Facts Relating to the Arrest of Dr. Kalugin

There was no sign of Courier when I returned to the stockade that evening, through pumpkin fields, with the late red sun throwing long shadows of corn shocks where they stood in bundles. There was no sign of him when I sat down to dinner in the officer’s mess, and attempted to join in the general conversation in a pleasant and comradely way. Not that I had much to contribute, with my pocket edition of Schiller, and nobody invited me to play cards with them. I was the recipient of a few distinctly dirty looks, in fact, especially from Iakov Babin.

I took a candle and wandered off to my room, my volume of poetry tucked sadly away in my coat. When I got there, I had the most peculiar feeling that something was somehow not quite right. I held up my candle and looked around.

My bunk, with its blanket, was undisturbed; so was my sea-chest. My Imperial Navy saber still hung in its place of honor on the wall. My little stack of books was where it ought to be. Of course, my credenza wasn’t there … perhaps Courier had left it in the guest room? I decided to wait until morning to look for it. Oh, yes, I know, you’d have gone straight in to see if he really had gone. I simply didn’t want to. I lit my lamp and blew out the candle. A plume of greasy smoke curled, pungent, from the snuffed wick.

That was when I heard the growl.

A growl, I say. It wasn’t a dog; it wasn’t a bear. God only knew what it was, but it had emanated from the other side of the plank wall. From Courier’s room. Oh, dear.

I scanned. I couldn’t make sense of my readings. Courier seemed to be in the room, and yet—

I lit the candle again and went out into the corridor, where I knocked at Courier’s door. There was a scuttling sound. No light showing under the door, or between the planks. What was going on here? I drew a deep breath and pulled open the door.

Darkness, and as the wavering light of my candle moved through the doorway I beheld a tangled mass on the floor. I prodded it with my boot. Strips of something? A trade blanket, torn to shreds. Interspersed with brittle glinting fragments and scraps of paper that had once been a framed picture of the Tsar. Where was Courier?

Cautiously I raised the candle and looked upward.

It was on the ceiling, wedged in an angle of roof and rafters. It was Courier up there clinging to the rafters: or had been.

Any mortal standing there in the dark, gazing up in the light of one shaky candle, would have seen a creature with dead white skin, enormous black insectile eyes, fangs and claws and a general strange misshapen muscularity. That sensible mortal would promptly have fled in terror. I, lumpish immortal, stared in bewilderment.

I saw an immortal in the direst extremity of self-protective fear. Blood had fled from his surface capillaries, leaving his skin pale; the protective lenses over his eyes had hardened and darkened. His gums had receded to give his teeth the maximum amount of cutting surface and his nails had grown out with amazing speed into formidable claws. He looked like nothing so much as Lon Chaney in London After Midnight.

The thing worked bulging jaw muscles and inquired:

“DUCITNE HAEC VIA OSTIA?”

“Courier, for God’s sake! What’s happened?” I cried.

It turned its head and the black surface of its eyes glittered as it fixed on me. “DA MIHI IUSSUM!” it croaked. What world, what time was it in?

I fell silent, as the horror of the thing sank into me, that one of us could suffer such an alteration. We, perfect mechanisms, in our endless lives see mortal men reduced by every degradation that disease and mischance can impose, skeletal horrors, sore-covered, deformed: but never we. Why had he become this thing?

He dropped on me, screaming.

Think. How many times in your long life have you avoided mortal assault? It’s easy, isn’t it? One can sidestep a blade or a fist or even a bullet without turning a hair, because mortal sinews are weak, mortal reflexes slow. Poor brutes. But could you ever have dreamed you might have to defend yourself against another immortal? How would you do it?

I tell you that I myself began to change. That writhing horror dove for my throat, and even as I grappled with it I felt an indefinable metamorphosis commencing. I was not frightened, either, me, can you believe that? One split second of vertigo, and then the strangest glee filled my heart. All my senses were sharpened. I fought with the demented thing in that room and it seemed clumsy and blundering to me, though it moved with a speed mortal eyes couldn’t have followed. Equals as we were in immortal strength, I had the advantage of sanity. My hideous new wisdom told me how to win and I pulled the creature’s head close, in both my hands, to—