Read Online The Howling Man by Charles Beaumont - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Charles Beaumont
Tags: Literary Criticism, Fiction.Horror, Collection.Single Author, Short Stories & Novellas, Acclaimed.S K Recommends, Acclaimed.Bram Stoker Award
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buzzed near the dead animals; there were no maggots burrowing. No vultures; the sky was clean of birds. And in all the untended rolling hills of grass and weeds which had once sung and pulsed with a million voices, in all the land there was only this immense stillness now, still as years, still as the unheard motion of the stars.
Kroner watched the people. The young woman in the gay print dress; the tall African with his bright paint and cultivated scars; the fierce-looking Swede looking not so fierce now in this graying twilight. He watched all the tall and short and old and young people from all over the world, pressed together now, a vast silent polyglot in this country meeting place, this always lonely and long-deserted spot--deserted even before the gas bombs and the disease and the flying pestilences that had covered the earth in three days and three nights. Deserted. Forgotten.
"Talk to us, Jim," the woman who had handed him the notebook said. She was new,
Kroner put the list inside his big overalls pocket.
"Tell us," someone else said. "How shall we be nourished? What will we do?"
"The world's all dead," a child moaned. "Dead as dead, the whole world . . ." .
"Todo el mund--"
"Monsieur Kroner, Monsieur Kroner, what will we do?"
Kroner smiled, "Do?" He looked up through the still-hanging poison cloud, the dun blanket, up to where the moon was now risen in full coldness. His voice was steady, but it lacked life. "What some of us have done before," he said. "We'll go back and wait. It ain't the first time. It ain't the last."
A little fat bald man with old eyes sighed and began to waver in the October dusk. The outline of his form wavered and disappeared in the shadows under the trees where the moonlight did not reach. Others followed him as Kroner talked.
"Same thing we'll do again and likely keep on doing. We'll go back and--sleep. And we'll wait. Then it'll start all over again and folks'll build their cities--new folks with new blood--and then we'll wake up. Maybe a long time yet. But it ain't so bad; it's quiet, and time passes." He lifted a small girl of fifteen or sixteen with pale cheeks and red lips. "Come on, now! Why, just think of the appetite you'll have all built up!"
The girl smiled. Kroner faced the crowd and waved his hands, large hands, rough from the stone of midnight pyramids and the feel of muskets, boil-speckled from night hours in packing plants and trucking lines; broken by the impact of a tomahawk and machine-gun bullet; but white where the dirt was not caked, and bloodless. Old hands, old beyond years. As he waved, the wind came limping back from the mountains. It blew the heavy iron bell high in the steepled white barn, and set the signboards creaking, and lifted ancient dusts and hissed again through the dead trees.
Kroner watched the air turn black. He listened to it fill with the flappings and the flutterings and the squeakings. He waited; then he stopped waving and sighed and began to walk.
He walked to a place of vines and heavy brush. Here he paused for a moment and looked out at the silent place of high dark grass, of hidden huddled tombs, of scrolls and stone-frozen children stained silver in the night's wet darkness; at the crosses he did not look. The people were gone, the place was empty.
Kroner kicked away the foliage. Then he got into the coffin and closed the lid.
Soon he was asleep.
----
Introduction to THE DEVIL, YOU SAY?
(by Howard Browne)
----
In 1951, as the then editor of the Ziff-Davis Fiction Group, I bought "The Devil, You Say?"--Charles Beaumont's first story sale. This obviously made me the first to recognize his unique talents as a writer.
Not true. As I recall, TDYS came into our editorial offices via the "slush pile," i.e. the daily raft of unsolicited submissions to the several fiction magazines the company published at the time, It was the staff's job to go through the pile in the unlikely chance of coming across something we could use.
At the
Kroner watched the people. The young woman in the gay print dress; the tall African with his bright paint and cultivated scars; the fierce-looking Swede looking not so fierce now in this graying twilight. He watched all the tall and short and old and young people from all over the world, pressed together now, a vast silent polyglot in this country meeting place, this always lonely and long-deserted spot--deserted even before the gas bombs and the disease and the flying pestilences that had covered the earth in three days and three nights. Deserted. Forgotten.
"Talk to us, Jim," the woman who had handed him the notebook said. She was new,
Kroner put the list inside his big overalls pocket.
"Tell us," someone else said. "How shall we be nourished? What will we do?"
"The world's all dead," a child moaned. "Dead as dead, the whole world . . ." .
"Todo el mund--"
"Monsieur Kroner, Monsieur Kroner, what will we do?"
Kroner smiled, "Do?" He looked up through the still-hanging poison cloud, the dun blanket, up to where the moon was now risen in full coldness. His voice was steady, but it lacked life. "What some of us have done before," he said. "We'll go back and wait. It ain't the first time. It ain't the last."
A little fat bald man with old eyes sighed and began to waver in the October dusk. The outline of his form wavered and disappeared in the shadows under the trees where the moonlight did not reach. Others followed him as Kroner talked.
"Same thing we'll do again and likely keep on doing. We'll go back and--sleep. And we'll wait. Then it'll start all over again and folks'll build their cities--new folks with new blood--and then we'll wake up. Maybe a long time yet. But it ain't so bad; it's quiet, and time passes." He lifted a small girl of fifteen or sixteen with pale cheeks and red lips. "Come on, now! Why, just think of the appetite you'll have all built up!"
The girl smiled. Kroner faced the crowd and waved his hands, large hands, rough from the stone of midnight pyramids and the feel of muskets, boil-speckled from night hours in packing plants and trucking lines; broken by the impact of a tomahawk and machine-gun bullet; but white where the dirt was not caked, and bloodless. Old hands, old beyond years. As he waved, the wind came limping back from the mountains. It blew the heavy iron bell high in the steepled white barn, and set the signboards creaking, and lifted ancient dusts and hissed again through the dead trees.
Kroner watched the air turn black. He listened to it fill with the flappings and the flutterings and the squeakings. He waited; then he stopped waving and sighed and began to walk.
He walked to a place of vines and heavy brush. Here he paused for a moment and looked out at the silent place of high dark grass, of hidden huddled tombs, of scrolls and stone-frozen children stained silver in the night's wet darkness; at the crosses he did not look. The people were gone, the place was empty.
Kroner kicked away the foliage. Then he got into the coffin and closed the lid.
Soon he was asleep.
----
Introduction to THE DEVIL, YOU SAY?
(by Howard Browne)
----
In 1951, as the then editor of the Ziff-Davis Fiction Group, I bought "The Devil, You Say?"--Charles Beaumont's first story sale. This obviously made me the first to recognize his unique talents as a writer.
Not true. As I recall, TDYS came into our editorial offices via the "slush pile," i.e. the daily raft of unsolicited submissions to the several fiction magazines the company published at the time, It was the staff's job to go through the pile in the unlikely chance of coming across something we could use.
At the
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