Part 1

THE SOUL STEALERS

by Chester S. Geier

Wraithlike, they came out of the darkness--dead men who walked among the living. What grim secret lay in their sightless eyes--a warning to all other men!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy October 1950 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

A chill touched Bryan as he looked down at the figure on the hospital bed. He had seen dead men before--too many of them. He had seen them sprawled on European battlefields, had seen them huddled in wrecked cars or lying waxen and stiff on morgue slabs.

But he had never seen a dead man like the one who lay there on the bed. For, paradoxically, this man was still alive. He still breathed, his heart still pulsed. Yet it was clear that these were little more than automatic processes. In the only respect that mattered, he was as truly dead as though in the last stages of dissolution and decay.

He lay on the bed with an unnatural supineness, his head lolling at a slack angle. His eyes were open in a blank stare, eyes as empty as a waiting grave. He did not move. He made no sound. A thread of saliva ran from a corner of his gaping mouth and made a glistening path down the side of his jaw.

A mindless idiot would have shown more animation than this man. Something vital and precious had gone from him, leaving him a mere shell. His was a death-in-life, a thing somehow more terrible than a shattered skull or a torn chest.

Bryan fought back a shudder and turned to the balding white-clad man at his side. "What can you tell me, Dave? Just what seems to be wrong with this fellow?"

The doctor sighed. "Wish I knew, Terry. I've never seen anything like it in over twenty years of medical practice. Not even the specialists seem to know. And we have several good ones here, who donate their services to the hospital--men with experience in unusual cases."

"But don't you have any idea at all about how he got this way?" Bryan persisted. "Isn't there any possibility that he has some sort of rare brain disease?"

"We gave him a careful examination, Terry," the doctor returned. "We could find no evidence of disease--no evidence of concussion or injury, either. Except, maybe, for one thing."

"What's that?" Bryan asked quickly.

"When he was first brought in, we found a sort of reddish mark near his left shoulder. As though something hot had touched him. The skin wasn't broken or burned, however." The doctor shrugged. "It's gone now. I doubt if anything so light and temporary could have been important, anyway."

"This might be a case for the psychiatrists," Bryan suggested slowly. "Maybe this fellow had a terrific shock of some kind--a psychic trauma, or whatever they call it."

"That's quite possible. But we've done the best we could at this end." The doctor's voice dropped. "I don't think there's going to be time for anything else, Terry."

"You mean that he--"

The doctor nodded. "He's dying. I've seen the signs. It's as though he's lost all will to live."

* * * * *

Bryan looked at the man on the bed again, grim speculation in his eyes. His voice was solemn and soft. "Maybe I'm just a superstitious Irishman, Dave--but I think I know what's the matter with this fellow. I knew it the first time I looked at him. He's lost something--something you can't see with microscopes or X-ray machines. It's something damned important--and that's why he's dying. What he's lost, Dave, is ... his soul."

"I'm not laughing, Terry. Oddly enough, I have the same opinion. A doctor keeps running into situations like this, where ideas thrown into the discard by the so-called scientific attitude have to be dusted off and put back to work."

There was silence. An elevator made distant noises somewhere in the building. White-clad nurses moved crisply by in the hall beyond the open door. Late Spring sunshine was bright behind the drawn shade at the window. Life and movement, the mundane and familiar. But in this room thoughts probed beyond the earthly facade and found a mystery, a wonder as old as Man.

Bryan moved his muscular shoulders as though against an invisible resistance. Then, slowly, still fighting that resistance, he reached into the breast pocket of his rumpled tweed jacket and produced a pencil and a wrinkled but otherwise clean envelope. Most reporters carried notepads about with them; some even went in for stenographers' shorthand notebooks. But to Bryan news was something more than mere details. It was a thing of human and emotional qualities, and these he carried in his head like songs--some gay and humorous, many more tragic and sad. This characteristic had given his by-line its great popularity with _Courier_ readers. When he needed to remember details at all--comparatively unimportant facts like dates and numbers--he recorded them on envelopes.

