Invasion of the Body Snatchers (7 page)

I hope I never again in my life see anything as frightful as those eyes. I could look at them for only a second at a time, then I had to close my own. They were almost, but not quite - not yet - as large as Becky's. They were not quite the same shape, or precisely the same shade - but getting there. The
expression
of those eyes, though… Watch an unconscious person come to, and at first the eyes show only the least dull beginnings of comprehension, the first faint flickers of returning intelligence. That is all that had yet happened to these eyes. The steady awareness, the quiet alertness of Becky Driscoll's eyes were horribly parodied and diluted here. Yet, washed out a dozen times over as they were, you could nevertheless see, in these blank blue eyes caught in the trembling beam of my light, the first faint hint of what - given time - would become Becky Driscoll's eyes. I moaned, and bent double, clutching my stomach tight under my folded arms.

There was a scar on the left forearm of the thing on the shelf, just above the wrist. Becky had a small smooth burn mark there, and I remembered its shape because it crudely resembled an outline drawing of the South American continent. It was on this wrist, too, barely visible, but there, and precisely the same in shape. There was a mole on the left hip, a pencil-line white scar just below the right kneecap; and although I didn't know it of my own knowledge, I was certain that Becky, too, was marked in this very same way.

There on that shelf lay Becky Driscoll - uncompleted. There lay a… preliminary sketch for what was to become a perfect and flawless portrait, everything begun, all sketched in, nothing entirely finished. Or say it this way: there in that dim orange light lay a blurred face, seen vaguely, as through layers of water, and yet - recognizable in every least feature.

I jerked my head, tearing my eyes away, and sobbed for air - unconsciously I'd been holding my breath - and the sound was loud and harsh in that silent basement. Then I came to life once more, my heart swelling and contracting gigantically, the blood congesting in my veins and behind my eyes, in a panic of fright and excitement, and I got to my feet, my legs stiff, so that I stumbled.

Then I moved - fast - up the basement stairs and tried the first-floor door; it was unlocked, and I stepped out into the kitchen. On, then, through the silent dining-room, the straight-backed chairs around the table silhouetted against the windows. In the living-room I swung onto the white-railed staircase, turned at the landing, then climbed silently, two stairs at a time, to the upper hallway.

There was a row of doors, all closed, and I had to guess. I tried the second, on a hunch, grasping the knob, squeezing my fist tight around it, then slowly twisting my wrist, making no sound. I could feel, not hear, the latch sliding out of its notch in the door frame, then I pushed the door open through fractions of inches, and brought my head into the room, not moving my feet. A dark, formless blur, a head, lay on the single pillow of a double bed; there was no telling who it was. Aiming my light to one side of the face, I pressed the button, and saw Becky's father. He moved, muttering an unintelligible word, and I released my flash button and - fast, but still noiselessly - pulled the door closed, then gradually released my grip on the knob.

This was too slow. I couldn't contain myself; I was ready to burst through the doors, cracking them back against walls, ready to shout at the top of my lungs and rouse the household. I took two quick steps to the next door, opened it wide and strode in, my flashlight on and moving rapidly down the wall of the room to find the face of the sleeper in it. It was Becky, lying motionless in that little circle of light, the face a strong, more vigorous duplicate of the parody of a face I'd left in the basement. I moved around the bed in two strides and grasped Becky's shoulder, my other hand holding the light. I shook, and she moaned a little but didn't waken, and now I got my arm under her shoulder and lifted. Her upper body came up to a sitting position, the head hanging back over my arm, and she sighed deep in her throat.

I didn't wait another second. Thrusting the little flash in my mouth, gripping it by the barrel in my teeth, I threw back the light blanket, got my other arm under her knees, and lifted. Then, staggering a step, I heaved Becky up over one shoulder in a fireman's carry. One arm curving up, holding her in place, I took the flash in my other hand, and staggered out into the hall. Then I walked, still staggering, but on tiptoe - I simply don't know how much or little sound I made - to the stairs, then down the stairway in the dark, sliding my feet, feeling for each step with my toes.

Out the front door, and then I was walking down the dark, empty street, alternately carrying Becky over my shoulder, then holding her, her head hanging limp, in my cradled arms. Just past Washington Boulevard she moaned, then lifted her head, eyes still closed, and her arms came up and clasped behind my neck. Then she opened her eyes.

