A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, October 1950 — page 80: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE ELIXIR OF HATE 79 men. Yet there still lived a body which had once been his. Yes, in his place there idled listlessly about Il Vecchio’s. grounds a boy of ten or twelve years—thus at least, that lad appeared; a lonely child, com- panionless, furtive, scared, and lost, with big eyes and a strange unnatural look upon his wretched face. Save for the color of those eyes and of his hair (though this had grown consid- erably lighter), and for the shape of his ears, which in human being never change their contour from birth to death, you could not have recognized this abnormal, inverted mockery of childhood. Yet it was Granville Dennison, the fa- mous American physician and surgeon, who less than seven months ago had in distress and all the disability of age climbed the straight path up to II Vecchio’s solitude. Sometimes when fiction of the wildest order passes unchallenged, when impos- sible lands and wild unearthly adventures find tolerant acceptance, the plain narra- tion of a plain scientific fact, amply veri- fied and easily susceptible of proof excites incredulous hostility. Yet, seven months from the day when Dennison had robbed I! Vecchio of the Alkahest, four months from the time when he had returned from the fruitless quest to Alfort, he had diminished to a height of four feet six and one-half inches, and to a weight of sixty-seven pounds. And week by week, day by day, the Alkahest was still at work upon him. He now appeared shorn of every aspect of re- volt, seemingly dulled to a certain passive acquiescence in this life of his, apparently thinking no more of the home-land; re- mempbering little, if anything (so Vecchio judged), of what had taken place; a curi- ous creature, neither man nor boy, yet partaking of the nature of both. The May sun shone brightly on him one morning, as, listlessly holding a red and blue box-kite in his hand, he walked down the gravel path toward the summer-house upon the cliff. There lying in a corner, he beheld the miscellaneous heap of trifles which II Vecchio had at different times during the past few weeks bought for him—a dis- sected map of Europe, a miniature rail- way system with track, switches, cars and engines ; a model aeroplane, and some few other things such as the old man, aided by Stasia’s heart-sick suggestions, had provided. At SIGHT of them, Dennison’s lip curled with deadly scorn. His indif- ferent eye brightened with a flash of hatred. Down he flung the kite, as though it burned his touch. “Ugh!” he exclaimed. He shoved the playthings away from him with his foot. His impulse was to stamp upon them, to dash them into bits and hurl them over the railing into the sea, far below, but he restrained it. “No, no, I mustn’t do that,” said he, quite slowly. ““That would never do at all. I’ve got to go right on pretending till— till—what? Oh! Oh merciful Father! What will be the end?” Terrified, he stared about him with wild eyes. He cringed as though from some invisible enemy. “The Horla—that was no impossibility, after all!’ he moaned. For a moment he stood there immersed in sick dejection and fear. Then anger reasserted itself. “Ugh! The fool!’’ he hissed. “He thinks he’s going to keep me contented, this way ? It’s like giving a condemned murderer a cheap cigar on the morning of his execu- tion! Oh, if it would only finish! If I didn’t have to go on and on, this way— making believe!’ Then tears came to his eyes, glistening there in the clear sunlight. Shuddering, he turned away. His gaze fell on a book that lay upon the bench—an open book with an exciting picture of a balloon driving through storm-clouds over an ocean in fury. ‘Jules Verne—for me!’ he gibed, with an exceeding bitterness. “For me, for Granville Dennison, A.B., A.M., M.D.! The idiot! The driveling madman! Play- things, pocket-money—five francs a week for fruit and candy and such nonsense— knickerbockers and Jules Verne for me!” Clenching his boyish fists, he stood there a moment rigid with hate and overpow- ering disgust. Then he fell to pacing the length of the pergola. “Am I going mad ?” he wondered. “Will an) (C 6)(0)©) <S (C(O)