Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 823 & 824, March/April 2010

The Faceless Thing by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch was, of course, best known for the hundreds of stories he wrote that fell within the classically defined borders of the mystery. But he also wrote a number of stories that could be classified as cross-genre pieces. The following tale, which first appeared in The Magazine of Horror in 1963, is one. A story about aging and fear, it was suggested to us for reprint by one of the author’s good friends, Doug Greene of Crippen and Landru Publishers.

SUNSET: golden flaming clouds draped over distant canyons barely seen in the dusk of the dying day; farmland gone to rot; fields in the foreground given over wildly to the running of the rabbit and the woodchuck; the farmhouse gray and paint-peeled, sleeping possibly but more likely dead — needing burial. It hadn’t changed much in all those years. It hadn’t changed; only died.

He parked the car and got out, taking it all in with eyes still intent and quick for all their years. Somehow he hadn’t really thought it would still be standing. Farmhouses that were near collapse fifty years ago shouldn’t still be standing; not when all the people, his mother and father and aunt and the rest, were all long in their graves.

He was an old man, had been an old man almost as long as he could remember. Youth to him was only memories of this farm, so many years before; romping in the hay with his little sister at his side; swinging from the barn ropes; exploring endless dark depths out beyond the last field. After that, he was old — through misty college days and marriage to a woman he hadn’t loved, through a business and political career that carried him around the world. And never once in all those years had he journeyed back to this place, this farmhouse now given over to the weeds and insects. They were all dead; there was no reason to come back... no reason at all.

Except the memory of the ooze.

A childhood memory, a memory buried with the years, forgotten sometimes but always there, crowded into its own little space in his mind, was ready to confront him and startle him with its vividness.

The ooze was a place beyond the last field, where water always collected in the springtime and after a storm; water running over dirt and clay and rock, merging with the soil until there was nothing underfoot but a black ooze to rise above your boots. He’d followed the stream rushing with storm water, followed it to the place where it cut into the side of the hill.

It was the memory of the tunnel, really, that had brought him back — the dark tunnel, leading nowhere, gurgling with rain-fed water, barely large enough for him to fit through. A tunnel floored with unseen ooze, peopled by unknown danger; that was a place for every boy.

Had he only been ten that day? Certainly he’d been no more than eleven, leading the way while his nine-year-old sister followed. “This way. Be careful of the mud.” She’d been afraid of the dark, afraid of what they might find there. But he’d called encouragement to her; after all, what could there be in all this ooze to hurt them?

How many years? Fifty?

“What is it, Buddy?” She’d always called him Buddy. What is it, Buddy? Only darkness, and a place maybe darker than dark, with a half-formed shadow rising from the ooze. He’d brought along his father’s old lantern, and he fumbled to light it.

“Buddy!” she’d screamed — just once — and in the flare of the match he’d seen the thing, great and hairy and covered with ooze; something that lived in the darkness here, something that hated the light. In that terrifying instant it had reached out for his little sister and pulled her into the ooze.

That was the memory, a memory that came to him sometimes, only at night. It had pursued him down the years like a fabled hound, coming to him, reminding him, when all was well with the world. It was like a personal demon sent from Hades to torture him. He’d never told anyone about that thing in the cave, not even his mother. They’d cried and carried on when his sister was found the next day, and they’d said she’d drowned. He was not about to say differently.

And the years had passed. For a time during his high school days, he read the local papers — searching for some word of the thing, some veiled news that it had come out of that forgotten cavern. But it never did; it liked the dark and damp too much. And, of course, no one else ever ventured into the streambed. That was a pursuit only for the very young and very foolish.

By the time he was twenty, the memory was fading, merging with other thoughts, other goals, until at times he thought it only a child’s dream. But then at night it By the time he was twenty, the memory was fading, merging with other thoughts, other goals, until at times he thought it only a child’s dream. But then at night it would come again in all its vividness, and the thing in the ooze would beckon him.

A long life, long and crowded... One night he’d tried to tell his wife about it, but she wouldn’t listen. That was the night he’d realized how little he’d ever loved her. Perhaps he’d only married her because, in a certain light, she reminded him of that sister of his youth. But the love that sometimes comes later came not at all to the two of them. She was gone now, like his youth, like his family and friends. There was only this memory remaining. The memory of a thing in the ooze.

