Seventh Sense

by Robert A. Brown

  The guy named Pete came in while I was putting the second tire together, but he only had time to grin at me before another car honked and away he went. I finished up and washed my hands. There wasn’t a bit of dirt on me. My CCC officer training, I guess – they caution you about not getting dirty, so that the men will respect you more or some such shit. Keeping myself cleaned up was second nature to me anyway.

  I’d tucked my shirt back in and was sitting on the box finishing my Coke when the day’s rush seemed to subside all at once. He stepped through the door, let out an exaggerated “whoosh,” grinned at me again and stuck out his hand.

  That’s how I met Pete Barlow.

  He was regular-sized, maybe five foot ten, tight build, and a dark complexion like a lot of the other people I’ve seen in this town. His black hair was close-cropped, and he had very dark eyes that looked right at you, maybe even through you. He had a beak of a nose that gave him kind of an Arab look. You remember my Uncle Chuck, from Lebanon? Pete looks like that.

  He had the confident air of the successful small-town businessman, and his handshake was strong and hard.

  “How about another Coke?” he asked, nodding at the empty bottle I’d left on the counter.

  “Sure. You bet.”

  He picked up my nickel, beside the bottle. “Here,” he said, flipping it to me. “Thanks for the help.”

  “Glad to do it. You were swamped.”

  He nodded his head. “Yeah. It was my rush hour. Everybody waiting until after work to gas up for the next day. I get a lot of one-gallon sales.” Pulling two Cokes from the box, he handed one to me. “That’s a CCC uniform, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” I took a pull from the wet, ice-cold bottle.

  “I don’t know of any camps around here.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “And I’m not CCC anymore. I’m doing interviews with old people around Mackaville, in town and back in the hills, for the WPA Folklore Project.”

  “Which is why you need wheels,” he said. Upending his Coke, he gulped about half the bottle, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Miz Stean told me.”

  “That’s right. I figured I could pick up some kind of old car here in town. I know enough to keep one running. But hell, no one wanted to give me the time of day.”

  “Yeah,” he said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “It’s a hard row for any newcomer in this place. They’ll thaw out, but it takes a while and you can’t wait. You need something to drive and right now.”

  I nodded. “That’s the size of it.”

  Pointing with the now nearly empty bottle, he indicated a Model T sitting just outside the station. The door of the turtle hull had been removed and a big box sat in its place, fitted snugly down into the trunk.

  “I could let you use the shop car for a buck a day, but you couldn’t have it until after lunch, and you’d have to have it back by six,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Naw. I don’t know when these people are going to be able – or willing – to talk to me, and if I gave you a dollar a day I’d likely run out of dough before I got my first government check.”

  “Miz Stean told me she didn’t think you had much money.”

  “Miz Stean ain’t lying,” I said.

  He glanced toward the repair bay – at the two tires I’d fixed, maybe – and seemed to ponder something for a moment.

  “I got an idea,” he said after a moment. “C’m’on.”

  I followed him through the grease bay to the other garage. “You know how to ride a motorbike?”

  “Sure,” I said, lying like I was on a blind date. You could put my knowledge of motorcycles in your eye and not feel a thing. But I remembered the name of the big bike that rich kid Lawrence Morgan used to ride and brag about – remember? – so I added, “I used to run around on an old Excelsior.”

  The sun was going down now, the front of the station in shadow. “Excelsior?” he said, suddenly bursting into laughter. “That ain’t a motorcycle.” He flicked on the lights in the bay and walked to the back of the shop, pulling the tarp off the biggest bike in the world.

  “This,” he announced, “is a motorcycle – a four-banger Indian with a side car.”

  John, the damn thing was as big as a combine, even without the side car – which had its own windshield. The engine, which sat in some kind of pan arrangement, was twice the size of anything I’d ever seen. I gasped like someone had just thrown a glass of water in my face. I couldn’t help it.

  Pete Barlow still grinned, but there was something besides humor in the piercing stare of those dark eyes. I could see doubt stirring behind them, and I couldn’t have that.

