Nightmare At 20,000 Feet

by Richard Matheson

  On the porch steps of the house he stopped and looked up the street, an uneasy chill running down his back. Probably perspired too much this afternoon, he thought. Now the cooling air was chilling him. After all, he wasn't as young as-

  He shook his head, trying to rid his mind of the phrase. A man's as young as he feels, he told himself authoritatively and nodded once curtly to impress the fact on his mind.

  The woman had left the front door unlocked. As he entered, he heard her talking on the telephone in Miss Smith's bedroom. Johnson nodded to himself. How many times had he spoken to Mary on that old phone? What was the number again? 4458.

  That was it. He smiled proudly at being able to remember it.

  How many times had he sat there in the old black rocker exchanging light conversation with her? His face fell. Where was she now? Was she married and did she have children? Did she-

  He stopped, tensing, as a floor board creaked behind him. He waited a moment, expecting to hear the woman's voice. Then he looked back quickly.

  The hallway was empty.

  With a swallow, he entered his room and shut the door firmly. He fumbled for the light switch and finally found it.

  He smiled again. This was more like it. He walked around his old room, running his hand over the top of the bureau, the student's desk, the mattress on the bed. He tossed down his hat and coat on the desk and settled down on the bed with a weary sigh. A grin lit his face as the old springs groaned. Same old springs, he thought.

  He threw up his legs and fell back on the pillow. God, but it felt good. He ran his fingers over the bedspread, stroking it affectionately.

  The house was very still. Johnson turned on his stomach and glanced out the window. There was the old alley, the big oak tree still towering over the house. He shook his head at the chest-filling sensation that thoughts of the past caused in him.

  Then he started as the door thudded slightly in its frame. He looked quickly over his shoulder. It's the wind does it, the woman's words came to him.

  He was certainly overwrought, he decided, but all these things were disturbing. Well, that was understandable. The day had been an emotional experience. To relive the past and regret the present was a full day's work for any man.

  He was drowsy after the heavy meal he'd eaten at the Black and Gold Inn. He pushed himself up and shuffled over to the light switch.

  The room plunged into darkness and he felt his way cautiously back to the bed. He lay down with a satisfied grunt.

  It was still a good old bed. How many nights had he slept there, his brain seething with the contents of books he'd been studying? He reached down and loosened his belt, pretending he didn't feel a twinge of remorse at the way his once slender body had thickened. He sighed as the pressure on his stomach was eased. Then he rolled on his side in the warm, airless room and closed his eyes.

  He lay there for a few minutes listening to the sound of a car passing in the street. Then he rolled onto his back with a groan. He stretched out his legs, let them go slack. Then he sat up and, reaching down, untied his shoes and dropped them on the floor. He fell back on the pillow and turned on his side again with a sigh.

  It came slowly.

  At first he thought it was his stomach bothering him. Then he realized it wasn't just his stomach muscles but every muscle in his body. He felt bands of ligament drawing in and a shudder ran through his frame.

  He opened his eyes and blinked in the darkness. What in God's name was wrong? He stared at the desk and saw the dark outline of his hat and coat. Again, he closed his eyes. He had to relax. There were some big customers coming up in Chicago.

  It's cold, he thought irritably, fumbling around at his side and finally drawing the bedspread over his stout body. He felt his skin crawling. He found himself listening but there was no other sound than the harshness of his own breathing. He twisted uncomfortably, wondering how the room could have gotten so cold all of a sudden. He must have gotten a chill.

  He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes.

  In an instant, his body stiffened and all sound was paralyzed in his throat.

  There, leaning over him, bare inches from him, was the whitest, the most hating face he had ever seen in his entire life.

  He lay there, staring up in numb, open-mouthed horror at the face.

  "Get out," said the face, its grating voice hoarse with malevolence. "Get out. You can't come back."

  For a long time after the face had disappeared, Johnson lay there, barely able to breathe, his hands in rigid knots at his sides, his eyes wide and staring. He kept trying to think but the memory of the face and the words spoken petrified his mind.

