The Thing in B-3

by Talmage Powell

  Watching her close the distance between them, Dr. Latham agreed with his son’s taste. Betty was lovely. Yet her attractiveness included more than looks. In her face one sensed intelligence, humor, compassion. Depth of character, Dr. Latham would have summed up in a moment when his mind was less strained.

  She stepped down beside him, comforting an omnibus textbook in the crook of her right arm.

  “Well, hi, Dr. Latham.” Her tone reflected her puzzlement at his appearance in this time and place.

  “Good morning, Betty. How was Chaucerian England today?”

  “I’ve a feeling,” she said, “you just didn’t happen to be here. Were you looking for me?”

  “I happened to be nearby and always welcome the pleasure of seeing you,” he evaded. If he could fish in blind waters, he wanted to keep from upsetting her more than necessary. “How about an old bear for company as you walk to your next class?” Her response was to stand firmly on the spot. The gush of students had subsided to nothing. They stood in an isolated privacy beside the walk, in a splash of shadow cast by a willow tree.

  “Dr. Latham, has something happened to Bill?” Her tone was steady, but he sensed the controlled alarm behind it. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hide much from this girl. Perhaps he shouldn’t even try. For all her femininity, she was no precious petal. Honesty might hurt her less than the feeling that she was being protected because she was too weak to face the truth.

  “I don’t know,” he answered bluntly. “Do you?” “No,” she said. “But I’ve been uneasy since night before last.”

  “Why?”

  Her shoulders made a slight movement of struggle. “I wish I knew. Something I felt. When you really like someone, you can usually tell when something’s wrong.”

  “I don’t disparage a woman’s intuition,” Dr. Latham assured her.

  A vagrant breeze, a hint of winter in the Indian summer morning, brushed a wisp of her glossy, black-purple hair across her forehead. “We had a coffee break together, Bill and I.”

  Dr. Latham nodded. “I remember. I met him as he brought in an emergency and told him he’d probably find you in the hospital commissary.”

  “Then, later, when he clocked out, a late snack— and he wasn't the same.”

  “In what way?”

  Her smooth brow crinkled. Then she shook her head. “I don’t know. But inside—he was changed. It must have happened while he was in the morgue, during the time between the coffee break and the pizza. Something happened ... touching him.”

  A non-existent girl in a cadaver compartment. Dr. Latham kept his shudder from twitching to the surface.

  “When did you see Bill last?”

  “Yesterday at lunch,” Betty said. “He looked beat, I might add. I blamed it on a math quiz.”

  “Are you meeting him today?”

  “No,” Betty said. “He phoned me early this morning. Said he had.to attend to something.”

  “Did he say what?”

  Betty’s head moved in the negative. “But he sounded okay. I didn’t pry.”

  Dr. Latham’s face felt warm, despite the chill in the breeze.

  “Whatever it was,” he said, “it wasn’t here at Crownover. Bill apparently hasn’t been on campus all day.”

  She clutched the textbook a little tighter. Her knuckles showed white. “I don’t like any of this, Dr. Latham. I admire and respect Bill for wanting to protect me ... us. But this is one time I wish he’d shared a problem.”

  “We may be jumping at shadows. Could be the problem doesn’t rate a sharing.”

  Her wide-lipped mouth twitched with irritation. Then she tilted the soft oval of her face and her eyes gentled. “Well,” she sighed, “Bill inherited the trait, I guess. But don’t kid-glove me, Doctor. I understand. I know when you’re putting me on.”

  “All right.” He nodded. “No communication gap. Maybe the shadow is big enough to slice up and go around.”

  “Then what’s the next move? Check the police and hospital for accident reports?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “If anything like that had happened, my office or home would have been notified. Both know where I am.”

  Absently, he lifted a hand and kneaded the coil of tension in the back of his neck. “Bill’s phone call canceling lunch today means that he didn’t intend to come to classes. His absence from the campus is deliberate, not by accident.”

  “But why?” Betty cried.

  “That is a rather good question,” Dr. Latham conceded. “Since Bill didn’t broadcast advance publicity, there is one person to whom he might have spoken.”