  “Hell, I can ride that big monster if you’ll give me a lesson,” I said, with what I hoped sounded like confidence instead of me whistling past a grave yard. “I know how to fly, I can run a dump truck, I can drive every model Cat made and work a steam shovel, too. This Indian ought to be my meat.”

  He took my words in without saying anything back, and when he stooped and spent a minute or so rubbing a nonexistent spot off the red polish of the sidecar with a rag from his hip pocket, I knew Pete Barlow was a man who didn’t make quick decisions.

  Finally, he stood up and faced me. “Tell you what I’d do, if you’re interested,” he said. “I’d rent you the bike for five bucks a month, cash on the barrelhead, and you come in after your supper for let’s say an hour every day and give me a hand closing up. Fix any flats I haven’t gotten to. Maybe do some grease jobs. Help me deliver cars. Once folks get used to you, maybe you can help on the drive, too. It’d be every day but Sunday. I don’t open on Sundays.”

  He let me think it over. I’d be working cheap, but the bike would be a lifeline. In fact, I didn’t know how the hell I’d be able to do the folklore job without some way to get around to the people I needed to see.

  “I may have a late interview every once in a while,” I said. “Would you work with me on that? I’d put in extra hours to make up for it.”

  He nodded, and before he had time to say anything I stuck out my hand, saying, “All right. You’ve got yourself a new hired man. Show me what to do and I’ll start now.”

  “All right, then.” He grinned like a guy picking up his winnings at a crap game. You can’t beat a deal that makes both sides happy.

  I worked with him through dinnertime that evening. He showed me where things were, and he seemed pleased when he found out I knew all the basics of being a pump jockey. After he’d closed up, he gave me my driving lesson on the big Indian, and I found out why it had been sitting there under a tarp for a while. The last bad wreck had done it for him. It had been his second accident in a year, and he’d had to take a month off work and turn the station over to someone named Diffie, who I doped out was a good guy but maybe not the sharpest tack.

  So it may not have been a giant act of charity on Pete’s part, but it still solved my transportation problem. I also found out it worked different from any motorcycle I’d ever seen, and steering it was like steering a battleship. Still, I got it figured out fairly quickly and felt confident enough to drive it back to the boarding house, where all the occupants – even MacWhirtle – came out to see what was making all the noise. (I found myself wishing that Patricia was there to see me come roaring in.) Ma let me park it in her empty garage, which is actually more of a shed, with garden tools and other stuff stored in it. But it has a good solid Yale lock on it, so I figure it to be plenty secure.

  As soon as I got in the house, before I’d even had a chance to thank her for sending me over to Pete’s place, Ma came out of the kitchen with a big thick-sliced ham sandwich and a glass of milk for me. I sat down at the table to eat it, MacWhirtle at my feet, and between bites told everyone about how I’d gotten the motor bike.

  On balance, it hadn’t turned out to be such a bad day after all.

  Your pal and faithful comrade,

  Robert

  May 13, 1939

  Saturday morning


  Dear John,

  Like I expected when I wrote you last, I’ve been so busy getting up and running with these interviews, along with helping Pete close up his station every night, that I haven’t had time to write for several days. So there’s lots to tell you.

  First of all, thank you for the good long letter. Minnesota seems a million miles away to me now, so I was especially glad to hear from you – and especially proud to hear that you’ve placed a yarn with Weird Tales. Congratulations, pal! Looks like you’ve won our old bet about who was going to crack the pulps first. I can’t remember what I owe you, but I’ll be happy to pay it. That idea about a vampire preacher is a pip. It ought to hit their readership smack between the eyes.

  I just looked over that last sentence. Guess I’m starting to use the patois I’ve been picking up around here.

  That’s not all I’ve picked up around here. Fact is, I’m getting plenty of ideas for Weird Tales-type stories myself. I know working the copy desk at the Dispatch puts you front row center on some strange happenings, but this burg can hold its own with St. Paul when it comes to the bizarre. It’s like a lot of these people are living in an E. Hoffman Price novel. Not Lovecraft – he’s too far out there – but Price or maybe Wellman.

