The Box: Uncanny Stories Read online

  “Care to check these items, Mrs. Wheeler?” Greg broke in. Suddenly, he hated her for her slowness, for her failure to accept. “Or shall we just walk out of here,” he said, sharply, “and let that blue convertible drag Paul’s head along the street until his brains spill out?”

  The woman looked at him in horror. Greg felt a momentary dread that he had told her too much, then relaxed as he realized that he hadn’t. “I suggest you check,” he told her, pleasantly. The woman backed away from him a little bit, then turned and hurried toward the patio door. “Oh, incidentally,” Greg said, remembering. She turned. “That dog out there will try to save your son but it won’t succeed; the car will kill it, too.”

  The woman stared at him, as if uncomprehending, then turned away and, sliding open the patio door, went outside. Greg saw the collie frisking around her as she moved across the patio. Leisurely, he returned to the sofa and sat down.

  “Greg—?”

  He frowned grimacingly, jerking up his hand to silence her. Out on the patio, there was a scraping noise as the woman overturned the playpen. He listened intently. There was a sudden gasp, then the stamping of the woman’s shoe on concrete, an excited barking by the dog. Greg smiled and leaned back with a sigh. Bingo.

  When the woman came back in, he smiled at her, noticing how heavily she breathed.

  “That could happen any place,” she said, defensively.

  “Could it?” Greg’s smile remained intact. “And the throw rug?”

  “Maybe you looked around while I was in the kitchen.”

  “We didn’t.”

  “Maybe you guessed.”

  “And maybe we didn’t,” he told her, chilling his smile. “Maybe everything we’ve said is true. You want to gamble on it?”

  The woman had no reply. Greg looked at Carrie. “Anything else?” he asked. Carrie shivered fitfully. “An electric outlet by the baby’s crib,” she said. “She has a bobby pin beside her, she’s been trying to put it in the plug and—”

  “Mrs. Wheeler?” Greg looked inquisitively at the woman. He snickered as she turned and hurried from the room. When she was gone, he smiled and winked at Carrie. “You’re really on today, baby,” he said. She returned his look with glistening eyes. “Greg, please don’t make it too much,” she murmured.

  Greg turned away from her, the smile withdrawn. Relax, he told himself; relax. After today, you’ll be free of her. Casually, he slipped the notebook back into his topcoat pocket.

  The woman returned in several minutes, her expression now devoid of anything but dread. Between two fingers of her right hand she was carrying a bobby pin. “How did you know?” she asked. Her voice was hollow with dismay.

  “I believe I explained that, Mrs. Wheeler,” Greg replied. “My wife has a gift. She knows exactly where and when the accident will occur. Do you care to buy that information?”

  The woman’s hands twitched at her sides. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Ten thousand dollars in cash,” Greg answered. His fingers flexed reactively as Carrie gasped but he didn’t look at her. He fixed his gaze on the woman’s stricken face. “Ten thousand . . .” she repeated dumbly.

  “That’s correct. Is it a deal?”

  “But we don’t—”

  “Take it or leave it, Mrs. Wheeler. You’re not in a bargaining position. Don’t think for a second that there’s anything you can do to prevent the accident. Unless you know the exact time and place, it’s going to happen.” He stood abruptly, causing her to start. “Well?” he snapped, “what’s it going to be? Ten thousand dollars or your son’s life?”

  The woman couldn’t answer. Greg’s eyes flicked to where Carrie sat in mute despair. “Let’s go,” he said. He started for the hall.

  “Wait.”

  Greg turned and looked at the woman. “Yes?”

  “How—do I know—?” she faltered.

  “You don’t,” he broke in; “you don’t know a thing. We do.”

  He waited another few moments for her decision, then walked into the kitchen and, removing his memo pad from an inside pocket, slipped the pencil free and jotted down the telephone number. He heard the woman murmuring pleadingly to Carrie and, shoving the pad and pencil into his topcoat pocket, left the kitchen. “Let’s go,” he said to Carrie who was standing now. He glanced disinterestedly at the woman. “I’ll phone this afternoon,” he said. “You can tell me then what you and your husband have decided to do.” His mouth went hard. “It’ll be the only call you’ll get,” he said.

