Duel (17 page)

Authors: Richard Matheson

BOOK: Duel

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If he could only forget her, he thought. Yes, if you could forget her for a while, just a little while, it would be all right.

He mumbled that to himself as he set up the movie projector in the living room.

She begged from the kitchenâ
Can I see?

“No!”

Now all his replies, worded or thought, were like the snapping retorts of a jangled old man. If only the six months would end. That was the problem. The months weren't moving fast enough. And time was like herânot to be reasoned with or intimidated.

There were many reels on the wall shelf. But his hand reached out without hesitation and picked out one. He didn't notice it; his mind was calloused to suggestion.

He adjusted the reel on the spindle and turned out the lights. He sat down with a tired groan as the flickering milky cone of light shot out from the lens, throwing pictures on the screen.

A lean, dark-bearded man was posing, arms crossed, white teeth showing in an artificial smile. He came closer to the camera. The sun flashed, blurring the film a second. Black screen. Title:
Picture of me
.

The man, high cheek-boned, bright-eyed, stood laughing soundlessly
out from the screen. He pointed to the side and the camera swung around. Lindell sat up sharply.

It was the station.

Apparently it was autumn. For, as the camera swung past the house, the village, jerking a moment as though changing hands, he saw the trees surrounded by heaps of dead leaves. He sat there shivering, waiting for something, he didn't know what.

The screen blacked. Another title roughly etched in white.
Jeff In the Office
.

The man peered at the camera, an idiotic smile on his face, white skin accentuated by the immaculate black outline of his beard.

Fadeoutâin. The man doing a jig around the empty warehouse floor, hands poised delicately in the air, his dark hair bouncing wildly on his skull.

Another title flashing on the screen. Lindell stiffened in his seat, his breath cut off abruptly.

Title:
Lover
.

There was her face horribly repellent in black and white. She was standing by his bedroom window, her face a mask of delight. He could tell now it was delight. Once he would have said she looked like a maniac, her mouth twisted like a living scar, her grotesque eyes staring.

She spun and her robe swirled out. He saw her puffy ankles and his stomach grew rock taut.

She approached the camera; he saw filmy eyelids slide down over her eyes. His hands began to tremble violently. It was his dream. It made him sick. It was his dream to the detail. Then it had never been a dreamânot from his own mind.

A sob tore at his throat. She was undoing the robe.
Here it is!
he screamed in his panic-stricken mind. He whimpered and reached out shakily to turn off the projector.

No
.

It was a cold command in the darkness.
Watch me
, she ordered. He
sat bound in a vise of terror, staring in sick fascination as the robe slid from her neck, pulled down over her round shoulders. She twisted sensuously. The robe sank into a heavy, swirling heap on the floor.

He screamed.

He flung out an arm and it swept into the burning projector. It crashed down on the floor. The room was night. He struggled up and lurched across the room.
Nice? Nice?
The word dug at him mercilessly as he fumbled for the door. He found it, rushed into the hall. Her door opened and she stood in the half light, the robe hanging from one smooth shoulder.

He jolted to a halt. “Get out of here!” he yelled.

No
.

He made a convulsive move for her, hands out like rigid claws. The sight of her pink, dewy flesh spun him away.
Yes?
her mind suggested. It seemed as if he heard it spoken in a slyly rising voice â¦

“Listen!” he cried, reaching out for the door to his room. “Listen, you have to go, do you understand? Go to your mate!”

He twisted back in utter horror.

I am with him now
âher message had said.

The thought paralyzed him. He stared, open-mouthed, heart pounding in slow, gigantic beats as the robe slipped over her shoulders and started down her arms.

He whirled with a cry and slammed the door behind him. His fingers shook on the lock. Her thoughts were a wailing in his mind. He whimpered in fright and sickness and knew it was no good because he couldn't lock her out.

There were monkeys chattering in his brain. They lay on their backs in a circle and kicked at the inside of his skull. They grabbed juicy blobs of grey in their dirty paws and they squeezed.

He rolled on his side with a groan. I'll go crazy, he thought. Like Corrigan, like all of them but the first one; that slimy one who started
it all; who added a new and hideous warp to the corrugation of her dominating Gnee mind; who had named her Lover because he meant it.

Suddenly he sat up with a gasp of terror, staring at the foot of the bed.
She comes through the walls!
âhowled his brain. Nothing there, his eyes saw. His fingers clutched at the sheets. He felt sweat dripping off his brow and rolling down the embankment of his nose.

He lay down. Up again! He whimpered like a frightened child. A cloud of blackness was falling over him. Her. Her. He groaned. “No.” In the blackness. No use.

