The other part was….
You know how a cat purrs? Well, something in those nightmares of mine purred. But not like a cat. It did express a sort of satisfaction, contentedness, but that was where the similarity ended. Nor was it truly a purring, no, it was more the wet, frothy, huskily breathed repetition of a single word, spoken slaveringly over and over again: Uzzi—Uzzi—Uzzi!
Finally, Monday morning just four days ago, the thing reached its peak. Or perhaps I should say it reached a peak. The dream was the same as before: a sort of lulling, warm embrace, a hypnotic drifting on some slimy ocean whose tides were irresistible. And deep inside a gnawing horror of some monstrous, impossible thing, which drifted with me and sang to me its hypnotic lullaby. Sang to me to numb my mind, anaesthetised me to the pain of its damned, leech-like sucking!
But when I woke up…the nightmare hadn’t gone away. And it was no longer any use kidding myself that this…this slime was sweat! No, for it was in fact slime: a sticky film of the filthy stuff that clung like clear, stinking jelly to my bedsheets—and to me, all down my left side! What’s more, there was a deep slimy depression in the bed to the left of where I’d slept: a wet, oval-shaped indentation as if a great cracked egg had lain there all through the night, seeping its fluids into my bed. And worse than any of this, I could no longer fool myself but had to admit that I was in pain; the left-hand side of my ribcage hurt like hell and felt…totally wrong.
I showered, carefully examined myself in a full-length mirror—and went immediately to see my doctor. Oh, yes, for I’d seen something like this before, except that then I’d thought my car was to blame. I also knew that it could get much worse, and I certainly wasn’t going to wait around until it—whatever “it” was—had eaten right through to my ribs!
The doctor took samples—blood, urine, tissue—and said he’d send them for testing. But he couldn’t tell me what was wrong with me, not right there and then. In fact I got the impression he was baffled. He thought it was a purely physical thing, do you see? And I wasn’t about to tell him what I thought was wrong with me. How could I? How could I explain to him what I made of the large, darkly indented weeping sore under my armpit? If I’d told him that, he’d think it was my mind that needed mending. And perhaps it is, which is why I’ve come to see you….
So that was four days ago. Since when—
It seemed to me that I must sort out my priorities, take some positive course of action. The first thing I must do was catch this beast “in the act”, as it were. At the doctor’s (on the pretext that I had a lot of night studying to do) I’d got hold of some tablets to help me keep awake. That night I drank a lot of strong, black coffee, put a powerful electric torch under my pillow, finally took two of the tablets before going to bed. I tried to look at a book but after reading the same paragraph five or six times gave it up as a bad job. And at last, at about 1:30, I turned out the light. I wanted it to come, d’you see?
I tried to stay awake, but…
…The luminous hands on my alarm clock stood at 2.55…I was adrift on that alien sea again, but striving against the lure of its tides…and at the same time I was in pain…and I knew that something bulky, clammy-cold and evil was glued to my side, droning its hideous song to keep me asleep:
Uzzi—Uzzi—Uzzi!
Don’t ask me how I kept from crying out. Have you tried to cry out, when you’re only half awake? Maybe I couldn’t. It was like a dream when you want to run but don’t seem to have any legs, when you want to scream and haven’t got a voice. But as I struggled up from sleeping, so my sense of reality got stronger, and with it my feeling of freezing horror!
I was lying on my back and my left arm was draped loosely, over the—torso?—of some slimy, oozing, corrugated oval shape which was pressing itself to me like a limpet. Its stench was that of the tomb, or perhaps some long-dead seabed heaved up to the surface, or a combination of the two with the thick, cloying reek of crushed toadstools thrown in for good measure. And in another moment I was conscious and my mind had switched itself on, and I knew that this was one hundred percent reality. No longer a dream but the real, the very real thing. This was Uzzi!
Paralysed? Very nearly. But somehow I managed to work my hand up under my pillow, find my torch and drag it out—and press its rubber stud. And I shone the beam full on the sick-gleaming unnatural thing that lay there in the bed with me, sucking on my side!
