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The Manikin · Short Ghost and Horror Stories Collection

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The mannikin a story of the strange ending of a
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: long professional partnership by John D. Swain to Upshaw, the
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  Speaker 1: young ambulance surgeon, the novelty of his vocation had not
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  Speaker 1: yet worn off. Each combat with death was still an adventure.
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  Speaker 1: He still cherished the dream in which most young medicos indulge,
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  Speaker 1: the rush to the bedside of a dying magnate, the
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  Speaker 1: bold decision and steady hand that dragged the patient back
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  Speaker 1: to life, the only child and heiress, a lovely maiden
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  Speaker 1: sobbing her gratitude out upon his shoulder. True, it was
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  Speaker 1: never more than a day dream. In cold fact, the
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  Speaker 1: patient might be a stricken reveler who had looked upon
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  Speaker 1: the alcohol when it was wood, where a broken tenement,
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  Speaker 1: drudge fallen beside her washtub, wore a child run down
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  Speaker 1: by a car, But never anybody having both a lively
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  Speaker 1: gratitude and a live bank account. There remained only the
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  Speaker 1: thrill of anticipation, theo zessed of conflict with the dark angel. Now,
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  Speaker 1: as he entered the room, three flights up and a
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  Speaker 1: cheap Hanover Street lodging house, upshaw knew that not here
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  Speaker 1: was his vision to come true. The room was small,
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  Speaker 1: and its one window looked through bleared panes into a
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  Speaker 1: disconsolate back yard, lacking so much as a single blade
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  Speaker 1: of grass. Only a sickly lanthus tree served as a
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  Speaker 1: clothes pole, on which hung the wet wash of many races.
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  Speaker 1: The room was papered in a pattern of crimson orchids
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  Speaker 1: on a background of poisonous green. Upon it hung a
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  Speaker 1: single colored print of a gauze draped vamp clinging to
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  Speaker 1: a cross of artificial rock, while wooden looking waves swept
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  Speaker 1: over her shapely legs. The dirty brown carpet was worn threadbare.
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  Speaker 1: Between the speckled iron bed and the washstand. Above the
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  Speaker 1: latter hung a cracked mirror, and upon its oilcloth cover
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  Speaker 1: were many cigarette stubs. There was also a wrecked Morris chair.
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  Speaker 1: From three or four rusty hooks screwed into the wall
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  Speaker 1: hung the shapeless garments of the man who lay upon
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  Speaker 1: the bed, his eyes closed, and only the slight rise
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  Speaker 1: and fall of his chest, indicating that he still lived.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Close at Upshaw's heels was old Binny with his white
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  Speaker 1: canvas stretcher. He had been an orderly before Upshaw had
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  Speaker 1: put on long trousers, and he knew things that many
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  Speaker 1: successful nurses and physicians did not suspect. Just inside the
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  Speaker 1: doorway stood the frowsy landlady, her eyes and nose running,
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  Speaker 1: her bony red hands twisting the damp apron to which
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  Speaker 1: a scared child clung hoocher dope. Upshaw asked her curtly
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  Speaker 1: as he passed. Now, he's just been layin that way
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  Speaker 1: all day. He's been sickly for a long spell. Nevertheless,
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  Speaker 1: Upshaw's first act was to sniff at the patient's breath,
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  Speaker 1: and his next to apply the stethoscope. At its touch,
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  Speaker 1: the eyes fluttered open. The doctor took note of the pupils.
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  Speaker 1: After a moment, he turned his head in the direction
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  Speaker 1: toward which the dying man was staring, and thus he
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  Speaker 1: came to observe the Mannikin sprawling in the room's one chair,
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  Speaker 1: its shrunken arms and legs outflung, was the figure of
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  Speaker 1: a puppet the size of a boy of tin, provided
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  Speaker 1: that the boy were a dwarf. It's great wood head
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  Speaker 1: was topped by a shock of fiery red hair with
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  Speaker 1: a sailor's hat. Its painted face was faded and scarred,
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  Speaker 1: only the eyes remained bright and clear. They seemed to
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  Speaker 1: be fixed with a stare of unspeakable malice upon the
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  Speaker 1: countenance of the dying man. The puppet's wooden lips grinned impishly,
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  Speaker 1: the hinged lower jaw hung loose. A ventriloquist he was,
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  Speaker 1: and I say, one of the best in his day,
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  Speaker 1: Garford the Great, he was build Upshaw nodded he had
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  Speaker 1: seen the act or others precisely like it. A score
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  Speaker 1: of times the ventriloquist would be seated in a chair
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  Speaker 1: with the Mannikin on his knee, a saucy boy with
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  Speaker 1: a dirty tongue. The man would speak in fatherly wise.
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  Speaker 1: The Mannikin would come back with an impudent retort that
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  Speaker 1: earned a small cuff on the air. The dummy always
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  Speaker 1: won out in the dialog, to the delight of the gallery,
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  Speaker 1: But the man mauled and shook and pounded him into
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  Speaker 1: a raging, tearful little beast. The lips of the sick
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  Speaker 1: man moved, claims going to break up Doc forty years
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  Speaker 1: Garford the Great, his eyes and lips closed. The soil
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  Speaker 1: blanket rose to a deep inhalation, sank, and thereafter seemed
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  Speaker 1: to move no more. Upshaw turned to speak to old
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  Speaker 1: Benny the orderly did not wait for the imminent command,
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  Speaker 1: but swiftly crossed to the washstand and fetched a glass
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  Speaker 1: of tepid water, into which Upshaw dashed aromatic spirits. The
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  Speaker 1: liquid ran down the unshaven chin of Garford the grate,
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  Speaker 1: its pungent odors stealing through the room. The young doctor
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  Speaker 1: next produced a hypodermic syringe. He glanced sharply at the
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  Speaker 1: tallow hued features, now oddly pinched and bleak, and hesitated.
