the airport.
I wired the source of my story, a Mr Will Dean, that I was on my way and gave him the time of my arrival.
Without waiting for his reply I took the plane that night. Palmer had done a nice job of fixing things. The ticket and the berth were ready and I settled down for a good night's sleep on the airliner.
I arrived during the early morning and Dean wasn't at LaGuardia Field.
I spent 2 hours wandering about the terminal waiting for Dean to show. How I ever thought I'd recognize him I didn't know. I'd never seen the man in my life.
After I thought a while, I decided I was a darned fool for coming all the way to New York when I didn't have the slightest idea what or who I was looking for.
Will Dean---a name---a man who had signed a letter.
Then I thought of his newspaper and spent two more hours trying to phone it.
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At last I talked with Dean's boss, Bill Proust, an editor I had known quite well back in college days.
"Dean is a scrappy guy," Proust told me. "Damn near quit his job before I would give him that vacation. I can't afford to lose him, he's that good."
I asked when he had seen Dean last.
"He left last night," he said. "Told me he'd be back today and go on his vacation Saturday. Thought he'd be in this morning. Say, why don't you come up and have breakfast with me? I eat about 10. Dean will probably show up here.
Being a pulp writer and having the habit of waking at 9 and attending Palmer's "Coffee Club" at 10, I liked the sound of coffee with Proust.
I shared a cab uptown with a couple of army lieutenants (Ed: again dates the writing to wartime 1940s) and managed to find the restaurant Proust had mentioned.
He met me, led me to a corner table and we ate. Proust had taken on 6 inches around the waist since college days, was a great guy as I had remembered him, and insisted on calling the office every 5 minutes to see if Dean had come in.
We talked until noon and Proust started to worry.
"That's Dean for you," he said upon returning from his 10th trip to the phone booth. "No sign of him. I called his boarding house. Landlady has your wire but he hasn't shown up to get it. I wonder ...?"
He didn't tell me what he was wondering so I suggested we part company and I visit my sister-in-law at her job in New Jersey. If he heard from Dean in the afternoon he could call me. Frankly, I was rather
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sour on Dean by that time and wanted to get away from New York. Just a small-town boy at heart, I was beginning to wish I'd stayed on Michigan Avenue where I belonged and made up fantasy as I went along, without any extended treks to the big city in search of the great and illusive "truth."
Proust put me on the subway and told me where to catch the ferry to New Jersey. Two hours and fifty four minutes later, I was giving my sister-in-law, Lucille, at her workplace in the police building. a proper brother-in-law kiss.
To my surprise she was quite serious about my mission and thought she could add some useful information to my meager collection.
"Wait a while," she said, "I'll talk to the Chief. I'd like you to see something we have upstairs.
She went whisking away down the clean marble hall and left me standing with mind in turmoil.
In a few minutes she was back, motioning me to follow her. We took an elevator to the 3rd floor and I followed her down the hall into a room that said "13K" on the door. It was neat and white inside and I noticed what I first thought was a child lying in a small bed, the bed clothes pulled up around her neck.
Was it a child?
I went closer and after a long time, I looked up at Lucille who stood on the far side of the bed staring at me. She shook her head.
Jackson White, she said and then I knew this was no child at all. This creature whose dead eyes stared up at me was a woman.
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Her hair was long and matted with stick-tights.
"We cleaned her up this morning," Lucille said. "The hair was hopeless."
The woman was small. I could tell from the outline under the sheets that she wasn't larger than a 12-year-old. Her face was free from wrinkles and one could detect a certain degenerate beauty about it. Her eyes had been filled with animal terror and she had died with the look still in them.
"What---happened?" I asked.
Lucille shuddered.
"I flatter myself that I'm tough," she said. "But---this ...."
She lifted the sheet. Then I saw what had given her the case of shudders. Just above the thigh, cut deep into the flesh, was a brand.
I call it a brand, for it had obviously been made with an instrument of some sort. It was a perfect outline of the fleur-de-lis, the French sign, burned centuries ago, into the skin of French convicts who must live out their years in prison.
Lucille covered the body.
"A salesman picked the body up early this morning at the edge of a swamp. It was close to the spot where we went for the picnic last summer."
I remembered.
The salesman was driving into New York. He thought this was a child. He said he couldn't just leave the body there. So he brought it in and we have it up here for post-mortem."
