Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

I had failed. His mind lacked, I think, the necessary conscious imagination. But there was one more thing to try.

I said gently: “Philippe, you care for Ma’m’selle Maguelonne, do you not?”

“I love Maguelonne,” he replied.

And then I told him brutally, briefly, almost viciously, of the thing that hung there in that cellar — and of its use.

The effect was as violent, as physical as if I had suddenly struck him in the face. “Ah! Ah! Tonnerre de Dieu! La coquine! La vilaine coquine!” he shouted, leaping from his bed like a crazy man.

The rest was simple. Philippe was too angry and concerned about Maguelonne to have much time for surprise or even gratitude at his sudden complete recovery, but he was sensible enough to realize that for the girl’s sake it was better not to make a public row. So when he went to fetch Maguelonne away he took his aunt with him, and within the hour she was transferred with her belongings to Madame Plomb’s room.

Martin Plomb would deal effectively with old Mère Tirelou. He was to make no accusation concerning the part she had played in Philippe’s misadventure — an issue difficult of legal proof — but to warn her that if she ever tried to interfere with Maguelonne or the impending marriage he would swear out a criminal warrant against her for ill treatment of a minor ward.

There remain two unsolved elements in this case which require an attempted explanation. The belief which I have always held concerning malevolent magic is that it operates by imposed autosuggestion, and that therefore no incantation can work evil unless the intended victim believes it can. In this case, which seemed to contradict that thesis, I can only suppose that while Philippe’s conscious mind reacted with complete skepticism, his unconscious mind (his family came from these same mountains) retained certain atavistic, superstitious fears which rendered him vulnerable.

The second element is, of course, the elaborate mummery of the enmeshed manikin, the doll, own cousin to the waxen images which in the Middle Ages were pierced with needles or slowly melted before a fire. The witch herself, if not a charlatan, implicitly believes that there is a literal, supernatural transference of identities.

My own belief is that the image serves simply as a focus for the concentrated, malevolent will power of the witch. I hold, in short, that sorcery is a real and dangerous force, but that its ultimate explanation lies not in any supernatural realm, but rather in the field of pathological psychology.

The Rat by S. Fowler Wright

I

Dr. Merson looked at the dying rat, and decided that, should he delay his experiment longer, it would be dead before morning.

He had nursed it now for nearly six months, and it had been very old and blind and feeble when he had bought it.

He had told Briggs that he would give him £5 for the oldest rat in Belsham, and the rat-catcher had earned his money.

It had surprised him, when he had first approached the subject, to realize how difficult it would be to find an animal that was really old and feeble. He had to observe that nature does not encourage the prolongation of pain and weariness: when health goes, life very quickly follows.

But he knew that, in the course of their age-long warfare with the human race, the rats had arrived at some social organization, and had adopted some of our practices, and in particular, that when a disease of blindness (to which they are very liable) attacks them, they may be nursed and fed by members of their family, so that life is prolonged to an age which would otherwise be impossible.

So he had asked for an aged rat, and had watched its vitality recede, till now it was too weak to crawl toward the tempting food that was offered... It was so dull with age that it did not flinch when the needle pricked it.

II

The next morning it was not dead. It lay sleeping; old, and blind, and decrepit. It was not pleasant to look at, but it may have been less feeble than the night before — and the food had been eaten.

Dr. Merson, observing this, became aware that his heart was beating fast, with a sudden excitement, of which he had not supposed himself to be capable.

When he looked at it again at midday, and observed that it was feebly attending to a neglected toilet, he did a thing which was less wise than his usual custom, calling his wife to observe it.

Mrs. Merson disliked his experiments; and his own habit of professional reticence disinclined him from speech which had no immediate purpose. But this was a discovery of such momentous consequence that he was impelled to share it.

“You mean that no one need ever die?” she asked incredulously. She was not greatly impressed, even if she took it with any seriousness. She was a healthy young woman, utterly without imagination, and the cook had given notice an hour ago.