"Anything else you can tell me about this man, Dave? Who he is, where he lives?"

The doctor fingered a slip of paper from a pocket of his white smock. "Here's his name and address. I had an interne copy them down from the stuff we found in his clothes. Knew you'd want them, Terry." He grinned briefly, a grin of real affection, then sobered. "The police did some checking on him. I talked to a detective just before you showed up.

"Seems this patient lived alone at a rooming house. A widower. No family. Worked as a dental technician for a small company in the Loop. It appears he was in the habit of spending his evenings in Grant Park. He was found there this morning, you know, just the way he is now."

"Grant Park," Bryan echoed. "That makes three. Three, Dave."

The doctor looked puzzled. "I don't get it, Terry."

"I didn't get around to this business until now, but two other men were found in Grant Park. Like this. They were taken to private hospitals."

"Good Lord!" the doctor breathed, startled. "This goes deeper than I thought. There must be something in Grant Park--"

"Something that I intend to look into," Bryan said quietly. "There's a story here--if I can dig it out."

He thrust the envelope and pencil back into his jacket, together with the slip of paper he had been given. "I'll be running along, Dave. Thanks for your tip. It was swell of you to remember me."

The other gestured as he followed Bryan into the hall and toward the elevators. "Maybe I had an ulterior motive. Ruth and I have been wondering why you never drop in any more."

"I've been running a rat-race," Bryan said.

"You look it, Terry. You don't look as well as you did when you first came back from overseas."

"What a big medicine bottle you have, doc!"

"I'm serious, Terry. I've had an idea you weren't happy about things, and now I'm sure of it. What seems to be the trouble? Your job?"

"The job's all right."

"You won't tell an old friend?"

Bryan lifted his hands. "Hell, Dave, I don't know just what is wrong. But it might be something like this. I fought a little war of my own, a personal war, to make the world a better place. Now that I'm back, though, it's the same old world--only a lot worse. And a reporter gets to see too much of the worse side."

"One man can't change the world, Terry," the doctor said. "All he can do it make the best of his small piece of it.... What you need to do is to get married and raise a family. And while on the subject, what became of that pretty girl reporter you brought around with you a couple of times?"

"Joyce? She's still with the paper."

"She seemed like a sensible person. Make a nice wife."

"Yes," Bryan said. He stopped in front of the elevator and held out his hand. "Thanks again, Dave. I'll drop in some evening, when the rat-race slows up a little. My love to Ruth."

"Take care of yourself, Terry." The doctor stood watching as the elevator doors closed on Bryan's figure. A worried frown deepened the lines in his forehead.

* * * * *

Outside, on the sidewalk before the hospital, Bryan lighted a cigarette. He stood there for some minutes, a big man in a rumpled tweed suit, his hat pushed back on thick brown hair that had a coppery glint in the bright sunshine. He had powerful shoulders, and the hands that went with them, but his face was fine-carved and sensitive--the face of an artist, or a dreamer. There was that paradox in him. And in that paradox was his personal tragedy. For while his strength took him easily through the deceit and cruelty of life, the stupidity and ugliness, the memory of each encounter remained with him like a scar.

The scars were beginning to show a bit too plainly. It had taken Dave to make him realize that.

Dave.... What was it Dave had said? There was an importance in the words.

"_One man can't change the world, Terry._"

That was it. Bryan considered the remark now, intently.

Was that what he really wanted to do--change the world? He groped among old ideals and ambitions for the answer.

In the beginning he had wanted to create--to create by writing about people, about life. But to write about life required knowing it. He had become a reporter.

What he had learned of life was evilness, greed, suffering, ignorance. He could not write of that and still create as he had dreamed. But he could fight it. He could fight it wherever he found it, little by little. And he had fought. It was all that had kept him going.

A fool's mission, doomed to failure. Dave was right.

Bryan had his answer now. He didn't want to change the world. He wanted to do something even more impossible--he wanted to make a world of his own.

