Uncollected Stories 2003 (14 page)

"What did you do?"
"Decided to take the chance," Henry said. "I took the window pole and
pulled the crate out. I eased it out, as if it were full of eggs. No...as if it
were full of Mason jars with nitroglycerine in them."
Dex sat up, staring at Henry. "What...what..."
Henry looked back somberly. "It was my first good look at it,
remember. It was horrible." He paused deliberately and then said it
again: "It was horrible, Dex. It was splattered with blood, some of it
seemingly grimed right into tile wood. It made me think of...do you
remember those joke boxes they used to sell? You'd push a little lever
and tile box would grind and shake, and then a pale green hand would
come out of the top and push the lever back and snap inside again. It
made me think of that.
"I pulled it out – oh, so carefully – and I said I wouldn't look down
inside, no matter what. But I did, of course. And I saw..." His voice
dropped helplessly, seeming to lose all strength. "I saw Wilma's face,
Dex. Her face."
"Henry, don't – "
"I saw her eyes, looking up at me from that box. Her glazed eyes. I
saw something else, too. Something white. A bone, I think. And a black
something. Furry. Curled up. Whistling, too. A very low whistle. I think
it was sleeping.
"I hooked it out as far as I could, and then I just stood there looking at
it, realizing that I couldn't drive knowing that thing could come out at
any time...come out and land on the back of my neck. So I started to
look around for something – anything – to cover the top of Badlinger's
crate.
"I went into the animal husbandry room, and there were a couple of
cages big enough to hold the Paella crate, but I couldn't find the
goddamned keys. So I went upstairs and I still couldn't find anything. I
don't know how long I hunted, but there was this continual feeling of
time... slipping away. I was getting a little crazy. Then I happened to
poke into that big lecture room at the far end of the hall – "
"Room 6?"
"Yes, I think so. They had been painting the walls. There was a big
canvas dropcloth on the floor to catch the splatters. I took it, and then I
went back downstairs, and I pushed the Paella crate into Badlinger's
crate. Carefully!...you wouldn't believe how carefully I did it, Dex."
When the smaller crate was nested inside the larger, Henry uncinched
the straps on the English department dolly and grabbed the end of the
dropcloth. It rustled stiffly in the stillness of Amberson Hall's basement.
His breathing rustled stiffly as well. And there was that low whistle. He
kept waiting for it to pause, to change. It didn't. He had sweated his shirt
through; it was plastered to his chest and back.
Moving carefully, refusing to hurry, he wrapped the dropcloth around
Badlinger's crate three times, then four, then five. In the dim light
shining through from the lab, Badlinger's crate now looked mummified.
Holding the seam with one splayed hand, he wrapped first one strap
around it, then the other. He cinched them tight and then stood back a
moment. He glanced at his watch. It was just past one o'clock. A pulse
beat rhythmically at his throat.
Moving forward again, wishing absurdly for a cigarette (he had given
them up sixteen years before), he grabbed the dolly, tilted it back, and
began pulling it slowly up the stairs.
Outside, the moon watched coldly as he lifted the entire load, dolly
and all, into the back of what he had come to think of as Wilma's Jeep –
although Wilma had not earned a dime since the day he had married her.
It was the biggest lift he had done since he had worked with a moving
company in Westbrook as an undergraduate. At the highest point of the
lift, a lance of pain seemed to dig into his lower back. And still he
slipped it into the back of the Scout as gently as a sleeping baby.
He tried to close the back, but it wouldn't go up; the handle of the
dolly stuck out four inches too far. He drove with the tailgate down, and
at every bump and pothole, his heart seemed to stutter. His ears felt for
the whistle, waiting for it to escalate into a shrill scream and then
descend to a guttural howl of fury waiting for the hoarse rip of canvas as
teeth and claws pulled their way through it.
And overhead the moon, a mystic silver disc, rode the sky.
"I drove out to Ryder's Quarry," Henry went on. "There was a chain
across the head of the road, but I geared the Scout down and got around.
