Duel: Terror Stories

by Richard Matheson

  He stood up dizzily. He started to hobble for the house.

  He heard a rushing in the air, a flicker of light dashed over his cheeks and eyes. He looked up and blinked and saw the cargo ship.

  Six months.

  He dropped the pistol and slumped down beside it and plucked at blue grass stupidly. He stared at the ship dumbly as it came down and stopped and the hatches opened and men climbed out.

  “Why,” he said, “that’s cutting it too thin for me.”

  And his voice was quite normal except that he broke into giggling and sobbing and had a fist fight with the air.

  “You’ll be all right,” they told him on the way back to Earth. And they shot more sedative to his shrieking nerves to make him forget.

  But he never did.

  SHIPSHAPE HOME

  “THAT JANITOR GIVES ME THE CREEPS,” RUTH SAID when she came in that afternoon.

  I looked up from the typewriter as she put the bags on the table and faced me. I was killing a second draft on a story.

  “He gives you the creeps,” I said.

  “Yes, he does,” she said. “That way he has of slinking around. He’s like Peter Lorre or somebody.”

  “Peter Lorre,” I said. I was still plotting.

  “Babe,” she implored. “I’m serious. The man is a creep.”

  I snapped out of the creative fog with a blink.

  “Hon, what can the poor guy do about his face?” I said. “Heredity. Give him a break.”

  She plopped down in a chair by the table and started to take out groceries, stacking cans on the table.

  “Listen,” she said.

  I could smell it coming. That dead serious tone of hers which she isn’t even aware of anymore. But which comes every time she’s about to make one of her “revelations” to me.

  “Listen,” she repeated. Dramatic emphasis.

  “Yes, dear,” I said. I leaned one elbow on the typewriter cover and gazed at her patiently.

  “You get that look off your face,” she said. “You always look at me as if I were an idiot child or something.”

  I smiled. Wanly.

  “You’ll be sorry,” she said. “Some night when that man creeps in with an axe and dismembers us.”

  “He’s just a poor man earning a living,” I said. “He mops the halls, he stokes the furnaces, he …”

  “We have oil heat,” she said.

  “If we had a furnace, the man would stoke it,” I said. “Let us have charity. He labors like ourselves. I write stories. He mops floors. Who can say which is the greater act?”

  She looked dejected.

  “Okay,” she said with a surrendering gesture. “Okay, if you don’t want to face facts.”

  “Which are?” I prodded. I decided it was best to let it out of her before it burned a hole in her mind.

  Her eyes narrowed. “You listen to me,” she said. “That man has some design in being here. He’s no janitor. I wouldn’t be surprised if …”

  “If this apartment house were just a front for a gambling establishment. A hideout for public enemies one through fifteen. An abortion mill. A counterfeiter’s lair. A murderer’s rendezvous.”

  She was already in the kitchen thumping cans and boxes into the cupboard.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” In that patient if-you-get-murdered-then-don’t-come-to-me-for-sympathy voice. “Don’t say I didn’t try. If I’m married to a wall, I can’t help it.”

  I came in and slid my arms around her waist. I kissed her neck.

  “Stop that,” she said. “You can’t disconcert me. The janitor is …”

  She turned. “You’re serious,” I said.

  Her face darkened. “Honey, I am,” she said. “The man looks at me in a funny way.”

  “How?”

  “Oh,” she searched. “In … in … anticipation.”

  I chuckled. “Can’t blame the man.”

  “Be serious now.”

  “Remember the time you thought the milkman was a knife killer for the Mafia?” I said.

  “I don’t care.”

  “You read too many fantasy pulps,” I said.

  “You’ll be sorry.”

  I kissed her neck again. “Let’s eat,” I said.

  She groaned. “Why do I tell you anything?”

  “Because you love me,” I said.

  She closed her eyes. “I give up,” she said quietly, with the patience of a saint under fire.

  I kissed her. “Come on, hon, we have enough troubles.”

  She shrugged. “Oh, all right.”

  “Good,” I said. “When are Phil and Marge coming?”

  “Six,” she said. “I got pork.”

  “Roast?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “I’ll buy that.”

  “You already did.”

  “In that case, back to the typewriter.”

  While I squeezed out another page I heard her muttering to herself in the kitchen. I didn’t catch it all. All that came through was a grimly prophetic, “Murdered in our beds or something.”

  “No, it’s flukey,” Ruth analyzed as we all sat having dinner that night.

  I grinned at Phil and he grinned back.

  “I think so too,” Marge agreed. “Whoever heard of charging only sixty-five a month for a five-room apartment furnished? Stove, refrigerator, washer—it’s fantastic.”

  “Girls,” I said. “Let’s not quibble. Let’s take advantage.”

  “Oh!” Ruth tossed her pretty blonde head. “If a man said—Here’s a million dollars for you, old man—you’d probably take it.”

  “I most definitely would take it,” I said. “I would then run like hell.”

  “You’re naivé,” she said. “You think people are … are …”

  “Steady,” I said.

  “You think everybody is Santa Claus!”

  “It is a little funny,” Phil said. “Think about it, Rick.”