He grinned sourly and flipped the remains of the cigarette away. Hailing a cab, then, he rode to the _Courier_ Building.

* * * * *

The city room was filled with the old familiar clamor, the rattle of typewriters and teletypes, the shrilling of telephones, the undulant babble of voices. Bryan waved in answer to greetings as he threaded his way to his desk. He rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter, lighted a cigarette, and rubbed his face. Then he straightened with a jerk and began hitting the typewriter keys with the first and second fingers of each hand.

Managing Editor Frank Sanders hurried past with a bulging file envelope, his vest open and his stiff white hair a usual disorderly tangle. He whirled as though Bryan's presence had only then registered on him.

"Terry! Where the hell have you been?" He jerked a thumb. "My office. Right away."

Bryan finished a paragraph and then followed Sanders into his glass-enclosed cubicle. He slumped into a chair and waited.

Sanders tried without success to light a clogged pipe. He dropped it back into the ashtray and said abruptly, "That Holzheimer story, Terry. You did a nice job clearing the kid, but your copy was pretty rough on the district attorney. Too rough, Terry."

"I should have thrown a street-car at him," Bryan said. "Trying to frame a kid and build up a record."

"Circumstantial evidence and re-election, Terry. It happens all the time--you ought to know. And you ought to know we're politically on the D.A.'s side of the fence. Stories like the one you wrote about the Holzheimer case will only hurt the campaign this paper is putting on."

"Sometimes there's too much incompetence to whitewash--even if it comes from the right side of the fence."

Sanders shook his disorderly thatch. "You ought to know better than that, Terry. You've been around long enough. This is no time to get a rush of ideals to the head."

"I've never pulled my punches," Bryan returned quietly.

"I know. But we just can't have any more stories like the one on the Holzheimer case." Sanders leaned forward at his desk, his eyes suddenly shrewd. "What's eating on you, Terry?"

Bryan shrugged. "Things like the Holzheimer business."

"It's all part of a system," Sanders said slowly. "You can't change that system any more than you can change human nature, Terry. All you can do is make the best of it. I hope you'll look at it that way. I've seen too many good reporters go sour over what they keep running into."

A telephone jangled on the desk. Sanders spoke into it briefly and returned his attention to Bryan.

"Working on anything now, Terry?"

Bryan explained about the three weirdly afflicted men who had been found in Grant Park. "I'm planning to look into it," he finished.

"Sounds like something big is involved," Sanders approved. "Go ahead with it, Terry.... And take things easy, will you?" he added as Bryan started toward the door.

"Sure," Bryan said.

Back at his desk, Bryan finished typing his copy. He was pencilling corrections when Joyce Mayhew appeared.

"Hi, Terry!" She perched on the edge of a neighboring desk, a slim dark girl with a wide humorous mouth and expressive hazel eyes. She was simply dressed as always, but gave a characteristic impression of fashionable elegance. "What have you got there--a scoop, or a love letter?"

"It could be my last will and testament," Bryan said. He stood up and called to a copyboy. "Have you had lunch?" he asked Joyce, then.

"I was hoping somebody would ask me. Somebody like you, Terry."

"Consider yourself asked. Let's go."

* * * * *

They sat in a booth in a small restaurant on a side street near the _Courier_ Building. Joyce's eyes were grave as she studied Bryan's face over the top of her menu.

"Anything in that last will and testament crack you made, Terry?" she asked at last. "I saw you come out of Sanders' office."

He shrugged, mobile lips twisting into a wry grin. "Nothing that serious. I just had my wrist slapped. Over the way I handled the Holzheimer story."

"There was quite a bit of talk about that up at the office. Sanders let you off easy. But Terry, you seem to have been hitting out at things a little too hard. What's the matter--a disappointed love life?"

"You know as much about my love life as I do."

"Really?" She looked down to finger a spoon, sudden pain and wistfulness in her averted face.

"I saw Dave at the County Hospital," he went on. "You remember Dave."

