The Silent Treatment (The Haunt of Fear #27, September/October 1954)

Once upon a time, long, long ago, huddled on a bed in a cabin high in the mountains, a king lay stiffly, rigidly, not daring to move, not daring hardly to breathe, not daring to do anything except wait and listen and know that if he heard it again, that if it started again, that maddening sound, that his mind would surely snap and he'd rave and rant and finally fling himself from the cliff outside down into the final silent peace called death.

And as the king lay there in that quiet dismal far-away cabin far from the sounds of his kingdom, he thought about how it had been before this. Before he craved utter and complete silence. He thought about the Princess Genevieve. Pretty little Genevieve.

GENEVIEVE: "Daddy! My cat! I...I..."

KING: "More wine! More food! Come, musicians! Play! Jesters dance! And you! You, little wench. Come here."

The queen, Genevieve's mother, had died with her birth, but the infant had not replaced the emptiness that had been left in the king's heart. So the king had surrounded himself with a song and merriment and a court of beautiful, laughing woman to help him forget.

CONCUBINE: "The king is hot-blooded this day."

KING: "I'm always hot-blooded with you, Morganna."

GENEVIEVE: "Daddy, my cat! It's caught in the ivy vine!"

So orchestras had played and jesters had squealed and the ladies of the court had laughed and chattered and whispered coquettish things into the king's ear. And the palace had been filled with noise. The noise of gaiety and fun. Loud noise, drowning-out noise, drowning out a little princess's plea.

GENEVIEVE: "...caught in the ivy vine outside the tower window, daddy! Please help me rescue her, daddy! Daddy? My cat! Daddy?"

CONCUBINE: "A hot-blooded man is a real man, your majesty."

KING: "Kiss me, wench."

The din of self-indulgence had echoed through the palace as the Princess Genevieve had shrugged and turned at her father's indifference and climbed the long winding tower steps, the tears streaming from her eyes.

GENEVIEVE: "He...He never listens! He never hears me! He never hears anything I say!"

The little princess had mounted to the tower window, determined to rescue her trapped pet herself. She'd reached out coaxing loving arms as the melee of noise drifted up to her.

GENEVIEVE: "Here, pussy! Please pussy! Come to Genevieve! Please."

But she leaned out too far. She slipped from the tower window, clawing, catching herself on the ivy, clinging there precariously, high above the din. And she screamed.

GENEVIEVE: "Daddy! Help me! Daddy! Help!"

But the king had not heard his little daughter's cries. Her childish screams had not been able to penetrate the merriment and cavorting noise that reverberated through the throne room.

KING: "More win! Play! Sing! Louder! Louder!"

And so, the princess, Genevieve, had hung there, crying for help, until her tiny fingers had weakened and grown tired and lost their hold on the twisting vines and she plunged downward, shrieking.

GENEVIEVE: "YAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Then, suddenly, a strange silence had fallen upon the castle as the echoes of a plunging dying shriek had faded away. The kind had stood up, his mouth quivering, his eyes wide.

KING: "What...what was that?"

SERVANT: "It's the princess, sire! She's fallen from the tower window! She's...dead!"

The king had not heard his daughter's plea, her cries for help. The king had been surrounded with ear-splitting noise. And now, the noise and his daughter had both died away.

KING: "Genevieve! *sob* Genevieve!"

After the princess's death, the king had ordered the orchestras disbanded, the jesters stilled, the laughing women of the court away. The king had wanted silence now. A silence of mourning.

SERVANT: "Your majesty, I-"

KING: "Shhhh!"

And so, months had passed. The mourning period had ended for the people of the kingdom. Once more, church bells had tolled and oxcarts had rumbled and the people had gone about their business. But for the king, the mourning period had not ended. It would never end. Each sound that reached the king's ears brought with it the echo of a girl's shriek of death.

KING: "Stop it! Stop that clattering!"

SERVANT: "Yes, your majesty!"

The conscience-striken king had grown more and more sensitive to noise as time had gone by. A dreadful silence had come upon the palace. The servants, wary of incurring the king's wrath, had been forced to move about the marble halls in their stocking feet. A nervous care was taken to see that no unnecessary sound made or else.

MAID: "Oops!"

KING: "Blast you, clumsy! I want it quiet!"

But even with the dead stillness surrounding him in the palace, the king had not been satisfied. In the town far below, the tolling of the church bell had grated upon his acutely sensitive ears.

SERVANT: "It's a wedding, your majesty. The people are rejoicing."

KING: "Order the bell silenced! Have it removed and melted down! I can't stand the noise!"

The people of the kingdom were not happy that their glorious bell could no longer sing out. But what could they do? The king had ordered silence and the king was the king.

KING: "What is that? What's that hammering and clanging down there?"

SERVANT: "It is the blacksmith, sire. He is tempering the horseshoes..."

KING: "Order him to stop! Order him to stop immediately!"

Then the king called his royal prime minister.