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  Speaker 1: At this instant, the familiar climax of scores of such occasions.
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  Speaker 1: A singular interruption startled the foe, who beheld Garford no
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  Speaker 1: longer great, taking his last curtain call. From the lips
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  Speaker 1: of the mannequin, or so it seemed, a high pitched
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  Speaker 1: nasal voice mocked the inert form, whose bloodless face, its
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  Speaker 1: painted eyes were fixed in sinister triumph. The voice was
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  Speaker 1: astonishingly loud and strong, disturbingly so in that squalid little
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  Speaker 1: chamber of silence. The dialect was the old familiar lingo
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  Speaker 1: of the passive partner of Garford the Great.
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  Speaker 2: You've croaked now, damn your eyes, and you can't have
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  Speaker 2: no more sport with me. I'm sorry for you, not
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  Speaker 2: or fight, cause you're going to hell and I'll have
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  Speaker 2: a blooming good long rest. Didn't I support you for
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  Speaker 2: more than forty year and pay for your booze and
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  Speaker 2: women and swell togs on? You put words in my
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  Speaker 2: mouth and then bushed me, silly adorf for saying over them,
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  Speaker 2: and after to show what then, why you slam me
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  Speaker 2: into a stuffy box while you're barged up and down
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  Speaker 2: the streets like a toff. You put so many blooming
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  Speaker 2: thoughts in my wooden head that some of them stuck
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  Speaker 2: there a crowd, a soul of sorts, just enough to
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  Speaker 2: supper with. I've been waiting for this hour to see
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  Speaker 2: a croak can go to hell, where your jolly well belongs.
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  Speaker 2: I don't care what becomes of me now. They can
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  Speaker 2: sell me to the ragman or give me to the
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  Speaker 2: kids for a football, but you'll never make a wholaughter
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  Speaker 2: me no more guv'nor he The voice trailed off in
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  Speaker 2: a whining diminuindow of unprintable epithets.
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  Speaker 1: Two. The landlady's brat had screamed once and then had
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  Speaker 1: buried his head in his mother's apron her own face
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  Speaker 1: a sickly yellow. She had uttered no sound, but having
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  Speaker 1: swiftly crossed herself, once had stood with her stricken eyes
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  Speaker 1: set upon the ugly, scarred wooden face of the Mannikin,
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  Speaker 1: which seemed to gloat upon the dead man, over whom
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  Speaker 1: young Upshaw bent. As the strident voice died away, the
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  Speaker 1: surgeon straightened and motioned to Old Binny. No need for
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  Speaker 1: the ambulance, he murmured, Oh, notify the coroner. Let's get
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  Speaker 1: out of here. He drove the soiled sheet over the
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  Speaker 1: face of Garford. The once great hesitated an instant, and
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  Speaker 1: then passed around the foot of the cot to where,
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  Speaker 1: silent now the Mannikin sprawled in the chair. Upshaw set
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  Speaker 1: his teeth, extended an arm, and clutching the thing by
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  Speaker 1: its baggy jacket, hurried out into the hall and down
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  Speaker 1: the dark well of the staircase. Half Way down he
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to light a cigarette, scratching the match on a wall
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  Speaker 1: to faced in every conceivable way at his shoulder, Old
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  Speaker 1: Benny's face hung luminous and yellow in the murky light.
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  Speaker 1: Forgive me a turn, it did, the orderly complained queer.
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  Speaker 1: How their minds run in the old grooves at the last,
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  Speaker 1: doing his turn, just as he'd give it a thousand times.
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  Speaker 1: Upshaw waited until the match burned clear, and touched the
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  Speaker 1: flame to the end of his cigarette. It was queerer
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  Speaker 1: than that, Benny, He said, huh, how do you mean queerer?
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  Speaker 1: Upshaw inhaled a lungful of smoke and expelled it. I
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  Speaker 1: mean that when the voice spoke, the man Garford was dead.
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  Speaker 1: Old Benny's eyes popped wide. Oh, come now, doctor Rupshaw.
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  Speaker 1: You know, and so do I, that it ain't easy
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  Speaker 1: to tell just when they snuff out. I've seen him
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  Speaker 1: sit up and ask for a drink, or where was
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  Speaker 1: they after they'd been pronounced good and dead? And the
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  Speaker 1: undertaker can tell you a string of stories, Upshaw interrupted him, brusquely,
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  Speaker 1: as you know so much? Do you happen to know this?
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  Speaker 1: That the trick of ventriloquism requires a powerful effort of
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  Speaker 1: the lungs, as powerful as that of a man running
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  Speaker 1: a marathon race. No man with his lungs still functioning
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  Speaker 1: like that was ever declared dead by a medical freshman.
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  Speaker 1: He dropped a cigarette upon the stairs and ground it
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  Speaker 1: with a heel. There's another thing which you may keep
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  Speaker 1: to yourself, do you hear? I was sure he was
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  Speaker 1: dead when the thing began to speak, But just because
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  Speaker 1: of that thousand to one chance that there was a
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  Speaker 1: spark of life left, I covered his mouth tight with
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  Speaker 1: my palm tight, I tell you, so tight that I
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  Speaker 1: felt his teeth through the lips, and the voice went
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  Speaker 1: right on, as clear as before. God whispered Old Benny
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  Speaker 1: as they moved on downward along the twisting stairway. What
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  Speaker 1: are you going to do with it? He asked. After
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  Speaker 1: a moment, Upshaw answered through clenched teeth, I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: the seller to burn the damned thing up, he said.
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  Speaker 1: End of The Mannequin by John D. Swain