Dearest

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  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Weird Tales March 1951. Extensive researchdid not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication wasrenewed.

  "Get him to tell you about this invisible playmate ofhis."]

  Heading by Vincent Napoli

  DEAREST

  BY

  H. BEAM PIPER

  Colonel Ashley Hampton chewed his cigar and forced himself to relax, hisglance slowly traversing the room, lingering on the mosaic ofbook-spines in the tall cases, the sunlight splashed on the faded pastelcolors of the carpet, the soft-tinted autumn landscape outside theFrench windows, the trophies of Indian and Filipino and German weaponson the walls. He could easily feign relaxation here in the library of"Greyrock," as long as he looked only at these familiar inanimatethings and avoided the five people gathered in the room with him, forall of them were enemies.

  There was his nephew, Stephen Hampton, greying at the temples butyouthfully dressed in sports-clothes, leaning with obvious if slightlypremature proprietorship against the fireplace, a whiskey-and-soda inhis hand. There was Myra, Stephen's smart, sophisticated-looking blondewife, reclining in a chair beside the desk. For these two, he felt animplacable hatred. The others were no less enemies, perhaps moredangerous enemies, but they were only the tools of Stephen and Myra. Forinstance, T. Barnwell Powell, prim and self-satisfied, sitting on theedge of his chair and clutching the briefcase on his lap as though itwere a restless pet which might attempt to escape. He was an honest man,as lawyers went; painfully ethical. No doubt he had convinced himselfthat his clients were acting from the noblest and most disinterestedmotives. And Doctor Alexis Vehrner, with his Vandyke beard and hisViennese accent as phony as a Soviet-controlled election, who hadpreempted the chair at Colonel Hampton's desk. That rankled the oldsoldier, but Doctor Vehrner would want to assume the position whichwould give him appearance of commanding the situation, and he probablyfelt that Colonel Hampton was no longer the master of "Greyrock." Thefifth, a Neanderthal type in a white jacket, was Doctor Vehrner'sattendant and bodyguard; he could be ignored, like an enlisted manunthinkingly obeying the orders of a superior.

  "But you are not cooperating, Colonel Hampton," the psychiatristcomplained. "How can I help you if you do not cooperate?"

  Colonel Hampton took the cigar from his mouth. His white mustache,tinged a faint yellow by habitual smoking, twitched angrily.

  "Oh; you call it helping me, do you?" he asked acidly.

  "But why else am I here?" the doctor parried.

  "You're here because my loving nephew and his charming wife can't waitto see me buried in the family cemetery; they want to bury me alive inthat private Bedlam of yours," Colonel Hampton replied.

  "See!" Myra Hampton turned to the psychiatrist. "We are _persecuting_him! We are all _envious_ of him! We are _plotting against_ him!"

  "Of course; this sullen and suspicious silence is a common paranoidsymptom; one often finds such symptoms in cases of senile dementia,"Doctor Vehrner agreed.

  Colonel Hampton snorted contemptuously. Senile dementia! Well, he musthave been senile and demented, to bring this pair of snakes into hishome, because he felt an obligation to his dead brother's memory. Andhe'd willed "Greyrock," and his money, and everything, to Stephen. OnlyMyra couldn't wait till he died; she'd Lady-Macbethed her husband intothis insanity accusation.

  "... however, I must fully satisfy myself, before I can sign thecommitment," the psychiatrist was saying. "After all, the patient is aman of advanced age. Seventy-eight, to be exact."

