Surprise Party

by Katz, William

  As the trains were running, Marty stared at them intently. "Do you like my trains, Dad?" he whispered, too low for Samantha to hear. "Am I doing a good job for you?"

  He walked back into the bedroom, slowly. He looked at Samantha to make sure she was asleep. Samantha didn't move. She didn't want Marty to know she was awake, still believing that these moments alone were good for him. Marty reached under the bed and took out the attaché case. He withdrew the videotape of the Douglas Edwards news show. Samantha opened one eye and saw him do it. But he often bought videotapes. So what?

  Marty walked back to the living room with the videotape. Samantha heard him moving furniture. She could not see that he was moving the old Model 30 TV set back from the corner, where it had been pushed. The set was mounted in a cabinet that also held the Shaws' videotape machine. Samantha recognized the sound of the machine's tape door clicking open. Still she was not suspicious. Marty watched videotapes all the time. Then she heard the door close. There were several more clicks as Marty turned on the power for the video machine and the television set itself. The old tube set began to warm and the sound started fading in about thirty seconds later.

  It would be a movie, Samantha thought.

  It wasn't.

  She heard a man's voice. He was delivering the news. She recognized the voice, but couldn't quite place it, although it sounded like one she'd heard long ago.

  Douglas Edwards. That was it. She remembered. She remembered how he'd had this news program on CBS in the 1950s, sponsored by Oldsmobile. She used to see glimpses of it on the old black-and-white Dumont that her parents had in their living room.

  But why was Marty watching an old Doug Edwards tape? He wasn't a nostalgia buff, and history definitely wasn't his fetish. He was a bit of a TV hound, though, and maybe he'd simply acquired an old TV tape to remind himself of the early days of the medium. Or maybe he was doing research for some public-relations project. What did it matter?

  But why was he watching a tape while the trains were running?

  Still, Samantha was tired and Marty was probably overflowing with happiness, so what was the difference?

  Marty watched the tape, mesmerized. He remembered how Doug Edwards had sounded that horrible night. He remembered the calm, even tones, the undramatic delivery, the straightforward manner.

  Everything was ready.

  The trains were running.

  Doug Edwards was on the Model 30.

  Marty looked around. Was there anything out of order? He focused on the portrait of Samantha that Len Ross had gushingly given to him on behalf of the staff. Who needed that in the living room? He took it and placed it in the kitchen, out of the way, out of sight.

  He was ready for the last great ritual before the act. It was 12:48 A.M.

  Marty slowly walked back into the bedroom. Again, Samantha pretended to be asleep. Marty went to her side of the bed. He reached down and grasped a small alarm clock on her night table.

  Samantha sensed his presence and barely opened an eye to see what he was doing.

  Marty picked up the alarm clock.

  He started turning it back.

  Back exactly one hour.

  Back to 11:48.

  Back to December fifth.

  Now a spike of fear so sharp it seemed to slice her in half shot up Samantha's spine.

  Marty walked to the clock on his desk. He turned it back. It had a calendar. Samantha watched with one eye as the "6" became "5."

  Why?

  What was going through the mind of the father-to-be?

  Frozen with fear, Samantha listened as Marty left the room and walked around the apartment. She heard him stop several times. The direction of the sound told the story.

  He was stopping at wall clocks.

  He was turning back the time.

  He was turning back the date.

  December fifth…again.

  No, Samantha thought, it couldn't be true. He wasn't actually going to do anything. That was foolish. Stupid. This was just some little fetish, something she didn't understand, maybe something immature and boyish. That's all it possibly could be, and yet she remained in bed, still paralyzed with fright. So many strange things had happened recently.

  Marty stood in the living room, observing what he'd done and finding it good. It was so much like that night in 1952. It was more like it than the nights of the other murders, which often had to be done outside. This was ideal. This was the way it should be.

  "I hope you're proud of me, Dad," he said. He did not whisper. Samantha heard him. What was this? "I've done everything I could, Dad. You hear the Doug Edwards program, don't you? Sure you do. And listen to those trains. The same ones you got me, Dad. I've got them set up right, the way you did."

  Samantha could stand the suspense no longer. She lurched out of bed and started walking slowly toward the living room to see for herself.

  "Everything is the same, Dad," Marty went on. "That's what I've tried to do."

  Samantha reached the edge of the living room and gazed in. Marty immediately saw her. "What's going on?" she asked.

  He did not answer. He just stared at her.

  "Tell me," she insisted.

  Marty glanced at a wall clock. It said 11:53. After staring at Samantha a few more seconds, he started moving his lips, but no words came out. A quaint, questioning look appeared on his face. Then the sound of his voice came, soft, kind, almost reverent.

