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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Weird Tales, March 1942, with "The Superfluous Phantom"
Believe me, he was one of the slickest haunters in the business—with a class A diploma from the Spooks Preparatory School... but the League just wouldn't let him practice!
THE lights in the stalled subway train blinked and went out. A foreman leaned over the edge of the platform and waved a lantern.
"Okay, men—the current's off. Grab him and get him up outa there. That's swell! Now—up here with him."
The two guards down on the tracks heaved and swung. The limp form rose and slid onto the station platform, then lay motionless. The morbid, sensation-hungry crowd that gathers as if by magic at every disaster, however trivial, reluctantly backed away a little, leaving a clear spot in the center of which lay the inert figure in its dirt-smeared, mussed brown suit. Only one man pushed forward—a smallish middle-aged man with a moth-eaten looking goatee and carrying a dilapidated black satchel.
"I'm a doctor," he told the guard who tried to stop him. He dropped to his knees and put a hand on the prostrate man's chest. In a moment he stood up, shaking his head with an air of solemn finality. "He's gone. No pulse—no respiration. There is nothing to be done."
Some in the crowd thought they saw a sudden tremor sweep the corpse, one man claimed afterward that he saw an eyelid flicker, but at the moment no one said anything. They simply stood, as metropolitan crowds usually do under the circumstances, popeyed, gaping and moronic—looking on for the sheer lust of seeing.
The doctor did not wait, but bustled away as if in a great hurry to keep an appointment. The crowd closed its ranks behind him and continued to stare. There would be other things to see, soon. The police would come, and reporters and stretcher bearers. And best of all, photographers. Every super-moron there was dumbly hoping that somehow he might get included in the picture so as to have something to boast of to his friends tomorrow. Then, above in the street a gong clanged and a siren shrieked its wailing song. The climax was at hand!
"All right, all right—outa the way, you—get going!"
Husky policemen shouldered their way through the mass of thrill seekers in a resistless phalanx. The sergeant's eye caught the picture of the train stalled halfway down the platform and thought he knew the answer—another suicide. But when he broke through to the inner circle and saw the prone figure on the concrete he saw that there was no blood on it. The guard shrugged and jerked a thumb toward the track. "Third rail," was all he said. "The guy's dead."
The sergeant wheeled and called out to the men behind him.
"A shock case, fellows. Jump up to the wagon and bring down the pulmotor. Then go to work on him and don't let up until I give the word. I've seen these third-railers pull through before."
The Emergency Squad went into action and while they were administering artificial respiration other cops cleared the jammed station. One by one the onlookers gave ground.
"Such a nice looking young man," commiserated one woman. "It's a pity. Too bad they didn't catch the man that pushed him." But nobody paid attention. As they shuffled out a cameraman came dashing in, demanding, "Where's the stiff?" and the outgoing sheep sighed. But they consoled themselves with the thought that in the very next editions they would be reading something like this:
"During the early rush hour today, a young man tentatively identified as John Wicks, 24, address unknown, jumped or fell in front of an uptown local. Trainman Horatio Z. Evans managed to stop the train before the wheels passed over the body, but when Wicks was extricated from beneath the first car it was found he had been electrocuted. Police rendered first aid, but their efforts proved unavailing. Service was resumed after a short delay."
That is, that is what they expected to read. But, as a matter of fact, they did nothing of the sort. For the first aid efforts did avail. After a few hours of mauling Johnny Wicks opened his eyes and saw the cops bending over him.
"Aw, lay off, won't you," he begged, "I wanna sleep."
Whereupon he tried to roll over and call it a day. They didn't let him do that, of course, but that is neither here nor there. The big thing—the main point to be remembered about the little episode is this: Johnny Wicks did not die! Not for an instant.
We-ell—maybe for an instant, or for a couple of instants—but hardly longer than that. After a little he signed a lot of papers, then walked home, more sore about ruining his new brown suit than anything. He would have to throw it away, now. The only other immediate consequence of his mishap was that for a few days he had to take a lot of kidding from his friends. After that the memory of it simply faded into the past. He hardly ever thought of it any more.
THE summer turned into fall, fall into winter, and in the course of time it was summer again. It was on a hot August night that Johnny went to bed early so as to be up early the next day. He was about to go on his vacation and did not mean to lose an hour of it. He was considerably annoyed, therefore, when shortly after he fell asleep he woke up again. It was with a sudden, scared start that puzzled him, and to add to his mystification an unseasonably icy gust of wind swept the room. Somehow there was a hint of the uncanny in it and his skin goose-pimpled and crawled in spite of him, for he thought he detected in the chill air the mouldy odor of the grave—an observation which itself struck him as odd the moment he made it, for not once in his whole life had he smelled a grave.
