Uncollected Stories 2003 (12 page)

Stanley, hardly aware of what he was saying, poured out a garbled
version of what had happened to the janitor. Charlie Gereson looked
more and more confused and doubtful. As upset as he was, Dex began
to realize that Charlie didn't believe a word of it. He thought, with a new
kind of horror, that soon Charlie would ask him if he had been working
too hard, and that when he did, Stanley would burst into mad cackles of
laughter.
But what Charlie said was, "That's pretty far out, Professor Stanley."
"It's true. We've got to get campus security over here. We – "
"No, that's no good. One of them would stick his hand in there, first
thing." He saw Dex's stricken look and went on. "If I'm having trouble
swallowing this, what are they going to think?"
"I don't know," Dex said. "I...I never thought..."
"They'd think you just came off a helluva toot and were seeing
Tasmanian devils instead of pink elephants," Charlie Gereson said
cheerfully, and pushed his glasses up on his pug nose. "Besides, from
what you say, the responsibility has belonged with zoology all along...
like for a hundred and forty years."
"But..." He swallowed, and there was a click in his throat as he
prepared to voice his worst fear. "But it may be out."
"I doubt that," Charlie said, but didn't elaborate. And in that, Dex saw
two things: that Charlie didn't believe a word he had said, and that
nothing he could say would dissuade Charlie from going back down
there.
Henry Northrup glanced at his watch. They had been sitting in the
study for a little over an hour; Wilma wouldn't be back for another two.
Plenty of time. Unlike Charlie Gereson, he had passed no judgment at
all on the factual basis of Dex's story. But he had known Dex for a
longer time than young Gereson had, and he didn't believe his friend
exhibited the signs of a man who has suddenly developed a psychosis.
What he exhibited was a kind of bug-eyed fear, no more or less than
you'd expect to see a man who has had an extremely close call
with...well, just an extremely close call.
"He went down, Dex?"
"Yes. He did."
"You went with him?"
"Yes."
Henry shifted position a little. "I can understand why he didn't want to
get campus security until he had checked the situation himself. But Dex,
you knew you were telling the flat-out truth, even if he didn't. Why
didn't you call?"
"You believe me?" Dex asked. His voice trembled. "You believe me,
don't you, Henry?"
Henry considered briefly. The story was mad, no question about that.
The implication that there could be something in that box big enough
and lively enough to kill a man after some one hundred and forty years
was mad. He didn't believe it. But this was Dex...and he didn't
disbelieve it either.
"Yes," he said.
"Thank God for that," Dex said. He groped for his drink. "Thank God
for that, Henry."
"It doesn't answer the question, though. Why didn't you call the
campus cops?"
"I thought...as much as I did think... that it might not want to come out
of the crate, into the bright light. It must have lived in the dark for so
long...so very long...and...grotesque as this sounds...I thought it might
be pot-bound, or something. I thought...well, he'll see it...he'll see the
rate...the janitor's body...he'll see the blood...and then we'd call security.
You see?" Stanley's eyes pleaded with him to see, and Henry did. He
thought that, considering the fact that it had been a snap judgment in a
pressure situation, that Dex had thought quite clearly. The blood. When
the young graduate student saw the blood, he would have been happy to
call in the cops.
"But it didn't work out that way."
"No." Dex ran a hand through his thinning hair.
"Why not?"
"Because when we got down there, the body was gone."
"It was gone?"
"That's right. And the crate was gone, too."
When Charlie Gereson saw the blood, his round and good-natured
face went very pale. His eyes, already magnified by his thick spectacles,
grew even huger. Blood was puddled on the lab table. It had run down
one of the table legs. It was pooled on the floor, and beads of it clung to
the light globe and to the white tile wall. Yes, there was plenty of blood.
But no janitor. No crate.
Dex Stanley's jaw dropped. "What the fuck!" Charlie whispered. Dex
saw something then, perhaps the only thing that allowed him to keep his
sanity. Already he could feel that central axle trying to pull free. He
grabbed Charlie's shoulder and said, "Look at the blood on the table!"
"I've seen enough," Charlie said.
His Adam's apple rose and fell like an express elevator as he struggled
to keep his lunch down.
"For God's sake, get hold of yourself," Dex said harshly. "You're a
zoology major. You've seen blood before."