  He didn't stay. When strength had returned, he got up, and managed to sneak out without attracting the attention of the woman. He drove quickly from the town, his face pale, thinking only of what he'd seen.

  Himself.

  The face of himself when he was in college. His young self hating this coarsened interloper for intruding on what could never be his again. And the young man in the Golden Campus; that had been his younger self. The student passing the Campus Cafe had been himself as he once was. And the student in the hallway and the resentful presence that had followed him around the campus, hating him for coming back and pawing at the past-they had all been him.

  He never went back and he never told anyone what had happened. And when, in rare moments, he spoke of his college days, it was always with a shrug and a cynical smile to show how little it had really meant to him.

  16 – THE DISTRIBUTOR

  July 20

  Time to move.He'd found a small, furnished house on Sylmar Street. The Saturday morning he moved in, he went around the neighbourhood introducing himself.

  "Good morning," he said to the old man pruning ivy next door. "My name is Theodore Gordon. I just moved in."

  The old man straightened up and shook Theodore's hand. "How do," he said. His name was Joseph Alston.

  A dog came shuffling from the porch to sniff Theodore's cuffs. "He's making up his mind about you," said the old man.

  "Isn't that cute?" said Theodore.

  Across the street lived Inez Ferrel. She answered the door in a housecoat, a thin woman in her late thirties. Theodore apologized for disturbing her.

  "Oh, that's all right," she said. She had lots of time to herself when her husband was selling on the road.

  "I hope we'll be good neighbors," said Theodore.

  "I'm sure we will," said Inez Ferrel. She watched him through the window as he left.

  Next door, directly across from his own house, he knocked quietly because there was a Nightworker Sleeping sign. Dorothy Backus opened the door-a tiny, withdrawn woman in her middle thirties.

  "I'm so glad to meet you," said Theodore.

  Next door lived the Walter Mortons. As Theodore came up the walk, he heard Bianca Morton talking loudly to her son, Walter, Jr.

  "You are not old enough to stay out till three o'clock in the morning!" she was saying. "Especially with a girl as young as Katherine McCann!"

  Theodore knocked and Mr. Morton, fifty-two and bald, opened the door.

  "I just moved in across the street," said Theodore, smiling at them.

  Patty Jefferson let him in next door. As he talked to her Theodore could see, through the back window, her husband Arthur filling a rubber pool for their son and daughter.

  "They just love that pool," said Patty, smiling.

  "I bet they do," said Theodore. As he left, he noticed the vacant house next door.

  Across the street from the Jeffersons lived the McCanns and their fourteen-year-old daughter Katherine. As Theodore approached the door he heard the voice of James McCann saying, "Aah, he's nuts. Why should I take his lawn edger? Just because I borrowed his lousy mower a couple of times."

  "Darling, please" said Faye McCann. "I've got to finish these notes in time for the Council's next meeting."

  "Just because Kathy goes out with his lousy son…" grumbled her husband.r />
  Theodore knocked on the door and introduced himself. He chatted briefly with them, informing Mrs. McCann that he certainly would like to join the National Council for Christians and Jews. It was a worthy organization.

  "What's your business, Gordon?" asked McCann.

  "I'm in distribution," said Theodore.

  Next door, two boys mowed and raked while their dog gambolled around them.

  "Hello there," said Theodore. They grunted and watched him as he headed for the porch. The dog ignored him.

  "I just told him." Henry Putnam's voice came through the living room window: "Put a coon in my department and I'm through. That's all."

  "Yes, dear," said Mrs. Irma Putnam.

  Theodore's knock was answered by the undershirted Mr. Putnam. His wife was lying on the sofa. Her heart, explained Mr. Putnam. "Oh, I'm sorry," Theodore said.

  In the last house lived the Gorses.

  "I just moved in next door," said Theodore. He shook Eleanor Gorse's lean hand and she told him that her father was at work.

  "Is that him?" asked Theodore, pointing at the portrait of a stony-faced old man that hung above a mantel crowded with religious objects.

