* * * * *
His driving, like everything else, was mechanical, rigid, a thing done reflexively, without volition. Ahead of them the state highway spread out, smooth and carefully tended, between the rolling gray hills. Now and then other cars passed them; they were nearing Bayshore Freeway.
“It won’t be long,” Miss Reiss said with anticipation. “We’re almost back to Belmont.”
“Listen,” Hamilton said hoarsely. “Stop pretending; stop playing this sadistic game.”
“What game is that?” Miss Reiss inquired mildly. “I don’t follow you, Mr. Hamilton.”
“We’re not back in the real world. We’re in your world, your paranoiac, vicious—”
“But I’ve created the real world for you,” Miss Reiss said simply. “Don’t you see? Look around you. Haven’t I done a good job? It was all planned out in advance, a long time ago. You’ll find everything as it should be; I haven’t overlooked anything.”
His hands white as they gripped the steering wheel, Hamilton demanded, “You were waiting? You knew it would come around to you after Mrs. Pritchet?”
“Of course.” Quietly, with controlled pride, Miss Reiss explained, “You just haven’t used your head, Mr. Hamilton. Remember why Arthur Silvester had control first, before any of the rest of us? Because he never lost consciousness. And why did Edith Pritchet follow him?”
“She was stirring,” Marsha said, stricken. “There, on the floor of the Bevatron. I—we could see her, at night; when we dreamed.”
“You should have paid more attention to your dreams, Mrs. Hamilton,” Miss Reiss observed. “You could have looked down the line and seen who lay ahead. After Mrs. Pritchet, I was the closest to consciousness.”
“And after you?” Hamilton demanded.
“It doesn’t matter what comes after me, Mr. Hamilton, because I’m the last. You’re back … you’ve come to the end of your trip. Here’s your little world; isn’t it lovely? And it belongs to all of you. That’s why I created it—so you’d have things as you wanted them. You’ll find everything intact … I hope you’ll begin living as you were before.”
“I guess,” Marsha said presently, “we’ll have to. We don’t have any other choice.”
“Why don’t you let us go?” McFeyffe demanded futilely.
“I can’t let you go, Mr. McFeyffe,” Miss Reiss answered. “I’d have to stop existing, to do that.”
“Not completely,” McFeyffe pointed out, in an eager, fluttering voice. “You could let us use something on you. That chloroform—something to knock you out. Something to—”
“Mr. McFeyffe,” Miss Reiss interrupted calmly, “I’ve worked very hard on this. I’ve been planning it for a long time, since the accident at the Bevatron. Since I first found out that my turn would come. Wouldn’t it be a shame to let all this go to waste? We may never have another chance … No, this is too valuable an opportunity to miss. Much too valuable.” After awhile, David Pritchet pointed and said, “There’s Belmont”
“It’ll be nice to be back,” Edith Pritchet said, in a wavering, uncertain voice. “It’s such a sweet little town.” One by one, under Miss Reiss’ directions, Hamilton let them off at their homes. The last were himself and Marsha. The two of them sat in the parked — in front of Miss Reiss’ apartment house as Miss Reiss collected her things and climbed nimbly out onto the sidewalk.
“You go on home,” she told them helpfully. “A hot bath and then bed would be the best thing in the world for you.”
“Thanks,” Marsha said, almost inaudibly. “Try to relax and enjoy yourselves,” Miss Reiss instructed. “And please, try to forget all the things that have happened. They’re behind you, now. Try to remember that.”
“Yes,” Marsha repeated, mechanically responding to the dry, dispassionate, school-teacher tone. “We’ll remember.”
As she crossed the sidewalk toward the apartment house steps, Miss Reiss paused a moment. Her long corduroy coat pulled around her, she was an unimposing, not particularly striking figure. With her armload of purse, gloves, and a copy of the New Yorker she had picked up at a drugstore, she might have been any middle-class secretary returning home from a day at the office. The cold wind of evening ruffled her sand-colored hair. Behind her horn-rimmed glasses, her eyes were enlarged and distorted as she gazed perceptively at the two people in the car.
