Whispers: An anthology of Fantasy and Horror

THE PAWNSHOP by Charles E. Fritch

“It’s not that I have anything against you personally, Davis,” the old man said. “But I simply must kill you.”

“But why, Mr. Carver?” the young man wanted to know. He’d stopped straining at his bonds, realizing at last the futility of that. “I’ve been your faithful employee for the past two years. If I’m going to die, at least tell me why.”

“Because I’m old,” Jonathan Carver said wearily, “and ready to die myself, and my soul is in hock.”

“I don’t understand,” James Davis said.

Carver grunted. “Of course you don’t. You’re young, happily married, with children. You have your whole life ahead of you. Or you would have,” he amended, matter-of-factly, “if I weren’t going to kill you.”

The old man glanced around the soundproof basement. The two of them were alone, of course. The door was locked and bolted from the inside. Davis’s young body was securely manacled to the wall, and there was no danger of his escaping.

“I suppose I do owe you an explanation,” he admitted.

I was a very young man (Jonathan Carver said) and I needed a thousand dollars. I had this idea for a new kind of radio component that would replace vacuum tubes. With a little money I could set myself up in business. But as I say, I was very young, very inexperienced. I was afraid someone would steal my ideas. I was also desperate.

I had this ring my mother had given me—a diamond, not very large, probably not worth very much, I thought, but I had to raise money somehow, so on impulse one day I stopped in a pawnshop to see what I could get for it. It was a dark, dusty old shop cluttered with the usual junk one finds in such a place. The proprietor was a middle-aged man of medium height and average appearance who didn’t even look at the ring I thrust under his nose.

“I’ll give you a thousand dollars cash for something else,” the man said; “something you don’t even know you have.”

A thousand dollars! Exactly the amount I needed. “Yes,” I agreed quickly. “Anything. I’d give my soul for a thousand dollars.”

The man smiled, and with good reason, for that’s precisely what he had in mind.

You laugh at that. Well, I don’t blame you. I laughed too, because of course I thought he was jesting; or else he was a madman. But then he went to his cashbox and brought out a thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills and placed them on the counter. Madman or not, his money was sane enough for my purpose.

I reached for the money, but he stopped me. “First,” he said, placing a small card on the counter before me, “you must put your thumbprint in the blank space. That makes it legal.”

I believed it to be nonsense, but for a thousand dollars I desperately needed, I’d be willing to humor the devil himself. I placed my finger in the blank space on the card and was surprised to find it was very warm. When I took my thumb away, the imprint was imbedded in the formerly blank area.

He didn’t stop me as I gathered up the ten one-hundred-dollar bills. I said, “I suppose you’ll want this back with interest?”

He said, “Of course not. Read the fine print on back of the card. You don’t repay us with money, but with bad deeds.”

He turned away and disappeared amid the clutter in the back of the store. I was going to call to him for an explanation, but I decided not to. After all, I had my money, and what good would it do me to argue ridiculous points with someone so obviously addled? I glanced at the card again. It held my thumbprint, as big as life, my name, and the amount borrowed: $1,000.00. The reverse side of the card held a library of small print, which I’d read later, if I had the time.

I had no patience with it now, for I was eager to get started on my new project. My mind was filled with a multitude of things I had to do—rent an old shack to be used as my first workshop, buy machinery, tools, and raw materials, perhaps even hire some part-time labor. So it was quite by accident that as I was rushing from the pawnshop, the card in one hand, counting my money, that I ran into the path of a speeding car.

For an instant, a horrible thought flashed across my mind: the devil was about to collect my soul before I had a chance to pay him off!

But then the car swerved to miss me, skidded, and went up onto the sidewalk and crashed into the porch of a tenement building. Gasoline flooded from the vehicle’s tank and caught fire. The apartment dwellings were old and dry, and they went up like tinderwood. Before the fire department could do anything, the entire block was destroyed. There were a few injuries, but miraculously no one was killed.

That night in my hotel room I happened to glance at the pawnshop ticket. The number had changed. Instead of the original $1,000.00, the figure was $999.00, I recalled what the pawnbroker had told me: “You don’t repay us with money, but with had deeds.”

