“All right, all right,” she said, “I won’t put the lock on. We’ll just have to hope the girl doesn’t decide she wants to see the cellar.”
He didn’t speak.
While she made sure he had everything he needed, bent far over to give him a dutiful peck on the forehead, went back up the steps and lowered the door into place, Scott stood motionless in the middle of the floor. He watched her walk past the window, the skirt of her dress windblown around her shapely legs.
Then she was gone, but he remained unmoving, staring out the window at the spot where she had passed. His small hands kept flexing slowly against his legs. His eyes were motionless. He seemed engrossed in somber thought, as if he might be contemplating the relative merits of life and death.
At last the expression slipped from his features. He drew in a long breath and looked around. He lifted his palms briefly in a gesture of wry surrender, then let them slap down on his thighs.
“Swell,” he said.
He climbed up on the chair, taking his book with him. He opened the book to the fringe-bottomed leather marker that read, “This Is Where I Fell Asleep,” and started to read.
He read the passage twice. Then the book fell forward in his lap and he thought about Louise, about the impossibility of his touching her in any way. He reached her kneecaps and a little more. Somewhat short of manliness, he thought, teeth gritted. His expression did not change. Casually he shoved the book off the chair arm and heard it slap down loudly on the cement.
Upstairs he heard Lou’s footsteps moving toward the front of the house, then fading. When they returned they were accompanied by another set of footsteps and he heard the voice of the girl, typically adolescent, thin, fluttery, and superficially confident.
Ten minutes later Lou was gone. In front of the house he’d heard the sputtering cough, the sudden gas-fed roar of the Ford being warmed up. Then, after a few minutes, the gunning sound had gradually disappeared. Now there were only the voices of the girl Catherine and Beth. He listened to the rise and fall of Catherine’s voice, wondering what she was saying and what she looked like.
Bemused, he put the indistinct voice to distinct form. She was five feet six, slim-waisted and long-legged, with young, uptilted breasts nudging out her blouse. Fresh young face, reddish-blonde hair, white teeth. He watched her moving lightly as a bird, her blue eyes bright as polished berries.
He picked up the book and tried to read, but he couldn’t. Sentences ran together like muddy rivulets of prose. The page was obscured with commingling words. He sighed and stirred uncomfortably on the chair. The girl stretched to the urging of his fancy, and her breasts, like firm-skinned oranges, forced out their silken sheathing.
He blew away the picture with an angry breath. Not that, he ordered.
He drew his legs up and wrapped both arms around them, resting his chin on his knees. He sat there like a child musing on the case for Santa Claus.
The girl had half taken off her blouse before he shut the curtain on her forcibly imposed indelicacy. The taut look was on his face again, the look of a man who has found effort unrewarding and has decided on impassivity instead. But, far beneath, like lava threatening in volcanic bellies, the bubbling of desire went on.
When the screen door of the back porch slapped shut and the voices of Beth and the girl floated into the yard, he slid off the chair with sudden excitement and ran to the pile of boxes beside the fuel tank. He stood there for a moment, his heart jolting. Then, when his mind came up with no authoritative resistance, he clambered up the pile and peered through a corner of the cobweb-streaked window.
Lines of pain shriveled in around his eyes.
Five feet six had become five feet three. The slim waist and legs had become chunky muscle and fat; the young, uptilted breasts had vanished in the loose folds of a long-sleeved sweatshirt. The fresh young face lurked behind grossness and blemishes, the reddish-blonde hair had been dyed to a lackluster chestnut. There were, feebly remaining, white teeth and movements like a bird’s; a rather heavy bird’s. The color of her eyes he couldn’t see.
He watched Catherine move around the yard, her broad buttocks cased in faded dungarees, her bare feet stuck in loafers. He listened to her voice.
“Oh, you have a cellar,” she said.
He saw the look on Beth’s face change obviously and felt his muscles tightening.
“Yes, but it’s just empty,” Beth said hastily. “Nobody lives there.”
Catherine laughed unsuspiciously.
