by Robert Bloch
“I give them the creeps, all right! I guess they know now, Thelma and all the rest of them bitches, what it feels like when the point goes in and it rips and rips—”
I moved my hand very swiftly, covering the table-top, groping for the poniard—the poniard that wasn’t there. He heard me and chuckled.
“Looking for your knife, huh? I got it. But I won’t use it. I never did use it, just stole it to cover up. I got my own tool. Haven’t you guessed yet? It’s a sword cane.”
I remembered now. Bill’s long black cane. I remembered the clattering sound as he’d dropped the sheath on the floor and the swishing noise. I heard the swish again, coming close.
“Don’t run,” he said. “I’ll find you.”
And he found me. The thin blade ripped out, ripped down along my shoulder. I heard the tear of cloth, felt the sharp bite in my arm.
“Cut it out!” I screamed. And my hand went into my pocket, looking for a knife that wasn’t there. When had I looked for that knife before?
Something was happening inside me, something was coming up into my memory. But there was no time for that now. There was only time to sense the feel of the object that was in my pocket. I grabbed it, whipped it out, flicked.
My cigarette lighter flared up, flashed. I could see everything now: myself crouching in that little room, my left arm bleeding; Blind Bill standing right before me with the long thin blade poised, then plunging toward my throat.
I raised the lighter and thrust the flame against his face, into his empty eyes.
He screamed, and the sword cane slipped to the floor as he brought both hands up to claw at his seared sockets. I dropped the lighter as he staggered away, picked up the sword. He dropped to the bed, moaning.
I switched on the light, found the phone, and made my call. By the time Lieutenant Cohen arrived, the moaning had stopped.
EIGHTEEN
Everything after that is a blur—a long blur of riding downtown, getting my arm bandaged, making a statement, hearing Bill’s confession. Somewhere in the blur was Lieutenant Cohen telling me what a good guy I was and also that I’d been a damned fool. Kit came in and made appropriate noises, and District Attorney Howard kept telling the reporters, “Not now, please. Can’t you see he’s almost out on his feet.”
They kept me in the hospital overnight and the next day, but I didn’t care about that. I slept around the clock and when I woke up I felt fine.
I felt fine because I could remember. I could think about it now, what had come to me there in the dark when the light flared up and I yelled “Cut it out!”—when I reached for a knife that wasn’t there.
It was the reason for my blackouts; I knew that now. It had been blotted out by the concussion and fracture, by shock and by fear. And since that time whenever the memory came too close to consciousness, I’d black out again, just to keep the fear away. It was the traumatic incident, as Doc Greene would call it. And I could remember it clearly now. The traumatic incident back there in Korea.
Onwatong, in April, 1951. Or the place where Onwatong used to be. Now it was only a rubble of bombed-out streets, with a few steel girders rising above the smoke and the ashes in the ruins. I remembered it all.
There was no place left to hide, and the planes were coming over. No place left to hide, and Jimmy and Sam and I were together when we heard the drone. We dropped down alongside this wall and started to dig, as the drone became a roar.
We dug, and the stones vibrated, and out of the roar came a whine and then it hit.
The wall went up. Part of it came down. Part of it got me in the back of the skull, and that was the concussion. Only I wasn’t out, entirely. I could still see, and I could still hear.
I could see Jimmy lying there. Part of the wall had hit him, too. The split stone had been driven halfway into his chest, and he wasn’t making any sound. What I could hear was coming from Sam.
At first he only moaned, and then he began this screaming. “Cut it out,” he yelled. “Cut—it—out.” I looked at him. He wasn’t asking anyone to stop. He meant that I should actually cut it out.
The top of the wall had fallen across his ankles, pinning him down so that he couldn’t use his legs. And they’d been mashed flat. But he still couldn’t pull loose. The pain was awful. He wanted to get free, and if I could only get him loose—
I reached for my pocket, for my clasp knife. It wasn’t there.
That’s all. As simple as that. I reached for my knife and couldn’t find it. So I lay there for two hours, until the medics finally came, and listened to him scream. Me with my concussion, he with the agony in his voice as he begged me, begged someone, begged anyone, to cut it out.
I wanted a knife then, more than anything else in the world. I would have given everything to use a knife: to cut it out. But I couldn’t. And when the medics came, I fainted, and they took me back to the hospital with the concussion.
That’s how it started, and that’s what it meant. Doc Greene would know the rest: about the suppressed guilt-feelings, the fear and the fascination connected with knives, the love and dread of the dark. Everything went back to that night in Korea: the physical shock of concussion, the psychic shock that brought the blackouts when I tried to remember what I’d done that was wrong, why I had failed, why I was guilty, and why I had to fear knives.
Now, it wasn’t important any more. Finding out the reason, I realized it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. The real reason never is. It’s what you do with it.
There’s always a reason, I’d said, and it was true. Blind Bill had his reason, Art Hughes had his. Probably poor Anthony Mingo had a reason, too. Doctors are still trying to find it out in the sanitarium.
Art Hughes went away and I never see him any more. Blind Bill went away, too, and nobody will ever see him.
So that leaves me. Me and Kit.
I’m not complaining about that arrangement at all. The store’s out of the red, and I’m out of the black. Literally. Since we’ve been married, I haven’t had a hint of a blackout.
I had a few qualms left over, at first. I remember the day before we got married. I was back at the store, getting things in shape ready to close up so that Kit and I could leave for a week on the Gulf Coast.
She was checking off the approvals, and I climbed up on a chair and opened the knife cabinet.
“What’s the big idea?”
Lieutenant Cohen came in, and I looked down to see if he was still chewing on the same old mustache. He was.
“Getting rid of these knives,” I told him. “Don’t want them around any more.”
His face fell a bit. “Oh. Didn’t know stuff like that bothered you. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have brought this.”
He produced the package, then.
Kit looked at it. He handed it to her with a nod. “Brought you a wedding present,” he said. “But if you don’t like it—”
“Of course we like it,” Kit said. “Don’t we, darling?”
“Sure.”
I stood there, watching her unwrap the package. And Lieutenant Cohen got redder and redder.
“Why—it’s wonderful,” Kit squealed. “Something we can really use, can’t we, Tom?”
I looked over her shoulder.
For a moment I shuddered, then I grinned.
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” I said. “Kit says, that’s one gift we can really use. Something practical. Though they do say there’s a trick to using it right.”
“That there is,” Lieutenant Cohen agreed. He chewed on his mustache thoughtfully as all three of us stood there and looked at the carving set.
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