Out of Their Minds

by Clifford D. Simak

  “Make it snappy, then,” he told me.

  I found a telephone directory on a shelf underneath the phone.

  “Where do I look for a Pilot Knob number?” I asked.

  “You’ll find it in there. Section called Pilot Knob-Woodman.”

  “This is Woodman?”

  “Sure it is,” said the man, disgusted with me. “You must have missed the signboard just outside of town.”

  “I guess I did,” I said.

  I closed the door and found the section, then thumbed through the pages to find the name I wanted. Finally I located it—Mrs. Janet Forsythe. There was only the one Forsythe in the book. Otherwise I’d not have known who to call. I had never known or had forgotten the name of Old Doc Forsythe’s wife.

  I reached out to lift the hook off the receiver, then hesitated. I had gotten by so far. Had I ought to take another chance? But there was no way, I argued, in which the call could be detected.

  I lifted the receiver, fed in the coin, and dialed. I waited while the ringing went on and on. Finally the ringing broke off and someone said hello. I thought I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Miss Adams?” I asked.

  “This is she. Mrs. Forsythe is asleep and …”

  “Kathy,” I said.

  “Who is this?”

  “Horton Smith,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said, startled. Then said nothing more.

  “Kathy …”

  “I am glad you called,” she said. “It was all a big mistake. The Ballard boy turned up. All three of them turned up. Now it is all right and …”

  “Hold up a minute, please,” I said. She was talking so fast that the words were tripping over one another. “If the Ballard kid turned up, tell me what happened to the body.”

  “The body? Oh, you mean …”

  “Yes, the body of Justin Ballard.”

  “Horton, that’s the strangest thing of all. The body disappeared.”

  “What do you mean—disappeared?” I thought I knew. I just wanted to be sure.

  “Why, they found it out at the edge of the woods just west of town and they left two men—Tom Williams was one of them, I don’t know who the other was—to watch it until the sheriff came. The two men looked away for a minute and when they looked back the body wasn’t there. No one could have stolen it. It just disappeared. The whole town is in an uproar …”

  “And you?” I asked. “Did you get the envelope?”

  “Yes, I got it. And I had just gotten home when the body disappeared.”

  “So now everything’s all right?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “You can come back now.”

  “Tell me one thing, Kathy. Did you look at what was in that envelope?”

  She started to speak and hesitated.

  “Look, Kathy, this is important. Did you look at it?”

  “I just took a peek and …”

  “Damn it,” I shouted, “quit stalling! Tell me if you read it.”

  She flared at me. “All right, I read it. I think the man who wrote it …”

  “Never mind about the man who wrote it. How much did you read? All of it?”

  “The first few pages. To where the notes began. Horton, do you mean to tell me there is something to it? But that’s a silly thing to ask. Of course there couldn’t be. I don’t know a thing about evolution, but I could punch a lot of holes in it.”

  “Don’t waste your time punching holes,” I told her. “Whatever made you read it?”

  “Well, I guess because you told me not to. When you told me that, I couldn’t help but read it. It’s your fault that I read it. And what’s wrong with reading it?”

  What she said was true, of course, although I hadn’t thought of it at the time. I had warned her because I didn’t want her to get further involved and I had done the one thing that had been guaranteed to get her involved, clear up to her neck. And the worst thing about Kathy was that she need not have been involved, that there had been no reason for her to get that envelope. The body of Justin Ballard had disappeared and with the disappearance I no longer was suspect. But if it had not happened that way, I told myself, trying to justify the circumstance, the sheriff would have searched my room at the motel and have found the envelope and then there’d have been hell to pay.

  “There’s only one thing wrong with it,” I told her. “You’re in trouble now. You …”

  “Horton Smith,” she snapped, “don’t you threaten me!”

  “I’m not threatening you,” I said. “I’m just sorry. I never should have let you …”

  “Sorry about what?” she asked.

  “Kathy,” I pleaded, “listen to me and don’t argue. How soon can you get away? You planned to drive back to Pennsylvania. Are you ready now?”

  “Why, yes,” she said. “My bags are packed—but what does that have to do with this?”

  “Kathy …” I began, then stopped. It would frighten her and I didn’t want that. But I could think of no easy way to tell her.

  “Kathy,” I said, “the man who wrote what is in the envelope was killed; the man who sent it to me was killed just a few hours ago …”

  She gasped. “And you think that I …”

  “Don’t be a fool,” I said. “Anyone who reads what’s in that envelope is in danger.”

  “And you? Was the business of Justin …”

  “I think it was,” I said.

  “What should I do?” she asked. Not particularly frightened, perfectly matter-of-fact, perhaps somewhat unbelieving.

  “You can get into your car and come and pick me up. Bring along the envelope, so no one else can get it.”

  “Pick you up. Then what?”

  “Then head for Washington. There are people there to see.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like the FBI, for one,” I said.

  “But you can simply pick up a phone …”

  “Not on this one,” I shouted. “Not on something like this. To start with, they’d not believe a phone call. They get a lot of crank calls.”