"Yes--and his wife's cooking and his lovely children."

"Dave mentioned you. He seemed to feel I've been neglecting him."

"Maybe you've been neglecting a lot of people, Terry."

He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, an action compounded of agreement, weariness--and despair. "I suppose that's true. People and I seem to have been going off in opposite directions. Take Dave. He's satisfied with what he's doing. I can't talk to him without being reminded of my own dissatisfaction. He can't talk to me without knowing that something's wrong."

Joyce reached across the table and caught his hand. "Terry--don't let it get you!"

He forced a grin. "With me it's work as usual. And this time it's something off the beaten path--something darned queer." He told her of the dead-alive man at the hospital and of the link to the other Grant Park victims. He straightened, animation quickening in his face, his melancholy forgotten.

"Three men," he finished grimly. "There's a kind of continuity to the thing. I'm going to watch the park, Joyce. I have the idea that what happened is going to happen again. I want to know just what was done to those men, just what sort of agency is at the bottom of it."

Her face was troubled. "Terry ... it frightens me! If something strange is really going on, you might get hurt--the way those men were hurt. I wish--" She broke off with a helpless gesture. "Be careful, Terry! Please be careful!"

* * * * *

Bryan sat on a stool in one corner of a small dimly lighted bar, frowning down at an envelope on which he had drawn a diagram of Grant Park. He had spent part of the afternoon checking on the locations where the three men had been found. These, it appeared, were concentrated roughly near the middle of the park, around a large sandstone memorial pavilion which was the center of numerous converging walks. He had visited the spot while daylight remained, familiarizing himself with it in preparation for his night vigil.

Glancing at his watch now, Bryan slid off the stool and went to a telephone alcove. He dialed a number quickly. There was a delay while an extension connection was made.

"Dave?" he said, then. "Terry at this end. How's the patient?"

"Dead, Terry. Not half an hour ago. We tried everything--oxygen, heart stimulants. It was no use. I knew it was going to happen all along and stayed to do what I could. I was just getting ready to go home."

"I checked up on the others who were found in the park," Bryan resumed. "They died, too. In about the same length of time as your patient."

"Good Lord, Terry! It ... it's horrible somehow. What in the name of reason could be back of it?"

"I'm working on that angle right now. I'll let you know if I turn up anything.... Thanks, Dave." Bryan hung up and went back to the bar. He finished his drink, lighted a cigarette, and strode outside.

Darkness had thickened along the street, a soft warm darkness, rich with the promise of approaching summer. A block's walk brought Bryan to the boulevard. Grant Park lay just across from him, lights shining fairy-like throughout its shadowed length.

He crossed with the traffic light, hands in his pockets, a man just strolling along on a pleasant evening. But his gray eyes were alert and grim. Vivid in his mind was the memory of a man in a hospital bed, a man who breathed and yet was not alive.

The park swallowed him. He walked directly toward the memorial pavilion, moving without haste, without apparent purpose or destination.

The pavilion took shape in the quiet gloom, a temple-like place of flowerbeds and radiating walks. On the benches around it was a scattering of romantic couples and lonely men sprawled in sleep. The atmosphere was one of serenity and peace. To Bryan it seemed briefly incredible that danger could threaten here. Yet in this vicinity three men had been struck down by something that had left them mere shells of flesh without the will to live.

He made a complete circuit of the pavilion without a glimpse of anything unusual or suspicious. Finally, choosing a bench thick in shadow and partly screened by bushes, he sat down to wait.

Time passed slowly in the lulling murmur of leaves and the distant drone of passing automobiles. The sleeping men on neighboring benches awoke one by one, stretched, and plodded away into the darkness. The spooning couples shared a last embrace and vanished in turn. Before much longer the benches around Bryan were deserted. But he knew that other persons might still be lingering in spots not visible to him.

The quiet had deepened. Bryan shifted cramped and protesting muscles and peered impatiently at the radium dial of his watch. The hour was already a late one. Soon it would be too late for what he had hoped would happen. Everyone would have left the neighborhood of the pavilion.

