The Best of Richard Matheson Page 6

  She didn’t drink any coffee. “Are you awake?” she asked. I nodded. I noticed the flashlight and the screwdriver on the kitchen table. I finished the coffee.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s get it over with.”

  I felt her hand on my arm.

  “I hope you’ll . . .” she started. Then turned her face.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “We’d better go.”

  The house was dead quiet as we went into the hall. We were halfway to the elevator when I remembered Phil and Marge. I told her.

  “We can’t wait,” she said. “It’ll be light soon.”

  “Just wait and see if they’re up,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything. She stood by the elevator door while I went down the hall and knocked quietly on the door of their apartment. There was no answer. I glanced up the hall.

  She was gone.

  I felt my heart lurch. Even though I was sure there was no danger in the basement, it scared me. “Ruth,” I muttered and headed for the stairs.

  “Wait a second!” I heard Phil call loudly from his door.

  “I can’t!” I called back, charging down.

  When I got to the basement I saw the open elevator door and light streaming from the inside. Empty.

  I looked around for a light switch but there wasn’t any. I started to move along the dark passage as fast as I could.

  “Hon!” I whispered urgently. “Ruth, where are you?”

  I found her standing before a doorway in the wall. It was open.

  “Now stop acting as if I were insane,” she said coldly.

  I gaped and felt a hand pressing against my cheek. It was my own. She was right. There were stairs. And it was lighted down there. I heard sounds. Sounds of metallic clickings and strange buzzings.

  I took her hand. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  Her hand tightened in mine. “All right,” she said. “Never mind that now. There’s something flukey about all this.”

  I nodded. Then I said, “Yeah,” realizing she couldn’t see my nod in the darkness.

  “Let’s go down,” she said.

  “I don’t think we better,” I said.

  “We’ve got to know,” she said as if the entire problem had been assigned to us.

  “But there must be someone down there,” I said.

  “We’ll just peek,” she said.

  She pulled me. And I guess I felt too ashamed of myself to pull back. We started down. Then it came to me. If she was right about the doorway in the walls and the engines, she must be right about the janitor and he must really have . . .

  I felt a little detached from reality. East 7th Street, I told myself again. An apartment house on East 7th Street. It’s all real.

  I couldn’t quite convince myself.

  We stopped at the bottom. And I just stared. Engines, all right. Fantastic engines. And, as I looked at them it came to me what kind of engines they were. I’d read about science too, the non-fiction kind.

  I felt dizzy. You can’t adapt quick to something like that. To be plunged from a brick apartment house into this . . . this storehouse of energy. It got me.

  I don’t know how long we were there. But suddenly I realized we had to get out of there, report this thing.

  “Come on,” I said. We moved up the steps, my mind working like an engine itself. Spinning out ideas, fast and furious. All of them crazy—all of them acceptable. Even the craziest one.

  It was when we were moving down the basement hall we saw the janitor coming at us.

  It was dark still, even with a little light coming from the early morning haze. I grabbed Ruth and we ducked behind a stone pillar. We stood holding our breaths, listening to the thud of his approaching shoes.

  He passed us. He was holding a flashlight but he didn’t play the beam around. He just moved straight for the open door.

  Then it happened.

  As he came into the patch of light from the open doorway he stopped. His head was turned away. The guy was facing the stairway.

  But he was looking at us.

  It knocked out what little breath I had left. I just stood there and stared at that eye in the back of his head. And, although there wasn’t any face around it, that damned eye had a smile going with it. A nasty, self-certain and frightening smile. He saw us and he was amused and wasn’t going to do anything about it.

  He went through the doorway and the door thudded shut behind him, the stone wall segment slid down and shut it from view.

  We stood there shivering.

  “You saw it,” she finally said.

  “Yes.”

  “He knows we saw those engines,” she said. “Still he didn’t do anything.”

  We were still talking as the elevator ascended.

  “Maybe there’s nothing really wrong,” I said. “Maybe . . .”

  I stopped, remembering those engines. I knew what kind they were.

  “What shall we do?” she asked. I looked at her. She was scared. I put my arm around her. But I was scared too.

  “We’d better get out,” I said. “Fast.”

  “We have nothing packed though,” she said.

  “We’ll pack then,” I said. “We’ll leave before morning. I don’t think they can do . . .”

  “They?”

  Why did I say that?—I wondered. They. It had to be a group though. The janitor didn’t make those engines all by himself.

  I think it was the third eye that capped my theory. And when we stopped to see Phil and Marge and they asked us what happened I told them what I thought. I don’t think it surprised Ruth much. She undoubtedly thought it herself.

  “I think the house is a rocket ship,” I said.

  They stared at me. Phil grinned; then he stopped when he saw I wasn’t kidding.

  “What?” Marge said.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” I said, sounding more like my wife than she did. “But those are rocket engines. I don’t know how in the hell they got there but . . .” I shrugged helplessly at the whole idea.

  “All I know is that they’re rocket engines.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s a . . . a ship?” Phil finished weakly, switching from statement to question in mid-sentence.

