Duel: Terror Stories

by Richard Matheson

  After a few feet, the man let go of the limp arms and the body fell with a heavy thud. The man in the overalls looked behind him then, his head jerking around suddenly. They saw his throat move with a convulsive swallow. The man’s eyes moved quickly, looking in all directions.

  “What’s he looking for?” Marian asked in a shaking whisper.

  “Marian, I don’t know.”

  “He’s leaving him there!” She almost whimpered the word.

  Their eyes filled with confused fear, they watched the overalled man move for the house again, his long legs pumping rapidly, his head moving jerkily as he looked from side to side. Dear God, what is he looking for?—Les thought in rising dread.

  The man suddenly twitched in mid-stride and clutched at his left arm. Then, abruptly, he broke into a frightened run and leaped up the porch steps two at a time. The screen door slapped shut behind him with a loud report and then everything was deadly still.

  A sob caught in Marian’s throat. “I’m afraid,” she said in a thin. shuddering voice.

  He was afraid too; he didn’t know of what but he was terribly afraid. Chilling uneasiness crawled up his back and rippled coldly on his neck. He kept staring at the body of the man sprawled on the ground, at the still, white face looking up sightlessly at the darkening sky.

  He jolted once as, across the yard, he heard the back door of the house being slammed shut and locked.

  Silence. A great hanging pall of it that pressed down on them like lead. The man slumped motionless on the ground. Their breaths quick, labored. Their lips trembling, their eyes fastened almost hypnotically on the man.

  Marian drew up one fist and dug her teeth into the knuckles. Sunlight rimmed the horizon with a scarlet ribbon. Soundlessness. Heavy soundlessness.

  Soundlessness.

  Sound.

  Their breath stopped. They stood there, mouths open, ears straining at the sound they’d never heard before. Their bodies went rigid as they listened to—

  A bumping, a slithering, a rocking flow of—

  “Oh God!” Her voice was a gasping of breathless horror as she spun away, shaking hands flung over her eyes.

  It was getting dark and he couldn’t be sure of what he saw. He stood paralyzed and numb in the fetid air of the cage, staring with blood-drained face at the thing that moved across the ground toward the man’s body; the thing that had shape yet not shape, that crept like a current of shimmering jellies.

  A terrified gagging filled his throat. He tried to move back but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to see. He didn’t want to hear the hideous gurgling sound like water being sucked into a great drain, the turbid bubbling that was like vats of boiling tallow.

  No, his mind kept repeating, unable to accept, no, no, no, no!

  Then the scream made them both jerk like boneless things and drove Marian against one of the cage walls, shaking with nauseous shock.

  And the man was gone from the earth. Les stared at the place where he had been, stared at the luminous mass that pulsated there like a great mound of balloon-encased plankton undulating palely in their fluids.

  He stared at it until the man had been completely eaten.

  Then he turned away on deadened legs and stumbled to Marian’s side. Her shaking fingers clutched like talons at his back and he felt her tear-streaked, twisted face press into his shoulder. Unfeelingly, he slid his arms around her, his face stiff with spent horror. Vaguely, through the body-clutching horror, he felt the need to comfort her, to erase her fright.

  But he couldn’t. He felt as if a pair of invisible claws had reached into his chest and ripped out all his insides. There wasn’t anything left, just a cold frost-edged hollow in him. And, in the hollow, a knife jabbing its razor tip each time he realized again why they were there.

  When the scream came, Merv slammed both hands across his ears so hard it made his head ache.

  He couldn’t seem to cut off the sound anymore. Doors wouldn’t shut tightly enough, windows wouldn’t seal away the world, walls were too porous—the screams always reached him.

  Maybe it was because they were really in his mind where there were no doors to lock, no windows to shut and close away the screaming of terror. Yes, maybe they were in his mind. It would explain why he still heard them in his sleep.

  And, when it was over and Merv knew that the thing had gone, he trudged slowly into the kitchen and opened the door. Then, like a robot driven by remorseless gears, he went to the calendar and circled the date. Sunday, August 22nd.

