UNSEEN — UNFEARED (4)
By:
July 28, 2023
“Unseen — Unfeared” was originally published in the February 10, 1919 edition of People’s Favorite Magazine. HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize it here for HILOBROW’s readers.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10.
“Well?” he said, looking at me keenly, but with not the least show of surprise at my presence.
“I beg your pardon,” I replied. “The door was unlocked and I came in here, thinking it was the entrance to the exhibit — what do they call it? — the ‘Great Unseen.’ The one that is mentioned on that long white sign. Can you tell me which door is the right one?”
“I can.”
With that brief answer he stopped and stared at me again. He was a tall, lean man, somewhat stooped, but possessing considerable dignity of bearing. For that neighborhood, he appeared uncommonly well dressed, and his long, smooth-shaven face was noticeable because, while his complexion was dark and his eyes coal-black, above them the heavy brows and his hair were almost silvery-white. His age might have been anything over the threescore mark.
I grew tired of being stared at. “If you can and—won’t, then never mind,” I observed a trifle irritably, and turned to go. But his sharp exclamation halted me.
“No!” he said. “No — no! Forgive me for pausing — it was not hesitation, I assure you. To think that one — one, even, has come! All day they pass my sign up there — pass and fear to enter. But you are different. You are not of these timorous, ignorant foreign peasants. You ask me to tell you the right door? Here it is! Here!”
And he struck the panel of the door, which he had closed behind him, so that the sharp yet hollow sound of it echoed up through the silent house.
Now it may be thought that after all my senseless terror in the open street, so strange a welcome from so odd a showman would have brought the feeling back, full force. But there is an emotion stronger, to a certain point, than fear. This queer old fellow aroused my curiosity. What kind of museum could it be that he accused the passing public of fearing to enter? Nothing really terrible, surely, or it would have been closed by the police. And normally I am not an unduly timorous person. “So, it’s in there, is it?” I asked, coming toward him. “And I’m to be sole audience? Come, that will be an interesting experience.” I was half laughing now.
“The most interesting in the world,” said the old man, with a solemnity which rebuked my lightness.
With that he opened the door, passed inward and closed it again—in my very face. I stood staring at it blankly. The panels, I remember, had been originally painted white, but now the paint was flaked and blistered, gray with dirt and dirty finger marks. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had no wish to enter there. Whatever was behind it could be scarcely worth seeing, or he would not choose such a place for its exhibition. With the old man’s vanishing my curiosity had cooled, but just as I again turned to leave, the door opened and this singular showman stuck his white-eyebrowed face through the aperture. He was frowning impatiently. “Come in—come in!” he snapped, and promptly withdrawing his head, once more closed the door.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.