  He turned and walked to the front door, opened it. “Come on, come on,” he ordered irritably. Carrie slipped by him, brushing at the tears on her cheeks. Greg followed and began to close the door, then stopped as if remembering something.

  “Incidentally,” he said. He smiled at the woman. “I wouldn’t call the police if I were you. There’s nothing they could charge us with even if they found us. And, of course, we couldn’t tell you then—and your son would have to die.” He closed the door and started for the car, a picture of the woman printed in his mind: standing, dazed and trembling, in her living room, looking at him with haunted eyes. Greg grunted in amusement.

  She was hooked.

  Greg drained his glass and fell back heavily on the sofa arm, making a face. It was the last cheap whiskey he’d ever drink; from now on, it was exclusively the best. He turned his head to look at Carrie. She was standing by the window of their hotel living room, staring at the city. What the hell was she brooding about now? Likely, she was wondering where that blue convertible was. Momentarily, Greg wondered himself. Was it parked?—moving? He grinned drunkenly. It gave him a feeling of power to know something about that car that even its owner didn’t know: namely, that, in eight days, at two-sixteen on a Thursday afternoon, it would run down a little boy and kill him.

  He focused his eyes and glared at Carrie. “All right, say it,” he demanded. “Get it out.”

  She turned and looked at him imploringly. “Does it have to be so much?” she asked.

  He turned his face away from her and closed his eyes.

  “Greg, does it—”

  “Yes!” He drew in a shaking breath. God, would he be glad to get away from her!

  “What if they can’t pay?”

  “Tough.”

  The sound of her repressed sob set his teeth on edge. “Go in and lie down,” he told her.

  “Greg, he hasn’t got a chance!”

  He twisted around, face whitening. “Did he have a better chance before we came?” he snarled. “Use your head for once, God damn it! If it wasn’t for us, he’d be as good as dead already!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I said go in and lie down!”

  “You haven’t seen the way it’s going to happen, Greg!”

  He shuddered violently, fighting back the urge to grab the whiskey bottle, leap at her and smash her head in. “Get out of here,” he muttered.

  She stumbled across the room, pressing the back of a hand against her lips. The bedroom door thumped shut and he heard her fall across the bed, sobbing. Damn wet-eye bitch! He gritted his teeth until his jaws hurt, then poured himself another inch of whiskey, grimacing as it burned its way into his stomach. They’ll come through, he told himself. Obviously, they had the money and, obviously, the woman had believed him. He nodded to himself. They’ll come through, all right. Ten thousand; his passport to another life. Expensive clothes. A class hotel. Good-looking women; maybe one of them for keeps. He kept nodding. One of these days, he thought.

  He was reaching for his glass when he heard the muffled sound of Carrie talking in the bedroom. For several moments, his outstretched hand hovered between the sofa and the table. Then, in an instant, he was on his feet, lunging for the bedroom door. He flung it open. Carrie jerked around, the phone receiver in her hand, her face a mask of dread. “Thursday, the fourteenth!” she blurted into the mouthpiece. “Two-sixteen in the afternoon!” She screamed as Greg wrenched the receiver from her hand a
nd slammed his palm on the cradle, breaking the connection.

  He stood quivering before her, staring at her face with widened, maniac eyes. Slowly, Carrie raised her hand to avert the blow. “Greg, please don’t—” she began.

  Fury deafened him. He couldn’t hear the heavy, thudding sound the earpiece made against her cheek as he slammed it across her face with all his might. She fell back with a strangled cry. “You bitch,” he gasped. “You bitch, you bitch, you bitch!” He emphasized each repetition of the word with another savage blow across her face. He couldn’t see her clearly either; she kept wavering behind a film of blinding rage. Everything was finished! She’d blown the deal! The Big One was gone! God damn it, I’ll kill you! He wasn’t certain if the words exploded in his mind or if he was shouting them into her face.