It was the voice of authority, for that moment anyway. Charlie did get
a hold of himself, and they walked a little closer. The random pools of
blood on the table were not as random as they had first appeared. Each
had been neatly straight-edged on one side.
"The crate sat there," Dex said. He felt a little better. The fact that the
crate really had been there steadied him a good deal. "And look there."
He pointed at the floor. Here the blood had been smeared into a wide,
thin trail.
It swept toward where the two of them stood, a few paces inside the
double doors. It faded and faded, petering out altogether about halfway
between the lab table and the doors. It was crystal clear to Dex Stanley,
and the nervous sweat on his skin went cold and clammy.
It had gotten out.
It had gotten out and pushed the crate off the table. And then it had
pushed the crate...where? Under the stairs, of course. Back under the
stairs. Where it had been safe for so long.
"Where's the...the..." Charlie couldn't finish.
"Under the stairs," Dex said numbly. "It's gone back to where it came
from."
"No. The..." He jerked it out finally. "The body."
"I don't know," Dex said. But he thought he did know. His mind
would simply not admit the truth.
Charlie turned abruptly and walked back through the doors. "Where
are you going?" Dex called shrilly, and ran after him. Charlie stopped
opposite the stairs. The triangular black hole beneath them gaped. The
janitor's big four-cell flashlight still sat on the floor. And beside it was a
bloody scrap of gray cloth, and one of the pens that had been clipped to
the man's breast pocket.
"Don't go under there, Charlie! Don't." His heartbeat whammed
savagely in his ears, frightening him even more.
"No," Charlie said. "But the body..."
Charlie hunkered down, grabbed the flashlight, and shone it under the
stairs.
And the crate was there, shoved up against the far wall, just as it had
been before, squat and mute. Except that now it was free of dust and
three boards had been pried off the top.
The light moved and centered on one of the janitor's big, sensible
work shoes. Charlie drew breath in a low, harsh gasp. The thick leather
of the shoe had been savagely gnawed and chewed. The laces hung,
broken, from the eyelets. "It looks like somebody put it through a hay
baler," he said hoarsely.
"Now do you believe me?" Dex asked.
Charlie didn't answer. Holding onto the stairs lightly with one hand,
he leaned under the overhang – presumably to get the shoe. Later,
sitting in Henry's study, Dex said he could think of only one reason why
Charlie would have done that – to measure and perhaps categorize the
bite of the thing in the crate. He was, after all, a zoologist, and a damned
good one.
"
Don't
!" Dex screamed, and grabbed the back of Charlie's shirt.
Suddenly there were two green gold eyes glaring over the top of the
crate. They were almost exactly the color of owls' eyes, but smaller.
There was a harsh, chattering growl of anger. Charlie recoiled, startled,
and slammed the back of his head on the underside of the stairs. A
shadow moved from the crate toward him at projectile speed. Charlie
howled. Dex heard the dry purr of his shirt as it ripped open, the click as
Charlie's glasses struck the floor and spun away. Once more Charlie
tried to back away. The thing began to snarl – then the snarls suddenly
stopped. And Charlie Gereson began to scream in agony.
Dex pulled on the back of his white tee shirt with all his might. For a
moment Charlie came backwards and he caught a glimpse of a furry,
writhing shape spread-eagled on the young man's chest, a shape that
appeared to have not four but six legs and the flat bullet head of a young
lynx. The front of Charlie Gereson's shirt had been so quickly and
completely tattered that it now looked like so many crepe streamers
hung around his neck.
Then the thing raised its head and those small green gold eyes stared
balefully into Dex's own. He had never seen or dreamed such savagery.
His strength failed.
His grip on the back of Charlie's shirt loosened momentarily.
A moment was all it took. Charlie Gereson's body was snapped under
the stairs with grotesque, cartoonish speed. Silence for a moment. Then
the growling, smacking sounds began again.
Charlie screamed once more, a long sound of terror and pain that was
abruptly cut off...as if something had been clapped over his mouth.
Or stuffed into it.
Dex fell silent. The moon was high in the sky. Half of his third drink –
an almost unheard-of phenomenon – was gone, and he felt the reaction
setting in as sleepiness and extreme lassitude.
