Page:Beyond Fantasy Fiction Volume 1 Issue 1 (1953-07).djvu/123

 RAIG had fainted. Now it was as if layer after layer of blackness were being removed, bringing him closer to the light with every moment. A tiny sullen orange disk glowed in the darkness, expanding, increasing in brightness until it filled the world.

The blackness was gone, and he was staring up into the blinding, brassy heart of the sun.

He gasped and turned his head away.

There was music. Someone whistling a German folk tune.

Hofmanstahal

Hofmanstahal sat in the stern, his brawny gold-fuzzed forearms resting on his knees.

The whistling stopped.

“Good morning, my friend. You have had a good, long rest.”

Craig stared, his lips working. Far above a gull called harshly, and was answered by one skimming at water level.

Hofmanstahal smiled. “You mustn’t look at me that way. I’m almost harmless, I assure you.” He laughed gently. “Things could be much worse, you know. Suppose, for example, I had been a werewolf. Eh?”

He waited a moment.

“Oh, yes, Lycanthropy is real—as real as those gulls out there. Or—more fitting, perhaps—as real as those sharks. Once, in Paris, I lived for three months with a young woman who was a public bath attendant by day and a werewolf by night. She would choose her victims by their—”

RAIG listened numbly, aware that Hofmanstahal was merely making idle talk. The story of the female werewolf turned into an anecdote, patently untrue. Hofmanstahal chuckled at it, and seemed disappointed when Craig did not. There was a certain sensitive shyness about the big Rumanian, Craig thought a sensitive vampire! Aware of Craig’s revulsion, he was camouflaging the situation with a flood of words.

“—And when the gendarme saw that the bullet which had killed her was an ordinary lead one, he said, ‘Messieurs, you have done this pauvre jeune fille a grave injustice.’ Ha! The moment was a sad one for me, but—”

“Stop it!” Craig gasped. “Go turn yourself into a bat or something and fly away. Just get out of my sight my blood in your stomach ”

He tried to turn away, and his elbows slipped. His shoulder-blades thumped the bottom of the boat. He lay there, eyes closed, and his throat thickened as if he wanted to laugh and vomit at the same time.

“I cannot turn myself into a bat, my friend. Ugly little creatures—” Hofmanstahal sighed heavily. “Nor do I sleep in a coffin. Nor SHARE ALIKE