“Marian,” he said, “Marian.” He shivered violently in the cold night air.
The house loomed up bleakly out of the flat darkness of the desert.
“For God’s sake, don’t put her in a cage!” he cried out desperately.
“Get back.” The man’s voice was flat, there was nothing in it, neither promise nor emotion.
Les stiffened. If it had been just him, he would have whirled and leaped at the man, he knew it. He wouldn’t, willingly, walk back past the edge of the house again, back toward the cages, toward that thing.
But there was Marian.
He stepped over the thrown-down shotgun on the ground and heard, behind him, the grunt of the man as he bent over and picked it up. I have to get her out of here, he thought, I have to!
It happened before he could do anything. He heard the man step up suddenly behind him and then felt a pinprick on his right shoulder. He caught his breath at the sudden sting and turned as quickly as he could, weighed down by Marian’s dead limpness.
“What are you—”
He couldn’t even finish the sentence. It seemed suddenly as if hot, numbing liquors were being hosed through his veins. An immense lassitude covered his limbs and he hardly felt it when the man took Marian from his arms.
He stumbled forward a step, the night alive with glittering pinpoints of light. The earth ran like water beneath his feet, his legs turned to rubber.
“No.” He said it in a lethargic grumble.
Then he toppled. And didn’t even feel the impact of the ground against his falling body.
The belly of the globe was warm. It undulated with a thick and vaporous heat. In the humid dimness, the being rested, its shapeless body quivering with monotonous pulsations of sleep. The being was comfortable, it was content, coiled grotesquely like some cosmic cat before a hearth.
For two days.
Piercing screams woke him. He stirred fitfully and moved his lips as though to speak. But his lips were made of iron. They sagged inertly and he couldn’t move them. Only a great forcing of will would raise his leaden eyelids.
The cage air fluttered and shimmered with strange convections. His eyes blinked slowly; glazed, uncomprehending eyes. His hands flopped weakly at his sides like dying fish.
It was the man in the other cage screaming. The poor devil had come out of his drugged state and was hysterical because he knew.
Les’s sweat-grimed brow wrinkled slowly, evenly. He could think. His body was like a massive stone, unwieldy and helpless. But, behind its flint, immobile surface, his brain was just as sure.
His eyes fell shut. That made it all the more horrible. To know what was coming. To lie there helpless and know what was going to happen to him.
He thought he shuddered, but he wasn’t sure. That thing, what was it? There was nothing in his knowledge to construct from, no foundation of rational acceptance to build upon. What he’d seen that night was something beyond all—
What day was it? Where was—
Marian!
It was like rolling a boulder to turn his head. Clicking filled his throat, saliva dribbled unnoticed from the corners of his mouth. Again, he forced his eyes open with a great straining of will.
Panic drove knife blades into his brain even though his face changed not at all.
Marian wasn’t there.
She lay, limply drugged, on the bed. He’d laid another cool, wet cloth across her brow, across the welt on her right temple.
Now he stood silently, looking down at her. He’d just gotten back from the cages where he’d injected the screaming man again to quiet him. He wondered what was in the drug the being had given him, he wondered what it did to the man. He hoped it made him completely insensible.
It was the man’s last day.
No, it’s dumb imagination, he told himself suddenly. She didn’t look like Elsie, she didn’t look at all like Elsie.
It was his mind. He wanted her to look like Elsie, that was what it was. His throat twitched as he swallowed. Stupid. The word slapped dully at his brain. She didn’t look like Elsie.
For a moment, he let his gaze move once more over the woman’s body, at the smooth rise of her bust, the willowy hips, the long, wellformed legs. Marian. That was what the man had called her. Marian.
It was a nice name.
With an angry twist of his shoulders, he turned away from the bed and strode quickly from the room. What was the matter with him anyway? What did he think he was going to do—let her go? There had been no sense in taking her into the house the night before last, in putting her in the spare bedroom. No sense in it at all. He couldn’t let himself feel sympathy for her, for anyone. If he did, he was lost. That was obvious.
As he moved down the steps, he tried to remind himself once more of the horror of being absorbed into that gelatinous mass. He tried to remember the brain-searing terror of it. But, somehow, the memory kept disappearing like a wind-blown cloud and he kept thinking instead of the woman. Marian. She did look like Elsie; the same color hair, the same mouth.
No!
He’d leave her in the bedroom until the drug wore off. Then he’d put her back in the cage again. It’s me or them!—he argued furiously with himself. I ain’t going to die like that! Not for anyone.
He kept arguing with himself all the way down to the station.
I must be crazy, he thought, taking her in the house like that, feeling sorry for her. I can’t afford it. I can’t. She’s just two days to me, that’s all, just a two-day reprieve from—
The station was empty, silent. Merv braked the truck and got out.
His boots crunched over the hot earth as he paced restlessly around the pumps. I can’t let her go! he lashed out at himself, his face taut with fury. He shuddered then at the realization that he had been entertaining the thought for two days now.
“Why wasn’t she a man?” he muttered to himself, fists tight and blood-drained at his sides. He raised his left arm and looked at the reddish lump. Why couldn’t he tear it out of his flesh? Why?