Should I say it was a monstrous slug? A huge octopus which was all body-sac, with short feelers or tentacles fringed about its suctorial mouth? How to describe a thing which is indescribable, except to a madman? But I do recall that it had eyes. Where placed? Don’t ask me, it’s something I mustn’t dwell on. It’s difficult to tell it without picturing it, which is what I mustn’t do. If I say they tipped three of its stubby tentacles…but, God! ...they were very nearly human eyes. And evil leered out of them like the devil himself through the gates of hell!
It was Uzzi, the dead German witch’s familiar, and it was something that the devil had sent to her out of hell. Except that now Uzzi was mine. And I was Uzzi’s!
All of these thoughts, this knowledge, coming to me in a single instant, from one brief glimpse—the merest blaze of light from my torch—for in the next moment the horror was gone. Just like that: gone! Disappeared from my bed, the room, the house. But not gone far, never gone far; and as usual, it had left its stink and its slime behind….
I staggered through the house putting on all the lights, sobbing, holding my side, loathing Uzzi, myself, this whole nightmare existence in a universe we so wrongly imagine to be neat and tidy and ordered. And then I turned my fire up and sat there before it all through the rest of the night, drinking whisky, burning in my fever of terror and at the same time shuddering right through to my soul.
Since then I haven’t slept at all, and I suppose it’s starting to show.
Well, that’s my story—it’s why I’ve come to see you, Dr Charles. Now tell me: am I mad?
• • •
I had been so wrapped up in Miles Clayton’s story that it took a little time to sink in that he was finished. I shook myself, asked if I might see his wound.
He took off his jacket, opened his shirt and showed me, explaining:
“Of course, it’s had three nights to heal a little. I haven’t slept, haven’t let myself be alone in the dark for a minute.”
I looked at it: the bruising, the central, sore area itself. I simply looked at it, didn’t touch it, and I came to my conclusions. As Clayton did up his shirt and put his jacket on again, I said: “Do you follow your stars, Miles?”
“Eh?” I’d taken him by surprise. “Astrology, d’you mean? Oh, yes—I’m a Pisces.” He frowned. “A good year ahead, allegedly.”
I shrugged. “Maybe, and maybe not. First I should get that cleared up, if I were you. And then I’d say you probably have a good many good years ahead.”
“Oh?” He looked doubtful, but interested.
I nodded. “Tell me, have you ever had any psychic experiences?”
“Ghosts?” He shook his head. “I’m not saying I don’t believe, mind you. No, for I’m open-minded on such things. But Uzzi is the first time anything like this has—” He paused, looked puzzled. “You changed the subject. I thought you were going to give me your opinion on my wound?”
“It might very well add up to the same thing,” I told him. “In fact I’d be willing to bet you don’t walk under ladders, either.”
“You’d win your bet,” he answered, looking tiredly mystified. “Why tempt fate? But what are you getting at?”
“Three possibilities with that trouble of yours,” I told him. “Two of them purely physical. But first tell me something: did you ever have anything like this bruise—this damage, let’s call it—before the accident in Germany?”
“Never so much as a pimple,” he answered. “Now tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Ah!” I smiled. “But it’s more what’s on your mind, Miles. Three
things, I said—three possibilities. But first let me say this: I for one don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t read my star forecasts and I’m not especially careful about ladders, or black cats crossing my path. In other words, I don’t let that sort of thing influence me. But they do influence you. For all that you’re a hard-headed businessman, you’re susceptible to extramundane suggestions.”
He inclined his head. “Extramundane?”
“Not of this world,” I told him. “You’re a believer…in things. Do you believe in God, too?”
He looked a little indignant. “Don’t you?”
“Frankly, no. Nor do I believe in the Devil. Good and evil are real, certainly: evidence of both is all around. But their origin lies in the mind. In the minds of men!”
We both sat down. “Go on,” he said.
I looked into his hollow, red-rimmed eyes and smiled. “Right! First the wound in your side. While you’re waiting for that doctor of yours to spark, I’d get a second opinion. Go to a specialist—you can afford it. Now, I’m obviously not that sort of doctor, but having looked at this damage of yours three things spring immediately to mind. One: it’s a cancer. A skin cancer, nasty but not fatal, and you should get it seen to at once. Two: it’s a nest of rodent ulcers, which—”
“What?” He leaned forward. “What sort of ulcers?”