She continued in a hushed voice, "The woman seems to be in her thirties, but she was carrying the doll."
Now I noticed the doll. The ungodly combination of an adult woman with a brand on her hip, and the rag doll in her arms, something that struck terror in me. It didn't make sense. It didn't
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fit into any of the slick puzzles I had created for my readers.
I moved closer to the bed and saw that the doll's head was sticking out from the covers.
I drew the sheet down a bit and studied the ragged, filthy object.
It was no more than a dollar variety of rag-doll common in so many nurseries. The filth of it and the way the woman had cuddled it to her gave the thing a special significance.
I was about to cover it again when I saw what I thought was a pencil smudge on the corner of the tiny gray-white apron tied about the doll's middle. I don't know what possessed me but I clutched the doll suddenly and pulled it from the bed.
Then I was reading the scrawl on the inner side of the tiny apron.
"Don't search for the source of the brand---the man with the claw," there followed several words I could not read as they had evidently been obliterated by mud and water. Then, the signature---"Dean."
I let it go at that and returned to New York. I contacted Proust and we had dinner together. Dean had not shown up.
Forty-eight hours passed. Will Dean did not return and no one heard a word about him.
A week---and I returned to Chicago without even visiting the strange marsh where the Jackson Whites made their home.
I was rushing to finish a novel for Palmer and he called me back on the job. I meant to write my quota, turn it in, and go back to search for Will Dean.
A month passed and then the search wasn't necessary.
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I heard from Proust that Dean's body had been found, washed up by the Atlantic on the border of the Jersey marshes. A Coast Guard patrol had found the body. It was in a bad state, but on the right elbow they could make out a strange, deeply burned scar. It looked, they said strangely like a flower. A flower with three drooping petals.
The fleur-de-lis! I'm not sure? I only know that I still kept the doll's apron in my desk and I took it out and read the strange message once more.
"Don't search for the source of the brand --- the man with the claw --- Dean."
It made no sense to me this time, nor had it before. I tried to put it aside and finish a short-short I was working on. It was no good. I went out and got tight. Palmer tried to contact me for three days, but as he said afterward, he gave it up, "knowing your habit of hiding out in the damned-est places."
I don't know myself where I went. When I returned to my office, Palmer was waiting for me. He had a thick envelope with him.
"This came yesterday," he said. "Knowing you as I do, and with your usual three-day vacation used up, I have been expecting your remains to be carted up here for the past hour.
"You're ready for coffee?"
I thanked him for bringing up the envelope, and I guess he was curious as I about it.
It was dated three days before and posted at a small sub-station on the Jersey shore. I'll swear that envelope had been dunked in the Atlantic, dragged through every mud hole in New Jersey and mailed by the dirtiest fingered gent in the coal-hauling business. It was a tough envelope. An 8 by 10, very full of pages and
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seemingly able to take the punishment it had been given.
I tore it open and a mess of odds & ends of paper fluttered out. Palmer and I collected them, placed them on the desk and tried to make sense of the writing.
It was evidently scrawled with a heavy black pencil and I thought the words looked familiar. I skipped back to the last page and found the signature.
"Will Dean."
No wonder I had recognized the handwriting. It was the same scrawl that had been used on the doll apron.
I think, when I had finished reading the script to Ray, he agreed that although people might not believe all they read, at least this story, tossed up from God knows what hole in Hell, was due to give them a great deal to think about. Here are Will Dean's words:
The Story of Will Dean
I address this to you for although we've never met, Lee Francis is the only person who saw in my article about the Jackson Whites, an unsolved and highly complicated problem. A source of material that went beyond the fact that they were an ignorant, dying race who could not read, write, or offer anything to civilization.
You will not hear from me again although you may read that they discovered my body on some forsaken spot. I don't know how well my body was hidden for I was not with it at the end. I left the shell and proceeded to ...
I cannot tell all of it on the first page. I must start at the beginning and build, step by step, to the final ending.
I left New York about four in the afternoon. It was after I was well
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down the Jersey shore that I started to wonder if this trip, taken when night was closing in, was really wise.
I pulled into a gas station south of Asbury Park and waited until the attendant had examined my wartime ration coupons and given me ten gallons of gas. Then I lit a cigarette and asked: "How far down the coast are the Jackson Whites?"