The car came then. A salesman’s car, dusty and hot.
As Merv pumped gas in, as he checked the oil and water, he kept glancing from under his hat brim at the hot-faced little man in the linen suit and panama hat. Replace her. Merv wouldn’t let the thought out yet he knew it was there. He found himself glancing down at the license plate.
Arizona.
His face tightened. No. No, he’d always gotten out-of-state cars, it was safer that way. I’ll have to let him go, he thought miserably, I’ll have to. I can’t afford to …
But when the little man was reaching into his wallet, Merv felt his hand slide back to his back overall pocket, he felt his fingers tighten over the warm butt of the .45.
The little man stared, slack-jawed, at the big gun.
“What is this?” he asked weakly. Merv didn’t tell him.
Night brushed its black iced fingers across the moving bubble. Earth flowed beneath its liquid coming.
Why was the air so faint with nourishment, why did the atmosphere press so feebly in? This land, it was a weak, a dying land, its life-administering gasses almost spent.
Amidst slithering, amidst scouring approach, the being thought of escape.
How long now had it been here in this barren place? There was no way of telling for the planet’s sun appeared and disappeared with insane rapidity, darkness and light flickering in alternation like the wink of an eye.
And, on the ship, the instruments of chronometry were shattered, they were irreparable. There was no context any more, no customed metric to adjust by. The being was lost upon this tenuous void of living rock, unable to do more than jorage jor its sustenance.
Off in the black distance, the dwelling of the planet’s animal appeared, grotesquely angular and peaked. It was a stupid animal, this brainless beast incapable of rationality, able only to emit wild squawking cries and flap its tendrils like the night plants of his own world. And its body—it was too hard with ca
lciumed rigidity, providing scant nutriment, making it necessary for the being to eat twice as often so violent an energy did digestion take.
Closer. The clicking grew louder.
The animal was there, as usual, lying still upon the ground, its tendrils curled and limp. The being shot out threads of thought and sapped the sluggish juices of thought from the animal. It was a barbaric place if this was ;ts intelligence. The being heaved closer, swelling and sucking along the windswept earth.
The animal stirred and deep revulsion quivered in the being’s mind. If it were not starving and helpless it could never force itself to absorb this twitching, stiff-ribbed beast.
Bubble touched tendril. The being flowed across the animal form and trembled to a stop. Visual cells revealed the animal looking up, distended eyed. Audial cells transferred the wild and strangling noise the dying animal made. Tactile cells absorbed the flimsy agitations of its body.
And, in its deepest center, the being sensed the tireless clicking that emanated from the dark lair where, hidden and shaking, the first animal was—the animal in whose flaccid tendril was imbedded the location cone.
The being ate. And, eating, wondered if there would ever be enough food to keep it alive—
—for the thousand earth years of its life.
He lay slumped across the cage floor, his heartbeat jolting as the man looked in at him.
He’d been testing the walls when he heard the slap of the screen door and the sound of the man’s boots descending the porch steps. He’d lunged down and rolled over quickly onto his back, trying desperately to remember what position he’d been in while he was still drugged, arranging his hands limply at his sides, drawing up his right leg a little, closing his eyes. The man mustn’t know that he was conscious. The man had to open the door without caution.
Les forced himself to breathe slowly and evenly even though it made his stomach hurt. The man made no sound as he gazed in. When he opens the lock, Les kept telling himself—as soon as I hear the door pulled open, I’ll jump.
His throat moved once as a nervous shudder rippled through him. Could the man tell he was faking? His muscles tensed, waiting for the sound of the door opening. He had to get away now.
There would be no other time. It was coming tonight.
Then the sound of the man’s boots started away. Abruptly, Les opened his eyes, a look of shocked disbelief contorting his features. The man wasn’t going to open the cage!
For a long time he lay there, shivering, staring up mutely at the barred window where the man had stood. He felt like crying aloud and beating his fists against the door until they were bruised and bleeding.
“No … no.” His voice was a lifeless mumble.
Finally, he pushed up and got on his knees. Cautiously, he looked over the rim of the window. The man was gone.
He crouched back down and went through his pockets again.
His wallet—nothing there to help him. His handkerchief, the stub of pencil, forty-seven cents, his comb.
Nothing else.
He held the articles in his palms and stared down at them for long moments as if, somehow, they held the answer to his terrible need. There had to be an answer, it was inconceivable that he should actually end up out there on the ground like that other man, put there for that thing to—
“No!”
With a spasmodic twitch of his hands, he flung the articles onto the dirt floor of the cage, his lips drawn back in a dull cry of frightened outrage. It can’t be real, it had to be a dream!
He fell to his knees desperately and once more began running shaking fingers over the sides of the cage, looking for a crack, a weak board, anything.
And, while he searched in vain, he tried not to think about the night coming and what the night was going to bring.
But that was all he could think about.
She sat up, gasping, as the man’s calloused fingers stroked at her hair. Her widened eyes stared at him in horror as he jerked back his hand.
“Elsie,” he muttered.
The whiskey-heavy cloud of his breath poured across her face and she drew back, grimacing, her hands clutching tensely at the bedspread.
