It's a Small World Read online

  It’s A Small World

  Robert Bloch

  Copyright © 1944 by Robert Block

  This edition published in 2010 by eStar Books, LLC.

  www.estarbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61210-121-7

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  It’s A Small World

  Robert Bloch

  For two tiny, bewildered people, it was a struggle for survival in a world of toys

  CHAPTER I

  It was Christmas Eve. Family men in their cozy bungalows hummed cheerfully as they put the finishing touches on Christmas trees. Men of affairs slapped each other affably on the back and toasted the season in the lounges of exclusive clubs. Merrymakers crowded the public streets and filled the taverns to overflowing. Children caroled gayly in church services. Mothers smiled their secret smiles as they wrapped presents.

  And Clyde Hilton worked like a lousy dog in Propper's toyshop.

  The funny part of it was, Clyde didn't care. He was as happy as the rest. Twelve hours on his feet today --facing mobs of customers gone frantic with the necessity of making last-minute purchases --that was Clyde's lot, but he was still smiling.

  From time to time the redheaded young man grinned and patted the left hand pocket of his suit coat. Deep down inside reposed a little plush-covered box. The box contained an engagement ring.

  Clyde fingered it and grinned-- grinned at the girl behind the counter across the aisle.

  Gwen Thomas was worth grinning at. A pert, trim, dark-haired girl with milk-white skin and perfectly modeled features-- she had the delicacy of a china doll. "Exquisite" is a somewhat precious word, and yet it exactly described Gwen's miniature-like beauty.

  Clyde waited for the moment that he would slip the ring on her dainty finger. This would be a Christmas they'd both remember. To top it off, Old Man Propper had promised Clyde a raise. He'd winked indulgently at this romance between his two clerks, and the holiday spirit had him in its grip. They'd have a little party after closing-time, and then Clyde would give Gwen the ring and Old Man Propper would say, "Bless you, my children." Just a slice out of Dickens.

  Meanwhile, Clyde scribbled furiously in his order book, wrestled with the wrappings of a hundred packages, tangled himself in yards of twine and ribbon, punched the cash-register until his fingers were blistered, and kept up a running fire of sales chatter.

  He had just sold a toy train to the fat lady and her husband when he saw the man.

  It had been a job, selling this expensive model, but Clyde was something of an expert in the train field and he rejoiced in the opportunity of turning on high-pressure tactics. So he was quite elated, and finished his wrapping with deft fingers.

  But he almost dropped the twine when the man came in.

  The door opened. The toyshop was crowded, and ordinarily an entering customer couldn't be detected in the throng --but this man was plainly visible.

  Clyde stared.

  The man wore a black overcoat with a turned-up collar that reached his chin. He was hatless, and his wiry gray hair stood up in a bushy mop upon his skull.

  The man had a great beaked nose, and a curiously red mouth. Despite gray hair, his face was absolutely unlined. Not a wrinkle disturbed the pristine pallor of his long face. It was a perfectly blank background for the blazing intensity of his eyes.

  If his hair denoted age and his unlined face indicated youth, then his eyes were--eternal.

  They were black, but shining --shining radiantly with a penetrating fire. Two fountains of strength. Clyde saw the eyes before he saw anything else, and the rest of his scrutiny was just incidental. He gaped, fascinated. For some reason a strange fancy occurred to him. During his lifetime, he mused, he must have seen a million pairs of eyes --but never until now had he realized what power the eye could contain. Black, blazing fountains.

  There was one other slight excuse for Clyde's interest in the stranger.

  The man was seven feet tall.

  He was not a giant, in the ordinary sense of the word --not one of those tall, thin glandular monstrosities. The man was adequately proportioned to his height. His shoulders spanned the doorway. The chest bulging under the overcoat was massive. Clyde saw the man reach up and adjust his collar --and his hand was the size of a dinner plate.

  Clyde watched the massive figure move through the milling crowd towards his counter. It was only as the gigantic bulk loomed directly before him that Clyde realized he was leading a small boy.