“Well, I hope not,” she said, looking toward the window. He shrank back, then realized that the cellar could not be seen through any of the windows because of the glare of light on them.
He watched them until they disappeared around the back end of the house. His eyes caught the fleeting sight of them as they moved past the window over the log pile. Then they were gone. Grunting, he climbed back down the pile of boxes and went back to the chair. He put one of the thermos bottles on the arm of the chair and retrieved the book. Then, sitting down, he poured smoking coffee into the red plastic cap and sat there, the book open and unread on his lap, sipping slowly.
I wonder how old she is, he thought.
***
He started up on the chair cushion, eyes jerking open.
Someone was lifting the cellar door.
With a gasp, he flung his legs over the edge of the suitcase just as the person’s hold slipped and the door crashed down. He struggled to his feet, looking frantically toward the steps. The door started to rise again; a spear of light shot across the floor, widening.
With two distinct lunges, Scott grabbed the coffee thermos and the book and almost dived under the fuel tank. As the opened door slammed down, he slid himself behind the big carton of clothes. He clutched the book and thermos bottle to his chest, feeling sick. Why did he have to be so vitriolically stubborn about having the lock put on the door? Yes, it was the idea of being imprisoned that he hadn’t liked. But at least in prison, others could not come in.
He heard the cautious descent on the stairs, the clicking of loafers, and he tried to stop breathing. As the girl entered he shrank back into the shadows.
“Hmm,” the girl said. She moved around the floor. He heard her kick the chair experimentally. Would she wonder why it was there? Wasn’t it an odd place for a chair, right in the middle of a cellar floor? He swallowed dryly. And what about the suitcase with the pillows in it? Well, that might be where the cat slept.
“Jesus, what a mess,” said the girl, her shoes scuffing over the cement. For a moment he saw her thick calves as she stood by the water heater. He heard her fingernails tapping on the enameled metal.
“Water heater,” she said to herself. “Uh-huh.”
She yawned. He heard the straining sound in her throat that accompanied tense stretching. It broke off with a loud grunt. “Boop-dee-doodle-oodle,” said the girl.
She moved around some more. Oh, my God, the sandwiches and the other thermos, he thought. Damn nosy bitch! his mind snapped. Catherine said, “Hmm. Croquet.”
Then, in a few minutes, she said, “Oh, well,” and went back up the steps and the cellar shook with the crash of the dropped door. If Beth were taking a nap, that would end it.
As Scott crawled out from under the fuel tank, he heard the back screen door slam shut and Catherine’s footsteps overhead. He got up and put the thermos bottle back on the chair arm. Now he’d have to let Lou put the lock on the door.
“Damn the stupid little…”
He paced the floor like a caged animal. Nosy bitch! You couldn’t trust one of them. First damn day and she had to see the whole house. She’d probably gone through every bureau, cabinet, and closet in the house.
What had she thought about seeing male clothing? What lie might Lou have to tell—or already told? He knew that she’d given Catherine a false last name. Since no mail was delivered to the house, there was not too much danger of the girl’s discovering the lie.
The only dange
r was that Catherine might have read those articles in the Globe-Post and seen the pictures. Yet if that were so, surely she already suspected that he must be hiding in the cellar and would have searched more carefully. Or had she been searching?
It was ten minutes later when he decided to have a second sandwich and discovered that the girl had taken them.
“Oh, Christ!” He slammed an infuriated fist on the arm of the chair and almost wished she’d hear him and would come down so he could berate her for a stupid pryer.
He sank back on the chair and shoved the book off the arm again. It slapped loudly on the floor. The hell with it, he thought.
He drank all the coffee and sat there, sweating, glaring straight ahead. Upstairs, the girl walked around and around.
Fat slob, he called her in the jaded smallness of his head.
***
“Sure, go ahead,” he said. “Lock me in.”
“Oh, Scott, please,” she begged. “It was your decision. Do you want to take a chance on her finding you?”
He didn’t answer.