For a moment, as I walked, looking down at her face, she stared at me, eyes drugged; then she blinked several times and her eyes cleared somewhat. Sleepily, like a child, she said, "What? What, Miles? What is it?"

"Tell you later," I said quietly, and smiled at her. "You're all right, I think. How do you feel?"

"All right. Tired, though. Gee, I'm tired." She was turning her head as she spoke, looking around her at the darkened houses, and the trees overhead. "Miles, what's
happening
?" She looked up at me, smiling puzzledly. "Are you kidnapping me? Carrying me off to your den, or something?" She looked down and saw that under my unbuttoned coat I was wearing pyjamas. "Miles," she murmured mockingly," couldn't you wait? Couldn't you at least ask me, like a gentleman? Miles, what in the
world
are you doing?"

Now I grinned at her. "I'll explain in a minute, when we get to my place." Her brows lifted at that, and my grin widened. "Don't worry, you're perfectly safe; Mannie Kaufman is there, and both the Belicecs; you'll be well chaperoned."

Becky looked at me for a moment, then shivered suddenly; the night air was cool, and her nightgown was thin nylon. She tightened her grip around my neck and snuggled close, closing her eyes. "Too bad," she murmured. "The biggest adventure of my life: kidnapped from my bed, by a good-looking man in pyjamas. Carried through the streets, like a captive cavewoman. And then he has to supply chaperons." She opened her eyes, and grinned up at me.

My arms ached horribly, my back felt as though a huge dull knife were pressing hard across my spine, and I could hardly straighten my knees after each step; it was agony. And yet it was wonderful, too, and I didn't want it to end; Becky felt good in my arms, close against me, and I was terribly aware of the pattern of delicious warmth wherever her body touched mine.

Mannie was at my place, I saw; his car was parked back of mine. On the porch I set Becky on her feet, wondering if I could possibly straighten up without shattering into pieces like a broken glass. Then I gave her my topcoat, as I should have long since; I just hadn't thought. She put it on and buttoned it, smiling; then we walked in, and Mannie and Jack were in the living-room.

They stared, mouths open, and Becky just smiled and greeted them, as though she were dropping in for tea. I acted equally casual, delighted at the looks on Jack's and Mannie's faces, and suggested to Becky that it was a little cool for a nightgown. I told her where she could find a clean pair of old blue jeans that had shrunk and were too small for me, a clean white shirt, wool socks, and a pair of moccasins; and she nodded, and went upstairs to find them.

I turned into the living-room, toward an empty chair, glancing at Mannie and Jack. "It's just that I get lonesome sometimes," I said, and shrugged. "And when that happens, I've just got to have company."

Mannie looked at me wearily. "Same thing?" he said quietly, nodding toward the stairs Becky had just climbed. "You find one at her place?"

"Yeah." I nodded, serious again. "In the basement."

"Well" - he stood up - "I want to see them. One of them, anyway. At her place, or Jack's."

I nodded. "Okay. Better make it Jack's; Becky's dad is at her place. I'll get some clothes on."

Upstairs, me in my bedroom, Becky in the bathroom a step or two down the hall, we each got dressed, and calling quietly to each other, were able to talk. Putting on pants, shoes and socks, a shirt, and my old blue sweater, I told her as briefly as possible what she had already guessed, what had happened at the Belicecs' and what I'd found in her basement, too, without going into details too much.

I was afraid of how it might affect her, but you never can tell, I've found, how a woman will take anything. Both dressed now, we walked out into the hall, and Becky smiled at me pleasantly. She looked fine; she'd rolled her dungaree pants halfway to the knees, so they looked like pedal-pushers, and with the white wool socks and moccasins, her shirt sleeves rolled up, and the collar open, she looked like a girl in an ad for a vacation resort. Her eyes, I noticed now, were alive, and eager, unafraid, and I realized that because she hadn't actually seen what I had, she was more pleased and delighted than anything else at all the excitement. "We're going to Jack's," I said. "Do you want to come?" I was ready to argue, if she did.

But she shook her head. "No, someone has to stay with Theodora. You all go ahead." She turned, walked into the room where Theodora lay, and I went on downstairs.

We took my car, all of us in the front seat, and after a few blocks, Jack said, "What do you think, Mannie?"

