Without a word, I picked up the tray and then put it down again as I stopped by the telephone. That this was really a matter of life and death for André, I had no doubt. Neither did I doubt that he fully intended committing suicide, unless I could make him change his mind, or at least put off such a drastic decision. Would I be strong enough? He would never forgive me for not keeping a promise, but under the circumstances, did that really matter? To the devil with promises and honour! At all costs André must be saved! And having thus made up my mind, I looked up and dialled Professor Augier’s number.
“The Professor is away and will not be back before the end of the week,” said a polite neutral voice at the other end of the line.
That was that! I would have to fight alone and fight I would. I would save André, come what may.
All my nervousness had disappeared as André let me in and, after putting the tray of food down on his desk, I went into the other room, as agreed.
“The first thing I want to know,” I said, as he closed the door behind me, “is what happened exactly. Can you please tell me, André?”
I waited patiently while he typed an answer which he pushed under the door a little later.
Hélène, I would rather not tell you. Since go I must, I would rather you remember me as I was be fore. I must destroy myself in such a way that none can possibly know what has happened to me. I have of course thought of simply disintegrating myself in my transmitter, but I had better not because, sooner or later, I might find myself reintegrated. Some day, somewhere, some scientist is sure to make the same discovery. I have therefore thought of a way which is neither simple nor easy, but you can and will help me.
For several minutes I wondered if André had not simply gone stark raving mad.
“André,” I said at last, “whatever you may have chosen or thought of, I cannot and will never accept such a cowardly solution. No matter how awful the re sult of your experiment or accident, you are alive, you are a man, a brain . . . and you have a soul. You have no right to destroy yourself! You know that!”
The answer was soon typed and pushed under the door.
I am alive all right, but I am already no longer a man. As to my brain or intelligence, it may disappear at any moment. As it is, it is no longer intact, and there can be no soul without intelligence . . . and you know that!
“Then you must tell the other scientists about your discovery. They will help you and save you, André!”
I staggered back frightened as he angrily thumped the door twice.
“André . . . why? Why do you refuse the aid you know they would give you with all their hearts?”
A dozen furious knocks shook the door and made me understand that my husband would never accept such a solution. I had to find other arguments.
For hours, it seemed, I talked to him about our boy, about me, about his family, about his duty to us and to the rest of humanity. He made no reply of any sort. At last I cried: “Andre . . . do you hear me?”
“Yes,” he knocked very gently.
“Well, listen then. I have another idea. You remem ber your first experiment with the ashtray? . . . Well, do you think that if you had put it through again a second time, it might possibly have come out with the letters turned back the right way?”
Before I had finished speaking, André was busily typing and a moment later I read his answer:
I have already thought of that. And that was why I needed the fly. It has got to go through with me. There is no hope otherwise.
“Try all the same, André. You never know!”
“I have tried seven times already,” was the typewritten reply I got to that.
“André! Try again, please!”
The answer this time gave me a flutter of hope, be cause no woman has ever understood, or will ever understand, how a man about to die can possibly con sider anything funny.
I deeply admire your delicious feminine logic. We could go on doing this experiment until Doomsday. However, just to give you that pleasure, probably the very last I shall ever be able to give you, I will try once more. If you cannot find the dark glasses, turn your back to the machine and press your hands over your eyes. Let me know when you are ready.
“Ready, André!” I shouted, without even looking for the glasses and following his instructions.
I heard him move around and then open and close the door of his “disintegrator”. After what seemed a very long wait, but probably was not more than a minute or so, I heard a violent crackling noise and perceived a bright flash through my eyelids and fingers.
I turned around as the booth door opened.
His head and shoulders still covered with the brown velvet cloth, André was gingerly stepping out of it.
“How do you feel, André? Any difference?” I asked, touching his arm.
He tried to step away from me and caught his foot in one of the stools which I had not troubled to pick up. He made a violent effort to regain his balance, and the velvet cloth slowly slid off his shoulders and head as he fell heavily backwards.
