THAT HAUNTING THING
By Achmed Abdullah
DIANA MANNING was the very last woman to whom such a thing should
have happened. For there was nothing about her in the least psychic or
spiritual.
She was matter with a capital M, and *** with a capital S; $,
rather, since hers was *** without the excuse of passion; *** dealing
entirely and shamelessly with bank accounts, high-power racing cars,
diamonds, and vintage champagnes.
She was lovely, and she drove the hearts and the purses of men as
a breath drives a thin sheet of flame.
Only her fingernails gave the mark of the east side tenement (she
was ne=E9 Maggie Smith) where she had been born and bred ; for they were
too well kept, too highly polished, too perfectly manicured.
But men did not notice. They seldom looked farther than her hair
which was like a sculptured reddish-bronze helmet, her low, smooth,
ivory forehead, her short, delicately curved nose, her lips which were
crimson like a fresh sword wound, her eyes which spoke of wondrous
promises and lied damnably.
Her life had been melodramatic from the man=92s angle, be it
understood, and not from her own since, sublimely evil, she was beyond
the moralizing sense of bad and, of course, good.
There had been death in the trail of her ****mmering gowns,
suicide, ruin, the slime of the divorce courts, disgrace to more than
one.
But she had never cared a whit.
She was always petting her own hard thoughts, puncturing the
lives of strangers who never remained strangers for long with the
dagger point of her personality, her greed, her evil; and men kept on
fluttering around the red, burning candle which was her life, like
silly willow flies.
Then more deaths, Requiems bought and paid for, and all that sort
of thing.
Quite melodramatic. Incredibly, garishly so.
But what will you?
It isn=92t always the woman who pays, stage and pulpit to the
contrary. And if she does pay it=92s usually the man who endorses the
note.
When she reached her home on the upper west side that Saturday
night, she felt the Thing the moment she stepped across the threshold.
She felt it shrouded, ambiguous, vague. But it was there. Very small
at first. Hidden somewhere in the huge, square entrance hall and
peeping in upon her mind.
She wondered what it was, and what it might be doing there.
So she called to her maid:
"Annette! Annette!"
She did not call to reassure herself. For the woman was not
afraid. That was it exactly; she was not afraid from first to last. If
she had been, she would have switched on the light.
But she did not. She left the flat in darkness. Deliberately.
And that, again, was strange since hitherto she had always hated
darkness and half-light and seeping, graying shadow; had always wanted
and gloried in full, orange bursts of color, big, clustering, massive,
cruel lights. She had just that sort of complexion; pallid, you know,
smooth, with her color rising evenly, dawn-hued and tender, and never
in patches and blurry streaks.
"Annette! Annette!" she called again, a mere matter of habit; for
she relied on her respectable, middle-aged Burgundian maid for
anything and everything that troubled her, from wrestling with a
cynical, inquisitive re****ter to putting the correct quantity of
ammonia in her Bromo-seltzers.
"Yes, madame," came the maid s sleepy voice.
"Has anybody called?"
"No, madame."
"But=85"
She looked into the corner of the entrance hall. The Thing seemed
to be crouching amongst the peacock-green cu****ons of the ottoman
there.
"But, Annette, " she commenced again.
She did not complete the sentence. Somehow, it did not make any
difference. The Thing was there.
And what did it matter how it had got in?
"I am coming, madame," said the maid.
"Never mind. Go to sleep. I=92ll undress myself. Good night,
Annette!"
"Good night, madame!"
Diana Manning shrugged her shoulders, walked across the entrance
hall, and put her hand on the door-knob of her boudoir. She said to
herself that she would open the door quickly, slide in, and close it
as quickly.
For she sensed, rather, she knew, that the Thing intended to
follow her. It radiated energy and vigor and determination. A certain
kindly de termination that, just for a fleeting moment, touched in her
the sense of awe.
But the moment she opened the door, the moment her lithe body
slid from the darkness of the entrance hall into the creamy, silky,
perfumed darkness of her boudoir, she knew that the Thing flitted in
by her side. She felt it blow over her neck, her face, her breast,
like a gust of wind.
It even touched her. It touched her wow-physically. That is the
only way to put it.
Nor was she afraid then. On the contrary, she felt rather sorry
for the Thing. And that touched in her once more the sense of awe
naturally, since to feel sorry was to her a new sensation, since never
before in all her life had she felt sorry for anything or anybody.
The result was that she began to hate the Thing with cold,
calculating hatred, hatred without fear.
She locked the windows and doors. Quite instinctively her hand
brushed the tiny nacre button which controlled the Venetian
chandelier. But she did not press it. She left the boudoir in
darkness.
For she was familiar with every stick of furniture about the
place. She knew the exact location of the great, carved, crimson-and-
gold Spanish renaissance day bed between the window and the fireplace,
the big buhl table in the center of the room, the smaller one, covered
with a mass of bric-a-brac, between the two windows, the low divan
running along the south wall and overlapping toward the fireplace, the
three chairs at odd angles, the four little tabourets, and, in the
northeast corner, the Chinese screen, inlaid with ivory and lac and
jade, behind which she kept a small liquor chest. She knew the room,
every inch of it, and could move about it, in spite of the darkness,
like a cat.