  I thought about it. A five-room apartment, brand new, furnished in the best manner, dishes … I pursed my lips. A guy can get lost in his typewriter. Maybe it was true. I nodded anyway. I could see their point. Of course I wouldn’t say so. And spoil Ruth’s and my little game of war? Never.

  “I think they charge too much,” I said.

  “Oh … Lord!” Ruth was taking it straight, as she usually did. “Too much! Five rooms yet! Furniture, dishes, linens, a … a television set! What do you want—a swimming pool!”

  “A small one?” I said meekly.

  She looked at Marge and Phil.

  “Let us discuss this thing quietly,” she said. “Let us pretend that the fourth voice we hear is nothing but the wind in the eaves.”

  “I am the wind in the eaves,” I said.

  “Listen,” Ruth re-spun her forbodings, “what if the place is a fluke? I mean what if they just want people here for a cover-up. That would explain the rent. You remember the rush on the place when they started renting?”

  I remembered as well as Phil and Marge. The only reason we’d got our apartment was because we happened to be walking past the place when the janitor first put out the renting sign. We went right in. I remember our amazement, our delight, at the rental. We thought it was Christmas.

  We were the first tenants. The next day was like the Alamo under attack. It’s a little hard to get an apartment these days.

  “I say there’s something funny about it,” Ruth finished. “And did you ever notice that janitor?”

  “He’s a creep,” I contributed blandly.

  “He is,” Marge laughed. “My God, he’s something out of a B-picture. Those eyes. He looks like Peter Lorre.”

  “See!” Ruth was triumphant.

  “Kids,” I said, raising a hand of weary conciliation, “if there’s something foul going on behind our backs, let’s allow it to go on. We aren’t being asked to contribute or suffer by it. We are living in a nice spot for a nice rent. What are we going to do—look into it and try to spoil it?”

&n
bsp; “What if there are designs on us?” Ruth said.

  “What designs, hon?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I sense something.”

  “Remember the time you sensed the bathroom was haunted?” I said. “It was a mouse.”

  She started clearing off the dishes. “Are you married to a blind man too?” she asked Marge.

  “Men are all blind,” Marge said, accompanying my poor man’s seer into the kitchen. “We must face it.”

  Phil and I lit cigarettes.

  “No kidding now,” I said, so the girls wouldn’t hear, “do you think there’s anything wrong?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, Rick,” he said. “I will say this—it’s pretty strange to rent a furnished place for so little.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Yeah, I thought—awake at last.

  Strange it is.

  I stopped for a chat with our strolling cop the next morning. Johnson walks around the neighborhood. There are gangs in the neighborhood, he told me, traffic is heavy and the kids need watching especially after three in the afternoon.

  He’s a good Joe, lots of fun. I chat with him everyday when I go out for anything.

  “My wife suspects foul doings in our apartment house,” I told him.

  “This is my suspicion too,” Johnson said, dead sober. “It is my unwilling conclusion that, within those walls, six-year-olds are being forced to weave baskets by candle light.”

  “Under the whip hand of a gaunt old hag,” I added.

  He nodded sadly. Then he looked around, plotter-like.

  “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” he said. “I want to crack the case all by myself.”

  I patted his shoulder. “Johnson,” I said. “Your secret is locked behind these iron lips.”

  “I am grateful,” he said.

  We laughed.

  “How’s the missus?” he asked.

  “Suspicious,” I said. “Curious. Investigating.”

  “Much the same,” he said. “Everything normal.”

  “Right,” I said. “I think I’ll stop letting her read those science-fiction magazines.”

  “What is it she suspects?” he asked.

  “Oh,” I grinned. “Just suppositions. She thinks the rent is too cheap. Everybody around here pays twenty to fifty dollars more, she says.”

  “Is that right?” Johnson said.

  “Yeah,” I said, punching his arm. “Don’t you tell anybody. I don’t want to lose a good deal.”

  Then I went to the store.

  “I knew it,” Ruth said. “I knew it.”

  She gazed intently at me over a dishpan of soggy clothes.

  “You knew what, hon?” I said, putting down the package of second sheets I’d gone down the street to buy.

  “This place is a fluke,” she said. She raised her hand. “Don’t say a word,” she said. “You just listen to me.”

  I sat down. I waited. “Yes dear,” I said.

  “I found engines in the basement,” she said.

  “What kind of engines, dear? Fire engines?”

  Her lips tightened. “Come on, now,” she said, getting a little burned. “I saw the things.”

  She meant it.

  “I’ve been down there too, hon,” I said. “How come I never saw any engines?”

  She looked around. I didn’t like the way she did it. She looked as if she really thought someone might be lurking at the window, listening.

  “This is under the basement,” she said.

  I looked dubious.

  She stood up. “Damn it! You come on and I’ll show you.”

  She held my hand as we went through the hall and into the elevator. She stood grimly by me as we descended, my hand tight in her grip.

  “When did you see them?” I asked, trying to be nice.

  “When I was washing in the laundry room down there,” she said. “In the hallway, I mean, when I was bringing the clothes back. I was coming to the elevator and I saw a doorway. It was a little bit open.”

