Food for demons, p.8
Food for Demons, page 8
Ransom, still too tall, too skinny, too physically unmatured even at twenty-two, was just beginning to gain a little success. He had sold several stories, and recently those that were rejected were coming close enough to saleability so that editors were writing him notes of comment and encouragement, rather than merely sending back printed rejecting slips.
“Gotta get me an entirely new idea,” he mused to himself one morning as he sat down in front of the battered, borrowed typewriter in his “Studio” (as he liked, humorously, to call his small, almost bare, rented room). “Need a new switch to a good idea.”
Ransom’s peculiar way of working up a story line was in no sense plagiarism, even though he did work more or less indirectly from stories he had read. He knew, as do all authors, that there are only a few basic plots.
So his technique was to think over the stories already published of one certain type, to study their basic plotideas, and then attempt to find a new feature in plot or counter-plot, a new trick ending, some different “switch” that would make the old idea over into one peculiarly his own.
His was apparently the type of imagination that was fertile in these things. He had often been complimented on the newness of his ideas, on their ingenuity, even when the stories themselves had not been quite good enough for the editors to buy.
In fact, one author he knew, who was in one of those periods when no plot ideas seem to come, had paid him twenty-five dollars for the use of one of his switches, from which he had written a new story.
“Lemme see, now,” Ransom said to himself. “For this time I wonder how about one of those stories where what is apparently a man is really a being from another world or dimension, or a demon or something. Ummmm.”
He ran rapidly over several stories his mind could call up off-hand, evaluating their basics, trying to find that new twist, that different angle to make his story his own—unique.
Soon he began to grin. “Boy, what a blurb that would be for a yarn. I can see it now on the page. There’s the name of the story, ‘by Stanley Ransom’ beneath it, a heading picture by a good artist, and then the editor’s blurb:
‘Earth couldn’t hold him;
‘Hell wouldn’t have him;
‘Heaven didn’t know what to do with him.’
Man, it’s wonderful. Now, what’ll the story be about?”
He sat for an hour, casting various ideas forth and back in his mind, trying to fit them into some logical pattern.
“I might use a series of letters between the recording angels of heaven and hell . . . naw, that’s been done before, and by better writers’n I’ll ever be.”
More cogitation. “I could use a newspaper reporter, finding out a news story . . . nope, that’s been done to death.”
It was long past bedtime when he finally gave up in disgust, and went through the motions of getting ready for bed. Once between the sheets, he tried to sleep, but his over-active mind kept wrestling with the problem. This kind of insomnia did not help his health any, either. Someday he would have to find a cure for it.
But at last he did tumble off the brink of wakefulness into the abyss of sleep. But even then his dreams kept pace with his snores.
Next morning he was at it again. After his sparse breakfast (from necessity, not choice) he sat down at his typewriter as he had found that he could, as he phrased it, “think better on a typer”.
He finally had an idea of sorts, so he fed in a sheet of scratch paper and started out. He ran along fine until about the middle of page four, when it petered out—his mind a vacuum in which not even the nucleus of an idea remained.
Angrily he wadded the sheets and flung them into the already overflowing wastebasket in the corner.
He paused to light a cigaret, then thought some more. After innumerable clock-ticks, he yelled “Whoopee!” He grabbed another sheet of paper, quickly threaded it into the machine, and began rattling the keys again.
This time he only got about three-quarters of the way down the second page when his sky-rocket of inspiration fizzled out and the stick of it fell with a thud that made him wince.
So it went for days. He was so sure he had a wonderful idea that he hated to give it up. But at last his native common sense came to his rescue. He typed the words of the “blurb” onto a sheet of paper, and slid it into his “idea file”.
Then he turned to another story-idea that had been smoldering on the back burner of his mind, and that seemed suddenly to show signs of breaking into flame.
After that one was completed, another story claimed his attention, then another, and so on—for several months. Then one sad day, needing an idea, he went through his idea file and happened to notice a slip of paper labelled “Blurb”.