The Thing, on the other hand, whatever it was, would find many
pitfalls in the cluttered-up boudoir if it tried to get rambunctious.
These latter were the exact words with which Diana Manning
expressed the thought to herself; in this very moment of awe and
hatred. Remember she was born and bred on the east side. Of course,
since those days of sooty, sticky, grimy tenement chrysalis, she had
learned to broaden her a s and slur her r s and to change the slang of
the gutters for that of the race tracks.
But, somehow, she knew that the Thing would be more familiar with
her earlier diction.
She lay down on the couch, staring into the dark ness.
She had decided to watch carefully, to pounce upon the Thing
suddenly and to throttle it.
For, somehow, the Thing had taken on the suggestion of
deliberate, personal intention of an aggressive hostility something
which felt and hated, even suffered, yet which had no bodily reality.
The realization of it froze Diana into rigidity not the rigidity
of fear, but something far worse than fear, partaking of Fate, of she
didn=92t know what.
She only knew that she must watch then pounce and kill.
"I must have matters out with it," she thought. "One of us two is
master in this room; it or I. And I can t afford to wait all night. At
half past eleven young Bunny Whipple is calling for me "
Again, at the thought of Bunny Whipple, she felt that strange,
hateful new sensation of awe blended with pity. The Thing was
responsible for it, the Thing!
How she hated it! She clenched her fists until the knuckles
stretched white. What had the Thing to do with Bunny Whipple and yes,
with Bunny Whipple=92s little blue-eyed, golden-haired wife the bride
who=85
Diana cut off the thought in mid-air and tossed it aside as if it
were a soiled glove.
She watched more carefully than ever, her breath coming in short
staccato bursts, her body tense and strained, her mind rigid. She
tried to close her mind; she did not want the Thing to peep in upon
it.
For right then she knew, she did not feel nor guess, she knew
that the Thing had the trick of expanding and decreasing at will.
It made her angry. She did not consider it fair.
For it gave to the Thing the advantage of suddenly shrinking to
the size of a pin point and hiding in a knot of the Tabriz rug which
covered the floor and, immediately afterwards, of bloating into
monstrous size, like a balloon, and floating toward the stuccoed
ceiling like an immense soap bubble hanging there looking down with
that strange, hateful, rather kindly determination.
"Bunny Whipple=92s wife " she thought again. "I saw her yesterday
and the silly little fool recognized me. She would have spoken to me
had I given her the chance. Spoken to me as she wrote me asking me to
give her back her husband=92s love=97love! "
Her mind formed the word, caressed it as if it were something
futile and soft and naive and laughable, like a ball of cotton or a
tiny kitten
The next moment, she whipped it aside with all her hard will. She
sat up straight.
For, at the forming of the word, the Thing which a second earlier
had been a pin-point sitting on the gilded edge of a S=E9vres vase,
bloated and stretched gigantically, leaped up, appeared to float,
leaped again toward the ceiling as if trying to jerk it away from the
cross beams.
Then, just as suddenly, it dropped on the floor. It lay there,
roaring with laughter.
Diana did not hear the laughter. She felt it. She knew it.
Too, she knew exactly where it was; between the large buhl table
and the divan. She d get it and choke it while it lay there helpless
with merriment.
She jumped from her couch, her fingers spread like a cat s
claws.
"I ll get you=97you-- you Thing!" she said the words out loud.
"I=92ll get you! I=92ll get you!"
Her voice rose in a shrill, tearing shriek step by step, she
approached the divan.
"I=92ll get you-- get you-- get you! "
"Madame! Madame! Did you call me?"
It was the maid=92s voice coming from the hall.
"No, no! Go to bed, Annette! Go to bed-- do you hear me?" as the
maid rattled the door-knob. "I don=92t want to be disturbed "
"I beg your pardon, madame," Annette coughed discreetly. "I
didn=92t know that anybody thought you had come home alone! "
"Go to bed! At once!" Diana shrieked ; then, the maid=92s footsteps
pattering away, she fell on the couch, panting.
She was in a towering rage. She felt sure that if it had not been
for the maid she could have pounced upon the Thing while it lay there
on the floor, roaring with laughter.
Now the laughter had died out and the Thing had got away. It had
shrunk into a tiny butterfly
That=92s how Diana felt it which was beating its wings against the
brass rod of the ****tieres. But it was fluttering rather helplessly,
blindly, as if it had lost some of its energy and vigor; and again
Diana felt sorry and correspondingly her hatred grew. And her
determination.
"I=92ll get you, you=85 "
She waited until her breath came more evenly, rose, walked
noiselessly to the ****tieres and rustled them.
The Thing was startled. Diana could feel the tiny wings flutter
and beat. She could hear its terrible, straining effort to bloat into
a huge soap bubble and, not succeeding, to shrink into a pinpoint.
But something was making it impossible, and Diana knew what it
was.
It was the fact that, in one of the hidden back cells of her
brain, the thought of Bunny Whipple=92s silly little fool of a golden-
haired wife had taken firm root, refused to budge.