  The child was an insignificant midge, contrasted to his huge companion. His tousled head scarcely reached the big man's knees, although he was large for a boy of seven.

  Abruptly, Clyde tore his attention away from the ponderous stranger and concentrated on the boy. That was sensible sales psychology--experience had taught him that a clerk must study the child and try to anticipate his wants.

  Clyde got another shock when he scrutinized the boy. Here, in miniature, was as strange a creature as the giant.

  For one thing, the boy's clothing was adult. Not a smart boy's shop imitation of "grown-up" attire--but adult. His little topcoat was an authentic replica of his immense companion's garb. The boy's hands were buried deep in the pockets, and he walked with truly adult nonchalance. His carriage and demeanor were adult.

  But the boy's face presented the strangest paradox.

  Clyde couldn't remember seeing a child whose face didn't light up immediately upon entering the toyshop. Even the children of the rich would squeal and giggle, their eyes would roll, and they would gesture with frantic excitement.

  This boy was different. His stare was cold, unemotional. His pale face was as unwrinkled as the curious face of the huge man beside him.

  And --his eyes were the same! Deep, black, disturbing eyes; the eyes of an adult in the face of youth.

  Now giant and infant faced the counter before Clyde. He quickly mastered his curiosity and assumed his professional poise.

  "Good evening," said Clyde. "Can I help you?"

  "I wonder," said the tall man. His voice had a curious depth; it rolled sonorously down upon Clyde's ears. Clyde stared up into the white face and the glittering eyes.

  But the big man had turned to the child.

  "What would you like, son?" he asked.

  The child shrugged. It was a strangely sophisticated shrug, a shrug of boredom.

  "There is nothing here that interests me," he lisped in a childish treble.

  Clyde did his best to hide his strange irritation at the child's nonchalance. He smiled down.

  "Isn't there anything you'd like Santa Claus to bring you?" he asked.

  "Santa Claus?" said the boy. He gazed at Clyde. And then he laughed.

  The laugh did something to Clyde. Perhaps he was tired. Perhaps he was overwrought. Perhaps his imagination was playing tricks.

  But the laugh was adult. Sardonic. More than sardonic. It was--evil.

  An evil, knowing chuckle from the lips of a child . . .

  No. It couldn't be. Clyde knew he was weary, confused. He fought down the feeling of frustration.

  "How about an electric train?" he coaxed.

  "I've got one, thank you."

  "A sled?"

  "Hardly."

  "We have some wonderful new chemistry sets--"

  "I think not."

  Curiously, the boy and the old man exchanged glances. The boy didn't laugh but his eyes twinkled mockingly.

  Clyde stood there with obvious bafflement written on his face. The giant stranger seemed to sense it.

  "Perhaps we'd better not detain t
his young man, Roger," he said. "We'll look around for ourselves, sir. We might find something we fancy."

  "Very well."

  Clyde moved down the counter.

  The crowd had thinned out in one of those temporary lulls that inexplicably occur in any shop. Clyde saw that Gwen was unoccupied at the moment. He stepped around the side of the other counter and joined her. Her tiny hand found his under the concealing counter and they stood together, smiling.

  Then Gwen gestured at the curious pair on the other side of the shop. Her eyes clouded, and she repressed a hasty gasp.

  "There he is again!"

  "Who?"

  "The giant--the tall man."

  "You've seen him before?"

  "Yes. He came in several days ago, when you were out on a delivery."

  "Who is he?"

  "I don't know. I watched Mr. Propper wait on him. He said he didn't want anything--he was just looking around. And then he stared at me."

  "Stared at you?"

  "Yes. Did you notice his eyes? They're awful, Clyde. Like the eyes of a statue. His eyelids don't blink, did you notice?"

  "Maybe he takes drugs," Clyde grinned. But he didn't feel any amusement. Gwen had noticed the eyes, too. . . .

  "Oh! There it is again--that stare—“

  It was true.

