Page:Weird Tales Volume 2 Number 2 (1923-09).djvu/68

Rh the key under the bed, and then cut his throat in the mirror. And there I was,locked in with this ghost, and couldn't get the key, and it gave me a worried look that I have never quite got over. I didn't murder that particular negro either, but it was just my blame blue luck that I looked like the fellow who did, and so this negro ghost haunted me:. [sic]"

At this point there was a path leading off from the road, and a sign on the path reading: "No blue ghosts allowed on this path."

"What's this!" I exclaimed. "Haven't blue ghosts as much right in ghostland as green or pink ghosts?"

"They've got as much right of another sort," replied Ben. "But not this sort."

"Watch me amble down the path," I said.

"Watch me watch you ambling down the path." Ben gave a nasty, economical laugh.

"I'll be too busy ambling to watch you watch me ambling," I retorted, giving a nastier and more economical laugh, for I laughed through my nose, or rather the consciousness of a nose. "Well, good bye, old ghost!"

I took Ben's hand to wish him goodbye and good luck, when something happened that seemed more like light than sound, and it was good-bye to Ben's ghost, for there I stood holding Bens right hand, and his right hand was all that remained of Ben's late ghost.

"Great Scott!" I gasped. "Something unlucky must have happened to poor old Ben."

Then I thought to let go of Ben's right hand, intending to place it on the fence nearby. If he should come back that way he would find his hand hanging there like a lost glove; but the blame blue ghostly hand wouldn't let go of mine!

For a while I ranted around like a young mustang attempting to throw a green monkey clinging to his back, but it was of no use. I had always suspected Ben as having more up his sleeve than his arm, and now I was positive he was that famous character who, as man or ghost, if he once got hold of you would never let go. The rest of him had jumped on that ghost bike and ridden away like a blue streak, but his right hand had remained, clutching my own right hand, like a rusty gopher trap.

This wouldn't do: they might find Ben's hand on me, clinging to me like a terrible retribution, and claim that I had killed him, suspecting that he had some ghostly dollars on his ghostly person, though no human eye, and I am as certain no ghostly eye, had ever discerned his person and twenty-five cents proximate or semi-proximate.

"It will have to wear off like a wart," I said, thrusting my right hand behind me with Ben's right hand still grasping it fast. Then I turned into the path reserved for most anything but blue ghosts.

I didn't see anything peculiar about that path, nor smell anything peculiar, nor hear any peculiar sound, nor even anticipate anything peculiar, but soon I began to feel peculiar. It began in my identity and stayed there, but that was enough. While boy and man I had always been very particular about my identity. My identity had been the only thing I had ever possessed beside a motorcycle and a wrist watch, which between them would run almost an hour, and believe me it was some identity, shading into actual personality at the extreme edge. I was now seized with a kind of uncertain, wobbly sensation in my identity, like a top must feel when it is about come to the end of its spin. This sensation soon became quite unbearable, for I felt as if I were not myself but Ben, while Ben was somewhere back in the distance; and was not himself but me.

It was bad enough to be a blue ghost not two hours old, with the dismembered hand of another blue ghost clinging to one's own hand like a rusty gopher trap, but this was crowding the limit—to be a blue ghost and some other dead man's blue ghost at that! And of all blue ghosts to be Edwin X. Benjamin's unlucky blue ghost!

I gave myself a nasty look and said, "Just my blame blue luck!"

Then I yelled, for I was positive I was Ben's ghost hurrying down that path, while Bob Tuffley's hand was clinging to my hand like a murdered thing.

I quickly decided that path was no place for me, as the sign had said, and I sought to turn back. But I found I could not turn back! I had got upon a path where no blue ghost could turn back, and I must continue to go on as another's ghost and not as myself. Continue to go on and leave myself with every step one step further behind.

Did you ever leave yourself behind, compelled to go on as some other man? Leave all your pride of youth and masculine beauty and a dash of everything high, if not holy, and sneak on as a miserable old yam eating, screw-necked sting-ray?

I did! I, the young ghost of Robert Jay Tuffley was that unhappy young ghost! But pity me not, for I'd be hanged if I care for your pity. I still remembered what I had been, though I felt all too keenly what I had become. I held my head high with pride of my old state, though my heart dragged with shame at my new condition. I looked like young Apollo but I felt like old Lucifer. I flamed without, but I was ashes within.

Yes, my poor ghost had turned into the wrong path and that path was the downward way to hell. I, formerly Robert Jay Tuffley, was now on my way to hell as the miserable ghost of Edwin X. Benjamin, retired Florida yam and bicycle merchant. There was the taste of some sour peanut butter in my mouth, the last dish of which Edwin X. Benjamin had partaken before his hasty demise to escape an advance of three cents the pound on cow's butter.

As I advanced the path grew wider, and after a time its borders began to bloom with primroses, just as the old poet Shakespeare tells of, and who himself often wore one of those primroses in his buttonhole, I plucked a primrose and placed it in my own buttonhole, for with the primroses a buttonhole had been provided me.

I had decided I would give Ben's ghost one hell of a good time. He had always looked as if he had been to hell, but he must have been hurried there through some dark underground passage, for he had none of the wide-glad-way and-primrose-air about him. He had been cheated somewhere along the crowded line of life, but now I would give his ghost a wide swing of the rosy way.

But I had forgotten the cue of destiny, and now destiny rang down the curtain on this glad act and began to shift the scenery to gloom for Ben's appearance on the stage. Yes, I had become Edwin X. Benjamin's ghost and it was just Ben's blame blue luck to miss all this rosy swing that I had promised his poor ghost.

The path suddenly narrowed, primroses withered, and no longer had I that feeling of being Ben's ghost but was Bob Tuffley again, with a rigid identity carrying a ripsaw personality capable of cutting the knottiest logic into kindling wood. Poor Ben's ghost had smelt but a few rods of primroses, then the bouquet of delight had been dashed from his nostrils, and for him all but the bill was over.

It was now that I ran into the tide of adventure that swept me out on the wide sea of the mysterious and ghostly, but where my rigid identity preserved me from losing my head, and my ripsaw personality prevented any malignant spirit from taking advantage of my youth and innocence as a ghost.