He leaned against the platform, chest throbbing with agitated breath. If the straw had landed on his foot…
He closed his eyes. Don’t think about it, he warned himself. Please. Don’t think about the things that could have happened.
The second time he tried, he managed to get the straw propped on the edge of the first stone. But while he was resting the straw fell over and almost knocked him down. Cursing with desperate anger, he dragged the straw to a leaning position, then, with a surge of energy, lifted it once more, this time making sure it was secure before letting go.
The next lift was harder yet. Leverage would be bad because he’d have to start raising the straw at waist level, and then up to the top of the second stone, which was at the level of his shoulders. His legs would be of no service. All the strength would have to come from his back, shoulders, and arms.
Drawing in breath through his mouth, he waited till his chest was swollen taut, then cut off air abruptly and lifted the heavy straw, setting it down on the second stone. It wasn’t until he let go that he realized how much of a lift it had been. There was a painful tension through his back and groin that loosened very slowly, as if the muscles had been twisted like wrung-out cloths and were unraveling now. He pressed a palm against the soft area on his back.
A few moments later he climbed to the top of the platform. With one more short lift, he slid the end of the straw into the groove. He shook the straw until it was in the most advantageous position, then sat down to gather strength for the climb. The giant was still working. There would be time. Of course there would.
Then he stood and tested the straw. Good, he thought. He inhaled quickly. Now to get out of there. He felt at the coil of thread over his right shoulder. Good. He was ready.
He began inching up the straw, shinnying along it carefully to keep it from sliding over. It sagged even more under his weight. Once it began to slip a little to the side, and he had to stop and, with body jerks, shake it back into position.
After a pause, he started climbing again, legs wrapped around the straw, lips drawn back from clenched teeth, eyes looking straight ahead at the dead gray of the cement face. When he got to the top of the step, he’d lower a thread loop and pull up the straw. There would be no stones to prop it on up there, but he’d manage something. Now he was twenty feet up, now twenty-five, now thirty, now…
A gigantic shape slid over him, blotting the sun from view.
He almost fell off the straw. Losing his grip, he spun around to the underside of the straw, arms hugging wildly at its smooth surface. He jerked himself to a halt, and found himself looking into the green lantern eyes of the cat.
Shock drained breath from him. He felt even more helplessly petrified than when the giant had come down the steps. He clung to the straw, staring at the cat as if hypnotized.
The spearlike whiskers twitched. The huge cat edged forward in wary curiosity, belly near the floor, front legs flattened, back slightly arched. Scott felt the warm wind of its breath misting over him, and he almost retched.
Unconsciously he let himself slide down a few inches. There was a liquid rumbling in the cat’s throat and he stopped abruptly, hanging there motionless. The cat’s whiskers twitched again. Its breath was sickening. Turning his head from side to side, he saw its protruding side teeth like giant, yellow-edged daggers that could pierce his body in an instant.
An electric shuddering ran down his back. He slid down the straw a little more. The cat hunched forward. No! his mind screamed. He froze to the quivering straw, heartbeat like a fist pounding at his chest.
If he tried to descend, the cat would attack. If he jumped, he’d break a leg and be eaten. Yet he couldn’t stay there. His throat contracted with a dry clicking. He hung there impotently under the bland surveillance of the huge cat.
When it raised its right paw twitchingly, his breath stopped.
In a fascination of absolute horror, he watched the huge, gray, scythe-clawed paw rise up slowly, coming closer and closer to him. He couldn’t move. Unblinking, stark-eyed he hung there waiting.
Just before the paw was going to touch him, everything shook loose at once.
“Get out!” he screamed into the cat’s face. It jumped back, startled. With a lurch, he flung the straw to the side, and it began sliding raspingly along the cement face, faster and faster. Not looking at the cat, he hung on till the toppling straw was about five feet from the floor. Then he leaped.