“Hmmm, that’s still a damned good idea. Now, what can I do with it?”
He worked for some time on the character of the “him” of the blurb. He gave him all the powers of a sort of superman, including great mentality and unusual mental powers.
Next he tried to work out a story-line, but time after time he found he could merely make a start, then it would pan out on him. He began getting angry at himself. Finally he ripped the last sheet on which he was working out of the typer, wadded all the pages together, and threw them toward that now-more-than-ever overflowing wastebasket.
“Really gotta empty that some day,” he muttered to himself. Then an impish grin smirked its way across his face. “Oughtta empty the floor around it, you mean, you lazy dope.”
Just then there was a rap on his door. “Come in, it ain’t locked,” he yelled, and turned to face it.
It opened, and a courtly-appearing gentleman was seen standing there. He was apparently about forty-five years of age, tall, faultlessly groomed, and “with that unforgeable characteristic which is the mark of the true aristocrat of personify” . . . which Ransom suddenly realized was a phrase he just recently had written.
But before he could think more, Ransom felt himself jerked out of his chair, as though by an invisible hand, and flung toward the ceiling. He twisted and turned as he rose and then as he fell downward.
Even in his fright and his astonishment he sensed that either the room had unaccountably grown huge, or that he himself had shrunk. For at the top of his flight it seemed at least a hundred feet down to the floor—and everything in the room was correspondingly enlarged.
He was falling rapidly now, and he could see that he was headed directly toward that huge, over-flowing wastepaper basket of his. In a moment he landed—kerplop! He skidded and slid along the topmost papers, then over the edge and downward along the piled-up mess.
It seemed an interminable time that he took to do all of this, which but added to his sense of unreality. But suddenly there was a moment of blankness . . . and he was back in his chair, himself and the room and furniture of regular size once more. He awoke then to the fact that his visitor was speaking.
“Pardon the intrusion, Mister Ransom,” he said in a suave voice that Stanley would have given worlds to be able to imitate. “But among all the other things that have happened to me, being thrown rudely and ruthlessly into a wastepaper basket has never occurred before. Nor can I say that I especially care for it.”
The young man looked at him in amazement, his lower jaw drooping as though it was hinged with a suddenly-tired spring.
“Huh? What’d you say? And what the hell just happened to me?”
“I am sure you both heard and comprehend me,” the man rejoined loftily. “I am quite certain that I enunciate clearly. However, to make sure, I shall implant it directly upon your mind.”
Stanley Ransom heard the words again in that suave voice, not aloud, but in his head. It but increased his confusion.
“Come, come, are you going to be polite and ask me to come in and take a seat? Thank you most kindly, sir, I shall be delighted to do so.”
The sarcasm was flaming, as the visitor entered the room, deposited hat, stick and gloves on an end-table, and seated himself in Ransom’s one good chair.
The young writer was still staring in open-mouthed curiosity and wonder at his self-invited guest.
“Look, Mister . . . Mister Whateveryournameis. I heard your words and I know what the words mean, but I’m damned if I know what you’re talking about. Who are you, anyway, and what d’ya mean by that ‘throwing you in the waste basket’ routine? I thought that was what just happened to me.”
“You just threw me in your wastepaper basket, and, as I intimated, I did not care for the sensation or indignity.”
’JI just threw you? You’re nuts. Now, who the hell are you, and what d’ya want?”
“I, sir, am the man whom ‘Earth could not hold’, whom ‘Hell would not have’, and whom ‘Heaven did not know what to do with’. I, sir, am your character, brought to life by you, and then thrown uselessly away without rhyme or reason, without having ever had a chance to accomplish any of the things that make me worthy of the splendid panegyric you have given me. I, sir, am Winston Carstairs.”
“Now I will be damned,” Ransom spoke aloud. But his subconscious, always the writer, was saying, “Whom, whom, that can’t be right. It oughtta be which . . . or should it be that?”