“Maybe I’ll drop over and visit you in a few days,” she said tentatively. “We might have a quiet evening, just sitting and chatting.”
“That—would be fine,” Marsha managed.
“Good night,” Miss Reiss said, concluding the matter. With a brisk nod, she turned and tripped up the stairs, unlocked the massive front door, and disappeared into the dim, carpeted lobby of her apartment building.
“Get us home,” Marsha said, in a low, jangling voice. “Jack, get us home. Please, get us home.”
He did, as quickly as possible. Bouncing the coupe up into their driveway, he yanked on the parking brake, snapped off the motor, and-savagely kicked open the door.
“Here we are,” he told her. Marsha sat beside him unmoving, her skin as pale and cold as wax. Gently but firmly, he took hold of her and lifted her from the car; picking her up in his arms he strode along the path, around the side of the house and onto the front porch.
“Anyhow,” Marsha said shakily, “Ninny Numbcat will be back. And sex, that’s back, too. Everything will be back, won’t it? Won’t this be just as good?”
He said nothing. Busily, he concentrated on getting the front door open.
“She wants power over us,” Marsha went on. “But that’s all right, isn’t it? We have our world; she did create the real world for us. It looks the same to me; do you see any difference? Jack, for God’s sake, say something.”
With his shoulder, he pushed the door aside and shoved on the living room light.
“We’re home,” Marsha said, glancing timidly around as he set her unceremoniously on her feet.
“Yes, we are.” He slammed the door behind them.
“It’s our old place, isn’t it? Just like it used to be before—this all started.” Starting to unbutton her coat, Marsha paced around their living room, examining the drapes, the books, the prints on the walls, the furnishings. “It feels good, doesn’t it? Such a relief … all the familiar things. Nobody dropping snakes on us, nobody abolishing categories … isn’t it fine?”
“It’s sensational,” Hamilton said bitterly.
“Jack.” She came up quietly beside him, her coat over her arm. “We can’t put anything over on her, can we? It won’t be like Mrs. Pritchet; she’s too smart. She’s a long way ahead of us.”
“A million years ahead of us,” he agreed. “She had all this planned out. Thinking, meditating, plotting, scheming … waiting for her chance to get control of us.” In his pocket was a hard, round cylinder; with a furious jerk he yanked it out and hurled it across the room, against the wall. The empty bottle of chloroform bounced against the rug, rolled a short distance, and came silently to rest, unbroken.
“That won’t do any good here,” he said. “We might as well give up. This time we really are licked.”
From the closet, Marsha got a hanger and began pulling her coat around it. “Bill Laws is going to feel bad.”
“He ought to slaughter me.”
“No,” Marsha disagreed. “It isn’t your fault.”
“How can I look him in the face? How can I look any of you in the face? You wanted to stay back in Edith Pritchet’s world; I brought you here—I fell for that psychotic’s strategy.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jack. It won’t do any good.”
“No,” he admitted. “It won’t do any good.”
“I’ll fix us some hot coffee.” At the kitchen door, Marsha turned wanly. “You want brandy in yours?”
“Sure. Swell”
With a forced smile, Marsha disappeared into the kitchen. For an interval there was silence.
Then her screams began.
Hamilton was on his feet in an instant; sprinting down the hall he emerged at the doorway of the kitchen. At first he failed to see it; Marsha, leaning against the kitchen table, partly blocked his view.
It was as he moved forward to grab hold of her that he saw it. The scene imprinted itself on his brain, and then cut off as he closed his eyes and dragged his wife away. One hand over her mouth, he stood forcing back her moaning screams, trying not to join with her, trying, with all his will, to control his own emotions.
Miss Reiss had never liked cats. She had been afraid of cats. Cats were her enemies.
The thing on the floor was Ninny Numbcat. He had been turned inside out. But he was still alive; the tangled mess was a still-functioning organism. Miss Reiss had seen to that; she was not going to let the animal get away.