Landing, he twisted himself in a somersault. Behind him the cat glided forward, growling. Get up! his mind shrieked. He found his feet again and lurched forward, falling.
As he skidded to his knees, the cat jumped, great paws banging down on each side of him, claw ends raking sparks from the cement. The mouth yawned open, a cave of scimitars and hot winds.
Twitching back against the step, Scott felt the thread coil slip off his shoulder. Grabbing it, he flung it deep into the cat’s mouth and it jumped back, spitting and gagging. Pushing off from the step, Scott raced to the hole of stones and dived into a cave.
A second after, the cat’s paw raked across the spot where he had entered. A cuffed stone rattled away. Scott crawled to the back of the cave and down a side tunnel as the cat scratched wildly at the rocks.
“Hey, Puss.”
Scott stopped abruptly, head cocked, as the deep voice thundered.
“Hey, what’re you after?” asked the voice. Scott heard chuckling like a threat of distant thunder. “Got yourself a mouse in there?”
The floor shook as the giant’s shoes thudded across it. With an indrawn cry, Scott ran down the sloping tunnel, off into another one, again into yet another, until he skidded to a halt before a blank wall.
There he crouched shivering and waiting.
“Got yourself a mouse, have you?” the voice asked. It made Scott’s head hurt. He covered up his ears. He still heard the fierce meowing of the cat.
“Well, let’s see if we can’t find ’im, puss,” the giant said.
“No,” Scott didn’t even know he spoke. He shrank against the wall hearing the boulders being shoved aside by the giant’s hands, the sound a grating, screeching rasp that plunged like a knife into his brain. He pressed both palms against his ears as hard as he could.
Suddenly, light speared across him. With a cry, he dived headlong into a newly opened tunnel. Clawing wildly at the air, he fell seven feet to a hard rock shelf, landing on his side and raking skin off his right arm. In the darkness, a boulder slammed down beside him, tearing skin from the heel of his right hand. He cried out in terror.
The giant said, “We’ll find ’im, puss, we’ll find ’im.”
Light again. With a rasping sob, Scott lurched up and dived into the darkness again. A stone bounced off the floor and knocked him down. He rolled over and up again, running across the floor of the collapsing cavern, mute with panic. Another bouncing rock sent him flailing across the floor to smash head-on into a rock wall.
As deeper blackness blotted out his mind, he felt blood trickling warmly down his cheek. His legs went limp, his hands uncurled like flowers dying, and falling rocks reared up a tomb around him.
C HAPTER
N INE
At last he stumbled into light.
He stood at the mouth of the cave, looking around the cellar with dull, unwitting eyes.
The giant was gone. And the cat. The side of the water heater was fastened back in place. Everything was as it had been; the vast, piled objects, the heavy silence, the imprisoning remoteness of it all. His gaze moved slowly to the steps and up them. The door was shut.
He stared at it, feeling empty with desire. He had struggled in vain once more. All the pushing of boulders, the endless crawlings and climbings through inky tunnel twists had been in vain.
His eyes closed. He swayed weakly on the hill of rocks, one throbbing length of pain. It seemed to well over him; his arms, his hands and legs and trunk. Inside, too, in his throat and chest and stomach. He had a dull, eating
headache. He didn’t know if he were starving or nauseous. His hands shook fitfully.
He shuffled back to the heater.
The thimble had been knocked on its side. The few drops remaining in it he drank like a thirsty animal, sucking them up from the cuplike indentations. It hurt to swallow.
When he had finished the water, he climbed with slow, exhausted movements to the top of the cement block. His sleeping place was completely barren, the sponge, handkerchief, cracker bundle, the box top all gone. He stumbled to the edge of the block and saw the box top across the floor. He hadn’t the strength to lift it.
He remained in the shadowy warmth for a long while, just standing, weaving a little, staring out at the darkening cellar. Another day ending. Wednesday. Three days left.