  Turning, Clyde saw that the tall man was peering across the room. His gaze fastened upon the girl at Clyde's side. Intense, penetrating, beating down like a palpable weight, his stare consumed the girl.

  And the tiny eyes of the boy added to the barrage of scrutiny. The two of them were smiling --giant and dwarf, smiling alike, as they stared. And now, unobtrusively, the giant bent his massive head and listened as the boy whispered something to him. His stubby finger gestured their way. The man smiled, shook his gray mane.

  "Clyde, I don't like that man," whispered the girl.

  "Never mind, darling. He's just a screwball. I'll get rid of him now." Clyde patted Gwen's shoulder and stepped briskly around the counter. He marched over and confronted his unusual customers.

  "Did you find anything?" he asked. It was hard to keep his voice from quivering, strangely difficult to keep his face from betraying the repulsion he felt.

  The tall man bent his great head and smiled benevolently at Clyde. That is, his face smiled. His eyes merely flamed.

  "Not for Roger, here," he said. "But there's another little boy I'd like to select a gift for. I think I'll take that tricycle over there."

  A finger the size of a wax taper stabbed suddenly in the direction of a tricycle.

  "Yes," piped Roger. "We'll take that." The child's face was suddenly animated, purposeful.

  "Good. That will be $10.95. Shall I wrap it up for delivery?"

  "If you will please. I notice you have facilities for gift-wrapping in the back room. Would you mind?"

  "Not at all."

  Clyde grasped the tricycle and lugged it back to the room behind the curtains. As he passed Gwen he flashed her a smile. Her responding glance held a nuance of peculiar entreaty.

  Nerves. Clyde pondered on the question as he wrapped the gift. Long hours and grueling work took their toll. He'd reached the point where he was imagining things. Just because an un-usually tall man had a bored brat of a son, he had let his fancy run riot.

  Maybe the old boy did take drugs. Perhaps the kid was a prodigy, or at least precocious. What was so unusual in that? Much ado about nothing.

  Well, in an hour the toyshop would close and he'd give the ring to Gwen, and they'd go somewhere and have a quiet holiday drink together --forget all this nonsense about giant's eyes.

  There!

  Deftly, Clyde completed the gift-wrapping, his red hair hanging over his forehead as he frowned in concentration. Brushing back the loose strands, he grasped the package and marched back into the shop.

  The crowd was thicker now. But as his eyes moved over the confines of the toyshop, Clyde realized that the old man and his son were gone.

  They had disappeared!

  A curious tingling crept along his spine. Hastily, he glanced behind the counters on either side of the toyshop. Where was Gwen?

  The tingling merged into a lurching shudder.

  Gwen had vanished!

  Mustering his confidence, Clyde strode down the counter. Old Propper's bald head gleamed as he bent over a tray of toy soldiers.

  "Pardon me, Mr. Propper," Clyde murmured. "Have you seen Gwen?"

  "Gwen? She was over there just a minute ago. Talking to the big man."

  "But he's gone."

  "I know, Clyde. I saw him go out with the little boy."

  "Gwen didn't leave with them, did she?"

  Clyde felt foolish as he asked the question, but he couldn't hold it back.

  Propper stared at him. "Of course she didn't," he snapped. "She must be in the back room. Where else?"

  Clyde didn't answer. He knew Gwen wasn't in the back room. Still, he stepped through the curtains once more.

  The room he had just quieted was still empty. And over on the wall were the hangers. Hangers that held Gwen's fur coat and perky little green hat.

  She couldn't have run out into the snow without putting them on.

  Heart pounding, Clyde retraced his steps. He surveyed the toyshop quickly. He tried to recollect his movements.

  He had gone in to wrap the tricycle. He had left the giant standing there, behind that counter near the corner. And Gwen had been across the aisle.

  All very simple. And what did it matter? The giant wasn't an ogre, or a demon. He couldn't have whisked Gwen through the walls. Besides, Mr. Propper had seen the tall man and the little boy go out of the shop--alone.