He whined. Sleep. Sleep. The word throbbed, swelled and depressed in his brain. This is the time. He knew it, knew it, knew â¦ .

The blade falling, sanity decapitated and twitching bloody in the basket.

No!
He tried to push himself up but he couldn't. Sleep. A black tide of night hovering, tracking.

Sleep
.

He fell back on the pillow, pushed up weakly on one elbow.

“No.” His lungs were crusted. “No.”

He struggled. It was too much. He screamed a thick, bubbling scream. She threw his will aside, snapped and futile. She was using all her strength now and he was enervated, beaten. He thudded back on the pillow, glassy-eyed and limp. He moaned weakly and his eyes shutâopenedâshutâopenedâshut â¦ .

The dream again. Insane. Not a dream.

When he woke up there were no flowers. The courtship was ended. He gaped blankly and unbelievingly at the imprint of a body beside him on the bed.

It was still warm and moist.

He laughed out loud. He wrote curse words in his diary. He wrote them in tall black letters, holding the pencil like a knife. He wrote them in the log book too. He tore up vouchers if they weren't the
right color. His entries were crooked lines of figures like wavynumbered tendrils. Sometimes he didn't care about that. Mostly he didn't notice.

He prowled the filled warehouse behind locked doors, red-eyed and muttering. He clambered up on the bundles and stared out through the skylight at the empty sky. He was lighter by fifteen pounds, unwashed. His face was black with wiry growth. He was going to have an immaculate beard. She wanted it. She didn't want him to wash or shave or be healthy. She called him Jeff.

You can't fight that, he told himself. You can't win because you lose. If you advance you are retreating because, when you are too tired to fight, she comes back and takes your city and your soul.

That's why he whispered to the warehouse so no one would hear, “There is a thing to do.”

That's why, late at night, he sneaked to the living room and put the gas pistol in his pocket. Never harm the Gnees. Well, that was wrong. It was kill or be killed. That's why I'm taking the pistol to bed with me. That's why I'm stroking it as I stare up at the ceiling. Yes, this is it. This is my rock to rest on through the daynights.

And he turned over plans as an animal snuffles over flat stones to find bugs for supper.

Days. Days. Days. He whispered, “Kill her.”

He nodded and smiled to himself and patted the cool metal. You're my friend, he said, you're my only friend. She has to die, we all know that.

He made lots of plans and they were all the same one. He killed her a million times in his mindâin secret chambers of his mind that he had discovered and opened; where he could crouch clever and undisturbed while he made his plans.

Animals. He walked and looked at the workers' village. Animals. I'm not going to end up like you. I'm not going to I'm not going to I'm not going to I'm â¦ .

He lurched up from his office desk, eyes wide, slaver running over his lips. He held the pistol tight in his palsied hand.

He flung open the office door and staggered over the concrete, through the lanes between roof-high stacks. His mouth was a line. He held the pistol pointing.

He flung up the catch and dragged back one heavy door. He plunged into the pouring sunlight and broke into a run. Wisps of terror licked out from the house. He reveled in them. He ran faster. He fell down because his legs were weak. The pistol went flying. He crawled to it and brushed off the dust. Now we'll see, he promised the monkeys in his head,
now.

He stood up dizzily. He started to hobble for the house.

He heard a rushing in the air, a flicker of light dashed over his cheeks and eyes. He looked up and blinked and saw the cargo ship.

Six months.

He dropped the pistol and slumped down beside it and plucked at blue grass stupidly. He stared at the ship dumbly as it came down and stopped and the hatches opened and men climbed out.

“Why,” he said, “that's cutting it too thin for me.”

And his voice was quite normal except that he broke into giggling and sobbing and had a fist fight with the air.

“You'll be all right,” they told him on the way back to Earth. And they shot more sedative to his shrieking nerves to make him forget.

But he never did.

SHIPSHAPE HOME

“THAT JANITOR GIVES ME THE CREEPS,” RUTH SAID when she came in that afternoon.

I looked up from the typewriter as she put the bags on the table and faced me. I was killing a second draft on a story.

“He gives you the creeps,” I said.

“Yes, he does,” she said. “That way he has of slinking around. He's like Peter Lorre or somebody.”

“Peter Lorre,” I said. I was still plotting.

“Babe,”
she implored. “I'm serious. The man is a creep.”

I snapped out of the creative fog with a blink.

“Hon, what can the poor guy do about his face?” I said. “Heredity. Give him a break.”

She plopped down in a chair by the table and started to take out groceries, stacking cans on the table.

“Listen,” she said.