“Elsie.” He said it again, thick voiced, his glazed eyes looking at her drunkenly.
The bedspread rustled beneath her as she pushed back further until her back bumped against the wooden headboard.
“Elsie, I didn’t mean to,” the man said, dark blades of hair hanging down over his temples, breath falling hotly from his open mouth. “Elsie, don’t … don’t be scared of me.”
“W-where’s my husband?”
“Elsie, you look like Elsie,” the man slurred the words, his bloodstreaked eyes pleading. “You look like Elsie, oh … God, you look like Elsie.”
“Where’s my husband!”
His hand clamped over her wrist and she felt herself jerked like a flimsy doll against the man’s chest. His stale breath surrounded her.
“No,” she gasped, her hands pushing at his shoulders.
“I love ya, Elsie, I love ya!”
“Les!” Her scream rang out in the small room.
Her head snapped to the side as the man’s big palm drove across her cheek.
“He’s dead!” the man shouted hoarsely. “It ate him, it ate him! You hear!”
She fell back against the headboard, her eyes stark with horror. “No.” She didn’t even know she’d spoken.
The man struggled up to his feet and stood there weaving, looking down at her blank face.
“You think I wanted to?” he asked brokenly, a tear dribbling down his beard-darkened cheek. “You think I liked to do it?” A sob shuddered in his chest. “I didn’t like to do it. But you don’t know, y-you don’t know. I was in it, I was in it! Oh God … you don’t know what it was like. You don’t know!”
He sank down heavily on the bed, his head slumped forward, his chest racked with helpless sobs.
“I didn’t want to. God, do you think I w-wanted to?”
Her left fist was pressed rigidly against her lips. She couldn’t seem to breathe. No. Her mind struggled to disbelieve. No, it’s not true, it isn’t true.
Suddenly, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and stood. Outside, the sun was going down. It doesn’t come till dark, her mind argued desperately, not until dark. But how long had she been unconscious?
The man looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “What are ya doing?”
She started running for the door.
As she jerked open the door, the man collided with her and the two of them went crashing against the wall. Breath was driven from her body and the ache in her head flared up again. The man clutched at her; she felt his hands running wildly over her chest and shoulders.
“Elsie, Elsie …” the man gasped, trying to kiss her again.
That was when she saw the heavy pitcher on the table beside them. She hardly felt his tightening fingers, his hard, brutal mouth crushed against hers. Her stretching fingers closed over the pitcher handle, she lifted …
Great chunks of the white pottery showered on the floor as the man’s cry of pain filled the room.
Then Marian was leaning against the wall, gasping for breath and looking down at his crumpled body, at his thick fingers still twitching on the rug.
Suddenly her eyes fled to the window. Almost sunset.
Abruptly, she ran back to the man and bent over his motionless body. Her shaking fingers felt through his overall pockets until they found the ring of keys.
As she fled from the room, she heard the man groan and saw, over her shoulder, the fleeting sight of him turning slowly onto his back.
She ran down the hall and jerked open the front door. Dying sunlight flooded the sky with its blood.
With a choking gasp, she jumped down the porch steps and ran in desperate, erratic strides around the house, not even feeling the pebbles her feet ran over. She kept looking at the silent row of cages she was running toward. It’s not true, it’s not true—the word
s kept running through her brain—he lied to me. A sob pulled back her lips. He lied!
Darkness was falling like a rapid curtain as she dashed up to the first cage on trembling legs.
Empty.
Another sob pulsed in her throat. She ran to the next cage. He was lying!
Empty.
“No.”
“Les!”
“Marian!” He leaped across the cage floor, a sudden wild hope flashing across his face.
“Oh darling.” Her voice was a shaking, strengthless murmur, “He told me—”
“Marian, open the cage. Hurry! It’s coming.”
Dread fell over her again, a wave of numbing cold. Her head jerked to the side instinctively, her shocked gaze fled out across the darkening desert.
“Marian!”
Her hands shook uncontrollably as she tried one of the keys in the lock. It didn’t fit. She bit her lip until pain flared up. She tried another key. It didn’t fit.
“Hurry.”
“Oh God.” She whimpered as her palsied hands inserted another key. That didn’t fit.
“I can’t find the—”
Suddenly, her voice choked off, her breath congealed. In a second, she felt her limbs petrify.
In the silence, faintly, a sound of something huge grating, and hissing over the earth.
“Oh, no.” She looked aside hurriedly, then back at Les again.
“It’s all right, baby,” he said. “All right, don’t get excited. There’s plenty of time.” He drew in a heavy breath. “Try the next key. That’s right. No, no, the other one. It’s all right now. There. No, that doesn’t work. Try the next one.” His stomach kept contracting into a tighter, harder knot.
The skin of Marian’s lower lip broke beneath her teeth. She winced and dropped the key ring. With a gagging whimper, she bent over and snatched it up. Across the desert, the wheezing, squashing sound grew louder.
“Oh, Les, I can’t, I can’t!”
“All right, baby,” he heard himself say suddenly, “never mind. Run for the highway.”
Duel: Terror Stories Page 29