  “Dr. Connell!” Betty said, before Dr. Latham could get the name out.

  “It’s a chance. Bill refused the idea of dumping his troubles on us. Let’s hope the heroics didn’t extend to Pat Connell.”

  Connell’s office in the faculty building was a rather cramped cubicle with a severe decor. The walls were paneled with a dark brown wood veneer. Two windows were at the end of the room, but they were narrow, faced north, and admitted little sunlight. The desk was boxlike in its sharp lines. Against the wall between desk and doorway, a pair of Windsor chairs, uninviting in their stiffness, were separated by a low table that bore a large ceramic ashtray and a lamp with a shade of tan parchment.

  The office reflected very little of Connell himself. He’d restrained the normal urge to enliven the surroundings with gimcracks of himself. No pictures of his choosing on the walls and no rack holding some of his tennis trophies.

  The office, Dr. Latham's practiced medical eyes noted, was as impersonal as a confessional booth.

  Connell leaned across the desk to shake Dr. Latham’s hand. He included a smile of greeting for Betty.

  “Welcome to faculty row, Doctor. How are you, Miss Atherton?”

  At Connell’s gesture Betty sat down in one of the chairs beside the table. Dr. Latham chose a chair nearer the comer of the desk. Connell sank down into a secretarial type chair that received him with a faint metallic squeak.

  “Obviously your son is the reason for seeing his faculty adviser, Doctor,” Connell said. “What can I do for you?”

  Dr. Latham’s questions were suddenly too personal to come easily. An awkwardness touched him. He cleared his throat. “I’m not here with one of the usual beefs.”

  “I shouldn’t think so.” Pat nodded. “Bill’s record is excellent. He’s steady, dependable, and works at the top of his I.Q., which, as you know, is well above average.”

  Dr. Latham wasn’t a man who lapped up praise of his son. He thanked God often for the quality of his children, but his love was big enough to see and accept Bill’s—and Vicky’s—faults.

  Still and all, under normal circumstances Dr. Connell’s opinion would have been heartwarming. But right now Connell’s words made Bill’s behavior seem even more puzzling.

  “Thank you,” Dr. Latham murmured. “But have you any idea why the usual pattern should suddenly shatter?”

  Pat’s elbows were resting on the desk, his hands folded before him. His fingers tightened slightly against each other. “Bill hasn’t as yet told you about his experience in the morgue?”

  “I know a little bit about it, the little that I found out for myself,” Dr. Latham said.

  Betty reminded them of her presence with a tight, small stirring. “Then I wasn’t wrong in my guess. Something did happen.” Her shoulders strained forward. “Tell me, Dr. Latham. I’ve a right to know.”

  His face dragged toward her, and she glimpsed the controlled fear deep in his eyes. His voice was steady, but she didn’t miss the painful twisting of his lips as they put words together: “Bill thinks the body of a dead girl is in one of the drawers at the morgue —an empty drawer.”

  The color dashed from Betty’s face. A gasp ripped from her. “Oh, no!”

  “That isn’t entirely correct.” Connell took issue in a courteous but firm voice. “Bill’s mind accepted the evidence. He knows that no material body is in the compartment.” />
  Dr. Latham frowned. “But he saw. ...”

  “He received an impression,” Connell amended. “Is there a difference?”

  “In this case—yes, I think so.”

  Dr. Latham’s jaw muscles rippled. “One of your fancy theories, Dr. Connell?”

  Pat wasn’t offended. Right now Dr. Latham’s coolly scientific outlook was clouded by the fires of apprehension.

  Anyway, Pat was used to skepticism. Parapsychology was in its infancy, and every branch of science suffered the same birth pangs. The thought helped, whenever Connell was discouraged.

  Discouragement was the least of his worries at the present moment. It was one thing to discuss theory in the security of the classroom, and a horse of an entirely different feather to gamble high stakes on it in the field.

  None of the turbulence of misgivings showed on Pat’s face. “Will a commonly accepted theory explain all the facts of the case, Doctor?”