  The eighth man.

  The pencil dropped from his slack fingers and rolled across the linoleum. Sixteen days—one man each two days for sixteen days. The mathematics of it were simple. The truth was not.

  He paced the living room, passing in and out of the lamplight aura which cast a buttery glow across his exhausted features, then melted away as he moved into shadow again. Sixteen days. It seemed like sixteen years since he’d gone out into the desert to hunt for jackrabbits. Had it only been sixteen days ago?

  Once again he saw the scene within his mind; it never left. Him scuffing across late afternoon sands, shotgun cradled against his hip, head slowly turning, eyes searching beneath the brim of his hat.

  Then, moving over the crest of a scrub-grown dune, stopping with a gasp, his eyes staring up at the globe which shimmered like a light immersed in water. His heartbeat jolting, every muscle tensing abruptly at the sight.

  Approaching then, standing almost below the luminescent sphere that caught the lowering sun rays redly.

  A gasp tearing back his lips at the circular cavity appearing on the surface of the globe. And out of the cavity floating—

  He’d spun then and run, his breath whistling as he scrambled frantically up the rise again, his boot heels gouging at the sand. Topping the rise, he’d started to run in long, panic-driven strides, the gun held tautly in his right hand, banging against his leg.

  Then the sound overhead—like the noise of gas escaping. Wildeyed, he’d looked up over his shoulder. A terrified cry had wrenched his face into a mask of horror.

  Ten feet over his head, the bulbous glow floated.

  Merv lunged forward, his legs rising high as he fled. A fetid heat blew across his back. He looked up again with terrified eyes to see the thing descending on him. Seven feet above him—six—five—

  Merv Ketter skidded to his knees, twisted around, jerked up the shotgun. The silence of the desert was shattered by the blast.

  A gagging scream ripped from his throat as shot sprayed off the lucent bubble like pebbles off a rubber ball. He felt some of it burrow into his shoulder and arm as he flung over to one side, the gun falling from his nerveless grip. Four feet—three—the heat surrounded him, the choking odor made the air swim before his eyes.

  His arms flung up. “NO!”

  Once he had jumped into a water hole without looking and been mired on the shallow bottom by hot slime. It felt like that now, only this time the ooze was jumping onto him. His screams were lost in the crawling sheath of gasses and his flailing limbs caught fast in glutinous tissue. Around his terror-frozen eyes, he saw an agitating gelatine filled with gyrating spangles. Horror pressed at his skull, he felt death sucking at his life.

  But he didn’t die.

  He inhaled and there was air even though the air was grumous with a stomach-wrenching stench. His lungs labored, he gagged as he breathed.

  Then something moved in his brain.

  He tried to twist and tried to scream but he couldn’t. It felt like vipers threading through his brain, gnawing with poisoned teeth on tissues of his thought.

  The serpents coiled and tightened. I could kill you now—the words scalded like acid. The muscle cords beneath his face tensed but even they couldn’t move in the putrescent glue.

  And then more words had formed and were burning, were branding themselves indelibly into his mind.

  You will get me food.

  He was still shuddering now, standing before the calendar
, staring at the penciled circles.

  What else could he have done? The question pleaded like a grovelling suppliant. The being had picked his mind clean. It knew about his home, his station, his wife, his past. It told him what to do, it left no choice. He had to do it. Would anyone have let themselves die like that if they had an alternative; would anyone? Wouldn’t anyone have promised the world itself to be freed of that horror?

  Grim-faced, trembling, he went up the stairs on feeble legs, knowing there would be no sleep, but going anyway.

  Slumped down on the bed, one shoe off, he stared with lifeless eyes at the floor, at the hooked rug that Elsie had made so long ago.

  Yes, he’d promised to do what the being had ordered. And the being had sunk the tiny, whirring cone deep into his arm so that he could only escape by cutting open his own flesh and dying.