  “Yes,” said Ruth.

  And I shuddered. That seemed to settle it. She’d been right too often lately.

  “But . . .” Marge shrugged. “What’s the point?”

  Ruth looked at us. “I know,” she said.

  “What, baby?” I asked, afraid to be asking.

  “That janitor,” she said. “He’s not a man. We know that. That third eye makes it . . .”

  “You mean the guy has one?” Phil asked incredulously.

  I nodded. “He has one. I saw it.”

  “Oh my God,” he said.

  “But he’s not a man,” Ruth said again. “Humanoid, yes, but not an earthling. He might look like he does actually—except for the eye. But he might be completely different, so different he had to change his form. Give himself that extra eye just to keep track of us when we wouldn’t expect it.”

  Phil ran a shaking hand through his hair.

  “This is crazy,” he said.

  He sank down into a chair. So did the girls. I didn’t. I felt uneasy about sticking around. I thought we should grab our hats and run. They didn’t seem to feel in immediate danger though. I finally decided it wouldn’t hurt to wait until morning. Then I’d tell Johnson or something. Nothing could happen now.

  “This is crazy,” Phil said again.

  “I saw those engines,” I said. “They’re really there. You can’t get away from it.”

  “Listen,” Ruth said, “they’re probably extraterrestrials.”

  “What are you
talking about?” Marge asked irritably. She was good and afraid, I saw.

  “Hon,” I contributed weakly, “you’ve been reading an awful lot of science-fiction magazines.”

  Her lips drew together. “Don’t start in again,” she said. “You thought I was crazy when I suspected this place. You thought so when I told you I saw those engines. You thought so when I told you the janitor had three eyes. Well, I was right all three times. Now, give me some credit.”

  I shut up. And she went on.

  “What if they’re from another planet,” she rephrased for Marge’s benefit. “Suppose they want some Earth people to experiment on. To observe,” she amended quickly, I don’t know for whose benefit. The idea of being experimented on by three-eyed janitors from another planet had nothing exciting about it.

  “What better way,” Ruth was saying, “of getting people than to build a rocket ship apartment house, rent it out cheap and get it full of people fast?”

  She looked at us without yielding an inch.

  “And then,” she said, “just wait till some morning early when everybody was asleep and . . . goodbye Earth.”

  My head was whirling. It was crazy but what could I say? I’d been cleverly dubious three times. I couldn’t afford to doubt now. It wasn’t worth the risk. And, in my flesh, I sort of felt she was right.

  “But the whole house,” Phil was saying. “How could they get it . . . in the air?”

  “If they’re from another planet they’re probably centuries ahead of us in space travel.”

  Phil started to answer. He faltered, then he said, “But it doesn’t look like a ship.”

  “The house might be a shell over the ship,” I said. “It probably is. Maybe the actual ship includes only the bedrooms. That’s all they’d need. That’s where everybody would be in the early morning hours if . . .”

  “No,” Ruth said. “They couldn’t knock off the shell without attracting much attention.”

  We were all silent laboring under a thick cloud of confusion and half-formed fears. Half formed because you can’t shape your fears of something when you don’t even know what it is.

  “Listen,” Ruth said.

  It made me shudder. It made me want to tell her to shut up with her horrible forebodings. Because they made too much sense.

  “Suppose it is a building,” she said. “Suppose the ship is outside of it.”

  “But . . .” Marge was practically lost. She got angry because she was lost. “There’s nothing outside the house, that’s obvious!”

  “Those people would be way ahead of us in science,” Ruth said. “Maybe they’ve mastered invisibility of matter.”

  We all squirmed at once, I think. “Babe,” I said.

  “Is it possible?” Ruth asked strongly.

  I sighed. “It’s possible. Just possible.”

  We were quiet. Then Ruth said, “Listen.”

  “No,” I cut in. “You listen. I think maybe we’re going overboard on this thing. But there are engines in the basement and the janitor does have three eyes. On the basis of that I think we have reason enough to clear out. Now.”

  We all agreed on that anyways.

  “We’d better tell everybody in the building,” Ruth said. “We can’t leave them here.”

  “It’ll take too long,” Marge argued.

  “No, we have to,” I said. “You pack, babe, I’ll tell them.”

  I headed for the door and grabbed the knob.

  Which didn’t turn.

  A bolt of panic drove through me. I grabbed at it and yanked hard. I thought for a second, fighting down fear, that it was locked on the inside. I checked.

  It was locked on the outside.

  “What is it?” Marge said in a shaking voice. You could sense a scream bubbling up in her.

  “Locked,” I said.

  Marge gasped. We all stared at each other.

  “It’s true,” Ruth said, horrified. “Oh, my God, it’s all true then.”

  I made a dash for the window. Then the place started to vibrate as if we were being hit by an earthquake. Dishes started to rattle and fall off shelves. We heard a chair crash onto its side in the kitchen.

  “What is it!” Marge cried again. Phil grabbed for her as she started to whimper. Ruth ran to me and we stood there, frozen, feeling the floor rock under our feet.

