Backteria and Other Improbable Tales (13 page)

“Mister, you got—” Don began.

“Shut up!” screamed the man.

Then he was quiet, his dark eyes peering toward the dining room, the stairs. He was listening to Billy crying again.

“You got a kid,” the man said slowly.

“
No
.” Betty said it suddenly. She stared at the impossible face of the impossible man who had just said he was going to kill her husband, who was asking with unholy interest about her son.

“This is gonna be a
pleasure
,” said the man, “I’m gonna pay you back good for what you done t’me.”

She saw Don’s face whiten, heard his voice, frail and unbelieving. “What do you mean?”

“Get in the dining room,” the man said.

They backed into the next room, their eyes never leaving the man’s pock-marked face. Betty’s heart thudded. She shivered without control at the sound of Billy’s crying.

“You’re not—”

“Get up the stairs.” A violent cough shook the man.

Betty shuddered as Don’s hand gripped her left arm. She glanced over at him dazedly but he didn’t return her look. He was holding her back from the stairs.

“You’re not going to hurt my boy,” he said, his voice husky.

The man prodded with his gun and Don backed up a step. Betty moved beside him. They went up another step and with each upward movement, Betty felt waves of horror grow stronger in her.

“Simpson, kill
me
,” Don begged suddenly, “Leave my boy alone.”

Don knew his name
. Betty slumped against the wall weakly with the knowledge that everything the man had said was true. True.

“I
swear
to you!” Don said.

“Swear!” the man shouted at him, “Twelve years I been after you. Ten in stir and two years running you down!”

Suddenly his face was convulsed with coughing; he shot out his left hand for the banister.

In the same second, Don leaped.

Betty felt a scream tear from her throat as the roar of the gun deafened her. She heard Don cry out in pain and watched in rigid horror as the two men grappled on the stairway just below her. She saw blood running down Don’s shirt and splashing on the green-carpeted steps.

Her eyes grew wide as she watched the man’s hate-tortured face grow hard, the flesh seeming to tighten as if drawn at the edges by screws. The two men made no sound, only gasped in each other’s faces. Their hands, wrestling for the gun, were hidden from her.

Another deafening roar.

The two men stood straight, staring at each other. Then the man’s mouth opened and spittle ran across his unshaven chin. He toppled backwards down the steps and landed in a crumpled heap on the landing. His dead eyes stared up at them.

For a long while, Betty stood quite still.

Then she left the room and went back into the hall, closing the door quietly behind her. She went to the bathroom and got the medical kit.

Don was sitting on a step hallway downstairs, his head propped on two blood-drained fists, his elbows resting on his knees. He didn’t turn as she came down the steps.

She sat down beside him and drew a bandage tight around his shoulder and arm.

“Does it hurt?” she asked dully.

He shook his head.

“I wonder if the neighbors heard,” she said.

“They must have,” he said, “You’d better call the police.”

Her fingers grew still on the bandage. “You didn’t call them before, did you?”

“No.”

He began to speak slowly, without looking at her.

“When I was just a kid,” he said, “Eighteen, nineteen—I worked the rackets in Chicago.” He looked down at the dead man. “Simpson was one of the guys I worked with. He was always hot-headed, maybe a little crazy.”

His head fell forward. “Well, when the police caught up with us I…” He let out a slow, tired breath. “I got scared and ran. I didn’t think then either. I was just a kid and I was scared. So I ran.”

She looked at him thinking how strange it was to have been married nine years to a man she didn’t know about.

“The rest is simple,” he said, “I changed my name, I tried to live a decent life, an honest one. I tried to forget.” He shook his head defeatedly. “I don’t know how he found me.” He swallowed. “It doesn’t matter, really. You’d better call the police. Before somebody else does.”

She finished the bandage and stood. She went down the steps, avoiding the sight of the man lying there with his blood-soaked chest.

She dialed the operator. “Police,” she said and waited, looking up at Don’s pale face looking at her between the posts of the banister. He looked like a frightened boy who’d been chased and punished and knew that he deserved it.