  And then the hideous gruel had vomited him onto the desert sands and he had lain there, mute and palsied while the being had raised slowly from the earth. And he had heard in his brain the last warning—

  In two days …

  And it had started, the endless, enervating round of trapping innocent people in order to preserve himself from the fate he knew awaited them.

  And the horrible thing, the truly horrible thing was that he knew he would do it again. He knew he’d do anything to keep the being away from him. Even if it meant that the woman must—

  His mouth tightened. His eyes shut and he sat trembling without control on the bed.

  What would he do when the couple were gone? What would he do if no one else came to the station? What would he do if the police came checking on the disappearances of eleven people?

  His shoulders twisted and an anguished sobbing pulsed in his throat.

  Before he lay down he took a long swallow from the dwindling whiskey bottle. He lay in the darkness, a nerve-scraped coil, waiting, the small pool of heat in his stomach unable to warm the coldness and the emptiness of him.

  In his arm the cone whirled.

  Les jerked out the last bar and stood there for a moment, head slumped forward on his chest, panting through clenched teeth, his body heaving with exhausted breath. Every muscle in his back and shoulders and arms ached with throbbing pain.

  Then he sucked in a rasping breath. “Let’s go,” he gasped.

  His arms vibrated as he helped Marian clamber through the window.

  “Don’t make any noise.” He could hardly speak he was so tired from the combination of thirst, hunger, heat exhaustion and seemingly endless, muscle-cramped filing.

  He couldn’t get his leg up, he had to go through the rough-edged opening head first, pushing and squirming, feeling splinters jab into his sweat-greased flesh. When he thudded down, the pain of impact ran jaggedly along his extended arms and, for a second, the darkness swam with needles of light.

  Marian helped him up.

  “Let’s go,” he said again, breathlessly and they started to run across the ground toward the front of the house.

  Abruptly, he grabbed her wrist and jerked her to a halt.

  “Get those sandals off,” he ordered hoarsely. She bent over quickly and unbuckled them.

  The house was dark as they hurried around the back corner of it and dashed along the side beneath the moon-reflecting windows. Marian winced as her right foot jarred down on a sharp pebble.

  “Thank God,” Les gasped to himself as they reached the front of the house.

  The car was still there. As they ran toward it, he felt into his back pocket and took out his wallet. His shaking fingers reached into the small change purse and felt the coolness of the extra ignition key. He was sure the other keys wouldn’t be in the car.

  They reached it.

  “Quick,” he gasped and they pulled open the doors and slid in. Les suddenly realized that he was shivering in the chilly night air. He took out the key and fumbled for the ignition slot. They’d left the doors open, planning to close them when the motor started.

  Les found the slot and slid in the key, then drew in a tense, shuddering breath. If the man had done anything to the motor, they were lost.

  “Here goes,” he murmured and jabbed at the starter button.

  The motor coughed and turned over once with a groan. Les’s throat clicked convulsively, he jerked back his hand and threw an apprehensive look at the dark house.

  “Oh God, won’t it start?” Marian whispered, feeling her legs and arms break out in gooseflesh.

  “I don’t know, I hope it’s just cold,” he said hurriedly. He caught his breath, then pushed in the button again, pumping at the choke.

  The motor turned again lethargically. Oh God, he has done something to it!—the words exploded in Les’s mind. He jammed in the button feverishly, his body tense with fear. Why didn’t we push it to the main road!—the new thought came, deepening the lines on his face.

  “Les!”

  He felt her hand clutch at his arm and, almost instinctively, his gaze jerked over to the house.

  A light had flared up at a second story window.

  “Oh Jesus, start!” he cried in a broken frenzy and pushed at the button with a rigid thumb.

  The motor coughed into life and a wave of relief covered him. Simultaneously, he and Marian pulled at the doors and slammed them shut while he gunned the engine strongly to get it warm.

  As he threw the gears into first, the head and trunk of the man appeared in the window. He shouted something but neither of them heard it over the roar of the motor.

  The car jerked forward and stalled.

