by Otto Penzler
“Listen.”
A porch swing creaked in the dark. And there was Mr. Terle, silent, alone on his porch as they passed, having a last cigar. They could see the pink cigar fire idling to and fro.
Now the lights were going, going, gone. The little house lights and big house lights, the yellow lights and green hurricane lights, the candles and oil lamps and porch lights, and everything felt locked up in brass and iron and steel. Everything, thought Lavinia, is boxed and wrapped and shaded. She imagined the people in their moonlit beds, and their breathing in the summer night, safe and together. And here we are, she thought, listening to our solitary footsteps on the baked summer-evening sidewalk. And above us the lonely street lights shining down, making a million wild shadows.
“Here’s your house, Francine. Good night.”
“Lavinia, Helen, stay here tonight. It’s late, almost midnight now. Mrs. Murdock has an extra room. I’ll make hot chocolate. It’d be ever such fun!” Francine was holding them both close to her.
“No, thanks,” said Lavinia.
And Francine began to cry.
“Oh, not again, Francine,” said Lavinia.
“I don’t want you dead,” sobbed Francine, the tears running straight down her cheeks. “You’re so fine and nice, I want you alive. Please, oh, please.”
“Francine, I didn’t realize how much this has affected you. But I promise you I’ll phone when I get home, right away.”
“Oh, will you?”
“And tell you I’m safe, yes. And tomorrow we’ll have a picnic lunch at Electric Park, all right? With ham sandwiches I’ll make myself. How’s that? You’ll see; I’m going to live forever!”
“You’ll phone?”
“I promised, didn’t I?”
“Good night, good night!” Francine was gone behind her door, locked tight in an instant.
“Now,” said Lavinia to Helen, “I’ll walk you home.”
The courthouse clock struck the hour.
The sounds went across a town that was empty, emptier than it had ever been before. Over empty streets and empty lots and empty lawns the sound went.
“Ten, eleven, twelve,” counted Lavinia, with Helen on her arm.
“Don’t you feel funny?” asked Helen.
“How do you mean?”
“When you think of us being out here on the sidewalk, under the trees, and all those people safe behind locked doors lying in their beds. We’re practically the only walking people out in the open in a thousand miles, I bet.” The sound of the deep warm dark ravine came near.
In a minute they stood before Helen’s house, looking at each other for a long time. The wind blew the odor of cut grass and wet lilacs between them. The moon was high in a sky that was beginning to cloud over. “I don’t suppose it’s any use asking you to stay, Lavinia?”
“I’ll be going on.”
“Sometimes …”
“Sometimes what?”
“Sometimes I think people want to die. You’ve certainly acted odd all evening.”
“I’m just not afraid,” said Lavinia. “And I’m curious, I suppose. And I’m using my head. Logically, The Lonely One can’t be around. The police and all.”
“Our police? Our little old force? They’re home in bed too, the covers up over their ears.”
“Let’s just say I’m enjoying myself, precariously but safely. If there were any real chance of anything happening to me, I’d stay here with you, you can be sure of that.”
“Maybe your subconscious doesn’t want you to live any more.”
“You and Francine, honestly!”
“I feel so guilty. I’ll be drinking hot coffee just as you reach the ravine bottom and walk on the bridge in the dark.”
“Drink a cup for me. Good night.”
LAVINIA NEBBS WALKED down the midnight street, down the late summer night silence. She saw the houses with their dark windows and far away she heard a dog barking. In five minutes, she thought, I’ll be safe home. In five minutes I’ll be phoning silly little Francine. I’ll—
She heard a man’s voice singing far away among the trees. She walked a little faster. Coming down the street toward her in the dimming moonlight was a man. He was walking casually.
I can run and knock on one of these doors, thought Lavinia. If necessary.
The man was singing, Shine On, Harvest Moon, and he carried a long club in his hand. “Well, look who’s here! What a time of night for you to be out, Miss Nebbs!”
“Officer Kennedy!”