  Abruptly, he became aware of the telephone receiver clutched in his aching hand; of Carrie lying, open-mouthed and staring on the bed, her features mashed and bloody. He lost his grip and heard, as if it were a hundred miles below, the receiver thumping on the floor. He stared at Carrie, sick with horror. Was she dead? He pressed his ear against her chest and listened. At first, he could hear only the pulse of his own heart throbbing in his ears. Then, as he concentrated, his expression tautly rabid, he became aware of Carrie’s heartbeat, faint and staggering. She wasn’t dead! He jerked his head up.

  She was looking at him, mouth slack, eyes dumbly stark.

  “Carrie?”

  No reply. Her lips moved soundlessly. She kept on staring at him. “What?” he asked. He recognized the look and shuddered. “What?”

  “Street,” she whispered.

  Greg bent over, staring at her mangled features. “Street,” she whispered, “. . . night.” She sucked in wheezing, blood-choked breath. “Greg.” She tried to sit up but couldn’t. Her expression was becoming one of terrified concern. She whispered, “Man . . . razor . . . you—oh, no!”

  Greg felt himself enveloped in ice. He clutched at her arm. “Where?” he mumbled. She didn’t answer and his fingers dug convulsively into her flesh. “Where?” he demanded. “When?” He began to shiver uncontrollably. “Carrie, when?!”

  It was the arm of a dead woman that he clutched. With a gagging sound, he jerked his hand away. He gaped at her, unable to speak or think. Then, as he backed away, his eyes were drawn to the calendar on the wall and a phrase crept leadenly across his mind: one of these days. Quite suddenly, he began to laugh and cry. And before he fled, he stood at the window for an hour and twenty minutes, staring out, wondering who the man was, where he was right now and just what he was doing.

  Dying Room Only

  The cafe was a rectangle of brick and wood with an attached shed on the edge of the little town. They drove past it at first and started out into the heat-shimmering desert.

  Then Bob said, “Maybe we’d better stop there. Lord knows how far it is to the next one.”

  “I suppose,” Jean said without enthusiasm.

  “I know it’s probably a joint,” Bob said, “but we have to eat something. It’s been more than five hours since we had breakfast.”

  “Oh—all right.”

  Bob pulled over to the side of the road and looked back. There wasn’t another car in sight. He made a quick U-turn and powered the Ford back along the road, then turned in and braked in front of the cafe.

  “Boy, I’m starved,” he said.

  “So am I,” Jean said. “I was starved last night, too, until the waitress brought that food to the table.”

  Bob shrugged. “So what can we do?” he said. “Is it better we starve and they find our bleached bones in the desert?”

  She made a face at him and they got out of the car. “Bleached bones,” she said.

  The heat fell over them like a waterfall as they stepped into the sun. They hurried toward the cafe, feeling the burning ground through their sandals.

  “It’s so hot,” Jean said, and Bob grunted.

  The screen door made a groaning sound as they pulled it open. Then it slapped shut behind them and they were in the stuffy interior that smelled of grease and hot dust.

  The three men in the cafe looked up at them as they entered. One, in overalls and a dirty cap, sat slumped in a back booth drinking beer. Another sat on a counter stool, a sandwich in his hand and a bottle of beer in front of him. The third man was behind the counter looking at them over a lowered newspaper. He was dressed in a white, short-sleeved shirt and wrinkled white ducks.

  “Here we go,” Bob whispered to her. “The Ritz-Carlton.”

  She enunciated slowly, “Ha-ha.”

  They moved to the counter and sat down on stools. The three men still looked at them.

  “Our arrival in town must be an event,” Bob said softly.

  “We’re celebrities,” Jean said.

  The man in the white ducks came over and drew a menu from behind a tarnished napkin holder. He slid it across the counter toward them. Bob opened it up and the two of them looked at it.

  “Have you got any iced tea?” Bob asked.

  The man shook his head. “No.”

  “Lemonade?” Jean asked.

  The man shook his head. They looked at the menu again.

  “What have you got that’s cold?” Bob asked.

