Terrors Read online

  But word of the third mysterious death would not be so easily suppressed. The victim this time was none other than Ellen Hansen van Burckhart, heiress to the van Burckhart department store chain. Her body was discovered by her maid, Betty Wilson. Mrs. van Burckhart was ninety-four years of age at the time of her death. Her husband, the founder and builder of the van Burckhart chain, had left his entire fortune to her, much to the displeasure of assorted children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and assorted relatives and hangers-on. Mrs. van Burckhart had further disappointed these heirs by outliving her husband by more than four decades.

  In view of the millionairess’ advanced age and fragile health, the maid had not been excessively shocked by her discovery. She had brought her employer’s breakfast of tea and toast with just a touch of strawberry jam, to Mrs. van Burckhart’s bedroom. Such was the millionairess’ preference, and had been for many years. Betty Wilson had placed the folding tray across her employer’s lap before she noticed Mrs. van Burckhart’s extreme pallor. Next, she noticed that Mrs. van Burckhart was so cold that moisture from the air around her was beginning to condense. When Betty Wilson touched her employer’s hand and realized how cold and rigid it was, the truth became obvious.

  Not so obvious, and in fact unnoticed by Betty Wilson, was the stream of tiny white specks moving away from the body and toward the slightly open window. Mrs. van Burckhart had been committed to the cultivation of fresh air, even in Seacoast City’s freakishly winter-like summer.

  In luxurious penthouses and cramped tenement dwellings throughout Seacoast City, in the suburban homes of industrialists and the tidy cottages of working families, in a hundred thousand dwellings or more, radios were tuned to WSCR. Seacoast Citizens high and humble leaned over their radios, hoping for word of the end of the unprecedented cold.

  They were prepared to hear a jingle, an announcer, even a playlet designed to part them from their dimes and dollars in exchange for the latest model automobile, the newest and most improved toothpaste or soap powder, the energizing breakfast cereal or the druggist’s nostrum that would fill their lives with excitement and their families with joy.

  They heard neither news of relief from the cold nor messages urging them to empty their pockets or their purses. Instead they heard a hard clicking followed by a discordant screech and finally the tones of a cold, harsh male voice.

  “This is Lord Gorgon, chief servant of the Scorpion Queen, speaking. Prepare yourselves, Seacoast Citizens, to hear the terms of The Scorpion Queen. Her demands are simple. In exchange for meeting them, the snow will cease to fall on your buildings and your thoroughfares. The ice will melt from your river, your harbor, the lakes in your parks.”

  There was a pause. In living rooms across the city men and women, puzzled, frightened, looked at one another questioningly.

  “What has happened to Seacoast City is a warning to the rest of the nation. The oligarchs in Washington have interfered in the affairs of Europe for too long. They have sent food and munitions to the weak, corrupt nations of that continent in a vain attempt to halt the liberating armies of the glorious leader. Unless this unwarranted meddling stops at once, every port in the United States will be frozen as Seacoast City has been. There is no need to reply to this message. The Scorpion Queen and her ally in Europe will observe the ports of America. Should this nation fail to comply, it will die in a new ice age!”

  Who was speaking? What had happened? Engineers in the WSCR control booth studied their dials, trained men tending the station’s transmitters conferred frantically with their superiors, trying to unravel the new state of affairs.

  The station’s signal had been hijacked.

  Frantic messages exchanged with the staffs of the Seacoast City’s other radio stations—WGVG, WHIQ, WISP, WBLU—revealed that those stations, too, had been hijacked. The clickings, the screech, the mysterious message that had gone out over the airwaves from WSCR had been carried by every station in the city.

  In the Mayor’s office in Seacoast City Hall, a meeting was taking place. The Mayor and the city’s Chief of Police were conferring as to steps to be taken.

  In an outer office, a male aide to the Mayor and a female secretary were seated, their heads close together, a small radio on the secretary’s desk tuned to the stylings of Wally Carson, the nation’s latest romantic crooner. Accompanied by an army of violins and an ocean of harps the crooner was pledging his undying love to the object of his affection. The Mayor’s male aide and female secretary were holding hands across her desktop and gazing passionately into each other’s eyes when the crooner was interrupted by a hard clicking and a discordant screech.