He glanced at the clock and saw by its luminous face that it was exactly midnight. At the same instant he unaccountably remembered that it was just a year to the day since he had had that ridiculous experience in the subway when the jostling of a hoodlum had caused him to be pronounced dead. But that was water over the dam, Wicks told himself and reached down for the cover. He was not going to stay awake and suffer, even if it was a cold night in August.
It was then he saw It.
"What's the big idea?" he demanded angrily of the seven-foot smoky apparition standing at the foot of his bed. The thing was vague and whitish, and as he challenged it it raised two elongated skinny arms and spread two sets of wispy, talonlike fingers.
"Who-o-o-o-osh! Ye-e-e-a-ow! Screee-e—e—e——" was what the thing said back to him, the last of its unearthly wails tapering off into a strangled silence.
"Oh, a ghost, huh?" commented Johnny, sitting upright in bed, wide awake by then. "Well, ghosty, run along and peddle your apples somewhere else. I haven't murdered anybody and nobody was ever murdered in this room that I know of. Anyhow, I don't believe in ghosts, so you're wasting time. Scram!"
Johnny Wicks slid down into the bed again and adjusted his pillow. But he kept a wary eye on the amorphous cloud hovering over the foot of his bed. It was waveringly condensing into something shaped much more like a man, but except for its initial screeches had uttered no other sound. Presently the apparition completed its reorganization. Then it stretched forth its ghostly arm and pointed an accusatory finger at the young fellow in the bed.
"You didn't kill me, no," admitted the ghost, croaking the words in a deep sepulchral voice, "but you're doing something worse and I can't stand it." It suddenly struck Johnny that the voice sounded a great deal like his own—that is, what his own might sound like if he had a bad cold and shouted down a cistern. "You're ruining my career, that's what you're doing," reproached the spectral visitor, "and for no reason except your own damn selfishness."
Johnny Wicks was flabbergasted. He hadn't the slightest idea what the phantom was talking about.
"I'm not taking it lying down, either," continued the ghost, threateningly, his voice getting stronger and more distinct and more and more like Johnny's own. "I'm going to haunt you until you make it right, that is what I'm going to do. You've gotta make things right—I can't go on this way."
The agitation of the spectre was painfully obvious. He swayed and twisted like a tornado cloud and his surfaces were wrinkled into little waves by the turbulence of the ethereal stuff of which he was composed. It made Johnny Wicks think of a dense cloud of cigar smoke over a poker table, stirred into erratic movement by the exhalations of the players.
"Me, Mac?" Johnny asked. "What have I got to do with you?" Then, realizing how ridiculous it was to be sitting up in bed at that time of night arguing with a strange ghost, he added, very firmly: "Listen, you bunch of fog, whoever you are. I don't know you and I don't want to know you. I don't get your racket and I don't care a hang what it is. I'm not interested. I've got a lot of important sleeping to do between now and morning and I'm going to get on with it. So pull yourself together and get the hell outa here before I throw you out."
"Yeah!" sneered the ghost, immediately belligerent. "Well, try it."
He swelled up to double his size, looking very fearsome, and uttered another of his long-drawn "Whooshes."
"Bosh!" said Johnny, and reached for the light switch.
THE illumination did not dispel the ghost, however. He was still here. At first he appeared to be a shapeless blue-green cloud, but he shrank rapidly until he seemed to be almost as solid as the living Johnny Wicks himself. And, to Johnny's further bewilderment, his own, exact double. Except that, instead of wearing pink pajamas, he wore the grease- and lime-stained brown suit of the night of the subway near-tragedy. It was amazing, for that suit had long since been burned.
"Start the rough stuff any time," challenged the ghost, insolently, "only I'd advise you to take it easy. You can sock me all right, but watch out you don't knock yourself out when you do. I'm not as solid as I look."
Johnny was already swinging when the ghost said that, but he hastily pulled his punch. The warning had the ring of sound advice. Yet he had promised to throw his unwanted visitor out and he had to make good. Otherwise he might find himself permanently haunted, and that was one thing that Johnny Wicks felt was unneeded to round out his life.
He considered the cloudy, nebulous nature of his guest and decided upon another maneuver. On his table stood an antiquated electric fan which he rarely used for the reason that it was so noisy. But now he plugged it in and flicked the switch. He trained it on the phantom, listened and watched as the wheezy motor buzzed up to speed, but little happened. His unsubstantial caller merely wavered ripplingly, but did not budge from where he stood. Nor did he alter the supercilious I-told-you-so sneer that was on his face. That infuriated Johnny particularly, for he knew just what the thing was thinking—or thought he must—because it looked so exactly like himself.