  "I'll get a job," he said.

  "Marty, you have a job," Samantha answered. "You run a company." What's happened to him? What's gone wrong?

  "I just wanted him to have these trains," Marty went on. "He's always wanted them."

  "Who, Marty?"

  "Not in front of the children, Alice!"

  "Alice?" Samantha asked. "Who's Alice? Marty, what are you talking about?"

  "Frankie loves the trains."

  "Frankie?" And then Samantha remembered. Frankie Nelson was the name of the boy in Omaha, the boy who, Cross-Wade had said, grew up to be the calendar killer.

  Oh my God, it's true! Samantha realized it. No doubt. There could be absolutely no doubt. Frankie was Marty. This was Frankie, drowning in his own past, his mind a prisoner of December 5, 1952.

  He'd turned back the clocks and date.

  It was December fifth.

  He was going to kill. Samantha knew it. And there were no police. There was no protection. There was nothing. She was alone with him.

  "I'm not a bum," Marty said. "I need a break."

  "Of course you're not a bum," Samantha answered. What could she say? Humor him. Maybe he'd stop.

  "Not in front of the children, Alice!"

  "Of course not."

  Maybe she should scream. But that would panic Marty and, by the time someone responded, it could all be over. Run for the door? He'd surely catch her. No, the only chance was pure, agonized self-defense. Samantha was trapped and she knew it.

  "Maybe they'll find out about you!" Marty blurted out. "Where'd you spend the night, Alice?"

  "Marty, what are you saying?"

  "Where'd you spend the night?"

  "Here, Marty, here."

  "Not in front of the children, Alice!"

  "Never, Marty."

  Suddenly, Marty started stalking back into the bedroom. He stopped. "Come with me!" he ordered.

  "Why?"

  "Come with me!"

  Samantha eyed the front door. Marty stood in her way. He'd never let her by. She walked with him into the bedroom. "I'll find the money for the trains somewhere," he said.

  "Of course you will."

  The attaché case was no longer under the bed, Marty having taken it out to get the tape. It was leaning against a night table. Now Marty lunged for it. In a flash, he pulled out the hammer and chain.

  "Oh my God!" Samantha screamed.

  The sight of the weapons was the ultimate confirmation of her deepest fears. She saw an opening, a clear path to the front door. She bolted.

  Ma
rty was faster.

  He stopped her, tripped her. She rolled over and over. "Don't do that!" he ordered. "I want you here, Mom!"

  Samantha sprung to her feet. "I'm not Mom! I'm Samantha, Marty. I'm not her!"

  Marty didn't answer.

  He charged at her.

  He raised the hammer.

  Samantha screamed, then grabbed a lamp, hurling it at Marty. It hit him, a metal point puncturing his arm. He stared at the blood. "You're not nice, Mom. A nice mom doesn't hurt her Frankie. You were never nice."

  He came at her again. She snaked around furniture, finally grabbing an alarm clock and trying desperately to turn the hours ahead once more. "December sixth, Marty. December sixth."

  But Marty swung the hammer at her, knocking the clock from her hands. It smashed to the floor before she could change it.

  She saw another opening. She shot past Marty. He caught up with her. She broke away. He blocked her path to the front door. She bolted for the kitchen. There were knives there. Knives.

  He trapped her in the kitchen.

  "Not in front of the children, Alice!"

  He said it over and over.

  "It's too late, Marty," Samantha pleaded. "It's December sixth. Nothing will change that, Marty. Turning back the clocks won't change it. You're too late. You can't kill me. It's not part of the game."

  "Not in front of the children, Alice!"

  Samantha went for the silverware drawer, throwing it open. She thrust out her hand to grab a knife.

  She was stunned.

  There were no knives.

  They had all been used for the party and were in the dishwasher…next to Marty.

  Samantha had nothing. She had given back the Mace.

  It was all over. She was sure of that.

  Marty walked slowly toward her. She backed against the counter, too frightened to scream.

  Marty's face broke out in a strange, mystical grin. "Dad," he said, "this is for you." He lifted the hammer above his head.

  Suddenly there was an enormous thud behind him.

  The apartment's main door swung open.

  Samantha saw only a blur, then a flash. Her ears rang from the sharp report.

  She heard a horrid, choking groan.

  Marty's grin turned to shocked surprise.

  He collapsed to the floor.

  "It's finished," Spencer Cross-Wade said, holding his service revolver and looking compassionately at Samantha. "I'm sorry it ended this way."