“She may come down again if the door’s open,” Lou said. “I don’t think she thought anything one way or the other about finding that bag of sandwiches here yesterday. But if she finds another one…”
“Good-by,” he said, turning away.
She looked down at him for a moment. Then she said quietly, “Good-by, Scott,” and she kissed him on the top of the head. He drew away.
While she went up the steps he stood on the floor, rhythmically slapping the folded newspapers against the calf of his right leg. Every day it’s going to be the same, he thought; sandwiches and coffee in the cellar, a good-by peck on the head, exit, door lowering, lock snapping shut.
When he heard it, a great suction of terror pulled the breath from him and he almost screamed. He saw Lou’s moving legs, and suddenly he shut his eyes, pressing his lips together to block the cry wavering in his vein-ridged throat. Oh, God, dear God, a prisoner now. A monster that good and decent people lock into their cellars so the world may not know the awful secret.
After a while the tension ran out of him and passive withdrawal came back again. He climbed up on the chair and lit a cigarette, drank coffee, and thumbed carelessly through the previous evening’s Globe-Post that Lou had brought home.
The short article was on page three. Head: WHERE IS THE SHRINKING MAN? Subhead: No Word Since Disappearance Three Months Ago.
“New York: Three months ago Scott Carey, the ‘Shrinking Man,’ so called because of the strange disease he had contracted, disappeared. Since then, no word about him has been received from any quarter.”
What’s the matter, you want more pictures? he thought.
“Authorities at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, where Carey was being treated, said they could make no comment as to his present whereabouts.”
They also can’t make antitoxin, he thought. One of the top medical centers in the country, and here I sit, shriveling away while they fumble.
He was going to shove the thermos bottle off the chair, but then he realized it would only be hurting himself. Compulsively he gripped one hand with the other and squeezed until the fingernails went bloodless, until his wrists began to ache. Then he let his hands flop on the arms of the chair and stared morosely at the orange wood between his spread fingers. Stupid color to paint lawn chairs, he thought. What an idiot the landlord must have been!
He wriggled off the chair and began pacing. He had to do something besides sit and stare. He didn’t feel like reading. His eyes moved restlessly about the cellar. Something to do, something to do….
Impulsively he stepped over to a brush leaning against the wall and, grabbing it, began to sweep. The floor needed sweeping; there was dirt all over, stones, scraps of wood. He cleared all of them from the floor with quick, savage motions; he swept them into a pile beside the steps, and flung the brush against the refrigerator.
Now what?
He sat down and had another cup of coffee, kicking nervously at the chair leg.
While he was drinking, the back screen door opened and closed, and he heard Beth and Catherine. He didn’t get up, but his gaze moved to the window, and in a moment he saw their bare legs move past.
He couldn’t help it. He got up and went to the pile of boxes and climbed up.
They were standing by the cellar door in bathing suits, Beth’s red and frilly, Catherine’s pale blue and glossy, in two pieces. He looked at the round swell of her breasts in the tight, pulled-up halter.
“Oh, your mother locked the door,” she said. “Why did she do that, Beth?”
“I don’t think I know,” Beth answered.
“I thought maybe we could play croquet,” said Catherine.
Beth shrugged ineffectually. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Is the key in the house?” asked Catherine.
Another shrug. “I don’t know,” said Beth.
“Oh,” said Catherine. “Well… let’s have a catch, then.”
Scott crouched on top of the boxes, watching Catherine as she caught the red ball and threw it back to Beth. It wasn’t until he’d been there five minutes that he realized he was rigidly tensed, waiting for Catherine to drop the ball and bend over to pick it up. When he realized that, he slid off the boxes with a disturbed clumsiness and went back to the chair.
He sat there breathing harshly, trying not to think about it. What in God’s name was happening to him? The girl was fourteen, maybe fifteen, short and chubby, and yet he’d been staring at her almost hungrily.
Well, is it my fault? he suddenly flared, letting fury take over. What am I supposed to do—become a monk?
He watched his hand shake as he poured water. He watched the water spill over the sides of the red plastic cup and dribble down his wrist. He felt the water like a trickling of ice down his hot, hot throat.