I could smell it coming. That dead serious tone of hers which she isn't even aware of anymore. But which comes every time she's about to make one of her “revelations” to me.

“Listen,” she repeated. Dramatic emphasis.

“Yes, dear,” I said. I leaned one elbow on the typewriter cover and gazed at her patiently.

“You get that look off your face,” she said. “You always look at me as if I were an idiot child or something.”

I smiled. Wanly.

“You'll be sorry,” she said. “Some night when that man creeps in with an axe and dismembers us.”

“He's just a poor man earning a living,” I said. “He mops the halls, he stokes the furnaces, he â¦”

“We have oil heat,” she said.

“If we had a furnace, the man would stoke it,” I said. “Let us have charity. He labors like ourselves. I write stories. He mops floors. Who can say which is the greater act?”

She looked dejected.

“Okay,” she said with a surrendering gesture. “Okay, if you don't want to face facts.”

“Which are?” I prodded. I decided it was best to let it out of her before it burned a hole in her mind.

Her eyes narrowed. “You listen to me,” she said. “That man has some design in being here. He's no janitor. I wouldn't be surprised if â¦”

“If this apartment house were just a front for a gambling establishment. A hideout for public enemies one through fifteen. An abortion mill. A counterfeiter's lair. A murderer's rendezvous.”

She was already in the kitchen thumping cans and boxes into the cupboard.

“Okay,” she said.
“Okay.”
In that patient if-you-get-murdered-then-don't-come-to-me-for-sympathy voice. “Don't say I didn't try. If I'm married to a wall, I can't help it.”

I came in and slid my arms around her waist. I kissed her neck.

“Stop that,” she said. “You can't disconcert me. The janitor is â¦”

She turned. “You're serious,” I said.

Her face darkened. “Honey, I
am
,” she said. “The man looks at me in a funny way.”

“How?”

“Oh,” she searched. “In â¦ in â¦
anticipation.
”

I chuckled. “Can't blame the man.”

“Be serious now.”

“Remember the time you thought the milkman was a knife killer for the Mafia?” I said.

“I don't care.”

“You read too many fantasy pulps,” I said.

“You'll be sorry.”

I kissed her neck again. “Let's eat,” I said.

She groaned. “Why do I tell you anything?”

“Because you love me,” I said.

She closed her eyes. “I give up,” she said quietly, with the patience of a saint under fire.

I kissed her. “Come on, hon, we have enough troubles.”

She shrugged. “Oh, all right.”

“Good,” I said. “When are Phil and Marge coming?”

“Six,” she said. “I got pork.”

“Roast?”

“Mmmm.”

“I'll buy that.”

“You already did.”

“In that case, back to the typewriter.”

While I squeezed out another page I heard her muttering to herself in the kitchen. I didn't catch it all. All that came through was a grimly prophetic, “Murdered in our beds or something.”

“No, it's flukey,” Ruth analyzed as we all sat having dinner that night.

I grinned at Phil and he grinned back.

“I think so too,” Marge agreed. “Whoever heard of charging only sixty-five a month for a five-room apartment furnished? Stove, refrigerator, washerâit's fantastic.”

“Girls,” I said. “Let's not quibble. Let's take advantage.”

“
Oh!
” Ruth tossed her pretty blonde head. “If a man saidâHere's a million dollars for you, old manâyou'd probably take it.”

“I most definitely would take it,” I said. “I would then run like hell.”

“You're naivÃ©,” she said. “You think people are â¦ are â¦”

“Steady,” I said.

“You think everybody is Santa Claus!”

“It
is
a little funny,” Phil said. “Think about it, Rick.”

I thought about it. A five-room apartment, brand new, furnished in the best manner, dishes â¦ I pursed my lips. A guy can get lost in his typewriter. Maybe it was true. I nodded anyway. I could see their point. Of course I wouldn't say so. And spoil Ruth's and my little game of war? Never.

“I think they charge too much,” I said.

“Oh â¦ Lord!” Ruth was taking it straight, as she usually did. “Too much! Five rooms yet! Furniture, dishes, linens, a â¦ a television set! What do you wantâa swimming pool!”

“A small one?” I said meekly.

She looked at Marge and Phil.

“Let us discuss this thing quietly,” she said. “Let us pretend that the fourth voice we hear is nothing but the wind in the eaves.”

“I am the wind in the eaves,” I said.

“Listen,” Ruth re-spun her forbodings, “what if the place is a fluke? I mean what if they just want people here for a cover-up. That would explain the rent. You remember the rush on the place when they started renting?”