  “But you think you can convince them.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “Apparently you are not convinced.”

  “I don’t know if I am or not. I’d have to think about it.”

  “There’s no time to think,” I warned her. “You either come and pick me up, or you don’t. It might be safer if we traveled together, although I can’t guarantee it would be. You’re traveling east in any case and …”

  “Where are you now?” she asked.

  “Woodman. A town down the river.”

  “I know where it is. Do you want me to pick up some of your stuff at the motel?”

  “No,” I said. “I think time may be important. We can take turns driving. Only stop for gas and food.”

  “Where will I find you?”

  “Just drive slowly down the main street. It’s the only street there is—the state highway. I’ll be watching for you. There won’t be many cars through here tonight, I would imagine.”

  “I feel foolish,” she said. “This is so …”

  “Melodramatic,” I suggested.

  “I suppose you could call it that. But, as you say, I am driving east in any case.”

  “I’ll be watching for you.”

  “I’ll be there,” she said, “in half an hour. Maybe a little more.”

  Out of the phone booth, I found that the muscles of my legs were cramped from being hunched in the crowded space. I limped across to the bar.

  “You took your time,” the bartender said, sourly. “I already threw Joe out and it’s closing time. Here’s your drink. Don’t linger over it.”

  I picked up the glass. “I’d be honored if you’d join me.”

  “You mean have a drink with you?”

  I nodded.

  He shook his head. “I don’t drink,” he said.

  I finished off the drink and paid him and walked out. Behind me, the lights went out and a moment
later the bartender came out and locked the door. He tripped over something as he stepped out on the sidewalk, but righted himself and reached down and picked up what he had stumbled over. It was a baseball bat.

  “Damn kids were playing out in back after suppertime,” he said. “One of them left it here.”

  Disgusted, he pitched it onto a bench that stood beside the door.

  “I don’t see your car,” he said.

  “I haven’t got a car.”

  “But you said …”

  “I know. But if I’d told you I didn’t have a car it would have required a lot of explanation and I had to get those phone calls made.”

  He looked at me, shaking his head—a man who popped out of nowhere and didn’t have a car.

  “I came by canoe,” I said. “I tied up at the landing.”

  “And what are you going to do now?”

  “Stay right here,” I said. “I’m waiting for a friend.”

  “The one you called?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The one I called.”

  “Well, good night,” he said. “I hope you don’t have to wait too long.”

  He went down the street, heading home, but several times he slowed and half turned, to look back at me.

  12

  Somewhere in the wood along the river an owl muttered querulously. The night wind held a biting edge and I turned up the collar of my shirt to gain a little warmth against it. A prowling cat came pussyfooting down the street, stopped when it caught sight of me, and then angled over to the opposite side of the street to disappear in the darkness between two buildings.

  With the disappearance of the bartender, Woodman took on the feel of a deserted village. I had not paid much attention to it before, but now, with time to be used up, I saw that the place was tattered and down-at-heels, another one of those dying little towns, somewhat further along the road to oblivion than was Pilot Knob. The sidewalks were breaking up and in places grass and weeds grew in the cracks. The buildings bore the marks of time, unpainted and unrepaired, and the architecture, if the shape of them could be dignified by such a word, dated to a century before. There had been a time—there must have been a time—when the town had been brand-new and hopeful; there must then have been some economic reason for its planting and existence. And the reason, I knew, must have been the river, at a time when the river still served as an artery of commerce, when the produce of the farm or mill was brought to the river landing to be loaded on the steamboats, when the same steamboats freighted all the goods that were needed by the countryside. But the river had long since lost its economic role and had been turned back to the wildness of its strip of bottomland. The railroad and the high-speed highways, the planes flying far above it, had robbed it of all significance except the primal, basic significance it had always held in the land’s ecology.

  And now Woodman stood forlorn, as truly a backwater in the fabric of society as the many little backwaters which meandered out from the mainstream of the river. Once prosperous, perhaps, but now in poverty, it hung on doggedly as a small dot upon the map (although not on every map), as a living place for people who had as much lost touch with the world as had the town itself. The world had gone marching on, but little, dying towns such as this had not done any marching; they had dozed and fallen out of step and perhaps they no longer cared much about the world or the other people in it. They had retained, or created, or clung to a world that belonged to them, or that they belonged to. And thinking about it, I realized that the definition of what had happened here did not really matter, for the town itself no longer really mattered. It was a pity, I thought, that this should be, for in these little dozing, forgotten and forgetting towns there still existed a rare touch of human caring and compassion, of human value, that the world had need of and could use, but which it had largely lost.

  Here, in towns such as this, people still heard the imagined baying of the were-pack, while the rest of the world listened for an uglier sound that might precede the thunderclap of atomic doom. Between the two of them, it seemed to be, the were-pack might be the saner sound to hear. For if the provincialism of little towns like this was madness, it was a very gentle, even a pleasant, madness, while the madness of the outer world was stripped of any gentleness.