Of course, I knew. I had been down here twice before. I wanted to get the man's reactions.
There wasn't much to give him away. A little scowl when I mentioned the Jackson Whites, and some of hesitation before he spoke.
"You mean the swamp people?"
I nodded though he must have been sure who I meant.
"About twenty miles," he said. "Damned if I'd stop the car down there though." he admitted. "Them guys give me the creeps."
I chuckled.
"I'm gonna visit my Uncle Fud," I said. "He's one of the little guys with the long whiskers and the loin cloths."
I stepped on the gas and rolled out toward the highway.
Through the rear-view mirror I could see the bewildered attendant standing by the pump, one hand on his hip, the other holding his cap as he scratched his forehead with an index finger.
I had a purpose for coming down before my regular vacation period started. For three weeks I planned to live with the swamp people, as one of them, and to learn just what made them tick.
Tonight I wanted to find a spot where one of their settlements was located and and decide upon the place where I would enter into the life of the Jackson Whites for the three-week experimental period. I also wanted to decide upon the type of dress I would need ...
The fragment ends here, the rest of pages are lost but can be read by purchasing the May 1948 Amazing Stories on Amazon.com.
The second fragment is apparently by Frances Yerxa. It's fragmentation is from latter part. Here it is:
Dearest Peter:down the Jersey shore that I started to wonder if this trip, taken when night was closing in, was really wise.
I pulled into a gas station south of Asbury Park and waited until the attendant had examined my wartime ration coupons and given me ten gallons of gas. Then I lit a cigarette and asked: "How far down the coast are the Jackson Whites?"
Of course, I knew. I had been down here twice before. I wanted to get the man's reactions.
There wasn't much to give him away. A little scowl when I mentioned the Jackson Whites, and some of hesitation before he spoke.
"You mean the swamp people?"
I nodded though he must have been sure who I meant.
"About twenty miles," he said. "Damned if I'd stop the car down there though." he admitted. "Them guys give me the creeps."
I chuckled.
"I'm gonna visit my Uncle Fud," I said. "He's one of the little guys with the long whiskers and the loin cloths."
I stepped on the gas and rolled out toward the highway.
Through the rear-view mirror I could see the bewildered attendant standing by the pump, one hand on his hip, the other holding his cap as he scratched his forehead with an index finger.
I had a purpose for coming down before my regular vacation period started. For three weeks I planned to live with the swamp people, as one of them, and to learn just what made them tick.
Tonight I wanted to find a spot where one of their settlements was located and and decide upon the place where I would enter into the life of the Jackson Whites for the three-week experimental period. I also wanted to decide upon the type of dress I would need ...
The fragment ends here, the rest of pages are lost but can be read by purchasing the May 1948 Amazing Stories on Amazon.com.
The second fragment is apparently by Frances Yerxa. It's fragmentation is from latter part. Here it is:
Terror on the Telephone by Lee Francis
p.59 (Title Illustration)
This account is presented in part by Doctor Jean Medeor of High Junction, Colorado and made complete by the diary of Frederick Cool. Doctor Medeor is no longer alive to present what proof she may have had
p.59 rt
of its truth and I am too tired and shocked to care whether or not the medical profession believes me. Frederick Cool is also gone yet the painful scrawl of his last weeks presents a picture too pitiful to disbelieve and too fantastic to dare accept as the whole truth.
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It is the picture of a man dying the worst imaginable type of death. For Frederick Cool's brain was stolen and he died insane. Do I confuse you? Listen to Doctor Jean Medeor's letter written in the early fall of 1944
Doctor Peter Fromm
235 Trust Building
Fresno, California
It is the picture of a man dying the worst imaginable type of death. For Frederick Cool's brain was stolen and he died insane. Do I confuse you? Listen to Doctor Jean Medeor's letter written in the early fall of 1944
Doctor Peter Fromm
235 Trust Building
Fresno, California
I told you it would be hard to stay in High Junction this winter. I'm lonely for those cloudless, warm skies and for you. I'll stick it out for I know that a young doctor, and especially one of the weaker sex, doesn't get a chance to hang out her shingle every day.
High Junction is up here in the Divide where it gets snowed in sometimes for several weeks. The temperature drops to thirty below Fahrenheit (c.minus 34 degrees C) and shows a strange reluctance to rise again. I'm afraid I'd rather be Mrs Doc Fromm this winter but I decided to become a career girl and I'll stick it out.