And that’s who it was, of course—Officer Kennedy on his beat.
“I’d better see you home.”
“Never mind, I’ll make it.”
“But you live across the ravine.”
Yes, she thought, but I won’t walk the ravine with any man. How do I know who The Lonely One is? “No, thanks,” she said.
“I’ll wait right here then,” he said. “If you need help give a yell. I’ll come running.”
She went on, leaving him under a light, humming to himself, alone.
Here I am, she thought.
The ravine.
She stood on the top of the 113 steps down the steep, brambled bank that led across the creaking bridge and up through the black hills to Park Street. And only one lantern to see by. Three minutes from now, she thought, I’ll be putting my key in my house door. Nothing can happen in just 180 seconds.
She started down the dark green steps into the deep ravine night.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine steps,” she whispered.
She felt she was running but she was not running.
“Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen steps,” she counted aloud.
The ravine was deep, deep and black, black. And the world was gone, the world of safe people in bed. The locked doors, the town, the drug store, the theater, the lights, everything was gone. Only the ravine existed and lived, black and huge about her.
“Nothing’s happened, has it? No one around, is there? Twenty-four, twenty-five steps. Remember that old ghost story you told each other when you were children?”
She listened to her feet on the steps.
“The story about the dark man coming in your house and you upstairs in bed. And now he’s at the first step coming up to your room. Now he’s at the second step. Now he’s at the third and the fourth and the fifth step! Oh, how you laughed and screamed at that story! And now the horrid dark man is at the twelfth step, opening your door, and now he’s standing by your bed. I got you!”
She screamed. It was like nothing she had ever heard, that scream. She had never screamed that loud in her life. She stopped, she froze, she clung to the wooden banister. Her heart exploded in her. The sound of its terrified beating filled the universe.
“There, there!” she screamed to herself. “At the bottom of the steps. A man, under the light! No, now he’s gone! He was waiting there!”
She listened.
Silence. The bridge was empty.
Nothing, she thought, holding her heart. Nothing. Fool. That story I told myself. How silly. What shall I do?
Her heartbeats faded.
Shall I call the officer, did he hear my scream? Or was it only loud to me. Was it really just a small scream after all?
She listened. Nothing. Nothing.
I’ll go back to Helen’s and sleep there tonight. But even while she thought this she moved down again. No, it’s nearer home now. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine steps, careful, don’t fall. Oh, I am a fool. Forty steps. Forty-one. Almost halfway now. She froze again.
“Wait,” she told herself. She took a step.
There was an echo.
She took another step. Another echo—just a fraction of a moment later.
“Someone’s following me,” she whispered to the ravine, to the black crickets and dark green frogs and the black steam. “Someone’s on the steps behind me. I don’t dare turn around.”
Another step, another echo.
&nb
sp; Every time I take a step, they take one.
A step and an echo. Weakly she asked of the ravine, “Officer Kennedy? Is that you?”
The crickets were suddenly still. The crickets were listening. The night was listening to her. For a moment all the far summer-night meadows and close summer-night trees were suspending motion. Leaf, shrub, star, and meadowgrass had ceased their particular tremors and were listening to Lavinia Nebbs’s heart. And perhaps a thousand miles away, across locomotive-lonely country, in an empty way-station a lonely night traveler reading a dim newspaper under a naked light-bulb might raise his head, listen, and think, What’s that?—and decide, Only a woodchuck, surely, beating a hollow log. But it was Lavinia Nebbs, it was the heart of Lavinia Nebbs.
Faster. Faster. She went down the steps.
Run!
She heard music. In a mad way, a silly way, she heard the huge surge of music that pounded at her, and she realized as she ran—as she ran in panic and terror—that some part of her mind was dramatizing, borrowing from the turbulent score of some private film. The music was rushing and plunging her faster, faster, plummeting and scurrying, down and down into the pit of the ravine!
“Only a little way,” she prayed. “One hundred ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen steps! The bottom! Now, run! Across the bridge!”