  Samantha hardly heard. Her ears were still deafened from the sound of the gunfire. Shock overwhelmed her body, her senses. She barely saw Cross-Wade standing before her. But in a few moments she felt his supporting arm around her shoulders, leading her out of this room of horrors. As he did, she glanced down and saw her portrait, now splattered with Marty's blood, oozing across her face, staining the auburn hair that had symbolized Marty's obsession.

  "Sit down," Cross-Wade said to her as they reached a couch in the living room. "Try to be calm. You're safe now. There is no more danger."

  Samantha closed her eyes, trying to rebound from the convulsion that had struck her world. Cross-Wade looked around and saw the electric trains still running, the tape of Douglas Edwards still beaming forth, in its 1950s grainy glory, from the old Model 30. He stopped the trains. He snapped off the tape machine. The remnants of Marty's past were suddenly quiet.

  "How did you know?" Samantha softly asked the man who had just saved her life.

  "One might call it the detective's instinct," Cross-Wade answered. "I was riding home and I looked at my watch. It suddenly occurred to me: It had turned December sixth here, but it was still December fifth in the one place that mattered…Omaha, Nebraska. They are an hour behind. Marty may have lived here, but on this one day his mind slipped back to Omaha time."

  "He turned back the clocks," Samantha whispered.

  Yes…to Omaha time. Your husband wanted perfect vengeance. He tried to duplicate, as exactly as he could, his night of nightmares in 1952."

  "It wasn't Marty who tried to kill me tonight," Samantha insisted, still speaking in a whisper. "It was Frankie."

  "Precisely."

  "I will always love Marty," Samantha said.

  "I hope you will," Cross-Wade replied. He got up, walked to the phone, and put through a call to the coroner's office.

  It was over. The terror of the calendar schizophrenic had come to an end.

  Epilogue

  Marty was buried four days later. Samantha had never thought about his death, and he had left no instructions or preferences. But now Samantha knew who he really was, and how he really felt. So she flew his body back to Omaha and had him buried in the little cemetery he had visited often… beside Dad. He was buried under his real name, Frank Nelson, which would appear on the headstone. And Samantha made sure that Dad's grave was neatened, and the stone set straight.

  She had invited Marty's friends to come to Omaha with her, but understood that the cost, and the scandal surrounding his death, would keep the number low. In fact, only one friend came—Tom Edwards, forever Samantha's rock, the man she knew she could depend on. He made all the arrangements with a funeral home in Omaha, secured the legal papers, even ordered flowers. Most of the people he dealt with assumed he was one of Samantha's close relatives.

  In the months following Marty's death, some of Samantha's friends drifted away, believing Samantha somehow tainted by the calendar schizophrenic saga, which was reported in detail in all the papers. Lynne, at her husband's insistence, was correct but not close. But Tom was thoroughly devoted, caring, giving of himself. He started visiting Samantha every day, taking her to dinner, sometimes to a movie or a Broadway play. He even drove her to the doctor's as the baby grew nearer to term.

  Tom and Samantha became close, and Samantha developed a deep feeling for him. He was becoming so much like Marty, the Marty before Frankie took over. Maybe he was emulating Marty, maybe he'd idolized him. Samantha liked that, for she still clung to the side of Marty she always wanted to remember.

  The baby, a boy, was born on schedule. Samantha asked Tom for his advice on a name. Tom had only one answer: Martin Everett Shaw, Jr. And so Marty Jr. came into the world.

  Tom and Samantha grew even closer after the birth, with Tom coming over and taking Samantha and Marty Jr. out for strolls three or four times a week. It was inevitable: Fourteen months after Marty's death, Tom and Samantha were engaged.

  Just before the small wedding, Tom told Samantha he wanted to visit Marty's grave. He wanted to go alone, he said, to pay his respects to his closest friend, perhaps to say a few words silently.

  Samantha was so moved. It made her love Tom more. She respected his privacy, and so he flew back to Omaha and went to the cemetery.

  It was an icy, miserable day as he entered the cemetery's gates.

  He approached Marty's grave and stood over it.

  And he did say a few words:

  "I think of you every single day. No one knows what we were to each other. No one suspects. I'll marry her soon, and carry on for you. I'll do what you wanted to do…for you, and for Dad. This I solemnly pledge to you. December fifth will come. She doesn't know this time. She won't get away. Rest well, my brother."

  He left the gravesite.

  Two weeks later Samantha Shaw joined Thomas Edwards in a chapel, and became his lawful wedded wife.

  The next day, Tom took a train to Queens and bought a hammer and chain.