The Dark Other by Stanley G. Weinbaum (best classic books TXT) 📕

"Your friend and protector, the Doctor, has thoughtfully eliminated your sweetheart as a factor. He struggles too feebly for me to feel."

"Nick!" she murmured again. "Dr. Carl!"

But the Doctor, now pulling painfully at his bonds, could only groan in distraction, and curse the unsuspected strength of sheer chiffon. He writhed miserably at the chafing of his wrists; his strange paralysis had departed, but he was quite helpless to assist Pat.

"I think," said the cold tones of Nicholas Devine, "that the more delicate torture lies in your willingness. Let us see."

He drew her into his arms. He twisted a hand in her hair, jerked her head violently backward, and pressed avid lips to hers. She struggled a little, but hopelessly, automatically. At last she lay quite passive, quite motionless, supported by his arms, and making not the slightest response to his kiss.

"Are you mine?" he queried fiercely, releasing her lips. "Are you mine now?"

She shook her head without opening her eyes. "No," she said dully. "Not now, or ever."

Again he crushed her, while the Doctor looked on in helpless, bewildered, voiceless anger. This time his kiss was painful, burning, searing. Again that unholy fascination and unnatural delight in her own pain stirred her, and it took what little effort she was able to make to keep from responding. After a long interval, his lips again withdrew.

"Are you mine?" he repeated. She made no answer; she was gasping, and tears glistened under her closed eye-lids, from the pain of her crushed lips. Again he kissed her, and again the wild abandonment to evil suffused her. She was suddenly responding to his agonizing caress; she was clinging fiercely to his torturing lips, feeling an unholy exaltation in the pain of his tearing fingers in the flesh of her back.

"Yours!" she murmured in response to his query. She heard her voice repeat madly, "Yours! Yours! Yours!"

"Do you yield willingly?" came the icy tones of the demon.

"Yes—yes—yes! Willingly!"

"Take off your clothes!" sounded the terrible, overpowering voice. He thrust her from him, so that she staggered dizzily backward. She stood swaying; the voice repeated its command.

The girl's eyes widened wildly; she had the appearance of one in an ecstasy, a religious fervor. She raised her hand with a jerky impulsive gesture to the neck of her frock, still pinned together in the makeshift repairs of the evening.

There came a strange interruption. The Doctor, helpless on-looker, had at length evolved an idea out of the bewilderment in his mind. He opened his mouth and emitted a tremendous, deep, ear-shattering bellow!

Nicholas Devine sent the girl spinning to the floor with a vicious shove, and turned his blazing eyes on Horker, who was drawing in his breath for a repetition of his roar. "Quiet!" he rasped, his red orbs boring down at the other. "Quiet, or I'll muffle you!" Closing his eyes, the Doctor repeated his mighty shout.

The demon snatched the blanket from the couch, tossing it over the figure of the Doctor, where it became a billowing, writhing heap of brown wool. He turned his gaze on Pat, who was just struggling to her feet, and moved as if to advance toward her.

He paused. She had retrieved the Doctor's revolver from the floor, and now faced him with the madness gone out of her eyes, supporting the weapon with both hands, the muzzle wavering toward his face.

"Drop it!" he commanded. She felt a recurrence of fascination, and an impulse to obey. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Doctor's head emerging from the blanket as he shook it off.

"Drop it!" repeated Nicholas Devine.

She closed her eyes, shutting out the vision of his dominant visage. With a surge of terror, she squeezed the trigger, staggering back to the couch at the roar and the recoil.

She opened her eyes. Nicholas Devine lay in the center of the room on his face; a crimson spot was matting the hair on the back of his head. She saw the Doctor raise a free hand; he was working clear of his bonds.

"Pat!" he said softly. He looked at her pale, sickened features. "Honey," he said, "sit down till I get free. Sit down, Pat; you look faint."

"Never faint!" murmured the girl, and pitched backward to the couch, with one clad and one bare leg hanging in curious limpness over the edge.

31
"Not Humanly Possible"

Pat opened weary eyes and gazed at a blank, uninformative ceiling. It was some moments before she realized that she was lying on the couch in the room of Nicholas Devine. Somebody had placed her there, presumably, since she was quite unaware of the circumstances of her awakening. Then recollection began to form—Dr. Carl, the other, the roar of a shot. After that, nothing save a turmoil ending in blankness.

A sound of movement beside her drew her attention. She turned her head and perceived Dr. Horker kneeling over a form on the floor, fingering a white bandage about the head of the figure. Her recollections took instant form; she remembered the catastrophes of the evening—last night, rather, since dawn glowed dully in the window. She had shot Nick! She gave a little moan and pushed herself to a sitting position.

The Doctor glanced at her with a sick, shaky smile. "Hello," he said. "Come to, have you? Sorry I couldn't give you any attention." He gave the bandage a final touch. "Here's a job I had no heart for," he muttered. "Better for everyone to let things happen without interference."

The girl, returning to full awareness, noticed now that the bandage consisted of strips of the Doctor's shirt. She glanced fearfully at the still features of Nicholas Devine; she saw pale cheeks and closed eyes, but indubitably not the grim mien of the demon.

"Dr. Carl!" she whispered. "He isn't—he isn't—"

"Not yet."

"But will he—?"

"I don't know. That's a bad spot, a wound in the base of the brain. You'd best know it now, Pat, but also realize that nothing can happen to you. I'll see to that!"

"To me!" she said dully. "What difference does that make? It's Nick I want saved."

"I'll do my best for you, Honey," said Horker with almost a hint of reluctance. "I've phoned Briggs General for an ambulance. Your faint lasted a full quarter hour," he added.

"What can we tell them?" asked the girl. "What can we say?"

