The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  "Well," said Charlie, and he stopped to consider the matter. How had he known? "Welt," he said, "since it was a halo, wouldn't it be kind of silly for it to have a halo around the wrong end? I mean, even sillier than to have- Hell, you know what I mean."

  Pete said, "Hmph." Then, after the car was around a curve: "All right, let's be strictly logical. Let's assume you saw, or thought you saw, what you . . . uh ... thought you saw. Now, you're not a heavy drinker so it wasn't D. T's. Far as I can see, that leaves three possibilities."

  Charlie said, "I see two of them. It could have been a pure hallucination. People do have 'em, I guess, but I never had one before. Or I suppose it could have been a dream, maybe. I'm sure I didn't, but I suppose that I could, have gone to sleep there and dreamed I saw it. But that isn't very likely, is it?

  "I'll concede the possibility of an hallucination, but not a dream. What's the third?"

  "Ordinary fact. That you really saw a winged worm. I mean, that there is such a thing, for all I know. And you were just mistaken about it not having wings when you first saw it, because they were folded. And what you thought looked like a . . . uh . . . halo, was some sort of a crest or antenna or something. There are some damn funny-looking bugs."

  "Yeah," said Charlie. But he didn't believe it. There may be funny-looking bugs, but none that suddenly sprout wings and haloes and ascend unto heaven.

  He took another drink out of the bottle.

  II

  Sunday afternoon and evening he spent with Jane, and the episode of the ascending angleworm slipped into the back of Charlie's mind. Anything, except Jane, tended to slip there when he was with her.

  At bedtime when he was alone again, it came back. The thought, not the worm. So strongly that he couldn't sleep, and he got up and sat in the armchair by the window and decided the only way to get it out of his mind was to think it through.

  If he could pin things down and decide what had really happened out there at the edge of the flower bed; then maybe he could forget it completely.

  O. K., he told himself, let's be strictly logical.

  Pete had been right about the three possibilities. Hallucination, dream, reality. Now to begin with, it hadn't been a dream. He'd been wide awake; he was as sure of that as he was sure of anything. Eliminate that.

  Reality? That was impossible, too. It was all right for Pete to talk about the funniness of insects and the possibility of antennae, and such-but Pete hadn't seen the danged thing. Why, it had flown past only inches from his eyes. And that halo had really been there.

  Antennae? Nuts.

  And that left hallucination. That's what it must have been, hallucination. After all, people do have hallucinations. Unless it happened often, it didn't necessarily mean you were a candidate for the booby hatch. All right then accept that it was an hallucination, and so what? So forget it.

  'With that decided, he went to bed and-by thinking about Jane again-happily to sleep.

  The next morning was Monday and he went back to work.

  And the morning after that was Tuesday.

  And on Tuesday.

  III

  It wasn’t an ascending angleworm this time. It wasn't anything you could put your finger on, unless you can put your finger on sunburn, and that's painful sometimes.

  But sunburn in a rainstorm?

  It was raining when Charlie Wills left home that morning, but it wasn't raining hard at that time, which was a few minutes after eight. A mere drizzle. Charlie pulled down the brim of his hat and buttoned up his raincoat and decided to walk to work anyway. He rather liked walking in rain. And he had time; he didn't have to be there until eight-thirty.

  Three blocks away from work, he encountered the Pest, hound in the same direction. The Pest was Jane Pemberton's kid sister, and her right name was Paula, but most people had forgotten the fact. She worked at the Hapworth Printing Co., just as Charlie did; but she was a copyholder for one of the proofreaders and he was assistant production manager.

  But he'd met Jane through her, at a party given for employees.

  He said, "Hi there, Pest. Aren't you afraid you'll melt?" For it was raining harder now, definitely harder.

  "Hello, Charlie-warlie. I like to walk in the rain."

