Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories (8 page)

  It is alive.

  So through the days and nights. His anger falling like frenzied axe blows in his house, on everything he owns. Sprays of teeth-grinding hysteria clouding his windows and falling to his floors. Oceans of wild, uncontrolled hate flooding through every room of his house; filling each iota of space with a shifting, throbbing life.

  He lay on his back and stared at the sun-mottled ceiling.

  The last day, he told himself. The phrase had been creeping in and out of his brain since he'd awakened.

  In the bathroom he could hear the water running. He could hear the medicine cabinet being opened and then closed again. He could hear the sound of her slippers shuffling on the tile floor.

  Sally, he thought, don't leave me.

  "I'll take it easy if you stay," he promised the air in a whisper.

  But he knew he couldn't take it easy. That was too hard. It was easier to fly off the handle, easier to scream and rant and attack.

  He turned on his side and stared out into the hall at the bathroom door. He could see the line of light under the door. Sally is in there, he thought. Sally, my wife, whom I married many years ago when I was young and full of hope.

  He closed his eyes suddenly and clenched his fists. It came on him again. The sickness that prevailed with more violence every time he contracted it. The sickness of despair, of lost ambition. It ruined everything. It cast a vapour of bitterness over all his comings and goings. It jaded appetite, ruined sleep, destroyed affection.

  "Perhaps if we'd had children," he muttered and knew before he said it that it wasn't the answer.

  Children. How happy they would be watching their wretched father sinking deeper into his pit of introspective fever each day.

  All right, tortured his mind, let's have the facts. He gritted his teeth and tried to make his mind a blank. But, like a dull-eyed idiot, his mind repeated the words that he muttered often in his sleep through restless, tossing nights.

  I'm forty years old. I teach English at Fort College. Once I had hoped to be a writer. I thought this would be a fine place to write. I would teach class part of the day and write with the rest of my time. I met Sally at school and married her. I thought everything would be just fine. I thought success was inevitable. Eighteen years ago.

Eighteen years.

  How, he thought, did you mark the passing of almost two decades? The time seemed a shapeless lump of failing efforts, of nights spent in anguish; of the secret, the answer, the revelation always being withheld from him. Dangled overhead like cheese swinging in a maddening arc over the head of a berserk rat.

  And resentment creeping. Days spent watching Sally buy food and clothing and pay rent with his meagre salary. Watching her buy new curtains or new chair covers and feeling a stab of pain every time because he was that much farther removed from the point where he could devote his time to writing. Every penny she spent he felt like a blow at his aspirations.

  He forced himself to think that way. He forced himself to believe that it was only the time he needed to do good writing.

  But once a furious student had yelled at him, "You're just a third-rate talent hiding behind a desk!"

  He remembered that. Oh, God, how he remembered that moment. Remembered the cold sickness that had convulsed him when those words hit his brain. Recalled the trembling and the shaky unreason of his voice.

  He had failed the student for the semester despite good marks. There had been a great to-do about it. The student's father had come to the school. They had all gone before Dr. Ramsay, the head of the English Department.

  He remembered that too; the scene could crowd out all other memories. Him, sitting on one side of the conference table, facing the irate father and son. Dr. Ramsay stroking his beard until he thought he'd hurl something at him. Dr. Ramsay had said-well let's see if we can't straighten out this matter.

  They had consulted the record book and found the student was right. Dr. Ramsay had looked up at him in great surprise. Well, I can't see what… he had said and let his syrupy voice break off and looked probingly at him, waiting for an explanation.

  And the explanation had been hopeless, a jumbled and pointless affair. Irresponsible attitude, he had said, flaunting of unpardonable behavior; morally a failure. And Dr. Ramsay, his thick neck getting red, telling him in no uncertain terms that morals were not subject to the grading system at Fort College.

  There was more but he'd forgotten it. He'd made an effort to forget it. But he couldn't forget that it would be years before he made a professorship. Ramsay would hold it back. And his salary would go on being insufficient and bills would mount and he would never get his writing done.

  He regained the present to find himself clutching the sheets with taut fingers. He found himself glaring in hate at the bathroom door. Go on!-his mind snapped vindictively-Go home to your precious mother. See if I care. Why just a trial separation? Make it permanent. Give me some peace. Maybe I can do some writing then.

Maybe I can do some writing then.

  The phrase made him sick. It had no meaning anymore. Like a word that is repeated until it becomes gibberish that sentence, for him, had been used to extinction. It sounded silly; like some bit of cliche from a soap opera. Hero saying in dramatic tones- Now, by God, maybe I can do some writing. Senseless.

  For a moment, though, he wondered if it was true. Now that she was leaving could he forget about her and really get some work done? Quit his job? Go somewhere and hole up in a cheap furnished room and write?

  You have $123.89 in the bank, his mind informed him. He pretended it was the only thing that kept him from it. But, far back in his mind, he wondered if he could write anywhere. Often the question threw itself at him when he was least expecting it. You have four hours every morning, the statement would rise like a menacing wraith. You have time to write many thousands of words. Why don't you?

  And the answer was always lost in a tangle of because and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.

  The bathroom door opened and she came out, dressed in her good red suit.

  For no reason at all, it seemed, he suddenly realized that she'd been wearing that same outfit for more than three years and never a new one. The realization angered him even more. He closed his eyes and hoped she wasn't looking at him. I hate her, he thought. I hate her because she has destroyed my life.