The horror was too much for me, too unexpected. As a matter of fact, I am sure that, even had I known, the horror impact could hardly have been less powerful. Trying to push both hands into my mouth to stifle my screams, and although my fingers were bleeding, I screamed again and again. I could not take my eyes off him, I could not even close them, and yet I knew that if I looked at the horror much longer, I would go on screaming for the rest of my life.
Slowly, the monster, the thing that had been my husband, covered its head, got up and groped its way to the door and passed it. Though still screaming, I was able to close my eyes.
I who had ever been a true Catholic, who believed in God and another, better life hereafter, have today but one hope: that when I die, I really die, and that there may be no afterlife of any sort because, if there is, then I shall never forget! Day and night, awake or asleep, I see it, and I know that I am condemned to see it for ever, even perhaps into oblivion!
Until I am totally extinct, nothing can, nothing will ever make me forget that dreadful white hairy head with its low flat skull and its two pointed ears. Pink and moist, the nose was also that of a cat, a huge cat. But the eyes! Or, rather, where the eyes should have been were two brown bumps the size of saucers. Instead of a mouth, animal or human, there was a long hairy vertical slit from which hung a black quivering trunk that widened at the end, trumpet-like, and from which saliva kept dripping.
I must have fainted, because I found myself flat on my stomach on the cold cement floor of the laboratory, staring at the closed door behind which I could hear the noise of André’s typewriter.
Numb, numb and empty, I must have looked as people do immediately after a terrible accident, before they fully understand what has happened. I could only think of a man I had once seen on the platform of a railway station, quite conscious, and looking stupidly at his leg still on the line where the train had just passed.
My throat was aching terribly, and that made me wonder if my vocal cords had not perhaps been torn, and whether I would ever be able to speak again.
The noise of the typewriter suddenly stopped and I felt I was going to scream again as something touched the door and a sheet of paper slid from under it.
Shivering with fear and disgust, I crawled over to where I could read it without touching it:
Now you understand. That last experiment was a new disaster, my poor Hélène. I suppose you recog nized part of Dandelo’s head. When I went into the disintegrator just now, my head was only that of a fly. I now only have eyes and mouth left. The rest has been replaced by parts of the cat’s head. Poor Dandelo, whose atoms had never come together. You see now that there can only be one possible solution, don’t you? I must disappear. Knock on the door when you are ready and I shall explain what you have to do.
Of course he was right, and it had been wrong and cruel of me to insist on a new experiment. And I knew that there was now no possible hope, that any further
experiments could only bring about worse results.
Getting up dazed, I went to the door and tried to speak, but no sound came out of my throat . . . so I knocked once!
You can, of course, guess the rest. He explained his plan in short typewritten notes, and I agreed, I agreed to everything!
My head on fire, but shivering with cold, like an automaton, I followed him into the silent factory. In my hand was a full page of explanations: what I had to know about the steam-hammer.
Without stopping or looking back, he pointed to the switchboard that controlled the steam-hammer as he passed it. I went no farther and watched him come to a halt before the terrible instrument.
He knelt down, carefully wrapped the cloth round his head, and then stretched out flat on the ground.
It was not difficult. I was not killing my husband. André, poor André, had gone long ago, years ago, it seemed. I was merely carrying out his last wish . . . and mine.
Without hesitating, my eyes on the long still body, I firmly pushed the “stroke” button right in. The great metallic mass seemed to drop slowly. It was not so much the resounding clang of the hammer that made me jump as the sharp cracking which I had distinctly heard at the same time. My hus—the thing’s body shook a second and then lay still.
It was then I noticed that he had forgotten to put his right arm, his fly leg, under the hammer. The police would never understand but the scientists would, and they must not! That had been Andre’s last wish, also!
I had to do it and quickly, too; the night watchman must have heard the hammer and would be round at any moment. I pushed the other button and the hammer slowly rose. Seeing but trying not to look, I ran up, leaned down, lifted and moved forward the right arm which seemed terribly light. Back at the switchboard, again I pushed the red button, and down came the hammer a second time. Then I ran all the way home.
