Duel (16 page)

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Authors: Richard Matheson

BOOK: Duel
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He stood up abruptly. I'm not hungry, he thought, not at all. But I'm going back to the house and order her to make me lunch and let her know I'm not hungry either. I'll make her used to being dominated herself and then she'll get no chance to pick at me. No bug-eyed Gnee woman, by God, is going to get
me
down.
Then he blinked and turned away quickly when he realized that he was staring at the wild pattern of scratches on the far office wall. And the belt without a buckle that still curled limply underneath the cot.
 
 
The dream again. It tore at his brain tissues with claws of razor. Sweat covering him. He tossed on the bed with a groan and was suddenly awake, staring into the darkness.
He thought he saw something at the foot of the bed. He closed his eyes and shook his head and looked again. The room was empty. He felt mind-drenching thoughts recede like some alien tide.
His fists contracted angrily. She's been at me while I slept, he thought, Goddamn her hide, she's been at me.
He pushed aside the covers and crawled to the foot of the bed nervously.
He couldn't see them. But the cloying fumes undulated up from the floor like erected serpents slithering into his nostrils. Gagging, he slumped down on the mattress, his stomach wrenched. Why? his brain mumbled over and over.
My God,
why?
 
Angrily, he threw the flowers away in her sight and the thoughts pleaded and showered over him like raindrops.
“I said
no
, didn't I?” he yelled at her.
Then he sat down at the table and controlled himself as well as he could. I've a long way to go, he told his will, ease off, ease off.
Now he was sure he knew why it was only six months. That would be more than enough. But I won't crack. He commanded himself. It's a cinch she isn't going to crack so conserve yourself.
She's too stupid to crack,
he thought deliberately, hoping she'd pick it up.
She apparently did for her shoulders slumped dejectedly all of a sudden. And during breakfast, she circled him like a timorous wraith, keeping her face averted and her thoughts aloof. He found himself almost sorry for her then. It probably wasn't her fault, he thought, it was just an inborn trait among Gnee women to dominate men.
Then he realized that her thoughts were at him again, tender and gratefully maudlin. He tried to neutralize himself and ignore them as
they sought to break through his apathy like honeyed picks.
All day he worked hard and made payments in spices and grain to the Gnee foreman to be forwarded to the workers. He wondered if the payments would go eventually to the women. Wherever they were.
“I'm taping my voice,” he dictated later that night. “I want to hear myself talking so I can forget her. There's no one else to talk to so I'll have to talk to myself. A sad case. Well, here goes.
“Here I am on Station Four, folks, having a wonderful time and wish you were here instead of me. Oh, it's not
that
bad, don't get me wrong. But I guess I know what knocked out Corrigan and the poor bastards before him. It was Lover and her cannibal mind eating them up. But I'll tell you this; it's not going to eat
me
up. That much you can put bets on. Lover isn't going to …
“No, I didn't call you! Come on, get out of my life, will ya? Go to a movie or something. Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, go to bed then. Just leave me alone.”
Alone
.
“There. That's for her. She'll have to go some to get me clawing at the walls.”
But he carefully locked the door to his room when he went to bed. And he groaned in his sleep because of the same nightmare and his limbs thrashed and all peace and rest were crowded out.
He twisted into wakefulness in mid-morning and stumbled up to check the door. He fumbled at the lock with heavy fingers. Finally his thickened brain divined the fact that the door was still locked and he went back to bed in a weaving line and fell on it into a stupored sleep.
When he woke up in the morning there were flowers at the foot of his bed, luxuriantly purple and foul-smelling and the door was locked.
 
He couldn't ask her about it because he left the kitchen in revulsion when she called him
dear
.
No more flowers! I'll promise!
cried her pursuing thoughts. He locked himself in the living room and sat at the desk, feeling sick. Get hold
of yourself!—he ordered his system, clasping his hands tightly and holding his teeth firmly clenched.
Eat?
She was outside the door; he knew it. He closed his eyes.
Go away, leave me alone,
he told her.
I'm sorry, dear,
she said.
“Stop calling me ‘dear'!” he shouted, slamming his fist on the desk surface. As he twisted in the chair, his belt buckle caught on the drawer handle and it jerked out. He found himself staring down at the shiny gas pistol. Almost unconsciously he reached down and touched its slick barrel.
He shoved in the drawer with a convulsive movement. None of that! he swore.
He looked around suddenly, feeling alone and free. He got up and hurried to the window. Down below, he saw her hurrying across the grounds with a basket on her arm. She's going for vegetables, he thought. But what made her leave so suddenly?
Of course. The pistol. She must have gotten his thoughts of violent intent.
He sighed and calmed down a little, feeling as if his brain had been drained of thick, noxious fluids.
I've still got cards in my hand, he soothed himself.
While she was out he decided to look in her room and see if he could find the shifting panel that enabled her to enter his room with the flowers. He hurried down the hall and pushed open the door to her barely furnished little chamber.
His brain was immediately attacked by the odor of a reeking pile of the purple flowers in one corner. He held a hand over his mouth and nose as he looked down in distaste at the living and dead blossoms.
What did they represent?—he wondered. An offering of thoughtfulness? His throat contracted. Or was it more than thoughtfulness? He grimaced at the thought and remembered that first evening when he'd dubbed her Lover. What had possessed him to choose that name from
the infinity of possible names? He hoped he didn't know.
On the couch he found a small pile of odds and ends. There was a button, a pair of broken shoe laces, the piece of crumpled paper he had told her to throw away. And a belt buckle with the initials W. C. stamped on it.
There were no secret panels.
He sat in the kitchen staring into an untouched cup of coffee. No way she could get in his room. W. C.—William Corrigan. He had to fight it, keep fighting it.
Time passed. And suddenly, he realized that she was back in the house again. There was no sound; it was like the return of a ghost. But he knew it. A cloud of feeling preceded her, came plunging through the rooms like an excited puppy, searching. Thoughts swirled.
You are well? You are not angry? Lover is back
—all hastily and eagerly clutching at him.
She swept into the room so quickly that his hands twitched and he upset the cup. The hot liquid splashed over his shirt and trousers as he jumped back, knocking over the chair.
She put down the basket and got a towel as she patted the stains dry. She'd never been so close to him. She'd never actually touched him before except for that first handshake.
There was an aroma about her. It made his chest heave painfully. And all the time, her thoughts caressed his mind as her hands seemed to be caressing his body.
There
.
There … I am here with you
.
David dear
.
Almost in horror, he stared at her spongy pink skin, her huge eyes, her tiny wound of a mouth.
And, in the office that morning, he made three straight mistakes in the log book and tore out a whole page and hurled it across the room with a choking cry of rage.
 
