Futuria Fantasia, Winter 1940 Part 3

"When at last he did awake, I had been listening to some continental communiques in the adjoining room, with the door open so that I could look in on him in case of emergency. The program ended and was followed by concert music. I don't care much for symphony, so I arose and went to the radio to switch it off. At the same time, Jerry stirred: I heard his bed creak. Turning to look his way, I twisted the wrong dial, and the music thundered: my brother began to toss on his bed. Disregarding the racket for a moment in excitement at seeing him move, I ran in to him, shouting, shaking him a little. His hands groped, found mine, and clung to them. Painfully he endeavored to raise himself, dropped back perspiring and panting. Then he screamed--horribly!--as if all h.e.l.l's devils were shovelling all h.e.l.l's coals on him, and opened his eyes, his face taut with dread. He recognized me. In a moment I had soothed him back to normalcy. He was perfectly all right from then on.

"Or at least we thought so. But since you're so interested in metaphysics, get him to tell you about the vision he had during his catalepsy. He won't feel embarra.s.sed; he's told it to others. Just say that I mentioned it to you." Ray had finished. Later, when I chanced upon Jerry Spencer, I brot him up to my apartment for dinner. The meal over, he smiled at my query concerning his comatose dream, and related:

"None in my family are as interested in music as I: my belief is that to realize its full magic you must leave off talking--better still, listen to it alone--and, closing your eyes, open your mind to it. Relax--forget yourself. All of my folks poke fun at me when I sit on the floor by the radio during the concert broadcasts, my ears close to the speaker. But that is the only way by which I can really enjoy music. The very loudness, blasting at my hearing, emphasizes the tone-magic, overwhelming everything else. And sometimes, if my eyes are shut, I can see fantastic dream worlds, fiery pageants inspired by thundrous harmonies.

"I had never dared to turn on the amplifier as loud as I'd have wished.

My family said that it would annoy the neighbors. So that day when I was alone at home, I thot that then was my chance, if ever, and proceeded to play my favorite record; the first scene of Chaikovsky's SWAN LAKE ballet, as loudly as possible. The sound was not so deafening as--maddening, or better still, intoxicating. How I Loved it! I sat cross-legged, eyes shut, dreaming, at last absolutely happy. More: ecstatic.

"The first notes were like an invitation emanating from a lost dimension, calling me, wheedling. Promising haven, peace. The call of the unknown: not the lure of das.h.i.+ng adventure but of mystery, mournful sorcery, epic splendors....

"Deep in my heart there's a sort of innate Slavic sadness which responded to the music's plaint, and my thought traveled with the melody effortlessly on and on. The warm darkness of my closed eyes lightened to infinities of cold, deep-blue emptiness, through which I felt myself gliding as the theme progressed.

"Each harmonic burst, every wailing echo, dominated me. My thought was borne farther and farther like a leaf in a tempest.... There were base chords which made my throat quiver, and tears burned under my lowered eyelids. I felt a tingling at my shoulders, and with eyes still closed but discerning by a sort of dream-vision, I half-consciously turned, beheld luminous yellow--draperies?--fluttering behind me, bouying me: like scarf-wings, whipping comet-tails.

"An instinctive transient fright gripped me, admonis.h.i.+ng me to withdraw from this blue region into the calid darkness from which I had come--but the melody's urge was stronger than my feeble urge to retreat. The azure became flecked with diamond points of light which augmented into great white moons, and from one to another in a vast network rayed pulsing filaments, vascular channels of fluid light.

"A stupendous chorus of clear unhuman voices, as from diamond throats, emanated from these linked moons, of which the music which had conveyed me was only a distorted, ghostly echo.... In tangible waves this greater music rippled around the webbed moons, beating against me as though to force me away on its tides I know not whither.

"Beneath me was a limitless tract of grey slime which rose and fell torpidly as with the breathing of a somnolent subterranean thing. The moonlight burned brightly on it, and crawling across it from some remote place came--trees?--snaky-rooted things whose prehensile branches bore, instead of leaves, flexible lenses.... They left behind them red trails on the slime, and excrementory ribbons of thin blue vapor streamed from their topmost appendages. Occasionally they paused to feed, focussing their lenses upon the gelatinous ground, which became luminously white under the concentrated light. The sucking mouths of the serpentine roots absorbed this matter, and red viscosity seeped into the eaten places, greying rapidly under the moon's effulgence, chemically affected by it.

"And the trees mated. Gynandrous, they converged in pairs or groups, pressing close together, thrusting their limbs into one enormous cl.u.s.ter, aggregating their lenses into a series of complex, compact forms ... shuddering with a violent ardor.... From erectile protuberances r.i.m.m.i.n.g the lenses ruby liquid spurted, bursting with incandescence under the condensed moonlight.

"Spent, drooping, the trees separated, and the radiant o.r.g.a.s.mic matter drifted lightly down to the slime, burning fitfully as the trees moved away indifferently.

"Apparently these flickering radiances fed, for gradually they grew, dulling, becoming opaque, substantial----thrusting out probing roots, developing limbs, wandering like their parents. They snailed onward out of sight, all of them.

"Silently, a phosph.o.r.escent green river raced like a bolt of furcate lightning over the green wastes. It was composed not of water but of myriad tiny luminous crawling insects. A conscious river, altering its tortuous course at will, small streams deviating from the main body and meandering erratically, then rejoining the general current. This river's end drew into sight, flashed under me and into the distance, leaving fast-greying red paths on the slime.

"The moon's music a.s.sailed me; simultaneously I felt those man-measures, which had carried me so long, cease, leaving me without a link to my own world--helpless against the inexorable tide of the lunar melody, which, bursting more loudly, swept me higher, through an interstice of the circulatory web, into blue infinity. And there it left me; fading ripples of it would lap me, but were too dissapated then to sweep me farther.