But Mannie just shook his head, staring absently at the dashboard. "I don't know yet," he said. "I just don't know." In the east, I noticed, though it was still black night in the car and the street around us, there was a hint of dawn or false dawn in the sky.

We climbed the dirt road in second gear, rounded the last turn, and every single light in Jack's house, it seemed, was blazing. For an instant it scared me - I'd expected the house to be utterly dark - and I had a quick mental image of a half-alive, naked, and staring figure stumbling vacant-mindedly through that house clicking on light switches. Then I realized that Jack and Theodora wouldn't have bothered turning off lights when they'd left, and I calmed down a little. I parked outside the open garage, and in just the time it had taken to drive up here from my house, the sky had definitely lightened; all around us now you could see the black outlines of trees against the whitening light. We got out, and in a little circle at my feet I could see the irregularities of ground and the first grey beginnings of colour in the weeds and bushes. The lights of the house were beginning to go weak and orange in the wan light of first dawn.

None of us speaking a word, we walked single-file into the garage, Jack leading, the leather of our soles gritting on the cement floor. Then we were in the basement, the half-open door of the billiard room six or eight paces ahead. The light was on, just as Theodora had left it, and now Jack was pushing the door open.

He stopped so suddenly that Mannie bumped into him; then he moved slowly forward again, and Mannie and I filed in after him. There was no body on the table. Under the bright, shadowless light from overhead lay the brilliant green felt, and on the felt, except at the corners and along the sides, lay a sort of thick grey fluff that might have fallen, or been jarred loose, I supposed, from the open rafters.

For an instant, his mouth hanging open, Jack stared at the table. Then he swung to Mannie, and his voice protesting, asking for belief, he said, "It was there, on the table! Mannie, it was!"

Mannie smiled, nodding quickly. "I believe you; Jack; you all saw it." He shrugged. "And now someone's taken it. There's a mystery here, of some sort. Maybe. Come on, let's get outside; I think I've got something to tell you."

seven

At the edge of the road in front of Jack's house, we sat down in the grass beside my car, our feet over the embankment, each with a cigarette in hand, staring down at the town in the valley. I'd seen it like this more than once, coming through the hills from night-time calls. The roof tops were still grey and colourless, but all over the town now, windows flashed a dull blind orange in the almost level rays of the rising sun. Even as we watched, the orange-coloured windows were brightening, lightening in tone, as the sun's rim moved, inching up over the eastern horizon. Here and there, from an occasional chimney, we could see a beginning straggle of smoke.

Jack murmured, speaking to himself actually, shaking his head, as he stared down at the toy houses below. "It just won't bear thinking about," he said. "How many of those things are down there in town right now? Hidden away in secret places."

Mannie smiled. "None," he said, "none at all," and grinned as our heads swung to stare at him. "Listen," he said quietly, "you've got a mystery on your hands, all right, and a real one. Whose body was that? And where is it now?" We were seated at his left, and Mannie turned his head to watch our faces for a moment, then he added, "But it's a completely normal mystery. A murder, possibly; I couldn't say. Whatever it is, though, it's well within the bounds of human experience; don't try to make any more of it."

My mouth opened to protest, but Mannie shook his head. "Now, listen to me," he said quietly. His forearms on his knees, cigarette in hand, the smoke curling upward past his dark tanned face, Mannie sat staring down at the town. "The human mind is a strange and wonderful thing," he said reflectively, "but I'm not sure it will ever figure itself out. Everything else, maybe - from the atom to the universe - except itself."

His arm swung outward, gesturing at the miniature town below us, brightening in the first morning sun. "Down there in Santa Mira a week or ten days ago, someone formed a delusion; a member of his family was not what he seemed, but an impostor. It's not a common delusion precisely, but it happens occasionally, and every psychiatrist encounters it sooner or later. Usually he has some idea of how to treat it."

Mannie leaned back against the wheel of my car and smiled at us. "But last week I was stumped. It's not a common delusion, yet from this one town alone there were a dozen or more such cases, all occurring within the past week or so. I'd never encountered such a thing in all my practice before, and it had me stopped cold." Mannie drew on his cigarette again, then stubbed it out in the dirt beside him. "But I've been doing some reading lately, refreshing my mind on certain things I should have remembered before. Did you ever hear of the Mattoon Maniac?"