  She would, thought Charlie bitterly. At the hated nick-name Charlie-warlie, he writhed. Jane had called him that once, but-after he'd talked reason to her-never again. Jane was reasonable. But the Pest had heard it- And Charlie was mortally afraid, ever after, that she'd sometime call him that at work, with other employees in hearing. And if that ever happened-

  "Listen," he protested, "can't you forget that darn fool . . . uh . . . nickname? I'll quit calling you Pest, if you'll quit calling me . . . uh . . . that."

  "But I like to he called the Pest. Why don't you like to he called Charlie-warlie?"

  She grinned at him, and Charlie writhed inwardly. Because she was who she was, he didn't dare say.

  There was pent-up anger in him as he walked into the blowing rain, head bent low to keep it out of his face. Damn the brat--

  With vision limited to a few yards of sidewalk directly ahead of him, Charlie probably wouldn't have seen the teamster and the horse if he hadn't heard the cracks that sounded like pistol shots.

  He looked up, and saw. In the middle of the street, maybe fifty feet ahead of Charlie and the Pest and moving toward them, came an overloaded wagon. It was drawn by an aged, desponded horse, a horse so old and bony that the slow walk by which it progressed seemed to be its speediest possible rate of movement.

  But the teamster obviously didn't think so. He was a big, ugly man with an unshaven, swarthy face. He was standing up, swinging his heavy whip for another blow. It came down, and the old horse quivered under it and seemed to sway between the shafts.

  The whip lifted again.

  And Charlie yelled "Hey, there!" and started toward the wagon.

  He wasn't certain yet just what he was going to do about it if the brute beating the other brute refused to stop. But it was going to be something. Seeing an animal mistreated was something Charlie Wills just couldn't stand. And wouldn't stand.

  He yelled "Hey!" again, because the teamster didn't seem to have heard him the first time, and he started forward at a trot, along the curb.

  The teamster heard that second yell, and he might have heard the first. Because he turned and looked squarely at Charlie. Then he raised the whip again, even higher, and brought it down on the horse's welt-streaked back with all his might.

  Things went red in front of Charlie's eyes. He didn't yell again. He knew darned well now what he was going to do. It began with pulling that teamster down off the wagon where he could get at him. And then he was going to beat him to a pulp.

  He heard Paula's high heels clicking as she started after him and called out, "Charlie, be caref-"

  But that was all of it that he heard. Because, just at that moment, it happened.

  A sudden blinding wave of intolerable heat, a sensation as though he had just stepped into the heart of a fiery furnace. He gasped once for breath, as the very air in his lungs and in his throat seemed to be scorching hot. And his skin--

  Blinding pain, just for an instant. Then it was gone, but too late. The shock had been too sudden and intense, and as he felt again the cool rain in his face, he went dizzy and rubbery all over, and lost consciousness. He didn't even feel the impact of his fall.

  Darkness.

  And then he opened his eyes into a blur of white that resolved itself into white walls and white sheets over him and a nurse in a white uniform, who said, "Doctor! He's regained consciousness."

  Footsteps and the closing of a door, and there was Doc Palmer frowning down at him.

  "Well, Charles, what have you been up to now?" Charlie grinned a bit weakly. He said, "Hi, doc. I'll bite. What have I been up to?"

  Doe Palmer pulled up a chair beside the bed and sat down in it. He reached out for Charlie's wrist and held it while he looked at the second hand of his w
atch. Then he read the chart at the end of the bed and said "Hmph."

  "Is that the diagnosis," Charlie wanted to know, "or the treatment? Listen, first what about the teamster? That is if you know-"

  "Paula told rue what happened. Teamster's under arrest, and fired. You're all right, Charles. Nothing serious,"

  "Nothing serious? What's it a non-serious case of? In other words, what happened to me?"

  "You keeled over. Prostration. And you'll be peeling for a few days, but that's all. Why didn't you use a lotion of some kind yesterday?"

  Charlie closed his eyes and opened them again slowly. And said, "Why didn't I use a- For what?"

  "The sunburn, of course. Don't you know you can't go swimming on a sunny day and not get-"

  "But I wasn't swimming yesterday, doc. Nor the day before. Gosh, not for a couple weeks, in fact. What do you mean, sunburn?"