I remembered as well as Phil and Marge. The only reason we'd got our apartment was because we happened to be walking past the place
when the janitor first put out the renting sign. We went right in. I remember our amazement, our delight, at the rental. We thought it was Christmas.

We were the first tenants. The next day was like the Alamo under attack. It's a little hard to get an apartment these days.

“I say there's something funny about it,” Ruth finished. “And did you ever notice that janitor?”

“He's a creep,” I contributed blandly.

“He
is
,” Marge laughed. “My God, he's something out of a B-picture. Those eyes. He looks like Peter Lorre.”

“See!” Ruth was triumphant.

“Kids,” I said, raising a hand of weary conciliation, “if there's something foul going on behind our backs, let's allow it to go on. We aren't being asked to contribute or suffer by it. We are living in a nice spot for a nice rent. What are we going to doâlook into it and try to spoil it?”

“What if there are designs on us?” Ruth said.

“What designs, hon?” I asked.

“I don't know,” she said. “But I sense something.”

“Remember the time you sensed the bathroom was haunted?” I said. “It was a mouse.”

She started clearing off the dishes. “Are you married to a blind man too?” she asked Marge.

“Men are all blind,” Marge said, accompanying my poor man's seer into the kitchen. “We must face it.”

Phil and I lit cigarettes.

“No kidding now,” I said, so the girls wouldn't hear, “do you think there's anything wrong?”

He shrugged. “I don't know, Rick,” he said. “I will say thisâit's pretty strange to rent a furnished place for so little.”

“Yeah,” I said. Yeah, I thoughtâawake at last.

Strange it is.

I stopped for a chat with our strolling cop the next morning. Johnson walks around the neighborhood. There are gangs in the neighborhood, he told me, traffic is heavy and the kids need watching especially after three in the afternoon.

He's a good Joe, lots of fun. I chat with him everyday when I go out for anything.

“My wife suspects foul doings in our apartment house,” I told him.

“This is my suspicion too,” Johnson said, dead sober. “It is my unwilling conclusion that, within those walls, six-year-olds are being forced to weave baskets by candle light.”

“Under the whip hand of a gaunt old hag,” I added.

He nodded sadly. Then he looked around, plotter-like.

“You won't tell anyone, will you?” he said. “I want to crack the case all by myself.”

I patted his shoulder. “Johnson,” I said. “Your secret is locked behind these iron lips.”

“I am grateful,” he said.

We laughed.

“How's the missus?” he asked.

“Suspicious,” I said. “Curious. Investigating.”

“Much the same,” he said. “Everything normal.”

“Right,” I said. “I think I'll stop letting her read those science-fiction magazines.”

“What is it she suspects?” he asked.

“Oh,” I grinned. “Just suppositions. She thinks the rent is too cheap. Everybody around here pays twenty to fifty dollars more, she says.”

“Is that right?” Johnson said.

“Yeah,” I said, punching his arm. “Don't you tell anybody. I don't want to lose a good deal.”

Then I went to the store.

“I knew it,” Ruth said. “I
knew
it.”

She gazed intently at me over a dishpan of soggy clothes.

“You knew what, hon?” I said, putting down the package of second sheets I'd gone down the street to buy.

“This place is a fluke,” she said. She raised her hand. “Don't say a word,” she said. “You just listen to me.”

I sat down. I waited. “Yes dear,” I said.

“I found engines in the basement,” she said.

“What kind of engines, dear? Fire engines?”

Her lips tightened. “Come on, now,” she said, getting a little burned. “I saw the things.”

She meant it.

“I've been down there too, hon,” I said. “How come I never saw any engines?”

She looked around. I didn't like the way she did it. She looked as if she really thought someone might be lurking at the window, listening.

“This is
under
the basement,” she said.

I looked dubious.

She stood up. “Damn it! You come on and I'll show you.”

She held my hand as we went through the hall and into the elevator. She stood grimly by me as we descended, my hand tight in her grip.

“When did you see them?” I asked, trying to be nice.

“When I was washing in the laundry room down there,” she said. “In the hallway, I mean, when I was bringing the clothes back. I was coming to the elevator and I saw a doorway. It was a little bit open.”

“Did you go in?” I asked.

She looked at me. “You went in,” I said.

“I went down the steps and it was light and â¦”

“And you saw engines.”

“I saw engines.”

“Big ones?”

The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. We went out.

“I'll show you how big,” she said.

It was a blank wall. “It's here,” she said.

I looked at her. I tapped the wall. “Honey,” I said.

“Don't you dare say it!” she snapped. “Have you ever heard of doors in a wall?”

“Was this door in the wall?”