  He heard the rustle of her skirt as she sat at the dressing table and pulled out a drawer. He kept his eyes shut and listened to the Venetian blinds tap lightly against the window frame as morning breeze touched them. He could smell her perfume floating lightly on the air.

  And he tried to think of the house empty all the time. He tried to think of coming home from class and not finding Sally there waiting for him. The idea seemed, somehow, impossible. And that angered him. Yes, he thought, she's gotten to me. She's worked on me until I am so dependent of her for really unessential things that I suffer under the delusion that I cannot do without her.

  He turned suddenly on the mattress and looked at her.

  "So, you're really going," he said in a cold voice.

  She turned briefly and looked at him. There was no anger on her face. She looked tired… "Yes," she said. "I'm going."

  Good riddance. The words tried to pass his lips. He cut them off.

  "I suppose you have your reasons," he said.

  Her shoulders twitched a moment in what he took for a shrug of weary amusement.

  "I have no intention of arguing with you," he said. "Your life is your own."

  "Thank you," she murmured.

  She's waiting for apologies, he thought. Waiting to be told that he didn't hate her as he'd said. That he hadn't struck
her
but all his twisted and shattered hopes; the mocking spectacle of his own lost faith.

  "And just how long is this
trial
separation going to last?" he said, his voice acidulous.

  She shook her head.

  "I don't know, Chris," she said quietly. "It's up to you."

  "Up to me," he said. "It's always up to me, isn't it?"

  "Oh, please darl- Chris. I don't want to argue anymore. I'm too tired to argue."

  "It's easier to just pack and run away."

  She turned and looked at him. Her eyes were very dark and unhappy.

  "Run away?" she said. "After eighteen years you accuse me of that? Eighteen years of watching you destroy yourself. And me along with you. Oh, don't look surprised. I'm sure you know you've driven me half insane too."

  She turned away and he saw her shoulders twitch. She brushed some tears from her eyes.

  "It's n-not just because you hit me," she said. "You kept saying that last night when I said I was leaving. Do you think it would matter if…" She took a deep breath. "If it meant you were angry with me? If it was that I could be hit every day. But you didn't hit me. I'm nothing to you. I'm not wanted."

  "Oh, stop being so…"

  "No," she broke in. "That's why I'm going. Because I can't bear to watch you hate me more every day for something that… that isn't my fault."

  "I suppose you…"

  "Oh, don't say anymore," she said, getting up. She hurried out of the room and he heard her walk into the living room. He stared at the dressing table.

  Don't say anymore?-his mind asked as though she were still there. Well, there's more to say; lots more. You don't seem to realize what I've lost. You don't seem to understand. I had hopes, oh God, what hopes I had. I was going to write prose to make the people sit up and gasp. I was going to tell them things they needed badly to know. I was going to tell them in so entertaining a way that they would never realize that the truth was getting to them. I was going to create immortal works.

  Now when I die, I shall only be dead. I am trapped in this depressing village, entombed in a college of science where men gape at dust and do not even know that there are stars above their heads. And what can I do, what can…?

  The thoughts broke off. He looked miserably at her perfume bottles, at the powder box that tinkled "Always" when the cover was lifted off.

I'll remember you. Always.

With a heart that's true. Always.

  The words are childish and comical, he thought. But his throat contracted and he felt himself shudder.

  "Sally," he said. So quietly that he could hardly hear it himself.

  After a while he got up and dressed.

  While he was putting on his trousers a rug slid from under him and he had to grab the dresser for support. He glared down, heart pounding in the total fury he had learned to summon in the space of seconds.

  "Damn you," he muttered.

  He forgot Sally. He forgot everything. He just wanted to get even with the rug. He kicked it violently under the bed. The anger plunged down and disappeared. He shook his head. I'm sick, he thought. He thought of going in to her and telling her he was sick.

  His mouth tightened as he went into the bathroom. I'm not sick, he thought. Not in body anyway. It's my mind that's ill and she only makes it worse.

  The bathroom was still damply warm from her use of it. He opened the window a trifle and got a splinter in his finger. He cursed the window in a muffled voice. He looked up. Why so quiet? he asked. So
she
won't hear me?

  "Damn you!" he snarled loudly at the window. And he picked at his finger until he had pulled out the sliver of wood.

  He jerked at the cabinet door. It stuck. His face reddened. He pulled harder and the door flew open and cracked him on the wrist. He spun about and grabbed his wrist, threw back his head with a whining gasp. *

  He stood there, eyes clouded with pain, staring at the ceiling. He looked at the crack that ran in a crazy meandering line across the ceiling. Then he closed his eyes.

  And began to sense something. Intangible. A sense of menace. He wondered about it. Why it's myself, of course, he answered then. It is the moral decrepitude of my own subconscious. It is bawling out to me, saying: You are to be punished for driving your poor wife away to her mother's arms. You are not a man. You are a-

  "Oh, shut up," he said.

  He washed his hands and face. He ran an inspecting finger over his chin. He needed a shave. He opened the cabinet door gingerly and took out his straight razor. He held it up and looked at it.

  The handle has expanded. He told himself that quickly as the blade appeared to fall out of the handle wilfully. It made him shiver to see it flop out like that and glitter in the light from the cabinet light fixture.

  He stared in repelled fascination at the bright steel. He touched the blade edge. So sharp, he thought. The slightest touch would sever flesh. What a hideous thing it was.

'It's my hand."

  He said it involuntarily and shut the razor suddenly. It
was
his hand, it had to be. It couldn't have been the razor moving by itself. That was sick imagination.