Time Exposures

by Wilson Tucker

"Yes, Donald?"

  "The ghost wants you to come up there too."

  "Donald!"

  "But he insists. He said he wanted to exhibit the whole blamed family, and for you to get up there toot-sweet or he'd report us all. Better come along, Louise."

  And he turned to mount the staircase.

  "Ah, at last," the uniformed gentleman exclaimed. He turned to address the people waiting behind him, all seated in a low motor conveyance.

  "This is a complete family unit of the twentieth century," he announced with evident satisfaction. "They spring from a race of aborigines inhabiting the North American continent from about the fifteenth century through the thirty-third. At the stage of their development you see here, they lived together as a closely knit family unit in dwelling places they called houses, which is a type of building containing many small cells similar to this one. Usually each member of the unit slept in a separate cell, but they lived together in the remainder of those making up the house.

  "Notice the male. At this early stage of history he has already assumed the place of head of his family unit and is fond of exhibiting various mental and physical characteristics to identify himself as the leader, or chief. Look closely at his face and you will see hair, or fuzz, growing. This was known as a beard and was permitted to grow to assert independence. These early men were extremely stubborn, as you noted a moment ago when it was necessary to use a musical instrument of the twentieth century to summon him from his cell."

  "Go away," Donald said to the uniformed man, "you're bothering us."

  "Earlier in the rise of their race, as you will soon see when we move along to the next stop, the aborigines had not yet learned the use of tools and were of course unable to erect buildings such as this one. During that distant period they lived in natural caves, squatting over continual fires for protection from the elements, for warmth, and for cooking. During the present period you see here they had found a means of moving the fires indoors for both warmth and cooking, and also developed a few primitive instruments to assist them in eating. Holding raw food in the fingers has almost vanished in the year before you."

  "Well, I like that!" Louise exclaimed.

  "G'wan, beat it," Donald chimed in. "It's the kid's bedtime. Shove off."

  "This race," the smartly uniformed man continued, "were called Indians, or Americans, the two terms being interchangeable. Sections, or tribes, existed among them and each tribe adopted the name of some patron saint, protective god, or robber baron to whom they paid monetary and honorary tribute. Their tribes sometimes bore colorful names like Ohio, Dogpatch; Jones, Republican; and so forth."

  "You're a radical!" Donald exclaimed. "Now get out of here or I'll put the dog on you!"

  "Not too much is known of their social cultures, because the various tribes were always warring upon each other, making historical surveys hazardous and the gathering of information extremely difficult. We will make one more stop in this era to observe a gathering of the wise men of the tribes, and there you will see laws and customs being enacted, taxes collected, and so forth. Afterward, we shall move a bit farther along for a quick glimpse of this family's forefathers, and perhaps if we are fortunate we shall see them hunting in the forests with primitive weapons. During this stage of the tour I must remind you to keep your protective shields closed at all times, for occasionally stray bolts from their weapons may drop among us." He paused and turned to move a small lever.

  The conveyance began to move across the room, drawing the misty lady from the confines of the wall to give her a solid, human appearance. The uniformed man cast a glance over his shoulder.

  "And so we say good-by to the colorful, romantic twentieth century with its many tribes, its primitive peoples, and its quaint customs." He turned to stare at Donald, directing a low-voiced order at the dumfounded man. "And see that you get here on time after this, chum. No more of that silly saxophone business."

  The conveyance wheeled across the room and vanished into the opposite wall, the lady in the rear seat turning for a last amused look at the quaint mill-era furniture. Her face faded and the visitors were gone.

  "Donald—" his wife quavered.

  "They can't do that to me!" Donald roared. "I'm a taxpayer! I'll see my precinct committeeman about this!"

  "Wasn't he a nice man, Daddy?"

  Daddy correctly reasoned that the nice, uniformed man and his strange conveyance of ghostly passengers would be back on the following night. He readied himself accordingly.