Quivering, palpitating, the moistly-shining blob of bones and tissue was undulating sightlessly across the kitchen floor. Its slow, steady progress had been going on for some time, probably since Miss Reiss’ world had come into existence. The grotesque mass, in three and a half hours, had managed to drag itself in a kind of peristaltic wave, halfway across the kitchen.
“It can’t,” Marsha wailed. “It can’t be alive.”
Getting a shovel from the back yard, Hamilton scooped the mess up and carried it outside. Praying that it could be killed, he filled a zinc bucket with water and slid the quivering heap of organs, bones and tissue into it For a time the remnants lay half-swimming, oozing and clinging, seeking to find some way out of the bucket. Then, gradually, with a final shudder of animation, the thing sank under and died.
He burned the remains, dug a hasty grave, and buried it. Washing his hands and putting away the shovel, he returned to the house. It had taken only a few minutes … it seemed longer.
Marsha was sitting quietly in the living room, her hands pressed together, gazing steadily ahead of her. She didn’t look up as he entered the room. “Darling,” he said.
“Is it over?”
“All over. He’s dead. We can be glad of that. She can’t do anything more to him.”
“I envy him. She hasn’t even begun on us.”
“But she hated cats. She doesn’t hate us.”
Marsha turned slightly. “Remember what you said to her that night? You scared her. And she remembers it.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “She probably does. She probably doesn’t forget anything.” Returning to the kitchen, he began fixing the coffee. He was pouring it into the cups when Marsha came quietly in and began getting out the cream and sugar.
“Well,” she said, “that’s our answer.”
“To what question?”
“To the question, can we live? The answer is no. Worse than no.”
“There’s nothing worse than no,” he said, but even to his own ears his voice lacked conviction. “She’s insane, isn’t she?”
“Apparently. A paranoiac, with delusions of conspiracy and persecution. Everything she sees has some significance, part of the plot directed against her.”
“And now,” Marsha said, “she doesn’t have to worry. Because, for the first time in her life, she’s in a position to combat it.”
As he sipped the scalding black coffee, Hamilton said, “I think she really believes this is a replica of the real world. Of her real world, at least. Good God, her real world will be so far beyond any of the fantasies of the rest of us—” He was silent a moment and then finished: “That thing she made Ninny into. She probably imagines that’s what we would do to her. She probably thinks that goes on all the time.”
Getting to his feet, Hamilton began moving around the house, pulling down the blinds. It was evening; the sun had sunk into oblivion. Outside the house, the streets were dark and chill.
From the locked desk drawer, he got his .45 caliber automatic and began fitting shells into the chamber.
“Just because she runs this world,” he said to his tensely-watching wife, “doesn’t mean she’s omnipotent.”
He pushed the gun away in his inside coat pocket. There it made a lumpy, conspicuous bulge. Marsha smiled wanly. “You look like a criminal.”
“I’m a private eye.”
“Where’s your bosomy secretary?”
“That’s you,” Hamilton said, smiling back at her.
Self-consciously, Marsha raised her hands. “I wondered if you’d notice that I’m—back again.”
“I do notice.”
“Is it all right?” she asked shyly.
“I’m willing to tolerate you. For old time’s sake.”
“Such a strange thing … I feel almost gross. So sort of non-ascetic.” Lips pressed tight together, she wandered around in a little circle. “Don’t you think I’ll get used to it again? But it does feel odd … I must still be under Edith Pritchet’s influence.”
Ironically, Hamilton said, “That was the last place. We’re on a different treadmill, now.”
In her shy pleasure, Marsha chose not to hear him. “Let’s go downstairs, Jack. Down in the audiophile room. Where we can sort of—relax and listen to music.” Coming toward him, she lifted her small hands to his shoulders. “Can we? Please?”
Pulling roughly away, he said, “Some other time.”
Dismayed, Marsha stood hurt and surprised. “What’s the matter?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Oh.” She nodded. “That girl, that waitress. She disappeared, didn’t she? While you and she were down there.”
