The Slanting Shadow
by August W. Derleth
Mr. Abner Follansbee, investigator for the Society for Psychic Research, stopped his car to peer out into the Wisconsin woods. To his companion he said, "This is apparently the place, Fred. There's a sign off to one side. Pretty well shot. 'Kroll's Inn'. Let's see that young lady's letter again."
Fred Tenny took a letter from his inner coat pocket and thrust it toward Follansbee, who opened it and regarded the scrawled writing dubiously.
"Probably just another wild goose chase," he said presently. "Looks to me more like a matter for the police. The girl's guardian, Uriah Kroll, disappeared over a year ago—and since then his room has been very strange. That's all it amounts to. I suppose the young lady thinks she's got a ghost on her hands."
The younger man smiled. "Something about a shadow, isn't there?"
"Yes. 'There's a queer shadow on the bed in his room when the moon shines,' she writes. 'I can't understand it. It shouldn't be there.' That's all."
"Very lucid," commented Tenny laconically.
The inn itself was a quiet little house of stone, hugging the ground in the middle of a clearing not very far from the heavily wooded roadside. A flagstone walk led up to a low stone porch, where the key to the front door lay under the mat, just where Miss Harriet Sears had said it would be in her letter to Follansbee.
As he bent to unlock the door, Follansbee said, "At least we can thank goodness we're alone. Miss Sears isn't likely to come bursting in on us at all hours of the night—she vowed she'd never set foot inside the building until we'd settled that shadow business."
He threw the door open on a short hallway leading directly into a low, raftered sitting-room, into which Follansbee immediately strode, followed by his companion. The room was comfortably and well furnished with antique pieces. The chairs were curiously carved and obviously hand-made. Follansbee, however, wasted no time in the sitting-room, but led the way into another, smaller room, and around into a large bedroom in the southeast corner of the building.
This was the room which had been occupied by Uriah Kroll, prior to his disappearance, as described in Miss Sears' letter. It was a large, oddly furnished room, with a bed against the south wall, and a single chair next to it, the north wall of the room next the door being occupied by what appeared to be a work-bench. Follansbee, having looked cursorily at the bed, went over to the bench and bent above it.
Tenny came over and stood at his side.
"What do you make of it?" Follansbee asked.
"Queer outfit," Tenny replied. "Looks as if he might have been blowing glass, doesn't it?"
Follansbee bent and took up a book. "Well, look at this," he said in surprise. "Arbatel's Treatise on Magic."
"Yes," supplemented Tenny excitedly, "and see here—he's got a trident, and incense, and oils—why, he dabbled in magic!"
"No doubt of it," assented Follansbee gravely.
He put the book down and examined the instruments on the bench. He chuckled oddly to himself, held up a magical diagram made on a sheet of stiff paper, and smiled at it with Tenny. Then he turned away, looked once more about the room, and said, "If you brought the lunch kit, we'll eat. The sun'll go down in about three-quarters of an hour, and the moon'll be up shortly after. We might as well be ready."
"What's the procedure?"
"We sleep here—nice, comfortable double bed, as far as I can see," replied Follansbee.
Lunch eaten, the two investigators returned to the bedroom where they were to sleep. The moon had already risen, so long had they sat in the kitchen, but it was not yet throwing its light through the single window to the south. Follansbee and Tenny sat talking for the better part of an hour.
It was the older man who first noticed that the moonlight had reached the counterpane of the bed. "There we are," he said. "Now for the shadow."
They sat for a few minutes in silence, while the light of the moon crept in a parallelogram across the counterpane. But there was no shadow save the shadow of a tree, a few branches of which dipped into the moonlight.
Presently Follansbee rose and went in some irritation over to the bed and stood looking down at the patch of moonlight. "Batty as can be," he murmured, obviously referring to Miss Harriet Sears.
Tenny, who had drifted to his side, said suddenly, "what a funny angle those branches have!"
Follansbee bent abruptly closer. "As if they were coming from above," he murmured. "But look here—they're not just branches—they're like a forest of little trees, and what odd spines for leaves!"
Suddenly he whirled to the window. "Oh, now I see," he said harshly. "There's no tree of any kind beyond the window!"
"Nor anything to make that shadow," added Tenny.
They stood for a few moments scrutinizing the glass and looking through it into the clearing outside. The line of trees to the south was too far for any shadow to reach the house; the trees were shadowed in an uneven line across the clearing below. Then they returned to the bed and stood looking down at the counterpane.
"Well, there has to be some explanation," said Tenny.
Follansbee nodded. "But I don't get it," he said. Then he stopped abruptly, staring down at the parallelogram of moonlight widening eyes.
Tenny followed the older man's startled gaze.
