The Shrinking Man Page 9

  An electric shuddering ran down his back. He slid down the straw a little more. The cat hunched forward. No! his mind screamed. He froze to the quivering straw, heartbeat like a fist pounding at his chest.

  If he tried to descend, the cat would attack. If he jumped, he'd break a leg and be eaten. Yet he couldn't stay there. His throat contracted with a dry clicking. He hung there impotently under the bland surveillance of the huge cat.

  When it raised its right paw twitchingly, his breath stopped.

  In a fascination of absolute horror, he watched the huge, gray, scythe-clawed paw rise up slowly, coming closer and closer to him. He couldn't move. Unblinking, stark-eyed he hung there waiting.

  Just before the paw was going to touch him, everything shook loose at once.

  "Get out!" he screamed into the cat's face. It jumped back, startled. With a lurch, he flung the straw to the side, and it began sliding raspingly along the cement face, faster and faster. Not looking at the cat, he hung on till the toppling straw was about five feet from the floor. Then he leaped.

  Landing, he twisted himself in a somersault. Behind him the cat glided forward, growling. Get up! his mind shrieked. He found his feet again and lurched forward, falling.

  As he skidded to his knees, the cat jumped, great paws banging down on each side of him, claw ends raking sparks from the cement. The mouth yawned open, a cave of scimitars and hot winds.

  Twitching back against the step, Scott felt the thread coil slip off his shoulder. Grabbing it, he flung it deep into the cat's mouth and it jumped back, spitting and gagging. Pushing off from the step, Scott raced to the hole of stones and dived into a cave.

  A second after, the cat's paw raked across the spot where he had entered. A cuffed stone rattled away. Scott crawled to the back of the cave and down a side tunnel as the cat scratched wildly at the rocks.

  "Hey, Puss."

  Scott stopped abruptly, head cocked, as the deep voice thundered.

  "Hey, what're you after?" asked the voice. Scott heard chuckling like a threat of distant thunder. "Got yourself a mouse in there?"

  The floor shook as the giant's shoes thudded across it. With an indrawn cry, Scott ran down the sloping tunnel, off into another one, again into yet another, until he skidded to a halt before a blank wall.

  There he crouched shivering and waiting.

  "Got yourself a mouse, have you?" the voice asked. It made Scott's head hurt. He covered up his ears. He still heard the fierce meowing of the cat.

  "Well, let's see if we can't find 'I’m, puss," the giant said.

  "No," Scott didn't even know he spoke. He shrank against the wall hearing the boulders being shoved aside by the giant's hands, the sound a grating, screeching rasp that plunged like a knife into his brain. He pressed both palms against his ears as hard as he could.

  Suddenly, light speared across him. With a cry, he dived headlong into a newly opened tunnel. Clawing wildly at the air, he fell seven feet to a hard rock shelf, landing on his side and raking skin off his right arm. In the darkness, a boulder slammed down beside him, tearing skin from the hell of his right hand. He cried out in terror.

  The giant said, "We'll find 'I’m, puss, we'll find 'I’m." Light again. With a rasping sob, Scott lurched up and dived into the darkness again. A stone bounced off the floor and knocked him down. He rolled over and up again, running across the floor of the collapsing cavern, mute with panic. Another bouncing rock sent him flailing across the floor to smash head-on into a rock wall.

  As deeper blackness blotted out his mind, he felt blood trickling warmly down his cheek. His legs went limp, his hands uncurled like flowers dying, and falling rocks reared up a tomb around him.

  Chapter Nine

  At last he stumbled into light.

  He stood at the mouth of the cave, looking around the cellar with dull, unwitting eyes.

  The giant was gone. And the cat. The side of the water heater was fastened back in place. Everything was as it had been; the vast, piled objects, the heavy silence, the imprisoning remoteness of it all. His gaze moved slowly to the steps and up them. The door was shut.

  He stared at it, feeling empty with desire. He had struggled in vain once more. All the pushing of boulders, the endless crawlings and climbing’s through inky tunnel twists had been in vain.

