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THE OTHER NOW
By MURRAY LEINSTER
Illustrated by PHIL BARD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction March 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He knew his wife was dead, because he'd seen her buried. But it was only one possibility out of infinitely many!
It was self-evident nonsense. If Jimmy Patterson had told anybodybut Haynes, calm men in white jackets would have taken him away forpsychiatric treatment which undoubtedly would have been effective. He'dhave been restored to sanity and common sense, and he'd probably havedied of it. So to anyone who liked Jimmy and Jane, it is good thatthings worked out as they did. The facts are patently impossible, butthey are satisfying.
Haynes, though, would like very much to know exactly why it happenedin the case of Jimmy and Jane and nobody else. There must have beensome specific reason, but there's absolutely no clue to it.
It began about three months after Jane was killed in that freakaccident. Jimmy had taken her death hard. This night seemed nodifferent from any other. He came home just as usual and his throattightened a little, just as usual, as he went up to the door. It wasstill intolerable to know that Jane wouldn't be waiting for him.
The hurt in his throat was a familiar sensation which he was doggedlyhoping would go away. But it was extra strong tonight and he wonderedrather desperately if he'd sleep, or, if he did, whether he woulddream. Sometimes he had dreams of Jane and was happy until he wokeup, and then he wanted to cut his throat. But he wasn't at that pointtonight. Not yet.
As he explained it to Haynes later, he simply put his key in the doorand opened it and started to walk in. But he kicked the door instead,so he absently put his key in the door and opened it and started towalk in--
Yes, that is what happened. He was half-way through before he realized.He stared blankly. The door looked perfectly normal. He closed itbehind him, feeling queer. He tried to reason out what had happened.
Then he felt a slight draught. The door wasn't shut. It was wide open.He had to close it again.
That was all that happened to mark this night off from any other, andthere is no explanation why it happened--began, rather--this nightinstead of another. Jimmy went to bed with a taut feeling. He'd had theconviction that he opened the door twice. The same door. Then he'd hadthe conviction that he had had to close it twice. He'd heard of thatfeeling. Queer, but no doubt commonplace.
He slept, blessedly without dreams. He woke next morning and found hismuscles tense. That was an acquired habit. Before he opened his eyes,every morning, he reminded himself that Jane wasn't beside him. It wasnecessary. If he forgot and turned contentedly--to emptiness--the acheof being alive, when Jane wasn't, was unbearable.
* * * * *
This morning he lay with his eyes closed to remind himself, and insteadfound himself thinking about that business of the door. He'd kickedthe door between the two openings, so it wasn't only an illusion ofrepetition. He was puzzling over that repetition after closing thedoor, when he found he had to close it again. That proved to him itwasn't a standard mental vagary. It looked like a delusion. But hismemory insisted that it had happened that way, whether it was possibleor not.
Frowning, he went out and got his breakfast at a restaurant and rodeto work. Work was blessed, because he had to think about it. The maintrouble was that sometimes something turned up which Jane would havebeen amused to hear, and he had to remind himself that there was no usemaking a mental note to tell her. Jane was dead.
Today he thought a good deal about the door, but when he went home heknew that he was going to have a black night. He wouldn't sleep, andoblivion would seem infinitely tempting, because the ache of beingalive, when Jane wasn't, was horribly tedious and he could not imaginean end to it. Tonight would be a very bad one, indeed.
He opened the door and started in. He went crashing into the door. Hestood still for an instant, and then fumbled for the lock. But thedoor was open. He'd opened it. There hadn't been anything for him torun into. Yet his forehead hurt where he'd bumped into the door whichwasn't closed at all.
There was nothing he could do about it, though. He went in. He hungup his coat. He sat down wearily. He filled his pipe and grimly faceda night that was going to be one of the worst. He struck a match andlighted his pipe, and put the match in an ashtray. And he glanced inthe tray. There were the stubs of cigarets in it. Jane's brand. Freshlysmoked.
He touched them with his fingers. They were real. Then a furious angerfilled him. Maybe the cleaning woman had had the intolerable insolenceto smoke Jane's cigarets. He got up and stormed through the house,raging as he searched for signs of further impertinence. He foundnone. He came back, seething, to his chair. The ashtray was empty. Andthere'd been nobody around to empty it.
It was logical to question his own sanity, and the question gave him asort of grim cheer. The matter of the recurrent oddities could be usedto fight the abysmal depression ahead. He tried to reason them out,and always they added up to delusions only.
But he kept his mind resolutely on the problem. Work, during theday, was a godsend. Sometimes he was able to thrust aside for wholehalf-hours the fact that Jane was dead. Now he grappled relievedly withthe question of his sanity or lunacy. He went to the desk where Janehad kept her household accounts. He'd set the whole thing down on paperand examine it methodically, checking this item against that.
* * * * *
Jane's diary lay on the desk-blotter, with a pencil between two of itspages. He picked it up with a tug of dread. Some day he might readit--an absurd chronicle Jane had never offered him--but not now. Notnow!
That was when he realized that it shouldn't be here. His hands jumped,and it fell open. He saw Jane's angular writing and it hurt. He closedit quickly, aching all over. But the printed date at the top of thepage registered on his brain even as he snapped the cover shut.
He sat still for minutes, every muscle taut.
It was a long time before he opened the book again, and by that timehe had a perfectly reasonable explanation. It must be that Jane hadn'trestricted herself to assigned spaces. When she had something extra towrite, she wrote it on past the page allotted for a given date.
Of course!
Jimmy fumbled back to the last written page, where the pencil had been,with a tense matter-of-factness. It was, as he'd noticed, today's date.The page was filled. The writing was fresh. It was Jane's handwriting.
"_Went to the cemetery_," said the sprawling letters. "_It was verybad. Three months since the accident and it doesn't get any easier.I'm developing a personal enmity to chance. It doesn't seem like anabstraction any more. It was chance that killed Jimmy. It could havebeen me instead, or neither of us. I wish--_"
Jimmy went quietly mad for a moment or two. When he came to himself hewas staring at an empty desk-blotter. There wasn't any book before him.There wasn't any pencil between his fingers. He remembered picking upthe pencil and writing desperately under Jane's entry. "_Jane!_" he'dwritten--and he could remember the look of his scrawled script underJane's--"_where are you? I'm not dead! I thought you were! In God'sname, where are you?_"
But certainly nothing of the sort could have happened. It was delusion.
That night was particularly bad, but curiously not as bad as someother nights had been. Jimmy had a normal man's horror of insanity,yet this wasn't, so to speak, normal insanity. A lunatic has always an
explanation for his delusions. Jimmy had none. He noted the fact.
Next morning he bought a small camera with a flash-bulb attachment andcarefully memorized the directions for its use. This was the thing thatwould tell the story. And that night, when he got home, as usual afterdark, he had the camera ready. He unlocked the door and opened it. Heput his hand out tentatively. The door was still closed.
He stepped back and quickly snapped the camera. There was a sharp flashof the bulb. The glare blinded him. But when he put out his hand again,the door was open. He stepped into the living-room without having tounlock and open it a second time.
* * * * *
He looked at the desk as he turned the film and put in a newflash-bulb. It was as empty as he'd left it in the morning. He hung uphis coat and settled down tensely with his pipe. Presently he knockedout the
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