"Live people," remarked the ghost with exasperating smugness, "often make that error. Because we look like smoke, they think we are smoke. But go ahead. Experiment all you want—I've got all eternity. Then when you've made up your mind you're stuck with me, we can get down to brass tacks. I came here to get justice, and by the Elder Shades, I'm going to get it, even if I have to haunt you night and day. And pal, believe me you, I'm one of the slickest haunters in the business. I'm only a young guy, but I've got a class A diploma from the S.P.S. and a cum laude to make it more binding."
Johnny Wicks gritted his teeth. The conceit and impudence of the fellow was unbearable. It was all the more so because of the fellow's close resemblance to him.
"And what the hell, if I may ask," put he frigidly, "is the S.P.S.?"
"Why, you poor dope—the Spooks Preparatory School," replied the phantom with some condescension. "You go there first—the minute you kick off. I was a natural for them. I got high marks in everything—chain clanking, body dragging, eerie yowling, materializations and dematerialization, stair-creaking, raising mouldy odors, and all the rest of it. Gee! My prof was proud of me!"
The ghost paused to gloat a moment over the memory of his own prowess. Then his face suddenly clouded with the gloom he had displayed earlier. He sighed a dismal sigh—truly a ghastly sigh. "And to think," he went on bitterly, "that after that I am not allowed to practice. And all on account of you, leading your selfish, heedless life. Five times I've been, hat in hand, to the head office of the L.P.A.G., and five times they've chucked me out. They won't give me a haunting license." Johnny thought the apparition was going to break down and weep, he looked so dejected. He wasn't at all sure he knew what the ghost was talking about, but since there appeared to be no way of getting rid of him, Johnny figured there could be no harm done in getting a little information. He was beginning to acquire an interest in the life and customs of the shades.
"If you were so darned good at the S.P.S.," he asked, "why is it that the L.P.A.G., whoever they are, won't let you practice? And when you bust in here and pester me this way, aren't you practicing? And when it comes to that, if you are unlicensed and I want to sleep, why shouldn't I report you to your own L.P.A.G. and let them handle it? I hate to be a squealer, Mac, but that's the way I feel about it."
"GO ahead and report," defied the ghost. "Nothing would suit me better. To get to the big shot you have to die and serve your apprenticeship. And that's all I want you to do. Then you'll meet the fellow in charge of assignments for the League for the Protection of Authentic Ghosts. He's the guy who says who can haunt and who can't, and dishes out the locations. If you're good—and on the level—he might slip you something choice, like the scene of a juicy triple murder. F'rinstance, I know a guy—but, oh hell, what's the use? I can't get anywhere as long as you're alive."
He stopped again and gave vent to another of his hollow sighs—a soul-wringing, swishy expiration calculated to send chills racing up and down the spine of any luckless listener. Those sighs were like gusts of stagnant air fanned from a long forgotten tomb.
"It's a lousy system," murmured the ghost disconsolately. "Why couldn't they have told me I was a phoney before I put in all that time and hard work at school?"
"I'm sure I don't know," answered Johnny Wicks, mildly. "I never considered that angle. But now that you bring it up, I thought that all ghosts were phoney. What makes you any different?"
"I'm illegitimate, that's what," replied the spectre sullenly. "You double-crossed me—you didn't stay dead like you oughta had. That leaves me in a tough spot."
The meaning of this strange interview was beginning to dawn on Johnny's mind. Could it be that during the brief time he was unconscious that night that he had generated a ghost—a premature one, so to speak? But the ghost was continuing to pour out his woes.
"You see, I can't prove that I... that is, you... I mean we—Oh, skip it, you know what I mean... that one or the other of us was killed when you fell on the third rail. I admit I was wrong—I shoulda waited. But when that doctor guy stepped right up and said you were dead, that was enough for me. I took right off. The next thing I knew I was in the primary class at the S.P.S. It was only last night when I took the final tests for a license that I found out you didn't die at all. They put me on cemetery patrol, but there wasn't a grave there I could call my own. The examiner got suspicious and wanted to see my death certificate. Of course, you know, every ghost don't have to have a grave—like the ones of fellows eaten by tigers and things like that—but they do have to be dead.
"So they looked up my pedigree. Now I'm sunk. They say that as long as you're alive, I don't even exist. Can you tie that?"
"It's tough," conceded Johnny Wicks, "but I don't see what I can do about it."
"You bet it's tough," replied the ghost fiercely, "and there's plenty you can do about it. You gotta make it right. You gotta kick off for keeps. Hang yourself, jump out the window or take a slug of cyanide—it's all the same to me. But make it snappy so we can get back to headquarters in time to qualify."