  His eyes closed. He swayed weakly on the hill of rocks, one throbbing length of pain. It seemed to well over him; his arms, his hands and legs and trunk. Inside, too, in his throat and chest and stomach. He had a dull, eating headache. He didn't know if he were starving or nauseous. His hands shook fitfully.

  He shuffled back to the heater.

  The thimble had been knocked on its side. The few drops remaining in it he drank like a thirsty animal, sucking them up from the cuplike indentations. It hurt to swallow.

  When he had finished the water, he climbed with slow, exhausted movements to the top of the cement block. His sleeping place was completely barren, the sponge, handkerchief, cracker bundle, the box top all gone. He stumbled to the edge of the block and saw the box top across the floor. He hadn't the strength to lift it.

  He remained in the shadowy warmth for a long while, just standing, weaving a little, staring out at the darkening cellar. Another day ending. Wednesday. Three days left.

  His stomach gurgled hungrily. Slowly he tilted his head back and looked up to where he put the few soggy cracker crumbs. They were still there. With a groan he moved to the leg of the water heater and climbed up to the shelf.

  He sat there, legs dangling, eating the cracker pieces. They were still damp, but edible. His jaws moved with rhythm less lethargy, his eyes staring straight ahead. He was so tired he could hardly eat. He knew he should go down and get the box top to sleep under in case the spider came. It came almost every night. But he was too weary. He'd sleep up here on the shelf. If the spider came… Well, what did it matter? It reminded him of a time, long before, when he had been with the Infantry in Germany. He'd been so tired that he'd gone to sleep without digging a foxhole, knowing it might mean his death.

  He plodded along the shelf until he came to a walled-in area, then climbed over the wall and sank down in the darkness, his head resting on a screw head.

  He lay there on his back, breathing slowly, barely able to summon the strength to fill his lungs. He thought, Little man, what now?

  It occurred to him then that, instead of fighting with the stones and the straw, he might simply have climbed into the giant's slack cuff and been carried from the cellar in a moment. The only indication of the self-fury he felt was a sudden bunching of skin around his closed eyes, a moist clicking sound as his lips pulled back suddenly from clenched teeth. Fool! Even the thought seemed to rise wearily.

  His face relaxed again into a mask of sagging lines.

  Another question. Why hadn't he tried to communicate with the giant? Oddly enough, that thought didn't anger him. It was so alien it only surprised him. Was that because he was so small, because he felt that he was in another world and there could be no communication? Or was it that, as in all decisions now, he counted on only himself for any desired accomplishment?

  Surely not that, he thought bitterly. He was as helpless and ineffectual as ever, maybe a little more blundering, that was all.

  In the darkness he felt experimentally around his body. He ran a hand over the long, raw-fleshed scrape on his right fore-arm. He touched the torn flesh on the heel of his right hand, nudged an elbow against the swelling, purplish bruise on his right side. He ran a finger over the jagged laceration across his forehead. He prodded at his sore throat. He reared up a trifle and felt the shoot of pain in his back. Finally he let the separate aches sink back again into the general, coalescent pain.

  His eyes opened, the lids seeming to fall back of their own accord, and he stared sightlessly at the darkness. He remembered regaining consciousness in the sepulchre of rocks; remembered the horror that had almost driven him insane until he realized that there was air to breathe and h
e had to keep his mind if he wanted to get out.

  But that first instant of realizing that he was sealed in a black crypt and still alive had been the lowest point.

  He wondered why the phrase occurred to him. How did he know it was his lowest point? There might be others much worse waiting around the next corner, if he stayed alive.

  But he couldn't think of anything else. It was the lowest point, the nadir of his existence in the cellar.

  It made him think of another lowest point, in the other life he had once led.

  35"

  When they got home from Marty's he stood at the living room window while Lou carried Beth to bed. He didn't offer to help. He knew he couldn't lift his daughter now.

  When Lou came out of the bedroom he was still standing there.