I do have an interesting case. Frederick Cool is his name and he used to run the telephone exchange here. I'm afraid he's slightly wacky, Peter. Yet, he's nearly sixty and quite harmless. He has the smoothest face and kindest blue eyes I've ever seen.
Mr Cool came into to see me three weeks ago. He said he had retired from his job at the exchange because they had installed one of those mechanical relay systems here for handling telephone calls. You remember the one downtown in Riley Township? A small brick building, locked up, windowless, with a magic inside that sorts and puts through any call you care to dial? With them, one operator can handle several towns. That gives you the picture.
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Frederick Cool is insane for sure, Peter. I would say, after questioning him for some time, that he retains only a vague idea of what goes on about him. I treated him kindly, advising him to get away from the town and take a vacation in a more friendly climate. He had a temper tantrum and wanted to know what a woman doctor would know about that. Threatened to change doctors. I reminded him I was the only one in town and he calmed down a lot.
He said he was sorry and that there was something I ought to know about. I'll never forget how the poor old man affected me. It was a cold, unfriendly day to begin with, and a first snow had placed a wet blanket on everything, including my state of mind. Mr Cool leaned forward and said:
"You see, Doctor, I know I'm crazy. That's unusual isn't it?" Most insane people think they are normal. I know better, and I know why."
His words were spoken hardly above a whisper.
"I haven't told anybody," he continued, "and I'm not going to tell you. My mind isn't clear now. I couldn't remember all the details so I wrote them down."
He was wearing an old tweed suit with frayed cuffs, and trousers neatly patched at the knees with a slightly different colored fabric. He brought from his inside coat pocket a collection of papers. They were as many as the colors in biblical Joseph's coat of many-colors---pages torn from magazines with notes made in the margin---sheets from nickel scratch pads.
He passed them to me and ducked his head as he spoke, as though talking to the floor.
"I'm ashamed of the condition of my diary. I wrote when I could---when my mind was clear."
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Truthfully, Pete, I didn't want to read the stuff but I couldn't hurt his feelings.
"I'll keep this in my desk," I promised, and read it when I can. Perhaps it will give us a basis for treatment of your case."
That ended our conversation. He wandered out into the street and down past the new telephone building. It's a small, fifteen foot affair with a freshly painted, locked door. Inside, the mechanical 'operator' takes care of the job Mr. Cool used to take so much pride in. Cool hesitated opposite the building, then as I watched him, he shook his head slowly and went shuffling onward.
I didn't have time to look at the diary until the following Thursday. Then, as I expected Cool on Friday, I scooped his papers from my desk, dropped them into my bag and took them to my hotel room. My room is very lonely, Pete. I guess I've mentioned that in every letter. I'll be very happy when I've proved to the world I can be a good doctor, and then have the chance to settle down and prove I'm just as good a wife. Do I bore you, future husband?
Finally I put my bare feet on a hot water bottle, picked up Frederick Cool's strange manuscript and started to read. I intended to put it aside in twenty minutes. When the Central Divide freight train came through town at three this morning, I was still reading. Pete, I'm going to say the same thing that Cool said in my office the other day.
I'm ashamed of the condition of the diary. Cool wrote only when his mind was clear. He didn't write well. I tried to read with a calm, scientific approach. Now I'm exhausted and all tied up inside. I'm not at all sure of my own sanity. I'm sending the diary to
p.61rt
you because it has given me a queer, lopsided viewpoint on life. Perhaps the intense cold has affected my brain. Perhaps I'm going crazy. You're the only one I can depend on. I've always come to you when I couldn't plan for myself, and you've never let me down.
You're so far away from this icy bit of Hades, perhaps you can read with a clear mind. I want your clear, honest opinion of Fred Cool's manuscript. I'm only sure of one thing now. When I pass that tightly locked phone building on Main Street, I stare at the windowless walls and wonder if strange death lurks within the sealed crypt. For heaven's sake, don't tell me I'm mad until you've read every last word.
I love you, Doctor, in case you've forgotten.
Jean.
