CHANDLER SHIFTED uncomfortably, while an old woman crippled by arthritis began fumbling a tune out of an electric organ. The bum Ellen Braisted had given him was beginning to hurt badly. If only these people were not such obvious nuts, he thought, he would feel a lot better about casting his lot in with them. But maybe it took lunatics to do the job. Sane people hadn’t accomplished much.
And anyway he had very little choice… .
“Ada, that’s enough,” ordered the fat youth. “Meg, come on up here. People of Orphalese, now you can listen again while Meg explains to the new folks how all this got started, seeing Guy’s in no condition to do it.”
The teen-ager marched up to the platform and took the parade-rest position learned in some high. school debating societyin the days when there were debating societies and high schools. “Ladies and gentlemen, well, let’s start at the beginning. Guy tells this better’n I do, of course, but I guess I remember it all pretty well too. I ought to. I was in on it and all. I” She grimaced and said, “Well, anyway, ladies and gentlemenpeople of Orphalesethe way Guy organized this Orphalese self-protection society was, like Walter says, he was possessed. The only difference between Guy and you and me was that he knew what to do about it, because he read the book, you see. Not that that helped him at first, when he was took over. He was really seized.
Yes, people of Orph’lese, he was taken and while his whole soul and brain and body was under the influence of’
some foul wanderer fiend from hell he did things tha”~
ladies and gentlemen of Orph’lese, I wouldn’t want to tell you. He was a harp in the hand of the mighty, as it says.
Couldn’t help it, not however much he tried. Only while he was doingthe thingshe happened to catch his hand in a gas flame and, well you can see it was pretty bad.”
With a deprecatory smile Guy held up a twisted hand.
“And, do you know, he was free of his imp right then and there! Now, Guy is a scientist, people of Orph’lese, he worked for the telephone company, and he not only had that training in the company school but he had read the book, yon see, and he put two and two together. Oh, and he’s my uncle, of course. I’m proud of him. I’ve alwavs loved him, and even when hewhen he was not one with himself, you know, when he was doing those terrible things to me, I knew it wasn’t Uncle Guy that was doing them, but something else. I didn’t know what, though.
And when he told me he had figured out the Basic Rule, I went along with him every bit. I knew Guy wasn’t wrong, and what he said was from Scripture. Imps fear pain! So we got to love it. That one I know by heart, all right: Could you keep your heart from wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy.’ That’s what it savs. ri kt~ So that’s why we got to hurt ourselves, people of Ornh’lpse and new brothersbecause the Wanderers don’t like it when we hurt and they leave us alone. Simple’s that.
“Well” the girl’s face stiffened momentarily”I knew 7 wasn’t going to be seized. So Guy and I got Else, that’s the other girl he’d been doing things to, and we knew she wasn’t going to be taken either. Not if the imps feared pain like Guy said, because,” she said solemnly, “I want to tell you Guy hurt us pretty bad.
“And then we came out here, and found this place, and ever since then we’ve been adding brothers and sisters. It’s been slow, of course, because not many people come this way any more, and we’ve had to kill a lot. Yes, we have.
Sometimes the possessed just can’t be saved, but”
Abruptly her face changed.
Suddenly alert, her face years older, she glanced around the room. Then she relaxed …
And screamed.
Guy leaped up. Hoarsely, his voice almost inarticulate as he tried to talk with his broken jaw, he cried, “Wha…
Wha’s … matter, Meg?”
“Uncle Guy!” she wailed. She plunged off the platform and flung herself into his arms, crying hysterically.
“Who:”’
She sobbed, “I could feel it! They took me. Guy, you promised me they couldn’t!”
He shook his head, dazed, staring at her as though she were indeed possessedstill possessed, and telling him some fearful great lie to destroy his hopes. He seemed unable to comprehend what she had said. One of the hunters bellowed in stark fear: “For God’s sake, untie us!
Give us a chance, anyway!” Chandler yelled agreement. In one split second everyone in the room had been transmut-ed by terror into something less than human. No one seemed capable of any action. Slowly the plump youth who had presided moved over to the hunter bound in the dentist’s chair and began to fumble blindly at the knots.
Ellen Braisted dropped her head into her hands and began to shake.
The cruelty of the moment was that they had all tasted hope. Chandler writhed wildly against his ropes, his mind racing out of control. The world had become a hell for everyone, but a bearable hell until the promise of a chance to end it gave them a full sight of what their lives had been. Now that that was dashed they were far worse off than before.
Walter finished with the hunter and lethargically began to pick at Chandler’s bonds. His face was slack and unseeing.
Then it, too, changed.
The plump youth stood up sharply, glanced about, and walked off the platform.
Ellen Braisted raised her face from her hands and, her eyes streaming, quietly stood up and followed. The old lady with the arthritis about-faced and limped with them.
Chandler stared, puzzled, and then comprehended.
They were marching toward the corner of the room where the rifles were stacked. “Possessed!” Chandler bellowed, the words tasting of acid as they ripped out of his throat. “Stop them! YouGuylook!” He flailed wildly at his loosened bonds, lunged, tottered and toppled, chair and all, crashingly off the platform.
The three possessed ones did not need to hurry; they had all the time in the world. They were already reaching out for the rifles when Chandler shouted. Economically they turned, raising the butts to their shoulders and began to fire at the Orphalese. It was a queerly frightening sight to see the arthritic organist, with a face like a relaxed executioner, take quick aim at Guy and, with a thirty-thirty shell, blow his throat out. Three shots, and the nearest three of the congregation were dead. Three more, and others went down, while the remainder turned and tried to run. It was like a slaughter of vermin. They never had a chance.
When every Orphalese except themselves was down on the floor, dead, wounded or, like Chandler, overlooked, the arthritic lady took careful aim at Ellen Braisted and the plump youth and shot them neatly in the temples.
They didn’t try to prevent her. With expressions that seemed almost impatient they presented their profiles to her aim.
Then the arthritic lady glanced leisurely about, fired into the stomach of a wounded man who was trying to rise, reloaded her rifle for insurance and began to search the bodies of the nearest dead. She was looking for matches.
When she found them, she tugged weakly at the uphol-stery on a couch, swore and began methodically to rip and crumple pages out of Kahlil Gibran. When she had a heap of loose papers piled against the dais she pitched the remainder of the book out of the window, knelt and ignited the crumpled heap.
She stood watching the fire, her expression angry and impatient, tapping her foot.
The crumpled pages burned briskly. Before they died the wooden dais was beginning to catch. Laboriously the old lady toted folding chairs to pile on the blaze until it was roaring handsomely.
She watched it for several minutes, until it was a great orange pillar of fire sweeping to the ceiling, until the drapes on the wall behind were burning and the platform was a holocaust, until the noise of crackling flame and the beginning of plaster falling from the high ceiling proved that there was no likelihood of the fire going out and, indeed, no way to put it out without a complete fire department on the scene at once.
The old lady’s expression cleared. She nodded to herself.
She then put the muzzle of the rifle in her mouth and, with her thumb, pulled the trigger that blew the top of her head off. The body fell into the flames, but it was by then already dead.
Chandler had not been shot, but he was very near to roasting. Walter had released one hand and, while the possessed woman’s attention was elsewhere, he had worked on the other knots.