 
Avoid her. No point in remonstration. He tried to raze his mental ground so that her thoughts could not find domicile there. If he relaxed his mind enough, her thoughts flowed through and out. Perhaps taking part of his will as they left but he'd have to risk that.
And if he worked hard and crowded his head with stodgy banks of figures, it kept her at a distance and his hands did not tremble so badly.
Maybe I should sleep in the office, he thought. Then he found Corrigan's note.
It was on a white slip of paper stuck away in the log book, hidden white on white. He only found it because he was going through the pages one at a time, reciting the dates in a loud voice to keep his mind filled.
God help me
, read the note, black and jagged-lettered,
Lover comes through the walls!
Lindell stared.
I saw it myself
, attested the words,
I'm going out of my mind
.
Always that damn animal mind tugging and tearing at me
.
And now I can't even shut away her body
.
I slept out here but she came anyway. And I.
. .
Lindell read it again and it was a wind fanning the fires of terror.
Through the walls.
The words agonized him. Was it possible?
And it was Corrigan then who had named her Lover. From the very start, the relationship had been on her terms. Lindell had had nothing to say about it.
“Lover,” he muttered and her thoughts enveloped him suddenly like a carrion's wings swooping down from the sky. He flung up his arms and cried out—“Leave me alone!”
And, as her phantom mind slipped off, he had the sense that it was with less timidity, with the patience such as a man knowing his own great strength can afford to display.
He sank back on the chair, exhausted, suddenly, depleted with fighting it. He crumpled the note in his right hand, thinking of the scratches on the wall behind him.
And he saw in his mind: Corrigan tossing on the cot, burning with fever, rearing up with a shriek of horror to see her standing before him. But then.
Then?
The scene was dark.
He rubbed a shaking hand over his face. Don't crack, he said to himself. But it was more a frightened entreaty than a command. Wasting fogs of premonition flooded over him in chilling waves.
She comes through the walls.
That night again, he poured the potion she made down his bathroom sink. He locked the door and, in the lightless room, he squatted in one corner, peering and waiting, lungs bellowing in spasmodic bursts.
The thermostat lowered the heat. The floorboards got icy and his teeth started chattering. I'm not going to bed, he vowed angrily. He didn't know why it was that suddenly the bed frightened him. I don't know, he forced the words through his brain because he felt vaguely that he
did
know and he didn't want to admit it, even for a second.
But after hours of futile waiting, he had to straighten up with a snapping of joints and stumble back to bed. There, he crawled under the blankets and lay trembling, trying to stay awake. She'll come while I'm asleep, he thought, I mustn't sleep.
When he woke up in the morning there were the flowers on the floor for him. And that was another day before a mass of days that sank crushed into the lump of months.
 
You can get used to horror, he thought. When it has lost immediacy and is no longer pungent and has become a steady diet. When it has degraded to a chain of mind-numbing events. When shocks are like scalpels picking and jabbing at delicate ganglia until they have lost all feeling.
Yet, though it was no longer terror, it was worse. For his nerves were raw and bleeding a hemophilia of rage. He fought his battles to the dregs of seconds, gaunt willed, shouting her off, firing lances of hate from his jaded mind; tortured by her surrenders that were her victories. She always came back. Like an enraging cat, rubbing endless
sycophantic sides against him, filling him with thoughts of—
yes, admit it!
—he screamed to himself through midnight struggles …
Thoughts of
love.
And there was the undercurrent, the promise of new shock that would topple his already shaking edifice. It needed only that—an added push, another stab of the blade, one more drop of the shattering hammer.
The shapeless threat hung over him. He waited for it, poised for it a hundred times an hour, especially at night. Wait. Waiting. And, sometimes, when he thought he knew what he was waiting for, the shock of admission made him shudder and made him want to claw at walls and break things and run until the blackness swallowed him.
 

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