You know the rest and can now do whatever you think right.
So ended Hélène’s manuscript.
The following day I telephoned Commissaire Charas to invite him to dinner.
“With pleasure, Monsieur Delambre. Allow me, however, to ask: is it the Commissaire you are inviting, or just Monsieur Charas?”
“Have you any preference?”
“No, not at the present moment.”
“Well, then, make it whichever you like. Will eight o’clock suit you?”
Although it was raining, the Commissaire arrived on foot that evening.
“Since you did not come tearing up to the door in your black Citroën, I take it you have opted for Monsieur Charas, off duty?”
“I left the car up a side-street,” mumbled the Com missaire, with a grin, as the maid staggered under the weight of his raincoat.
“Merci,” he said a minute later, as I handed him a glass of Pernod into which he tipped a few drops of water, watching it turn the golden amber liquid to pale blue milk.
“You heard about my poor sister-in-law?”
“Yes, shortly after you telephoned me this morning. I am sorry, but perhaps it was all for the best. Being already in charge of your brother’s case, the inquiry automatically comes to me.”
“I suppose it was suicide.”
“Without a doubt. Cyanide, the doctors say quite rightly; I found a second tablet in the unstitched hem of her dress.”
“Monsieur est servi,” announced the maid.
“I would like to show you a very curious document afterwards, Charas.”
“Ah, yes. I heard that Madame Delambre had been writing a lot, but we could find nothing beyond the short note informing us that she was committing suicide.”
During our tête-à-tête dinner, we talked politics, books and films, and the local football club of which the Commissaire was a keen supporter.
After dinner, I took him up to my study where a bright fire – a habit I had picked up in England during the war – was burning.
Without even asking him, I handed him his brandy and mixed myself what he called “crushed-bug juice in soda water” – his appreciation of whisky.
“I would like you to read this, Charas; first because it was partly intended for you and, second, because it will interest you. If you think Commissaire Charas has no objection, I would like to burn it after.”
Without a word, he took the wad of sheets Hélène had given me the day before and settled down to read them.
“What do you think of it all?” I asked, some twenty minutes later, as he carefully folded Hélène’s manu script, slipped it into the brown envelope and put it into the fire.
Charas watched the flames licking the envelope from which wisps of grey smoke were escaping, and it was only when it burst into flames that he said slowly raising his eyes to mine: “I think it proves very definitely that Madame Delambre was quite insane.”
For a long time we watched the fire eating up Hélène’s “Confession”.
“A funny thing happened to me this morning, Charas. I went to the cemetery where my brother is buried. It was quite empty and I was alone.”
“Not quite, Monsieur Delambre. I was there, but I did not want to disturb you.”
“Then you saw me …”
“Yes. I saw you bury a matchbox.”
“Do you know what was in it?”
“A fly, I suppose.”
“Yes. I had found it early this morning, caught in a spider’s web in the garden.”
“Was it dead?”
“No, not quite. I . . . crushed it . . . between two stones. Its head was . . . white . . . all white.”
’Tis the Season to be Jelly
Richard Matheson
Pa’s nose fell off at breakfast. It fell right into Ma’s coffee and displaced it. Prunella’s wheeze blew out the gut lamp.
“Land o” goshen, Dad,” Ma said, in the gloom, “if ya know’d it was ready t’plop, whyn’t ya tap it off y’self?”
“Didn’t know,” said Pa.
“That’s what ya said the last time, Paw,” said Luke, choking on his bark bread. Uncle Rock snapped his fingers beside the lamp. Prunella’s wheezing shot the flicker out.
“Shet off ya laughin”, gal,” scolded Ma. Prunella toppled off her rock in a flurry of stumps, spilling liverwort mush.
“Tarnation take it!” said Uncle Eyes.
“Well, combust the wick, combust the wick!” de manded Grampa, who was reading when the light went out. Prunella wheezed, thrashing on the dirt.