“Rodent,” I repeated. “Burrowing. Gradually working their way under the skin and destroying tissue. I’ve an old friend who gets them, and he also gets treatment for them. Radiation, laser—there are several types of treatment. Every now and then he breaks out, but in a matter of weeks they have it under control. That wound of yours has precisely the same sort of dark indentations around its circumference, and—”
“Teeth marks,” he cut me off. “That’s where Uzzi clamps himself on to me—if it is a ‘he’!’ ” He sighed wearily. “All right, you’ve made two guesses—wrong ones, I’m afraid—so what’s the third?”
I shrugged, said: “It’s psychosomatic—and that is some thing I know about. And if all else fails, it’s the only possible diagnosis.”
“Psychosomatic?” He curled his lip, then immediately apologized. “I’m sorry. But does that mean what I think it means?”
“A mental illness,” I answered. “Of a sort.”
“Go on.”
“Mind and body are linked, Miles,” I continued. “It’s not just a one-way deal—each controls the other. The problem is your guilt. You’re doing this to yourself!”
His interest at once turned to anger. Which was what I’d more than half expected. “Am I really paying you for this?” he said. “You mean you think I’m eating my own side away? That everything that’s happening to me is generated up here?” He tapped his head. “And does that explain why my bed’s a swamp every time I sleep in it, after Uzzi’s visited me? I mean, are you really telling me that I’m—”
“Insane? But that’s what you came to find out, isn’t it?”
He closed his grimacing mouth, slumped down in his chair. “And am I?”
“No,” I shook my head. “You just feel guilty, that’s all, and you feel you have a great debt to pay.”
His eyes opened wide and I knew he was hooked. And I believed I knew how to cure him. “A debt?” he said. “To the girl, d’you mean?”
I nodded. “To her, and to Uzzi.”
He shrank down again. “You’re forgetting something,” he said. “I’ve seen Uzzi!”
“But only in the night, in the dark, when you’re half asleep and your conscience is most vulnerable. Only wake up, turn on the light, and—no Uzzi. It’s a figment of darkness, of the night, of your mind!”
“Guilt….” he said. But there was hope in his eyes.
“Oh, yes!” I drove my point home. “Guilty, because you can’t be sure even now that you were driving on the correct side of the road. Guilty—
because you’d let your attention wander. Guilty, of course, for you drove your car into that poor girl and broke her body. Guilty, because there was nothing you could do to save her—and more especially guilty, in your own mind, because you got off scot-free. But worst of all: guilty because you couldn’t even honour her last request, that you look after Uzzi! And so your mind’s paying your debt for you, and in so doing is slowly destroying your body—and must soon destroy itself, too. Except we won’t allow that. Psychosomatic, as I said.”
He put his face in his hands and sobbed, real tears that dripped from between his fingers. “God, yes!” his muffled, racked voice came to me. “God, I am guilty!”
“But you’re not,” I told him, “and there is a cure.”
He looked up and his face was pink jelly. “A…a cure?”
“Of course. To begin with, you weren’t to blame for the accident. Now, I know you’ve said you weren’t to blame, but you have to really believe it. After all, that young German policeman saw the whole thing, didn’t he? So that’s all it was, an accident. There are thousands just like it, all over the world, every day. As for Uzzi: you were probably right. A pet kitten, or maybe a dog. But Germany’s a civilized country. Uzzi will be taken care of.”
He stood up, stumbled to my desk, almost fell across it to grasp my hand. “Lord, if only I could be sure of that!”
“Listen,” I said. “You can be sure. It was that promise you made, that’s all, when you swore you’d look after him. That’s what made the connection in your mind. A wrong connection. And now all we have to do is break it.”
“And you can do that?” He was crushing my hand. I gently freed myself, said:
“Of course. For I have no belief in such things. Now, Miles, I want you to try very hard and remember everything we’ve talked about. You’ll very soon see how it all makes sense. And I want you to believe that you’re going to be OK. As for Uzzi: you can forget all about that. You see, I’ll take care of Uzzi. I swear I will!”
• • •
That was a week ago. I’ve tried to contact Clayton but he’s in Switzerland. I understand they make fabulous chocolates there. My God, chocolates!
My bedroom’s a mess and there’s this horrible sore in the middle of my chest and my wife has run away, where I don’t know.