There, in the moonlight, was a tiny, moving shadow—a shadow only slightly over two inches in height, moving with incredible rapidity, yet achieving no distance in the parallelogram of moonlight—the figure of a man!
Back and forth it ran within a space so small that it might have been covered by the extended palm of a hand. The two men stared in growing amazement. Then Follansbee turned to the window again. But there was nothing there—nothing on the glass, nothing against the glass outside, nothing flying against the moonlight in the sky.
He turned back to the bed. The shadow was still there. He bent, peering intently. The incredible shadow was running wildly, this way and that, its tiny arms outflung, its spindle-legs moving rapidly upon the counterpane, a thing alive, yet without substance.
"Good God," muttered Tenny at last. "It's a man—it's a live man. But where is he?"
"I don't know," Follansbee jerked out.
He stood for a few moments more, his fascination for the unbelievable shadow holding him there; then he swung away and went over to the work-bench, where he lit a lamp and began to thumb swiftly through a group of the old books lying carelessly abandoned there.
Tenny followed, asking, "Can I help?"
The older man nodded. "Check up on all references to magical designs in these books," he said. "I've got an idea. I don't know what's in it, but it's worth trying."
It was Follansbee who found what they sought. "Here it is," he said suddenly. "Magical designs on glass. It's been marked up by someone, too—Kroll, most likely. Parts of it are illegible, but the sense of it can be made out. Third paragraph down in the second column."
Tenny bent to read the printed lines on the yellow page:
"Certain mages have brought into being worlds of glass—invisible in glass, the objects of such consistency that though they cannot be seen in the light of the sun, they are shadowed by the moon.... The glass is of no ordinary kind, but must be specially made. And the creatures to be placed there may be drawn from the mind or from life."
"You see?" cut in Follansbee, drawing the book away. "That's what he was doing—but something happened. He tried it on himself, and vanished."
Tenny turned astonished eyes on the glass in the window.
Follansbee abruptly left the work-bench and, going over to the window, raised it. "It's the upper pane we want," he murmured. "It must be broken—there's no other way. But be careful that all the pieces fall into the room."
As he spoke, the older man pulled down the upper half of the window. Then he drew the curtain down outside the glass, and into the room again below.
"All right," he said. "Break it, Fred."
Tenny rapped sharply against the glass of the upper pane. It did not break. He struck it harder with the trident from the work-bench. Still it did not break. Then he smashed into it with all his strength. The glass broke into incredibly small fragments that slithered down the drawn curtain to the floor.
Follansbee let the curtain snap up. Looking down, he and Tenny exclaimed simultaneously. The window lay in silver fragments on the carpet in the moonlight that stretched to the bed—but beyond the fragments ran a tiny dark shadow, of substance now.
"Good God!" breathed Follansbee hoarsely. "The dimensions didn't change!"
"It's Kroll," said Tenny. He swooped to seize hold of the figure on the carpet, but at that moment it disappeared under the bed. He sank to his knees. "Kroll!" he shouted. "Come out, Kroll!"
There was a vague scuttering noise beneath the bed.
Follansbee came to his knees at Tenny's side and peered into the moonlit dusk beneath the bed. "Kroll" he whispered softly. Turning abruptly, he said to Tenny, "Get over on the other side. He's skirting the wall toward the door."
Tenny moved to obey.
Then suddenly there came a quick rustle, a dark shadow launched itself from the wall upon the two-inch figure that crept toward the door, there was a shrill squeal, a tiny human scream, and abrupt, unnatural silence.
"A rat," whispered Follansbee shakily. "My God!"
He got up unsteadily and looked down at the bed. The moonlight lay unbroken on the counterpane.
The End
KARLOFF'S MONSTER
by Forrest J. Ackerman
An interview of extreme interest to fantasy film fans was that of Boris Karloff with Jimmie Fidler over the air on the "Hollywood on the Air" program earlier in the year. Karloff spoke: "I shall create a Monster like Frankenstein's. No brain—just a huge creature which shall guard against reporters and interviewers. Connect the electrodes!" A snap. "Throw the switches!" A crackling of electricity. And Karloff, crying: "It lives ... it moves! ... it lives.... Karloff's monster LIVES!" Then the Monster spoke—with the voice of Jimmie Fidler, the interviewer. "Alas"—Karloff was in despair; "I have created a Frankenstein monster: it's a fan magazine writer!" And Jimmie Fidler then proceeded to question him. Proving himself to be anything but one of the many monsters he has portrayed, William Henry Pratt (known on the screen as the man from Karloffornia who is sure to never Boris) stated in a private word addressed to his admirers that he greatly appreciated all their letters, and that he was always grateful for criticism received of his work.
His next pictures will be "Frankenstein Lives Again!" "A Trip to Mars," "The Werewolf of London," and "The Raven."