  Les hissed in impotent fury as he jabed in the button again. The motor caught and he eased up the clutch. The tires bumped over the uneven ground. Upstairs, the man was gone from the window and Marian, her eyes fastened to the house, saw a downstairs light go on.

  “Hurry!” she begged.

  The car picked up speed and Les, shoving the gears into second, jerked the car into a tight semicircle. The tires skidded on the hard earth and, as the car headed for the lane, Les threw it into third and jerked at the knob that sent the two headlights splaying out brightly into the darkness.

  Behind them, something exploded and they both jerked their shoulders forward convulsively as something gouged across the roof with a grating shriek. Les shoved the accelerator to the floor and the car leaped forward, plunging and rocking into the rutted lane.

  Another shotgun blast tore open the night and half of the back window exploded in a shower of glass splinters. Again, their shoulders twitched violently and Les grunted as a sliver gouged its razor edge across the side of his neck.

  His hands jerked on the wheel, the car hit a small ditch and almost veered into a bank on the left side of the lane. His fingers tightened convulsively and, with arms braced, he pulled the car back into the center of the lane, crying to Marian.

  “Where is he?”

  Her white face twisted around.

  “I can’t see him!”

  His throat moved quickly as the car bucked and lurched over the holes, the headlights jerking wildly with each motion.

  Get to the next town, he thought wildly, tell the sheriff, try and save that other poor devil. His foot pressed down on the pedal as the lane smoothed out. Get to the next town and—

  She screamed it. “Look out!”

  He couldn’t stop in time. The hood of the Ford drove splintering into the heavy gate across the lane and the car jolted to a neck-jerking halt. Marian went flailing forward against the dashboard, the side of her head snapping against the windshield. The engine stalled and both headlights smashed out in an instant.

  Les shoved away from the steering wheel, knocked breathless by the impact.

  “Honey, quick,” he gasped.

  A choking sob shook in Marian’s throat. “My head, my head.” Les sat in stunned muteness a moment, staring at her as she twisted her head around in an agony of pain, one hand pressed rigidly to her forehead.

  Then he shoved open the door at his side and grabbed for her free han
d. “Marian, we have to get out of here!”

  She kept crying helplessly as he almost dragged her from the car and threw his arm around her waist to support her. Behind him, he heard the sound of heavy boots running down the lane and saw, over his shoulder, a bright flashlight eye bobbing as it bore down on them.

  Marian collapsed at the gate. Les stood there holding her, trembling impotently as the man came running up, a .45 clutched in his right hand, a flashlight in his left. Les winced at the beam flaring into his eyes.

  “Back,” was all the man said, panting heavily and Les saw the barrel of the gun wave once toward the house.

  “But my wife is hurt!” he said. “She hit her head against the windshield. You can’t just put her back in a cage!”

  “I said get back!” The man’s shout made Les start.

  “But she can’t walk, she’s unconscious!”

  He heard a rasping breath shudder through the man’s body and saw that he was stripped to the waist and shivering.

  “Carry her then,” the man said.

  “But—”

  “Shall I blast ya where ya stand!” the man yelled in a frenzied anger.

  “No. No.” Les shook nervously as he lifted up Marian’s slack body. The man stepped aside and Les started back up the lane, trying to watch Marian’s face and his footing at the same time.

  “Honey,” he whispered. “Marian?”

  Her head hung limply over his left forearm, the short blonde hair ruffling against her temples and brow as he walked. Tension kept building up in him until he felt like screaming.

  “Why are you doing this?” he suddenly blurted out over his shoulder.

  No answer, just the rhythmic slogging of the man’s boots over the pocked ground.

  “How can you do this to anyone?” Les asked brokenly. “Trapping your own kind and giving them to that—that God only knows what it is!”

  “Shut up!” But there was more defeat than anger in the man’s voice.

  “Look,” Les said suddenly, impulsively, “let my wife go. Keep me here if you have to but … but let her go. Please!”

  The man said nothing and Les bit his lips in frustrated anguish. He looked down at Marian with sick, frightened eyes.