  The cold male voice began to speak.

  Moments later the male aide and the female secretary rushed into the Mayor’s office. The Mayor and the Chief of Police leaped to their feet and followed the Mayor’s employees to the outer office in time to hear the concluding ultimatum.

  Again, there was a clicking. Again there was a screech. Then the crooning of Wally Carson resumed as if nothing untoward had taken place. The musical program had been from a remote hookup at the Treble Clef, Seacoast City’s favorite supper club. The city’s upper crust and its daring youth were heeding the advice of the city’s leaders and keeping up their usual way of life. The well-dressed young men and attractive young women sharing the victuals and the music at the Treble Clef never realized what had happened.

  But Mayor Howard Harkness and Chief Alf O’Brien knew.

  “I suspected as much, Chief. This isn’t just freakish weather. I should have known that somebody was behind it.”

  The chief of police reached into a uniform pocket and extracted a roll of multicolored disks. He popped a couple into his mouth and chewed. “Sorry, Mr. Mayor. Ulcer’s acting up.”

  “No surprise there, Chief. I haven’t been sleeping too well, myself. To each man his ailments, eh?”

  Chief O’Brien grunted his agreement.

  “I’ve never heard of these two, Mr. Mayor. Lord Gorgon, The Scorpion Queen—sounds like a couple of kids playing make-believe, playing dress-up for a Halloween party.”

  The mayor nodded. His iron-gray hair was rumpled, his usually handsome features blotchy and his eyes red from lack of sleep.

  “I’ve heard of them, Chief. I know them all too well.”

  “Well, don’t you think I ought to know, then?” Chief O’Brien pushed himself up from the leather chair opposite the mayor’s desk. “If these scoundrels have the power to change the weather—if they can turn summer into winter—they’re a menace to society. We’ve got to act against them, Mr. Mayor!”

  Mayor Harkness rubbed his temples wearily.

  “No question about that, Chief.”

  “I think you’d better tell me what’s going on, Mr. Mayor. It’s unconscionable that the chief of police of Seacoast City has never heard of these people, and that the mayor knows all about them and hasn’t told the chief. In fact, if I don’t have your confidence, sir, enough to be told about such a threat to the city, I wonder why you haven’t asked for my resignation. If you want it, Mr. Mayor, it will be on your desk just as fast as I can scratch pen across paper!”

  If Lord Gorgon’s message, broadcast over each of Seacoast City’s radio stations, had not been enough, the threat to that metropolis was made manifest the next morning.

  The Seacoast City Superbas had been scheduled to play host to the Green Valley Hawks, but in view of Seacoast City’s abnormal weather, the game had been moved to the warmer confines of Green Valley. The entire Superba team, plus its trainer, batboys, coaches, and Manager Mack Houlihan, had piled onto a chartered bus. The bus, its feeble heaters strained to the limit and its heavy tires fitted with chains, had set out through the city’s streets, headed for the Vespucci Bridge and the highway to Green Valley.

  Only one member of the organization had missed the bus. This was backup catcher Barney Shea, a onetime big leaguer who continued to play the game in the forlorn hope of making it back to the
bigs despite his weak throwing arm and his total inability to hit a curve-ball. Barney’s wife had given birth to their fifth daughter at half-past three that morning. Barney had stayed at her side as long as he could, then set out to join his teammates.

  When he realized that he had missed the team bus by the narrowest of margins, he commandeered a taxicab and had the driver pursue the bus. They had nearly caught the bigger vehicle when the bus veered off the roadway just before reaching the Vespucci Bridge and plunged, nose-first, to the ice-covered Saturn River.

