The Man Who Was Pale

She was just a sweet, kind-hearted old landlady who couldn't keep her nose out of other people's business. This was very unfortunate for Mr. Thobal.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Science Fiction Stories December 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Mrs. Tibbets was a worrier. When it rained, she worried about people caught outside without umbrellas. When the sun shone, she worried about the corn crop that might need water. At band concerts, she worried about the deaf people who were missing the music. If it thundered, she worried for the hearing of people with good ears. No matter what happened, she found something to get worried about. As long as she was worried, she was content.

Her husband had been dead ten years when Mrs. Tibbets realized that she had a twelve-bedroom house for just herself alone, and began to worry about people who had no place to live. So she put an ad into the papers offering her home as lodging for any who could afford the modest price she asked for the rooms (her husband had left her very little money, and this worried her, too).

After eleven of the rooms were filled--leaving the remaining room for herself--the price of the ad in the paper began to worry her, so she called and had it taken out. Then she settled herself comfortably in the living room, and, in her new role as landlady, began to worry about collecting the weekly rent.

The sun had just set, and Mrs. Tibbets had just turned on the lights in the living room--and begun to worry about the electric bill--when the door-chimes sounded.

"It could be a telegram with bad news," thought Mrs. Tibbets, worrying herself toward the door. "Or the police are here to arrest one of the tenants. Or some desperate criminal has come here to murder us all. Or--"

At this juncture, she opened the door.

She found herself looking up into the sad-eyed, pale face of a man who stood at least six-feet-six inches tall, couldn't have weighed less than two hundred pounds, and was rather startlingly garbed in an ankle-length opera cloak with a flame-colored silk lining.

"I've come about a room," he said, in an enthralling baritone voice, with just the smallest hint of a foreign accent bending the syllables. "My name," he added, with a toothy smile, "is Thobal. Vandor Thobal."

* * * * *

Mrs. Tibbets found herself smiling back, despite the queer goosefleshy feeling she got all over when she saw the length and sharpness of his canines. There was a numbing sort of heat in his deep-set, burning eyes that made her feel rather weak and helpless.

"I'm afraid--" she said, and almost left those two words as her complete statement, "--I'm afraid that I've rented all the rooms. I just had the ad taken out of the paper today."

"Surely you have something ..." he insisted, coming inside her hall and closing the door behind him. He made no move to remove his cloak. "All I require is a place to sleep...."

"I'm so terribly sorry, but I--" Mrs. Tibbets began to worry about Mister Thobal, all at once. What if she turned him away, and he were found in the morning, huddled frozen in an alley somewhere. The fact that it was mid-July didn't stop her mental image of frosty death. Then she brightened. "Perhaps ... I wouldn't show this to anybody, ordinarily, because it's really a terrible sort of place, but I do have a very small room. However, I should warn you: It's down in the cellar."