The Best of Robert Bloch

  Howard didn't stop running until he got to the car. He was panting when he climbed in, panting and wringing wet with perspiration. He could feel his heart pounding, but he forced himself to be calm. He had to be calm, very calm now, because he knew there was no one else to depend on. He'd have to do it all himself. The first thing was to check the car very thoroughly, including the back seat. And then, when he was quite sure nothing had gotten in, to lock the doors. Lock the doors and roll up the windows. It was hot inside the car, but he could stand the heat. He could stand anything but the buzzing and the stare.

  He started the engine, pulled out. Calm, now. Keep calm. Drive carefully, right up to the freeway access. And edge out slowly. Get into the left lane and open up. Now. Drive fast. The faster you drive, the faster you get away from the buzzing and the staring. Keep it at seventy. A fly can't do seventy, can it?

  That is, if the fly is real.

  Howard took a deep breath.

  Suppose everyone else was right and he was wrong? And there was no fly, except in his own imagination? But it couldn't be; not in his imagination, the one tool, the one weapon, the one area a writer must protect. You can't open your imagination up to a buzzing beast, a creature that crawls through filth, you can't allow the invasion of an insect that incubates in your own insanity, an incarnation of your own personal devil, an evil that torments you incessantly. But if it was that way, then of course there was no escape. He couldn't drive fast enough, run far enough, to get away. And there was no hope for him at all.

  Bzzzzzzz.

  It was there, in the car. At least, he heard it. But the sound might be coming from inside his own shattering skull.

  And now he saw it, fluttering against the windshield before him, just below the rear-view mirror. Or did he see it? Wasn't it just a fragment of inward vision? How could there be a real fly here in the car, with all the windows closed tight?

  But he saw and he heard and it buzzed and it crawled, and his sweat poured and his heart thumped and his breath rasped and he knew it was real, it had to be real. And if it was, then this was his chance, his only chance, locked inside the car with it where it couldn't get away.

  Howard shifted his foot from the gas-pedal to the brake. The car was hurtling down an incline but he knew he had it in control, everything was under control now. All he needed to do was swat the fly.

  The creature had paused in its progress across the windshield so that it was poised directly before his line of vision. Howard could see it very clearly now, as his hand moved up. He almost laughed at himself as he stared, laughed at his absurd fantasies. Silly to think of demoniac possession by such a tiny, fragile insect; he could see every delicate veining and tracery of its fluttering wings as he leaned forward. For an instant he even stared into its eyes; its multi-faceted eyes, mirrors of myriad mysteries.

  In that instant he knew.

  But his hand was already swooping out, and all he could do was shriek as the car lurched and the culvert wall loomed—

  When the squad-car came the fly was resting very quietly on Howard's eyeball.

  Its eyes swivelled slowly as the red-necked patrolman bent over the body, pausing just long enough to sense the frustration, the suppressed anger, the seething tension behind the stolid face. Then it rose gracefully and buzzed around the patrolman's shoulders as he straightened. As the patrolman turned away, the fly followed.

  The patrolman sighed. "Poor devil," he muttered.

  It was, of course, an epitaph . . .

  The Plot is the Thing

  WHEN THEY BROKE into the apartment, they found her sitting in front of the television set, watching an old movie.

  Peggy couldn't understand why they made such a fuss about that. She liked to watch old movies—the Late Show, the Late, Late Show, even the All Night Show. That was really the best, because they generally ran the horror pictures. Peggy tried to explain this to them, but they kept prowling; around the apartment, looking at the dust on the furniture and the dirty sheets on the unmade bed. Somebody said there was green mould on the dishes in the sink; it's true she hadn't bothered to wash them for quite a long time, but then she simply hadn't bothered to eat for several days, either.

  It wasn't as though she didn't have any money; she told them about the bank-accounts. But shopping and cooking and housekeeping was just too much trouble, and besides, she really didn't like going outside and seeing all those people. So if she preferred watching TV, that was her business wasn't it?

  They just looked at each other and shook their heads and made some phone-calls. And then the ambulance came, and they, helped her dress. Helped her? They practically forced her, and by the time she realized where they were taking her it was too late.

  At first they were very nice to her at the hospital, but they kept asking those idiotic questions. When she said she had no relatives or friends they wouldn't believe her, and when they checked and found out it was true it only made things worse. Peggy got angry and said she was going home, and it all ended with a hypo in the arm.

  There were lots of hypos after that, in in-between times this Dr. Crane kept after her. He was one of the heads of staff and at first Peggy liked him, but not when he began to pry.

  She tried to explain to him that she'd always been a loner, even before her parents died. And she told him there was no reason for her to work, with all that money. Somehow, he got it out of her about how she used to keep going to the movies, at least one every day, only she liked horror pictures and of course there weren't quite that many, so after while she just watched them on TV. Because it was easier, and you didn't have to go home along dark streets after seeing something frightening. At home she could lock herself in, and as long as she had the television going she didn't feel lonely. Besides, she could watch movies all night, and this helped her insomnia. Sometimes the old pictures were pretty gruesome and this made her nervous, but she felt more nervous when she didn't watch. Because in the movies, no matter how horrible things seemed for the heroine, she was always rescued in the end. And that was better than the way things generally worked out in real life, wasn't it?