I was astonished, not so much at the magical change in the number on the ticket, but that destruction of so many buildings, coupled with the various injuries sustained by several persons, was worth a mere one dollar. At that rate, I’d have to set fire to nine hundred ninety-nine more buildings in order to pay my debt.

That was nonsense, I decided, and immediately dismissed the thought. When I had a thousand dollars in profits from my venture, I’d pay off the loan, adding whatever interest was due.

I rented the shack, bought what tools I needed, invested money in raw materials, and worked night and day to build up my little business. Within six months, I had to move to a larger location. I’d hired three full-time employees. I was making a good living, and I had several thousand dollars in my bank account. I withdrew twelve hundred of the savings and returned to the pawnshop where I’d “hocked my soul.”

Or I tried to. I went back to the same location. Still across the street were the charred ruins of the tenements which had not been replaced. But there was no pawnshop. According to neighbors, there never had been one there. It was my imagination, they said. The pawn ticket, however, was very real, and on it I read the statement that I would not be allowed to redeem my soul under any circumstances except those specified. That’s when I decided to read the fine print in the contract.

There was just no getting around it. I had to do bad deeds, if I wanted to get my soul back. Actually, assuming there was such a thing as a soul and a person as the devil and a place called Hell, it seemed logical that Satan would want such things written into a contract. It was his purpose on Earth to do evil deeds, or to have them done, and according to the fine print every little bit helped. For example, if once a day I kicked a dog on the street, it might not register right away on the card, but it would all add up over the years.

To tell the truth, I wasn’t totally convinced just then to take all this at face value. During six months, the number had remained at the $999.00 figure, not budging. Of course, I’d been too busy at honest labor to do anything bad, even accidentally. At the rate I was going, I’d never do enough evil to pay off my debt before I died—and then it would be too late.

I put the thought from my mind. After all, I was a young man, and death seemed so distant as to be nonexistent. I threw myself wholeheartedly into my work, hardly bothering even with the simple pleasures of life.

Except for Mary, that is.

She was a pretty thing, with soft brown hair, liquid eyes, a pert nose, rich red lips. She was quite innocent when she came to work for me at the plant because I needed some office help. Would you believe she had to support a sick mother? Oh, it was a marvelous set-up. I think she genuinely liked me, but even then she might not have done what I wanted if I hadn’t intimated she might be fired otherwise. The poor girl needed the money, even the modest stipend I gave her every week. Besides, I told her I loved her and that we’d get married some day when the factory was built up enough.

And the silly goose had to go and get pregnant! She came to me in tears, saying she couldn’t have an illegitimate child and I’d have to marry her. I told her I didn’t have to do any such thing. I said she was probably fooling around with dozens of other fellows. I told her to go find the true father and not to bother me any more. To make doubly sure she kept away, I fired her.

I learned later that she took her own life, and shortly thereafter her mother grew worse and also died. I didn’t think it was my fault, but apparently my friends in the pawnshop did, for they gave me a credit of one hundred dollars for the two lives.

I began to take the ticket and the contract more seriously after that. I mean, just on the off chance there was something to this devil and soul business. I read the fine print on back of the card carefully. It didn’t spell out all the credits available, but it made it clear that human life was at a premium, and the more I could make that human suffer, the more credit I got.

Which, by the way, Davis, is why I intend torturing you before I kill you. I’m sure you can see my logic in that.

Anyway, I realized happily that it wouldn’t really be going out of my way to do bad deeds. It was common in the business world then just as it is now. In fact, I suspect many big businessmen have sold their souls to the devil and are now doing bad deeds in the name of industry in order to redeem their pledges. And along the way, I could do a few things when the opportunities presented themselves.

For example, I went to church. That surprises you, does it? Well, you won’t be surprised when you hear the reason. When they passed the plate, instead of putting something in it, I always took something out. Stealing was worth a few points, but stealing from the devil’s opposition was even better. Not enough, perhaps, to register immediately as a credit on my pawn ticket, but it all added up, as the fine print insisted.