His stomach gurgled hungrily. Slowly he tilted his head back and looked up to where he put the few soggy cracker crumbs. They were still there. With a groan he moved to the leg of the water heater and climbed up to the shelf.
He sat there, legs dangling, eating the cracker pieces. They were still damp, but edible. His jaws moved with rhythmless lethargy, his eyes staring straight ahead. He was so tired he could hardly eat. He knew he should go down and get the box top to sleep under in case the spider came. It came almost every night. But he was too weary. He’d sleep up here on the shelf. If the spider came… Well, what did it matter? It reminded him of a time, long before, when he had been with the Infantry in Germany. He’d been so tired that he’d gone to sleep without digging a foxhole, knowing it might mean his death.
He plodded along the shelf until he came to a walled-in area, then climbed over the wall and sank down in the darkness, his head resting on a screw head.
He lay there on his back, breathing slowly, barely able to summon the strength to fill his lungs. He thought, Little man, what now?
It occurred to him then that, instead of fighting with the stones and the straw, he might simply have climbed into the giant’s slack cuff and been carried from the cellar in a moment. The only indication of the self-fury he felt was a sudden bunching of skin around his closed eyes, a moist clicking sound as his lips pulled back suddenly from clenched teeth. Fool! Even the thought seemed to rise wearily.
His face relaxed again into a mask of sagging lines.
Another question. Why hadn’t he tried to communicate with the giant? Oddly enough, that thought didn’t anger him. It was so alien it only surprised him. Was that because he was so small, because he felt that he was in another world and there could be no communication? Or was it that, as in all decisions now, he counted on only himself for any desired accomplishment?
Surely not that, he thought bitterly. He was as helpless and ineffectual as ever, maybe a little more blundering, that was all.
In the darkness he felt experimentally around his body. He ran a hand over the long, raw-fleshed scrape on his right forearm. He touched the torn flesh on the heel of his right hand, nudged an elbow against the swelling, purplish bruise on his right side. He ran a finger over the jagged laceration across his forehead. He prodded at his sore throat. He reared up a trifle and felt the shoot of pain in his back. Finally he let the separate aches sink back again into the general, coalescent pain.
His eyes opened, the lids seeming to fall back of their own accord, and he stared sightlessly at the darkness. He remembered regaining consciousness in the sepulcher of rocks; remembered the horror that had almost driven him insane until he realized that there was air to breathe and he had to keep his mind if he wanted to get out.
But that first instant of realizing that he was sealed in a black crypt and still alive had been the lowest point.
He wondered why the phrase occurred to him. How did he know it was his lowest point? There might be others much worse waiting around the next corner—if he stayed alive.
But he couldn’t think of anything else. It was the lowest point, the nadir of his existence in the cellar.
It made him think of another lowest point, in the other life he had once led.
35″
When they got home from Marty’s he stood at the living-room window while Lou carried Beth to bed. He didn’t offer to help. He knew he couldn’t lift his daughter now.
When Lou came out of the bedroom he was still standing there.
“Aren’t you going to take off your hat and coat?” she asked.
She went into the kitchen before he could answer. He stood in his boy’s jacket and his Alpine hat with the red feather stuck in the band hearing her open the refrigerator. He stared out at the dark street and heard the nerve-twisting crunch of ice cubes being freed in their tray, the muted pop of a bottle cap being pried off, the carbonated gurgle of soda being poured.
“Want some Coke?” she called to him.
He shook his head.
“Scott?”
“No,” he said. He felt a throbbing at his wrists.
She came in with the drink. “Aren’t you going to take off your things?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
She sat down on the couch and kicked off her shoes. “Another day,” she said. He didn’t reply. He felt as if she were trying to make him feel like a boy for getting dramatic over something inconsequential, while she patiently humored him. He wanted to burst out angrily at her, but there wasn’t any opening.
“Are you just going to stand there?” she asked.
“If I choose,” he said.