  Dr. Latham's hands were clamped together in his lap, knuckles cracking under the pressure. Faced with Connell's experience in the specialized fields of psychology, psychiatry, and, finally, parapsychology, Dr. Latham endured a moment of feeling as helpless as a layman.

  His lips were numb. He heard himself speak as though the voice belonged to someone else. “You’re asking me to believe in my sons sanity.”

  “At least for a little while. Until the score is in. Just don’t brush aside parts of the evidence that we don’t understand, that’s all I’m asking.”

  “But why did he receive this impression, this psychic contact from the unknown?”

  “I don’t know,” Connell said. “I don’t know why X rays work, either. But I’ve a smattering of knowledge of how they work, and so I’m able to take pictures with X rays. The top scientists of yesteryear would have pooh-poohed the whole idea.”

  A glisten of sweat squeezed from Dr. Latham’s face. “X rays are deadly in inexperienced hands, Dr. Connell.”

  Pat felt a pulse beating unpleasantly through his chest. He knew exactly what Dr. Latham was thinking. He didn’t blame the older man for not wanting to put it into words. The unknown force—if it existed —could be far deadlier than X rays.

  And we are so inexperienced, Connell thought. Like primitive men finding a door open and blindly wandering into a nuclear power plant.

  A sudden small cry burst from Betty. Her eyes flashed from one to the other of the two men. “Will we help Bill by sitting here and talking theories?” Dr. Latham took the long breath of a man reinforcing control over his anxieties. He glanced at Pat. “She’s more practical than both of us, Doctor.” “And perhaps twice as sensible,” Pat admitted.

  6

  The Oaks

  THE DAY had begun for Bill on a drowsy note. Sleep stole gently away from him. Sprawled in his bed on his stomach, he lingered in a half-awake, dreamy state. He didn’t open his eyes right away. The darkness was a friendly presence to him, peaceful and languorous.

  Yesterday seemed a long way off. He had glimpsed the image in the compartment—and what else had happened?

  Nothing.

  Here he was, quite safe in bed.

  He yawned and opened his eyes. The room, with the blinds drawn, was steeped in gray. About him, the house was heavy with silence. The hour was early, and no one else was up yet.

  He rolled onto his back, clasped his hands behind his head, and stared vaguely through the gloom in the direction of the ceiling.

  He felt much different than he had yesterday morning. The presence that had nudged him with nightmares the previous night hadn’t bothered him at all during the night just ending.

  The contrast struck him as odd. Was the experience over? Or were his refreshments of mind and body necessary for a rigamarole that was only just beginning?

  “Now, that’s a thought for you,” he muttered at the dimness of the ceiling.

  He raised, punched up his pillow, and flopped on his side. Resolutely he closed his eyes and evened out his breathing. Plenty of time to catch another little nap before breakfast.

  But his mind refused to drift off. His eyes wanted to snap open. In an effort to lull himself back to sleep, he tried the old method of thinking of a single subject. Usually when he was a few paragraphs along, the sentences began to skip, the words to slip off, and, next thing, he was waking up again, and it was time to get up.

  Parapsychology, he thought. Young science . . . has several branches ... ESP, extrasensory perception, knowing something you couldn't have learned with any of the five physical senses ... telepathy, catching a thought in somebody else’s mind . . . clairvoyance, getting a glimpse of the future... psychokinesis, or PK, which means the influence of mind over matter. . . .PK research . . . number of reports show definite relationship between “green-thumbed” people and plant germination and growth____

  His chest rose and fell with an aggravated sigh. No use. He was wide-awake. The pleasant ability to slip off to sleep again seemed to have left him completely. The bed had an unfamiliar hardness.

  He sat up, tangled in his sheet, and swung his bare feet to the floor.

  Half an hour later he was at the kitchen table buttering toast when Mrs. Hofstetter entered. She was bright-eyed.

  Her brows lifted. “Well, day of miracles! Look who’s up without a bomb going off.”

  He caught her motherly appraisal as she passed. He grinned and said, “Slept like a guru with a sweet flower conscience.”

  “Looks as if it helped a little, too.” She glanced at the overdone eggs on his plate. “Is that a synthetic rubber experiment? How about if I cook you some more?”