I backed right up to the edge of the water. The moon was still up and I
could see its reflection way down in the blackness, like a drowned silver
dollar. I went around, but it was a long time before I could bring myself
to grab the thing. In a very real way, Dex, it was three bodies...the
remains of three human beings. And I started wondering...where did
they go? I saw Wilma's face, but it looked...God help me, it looked all
flat, like a Halloween mask. How much of them did it eat, Dex? How
much could it eat? And I started to understand what you meant about
that central axle pulling loose.
"It was still whistling. I could hear it, muffled and faint, through that
canvas dropcloth. Then I grabbed it and I heaved...I really believe it was
do it then or do it never. It came sliding out...and I think maybe it
suspected, Dex...because, as the dolly started to tilt down toward the
water it started to growl and yammer again ... and the canvas started to
ripple and bulge...and I yanked it again. I gave it all I had...so much that
I almost fell into the damned quarry myself. And it went in. There was a
splash...and then it was gone. Except for a few ripples, it was gone. And
then the ripples were gone, too."
He fell silent, looking at his hands.
"And you came here," Dex said.
"First I went back to Amberson Hall. Cleaned under the stairs. Picked
up all of Wilma's things and put them in her purse again. Picked up the
janitor's shoe and his pen and your grad student's glasses. Wilma's purse
is still on the seat. I parked the car in our – in my – driveway. On the
way there I threw the rest of the stuff in the river."
"And then did what? Walked here?"
"Yes."
"Henry, what if I'd waked up before you got here? Called the police?"
Henry Northrup said simply: "You didn't."
They stared at each other, Dex from his bed, Henry from the chair by
the window.
Speaking in tones so soft as to be nearly inaudible, Henry said, "The
question is, what happens now? Three people are going to be reported
missing soon. There is no one element to connect all three. There are no
signs of foul play; I saw to that. Badlinger's crate, the dolly, the painters'
dropcloth – those things will be reported missing too, presumably.
There will be a search. But the weight of the dolly will carry the crate to
the bottom of the quarry, and...there are really no bodies, are there,
Dex?"
"No," Dexter Stanley said. "No, I suppose there aren't."
"But what are you going to do, Dex? What are you going to say?"
"Oh, I could tell a tale," Dex said. "And if I told it, I suspect I'd end up
in the state mental hospital. Perhaps accused of murdering the janitor
and Gereson, if not your wife. No matter how good your cleanup was, a
state police forensic unit could find traces of blood on the floor and
walls of that laboratory. I believe I'll keep my mouth shut."
"Thank you," Henry said. "Thank you, Dex."
Dex
thought
of
that
elusive thing Henry had mentioned
companionship. A little light in the darkness. He thought of playing
chess perhaps twice a week instead of once. Perhaps even three times a
week... and if the game was not finished by ten, perhaps playing until
midnight if neither of them had any early morning classes, instead of
having to put the board away (and, as likely as not, Wilma would just
"accidentally" knock over the pieces "while dusting," so that the game
would have to be started all over again the following Thursday
evening). He thought of his friend, at last free of that other species of
Tasmanian devil that killed more slowly but just as surely – by heart
attack, by stroke, by ulcer, by high blood pressure, yammering and
whistling in the ear all the while.
Last of all, he thought of the janitor, casually flicking his quarter, and
of the quarter coming down and rolling under the stairs, where a very
old horror sat squat and mute, covered with dust and cobwebs, waiting...
biding its time...
What had Henry said? The whole thing was almost hellishly perfect.
"No need to thank me, Henry," he said.
Henry stood up. "If you got dressed," he said, "you could run me
down to the campus. I could get my MG and go back home and report
Wilma missing."
Dex thought about it. Henry was inviting him to cross a nearly
invisible line, it seemed, from bystander to accomplice. Did he want to
cross that line?
At last he swung his legs out of bed. "All right, Henry."
"Thank you, Dexter."
Dex smiled slowly. "That's all right," he said. "After all, what are
friends for?"