  “The engines!” Ruth suddenly cried. “They’re starting them!”

  “They have to warm up!” I made a wild guess. “We can still get out!”

  I let go of Ruth and grabbed a chair. For some reason I felt that the windows had been automatically locked too.

  I hurled the chair through the glass. The vibrations were getting worse.

  “Quick!” I shouted over the noise. “Out the fire escape! Maybe we can make it!”

  Impelled by panic and dread, Marge and Phil came running over the shaking floor. I almost shoved them out through the gaping window hole. Marge tore her skirt. Ruth cut her fingers. I went last, dragging a glass dagger through my leg. I didn’t even feel it I was so keyed up.

  I kept pushing them, hurrying down the fire escape steps. Marge caught a slipper heel in between two gratings and it snapped off. Her slipper came off. She limped, half fell down the orange-painted metal steps, her face white and twisted with fear. Ruth in her loafers clattered down behind Phil. I came last, shepherding them frantically.

  We saw other people at their windows. We heard windows crashing above and below. We saw an older couple crawl hurriedly through their window and start down. They held us up.

  “Look out, will you!” Marge shouted at them in a fury.

  They cast a frightened look over their shoulders.

  Ruth looked back at me, her face drained of color. “Are you coming?” she asked quickly, her voice shaking.

  “I’m here,” I said breathlessly. I felt as if I were going to collapse on the steps. Which seemed to go on forever.

  At the bottom was a ladder. We saw the old lady drop from it with a sickening thud, crying out in pain as her ankle twisted under her. Her husband dropped down and helped her up. The building was vibrating harshly now. We saw dust scaling out from between the bricks.

  My voice joined the throng, all crying the same word, “Hurry!”

  I saw Phil drop down. He half caught Marge, who was sobbing in fright. I heard her half-articulate “Oh, thank God!” as she landed and they started up the alleyway. Phil looked back over his shoulder at us but Marge dragged him on.

  “Let me go first!” I snapped quickly. Ruth stepped aside and I swung down the ladder and dropped, feeling a sting in my insteps, a slight pain in my ankles. I looked up, extending my arms for her.

  A man behind Ruth was trying to shove her aside so he could jump down.

  “Look out!” I yelled like a raging animal, reduced suddenly by fear and concern. If I’d had a gun I’d have shot him.

  Ruth let the man drop. He scrambled to his feet, breathing feverishly and ran down the alley. The building was shaking and quivering. The air was filled with the roar of the engines now.

  “Ruth!” I yelled.

  She dropped and I caught her. We regained our balance and started up the alley. I could hardly breathe. I had a stitch in my side.

  As we dashed into the street we saw Johnson moving through the ranks of scattered people trying to herd them together.

  “Here now!” he was calling. “Take it easy!”

  We ran up to him. “Johnson!” I said. “The ship, it’s . . .”

  “Ship?” He looked incredulous.

  “The house! It’s a rocket ship! It’s . . .” The ground shook wildly.

  Johnson turned away to grab someone running past. My breath caught and Ruth gasped, throwing her hands to her cheeks.

  Johnson was still looking at us; with that third eye. T
he one that had a smile with it.

  “No,” Ruth said shakily. “No.”

  And then the sky, which was growing light, grew dark. My head snapped around. Women were screaming their lungs out in terror. I looked in all directions.

  Solid walls were blotting out the sky.

  “Oh my God,” Ruth said. “We can’t get out. It’s the whole block.”

  Then the rockets started.

  BLOOD SON

  The people on the block decided definitely that Jules was crazy when they heard about his composition.

  There had been suspicions for a long time.

  He made people shiver with his blank stare. His coarse guttural tongue sounded unnatural in his frail body. The paleness of his skin upset many children. It seemed to hang loose around his flesh. He hated sunlight.

  And his ideas were a little out of place for the people who lived on the block.

  Jules wanted to be a vampire.

  People declared it common knowledge that he was born on a night when winds uprooted trees. They said he was born with three teeth. They said he’d used them to fasten himself on his mother’s breast drawing blood with the milk.

  They said he used to cackle and bark in his crib after dark. They said he walked at two months and sat staring at the moon whenever it shone.

  Those were things that people said.

  His parents were always worried about him. An only child, they noticed his flaws quickly.

  They thought he was blind until the doctor told them it was just a vacuous stare. He told them that Jules, with his large head, might be a genius or an idiot. It turned out he was an idiot.

  He never spoke a word until he was five. Then, one night coming up to supper, he sat down at the table and said “Death.”

  His parents were torn between delight and disgust. They finally settled for a place in between the two feelings. They decided that Jules couldn’t have realized what the word meant.

  But Jules did.

  From that night on, he built up such a large vocabulary that everyone who knew him was astonished. He not only acquired every word spoken to him, words from signs, magazines, books; he made up his own words.

  Like—nightouch. Or—killove. They were really several words that melted into each other. They said things Jules felt but couldn’t explain with other words.