  His grin became a laugh. “After these, I’ll really appreciate yours tomorrow morning.”

  “All right,” she said, opening the refrigerator. “It’s your stomach. If everyone had one like it, the alkalizer people would go out of business, I suppose ”

  He finished eating while the kitchen wanned with the mouth-watering aromas of Mrs. Hofstetter's sizzling bacon and perking coffee.

  He pushed back his chair and got up. “Off to the wars.”

  “Have a good day.”

  Through the tier-curtained window over the sink, Mrs. Hofstetter saw him cross the driveway and get in his car.

  The murmur of water in piping told her that another Latham was out of bed and in the shower. Probably Victoria. That girl doesn't want to waste a single marvelous minute these days. If Fortesque Fifth Avenue doesn't come through for her, Mrs. Hofstetter thought, I’ve a notion to personally march in and tell them what fatheads they are.

  The habitual snorting complaints of Bill's car drifted to her as he coaxed the cold engine to life. Soon the shadow of the car dipped across the window as he prodded it along the driveway.

  He came to a full stop at the street. With a few seconds’ warming, the motor relented and smoothed out. He turned and drove the familiar blocks over to the arterial street that led downtown.

  Traffic was already a rush and roar. He waited, in the shadow of a stop sign, for a break in the stream of cars. He slipped in with a smooth turn of the steering wheel, pressuring the accelerator until he had adjusted his speed.

  Half a mile along, a bank of traffic signals high over the street turned red at an intersection. He braked to a stop.

  It was then that the thought came from nowhere, a swift flash, almost a pain in his mind: Why B-three? Why not one—or any—of the other cadaver drawers? Why had B-three been pinpointed?

  The light changed, and for once his alertness missed a detail in traffic. He sat woodenly, staring through the windshield.

  A short beep from the car behind snapped through to him. He jumped slightly, looked at the green light, and drove ahead.

  Fed by side streets, the thoroughfare widened to six lanes. He would have to jockey to the outside lane to take the turn and cloverleaf underpass for the route to Crownover. Instead, he stayed in the thru lane, hardly noticing the turnoff when it flicked past.

  Minutes later, he was driving ont
o the grounds of the hospital complex. He parked in his space on the employees’ lot, got out, and hurried around the main building to the morgue wing.

  Mrs. Wennington, who constituted the office force, hadn’t yet arrived. The building, not surprisingly, was steeped in the tomblike silence of death.

  Bill went directly into the main office beyond the reception room. He crossed to the filing cabinets and slid out the long, slender cross-index file. He flipped the cards for the name of the last occupant of B-3, then closed the file and pulled a larger drawer open.

  Thumbing through the folders, he quickly found the one for which he was looking. He yanked it out and dropped it open on Dr. Homaday's desk.

  The typed form was an icily impersonal summation of a human life:

  Name: Elizabeth Ursa Braxley.

  Age: 21.

  Address: The Oaks, Harlandale.

  Cause of death: Leukemia.

  Circumstances: No suspicious circumstances. Deceased expired while hospitalized for treatment. Body temporarily removed to morgue for transfer to private mortician. Body released to Bascome Funeral Home.

  Findings of inquest and/or autopsy: No inquest

  Surviving next of kin: Mother, Mrs. Jonathan Fitfield (Carlotta) Braxley, The Oaks, Harlandale.

  Bill closed the folder, turned to the cabinet, and replaced it.

  The shortness of her life and the way she had died touched his compassion. But the written proof that a young woman was the last occupant of B-3 didn’t surprise him in the least. He was halfway across the outer office when he broke stride and crossed to the desk. He picked up the phone and dialed Betty’s number.

  The cool voice of a servant announced the Atherton residence.

  Bill identified himself and asked to speak to Betty. Her voice came to him after a moment.

  He returned her cheerful “hi” and said, “Don’t let it bug you if I miss lunch today.”

  From her hesitancy, he sensed her curiosity. But she didn’t pry, as some girls might have. “Maybe I’ll try the football players’ table. I don’t like to scoff alone.”

  “You’re a problem child. But I’ll make it if I can, after I attend to a detail.”