She spoke to her legs, her arms, her body, her terror; she advised all parts of herself in this white and terrible instant. Over the roaring creek waters, on the swaying, almost-alive bridge planks she ran, followed by the wild footsteps behind, with the music following too, the music shrieking and babbling.
He’s following. Don’t turn, don’t look—if you see him, you’ll not be able to move! You’ll be frightened, you’ll freeze! Just run, run, run!
She ran across the bridge.
Oh, God! God, please, please let me get up the hill! Now up, up the path, now between the hills. Oh, God, it’s dark, and everything so far away! If I screamed now it wouldn’t help; I can’t scream anyway! Here’s the top of the path, here’s the street. Thank God I wore my low-heeled shoes. I can run, I can run! Oh, God, please let me be safe! If I get home safe I’ll never go out alone, I was a fool, let me admit it, a fool! I didn’t know what terror was! I wouldn’t let myself think, but if you let me get home from this I’ll never go out without Helen or Francine again! Across the street now!
She crossed the street and rushed up the sidewalk.
Oh, God, the porch! My house!
In the middle of her running, she saw the empty lemonade glass where she had left it hours before, in the good, easy, lazy time, left it on the railing. She wished she was back in that time now, drinking from it, the night still young and not begun.
“Oh, please, please, give me time to get inside and lock the door and I’ll be safe!”
She heard her clumsy feet on the porch, felt her hands scrabbling and ripping at the lock with the key. She heard her heart. She heard her inner voice shrieking.
The key fitted.
“Unlock the door, quick, quick!”
The door opened.
“Now inside. Slam it!”
She slammed the door.
“Now lock it, bar it, lock it!” she cried. “Lock it tight!”
The door was locked and barred and bolted.
The music stopped. She listened to her heart again and the sound of it diminishing into silence.
Home.
Oh, safe at home. Safe, safe and safe at home! She slumped against the door. Safe, safe. Listen. Not a sound. Safe, safe, oh, thank God, safe at home. I’ll never go out at night again. Safe, oh, safe, safe, home, so good, so safe. Safe inside, the door locked. Wait. Look out the window.
She looked. She gazed out the window for a full half-minute.
“Why there’s no one there at all! Nobody! There was no one following me at all. Nobody running after me.” She caught her breath and almost laughed at herself. “It stands to reason. If a man had been following me, he’d have caught me. I’m not a fast runner. There’s no one on the porch or in the yard. How silly of me! I wasn’t running from anything except me. That ravine was safer than safe. Just the same, though, it’s nice to be home. Home’s the really good warm safe place, the only place to be.”
She put her hand out to the light switch and stopped.
“What?” she asked. “What, what?”
Behind her, in the black living room, someone cleared his throat …
AT MIDNIGHT, IN THE MONTH OF JUNE
RAY BRADBURY
It is Frederic Dannay, one half of the Ellery Queen collaboration, who we have to thank for the following story. After reading “The Whole Town’s Sleeping,” Dannay suggested that Bradbury write a sequel for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. This was a daunting request, according to the author.
Having brought the story to the point where the reader expected the usual denouement, Bradbury deliberately left it hanging, leaving it to the reader to decide if The Lonely One will strangle Lavinia, as he apparently had strangled other young women, or even, come to think of it, if The Lonely One is a man, since the figure is described merely as “someone.” And what was his demented motive for committing these horrible crimes? Bradbury doesn’t help us here, either.
So should we anticipate a nice, tidy, ending, as creators of traditional detective stories have taught us to expect, or will we still be left in the dark, as befits a tale set at midnight. Read on and find out.
“At Midnight, in the Month of June” was first published in the June 1954 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
AT MIDNIGHT, IN THE MONTH OF JUNE
BY RAY BRADBURY
HE HAD BEEN WAITING a long time in the summer night, as the darkness pressed warmer to the earth and the stars turned slowly over the sky. He sat in total darkness, his hands lying easily on the arms of the Morris chair. He heard the town clock strike 9 and 10 and 11, and then at last 12. The breeze from an open back window flowed through the midnight house in an unlit stream, that touched him like a dark rock where he sat silently watching the front door—silently watching.