"Don't you say anything, Pat. I'm not on the board for nothing." He rose from his knees, glancing out of the window into the cool dawn. "Queer neighborhood!" he said. "All that yelling and a shot, and still no sign of interest from the neighbors. That's Chicago, though," he mused. "Lucky for us, Pat; we can handle the thing quietly now."

But the girl was staring dully at the still figure on the floor. "Oh God!" she said huskily. "Help him, Dr. Carl!"

"I'll do my best," responded Horker gloomily. "I was a good surgeon before I specialized in psychiatry. Brain surgery, too; it led right into my present field."

Pat said nothing, but dropped her head on her hands and stared vacantly before her.

"Better for you, and for him too, if I fail," muttered the Doctor.

His words brought a reply. "You won't fail," she said tensely. "You won't!"

"Not voluntarily, I'm afraid," he growled morosely. "I've still a little respect for medical ethics, but if ever a case—" His voice trailed into silence as from somewhere in the dawn sounded the wail of a siren. "There's the ambulance," he finished.

Pat sat unmoving as the sounds from outdoors detailed the stopping of the vehicle before the house. She heard the Doctor descending the steps, and the creak of the door. Though it took place before her eyes, she scarcely saw the white-coated youths as they lifted the form of Nicholas Devine and bore it from the room on a stretcher, treading with carefully broken steps to prevent the swaying of the support. Dr. Horker's order to follow made no impression on her; she sat dully on the couch as the chamber emptied.

Why, she wondered, had the thought of Nick's death disturbed her so? Wasn't it but a short time since they had both contemplated it? What had occurred to alter that determination? Nick was dying, she thought mournfully; all that remained was for her to follow. There on the floor lay the revolver, and on the table, glistening in the wan light, reposed the untouched lethal draft. That was the preferable way, she mused, staring fixedly at its glowing contour.

But suppose Nick weren't to die—she'd have abandoned him to his terrible doom, left him to face a situation far more ominous than any unknown terrors beyond death. She shook her head distractedly, and looked up to meet the eyes of Dr. Horker, who was watching her gravely in the doorway.

"Come on, Pat," he said gently.

She rose, followed him down the stairs and out into the morning light. The driver of the ambulance stared curiously at her dishevelled, bedraggled figure, but she was so weary and forlorn that even the effort of brushing away the black strands of hair that clouded her smoke-dark eyes was beyond her. She slumped into the seat of the Doctor's car and sighed in utter exhaustion.

"Rush it!" Horker called to the driver ahead. "I'll follow you."

The car swept into motion, and the swift cool morning air beating against her face from the open window restored some clarity to her mind. She fixed her eyes on the rear of the speeding vehicle they followed.

"Is there any hope at all?" she queried despondently.

"I don't know, Pat. I can't tell yet. When you closed your eyes, he half turned, dodged; the bullet entered his skull near the base, near the cerebellum. If it had pierced the cerebellum, his heart and breathing must have stopped instantly. They didn't, however, and that's a mildly hopeful sign. Very mildly hopeful, though."

"Do you know now what that devil—what the attack was?"

"No, Pat," Horker admitted. "I don't. Call it a devil if you like; I can't name it any better." His voice changed to a tone of wonder. "Pat, I can't understand that paralyzing fascination the thing exerted. I—any medical man—would say that mental dominance of that sort doesn't exist."

"Hypnotism," the girl suggested.

"Bah! Every psychiatrist uses hypnotism in his business; it's part of some treatments. There's nothing of fascination about it; no dominance of one will over another, despite the popular view. That's natural and understandable; this was like—well, like the exploded claims of Mesmerism. I tell you, it's not humanly possible—and yet I felt it!"

"Not humanly possible," murmured Pat. "That's the answer, then, Dr. Carl. Maybe now you'll believe in my devil."

"I'm tempted to."

"You'll have to! Can't you see it, Dr. Carl? Even his name, Nick—that's a colloquialism for the devil, isn't it?"

"And Devine, I suppose," said Horker, "refers to his angelic ancestry. Devils are only fallen angels, aren't they?"

"All right," said Pat wearily. "Make fun of it. You'll see!"

"I'm not making fun of your theory, Honey. I can't offer a better one myself. I never saw nor heard of anything similar, and I'm not in position to ridicule any theory."

"But you don't believe me."

"Of course I don't, Pat. You're weaving an intricate fairy tale about a pathological condition and a fortuitous suggestiveness in names. Whatever the condition is—and I confess I don't understand it—it's something rational, and those things can be treated."

"Treated by exorcism," said the girl. "That's the only way anyone ever succeeded in casting out a devil."

The Doctor made no answer. The wailing vehicle ahead of them swung rapidly out of sight into an alley, and Horker halted his car before the gray facade of Briggs General.

"Come in here," he said, helping Pat to alight. "You'll want to wait, won't you?"

"How long," she queried listlessly, "before—before you'll know?"

"Perhaps immediately. The only chance is to get that bullet out at once—if there's still time for it."

She followed him into the building, past a desk where a white-clad girl regarded her curiously, and up an elevator. He led her into a small office.

"Sit here," he said gently, and disappeared.

She sat dully in the chair he had indicated, and minutes passed. She made no attempt to think; the long, cataclysmic night had exhausted her powers. She simply sat and suffered; the deep scratches of fingernails burned in the flesh of her back, her cheek pained from the violent slap, and her head and jaw ached from that first blow, the one that had knocked her unconscious last evening. But these twinges were minor; they were merely physical, and the hurts of the demon had struck far deeper than any physical injury. The damage to her spirit was by all odds the more painful; it numbed her mind and dulled her thoughts, and she simply sat idle and stared at the blank wall.

She had no conception of the interval before Dr. Horker returned. He entered quietly, and