  A few minutes before Judy's usual bedtime the vehicle nosed through one wall of the bedroom and the uniformed guide could be seen rising from his seat, preparatory to spouting his lecture on the twentieth-century family unit. As he solidified he glanced about the room, noting the absence of Donald's wife and child.

  "Come, come now," he said with displeasure. "Bring in the remainder of your family. We have a nice crowd today."

  "I've got a surprise for you," Donald replied softly. "Indeed?" said the guide. "What?"

  "This!" Donald cried, and brought from behind him a double-barreled shotgun. He raised the weapon and fired both barrels at the crowded car. Plaster fountained from the opposite wall and the bedroom window crashed down in shards.

  The guide shook his head. "For shame! Please call the family"—he reached behind him to pick up a saxophone—"or must I perform another tune?"

  "This," he said to the watching tourists, "is a male of the twentieth century. You have just witnessed a primitive fireworks display used by these people to welcome visitors to their land or to celebrate special holidays dedicated to their gods. It would be a generous gesture on our part to show this man we appreciate the display he has prepared for us. Early peoples, you know, thrive on flattery and attention." He broke into polite applause and the tourists seated behind him took it up. Someone pitched a few coins.

  Donald hurled the gun to the floor and stamped on it.

  "The twentieth-century man is now beginning his dance of welcome, a tribal ritual which has come down to him from the campfires of his ancestors who roamed the forests still hundreds of years away. I hold in my hand a musical instrument of this age called a saxophone, and presently I will blow a little tune which will summon his mate and child from the nether regions of the building in which they dwell...."

  Donald kept trying. On the following night he laboriously strung a length of hose from the second-floor bathroom to the bedroom, and as the visitors emerged from the wall—a rather thin crowd this particular trip—he attempted to douse them with a strong stream of water. The water squirted through the visitors and splashed down the cracked wall on the opposite side of the room.

  "This," said the guide, "is a twentieth-century male. He is welcoming us to his dwelling place with a water ritual designed to wash away the evil spirits which he fears may hamper our coming. When he has thoroughly cleansed the walls of his dwelling and made the unit safe for us, he will begin his dance of welcome and we will be expected to show our appreciation by applause or small gifts and coins. Afterward, by making notes on this instrument in my hand, the remainder of his family will approach. Now, note the quaint furniture of the—"

  In an aside as he was leaving, the guide confided to Donald, "Keep it up, chum. You put on the best show on my entire run. We're getting good word-of-mouth advertising."

  Donald kept it up. He tried stink bombs, which succeeded only in forcing him and his family out of the house; he brought in a radio, a phonograph, several automobile horns and a borrowed siren in an effort to drive away the tourists from the future by a sheer wall of noise, and succeeded only in blasting his own eardrums; he turned a swarm of bees loose in the room and wound up with numerous stings; he was forcefully prevented by his wife from piling the furniture and the bedding in the room's center and setting fire to it as the guide and his conveyance appeared through the wall.

  "This is a man of the twentieth century. He is preparing to welcome us by setting fire to those numerous small red objects you
see lying about the floor of the dwelling unit. Presently the red objects will explode with a tremendous repercussion, driving away evil spirits lurking here—he believes—and making our visit a safe one. Now, please note..."

  A red-eyed haggard man stood on a street corner, leaning dazedly against the lamp post. His wife had left him and returned to her mother, declaring that she and their child would return to that horrible house when—and only when—he had rid Judy's room of those horrible visitations once and for all. He hadn't reported for work for over a week and his job was in danger; he hadn't slept for the same length of time and his health was in similar jeopardy. His friends avoided him, believing he had fallen into the clutches of the demon rum. All in all, he was a sad specimen of twentieth-century man. And he was on the verge of ending it all when the bus went by.

  Someone babbling in a loud voice caught his attention, and he glanced up, cringing instinctively at the sight of a rubberneck bus wheeling along the street. Sick at heart, he turned his back to discover passers-by gazing curiously at the bus.

  Donald opened his eyes wide.

