A Pleasure to Burn Read online

  The fire burned the town. He sat under a tree for a long time, until morning. Then, he found a cave in the hills, and went in, to sleep.

  He awoke at sunset with a sudden dream of fire. He saw himself pushed into the flue, cut into sections by flame, burned away to nothing. He sat up on the cave floor, laughing at himself. He had an idea.

  He walked down into the town and stepped into an audio booth. He dialed OPERATOR. “Give me the Police Department,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the operator.

  He tried again. “The Law Force,” he said.

  “I will connect you with the Peace Control,” she said, at last.

  A little fear began ticking inside him like a tiny watch. Suppose the operator recognized the term Police Department as an anachronism, took his audio number, and sent someone out to investigate? No, she wouldn’t do that. Why should she suspect? Paranoids were nonexistent in this civilization.

  “Yes, the Peace Control,” he said.

  A buzz. A man’s voice answered, “Peace Control. Stephens speaking.”

  “Give me the Homicide Detail,” said Lantry, smiling.

  “The what?”

  “Who investigates murders?”

  “I beg your pardon, what are you talking about?”

  “Wrong number.” Lantry hung up, chuckling. Ye gods, there was no such a thing as a Homicide Detail. There were no murders, therefore they needed no detectives. Perfect, perfect!

  The audio rang back. Lantry hesitated, then answered.

  “Say,” said the voice on the phone. “Who are you?”

  “The man just left who called,” said Lantry, and hung up again.

  He ran. They would recognize his voice and perhaps send someone out to check. People didn’t lie. He had just lied. They knew his voice. He had lied. Anybody who lied needed a psychiatrist. They would come to pick him up to see why he was lying. For no other reason. They suspected him of nothing else. Therefore—he must run.

  Oh, how very carefully he must act from now on. He knew nothing of this world, this odd straight truthful ethical world. Simply by looking pale you were suspect. Simply by not sleeping nights you were suspect. Simply by not bathing, by smelling like a—dead cow?—you were suspect. Anything.

  He must go to a library. But that was dangerous, too. What were libraries like today? Did they have books or did they have film spools which projected books on a screen? Or did people have libraries at home, thus eliminating the necessity of keeping large main libraries?

  He decided to chance it. His use of archaic terms might well make him suspect again, but now it was very important he learn all that could be learned of this foul world into which he had come again. He stopped a man on the street. “Which way to the library?”

  The man was not surprised. “Two blocks east, one block north.”

  “Thank you.”

  Simple as that.

  He walked into the library a few minutes later.

  “May I help you?”

  He looked at the librarian. May I help you, may I help you. What a world of helpful people! “I’d like to ‘have’ Edgar Allan Poe.” His verb was carefully chosen. He didn’t say ‘read’. He was too afraid that books were passé, that printing itself was a lost art. Maybe all “books” today were in the form of fully delineated three-dimensional motion pictures. How in hell could you make a motion picture out of Socrates, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud?

  “What was that name again?”

  “Edgar Allan Poe.”

  “There is no such author listed in our files.”

  “Will you please check?”

  She checked. “Oh, yes. There’s a red mark on the file card. He was one of the authors in the Great Burning of 2265.”

  “How ignorant of me.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “Have you heard much of him?”

  “He had some interesting barbarian ideas on death,” said Lantry.

  “Horrible ones,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Ghastly.”

  “Yes. Ghastly. Abominable, in fact. Good thing he was burned. Unclean. By the way, do you have any of Lovecraft?”

  “Is that a sex book?”

  Lantry exploded with laughter. “No, no. It’s a man.”

  She riffled the file. “He was burned, too. Along with Poe.”

  “I suppose that applies to Machen and a man named Derleth and one named Ambrose Bierce, also?”

  “Yes.” She shut the file cabinet. “All burned. And good riddance.” She gave him an odd warm look of interest. “I bet you’ve just come back from Mars.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “There was another explorer in here yesterday. He’d just made the Mars hop and return. He was interested in supernatural literature, also. It seems there are actually ‘tombs’ on Mars.”

  “What are ‘tombs’?” Lantry was learning to keep his mouth closed.

  “You know, those things they once buried people in.”

  “Barbarian custom. Ghastly!”

  “Isn’t it? Well, seeing the Martian tombs made this young explorer curious. He came and asked if we had any of those authors you mentioned. Of course we haven’t even a smitch of their stuff.” She looked at his pale face. “You are one of the Martian rocket men, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Got back on the ship the other day.”

  “The other young man’s name was Burke.”

  “Of course. Burke! Good friend of mine!”

  “Sorry I can’t help you. You’d best get yourself some vitamin shots and some sun-lamp. You look terrible, Mr.—?”

  “Lantry. I’ll be good. Thanks ever so much. See you next Hallows’ Eve!”

  “Aren’t you the clever one.” She laughed. “If there were a Hallows’ Eve, I’d make it a date.”

  “But they burned that, too,” he said.

  “Oh, they burned everything,” she said. “Good night.”

  “Good night.” And he went on out.