"Never mind the 'we,' " said Johnny, a little angrily. "You leave me out of this. If you were dizzy enough to go off half-cocked on account of what some stranger said, that's your hard luck. Why, you silly nitwit, you didn't even know whether the fellow was a regular doctor or not. Anyhow, if you think I'm going to kill myself just to get you out of a jam, you're plain nuts."
"You'll be sorry," threatened the ghost, puffing himself up to three times his former dimensions and taking on what was intended to be a terrifying look. "You haven't seen anything yet."
But Johnny Wicks was not going to be intimidated by any counterfeit ghost.
"Get this, spook," he said very determinedly, "you can go plumb to wherever it is that no-good ghosts go to. Or go haunt the bozo that pushed me—er, us—off the platform. Or try your luck on the Interboro; they were the people that furnished the juice that killed me—you—damn it, you've got me doing it now! Or take a crack at that gyp doctor that started the trouble. But lay off me."
With that he turned off the light, pulled the blanket over his head and paid no further attention to the screeches and howls that made the night hideous for awhile. Presently he fell asleep, and the phantom, discouraged by the indifferent snoring of his intended victim, faded slowly back into nothingness.
JOHNNY WICKS had a very pleasant vacation, unmarred by another visit from his spectral double. But the very first night he was back in town, the phantom appeared once more, making his entrance as before.
"Now what?" Johnny wanted to know, glowering at the intruder. Then he noticed his ghost appeared a good deal the worse for wear. One of his eyes had been blackened and his nose pushed out of place. He carried one arm in a sling and the hand of the other one was bandaged. He looked as if he had been the chief loser in a free-for-all.
"I tried all you said to do," complained the phantom reproachfully. "It won't work. So you've got to bump yourself off after all. That's what I came to tell you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. It was this way. I looked up the coot who pushed us off the platform. What a souse! That fellow don't ever go to sleep—he just passes out. He's haunt-proof. Then I tried the subway. I couldn't work there, either. In the first place that station has four or five real ghosts on the job—suicides and lushes—that specialize in platform work. What I didn't count on was all the dead groundhogs and blasters. Around midnight the tunnels are crawling with 'em. Some roughneck wanted to know who I was and wanted to see my card. Then a Floating Delegate came by, checking up, and he told 'em I was a phoney. So they ganged up on me. A mortal can't hurt a ghost, but another ghost can."
The phantom exhibited his injuries.
"What about the quack doctor?" asked Johnny, getting interested.
"Oh, him? That was worse. All doctors, even the good ones, are bad haunt prospects because too many people die under their hands for one reason or another. But that guy is in a class all to himself. The amount of malpractice he musta done would burn you up. I went up there one night, but couldn't get near the place, the ghosts were so thick. They asked me what I had against the bird and I told 'em. You shoulda heard 'em laugh. Then they ran me off the place."
"Well?"
"I'm just telling you. I tried to get by without your help, but it's no go. Now you've got to do the Dutch. It's the only way out."
"Go chase yourself," said Johnny, pulling up the covers.
"Tomorrow night I get tough," warned the phantom, then vanished.
THE ghost did get tough. He tried all the tricks of his trade, but none of the ordinary ones worked. So he settled down to a campaign of incessant, interminable talk. He showed up every night promptly at the hour of twelve and gabbled until morning. Where howling and chain-clanking or being smothered under filmy shrouds had failed to disturb Johnny in the least, the constant chatter began to wear him down. He had to listen, for the ghost, being an offspring of his own self, knew all his inmost secrets—the things that Johnny had half-forgotten and was willing to keep forgotten. He was prodded and taunted for every mistake he had ever made, and for every evil thought. That went on, night after night, for months, until Johnny Wicks was near the breaking point. He lost flesh by the pound, his hair grayed, and he took on the haggard, frenzied appearance of a man on the verge of madness.
"You look like a ghost," his boss said to him one day, and Johnny jumped as if jabbed with a bayonet. The very word ghost, in his jittery condition, was almost more than he could stand. He wondered dumbly how much longer he could hold out. He had rebelled from the first on the suggestion of suicide, but lately it began to have an appeal. But, as is common in most people, the tendency to cling to life was strong, so he cast about for some means of eliminating his pestiferous double self.
He read books dealing with phantasms. Though he found that there were approved methods of exorcism as regards many, there was nothing that was helpful against ghosts. Silver bullets could dispose of were-wolves, a stake through the heart would stop a vampire. Garlic, crucifixes and other things were effective against certain classes of witches and demons. But man was helpless against ghostly persecution.