  "Yes," said Eleanor, thirty-four and ugly.

  "Well, I hope we'll be good neighbours," Theodore said.

  That afternoon, he went to his new office and set up the darkroom.

  July 23

  That morning, before he left for the office, he checked the telephone directory and jotted down four numbers. He dialled the first."Would you please send a cab to 12057 Sylmar Street?" he said. "Thank you."

  He dialled the second number. "Would you please send a repairman to my house," he said. "I don't get any picture. I live at 12070 Sylmar Street."

  He dialled the third number: "I'd like to run this ad in Sunday's edition," he said. "1957 Ford. Perfect Condition. Seven-hundred eighty-nine dollars. That's right, seven-hundred eighty-nine. The number is DA-4-7408."

  He made the fourth call and set up an afternoon appointment with Mr. Jeremiah Osborne. Then he stood by the living room window until the taxicab stopped in front of the Backus house.

  As he was driving off, a television repair truck passed him. He looked back and saw it stop in front of Henry Putnam's house.

  Dear sirs, he typed in the office later, Please send me ten booklets for which I enclose one hundred dollars in payment. He put down the name and address.

  The envelope dropped into the out box.

  July 27

  When Inez Ferrel left her house that evening, Theodore followed in his car. Downtown, Mrs. Ferrel got off the bus and went into a bar called the Irish Lantern. Parking, Theodore entered the bar cautiously and slipped into a shadowy booth.

  Inez Ferrel was at the back of the room perched on a bar stool. She'd taken off her jacket to reveal a clinging yellow sweater. Theodore ran his gaze across the studied exposition of her bust.

  At length, a man accosted her and spoke and laughed and spent a modicum of time with her. Theodore watched them exit, arm in arm. Paying for his coffee, he followed. It was a short walk; Mrs. Ferrel and the man entered a hotel on the next block.

  Theodore drove home, whistling.

  The next morning, when Eleanor Gorse and her father had left with Mrs. Backus, Theodore followed.

  He met them in the church lobby when the service was over. Wasn't it a wonderful coincidence, he said, that he, too, was a Baptist? And he shook the indurate hand of Donald Gorse.

  As they walked into the sunshine, Theodore asked them if they wouldn't share his Sunday dinner with him. Mrs. Backus smiled faintly and murmured something about her husband. Donald Gorse looked doubtful.

  "Oh, please," begged Theodore. "Make a lonely widower happy."

  "Widower," tasted Mr. Gorse.

  Theodore hung his head. "These many years," he said. "Pneumonia."

  "Been a Baptist long?" asked Mr. Gorse.

  "Since birth," said Theodore with fervour. "It's been my only solace."

  For dinner he served lamb chops, peas, and baked potatoes. For dessert, apple cobbler and coffee.

  "I'm so pleased you'd share my humble food," he said.

  "This is, truly, loving thy neighbour as thyself." He smiled at Eleanor who returned it stiffly.

  That evening, as darkness fell, Theodore took a stroll. As he passed the McCann house, he heard the telephone ringing, then James McCann shouting, "It's a mistake, damn it! Why in the lousy hell should I sell a '57 Ford for seven-hundred eighty-nine bucks!"

  The phone slammed down. "God damn" howled James McCann.

  "Darling, please be tolerant!" begged his wife.

  The telephone rang again.

  Theodore moved on.

  August 1

  At exactly two-fifteen a.m. Theodore slipped outside, pulled up one of Joseph Alston's longest ivy plants and left it on the sidewalk.In the morning, as he left the house, he saw Walter Morton, Jr., heading for the McCann house with a blanket, a towel and a portable radio. The old man was picking up his ivy.

  "Was it pulled up?" asked Theodore.

  Joseph Alston grunted.

  "So that was it," said Theodore.

  "What?" the old man looked up.

  "Last night," said Theodore, "I heard some noise out here. I looked out and saw a couple of boys."

  "You seen their faces?" asked Alston, his face hardening.