So Diana kept the thought. She nursed it. It seemed like a bait,
and she thrust it forward.
She spoke out loud, her face raised up to the ****tieres.
"Silly little fool of a golden-haired bride!" and she added, out
of subconscious volition: "Silly Bunny!"
She had spoken the last words caressingly, as a naughty boy
speaks to a cat before he catches her and tweaks her tail, and the
Thing was about to fall into the trap. For a second it hovered on the
brass rod, seemed to wait, expectant, undecided.
Then it came down a few inches. It fluttered within reach of
Diana=92s outstretched hand.
But when she closed her hand suddenly, viciously, it winged away
again, breathless, frightened, but unharmed. It flew into the center
of the room. It made a renewed terrible effort to bloat into a
balloon.
And this time it succeeded partly.
She did not feel exactly what shape it had assumed, but it was
something amorphous, flabby, covered all over with soft bumps which
were very beastly.
She followed, more determined than ever, and the Thing tried to
leap into the air.
It had nearly succeeded when Diana, with quick presence of mind,
thought again of Bunny Whipple and Bunny Whipple=92s silly, golden-
haired wife.
"She asks me to give her back Bunny=92s love-- his love! God! Does
the silly little fool think that Bunny loves me? Does she call that
love?"
This time it was Diana who burst into a roar of laughter, and the
Thing stood still and listened, its head cocked on one side, stupid,
ridiculous, foolish; and when Diana neared it, when it tried to fly,
to hover, to swing in mid air, all it succeeded in doing was to move
swiftly about the room, just an inch or two away from the woman=92s
groping fingers.
Diana laughed again, for she knew that the Thing had lost its
faculty of flying, that it would not be able to escape her for long
with the chances all in her favor.
For the boudoir was cluttered with furniture, and she knew the
location of every piece, while the Thing would lose itself, stumble,
fall, and then
"Wait! You just wait!" she whispered; and the Thing backing away
from the center of the room toward the carved Chinese screen, she
followed step by step, her fingers groping, clawing, the lust of the
hunter in her eyes, in her heart.
"I=92ll throttle you."
Then she reconsidered. To throttle so as to kill, she would have
to measure her own strength exactly against the Thing=92s strength of
resistance. And that would be hard.
For the Thing was non-physical. It had no body.
But it was sure to have a heart. She would stab that heart.
So she picked from the buhl table the jeweled Circassian dagger
which she had admired the day before in a little shop on Lexington
Avenue and which Bunny had given to her with some very foolish remark,
quite typical of him, she remembered. "I wish to God you=92d kill
yourself with it! Get out of my life, leave me in peace, me and
Lottie!"
Lottie was the silly, golden-haired wife.
But when, dagger in hand, Diana took up the chase again, she was
disappointed. For the Thing seemed as familiar with the room as she
herself. It avoided sliding rugs, sharp-cornered buhl tables,
tabourets and chairs placed at odd angles. It never as much as grazed
a single one of the many brittle bits of bric-a-brac.
Once it chuckled, as if faintly amused at some thing.
But Diana did not give up heart. She had made up her mind, and
she was a hard woman her soul a blending of diamond and fire-kissed
steel.
"I=92ll get you!" and she thought of a new, better way. She would
corner the Thing.
Again she advanced, slowly, cautiously, step by step, driving the
Thing before her across the width of the room, always keeping
uppermost in her mind the thought of Bunny Whipple and his silly fool
of a golden-haired wife, the thought which was paralyzing the Thing=92s
faculty of bloating and shrinking and flying.
The end came very suddenly.
Watching her chance, she had the Thing cornered, straight up
against the inlaid Chinese screen.
It tried to shrink, to bloat, to fly, to get away.
But Diana had timed her action to the click of a second. She
brought the dagger down with all her strength and the Thing crumpled,
it gave, it was not.
There was just a sharp pain, a crimson smear, and a very soft
voice from a far, starry, velvety distance.
"You have killed me, Diana!"
"Killed whom? Who are you?"
"The evil in your soul, Diana! The evil " then something which
had been congealed seemed to turn fluid and alive and golden;
something rose into a state that was too calm to be ecstasy.
The next morning, Bunny Whipple=92s silly, blue- eyed, golden-
haired wife was sitting across from her husband at breakfast.
He was white and haggard and shaky. She looked at him, pity in
her eyes.
"Have you seen the morning paper, Bunny?" she asked.
"No! Don t want to. More scandal about me, I guess " he bit the
words off savagely.
"Only that--that woman " she faltered.
"Diana Manning! All right! What about her?"
"She was found dead last night by her maid. She had stabbed
herself through the heart with a Circassian dagger. The--the papers
say that a smile was on her face a happy, sweet smile as if--"
She picked up the Star and read the re****ter=92s lyric outburst out
loud:
"As if death had brought her happiness and salvation and a deep,
calm, glorious fulfillment."
Bunny Whipple did not reply. He stared into his coffee cup.
Very suddenly he looked up. His wife had risen and walked around
the table toward him.
She put her slim, white hands on his shoulders.
There were tears in her eyes--tears and a trembling question.
He drew her to him, and kissed her.
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