"What did you do then?" Henry asked. What he hadn't done, he knew,
was to go to campus security; they wouldn't have listened to such a
story and then released him so he could go and tell it again to his friend
Henry.
"I just walked around, in utter shock, I suppose. I ran up the stairs
again, just as I had after...after it took the janitor, only this time there
was no Charlie Gereson to run into. I walked...miles, I suppose. I think I
was mad. I kept thinking about Ryder's Quarry. You know that place?"
"Yes," Henry said.
"I kept thinking that would be deep enough. If...if there would be a
way to get that crate out there. I kept...kept thinking..." He put his hands
to his face. "I don't know. I don't know anymore. I think I'm going
crazy."
"If the story you just told is true, I can understand that," Henry said
quietly.
He stood up suddenly. "Come on. I'm taking you home."
"Home?" Dex looked at this friend vacantly. "But – "
"I'll leave a note for Wilma telling her where we've gone and then
we'll call...who do you suggest, Dex? Campus security or the state
police?"
"You believe me, don't you? You believe me? Just say you do."
"Yes, I believe you," Henry said, and it was the truth. "I don't know
what that thing could be or where it came from, but I believe you." Dex
Stanley began to weep.
"Finish your drink while I write my wife," Henry said, apparently not
noticing the tears. He even grinned a little. "And for Christ's sake, let's
get out of here before she gets back."
Dex clutched at Henry's sleeve. "But we won't go anywhere near
Amberson Hall, will we? Promise me, Henry! We'll stay away from
there, won't we?"
"Does a bear shit in the woods?" Henry Northrup asked. It was a
three-mile drive to Dex's house on the outskirts of town, and before they
got there, he was half-asleep in the passenger seat.
"The state cops, I think," Henry said. His words seemed to come from
a great distance. "I think Charlie Gereson's assessment of the campus
cops was pretty accurate. The first one there would happily stick his arm
into that box."
"Yes. All right." Through the drifting, lassitudinous aftermath of
shock, Dex felt a dim but great gratitude that his friend had taken over
with such efficiency. Yet a deeper part of him believed that Henry could
not have done it if he had seen the things he had seen. "Just...the
importance of caution ..."
"I'll see to that," Henry said grimly, and that was when Dex fell
asleep.
He awoke the next morning with August sunshine making crisp
patterns on the sheets of his bed.
Just a dream
, he thought with
indescribable relief.
All some crazy dream
.
But there was a taste of Scotch in his mouth--Scotch and something
else. He sat up, and a lance of pain bolted through his head. Not the sort
of pain you got from a hangover, though; not even if you were the type
to get a hangover from three Scotches, and he wasn't.
He sat up, and there was Henry, sitting across the room. His first
thought was that Henry needed a shave. His second was that there was
something in Henry's eyes that he had never seen before – something
like chips of ice. A ridiculous thought came to Dex; it passed through
his mind and was gone.
Sniper's eyes
.
Henry Northrup, whose specialty is the earlier English poets, has got
sniper's eyes.
"How are you feeling, Dex?"
"A slight headache," Dex said. "Henry...the police...what happened?"
"The police aren't coming," Northrup said calmly. "As for your head,
I'm very sorry. I put one of Wilma's sleeping powders in your third
drink. Be assured that it will pass."
"Henry, what are you saying?"
Henry took a sheet of notepaper from his breast pocket. "This is the
note I left my wife. It will explain a lot, I think. I got it back after
everything was over. I took a chance that she'd leave it on the table, and
I got away with it."
"I don't know what you're – "
He took the note from Henry's fingers and read it, eyes widening.
Dear Billie,
I've just had a call from Dex Stanley. He's hysterical. Seems to have
committed some sort of indiscretion with one of his female grad
students. He's at Amberson Hall. So is the girl. For God's sake, come
quickly. I'm not sure exactly what the situation is, but a woman's
presence may be imperative, and under the circumstances, a nurse from
the infirmary just won't do. I know you don't like Dex much, but a
scandal like this could ruin his career. Please come.
Henry.
"What in God's name have you done?" Dex asked hoarsely.
Henry plucked the note from Dex's nerveless fingers, produced his
Zippo, and set flame to the corner. When it was burning well, he
dropped the charring sheet of paper into an ashtray on the windowsill.