“She wasn’t a waitress.”
“I guess not.” Marsha brightened. “Anyhow, she’s back now. So it’s all right. Isn’t it? And”—she gazed hopefully up into his face—”I don’t mind about her. I understand.”
He wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or amused. “You understand about what?”
“How you felt. I mean, it didn’t really have anything to do with her; she was just a way for you to assert yourself. You were protesting.”
Putting his arms around her, he pulled her close to him. “You’re an incredibly broad-minded person.”
“I believe in looking at things in a modern way,” Marsha said stoutly.
“Glad to hear it.”
Disengaging herself, Marsha rugged coaxingly at his shirt collar. “Could we? You haven’t played records for me in months … not like you used to. I was so jealous when you two went down there. I’d like to hear some of our old favorites.”
“You mean Tchaikowsky? That’s what you usually want when you talk about ‘our old favorites.’”
“Go turn on the light and the heater. Get it all nice, all lit up and inviting. So it’ll be that way when I come down.”
Bending forward, he kissed her on the mouth. “I’ll have it radiating eroticism.”
Marsha wrinkled her nose at him. “You scientists.”
The stairs were dark and cold. Feeling his way with care, Hamilton descended into the gloom, one step at a time. A measure of good feeling returned to him, brought by the familiar routine of love. Soundlessly humming to himself, he advanced farther into the shadowy depths of the basement, making his way with the automatic reflex of long experience. …
Something coarse and slimy brushed his leg and stuck there. A heavy, ropy strand, sticky with damp ooze. Violently, he jerked his leg away. And beneath him, at the bottom of the steps, something hairy and ponderous scuttled off into the audiophile room and became still.
Not moving his body, Hamilton clung to the wall of the stairwell. Extending his arm, he groped for the light switch below. His probing fingers touched it; with a sweeping surge, he flicked it on and straightened himself out. The light winked fitfully into existence, a sputtering yellow puddle in the murkiness.
Across the basement stairs hung a crude bundle of strands, some of them broken, many of them wound together in a shapeless cable of gray. A web, a clumsy and brutal job of spinning, done hurriedly, without finesse, by something immense and squat and bestial. Underfoot, the steps were coated with dust. The ceiling was
stained with vast streaks of filth, as if the web spinner had crawled and crept everywhere, exploring each corner and crack.
Drained of strength, Hamilton sank down on the step. He could sense her there, below him, waiting in the audiophile room, in the fetid darkness. He had, by blundering into her half-completed web, frightened her off. The web was not strong enough to hold him; he was still free to struggle—to pull himself loose.
He did so, slowly, with painstaking care, disturbing the web as little as possible. The strands came away and his leg was free. His trouser was coated with a thick blob of gummy substance, as if a giant slug had squirmed across him. Shuddering, Hamilton grasped the railing and began to climb back upstairs.
He had gone only two steps when his legs, of their own volition, refused to carry him farther. His body comprehended what his mind refused to accept. He was going back down. Down, toward the audiophile room.
Dazed, terrified, he spun around and scrambled in the opposite direction. And again the monstrous thing happened—the ragged, clinging nightmare. Still he was going down … beneath him the dark shadows stretched out, the strewn filth and debris.
He was trapped.
As he crouched staring in hypnotized fascination at the descent below him, there was a sound. Above and behind him, at the top of the stairs, Marsha had appeared.
“Jack?” she called hesitantly.
“Don’t come down,” he snarled, turning his head slightly, until he could dimly make out the illuminated shape of her body. “Keep off the stairs.”
“But—”
“Stay where you are.” Breathing heavily, he clung to the step, his fingers wrapped tightly around the railing, trying to collect his wits. He had to proceed slowly; he had to keep from leaping up and scrambling mindlessly toward the bright doorway above him, and the slender image of his wife.
“Tell me what it is,” Marsha said sharply.
“I can’t.”
Eye in the Sky Page 17