Now the weeds were tall, beating against his legs, stirring nameless insects to flight with every step. He pressed a handkerchief against his brow, sponging the sweat that was forming there. Would the dark place still be there, or had fifty years of rain and dirt sealed it forever?

“Hello there,” a voice called out. It was an old voice, barely carrying with the breeze. He turned and saw someone on the porch of the deserted farmhouse. An old woman, ancient and wrinkled.

“Do I know you?” he asked, moving closer.

“You may,” she answered. “You’re Buddy, aren’t you? My, how old I’ve gotten. I used to live at the next farm, when you were just a boy. I was young then myself. I remember you.”

“Oh! Mrs...?” the name escaped him, but it wasn’t important.

“Why did you come back, Buddy? Why, after all these years?”

He was an old man. Was it necessary to explain his actions to this woman from the past? “I just wanted to see the place,” he answered. “Memories, you know.”

“Bitter memories. Your little sister died here, did she not?” The old woman should have been dead, should have been dead and in her grave long ago.

He paused in the shade of the porch roof. “She died here, yes, but that was fifty years ago.”

“How old we grow, how ancient! Is that why you returned?”

“In a way. I wanted to see the spot.”

“Ah! The little brook back there beyond the last field. Let me walk that way with you. These old legs need exercise.”

“Do you live here?” he asked, wanting to escape her but knowing not how.

“No, still down the road. All alone now. Are you all alone, too?”

“I suppose so.” The high grass made walking difficult.

“You know what they all said at the time, don’t you? They all said you were fooling around, like you always did, and pushed her into the water.”

There was a pain in his chest from breathing so hard. He was an old man. “Do you believe that?”

“What, does it matter?” she answered. “After all these fifty years, what does it matter?”

“Would you believe me,” he began, then hesitated into silence. Of course she wouldn’t believe him, but he had to tell now. “Would you believe me if I told you what happened?”

She was a very old woman and she panted to keep up even his slow pace. She was ancient even to his old eyes, even in his world where now everyone was old. “I would believe you,” she said.

“There was something in the ooze. Call it a monster, a demon, if you want. I saw it in the light of a match, and I can remember it as if it were yesterday. It took her.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I said I would. This sun is hot today, even at twilight.”

“It will be gone soon. I hate to hurry you, old woman, but I must reach the stream before dark.”

“The last field is in sight.”

Yes, it was in sight. But how would he ever fit through that small opening, how would he face the thing, even if by some miracle it still waited there in the ooze? Fifty years was a long long time.

“Wait here,” he said as they reached the little stream at last. It hadn’t changed much, not really.

“You won’t find it.” He lowered his aged body into the bed of the stream, feeling once again the familiar forgotten ooze closing over his shoes.

“No one has to know,” she called after him. “Even if there was something, that was fifty years ago.”

But he went on, to the place where the water vanished into the rock. He held his breath and groped for the little flashlight in his pocket. Then he ducked his head and followed the water into the black.

It was steamy here, steamy and hot with the sweat of the earth. He flipped on the flashlight with trembling hands and followed its narrow beam with his eyes. The place was almost like a room in the side of the hill, a room perhaps seven feet high, with a floor of mud and ooze that seemed almost to bubble as he watched.

“Come on,” he said softly, almost to himself. “I know you’re there. You’ve got to be there.”

And then he saw it, rising slowly from the ooze. A shapeless thing without a face, a thing that moved so slowly it might have been dead. An old, very old thing. For a long time he watched it, unable to move, unable to cry out. And even as he watched, the thing settled back softly into the ooze, as if even this small exertion had tired it.

“Rest,” he said, very quietly. “We are all so old now.”

And then he made his way back out of the cave, along the stream, and finally pulled himself from the clinging ooze. The ancient woman was still waiting on the bank, with fireflies playing about her in the dusk.

“Did you find anything?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” he answered.

“Fifty years is a long time. You shouldn’t have come back.”

He sighed and fell into step beside her. “It was something I had to do.”

“Come up to my house, if you want. I can make you a bit of tea.”

His breath was coming better now, and the distance back to the farmhouse seemed shorter than he’d remembered. “I think I’d like that,” he said.