  Okay. I’d better quit beating around the bush and get right to the story.

  Last night, I had the crap scared out of me.

  I was coming in from doing an interview with an old fellow named Izzy Seamore and his wife, Junie. They live in a little whitewashed shack about a mile outside of town. Actually, his wife turned out to be the loquacious one, and she gave me the best story. It’s plenty chilling, and if I can make these keys strike hard enough to get through three sheets of paper and two sheets of carbon paper (I keep a copy of all the reports for myself) I’ll send you a copy when I finish writing it up.

  On the way back to town on the big Indian, I started experiencing one of those dark feelings I used to get that were, a lot of times, precursors to the seventh sense. I chalked it up to the story the old lady had told me, and wait ‘til you read it, but darkness kept getting stronger and stronger, even when I shared the story with Pete as we were closing his service station down.

  “Them Seamores are pretty good people,” was about all I got out of him.

  I got back to the boarding house about dark – had to, since the lights on the bike don’t work. Pete keeps saying he’ll fix them, and then we get busy and it slips his mind and mine, too. I ate dinner with Mister Clark and Paul. Dave had gone on the swing shift at the rail yard.

  (Patricia wasn’t there because she only works mornings and weekends – I saw her just an hour or so ago, though, and we’re getting pretty chummy. Boy, what a baby!)

  There’s a twofer rack at the grocery story just down the street, where you can trade two pulps for another or buy the used ones for half-price. I’d gotten four really good ones while I was on my lunch break that day – a Shadow from ‘35, a Doc Savage from ‘36, a Weird Tales – your new employer – from all the way back to ‘29, and a hot damn Spicy Adventure from ‘35, all four for 30 cents. They were all new to me, in good shape, and I couldn’t wait to get to them.

  I chose the Doc first, and I finished the whole story by about midnight, another good effort by old Kenneth Robeson that takes Doc and the boys to the South Pole. I was reading in bed, under one of those lights that hooks over your headboard, and while I thought about finishing off with one of the three backup stories in the mag, my eyes were getting heavy. So I switched off the light, and I’ll admit I was thinking about Patricia, and I don’t mean Doc’s cousin, as I drifted off.

  I think I told you that my room was on the second floor, with a big window right next to the bed. Well, John, all of a sudden I was wide awake, lying on my side and staring out that window into the moonlight. I lay there confused for a minute, wondering why I’d awakened, and then I heard the sound on the other side of the room, behind my back. Someone was at my desk, going through my papers and being very sneaky about it, trying not to make any noise. Still, I could pick it up plainly enough. Two or three pages would flip, and then I’d hear this little scraping or scratching, like when somebody runs a fingernail down a piece of paper.

  I want you to know that as I lay there in the pitch dark, my eyes fixed on the moonlit scene outside, I figured I was a dead duck. What could I do? I kept listening, and every once in a while I thought I heard heavy breathing.

  I don’t know how long I lay there, not moving a muscle. Maybe it was only a couple of minutes. Because my back was to the rest of the room, I knew that if I rolled over whoever or whatever it was would be on me before I could even jump up. I am here to tell you I felt the kind of terror you and I have only read about, and it was damn near unbearable. I knew I had to do something.

  Very slowly, I calmed myself down and took stock. My left hand was resting on the pillow, and I decided that my best course of action was to slowly, very slowly, slide it up the headboard to the reading lamp and flip it on. At the same time, I’d yell at the top of my lungs.

  I was frightened nearly out of my mind, and at the same time I was mentally cussing you because your making fun of me was the reason I did not sleep with my pistol under my pillow anymore.

  Well, every nerve in my body was screaming from tension as I moved my hand, slowly, silently, up to that light switch. I can’t explain how good that little knurled knob felt when my fingers finally touched it. Gathering myself up, I switched it on, whirling around and shouting something like, “YAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

  The room exploded with light, and something else exploded at my desk. Papers flew into the air, a tumbler half-full of water clattered to the floor, and a big old calico cat shot up the wall, clawed frantically at the door moulding, and bailed out through the transom like her life depended on it – which it did, because I would’ve killed that son-of-a-bitch if I could’ve caught her.