  Doc Palmer rubbed his chin. He said, "You better rest a while, Charles. If you feel all right by this evening, you can go borne. But you'd better not work tomorrow."

  He got up and went out.

  The nurse was still there, and Charlie looked at her blankly. He said, "Is Doc Palmer going-Listen, what's this all about?"

  The nurse was looking at him queerly. She said, "Why! you were. . . . I'm sorry, Mr. Wills, but a nurse isn't allowed to discuss a diagnosis with a patient. But you haven't anything to worry about; you heard Dr. Palmer, say you could go home this afternoon or evening."

  "Nuts," said Charlie. "Listen, what time is it? Or aren’t nurses allowed to tell that?"

  “It’s ten-thirty."

  "Golly, and I've been here almost two hours." He figured back; remembering now that he'd passed a clock that said twenty-four minutes after eight just as they'd turned the corner for that last block. And, if he'd been awake again now for five minutes, then for two full hours.

  "Anything else you want, sir?"

  Charlie shook his head slowly. And then because he wanted her to leave so he could sneak a look at that chart, he said, "Well, yes. Could I have a glass of orange juice?"

  As soon as she was gone, he sat up in bed. It hurt a little to do that, and he found his skin was a bit tender to the touch. He looked at his arms, pulling up the sleeves of the hospital nightshirt they'd put on him, and the skin was pinkish. Just the shade of pink that meant the first stage of a mild sunburn.

  He looked down inside the nightshrt, and then at his legs, and said, "What the hell-" Because the sunburn, if it was sunburn, was uniform all over.

  And that didn't make sense, because he hadn't been in the sun enough to get burned at any time recently, and he hadn't been in the sun at all without his clothes. And--yes, the sunburn extended even over the area which would have been covered by trunks if he had gone swimming.

  But maybe the chart would explain. He reached over the foot of the bed and took the clipboard with the chart off the hook.

  "Reported that patient fainted suddenly on street without apparent cause. Pulse 135, respiration labored, temperature 104, upon admission. All returned to normal within first hour. Symptoms seem to approximate those of heat prostration, but--"

  Then there were a few qualifying comments which were highly technical-sounding. Charlie didn't understand them, and somehow he had a hunch that Doc Palmer didn't understand them either. They had a whistling-in-the-dark sound to them.

  Click of heels in the hall outside and he put the chart back quickly and ducked under the covers. Surprisingly, there was a knock. Nurses wouldn't knock, would they?

  He said, "Come in."

  It was Jane. Looking more beautiful than ever, with her big brown eyes a bit bigger with fright. "Darling! I came as soon as the Pest called home and told me. But she was awfully vague. What on earth happened?"

  By that time she was within reach, and Charlie put his arms around her and didn't give a darn, just then, what had happened to him. But he tried to explain. Mostly to himself.

  IV

  People always try to explain.

  Face a man, or a woman, with something he doesn't understand, and he'll be miserable until he classifies it. Lights in the sky. And a scientist tells him it's the aurora borealis-or the aurora australis-and he can accept the lights, and forget them.

  Something knocks pictures off a wall in an empty room, and throws a chair downstairs. Consternation, until it's named. Then it's only a poltergeist.

  Name it, and forget it. Anything with a name can be assimilated.

  Without one, it's-well, unthinkable. Take away the name of anything, and you've got blank horror.

  Even something as familiar as a commonplace ghoul. Graves in a cemetery dug up, corpses eaten. Horrible thing, it may be; but it's merely a ghoul; as long as it's named-- But suppose, if you can stand it, there was no such word as ghoul and no concept of one. Then dug-up half-eaten corpses are found. Nameless horror.

  Not that the next thing that happened to Charlie Wills had anything to do with a ghoul. Not even a werewolf. But I think that, in a way, he'd have found a werewolf more comforting than the duck. One expects strange behavior of a werewolf, but a duck--

  Like the duck in the museum.

  Now, there is nothing intrinsically terrible about a duck. Nothing to make one lie awake at night, with cold sweat coming out on top of peeling sunburn. On the whole, a duck is a pleasant object, particularly if it is roasted. This one wasn't.