“Thirteenth precinct,” said the man’s voice on the phone.

“I’d like to report a shooting,” Betty said.

The man took the address. Betty’s eyes were on Don, on the look of resignation on his face.

“The man broke into our house,” she said.

“No,” Don said, “Tell them the truth.”

“That’s right,” she said, “We never saw him before. I guess he was a burglar. Most of our lights were out. We were watching television. I guess he thought we weren’t home.”

Don sagged and closed his eyes as she told the police to bring a doctor. Then, after she hung up she stood looking down at him.

“All right,” he murmured.

The blood started oozing through his bandage then and Betty went and got a clean towel from the linen closet. She went back and sat beside her husband and held the towel against his shoulder until the flow stopped. Then she got up, went to Billy’s bedroom and rocked him gently in her arms.

Downstairs, Don waited quietly for the men to come and take away the body.

“Grace?”

She stopped and looked across her shoulder. Miles was standing in the doorway of his study.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I have to speak to you,” he told her.

No, she thought. She almost groaned aloud. Not
another
crisis.

“Please,” he said. His tone was grim.

“The car’s already waiting,” she objected.

Miles shuddered. “This is absolutely vital.”

Grace sighed and shut the front door. Give me strength, she thought as she crossed the entry hall. Miles stepped aside, admitting her to his study. “I have an awful lot of shopping to do,” she said.

“This won’t take long.”

She cast her eyes upward.

Famous last words, she thought; he used them every time—and it always took long.

His astrological chart was on the desk.

“This is
it
,” said Miles.

She held herself in check. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
This
time? she kept herself from adding.

“An ultimate array of squares, semisquares, and adverse conjunctions,” Miles answered in a quavering voice.

Don’t sigh wearily, she told herself firmly. “What does it mean?” she asked, adopting a solicitous tone.

“Financial ruin.”

She blinked. Did he say ruin? “Ruin?”

“Ruin.”

Grace’s mouth opened and closed without a sound. This was serious. With his fanatical devotion to astrology he might very well create that ruin just to prove his point. She stared at him in shock. All the aggravations of the past seemed trivial compared to this.

“See here,” he said. He drew her to the desk and pointed at his chart with stabbing motions. “Square to Mars. Square to Saturn. Adverse conjunction. Semisquare to Mercury. Good God, it’s a positive blueprint for bankruptcy!”

No, she thought. She could not repress a groan this time. And there was nothing she could do; that was the nightmare. In every other detail of their marriage Miles deferred to her completely. But where astrology was concerned—

“What are you going to do?” she murmured.

“It’s already done,” he answered. His voice made her shiver.

Incredible, she thought ten minutes later as she rode into the city. All these years of being convinced that astrology was nonsense. Now this. It certainly gave one a sense of cosmic awe.

“Where to?” the chauffeur asked.

Grace blinked and looked at him. “The bank,” she said. She had to smile.
Your chart is free of such afflictions, don’t you see
, Miles had told her dramatically;
therefore, to protect myself from this impending ruin I must transfer everything to you
.

“And then?” the chauffeur broke into her train of thought.

The sight of his shoulders and curly black hair made her tingle with anticipation.

“And then the airport,” she replied, “Leo, darling.”

B
Y
R
ICHARD
M
ATHESON AND
R
ICHARD
C
HRISTIAN
M
ATHESON

It is not unusual for a son to follow in the writing footsteps of his father, but it’s uncommon for the two to collaborate. Here is a rare and fortunate exception. Richard Matheson is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, author of many classic throat-gripping short stories and novels of terror
—
“
Duel,” “Prey,” A Stir of Echoes, The Shrinking Man, I Am Legend
—as well as one of the key writers to work with the late Rod Serling on the famous
Twilight Zone
television series. His son, Richard Christian Matheson, still in his mid-twenties, has already sold a number of short stories to magazines and anthologies and has begun a career in television scripting. He shows promise of making a strong mark of his own. Their combined talents concentrate here on the claustrophobic aspects of terror
.

