Uncollected Stories 2003 Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the lab and was
spared the sight that had wakened me from a thousand awful
nightmares. The lab was darkened and all that I could make out was a
huge shadow moving sluggishly. And the screams! Screams of terror,
the screams of a man faced with a monster from the pits of hell. It
mewed horribly and seemed to pant in delight.
    My hand moved around for a light switch. There, I found it! Light
flooded the room, illuminating a tableau of horror that was the result of
the grave thing I had performed, I and the dead uncle. A huge, white
maggot twisted on the garage floor, holding Weinbaum with long
suckers, raising him towards its dripping, pink mouth from which horrid
mewing sounds came. Veins, red and pulsating, showed under its slimy
flesh and millions of squirming tiny maggots – in the blood vessels, in
the skin, even forming a huge eye that stared out at me. A huge maggot,
made up of hundreds of millions of maggots, the feasters on the dead
flesh that Weinbaum had used so freely. In a half-world of terror I fired
the revolver again and again. It mewed and twitched. Weinbaum
screamed something as he was dragged inexorably toward the waiting
mouth. Incredibly, I made it out over the hideous sound that the creature
was making.
"Fire it! In the name of heaven, fire it!"
    Then I saw the sticky pools of green liquid which had trickled over the
floor from the laboratory. I fumbled for my lighter, got it and frantically
thumbed it. Suddenly I remembered that I had forgotten to put a flint in.
I reached for matches, got one and fired the others. I threw the pack just
as Weinbaum screamed his last. I saw his body through the translucent
skin of the creature, still twitching as thousands of maggots leeched
onto it. Retching, I threw the now flaring matches into the green ooze. It
was flammable, just as I had thought. It burst into bright flames. The
creature was twisted into a horrid ball of pulsing, putrid flesh. I turned
and stumbled out to where Vicki stood, shaking and whitefaced.
    "Come on!" I said, "Let's get out of here! The whole place is going to
go up!"
We ran out to the car and drove away rapidly.
Chapter Nine
    There isn't too much left to say. I'm sure that you have all read about the
fire that swept the residential Belwood District of California, leveling
fifteen square miles of woods and residential homes. I couldn't feel too
badly about that fire. I realize that hundreds might have been killed by
the gigantic maggot-things that Weinbaum and Rankin were breeding. I
drove out there after the fire. The whole place was smoldering ruins.
There was no discernable remains of the horror that we had battled that
final night, and, after some searching, I found a metal cabinet. Inside
there were three ledgers. Once of them was Weinbaum's diary. I clears
up a lot. It revealed that they were experimenting on dead flesh,
exposing it to gamma rays. One day they observed a strange thing. The
few maggots that had crawled over the flesh were growing, becoming a
group. Eventually they grew together, forming three separate large
maggots. Perhaps the radioactive bomb had speed up the evolution.
    I don't know.
Furthermore, I don't want to know.
In a way, I suppose, I assisted in Rankin's death; the flesh of the body
    whose grave I had robbed had fed perhaps the very creature that had
killed him. I live with that thought. But I believe that there can be
forgiveness. I'm working for it. Or, rather, we're working for it.
Vicki and I. Together.
THE GLASS FLOOR
From Weird Tales , Fall, 1990
INTRODUCTION by Stephen King
    In the novel Deliverance , by James Dickey, there is a scene where a country
fellow who lives way up in the back of beyond whangs his hand with a tool
while repairing a car. One of the city men who are looking for a couple of
guys to drive their cars downriver asks this fellow, Griner by name, if he's
hurt himself. Griner looks at his bloody hand, then mutters: "Naw – it ain't as