If only I’d been in munitions, I could’ve had my debt wiped out long ago. Or even if I’d been in the service, maybe I could’ve tossed a few grenades in the right spots to pile up some credits; unfortunately, the head-shrinkers decided I was unfit for military duty, whatever that meant. So I had to do it the hard way, a little at a time.

I kicked dogs whenever they came within booting range, littered places that had do-not-litter signs, laid off my employees just before Christmas, broke windows when no one was looking, let the air out of tires—and so on. It got so I never let an opportunity pass without taking advantage of it, no matter how small it might be. Compared to me, Ebenezer Scrooge was a fairy godmother.

And every once in a while, the figure on the ticket would change, sometimes only a penny at a time. But then, I was a young man, and I had plenty of time. At least, that’s what I thought. But the years went by so swiftly. My bank balance built up into the millions. I own five factories turning out electronic equipment for the government and private industry. I have a big home and several cars.

And now, I’m very close to dying, and I still owe the devil fifty dollars and seventy-three cents.

“So you see,” Jonathan Carver said to the manacled young man, “why I must kill you. I must torture you seventy-three cents’ worth and then destroy your fifty-dollar body. Perhaps, because you have a wife and children who will be distraught and penniless, I have some leeway, but I can’t afford to take any chances. It’s nothing personal, Davis, I want you to understand that.”

James Davis wet his lips. “Wait. You’re making a mistake. You wouldn’t be doing a bad deed killing me.”

“Please,” Jonathan Carver said wearily. “Don’t waste my time with nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense,” Davis rushed on desperately. “You see, I’ve got a pawn ticket myself.”

Jonathan Carver paused to stare at the young man.

Davis nodded. “My wife, Beth. You’ve never met her, but she’s beautiful. When I first met her, she didn’t love me. I remember I was walking along the street thinking I’d sell my soul if I could only have her for my wife. Suddenly I looked up to see this pawnshop where none had been before. On impulse I went in. The man said he’d loan me one thousand dollars to buy roses for the girl I loved. He said an eloquent gesture like that would make her love me. I thought he was mad, but he counted out the money and said if it didn’t work, I owed him nothing. If it did—”

“Your soul,” the old man said.

“Right. I didn’t see what I had to lose, and I was crazy enough myself to try it. And of course it worked. Beth was so impressed with the nut who loved her enough to fill half her house with red roses on a whim, she started taking a new interest in me. We were married a month later.” James Davis paused. “So you see, I’m working to pay off my own debt, just like you. I’ve got a lifetime of bad deeds ahead of me. If you kill me now, you’ll be doing the world a favor—but not yourself.”

Jonathan Carver stared thoughtfully at the man. “I don’t believe you,” he said finally.

“The pawn ticket is in my wallet,” the young man said. “See for yourself.”

Cautiously the old man extricated Davis’s wallet from a rear pocket and fumbled through the cards until he came to a familiar one that held a thumbprint, the name James Davis, and the number $997.46.

“You’ve got a long way to go,” Carver grunted.

“I just started,” Davis said, almost apologetically. “You’d be surprised at some of the things I had to do to get the loan down that far. Anyway, as you can see, we’re both working for the same employer.”

The old man sighed. “All right.” He shuffled forward to release the man from his manacles. “Perhaps,” he added hopefully, “we can even work together—for our mutual benefit.”

James Davis rubbed circulation into his unbound ankles and wrists. “I’m afraid not.” He smiled and said pleasantly, “One of the things I’ve been doing during my two-year employment as your bookkeeper is embezzling funds from you.”

Jonathan Carver’s face turned livid. “What?”

“That’s right.” The young man’s strong hands leaped out to grasp the old man by the throat. “And here’s where I earn a fifty-dollar credit for myself.”

Carver’s puny hands scrabbled at the fingers tightening into his windpipe. He gasped and wheezed, and his face changed color.

“But you mustn’t kill me,” he muttered hoarsely. “You said killing an evil person is not a bad deed.”

“I lied,” James Davis said simply. “Lying is worth a few points too, you know. Besides, you don’t really think the devil is going to let you redeem your soul, do you?”

Suddenly the old man laughed. “Nor yours,” he said.

James Davis’s fingers cut off the old man’s words forever, but years later the young man growing old remembered them and knew the beginnings of fear.