  "Aren't you going to take off your hat and coat?" she asked.

  She went into the kitchen before he could answer. He stood in his boy's jacket and his Alpine hat with the red feather stuck in the band hearing her open the refrigerator. He stared out at the dark street and heard the nerve twisting crunch of ice cubes being freed in their tray, the muted pop of a bottle cap being pried off, the carbonated gurgle of soda being poured.

  "Want some Coke?" she called to him.

  He shook his head.

  "Scott?"

  "No," he said. He felt a throbbing at his wrists.

  She came in with the drink. "Aren't you going to take off your things?" she asked.

  "I don't know," he said.

  She sat down on the couch and kicked off her shoes. "Another day," she said. He didn't reply. He felt as if she were trying to make him feel like a boy for getting dramatic over something inconsequential, while she patiently humoured him. He wanted to burst out angrily at her, but there wasn't any opening.

  "Are you just going to stand there?" she asked.

  "If I choose," he said.

  She looked at him for a moment, blank-faced. He saw the reflection of her face in the window. Then she shrugged. "Go ahead," she said.

  "No skin off your nose," he said.

  "What?" There was a sad, weary smile on her lips.

  "Nothing, nothing." Now he did feel like a boy.

  Her drinking and swallowing sounded noisy to him. He grimaced irritably. Don't slurp, his mind rasped. You sound like a pig.

  "Oh, come on, Scott. Brooding won't help." She sounded faintly bored.

  He closed his eyes and shuddered. It has come to this, he thought. The horror was gone; she was inured. He had expected it, but it was still a shock to find it happening.

  He was her husband. He had been over six feet tall. Now he was smaller than her five-year-old daughter. He was standing in front of her, grotesque in his little boy's clothes, and there was nothing but a faint boredom in her voice. It was a horror beyond horror.

  His eyes were bleak as he stared out at the street, listening to the trees rustle in the night wind like a woman's skirts descending an endless stairway.

  He heard her drink again and he stiffened angrily.

  "Scott," she said. Falsely applied affection, he thought. "Sit down. Staring out the window won't help Marty's business."

  He spoke without turning. "You think that's what I'm worried about?"

  "Isn't it? Isn't it what we're both-"

  "It isn't" he cut her off coldly. Coldness in a little boy's voice sounded bizarre, as if he were acting out a part in a grade school play, unconvincing and laughable.

  "What, then?" she asked.

  "If you don't know by now…"

  "Oh, come on, darling."

  He picked on that. "Takes a little straining to call me darling now, doesn't it?" he said, skin tight across his small face. "Takes a little-"

  "Oh, stop it, Scott. Aren't there enough troubles without your imagining more?"

  "Imagining?" His voice grew shrill. "Sure I'm imagining everything. Nothing has changed. Everything's just the same. It's all just my imagination!"

  "You'll wake Beth up."

  Too many enraged words filled his throat at once. They choked each other and he could only stand fuming impotently. He turned back to the window and stared out again.

  Then, abruptly, he headed for the front door.

  "Where are you going?" she asked, sounding alarmed.

  "For a walk! Do you mind?"

  "You mean down the street?"

  He wanted to scream. "Yes," he said, his voice shaking with repressed anger, "down the street."

  "You think you should?"

  "Yes, I think I should!"

  "Scott, I'm only thinking of you!" she burst out "Can't you see that?"

  "Sure. Sure you are." He jerked at the front door, but it stuck. Colour sprouted in his cheeks and he jerked harder, a curse muffled on his lips.

  "Scott, what have I done?" she asked. "Did I make you this way? Did I take that contract away from Marty?"

  "Damn this goddam-" His voice shook. Then the door opened and banged against the wall.

  "What if someone sees you?" she asked, staring up from the couch.

  "Good-by," he said, slamming the door behind him. And even that was ineffective because the jamb was too warped and the door wouldn't slam, only crunch into its frame.

  He didn't look back. He started down the block with quick, agitated strides, heading for the lake.