How old was she? he wondered.
***
Flesh pulsed over his jaws as he kept biting. He stared through the grimy window at Catherine, who was lying on her stomach, reading a magazine.
She lay sideways to him, stretched out on a blanket, her chin propped up by one hand, the other hand idly turning the pages.
His throat was dry but he didn’t notice it; not even when it tickled and he had to clear it. His small fingers pressed for balance against the rough surface of the wall.
No, she couldn’t be less than eighteen, he commented to himself. Her body was too well developed. That bulge of breast as she lay there, the breadth of her hips. Maybe she was only fifteen, but if so she was an awfully advanced fifteen.
His nostrils flared angrily and he shuddered. What the hell difference did it make? She was nothing to him. He took a deep breath and prepared to return to the floor but just then Catherine bent her right knee and the leg wavered lazily in the air.
His eyes were moving, endlessly moving over Catherine’s body—down her leg and across the hill of her buttock, up the slope of her back and around her white shoulder, down to the ground-pressing breast, back along the stomach to her leg, up her leg, down her—
He closed his eyes. He climbed down rigidly and went back to the chair. He sank back in it, ran a finger over his forehead, and drew it away dripping. His head fell back against the wooden chair.
He got up and went back to the boxes. He climbed up without a thought. Yes, that’s it, have another look at the back yard, mocked his alien mind.
At first, he thought she had gone into the house. A betraying groan began in his throat. Then he saw that she was standing by the cellar door, lips pursed estimatingly, looking at the lock.
He swallowed. Does she know? he thought. For one wild instant he thought he would run to the door and scream, “Come down, come down here, pretty girl!” His lips shook as he fought the desire.
The girl walked past the window. His eyes drank her in thirstily, as if it were the final view of all time. Then she was gone and he sat down on the top of the boxes, back to the wall.
He stared at his ankles, the thickness of a policeman’s club. He heard the back door shut and then the footsteps of the girl moving around overhead.
He felt drained. He felt that if he relaxed an iota more, his body would run down over the boxes like syrup on a hill of ice cream.
He didn’t know how long he’d been there when the back door whined open and slammed shut again. He twitched, startled, and rose up again.
Catherine walked past the window, a key chain dangling from her fingers. His breath caught. She’d been in the bureau drawers and found the extra keys!
He half slid, half jumped down the stacked boxes, wincing as he landed on his right ankle. He grabbed the sandwich bag and shoved the thermos bottles into it. He tossed the half-finished box of crackers on top of the refrigerator.
His eyes fled around. The paper! He darted to it and snatched it up, as he heard the girl experimenting with the keys at the door. He stuck the folded newspaper on the shelf of the wicker table, then grabbed his book and the bag and ran for the dark, sunken room where the tank and water pump were. He’d decided beforehand that if Catherine ever came down again, that was where he’d hide.
He jumped down the step to the damp cement floor. At the door, the lock clicked open and was pulled out of the metal loop. He stepped gingerly over the network of pipes and slid in behind the high, cold-walled tank. He set down the bag and book and stood there panting as the door was pulled up and Catherine came down in the cellar.
“Locking the cellar,” he heard her say in slow disgust. “Think I was gonna steal somethin’ or somethin’.”
His lips drew back in a teeth-clenched, soundless snarl. Stupid bitch, he thought.
“Hmmmph,” said Catherine. He heard her loafers clicking over the floor. She kicked the chair again. She kicked the oil burner and it resounded hollowly. Keep your goddam feet to yourself! his brain exploded.
“Croquet,” she said. He heard a mallet being slid out of the rack. “Hmmph,” she said again, a little more amusedly. “Fore!” The mallet clicked loudly on the cement.
Scott edged cautiously to the right. His shirt back scratched over the rough cement wall and he froze. The girl hadn’t heard. “Uh-huh,” she was saying. “Hoops, clubs, balls, stakes. Yowza.”
Richard Matheson Suspense Novels Page 13