An 11 page, 2,500 word story written for a proposed last volume of Harlan
Ellison’s
Dangerous Visions
anthologies. Ellison felt that the story was not quite
ready to be published in the current form. King did not feel that was the case.

B
illy Clewson died all at once, with nine of the ten other members of D
Squad on April 8, 1974. It took his mother two years, but she got started
right away on the afternoon the telegram announcing her son's death
came, in fact. Dale Clewson simply sat on the bench in the front hall for
five minutes, the sheet of yellow flimsy paper dangling from his fingers,
not sure if he was going to faint or puke or scream or what. When he
was able to get up, he went into the living room. He was in time to
observe Andrea down the last swallow of the first drink and pour the
post-Billy era's second drink. A good many more drinks followed –
it was really amazing, how many drinks that small and seemingly frail
woman had been able to pack into a two-year period. The written cause
– that which appeared on her death certificate – was liver dysfunction
and renal failure. Both Dale and the family doctor knew that was
formalistic icing on an extremely alcoholic cake – Caruba rum, perhaps.
But only Dale knew there was a third level. The Viet Cong had killed
their son in a place called Ky Doe, and Billy's death had killed his
mother.

It was three years – three years almost to the day – after Billy’s death
on the bridge that Dale Clewson began to believe that he must be going
mad.

Nine
, he thought.
There were nine. There were always nine. Until
now.
Were there?
his mind replied to itself.
Are you sure? Maybe you really
counted –
The lieutenant's letter said there were nine, and Bortman's letter said
there were nine.
So just how can you be so sure? Maybe you just assumed.
But he hadn't just assumed, and he could be sure because he knew
how many ninewas, and there had been nine boys in the D Squad
photograph which had come in the mail, along with Lieutenant
Anderson's letter.
You could be wrong
, his mind insisted with an assurance that was
slightly hysterical.
You've been through a lot these last couple of years,
what with losing first Billy and then Andrea. You could be wrong.

It was really surprising, he thought, to what insane lengths the human
mind would go to protect its own sanity.
He put his finger down on the new figure – a boy of Billy's age, but
with blonde crewcut hair, looking no more than sixteen, surely too
young to be on the killing ground. He was sitting cross-legged in front
of Gibson, who had, according to Billy's letters, played the guitar, and
Kimberley, who told lots of dirty Jokes. The boy with the blonde hair
was squinting slightly into the sun – so were several of the others, but
they had always been there before. The new boy's fatigue shirt was
open, his dog tags lying against his hairless chest.
Dale went into the kitchen, sorted through what he and Andrea had
always called "the jumble drawers," and came up with an old, scratched
magnifying glass. He took it and the picture over the living room
window, tilted the picture so there was no glare, and held the glass over
the new boy's dog-tags. He couldn't read them. Thought, in fact, that the
tags were both turned over and lying face down against the skin.
And yet, a suspicion had dawned in his mind – it ticked there like the
clock on the mantle. He had been about to wind that clock when he had
noticed the change in the picture. Now he put the picture back in its
accustomed place, between a photograph of Andrea and Billy's
graduation picture, found the key to the clock. And wound it.
Lieutenant's Anderson's letter had been simple enough. Now Dale
found it in his study desk and read it again. Typed lines on Army
stationary. The prescribed follow-up to the telegram, Dale had
supposed. First: Telegram. Second: Letter of Condolence from
Lieutenant. Third: Coffin, One Boy Enclosed. He had noticed then and
noticed again now that the typewriter Anderson used had a Flying "o".

Billy's squad and two others had been involved in a flank sweep of a
jungle quadrant of which Ky Doe was the only village. Enemy contact
had been anticipated, Anderson's letter said, but there hadn't been any.
The Cong which had been reliably reported to be in the area had simply
melted away into the jungle – it was a trick with which the American
soldiers had become very familiar over the previous ten years or so.
Dale could imagine them heading back to their base at Homan, happy,
relieved.

Squads A and C had waded across the Ky River, which was almost
dry. Squad D used the bridge. Halfway across, it blew up. Perhaps it had
been detonated from downstream. More likely, someone – perhaps even
Billy himself – had stepped on the wrong board. All nine of them had
been killed. Not a single survivor.

God – if there really is such a being – is usually kinder than that, Dale
thought. He put Lieutenant Anderson's letter back and took out Josh
Bortman's letter. It had been written on blue-lined paper from what
looked like a child's tablet. Bortman's handwriting was nearly illegible,
the scrawl made worse by the writing implement – a soft-lead pencil.
Obviously blunt to start with, it must have been no more than a nub by
the time Bortman signed his name at the bottom. In several places
Bortman had borne down hard enough with his instrument to tear the
paper.