He sank back on his typist chair, felt himself grow wet with a cold, clammy sweat that . . . that . . . oh, hell, this was no time to be trying to think up cute ways out of cliches and trite phrases.
“Then I suppose you’re responsible for that feeling I just had, as though I’d been made very small, and also thrown into that basket?” Ransom’s voice was very small.
“Yes, I felt you should experience it, so you would be more careful and considerate of what you do to others in the future.”
“But how was I to know that the fictitious characters I describe in a story really have actual life?”
“Oh, come now, would you have me believe that you are really that naive, not to know you give them life when you create them on paper and in your mind?”
“Maybe I’m naive, maybe I’m nuts, but I sure never knew that. I’m not so sure I know it even now. Sounds mighty fishy to me. None of the others ever showed up in the flesh.”
“Probably you didn’t give them enough powers so they could do so. But I shall tell you something else. You created me, granted. But you made me greater than yourself. You are not the Master, therefore. I am. Think on that for a spell.”
Stanley Ransom did “think on” it, and the more he thought about it the less he thought about it. He had apparently got himself in a mess this time.
But his thinking was interrupted by that demanding voice. “Now, since I am the Master, you are the slave. Therefore, slave, hurry and get me something to eat. I hunger. I desire the finest food obtainable in this city. None of your common food, such as ordinary men like yourself eat.”
“But, I . . .”
“Silence and attend. You are to bring me the finest of viands, tastefully prepared. I must have the best of wines. I crave the finest cigars to smoke. Get them—at once.”
“Now look,” protested Ransom with a surge of independence. “I’m not a rich man. I can’t furnish you all those things. I have less than five bucks to my name, and that won’t even get one meal such as you describe.”
“Money, money. What have I to do with that? I have given you your orders. Obey them. If you have no money, sell your books, your clothing, anything. What do I care about how you get it? But get it you shall, and quickly.”
A peculiar feeling came over Ransom as this strange being said those words. He felt not only complete helplessness, but into his mind crept the knowledge that he had to obey those commands.
Tears were standing in his eyes as he made a package of some of his beloved books. These carefully chosen few were, to Stanley Ransom, beloved friends rather than inanimate objects.
Those tears were still in his eyes when he entered the second-hand book store and were, perhaps, the means of his obtaining more money than he might otherwise have been paid. For the proprietor, despite being a small, greasy man, was a kind-hearted one. He took pity on this young man who was all too apparently feeling so badly about parting with his precious possessions. The price he paid Ransom was a little above that which he would ordinarily have been offered.
The money in his pocket, Ransom went to the finest restaurant in the city, The Golden Pheasant. It was a place he had never had the nerve to enter before, it being known not only for the excellence of its cuisine, but also for the stratospheric prices it charged.
Here he ordered the finest meal his money would buy, and had it prepared to take out, in heat-maintaining containers.
Wearily he lugged the precious load back to his room, where he was forced to the further indignity of standing by, helpless and hungry, while the stranger consumed the entire meal.
When he had finished eating, Carstairs seated himself again in Ransom’s one good chair, stretched out, burped in contentment, then demanded, “Well, where are my cigars?”
“There wasn’t enough money for them, too.”
“I told you not to bother me about your lack of money. Get them!”
“Yes sir,” humbly. Ransom went to the closet and took out his top-coat, his only decent piece of wearing apparel. With it across his arm he went out to look for a pawnshop. An hour later he was back in his room with three one-dollar cigars.
“I know you said not to bother you, but what do you expect me to do about future meals?” he wailed in worried supplication. “I haven’t much of anything else to sell or pawn.”
“There’s your typewriter.”
“It isn’t mine. I borrowed it from the landlady.”
“Sell it anyway.”
“I won’t, I won’t! I’m not a thief. I’ve never stolen anything in my life. I’m not going to start now. You’ve got me hypnotized someway, but I know this much—you can’t hypnotize a man to do anything that’s against his basic ethics.”