  Dr. Crane didn't think so. And he wouldn't let her have any television in her room now, either. He kept talking to Peggy about the need to face reality, and the dangers of retreating into a fantasy world and identifying with frightened heroines. The way he made it sound, you'd think she wanted to be menaced, wanted to be killed, or even raped.

  And when he started all that nonsense about a "nervous disorder" and told her about his plans for treatment, Peggy knew she had to escape. Only she never got a chance. Before she realized it, they had arranged for the lobotomy.

  Peggy knew what a lobotomy was, of course. And she was afraid of it, because it meant tampering with the brain. She remembered some mad doctor—Lionel Atwill, or George Zucco?—saying that by tampering with the secrets of the human brain one can change reality. "There are some things we were not meant to know," he had whispered. But that, of course, was in a movie. And Dr. Crane wasn't mad. She was the mad one. Or was she? He certainly looked insane—she kept trying to break free after they strapped her down and he came after her—she remembered the way everything gleamed. His eyes, and the long needle. The long needle, probing into her brain to change reality—

  The funny thing was, when she woke up she felt fine. "I'm like a different person, Doctor."

  And it was true. No more jitters; she was perfectly calm. And she wanted to eat, and she didn't have insomnia, and she could dress herself and talk to the nurses, even kid around with them. The big thing was that she didn't worry about watching television any more. She could scarcely remember any of those old movies that had disturbed her. Peggy wasn't a bit disturbed now. And even Dr. Crane knew it.

  At the end of the second week he was willing to let her go home. They had a little chat, and he complimented her on how well she was doing, asked her about her plans for the future. When Peggy admitted she hadn't figured anything out yet, Dr. Crane suggested she
take a trip. She promised to think it over.

  But it wasn't until she got back to the apartment that Peggy made up her mind. The place was a mess. The moment she walked in she knew she couldn't stand it. All that dirt and grime and squalor—it was like a movie set, really, with clothes scattered everywhere and dishes piled in the sink. Peggy decided right then and there she'd take a vacation. Around the world, maybe. Why not? She had the money. And it would be interesting to see all the real things she'd seen represented on the screen all these years.

  So Peggy dissolved into a travel agency and montaged into shopping and packing and faded out to London.

  Strange, she didn't think of it in that way at the time. But looking back, she began to realize that this is the way things seemed to happen. She'd come to a decision, or go somewhere and do something, and all of a sudden she'd find herself in another setting—just like in a movie, where they cut from scene to scene. When she first became aware of it she was a little worried; perhaps she was having blackouts. After all, her brain had been tampered with. But there was nothing really alarming about the little mental blanks. In a way they were very convenient, just like in the movies; you don't particularly want to waste time watching the heroine brush her teeth or pack her clothing or put on cosmetics. The plot is the thing. That's what's real.

  And everything was real, now. No more uncertainty. Peggy could admit to herself that before the operation there had been times when she wasn't quite sure about things; sometimes what she saw on the screen was more convincing than the dull gray fog which seemed to surround her in daily life.

  But that was gone, now. Whatever that needle had done, it had managed to pierce the fog. Everything was very clear, very sharp and definite, like good black-and-white camera work. And she herself felt so much more capable and confident. She was well-dressed, well-groomed, attractive again. The extras moved along the streets in an orderly fashion and didn't bother her. And the bit-players spoke their lines crisply, performed their functions, and got out of the scene. Odd that she should think of them that way—they weren't "bit-players" at all; just travel clerks and waiters and stewards and then, at the hotel, bellboys and maids. They seemed to fade in and out of the picture on cue. All smiles, like in the early part of a good horror movie, where at first everything seems bright and cheerful.

  Paris was where things started to go wrong. This guide—a sort of Eduardo Ciannelli type, in fact he looked to be an almost dead ringer for Ciannelli as he was many years ago—was showing her through the Opera House. He happened to mention something about the catacombs, and that rang a bell.

  She thought about Erik. That was his name, Erik— The Phantom of the Opera. He had lived in the catacombs underneath the Opera House. Of course, it was only a picture, but she thought perhaps the guide would know about it and she mentioned Erik's name as a sort of joke.

  That's when the guide turned pale and began to tremble. And then he ran. Just ran off and left her standing there.

  Peggy knew something was wrong, then. The scene just seemed to dissolve—that part didn't worry her, it was just another one of those temporary blackouts she was getting used to—and when Peggy regained awareness, she was in this bookstore asking a clerk about Gaston Leroux.

  And this was what frightened her. She remembered distinctly that The Phantom of the Opera had been written by Gaston Leroux, but here was this French bookstore clerk telling her there was no such author.

  That's what they said when she called the library. No such author—and no such book. Peggy opened her mouth, but the scene was already dissolving . . .

  In Germany she rented a car, and she was enjoying the scenery when she came to this burned mill and the ruins of the castle beyond. She knew where she was, of course, but it couldn't be—not until she got out of the car, moved up to the great door, and in the waning sun of twilight, read the engraved legend on the stone. Frankenstein.