"I floated aimlessly in the void, it seemed for ages, less a body than a mind, aware of neither hunger nor thirst nor ill of any sort other than a dreadful sapping weariness.

"There was no way of reckoning time, but after an eternity of loneliness and self-boredom, I heard a glissando of mellow tintinabulations. A troop of small stars flashed toward me like a scattered handful of sparkling white gems, whirling in interweaving dance of enchantment, tinkling glad clear tunes like the babbling of crystal brooks. The joyous, youthful essence of their song so charmed me that I forgot my weariness and vocally ventured to imitate it.

"At last they broke their circle and swept away, single-file, out of sight, diminis.h.i.+ng with distance.

"For awhile I hummed their song, but with every repet.i.tion it lost some of its starry quality and gained a human-ness, earthiness, animalism--until it impressed me no longer beautiful, and I was silent.... Wearily the sluggish ages pa.s.sed ... in the illimitable blue solitudes....

"Eventually I heard the man-music, again like a summons--its vibrations piercing the moon-net, receding, drawing me with it. Its power increased with every unit of retregression, dragging me with it. Over the wastes of slime it dragged me, all in a fraction of seconds. Wind tore at me, racketing in my ears, drowning music of both moons and man.

"In a flash of cataclysm, of cosmic pandemonium, the moons, jostled out of their places by my abrupt pa.s.sage through the web, strained apart, snapping their pulsant filamental arteries. White, searing drops of blood of light oozed from the severed ducts, hissing as they fell, and splashed on the slime, which heaved torturedly. The crawling trees reared upon their writhing roots, flailing their lensed limbs, and the phosph.o.r.escent rivers halted suddenly, piling into swiftly disintegrating mounds.

"The rain of light blood thinned and ceased: the moons dimmed and plunged earthward, l.u.s.terless. As they touched the tempestuously tossing slime, it shrieked stridently, deafeningly--_cosmically_! An outcry voicing all life's inherent dread of the horror of pain and death, which arose from all sides, like an auditory vise, tightening upon and crus.h.i.+ng me. The blue chaos was wiped away by utter blackness; the shriek weakened, ceased.

"I opened my eyes, shut them--dazzled by daylight, and opened them again, but cautiously. My brother Ray was standing over me, shaking me, calling my name ... AND IT WAS I WHO HAD SCREAMED!"

as i remember----

[Ill.u.s.tration]

As I remember, August Derleth wrote, a time back: "My personal favorite of the Lovecraft stories is THE RATS IN THE WALL, followed by DUNWICH HORROR, COLOUR OUT OF s.p.a.cE, THE OUTSIDER, WHISPERER IN DARKNESS." H.P.L.

liked MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN as well as anything he did, COLOUR next.

Donald Wandrei is busy in St. Paul writing plays and shorts. "My average day brings me anywhere from ten to fifty letters that must be answered."

As I remember one night in Coney Island found seven strange looking fellows, fans and authors, crowded into a car for a posed picture. Ross Rocklynne, freshly freckled by a New Yawk sun, at the steering wheel, Jack Agnew at his side with Mark (I'm makin' my mark in pulps) Reinsburg and immediately in back of Rocklynne a fellow with too much hair, a tan that would make an Ethiopian blush, and teeth, Bradbury, augmented by the humorously verbose Erle Korshak, the professorly nice Bob Madle and one V. Kidwell. I recall also a night at Mort Weisinger's home during July with Rocklynne, Ackerman, Morojo, Hornig, Binder, Schwartz, Darrow and again Bradbury. A picture was taken that night and the only ones with decent smiles were Ackerman and the under-done personality who edits this magazine. Hornig looked strangely thoughtful with his hand to his chin, Mort had a cigarette drooping from his lip and Darrow, Schwartz and Binder all were lost in profound contemplation of the little birdie which Mort's brother held. I remember also a night on Central Park, a stag night, when it was raining convulsively and Binder, Bradbury, Hornig, Rocklynne and Darrow all clambered into a rocking boat and swished out onto the glittering water, yodeling popular tunes at the way-way top of their corny contraltos. Binder has a pleasing bath-tub baritone, while Hornig can imitate a frog at the drop of a body. Darrow was strangely silent, but that man Bradbury and Rocklynne set up such a howl that the Park authorities came out in a submarine, thinking that the Loch Ness monster had turned up again. This was all settled when someone pulled the plug and everyone drowned peacefully.

Going way back in the cobwebs I seem to recall a letter arriving at an Eastern post-office addressed to Mars. It was returned marked: Insufficient Postage.

As I remember Charlie Hornig wrote, on January 9th: "On Tuesday, February 20th, 1940, I'll be in Los Angeles. I will write for Futuria Fantasia, but my rates are 12 cents a word, before acceptance. I haven't seen GONE WITH THE WIND yet, but if I stop off to see it on the road, expect me two days later than heretofore planned. If I walk it, expect me at the city limits on the R car-line, Whittier, the same time of the morning, only about 18 months later. I'll bring my overcoat and shovel along for the annual sun showers and orange blizzards." And later, from Hornig: "I liked the latest issue of Futuria Fantasia very much, especially the page of conventional descriptions over which I laughed myself sick and silly. The note about Bradbury and the mask and the blonde in the Paramount is the funniest thing I've ever read in a fan-mag."

I seem to remember being at someone's house not so long ago and glancing thru a thick ma.n.u.script under submission to John W. Campbell. I seen to remember that the author was Robert A. Heinlein, member of our LaSfl.

And the other day that story popped up in Astounding as a Nova, "IF THIS GOES ON--" And it seems to me that here and now Bob should take a bow for a swell story. And thanks to Campbell for providing it with a Rogers cover and Rogers interiors. OMEGA----