  “Did you go in?” I asked.

  She looked at me. “You went in,” I said.

  “I went down the steps and it was light and …”

  “And you saw engines.”

  “I saw engines.”

  “Big ones?”

  The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. We went out.

  “I’ll show you how big,” she said.

  It was a blank wall. “It’s here,” she said.

  I looked at her. I tapped the wall. “Honey,” I said.

  “Don’t you dare say it!” she snapped. “Have you ever heard of doors in a wall?”

  “Was this door in the wall?”

  “The wall probably slides over it,” she said starting to tap. It sounded solid to me. “Darn it!” she said, “I can just hear what you’re going to say.”

  I didn’t say it. I just stood there watching her.

  “Lose something?”

  The janitor’s voice was sort of like Lorre’s, low and insinuating. Ruth gasped, caught way off guard. I jumped myself.

  “My wife thinks there’s a—” I started nervously.

  “I was showing him the right way to hang a picture,” Ruth interrupted hastily. “That’s the way, babe.” She turned toward me. “You put the nail in at an angle, not straight in. Now, do you understand?” She took my hand.

  The janitor smiled.

  “See you,” I said awkwardly. I felt his eyes on us as we walked back to the elevator.

  When the doors shut, Ruth turned quickly.

  “Good night!” she stormed. “What are you trying to do, get him on us?”

  “Honey. What … ?” I was flabbergasted.

  “Never mind,” she said. “There are engines down there. Huge engines. I saw them. And he knows about them.”

  “Baby,” I said. “Why don’t …”

  “Look at me,” she said quickly.

  I looked. Hard.

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” she asked. “Come on, now. Never mind the hesitation.”

  I sighed. “I think you’re imaginative,” I said. “You read those …”

  “Uh!” she muttered. She looked disgusted. “You’re as bad as …”

  “You and Galileo,” I said.

  “I’ll show you those things,” she said. “We’re going down there again tonight when that janitor is asleep. If he’s ever asleep.”

  I got worried then.

  “Honey, cut it out,” I said. “You’ll get me going too.”

  “Good,” she said. “Good. I thought it would take a hurricane.”

  I sat staring at my typewriter all afternoon, nothing coming out.

  But concern.

  I didn’t get it. Was she actually serious? All right, I thought, I’ll take it straight. She saw a door that was left open. Accidentally. That was obvious. If there were really huge engines under the apartment house as she said, then the people who built them darn sure wouldn’t want anyone to know about them.

  East 7th Street. An apartment house. And huge engines underneath it.

  True?

  “The janitor has three eyes!”

  She was shaking. Her face was white. She stared at me like a kid who’d read her first horror story.

  “Honey,” I said. I put my arms around her. She was scared. I felt sort of scared myself. And not that the janitor had an extra eye either.

  I didn’t say anything at first. What can you say when your wife comes up with something like that?

  She shook a long time. Then she spoke, in a quiet voice, a timid voice.

  “I know,” she said. “You don’t believe me.”

  I swallowed. “Babe,” I said helplessly.

  “We’re going down tonight,” she said. “This is something important now. It’s serious.”

  “I don’t think we should …” I started.

  “I’m going down there,” she said. She sounded edgy now, a little hysterical. “I tell you there are engines down
there. Goddamn it, there are engines!”

  She started crying now, shaking badly. I patted her head, rested it against my shoulder. “All right, baby,” I said. “All right.”

  She tried to tell me through her tears. But it didn’t work. Later when she’d calmed down, I listened. I didn’t want to get her upset. I figured the safest way was just to listen.

  “I was walking through the hall downstairs,” she said. “I thought maybe there was some afternoon mail. You know once in a while the mailman will …”

  She stopped. “Never mind that. What matters is what happened when I walked past the janitor.”

  “What?” I said, afraid of what was coming.

  “He smiled,” she said. “You know the way he does. Sweet and murderous.”

  I let it go. I didn’t argue the point. I still didn’t think the janitor was anything but a harmless guy who had the misfortune to be born with a face that was strictly from Charles Addams.

  “So?” I said. “Then what?”

  “I walked past him. I felt myself shiver. Because he looked at me as if he knew something about me I didn’t even know. I don’t care what you say—that’s the feeling I got. And then …”

  She shuddered. I took her hand.

  “Then?” I said.

  “I felt him looking at me.”

  I’d felt that too when he found us in the basement. I knew what she meant. You just knew the guy was looking at you.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll buy that.”

  “You won’t buy this,” she said grimly. She sat stiffly a moment, then said, “When I turned around to look he was walking away from me.”

  I could feel it on the way. “I don’t …” I started weakly.

  “His head was turned but he was looking at me.”

  I swallowed. I sat there numbly, patting her hand without even knowing I was doing it.

  “How, hon?” I heard myself asking.

  “There was an eye in the back of his head.”

  “Hon,” I said. I looked at her in—let’s face it—fright. A mind on the loose can get awfully confused.

  She closed her eyes. She clasped her hands after drawing away the one I was holding. She pressed her lips together. I saw a tear wriggle out from under her left eyelid and roll down her cheek. She was white.