She looked at him for a moment, blank-faced. He saw the reflection of her face in the window. Then she shrugged. “Go ahead,” she said.
“No skin off your nose,” he said.
“What?” There was a sad, weary smile on her lips.
“Nothing, nothing.” Now he did feel like a boy.
Her drinking and swallowing sounded noisy to him. He grimaced irritably. Don’t slurp, his mind rasped. You sound like a pig.
“Oh, come on, Scott. Brooding won’t help.” She sounded faintly bored.
He closed his eyes and shuddered. It has come to this, he thought. The horror was gone; she was inured. He had expected it, but it was still a shock to find it happening.
He was her husband. He had been over six feet tall. Now he was smaller than her five-year-old daughter. He was standing in front of her, grotesque in his little boy’s clothes, and there was nothing but a faint boredom in her voice. It was a horror beyond horror.
His eyes were bleak as he stared out at the street, listening to the trees rustle in the night wind like a woman’s skirts descending an endless stairway.
He heard her drink again and he stiffened angrily.
“Scott,” she said. Falsely applied affection, he thought. “Sit down. Staring out the window won’t help Marty’s business.”
He spoke without turning. “You think that’s what I’m worried about?”
“Isn’t it? Isn’t it what we’re both—”
“It isn’t,” he cut her off coldly. Coldness in a little boy’s voice sounded bizarre—as if he were acting out a part in a grade-school play, unconvincing and laughable.
“What, then?” she asked.
“If you don’t know by now…”
“Oh, come on, darling.”
He picked on that. “Takes a little straining to call me darling now, doesn’t it?” he said, skin tight across his small face. “Takes a little—”
“Oh, stop it, Scott. Aren’t there enough troubles without your imagining more?”
“Imagining?” His voice grew shrill. “Sure I’m imagining everything. Nothing has changed. Everything’s just the same. It’s all just my imagination!”
“You’ll wake Beth up.”
Too many enraged words filled his throat at once. They choked each other and he could only stand fuming impotently. He turned back to the window and stared out again.
Then, abruptly, he headed for the front door.
“Where are you going?” she asked, sounding alarmed.
“For a walk! Do you mind?”
“You
mean down the street?”
He wanted to scream. “Yes,” he said, his voice shaking with repressed anger, “down the street.”
“You think you should?”
“Yes, I think I should!”
“Scott, I’m only thinking of you!” she burst out. “Can’t you see that?”
“Sure. Sure you are.” He jerked at the front door, but it stuck. Color sprouted in his cheeks and he jerked harder, a curse muffled on his lips.
“Scott, what have I done?” she asked. “Did I make you this way? Did I take that contract away from Marty?”
“Damn this goddam—” His voice shook. Then the door opened and banged against the wall.
“What if someone sees you?” she asked, staring up from the couch.
“Good-by,” he said, slamming the door behind him. And even that was ineffective because the jamb was too warped and the door wouldn’t slam, only crunch into its frame.
He didn’t look back. He started down the block with quick, agitated strides, heading for the lake.
He was about twenty yards from the house when the front door opened.
“Scott?”
He wasn’t going to answer at first. Then, grudgingly, he stopped and spoke over his shoulder.
“What?” he asked, and he could have wept at the thin, ineffectual sound of his voice.
She hesitated a moment, then asked, “Shall I come with you?”
“No,” he said. It was spoken in neither anger nor despair.
He stood there a moment longer looking back in spite of himself, wondering if she would insist on coming. But she only stood there, a motionless outline in the doorway.
“Be careful, darling,” she said.
He had to bite off the sob that tore up through him. Twisting around, he hurried quickly down the dark street. He never heard her close the door.
This is the bottom, he thought, the very bottom. There is nothing lower than for a man to become an object of pity. A man could bear hate, abuse, anger, and castigation; but pity, never. When a man became pitiable, he was lost. Pity was for helpless things.
Richard Matheson Suspense Novels Page 9