  Seventy-eight; almost eighty. Colonel Hampton could hardly realize thathe had been around so long. He had been a little boy, playing soldiers.He had been a young man, breaking the family tradition of Harvard andwangling an appointment to West Point. He had been a new second lieutenantat a little post in Wyoming, in the last dying flicker of the Indian Wars.He had been a first lieutenant, trying to make soldiers of militiamen andhoping for orders to Cuba before the Spaniards gave up. He had been thehard-bitten captain of a hard-bitten company, fighting Moros in thejungles of Mindanao. Then, through the early years of the TwentiethCentury, after his father's death, he had been that _rara avis_ in theAmerican service, a really wealthy professional officer. He had playedpolo, and served a turn as military attache at the Paris embassy. He hadcommanded a regiment in France in 1918, and in the post-war years, hadrounded out his service in command of a regiment of Negro cavalry, beforeretiring to "Greyrock." Too old for active service, or even a desk at thePentagon, he had drilled a Home Guard company of 4-Fs and boys and paunchymiddle-agers through the Second World War. Then he had been an old man,sitting alone in the sunlight ... until a wonderful thing had happened.

  "Get him to tell you about this invisible playmate of his," Stephensuggested. "If that won't satisfy you, I don't know what will."

  * * * * *

  It had begun a year ago last June. He had been sitting on a bench on theeast lawn, watching a kitten playing with a crumpled bit of paper on thewalk, circling warily around it as though it were some living prey,stalking cautiously, pouncing and striking the paper ball with a paw andthen pursuing it madly. The kitten, whose name was Smokeball, was afriend of his; soon she would tire of her game and jump up beside him tobe petted.

  Then suddenly, he seemed to hear a girl's voice beside him:

  "Oh, what a darling little cat! What's its name?"

  "Smokeball," he said, without thinking. "She's about the color of ashrapnel-burst...." Then he stopped short, looking about. There wasnobody in sight, and he realized that the voice had been inside his headrather than in his ear.

  "What the devil?" he asked himself. "Am I going nuts?"

  There was a happy little laugh inside of him, like bubbles rising in aglass of champagne.

  "Oh, no; I'm really here," the voice, inaudible but mentally present,assured him. "You can't see me, or touch me, or even really hear me, butI'm not something you just imagined. I'm just as real as ... asSmokeball, there. Only I'm a different kind of reality. Watch."

  The voice stopped, and something that had seemed to be close to him lefthim. Immediately, the kitten stopped playing with the crumpled paper andcocked her head to one side, staring fixedly as at something above her.He'd seen cats do that before--stare wide-eyed and entranced, as thoughat something wonderful which was hidden from human eyes. Then, stilllooking up and to the side, Smokeball trotted over and jumped onto hislap, but even as he stroked her, she was looking at an invisiblesomething beside him. At the same time, he had a warm and pleasantfeeling, as of a happy and affectionate presence near him.

  "No," he said, slowly and judicially. "That's not just my imagination.But who--or what--are you?"

  "I'm.... Oh, I don't know how to think it so that you'll understand."The voice inside his head seemed baffled, like a physicist trying toexplain atomic energy to a Hottentot. "I'm not material. If you canimagine a mind that doesn't need a brain to think with.... Oh, I can'texplain it now! But when I'm talking to you, like this, I'm reallythinking inside your brain, along with your own mind, and you hear thewords without there being any sound. And you just don't know any wordsthat would express it."

  He had never thought much, one way or another, about spiritualism. Therehad been old people, when he had been a boy, who had told stories ofghosts and apparitions, with the firmest conviction that they were true.And there had been an Irishman, in his old company in the Philippines,who swore that the ghost of a dead comrade walked post with him when hewas on guard.

  "Are you a spirit?" he asked. "I mean, somebody who once lived in abody, like me?"

  "N-no." The voice inside h
im seemed doubtful. "That is, I don't thinkso. I know about spirits; they're all around, everywhere. But I don'tthink I'm one. At least, I've always been like I am now, as long as Ican remember. Most spirits don't seem to sense me. I can't reach mostliving people, either; their minds are closed to me, or they have suchdisgusting minds I can't bear to touch them. Children are open to me,but when they tell their parents about me, they are laughed at, orpunished for lying, and then they close up against me. You're the firstgrown-up person I've been able to reach for a long time."

  "Probably getting into my second childhood," Colonel Hampton grunted.

  "Oh, but you