“Oh, you’ll do it when the time comes,” Carstairs said smugly. “What I have is mental control, not hypnotism. So you will get me the food I desire when I ask for it. Or would you perhaps prefer to have me drink your blood? You know I am a vampire, as well as all the other things you’ve made me.”
He got up from the chair and started toward the bedroom. “Now I think I shall have a bath and then a nap. See you do not disturb me.”
Stanley Ransom was mad clear through, with an intense anger such as he had never known before. So mad he knew he was not capable of straight thinking. Yet he could not stop thinking, trying to plan some way out.
He was still sitting there, attempting valorously but vainly to frame a plan, when his uninvited guest returned to the living room. Ransom had evolved one little plan, but even he did not have much faith in it. However, he would give it the good old school try.
“You say you’re the embodiment of the man I created in my blurb. Well, how about a little proof, instead of just your say-so? Let’s see you do something that would justify such a blurb as I wrote for you.”
“You dare command me? . . . But then, I suppose just once you do have the right. Therefore, name what you want, and I shall give you that proof.”
“O.K., then, I’ll give you a test. I said that ‘earth couldn’t hold you’. So let’s see you go to Jupiter, and bring me back a chunk of the stuff that makes the Red Spot red.”
Winston Carstairs looked at him a moment in mirthless contempt, then suddenly faded into vanishment. Ransom had not recovered from the shock of surprise when his visitor came back into visibility. He held in his hand a small lump of reddish material, crumbling and small-lumpy. It gave off a peculiar light of its own, and seemed to be pulsing with power. Ransom backed away as the man held it out toward him, for already his skin was feeling itchy, as though badly sun-burned.
“What . . . what is it?” he quavered.
“Just some of the radio-active dirt from Jupiter’s Red Spot,” Carstairs said contemptuously, flinging the stuff onto Ransom’s desk.
The latter’s eyes bugged out even farther as he saw it eating into the woodwork. “Get it off there,” he yelled, “throw it out the window before it ruins my desk.”
Silently Carstairs did so. “Anything further your majesty desires?” His voice was silky with withering contempt. As Ransom remained silent he added, “Do you think I cannot read in your mind how your pitifully weak intelligence was trying to trap me? Did you write me up as a complete fool?”
Ransom gasped, his face suddenly whitened. “Trapped, that’s what I am. Not the other, not him . . . he . . . but me . . . I . . . I’m the one that’s trapped.”
Damn it, he was so badly rattled he could not remember his grammar.
“O.K., O.K., so I’m beat,” he finally admitted. “Now suppose you help me out a little, if I’m to be saddled with you. If you’re so good, how about giving a flock of ideas, so I can write some swell stories that editors will gobble up? That should be easy for you,” he tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Besides, it will help settle the money problem for both of us.”
“It’s not too bad an idea, except that it’s grossly inefficient,” Carstairs seemed challenged by the thought. “Let’s do it the simple way.”
“Like what?” Ransom demanded.
“Like this.”
Carstairs sat down at Ransom’s desk, quickly inserted a sheet of paper in the machine, then sat back, his eyes closed in concentration.
Instantly the typer started clicking, its keys flying and the carriage racing forth and back. As fast as each sheet was filled, Carstairs silently inserted another. Ransom could see that it was a story of some sort.
Almost before the young man could recover his wits at the sight of this marvel, the man turned and held out to him a pile of sheets completely filled with beautiful typing.
In a daze Ransom took the typescript. There was the title, “Googoos of Goran”, then his own name. He glanced up at Carstairs.
“Your name is becoming known and has some sales values,” his guest explained. “Mine hasn’t, and although I could easily and quickly make it so, I do not care to be thus publicized. So we will use yours. It’s a good idea. I can’t imagine how you happened to think of it,” he ended with that infuriating sarcasm of his.