  Still, Gwen was gone.

  And the tall man and the child had whispered together and pointed at her...

  Clyde knew he was behaving like a fool as he rounded the counter in the corner. Here was an alcove hidden from the rest of the shop. A little recess in the wall.

  The giant had stood near here. If he beckoned Gwen over, they'd be standing unobserved.

  Still, what good would that do? What did it mean---?

  Then Clyde's moving left foot encountered a soft, tangling encumbrance. He almost stumbled over the pile. Hastily he glanced down. Glanced down and saw the disheveled bundle on the floor.

  Gwen's clothes!

  There was her black dress. Yes, and beneath it her stockings, still in her shoes! And beneath that, a brassiere, a slip.

  Clyde knelt and fingered the garments.

  They were still warm, still bore the imprint of Gwen's body.

  Gwen's clothes, in a tangled heap on the toyshop floor.

  And where was Gwen? Clyde's groping fingers encountered a small, hard length lying against the counter. He grasped a hidden object, held it up.

  A pencil stub. A pencil stub from Gwen's order book.

  He ran his right hand in swift exploration across the floor near the pile of garments.

  In a moment he found Gwen's order book, raised it.

  The top sheet was covered with a sprawling scrawl--not the neat lettering of Gwen's precise handwriting on an order--just an awkward scribble. But as Clyde read it, his senses spun. Merely a name, and an address. But somehow, Clyde know there was a connection. He deciphered the wobbly lettering:

  "Simon Mallot. 4954 Archmore Court. Clyde---"

  Just that, and nothing more." Clyde," was the last word. The end of the "e" had been abruptly drawn out in a jagged slash across the page. As though Gwen had been interrupted in her message.

  As though Gwen had shrieked for help just as a hand closed over her mouth. A hand like a dinner plate. The hand of a giant!

  CHAPTER II

  The Giant's Castle

  The streets of Manhattan were thronged with holiday revelers.

  Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed since Clyde had read the peculiar scrawl on

  Gwen's order book, and yet swift strides had already carried him far uptown, towards Archmore Court.
/>   Old Man Propper had accepted his hastily-worded excuse and let him go with a curt nod of his bald head. Now, his overcoat wrapped tightly around him as a shield against the fine-spun snow, Clyde forced his way through the mob with flatting arms.

  It was impossible to find a cab, and his impatience brooked no delay. His pace increased, his stride lengthened.

  Curious thoughts churned through his head.

  Christmas Eve!

  Bells tolled their rejoicing in his ear, and yet Clyde heard only the resonance of a funereal note--a note of doom.

  Holiday merrymakers called their cheery greetings--Clyde listened to a voice within himself: the voice of Gwen, screaming his name.

  Christmas time . . . festival time! Clyde thought of older, pagan festivals. Festivals dedicated not to a kindly Christ-child, but to older, darker gods. Gods of blood and sacrifice. Gods that granted black booms --and took a grisly toll. Gods that were worshipped by pale-faced men with set and staring eyes. Deep-set, fanatical eyes . . . like the eyes of the giant Simon Mallot.

  That was his name. But who was he, really? And what was he?

  4954 Archmore Court.

  Where was it, and what was it? Clyde clutched the order book in his pocket and hurried along.

  His way led him now through quieter side streets. Streets where no Yuletide lights shone in the windows. Streets given over to winter wind and midnight shadow. Streets that coiled and twisted their snowy surfaces beckoning down to darker depths.

  Clyde felt like a pigmy running along on the back of some fabulously enormous serpent. A snow-serpent wound around between the looming buildings. Soon he would reach the serpent's head, the serpent's fangs, the serpent's blazing eyes.

  Blazing eyes

  Clyde saw the lights before him. He knew, instantly, that this was the place. The great house stood set back from the street. A stone wall guarded the tree-girdled grounds. But the huge structure loomed above it on a little eminence of land. From a block away, Clyde could see the glittering lights in the lower windows.