  Kathy would be arriving soon—or I hoped she would arrive. If she failed to show up, it would be understandable. She had said she would, but on second thought, I warned myself, she might decide against it. I, myself, I recalled, had questioned very seriously what my old friend had written, although I had more reason at the time to believe it than Kathy would have now.

  And if she did not show up, what should I do then? Go back to Pilot Knob, most likely, gather up my things and head for Washington. Although I was not entirely sure how much good going there would do. The FBI, I wondered, or the CIA? Or who? Someone who would listen, someone who would pay attention and not brush it off as the raving of a madman.

  I was leaning against the side of the building which housed the bar, looking up the street, hoping that Kathy would show up very soon, when I saw the wolf come trotting down the road.

  There is something about a wolf, some deep-buried instinct from man’s distant past, that triggers at once a chill of fright and a raising of the hackles. Here, immediately, is an implacable enemy, a killer as terrible and remorseless as is man himself. There is nothing noble about this killer. He is sly and tricky and ruthless and relentless. There can be no compromise between him and man, for the enmity is one of too long standing.

  Standing there, seeing the wolf trot out of the darkness, I felt this instant chill, this raising of the hackles.

  The wolf moved self-assuredly. About him there was no slinking and no furtiveness. He was going about his business and would brook no foolishness. He was big and black, or at least he looked black in the light, but gaunt and he had a hungry look about him.

  I stepped out from the building and as I stepped out, I cast a quick look about me for something that might serve as a weapon, and there, lying on the bench where the bartender had tossed it, was the baseball bat. I reached down and took hold of the bat and lifted it. It had a nice heft and a good balance to it.

  When I looked back at the street, there was not one wolf, but three, spread out one behind the other, all three of them trotting with an irritating self-assurance.

  I stood still on the sidewalk, with the bat gripped in my hand, and when the first wolf reached a point opposite me it stopped and wheeled around to face me.

  I suppose I could have shouted and aroused the town; I could have called for help. But the thought of shouting never once occurred to me. This was a matter between myself and these three wolves—no, not three, for there were more of them now, trotting out of the darkness and coming down the street.

  I knew they weren’t wolves, not real wolves, not honest wolves born and raised on this honest earth. No more real wolves than the sea serpent had been a real sea serpent. These were the things I knew, that Linda Bailey had told me about; perhaps the very ones that I had heard the night before when I had stepped out for a breath of air. Linda Bailey had said dogs, but they weren’t dogs. They were an ancient fear that stretched clear back to the primal days of mankind, a fear that had bayed its way through uncounted centuries, made whole and sound and material by those very centuries of fear.

  As if, for all the world, they were performing a well-rehearsed drill maneuver, the wolves came trotting in, aligning themselves with the first of them, swinging around to face me. When they all were there, they sat down as if someone had barked an order, sitting in a row, in identical position, sitting straight, but easy, with their front legs well under them and very neatly placed. They sat there facing me and they let their tongues hang out the sides of their mouths as they panted more demurely. They all were looking at me and looking nowhere else.

  I counted them and there were an even dozen.

  I shifted the bat to get a better grip upon it, but I knew there wasn’t much h
ope if they tried to rush me. If they rushed me, I knew, they’d do it all together, as they’d done everything else together. A baseball bat, well swung, is a deadly weapon and I knew I’d get a few of them, but I couldn’t get them all. I could, just possibly, make a leap for the metal bracket from which the beer sign hung, but I had grave doubt that it would hold my weight. It already was canted at a sagging angle and quite possibly the screws, or bolts, that held it would rip from the rotten wood at the slightest strain.

  There was only one thing to do, I told myself—stand fast and face it out.

  I had taken my eyes off the wolves for an instant to glance up at the sign and when I looked back again the little monstrosity with the pointed head was standing in front of the wolves.

  “I should let them have you,” he piped, ferociously. “Out there on the river you hadn’t ought to belted me with that paddle.”

  “If you don’t shut your trap,” I told him, “I’ll belt you with this ball bat.”

  He bounced up and down in rage. “Such ingratitude!” he screeched. “If it weren’t for the rules …”

  “What rules?” I asked.

  “You should know,” he piped in wrath. “It is you humans who have made them.”

  And then it struck me. “You mean that business about three times is a charm?”

  “Unfortunately,” he shrilled, “that is what I mean.”

  “After you jokers have failed three times in a row, I am off the hook?”

  “That is it,” he said.

  I looked at the wolves. They were sitting there, with their tongues hanging out, grinning at me. They didn’t care, I sensed. It was all one to them if they took me or if they went trotting off.

  “But there is further,” said the thing with the pointed head.

  “You mean there is a catch to it.”

  “Oh, not at all,” it said. “There is the matter of honest chivalry.”

  I wondered what chivalry might have to do with it, but I didn’t ask. I knew that he would tell me. He wanted me to ask; he was still stinging from that paddle blow and he was all set to do a good job baiting me.

  He glared at me from beneath the hanging fringe of hair and waited. I took a good grip on the ball bat and waited in my turn. The wolves were enjoying it immensely. They sat in silent laughter.