At midnight, in the month of June …
The cool night poem by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe slid over his mind like the waters of a shadowed creek.
The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
He moved down the black shapeless halls of the house, stepped out of the back window, feeling the town locked away in bed, in dream, in night. He saw the shining snake of garden hose coiled resiliently in the grass. He turned on the water. Standing alone, watering the flower bed, he imagined himself a conductor leading an orchestra that only night-strolling dogs might hear, passing on their way to nowhere with strange white smiles. Very carefully he planted both feet and his tall weight into the mud beneath the window, making deep, well-outlined prints. He stepped inside again and walked, leaving mud, down the absolutely unseen hall, his hands seeing for him.
Through the front-porch window he made out the faint outline of a lemonade glass, one-third full, sitting on the porch rail where she had left it. He trembled quietly.
Now, he could feel her coming home. He could feel her moving across town, far away, in the summer night. He shut his eyes and put his mind out to find her; and felt her moving along in the dark; he knew just where she stepped down from a curb and crossed a street, and up on a curb and tack-tacking, tack-tacking along under the June elms and the last of the lilacs, with a friend. Walking the empty desert of night, he was she. He felt a purse in his hands. He felt long hair prickle his neck, and his mouth turn greasy with lipstick. Sitting still, he was walking, walking, walking on home after midnight.
“Good night!”
He heard but did not hear the voices, and she was coming nearer, and now she was only a mile away and now only a matter of a thousand yards, and now she was sinking, like a beautiful white lantern on an invisible wire, down into the cricket and frog and water-sounding ravine. And he knew the texture of the wooden ravi
ne stairs as if, a boy he was rushing down them, feeling the rough grain and the dust and the leftover heat of the day …
He put his hands out on the air, open. The thumbs of his hands touched, and then the fingers, so that his hands made a circle, enclosing emptiness, there before him. Then, very slowly, he squeezed his hands tighter and tighter together, his mouth open, his eyes shut.
He stopped squeezing and put his hands, trembling, back on the arms of the chair. He kept his eyes shut.
Long ago, he had climbed, one night, to the top of the courthouse tower fire-escape, and looked out at the silver town, at the town of the moon, and the town of summer. And he had seen all the dark houses with two things in them, people and sleep, the two elements joined in bed and all their tiredness and terror breathed upon the still air, siphoned back quietly, and breathed out again, until that element was purified, the problems and hatreds and horrors of the previous day exorcised long before morning and done away with forever.
He had been enchanted with the hour, and the town, and he had felt very powerful, like the magic man with the marionettes who strung destinies across a stage on spider-threads. On the very top of the courthouse tower he could see the least flicker of leaf turning in the moonlight five miles away; the last light, like a pink pumpkin eye, wink out. The town did not escape his eye—it could do nothing without his knowing its every tremble and gesture.
And so it was tonight. He felt himself a tower with the clock in it pounding slow and announcing hours in a great bronze tone, and gazing upon a town where a woman, hurried or slowed by fitful gusts and breezes of now terror and now self-confidence, took the chalk-white midnight sidewalks home, fording solid avenues of tar and stone, drifting among fresh-cut lawns, and now running, running down the steps, through the ravine, up, up the hill, up the hill!
He heard her footsteps before he really heard them. He heard her gasping before there was a gasping. He fixed his gaze to the lemonade glass outside, on the banister. Then the real sound, the real running, the gasping, echoed wildly outside. He sat up. The footsteps raced across the street, the sidewalk, in a panic. There was a babble, a clumsy stumble up the porch steps, a key racheting the door, a voice yelling in a whisper, praying to itself. “Oh, God, dear God!” Whisper! Whisper! And the woman crashing in the door, slamming it, bolting it, talking, whispering, talking to herself in the dark room.