  The low bodied motor conveyance made its nightly appearance through the wall, and Donald saw the guide rising from his seat to address the tourists behind him. Donald folded his arms and waited. The entire vehicle, well crowded, came into view and stopped.

  The uniformed guide looked at him inquiringly. "Pretty quiet around here, chum. Can't you whip up something?"

  "I certainly can, mister," Donald told him. "Just you wait right here." He crossed to the bedroom door and flung it open, jumping back to avoid the mob. "Here they are, folks," he shouted, "as advertised." Holding out his hat, he admitted the crowd into the room, watching carefully to see that each dropped a coin into the receptacle.

  "Real, genuine ghosts, folks! The only haunted house in Libertyville! Each night and every night on the hour this ghostly crew rides out of that wall yonder and parades across the room. Step right up to them, folks; try to touch them; try to feel them. You can't! Come right in and meet my ghosts."

  The small bedroom was suddenly filled with awed, milling people crowding forward to gaze at the ghostly conveyance. Curious hands reached out to touch the future tourists, only to grasp the empty air. Flashbulbs popped as newspaper photographers snapped what they hoped would be pictures of the visitation. A representative of the American Ethereal Society pinched his glasses to his nose and held a lighted match to the ghostly guide's natty uniform, testing to see if flaming gauze netting would reveal a trickery. The guide stared at the flashbulbs, slightly taken aback.

  "Come now," he said, "this will be reported."

  "He talks, he walks, he plays a saxophone!" Donald shouted above the din. "A real, genuine ghost, folks. Step right up and take a look at the real article!"

  "Where in hell did they come from?" a reporter wanted to know, brazenly pushing two fingers into and through the disapproving face of the guide. "I'm damned if they scare me!"

  "He's a legend connected with the house," Donald explained glibly. "According to the story, this fellow in the uniform was an eccentric inventor who used to live here, but he finally killed himself. The story says he was a 4-F but he wore that uniform to ease his conscience; he always claimed to be inventing war machines for the Government. See all those people behind him?"

  Necks craned to look at the tourists.

  "They were murdered!" Donald whispered hoarsely. "According to the legend, this crazy inventor murdered them all and sealed their bodies up in the wall. And now, every night he lines up all the ghosts on this crazy machine he imagines he invented and rides them through the walls...."

  A fresh onslaught of people in the doorway drew his attention. Snatching up the hatful of jingling coins, Donald fought his way to the door.

  "Step right in, folks. The ghosts are here! Come right in and meet genuine ghosts in the only haunted house in town! Each night and every night..."

  Donald's wife and child returned home the following weekend. Judy was installed in a new bedroom, and in due time developed an intense interest in Hopalong Cassidy.

  The End

  ****************************

  To a Ripe Old Age,

  by Wilson Tucker

  F&SF Dec. 1952

  Short Story - 6520 words

  There are at least four separate persons in the one lean body of Wilson (or Bob) Tucker: a professional mystery novelist, author of an annual series launched by the memorably tricky THE CHINESE DOLL; a professional operator of motion picture projection machines; an amateur publisher and science fiction fan, whose Science Fiction News Letter is the most informative of fan magazines; and—all too rarely—a producer of highly adroit and individual science fiction short stories. You'll remember his grim My Brother’s Wife in F&SF (February, 1951) and his sparkling The Tourist Trade in a current anthology. Now read what we consider his best work in this field to date: a sparkling treatment of a grim theme, an inherently terrible story of the Last Man on Earth, told in dialog which compels your loudest chortles.

  George Young sneezed and squinted his eyes. The dirty wallpaper clinging to the ceiling above him seemed ready to come loose and fall. He sneezed again and rolled his eyes slowly, taking in the equally sad paper peeling from the sidewalls—faded roses, and beneath that, blue feathers. A battered old telephone hung on the wall near the door. The room contained a peculiar odor. His trousers were thrown over a chair beside the bed.