  “Hi-Li Orange and Dr Pepper,” said the man in a bored voice.

  Bob cleared his throat.

  “May we have some water before we order? We’ve been—”

  The man turned away and walked back to the sink. He ran water into two cloudy glasses and brought them back. They spilled over onto the counter as he set them down. Jean picked up her glass and took a sip. She almost choked on the water it was so brackish and warm. She put down the glass.

  “Can’t you get it any cooler?” she asked.

  “This is desert country, ma’am,” he said. “We’re lucky we get any water at all.”

  He was a man in his early fifties, his hair steel-gray and dry, parted in the middle. The backs of his hands were covered with tiny swirls of black hair, and on the small finger of his right hand there was a ring with a red stone in it. He stared at them with lifeless eyes and waited for their order.

  “I’ll have a fried egg sandwich on rye toast and—” Bob started.

  “No toast,” said the man.

  “All right, plain rye then.”

  “No rye.”

  Bob looked up. “What kind of bread have you got?” he asked.

  “White.”

  Bob shrugged. “White then. And a strawberry malted. How about you, honey?”

  The man’s flat gaze moved over to Jean.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She looked up at the man. “I’ll decide while you’re making my husband’s order.”

  The man looked at her a moment longer, then turned away and walked back to the stove.

  “This is awful,” Jean said.

  “I know, honey,” Bob admitted, “but what can we do? We don’t know how far it is to the next town.”

  Jean pushed away the cloudy glass and slid off the stool.

  “I’m going to wash up,” she said. “Maybe then I’ll feel more like eating.”

  “Good idea,” he said.

  After a moment, he got off his stool, too, and walked to the front of the cafe where the two restrooms were.

  His hand was on the doorknob when the man eating at the counter called, “Think it’s locked, mister.”

  Bob pushed.

  “No it isn’t,” he said and went in.

  Jean came out of the washroom and walked back to her stool at the counter. Bob wasn’t there. He must be washing up, too, she thought. The man who had been eating at the counter was gone.

  The man in the white ducks left his small gas stove and came over.

  “You want to order now?” he asked.

  “What? Oh.” She picked up the menu and looked at it for a moment. “I’ll have the same thing, I guess.”

  The man went back to the stove and broke another egg on the edge of
the black pan. Jean listened to the sound of the eggs frying. She wished Bob would come back. It was unpleasant sitting there alone in the hot, dingy cafe.

  Unconsciously she picked up the glass of water again and took a sip. She grimaced at the taste and put down the glass.

  A minute passed. She noticed that the man in the back booth was looking at her. Her throat contracted and the fingers of her right hand began drumming slowly on the counter. She felt her stomach muscles drawing in. Her right hand twitched suddenly as a fly settled on it.

  Then she heard the door to the men’s washroom open, and she turned quickly with a sense of body-lightening relief.

  She shuddered in the hot cafe.

  It wasn’t Bob.

  She felt her heart throbbing unnaturally as she watched the man return to his place at the counter and pick up his unfinished sandwich. She averted her eyes as he glanced at her. Then, impulsively, she got off the stool and went back to the front of the cafe.

  She pretended to look at a rack of sunfaded postcards, but her eyes kept moving to the brownish-yellow door with the word MEN painted on it.

  Another minute passed. She saw that her hands were starting to shake. A long breath trembled her body as she looked in nervous impatience at the door.

  She saw the man in the back booth push himself up and plod slowly down the length of the cafe. His cap was pushed to the back of his head and his high-topped shoes clomped heavily on the floor boards. Jean stood rigidly, holding a postcard in her hands as the man passed her. The washroom door opened and closed behind him.

  Silence. Jean stood there staring at the door, trying to hold herself under control. Her throat moved again. She took a deep breath and put the postcard back in place.

  “Here’s your sandwich,” the man at the counter called.

  Jean started at the sound of his voice. She nodded once at him but stayed where she was.

  Her breath caught as the washroom door opened again. She started forward instinctively, then drew back as the other man walked out, his face florid and sweaty. He started past her.