  There was a faint sound from behind the door, a sound of muffled, dragging footsteps, moving closer. Peggy screamed, and ran . . .

  Now she knew where she was running to. Perhaps she'd find safety behind the Iron Curtain. Instead there was another castle, and she heard the howling of a wolf in the distance, saw the bat swoop from the shadows as she fled.

  And in an English library in Prague, Peggy searched the volumes of literary biography. There was no listing for Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, none for Bram Stoker.

  Of course not. There wouldn't be, in a movie world, because when the characters are real, their "authors" do not exist.

  Peggy remembered the way Larry Talbot had changed before her eyes, metamorphosing into the howling wolf. She remembered the sly purr of the Count's voice, saying, "I do not drink—wine." And she shuddered, and longed to be far away from the superstitious peasantry who draped wolfbane outside their windows at night

  She needed the reassurance of sanity in an English-speaking country. She'd go to London, see a doctor immediately.

  Then she remembered what was in London. Another werewolf. And Mr. Hyde. And the Ripper . . .

  Peggy fled through a fadeout, back to Paris. She found the name of a psychiatrist, made her appointment. She was perfectly prepared to face her problem now, perfectly prepared to face reality.

  But she was not prepared to face the bald-headed little man with the sinister accent and the bulging eyes. She knew him—Dr. Gogol, in Mad Love. She also knew Peter Lorre had passed on, knew Mad Love was only a movie, made the year she was born. But that was in another country, and besides, the wench was dead.

  The wench was dead, but Peggy was alive. "I am a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made." Or had she made this world? She wasn't sure. All she knew was that she had to escape.

  Where? It couldn't be Egypt, because that's where he would be—the wrinkled, hideous image of the Mummy superimposed itself momentarily. The Orient? What about Fu Manchu?

  Back to America, then? Home is where the heart is—but there'd be a knife waiting for that heart when the shower-curtains were ripped aside and the creature of Psycho screamed and slashed . . .

  Somehow she managed to remember a haven, born in other films. The South Seas—Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, the friendly natives in the tropical paradise. There was escape.

  Peggy boarded the ship in Marseilles. It was a tramp steamer but the cast—crew, rather—was reasuringly small. At first she spent most of her time below deck, huddled in her berth. Oddly enough, it was getting to be like it had been before. Before the operation, that is, before the needle bit into her brain, twisting it, or distorting the world. Changing reality, as Lionel Atwill had put it. She should have listened to them—Atwill, Zucco, Basil Rathbone, Edward Van Sloan, John Carradine. They may have been a little mad, but they were good doctors, dedicated scientists. They meant well. "There are some things we were not meant to know."

  When they reached the tropics, Peggy felt much better. She regained her appetite, prowled the deck, went into the galley and joked with the Chinese cook. The crew seemed aloof, but they all treated her with the greatest respect. She began to realize she'd done the right thing—this was escape. And the warm scent of tropic nights beguiled her. From now on, this would be her life; drifting through nameless, uncharted seas, safe from the role of heroine with all its haunting and horror.

  It was hard to believe she'd been so frightened. There were no Phantoms, no Werewolves in this world. Perhaps she didn't need a doctor. She was facing reality, and it was pleasant enough. There were no movies here, no television; her fears were all part of a long-forgotten nightmare.

  One evening, after dinner, Peggy returned to her cabin with something nagging at the back of her brain. The Captain had put in one of his infrequent appearances at the table, and he kept looking at her all through the meal. Something about the way he squinted at her was disturbing. Those little pig-eyes of his reminded her of someone. Noah Beery? Stanley Fields?

  She kept trying to remember, and at the same time she was dozing off. Dozing off much
too quickly. Had her food been drugged?

  Peggy tried to sit up. Through the porthole she caught a reeling glimpse of land beyond, but then everything began to whirl and it was too late . . .

  When she awoke she was already on the island, and the woolly-headed savages were dragging her through the gate, howling and waving their spears.

  They tied her and left her and then Peggy heard the chanting. She looked up and saw the huge shadow. Then she knew where she was and what it was, and she screamed.

  Even over her own screams she could hear the natives chanting, just one word, over and over again. It sounded like, "Kong."

  How Like a God

  TO BE WAS sweet.

  There was meditation—a turning-in upon oneself. There was contemplation—a turning-out to regard others, and otherness.

  In meditation one remained contained. In contemplation there was a merging, a coalescence with the rest.

  Mok preferred meditation. Here Mok enjoyed identity and was conscious of being he, she, or it, endlessly repeated through the memory of millenniums of incarnations. Mok, like the others, had evolved through many life-forms on many worlds. Now Mok was free of the pain and free of the pleasure, too; free of the illusions of the senses which had served the bodies housing the beings which finally became Mok.

  And yet, Mok was not wholly free. Because Mok still turned to the memories for satisfaction.

  The others preferred contemplation. They enjoyed coalescing, mingling their memories, pooling their awareness, and sharing their sense of being.

  Mok could never share completely. Mok was too conscious of the differences. For even without body, without sex, without physical limitation imposed by substance in time and space, Mok was aware of inequality.

  Mok was aware of Ser.