  “Mother of Moses!” George Young complained aloud. “Another firetrap.”

  He fought away the ache in his back and the dull pain in his chest to sit up. The movement sent a fine cloud of dust flying. He sneezed again, and continued sneezing until the dust had cleared away.

  “What the hell goes on here?” George demanded of the peeling wallpaper. His uneasy nostrils cringed from the smell of the place.

  Slowly swinging his feet off the bed and to the floor, he swore loudly when his naked toes made jarring contact with several glass bottles. Curious, George peered down. Liquor bottles—all empty. With growing incredulity he examined them, attempted to count them. Bottles, all shapes, all kinds, all colors, all manner and variety of labels, empty bottles. They began at the baseboard of the wall near the head of his bed and marched across the dusty carpet, a reasonably straight line of them running from the head to the foot of the bed. His eyes swung that way, still doubtfully counting, to find the bottles turned a corner. At the count of 52 they swung around the scarred bedpost and continued parallel with the footboard.

  George gingerly lifted himself to his feet and rested his hands on the footboard, staring over and down. The empty bottles continued their fantastic march across the floor and turned a second corner. George swallowed and lay back down on the bed. Dust flew. He sneezed.

  “Stop that, damn it!” he yelled hoarsely. “Why don’t they dust this stinking firetrap?”

  After a long moment he very carefully rolled over on his belly to stare at the floor on the opposite side of the bed. Empty bottles. After turning that second corner the bottles maintained their marching line up to the wallboard once more. His bed was ringed by bottles, a three-sided ring with each end anchored at the wall. All empty, all large—he saw that he had not wasted his money on pint sizes.

  “Money—!”

  Alarmed, George leaped from the bed in another cloud of dust to snatch up the rumpled trousers. There was no wallet in the pockets. He shook his addled head to clear away the dust and haze, and grabbed for the pillow. The wallet was there. Hurriedly he opened it, plucked out the sheaf of currency and counted the remaining bills.

  “Oh, no, Mother of Moses!” Thoughtlessly, George ran to the window, inserted his fingers into the two-inch opening along the bottom and pulled it up. He thrust his head out into the hot sunlight. “Police! I’ve been robbed!”

  He brought his head in again to stare at the array of bottles. Once more he counted the money in his wallet. He lifted a naked foot to kick at the nearest empty, and thought the
better of it. Slowly then, using a dirty index finger, he made a second count of the number of bottles, multiplied the total by five, and compared that sum with the remaining money. The answer was startling.

  “I was robbed,” he repeated dully. “Hell, I never get that drunk! Why—I couldn't drink all that.” George paused to survey the marching line. “I don’t think I could.” He paused again, considering. “Well, I never could before.”

  He stepped over the bottles and sat down on the bed. Dust arose, he sneezed. The single bedsheet beneath him was covered with a crust that made his bottom itch. The wallet lay open in his hand.

  More than $400 gone ... where? Into all that joy-juice? Four hundred bucks, the money he had saved up for his furlough. Four hundred bucks earned the hard way by scrubbing latrines, polishing brass, cleaning the damned rifle, policing the grounds, drilling, drilling, drilling.... Eleven months in the army, eleven months of deepest privation and degrading toil, eleven months of saving his meager pay and running it up in crap and poker games; and finally, after eleven months, a ten-day delay-enroute. From Fort Dix, New Jersey, to Camp Walton, California, with a delay-enroute.

  All right, so he had delayed enroute. Somewhere. He had climbed down off the train—in somewhere town—and squandered about $400 on those bottles now surrounding the bed. But where was somewhere town? And still more alarming was a new thought: which of those ten days was it now, today? How far was he from Camp Walton and how many days had he left to reach there?

  Hurriedly he arose from the bed in a cloud of dust and jumped the line of bottles, to snatch up the earpiece of the ancient wallphone. There was a layer of dust on it.

  “Hey, down there!” George shouted into its mouth, “where the hell is this? And what day is it?”

  The phone stayed dead.