(Dr Fromm) The diary was in bad order when I started to assemble it. I became so fascinated by the warn pages that I asked my secretary to transcribe them at once. She worked on them as I read and soon the whole story was assembled in some order and ready for study. For some time I wondered if a trip to High Junction would be necessary. It would be a good excuse to rush to Jean's side. However, we had both decided that we must live alone, at least until we could convince Jean's father that her study at medical college had not been wasted time or effort. We hoped that once she had proven her worth to High Junction, the old man would bless our marriage and look at me as a son instead of a rank imposter.
It was a difficult decision but I knew that I must stay away from Jean as long as I could. We would weaken easily if fate threw us together. We planned to marry in the spring.
p.62
Perhaps, also, the diary of Fred Cool had the power to upset a man's thought processes, until a reader felt that he might be slightly mad to accept the material he found on those pages. Perhaps I, like Jean Medeor, wasn't able to think clearly after reading so unusual a story. You may judge.
Doctor Peter Fromm
Fresno, California
(Fred Cool's Manuscript)
Ny name is Frederick Cool. I am an old man now, yet not old judged by normal standards. I am done with life. Even now I am dead. Dead as surely as someone held a knife at my throat. More accurately, my brain is being dissected bit by bit, and placed in another receptacle, prepared for it long ago. It will go on functioning yet it will not be mine. My brain is helping a killer. A killer so powerful and so subtle that no one recognizes it or is able to prepare war against it.
Let me tell you why I die without a brain, without knowing much of what goes on about me---or caring.
Twenty years ago I rode into High Junction in an empty freight-train car bound for California. In those days three engines puffed up the mountain, dragging their heavy trains over the hump. I was young then, disowned by my family in England and recently arrived in America on a tramp steamer. I stayed in High Junction. I hadn't planned to do that , but a yard detective found me, half-frozen,jumping up and down beside the freight trying to warm myself. He warned me to get away from the train and foolishly I tried to quarrel with him. I awakened in jail, a hard lump on my head where he had hit me with his billy.
p.62rt
A sheriff with a walrus mustache warned me out of town in 24 hours---"or get yourself a job."
My last dollar was gone. I went to work for the High House, a two-story, shingled affair, where I got three dollars a week and a small room beneath the stairs where I could sleep. Those first years were hard, but, somehow, High Junction got into my blood. I would lie quietly on my bunk at night, listening to the freight trains as they puffed over the Divide. I would listen to the thin, high scream of the train whistle and the howl of the north wind, and somehow I knew I'd never go beyond this place. I hated it, and yet it was home. Perhaps I didn't hate it at all. It had a power that kept me from going on.
I worked for the railroad, laying ties for a spur line up to the mine. I worked one summer, deep in the mine.
Then, at last I had a steady job.
The job wasn't important to the world but It was very important to me. The day I walked into the loft above the General Store I was as proud as a king looking for the first time at his throne.
"High Junction depended on the "valley" for everything. The "valley" was Denver Colorado. If a woman needed a doctor---if the hotel needed supplies---they phoned the "valley" for help. The Mayor called the "valley" for a sheriff to come up after a murderer.
Every call---every bit of business transacted with the "valley" had to go through my office. I ran the telephone exchange.
I thought I was the most important person in High Junction. Once we were snowed in for a week. I walked a mile through waist-deep snow and found the break in the wire. I made contact with a portable phone and asked for a
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doctor to come and see Mayor Wiggins through a spell of the flu. Doc Deverish came. He had to leave the train three miles down the pass and ski from there. He saved Wiggins and the Mayor gave me a gold watch for doing what I did.
"You saved my life, Fred," he told me. "I was about ready to kick off my boots and give up the ghost."
So you may see I was very important to High Junction in those days.
In looking back across the years, I see many things clearly that at the time were confusing to me. I recall the first time I felt cause for alarm, and how it affected my entire nervous system.
I had been alone in the office all evening. It was well after midnight and few calls were coming through. To some, the loft would've been a lonely place. To me it was home. I had a small stove which kept me warm and brewed my coffee.
I decided to close up for the night and was banking my fire when the warning light flashed on above the switchboard. No one was formal on the telephone in those days. I put the speaker over my shoulder and spoke.
"Yes---who is it?"
I thought I could recognize any voice in town, but I asn't familiar with the cold, impersonal voice that spoke now.
"This is you, Fred Cool," it said. "Just testing."
Someone must be joking and yet it didn't seem very funny at the time.
I chuckled but deep inside the voice gave me a start.