  He was about twenty yards from the house when the front door opened.

  "Scott?"

  He wasn't going to answer at first. Then, grudgingly, he stopped and spoke over his shoulder.

  "What?" he asked, and he could have wept at the thin, ineffectual sound of his voice.

  She hesitated a moment, then asked, "Shall I come with you?"

  "No," he said. It was spoken in neither anger nor despair.

  He stood there a moment longer looking back in spite of himself, wondering if she would insist on coming. But she only stood there, a motionless outline in the doorway.

  "Be careful, darling," she said.

  He had to bite off the sob that tore up through him. Twisting around, he hurried quickly down the dark street. He never heard her close the door.

  This is the bottom, he thought, the very bottom. There is nothing lower than for a man to become an object of pity. A man could bear hate, abuse, anger, and castigation; but pity, never. When a man became pitiable, he was lost. Pity was for helpless things.

  Walking on the treadmill of the world, he tried to blank his mind. He stared at the sidewalk, walking quickly through the patches of street lights and into darkness again, trying not to think.

  His mind would not cooperate; it was typical of introspective minds. What he told it not to think about it dwelt on. What he demanded it to leave alone it clung to, doglike. It was the way.

  Summer nights on the lake were sometimes chilly. He drew up the collar of his jacket and walked on, looking ahead at the dark, shifting waters. Since it was a week night, the cafes and taverns along the shore were not open. Approaching the dark lake, he began to hear the slapping of water on the pebbled beach.

  The sidewalk ended. He moved out across rough ground, the leaves and twigs crackling under his tread like things alive. There was a cold wind blowing off the lake. It cut through his jacket, chilling him. He didn't care.

  About a hundred yards from the sidewalk, he came to an open area beside a dark, rustic building. It was a German cafe and tavern, next to it a few dozen tables and benches for outdoor eating and drinking. Scott threaded his way among them until he overlooked the lake. There he sank down on the rough, pocked surface of a bench.

  He sat staring grimly at the lake. He tried to imagine sinking down in it forever. Was it so fantastic? The same thing was happening to him now. No, he would hit bottom and that would be the end of it.

  He was drowning in another way.

  They had moved to the lake six weeks before, because Scott had felt trapped in the apartment. If he went out, people stared at him. With the first week and a half of the Globe-Post series already in prin
t and reprint, he had become a national celebrity. Requests still poured in for personal appearances. Reporters came endlessly to the door.

  But mostly it was the ordinary people, the curious, staring people who wanted to look at the shrinking man and think, Thank God, I'm normal.

  So they had moved to the lake, and somehow they had managed to get there without anyone's finding out.

  Life there, he discovered, was no improvement.

  The dragging of it was what made it so bad. The way shrinking went on day by day, never noticeable, never ceasing, an inch a week like hideous clockwork. And all the hum drum functions of the day went on along with it in inexorable monotony.

  Until anger, crouching in him like a cornered animal, would spring out wildly. The subject didn't matter. It was the opening that counted.

  Like the cat:

  "I swear to God, if you don't get rid of that goddam cat, I'll kill it!"

  Fury from a doll, his voice not manlike and authoritive, but frail and uncompelling.

  "Scott, she's not hurting you."

  He dragged up a sleeve. "What's that? Imagination?" He pointed to a ragged scar.

  "She was frightened when she did that."

  "Well, I'm frightened too! What does she have to do, rip open my throat before you get rid of her?"

  And the two beds:

  "What are you trying to do, humiliate me?"

  "Scott, it was your idea."

  "Only because you couldn't stand to touch me."

  "That's not true!"

  "Isn't it?"

  "No! I tried everything I could to-"

  "I'm not a boy! You can't treat my body like a little boy's!"

  And Beth:

  "Scott, can't you see she doesn't understand?"

  "I'm still her father, damn it!"

  All his outbursts ended alike, him rushing to the cool cellar, standing down there, leaning on the refrigerator, breath a rasping sound in him, teeth gritted, hands clenched.