  The taxi driver pulled over. He and Barney jumped from the cab and raced to the river bank. The front end of the bus had smashed through the ice covering the river and the bus was slowly sinking through the opening. Barney was able to wrench open the bus’s emergency door and clamber in, only to find his teammates dead white and ice cold. As he stood, horrified, he felt the strong hands of the cab driver seize him by collar and elbow and drag him from the doomed bus seconds before it sank through the ice.

  Neither Barney nor his rescuer noticed the stream of tiny white specks that flowed from the open emergency door and across the cracked ice.

  By the time derricks pulled the bus from the icy water, there were no survivors. The cadavers were transported to the City Morgue, with all-too-familiar results.

  Meanwhile, in a penthouse suite atop the Central Railroad Tower, a usually graceful figure bent over a dizzying array of electrical devices. Needles swung on meters. Bright points skittered erratically across the faces of vacuum tubes that resembled miniature motion picture screens. A typewriter seemed to operate itself, clattering out columns of figures. To the casual observer, it might have been powered by a ghost, but in fact it was connected by a heavy cable to one of the most advanced scientific analyzers ever built by human hands.

  The figure bent over these devices was clad in a white scientist’s tunic. Her dark countenance and glossy hair stood in shocking contrast to her clothing.

  She looked away from a panel of meters, studied the columns of figures produced by the typewriter, and turned toward a large-scale grid-map of Seacoast City. In the center of the map, the gridwork of city streets and tall buildings was interrupted by the world-famous Molly Pitcher Park and its shimmering Poseidon Pond. In happier times, lovers paddled boats on the surface of the Pond while artists stood at their easels, striving to capture the beauty of this man-made speck of paradise. Now the Pond was frozen and children skated on its smooth surface.

  The white-coated figure placed a pair of sensitive earphones over her head. She stared at the map, moving her head ever so slightly to the left or the right, up or down. What she had discovered seemed unbelievable, but she knew it was true.

  The mysterious signal from Lord Gorgon and his superior, The Scorpion Queen, seemed to be coming from Poseidon Pond. More precisely, as the white-clad scientist’s devices showed, it was coming from directly beneath the Pond.

  The white-clad scientist returned to her former position. She flicked a series of switches, then turned a carefully calibrated control. A peculiar light played upon her, or perhaps the suggestion of a light. It might have been a deep orange in tint, or then again it might have been something at the violet end of spectrum, something that teased the optic nerve, hinting at shades and images better left unimagined.

  One of the vacuum tubes before the scientist came to life. Within it could be seen the face of a woman. Her skin was deathly white, her lips a dark crimson. Her eyes had just the slightest suggestion of the Orient in their shape; their color was that of fine emeralds. She wore a shimmering, high-necked garment, decorated with sinuous embroidery. But most striking was her hair, which seemed to waver and writhe with a life all its own, suggestive of Medusa, the snake-headed sorceress of myth.

  “Nzambi,” the figure hissed, “I have heard of you and your work. I have seen your image in news reports. What is it that you wish?”

  “You are The Scorpion Queen?” the white-coated woman asked.

  “I am. And I am busy. State your business, Nzambi.”

  “You are the cause of the cold wave. You and your henchman, Lord Gorgon. You have demanded that your terms be met, but you have not stated your demands. Do so now.”

  The snake-haired figure laughed derisively. “There are no terms, Nzambi. I was merely toying with those fools in City Hall, and with the rest of Seacoast City. I could ask for millions of dollars. What good would money do me? I have all I need and I can get more whenever I need it.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Oh, you fool. Don’t you read the morning newspapers? Don’t you listen to the radio, or see the newsreels at any movie theater? A terrible war is coming, one that will make the World War of the past pale by comparison. In fact, the war has already started on other continents. It will come to America, you can rest assured. And when it does, this weak and pleasure-sodden country will be unready for it. What I have done to Seacoast City is just a test. Soon the other metropolises of his country will suffer the same fate. Imagine frozen harbors in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Detroit, every major port in this country, frozen solid.”

  Nzambi, the Golden Saint, shook her head. “I’ve long known of you, The Scorpion Queen. I’ve known you as a master criminal and I’ve known of your cruelty and your duplicity, but I never thought that even the likes of you would stoop to treason!”