He complained to the police but the most helpful hint they gave him was that a short stay in Bellevue's psycopathic ward would do him no harm. Ghosts were out of their line. They couldn't be apprehended, or confined; bullets and blackjacks did not do them injury. Consequently, the police rule was to let them strictly alone. But they did recommend a lawyer who they said had had some success in such matters.
Johnny Wicks took the address and looked him up. The lawyer was not an imposing one. On the contrary he was a dried-up wisp of a man of great but indeterminable age.
"Hmm," he said, when Johnny had poured out his story. "Quite unusual, this. Haunted by your own ghost, eh? Most extraordinary!"
He pulled down a calfskin bound volume and studied its index. Then he shook his head rather hopelessly.
"During the Middle Ages," he said, "there were numerous court decisions relating to ghosts and the like. But in our time the courts have the tendency to throw such cases out. The complainant against spectral annoyance rarely receives assistance. Here, for example. In an action brought by certain citizens of Calder's Falls, Idaho, against the Western Sextons' Association to abate nocturnal noises in the town's cemetery, the court held:
"'—the defendant is in no respect liable for the behavior of ghosts operating upon his premises. Ghosts have repeatedly been held to be a species of ferae naturae, or wild beast, or wild and unaccountable creatures, without ownership and beyond control. Moreover, the tendency to haunt is a natural instinct with a ghost, and as such, in the absence of any statute specifically to the contrary, not an offense.'"
Johnny Wicks blinked. That did not sound helpful.
"That attitude is the common one," the lawyer went on to say. "Most judges would reject your case on the pretext that it does not fall within their jurisdiction. I am quite certain that should you attempt to obtain an injunction against your own ghost you would get nowhere. What he is attempting, of course, is a form of extortion, but it has been previously held that a man cannot blackmail himself. By extension, your own ghost, being a sort of alter ego, comes under the same rule. I am sorry, my young friend, but there appears to be nothing you can do."
Johnny sighed miserably. He was very tired and needed sleep badly. He wondered if it would not be wise to cut his throat and be done with it.
"However," remarked the old lawyer, shrewdly, "it follows that since you have no rights against the phantom, it also has none against you. You are perfectly free to deal with it as you choose."
"I know," said Johnny, hopelessly, "but how? You can't sock the thing, you can't pin it down, you can't outtalk it."
"Everything that ever lived is afraid of something," observed the sage old man. "What is your ghost afraid of?"
"Other ghosts," said Johnny, after a moment's reflection. "But I don't know any other ghosts."
"Think it over, son. There's your way out. Five dollars, please."
Johnny Wicks fumbled for the money, paid him, and staggered out. It was five dollars wasted; all he had learned was that he was trapped. His only release would be death. But at least he would not have to listen to the tirades of his nightly visitor.
THAT afternoon he visited a hockshop and bought a revolver. He took it home with him, loaded it and placed it on the table. Tonight was the night. He undressed, listless and numb, and fell onto the bed. Nothing mattered any more. He slept. Then, at midnight, there came the icy gust and with it his ghastly double.
"Do you remember the time..." began the ghost.
"Cut it," said Johnny, and snapped on the light. "You win."
He got up and picked up the pistol, whirled its cylinder and verified that it was loaded and ready to go. Then he faced the phantom. That time he was defiant, for a dazzlingly new idea had just popped into his mind.
"You win," he repeated, "but only the first round. In one minute I am going to blow my brains out. Then I'll be dead. That's what you want, isn't it?"
"Whatta pal!" exclaimed the ghost, beaming, "I knew you'd do the right thing."
"Okay. But wait. In a few seconds I'll be dead. Then I'll produce a real, honest-to-God ghost that won't look a thing like you—gray, thin, and older. Then I'll go straight to the L.P.A.G. and denounce you for the impostor you are. After that..." he paused for an ominous silence. The ghost quailed. "After that I'm coming back and going to rip that foggy hide right off your back. I'm going to take you apart, one bunch of smoke at a time, until I find out what makes you tick. Then I'm going to stop it ticking. Get that?"
"You can't do that to me!" wailed the spectre. "Ye-e-e-ow. Screee-e!"
"Watch me," said Johnny Wicks grimly, and put the gun to his temple. But he did not pull the trigger. The phantom was in a state of intense agitation, its nebulous substance writhing and twisting horribly. But it was steadily growing fainter, and in half a minute or so more it became quite invisible. Johnny slowly lowered the gun. Then he tossed it into a drawer with a chuckle.
"What a damn fool I've been," he said to himself. "I plight have known that the best way to handle a blackmailer is to call his bluff."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.