A. E. Van Vogt - The Witch

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A. E. VAN VOGT

The Witch

rom where he sat, half hidden by the scraggly line of bushes, Marson watched

the old woman. It was minutes now since he had stopped reading. The afternoon air

hung breathless around him. Even here, a cliff’s depth away from the sparkling

tongue of sea that curled among the rocks below, the heat was a material thing,

crushing at his strength.

But it was the letter in his pocket, not the blazing sunlight, that weighed on

Marson’s mind. Two days now since that startling letter had arrived; and he still

hadn’t the beginning of the courage necessary to ask for an explanation.

Frowning uncertainly—unsuspected—unsuspecting—he watched.

The old woman basked in the sun. Her long, thin, pale head drooped in sleep. On

and on she sat, moveless, an almost shapeless form in her black sack of a dress.

The strain of looking hurt his eyes; his gaze wandered; embraced the long, low,

tree-protected cottage with its neat, white garage and its aloneness there on that high,

green hill overlooking the great spread of city. Marson had a brief, cozy sense of

privacy—then he turned back to the old woman.

For a long moment, he stared unshaken at the spot where she had been. He was

conscious of a dim, intellectual surprise, but there was not a real thought in his head.

After a brief period, he grew aware of the blank, and he thought:

Thirty feet to the front door from where she had been sitting; and she would have

had to cross his line of vision to get there.

An old woman, perhaps ninety, perhaps a hundred or more, an incredibly old

woman, capable of moving—well thirty feet a minute.

Marson stood up. There was a searing pain where an edge of the sun had cut into

his shoulders. But that passed. From his upright position, he saw that not a solitary

figure was visible on the steeply mounting sidewalk. And only the sound of the sea

on the rocks below broke the silence of that hot Saturday afternoon.

Where had the old wretch disappeared to?

The front door opened; and Joanna came out. She called to him:

“Oh, there you are, Craig. Mother Quigley was just asking where you were.”

Marson came silently down from the cliff’s edge. Almost meticulously, he took

his wife’s words, figuratively rolled them over in his mind, and found them utterly

inadequate. The old woman couldn’t have been just asking for him, because the old

woman had NOT gone through that door and therefore hadn’t asked anyone

anything for the last twenty minutes.

At last an idea came. He said: “Where’s Mother Quigley now?”

“Inside.” He saw that Joanna was intent on the flower box of the window beside

the door. “She’s been knitting in the living room for the last half hour.”

Amazement in him yielded to sharp annoyance. There was too damn much old

woman in his mind since that letter had come less than forty-eight hours before. He

drew it out, and stared bleakly at the scrawl of his name on the envelope.

It was simple enough, really, that this incredible letter had come to him. After the

old woman’s arrival nearly a year before, an unexpected nightmare, he had mentally

explored all the possible reverberations that might accrue from her presence in his

home. And the thought had come that, if she had left any debts in the small village

where she had lived, he’d better pay them.

A young man, whose appointment to the technical school principalship had been

severely criticized on the grounds of his youth, couldn’t afford to have anything

come back on him. And so a month before he had leisurely written the letter to

which this was the answer.

Slowly, he drew the note from its envelope and once more reread the mind-

staggering words in it:

Dear Mr. Marson:

As I am the only debtor, the postmaster handed me your letter; and I wish to

state that, when your great grandmother died last year, I buried her myself and in

my capacity as gravestone niaker, I carved a stone for her grave. I did this at my

own expense, being a God-fearing man, but if there is a relative, I feel you should

bear cost of same, which is eighteen (18)’ dollars. I hope to hear from you, as I

need the money just now.

Pete Cole.

Marson stood for a long moment; then he turned to speak to Joanna—just in time

to see her disappearing into the house. Once more undecided, he climbed to the

cliff’s edge, thinking:

The old scoundrel! The nerve of a perfect stranger of an old woman walking into

a private home and pulling a deception like that.

His public situation being what it was, his only solution was to pay her way into

an institution; and even that would require careful thought— Frowning blackly, he

hunched himself deeper into his chair there on the cliff’s edge, and deliberately

buried himself in his book. It was not until much later that memory came of the way

the old woman had disappeared from the lawn. Funny, he thought then, it really was

damned funny.

The memory faded— Blankly sat the old woman.

Supper was over; and, because for years there had been no reserves of strength in

that ancient body, digestion was an almost incredible process, an all-out affair.

She sat as one dead, without visible body movement, without thought in her

brain; even the grim creature purpose that had brought her here to this house lay like

a stone at the bottom of the black pool that was her mind.

It was as if she had always sat there in that chair by the window overlooking the

sea, like an inanimate object, like some horrible mummy, like a wheel that, having

settled into position, seemed now immovable.

After an hour, awareness began to creep into her bones. The creature mind of her,

the strange, inhuman creature mind behind the parchmentlike, sharp-nosed mask of

human flesh, stirred into life.