He awoke.

It was dark and cold. Silent.

I’m thirsty, he thought. He yawned and sat up; fell back with a cry of pain. He’d hit his head on something. He rubbed at the pulsing tissue of his brow, feeling the ache spread back to his hairline.

Slowly, he began to sit up again but hit his head once more. He was jammed between the mattress and something overhead. He raised his hands to feel it. It was soft and pliable, its texture yielding beneath the push of his fingers. He felt along its surface. It extended as far as he could reach. He swallowed anxiously and shivered.

What in God’s name was it?

He began to roll to his left and stopped with a gasp. The surface was blocking him there, as well. He reached to his right and his heart beat faster. It was on the other side, as well. He was surrounded on four sides. His heart compressed like a smashed soft-drink can, the blood spurting a hundred times faster.

Within seconds, he sensed that he was dressed. He felt trousers, a coat, a shirt and tie, a belt. There were shoes on his feet.

He slid his right hand to his trouser pocket and reached in. He palmed a cold, metal square and pulled his hand from the pocket, bringing it to his face. Fingers trembling, he hinged the top open and spun the wheel with his thumb. A few sparks glinted but no flame. Another turn and it lit.

He looked down at the orange cast of his body and shivered again. In the light of the flame, he could see all around himself.

He wanted to scream at what he saw.

He was in a casket.

He dropped the lighter and the flame striped the air with a yellow tracer before going out. He was in total darkness, once more. He could see nothing. All he heard was his terrified breathing as it lurched forward, jumping from his throat.

How long had he been here? Minutes? Hours?

Days?

His hopes lunged at the possibility of a nightmare; that he was only dreaming, his sleeping mind caught in some kind of twisted vision. But he knew it wasn’t so. He knew, horribly enough, exactly what had happened.

They had put him in the one place he was terrified of. The one place he had made the fatal mistake of speaking about to them. They couldn’t have selected a better torture. Not if they’d thought about it for a hundred years.

God, did they loathe him that much? To do
this
to him.

He started shaking helplessly, then caught himself. He wouldn’t let them do it. Take his life and his business all at once? No, goddamn them,
no
!

He searched hurriedly for the lighter. That was their mistake, he thought. Stupid bastards. They’d probably thought it was a final, fitting irony: A gold-engraved thank you for making the corporation what it was. On the lighter were the words:
To Charlie/Where there’s a Will
…

“Right,” he muttered. He’d beat the lousy sons of bitches. They weren’t going to murder him and steal the business he owned and built. There
was
a will.

His.

He closed his fingers around the lighter and, holding it with a white- knuckled fist, lifted it above the heaving of his chest. The wheel ground against the flint as he spun it back with his thumb. The flame caught and he quieted his breathing as he surveyed what space he had in the coffin.

Only inches on all four sides.

How much air could there be in so small a space, he wondered? He clicked off the lighter. Don’t burn it up, he told himself. Work in the dark.

Immediately, his hands shot up and he tried to push the lid up. He pressed as hard as he could, his forearms straining. The lid remained fixed. He closed both hands into tightly balled fists and pounded them against the lid until he was coated with perspiration, his hair moist.

He reached down to his left-trouser pocket and pulled out a chain with two keys attached. They had placed those with him, too.
Stupid bastards
. Did they really think he’d be so terrified he couldn’t
think
? Another amusing joke on their part. A way to lock up his life completely. He wouldn’t need the keys to his car and to the office again so why not put them in the casket with him?

Wrong, he thought. He
would
use them again.

Bringing the keys above his face, he began to pick at the lining with the sharp edge of one key. He tore through the threads and began to rip apart the lining. He pulled at it with the fingers until it popped free from its fastenings. Working quickly, he pulled at the downy stuffing, tugging it free and placing it at his sides. He tried not to breathe too hard. The air had to be preserved.