Hope was fading in Bryan, but he forced himself to remain where he was. More time passed. A deep somnolent hush lay over the pavilion. Even the continual rustling of leaves now seemed muted and remote. The sky pressed down, a soft dark blanket lavishly strewn with points of brilliance. In the silver gloom the lamps spaced along the walks shone with an ethereal phosphorescent quality.

Bryan slumped on the bench in resignation. He was certain now that nothing would happen. Not tonight, at least. And in his disappointment he wondered if there had been some warning of his presence. Or had what he had been waiting for already taken place, without his having been aware of it?

His tiredness blunted the question. Rest seemed more important now. He'd go to his furnished room and sleep. This was just the first night. There would be other nights. He'd wait and watch until something finally happened.

But right now there was no further need for caution. He could have a smoke. He could stand up to ease his aching muscles.

* * * * *

He was reaching for his cigarettes when he heard the sound rising above the murmur of leaves. The sound of wings. There was a rushing power to them, a massive beat. And listening, Bryan had the swift certainty that it was nothing familiar that flew through the night. He crouched on the bench, frozen, searching the jeweled sky.

Then another sound--a girl's questioning voice, shrill with alarm.

Bryan swung and saw two figures against the pale outlines of the pavilion, one evidently the girl he had heard and the other that of a man accompanying her. They must have been nearby without his having noticed them. The sound of approaching wings had drawn them into view.

Bryan's pulses leaped in dread excitement. Was it going to happen now--like this? Did whatever it was that had deprived three men of the will to live ride the air on great wings?

The thought brought a chill dismay. His eyes widened on the two figures before the pavilion. If some strange attack portended, he could not stand idly by and watch it happen. The man and girl were too clearly exposed, in possible great danger.

Bryan was tensing his muscles when the beating wings swept by overhead. His glance jerked upward. He stared in numbed disbelief.

A huge bird-like shape was gliding down toward the pavilion. Flying beside it, grotesquely like fighter planes escorting a giant bomber, were a number of smaller shapes--vaguely man-like. But it was not this sight alone that filled Bryan with nightmare amazement. For astride the bird-thing was a slender-limbed figure in veil-like garments--a girl. And against the dark backdrop of the sky, girl and winged creatures alike all seemed to shine with an eerie glow, a luminous radiance.

Impossibility! Madness! Bryan's thoughts whirled in chaos. This bizarre scene couldn't be real. He was suffering a delusion. His long vigil on the bench had lulled him into a dream-like state in which he was experiencing a fantastic vision.

But even as he told himself this, he knew he was very much awake. And he knew that what he saw was no mere vision. For a scream from the girl before the pavilion testified that she and her companion saw it also.

The fantastic winged shapes were slanting downward. Bryan realized they were moving directly toward the man and girl. The couple stood immobile, rigid, as though spell-bound by the utter weirdness of what they saw.

Bryan shouted a hoarse warning and started forward. He did not know what he could possibly do. No rational purpose motivated him. His action was instinctive, an appalled protest against what he feared was about to take place.

Bryan's warning registered upon the couple. They seemed abruptly aware of their danger. The man caught at the girl's arm as if to draw her with him in flight. But now terror struck her with its full impact, and her body began crumpling in a faint even as she turned to follow. Her companion hesitated in dismay, concern for the girl obviously struggling against desire for escape.

One of the smaller flying monstrosities had pulled ahead of the others. Skimming several feet above the ground, it darted at the man.

Closer now, Bryan was able to make out details that previously had escaped him. The creature was the size of a child, with two pairs of arms, its lean body human in shape. It had large bulging eyes in a small hairless head. Its face projected in a long tapering needle-like proboscis, which together with delicate gauzy wings gave the appearance of an enormous insect--a mosquito. The luminous radiance that glowed from the thing was not the only remaining unearthly feature; Bryan discovered that it was mistily transparent as well, somehow unsubstantial.