Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/94

 The drunk shrieked. "No, no!" he babbled. "Not that!"

Vanderhof realized that he had taken on the attributes of the distorted image. He glanced at the cowering horse-faced man, and felt a warm glow of triumph.

It faded as he was punched in the stomach by the cane.

Vanderhof got mad. He said, with slow emphasis, "Okay. You asked for it. Now you're going to—get it!"

The other showed his teeth.

Vanderhof looked at the nearest mirror. The result was shocking, but did not quite satisfy him. He looked at another, and then another, after that turning to confront his enemy.

Not even Samson could have faced the chaotic Vanderhof without screaming then. He looked like a piecemeal zombie assembled by someone with no knowledge of anatomy. One leg was six feet longer than the other. He had five arms. His chest was like a balloon, and his waist measured perhaps three inches around.

His head resembled a fried egg that had broken in the pan. The mouth was, oddly enough, in the forehead, and there was a tasty assortment of eyes scattered around them, all of these glaring furiously. He towered to the ceiling, and the horse-faced man, giving up all thought of hostility, skittered away like a rabbit.

"Go 'way!" he babbled. "Don't touch me! You're not human, that's what you ain't!"

"You don't get out of it that easily," Vanderhof snapped, barring the door with a fifteen-foot arm. "What do you think I am, anyhow?"

"The devil himself," said the drunk, with a flash of sudden insight. "Awrrrgh! Don't do that!"

"I'll do it again," Vanderhof announced, and a scream of pain from the drunk bore testimony to the fact that he had done it again. "Thus."

The wild and impassioned shrieks of the horse-faced man bore fruit. Vanderhof heard faint cries from behind him. He turned to see faces peering in through the door.

They went white and drew back. Someone cried, "A freak! He's gone mad!"

"He's murdering me!" the drunk announced. "Help!"

Heartened by reinforcements, he made the mistake of prodding Vanderhof from the rear with his cane. At this all semblance of sanity departed from Tim Vanderhof. Completely forgetting everything else, he bent all his energies to the task of reducing the horse-faced man to a state of babbling idiocy.

"Give me that cane!" he grated.

"So you can ram it down my throat?" came the prescient reply. "I won't."

At this Vanderhof looked in a mirror, sprouted another arm, grew two feet, and advanced toward his opponent. He got the cane and broke it into six pieces. One in each hand, he commenced to tattoo a rhythm on the drunk.

This wasn't quite satisfactory, so he gave it up, and concentrated on scaring the wretched man to death. Never was any revenge more horrifying or complete. Vanderhof felt a random sense of warning; it might be wiser, safer, to leave now, before more trouble arrived. But—what the hell!

He grinned, and the horse-faced man bellowed in anguish. "He's going to eat me!" he cried. "Don't let him eat me!"

"There they are," someone observed. "In there, Sergeant. It's a freak. Quite mad."

"It's a freak, all right," said a gruff voice. "But I'm thinking that I'm the looney one. Will you look at the horrid thing!"

"I've been looking at it for ten minutes," said the other voice. "Ever since I turned in the alarm. You've got your