  “Treason? I owe no loyalty to this fat, soft country you call America. I am strong. I am cruel. And I stand in alliance with the strongest and cruelest man on this planet. I am sure you know of whom I speak.”

  “Yes.”

  Before Nzambi could say anything further, the snake-haired image of The Scorpion Queen faded from the surface of the tube.

  Without hesitating, Nzambi switched on a two-way microphone mounted before her. She spoke a series of low commands.

  Although she was alone in her laboratory atop the Central Railroad Tower, other women and men dedicated to the cause of justice worked to support her efforts. In a brightly-lit chamber not far from Nzambi’s laboratory, a young woman responded to the commands her mentor had spoken. She obeyed, operating a complex device, the only one of its kind. Moments passed, lights blinked and dials spun.

  “Please proceed,” the young woman murmured into a microphone of her own.

  Nzambi, the Golden Saint, watched as a different face took form on the surface where The Scorpion Queen had previously snarled her threats. This time, the face was that of a gray-haired man, his features hardened and honed by a lifetime of service to his country. He wore a military jacket and cap. Silver stars glittered on his uniform shoulders. His weary face bore an expression of stress and fatigue.

  “Hopkins here, Saint.”

  “Thank you, General. I have urgent information for you.”

  The military man grunted his readiness to hear the Golden Saint’s news. In succinct and powerful terms she described her conversation with The Scorpion Queen and sketched for the officer the threat that faced the nation.

  General Hopkins pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes. “This information should go to the President himself, Nzambi.”

  “I trust you to get word to the President,” she replied. “But urgent action is called for,”

  “You have a plan, then?”

  “I have.” The Saint told the general what she had in mind.

  “You’re sure that will work?”

  “No, sir, I cannot make such a promise. But I think it’s our best chance to nip this scheme in the bud. If we don’t try it, I shudder to think of what will happen next.”

  The general consulted a sheaf of papers that lay before him, barely visible in the image Nzambi was studying. After a moment the general raised his eyes, peering directly into those of the Golden Saint, or seeming to do so. “What,” he asked, “are the white specks that appear after each murder?”

  “I don’t know,” the Golden Saint replied. “I have a theory. I think they have something to do with the transformation of th
e murder victims into hollow, icy replicas of themselves. As for what they are, I’d rather keep my notion to myself until I find out whether I’m right or not.”

  General Hopkins nodded. “Very well. I’m sure the President will approve of your plan. Where do you wish to rendezvous, Nzambi?”

  “Five thousand feet in the air, General Hopkins. Five thousand feet, directly above Poseidon Pond. How long will it take your men to fly the B-16’s there?”

  “They’ll be coming from North Orion Airfield. They should be over Poseidon Pond in an hour.”

  “I’ll meet them there, General.”

  Nzambi clicked off, lifted an ordinary telephone and placed a call to the office of Seacoast City’s Police Chief, Alfred O’Brien.

  Within minutes, uniformed officers were clearing children from the icy surface of Poseidon Pond. Once the ice-skaters and sledders had been sent packing, the police proceeded to evacuate Molly Pitcher Park and close it to the public for the first time in its history.

  In her headquarters atop the Central Railroad Tower, the brilliant scientist known to her colleagues as Nzambi, to the patrons of Madame Cerise’s Salon of Beauty as the shy manicurist Ruby Mae Jones, and to the admiring public as the Golden Saint, prepared herself for what must surely be the most dangerous enterprise of her action- and peril-filled career.

  Not very long afterwards, had a Cierva Gyroplane passed the Central Railroad Tower, its pilot might have beheld a strange sight.

  A door opened from the penthouse suite of the Tower and a startling apparition stepped onto the broad balcony. It was the figure of a woman. Tall and willowy, she wore a costume that seemed almost alive, a shimmering integument of sheerest gold. Gauntlet-like gloves covered her hands and extended to her elbows. Spike-heeled boots added further to her height.