Uncle Rock got sparks again and lit the lamp.
“Where was I now?” said Grampa.
“Git back up here,” Ma said. Prunella scrabbled back onto her rock, eye streaming tears of laughter. “Giddy chile,” said Ma. She slung another scoop of mush on Prunella’s board. “Go to,” she said. She picked Pa’s nose out of her corn coffee and pitched it at him.
“Ma, I’m fixin” t’ask ’er t’day,” said Luke.
“Be ya, son?” said Ma. “Thet’s nice.”
“Ain’t no pu’pose to it!” Grampa said. “The dang force o” life is spent!”
“Now, Pa,” said Pa, “don’t fuss the young ’uns” mind-to.”
“Says right hyeh!” said Grampa, tapping at the journal with his wrist. “We done let in the wave-len’ths of anti-life, that’s what we done!”
“Manure,” said Uncle Eyes. “Ain’t we livin’?”
“I’m talkin” ’bout the coming gene-rations, ya dang fool!” Grampa said. He turned to Luke. “Ain’t no pu’pose to it, boy!” he said. “You cain’t have no young ’uns nohow!”
“Thet’s what they tole Pa ’n’ me too,” soothed Ma, “an” we got two lovely chillun. Don’t ya pay no mind t’Grampa, son.”
“We’s comin” apart!” said Grampa. “Our cells is unlockin”! Man says right hyeh! We’s like jelly, breakin’-down jelly!”
“Not me,” said Uncle Rock.
“When you fixin” t’ask ’er, son?” asked Ma.
“We done bollixed the pritecktive canopee!” said Grampa.
“C
an o” what?” said Uncle Eyes.
“This mawnin”,” said Luke.
“We done pregnayted the clouds!” said Grampa.
“She’ll be mighty glad,” said Ma. She rapped Prunella on the skull with a mallet. “Eat with ya mouth, chile,” she said.
“We’ll get us hitched up come May,” said Luke.
“We done low-pressured the weather sistem!” Grampa said.
“We’ll get ya corner ready,” said Ma.
Uncle Rock, cheeks flaking, chewed mush.
“We done screwed up the dang master plan!” said Grampa.
“Aw, shet yer ravin” craw!” said Uncle Eyes.
“Shet yer own!” said Grampa.
“Let’s have a little ear-blessin” harminy round hyeh,” said Pa, scratching his nose. He spat once and downed a flying spider. Prunella won the race.
“Dang leg,” said Luke, hobbling back to the table. He punched the thigh bone back into play. Prunella ate wheezingly.
“Leg a-loosenin” agin, son?” asked Ma.
“She’ll hold, I reckon,” said Luke.
“Says right hyeh!” said Grampa, “we’uns clompin” round under a killin” umbrella. A umbrella o” death!”
“Bull,” said Uncle Eyes. He lifted his middle arm and winked at Ma with the blue one.
“Go ’long,” said Ma, gumming off a chuckle. The east wall fell in.
“Thar she goes,” observed Pa.
Prunella tumbled off her rock and rolled out, wheezing, through the opening. “High-speerited gal,” said Ma, brushing cheek flakes off the table.
“What about my corner now?” asked Luke.
“Says right hyeh!” said Grampa, “’lectric charges is afummadiddled! ’Tomic structure’s unseamin”!!”
“We’ll prop ’er up again,” said Ma. “Don’t ya fret none, Luke.”
“Have us a wing-ding,” said Uncle Eyes. “Jute beer ’n’ all.”
“Ain’t no pu’pose to it!” said Grampa. “We done smithereened the whole kiboodle!”
“Now, Pa,” said Ma, “ain’t no pu’pose in a-preachin” doom nuther. Ain’t they been a-preachin” it since I was a tyke? Ain’t no reason in the wuld why Luke hyeh shouldn’t hitch hisself up with Annie Lou. Ain’t he got him two strong arms and four strong legs? Ain’t no sense in settin” out the dance o’ life.”
The Mammoth Book of Body Horror Page 18