  "No, it was too dark," said Theodore. "But I'd say they were-oh, about the age of the Putnam boys. Not that it was them, of course."

  Joe Alston nodded slowly, looking up the street.

  Theodore drove up to the boulevard and parked. Twenty minutes later, Walter Morton, Jr., and Katherine McCann boarded a bus.

  At the beach, Theodore sat a few yards behind them.

  "That Mack is a character," he heard Walter Morton say. "He gets the urge, he drives to Tijuana, just for kicks."

  In a while Morton and the girl ran into the ocean, laughing. Theodore stood and walked to a telephone booth.

  "I'd like to have a swimming pool installed in my backyard next week," he said. He gave the details.

  Back" on the beach he sat patiently until Walter Morton and the girl were lying in each other's arms. Then, at specific moments, he pressed a shutter hidden in his palm. This done, he returned to his car, buttoning his shirt front over the tiny lens. On his way to the office, he stopped at a hardware store to buy a brush and a can of black paint.

  He spent the afternoon printing the pictures. He made them appear as if they had been taken at night and as if the young couple had been engaged in something else.

  The envelope dropped softly into the out box.

  August 5

  The street was silent and deserted. Tennis shoes soundless on the paving, Theodore moved across the street.He found the Morton's lawn mower in the backyard. Lifting it quietly, he carried it back across the street to the McCann garage. After carefully raising the door, he slid the mower behind the work bench. The envelope of photographs he put in a drawer behind a box of nails.

  Returning to his house then, he phoned James McCann and, muffledly, asked if the Ford was still for sale.

  In the morning, the mailman placed a bulky envelope on the Gorses' porch. Eleanor Gorse emerged and opened it, sliding out one of the booklets. Theodore watched the furtive look she cast about, the rising of dark colour in her cheeks.

  As he was mowing the lawn that evening he saw Walter Morton, Sr., march across the street to where James McCann was trimming bushes. He heard them talking loudly. Finally, they went into McCann's garage from which Morton emerged pushing his lawn mower and making no reply to McCann's angry protests.

  Across the street from McCann, Arthur Jefferson was just getting home from work. The two Putnam boys were riding their bicycles, their dog racing around them.

  Now, across from where Theodore stood, a door slammed. He turned his head and watched Mr. Backus, in work clothes, storming to his car, muttering disgustedly, "A swimming pool!" Theodore loo
ked to the next house and saw Inez Ferrel moving in her living room.

  He smiled and mowed along the side of his house, glancing into Eleanor Gorse's bedroom. She was sitting with her back to him, reading something. When she heard the clatter of his mower she stood and left the bedroom, pushing the bulky envelope into a bureau drawer.

  August 15

  Henry Putnam answered the door."Good evening," said Theodore. "I hope I'm not intruding."

  "Just chatting in the den with Irma's folks," said Putnam. "They're drivin' to New York in the mornin'."

  "Oh? Well, I'll only be a moment." Theodore held out a pair of BB guns. "A plant I distribute for was getting rid of these," he said. "I thought your boys might like them."

  "Well, sure," said Putnam. He started for the den to get his sons.

  While the older man was gone, Theodore picked up a couple of matchbooks whose covers read Putnam's Wines and Liquors. He'd slipped them into his pocket before the boys were led in to thank him.

  "Mighty nice of you, Gordon," said Putnam at the door. "Sure appreciate it."

  "My pleasure," said Theodore.

  Walking home, he set the clock-radio for three-fifteen and lay down. When the music began, he moved outside on silent feet and tore up forty-seven ivy plants, strewing them over Alston's sidewalk.

  "Oh, No," he said to Alston in the morning. He shook his head, appalled.

  Joseph Alston didn't speak. He glanced down the block with hating eyes.

  "Here, let me help you," Theodore said. The old man shook his head but Theodore insisted. Driving to the nearest nursery he brought back two sacks of peat moss; then squatted by Alston's side to help him replant.

  "You hear anything last night?" the old man asked.