  OH, HOW CAREFULLY HE WAS BALANCED in this world! Like some kind of dark gyroscope, whirling with never a murmur, a very silent man. As he walked along the eight o’clock evening street he noticed with particular interest that there was not an unusual amount of lights about. There were the usual street lights at each corner, but the blocks themselves were only faintly illuminated. Could it be that these remarkable people were not afraid of the dark? Incredible nonsense! Everyone was afraid of the dark. Even he himself had been afraid, as a child. It was as natural as eating.

  A little boy ran by on pelting feet, followed by six others. They yelled and shouted and rolled on the dark cool October lawn, in the leaves. Lantry looked on for several minutes before addressing himself to one of the small boys who was for a moment taking a respite, gathering his breath into his small lungs, as a boy might blow to refill a punctured paper bag.

  “Here, now,” said Lantry. “You’ll wear yourself out.”

  “Sure,” said the boy.

  “Could you tell me,” said the man, “why there are no street lights in the middle of the blocks?”

  “Why?” asked the boy.

  “I’m a teacher, I thought I’d test your knowledge,” said Lantry.

  “Well,” said the boy, “you don’t need lights in the middle of the block, that’s why.”

  “But it gets rather dark,” said Lantry.

  “So?” said the boy.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” asked Lantry.

  “Of what?” asked the boy.

  “The dark,” said Lantry.

  “Ho ho,” said the boy. “Why should I be?”

  “Well,” said Lantry. “It’s black, it’s dark. And after all, street lights were invented to take away the dark and take away fear.”

  “That’s silly. Street lights were made so you could see where you were walking. Outside of that there’s nothing.”

  “You miss the whole point—” said Lantry. “Do you mean to say you would sit in the middle of an empty lo
t all night and not be afraid?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of what, of what, of what, you little ninny! Of the dark!”

  “Ho ho.”

  “Would you go out in the hills and stay all night in the dark?”

  “Sure.”

  “Would you stay in a deserted house alone?”

  “Sure.”

  “And not be afraid?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re a liar!”

  “Don’t you call me nasty names!” shouted the boy. Liar was the improper noun, indeed. It seemed to be the worst thing you could call a person.

  Lantry was completely furious with the little monster. “Look,” he insisted. “Look into my eyes …”

  The boy looked.

  Lantry bared his teeth slightly. He put out his hands, making a claw-like gesture. He leered and gesticulated and wrinkled his face into a terrible mask of horror.

  “Ho ho,” said the boy. “You’re funny.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You’re funny. Do it again. Hey, gang, c’mere! This man does funny things!”

  “Never mind.”

  “Do it again, sir.”

  “Never mind, never mind. Good night!” Lantry ran off.

  “Good night, sir. And mind the dark, sir!” called the little boy.

  Of all the stupidity, of all the rank, gross, crawling, jelly-mouthed stupidity! He had never seen the like of it in his life! Bringing the children up without so much as an ounce of imagination! Where was the fun in being children if you didn’t imagine things?

  He stopped running. He slowed and for the first time began to appraise himself. He ran his hand over his face and bit his finger and found that he himself was standing midway in the block and he felt uncomfortable. He moved up to the street corner where there was a glowing lantern. “That’s better,” he said, holding his hands out like a man to an open warm fire.

  He listened. There was not a sound except the night breathing of the crickets. Faintly there was a fire-hush as a rocket swept the sky. It was the sound a torch might make brandished gently on the dark air.

  He listened to himself and for the first time he realized what there was so peculiar to himself. There was not a sound in him. The little nostril and lung noises were absent. His lungs did not take nor give oxygen or carbon-dioxide; they did not move. The hairs in his nostrils did not quiver with warm combing air. That faint purling whisper of breathing did not sound in his nose. Strange. Funny. A noise you never heard when you were alive, the breath that fed your body, and yet, once dead, oh how you missed it!

  The only other time you ever heard it was on deep dreamless awake nights when you wakened and listened and heard first your nose taking and gently poking out the air, and then the dull deep dim red thunder of the blood in your temples, in your eardrums, in your throat, in your aching wrists, in your warm loins, in your chest. All of those little rhythms, gone. The wrist beat gone, the throat pulse gone, the chest vibration gone. The sound of the blood coming up down around and through, up down around and through. Now it was like listening to a statue.

  And yet he lived. Or, rather, moved about. And how was this done, over and above scientific explanations, theories, doubts?

  By one thing, and one thing alone.

  Hatred.

  Hatred was a blood in him, it went up down around and through, up down around and through. It was a heart in him, not beating, true, but warm. He was—what? Resentment. Envy. They said he could not lie any longer in his coffin in the cemetery. He had wanted to. He had never had any particular desire to get up and walk around. It had been enough, all these centuries, to lie in the deep box and feel but not feel the ticking of the million insect watches in the earth around, the moves of worms like so many deep thoughts in the soil.

  But then they had come and said, “Out you go and into the furnace!” And that is the worst thing you can say to any man. You cannot tell him what to do. If you say you are dead, he will want not to be dead. If you say there are no such things as vampires, by God, that man will try to be one just for spite. If you say a dead man cannot walk he will test his limbs. If you say murder is no longer occurring, he will make it occur. He was, in toto, all the impossible things. They had given birth to him with their damnable practices and ignorances. Oh, how wrong they were. They needed to be shown. He would show them! Sun is good, so is night, there is nothing wrong with dark, they said.