KING: "Issue an order! There will be no noise! I want silence, do you hear? Silence? Anyone who dares defy me will be thrown in irons!"

PRIME MINISTER: "Yes, your majesty."

The blacksmith had been ordered to stop his anvil hammering, thereby forcing him to close down. But he had been arrested when he tacked up his notice.

BLACKSMITH: "But I only-!"

GUARD: "Silence, idiot!"

Merchants had been forced to abandon their oxcarts as a means of carrying about their merchandise, because of the racket the wooden wheels made on the cobblestones.

GUARD: "Get down off of there! You're under arrest!"

MERCHANT: "Please have pity!"

Carpenters were forced to give up the trade, because their sawing and nailing irritated their king. Building was halted.

CARPENTER: "My roof leaked! I had to-!"

GUARD: "Come with us! It's the dungeon for you!"

Finally, the sound-sensitive king had looked out over his silent kingdom from his silent palace and nodded in relieved approval. Now all was quiet. Now all what still. And then he heard the babble. Like mice in walls, the chattering, the distant sounds of voices.

KING: "Order them to stop talking!"

PRIME MINISTER: "Yes, your highness."

Talking was outlawed. The people had taken to whispering. Anyone who accidentally talked in a normal voice was immediately carted off and his tongue cut out. The king looked out over his silent kingdom from his silent palace and he nodded. And then he heard the hissing. The sibilant murmurs like wind-blown leaves.

KING: "Order them to stop whispering!"

PRIME MINISTER: "Yes, sire."

And so, all whispering had been banished from the kingdom. The people had taken to writing communication between themselves. Everyone carried implements with them. And the king looked out and he heard the scratching, the rubbing of chalk on slate like summer rain.

KING: "Order them to stop writing!"

PRIME MINISTER: "Yes, your majesty."

Now the people could do nothing but sit and stare at each other. And the king looked out over his silent kingdom and he heard the faint sighs, the sucking in and expelling out of air from their lungs like spring breezes.

KING: "ORDER THEM TO STOP BREATHING!"

PRIME MINISTER: "But, your majesty!"

The king raved and ranted, insisting upon the order.

PRIME MINISTER: "But, your majesty! If the people do not breath, they will die!"

KING: "Then let them die! I WANT SILENCE!"

And over the silent, silent kingdom, his voice carried like an echo.

VILLAGER #1: "Did you hear?"

VILLAGER #2: "The fool has gone far enough!"

The prime minister had shuffled off on padded feet and the king stood in the silence and listened, waiting for the sounds of the breathing that drifted up to him from the kingdom below to stop. But instead, he heard a stirring.

KING: "They're talking! They're whispering again!"

And the stirring had become a murmur and the murmur a humming and the humming a roar and the roar had thundered up the mountain toward the palace.

KING: "Silence! Silence, you fools! Go back! Go back and keep quiet!"

The thunder had been so loud, it drowned out the shrieks of the king. The thunder had been a thousand angry voices, a thousand pairs of angry feet. The carpenters, the blacksmiths, the merchants and leading them, a craftsman named Mason Higgins. Mason Higgins had clutched a small box in his hands.

HIGGINS: "Swim the moat!"

VILLAGER #3: "Lower the drawbridge!"

The thundering people had stormed the palace and overpowered the guards and stampeded through the marble halls and found the king.

VILLAGERS: "There he is! Get him! Higgins, the box!"

KING: "Oh, lord! The noise!"

The king had been forced to the floor and the people had done things to him with knives and needles and threads and Mason Higgins's little box. So, once upon a time, a king lay stiffly, rigidly, on a bed in a cabin high in the mountains where his people had exiled him. He lay, not daring to move, not daring to breathe, not daring to do anything but wait and listen and know that if he'd hear that sound again, just once, he's go out of his mind. It wouldn't happen as long as he lay still. It wouldn't happen as long as he wouldn't move. The king knew that. He suffered hours of torture time and time again during his brief exile. He'd born up under the maddening sound until it stopped and he found out! He found out that if he moved, it would start again!

So he lay stiffly, like stone, like silent stone and he watched the spider. The silent spider on the ceiling spinning it's silent web. And he watched the web lengthen and the spider drop, inch by inch, lower and lower, until it hung just above his face. And he still did not move. He just prayed. He prayed that the spider in the silent, silent cabin would silently climb back up it's silent silken thread, instead of...instead of...Oh, lord! The spider was coming closer, closer, closer to the king's face.

And then it touched him and he shuddered and screamed and swung at the spider and the silence was destroyed. That sound! That maddening sound began again! That incessant maddening tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. The sound that was driving him out of his mind.

KING: "No! No! NO!"

The sound coming from the special metronome time-piece Mason Higgins had labored over, ever so quietly, after they made him close his shop and stop his clocks. The metronome time-piece that wound up automatically at the slightest, slightest movement and took hours to run down. The metronome time-piece they seen inside the king before they had gone back to their normal noisy routines living happily ever after.

While the king went off the deep end...off a cliff.

KING: "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"