I woke up this morning at 4.00, and Uzzi was lying on me like some obscene nightmare lover, with those…appendages sliming on my face.
That’s why I’ve made up a story—similar to Clayton’s. Except mine is a false one, about a gypsy curse—which I plan to tell to that fat greasy bastard Powell. Yes, I’ll refer my case to him, and then I’ll take a nice long trip abroad somewhere. No guilt will attach to me, for I don’t believe in such. And I know that Powell doesn’t either. After all, he has my office, the girl I should have, the house I should rightly occupy. So why shouldn’t he have this, too?
It couldn’t happen to a nicer fellow.
Uzzi…Uzzi…Uzzi….
HAGGOPIAN
1.
Richard Haggopian, perhaps the world’s greatest authority on ichthyology and oceanography, to say nothing of the many allied sciences and subjects, was at last willing to permit himself to be interviewed. I was jubilant, elated—I could not believe my luck! At least a dozen journalists before me, some of them so high up in literary circles as to be actually offended by so mundane an occupational description, had made the futile journey to Kletnos in the Aegean to seek Haggopian the Armenian out; but only my application had been accepted. Three months earlier, in early June, Hartog of Time had been refused, and before him Mannhausen of Weltzukunft, and therefore my own superiors had seen little hope for me. And yet the name of Jeremy Belton was not unknown in journalism; I had been lucky on a number of so-called “hopeless” cases before. Now, it seemed, this luck of mine was holding. Richard Haggopian was away on yet another ocean trip, but I had been asked to wait for him.
It is not hard to say why Haggopian excited such interest among the ranks of the world’s foremost journalists; any man with his scientific and literary talents, with a beautiful young wife,
with an island-in-the-sun, and (perhaps most important of all), with a blatantly negative attitude toward even the most beneficial publicity, would certainly have attracted the same interest. And to top all this Haggopian was a millionaire!
Myself, I had recently finished a job in the desert—the latest Arab-Israeli confrontation—to find myself with time and a little money to spare, and so my superiors had asked me to have a bash at Haggopian. That had been a fortnight ago, and since then I had done my best towards procuring an interview. Where others had failed miserably I had been successful.
For eight days I had waited on the Armenian’s return to Haggopiana—his tiny island hideaway two miles east of Kletnos and midway between Athens and Iraklion, pur chased by and named after himself in the early forties—and just when it seemed that my strictly limited funds must surely run out, then Haggopian’s great silver hydrofoil, the Echinoidea, cut a thin scar on the incredible blue of the sea to the southwest as it sped in to a midmorning mooring. With binoculars from the flat white roof of my Kletnos—hotel?—I watched the hydrofoil circle the island until, in a blinding flash of reflected sunlight, it disappeared beyond Haggopiana’s wedge of white rock. Two hours later the Armenian’s man came across in a sleek motorboat to bring me (I hoped) news of my appointment. My luck was indeed holding! I was to attend Haggopian at three in the after noon; a boat would be sent for me.
At three I was ready, dressed in sandals, cool grey slacks and a white T-shirt—the recommended civilized attire for a sunny afternoon in the Aegean—and when the sleek motorboat came back for me I was waiting for it at the natural rock wharf. On the way out to Haggopiana, as I gazed over the prow of the craft down through the crystal-clear water at the gliding, shadowy groupers and the clusters of black sea-urchins (the Armenian had named his hydrofoil after the latter), I did a mental check-up on what I knew of the elusive owner of the island ahead:
Richard Hemeral Angelos Haggopian, born in 1919 of an illicit union between his penniless but beautiful half-breed Polynesian mother and millionaire Armenian-Cypriot father—author of three of the most fascinating books I had ever read, books for the layman, telling of the world’s seas and all their multiform denizens in simple, uncomplicated language—discoverer of the Taumotu Trench, a previously unsuspected hole in the bed of the South Pacific almost seven thousand fathoms deep; into which, with the celebrated Hans Geisler, he descended in 1955 to a depth of twenty-four thousand feet—benefactor of the world’s greatest aquariums and museums in that he had presented at least two hundred and forty rare, often freshly discovered specimens to such authorities in the last fifteen years, etc., etc.