  I climbed out of bed to retrieve my papers, some of which were already wet from the spilled water, and it wasn’t long before there came frantic knocks at my door. I threw on some pants and an undershirt and pulled the door open. Everybody in the house was there, even MacWhirtle, peering in at me like they thought I’d gone mad.

  When I told them what had happened, though, they laughed. Thank God they thought it was funny. I had visions of being put out onto the street in this strange little burg with no place to go.

  I didn’t think it was too damned funny, though. Because in the split second between the light coming on and the cat scaling the wall and shooting through the transom, I saw a couple of things that right now give me goose pimples, even on this bright and sunny morning.

  I’d bet money my intruder was the same old cemetery cat that ushered me to this place last Sunday. And, John, I’d bet double that I caught it reading the notes from my interviews.

  More later,

  Robert

  May 14, 1939

  Sunday afternoon

  Dear John,

  I am feeling over my jitters now and sometimes it even seems a little funny, that whole thing about the cat in my room looking over my notes. It’s funny in another way, too. Funny odd. Because even though everybody here at Ma Stean’s seems amused by my outburst Friday night, I know there’s something going on. Remember that essay that Lovecraft wrote about cats, and how they’re close to things that people can’t see? I’ve been thinking about that.

  And speaking of old H.P.: There’s one of his yarns in the Weird Tales I bought at the grocery, but I’ve put it aside for a while. It’s weird enough around here.

  Ma asked me to church again this morning, but I turned her down gently and told her I was going to take the morning and explore the countryside. She looked at me a little funny, but not mean or anything, and told me to be careful.

  So I got on the big Indian about 7:30 this morning and took off for the hills, winding through a lot of woods and wilderness. Here everything is green and lush, all up and down, hills following hills, row upon row,
little valleys with shacks and animal pens and crop rows hidden from each other by ridges and dark bands of trees. Sometimes the evergreens and old hardwoods were so thick and tall that going past them plunged me into a kind of twilight.

  I was popping away through one of those stretches, heading back toward town, and I suddenly felt sure that someone on horseback was coming up behind me. When I glanced back I didn’t see anyone, but I couldn’t shake the feeling so I opened her up and went tearing away down a hill. Hell, I’m not sure now why I even did that, but at the bottom I ran into a dry creek bed that was about a foot deep in pea gravel.

  Talk about an explosion! That crap blew out around me like I was a speed boat and it was my wake. I thought I was going to roll the bike for sure, but I shot on across – how I don’t know. That stuff is round and loose and slippery and I had a hell of a time staying upright. But I did. I am still shaking those little rocks out of the Indian.

  Even though I made it across the gravel, I didn’t get off scot-free. Just as I topped the next hill the Indian started missing and then quit dead on me. I had to get off and push her in for the last five miles. Since it was Sunday, Pete wasn’t open, so I wrangled her into Ma’s garage and went in the house and cleaned up, figuring to get to Pete’s station early tomorrow. So now, after a good bath, I’m at the roll-top in my room writing you and wondering about the bike. I figure one of the rocks may have kicked up and busted something up in the engine.

  Looking around this room I think it’s funny how it’s become home already. I’ve only been here a little over a week and in some ways it’s like I’ve lived my whole life in this burg. The brass bed, the funny little rag rug, even old MacWhirtle, who’s right now sitting at my feet – have I really only lived here for a week?

  It makes me feel good to write you. The next best thing to talking.

  Most of the interviews I’ve gotten so far have just been standard stories about grandparents and other people from a long, long time ago – I’ve heard a couple from as far back as the 1700s – and how they lived back then, but Mrs. Seamore, the woman I wrote you about yesterday, gave me a real dandy. I’ve finished writing it up and I hope that the carbon I’m sending along is dark enough for you to read. I think it is. I gave you the one I usually keep, the first copy, and took the second and lighter one for my own records. It wouldn’t surprise me if you found enough in it for another Weird Tales story. In fact, I’m thinking that I’m going to find enough stories around here to keep us both in Weird Tales-type plots for a good long time.