The Dark Other by Stanley G. Weinbaum (new ebook reader .txt) 📕

“To complete the business of Saturday night,” he said. “Your lips have healed; they bleed no longer, but that is easy to remedy. Come.”

“I won’t!” exclaimed the girl in sudden panic. “I won’t!” She moved as if to rise.

“You forget,” intoned the being beside her. “You forget the authority vested in me by virtue of this love of yours. Let me convince you.” He stretched forth a thin hand. “Move and you condemn your sweetheart to the punishment you threaten me.”

He seized her arm, pinching the flesh brutally, his nails breaking the smooth skin. Pat felt her face turn ashy pale; she closed her eyes and bit her nearly-healed lips at the excruciating pain, but she made not the slightest sound nor the faintest movement. She simply sat and suffered.

“You see!” sneered the other, releasing her. “Thank my kindly nature that I marked your arm instead of your face. Shall we go?”

A scarcely audible whimper of pain came from the girl’s lips. She sat palled and unmoving, with her eyes still closed.

“No,” she murmured faintly at last. “No. I won’t go with you.”

“Shall I drag you?”

“Yes. Drag me if you dare.”

His hand closed on her wrist; she felt herself jerked violently to her feet, so roughly that it wrenched her shoulder. A startled, frightened little cry broke from her lips, and then she closed them firmly at the sight of several by-passers turning curious eyes on them.

“I’ll come,” she murmured. The glimmering of an idea had risen in her chaotic mind.

She followed him in grim, bitter silence across the clipped turf to the limit of the park. She recognized Nick’s modest automobile standing in the line of cars along the street; her companion, or captor, moved directly towards it, opened the door and clambered in without a single backward glance. He turned about and watched her as she paused with one diminutive foot on the running board, and rubbed her hand over her aching arm.

“Get in!” he ordered coldly.

She made no move. “I want to know where you intend to take me.”

“It doesn’t matter. To a place where we can complete that unfinished experiment of ours. Aren’t you happy at the prospect?”

“Do you think,” she said unsteadily, “that I’d consent to that even to save Nick from disgrace and punishment? Do you think I’m fool enough for that?”

“We’ll soon see.” He extended his hand. “Scream⁠—fight⁠—struggle!” he jeered. “Call them down on your sweetheart!”

He had closed his hand on her wrist; she jerked it convulsively from his grasp.

“I’ll bargain with you!” she gasped. She needed a moment’s respite to clarify a thought that had been growing in her mind.

“Bargain? What have you to offer?”

“As much as you!”

“Ah, but I have a threat⁠—the threat to your sweetheart! And I’m offering too the lure of that evil whose face so charmed you recently. Have you forgotten how nearly I won you to the worship of that principle? Have you forgotten the ecstasy of that pain?”

His terrible, bloodshot eyes were approaching her face; and strangely, the girl felt a curious recurrence of that illogical desire to yield that had swept over her on that disastrous night of Saturday. There had been an ecstasy; there had been a wild, ungodly, unhallowed pleasure in his blows, in the searing pain of his kisses on her lacerated lips. She realized vaguely that she was staring blankly, dazedly, into the red eyes, and that somewhere within her, some insane brain-cells were urging her to clamber to the seat beside him.

She tore her eyes away. She rubbed her bruised shoulder, and the pain of her own touch restored her vanishing logical faculties. She returned her gaze to the face of the other, meeting his gaze now coolly.

“Nick!” she said earnestly, as if calling him from a distance. “Nick!”

There was, she fancied, the faintest gleam of concern apparent in the features opposite her. She continued.

“Nick!” she repeated. “You can hear me, Honey. Come to the house as soon as you are able. Come tonight, or any time; I’ll wait until you do. You’ll come, Honey; you must!”

She backed away from the car; the other made no move to halt her. She circled the vehicle and dashed recklessly across the street. From the safety of the opposite walk she glanced back; the red-eyed visage was regarding her steadily through the glass of the window.

Pat almost ran the few blocks to her home. She hastened along in a near panic, regardless of the glances of pedestrians she chanced to pass. With the disappearance of the immediate urge, the composure for which she had struggled had deserted her, and she felt shaken, terrified, and weak. Her arm ached miserably, and her wrenched shoulder pained at each movement. It was not until she attained her own doorstep that she paused, panting and quivering, to consider the events of the evening.

“I can’t stand any more of this!” she muttered wretchedly to herself. “I’ll just have to give up, I guess; I can’t pit myself another time against⁠—that thing.”

She leaned wearily against the railing of the porch, rubbing her injured arm.

“Dr. Carl was right,” she thought. “Nick was right; it’s dangerous. There was a moment there at the end when he⁠—or it⁠—almost had me. I’m frightened,” she admitted. “Lord only knows what might have happened had I been a little weaker. If the Lord does know,” she added.

She found her latchkey and entered the house. Only a dim light burned in the hall; her mother, of course, was at the Club, and the maid and Magda were far away in their chambers on the third floor. She tossed her wrap on a chair, switched on a brighter light, and examined the painful spot on her arm, a red mark already beginning to turn a nasty blue, with two tiny specks of drying blood. She shuddered, and trudged wearily up the stairs to her room.

The empty silence of the house oppressed her. She wanted human