  Now it is Thursday. Charlie's stay in the hospital had been for eight hours; they'd released him late in the afternoon, and he'd eaten dinner downtown and then gone home. The boss had insisted on his taking the next day off from work. Charlie hadn't protested much.

  Home, and, after stripping to take a bath, he'd studied his skin with blank amazement. Definitely, a third-degree bum. Definitely, all over him. Almost ready to peel.

  It did peel, the next day.

  He took advantage of the holiday by taking Jane out to the ball game, where they sat in a grandstand so he could be out of the sun. It was a good game, and Jane understood and liked baseball.

  Thursday, back to work.

  At eleven twenty-five, Old Man Hapworth, the big boss, came into Charlie's office.

  "Wills," he said, "we got a rush order to print ten thousand handbills, and the copy will be here in about an hour. 1'd like you to follow the thing right through the Linotype room and the composing room and get it on the press the minute it's made up. It's a close squeak whether we make deadline on it, and there's a penalty if we don't."

  "Sure, Mr. Hapworth. I'll stick right with it."

  "Fine. I'll count on you. But listen-it's a bit early to eat, but just the same you better go out for your lunch hour now. The copy will be here about the time you get back, and you can stick right with the job. That is, if you don't mind eating early."

  "Not at all," Charlie lied. He got his hat and went out.

  Dammit, it was too early to eat. But he had an hour off and he could eat in half that time, so maybe if he walked half an hour first, he could work up an appetite.

  The museum was two blocks away, and the best place to kill half an hour. He went there, strolled down the central corridor without stopping, except to stare for a moment at a statue of Aphrodite that reminded him of Jane Pemberton and made him remember--even more strongly than he already remembered--that it was only six days now until his wedding.

  Then he turned off into the room that housed the numismatics collection. He'd used to collect coins when he was a kid, and although the collection had been broken up since then, he still had a mild interest in looking at the big museum collection.

  He stopped in front of a showcase of bronze Romans.

  But he wasn't thinking about them. He was still thinking about Aphrodite, or Jane, which was quite understandable under the circumstances. Most certainly, he was not thinking about flying worms or sudden waves of burning heat.

  Then he chanced to look across toward an adjacent showcase. And within it, he saw the duck.

  It was a perfectly ordina
ry-looking duck. It had a speckled breast and greenish-brown markings on its wing and a darkish head with a darker stripe starting just above the eye and running down along the short neck. It looked like a wild rather than a domestic duck.

  And it looked bewildered at being there.

  For just a moment, the complete strangeness of the duck's presence in a showcase of coins didn't register with Charlie. His mind was still on Aphrodite. Even while he stared at a wild duck under glass inside a show-case marked "Coins of China."

  Then the duck quacked, and waddled on its awkward webbed feet down the length of the showcase and butted against the glass of the end, and fluttered its wings and tried to fly upward, but hit against the glass of the top. And it quacked again and loudly.

  Only then did it occur to Charlie to wonder what a live duck was doing in a numismatics collection. Apparently, to judge from its actions, the duck was wondering the same thing.

  And only then did Charlie remember the angelic worn and the sunless sunburn.

  And somebody in the doorway said, "Yssst. Hey."

  Charlie turned, and the look on his face must have been something out of the ordinary because the uniformed attendant quit frowning and said, "Something wrong, mister?"

  For a brief instant, Charlie just stared at him. Then it occurred to Charlie that this was the opportunity he'd lacked when the angleworm had ascended. Two people couldn't see the same hallucination. If it was an--

  He opened his mouth to say "Look," but he didn't have to say anything. The duck heat him to it by quacking loudly and again trying to flutter through the glass of the case.

  The attendant's eyes went past Charlie to the case of Chinese coins and he said "Gaw!"

  The duck was still there.

  The attendant looked at Charlie again and said, "Are you-" and then stopped without finishing the question and went up to the showcase to look at close range. The duck was still struggling to get out, but more weakly. It seemed to be gasping for breath.