  Dark is horror, he shouted, silently, facing the little houses. It is meant for contrast. You must fear, you hear! That has always been the way of this world. You destroyers of Edgar Allan Poe and fine big-worded Lovecraft, you burner of Halloween masks and destroyer of pumpkin jack-o-lanterns! I will make night what it once was, the thing against which man built all his lanterned cities and his many children!

  As if in answer to this, a rocket, flying low, trailing a long rakish feather of flame. It made Lantry flinch and draw back.

  IT WAS BUT TEN MILES TO THE LITTLE TOWN OF SCIENCE Port. He made it by dawn, walking. But even this was not good. At four in the morning a silver beetle pulled up on the road beside him.

  “Hello,” called the man inside.

  “Hello,” said Lantry, wearily.

  “Why are you walking?” asked the man.

  “I’m going to Science Port.”

  “Why don’t you ride?”

  “I like to walk.”

  “Nobody likes to walk. Are you sick? May I give you a ride?”

  “Thanks, but I like to walk.”

  The man hesitated, then closed the beetle door. “Good night.”

  When the beetle was gone over the hill, Lantry retreated into a nearby forest. A world full of bungling helping people. By God, you couldn’t even walk without being accused of sickness. That meant only one thing. He must not walk any longer, he had to ride. He should have accepted that fellow’s offer.

  The rest of the night he walked far enough off the highway so that if a beetle rushed by he had time to vanish in the underbrush. At dawn he crept into an empty dry water-drain and closed his eyes.

  THE DREAM WAS AS PERFECT as a rimed snowflake.

  He saw the graveyard where he had lain deep and ripe over the centuries. He heard the early morning footsteps of the laborers returning to finish their work.

  “Would you mind passing me the shovel, Jim?”

  “Here you go.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute!”

  “What’s up?”

  “Look here. We didn’t finish last night, did we?”

  “No.”

  “There was one more coffin, wasn’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, here it is, and open!”

  “You’ve got the wrong hole.”

  “What’s the name say on the gravestone?”

  “Lantry. William Lantry.”

  “That’s him, that’s the one! Gone!”

  “What could have happened to it?”

  “How do I know? The body was here last night.”

  “We can’t be sure, we didn’t look.”

  “God, man, people don’t bury empty coffins. He was in his box. Now he isn’t.”

  “Maybe this box was empty.”

  “Nonsense. Smell that smell? He was here all right.”

  A pause.

  “Nobody would have taken the body, would they?”

  “What for?”

  “A curiosity, perhaps.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. People just don’t steal. Nobody steals.”

  “Well, then, there’s only one solution.”

  “And?”

  “He got up and walked away.”

  A pause. In the dark dream, Lantry expected to hear laughter. There was none. Instead, the voice of the gravedigger, after a thoughtful pause, said, “Yes. That’s it, indeed. He got up and walked away.”

  “That’s interesting to think about,” said the other.

  “Isn’t it, though?”

  Silence.<
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  LANTRY AWOKE. It had all been a dream, but God, how realistic. How strangely the two men had carried on. But not unnaturally, oh, no. That was exactly how you expected men of the future to talk. Men of the future. Lantry grinned wryly. That was an anachronism for you. This was the future. This was happening now. It wasn’t 300 years from now, it was now, not then, or any other time. This wasn’t the Twentieth Century. Oh, how calmly those two men in the dream had said, “He got up and walked away.” “—interesting to think about.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” With never a quaver in their voices. With not so much as a glance over their shoulders or a tremble of spade in hand. But, of course, with their perfectly honest, logical minds, there was but one explanation; certainly nobody had stolen the corpse. “Nobody steals.” The corpse had simply got up and walked off. The corpse was the only one who could have possibly moved the corpse. By the few casual slow words of the gravediggers Lantry knew what they were thinking. Here was a man that had lain in suspended animation, not really dead, for hundreds of years. The jarring about, the activity, had brought him back.

  Everyone had heard of those little green toads that are sealed for centuries inside mud rocks or in ice patties, alive, alive oh! And how when scientists chipped them out and warmed them like marbles in their hands the little toads leapt about and frisked and blinked. Then it was only logical that the gravediggers think of William Lantry in like fashion.

  But what if the various parts were fitted together in the next day or so? If the vanished body and the shattered, exploded incinerator were connected? What if this fellow named Burke, who had returned pale from Mars, went to the library again and said to the young woman he wanted some books and she said, “Oh, your friend Lantry was in the other day.” And he’d say, “Lantry who? Don’t know anyone by that name.” And she’d say, “Oh, he lied.” And people in this time didn’t lie. So it would all form and coalesce, item by item, bit by bit. A pale man who was pale and shouldn’t be pale had lied and people don’t lie, and a walking man on a lonely country road had walked and people don’t walk anymore, and a body was missing from a cemetery, and the Incinerator had blown up and and and—