"I suppose, then," I said, "that I'm speaking to myself?"
There was no answer.
"Who is this---really?" I asked sharply.
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I could have waited all night. There was no reply. I hung up. I was shivering slightly, though the room was warm. The complete strangeness of that troubled me. I returned to the fire and drank a cup of coffee. I tried, after a time to convince myself that the whole think could be blamed on my imagination. It was no good. Then, the content of the message started to get under my skin.
"This is you---Fred Cool ..."
That sounded so damned silly that I decided I was a fool to be taken in by such an un-funny joke. I left it that way.
The next day I was careful not to say a word about the incident. I felt sure that whoever the person who called, he or she would rib me about about what had happened. Such an opportunity would be too good to miss.
No one spoke about it. The owner of the voice did not call again---that night.
Those were strange years at High Junction. The town wasn't much. The main road came through here once but they changed the road-bed to a deeper, safer pass over the Divide. It left High Junction, a small iron-mine town with a single train that puffed through once a day, weather permitting. People kept to themselves. They went to the "valley" only when it was necessary. Each man was respected for what he was and not for the earthly goods he had collected. I held a respected place in the community. I was not an attractive man and I never married. I lived alone and, I suppose, seemed somewhat of a hermit.
I didn't live what was termed a "normal" life. I ate when I wished, slept part of the time at the hotel and part of the time at the exchange, and came and went as I pleased. Often I stayed I stayed up throughout the
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night, taking emergency calls.
I tell you this, so you will realize as I go on, that I knew how people talked about me. My actions, though strange, are explained entirely by the terrible fear that haunted my mind.
The voice spoke to me again one night when a terrible thunderstorm lashed at the mountains and lightning splashed its death lights across the water-swept crags. The storm was so violent that I failed to hear the bell ringing and noticed the warning light only when the lightning diminished and the room was quite dark.
I hurried to the switchboard, expecting news of fire or washout.
"How do you like the storm?" the voice asked.
I recognized it at once though four months had passed since it had first troubled me. I was trembling, but I managed to steady my voice.
I could never capture the quality of the voice. I could never explain it. Yet, I try here, for it was so important to know everything I could about it. If possible, it was a voice like drops of ice water plopping against my brain. It was cold and dephtless, yet mechanical as though recorded in hell.
The hair on my neck seemed to prickle and my heart pounded.
I said:
"Who's calling? I don't recognize ..."
"Fred Cool," the voice snapped at me. "You remembered me at once. I could tell by the fear in your voice that you know me. You are Fred Cool---so am I. Amazing, isn't it?"
I was badly frightened.
"See here," I snapped. "I don't think this is funny. Perhaps I'm a poor practical joker but I don't like this."
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The voice was suddenly very angry.
"It's no joke. You will realize that soon."
Doc Demorest decided to come to High Junction. He was an old timer from the "valley." A good man but tired. He wanted to escape the big town. I went to see him after he arrived. He was a sage as well as a medical man. In his dark office, pale-faced, bearded and fortified behind a huge roll-top desk, he stared at me with twinkling eyes.
"Sit down, Mr Cool," he said. "You don't impress me as a man troubled by minor ailments."
I was fifty then. I felt nervous and irritable. Often I forgot to speak to people I had known for years. Didn't even see them on the street, though they reminded me of our passing later. I sat down a little heavily in the leather chair opposite him. I breathed a little hard and felt tired most of the time. I heard the voice often now. Sometimes I heard it in my mind, even though I was away from the office.
"I want a complete examination, " I said.
Doc Demorest didn't move. His eyes weren't twinkling now. He stared at me solemnly, a little sternly.
"You're in good shape, Cool," he said. "Don't start taking pills at your age." Go home and forget it. You'll live a good thirty years yet."
I said:
"I'm not sure. I notice a falling off in vitality. People tell me I act odd. I'm absent-minded and a little strange. "
Demorest chuckled.
"We're all a little batty above the neck-line," he said, and tapped his head with his finger. "I'm crazy as a loon ... ."
End of fragment.
Comment: These two stories are no big deal; typical pulps of the 1940s, but Don't you think the reading is a rather pleasant time-passer even though we don't have the endings? To me that's always the sign of a good writing. It means the writing was pleasureful in and of itself separate from the actual pleasure and outcome. Would like to hear other opinions.
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