Amazing Stories, August 1927 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

484 «cy CAN scarcely bear to write. Redfield, Burke and the others have gone. Yesterday they were there, tiny, red-faced, toothless, newly-born babies, and today no trace of their presence re- mains. And my wife! As I write, she who was my beloved Elvira is creeping about the floor, while I, the last of the ten to succumb to the effects of our accursed experiments, sit at the desk, torn with unbearable dread, with indescrib- able horror at the fate which, so unconsciously, I have brought upon my wife and the others. And though I am writing this in the same hand which I used when a full grown man, although I have felt no change in my brain, yet I am but a youth, a mere stripling, a beardless boy of perhaps a dozen years. ‘Were it not for Elvira, were it not that until her last moment I must care for her, I would follow the example of Montross and John- son and would hasten my end by taking a double dose of Juvenum. But instead, I have destroyed everything. Every chemical, every formula, every- thing to do with the damnable affair has been made away with. Never shall the world know how to do what we have done if I can prevent it. Nothing shall be left that will be available for others. And as soon as Elvira has drifted backward into that unfathomable beyond whence all life comes, I shall face the most terrible fate of all. No one will be left to care for me. I shall be a helpless infant and, must, I feel sure, go through the retrocessional process to oblivion, for I long ago promised Elvira that I would not take my own life, and, I feel sure, I will not be granted the solace of starving to death, for I am convinced that this whole horrible nightmarish affair is but a reversion of life as it has been for us; that time has been turned back, as related to our own existence, that if we sur- vived the perils of infantile mortality nothing can prevent us from retroceeding in the same manner, and that, as long as I did not starve to death while an infant, I cannot hope to succumb to starvation now that my infancy is to be repeated, even though there are no loving hands to care for me. “And another strange thing has happened. Of late I have been aware of the presence of beings about me. They are invisible, intangible, but I feel their nearness. Are they the spirits of my companions? Can it be possible that, having gone back beyond the stage of human form at birth, they have been unable to return to embryonic form, and are still filling the atmosphere about me? “These will be my last lines. My beloved wife has gone. To the very end she seemed happy. In her baby eyes, as I tenderly, though clumsily fed her, was the look of contentment; her baby mouth smiled, and there was none of the agony which contorted the infantile countenances of Burke, Redfield and the others. This morning she faded ‘from sight and vanished, and I feel that some- where she is watching me and waiting for me. I am more resigned to my fate now. And for the first time I have given thought to matters aside from our own affairs. What, I wonder, will the world think when it finds that ten members of its population have inexplicably vanished into thin air? No doubt there will be invesiizaHons: the PORE een are ae SS AMAZING STORIES police will be called in; but only to make the mys- tery the greater. What will they think when they find the baby clothes which have served for Burke, Redfield and even for Elvira in turn? Only I will be without the tiny garments. Long before my body is small enough for them I will be unable to dress myself. I will shrink to an infant in the clothes I have on, in the makeshift, cut-down things I am wearing, and crawling from them, a naked infant, I shall probably find them an interesting plaything. Strange, now that my fate is so near at hand, I am so calm, that I can see the humor of the situation. today I will be unable to record my sensations. Even if my mind remains mature my childish hand will be unable to hold a pen or form the letters. T am now a child of eight or ten years in appear- ance and physical characters, and I am forced to sit upon a pile of books in order to write. Ever since this morning I have realized I am dwindling. I have been forced to add two books to the pile. But befvre I am unable to do so IT must make some preparations, I will place this journal among the infant’s garments and other things in a drawer beyond my own reach, for otherwise, in my infantile state, I may tear and destroy the onlv record I can leave of the incredible events which have transpired here in my laboratory. I can write no more. My brain is still clear and filled with the thoughts of a grown man,—yes even the scientific side of my intellect is unchanged. But I find the pen difficult to hold, and my childish fingers can scarcely form the characters I wish to write. And there is no more to record. I have sought perpetual youth and I have found it; but such a youth! Youth re- duced to the nth degree, the utter youth of in- visible existence, the youth ofthe pre- natal, inex- plicable germ of life, perhaps the The journal ended in an undecipherable scrawl. Trembling, shaken, pale with the suspense of what I had read, I sat staring, and was aware for the first time that the vast laboratory was dusky with approaching night. Then, with a stifled cry, I sprang to my feet. An invisible, intangible pres- ence seemed to be near. I could have sworn that fingers clutched my clothes. With my scalp ting- ling, terrified as I had never been in my life, I fled from the room which, despite common sense and reason, I felt sure was still tenanted by the missing ten. And I‘ was even more terrified as another thought flashed across my mind. How did I know that some of the terrjble element, Juve- num, might not have remained in the laboratory? How could I be sure that I had not inadvertently exposed myself to its effects? How could I be positive that I, too, might not find myself going backward, doomed eventually to pass out like a snuffed-out candle? Never again, I determined, would I enter the laboratory. I would resign the next day, I would return to my former work, and, for a space I knew, I would live in deadly fear of signs of regained youthfulness, But fate took a hand in my plans. a disastrous fire swept McCracken College, the laboratory with all its MON was utterly de- stroyed, and to this ¢ es COMICS OO, Sie But my great regret is that after ~ That night