It studied Marson at the living room table, his head bent thoughtfully over the

next term curriculum he was preparing. Toothless lips curled finally into a con-

temptuous sneer.

The sneer faded, as Joanna slipped softly into the room. Half-closed, letching

eyes peered then, with an abruptly ravenous, beastlike lust at the slim, lithe, strong

body. Pretty, pretty body, soon now to be taken over.

In the three-day period of the first new moon after the summer solstice . . . in nine

days exactly— Nine days! The ancient carcass shuddered and wriggled ecstatically

with the glee of the creature. Nine short days, and once again the age-long cycle of

dynamic existence would begin. Such a pretty young body, too, capable of vibrant,

world-ranging life— Thought faded, as Joanna went back into the kitchen. Slowly,

for the first time, awareness came of the sea.

Contentedly sat the old woman. Soon now, the sea would hold no terrors, and the

blinds wouldn’t have to be down, nor the windows shut; she would even be able to

walk along the shore at midnight as of old; and they, whom she had deserted so long

ago, would once more shrink from the irresistible energy aura of her new, young

body.

The sound of the sea came to her, where she sat so quietly; calm sound at first,

almost gentle in the soft sibilation of each wave thrust. Farther out, the voices of the

water were louder, more raucous, blatantly confident, but the meaning of what they

said was blurred by the distance, a dim, clamorous confusion that rustled

discordantly out of the gathering night.

Night!

She shouldn’t be aware of night falling, when the blinds were drawn.

With a little gasp, she twisted toward the window beside which she sat. Instantly,

a blare of hideous fear exploded from her lips.

The ugly sound bellowed into Marson’s ears, and brought him lurching to his

feet. It raged through the door into the kitchen, and Joanna came running as if it was

a rope pulling at her.

The old woman screeched on; and it was Marson who finally penetrated to the

desire behind that mad terror.

“Good Lord!” he shrugged. “It’s the windows and the blinds. I forgot to put them

down when dusk fell.”

He stopped, irritated, then: “Damned nonsense! I’ve a good mind to.—”

“For Heaven’s sake!” his wife urged. “We’ve got to stop that noise. I’ll take this

side of the room; you take the windows next to her.”

Marson shrugged again, acquiescently. But he was thinking: They wouldn’t have

this to put up with much longer. As soon as the summer holidays arrived, he’d make

arrangements to put her in the Old Folks Home. And that would be that. Less than

two weeks now.

His wife’s voice broke almost sharply across the silence that came, as Mother

Quigley settled back into her chair: “I’m surprised at you forgetting a thing like that.

You’re usually so thoughtful.”

“It was so damned hot!” Marson complained.

Joanna said no more; and he went back to his chair. But he was thinking sud-

denly: Old woman who fears the sea and the night, why did you come to this house

by the sea, where the street lamps are far apart and the nights are almost primevally

dark?

The gray thought passed; his mind returned with conscientious intentness to the

preparation of the curriculum.

Startled sat the old woman!

All the swift rage of the creature burned within her. That wretched man, daring to

forget. And yet—’ ‘You’re usually so thoughtful!” his wife had said.

It was true. Not once in eleven months had he forgotten to look after the blinds—

until today.

Was it possible that he suspected? That somehow, now that the time for the

change was so near, an inkling of her purpose had dripped from her straining brain?

It had happened before. In the past, she had had to fight for her bodies against

terrible, hostile men who had nothing but dreadful suspicion.

Jet-black eyes narrowed to pin points. With this man, there would have to be

more than suspicion. Being what he was, practical, skeptical, cold-brained, not all

the telepathic vibrations, nor the queer mind storms with their abnormal impli-

cations—if he had yet had any—would touch him or remain with him of themselves.

Nothing but facts would rouse this man.

What facts? Was it possible that, in her intense concentrations of thought, she had

unwittingly permitted images to show? Or had he made inquiries?

Her body shook, and then slowly purpose formed: She must take no chances.

Tomorrow was Sunday, and the man would be home. So nothing was possible.

But Monday— That was it. Monday morning while Joanna slept—and Joanna

always went back to bed for an hour’s nap after her husband had gone to work—on

Monday morning she would slip in and prepare the sleeping body so that, seven days

later, entry would be easy.

No more wasting time trying to persuade Joanna to take the stuff voluntarily. The

silly fool with her refusal of home remedies, her prating of taking only doctors’

prescriptions.

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摘要：

A.E.VANVOGTTheWitchromwherehesat,halfhiddenbythescragglylineofbushes,Marsonwatchedtheoldwoman.Itwasminutesnowsincehehadstoppedreading.Theafternoonairhungbreathlessaroundhim.Evenhere,acliff’sdepthawayfromthesparklingtongueofseathatcurledamongtherocksbelow,theheatwasamaterialthing,crushingathisstrengt...

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